Roy Mark

No one ever accused big league baseball owners of adopting technology early. Lights? Too expensive. Radio and television broadcasts? That’ll kill the gate, the Lords of the Realm declared. The Internet? To no one’s surprise, the owners were slow to embrace the new media years ago. Today, as the 30 owners who collectively comprise Major […]

The Internet sales tax issue may have reached the tipping point when 18 state tax collectors agreed upon an interstate set of sales tax rules. The tipping point, however, is still a long way from reality. Meeting in Chicago last week, the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) took its most significant step to date to […]

It appears women are leaving the American IT workforce faster than male executives can say, “Go fetch me a beer, darlin.” But apparently, in the Silicon Valley, “You go, girl!” means “We’re outta here.’” The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) recently published a gender diversity study in IT and the numbers are sobering: The […]

Deep Impact’s spectacular collision with the comet Tempel 1 resulted in an explosion of record traffic to the NASA Web site to see how it looked. The hyper-speed demise of the ship’s probe, as it smashed into a comet half the size of Manhattan, generated approximately 80 million page views. “It’s off the scale,” Brian […]

The financial services industry is pooling its own data on identity theft victims with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and law enforcement groups. The Identity Theft Assistance Center (ITAC), a program funded by the 48 participating financial services companies that are Members of the Identity Theft Assistance Corp., said Tuesday it was moving beyond its […]

Promising to couple privacy with technology, U.S. Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) introduced legislation Thursday that would start the process of shifting health records from a paper-based system to a secure electronic format. The bill creates a public-private collaborative effort to identify uniform national data standards and to implement policies for adoption of health information technology. […]

In a policy reversal, the United States plans to retain its control over the top-level domain and addressing system (DNS) of the Internet. Previously, the U.S. said it was willing to give up its control over the Internet’s master indexes and root directory. Although the Internet’s 13 root servers are in private hands, the U.S. […]

WASHINGTON — Federal agents took a strike at the international online piracy market today with 70 raids resulting in four arrests. At least eight major online distribution networks were dismantled, with seized pirated works estimated at $50 million. The U.S. raids were coordinated with law enforcement officials in 10 other countries conducting similar operations. According […]

U.S. Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Ver.) introduced legislation Wednesday targeting data brokers and their methods of collecting and securing the personal information of Americans. Spector, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the panel, are seeking a national data breach disclosure law in addition to limiting the […]

WASHINGTON — Without more government leadership on the transition to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), U.S. commerce could potentially face “devastating” competition from Europe and Asia. According to testimony before a House panel Wednesday, Europe and Asia have invested more than $800 million in the next generation IP protocol designed for more address space, mobility […]

Reaction to this week’s Supreme Court Brand X ruling has fallen into two camps. Depending on the viewpoint, the justices either added regulatory certainty to the broadband market or muddled the situation even more. The cable companies, of course, are delighted with the decision that they do not have to share their high-speed broadband lines […]

What will a post-Grokster world look like? Very rosy indeed, a jubilant Hollywood says. A new era of legal headaches that will stifle innovation, peer-to-peer (P2P) supporters moan. In Monday’s Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster, the justices put P2P companies on notice that they can he held responsible for the illegal acts of […]