Ryan Naraine

Hollywood and the music industry’s quest to eliminate copyright infringement on file-sharing networks hit a major pothole Friday when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that two popular P2P networks could not be held liable for piracy by third-party users. The stunning judgment frees the Grokster and Morpheus networks from being sued by a […]

The e-commerce sector, once the face of the protracted dot-com slump, has emerged as a rare bright spot on the Internet with research firms predicting a banner year in 2003. Despite a continued sluggish economy, business research firm eMarketer is predicting the total business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce market will reach $90.1 billion in 2003, a whopping […]

More than a year after grabbing total control of the .PRO domain name registry, Register.com has opened up its RegistryPro business to begin marketing the suffix — at least partially. Professionals in the medical, legal and accounting fields can now reserve the new .PRO top-level domain under the Sunrise Period for defensive name registrations launched […]

Finnish mobile technology giant Nokia on Thursday announced that its VMR-WB (Variable-Rate Multi-Mode Wideband) codec has won approval from the 3GPP2 forum to form the underbelly of moves to standardize a CDMA2000 speech codec. CDMA2000 is another term for single carrier (1x) radio transmission technology, a 3G technology based on the CDMA standard that can […]

Four security holes have been detected and patched in the world’s most popular Web browser, Microsoft said on Wednesday, warning that the vulnerabilities carry a ‘critical’ rating. The security vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s flagship Internet Explorer (IE) browser could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a user’s system if the user either browsed to […]

Digital Rights Management (DRM) specialists Macrovision on Wednesday announced plans to sort through the quagmire of copyright-protection and portability of music CDs with a Microsoft Windows Media data session toolkit that allows the creation of “second session” music files. The availability of a tool to create “second session” files is seen as a crucial step […]

Finnish wireless giant Nokia on Tuesday announced a $21 million stock-swap deal to acquire Eizel Technologies as part of plans to beef up its mobile enterprise offerings. The Pittsburgh-based Eizel, a start-up founded in 2000 by scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, will be folded into Nokia’s enterprise network security division once the acquisition closes. Eizel, […]

Moving to avoid the embarrassment of lawsuits, Pennsylvania State University has pulled the plug on 220 students found trading in copyrighted digital files on its network. The Penn State move comes just weeks after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) slapped lawsuits on four student file-swappers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Princeton University […]

Digital media software powerhouse RealNetworks on Monday shelled out $36 million in cash and stock to snap up Listen.com in a deal that could set off a slew of roll-up activity in the online music space. As first reported by internetnews.com, RealNetworks buyout of Listen.com follows a minority investment it made in the company in […]

Nielsen//NetRatings’ quest to be the one-one-stop for Internet audience measurement took a small step forward Monday with the launch of SiteCensus, a service that promises research analysis for sites with smaller audience sizes. The Milpitas, Calif.-based NetRatings said the census-based service would target media companies and content publishers by offering in-depth measurements of key metrics, […]

In a deal that signals contraction among smaller tech consultancy players, Colorado-based Ciber, Inc. announced Monday it would pay about $29 million to acquire rival AlphaNet Solutions . Ciber, an IT services firm that specializes in system-monitoring and disaster recovery business, said the deal would help spread its wings on the East Coast, where AlphaNet […]

As part of a deliberate strategy to stick to its digital media roots, Roxio has sold off the assets of the GoBack system recovery utility to Symantec Corp. in a deal valued at $13 million. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based Roxio, which is busy preparing for the legitimate comeback of the Napster music service, decided to […]