Ryan Naraine

The Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) decision to slap lawsuits on file-swappers at three U.S. universities has been met with an angry retort from the president of the Michigan Technological University (MTU). In a letter to RIAA boss Cary Sherman, MTU’s Curtis Tompkins accused the association of turning a blind eye to the school’s […]

Digital media heavyweight RealNetworks has made full use of the NAB spotlight in Las Vegas, announcing a slew of reseller deals and a major client win to sell multimedia programming from BBC Worldwide. During a keynote address at the National Association of Broadcasters conference, RealNetworks boss Rob Glaser is expected to announce a deal with […]

DVD software firm InterVideo has scored a deal with Microsoft to port components of the Windows Media Format to run on Linux-based consumer devices. The deal illustrates the general shift in the digital media marketplace to open up codecs and formats to competing platforms. Rival RealNetworks has already gone the open-source route for its Helix […]

IBM Corp. on Monday lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding xCP (eXtensible Content Protection), the digital rights protection architecture that promises to solve the riddle of portability for content creators. Big Blue used the spotlight of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference to showcase the goodies from its Digital Media Factory and finally […]

What was once a minor buzz about strategic moves in the online music sector is now hitting a crescendo over whether a shakeout is looming and which companies will be left with all the chips. With the bigger players — Microsoft , AOL , RealNetworks , Apple and Sony Music — all putting their cards […]

The RIAA wasn’t bluffing. Following through on a threat to sue illegal file-swappers at universities nationwide, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has slapped four lawsuits against operators of what it described as “Napster-like internal campus networks” that aid in the theft of copyrighted songs. Just months after seeking the cooperation of college administrators […]

Microsoft-backed Groove Networks on Wednesday made a play for the small business market, announcing it would begin selling a trimmed-down version of the Groove Workspace desktop collaboration software for less than the price of a PC. The Beverly, Mass.-based firm, which just banked $38 million in funding from a group of investors led by Microsoft […]

The Apache Software Foundation has rushed out another update to the Apache 2.0 HTTP Server because of a significant denial-of-service vulnerability discovered and reported by security research firm iDefense. An announcement from the Foundation warned that prior Apache 2.0 versions through 2.0.44 contained a serious DoS flaw . Details of the vulnerability have been embargoed […]

Mobile synchronization technology firm Pumatech on Monday announced plans to acquire Motorola subsidiary Starfish Software, a deal that gives it key patents in the area of enterprise synchronization software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but it’s a safe bet the price tag is nowhere near the millions paid by Motorola in 1998 […]

Researchers are warning of serious security holes in two popular digital media players — RealNetworks’ RealOne and Apple’s QuickTime — that have put millions of systems at risk. The vulnerabilities, which are not related, affect the way the media players read certain file types and could leave susceptible systems open to intrusion. RealNetworks confirmed the […]

With the pace of MPEG-4 adoption slowed by the absence of Digital Rights Management (DRM) capabilities, the non-profit Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) is pushing ahead with plans for the final release of a content protection specification in June. The ISMA, which is leading the lobby for market adoption of an open standard for streaming […]

Highlighting the shortcomings of the Wi-Fi Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security standard, Microsoft on Monday rolled out its own alternative for Windows XP users, new software that promises increased security in the areas of data encryption and user authentication. Microsoft announced the availability of a free XP download with support for the standards-based Wi-Fi Protected […]