Day: March 14, 2007

YouTubes fate rests on decade-old copyright law

news analysis Whether YouTube suffers the same fate as Napster may depend on the wording of a nearly antique law written long before video-sharing Web sites were envisioned. The law is, of course, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which made its appearance in the U.S. Congress in July 1997. That was a year marked by the arrival of Apple’s Mac OS 8, Microsoft shares increasing in price by 150 percent annually, and Amazon.com holding its initial public offering. High-speed connections that enable video sharing were a luxury, and the Internet’s total population hovered around 19

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Federal agencies ban Windows Vista

As Microsoft is out touting the “wow” of Windows Vista, two federal agencies are among those saying “whoa.” The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cite fear of compatibility problems as one of the reasons not to allow their tens of thousands of employees to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest operating system. “We are temporarily not permitting computers with the Vista operating system to be connected to our networks,” Michael Baum, a NIST spokesman, said Tuesday. The organization’s technology staff is testing NIST applications and evaluating the security in Windows Vista.

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Campaign to educate public on digital TV switch

WASHINGTON–Concerned that millions of Americans don’t understand what the February 2009 digital television switch means for their sets, a number of industry and public interest groups on Wednesday said they plan to launch an educational campaign. Trade associations representing consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers, the cable and broadcast industries, public television stations, and civil rights advocates have aligned themselves as the DTV Transition Coalition and plan to pool unspecified millions of dollars to educate consumers about the crossover from analog TV For more info click here 

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Adult spam hits all-time low

There’s still plenty of spam going around, but “adult” spam has been on a steady decline and hit an all-time low in February, according to a new Symantec report. Of all the spam filtered by Symantec’s e-mail security tools in February, only 3 percent could be classified as adult spam, the company said Tuesday. Adult spam, according to Symantec, contains or refers to “products or services intended for persons above the age of 18” and is “often offensive or inappropriate. Examples: porn, personal ads, relationship advice.” For more info click here 

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eBay CEO: Phishers threaten user trust

WASHINGTON–eBay chief Meg Whitman said on Thursday that phishers pose one of the biggest threats to the customer trust that has sustained the auction giant. Speaking at the Visa Security Summit here, Whitman said her company has been developing fraud models aimed at detecting unauthorized account access and hires experts around the globe to help law enforcement find criminals. But she said additional safeguards and educational campaigns are necessary to prevent consumers from falling prey to phony requests for their sensitive information–or simply getting annoyed and canceling their eBay accounts. For more info click here

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SEC goes after stock spammers, hackers

The Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action against alleged stock promoters and hackers thought to have broken into trading accounts. The SEC suspended trading Thursday in the securities of 35 companies that were heavily promoted in spam e-mail campaigns, it said in a statement. The trading suspensions, the most ever aimed at spammed companies, were ordered because of questions about the adequacy and accuracy of information about the companies, it said. For more info click here

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Feds unveil digital-TV subsidy details

update WASHINGTON–Americans who want a converter box permitting older televisions to receive digital broadcasts will be eligible for federal subsidies, according to new rules announced Monday that clear up some confusion about how the program will work. As part of the lead-up to a scheduled February 2009 shutdown of over-the-air broadcasts in the United States, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) held a press conference here Monday to unveil its long-awaited final rules for a congressionally mandated subsidy program. For more info click here 

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