Day: September 17, 2007

Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001. Tomorrow’s legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts surveyed this week by CNET News.com to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed. If ad-blockers become so common that they slice away at publishers’ revenues, “I absolutely would expect to see litigation

WASHINGTON — Americans might pay more for DSL and cable modem bills starting November 1, thanks to politicians in the U.S. Congress who have yet to extend a federal moratorium limiting taxes on those services. At the moment, a handful of bills in both chambers of Congress propose competing approaches, ranging from making the moratorium permanent to extending it for another four years. Earlier this summer, supporters and opponents of a permanent ban indicated they had reached a compromise that would involve extending the ban for another finite period of time and redefining the concept of Internet