MTV has launched a new online station directed at college students. The station, mtvU, includes music videos, movies made by and for college students, games, news, and a range of other content targeting 18-to-22-year-olds. The station only works on PCs at this point, not on Macs, and invites viewers to submit their own content. In […]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed suit against AT&T for allegedly cooperating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in eavesdropping on individuals without a warrant. President Bush ordered the wiretaps following the terrorist attacks of 2001 and has vigorously defended them, saying the Constitution and Congressional resolutions allow them. Civil liberties groups and others […]

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, has sparked an ongoing debate about how best to bring technology to the developing world. Negroponte has created a nonprofit organization called One Laptop Per Child to develop a $100 laptop to be marketed to countries with limited access to technology. His vision is reportedly taking shape, […]

In the United Kingdom, the High Court has ordered 10 ISPs to disclose the identities of 150 individuals suspected of trading copyrighted software. The Business Software Alliance estimates that one-quarter of all software used in the United Kingdom is illicit. The court ruling came after a group called the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) petitioned […]

IBM has released a free version of its DB2 database, joining Microsoft and Oracle in offering free database software to developers. The goal of such products is to encourage software developers to use the products and write programs for them and to compete with the growing stable of open source databases, including the popular MySQL. […]

According to a new report from Javelin Strategy and Research and the Better Business Bureau, the number of individuals victimized by identity theft has fallen in recent years, but the amount of money lost to such malfeasance is climbing. Researchers found that about 8.9 million people suffered identity theft last year, compared to 9.3 million […]

Data broker ChoicePoint has reached a $15 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) following the company’s disclosure a year ago that it had turned over sensitive personal data for about 150,000 people to bogus customers. The FTC alleged that ChoicePoint did not have adequate procedures in place to prevent such fraud and that […]

In the first two cases of illegal file trading that went to trial in the United Kingdom, the High Court has ruled against two men, ordering them to pay damages to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The two defendants and three other individuals were accused of illegally sharing nearly 9,000 songs over the Internet. One […]

A federal judge has issued a summary judgment in favor of AOL in its lawsuit against a man AOL describes as “the poster child for the CAN-SPAM Act.” Christopher William Smith was accused of sending billions of e-mail messages in violation of the federal statute.
Smith’s attorneys withdrew from the case several months after it was […]

A group of technology companies has pledged $10 billion between now and 2010 to encourage adoption of Intel’s Itanium processor, a high-end unit that has failed to meet expectations that it would capture a large portion of the server market. The companies that will contribute to the effort are Intel, HP, Unisys, Silicon Graphics Inc., […]