In comments submitted to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group, which is investigating digital rights management (DRM) technologies, the British Library has expressed strong concerns about the long-term viability of electronic resources. Content producers increasingly use DRM to limit unauthorized access to electronic materials, but officials from the library said the protections also threaten legitimate […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to review a patent held by Forgent Networks on the JPEG compression technique. An organization called the Public Patent Foundation had petitioned the patent office to review the patent. The Public Patent Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to minimizing what it sees as damage that patents […]

A group of computer security companies is cooperating on an initiative to help consumers combat the growing problem of spyware, which is estimated to be increasing by 50 to 100 percent per year. ICSA Labs, McAfee, Symantec, Thompson Cyber Security Labs, and Trend Micro will initially offer tools that will help users identify spyware on […]

A Congressional hearing this week will address cell phone companies’ efforts to protect the privacy of their customers. The hearing comes after recent revelations that a number of data brokers have been able to con cell phone companies into disclosing data about customers and their calling habits, which was then sold to third parties. The […]

Researchers at Iowa State University will use a recently acquired supercomputer to work on a map of the genome of the corn plant. The $1.25 million IBM BlueGene computer, which was financed by the university and the National Science Foundation, can perform up to 5.7 trillion calculations per second, according to Srinivas Aluru, professor of […]

Microsoft has announced details of a new policy on censoring the content of blogs maintained by its customers. According to the new policy, blog content will only be blocked to comply with local laws and with the terms of use of MSN Spaces, the company’s blog application.
In order to have content blocked, a local government […]