Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Microsoft has formed a new Media/Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group, a move analysts say is calculated to build trust between the Redmond, Washington, technology giant and the media and entertainment industries. "Clearly Microsoft is trying to reach out to the companies that own rights to digital media because having that media compatibl...

In an apparent move to avoid the mistakes made by the recording industry in managing digital forms of its intellectual property, two movie studios have cut a deal with several major technology companies -- including Microsoft and IBM -- to develop a scheme that will allow limited copying ofnext-generation DVDs "They're trying to be wiser than the r...

After more than 70 months without a significant drop in its share of the U.S. Web browser market, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) saw its hold on the mouse clicks of Web surfers slip by one percent over the last month On the basis of a daily survey of some 30 million browsers, WebSideStory, a San Diego-based Web metrics company, reported that IE's...

More than a third of the software on the world's PCs has been pirated from its makers, according to a study released yesterday by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), whose members include Adobe, Apple, Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft The annual study -- this year conducted for the first time by IDC of Framingham, Massachusetts -- showed that 36 ...

A move to help TV viewers avoid restrictions on digital broadcast signals scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2005 has been launched by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) The campaign is targeted at something called the "Broadcast Flag," a digital rights management scheme that the EFF maintains will stop viewers from making digital copies of ...

As part of its "Patent Busting Project," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) yesterday released its "Ten Most Wanted" patents -- patents it claims pose the greatest threat to the public domain At its web site, the EFF has posted a "wanted poster" that mimics those found on post office walls. "Wanted," the poster declares, "by EFF Marshals" for...

To kick off its big JavaOne party for its software developers in San Francisco this week, Sun Microsystems made a flurry of announcements aimed at rekindling enthusiasm for the once high-flying company's future prospects. But some critics of the Santa Clara, California enterprise remained unimpressed by the festivities "At the moment, Sun is sort o...

File-sharing appears to boost music CD buying, according to survey results released by Warez.com, a maker of file-sharing software The online survey, which reportedly has been taken by some 150,000 people, shows that the purchasing of music increases slightly for some consumers after they discover peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Light buyers of...

Hot spots for making wireless connections to the Internet are popping up in places like MacDonald's, Starbuck's and Panera's, but WiFi remains just a side dish for outfits trying to make a buck from the technology The hot spots are a premium service used to attract customers to their sponsors' locations, explained Roberta Wiggins, an analyst with t...

The entertainment industry and civil liberties advocates have their dirks leveled at each other's throats again -- this time over a proposed California law aimed at protecting anonymous free speech on the Internet While proponents of the legislation say it's needed to protect employees exercising their First Amendment rights from employer retributi...

FastTrack, once the darling of online file-sharers, appears to be losing its popularity Reports in recent weeks -- as well as data gathered by Internet traffic tracker Alexa -- show a marked decline in files swapped on networks like Kazaa that use the FastTrack protocol....

Microsoft released a "technical beta" of Windows Media Player 10 yesterday, and while the target date for the prime-time version isn't until later this year, there's little doubt now who is in the crosshairs with this incarnation of the software According to Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research in New York Ci...

After some friendly negotiations with local authorities, Spamhaus, a volunteer organization fighting the proliferation of unsolicited e-mail across the globe, has established operations in China with the launch of a new Web site, spamhaus.cn The move is seen by some as another positive sign that the Asian giant is waking up to its spam problem. "Th...

It may not be a perfect deterrent to illegal file-swapping on the Internet, but it comes very close to it That's how Loudeye characterized its new high-performance Titanium antipiracy service announced this week by the Seattle-based provider of business-to-business digital media solutions....

A federal court ruling that dismissed a seven-year-old patent infringement lawsuit against PalmOne's Graffiti handwriting recognition system will be appealed by Stamford, Connecticut-based Xerox Corporation "We intend to appeal," Xerox spokesperson Christa Carone told TechNewsWorld. "We've won on appeal twice already, and we believe we will have a ...

The European Commission (EC) has passed a controversial directive that opponents claim will bolster the lot of big companies at the expense of small ones and will stifle innovation The so-called Computer-Implemented Inventions directive, which would harmonize how software patents are issued throughout the European Union, created a furor when it was...

The Australian recording industry's bid to eyeball material gathered in a series of raids at the sites of alleged music pirates -- including Sharman Networks, maker of the popular online file-sharing program Kazaa, and Sharman partners Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment -- was deflated last week in a proceeding in a New South Wales federal court...

The arrest this week of the Japanese author of a popular online file-sharing program appears to be an extreme reaction, at least by American standards, to his alleged abetting of copyright infringers, according to a patent attorney in Chicago In what's been reported as the first arrest of a software developer for helping others to violate copyright...

As video-game makers from around the world gather at the 10th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo -- known in the industry as E3 -- in Los Angeles this week, handheld hardware is expected to garner much of the buzz emanating from the show "There'll be a lot of looking at the handheld market this year, with both Sony and Nintendo having new product...

There's yet another pay-per-tune music store on the Net, this time launched by media behemoth Sony through its Sony Connect subsidiary in Santa Monica, California The store has a library of more than half a million tracks from all major labels and some independents, as well as exclusive content from such artists as Avril Lavigne, Yeah Yeah, Snow Pa...