Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Spam and its evil offshoot, phishing, have become growing problems on the Internet. Not only has spam become a nuisance with its frequently offensive subject matter, but it is consuming increasing amounts of bandwidth. According to a report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, an estimated 50 percent of all e-mail in 2003 was spam, which may have chewed up US$20.5 billion in technical resources...

Microsoft yesterday pulled the wraps off the latest version of its digital rights management (DRM) software, a move awaited with great anticipation in some corners of the online music universe "We're very excited about it," Richard Bullwinkle, senior product marketing manager at Rio Audio in Santa Clara, California, told TechNewsWorld. "We believe ...

Tired of paying 99 cents a track for your music downloads? Try paying for them by the megabyte An online store based in Moscow is selling music downloads by popular artists like Norah Jones, Usher, Prince, Outkast and scores of others for 1 to 2 cents per megabyte of song....

When Apple raised the curtain on its online digital music store a year ago this week, there were more than a few skeptics in the audience. Why, they asked, would websters buy something they could get for free through numerous file-sharing networks? Well, after selling 50 million songs from its iTunes store, it's apparent that Apple is doing somethi...

A new group committed to evangelizing grid computing formed this week, with its inaugural roster boasting such high-tech heavy hitters as Oracle, Sun Microsystems, EMC, NEC, Fujitsu Siemens and HP. Called the Enterprise Grid Alliance, or EGA, the new consortium seeks to create standards for critical business functions and formulate compliance test...

Joining the ranks of Linux distributors HP, Novell and Red Hat, a companynamed Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) has launched a program to protectlarge and small users from legal entanglements arising from adoption of theopen-source operating system According to OSRM, its move into the indemnification business comes after arigorous six-month evalu...

Google, operator of the most popular search engine on the Internet, tried to avoid fanfare when it quietly notified some 150,000 advertisers through e-mail that it was modifying its policy on selling keywords that contained trademarked material. Instead, it's ignited a controversy Speaking on the policy change, Barry G. Felder, a partner with New Y...

While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mulls over what to do about services for making phone calls on the Internet, two legislators have decided that the U.S. Congress should get into the act Sen. John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Mississippi) have filed bills in their respective legislative branches to place regul...

The group empowered with overseeing administration of Internet domain names and addresses has asked a federal court judge to dismiss antitrust and breach-of-contract claims leveled against it by VeriSign, which runs the registry for two of the most popular top-level domain extensions on the Internet -- .com and .net In an acerbic motion filed in U....

Is Linux more secure than Windows? That's the question Forrester senior analyst Laura Koetzle attempted to answer in a recent report on the subject, but her analysis may be pouring gasoline on an already flaming debate....

A bill to criminalize file-sharing on the Internet is moving rapidly through the U.S. Congress The measure -- which last week was just a draft proposal circulating among members of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property -- has been scheduled for action by that panel tomorrow afternoon....

The European Commission's finding that Microsoft has abused its monopoly market presence and the penalties stemming from that finding won't have a dramatic short-term impact on the operations of the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, according to one analyst "The short-term impact is going to be minimal," Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directi...

Porn, spam and jobs are among the subjects found in the latest list of proposed top-level domains (TLDs) hoping to join the ranks of .com, .net, .org and others According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the governing body of the Internet, 10 groups have applied for nine new top-level domains. The proposed TLDs ar...

Some malware that packs an unusual assortment of tools for mischief and has infected thousands of computers on the Internet is being closely watched by security experts Although the "Phatbot" or "Polybot" program currently poses a low risk to online systems, its potential for devilry prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week to is...

State attorneys general meeting in Washington, D.C., this week may be weighing a move to crack down on makers of Internet file-sharing software A document obtained by TechNewsWorld titled "Draft Attorneys General Letter to Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Software Manufacturers and Distributors (California Attorney General Bill Lockyer Edited Version 2/25...

A measure aimed at countering product piracy of all sorts -- from digital music to ladies' handbags -- has produced a sour aftermath following its approval by the European Parliament this week Supporters as well as opponents had something critical to say about the compromise measure that appears to have more camel than thoroughbred in it....

BobVila.com has long been recognized as a magnet for homeowners starting home improvement projects, but it also may become a milestone for attorneys searching for ways to crank up their cash flow Last Friday, the first lawsuit filed under the federal CAN-SPAM law targeted the home-improvement Web post, owned by Boston-based BVWebTies and marketed b...

An attempt to exclude evidence from a music piracy case seized in sweeping raids by the Australian recording industry has been rejected by a federal court judge The evidence was gathered February 5th by Music Industry Privacy Investigations (MIPI), the enforcement agent of Australia's recording industry, in court-ordered raids at 12 locations throu...

The recent rush to adopt technologies for countering e-mail abuses like spam and phishing could pose a dangerous threat to freedom on the Internet "These proposals are extremely dangerous," Eric Johansson, a networking consultant for the TriArche Research Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told TechNewsWorld....

In what could be a blueprint for the future of sharing commercial music on the Internet, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Wednesday released a white paper outlining a scheme to squelch squabbles between the music industry and online peer-to-peer networks over music file-sharing in cyberspace "There are some logistical hu...