Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

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...

In what's been called the "Academy Awards for Engineers," four distinguished figures in personal computer history will be awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize tonight at a dinner in Washington, D.C Sharing the US$500,000 prize will be Robert W. Taylor, Alan C. Kay, Butler W. Lampson and Charles P. Thacker -- all key players at the celebrated comp...

The amount of Internet fraud perpetrated using a practice known as "phishing" increased 52 percent from December to January, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) In January, there were 176 new, unique attack types reported to the group, compared with 116 in December, the organization revealed in its monthly "Phishing Attack Trends Re...

The first vulnerability stemming from the Windows source code apparently leaked last week by one of Microsoft's developers has been posted on the Internet "It appears that it could be used to attack ordinary users, but according to the person posting it, it does not affect newer versions of Internet Explorer," said Stuart Moore, CEO of SecurityTrac...

Sharman Networks has moved to nullify a court order that allowed agents of Australia's music industry to raid the company's offices in Sydney last week in search of evidence for a copyright infringement case against the owner and distributor of Kazaa, a popular Internet file-sharing program The action by the Australian Recording Industry Associatio...

Diebold Systems, a US$2 billion company that makes most of its money by manufacturing ATM machines but most of its headlines by producing electronic voting devices, found itself in court Monday for alleged abuse of copyright protections created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) The lawsuit filed by two Swarthmore College students and a...

As the entertainment industry attempted this week to overturn a court ruling protecting the operation of file-sharing services on the Internet, two peer-to-peer outfits rolled out new products that could cause more hand-wringing among movie and music execs Los Angeles-based StreamCast Networks released a new version of its Morpheus peer-to-peer sof...

Big Music and Big Movies will square off once again with Internet file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus today in a California courtroom over what the "bigs" say is rampant copyright infringement taking place on those networks A lower court dismissed contentions that the owners of the services should be held responsible for copyright infringem...

The five-year antitrust probe of Microsoft in Europe appears to be drawing to a close, and there are indications that punitive action will be recommended against the Redmond, Washington-based software colossus Although lots of unnamed sources have been talking freely to the press about a draft of a decision in the case, the European Commission, Eur...

News of Microsoft's move to file XML-related patents in Europe and New Zealand is being seen in some quarters as an attempt by the Redmond, Washington-based software company to erect barriers to competitors seeking greater compatibility with the company's market-dominating office suite "When Microsoft added an XML format to Word, suddenly Word's fo...