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The U.S. Department of Justice this week said it would review long-held agreements with two major performing-rights organizations with an eye to updating them to reflect the climate of the music industry more accurately. The DoJ's agreements with ASCAP and BMI have been in place for more than 70 yea...

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission reportedly is changing a proposal for regulating Internet traffic in response to a wave of dissension against the idea. Chairman Tom Wheeler had proposed a new "Net neutrality" plan that would allow Internet service providers to negotiate with ...

Netflix is hiking subscription fees for new users of its streaming video service effective immediately, while current members will have a grace period before they must start paying the increased rates. Subscribers in the U.S. and Canada will fork over an extra dollar a month, with the fee jumping to...

More than 100 companies in the tech industry have come together to battle a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission that they say could irreparably harm the open Internet. Firms including Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, and Yahoo signed a...

Amazon is now allowing consumers to add items to their shopping cart simply by sending a reply on Twitter. Users who connect their accounts on the two services can add a product they see in a Twitter link to their Amazon shopping cart simply by replying to the tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart -- o...

Sony's PlayStation 4 remains top dog among the latest generation of consoles after March sales figures showed it continuing to outpace Microsoft's Xbox One. Sony revealed earlier this week it had sold more than 7 million PS4 units worldwide, while Microsoft said it had shipped 5 million Xbox Ones to...

T-Mobile has decided to end overage fees for its mobile customers. The company is abolishing overage charges for customers on every consumer plan, and its chief executive, John Legere, has laid down the gauntlet to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to kill off such charges as well. Twenty million America...

Amazon has released its annual letter to shareholders, revealing a smattering of tidbits about what's happening in the company now and what's in store for the future. The running theme throughout the letter is innovation. The entire company innovates with the customer in mind, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ...

BlackBerry has decided to part ways with T-Mobile. "BlackBerry has had a positive relationship with T-Mobile for many years," said CEO John Chen. "Regretfully, at this time, our strategies are not complementary and we must act in the best interest of our BlackBerry customers." BlackBerry hopes to wo...

Twitter has bolstered its photo-sharing capabilities with the addition of two new features: the option to add up to four photos per tweet, and a function allowing users to tag up to 10 other people in a photo. Both features are designed to make photos more social. When a user shares multiple photos ...

eBay's board of directors this week urged shareholders to reject Carl Icahn's plan to spin off PayPal as a separate company. "Our shareholders and our customers are best served by keeping PayPal and eBay together," the board said in a letter to investors. "No other payments competitor has achieved P...

Facebook has agreed to acquire Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming hardware. Facebook will pay around $2 billion for the company. That figure includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock, valued at $1.6 billion based on recent average trading ...

Although they previously came to an arrangement regarding stronger broadband service delivery, Netflix and Comcast last week sparred over the issue of Net neutrality in a public forum. Net neutrality -- or "open Internet" -- is the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally by Inter...

Google and Viacom have settled a long-running copyright suit, after a federal judge twice threw out the case. "Google and Viacom today jointly announced the resolution of the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright litigation," the companies said in a brief joint statement. "This settlement reflects the growin...

It appears Amazon is ready to take its brand of gaming to television screens, based on leaked photos of a game controller the company purportedly is working on. The images, which blogger Dave Zatz on Friday reported finding on the website of a Brazilian regulatory authority, show a controller with t...

Amazon is hiking the price of the Amazon Prime subscription service for the first time since it launched nine years ago. Members will have to pay $99 for their subscription instead of $79. Amazon Student members will pay $49 for the service. Those who subscribe to Amazon Prime get unlimited two-day ...

Several members of Hollywood's elite walked out of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles clutching golden statues on Sunday, but it might have been Samsung that landed the largest victory at the event. Partway through the show, host Ellen DeGeneres stopped to capture the moment by using a Samsung phone t...

Target reported financial results for the quarter during which it suffered a high-profile data breach, revealing how badly the company was stung by the security lapses. In the three months ending Feb. 1, net earnings dropped by 46 percent compared with the year-ago fourth quarter, from $961 million ...

Netflix users who subscribe to Comcast Internet services soon may enjoy much smoother streaming video. The companies have agreed to a "mutually beneficial interconnection agreement" with the goal of giving Comcast's U.S. broadband customers a high-quality experience when using Netflix's streaming vi...

Google has revealed plans to expand its Google Fiber Internet service to as many as 34 new cities. Google Fiber offers connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps -- around 100 times faster than the average U.S. speeds of 9.8 Mb/sec, according to Akamai -- by providing service through fiber-optic cables i...