In a statement released this morning, Simon Awde, chairman of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), accused Microsoft of scheming to "hijack HTML" and wrestle control of the World Wide Web away from open standards. His specific beef: the XAML markup language, which will ship next week to consumers as part of Windows Vista. [...]

Ashwin Navin recently discussed his expectations for the upcoming BitTorrent online video download store and its partnering with Netgear Inc to stream content from the PC to the TV. In a recent interview on the program MarketWatch, Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent Inc. CEO and co-founder, discussed the future of the company and how he hopes to [...]

Starbucks and Apple® today announced the availability of the Starbucks Hear Music catalog on the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com), giving iTunes users the ability to preview, buy and download a wide variety of Starbucks popular Hear Music titles. Hear Music produces a wide range of albums showcasing new and classic artists including the well-known Artist Choice™ [...]

A consortium of movie studios and technology companies backing the encryption system for high-definition DVDs on Thursday confirmed that hackers have stolen "title keys" and used them to decrypt high-definition DVDs through flaws in DVD player software. Both the title keys and a number of decrypted films have been posted on peer-to-peer Web sites for [...]

Remember that election last November? You know, the one that signaled the need for change. Well, apparently that change doesn’t include taking a more enlightened approach to legislation involving new technology. Earlier this month a bipartisan group of Senators lead by Diane Feinstein (D-CA) introduced a bill that would create a variety of new restrictions [...]

With Sealand now giving them the cold-shoulder, the denizens of BitTorrent Piratedom have have pulled up anchor and gone looking elsewhere. Talks with the “Prince” of Sealand have apparently gone nowhere, which was pretty much a foregone conclusion from the beginning in my opinion. In addition to the fact that the Principality of Sealand it [...]

The Business Software Alliance(BSA) went after a BitTorrent user in the UK for downloading “unlicensed copies of copyrighted computer programs,” and he’s probably not alone. A customer of the ISP Pipex in the UK was recently sent a letter informing him that he had been suspected of downloading “unlicensed copies of copyrighted computer programs.” Much [...]

College students who illegally download music and movies have been sued. They’ve had Internet access shut off or threatened, and they’ve been warned to never do it again. But the threat of a letter in a permanent file doesn’t hold as much sway as it used to. Complaints of copyright violations remain steady at campuses [...]

Internet service providers naturally are concerned about circumstances under which they potentially could be held liable for content posted by users. But after a recent decision by a Texas federal judge, ISPs can breathe a collective sigh of relief. The judge dismissed an ISP as a defendant in the case of Doe v. Bates (PDF), [...]

The long-awaited PlayStation 3 will finally go on sale across Europe on 23 March, and will cost 599 Euros. The electronics giant has said that only the 60GB version of the console will be available at launch, with the 20GB model to follow later. The next-generation console is already available in Japan and the US, [...]

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has vowed to “purify” the Internet, state media reported on Wednesday, describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country’s sprawling, unruly online population. Hu made the comments as the ruling party’s Politburo — its 24-member leading council — was studying China’s Internet, which claimed 137 million [...]

Solutions Research Group claims that 25% of the total 147 million online population of the US have downloaded a movie illegally using a P2P file-sharing site of some kind. Solution Research Group recently released more data concerning its syndicated consumer trend study Digital Life America. The study was conducted between June and September of last [...]

Another one bites the dust, as Blu-ray joins its HD-DVD brother as well as other encrypted forms media that have seen their security features “cracked and hacked” by industrious individuals bent on keeping content free for everyone. It’s no secret that the HD-DVD disc has been cracked wide open, the infamous muslix64, identity and whereabouts [...]

One of the longest running feuds in the P2P business has taken a new turn after a judge dismissed a racketeering case brought by Streamcast Networks against Skype. Streamcast, which develops the Morpheus P2P software, has long maintained that it had rights to the FastTrack/Kazaa P2P software engine on which Morpheus is based. FastTrack was [...]

A court ruling previously hailed as a victory for the free downloading of copyright material from the internet actually leaves Italian law unchanged, claimed a spokesman for the Italian Music Industry Federation (FIMI) on Tuesday. Earlier this month the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court, quashed a three month and ten day prison sentence that [...]

Though not yet available, Grooveshark claims to be a new P2P music-sharing community that will compensate both copyright holders and members who participate in the community. Grooveshark will be a P2P music file-sharing community that will broker music transactions between members. It will be charging for the songs exchanged between members on the site, Grooveshark [...]

German and French consumer groups have joined a Nordic-led drive to force Apple Inc. to make its iTunes online store compatible with digital music players made by rival companies, a Norwegian official said Monday. Currently, song purchased and downloaded through iTunes are designed to work with Apple’s market-leading iPod players but not competitors’ models, including [...]

Malware designed to steal users’ Windows Live Messenger password has been released onto the net. The password stealer was released for download via BitTorrent earlier this week by a hacker using the handle “Our Godfather”. The malware comes in the form of an IMB download confirmed by anti-virus firm Sophos as containing a password-stealing Trojan [...]

In the chaos of today’s media and technology brawl – iPod-vs. Zune, Google vs. Yahoo, Windows vs. Linux, Intel vs. AMD – we can declare one unlikely winner. Standing tall in a field of new tech wonders, it’s a geezer technology that was invented in the 1920s and commercialized in the 1940s, and it’s still [...]

The BBC’s plans to offer all its TV and radio shows on-demand via the internet and cable TV have been criticised by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. Ofcom said that certain aspects of the BBC’s on-demand service, which is due to start later this year, could have a “negative effect” on commercial rivals. It added that [...]