Politics

At lunchtime on Wednesday, a chandeliered ballroom in downtown Washington, D.C. played host to scores of communications company executives, who set down their coffee cups and forkfuls of pecan tart to sing a rousing "Happy Birthday" to their guest of honor: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, who just turned 39.

"I thought we were just having a birthday party," quipped Martin, who was invited to be the keynote speaker at a business and policy summit hosted by Comptel, a trade association.

"Nah, I'm just joking," he added hastily.

After fielding more … Read more

A California man has plead guilty to distributing a stolen copy of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" two days before it appeared in theaters.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that Marc Hoaglin, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. The plea agreement says the Star Wars movie was stolen from a post-production company hired by Lucasfilm.

Hoaglin is one of the first Americans to be prosecuted under a new law, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, that President Bush signed in April.

Another defendant pleaded guilty in … Read more

An Iranian trying to enter the U.S. says border guards barred him from entering because his blog said he was based in New York.

Hossein Derakhshan, who writes a blog on Hoder.com, said in a post last week that he's "homeless" because he was prevented from re-entering the country. Derakhshan says he was born in Tehran and then moved to Toronto, Canada in December 2000.

The United States, of course, requires a visa for foreign citizens who want to live here permanently.

So when the border guards found a Newsweek magazine labeled with his name … Read more

Way back before the Web was born, Internet pioneer Jon Postel reserved all the single-letter domain names he could, in case they were needed for future expansion.

Postel oversaw Internet address assignments, and his successor -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- has kept the same policy. A July 2000 message from ICANN Vice President Louis Touton said single-letter names like a.com, b.com, c.com and so on are "reserved for infrastructure purposes to help ensure stable operation of the Internet."

Now, however, ICANN may be about to change its mind.

Kurt Pritz, … Read more

Iraq will likely begin to seek out deals with private companies to rebuild its destroyed oil and gas fields, officials said at the International Petroleum Technology Conference taking place in Doha, Qatar.

Although security remains a problem, Iraq is set for another election and is looking at ways to rebuild, said Ibrahim Baher Al Olom, the Minister of Oil for Iraq. Any deals will have to preserve the interests of the people in the country.

"There are many contracts in the oil business," he said. Despite the risks, it is important for the regional powers to assist the … Read more

The House of Representatives on Friday backed a plan to require TV broadcasters to switch to all-digital transmissions by December 2008, which is three months earlier than they would under provisions of a Senate bill, according to a story by The Associated Press.

As part of a sweeping budget bill, the House also voted to set aside $830 million to help millions of Americans with older, analog TV sets pay for converter boxes so they'll continue to get service in the digital era, according to the story.

The deadline for the switch in the Senate bill is April 7, … Read more

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is seriously considering running for lieutenant governor of California on the Republican ticket, according to published reports. Fiorina, who was ousted by HP's board of directors in February after five turbulent years at the helm, would be backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (assuming of course that they do both run and are elected, or reelected in the guvernator's case).

During her tenure at HP, Fiorina resisted calls to break the iconic Silicon Valley company into two separate companies, with one focused on business customers and another focused on consumers. HP's merger with Compaq … Read more

A federal appeals court on Tuesday decided not to put on hold a thorny set of rules about 911 requirements for Web phone providers.

Earlier this month, Nuvio, a Missouri-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider, and three other companies requested an emergency stay of the Federal Communications Commission rules. They said they were concerned the agency had not supplied enough guidance to VoIP companies.

Nuvio CEO Jason Talley said he suspected the court denied the request because the FCC last week issued a supplementary notice that offered some clarification.

Talley said the company still thinks the FCC's order … Read more

The ongoing saga over 911 service requirements in the Internet phone world now has an official Web presence--albeit with limited offerings at the moment.

On Monday, a task force created by the Federal Communications Commission launched the site, which is aimed at providing consumers, industry and government with the latest information about Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and 911 service.

Under current FCC rules, VoIP providers have until Nov. 28 to be able to connect their subscribers to the enhanced 911 network, a next-generation system that can pinpoint the caller's geographic location. According to a recent notice, the … Read more