internet

We already know that Webcasters small and large are outraged at the prospect of having to pay higher royalty fees to the music industry, particularly when compared with what is required of their satellite and terrestrial radio counterparts.

But the heightened royalty rates enacted by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board earlier this year and scheduled to take effect July 15 are not the only thing that's firing up leading Internet radio industry companies like RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and Live365.

In letters distributed to various Capitol Hill offices on Thursday morning, the four companies' CEOs argue that the music … Read more

Internet advertising revenue reached a record $4.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 26 percent from a year earlier and up 2 percent from the previous quarter. That's according to a report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Online ad sales have been rising steadily since a slump in mid-2002. They have more than tripled since then.

Mobile media company Melodeo, best known for mobile radio and podcast deals with cellular carriers, has launched the public beta of a new brand: Nutsie, which allows you to upload iTunes playlists to its Web site and stream them to your cell phone. (Get it? "Nutsie?" It's "iTunes" with the letters rearranged.)

So far, it's compatible with a bunch of different cell phones: the Motorola Razr, LG CU500, Sony Ericsson W600, and a handful of Samsung and Nokia handsets. Upon signing up, you export your iTunes library to Nutsie's Web site (no word … Read more

Security researcher Michal Zalewski has published four new vulnerabilities to the Full Disclosure mailing list for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. There are no patches yet available from either vendor. The most serious is MSIE page update race condition, where users navigating with JavaScript from one page to another page with the same domain experience a window of opportunity for attackers to concurrently execute JavaScript to perform actions with the permissions of the previous page.

The next most severe is Firefox Cross-site IFRAME hijacking where an attack against about:blank frames could allow malicious code execution. Zalewski also published … Read more

Large digital media companies, small Webcasters and National Public Radio on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to stall controversial new fees scheduled to kick in next month.

In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Webcasters argued new royalty rates scheduled to take effect July 15 are "radical and arbitary" and requested an emergency stay of the decision by a three-judge copyright panel.

The SaveNetRadio Coalition, whose members include prominent Net radio operators RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and Live365, said it hoped the move will allow Congress more time to … Read more

Yoggie, an Israeli security vendor, has released USB device called Pico, a Linux-based computer on a stick that provides enterprise-level security on a home laptop or desktop PC. Corporate desktops and laptops reside behind an IT department with dedicated servers blocking inbound malicious content. As home software-based security suites attempt to match these blocking features, they sometimes tax the computer's CPUs--and the end-user's patience. Instead, the Yoggie device handles all the heavy lifting of Internet blocking and security within the USB device itself, liberating desktop or laptop resources ordinarily dedicated for antivirus and antispyware software for other use. … Read more

If this were real life, Wafaa Bilal wouldn't be alive. After all, he's been shot something like 40,000 times over the past month. Fortunately, the hits have come from a paintball gun. But while paint won't likely kill Bilal, the Iraqi-born artist views the constant assaults as a metaphor for the danger and confinement his family and others face back home.

Bilal's provocative video installation, Domestic Tension, invites the public to log on 24 hours a day to WafaaBilal.com to watch him, contact him or splatter him with bright yellow paint using arrow icons … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--At an event here Tuesday night, Pandora Media unveiled an updated Web site and new partnerships that would make its streaming Internet radio service more mobile.

Pandora, the third-largest Internet radio service, with nearly 7 million registered users, according to founder Tim Westergren, said it teamed with Sprint to sell its music recommendation service over the company's cell phones. Pandora will cost $2.99 per month after a free 30-day trial on select Sprint phones.

It also struck a deal with digital-media player maker Sonos to stream music into the home wirelessly for $36 a year. And down … Read more

A Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday that he plans to revive an earlier effort to force broader sales tax collection by Internet retailers.

At a hearing focused on what to do about a soon-to-expire ban on Internet access taxes, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) said he remains concerned that states are being deprived of billions of dollars in would-be sales tax revenue because of the massive growth of e-commerce over the years.

"I will be filing legislation come July that hopefully will deal with the issue," he said.

At the moment, if you order something from a company that's … Read more