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The lawyers for Kim DotCom and MegaUpload continue to rack up court victories in New Zealand.

One of the country's courts has ordered the United States to turn over evidence it says it has that proves DotCom committed criminal acts of piracy. The U.S. Attorney's office has accused DotCom, founder of the cloud-storage service, of operating MegaUpload as a criminal enterprise.

U.S. officials say that MegaUpload made over $175 million by enabling users to store pirated digital media, including movies, music, and software on the company's servers. They accuse him of encouraging the looting and … Read more

Amazon is the latest tech company to come out in support of same-sex marriage. And judging from the size of founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' whopping $2.5 million donation to defend same-sex marriage in Washington State, there's no mistaking how the e-commerce magnate feels about the cause. This is the largest-ever publicly reported donation to a marriage campaign, according to the Associated Press.

Bezos announced Friday that he was making the donation with his wife MacKenzie to Washington United for Marriage, a group working to uphold the state's same-sex marriage law. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told the … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission's annual "state of the union" on ISP and broadband performance shows most Internet providers are offering speeds as advertised -- while others are offering Internet access at speeds that exceed consumer expectation.

On the whole, ISPs are reaching 96 percent of advertised speeds during peak hours, up by 9 percent on a year ago. Older technologies, such as DSL, are being outshone by more reliable cable and fiber service -- to the extent that fiber customers in particular are getting more than they actually pay for.

DSL remains high at the bottom of … Read more

SAN YSIDRO, Calif.--They were hidden in the gas tank -- 17 tightly-wrapped packages of marijuana weighing in at 38.44 pounds.

The car was nondescript, a green 1999 Mazda 626. The driver was a male 50-year-old Mexican national, a resident of Tijuana who had presumably been hoping to make it into California without being stopped.

Instead, the man got caught with the massive haul of pot, snared by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers here at the world's busiest border crossing using several tools in their arsenal -- some high-tech, some very low-tech -- to find … Read more

If you're driving around in a 2013 Ford Fusion and think to yourself, "My, but this seat is comfortable," there's a good chance you have RUTH the robot to thank.

Ford's Robotized Unit for Tactility and Haptics -- a modified consumer packaging arm that tests interiors for quality and comfort -- has crossed the Atlantic from Europe to bring her touchy-feely testing skills to North America.

The robot simulates human motor skills to measure parameters like roughness, hardness, and temperature on points such as the steering wheel, knobs, and armrests. RUTH has already been used for several years at the automaker's European Research Center in Aachen, Germany, to poke and prod European versions of the Focus and Fiesta.

RUTH 2.0, located at Ford's Product Development Center in Dearborn, Mich., measures seat comfort too. She has extended her six-jointed arm all over the seats of the 2013 Fusion, the first North American car headed to production that she's had a major hand (or arm, we should say) in testing. … Read more

Despite court cases in the Netherlands and the U.K. forcing ISPs to place blocks on their systems to prevent customer access to The Pirate Bay, the blocks may ultimately prove futile, according to data seen by the BBC and others.

One major U.K. broadband provider said peer-to-peer traffic on its network returned to "just below normal" only a week after it was forced to block customers' access.

But in the days following the court decision in late April, traffic had reached record levels as a result of the increased media coverage. This backs up earlier claims … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- The first space-bound Orion capsule, the centerpiece of NASA's post-shuttle push to break out of low Earth orbit for eventual manned flights to a variety of deep space targets, was officially unveiled at NASA's Florida spaceport today. The spacecraft will be outfitted for an unmanned test flight in 2014.

"As KSC celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, I can't think of a more appropriate way to celebrate than by having the very first Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle here at KSC," Robert Cabana, the center's director and a former shuttle … Read more

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket, the most powerful in the postshuttle U.S. inventory, boosted a top-secret National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite into space early Friday, after a spectacular morning launch from Cape Canaveral.

Running three hours late because of technical snags, the 232-foot-tall rocket, made up of three liquid-fueled common core boosters and a powerful upper stage, roared to life at 9:15 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) and quickly climbed away from launch complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Generating nearly two-and-a-half million pounds of thrust from three upgraded Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68A … Read more

Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, published draft code today that would require ISPs to notify suspected pirates via "copyright infringement reports."

Such reports would tell the ISP customers that their Web activity is being monitored, inform them of ways to find legal online content, such as through paid services, and alert them that they could face legal action as a result of infringing copyright.

Today's draft code puts the U.K.'s Digital Economy Act, a law aimed at curbing piracy, into action via a three-strike system, or "graduated response."

Under Ofcom's draft code, … Read more