Digital Rights Management (DRM) refers to any scheme used to protect the copyright of digital content using a system of encryption that often includes remote monitoring and control by the copyright owners. The development of the various forms of DRM has largely been driven by the large media companies as a response, they say, to the effect of large scale copying on their revenues rather than rely on the passive protection of copyright law these [...]

Symantec has reported widespread incidents of phishing scam emails which point to fake Income Tax Department websites, taking obvious advantage of the returns filing season. The emails themselves claim that users have been identified as eligible for tax refunds. These sites, as expected, look identical to the official IT department website, but users are pointed to a form that asks for bank account details and/ or credit card authentication information. Users are warned to be [...]

Microsoft has emerged victorious from a sneak legal attack in which it managed to get 277 Internet domains associated with the Waledac botnet shut down, effectively cutting its owners off from their swarm of zombie infected PCs. According to the company, Waledac was one of the 10 largest botnets in the United States, and had been responsible for over 1.5 billion spam email messages per day, with over 650 million of them directed at Hotmail [...]

Apple, which has sued HTC for 20 counts of patent infringement, might have a tough time ahead of it in court. HTC has said it intends to fight the charges and is confident it can defend itself. HTC manufactures a number of smartphones based on the Android platform, including Google’s own flagship Nexus One device. Several of the patent infringement charges have been made against specific Android models. Relations between Apple and Google have soured [...]

When Google announced its plans to push fiber optic cables to 500,000 American homes in order to stimulate broadband adoption, they certainly got the attention of the International press. By announcing plans to build and test networks with speeds of up to 1 Gbps at competitive pricing, Google is aiming squarely at service providers who are sitting idle because they have no competition to fear. The company’s official blog outlines a vision of streaming 3D [...]