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MPAA Dismisses Demand for Copyright Treaty Transparency as “Distraction”
Says Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations shouldn’t be derailed over public concerns that they’ll have no say in an international agreement that could force their ISPs to monitor their Internet traffic and disconnect those accused of illegal file-sharing. I first discussed some of the emerging details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being negotiated in secret earlier this month. Instead of focusing on customs procedures and enforcement to fight large scale commercial piracy it has delved into the area of noncommercial illegal file-sharing at the behest of international entertainment corporations as many have feared.
Continue reading »Week in tech: USB 3.0, gay slurs, and Chrome syncing in the cloud
USB 3.0, hidden tags on political sites, and Google cloud synchronization were the three biggest hardware and tech news stories past week, but that’s not all we dug into on Ars. Devices based on USB 3.0 will begin to arrive in 2010, but with the deadline approaching news about the spec is coming fast and furious. Ars reviews the latest developments , and looks a little bit ahead at what the near-term future holds.
Continue reading »FCC probes Google Voice rejection, AT&T denies involvement
Apple and AT&T opened up a can of worms when Apple not only rejected Google’s native Google Voice iPhone app, but summarily purged the App Store of any application that worked with Google Voice. The FCC has been giving the exclusive deals between handset makers and mobile carriers a lot of scrutiny lately, and now the FCC is looking into Google Voice-gate. The FCC has informed Apple and AT&T that it is trying to determine if the exclusivity between Apple and AT&T is having adverse effects on developers and consumers.
Continue reading »Experts clash over cell phone jamming at Senate hearing
In the debate over cell phone jamming in prisons, the skeptics have caution and reason on their side, but the advocates bring impressive horror stories. Take Texas State Senator John Whitmire, who testified at Wednesdays’ Senate Commerce and Science hearing on a bill to let prisons use jamming technology to block mobile phone use within their walls. At the event, he described how he received a phone call last year from Texas death row inmate Richard Tabler .
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