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Minnesota federal judge Michael Davis has reduced the fine imposed on Jammie Thomas-Rasset for illegally sharing music on the Internet from US$1.92 million to $54,000. Davis, who presided over the trial, said that the original calculations to determine Thomas-Rasset's penalty -- more than $83,000 per song -- were "monstrous and shocking."

The Chinese government issued a series of statements over the weekend that defended the country's Internet censorship policies and accused the United States of maintaining a "double standard" when it comes to online surveillance The comments, made through the state news agency Xinhua, were in part a reaction to statements made by Secretary of Stat...

Forget about the debate over whether "Avatar" or "The Hurt Locker" will win movie awards this year. The real argument among those who create and share their own Web videos -- DIY James Camerons, as it were -- centers on whether or not they should dump Adobe Flash and other plug-in players for HTML 5, the latest version of the Web's markup language ...

Digital cameras have been around for so long that for some shutter buffs, it's difficult to remember a time when they didn't exist. It's even more difficult to recall the days when a slide projector was a necessary accessory for an image-grabbing hobbyist. ...

Regardless of the state of the economy, information security remains a top concern for consumers worked up about their information, for businesses seeking to protect that information, and for job-seekers looking for the next big thing. Even during the recession, the demand for information security-related jobs has remained strong "Security continu...

Major hotel chains have been wooing travelers for years with CRM tools focused mainly on "loyalty" or rewards programs. The CRM programs help hotels and resorts determine which customers patronize the same hospitality brand on a regular basis. Those frequent customers accumulate points that can be exchanged for a reward -- most often discounts on extended stays or future bookings.

This is an Apple launch week, which means we'll be on pins and needles until we actually know what Steve Jobs is going to have on stage in San Francisco. While there is a lot of drama with any big Apple announcement, there is substantially more with this one, including the unprecedented number of leaks, the location of the event itself, and the ...

The movie industry loves a gala premiere, with red carpets, paparazzi and Klieg lights sweeping a glittering marquee. YouTube's announcement this week of its new movie rental strategy is about as far away from that scenario as you can get Instead of the commercial first-run features that are popular with Netflix members, YouTube said this week that...

Although news of data breaches and computer hacks make headlines almost daily, individual users and companies too often simply don't protect their passwords strongly enough. Most users tend to select simple or common passwords or leave the default passwords of hardware and software they purchase unchanged, security vendor Imperva found after analy...

We're now in week two of Google's high-profile battle with China, and the stakes have risen high enough to catch the attention of no less than the U.S. Secretary of State herself, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She cheered on Google's stance in a speech Thursday, saying, "Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere, and in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand." ...

American companies need to take a stand against censorship on the Internet, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Thursday in a speech on Internet freedom delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C "Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere," Clinton said, "and in America, American companies need to make...

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has undoubtedly made a significant improvement to the security of cardholder account numbers and other sensitive information within the payment card infrastructure. The standard lays out a strong set of requirements that merchants, acquirers and processors must follow. However, complying w...

Move over Data.gov. The United Kingdom has unveiled its own version of an open source database for its citizens, and the U.S. version pales in comparison. The site, data.gov.uk, which has been running in beta since last September, opened to the public this week to much fanfare. The brainchild of Web founder Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt, a ...

One might guess that a computer scientist who is touted as a pioneer of virtual reality would be a fan of that whole social media thing. After all, Jaron Lanier works as a genius-in-residence of sorts at Microsoft, which is one of several big companies pushing cloud computing, the technological innovation that's brought a lot of Web 2.0 companies to life...

Harried by shrinking sales and the increasing popularity of Android smartphones, Nokia on Thursday announced that it is now offering a new version of its Ovi Maps mobile navigation app for free ...

Amazon on Thursday announced it will launch a limited beta version of its Kindle software development kit (SDK) so developers can create applications for its Kindle e-reader. The beta will be available next month, and the SDK will include sample code, documentation and a Kindle simulator that will run on PCs, Macs and Linux desktops.

After strenuous deliberations, the European Union's antitrust regulatory authority is giving Oracle's proposed US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems a green light. The EU's approval is the culmination of a months-long dispute between Oracle and Europe that threatened the deal's survival until Oracle signaled last month it would make some...

Heart attacks are as American as hot dogs and easily more common than fast-food joints. While changes in the nation's diet are slowly under way to pre-empt the disease, scientists are scrambling to find ways to treat or cure it, in the hope of reducing the swelling numbers added daily to the body count. "Nanoburrs," developed by researchers at the...

Aberdeen's August 2009 research "Talent Acquisition Strategies 2009" found that the top strategy organizations are pursuing in the area of recruiting today is to proactively build and expand a candidate pipeline regardless of current hiring needs. Given the continuing pressure many organizations are facing to locate key skills in a tightening lab...

People who use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not known for their reticence -- many put just about any personal information imaginable out there. The risks to such openness are clear -- from inviting tailored phishing attacks to appalling potential employers with one's late-night party habits -- but many users who are tec...