TechBytes

A new proposal, currently called the “Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008,” is floating around the US Senate these days—a proposal to fight organized crime that involves “the theft and interstate fencing of large volumes of stolen retail merchandise.

The need to achieve technological breakthroughs to provide cleaner, more efficient sources of energy may indeed be the race-to-the-moon for this generation of American inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs.

Okay, here’s a quick quiz.

Okay, here’s a quick quiz.

Add Prof.

In the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission began a struggle to reconcile old communications laws governing telephones, broadcasting, and cable television with the new technological and business realities.

H.

The IP-skeptic activist groups took it on the chin last week, as their plans for socializing the intellectual property (IP) system hit a setback.

Should Internet application providers be liable for illegal material such as pornography, copyright violations and civil rights infractions that pass through their “pipes” or through their service? The general principle has been that, so long as the provider passively allows traffic to flow through and does not look at or interact with the material, that provider exists within a “safe harbor” and is not legally liable.

Here in Geneva at the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, there is a really bad idea floating around.