US judges agree FCC has no rights pursue HDTV broadcast flag regs

Federal judges have cast doubts on a US ruling that devices able to receive high quality television signals must have copy protection technology built in to them. Two of the three judges of District of Columbia Circuit panel said such decrees by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are outside its remit. As things stand, from 1 July, an FCC regulation will ban sets able to receive HDTV (high-definition TV) signals if they are unable to read the 'broadcast flag' embedded in the signal to prevent unlawful copying of the content. ...more

Microsoft withdraws from UN software standards group

Microsoft has pulled out of a United Nations sponsored software standards group. The company would only say that there were 'business reasons' for the decision for its withdrawal from the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, or UN/Cefact. It has been known for some time that the company has been unhappy with the direction the group has been going. ...more

BT announces latest batch of broadband upgrades

BT has named the next 83 exchanges to be be ADSL broadband enabled. The exchanges and service dates are as follows. ? 3rd September 2003: Sharnbrook. ...more

Navio follows Real in iTunes' FairPlay hack

A Cupertino neighbour of Apple has announced plans to reverse engineer the FairPlay DRM system employed on iPods. Navio Systems wants to enable other downloads stores to sell music that can play on iPods. 'Typically, we embrace and want to work with the providers of the DRM,' said Ray Schaaf, Navio's chief operating officer. ...more

Nokia grows phone market share in better-than-expected quarterly results

Nokia has announced its third quarter results, beating expectations and growing market share, but showing a decline in revenues from mobile phones after a price cuts pushed through in the previous quarter. Nokia's mobile phone unit showed sales of 4.43bn Euros, down 13 per cent year on year from 5. ...more