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WASHINGTON--Congress must not interfere with Internet service providers that are trying to filter pirated content from their networks, a Republican politician said Wednesday.

The recommendation from Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) came in a steadfastly pro-copyright speech at an Internet policy conference here, during which she railed against what she described as rampant online piracy.

"I believe the best chance we have for achieving any success against digital piracy is to allow those entities and individuals who manage networks to have the flexibility and agility to take necessary and lawful steps to stop piracy online before it starts," … Read more

In a speech at the Midem music trade show, U2 manager Paul McGuinness claims that Internet service providers bear a portion of responsibility for the sales decline in recorded music. It's so laughable on so many levels that I can't let it pass without comment:

1. File trading's not the sole cause of lower sales. McGuinness, like the RIAA and IFPI and other recording industry bodies, assumes that piracy on P2P networks is the main driver of the decline in music sales. This ignores several studies that have shown that heavy P2P users are also the heaviest … Read more

Peer-to-peer file-sharing generally involves free software, and much of the technology is certainly still legal in the United States (for now). However, once you start trading copyrighted material like music and movies, that's where legal problems arise. If you're trafficking, uploading or downloading copyrighted digital material without consent of the owner, you are infringing. You are also risking the possibility of massive penalties, more if the work in question has not yet been released.

This weekend, a company called Qtrax made a big splash by announcing "the world's first free and legal peer-to-peer digital music site.&… Read more

UPDATE: 7:12 A.M. (1-28-08): Qtrax continues to delay the launch of its much awaited legal file-sharing site as more record labels confirm that the startup doesn't have permission to sell their music.

For weeks, Qtrax, an ad-supported P2P site, had promised to offer free and legal music downloads from all four of the major record labels when it opened for business.

But despite earlier reports, Qtrax's Web site will apparently not feature legal downloads from any of the majors when it debuts. On the eve of the site's launch, Warner Music Group and Universal Music … Read more

Aside from his storied history of mastering downloadable software and ensnaring cyber-ne'er-do-wells around the globe, Power Downloader is also a longtime music collector. Since the very first 78rpm record he received as a young boy on Christmas Day untold years ago, Power has combed the stacks of record stores everywhere he travels. From Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and the Stooges to Arcade Fire, R. Kelly, and The White Stripes, Power Downloader has acquired a gigantic music collection that now also lives on his PC, portable MP3 player, and via software, any connected computer, or iPhone in the world.… Read more

Nearly all broadband Internet accounts come with storage on the ISP's servers, but I'll wager not one in 10 broadband users ever store anything there. That's a shame, especially if you find yourself schlepping a USB thumbdrive or rewritable CD full of your personal files from computer to computer. There are dozens of free utilities out there that make transferring files between your local PC and an FTP or Web server as easy as dragging and dropping. The two I've been using are the open-source FileZilla FTP client, and 2Brightsparks' SyncBack, which is also available in … Read more

I bought Microsoft's newest version of Office for Mac (2008) on Tuesday and have been using it nonstop ever since. (Check out the CNET review here.) It is snappy, intuitive, and even innovative in some ways. (MyDay, seen at right, is a blessing.) In short, Microsoft has done something very, very right with this product. I recommend it to everyone who needs it.

Entourage is the biggest area where I see improvements. It is soooo fast compared with Office 2004 for Mac. The UI is gorgeous. My favorite improvement, however, is My Day. It's a floating window that shows my upcoming appointments, "To Do" items, and e-mails that I've flagged for action. It's such a simple addition, but I'm already wholly reliant on it.

The product does have some downsides.… Read more

Not to be confused with UStream, a new technology put together by the folks at BitLet (coverage) called Westream lets you listen to music files that are being distributed via Bittorrent. Up until now there hasn't been an easy way to listen to Bittorrent files without downloading the entire file, or group of files. In the case of Bitlet's system, all you have to do is drop in the URL link to a Bittorrent file, and the system will pull up the tracks, complete with a player that lets you pause, skip songs, and increase and decrease the … Read more

There's a great little feature in Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier versions of the word-processing program that lets you export to PowerPoint an outline of any Word file formatted with headings. I admit that it's a specialized operation that probably doesn't get used all that often, but it's a handy way to work between the two Office apps.

I was all set to tell you how to use the feature in Word 2007 when I realized it has been removed. So all that noise Microsoft made when the new Office System was released more than a … Read more