Scarlet Pruitt

The fiery debate over how to protect content online moved from the well-charred subject of music to digital television this week, thanks to a proposal by a computer and consumer-electronics group to create a high-definition TV "standard" that would keep pirated content from ending up on the Internet.

Faced with a still lagging economy, a handful of tech companies have decided to reduce costs by implementing mandatory employee vacations, perhaps figuring that telling workers to lay back for a week is better than telling them they are laid off.

Hoping to fend off a potential patent suit, Good Technology Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it has filed suit against rival Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) over a patent RIM holds on delivering wireless e-mail messages.

Despite the setbacks caused by last year's tight economic environment, worldwide sales of relational and object-relational database management systems (RDBMS) are poised to surge once again, growing to a US$20 billion market by 2006, according to a report released Wednesday by IDC.

Despite the setbacks caused by last year

Much like the "Star Wars" movies, the browser wars have returned for a whole new era of battle, as illustrated Wednesday by the release of Netscape Communications Corp.'s Netscape 7.0 preview browser.

After a long and torrid courtship, Bertelsmann AG said Friday that it has agreed to purchase Napster Inc. for US$8 million, and is reinstating Konrad Hilbers at the helm of the troubled song-swapping service.

Sun Microsystems is partnering with Yahoo to integrate My Yahoo Enterprise Edition into Sun ONE Portal Server, offering corporate users the breadth of Yahoo