With courtroom victories against P2P networks and individual users behind it, the Recording Industry Association of America is launching a new legal effort to take down binary newsgroup providers, which have long claimed immunity from copyright claims.

For now, the suit only targets Usenet.com. However, some worry that if the RIAA is successful, it could open the door to lawsuits against anyone who offers newsgroup services, possibly endangering the future of this nearly three decade old Internet staple.

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It is one of the crown jewels of what is known in Japan as "Silicon Island" - a major processor fabrication facility on Nagasaki, where employees are said to take lunch breaks by walking out the front gates, through the private golf course, and alongside the ocean. In 2001, it was part of Sony's multi-billion-dollar consolidation of three of its manufacturing entities into what was planned to be a single, global powerhouse, setting new standards for efficiency and quality control.

This morning, as part of a different kind of corporate consolidation altogether, multiple Asian news sources report that Sony's Kyushu semiconductor division has agreed to sell 60% of its 300 mm Nagasaki fab -- the key facility in the manufacture of the Cell BE processor that powers the PlayStation 3 -- to Toshiba.

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In Yahoo's third-quarter performance call yesterday, investors and analysts heard for the first time the lower-key, back-to-basics approach of co-founder and re-installed CEO Jerry Yang, and newly elevated president Susan Decker. There's evidence their strategy is already working, but the next move involves a carefully calculated approach to attracting customers that goes against the current trend.

It was the first quarter of doing business as Yahoo, the online search and advertising services company. Gone was the company's blind persistence in building a content generation and entertainment empire. Missing were most of the unique figures hailing from realms outside of digital information. It was Jerry Yang, the once and future CEO of Yahoo, and newly installed, back-to-business company president Susan Decker, without fanfare or grand accompaniment, representing the backbone of their redefined company, during yesterday's third-quarter financial performance call.

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London-based mobile satellite communications company Inmarsat has begun marketing its new IsatPhone as the world's cheapest satellite phone.

The device is pocket sized (13 x 5 x 3.2 cm) and features the typical oversized satellite antenna. It features dual mode GSM 900 and satellite reception with coverage in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The battery provides up to 2 hours 40 minutes of talk time, and up to 42 hours of standby time.

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Nokia on Wednesday introduced its updated Internet Tablet device, although it still lacks phone capabilities via the cellular network.

The new N810 will include both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity as well as options to expand data storage up to 10GB, and a nearly 4 1/4" display with 800x480 resolution. The device goes on sale in November at a price of $479 USD.

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Two men behind a spam ring that sent millions of pornographic mails are the first to be convicted under new federal spam laws, the Justice Department said.

The law, known as CAN-SPAM, was passed in 2003 in order to criminalize the sending of unsolicited mail. Since then, many companies including AOL and Microsoft have used the law to fight back against spammers.

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Since the number of "principal" or "participating" (P-class) voting members of the International Organization for Standardization's JTC 1 SC 34 working group increased by eleven prior to last month's preliminary ballot on the approval process for Microsoft's Office Open XML format suite, participation by nearly all members on important matters other than OOXML appears to be waning.

Of the three non-OOXML ballots that were voted on since September 2, ISO documents reveal, Poland was the only new member to vote yea or nay, while Colombia voted twice to abstain, and all other new members failed to cast ballots at all.

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As reported earlier this month the HTC Touch smartphone will soon be made available in the United States by mobile carrier Sprint for a price of $249 USD.

The touch screen-enabled Windows Mobile device is currently available in European and Asian markets. For notification on the exact date of when the handsets are in stock, Sprint's Web site offers an abbreviated sign-up sheet.

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Best Buy announced today that it has pulled all remaining analog television products from store shelves and will henceforth only sell digital tuners. The company is the first consumer electronics retailer to publicly announce its departure from the analog television business.

Congress has mandated that the FCC re-claim the wireless spectrum used for analog TV by January 2009. The spectrum is being auctioned early next year, with Verizon and Google among the interested bidders. Consumers will soon begin seeing ads on TV announcing the impending transition to digital.

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Stepping up his rhetoric against Yahoo yesterday, the chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos (D - Calif.), said he has issued requests for CEO Jerry Yang and senior vice president and general counsel Michael Callahan, to appear before the committee on November 6. Their purpose there will be to answer allegations and respond to evidence Rep. Lantos says he will present that Callahan made false statements to Congress in February 2006, regarding whether Yahoo turned over private customer data about a Chinese journalist to Chinese government authorities.

"Our committee has established that Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006," reads a statement from Rep. Lantos last night. "We want to clarify how that happened, and to hold the company to account for its actions both before and after its testimony proved untrue. And we want to examine what steps the company has taken since then to protect the privacy rights of its users in China."

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Following a similar move by Verizon Wireless in January of last year, AT&T said Wednesday that it will change its policies to reduce early termination fees and change their contracts without penalty.

Like Verizon's new method, termination fees will be prorated and based on how much time is remaining in the contract. Additionally, fees for changing calling plans will be reduced.

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Professional photographers are about four times as likely to use Lightroom versus Apple's competing application Aperture, Adobe's Photoshop product manager said Tuesday.

According to data compiled by research firm InfoTrends, Aperture's market share in the segment stands at about 5.5 percent. The rest are using some type of Adobe product: 66.5 percent use the PhotoShop Camera Raw plug-in, and 23.6 percent use Lightroom.

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After months of silence on the matter, Apple finally announced Wednesday that it plans to enable developers to create native third-party applications for the iPhone (not just Web-based applications), and will deliver an SDK in February. The delay has been blamed on security concerns.

"It will take until February to release an SDK because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once - provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.," company CEO Steve Jobs said. Apple notes that Nokia does not allow third-party applications on its newer phones without a digital signature for this very reason. Jobs adds that applications can also be created for the iPod Touch.

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An appeals court ruled Monday that two remaining antitrust claims brought against Microsoft by Novell could go forward, upholding an earlier court decision that dismissed the company's other four claims.

Novell had originally sued Microsoft in November 2004 for monopolistic behavior in the productivity software market, which prevented it from selling its WordPerfect word processing and Quattro Pro spreadsheet applications from 1994 to 1996.

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The Sao Paolo and Rio de Janiero offices of Cisco in Brazil were temporarily closed yesterday, and employees were reportedly arrested under suspicion of tax fraud amounting to approximately $830 million dollars in unpaid duties.

Cisco is under major tax fraud investigation for allegedly using tax havens like Panama, the Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands to ship undervalued goods into Brazil to avoid paying applicable duties. Its Brazilian unit is believed to have imported $500 million worth of network and telecommunications equipment over the course of five years without paying necessary taxes.

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