Anne Broache

Congress may soon vote on a new "compromise" spy law that would still likely derail pending suits against AT&T and other companies accused of opening their networks to the government in violation of wiretap law.

Senators on Tuesday pressed executives from Yahoo, Google, and Cisco Systems to justify their business practices in China and other Internet-censoring countries, with Cisco in the hot seat over new allegations of cozier-than-confessed ties with the Chinese police.

Federal regulators may be probing Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent filesharing traffic, but can they actually take action, if they choose, against the company or any other broadband provider on Net neutrality grounds? The answer may not be simple.

As expected, Amazon.com is hitting back at New York over a new law requiring online retailers to collect sales taxes from customers residing in that state. In a complaint filed on April 25, Amazon asked the New York State Supreme Court to declare the recently passed law "invalid, illegal, and unconstitutional."

Most TVs and telephones must be outfitted with special features for people with hearing, vision, and speech impairments under U.S. law. But House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) wants to expand those requirements to their Internet counterparts.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a copyright holder-backed enforcement proposal known as the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act.

Hospital administrators and medical device manufacturers fear unlicensed use of "white spaces" spectrum between television channels could interfere with medical devices. "If a new white space application that's operating thousands of times more powerfully came online, either in the hospital or outside the hospital, it could very well directly interfere with the telemetry system and prevent patient monitoring," Tim Kottak, engineering general manager for GE Healthcare's systems and wireless division, said in a telephone interview with CNET News.com this week.

In a potential setback for fans of broadband over power lines, a federal appeals court has sided in part with amateur radio operators who challenged rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's rollout.

AT&T on Friday denied using forged reset packets to interfere with network connections of Vuze file-sharing platform users, as Comcast has been accused of doing with BitTorrent traffic. The statement came in response to a report released earlier this week by Vuze, which offers a BitTorrent-based client primarily used for distributing video.

With discontent still festering over Comcast's admitted slowing of file-sharing uploads, the cable industry's chief on Thursday set out to do a little damage control.