ANTITRUST
Microsoft, Justice Dept. Reach Deal (Wired)
INTERNET
IndyMedia in a Snit With CNN (Wired)
Activists Enrage WTO with Phony Web Site (Reuters)
Web Addresses Sprout New Suffixes, Needed or Not (NYT)
Teens' Web Habits -- Chat, Entertainment, Sex: Study (CBC)
ANTITRUST
MICROSOFT, JUSTICE DEPT. REACH DEAL
Issue: Antitrust
Microsoft and the Justice Department, urged by a judge concerned with the
national psyche, have tentatively agreed to settle the Microsoft antitrust
case. Meanwhile eighteen state attorney generals must also decide whether
they can be satisfied with proposed penalties Microsoft would face for at
least the next five years, according to people familiar with the
negotiations. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the new trial
judge, has set a deadline of Friday for any settlement. A spokeswoman for
the Justice Department declined to comment on the negotiations.
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Ted Bridis and D. Ian Hopper (Associated Press)]
(http://wired.com/news/reuters/story?story_id=20011101APAP-Microsoft.htmlt)
INTERNET
INDYMEDIA IN A SNIT WITH CNN
Issue: Journalism
CNN has banned the word "indymedia" from its chat room, according to Edna
Johnson, a representative for the company. CNN claims that Indymedia fans
were spamming other people in the chat rooms, constantly telling chatters
that they should get their news from the independent site. "We did it after
many, many, many incidents of advertising," Johnson said. "CNN (chat rooms)
do not permit any advertising -- so that means if users repeatedly try to
advertise in our chat rooms, we will block that, and the warning is posted
on our site." The company enforces the rule for egregious violations. Did
Indymedia spam CNN? Not in any organized way, according to Ryan Giuliani, a
member of the organization in San Francisco. Giuliani did allow that fans of
the
Indymedia site may have talked it up on CNN. But Indymedia doesn't believe
this is about chatroom spam at all. Indymedia was the site where someone
first posted that CNN's images of people dancing in the street after the
September 11 bombings were actually shot in 1991, and that CNN was being
unfair to Palestinians. (Indymedia allows anyone to post to its site.) For
the record, however, "ABCnews" and "Foxnews" are also banned phrases in the
CNN chat rooms.
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR:Farhad Manjoo]
(http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48058,00.html)
ACTIVISTS ENRAGE WTO WITH PHONY WEB SITE
Issue: Internet
Anti-globalization activists have enraged the World Trade Organization (WTO)
by
setting up a fake Web WTO site that had the look of the real thing, but
contained spoof language. "A fake WTO Web site -- www.gatt.org -- has been
created to deceive Internet users by copying the entire official WTO Web
site. While the design is identical, the texts have been distorted," the
organization said on its real site, www.wto.org. The name GATT refers to the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), a body which was replaced by
the WTO in 1995.
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Staff Writer]
(http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=internetnews&StoryID=336522)
WEB ADDRESSES SPROUT NEW SUFFIXES, NEEDED OR NOT
Issue: Internet
The Internet land grab of the late nineties nearly exhausted the pool of
.com names; one
study determined that a fair number of the generic words in the dictionary
had been
registered as Web addresses. So the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and
Numbers, or Icann, which the Commerce Department set up to oversee the
Internet's
address system, began studying new suffixes to be added to the familiar
.com, .net and
.org. After much preparation, the first of seven new extensions, including
.diz, .info and
.name, are finally appearing online, giving businesses and consumers new
options when
registering Web addresses. But now that the dot-com frenzy has subsided, it
is unclear
how urgently the new extensions are needed.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Susan Stellin]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/technology/circuits/01BASI.html)
(requires registration)
TEENS' WEB HABITS -- CHAT, ENTERTAINMENT, SEX: STUDY
Issue: Internet
A study on Internet use by young Canadians has revealed a third use chat
rooms for adults
and one in four have been sent pornography by someone they met over the
Internet. The
report, Young Canadians in a Wired World, was commissioned by the Media
Awareness
Network and the Government of Canada. According to the results, many used
the Internet
for social communication, chat rooms, entertainment and homework. More than
40 per
cent of kids say they have Internet use at home and of those, half said they
were never
monitored by their parents.
[SOURCE: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, AUTHOR: CBC News Online staff]
(http://www.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/10/30/Consumers/Tee
nsInterne
t_011030)
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