Industry News

.: Week of 04-24-00

A man in Italy made additional copies of software for which he had only purchased one license. While his actions would be illegal in the United States,apparently theyÆre not in Italy. The judge in the case ruled that since the man did not make the copies with the intent of profiting from them, there was no criminal impropriety. Microsoft Italia is not pleased to say the least. For more information, visit Wired.

Rapper and producer Dr. Dre has served notice to Napster that he wants his music to not be included in its online catalog anymore. While at this point Dre has not sued Napster like heavy metal band Metalica, it would seem storm clouds are growing over Napster. There is the potential of a tidal wave of lawsuits being brought against Napster and its online trading community. For more information, visit Wired.

In a case that has large ramifications, Metialica has sued Napster in an attempt to end the illegal trading of its music on the Internet. Currently, CDs can be encoded in a format known as MP3 and the files are then often available online to anyone. Napster greatly simplified the search for music by creating a massive database of users MP3 files. For more information, visit ZDNN.

.: Week of 04-02-00

After monday's guilty verdict, both Judge Penfield and Microsoft lawyers agreed to expediate the penalty stage of the trial.  The penalties could range from fines to a break up of the company.  Many industry experts say that a breakup is a very real possibility.  The speculation of the penalty phase caused the biggest one day drop in Microsoft history.  For more information, visit ZDNN.

Many colleges and Universities haved banned the MP3 music compression technology because the dramatic increase in the use of this technology is backing up the  collegiate computing centers.  Use of filesharing sites like www.napster.com, www.gnutella.com and scour.net  also contribute to the backup.  So far Purdue still allows MP3 technology although a review is currently underway.

.: Week of 03-19-00

Opera Software announces that the Beta 1 version of it's Opera 4.0 browser is available for download.  This version is for Windows platforms.  The browser is also available for download in various Beta stages for Linux, BeOS, and EPOC platforms.  An Alpha version is available to download for MacOS and OS/2 platforms.  For more information, visit www.opera.com. 

The FDA is making an effort to regulate the online sale of drugs.  They have emphasized a need to stop two main problems.  The first problem is with many websites selling prescription drugs without proof of a prescription.  The second is with websites that are inacurately diagnosing and prescribing drugs based on questionnaires.  The FDA has asked Congress to give them the authority to force online pharmacies to obtain state licenses and post ownership information.  In the meantime, the FDA has focused on educating the online consumer.  For more information, visit the FDA's website.

A security hole is found in WebTV.  The hole allows an embedded URL in e-mail and newsgroup postings to execute a macro on unsuspecting subscribers.  The macro then copies the URL into the subscribers signature file, and sends an e-mail from their account to various newsgroups.  The problem only affects users of the WebTV Classic device.  For more information, visit ZDNN.

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