The Progress & Freedom Foundation in its report recommends that Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson fracture Microsoft into one applications
company and three operating systems companies.

The PFF suggested that of all the options available to Microsoft at
this juncture in its ongoing legal battle with the Justice
Department, this plan is as good as it gets.

Continue reading →

eToys.com has settled its ongoing legal battle with a group of Swiss artists operating the etoy.com Website, but not the
way it originally intended - eToys.com has dropped its lawsuit and
will pay up to $40,000 to the Swiss group in legal fees.

As reported previously, eToys.com filed suit against etoy.com in
September, 1999, alleging the Swiss group of artists committed
trademark infringement, and exposed eToys.com customers to profane
and violent images when they access the Swiss site in error.

Continue reading →

Universal Image, as part of its $4 billion lawsuit against Yahoo, has accused the Internet portal of violating the state's anti-stalking law
by tracking computer users without permission.

Universal Image has asked Dallas County Judge David Gibson to rule
that Yahoo violated Texas criminal law through its use of "cookies," or
computer
files that collect data on Internet users. Universal's Chalkboardtalk.com,
which provides educational videos and video content, sued Yahoo on
Dec. 22, 1999 alleging breach of contract, tortuous interference with
contract, conversion, trespass to personal property, fraud, and civil
theft.

Continue reading →

Mozilla 5 reached Milestone 13 last night, the first official Alpha release. According to the Mozilla Web site, "it should be functional enough for everyday use by testers so we encourage you to use it daily and find as many bugs as possible as we work to release a beta."

Mozilla 5 will be the core behind Netscape's Communicator 5.0. AOL 4.0 users may find that Milestone 13 does not work correctly with this older release and should upgrade to version 5.0. Download instructions may be found in the Milestone 13 release notes.

Continue reading →

Computer Associates and the McAfee division of
Network Associates have warned PC users to be on the lookout for the first macro viruses to target Microsoft's Visio software.

The good news is that the macro viruses are relatively harmless, but
the bad news is that, as with the first viruses for any platform or
computer software, other viruses writers can tweak the macro launch
application and add a malicious payload.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has released IntelliType Pro 1.1 software that includes support for Windows 2000 and AOL 5.0. Microsoft IntelliType Pro 1.1 software supports the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro, Microsoft Internet Keyboard, Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro, and Microsoft Natural Keyboard. This software is not intended to work with Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite or any non-Microsoft keyboard. You may download this latest release at Microsoft's IntelliType download page.

Continue reading →

On Jan. 12, the US government announced a drastic reduction of export limitations for software products with built-in encryption technologies. As a result, Microsoft has announced that, taking the new export regulations into account, it will use 128-bit encryption in Windows 2000 versions shipped to other countries.

The new regulations were effective Jan. 14, and mean that software
vendors do not need US export licenses for products which utilize
encryption with key lengths exceeding 56 bits.

Continue reading →

In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft has combined development of Neptune, its upcoming consumer version of Windows NT, and Odyssey, the successor to Windows 2000, into a new operating system dubbed 'Whistler.'

For over two years Microsoft has intended to migrate all version of Windows over to the Windows NT kernel, but with new editions of Windows 9x continually waiting in the wings, it was not until this past summer that Microsoft announced Neptune - the first NT-based consumer OS. Neptune began development on August 13th of last year, with a prototype based upon Windows 2000. The Neptune team worked on adding user interface enhancements to daily Windows 2000 syncs and sent out Developer Release 1 to testers in late December. Neptune was slated to show off a new user interface that allowed for easy digital media management and included 'Activity Centers' that were cut from Windows Millennium.

Continue reading →

Word has begun to spread around the Net today that the source for DeCSS has been included in the public court records filed by the DVD Copy Control Association against Webmasters and distributors of the DVD decryption application. Once again proving the lack of understanding that DeCSS itself is not the problem but rather the protocol itself, the source is now available for public consumption and will undoubtedly lead to more decryption programs. After a California Superior Court issued an injunction Friday barring the distribution of DeCSS, this mistake may turn things around for proponents of DeCSS and civil liberties. A copy of the lawsuit filings may be viewed at http://cryptome.org/dvd-hoy-reply.htm.

Continue reading →

Less than 48 hours after a federal judge in New York granted an
injunction ordering three individuals to remove information about DVD
encryption from their Websites, a California superior court judge late
Friday issued an almost identical ruling in a case against roughly 50
defendants there.

Seeking the injunction in a Santa Clara, Calif. Superior Court was
the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a not-for-profit,
industry-backed organization that owns and licenses DVD encryption
technology. The DVD-CCA argued that the defendants in the case - who
it alleges shared classified information about DVD encryption for the
purpose of pirating DVD-viewing software - violated copyright laws and
stole trade secrets.

Continue reading →

When Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers need to spell-check the documents they prepare for their massive antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., they all may soon be using software from Microsoft rival Corel Corp.

Corel, based in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, today
announced a three-year, multi-million-dollar licensing deal that
will put its Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 suite on over 55,000 DOJ
desktops, some 16,000 of them using the WordPerfect Law Office
version of the software designed specifically for legal eagles.

Continue reading →

Novell, Inc. has recovered $20 million worth
of its software that was offered on the auction site eBay, the Utah-based company disclosed today.

Novell said the software was put up for auction last year by
Peter Bosworth of Attleboro, Massachusetts. During routine
monitoring of the Internet, Novell investigators discovered various
versions of NetWare, GroupWise, BorderManager and others
posted on eBay.

Continue reading →

Today in Federal District Court in New York, the Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against MP3.com for copyright infringement with regards to its new Beam-It software. Stating that MP3.com was "in reckless disregard of the law", the RIAA begins its second round of litigation over digital music.

The motion, filed this afternoon, claims that it "is not legal to compile a vast database of our member's sound recordings with no permission and no license."

Continue reading →

RealNetworks has started beating the
publicity drum over a legal copyright case it said it has won against Streambox for the firm's Streambox VCR and Ferret technologies.

RealNetworks, arguably the dominant player in the Internet audio-
visual streaming technology, said it has a preliminary injunction
against Streambox for its allegedly infringing technology.

Continue reading →

Symantec has announced that a key technology
in its Striker anti-virus engine has been granted patent rights by the US Patent and Trademark office.

The firm said that the next-generation technology enables the Striker
engine to detect complex polymorphic, or self-mutating, viruses much
more rapidly than traditional anti-virus engines.

Continue reading →