Yahoo has once again revised the terms of use for its GeoCities Web community after members protested that proposed copyright clauses released late last month robbed users of control over the content of their own websites. The row started when Geocities members became alarmed by language in an agreement which gave Yahoo "the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable. . . license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display" their content.
In a clear attempt to mollify users, the new terms state (our italics): "Yahoo does not claim ownership of the content you place on your Yahoo GeoCities site. By submitting content to Yahoo for inclusion on your Yahoo GeoCities site, you grant Yahoo the world-wide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the content. . . for as long as you continue to be a Yahoo GeoCities homesteader."
Standard Lines: Global agreement on a new telephone standard, ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), will vastly speed up links from homes to the Internet, the United Nations telecommunications agency has promised. American firms are already offering the new standard, which enables speeds at least 30 times faster than the current top-of-the-range modems and uses ordinary copper telephone lines.
Communication Breakdown: Proposed e-commerce legislation in Britain could be stalled by attempts to give the police access to private encrypted information. The new law's most controversial section, the Electronic Communications Act, grants police powers to seek jail sentences for those not providing them with keys to encrypted files. The government has been told that the Conservative party will block attempts to rush the law through parliament as they deem it (the new law) both a "dog's breakfast" and unnecessary.
Microsoft's Vocation: The City of Dublin VEC, in association with Microsoft, is to implement new training initiatives to introduce technical education programmes in Dublin. Under the agreement the VEC becomes an accredited academic partner of the software giant. Initially six selected schools will be involved in offering Windows 9x and Windows NT courses.
Ireland's Digital Corridor: Ocean has announced details of a £14 million project, partly financed by EU Structural funds, to build a 300 kilometre fibre-optic cable route connecting Dublin, Athlone, Galway and Shannon. Ocean hopes that this "Western Digital Corridor" will allow businesses and communities along the route to access a greatly expanded range of advanced broadband communications services.
Matters Of Trusts: While Microsoft's landmark antitrust trial may be coming to an end, a US federal judge has ruled against the company in its effort to block an second antitrust lawsuit by small rival software company Caldera. District Judge Dee Benson denied Microsoft's claim that Caldera did not have the standing to bring claims for alleged violations outside the United States, concluding "there was a global market being affected" by Microsoft's action. The new antitrust case seeks damages of more than $1 billion from Microsoft for alleged improper conduct in the early 1990's, particularly related to the venerable MS DOS.
Improved Protocol: The Internet Engineering Task Force has made HTTP 1.1 a new draft standard. The new version of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol will speed the performance of the Web, according to its authors at the World Wide Web Consortium. HTTP 1.1 will cache content more flexibly and streamline the transfer of information packets. It also allows for the secure transfer of passwords and rationalises the use of IP addresses.
Bumper Apple Crop: Apple shares continue to increase in value amid hopes of new product introductions later this month, another strong quarterly earnings report and a growing sense of optimism about the company's long-term prospects. The company's shares are at their highest level since 1993 and Apple is set to post its seventh quarterly profit in a row since the return of co-founder and interim chief executive Steve Jobs.
Slack Searches: Search engines are failing in their efforts to keep up with the Web's growth, according to a study published in the current issue of Nature. NEC Institute research scientists Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles found that, while the Web more than doubled in size - from 320 million pages to 800 million between December 1997 and February 1999 -, even the top-ranking search engine, Northern Light, had coverage of only 16 per cent of the estimated total.
Net Cases: A new study by University of South Florida researchers has concluded that fear of the Internet is replacing fear of Communists or of the CIA or of the controlling power of radio waves as a favourite delusion of new psychiatric patients. Every case of Internet delusion documented by the researchers involved people who actually had little experience with computers, said Dr. Glenn Catalano, the USF psychiatrist who wrote the report.
Trojan Cow: Microsoft is fearful of a new Trojan Horse program which allows hackers take control of networks operating Windows NT. A hacker group, The Cult of the Dead Cow, issued statements last week at the 7th annual DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas heralding the release of the second version of Back Orifice 2000. Back Orifice, first released last August, arrives as an email attachment and, when opened, installs itself, turning the victim's computer into a "client", i.e. enabling anyone with the other half of the software to take control. DefCon is attended by thousands of practising or would-be hackers.
In Brief...Go Network, the Internet venture run by Infoseek and Walt Disney, has teamed up with Entertainment Boulevard to offer music videos on Go Network's music site. . . IT services company ICL has sealed a £20m desktop-managed services contract with Northern Ireland's five Education and Library Boards. . . The VHI has become the latest company to choose Esat Telecom's broadband online business continuity service. . . CBT Systems has teamed up with Unisys to design, develop and administer technical certification programs offered to Unisys employees. . . Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge has been signed by ABC Radio Networks to anchor a two-hour weekly radio show. . .