A conflict between Bavarian media czar Leo Kirch and virtually all the rest of the German broadcasting industry has been settled, but it remains unclear who won, industry officials said: after a months of tense negotiations with leading German media groups and Deutsche Telekom AG, Kirch has confirmed he will give up plans to market his own digital television decoder in Germany; instead, he will join a company called Multimedia Betreibergesellschaft mbH which is being set up to market near video-on-demand, home shopping and other multimedia services technology for use next year; Vebacom GmbH, the telecommunications subsidiary of energy group Veba AG, confirmed it would join the Multimedia company rather than pursue plans to form a separate alliance with Kirch.
Poland’s anti-monopoly office has imposed a $205,000 fine on state-owned telephone company Telekomunikacja Polska SA for hindering the business of a competing company, it said: the fine was instated after privately-owned local service company Lublin Telecom, operating in eastern Poland, filed a complaint that Telekom had refused to connect its 20,000 subscribers to the national network; Telkom has a monopoly on the nationwide trunk network and international connections; private operators are permitted on a local level and over 50 firms had been granted licences by the government.
America Online Inc and Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros Online have renewed their affiliation for another year: Warner Bros Online will provide America Online with programming based on Warner Bros content and will also create original on-line content designed for America Online; new promotional sites will feature Warner Brothers movies in current release and the entertainment company’s prime-time and syndicated television properties; the sites will incorporate chat rooms, message boards and other vehicles for fans, it said; the financial terms of the deal were not given.
Bezeq Ltd reached agreement with the Israeli government on outstanding debts, and will pay the government $43m, which it said will enable it to proceed with its planned global offering, tentatively scheduled for the first quarter of 1996: the government is planning to sell an additional 25% of the phone company; 24% of Bezeq is already publicly owned, with Cable & Wireless Plc the largest single shareholder after the government with the 10.1% stake bought in the summer; under the agreement, Bezeq will also pay royalties on additional services to the government in return for permission to raise its rates further.
US civil rights groups, privacy activists and others have been lying down on the Information Superhighway to express their protest and whip up opposition to legislation that would make it illegal to make indecent material available to minors on the Internet, in response to the US House of Representives agreeing to make it a crime for anyone to knowingly display such material on an on-line service or over the Internet: some 60 groups in the US and abroad sent electronic mail to users accross the Internet saying they were preparing a National Internet Day of Protest that targets Congresspeople thrashing out the final details of the telecommunications bill; under the bill, those found guilty could face up to two years in prison and fines of as much as $100,000; the Senate passed similar legislation and protest organisers include the American Civil Liberties Union, Centre for Democracy & Technology, the National Writers Union, and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; on-line services, Internet companies and civil rights activists say they are seeking legislation that is narrower.
Netscape Communications Corp said a pair of software sleuths won $1,000 each for finding security gaps in its new Internet-browsing software: in September a group of Internet hackers cracked the security code in Netscape’s Navigator browser software and unearthed supposedly secret credit card transactions, so the company offered cash to anyone who could come up with similar bugs in test versions
of Navigator 2.0 (CI No 2,771) software; the winners, one from Australia, one from San Francisco, both independently found a holes that would enable people to crack the Public Key encryption by timing exactly how long each encryption was taking; Netscape said they were the only ones to come up with security bugs, although it also awarded gifts to 50 other entrants in its Bugs Bounty programme for reporting other bugs; all known bugs are now fixed.
Compaq Computer Corp said a Houston Federal District Court ordered Procom Technology Inc of Irvine, California to stop making and selling hard disks containing copyrighted Compaq information: Procom was advertising and selling third-party drives for ProLiant servers operating with Compaq’s Insight Manager, which enables a network administrator to see the disks on the network and diagnose problems; Procom advertised its drives as 100% compatible with the ProLiant servers; the court order prevents Procom from using Compaq’s intellectual property in its drives and from advertising or selling unauthorised copies of copyrighted data; Compaq also sued Procom for patent infringement relating to the tray on which the hot pluggable drive is mounted; a hearing is expected late next year.
Yes but what are people more versed in the works of Jonathan Swift – in particular Gulliver’s Travels – than the Wired Society going to make of it on the bookstalls? Having our name on the newsstand has tremendous value for us, one of the Yahoos at Yahoo Corp told the New York Times breathlessly – We have tremendous name recognition on line, but we need to get into the off-line channels, as well.
