UK one of only five to make EU's communications deadline

The UK, along with Ireland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden are the only five countries in the EU to make today's deadline for implementing electronic communications directives into national law. Although we are in the clear, the European Commission is going to put the heat on tardy territories, threatening 'infringement proceedings if action is not taken rapidly'. Italy looks likely to be fashionably late, but seems to have charmed the EU into accepting a date of 31 July for its compliance. ...more

Microsoft suffers setback in overturning EU antitrust ruling

Microsoft suffered a setback yesterday in its attempts to overturn the EU antitrust ruling against it. On the first day of the appeal hearing at the Court of First Instance, James Flynn, a lawyer representing the anti-Microsoft trade group ECIS, produced internal Microsoft memos that suggested the company had deliberately set out to eliminate RealNetworks from the streaming video market. Reuters reports that the memo suggested to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates that the strategy that had successfully been deployed to 'crush' the Netscape Web browser could also be applied to tackle Real's then dominant position in streaming media. ...more

Apple extends its iTunes Affiliates Program to Europe

Apple has announced the extension of its iTunes Affiliates Program to its European online music stores. The programme lets other websites link directly to songs and audiobooks sold on the iTunes Music Store and take a four per cent share of the revenues from any songs sold. There are some 15,000 affiliates in the US, where the scheme has been running since September. ...more

Parents fret over kids' 3G Web surfing

Parents worry that 3G phones will mean children will be surfing far from their supervision, but also that their children know far more about the technology than they do. According to children's charity NCH, a NOP Poll yesterday showed that nearly three in four parents worry that phones offering Web surfing will put their children in increased danger by allowing them to connect from anywhere. But while they are worried that they can not be there to supervise their use, 63 per cent say their children know more about the phones than they do anyway. ...more

PGP to sign VoIP calls

The inventor of the Internet's best-known encryption software has turned his attention to the security of IP voice calls. Phil Zimmerman, whose PGP (Pretty Good Encryption) software is the de facto standard for the encryption of email, announced that he will demonstrate a prototype of his new program for scrambling VoIP traffic - Internet-based phone calls. Like PGP it will use public and private keys to encrypt the call before it is sent and then unscramble it on receipt. ...more