Yahoo's decision to revise copyright clauses in the terms of service at GeoCities caused a major stir among members last week. The changes at the free webspace provider give its new owner Yahoo the right to use the content of GeoCities pages. In order to create or update their pages, members have to agree to give Yahoo "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content" in any form or media. Xoom and Tripod also require a royalty-free, unrestricted licence to use or modify member content.
UK Porn Case:In a judgment with major legal ramifications, an English court has ruled that the content of websites hosted in the US can be subject to British jurisdiction. After last Wednesday's ruling, Graham Waddon (28) pleaded guilty to running Britain's largest online porn operation. He had argued that the sites were outside Britain, but the judge ruled that publication occurred when he transmitted material to the sites.
Ocean Makes Waves: Oceanfree.net, Ireland's first "free" Internet service provider, says it has attracted over 30,000 users after just three weeks. Meanwhile, An Post is considering whether to sell Ireland Online and PostGem. It is said to be seeking around £18 million for the two Internet operations, which have had losses of around £6.5 million.
Online Reviews Count: Book publisher Tim O'Reilly says online reviews at Amazon.com are "increasingly significant as a measure of what's important out there". The site uses more than 2.5 million customer reviews, a spokesman said.
Blur Edisc: Blur's new single Coffee And TV is being emailed to fans who have subscribed to email updates on the band's official website. The "e-disc single" has a snatch of the record, a video clip and a ticket competition. Unlike MP3 files, ediscs are self-extracting and have a maximum size of 1.4 MB, so they can be bulk emailed or put on a floppy disk.
The Wicklow Way: The Wicklow Information Network will be launched this evening at the County Buildings, Wicklow. Learning centres have already been set up in Arklow, Aughrim, Avoca, Baltinglass, Carnew, Kiltegan, Laragh, Newcastle, Kilcoole, Newtownmountkennedy, the Glen of Imaal and Enniskerry. The centres provide public access to computers and the Net. - Info: Michael O'Brien, obmm@indigo.ie
Advertisers Flock To Web: A survey of 180 Irish advertisers by the Association of Advertisers of Ireland and ICAN has found that four fifths have a company website. Half the sites are over two years old, 31 per cent are updated monthly, and 26 per cent are only updated "as required".
Email For Call Centres: Nortel Networks has enhanced its WebResponse email response management system. The product, which aims to "significantly increase the level of customer care" at call centres, was developed at its R&D labs in Galway. - Info: www.nortelnetworks.com
New Seeker: Blue Squirrel (www.bluesquirrel.com) has launched EasySeeker for Windows. It combines the results of more than 100 search engines and delivers a list of results that can be easily saved, viewed off-line, organised, and updated.
Easy Java: Oracle has launched a migration program for Java programmers to move from other development tools to its JDeveloper 2.0 at a discount price. It says JDeveloper 2.0 is the first Java tool to automate building database servlets.
Faster Claims Claimed: A new electronic claims management system means insurance companies can process claims online considerably faster than on paper, according to Irish insurance adjusters Farrells. The Lotus Domino-based system means claims can be turned around within two days compared with "probably six to eight days" on paper.
Web Trading: Irish firm International Financial Systems, which specialises in financial Web-based trading and risk management software, has unveiled Automated Trading System. It is currently being tested by a London institution and should be available to other banks in the autumn. - Info: www.ifs.ie
Faking It: Scientists at TCD-based company Horcom have developed a portable device that can spot fake goods just by looking at them. Existing scanners can only cope with a very small number of different dyes but Horcom's device can recognise billions of them. - Info: Seamus Curran, tel 086 827 8895.
Home Access On Rise: The average age of respondents in the Irish Internet Association's latest survey of Internet use is 32 and the male-female ratio is 65 to 35. Over 2,500 people took part in the survey, which showed a 71 per cent rise in those who had Internet access at home as well as at work.
Careers CD: The Careers World CD-Rom mentioned in Computimes last week was created by Windmill Lane Pictures, the Department of Education and Woodgrange Consultants. - Info: www.careersworld.com or kevin@windmilllane.com
In Brief: Hewlett-Packard's HP OmniBook 4150 and 900 notebook PCs will incorporate the new Intel Pentium II 400MHz processor . . . The Irish Internet Association has appointed Frank Cronin as its first full-time chief executive . . . Trading began last week in Dublin and London in the shares of CPL Resources, one of Ireland's largest technology recruitment agencies, and Esat Telecom made its debut on the Irish Stock Exchange . . . Major international bank Commerzbank uses Iona Technologies' Orbix and OrbixTalk products to build an online trading application called Tradinjector. It has already been deployed in Frankfurt and London . . . Dell's European customers can now order Red Hat's Linux 6.0 factory-installed on some configurations of its Precision workstations . . . Irish IT group Xpert Systems had a 40 per cent rise in annual profits to 3.56 million euros . . . Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology has selected Bull Cara Group to update its IT infrastructure . . .