Talk about flipping the chips: IBM (which is being sued by SCO Group over Unix elements in Linux) wants a federal court to block SCO Group from distributing any Linux software and rule yes to Big Blue's counterclaim that SCO forfeited that right by violating what's considered a common Linux distribution license: the GNU General Public License, which SCO declared invalid. "SCO has, without permission, copied code from 16 discrete packages of copyrighted source code written by IBM for Linux and distributed those copies as part of its own Linux products," said the IBM motion. "Although IBM's contributions to Linux are copyrighted, they are permitted to be copied, modified and distributed by other under the terms of the...GPL. However, SCO has renounced, disclaimed and breached the GPL, and therefore the GPL does not give SCO permission or a license to copy and distribute IBM's copyrighted works."
Two major Internet travel sites – in what's called one of the first Internet enforcements of the Americans with Disabilities Act – have agreed to make their sites more accessible to the visually impaired and the blind: Priceline.com and Ramada.com. They agreed to make changes letting users with screen-reader software and other similar technology to navigate and listen to text on their sites. This came in New York after that state spent at least two years investigating whether Websites conformed to the ADA's clause mandating "all places of public accommodation" and their goods, services, and privileges being accessible to the disabled.
You may be Googled out of late, with all the hoopla over the search kings' initial public stock offering, but that hasn't kept lots of other things from happening online – like the Web becoming the fastest-growing outlet for political campaigns, says PQ Media. Political campaigns are spending $25.3 million on Web advertising this year, eight and a half times what they spent four years ago, PQ said. That's still a drop in the bucket, however, compared to broadcast advertising, which PQ said are bound to hit past $1.5 billion for the year.
E-tail is also believed to be surging a bit, as in sales hitting 23.1 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2003, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. E-tail sales hit $14.65 billion between April and June and accounted for 1.7 percent of all retail in that quarter, according to Commerce.
But if you've hit the Net looking for much beyond ordinary news reports from the Summer Olympics, you can just about forget it. Organizers of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat – that's the International Olympic Committee to you – have barred competitors, coaches, support workers, and other officials from writing online journals, blogs, or first hand accounts to news and other Internet sites. (Ex-Olympians, like former U.S. gymnastics champ Kerri Strug – who now works for the federal government, of all people, and is writing commentaries on the Games for Yahoo Sports – are not affected.) They can, however, contribute to a personal Website if the site was not set up for the Games explicitly.
Massachussetts doesn't want you hitting the Net looking for guns and other weapons. And four out of seven online gun sellers in Attorney General Tom Reilly's sights have now agreed to stop selling the shootin' irons and their accessories to Massachussetts Netizens. The other three? They're going to face a state judge September 10 if they don't drop their cyberweapons in the state before that deadline. "Our investigators had no trouble getting stun guns, crossbows, switchblades, cane swords and other dangerous items on the Internet," Reilly told an August 19 press conference. "If sellers think that they can hide behind a Web site and ship these illegal items into our state, and particularly into the hands of our children, they are mistaken.''
