Adult Website Whitehouse.org has pulled the politics from the site. Once known for satirizing presidents, first ladies, and White House interns, owner Dan Parisi has stripped all political references from the site – but not necessarily because he's leery of tying politics to porn. Published reports indicate he got hints from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that he has a better chance of winning a trademark if he does all he can to make sure visitors don't think the porn site is tied in any way to the actual White House Website…
This doesn't mean political matters have taken a hike from cyberspace altogether. Not with Democratic presidential nominee in waiting Sen. John Kerry breaking President Bush's fundraising pace and the Internet being primarily responsible for it. Not with Kerry nailing $3 million in online fundraising alone June 30, a one-day record. And not with the brouhaha over Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 flaring up in the file-swapping world – an anti-Moore Website has posted links to a pirated copy of the film, saying Moore himself has voiced an okay to downloading it. "Moore has said on many cases that he doesn't care if people download his movies or steal his book or sneak into his movies," said MooreWatch founder Jim Kenefick. "If I can use his own words against him to be a bee in his bonnet, then I will."…
And certainly not with continuing discussion on the Supreme Court's sending the Child Online Protection Act back to a lower trial court yet again, when a tightly-divided 5-4 majority said filtering solutions might be the better way to go than writing law that isn't the least restrictive against all free speech. "Because the statute only applies to U.S. holdings, people who would want to run a porn site could easily allow their site to be run by a foreign host," said the Auburn Plainsman. "The law just lacked teeth." PC World columnist Michael J. Miller thinks the main reason the law should be stopped is that it can't work. And the Indianapolis Star said what a lot more people probably think: keeping the kids from the porn isn't the government's job, it's the parents'…
The government's job does include, however, picking off when an Internet company might be guilty of deceptive practices. That's what the Arkansas State Supreme Court said the state attorney general can do, regarding Mercury Internet and affiliate company GoInternet, in a 4-3 ruling upholding a temporary restraining order against the company. The state "clearly had reason to believe" the company misled over five thousand Arkansas businesses by putting hidden charges on their phone bills…
Maxtor can't hide from economic hard times hitting hard-drive makers like themselves. The company is said to be cutting between 400-500 jobs while predicting a second-quarter net loss of about $20-30 million…
The U.S. and Antigua are trying not to hide from prospects of resolving a dispute on Internet gambling. The two countries have decided to negotiate a resolution rather than let the World Trade Organization set a panel to do it. Antigua has challenged the U.S. ban on Net gambling, saying it would help the twin-island country's economy. "We look forward to working with Antigua to discuss the issues surrounding the dispute and hopefully to resolving it," said U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Richard Mills.
