File swapping is back on college campuses — offered by some of the very same colleges that have banned Napster. A group of 40 universities, including Stanford University, will offer students a Web-based memory storage system from I-drive.com that has, as one of its functions, file swapping, according to a story at ZDNet.

From a story at 2600.com: “As expected, the Motion Picture Association of America has begun to threaten people all over the world in the wake of their victory in the 2600 lawsuit. This time, not only are sites that mirror DeCSS being targeted, but also those that merely have LINKS to other sites with DeCSS. The MPAA points to the anti-linking ruling in the 2600 decision and apparently intends to pursue people who type a single line of HTML — if it points somewhere they don’t want it to point.”

They may not get as much attention as Microsoft’s high-profile legal battle against the U.S. Department of Justice, but dozens of private antitrust lawsuits are working their way through the nation’s courts — claims that could cost the company billions of dollars in damages.
While the government case seeks drastic remedies to reel in what Microsoft can do in the future, the private suits want to force the company to pay for what it’s done in the past. Unlike the DOJ, the plaintiffs seek monetary damages, which could be tripled under antitrust laws. ZDNet reports.

From a column at ZDNet: “While I don’t agree with piracy, I strongly disagree with some of the RIAA’s actions in this matter, mostly in the way that the music industry has ripped off the consumer. While this does NOT justify piracy, I think all the piracy shows how tired the American people are of getting ripped off.”

From humor site Segfault: In a federal court today, God Almighty filed suit against several condom manufacturers for violations of section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. “It has come to my attention that these companies manufacture a device that is being widely used to circumvent a process of my design,” said the well-known deity in a telephone interview. “Many people have been using these products, purchasable over the Internet, to control access to certain components of their bodies. I don’t see how anyone can justify the use of such circumvention devices,” God asserted, “and I will file a million lawsuits a day if that’s what it takes.”

IBM announced Wednesday the Open Source contribution of a high-performance file system technology and talent to strengthen collaboration in the enterprise. The contribution of AFS Enterprise File System gives the community a remote file system with a proven track record that features high performance and scalability in rigorous computing environments. AFS is designed to protect data access by authenticating users, providing a very secure, easily managable working environment that supports a wide variety of operating platforms, including Linux. The full press release is on InternetWire.

The Linux community in southern Australia welcomes a few hundred more users into the fold at the Adelaide Install Fest 2000, reports LinuxWorld.

A judge on Wednesday rejected an accusation by MP3.com Inc. that Seagram Co.’s Universal Music Group was using its copyright infringement claim to put the online music company out of business.
The presiding U.S. District Court judge, Jed Rakoff, also ruled as irrelevant MP3.com’s allegation that Universal, the world’s largest record company, was unwilling to settle the suit out of court because of its own online strategy, Reuters reported.

At Apple Expo 2000 in Paris on September 13, Apple will finally release the much-anticipated Mac OS X Public Beta. Steve Jobs announced the news at his Seybold San Francisco keynote speech on Tuesday. We now have a concrete date for the emergence of Mac OS X from the development community and into the hands of early adopters and power users, MacWeek reports.

Linuxworld.com.au offers an interview with Matt Allen, founder of Linux Worx Pty Ltd, a company which “came about from years of frustration with a certain M$ operating System.”