“Some popular free Web services are playing both sides of the fence when it
comes to protecting consumers from pesky marketers, offering to block junk
email while they help advertisers push promotions into customers’ in-boxes.” ZDNET.co.uk reports.

A press release at PRNewswire.com states: “The recent outage of
Microsoft’s web service is a serious reminder of the potential consequences of
incorrectly configured DNS (Domain Name System). A survey run yesterday by
the DNS consultancy and DNS software specialist, Men & Mice, shows that
approximately 38% of .COM domains have the same DNS configuration problem that
allowed some of Microsoft’s most popular websites to crash for over 24 hours.”

Wired.com: “It seems a 20-year-old college student decided there was money to be made in PDAs, and how better to make dough than to peddle porn?”

ZDNET.co.uk reports: “On the heels of settling its Java lawsuit with Sun Microsystems, Microsoft on
Thursday announced a new set of software development tools and services
that will allow Java programmers to support Microsoft’s new software
strategy.”

ZDNET reports that, in a move to push the Web services movement forward, IBM
Thursday released the source code for UDDI for Java to the open
source community.

Wired.com reports: “Eight groups, ranging from cryptographers to journalists, are set to file friend-of-the-court briefs saying last year’s ruling that prohibited a Web zine from publishing the DeCSS code ignores basic “fair use” and free expression rights.”

The Economist says: “Linux, the free computer operating
system developed by thousands of
volunteers collaborating over the
Internet, is still not taken very
seriously in corporate circles. It is
used for niche tasks, such as running
web servers, but it is generally
deemed to be too immature for the
most demanding environments, such as
heavy-duty database systems. Recent
events, however, suggest that
Linux-whose mascot is a cheerful
penguin-may have outgrown the commune
of its birth.”

Wired.com reports that “Microsoft has built a reputation for dominating the software and Internet markets, but it also has an equally strong reputation for not being forthcoming when calamity strikes. Such was the case this week with its website failures.”

The BBC reports: “The European Commission (EC) is to launch an investigation into
alleged price fixing by leading Compact Disc (CD) sellers.

The EC fears that companies – including EMI, Time Warner, Sony,
Bertlesmann and Universal – are sharing information in order to set
prices artificially high.”

The Standard reports that the SIIA filed separate lawsuits against two men, alleging that they
sold illegal copies of software products to people who had bid
for them at auction Web sites, said Peter Beruk, VP of the
antipiracy division at SIIA. Named in the suits are Michael Chu
of Los Altos Hills, Calif., and Christopher Julian Kish of
Chicago, who are both accused of violating the U.S.
Copyright Act, Beruk said. If found guilty, each of the
defendants faces a fine of up to $150,000 for each title
infringed upon.