Universal tests Napster-style music service Music & MP3 10/23/2000; 5:33:54 PM 'Big five' recording company Universal Music Group has begun secret trials of an unlimited access, subscription-based digital music distribution service.... 'The trial apparently provides unlimited access to some 20,000 tracks via a streamed media connection over the Internet. Subscribers, of whom, Reuters reckons there are 5000 - seems a lot to us - can't download and keep the songs they choose to listen to.

UK e-snooping rules conflict Country Watch: Britain 10/23/2000; 5:32:15 PM 'The UK government bodies regulating employers' snooping on staff e-mails and phone calls have given conflicting explanations of how two overlapping sets of new rules will interact. 'The Department of Trade and Industry's surveillance rules, which come into force next week, give employers a largely free hand to snoop. The main proviso is that staff are warned their personal e-mails and calls may be monitored.

Privacy under attack (again) on Capitol Hill Surveillance and Privacy from Government 10/23/2000; 5:31:44 PM 'One of the most bizarre items currently proceeding under the CR has to be the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000, sponsored by House Subcommittee on Crime Chairman Bill McCollum (Republican, Florida), which was ostensibly designed to provide better protection to former Presidents from violent lunatics "and for other purposes." Incredibly, the measure passed the Senate, but a rider McCollum wants tacked onto it called the Fugitive Apprehension Act has since raised hackles because it would authorise the Feds to read e-mail and other ISP records on a mere administrative subpoena, which does not require a warrant approved by a judge.

Senator Hatch's Napster Epiphany Music & MP3 10/23/2000; 11:32:16 AM 'The kinks and twists and political intrigues attaching to this story [Napster vs. DMCA vs. DMCA author] are only beginning to show, and one can only delight in contemplating what might come next. What we have thus far is a stiff-collared conservative Senator renouncing his own, industry-accommodating legislation on behalf of some punk Internet start-up venture; a pseudo-hip and nominally Democratic White House desperately trying to enforce the Draconian provisions of the stiff-collared conservative Senator's original, industry-accommodating legislation; and an extraordinarily talented lawyer with, until now, respectable Establishment credentials suddenly disdaining the political machine for which he had recently done battle, and cheered by, you guessed it, the stiff-collared conservative Senator whose crummy legislation failed to protect Napster from recording-industry abuse in the first place.

Who ya gonna call? Patent busters! Patents 10/23/2000; 11:26:16 AM 'Charles Cella used to help start-ups like ARTISTdirect apply for Internet business method patents. Now the attorney-turned-CEO plans to make money busting them. 'Why the change of heart? "Because there are a lot of bad patents out there, and there are a lot of valid patents too," he says. "What needs fixing is the system of 'prior art.'" '"Prior art,"

Another crack in the SDMI wall Music & MP3 10/23/2000; 11:22:44 AM 'A coalition of cryptography and watermarking researchers from Princeton University, Xerox PARC and Rice University claims to have successfully defeated a music protection system proposed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI).' This has a lot of credibility if you ask me. Be sure to check out their site, particularly their Frequently asked questions.

Blurring the Lines of Digital Art Free Speech 10/23/2000; 11:20:43 AM 'In 1994, the Whitney was the first major institution to collect a work of Net art, Douglas Davis' "The World's First Collaborative Sentence." Earlier this year, the museum included Net art in its prestigious biennial exhibition, considered a barometer of what's hot in contemporary art. 'And now, digital art is so hot that it deserves its own show. Two shows, in fact.

Keep the Customer Dissatisfied Misc. 10/23/2000; 11:16:35 AM 'Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, doesn't want us to buy wine on the Net. His argument is that minors are using online ordering to get their hands on booze. Maybe so. Or maybe the wholesale distributors of alcoholic beverages would rather not deal with online competition, and have found some friends in high legislative places.... 'Personally, I think it's absurd that I won't be able to order my favorite boutique pinot noir or microbrew from out of state just because the government can't figure out how to stop a 16-year-old using a parent's credit card from doing the same thing.

Uncovering the Dark Side of the world wide web Misc. 10/22/2000; 12:42:09 PM 'In an achievement that is almost the equivalent of the Human Genome project for the internet, a new Scottish software company has not only succeeded in plotting a map of the world wide web but has also uncovered its Dark Side.... 'A team member replied: "Well, you'll first need to map all that's good and bad - an awesome challenge - and keep adding to it on a daily basis.

No free speech @Home for critic who posts service documents Free Speech 10/22/2000; 11:58:34 AM 'Participants in an @Home-run newsgroup that focused on @Home service topics were the ones up in arms. One of their participants, an AT&T@Home customer named Wesley, had his account shut down by @Home within hours of posting some @Home and/or cable company documents to the newsgroup. The documents included technical support procedures and refund policies, leaving many @Home customers feeling Wesley was guilty only of giving them ammunition to deal with the service outages they've experienced.