Napster fans are celebrating after federal appeals judges granted the service a stay allowing the wildly popular music trading service to remain, at least temporarily, online. Napster, www.napster.com, was facing a weekend deadline for shutting down after a lower court judge sided with the recording industry, which claimed it allowed users to violate copyrights. Napster CEO Hank Barry thanked users for standing by the company, saying that it could help consumers, artists and the music industry.
Napster had been ordered by a judge to cease allowing users to swap music over the Web pending a trial. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said the site was encouraging "wholesale infringing" against recording industry copyrights. Seventy million people were expected to be using Napster by the end of the year unless the service was halted, she said. Before the stay, tens of thousands of outraged users had pledged to boycott the recording industry in retaliation for its lawsuit.
Web for all: There will be no so-called digital divide in Ireland according to the Minister for Public Enterprise Mary O'Rourke. Speaking in Dublin last week she said the Government would ensure that "everyone throughout the country, regardless of location, can reap the rewards of the Information Age". Government and EU aid totalling £150 million will be spent on upgrading communications and e-commerce infrastructures in less developed parts of the country, she said. O'Rourke was announcing that six Irish companies will be buying bandwidth on Global Crossing's multi-million-pound world fibre optic network.
Net increase: There are now almost 820,000 Irish people with Internet access, according to figures for the month of June released by Nielsen//NetRatings. Some 42,000 additional people have gone online in May and June of this year, the figures suggest, representing an increase of 5.4 per cent.
We've got it: Last week saw the announcement of a total of more than 6,000 new IT jobs. The latest announcement by Mary Harney revealed that Harcourt General is expanding its Irish e-learning operation - NETg Ireland - in Limerick, creating 340 jobs by the end of 2002. Meanwhile, e-business company Breakaway Solutions is to establish its European Solution Centre in Dublin creating 325 jobs, Cisco Systems will create 3,000 jobs in Dublin, IBM is investing a further £100 million in its Dublin plant creating a possible extra 1,000 jobs, and Canadian telecommunications company Nortel will create 1,600 in Monkstown near Belfast.
Stop! Private: Internet firms in the US have been banned from using visitors' medical and financial data, or online sexual behaviour to decide which ads appear on their computer screens. A majority of America's Internet advertisers devised the new set of industry standards with the US government to protect the privacy of Web users who will be able to choose which information is used.
Bigger, better, faster: IBM has introduced a commercial version of its ASCI White super computer - the most powerful in the world. The new RS/6000 is 30,000 times faster than an average personal computer, capable of 12.3 trillion calculations per second. It is aimed at the e-business sector. The machine was initially used by the US Department of Energy for simulating nuclear testing.
King publisher: Thousands of Web users downloaded Steven King's latest online publishing release last week. Early indications show that users reading the first instalment of The Plant are coughing up the $1 per copy King is asking for. He said the first two instalments will be put on the Web, but he will only continue to post and write new ones if at least three-quarters of the readers choose to pay for them.
In brief... Domain name globalcurrency.com will be auctioned on eBay today . . . Shares of Amazon.com fell nearly 13 per cent on Thursday following a mixed second-quarter earnings report . . . A survey in the US has revealed that people who get music from the Web actually buy more CDs than other people.
Diary
Today: Part two of the Irish Internet Association's (IIA) content management series, The IIA Showcase: Content Management Solutions, in the Mont Clare Hotel, Merrion Square, Dublin at 7 p.m. (registration 6.30 p.m.). Info - events@iia.ie or www.iia.ie
Modem World
www.cookingbynumbers.com
This site will instantly devise recipes using only the meagre contents of your kitchen.
www.witnness.com
Slick website dedicated to next weekend's Witnness music festival at Fairyhouse Racecourse in Co Meath.
www.bigbrother.terra.com
Webcams live 24 hours a day in Channel 4's Big Brother house experiment.
Textbites
"Sharing is such a warm, cuddly, friendly word . . . this is not sharing, it's duplicating" - Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich after music swapping website Napster was told to discontinue the service by a judge in the US.
"Here in the Guinness Hopstore, we are truly witnessing a merging of the old and the new: the tradition of the industrial age is handing over to the technology revolution" - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern speaking at the launch of MediaLabEurope in the Guinness Hopstore in Dublin last Monday (see also: "Talking beds and other madness come to Dublin", left).
News monitor column by Patrick Logue. Computimes edited by Conor Goodman and Conor Pope Information and releases to computimes@irish-times.ie - e-mail preferred (rather than fax, post, phone). No attachments, please.