BetaNews Staff

Responding to last week's congressional passage of legislation
requiring the use of Internet filtering software in federally funded
schools
and libraries, an online civil liberties group today unveiled software
capable of blocking many popular filtering programs.

Called "Peacefire," the software, available online at
http://www.peacefire.org ,
will disable Windows-compatible filtering programs like Net Nanny, Cyber
Patrol, CYBERsitter and others, Peacefire developer and Webmaster
Bennett Haselton told Newsbytes today.

Continue reading →

Two online music start-ups - Streamwaves of Dallas,
Texas, and Uplister, Inc., of Oakland Calif. - said today that they
will team up to deliver streaming music on demand to members of
Uplister's song recommendation community.

Streamwaves, which last month announced a groundbreaking music
licensing deal with record company EMI, will allow Uplister users
to tap in to its planned subscription-based service, which it says
will eventually encompass recordings from other major labels in
addition to EMI.

Continue reading →

iTraceYou.com is the name of a new, and free, Web-based
service that allows users of almost any e-mail service to know the
exact date and time their messages were opened.

The service is the brainchild of Andre Lessa and Marcos Machado, two
systems analysts, who started work on their Web service project
in August.

Continue reading →

EMusic.com Inc. and the Harry Fox Agency Inc.
today said they amended their previous licensing agreement so the site
can add full-song streaming to its subscription service.

EMusic.com will pay the agency, a unit of the National Music Publishers'
Association Inc. (NMPA), a one quarter of a cent ($.0025) royalty fee the
first time a song is streamed by a user.

Continue reading →

Online brokerage Charles Schwab Corp.
has reportedly confirmed its Web trading site was
vulnerable to a security flaw that could allow an intruder to
hijack subscribers' accounts, but insisted the risk was small
and that no accounts had been illegally accessed.

The revelation makes Schwab the second online brokerage to
uncover the flaw after E-Trade Group did so last
month. Schwab oversees some $420 billion in online transactions,
listing 4.2 million active trading accounts, according to a
Reuters report, which added that the company stated it has
implemented temporary security measures and hopes to install a
permanent fix by year's end.

Continue reading →

Universal Music's recent victory in a copyright
infringement lawsuit against MP3.com made it clear that the
recording giant - and not the Internet music distributor - holds
the right to make copies of the songs on its CDs.

But when Universal itself is broadcasting those tracks on the Web,
it should be paying music publishers and songwriters - just like
radio stations do - according to a lawsuit launched this week
against the Seagram-owned company behind such well-known labels as
Decca, MCA, Motown, Philips, and Polydor.

Continue reading →

In a move that renders one-hour delivery services instantly obsolete - at least in the music space - MP3.com today said it will team with the Tower Records retail chain to make music purchased from Tower's Web site available to users almost
instantly, allowing them to it well before the CDs arrive by mail.

The music-streaming service will be part of MP3.com's newly relaunched
MyMP3.com, the personalized music-locker, which got the company in
considerable legal trouble with the recording industry this year,
for making unlicensed copies of CDs available to listeners. Recent
court settlements have allowed MP3.com to officially license
recordings, however, making the alliance with a major chain like
Tower possible.

Continue reading →

After paying what is believed to be well over
$100 million to untangle itself from copyright-infringement
litigation, MP3.com has re-launched the online music-locker service
that got it into legal hot water in the first place.

This time, however, San Diego-based MP3.com has permission
from the world's largest record companies to serve up Web-hosted
copies of tracks already in the personal music collections of
subscribers.

Continue reading →

A major distributors of Linux-based software,
Red Hat Inc., is reportedly closing its San
Francisco office and two European offices, and laying off about
20 employees.

A report by Wired News said staffers learned of the move Monday
and some of them have been offered jobs at other Red Hat
locations. Unconfirmed reports suggested that the lay-offs were
due to nine recent acquisitions which caused redundancy in some
job categories.

Continue reading →

The dispute between the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
and Amazon [NASDAQ:AMZN], which started earlier this year when the
privacy group nixed its book distribution deal with the e-tailer, is
continuing, with EPIC now urging government agencies of the need to
investigate Amazon's operations.

This time EPIC appears to be pulling no punches, saying that
government agencies should investigate the e-tailer in both the US and
the UK, charging violations of trade practices and data protection
laws.

Continue reading →

Ericsson has taken the wraps off an embedded Wireless
Application Protocol (WAP) server that has Bluetooth personal area
network (PAN) technology featured as standard.

The development is a key one for both WAP and Bluetooth users, as it
means that the raft of WAP-equipped mobiles with Bluetooth facilities
expected early next year will soon have a real server to access.

Continue reading →

The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) division of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned that the New Year
may bring with it a spate of hacker attacks.

The attacks, the NIST warning says, stem from the fact that the
lengthy holiday period may allow hackers to further refine their
hacking techniques, just as they did over last year's holiday season.

Continue reading →

Internet music site EMusic.com [Nasdaq: EMUS]
says about one-third of the Napster users that have been warned to stop
sharing its music have complied.

Using newly developed software, EMusic.com on Nov. 21 began sweeping
Napster files to locate its songs and notify members that they are
illegally
sharing their music and to cease the practice. "As of Thursday, we had seen
about 35,000 users, and we have currently sent notice to 1,500,"
EMusic.com's
Gene Hoffman told Newsbytes. "We sent an instant message to them and they
didn't comply."

Continue reading →

America Online said today that it is in the process of closing
a security loophole that allowed hackers to steal AOL Instant Messenger
(AIM) screen names and, in some cases, access AOL members' credit cards.

Nicholas Graham, spokesperson for AOL, said that the new security measure
will address the issue not only for AIM version 4.3 clients, but
others as well.

Continue reading →

Motorola's branding revolves around wireless communications, from big
things
like satellite-linking stations down to home networking and cellphones.
But the US-based communications company is also interested in the
small things, as demonstrated by a just-signed development agreement
with Compugen Ltd., a Tel Aviv, Israel-based
biotechnology firm.

Motorola and Compugen have linked up to make and market DNA microchips,
tiny microcircuits loaded with bits of genetic material rather than
electronic circuits.

Continue reading →