At least two US websites are seeking permission from the American government to broadcast the execution of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh next month. McVeigh is due to be put to death by lethal injection on May 16th for bombing the Oklahoma City Federal building killing 168 people in 1995. Liveontheweb.com and Entertainment Network have been denied the right to put cameras in the death chamber, but both are mounting separate legal challenges citing - strangely - the right to freedom of speech.
Liveontheweb.com says it will not be billing the event as a pay-per-view event and will use strict age verification. Entertainment Network says it will charge $1.95 to view the execution. The US Attorney General had earlier decided the execution could be viewed by relatives of the victims on closed circuit television.
DISGRACEFUL NAPSTER: Another week and still more bad news for Napster and its legion of fans. A San Francisco judge says she may consider pulling the plug completely on it. District judge Marilyn Hall Patel described the company's efforts to block copyright works from its online music-swapping service as "disgraceful". She said a court-appointed expert would review claims by the industry Napster was failing to remove copyright material from its service. A Recording Industry lawyer Carey Ramos said of 5,000 songs the record labels asked to be removed last month 84 per cent were still being downloaded free of charge via Napster. He commented: "Whatever they're doing, it ain't working." Fans of the service would no doubt beg to differ.
DOOMED DOTCOMS: One hundred and twenty-five people lost their jobs last week at two Dublin-based technology companies. International e-business consultancy Oniva closed with the loss of 65 jobs while Norkom Technologies announced it was to cut staff numbers by 60 - or nearly one-third of its workforce.
CHANGING MOOD: Amid the Dotcom Despair UCD's campus company ChangingWorlds is providing a modicum of good news. The Irish pioneer of advanced intelligent personalisation technologies for mobile, wireless and digital TV Internet applications, is to expand operations by recruiting 40 new employees in Dublin. ChangingWorlds was established as a campus company in 1999 by UCD computer scientists Paul Cotter and Dr Barry Smyth following an extensive research and development programme at the college's Smart Media Institute.
PORN AGAIN: Yahoo!, under pressure to develop new sources of revenue, is offering a broad selection of adult material, including hard-core porn videos and DVDs, through its popular shopping service. The company declined to confirm it had dramatically increased its porn offerings in recent weeks, but did say it was comfortable offering adult material to help build its overall commerce business.
PERFECT MOVE: PerfectWorld, the digital media consultancy firm established by Damian Ryan, has invested £210,000 in Irish company NetTV, a provider of streaming media services and content to companies wishing to establish video and audio facilities on the web.
BOUGHT TO BOOK: Borders Group, the second-largest book retailer in the US, is abandoning its online business, turning it over to Amazon.com as part of a new partnership between the two companies. A new co-branded Borders.com site will launch in August. Amazon has also struck a deal with Adobe Systems to offer Adobe's digital book-reading software through the online retailer. Amazon.com also announced that it expects a first quarter net loss of less than $255 million compared with $308 million loss a year earlier.
NBC SHUTDOWN: NBC is shutting down its loss-ridden Internet subsidiary, acknowledging that any hopes of it becoming profitable had vaporised along with the online advertising market. Many of the 300 jobs there will be eliminated as the unit's assets are integrated into NBC.
COMPAQ DELAY: Compaq is delaying its largest trade show for customers, citing the high-tech downturn. The biennial Innovate Forum, which was to have been held in Texas in the week of May 23rd, is being postponed until next year at the earliest as part of the personal computer maker's cost cutting efforts
FLAWED PHONES: Ericsson is withdrawing its first shipment of new-technology GPRS mobile phones due to a flawed factory installation. The flawed phones, Ericsson's recently launched R520 model, have been sent to retailers in Sweden and one or two other European countries.
RIGHT OF RAY: The European Union Commission has given antitrust clearance to a joint venture to make cathode ray tubes for televisions and computer monitors between Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands and LG Electronics of South Korea. "The investigation showed that the operation would not give rise to competition concerns," the EU's executive office said in a statement. The deal is aimed at creating the world's leading supplier of cathode ray tubes, incorporating their global operations by mid-2001.
IN BRIEF...Intel has lost a bid for a rehearing before a US federal appeals court that ruled the firm had no license to use Intergraph 's computer chip technology in its Pentium product. . . Motorola plans even more job cuts on top of the 22,000 it has already announced, the communications equipment maker said after reporting its first quarterly loss in 16 years. . .