Wanadoo's 8Mbit ads rile ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld several complaints about high-speed broadband claims made by Wanadoo in a series of TV and press advertisements that first appeared last October. Both rival ISPs and members of the public complained that the ads implied that services 'up to 8 Meg' were available to the majority of broadband users. BT, Tiscali and Bulldog noted that while the ads appeared nationwide Wanadoo was only enabling 8Mbps services in certain locations. ...more

MPs bid to tackle online extortion

The All Party Internet Group (APIG) is to put forward a bill to update the venerable 1990 Computer Misuse Act. The amendments, if accepted, would explicitly make a crime of distributed denial of service attacks and raise the punitive measures for hacking from six months to two years. The amendments are mainly directed at tackling the rising incidence of blackmail and extortion against online services, such as bookmakers, where organised gangs demand sums of money or threaten to take the service offline with such an attack. ...more

AOL, BTOpenworld raise dial-up prices

AOL and BTOpenworld have both announced increases in the prices of their unmetered dial-up, narrowband Internet services, from ?14.99 to ?15.99 per month. ...more

Treo is go for GPRS

Handspring has announced a GPRS upgrade free for your Treo Owners of Treo 180 and 270 communicators in Europe and Asia can upgrade to the faster services of data-enabled GPRS networks with a free download from the Handspring Web site today. 'We believe the GPRS Upgrade transforms Treo from a good data device to an outstanding data device with dramatically improved browsing performance and a more seamless email experience,' said Joe Sipher, vice president of worldwide marketing. 'Along with the improved data features, we've also included a number of customer requested enhancements to the user interface. ...more

Sun GPLs Java

Sun Microsystems is to release its key Java platform under the same licence used for Linux and other open-source software. The first parts of Sun's Java Platform Standard Edition and Mobile Edition will be available today under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Additionally, Sun's Enterprise Edition for Java will be released under the GPL, having previously been licensed under Sun's OSI-approved Common Development and Distribution Licence. ...more