Federation Against Software Theft condemns rogue IT workers

The UK software industry has warned companies to be wary of rogue IT workers after 5,800 illegally downloaded music files were discovered during a software audit of a financial services company. Most files had been downloaded by members of the IT department, the very people, says the Federation Against Software Theft, who should be charged with preventing this happening. 'All too often IT policy enforcement and management is left solely to the IT department, in the belief that when IT staff say that correct licences are in place, they are,' said John Lovelock, director general of FAST. ...more

French MEP proposes 'email tax'

A French politician has come up with a new idea to help solve the European Union's budget problem. MEP Alain Lamassoure has suggested that the EU put a tax on emails and mobile phone text messages. The centre-right MEP says that all 25 EU national parliaments and governments should make computer users pay a tax of €0. ...more

Sony presses play for MP3 files on Walkmans

MP3-playing Walkmans are being launched by Sony, and existing NW-series Walkmans will also have a firmware update for accommodating the de-facto Internet standard for compressed music files. As we reported back in September - Sony does u-turn for MP3 support - Sony has abandoned its position on only supporting its own ATRAC-format. The devices, which have up to 1GB of Flash memory, are Sony's first to accommodate the more popular MP3 format. ...more

Terra settles Lycos bill for nearly ?1bn

Terra Lycos writes down cost of Lycos Massive losses of around €2bn (?1.37bn) make up the Spanish Internet company's net loss for 2002, mostly down to balancing the cost of acquiring US Internet portal Lycos in 2000. With a depressed market, and weak currencies in its Latin American territories snatching €19m away, revenues fell 10 per cent year on year, although were up 5 per cent for the quarter sequentially. ...more

Skype VoIP the springboard for headsets, hopes Plantronics

Plantronics has big plans to use Internet phone call start up Skype as a springboard for pushing sales of its headsets. The company sees VoIP calling services as a big opportunity to sell its headsets, and the surging interest in Skype - currently gaining 80,000 new users a week - as the perfect platform. Philip Vanhoutte Plantronics' MD for EMEA, said that current usage of headsets is relatively tiny for functions such as mobile phones, business, home PCs and residential phones. ...more