UK ISP Wants VAT Rules Changed
Freeserve, the United Kingdom’s largest Internet service provider, called on the government last week to urgently implement the new European proposal to regulate value-added tax on digital supplies. Doing so would solve the company’s much-publicized concerns that U.S.-based rival AOL is at an unfair advantage under current VAT rules.
The new directive will mean that AOL in the United Kingdom will have to charge its unmetered access customers VAT at 17.5 percent. It is presently exempt. The proposed directive, agreed upon recently by the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers of the European Union, requires non-E.U. businesses to register for VAT in the E.U. and charge VAT at the standard rate in the member state where their customers reside.
Member states are due to sign the new directive at a meeting of the council in February. A meeting will be held in January to agree on the final date by which each member state must implement the directive.
Freeserve argued in this week’s statement that "the long-standing Business Brief, which treats AOL in the U.K. as a supplier of content rather than of telecommunications services, and gives AOL in the U.K. a VAT savings of at least £30 million a year, is now more discredited than ever before."
EU Working with Russia to Legislate E-Commerce Laws
Experts from the European Union and Russia have been working together on the development of legislation in Russia that would be compatible with Europe’s e-commerce laws. The Russian legislation is now in its second reading in the Duma. E.U. Commissioner Erkki Liikanen last week urged Russian leaders to iron out their differences and join the World Trade Organization "in the very near future."
Liikanen spoke by video link to a conference of the Russian Association of Networks and Services. He said while there is a high degree of compatibility between E.U. directives and Russia’s draft laws, there are also some important differences.
Rules Changes for ".biz" Rollout
NeuLevel, the registry for all domain names ending ".biz," announced that it is changing the way it will allocate 39,000 names. The company's former allocation process became the subject of a legal action accusing the U.S. company of operating an illegal lottery.
To date, applications have been made for more than 500,000 .biz names. Before the names went on a first-come, first-served basis, trademark owners were given an opportunity to stake claims to names in advance. However, the rules provided that multiple applications could be made for the same domain name. This increased an applicant's chances of securing the name because the winner was to be chosen at random from all duplicate applications. NeuLevel was sued by aggrieved applicants for operating an illegal lottery under Californian laws.
Most .biz names went live on Oct. 1, but 39,000 applications were put on hold as a result of the legal action. In a statement this week, the company said: "NeuLevel believes that there is a strong likelihood that the litigation could tie up the affected names for many months, if not years. In the interest of having the affected names available as soon as possible, regardless of the final outcome of the litigation, NeuLevel has developed an alternative method for the distribution of the affected names."
Australian Court to Hear Defamation Case with U.S. Web Site
An appeal will be heard in Australia’s highest court to determine whether a defamation case against a U.S. web site can be heard in the country.
Dow Jones & Co. of New York, best known as the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, won the right to appeal in an Australian High Court ruling on Friday. It follows a decision in August by the Victoria Supreme Court, which said Australian entrepreneur Joseph Gutnick could bring his case against the publisher over an allegedly defamatory article about him that was posted by Dow Jones on one of its Web Sites.
The date of the hearing has not been set.
HotJobs.com Deadline Looming
Online help-wanted site HotJobs.com on Monday gave Monster.com's owner 72 hours to top a $436 million takeover bid from Yahoo! Inc., setting the stage for a bidding war between rival suitors that run two of the Web's most popular destinations.
New York-based HotJobs told Monster.com's parent, TMP Worldwide Inc., that it will call off their six-month-old merger agreement unless TMP can beat an unsolicited $10.50-per-share bid made by Yahoo! less than two weeks ago.
HotJobs set a deadline of 9 a.m. EST on Thursday for TMP to improve its all-stock offer, which was valued at $9.11 per share based on TMP's closing price Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
If TMP doesn't sweeten the pot, HotJobs said it will enter into formal negotiations with Yahoo!. Jilting TMP would cost HotJobs $17 million to cover a merger termination fee and other expenses during the six-month courtship. Industry analysts have anticipated a bidding war for HotJobs since Yahoo! unexpectedly entered its bid on Dec. 12.
Technology Improvements Slated for 2002
Portable MP3 players will shrink in size but hold more songs. Cell phones will double as handheld computers. And televisions will be bigger, sharper--and cheaper.
These are some of the new--well, really just improved--consumer electronic gadgets that will debut in 2002, a year that also promises some modest strides toward the wireless world that was promised a more than a year ago, according to industry experts.
Devices such as personal digital assistants, cell phones and combinations of the two will increasingly come with built-in wireless Web access.
Laptop-toters seeking to surf the Web through wireless hubs, their options currently limited, will likely see many more companies offer the service as this technology proliferates.
Now that tech jargon like MP3, DVD and PDA have entered the vernacular, the consumer electronics industry is concentrating on next-generation devices, learning from the mistakes and building on the successes of the past few years.
Travel Web Sites Rebound with Holiday Traffic
Jolted by the Sept. 11 attacks, online travel agency Orbitz evacuated its headquarters near the Sears Tower that morning and watched its business plummet for weeks afterward. But Orbitz and its competitors have now regained altitude--and then some.
Thanks to bargain-hunting leisure travelers and the growing use of Internet sites for more than just airplane tickets, the Web travel business is strong, and the outlook is brighter than that of the industry as a whole.
"All of the sudden, consumers are realizing this isn't just something for the most technologically advanced. It's for everybody,'' said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research, told the Associated Press.
While overall industry revenue is expected to finish the year down 20 percent from last year, online leisure travel sales will wind up at a healthy $14.2 billion, according to Forrester.
That is scaled back from the $16.7 billion forecast before the weakened economy and the terrorist attacks took their toll, but still 16 percent higher than a year ago. Nearly 3 million more U.S. households, 17.8 million in all, bought travel arrangements online this year.
Microsoft Admits to Flaws in XP
Microsoft Corp. acknowledged on Thursday several serious flaws in its newest version of Windows that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files via the Internet or implant rogue computer software. The company urged consumers to quickly install a free fix it offered.
A Microsoft official said the risk to consumers was unprecedented because the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet.
Microsoft made available on its Web site a free remedy for both home and professional editions of Windows XP and forcefully urged consumers to install it immediately.
The flaws, discovered five weeks ago by independent security researchers, threatened to undermine widespread adoption of Microsoft's latest Windows software, which many hope will be an economic catalyst for the sagging technology industry. The company sold more than 7 million copies of Windows XP in the two weeks after it hit stores Oct. 25.
NEC Closes Scotland Factory
Electronics giant NEC is shutting a factory in Scotland with the loss of more than 1,200 jobs, the company announced Tuesday.
NEC blamed the closure of the semiconductor plant in Livingston, West Lothian, on a global downturn in demand for mobile phone-related systems.
The losses are the latest to strike Scotland's high-tech industry. Earlier this year, Motorola confirmed plans to close its Bathgate plant, also in West Lothian, where more than 3,000 workers made mobile phones. Another 700 workers were made redundant by computer firm Compaq at its facility in Erskine, Renfrewshire.