CNetNews.com points out that “Microsoft has made changes designed to make it easier to access the technical documentation for its older Office binary document formats and will sponsor an open-source project to map those binary formats to Open XML.
In a different article on CNetNews, Graham Webster writes that “[y]esterday, a Chinese public-security ministry official asked for international help in copyright enforcement, noting that many infringers use Web sites hosted outside Chinese jurisdiction. ‘Copyright infringements, by their very nature, are international crimes. To effectively curb such activities, (we) need enhanced international cooperation on law enforcement,’ said Gao Feng, the official.” Adds Webster, “I don’t doubt that international borders are a challenge for Chinese enforcers, but they certainly could do more here. The illegal streaming versions of movies and TV series from Chinese video sites are even fueling viewers in the United States, where DVDs are no minor investment. The only sacrifices for viewers are the need to wait for buffering and some loss in resolution. Until legal DVDs or iTunes-like download or rental services are available to the Chinese market, however, I can’t imagine that people will stop watching the free or cheap pirated versions.”
The Register reveals that “Central America, India, China and Africa are likely to become the hotspots of malware production and cybercrime over the next five years.” An analysis by net security firm F-secure “reckons cybercrime will continue to be the main motive for malware creation over the next five years, but predicts that an alignment between broadband penetration and socio-economic factors such as economic development and lack of IT employment opportunities will see activity in the underground economy shifting towards India, Mexico and Africa. In many countries, there will be a delay before the legal system catches up with developments in the IT sector. Computer criminals may also be able to escape the law more easily in countries which are undergoing serious political or economic upheavals.”
Ars Technica reports that Amazon “offered free shipping in France, got sued for it by the French Booksellers’ Union, and lost. Now it’s choosing to pay €1,000 a day rather than follow the court’s order. […] The Tribunal de Grande Instance (a French appeals court) in Versailles ruled back in December that Amazon was violating the country’s 1981 Lang law with its free shipping offer. That law forbids booksellers from offering discounts of more than 5 percent off the list price, and Amazon was found to be exceeding that discount when the free shipping was factored in. […] Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, has taken to the virtual airwaves to rally the French public in support of Amazon’s free shipping. He sent out a recent e-mail to French customers in which he claimed that ‘France would be the only country in the world where the free delivery practiced by Amazon would be declared illegal.’ He then asked people to sign an online petition that has so far garnered more than 120,000 signatures.” As Ars Technica points out, “[i]t’s a bold and potentially antagonistic move for an American company to make, but Amazon is serious about its free shipping. Judging from the response to Bezos’ e-mail so far, so are Amazon’s customers.”
According to Internetnews.com, “[w]orldwide PC shipments rose 13.4 percent to 271.2 million units in 2007.” A report by IT consultancy Gartner “found that Europe, the Middle East and Africa collectively led the way — ahead of Asia, itself a booming market. During fourth quarter alone, global PC shipments rose 13.1 percent over the same period in 2006, Gartner said.”