8 February – Five Stories You Need to Read

The International Herald Tribune reports that “Silicon Valley company [VeriSign] is undertaking a $100 million expansion of a crucial part of the system that speeds Web users to their destinations” in order “[t]o keep up with the growing strains put on the Internet by both legitimate users and online attackers”.

In a different story, the International Herald Tribune writes that “[t]he United States retained its lead as the world’s most inventive country in 2006, with a 6.1 percent increase in international patent applications from the previous year bringing its share to 34.1 percent of the world total, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization”.

BBC News points out that “[t]he European Commission is going to overhaul rules for online transactions to make people feel safer making cross-border purchases on the internet.”

According to the Financial Times, “Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music’s chief executive, on Thursday slapped down Steve Jobs’s suggestion that record companies do away with copyright protections for digital music in order to spur the market’s growth”.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “U.S. personal computer buyers took to the stores to buy new systems in the first week that Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system was available, according to data from research firm Current Analysis, Inc”.  In fact, “unit sales of PCs at U.S. retailers for the week ending Feb. 3 jumped 67% versus a year ago and 173% from the prior week”.