.xxx

A virtual red light district for pornographic websites is to be set up on the internet with the domain address dot xxx, it was reported Monday.

The global internet governing body ICANN is expected to sign off on the proposal, which will add dot xxx to other domains such as dot com and dot net next week at a meeting in New Zealand, Radio New Zealand reported.

It quoted the applicant for the domain, Stuart Lawley of ICM Registry based in Florida, as saying dot triple-x could help clean up the online industry by signposting pornography for parents.

He claimed it would help parents who wanted to prevent the exposure of porn sites to their children and would screen out child pornography.

Keith Davidson, executive director of Internet New Zealand, said the domain had some positive aspects, but that parents should be aware that not all porn sites would be confined to dot xxx.

A parental advice Internet site has sued Google Inc., charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.

The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on Friday by KinderStart.com seeks financial damages along with information on how Google ranks Internet sites when users conduct a Web-based search.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment but the company aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system and asserts its right to adapt it to give customers what it determines to be the best results.

KinderStart charges that Google without warning in March 2005 penalized the site in its search rankings, sparking a “cataclysmic” 70 percent fall in its audience — and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.

At its height, KinderStart counted 10 million page views per month, the lawsuit said. Web site page views are a basic way of measuring audience and are used to set advertising rates.

“Google does not generally inform Web sites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the Web site was penalized,” the lawsuit said.

While an entire sub-industry exists to help Web sites feature prominently in Google results, the company is known to punish those who try to trick the system into boosting their search rankings.

The lawsuit notes that rival search systems from Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Yahoo Inc. feature Kinderstart.com at the top of their rankings when the name “Kinderstart” is typed in.

The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart’s constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.

KinderStart contends that once a company has been penalized, it is difficult to contact Google to regain good standing and impossible to get a report on whether or why the search leader took such action.

The suit was filed the same day a federal judge denied a U.S. government request that Google be ordered to hand over a sample of keywords customers use to search the Internet while requiring the company to produce some Web addresses indexed in its system.

Hewlett-Packard plans to begin selling a third generation of midrange and high-end Unix servers on Monday, in the first of two performance kicks it will give this year to the systems.

The systems’ Itanium processors are connected to memory, networking and other processors using HP’s sx2000 “Arches” chipset. Arches boosts performance about 30 percent over the prior sx1000 “Pinnacles”-based servers, according to the Palo Alto, Calif., company.

The Arches chipset is used in the eight-processor Integrity rx7640, the 16-processor rx8640, and the 32-processor or 64-processor Superdome. Those models will be available with the PA-8900 chip by the end of the year, after testing and qualification work is completed, said Manuel Martull, the worldwide marketing manager for HP’s Business Critical Servers group. “We gave priority to Itanium,” he said.

The second boost to the Unix systems is expected in the third quarter, when HP plans to upgrade them with Intel’s “Montecito” chip. Montecito is the first version of Itanium to employ dual processing engines, called cores.

In addition, HP will upgrade the lower end of its Integrity line later this year, after Intel releases Montecito. It will replace the earlier zx1 chipset for these machines with a new zx2 chipset. “As soon as Intel announces it, we will be releasing a few weeks after the volume systems with zx2,” Martull said.

Switching over
HP is partway through a years-long transition from its own PA-RISC processors to Itanium chips. The PA line ran only HP-UX, the company’s version of the Unix operating system, while Itanium can run Windows, Linux and HP’s OpenVMS as well. Though HP dominates the Itanium server market, customers also can purchase machines from second-tier server makers, including Unisys, NEC and Fujitsu.

But delays, software incompatibilities and poor initial performance have hobbled the arrival of the Itanium family. That has led IBM and Dell to scrap their Itanium products and has made HP’s transition slower than anticipated. The Arches systems were initially designed to debut with Montecito’s release, but Intel pushed that date back from late 2005 to the second quarter of 2006.

IBM took over leadership of the $17.5 billion Unix market in 2005, according to research firm IDC. It took in 31.8 percent of revenue, compared with 29.8 percent for HP and 26.2 percent for Sun.

Although Itanium systems don’t ship in large quantities compared with models with x86 chips or even with Sun’s Sparc processor, the products are steadily maturing. For example, HP-UX on Itanium is now more advanced than on PA-RISC, with the ability to carve out operating systems partitions that use only a fraction of one processor’s power, said Nick Van der Zweep, the director of virtualization and Integrity server software.

HP is trying to blur boundaries between machines so that administrators can deal more with a pool of computing power than with several individual machines. In consequence, HP plans to make a significant change to its per-processor server pricing strategy in the third quarter.

Currently, HP sells its servers on the basis of how many processors each has. However, customers can order machines with unused chips and pay only when those extra ones are activated, either temporarily or permanently. In the third quarter, with a feature called Global Instant Capacity, customers will be able to shuffle computing capacity from one server to another and so adjust to changing work requirements without paying a price penalty.

Suppose a customer has two servers, each with 16 active, paid-for processors. “You can turn a CPU off in one machine and on in the other. As long as you stay at 32 CPUs or below, we don’t care,” Van der Zweep said.

The rx7640 has a starting price of $43,500 for a bare-bones model with two processors and 4GB of memory. The rx8640 starts at $76,500 for a similar configuration.

The new Superdome models are available immediately, but HP wasn’t able to supply prices.

A federal judge ordered Google Inc to give the Bush administration a peek inside its search engine, but rebuffed the government’s demand for a list of people’s search requests - potentially sensitive information that the company had fought to protect.

In his 21-page ruling on Friday, US District Judge James Ware told Google to provide the US Justice Department with the ad-dresses of 50,000 randomly selected Web sites indexed by its search engine by April 3. The government plans to use the data for a study in another case in Pennsyl-vania, where the Bush administration is trying to revive a law meant to shield children from on-line pornography.

Ware, though, decided Google won’t have to disclose what people have been looking for on its widely used search engine, handing a significant victory to the company and privacy rights ad-vocates.

“We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring,” Google lawyer Nicole Wong wrote on the company’s Web site last night. “What his rul-ing means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies.”

Attempts to reach a spokesman for the Justice Department last night weren’t immediately successful. The government had asked for the contents of 5,000 randomly selected search requests, dramatically scaling back its initial de-mands after Google’s vehement protests gained widespread attention.

Skype survived its early tests as a European start-up to become a world leader in Internet telephony but the region’s aversion to risk means many other fledging companies are doomed, Skype’s founder said.

Ahead of meeting next week of European Union leaders to discuss long-delayed reforms to make Europe more competitive, Niklas Zennstroem told business and EU officials that Europe still has the wrong culture when it comes to entrepreneurship.

“In the U.S. for example, if you have a start-up and it doesn’t work out, you have gained an experience,” he told the conference. “In Europe, you have made a mistake.”

Skype became one of the hottest takeover stories of last year when it was snapped up by the Internet auctioneer eBay for $4 billion, less than three years since the launch of its software enabling free phone calls over the Internet.

Zennstroem, a 40-year-old Swede, and co-founder Janus Friis of Denmark are a rare success story in a continent that lags behind the United States in research spending and offers little help to young innovators.

EU policymakers have long highlighted the need to accelerate research and innovation and support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make the bloc more competitive against the United States and Asia.

Yet industry leaders and politicians admit the bloc has fallen short of its own 10-year Lisbon Agenda programme for a knowledge-based economy driven by research and development.

Technology start-up companies still face obstacles, chief among them scarce funding, Zennstroem said.

“We went round Europe trying to raise money for one year to close our first round. If we were a Silicon Valley company, it probably would have taken us one month,” he said, referring to the area in California that is home to many high-tech start-ups.

Then, as the company began to be a success — by last count Skype had 68 million users worldwide — and was looking for a buyer, “not a single European company was interested in even talking to us,” Zennstroem said.

But it is not just the venture capitalists who are wary of risk in Europe. With unemployment high, young people are demanding job security in some countries.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters in France took to the streets on March 7 against a law the government says helps to free up labor markets, but which critics say reduces job protection for young people.

“This is a cultural problem in Europe,” Zennstroem said. “(People) want to keep all their comforts, all their security, vacations, all their job packages.”

With hundreds of millions of Macromedia Flash installations, Flash player is one of the most successful and ubiquitous plug-ins of all time. Many millions of those users may be at risk today if they don’t upgrade to the latest version.

An Adobe/Macromedia Flash vulnerability has been reported that could potentially allow an attacker to execute remote code on a user’s system. All a user needs to do to get infected is view a maliciously crafted Flash file within a browser.

US-CERT has issued a Cyber Security Alert for multiple Adobe/Macromedia Flash-based products, including Flash Player version 8.0.22.0 and earlier for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris.

Microsoft issued its own advisory on the Flash flaw earlier this week, as well. Flash player is usually included by default on a number of Microsoft Windows platforms going all the way back to Windows 98.

Flash Professional 8, Flash Basic, Flash MX 2004, Flex 1.5, Breeze Meeting Add-In 5.1 and earlier, and Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player 10.1.0.11 and earlier were also affected.

An upgraded version of Flash that fixes the vulnerability is now available on the Macromedia site.

A December survey by NPD Online reported that Flash Player is installed on 97.7 percent of Internet-enabled PCs. Adobe Acrobat was the second-most installed plug in at 89.4 percent, followed by Java at 86.2 percent.

Amazon is now offering low-cost online data storage to users, Microsoft wants to be the search site of choice, Yahoo is involved with VoIP services, and Google seems to want to break into retail.

On Thursday, Google rolled out a limited trial of its new online payment processing service. The company is also rumored to be building a high-end virtual mall for European retailers.

With Google’s payment processing offering, users of the Google Base classified ads service will now be able to accept credit card payments from buyers.

Google Base, still in beta, debuted in November. Users can post virtually any sort of legal content or advertising to the service, and Google will then index and make the content findable via Google’s search engine.

Analysts have speculated that Google Base could be a Craigslist killer. Craigslist carries the sort of classified ads for jobs, apartments and other services that newspapers used to count on for a steady revenue stream.

But with the advent of Google’s payment processing service, the circle of potential Google victims now includes eBay and its PayPal online payment processing service.

And just like PayPal, the Google Payments service could be offered to other vendors as an e-commerce payment platform. At the moment Google charges $0.25 and 2.5 percent per transaction, compared to PayPal’s charges of $0.30 and 2.9 percent for items priced under $3,000 on eBay.

“It’s clear when you look at it who the competition is; clearly Google is going after eBay and PayPal,” said Andy Beal, CEO of Fortune Interactive, a search marketing consulting firm based in Raleigh, N.C.

Beal pointed out that while other companies have tried to break into the universal online payment processing business, these services didn’t prosper because they were launched after PayPal already had captured a large market share.

“PayPal also got a huge shot in the arm from eBay. So with that much clout, it was difficult for anybody to challenge PayPal. But now here comes the 800-pound gorilla called Google. They have got the clout to do this. It’s a natural extension of what they’ve been doing,” said Beal.

Google began testing the Google Base payment service in late February. And there was little fanfare at its launch.

Last month some Google Base browsers noticed they could purchase videos via their Google accounts, just as they have been able to purchase maps, AdWords advertising and other services directly from Google for over a year.

Among their many other interests, the powers-that-be at Google now seem to be focused on buying and selling. According to a report in Thursday’s edition of The Financial Times, Google also plans to launch a service through Google Base that would enable European retailers to sell their products online.

And a Silicon Valley Watcher article claims that Google and Yahoo are in talks with Wyse Technology to build bargain-priced PCs.

Beal said that while Yahoo and Google are in direct competition, both companies are pursuing different paths to profit.

“Yahoo is defining itself as a portal with content as a means to build community that people will engage in. Google’s approach is to provide products and tools that are useful and try to touch on as many aspects of that experience as possible,” said Beal.

“Google’s plan seems to be ‘let’s throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.’ And Google has resources and talent to do that, whatever ones that work they’ll keep and what doesn’t work they won’t keep.”

Google is free to cache whatever material it wants unless content owners specifically forbid the search site from copying and archiving online content, a federal judge ruled last Friday.

The judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming Google had violated an author’s copyright by archiving his Usenet posts and providing excerpts from his Web site in Google’s search results.

Gordon Roy Parker, who is also known as Ray Gordon, filed suit against Google in 2004, after the search engine archived a chapter of one of Parker’s e-books, “29 Reasons Not To Be A Nice Guy.” Gordon had posted the chapter on Usenet, a collective name for the thousands of public discussion forms available online.

Parker filed his original complaint on Aug. 18, 2004, and then filed an amended complaint on Oct. 22, 2004, accusing Google of copyright violations, racketeering, civil conspiracy and negligence, along with other charges. He also named 50,000 “John Doe” defendants in the case.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled (PDF) last Friday that Google (and all those John Does) did not infringe on Parker’s rights.

“Despite our lenient review of Plaintiff’s Complaint, it is clear that with regard to his claims of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, defamation, invasion of privacy, negligence, Lanham Act violations and abuse of process, Plaintiff has failed to state a claim on which relief can be granted.

“With regard to Plaintiffs racketeering and civil conspiracy claims, the Complaint fails to meet Rule 8(a)’s short and plain statement requirement and will be dismissed,” the court ruling read in part.

In one of his court filings, Parker said Google had “come out swinging” by “unjustly branding him a vexatious litigant.” Parker also claimed that Google had invaded his privacy by creating an “unauthorized biography” of Usenet posts about Parker, many of which Parker says are defamatory.

If Parker, who was not reached for comment by presstime, appeals, he may be fighting precedent. In January, a Nevada federal court ruled in “Field v. Google” that Google’s caching of Web pages is not copyright infringement, a finding that was cited in the Pennsylvania ruling.

The Nevada decision was the result of a court case brought forward by a lawyer, Blake Field, who posted a story on his Web site and later removed it.

He charged copyright infringement when the story appeared in Google’s cache of his site. A cache, in this instance, is a copy of online data that is stored on a server separate from the originator or creator of that data.

Web site owners who choose not to have their material cached by Google need only add some simple text to their Web sites. Usenet posters can decline to be included in Google’s cache by adding ” X-No-Archive: yes” to the headers of their Usenet posts.

The Pennsylvania court, while noting in its ruling that these techniques exist to stop Google from caching content, also added: “When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users, the necessary element of volition (willful intent to infringe) is missing.”

Google was not reachable by presstime for comment.

A U.S. bill aimed at stamping out the $12 billion Internet gambling industry is doomed to fail, the chief executive of 888 Plc, one of the companies it is aimed at, said on Thursday.

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday approved a bill attempting to stop businesses such as 888 from accepting credit cards, hitting UK online gaming shares by up to 5 percent on Thursday after similar falls the day before.

But 888 Chief Executive John Anderson told Reuters: “We feel confident it won’t get through the next stages, and we’ll be okay.”

888 shares fell 3 percent to 174 pence by 0936 GMT, even though the group announced a 16 percent increase in annual profits and a slight reduction in its U.S. exposure.

Profit before tax rose to $50.2 million in 2005 from $43.1 million in 2004, and the company said current trading was in line with expectations.

Shares in sector leader PartyGaming fell 5.4 percent, while the second-biggest online gaming group, Sportingbet, fell 3.9 percent.

The bill, cleared by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions.

Unlawful gambling, under the legislation, would include placing bets on online poker sites, and any other online wager made or received in a place where such a bet is illegal under federal or state law.

“This was well flagged, but these stocks will be quite tetchy this year,” said analyst Greg Feehely at Altium Securities. “The bill’s proponents appear to think this is their best chance in years.”

With about 8.5 million regular players in the U.S. and numerous routes for them to make payments, the bill would be difficult to enforce in the unlikely event it got through, he added.

888 said it diversified away from the United States in 2005, reducing the share of revenues it gets from the U.S. to 55 percent from 58 percent in 2004.

“To rely on one country too much is not good, and without reducing volumes, I’d like to get the percentage we’re taking from the U.S. down to 20 to 30 percent as soon as we can,” said Anderson.

By making it illegal to accept payments from people who live where federal or state law prohibits wagering, the legislation would affect offshore gambling Web sites used by many Americans to place bets.

The bill now moves to the House floor for consideration.

888’s Casino players increased 28 percent to 4.1 million in 2005, while poker players more than doubled to 1.5 million.

Group gaming revenues were up 52 percent in 2005 to $271 million.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Google Inc.’s Web search systems infringe on a publisher’s copyright, a minor victory for the company which faces numerous suits charging that its services trample on the rights of authors.

In a ruling issued last Friday and made known on Thursday, Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rejected eleven allegations contained in a civil complaint by plaintiff Gordon Roy Parker of Philadelphia.

Parker, 39, an online publisher of sexual seduction guides with titles like “Why Hotties Choose Losers,” is a former paralegal who was acting on his own behalf in suing Google. His site also offers racetrack betting and chess-playing tips.

The eleven claims against Google had included accusations of copyright and trademark infringement, invasion of privacy, negligence, racketeering, abuse of legal process and civil conspiracy, according to the court documents.

Judge Surrick’s ruling found that Google enjoys projection under an exemption to the Communications Decency Act for online service providers acting as an automatic redistributor of published material.

Parker’s original 72-page complaint had argued that Google was responsible for anonymous Web postings attacking him in Usenet newsgroups that Google archives on its computers and via the newsgroup and general Web search systems it offers.

Usenet newsgroups are a wide-ranging, uncensored forum for online group discussions that date back 25 years and cover an endless range of topics from music to religion to obscure topics like beekeeping and alternative sexual practices.

“If someone wants to ruin your reputation, they can use Google to do it,” Parker said of attacks on his reputation that surface when Web users search the Usenet archive for links to him. “Libel law as we know it in print publications does not exist on the Internet. It is just not being applied,” he said.

The dismissal of Parker’s case, reported on Thursday by CNET News.com, follows a ruling in a Nevada federal court in January in favor of Google in a copyright lawsuit filed by a lawyer who publishes poems on his Web site.

The judge in that case affirmed Google’s “fair use” right to cache, or store a copy in its database for redistribution.

“The Parker decision is one of several recent rulings finding that Google’s services are consistent with principles of copyright law,” Michael Kwun, Google’s litigation counsel, said in a statement released by the company. “We are very pleased with this decision,” he said, noting that the judge in Pennsylvania had relied in part on the earlier Nevada case.