Apparently Dreamworks sent a note to a Swedish BitTorrent tracker site asking that its content be removed, citing the American Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The site responded with the following:

“As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. … US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.”

Classic !

MS have been forced by the European Commission to rename a new version of its Windows XP software to Windows XP Home Edition N.

The ‘N’ in the new name stands for “not with media player”.

The EU said Microsoft’s first choice, Windows XP Reduced Media Edition, could have put consumers off the new version - by incorrectly implying it was a cut-down operating system, as opposed to the reality that it simply doesnt auto-install Gates’ poor quality knock off of WinAmp.

Brussels last year fined Microsoft 497m euros ($640m; £343m) and ordered it to sell a version of its Windows XP software without its Media Player. The EU Commission rejected all 10 names submitted by Microsoft, and told them to rename it Windows XP Home Edition N.

Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s top european lawyer told Reuters …

“We have some misgivings about the chosen name, as we fear it may cause confusion for consumers about the product, but we will adopt the Commission’s name in order to move forward”

For those readers without the automated bullshit filtering system installed that means …

“We tried to con people into thinking it wasn’t even as good as the standard XP Home by giving it a dodgy name, but we got busted. And so we’ve accepted the EU proposed name, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to sell any copies outside of the US”

The new edition could go on sale in Europe as soon as one of the Art Direction Team put out a suitable font for the (N) sticker which will go on the box.

Media Player will still be available for the (N) version users, as a free download, but now they will have a choice of products rather than the M$ one forced on them. Key competitors for Microsoft’s Media Player include RealNetworks’ RealPlayer and Apple’s Quicktime amonst others

The search for a new .net operator, which began with Request for Proposals on 10 December 2004, will soon reach its final stages on 28th March 2005, when Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will release the evaluators’ final report and rankings of the five applicants - Aflilias, CORE++, DENIC, Sentan, and VeriSign.

Once the report is published on 28th March, the Internet community will be invited to review the report and submit comments. ICANN will promptly enter negotiations with the top-ranked applicant to reach a mutually acceptable registry agreement.

On 7 February 2005, ICANN announced that Telcordia Technologies, Inc. had been retained to conduct the independent evaluation of the applications. Telcordia has been advised in its work by an international team of DNS experts assembled by ICANN. In association with the announcement of Telcordia, ICANN also posted an “Advisory Regarding Neutrality of Independent Evaluators”, which has also been reviewed with each of the applicants.

Telcordia has been conducting scoring and evaluation activities since its appointment, and has now completed its preliminary written report noting substantive comments and questions on each applicant. Telcordia is also conducting site visits at each of the applicants’ facilities. As provided in the RFP process, the preliminary written report on each applicant will be provided to that applicant only (as soon as the site visits are concluded), and each applicant will be allowed to respond to the report in writing.