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AOL Time Warner may have gotten itself into antitrust trouble once again. The Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer-advocacy group, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into AOL’s relationship with High Speed Internet Access, a Colorado-based ISP. When AOL and Time Warner’s merger was approved, one condition was that it had to give at least three rival internet service providers access to its cable network. And AOL will open up its cable infrastructure to High Speed. On the surface, the deal with High Speed Access helps AOL meet the condition. But it turns out that AOL and High Speed already may have been working together. AOL Time Warner sells cable programming, like HBO, to cable provider Charter Communications, which partly owns High Speed. The Center for Digital Democracy interprets the relationship as an antitrust violation and is concerned that the arrangement could block competing content. In defense, High Speed Access claims it is separate and distinct from AOL Time Warner.
Yahoo cracks down further on adult content
After taking flak for the ready availability of sexually-themed content across its web sites, Yahoo quit selling adult videos, stopped accepting advertising from adult-content companies, and made it more difficult for underage users to access adult chat rooms and clubs. But the internet portal is discovering that it can’t please all the web surfers all the time. Users have complained that Yahoo has restricted access to its adult clubs and chat rooms, making them in some cases difficult to find. As a result, thousands of Yahoo users have signed a petition requesting that Yahoo keep its adult areas alive. Yahoo’s official line is that all the adult sites are still there. But the company is evaluating whether or not to take the next step and actually remove them, and has in fact made changes in the directories and links that help users find sexually themed material and clubs.
MVP.com is back in the game
As if to show that Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and John Elway aren’t capable of staying retired, their dot.com baby has returned to life. CBS SportsLine.com has resurrected online sporting-goods store MVP.com, the company that the trio of legendary athletes helped launch in late 1999. The store’s grand reopening was yesterday. MVP’s first year in existence was troubled. After burning through most of the $65 million it had in its cash reserves, laying off most of its workers and shutting down two offices, MVP.com sold its domain name and assets to SportsLine in January. SportsLine has teamed up with USA Networks to retool and operate the site. Thus MVP.com is to be marketed on USA’s Ticketmaster.com and Citysearch.com sites as well as on SportsLine.
Coming to a URL near you: ‘dot.biz’
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has finalized its approval of a new internet domain name suffix: ".biz." The extension, which is intended for businesses, will go live in October. NeuLevel, the registry that controls dot.biz, is now free to begin selling and registering new domain names with the extension. But the field is not wide open for so-called cybersquatters, who register trademarked names in the hopes of selling them for a significant profit. This time, companies have dibs on registering their trademarked names through July 9. Businesses can apply for dot.biz addresses until Sept. 25. Dot.biz was among the seven new upper-level domain names that ICANN approved last fall, all of which will serve to ease the crowded "dot.com, dot.net, dot.org" space. The sanctioning of dot.biz comes on the heels of several other companies’ launches of unapproved extensions, including dot.kids and dot.xxx.
PlayStation2 will soon include AOL
Sony and AOL Time Warner announced yesterday they are teaming up to provide AOL web services in PlayStation 2 game consoles. Sony said a hard disk drive, LCD display, keyboard and mouse, which will be needed to take advantage of the AOL instant messaging, chat and email functions, will likely be ready by year's end. A special version of AOL's Netscape browser is being developed. The move serves as an example of the "AOL Anywhere" strategy, which seeks to make its online service available on a variety of household devices. The partnership stands as direct competition to Microsoft's upcoming Xbox gaming device, debuting at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in L.A. this week, as well as the existing Sega Dreamcast which currently allows browsing with a modem. How the revenue from this partnership will be divvied between the two companies is not known. AOL has over 29 million members globally; Sony counts more than 30 million PlayStation users.
On eBay: Your great-great grandpa’s Levi's
A pair of Levi’s blue jeans that might be the world’s oldest goes up for sale on eBay this month. The pants turned up in a mound of mud in an old Nevada mining village two years ago. Judging by the fabric and the copper rivets, historians with Levi Strauss & Co. estimate that the garment dates back to the 1880s. Levi Strauss owns several pairs of 19th-century jeans, but none quite as old as these. The pants are relatively well-preserved, if a bit faded and holey. The auction is a joint effort between eBay and the History Channel. Experts predict that the jeans, which were known back then as denim waist overalls, could fetch up to $35,000, given what similar pairs of pants have netted in the past. Bidding starts on Friday and runs for a week.
May 16, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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