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>By requiring people to file claims through the court, as would normally happen, people are much less able to make phony claims.

If it workes for Bill Gates, why can't it work for anyone?

You don't get it both ways, Microsoft. Either you let everyone lie to the courts, or you don't. Which one they prefer -- they've already made your own bed of nails on that one -- doesn't matter.

This was a civil judgement not a criminal conviction, the First Amendment does not apply AT ALL.

Wrong

AT&T dropped it
Sprint, AOL, and Bell South mentioned here halfway down the page
I also have a vague recollection of the Sprint system being used for the some Hip Hop Awards that Busta Ryhmes hosted. Hope this helps.

Even if MSFT was not based in the U.S. it would not prevent them from being punished for breaking U.S. antitrust law. After all MSFT was investigated by Japan for antitrust issues as well as an European Union antitrust investigation. In neither of this case was the fact that MSFT an American based company a savior.

British Columbia should investigate antitrust law before making such suggestions to MSFT.

Even if MSFT was not based in the U.S. it would not prevent them from being punished for breaking U.S. antitrust law. After all MSFT was investigated by Japan for antitrust issues as well as an European Union antitrust investigation. In neither of this case was the fact that MSFT an American based company a savior.

British Columbia should investigate antitrust law before making such suggestions to MSFT.

that 'one click' agreements, which appearently have the power of signature, don't apply to people under the age of majority?

It's about time consumers get SOME rights back - the illegalily of circumventing protection mechanisms is another case of banishing a tool of crime rather than the crime itself, presupposing criminal tendancies, like the DAT tax, reduction of freedoms, etc. It's not addressing the root cause, just the symptom and is right up there w/ other bad laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, passed on behest of the cell phone business/lobby,
which makes it illegal to own a device and merely 'tune in' certain bands of radio frequencies, such as old 70's era TV UHF sets can. The law used to be you could listen to anything, but it was a crime to use that ill gotten information. Another of it's problems is that it's horribly unenforcable and thus innately unjust, as it can only be used selectively at chosen 'enemy' targets, it can't apply to everyone equally. You end up with a society with many people happily scanning and evesdropping on what the calling parties consider a 'secure' conversation (that's what the phone sales flak said!) that really isn't, and a few unlucky evesdroppers who get the book thrown at them and made an example out of which doesn't stop the others from secretely scanning away, with very little chance of ever getting caught. As we all know, Msft has about a 27% unlicensed software 'shrinkage' and I'm sure there are lots of developers out there who will ask friendly Bob down the hall for the Kerberos spec printout with impunity, while highly visible sources like Dash Slot here get trounced on.

Or hear about someone like Enikia

or Compaq Intel Microsoft

or Notel (Canada)

or UK and others (Germany for example) are trying and setting up networks over power lines (X10 over power lines has been implemented for a while now)

It's nothing like the light transmitters but for home use it could be good, especially if you have no DSL or CABLE access. Electric cables are everywhere. The problem with electric power networks is only that unlike other forms of communication before electricity gets to your house it is transformed at many different nodes and sub-stations with analog transformers (thus it is problematic to send binary data on these lines) hopefully it'll be done everywhere anyway!

Or hear about someone like Enikia

or Compaq Intel Microsoft

or Notel (Canada)

or UK and others (Germany for example) are trying and setting up networks over power lines (X10 over power lines has been implemented for a while now)

It's nothing like the light transmitters but for home use it could be good, especially if you have no DSL or CABLE access. Electric cables are everywhere. The problem with electric power networks is only that unlike other forms of communication before electricity gets to your house it is transformed at many different nodes and sub-stations with analog transformers (thus it is problematic to send binary data on these lines) hopefully it'll be done everywhere anyway!

Honor of the first internet election -- that too a significant election -- election for head of state goes to...Costa Rica I think the year was 1997-98 I could find one link link1 -ak