The Times: Tech column - Multimedia messaging/FaxYourMP.com/Net radio

By David Rowan

THE mobile-phone industry has discovered a new "killer application". Not content with overselling WAP (wireless application protocol) then almost rejecting text-messaging as a needless handset add-on, the debt-burdened phone companies are desperately hyping "multimedia messaging" as the latest solution to all our communications needs.

Should we believe them? This is an industry, don't forget, facing ever-deeper economic problems: handset sales fell last year for the first time since 1990, and let us not start on debt. With third-generation networks still some way off in Europe, the marketing departments are going all out to promote the multimedia messaging service (MMS) as the reason to spend £200 on a replacement phone. MMS is to text-messaging (or SMS) what the holiday video is to the postcard - a neat way of sending pictures, sound clips and colour between phones. Networks dream of the day when MMS consumers will send anything approaching the 44 million text messages that are currently exchanged every day.

Some hope. Early signs are that networks will charge anywhere between 26p and 83p to send each colour photograph that your camera-equipped phone lets you take, or each song clip that you play using its "polyphonic" sound chip. Compare that with the 10p that a typical text message costs, and suddenly your bills move beyond pocket money. Besides, manufacturers were able to equip phones for SMS so cheaply that it became universal. MMS, by contrast, will catch on only if enough of us buy the expensive colour phones: Nokia is promising ten new models this year, and Sony Ericsson has just launched its T300 image-ready phone. Yet the usual handset shortage will slow down the take-up.

It is hard to believe predictions from the likes of the Ovum consultancy that, within five years, annual MMS revenues will reach £50 billion. Buoyed by the short-term blossoming of the novelty ring-tone market, the industry is convinced that most of its profits will come from premium-rate services, from cartoons to horoscopes. That is an ominous presumption, considering the weakness of demand for third-party content other than porn.

I readily admit that multimedia applications, from picture-messaging to song-swapping, are an attractive proposition for those in the market for a phone upgrade, and the handsets themselves are wonderfully stylish. But the business models emerging from the likes of Vodafone and mmO2 suggest that MMS is being aimed largely at their shareholders, in a desperate bid to persuade them that profits will some day return.

++++

THE steam rising from hundreds of hostile websites helped to defeat the Home Secretary's amendments to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) last week. But the main credit should go to a small, non-profit site run by a dozen volunteers. FaxYourMP.com grew out of the original campaign against RIPA, since when this simple web interface has delivered almost 31,000 missives on every range of issues to MPs. Last week, the site sent 1,789 faxes, of which around 1,600 related to David Blunkett's amendments, an average of more than two per MP. You could e-mail your MP - Parliament's own website offers a guide (www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/alms.htm) - but we know how easy e-mails are to ignore. Besides, only two thirds of MPs even publish an e-mail address - and T Blair is not among them.

++++

AS MORE people have installed high-speed web connections, internet radio has become a huge growth area; one network alone, Live365, promotes 30,000 stations, ranging from Christian gospel to gay talk shows. But for most it seems that time is up: the US Copyright Office decided last week that they should pay royalty fees of 70 cents (50p) a song per 1,000 listeners. The fees, following lobbying by the record industry, are backdated to 1998, and their impact will be crippling: one with 2,000 simultaneous listeners must pay about $350 a day. Listen while you can.

(The Times, June 26 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Broken Windows/Prada's RFID tags

By David Rowan

If a design flaw made your car crash, you would probably sue the manufacturer. Yet when flawed software crashes your computer, you can only curse and pray that the helpline eventually answers. Well, Technobabble is getting mad as hell - especially at Microsoft products such as XP, which contains more holes than a Swiss cheese.

And we are not going to take it any more. According to your e mails, you feel the same - showing little patience for the Bill Gates doctrine that, as a service rather than a product, software is perfectly entitled to be flawed. What this industry needs is a class action lawsuit to get it thinking about our rights as consumers - and Technobabble is happy to lead the way. Do get in touch if you fancy launching a test case against the absurdly low standards - lawyers are especially welcome - and we will see if we can have some fun. Apologies, though, if I cannot reply to your e-mails: I have been having some tremendous technical trouble lately.

++++

PRADA, the Italian fashion house, has taken data-mining to a new level at its New York store. It has placed "e-tags" inside every item which monitor what shoppers try on compared with what they buy. A screen in the changing room picks up the signal and, if you are a regular customer, the system will recommend other items based on those that you have previously handled. It is part of a trend that retailers say will enable them to improve service and store layouts. In other words, yet another excuse to crunch personal data and for more intrusive marketing campaigns - though next time you succumb to a pair of Jimmy Choos, at least you can blame science.

(The Times, June 19 2002)

Read more!

Evening Standard: How newspapers buy readers

Beware boasts of circulation rises - a few old tricks can work wonders. By David Rowan

THE big news story this week, of course, is that The Times - as its front page trumpeted on Saturday - has increased its year-on-year sales while the Daily Telegraph's has dropped. Then again, maybe it is The Guardian's scoop that its own circulation is up by 0.5 per cent against a market plunging by 2.3 per cent. Or perhaps it is the Sunday Times exclusive that its full-price sale comfortably exceeds that of its combined rivals, or the Daily Express's claim to be "Britain's fastest-rising newspaper" or the Daily Star's "simply awesome" news of its "stunning" circulation rise. It's hard to know which paper to believe.

In fact, as this month's audited newspaper sales again proved this week, there are lies, damned lies and circulation statistics. When the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) released its latest tables, reproduced in part below, it was inevitable that Fleet Street would place endless interpretations on them, whether they chose year-on-year or month-onmonth comparisons, or "bulk sales". Only a few stayed silent, such as The Independent and the Sunday People, which no calculation could present as winners.

But victory comes at a cost. For the Telegraph Group, that runs to the millions that subsidise its discounted voucher schemes, currently accounting for two out of three sales on a Sunday. For the Daily Mirror, which last week stepped back from a price war with The Sun, it meant a weekly £1 million subsidy to readers. Whether buying TV ads to promote holidays, dumping copies with airlines or printing editorial supplements, newspapers are casting around huge sums to buy circulation. Yet can the results be justified?

Not according to the media buyers, who see bulk sales as particularly pointless. After all, as Adam Smith of Zenith Optimedia says, it is only advertisers (apart from gung-ho newspaper executives) who care about the numbers. "It's a mystery to me why they fiddle the figures so much," he says. "Bulking is not criminal, but it serves no great economic purpose. We also cast a skunk eye at subscription sales. If someone hasn't decided to pay full price, they're less motivated to read that newspaper."

Newspapers have other tricks up their sleeves. For some, foreign sales - less carefully audited than those at home - offer a lifeline: the Financial Times sells 307,000 of its 480,000 copies abroad. For others, voucher promotions - such as that for the Daily Mail's Queen Mother plate - work, often boosted by costly television support, or giveaways, such as the Oasis CD promised in this week's Sunday Times. But the ruse causing most controversy is counting dumped copies as sales.

The Daily Mirror proclaimed in April that it was abandoning bulk sales in favour of "more effective" forms of marketing. The argument makes sense to News International, which sees such giveaways as commercially pointless, especially for tabloids (The Times, by contrast, still gives away 49,000 of its 659,000 UK and Ireland copies). "There are 'genuine bulk sales', such as on airlines, where people sit down and read you, but dumping 300 copies unopened in a Little Chef is not legitimate, and it costs an arm and a leg," says a senior source in Wapping. Two years ago, he says, the Mirror was posting 69,000 bulks, and The Sun fewer than 3,000. Last month, The Sun was down to 223.

In its determination to present its pricecutting strategy as a success, the Mirror Group hopes to write its own circulation history. Last May, its bulk circulation was 53,000, so it has asked the ABC to let it retrospectively restate last year's figures to exclude them. "All we're asking for is that, when people assess the health of our circulation figures, they are measuring like with like," explains Wally Cowley, the group's circulation sales director. An ABC ruling is expected in September.

The bureau's 100 staff number-crunch like tax inspectors: each month, auditors visit newspapers, and once a year inspectors spend three days there. Occasionally, wrongdoings are revealed: last March, it disallowed "a large quantity" of Guardian-Observer bulk sales. Martyn Gates, the ABC's director of newspapers, stresses that errors usually occur through ignorance rather than malice, although evidence of fraud at the Birmingham Post and Mail three years ago led to reforms.

Some papers, though, have proved that editorial innovation, backed by investment, can boost sales. At The Observer, editor Roger Alton gives much credit for recent rises to its monthly food and sport magazines. According to marketing director Marc Sands, the two supplements have increased monthly circulation by almost 60,000 to 460,000, and about half those visiting on a sport week tend to return the next Sunday. "We chose editorial supplements not subscriptions or CDs," he says. "It's a newspaper, not a music magazine."

CD giveaways boost The Observer's circulation by up to 100,000, but they tend not to stay. "The key is retention over future weeks," says Sands. "For us, price doesn't come into it.

The Guardian is up on Saturday from 85p to £1, with no loss in sales." Saturday sales have risen from 515,000 to about 550,000 this past year, which keeps the daily average above 400,000, even if Saturdays lose money.

Still, there is one guaranteed winner - you, the reader, can currently choose between the Express, Mirror and Sun at 20p, the Star at 10p, the Daily Mail offering £25,000 a year for life, or the Times and Telegraph papers for just £1 a week. You may even enjoy what you read.

(Evening Standard, June 19 2002)

Read more!

Evening Standard: Internet dating brought us together

Busy London executives are turning to online dating agencies to find love. Here, two tell how they clicked with someone special - and wed. By David Rowan

SUESIE Glagow had the riverside apartment overlooking St Paul's, the well-paid job as finance director of the Manhattan Loft Corporation and the regular stream of party invitations.

"But somehow it was all such a shallow lifestyle," recalls Suesie, 43, who had been single for 11 years since her divorce. "The guys I was meeting were just after a good time and the parties were all a bit vacuous. Yet I was absolutely certain that I wanted to get married again."

At a friend's suggestion, Suesie joined the growing numbers of busy London executives turning to the internet to find love. More than 20,000 Londoners are now enrolling each month with any of the 100 online dating agencies, their names - from Date-A-Doc to Good Genes - reflecting the vast choice open to the 30 per cent of adults who tell researchers they are single.

As internet use continues to grow, these agencies are showing subscriber growth of 200 per cent a year and are losing the stigma that used to deter well-educated urban professionals. "It works, because it is less personal and less embarrassing than going to traditional agencies," according to the internet consultancy Forrester Research, which sees this as "one of the few services on the net, apart from porn, that is really making money".

For Suesie, it was the largest of these agencies, Match.com, that brought her close to Steve, a fellow south Londoner, three years older, whose online profile offered a 98 per cent match to her requirements. "We exchanged emails, and arranged to meet for a meal at Alastair Little in Soho," she recalls. "By the second date, at The Capital on Basil Street, I'd fallen in love. Steve took along his own blended brandy, which helped things along, and we were just having so much fun. I'd never met anyone so similar to me."

Steve - the American-born marketing director for Hewlett Packard - clearly felt the same. On the fourth date, he introduced Suesie to his three teenage children from his first marriage (Suesie has no children), and for the sixth date they flew to Miami to meet his mother. Then, two months after their first exchange of emails, Steve asked Suesie to marry him. The wedding, 23 months ago, was a luxurious 75-guest affair at the five-star Chewton Glen Hotel in the New Forest. The couple now own a house in Fleet, Hampshire and a timeshare in Hawaii.

"I'd never tried a dating service before, and saw it almost as an admission of failure to use one," Suesie explains. "My parents are still embarrassed about it, the stigma it carries. But though I would have found a traditional introduction agency too intrusive, with online dating it's all left to the database. You're in control - I could take or leave who it came up with."

Of 110 emails she received in her first 10 days, some were worryingly aggressive in tone, and others shamelessly upfront: "I'm a milkman looking for sex; are you interested?" read one. Another, from "a handsome male model", included a photograph that Suesie guessed was 20 years out of date. Most replies, though, were from lawyers, accountants and entrepreneurs whose busy lives simply prevented them from meeting the right person.

As Match.com's vicepresident of romance, Trish McDermott explains: "The challenge is gaining access to a suitable pool of singles. At university, you're in this thriving community full of potential partners; but now you're working long hours, and probably don't like dating at work, or are sent away from home for your career. As you get older, loud clubs and pubs no longer seem attractive places to meet people."

The website currently has more than 350,000 members in the UK, 140,000 of them "active" with profiles available to search, and a further 36,000 new members registering each month. It is free to search for other members according to categories ranging from income to drinking habits, although if you want to get in contact you must pay £17 a month. The company recently analysed profiles of 40,000 of its single members in London, and found that 47 per cent of women are seeking a man who earns more than £75,000, while 31 per cent want a university graduate. Four out of five site users consider themselves to be professional or managerial, and there are around three men for every two women.

Unlike conventional local introduction agencies, the bigger digital dating services offer, quite literally, a world to choose from. Graham Freeman, 36, an IT consultant from Enfield, logged on to Match.com "out of curiosity to see how the database worked". He had not counted on meeting Debra, 38, then living in Toronto, who was seeking a pen-pal. But soon, they too found love, and, after marrying in her local church, Debra came to Enfield to live with Graham.

"I was looking for someone from South-East England, and filled in all the age and height preferences. But I also clicked to receive emails from other people who might fit the right profile. Debra had signed up for a free trial for a laugh, and when she saw what I wanted as my ideal woman, she said, 'Wow, you've just described me.' I was intrigued - I'd always been fascinated by Canada but had never been there. We swapped phone numbers after two weeks, and as we got on so well I arranged to spend Christmas there."

When Graham eventually met Debra at Toronto's airport, their initial nerves soon gave way to a sense of familiarity. "We had known each other for months, even though we hadn't met," he says. "It just felt right. Then, just before I left Toronto, I had an epiphany: I knew it was time to stop drifting and make a life plan. I knew I wanted to get married to Debbie." The wedding took place in August 2000.

A DECADE earlier, Graham had tried a conventional introduction agency, but was shocked at the mismatched dates that were suggested. "I presume there just weren't many people on their books. That's not a problem on the net, where you can browse around there and then. It's a bit like shopping for a book at Amazon from your desk," he adds. "Although I guess with Amazon at least you know exactly what you're getting."

It is this uncertainty about the true motivation of online singles that worries critics of internet dating. Anyone can post their personal profile to a dating website, however inaccurate: increasingly stories are emerging of women duped by still-married men, or of stalkers who target those they have met online. Consider the experience of Trevor Tasker, a 27-year-old petrol-pump attendant from Yorkshire who began an online flirtation with Wynema Shumate, supposedly a 30-year-old blonde from South Carolina. Trevor flew to the US to step up the affair, but at the airport discovered to his horror that Wynema was in fact 65, and had sent him a 35-year-old photograph.

Worse, she was arrested during his visit after police found in her freezer the body of her 70-year-old former flatmate, whose bank account she was raiding.

"You can be balding, have five kids, be out of work - yet on the internet you can be Bruce Willis or David Beckham," warns Lynda Davies, chairman of the Association of British Introduction Agencies, which represents the traditional sector. "We've signed on to some sites as Mickey Mouse and our files were accepted. Yet if something goes wrong, very few sites give a landline phone number or address where you can go for redress.

"You have to be very careful. You can scream as loud as you like in cyberspace - but you won't be heard."

(Evening Standard, June 17 2002)

Read more!

Evening Standard: Why did Piers Morgan end the red-top price war?

By David Rowan

THE war, such as it was, lasted just four weeks. As suddenly as the Daily Mirror had launched a bitter tabloid price fight, it shocked rivals last week by signalling an unexpected apparent U-turn.

In the jargon favoured by the management consultants now advising the paper, by restoring the cover price from 20p to 32p this week it was merely "concentrating its pricing initiative in the third phase of the brand relaunch". David Yelland, editor of The Sun, offered a more direct interpretation: "We can report white flags flying over Canary Wharf," he gloated. "We are jubilant and are carefully considering our options in light of Trinity Mirror's surrender."

Had the Mirror's editor, Piers Morgan, and its MD, Mark Haysom, made a "massive, huge, gigantic miscalculation" in declaring war on Rupert Murdoch, as Yelland had forecast? Had these "two-bit nobodies", as their rival put it, foolishly miscalculated that The Sun would not respond with its own 20p cover price?

Haysom had always insisted that "price is the most effective way of building purchase frequency and circulation" for the Mirror - which for the moment remains at 20p in selected regions such as London and 10p in Scotland. But with its May national circulation expected to be up just one per cent over April's - despite a weekly subsidy to readers of more than £1 million - are the cuts proving to be a costly mistake?

Morgan insists that the "price war", as his rivals characterise it, is merely an attempt to encourage more frequent purchase. "It's laughable, the idea that we've surrendered," he says. "We're not idiots. We have a long-term plan to build circulation, and it is rolling out exactly as we planned it. We never said how long the cuts would last - how does the £20 million additional investment that we announced translate into a year's price cuts, as some commentators seem to believe?" As Mark Haysom explains: "Our plan has always been to divide the country in two after an initial national pricing burst. This enables us to focus our resources on key regions to get the maximum benefit for the longest time."

The cuts followed advice from consultants McKinsey that falling sales might be halted if readers could be persuaded to the paper every day, instead of only now and then. "We have comfortably, significantly exceeded all of McKinsey's expectations," Morgan insists, rejecting the idea that consultants might not be the best judges of British newspaper buyers' demands. "We've sold an average of 160,000 extra copies every day. Price-cutting is the most effective way to put newspapers into people's hands."

Les Hinton, executive chairman of News International, which publishes The Sun, remains unconvinced. "You cannot turn a paper around simply by cutting its price," he says. "To do so for just three weeks is a joke." The Sun will be watching its " eccentric" rival carefully before considering its options, he adds. "No one's claiming victory here. They started it, and we had no choice but to respond. We don't think it's wise and we don't want it to continue, but we need clear evidence that they're going to stop."

As for whether the cuts have worked for the Daily Mirror, that all depends on how the numbers are presented. Trinity Mirror estimates that its May audited circulation will be 2,130,000 copies, which, on weekdays, represents a nine per cent lift in sales compared with April. This, it says, was "the best performance in the market". Further, the company reports that its strategy has achieved a remarkable reversal in its year-on-year decline, with sales, excluding sampling and marketing promotions, now above those of last May.

But note the careful qualifications. In hard absolute numbers, the Mirror sold just 21,000 more copies - a mere one per cent - in May compared with April. Even discounting those giveaway copies included in April's figures, the monthly rise is only 49,000, about 2.4 per cent. The Sun, by contrast, lifted average sales by 109,000 copies according to industry estimates for May; on weekdays, the paper claims a 250,000 rise. At 3,460,000, its May total was three per cent above April's, suggesting a greater return than that for the Mirror.

It has, however, come at a heavy cost, not least in readers' perceptions of newspapers' monetary value. As another circulation director notes: "In what way can the Mirror see these figures as a success? To cut your price and lose that amount of money, while spending vast amounts on TV - now, that has to be seen as a disappointing result."

(Evening Standard, June 12 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Craig Newmark/Emotive ATMs/Death and passwords

By David Rowan

Craig Newmark is a San Francisco-based web programmer who, by his own admission, "grew up wearing a plastic pocket protector and thick black glasses taped together - the full nerd cliche". He runs a popular community bulletin board called craigslist, raising money for local causes. But since last week Newmark has another focus for his energies: concerned by the entertainment industry's attempts to control how we enjoy its digital content in our homes, he is suing Hollywood. The outcome of the case will help to determine how you use the next generation of digital video recorders.

One of the great selling points of personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVo is their ability to let you skip over adverts. Broadcasters, facing pressure from advertisers, are clearly unhappy with this. It is the same battle that the record industry is fighting to keep control of digital music (even as technology lets us play and record music that we have legally acquired in a variety of new machines).

The music studios' answer has been to encrypt CDs to control exactly how they are used. Broadcasters and film-makers are taking a more desperate step: they are seeking to label honest citizens as thieves. Last month Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting - a major part of AOL Time Warner - declared that fast-forwarding through ads constituted theft. "Any time you skip a commercial, you're actually stealing the programming," he claimed. Meanwhile, lawyers representing dozens of Hollywood studios are suing SonicBlue, which makes the ReplayTV PVR, claiming that its use constitutes copyright infringement. The studios have even tried to force SonicBlue to install software on its machines to spy on customers' viewing habits.

As with their earlier battles to ban Betamax, they are making the mistake of targeting the technology rather than the minority of genuine copyright thieves. Hence the decision of Newmark and four others, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to sue to safeguard his right to watch programmes when and how he likes. "I'm just trying to exercise my normal rights in terms of video recording, just like I can with my video-cassette recorder," he says. "A lot of folks in entertainment seem to be panicking, taking bad advice and trying to get anti-consumer laws passed to restrict personal freedoms." The Motion Picture Association is dismissing the case as a publicity stunt, but it raises important issues about how far copyright owners should seek to control the use of their works. As these devices become more widely available, it should be for the honest user to decide how best to use their personal technology.

++++

Next time you're at the cash machine, try not to look so guilty about your overdraft - the ATM might be watching. The latest innovation in banking technology is the machine that reads your emotions and reacts accordingly. NCR, a leading manufacturer of cash machines, is using cameras and new software to discern facial expressions, which are then matched with a database to formulate your likely emotional state. A frown suggests that you're not happy, while wide-open eyes and upturned lips mean you are upbeat. "We're teaching the computers to be more like human beings," says Dave Schrader, an engineer working on the project. "We can train the computer to pick up on non-verbal clues, identifying people's reactions when they're asked questions." It's designed to save money, reducing numbers of bank employees. But will it say sorry when it swallows your card?

++++

It's all very well keeping your password secure but what if you're the only one with access to a valuable database - and then you die? This problem has been bothering the Ivar Aasen Museum in Norway, which inherited a vast collection of books and periodicals from a collector and then began cataloguing it. Unfortunately, 11,000 entries into the database, its compiler died, taking the password with him. "Without the database it will probably take us four years to register the collection," says an anxious librarian. So there was only one option: the museum's director, Ottar Grepstad, has made a public appeal for hackers to download the database and break in. Join the hunt at: www.aasentunet.no.

(The Times, June 12 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Free WiFi/Jihadi video games/World Cup websites

By David Rowan

HOW would you like a fast, permanent internet connection, from your favourite cafe or park bench, that will not cost you a penny? Thought so. It's time to join the latest communications revolution sweeping Britain, one that harnesses the co-operative spirit of the net community for remarkable local benefits. From Bethnal Green to Bath, volunteers are sharing their spare bandwidth with strangers through wireless neighbourhood networks.

Anyone whose computer has a wireless network card and an antenna can get online via radio signals that link to a nearby base station. There are more than 60 free local wireless networks across Britain, and the number is rising fast. Many were set up to allow groups of friends or colleagues to work away from their desks, using a radio data standard known as 802.11b, but now they are attracting wider use among those who appreciate the benefits of wireless net access. As long as you are within reach of a wireless "node", you can surf at six megabits a second - fast enough for videoconferencing, game-playing or MP3 streaming. And depending on the rules of your group, access may cost nothing or a token contribution.

This is a grass-roots movement, whose members spread the word through websites such as Free2Air.net and Consume.net. At Consume.net, you can type in your postcode to discover your nearest network. If it is too far away to gain a signal, these sites will show you how to get started, using cheap, readily available equipment such as an antenna that must be mounted on an outside wall. Most internet service providers naturally disapprove of any sharing of bandwidth, but the networks point out that ISPs cannot easily find out who is using a subscriber's excess bandwidth.

Still, as demand grows, the corporate sector senses new commercial opportunities. In the US, Microsoft is working with Starbucks to wire up every coffee shop; in Japan, McDonald's plans to connect 4,000 restaurants.

Here, the Government has until now prevented commercial exploitation of this part of the radio spectrum, but that is about to change. BT, seeing its moment, recently pledged to build 400 wireless "hotspots" by next June, with up to 4,000 sites by June 2005, to raise £30 million a year. Well, did you expect it to be free?

++++

Here's a suggestion for bringing peace to the Middle East: banish the video game designers. For some years, Israeli programmers have produced such delights as Intifada, a game that trains players to wipe out Palestinian rock-throwers: if an Israeli is knocked out, you lose a round and a warning appears: "Remember, your goal is to kill Arabs!" Now Syria has come up with a game called UnderAsh, the hero of which is a Palestinian stone-thrower called Ahmad. The boy has to reach Jerusalem's Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount) by stoning Israeli soldiers while avoiding tanks and settlers' bullets. The game is a hit for the Dar Al-Fikr publishing house, which sold 10,000 copies in Syria in its first month.

++++

Not a good World Cup so far for Fifa's official website (www.fifaworldcup.com), which could barely cope with traffic over the weekend (they must have presumed everyone would be busy watching football matches). In a rather greedy deal with Yahoo!, Fifa has been charging $19.95 £14) to watch video highlights yet, because of the Kirch group's hold on rights, you can see just four minutes of each match.

Even then, you can forget it if you use a Mac: the website supports only PCs running Microsoft software, something that has been enraging the talk boards. So it will be interesting to see what happens to an unofficial site, Worldcup-02.com: as we went to press, it was still showing video highlights of the England-Sweden match. Owned by a Nottingham-based company called Nokamu, the site claims a "fair dealing" justification under copyright law, and adds that it is "for the fans, by the fans" and so should be left in peace. That's not likely to impress Fifa's lawyers, but all power to Nokamu for playing a high-risk game.

(The Times, June 5 2002)

Read more!