A recent court ruling against Microsoft may place the use of interactive media in jeopardy and has the computer industry worried about increasing development costs and disruptions for net users. Microsoft's ActiveX software allows browsers to automatically open and play information from the web and is used in applications such as music players, video games and the retrieval and display of online Word documents. While Microsoft disputes the ruling, a US Federal Jury has awarded former University of California (San Francisco) researcher Michael Doyle $521 Million, or approximately $1.47 for every version of Windows produced with the technology. ActiveX, or some version of it has become an accepted and well used technology and has been ratified by the World Wide Web Consortium, the common standards body that oversees technology and languages used on the web. Microsoft is left with the option of paying off Mr. Doyle or redeveloping large sections of the code that runs Windows. The rest of us are left waiting for either an outcome of Microsoft's appeal or an agreement between Microsoft and Mr. Doyle.

AOL has been dropped from the name of the company it bought 30 months ago. The board at AOL Time Warner have decided to discontinue the using AOL as part of their corporate moniker in a bid to distance themselves from the money-losing division. From now on, the corporation will be referred to simply as Time Warner and will trade on the NSE under the letters, TWX, the acronym it traded under before the merger. The decision to drop AOL from the corporate name is not a signal of an impending sale of the beleaguered division, nor is it a sign that AOL is close to settling the investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission into AOL's past creative use of accounting practices.

If you are fortunate enough to live above the 49th parallel, you are legally allowed to trade music on the Net! Really, we're not joking. According to the Copyright Board of Canada which administers Canada's Copyright Act of 1998, "The amendment to the Act legalized copying of sound recordings of musical works onto audio recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy." (from Copyright Board of Canada Fact sheet).

In order to guarantee that artists receive fair compensation for their works, the Canadian government levied a $0.77 tax on all blank CDs and $0.29 on blank cassette tapes. New levies will be applied to MP3 players, flash memory cards and recordable DVDs sometime in the coming year.

While the RIAA is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to pursue American file traders with highly aggressive lawsuits and constitutionally questionable home invasion tactics, Canadians can happily and legally trade music to their hearts content. It is even possible for P2P file sharing networks to relocate to Canadian servers to benefit from the umbrella of a different approach to copyright enforcement.

Also of note, 50% of Canadian Internet users enjoy broadband access to about 20% of American users. Chances are file sharing could become a lot faster as well as a lot safer. Viva la difference.