The Supreme Court could decide as early as September whether to take up the appeal. In other Microsoft news, the company persuaded a Kentucky state court judge to dismiss a consumer class-action antitrust suit that accused the company of charging monopoly prices for its Windows operating system. The decision is the latest in a series of Microsoft legal victories. And in an interesting twist, it appears many of the states suing Microsoft for antitrust violations are also watching their state pension funds lose value as the company's stock value dips. The voluntary agreement applies only to members of the Network Advertising Initiative, a consortium including Internet advertising companies AdKnowledge, Adsmart, AdForce, DoubleClick, Engage Technologies, NetGravity and Real Media.
Critics call the agreement a sweetheart industry self-regulation plan that is doomed to fail.
But because the plan was approved by the FTC, members can be sued if they violate its provisions. News Web sites reported a surge in traffic Tuesday as people flocked online for the latest on the Concorde crash outside Paris. Other events Tuesday, including major stories about the end of the Middle East peace talks and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's choice of Dick Cheney as his running mate, contributed to the traffic. This document is for everyone's eyes only New York architect John Young continues to be a pain in the CIA's undercover. Young's Web site published a secret agency overview of the U.S. intelligence community believed to have been prepared for Japanese intelligence officials visiting the agency's headquarters in 1998.