Japan's leading online service, Niftyserve, was found liable by a Japanese court for defamation in a case over information posted about one of its users. Niftyserve rejected the women's request that the name of the poster be disclosed, but did make initial efforts to remove the offending messages. It stopped doing so after a few weeks and left subsequent messages intact. OECD called for a July 1997 meeting on the problem. The Department of Justice reports that between 1985 and June 1996, investigation of at least 30 bombings and 4 attempted bombings resulted in recovery of bomb-making literature that suspects obtained from the Internet.
Critics note that such information is readily available in bookstores and public libraries.
Critics expressed shock over Ticketmaster's suit against Microsoft for publishing links from its local Internet directory sites to Ticketmaster's online event pages. The new product will be shipped to overseas customers by Sun distributors in third countries. New companies would be chosen to register domain names. Signatories to the MoU reportedly will include the Internet Society, the Internet Assigned Names Authority, NetNames, MCI Communications Corp., Telecom Italia, France Telecom, Telia, Digital Equipment, and UUNet, among others. Network Solutions, the company that currently holds a monopoly franchise allowing it to assign domain names that will end in March 1988, opposes the IAHC proposal.