The final regulations will authorise businesses to monitor or record all communications transmitted over their systems without consent for a number of purposes including investigating or detecting unauthorised use of the business's telecoms system. The Illinois Institute of Technology's Research Institute and Chicago-Kent College of Law were chosen to undertake the review, meant to give an outside examination of the FBI's controversial tool. But several members of the research team have ties to the federal government and to the Clinton administration. The Supreme Court denied leave to appeal in a suit launched by AOL subscribers against the company which argued that the company should be regulated by the FCC as a common carrier. The European Parliament adopted an amendment to the Commission's original clause on jurisdiction that would restrict the right of consumers to sue foreign suppliers of goods or providers of services in their jurisdiction to 'active' Internet sites, i.e. sites which target the consumer's Member State.
Further amendments call for the extensive use of extra-judicial dispute resolution.
Two California professors have dropped a lawsuit against an on-line teacher review site they say called them foul names in cyberspace, thus ending a case that threatened to pit academic freedom against the future of free speech on the Internet. L'ART rend un arbitrage la demande de Bouygues T l com. The online arm of the Walt Disney Company will take steps to deter children from wandering into areas of its Web sites that contain inappropriate material. The panel will probably also suggest that Congress offer Web sites some sort of incentive program to abide by a self-imposed rating system for online content. The U.S. government ended a three year search for a new encryption standard by selecting Rijndael, a standard created by two Belgian cryptographers.