The price of AOL's other option, which limits access to a set number of hours, will not change. The company has been hinting at a price increase for some time, and some analysts had said the move might be necessary for AOL Time Warner to meet its aggressive year-end growth targets in the wake of a slowdown in the overall advertising climate and growing economic uncertainty. AOL said that the price increase will help fund improvements in the AOL service. Asia was the only region where software piracy spurted last year, but governments intent on expanding their technology sectors are stepping up efforts to curb the trend, an anti-piracy watchdog said. Asia's software piracy rate rose to 51 percent in 2000 from 47 percent the previous year.
Estimates indicate that one in every three business software applications was a bogus copy.
Softbank Finance, a wholly owned financial unit of Japan's top Internet investor Softbank, said it would enter the growing biotech industry by setting up a joint venture for developing genome-related firms. Yoshitaka Kitao, president of Softbank Finance, said that his company and Scientia Health Group, a U.S. incubator of biotechnology firms, have agreed to set up Scientia Japan, in which Softbank Finance would hold a 51 percent stake. ASM Lithography NV, a Dutch semiconductor equipment maker, said it had acquired U.S. Silicon Valley Group. ASML won approval from the U.S. government earlier this month to take over SVG, based on ASML agreeing to sell off its Tinsley optical unit. The Pentagon worried that Tinsley's technology, some of it used for spy satellites, could fall into the wrong hands.