The Net may have spawned a New Economy, but it's shown less success with New Excuses. Last month, the lawyer for a teenager accused of slinging online threats argued that the youth had a Net addiction. The novel argument went that virtual threats in a virtual world aren't worth squat. But even the plaintiff couldn't stomach that line of defense. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to the threats in a Denver courtroom.
Microsoft Corp. may be sighing with relief over the hacks. Buried by the avalanche of media coverage over the break-ins is the news of yet another antitrust investigation involving Redmond. This time it's European Union officials who are peering into Microsoft's doings - they're investigating anticompetitive charges against Windows 2000.
In morning-after coverage of the New Hampshire primary, the cyber-savvy campaign of Republican victor John McCain came under scrutiny, as did the media's own use of the Net in covering the Granite State's doings. It turns out that readers, like the electorate of which they are a part, aren't always the winners.
Today's presidential primary in New Hampshire isn't the only vote-seeking campaign being waged. In the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., both sides have mounted a get-out-the-vote rally in the form of legal briefs.
Did it seem like too many days had passed since someone in the music industry filed a Net-related lawsuit? If so, everyone can relax. The National Association of Recording Merchandisers got in the groove on Monday with a lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment. The music retailers want to bar Sony from tucking hyperlinks to the company's online music stores into its enhanced CDs.
Dell Computer Corp. will end this quarter with its revenue off by $800 million, but it's not the company's fault. As told by Dell, and faithfully repeated by the media, the company lost $300 million due to a dried-up chip supply and another $500 million to nasty Y2K slowdowns.
There's nothing more boring than a lawsuit that becomes a battle of the briefs. So when the Associated Press reported that the Ohio attorney general wasn't entirely sold on the idea of a Microsoft breakup, the press was off and running on the news - and on a hunt for other defectors, among the 18 other states that are plaintiffs in the antitrust suit.
There's nothing like a few words of cynicism to get a Grokker pumped up.
Newsweeklies lucked out with the AOL-Time Warner Inc. deal. Nearly two weeks after the union was announced, the debate du jour remains how much this sucker's stock is worth. And with that unanswerable question bound to linger for months and years, the weeklies chimed in with their two cents' worth.
As if there wasn't enough hot air in the business-to-business market, investment firm Thomas Weisel Partners hosted a gathering this week in Boston to inject a little more.
Jim Barksdale might have made his zillions at the helm of companies based on the West Coast, but when it came time to give away some of his money, he gave the early word to the East Coast media.
One reason journalists are so fascinated with IPO money is that most of them won't ever get near a penny of it. Then again, IPO features in Vanity Fair and Money prove that plenty of people who stand closer to the IPO pipeline won't be raking in the really dazzling cash, either.