Bill Hopkins is the Webmaster of PhotoSourceFolio* (www.photosourcefolio.com) and a regular contributor to PhotoStockNotes. Send comments via Email to wh@photosourcefolio.com. Fax: 1 818 831-0916. Or US Mail: PhotoStockNotes. (*Display 6 of your images on our Web site!) For on-line marketing questions, contact him on the Cracker Barrel at www.photosource.com/board

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has unanimously approved creation of new domain names, the first such additions since the late '80's. It's only the beginning, and much work remains to be done before names like .store, .shop, and others may be available for use. A target date of December, 2000 was set for ICANN to finalize agreement on additional names. Who can get the new names? How will copyrights be protected? That's all "TBD." Stay tuned!

Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) has announced a major change with the introduction of its latest Internet Explorer (MSIE) version 5.5 B Cookie Control! This built-in feature will provide a pop-up screen when an Internet site attempts to store a third-party cookie* on your computer, and allow you the right to refuse the cookie to be written. BUT, it automatically allows so-called first-party (do I sound like a lawyer yet?) cookies to be written without prompting. Translation: If the cookie is designed to be read/used only by the website to which you're currently connected (what shows on your browser's address or location line), first-party cookies (used by sites such as online stock trading sites, home page portals, etc.), then MSIE views it as OK and won't prompt you for permission. Third-party cookies are under the control of another website, such as most ad banners (as in DoubleClick) being displayed on the site you're currently visiting, and which generally permit a certain amount of third-party tracking of where you've been (but not who you are) on the Internet. Naturally, the surfing community and privacy advocates hail this latest achievement as one small and overdue step for public protection, and the business community's not very happy at all. Said Stefan Tornquist, marketing director at Bluestreak.com, Inc. (www.bluestreak.com), "Today's invasion of privacy is tomorrow's convenience." Which do you prefer, Invasion or Convenience? (*Cookies are small files [or small amounts of data] placed on your hard disk to help identify you when you return to or visit certain websites.)

In a brief ceremony at Congress Hall, President Clinton signed the bill giving online contracts the same legal force as contracts written and signed on paper. Yes, he did sign the bill with pen and ink, but also signed the electronic version with his digital signature.

What's a Carnivore?

Well, we're not talking meat-eaters here. Well, maybe...That's the name of the FBI's new electronic Internet surveillance equipment. It's a box loaded with (so far) secret and sophisticated software for monitoring e-mail and other online communications. The device connects directly to the Internet at an ISP's hub and thus can monitor all traffic thru that hub. Supposedly, it would only monitor communications for which the FBI had a court order to monitor, but so far, there's no independent verification in place to ensure that's only what the box is doing. The Internet community wants to know all it can, including source code, about the box, and the government wants to tell nothing. Haven't we been here before, say, in the fifties? Time and court battles will tell.