AOL's Saga Continues...
AOL, (America on-line News) at subscribers' urging, began blocking junk E-mail (see 10/96 PSN). A major "junk E-mailer" sued AOL to prohibit their actions, and won the first round. But shortly thereafter, AOL got an appeals court to vacate the restraining order, and can now resume blocking. In a separate case, AOL reached a tentative settlement over another lawsuit brought by a group of subscribers over AOL's billing practices (see 11/95 PSN). The subscribers get about $700,000 in refunds, and their attorneys get almost $2.8 million in fee reimbursement from AOL. Justice at its best.If you're getting unsolicited E-mail, don't hesitate to contact your service provider and let them know about it. Many have even set up special "fraud and abuse" departments to deal with the issue.

Your Vital Stats Are Loose!
Earlier this year, Lexis-Nexis launched a new service which permitted searching their database (for a fee) and downloading such personal information as your name, social security number, current and previous address, mother's maiden name, birth date and other vital personal information through a new Lexis database called P-Trax. Such information could be used to commit credit card fraud or otherwise allow someone else to use your identity. They claim that their competitors have been doing this for a long time, and that it's a business-to-business service (well, that still leaves a whole bunch of people with access to your info!). So much fuss was raised that only 11 days after the launch, they removed the Social Security number display. If you're concerned about yet another cyberdatabase containing your personal info, request your data be removed by sending an E-mail (include your name and address) to p-trak@prod.lexis-nexis.com. You can also send a FAX toll-free to 888/470-4365, or via US mail to LEXIS-NEXIS, P.O. Box 933, Dayton, Ohio 45401-0933. Don't make it any easier to get ripped-off! (Thanks to subscriber Kathy Sloane for the tip.)

From the trenches
Inger Hogstrom reported via the StockPhoto list server (stockphoto@info.curtin.edu.au) that he's discovered several unauthorized photo usages at an adventure travel Web site. If you're into the field of adventure travel and discover an unauthorized use of your picture(s) let us know about it after you confront the Web site owner. We'll mention it here in this column.Commerce on the Internet One major obstacle to selling/buying via the Internet is credit card use. We all know about the "security" issue, but there's an even larger problem, and that's dollars and cents. Credit card companies have a fee structure that charges merchants for each sale they make using plastic. Not a big deal for large-ticket items, but for smaller purchases these fees can make the sale impractical. CyberCash unveiled an electronic payment system called CyberCoin which will make these small purchases practical for participating Internet merchants. This is a critical first step in allowing (among other things) publishers to start charging for on-line News content (25 cents here, $3 there), which means one less excuse publishers have for not paying authors and photographers for on-line News use of their articles and images.

New Standard For Imaging?
FlashPix is a new, open-standard digital file format promises many key benefits for both archiving and delivery. Corbis, Kodak, HP and Microsoft (to name a few) have gotten behind the cart and are pushing together to make FlashPix the new standard in the imaging industry. Right now, no set standard has emerge for photographers and designers. Some FlashPix key elements: Images can be stored as a hierarchy of independent resolutions; JPEG compression is supported, with independent compression for each tile; resolution-independent image editing; data storage for each image, and features that make printing easier (NIF RBG and PhotoYCC color spaces). The specs for this new file format will be free to the industry. I expect that viewers will be downloadable from major sites for free, while the creation software will probably cost.

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