Articles by Paul A. Greenberg

Despite a five-year extension of the U.S. moratorium on Internet taxation, support for taxing online purchases appears to be gaining strength among legislators and consumers Individual U.S. states in particular are keeping a watchful eye on steadily increasing Internet sales, out of concern over the amount of sales tax revenue they are losing as mo...

Online retail giant Amazon.com rebounded mightily from a protracted slump Friday, just in time to celebrate its fifth birthday The company's stock sank at the end of June after Lehman Brothers analyst Ravi Suria described Amazon's credit as "extremely weak and deteriorating," but a report on Friday from Salomon Smith Barney analyst Tim Albright tri...

Controversy continued to mount Thursday over the issue of Internet gambling, which appeared headed for a U.S. government ban earlier this week. A vote on a pending House of Representatives bill could come as early as next week The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act was the subject of heated negotiations in the House on Tuesday, and by Thursday the f...

Responding to defunct online toy retailer Toysmart.com's attempt to sell its customer records, two U.S. Senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to block the sale of consumer information on the Internet Senators Patrick Leahy, (D-Vermont) and Robert Torricelli, (D-New Jersey) attached the proposal to a broader piece of legislation that seeks to...

Angry musicians came face-to-face with Napster chief executive Hank Barry on Capitol Hill Tuesday, in an emotional hearing before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee At issue is the ongoing dispute between Napster, the online music downloading service that enables users to exchange music files, and the recording artists who object to their music bein...

A coalition of more than 70 recording artists have launched a national campaign to protect their exclusive rights to distribute and market copyrighted recordings on the Internet The group, "Artists Against Piracy," unveiled the awareness effort on the same day the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on the future of digital music. At...

The battle for e-commerce supremacy continued to rage between Amazon.com and America Online in June, according the NextCard eCommerce Index, a monthly listing of online merchants with the greatest number of transactions by NextCard customers Transaction volume measured among the top 30 online merchants showed Amazon moving slightly ahead of AOL, an...

Canadian e-commerce welcomed a prominent player to the field when the country's oldest department store, Hudson's Bay, announced a joint venture to add an online component to its retail offerings Hudson's Bay, a 330 year-old company, will team with Microsoft Canada Co., IBM Canada Ltd. and Oracle Corp. to makes its move into the new economy. The th...

After a challenging investigation and trial, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has successfully shut down an Internet pyramid scheme that bilked consumers out of $2.9 million (US$) The fraudulent operation, Five Star Auto Club, Inc., operated a Web site that offered to lease to consumers their "dream vehicle" for free as they earned between $180 a...

Amazon.com and Federal Express will take on one of the most significant e-commerce challenges to date on Saturday when they attempt to deliver a popular new children's book to 250,000 U.S. homes in a period of just a few hours The book, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," has set a record for a first printing in the United States, with 3.8 milli...

As e-tailers struggle to find their core user groups, many are increasingly shifting their focus to the fastest growing online population segment -- women Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research estimates 45 percent of online shoppers are female, and more than half of all consumers who made their first purchase in the second half of last ...

U.S. automakers have hit a number of regulatory roadblocks to selling cars directly over the Internet, but Ford Motor Company and Toyota are crossing the border to implement a test program that will enable shoppers in three Canadian regions to purchase cars online Ford is offering only three of its most popular vehicles online: Taurus, Windstar and...

CDNow, Inc., the cash-strapped online music retailer, said Thursday it is in talks with a number of potential investors in its quest for survival, but so far has not solidified a deal The embattled e-tailer's announcement is the latest in a series of updates the company has issued to offer reassurance that it expects to bolster its shaky economic p...

Six major airline companies are reportedly banding together to challenge name-your-price pioneer Priceline.com for dominance in the discount air travel marketplace The participating airline companies are: United Airlines, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines Corp., Continental Airlines, Inc., U.S. Airways Group, Inc. and America West Airlines, acc...

Companies that sell goods and services over the Internet are responsible for almost 5,400 lost jobs since December 1999, according to a report from Chicago, Illinois-based employment company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc According to the survey, 1,263 of the jobs were lost from a total of 17 dot-coms during June. The jobs lost since December co...

Mammoth Internet service provider America Online announced an agreement Tuesday with InterTrust Technologies Corp. that will allow AOL's 23 million subscribers to digitally download music and videos for a fee, while protecting copyrighted material from theft The Sunnyvale, California-based InterTrust specializes in so-called digital rights manageme...

Latin American electronic commerce is poised to skyrocket to $15 billion (US$) by 2003, according to a new study by New York-based research firm eMarketer The report predicts that there will be about eight million active adult Internet users in Latin America by the end of this year, more than double last year's figure. That total is expected to gro...

Just one day after U.S. regulators charged more than 120 people in 11 states with online investment fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday shut down a "virtual stock exchange" that allegedly defrauded hundreds of investors across the country Lured by a promise to "double your money every month," the investors fell victim to...

A consortium of 49 consumer product companies announced Wednesday the formation of Transora.com, a business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace to be launched this fall Transora will offer services in procurement, customer and consumer marketing, supply chain collaboration and related functions....

BET.com announced Wednesday that it has forged an alliance with mortgage loan financier Fannie Mae and lenders Cendant Mortgage and HomeSide Lending, Inc. to offer an online service for African-American homebuyers Cendant and HomeSide will feature mortgage information and applications on the BET.com Web site -- an African-American portal and online...