1991 - 2000

1991 Elsevier buys Pergamon from Robert Maxwell

1991 Matsushita buys MCA

1991 IBM's first revenue decline in 45 years

1991 Line Mode Browser - the first internet browser

1991 Australia as An Information Society report

1991 CNN dominates news coverage worldwide during Gulf War

1991 Denver trial of VOD - over 1 000 titles but no profits

1991 over 4 billion videocassette rentals in the US

1991 75% of US homes reported to own VCRs, 60% have cable tv

1991 Zimmermann releases first version of PGP

1991 US Telephone Consumer Protection Act

1991 UN Draft Declaration of the Rights of the World's Indigenous Peoples

1991 Feist copyright decision by US Supreme Court

1992 US cable television revenue reaches US$22 billion

1992 US has 10 million mobile phone subscribers

1992 900 million TV sets in the world; 201 million in the US

1992 first use of the phrase "surfing the net" by Jean Armour Polly

1992 first SMS to a mobile phone

1992 Moving Picture Experts Group agree on MPEG Audio Layer III, aka MP3

1992 at least 50 US cities have competing cable services

1992 Australian Disability Discrimination Act

1992 US Audio Home Recording Act

1992 Gilder's Life After Television

1992 TeleCommunications chair John Malone predicts "500 channel universe"

1992 US National Science Foundation appoints NSI to manage .com, .net, and .org domain names

1993 merger of Elsevier and Reed International

1993 DVD invented by Toshiba

1993 V-chip proposed for TV content control

1993 Mosaic - first graphical internet browser

1993 Kodak and Apple produce first digital still image camera for consumers

1993 New Zealand Privacy Act

1994 Elsevier buys LEXIS-NEXIS

1994 first digital TV service - DirecTV in the US by satellite

1994 Netscape

1994 Village controls Austereo radio in Australia

1994 Viacom buys Blockbuster and Paramount

1994 135 million PCs worldwide

1994 US government privatises internet management

1994 first ad on the World Wide Web, for Wired magazine

1994 first demonstration of Java

1994 Cyberspace & the American Dream manifesto

1994 Pizza Hut sells pizzas over the net

1994 First Virtual, first cyberbank

1994 Rheingold's The Virtual Community

1994 Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies

1994 Cordell proposes Byte Tax

1994 Canter & Siegel's How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway

1994 Goldstein's Copyright's Highway: The Law & Lore of Copyright from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox

1994 interactive TV introduced in US

     1995

1995 est 25 million mobile phone subscribers in US

1995 first US NTIA Falling Through The Net report

1995 Amazon.com founded

1995 Pearson buys Grundy Worldwide

1995 Seagram buys MCA

1995 Westinghouse buys CBS, subsequently changes name to CBS

1995 Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser

1995 Sony demonstrates flat-screen TV set

1995 Iomega markets Zip drive

1995 RealAudio lets internet users hear in near real-time

1995 Marty Rimm 'cyberpanic'

1995 Negroponte's Being Digital

1995 Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil

1995 EU Data Protection Directive

1995 global Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS)

1995 Disney buys ABC network

1995 VeriSign founded

1996 399 629 industrial robots in use in Japan, 70 858 in US

1997 Telecommunications Act 1997 deregulates telecoms in Australia

1997 Cairncross' The Death of Distance

1997 Schement & Curtis' Tendencies & Tensions of the Information Age

1997 Strassmann's The Squandered Computer

1998 AOL buys Netscape

1998 ICANN created

1998 Seagram buys Polygram

1998 Hewlett-Packard releases first colour Palmtop computer

1998 Panasonic releases first hand-held DVD player

1998 Kelly's New Rules For The New Economy

1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act

1999 Fanning founds Napster

1999 auDA established to manage dot-au TLD

1999 150 million internet users worldwide (over 50% in US)

1999 Finland's mobile phones linked to vending machines

1999 first WAP mobile phone advertisement in Finland

1999 Australian Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act reinforces online content regulation

1999 Australian Electronic Transactions Act

1999 Varian & Shapiro's Information Rules

1999 Lessig's Code & Other Laws Of Cyberspace

1999 RIAA litigation against Napster

1999 Viacom buys CBS

     2000

2000 Vivendi swallows Seagram

2000 CanWest swallows Hollinger's Canadian newspaper chainn

2000 'Digital Agenda' Copyright Act in Australia

2000 Australian Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act extends privacy regime to parts of non-government sector





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