The United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet. At a summit here this week, delegates from around the world gathered to take a preliminary step toward U.N. involvement in some of the areas that are bedeviling Internet users and governments alike, including spam, network security, privacy and the regulation of the technical underpinnings that control the sprawling global network.

To watch the European Commission's Webcast of its antitrust decision against Microsoft on Wednesday, viewers needed to have RealNetworks' media player loaded on their computer. The commission's decision is supposed to make that easier. By ordering Microsoft to sell in Europe a version of its Windows operating system without its media player, the commission wants to encourage computer makers to install competitors' players.

European antitrust regulators imposed a record fine on Microsoft yesterday and ordered the company to change the way it does business in Europe. But legal maneuvering could enable the company to avoid sanctions on the upcoming version of its most important product: the flagship Windows operating system.

Apple Computer has pushed back the international debut of its iPod mini from April to July, citing stronger-than-expected demand in the United States and a limited supply of hard drives.

Online advertising firm aQuantive is testing a new under-the-radar initiative to liaise between publishers and advertisers, positioning it somewhere between an agency and a rep firm.

As the feds wrap up their probes, Time Warner's CEO is pondering: Sell, spin off, or keep making the best of a flawed enterprise?

Federal authorities announced yesterday the arrest and conviction of a spammer accused of impersonating AOL and PayPal to obtain credit card and personal information from consumers.

Last year, EarthLink, the big Internet access provider, went hunting for phishers. It started a campaign to track down people who were sending e-mail messages that pretended to be from EarthLink but were actually fraudulent attempts to steal customers' passwords, credit card numbers and other information. What it found was that of the dozen or so people it could clearly identify as engaged in the practice known as phishing, more than half were under 18.

For months, Google.com has been coy about filing for an initial public offering, but the popular Internet search company may soon have to reveal its closely guarded financial performance through another type of public filing, according to securities lawyers tracking the company.

The promise of high-speed wireless Internet service edged closer to reality for a larger swath of the nation Monday with a series of somewhat vague announcements at the annual cellular industry trade show