"The EPO would...apply and be bound by a new unitary Community law with respect to Community patents," the Commission said in a statement. "The draft Community Patent regulation confirms in its Article 28.1(a) that patents granted for a subject matter (such as computer programs), which is excluded from patentability pursuant to Article 52 EPC, may be invalidated in a relevant court proceeding."

This statement appears to contradict one made by the EC last year, when it said that the EPO would continue to grant software patents that make a technical contribution, despite the European Parliament's decision to reject the software patent directive. That directive would have widened the extent to which software could be patented.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, which has doggedly campaigned against software patents in Europe, was confused at the change of tune.

"I'm stunned," Pieter Hintjens, the president of the FFII, said Wednesday. "Does the Commission now accept that the EPC (European Patent Convention) rules do actually rule? Or have I misunderstood something?"

In the past, campaigners have expressed concerns that the Community Patent legislation would be used by the Commission to legalize software patents.

The EC statement last week was made in response to a question posed by a Polish member of the European Parliament, Adam Gierek, in April. Gierek asked whether the Community Patent legislation would ratify the EPO's current practice of granting software patents.

"I am concerned about European Patent Office practices, which are undermining the social acceptability of the patent system, with patents being granted for solutions that are not patentable under the current law," Gierek said in his question. "Does the Commission still stand by the position set out in...the proposal for a Council regulation on the Community patent, namely that the case law which the EPO developed for the European patent will apply to the Community patent?"

Even if the Community Patent legislation does allow software patents to be invalidated in court, that would not be enough, Hintjens said. The patent office should offer an independent appeal process, rather than forcing companies to pursue a costly legal case at the European Court of Justice, he said.

"The proposed Community Patents will be granted by the EPO--a nonaccountable, non-Community organization--with no independent appeal possible. The Commission says this is not a problem, since the (European Court of Justice) can invalidate the granted patents in infringement cases," Hintjens said.

"That is, however, only true if it comes to civil litigation, which is often too expensive for (smaller companies), forcing them to pay for a license. Therefore, software patents not yet taken to court will impose an enormous burden on the industry," he added.

Gierek's question and the EC's full answer can be viewed on the European Parliament's Web site.

Faster Internet connections are making it easier for consumers to play games online and to download game content that had once only been available in stores, said NPD, which last year began tracking online subscriptions.

Subscriptions to play specific online titles -- such as "World of Warcraft" from Blizzard Entertainment and Vivendi Games -- reached roughly $292 million in 2005, with about 1.4 million paid subscribers.

Casual gaming sites, such as Electronic Arts Inc.'s Pogo.com or RealOne Arcade from RealNetworks Inc., had sales of around $52 million in 2005 and had 1.05 million paid subscribers. Such sites often include puzzle games that can be played in a 15-minute coffee break.

Major U.S. game publishers such as EA and Activision Inc. expect downloads to grow into a substantial business, although that part of the industry is just starting out.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier said digital downloads appeared to have contributed about 3 percent of total PC market sales in 2005, which would amount to about $42 million.

Specifically, such companies want to charge Web sites for the speedy delivery of streaming video, television, movies and other high-bandwidth data to their customers. If they get their way (Congress may vote on the matter before the year is out), the days of wide-open cyberspace are numbered.

As things stand now, the telecoms provide the lines -- copper, cable or fiber-optic -- and the other hardware that connects Web sites to consumers.

But they don't influence, or profit from, the content that flows to you from, say, cinemanow.com; they simply supply the pipelines. In effect, they are impartial middlemen, leaving you free to browse the entire Internet without worrying about connection speeds to your favorite sites.

That looks set to change. In April a House subcommittee rejected a measure by Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts (D) that would have prevented telecoms from charging Web sites extra fees based on bandwidth usage.

The telecom industry sees such remuneration as fair compensation for the substantial cost of maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure that makes high-bandwidth services, such as streaming video, possible.

Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. "A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx's makes sense," he says.

On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message.

With a tiered Internet, such routing technology could be used preferentially to deliver either the telecoms' own services or those of companies who had paid the requisite fees.

What does this mean for the rest of us? A stealth Web tax, for one thing.

"Google and Amazon and Yahoo are not going to slice those payments out of their profit margins and eat them," says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that monitors media-related legislation. "They're going to pass them on to the consumer. So I'll end up paying twice. I'm going to pay my $29.99 a month for access, and then I'm going to pay higher prices for consumer goods all across the economy because these Internet companies will charge more for online advertising."

Worse still, Scott argues, the plan stands to sour your Web experience. If, for instance, your favorite blogger refused to ante up, her pages would load more slowly on your computer than would content from Web sites that had paid the fees.

Which brings up another sticking point: A tiered system would give established companies with deep pockets a huge competitive edge over cash-strapped start-ups consigned to slow lanes.

"We have to remember that some of the companies that we now consider to be titans of the Internet started literally as guys in a garage," Scott says."That's the beauty and the brilliance of the Internet, yet we're cavalierly talking about tossing it out the window."