This time in '99: Inktomi chief warns caching ban will leave Europe isolated

This is how the original story broke on 04 May, 1999:

US IT vendors will be forced to pull out of Europe if the controversial Web caching ban goes ahead, according to a leading Internet industry leader.

David Peterschmidt, CEO of caching and search engine software developer, Inktomi, made his bold warning in an exclusive interview with Silicon.com.

He said US companies have become very concerned about the Web caching ban proposed by the European Parliament in February.

Since then, European campaigners have been lobbying the Commission to remove the legislation, which could seriously damage European ecommerce by slowing down the functionality of the Internet.

"Every US technology vendor will have to pull products out of Europe if the ban goes ahead. That could mean Europe would go dark on the Internet", Peterschmidt warned.

But fears could be quickly dispelled, as it appears that Mario Monti, the commissioner responsible for copyright issues, may have already removed the offending caching item from the Bill. Monti is due to re-publish his copyright directive within the next week, and industry experts are confident that the latest draft will favour technology suppliers.

Despite his earlier warnings, Peterschmidt was generally positive about the outcome and the future of Europe's technology climate. "There is real movement afoot to bring Europe's technology market up to date with that of the US - we are currently building up European operations on that fact".