[JackSpratts]

"eDonkey and other P2P networks can have the entire piracy market because we're not interested in it at all." – Ashwin Navin


"Lots of at least scared -- if not innocent -- people are dragged into an unpleasant, clunky process for something that may be illegal but is generally accepted by society as OK." – John Palfrey


"My impression is that the majority of those sued [by the RIAA] are innocent." – Ray Beckerman


"People are illegally downloading as much music as before." – Eric Garland


"We have absolutely no problem with digitization of public domain works." – Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild

































Time Share Available

There’s an argument floating around equating real property to copyrights, landlords to record execs. It’s old but it keeps creeping up on forums like mold on shower doors. I’m sure somebody somewhere thinks the comparison is valid, but my guess is most people using it are either simple c&p’ers trying to participate without bothering to be original or media company stooges. I was traveling with a TV producer to NYC, home of rent-stabilized apartments, and he dragged it out during a heated discussion (loves his artificially-low rent, hates P2P). This was a few years ago. I thought it was pretty much shot back then but I saw it around recently. Bad ideas don’t die, all that easily anyway. I thought I should drive another stake through its blackened little heart this week. Feel free to pass it on.

If you take away my real property – which btw the government does regularly, except they don’t refer to it as a “taking,” they call it “rent control” or “eminent domain” or some such - then yes, I won’t own it anymore and would sacrifice all potential income that future rents could generate. However, comparing real or physical property with intellectual property is disingenuous. To begin with, unlike real property, the income stream generated by Intellectual “Property” flows from units copied, advertising, ticket or transmission fees and not exclusive possession fees like apartment rentals. Like a legal marriage, apartment rentals are monogamous; you can only rent it once during any given period because all you have is one unit. Media rentals are by nature polygamous, you can rent out the same performance an infinite number of times during any given period because it’s reproducible. It’s the crucial difference. When someone asks “How would you like it if somebody took away your rental units, or rented them out for free”? they are missing the point, usually deliberately. Even if copyrights disappeared tomorrow, content creators would still be free to sell or rent their copies to the public, even while others were getting the same (or similar) content for “free.” Indeed, this is how things worked before the age of copyrights and it was one reason Thomas Jefferson was so ambivalent about intellectual policy in general. He seemed to think we didn’t really need it. He was probably right. On the other hand if these mysterious squatters used for the arguments sake take over the stately Jack Spratts’ Arms - I’m outa bidniz - immediately. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. All I had was the original. Choosing between the two is a no brainier. Take IP ownership over real property ownership any day; the law gives you a monopolistic privilege found nowhere else; it grants you the right to penalize normal behavior. Very important of course if the Bolsheviks are coming to take your stuff.

When they steal my crib, I ain’t got a home, but when they copy my crib, what care is it of mine? Hell, my architect probably riffed the plans for it anyway. If you like it so much go ahead, build some more. It might even make mine more valuable by increasing its familiarity.

So this IP vs. RP argument is moot. The differences are too extreme to manage.

Free at Last?

Although I’ll usually accept it as a moniker, I don’t actually consider file-sharing free since there are numerous primary costs associated with content acquisition like computers, bandwidth and storage fees, and with most people buying high speed burner media, high capacity hard drives and high speed Internet lines for swapping and storing, they’re now spending more on “content” - on average - then they did before peer-to-peer. There are also secondary costs, like encryption, education, anti-virus apps and questionable security programs requiring endless upgrades and various other time consuming activities, not to mention growing global political activism that now sucks up more hours than the anti-war movement. No, P2P is certainly not free. The cash is pouring out of our pockets and our time is draining away. We work very hard for our files. So hard in fact that going to the store is like taking a vacation. Any argument that uses the word free is immediately suspect. When I hear “How would you like it if everything you wrote was available for free?” my response invariably is “You’re not discussing P2P.” A more accurate approach would be to ask “How would you like it if everything you wrote was available but the money never went to you?” Ah, well, that’s different, and we might be getting somewhere if one presupposes two critical things, both of which are wrong: that (1) P2P will flatten artists who would otherwise be (2) doing fine under contract to conglomerates. The argument is that Jill’s file-sharing somehow magically stops Jack’s commerce, as if the simple act of trading freezes my hand and prevents me from selling my work. The Everyone else can trade but me! syndrome. I call it the “Myth of Voodoo P2P.” A program so powerful, so overwhelming it instantly crushes capitalism at the very first click. Would if it were true! But it’s not.

Judging by the way they bury the story the news editors working for the media conglomerates don’t seem to want you to know this but sales of media content continue to flourish even during this golden age of unbridled file-sharing. DVDs, CDs, books, digital files all moving along smartly, as if there’d never been anyone named Shawn Fanning or anything called Napster. Sales continue their typical all-around trends of up, down, flat and sideways, just like in any other industry, just like they did before the college kid from New England changed the ‘net forever with the first user friendly P2P program. But the important point is that things are selling while they are simultaneously being shared. So the Myth of Voodoo P2P is just that, a myth. P2P does not end commerce. The second critical thing is a bit more complex. Well, a lot more complex if half of what they say about Hollywood accounting is true. It presupposes artists are doing fine now, getting their fair payment from the major media companies they are contracted to work for, and I have a major issue with that. I don’t think they are, and I’m not alone in this belief. More than a little evidence suggests artists are being fleeced by their own media companies, yet are essentially powerless to do anything about it because of one-way contract laws pushed through congress by the same media companies ripping them off! So before I go down that rocky crag I ask do they know, for a fact, if artists are being served honestly by the commercial interests presently representing them. At this point there is a long pause, usually as they think about all those stories they’ve heard about number-one movies with no profits and singers going bankrupt after multi-platinum albums, and that as they say is that. This particular squabble typically ends there, as it should.

So we find ourselves in a situation where the arguments used to control our behavior are inaccurate at best and rather easily dismissed, yet deliberately used against us by our elected representatives in spite of their obvious fallaciousness. Nothing new there of course but it bears remembering, particularly as November 8th nears.

A few observations:

Free P2P does not destroy artists. There is no evidence sales are lost to free file-sharing. Artists can and do earn money with free file-sharing. There is evidence commercial media companies are stealing from artists. There is evidence artists can make more money with free file-sharing than with traditional media company arrangements.

And finally, my house and this essay are not the same. They are in fact incomparable. The only time they should appear together in an honest discussion about P2P is when their differences are being underlined.
















Enjoy,

Jack

















October 8th, 2005





RIAA Takes Shotgun to Traders
Bruce Gain

Hundreds of people are being wrongly sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally trading music online, legal experts say.

Attorneys representing some of the 14,000 people targeted for illegal music trading say their clients are being bullied into settling as the cheapest way to get out of trouble. Collection agencies posing as "settlement centers" are harassing their clients to pay thousands of dollars for claims about which they know nothing, they say.

In May, a judge in Michigan dismissed a file-sharing case against Candy Chan, a mother who testified in court that the user name identified in the suit belonged to one of her children.

In the court report (.pdf), Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff wrote: "Chan opposed the motion and asserted that the plaintiffs used a 'shotgun' approach to pursue this action, threatening to sue all of Chan's children and engaging in abusive behavior to attempt to utilize the court as a collection agency."

The case was dismissed but last week the record companies filed suit against Chan's child.

Now others say they are in the same boat as Chan.

"I don't even know how to download music," said Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother from Oregon who lives on Social Security benefits. "The user names (they cite) I have never heard of."

Andersen is one of three single parents claiming to have been erroneously identified as an illegal music trader by a law firm representing RIAA interests, which is seeking more than $1 million in damages -- $750 for each of the 1,400 songs Andersen allegedly shared.

The RIAA began its litigation campaign in September 2003, resulting in more than 14,000 lawsuits. So far, more than 3,300 parties have settled, which the RIAA says proves the overwhelming majority of those summoned are guilty of stealing copyright files.

But attorneys representing many of the accused say that's not true. Estimates of how many people are being wrongly targeted for illegal file sharing vary, from hundreds to many more.

Ray Beckerman, a New York-based attorney with Beldock Levine & Hoffman, put the number in the thousands.

"My impression is that the majority of those sued are innocent," Beckerman said.

Andersen wrote to Rep. David Wu (D-Oregon) and offered to surrender her PC to the RIAA for inspection -- to no avail.

"(The RIAA) says 'We don't care enough about you that we are even going to check,'" said Lory R. Lybeck, Andersen's attorney from Lybeck Murphy of Mercer Island, Washington. "And if ... they have made a mistake, they are not going to apologize or investigate -- they are going to sue you again."

Dawnell Leadbetter, a Washington-based single mom whom Lybeck also represents, is suing Comcast, her ISP, for disclosing her name and other personal details to the RIAA, which then sued her. She also says the RIAA has confused her IP address with the wrong person.

Accurately tracking acts of piracy and matching names to IP addresses can be an error-prone process. Many things can go wrong when determining who is actually downloading and uploading copyright files over file-sharing networks, especially when attempting to identify users' names, IP addresses and actual PCs -- let alone the PC's user at the time.

However, the legal process set in motion by the recording industry is hard to stop -- unless you pay.

"What really rankled me is the bullying tactics they use, and I don't like bullies," said Beckerman, the New York attorney.

"Prior to retaining lawyers, when (defendants) talk to the settlement support center, they are threatened with criminal prosecution, ruin of their credit, publication of their names," he said.

Beckerman is defending Patricia Santangelo, a single mother with five children, against a complaint filed by Elektra Entertainment Group.

After an agency contacted her to settle claims for having allegedly uploaded at least 1,641 files, Santangelo proclaimed her innocence while representing herself in a federal District Court in New York in May.

Santangelo then swore under oath that she no longer owned the computer with the IP address allegedly used for illegal uploads and that the screen name corresponding to the Kazaa program used for the uploads belonged to a friend of one of her children and not to anyone in her family.

An RIAA spokeswoman would not comment on whether it had fairly summoned payments from Andersen or Santangelo or whether it had mistakenly connected them to an IP address used for illegal downloads or uploads.

However, an RIAA spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement that the RIAA had "complete confidence in the litigations we have filed and in the judicial process to resolve the issues raised in those cases."

"The message of the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in the Grokster case is clear: Both the businesses that encourage theft and the individuals who download songs without permission can be held accountable," the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement.


John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said the targeting of the lawsuits was far from perfect.

"Lots of at least scared -- if not innocent -- people are dragged into an unpleasant, clunky process for something that may be illegal but is generally accepted by society as OK," Palfrey said.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,68951,00.html





RIAA Sues Another 750 For File Sharing

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) files another 757 lawsuits against people accused of illegally copying digital music.
Gregg Keizer

Even as some file-sharing networks wave the white flag, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) kept up the pressure Thursday by filing another 757 lawsuits against people accused of illegally copying digital music.

Sixty-four of the people targeted use the high-speed Internet2 network, the RIAA said, which named 17 universities, including Boston University, Columbia, Princeton, and UCLA, as among the offenders.

Coincidentally, the RIAA became a corporate member of Internet2 only two weeks ago. At that time, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said in a statement that "we look forward to collaborative work with a broad spectrum of Internet2’s members to develop new technologies that will enable us to produce and distribute digital content over next generation networks in ways that protect and enhance the value of creative works."

The remaining 693 "John Doe" lawsuits were filed against users of such peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks as eDonkey and LimeWire.

In its two-year legal campaign against file sharing, the RIAA has sued some 14,800 U.S. computer users. Nor are the actions against Internet 2 users new; this is the third wave of suits naming users of the high-speed network intended for academic researchers. In April and May 2005, the RIAA expanded its anti-copying efforts to include nearly 500 students at 38 different Internet2-equipped schools.

"As long as students continue to corrupt this specialized academic network for the flagrant theft of music, we will continue to make it clear that there are consequences for these unlawful actions," Sherman said in a May statement.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=171202305





Record Labels Target 14 Year-Old Girl
Ed Oswald

A 14 year-old girl is in the middle of a dispute with the record labels that could have broad implications for future cases involving minors downloading illicit music files from peer- to-peer services.

An effort is underway by EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony BMG to force the courts to appoint an official legal guardian for Brittany Chan so they can move forward with their lawsuit against her.

As first reported by P2P news site p2pnet.net, the record labels latest actions stem from the refusal of the teen's mother, Candy Chan, to take responsibility for the alleged file sharing of her child.

According to the record labels, they were forced "to file this action directly against Brittany Chan even after they informed her she had left them with no alternative."

If the record companies are successful in court, it could potentially provide the RIAA with a new weapon in prosecuting minors for downloading music over P2P services: by appointing another legal guardian if parents fail to take responsibility for their children.

An investigation by the record companies found that a computer within the Chan household contained 829 illegally shared music files. Brittany Chan had already admitted to using the P2P account linked to these files, "Spicybrnweyedgirl."
http://www.betanews.com/article/prin...irl/1128618276





Eminem Sues To Stop Use Of Songs As Ringtones
AP

Grammy-winning rapper Eminem's publishing companies filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop his songs from being used as cell phone ring tones.

In the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Michigan-based Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated are seeking a court order to prohibit five companies from
selling Eminem song ring tones on the Internet.

Lawyers for the rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, said they also plan to sue karaoke companies that sell Eminem songs without getting the proper licenses.

``This is a big business. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,'' said Howard Hertz, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

The companies named in the suit are Colorado-based Cellus USA, Georgia-based FanMobile, New York-based Nextones.com, New Jersey-based MyPhoneFiles and New Jersey-based MatrixM LLC.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12823447.htm





Man Pleads Guilty In Piracy Sting
AP

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty to charges he illegally uploaded computer games, software and movies to a Web server set up as part of a federal sting to combat Internet piracy, authorities said.

Ryan Zeman, of Rohnert Park, entered the plea on one county of copyright infringement Monday as part of an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office that required him to surrender his laptop, a computer tower and several CD's and DVD's.

Zeman, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 27, faces a maximum penalty of up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Under the agreement, he admitted copying 14 titles over three months this year, including the movie, ``Austin Powers Goldmember.''

Zeman is the second person to plead guilty on charges stemming from ``Operation Copycat,'' an undercover FBI operation that has so far resulted in charges against six people.

A 19-year-old movie theater cashier from Missouri pleaded guilty to similar charges in September and faces eight years in prison on charges he bootlegged movies and posted them to the Web, prosecutors said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12816184.htm





Delaware Supreme Court Declines to Unmask a Blogger
Rita K. Farrell

WILMINGTON, Del., Oct. 5 - The Delaware Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that if an elected official claims he has been defamed by an anonymous blogger, he cannot use a lawsuit to unmask the writer unless he has substantial evidence to prove his claim.

That standard, the court said, "will more appropriately protect against the chilling effect on anonymous First Amendment Internet speech that can arise when plaintiffs bring trivial defamation lawsuits primarily to harass or unmask their critics."

At issue was a defamation lawsuit filed last year by Patrick Cahill, a councilman in Smyrna, Del. Mr. Cahill said he needed the identity of a blogger who in a September 2004 posting praised the mayor but said Mr. Cahill was divisive and had "an obvious mental deterioration."

In a second posting, the blogger, named John Doe in the suit, wrote that Mr. Cahill "is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is," according to court records.

Using a court order, Mr. Cahill learned from the publisher of the blog, Independent Newspapers, that the Web address of the blogger belonged to a customer of Comcast. When Mr. Cahill demanded the person's identity, Comcast notified the blogger, as required by law. The blogger filed for a protective order. A lower court judge denied the request, and the blogger appealed.

In a 33-page opinion, the five justices reversed the lower court, saying the judge used a standard that was incorrect because it was not stringent enough. The court said, "The Internet provides a means of communication where a person wronged by statements of an anonymous poster can respond instantly, can respond to the alleged defamatory statements on the same site or blog, and thus, can, almost contemporaneously, respond to the same audience that initially read the allegedly defamatory statements."

David Finger, the blogger's lawyer, said: "Statements on an electronic bulletin board with hyperbole and profanity are generally not considered as credible sources of facts. The court found that people who read these types of blogs cannot reasonably expect them to be anything more than the writer's opinion."

Mr. Cahill's lawyer, Robert Katzenstein, had no comment.

While acknowledging that "the Internet is a unique democratizing medium" that allows "more and diverse people to engage in public debate," the judges said they made no distinction between "communications made on the Internet and those made through other traditional forms of media in determining the standard to be applied."

The court said its decision was the first time any state or federal Supreme Court had ruled on the rights of anonymous bloggers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/te...gy/06blog.html





Movie Industry To Move Online To Beat Pirates
Adam Pasick

The film industry is working to launch online movie download services to avoid the same fate as the piracy-ridden music industry, NBC Universal Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Wright said on Tuesday.

"It's something we have to do, but it has to be done well," Wright said "These movies are so expensive we have to be careful ... We're pretty close. Hopefully by the end of this year we'll be able to do that."

Wright was speaking at the launch of an anti-piracy and counterfeiting initiative with senior executives from media, software, pharmaceutical and food industries known as "Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy" (BASCAP).

Other participants included Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, Nestle's Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Vivendi Universal's Jean-Rene Fourtou and EMI Group's Eric Nicoli.

"The problems are spreading and no one is immune," Wright said. "In my business we're just looking over the shoulder of the music industry, which has gone through a very difficult time."

The global music industry has been decimated by physical piracy and online file-trading networks. It has stemmed some of the losses by aggressively targeting illicit file-sharers with lawsuits while also offering legal online alternatives like Apple's iTunes Music Store.

Movies are increasingly vulnerable to online piracy due to the spread of high-speed Internet connections and file-sharing technologies like BitTorrent. Eight people were charged last week for stealing a copy of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" and posting it online before the movie appeared in theatres.

There are already at least two fledgling online movie stores: Movielink, which is a venture of five major Hollywood studios, and CinemaNow, which is jointly owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, Microsoft, Blockbuster and several private equity firms.

Wright also spoke about the battle over next-generation DVD technology. Universal Studios, a unit of NBC Universal, and Warner Bros Studios have endorsed the HD DVD format, while Paramount, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and Twentieth Century Fox have backed the rival Blu-ray format.

"You'd always rather have one standard -- that's going to happen eventually," he said. "Hopefully this won't go as far as (the) Betamax-VHS (video tape format battle)."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False





Free Download Of Film Soundtrack Offered With Online Tickets
AP

Consumers who buy a ticket online to see ``The War Within'' will get an unexpected bonus -- a free digital copy of the soundtrack.

HDNet Films, the Dallas-based production company owned by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, will offer a free Internet download of the movie's soundtrack to everyone who buys a ticket at Moviefone or Movietickets.com.

Cuban and Wagner's company is behind another cinematic innovation, releasing a series of films in theaters, on television and on DVD simultaneously. The company has signed with director Steven Soderbergh to release a series of ``day and date'' release films beginning next January.

``The War Within'' is about a terrorist involved in a plot in New York City who has second thoughts. The small independent film opens in New York on Friday and will expand to other markets.

The score for the film was written and performed by Free Association, a collaboration of DJ and film composer David Holmes and Steve Hilton.

``As studios and exhibitors search for ways to retain audiences frustrated with the theater experience, we believe the competitive solution lies in increasing value for customers,'' Wagner said in a statement.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...printstory.jsp





Unattended PCs Security Risk Underestimated
Gregg Keizer

Lonesome PCs pose a security risk that enterprises underestimate, a research firm said this week. Making matters worse, corporations just don't pay attention to the major security hazard of unattended workstations, according to Gartner research vice president Jay Heiser.

"Organizations are protecting their systems and personnel against external security threats but failing to realize the very real risks that exist internally from something as basic as an unattended PC," said the U.K.-based Heiser in a statement. "Relatively simple solutions are available to address the problem but few organizations have implemented them."

From Gartner's perspective, a "significant number of unauthorized access events" happen in the workplace when someone sits in front of another's PC. The possible ramifications range from accessing sensitive data to sending e-mail or IM disguised as another employee. And the lack of protection makes it difficult to discipline workers for improper online activity when the excuse of 'someone else must have sat at my PC' can't be disproved.

"Unattended PCs represent the computer security equivalent of 'low-hanging fruit'," said Heiser.

The solution, said Heiser, would be to require workers to log out each time they leave their desk -- the 'timeout' could also be done automatically -- and log back in when they return. Then, the log-in password stands between seat-warmers and access to data and services they've no right to.

Trouble is, users hate logging off and on, and complain loudly to IT when such requirements are made. That could be mitigated, Heiser said, by making workers understand that they'll be held accountable for any computer mischief originating from their workstations or usernames.

"There's little point in implementing some sort of sophisticated identity and access management system unless you can ensure that when people are logged in to systems, they stay at their PCs," said Heiser. "Sloppy management of login sessions sends the wrong message, but tight management, including a degree of user inconvenience, sends the message 'user login sessions are important and must be protected'."

Heiser recommended that enterprises look at both technology and policy solutions, including "proximity" tokens, small devices worn around the neck that are also used for hands-off security door access. Used for PC security, proximity tokens automatically log off a user when he or she steps a defined distance from the computer.

"Tokens are appropriate wherever shared PCs are used to access critical applications, such as in hospitals and clinics," said Heiser. "Proximity tokens are convenient and particularly effective in preventing the 'someone else used my PC' defense common in call centers and on factory floors."

Although timeouts won't work in all situations -- fast reaction scenarios like stock trading would be among them -- Heiser believed that in most office situations, the practice would be "a simple and effective solution" to the security problem of unattended PCs.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=171202296





IM Reaches Mainstream, But Insurers Play It Safe

Instant messaging may be a boon to productivity, but control issues still dog carriers.
Pat Speer

The evolution of real-time text communications technology, in which messages can be sent, received and viewed immediately-a.k.a. instant messaging (IM)-is a welcome one for most companies.

As IM moves from being a novelty for teens and college students to a viable communications vehicle for business, many organizations realize its potential: to improve collaboration and productivity.

But although analysts predict IM will soon be as commonplace as e-mail, its popularity among insurance companies is tempered with considerable caution.

Their concern revolves around security and compliance issues. Risk management is a hefty consideration, and carriers conducting an IM cost/benefit analysis have much to consider: reliability testing, the training involved, where and how IM will be used, whether formal directives are required to maintain control, and whether the software's security and archival functionality is strong enough to comply with SOX and other regulations.

For Arrowhead Group, a San Diego, Calif., managing general agency, the decision whether to implement IM has its roots in regulatory compliance.

"At this time we are blocking IM within the organization," notes Steve Boyd, Arrowhead vice president. "Sarbanes Oxley-related regulations are a major reason for this."

As part of a larger initiative that includes a move to a new location, Arrowhead is considering IM in the future, however, especially if the company splits its IS group across three buildings in the San Diego area, as planned.

"We are spending a great deal of time focusing on our internal development process and are concerned about the potential for disconnect between project team members at remote locations," Boyd says. "We feel IM can be a very useful and productive tool for our development teams, so we've begun an evaluation of different IM products to see which ones can meet our needs while at same time provide us with some kind of auditing function."

Internal comfort zone

As agents and carriers evaluate the potential benefits of IM, many are seeing obvious advantages for internal implementation, but few are venturing beyond the firewalls of their own systems to use it to communicate to the outside world.

Boyd confirms that his company "more or less agreed" that an IM implementation would only be used internally.

Encompass Insurance, a Barrington, Ill., P&C subsidiary of Allstate, uses instant messaging on a very limited basis, and only within the Allstate network, says Neil Nelson, senior manager of business relationship management, protection technology service, at Encompass.

"IMs cannot cross the firewall, so we do not use them to communicate with our agents," says Nelson.

For both carriers and agents, interest in the new technology is clouded with concern about security.

"While we are huge believers in leveraging the latest proven technologies and tools to make our business processes more efficient and to speed communication and decision-making, we have decided that for the foreseeable future, we will not allow the use of IM," says Kieran Sweeney, president and CEO of Align General Insurance Agency Inc., San Diego. "Significant security concerns were the driving force behind this decision," he says.

Sweeney points to the industry's highly regulated environment as another concern. "We routinely receive and store consumers' personal information," he says. "As a result, we need to emphasize security in at least equal measure with functionality when choosing our business tools."

Best case, IM can foster potentially poor and unmanageable communication habits within the business environment, he says. Worst case, it could place the enterprise systems at greater risk to external penetration. "We see no compelling reason at this time to facilitate the use of IM," he adds.

LifeCare Assurance, a Woodland Hills, Calif., long-term care reinsurer, has its own instant messaging system, restricted to employees within the organization.

With both regulatory requirements and security in focus, the company has a clear mandate. "Any outside contacts must be through e-mail," confirms Anna Abrams, director of financial reporting at LifeCare.

The awareness that IM security threats rival those of e-mail technology, however, are cause for yet more concern.

As IM and peer-to-peer (P2P) networking becomes increasingly more popular, hackers are finding it easier to break in through IM buddy lists, say analysts.

In a study conducted last year by Cupertino, Calif.-based security software firm Symantec Corp., 19 of the 50 top viruses and worms used IM and P2P applications. This represents an increase of almost 400% in only one year, reports Symantec.

IMlogic, a Waltham, Mass., provider of IM enterprise software, is warning customers that the Tixanbot Trojan and Guapim worm are using instant messaging to spread.

The Guapim worm uses MSN Messenger and another leading public IM network, as well as other P2P file sharing networks to distribute links to download a variant of the Spybot worm.

Due diligence quandary

Along with the threats mentioned above, the IMlogic Threat Center had detected more than 140 new threats in the two- week period before press time.

Regardless of whether the consideration is security or compliance, carriers that decide to implement IM for internal or external use face the same quandary: due diligence.

To stay on top of the potential downsides of IM implementation, the IT department must monitor IM systems daily, train employees, and enforce a formal policy for its use and misuse, according to two groups that recently studied the phenomenon.

According to a study of organizations' use of electronic communications tools, risk management issues and compliance failures exist because "there is a gap between the implementation of new technologies (such as IM) and organizations' management of them through formal directives and training."

The "Electronic Communication Policies and Procedures" study, conducted by AIIM, a Silver Spring, Md., enterprise content management association, and Kahn Consulting Inc., a Highland Park, Ill., compliance and records management consulting firm, queried companies on the tools they use.

Formal policies needed

Nearly half of the 1,000 organizations surveyed (19% of which are in the insurance industry) allow employees to use instant messaging, nearly 20% more than 18 months ago.

Since the organizations' first study in 2003, 33% more respondents reported they had implemented formal policies for electronic communication. Yet, that figure still only represents 28% of the total that provide formal directives regarding its use.

Similar to LifeCare, Encompass, and Arrowhead, Align has evaluated the merits of formal policies that spell out usage requirements.

"Align's e-mail usage policy is well understood by our staff and allows us to achieve a speed of business that differentiates the company without creating new and unnecessary downside risks and exposures," says Align's Sweeney.

Sweeney says his agency does not plan to use IM until it can ensure that no one can bypass the corporate authentication systems, that it can safeguard and track the flow of confidential information, and that it can document its corporate communications."
http://www.insurancenetworking.com/p...Id=3626&pb=ros





Yahoo To Digitize Public Domain Books
Elinor Mills

Yahoo is launching a library-digitization project to rival Google's controversial program.

Yahoo is working with the Internet Archive, the University of California and others on a project to digitize books in archives around the world and make them searchable through any Web search engine and downloadable for free, the group was set to announce Monday.

"If we get this right so enough people want to participate in droves, we can have an interoperable, circulating library that is not only searchable on Yahoo but other search engines and downloadable on handhelds, even iPods," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.

The project, to be run by the newly formed Open Content Alliance (OCA), was designed to skirt copyright concerns that have plagued Google's Print Library Project since it was begun last year.

The Authors Guild sued Google last week, alleging its scanning and digitizing of copyright protected books infringes copyright, even if only small excerpts are displayed in search results as Google plans. Google argues that the project adheres to the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law, which allows excerpts in book reviews and the like.

Unlike Google, Yahoo will scan and digitize only texts in the public domain, except where the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The OCA project also will make the index of digitized works searchable by any Web search engine. Because Google is restricting public access to excerpts of copyright protected books, it is maintaining control over the searching of all the digitized texts in its program.

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit formed to offer access to historical collections that exist in digital format, will host the digitized material. Hewlett-Packard Labs is providing technology for scanning books, and Adobe Systems is providing software licenses for its Acrobat and Photoshop software.

The University of California system, The University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives in the United Kingdom, O'Reilly Media and Prelinger Archives are all providing content, which will include books, speeches, spoken word audio, video and music, Yahoo said.

The University of California's 10 campus libraries have about 33 million volumes, of which an estimated 15 percent are in the public domain, said Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost and University Librarian of the California Digital Library.

Greenstein said that contrary to publisher concerns that people will choose not to buy books if they can read or download them free online, the ability to easily find books on the Internet will broaden the public's exposure to them and is likely to increase, not decrease, sales.

"There is good evidence to suggest that if people see (that a book) is (out) there, they will buy it. Print sales either increase or are unchanged," he said. "We haven't once seen data to suggest that open access, at least to published printed works, decreases sales."

The University of California Press is likely to participate in the project, said Lynne Withey, director of the UC Press. "I'm all in favor of extending the availability of both books and journals in digital formats," she said. "So anything that does that in a way that respects authors' copyrights and also allows publishers to stay in business is a good thing."

By exposing more people to scholarly works, the OCA project could contribute to improved research and help reverse the trend among publishers of cutting back the number and print runs of books, said Lawrence Pitts, chairman of the University of California Academic Counsel Special Committee on Scholarly Communication.

Rising prices on books from academic publishers has meant fewer purchases by universities, he said. For example, academic presses that used to print 12,000 copies of a book a few years ago are now printing as few as 250 copies, he said.

"It is a terrible problem in the liberal arts, in particular, of getting a first book published, and that is often the ticket to being hired by a good university and getting tenure," Pitts said. "Data show that if you can put the material in an open access arena, the mention of the work doubles or quadruples because people out there in the world can find it better."

The OCA is appealing to publishers and other libraries, universities and archives worldwide to offer materials as well. "This is an international effort, not just domestic," said Dave Mandelbrot, Yahoo's vice president of search content. For example, "we would be very eager to integrate French content into the Open Content Alliance and are working with people in France to make that happen."

After Google announced its effort, the French government said it would embark on its own book digitization project, complaining that the Google plan would only accelerate the domination of the English language over other languages.

The OCA effort was applauded by publisher and author groups who have been critical of Google's effort, including the Association of Learned and professional Society Publishers, the Text and Academic Authors Association, or TAAA, and the Authors Guild.

"It is a wonderful idea. It does all the good things that the Google project was represented as doing, but it respects the copyright," said Richard Hull, executive director of the TAAA.

"Sounds fine, but we would want to see the details, of course," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "We have absolutely no problem with digitization of public domain works. With copyright works, we want to make sure the people who actually have the rights are the ones granting the licenses. In most cases it would be the authors."

The OCA also is looking for ways to help publishers be compensated for offering copyright protected books to the repository, said Mandelbrot. "We are working directly with publishers to come up with business models to encourage them to come up with ways to make works publicly available," he said.

O'Reilly will make some copyright works available, initially without compensation, to encourage others to participate, Yahoo said.

When asked to comment on the Yahoo project, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said, "We welcome efforts to make information accessible to the world."
http://news.com.com/Yahoo+to+digitiz...3-5887374.html





EU Unveils Plans For European Digital Libraries
Press Release

The European Commission today unveiled its strategy to make Europe’s written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. Turning Europe’s historic and cultural heritage into digital content will make it usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and will give innovators, artists and entrepreneurs the raw material that they need. The Commission proposes a concerted drive by EU Member States to digitise, preserve, and make this heritage available to all. It presents a first set of actions at European level and invites comments on a series of issues in an online consultation (deadline for replies 20 January 2006). The replies will feed into a proposal for a Recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation, to be presented in June 2006.

“Without a collective memory, we are nothing, and can achieve nothing. It defines our identity and we use it continuously for education, work and leisure”, commented Information Society and Media Commissioner Reding. “The Internet is the most powerful new tool we have had for storing and sharing information since the Gutenberg press, so let’s use it to make the material in Europe’s libraries and archives accessible to all”. Ján Figel’, Commissioner for Education and Culture, added: “European cooperation is an obvious necessity in this field: it is about ensuring preservation and access to our common cultural heritage for the future generations”.

Making the resources in Europe’s libraries and archives available on the Internet is not straightforward. On one hand, we are talking about very different materials – books, film fragments, photographs, manuscripts, speeches and music. On the other, we have to select from very large volumes – for example, 2.5 billion books and bound periodicals in European libraries and millions of hours of film and video in broadcasting archives.

The Commission communication sets out three key areas for action: digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation. At present, several initiatives exist in the Member States, but they are fragmented. To avoid creating systems that are mutually incompatible and duplicate work, the Commission proposes that Member States and major cultural institutions join EU efforts to make digital libraries a reality throughout Europe. Private involvement and public/private partnerships are a key element in achieving this goal.

For its part the Commission will step up coordination work and contribute funding through its research programmes and through the eContentplus programme:

the results of an online consultation on digitisation and digital preservation issues (2005) will feed into Commission Proposal for a Recommendation ( 2006). The results will also be an input for other relevant initiatives such as the review of EU copyright rules (2006) and the implementation of the Community R&D programmes (2007). A High Level Group on digital libraries will advise the Commission on how to best address the identified challenges at European level,
collaboration among Member States will be facilitated by an update of the Lund action plan, providing operational guidelines on digitisation (2005), backed up by quantitative indicators to measure progress. The Commission will work together with cultural institutions, such as the national and deposit libraries, to ensure co-ordinated action at European level,
the Commission has made €36 million available for research on advanced access to our cultural heritage and digital preservation in the fifth call for proposals under the sixth research framework programme for R&D (2005). Under the seventh framework programme (FP7), the research on digitisation, digital preservation and access to cultural content will be considerably stepped up, inter alia through a network of Centres of Competence in the fields of digitisation and preservation (2007), and between 2005 and 2008, the eContentplus programme will contribute €60 million towards making national digital collections and services interoperable and facilitating multilingual access and use of cultural material.
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRele...guiLanguage=en





Finnish Parliament Passes New Controversial Copyright Law
TankGirl

After a heated debate yesterday the Finnish Parliament unsurprisingly passed a new copyright law intended to 'harmonize' the national copyright laws with EU directives. The voting result was 121–34 for the new law. The law will make it illegal for the consumers to break copy protections on digital media even for their own fair use, and this particular point initiated an unforeseen active e-mail campaign from citizens to the members of the parliament plus a 300-strong demonstration in front of the parliament house yesterday. The new law does not criminalize downloading of copyrighted material from Internet for private use but as many p2p clients automatically share further what you are downloading, this is a rather meaningless detail.

The lively parliamentary debate revealed some interesting details about the legislation process. A parliamentary committee responsible for the preparation of the law - which has been admitted to be obscure and problematic even by its supporters - defended its actions to the parliament by telling it had heard 66 specialists during the preparation of the law. It turned out that over 20 of these specialists represented copyright industries and organizations while the consumers had no representation at all. The Finnish cultural minister Tanja Karpela, who had a leading role in pushing the new law through, defended her own actions with the pressure from EU commission. In closer scrutiny it turned out that official communications had been limited to verbal communications between one EU clerk and one Finnish ministery clerk. Overall, Karpela showed remarkable cluelessness throughout the debate while her main challenger, tech-savvy Jyrki Kasvi from Green Party, made a good case for rejecting the obscure and lopsided law and demanding a full rewrite of it. When the Finnish MP:s started to get hundreds of e-mails from worried citizens minister Karpela was quick to criticize the e-mails as a rogue campaign organized by a small activist clique. Many parliament members corrected this false claim in the debate and expressed their satisfaction of this newborn citizen activity and interest in parliamentary work. Large numbers of Finns have expressed their opinions on the issue on various public discussion boards, and over 100 websites have joined a spontaneously born "Am I A Criminal?" banner campaign.

DigiToday, a well-established Finnish online news publication focusing on IT, media and business topics, organized an online poll about the new law. 98 % of 4542 voters opposed it. The magazine also set up quickly special pages to do live reporting from the Parliament, publishing both the entire parliamentary debate verbatim and the detailed voting records of the MPs. The magazine seemed clearly to side with the consumers on the issue.

Perhaps the most significant result of the debate was the politicization of the copyright issue in Finland. A day before the decisive vote two small opposition parties and all political youth organizations associated with the Finnish parties ended up officially opposing the new law. A somewhat similar development happened earlier in the summer in Sweden when a corresponding law was passed in the Swedish parliament. Another positive outcome of this unexpected burst of citizen activity is the heightened public awareness of copyright issues - both among people and among the MPs - which will put the parliament under a much closer public scrutiny in the future when new copyright legislation will be worked on.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...ad.php?t=22041





International Business Leaders Form Anti-Piracy Coalition
AP

LONDON (AP) - Business leaders representing industries ranging from pharmaceutical to software agreed at a meeting here Tuesday to form a coalition to lobby governments around the world to step up the fight against international piracy and counterfeiting.

Executives including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer, EMI Group PLC Chairman Eric Nicoli and NBC Universal Chief Executive Officer Bob Wright said many governments had not done enough to legislate against -- or enforce existing legislation against -- the theft of intellectual property. NBC Universal is , a unit of General Electric Co.

``We need an adequate legal framework and enforcement capacity,'' said Vivendi Universal Chairman Jean-Rene Fourtou after the meeting. ``We are very far from that even in the U.S., and Europe is quite worse.''

Nicoli warned governments that the companies forming the coalition under the banner ``Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy'' were worth around $1,000 billion, with a work force of 1 million and served more than a billion people.

``These aren't statistics, we respectfully suggest, that governments can afford to ignore,'' he said.

Nicoli declined to name countries that were dragging their heels on the fight against piracy, but said that the coalition would draw up a series of indices and publish them within the year.

He said the executives had decided to tackle the problem in the same way the pirates operate, by forming a coalition across industries and countries.

Nicoli on Tuesday dismissed suggestions by Apple Computer Inc. that a single price for songs sold over the Internet would help prevent piracy in the music industry.

``I'm not persuaded by the argument that a single price deters piracy,'' Nicoli said at a news conference in London.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs last month called music companies greedy for seeking higher prices for music downloaded from the Internet, saying such moves would increase piracy.

While the music industry has so far borne the brunt of copyright theft, with its easily reproducible and distributable products, the executives pointed out that almost every other industry is vulnerable.

Ballmer told the conference that the software industry is losing up to $32 billion annually to piracy. In the pharmaceuticals sector, up to 10 percent of products worldwide are counterfeit, rising to as much as 50 percent to 60 percent in the developing world.

``Nobody is immune,'' said Wright. ``There are elements that are very bad and the reputations of countries and citizens are at stake.''

Nicoli said there would be no ``overnight success'' in tackling piracy and counterfeiting but pointed to improvements in the music industry, which has waged a campaign against digital piracy over the past few years. The multi-pronged approach by the music industry has included a public education campaign and a series of lawsuits against individual file-sharers around the world.

``We are seeing progress and we are at least containing piracy,'' Nicoli said of the music industry.

The executives agreed to combine their current efforts to fight piracy and create the first global cross-sector stock-take of the size of the problem. They will also lobby other businesses to join the coalition.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12815813.htm





Australian High Court Rules In Favour Of Modders

The High Court of Australia has ruled that Australian consumers and overseas travellers can buy cheaper computer games and hardware offshore and modify them locally.

Gadens Lawyers, who represented appellant Eddy Stevens in the High Court suit, released a statement today following the ruling, calling the win a "landmark copyright case" championing the rights of consumers.

Stevens ran a business that modified and repaired PlayStation games console equipment. Mod chips let gamers ignore vendors' regional coding systems to buy cheaper games designed for markets outside of Australia.

Stevens had been fighting PlayStation maker Sony in the High Court of Australia for four years to establish the right of consumers and businesses such as his to do so, Gadens said.

"All six judges of the High Court held that widely used 'mod-chips' were legal, with far reaching implications for the manufacturers of computer games -- Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft - and consumers," the law firm said.

The High Court also ruled that playing a game on a consumer machine does not constitute making an illegal copy of that game, Gadens said.

Michaell Bradley, managing partner at Gadens and counsel for Stevens, said the win was excellent news for Australian consumers.

"The judiciary and the consumer watchdog categorically upheld the rights of the little guy against the might of a multinational," Bradley said.

Gadens added in its statement that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had stepped in as a friend of the court at Federal Court level to argue that regional coding was detrimental to consumer choice.

Nathan Mattock, senior associate for Gadens and part of Stevens' legal team on the High Court case, said the legal issues involved in the case had been complex.

"The court has had to interpret copyright law within the ever-changing technical environment in which we live. Fortunately for the consumer, the court has prevented a multinational corporation from further eroding consumer rights," Mattock said.

Gadens litigation team had handled several other landmark copyright and technology cases, including a Federal Court case for the Australian Video Retailers Association (AVRA) against Warner Home Video.

"Also a test case, it was comparable to Stevens versus Sony because it dealt with the issue of copying and explored the nature of the technology used for playing DVDs. Gadens Lawyers’ client was successful against Warner," the law firm said.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=20369





China Shuts Down Two More Web Sites In Crackdown
AP

In a widening Internet crackdown, Chinese authorities have shut down an online discussion forum that reported on anti-corruption protests in a southern village and a Web site serving ethnic Mongolians, overseas monitors said Tuesday.

China routinely shuts down or blocks Web sites that operate outside of government control, but the issue has received heightened international attention in recent weeks with the publication of new rules aimed at stifling online dissent.

Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-based broadcaster, said an online forum that covered protests in the village of Taishi has been closed. The site had been popular among academics, journalists and rights activists, the broadcaster said.

Residents of Taishi, which is near the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, had demanded that their village chief be removed from office and investigated for allegations of embezzlement and fraud.

Several villagers were reportedly injured in a clash with police last month as they tried to prevent police from seizing accounting ledgers that they said contained evidence of corruption.

Police and local authorities have refused comment.

The Taishi protest came amid a series of increasingly bold actions in China's impoverished countryside to bring attention to grievances from industrial pollution to corruption and illegal land seizures.

The group Reporters Without Borders said China also had shut down an online forum for ethnic Mongolian students, called www.ehoron.com, for allegedly hosting separatist content. Attempts to view the page Tuesday called up a message that said: ``You are not authorized to view this page.''

The Paris-based press group said Beijing's controls on ethnic minorities were more restrictive than for the rest of China's population.

The government also temporarily closed the Web site of a law firm in China's Inner Mongolia region, called www.monhgal.com, the press group said. That site could be accessed Tuesday.

China last month issued rules banning Internet news services from inciting illegal assemblies, marches and demonstrations and prohibiting activities on behalf of unauthorized civil groups.
http://mymail01.mail.lycos.com/scrip...ext=1128627936





Send In The Skype Clones
Nathan Willis

Over the past couple of months, public opinion of Skype has shifted from "media darling" to "when will their 15 minutes of fame be up?" Judging from forum and blog chatter, it would appear that the novelty of the product is wearing off and early adopters are feeling restless. Luckily, Internet telephony aficionados have standards- based alternatives to choose from.

This is a dangerous time for Skype, which recently announced it would be sold to eBay. Once users begin to see shortcomings, the door is wide open for a competitor to swoop in and take them all away -- particularly when (like Skype), your service is free or pay-as-you-go.

That is not to say Skype is resting on its laurels. It is offering beta-test programs for SkypeIn and SkypeZones, selling ringtones and avatars, and offering other new wrinkles to keep customers interested.

Nevertheless, Skype's core product is a commodity communications platform, and if a similar one comes along with a better user experience and improved features, Skype could be in serious trouble.

Many are of the opinion that Skype's Achilles' heel is its closed, proprietary network, and that a competitor that builds an equally good product based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) will displace Skype.

While most would agree that open standards are better for Internet users as a whole, closed networks based on proprietary protocols and codecs are not quick to die. We won't need to wonder much longer, though. The first generation of SIP-speaking Skype doppelgangers have hit the ground running.

Open and closed case

Let's start with the Gizmo Project. Gizmo, like Skype, is cross-platform, offering clients for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux on x86 -- though Gizmo doesn't offer a client for Pocket PC. The user interface is virtually identical to Skype's -- tabs for contact list, status, and call logs, and icons that look like they were designed for Playskool toys.

As with Skype, users can call into the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and receive calls from the public telephone network by purchasing add-on services from Gizmo's corporate parent SIPphone.

For users, the most significant difference between the services offered is that Gizmo uses the SIP protocol stack to locate, initiate, and tear down calls. This means a Gizmo user can call anyone on any competing SIP system.

Gizmo, like Skype, uses the proprietary iSAC and iLBC codecs from GlobalIPSound. It also supports GSM, g711U/A, enhanced G711, and iPCM-wb -- which makes sense when interoperability with other services is desired. Skype only needs to support the codecs it ships. Both clients auto-select codecs when negotiating call setup.

SIP support and interoperability are good to have, but I have seen numerous references to Gizmo as "the open source Skype." Unfortunately, Gizmo's license isn't open source. SIPphone provides the dial-in and dial-out services to make money, and they openly assert their support of and commitment to open standards -- but you still can't have the source.

Linux users get an "alpha" version of the Gizmo client. The current version for Linux is available only as .deb packages and to Linspire users through the "click and run" (CNR) service. That complicated my initial tests of the application; I wanted to try connecting to people on all three supported operating systems, but my friends encountered serious stumbling blocks installing the app on other flavors of Linux.

When I did get Mac, Windows, and Linux users online, the audio quality was comparable to Skype's. Basic calling works with the Linux client, but critical UI elements are non-functional: most of the buttons do nothing, the View menu is empty and the File menu has only one entry, Quit.

Furthermore, I experienced symptoms widely reported on the Gizmo forums: CPU usage sits at 100% until the first call is made, frequent segfaults, etc. There is still, shall we say, a lot of room for growth in the Linux client.

Is Gizmo a worthy replacement for Skype? I have to say no. Both are proprietary applications. The sole point in Gizmo's favor is using a recognized standard for call management, but if you are under the impression that this equates to open standards support, then you have overlooked the audio codec issue.

SIP is codec-agnostic, and open platforms have dozens of codecs to choose from, including several open source and patent-unencumbered. If the "commitment to open standards" trumpeted at the Gizmo Project site extends only to SIP (as it seems) then it is skin-deep. SIP is but one piece of the overall puzzle.

If you build it, they will come

But as you might expect, there are several GPLed projects interested in chasing down Skype. For brevity's sake, let's take a look at just one of them.

Wengophone is similar in interface design to Skype and Gizmo, and like those offerings, Wengophone is the progeny of a VoIP-to-PSTN service provider -- in this case, France's Neuf Telecom. Neuf Telecom obviously intends to give the product away as a loss-leader for selling its SIP-to-PSTN gateway services much as Skype and SIPphone do for their softphones. A stable release of the Wengophone client is available for Windows, and there's a beta for Linux on x86. Mac OS X and Pocket PC clients are in development.

Wengophone's Linux client is available in .deb and .rpm binary packages, and you can download the source for all platforms from a Subversion repository.

I had no trouble installing the Debian package, but the RPM was a different story. It suffered from sloppy version-checking and bad linking, and required some manual intervention to get it working. The developers did respond quickly to questions on the mailing list and forum. They assure users that the next release will fix those problems. And, of course, you can always compile it yourself.

Wengophone uses the AMR, AMR-WB, PCMA, PCMU, and GSM codecs. Thus when I test-called a Gizmo user from Wengophone, the only codec we had in common was GSM. Sound quality is appreciably nicer with iSAC in Gizmo-to-Gizmo or Skype-to-Skype calls. The GSM codec is not fault-tolerant, meaning that network traffic can introduce jitter, and it uses 8kHz sampling, capping the sound quality below the 16kHz used by other "wide-band" codecs.

The Wengophone configuration panel has a codec tab, which suggested to me that perhaps additional codecs were or would soon be available. I inquired about it on the forums and learned that user-installable codecs are tapped for the next release. The current release also lacks the ability to specify which audio devices to use for sound, microphone, and ringing, but the defaults worked fine on my machine. It should be noted that Wengophone is very young, so perhaps it is too early to be demanding of it in a review.

Despite its shortcomings, I believe that the GPLed status of the project makes it a safer bet for the future than Gizmo, for several reasons. The app can be modified to work with any SIP gateway (present or future -- you never know how long the parent company will survive in this field). Third parties can add support for additional audio codecs (even non-free ones) and new protocols (say, IAX or XMPP integration). Finally, anyone could port Wengophone to other operating systems and new devices -- unlike Skype and Gizmo.

These constitute clear advantages for Wengophone, given that Skype's commodity pricing leaves customers apt to jump ship. That said, for the time being the audio codec issue is the largest hurdle for Wengophone and all other open-source softphones to overcome.

Hanging up

I don't think that Skype's days are numbered by any means. If anything, there is so much growth potential in VoIP that even the smallest player five years from now will probably have more customers than Skype does today. Nevertheless, the horde of Skype lookalikes has a leg up on them due to SIP support.

But a half-open, half-closed solution is not worth supporting. To those who want to see VoIP softphones become widespread, a SIP client supporting only patent- encumbered, royalty-licensed audio (and video) codecs is one step forward and one step back.

If your commercial OS friends start asking you about Skype, I would suggest steering them away from Gizmo and toward a nice cross-platform, GPLed client. And, in the meantime, I would start looking for a way to speed up support for free voice codecs in open source and proprietary clients.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../09/22/2039237





Skype Refreshes P2P Voice Chat Software

Skype has released a refresh of its popular voice chat software, adding features that it hopes will solidify its position as the market leader. Improvements to sound quality, increased personalization, and new mobility options are just a few of the additions included in the release. The company claims some 56 million registered users, with 170,000 new registrations per day. Skype was recently acquired by eBay in a USD 2.6 billion deal announced September 12.

Skype 1.4 incorporates two premium features into the client. Call forwarding will allow a user to forward calls to another Skype user for free, or to a traditional phone line for a fee using the company's SkypeOut service. Personalization is also now possible, working much like a mobile phone. Customers will pay a small fee of 1 euro, or about USD 1.20 USD to personalize the client with pictures, sounds and ringtones. Three companies have partnered with Skype to enable such options: American Greetings, Qpass, and Wee World.

A new wizard will also help to simplify the Skype registration and initial use of the product. The company says that as a result, it will take users about three minutes to get started with version 1.4. Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom says his company has always worked to give their users what they want.

"Today, we are thrilled to be delivering on this promise by offering a new version of Skype which both new and existing callers will find adds powerful and innovative new features like call forwarding and personalization, as well as offering our best ever sound quality on our simplest product to install and use," he said.
http://www.sda-india.com/sda/news/ps...age,India.html





Free the Cell Phone!
Jennifer Granick

Last week, I was contacted by a small company that I'll call Unlocko. Unlocko sells software that "unlocks" mobile phones so owners can select different cellular providers on the same handset. The company had received a cease-and-desist letter from a large mobile phone provider, which I'll call CellPhoneCo.

Like most U.S. cellular providers, CellPhoneCo electronically locks the handsets it sells so the phones can only be used with CellPhoneCo's service. CellPhoneCo claims that the sale of unlocking software is illegal.

The financial motive behind this claim is obvious. Companies have been using the razor blade business model to guarantee a steady stream of revenue ever since, well, the razor blade. Cell phone companies sell you a phone at a discount, and then make up the difference by requiring you to sign a multi-year contract promising to pay monthly fees for mobile phone service or to fork over a hefty termination penalty if you break the deal.

But many customers, particularly those who travel internationally, want more choice. They may be perfectly happy paying their service provider the usual monthly fee to use their GSM phone in the United States, but in Europe they want to use the same phone with a European carrier that won't charge for roaming or long distance. Or they might find that their usual carrier doesn't have reliable service at their summer house, and they want to use a different provider while vacationing. Or customers might want to take the same phone to a different carrier after their service contract ends.

As a result, a burgeoning market has developed for unlocking software that allows customers to modify their phones to accept signals from the service provider of their choice.

Here, CellPhoneCo is making a novel argument: that it can stop a business with which it has no contractual relationship from selling software that customers might use for these purposes. Does CellPhoneCo have a legal right to squelch unlocking software?

To lock out the unlockers, CellPhoneCo is turning to a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act intended to prevent people from disabling technology that protects games, songs and movies from illegal duplication. The DMCA says that you can't distribute tools that break -- or circumvent -- technological measures that control access to copyright works.

But CellPhoneCo isn't asserting that Unlocko's program copies any copyright-protected software or content. Its claim is more subtle.

Unlocko's software reprograms your mobile phone so it bypasses the "secret handshake" CellPhoneCo's locking software requires before the phone will operate. After "circumventing" the handshake requirement, the phone -- like virtually any modern piece of electronics -- runs software installed on its internal chip.

Therefore, CellPhoneCo claims, Unlocko's program unlawfully circumvents a technological measure controlling access to the phone's copyright-protected software.

But other resourceful manufacturers have tried similar tactics to lock customers into aftermarket goods and services, and failed in the end.

For example, printer company Lexmark wanted its customers to buy its brand name refill cartridges instead of cheaper generic ones. It programmed the printer software to require a "secret handshake" from the cartridge before it would operate. When competitors figured out how to make their cartridges work in Lexmark printers regardless, the company sued, claiming that the competitors violated the DMCA because software on the generic cartridge chip was circumventing the secret handshake and accessing the copyright-protected software in the printer.

In the trial court, Lexmark won, perhaps inspiring the Chamberlain Group, a garage door company, to file a similar case against a competitor that sold universal garage door openers. In that case, however, the trial court rejected Chamberlain's DMCA argument. The court decided that Chamberlain had no legal right to control how its customers open their own garage doors.

This view probably influenced the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviewed the Lexmark decision, because it later reversed the trial court, explaining that printer owners had an unfettered right to run software installed on their printers.

A court should view CellPhoneCo's DMCA argument the same way. It's true that by tying customers into CellPhoneCo's service, the company can provide cheaper phones. But CellPhoneCo is legally entitled to receive its expected future revenue under its service contract with the customer, regardless of what service the customer uses. Meanwhile, customer choice means mobile users can select the best service now, while breeding competition that will improve both price and quality for all users.

Most importantly, CellPhoneCo shouldn't be able to stop Unlocko, a company with which it has no contractual relationship, from making a product that fosters consumer choice and competition.

In the physical world, we instinctively understand that the law doesn't forbid you from installing generic parts in your Honda, and that the Maytag repairman isn't the only person allowed to service your washing machine. CellPhoneCo hopes to use the law to create an unbreakable bond between selling phones and selling wireless service. If courts protect anti-competitive business practices, customers won't simply be making contractual promises not to buy from other vendors -- other vendors won't even exist. We literally won't know what we're missing.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68989,00.html





Google, Sun in Challenge to Microsoft
Matthew Fordahl

Google Inc. took a step toward challenging Microsoft Corp.'s dominance of computer software with the announcement Tuesday of a collaboration agreement with Sun Microsystems Inc.

The move could lead to Google offering next-generation word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration tools that would take on Microsoft's industry-leading Office suite of software.

But for now its significance may be mostly as a symbolic shot across Microsoft's bow, signaling Google's intention of attacking the world's biggest software company head on.

Aside from a plan to offer Google's toolbar program with downloads of Java software, details of the agreement were scant. Though it could lead to a new pipeline for Sun software to millions of computers, there was no firm commitment.

Some downplayed the announcement as a publicity stunt that probably would not have occurred had Google CEO Eric Schmidt not spent 14 years of his career working at Sun under CEO Scott McNealy.

The alliance would be a boon for Sun if Google had promised to buy some of the company's sophisticated computers, but no ironclad commitments were announced.

"There really isn't much depth to this partnership," said industry analyst Rob Enderle.

"I think Eric is doing this as personal favor for Scott," he said. "It provides a certain amount of press and visibility to Sun when there hasn't been very many positive things going on at the company."

Sun's shares edged up a penny Tuesday to close at $4.20 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where Google's shares fell $7.68 to finish at $311. Microsoft's shares lost 52 cents, or 2.04 percent, to close at $24.98.

As part of the agreement, Sun will offer Google's search toolbar with downloads of its free Java software, which is required to run a variety of Web-based applications and works with multiple operating systems.

The two companies, which did not disclose terms of the deal, said they also agreed "to explore opportunities to promote" other Sun technologies, including the freely available OpenOffice.

OpenOffice, an offshoot of Sun's StarOffice, is a leading challenger to the ubiquitous Office suite, a major cash cow for Microsoft. Both offer a word processor and spreadsheet among other applications.

"OpenOffice is already an alternative, but if Google gets involved in supporting it, that could be the thing that puts it over the top," said Forrester Research analyst John R. Rymer.

Neither McNealy nor Schmidt would say when or how Google might distribute Sun's software. Both said the Google toolbar option for Java downloads - the toolbar provides quick access to Google search, spell checking and a popup-ad blocker - is just a first step in a significant agreement.

"We only want to talk about what we're talking about here now ... we expect more," McNealy said.

Microsoft did not immediately comment.

OpenOffice could provide a vehicle for Google to diversify its sales, which are driven almost exclusively by online advertising. So-called office productivity software generates more than $10 billion in annual sales, estimated Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney.

"We believe this creates a potentially interesting new revenue opportunity for Google," Mahaney wrote in a research note Tuesday.

The deal could eventually boost the fortunes of programs that work on multiple operating systems, eating into Microsoft's profits from its dominant Windows computing environments.

Increasingly, many of the applications that computer users value most - such as news and weather tickers - run as Web services independent of the operating systems on their computers.

Java is a backbone of those Web services, along with Microsoft's .NET architecture.

Since it was launched a decade ago, Java has been used to power Web-based applications, standalone programs, cell phones and other gadgets across a variety of computer operating systems.

A key component of Sun's decade-old Java, its application-running platform, was the source of one of many rifts between Microsoft and Sun over the years.

Sun first sued the world's top software maker in 1997, claiming the Redmond, Wash., company rewrote elements of Java specific to Windows. Later, Microsoft said it would yank Java entirely from its ubiquitous software.

The wrangling ended in spring 2004, when the companies surprised the world with a $1.95 billion settlement and 10-year collaboration agreement.

Both Sun and Google share the common root of Stanford University. Sun - short for Stanford University Network - was founded there in the 1980s, while Google got its start there in the 1990s. And one of Sun's co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim, gave Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin $100,000 in 1998 to incorporate their young search company.

Sun has lost $4.5 billion since June 2001, although the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has recently started to show signs of recovery.

While Sun has been struggling, Google's fortunes have steadily risen. Though best known as a search engine, it now offers free e-mail, maps, instant messaging, video and last week announced it wants to provide free Wi-Fi to San Francisco.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100401428.html





Review: OpenOffice 2.0

OpenOffice Is Great Alternative To Microsoft
Andy Ihnatko

The biggest coup of open-source software isn't that it's (usually) free for the downloading. No, it's one of the few remaining incubators for truly great apps. Freed from commercial expectations, it starts with a good idea and steadily keeps on evolving as hundreds of developers keep adding features and improvements until, after years of commitment, the good idea finally emerges as a great app.

Witness the success of the Firefox browser. Many companies had the guts to challenge Internet Explorer, but did any of them have the resources and the commitment to stick with it for five or six years? No, not even as a tax dodge. Saying "We spent $740,000 trying to unseat a product with 83 percent market share" is a rocketship to an audit. But years of steady, relentless progress led inevitably to the debut of Firefox as a real, honest-to-goodness app and a browser that makes Explorer seem pointless and silly.

Now it's OpenOffice's turn. An official, "stable" release of OpenOffice 2.0 will be available for download in a few days from www.openoffice.org. And with this ambitious new edition of the venerable alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice has officially been FireFoxed. That is, you won't use it because you hate Microsoft or because you don't like tying your whole office's (or your government's) ability to function to the proprietary whims of one single company. Maybe you won't even use it just because it'll cost you $0 to Microsoft Office's $365. You'll use it because OpenOffice 2.0 is an attractive and compelling suite of office apps in its own right.

The individual improvements to its apps are many and fundamental, but head-and-shoulders above them all is the simple fact that OpenOffice now has a clean and simple user interface that doesn't get in the way of what you're trying to accomplish. Working with 1.x was a bit like having a long conversation with a smart, witty person who desperately needed a breath mint: You stuck with it, though at a cost. 2.0 is actually a slight improvement over MS Office's standard configuration. Its file-handling has also been tweaked to make working with MS Office docs a more transparent experience.

Which brings us to the central question: For all of its improvements, is OpenOffice 2.0 a credible replacement for MS Office? You know, after a few weeks of using the suite and trying to settle on an answer, I've concluded that it's an unsophisticated question to begin with. OpenOffice is mature and ambitious enough in its design to be thought of as its own product, not as some sort of counterfeit Gucci bag.

But OK: (just this once, mind you) Let's be unsophisticated. OpenOffice consists of Write, Calc, Impress, Draw (a simple graphics app) and Base, analogues for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

Each app can natively read and write files created by its Microsoft counterpart, though the deeper the document reaches into MS Office's top-drawer features, the greater the chance that you'll have to massage the results after importing it into OpenOffice.

But let's not gloss over Open-Office's choice of native file format, either. OpenDocument is itself an open standard, meaning that it's 100 percent non-proprietary and any developer (including Microsoft) can write apps that support the format.

Potentially that's a revolutionary feature; with all of your docs based on an open standard, you're free to switch to a different office suite without converting any of your old data.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts feels so strongly about this sort of freedom and accessibility that it's chosen OpenDocument as its official office format for both internal use and for public documents.

Feature-wise, I'd guesstimate that OpenOffice 2.0 is only missing about 5 percent of MS Office's feature set, and nearly every missing feature is a power tool. Which is sort of an all-or-nothing thing: either it's a feature that you've never used and never will, or it's something you absolutely rely on each and every day.

Write allows you to track changes, for example, but it could never keep up with the hundreds of notes and changes that four different editors added to the 600- page book I've just finished writing. In other cases, such as the suite's macro language and Calc's DataPilot feature, the basic abilities are there, yes, but they're not directly compatible with Microsoft's macros or with Excel's Pivot Tables, so you'd have to re-create them.

Who cares? There's no risk involved. Download OpenOffice 2.0, throw your MS Office files at it, and see what happens. Or try Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 8, which is based on OpenOffice 2.0's code base and includes (among many enhancements) cleaner importing and exporting. StarOffice (from www.sun.com) costs $99 boxed or $69 as a download.

OpenOffice 2.0 really ought to be the first choice for all students, nearly every user and even many small businesses. It's definitely not a replacement for Microsoft Office 2003, but it's an utterly credible alternative. And for most people, it's all the Office they'll ever need.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/workt...in-andy22.html





Red Hat To Seek Trusted OS Status

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, due at the end of 2006, is expected to become the first "trusted" Linux, a security designation that could accelerate partners’ Linux business with the government.
Paula Rooney

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, due at the end of 2006, is expected to become the first “trusted” Linux, a security designation that could accelerate partners’ Linux business with the government.

Last week, Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said it is working with IBM and Trusted Computer Solutions, Herndon, Va., to make its enterprise Linux distribution compliant with the Common Criteria of the Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4), the government’s highest security rating. To achieve trusted operating-system status, technology must support three additional levels: the labeled security protection profile (LSPP), the controlled access protection profile (CAPP) and role-based access control security capabilities.

Sun Microsystems, Novell and Microsoft have earned the EAL4 rating, but only Sun Solaris 9 has full trusted OS status. Sun is expected to release Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions during the first half of 2006, a Sun spokeswoman said.

Red Hat rival Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 4 has an EAL4+ rating, which signifies it supports CAPP requirements. Novell may add support for LSPP in SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, due next spring, but has not decided whether to pursue the full trusted OS designation, a company spokesman said.

One open-source consultant was skeptical of the Red Hat effort, saying the requirements to become a trusted OS can’t be met by an out-of-the-box solution. “Technically, a trusted OS is one that has achieved EAL compliance, although most security agencies consider EAL4 a minimum,” said Chris Maresca, senior partner at Olliance Group, Palo Alto, Calif.

What gives Red Hat a technical advantage over Novell is its support for SELinux, a Security-Enhanced Linux derivative developed by the National Security Agency, said Ed Hammersla, COO of Trusted Computer, whose TCS Trusted Linux will be merged with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in late 2006.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=171202290





Open Internet, We Hardly Knew Ye
Jennifer Granick

Hurricane Katrina tore families away from their homes and from each other. And with the Gulf Coast in chaos, electricity out and cell-phone towers down, people in far-flung places across the United States turned to the robust, decentralized internet to find their loved ones.

While some evacuees posted their whereabouts on existing sites like craigslist, others turned to a variety of new message boards created specially for evacuees.

Almost immediately, there were too many sites to choose from. A grandchild looking for her grandmother, or a father for his son and wife, had literally dozens of online databases to search. The internet offered a solution here as well. An international, ad hoc group of self- described geeks built a system that automatically combined information from the dozens of refugee listing sites into a single, searchable database that family members could use to find each other.
That database, at Katrinalist.net, is tangible evidence of the beauty and power of internet technology in the hands of well-meaning citizens.

It's also an endangered species. In a few years, legal doctrines being aggressively pushed by corporations and law enforcement officials might prevent something cool and useful like this from ever happening again.

In a variety of cases, courts are holding that people can't access internet computers without first getting authorization from the computer's owner. Judges are assuming that the public has no right to use unsecured computers connected to the internet, and are requiring the public to get permission first.

For example, many ISPs and some prosecutors are arguing that it's a crime to use unsecured wireless access points without the explicit permission of the owner. Antispam crusaders advocate blocking any e-mails that haven't been whitelisted first. Airlines like American and auction sites like eBay -- which want customers to visit their websites, view their ads and "join the community" -- have won court injunctions against companies that collect price information on plane fares or auctions to help consumers comparison shop.

Under ancient legal theories like "trespass to chattels" and ill-advised modern laws like the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and state computer crime statutes, courts are holding that if you don't have authorization, you can't access computers.

And if you can't access computers, you can't collect data about airfares, auctions or evacuees.

The better world is one in which we don't need to seek permission or risk punishment to do cool stuff that makes the world a better place. In the early days of the internet, a lot of people felt that we'd found that better world. Thanks to the internet's open protocols, many of the most useful innovations, from the web to instant messaging to internet telephony, emerged without developers needing anyone's permission to run their cool new code.

But under a permission-only legal regime, the Katrinalist.net volunteers would have had to contact every site with listing data and ask for authorization to use the information first. With dozens of sites popping up in the days following the storm, getting permission would have taken a lot of time -- if the site owners could even be reached and convinced of the merit of the idea in the first place.

On the internet, having to ask permission first can kill the creation of a useful new tool.

The law should treat the internet as open by default -- a public resource rather than a gated community. This doesn't mean that we can't protect our networked computers or data with copyright law, passwords, firewalls or perhaps even terms-of-service agreements. But rather than asking whether a user obtained permission to access computers connected to the internet, the law should ask whether the owner did anything to prevent public access.

In the absence of intellectual property protection or technological barriers to information access, courts and legislatures must allow free, unfettered use of data and machines that owners place online and leave publicly accessible.

It's an accident of technology that data published on the internet must be contained on computer servers. By giving owners too many rights to control whether and when the public accesses those servers, we will lose the very openness that makes the internet particularly cool. We'll also lose the rights that we already have in the real world, to comparison shop, to search, to collect information or even to help hurricane victims find each other.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,68850,00.html





Microsoft, Film Studios Tap Jackson For 'Halo'
Lisa Baertlein

The Oscar-winning creative team behind the "The Lord of the Rings" films, including director Peter Jackson, has been named to run the production of the upcoming film based on Microsoft Corp.'s blockbuster "Halo" video game, the company said on Tuesday.

Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, will serve as the executive producers for "Halo," which is targeted for worldwide release in mid-2007 by Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox film studios.

Universal will oversee the film's production and domestic distribution. Fox will handle international distribution.

Donna Langley, Universal's production president, told Reuters it is impossible at this early stage to give specific details about the film.

"The game is a good template," hinted Langley, who added that "Halo" will have a bigger budget than "Doom," the video game-inspired Universal film due in theaters later this month.

Langley described "Doom" as a monster chase movie that moves from Point A to Point B. The "Halo" games have a more complex mythology, characters, environments and worlds, Langley said.

"Halo," the best-selling franchise for Microsoft's Xbox game console, follows the adventures of the futuristic super-soldier "Master Chief" as he battles an alien onslaught.

Eradicating Cynicism

The "Halo" movie will be shot in Wellington, New Zealand, and will use Jackson's production and post-production facilities there.

"He eradicates any cynicism that might exist with core fans (of the game). At the same time, he makes a movie like this appealing to a mainstream audience," Langley said of the director, who is an avid video game player and fan of "Halo."

The executive producers will collaborate with Universal, Fox and Microsoft's Bungie Studios, which created the game.

Screenwriter and novelist Alex Garland wrote the original feature film adaptation of Halo. A director will be named in coming weeks, and the cast has yet to be announced.

Jackson and Walsh are currently in post-production on Universal's "King Kong," slated for release in December. "Halo" marks the first time that the duo are acting as executive producers on a major film that Jackson is not directing.

The video game industry -- whose sales rival those of U.S. box offices -- is gaining status, taming its maverick image and moving closer to Hollywood. By the time of its release, "Halo" will join such other video game-inspired films as "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," "Resident Evil," and "Doom." But the industry's Hollywood inroads have not been without bumps.

Hollywood's major film studios gave Microsoft a cool reception last spring when the company came to them with an initially high asking price for "Halo." The script was delivered by costumed, laser gun-toting messengers.

As part of their deal with the global software giant and No. 2 video game console maker, Universal and Fox will pay Microsoft $5 million plus a percentage of movie ticket sales. The price is capped at 10 percent of domestic box office receipts.

Universal Pictures is operated by the NBC Universal media division of General Electric Co., and is co-owned by Vivendi Universal. Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Ltd.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False