[JackSpratts]

MPAA Leader Weighs In on Grokster Case
Chris Nolan

Dan Glickman, a former congressman and a Cabinet member in the Clinton administration, took over as CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America last fall.

Although Glickman didn't initiate the association's lawsuits, which have led to the U.S. Supreme Court's pending decision on the legal merits and ramifications of peer-to-peer file sharing, his brief tenure has coincided with the hearing of what is perhaps the most-watched legal action in the tech community.

It's a case that will set the tone for how digital copyright is managed—legally and in the real-world marketplace—for some time to come.

Glickman, who is making a deliberate effort to talk to more tech folks more frequently, sat down with me for an interview in his Washington, D.C., office Tuesday morning.

What do you think the Supreme Court is going to decide in MGM v. Grokster?

I'm not clairvoyant. My guess is, if I were betting, that we—meaning the MGM et al group—will win a victory. I can't tell you how sweeping the victory will be, nor can I tell you whether the issue ultimately, in part, gets remanded back to the district court for further evidentiary discussions.

The betting around Washington is that it is going to be sent back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Yeah. I think if it's sent back, it will be sent back with an affirmation of the 9th Circuit. It will be sent back with the recognition that conduct which is geared to encourage people to infringe is wrong and illegal, and if it's sent back, it will be sent back with some different legal context in mind.

Is conduct innovation and invention, or is it encouragement of the innovation and invention?

It's clear the conduct is not innovation or invention because we're all in that game, whether we're in the technology business directly or the content business. The conduct I'm referring to is the conduct which actively encourages people to break the copyright law, and that is what we saw in Grokster, where we have a peer-to-peer service that is established, in our judgment, to encourage people to take music and movies without paying for them.

Grokster is set up in a way that avoids "ownership." That's kind of a trend, and if I were you, I'd be worried. Are you?

Well, obviously, we're worried enough to go to court to try to stop this behavior from occurring.

I've got on my desk—you see, 'Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil'—the fact of the matter is that the law is replete with evidence that [if there's] active or constructive knowledge that the law being broken, you can't escape from that, you can't hide from that. You can't say 'I don't know and I don't care.'

So, the vogue in some tech companies to think, 'Oh well, if it's out there on the network, it's off our servers, we don't have to worry about it,' is not one that you'd cotton to?

It's certainly one we don't cotton to when, in fact, the user is encouraged to in fact infringe. This is, of course, a tricky area. I don't know exactly how far the court is going to go, and I'm not an expert lawyer in this situation.

Almost everyone I've spoken to in the past couple of days has talked about how engaged the justices were, and they were struck by the astuteness of their technical questions, that's both tech people as well as people here in Washington.

I sat in on the hearing, and all but Justice Thomas asked serious questions, all the way from somewhat complicated technology questions to more basic questions about the role of copyright in a modern society.

Let's talk about that. My feeling is that the Grokster case is really the thing everyone is waiting for. That after this, there will be some congressional redress or action. There's a feeling that Congress will somehow update or change copyright law, either to protect companies like your members against the 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' or on the part of technology users to allow them more freedom and to relieve the threat that they feel is hanging over them.

From the larger perspective, we have to recognize that creative juices are largely fed through some form of compensation. That is that while, yeah, some people do create out of the goodness of their heart, it defies the laws of human nature to think that people are going to come up with new ideas— whether it's movies, music, books, software or other inventions just because it's a sweet and wonderful thing to do. That's that side of the coin.

The other side of the coin is that technology is changing so rapidly and consumers' desires for new products are changing so rapidly that it's harder and harder to fit an old model into this new distribution system that we've got.

On the other hand, I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and I saw all this amazing stuff. [The fact that] all these new things had movies—they're running things that we have created— on there shows that it's a little bit like the old song, 'Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage—you can't have one without the other.' It's going to get trickier and trickier to try and figure out how to compensate artists and creators in this new world.

Next Page: The tech and content worlds need to work together, Glickman says.

Having said that, Larry Lessig has put forth his Creative Commons licensing idea. Former MPAA head Jack Valenti didn't quite endorse it but seemed receptive. Have you changed course on that?

My position—at this stage—would be roughly the same as Jack's.

The one thing I am trying to do is—the tech world and the, I hate to use the word 'content,' world, because we're all kind of in this together—these two worlds are worlds that have to work together. What I've noticed in Washington over the past 10 or 15 years is that every issue that's worked on becomes Armageddon here, and I want to try and keep these issues as much as possible from becoming another Armageddon type of thing.

How?

The only thing you can really do is keep talking, keep the lines of communication open. The other night, I was at a dinner for Bill Gates. Microsoft invited me to come. There's all sorts of opportunities where we can work together and talk.

Are you talking to any companies besides Microsoft?

Yes. We as an organization are talking to all the companies.

Including TiVo?

Yes. As a matter of fact, at the Consumer Electronics Show, I met with the TiVo people. There's no reason not to meet with them.

I don't think a lot of people understand the television aspect of the motion picture business [Most TV shows are produced by the studios].

It's like the old Pogo thing: We have met the enemy and it is us, so to speak. Who would have thought that 'them' would become 'us'? Television—and it's not just television, it's all sorts of delivery systems to the individual—are all now part of our world, and they weren't years and years ago.

That's an interesting point. When you talk about MPAA, you're talking about people who are used to selling large packages of content to people. We're moving into a one-to-one world, and TiVo allows me to record a program, not necessarily watch a channel.

The concept of time shifting generally, that's obviously an enormous change, particularly for the television and broadcast part of this business. Modern technology, digital technology will allow the consumer to do an awful lot of things that are inconsistent with the historic mode of how broadcast television was created. It's just an enormous challenge for people in this business. That's why so many of them have gone into multiple businesses.

What kind of time frame do you see for Grokster?

The decision will come out sometime near the end of June [the Supreme Court adjourns at the end of June and issues its opinions before that date]. And then we'll see. No body knows exactly what the decision is. Obviously, we're getting ready to anticipate that, both offensively and defensively, as I'm sure some in the tech community are doing as well.

We're waiting to see what it is and then to see what, if any, remedies are needed or desirable, either in the legislative context—more than likely there will be a strong look at that—but I think the marketplace will be the main place where a lot of this stuff is decided.

eWEEK.com technology and politics columnist Chris Nolan spent years chronicling the excesses of the dot-com era with incisive analysis leavened with a dash of humor. Before that, she covered politics and technology in D.C. You can read her musings on politics and technology every day in her Politics from Left to Right Weblog.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1812933,00.asp


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What will Ahnud do?

State Bill to Limit RFID
Kim Zetter

While civil libertarians battle the federal government's decision to embed RFID chips in new U.S. passports, a California bill is moving swiftly through the state legislature that would make it illegal for state agencies and other bodies to use the technology in state identification documents.

The bill, which California lawmakers believe is the first of its kind in the nation, would prohibit the use of radio- frequency identification, or RFID, chips in state identity documents such as student badges, driver's licenses, medical cards and state employee cards. The bill allows for some exceptions.

RFID, also known as contactless integrated circuits, transmits information wirelessly, allowing scanners to read cards from a distance, typically a few feet. The technology is widely used in building security and inventory-tracking systems, and is being considered for numerous other applications.

The bill, which passed out of the state Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday with a vote of 6 to 1, also would outlaw skimming -- which occurs when an unauthorized person with an electronic reading device surreptitiously reads the electronic information on an RFID chip without the knowledge of the person carrying or wearing the chip.

"It's heartening to think that hopefully the government is starting to recognize the seriousness of the security and privacy implications," said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which helped draft the legislation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, a democrat representing a district in Northern California, introduced the Identity Information Protection Act of 2005 (SB682) in February after a small-town California school received national attention for launching an RFID program to track students without properly notifying parents or students.

In January, Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, California, began requiring students to wear photo ID cards embedded with an RFID chip containing a 15-digit number assigned to each student to track attendance.

The school cut a deal with a local maker of the technology to test the tracking system and receive a percentage of profits if the company succeeded in selling the system to other school districts. But after a group of outraged parents protested the plan, the school dropped it.

Simitian said the incident was the catalyst that was needed to address a technology that was on its way to becoming ubiquitous.

"(The use of RFID) is an issue we've been following for some time in the legislature, but mostly in (relation to) the retail setting in years past," Sen. Simitian told Wired News. "But the events in the Northern California school district brought the personal privacy issues (regarding the technology) into sharp relief."

Simitian said California's move was also spurred by plans at the federal level to use RFID in passports.

"If you've got a discussion going on that reaches from neighborhood elementary schools to the U.S. Department of State, that suggests that it's time to confront the position and try to put some thoughtful, rational policy in place," he said.

Concerns about RFID center around surreptitious scanning and tracking, since data on the chips can be picked up by either an authorized or an unauthorized reader without the knowledge of the person carrying the chip.

For example, a student participating in a protest on a state university campus could be scanned by a campus policeman carrying a reader to track his political activities. Or, depending on the kind of data stored on the card, someone could read the data on a chip in order to clone it and create false documents.

The bill allows for a number of exceptions for the use of RFID, such as devices used for paying bridge and road tolls, ID badges used for inmates housed in prisons or mental health facilities, or ID bracelets and badges used for children under the age of four who are in the care of a government-operated medical facility.

The bill allows agencies to obtain additional exceptions to the ban if they can prove to the legislature that there is a compelling state interest to use it in certain situations and can prove that other, less invasive technologies would be unsuitable. The bill allows state agencies that already have RFID devices in place -- such as the Senate and Assembly office buildings -- to phase them out by 2011.

"RFID in itself is not a bad thing. But there are circumstances where RFID technology is not appropriate because of the privacy and security risks," said Ozer. "There are other (technology) options that deliver the same kind of convenience without the same kind of privacy concerns. Right now there's no mechanism, no control over the state deciding to adopt RFID without having staff think about why they need the technology."

The bill has the support of a wide range of consumer and privacy groups, in particular groups concerned with domestic violence and stalking, who fear that RFID would expose the whereabouts of women and children who have fled dangerous home environments. It also has bipartisan support from conservative and liberal lawmakers and organizations like the conservative Capitol Resource Institute.

"It's restoring my faith in the political system that it doesn't have to be a bipartisan issue and that they can put party politics aside and just do what's good for the people of California," said Michele Tatro, mother of two Brittan Elementary School students, who helped lead the fight against her school district's RFID program. "This issue is wrong for the state of California and they recognized it right away."

Tatro, along with her husband and two teenage children, appeared at a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to discuss the bill on Tuesday, where she said committee members expressed "shock and amazement" when the parent of another Brittan student described what happened at their school.

"They couldn't believe what (we) told them," Tatro said. "By their facial reactions you could tell that the panel was appalled."

Tatro said her kids were pleased that the bill was moving forward but said they hadn't yet grasped its full significance.

"It's still sinking in to us, the fact that this is the first legislation of its kind, not only in the state of California but in the nation," Tatro said. "I don't think they realized the gravity of that, how big that is."

The bill will likely reach the Senate floor in late May or early June.

Ozer said she hoped the move in California would spur federal legislators to re-examine their use of RFID in passports.

"California legislators are often on the forefront of these issues, and they definitely sent an important message by moving the bill on," Ozer said. "After all of this talk, hopefully some congressmen are finally waking up to the serious privacy and security ramifications of utilizing this technology in identification documents."

The Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, a group representing the RFID industry in the United States, was unavailable for comment late Thursday.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67382,00.html


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He can read the writing on the emails

Lawmaker Rips RFID Passport Plans
Kim Zetter

A key U.S. congressman who led post-Sept. 11 passport reforms told European diplomats last week that there was no need for European countries to put RFID chips in their passports and that Congress never required them to do so.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, expressed dismay that EU countries were planning to employ a technology that was still unproven for use in travel documents that would add costs and delays to rolling out new, more secure passports.

Sensenbrenner said the countries were planning to use RFID chips even though the United States had not required them to do so and there were other, more proven technologies available that would allow countries to meet an Oct. 26, 2005, deadline Congress set for issuing new passports. He made the comments during an April 27 breakfast meeting with EU ambassadors at the Luxembourg Embassy in Washington.

Sensenbrenner authored the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, which stipulates new biometric passport requirements for the 27 so-called visa-waiver countries whose citizens don't need visas to enter the United States if they come for 90 days or less. According to Section 303 of the act, new passports must be machine-readable and conform to standards issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, a United Nations agency that was tasked with developing standards for travel documents.

"The Border Security Act stipulated only that biometric identifiers and documents meet ICAO standards, and that the passport be 'machine-readable,'" Sensenbrenner said. "(T)hat the EU should choose an elaborate and expensive path to meet the requirement has led to consequences that are regrettable, but not insurmountable."

Sensenbrenner's remarks underscore ongoing uncertainty over technical requirements for electronic passports, even as dozens of countries, including the United States, move forward with plans to adopt them. The use of RFID in passports has sparked debate over the potential implications for privacy and raised concerns about costs and delays in shoring up a system aimed at verifying the identities of millions of travelers each month.

RFID, also known as contactless integrated circuits, transmits information wirelessly, allowing scanners to read cards from a distance, typically a few feet. The technology is widely used in building security and inventory- tracking systems, and is being considered for numerous other applications.

Concerns about RFID center on surreptitious scanning and tracking, since data on the chips can be picked up either by an authorized or an unauthorized reader without the knowledge of the person carrying the chip.

Sensenbrenner said that although the act calls for passports to use some kind of biometric identifier -- such as a standardized, digitally stored facial image that can be used with facial-recognition software -- it doesn't require countries to use an RFID chip to store the biometric data on the passport. Other technologies can be used -- such as 2-D bar codes -- that don't carry the same privacy and security risks as RFID.

Biometrics is a technology that measures physiological characteristics of a person to distinguish one person from another and to authenticate that an individual is who he says he is. The physiological characteristics can be facial or hand patterns, fingerprints, irises or voice patterns.

The act doesn't specify which biometric characteristic a country should measure. The ICAO standards include facial biometrics and fingerprint biometrics, although the standards make only facial biometrics mandatory for passports.

The biometric characteristics a country chooses to embed in its passport are important because they help determine what kind of technology is necessary to store the data on the passport. The State Department has decided to include only a digital photograph in U.S. passports, but the EU will include fingerprints as well, and the United Kingdom is considering embedding iris scans in its passports.

For that reason, the ICAO standards call for countries to use a "contactless IC chip."

Frank Moss, speaking last month at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Seattle, said that RFID chips were preferred because they could store more data than a magnetic strip or a bar code and, being contactless, they could speed movement through border crossings.

"One of the purposes of this is not just security," Moss said, "it is in fact travel facilitation by putting this technology into a contactless chip and really allowing some data to be collected on travelers before they actually physically appear before the border inspector.... Contactless chips have considerably higher bandwidth so we get the data out of the chip and into the reader (without impeding) travel."

The act originally required visa-waiver countries to begin issuing new, biometric-enabled passports beginning Oct. 26, 2004, but the deadline was extended to October of this year when it became clear that countries could not meet it. The deadline affects only new passports. Countries do not have to replace existing passports before they expire.

But many countries are now saying they cannot meet the October 2005 deadline either. This is primarily because the RFID chips and readers they plan to use are still in the testing phase. Early interoperability tests have indicated reliability and privacy problems with regard to reading the chips.

Sensenbrenner criticized not only European countries opting for RFID, but the ICAO for approving its use in the first place. He said countries would not have had trouble meeting the original October 2004 deadline had ICAO opted for a proven technology rather than RFID.

He told the diplomats that "the only obstacle to visa-waiver program countries meeting the 2004 deadline was for ICAO to update standards for digital photographs of the facial images contained in passports, and possibly address some software and camera technicalities relating to how the photos could be read by machine standards for purposes of validation."

Sensenbrenner said Congress chose October 2004 to force countries to modernize their passports promptly. He also said Congress anticipated that the ICAO would establish "reasonable, cost-effective standards which relied upon existing technology" rather than becoming "enmeshed in new and unproven technology."

In a letter Sensenbrenner sent to leaders of the European Union on April 5, he wrote that using additional biometric elements increased the cost of creating an infrastructure for reading the passports and added technical obstacles that led to delays in implementing the new passport system.

"In my view, much expense and public consternation could have been avoided by a less technically ambitious approach, one that simply met the terms of the act as written," Sensenbrenner wrote in the letter.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Kimberly Weissman could not respond to Sensenbrenner's statements other than to say that plans for the visa-waiver passports are still being negotiated.

"(DHS Secretary Michael) Chertoff is set to meet with Sensenbrenner (this month) to review this issue. It is still under review," she said. "We are continuing to work with our international partners and the administration on how we will proceed."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67418,00.html


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Tempe 1st Major City Going Fully Wireless

Wi-Fi Internet access should be up by fall
Stephanie Paterik

It's official: Tempe will become the first major metropolitan area in the United States to deploy citywide wireless Internet access.

The City Council has approved a contract with MobilePro Corp. and Strix Systems, and staff members are wrapping up negotiations this week. The companies will install hundreds of access points throughout Tempe in phases, starting this summer with south Tempe.

The "mesh network" will cover the entire city by late summer or early fall, allowing subscribers to fire up the Internet on laptops, cellphones and PDAs anywhere within Tempe's borders.

"Tempe is blazing the trail" to provide residents and businesses with full access, said Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman, who logs on wirelessly at home. He said it would allow people to enjoy the community's recreational amenities while still tending to "the occasional business and family interruption."

Monthly subscriptions are likely to be $20 for dial-up speed and $30 to $40 for high-speed wireless, although prices have not been set.

Only 29 U.S. cities have gone completely wireless, mostly rural or remote regions without traditional high-speed Internet access, according to a March report by muniwireless.com. Eight urban areas in addition to Tempe plan to join the trend, including Philadelphia, Cleveland, West Hollywood, Calif. and Madison, Wis.

Tempe will be the first Arizona city to try border-to-border wireless access. Nearby communities are consulting Tempe as they consider similar action, said Dave Heck, Tempe's deputy manager of information technology.

"I think it's going to be looked at by a lot of folks," he said, "especially the model we took in letting someone else install and manage it."

Tempe is offering use of its streetlights for nodes that serve as access points, and in exchange, city officials and public safety workers will get free wireless on the job.

There are persistent fears about the safety of wireless Internet, but Strix uses advanced encryption and does not allow network users to view other users, said Doug Huemme, associate vice president of marketing.

Tempe and Arizona State University will continue to offer free wireless downtown, and anyone with a wireless device can access the city and university Web sites for free.

MobilePro is taking the unusual step of partnering with multiple service providers to give residents a choice. So far, Cox Communications, EarthLink and Limelight Networks will vie for wireless customers in Tempe.

"This will be a freedom of choice network," said Bruce Sanguinetti, president and chief executive officer of MobilPro's Neoreach Wireless Division. "That's the magic of what Tempe has pulled off. If you look at other wireless opportunities, you have to take what they give you. . . . This allows competition."

Based in Bethesda, Md., MobilePro faced off with three other bidders for Tempe's coveted contract, including America Online, Wildfire Internet Services and Wi-Vod Communications. It is teaming with Strix Systems of Calabasas, Calif., to provide the Internet backbone.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/t...-wifiZ10.html#


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Speakeasy Launches Wireless Broadband In Seattle

Speakeasy Inc., a privately owned Internet broadband provider, on Wednesday launched an Internet access service for businesses using

new wireless technology that it said was faster and easier to deploy than its current broadband service.

Seattle-based Speakeasy has built a loyal base of subscribers in most metro areas of the United States for DSL, which uses telephone lines to connect homes and businesses to the Internet.

The new wireless service, which will be launched first in Seattle, uses WiMAX technology, which the company said will allow users to connect to the Internet at much faster speeds without having to install complicated equipment.

Several major communication providers have said they expect WiMAX to play a key role in the growth of broadband Internet access, especially in urban areas.

Speakeasy Chief Executive Bruce Chatterley said that Seattle was an ideal place to experiment with WiMAX and related technology because its water, hills, tall buildings and trees provide a challenging topology.

Speakeasy is using Seattle's Space Needle, built for the 1962 World's Fair, as a broadcast and receiving tower for one of the wireless base stations that power the new service.

Speakeasy said it would start taking orders from Wednesday and begin deploying the service to customers next month.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8385351


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U.S. Cities Set Up Their Own Wireless Networks

A number of U.S. cities are becoming giant wireless "hot spots" where Internet users will be able to log on from the beach or a bus stop, a trend that is triggering a fierce backlash from telecom and cable giants.

"We look at this as another utility just like water, sewer, parks and recreation, that our communities should have," said St. Cloud, Florida, Mayor Glen Sangiovanni, who hopes to provide free wireless service to the entire city by the fall.

At a conference this week, officials from dozens of local governments compared notes, listened to pitches from vendors and discussed ways to counter the lobbying of telecommunications giants that have sought to block them at the state level.

Free or discounted wireless service can spur economic development, improve police patrols and other city services and encourage Internet use in poorer neighborhoods, they said.

Slightly more than 100 U.S. cities -- as big as Philadelphia and as small as Nantucket, Massachusetts -- are setting up wireless networks now. Conference organizer Daniel Aghion said close to 1,000 local governments worldwide have plans in the works.

The trend has prompted an intense backlash from the large telecom and cable providers that sell most broadband access in the United States. At their request, 13 states have passed laws restricting cities setting up their own networks, and several others are considering such bans.

"With so many other issues challenging municipalities today, why on earth should cities waste millions of taxpayer dollars to compete with carriers already offering high speed Internet service?" said Allison Remsen, spokeswoman for the U.S. Telecom Association, which represents incumbents like SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications.

Resistance Sparks Interest

City officials said they don't want to compete head on with commercial providers but aren't going to be held hostage to their profit concerns.

Providers have shown no interest in setting up broadband wireless service or offering free or discounted rates, they said. Sometimes they refuse to provide any broadband service at all.

"We begged them to deliver the service -- we didn't want to be in this business," said Scottsburg, Indiana, Mayor Bill Graham, who said local businesses threatened to leave his town before it set up its own wireless network.

The legal battles seem to have only increased interest among city officials, especially after squabbles over a Pennsylvania state law made national headlines last year.

"It helped to bring to light what the telecommunications industry was attempting to do," said Philadelphia technology manager Dianah Neff.

Others said the threat of a ban at the state level has spurred them to action.

"We're acting pretty quickly for a municipality of our size, because we don't like to be pre-empted," said Lindy Fleming McGuire, a Chicago City Council staffer.

Smaller wireless startups are rushing to provide the equipment and expertise needed to run city networks.

"Munis don't want to own this at all, they just want the service," said Robert Ford, chief executive of NextPhase Wireless, a service provider.

Rio Rancho, New Mexico, brought in wireless provider OttawaWireless because incumbents didn't reach many areas, assistant city administrator Peggy McCarthy said. Now that the network is up and running, the incumbents' service has grown more competitive, she said.

"The lethargy and apathy with which we had been given DSL and cable have both changed," she said.

Some cities, including Spokane, Washington, found they could easily set up wireless service when they upgrade their emergency communications networks with a little help from the Homeland Security Department. The federal department awarded $925 million last year for communications upgrades.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8388919


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Cities Brace For Broadband War
Jim Hu and Marguerite Reardon

A hundred years ago, when Louisiana was still literally in the dark, residents of Lafayette banded together to build a city-owned electric utility where once there was little more than swampland. Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, it is hatching plans to lay out its own state-of-the-art fiber-optic broadband network.

This time, the city's futuristic ambitions are challenged not by the rigors of geography but by obstacles of business: specifically, telecommunications giant BellSouth and cable provider Cox Communications, which claimed the region as their own years ago. But the historic coastal community, known for its eclectic culture and rhythmic zydeco music, is not about to abandon the pioneering spirit that begat its visionary reputation.

After a legal skirmish earlier this year, the two sides are preparing for a citywide election slated for mid-July that will decide the issue.

"The people of Lafayette feel like there is a history of seizing the initiative," said John St. Julien, a member of Lafayette Coming Together, a citizens group supporting the fiber network. "Our Creole and Cajun communities have always been told by outsiders that everything we did was wrong--from our language to the food we eat. Culturally, we've learned not to care what others think or say about us. I think it gives us a place to stand when companies like BellSouth and Cox come in and tell us we can't do something."

Across the country, acrimonious conflicts have erupted as local governments attempt to create publicly funded broadband services with faster connections and cheaper rates for all citizens, narrowing the so-called digital divide. The Bells and cable companies, for their part, argue that government intervention in their business is not justified and say they are far better equipped to operate complex and far-flung data networks.

As part of this special report, CNET News.com has created an interactive municipal broadband legislative map that details the major battlegrounds on the issue. At stake is the fate of high- speed Internet access for millions of Americans, hinging on a fundamental question of civics and economics--whether the government or private industries should take the leading role in building out what's considered this generation's critical infrastructure challenge.

"Is broadband fast food, or is it power?" said Doug Lichtman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. "The answer might be: 'We don't know. Let's experiment with it.' It might give us great information about what risks the government assumes, once it gets into it."

In some cases, local governments have simply stepped into a vacuum left by commercial providers that have proved slow or unwilling to bring broadband to their residents. But the situation has grown more complicated with public broadband proposals in major cities already served by private industry. These projects highlight a growing conviction that broadband is not merely a luxury of modern urban life, but rather an essential public service that could increase tourism and commerce while squeezing new efficiencies from services such as health care, education and even sanitation.

Despite the technology's youth, the dynamics over its control are as old as the nation itself. Governments and private businesses have long quarreled over who should control the build-out of highways, canals, railroads, the postal system and telephone networks. Oftentimes, what begins as a project of one side eventually falls into the hands of the other: The railroad system was first constructed by private companies but is now controlled largely by the federal government, while the postal system is run by Washington but faces stiff competition from private couriers such as FedEx and United Parcel Service of America.

Philadelphia is an early high-profile litmus test for whether cities and broadband are a good mix. As is the goal with many municipal projects, the city hopes that its planned wireless broadband network will put it on the map as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.

In April, city officials unveiled an ambitious plan to blanket Philadelphia's 135-square-mile area with wireless broadband, or Wi-Fi, access. Officials hope the network will attract tourists and businesses, while providing affordable broadband access to underprivileged residents. The service could cost as little as $20 a month, which is cheaper than local phone company Verizon Communications' rate of $30.

Not surprisingly, Verizon has fought fiercely against the plan. The Baby Bell successfully helped shepherd a state bill that bans any city in Pennsylvania from pursuing similar projects without Verizon's input.

State activity
Verizon isn't the only one taking the legislative route. Other Bells and cable companies have thrown their weight behind similar state bills that bar municipalities from building networks. Twenty states have already passed, or are trying to push through, legislation that would impose heavy restrictions on communities creating their own networks in areas already served by Bells and cable companies.

Thirteen of those states--Arkansas, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington--have passed bills restricting future public broadband projects, though existing initiatives are allowed to operate. The remaining eight have measures pending or have seen their bills fail to reach a vote.

The debate has become contentious, sparking heated opinions over how the nation can become a global leader in broadband. Critics of the state of U.S. broadband penetration cite the nation's ranking below Japan, Korea and Norway, to name a few. But telecommunications giants say broadband adoption continues to skyrocket and that competition remains healthy.

The origins of the conflict date back to the late 1990s, when the Bells and cable giants were just beginning to dip their toes in the broadband stream. Cities eager for high-speed networks faced frustrating delays, particularly in rural centers where the phone and cable companies faced the prospects of heavy costs and slim returns.

The story has changed dramatically in some ways since then. The Bells and cable giants are fighting a fierce war over broadband among Americans, prompting the local phone companies to lower prices, and cable providers to nearly double download speeds, over the past two years.

Within the next 12 months, Verizon and SBC Communications expect to launch their own pay TV services, to put more competitive pressure on cable companies. In late April, Verizon said it would sell to some customers DSL access without requiring people to buy a local phone line--a longtime demand from consumer groups.

Providers are also trying to add bells and whistles to the basic data pipe into the home. Some of the phone carriers, including Verizon and SBC, have partnered with Web portals Yahoo or MSN, or both. Cable giant Comcast runs its own broadband portal, which emphasizes high-bandwidth features such as video clips and video e-mail. Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service comes packaged with America Online.

"Broadband services are maturing enough where it's not just high-speed access to the Internet," said Mike Paxton, an analyst at In-Stat. "There's a lot more that can be done with a broadband connection now than in the past, and that is very attractive and beneficial to consumers."

Appealing to the states
The stakes for the winners are huge. So it's hardly a surprise that the Bells and cable companies are lobbying hard to keep government out of the race. They're working to support antimunicipal broadband bills at the state level and funding publicity campaigns to squash these projects. The message: Local governments should not compete against private industries, which have spent billions of dollars on infrastructure to serve residents and on city taxes.

The industry also argues that governments are in over their heads when they try to operate a complex citywide network. And if the city's plans go belly-up, opponents say residents will have to bail out the projects through higher tax bills.

"Our major focus--either through the legislative branch or through working with regulators--is to make sure...we have provisions in place that the resulting competition that we engage with is fair," BellSouth spokesman Joe Chandler said.

Fairness in the eyes of the Bells means implementing a series of "safeguards," according to Chandler. These include barring cities from using taxes to fund their ventures; requiring city networks to pay the same taxes as private companies; and requiring the public to vote on proposals before construction.

Many cities claim that they are not competing against the Bells and cable but rather are serving their communities. Legal experts wonder whether municipalities are addressing legitimate problems ignored by the telecoms, or whether they are trying stifle competition.

"I worry about the political economics of it," said Matthew Spitzer, Dean of the University of Southern California Law School. "Once the city gets into a business that's directly competitive with private companies, there are temptations to regulate the private companies in ways that disadvantage them."

What are cities doing?
Many communities remain undeterred. Larger cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago claim broadband is too expensive for lower-income residents.

In March, officials in Chicago threw down the gauntlet against the state of Illinois when they announced plans to consider blanketing the entire metropolis with Wi-Fi. Just as in Philadelphia and Lafayette, lawmakers promoting this plan think that cheap broadband is good for residents and offers an additional source of revenue for city coffers.

"It's our responsibility to protect the interests of citizens of Chicago, and if we feel a Wi-Fi system would open up opportunities to provide cheaper access, why wouldn't we examine it, and why should we be told by Springfield that we can't?" said Donal Quinlan, a spokesman for Chicago Alderman Edward Burke.

Smaller communities such as Scottsburg, Ind., and Lafayette hope that citywide broadband systems will attract more businesses and spark entrepreneurship.

Lafayette's economy over the last century has been tied to the oil industry. But as oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico run down, city leaders recognize that they need to attract new industries to the community to sustain growth. A fiber-based broadband network could help attract manufacturing-design companies and software developers, said Kaliste Saloom, an attorney in Lafayette who organized the Lafayette Yes political action group to campaign for the new fiber network.

"We have a great computer science program right here in Lafayette at the University of Louisiana," he said. "So we already have the talent. If we have the high-speed broadband network, it would be easy for companies to tap that resource and open development facilities here."

Then there's the string of cities hugging Utah's Great Salt Lake that have begun constructing a fiber-optic network. Called the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, the project aims to pipe video, phone service and broadband Internet access into peoples' homes. Organizers draw analogies to airports, for which governments fund facilities and private companies operate their businesses using the space.

Utopia's executive director, Paul Morris, told an audience at the Voice on the Net conference this month that the project has already attracted some private companies, including AT&T. One Utah-based ISP plans to begin offering 10 megabits per second of broadband speed for $39.95 a month. Cable broadband at less than half that speed costs about $45 a month, while many cheaper DSL services from the Bells provide 1.5mbps at the base service tier.

"We were concerned we were being left behind," Morris said. "We wanted to lure businesses and nurture them in Utah, and we didn't see that happening for us."
http://news.com.com/2009-1034_3-5680305.html


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At Dartmouth, Advanced Wi-Fi
Katie Zezima

IT'S not that he doesn't like them or doubts his teaching ability, but Thomas H. Luxon, an English professor at Dartmouth College here, wants to see his students less next semester, hoping they will learn a lot more without having to look at him in a classroom.

Professor Luxon, who teaches courses on Shakespeare, wishes they will instead be watching scenes from "The Merchant of Venice" or "Macbeth" on their PC's while sitting on a lawn, in a coffee shop or while relaxing in a dorm room. "That will be really cool," Professor Luxon said. "They could watch it on their own time and in their own place instead of having to go to the classroom or the media center. That means they could review it as often as they like, and they don't have to see it just once."

Professor Luxon is able to release his students from the shackles of forced classroom movie viewing as a result of a major wireless convergence project that has taken Dartmouth's phone, cable and wireless systems and condensed them into one Wi-Fi network. The project, officials say, keeps students on the forefront of wireless technology, and opens up endless educational and teaching opportunities while saving the college millions of dollars. The switch, which started in 2001 and will be complete with the wireless cable rollout this fall, includes the addition of 1,400 wireless access points and 24,000 wired ports across the campus of the 236-year-old college, the first in the country to completely integrate its communications systems into a wireless infrastructure.

"This really improves our ability to deliver types of information services that enhance teaching and learning," said Brad Noblet, Dartmouth's director of technical services.

The first phase of the cable rollout will put the school's cable television system online. After that, students, professors and anyone else on the overall network will be able to make up his or her own "channel," showing movie clips, video projects or presentations with cable-quality video.

The college's public affairs office hopes to have its own channel as well. It could also be used by students to shop for classes during course selection because they could view a few minutes of a lecture or discussion on the network, and by professors to provide discussion materials before class. Dartmouth also hopes to put all its public lectures and forums on a cable network instead of on the sometimes gritty streaming video now available.

"We're really at the front end of this," said Jeffrey L. Horrell, dean of the libraries and librarian of the college. "It's not yet clear where the boundaries are."

The new network could even change how students write papers. They will not replace words or writing, but might enhance, say, a paper on "The Merchant of Venice" with a clip of the actor Patrick Stewart explaining the method behind his portrayal of the character Shylock, said Professor Luxon, who teaches a course on the play.

"Imagine writing a paper about one of these performances and including a video clip in your paper, like you would a quote," he said. "Now your paper isn't on paper anymore, it's on a Web site or a word file."

The convergence project is meant for educational purposes, but it is not bad for entertainment, either. Students will be able to catch the latest episode of MTV's "Pimp My Ride" or any other television show anywhere on campus - including in class. While that is one more worry for professors who are now used to students staring at screens, they hope that the interaction and stimulation of a class will detract from the desire to tune in to "TRL" during sociology, Mr. Horrell said.

Students, many of whom did not know about the new service, are enthusiastic. Jean Cowgill, 19, a freshman, hopes to use the network to watch materials outside of class. But, Ms. Cowgill said, the cable access might backfire.

"That sounds amazing," she said. "But I don't know how great it will be for my study habits."

Wireless data has been available here since 2001. Its success led the technology department to combine it with the college's cable and data lines, which were antiquated and in need of replacement. Over the next few years, Dartmouth standardized its wireless protocol and increased its capacity by uniting two versions of wireless, 802.11b and 802.11g, on its central server, both of which can be retrieved anywhere off campus with wireless access and a Dartmouth computer or port.

It's also cost effective. College officials said that Dartmouth saved $2.07 million by updating and condensing its current system instead of replacing it, and saves nearly $1 million annually on maintenance, cabling and salary costs.

Officials added that the system is secure because the video component is not installed on computers, but instead is downloaded every time it is used. But for right now, faculty and staff like Cynthia Pawlek, associate librarian of the college, are focused on how the network will change teaching and learning here.

"The possibilities are really endless," she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...?hp&oref=login


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The Unwired Peer

AeroComm's Mesh-ready AC4790 Peer-to-Peer Transceivers Smooth Data Flow, Boost Range
Robert Hoskins

AeroComm eases networking for a wide variety of industrial control applications with true peer-to-peer technology, embedded into new AC4790 transceivers. AC4790s remove the server from an RF communication system, facilitating fully expandable mesh networking. The wireless solution complements AeroComm's popular server-client-based AC4490 transceivers, giving any OEM the flexibility to choose the protocol that best suits the application.

By utilizing a dynamic addressing scheme, AC4790's protocol supports independent communication between any two in-range transceivers in an RF network. Each transceiver "node" knows exactly which other nodes are within talking distance, as well as the signal strength of each one. The OEM is able to design routing sequences that optimize the network without bogging down system performance.

"Both flexibility and reliability are vital to a vast array of network architectures," said Mike Varady, CEO of AeroComm. "In AC4790's intelligent addressing mechanism, we embed software 'hooks' so an OEM can have complete control of the routing schemes. This maximizes the efficiency of the network, while allowing the OEM to alter the architecture as necessary."

Multiple node groups may also communicate simultaneously, supporting system scalability. Traffic is forwarded seamlessly from node to node, across a virtually endless range. An optional API command processor controls packet delivery and acknowledgment (on a packet-by-packet basis) and reports to the host device, greatly reducing OEM software development. Additionally, AC4790s feature industry-leading 25ms sync times and SenseAdjust -- a software- controlled RF desensitizer that wards off interference.

As with all AeroComm 900MHz transceivers, the AC4790 family utilizes field- proven FHSS technology, employs data-encryption standards and supports transmit-power levels of up to 1 watt, providing for extremely long range between nodes.

AC4790 supports hundreds of industrial applications, including those where devices must be able to communicate with one another seamlessly. Some examples are automatic meter reading, industrial automation, vending control and utility monitoring. AC4790 Developer Tools are available from AeroComm, Avnet, Mouser and premier distributors worldwide for $199. Quantity pricing for 1,000 units starts at $39 for 200mW devices.

AeroComm Inc. has played a major role in the short-range RF industry for more than a decade with consistent technological advances in both performance and price. The company made waves in 1994 by gaining FCC approval for the first 2.4GHz spread spectrum transceivers.

Soon after, it introduced its groundbreaking $200 digital sequence commercial module. In 1996 AeroComm shifted to frequency hopping for greater interference immunity in any environment. Its innovative design techniques resulted in superior modules using inexpensive materials -- producing a cost- per-module that suited vastly more applications.

AeroComm broke the $100 price barrier in 1998. Responding to the growing demand for affordable yet versatile wireless, it quickly developed the first complete line of 2.4GHz OEM RF transceivers. These products were backed by the company's own fully automated radio testing system, measuring all critical parameters and assuring the highest quality.

The company continues to support myriad applications where wireless was previously cost-prohibitive. Its robust proprietary technology, manufacturing and testing guarantee reliable communication, while lower frequencies and fewer parts allow for reduced prices.
http://www.bbwexchange.com/publicati...46-1979931.asp


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Wireless Developers Plan to Meld Bluetooth
Bruce Meyerson

Wireless developers plan to work together to meld Bluetooth, the short-range technology that links cell phones and cordless headsets, with an emerging technology designed to beam video and other large content short distances between TVs, home entertainment systems and computers.

The plan, announced Wednesday, comes at a crucial time for Bluetooth. After years of hype, the technology is finally becoming a mainstream feature on mobile devices, only to be met with predictions it may soon be supplanted by other technologies and disappear.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a 3,400-member group whose backers include Nokia Corp., Motorola Corp. and Intel Corp., said it has begun working with two industry bodies developing rival versions of the technology commonly referred to as ultra-wideband, or UWB.

The discussions with the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum are very preliminary, so it is unclear whether the collaboration will produce an integrated platform combining Bluetooth with UWB. There are also issues such as UWB regulatory approvals and signal interference with other wireless technologies that need resolution.

While both technologies are used for connections of 10 yards or less to create so-called "personal area networks" between various devices, the similarities mostly end there.

There's little relation in terms of the actual technology, but the most significant difference is speed.

The most common type of Bluetooth transmits data at speeds of up to 1 megabit per second, while a next-generation version starting to hit the market offers up to 3 mbps.

UWB allows speeds of 100 mbps and higher, making it a far more effective way to transmit, for example, a video signal from a digital video recorder to a flat-screen monitor or a laptop without wires.

That means a UWB signal has enough bandwidth to handle a high-definition television program, which can require 22 mbps of bandwidth for real-time streaming and viewing, plus a few other tasks at the same time.

One major goal, according to the Bluetooth group, is to enable short-range wireless compatibility between today's Bluetooth-enabled devices and machines with UWB, which are not expected to hit the market until at least next year.

The appeal? Millions of devices with Bluetooth shipping every week, and buyers of those products might be frustrated if they're unable to communicate with UWB- enabled purchases down the road.

By contrast, the prospect of compatibility could make manufacturers more comfortable about developing products with the technologies, said Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth group.

"The question becomes how do we make people feel comfortable about implementing Bluetooth in their devices today when they see something on the horizon," Foley said. "And this solution will really speed the time to market for UWB devices because we're creating a very clear path for manufacturers to add ultra wideband to their devices" without negating their investment in developing Bluetooth products.

While Bluetooth adoption is expected to grow for the next few years, many have questioned its longer-term fate.

Bluetooth's big advantages, for now, compared with UWB include its market penetration and increasingly recognizable brand name, as well as its low power- consumption, which makes it perfect for cell phones and headsets with limited battery life.

"Nobody's really been targeting voice applications for ultra-wideband, everybody is targeting video," said Joyce Putscher, an industry analyst for In-Stat. But, she added, "If nothing was done (to integrate Bluetooth with UWB), at some point ultra wideband would figure out a way to tackle voice."

In addition, thanks to the growing demand, Bluetooth component prices have fallen sharply to a few dollars per device, whereas UWB may cost as much as $20 per device in the beginning, said Putscher.

"So you have to wait for ultra-wideband to get very cost efficient," she said. "This is going to be a very slow process. It's too soon to tell if Bluetooth goes away."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Navy Gives Small Antenna Big Results

The news last June that an inventor had shrunk the antenna size without shrinking its effectiveness, produced a large group of Doubting Thomases worldwide. Prove it, they demanded. With the help of the Navy's antenna test range, the inventor has done just that.

The news last June that Rob Vincent, an employee in the Physics Department at the University of Rhode Island, had shrunk the antenna size without shrinking its effectiveness, produced a large group of Doubting Thomases worldwide. Prove it, they demanded.

Vincent and URI, with the help of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and its antenna test range on Fishers Island, N. Y., have done just that.

On March 31, 14 versions of Vincent’s Distributed Load Monopole (DLM) antennas were put through a battery of validation tests. The results exceeded Vincent’s and URI’s expectations. Smaller is better.

The Navy center responds to a wide variety of military and commercial requests for testing antennas at its Fishers Island over water range, the only such range of its kind in the world. Water provides a better path for transmission and reception than land. The site is located on a low-lying, remote coastal area, free of local interference.

The Fishers Island range is a far-field ground wave antenna test range capable of measuring the performance of antennas ranging in frequency from 2 to 30 megahertz. Gain measurements are done relative to an ideal quarter wave monopole antenna. The URI antennas were tested using the same methods and instrumentation as those used to test and certify Navy antenna systems.

Industry regards such testing as dependable as science permits and often includes the center’s data with products to assure customers of its performance specifications.

Vincent’s Plano Spiral Top Hat antenna at 7 megahertz is half the size of a normal quarter-wave antenna operating at that frequency. The URI antenna gain matched the performance of the ideal quarter-wave antenna, and its bandwidth was nearly twice as wide. This type of antenna has multiple uses, including military, marine, amateur radio communications and AM broadcasting.
In addition, the gain of Vincent’s capacity Top Hat DLM antenna, which incorporates a helix, a load coil, a capacitive top hat utilizing radial spokes at the top of the antenna and a horizontal plane was nearly identical to the ideal quarter wave antenna. Its bandwidth was greater than 5 percent of the operating frequency and the antenna is more than 70 percent shorter than an ideal quarter wave antenna.

Vincent’s standard DLM antennas with a standard helix and load coil were also tested at various frequencies. All exhibited gains nearly equal to the ideal antenna with bandwidths of 3 to 10 percent. The antennas were 33 to 40 percent shorter.

More than 200 businesses, companies, and government agencies have contacted URI seeking information for automotive, marine, and military applications, among others, since the antenna announcement last year. A patent is pending on Vincent's technology. The inventor has made the University of Rhode Island and its Physics Department partners that will benefit from any revenue his invention earns.

URI is close to securing several license agreements. In addition, prototypes have been developed for numerous applications.

View the test data on URI’s antenna technology online. Visit the U.S. Navy’s testing facility online for more information.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/511437/?sc=swtn


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ILN News Letter

NJ Fed CT. Refuses To Award Higher Damages To DirecTV

A federal court in New Jersey has refused to order payment of higher statutory damages to DirecTV in case involving an infringing access device. The court ruled that it was not persuaded that the defendant was "highly culpable" and expressed doubt that the higher award was needed to compensate DirecTV and punish the defendant for his action.

Case name is DirecTV v. Cain.


Australia A.G. Releases Fair Use Study Paper

The Australian Attorney General has released a study paper on fair use in the digital age. The paper is part of a national consultation on the issue.
http://aufairusepaper.notlong.com/


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But but but…he was a Nazi

Italians Seek To Close Web Site Showing Pope As Nazi

Rome judicial authorities sought a temporary injunction on Friday against an Internet site which carried doctored photographs of Pope Benedict dressed in a Nazi uniform.

The crude photomontages of the head of former German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the body of a man wearing a swastika armband and standing in front of a Nazi flag were posted 10 days ago on the Italian branch of the international news and opinion site, Independent Media Center.

Rome investigating magistrate Salavtore Vitello said in a statement that the pictures violated a national law prohibiting defamation of the Catholic Church. Vitello said he was also considering taking action against the owners of the site for insulting the authority and honor of the pope himself.

Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth, a Nazi paramilitary organization, in World War II when membership was compulsory for young Germans.

He was soon released to study for the priesthood, and his biographers have said he was never a member of the Nazi Party and his family opposed Hitler's regime.

Jewish leaders and human rights groups have welcomed his election as pope and his anti-Nazi roots.

Judicial sources in Rome said the Indymedia site was registered in Brazil and it was not immediately clear how the injunction, if granted, would be put into effect.

The Italian arm of the Independent Media Center, whose site is a forum for hundreds of contributors around the world on issues ranging from anti-globalization to gay rights, could not be reached for comment.
http://news.com.com/Italians+seek+to...3-5690570.html


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Face To Face With The Great Firewall Of China
Michael Geist

As the Internet was taking flight in the early 1990s, John Gilmore, one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading online civil liberties group, is credited with having coined the infamous phrase that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Gilmore’s view has since been regularly invoked whenever there are failed attempts to limit the dissemination of information.

Beginning with a string of cases dating back to the Paul Bernardo trial in the mid-1990s, the Internet has undermined court-ordered publication bans in Canada with surprising frequency. The latest incident occurred last month when a U.S. website posted evidence from the Gomery inquiry that was subject to a publication ban. The ban was lifted within days, however, as Judge Gomery acknowledged what had become obvious to all – supposedly secret testimony was readily available to anyone with Internet access.

While these events seemingly affirm the notion that the Internet is beyond the reach of governments and courts, my recent trip to China provided a powerful reminder that unfettered Internet access is far more fragile than is commonly perceived. China, which boasts the world’s second largest Internet user base, is currently home to more than 94 million Internet users, yet their Internet is far different from ours.

These differences are not immediately obvious. My hotel in Beijing featured high-speed Internet access much like that offered in hotels throughout North America. Logging onto the network was a snap and I quickly found that bandwidth speeds were comparable to those found at home.

It was once I sought to access common news sites that I found myself face to face with the “Great Firewall of China.” Google News, a popular aggregator of news stories from around the world, would not load into my browser, apparently blocked by a filtering system that employs 30,000 people to regularly monitor Internet traffic and content. Similarly, while the BBC website would load, attempts to access news stories on that site yielded only error messages.

My frustration increased when I attempted to download my own email. While I was able to access my Canadian-based mail server storing my messages, the download was short-circuited midway as I suddenly lost the connection. Although I initially thought that perhaps the error lay at the Canadian end, when the experience repeated itself, it became clear that the Chinese system was filtering my email messages and cutting off the connection.

Having experienced limits in accessing both news and email, it came as little surprise to find that the search engines were subject to similar restrictions. Searches for articles on circumventing the Chinese filters yielded a long list of results, none of which could be opened. Moreover, inputting politically sensitive words such as the “Falun Gong” cut me off from the search engines completely.

While I found using the Chinese Internet exceptionally frustrating, most people I spoke to were resigned to an Internet with limits. They live with the fact that in recent months the government has shut down thousands of Internet cafes, an important point of access for many citizens. Many noted that the censorship “only” affected political information, but that business could be conducted online unimpeded. At one academic conference, Chinese law professors even spoke of the desirability of increased content regulation and supported government limits on search engine results.

As groups such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders regularly seek to remind us, the Chinese Internet is not unique. Countries throughout the Middle East and in parts of Asia employ similar technologies to limit their citizens’ access to a medium that most Canadians now take for granted.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the Canadian Internet will always remain just as free as China’s is censored. Canadian law enforcement officials are actively lobbying for a series of “lawful access” reforms that will provide authorities with dramatically increased Internet surveillance powers. These include mandating real-time network surveillance capabilities on Canada’s biggest Internet service providers and providing authorities with the right to demand subscriber information without the need to obtain a prior court order.

While it would be unfair to characterize the lawful access proposal as comparable to the monitoring and censorship used in the Chinese Internet, my experience provided a sobering reminder of the dangers inherent in increased surveillance and weakened judicial oversight.

The Internet may be accessible from Toronto to Beijing, yet people in these two cities do not access the same Internet. The challenge in the months and years ahead will be to promote Gilmore’s vision of online freedom through lobbying for greater access abroad and rejecting unnecessary and potentially dangerous limits at home.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/may22005.html


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Your Phone Is Calling Your Car
Wilson Rothman

HOP in your car, turn the key and your phone book stares up at you from the liquid crystal display screen in your dashboard. Scroll through a list of missed calls or recently dialed numbers. Find the name you're looking for, press a button and the call rings through the car's sound system, all while your phone remains untouched in your jacket pocket.

Radio-frequency wireless connections in cars through a technology known as Bluetooth have been around for about three years, but this new level of connectivity - where the phone's internal directory and call logs are displayed on the car's dashboard - is new. At the moment, you can find it only in 2005 Audi A6 and A8 models, and only if you use certain phones, including PalmOne's popular Treo 650 P.D.A. phone.

The Audi-Treo matchup may still be missing certain crucial features, like the ability to find entries stored in the phone's memory by using the car's voice-recognition system. But this initial cooperation, followed by a broadening of the Bluetooth standard and continued development in automotive technology, promise a future where most cars and most phones work together in wireless harmony.

"There's much greater availability in cars today than ever before," said Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth special interest group. "Over 20 carmakers - including over 30 2005 models - offer factory-installed Bluetooth options."

BMW, DaimlerChrysler and Ford offer Bluetooth in all or most of their cars in the United States. G.M., Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen, makers of Audi, each offer at least one car with integrated Bluetooth.

The most rudimentary systems simply turn the car's sound system into a hands-free speakerphone. More advanced systems - like those in DaimlerChrysler cars featuring the UConnect Bluetooth option as well as Honda's latest Acura TL and RL models - use voice recognition. Call out a string of numbers, and they are sent to your phone, where the call is placed. These in-car systems allow you to create "voice tags" - short recordings of names - that can be matched to numbers, so you can say a name instead of remembering a number.

The 2005 Audi A6 and A8 come standard with Bluetooth, and the special connectivity for retrieving call logs. The system is also compatible with nine other Bluetooth phones from Motorola, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

The difficulty in marrying phone technology to automotive technology originates partly from the development time of different systems. By the time a carmaker has added a technology like Bluetooth to its assembly process - at its fastest, this might take 18 to 24 months - a cellphone maker has built and marketed two or three generations of phones, each time honing that technology.

There is another cook in the kitchen, too. In the United States, cellphone companies can choose whether to carry Bluetooth-enabled phones and scale back the software loaded onto the phones they sell. Last year, Verizon Wireless shipped Motorola's V710 handset, but only after some of the phone's Bluetooth ability had been removed.

Even with reduced ability, the V710 was a breakthrough for Veri- zon Wireless, as the carrier's first Bluetooth phone.

"Automakers, wireless carriers and handset makers have to agree on a profile," said Dan Benjamin, senior automotive analyst for ABI Research.

The latest draft of that profile, Mr. Foley said, will be out this summer, and will include detailed instructions for standardizing phone books, so that phones other than the Treo 650 - and cars other than Audi - can have instant on-screen access.

Mr. Foley promised additional new applications for Bluetooth in cars. Besides phone books and enhanced voice-recognition compatibility, the biggest breakthrough might be wireless music. If you store digital music files on your phone, you may soon be able to stream them to the sound system of your Bluetooth-enabled car.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...04rothman.html


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Internet Cuts Need for Bike Messengers
David Sharp

Bicycle messengers once crowded downtown traffic to deliver court papers, business documents and blueprints. Today, only one such company and one lone courier pump along on any given workday in Maine's biggest city.

Around the country, high-speed Internet, which allows larger documents to be e- mailed quickly, is beating cyclists in the race for fast and cheap delivery of urgently needed material.

"I enjoy this. It's a lot of fun. But it's not a tenable way to make a living," said Portland courier Stephen Wagner, taking a break on a park bench. "You'd be dirt poor if you did this for a living."

Wagner, 22, splits his time working for Rapid Courier and a bike shop.

In recent years, many courier companies from New York to California have been scaling back on bicycle messengers, those daredevils on two wheels who have long been ubiquitous on city streets.

But don't count them all out. They survived the fax revolution, and riders say they'll survive broadband Internet as well.

"There's still potential there. There's still stuff that needs to be hand-delivered," said Bob Smyth, a former bicycle messenger in Boston and San Francisco who came to Portland to serve as office manager for Rapid Courier.

At the peak, around 1992, there were about 14 or 15 bicycle messengers working for four or five companies in Portland, said Percy Wheeler, a former messenger who worked for several companies and himself as Mad Dash Courier.

The cyclists earned their reputations as rebels by weaving in and out of traffic, jumping curbs and bouncing down stairs.

But business began riding downhill with fax machines and e-mail. Broadband made things worse.

Years ago, it was common for a courier to pocket more than $100 a day in Portland, Wheeler said. Now, $100 represents a rare good day.

In San Francisco, Speedway used to have 30 bicycle messengers but there are now 12, said Lori O'Rourke, one of the owners. Another company, Quicksilver, had 14 messengers five years ago and now has only two, said dispatcher Stacey Means.

In Chicago, Velocity has half as many bicycle messengers as it did in 1999, when there were about two dozen riders, said Kyle Wiberg, a co-owner.

In Seattle, Dynamex had 15 to 20 riders at the peak; now there are five or six, said Phil Matthews, senior dispatcher.

"At this rate, in five to 10 years, I don't think there'll be bicycle messengers," Matthews said.

New York is the nation's bicycle messenger capital, with about 1,000. Fax machines and computers can't deliver fabric samples to the garment district, or hand-signed legal documents, or portfolios or blueprints.

But even in New York, growth has stagnated.

The number of bicycle messengers at Breakaway Courier has dropped from 100 to 40, said Robert Kotch, the company's president. New York Minute has 15 riders, roughly half what it had a couple of years ago, said Mike Sirota, general manager.

New York's Urban Express, which has 250 bicycle messengers, reports that bicycle work has been flat while vehicle deliveries continue to grow.

Portland's Wheeler, 35, left the business after someone in a parked car threw open a door as he sped down Congress Street. The collision sent him careening to the ground, leaving him with a smashed helmet, gashed hand, numerous cuts and road rash. He hung up his bicycle messenger bag and his two-way radio and now runs a bicycle repair shop. But he misses it.

"I just miss riding my bike every day. I miss the fitness," he said. "I don't like being inside every day."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Phishing Attacks Take A New Twist
Alorie Gilbert

Phishers are increasingly using new methods to nab sensitive information from Internet users, according to data from Websense Security Labs.

In recent months, the researchers at security software company Websense detected a rise in schemes involving malicious programs known as keyloggers, according to the March phishing trends report released Wednesday by the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

The technology, which records the keystrokes of people using infected machines, could be designed to help phishers stay one step ahead of honest folk. In the past, attackers have relied mainly on e-mail messages that lure victims to malicious Web sites, where they are duped into disclosing logins and usernames for banking sites and other sensitive online accounts. The messages are typically spoofed to look like they come the bank or other trusted provider.

The keylogger programs are built specifically to capture login names and passwords for online bank accounts and to send them to the attackers, Websense Security Labs said. They typically exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser program.

Each week in March and February, Websense uncovered as many as 10 new keylogger variants and more than 100 new Web sites set up to infect computers with them. That's up from November and December, when the company's researchers identified an average of one-to-two new variants and 10 to 15 Web sites per week.

People can infect their machines with keylogger programs in numerous ways, including opening bogus e-mail attachments, downloading programs online or simply visiting a fraudulent Web site.

Keylogger attacks are a particular problem in Brazil, where recent two schemes targeted more than 100,000 .br e-mail accounts, the report found. However, the machine that hosted the malicious code in one of the attacks was located in California.

Phishers have previously turned to instant messaging, faked news feeds and have preyed on people that mistype the Web addresses of popular online destinations, such as Google.

The United States is host to more phishing sites than any other country, followed by China and Korea, according to the APWG report. In March alone, people reported more than 13,000 phishing-scheme e-mails to the group.
http://news.com.com/Phishing+attacks...3-5695874.html


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Scouts Get Merit Badge For Respecting Intellectual Property

Dib, dib, dib
Paul Hales

THE HONG KONG Scout Association has issued a badge scouts can earn for "respecting intellectual property rights."

The idea is the brainchild of scout master Victor Chan, who also happens to be Deputy General Manager of the Hong Kong Motion Picture Association (MPA).

The MPA in Hong Kong says Chan’s idea is supported by the Hong Kong Scout Association and Hong Kong Customs.

A spokesman for the Asia-Pacific MPA, Mike Ellis, said there was a need, "to make people understand that intellectual property has a value, and that its development has a cost. If people don’t value intellectual property, and are not willing to pay for it, eventually the development of that intellectual property will dry up."

Elllis, who isn’t a psychologist, or an expert on human motivation, might be excused for peddling untruths, but should he be allowed near your children, we wonder?

The MPA says far-eastern piracy costs it members US$896 million in lost revenue each year.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23038


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BitTorrent As Friend, Not Foe

Hollywood wants to cripple peer-to-peer technology. One Internet guru thinks that's a mistake.
Krysten Crawford

BitTorrent has been described as Hollywood's Napster -- a sinister software that makes it easy to steal movies off the Internet. And just like the recording industry response to the Napster scourge years ago, movie studios today are determined to stamp out BitTorrent.

Vinton Cerf, one of the co-creators of the Internet, thinks Hollywood is making a big mistake and that BitTorrent or another technology like it can't be stopped. His advice to Hollywood: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

"It would be a mistake to think that because a particular technology can be used to distribute illegal copies therefore you should just run away from it," said Cerf, who helped design the architecture that underlies the Internet and current chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the private, non-profit group that essentially supervises the Web.

In fact, Cerf said he knows Hollywood producers who are considering ways to use BitTorrent to distribute movies or other content online. He did not provide any names, but described the interest as "serious."

"Nobody has made any commitments," continued Cerf. Given the huge stakes involved, the producers are moving cautiously, he said.

The incipient interest in effectively embracing the enemy comes at a critical time for Hollywood,

The movie industry, claiming that billions worth of sales are lost to DVD and online piracy every year, has mounted a high-profile and multi-thronged campaign against so-called "peer-to-peer" networks, a technology that allows Internet users to trade songs, movies, video games, and photos stored on their hard drives.

Stopping the unstoppable

Together the movie and music industries have sued thousands of peer-to-peer users. They're asking the Supreme Court to give them standing to sue peer-to- peer developers. They're lobbying Congress to enact stiffer piracy penalties.

The movie industry faces an uphill climb. Data from tracking firm CacheLogic show that BitTorrent usage levels -- about half of all peer-to-peer traffic -- have not changed since the Hollywood onslaught began late last year.

But BitTorrent is not a company, it's a technology. And when one site shuts down, another instantly takes its place.

Briefly, here's how it works: users download from BitTorrent.com or some other site what's known as a '.torrent file' which also contains a link to a "tracker." This tracker basically allows users to find files, whether it's a movie or an operating system or a video game.

The beauty of BitTorrent is, the more people who download a file the better. Mass downloading essentially accelerates the process instead of slowing it down. As a result, instead of taking a full day, a movie download can happen in a matter of hours.

"BitTorrent makes Hollywood nervous the way Napster made the recording industry nervous," said Michael Goodman, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

But Goodman and other industry analysts think Hollywood has only one choice: embrace BitTorrent or a technology like it.

"One of the lessons we've certainly learned is you can't stem the technology tide," explained Goodman. "Peer-to-peer networks are here to stay and that begs the question, 'How do you live and work with them rather than let them be a source of piracy?'"

Some companies are looking for ways to use BitTorrent or similar technology.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is designing a peer-to-peer network where users can get free access to all the U.K.-based company's programs. On Wednesday, Netscape pioneers Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen launched the Open Media Network, a similar site that contains television shows, radio programs, movies and other content that their creators are willing to give away without cost.

Both the BBC project and the Open Media Network are based on a technology called Kontiki, which is like BitTorrent in that it allows participants to share unused bandwidth on their computers and servers.

A brief case study

One company that uses BitTorrent is Linspire, a San Diego-based developer of the Linux operating system. Linspire uses BitTorrent to distribute its products and minimize demand on company servers, said CEO Kevin Carmony.

He estimates the company saves about $20,000 a month, or half its bandwidth costs, using BitTorrent. "We love it and customers love it because it's a faster download," said Carmony.

Can BitTorrent be used to steal Linspire software? Carmony shrugs. "Of course it can and of course it will," he said. "There's no form of copyright protection that can't be broken."

Andrew Parker, the co-founder and chief technology officer at CacheLogic, thinks it's only a matter of time before Hollywood accepts that there is no "magic bullet" to combat peer-to- peer piracy and then starts to embrace it.

"I'm not sure they understand it enough yet," said Parker.

A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, the movie industry group leading the anti-piracy campaign, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/29/tech...iracy/?cnn=yes


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Man Who Claims He Created The Internet Gets Award

Ironically from the man who really did
Nick Farrell

FAILED presidential candidate Al Gore, who once famously claimed to have invented the Internet, is going to get a lifetime achievement award for services to the Internet.

Gore was widely laughed at for his comments in a CNN interview that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet". In fact he was only 21 when the Internet was created out of a Pentagon project.

However the Webby awards, herefor online achievements said that Gore will get a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions service to the Internet.

Not that the Webby awards say he created the Internet, he just did "amazing work for three decades as congressman, senator and vice president".

Ironically, one of the blokes who really did invent the Interweb, Vint Cerf, will give Gore the award at a June 6 ceremony in New York.

When Gore joined Congress eight years after the Internet was created, he promoted high-speed telecommunications for economic growth and supported funding increases for the Internet.

He also came up with the term "information superhighway" when he was vice president, so it was his fault.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23023


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Time Travelers to Meet in Not Too Distant Future
Pam Belluck

Suppose it is the future - maybe a thousand years from now. There is no static cling, diapers change themselves, and everyone who is anyone summers on Mars.

What's more, it is possible to travel back in time, to any place, any era. Where would people go? Would they zoom to a 2005 Saturday night for chips and burgers in a college courtyard, eager to schmooze with computer science majors possessing way too many brain cells?

Why not, say some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have organized what they call the first convention for time travelers.

Actually, they contend that theirs is the only time traveler convention the world needs, because people from the future can travel to it anytime they want.

"I would hope they would come with the idea of showing us that time travel is possible," said Amal Dorai, 22, the graduate student who thought up the convention, which is to be this Saturday on the M.I.T. campus. "Maybe they could leave something with us. It is possible they might look slightly different, the shape of the head, the body proportions."

The event is potluck and alcohol-free - present-day humans are bringing things like brownies. But Mr. Dorai's Web site asks that future-folk bring something to prove they are really ahead of our time: "Things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated."

He would also welcome people from only a few days in the future, far enough to, say, give him a few stock market tips.

Mr. Dorai and fellow organizers are the kind of people who transplant a snowblower engine into a sleeper sofa and drive the couch around Cambridge. (If the upholstery were bright red, it could be a midlife crisis convertible for couch potatoes.)

They built a human-size hamster wheel - eight feet in diameter. And they concocted the "pizza button," a plexiglass pizza slice mounted in their hallway; when pressed, it calls up a Web site and arranges for pizza delivery 30 minutes later. (For anyone wanting to try this at home, the contraption uses a Huffman binary code. It takes fewer keystrokes to order the most popular toppings, like pepperoni, more keystrokes for less popular extras, like onions.)

At the convention, they plan to introduce a robot with an "infrared pyro-electric detector," designed to follow anything that emits heat, including humans.

"It's supposed to be our pet," said Adam Kraft, 22, a senior.

"It needs fur," added David Nelson, 23, a graduate student.

While Mr. Dorai has precisely calculated that "the odds of a time traveler showing up are between one in a million and one in a trillion," organizers have tried to make things inviting.

In case their august university does not exist forever, they have posted the latitude and longitude of the East Campus Courtyard (42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west).

A roped-off area, including part of an improvised volleyball court, will create a landing pad so materializing time-travel machines will not crash into trees or dormitories.

To set the mood, organizers plan to display a DeLorean - the sleek but short-lived 1980's car that was the time-traveling vehicle in the "Back to the Future" movies.

At first, Mr. Dorai urged people to publicize the event with methods likely to last. "Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper," he directed, "and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries!"

But Mr. Dorai said the response was so overwhelming that the police, concerned about security, had asked that anyone who had not replied by Wednesday not be allowed to attend.

No future-guests are confirmed as of yet, although one responder purports to be from 2026. But among the 100 likely attendees, there are those from another time zone - Chicago - and from New York, which at least likes to think of itself as light-years ahead.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed," said Erik D. Demaine, an M.I.T. mathematician who will be one of the professors speaking.

There will also be two bands, the Hong Kong Regulars and Off-White Noise, performing new, time-travel-apropos tunes.

"If you subscribe to alternative-world theory, then time travel makes sense at some level," said Professor Demaine, who would like future-guests to bring answers to mathematical mysteries. "The universe is inherently uncertain, and at various times it's essentially flipping coins to make a decision. At any point, there's the heads version of the world and the tails version of the world. We think that we actually live in one of them, and you could imagine that there's actually many versions of the universe, including one where suddenly you appear from 10 years in the future."

If you can not imagine that, consider Erin Rhode's view of time travel.

"I kind of think if it's going to happen, it'll be the wormhole theory," said Ms. Rhode, 23, a recent graduate, adding, "If you create a stable wormhole," a hole in space, "people can go back to visit it."

William McGehee, 19, a freshman who helped build a "Saturday Night Fever"-like dance floor in his dorm, said, "It's pretty obvious if time travel does occur, then it doesn't cause the universe to explode."

And Sam McVeety, 18, a freshman, wondered if wearing a tinfoil hat would be comforting or insulting to future-people.

Mr. Dorai has had quirky brainstorms before: proposing the imprisonment of Bill Watterson, the retired cartoonist, to force him to continue his "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip; and donning the costume of M.I.T.'s mascot, the beaver, while climbing the statue of John Harvard, namesake of that other Cambridge college. That incident went awry when some Harvard men swiped a paw.

But Mr. Dorai's time travel idea seems to have legs.

"If you can just give up a Saturday night, there's a very small chance at it being the biggest event in human history," he said.

And if it is a flop, futuristically speaking?

Well, Mr. Dorai reasoned, "Certainly, if no one from the future shows up, that won't prove that it's impossible."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/national/06time.html















Until next week,

- js.














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