Politechbot New Net laws reach beyond borders

"The challenge of borders lies at the very heart of cyberlaw. Most observers have long argued that the Internet presents lawmakers with a jurisdictional dilemma: The Internet is viewed as "borderless," but law is best characterized as "bordered" because national laws typically stop at the border.

While the bordered Internet may attract increasing attention, borderless laws deserve even greater scrutiny. Consider recent developments in three of the most contentious legal areas -- copyright, domain names and privacy."

redux [05.29.02]
News.Com Enforcing laws in a borderless Web

"Certainly, conflicts over jurisdiction have been around for centuries, but the Internet introduces a new set of questions about how to apply cross-border laws. In the physical world, the ground rules are relatively well established, bolstered by years of international treaties, case law and agreements between specific nations that dictate how such laws are applied and enforced."

"But the Web changes the dynamics. When you put up a Web site, virtually anyone can stop by and shop. And often, sites aren't selling items but are merely posting speech that some might find objectionable."

MSNBC 'Borders' prompt fears for Net future

"FOR MUCH of its life, the Internet has been seen as a great democratizing force, a place where nobody needs know who or where you are. But that notion has begun to shift in recent months, as governments and private businesses increasingly try to draw boundaries around what used to be a borderless Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorism concerns.

"It used to be that a person sitting in one place could get or send information anywhere in the world," said Jack Goldsmith, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago. "But now the Internet is starting to act more like real space with all its limitations.".""

redux [08.18.01]
The Economist Putting it in its place

"On the face of it, the Internet appears to make geography obsolete. But the reality is rather more complicated. If you want a high-speed digital-subscriber line (DSL) connection, for example, geographical proximity to a telephone exchange is vital, because DSL only works over relatively short distances. Similarly, go to retrieve a large software update from an online file library, and you will probably be presented with a choice of countries from which to download it; choosing a nearby country will usually result in a faster transfer. And while running an e-business from a mountain-top sounds great, it is impractical without a fast connection or a reliable source of electricity. The supposedly seamless Internet is, in other words, constrained by the realities of geography. According to Martin Dodge of University College London, who is an expert on Internet geography, "the idea that the Internet liberates you from geography is a myth"."

redux [04.02.01]
eCompany Does Geography Matter Online?

""All politics is local," the late Massachusetts congressman Tip O'Neill once quipped. It turns out that the old saw is also true of e-commerce.

Cruise by a Nordstrom in Seattle on a misty spring day and the beige mannequins might be wearing yellow raincoats and duck boots. Three thousand miles away in Boca Raton, the Nordstrom window might showcase dolls dressed in floral-pattern bikinis and sunglasses. But at Nordstrom.com you get the same sell whether you log on from soggy Seattle or sunny Boca.

That's because, in our rush to get online, we've forgotten that some of the rules of real-world selling still apply on the Web. Geography matters -- online and off."

The New York Times E-Commerce: Borders Returning to the Internet
[requires 'free' registration]

"But for auction sites, gambling sites and others, geography is becoming increasingly important, because they must treat people from different locations differently, as is the case with the French government's barring the sale of Nazi-related items to its citizens.

Online advertising companies, too, are increasingly desperate to use geographic targeting tools to reinforce their clients' faith in Internet marketing. In short, for a growing number of companies, this will be the year when the borderless Internet economy becomes an outmoded concept.

"Our customers told us over the past six months or so that it was an absolute requirement that we have geo-targeting," said Mark Joseph, chief technology officer for MediaPlex, an advertising company based in San Francisco."

redux [10.07.00]
Internet Geography Project: Putting place back in cyberspace Overview

"This project arose in response to one of the great myths or the Internet age, i.e. the coming of cyberspace heralds the end physical constraints which will eventually lead to the death of cities. In fact, the exact opposite is occurring. The largest concentrations of Internet users and producers are located in urban areas and many of the most innovative firms in the Internet space are housed in downtowns. There should be nothing surprising about this since, cities have always been the primary source of innovation and will continue to play this role in the future.

Although the power of the Internet does opens up new possibilities for long-range collaboration and even new spaces of interaction within cyberspace it also exhibits much of the traditional unevenness that has characterized urban and economic development throughout history. The fact that information can be easily and widely distributed is often mistaken for an indication that the production of this information is also diffused. In fact, there is a much more complicated dynamic involving the connection of specific places to global networks resulting in a system of production that is both place-rooted and networked at the same time.

Scientific American 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

"When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy."

redux [04.13.02]
The New York Times 'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics'
[requires 'free' registration]

"Before we get to the scientific arguments of the neo-creos, a word should be said about their motivation. Just what do they have against Darwinism? Unlike the old-fashioned creationists, they are not especially worried about evolution conflicting with a literal reading of Genesis. Then why can't they join with the mainstream religions, which have made their peace with Darwinism? In 1996, for example, Pope John Paul II said that the theory of evolution had been ''proved true'' and asserted its consistency with Roman Catholic doctrine. Stephen Jay Gould, though agnostic himself, salutes the wisdom of this papal pronouncement, arguing that science and religion are ''nonoverlapping magisteria.'' But the neo-creos aren't buying this. They think that belief in Darwinism and belief in God are fundamentally incompatible. Here, ironically, they are in agreement with their more radical Darwinian opponents. Both extremes concur that evolution is, in the words of Phillip Johnson, ''a purposeless and undirected process that produced mankind accidentally'' and, as such, must be at odds with the idea of a purposeful Creator."

redux [09.23.01]
The New York Review of Books Saving Us from Darwin

"Intelligent design awkwardly embraces two clashing deities - one a glutton for praise and a dispenser of wrath, absolution, and grace, the other a curiously inept cobbler of species that need to be periodically revised and that keep getting snuffed out by the very conditions he provided for them. Why, we must wonder, would the shaper of the universe have frittered away thirteen billion years, turning out quadrillions of useless stars, before getting around to the one thing he really cared about, seeing to it that a minuscule minority of earthling vertebrates are washed clean of sin and guaranteed an eternal place in his company? And should the God of love and mercy be given credit for the anopheles mosquito, the schistosomiasis parasite, anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague...? By purporting to detect the divine signature on every molecule while nevertheless conceding that natural selection does account for variations, the champions of intelligent design have made a conceptual mess that leaves the ancient dilemmas of theodicy harder than ever to resolve."

redux [02.05.00]
Slate Is Natural Selection the Result of Design?

Steven Pinker: "Warm rooms are a goal of thermostats, thermostats a goal of people, people a goal of their genes. Darwin, and then Dawkins, made it scientifically respectable to talk about genes as having goals, because natural selection makes them act as if they do. But natural selection itself, being a product not of a teleological process but of the physics and mathematics of replicating systems, has no right to have a goal in the way that genes or people or thermostats do."

Robert Wright: " A system can be entirely mechanical, complying with the laws of physics and mathematics, yet be teleological, designed to realize a purpose. In fact, that seems to be true of all teleological systems I know of, including genes and people and thermostats."

redux [09.05.01]
The Third Culture Science and the Psychology of Beliefs

"The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased. Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what separates science from everything else."

redux [09.13.00]
Scientific American A New Paradigm for Thomas Kuhn

"Kuhn wrote: "The very existence of science depends upon vesting the power to choose between paradigms in the members of a special kind of community." Fuller has confidence in the intelligent good sense of ordinary folks and properly calls for "the right to be wrong." But do statements such as "the universe is light-years wide," "the earth is billions of years old," "all life is related by common descent," "organisms are composed of cells that contain double-helix DNA," and so on really have no greater claim on "reality" than the Genesis stories of creationists or the popular consolations of astrology? If the answer is no, as Fuller comes dangerously close to asserting, then most scientists would throw in the towel and get jobs flipping burgers.

Fuller underestimates the highly evolved "fitness" of the methodologies, sociologies and conceptual paradigms of normal science. The deprofessionalization of science and the establishment of a citizen marketplace of ideas are not likely to happen without the sociopolitical equivalent of an asteroid impact, and no such potential upheaval looms on our intellectual radar screens. Certainly, science studies lacks the weight to do it."

The New York Times WorldCom Says It Hid Expenses, Inflating Cash Flow $3.8 Billion
[requires 'free' registration]

"When WorldCom's stock was rising, Mr. Tice said, investors cheered its acquisition binge and paid little attention to how the company generated its profits. That attitude, he said, encouraged the company to stretch accounting rules and take ever-bigger risks in an effort to keep its stock rising.

During the late 1990's, "the executives, the money managers, the auditors, the C.F.O.'s, the C.E.O.'s, the ones that got ahead were the most reckless, the least ethical," Mr. Tice said.

"The most reckless guys were the ones that ended up having the most power and the highest market valuations," he said."

Dan Gillmor Corporate sleaze carves into our trust

"I fear we're nearing a classic tipping point. The primary reason we didn't have a worse recession in the wake of the market downturn was that consumers kept spending. Now their confidence is dropping.

Rational people are starting to assume something that isn't necessarily true. They're becoming convinced that the system is hopelessly, irrevocably rigged against everyday investors by a corrupt cadre of insiders in boardrooms and on Wall Street, willfully assisted by regulators and elected officials who are either corrupt themselves or simply blind.

redux [06.04.02]
Salon "It was just stupid"

"This was a valuation bomb, not a disclosure bomb. Enron and Global Crossing -- those are issues of disclosure. They simply didn't tell us how bad things were. If you go back and look at all the dot-com prospectuses, they're filled with how bad things are.

The great Wall Street promotional machine accentuates whatever happens to be the mood of the public. Wall Street was complicit and the public was complicit and the companies were certainly complicit and the venture capitalists were complicit.

It takes all of those to make it happen."

redux [05.10.02]
Forbes Cramer's Troubles Could Get Worse

"The transcript includes some eyebrow-raising anecdotes relating to Cramer's cozy relationship with CNBC television personalities Maria Bartiromo, David Faber and Mark Haines."

"In some instances, according to the taped interview, Cramer would call the anchors with a possible news lead on a company after he had already established a position in that firm. Says the trader in the taped interview: "Before he'd call Maria maybe we'd buy five or ten thousand shares of something. You know, the name that he was about to mention. He would position the firm so that when it did come out, it would be the positive or negative short or long, depending on, you know, what information he gave.""

USA Today Scandals shred investors' faith

"A drumbeat of corporate misdeeds has helped crush stock prices and eviscerate pension plans. But the biggest victim may be trust -- investors' trust in financial advisers, stock analysts and Corporate America."

"Trust keeps the financial system together. Once lost, it can take years for Wall Street to regain it. Signs of how badly trust has eroded are everywhere."

Business2.0 Who's to Blame for the Dotcom Insanity?

"And yet, as compared with previous bubbles -- say, junk bonds in the '80s -- the dotcom fiasco owed relatively less to Wall Street's lack of ethics and relatively more to willing contagion by the public itself. "The market wanted these stocks," Blodget observed to CNBC, and Blodget was right. By the millennium's waning months, it was common, for example, to see engineers in Silicon Valley with CNBC in one pop-up window on their computer screens and their brokerage accounts in another, and they would -- or so I'm told -- trade all day and scarcely attend to their jobs.

Of course, the financial press -- CNBC in particular -- fanned the flames, but faulting it or any other group misses the epidemic nature of the contagion, which naturally infected the whole of society without distinction."

SatireWire MEDIA CONVICTS MEDIA OF UNFAIRLY CONVICTING MEDIA IN MEDIA: MEDIA

""Lately it has been popular in the media to try and convict the media for exaggerating the importance and influence of the media on issues such as the economy and the Internet," said the report's co-author, recently retired CNN anchor Bernard Shaw. "We in the media felt it was time to take a look at the way the media has been looking at the media looking at the media's coverage, and we were appalled at what we found ourselves finding ourselves finding out about ourselves."

The report, however, drew immediate criticism from Shaw, who blasted himself in a two-hour televised panel discussion."

redux [03.13.01]
The Washington Post Who Blew the Dot-Com Bubble?

"Henry Blodget, Wall Street's loudest cheerleader for Internet stocks, made it to the front page of the New York Times last week. And thereby hangs a tale about the media and the bubble."

"For it was the mainstream media -- which now take such delight in scolding those involved in the dot-com mania -- that helped push the idea that anyone could get rich by playing the market.

"The media invented Blodget," says Christopher Byron, a columnist for Bloomberg News and MSNBC. "In a bull market everyone loves to cheer, and Henry Blodget was everyone's first phone call. . . . Where were they when companies were trading for 150 times revenues? They were repeating the words of these guys. It's disgusting."

News.Com Russia poised to restrict Net activities

""This version of the bill still allows the ability to prevent Internet activities without any necessity," said Kovalev, a 72-year old civil libertarian and member of the liberal "soyuz peravikh sil" faction.

Kovalev cited the portion of the bill that says it is "forbidden to use computer networks for extremism" and pledges a vague punishment that may "take into consideration" existing Russian criminal laws."

Wired News Egyptians Flock to New Net Plan

"Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.

But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net."

redux [06.06.02]
BBC China loses grip on internet

""Without the internet the story may still have got out," said Mr Zheng. "With so many people killed it would have been hard to keep it a secret for ever, but it would have been much more difficult."

The internet is changing China in subtle but profound ways. Information is now being spread and exchanged in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.

The Chinese state's once total control on information has been broken and hard as it may try it has little hope of regaining that control."

redux [04.16.02]
Online Journalism Review Censorship Wins Out

"A decade or so ago, it was all clear: the Internet was believed to be such a revolutionary new medium, so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian regimes would crumble before it. What we've learned in the intervening years is that the Internet does not inevitably lead to democracy any more than it inevitably leads to great wealth.

The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism."

redux [03.21.02]
Salon Will the Net save China?

"Mao once said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." The entrepreneurs in China Dawn seem to want to change the last phrase to "ISP access."

But their enthusiasm betrays a streak of naivete. As Tiananmen so amply demonstrated, in China today, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun. And the prediction that the rise of the Internet will liberate Chinese from authoritarian rule is far from certain."

South China Morning Post Who let the blogs out?

"One notable loophole in the content watch list are weblogs. Weblogs are content websites maintained by ordinary users that can act as introspective online diaries, soapboxes to rant opinions, and a vehicle guide the horde of Internet users to swarm to other obscure links to be found on the net. They are easy to update, cheap to maintain, and difficult to block because so many new ones appear each day. They utilize a client relationship with a server and can be updated with a simple browser."

The bureaucrats and censors in China who block and monitor websites will be hard pressed to try and control the future flow of weblogs both in and out of China due to the number and diversity of this new information platform. Having met actual Internet content censors from China, they are decent people but come from a different time and different place in terms of technology. They don't really get it yet since weblogs remain a concept difficult for them to understand for now."

redux [08.08.01]
First Monday The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term."

"In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."

redux [06.19.01]
Ananova Political heavyweight warns of 'web threat to democracy'

"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.

Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."

"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.

But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."

redux [10.26.00]
Center for Strategic and International Studies Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age

"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."

"Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."

redux [10.10.00]
MediaChannel.Org A Tower Aflame: Media, Metaphor and Revolution

"Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols - indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."

"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."

ZDNet Are you ready for angry robots?

"The system is initially intended for entertainment applications, such as toys that display emotion and videogame characters that respond emotionally to their virtual circumstances. The company has assembled technological demos of the system, such as a search engine that uses certain language cues to find information of a particular emotional flavor.

Another demo, called "Robby the emotional thermostat," allows the user to control the environment that influences a virtual character, causing emotional responses such as anger when the environment gets beyond the character's control."

redux [05.15.02]
Ananova Researchers to study how children interact with their Aibos

"Washington University professors Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn fear children may establish friendships that robots can't live up to.

The husband and wife team say early tests show while most children are aware robots aren't actually alive, others do not.

Some reason they must be living because they are able to learn how to respond to limited commands and move apparently independently."

redux [03.20.02]
Wired News Furrybot to Watch Over You

""While children often form emotional attachments to teddy bears, stuffed animals, blankets and other objects, senior citizens generally do not."

But Matsushita said residents have no problem interacting with the pets. Women who participated in a trial wanted to keep their newfound friends, Kadota said.

"I see no reason why, with the appropriate feedback, that reasonable bonding could not be achieved between a robot pet and its human owner," said Martin King, a research fellow at the University of Salford's Center for Robotics and Automation. The center is currently designing a robotic gorilla to interact with children."

redux [02.04.02]
The New York Times Man Who Would Be God: Giving Robots Life
[requires 'free' registration]

""A game it might have been, but if you'll forgive the staggering lack of modesty this implies, Creatures was probably the closest thing there has been to a new form of life on this planet in four billion years," Mr. Grand writes. "These creatures probably still represent the state of the art in synthetic life forms.""

""Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far," Mr. Dawkins has said. Speaking of Mr. Grand's latest endeavor, what is known as the Lucy project, he told The Sunday Times: "With his record, if anyone could pull off such a spectacular coup, it would be him.""

redux [11.07.01]
AsiaWeek Robot Lovin'

"A.I. is of course fantasy, but Japan today is testing the plotline for real. Using interactive toys programmed to behave as obsequiously as the average lapdog, health care workers are trying to add companionship and emotional sustenance that may be missing from the lives of hospitalized children and elderly shut-ins. Researchers hope that one day, armies of sharing, caring machines will shore up a medical system that is hard-pressed to meet the demands of a rapidly aging society. Robots might even serve as surrogate family members, providing contact and affection for patients who have no immediate relatives nearby."

redux [08.01.01]
Ananova New doll 'has real feeding and sleeping patterns'

"A new toy doll which it makers claim has realistic skin, senses and reflexes has gone on sale in the UK.

Miracle Baby smiles when she's fed, frowns when she's tired and develops her own feeding, playing and sleeping patterns over time.

Her makers, Mattel, have used similar technology to that used by the manufacturers of robot dogs which led to a worldwide craze for the artificial pets."

redux [05.11.01]
NPR : All Things Considered People Who Like Fake Dogs

"Robert Siegel talks with Sherry Turkle, professor of the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Turkle has studied people's relationships with computational objects for the past 20 years. She says recently some computers have been designed to ask humans to "nurture" them and humans respond. Turkle says that the attachment of AIBO owners to their robot dogs raises questions about what it means to love an object that doesn't know you're there."

redux [05.25.00]
The New York Times What Do You Mean, 'It's Just Like a Real Dog'?
[requires 'free' registration]

"What do children think about what it means to be alive? And at what ages can children distinguish mechanical objects from real animals or people? Research into these questions is still in its earliest stages. There was a flurry of interest in children's reactions when Tamagotchis, virtual pets from Japan, first appeared a few years ago and then started dying on their young owners. But the topic is attracting more attention now as seemingly intelligent toys and other robots appear on the market in increasing variety and numbers. "

"Again and again... researchers have asked the children: "Is it alive? Is it like a real pet? Does it know you?"

"Strikingly," Ms. Audley said, "often the answer they settled on was, "It's not alive in a human or animal kind of way, but in a Furby kind of way.""

redux [04.21.00]
The Third Culture A new kind of object: From Rorschach to Relationship

"I have studied the effects of computational objects on human developmental psychology for over twenty years, documenting the ways that computation and its metaphors have influenced our thinking about such matters as how the mind works, what it means to be intelligent, and what is special about being human. Now, I believe that a new kind of computational object - the relational artifact - is provoking striking new changes in the narrative of human development, especially in the way people think about life, and about what kind of relationships it is appropriate to have with a machine. Relational artifacts are computational objects designed to recognize and respond to the affective states of human beings - and indeed, to present themselves as having "affective" states of their own. They include children's playthings (such as Furbies and Tamagotchis), digital dolls that double as health monitoring systems for the homebound elderly (Matsushita's forthcoming Tama), sentient robots whose knowledge and personalities change through their interactions with humans, as well as software that responds to its users' emotional states and responds with "emotional states" of their own."

"By accepting a new category of relationship, with entities that they recognize as "sort-of-alive", or "alive in a different, but legitimate way," today's children will redefine the scope and shape of the playing field for social relations in the future."

redux [09.88.00]
Wired Magazine Congratulations, It's A Bot!

""When kids play, they create an entire world that's alive, and it never objects to them. A kid's imagination is a completely open architecture, and there are no bounds to what a toy can do," he explains.

"That's the future of toys. Technology's role is to become transparent. If you give the cues of autonomy, the imagination fills in the blanks, because that's what it's meant to do."

As processing power and sensors improve, the difference between simulated autonomy and actual autonomy will blur. Already it's difficult to relate to these new technological creatures without imputing to them the sorts of feelings we routinely discover in, say, our pets. And when you throw in realistic human behavior, not to mention silky skin, things become rather surreal.

"These are not toys anymore," says Chung as the screwy signal scrambles his face again. "These are way beyond toys."

"So what are they?" I ask. For once, Chung pauses. "They are the next iteration of our attempt to re-create life.""

The New York Times Internet Radio Criticizes Rate on Royalties
[requires 'free' registration]

"Under the ruling, radio companies will pay the recording industry 0.07 cent each time they play a song over the Internet. Webcasters, who have been slow to find advertisers despite drawing large audiences, had hoped that the rate would be set at a percentage of revenue, a move that they argued would allow them time to build a new outlet for music.

"For a lot of independent Webcasting companies, this is going to take them out," said John Jeffrey, executive vice president of Live 365, a network of 47,000 stations. "There's going to be less music put out on the Web, and that's not good for artists or anyone else.""

USA Today Neither side happy with Net radio royalty rates

"Webcasters like Live365, a network of about 30,000 radio stations created by individual Internet users, wanted a rate based on a percentage of revenue to pay performers and record labels. Webcasters, like over-the-air radio stations, already use such an arrangement to pay songwriters and composers.

But the Copyright Office said that because many webcasters have such small revenues, there would be little compensation for those who own the copyrights to songs."

redux [04.03.02]
Salon The battle over Web radio continues

"Now to your propaganda about webcaster finances. First, you point out that most webcasters are either out of business or on shoestring budgets. For those out of business, I assume you'd agree that royalties had nothing to do with it because they'd never paid a dime (e.g., NetRadio went out of business before the royalty rates were even announced thus denying record companies and artists in the millions of dollars). For the others, you claim that most are using Shoutcast or other free software. But they still must be either paying for bandwidth costs that would generally exceed their royalties, or having someone like live365 pay on their behalf. Live365 participated in the CARP proceeding (and actually hired two different high-priced law firms to represent them!). In the proceeding, live365 submitted evidence demonstrating how their costs for bandwidth, employment, sales and marketing, and hardware and software were many, many times their revenues."

"We understand that hobbyists are different. We are prepared and intend to work with true hobbyists to find a solution."

Newsbytes Privacy Concerns Raised Over Digital Music Proposal

"Proposed federal regulations that would standardize the way in which Internet broadcasters pay royalties for the songs they play could jeopardize the anonymity of online music listeners, according to some privacy advocates."

"According to the Copyright Office, each Listener's Log would include information about which users were accessing which songs online. The logs would also include information about when users were listening and from where."

Wired News Public Protests NPR Link Policy

"When huge, nameless, faceless corporations try to impose "linking policies" upon webmasters who want to point to the company's site, people usually react in a predictable way. They get mad, they spitefully put up dozens of policy-violating links, and they bemoan, once more, the fact that some folks still don't understand that if you don't want to be linked you shouldn't be on the Web.

The reaction was much the same on Wednesday, when webloggers discovered that yet another huge organization is trying to lay down rigid linking guidelines -- only this time the huge organization is National Public Radio, the ad-free, member-supported radio network that often paints itself as the antithesis of all things big and corporate."

Ernie the Attorney Giga law Reports on NPR Linking Controversy

"I wonder if NPR has picked up a disturbance in the force yet? I am losing respect for that organization by the hour. Now is the time for them to respond to the criticism, and like I said earlier, it would be nice if they could track down and interview Tim Berners-Lee. He could draw them a picture. See, this here is the web. And this here (pointing to their page describing the linking agreement requirement) is the web, tarnished and defaced by stupid, pointless, mindless corporate rule-making. Any questions?"

Teleread NPR rethinking the deep link rule -- Speak up if need be

"NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin has just told me that the legal, news and Web sides will reconsider the policy this afternoon--he himself will participate. I'll think good thoughts."

redux [05.01.02]
Wired News Site Barks About Deep Link

"By his own proud admission, Avi Adelman is an irrepressible muckraker."

"Now Adelman is locked in a battle against the Belo media corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, which sent him a legalistic letter this week demanding that BarkingDogs.org remove all "deep links" to the DallasNews.com site."

Jim Romenesko's MediaNews Letters Deep-linking benefits

"From BEN SILVERMAN, Editor Dotcom Scoop: I wonder if it occurred to whoever made the decision to punish deep-linkers that websites are actually doing Belo's newspapers a favor by linking to their articles in the first place, thus driving traffic to Belo properties and putting advertising dollars in Belo's pockets. Deep-linking is probably the best thing that could ever happen to newspapers or content sites. It brings readers to a specific piece of content and to a website that they otherwise probably would not have visited. Links on this site (Media News) are a perfect example. I don't know how many times I've clicked on a story link and then decided to prowl around the linked website for awhile longer because I enjoyed the piece or saw links to other interesting stories. When a story of mine is linked on Media News, or in Yahoo's Full Coverage area for example, I notice a sharp increase in overall page views, not just visits to the page that has been linked."

redux [12.14.01]
The New York Times Experts Say Decision Could Undermine Online Journalists
[requires 'free' registration]

"Free speech advocates are worried that a recent federal appeals decision could have a chilling effect on online journalists who use hyperlinks to direct readers to relevant, newsworthy sites that contain illegal material.

Even more troubling, the critics say, may be an emerging double standard in the way courts treat traditional print publishers and their online offshoots, especially when it concerns printing a controversial address in a newspaper vs. linking to it from a Web page."

Wired News Big Stink Over a Simple Link

"KPMG, an international services firm, prides itself on its "e-business" savvy, and it charges companies boatloads to improve their "new economy" businesses.

But this week several website owners were wondering whether KPMG's Internet acumen was really worth anything at all, as it announced a policy that seemed to breach the most basic freedom on the Web -- the freedom to link to any site you want to."

redux [06.16.00]
The New York Times Is Linking Illegal?
[requires 'free' registration]

"A crucial aspect of online journalism is the ability to garnish articles with hyperlinks that instantly refer readers to Web sites related to newsworthy issues."

But suppose one of those sites contains material alleged to be illegal--a pirated copy of an author's book, perhaps, or an unlawful software program. Is the publisher who did the linking in hot water?

The answer, according to legal papers recently filed by eight motion picture studios in a closely-watched federal case in Manhattan, is sometimes yes and sometimes no."

Security Focus U.S. Denies Data Retention Plans

"An early draft of the White House's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace envisions the same kind of mandatory customer data collection and retention by U.S. Internet service providers as was recently enacted in Europe, according to sources who have reviewed portions of the plan.

But a Justice Department source said Wednesday that data retention is mentioned in the strategy only as an industry concern -- ISPs and telecom companies oppose the costly idea -- and does not reflect any plan by the department or the White House to push for a U.S. law. "

Guardian Unlimited Blunkett surprises critics with admission of privacy blunder

"The uproar over access to electronic data reflects a lack of previous public discussion of the issue, the home secretary believes. "This became a lightning conductor for a whole broader debate on privacy," said an aide.

"There has been an exponential growth in email and mobile use in the last five years but no public debate over where to strike the balance between individual privacy and giving public authorities powers to fight crime, maintain public health and so on.""

redux [06.06.02]
BusinessWeek Privacy vs. Security: A Bogus Debate?

"Let me emphasize again: Without some privacy, we couldn't stay human. But we'll be better equipped to defend a core of essential privacy if our overall civilization is open enough to let us catch the Peeping Toms and power abusers.

Better, more intrusive technology is going to limit our [ability to stay anonymous]. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have eyeglasses that scan any face on the street, look it up on the Internet, and provide captions as you walk by. This will be a return to the village of our ancestors, where they recognized everyone they saw. No one will be a total stranger."

redux [06.28.00]
The Standard Consumers Fight Back, Anonymously

"It's unlikely that in the future everyone will choose total online anonymity. But the new privacy technologies have implications that go beyond the short-term questions of law enforcement and marketing.

"The real dimension here isn't the choice between privacy and disclosure," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "The real story is the impact it has on our sense of identity. The fact that we can selectively disclose things on the Internet is changing the nature of social interactions. If you can change your persona at will in cyberspace, that begins affecting what you think of your own identity and who you think you are.""

redux [04.30.00]
The New York Times Magazine The Eroded Self
[requires 'free' registration]

"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."

"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."

Salon Twilight of the crypto-geeks

"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.

Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."

redux [02.15.01]
The Atlantic Online The Reinvention of Privacy

"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?

A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""

The New York Times Telecom Outlook: First the Bad News, Then the Bad News
[requires 'free' registration]

"The turmoil continues in telecommunications, making the long-awaited turnaround increasingly difficult to call. Indeed, in light of a wave of bad news last week and through the weekend, some analysts say the industry's problems could actually become worse before they become better."

" "I foresee a near total collapse as the endgame," said Susan Kalla, a senior telecommunications analyst at Friedman, Billings & Ramsey. "I've become more reactionary in the last month as it becomes clear that almost nothing is working in the industry's favor.""

redux [04.30.02]
Light Reading Telecom Downturn: Just Beginning?

"The carrier spending downturn could very well last another five to six years, according to Dr. John McQuillan, president of McQuillan Ventures. McQuillan, cochairman of the NGN Ventures conference here, sent a few attendees scrambling for their Maalox on Tuesday when he pointed out that, historically, capital spending downturns have tended to last for seven to eight years.

Since the telecom industry is only two years into its current downturn, McQuillan told attendees that they'd better just buck up and quit living in the past: "We need to stop telling ourselves that it's a tough market and start telling ourselves that this is the market.""

The Washington Post AT&T Posts Nearly $1 Billion Loss

"Phone and cable carrier AT&T Corp. reported its loss widened to nearly $1 billion in the first quarter, blaming the performance on falling long-distance sales and a slide in the value of its investments."

redux [03.15.02]
MSNBC A telecom hangover ...that won’t go away

"After nearly $2 trillion of investment, the build-out of the information superhighway has run out of gas. The mountain of money invested by wannabe global telecom providers continues to go up in smoke. Though the smaller upstarts were first to pull the plug, major carriers like Global Crossing are now hitting bankruptcy court. And analysts say it could be years before the industry shakes off its debt hangover, absorbs a glut of capacity and begins to grow again."

redux [02.08.02]
BusinessWeek The Tidal Wave Bearing Down on Telecom

""Some of the more highly leveraged companies are really struggling. They don't have the cash flow to make their payments," says James Glen, a telecom economist with Economy.com."

Worse, Baby Bells such as Verizon (VZ ) and SBC (SBC ) continue to eat away at consumer long-distance monopoly of AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom. That's on top of the woes the big three already face in operating backbone undersea and land-based networks, which they resell to other operators in some places. While Sprint, WorldCom, and AT&T don't face the type of imminent cash crunch as Global Crossing does, a consolidation among even the major long-distance providers is now a possibility."

DotComScoop Sprint CEO warns employees "there is no magic bullet"

"Sprint PCS stock hit a 52-week of low $10.00 on Wednesday after the company cut 2002 subscriber targets. Meanwhile, Sprint stock plummeted to an all-time low of $12.64 on Wednesday after the company posted a big loss and cut its 2002 outlook.

The telecom market has been rocked by the bankruptcy of Global Crossing and lingering doubts from last year. Sprint competitor WorldCom has seen its stock fall drastically this week while fears of more Enron-esque accounting problems plague the industry."

SMART Letter The Enronization of Telecom

"The fundamental health of the [telecom] sector is likely to get worse before it gets better . . . The combination of: the sector's anemic growth outlook, the cannibalizing competitive mega-trends of wireless substitution, voice to data migration, Bell entry into long distance combined with local competition, and the bubble-induced excesses in debt and over-capacity, all create a powerful wealth destroying dynamic. Telecom's 'debt spiral' has gotten so bad that even the relatively strongest players who are still able to raise significant capital (VZ, SBC, and BLS) don't want to assume any more liabilities or business risk. Consequently, Precursor is reversing its long held view that consolidation can help improve the sector from excess capacity and debt any time soon."

David Isenberg and David Weinberger The Paradox of the Best Network

"Despite the darkened outlook, new communications capabilities are within reach that will make the current Internet look like tin cans and string. The technical know-how exists. Radically simplified technologies can blast bits a million times faster than the current network at a millionth of the cost. These are sitting in laboratories undeveloped, in warehouses undeployed, and in the field underutilized.

It's not even that the communications revolution has been derailed by inept or self-aggrandizing behavior by incumbent telephone companies and their government regulators. Something more fundamental is at work."

The New York Times Battle Over Access to Online Books
[requires 'free' registration]

"When Internet song-sharing services created digital jukeboxes of free music, book publishers raced to bolt the door to their own archives of copyrighted works.

Many librarians, on the other hand, thought the idea was pretty exciting.

Now, new technologies are igniting a similar battle closer to home. Librarians have seized on the potential of digital technology and offered users free online access to the contents of books from their homes, and they are squaring off with publishers who fear that free remote access costs them book sales."

redux [03.25.02]
The New York Times Law Limiting Internet in Libraries Challenged
[requires 'free' registration]

"This morning in a Philadelphia courtroom, a coalition of libraries, Web sites and library patrons will begin nine days of hearings in which they will ask three federal judges to help decide a seemingly simple question: What is a library for?"

"They argue that a law passed by Congress in December 2000 requiring schools and libraries to use Internet filtering software changes the nature of libraries from being places that provide information to places that unconstitutionally restrict it."

The Washington Post Pat Schroeder's New Chapter

"And who, you might be wondering, is giving Schroeder and her publishers such a fright?

Librarians, of course.

No joke. Of all the dangerous and dot-complex problems that American publishers face in the near future -- economic downturns, competition for leisure time, piracy -- perhaps the most explosive one could be libraries. Publishers and librarians are squaring off for a battle royal over the way electronic books and journals are lent out from libraries and over what constitutes fair use of written material."

redux [08.23.01]
The New York Times Librarians Adjust Image in an Effort to Fill Jobs
[requires 'free' registration]

""It's time for us to work on advocating for libraries to change the image," said one of the "21st Century Librarians," Veronda Pitchford, an African-American librarian in Chicago who wears dreadlocks, enjoys in-line skating, practices yoga and listens to eclectic music. "I want little kids to know that this is an option. I want little girls to see me."

Ms. Pitchford, 30, said that even in an age when computers may be leading children to forget the human touch of a librarian, there is no substitute.

"When I say that we're the ultimate search engine," she said, "I'm not joking.""

redux [07.12.01]
News.Com Library "radicals" targeted in latest copyright battles

"Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times."

In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."

redux [01.18.01]
MSNBC Filter THIS!

"The American Library Association has decided to file a lawsuit challenging a new federal law that would require filtering in public schools and libraries."

"The ALA has been vocal and active about free speech issues. Five years ago, it joined a successful challenge to the Communications Decency Act, which would have regulated Web content deemed harmful to minors had the Supreme Court not declared it unconstitutional. And most recently, it filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Napster case, arguing that shutting down the service could have chilling consequences for any entity that catalogs information for others to use, including libraries and search engines.""

redux [04.09.00]
Dan Gillmor Librarians are heroes of Net censorship fight

"HEROES OF FREEDOM: They are champions of some vital principles, "the unsung heroes of the fight for free expression, intellectual freedom and access to the Internet"

"Librarians help us find things. They help us read. They help us learn. And lately they've been fighting the good fight for their patrons' right to have access to the unfiltered resources of the newest information resource -- the Internet."