conflux
Online Journalism Review
Guarding Against Libel Lawsuits
"The Internet has introduced new complications into defamation suits generally, and the meaning of publication in particular. Technology has made it possible for a message to be retrieved by a reader anywhere in the world regardless of its intended geographic audience. If jurisdiction is premised on the place where the message is read, the sender's geography is no longer an important consideration."
"Online publications have always been at risk of defamation claims. What Dow Jones and the other cases tell us is that the number of foreign claims is on the rise."
redux [10.24.02]
"Google confirmed on Wednesday that the sites had been removed from listings available at Google.fr and Google.de. The removed sites continue to appear in listings on the main Google.com site."
""To avoid legal liability, we remove sites from Google.de search results pages that may conflict with German law," said Google spokesman Nate Tyler. He indicated that each site that was delisted came after a specific complaint from a foreign government."
redux [09.26.02]
"An Internet libel jurisdiction case currently awaiting a decision in Australia's highest court represents another front in the battle being waged to determine which laws should apply on the Internet.
At issue in the Dow Jones v. Gutnick case is how publication is defined in cyberspace: Whether material is published when it is uploaded onto computer servers, or when it is downloaded by readers. The distinction is important because it helps determine which country or state's libel laws should apply tothe published material."
redux [05.29.02]
"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."
redux [01.04.02]
"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]
"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]
""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."
[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]
"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.
10:37 PM 0 comments
The New York Times
Wall St. Wonders How AOL Time Warner Will Right Itself
[requires 'free' registration]
"In other words, all of AOL Time Warner's high-flying initiatives of the last two years have amounted to a $100 billion mistake -- a figure larger than New Zealand's annual gross domestic product. And Wall Street analysts are wondering how managers who have survived the infighting and blunders thus far are going to turn around the company."
""It's a mature media company, and you've got what you've got in the old Time Warner assets," said Tom Wolzien, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company in New York. "They won't be posting huge growth and that's why the board decided to sell it two years ago. The problem is, they sold it to the wrong people.""
"Stop for a moment to consider AOL's multiple problems and Microsoft's manifest strengths, and a logical -- if somewhat farfetched -- solution emerges: Perhaps the two bitterest enemies on the Web should call a truce long enough for AOL Time Warner to unload its stumbling online service on voracious, cash-rich Microsoft."
redux [04.01.02]
"As AOL Time Warner Inc. stock sank last week to the lowest level since the companies announced plans to merge two years ago, the biggest merger in corporate history looked more and more like the biggest blunder.
"The merger of AOL and Time Warner was "an absolute mistake," Berry said. "The only reason it went through is that this was during the silly times in the market. Otherwise, there was not a chance in hell.""
redux [01.24.02]
"Only six months ago, the merger of AOL and Time Warner was reshaping the media industry, for two main reasons. First, because of its size: it was more than twice as big as its nearest rival, Viacom, and everybody else was scared of being trampled under the sheer weight of the new group. And second, because AOL Time Warner seemed to be redefining the nature of media itself, through its fusion of old and new. At that time, most activities of other big media groups--whether News Corp's obsession with snapping up DirecTV, a satellite broadcaster (which, for now, it has failed to do), or the attempts by Vivendi Universal, a French media giant, to secure distribution in America (which it has done)--could be explained by their need to stand up to AOL Time Warner..
Today, however, things look a little different."
redux [12.06.01]
"Old media officially took control of new media within the world's largest media company Wednesday, when CEO Gerald Levin unexpectedly announced his retirement. By selecting former Time Warner executive Parsons as his successor less than a year after the AOL-Time Warner merger, Levin disproved many assumptions about the direction of a company conceived at the height of dot-com power--and about the role of the Internet in creating a brave new world of media. Essentially, the establishment neutralized the revolution.
"In its role in a diversified media company, the Internet has a place as does any other medium," said Mark Mooradian, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, commenting on the significance of the power transfer. "The Internet is simply another one.""
redux [07.08.01]
"Like its earthly manifestation, which also encompasses portions of Rockefeller Center eight blocks downtown and AOL's digs in Dulles, Virginia, the intangible cultural sprawl of AOL Time Warner is also vast and diverse. With content spanning much of mainstream music, movies, television, magazines, and other media; with access to the distribution of cable and online services; with some 90,000 employees including some 17,000 at Time Inc. and CNN; and with a combined customer base 130 million subscribers strong, the new company is dealing with the convergence of old media and new on an incomparably large scale. Because of its sheer size and the strength of its news brands, CNN and Time Inc., the forces and patterns set in motion by AOL/TW may well affect everyone in journalism -- in print, on TV, and in the evolving online frontier."
redux [03.09.01]
"In the Time Inc. division, which is the largest magazine outfit in the U.S., concerns are multiplying faster than staffers initially imagined. Some at Time Inc. are increasingly wary that the magazine business could be threatened by AOL?s lack of journalistic savvy and the huge pressure to meet AOL Time Warner?s extremely aggressive financial goals ? including increasing cash flow 30 percent this year ? amid an ever-deteriorating advertising climate."
"AOL Chairman Steve Case?s answer: The pressure would force people to abandon old ways of thinking and forge new relationships across its various units."
redux [02.21.01]
"From the Web's beginning, in 1995, a debate has simmered over the ethics of online journalism. Most established media have maintained as clear a distinction online as they do in print between news and commerce. Pure dot-coms, by contrast -- and so-called portals, in particular -- have been willing, even eager, to pair editorial and sales in ways that aren't entirely transparent to readers.
"AOL's purchase of Time Warner and its Time Inc. publishing unit -- a prominent ASME member -- has, overnight, transformed the world's largest and most profitable dot-com company into the world's largest and most prestigious magazine publisher as well. It has thus moved the debate over the Web's journalistic ethics from the realm of the theoretical to the intensely practical. The issue is: Whose standards should prevail -- those of AOL Time Warner the publisher or those of AOL Time Warner the newsstand aggregator?"
redux [04.11.00]
"America Online's president sees home entertainment and communications as a collection of boxes. The TV set is the ''tell-me-a-story box.'' The personal computer - ''the manage-your-life box.'' The CD player? ''The give-me-a-mood box.''
The roles for those machines may be quickly evolving and the lines between them blurring. But Bob Pittman still sees plenty of room in American life for the newspaper out in the mailbox."
"In remarks that were part pep talk, part cautionary tale, he said practitioners of the written page can thrive in the new communications age if they are aggressive about getting their content online and don't defy a consumer-driven Internet culture that wants more and more at little or no cost."
redux [03.21.00]
"The choice of Sacks as primary attraction of a journalism seminar -- he's senior vice president and general manager of America Online -- was controversial enough to make one editor of Online Journalism stay home in protest. Yet it was strangely invigorating to hear this smug megacorporation executive lecture on his own importance, and how all journalists will play by AOL/Time-Warner's rules from now on, because, as Sacks said, "We're the biggest guys. We're big, and we're bad."
""If our goal was to publish bad magazines, by the way, we could have done that without a $120 billion merger." Before Sacks finished, he had happily proclaimed, "We do no original news," and described the new world of reporting as "an integrated consumer experience." Gives you an idea about how AOL might cover a famine."
8:03 PM 0 comments
News.Com
Bush proposes antiterror database plan
"A forthcoming government database will compile information from all federal agencies and the private sector on people deemed possible terrorist threats, President Bush said Tuesday evening."
"The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday about what information on Americans would be accessible to the TTIC. One government official with knowledge of the center, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was not designed to supplant Poindexter's efforts but was instead "an effort by the president to bring together elements of agencies that are focused on terrorism.""
"But while Congress asks for reports, TIA is already steaming forward. According to people with knowledge of the program, TIA has now advanced to the point where it's much more than a mere "research project." There is a working prototype of the system, and federal agencies outside the Defense Department have expressed interest in it.
Most alarmingly, an examination of the research that has been conducted so far into TIA reveals that even while the project has been charging ahead, only token attention has been paid to perhaps its most critical aspect -- privacy and civil liberties protection. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is taking the lead on TIA, has stymied the efforts of outside groups to find out more about TIA's protections."
"The threat integration center will analyze intelligence and ensure the information is shared throughout the federal government as well as with state and local authorities. It also will have the authority to set requirements for all intelligence agencies and assign collection operations to the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and, through Homeland Security, to state and local law enforcement authorities.
"This will be the first time in our history that all of these elements come together," the official said."
"The new terrorist information center would be headed by a senior government official reporting to the director of the CIA, which raises the question of how much control over intelligence operations the FBI is being given, even in light of its expanding mission."
"Treverton added that the new intelligence structure probably reflects some battling over turf among intelligence agencies. The CIA director, George Tenet, will not cede any of his authority over intelligence collection and analysis under the new plan, nor will his access to the president decrease. Quite the opposite, Anderson said. "It will probably strengthen his role and his visibility.""
9:35 PM 0 comments
Newsday
Anti-War Ads Rejected During Bush Speech
"The Comcast cable television company rejected ads that an anti-war group wanted to air during President Bush's State of the Union speech, saying they included unsubstantiated claims."
"The statement did not specify what Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, objected to.
The ads show citizens expressing opposition to war with Iraq and were to run twice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights."
9:04 PM 0 comments
ABC News
New Monitoring Law Concerns Librarians
"A federal law aimed at catching terrorists has raised the hackles of many of the nation's librarians, who say it goes too far by allowing law enforcement agencies to watch what some people are reading."
"Some 10,000 librarians from around the world were expected in Philadelphia for the association's midwinter meeting, which began Friday. The group will discuss the Patriot Act at a forum Sunday and is likely to draft a resolution condemning sections of the law that open library records to police inspection, Freedman said."
redux [01.17.03]
"The survey of 906 libraries by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that in the year following the Sept. 11 attacks, federal and local law enforcement agents visited at least 545 libraries to inquire after patrons' records.
When asked to voluntarily forfeit patrons' records, roughly half the librarians cooperated with investigators without demanding a subpoena or court order, the study found."
redux [01.01.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"As pinup calendars go, it has many of the standard features: models in black leather perched on beefy motorcycles. But the men and women on display here aren't exactly firefighters, or the Girls of "Baywatch," or any other known species of cheesecake or beefcake."
""We wanted to show people we've changed," said Nancy Dowd, the head of public relations for the library system, who snapped the photos with her Olympus C-3000, a digital camera. "People's ideas of librarians is conservative, and this just blew it out of the water.""
redux [06.17.02]
[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]
[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."
"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]
[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]
"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 [04.09.00]
"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."
10:03 PM 0 comments
The Japan Times
Chips with everything makes for a hi-tech mess
"So what are the environmental impacts of producing and using a 32-megabyte DRAM computer chip that weighs a mere 2 grams? The UNU team found that to make every one of the millions manufactured each year requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 grams of elemental gases (mainly nitrogen), and 72 grams of chemicals (hundreds are used, including lethal arsine gas and corrosive hydrogen fluoride).
To make matters worse, Williams believes his findings are conservative. "We think the real numbers may be twice that," he said, adding that rapid advances in technology aggravate the problem. "The fact that a chip has such a short lifespan, because the technology turns over so quickly, exacerbates the environmental impact.""
redux [01.10.03]
""The leadership continues to be by and large the Japanese companies, and the U.S. companies tend to be far behind," Smith said.
"A lot of (U.S. manufacturers') initiatives are piecemeal and not really designed to address the vast majority of consumer concerns," he added. "There is still an enormous amount of computer waste being exported to China.""
"The report also criticizes Dell's use of federal prison labor to recycle old computers, which it says exposes inmates to toxic chemicals without the same health and safety protections as workers at other facilities."
redux [12.03.02]
"In a shift that will change how toxic electronic waste is recycled in California and possibly nationwide, Hewlett-Packard has said it will support state legislation to require PC manufacturers to bear the cost of computer disposal.
""The combined HP-Compaq company is the single largest manufacturer of PCs in the world. They are the linchpin for producer responsibility,'' said Smith, whose group helped expose the primitive recycling industry in China. ``The fact that they have changed their position vastly improves the likelihood we'll get a very good e-waste bill in the new session.""
redux [11.13.02]
"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.
It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."
redux [05.22.02]
"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.
Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."
redux [04.06.02]
"Americans will throw out about 10 million old computers this year. About two-thirds of these will be shipped to Asia for dismantling by rural villagers. The computers all contain mercury and lead, and the resulting toxic waste has become a threat to villagers' health and environment.
"A coalition of activists and lawmakers has been working to improve the situation, and in recent weeks they've gotten a signed pledge from electronic manufacturers in the United States to consider a new solution."
"Workers in Silicon Valley's semiconductor plants toil in head-to-toe protective clothing designed to keep impurities from contaminating the microchips. But Mother Jones magazine reports that the growing incidence of health problems among these workers suggests that it is they who need protection. At least 250 workers have filed lawsuits against high-tech companies, charging that the toxic soup of chemicals in production areas has triggered high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer."
redux [05.04.00]
"Behind the well-paid geeks in cubicles and the sharp-dressed entrepreneurs is an industry that consumes as many resources, uses as many lethal chemicals, and generates as much toxic waste as some of the worst culprits of the pre-Internet age. And both industry workers and the people who live near the plants are feeling the effects: the toxins damage aquatic life in the bay, poison drinking water, and, increasing evidence suggests, kill high-tech industry workers.
While the federal government, local agencies, and hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents and company workers are dealing with the computer industry's mess here in America, the same (or worse) problems are spreading worldwide."
4:24 PM 0 comments
The Economist
Caught in the net
"IF THE internet will force difficult changes on democracies by handing power to individual citizens, it seems reasonable to believe that it will have a devastating impact on dictatorships. But it is not impossible that instead of undermining repressive regimes, the internet could become the most effective tool of social control that autocratic rulers have ever wielded."
"As more human interactions are conducted and recorded electronically, as the ability to analyse databases grows and as video and other offline surveillance technologies become cheaper and more effective, it will become ever easier for authoritarian governments to set up systems of widespread surveillance. George Orwell's Big Brother of "1984" might yet become a reality, a few decades later than he expected."
redux [01.09.03]
"In today's networked, globalized world, many presume that the Internet will pose a grave threat to authoritarian regimes. Such has been the power of this conventional wisdom that it remains for the most part unchallenged, and largely unexamined.
A new book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes, offers the most comprehensive and thought-provoking work on this subject to date. Authors Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas trace Internet use in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries: China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. They discover that authoritarian governments, far from fearing the information age, have chosen to direct Internet development in ways that bolster the state. At the same time, many regimes are struggling to cope with the potent challenges posed by new technologies. The authors encourage policy makers in the U.S. and other industrialized democracies to promote specific Internet-based initiatives that foster political liberalization, rather than perpetuating the myth of the Internet as an unstoppable "virus of freedom.""
redux [09.30.02]
"After resisting the Internet as a freewheeling tool of globalization and political anarchy for a decade, Saddam Hussein's government has cautiously embraced it.
Internet cafes have sprung up all over Baghdad in recent months, and even in smaller cities such as Karbala, a religiously conservative city 75 miles southwest of the capital. Just last month, the government took another major step, permitting some citizens to have Internet connections at home
Iraqis can now surf the Web and send e-mail to their hearts' content -- as long as they do it via www.uruklink.net, the government-controlled service provider monitored by Saddam's agents."
redux [08.29.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"THE Saudi government is censoring public Internet access to a degree that goes significantly but haphazardly beyond its stated central goal of blocking sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam, according to a recent study by Harvard Law School researchers.
The study's detailed list of blocked sites offers a glimpse into the areas that the Saudi government has deemed most troubling. Among them are sites related to pornography, women's rights, gays and lesbians, non-Islamic religions and criticism of political restrictions. Many humor and entertainment sites have also been blocked."
The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."
redux [06.25.02]
""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."
"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]
""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]
"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]
"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."
"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]
"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]
"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]
"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]
"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."
8:31 PM 0 comments
ISP Planet
War at the Core
"The core of the Internet is stitched together by agreements that allow traffic to pass from one company's network to another's. A recent dispute between AOL and Cogent Communications showed that these agreements are shockingly fragile."
"It is a complex process that AOL allegedly hopes to complete no sooner than end of 2003. Cogent appears not to be on AOL's list of desirable peering partners. Reports claimed AOL sought to charge Cogent $75,000 per month in order to keep the peering relationship intact, an amount that Cogent's chief executive David Schaeffer described as "approximately correct.""
"FEDERAL Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston said Australia is getting "screwed" by internet carriers' peering arrangements and that he would be directing competition and consumer watchdog the ACCC to do something about it."
" "The current arrangements for international and domestic internet traffic charging between networks, in particular the system generally known as peering whereby charges are levied on the basis of the relative amount of traffic exchanged between networks, is a significant issue for Australian broadband providers," the report said."
redux [05.25.01]
"The consumers' connections to the Internet are controlled by companies who are in the business of delivering content and services funded by advertising. Consumers who wander the Internet represent lost revenue. Customers who use IP telephony no longer make phone calls. Customers who experiment with creating new services are called abusers.
As long as these companies control connectivity, we do not have a marketplace for the connectivity services vital to the growth of the Internet and necessary for innovation and the benefits we have come to expect.
We must allow for a marketplace by preventing players with interests opposed to connectivity from controlling connectivity. It is a dramatic case of conflict of interest and antitrust violation. We cannot afford to tolerate such behavior. It is allowed and abetted by accepting the self-serving fallacies of the existing players. We must challenge their claims and create the opportunities so necessary for our continued prosperity."
redux [06.06.01]
"The blockage that stopped traffic flowing between two of the top 10 networks in the United States for more than four days stemmed from a relationship called "peering," in which two networks agree to swap traffic back and forth without charge. In this case, Cable & Wireless has stopped peering with PSINet, saying the struggling company no longer had enough traffic to make the relationship worthwhile."
"Because of the complicated set of histories and relationships that make up the Internet, this had far-reaching ramifications. Cutting off this link prevented either network from seeing the other, though both could use different routes to get anywhere else on the Net."
"That no one owns the Internet is taken as a truism. But the infrastructure on which the global network runs is owned by a handful of powerful corporations that can, and often do, use their control over the Internet backbone to their advantage in business negotiations. The influence these companies exert, some industry insiders fear, is strangling smaller companies and reducing customer choice."
""I can give you an example that shows that the Internet is owned by someone," says Jilani Zeribi, a senior analyst at market researcher Current Analysis in Sterling, Va. "Look at old peering arrangements, which were basically, 'I'll connect to your network, you carry my data and I'll carry yours.' The carriers started to realize that smaller ISPs were free-riding on their network, so they started charging for peering arrangements. Just the fact that someone wields that kind of power shows that someone owns the Internet.""
"As a consequence, the rules for Internet interconnection are still in the process of being worked out - and in this uncertain environment, Internet interconnection is an inherently risky business. The new technology presents its own interconnection complexities, with multiple layers of virtual networks built one over the other - so that an operator at any layer of the infrastructure will have its costs determined by the prices charged by the virtual network below it, while its prices, in turn, will determine the cost structure of the layer above. Furthermore, while commercial principles would suggest that money should flow towards those operators which produce value, this does not always happen in practice (a hangover of the historical expectation that Internet access should be free for all). The uncertainties of the environment are aggravated by the fact that there is currently no consensus on the issue of how to attribute "value" to the various elements of Internet interconnection."
"We discuss economic rationales behind peering decisions in the Internet. In the first part of the paper we analyze the decision about a bilateral peering agreement between two commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) who are in Cournot competition. In the second part we discuss multilateral peering between commercial ISPs and an academic research network (ARN). The latter is organized as club of academics who share the cost of their network. It is discussed whether peering threatens the existence of the ARN and under what circumstances a commercial ISP would want to use strategic pricing to win all ARN-members as customers."
7:47 PM 0 comments
News.Com
RIAA chief
to step down
"During the past several years, Rosen has served as a focal point for all the criticism and complaints levied by advocates of unfettered technology. Indeed, she was featured in the most recent issue of Wired magazine as "The Most Hated Name in Music"--a bold statement in an industry notoriously rife with avaricious record producers and label executives.
She has been cast by her critics as an unswerving enemy of technology, an impression she has tried with little success to dispel by saying she did not oppose peer-to-peer or Internet technologies per se, but only their use to distribute music without permission."
"Most people in Rosen's place would consider themselves lucky just to make it out alive. Reviled by college kids, music fans, and more than a few recording artists for the RIAA's role in forcing the shutdown of Napster, Rosen is seen as the embodiment of a venal corporate culture hurtling toward obsolescence. It seems she'll stop at nothing to frighten those who share music online instead of buying it in a store - hacking into networks, threatening universities and businesses, sending out subpoenas to unmask music-swappers. Some Hilary haters have protested her speeches and urged others to mail her excrement. On a scale of odiousness, devotees of the Web site Whatsbetter?com rated Rosen just below Illinois Nazis but better than Michael Bolton (and way above pedophile priests). On the more serious side, death threats once prompted Rosen to travel with security. "People take their free music seriously," Rosen says wryly."
" What speaks the loudest in the music industry is losing money hand over fist. And that is exactly what they are doing while at the same time video gaming and home video boom in sales despite of the slumping economy. The new successor to Rosen will be given an opportunity to put on a happy face with all of the parties (consumers who love the convenience of MP3s and record execs and artists who want to get paid for their music) and try to redirect the music business back to the ongoing success that they are accustomed to."
7:21 PM 0 comments
Wired News
This Is Your Business, Virtually
"Few companies have made a common practice of holding meetings in what analysts call a "virtual room" because the technology is still prohibitively expensive, said Christine Perey, president of Perey Research & Consulting. What's more, not everyone feels comfortable speaking in front of a camera. But as the technology improves and costs continue to drop, Perey said she could see virtual rooms becoming mainstream "in 20 years.""
"By then, the generation that grew up with a video camera stuck in its face by doting parents won't think twice about being recorded for business presentations, she said."
""We look at this as a long-term thing," Microsoft Information Worker Group lead program manager Dan Leach told internetnews.com. "We make big bets and long term bets... and this is one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Web conferencing becomes even more commonplace in the next five years.""
redux [05.14.02]
"Videoconferencing peaked in the two months after Sept. 11 as all travel -- especially airline travel -- was curtailed, said AT&T spokeswoman Jean Hurt. "Now it has settled back to normal growth trajectory," she said."
""Usage remained high until around Dec. 18, and then it crashed and burned,"' Gold said."
redux [03.07.02]
"Analyst Phil Leigh said that after Sept. 11, business users are more inclined to try Web conferencing technology than face the added ordeals of a business trip.
"It's still a new thing and it's still not as easy as picking up the telephone," said Leigh, vice president of technology research at Raymond James & Associates.
"Some resistance to change is endemic to all of us," Leigh said. "You can't shake hands across the Web. But in terms of personal productivity, I can do more with WebEx -- I can reach out to more people in the same fixed amount of time.""
redux [10.29.01]
[requires 'free' registration]""Corporate America is developing a different strategy of place," said Charles Grantham, chief scientist of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work. "The bottom line is a hard-core business logic -- you're better positioned for business continuity if you're distributed. But Sept. 11 also crystallized for a lot of people that they want a better balance between their personal and professional life, and managers are going to have to confront that in the coming year."
Such revolutionary zeal may be premature. After all, the longstanding conviction that a centralized workplace is essential to enforcing corporate culture, loyalty and hard work has been behind big real estate investments in corporate campuses and towering headquarters buildings. Those expenditures can make it prohibitively expensive to switch to a distributed workplace."
redux [09.20.01]
"The economy and corporate budgets are in sharp decline, new safety checks have made moving through airports slower than ever, and there's a general reluctance to travel in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks.
If corporate America is to attempt some semblance of normality, there must be meetings with customers, suppliers, far-flung co-workers, bankers, lawyers and distributors.
To keep things going, many companies are turning to videoconferencing, the technology touted years ago as the movement that would end corporate travel. It never did and it never will. But videoconferencing is on the rise, and experts said last week's events will further accelerate its use."
redux [07.11.01]
"While researchers tap Internet2 to extend collaboration between universities and push the limits of new Internet technologies, another group of social scientists is looking at how Internet2 is affecting those who use it - in effect, researching the researchers."
"Still, human beings clearly prefer working face to face. Teasley says that although scientists at each CFAR site can meet and examine data from their own PCs, they still tend to cluster around a single computer. "Their biggest complaint was that it was too hard to see that small screen," says Teasley. "I told them they should buy a projector. That was my high-level PhD advice.""
"Beyond Being There was a research project at Bell Communications Research in 1991 and 1992. Its key insight was that computer and communications technology cannot in the foreseeable future achieve the same quality of human interaction as that afforded by PPR (physically proximate reality - our somewhat obscure term for meeting in person). Thus, while most other projects aimed at every-higher communication bandwidths and higher-fidelity video, we aimed at making computers help people communicate in ways that cannot be done in PPR (for example, anonymous interactions). In other words, we wanted to be better than reality and move beyond being there!"
"Hollan and Stornetta effectively argue that the pursuit of face-to-face is a) often inappropriate, and b) destined to fail. The premise behind this assumption is that a media attempting to imitate face-to-face fails when communities only use that media when f-to-f is not available. When this happens, electronic communication is at a disadvantage relative to f-to-f. They argue that "In telecommunications research perhaps we have been building crutches rather than shoes;" we only use the crutch when our fully functional leg is not available. The authors suggest that researchers should instead begin building shoes, which augment our legs, and we use them even when they are fully functional. They astutely argue that there are potential advantages to electronic communication that are not present in f-to-f. "For example, three significant features of the new medium are its ability to support asynchronous communication, anonymous communication, and to automatically archive communication.""
7:07 PM 0 comments
MIT Technology Review
Creating a Culture of Ideas
"Not so many years ago, Bell Labs conducted so much research it could easily house some very high-risk programs, including the so-called blue-sky thinking that led to information theory and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. But the world benefited, and sometimes AT&T did too. Now, Bell Labs is a shadow of its former self, subdivided several times through AT&T's 1984 divestiture and subsequent split into Lucent, NCR, and the parent firm. Moreover, it is not alone. As the economy sags and companies trim their expenses, some of the first cuts are in high-risk or open-ended research programs. Even if the research budget does not drop, the nature of projects is prone to be more developmental than really innovative. If the trend continues, eventually we will suffer a deficit of new ideas. Already, fewer and fewer big corporations are focusing on new ideas. And the formation of startups has come almost to a standstill.
More than ever before, in the new "new economy," research and innovation will need to be housed in those places where there are parallel agendas and multiple means of support."
redux [08.02.02]
"Neuvo is the humble, if eccentric, technologist who heads research and development at Nokia (NOK), arguably the best product-driven R&D organization in the world.
Nokia's R&D apparatus is unlike anything in multinational corporate history. Most large-scale R&D operations are centralized, hierarchical, no-nonsense -- science as brute force. Nokia's 18,000 engineers, designers, and sociologists are scattered across the globe and form a kind of federation of rule-breaking, risk-taking hackers. Most of them answer not to countless layers of managers but to Neuvo, who considers it his missionary duty to break down his people's mental inhibitions, freeing their minds to roam toward the next big breakthrough. "We operate the way a great jazz band plays," Neuvo says. "There is a leader, and each member is playing the same piece, but they can improvise on the theme.""
redux [11.18.01]
"Balancing an increased market focus--and closer ties to customers--with the pursuit of world-class science is now the trick for many corporate R&D groups. Gone forever are the days when large industrial labs churned out scientific papers and conducted long-term research far removed from business pressures. But while R&D