conflux
Forbes
Canada court refuses to crack down on music swaps
"The Federal Court of Canada rejected a request from the country's biggest music producers that it order Internet service providers to identify music swappers."
""I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P (peer-to-peer) service," he wrote."
redux [01.21.04]
[requires 'free' registration]
"``Our campaign against illegal file sharers is not missing a beat,'' said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. ``The message to illegal file sharers should be as clear as ever.''
"Although the lawsuits have generated a harsh response and bad publicity, recording industry officials said that by other measures the industry's tough approach was proving successful. By some measures, file trading on peer-to-peer networks has dropped, at least in the United States, while awareness that trading music violates the law ``has shot through the roof,'' said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association."
" The Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits against online song swappers are aggressive, but do they work? Two widely cited surveys seemed to show that legal action, which began in September, was chilling file-sharing activity."
"Trouble is, those surveys provide a relatively narrow view of the file-swapping universe. BayTSP, a Silicon Valley watchdog that works for three of the major record labels, tracks the number of songs available for download worldwide. It sees just a 10% drop since July and also notes steady migration from older, virus-ridden programs like KaZaA to hipper peer-to-peer networks such as eDonkey and Bit Torrent -- which were absent from comScore's tally."
redux [09.10.03]
"Brianna Lahara won't be sharing music files anymore. Less than a day after the recording industry announced its lawsuits, the 12-year-old Manhattan schoolgirl and her mother settled their case for $2,000.
"I am sorry for what I have done," Brianna said in a statement released by the Recording Industry Association of America on Tuesday. "I love music and I don't want to hurt the artists I love.""
"A peer-to-peer group says it will cover costs for a 12-year-old New York girl who agreed to pay record labels $2,000 to settle a file-swapping lawsuit."
""We do not condone copyright infringement, but someone has to draw the line to call attention to a system that permits multinational corporations with phenomenal financial and political resources to strong-arm 12-year-olds and their families in public housing the way this sorry episode dramatizes," said Adam Eisgrau, the executive director of P2P United."
redux [08.19.03]
""RIAA is in no way targeting 'de minimis' users," wrote Cary Sherman, the group's president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.""
"Sherman said that in cases it brought last year against college students who were illegally distributing tens of thousands of songs, the RIAA settled cases for $12,500 to $17,000 each."
redux [08.11.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Arguing that the record industry is trying to force its members to become the "police of the Internet," a group representing over 100 Internet service providers plans to deliver a letter to the industry's trade association today. The letter asks a series of pointed questions about plans to sue people suspected of illegally trading music files online.
""There has to be a better answer than litigation," the letter says."
"A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law.
""A school or university should consider carefully whether it wants to be co-opted into the law enforcement business," D'Amato wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times."
"Next week, incoming students at UC Berkeley will receive more than just campus maps and classroom tours: They'll learn about the perils of sharing digital music and movies files online.
Specifically they'll be warned they can lose their Internet access or get slapped with a costly copyright infringement lawsuit if they aren't careful about uploading and downloading files using programs like Kazaa."
redux [07.28.03]
"Bob Barnes never dreamed that the long arm of the music industry would reach into his personal computer. Sure, the bus operator from Fresno, Calif., had used Napster to grab music files off the Internet. And when that file-swapping service was put out of business, he switched to its most popular successor, Kazaa. But he was careful not to leave a trace, transferring all his downloaded songs to separate discs. A visiting teenage grandson wasn't so careful, however, and last week Barnes, 50, was slapped with a subpoena from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It alleged that he had posted online -- for the world to steal -- digital copies of songs by Savage Garden, Marvin Gaye and the Eagles. "This is like shock and awe," says Barnes. "Blitz them until they submit."
Barnes may be a pirate, but he has plenty of company."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Those on alert include several college students, the parents of a 14-year-old boy in the Southwest, a 41-year-old Colorado health care worker and a Brooklyn woman who works in the fashion industry.
"They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring the bejiminy out of them," said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last Wednesday, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. "If someone had sent me a letter saying `this is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have gotten my attention. This just seems so drastic.""
"As the war over P2P downloading heats up, and the record companies launch the novel marketing technique of suing their customers, I think it is an appropriate time to settle some of the pervasive myths about U.S. copyright law which fuel both sides of the debate."
redux [06.25.03]
"A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes."
""The RIAA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to not only alienate their own customers but attempt to drive them into bankruptcy through litigation. So therefore they probably won't be able to afford to buy any music even if they want to," said Grokster President Wayne Rosso, who added he does not support copyright infringement."
9:15 PM 0 comments
News.Com
Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says
"For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.
"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.""
redux [07.10.03]
"The survey's findings oppose the music industry's long-standing argument that internet downloading is responsible for a slump in CD sales, with album sales falling 5% in the last year.
Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet."
redux [06.25.03]
"A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes."
""The RIAA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to not only alienate their own customers but attempt to drive them into bankruptcy through litigation. So therefore they probably won't be able to afford to buy any music even if they want to," said Grokster President Wayne Rosso, who added he does not support copyright infringement."
redux [05.08.03]
"Offering some insight to the recording industry as it struggles to boost sales online, a survey finds that Web surfers who download music from song-swap sites are more likely to buy music online, as well as offline at retailers."
"The major record labels blame the popularity of such free services as Kazaa and Morpheus for sharp declines in CD sales. But other industry watchers argue that declining sales are the result of fewer hit albums being released and a weak economy."
redux [11.04.02]
"When Napster, the seminal file-swapping service, tempted people with the ability to pluck copyrighted songs from the Internet for free, the music recording industry said its sales would suffer. Napster has since been shuttered, but a report scheduled for release today suggests that the proliferation of other file-swapping services, such as Kazaa, has done exactly what the recording industry said it would."
"Peter Daboll, president of ComScore, acknowledged the quality of music might have played a role in the slumping music sales, as the popularity of Britney Spears and boy bands like 'N Sync has waned with no clear successors driving sales. But Daboll and record labels place most of the blame on illicit file-swapping services that have taken the place of the defunct Napster."
redux [10.23.02]
"On the first day I posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales tripled, and they have stayed that way ever since. I'm not about to become a zillionaire as a result, but I am making more money. At a time when radio playlists are tighter and any kind of exposure is hard to come by, 365,000 copies of my work now will be heard. Even if only 3% of those people come to concerts or buy my CDs, I've gained about 10,000 new fans this year.
That's how artists become successful: exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, and no one buys CDs. After 37 years as a recording artist, when people write to tell me that they came to my concert because they downloaded a song and got curious, I am thrilled."
redux [06.14.02]
"Traditional music pirates, who burned and sold bootlegs long before the days of Napster, continue to cost the music industry billions of dollars every year.
But the same technologies that pirates use to steal -- -- file sharing, CD-burning and computers -- are driving legitimate sales by consumers, according to research from market research company Ipsos-Reid."
redux [05.06.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Disputing the position held by the major record companies, a report issued on Friday found that people who use file-sharing networks to obtain music at no charge over the Internet are more likely to have increased their spending on music than are average online music fans."
""File-sharing is a net positive technology" in spurring sales, said Aram Sinnreich, author of the Jupiter report, explaining that people who download music online often are, in effect, sampling it. "It gets people enthusiastic about new and catalog music.""
redux [04.24.02]
"Contrary to charges that Internet song-swapping is killing the music industry, new Jupiter Media Metrix research contends that experienced online song-swappers are more likely to buy new albums than average music fans, not less."
redux [04.17.02]
""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."
""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""
redux [03.18.02]
"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."
"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."
redux [12.18.01]
"Indeed, the pointless attempt to control copyrighted data every step of the way from musician's voice to listener's ear is the biggest roadblock to success for online music. Just as HBO doesn't try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters. Even former BMG head Strauss Zelnick, who says he has no problem throwing big-time bootleggers in jail, agrees the industry's challenge is to come up with an attractive alternative to Aimster and its ilk. "We need to give consumers a service they want, at a price they're willing to pay," he told me in an interview this summer. "People don't like to think of themselves as criminals." But ironically, the more anti-theft hurdles crammed into the legal products, the more attractive the pirate alternatives become."
redux [07.21.00]
"Jupiter said it surveyed more than 2,200 online music fans about whether the money they spent on music purchases had increased, decreased or remained the same since they began visiting music destinations on the Web. People between the ages of 18 to 24 who spend less than $20 on music within a three-month period indicated that they were likely to remain at a constant purchasing level despite online music use. All other groups said they had increased spending as a result of online music use, Jupiter reported."
redux [05.02.00]
""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.
There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.
And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."
7:28 PM 0 comments
Wired News
How E-Voting Threatens Democracy
"Clicking on a link for a file transfer protocol site belonging to voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems, Harris found about 40,000 unprotected computer files. They included source code for Diebold's AccuVote touch-screen voting machine, program files for its Global Election Management System tabulation software, a Texas voter-registration list with voters' names and addresses, and what appeared to be live vote data from 57 precincts in a 2002 California primary election.
"There was a lot of stuff that shouldn't have been there," Harris said."
redux [03.02.04]
"Scattered technical problems were reported in the early hours as voters in 10 states, including California, New York and Ohio, went to the Super Tuesday polls to choose a Democratic presidential nominee and decide primary contests for congressional and state races.
Advocates of electronic voting say paperless ballots save money and eliminate problems common to old systems. But the technology brings a new breed of security concerns, like software errors and hackers that could make the results unreliable."
"More worryingly, with public opinion so evenly divided, a president can be elected on the basis of 537 votes in one state. The new systems appear so easy to crack that a hacker armed with a telephone and the right numbers can dial into numerous access points, change a few votes for each precinct or hundreds of votes in several - leaving no trail.
There is nothing fanciful about the possibility of things going wrong. In one election last year in Indiana, the new electronic equipment recorded more than 100,000 votes in an election with only 19,000 registered voters."
redux [02.13.04]
"Fear of change is a universal human emotion, and it often erupts when new technology comes along to alter an established and comfortable way of doing things.
This fear can sway people away from thoughtful consideration of risks and rewards, pushing them into panic reactions where new ideas are weighed down by unfair expectations.
That's happening right now with electronic voting."
"Six electronic voting machines used in two North Carolina counties lost 436 absentee ballot votes in the 2002 general election because of a software problem, raising increasing doubts about the accuracy and integrity of voting equipment in a presidential election year."
""If this happened with one version of the firmware, how can we be sure that it didn't happen with other versions of the firmware?" asked Dill. "How can we be sure that other counties didn't lose votes that they didn't catch?""
"While I sat at his computer, March helped me open a file containing actual results from a March 2002 primary election held in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. -- a file that March says would be accessible to anyone who worked in the county elections office on Election Day. Following March's direction, I changed the vote count with a few clicks. Then, he explained how to alter the "audit log," erasing all evidence that we'd tampered with the results. I saved the file. If it had been a real election, I would have been carrying out an electronic coup. It was a chilling realization."
redux [02.12.04]
"Wolfowitz said the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) could not guarantee voting records would be kept secure, thereby calling into question the integrity of the process.
The Defense Department will continue to investigate other methods of electronic voting, but at this point it is not clear if any effort will be in place by Election Day."
"Brewer said Michigan is using state-of-the art security, many parts of which he would not discuss. The vote tally includes a check to make sure no one voted more than once.
Brewer compared the risks to those of paper absentee ballots: "People have decided over the course of time that accessibility and convenience of voting is worth taking that risk -- not that you let your guard down.""
redux [02.02.04]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails."
"Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true."
"Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton.
Concerned that their new $12.7 million Diebold electronic voting system had developed a glitch, election officials turned to a company representative who happened to be on hand.
Lucky he was there. For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California."
redux [01.26.04]
"Researchers warned last week that an Internet voting system designed for Americans overseas to use in the November presidential election should be scrapped -- because Internet insecurities could compromise the election.
The government dismissed the researchers' findings, saying the report offered false conclusions about the security of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, system. The evaluation was written for the Defense Department by four of 10 computer experts assembled by the Federal Voting Assistance Program."
redux [12.18.03]
"Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials.
The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission."
"Remember all the chads and dimples that made voting for President so chaotic in Florida three years ago? In a well-meaning effort to fix the system before the 2004 elections, many communities--in Florida and in other states--have begun to install direct-recording electronic machines (DRE), which instantly record and tabulate votes; some even use fancy touch-screen technology similar to automated-teller machines in banks. Computer scientists are alarmed, however, by the potential to manipulate the new machines."
redux [12.12.03]
"The role of technology in U.S. elections has become the center of a curious fight in which the forces aren't lining up at all the way you might think. On one side, state and local elections officials, often thought to be technological troglodytes, are the most enthusiastic fans of the latest in computerized voting systems.
On the other is a group of computer scientists and other academics who are deeply suspicious of the technology and believe the best answer is, of all things, paper ballots."
"As for voting itself, I think we have made a horrible decision to solve this problem with technology. While the voting technology we have been considering is flawed, the best answer doesn't have to be some other voting technology that is somehow better. We turn to technology because it supposedly eliminates human error. I suggest that we add humans to the process in order to eliminate technological errors. And we'd save a lot of money in the process.
My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right."
"Electronic-voting machine manufacturers are circling their wagons trying to ease the security concerns raised in the last few months that their machines are susceptible to being hacked and subject to voter fraud.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the software that runs on the voting machines of industry leader Diebold. In their report they stated, "We found significant security flaws: voters can trivially cast multiple votes with no built-in traceability, administrative functions can be performed by regular voters, and the threats posed by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and even janitors, is even greater.""
"Several well-publicized flaws in "e-voting," or electronic voting, systems have not led to improvements, said Harvard University computer professor Rebecca Mercuri."
""Officials are not removed from their posts, fired or sent to trial; vendors are not banned from participation; equipment is not recalled; standards are not rewritten; and elections are not re-held," she said."
"An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased."
"Diebold spokesman David Bear would neither dispute nor confirm the accuracy of the "yin-yang" e-mail on Monday, saying it is "at best the internal discussion of one individual and does not reflect the sentiments or the position of the company.""
8:43 PM 0 comments
The New York Times Magazine
The Human Factor
[requires 'free' registration]
"How much is your life worth to you? On the face of it, that's an idiotic question. No amount of money could compensate you for the loss of your life, for the simple reason that the money would be no good to you if you were dead. And you might feel, for different reasons, that the dollar value of the lives of your spouse or children -- or even a stranger living on the other side of the country -- is also infinite. No one should be knowingly sacrificed for a sum of money: that's what we mean when we say that human life is priceless.
But the government set a price for it four years ago: $6.1 million. "
redux [01.02.02]
"Is the life of an investment banker who died in the World Trade Center worth $1.65 million in taxpayer money? What about $3 million? Is the life of a firefighter worth more than that of the janitor he tried to save? How about the life of a woman who died in the Oklahoma City bombing?
These sound like rhetorical questions, the kinds of queries we hope never to have to answer. But they are the questions that the administrators of private charities and federal compensation funds must consider -- and answer to the satisfaction of an entire nation -- as they begin to divvy up and distribute enormous sums of money to the victims of the Sept. 11 disaster."
[requires 'free' registration]
"The Justice Department has provoked a sharp debate among lawyers by asking whether it should use formulas to help determine awards from the federal fund for victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks."
"A grid approach is essentially the opposite of the traditional case method of American courts, where individual determinations are made on issues like the value of a person's suffering. Proponents say a grid could calculate damages through formulas that would include factors like the age, earnings and number of children of each victim."
"Although this economic model - willingness-to-pay measures - has been adopted by most economists, the courts use the human capital model to determine damages in cases of wrongful death. "This views people as a machine - a stream of income," said Feldman. "To make [the plaintiffs] whole, they look at what the deceased would have earned and passed on to them."
Feldman believes there is a certain logic to this when widows and children go before the courts to seek justice for a family member who has lost his or her life through another's negligence. But such an approach "implies that someone who is 65 years old or is retired is worth nothing," said Feldman. "A younger person's life is going to always be more valuable using this model.""
"Compensation for death or bodily injury involves two quite different problems. The first is the problem of how much' damage there is to make up for. The second is the problem of in what coin damages can be paid. One might imagine that someone would be willing to give his life in exchange for a sufficiently high price--five years of ecstasy, perhaps. Faust, after all, traded not merely life but eternal bliss for a finite payment. More mundanely, we observe that people are willing to enter dangerous professions (driving dynamite trucks, for example) in exchange for somewhat higher pay, thus in effect trading life--a small increase in the probability of getting killed--for income. Both examples suggest that the reason it is impossible to 'fully compensate' someone for the loss of his life is not that the value of his life to him is infinite--it is not--but that the value of compensation to a corpse is in most cases small."
9:21 PM 0 comments
News.Com
Dell sees
green in EPA computer, recycling pact
"Dell has won a contract to supply PCs to the Environmental Protection Agency over the next three years, as well as help the regulatory body recycle its aging hardware."
"Gaining the business of the environmental agency is a surefire sign that the Round Rock, Texas-based systems vendor has won over some experts with its plans for keeping dangerous elements found in PCs and other devices out of the country's landfills."
redux [03.09.04]
"It turns out your computer is a much bigger material and energy hog than previously believed. The most effective way to reduce its oversized environmental footprint is to increase its useful lifespan, according to a new book released Monday, Computers and the Environment , by the United Nations University in Tokyo.
The average desktop PC and 17-inch CRT monitor takes an SUV-sized 1.8 tons of water, fossil fuels and chemicals to make, the book reports."
redux [01.01.04]
"Entrepreneurs and environmental groups are getting ready for a surge of old computers, cell phones and other electronic devices that could be recycled or reused.
A recent tax law and new recycling requirements are expected to increase the supply of gadgets that can be given new life.
The tax break gives businesses an added 50 percent "bonus deduction" from a company's profit for equipment purchased between last May 5 and the end of next year. The deduction, in a law signed by President Bush, is on top of the 30 percent first-year write-off that many businesses take on new equipment."
redux [09.27.03]
"Californians, it's time to clean out the basements, garages and closets: The state will soon provide a safe place to ditch ancient computers and televisions."
"The [Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003] charges retailers and manufacturers a small fee, ranging from $6 to $10 depending on the product, to fund a statewide recycling infrastructure. The money, collected at the point of purchase, will be distributed to local governments and electronic waste recyclers to set up collection points and drop-off sites where consumers can unload their useless machines."
redux [07.07.03]
"Most people viewing the carcass of an abandoned motherboard would see a useless collection of plastic shards and mangled wires.
Hewlett-Packard's Chris Altobell sees silver and gold.
Altobell is the marketing manager of HP's Product Recycling Solutions unit in Roseville, Calif., which processes 3 million pounds of used computer machinery each month, transforming giant corporate printers and cast-off 386 consumer machines into materials that can be spun into precious metals and plastic containers."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Responding to concerns from both customers and environmental advocates, Dell Computer announced yesterday that it would no longer rely on prisons to supply workers for its computer recycling program.
Dell, the world's largest seller of PC's, said it had canceled its contract with Unicor, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that employs prisoners for electronics recycling and other industries."
redux [06.27.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"The nation's two largest personal computer makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, handle recycling of the waste from computer products in remarkably different ways, according to a report by environmentalists released today.
The report was prepared by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group that also focuses on health issues, and the Computer Take Back Campaign. It commended Hewlett-Packard for using "state of the art" practices in partnership with an expanding commercial recycling industry, while criticizing Dell for using low-cost prison labor in association with Unicor, an industrial prison system within the Justice Department."
redux [06.04.03]
"Every year, 1.5 million old, but working, computers are buried in landfill sites. Now, an impending EU directive could mean these discarded machines, and many others, enjoy a more useful life.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Weee) Directive makes electronics firms responsible for what happens to the gadgets and devices they produce once people have done with them."
redux [02.25.03]
"This is the end of the road for the toxic end-product of the computer age.
In towns such as this one on China's south-eastern coast, vast quantities of obsolete electronics shipped in from the United States, Europe and Japan are piled in mountains of waste."
"The real costs are being borne by the people on the receiving end of the 'e-waste'. In towns along China's coast as well as in India and Pakistan, adults and children work for about US$1.20 (S$2.08) a day in unregulated and unsafe conditions."
redux [02.05.03]
"The computer maker is testing a program that gives those who recycle their old computers, monitors, printers or other gear a coupon worth up to $50 for any purchase of $60 or more on HP's online store. Under a program announced nearly two years ago, HP charges anywhere from $17 to $31 to recycle products. The company says the coupon will offset the amount customers must pay for the service, which ensures none of the gear ends up in landfills.
The need for recycling is growing, particularly as nonprofit agencies become less willing to accept older gear, said Renee St. Denis, manager of HP's recycling effort. The problem of what to do with all this aging equipment has become a major issue facing the tech industry."
redux [01.26.03]
"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."
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."
10:20 PM 0 comments
Wired News
Outsourcing Report Blames Schools
"A desire for cheap labor is not the primary reason technology companies are turning to offshore workers, according to a new report by the American Electronics Association, the United States' largest high-tech trade association.
The American school system, which AeA researchers charge is failing to provide strong science and math education to students, is largely to blame for lost jobs, according to the AeA's report, "Offshore Outsourcing in an Increasingly Competitive and Rapidly Changing World.""
redux [03.01.04]
""How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.
Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, Nagarajan said, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the United States has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans."
"Instead of focusing on jobs lost to the globalisation of information technology, Catherine Mann of the Institute for International Economics in Washington looks at globalisation's power to reduce prices and so help spread new technology, new practices and job-creating investment through the economy.
She uses the example of cheaper IT hardware, one of the main aspects of globalisation in the 1990s. Most of the drop in prices for PCs, mainframes and so on was caused by the relentless advance of technology; but she still thinks that trade and globalised production--all those Dell Computer factories in China, for instance--was responsible for 10-30% of the fall in hardware prices. These lower prices led to higher American productivity growth and added $230 billion of extra GDP between 1995 and 2002, equivalent to an extra 0.3 percentage points of growth a year."
redux [02.10.04]
"Diana Farrell, director, McKinsey Global Institute, said, "People in the US are looking at it as a job issue. They are not economists and therefore, they don't necessarily see the whole picture. What's going to happen is that offshoring is actually going to benefit US businesses even more than India." She said it was a profoundly new way of doing things and would change the structure of organisations. Offshore was about global wealth creation and integrating economies, she explained, adding that it would create more high-value jobs in the US than people could imagine today.
Based on the research that the McKinsey institute had carried out, Ms Farrell said conservatively, for every dollar invested in the offshore space, $0.58 was directly saved."
[requires 'free' registration]
"MANY American computer programmers complain that they're losing their jobs to lower-paid workers in India. The trend toward foreign "outsourcing" has become a political flashpoint.
But the trend is less frightening and more promising than you'd think from either the angry talk from unemployed programmers or the scary estimates from consulting firms, argues Catherine L. Mann, an economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington."
redux [01.27.04]
"Aparna Jairam isn't trying to steal your job. That's what she tells me, and I believe her. But if Jairam does end up taking it - and, let's face facts, she could do your $70,000-a-year job for the wages of a Taco Bell counter jockey - she won't lose any sleep over your plight. When I ask what her advice is for a beleaguered American programmer afraid of being pulled under by the global tide that she represents, Jairam takes the high road, neither dismissing the concern nor offering soothing happy talk. Instead, she recites a portion of the 2,000-year-old epic poem and Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita: "Do what you're supposed to do. And don't worry about the fruits. They'll come on their own."
This is a story about the global economy."
"If your job has been offshored to another country, where someone else will do it for a fraction of your former salary, should you:
(a) Stand outside corporate outsourcing conferences waving a placard that says "WILL CODE FOR FOOD"?
(b) Start a Web movement or e-mail campaign to lobby the government and other shoppers to stop doing business with companies that send jobs overseas?
(c) Hang up your keyboard and learn a new skill, like massage therapy or nursing, that can't be bought and sold over a phone line with the click of a mouse?
Amy Dean has a more radical, if wonkier, idea."
10:06 PM 0 comments
International Herald Tribune
Text-messaging the revolution
"In the terrorist attacks in Madrid, mobile phones played a deadly role, detonating the bombs that killed 202 people. But the devices, along with other digital technology, may have served a more democratic purpose in the aftermath.
On the eve of the March 14 elections that resulted in the defeat of the governing Popular Party, text messages and e-mails raced around Spain. Some urged supporters of the Socialists, the eventual victors, to vote. Others tried to rally supporters of the Popular Party, defending against it accusations that it had tried to cover up evidence of Al Qaeda's apparent responsibility for the bombings."
redux [03.19.03]
"With the help of communications technology, protesters are gearing up to take immediate action if and when war breaks out in Iraq."
""Groups wouldn't have been able to do some of the logistical and other planning without the aid of the Internet for getting the message out," said Rayan Elamine, organizer with Direct Action to Stop the War, an umbrella organization for a number of antiwar groups based in the San Francisco Bay Area."
""The Internet is communication, but it's not community. People make that mistake sometimes," said Gordon Clark, national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which calls on people to engage in civil disobedience when a war with Iraq begins. "You can't replace physical activism with online activism."
The generation gap sometimes shows when younger activists are asked to pass out flyers or circulate petitions, Smith said. The constant committee meetings behind the Vietnam War protests may have been grueling, but they brought people together in a way that electronic communication can't duplicate, he said."
redux [03.07.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Internet democracy solves the problem of how to focus political activity in a vast country of extremely busy and distracted citizens, because what keeps so many Americans busy and distracted these days is the Internet. In late February, my in-box received a forwarded message with the subject line ''Virtual March: Heading to 200,000. SEND FAX~a5646u63431t0~.'' The ''Virtual March on Washington'' was a campaign that Pariser and moveon.org held on Feb. 26: more than 1 million Americans around the country, moveon.org reports, flooded the Washington offices of their elected officials with antiwar messages, timed by electronic coordination so that phone lines wouldn't jam up. Internet democracy allows citizens to find one another directly, without phone trees or meetings of chapter organizations, and it amplifies their voices in the electronic storms or ''smart mobs'' (masses summoned electronically) that it seems able to generate in a few hours. With cellphones and instant messaging, the time frame of protest might soon be the nanosecond."
redux [02.23.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.
Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in areas where social protest information would typically reach."
"Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve around social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is true for their work as well."
redux [01.03.03]
"The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.
When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they simply pressed a few computer keys. Text messages flashed to the cellphones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls."
"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy."
redux [05.10.01]
"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web."
"In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."
redux [01.20.01]
"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."
"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."
"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."
redux [11.29.00]
""NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the latest in the effort to unseat Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Filipinos send 30 million cell phone "text messages" daily- more than anywhere else in the world. Activists are using the technology to organize rallies and respond instantly to the latest corruption charges. (5:19)""
redux [07.07.00]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone.
"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces," said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back." ."
"Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe, especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive."