NewsScan Daily, 28 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 28 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Students Create A File-Swap Work-Around
        New Defense: The Computer Did It
        Games Are Where The Girls Are
        Wildfires Stoke Tech Worries
        Cell Phone Rehab?

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Déjà Vu All Over Again:
        Worth Thinking About: Self-Expression, Self-Control

STUDENTS CREATE A FILE-SWAP WORK-AROUND
Two students at MIT have discovered a way to give their fellow attendees 
free dorm-room access to a library of 3,500 CDs without breaking copyright 
laws. Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel developed software that routes the 
tunes over the school's cable TV network, making it an analog transmission. 
Unlike digital copies swapped over the Internet, analog transmissions are 
not exact copies, which makes the likelihood of prosecution much more 
remote since most universities already have licenses to "perform" analog 
music. "I think it's fascinating. As a copyright lawyer, I think they've 
managed to thread the needle," says Electronic Frontier Foundation legal 
counsel Fred Von Lohmann. "They've basically managed to cut the record 
labels out of the equation altogether." The students managed to circumvent 
the Recording Industry Association of America completely by purchasing MP3 
versions of the CDs from Seattle-based Loudeye under license from the 
National Music Publishers Association. "The students get access to a broad 
array of music, and the copyright owners get paid. This is where we should 
all be heading. I hope the record industry takes not and realizes this is a 
whole lot more promising than suing people," says Von Lohmann. (AP 27 Oct 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031027/D7UEHP801.html

NEW DEFENSE: THE COMPUTER DID IT
Prosecutors in computer hacking cases are facing a new defense strategy 
that likely will become more prevalent in the age of hijacked PCs: the 
computer did it. Defense lawyers in three cases recently tried in the U.K. 
successfully argued that the crimes committed by their clients were, in 
fact, the results of "Trojan" programs placed on their computers without 
their knowledge. While it is relatively easy to trace a hack back to a 
particular computer, it's much more difficult to prove that the owner of 
that computer committed the crime. "On the one hand, this is 100% correct 
that you can not make that jump from computer to keyboard to person," says 
Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer for Counterpane Internet Security. 
"On the other hand, this defense could be used to acquit everybody. It 
makes prosecuting the guilty harder, but that's a good thing." But computer 
security consultant Dave Morrell says the defense also gives the green 
light to hackers. "It sets a precedent now in the judicial system where a 
hacker can just claim somebody took over his computer, the program vanished 
and he's free and clear." The Trojan defense has not yet been put to the 
test in the U.S. (Reuters/CNN.com 28 Oct 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/23/film.leaks.reut/index.html

GAMES ARE WHERE THE GIRLS ARE
Girls increasingly are getting hooked on computer games and game makers are 
beginning to notice. According to a new survey by the Entertainment 
Software Association, about 26% of all video and computer gamers are women 
18 or older, a finding that has resulted in more companies offering card 
games, puzzles and word games, which are more appealing to women than the 
male-dominated slugfests like "Quake" and "Doom." Microsoft says 68% of the 
30 million registered players at its www.zone.com site are women, and Game 
Universe reports that 60% of its eight million registered games are women. 
Meanwhile, simulation games such as "The Sims" have found a following among 
females, which make up about 56% of the players. "Women just have better 
taste in these things," says a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. Similar 
demographics are apparent at the newly launched There.com, which offers 
players a free-form animated world where users create characters and then 
socialize, build houses, exchange goods or simply wander around. One 
enthusiastic There player says she's logged in an average of four hours a 
day since joining. "Work and There are my life," she says. (Wall Street 
Journal 28 Oct 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106729313030890700,00.html (sub req'd)

WILDFIRES STOKE TECH WORRIES
The wildfires raging through Southern California are disrupting operations 
at several high-tech firms, including Iomega, Microsoft and Qualcomm. 
Iomega closed its San Diego headquarters on Monday and a company spokesman 
said the firm is monitoring the situation day by day. The Cedar Fire, which 
is threatening areas surrounding San Diego, came within 10 miles of 
Qualcomm, prompting the company to set up a temporary shelter for affected 
workers. Flaming embers from that fire were also responsible for several 
brush fires within a quarter-mile of Gateway's headquarters, but the 
computer maker's facilities were unscathed. Meanwhile, Microsoft's problems 
stemmed from cancelled and delayed flights into Los Angeles, preventing 
would-be attendees at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles 
from getting there. (CNet News.com 27 Oct 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-7342-5097899.html

CELL PHONE REHAB?
Substance abuse experts say some of today's cell phone users exhibit 
symptoms very similar to addiction when it comes to their communications 
habits. "People literally detox from their phones. Text messaging, games -- 
these are all sources of isolation, a way to zone out," says a spokeswoman 
for a leading substance abuse clinic in Southern California, which requires 
cell phones to be checked upon admission. Critics say the word "addiction" 
is over-used, and that the test should be whether there are harmful 
consequences involved. But while frequent cell phone use hasn't yet been 
determined to cause physical damage, it may have a negative impact on 
relationships when talking on the phone becomes more important than talking 
to the person you've invited on a date. Then of course, there's the 
yet-unresolved issue of talking on the phone while driving, and the 
condition described as "pseudo-attention deficit disorder," where meeting 
participants while away their time on their "crackberry" RIM devices 
instead of paying attention to the topic at hand. Virgin Mobile has taken 
the controversy to heart, and has published on its Web site the 
"Textercises" recommended by the British Chiropractic Association to avoid 
straining hands and fingers while text-messaging. They call it "Practicing 
Safe Text." (Wired.com 25 Oct 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60936,00.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for 
others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath 
their notice, that they're better than other human beings." (James Baldwin)

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN
      Last week we recommended NewsScan Daily subscriber Leon Goodman's 
interesting autobiography to you, but his Web site couldn't withstand the 
heavy traffic we generated, so Leon has created a new site, at 
http://www.leongoodman.com. Check it out.

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: SELF-EXPRESSION, SELF-CONTROL
      "The blot of violence has spread over more and more of our social 
space. People in the late 20th century have lost a sense of safety, of 
immunity against sudden, unprovoked attack. They feel themselves surrounded 
and trapped in a jungle of ruthless, hidden predators. Danger is 
everywhere, and comes from everywhere. Perhaps the ultimate nightmare is 
the drive-by shooting -- random bullets sprayed from a car, ricocheting off 
walls and sidewalks, endangering us in our cars, at home, in our yards, 
putting at risk even children at play.
      "Modern violent crime may or may not be the bastard child of frontier 
violence, or American machismo, or domestic violence, or the like. Even if 
there is a connection, the connection does not explain very much. Modern 
violence is different from frontier violence, or historic American 
violence. There have been plenty of outbursts of violence in the past -- 
the New York draft riots of the Civil War period; vigilantism; race riots. 
Lynch law was an appalling aspect of our history. Brutality runs through 
our history. The bloodstained past may have something to do with it, yet 
our past is much less bloody than the pasts of other countries, which today 
are lambs to our wolves. The samurai code, unlike the Wild West, does not 
seem to have left Japanese streets littered with corpses. The French 
Revolution and the Terror do not seem to make Paris as raw and untamed as 
New York. Something has to be rotten in the modern state of affairs -- some 
sickness that is peculiarly our own, the child of our period, our customs, 
our times.
      "The 19th century stressed 'impulse control,' discipline, in short, 
and this put a damper on crime. Contemporary society has forgotten about 
impulse control, the main theme of modern life, on the contrary, is 
'self-expression.'"
                                 ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465014879/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Lawrence M. Friedman's "Crime and Punishment in American History" -- or 
look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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