NewsScan Daily, 10 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 10 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        ISPs Sue Spammers Under Can Spam Legislation
        Competing Blog Format Truce Proposed
        Napster, IBM Target Colleges with New Digital Music System
        French Group Threatens Apple Over iPod Royalties
        Resume Fraud Goes High-Tech

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscribers: Simon and Schuster
        Safe and Sound in the Cyber Age: Cooling the Cool Factor

ISPs SUE SPAMMERS UNDER CAN SPAM LEGISLATION
      Teaming up in an unusual joint effort, Microsoft, MSN, EarthLink and 
Yahoo have filed six lawsuits against hundreds of people who allegedly have 
sent millions of spam e-mail messages through the plaintiffs' e-mail 
networks. The lawsuits mark the first legal action taken under the Can Spam 
legislation, which took effect on Jan. 1. "Congress gave us the necessary 
tools to pursue spammers with stiff penalties, and we in the industry 
didn't waste a moment moving with speed and resolve to take advantage of 
the new law," says AOL executive VP Randall Boe. Among the named defendants 
are Davis Wolfgang Hawke and Braden Bournival, both of whom are accused of 
sending millions of e-mails touting weight loss supplements, personal "lie 
detectors" and other products. Dozens of others are identified only as 
"John Doe" defendants. (AP/Wall Street Journal 10 Mar 2004)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107893288243551457,00.html (sub req'd)

COMPETING BLOG FORMAT TRUCE PROPOSED
      Two competing weblog formats could solve their differences simply by 
merging, says Dave Winer, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet 
& Society who is generally considered the arbiter of the RSS (Really Simple 
Syndication) format. The competing format, known as Atom, was launched last 
summer and scored a major victory recently when Google said it would 
support its feeds. The two technologies do essentially the same thing and 
would not be difficult to merge, according to proponents. The work of 
combining them could be done under the auspices of the Internet Engineering 
Task Force, an idea that seems to appeal to both parties. "As long as it's 
under the IETF, it's fine," says Sam Ruby, the IBM engineer behind Atom. 
"The IETF has a good history of dealing with personality disputes of all 
types, and I imagine we'll work through them." (CNet News.com 9 Mar 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5171882.html?tag=nefd_hed

NAPSTER, IBM TARGET COLLEGES WITH NEW DIGITAL MUSIC SYSTEM
      Napster took the wraps off a new "Super Peer" application, which uses 
IBM's eServer BladeCenter systems to store the most popular music tracks in 
on-site servers rather than on the Internet. The "Super Peer" application 
is being marketed to colleges and universities as a way to reduce their 
computing infrastructure's vulnerability to overuse. Citing usage 
statistics at Penn State, for instance, of 100,000 downloads and 100,000 
streams per day, Napster CTO Bill Pence says storing the most popular songs 
on-site could save the university an estimated $50,000 in bandwidth fees 
the first year: "When we embarked on our industry-leading university 
program, we set out to alleviate the technical and business strains that 
illegal file-sharing puts on universities and ISPs." (Reuters/Washington 
Post 10 Mar 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45241-2004Mar10.html

FRENCH GROUP THREATENS APPLE OVER IPOD ROYALTIES
      The French Society of Music Creators, Composers and Publishers 
(Sacem) is threatening to take Apple Computer to court over unpaid 
royalties owed on sales of Apple's iPod music player. According to French 
law, a small portion all sales of blank CDs, tapes, hard drives and other 
hardware that can be used to copy music must be paid to Sacem, which uses 
the funds to compensate musicians and other rights holders. The French levy 
came into force in July 2002, but Apple has refused to comply with the 
law's provisions. Sacem estimates that Apple sold 20,000 iPods in France 
last year, which could leave it liable for almost $500,000 in fees for 
2003. (AP 10 Mar 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040310/D817J1I00.html

RESUME FRAUD GOES HIGH-TECH
      As companies ratchet up efforts to detect misrepresentations on job 
seekers' resumes, resume fraud is jumping to a new level, thanks to 
operators of Web sites that provide phony degrees and toll-free numbers for 
employers to call, where they're assured that a job candidate's credentials 
are valid. Some candidates are even paying hackers to alter class lists at 
universities they claim to have attended, says Charles Wardell, managing 
director at Korn/Ferry International. "In the past, people just lied. Now, 
what they are doing is they are hacking into a class of a university and 
putting their name on the class list." Wardell says his company has started 
requesting degrees and, in some cases, even grades from potential job 
candidates, but such documents are also easily faked, thanks to the 
ingenuity of Web sites such as easydiploma.com, which offers phony degrees 
and a verification service. "You can select the parchment paper, the 
insignia and the type of degree," says the head of a corporate 
investigation firm's background screening division. Background search firms 
say these increasingly sophisticated resume fraud schemes are making their 
jobs more difficult: "A good liar understands that you have to have some 
basis and facts to pull off a scam. But it's even more dangerous when 
employers unknowingly hire a fraud, thief or a crook," says the president 
of Employment Screening Resources. (Reuters 9 Mar 2004)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=OJNDBKAUN40DSCRBAEOCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=4529931

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its 
creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too 
little falls into lazy habits of thinking." (Albert Einstein)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBERS: SIMON AND SCHUSTER
      Today's Honorary Subscribers are the publishing duo of Richard L. 
(Dick) Simon (1899-1960) and M. Lincoln (Max) Schuster (1897-1970) who 
teamed up in 1924 to found the well-known publishing house of Simon & 
Schuster.
      The firm's beginnings were modest. Its first publication was a 
crossword puzzle book, which came with an attached pencil. It was a runaway 
best seller and put Simon & Schuster on the road to becoming a world famous 
publisher that would eventually publish more than 2000 titles annually 
under a wide variety of imprints. From the outset the publishing partners 
followed a business policy of publishing things they personally found 
interesting, convinced that if a book appealed to them it would also be of 
interest to others. They were also savvy marketers. Showing their concern 
for the reader, they became the first company that allowed booksellers to 
return unsold copies for credit. Other firsts included spending five to ten 
times more than standard for advertising and promotion, along with applying 
mass-market production and distribution techniques. They were responsible 
for two radical publishing innovations: first in 1939 when they started the 
paperback revolution with Pocket Books, again in 1945 with bringing out the 
first "instant books" -- books rushed to print after some notable event.
      Schuster was born in Austria, but was raised in New York City, where 
he attended Columbia University. At the time of his meeting with Simon, he 
was working as a writer-editor for the United Press news syndicate. Simon 
was a native New Yorker who also attended Columbia University. His family 
was passionate about music and, after serving in World War I, he became a 
piano salesman. The two developed a friendship over the next three years 
that culminated in their publishing venture start-up in 1924, which at the 
time did not require very much capital. They met almost immediate success 
when they came up with the novel idea of capitalizing on the prevailing 
crossword puzzle craze by providing the puzzles in book form. The fledgling 
firm's next big success came in 1926 with the publication of Will Durant's 
"The Story of Philosophy." Credit for the firm's innovative use of modern 
marketing methods largely belongs to Simon. Under his astute business hand, 
Simon & Schuster became a leading force in the publishing world. Simon was 
also the driving force behind the company's successful marketing of books 
on music and photography.
      Simon died in 1960 and Schuster 10 years later. In the years since, 
the company has changed hands a number of times, eventually ending up as a 
subsidiary of Viacom. Michael Korda, current editor-in-chief at Simon & 
Schuster, recently published a memoir, "Another Life," which is something 
of a tell-all book by a company insider.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385335075/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Michael Korda's "Another Life" -- or look for it in your favorite 
library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult 
literacy programs.)

SAFE & SOUND IN THE CYBER AGE: COOLING THE COOL FACTOR
     (by Chey and Stephen Cobb)
      Our "Doom and Gloom" column on February 24, 2004 sparked an 
interesting response from Eric Kallgren of MondoTimes.com (published on the 
following day). Eric thought we had overstated the potential impact of spam 
and other Internet abuses on consumer and business use of the Internet. 
We'd like to think he's right, but we stand by our prediction that Internet 
growth will be negatively impacted this year, although we may not know if 
we are right until end-of-year studies appear. We will keep NewsScan 
readers posted.
      Eric was quite right to question some of the statistics that are 
bandied about by anti-spam companies. Obviously these companies have an 
agenda. They want to sell their anti-spam products. However, we base our 
opinion on a variety of factors including some studies which are not 
company sponsored, such as those by the Pew Internet and American Life 
Project (www.pewinternet.org). If you look at the survey of 1,100 consumers 
conducted by the nonprofit Ponemon Institute at the request of ePrivacy 
Group last July, the numbers strongly suggest that spam is negatively 
impacting people's "Internet experience." For example, 40% reported 
spending half an hour or more per day deleting unwanted e-mail. Clearly 
that is time wasted.
      The knock-on effect of spam also showed up in that survey, in the 
form of a lack of trust in e-mail content and poor performance by e-mail 
systems. For example, 70% of respondents said experienced failure to 
receive e-mail that they knew was sent to them. In 15% of those cases, the 
cause of the delivery failure was known to be misidentification of 
legitimate messages as spam.
      Something else we consider when forming our opinions is input from 
the field, such as the graduate students we teach on the Norwich University 
Master of Science in Information Assurance program. These students are 
dealing with IT issues for some fairly large companies and government 
agencies. When we conducted a session on spam a few weeks ago, most 
students agreed that spam's unauthorized consumption of resources has now 
reached a point at which it is creating a "drag" factor, that is:
      a. consuming resources that would otherwise be productively employed, 
and
      b. discouraging the development and/or rollout of new e-mail projects.
      We had direct experience of what a "drag" spam can on a recent trip 
to England where, somewhat ironically, Stephen was scheduled to speak about 
spam at a security conference. Just before the trip Stephen's shiny new 
Treo 600 arrived. He has been lusting after this gadget ever since it was 
announced by Handspring last summer and it is a pretty impressive 
combination of phone, personal digital assistant, camera, and MP3 player 
(with a color screen so bright it can double as a flashlight when you want 
to navigate an unfamiliar hotel room in the middle of the night without 
waking your spouse).
      Because the Treo 600 is a tri-band GSM phone it works just as well in 
Europe as it does in America (or the middle of Australia for that matter). 
And because it GPRS-capable, the Treo 600 is an efficient means of checking 
e-mail. So, when we got off the 7-hour flight from Washington to London, 
Stephen turned it on, and sure enough, it checked e-mail: 192 messages, all 
but a dozen of which were spam. As so it went. For example, each morning 
there were over 150 messages waiting, most of them spam, but salted with a 
few choice missives of real importance that are easily missed if you don't 
check them carefully.
      Suddenly, the cool toy is not so cool when you have to sit there 
repeatedly tapping Delete to get rid of the garbage that you have just paid 
to receive. Sure, there are steps Stephen could take to cut down on spam, 
like routing the messages through a filter, but that only underlines the 
point that spam is consuming precious resources and making life tougher 
than it needs to be for people who are trying to make the most of new 
technology.
      A year ago we routinely told friends to e-mail us if they needed to 
get in touch while we were on the road. It was cheaper and more efficient 
than a phone call. We don't say that any more. We tell them to call us, on 
the GSM phone (just try to bear the time difference in mind or you'll find 
us using the "flashlight" feature to navigate a strange hotel room).
      [Chey Cobb, CISSP, is the author of "Cryptography for Dummies" (John 
Wiley & Sons) and a former senior technical security advisor to the NRO. 
She can be e-mailed as chey at aug dot com. Stephen Cobb, CISSP, is the 
author of "Privacy for Business" (Dreva Hill). He can be e-mailed as scobb 
at cobb dot com.]

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