NewsScan Daily, 12 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 12 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Hollywood Petitions Supreme Court on File-Sharing
        U.S. Government Funds Chat Room Surveillance
        Sun Settles Java Suit for $92 Million
        Spyware in FTC's Crosshairs
        France Approves Cell Phone-Jamming in Theaters

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Ahoy! Are You There?

HOLLYWOOD PETITIONS SUPREME COURT ON FILE-SHARING
      The entertainment industry is fighting back against peer-to-peer 
(P2P) file-sharing, petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a 
federal appeals court decision reached in August that upheld file-sharing 
companies' right to distribute their software regardless of whether that 
software is later used to violate copyrights. That decision drew heavily on 
the precedent established by the 1984 Sony-Betamax case, which gave 
electronic device makers legal protection against claims of copyright 
infringement. This latest petition, which targets P2P purveyors Grokster 
and Streamcast Networks, cites a conflicting ruling reached in 2003, which 
upheld an injunction against P2P service Aimster on the grounds that it 
facilitated copyright infringement. However, critics say even the Aimster 
case upheld the basic tenets of the Sony-Betamax case. "They want to argue 
that there's some sort of national emergency here. But Betamax is the law 
of the land and it's not undermined by either of these two decisions," says 
Susan Crawford, a professor of Internet law at Cardozo School of Law in New 
York. (New York Times 12 Oct 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/technology/12share.html>

U.S. GOVERNMENT FUNDS CHAT ROOM SURVEILLANCE
      The U.S. government is funding a year-long study by a Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute computer science professor aimed at developing 
mathematical models to identify patterns in the chaotic traffic generated 
by online public forums that might reveal "hidden communities" of 
terrorists. RPI professor Bulent Yener will download data from selected 
chat rooms while tracking the times that messages were sent in order to 
create a statistical profile of the traffic. For instance, if QTpie and 
RatBoi consistently send messages within seconds of each other in a crowded 
chat room, it might be inferred that they are "speaking" to each other, 
camouflaged by the "noise" of the chat room environment. "For us, the 
challenge is to be able to determine, without reading the messages, who is 
talking to whom," says Yener. The $157,673 grant to conduct the study comes 
from the National Science Foundation's Approaches to Combat Terrorism 
program, which works in concert with U.S. intelligence agencies to make its 
selections. However, some scholars doubt the concept has much merit: "In a 
world in which you can embed your message in a pixel on a picture on a home 
page about tea cozies, I don't know whether if you're any better if you 
think chat would be any particular magnet," says Harvard Law School 
Internet scholar Jonathan Zittrain. (AP/Washington Post 11 Oct 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25272-2004Oct11.html>

SUN SETTLES JAVA SUIT FOR $92 MILLION
      Eastman Kodak has accepted a $92-million offer by Sun Microsystems to 
settle a billion-dollar patent-infringement lawsuit over the Java 
programming language. A U.S. federal jury decided last Friday, after a 
three-week trial, that Java infringed on patents Kodak acquired when it 
bought Wang Laboratories' imaging software business for $260 million in 
1997. The night before the trial's damages phase, which was to begin 
Thursday, the companies ended their two-year-old battle in an out-of-court 
settlement. Without admitting or denying the allegations, Sun Microsystems 
said it will pay Kodak $92 million to settle all claims in the dispute. In 
exchange, Sun received a license for Java under all Kodak patents. (The 
Australian, 8 Oct 2004) rec'd from John Lamp
<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,11009794%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html>

SPYWARE IN FTC'S CROSSHAIRS
      The Federal Trade Commission is launching an aggressive new strategy 
to prosecute "spyware" perpetrators, and last week filed a civil lawsuit 
against former spam-king Sanford Wallace and his companies, Seismic 
Entertainment Productions and SmartBot. Wallace, who was once dubbed 
"Spamford" for his earlier misdeeds, operates the PassItOn.com Web site, 
which requires visitors to click through multiple pop-up windows in order 
to exit. In an interview with CNet last year, Wallace defended his practice 
of collecting personal information from people who visited his site: "We 
don't violate anybody's privacy; everything is disclosed. We're giving 
something away for free in exchange for consumers' permission to use 
private information. It's no secret. Publishers Clearinghouse has been 
doing this type of thing for years." However, an FTC investigator says 
Wallace's actions go far beyond information-gathering, by changing the home 
page of her Internet Explorer browser and using programming code to pop 
open the CD drive in her computer while displaying a message saying, "If 
your cd-rom drive opens… you desperately need to rid your system of spyware 
pop-ups immediately." Of course, the site then offers to sell a product 
called Spy Deleter. Anti-spyware activist Ari Schwartz says the FTC has 
"built a good case. This fits into the kinds of cases where FTC could get 
their feet wet on this issue." (CNet News.com 12 Oct 2004)
<http://news.com.com/From+spam+king+to+spy+master/2100-1032_3-5406348.html>

FRANCE APPROVES CELL PHONE-JAMMING IN THEATERS
      Tired of chatty theater-goers disturbing your entertainment 
enjoyment? France Industry Minister Patrick Devedijian has approved a 
decision by the country's Telecommunications Regulation Authority to allow 
cinemas, concert halls and theaters to install cell phone jammers that 
would prevent patrons from making or receiving calls during performances. 
Devedijian stipulated that emergency calls and calls made outside theaters 
and other performance spaces must not be affected, however. The move comes 
in response to "a long-standing request" from cinemas, says Jean Labbe, 
president of the National Federation of French Cinemas, noting that movie 
theaters had invested heavily to improve comfort and that "the 
authorization of jammers is the cherry on the cake." (AP 11 Oct 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041012/D85LIBC80.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Argument is the worst sort of conversation." (Jonathan Swift)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: AHOY! ARE YOU THERE?
       In his book about telephone technologies, James W. Robinson recalls 
this bit of telephonic ancient history:
      "The invention initially had its doubters and cynics. The chief of 
the British Post Office was reported to have said: 'The Americans may have 
need for the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.'
      "Mark Twain dismissed the new contraption with this legendary 
put-down: 'If Bell had invented a muffler or gag, he would have done a real 
service.'
      "Others reacted with fear and superstition. They were afraid to talk 
to a disembodied voice and worried they would be electrocuted. Still others 
felt the phone was simply another 'gilded-age' toy for the upper crust -- 
certainly not a development that would alter the lives of average people 
and society as a whole.
      "'Telephones are rented only to persons of good breeding and 
refinement,' an early advertisement reminded potential customers. Indeed, 
it cost a fortune: $150 to lease a telephone in New York and $100 in 
Chicago and Philadelphia. That was a lot of money in the 1880s. True to 
that 'good breeding and refinement' mentality, many early customers hid 
their phones in a cupboard or installed a special cabinet to house the 
instrument.
       "Even the now universal method of answering the telephone went 
through several manifestations in the very early days. Alexander Graham 
Bell always said 'Ahoy!' When Thomas Edison worked on perfecting the 
device, it had to be cranked first and the user asked 'Are you there?' 
Edison thought that took too long, so he just said 'Hello?'
      "The early notion that the telephone would remain an extravagance for 
a small segment of society was quickly proved wrong. Communications 
technology spread like wildfire from day one, and it hasn't stopped since."
                               ***
[Visit www.RedLightGreen.com to find a library with James W. Robinson's 
"The Excel Phenomenon: The Astonishing Success Story of the Fastest-Growing 
Communications Company -- and What It Means to You" or to buy the book you 
could go to 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761511717/newsscancom/ref=nosim>. 
Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media recommendations to 
adult literacy programs.]

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