NewsScan Daily, 10 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 10 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        EPAL Explains the Ways of Man to the Mind of the Machine
        Federal Anti-Spam Bills Won't Do the Trick
        Webcaster Alliance Threatens RIAA with Antitrust Suit
        Google Caching Feature Sparks Copyright Concerns
        NEC Unveils Mobile Phone-TV Combo
        Microsoft Targets Speech Software Market

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: The Language Police

EPAL EXPLAINS THE WAYS OF MAN TO THE MIND OF THE MACHINE
IBM is calling its new Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language (EPAL) 
"the first computer language to provide enterprises with a way to automate 
the enforcement of privacy policies among IT applications and systems." 
EPAL is intended to make it easier for enterprises to translate their 
privacy policies into machine-readable descriptions of data-handling 
procedures. For example, it translates for the machine such 
natural-language policy statements as: "Members of the physician group can 
read protected health information for the purpose of medical treatment only 
if the physician is the primary care physician and the patient or the 
patient's family is notified in advance." (Market Wire/eBizq 9 Jul 2003)
http://www.ebizq.net/news/news075503.html

FEDERAL ANTI-SPAM BILLS WON'T DO THE TRICK
The legal counsel of the Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, 
has told a U.S. House subcommittee that the anti-spam legislation Congress 
is considering is insufficient, because it places too much burden on 
consumers: "Thus far, the bills proposed, including H.R. 2214, have an 
'opt-out' as part of their core solution. In other words, an Internet 
service provider must first pass on the spam to consumers, consumers must 
then read the spam, and then they can exercise their right to stop 
receiving messages from that particular sender... This puts too much burden 
on consumers to block spam and makes it too difficult to hold spammers 
legally accountable for their inappropriate interference with consumers' 
e-mail." (TechWeb 9 Jul 2003)
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20030709S0005

WEBCASTER ALLIANCE THREATENS RIAA WITH ANTITRUST SUIT
Angry over a new music royalty rate structure it says may force nine out 
ten small Internet radio stations to shut down, the 300-member Webcaster 
Alliance of small stations is threatening an antitrust lawsuit against the 
Recording Industry Association of America. The Librarian of Congress worked 
out a compromise fee-structure last year between the music industry and 
Internet radio station operators, but small stations continue to argue that 
they're being asked to pay too much for the right to play music. The RIAA 
has not yet commented officially on the newly threatened lawsuit, but a 
spokesman says: "We have worked diligently to negotiate fair agreements 
that offer a broad and flexible array of rates and terms to large, small, 
and non-commercial webcasters." (Washington Post 9 Jul 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31245-2003Jul9.html

GOOGLE CACHING FEATURE SPARKS COPYRIGHT CONCERNS
A caching feature on the Google search site sometimes enables users to call 
up snapshots of archived Web pages that for whatever reason are either 
restricted or no longer available at the original source, such as newspaper 
articles that require user registration to access or those that "expire" 
after a certain number of days. The feature has raised the ire of some 
publishers. "We are working with Google to fix that problem -- we're going 
to close it so when you click on a link it will take you to a registration 
page," says a New York Times Digital spokeswoman. "We have established 
these archived links and want to maintain consistency across all these 
access points." Google says its caching feature benefits Web surfers trying 
to access a site that's experiencing technical difficulties, but some 
copyright experts say they expect the issue will end up in court: "Many of 
us copyright lawyers have been waiting for this issue to come up: Google is 
making copies of all the Web sites they index and they're not asking 
permission. From a strict copyright standpoint, it violates copyright," 
says Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred Lohman. Most search 
engines make a statistical record of a Web page when they "spider" it, or 
use "robots" to scan the page's content for meaning or context, but Google 
goes one step beyond by snapping a digital picture of pages and making them 
available to users. The picture exists on Google's site until the next time 
it crawls that particular page, whether it's a few days or six weeks or 
more. Web sites can block the caching feature, but some publishers are 
reluctant to do so because they fear losing favor in the company's powerful 
search rankings, even though Google has assured them the "no cache" tags do 
not affect search results. (CNet News.com 9 Jul 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-1024234.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed

NEC UNVEILS MOBILE PHONE-TV COMBO
NEC has taken the wraps off a prototype of a mobile phone that can also be 
used to watch digital TV broadcasts, paving the way for a host of new 
services that combine the two technologies. The company says it hopes to 
launch the product commercially in 2005 in Japan, although it's uncertain 
when broadcasting for mobile terminals will be available. In addition to 
receiving broadcasts, the new phones will be capable of accessing the same 
interactive services that will be available to digital television viewers. 
One of the biggest hurdles for commercialization will be developing a more 
efficient power supply. Right now, the phone can operate a little over an 
hour when displaying TV broadcasts. "That's not enough," says NEC R&D 
manager Akira Kato. "We want the product to allow one hour of voice 
communications even after one hour of TV broadcast viewing. That's the 
minimum we'll target." (Wall Street Journal 10 Jul 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105781994954502900,00.html (sub req'd)

MICROSOFT TARGETS SPEECH SOFTWARE MARKET
Microsoft has released a test version of its new Speech Server technology, 
and is soliciting about 100 companies in retail, financial, health care and 
other industries to take part in the trial. The final product is slated for 
release in the first half of 2004. (AP 9 Jul 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030710/D7S6CGR80.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." (Samuel Johnson)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE LANGUAGE POLICE
      Education expert Diane Ravitch is dismayed about the foolish extremes 
to which school book publishers go in censoring material that officious 
watchdogs might find objectionable:
      "After many years of studying the history of education and writing 
about the politics of education, I discovered some things that shocked me. 
Almost by accident, I stumbled upon an elaborate, well-established protocol 
of beneficent censorship, quietly endorsed and broadly implemented by 
textbook publishers, testing agencies, states, and the federal government. 
I did not learn about this state of affairs in one fell swoop, but one step 
at a time. Like others who are involved in education, be they parents or 
teachers or administrators or journalists or scholars, I had always assumed 
that textbooks were based on careful research and designed to help children 
learn something valuable. I thought that tests were designed to assess 
whether they had learned it. What I did not realize was that educational 
materials are now governed by an intricate set of rules to screen out 
language and topics that might be considered controversial or offensive. 
Some of this censorship is trivial, some is ludicrous, and some is 
breathtaking in its power to dumb down what children learn in school.
      "Initially these practices began with the intention of identifying 
and excluding any conscious or implicit statements of bias against African 
Americans, other racial or ethnic minorities, and females, whether in tests 
or textbooks, especially any statements that demeaned members of these 
groups. These efforts were entirely reasonable and justified. However, what 
began with admirable intentions has evolved into a surprisingly broad and 
increasingly bizarre policy of censorship that has gone far beyond its 
original scope and now excises from tests and textbooks words, images, 
passages, and ideas that no reasonable person would consider biased in the 
usual meaning of that term."
                                                            *
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375414827/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Diane Ravitch's "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What 
Students Learn" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all 
revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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