NewsScan Daily, 24 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 24 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        U.S. House Reverses New Media Ownership Rules
        RIAA Unleashes Lawyers on Parents, Grandparents
        'Smart' Passports Set for 2004 Debut
        Serious Flaws in Electronic Voting Systems
        Xbox Live in Japan
        Movielink and Disney Sign Movie Download Deal

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Luis Vaz de Camõens

U.S. HOUSE REVERSES NEW MEDIA OWNERSHIP RULES
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted 400 to 21 in favor of a bill 
reversing a rule that would have allowed television networks to expand 
their audience coverage from 35% to 45% of the country. The provision was 
attached to a $37.9 billion bill funding the Commerce, Justice and State 
Departments next year, and the Bush administration has threatened to veto 
the annual spending bill if attempts to rescind the new media ownership 
rules were included. The Federal Communications Commission's recent 
relaxation of those rules has met with criticism from Democrats and 
Republicans alike who argue it likely would reduce local reporting and 
diversity of viewpoints, but FCC Chairman Michael Powell defended the move, 
saying that it reflects the current marketplace. "We created enforceable 
rules that reflect the realities of today's media marketplace. The rules 
will benefit Americans by protecting localism, competition and diversity." 
(Wired.com 23 Jul 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59745,00.html

RIAA UNLEASHES LAWYERS ON PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS
The Recording Industry Association of America is targeting parents and, in 
some cases, grandparents of youthful music file-swappers, threatening them 
with legal action over their offspring's music-sharing activities. The 
subpoenas have come as a shock to both parents and their children, who 
assumed that using cryptic nicknames such as "hottdude0587" guaranteed them 
anonymity. The RIAA says it has cited the numeric Internet addresses of 
high-volume music downloaders on its subpoenas and can track users only by 
comparing those addresses against subscriber records held by ISPs, but the 
Associated Press had no trouble using those addresses and some details 
culled from the subpoenas to identify and locate some of the targets. 
Outside legal experts warned that the music industry should move carefully 
in selecting targets for prosecution. "If they end up picking on 
individuals who are perceived to be grandmothers or junior high students 
who have only downloaded in isolated incidents, they run the risk of a 
backlash," says one Hollywood attorney. (AP 24 Jul 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030724/D7SFNKE00.html

'SMART' PASSPORTS SET FOR 2004 DEBUT
Beginning in October 2004, the U.S. will begin issuing "smart" passports 
that include an embedded microchip that stores a compressed image of its 
owner's face. The new digital passports are intended to prevent tampering, 
but civil liberties groups say such technology could eventually be used to 
monitor the activities of citizens in unprecedented detail. However, Frank 
Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services at the U.S. State 
Department says such fears are unfounded: "They will include no information 
other than that on the basic passport information page." Meanwhile, 
European travelers may also soon be required to carry passports containing 
both fingerprint and iris scan biometric information, but no date has been 
set yet for the new passports' introduction. (New Scientist 23 Jul 2003)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993975

SERIOUS FLAWS IN ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS
Johns Hopkins University experts say that high-tech voting machine software 
from Diebold Election Systems has flaws that would let voters cast extra 
votes and allow poll workers to alter ballots secretly. Aviel D. Rubin, 
technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, 
led a team that examined the Diebold software, which has about 33,000 
voting machines operating in the United States. Adam Stubblefield, a 
colleague of Rubin's, said that "practically anyone in the country -- from 
a teenager on up -- could produce these smart cards that could allow 
someone to vote as many times as they like." Diebold has not seen the 
Institute's report and would not comment on it in detail, but a company 
spokesman said: "We're constantly improving it so the technology we have 10 
years from now will be better than what we have today. We're always open to 
anything that can improve our systems." Peter G. Neumann, an expert in 
computer security at SRI International, said the Diebold code was "just the 
tip of the iceberg" of problems with electronic voting systems. [Side note: 
see the interview of Peter Neumann by John Gehl in the archives of the ACM 
online publication Ubiquity: 
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/p_neumann_3.html.] (New York Times 
24 Jul 2003) http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html

XBOX LIVE IN JAPAN
Microsoft is expanding its Xbox Live online gaming service in Japan by 
adding chat functions that can handle up to 16 players at a time. The 
feature will cost about US$30. A Microsoft executive says that "Xbox is 
about the social aspects of gaming -- not the solitary or the escapism 
aspects of gaming," and predicts that about 15 online games will be 
available in Japan in the next 12 months, including the role-playing True 
Fantasy Live Online and Project Gotham Racing 2, the car racing sequel. 
(San Jose Mercury News 24 Jul 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6374432.htm

MOVIELINK AND DISNEY SIGN MOVIE DOWNLOAD DEAL
Dozens of Disney films are going to be made available for downloading from 
the Internet through a licensing deal just reached between Disney and 
online movie service Movielink. With this new agreement in place, Movielink 
will have access to film titles from all the major studios except Twentieth 
Century Fox, and will have a library of about 400 digitized films. Movies 
from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone, Miramax and Dimension will be 
available through the service, and among the first releases will be "Gangs 
of New York," "The Recruit" and "The Jungle Book 2." Disney will set the 
retail price for the movie downloads (typically ranging between $2.95 and 
$4.99), and the downloaded movies will be viewable either on a PC or on a 
TV connected to a computer. (AP/USA Today 24 Jul 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2003-07-24-disney_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot 
stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either." (Mark Twain)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: LUIS VAZ DE CAMÕENS
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is Portugal's national poet, Luiz Vaz de 
Camõens (1525-1580), who is said to constitute an entire literary genre by 
himself.
      A literary giant of his era, he influenced writers in many languages, 
totally dominating all poetic currents of the time --traditional and 
Italianate, Renaissance and Baroque. He wrote beautifully structured 
sonnets and lyric poems, but his masterpiece was "The Lusiads," the epic 
poem in which he recalls Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to 
India and the historical achievements that brought Portugal to prominence 
as a leading world maritime power. The poem's title derives from the 
ancient Roman name for Portugal, Lusitania. The 10 cantos of the poem are 
in ottava rima and amount to 1,102 stanzas in all.
      The details of Camõens' life are not well-documented. It is supposed 
that he was born to an impoverished noble family in Lisbon around 1524, 
when Portuguese expansion in the East was at its peak. Between 1546 and 
1549, he fought in the Portuguese African campaign and there lost one of 
his eyes from a cannon fire accident. Back in Lisbon, he fell into a 
disorderly lifestyle and in 1553 was incarcerated for wounding a royal 
officer in a brawl (and was only released on condition that he go to India 
as a soldier).
      In the East his career was full of vicissitudes. At one point, having 
proven his bravery in battle, he was again languishing in jail on a charge 
of malfeasance in office as a government official in Macao. At another 
time, after rolling in wealth, he was again overwhelmed with debt. His 
too-ready pen and tongue often brought him enemies. Seldom stationary 
anywhere for long, he engaged in long journeys that took him as far as 
Malacca, and on one occasion he barely escaped death by shipwreck. Finally, 
in 1567, he began the return trip to Portugal, being delayed at Mozambique 
for two years, a victim of disease and dire poverty.
      With the help of friends he continued his journey and reached Lisbon 
in 1570. After an absence of sixteen years there was no welcome for 
Portugal's greatest bard in a capital that had just been visited by plague. 
Two years later Camõens published his epic, dedicated it to the king, and 
was rewarded with a meager royal pension.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140440267/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "The Lusiads" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate 
all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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