NewsScan Daily, 8 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 8 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Judge Says Pop-Up Ads Don't Violate Copyrights
        Are Databases the Next Copyright Battleground?
        Cisco Grant Helps Poor Get Voice Mailboxes
        Internet Used to Recover Art Pillaged by Nazis
        Know Thyself (or Thy DNA) for a Thousand Bucks
        APPLE I Resurrected

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Elizabeth Blackwell
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

JUDGE SAYS POP-UP ADS DON'T VIOLATE COPYRIGHTS
A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that pop-up ads for rival companies' 
products that obscure the original Web site's offerings do not violate 
trademark or copyright laws, potentially giving a green light to more 
aggressive online advertising tactics. The pop-ups -- distributed mainly by 
Gator and WhenU.com -- often divert online shoppers to competitors' offers, 
an action that infuriates Web site operators. According to Judge Gerald 
Bruce Lee's reasoning, however, consumers have accepted these ads when they 
agree to download Gator's and WhenU's free programs, such as screen savers 
or games, which piggyback on software that tracks users' Web surfing habits 
and then delivers ads based on their apparent interests. In the case 
brought by U-Haul International, Lee ruled that when WhenU's software 
delivers a competitor's ad to a Web surfer perusing U-Haul's Web site, it 
doesn't "copy or use U-Haul's trademark or copyright material" and 
therefore can't be accused of infringing on them. "Computer users, like 
this trial judge, may wonder what we have done to warrant the seizure of 
our computer screens by pop-up advertisements for secret Web cameras, 
insurance, travel values and fad diets," the judge wrote. But he argued 
that people "invited" those ads when they downloaded the free software, and 
that "(u)ltimately, it is the computer user who controls how windows are 
displayed on the computer desktop." The legal battle isn't over however -- 
U-Haul lawyers are contemplating an appeal, and similar suits have been 
filed by several Web-site operators, including Hertz Corp. (Wall Street 
Journal 8 Sep 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106297458754745600,00.html (sub req'd)

ARE DATABASES THE NEXT COPYRIGHT BATTLEGROUND?
A proposed bill scheduled for a joint hearing by the U.S. House Judiciary 
and Energy and Commerce Committees would prevent the wholesale copying of 
news archives, professional directories, and other compilations of factual 
information not currently protected by copyright laws. Backers of the 
measure say it would prevent groups from simply copying and repackaging 
databases to resell them or make them available for free, but the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce and consumer advocates plan to protest the proposed 
legislation, arguing that it could dramatically limit the public's access 
to information and that database providers can protect themselves through 
existing terms-of-service agreements with users. "We think this is already 
dealt with under license and contract law, and there's no reason to extend 
beyond that," says Joe Rubin, director of congressional and public affairs 
at the U.S. Chamber. And while some advocates say the measure would 
encourage publishers to make more information available for free, Mike 
Godwin, senior technology counsel at Public Knowledge, says the more likely 
outcome will be the opposite: "Information, when not copyrighted, is 
something that can be shared. Once you start putting fences around 
information, there's not freedom of inquiry. That doesn't make us smarter, 
it makes us dumber." (Reuters/CNet 5 Sep 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5072206.html

CISCO GRANT HELPS POOR GET VOICE MAILBOXES
Cisco Systems has awarded a $2.5-million grant to a Seattle nonprofit 
agency called Community Voice Mail, which gives the homeless, poor and 
jobless a voice-mail box. Jennifer Brandon, the organization's executive 
director, explains: "It is virtually impossible to get a job without a 
phone. This isn't a phone. But it is a cost-effective alternative. It's a 
reliable and consistent phone number. It removes the stigma of being 
homeless or in transition." The voice mailbox can be accessed from a pay 
phone or a phone at a social-service agency. Cisco's grant is intended to 
double the number of people Community Voice Mail assists nationwide, from 
25,000 to 65,000, by the end of 2007. Brandon says, "When you have been 
laid off from your job, you have to look at whether you are going to pay 
the mortgage or rent, your electricity or your phone. The phone is the 
first thing to go." In 2002, half of the people using Community Voice Mail 
to find work found jobs, and 65% of the homeless people using the system 
found housing. (San Jose Mercury News 8 Sep 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6719943.htm

INTERNET USED TO RECOVER ART PILLAGED BY NAZIS
The American Association of Museums -- whose members include the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National 
Gallery of Art -- is establishing an Internet registry to share information 
on nearly 6,000 artworks in 66 of the largest American art museums, as a 
step in the recovery of thousands of artworks that were seized by the Nazis 
from public museums and private collectors in Europe during the 1930s and 
1940s. The Association says that the new Web site, www.nepip.org, shows 
that its members "have assumed the responsibility of researching the 
Nazi-era provenance of objects in their collections." The institutions that 
have funded the project include the Commission for Art Recovery of the 
World Jewish Congress, the Getty Grant Program, and the Institute of Museum 
Library Services. (New York Times 8 Sep 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/arts/08PORT.html

KNOW THYSELF (OR THY DNA) FOR A THOUSAND BUCKS
The scientific community is trying to get the price tag for a copy of an 
individual's DNA sequence down to $1,000 -- an amount considered low enough 
to give scientists the thousands of sequenced samples they need to 
understand how genes work, and giving patients access to a personalized DNA 
snapshot at the doctor's office that could show the diseases they are at 
risk of developing. Several approaches are being taken to lower the cost of 
such snapshots. Stephen Quake and colleagues at Caltech have developed a 
technique to read DNA one base pair at a time, using a fluorescent label to 
mark the free molecules that surround DNA (and then seeing which molecules 
are used when the DNA makes a copy of itself); Harvard Medical School's 
Daniel Branton has devised a technique for shooting DNA through a tiny hole 
called a nanopore and measuring the electric signals each base pair emits; 
and a company called 454 Life Sciences says it has sequenced the genome of 
a virus by dropping DNA into tiny wells -- and is now working on bacteria, 
with 2 million to 8 million base pairs. But there's quite a bit of work yet 
to be done, and genetic expert Elaine Mardis of Washington University in 
St. Louis warns: "Honestly, it's going to take us 10 or 15 years to get 
there [to the $1,000 genome]. The non-scientific public is hearing this and 
saying that sounds really great, and people must be at that goal because 
they're talking about it. That's totally not the case. This is the plan for 
the future, and the future is not now." (AP/USA Today 8 Sep 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-09-08-1000-genome_x.htm

APPLE I RESURRECTED
A Cleveland, Ohio, computer enthusiast has been granted permission to 
produce a replica of the Apple I, which he plans to sell out of his garage 
for $200 apiece. Vince Briel has been planning his venture for some months, 
but was unable to get the okay from Apple to do it. So he did the next best 
thing -- he wrote Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak asking his permission to 
use the Apple I ROM. "Sure you can use the ROMs," answered Wozniak. "I'm 
sure that Apple would deny this request, even though what you are speaking 
of is very noble and cannot hurt Apple in any way." Wozniak says he freely 
distributed the Apple I's schematics and ROM code at the Homebrew Computer 
Club in 1975, long before he and Steve Jobs started selling the machines 
from Jobs' parents' garage. Briel says his replica uses different 
components from the original, but that it's functionally identical. "I 
spent a lot of time trying to get every detail so the replica functions 
completely identically to the Apple I. I'm hoping this project generates 
interest in creating hardware and exploring computers the way they used to 
be. I just want to help people relive the 8-bit computer experience and get 
more people involved in the history of computers and collecting." 
(Wired.com 8 Sep 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,60329,00.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "A thick skin is a gift from God." (Konrad Adenauer)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ELIZABETH BLACKWELL
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Anglo-American physician Elizabeth 
Blackwell (1821-1910) who was the first woman to be granted an M.D. degree 
from a medical school in the United States, graduating in 1849 from the 
Geneva (N.Y.) Medical College (forerunner of Hobart College).
      She was born in Bristol, England in 1821 and emigrated with her 
family to New York in 1832. When her father died in 1838, she and her 
sister helped support the family by operating a boarding school for girls. 
She began her medical education by reading medical books and receiving 
private tutoring. After being refused admission to medical schools in New 
York and Pennsylvania, she was finally accepted in 1847 by the Geneva 
Medical College in New York, graduating at the head of her class in 1849.
      After graduate studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and on 
the Continent, she practiced in New York City, where in 1857, in spite of 
much opposition, she established the New York Infirmary, a hospital staffed 
entirely by women. Later she established a full course of medical education 
for women there.
      During the Civil War she played an important role in forming the 
Woman's Central Association of Relief to provide military nurses for the 
Union Army. In 1869 she returned to England, where she became a founder of 
the London School of Medicine for Women. In 1875 she left private practice 
to join the school's faculty as professor of gynecology. A year later, ill 
health forced her to retire and restrict her professional activities to 
writing books about sex education and moral reform, two causes she for 
which she had been an outspoken advocate. In 1879, she moved permanently to 
the village of Hastings on the English Channel, where she finally gave up 
private practice and wrote her autobiography, published in 1895 under the 
title "Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women." She made 
one more trip back to New York in 1906 but was too ill to visit the New 
York Infirmary. She died in England in 1910 at the age of 89. The hospital 
she founded still operates as the New York Infirmary-Strang Clinic on East 
15th Street in Manhattan.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071343350/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for a biography of Blackwell written by Adele Glimm for young adults -- or 
look for it in your favorite library. [We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BRIBE IGNORANT AND APATHETIC VOTERS?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9134
      I think bribing people to vote would be a terrible idea. One of the 
biggest dangers of democracy is that uninformed voters will choose a 
candidate who offers them pretty lies over a candidate who tells them 
unpleasant truths. Deliberately drawing ignorant and apathetic voters into 
polling places with bribes seems far more likely to make that problem worse 
than to make it better.
      It is ultimately the quality of voters that determines whether the 
best candidate will win or lose, not the quantity. Further, one of the best 
ways to ensure that a disease will get worse is to treat its symptoms 
without treating the underlying disease. We need to try to solve the 
problems of ignorance, apathy, and political parties that cater to special 
interests so much that many voters are disgusted with both of the major 
parties. Masking those problems by arbitrarily inflating voter turn-out is 
not a step in that direction. (Nathan Barclay)

NO RESPECT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9143
      I was a little disappointed at your headline "Woman Gets E-Gov 
Czar-Job at OMB". If a man had got the position would you have had the 
headline "Man Gets E-Gov Czar-Job at OMB"? I doubt it. Obviously Karen 
Evans was the best person for the job and I think you do her a great 
disservice by not headlining her name and just her gender. I think she 
deserves a little more respect than what you have given her. (Shari 
Baraniuk, "Woman" in Canada)

WHATEVER IT TAKES
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9146
      The Cobbs seem to me to be unable or unwilling to accept that 
"Whatever It Takes," is a new way of life since 9/11. Look at Israel to see 
how we should be operating, and will be operating, relative to airline 
safety. I am willing to be inconvenienced and intruded upon when the 
alternative is "Too Ghastly To Contemplate." My first suspect in an 
aircraft terrorist operation would be the  most unlikely. i.e., pale, 
European, middle-aged, for reasons obvious to the least attentive school 
boy and many school masters. Hopefully it will not take another 9/11 for 
the weak and intractable minds to grasp a sense of urgency, duty and 
reality. Surely, the American people have not become so satiated that they 
can no longer be bothered to reach for the remote. Or have they? (Don Bryant)

WHOLE LOTTA SPAMMIN' GOIN' ON
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9138
      Since the SoBig.F worm flood began, I have personally gotten more 
than 365,000 SoBig mails -- both "original" worm messages and bounce 
messages from systems that rejected worm messages forged under my address. 
I have relatively high bandwidth at home, but early in the flood, worm 
messages were arriving at a rate of more than twice my bandwidth. The flood 
broke my provider's anti-spam system (which still isn't working right) and 
prevented me from handling a huge proportion of my mail for more than a 
week. Nonetheless their system -- while quarantining most of my legitimate 
mail, including messages from me on which I had CCed myself -- found 
harmless and passed me another 48,000 or so SoBig messages without 
intercepting them. No one has any idea why I've gotten such a huge amount 
of this criminal junk. I'm mystified. Why me?
      Just a cheery little personal note. Publish if you wish. It might 
amuse someone, or perhaps someone would see it who might have some cogent 
thoughts. (Pete Kaiser)

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