ptalk > Peeves

Why Fi?

Tech Superpowers, the folks who bring you Newbury Open — free wireless internet access on Newbury Street, have an interesting demo at Boston's South Station. The have set up a wireless internet “bubble” that lets travellers get a glimpse of what it might be like to have free wireless access in the station.

Unfortunately, they inform you, the “powers that be” are holding out, thinking that someone is actually going to pay them to have the right to the wireless airspace in the station (presumably because they will then charge people to access the internet from the station).

Wrong business model if you ask me. Wireless internet access should be like Muzak or plant services. They enhance the value of your space by making customers linger and spend more money…

Who are these mysterious “powers”, and how do we get though to them?

The League of Extraordinary Copyrights

Hollywood hoist with its own petard:

One of the film’s problems, and the comic book’s strengths, is enormously relevant in an age of rampant online file-sharing and courtroom wars over extension of the copyright term. In the comic book, Moore shows the benefit of having a rich public domain. He plucks old characters from obscurity, brings them together and makes them dance. The public domain works the way it’s supposed to. New creators enliven old works and send interested readers scurrying back to the original texts.

At the same time, the film illustrates how modern copyrights restrict the use of established cultural texts that should be in the public domain. For American audiences, Tom Sawyer is added to the mix, but evidently Fox couldn’t clear his film rights, so he’s referred to only as “agent Sawyer.” A friend of mine walked out of the movie having no idea Mark Twain’s rambunctious kid was all grown up and inexplicably sneaking about London with a shotgun.

[Full story at MSNBC]

Apple to RIAA: Get a clue!

"The way to go after illegal file sharing services is to compete with them, says Peter Lowe, Apple's Director of Marketing for Applications and Services. This can be done by offering quality and speed that is greater than that of file-swapping services, Lowe says."

[Full article at MacNN ]

EFFective?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is campaining to reform the way music is paid for, and 'decriminalizing' music sharing.

Free the Tunes!

College education

"Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, citing concerns about student privacy, moved yesterday to quash subpoenas issued by the recording industry to discover the identities of students the industry says are illegally distributing copyrighted music."

[Thank goodness someone is showing sense. How can subpoenas issued without judicial review be honored over constitutional rights?

Full story by James Collins in The Boston Globe]

Left your windows open?

Microsoft admits critical flaw in nearly all Windows software

[Full article at Security Focus]

Jackboots¹

"The music industry has issued at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users this month suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, U.S. court officials said Friday."

[Full article in Salon]

Would you like spam with that?

With all of Europe set to implement Opt-in legislation by October, Europe has taken the lead in banning spam and is no longer waiting for the United States to stop the huge American spam problem, problem that most of Europe suffers from with over 90% of all spam hitting Europe being sent by American (mostly Florida-based) spammers.

But the United States is going in the opposite direction to Europe and is now set to explode the spam problem far worse than it is today, incredibly by actually legalizing Unsolicited Bulk Email instead of banning it.

[...]

[Full article at Spamhaus]

Download a file, go to jail

Latest round in the RIAA's attempt to get Congress to force us to buy a product we don't find value in.

http://news.com.com/2100-1028-1026715.html

EFF Launches "Let the Music Play" Campaign

Urges 60 Million Music Lovers in U.S. to Demand Legal Rights

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Monday, June 30, launched a "Let the Music Play" campaign urging the more than 60 million U.S. citizens who use file-sharing software to demand changes in copyright law to get artists paid and make file- sharing legal.

The EFF Let the Music Play campaign counters the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) announcement that it will file thousands of lawsuits against individuals who use file- sharing software like Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus.

"Copyright law is out of step with the views of the American public and the reality of music distribution online," said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. "Rather than trying to sue people into submission, we need to find a better alternative that gets artists paid while making file sharing legal."

EFF's Let the Music Play campaign provides alternatives to the RIAA's litigation barrage, details EFF's efforts to defend peer- to-peer file sharing, and makes it easy for individuals to write members of Congress. EFF will also place advertisements about the Right to Share campaign in magazines such as Spin, Blender, Computer Gaming World, and PC Gamer.

"Today, more U.S. citizens use file-sharing software than voted for President Bush," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Congress needs to spend less time listening to record industry lobbyists and more time listening to the more than 60 million Americans who use file-sharing software today."

According to online media analyst Big Champagne, more than 60 million Americans are using file-sharing software.

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030630_eff_pr.php

EFF file-sharing campaign site:
http://www.eff.org/share

EFF file-sharing ad:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/music-to-our-ears.php

How to not get sued for file sharing:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php

Reclaim the Public Domain

Get back what's constitutionally yours:

http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html

More money than time

Rx for Music Industry: Seek Out the Old Geezers

By HARRY SHEARER
The New York Times

Here's a business model with a future: sue your customers. That's what, as of this month, the recorded-music industry has been doing. It filed suit against four college students involved in Internet file-sharing (in which compressed "files" of music are swapped, Napster-style), asking for billions of dollars in damages. Yes, billions. Interestingly enough, the Bush administration, known to be opposed to frivolous lawsuits and in favor of tort reform, has weighed in on the side of the industry. Let's go after those students. That's where the money is.

[...]

[Full story at The New York Times (free subscription required)]

Music industry swamps swap networks with phony files

Major record labels have launched an aggressive new guerrilla assault on the underground music networks, flooding online swapping services with bogus copies of popular songs.

[...]

[full article at
SiliconValley.com]

Embrace file-sharing, or die

A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.

[...]

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813]

[...]

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed by Congress in 1998 to address how technological innovation would affect intellectual property. In drawing up the document, Congress looked to the RIAA and similar groups for guidance as to what the law should contain. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently released a study titled "Unintended Consequences: Four Years Under the DMCA" which goes on to detail how the "anti-circumvention" clauses of the DMCA have been used to stifle innovation, censor free speech, and threaten academic/scientific research. These chilling effects of the DMCA contradict and limit the "fair use" doctrine that is an important part of copyright law. Additionally, the digital rights management (DRM) initiatives that the RIAA and MPAA propose to protect their copyrights do nothing to protect the "fair use" rights of consumers.

[...]

[Full article: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/01/file_trading_manifesto/index.html]

[For more on Jefferson's letter and patenting in general, see: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3982]

Don't call me

In case you didn't see it in the Globe today, the state of Massachusetts has launched its "Do Not Call" registry, which "allows residents to block telemarketing calls to their homes..."

Mass. Residents can sign up until March 1 using a Web site, www.mass.gov/donotcall or by telephone, (866) 231-2255, or through the mail at PO Box 1348, Boston, MA 02117.

The article also says:

Under the new law, which takes effect April 1, telemarketing firms that fail to register or that call consumers on the lit will face penalties of $5,500 per violation. Calls from nonprofit and political organizations are exempted.

Also, a friend sent this "beep", which he claims if you record as the first thing on your answering machine, will make the telemarketing auto-dial machines hang up (and maybe even delete your phone from their list). This is what the Telezapper (as seen on TV, before midnight tonight) does.

Download file

What Do Intellectual Property Owners Want?

http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ar/ip_owners.html

...

Why copyright? Why did this obscure branch of "intellectual property," this private concern of entertainment and software firms, become the most pressing public policy area of the computer field?

[The Sklyarov and Jonansen cases] make us suspect that the multiple tentacles of the "intellectual property" leviathan bears barbed hooks on each end--and that some of the critical issues in modern democracy and discourse may be snagged by them.

...

(This article is also currently in print at The American Reporter, http://american-reporter.com/)

Voting machines

A third world country decided to go democratic, turning to the USA for guidance. On a limited budget, they could only afford second-hand equipment and got some voting machines from the city of Chicago.

With great fanfare, they held their election, with Fyodor Guantanamo running against Kwame Santahara.

The winner was ...
   Richard J. Daley.

[From RISKS-FORUM Digest 22.38]

Scary...

"The sad fact is that the legitimacy of government in the United States will remain in question as long as over 98% of the vote is tabulated by machines that can be easily rigged, impossible to audit, and owned by a handful of private companies. Until we get rid of those voting machines, democracy in America may be a distant memory."

Lynne Landes

[From http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm]

New heights in spam

"This is not spam! You are receiving this message because you are listed in an email database that I have purchased."

Oh, I see.

The new spam logic

[Opening sentence from a recent spamvertisement:]

"This email is never sent unsolicited, you are receiving this message because we went to your site and you were chosen by our company to participate."

An eye for an ell

How well does your email font distinguish 'l' (ell) and 'I' (eye)?

Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:23:18 GMT
From: rubin@research.att.com (Avi Rubin)
Subject: Fake Paypal site collects user ids and passwords

Somebody in the Ukraine registered PayPaI.com (note the resemblance to PayPal, especially with the upper-case I [in some fonts]), then copied Paypal's HTML and sent mail to a bunch of paypal users saying 'J. Random has just transferred $827 to you using PayPal, log in at http://www.paypaI.com/ to claim it!' of course, as soon as you "logged in" your password was mailed to some free e-mail service. For more on the story see http://www.msnbc.com/news/435937.asp?cp1=1 among other places.

Avi http://avirubin.com/