general internet news (use, academic article, RFID,google) - 4 May - part 3/3

[David Goldstein <goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au>]

Australia lags in innovation: report
Australia has a relatively poor record in innovation and
that is unlikely to change any time soon, the Committee for
Economic Development of Australia, a business think-tank,
says in a report.
 http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/29/1083103605566.html

Australians embrace mobiles, Internet
A survey has found Australians are continuing to embrace
new technology but with one major exception.
 http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1099553.htm

uk: BBC introduces flexible TV with online trial
The future of television is almost upon us: the day when we
spend our train or bus journey to work catching up on the
shows we missed the night, or even several days, before.
Later this month, the BBC will launch a pilot project that
could lead to all television programmes being made
available on the internet.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=517636
 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3564153

Sasser worm 'spreading rapidly'
A new internet worm may already have infected millions of
computers but causes no lasting damage, experts say.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3678725.stm

us/ag/bm: Challenge to Ban on Internet Gambling Upheld
Tiny Antigua and Barbuda have successfully challenged a
U.S. ban on Internet gambling, diplomatic sources said on
Friday, dealing the United States another setback at the
World Trade Organization.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5004853

au: ATO posts fraud email warning
THE Australian Tax Office has posted a warning on its web
site alerting the public to an increase in forged emails
claiming to be official ATO correspondence.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9423066%5E15331%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15319,00.html

us: Building a network against international terrorism and
crime
You don't have to look very far past the violent and
property crimes that plague local communities to see that
criminals from Nigeria are reaching for your wallet through
your own home computer...that Russian mafia are eying your
credit cards...and that Colombian and Asian drug
traffickers are finding ways to offer illegal drugs to your
children. Then there are the ones you can't see but know
are out there in the world, all focused on money and
mayhem: terrorists, spies, and international traffickers.
 http://www.fbi.gov/page2/april04/042804mueller.htm

uk: Man arrested as police trawl net for phishing scams
Police have arrested a 21-year-old man from Lytham St
Annes, Lancashire, in connection with internet "phishing",
a scam where emails are used to trick people into revealing
their bank details.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1206492,00.html

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=4985079
 http://www.iht.com/articles/517863.html

NZ still lagging in broadband uptake says new report
New Zealand's broadband uptake rate compared with other
countries has again been slammed, this time by UK-based
broadband analyst Point Topic.

http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/94643600C1DE8D5BCC256E85000CC139

Lawfully Surfing the Net: Disabling Public Library Internet
Filters to Avoid More Lawsuits in the United States by Mary
Minow
As the 1 July 2004 E–rate deadline approaches, many U.S.
public libraries are scrambling to understand the
requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act,
which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in July 2003. Of
paramount importance are disabling policies that must be
administered without significant delay. The Court and the
FCC have given little guidance on this issue, leaving it to
the libraries to establish norms and weather future
lawsuits. To minimize the risk of an "as–applied" lawsuit,
the safest position is one that minimizes overblocking and
maximizes the ease of disabling the filter (or TPM) for
adults, and unblocking for children.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/minow/index.html

The Internet in developing nations: Grand challenges by
Larry Press
This is a call for a "Grand Challenge" project for
achieving truly global connectivity. For over a decade, we
have hypothesized that the Internet could raise the quality
of life in developing nations. We have conducted hundreds
of studies of the state of the Internet and "e–readiness,"
done extensive training of technicians and policy makers,
run pilot studies, and held local, regional and global
conferences and workshops. After all of this activity,
Internet connectivity is nearly non–existent in rural areas
of developing nations, and far below that of developed
nations in the urban areas of developing nations.
This is not to say the activity of the past decade has been
a waste. We have demonstrated the value of the Internet and
raised awareness. The United Nations and the
administrations of nearly all nations have acknowledged the
potential of the Internet. The way has been paved, and it
is time to act on what we have learned.
After outlining the work of the last decade, we explore one
possible Grand Challenge: Connecting every village in the
rural developing world to the Internet using a strategy
similar to that used in building the NSFNet. We speculate
on wireless technologies that might play a role in working
toward that goal: Terrestrial, high–altitude platform, and
satellite. We conclude with a brief discussion of
alternative Grand Challenges and a call for action. The
time is ripe for an audacious project. What could we
achieve with US$15 billion and ten years time?
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/press/index.html

How Rights Change: Freedom of Speech in the Digital Era by
Jack M Balkin
Technological change produces new forms of social conflict.
The digital revolution is no exception: lowering the costs
of distribution and content creation inevitably creates
conflicts between ordinary individuals and the information
industries. Freedom of speech is a key site for these
struggles, as media companies repeatedly attempt to expand
intellectual property rights at the expense of individual
free expression, while simultaneously invoking freedom of
expression to oppose telecommunications regulation. This
stunted vision of free speech undermines the creative and
participatory possibilities of the digital age; it treats
ordinary individuals as passive consumers rather than
active producers of their cultural world. We must promote a
democratic culture that celebrates interactivity and
widespread cultural participation. Earlier free speech
theories concerned with democratic deliberation were
adapted to the twentieth century world of broadcast media,
in which only a relatively few people controlled access to
mass communication. Free speech theory must now be
dedicated to promoting each individual's ability to
participate in the growth and development of culture.

http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/~slr/v26/n1/Vol%2026%20%20No%201%202004.pdf

Governing the Egalitarians from Without. The Case of the
Internet - Prof. Dr. Christoph Engel
The Problem: Regulators are not good at multi-tasking.
Nobody would claim that regulators have neglected the
Internet. There is a flurry of regulatory activity all over
the world, and an almost intractable amount of academic
work on Internet-related subjects. But most of this work is
attracted by the global character of the Internet.
Admittedly this is a serious challenge to regulation. But
it is not the only one, and probably not even the most
disquieting one. The Internet empowers libertarians to
challenge the legal system from within. Most regulatory
tools have a hard time in matching the tremendous speed of
Internet evolution. And Internet use is almost entirely
decontextualised, and therefore almost entirely without
social control. Another of these largely overlooked
challenges to governance is cultural. The Internet
originated in the egalitarian culture of American
university computer labs. Its architecture was shaped at
that period. Up till now, many, if not the most key
functions for Internet management have been held by people
coming from that culture. This paper basically makes three
points: The egalitarian challenge to Internet governance
has been largely overlooked. The challenge is serious, but
not unmanageable. Yet regulators must use appropriate
concepts to understand the challenge, and they must use a
set of governance tools that deviates considerably from
standard regulatory responses.
 http://www.mpp-rdg.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2003_10online.pdf
 http://www.mpp-rdg.mpg.de/engel.html

External Technology Sources: Embodied or Disembodied
Technology Acquisition
Abstract: This paper analyzes the choice between different
innovation activities of a firm. In particular, we study
the technology acquisition decision of the firm, i.e. its
technology BUY decision as part of the firm’s innovation
strategy. We take a closer look at the different types of
external technology acquisition where we distinguish two
broad types of technology buy decisions. On the one hand,
the firm can acquire new technology which is embodied in an
asset that is acquired such as new personnel or (parts of)
other firms or equipment. On the other hand, the firm can
obtain new technology disembodied through a licensing
agreement or by outsourcing the technology development from
an R&D contractor or consulting agency. Through a series of
Probit regressions, we discuss variables that might affect
external technology acquisition choices of the firm and pay
special attention to the firm’s abilities to scan the
market for technology and to absorb the technology
acquired. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of different
appropriation regimes on the decision of the firm to source
technology.
 http://www.cbeji.com.br/br/downloads/secao/224582[1].pdf

Antitrust for Patent Pools: A Century of Policy Evolution
by Richard J. Gilbert
This paper reviews the antitrust treatment of
patent-pooling and cross-licensing arrangements from  E.
Bement & Sons v. National Harrow Co., decided in 1902, to
the recent Department of Justice business review letters on
the MPEG and DVD patent pools. I examine the factors that
the courts identified as pertinent to the antitrust outcome
and compare them to the competitive factors identified in
the DOJ/FTC Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of
Intellectual Property. Until recently, the competitive
relationship of the patents was not a major determinant of
the antitrust outcome in most cases. Instead, the courts
have focused on restrictive licensing terms that affect
downstream prices. I consider the logic of this approach to
evaluating antitrust liability. I also propose an approach
to evaluating the antitrust risks of arrangements that
combine potentially blocking patents.
 http://stlr.stanford.edu/STLR/Articles/04_STLR_3/index.htm

The Accountable Net: Peer Production of Internet Governance
By David Johnson, Susan Crawford, and John Palfrey
Three problems of online life - spam, informational
privacy, and network security - lend themselves to the peer
production of governance. Traditional sovereigns have tried
and, to date, failed to address these three problems
through the ordinary means of governance. The sovereign has
a role to play in the solution to each of the three, but
not as a monopoly and not necessarily in the first
instance. A new form of order online, brought on by private
action, is emerging in response to these problems. If
properly understood and encouraged, this emerging order
could lead to an accountable internet without an offsetting
loss of those aspects of online life that we have found
most attractive. There has been a great deal of loose talk
about the need for internet governance, particularly in the
context most recently of the World Summit on the
Information Society, but much less careful analysis of the
question whether the online world really does pose special
problems, or present special opportunities, for collective
action. There has been a general discussion as to whether
the internet, as a general rule, lends itself to governance
by traditional sovereigns or if something in the net's
architecture resists such forms of control. We do not seek
to re-open this debate, acknowledging at the outset the
important role that traditional sovereigns have to play in
most areas of decision-making and enforcement on the
internet. Rather, we seek to look more closely at a series
of particularly thorny issues that have proven especially
challenging for policy makers seeking to impose governance
by states. We seek the special problems -- and
corresponding opportunities – of online activity and assess
the relative merits of various options for how to resolve
them.
 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/2004-04

Special Studies on Technology and Banking: Who Offers
Internet Banking?
The main purpose of this article is to help fill
significant gaps in existing knowledge about the Internet
banking landscape. Using information drawn from a survey of
national bank examiners, we present data on the number of
national banks offering Internet banking and the products
and services being offered. In addition, we project the
extent of Internet banking at the beginning of 2001 implied
by the survey. We also investigate how national banks
offering Internet banking perform relative to other
national banks with respect to profitability, cost
efficiency, and other characteristics. We separately
examine de novo (newly chartered) national banks to
investigate the extent to which new entrants are embracing
Internet banking technology to a different degree than
existing banks.

http://www.cbeji.com.br/br/downloads/secao/IBQJFurstLangNolle.pdf

Fundamental issues with open source software development by
Michelle Levesque
Despite the growing success of the Open Source movement,
most of the general public continues to feel that Open
Source software is inaccessible to them. This paper
discusses five fundamental problems with the current Open
Source software development trend, explores why these
issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions
that might help overcome these problems. The lack of focus
on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary
software’s more intuitive interface. Open Source software
tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation
that retains users. Developers focus on features in their
software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core.
Open Source programmers also tend to program with
themselves as an intended audience, rather than the general
public. Lastly, there is a widely known stubbornness by
Open Source programmers in refusing to learn from what
lessons proprietary software has to offer. If Open Source
software wishes to become widely used and embraced by the
general public, all five of these issues will have to be
overcome.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/levesque/index.html

us: California Bans E-Vote Machines
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertifies all
touch-screen voting machines and recommends charges against
Diebold.
 http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/national/01VOTE.html

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5006037

Ireland to scrap e-voting plan
The Irish government is likely to call a stop to plans to
introduce electronic voting because they can't prove the
system is reliable.
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/30/ireland_evote

us: Senate Approves Internet Access Tax Ban
The United States Senate broke an eight-month stalemate on
Internet access tax policy early Thursday evening, casting
a 93-3 vote to ban state and local tariffs on Internet
connections for another four years.
 http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3347651

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5004853
 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/politics/30INTE.html

New worm's got sass, but not much else
The latest worm will likely spread widely, leaving behind
an open file server on each victim, but security experts
believe the Internet got lucky with the poorly coded
program.
 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5203791.html

OECD: Just released: Biometric-Based Technologies  	
This new report provides a general introduction to
biometric technologies. It also discusses the various
concerns raised by these technologies, with a focus on
privacy and information security. The report was prepared
by Peter Hope-Tindall, Director and Chief Privacy
Architect, dataPrivacy partners, under the supervision of
the secretariat.

http://appli1.oecd.org/olis/2003doc.nsf/linkto/dsti-iccp-reg(2003)2-final

us: Wal-Mart's Tracking Tags Are Getting First Field Test
Wal-Mart will be using radio frequency identification to
track goods as they are sent out to its Supercenter stores.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/technology/01shop.html

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-04-30-wallyworld-rfid_x.htm
 http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=7024

us: California Crackdown on RFID
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises
to speed the supply chain, but some fear it will tell
retailers too much.
 http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3348011

How Google Became a Cultural Phenomenon
So you've spent an hour Googling through the Web for your
graduate research paper, you've played the Google drinking
game, heard the Google theme song and vanity-Googled
yourself (again).

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5000610

Google float expected to net $2.7bn
Google has filed to become a public company, in a move
expected to make billionaires of its two thirtysomething
founders.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1206802,00.html
 http://www.iht.com/articles/517831.html

The weakness of Google
THIS week, Google, a secretive private firm that is also
the world's favourite internet search engine, reached a
regulatory tripwire that forces firms with more than 500
investors to disclose almost as much information as firms
listed on America's stockmarkets do. In Silicon Valley,
where firms often pay workers in shares as well as cash,
this is common and often prompts firms to go one extra step
to an initial public offering (IPO) of shares. As a result,
as The Economist went to press, Silicon Valley and Wall
Street were rife with speculation about what Google might
be worth as a listed company. Not since the Netscape IPO in
1995, which kicked off the dotcom era, have techies been so
excited.

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2630422

Googling Google
The Google story is a reminder of how a slim technological
advantage can reap enormous dividends in the new economy.
 http://nytimes.com/2004/05/02/opinion/02SUN3.html

Court Ruling in Europe Could Affect Microsoft
The European Court of Justice drew a legal line in the sand
Thursday on the circumstances under which a dominant
company must license its intellectual property for use by
rivals. The ruling, involving two distributors of drugs,
could have repercussions for the European Commission's
antitrust case against Microsoft.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30euro.html
 http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5201914.html

Court clarifies antitrust law in Europe
The European Court of Justice set an important precedent
Thursday that will become a reference point in Microsoft
Corp.'s appeal against the recent European Commission
antitrust ruling against it, according to Brussels-based
antitrust lawyers. Although both sides in that pending
court room battle claim that Thursday's judgement helps
them, the lawyers reckon it will help the regulator, not
Microsoft.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/30/HNeuantitrust_1.html

us: DaimlerChrysler: Dismiss SCO suit
DaimlerChrysler has asked a judge to dismiss the SCO
Group's lawsuit against the company, one of several
high-profile cases that have entangled Linux in SCO's
intellectual-property claims over Unix.
 http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5202095.html

Negotiating on the Internet gets lawyers' egos out of the
way.
IN 1995, CHARLES BROFMAN was representing a company that
had been slapped with a personal-damage claim from an auto
collision. He happened to be friends with the plaintiff's
attorney. But when they talked damages, they were a million
dollars apart. "He made a demand that was just in the sky,"
Brofman said with a laugh. "And I told him, 'Well, I'm not
making an offer to a man that stupid.'"

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2004/scene_thompson_mayjun04.html

De Bono given leading role in run-up to ITU assembly
Government and industry representatives at the ITU
(International Telecommunications Union), the specialised
UN agency on telecommunications, have unanimously agreed to
recommend Anthony De Bono to represent Europe and take up
the position of vice-chairman and member of the Steering
Committee of the ITU World Standardisation Assembly.
 http://www.timesofmalta.com/core2/article.php?id=152898

Stumped: Technology is throwing the game of cricket into
confusion
He HAS a normal head, but nestling between his massive
shoulders it seems small. He is Shoaib Akhtar, “the
Rawalpindi Express”, the fastest recorded bowler of a
cricket ball in history. And right now, before a small but
baying crowd at the Rawalpindi Cricket Ground, he is
steaming towards this (terrified) correspondent. From 22
yards, Mr Akhtar launches into the weirdly beautiful
contortion that fast bowlers perform to hurl a six-ounce
lump of cork and leather at up to 100mph (161kph). Half a
second later, the ball demolishes the stumps.

http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2628662

New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right
Journalist David Brock will start a new Internet site this
week that will monitor the conservative media and correct
erroneous assertions in real time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/business/media/03BROC.html
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