Incredible Analysis of INDUCE Bill

The battles being fought now over intellectual property issues will have a profound impact beyond whether we can download Shrek 5 for free on eMule. The continuing expansion of the legal definition of property will profoundly affect scientific research, the price and availability of medications and the control and distribution of virtually every new technology.

Ernest Miller has posted a brilliant analysis of the INDUCE act, which would make it illegal to provide technology that could encourage people to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted material.
  PERMALINK: 4:09 PM 1 comments

  The Empire Strikes Back

After losing to Grokster in court last week, the Movie and Record Industry Empire fought back through the good graces of the U.S. Justice Department. Targeting five people who allegedly hosted Direct Connect servers, the raiders confiscated computers but made no arrests.

It's a bit disconcerting that the administration keeps attaching PR-friendly names to their legislation, investigations and military activities. This one's called "Operation Digital Gridlock."

  PERMALINK: 3:27 PM 0 comments

  Sweden Gives Dreamworks a Nightmare

Now that I've wiped the tears from my laughing eyes, I can post this.

A Dreamworks lawyer sent a threatening letter to a Swedish ISP for hosting a file sharing server containing a bootleged copy of Shrek. It seems Swedish law is not as rabid about intellectual property as in the States. Here's an excerpt from their reply:

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States
of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.
Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here.
For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.
  PERMALINK: 12:33 PM 0 comments

  Wikipedia: Grassroots Facts Attacked

The unique ecosystem of the internet makes for very interesting battles within the process of societal and economic evolution. New forms of virtual life compete with traditional dinosaurs of the arts, journalism, commerce and community structure. Ebay, Amazon, and Google have displaced competing non-virtual establishments. Now the wikipedia has been publicly questioned by a High School librarian.

<>The wikipedia is an online encyclopedia created by its users. Instead of a tradition tomes compiled. Slashdot hosted a very interesting discussion about new forms of cooperative economic systems.

Personally, wikipedia is the first place I use for background information on a subject and I've added a wikipedia plugin to my Firefox search bar.   PERMALINK: 9:08 AM 0 comments

  Great free image libraries

I've recently stumbled upon two sites that demonstrate photography's verson of freeware. On both sites, photographers upload images for free use by the public. Many of these photos are from professional photographers who contribute work they've done which was not selected by their clients. Although the quality does vary, I was very impresssed by how well the content of both sites stacks up to the commercial vendors.

MourgeFile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists for free personal or commercial use.

Stock.xchng has a searchable gallery containing over 85.000 quality stock photos by more than 7.000 users.

I hope that many of these photographers will land new clients who discover their work on these sites. This is another fascinating new grassroots marketplace that joins the ranks of shareware and freeware for software, and music from unsigned bands on sites like www.garageband.com.



  PERMALINK: 11:37 PM 0 comments

  Old Computers Can Help Those In Need

If you're like me, you have at least one old computer sitting unused in your home. We're not alone. Forester Research reports that one in four computers is slated to be replace soon. Here are some organizations that take used computers and find good homes for them.

East-West Education Development Foundation
Gifts In Kind America
The Lazarus Foundation
National Cristina Foundation
Parents, Educators, and Publishers
The Surplus Exchange

  PERMALINK: 8:43 PM 0 comments

  We're Number One! We're Number One!



The U.S. of A. has received the Gold medal in the world spam competition, leading second place competitor South Korea by almost thirty points. Although the silly Olympics have drowned out coverage of this critical American win, let's do our part to congratulate the entrepreneurial sportsmen who have contributed to this impressive victory.

In related news, dozens have been arrested in a U.S. Justice Department crackdown on spam. Gee, do we want to be the champion or not?

Finally, these news items follow on the heels of SPAMARAMA, a Spam festival in Austin Texas that drew around 8000 people, and included a Spam eating contest. My guess is that an American won that event too.
  PERMALINK: 9:06 AM 0 comments

  Microsoft Bails from U.N. Standards Group



I don't want to keep posting on Microsoft, but those guys keep at it. Oh well...

Wasn't it just last February that Slashdot wondered whether Microsoft was paying off UN/CEFACT? Well, it seems that the free around the world junkets didn't do the trick to sway UN. committee member votes..

Microsoft is leaving the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business because of concerns about control of intellectual property. Following in the proud tradition of the U.S. Government, if the U.N. won't do it their way, they're out of there! Rumor has it that they're putting together a "coalition of the willing" which will include a number of Eastern European and Third World software companies that depend on their good graces for support.
  PERMALINK: 9:56 PM 0 comments

  My Birthday's Just a Couple Months Away



Okay, it's time to get off my high horse and admit to some tech-greed. Sanyo just released this oh-so-cute 640x480@30 fps, 4 megapixal for stills camera. If anyone can read Japanese, please translate this press release and post it here.
  PERMALINK: 8:45 PM 5 comments

  You Can Run But You Cannot Blog



Olympic athletes have been barred from posting personal blogs or posting snapshots and videos they've taken. A CNN story reports that the International Olympic Committee's rationale is that "athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists -- and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first."

The high ideals of amateur athletics and non-commercial competition seems to stop at the door of juicy media contracts. Although they have been lax about allowing amateurs to get in bed with corporations for the purposes of advertising, the IOC would like to control olympians' freedom of expression if it endangers their revenue stream.

If nothing else, this story gives credence to the power of blogs to challenge established media. The only reason this is an issue is that there is the fear that some percentage of the potential audience will choose to read athletes' blogs and take eyes away from the traditional press.
  PERMALINK: 8:53 AM 0 comments

  del.icio.us explores the web of links

I just ran across a new site that I found to be a fascinating new spin on the six degrees of separation" idea. People registered on the site share their bookmarks and assign them key words. You can browse the site to find connections between bookmarks based on key words as well as connections between people based upon their links. This may also be of interested to those working with taxonomy issues for searching, since the site avoids this altogether by allowing the users to provide key words, evaluate them by seeing what other links show up under their choices and then tweak them as they choose until they find a good fit.
  PERMALINK: 11:08 AM 0 comments

  CEOs Who Blog

Okay, James, maybe blogging's not as big a deal as all the hype, but check out who's doing it. A list on The New PR Wiki enumerates a growing number of U.S. and European business leaders such as Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, Marcomedia's Kevin Lynch, and of course, Groove Network's Ray Ozzie. What's up Bob?

The PR Wiki has also started a Case Study list. Maybe we'll get on the list if plans go well.

We've just put up WordPress blogging software on the network and once it is fine-tuned and thrown on our ISP's box, we will start utilizing blogs more extensively here. Plans call for project blogs for most projects to help keep our employees and our clients up to date with what's going on.

We've also been discussing the launch of an enhanced intranet portal with new content ever day including real time RSS news feeds, an expanded variety of executive and employee blogs, discussion forums, as well as ongoing new content such as case studies, employee photo of the week, etc.


  PERMALINK: 9:22 AM 1 comments

  Appeal Court Confirms P2P Ruling

It looks like the Ninth Circuit Court agreed with my "guns don't kill people" analogy by ruling that Peer-to-Peer software companies aren't liable for those who use their networks to infringe on copyrights. You can find a .pdf of the complete ruling here. A pretty impressive win, given the Grand Canyon deep pockets of the plaintiffs, which included RCA Records, BMG Music, Sony Music, Virgin Records, Walt Disney Records and Zoomba Recording Corp.
  PERMALINK: 7:35 AM 0 comments

  Wired Removes Capital (no it's not a typo)



Wired News announced it would no longer capitalize the Internet, Web or Net when describing the World Wide Web? It's a sign that perhaps we're getting over ourselves, which even the stock market crash didn't quite take care of. I suspect that in every time, people have seen themselves and their generation's new inventions as somehow special. And I hate to be repeating this glaring error in self-perception, but I think our generation's hubris was towards the top of the scale, hence the capitalization.

Did they call it the Telephone, when the phone system was invented? I'm going to use some Electricity. Or how about, put the mammoth tusk in the Fire, please Og

So I offer my congratulations to Wired News for waking up and returning to a semblance of proper perspective..
  PERMALINK: 8:17 AM 1 comments

  49 Cent Song Download Sale at Real

Here's a bit more evidence that the P2P phenomenon has been good for consumers. Previously, we've seen cuts in CD prices and the advent of authorized downloadable music from Apple's iTunes and others. Now, RealNetworks is running a sale on their entire catalog for 49 cent songs and $4.99 albums. Granted, they are doing this at a loss to help promote their new Harmony technology, but retailers running sales and loss leaders are certainly nothing new.

It's good to see signs that the internet still has the ability to level the playing field a bit between consumers/small business and the handful of large companies that control the vast majority of the media including record labels, radio stations, book publishing, etc.
  PERMALINK: 8:44 AM 1 comments

  New CVS Security Problem Reported



It's not like this blog was intented to be consumed with security issues, but here's another one.

IDefense released a report on a new exploit including proof of concept code. This is the newest flaw reported, following reports in May about other security issues with both CVS and Subversion and in June about CVS.
  PERMALINK: 9:35 AM 0 comments

  Instant Messaging to Get The Vote Out



It will be interesting to see how well MTV's Rock the Mobile Vote Instant Messaging campaign will turn out young voters. They're using a private labeled IM system that allows users to chat with buddies on AIM, MSN, ICQ and Yahool, as well as MTV "Street Team" members who will organize polls, political discussions, etc. People can also sign up for SMS text alerts for breaking election news.

Howard Dean's campaign demonstrated the power of the interent to transform grassroots support into a national force, as well as its limitations in getting people to actually vote. What's intersting about the Rock the Mobile Vote campaign is that it is working to not only increase young people's interest in the campaign, but get them into the voting booth.

As we think about our own communication and collaboration tools, it might be a good exercise to think outside the corporate box. Any ideas?




  PERMALINK: 11:40 AM 1 comments

  New Ad-Aware Had Hole. Patch it Please.

The great new ad-aware update I reported on a few days ago seems to have a nasty security vulnerability. You can download the patch here.
  PERMALINK: 9:48 AM 0 comments

  JP Mobile Partners with Cincinnati Bell

This is the first news story on JP Mobile since they acquired PDA Defense from us. They have been busy integrating PDA Defense into their SureWave platform since the acquisition and we look forward to seeing our "baby" doing very well.
  PERMALINK: 9:20 AM 0 comments

  Interesting IP Conversation



For those of you following the Peer-to-Peer and intellectual property wars, there's an interesting conversation on Slashdot that started yesterday. It begain with a reference to a Wired article on Net publishing focused on ebooks.

The book and record industrys' business models have evolved into focusing on a relatively small number of publications and artists (like Harry Potter and Britney Spears) to create massive revenues. At the same time, distribution is ever-more concentrated in a small number of radio and publishing conglomorates, retail book companies, etc. Finally, the idea of intellectual property is being more widely defined and covering areas that historically have not been considered property.

The bottom line is that the once rich ecology of the marketplace is falling, not to State controlled Socialism, but to Capitalism. How ironic. The rise of P2P networks, in my mind, is just the market responding to an unhealthy imbalanced system.

Some people get it. Michael Moore said it was okay for people to share bootleg copies of his "Farhenheit 911" movie, as long as they didn't sell it.
  PERMALINK: 10:33 AM 0 comments

  New Anti-Spyware update from Lavasoft



The good folks at Lavasoft have just released an upgrade to their fine, free anti-spyware software Ad-Aware SE. Although spyware doesn't have the replication and nasty destructive functionality of a virus, it can bog down your system with as much as a 50% hit on performance.

It's been a while since I checked for spyware and Ad-Aware caught 109 objects, mostly data miners.


  PERMALINK: 8:40 AM 0 comments

  Tool converts .Net to Java

Although Microsoft was happy enough to help you convert Java to .Net, for some odd reason they haven't offered much help going the other way. A product call iNet from Stryon, claims to do the trick.
  PERMALINK: 9:12 AM 0 comments

  Javascript IM interface



eMessenger allows people to use MS Messenger from a javascript enabled browser without installing a programm or downloading an applet. They also have a WAP version. Any play for this with Envoke?


  PERMALINK: 10:23 AM 2 comments

  XP Service Pack Update. Many Wait.

I wonder why so many CIO-types are hesistant to roll out the new service pack? Could it be that they've learned something from experience? Maybe if they would start using XP methodology to create Windows XP, they'd have a less buggy product and a better reputation.
  PERMALINK: 8:20 AM 0 comments

  Will Envoke need a back door for Law Enforcement?

Although the FCC turned down the FBI's first request to be able to tap into Instant Messaging, they are likely to ask again, according to a post from CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh.
  PERMALINK: 9:51 AM 1 comments

  New XP Service Pack

Microsoft today released the new XP service pack on MSDN. The almost half a gig download will probably be available on Microsoft's download site Monday.

My take on this is that Microsoft was concerned that Asynchrony stopped supporting Internet Explorer and this was a defensive move to prevent Gary from moving everyone off of Windows and on to Linux.
  PERMALINK: 9:25 AM 0 comments

  PDA Virus Alert - Yawn

Major news hitting tech magazines and even the St. Louis Post Dispatch report a PDA virus found "in the wild." Of course, they've only found a single instance, but news-hungry editors around the country have rushed to this story.

Here's my take. If I was a virus writer, would I spend my time writing something that could infect 85% of the computers around the world, many of which receive e-mail and browse the interntet, or would I write something that ran on a PDA, most of which do neither of the above? Hmmm????

I guess the smartest way to infect handhelds would be to throw out fake warez software on the P2P sites and rationalize that you're a karmic force. Even so, it seems that PCs offer so much more opportunity for havoc and gain that I just can't see many virus creators spending time on them. Plus, with a PDA, you've got everything backed up.

My suggestion is that you stick to PDA Defense to protect against the REAL threat of someone poking around in your lost or stolen device and save your money for now on anti-virus software for your handheld.
  PERMALINK: 6:30 PM 2 comments

  Microsoft tries to catch up with Envoke



Microsoft just released the portal version of msn messenger, their instant messaging program. Took 'em long enough!
  PERMALINK: 10:31 AM 1 comments

  3...2...1....crash and burn


Our fellow St. Louis-based company, 321 Studios, has been pushed out of business by the intellectual property worshipping courts. Their DVDXcopy software allowed users to break copy protection on DVDs so they could make back up copies. Believe it or not, some unscrupulous users traded the video files that were created by the software on the internet!

It blows my mind that the courts will ban software that has a perfectly legitimate use, just because some people use it for illegal activity, when you can go out and buy a semi-automatic weapon. Let's see, on the one hand movie companies MAY lose a little money and on the other hand PEOPLE GET MURDERED.

Software doesn't steal intellectual property, people do.




  PERMALINK: 9:19 AM 2 comments

  Another one bites the dust



Okay. First they ruin our Vegas vacation (I mean important business trip) by cancelling Comdex this year. Now, it looks like Cebit American has bit the dust, at least for 2005.

We've exhibited at Comdex for the last few years, promoting our PDA Defense security product and the Envoke instant messasging platform. Last year, we were in the security pavilion, (thank you ascii group). The story was that the promoters of the show had intentionally cut it down to size in order to increase the quality of the attendees. Yah, right.

Actually, we were down with a more focused show. It's a waste of time and a great bore to speak with a few thousand people who have no possiblity of becoming customers. You know, students, the local unemployed, bored boothbabes, people who have the nerve to want to sell US something, etc. But when you combine a drastic reduction in floor traffic with a still very broad crossection of attendees, it's hard to justify the cost.

Shows like Comdex and Cebit America can be too broad to deliver a high concentration of qualified prospects to many of the potential exhibitors. It can make more sense to spend your marketing dollar on more targeted opportunities. For instance, there are very successful shows that set you up with one-on-one meetings with a dozen highly qualified prospects. (Those shows have the most persistant salespeople I've ever encountered.)

So what's the moral of the story? It looks like we won't be entering or leaving Vegas this November. Oh well.


  PERMALINK: 3:49 PM 0 comments