1994: the Internet is mainly the province of researchers at universities and government lab's.
1995: Business starts to dabble in the Internet and the www. Some university-developed search engines and indexes (e.g. Yahoo) go commercial. The print media start to write about the Internet and www and effectively to promote them, but there are regular sensational stories about online porn' and about child molesters using the net.
1996: Business starts to get serious about the net. Every corporation has to have a web site, although most are just on-line versions of the "glossy booklet". Electronic commerce starts to get under way as the technical means for security are made available. Several "unofficial" fan sites are closed down under threat of legal action against them for holding copyright music, scripts, pictures etc. The press starts to leave porn-scares behind and moves on to issues of quality, social change, copyright, law, control. Most large newspapers and TV stations start to develop their own web sites.
1997:
Despite huge increases in network capacity, the Internet has not
grown perceptibly faster for most users; the increase
in the number of users and in the use of graphics in web pages
has mopped it all up.
The Java-based net-computer started to win contracts,
such as the NSW car-registration office (Sept 1997),
up against the MS net-pc.
Microsoft released its Explorer 4.0 web-browser in October 1997
applying strong pressure to Netscape,
and even more so when
New Scientist #2110 29 Nov 1997 p5 - Superhighway snarlup - report confirms the (lack of) speed perceptions noted above: Kenote (Ca) surveyed the time taken to load 50KB from selected web sites through 34 (fibre optic) Internet backbones; the Internet slowed by 4.5% between April and September. Effective upper speed is 40Kbps (c.f. 56Kbps modems).
1998: Tele-Communications Inc. is planning TV-set-top boxes to bring the Internet to cable television (entertainment and shopping are the go). TCI signed an agreement with Sun Microsystems (9/1/98) for software to to connect the boxes to the 'net and with Microsoft (11/1/98) for Windows software for the interface.
You thought that the Y2K Millenium Bug
would arrive on 1/1/2000? Well most credit cards issued
in 1998 have expiry dates in 2000 and allegedly some of these
are already showing up problems in some ATM's and computer systems.
[I have no 1st-hand reports,
so this may be an "urban myth"]
12/1998: Microsoft admitted that its Windows 98 `Wordpad' wordprocessor
treats 2000 as an invalid date; fixes are available.
Javatm, the
Sun Microsystems platform-independent platform, seems to be catching on
in a big way in computing for molecular biology,
if ISMB98 was anything to go by,
with many project groups seeing it
as a good way of running their software on Unix and also Wintel machines,
not to mention that it is also a "nice"
1999:
The Microsoft anti-trust case drags on, with
occasional entertainment such as an embarassing gaff
by MS over video-taped evidence that did not show a system
it claimed to.
Linux, the free open-source Unix Operating System,
is showing signs of snow-balling:
Apple, Compaq (DEC), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and SGI
are all supporting it on their machines,
both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
(SGI are not about to abandon their own Irix version of Unix,
nor windows NT.)
1999 November: Findings of harm to consumers in the Microsoft anti-trust case.
2000: The y2k bug turned out not to cause any very major problems; whether this was because it was a beat-up all along, or because of all the extra software checking done in advance, is keenly argued.
1/2000: The huge ISP `AOL'
is to merge with (take-over)
"old-media", content-rich `Time-Warner'
[they split in 2009] and,
in au, Telstra is to buy OzEmail
[but the ACCC raised concerns and Eisa was to buy OzEmail instead,
however as of 6/2000 the deal is off and
Eisa is in financial difficulties].
2/2000: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ABC] may provide
"content" for Telstra's web site for $12M over 5 years;
this sparked questions about the ABC's independence and
advertisers' interests.
Microsoft broke the anti-trust laws
The
judge ruled to split Microsoft into
(i) operating systems and (ii) applications [6/2000].
10/2000: Sun micro-systems released the source code of its Office suite, StarOffice, under the gnu public licence, GPL.
2001: In late 2000 and early 2001 many high-tech' stocks,
and the "dot com's" in particular,
suffered big losses, or bit the dust.
January:
IBM paid a lot of money to create the Australian Tennis Open web-site.
The tennis association placed restrictions on the number of results
that accredited news outlets, such as Fairfax newspapers, could put on
their own web-sites (which have become big business after
extreme apprehension a few years ago), causing protests that this
restricted legitimate reporting.
2001: Microsoft has been mounting a campaign against
open-source software but it seems that Microsoft has been using
[free-BSD],
which is open source,
2001 June: Apple's new operating system
2001 August: OS X 1.1 released,
i.e. it is now OK for cautious adopters.
(In principle
Also, Linux gets better and better, with
2002:
Copyright remains a contentious issue.
The music-file swapping system `Napster' was sued off the 'net in 2001,
but reborn at the end of the year as a system for down-loading
"legal" music content.
Many actual and proposed technological fixes to digital copyright
greatly restrict taken-for-granted "fair-use" provisions
of written-, music-, or video-content, such as the ability to "play" it
on any machine, or quote extracts in research.
The Microsoft anti-trust case(s) drags on, of course.
2002 July: Apple's operating system version OSX 1.2.
2002 August: Sun is to support Linux (and Solaris!), and
Microsoft had a stand at Linux World Expo!?#$ [-linux.org]
2002: Industrial Light and Magic uses Linux (replacing SGI) for the computer-generated special effects in Star Wars episode II Attack of the Clones.
2003: Spam (junk email) is as old as the internet and you might have predicted exponential growth and nuisance value from 1994± on. In fact it was annoying but manageable until 2002, say, but there has been a surge since. The ``Nigerian'' hoax is now a ``classic''. Recording companies are becoming more aggressive in pursuing those swapping MP3 files of copyrighted music.
2003:
Linux will bury Microsoft for data processing applications and
Sun's StarOffice
is ``almost usable'' - Larry Ellison, Oracle.
It is always nice to get
a prediction to check
back on in 5 or 10 years.
The City of Munich decided to switch from Microsoft to Linux
on 14,000 desktop and laptop computers.
Walmart started selling
PCs preloaded with Linux from US$298.
2004: It is said that digital cameras outsold
film cameras
2004: The Age, Next p4, quotes Netcraft; the opensource web server, `Apache', has about 68% of the web-site "market" and rising, Microsoft IIS about 21% and falling. Many like the security and ease of use of Apache. On traffic Nielsen suggest 40%:43%. (And then others say that the IIS sites often have Linux front-end caches.)
2004 June: Cabir cell-phone virus.
2004 Nov: US election & the 'net.
2004: RK predicts
a useful off-the-shelf quantum computing gadget
of some sort in 5 years,
2005: The European Union did not allow software to be patented (yet).
2005:
Apple announced that it would switch from power-pc processors to Intel.
The first products are expected
2005 Oct: Apple's iMusic online music "store" finally opened in Australia.
2006: Apple released its first Intel-based pcs in February (e.g. iMacs from au$2K).
2006: Image-spam took off in a big way. I got my first image-spam in 2003 but they were surprisingly slow to catch on.
2007: Check on a 2004 [prediction] about spam.
2007: Apple's iPhone released 29 June (USA).
2007, Oct.: Personal details on 25 million UK citizens are lost,
possibly stolen, in a security lapse (not the first!) at HM Revenue and
2008: Check on a 2003 [prediction] by Larry Ellison that Linux will bury Microsoft for data processing applications.
2008, April: IPv4 (32-bit) allows 232 -- about 4 billion --
2009:
Check on a 2004 [prediction] on the progress
of practical quantum computing:
2010, Jan. 5: Google launched the Nexus One (not the 'gPhone'), 3.7" screen, 5-mega-pixel camera, running the Android O/S (also see iPhone 29 June '07).
2010, January 27: Apple announced the 'iPad' tablet computer, for sale ~March.
2010, May 6: Icann turned on a system allowing web addresses containing no Latin characters, only Arabic.
2010, various: Wikileaks released many confidential US military and diplomatic documents.
2011, Feb. 11:
Nokia and Microsoft announced a partnership in mobile phones
2012:
2013:
2014:
2015:
2016 Check on a [2006] prediction about the progress of virtual sex.
15 August 2011: "Internet giant Google has announced a deal to buy Motorola Mobility for us$12.5bn ..." -- [bbc]. (Supposedly for M's patents re mobile phones and the like.)
June 2011: News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch) sold MySpace for us$35m. Once seen as a rival to Facebook, MySpace was bought by NC for us$580m in 2005 -- [bbc]['11].
27 January 2010: Apple announced the 'iPad' tablet computer with a 20cm×15cm touch screen, for sale ~March, us$500-$830. Some think it will help the spread of charging for content on the net (see Murdoch's recent rumblings), as iTunes did for music. It is certainly a rival for Amazon's 'Kindle' ebook reader. (Apple tried the Newton MessagePad in 1993 but it flopped.)
15 January 2010:
"Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer was a weak link in the
recent attacks on Google's systems [gmail accounts]
that originated in China. ..." -- BBC
[www].
"The [.au] Federal Government has ramped up warnings
about Microsoft's web browser Internet Explorer, which has come under
attack from hackers. ... Microsoft has acknowledged all recent
versions of the program are vulnerable. ..." -- ABC
[www][19/1/'10].
(E.g., try the alternative Firefox web browser:
13 January 2010:
"Internet giant Google has said it may end
its operations in China following a 'sophisticated and targeted'
cyber attack originating from the country.
It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing
to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn. ..." -- BBC
[www].
12 January 2010, googleblog:
"... In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and
targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China
that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.
However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely
a security incident -- albeit a significant one -- was something
quite different. ... have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of
the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of
Chinese human rights activists. ..." -- google
[www].
Google has often been criticised for censoring results
from google.cn to appease Chinese authorities.
23 December 2009: "A US court has upheld a $290m verdict against Microsoft in a patent dispute with Canadian company i4i. ... injunction banning the company from selling Word software that includes the patented technology in the US. ... infringing on [14i's] 1998 XML patent in its Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs. ..." -- [BBC].
December 2009: AOL and Time Warner, which merged with much fanfare in 2000, split -- [BBC].
21 October 2009: ''Microsoft is
hoping that its newly-launched
operating system [Windows 7, £80-£100] will be one
that "doesn't let you down". ...'' -- [BBC].
Sales of its predecessor, Vista, certainly let microsoft down.
9 October 2009: "News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch has launched a stinging attack on Google and other online entities for stealing content. ..." -- [ABC]. He wants Google (and readers) to pay!
August 2009: Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corporation
will soon start charging for news content rather than
giving it away for free (as everyone else does).
It will be very interesting to see if News C. can manage it
without slashing traffic to its site(s).
The ABC and the BBC
might become even more popular.
12 August 2009:
Judge bans Microsoft Word sales,
"A US federal court has ordered Microsoft to pay over
$290m (£175m) for wilfully infringing on a patent by
Canadian firm i4i. ... use of XML ..."
-- BBC.
July 2009: Microsoft and Yahoo came to an agreement where Y will use M's search engine, Bing, and M will pay Y ad revenue. (See Feb 2008.)
5 June 2008: Iain Thomson, Acer Bets Big on Linux
"Acer has stated that it will be pushing Linux aggressively on
its laptops and netbooks. The company is already heavily promoting Linux
for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but
senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its
laptops. ..."
--[iTnews].
1 February 2008:
Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo
for us$44.6 billion in cash and shares.
Yahoo's and Microsoft's search engines are well behind
Google (which has ~58% of searches) in use and
hence the greatest adverti$ing income.
Yahoo shares quickly rose by nearly 50% to us$28+.
It looks like Microsoft felt it just had to do something
about the search business, but Yahoo seemed to be in gradual decline,
so will it turn out to be the right thing?
The offer was rebuffed.
(But see July 2009.)
22 January 2008: Commsec's [ref] internet share trading site failed when too many customers tried to access it at once during a major share-market collapse, i.e. just when they really needed it.
12 July 2007: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission [ACCC] has challenged, in the courts, the practice of google, and `Trading Post', of allowing companies to place ads by "buying" the names of competitors as search-terms so that a link to their own site appears. The ACCC alleges "that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from 'organic' search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act." [Refs]
June 2007: Google complained to the US Department of Justice that Microsoft has, by giving preference to M's search software, violated a 2002 [antitrust decree] that bars Microsoft from stifling competition (e.g., see [new-sci]).
January 2007: Microsoft released its new Vista operating system. Now that a good pc can be bought for less than $1000 ($au) why would you pay about $300 for Vista and $200+ for Office when [Ubuntu] is free?
October 2006:
Google bought YouTube in
a us$1.65 billion share swap deal.
YouTube is a free site for "the community" to (up|down)load small videos.
April 2006: Apple released `Bootcamp' which lets an Intel-based Mac run Apple's OS-X or Microsoft's windows (but not both together which would need vm-ware or similar).
Feb 2006: Apple released its first Intel-based pcs in February (iMacs from au$2K). Given that OS-X is based on free-BSD Unix, It would be awfully easy for Apple to release it for all pcs, if it wanted to.
Feb 2005: Apple launched the Mac Mini. Excluding keyboard and screen, the Mini is 6.5"×6.5"×2" and from us$499. If this does for the home computer what the iPod has done for music...
7 Feb 2005: IBM, Sony and Toshiba have unveiled
the "Cell" microprocessor.
It is
"rumored to be the core of Sony's PlayStation 3, expected in 2006"[*].
"The new chip incorporates eight 'synergistic' processors and
top clock speeds of more than 4 GHz."[*]
[* ibm]
30/3/2004: See [TV] dropping off?
29 March 2004: "HP and Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced a joint agreement to certify and support the Novell(r) SUSE(r) LINUX operating system on select HP Compaq client systems.[...]" --[HP][No'].
25 March 2004: The European Union fined Microsoft eu497 million (us$613m) for violation of its competition laws. It required the company to give details of its code to other companies, within 120 days, so that they can write compatible software to run on the windows O/S. Microsoft must also offer a version of windows without the (free) Microsoft Media Player within 90 days. The EU wants fair conditions for rival companies such as Real Networks, and Apple (Quicktime). There will be appeals. What if anything will happen during the wait? (Also see the US antitrust case Jan 2002.)
J. Giles Societies take united stand on journal access,
Nature 428, 356, 25 March 2004
[doi:10.1038/428356a]
"More than 40 biomedical societies have banded together to counter calls
for them to provide immediate and unrestricted access to
the scientific literature they publish. ..."
[Their argument is that profit from publishing their
journals lets "learned societies" do lots of other worthwhile things.
Many journals now also publish their articles on-line --
some free, some only to subscribers. A recent development
is to charge the authors instead of the readers, e.g.$1,500
in the case of Public Library of Science's [PLoS]
journal, `PLoS Biology', access to articles then being free.]
Also see Nature's "focus", Sept 2004
7 February 2004, The Age, Good Weekend, Saturday, p36:
``Microsoft is helping develop "e-government"
for Iraq, which seems a little ahead of the curve
given that there is no g-government there.''
-- Adds new meaning to `act of war'.
January 2004, Sun News: Sun's Java programming language is being used by NASA to process pictures from the robot mission to Mars.
15 July 2003:
"SuSE Linux and Microtel Computer Systems today announced that
Microtel PCs preloaded with the SuSE Linux 8.2 operating system
are for sale at Walmart.com. Prices start at $298 USD and provide
a range of PC options to give customers diverse and affordable
alternatives to proprietary systems. This offer is limited to
www.walmart.com online purchases and not available through
Wal-Mart stores. ..."
28 May 2003:
"The city council of Munich today made a key decision to deploy the
open source operating system Linux instead of alternative
[Microsoft] operating systems.
This initiative will see Germany's third largest city migrate 14,000 desktop
and notebook computers to Linux. Their objective is to deploy information
technology that stimulates more commercial and technological flexibility at
a lower cost to the public sector. Although the council has not made a
decision on its choice of vendor, Linux distributor SuSE Linux AG and
IBM Germany will be participating in the resulting contract bid. ..."
Also, a Danish report
"...shows that there are potential for major savings for
the public administration in the
use of
May 2003: National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has used a number of Sony PlayStation-2's and Sony's Linux-kit for PS2 to make a cheap supercomputer.
news.com: Sony dumps Microsoft for StarOffice 5 Dec 2002:
Sony will offer Sun's StarOffice Office Suite on some
European PCs.
Sun already has a foot in the door
with European governments looking for an alternative,
and cheaper, supplier from Microsoft.
For the public, there is always the free(!)
OpenOffice derivative.
Also see [Munich][28/5/03].
5 November 2002, Outsourcing: "The manager attempting to make decisions on the sourcing of IT services is confronted by a range of conflicting messages. On the one hand some consultants are promoting business process outsourcing as the new best thing, while others (like Gartner) are arguing that ``in outsourcing, the chances of success are at best 50/50.. and for IT services it's even worse''. This presentation answers the question: What can independent research tell us about the success and risks of outsourcing and how well recommended practices reduce these risks? Drawing on four years of qualitative research into IT outsourcing in Australia, and one of the largest quantitative surveys conducted worldwide, the author presents a more measured view of outsourcing. She also discusses some of the useful rules of thumb for choosing services which are likely to be successfully outsourced." 18/11/2002 seminar abstract, Dr Anne Rouse.
1 November 2002: Judge Colleen Kollar--Kotelly approved the anti-trust settlement between the US Justice Dept. and Microsoft. There may [will] be appeals! (Also see March 2004 Europe, Jan' 2002 and NAAG under refs.)
15 October 2002 [various, yahoo, zdnet, etc.] MS PR blunder:
Microsoft withdrew an on-line ad',
"Confessions of a Mac to PC convert", purporting
to be from a customer who switched from Mac to PC (with MS Windows XP)
and was happy with that choice. It turns out that the piece was written by
P.R. and that the accompanying photograph
was of a model, out of the Getty library, not of a customer.
Maybe Microsoft can't find a satisfied customer?
The "ad" was in response to a successful series that Apple has been
running on happy converts from Windows p.c.s
to Apple OS/X.
8 October 2002, The Age, Next, p4, Perspectives, G. Philipson:
... Microsoft [ended] its experiment with end-user
subscription licensing (ESL) for Office XP.
[It] ran only in .au, .nz and .fr. [...]
The cost of Office XP was [au]$1288 [about £350, us$700]
and the cost of the annual licence [rent] au$400, [...].
There are [...] Office users in .au, .nz and .fr, - probably 10 million.
[...]
[Unsurprisingly consumers do not like the idea of renting software, which stops working when the the annual payment is not made. With some p.c.s now selling for just au$1000, it beggars belief that anyone would pay $1300 for another piece of software to compose letters, club newsletters, school assignments, a c.v. etc., when a 5- or 10-year old version, or an alternative brand, would do just as well. In any genuine "market" the old model of Office would be available for $9.99. Hardware prices have come down from a few thousands of dollars to one or two $K -- and a piece of hardware is a tangible product with low but genuine replication costs. Software costs essentially nothing to replicate, to develop is another matter, but are there $1300 worth of developments in Office XP? Particularly when there is a perfectly adequate free(!) OpenOffice suite available. Microsoft had to try the licensing trick but it was never going to work at that price. And if that figure of 10 million users in .au, .nz and .fr is remotely accurate, and if they are spread pro-rata by population, say 1 million in .au(?), then .au consumers (debt, balance of trade, ...) would be about a billion dollars better off if they switched to OpenOffice.]
1 August 2002: Microsoft's new "preferred" billing method for commercial customers is for them to pay for "maintenance" which will include automatic upgrades (and fixes) to software at a discount compared to the ordinary purchase price (if you would have bought it). Cynics say Microsoft is trying to lock companies into providing it with a regular, predictable cash-flow with saturation of the p.c. market on the horizon, if not here already. A more worrying factor is that if enough companies are on the Microsoft upgrade conveyor-belt then third parties face pressure to follow suit (because of growing feature-ism), helping the viral spread of Microsoft products.
23 July 2002, The Age, Business p1: WorldCom Inc has filed the largest bankruptcy in [USA] history... ...Chapter 11 protection... ...handled more than half of the world's Internet traffic...
[Chapter 11 gives companies the chance to trade their way out of difficulties. Perhaps.]
July 2002: Where game writers had to break into the security on Microsoft's X-box to put Linux on it, Sony released their own ``Linux for Playstation 2 kit'' complete with libraries, examples and instructions.
5 July 2002, The Age, Business p3:
[...] Gartner Group survey [of] Melbourne University
[...] supporting [its] 4400 Apple Macintosh machines
cost [au]$14 million a year. Running a similar number of
IBM-clone Windows machines cost more than $18 million. [...]
[You can perhaps guess which brand Monash University went with ?-( ]
May 2002, CACM 45(5) p9:
"Bookings on major airlines' Web sites pushed airlines' Web sales over
[US]$6 billion in 2001 [...]
But these sites produced a small slice of their $86 billion revenue;
travel agents still sell 70% of airline tickets."
[Quoting a USA Today survey and PhoCusWright consulting.]
1 May 2002: OpenOffice.org announced the availability of OpenOffice.org 1.0, the open source, free Office software suite.
11 January 2002,
Judge Scuttles Microsoft Suit Settlement
- P. Kaplan, yahoo.com.
[U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz]
scuttled Microsoft Corp.'s proposal to donate
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
computers and software to schools to settle the
scores of class-action anti-trust suits filed
against the software giant.
[...]
The ruling means Microsoft now will have to renegotiate the settlement or
fight the scores of [state and private] suits in court.
[...]
Many commentators had argued that Microsoft's proposed settlement would in effect assist Microsoft by dumping its software into the school market where one of its main competitors, Apple, is strong.
Antitrust settlement too soft on Microsoft, critics claim -
Garry Barker, The Age, Business section p2, 5/11/2001.
[...] not broken up, and will probably not change many of its
spots after Friday's out-of-court settlement [...]
[...] if [...] US District Court judge
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved [the settlement ...].
7 August 2001, Anti-Trust Case:
Microsoft requested that
"... the district judge should have been disqualified
[from the anti-trust case] as of September 1999...",
effectively invalidating the findings.
See
[9 June 2000] and
Nat' Assoc' Attorneys General NAAG in
[refs].
July 2001: Microsoft's Windows XP operating system due out soon does not come with Java. You'll have to get it from Sun Microsystems; see [Refs].
24 July 2001, Linux offer to charity in Windows row,
The Age IT1 p2, Nathan Cochrane.
"Sydney free software distributor and trainer
Everything Linux has pledged to support a Geelong children's charity
whose work Microsoft halted last week for distributing
PCs with obsolete copies of its software." [...]
[LA: It shows the potential risk of getting locked in to a single source monopoly supplier. Many charities are donated old PCs. These often are not big enough or fast enough to run current MS Windows. MS have apparently stopped this charity from loading copies of e.g. Win3.1. Fortunately the Linux operating system will run fine, even on an old 486, and it's free. And Openoffice (~Staroffice) is a free office software suite - ~word, ~excel, etc. - see [Sun] in Refs.]
February 2001: A new book, World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies, by Ken Auletta paints an interesting picture of Bill, "I am going to destroy three companies: Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Netscape," Gates and his rivals at AOL, Sony, and Sun Microsystems. (Neat title.)
February 2001: Sun accepted $20M from Miscrosoft in an out of court settlement for MS breaking the Java licence conditions. Microsoft probably looks upon this as small change for delaying tactics to muddy the Java waters while getting a competitor (C#) up.
December 2000: Republican George W. Bush was declared the next US president, after many legal challenges to the vote in Florida. (Democrat Al Gore won the national "popular vote" and the result hinged on just hundreds of disputed votes in Florida which held the balance in the electoral college.) It will be interesting to see what, if anything, this means for the Microsoft anti-trust case.
4 August 2000: The European Commission (EC) began investigating claims that Microsoft selectively withheld information from some software companies, seen as being competitors, with the aim of extending its near monopoly in the desk-top operating system market into other markets. This would violate European Union antitrust laws.
9 June 2000:
The judge in the Microsoft anti trust case
ruled that Microsoft should be split in two: One part
based on the windows operating system and the other
making `applications' such as ms-word etc.
There will be appeals.
They could drag on for two years.
See [1/2002],
[8/2001] and
US DOJ under [References].
3 May 2000,
is Microsoft at it again?
Stanley Holmes, The Age:
[...] The Justice Department and 17 states allege that
[Microsoft] has doctored the newest version of its
operating system - Windows 2000, [...] - to prevent competitors
from taking advantage of some new functions. [...]
released an email [by] Bill Gates that allegedly
directs employees to redesign software to harm competitors
who make [the popular Palm hand-held computer].
[...]
28 April 2000, remedy: The
states propose to split Microsoft into
The hope must be that MS_(i) would look for as many applications
for its Op-Sys as possible, even those not written by MS_(ii)
and that MS_(ii) would want to run its applications on
as many Op-Sys as possible, even those not written by MS_(i).
Some think any split should be finer, particularly separating
internet e-commerce, from office applications, and from
infra-structure (i.e. wire or cable networks etc.).
I have a lot of sympathy with the latter view:
no person or company should be allowed to control or influence both
a physical medium of transmission (band-width, fibre optic, wires) and also
"content" & business using that medium.
This seems to be a good "separation of powers" for the 'net.
3 April 2000: Judge Jackson
ruled that Microsoft used predatory tactics to maintain a monopoly,
violating anti-trust laws.
Now comes the `remedy phase' when solutions and/or penalties will be
decided. There will also be an appeal, of course.
See US DOJ under [References].
(Also see the remedy above and 11/1999.)
February 2000: The European Commission (EC) will investigate complaints that Microsoft that indulges in anti-competitive practices, in particular making it difficult for competitors to write software that can interact with the new Windows 2000 p.c. operating system
February 2000: Eisa (an ISP) is [was]
to buy OzEmail (an ISP).
This is probably good news for competition in Australia
as Eisa may well now have more subscribers than Telstra bigpond which was
#1 by far - Telstra had wanted to buy OzEmail but the ACCC took a dim view.
February 2000: The ABC may provide "content" for Telstra's
internet services, some of which carry advertising, under a
$12M deal over 5 years.
This raises questions of the independence of the ABC v.
the commercial "interests" of advertisers (on Telstra's site(s)
which may carry the content).
[June 2000: The deal fell through. The ABC said it was unhappy
about strings and conditions.]
And . . .
14 February 2000: Media Watch (ABC TV)
gave many examples of the blatant promotion of Murdoch-owned web sites
in Murdoch-owned newspapers around Australia, in the form
of "articles" not clearly identified as ad's
or at least potential conflicts of interest.
The programme suggested that a competitor's web-site
had been hampered when trying to advertise in the press.
January 2000: Bill Gates is to step down as CEO of Microsoft, will concentrate on more technical software matters, but will remain as chairman. Meanwhile the company and the Justice Dept.(?) are negotiating what might happen to Microsoft following the finding of harm in the anti-trust case. (Ruling 4/2000.)
January 2000:
America Online, AOL, is to merge with
(but some say take-over) Time-Warner.
The idea is that the former has the eye-balls,
the latter has the content.
In Australia, groan, Telstra is to buy the #2 ISP,
OzEmail
(review permitting
[2/'00 Eisa is to buy OzEmail;
6/'00 the deal is off]).
19/1/2000: There are also stories that
Telstra (BigPond i.e. eye-balls) and
Fairfax (publishes The Age ... i.e. content)
may strike a deal.
This kind of deals sounds like bad news for freedom of
choice/ information/ speech/ ... .
1 January 2000: The y2k "bug" did not cause the end of civilisation. No serious failures have come to attention, although problems with one type of ATM were reported, and there have been some amusing incidents with announcements, web pages, tickets, receipts etc. dated January 100, or January 1900.
5 November 1999:
Thomas Penfield Jackson,
the judge in the Microsoft Anti-Trust case,
found that harm had been done to consumers
as a result of Microsoft's effective monopoly in the pc operating system
market.
[local]
e.g. point 63, p33, on pricing and monopoly power:
"A Microsoft study from November 1997 reveals that the company
could have charged $49 for an upgrade to Windows 98 - there is no
reason to believe that the $49 price would have been unprofitable -
but the study identifies $89 as the revenue maximising price.
Microsoft opted for the higher price."
p207: ". . . Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its
prodigious market power and immense profits to harm
any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that
could intensify competition against one of
Microsoft's core products."
Also discussed are IBM's OS/2, Apple, Netscape, Sun's Java,
Intel's NSP, RealNetworks, Compaq, AOL, etc.
A ruling on what to do to Microsoft could take months. Expect appeals to drag on for years. (Ruling 4/2000.)
December 1998: America Online (AOL) is to buy Netscape, once touted as a competitor to Microsoft.
20 November 1998:
The
Microsoft Anti-Trust case has
been running since 19 Oct 1998 and some heavyweights have now testified
about pressure being applied to them by MS
to do, or not do, `uvw', or else MS might do `xyz'.
Bill Gates has also testified, denying the significance of internal MS email
messages containing threatening language against other companies.
See
[finding 5/11/1999] (above) and
National Association of Attorneys General in the
[Refs].
17 November 1998:
A US court found that Sun Microsystems Inc.
would be likely to win its case, that Microsoft violated
its Java contract and therefore granted an injunction that
Microsoft must change any of its products (e.g. Windows98, Explorer,...)
that it claims to be Java compatible, or that are derived from
Java technology, so that they genuinely are compatible with Sun's
Javatm test suite.
See
Feb 2001,
March 1998 and
7 October 1997
(the courts are so slow).
27 October 1998: Sun Microsystems released the Solaris-7 64-bit operating system for Sun SPARCtm CPUs and also for Intel (Pentium) machines. Solaristm Easy Access Server "allows servers running Solaris to work with any PC. It also provides important network services such as file, print, ...". (Solaris is also offered free to non-commercial users.)
19 October 1998: Microsoft Anti-Trust case begins
in court.
See National Association of Attorneys General in the
[Refs].
By the way, the `Halloween document' at Opensource.com (see Refs) is said to be a leaked Microsoft memo' acknowledging that the free operating system, Linux, poses a threat, or at least serious competition, to Windows98 and Windows-NT. It says that free software can be reliable and efficient (and cheap:-). Some conspiracy theorists say that the memo' is just a "plant" to help deflect the anti-trust case.
22 September 1998, Communicator labelled `Trojan horse',
The Age, IT1, p5.
A windows-friendly version of Netscape's Communicator 4.5
is said to install itself as the default browser, add its
icon to the Windows tool bar, and set the default home page
to Netscape, all at a single "click". It is reported that
``Officials from Microsoft have called the software
a "Trojan horse".''
Now that's ironic!
Also see the Microsoft anti-trust (19/10/1998), and Java cases below.
26 August 1998: The USA Dept. of Justice anti-trust
case (preparation) against Microsoft continues:
idg.net reports that the New York Times reports allegations
that in August 1995 Bill Gates made vague threats against Intel
if Intel continued to work in certain internet-related area.
(Also see 19/10/1998 above, and
[NAAG].)
D. Lawsky. MS `disabled' competitor's sound system.
The Age, IT1, Tues 28 July 1998, p3.
Realnetworks Inc. [make internet sound and music software] ...
has accused Microsoft of releasing a program that disables its product.
Chief executive Robert Glaser [of Realn']
[...] told the Senate Judiciary Committee [MS] was using its dominant
position to extend its grasp of the software market.
[...]
Four other executives [inc' from Lotus, Acer]
gave specifics on ways they said Microsoft used a monopoly in
the Windows operating system to compete unfairly. [...]
March 1998: A USA court told Microsoft to remove the Java-compatible logos from Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Software Developers Kit while a court case brought by Sun Microsystems continues. Sun has sued Microsoft for breach of contract over its Java licence; see 7 October 1997 below. This may yet be a case of Sun winning a battle but losing the war?
See Feb 2001, 17 November 1998 above and 7 October 1997 below.
January 1998: Apple turned in a profit after its recent losses, painful cuts and much debated $150M investment by Microsoft (1997).
22 December 1997: Telstra has been
warned by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
that its pricing policies for the Internet are unfair:
Telstra charges other Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
$0.19 per megabyte [!] of data that they take from Telstra's
BigPond but does not pay for data that Telstra receives!
Such unfairness is more likely to arise when an entity both controls the infrastructure and provides a significant fraction of the content on it - legislators take warning.
December 1997: A US court has issued a preliminary injunction stopping Microsoft from forcing makers of personal computers to install their Explorer web-browser as a condition of licensing the Windows95 operating system. This is seen as a symbolic judgement, placing some limits on Microsoft's activities. It probably will not have much actual impact on the Netscape v. Explorer web-browser contest. It remains to be seen what effect it will have on the coming Windows98 operating system which is said to be closely integrated with the web. One might expect Microsoft to contest the decision.
Less than 2 per cent of Internet surfers actually click on the
banner ads placed on the most popular sites around the Web.
And "click through" [...] is falling says Dr Marshall Rose
[of First Virtual].
[...]
The US Justice Department yesterday asked the Federal Court to fine
Microsoft $US1 million a day over the software giant's
attempt to dominate the Internet.
[...]
[LA: Microsoft's web browser Explorer-4 grows ever more closely
involved with the Windows-95 (soon Windows-98) operating system.
Microsoft's argument is that they are just adding
improvements and new functions to their O.S..
The counter view is that MS is attempting to stifle
competition in the web browser market, specifically to
knock-off Netscape which held 70% of it as of mid 1997.
The European Commission is also investigating if Microsoft
is using its monopoly of Windows-95, and hence monopoly
(to all intents and purposes) of P.C. operating systems,
to force computer suppliers to install Explorer as the default
browser to the detriment of Netscape.
Incidentally, it has been suggested that if the Windows O.S. specification
was freely available there would be some real competition in
P.C. operating systems because other software companies would be
able to implement the spec',
hence be able to run the applications programs which are the reason
for Windows' popularity,
and offer an alternative to MS.]
7 October 1997:
Sun Sues Microsoft For Breach of Javatm
Contract
Sun claims that Microsoft products
Explorer 4.0, the recently (Oct 1997) released ms web-browser,
and Software Development Kit for Java (SDKJ)
failed the Java compatibility tests
and so should not be labelled as being Java compatible,
nor should the Java-compatible logo be applied to them.
The Sun press release alleges that Microsoft's actions include "...secretly adding Win32-specific and other APIs to the Java class libraries...".
Some conspiracy theorists believe that Microsoft
would like to kill Java off, others that it would like to hi-jack it.
See also
Feb 2001,
17 November 1998,
March 1998 and
Appraising Microsoft below.
[References]
Ralph Nader's Essential Information is organising an Appraising Microsoft conference (13-14/11/97) to discuss whether or not Microsoft engages in unethical business practices and whether its dominance of the p.c. software market is harmful.
[...] The Australian Tax Office is conducting a study into the impact of information services on specific tax issues, and taxes administered [...]. [...] impact on our traditional tax system, based on concepts such as residency, [...]
[LA: When Internet business really gets going, who levies taxes, who collects them, and how?] [Refs]
The Internet should be turned into a duty free zone, according to a proposal being drawn up by officials in the US Treasury Department. [...]
Currently most Internet-distributed services such as software and access to databases, go untaxed. But the European Union has set up a task force to investigate how to levy taxes on business conducted over the net. [...]
[Note, this refers to pure internet services, not to goods that are ordered over the internet and delivered by other means. The main difficulties are the multiple jurisdictions that may be involved and how to tax many small transactions. How interesting to a see a taxation department proposing to pass up an opportunity to tax something!]
[...] Some [travel] agents say banks have charged them for bookings with Kiwi Air that were not honored when the airline collapsed.
At the same time a Commonwealth Bank ruling has
rejected credit card authorisations made by e-mail.
[...]
[...] he sent copies of e-mail exchanges between [the agent] and
the card holder but the bank said this was
"insufficient documentation" [...]
[LA: I wonder how this compares with telephone authorisation of credit-card sales?]
Also see Pornography and social-consequences.
See [12/1/2010] re China and google.
August 2008: The Great Firewall of China (GFC) caused a fuss when foreign journalists, visiting China to cover the Beijing Olympics, found it firmly in place contrary to prior agreements. It was later "eased", at least for international visitors, at least for the duration of the games.
May 2007: "Internet censorship and surveillance are growing global phenomena. ..." -- [OpenNet Initiative].
10 July 2004, New Scientist, p4,
China steps up text control.
[...] tighter regulations to monitor mobile phone text messages.
According to [Reporters Without Borders (RWB)]
Venus Info Tech [...] filtering algorithms [...]
to root out dissidents by identifying "false political rumours" and
"reactionary remarks". [...]
October 1999: As those in the industry come to grips
with ways of implementing content restriction in Australia
(see the Broadcasting Services ...
[28 May 1999],
they are realisong what a tricky and messy business it is.
There are various worries:
See the
Australian Broadcasting Authority ABA,
Internet Industry Association IIA, and
Internet Society of Australia in the [refs].
28 May 1999: The Broadcasting Sevices Amendment (Online Services) Bill (~Internet content restrictions, see below) was passed. Many internet service providers (ISPs) have called the legislation unfair and unworkable.
13 May 1999: The Australian Government is nearing a vote on restrictions on internet "content". The Broadcasting Sevices Amendment (Online Services) Bill proposes that the Internet be treated as a broadcasting medium. ISPs could be given 24 hours notice to remove illegal material from their sites with large fines possible for breaches.
A complaints mechanism would allow any person
to complain to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA)
about offensive material.
Material would be classified "on the basis of current
National Classification Board guidelines, as material Refused Classification
and rated X, and material rated R that is
not protected by adult verification procedures."
"The Government acknowledges that there are technical difficulties
[and how!] associated with blocking overseas material.
At the same time, it considers that where it is technically feasible to
block material, this should be done. In its view it is
not acceptable to make no attempt at all on the basis that
it may be difficult."
[While this is sounds like a laudable "apple-pie" sentiment,
we could, for example, block illegal pornography in the (snail-) mail
by routinely opening mail, and there is no suggestion that this be done.]
Many people believe that internet content bill is being rushed through
parliament to gain the support of Senator Brian Harradine who
holds the balance of power in the Senate (until June) and who
is crucial to the Government getting its Goods and Services Tax (GST)
passed. [Harradine decided not to support the GST,
and the Government entered into negotiations with the Democrats
to decide its future. The Internet restrictions were passed
anyway, 28/5/99.]
(See
[Senate enquiry] 9/1995,
[DCA enquiry] 7/1995,
and [Refences]; try DCA.)
The Singapore Government has said it does not
intend to crack down on Internet content [... but]
it wants all Internet users to register so they
can be held accountable for what they publish online. [...]
- The Age D2 17 June 1997
[An open internet poses a very interesting dilemma for regimes with authoritarian tendencies; see Burma, China, Malaysia below.]
[Reports that some filters also filter out]
any site with a hint of controversial political content -
for example, discussions of feminism and homosexuality
and even sites run by critics of blocking software.
[Makes the excellent point that a blocking company should make it
clear exactly what its criteria are for blocking sites.
It seems that Solid Oak, for one, hasn't been so forthcoming.]
[...] Earlier this month a Philadelphia court ruled
that America Online (AOL) can block unsolicited
mail addressed to its 7 million customers.
[...]
In March, Cyber Promotions sued AOL, claiming
the block on its email was a restriction of the company's
right of free speech [...]
Burma has made owning, using, importing or borrowing a modem
or fax machine without government permission a crime punishable by
up to 15 years in jail, according to a report by United Press
International.
[...]
Stephen Hutcheon. Beijing blocks access to news on Internet. The Age (Melbourne) pA17 Sat 17 Sept 1996.
China is blocking access to Internet sites, including several run by Chinese and English language newspapers, in a bid to reinforce the state's monopoly on information control.
[...] 100 sites are now affected, [...]
Internet sites operated by CNN, The Washington Post,
The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal are affected.
[...]
In addition, users in China are being denied access to a number of sites
run from Taiwan, those seen as sympathetic to the exiled Tibetan religious
leader, the Dalai Lama, and anything related to the activities of
Chinese dissidents.
[...]
Jonah Sieger. Communications Decency Act is Defeated: Landmark Victory for Netizens. Communications of the ACM 39(8) p13-15 August 1996
[...] the CDA failed to recognize that the Internet is fundamentally different than traditional broadcast media - every single Internet user, from the largest corporate Web site to the humblest home page, is a publisher with the capacity to reach a global audience.
[...] The court, eloquently and unequivocally, ruled that speech on the Internet deserves first amendment protections at least as broad as those enjoyed by the print medium. [...]
[Over in Australia ...
the
Broadcasting Services Amendment
[Bill] came up for consideration 5/1999.]
The censorship issue is particularly pointed if you come
from anywhere other than the USA which still dominates the internet.
For example, France, Japan and the USA have very different standards
when it comes to nudity - tits and bums films are acceptable for the
main-stream audience in the USA which is otherwise very prudish,
anything seems allowed in Japan except pubic hair,
and the French ...
!
On the other hand the USA has a casual attitude to
guns and violence on film that offends many others.
These considerations pale into insignificance when you consider the
differences in public, even if not private, standards between
say Iran and California.
The internet is no respecter of international borders.
Malaysia `no' to Net censorship. The (Computer) Age (Melbourne), pC2, Tues 2 April 1996.
[...] Malaysia is "at the moment quite fixed on the idea that there should be no censorship".
This is according to Dr. Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen
director general of the Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic
Systems (MIMOS).
[...]
Kurt Kleiner. Net porn Law laces `free speech' test. New Scientist #2020 p11 March 1996.
[...] Last week a consortium that includes
Microsoft, CompuServe and America Online, [...],
began proceedings in the District Court at Pittsburg to overturn
the law [CDA, Ref].
[...]
In February the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
won a temporary injunction preventing the law from
being enforced until the court decides whether it is constitutional.
[...]
Although the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that
truly pornographic material can be restricted, the material
has to be without any social or artistic merit before it
falls into this category.
[...]
Taken at face value, the law would seem to outlaw a great deal
of western art - for instance the complete works in the Louvre
are available online - as well as material that discusses birth control
or sex.
[...]
A provision of the law does exempt service providers such
as CompuServe, [...] reasonable attempt to limit the availability
of indecent material [...]
[...]
[The CDA was over-turned August 1996, see above.]
... on Thursday [8 Feb] ... United States President Bill Clinton
signed the Communications Decency Act into law.
[...]
The CDA ... carries fines of up to $250,000
and two years in prison for transmitting sexually
explicit material to minors.
[...]
The measures come more than a month after the Victorian Government
enacted its own online censorship provisions ...
[...]
The ABA [Australian Broadcasting Authority] issues paper is at
http://www.dca.gov.au/aba/olsissue.htm [Ref]
on the web.
[...]
... Now the question is how the [Senate] committee will deal with Kevin Durkin's review of existing research on effects of computer games on young people.
... Durkin, associate professor of psychology at [UWA],
found no strong evidence of increased aggression after playing violent
computer games and some evidence of positive effects on cognition,
spatial and computer skills, and family life.
[...]
Studies found a weak link between arcade game playing and aggression
[...]
[LA: see below re senate Enquiry.]
The article discusses the Australian Senate enquiry (see below), Schoolsnet and products such as Net Nanny, CensorMan[Ref], NewsMan and Surfwatch.
The Australian Senate is holding an enquiry into `The Regulation of Computer On-Line Services'. The Committee will examine:
Submissions by 29 Sept 1995 (tel (06) 277 3545/6/7).
Enquiry to be completed by 30 November 1995.
(See also the Dept. Comm. and the Arts enquiry (DCA); submissions closed 1 Sept. 1995, and the Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill 5/1999.)
The InterNet provides access to international information and a way to circumvent national censorship. For example, the book `E for Ecstasy' has been banned in Australia (Saunders, 1995) but is freely available on the InterNet. (One may own a physical copy but not import it.)
May 2007: Viacom (owns MTV) has claimed us$1B damages from YouTube (now owned by cash-rich [Google]!) for the many 10s of 1000s of clips from its TV shows on the site. Google's case is that it is not responsible for infringements by its customers (¿if it removes such content when notified?).
January 2007: EMI, and later Sony BMG, gave up on digital rights management (DRM) protection on music CDs (too much trouble, and easily worked around anyway). NB. This does not mean that CDs are free of copyright. Now what about movies?
31 March 2004 Canada: Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) had not proved that 29 ``music uploaders'' had infringed copyright, under current Canadian law, by placing music files in shared directories, [.pdf][4/2004]. Expect appeals.
December 2003: It is said [Refs] that a program, QTFairUse by Lech Johansen, that allows iTunes music to be copied (a "QuickTime ... memory dumper") without restriction, is in circulation. iTunes, launched by Apple in April 2003, sells encrypted songs for us$0.99 each and is held up as the way for the music industry to make money in the web era.
7 October 2003:
`Universities failing to plug download pipes',
Nathan Cochrane and Nick Miller, the Age, "Technology" section.
... 28 terabytes of traffic sent over the illicit FastTrack-Kazaa network
in the past 12 months. ...
[-- on music piracy, Australian Universities, and the music-industry
crackdown on mp3 swapping] [Refs]
18 Feb 2003: Recording companies alleged that Australian university students, notably at U of Melbourne, Sydney and Tasmania, are using the university networks for large-scale (illegal) swapping of MP3 of copyrighted music files. The Universities say that this is not condoned and that there have been only isolated incidents, which are dealt with when identified. [--ABC news]
May 2002:
Some musicians, such as Janis Ian [Ref]
argue that the music industry should embrace the internet somehow
rather than fighting tooth and nail against MP3 down-loading, and
that it is only trying to protect its own structure not the musicians
in any case.
(Also see Courtney Love [Ref].)
April 2002: The music industry has started to release music CDs
that cannot be read be computer CD readers. This is done by
adding certain "errors" to the data which are tolerated by (most)
music players but not by computer drives. The industry's hope is that
this will stop people copying and swapping music (which is alleged
to have caused a drop in music sales) either
on CDs or via the internet. It is a forlorn hope of course --
31 July 2001: `Free Speech Emasculated', Simon Minahan,
The Age, IT1 p7
Dimitry Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas [...]
a 27 year old programmer who works for a Russian company ElcomSoft
for whom he created a program for copying e-books downloaded
on Adobe's E-book Reader.
[...] the first person to be charged in the US under the
Digital Millenium Copyright Act, [...]
[The article points out the potential of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to be used to effect perpetual copyright and pay-per-read, and to inhibit "fair use". Also see Dr Edward W. Felten and the Secure Digital Music Initiative, below.]
12 June 2001: `US boffins put law to the test'
The Age
... a team of of computer scienteists
last week asked a IS federal court for permission to reveal how
they cracked the music industry's leading anti-piracy
technology for compact discs.
Dr Edward W. Felten ... Princeton ...
(see Felten on the Secure Digital Music Initiative
(SDMI) Challenge in
References).
On the one hand the US is strong on free speech,
but on the other hand the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act
bans anyone from using or spreading any mechanism capable
of circumventing copy-protection technology.
On the face of it the law is pretty daft being
The next industry in the firing line is the movie industry.
Digital Video Discs (DVD) can now be compressed onto (lower quality) CDs
and down-loaded. If internet band-width improves, down-loading
high quality DVDs directly may become feasible.
The MPAA is worried.
[See Refs.]
November 1999: Digital Versatile (or Video) Discs (DVD) use the `Content Scrambling System' (CSS) to encrypt the movie on a disc. Players have a few keys on-board. This allows manufacturers to limit the playability of discs to certain zones etc. Some Norwegian programmers have released a program, `DeCSS', which can decode the material on the disc, allowing it to be played anywhere, on any computer. Breaking the system was easier than expected because a manufacturer put unencrypted keys in players.
April 1999 New Scientist #2182 17/4/99: Panasonic has prototype digital video discs (DVD) which contain unique identifying codes for the purposes of protecting copyright on material that is bought on the DVDs or that is down-loaded across the 'net (the code can be checked with the DVD in the computer's reader). The unique id on a DVD-Net disc is added by a laser after the disc is pressed.
26 March 1999: MP3 (mpeg-3) has the music recording industry seriously worried. It compresses a music-CD (say 1 hours play time, 16-bit, uncompressed) to typically 1/30th of the raw file size, with almost no detectable loss of quality, so that it can be transmitted across the internet (even at today's speeds) quickly, opening the door to high quality bootleg copies. All sorts of water-marking and other security schemes have been proposed for music and video, but they all ultimately rely on the digital processing device (~computer) more or less voluntarily deciding not to process data in some way. After all, the data has to be decrypted to be put in the computer's sound- or video-memory to get heard or seen, and so the ability to copy the content of that memory has to be given up for these schemes to work. e.g. ...
... New Scientist #2178, p11, 20 March 1999,
reports a $15 million investment by Microsoft in
Reciprocal of Buffalo, N.Y..
The latter plans to `wrap' data, such as MP-3 formatted music or video
in a "layer of encryption".
Software will check the use-rights to the data that a customer has bought,
(e.g. one play) and act accordingly.
"Initially, the software will not be totally secure.
But [MS] will now embed it deeper in Windows, making it
tougher to bypass...".
July 1998: Signum Technologies is marketing a system that can watermark a digital image and prove that it has not been tampered with if the image is later used in a court case (say). It uses a key to select pixel values which are changed by +/-1. If the image is tampered with the changes won't match up. To stand up in court, the watermarking would have to take place in the camera. [Refs]
Feb 1998: Various watermarking schemes have been proposed by which published material (images, audio, video) could be watermarked in some way that would not have a noticeable effect on human perception of the material but could be detected by a computer program (webcrawler etc.) searching for violations of copyright. There are severe practical and theoretical difficulties for watermarking: [steganography]
M. De Zwart. Electronic piracy: the hypertext link. Business Quarterly, Monash University, page 7, Summer 1997.
[...] American computer ticketing giant Ticketmaster
has issued a complaint against [...] Microsoft. [...]
[...] relates to hyperlinks made by Microsoft from its Seattle Sidewalk
World Wide Web site to Tickemaster's [...].
[... T'] alleges Microsoft benefits from the link because Microsoft is
able to sell advertising around the Ticketmaster link [...]
[Note that there is a technical solution open to Ticketmaster: almost all browsers set a `referer-page' variable. T's web server could use this to redirect requests coming via a Microsoft page to T's front page (or any other page). See also Shetland Times v. Shetland News.]
11 November 1997: The Shetland Times and The Shetland News settled out of court in their dispute over the News making headline hyper-text links to the Times' articles. The News agreed to clearly mark any such link as a "Shetland Times" article and to provide the Times' Logo and a button so marked.
[See also 25 Jan 1997 below.]
[...] "Decompilation" of software interfaces
is prohibited by copyright law,
according to the Supporters of Interoperable Systems Australia (SISA),
which is lobbying the [Australian] Government to explicitly
allow the practice.
[...]
Sun [computers] is a member of SISA which is lined up against
the Business Software Association on the issue.
[...]
[Sun's rep' ...] said there was no suggestion that
developers should be able to copy other's work,
just that they should have access to the information
that would allow them to produce compatible products.
[...]
[... Microsoft] was not as free with its specifications
as it should be.
[...]
[Bate of Sun] said most of Europe allowed
the practice [of decompilation].
[...]
[The article and Sun are careful to emphasise that they do not propose decompilation for the purposes of copying and piracy, rather it is to infer specifications and interfaces where such information is not documented and openly available.]
[Case of Powerflex & Dr. Bennett v. US Data Access Corporation in the Federal Court of Australia. The latter claimed the former had infringed their copyright by using certain (command) words (check, save, ...) in writing a database that performed similar functions to DAC's.]
[...] The decision is believed to all Australian developers to continue to create programs compatible with, or performing very similar functions to, products from their competitors [...].
[...] The full court [held] that the work to be protected was the source code [of DAC's program] behind the commands and that the commands were only a "cipher".
[This obviously is a rather important case for `look and feel' disputes. Will there be an appeal?]
The pop-group `Oasis' has told unofficial fan web-sites to remove its lyrics, sound clips and pictures from the internet or be sued for breach of copyright. While this is quite within the group's rights, it is rather ironic because some of its songs' lyrics advocate "alternative action" of various kinds.
Late last year an official with the TV mogul Aaron Spelling's giant
United States corporation wrote to the head of a university faculty
in Germany, informing him that a student was using the university's
computers to "load and retrieve unauthorised information about
Spelling's productions".
[...]
[LA: Tom Zoerner ran a web site called "Spellingland" which was kept a bemused watch on the antics of Spelling's series Melrose Place, Beverley Hills 90210, Models Inc. etc. It was rather fun, not very serious.]
[...]
Although a lawyer friend advised him the company had no case,
the continued threats of legal action shocked the University into
demanding that Zoerner remove his material [...].
[LA: The article goes on to point out that this action has offended many fans of Spelling's shows. Some fans suggest that Spelling should have paid Zoerner to run an official web site, and this is a common refrain where other unofficial sites have been closed down. However this ignores the fact that huge corporations and fans have very different objectives. A corporation pays an awful lot of money to construct a particular image. Obsessive fans are wild cannons; there is a certain attraction in harnessing their energy but they are not under the corporation's control and can become disaffected and can easily tarnish that glossy image.
There is no doubt at all that scripts are owned by the writer or his or her employer and that the owner has the right to make money out of them through performances or sales and that unauthorised publishing is illegal. Small extracts (a few lines) might be quoted, with acknowledgement, to make some point in a review or article under "fair usage" provisions.]
[...] Last October, The Shetland Times went to court
and forced the [Shetland] News to stop linking to
its [web] site.
A final decision is expected to be made by the
Court of Sessions in Edinburgh.
[...]
[...] [Independent Radio News (NZ)] thinks that if
Simpson [who runs an Internet news service] wants
to give his readers access to its news,
he should pay for the privilege.
But while that thinking makes sense for radio stations,
the logic is less compelling in a medium which assumes that information
is open to all.
[...] Last year [the state of] Georgia passed a law that requires anyone wanting to link to a site to first receive permission from that site. The law created uproar and is being challenged [...].
[...] The [Software Publishers Association] claims that [merely]
providing links to the sites [that contain pirated software] is
"contributory infringement of American copyright laws.
[...]
[So, some are arguing that a hyperlink to a web page or image violates copyright. However, netiquette seems to be that a link to an HTML web page is "ok" but inlining an image from another site into one of your own HTML pages is "not ok" even though strictly speaking you have not made a copy of the image - the reader's browser does that. However this has not yet been tested in court and even if it were then which court? There are some possible technological fixes - a web server can deny an image unless the `referring page' parameter is correctly set. A site or page could have `can-link' or `no-links' permissions indicated in some machine readable way, e.g. see the `robots.txt' protocol for excluding webcrawlers.]
[...] At a 3-week conference in Geneva last month [...] software companies attempted to make piracy of their products more difficult.
The changes could have required Net users to obtain permission from the copyright owner before browsing a page on the [web]. [...]
[...] watered down [...] and the Web is now covered by "fair use" rules designed to allow researchers to trawl through copyright material.
[...] Simon and Schuster [...] tracking down a runaway book pirated on right wing and anarchist sites on the World Wide Web.
[...] Report from Iron Mountain, first published in 1967 and intended as a political satire, and re-released early this year by Simon and Schuster imprint, the Free Press.
[...]
[...] is a classic among militia groups, some of whose members believe
it is a real Government report [ie. not a spoof]
that concludes that war is necessary for society to flourish.
[...]
Three men - Victor Navasky, Richard Lingeman and Leonard Lewin
conceived the political parody [...]
[Of course this could be a Government plot to cover up a Government leak :-) ]
...
[...], a move by the Australian Performing Rights Association
could see Internet service providers (ISPs) classed as broadcasters,
and therefore liable for any violations of music copyright on
their networks.
[...]
INTERNET folklore would have it that the Net renders copyright law irrelevant. Although this view is a myth, it is true that the impact of copyright rules is increasingly unpredictable and that enforcement is difficult.
...
Protectable material authored in Australia which includes any text, software and video and audio material ...
... material on the Net, even if not identified as copyright by notice, will be subject to copyright. ...
21 October 2009:
"ACM is joining with several partners from the
computing community to commend the U.S. House of Representatives' passage
of a resolution to raise the profile of
13 May 1999: Email and the internet continue to
be used as tools in industrial disputes and
now they are reasons for a dispute:
"A 24 hour strike will be held at VUT
[Victorian University of Technology] on 13 May over an
intellectual freedom dispute. The dispute started when the university
management cancelled the internal email access of Professor Alan
Patience, an elected staff member of the University Council, after he
emailed to VUT staff a highly critical report on the Council's
decision-making processes and VUT's decision to invest $100,000 on a
corporate box at a stadium. [...]
National Tertiary Education Union,
[nteu@monash...]
[general enquiries]."
Guy Healy. No magic cure in new technologies. The Australian 7/1/1998
[...] an investigation of international experience has found overseas universities are treating the technologies with renewed caution and awareness of their limitations.
The comments by the head of the [QUT] media and Jounalism School, Stuart Cunningham, in a paper [...]
[...] not ultimately a cheaper option and the [online] medium should
be exploited for its overall benefits.
[...]
[See also Korb, Kopp & Allison. There is no doubt that "new technologies" will change Universities, they always have, just consider printing, overhead projectors, photocopiers, email, ... It is just that the effects are hard to predict, rarely what is foreseen, often tangential and frequently more expensive than expected.]
Christopher Richards. Unis urged to go high-tech The Age 10/11/1997.
CD-ROMS and teleconferenced lectures may replace some university lecturers if the Federal Government follows the West committee report on higher education [...]
[...] Deakin University which was established with a distance-education mission, has told the committee that Government funding [LA: it ain't going to save money] will be needed to develop a dedicated national electronic education network [...]
Professor David Penington [LA: ex Melbourne University VC] warned the committee that expectations that information technology would reduce teaching costs were not well founded [LA: so did Korb, Kopp & Allison]. This was because tutorial support of students tapping into lectures at a distance would become even more important than now. [amen]
When a mid-level executive at a West Coast company lost her job,
her bosses pointed to a tough economy.
[...]
"Get that bitch out of here as fast as you can" said the [old, presumed deleted, email] message from the woman's supervisor. "I don't care what it takes. Just do it."
Hours after computer sleuth John Jessen unearthed it,
the firm wrote the woman a $335,200 cheque to settle her lawsuit.
[...]
[LA: it sounds like sections of the film `Disclosure' (1995).]
[LA: see also pornography.]
... Connecticut last week passed a pioneering law making harassment by computer a crime. It is now as illegal in the state "to harass, annoy, alarm or terrorise another person" by computer as it is by stalking or making obscene phone calls.
...
10 December 2003 [ABC news etc.]:
The high court of Australia allowed businessman
Joseph Gutnick to sue Dow Jones in Australia.
He claims that Dow Jones libelled him in a newsletter
distributed on the internet.
Dow Jones had wanted the case to be heard in the USA where Gutnick is
little known and where defamation laws are weaker.
The ruling deems material to be published where it is
downloaded and read, not where the originating server is.
The implications for ISPs are interesting but
NB. Gutnick has yet to win his case.
June 2001: "Diamond" Joe Gutnick has taken
Dow Jones' "Barron's" magazine to court,
to an Australian court, because he believes that he
was defamed in an article. The magazine is published in the US
but it is available through the 'net and Gutnick argues
that he has therefore been defamed in Australia and
can seek a judgement, and possibly damages, here.
The publishers want the case to be heard in America,
which has laxer laws on defamation (and has a rather casual
attitude to some of the laws of other countries).
If Gutnick wins, overseas companies with representation
in Australia will have to consider Australian laws before
putting material on the 'net.
[I wonder if using, say, .htaccess
control to prevent
access from the .au
domain would be sufficient defence?
If G' wins.]
December 2000:
The Australian Federal Government is set to make law
the Interactive Gambling (Moratorium) Bill,
i.e. the banning for 12 months of new Australian
internet gambling services
that were not already in operation on 19 May 2000.
It's a case of damned if they do, damned if they don't.
It won't have much effect of course, except to make
gamblers use offshore facilities.
A court in Missouri has ruled that a company [based in Pennsylvania] that offers gambling on the internet broke the law by allowing people in Missouri to play.
[There will be an appeal. But the big question is what rules apply or should apply when the company is based in another country.]
[...] Oxford Media Group Pty Ltd. had signed a deal to
provide Vanuata with a revolutionary Internet system that would
allow world-wide buying and selling of products.
[...]
[...] the ombudsman, Ms Marie-Noelle Ferrieux Patterson, said in
a report that Mr. Sope [the Deputy Prime Minister]
had acted "very, very badly" in arranging
the deal which included a $US250,000 payment.
[...]
[LA: this story is primarily one of business in general rather than Internet business itself, although it is interesting that such world-wide buying systems are being set up in small countries. One naively wonders why.]
The consensus seems to be that communication on the internet - eg. bulletin boards, email, enews, ftp, www - is not immune from the laws of defamation. Further, since the communication can be international, one should perhaps consider the laws of every country that one might potentially wish to visit!
Prodigy a giant United States online service owned by IBM .... is being sued for $200, million ($A277 [LA: million]) over the content of a message posted by one of its subscribers.
Judge Stuart Ain ruled in the state of New York last month that Prodigy could be held liable because it functions more as a publisher than as a passive conduit of information. The case can now be brought to trial.
.... it is important to note that Ain did not reject the "common carrier" argument, his opinion being: "Computer bulletin boards should generally be regarded in the same context as bookstores, libraries and network affiliates." He decided Prodigy was different because as far back as 1990 it had marketed itself as a superior service precisely because of its editorial control. ...
... the federal Attorney-General's Department, became so concerned about the problem [of "frank" email] that it issued stern warnings to Government lawyers after a computer hacker seized booty, including 5000 electronic messages, and leaked them to the Federal Opposition. [The material handed back.]
... [email may be] obtained [...] under freedom of information or subpoenaed by a court. Then there are the risks from accidental or illegal distribution by a hacker. ...
Next month [July 95] the issue will be revisited in England when the High Court hears a case brought by a physics lecturer alleging libel by an academic colleague over messages published on the Internet. ...
Mr Bartlett, from the firm Minter Ellison, warns: "Potentially their comments are available to millions of others and could expose them to international defamation actions."
It is very easy to obtain technical reports, papers and other works from the internet by www, ftp etc. Some might be tempted to plagiarise such work and pass it off as their own. The perpetrator would, at the very least, have infringed copyright. There is nothing new in this problem; it is just that the internet makes it much easier.
N. Kock. A Case of Academic Plagiarism.
Comm. A.C.M. 42(7) pp96-104, July 1999
Kock describes how a paper of his, that was available on the 'net,
was plagiarised and submitted to a journal by another academic.
He doubts that the US legal system would have given him
adequate redress, if it had come to that,
and suggests that the best defence is to "publicize and discuss
[such cases] as widely as possible".
[References]
B. Hickman. Net Can Weave Web of Deciet.
The Australian, p3, Wed' 5 Feb 1997.
The growth of the Internet has created greater opportunities for
Net users, particularly students, to plagiarise work from other
people's web sites, [...].
[...]
But copyright
rules [...] extend to the Internet.
[...]
[See below!]
It is alleged by the Steering and Programme Committee of Euro-Par (1995) that one [CVP] had submitted plagiarised articles to the conference and had previously successfully submitted and published a number of plagiarised articles obtained from the internet by various means.
This would seem to be a violation of copyright at the very least.
9 January 2008 (made public 12 Jan.):
The laptop computer of a Royal Navy (UK) officer was stolen
with personal details of about 600,000 people on it --
names, addresses, and
even some bank, national insurance, driver's licence and
passport details --
just what you need for serious identity theft.
Also see [18/10/2007].
18 October 2008:
Two CDs containing details of 25 million UK citizens
who had claimed child benefits
disappeared when in transit in an unregistered package by courier (TNT)
from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
to the National Audit Office (NAO).
(The loss is made public
Also see [9/1/2009].
5 November 2005, Alison Motluk, 'Tracing Dad Online', p.6, New Scientist. "... a 15-y.o. boy rubbed a swab along the inside of his cheek, popped it into a vial and sent it off to an online genealogy DNA-testing service. ... FamilyTreeDNA.com ... After nine months ... contacted by 2 men with Y chrs. closely matching his own. ... [they had] same last name ... mother had been told the man's date and place of birth and his college degree. ... [from] Omnitrace.com, he purchased the names of everyone that had been born in the same place on the same day. ... one man." --[NS][11/'05]
[Police could use similar techniques to match DNA from a crime scene, say.]
July 2003: There is a growing campaign against the use of radio frequency identification devices (RFID) in consumer products -- potentially all products. Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) (USA) claimed that "it was able to obtain hundreds of confidential and otherwise revealing internal documents from the MIT Auto-ID Center's website using nothing more than the site's search feature."--[7/2003] (i.e. A Machiavellian plot was revealed.) RFID devices are tiny, and cost a few cents . Potential uses include improved shop security and automatic billing at the check-out. But if the devices remain "on" after leaving the store -- tracking of product & owner in public spaces, cross-referencing of buyers, products & credit-card details across all purchases, targetted ad's e.g. in shopping centres, bus stops etc.. And imagine what happens when (not if) thieves get hold of RFID readers.
2001: An Unbreakable Code?
Professor Michael Rabin and PhD student Yan Zong Ding have
proposed a cheap and apparently practical version of the `one-time pad':
A high-capacity source of (true) random bits is required.
The sender and receiver agree on some method of sampling
the bits to build keys for messages.
A key is only used to encode and decode one message and the
key is not stored beyond that by the sender or receiver.
The only way that a third party, X, could later decode an
intercepted message would be for X to
2000 June: The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) bill reached the British House of Lords for debate. The bill requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install links to the security services so that the latter could eavesdrop on email and other electronic data. It is hard to know whether to be upset at the challenge to privacy, or to laugh at the futility of the British Government's efforts to catch crooks(?) by such methods, given the existence of strong cryptographic methods which would be given another little boost if the bill were passed.
1999: Junk Email continues despite attempts to control it. There did seem to be a lull in early 1999, but by mid year it was as common as ever. [e.g.]. Some of it is becomimg almost funny: [e.g. 1], [e.g. 2].
Microsoft has [admitted] that Windows 98 Registration Wizard copies the following information which can be used to identify the the user and the machine when various microsoft products are used:
Office 97 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access) also inserts a `unique identifier' into Office 97 documents. Microsoft claims that this is not linked to the unique machine-ID above but states that "The forthcoming release of Office 2000 will not include the ability to insert unique identifier (sic) in documents."
British companies are being warned that they could be breaking the law by using personal data gathered from the Internet. [...]
[LA: unlike Australia, Britain has reasonably strong laws protecting privacy w.r.t. computer databases, and fortunately these are applicable to the Internet and world wide web.]
ABC Radio and ABC TV [12/5/96] reported that family court records were available on the internet. Records and judgements had long been published in law journals but these have a limited circulation. These reports were now appearing on the internet and could therefore be read by millions. A law journal is a public document and an internet version is also a public document so from one point of view there is no reason to restrict the contents of one more than the other. However the ease with which information can be retrieved from the internet by voyeuristic parties with no genuine need for it may be a cause for concern.
... and on Monday 13 May 1996:
Law body hits at records on Net, The Age (Melbourne)
The publication of intimate Family Court records on the Internet was a
serious breach of the fundamental right to privacy, the executive
director of the Law Institute of Victoria, Mr Ian Dunn, said yesterday.
[...]
[... details are ...] being put on the Internet by the Australian Legal
Information Institute.
[...]
ABC Radio reported that the Family Law Council is to refer the issue to
the federal Attorney General, Mr. Williams.
[...]
See [Censorship].
There are separate arguments about soft-core pornography (eg. Playboy) and hard-core pornography (eg. child pornography).
Soft-core pornography is generally not illegal as such -
although the question remains of which country's legislation
should apply.
However, the main issues here are:
Should minors be allowed free access?
Should any or all of the following be given `common carrier' status:
internet node, service provider, bulletin board, moderator etc.?
ie. not be liable for the content of material,
nor be responsible for vetting a reader's age.
Hard-core pornography is generally illegal, although the problem of different definitions (eg. the minimum age limit on a nude model) still remains. It is hard to see why the internet should be treated any differently from telephone services, postal services, and other media in this regard, except that existing legislation might need amending to broaden the definition of terms such as document, picture, movie etc.
X-rated internet name system approved,
`Pornographic internet sites are to be given their very own
piece of the web, after the internet's governing body approved
the creation of a new top level domain extension for adult
11 Dec 2002, The Age (.au),
Pam and Tommy get paid(!-):
Pamela Anderson and her ex, Tommy Lee, were awarded us$741,000 damages
for the unauthorised release of a now notorious video of them
on their honeymoon, c1996.
Many copies were sold via the internet.
C. Price. Cybersex weaves a tangled web.
Financial Times, 26 August 1998.
[...] Forrester Research [...] increased its estimates of the
[legal online sex] industry's revenue this year from
$185m to $500m [$US].
[...] the real figure possibly closer to $1bn.
Austrian police raid the Vienna offices of a commercial Net provider, temporarily closing the nation's electronic borders. [...]
[LA: CompuServe Germany was accused of allowing child pornography and Nazi images to be transmitted through its system - unknowingly. But it is quite impractical for an ISP to filter out offensive material because it can easily, very easily, be encrypted.]
[LA: Casimir gives the TV programme `60 Minutes' a serve for beating up the `net porn' and `stranger danger' risks of using the internet:]
[...] 60 Minutes with impeccable timing had cottoned on to a story that everyone else had given up on a year or more ago. [...]
[LA: So there, it's official, the Age at least has got past that stage.]
US based CompuServe .... yesterday became the first gateway to the
Internet to suffer a court order banning "cyberporn" and all
other sexual material.
[...]
[...] [CompuServe] said it was denying access to more then 200 sexually
explicit newsgroups [...]
Its move is in response to a German court order against the service [...]
[...]
German prosecutors said yesterday they were investigating CompuServe on
suspicion that its members sent child pornography over its network.
[...]
Users of the Net are concerned that once such a precedent is set for
banning what one court considers pornographic, it could lead to zealots
seeking court action against legitimate newsgroups [...]
Using child pornography on the Internet could bring five years'
jail and unlimited fines under the nation's first laws framed
specifically to tackle abuse of online computer services.
[...]
... unveiled yesterday by the [WA] Attorney-General, ...
[...]
... the 1995 censorship bill consolidated three existing laws
that deal with printed articles, films and videos and revised them to
encompass modern technology.
[...]
... to protect computer users from prosecution for inadvertently accessing
objectionable material, the Bill provides that intent had to be proved.
Service providers will not be prosecuted unless they know
objectionable material is on their service and continue to allow
its transmission.
[...]
Police seized 15 computers in raids against bulletin board child
pornography in Brisbane and seven Queensland provincial towns yesterday.
[...]
The FBI arrested a dozen people yesterday for transmitting pornographic
images of children, and soliciting sex from children, on computer
networks run by America Online.
[...]
Congress is considering a number of bills that would attempt to regulate
the rowdier corners of the online world.
[...]
The Internet is fast becoming an electronic red-light district [...] a computer expert says.
But there is no reliable way of intercepting disturbing messages
or images [...] Professor Harold Thimbleby told Britain's most
prestigious annual science festival.
[...]
Mr Thimbleby told the festival of the British Association, ...,
that the top eight most frequently used "search words" related
to pornography.
His research showed that more than 10% of the shops on the Internet sold erotica and 10% of the bulletin boards accessed in a random sample were pornographic.
... Approximately 10% of shops using the Internet sell `erotica'
(figure from First Virtual).
Approximately 10% of bulletin boards I can access directly from the
University are pornographic (I used stratified sampling, sampling 50
random BBS out of 50000) ...
... 47% of the 11000 most often repeated searches were pornographic
(like everything else, this is a subjective estimate because, for example,
I counted searches for "hardcore" but I did not count searches
for "gay" or "lesbian"). ...
...
When [the Internet] has more [interesting material] it is just possible
that pornography etc. will slip into its statistically appropriate place,
[...] not the most prominent on the Internet.
[LA: the search engine was `Jump Station'. The paper reviews Self-Censorship, Indirect Censorship (browser s/w), Blanket Censorship, Rapid Response (e.g. SurfWatch), Monitors and Logs, Limited Access, Cryptography. There is a nice section on Clear Thinking.]
...
What is needed is something that will pacify not only
the American nation but the whole Internet community.
[LA: amen!]
...
If American IAPs became liable for carrying offensive information,
he [Peshpendra Mohta of CERFnet] says, another country could break ranks
and declare its IAPs free of accountability. In this instance IAPs could
set up shop in that country to avoid punishment.
...
Perhaps, if the [proposed] law is enforced, and the commercial
network services provide information that people really want, commerce
will lead all the people away again.
The Internet would then be left in peace to sink back into the academic
underground it once was and everybody will be happy.
---
[LA: I find the last sentence above naive, at best.
Much of the valuable information is on academic Internet servers.
Commercial servers will push violent, offensive material
if there is a dollar in it.]
The Department of Communications and the Arts (DCA, Australia) `Consultation Paper on the Regulation of On-Line Information Services' (7 July 1995) [Ref] supports these principles:
(Also see the [Senate] enquiry, submissions close end of Sept' 1995, and the Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill 5/1999.)
This technical report describes a voluntary classification scheme and some of its consequences.
[LA: see also harassment.]
... three firms, including Microsoft, announced plans for a new filter that would render cyberspace a smut-free zone [LA: this must be IHPEG, see also PICS [Ref]], narrowly before the United States Senate passed, by a margin of 84-16, a bill to ban obscenity and indecency in online communication. This now goes to the house of representatives where it could be voted into law.
... SchoolsNet, a Melbourne Internet service provider that specialises in the education market, has side-stepped the problem (and passed on the liability) [LA: wants to be a common-carrier - see the Prodigy case] by giving its users the tools to do their own censoring.
...
... If the bill passed by the Senate becomes law, though, it would become a crime punishable by up to two years in prison even to use common swearwords on computer bulletin boards, or to exchange sexually explicit pictures over networks that might be seen by children under 18.
But that won't happen without a fight. ...
The objections of the online community have carried little weight in Congress, but free-speech advocates are confident they will get a better hearing in court: many experts doubt the [LA: USA!!!] constitutionality of the measure, ...
... Advocates of civil liberties view with concern a perceived shift
towards "a new wowserism". ...
...
Carriers and service providers should be expected to investigate
complaints, but not to become the primary instrument of censorship. ...
...
Many corporations are likely to be over-restrictive, to ensure that
they do not cause offence to some customers or carry material
incompatible with their corporate image. ...
2002: The $<xxx>-million dollar scam from Nigeria (usually) grows more and more "popular" as a piece of [spam mail].
Email is very easy to forge.
The FROM
and REPLY-TO
lines of email should be treated sceptically.
Carefully check the trail of machines in the email headers if
in the slightest doubt.
The Age (8/7/1998) reports a scam where forged email is sent to users,
the email purporting to be from their ISP,
whose records-computer just happens to have crashed (say),
and who needs their address and credit-card details to recover accounting
information, otherwise their ISP-account will be deleted in 5 days.
In reality any replies go to some free and untraceable email account
where the crook makes off with the credit-card details.
In this example the reply-to address would not match
the legitimate ISP.
In other examples, nuisance email (e.g. marketing, harassment, hate-mail)
can be sent with the REPLY-TO set to non-existent accounts
(to avoid flames) or to some innocent bystander's account.
Company researchers at [SOS] ...
have discovered a new Internet scam [...]
[...]
Typically, on porn' sites, the come on [!]
is the availability of free pornographic pictures [...].
Unfortunately the user is notified that they
need to download a special "viewer" in order to be
able to access the free pictures.
[... this special viewer turned off] the speaker in his modem,
disconnected him from his regular Internet service
provider, and reconnected him to a provider in some third world
country where long distance charges can cost as
much as $25.00 per minute. [...]
[...]
This type of "Trojan Horse" programming could lurk in
almost any type of downloadable application.,
ActiveX control or even Javascripts. [...]
... and ...
Mark Ward.
Porn viewers hit by cyberscam. New Scientist p7, 8 Feb 1997
[...] the [downloaded] program disconnects their modem from their local
Internet provider and dials Moldova direct.
[...]
The Moldovan site makes money out of the trick
because income generated by long-distance calls is eventually shared
out between the telephone operator [...] and the company the calls
were made to.
The web site does give a warning [...]
in red on a bright background. [Hard to read!]
[...]
... and ...
Robert Uhlig, Trapped by Trojan sex link.
The Age page D4 (Computer Age) Tues 11 Feb 1997,
also of the Daily Telegraph.
[States that the phone number was in Moldova, a former Soviet Republic and refers to the New Scientist Article.]
25 Nov 2004 Spyware floods PCs from a single web page
New Scientist:
"...Ben Edelman, a researcher at Harvard University ...
used a PC with a fresh installation of the Windows XP operating system and
no software updates. ... 16 different programs quickly installed
onto his PC without his consent. ..."
June 2004: "The 1st computer worm designed to spread between cellphones was demonstrated last week. [...] Cabir [...] authoring group calling itself 29a. [...] Nokia's series 60 smartphone software, which runs on the Symbian operating system. [...]" -- New Scientist, p23, 26 June 2004.
4 March 2004:
"The global email account has been infected with a virus.
Do not open any attachments sent via global email. ..."
-- global.emails@adm.monash.edu.au
[Only a problem to a Microsoft Windows system.]
February 2004:
Microsoft announced security loop-holes (and patches)
in Windows (NT4, XP, 2000).
It has known about the flaws
May 2003: The <various>.pif virus, (i.e. W32.HLLW.Mankx@mm or W32/Palyh-A mass-mailing worm) spread by email, and apparently from support@microsoft.com, caused problems for microsoft shops. [Do these things originate with junk emailers to help them capture live email addresses?]
7 October 2002: The `Bugbear' virus became one of the most rapid spreading viruses of recent times. It exploits a security weakness in Microsoft software and, even if that has been patched, opening an infected attachment lets the virus loose. One of its tricks is to forge email headers so that copies appear to come from innocent parties.
May 2000: An email worm, the so-called ILOVEYOU bug, caused chaos in many companies and organisations. An email with this subject heading contained a VB-script macro/program as an attachment. Anyone unlucky enough to open the attachment on a computer running Microsoft Windows 95/ 98/ 2000 or similar unleashed it to delete program and data files and email itself to other individuals listed in the Microsoft Outlook address book. The rapid spread was a result of poor security in the MS mail program, bad default security settings and natural human curiosity. More copy-cat worms rapidly appeared. Suspects were arrested in the Phillipines.
April 1999: Melissa, a "macro-"virus
for Microsoft Word (a word processor) caused havoc with the
email systems of many organisations: Melissa sends self-propagating
chain-mail style messages to 50 contacts in a victim's
Microsoft Outlook Organiser mailing list.
This was sufficient to cause many mail systems to fail.
Papa a virus for Microsoft Excel (a spread-sheet)
has also proved troublesome recently.
November 1998: Central Command, an anti-virus company,
has detected the first (?)
HTML-virus that affects Microsoft Explorer (only).
It relies on Visual-Basic inline scripts.
[Refs]
17 July 1998:
a special purpose DES-cracker machine, `Deep Crack'
with 24 processors, built by John Gilmore and Paul Kocher
for the `Electronic Frontiers Foundation'
cracked a 56-bit DES-encoded message in 56 hours:
"It's time for those 128-, 192-, and 256-bit keys".
This won RSA's $10,000 DES Challenge II contest.
DES(-56) had previously been cracked by a PC-farm 5 months,
and later in 39 days, in earlier challenges.
The USA Government (in particular) has been persistent in
encouraging or coercing business to use the relatively weak DES
encryption method
(and trying to restrict the use of strong public-key methods)
so that it can "protect national security
and aid in catching criminals" - or read all your secrets,
depending on your point of view.
[To win one of the 6-monthly
RSA Des-II Challenges you have to find the key for a
secret message faster than the previous winner:
>= 4x faster $10,000;
>= 2x faster $5,000;
>= 1/3 faster $1,000 ]
[Refs]
27 March 1998: Rivest, the `R' in the RSA encryption algorithm,
has pointed out that digital signatures can be used
to send encrypted messages without encryption as such:
"Chaffing and winnowing, Confidentiality without encryption",
the message is not encrypted but is divided into short
sections [which can be at the bit level],
which are numbered and signed digitally.
In between the sections are fake sections
signed with a bad signature. The holder of the key can detect the
fakes and piece the good bits back together.
The point is to show the absurdity of the US government ban on the
export of strong encryption software - digital signature software can
be exported!
[Refs]
[...] The boy called up the [online] order form, filled in his name and address, and lodged an order for $US2000 of [chocolate].
Further prompts asked for his credit card number,
so he made up one, typing in 16 digits at random.
[...]
[At random! So you thought credit cards were safe? A 15 year old boy in Dublin ordered rather a lot of sweets from an American company. The bill went to the card holder in Argentina who denied any knowledge of the order and the police eventually tracked the goods down.]
Music student Richard Pryce, was only 16 when he first appeared at Bow St [...] in 1994. charged with hacking into a US Air Force computer system [...] Last week [... he] pleaded guilty to 12 charges under Britain's Computer Misuse Act, 1990, and was fined 1200(stg).
SATAN has been stalking the Internet [...] Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks, is a program that automatically scans computer networks to see if they are secure from outside interference. [...]
When the program was posted on the Internet in April 1995 [...] there was an outcry. [...]
[LA: Satan's author, Dan Farmer, ran a survey of financial, government and media web-sites listed in Yahoo ... and found many had security flaws. Surprise!]
See [12/1/2010] re China and google.
August 2009: When the Melbourne Film Festival chose to show a documentary, The 10 Conditions of Love, about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, to the displeasure of the Chinese Government, hackers, apparently based in China, mounted attacks on the festival's web-site. These included defacing the site, and a denial of service (DoS) attack. (The attendant publicity probably increased the popularity of the film which was moved to a larger venue for screening.)
June 2009: Activists against a probably rigged presidential election in Iran (that returned incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) used mobile phones, email and twitter to send descriptions and images of protests, and of the subsequent brutal crackdown, out of the country.
8 August 2008: There were red faces when it was revealed that some of the pictures of fireworks broadcast to television audiences watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics were in fact computer generated images (CGI). (And that the cute little girl featured in one of the songs, was not the one doing the singing.)
January 2008, public access to sci. papers: "NIH informed its grantees that, to comply with a new law, they must begin sending copies of their accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts to NIH for posting in a free online archive. Failure to do so could delay a grant or jeopardize current research funding, NIH warns." -- [doi:10.1126/science.319.5861.266]['1/08] |
15 July 2007:
The Australian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party,
John Howard, who is facing an election this year, placed a video
on the [YouTube] video sharing web site.
Within hours numerous spoofs and "mashes" sprang up and the
original attracted a great many negative comments.
25 April 2007: The US House of Representatives [*] overwhelmingly passed the "Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act" (GINA). The act makes it illegal for an employer or an insurance company to deny a job or insurance to someone on the basis of an inherited illness or a genetic predisposition to one, [act.pdf@gpo.gov][2007].
18 May 2006,
New Scientist,
Game company sued over virtual land squabble.
A US gamer has filed a "first-of-its-kind"
lawsuit in an acrimonious dispute over the sale of virtual land
within the online role-playing game
[Second Life. ...
Marc Bragg, an attorney from Pennsylvania, US, filed the suit against the
company behind Second Life, Linden Lab based in California, US. He accuses
the company of deactivating his account after he discovered a loophole that
enabled him to buy virtual land cheaply within the game. ..."
[!]
18 April 2006,
[CNN],
Future sex gizmos: Reach out and touch someone,
`S.F., Cal. (Reuters) --
When America's top sex researchers gathered recently
to discuss the next decade ...
"What is very likely to be present before 2016
would be a multi-sensual experience of virtual sex,"
said Julia Heiman, director of
the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and
Reproduction at Indiana University, Bloomington. ...'
[Memo: Check this
prediction in
2016.
See [refs] and also the movie
[A.I.].
20 April 2006, see [Porn's burning desire ...].
2 Dec 2005, NTEU:
"... RMIT University academic Robert Austin is facing the sack for
rescheduling classes on August 10 so that students could attend a
protest against the government's 'voluntary student unionism'
(VSU) legislation. ... RMIT...used an article by Andrew Bolt... as
evidence of Austin's supposed 'lack of collegiality'."
17 Aug 2005, Andrew Bolt, the Herald-Sun:
"... Robert Austin, head of the Spanish courses, asked students
in emails to join last Wednesday's protests, adding none would
be penalised for not turning up to their regular classes on that day...."
--[heraldsun][12/2005]
[Emails!]
3 May 2005: As the British election draws near (5/5/05), Tacticalvoter.net offers a voter who supports party P but who lives in an electorate where P stands no chance, to trade a "tactical vote" for another party, P', with someone who lives in a constituency where P' stands no chance, but P does. Brilliant!
10 March 2005, D. Rood,
Disgraced academic wins top job with unis,
The Age.
"Monash University's former vice-chancellor [David Robinson]
who quit amid a plagiarism scandal lands a plum position. ...
... VERNet ... ... Mr McMeekin, executive director of
Information Technology Services at Monash, said the decision as
to Professor Robinson's suitability had been made by the [Victorian]
vice-chancellors."
[Sometimes you are told news about your home town by people on
the other side pf the world reading "your" local paper on the 'net.
News now flashes around the world at Giga-bit speed.]
18 February 2005,
members of the
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFI)
protested against allowing software to be patented
which was under consideration by the European Union.
The proposal was rejected (at least in its present form).
"The move was expected to delay the passage of the bill by
several months at least and could see it substantially redrafted or
scrapped." --
[yahoo][17/2/'05]
Those against patenting software say that it would stifle innovation
and harm the open-source movement.
Also see [3/2003].
2 November 2004: The 2004 US Presidential election saw more (mis)information than ever on the 'net. [FactCheck] was one site trying to keep both sides honest: "We haven't addressed every false or misleading statement in the campaign -- there were too many of them and our resources are too limited for that." [!] Bush (Rep.) got a 2nd term by beating Kerry (Dem.).
May 2004: Islamic militants in Iraq kidnapped and murdered
American civilian Nicholas Berg then put video of the deed on
an internet web site.
30 March 2004
slashdot.org:
You're Watching Less TV (particularly if you are male and 18-34).
And 25/11/2003 mediapost.com:
Fox To Audit Nielsen's Books, Retains Researcher To Probe Drop In
Young Men [TV] Ratings.
[Is this the start of the demise of telly?]
The Curse of Friends Reunited,
The UK documentary examined the web-site 'Friends Reunited'
which allows old school- or work- friends etc. to find
each other. The site has become very popular.
It has also led to some marriage breakups where
partners leave their current relationships for old flames.
17 February 2004, The Age (Next, p3), quotes
Bruce McCabe (S2 Intelligence), The Future of Spam,
as predicting that spam will rise
and rise, to 80% of all email, c2007 before falling, somewhat.
[Memo: Check this
prediction in 2007.]
12/2007: From personal experience, the 80% figure does seem
to be about right. It would be nice to think that it might fall in
the future, but I am sceptical.
8/2009: Where's the fall?!-)
2004: The verb to `google' (googling etc.), as in to search for, has entered the language. Google also makes new pastimes possible, e.g. Don Watson's book Death Sentence (2003) decries the decline of public language. Use google to search for two or three of {"best practice", "bottom line", commitment, engage, impact, "move forward", "positive outcome"} or similar, at your organization's web site {site:whatever.this.that} (and just hope it doesn't find anything written by yourself).
4 November 2003: United States Patent, 6,643,686,
System and method for counteracting message filtering,
Inventors: Hall; Robert J. (Berkeley Heights, NJ),
Assignee: AT&T Corp. (New York, NY).
"A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication
detection to detect and
block unsolicited e-mail (spam.) ..."
[What a very odd thing for AT&T to do.]
[refs]
Nov 2003:
Many internet web search-engines have fallen by the wayside but
[google] goes from strength to strength, now allegedly
carrying out 3/4 of all searches.
As of late 2003 google is intending to float on the stock-market.
Meanwhile [nutch.org] is a project
to build an opensource search engine -- for those who
fear bias in commercial search-engines.
24 September 2003:
The European Parliament decided to limit patents on software,
P5_TC1-COD(2002)0047 A5-0238/2003
`Patentability of computer-implemented inventions':
"...to be patentable... must be susceptible of industrial application,
new and involve an inventive step. ...
computer-implemented inventions must in addition make a new technical
contribution to the state of the art, in order to distinguish them from
pure software.
...a computer-implemented business method, data processing method or other
method in which the only contribution to the state of the art is
non-technical cannot constitute a patentable invention.
...an algorithm is inherently non-technical and therefore cannot constitute
a technical invention. ..."
[refs]
Also see [Feb 2005].
2003: The volume of spam email increased greatly in late 2002 and in [2003]. Frankly, it is surprising that the growth had been so slow (or perhaps kept in check so well) through the 1990s until quite recently. Anti-spam measures developed in response, including the latest IT fad -- Bayesian spam filtering. Fortunately spammers cannot tamper with certain parts of their messages and various other of their tricks are sure-fire ways of recognising spam and filtering it out automatically:
December 2002: An Australian report, D. Anderson, R. Johnson & L. Saha, Changes in academic work: Implications for universities of the changing age distribution and work roles of academic staff, [www] finds that many academics believe that plagiarism has increased with the "wide availability of electronic text". Well blow me down!
2002:
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon
e.g. The British Government is considering a high-tech
identity card, in part to reduce social security fraud
and illegal immigration.
The cautious have pointed out the possibilities for abuse.
And even if the technology is "perfect",
weak points in the issuing of cards will still
allow identities to be manufactured or stolen.
December 2000:
The Australian Federal Government's
Interactive Gambling (Moratorium) Bill
bans new Australian based online gambling services for 12 months
unless they were already in operation on 19 May 2000.
Futile of course.
May 2000: Australian web set CrimeNet
caused a muder trial to be aborted when the judge
ruled that jurors might obtain details of the accused's
prior convictions thus prejudicing a fair trail.
State and Federal Governments made suitably worried noises and
civil liberties activists raised the issues of
18 September 1999:
The Victorian State Election turned out to be a cliffhanger
with the final outcome still unknown as of 4 October,
due to the election of three independants, and
pending a delayed election in `Frankston East' (now 16/10/99) because
the sitting Liberal member died on the night of the original election.
Who knows
but the Internet may have played a part in the surprise result
when an easy Liberal victory had been predicted.
The Liberal party put up a ``Jeff Kennett'' web-site at
www.jeff.com.au
(closed after election).
But presenting a very different view of the Liberal Government,
Stephen Mayne's www.jeffed.com
went to number two in the `.com.au' daily traffic rankings
in the final days of the campaign.
[Refs]
13 May 1999: See the VUT email dispute, over intellectual freedom and the use of email within an Australian University.
May, April 1999, not-a-war online:
The web-site of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
gives details of its press-briefings, including maps
and aerial photographs of attacks etc.,
for its air-campaign against Serbia over the Kosovo crisis.
(See Refs.)
Apparently the web-site has been (cyber-) attacked by Serbians
(email attack, denial of service) and unavailable
for a day.
September 1998: Within days of its being delivered,
the Starr report investigating USA President Bill Clinton's
relationship with Monica Lewinski, and possible perjury,
was released on the internet.
Anyone with a computer can now read all of the sordid details.
Apart from showing that the USA has inconsistent moral standards,
the whole affair does suggest that politicians cannot hide,
or "spin doctor", any more.
August 1998: the long term HomeNet project by (social psychologist) Robert Kraut and others at CMU is studying the use of the Internet in the home, looking for social consequences, gender and age differences etc.. Recent work suggests that Internet users are slightly lonelier and more depressed than non-users. The study suggests that loneliness and depression is an effect, not the cause of Internet usage. (See Refs.)
The InterNet gives new power for minority groups to band together and to have a world voice. The web-site huaren.com claims to document human rights abuses against ethnic Chinese (particularly in Indonesia as of 1998).
25 July 1998: New Scientist p64: Quite a fun 1-page article by Matthew Stevens about the blight of spam [junk email] and how it mirrors aspects of the natural world with processes of natural selection, which suggests that diversity would be a good thing within the 'net.
August 1998: The internet has provided new ways for people to "meet", not just for technical purposes, but for social and even (potentially) romantic purposes For example Science Connect is "a network for single people interested in science or nature". (See [You've Got M@il] (1998).)
The ever growing deluge of spam (junk email)
has caused the author of the ubiquitous sendmail
program to address the problem of blocking it.
And ...
Amy Harmon. Judge orders $1M spam ban.
The Age, IT1 p3, 31 March 1998.
... [Cyberpromotions] has agreed to pay $2M to settle the last of several
lawsuits brought against it by Internet service providers.
... [chief exec' Stanford Wallace] will be held personally liable for $1M
if he or any company affiliated with him emails unsolicited
advertisements to [...] Earthlink [...]
[LA: well that will put a stop to spam, like ****!]
October 1997, the annual Ig Nobel Prizes were announced at a ceremony at Harvard University. the The Ig Nobel prize for Communication was awarded to Sanford Wallace of Cyber-Promotions, spam, spam, spam, spam, ...
Enterprise Bargaining email and the web have provided new means for employers and employees to keep informed about developments in "the workplace". Monash University and its staff, through the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), have been involved in negotiations, and disputes, over pay and conditions for much of 1997 [finally settled March 1998]. Both parties make extensive use of email and the web to put their cases. This is particularly useful to the NTEU because the staff members are spread out over several campuses. About mid 1997 the University removed the local union branch's "inside" access to the University's email system handicapping the NTEU's ability to keep its members informed.
[LA: A number of individuals organised an email attack on the IGC server because it hosts the pages of ETA which recently kidnapped and murdered a local councillor.]
[...] a lawyer for America Online [...] says close to 30% of the 15 million emails sent to its customers every day are spam. [...]
[A proposed US law would extend prohibitions that apply to junk fax message to email. Another proposed law would require advertising junk emails to be identified as such so that they could be easily filtered out. Junk emailers might have to keep lists of those who did not want to receive junk mail. The sceptical view is that even if the legislation is passed, the real problem cases will ignore simply ignore it as it is easy to forge or disguise email. In any case, it is quite hard to define spam as opposed to unexpected messages that you might want to receive.]
Every time someone predicts that the Internet will bring news and knowledge to the masses, unfiltered by the local newspaper or broadcast network, I wonder what a few million people will do with electronic mail from the fellow who thinks that 50,000 people a year die from magnesium poisoning in American waters. [...]
[The article argues that there is no quality reporting of news and events on the Internet just echoes of the big trendy stories. It goes on to use the example of the Wall Street Journal which daily reports the price of used burlap bags:]
Nobody in the pseudo-journlism of the Web makes that phone call [to get the price of burlap bags.] [...]
[Author is an editor of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News
email:copyboy@dma.org
Someone will now find the price of burlap bags on the 'net.
Hundreds of burlap-bag sites will suddenly spring up.
In fact there is a little information on burlap bag vendors
as of June 1997 -
just look for +burlap +bags
The article discusses the issue of on-line voting which could be much more frequent and for "smaller" issues than is possible with the current system of ballots and referenda:
[...]
Stoll has impeccable computer credentials. He was one of the creators of
Arpanet, [...]
... Stoll insists that life on-line is sterile and even worse - a crippling addiction. [...]
Today [Stoll] complains more about the junk that litters the highway along with the undesirable [...] morons and creeps are omnipresent, and rudeness as well as outright aggression are rampant. [...]
Others worry about the fate of the printed word. Not surprisingly, one of the most articulate is Vartan Gregorian, former director of the New York Public Library, now president of Brown University [...]
Enumerating the gains accruing from this
"dazzling equipment" [internet etc.]
he nevertheless cautions academics against the new
"priesthoods and esoteric communities" emerging [...]
The cosy clubs unwittingly designed to keep others out are
precisely the opposite of the global village promised by cyberspace
communicants.
[...]
PS. Don't believe everything that you read on the 'net.