Into Tech

You may recall late last year that an investigation in Ohio turned up that all e-voting machines used in the state during the 2004 election had malfunctioning problems. Earlier this year, officials declared machines from that election a crime scene to be investigated, and now Ohio has filed a lawsuit against Premiere Election Solutions, the company better known as Diebold (it changed its name after tons of bad press).

Premiere/Diebold, of course, were at the heart of early stories about e-voting machine flaws, and the company consistently fought against anyone who suggested there was anything wrong with its machines, despite overwhelming evidence. Instead, it tried to bully those who spoke out against the company, or paint them as extremist kooks. Yet, with each passing story, it appears that the concerns were very, very real. As per usual, Premiere/Diebold is doing little to actually address the issues in this particular lawsuit, claiming:

“We certainly feel strongly that we, in fact, have fulfilled the contract with the state of Ohio. It’s a high-quality voting system that continues to operate in many, many Ohio counties with great success.”

I’m not sure if the “contract” allowed for completely dropping votes, but assuming it did, that’s hardly something to brag about. Also, pointing out that other states use the same machines isn’t a defense — it should be an alarm for those other states to start investigating as well. Other than that, Premiere/Diebold has relied on its usual defense: “It wasn’t our fault!” Instead, the company claims that antivirus software interfered with the voting tabulation system. That’s a pretty weak excuse — especially since (as Ohio points out) the system was certified with antivirus software installed. Besides, what kind of software is Premiere/Diebold building if antivirus software causes it to lose votes? Not the type of software I’d want running my elections.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We never quite understood why various universities were cooperating with RIAA demands that it send “pre-litigation” letters to students accused of file sharing. These non-binding letters are often used to pressure students into paying fines, even if they’re based on weak (at best) evidence of file sharing. It certainly wasn’t in any university’s best interests to basically help out a private organization in a business model dispute with its students. Yet, some university officials, falsely convinced by the RIAA that this was more than a business model dispute, decided to help out. And the response? The RIAA has increased the flood of notices, and then convinced Congress to move forward on legislation that would legally obligate universities to act as the RIAA’s copyright cops.

It appears that more and more universities are realizing that they got shafted. The EFF points out that there’s widespread anger among university officials who felt they were trying to find a middle ground by cooperating, but instead find themselves swamped with more and more notifications and this new legislation that increases their legal liability over a business model dispute. And, the worst part? Now that they’re pushing back in court, the RIAA points out that dealing with these notices before wasn’t a burden, so universities aren’t being truthful that they’re now a burden. How’s that for a thank you for helping out originally?

If it hasn’t become clear by now, the RIAA doesn’t view universities as partners in all of this — and any university that thinks of the RIAA as a partner is about to get steamrolled by the RIAA legal machine. It’s time that more universities stood up not just for their own rights, but the rights of their students as well not to be targeted by questionable “pre-litigation” threat letters without more significant evidence. And, it wouldn’t help for the RIAA to finally recognize that this entire battle has done nothing to deal with the real issue: its own inability to recognize that its business model needs to change.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Apple Mac fans that enjoy lauding the platform’s ability to help you create and edit home movies may well have more ammunition to throw at the PC brigade, following rumours of an upgrade to its graphics chipset.

The word on the street is that Apple’s new range of computers will have a dedicated chip specifically for decoding and encoding video, which should significantly reduce the time it takes to process HD content.

While not enough people recognize it, the real purpose of copyright law is to provide an incentive for the creation of more content. The government felt that there was a market failure, where not enough “content” would be produced without a limited monopoly, and thus, copyright was born. However, that happened back in the day when creating content wasn’t easy. You pretty much had to go through a professional process. These days, thanks to new technologies, creating content is exceptionally easy — and thus, a big part of the very basis for copyright no longer makes sense. We’re drowning in content — and it’s not because of the “incentive” of copyright. There are plenty of incentives for creating content these days and very few have anything to do with copyright.

However, because of that bright line, where copyright was really designed for professional content creators, you end up with bizarre conclusions about how communications should be owned. This stems from the fact that these new technologies have blurred the boundaries between content and communications. Traditionally, professional content was about a one-to-many communication system. However, today, most content is really about many-to-many communication. This isn’t new. Nearly four years ago, we pointed to some early work by Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter (who are still doing good work in this field) pointing out how copyright law doesn’t make sense for many-to-many communications.

But with that border being made increasingly blurry (and it’s only going to get more so), it’s causing more and more people to recognize how troublesome existing copyright law is — because all it does is hinder that kind of communication. That is, rather than acting as incentive for content creation (as is it’s basic purpose), it’s instead hindering content creation. That’s because it only targets one increasingly less relevant type of content creation, while hindering the increasingly more popular one. This realization is occurring to more and more people, and the latest is Jeff Jarvis, who has come to the conclusion that the “creative class” is a myth. And he’s right. These days, we’re all the creative class — and copyright is holding us back.

I’ve long disagreed with those who say that copyright kills creativity, for I do believe that there is no scarcity of inspiration. But I now understand their position better. I also have learned that when creations are restricted it is the creator who suffers more because his creation won’t find its full and true public, its spark finds no kindling, and the fire dies. The creative class, copyright, mass media, and curmudgeonly critics stop what should be a continuing process of creation; like reverse alchemists, they turn abundance into scarcity, gold into lead.

In the essay, Jarvis also dives into a fuller recognition of the economics of scarcity and abundance:

But we are shifting, too, from a culture of scarcity to one of abundance. That is the essence of the Google worldview: managing abundance. So let’s assume that instead of a scarcity there is an abundance of talent and a limitless will to create but it has been tamped down by an educational system that insists on sameness; starved by a mass economic system that rewarded only a few giants; and discouraged by a critical system that anointed a closed, small creative class. Now talent of many descriptions and levels can express itself and grow. We want to create and we want to be generous with our creations. And we will get the attention we deserve. That means that crap will be ignored. It just depends on your definition of crap.

Welcome to the party, Jeff.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Italian owner of internet service provider Tiscali has reduced its sale and profit forecasts after announcing lost British customers over the past three months.

Tiscali’s failure to attract and retain customers means Sky could overtake the company to become Britain’s fourth-largest ISP sometime this quarter.

The move is likely to increase pressure on the management of the company to reduce their expectations of what it is worth.

“In view of the developments within the business environment and the strategic review process still under way, Tiscali’s board of directors intends to review the business plan in the fourth quarter of this year,” the company said.

Based in the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, Tiscali has been up for sale for the past six months, but a succession of bidders have walked away because the price tag is too high.

Tiscali had hoped to conclude a sale by the end of June but that ambition collapsed when Vodafone counted itself out of the bidding. BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have also both gone cool on making an offer.

Last month, Italian rival Fastweb, controlled by Switzerland’s Swisscom, was seen as the most likely buyer of the business.

In Britain, Tiscali has built itself up by buying a series of businesses including Pipex and HomeChoice, the broadband TV operation. But it has been losing out to Sky and BT in the battle to win customers.

The company admitted today it lost 37,000 customers over the three months to end June and now has 1,838,000.

It reported a first-half net loss of €57.2m (£44.9m), down from €73.4m last year, but dropped its outlook for revenues for the full year to €1bn-1.1bn from last year’s forecast of €1.3bn.

The company said it expected profits before financial charges to be €220m-230m, well down on the €290m it had originally forecast. The company blamed the weakness of the pound against the euro and “the changed conditions in the broadband market and telecommunication services in general” for the reduction in its targets.

Broadband connections in Q2

1. BT4,500,000 (+103,000 customers)
2. Virgin Media 3,836,100 (+54,000)
3. Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk/AOL) 2,754,000 (+44,000)
4. Tiscali 1,838,000 (-37,000)
5. BSkyB 1,628,000 (+200,000)
6. Orange 1,063,000 (-44,000)

I’ve gotten way behind on my series of posts on intellectual property. I plan to pick it up again shortly. There’s a big post I’ve been working on that I just haven’t had the time to complete. However, one of the upcoming posts in the series is going to focus in on the question of pharmaceutical patents. While some claim that the pharma industry is an example where patents actually work effectively, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. I’ll try to highlight much of that evidence, but it looks like Michael Heller is doing some of that already. Heller, the author of The Gridlock Economy, which we recently mentioned has penned a piece for Forbes, where he points out how the rise of patents in the pharma and biotech world is not leading to new cures. In fact, it’s actively stifling them, by making it nearly impossible for certain types of research to be done. This is a point Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has also been making for years.

Of course, some will point to some recent medical breakthroughs as evidence to the contrary, but as a New Yorker review of Heller’s book points out, it’s often much harder to see “foregone opportunities.” But, the more you understand the economics of innovation and growth, the more you see how clearly pharma and biotech patents are stifling lifesaving advancements — and that’s not just a huge shame, it’s incredibly destructive to human health, dignity and the wider economy.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

At this point it shouldn’t be a surprise that various systems that shouldn’t be are quite easily hacked, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. Over at this years Black Hat event there was a demonstration of just how easy it is to hack the automatic toll devices used at most bridges and toll roads throughout the country. The stunning part is that it appears that the folks who created these transponders did almost nothing to keep them secure. They’re constantly broadcasting and they include no encryption. And this is a device that often connects directly to a registered credit card. Sense a potential problem? The researchers who showed this pointed out that it wouldn’t be difficult for someone to clone your transponder and make you start paying for their tolls. Alternatively, it could be used to create an alibi for someone planning to commit a crime — since police have used toll crossing data to establish where someone is.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, an investigation has found that the chips in the supposedly “fakeproof” e-passports are easily cloned, manipulated and passed through the checking machine — which is especially worrisome given that 3,000 blank e-passports were stolen just last week. Of course, people have talked about the possibility of such hacks for years — even before they were put in place — to show how silly it was to think they were secure. And, of course, the best response comes from the UK gov’t. After being presented with the fact that the chips can be changed or modified, the statement from the government was: “No one has yet been able to demonstrate that they are able to modify, change or alter data within the chip. If any data were to be changed, modified or altered it would be immediately obvious to the electronic reader.” If you keep saying it, maybe you can pretend it’s true.

In both cases, though, the striking thing is that these aren’t “surprise” vulnerabilities. They should have been somewhat obvious to those who crafted these systems in the first place. Both are now working on “patches” to deal with the problems, but it’s pretty difficult to completely patch a system that’s so widespread — and either way it will take some time. So why weren’t these systems designed with better security in the first place?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I’ve now tried five of the new mini-notebooks, and the Acer Aspire One is one of the best. It offers good quality at a low price. But the Linpus Linux Lite version 0.5 that came preinstalled almost drove me batty, so I’d go for Windows XP instead. The Aspire One is very similar to the Asus PC Eee 900, with its 8.9in screen, but the case is almost an inch wider. This is enough to transform the keyboard from being very hard to use to one big enough for fast touch-typing - though it’s quite not as good as the one on HP Mini-Note.

The Aspire One feels much nicer than the Asus machines, with rounded corners and a glossy top. It has plenty of connections, including three USB ports, two SD card slots, an Ethernet port and an external monitor port. It also has an 8GB Flash drive and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, though not Bluetooth. But at 249 x 170 x 29mm, the Aspire One is still small and, at just under 1kg, light.

I was apprehensive about the performance, given its skimpy fixed 512MB of memory, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and built-in Intel 945 graphics. However, I found it worked very well for the sort of tasks subnotebooks are aimed at, such as word processing, email and browsing. It had no problems playing videos, including .wmv, DivX and YouTube.

Acer’s Linux has a simple front end for instant access to a dozen applications including the Firefox 2 browser and the OpenOffice.org word processor and spreadsheet. Several other applications are sourced from Acer, including the media player, messenger program, calendar, contacts and Aspire OneMail. The simple file manager is horrible. I’d much rather have had Thunderbird, VLC etc but there is no obvious way to change them, and I couldn’t find any help on Acer’s website.

My main problem was that hovering the cursor over things activated them very quickly. It should be easy to fix, but I could find no way to slow it down or stop it. Constantly worrying about the cursor position was no fun at all. Also, the Aspire One didn’t suspend/hibernate on closing the lid.

At Amazon.co.uk prices, this base version looks very good value at £219.99. The more attractive top-of-the-range model has 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive, and the more familiar, more capable, Windows XP Home for £299.99. There are several options in between.

Pros: Small, attractive design, good screen and keyboard, light, cheap

Cons: Short battery life, 0.3MP webcam, hard to change

acer.com/aspireone

For a few years now, we’ve been covering the battle between TorrentSpy and the MPAA. While TorrentSpy has given in and shut down on the question concerning the operations of its business, there was a separate legal question that is still being fought in court. As we noted recently, TorrentSpy has appealed the judge’s ruling that the MPAA didn’t break any laws in gaining access to its executives’ emails. As you may recall, the MPAA hired a guy who hacked into TorrentSpy’s servers to send copies of all the emails to himself first, which he then sold to the MPAA (he later regretted this decision and confessed to TorrentSpy, which is what resulted in the lawsuit in the first place). When the issue first came up in court, the MPAA played dumb, and pretended that it assumed the guy had legal access to the emails.

While this may seem like just a straight privacy case, the EFF, along with the ACLU and others, have filed a brief noting that there’s much more at stake here. Specifically, the EFF is concerned that the court ruled that since the email messages were not technically “intercepted” under the wiretap act, due to the fact that the emails were stored, however briefly, on a mail server before they were copied and re-forwarded. In other words, as the EFF points out, if you have access to any server that handles a message as it travels across the internet, it’s not “intercepted” for you to read that message. That has huge and very dangerous implications for any sort of internet wiretapping — suggesting that as long as the government routed all communications through its own machines, it could read everything without a warrant. This case is about a lot more than a BitTorrent tracker battling the MPAA.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

When Chinese search engine Baidu first went public, some folks pointed out that the main reason why people used it a lot more than Google was that it had an MP3 search engine, which let people find music to download. Google, being afraid of copyright infringement lawsuits, chose not to have such a specific search engine. Of course, once it had gone public, Baidu attracted the attention of record labels as well, and was quickly sued. However, Baidu eventually won that lawsuit — which does seem like the right decision. Baidu, as a search engine, isn’t making any copies of the file itself at all. It’s merely linking to where those files are, and it’s difficult to see how that’s copyright infringement.

Of course, the record labels aren’t known for giving up easily, and they simply sued again. However, it appears that Google has seen enough of getting beaten handily in the Chinese market by Baidu, and that initial ruling in favor of Baidu and has apparently decided to set up its own MP3 search engine on its Chinese site. The report notes that Google is first looking to get “approval” from the recording industry, though it’s not clear what sort of approval is sought or needed. If it’s going to be an industry approved search engine, it’s unlikely to do what Google needs it to do. That is, it will most likely be quite limited and locked down, meaning people will just stick with Baidu’s.

At the same time, it’s still difficult to see why a separate search engine is really necessary. What’s wrong with just doing a search with specific parameters included? In fact, some have already automated the process.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story