“And that’s why the news China has decided pretend money can no longer be exchanged for real goods and services is significant.”

Now, “An Australian video gamer has stolen thousands of dollars from a bank inside an online game and converted them into real-world money,” says the CBC, going on:

“The bank heist happened in Eve Online, where players mine in-game resources to build colonies and space ships in a futuristic space-themed online world. The game has hundreds of thousands of players who pay for access to the world. An in-game economy, complete with its own currency known as interstellar kredits, has emerged to enable trading transactions within the game. Numerous banks have even sprung up.”

Not only but also, piracy and racketeering are all part of the game.

And where there are banks, there are bank robbers, as John Herbert Dillinger (June 22 1903 – July 22, 1934) would probably testify, if he wasn’t dead.

“Using the online name of ‘Ricdic’, the married father of two built a reputation as one of EVE’s few trusted players - a rare commodity in a game where repeatedly blowing up a violator’s spaceship was the only way to enforce some contracts,” says news.com.au.

“More than 300,000 EVE subscribers pay $US15 ($19) a month to play and gain wealth by hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars,” it says.

Reuters has Richard, aka Ricdic, saying,  “It was a very on the spot decision” — that a, “spam email for a black market website that traded online money for real cash popped up on his screen, prompting him to exchange the virtual cash for real money to cover a deposit on his house and expenses related to his son’s medical problems”.

“I saw that as an avenue that could be taken, and I decided to skim off the top, you could say, to overcome real life (difficulties),” he says in the story, which goes on:

“Word of the theft spread quickly within EVE. Panicked customers started a run on the bank, worried that they would lose the money they had amassed by hunting space pirates or mining asteroids.

“Ironically, if Ricdic had merely stolen the online money he could have stayed in the game. But exchanging the virtual cash for real dollars broke the rules and CCP banned Richard’s EBank accounts.”

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p2pnet - China bans virtual cash, June 30, 2009
CBC - Gamer robs virtual bank to get real-world cash, July 3, 2009
news.com.au -  EVE banker that stole kredits a real Ricdic, July 3, 2009
Reuters - Gamer steals from virtual world to pay real debts, July 2, 2009

In it we point out TPB spokesman Peter Sunde assures active and ex-TPB followers, “Remember this, guys and gals, we really love you all.”

At the tail-end, among other things, he says, “we are also working on the finishing touches to our anonymizer Ipredator …”

Said TPB in March, “IPREDator is a network service that makes people online more anonymous using a VPN. it costs about 5 EUR a month and we store no traffic data. our service is right now in a beta stage. we hope it will be released for the public before 1st of april. Sign up now to start using it as soon as we’re stable. The network is under our control. Not theirs. ”

But in a TPB comment, “Is it true that ‘iPredator’ is just Relakks?” - Fausty asks, adding, “If so, why is it taking so many months to rebrand an old VPN service from 2006?” He doesn’t get an answer that we could find.

Pirate Party Relakkses

Back in 2006, “Yesterday came news that Sweden’s new Pirate Party had launched Relakks, an online service which, it says, ‘lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged’,” said a p2pnet story.

It would cost about $6.40 a month.

But is it all it’s cracked up to be? - wondered Smirnov on the Pirate Party site, saying he was, “thoroughly and very perplexed”.

His post has long since vanished, but you can read it at the end of this.

Meanwhile, torrentfreedom.net is a Baneki product, along with CryptoCloud, and Baneki is, in turn, a Canadian company in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

With co-founder Douglas Spink as CTO, it states, “Both as a company and as individuals, we support a broad cross-section of nonprofit and community-focused efforts, from free web hosting for politically unpopular websites to more direct financial contributions to groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this work isn’t just window-dressing to make us look good – it’s a central part of who we are.”

In February last year, it boasted of $17-a-month TorrentFreedom, “we’ve built a clever service that allows people to protect their privacy and freedom to explore and share online without a bunch of hassle.  It’s put together with all open source components, plus a little clever glue here and there.  Genuine structural anonymity but torrenters, and free range to boot.  We call it torrent freedom.”

Of CryptoCloud, Baneki says at $17 a month it, “employs robust, opensource security technology to protect all of your internet applications from surveillance: web, email, IM, VoIP, p2p - every packet. Route around censorship and limitations like packet shaping, content filtering, traffic logging, and protocol limits - make your own ‘net neutrality’.”

‘Don’t slag competitors’

“In general, we don’t engage in any competitive ‘mudslinging’ in our company,” says the ‘Baneki team’ in a post on the company’s CultureGhost site, promising, “our efforts are focused on running a great service and seeking out new ways to improve, not trying to belittle others doing similar work”.

But, it goes on, “regarding the ‘iPredator’ service announced by TPB; given the overall relevance of his rant, and the connection to the larger filesharing community and the longer-term direction of the community itself, this is an exception we’ll make to the ‘don’t slag competitors’ rule”.

Here’s what Fausty has to say »»»

You’ll forgive me, dear reader, if in writing this post I sound rather like someone who has fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole and is living in a mysterious parallel universe. This week, I feel like that myself - even more so than usual. It seems The Pirate Bay has begun generating its own, Jobs-style reality distortion field. Or, perhaps, that field is being generated around them and they’re as caught in it as the rest of us.

First, the fact topology:

This spring, TPB announces with the usual press fanfare that they are going to launch a “VPN service.” Wow, that’s rather interesting to me given my years’-long involvement in the business of providing a VPN-based service to customers around the world. I’d cite the original wired.com article about this “launch” but, alas, that article disappeared from their website this week. I’ll see if I can find a cache of it and post it in a parallel thread. In short, the “launch” has zero details - what technology will they use? What new angle on VPN service will they bring to the table? Nothing. Oh, they do say they will “not keep logs of customer activity when using the VPN service.” Hmmm. . . that sounds amazingly familiar - down to the exact wording of the sentences. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I’m a bit flattered (having personally written Baneki’s “no customer logging” policy in early 2007).

The “launch date” for this ‘ipredator’ service is set as April 1st. I dutifully go over and sign up for the “contact me” list on the website - only to hear reported, a few weeks later, that two hundred thousand people have signed up for TPB’s new ipredator VPN service! Wow, that’s amazing - I guess I missed the launch. I check the ipredator website - no, there’s no launch, still just a “enter email address’ field and a link to some wikipedia articles on what a “VPN” is. Nice. Apparently the press is simply reporting however many people TPB says entered their email address as people “signing up for the ipredator service” - rather an unusual trick of reporting for a paid service eh? Given the massive traffic to TPBs’s main website they could safely “announce” a “service” sending people to the moon on flying carpets, put a link in the site’s footer (as they did for ‘ipredator’), and have hundreds of thousands of people “sign up” by entering an email address in a form.

Anyway, ok well I’m sure lots of folks will sign up for their service whenever it launches. I mean, they have a big tracker and putting a link to a paid VPN service on the front page of a tracker, I dunno, it also seems just a little bit familiar. Great minds think alike? I guess. . .April comes and goes, then May, then June. Suddenly there’s a new flurry of press puff-pieces in late-June: ipredator is in “beta testing” yay! Nobody mentions that it was supposed to be launched April 1st. Nobody asks how a multi-month delay happened, why the “launch” is now a “beta test,” what technology they are using, etc. Nope, but it is widely reported that they already signed up two hundred thousand people to their new service!!!!

eh? Given the massive traffic to TPBs’s Wow, great reporting there. Anyway, nobody on the email list has EVER received so much as a ‘welcome’ email from TPB so I’m skeptical about this “beta test.” Apparently, you have to be really cool (and really Swedish?) to qualify as a super-cool ipredator beta tester. I wait for further news, and then.

BAM! This week TPB announces they are selling the tracker. Or not selling the tracker. Or selling the membership, but not the tracker. Or selling the tracker, but not the membership - or something. Nobody can quite agree on what is being announced - but the press dutifully prints, verbatim, whatever TPB says they are doing. They sold! They didn’t! They have angel wings! Oddly, I actually decide to read the press release issued by the company who is supposedly BUYING TPB - seems a decent place to start if one wants to report on a “sale,” right?

Well, the press release is very clear: this isn’t a sale, it’s a reverse merger. And the “buyer” doesn’t have the cash component of the “purchase” - they have to go raise that money now. And there’s no actual business plan for what happens after the sale/merger - but someone is making good money moving worthless Swedish penny stock on the basis of the announcement alone: millions of shares change hands, day after day, all week. In non-Swedish, not-cool situations we call this “pump and dump” - if I did it, given that I”m not as cool or Swedish as TPB, the press would be all over me about it (appropriately). However, TPB’s reality distortion field obviates that apparently.

All week I’ve waited for SOMEONE in “the press” to utter the words “reverse merger” to describe TPB’s transaction. And wait. And wait. I mean, this is hardly controversial - Peter Sunde has essentially said it’s a reverse merger - a way for TPB to “become listed” as the “ultimate prank!” Finally, I send a rather snippy email to Torrentfreak - who claims to “cover” the filesharing world but lately seems to be much more concerned with writing puff-pieces on whoever is coolest. Yes, they also “reported” on the 200,000 people that “signed up” for ipredator - and no they never corrected it, etc.

As I wait around, twiddling my thumbs in boredom this week (ok not really), serendipity strikes: today, in fact, a friend of a friend actually gets one of the ‘coveted’ beta tester invites to iPredator. Two salient points:

1. This is NOT a ‘beta test’ - it’s a paid launch. Beta tests, by definition, are NOT paid launches - they are TESTS. If you charge people to use a service - charging full price, natch - it is NOT a “beta test.”2. This isn’t even a new VPN service - it’s just Relakks, with a halfway-updated skin slapped over the same forms and payment pages and all the rest. TPB’s “new iPredator anonymizing service” is a warmed-over, left-for-dead project from 2006.

What is Relakks? Well, Relakks was the first consumer-focused VPN service - launched in 2006. They got some good mainstream press (including the Wall Street Journal, where I first read about them) and claimed to have signed up “20,000 customers” (a number I now question, seeing as they have now resurfaced with a similar claim about iPredator, one we know is bullshit, i.e. the “200,000 signups”). I got an account with them in 2007, as a test. Their “service” is just a shoddy implementation of pptp - which is, itself, an old proprietary VPN framework that Cisco and Microsoft developed in the 1990s and largely left for dead. Why use it? Simple, it’s built in to all Windows OS’s (being a proprietary Microsoft creation, no surprise) - so there’s exactly zero development work needed to “lauch” a pptp-based service. You just put a how-to page up telling people how to activate the pptp frontend in Windows, buy a (licensed?) copy of a Windows Server OS, and let people connect.

Anyway, the Relakks pptp-based VPN service is. . . ok, I guess. It’s slow, it’s proprietary, it’s not happy with some of the more non-mainstream IP protocols (like, err, bittorrent). Oh, and it leaks DNS information routinely - it was never meant to be a “real” VPN framework, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that it’s proprietary. As we built our first VPN service, at Baneki, we used them as a starting point - and quickly realized that doing VPN service correctly would require a completely different technical approach. We researched OpenVPN, rolled up our sleeves, and got to work. In the winter of 2007/2008 we acquired another VPN service (VPNtunnel.co.uk) which had also spent years developing an OpenVPN-based network. We kept developing and improving and updating our network and our client - using opensource code every step - and, nowadays we’re at version 3.1 of our client applet.

What about Relakks? Well, it’s kind of a funny/sad story. By 2008 Relakks was regularly reported to be having multi-day network outages. At the same time, they made a big fanfare about their “Internet Passport” feature which would allow people to “choose their country” from the VPN client - and of course lots of press coverage for this vaporware “feature” which was never launched and never spoken of again (in contrast, of course, we released our successful GeoChoice country selection feature last week - after months of REAL beta testing - and the press has been too busy non-reporting on TPB to notice this non-vaporware service rollout, apparently). Their website would also disappear sometimes until, finally, the website and the network - the whole damned thing - just vanished for several months. Oh well, I guess that’s the end of that. Eventually, we’ve been told, it sort of showed back up with a “gee we’re sorry” note and acted as if nothing happened, but by all accounts their customers seem to have wisely concluded it’s not such a reliable service (who would trust these guys with their network security, anyway?). They’ve been largely written off as of historical interest alone.

Then, today, I read a follow-up to the follow-up piece at wired that says the following:

Quote: The Pirate Bay’s other projects, including the upcoming streaming-video site TheVideoBay and the iPredator anonymizing service, are not part of the sale, the Bay’s current management said.

So, here’s what we’ve got: we have TPB announcing a reverse merger - which is pointedly NOT called a reverse merger in any press coverage I’ve seen thus far (and there’s been plenty of coverage) - and TPB announces their “anonymizing service” isn’t part of that transaction. . . but they fail to mention that their “anonymizing service” is just a warmed-over re-branding of Relakks - which was itself left for dead by whoever owns it in 2008.

By the way, who does own Relakks? For all that we like to trust those silly Swedes and assume they’re all swarthy and solid - wouldn’t it be kinda nice to know who is behind a paid security service like Relakks/iPredator? I mean, we don’t make any secret about who our founders are - warts and all.

Is iPredator just Relakks under a new name? If so, who is the “man behind the curtain” who is running this thing? Why should we trust him/her? If it’s TPB running it - and TPB just rolled the dice on a spectacularly shady reverse-merger (which is not called a reverse merger, of course) and showed horrific judgment - isn’t that perhaps relevant? If it’s the Relakks crew - the same one that disappeared for months in 2008 and abandoned their customers - that might also be noteworthy.

Alas, don’t hold your breath for anyone to do anything as prosaic and pedestrian as ask questions about such things when giving fawning interviews to TPB; no, nothing but that. Instead we’ll just continue to see the same warmed-over talking points, the same lying-through-omission about what “iPredator” actually is, the same “trust is we’re cool” approach to justifying what TPB is doing (and not doing) with community-supported resources. It’s all a bit much for me - I grew up in an era when we were held to task for what we did, good or bad (and I’ve been on both sides of that). I can’t imagine, personally, showing this level of bad judgment and NOT being torn to shreds by the press as a result (and yes I HAVE shown judgment this bad - and worse - in the past and, yes, I’ve been torn to shreds by the press for it. . . and learned as a result).

The whole thing has turned into a bit too much of a celebrity/paparazzi dynamic for me to understand; that’s just not my world. In my world, people are “famous” because they do good, important, useful, creative things - people like Jeff Bezos or Zennstrom or Fanning - these are the people I’ve always watched as role models and as peers. When things flip over to a fully press-driven, fame-driven, famous-for-being-famous universe I’m just out of my league. I’ve done my share of press junkets - good and bad - and I’ve had my share of front-page stories (good and bad); they were all because of something I DID (good or bad), not just because I was “famous for being famous.” TPB is now in that world, and it seems their tenuous connection to the actual world of network technology and network community has been cut entirely.

Honestly, this week, I feel as if the Michael Jackson news has been more substantive than the drivel reported on what TPB’s been doing. And that, indeed, is a low threshold to meet.

Fausty

And here’s what Smirnov had to say of the Swedish Pirate Party’s Relakks three years ago »»»

First, both the Relakks site and the announcement make it very clear that the service is supposed to provide anonymous access to the Internet. What isn’t as clear is that Relakks is just a PPTP (VPN) provider. Customers sign up, pay ?5 a month and get on their merry way. All of their traffic is encrypted to the Relakks servers, at which point it travels the Internet like regular traffic.

As far as I can tell, all your traffic carries a Swedish Relakks IP, presumably mapped to your real IP somewhere on a Relakks computer. Now you can’t connect to Relakks anonymously, because then they’d have no way of verifying you are a paying customer (plus VPN authentication is based on identity verification), so Relakks knows who you really are when all your traffic goes through them.

Let’s compare this to something that has been traditionally called an anonymous network — Tor, a program implementing onion routing. With Tor you connect to an onion router, which then builds a path for you through other onion routers to your destination, in such a way that it makes it very hard to determine both the sender and the receiver of an on-going communication. The entire link is encrypted, unless of course you are outproxying to the intenet (then traffic has to be decrypted either way when it leaves the outproxy). But at least with Tor, it is very hard for the outproxy to figure out where the real request came from.

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged.

The problem is that since Relakks knows who I really am, and that any outgoing connections from them are unencrypted, I really do have something to fear.. Relakks. What is the difference between trusting them and trusting my own ISP not to give me away?

Relakks could be logging behind the scenes, turning on a silent switch without telling anyone. Even in a case where we do trust Relakks not to keep the logs of the actual data that goes through, they will still have mappings between Relakks IPs and Real IPs at any point in time — this is just begging for an organization such as the antipiratbyran or the MPAA/RIAA to set up honeypots across various torrent sites, until finally they have enough Relakks IPs information to be able to sue them in court if they have a real IP, at which point the Swedish police could raid the Relakks location and get those real IPs.

If Relakks did not have their own direct connection to the internet, their outgoing ISP could be tapped and then setting up such a honeypot would be trivial. Otherwise, multiple peers could actively participate in swarms on sites such as the Pirate Bay, logging actively all of the IPs of the seeds and the superseeds on such swarms.

Secondly, the Relakks service is called a “Darknet.” After reading the paper that originally introduced the term Darknet at http://www.bearcave.com/misl/misl_tech/msdrm/darknet.htm, I am hard pressed to understand what makes a VPN tunnel a Darknet.

The idea of the darknet is based upon three assumptions:

1. Any widely distributed object will be available to a fraction of users in a form that permits copying.
2. Users will copy objects if it is possible and interesting to do so.
3. Users are connected by high-bandwidth channels.

This seems to me to describe a subset of P2P services, perhaps F2P. A program such as Waste, facilitating connections to your friends would fit the bill, but a general-connectivity tunnel? Would that not be akin to calling IPSec or IPv4 a darknet solution because it allows programs such as Freenet to operate under it? Would that not make any low level Internet protocol a Darknet then?

The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

Yet I do not recall Darknets having to be anonymous. Pseudononymous, perhaps, but only because that is a side effect of keeping the connections limited to a group of friends. Even if a Darknet had to be anonymous though, as I said earlier, Relakks hardly keeps your identity safe — they have to know who you are at all times (unlike say Tor)!

Lastly, I have some less related comments I wish to share with you:

* The PPS does not own Relakks, they seem to be affiliated and perhaps will get a share of each person they refer to Relakks?
* I wonder what political repercussions the PPS is hoping to achieve by actively promoting a network which will incentivize users to engage in illegal activities (such as unauthorized works distribution) behind the scenes of a “trusted” outproxy.

P.S. My views do not represent the official views, positions, standings or otherwise, of the Pirate Party US, unless otherwise stated by an appropriate party official.

Definitely stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

p2pnet -  ‘We need your support!’ The Pirate Bay, July 3, 2009
love you all - The internets needs all of us!, July 3, 2009

Thus spaketh one-time hopeful, but not entirely successful, vice-president of America candidate Sarah Palin on her decision to pack it in as governor of Alaska.

Does that means she’ll go for The Job in 2012?

In her executive column on the Alaska state web page, “I do not want to disappoint anyone with my decision,” she says — “all I can ask is that you TRUST me with this decision – but it’s no more ‘politics as usual’. ”

But she also says, portentously or ominously, depending on your point of view,”I am taking my fight for what’s right – for Alaska – in a new direction”.

She goes on »»»

Some Alaskans don’t mind wasting public dollars and state time. I do. I cannot stand here as your Governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of Governor. And my children won’t allow it either. ? Some will question the timing. ? Let’s just say, this decision has been in the works for awhile…

In fact, this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children (where the count was unanimous… well, in response to asking: “Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children’s future from OUTSIDE the Governor’s office?” It was four “yes’s” and one “hell yeah!” The “hell yeah” sealed it - and someday I’ll talk about the details of that… I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently.) Um, by the way, sure wish folks could ever, ever understand that we ALL could learn so much from someone like Trig - I know he needs me, but I need him even more… what a child can offer to set priorities RIGHT – that time is precious… the world needs more “Trigs”, not fewer.

My decision was also fortified during this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for OUR freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that LIFE is short so they choose to NOT waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than SELF… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and NOT this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.

“May we ALL learn from them! *((Gotta put First Things First))*” - she adds.

Right.

Stay tuned, America.

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Alaska state web page - Palin Announces No Second Term, July

The question was asked of Christopher Parsons (right) during a recent interview with a Toronto student radio station, and it related to deep packet inspection (DPI) in Canada.

A PhD student at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island in BC, p2pnet.net’s home base, he’s particularly interested in Deep Packet Inspection and he gets into the kiddie porn question on his Technology, Thoughts, and Trinkets blog.

“I honestly hadn’t thought about this, but I’ll recount here what my response was (put together on the fly) in the interests of  (hopefully) generating some discussion on the matter,” he says, continuing »»»

I’ll preface this by noting what I’ve found exceptional in the new legislation that was recently presented by the Canadian conservative government (full details on bill C-47 available here, and C-46 here) is that police can require ISPs to hold onto particular information, whereas they now typically required a judicial warrant to compel ISPs to hold onto particular data. Further, some information such as subscriber details can immediately be turned over to police, though there is a process of notification that must immediately followed by the officers making the request. With this (incredibly brief!) bits of the bills in mind, it’s important for this post to note that some DPI appliances are marketed as being able to detect content that is under copyright as it is transferred. Allot, Narus, ipoque, and more claim that this capacity is built into many of the devices that they manufacture; a hash code, which can be metaphorically thought of like a digital fingerprint, can be generated for known files under copyright and when that fingerprint is detected rules applied to the packet transfer in question.

The challenge (as always!) is finding the processor power to actually scan packets as they scream across the ‘net and properly identify their originating application, application-type, or (in the case of files under copyright) the actual file(s) in question.

Let’s assume for the purposes of detecting particular files that inspections of packets is largely done offline (i.e. you can copy packets to a separate processing unit, and not worry about examining the packet in absolute real-time) or the devices are quick enough to massively do these analyses on the fly in the relatively near (24 months) future. (As a note: I see the former, rather than the latter, as a more effective technique as the technology stands today, at least in terms of mass surveillance of data traffic.

This is just based on my understanding of the computational power available to DPI appliances, and is subject to change as I learn more about the technology/there are advances in processor technologies.) Shouldn’t it be a relatively easy process then for authorities, working in conjunction with network administrators, to develop a hash-list of illegal files, where any time that these files are suspected of crossing the network authorities are automatically notified (DPI is predictive, and thus cannot be relied on to have 100% accuracy rates)?

I’m not talking about stuff like files guarded by copyright – the RCMP has noted that they don’t see file sharing as one of their priorities – but stuff that Canadian society deems particularly nasty, such as illicit images of naked children.

With a detailed hash-list of known illegal images/text/movies, then shouldn’t it be a relatively simple process to both limit much of the sharing of these images (when a match is detected, stop the flow of packets ‘tagged’ with that ‘fingerprint’) and notify authorities?

Law enforcement could set up an automated  system that issues demands to the ISP(s) in question, and then establish procedures to gain access to subscriber information in an effort to quickly find and question those suspected of peddling kiddie porn.

This notion of mass surveillance for law enforcement purposes leads us to ask what we, as a society, want these devices used for, or what drivers should motivate the technology; do we want to limit these appliances to balancing network congestion/network load, or go further and try and identify ‘clearly’ criminal actions? I worry about the long-term effects of using DPI for automated surveillance for detecting criminal behaviour, but my willingness to accept a bit more messiness in this world at the expense of increasingly efficient detection of deviance isn’t necessarily a commonly held position…

Chris says he ended the interview by leaving listeners with the questions; “what degree or level of surveillance do we, as a Canadian people, see as ‘good’ on ISP networks – what discrimination (in reference to packet discrimination) is permissible, and what is not ? How do we actually go about developing a consensus on surveillance, and what processes should we engage in to codify said consensus?”

“I actually don’t have responses to these queries. There are people who know both surveillance and discrimination literature far better than I likely ever will – my aim (at the moment) is just to puzzle through how this technology might intersect with privacy, surveillance, and discrimination literature, and gradually develop insights from which others can pursue far more nuanced, far more profound ethical thinking about DPI and similar network appliances.”

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

“Taking features away and pretending your customers are stupid enough to believe it’s for their benefit isn’t likely to fly.”

The comment came in a post which kicked off with, “For example, when eMusic raised prices and disabled features it put up a blog post trying to spin it as a positive, claiming ”more of the good stuff!’ Yes, at a higher price, with fewer features, but why let that get in the way of claiming good news?”

Now, “This is really unfortunate,” he says in a TechDirt follow-up, continuing »»»

eMusic used to be a great example of how treating customers right and with respect and trust could win over more customers — but in the last month or so, it seems like the company is throwing all that out the window and pissing off customers left and right. Beyond the big price increase at the same time as signing its first major record label (bad PR to announce both together), the company has censored critics and removed the feature that let you redownload songs you’d purchased before, at your convenience. However, now we’re hearing that there were a bunch of other features that were removed as well. An anonymous reader notes:

“July 1 was the first day in the Sony era over at eMusic. Despite published interviews with eMusic executives, FAQs on the eMusic web site and messages from eMusic employees on the eMusic forums attempting to clarify the new pricing structure, there were quite a few surprises. Some of the changes I’ve noticed (or read about in the forums) include:

• Certain tracks can only be downloaded with “paid” credits, not the free credits eMusic hands out for trial memberships.
• Individual track downloads disabled for tracks longer than 10 minutes - you must download the entire album
• Certain (popular) sub-10-minute tracks disabled for individual download
• No downloading individual discs in multi-disc sets
• Most new albums use 12-credit album pricing (very few reports of 6 or 9 credit album pricing)
• Many (a significant portion in the classical section at least) albums with fewer than 12 tracks cost 12 credits
• Many albums previously available on eMusic have been re-priced (in some cases, tracks available for 1 credit on June 30 now require 12 credits)

IMO, the fact that eMusic did such a poor job communicating these important changes suggests that they deliberately withheld (or downplayed) this information, possibly to keep from fueling the outrage generated from last month’s Sony/pricing announcement.”

“This seems like an increasing disaster,” Mike says, adding:

“Hopefully some of these changes are mistakes, rather than permanent. But the way this whole situation has been handled is going to make a terrific case study in how not to do PR. eMusic has turned from a company that customers really loved into one that many seem to hate … and it’s happened in an incredibly short time frame.

“That’s really unfortunate.”

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TechDirt - If You’re Taking Away Features From Users, Don’t Tell Them It’s For Their Own Benefit, June 29, 2009
TechDirt - Even More eMusic Features Disabled?, July 2, 2009

Shot fired, one wounded at Virginia-based Apple Store AppleInsider
An unidentified man fired at least one shot at the Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington, Virginia shortly after the store opened Friday morning, wounding at least one, a person with knowledge of the situation tells AppleInsider. “Someone was just shot at the store and just were carted out in an ambulance,” that person said. “Unsure what happened but the store is closed down and there are police everywhere.”

MySpace suicide conviction tentatively dismissed Reuters
A federal judge on Thursday tentatively dismissed the conviction of a suburban mother accused of driving a love-lorn 13-year-old girl to suicide by tormenting her with a fake MySpace persona. U.S. District Judge George Wu said during a hearing in a Los Angeles courtroom that prosecutors’ application of a federal anti-hacking statute against the Missouri woman, Lori Drew, was selective and the law was unconstitutionally vague. In a high-profile cyber-bullying case that drew worldwide headlines, Drew was found guilty in November 2008 of three misdemeanor counts of accessing a protected computer without authorization. She was acquitted of more serious felony charges. The jury deadlocked on a fourth felony conspiracy count. Drew was accused of creating a fake profile on the MySpace social networking website, owned by News Corp and posing as a teenage boy to tease and humiliate 13-year-old Megan Meier, a neighbor who had quarreled with Drew’s daughter. Megan ultimately committed suicide, hanging herself in her bedroom closet in October 2006.

Radio stations step up battle against Performance Rights Act Los Angeles Times
For more than 80 years, commercial stations have aired songs without paying royalties to musicians, but a bill making its way through Congress would change that. The bill making its way through Congress would require AM and FM stations to pay fees, to be split evenly between the artists and copyright owners. The annual flat rate would be calculated according to a radio station’s revenue, with the smallest paying $500 a year, medium-size stations paying as much as $5,000 and the largest paying more.

Bell closes deals for The Source, Virgin Mobile Canada CBC
Bell Canada has completed two deals worth a total of $277 million, acquiring Canadian electronics retailer The Source and buying the half of Virgin Mobile Canada that it didn’t already own. Bell paid $135 million for The Source and $142 million for the 50 per cent stake of Virgin Mobile. Circuit City renamed RadioShack stores The Source after acquiring them with the purchase of Barrie, Ont.-based InterTan Inc. for $371 million in 2004. Bell also announced Thursday that The Source will sell Bell and Virgin Mobile wireless products exclusively starting in January 2010. It already sells the high-definition television service Bell TV and will offer other services, such as Bell home phone and Bell internet, in the coming months.

Report raises concern over Wireless E911 services Digital Home
In February of this year the CRTC gave Canada’s wireless phone companies one-year to deploy upgraded wireless 911 service which the feds said would give emergency responders the ability to pinpoint the location of 911 callers with much greater precision. A recent report, however, from IDC Canada Ltd. suggests that federal regulators have waited too long to implement such measures and failed to properly regulate the implementation of important safety features necessary to make the Enhanced Wireless 911 service work effectively. For example, the researchers found that under the new CRTC mandate, emergency responders would still be unable to glean accurate location data from as many as 70% of wireless 911 phone calls. “Canada is significantly lagging behind the U.S. as well as Europe in adopting wireless emergency service technology. This technology exists today and it is imperative that Canada’s emergency call centres are well equipped to quickly and accurately pinpoint the location of a 9-1-1 cell phone caller.” said IDC Canada VP Lawrence Surtees.

Essayrunner sells school papers found on Limewire P2P Blog
Would you pay ten bucks per month for the chance to access thousands of school papers that your teachers won’t find with a simple Google search? Essayrunner.com is betting that some folks will, and it is using the Gnutella P2P network to build a business based on this idea. The site is basically a giant archive of essays, currently promising access to over 140,000 school papers. There are dozens of essay sites with names like Duenow.com out there, and many students have started to upload papers to sites like Scribd. Essayrunner however offers an interesting twist: The site scours the Gnutella P2P network for essays shared via Limewire and similar file sharing clients.

Stolen Mongolian crown found at police station after 20 years The Local
A decorative Mongolian silver crown stolen in 1984 from a Stockholm museum has been found on the premises of the Swedish Police Service, where it has spent more than twenty years in accidental storage. “We would like to thank the national police service for housing the silver Mongolian crown for such a long time,” said museum chief Anders Björklund in a statement. The crown, part of a woman’s costume from Mongolia, was one of the Museum of Ethnography’s most prized possessions when it first went on display in 1980.

Broadband industry group say U.S. rules go too far Reuters
U.S. government guidelines to spend $4 billion to expand broadband access to underserved areas across the United States may go beyond current laws, a broadband industry group, said on Thursday. USTelecom, which represents the biggest U.S. telephone companies Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, said it was still analyzing requirements to provide loans and grants to applicants that can include state and local governments as well as non- and for-profit organizations.

True HD Streaming Likely Years Away, Says Report IMDb
It is likely to be at least five years years before high-definition movies can be streamed to home theaters with the same resolution as Blu-ray discs, according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and reported on the Video Business magazine’s website. Although millions of homes are already connected to video services that claim to offer HDTV titles, via streaming, the quality doesn’t even match that of standard DVDs and the “flow” is sometimes jerky.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

Because Big Brother Bluetooth may be watching you.

“Researchers are using Bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices,” says Reuters.

A University of Ghent in Belgium teams reckons their work might end in new satellite navigation applications for the retail and security sectors.

“We have installed 36 Bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops,” the story has Nico Van de Weghe saying.

Bluetooth is an open wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs), explains the Wikipedia.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Reuters - Bluetooth “Big Brother” tracks festival-goers, July 3, 2009

Deep Purple were performing in Rostov-on-Don in Russia a little under a year ago. Then, after the show, they heard from NGO, the Russian Authors’ Society, an organisation which looks suspiciously similar to SOCAN, the Canadian music rip-off organisation.

Because, says the Russian collection agency as cited in Russia Today, Ian Gillan, Ian Paice and Roger Glover, “should have obtained a license” from NGO for the, “public performance of any of their songs”.

It, “represents the rights of foreign performers in Russia – even without these performers giving the NGO permission to represent them,” says the story.

ASCAP, anyone?

(Cheers, Marshall)
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

SOCAN - SOCAN threatens p2pnet. Again, August 2, 2007
Russia Today - Deep Purple ordered to pay royalty to themselves, July 3, 2009
ASCAP - ASCAP: ‘You’re all pirates, but don’t fret’, June 24, 2009

Because although at first glance, they look like they’re in someone’s mouth, they’re not.

They’re fish fangs.

We borrowed this pic from junglephotos.com, the fish in question being a pacu, a members of piranha family.

It’s found in South America, but somehow, a fisherman caught one at Buffalo Springs Lake in Tyler, Texas.

“When Curry caught the fish, he said he saw another one just like it,” says Underwater Times, adding:

“Lake officials have put a bounty on that, anyone catching it will get $100.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

Under it, people leave comment posts, anonymously or otherwise. But when Net adverting company Goggle tried to launch something similar, it didn’t work.

Now, “Google has eliminated an experimental feature that allowed people quoted in articles in Google News to post comments on those articles,” says the New York Times, going on »»»

People in the news media were intrigued by the idea of giving article subjects the power to comment, and the idea drew considerable coverage. But the feature never got a lot of use -– the company declined to provide numbers –- and it was dropped without an announcement in May.

The post ends with a Gargle dissemblement, to wit:

“We’re always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.”

Provide your own translation.

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New York Times - Google Drops News Comment Feature, July 1, 2009

That’s The Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in the site’s blog.

Following the news of The Pirate Bay’s acquisition by Global Gaming Factory X, a gaming company suspected of insider trading, significant numbers of former TPB users now believe the PB4 are lower than whale excreta.

Equity marketplace Aktietorget wonders if illegal stock trading took place before the announcement of the take-over was made official.

“The exchange also says it’s concerned about the legality of Pirate Bay’s business practices,” says paidContent, going on »»»

“AktieTorget wants to make sure that the companies that are traded on the list are managing legitimate businesses,” [an] official says. It’s not clear whether the investigations are enough to derail the deal, but they do add to the general uncertainty surrounding it, especially considering that Global Factory X says it still needs to raise the funds to buy Pirate Bay.

Still needs to raise funds? Interesting.

And, “If the acquisition is completed, Aktietorget might start a further investigation since The Pirate Bay is suspected of committing criminal actions,” says the story.

‘If we ever needed your support, this is now’

Meanwhile, “The last days have been quite stress for all of us,” Sunde blogs, continuing »»»

We are still (of course) doing this for fun, and we are (of course) really grateful for or cheers and supportive comments. If we ever needed your support, this is now. Or, actually, more correct would be to say that the internet needs YOU!

In these times, when internet legislations and blockades are surrounding us from all angles, we really need to stick together. We need to work the internets as it would be our cute and possibly underages neighbor - gently but with a firm hand. Instead of bashing each other we really have to build the internet as we want it to be.

For example, we and our friends have recently been rebuilding the internets of Iran. Why? Do we take a stand in the recent election? No, not really. We just don’t want to see people being slaughtered, and since internets is what we do that is also what we can provide. The systems surrounding the Iran project has now been up and running for a couple of weeks, and we really hope that they have made a difference. Actually we KNOW that they have, and that makes us very happy.

Not only but also, “Besides that we are also working on the finishing touches to our anonymizer Ipredator, we continue working on our You tube killer The Video Bay,” says Sunde. “We are also a part of the internets collective tink tank We Rebuild EU, which focuses at European politics and internetional networking.”

And, “Remember this, guys and gals, we really love you all,” he says, adding:

“Together we can build not only a free internets - but the world of our futures. Internets will be what we make of it.”

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Jon, just wanted to fill you in on this,” said Ottawa Gal a little earlier today. “New CRTC filing in reply to Bell’s non-reply to reopen the ‘throttling case’.”

Re-opening the throttling case?

She’d have been on this. But she’s taking a holiday break –” Not at my computer, can’t get to my computer, can’t get to Email and don’t have your email etched in memory … ”

So »»»

1. CAIP et al. via PIAC: http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/1445389~572b62733237bb57791279c632e847e0/2008-108_RV_Reply_2July09FINAL.pdf
2. J.F. of Vaxination: http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/1445390~f25d06fcfee813f8c1d16ddaaa08843d/vaxination_r%26v_final.pdf

In his document, Vaxination Informatique’s Jean-François Mezei says he’s in receipt of comments from:

• CAIP et al
  
• Distributel Communications
  
• Bell Canada/Bell Alliant
  
• CIPPIC representing Campaign for Democractic Media
  
• Union des Consommateurs
  
• Canadian Film and Television Production Association
  
• Coalition of Internet Service Providers
  
• Many personal comments sent to the CRTC on this issue

“Sympatico” refers to Bell Canada’s retail ISP service, he says, noting, “Despite branding changes, this term is still more recognised and provides clearer distinction between the retail ISP business and Bell Canada’s commercial network services, and going on »»»

Errors in scope

In paragraph 4, Bell Canada states:

4. These comments fail to acknowledge the fact that the CAIP Proceeding was limited in scope to a wholesale tariff dispute between Bell Canada and some of its wholesale ISP customers.

3.  If  Bell now agrees that the scope of the proceeding should be limited to the nature of the GAS service, why did it spend so much time and effort during the proceedings (both in its filings and with the media) trying to paint GAS as a white label reselling of its retail Sympatico service ?

4.  One can also challenge Bell Canada’s use of the word “wholesale”.  Wholesale is defined in the dictionary as the bulk selling of a product/service to be retailed by others.  GAS service just one of many commercial building blocks needed to create a complete solution, it cannot be resold in retail, and cannot be purchased by individuals. GAS does not provide connectivity to the internet. In fact, it is closer to a commercial telecommunications service purchased by banks linking their branches and ATMs to their data centres.  As such, the Commission must consider how precedents set by its GAS decision would apply to other commercial service such as those purchased by banks.

5.  GAS is completely different from Sympatico.

6.  In writing the 2008-108 decision  the Commission failed to recognize the true nature of the GAS service: a commercial, PPPoE based telecommunications service on which Bell Canada was applying retail throttling.  The Commission failed to recognize the differences with Sympatico and this lead to the Commission excluding valid arguments while including arguments applicable to Sympatico but not to GAS.

7.  The CAIP.vs.Bell process was about the use of throttling of P2P  by Bell Canada on traffic flowing on a commercial telecommunications service used by independent ISPs using the PPPoE protocol. Discussions  on throttling as well as its applicability on a commercial PPPoE service were not only within scope, but also required to reach a proper decision.  Discussions about individual ISPs (such as Sympatico) using DPI equipment on their retail customers was outside the scope of  the process.

8.  The 2008-19 process retained the discussion on throttling of P2P (and did not widen the scope of discussion to encompass additional capabilities of DPI equipment), and widened applicability to the retail ISP industry.

9.  However, the way with which the 2 processes were linked, as well as interviews given by senior CRTC officials gave the strong impression that the CRTC had rendered a decision before having fully studied the issue and was going to complete the study of throttling with the wider scope of 2008-19.  This is an image problem which the Commission needs to correct.

Safeguards are necessary

10.  Furthermore, while  reviewing this decision, the Commission must incorporate necessary safeguards to ensure that Bell Canada does not deviate from the revised decision. This was a major flaw in the original 2008-108 decision.

11.  In paragraph 21, Bell Canada classifies as being outside of the scope some of the text provided by Vaxination in 2008 which described various capabilities of DPI equipment. While Bell Canada states that none of those are enabled, the Commission failed to include any safeguards in its 2008-108 decision to ensure that Bell Canada does not enable DPI features beyond flow control.

12.  In paragraph 70 of the 2008-108 decision, the Commission imposed a notification requirement only where DPI equipment changes result in material impact on performance.  Bell Canada remains free to change/enable other features which do not have performance impacts.

13.  Having knowledge of the full capabilities of this DPI equipment,  the Commission failed in its duty to uphold article 7(i) of the Telecommunications act because it did not add any text to prevent Bell Canada from enabling features which would cause serious privacy violations without having to notify anyone since such feature would not have material impact on performance.

14.  The Commission based its 2008-108 decision largely on the fact that GAS and Sympatico were equally throttled, yet, the Commission failed to add any text in the decision to ensure that the throttling parity persisted and that Bell Canada could not eventually remove/change throttling from the Sympatico offering while maintaining it for GAS.

Discrimination cannot be ignored

15.  Contrary to what Bell states in its paragraph 16,   Vaxination’s submission did not imply Comcast’s implementation of throttling was a form of blocking. Vaxination’s submission  quoted an internal CRTC powerpoint slide, obtained via Access to Information, which showed in black and white that the Commission was aware that the FCC considered Comcast’s traffic management to be discriminatory.

16.  There are two issues to be considered independently when comparing Bell against Comcast:
• How the throttling is implemented (blocking issue)
• What  traffic is throttled (discrimination issue)

17.  Differences in how throttling was implemented do not deter from the fact that Bell discriminates just like Comcast did  by targeting only certain types of transmissions. Therefore, the comparison with Comcast is valid since both discriminate between transmissions based on whether they found certain data patterns in the payload of packets.

18.  Comcast was forced to and has implemented  non-discriminatory network management, showing that  Bell’s solution is not the only solution.

19.  The Commission publicly admitted in a CBC Interview  that it based its 2008-108 decision largely on the Bell Canada argument that there was no discrimination because Sympatico and GAS were equally throttled.  But,  the second paragraph in the introduction to the 2008-108 decision states:
The Commission’s determinations in this Decision relate solely to Bell Canada’s traffic-shaping practices in relation to its wholesale GAS, and are based on the evidence filed in this proceeding.

20.  Why then did the Commission place so much weight on a comparison with Sympatico which doesn’t use the tariffed GAS service, has different network interconnection to the ADSL cloud and more importantly, has an undisclosed internal business relationship with Bell Canada that makes any meaningful comparison impossible ?

21.  More importantly, in its decision, the Commission avoided the real discussion on discrimination, namely the fact that certain transmissions were targeted for discriminatory treatment based on some signatures found inside the payload of packets.

22.  The Commission failed to consider the real issue of discrimination which was raised by many parties, as well as the FCC’s own clear conclusion that the throttling of only certain transmissions was discriminatory.  This this a critical omission since the Commission rendered a decision which made throttling legal without actually analysing whether it was legal.

How is throttling implemented ?

23.  In both the CAIP.vs.Bell and the 2008-19 processes, the Commission conveniently avoided requiring the carriers to disclose exactly how they performed the throttling of certain transmissions only.

24.  In the November 20th opening of the 2008-19 consultation process, footnote 3 states:

3 In the context of CAIP’s application, throttling referred to the practice of slowing down the transfer rates of traffic by delaying certain data packets at certain points in the network.

25.  Delaying packets cannot be done because an overdue packet would simply trigger a retransmission because the original packet would be declared lost. The Commission, on the day it rendered 2008-108 and began 2008-19, showed that it did not understand what throttling really was.

26.  How can the 2008-108 decision be allowed to stay when it is clear that the Commission had not even looked at the way throttling was accomplished and whether it was legal within the context of the Telecommunications Act ?

27.  It is clear that the Commission rendered 2008-108 without having studied and understood exactly how throttling was accomplished, and that Bell Canada did not provide any information on how its equipment acted on packets to reduce throughput.

28.  Coming back to paragraph 16 and 17 which discuss the RST technique, Bell Canada, which had refused to confirm until now ANYTHING about how throttling was accomplished, finally agrees to state that it does now use the RST technique.

29.  At this point in time, it is necessary to inject a few facts into this discussion. The “Reset” (RST) technique is essentially the carrier forcing one side of a communication to hang-up and not telling the other side about it so the other side will wait and wait and wait. This is the technique that had been used by Comcast. This is described with more detail in  Appendix 2.

30.  My own experiments in the spring of 2008 (documented in my July 3 2008 submission, page 23) seem to point to Bell Canada’s DPI equipment dropping between 20% and 30% of packets in flows it has targeted for throttling.  See Appendix 1 for a brief description of how TCP manages flow of packets and how it relates to Bell Canada discarding packets.

31.  It must be noted that Bell Canada’s response, while confirming it does not use the Reset bit technique, does not confirm what technique it does use.  The Commission should have never rendered a decision granting the right to throttle before knowing what throttling really involved.

32.  It should also be noted that in the only interrogatory for the 2008-19 process (December 4th 2008), the Commission asked question 8 (c) in such a way as to allow Carriers to answer without having to reveal exactly how packets were treated by their DPI equipment. Knowing how thorttling affects packets  is important to ensure compliance with the Telecommunications Act.  Modifications of packets during transit with the purpose of disrupting communications may not be something the Commission would desire.

33.  Therefore, should the Commission insist on finding a way to allow Bell Canada to continue to throttle GAS service (since the scope of this process is limited to GAS service),  it must first get public confirmation from Bell Canada on how its equipment treats packets to force a reduced throughput in a transmission.

Does throttling block traffic ?

Block: [verb]
• make the movement or flow in (a passage, pipe, road, etc.) difficult or impossible
• put an obstacle in the way of (something proposed or attempted) :
• restrict the use or conversion of (currency or any other asset).
• Sports hinder or stop the movement or action of (an opponent).

34.  Bell Canada has stated many times in this process that it did not block P2P.  In Bell Canada’s comments, paragraph 16, the issue of blocking is brought up again. And in the CBC interview on the day the 2008-108 decision was rendered,  the CRTC co-chairman stated:Katz: The [U.S. Federal Communications Commission] situation is very different. Comcast was actually blocking traffic that was coming across the network. What they may have agreed to do is something totally different. We’ll look at what we think needs to be done in Canada, but Bell was not blocking at all. All they were doing was managing traffic on their network without impacting or influencing the content at all. Big difference.

35.  It must be noted that at the time the decision was rendered, Bell Canada had not confirmed nor published what technique was used to slow traffic down, and thus, the Commission was in no position to state that Bell Canada was not blocking at all. On that same day, the Commission had issued the 2008-19 letter in which they thought that in the context of CAIP’s process, throttling involved the delaying of packets, which is an error in fact.

36.  In the case of Comcast, they were randomly forcing disconnection of TCP flows, allowing eventual reconnection between two peers.  This reduces throughput. But requires the application compensate by re-opening new links to replace those terminated by the DPI equipment.

37.  Assuming that Bell Canada’s technique consists of dropping 20 to 30% of  TCP packets, this force peers
to stop sending while they wait for acknowledgements, reducing throughput.

38.  In both cases, the DPI equipment provide an impediment to the efficient flow of packets, hence one can use the term “block”.  In both cases, the application will eventually be able to reconstitute the contents that was intended to be transferred, albeit with many retransmissions, overhead and orders of magnitudes more time.

39.  Therefore, the Commission erred when it ruled that Bell Canada’s throttling was different enough from Comcast to escape the “blocking” and “discriminatory” labels.

Bell Canada’s real motives

40.  Because Bell Canada throttles specific types traffic 40% of the day, every day of the week, whether there is congestion or not, and because Bell Canada does not throttle other types of traffic which generate equal or greater loads on the network,  the Commission failed to consider whether Bell Canada had goals other than mere congestion management.

41.  In the context of GAS, if an ISP  purchases sufficient GAS/AHSSPI capacity to support its customers accessing innovative leading edge services, Bell Canada should have no reason to claim that users of this ISP are creating congestion problems. Bell Canada insisting on throttling such end users should have raised competition alarms at the Commission.

42.  When a GAS customer purchases a telecommunication service of a certain capacity, the carrier as no business decide what type of traffic can and cannot flow unimpeded on those links. This is a core concept in telecommunications which the Commission failed to uphold.

43.  It is outside the purview of this process to discuss what Sympatico can and cannot do as this process is limited to the GAS service.   And it is exactly because of this that  the Commission must keep GAS and Sympatico totally separate and not allow service features imposed on Sympatico customers to also be imposed on GAS end users. As long as a GAS customers purchases sufficient capacity to support the usage generated by its end users, there should not be any complaints by Bell about some users negatively impacting others.

44.  The Commission failed to uphold the basic need to allow each service provider to independently define its service offering to maintan a competitive environment. Allowing Sympatico, a retail service outside the scope of this process, to impose service features on individual links inside a commercial GAS service is extremely anti competitive.

45.  Therefore, the Commission must send a strong signal to Canadians that it will uphold basic principles of telecommunications which require a carrier to be content agnostic, manage a service according to the protocol which defines that service and not impose any discrimination on certain contents just because it has unilaterally decided it doesn’t like them.

46.  The Commission must also uphold the core principle that if you buy a certain amount of capacity from a common carrier, the later should be made to provide this capacity.

Other Notes

47.  In paragraph 9 of Bell Canada’s June 22nd submission, Bell Canada contents that both CAIP and Vaxination are repeating arguments already presented in the original proceeding, that Bell Canada had already answered those in its 85 page submission of July 11th and that the Commission had already ruled on.

48.  As part of a Review and Vary process, once needs to outline those failures to consider a basic principle which had been raised in the original proceeding . It is the duty of the Applicants in an R&V to point to those issues which the Commission failed to properly address in its decision.  The fact that so many points could be raised again between the 2 Applicants shows how many issues the Commission had chosen to ignore, despite those issues being relevant within the scope of a thorttled GAS service.

49.  In paragraph 10, Bell Canada refers to its  85 page submission of July 11th. Unfortunately, those with enough technical background to tackle the enormous amount of misleading statements and errors contained in that submission did not have the opportunity to submit comments due to the structure of the process, and it was extremely worrisome to see that not only had the Commission chosen to believe all of Bell Canada’s statements and failed to challenge even the most blatant errors, but it included many significant errors in the final decisions, including the most serious one, the assertion that Bell Canada’s DPI equipment did not look at packet contents.

50.  The Commission committed a grave error in fact when it decided to believe Bell Canada’s statement that its DPI equipment did not look at packet contents, despite the overwhelming evidence presented to the Commission to this effect, and despite the very definition of Deep Packet Inspection equipment.

51.  Once the Commission agrees to the truth on this issue, it will be forced to admit that this type of network management is discriminatory, just as the FCC had been forced to admit.

52.  Overall, in Bell’s 85 page submission, the majority of blatant errors were caused by Bell Canada treating GAS as if it was just a resold Sympatico service.  It is ironic to see Bell Canada complain about scope here when its own 85 page submission was guilty of being so far out of scope.  This 85 page document was unfortunately successful at influencing the Commission into comparing GAS with Sympatico and  concluding there was no discrimination.

53.  It is therefore important that the Commission realise and admit that the GAS service is a PPPoE service which is extremely different from Sympatico and take corrective actions to eliminate all comparisons with Sympatico in its analysis, as well as removing all Bell Canada arguments that portray the GAS service as being the same as Sympatico.

About ATM and purchased capacity

54.  In paragraphs 12-15, Bell Canada discusses upgrades to Ethernet switches and ancient ATM DSLAMS.

55.  The Commission is faced with many GAS related files at the moment. Most of them include complaints by Bell Canada about congestion in its ATM lines causing problems etc. The appearance given is that Bell Canada is no longer upgrading capacity in its ATM network. It is understandable that a carrier would want to stop upgrading ancient technology and seek to migrate to current technology.

56.  What is not understandable is why Bell Canada has not upgraded the all of the  GAS infrastructure to Ethernet yet.  American ADSL networks have long ago converted to ethernet.  There are still a number of ISPs in Ontario/Québec whose AHSSPI links are limited to ATM technology because apparently, this is all Bell can  offer in certain wire centres.

57.  Why is this related to this R&V ? Because the Commission failed to do due diligence before rendering its 2008-108 decision and blindly accepted Bell’s statements that there was congestion. It failed to investigate whether Bell Canada had misused funds generated by the GAS service to upgrade portions not used by GAS, and then restrict GAS with throttling because of congestion due to lack of capacity increases on the old segments still used by GAS.

58.  This is the reason my Application had mentioned that the Commission should consider the upcoming costs analysis to be filed by Bell Canada on July 10th to ensure that funds generated by GAS over the last few years have been re-invested in GAS infrastructure upgrades.

Appendix 1

Description of TCP flow control

59.  The 2 peers in a TCP session adjust packet sending rate based on measured round trip time and by detecting undelivered packets. To use a telephone conversation analogy, when the line is good, one speaker will say a complete telephone number without pause and then wait for the other to acknowledge he got all 7 digits. When line conditions are bad, he may say the first 3 digits and wait for acknowledgement and then proceed with the last 4 digits and wait for acknowledgement, And when line conditions are very bad, he will wait for acknowledgement after saying each digit. How many “digits you can say” without an acknowledgement is called a window size.  The lower the window size, the more “pauses” are inserted on the line while the sender waits for the recipient to acknowledge.

60.  TCP was designed to make most efficient use of available capacity. This is not a P2P characteristic, it is a characteristic common to all applications that use TCP, including the web (HTTP),  mail (SMTP) etc.

61.  The flow control is done at the TCP software level, which means that all applications that use TCP as session layer will behave exactly the same way on the Internet in terms of using all available bandwidth and managing congestion and line condition problems.

62.  When the sender detects that it has packets that have been unacknowledged for too long, it will resend the unacknowledged packet(s). (there are other ways to cause sender to resend a packet).  As well, the sender will reduce its window size. This will result in suboptimal use of the line, reducing throughput because the sender will have to pause regularly to wait for acknowledgements.

63.  After an “event” where the window size was reduced, the sender will slowly increase the window size again to test the waters in case line conditions have improved. If this was a temporary “blip”, the transmission eventually resumes at its optimal throughput. If the line conditions have not improved, further packet losses will be encountered which will keep the window size low and thus keep the throughput low.

64.  In spring of 2008, I performed packet traces and found that BitTorrent flows had sustained packet loss rates between 20 and 30%.  To prevent peers from raising throughput after a dropped packet (since there is not much actual congestion), the DPI equipment must constantly drop packets to simulate a permanently poor/congested link.

65.  HOWEVER, for every packet that the DPI equipment purposefully destroys and which never arrives to destination, it means that the sender must eventually resend that packet, and this increases the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. If 25% of packets are destroyed by Bell’s DPI equipment, this increases the amount of data the sender has to send by 25%.

66.  Bell Canada’s actions can also impact some innocent sender in another continent. If he had intended to send 1 megabytes of data to a Canadian user, but Bell Canada’s DPI equipment forces him to send 1.25 megabytes, he may  incur higher  transmission costs (especially if sent from a mobile phone).

67.   It must be noted that on the Internet, dropping packets is the accepted practice to handle congestion. HOWEVER,  on the internet, a transit provider that would have a sustained  a 25% rate of packet loss for 40% of the day every day of the week would quickly lose all its customers and go bankrupt. Only a monopoly would survive such under-provisioning of lines because customers would have nowhere else to go. Congestion problems are normally temporary in nature.

Appendix 2

How the Reset bit works

68.  On the subject of the CAIP et al.’s  question of   “RST injection”.  The Comcast implementation achieved
its goal of slowing down traffic by simulating one peer having “hung up” without warning.

69.  This is done with the DPI equipment modifying the RST bit field in the packet header.1 This tells the packet’s recipient to abruptly end any communications using this TCP session and that it must be torn down unilaterally without handshake.

70.  Consider  computers A and B having setup a TCP session between port A-3000 and B-5000.  All is fine and dandy and packets flow in both directions. But B crashes and reboots.  At that point, B is no longer aware of the former link to A. And when A sends it a packet from its port 3000 to B’s port 5000, B will reply with a packet having the Reset bit set, telling A that this session no longer exists. At this point, A destroys this session without further handshakes with B.  A can then re-establish a new session with B at which point, both A and B will be able to communicate again.

71.  In the context of throttling, when a packet from B to A arrives with a reset bit having been set by the DPI equipment, A immediately stops communicating with B. However, B still has a valid session with A and it may take some time before B realises that A no longer has a valid TCP session with it.

72.  Eventually, A will again connect to B and start exchanging data again. But the disruption caused by the reset bit causes delays and reduced throughput.

1 This also involves recalculating the packet’s checksum and changing it so that the recipient doesn’t realise that the packet was changed in transit.

“I hope to see the Consumer Unions Reply, if any,” says Ottawa Gal.

Thanks for taking the trouble, Jean-François, and thanks Ottawa Gal.

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

Starting today Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, will be, “made available,” says Spotify.

But only to UK users. Which is passing strange since Anderson is an American.

“Personally narrated by Anderson, Free considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being challenged by a growing flood of free goods – newspapers, DVDs, T-shirts, phones, even holiday flights,” says the story, adding:

“The audiobook supports today’s hardback launch of Free, published by Random House.”

But of course, Free isn’t free. Listed at $26.99, Amazon is flogging it for $17.81 .

Which is also passing strange because it’s all about how companies get rich by charging nothing.

It’s, “essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that ‘information wants to be free’,” says a review in The New Yorker.

“This is the first audiobook we’ve ever included in our catalogue,” says Spotify. “We’re going to trial it, see what people think and who knows, maybe this is the start of something new for us.”

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Spotify -  Chris Anderson’s Free, the first audiobook on Spotify, July 2, 2009
The New Yorker - Priced to Sell, July 5, 2009

“This kids is ready to attack the Google Street View car with his new shovel: http://tinyurl.com/nwg2f6 #streetview,” says the streetviewfunny Twitter page.

And of the second pic, “Google captures a family and their pet chicken - http://bit.ly/TAoqo #streetview“.

In accordance with strict Gargoyle privacy policies, the faces are blurred so there’s absolutely no way anyone would ever be able to identify the featured individuals, even though the street address is in plain sight and the surrounds are easily recognizable.

We  excluded the addresses in our own effort to protect the innocent, but we can say the scenes are from Spain.

(http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/tech/story/a-present-on-her-shoe isn’t bad either. )

Cheers!

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

The news comes in response to the open letter written by Free Software founder Richard Stallman about the “Mono problem,” says Heise Online.

Says Stallman »»»

Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.

The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn’t make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.

We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever possible.

But Reichle-Schmehl says this isn’t the case, and the default installation hasn’t changed, stating »»»

… in answer to your open letter Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C# I like to explain a small misunderstanding that seems to have been spread pretty wide recently.

Debian has not to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy. The default installation – or to be more precise: The default GNOME installation (there are installation media which install an KDE, Xfce or LXDE desktop by default, too) – hasn’t changed. It still installs a more or less minimal Gnome Desktop without tomboy and without mono. As far as I know there haven’t been major changes in package selection for the GNOME installation media, nor are there major changes planed.

What really has changed is that one of our meta packages, which are mainly used to install a set of packages. Indeed our meta package to install everything gnome related got a dependency on Tomboy and will indeed pull in mono, too.

That doesn’t have any effect on the default installation (which doesn’t use that package) nor does it effect a major part of Debian’s GNOME users, who prefer to install gnome-desktop (a meta package to pull in a simple GNOME Desktop) or even the gnome-core meta-package (which installs the bare necessities to run GNOME applications). Please see the numbers at our popularity contest system for yourself.

So, Debian didn’t change the default installation (whatever that’s supposed to be) but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).

Stay tuned.

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Heise Online - Debian - Mono is not in our default installation, July 2, 2009
Stallman - Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C#, June 26, 2009
Reichle-Schmehl - Dear Richard, June 30, 2009

Steve Jobs has much in common with the auld grey heads who run the corporate movie and music industries. For example, he loves DRM,  although he says he doesn’t, and he hates competition, although he says he’s all for it.

When computer upstart Psystar had the unmitigated gall to launch an affordable Mac clone, Stevo hit the roof and sued Psystar out of existence.

Or so he’d thought. But it’s back.

And not quietly.

Starting at $600, its Open 3 runs not only on Mac OS X (of course), but also on Windows Vista and XP ($550), and Linux.

And its Psystar Open 7, with an Intel Xeon processor and good for up to 12 gigs of RAM, is being sold for or $1,500.

“When life gives you apples, make apple sauce,” it says in a letter to customers, quoted by TUAW.

Here’s the legal table of events, as it’s outlined on the Wikipedia »»»

The end-user license agreement for Mac OS X forbids third-party installations of Mac OS X, and Psystar’s Mac clone is in violation of that agreement.^[2] However, Psystar argues that Apple’s prohibition against third-party installations will not hold up in court: “What if Honda said that, after you buy their car, you could only drive it on the roads they said you could?”^[2] Psystar says it will continue to sell the Open system, adding “We’re not breaking any laws.”^[2]

On July 3, 2008, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in the District Court of Northern California.^[3]

On August 28, 2008, Psystar Corporation responded to Apple’s claims of copyright infringement, and also countersued Apple for anti-competitive practices, monopolistic behavior, and copyright misuse.^[4][5] This countersuit was dismissed on November 18, 2008.^[6]

On December 22, 2008, Psystar opened the claim that Apple “is prohibited from bringing action against Psystar for the alleged infringement of one or more of the plaintiff’s copyrights for failure to register said copyrights with the copyright office as required” by law.^[7]

On February 5, 2009, Psystar won a round as a modified abuse of copyright claim against Apple under Judge William Alsup, opening the door to a potential nullification of the Apple-only hardware rule in Apple’s EULA.^[8]

In April 2009, Apple alleged that Psystar were withholding financial information relating to their company and that “at the deposition regarding Psystar’s revenues, profits, assets and liabilities (including investors, lenders or other sources of financial support), taken on March 20, 2009, Psystar’s CEO and founder Rudy Pedraza, the person designated by Psystar to testify on this topic, would not answer basic questions about Psystar’s financials.” ^[9] Psystar countered that they have never produced monthly, quarterly or yearly statements, that they lost some documents when moving premises, and that they have produced the requested information where available. ^[10]

On May 26, 2009, Psystar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Regardless, the company continues to sell their computers with Apple’s Mac OS X installed on them.^[11]

On July 2, 2009, Pystar announced that they would emerge from Chapter 11 protection. ^[12]

Definitely stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

Tom’s an Australia economist and regular contributor who at one point in his life was an Internet Service Provider — an ISP.

The topic of net neutrality is major and yesterday he posted an item in which he states there’s no such thing

Says Rocky »»»

From where I sit, if the demand goes up, you up your network capacity to accommodate.

Controlling how individuals surf in order to not keep investing isn’t the way to go.  There are plenty of opportunities to make money, even when the demand goes up.

Net Neutrality is most threatened when an entity has absolute control (and no transparency) on the population’s ability to have online choice.

I think different ISPs should have the ability to provide different choices for internet access (as we do — a capped and an unlimited service).  In my mind, so long as choice exists (which is what Bell and the like are trying to remove), the population can select, knowingly being aware of what they’re getting.

I also think some of the discussion Tom speaks of doesn’t consider the varying technologies.

Cable is affected in clusters (by locale) but DSL isn’t, so disproportionate use becomes very technology specific and pretty much subjective.

Bottom line, if you control traffic in any obstructive way (slowing/stopping/filtering/etc), it’s for profit margins, or to disadvantage competition. So from a law or regulatory perspective, I’d say, if an ISP doesn’t believe in Net Neutrality principles that’s fine.

But if they’re a regulated monopoly regulated to strictly be a dumb pipe or unbiased carrier, they have an obligation to not impose their retail way of business on other ISPs.

It’s anti-competitive!

Transfer of blame

Yesterday among other things, Tom stated»»»

There’s something about owning/running a network you built every step of the way the Telcos/RBOCs will never quite grok. You know every point of failure, potential failure, chewing gum and shoelace repair location in the whole network. It’s yours. You created it. Therefore, when some little kid comes along with Napster and tries to take it down by filling up all the MRTG graphs, you start a battle of wits.

It’s you versus the kid. He wants to rape your entire bandwidth and you have another 25,000 customers don’t really want him too.

So you watch graphs, you reconfigure routers; you purchase expensive $24,000 Alteon smart switches so you can traffic shape the little kid.

However, he gets his mates in on the Napster thing.

Suddenly there’s not just one leak in the dam; the whole network in multiple locations around the country is holier than a set of fishnet stockings.

You’re left with no choice: all the Napster traffic has to be routed via an alternative source. You buy a satellite feed and divert all the P2P traffic straight out the dish on top of the roof to Pas-8.

Hah! fixed his wagon and his little mates. They’re now Sprint’s problem. The other customers click on blissfully unaware you just single-handedly fought off the invading Mongol hordes to ensure the MRTG graph didn’t blip over 90 %

What’s all this about? There’s no such thing as net neutrality.

And in a comment post to Readers’ Writes, he says

@Devil’s Advocate Says: “…when some little kid comes along with Napster and tries to take it down…”

Shortsightedness (or lack of foresight) always seems to be followed by transfer of blame.

There are very obvious reasons providers would even have to think of traffic management.
1) They didn’t anticipate the growth rate, so SUFFICIENT RESOURCES weren’t built in;
2) They continued to OVERSELL what they already couldn’t provide, by an astronomical factor;
3) They began operating an array of THEIR OWN CONTENT services, and needed to steal back some of the resources they didn’t have.

@RW - you forgot the fourth thing.

4) Bandwidth to the USA for countries not in the USA costs a bloody fortune. In fact to be precise, 1n 1994 I was paying $88,000 for a 2 Megabyte link (that’s one DSL connection worth of bandwidth) from Sydney to Coos Bay Oregon.
So don’t try to tell me that I wasnt warranted in trying to stop little Johnny. I was.

The arrogance of Americans and Canadians in regards to the amount of bandwidth available and what it shoud cost is amazing.
The orignal Internet was USA concentric - that is no longer necessarily the case - yet it is cheaper often to buy a link from singapore to America than from singapore to Malaysia (just across the harbour).
Outside of the USA ISP’s have to backhaul 10,000 miles in some instances just to connect. To have that backhaul used up by just 2 or 5 or 10 users is bullshit. That is reality.

There are 6 billion people in this world of those only 335 million live on the American Northern Continent. Why is it that the American minority see fit to instill their standards, expectations and consumer waste habits on the rest of the world ?

/Angry Rant Mode /off

@ Robert - Yep - P2P is great from the ISP point of view if it community based. This rtequires every ISP to install a Torrent Seeder and an ED2K server. However, I can’t recomend this superior technology solution at this time for obvious legal reasons.

@surfer and @dresdnik - Yes we do already pay for content. ut not in the $35,00 blueray example. We pay for content in that the cvontent uses up part of out monthly allowance - ISP capacity (preventing other activities from occurring that might benefit the GDP) and of course in Disk storage, hardware expendioture at the local, ISP and RBOC levels. So actually, a 90 minute movie if you download it using P2P actually costs $1.05 in the USA, about $1.65 in Canada. I blogged about this in January this year in the real value of a DVD movie.

@ Readers Write - Smoker on a bus ? Yep in my original article I stated the smoker has two choices - smoke and upset everyone or get off the bus and catch the next one. - Unfortunately we really do only have one Internet Bus. So like Mommy says - play nicely and the toys will last a lot longer.

@Reader’s Write - Solar Cell Battery Recharge Time - You have a point but as an economist I have to retort - it’s a rather selfish one. Your battery recharge time don’t affect the GDP of the entire country - just yours.

And on the subject of Turd Sandwich - there is a saying, you cant polish a turd. Unfortunately the Mythbusters proved that one wrong –> http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html

P2P does affect the GDP of the entire country - and not just the content industry. I have tried to make suggestions to them, they don’t really want to listen. I am referring to every E-Commerce page on the Internet is harder to to get to BECAUSE of P2P traffic - both genuine downloader traffic AND industry spoling attempts.

Does that mean you should stop using P2P software ?

NO! But just maybe, we could all conserve it a little bit - sort of like letting the old lady cross on the pediastrian crossing when you dont have too.

Just an idea, no-one has to give up their selfish P2P practices (This statement excludes the old folks home IT dude - you keep on downloading at full speed) - I’m just suggesting that during the fianncial crisis it is a bit unfair for all of us to continue as before and put our heads in the sand…. “I’m not hurting anyone, I’m just downloading a couple of files that have already been ripped.” - Great download them - but just like turning off the light switch to conserve power - possibly we could all utilise P2P in a more eco concsious manner. (Eco towards other Internet users).

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

If there was an online Canadian parliament, law professor Michael Geist would be an MP. There isn’t — not officially, anyway — but meanwhile, he  continues to point up items of interest to anyone who cares about what’s happening, here, and yesterday, he cited VisibleGovernment.ca, which launched Beers For Canada.

It encourages Canadians to, “support transparency by buying your country a beer,”  he said.

Of course, we shouldn’t need special projects to make sure our elected representatives do what they’re supposed to do. But the sad reality is: it’s necessary and VisibleGovernment.ca says it wants government leaders and organizations to, “share their information openly, and work with developers to build tools and websites that make government information more accessible to average citizens”.

The organisationm says funds raised by Beers for Canada will be used for:

• Creating new tools and websites that encourage more open communication between government and citizens.
• Launching the Code For Canada application design competition that awards prizes to people who build apps that provide visualization, analysis, and access to federal government data sets.
• Working with other open government organizations like The Sunlight Foundation in the US and MySociety in the UK to bring tools they’ve created to Canadian screens, and to share Canadian-made applications with others.
• Encouraging government openness in public forums, helping government organizations to share their data, showcasing examples of open government, and promoting the benefits of transparency in public office.

July, 2009

With thanks to Ralph, we’ll be bringing you more of these topical, and biting, cartoons every now and then.

Meanwhile, Chappatte does a twice-weekly cartoon in the International Herald Tribune, as wel as producing works for the daily Le Temps, in Geneva, and the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in Zurich, says Globe Cartoons, adding:

“He is also a curious blend of Swiss and Lebanese origins, born in Pakistan, raised in Singapore and in Switzerland, he lives now in Geneva after three years spent in New York.
He has an equal passion for World Affairs and dark bitter chocolate.”

(Cheers, catflap)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

Some Vista users say they’re getting the Ultimate shaft CNet News
Microsoft promised that by purchasing the pricey Ultimate edition of Vista users would get all kinds of extras. However, for many, those extras turned out to be little more than a few screensavers and a poker game, prompting some significant grousing. Now, that frustration has turned to anger after Microsoft offered its pre-order program for Windows 7. Through July 11, Microsoft is offering a steep discount for those moving to cheaper versions of Windows 7, but nothing for those who want to stay on Ultimate. Under the terms of Microsoft’s discount pre-order program, users can buy an upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional at roughly half the list price, but the Ultimate version is offered at the full $219 price. Among the versions of Windows Vista Ultimate that Microsoft sold was this limited-edition package signed by Bill Gates. John Dabarno, a purchaser from Montreal, said that Microsoft is alienating exactly the wrong crowd. Dabarno notes that he is the person that friends and family turn to for computer advice. Indeed he has already pre-ordered Windows 7 copies to update his wife’s desktop and laptop, but feels stuck on what to do with his Vista Ultimate machine.

Responding to privacy concerns, Facebook streamlines user controls Mercury News
Amid mounting concerns about Internet privacy, Facebook on Wednesday announced plans to streamline its user controls by introducing a “Unified Privacy Page.” The Palo Alto social-networking leader said it was taking action to address common complaints among its more than 200 million users worldwide about privacy. The company also announced that it is phasing out familiar regional networks such as “Silicon Valley” to minimize confusion. Facebook credits its growth to fostering a culture that assures privacy and encourages authenticity. But in the past, Facebook has also engendered controversy by gathering data without user consent — a practice later reversed amid a user backlash. On Wednesday, Facebook also sought to allay puzzlement and concerns over its fledgling “Everyone” posting feature, which it introduced in March. The feature, Facebook says, eventually will enable users to broadcast messages, photos and video far beyond their personal social networks and to the Internet at large. Facebook is vague about products, but acknowledged they could take the form of bulletin boards or forums on a vast array of topics, as well as a new searchable database. The “Everyone” initiative has helped revive questions about Facebook’s dedication to privacy safeguards. Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, portrayed the latest changes as a public relations gimmick.

Judge throws book at Usenet.com in RIAA lawsuit Ars Technica
A court has found newsgroup provider Usenet.com liable for copyright infringement. Advertising to file-sharers, putting “warez” in your site’s meta tags, and tampering with evidence don’t amuse federal judges.

Jackson’s death unleashes barrage of online scams Associated Press
Minutes after any big celebrity dies, Internet swindlers get to work. They pump out specially created spam e-mails and throw up malicious Web sites to infect victims’ computers, hoping to capitalize on the sudden high demand for information. Michael Jackson’s death was no different, and security experts say the fraud artists are just getting started. The scams started cropping up almost instantaneously as Jackson’s death was still hitting the news. As days have gone by, they’ve gotten more sophisticated — and dangerous. Jackson’s death “took a lot of people by surprise — the spammers, too,” said Dermot Harnett, principal analyst for anti-spam engineering at Symantec, the Cupertino-based security software maker. “It might take them some time to really pounce on this issue. They are catching up pretty quickly, though.” Any major world event, such as the recent protests in Iran, triggers a barrage of Internet attacks. Security experts say the malicious traffic associated with Jackson’s death will most likely match and perhaps exceed those of other big spamming campaigns, such as those connected with the swine flu outbreak and Saddam Hussein’s execution.

Microsoft chucks vomit ad CNet news
Earlier this week, we were all rather intrigued by the appearance of a Microsoft ad, in which a wife borrows her husband’s laptop and suffers a technicolor nightmare when she espies a site that he has been, um, enjoying. By Wednesday night, however, Microsoft had second thoughts about the pulling power of puke. The ad has been pulled from the IE8videos channel on YouTube. It’s also has been removed from the BrowsefortheBetter.com site, which is part of the ad campaign. The vomit ad’s slot has been replaced by a tag that says “coming soon.” This could have meant that a new ad is coming soon, or that the upchuck was uploaded too soon.

MCPS Finances Hit By Interest Rate Slump Billboard
The sudden fall in interest rates has forced the U.K.’s Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) to implement a far-reaching review of operations in order to cut costs. Speaking at the Music Publishers Association (MPA) annual general meeting (AGM) in London, PRS for Music chief executive Steve Porter revealed that what he dubbed the “interest rate meteor” was projected to result in £4 million ($5.6 million) shortfall in MCPS finances in 2010. MCPS, the subsidiary company of the MPA, is part of the PRS for Music collecting society brand. Porter said that MCPS distributed income to publishers for 2008 was £184.3 million ($259.8 million), an increase of £8 million ($11.3 million) on the original budgeted figure, which he described as a “pretty strong performance.” However, he predicted a 10-15% reduction in revenue from audio products in 2009.

No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam Computerworld
The meet-up in San Francisco last month had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party. The inaugural get-together of the burgeoning NoSQL community crammed 150 attendees into a meeting room at CBS Interactive. Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain’s heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of slow, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data.

Rules Set for Distribution of Broadband Stimulus Funds Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration on Wednesday published the criteria it will use to hand out billions of dollars in stimulus funds aimed at developing the infrastructure to deliver broadband Internet access to areas that are underserved or without access. The Commerce and Agriculture departments will consider projects that provide wired or wireless access starting at low-end DSL speeds, but will give priority to ones promising higher speeds. An area will be considered “underserved” by broadband, and thus eligible for grants, if half or fewer of the households can get wired broadband today, among other criteria. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday said the U.S. lags behind more than a dozen other countries in terms of Internet access.

Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm CNN
As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone. He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter, commenting on everything from the weather to the state of his crops to his son’s first tractor ride and even last night’s cheeseburger. “Got rained out trying to finish up planting corn. Only 90 acres left. Maybe it will dry up today and I can finish Lord willin’,” he wrote in one recent post. “Just sold some more wheat, now, I wait for God to provide the harvest so I can fill the contracts,” the 39-year-old said in another. “Eat more bread!” Tucker is proof that smartphones are starting to put down roots in rural America.

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July, 2009