- MSN shuts down free chat
In an unprecedented move, Microsoft Network next
month will close its chatrooms in most of its 34 markets around the world
and will restrict access in North America, Japan, Brazil, and Israel,
the Associated
Press reports. That includes thousands of UK-based chatrooms used
by millions of people, reports The
Independent, adding that - with this action - MSN has "declared war
on Internet pedophiles." Online children's advocates welcomed
the move, but with qualifications summed up by Rachel O'Connell of Lancaster
University, who studies children's online behaviors. Professor O'Connell
told The Independent that kids (not to mention sexual predators) will
quite likely find work-arounds. The
Register's and other reports suggest additional MSN motivations for
shutting down chat: a company policy to turn free services into paid ones
(chat has been free to subscribers), the cost of monitoring chat, and
a strategic decision to grow the instant-messaging part of its business
(one of those work-arounds Professor O'Connell suggested, though generally
safer than chat), as well as to minimize abuse (such as spammers' mining
email addresses in chatrooms) and protect children. The
Economist, too, zoomed in on non-child-protection reasons for the
decision. CNET
and the Sydney
Morning Herald had reactions from other large ISPs.
As for the new restrictions on chat in the US,
"MSN will require users ... to subscribe to at least one other paid MSN
service," according to the AP. "That way, the company will have credit
card numbers to make it easier to track down users who violate MSN's terms
of use. The sessions will not be moderated," and - according to TheJournalNews.com
in New York - "will be able to track every MSN Chat user's real name,
address and phone number, using their credit cards. Customers could be
turned over to police or have their subscriptions canceled if there is
abuse." Here's a 4-minute audio
interview about the MSN decision with SafeKids.com's
Larry Magid, which aired in the UK this week.
- Porn surge on Web: Filter company study
"The number of pornography pages on the Internet
has exploded to 260 million," a 20-fold increase over the past five years,
reports Australian IT, citing a study by filtering company N2H2. The
growth figure refers to the number of porn pages in N2H2's blocking database,
which raises the question of whether the database's growth rate matches
that of porn on the Web - and how representative the database's size was
in 1998, compared to this year's. We wonder because of what Ed O'Neill,
head of research at the Online Computer Library Center, told us in a recent
phone interview. Ed said that growth of the pornography portion of the
Web has been fairly constant from year to year. The latest
data from a multi-year Web measurement project of the OCLC (with 45,000
member libraries in 84 countries) show "a little more than 100,000 sites"
publishing sexually explicit content - approximately 3% of the part of
the Web that's publicly available, up 1% from the year before. N2H2's
findings refer to pages and the OCLC to sites, a bit "apples and oranges,"
but we appreciate the balance the OCLC provides when looking at N2H2's
disturbing figures. The 9/23 N2H2 presser can be found on the company's
Press Releases
page (no direct URL available).
- Beware the IM pop-ups
Have you noticed these? A new kind of pop-up -
the sort brought to you by instant-messaging programs? Well, Wired
News says crooks have joined advertisers in sending these, and you
and your children will want to be aware of the latter's tricks. "Last
Thursday a scammer sent what security experts call a 'phishing' notice
to AOL members through the [Microsoft] Messenger service. A gray pop-up
window appeared on AOL users' computers, allegedly from 'AOL Billing,'
and instructed them to visit a website - updatedp.com - to correct problems
with their credit card numbers." The page looked like an official AOL
page but suspiciously asked for the user's name, address, credit card
number, mother's maiden name, birthday, Social Security number, driver's
license number, master screen name and password! AOL thought it had blocked
this new type of pop-up and had told its customers so. Tell your family
not to heed IM-carried pop-up ads - just "x" out of them right away.
- Ulifeline.org
The "online behavioral support system for young
adults" is literally a lifeline for some of the site's visitors. Suicide
is the second-leading cause of death among college-age Americans, Wired
News reports, and this site is there for young people far from home
and other familiar support systems. It has received 1.3 million visitors
to date. The Internet's convenience and anonymity help students talk about
their problems. "Even very depressed students who have stopped going to
class and socializing with friends continue to log on," Wired News reports.
But the service also recognizes the need for human contact. It's customized
for each university, linking students to mental health services in their
own communities. "Ulifeline assesses students for suicide risk and a variety
of other disorders simultaneously, issues a diagnosis and recommends steps
to take next," according to Wired News, which adds: "With demands for
mental health services on campus at record highs and students more wired
than ever, school officials now say online support could save those who
might otherwise fall through the cracks."
- Another heads-up on camera phones
This Washington Post piece doesn't look at
the implications for children, but it illustrates that the problem has
gained a beachhead in the US. Fitness clubs and YMCAs are aware of privacy
invasions that have occurred in Europe and Asia. Locker room photos showing
up on the Internet "has led to the banning of camera phones at fitness
clubs in Hong Kong and at bathhouses in Japan, according to reports on
Wired.com [cited by the Post]. The Web site has reported that camera-phone
photos taken of naked women in a public sauna in South Korea have shown
up on the Internet and that police have arrested people in Japan for using
camera phones to take pictures up the skirts of unsuspecting women at
train stations." See an earlier MSNBC
piece for concerns in Europe about picture phones and kids.
- California's anti-spam law
The new law is the most far-reaching of any of
the 35 other state anti-spam laws to date, CNET
reports. But in a separate article, CNET suggests that the law's wording
is so broad that it looks like, in signing it, Gov. Gray Davis simply
moved California's debate over spam from the legislature floor to the
courts.
- School gadget rules
Palo Alto High School "senior Stav Raz has memorized
her cell phone keypad so she doesn't even have to look at it while quietly
messaging friends during class," Yahoo News reports. She is not alone, nor
is her school - though its student body is probably among the more tech-literate
in the US. "Palo Alto High is ahead of the curve and an exception. Its
school board updated its computer policies in June to include PDAs, basically
allowing their use as long as they don't interfere with class." Most US
schools and school boards are behind their students' tech curve, so teachers
are often taking matters into their own hands. "Some teachers configure
student seats in a U-shape instead of rows, for easier monitoring of computer
screens. They set rules on when laptop screens can be up or down. They
listen for keyboard taps, knowing that if students are typing a mile a
minute during a lecture, they're probably messaging someone instead of
listening. And cell phones that ring in class are often confiscated until
school's over." It's an interesting article about this tension between
the ups and downs of technology at school - and the 21st-century version
of passing notes in class.
- New thing: Limiting people's Net time
Providers of broadband (as opposed to dial-up)
Internet service are beginning to put limits on their biggest users' use,
CNET reports. CNET mentions a broadband customer of Comcast's
in Philadelphia who got a letter from Comcast saying he'd been using the
Internet too much - he was a "network abuser." When he called, Comcast
wouldn't tell him how much bandwidth he was allowed but said that if he'd
cut his usage in half, he'd be fine. A Comcast spokesperson told CNET
the two-month-old policy only affects about 1% of users, that "some of
those people were downloading the equivalent of 90 movies in a given month."
The user CNET cites said he's "a British immigrant" who "used his cable
modem service to watch the BBC, have video conversations, and trade DVD-quality
home movies with his family in the United Kingdom."
- Cell phones-cum-walkie talkies
Is this one of those "annoying" new technologies
that everyone will want? Wired
News thinks so. At least, "push-to-talk," as it's called, will make
life even harder for legislators trying to ban mobile phones from cars
or public places. Push-to-talk is "radio technology frequently used by
police officers, truckers, taxi drivers and IT managers," and it's "coming
to many cell phones near you," Wired News reports. All the major cell
phone companies plan to join push-to-talk leader Nextel Communications
in "rolling out nationwide cell-phone walkie-talkies" this year. And,
Wired News says, "it's for everyone, from men radioing their wives from
the bread aisle of the supermarket to teens arranging meetings with friends
in the schoolyard." One company, fastmobile.com in Chicago, plans to offer
"walkie-talkie-style instant voice messaging ("fastchat"), photo and video
messaging ("fastpix"), IM ("fastxt"), and email ("fastmail") to users
worldwide. That comes with a catch, of course: fastmobile works with AT&T,
Cingular, and T-Mobile, not Verizon or Sprint.
- 'Illegal but not immoral'
That's the bottom line for the "pragmatic moral
code" of US university students - at least at Pennsylvania State University
- where file-sharing, plagiarism, under-age drinking, etc. are concerned,
the New
York Times reports. Part of it is just ease of access: "Penn State
recently made the student center ... entirely wireless, so students do
not even have to dial up to get on the Internet. In comfortable armchairs,
they sit clicking on Google searches, their ears attached to iPods, cellphones
a hand away.... Many courses put all materials - textbook excerpts, articles,
syllabuses - online. Residence halls offer fast broadband access - which
studies say makes people more likely to download." Administrators realize
that, now that it's all so convenient, they have to educate students about
the ethics of it all - as well as put a cap on the data they're downloading
via the university network (whether information or music).
All this reminds us of something Herb Lin, a senior
scientist at the US National Research Council, said to us in an interview:
"If you increase the hassle factor and the wait time associated with using
the Internet, many kids will want to use it less and will find it less
desirable," though it may be too late to increase the hassle factor at
Penn State and other universities. Perhaps at home? [For more from Herb,
who directed the milestone 2002 report, "Youth, Pornography, and the Internet,"
see our feature, "The dad behind NetSafeKids.org,"
9/5/03.]
- P2P hit film: 'Shaolin Soccer'
Don't let film companies fool you, this story
seems to say - file-sharing isn't all bad for them. "Shaolin Soccer" -
"a comedy about a group of Shaolin monks who blend their kung fu skills
with soccer" - is a perfect case in point, Wired
News points out. Released in Hong Kong in 2001, it became a huge hit
there and a "smash hit with file-sharers" worldwide, Wired News reports.
Film companies hire cyberdetective agencies like BayTSP (see this
BBC piece on BayTSP) to sniff out illegal film file-sharing, but they
also get some extremely useful marketing data when their "detectives"
tell them that Shaolin Soccer, for example, has been on file- sharers'
Top 10 list for the past four months. Miramax has delayed US release several
times, waiting to maximize the film's success here, it told Wired News.
Looks like the US release is coming soon now.
- Israel to 'follow suit'
The Israeli music industry this week announced
its news "zero tolerance" policy toward file-sharing. The decision to
pursue legal action by Israel's branch of the International Federation
of the Phonographic Industry, the global music industry's trade body,
mirrors that of the RIAA, Reuters
reports.
- Songwriters lobby against piracy
About 50 of Nashville's top song writers lobbied
against file-sharing on Capitol Hill this week, the Associated Press reports. They asked lawmakers
to support the RIAA in its anti-piracy efforts. The New York Times reports, however, that the music
bigger piracy problem is overseas.
- Oops, wrong person
The RIAA dropped one of its lawsuits this week,
saying it was a case of mistaken identity. The music industry trade association
did, however, reserve the right to file again "if and when circumstances
warrant," The
Register reports. The woman it sued, Sarah Seabury Ward of Massachusetts,
is a 66-year-old artist who said she's never used file-sharing and anyway
has an Apple computer, which can't run Kazaa software. The Boston Globe reports that Ward was accused of illegally sharing more
than 2,000 songs and held liable for "up to $150,000" per song (or $300
million). The Register's dripping sarcasm is tough to resist: "Having
attacked naval cadets, students, young children, and now innocent senior
citizens, the music business appears not to fear the consequences of its
litigation."
- Winning some, losing some
The RIAA faces five more years of file-sharing
growth, according to a UK study cited by Reuters,
but the picture is not entirely bleak for the music business. The study,
by Informa Media, found that lost sales (due to file-sharing and CD-burning)
will reach $4.7 billion by 2008, up from $2.4 billion for 2002. But online
music sales (of CDs from retail Web sites and songs downloaded from services
like Apple's iTunes) will reach $3.9 billion by 2008, up from $1.1 billion
in 2002. Informa Media's explanation for file-sharing growth despite lawsuits,
etc., is the growth of broadband Internet connections in homes. Our thanks
to BNA Internet Law for pointing
this item out.
- Hollywood after file-sharers too
Tactics range from night vision goggles for security
guards in movie theaters (to detect digital video cams) to copyright education
programs in schools. See a Washington
Post roundup of reportage on the movie version of the peer-to-peer
story.
