Tying the Threads Together
Essays
6/5/2000; 7:15:31 AM April 18, 2000: A brief essay tying together many international stories, showing that the ability to simply run to another country if things get hot in your own may not necessarily be as viable as people might think.

CACIB Troubles Country Watch: Britain6/5/2000; 7:15:29 AM April 17, 2000: I hope that Britain's example of how badly things can go wrong when you rule that content providers are responsible for content sends a clear warning to other countries (and courts!) who might consider ruling this way. Slashdot today has an article about the British site that's protesting the Godfrey result and the subsequent wild censoring, the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain. The CACIB had to run to the United States because their British ISP shut them down, fearing they would libel someone!One wonders if the ISP didn't think at least a little about the legitimacy that might give the organization... but nevertheless, the ISP is on the right side of the law... and that's horrible.

ZDNet: News: Judge to rule against Bidder's Edge General IP Issues6/5/2000; 7:15:27 AM April 17, 2000: "A federal judge said he plans to issue a preliminary injunction against Bidder's Edge Inc. in a suit brought by eBay Inc., a victory for the big online auctioneer in a battle that could have wide implications for Internet commerce."This has been a long time coming and opens the door to more debates then you can shake a stick at. "Daniel Bergeson, a partner at Bergeson & Eliopoulos LLP in San Jose, said eBay's argument is simple. 'When you visit a site, you can't take that information and use it for your own purposes, especially for commercial purposes,' he said."I think in this case, "commercial purposes" on the part of Bidder's Edge is pretty clear. But how about search engines? Is that commercial use of site data... or just use of the site data that happens to have advertisements on it, independent of the search results?I think that the only consistent answer is that no, you CAN'T just abscond with another sites data and use it for commercial purposes... and yes, search engines are 'commercial purposes'. However, with search engines, a good case can and should be made that they are already common practice, and that it is well known how to stop polite search engines from searching your site by using a standardized file called robots.txt.A reason I think this is fair is that it cuts both ways. It also means that nobody can walk off with your weblog and proceed to make big bucks with it. It doesn't just protect eBay, it levels the field for everybody. The alternative, that you can walk off with content and profit off of it, results in big money always winning.(And a gentle reminder that if you give permission to somebody, they can do whatever you gave them permission to do. Userland's weblog search engine would be unaffected by this ruling, because you have to explicitly ask them to index your weblog.)

The digital divide is bunk Digital Divide6/5/2000; 7:15:23 AM April 17, 2000: The article provides a much needed dose of common sense into the debate, but it does overstate its case a bit.

"By far the most important factors facilitating or inhibiting Internet access are education and age, and not income—nor race/ethnicity or gender, each of which accounts for less than a 5 percent change in rates of access and is statistically insignificant."

See, there is a digital divide, but the true divide is between those who are online and those who aren't. That may seem like circular logic at first, but realize this is in stark opposition to the usual opinion on the topic, which insists it's the usual convenient race/gender/class excuses. Note: it's an excuse when you simply assume those are the causes, it's a valid reason when you have research and logic to back those reasons up... same standards as "the dog ate my homework"!Especially in this case, if you approach the problem as a race/class issue, and there's proof that it's not a factor, then you will accomplish precisely nothing... but I suppose you'll get re-elected doing it. There is a divide, but attack the root of the problem: Education. You can't do so much about age .

Can Napster be Stopped? No! Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:15:15 AM April 17, 2000: Well, to pick nits, yes, Napster itself can be stopped, as it depends on central servers. Maybe you can't stop it but you can make it as hard to use as it is to find FTP servers with warez, which for someone who is not "in the loop" is quite hard. Gnutella, on the other hand, is virtually provably impossible to block. If the protocol becomes encrypted or compressed, then the data it sends will look just like any other encrypted or compressed data, and the only other clue will be the traffic pattern, which I doubt will remain unique to Gnutella as others come up with perfectly legitimate uses for that protocol, like massive distributed processing.Update: Napster Takes a Nap: "Starting around 7 a.m. PDT Monday, servers and home pages for Napster, a popular service that allows Internet users to exchange MP3 music files, have been unavailable and disconnecting users." Napster's so easy to block it can even happen accidentally Thanks to Lawrence Lee for e-mailing me this link.

Real Work Personal Commentary6/5/2000; 7:15:12 AM April 16, 2000: I don't know why exactly, but I was thinking about my grandparents and what they think of my education in computer science.I was thinking of how to explain to them why what I do is hard enough to justify an education and that money they hear so much about. And I started wondering... if you could add up all of the person-hours spent on the processes invoked when you viewed this web page... from the web-browser and network connection you're using down to the silicon itself... how would that compare to the person-hours spent preparing for the invasion of Normandy, which I believe is still the largest military exercise ever (correction invited). My guess would be that the web-page view would be at least an order of magnitude greater, if not two or three. A bold claim, and I can't back it up. But who knows?(If you know enough to consider the question, draw the "technology tree" sometime that has everything necessary to create a web browser and a network to use it on. Don't forget the routers, the concept of a Turing machine, compilers, hardware, time to learn how to optimize the hardware, AND gates, OR gates, XOR gates, pipelines, caching, hard drives, RAM, fiber optics, modems/network, protocols, standarization, display technology, the science behind all of this stuff, input technology, time to test the technology, the list just goes on.)It's not that this is some startling revelation... but I think we should step back and think about how we got where we are sometimes. When I hit "Post Changes", how many millions of person-hours will I benefit from?If I have been able to see further than others, It is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. - Sir Isaac Newton

French Group Takes Yahoo to Court Over Nazi Site
Country Watch: France
6/5/2000; 7:15:09 AM April 16, 2000: Missed this one, dated last Tuesday. Mostly interesting because of the line "LICRA did not say how access to a worldwide Web site could be blocked in France only." A concrete example of international laws in conflict.

Suck: Project Zapster
Humor/Amusing
6/5/2000; 7:15:06 AM April 16, 2000: Not a site I visit often, but this is good...

The Wired Word Technology & Sociology6/5/2000; 7:15:00 AM April 14, 2000: (a là array) "The egalitarianism of the Internet is appealing, but it rests on an untenable assumption: not merely that all of us are created equal, but that all of us are equally meritorious and interesting. Thus we have news Web sites in which the opinions of readers are solicited ("What's Your View?") and displayed in a format that gives equal weight to the informed and the ignorant; at last count Washingtonpost.com had registered more than (!) 2,600 "opinions" about gay rights in Vermont. "Wrong. The egalitarianism rests on no such assumption, it results from the empowerment of everybody with a voice that anyone can hear. Other whining: "In making publication available to all, the Internet bypasses the editorial process that attempts to separate the wheat from the dross, the publishable from the unpublishable. ... It has no standards, because none are required." Also wrong. Not every website is equally popular; you can find your way to good writing on the net!'Weblogs' are a part of that, of course, but hardly even the only way of finding good writing on the net. Usenet's still around, among other things.

BetaNews - Metallica Sues Napster, Universities, Fans Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:14:52 AM April 14, 2000: (another hit for "array"... I like this article better then the mainstream outlets) "This will be the first time a band has directly filed suit against Napster, and the first time universities have been sued for allowing students to trade MP3s. The case will set a precedent for what legal action can be taken against the spread of digital music. "It's been a trend this past two weeks; hold the network providers responsible for content.And I can't resist... "Metallica's Lars Ulrich said in a statement, '[It's] sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is.'" Nah, I think 'commodity' sounds about right. Now... back to my Mozart...