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| | | May 4, 2003
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Sunday, May 4, 2003 |
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Unity to fight spam
Disturbed by the increasing number of junk mail, the lack of clear-cut solutions in sight and the growing discord over proposed efforts and legislation, three top U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) united to battle unsolicited commercial e-mail.
America Online (AOL), Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo! will join forces in an attempt to substantially curb the propagation of spam, push for laws regulating unwanted mail and establish standards and guidelines for handling electronic messages.
According to Brightmail, a U.S.-based spam filtering technology provider, more than 45% of transmitted e-mail messages fall into the spam category, making the phenomenon a global threat for Internet's most widely used service. Today, unsolicited e-mail creates colossal traffic, not only annoying Net users, but also presenting a huge financial burden on ISPs and other infrastructure-critical hubs. Just this week, AOL reported filtering over two billion spam e-mails in a single day.
Trying to tackle the problem, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) convened a spam conference, allowing hundreds of antispam activists, politicians, ISP representatives, IT professionals, government officials and direct marketers to discuss potential solutions. The conference coincided with the release of an FTC study that showed two-thirds of spam messages were fraudulent in some way. FTC's findings demonstrated that junk mailers regularly resorted to falsifying their identities, using unrelated subject lines and even offering deceptive deals.
The three-day conference, however, turned into an ebullient debate. Some direct marketers attending the meetings and representatives of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) deplored ISPs for filtering legitimate commercial e-mails alongside with unsolicited ones. Other attendees presented ideas, proposed technological solutions and discussed legislation to crack down on spam.
Meanwhile, at Stanford University's Law School, U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren announced plans to introduce a bill, which will establish financial rewards for people, who report spammers to law enforcement authorities.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 3 | PC World | VNUNET.com 1 2 | The Washington Post | Wired News 1 2
Clamping down on illicit tunes
From one Internet hot zone to another... The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and several other music industry organizations took their message to music-swappers themselves. Using the built-in messaging systems of Kazaa and Grokster, the RIAA notified file-sharing users they may be in violation of copyright laws and risk "legal penalties." The message ominously reminded "you are not anonymous and you can be easily identified."
According to the groups involved, the campaign is part of an educational initiative informing file-swappers their actions may be illegitimate. This reflects the association's view that most users of such systems do not realize they are doing illicit actions. The message also advised them to stop sharing files, cease downloading stolen intellectual property and uninstall file-sharing software.
The move comes just a few weeks after the RIAA sued four U.S. college students for sharing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted music files. This week the association reached a settlement with the students, obliging them to pay from $12,000 to $17,500 each.
More from: PC World | Reuters | The Washington Post 1 2 3 | VNUNET.com
Apple turns up the beat
While the music industry is battling illegal file-sharing, Apple debuted its long-awaited legal online music store. At a launching event on Monday, Apple's founder and CEO Steve Jobs unveiled iTunes Music Store and several other new releases from the company, including three new iPods.
After 18 months under development and arduous negotiations with music companies, iTunes Music Store boasts more than 200,000 tracks with all five major record labels represented. Unlike other legal music sites, Apple's solution does not have subscription fees, but sells every song for 99 cents. The company also allows its users to burn music on a CD or play it on up to three Macintosh computers. The service is yet to be made available to Windows users.
According to some analysts, given the reasonable price per song download, Apple's music store may turn into an astounding hit after it reaches its potential Windows-running customer base.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 | InternetNews.com | Reuters | The Washington Post | ZDNET
In Other News...
 The seventh annual Webby Awards ceremony honoring Internet's best web sites was cancelled this week. The organizers of the event, originally scheduled for June 5 in San Francisco, blamed the poor performance of the IT sector and the persisting fear of travel for the lack of commitment by the nominees to attend the ceremony. The winners will be announced as scheduled at the Webby Awards web site.
Hoping to bolster sales, No. 1 computer maker Dell unveiled a new system, specifically aimed at gamers. Boasting Intel's newest 3 GHz processor and the recently released 875P chipset, the product, Dimension XPS, is appealing to the lucrative market of home enthusiasts, looking for the latest and most powerful technology.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released new ad sizes, which the group hopes will become standards for both Internet publishers and advertisers. The new package offers much larger advertisements, including bigger skyscraper and square box banners.
Another test version of the upcoming Windows operating system, codenamed Longhorn, leaked onto the Internet. The new build appears to be much more functional and has many additional features -- an indication, some analysts believe, that Microsoft is stepping up its efforts on the product, which is not expected to debut until 2005.
Utah-based provider of UNIX and Linux software solutions SCO Group came under a large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Friday. The company's web site was taken offline after the transmission lines of SCO's Internet access provider, ViaWest, were clogged by data originating from over 130 computer machines. Suspicions were raised that ireful Linux users were behind the attack, meant to protest a billion dollar lawsuit from The SCO Group against IBM for infringement of UNIX intellectual property.
Just before the incident, in a formal filing in a U.S. District Court, IBM denied SCO Group's allegations that it misappropriated UNIX technology and claimed the charges are unfounded. The computer maker also accused SCO of hampering the efforts of the open source community.
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