TELECOM Digest     Sun, 8 May 2005 19:51:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 202

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Unbrand America Causes a Mess on the Net Over Weekend (Patrick Townson)
    Big Media Companies Weigh Blog Strategies (Lisa Minter)
    Jail for 'Robin Hoods' Who Cost Microsoft Millions (Lisa Minter)
    Municipal Report: Fiber Kung-Fu in the Bayou (Jack Decker)
    Phisher Price: Phishing on E-Bay During the Holidays (e.lamb)
    Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? (SELLCOM Tech support)
    Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? (Robert Bonomi)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without explicit written consent.  Chain letters,
viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome.

We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime.   Geoffrey Welsh

               ===========================

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Patrick Townson <ptownson@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Unbrand America Causes Mess on the Net Over Weekend
Date: Sun, 8 May 2005 17:01:57 -0500


Hi Everyone,

Telecom and dozens (maybe hundreds) of other newsgroups have been
spammed by Unbrandamerica.org.  The NNTP server used for this spam is
under jurisdiction of Asian Pacific Network.  However the server's
address is not registered with APN and so is not in their database, so
it appears they may have used an unregistered open server or something
of that kind to send their spam.

Somehow they were able to bypass the Moderators of newsgroups and post
directly to telecom and other groups.  I did NOT approve any of their
spam messages for posting to telecom.

Unbrandamerica.org appears to be part of or associated with
Adbusters.org. Here is what Adbusters says about themselves on their web
site:

"We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters,
students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social
activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing
power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the
21st century."

They have a magazine which they describe as "Based in Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit ... magazine concerned
about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by
commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured on MTV and PBS...."

They also have what they call The Culture Jammers Network  "We are a
global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students,
educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist
movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power
structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st
century. We believe culture jamming can be to our era what civil rights
was to the '60s, what feminism was to the '70s, what environmental
activism was to the '80s. It will alter the way we live and think. It
will change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power,
the way TV stations are run, the way the food, fashion, automobile,
sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, it
will change the way meaning is produced in our society."

These radicals appear to have no concept of common courtesy or
decency, only caring about imposing their radical ideas on everyone,
even to the extent of engaging in illegal activities in order to
accomplish their goals.

Unfortunately, because of the way usenet works, there is little we can
do to delete their spam from the net.  Once a piece of spam is
accepted and posted on a usenet server, it is almost instantaneously
propogated to hundreds of news servers around the world, and there is
no way we can recall those posts, except 'cancels' one by one .  It's
kind of like gossip -- once you have passed on a bit of gossip, there
is no way of getting it back.

Those Unbrandamerica messages were NOT approved by newsgroup
moderators for posting, nor do we in any way endorse the garbage they
are preaching.  Please accept our apologies.  All we can suggest to do
is to ignore those posts, and continue to cancel them as we find them.

Oddly, there were certain newsgroups which got hit the worst; many of
the Christnet groups were hit very hard, along with some of the social
issues forums. Other newsgroups that the Unbrandamerica people approve
of did not get hit as badly. Perhaps the Unbrandamerica people realize
that while not exactly sympathetic to them, there are _many_ netters
who think 'nothing can be done about spam' and that we have to
tolerate it, and the same netters insist in their delusions that 'no
one wants anything different than it is.' Maybe someday there _will_
be some major changes on the net, with or without the cooperation of
the guys who keep claiming 'nothing can be done, this is an anarchy'
and all that talk. I sure hope so for one.  

PAT

------------------------------

Date: 08 May 2005 15:11:30 -0700
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Big Media Companies Weigh Blog Strategies


Are the newspapers being to feel a squeeze from the internet? And
what about the cable news operations?  Some of them were just a
little shocked to read the recent survey results showing that
many Americans who _were_  spending an hour or so each day either
in front of the television for news or buried behind their newspapers
reading it have now chosen to instead read blogs and news feeds on
the internet instead. The newspapers of course chant their ongoing
mantra, 'But who edits it and approves it prior to publication?'
Well, that's a no-brainer. The people themselves atttend to that. 
And oooh, that makes the television and newspapers editorial people
so angry. "What do you mean, we no longer control what they see and
read? Who is going to buy what our sponsors have for sale?"

Read about some of it here:

Big media companies weigh blog strategies
http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050506/wr_nm/column_pluggedin_dc

------------------------------

Date: 08 May 2005 15:12:36 -0700
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Jail For 'Robin Hoods' Who Cost Microsoft Millions


Robin Hood, according to legend, took from the rich and gave to
the poor. Microsoft has been particularly hard hit from this,
and has decided to strike back.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050506/wr_nm/tech_internet_dc

------------------------------

From: Jack Decker <jack-yahoogroups@withheld_on_request>
Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 21:35:21 -0400
Subject: Municipal Report: Fiber Kung-Fu in the Bayou


I'm passing this along only to highlight the sort of dirty tricks and
deceptive tactics that the phone and cable companies will resort to
when trying to keep out municipal broadband.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63279

Municipal Report
Fiber Kung-Fu in the Bayou
Written by Karl Bode

When Comcast and SBC wanted to convince three Illinois cities to vote
against running their own fiber, they conducted "push polls" designed
to shape voter perception, not gauge it. This, combined with more than
a quarter million dollars in often misleading local marketing, helped
"educate" voters that they should stay out of the broadband
business. That public relations victory was a model for a battle
that's now brewing in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The Illinois surveys, which we were the only outlet to get a copy of,
contained questions like "Should tax money be allowed to provide
pornographic movies for residents?" As explored by Mother Jones
recently, they played an integral part in defeating the initiative
twice (See our interview with local leader Ed Hodges).

It later turned out that SBC spent $192,324 on defeating the ballot
measure, while Comcast spent $89,740. Fiber for our Future, the
community group pushing the initiative, spent $4,325. Not months after
the first vote failed, the Illinois area in question saw Comcast rate
hikes as high as 33% in some neighborhoods.

Now the city of Lafayette, Louisiana is preparing to vote on a non-tax
(revenue bonds) based fiber network. Cox and Bellsouth, as recently
explored by USAToday, have been fighting this plan tooth and nail.

Their efforts have included not-so-veiled threats (the Independent)
that BellSouth could pull a local wireless call-center (1,300 local
employees) if the plan moved forward. They've also trotted out
not-so-independent policy groups like the Heartland Institute (also a
big player in killing the Illinois project) to try and convince locals
that the enterprise is akin to capitalistic cancer.

Heartland's warning comes despite the fact the Lafayette Chamber of
Commerce, some 2,400 businesses strong (ironically including Cox),
studied the local impact of the plan for a year and came out in favor
of it.

After considerable legal wrangling, BellSouth and Cox managed to get
the fiber plan put to a vote. There's no great love of Democratic
process here; the providers wisely know that they can easily win in
public relations politics, usually by outmanning and outfunding their
opponents.

As the incumbent PR campaign ramps up in Lafayette ahead of the July
vote, push polls have again emerged as a tactic of choice. According
to the Advocate, locals are amazed at some of the questions being
asked.

One local Louisiana television channel quotes several local residents,
one of whom claims they were told by a pollster: "if the government
controls the cable TV, you may not be able to watch TV except on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 'cause they could ration your TV
watching."

Lafayette's fiber plan goes to a vote on July 16. The Lafayette
Chamber of Commerce research into the plan is available here for those
interested. Arguments for the project can be found at the Lafayette
Pro-Fiber website. Arguments against the project can be found at the
Fiber411 website.

Article + reader comments at:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63279

How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home:
http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/

------------------------------

From: elamb.security@gmail.com
Subject: Phisherprice: Phishing on Ebay During the Holidays
Date: 8 May 2005 16:13:28 -0700


A hacker tried to get a free phone using a phishing technique that I
had never heard of.  The phisher used a Western Union Auction Money
order form (a fake number) and actually sent me the fedex lable and had
fedex come to my house to pick up the phone.  Even though I didn't have
the cash for the phone yet.

The Phishing exploit relies on the buyers greed and the feverish haste
of holiday spending.

Here is the phishing exploit in detail:
http://elamb.blogharbor.com/hacked/phisherprice.htm

rob
http://elamb.org

------------------------------

From: SELLCOM Tech support <support@sellcom.com>
Subject: Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ?
Organization: www.sellcom.com
Reply-To: support@sellcom.com
Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 18:12:23 GMT


kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) posted on that vast internet thingie:

> You can get cordless phones with headsets and body packs.  Hello
> Direct has a couple models.  That might be closer to what you're
> wanting.

Plantronics has a nice wireless headset that is at 900mhz.


Steve at SELLCOM

http://www.sellcom.com
Discount multihandset cordless phones by Panasonic 
5.8Ghz 2line; TMC ET4300 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Brickmail voicemail
Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Firewood splitters www.splitlogs.com
If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz.  New www.electrictrains.biz

------------------------------

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased?
Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 20:25:15 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In an addendum to article <telecom24.201.8@telecom-digest.org>,
PAT noted:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would think however, that if the
> 'internet company' later got in a legal hassle about this -- let's say
> for example, tomorrow I showed up at the ISP's office with my properly
> notorized papers as the executor of the soldier's estate and asked 
> them where is my email, and made a legal stench because they  (ISP)
> had already given it away to someone else, they (ISP) could make a
> reasonable defense: "We acted in good faith; not knowing of any other
> executor to the estate. Typically for unmarried young soldiers who
> die in combat, their parents _are_ the executors, and in good faith
> we worked with them on that basis."  I think that would hold up if
> the ISP were to get sued, since it is unreasonable the ISP as one of
> its obligations is to search for other executors. 

You're right on one thing. It is *NOT* the ISP's duty to 'search out'
other executors.  It is their duty to act *only* _with_ the "properly
desigated" executor.  Which requires _proof_ of the appointment to
that position.  Which comes only from the court.

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #202
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