From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 10 03:51:50 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i3A7pnY28083; Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:51:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:51:50 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404100751.i3A7pnY28083@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #176 TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:52:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 176 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nigerian Crooks Abuse Phone Relay Service for Deaf People (M. Solomon) Broadcaster to Face Trial Over Airplay Practices (Monty Solomon) Radio Chain Boots Stern Off Stations (Monty Solomon) FCC Proposes Statutory Maximum Fine of $495,000 (Monty Solomon) Here Comes Broadband John (Monty Solomon) Cellphones May Boost Forces on Biological Tissue (Monty Solomon) Cut-Rate Calling, by Way of the Net (Monty Solomon) Verizon Is Crossing The U.S. With Speedy, True Wireless Access (Solomon) After Years of Struggle, GPS is Taking Off (Monty Solomon) US Appeals Court Stays Cable Internet Ruling (Monty Solomon) The Mouse Who Would be King (Monty Solomon) GILC Alert v8i3 (Monty Solomon) From Cablevision, Another Way to Carry Your Voice (Monty Solomon) Calgary Blowtorches (Miikka Kiprusoff) Re: A-la-carte v. Tiering (was The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom)-1 (Wesrock) Spam Issues (SELLCOM Tech support) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:21:04 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Overseas Crooks Abuse Phone Service For Deaf By Tim Steller ARIZONA DAILY STAR Overseas scam artists have hijacked a telephone relay system for deaf people and turned phone operators in Tucson and nationwide into full-time facilitators of fraud. Operators at Tucson's Communication Service for the Deaf call center used to spend their shifts helping hearing- and speech-impaired Americans make calls. But since January their workdays are dominated by Internet calls from Nigeria and elsewhere. The callers try to use stolen credit-card numbers to make big purchases of merchandise from American companies. The operators often suspect fraud, but they can't just hang up. Federal rules require them to make the calls and keep the contents strictly confidential. Merchants stand to lose big if they fall for the ruse -- callers often try to order more than $10,000 worth of expensive equipment. People who legitimately use the service fear businesses will stop taking their calls, thinking they are fraud artists. http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/17393.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 21:07:37 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Broadcaster to Face Trial Over Airplay Practices By Jeff Leeds Times Staff Writer A federal judge in Denver has ruled that there is evidence that the nation's biggest radio broadcaster and concert promoter abused its clout by threatening to keep artists off the air unless they performed at its shows. U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham this week ordered Clear Channel Communications Inc. to stand trial in August and defend its business practices after finding there was reason to believe that "Clear Channel intends to manipulate artists' promotion decisions and interfere with competitors by withholding airplay." The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in August 2001 by Denver concert promoter Nobody in Particular Presents . The suit accuses Clear Channel of violating state and federal antitrust laws. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-clear9apr09,1,1529180.story ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 22:42:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Radio Chain Boots Stern Off Stations Clear Channel makes the temporary move permanent after FCC proposes fining it for airing the shock jock. By Jube Shiver Jr. Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON - The nation's largest radio chain on Thursday booted shock jock Howard Stern off its stations after regulators proposed fining the company $495,000 for airing Stern's sexually explicit broadcasts. The Federal Communications Commission cited Clear Channel Communica- tions Inc. for "willfully broadcasting indecent material" last April on stations in San Diego and five other cities. The FCC said the broadcasts included "repeated, graphic and explicit sexual descrip- tions that were pandering, titillating or used to shock the audience." The fine was the third six-figure penalty levied this year against Clear Channel, which owns 1,200 stations and earned $1.1 billion in 2003. In January, the FCC fined Clear Channel a record $715,000 for broadcasts by a disc jockey known as Bubba the Love Sponge. In March, the agency imposed a $247,500 fine on the company's "Elliot in the Morning" broadcasts. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stern9apr09,1,1384342.story ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 22:51:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Proposes Statutory Maximum Fine of $495,000 http://www.fcc.gov/ Commission Proposes Statutory Maximum Fine of $495,000 Against Subsidiaries of Clear Channel Communications, Inc. for Apparent Multiple Violations of Indecency Rules. News Release http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-245911A1.doc http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-245911A1.pdf NAL http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A1.doc http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A1.pdf Copps Statement http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A2.doc http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A2.pdf Adelstein Statement http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A3.doc http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-88A3.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 00:48:22 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Here Comes Broadband John Kerry is set to roll out an ambitious plan to boost high tech -- and woo Silicon Valley John Kerry doesn't claim he invented the Internet -- but he has long recognized its value. Back in the mid-'90s, he was agitating to bring high-speed data lines to rural Massachusetts and promoting tech-friendly policies in the Senate. So while he's not a full-blown geek like Al Gore, Kerry is comfortable in libertarian Silicon Valley, which he's visited 16 times in the past three years, as well as on Boston's Route 128. His message to the shrunken industry: I feel your pain. Now, the likely Democratic Presidential nominee plans to take his pro-tech message to the national stage. In a speech scheduled for mid-April, he will unveil his plan to bolster the industry. Among the ideas he's likely to propose: a national broadband strategy to promote superfast Web connections, tax breaks for investments in startups, and more federal dollars for research that can foster lucrative commercial spin-offs. His goal: Woo techies -- and draw a sharp contrast with President George W. Bush, who many in techdom say hasn't lifted a finger to help them. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_16/b3879111.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:20:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellphones May Boost Forces on Biological Tissue Mobile phone radiation may cause a massive increase in the forces that living cells exert on each other, suggests a new study from Sweden. The research could be important in answering the question of whether the radiation from mobile phones cause cancer or other health problems. Many researchers fear the answer is yes, yet they have been unable to come up with any plausible way that radiation from a phone could affect, let alone harm, biological tissue. The conventional view is that the only way radio waves could damage a cell would be if they were energetic enough to break chemical bonds or heat the tissue, like microwaves. Yet the radiation given off by handsets is much too weak to produce either of these effects. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994855 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:22:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cut-Rate Calling, by Way of the Net By DAVID POGUE EVERY time an important piece of our lives goes electronic, much is gained, but something is lost, too. Audiophiles say that compact discs don't sound as warm as vinyl records. Home theaters are neat, but don't offer the communal fun of a movie theater crowd. And no matter how efficient e-mail may be, it can't touch the joy of receiving a handwritten letter on fine stationery, thoughtfully composed and concluding with the words "check enclosed." So stand back. The latest life component to make a radical, Internet-driven shift is ordinary home telephone service. This development is annoyingly called voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, which means "calls that use the Internet's wiring instead of the phone company's." When you sign up, you get a little box that goes between your existing telephone and your broadband modem (that is, your cable modem or D.S.L. box, a requirement for most of these services). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08stat.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:25:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Is Crossing The U.S. With Speedy, True Wireless Access By WALTER S. MOSSBERG True wireless broadband is coming to the U.S. this year and next. By the end of 2005, courtesy of Verizon Wireless, you should be able to wirelessly connect a laptop, PDA or cellphone to the Internet at real broadband speeds from almost any location in every major U.S. metropolitan area. I'm not talking about the spread of more Wi-Fi "hot spots" in airports, coffee shops and similar places. I'm talking about wireless high-speed Internet service that you can use just about anywhere -- even on the street or in a car. This isn't a pipe dream. I've been testing Verizon's new service, called BroadBand Access, on a laptop around Washington, D.C., one of the first two cities where the company has rolled it out. I am very impressed. It is simple to set up and works just like any other broadband connection, with your normal Web browser and e-mail program. Based on a new cellphone technology called EV-DO (short for Evolution-Data Optimized), the new Verizon service is as fast as most wired DSL lines, and it worked effortlessly almost everywhere I tried it in a wide swath of Washington and its suburbs. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040408.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:27:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: After Years of Struggle, GPS is Taking Off By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com Finding yourself, or someone else, is starting to pay off. After several years of unfulfilled promises, the market for products that use Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is beginning to take off, in part due to government regulations, customer acceptance and technological improvements. GPS can pinpoint an individual's location through satellite signals. GPS chip designer SiRF Technology , for instance, has seen its revenue grow from $15 million in 2001 to $30.4 million in 2002 to $73.1 million last year. http://news.com.com/2100-1033-5187758.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:11:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US Appeals Court Stays Cable Internet Ruling WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - A court ruling that could have forced cable companies to offer customers a choice of Internet service providers has been suspended while regulators and cable companies appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco on Friday said it would grant petitions from the Federal Communications Commission and cable companies for a stay pending consideration of the case by the high court. The appellate court ruled in October that the FCC should have classified high-speed Internet service over cable as a telecommunications service instead of an information service -- including requiring a choice of Internet service when customers sign up for cable broadband. The appeals court last week refused to reconsider its decision that regulators improperly insulated cable companies from strict regulations. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=41046198 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:29:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Mouse Who Would be King Disney's ever-expanding copyright powers are threatening to squash everyone's cultural creativity. As two new books compellingly argue, the time is ripe for more anarchy, and fewer lawyers. By Farhad Manjoo April 8, 2004 | It's become fashionable lately to vilify Mickey Mouse. So much money and power have been invested in the otherwise innocent-looking, squeaky-voiced cartoon character that he no longer is, for many of us, just a drawing. Mickey is, instead, The Man, the symbol of a global entertainment behemoth bent on remaking our world to its own ends. Parents worry that Mickey will corrupt their children. Foreigners worry he'll corrupt their culture. And the most persistent claim these days is that Mickey is corrupting our Constitution: In order to protect Mickey Mouse and his cartoonish brethren -- not just Minnie and Pluto but also Britney and Eminem -- from the scourge of digital technology, this argument goes, the entertainment industry is clamping down on our freedoms to create, innovate and speak. http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 19:50:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: GILC Alert Volume 8, Issue 3 Welcome to the Global Internet Liberty Campaign Newsletter. Welcome to GILC Alert, the newsletter of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. We are an international organization of groups working for cyber-liberties, who are determined to preserve civil liberties and human rights on the Internet. We hope you find this newsletter interesting, and we very much hope that you will avail yourselves of the action items in future issues. If you are a part of an organization that would be interested in joining GILC, please contact us at . If you are aware of threats to cyber-liberties that we may not know about, please contact the GILC members in your country, or contact GILC as a whole. Please feel free to redistribute this newsletter to appropriate forums. Free expression [1] Canadian judge: Net file-sharing is legal [2] Showdown looms for controversial French digital economy bill [3] Report: China blocks weblogs over Tienanmen article [4] South Korean gov't arrests Net political protestors [5] Syria blocks Kurdish news websites [6] UN holds Internet governance forum [7] European Parliament approves EuroDMCA [8] Net speech curbs again argued before U.S. high court [9] Legal battle over Korean music-storing phones [10] U.S. local officials threaten file-sharing software makers [11] New Internet uploading anti-anonymity bills [12] Lawsuit filed over digital television crippleware rules [13] Saudi gov't lifts blocks on 2 gay websites [14] Japanese Web headlines copyright lawsuit thrown out [15] Study: expanded intellectual property laws bad for business [16] Online repression awards given out Privacy [17] U.S. gov't wants spy-friendly broadband & Net telephony rules [18] New Google Gmail service causes privacy worries [19] International cybercrime treaty enters into force [20] Japanese broadband provider suffers security breach [21] U.S. anti-spyware bills appear [22] Serious security flaw found in Hotmail and Yahoo email [23] New Nigerian draft cybercrime bill [24] Microsoft warns of new Outlook security bug [25] EBay warns of PayPal security snafus [26] Study: workplace monitoring increases, with little benefit http://www.gilc.org/alert/alert82.html http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/msg01121.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 20:58:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: From Cablevision, Another Way to Carry Your Voice By DAVID POGUE WHEN is an Internet phone company not an Internet phone company? When it's a cable company. Optimum Voice, a new phone service offered by Cablevision to its cable-modem subscribers, has a lot in common with Internet-based phone offerings like Vonage and AT&T CallVantage. For example, it offers unlimited local and long-distance calling for a flat $35 a month, without any tacked-on fees. It comes with call waiting, call return (*69), call forwarding, three-way calling and caller ID that shows name and number. (And unlike a conventional phone line, it stops working altogether if the power goes out.) But there's a crucial difference: While this voice-over-cable service, the country's first in wide deployment, carries your voice using the same voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, it doesn't actually use the public Internet. Instead, it connects your calls to the regular phone network over Cablevision's own TV cables. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08cabl.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:01:04 +0100 From: Miikka Kiprusoff Subject: Calgary Blowtorches Reply-To: miikka@calgaryweb.net > A list of AM radio stations in Calgary, Alberta: > 660 - CFFR, "66-CFR" golden oldies > 770 - CHQR, "QR77" all-talk > 960 - CFAC, "The Fan 960" all-sports-talk > 1010 - CBR, CBC Radio One > 1060 - CKMX, "Great Music, Great Memories" > 1140 - CHRB, community radio > Which one of these blowtorches is the "very loud" rock station you > speak of? I'm pretty sure neither CJAY nor CKIK or even CKIS > ("Jack"), this city's "rock" stations, are making it all the way down > to your neck of the woods, as they're FM stations. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My recollection of hearing Calgary > was about twenty years ago more or less. Have any of those stations > changed their format in recent years? PAT] 960 CFAC used to be country music. 1060 CKMX was "Mix-1060", a top-40 station, and also 1140 CHRB used to be 1140 CKXL, also top-40. It might have been one of the latter two "loud" stations, more likely 1140 CKXL which had a more powerful transmitter. (770 CHQR changed frequencies sometime around 1990ish, formerly being 810 CHQR -- I don't know why). But you said, in your original post, that you "hear" this station at night in Independence -- meaning present tense. Now, suddenly, you're actually talking about 20 years ago? I thought you were in Chicago 20 years ago? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, I think what I said, or meant to say was I hear*d* the loud station from Calgary *in Chicago* about twenty years ago, once or twice. Since that sort of music does not interest me, I did not go back looking for it again. In those days, in Chicago, I lived on the top (eighth) floor of a high-rise apartment building, and had access to the rooftop and the elevator penthouse or machine room. In addition to a television antenna and a citizen's band radio (perfectly legal since it was NOT mounted more than twenty feet above the structure it was *mounted on*, i.e. the roof of the elevator machine room, which was effectively one floor above the main part of the roof), I also had a scanner radio antenna, and a horizonal wire cut to a certain meter band (forget for sure) which went down the shaft into my apartment. Believe me, I could and did hear *everyone* talking out there, if I chose to do so. I had an old Zenith radio with five or six 'bands' on it; three or four of the 'bands' were for shortwave, plus AM and FM. The radio was tunable (not digital) with a very wide bandspread; I could sit there and **very slowly** tune the radio, just inching the tuning dial along, ever so slowly on the AM side late on a hot summer night, jotting down notes of who I heard and where they were from. That is where I heard the loud mouths from Calgary one time. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 20:43:15 EDT Subject: Re: A-la-carte v. Tiering (was The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom)-1 Neal McLain quoted: >> There is a difference. The sports section in the newspaper is created >> either by the same wire services that they subscribe to or by their >> own reporters and doesn't cost a whole lot extra. The sports channels >> on cable networks are additional costs to the cable operator that they >> have to pass on to everyone because they have to pay for every >> subscriber. This indicates a complete lack of understanding of newspaper economics. The Sports Department is a dedicated organization in any newspaper of any size and probably the biggest single cost center in the news department. There are numerous sports reporters, which do not overlap at all with the general news reporters; many of the sports reporters are specialists in one type of sports. There are also sports columnists, usually different persons than the reporters. And there are syndicated sports columnists, who are a separate expense. Not to mention that the regular wire services have a higher rate for a full sports report rather than the basic coverage included in the general news report. (In the days of transmission by leased teletypewriter lines, each wire service had a dedicated sports wire, dedicated entirely to sports and at a substantial additional charged. Then there are extensive traveling expenses for the newspapers' reporters going to different cities -- sometimes overseas -- to cover the home teams' games and other sports of specific local interest in the newspapers' circulation areas. The sports section of a newspaper is by no means a by-product. And sports coverage doesn't come cheap. I've been there, both on a newspaper and on a wire service. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Spam Issues Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:10:45 GMT I assume that spam issues are on topic since I have seen them discussed. I believe that we are all against spam, but what about when a blackhole type site is being run in a totally irresponsible manner? I speak of FIVETEN. The trash running http://www.five-ten-sg.com/blackhole.php have whole sections of the world blocked without any real cause and they won't remove such listings after notification. We had a customer place an order for a phone and our reply to them was "blacklisted by FIVETEN". We have had cases in the past where a blackhole site thought our address was dynamic and were quite courteous and fixed the problem immediately. The scum at FIVETEN don't care. Can anything be done? Their reputation for rejecting valid email may simply negate them but they are still listed with some spam removal company sites. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Mini-Splitter log splitter! If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #176 ******************************