From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jun 5 15:59:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i55Jxvg04236; Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:59:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:59:58 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200406051959.i55Jxvg04236@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 #277 TELECOM Digest Sat, 5 Jun 2004 16:00:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 277 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson More Memories of Illinois Bell (TELECOM Digest Editor) Another "We're the First" Press Release (VOIP News) QOS Tutorials - Free Access to Learn QOS (sitekeeper) Re: Memories of Illinois Bell in Better Times (J Kelly) Re: Memories of Illinois Bell in Better Times (Daniel W. Johnson) Re: WW II Britain-U.S. Telephone Links? (John Levine) Re: Can I Tell If Incoming Call Is From A Pay Phone? (jim evans) Re: Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition (jmeissen) Correction from an Editor's Note (Patrick Townson) EFFector 17.20: Don't Let Congress Take Away Your Rights (Monty Solomon) Zombie PCs Spew Out 80% of Spam (Monty Solomon) Intellectual Property: Economic Arrangements Among Small (Monty Solomon) Your Radio Is Calling (Eric Friedebach) 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, 5 Jun 2004 15:16:15 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: More Memories of Illinois Bell You've all heard the expression that 'no good deed goes unpunished' or perhaps how things you do come back to bite you on the ass later in life. Or, what goes around, comes around. This story today is about a man by the name of Wally, who was a repair technician in what Illinois Bell used to call 'Night Plant'. In other words he was one of those guys who works during overnight hours, going out to **important, and critical** customers whose phone service is down, when it **really** matters to the community or at least the customer. For example, if telephones went down at a police station or fire station, or a customer with a 24 hour per day business with a switchboard had a fire, or whatever, and getting the phones back into service was very critical. Wally was one of the guys Illinois Bell would send out. He was allowed to keep his company truck at his house so that if there was a call from his office at 10 PM, he could go out to the location and deal with the problem. I do not know if telco still does that or not (responding to important customers during the night as needed) but at least Illinois Bell used to in the 1950-60's era. Wally said that during the April, 1968 riots in Chicago which destroyed most of the west side of the city (the occassion for rioting was the assassination of Martin Luther King; the Democrats and the riot they caused at their convention would not come for a few more months until August), he was assigned to work during much of that time. He said he and his partner (during the riot, the company insisted they work as partners, at least two men on the job) were driving around looking for damages to telco equipment on the streets, etc. Two white guys in a telco van driving around on the west side; wouldn't that be dangerous? Nah, he said, the rioters didn't hassle the utility workers; they knew the electric guys and the phone guys were just out there to do work, not to pick fights; they didn't bother us. Anyway, my experience was if you go out looking for trouble, you'll always find it; if you go out as a decent person, and treat people you meet with respect, they'll nearly always give you respect in turn, even though we were nearly all white guys; the ones accused of rioting at the MLK assassination were nearly all racial minorities. We stopped at this one liquor store on Lake Street. The guy's only telephone was a pay station; it had been completely torn off the wall and trashed on the sidewalk; the coin box was stolen of course. My partner and I took a new phone out of our truck and reinstalled it. Now, many of the guys I worked with; I won't say they were racist at all, but they had the attitude "fu-- the animals! Let it wait until tomorrow, let the day crew go out and work on it." But I happen to know that was the only pay phone for several blocks around, and many of the people who lived in the housing project on that block were too poor to have their own phone and they relied heavily on that pay phone. That's probably the reason the coin box was stolen; it was considered to be one of the better pay phones in the area for the company. That liquor store was also an Illinois State Lottery agent and the guy who ran the store also needed a phone. So we re-installed it and I made certain it was bolted so well that no one was ever going to trash it again. My partner finished a little last minute work on the phone, and it was around 10 PM, then I called our office to see if they had any more assignments for us. If not, I would have driven my partner back to his house and I would have gone home myself. Well, the office said they had gotten a call from the operator at Bethany Brethren Hospital, about two miles away. The poor lady was frantic because there had been a broken water pipe, some of the basement had gotten flooded and her switchboard had gone out. So my partner said let's go see what we can do for her. We pulled in the parking lot about twenty minutes later and went in to see her. The lady was so glad to see us; I thought she was going to kiss the ground we were walking on. She was 'absolutely certain' no one from Bell was going to come out there at midnight and fix her dead switchboard. We went down to the basement to look at the frames. The water had all gone down the sewer by then, and really only one section of cable had gotten pretty well soggy, but it was an important part of the installation, part of the operator's 'common talking path' to the various extensions, and outside lines, etc. First thing I did was take the first three of the outside trunk lines coming into the hospital and wired them straight across to the three extensions in the emergency room, so the first three calls into the hospital would get answered by the people in the emergency room. Then after some evaluation, I saw we could cut out and replace that bit of cable that was so drenched. It took around 30-45 minutes to tie the new cable into place and remove the old section. Presto, her board came back in service. Then I removed the jumpers that we had put there to route the first three trunk lines to the emergency room phones and went back upstairs. That poor lady was so thrilled that her board was going once again. She was so pleased in fact, that she got in her purse and was going to give us *her personal money* for the work we did. I told her, "hey, we don't do business like that; if you insist on a reward for us, then take my partner here down to the cafeteria and get him a cup of coffee. Take your time, and when you come back bring me a cup also. I will stay here and run the board while you are gone; I wanna clean it up a little anyway." I did not like the 'action' on the board; it sounded to me like the relay for the buzzer and lights needed to be adjusted a little, and a couple of the key switches were sort of difficult to flip on or off. So I sat there and cleaned up the board a little, adjusted the action on the buzzer, replaced a burned out bulb that was there, etc. She came back from the cafeteria in twenty minutes or so, had more coffee and a donut for each of us. We sat there another 15-20 minutes or so chatting and then decided we really had to go. I called my office from the switchboard and the dispatcher in the office had no more work for us -- it was a little past midnight now -- so I was going to drive my partner home before quitting for the night myself. We went out to the parking lot and you know what? Just guess! Some of those animals rioting had stolen every damn piece of equipment and supplies out of our truck, and then vandalized the truck while we were inside working. We went back inside and I called the office again and told them what had happened. The boss said "just stay inside there where you guys will be safe, some men are coming out to get you now." About 10 minutes later one of our trucks pulled in with some guys who worked out of Kedzie Bell, they hustled us both into the back of their truck then took off. But I guess even rioters have some code of conduct or sense of fair play. Before the night was over they had looted and set fire to every store in that area, smashed all the windows, etc. But they never laid a hand on Bethany Hospital, or the old people's home up the street, or the telephone company or the Western Union office. But they sure did a number on everything else around there. Of course Kedzie Bell had a bunch of security officers around all night so who knows why they were left alone at the phone company office. They looted Goldblatt's Furniture and Appliance store to the four walls then set fire to the remains. I guess we were lucky to get out of there alive with just our truck looted. ---------------------------------------------- Now fast forward twelve years or so to about 1980. Mayor Daley blustered about it and how 'all that neighborhood will be rebuilt, everything will look like new.' That was not done (following the Los Angeles riot in South Central in the nineties, did the city ever repair the area as they promised they would?) By the early 1980's the west side of Chicago was more dismal than ever. The few business places remaining took the hint and cleared out. No banks, no stores (except a few cut- rate liquor stores and Illinois State Lottery agents, mostly Korean immigrants who had moved in there in later years), no jobs, no money. With no jobs, no money, no place to live, people just survive the best they can. But they still get sick of course, and have to see doctors, especially when the pain from their illness forces them to go. The two hospitals in the area, Saint Anne's and Bethany Brethren both filed bankruptcy when their collections got to be so awful. But a group of religious leaders in Chicago decided they did not want to see still more vacant businesses around the area, so they decided to buy both hospitals out of bankruptcy with several million dollars to the creditors, and commit several million more dollars per year to keep them operating. The new organization was called 'Evangelical Health Care Corporation' with the 'Bethany Pavillion' and the 'St. Anne's Pavillion' parts to it. St. Anne's was turned into a specialized outpatient clinic; the surgery and in-patient stuff was to be handled at Bethany. Also, about 12 years later, in 1980, Wally had retired by that time, an old man. But he belonged to the Pioneers, an organization for senior employees of Illinois Bell, and went to their meetings on a regular basis. Now we hear some more from him: ------------------------------------------------ "I was down at the company one day; retirees were invited to a luncheon given for us in the Pioneers. The guest speaker they had that day was one of these young hot shots the company hires now days, kids who know all about computers and this new system the company started replacing the old way with. Its called 'Electronic Switching System' or ESS. This kid is a salesman for the company, selling this ESS equipment for customers. They don't put a switchboard on customer's premises any longer; they do not even need operators in the customer's business place! The company calls the new system Centrex, and they are trying to sell it to every business place. This kid was explaining the whole thing to us. After the lunch was over, we were leaving and this kid comes up to me. He had just started working for the company a month before I retired back in 1977 or so. He said, 'well Wally, you sold a Centrex system for me today'. I guess I looked sort of surprised by that and he started to explain." He said, "one account I have worked on now for a few months has been the inquiry made by Evangelical Health Care. They had asked about a Centrex system connecting them and St. Anne's and that other clinic they now have. They had all sorts of salesmen out there trying to get them signed up with lots of stuff. Some guy from Nortel, one from Panasonic; they all went there and pitched their electronic switchboard stuff. And its a major expenditure you know, they had a meeting of their executives and trustees and directors yesterday to make a final decision. I was there making a pitch for AT&T and Illinois Bell as were the guys from Mitel and Nortel. Then this one real old black lady stood up to speak. She was identified as Vice President - Telecom for Evangelical Health Care. She asked these guys point blank, 'if the equipment goes on the fritz at midnight who do we call to get it fixed?' The guys told about their warranties, etc then she spoke up again and said, 'Well when I used to be the night operator over at Bethany years ago and had the whole board go out one night, during the riots back in 1968, this guy named Wally came out that night a few minutes after I called Bell and reported it. Personally I think we should just stick with Bell's proposal since I really have to have assurance I can get repairs when I need it.' Wally, my jaw dropped open when she said that and recommended to the Trustees they go along with my proposal, which they did." Wally said his jaw dropped open also. "Can you imagine that woman calling me by name and remembering me being there 12 years earlier to work on her board?". Well yeah, because as the old saying goes, 'what goes around, comes around.' You never know when something you did for someone will come back to reward you. And that is our story from the past for this weekend in the Digest. Maybe it will serve as an encouragement for some customer service or sales people or technicians in the future. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 17:25:29 -0400 Subject: Another "We're the First" Press Release Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com I wish companies would stop issuing press releases claiming they are the first at something -- it always makes me wonder if I just imagined a major part of my lifetime. I don't know what this company is claiming to be first at, but they certainly aren't the first to offer a software VoIP client -- numerous companies have done that since way back in 1996. Nor are they the first to offer free calls to the PSTN -- DialPad did that for several months during the high-flying "dot-com" days, and more recently, Free World Dialup has offered free calls out to the PSTN to commemorate certain special days. They're not even the first to offer free numbers for incoming calls via VoIP (at least two different companies have offered to "map" PSTN numbers to Free World Dialup numbers in the not-very-distant past). But anyway, here's the press release. Should you decide to download their software, please make sure to take all the usual precautions to make sure that nothing is being installed on your system other than what you really want (it's a sad commentary on the Internet that you have to be careful about downloading free software, for fear of what might be riding along with it -- I hope nothing bad in this case, but I have not actually personally attempted to install or use this software. If you do, a review would be appreciated). http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=68224 The World's First Free Telephone Service Launches: StanaPhone Communications Unveils Easy-to-Use StanaPhone Using Voice Over IP Technology, StanaPhone Turns Any PC Into a Telephone NEW YORK CITY, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 06/04/2004 -- StanaPhone Communications today announced the launch of StanaPhone, the world's first free telephone service. StanaPhone uses Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, and works with standard personal computers running Windows 98, 2000 or XP coupled with a PC headset. Perfect for small businesses and consumers, StanaPhone requires no monthly fee or set up charges. Simple to activate, users can visit www.stanaphone.com to download the StanaPhone software and sign up for their free telephone number. By adding a standard PC headset that can be purchased at almost any consumer electronics store to their PC, users can make and receive free telephone calls to and from any phone number in the United States, Canada and a selection of other countries. StanaPhone's advancements in VoIP applications have enabled the Company to provide the same or better sound quality than a "land-lines" like a normal household phone. Michael Choupak, CEO of StanaPhone Communications, said, "Years ago, there were legitimate concerns about the sound quality of VoIP. Now, technologies are maturing to the point that industry analysts are predicting that up to 44 percent of the world's corporate telephone traffic may be IP-based by 2008. StanaPhone is already ahead of that curve, having worked extensively with some of the world's leading acoustic experts to ensure high-quality voice communications. Plus, unlike other VoIP services such as Vonage and Packet8, the convenience and flexibility of StanaPhone is free." Similar to popular e-mail accounts, such as Hotmail, subscribers who activate a StanaPhone telephone number can keep it as long as they use it regularly. If the number is idle (no calls made for 45 days), the number will expire and the account terminated. StanaPhone subscribers receive 100 free minutes of outgoing calls to regular and mobile telephone numbers per 30-days (each month). Other calls to and from StanaPhone are unlimited. StanaPhone's Account Manager feature enables users to view their account information online 24/7 and see how many calls have been made and the corresponding details. Choupak shared, "Because StanaPhone can be used on any PC, it's a great solution for everyone. A person visiting an Internet cafe anywhere in the world can log into his or her StanaPhone account and make calls. College students who want to phone home without incurring expensive long distance charges or having the hassle of carrying a telephone credit card can use StanaPhone. Home office workers can establish a dedicated telephone number through StanaPhone, enabling them to keep their home telephone line separate and private." Visit www.stanaphone.com and follow the simple software download instructions to activate StanaPhone. For additional information, please e-mail info@stanaphone.com. Note to editors: Trademarks and registered trademarks referenced herein remain the property of their respective owners. MEDIA CONTACT: Jeanne Achille The Devon Group for StanaPhone 32-542-2000, ext. 11 jeanne@devonpr.com 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: sitekeeper@intersyncsolutions.com (sitekeeper) Subject: QOS Tutorials - Free Access to Learn QOS Date: 5 Jun 2004 03:58:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi All, We just put up a new tutorial site for QOS and VOIP. For QOS -- http://www.intersyncsolutions.com/pages/2/index.htm For VOIP -- http://www.intersyncsolutions.com/pages/1/index.htm For businesses and professionals who want to know more! Links, news, whitepapers, tutorials updated daily -- fresh content. Check it out & Tell and Friend! :-) ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Memories of Illinois Bell in Better Times Date: 4 Jun 2004 19:14:23 -0700 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Lisa Hancock: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We had two cafeteria/buffet places here > in town for many years, a local place called 'Down Home' and another > place called 'Sirloin Stockade' which is now gone. PAT] I believe Sirloin Stockade is (was) a chain. I remember there being one across from my hotel when I was workign out of town about 6 years ago. If I recall correctly it was in Sioux City, Iowa. I often eat at an Old Country Buffet in Waterloo, Iowa. Not bad food, not cheap, but not too bad, my kids are young enough that they can eat for a buck or so, which helps. I don't think it costs us much more for four people to eat there than it does at Wendy's, and we get a lot better food (not that Wendy's is bad food, I quite like it). I guess I've drug this off topic a bit. ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net (Daniel W. Johnson) Subject: Re: Memories of Illinois Bell in Better Times Date: 4 Jun 2004 21:10:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote in message news:: > There are some modern chains of cafeterias. We have one called "Old > Country Buffet". The difference is that it's strictly pay in advance, > not cheap, and all-you-can-eat. They're not bad. > I miss the ability to select whatever I'm in the mood for, be it a > single side vegatable or a big dinner. Cafeterias allowed completely > free choice and I liked that. We have some "Old Country Buffet" locations around Indianapolis. I'm not sure I'd call it a cafeteria, though. What you seem to want is more like a chain called "MCL Cafeteria", but Springfield, IL seems to be their only location west of Indiana. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jun 2004 23:27:41 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: WW II Britain-U.S. Telephone Links? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I'm not sure if "nationalized" is the right word for this. While the > government told the Bell System what it's service and sales priorities > were to be, as it did most industries, it did not actually take over > management or ownership. The government took over railroads in WW I > and realized that was a mistake, it left business in private hands > during WW II, under strict (and very complex and confusing) > regulations. They nationalized the phone system in WW I, which was definitely a mistake, since what it meant in practice was that they turned around and subcontracted its operation back to Bell, but now the government was on the hook to pay all the bills. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: jim evans Subject: Re: Can I Tell If Incoming Call Is From A Pay Phone? Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:00:12 -0500 Organization: http://newsguy.com On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 09:58:39 -0500, jim evans wrote: > On my cell phone the only information I get about the caller is their > phone number. Is there a way to tell which numbers are pay phone > numbers. That is, callers who are calling from pay phones. > jim > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most cell phones are a lot like one of > my older caller-ID units, with just enough space or memory or what > have you to allow a single line with a number, nothing more. On one > of my newer units (a cordless phone fron Uniden with caller ID built > into the handset) I get the whole story; the number and some attempt > at the name, or 'wireless caller', etc. I think all you can do is > attempt to correlate the data you recieve with a cross reference > directory from the net or elsewhere. Any other ideas, anyone? PAT] Seems like I read a long time ago that pay phone numbers has some unique characteristic. jim [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Frequently yes, but not always. In many communities pay phones had suffixes beginning with '9' as in xxx-9xxx. Or sometimes '8'. But that was not always the case. With older phones which have been around for many years that is still generally the case, but how does one know if EXChange-9503 is an older line or not with those characteristics. And someone here recently mentioned having a home phone years ago of the xxx-9xxx variety and frequently being questioned by an operator about whether or not it was a pay phone. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition Date: 5 Jun 2004 01:24:16 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Phil Earnhardt wrote: > The numbers are way overkill for a home system. OTOH, this system > could hold promise for commercial cinemas. Hollywood should embrace > systems that deliver stunningly higher performance in theaters than > people can see at home. At this point in time (and IMHO), the DLP > system has failed to deliver on its promise. It's not the DLP technology that's at fault, it's the implementation. TI's DLP system scales easily, and requires nothing more than a few chips and lenses to achieve whatever resolution they want. The technology itself is quite elegant. If the theatre systems are only showing 2K pixels across, it's because that's how they designed the system and created the digital material. DLP would scale to whatever resolution they wanted. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 21:33:55 -0400 From: ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu Subject: Correction to URL I referred here a couple days ago to an article in the Village Voice I found interesting regards President Bush's foreign policy toward Israel and America. But I neglected to give the URL for people who wished to read about 'Jesus Landing Pad'. It is: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:18:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.20: Don't Let Congress Take Away Your Rights EFFector Vol. 17, No. 20 June 4, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 292nd Issue of EFFector: * Action Alert: Don't Let Congress Take Away Your Rights - Demand PATRIOT Review! * Activism Update: National, State Victories Abound * Maryland Election Officials Under Fire From Voters: EFF Files Brief in Case Challenging the Use of Insecure Diebold E-Voting Machines * MiniLinks (12): Why Google Should Be Good on Privacy * Staff Calendar: 06.06.04 - Ren Bucholz speaks at Planet Interactive, San Francisco, CA; 06.10.04 - 06.13.04 - Lawrence Lessig and Wendy Seltzer speak at "Wizards of OS 3: The Future of the Digital Commons," Berlin, Germany * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/20.php ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:49:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Zombie PCs Spew Out 80% of Spam By John Leyden Four-fifths of spam now emanates from computers contaminated with Trojan horse infections, according to a study by network management firm Sandvine out this week. Trojans and worms with backdoor components such as Migmaf and SoBig have turned infected Windows PCs into drones in vast networks of compromised zombie PCs. Sandvine reckons junk mails created and routed by "spam Trojans" are clogging ISP mail servers, forcing unplanned network upgrades and stoking antagonism between large and small ISPs. Using its own technology, Sandvine was able to identify subscribers bypassing their home mail servers and contacting many mail servers within a short period of time -- a sure sign of spam Trojan activity -- over sustained periods. It also looked at SMTP error messages returned, which helps to clarify the total volume of spam within the service provider network. "After comparing those data points with the total volume of legitimate messages passing through the service provider's mail system, we are able to arrive at our percentage of 80 per cent," explained Sandvine spokesman Mark De Wolf. Sandvine's analysis, cross referenced with data from SORBS, to determine what IP space is assigned to residential subscriber pools of global service providers, shows most spam now originating from residential broadband networks. http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/04/trojan_spam_study/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:04:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Intellectual Property: Economic Arrangements Among Small Excerpt from Recent GAO Reports and Testimony Intellectual Property: Economic Arrangements Among Small Webcasters and Their Effect on Royalties. GAO-04-700, June 1. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-700 Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d04700high.pdf Abstract The emergence of webcasting as a means of transmitting audio and video content over the Internet has led to concerns about copyright protection and the payment of royalties to those who own the recording copyrights. Arriving at an acceptable rate for calculating royalties has been particularly challenging. Under the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002, small commercial webcasters reached an agreement with copyright owners that included the option of paying royalties for the period of October 28, 1998, to December 31, 2004, on the basis of a percentage of their revenues, expenses, a combination of both, or a minimum fee rather than paying the royalty rates set by the Librarian of Congress. During debate on the act, copyright owners raised concerns that small webcasters might have arrangements with other parties, such as advertisers, that could produce revenues or expenses that might not be included in their royalty calculations. In this context, the Congress mandated that GAO, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, prepare a report on the (1) economic arrangements between small webcasters and third parties and (2) effect of those arrangements on the royalties that small webcasters might owe copyright owners. Small webcasters have a variety of economic arrangements with third parties, the most common being agreements with bandwidth providers and advertisers. Almost all of the webcasters that we interviewed reported arrangements with bandwidth providers, and many reported arrangements with advertisers. Less commonly reported arrangements included those with merchandise suppliers and companies that help small webcasters manage or obtain advertising for their Web sites, such as by inserting ads on the Web site or into the webcast itself or selling advertising based on the aggregate audiences of multiple webcasters. Third-party economic arrangements have had a minimal effect to date on royalties owed by small webcasters to copyright owners. Of the 27 small webcasters we interviewed that had agreed to the terms of the small webcaster agreement and provided us with financial data, 19 reported revenue and expense estimates below the levels that would result in royalty payments greater than the minimum fee. We found limited evidence to suggest that small webcasters may not be reporting revenues and expenses as required by the small webcaster agreement. Specifically, 2 of the 13 small webcasters who reported receiving free or reduced-price items did not report the value of these items as revenue for calculating royalties. However, the data we obtained in our survey may not reflect conditions that could develop as the webcasting industry matures. According to industry analysts, revenues of small webcasters are likely to increase as they attract more listeners and advertisers rely more on the Internet to reach customers. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04700.pdf ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Your Radio Is Calling Date: 5 Jun 2004 11:23:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Arik Hesseldahl, 06.04.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - Before the iPod, even before the Walkman personal stereo and the portable boom box, the transistor radio was one of the great electronic status symbols of young consumers. If you're of a certain age, you'll remember how the counterparts to today's owners of Apple Computer's. iPod music players could be picked out by the pocket-sized electronic box they held up to their ear. The first transistor radio was produced in 1954 through a joint venture between Texas Instruments and a company known as Industrial Development Engineering Associates. But a little Japanese maker called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo made it a cultural phenomenon. That company later changed its name to Sony . Aside from MP3 players, the mobile phone is probably the closest cultural equivalent to the transistor radios of old. A visit to any suburban mall on a Saturday afternoon proves that. Teenagers gab on their phones endlessly and are never caught without them. That's a point not lost on Nokia the world's largest maker of mobile phones. One often overlooked feature on several Nokia phones is the ability to receive FM radio signals, many of the company's phones have been equipped to receive FM radio signals. Nokia reckons that 77% its customers who use the simple radio feature tend to use it about once a week, and consider it important. Now the company wants to make the mobile phone the preferred way of listening to the radio and accessing related content. http://www.forbes.com/wireless/2004/06/04/cx_ah_0604radio.html Eric Friedebach /VoIP: prank calls to ex-girlfriends has never been cheaper/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Eric's comments about the first transistorized pocket radios reminds me of the one I had while in high school, 1956 or so. They only had AM signals of course, and you had to put this plug in your ear which looked like a hearing aid. People who did not know me, and some who did, would see me walking around with that plug in my ear, and say "Oh how unfortunate that at your young age you have to use a hearing aid. Are you mostly deaf or just a little bit 'hard of hearing'? PAT] ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #277 ******************************