From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 22 14:59:45 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAMJxiJ03832; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:59:45 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:59:45 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411221959.iAMJxiJ03832@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 #561 TELECOM Digest Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:59:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 561 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson EchoStar Statement on Passage of Satellite Bill (Monty Solomon) OFX Consortium Develops New Approach To Financial Account Data (Solomon) Video Board Approves Apple-Supported Codecs (Monty Solomon) How do I Discover an Unknown Number (reking) Dropping SBC For a VoIP Solution - Vonage or Packet8? (Ringo Langly) Internet Broadband Services via Satellite (Thomas Ludwig) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Dan Lanciani) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (jdj) Re: SBC Wants its Cut of VoIP Revenue (Lisa Hancock) Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders (Robert Bonomi) Record Keeping, Re: Movie Studios Sue Internet File Traders (D.Burstein) U.S. Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Measure (Lisa Minter) 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: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 17:56:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EchoStar Statement on Passage of Satellite Bill ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 2004--EchoStar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:DISH) released the following statement today: EchoStar applauds the members of Congress for their work in passing the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act of 2004 that will benefit consumers. Over the next several years, the bill will allow satellite TV carriers to begin offering distant high definition TV network channels to many consumers if the local broadcasters lapse on their promises to Congress to begin broadcasting full-power HDTV to their viewers. EchoStar thanks the Senate and House Commerce Committees and the Senate and House Judiciary Committees for their time and effort in creating this bill and focusing on the best interests of consumers. In particular, we appreciate the diligence of Senators Ensign, McCain, and Stevens, their staffs and the participation of the House and Senate leadership. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=45160092 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:56:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: OFX Consortium Develops New Approach To Financial Account Data MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 22, 2004-- Seeks Comments on Process that Increases Safety, Security and Reliability of Electronic Financial Data Transfers The OFX Consortium, a group of companies that includes Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq:INTU), Parsam Technologies, Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT), is working to standardize the way financial transactions are transmitted over the Internet. The consortium is seeking comments on a new proposal that would increase the safety, security and reliability of electronic transfers. The proposal, available at http://www.ofx.net/ , takes a new approach to aggregating customer data by extending the widely used Open Financial Exchange (OFX) specification in ways that allow aggregators to receive account data for large numbers of users. In addition, it provides a mechanism that removes the need for sensitive user information, such as passwords, to be stored on aggregators' systems. The proposal was developed by the Open Financial Exchange Aggregation Services Working Group over the past 12 months. This extension to OFX provides ways to meet data exchange guidelines as defined in BITS Voluntary Guidelines for Aggregation Services, Version 2.0, published in January 2004, which is being endorsed by businesses with varying roles in electronic financial transactions. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=45168355 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:21:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Video Board Approves Apple-Supported Codecs By Jim Dalrymple The Digital Video Broadcasting Steering Board (DVB) has approved a revision to its implementation guidelines for audio and video codecs over a broadcast Transport Stream. The revision includes two technologies supported by Apple Computer Inc., H.264 or Advanced Video Codec (AVC) and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codecs. AVC and AAC are codecs supported by MPEG-4, an open standard technology based on the QuickTime file format and adopted by the ISO governing body. http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/11/09/avc/index.php ------------------------------ From: rekingus@yahoo.com (reking) Subject: How Do I Learn an Unknown Number? Date: 22 Nov 2004 09:55:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone know how I can retrieve a phone number for a line that I have recently discovered within our business. SBC is our carrier but they tell me I would have to have someone come out and trace the line at a charge. Is there a way of determining the nimber by using some code entered on the phone. reking [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a number (varies from one central office to another), but they are kept secret by the phone company, which tends to change them every three months or so anyway. If you knew *what central office your company is in* it is possible one or more of our readers who know about that sort of thing might be able to advise you what number (as of this day) to dial into. It is often times a number in the 200 'area code' such as 200-xxx-xxxx. Some reader may write to you to get the needed details and look up the answer for your particular situation. Or, you write again and tell us, maybe someone will answer you through here. What some people do, however, is inquire via 'Operator 7'. They place a 'person to person' long distance call to some number where there are a lot of transients, such as a large hotel, asking for Mr. Johnson. After looking around for Mr. Johnson, the hotel switchboard operator cannot find such a person; there is no such person as Mr. Johnson. But you insist he is due to arrive almost any minute, and ask your local operator to 'leave word'. So your operator will instruct the hotel switchboard operator to "leave word for Mr. Johnson when he arrives to call long distance to (your town) and ask for 'operator 7' (which is telco terminology for an incompleted person to person call), and the calling number is xxx-xxx-xxxx." You write down the number you heard your operator quote to the hotel switchboard operator, and you have your answer. If your operator asks "what number do you want Mr. Johnson to call you on?" your answer should be 'ask him to call this number I am on now.' and the operator will quote what her console ANI says. Its a variation on social engineering. The only time this may not work is if the operator suspects she is dealing with a phreak then she may choose to split the connection while she is instructing the hotel operator what to do, just to be nasty about it. If that happens the only thing you can do is wait a few minutes then try again hoping for a different operator next time. Or, call the hotel switch- board direct, state that you are Mr. Johnson and 'do you have any messages there for me?' Its a less expensive approach than telling the service rep to set up a technician's visit; and quicker also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rlangly@gmail.com (Ringo Langly) Subject: Dropping SBC For a VoIP Solution -- Vonage or Packet8 ?? Date: 22 Nov 2004 07:42:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all, I've been with SBC for quit a while, and the $35/month plus long distance I pay is really steap compared to what others like Vonage and Packet8 charge. I could also go with Time Warner's phone solution, but it's $50/month -- which is more then I'm paying now. For one, I don't make many long distant calls anyway (maybe 3-4 a month), so paying $50/month over $35/month for unlimited LD is useless for me. This brings me to two choices I'm looking at -- Vonage or Packet8. I've found a number of reviews, and they do help: http://www.easycall.net/broadband-phone.shtml http://reviews.cnet.com/4540-9238_7-30974762-3.html?rid=30974760 http://www.thetravelinsider.info/2003/0829.htm ... and most show Vonage better yet Packet8 cheaper. The key issue that's tieing me up is Vonage isn't in my area yet -- though they've said they'll be here 'soon' for like the last 6 months. THey are in my areacode, but the towns they cover are LD from where I live. Can someone give me some pros and cons from personal experience on either service? Why did you choose one over another? I'm looking more at Vonage mainly because of the features and Softphone program, which I'd love to get. Thanks for any insite ... Ringo ------------------------------ From: tludwig@idirect.net (Thomas Ludwig) Subject: Internet Broadband Services via Satellite Date: 22 Nov 2004 07:55:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com iDirect's technology has been optimized to deliver IP traffic over satellite, without land-line, and can handle any internet or web enabled functions, including high-speed internet surfing, VOIP, video-conferencing and others. Our technology is really cutting edge for IP VSAT in that we are pure TCP/IP-based and it is designed to deliver very high speed internet services into more remote-areas where terrestrial solutions are lacking. The iDirect "NetModem", which goes at the customer premises, is actually a combination satellite modem and internet router with TCP Acceleration and QoS built in (our "one box solution"). The Netmodem can provide up to 9 Mbps of throughput on the receive side and up to 4 Mbps of throughput on the transmit side. We have also built uplink power control into our technology that provides far greater reliability even in bad weather conditions. In general, iDirect's target market has been corporate WAN's, especially for customers in such sectors as oil and gas and government that need a highly robust, application rich solution. One area where we are seeing a quite a big interest is for using our technology for hybrid VSAT/terrestrial wireless solutions. In this scenario, the the VSAT link receives the high-speed internet connection, and then the internet is distributed from the VSAT using WiFi or some other terrestrial wireless solution. Kind Regards, Thomas Ludwig +32 479 34 94 40 EMEA iDirect Technologies Regus House 268 Bath Road Slough, Berks SL1 4DX United Kingdom ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:23:34 EST From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > In article , Dan Lanciani > wrote: >> Obviously. But why should I care? The point of the response is to >> tell people who were neither sending spam nor forging their address >> that their mail has been incorrectly identified as spam. Note that I >> do not include the body of the original message in my automated >> response, so you can't use my filter to reflect spam to a third party. > Suppose *your* email address got forged as the sender on spam that > went to 100,000 people using a similar system. My email addresses are frequently forged as from addresses for spam and various trojan horse programs. The automatically generated responses to those messages make up a lot of my junk mail. The difference between those "similar" systems and my system is that the operators of those systems are not considerate enough to rate-limit the responses to one per several months. Yet I do not condemn them for this oversight. |Guess what happens to _your_ mailbox. Yes, let's guess. Or rather, let's compare the two scenarios. If nobody were using a system similar to mine then my mailbox would see at a minimum a bounce message for each bad address on the list of 100,000 people. You may try to argue that spammers--being far more considerate of the innocent user whose from address they forged than I am--would carefully vet the list to minimize the bounces. But everybody who has received the bounces resulting from these forgeries knows that this is not the case. And even if the target address is good, it may well be set up to reject unknown from addresses. If every target system involved *were* running something like my filter then my mailbox would see at most one spam warning message from each *system* involved, regardless of the number of target addresses on that system. You may argue that spammers don't send to multiple accounts on the same system and -- even though anyone who has cleaned up the aftermath of having their address used in such a forgery knows that this argument is not generally valid -- I'll give it to you. So in the worst case my mailbox will see 100,000 spam warning messages. But guess what? Cleaning up 100,000 spam warning messages rather than 10,000 bounces (assuming a conservative 10% bounce rate) really doesn't involve a significantly greater effort. Beyond a certain threshold it comes down to removing the whole file, possibly after grepping for a few important keywords. On the other hand, in the best case (and a case that I expect would be much more typical) all 100,000 destination addresses may be @aol.com, so I'll get but one warning regardless of the god/bad address ratio. I like the odds. > But, "why should those people care?" They should *not* care. I encourage everyone to do something similar to what I am doing. This is not a prisoner's dilemma or a tragedy of the commons. The only downside to any individual of others doing the same thing is a greater incentive for spammers to look for ways around the specific filter, but that is a second order effect. And in any case the actual filters don't have to be the same, just the general operation. > *You* don't care about being part of doing it to them. What I'm doing is not part of the problem; it is part of the solution. Consider what would happen if everybody implemented a system similar to mine. There might (or might not, depending or arguable statistics about how well the addresses are coalesced per system) be more warning messages for people to read. But getting people to read warning messages does not benefit spammers. Spammers need people to read *their* messages. If nobody reads their messages then they will go away. Of course, it may be hard to accept that a solution that helps in the long term also provides tangible advantages to its users in the short term. We've been hearing for years about strategic initiatives to fight spam by punishing the owners of open relays and causing collateral damage to residents of spam-friendly ISPs. It all sounds very clever and political, but the spam just keeps increasing. (You may claim that the problem would be even worse were it not for these strategic initiatives; I really don't know.) I'm tired of waiting, so I opt for a more direct approach. > If all the spam had *invalid* addresses addresses, it wouldn't be an > issue. But, it is _very_ common for the forged address to belong to a > _real_person_ who had *nothing*to*do* with the spam. > You *are* spamming _their_ mailbox. Nonsense. You are re-defining "spamming" to suite your goal of shifting blame from the spammers to those who do not wish to read their spam. >>> Occasionally I see messages like that and they are treated >>> like spam, since they have nothing to do with me and responding to >>> them is useless. They go to /dev/null. Until it's full. >> That works only if you have time to look at all the messages. I >> don't. (I see you declined to disclose a working solution here or in the initial part of my message where I asked for an alternative. How about proposing a solution that does not involve reading the spam as its senders desire and that does not involve dropping what might not be spam on the floor without a response.) >>> Since spammers never use a real From: address replying by mail is >>> useless. >> It is extremely useful for my purposes; it just may not happen to also >> do what you (said you) want. :) > Yeah. you mail-bomb *innocent* parties who's address was used >_without_their_permission_as the sender. So you consider sending a single warning message in response to a received message to constitute mail-bombing? Again, I think you are using a very strained definition in an attempt to shift blame from the responsible parties to the victims. Do you also consider an error response for a non-existent target address to constitute mail-bombing? What about a response that the recipient is not accepting mail from the sender (as is popular with AOL)? >> My machine doesn't look like a relay and they are not trying to use it >> as a relay. They are sending to long lists of (invalid) *local* >> addresses. > It's called a 'dictionary' attack. No kidding. The question is why they are doing it to my machine. I suppose it's possible that they do it to any port 25 to which they can connect, but I'm not convinced. Anyway, feel free to have the last word. I realize that this is basically a religious argument that could carry on indefinitely, so I'll bow out. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The same thing could be said of me, I guess. I have an autoreply here at telecom I sent out to everyone who writes to anyone@telecom-digest.org or ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu which serves three purposes. If you are a good person, writing here to ask a question of the readers, comment on what others said, (or quite often, sass at me) that's fine. The second purpose is if you spammed, but are trainable, like most cats and many dogs to use a litter pan or a newspaper, then it tells you we are not interested in buying anything. The third purpose of the autoack is if you did not write any letter at all, to let you know someone has borrowed your name or your port 25 or whatevr, so you can make adjustments as needed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:16:58 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:22:44 -0500, Dan Lanciani wrote: > jdj@now.here (jdj) wrote: >> On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:12:34 -0500, Dan Lanciani wrote: >>> Interesting. I didn't realize that this was considered a bad thing. >> There are a lot of people who equate receiving spam to stepping in what >> the cat leaves on the lawn. > This makes no sense. How exactly can you avoid "receiving spam"? Huh? I don't find mention of avoiding spam here. This was relating the emotional aspect of stepping in the cat's donation to one's lawn to spam. Can't really avoid that, either -- unless there's no lawn. >> It makes them all kinds of upset when someone suggests doing something >> other than killing received spam. > Tell me how to kill received spam without also killing legitimate mail > and I'll do it. ???????? OK, now I _am_ confused. Moving on ... >>> My filters respond to every (seemingly) spam message with a note >>> indicating how to bypass the filter if in fact the mail is not spam. >>> (Actually they do this only once per sender per some months, but you >>> get the idea.) I really can't just dump (seeming) spam in the bucket >>> since there are a few false positives. But I get 1500+ spams per day >>> and I can't look at them all. That's not too many... :) >> Chances are that your filters are sending responses to forged >> addresses. > Obviously. But why should I care? The point of the response is to tell > people who were neither sending spam nor forging their address that > their mail has been incorrectly identified as spam. Not a good idea for someone in business. Not a few people will not bother trying again. So I presume you're not in business. >> Occasionally I see messages like that and they are treated like spam, >> since they have nothing to do with me and responding to them is >> useless. They go to /dev/null. Until it's full. > That works only if you have time to look at all the messages. I don't. Not even such messages that make it through the filters? >> I should have made it clear that I was not talking about replying to >> mail. > Yes, that would have been helpful ... Well, it is a rare spammer, if any, that requests a mail response. I really thought that was fairly common knowledge and would not need to be put in such pedantic detail. >> I meant responding by using the url's in the mail body. > Only a small minority of the spam emails that I've examined bother to > encode a destination address tracking cookie in the URLs. Thus your > comment about tainting the database doesn't make a lot of sense in the > context of accessing the URLs rather than responding by mail. Well, not all are so encoded. There are other ways, quite trivial. No, I will not go into them as they are already discussed to death elsewhere. You know, there are things you can do to cut back on the connections from spammers, such as throttling, blocking multiple connections, etc. >> Since spammers never use a real From: address replying by mail is >> useless. > It is extremely useful for my purposes; it just may not happen to also > do what you (said you) want. :) ????? >> Spammers hit every machine with an open smtp port. If your mail server >> accepts connections and even looks like it relays, it will be on >> spammer lists as a good relay. They don't care if nothing is actually >> delivered. > My machine doesn't look like a relay and they are not trying to use it > as a relay. They are sending to long lists of (invalid) *local* > addresses. I wonder what makes your mailer so special that they keep trying invalid addresses? I rarely see such traffic. They nearly always are looking for relays. >> A SYN would do nothing and with multiple SYNs being sent from all over >> the place it would probably be regarded as a dDOS attack. > That's quite a stretch, given that each SYN would be in response to > something the spammer had actually sent, i.e., there would be no third > party initiating the attack. Of course, you would have to be careful > not to build a distributed machine that *could* be used by a third party > for such an attack. What would you think if you were getting thousands of SYNs from all over the world all the time? And what would a laywer think? >> To be charged for a hit a page must be requested. So sending a SYN >> would cost the spammer nothing. > So you are saying that spam hosters do not charge their clients for IP > traffic? Even if that is true, they might change their policy in the > face of such a response. As I said, they charge for hits. SYNs are not hits. Wishes are not fishes. > Unfortunately, I can't afford to waste the bandwidth by actually > requesting the pages. Then the trick is not for you. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: SBC Wants its Cut of VoIP Revenue Date: 22 Nov 2004 10:04:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Adam wrote > How can we fight to prevent S.B.C from reaching its greedy claws into > the VoIP treasure chest? Well, as I understand it, VOIP was just ordered by the FCC to be deregulated. So they have to make do in the marketplace. If fees charged by their vendors are too high, they may find another vendor (like cable companies who offer VOIP) or build their own networks, just like the cable companies were able to do. I think it's wrong when the new carriers want to be deregulated when it suits them, but be a "public utility" when it suits them. They can't have it both ways. The VOIP escaped the regulatory burdens the traditional land line carriers have to put up with, which is a major financial benefit to them. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 06:50:32 +0000 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In this next group of three messages, Robert Bonomi contradicts me, then Danny Burstein elaborates on what he was saying earlier (about no logs kept very long), and finally, Lisa Minter explains what the lame duck government decided to do a couple days ago on copyright violations. PAT[ In article , > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But as someone else noted in a message, > not all ISPs keep that information around very long. Once they have > had a chance to do what they need with it, the information is dumped. > And if someone called in on a dialup line and hacked a real user's > name and password then they would have nothing to go on would they? > PAT] Ever hear of ANI, and/or caller ID ? Six years ago, almost all of UUnet's dial-ups had caller ID, the capability to 'lock out' given calling numbers, and rejected calls without caller ID info. In greater NYC, at -that- time, they had *one* POP that couldn't do caller ID (actually it was the telco C.O. that couldn't 'do' it). And a _very_ persistent spammer who was using it, via large numbers of throw-away accounts via providers that contracted with UUnet for dial-up port access. AT THAT TIME, they were migrating to ANI where it was available. The big dial-up ports providers have had enough problems with fraud, etc. that they almost all run pretty paranoid systems, with extensive logging retained for extended periods. Contrary to the other poster's assertation, almost all ISPs keep this info around for moderately extended periods -- i.e. _months_, for their *own* needs. It can easily take a month or more, for credit-card fraud to surface, just to mention one reason. Example: card charged at the beginning of a billing cycle. 4 weeks later is end-of-cycle. Several days after that the charge statement is mailed. A few days later it is delivered. *BUT* the cardholder is on vacation for 3 weeks. You're at 60+ days from the account opening, before the cardholder 'notices' the fraudulent charge, and challenges it. ONLY THEN does the 'red flag' go up at the ISP, that the caller log data may be 'needed' to identify the criminal that defrauded _them_. In any territory where there is 'measured calling', the _telephone_company_ has records of every call, going back _at_least_six_months_, often longer. Even on 'unlimited calling plan' lines. Finding the records of calls made _to_ your number is a royal pain-in-the-ass, but it _can_ be done. Despite the public claims by the telco's to the contrary. (Judges are _not_ amused when a subpoena response comes back 'we do not have any such data available', and the requesting party shows the judge that they _do_ have call-detail data for that period available; that the 'true situation' is that is is 'inconvenient' to look for what was subpoenaed. Such a pissed-off judge can provide a _great_deal_ of 'motivation' to a recalcitrant phone company. *grin* ) ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Record Keeping, was Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:55:19 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: ( lots snipped ) >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But many IP addresses are not static, >> but dynamic. What do they do then to find the person who 'stole' the >> movie or the piece of music? PAT] > *READ* what I wrote, above. They have the IP address _and_ the timestamp. > The subpoena the ISP to *find*out* _who_ was using *that* IP address *at* > *that*time*. The _ISP_ *does* have that information, from authentication > logs, etc. _Now_ they have the person's name, to replace the "John Doe" > on the lawsuit. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But as someone else noted in a message, > not all ISPs keep that information around very long. Once they have > had a chance to do what they need with it, the information is dumped. > And if someone called in on a dialup line and hacked a real user's > name and password then they would have nothing to go on would they? > PAT] The bit of hacking a "real user", etc., is an annoyance but not the major issue. Of far more concern is that, thanks (or no thanks) to such massive (ab)use of the legal system by the RIAA (and others) many ISPs, and many other groups that would have records, are trashing them as soon as they're not absolutely necessary for system functioning. This has potential to cripple valid and serious investigations. With the emphasis that I'm speaking for myself and not for any group I'm associated with, if the FBI came by and was looking for info to help track a shipment of plutonimum, or to figure out where a car bomber was connecting to the internet, I'd give them all the assistance I could. However, I most assuredly do NOT want to get into the midst of a pissing match between the RIAA and music sharers. Or, for that matter, divorce proceedings. Or thousands of other relatively minor incidents, which, while important to the people involved, are of no social seriousness. The net result of the RIAA, etc., hassles is that a huge amount of useful infomration that could be crucial in major cases is destroyed. (Let me repeat here that it's not just the RIAA but they're the most visible. It's also not just ISPs that see this concern. Taken to extremes you'll find pizza stores dumping records so as not to get dragged into investigations of adultery in divorce cases ...). And I fear we're going to see exactly this scenario, one in which the feds have a _valid_ and _crucial_ need to find out which internet connection was used six weeks ago to, say, check out suppliers of geiger counters, but all the records are long since destroyed. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: U.S. Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Measure Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:50:04 EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate has voted to outlaw several favorite techniques of people who illegally copy and distribute movies, but has dropped other measures that could have led to jail time for Internet song-swappers. People who secretly videotape movies when they are shown in theaters could go to prison for up to three years under the measure, which passed the Senate on Saturday. Hackers and industry insiders who distribute music, movies or other copyrighted works before their official release date also face stiffened penalties under the bill. "This bill strengthens the intellectual-property laws that are vital to the ongoing growth of our economy," Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said. Most elements of the bill have already passed the House of Representatives but will need to be approved by the House again in December to iron out minor differences. Left out were several more controversial measures that would criminalize the actions of millions of U.S. Internet users who copy music and movies for free over "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa. These users now face copyright-infringement lawsuits from recording labels and movie studios, and thousands have been hit with such suits since last year. Under a measure approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, song swappers could go to jail for up to three years if they shared more than 1,000 copyrighted works. That bill would have also directed the Justice Department to pursue file-traders more actively through civil lawsuits. Consumer groups, consumer-electronics makers and the American Conservative Union had sought to derail those measures, portraying them as a radical expansion of traditional copyright protections. That material was dropped from the bill, but the Justice Department said on its own last month it plans to take a more aggressive approach to policing intellectual-property crimes. The bill also shields "family friendly" services like ClearPlay that strip violent or sexually explicit scenes from movies. Hollywood groups say such services violate their copyrighted works by altering them without permission. A section that would have made it illegal to edit out commercials was removed. Earlier in the week Congress approved a measure that would streamline the process by which royalty rates are determined. Another measure that would have made it easier to sue peer-to-peer networks died in committee last month, though insiders expect Congress to take it up again next year. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ 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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