Clips October 29, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips October 29, 2002

ARTICLES

Bush to Sign Voting Revamp Bill
Sun shields server rooms from attack
Reuters Accused in Privacy Case
Roster Change Government IT personnel moves
RealNetworks to release player source code
Nonprofit to Create Open Source Software
Who owns your e-mail?
P2P App's Aim: Defend Free Speech
E-mail greeting card hides porn
Study tallies sites blocked by Google

***************************
Associated Press
Bush to Sign Voting Revamp Bill
1 hour, 24 minutes ago
By SANDRA SOBIERAJ, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush (news - web sites) is signing legislation 
to revamp the nation's voting system and protect against the kinds of 
errors that threw his own election into dispute two years ago.

The White House scheduled a morning bill-signing ceremony for Tuesday, 
starting Bush's two-day respite from campaigning for GOP House, Senate and 
gubernatorial candidates in next Tuesday's elections.


Under the Martin Luther King Jr. Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 
2002, states will receive $3.9 billion in federal money over the next three 
years to replace outdated punch-card and lever voting machines or improve 
voter education and poll-worker training.


The new law's protections against voting error will not affect next week's 
balloting but are scheduled to be mostly implemented in time for the 2004 
congressional and presidential vote, which will most likely include Bush's 
re-election bid.


It was Bush's bitter 2000 Florida recount battle with Democrat Al Gore 
(news - web sites)  with its confusing "butterfly ballots," half-perforated 
punch ballots and allegations of voter intimidation  that gave rise to the 
legislation. Bush's election was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.


The House approved election changes late last year and the Senate followed 
suit in April, but Republican demands for strong anti-fraud provisions 
stalled reconciliation of the two versions for months. Lawmakers did not 
send a final bill to Bush until last Wednesday.


"This has been a long marathon, but the finish line is finally in sight and 
the winner is the American public," said Senate Rules Committee Chairman 
Chris Dodd, D-Conn. "This landmark legislation will ensure that everyone 
not only has the right to vote on Election Day, but that their voice is 
heard."


Beginning Jan. 1, first-time voters who registered by mail will be required 
to provide identification when they show up at the polls.


By the 2004 vote, states will be required to provide provisional ballots to 
voters whose names do not appear on voter rolls. Those provisional ballots 
would counted once valid registration is verified.


For 2006 balloting, states will be required to maintain computerized, 
statewide voter registration lists linked to their driver's license 
databases. States will also be required to have voting machines that allow 
voters to confirm the way they marked their ballot  and, if necessary, 
change their votes  before they are finally cast.


Such voting software was tested in one jurisdiction in the 2001 Virginia 
gubernatorial election. The Century Foundation, which reviewed the results, 
found that the "lost vote" rate went from between 600-700 votes in the 2000 
election to just one vote in 2001, said Tova Andrea Wang, a staffer to the 
National Commission on Federal Election Reform who later oversaw the 
foundation's study.

"The bill goes a long way toward addressing a lot of the problems, but the 
extent to which the bill works relies on what the states do because they 
are given a lot of discretion," said Wang.

"A new polling machine is fine and great as long as people know how to use 
it, and there's no specificity in the legislation on poll-worker training 
and voter education."

Wang and other election experts also worry that discriminatory enforcement 
of the voter-ID requirements could especially disenfranchise minorities, 
the poor, immigrants and students. She called the provision "something that 
may have to be revisited."
***************************
Reuters
Pro-Islamic Hackers Gear Up for Cyber War, Experts Say
Tue Oct 29, 4:30 AM ET
By Michael Christie

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pro-Islamic hackers are on the frontline of a potential 
new cyber war after the end of a cease-fire by "hacktivists" and virus 
designers that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States, 
Internet experts say.



Pro-Islamic hackers are escalating attacks against countries backing the 
U.S. war on terror and its campaign against Iraq, while the "Bugbear" worm 
and last week's strike on the Internet backbone signal that cyber villains 
are again on the prowl.


London-based computer security firm mi2g said on Tuesday that October had 
already qualified as the worst month for overt digital attacks since its 
records began in 1995, with an estimated 16,559 attacks carried out on 
systems and Web Sites.


The firm which advises banks, insurance and reinsurance firms on security 
said politically motivated attacks had risen "sharply."


"We have noticed that more and more Islamic interest hacking groups are 
beginning to rally under a common anti-U.S., UK, Australia, anti-India and 
anti-Israeli agenda," it said.


According to the zone-H database, an independent site which monitors hacker 
activity, politically motivated Web Site defacements make up around 11 
percent of the total.


Most hacking is attributable to "script kiddies" from Brazil to Germany 
"bragging and strutting," said Dean White, the SANS Institute Internet 
Storm Center coordinator for the Asia Pacific.


But real-life events like the September 11 anniversary, simmering violence 
in Israel, bombs in the Philippines or the October 12 blasts that killed 
180 people on Indonesia's island of Bali all could be expected to serve as 
inspirations on the Web.


SOMETHING AROUND THE CORNER


"We were saying we have to be ready and we have to be prepared, it's been 
quiet for too long, there's going to be something around the corner," White 
told Reuters.
*****************************
New York Times
Online in Cairo, With News, Views and 'Fatwa Corner'
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

CAIRO, Oct. 28  Inside a run-down building in a middle-class Cairo 
neighborhood, a hybrid group of eager young dot-commers and idealistic 
religious messengers produces one of the Islamic world's leading Web sites, 
Islam-Online.net.

"We all consider this an act of jihad, how to liberate people's minds from 
ignorance," said Ahmed Muhammad Sa'ad, using "jihad" in its sense of 
spiritual struggle. Mr. Sa'ad is a recent religious school graduate and a 
prize-winning reciter of the Koran who helps channel readers' requests for 
religious rulings, or fatwas, to Islamic legal scholars around the world.

Islam Online says it wants to present a positive view of the faith to 
non-Muslims, to strengthen unity in the Muslim world and to uphold 
principles of justice, freedom and human rights. Scholars of the region say 
they see the Web site as a leading example of efforts by moderate Muslims 
to push for the Islamization of societies by nonviolent means.

"There's a desire to make it a one-stop shop," said John L. Esposito, a 
professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University. 
"But obviously no single Web site can do that for anything, let alone the 
Islamic world."

The Web site also has an English version, aimed at Muslims living outside 
the Arab world. Professor Esposito points out that only about a quarter of 
the world's 1.2 billion Muslims speak Arabic, and that for the rest, 
English is an increasingly common second language.

The site is ambitious in content. Along with news articles, there are 
in-depth discussions of Islamic issues, political analyses, discussion 
groups, advice pages and a "fatwa corner," where readers can ask questions 
or look up past edicts from religious scholars. That is where Mr. Sa'ad works.

The promulgation of fatwas by call-in shows and Web sites has spread in 
recent years. Islam Online provides private responses for personal issues, 
and public ones for questions of general interest. One recent day, the 
Arabic site advised a questioner that killing women and children in war was 
forbidden unless they were warriors; that a woman could appear unveiled 
before her son-in-law; that abortions of deformed fetuses were wrong if the 
condition was one that could be lived with.

The site's news section reflects the point of view of most media in the 
Arab world, emphasizing the suffering of Palestinians, criticism of Israeli 
policies and opposition to the United States' policy on Iraq. The 
commentary section is generally mild in tone. The site appears to steer 
clear of touchy doctrinal issues, like traditions that separate Shiites 
from Sunnis.

During a reporter's recent visit to the offices here, young employees sat 
at work over computer keyboards behind a series of closed doors. About 100 
people, mostly Egyptians, with a sprinkling of others from across the Arab 
world, work here; most of the women on hand wore head scarves.

In the newsroom, Eman Ahmed, 24, a graduate of Cairo University in her 
first job, was rewriting a correspondent's account of the Bahraini 
elections. "I am doing good things for Muslims and Islam," she said. In the 
fatwa room, a group of graduates of the prestigious Islamic university Al 
Azhar, including Mr. Sa'ad, dealt with requests for religious rulings. 
Later, work stopped throughout the offices for evening prayers.

Mutiullah Tayeb, the Web coordinator, said Islam Online was receiving about 
250,000 page views a day, which he said made it the leading Islamic site. 
"We have to have mutual understanding, conversation," he said, "and not 
allow other people just to describe Islam on behalf of Muslims."

The Web site began operating three years ago in Doha, Qatar, where its 
technical and corporate offices are located. Qatar's leader, Sheik Hamad 
bin Khalifa al-Thani, has made efforts to create a more open, liberal 
atmosphere. Another prominent result of that openness is Al Jazeera 
television, which has broadcast messages by Osama bin Laden and his 
confederates, and has drawn criticism from governments across the Arab 
world for its outspoken ways. The Qatari royal family, which finances Al 
Jazeera, is a major supporter of the Web site, according to its deputy 
editor, Hossam el-Din el-Sayed.

Islam Online and Al Jazeera are both feeling the influence of an 
Egyptian-born cleric, Sheik Yusuf Abdulla al-Qarawadi. In addition to 
acting as the Web site's spiritual guide and chairman of its board, he has 
gained prominence through a regular call-in show on Al Jazeera, in which he 
expounds on theological topics and answers questions about Islamic 
practices and principles.

He has given mixed signals on the subject of women, saying that nothing in 
the Koran forbids their voting or driving but that a woman's main role is 
as a mother.

Sheik Qarawadi, who has a history of anti-American views, condemned the 
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a "heinous crime," saying on the Web site that 
the killing of innocents is a "grave sin" under Islam. But the sheik also 
condemned Egypt's leading Muslim scholar for rejecting terrorist attacks 
that killed Israeli civilians. The perpetrators were fighting colonizers, 
he said, and in Israel all men and women are "soldiers."

But Mr. Sayed, the site's deputy editor, said that Islam Online was by no 
means a mouthpiece for the sheik. He, like others interviewed at the site's 
offices, emphasized that it was a vehicle for a broad range of mainstream 
Islamic views.

"I have this idea about sharing the principles and concepts of Islam with 
humanity," he said. "We are defending justice, not only Muslims."
********************************
CNET News.com
Sun shields server rooms from attack
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
October 28, 2002, 9:00 PM PT

Sun Microsystems has come up with a way to insulate computer networks from 
fires, floods and bomb attacks: Split up the machines and put them in 
different cities.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based server manufacturer on Tuesday will unveil its 
Enterprise Continuity program, a collection of services and technology 
designed to prevent network failure by physically separating computers that 
work together in a unified cluster.

Properly installed, computers in the same cluster--running, for example, a 
stock trading system or conducting drug research--could be located 125 
miles away from one another without increasing latency or lag time. Current 
fiber connections only allow computers in a cluster to be separated by six 
miles. Beyond that distance these computers can't function seamlessly to 
run the same application together.


"This allows you to pick up half your cluster and get it out of the 
disaster footprint," said Chris Wood, director of technology sales and 
marketing in Sun's storage division. "You want to move from disaster 
recovery to didn't stop in the first place."

Nortel Networks participated in the project and will assist Sun in 
implementing installations.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and other events in recent years have 
prompted a surge of interest in physically distributed computing. The 
German government, for example, has passed legislation that banks 
geographically disperse their processing centers. Downtime caused by 
outages can quickly cause millions' worth of damage.

To date, companies have mostly hired disaster recovery companies to perform 
data retrieval or create systems that mirror ongoing operations to prevent 
downtime. Some companies have tried services similar to the one that Sun is 
selling as well.

Although not cheap, Enterprise Continuity will be less expensive compared 
with many traditional disaster recovery options because the active computer 
systems and the backup systems are the same thing. If an explosion knocks 
out half the cluster, the remaining half will absorb the work.

The system depends largely on an artifact of the dot-com era: dark fiber. 
In the late 1990s, companies planted miles of fiber-optic cable into the 
ground in Europe and North America. A substantial portion of it has yet to 
be used.

In Enterprise Continuity, customers will exclusively lease portions of this 
unused fiber and create a dedicated, secure link between two halves of a 
separated cluster. In developing the system, Sun largely worked on tuning 
its servers and storage systems for this sort of architecture while Nortel 
examined the high-speed communications issues.

"It turns out that putting distance into architectures that were originally 
designed to run 500 meters (500 yards) was a bigger challenge than 
expected," Wood said. The long-distance lasers on the market now, for 
instance, only reach six miles, which made them ineffective.

These systems, which will all involve custom installations, will be 
targeted at the largest 1,000 companies in the world. Sun has certified 
that its StorEdge 3900, 6900 and 9900 storage systems and the SunFire 15k 
server can be used in these installations.
*************************
Associated Press
Reuters Accused in Privacy Case
Mon Oct 28, 3:46 PM ET

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - A small Swedish information technology company 
Monday filed criminal charges against news service Reuters PLC for 
obtaining an earnings report from a Web page it considered private.



Intentia International asked Sweden's National Criminal Investigation 
Department to investigate whether Reuters PLC broke the law by retrieving 
parts of Intentia's third-quarter report from a Web page before Intentia 
released it publicly.


Reuters published Intentia's report on Oct. 24 after it became available 
through Intentia's Web site. The report was available to anyone who typed 
the correct Web address. But Thomas Ahlerup, a spokesman for the company, 
said the Web page was not available through normal channels on the site.


He said Intentia's legal advisers consider Reuter's action to be an 
infringement of laws that govern information technology property.


Reuters' Nordic bureau chief in Stockholm, Jonathan Lynn, said in a 
statement that the company was surprised by Intentia's stance. Reuters 
published information on the results "after they had been accessible over 
the Internet."


A release from Reuter's London headquarters said "there was no substance to 
the allegations that it made an illegal entry to Intentia's IT systems."


Last week, Reuters published an earnings report from banking group Nordea 
AB ahead of the scheduled release. Nordea has acknowledged that parts of 
the report were mistakenly put on its Web site.


Ahlerup said that if authorities deem that Reuters retrieved the 
information from a public part of the Web site, it could set an important 
precedent, making anything on a company's Web server public information, he 
said.


"We want the authorities to test what can be considered to be private or 
public," Ahlerup said.


Ahlerup wouldn't comment on whether the company had made market-sensitive 
information available before it was released.
***************************
Federal Computer Week
Roster Change Government IT personnel moves
Oct. 29, 2002.

Fred Thompson, a longtime information technology official at the Treasury 
Department, will end his 30-year federal career on Nov. 1.

He is leaving the federal government in the midst of a departmental 
reorganization that resulted in cuts to the IT staff.

Thompson, assistant director for consulting and marketing at Treasury's 
Office of the Chief Information Officer, is the latest IT official to 
announce his departure. Last week, Mayi Canales, the acting CIO, said she 
was leaving her job in government effective Oct. 25 to start a consulting 
business.

Mike Parker, currently the director of Enterprise IT Business Planning and 
Assurance for Treasury's CIO office, will become the interim acting CIO 
while officials look for a permanent candidate. Parker began his tenure at 
Treasury as director of financial management for the CIO office in 1999.
*****************************
Government Computer News
DOD settles on new rule for software buys

By Dawn S. Onley
GCN Staff

The Defense Acquisition Regulations Council published a final rule Friday 
requiring contracting officers to first review the Defense inventory for 
commercial software and maintenance services before checking elsewhere.

The rule adds the Enterprise Software Initiative requirements to the 
Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement Subpart 208.74.

"The goal is to achieve significant savings to the taxpayer through lower 
prices and better use of software licenses," the council wrote in the rule.

The Defense ESI working group lobbied for the rule as a way to put some 
teeth in a two-year-old mandate that was widely overlooked. A July 2000 
memorandum from the Defense CIO's office required contracting officers to 
consult ESI when buying commercial software and maintenance services, but 
the memo was often ignored. The latest move by the council makes the 
measure a part of the DFARS, the rules that procurement officials must 
follow in purchasing for military agencies.

The rule requires Defense contracting officers to first check the Defense 
inventory for large software buys, said James S. Clausen, co-chairman of 
the group. The blanket purchasing agreements offer DOD agencies discounts 
of up to 90 percent off list prices for items such as communications 
software, database products, office automation and security tools.

If the inventory does not have an enterprise agreement for a particular 
product, or if a contracting officer is not satisfied with the price or 
terms, he or she can apply for a waiver to use another vehicle, officials said.
*****************************
Government Executive
GSA awards contract to upgrade Web site

From National Journal's Technology Daily




Responding to the Bush administration's call to offer more citizen-focused 
services, the General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded a contract 
to overhaul its Web site.


The agency said Monday that it has awarded the $930,000 contract to Bates 
Worldwide and its partner 141XM. The initiative follows a marketing study 
that GSA conducted last February outlining the need to make the site more 
user friendly.


In particular, customers said the site contains too much information that 
is not always intuitively organized. Work already has begun on the site to 
meet the spring 2003 deadline.


GSA's Office of Citizens Services and Communications will be conducting 
customer surveys and working with internal stakeholders "to determine the 
type of information clients want to see on the Web sites," said Tom 
Skirbunt, acting director of strategic planning and marketing.


GSA may look to sites like FirstGov.gov as models for aspects of the GSA 
redesign.
***************************
Computerworld
Net's Vulnerability Exposed
Attack on root servers resulted in moderate damage - this time
By Jaikumar Vijayan and Patrick Thibodeau
OCTOBER 28, 2002

Last week's assault on the Internet's core addressing system may not have 
caused much real damage, but it highlights the Internet's vulnerability to 
more sophisticated cyberattacks in the future, security analysts warned.
All 13 of the Internet's root Domain Name System servers - three of which 
are located outside the U.S. - were victims of a massive distributed 
denial-of-service attack on Oct. 21.

"It was the single most elaborate and focused attack on the DNS network 
that we have ever seen," said Tom Ohlsson, vice president of Matrix 
NetSystems Inc., an Austin, Texas-based Internet performance monitoring 
company.

The attack appears to have been an attempt to disrupt the Internet by 
clogging root DNS servers with useless traffic. The root DNS servers 
provide the vital translation services needed for converting a Web name 
such as www.computerworld.com into a corresponding numerical IP address.

But overall Internet service appears to have been largely unscathed, with 
few major disruptions reported, Ohlsson noted.

That's because most of the information contained in the 13 root DNS servers 
is cached in redundant and hierarchical fashion across multiple secondary 
DNS servers.

"On the plus side, this shows that despite all those apocalyptic 
projections, the Internet is more resilient than people think," said John 
Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. "But it also shows 
that the basic plumbing of the Internet still has vulnerabilities that need 
to be addressed or brought up to business-quality levels."

Simple Solution

The relatively simply nature of last week's DDOS attack is what made it 
easy for administrators to detect and choke off the offending traffic in a 
few hours, analysts said.

But service would have started degrading if the attack had been sustained 
long enough for the information contained in the secondary DNS caches to 
start expiring - a process that usually takes from a few hours to about two 
days, analysts added.

"This wasn't exactly the most sophisticated attack in the world," said 
Jerry Brady, chief technology officer at Guardent Inc., a security 
consultancy in Waltham, Mass. "But I've got to believe that this is going 
to inspire a lot more attacks like this in future."

In a DDOS attack, hackers typically break into and take over thousands of 
poorly protected networked computers - including those in homes - and use 
such "zombies" to send torrents of useless data at target servers or networks.

"It is the electronic equivalent of somehow getting 50,000 phones to dial 
911 at the same time," said Mark D. Rasch, former head of the U.S. 
Department of Justice's computer crimes unit.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the 
private group that's charged with ensuring the stability and security of 
the DNS, will discuss methods for improving DNS security at its annual 
meeting next week in Shanghai.

Among the fixes ICANN will be looking at is deploying the DNS Security 
protocol to improve data origin authentication, said Stephen Crocker, an 
Internet pioneer and computer scientist who heads the ICANN security 
committee.

The more daunting problem is improving the security of PCs sold without any 
security protections. "It's a public nuisance issue," Crocker said.

And DNS servers aren't the only component of core Internet infrastructure 
that can be taken down by such attacks, analysts say. For instance, an 
attack directed against a few well-selected Border Gateway Protocol routers 
- which are used to exchange routing information for the Internet - could 
cause large portions of traffic to be misdirected at will, said Ted Julian, 
president of Arbor Networks Inc., a Lexington, Mass.-based vendor of DDOS 
prevention tools.

Last week's attacks "represent an important escalation of these kinds of 
threats," Julian said. "DDOS is no longer being targeted at single Web 
sites, but at the entire Internet infrastructure."
****************************
USA Today
RealNetworks to release player source code

SEATTLE (AP)  Microsoft has billions of dollars working to its advantage, 
but crosstown rival RealNetworks is hoping to line up the rest of the world 
on its side.

RealNetworks on Tuesday planned to release most of the secret blueprints, 
or "source code," to its software that allows computer users to play audio 
and video over the Internet. It planned to similarly release the source 
code for its server and encoding software in December.

By sharing the code with thousands of developers, the company believes it 
can more quickly and more effectively spread adoption of its 
software  tailored for scores of different computers, wireless phones and 
handheld devices.

Still, the Seattle-based company is keeping other parts of its source code 
secret, including the blueprints for such features as burning compact discs.

The release is part of RealNetworks' new "Helix" strategy, announced in 
July. The company is the latest convert to the so-called "open-source" 
software movement of sharing software blueprints. The idea is that an 
assortment of programming talent will improve and build upon existing 
technology.

That's a starkly different strategy than Microsoft follows. The 
Redmond-based software giant closely guards its source code and considers 
such open-source software as Linux operating systems and server programming 
as significant competitive threats.

RealNetworks now has 300 million users of its media-playing software, 
mostly on personal computers. It wants to reach 1 billion users in five 
years, on everything from cell phones to handhelds, chief executive Rob 
Glaser said. Not counting media software embedded in browsers, RealNetworks 
has a slight edge over Microsoft, with about 31 million home users in June, 
compared with 30.1 million for Microsoft players, according to the research 
firm comScore Media Metrix.

Since the announcement, more than 2,000 developers have signed on to the 
RealNetworks Helix Web site to participate, the company said. RealNetworks 
is offering two licenses  one for enthusiasts who must agree to make their 
creations available for free to anyone in the community and another for 
companies who must pay a royalty to RealNetworks for any commercial 
programs built off the source code.

Microsoft said RealNetworks' Helix initiative is a ploy.

"Real is using open source theatrics to try to change the perception among 
the developer community that they are hard to work with and too restrictive 
in their licensing terms," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager of 
Microsoft's Windows Digital Media.

RealNetworks needed to make such a strategic change in order to keep pace 
with the explosion of interest in digital media, said Richard Doherty, 
director of research firm The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y.

"No one can handle it all," he said. "So the only way RealNetworks could 
expand is to give up some of the magic through open source."

Regardless of whether it's an offensive or defensive move, it helps 
differentiate RealNetworks from Microsoft in a race that has grown too 
close to call, said Max Flisi, an analyst with International Data Corp. 
"They wanted to do something that was not just 'let's release the next 
version and claim it is twice as fast.' "
*****************************
New York Times
Nonprofit to Create Open Source Software
By LAWRENCE M. FISHER

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28  Mitch Kapor, a software industry pioneer, has 
started a nonprofit organization to create software applications in the 
manner of the "open source" movement, in which the underlying code is 
freely shared with the public.

Mr. Kapor, who in 1982 created the first so-called killer app for personal 
computing, the Lotus 123 spreadsheet, and was a co-founder of the Lotus 
Development Corporation, has financed the new organization, the Open Source 
Applications Foundation, with $5 million of his own money. But he is also 
accepting donations. Andy Hertzfeld, a leader of the original Apple 
Macintosh development team, has joined as a full-time volunteer, and the 
foundation has five other employees, all based in San Francisco.

The foundation's first software program is to be a personal information 
manager, or PIM, as such programs are known. Code-named Chandler, the 
software is to combine e-mail and calendar functions with tools for sharing 
files among multiple users. Mr. Kapor said he planned to release a 
functional portion of the program by the end of the year, and hoped to have 
a finished product by the end of 2003. At this time the Foundation plans to 
release Chandler, both the production program and the underlying source 
code, as a free download, but Mr. Kapor said he would not rule out a 
commercial package, most likely from a third party.

"I actually think the PIM is the central productivity application, not the 
word processor or the spreadsheet," Mr. Kapor said last week. "Where people 
spend their time is their e-mail and calendar," he said. "I've felt 
frustrated that what is out there falls short of something satisfying."

Most large companies use Microsoft's Outlook Express for e-mail and 
calendars. But the program's more advanced features, like file sharing and 
collaboration, are available only when it is used with Microsoft Exchange, 
a more costly product requiring network server computers. Mr. Kapor said 
Chandler would offer this kind of performance to smaller organizations at 
much lower cost by using so-called peer-to-peer technology, which relies on 
the users' PC's and eliminates the server.

"Individuals and small organizations are at a disadvantage today," he said, 
"and I'm an old PC guy. I'm in favor of end-user empowerment and 
decentralization." Mr. Kapor said Chandler was aimed at filling an unmet 
need for smaller organizations, not at unseating Microsoft in large 
companies. Groove Networks, a company backed by venture capital and founded 
by the Lotus Notes creator, Ray Ozzie, has also produced a peer-to-peer 
e-mail and collaboration program, but it, too, is primarily aimed at large 
companies, Mr. Kapor said.

The Open Source Applications Foundation will offer its code free to 
individuals or organizations, provided they also make any code they produce 
using the foundation's work freely available as well. Companies producing 
proprietary commercial products with the foundation's underlying code will 
pay a fee.

Jeff Tarter, editor of Softletter, said he was skeptical that there was a 
market for Mr. Kapor's new venture, but the success of the Linux operating 
system had also defied the skeptics.

"I haven't seen any evidence that there's a hole in the market here," he 
said. "But all the rational people have been completely wrong about most of 
these markets. So the fact that this sounds loony is probably a good thing."
*************************
 CNET News.com
Who owns your e-mail?
By Evan Hansen
October 29, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

Nancy Carter has a message for Internet service providers: Keep your hands 
off my e-mail.

The Toronto, Ontario-based freelance TV producer has been battling 
U.S.-based Inter.net Group for the past 16 months over a billing dispute 
she says may have cost her a lucrative job opportunity. Now she wants 
$110,000 in damages over a policy that led Inter.net's Canadian subsidiary 
to keep her ISP account open for incoming e-mail even while denying her 
access to the account.

Beyond the money, Carter said she wants to change the way ISPs handle 
suspended and canceled e-mail accounts. At stake, she asserts, is an 
industrywide practice that amounts to extortion, in which ISPs may hold 
private communications hostage until bills are settled up.



E-mail has "entered our lives at warp speed, and the law needs to keep up," 
she said of her lawsuit, filed earlier this month in federal court in 
Canada. "You can't interfere with the mail. The post office has to return a 
letter even when it doesn't have enough postage."

Carter's legal odyssey is unfolding in the wake of bankruptcies among major 
ISPs including Excite@Home and Northpoint Communications, failures that 
have put ISP consumer protection issues on the front burner for lawmakers 
in the United States.

Dave Kramer, an attorney with Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm Wilson, Sonsini, 
who is not involved in Carter's suit, said disputes over suspended e-mail 
accounts in the United States are typically covered by terms of service 
contracts that consumers agree to when they sign up with ISPs. In general, 
he said, such contracts give ISPs wide latitude to set conditions, 
including collecting and refusing to hand over e-mail until bills are settled.

"Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see ISPs tweak their contracts" in 
response to the case, Kramer said.

Related consumer protection issues have already been heating up in 
California, where Gov. Gray Davis recently handed Internet companies a 
split decision.

Davis late last month signed a bill that requires e-mail service providers 
to give 30 days' notice before shutting down e-mail accounts. The law, 
which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2003, does not apply in situations where an 
account holder has violated the terms of service or when service is 
interrupted for reasons beyond the e-mail provider's control.

Davis subsequently vetoed a more sweeping bill that would have enacted the 
same restriction on ISPs (Internet service providers). The governor called 
the bill "well intentioned," but said it failed to provide sufficiently for 
cases of consumer misconduct or technical mishap.

A question of privacy
Carter's legal quest began last year, when she filed a complaint with the 
Privacy Commissioner of Canada charging Herdon, Va.-based Inter.net with 
violating the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic 
Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Enacted in 2000, the law prohibits anyone from collecting personal 
information without consent and putting it to commercial use.

Carter argued that Inter.net had violated the law by collecting e-mail 
messages addressed to her and using the files as a weapon to force her to 
pay a disputed bill.

The commissioner does not reveal the names of parties involved in suits 
brought before him. Nevertheless, Carter said the findings related to her 
case were published in a report issued Aug. 28. In that brief, the 
commissioner found that the ISP in question had failed to adequately 
disclose its policy on delinquent accounts, and agreed that the policy 
violated PIPEDA, clearing the way for a civil trial.

A representative for Inter.net, a company formed following the bankruptcy 
of PSINet last year, declined to comment on the finding or the lawsuit.

According to Carter, Inter.net presented her with a $214 charge for 14 
months of service that had gone unbilled because of an accounting error.

Carter said she agreed to pay half, an arrangement the company initially 
accepted but later rejected. At that point, she terminated the account and 
signed up with an alternate provider, Carter said.

The old account, however, was kept open under suspension without her 
knowledge, she said, and e-mail continued to pile up. Carter eventually was 
able to retrieve 24 e-mail messages some three and a half weeks after the 
cancellation, including one from a potential employer encouraging her to 
apply for a $65,000 contract job at the Discovery Channel. Prior to the 
e-mail, Carter and her potential employer had exchanged telephone messages 
about the position. Unbeknownst to her, the e-mail would have been the next 
link in that chain, but by the time she got it, the position had been filled.

In his report, Canada's Privacy Commissioner said Inter.net's policies are 
standard practice in the ISP industry that need to be changed.

The commissioner recommended that "the ISP immediately cease collecting, 
storing, and denying access to e-mails addressed to holders of accounts 
under suspension and adopt instead the practice of deflecting such e-mails 
back to the senders with notification to the effect that the messages could 
not be delivered."

Few companies offer e-mail senders a way other than a direct reply to 
verify whether their messages have gotten through to, and been read by, the 
intended recipient.

America Online, the world's largest ISP, provides members with an e-mail 
receipt notification option and lets members check on the status of e-mail 
sent to other members.

But AOL spokesperson Nicholas Graham said the company's privacy policy does 
not allow AOL to indicate to anyone other than the owner of the account 
whether someone had access to the account at any given time. As a result, 
accounts that have been suspended may continue to receive e-mail without 
notification to senders that the account is inaccessible to the owner.

Graham added that AOL requires members who violate the company's terms of 
service to return to good standing before they can access e-mail that has 
accumulated during this period. AOL members who cancel their accounts 
voluntarily lose any accumulated e-mail unless they reactivate their 
accounts before the files are purged, a process that may take a few weeks 
to complete.

AOL members who send e-mail to a canceled AOL account receive notification 
that the account is no longer active. Non-AOL members e-mailing a canceled 
account receive a different notification stating that the message did not 
reach its intended address.

Carter said she has pursued Inter.net in the hopes of barring ISPs from 
collecting e-mail sent to delinquent accounts and of forcing them to notify 
e-mail senders when an account they have tried to reach is inactive.

"I want the industry to stop doing this," Carter said.
***************************
Wired News
P2P App's Aim: Defend Free Speech

Developers of peer-to-peer file sharing application Freenet issued a 
long-awaited "major release" on Monday, marking the controversial project's 
first such advancement since August 2001.

The announcement ends an extended quiet period for its creators, and 
underscores their hopes of reaching more users.

Like its more popular peer-to-peer cousins Kazaa and Gnutella, Freenet 
allows people to exchange files over the Internet through a shared network.

But unlike other networks, Freenet's creators say they designed the 
application with free speech, not free entertainment, in mind. The software 
provides a forum for anonymous publication, using data encryption and a 
decentralized network designed to prevent shutdown by anyone -- unfriendly 
governments, ISPs and even the network creators themselves.

Hampered by stability problems and a less-than-friendly user interface, 
earlier versions were relegated to a limited audience of tech-savvy users. 
But Freenet's developers say version 0.5 addresses those limitations, and 
includes enhanced encryption and anonymity capabilities.

The application's identity-cloaking design makes it impossible to determine 
the actual number of users, but 25-year-old Freenet project founder Ian 
Clarke says the software is downloaded roughly 2,000 to 3,000 times daily. 
Last week, Kazaa averaged 442,460 downloads a day on CNET's Download.com.

Reportedly, users in China have translated the software's user interface to 
Mandarin Chinese, and have adapted it for distribution on a single floppy 
disk.

"I'm told they're using it to share documents the government has been 
trying to censor, some of which are related to the Tienanmen Square 
massacre and (banned Chinese spiritual organization) Falun Gong," Clarke says.

He acknowledges that Freenet will inevitably also be used by the Web's 
"seedier elements" to distribute other kinds of outlawed content -- 
potentially including child pornography or racist propaganda. Freenet's 
distributed design means that a network participant could unknowingly store 
fragments of illegal or offensive content on their computer, in encrypted 
form.

"If you believe in freedom of speech, you need to protect other people's 
right to it, even when you disagree or find it distasteful," Clarke says. 
"Freenet is like a parallel World Wide Web, where everybody is anonymous."

The project's conceptual base was documented in 1999 in a paper Clarke, who 
is Irish, wrote while studying at Edinburgh University in Scotland. On a 
whim, he published his paper online, soliciting help to execute the 
project. Freenet's first release launched in March 2000, and Clarke moved 
to Los Angeles shortly thereafter. Freenet now consists of about 30 
volunteers and one paid student developer.

This week, Clarke also announced he is stepping down from Uprizer -- a 
company he founded in 2000 to explore commercial applications for Freenet 
-- to launch a new company called Cematics.

Clarke says Uprizer will relocate to Singapore, where it will find a ripe 
market for its content distribution products in a region where bandwidth 
cost is widely estimated at four to five times U.S. averages.

Freenet's developer fans are creating a number of surprising applications 
for the software, including one designed to enable FM-quality radio 
broadcasting over its network. Projects like these aren't likely to win the 
notorious network any new friends among entertainment lobbyists who argue 
it promotes unlawful distribution of copyrighted material.

But Clarke claims copyright law was the last thing on his mind when he 
started the project.

"So much of the uproar over copyright implications of Freenet seemed 
off-topic to me," he says. "I wanted to say, 'Look, welcome to the jungle. 
This is capitalism, where people are forced to adapt to new technology.' 
Copyright is just one way of encouraging artists to create.

"And, ultimately, free speech is more important than your current copyright 
laws."
***************************
CNN Online
E-mail greeting card hides porn
By Jeordan Legon
CNN
Tuesday, October 29, 2002

(CNN) -- The e-mail looks harmless enough: A link to a greeting card that 
appears to be sent by a friend.

But clicking on the link can place porn images on a desktop, download a 
barrage of x-rated ads, or send similar e-cards to those listed in 
Outlook's address book.

No downloadable e-mail attachments to install. No infected disks shared. 
All the user has to do is go to a link.

E-mail marketers -- many of them porn sites -- are increasingly borrowing 
tactics used by hackers to trick potential customers into seeing their 
messages, anti-virus experts say. And often, they use Microsoft's ActiveX 
Controls, which are meant to make Web pages more interactive, to instantly 
download their unwanted programs.

"It like the boogy man. It's going that way," said Chris Wraight, tech 
consultant for anti-virus company Sophos. "You have to be careful and be 
very, very suspicious."

They're not viruses or worms, but they are annoying -- modifying a user's 
computer in ways they never intended, said Lawrence Baldwin, president of 
Internet security firm myNetWatchman.com.

"The general thinking of the average Internet user is that ... by running 
antivirus and not downloading executable files, they don't have to worry," 
Baldwin said. "But they're getting a false sense of security."

One e-greeting prompts warning
There are many such direct marketing e-mails making their way around the 
globe. One this week elicited enough complaints that it prompted warnings 
from anti-virus firms and by Tuesday, Canadian company Cytron 
Communications had taken down the offending site.

The Cytron-enabled e-mail greeting mimicked many legitimate greeting card 
sites by including a personalized subject line: "(Recipient) you have an 
E-Card from (sender)." Within the message, there was a link to 
friendgreetings.com and a small note: "E-card viewer plug-in may be 
required to view some cards."

Those who clicked on the link and accepted the lengthy user agreement 
unwittingly downloaded a program that peppered them with porn-filled pop-up 
ads and handed over the e-mail addresses in their Outlook e-mail address 
book to the marketer.

Not doing anything illegal
The direct marketer is not doing anything illegal, so many anti-virus firms 
are treading carefully -- not treating such misleading campaigns as 
viruses, but warning users nonetheless.

"It was a gray area... that we have to watch carefully," Wraight said.

Baldwin advises users to avoid clicking on e-mail links to sites they don't 
recognize. And he suggests disabling the Internet Explorer function that 
allows browsers to instantly download ActiveX Controls. Doing so will cause 
a warning box to appear anytime such files are encountered, which could get 
annoying because Macromedia Flash, used to create Web animations, uses 
ActiveX Controls.

But a little annoyance is worth it in the long run, he said. "You have to 
configure your browser to protect yourself."
****************************
CNN Online
Study tallies sites blocked by Google
Friday, October 25, 2002

NEW YORK (AP) -- What you get through Google's powerful and popular search 
engines may depend on where you live.

A report Thursday from Harvard Law School found at least 100 sites missing 
from search results when accessing Google sites meant for French and German 
users.

Most of the missing sites are ones that deny the Holocaust or promote white 
supremacy. France and Germany have strict laws banning hate speech, while 
the United States favors freedom of expression even for unpopular viewpoints.

The sites themselves were not blocked. But the effect is the same when 
users cannot find them, said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com.

"Search engines are an incredible tool for people to locate information on 
the Web," Sullivan said. "If you pull a Web site out of a search engine, 
you are in some degree censoring, in some degree making it inaccessible to 
some people."

In a statement, Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said the company must 
occasionally remove sites to avoid legal liability. Such removals, he said, 
are in response to specific requests and are not done preemptively.

"We carefully consider any credible complaint on a case-by-case basis and 
take necessary action," Tyler said. "We only react to requests that come to 
us."

Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and several other companies run separate sites for 
different countries, often in native languages and featuring local 
currencies. The primary, ".com" version is generally considered the U.S. 
site, though it is accessible from elsewhere, including France and Germany.

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for 
Internet & Society, and Ben Edelman, a Berkman researcher, found about 65 
sites excluded from Google.de, the German site. They found 113 sites, 
including the 65, missing at Google.fr, the French site.

Testing was conducted Oct. 4-21.

Remove sites for legal reasons
Edelman said users would have no inkling of any exclusions unless they 
compared search results side by side. He suggested Google could better 
serve users by inserting a "placeholder" where sites are removed due to 
government or other censorship.

Google's stated policy calls for removing links when site owners request them.

It also removes them for legal reasons, most prominently when the Church of 
Scientology International complained of copyright violations at a Norwegian 
site run by critics.

After free-speech advocates complained, Google agreed to notify the site 
ChillingEffects.org when it gets a copyright-related removal request.

Google, as a private company, is generally not bound by the free-speech 
guarantees in the First Amendment, which applies to restrictions imposed by 
government.

But Edelman said that private or not, the company has a public 
responsibility as a widely used resource.
***************************


Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx