What a week it was.
DVD Counter-attack: Film industry lawyers reportedly contacted two programmers involved in developing the utility that allows DVD films to be copied and asked them to delete information from their Web sites. One of the programmers who claimed he was leaned on capitulated, saying he didn't "have the time, nor money, to go up against these people."
But who's fault was it, really, that DVD was cracked? Proponents of strong crypto blamed the US government for holding back the industry and leaving DVD to rely on puny 40-bit keys. "This demonstrates what much of us have been saying for years: Export controls on encryption compromise security," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center's top lawyer.
MS Fallout: Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's Friday evening Microsoft ruling dominated discussion on TV talk shows, around water coolers, and on our pages well into the new week.
Much of the chatter centered on what fate the operating-system monopolist might now suffer. The government and Microsoft's enemies want to carve it up like a Thanksgiving turkey, but others said less draconian measures will suffice.
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Free-market think tanks were aghast at the ruling's scope and the sheer volume of the judge's anti-Microsoft denunciations, and could only speculate hopefully that Gates & Co. would win on appeal.
And what about Linux? Isn't it a competitor to Microsoft? The judge said only a "small number" of diehard geeks will choose to spend their time writing free software, and that the computer industry isn't embracing Linux or other more technically challenging Unix variants. Linux fans, however, beg to differ.
Microsoft, meanwhile, insisted that it had always wanted to settle the case and, really, Jackson's treatise decision mattered little. Mostly, though, the company laid low -- reportedly content to wait for a Republican to take the White House in 2000. And, as if to emphasize its business-as-usual stance, the company announced a five-year agreement with RadioShack to establish a Microsoft "store within a store" in as many as 7,000 Shacks across the United States.
Damage control: Real Networks couldn't shake the RealJukebox snooping story, though the company did learn it was off the hook as far as TRUSTe was concerned. For its part, the industry-sponsored privacy watchdog tried to salvage a bit of credibility by insisting it hoped to widen its regulatory scope to cover similar future cases.
And there are likely to be more. The global unique identifier -- the network tool used to detect when machines and their users come and go to networks and dot-com addresses -- has repeatedly been exposed as the culprit in Internet privacy misdeeds.
But back to Real, which may face its comeuppance in court. A Pennsylvania law firm filed a class-action suit charging the company misrepresented the use and collection of personal data of Jukebox users, violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as well as state privacy laws and consumer protection statutes.
Real also was forced to post a free beta of RealPlayer 7, which it said no longer tracks personal user information. (Real competitor Microsoft said its Windows Media Player also transmits an identifier, but since the company doesn't require user registration for its product -- as Real does -- the ID number can't be tied to personal information.)
And if all that wasn't enough, Streambox said it had developed a way to hack through RealAudio encryption so users -- not content owners -- can decide when, where, and how they listen to downloaded music.
Peace, love, right speech: America Online didn't want people to think it was meeting with gay groups under pressure, but it obviously was -- and the discussion of how hate speech fits into the company's terms of service went well. "We think hate speech on the Internet is dangerous and AOL agreed with us," said a rep from Human Rights Campaign. "They are very interested in developing an even-handed enforcement policy."
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Taking on Mr. Big: Nortel said that it will price its data routers up to 50 percent cheaper than those of rival Cisco Systems. The price reduction is all part of the company's aggressive push against Cisco, which has long dominated the data routers market.
E-politics: Email was at the heart of a couple of political stories this week. In the first, the Steve Forbes campaign tried to thank top contributors for coughing up US$1,000 apiece, the maximum allowed by law -- but instead sent the email to those who hadn't topped out. The other story was just an old-fashioned political dust-up conducted in a newfangled way, with Bill Bradley using the speed and power of email to accuse the Gore campaign of plagiarizing his ideas.
Forbes, BTW, made an appearance in Silicon Valley and was favorably received by the modest crowd that showed up to hear him. But that doesn't mean they'll support him. Those in attendance expressed concern that the publisher's chances for the GOP nomination were all but nil. Plus, most tech cash has already found its way to George W., Bradley, and the Veep.
MP3 the way they like it: Maybe the recording industry's secure digital music initiative isn't such a strife-ridden disaster after all. Portable players with skeleton support for SDMI started popping up in time for the Christmas rush -- including a new version of Creative Labs' Nomad player that will support a digital rights management system.
__ No way:__ The Internet Engineering Task Force voted overwhelmingly not to provide wiretap capabilities for governments that want to conduct surveillance online. One common complaint was that inserting wiretap functionality into standards makes them less secure, something the IETF has long opposed. "It would be like having the Christian Coalition debating a protocol for third-trimester abortions," was how one networking security expert put it. ____
Gotcha: An unannounced, random computer search at Carnegie Mellon University led to disciplinary action against 71 students who were allegedly hosting copyrighted MP3s. Their aid came after recording industry groups warned the university it could face legal action if it didn't comply.
A woman's place: The Internet-user gender gap, once a topic of great concern, has disappeared. Oh, all right, not completely; but 49.5 percent of all Internet users in the United States are now women, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The steep rise in the number of wired gals is changing the way commercial sites are choosing their content, too.
Y2K ready: The United States has 103 nuclear reactors, providing about one-fifth of the nation's electricity. And if the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute is to be believed, that portion of the juice should flow on 1-1-2000. "We expect to successfully maintain electricity production through January 1 and beyond," an NEI spokesman said. At least one watchdog group, however, wasn't so sure.
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End in sight: One guy in the Silicon Valley PR industry called what's going on a "feeding frenzy" -- well-funded infant dot-coms paying nearly any price for promotional help. But Susan Buttenhoff, president and CEO of Access Communications, said the flacks' feasting won't last forever. When the consumer-oriented dot-coms falter over the next three years, she expects the tech PR industry to shrink as much as a third.
Business vs. Business: The owner of DigDirt.com's parent company sued the august Washington law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, claiming it cracked into Dig Dirt and other Moore Publishing sites some 750 times, posted defamatory messages about owner Michael Moore on Usenet, and tried to cover it all up by doing their evil deeds under an e-identity swiped from a Virginia furniture store owner. The kicker to this weird tale? The judge who received the case is none other than Thomas Penfield Jackson.
That's the week that was. For information on ongoing goings-on, click over to The Calendar of E-vents.
