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p2pnet World Headlines: Dec 14, 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009 8:02 PST -08:00 News

Open-access internet rules take hits CBC
MTS Allstream has lost its appeal for regulated access to parts of Bell’s and Telus’s internet networks.MTS Allstream has lost its appeal for regulated access to parts of Bell’s and Telus’s internet networks. The federal government has taken a pair of shots at rules that give smaller internet service providers regulated access to the networks of big phone companies such as Bell and Telus. In the first of two internet-related decisions quietly released on Friday, the government rejected an earlier order by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that would have given smaller ISPs the right to sell the same speeds as Bell and Telus. The CRTC’s “matching speeds” decision, made in December last year, would have required the large companies to offer the same speed services they themselves sell to smaller regional ISPs, such as Teksavvy or Execulink, at reasonable rates. These smaller ISPs rent portions of the big companies’ networks to provide their own services. They are currently limited to selling internet speeds up to around five megabits per second, while Bell and Telus offer up to 15 or 16 megabits.

87% Don’t Want to Pay Online NewTeeVee
People don’t want to pay for online content, no matter where they are in the world: That’s the result of a new study conducted by the GfK Group based on interviews with 16,800 people in the U.S. and 16 European countries. Only 13 percent of all respondents around the globe said that they were willing to pay for online content, while 33 percent even said that they wanted everything for free, without ads. I guess BitTorrent downloads weren’t an explicit choice, but they probably would have gotten quite a few votes as well. The GFK study (German press release), which was conducted on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, tried to get a sense of how people use the Internet in the U.S. as well as different parts of Europe. The willingness to pay for online content was just a small part of it, but the results are definitely noteworthy, if not troublesome, at least if you’re in the business of selling content online. However, just like on a backpacking trip through Europe, there’s always some places that are worse than others.

TechCrunch files suit over CrunchPad CNet News
TechCrunch filed a lawsuit Thursday against Fusion Garage, the blog’s onetime partner on the CrunchPad tablet device, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced Friday. Arrington wrote that the suit charges Fusion Garage with “Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competition, and Violations of the Lanham Act.” The filing of the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California escalates the war of words between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage, in a falling-out that recently became public. Arrington had earlier indicated that he would move toward litigation. In the hands of Fusion Garage, the tablet is now known as the JooJoo and on Monday made its media debut in San Francisco. The touch screen device, priced at $499, is designed for browsing the Web.

Hackers declare war on international forensics tool The Register
Hackers have released software they say sabotages a suite of forensics utilities Microsoft provides for free to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the globe. Decaf is a light-weight application that monitors Windows systems for the presence of COFEE, a bundle of some 150 point-and-click tools used by police to collect digital evidence at crime scenes. When a USB stick containing the Microsoft software is attached to a protected PC, Decaf automatically executes a variety of countermeasures. “We want to promote a healthy unrestricted free flow of internet traffic and show why law enforcement should not solely rely on Microsoft to automate their intelligent evidence finding,” one of the two hackers behind Decaf told The Register in explaining the objective of the project.

Teenagers regularly flout texting-and-driving laws intoMobile
Teenagers regularly flout texting and driving lawsThe idea of a nationwide ban on sending text messages while driving might sound like a great way to keep careless motorists from endangering our lives, but the harsh reality is that such a ban will probably fall on deaf, teenage ears – even if most Americans support such legislation. Reuters reports that at least one study has found that US teens often ignore anti-texting laws when behind the wheel of a car. That’s all the more alarming when you consider that inexperienced teen drivers are many times more likely to get into a wreck, either due to an inability to react to an emergency situation (lack of experience) or due to being distracted by their mobile phone. One 17-year old student in Phoenix, Arizona has some chilling insight into teens’ perception of the ban on texting while driving. Karen Cordova said that “nobody is going to listen” to the new laws, because, according to classmate Anna Hauer, “by the time they pull you over, the chances are you are going to be done with your text anyway so they can’t exactly prove that you were texting.” And, therein lies the problem.

Gary McKinnon challenges extradition Guardian
Lawyers acting for the computer hacker Gary McKinnon today lodged papers for a fresh high court challenge to stop him being sent for trial in the US. Last month the home secretary, Alan Johnson, wrote a letter ordering McKinnon’s removal to the US on charges of breaching US military and Nasa computers, despite claims by his lawyers that extradition would make the 43-year-old’s death “virtually certain”.

Random House Claims Digital Rights to Past Books Wall Street Journal
In the letter, dated Dec. 11, Markus Dohle, CEO of the Bertelsmann AG publishing arm, writes that the “vast majority of our backlist contracts grant us the exclusive right to publish books in electronic formats.” Mr. Dohle writes that many of the older agreements “often give the exclusive right to publish ‘in book form’ or ‘in any and all editions.’ ” He argues that, much as the understanding of publishing rights has evolved to include various forms of hardcovers and paperbacks, so too does it now include digital rights, since “the product is used and experienced in the same manner, serves the same function, and satisfies the same fundamental urge to discover stories, ideas and information through the process of reading.” The letter is likely to prove controversial at a time when e-books are one of the few fast-growing segments of the publishing business. It addresses one of the most vexing issues in publishing today: who owns the digital rights to older titles, frequently referred to as backlist books.

Facebook backtracks on public friend lists CNet News
It’s been a matter of days since Facebook’s new privacy controls went into place, and the company is already making modifications in response to user complaints that they expose too much information. Namely, the company has made it easier to prevent people from seeing who your friends are. For one, Facebook no longer makes a link to a list of your friends publicly available, and it has added an option for members who want no one at all–including other friends–to see their connections. Third-party applications, however, can still access it. “In response to your feedback, we’ve improved the Friend List visibility option,” an update to Facebook’s blog post about the new privacy settings read. “Now when you uncheck the ‘Show my friends on my profile’ option in the Friends box on your profile, your Friend List won’t appear on your profile regardless of whether people are viewing it while logged into Facebook or logged out. This information is still publicly available, however, and can be accessed by applications.”

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