Drop the mouse son and give up your rights
Kazaa offices in Sydney Australia were raided by record industry private investigators in an attempt to uncover evidence of alleged copyright infringements. Kaaza is the world's largest P2P file swapping network which specializes in giving its users the ability to trade music, picture and video files via its software while also housing its own search engine and distributing various forms of AdWare to its users PCs.
Kazaa claims to house 3 million to 4 million users at any given time - given the distribution of keyword advertising and adware via Kazaa, that's a big number.
AP wires report that The Federal Court gave five major Australian record labels permission to raid 12 premises in three states to collect evidence against Kazaa, said Michael Speck, general manager of the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (I just learned a difference between US and Australian law).
In the United States, a federal judge already has dismissed the entertainment industry's lawsuits against two rival file-sharing services, Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., saying they could not be held liable for what their users do with the software. Basically file swapping services let users swap any types of files (most being bootlegs or illegal). That ruling has been appealed, with a decision expected in February."
the Search Engine Journal

From the WTF files: Japan is bombing us with stupid
Tamagotchi, the popular digital pet from the 90s, is coming back, and this time it will be able to date, fall in love, and even have babies.
The new, souped-up version -- which goes on sale in Japan on March 20 -- will be able to communicate with other pets through infrared, said Bandai Co., the Japanese toy maker that produces Tamagotchi, on Wednesday. Owners can have their pets compete in eating contests or give flowers and other presents.
CNN.com - Tamagotchi digital pets to return, and this time they breed - Feb. 5, 2004

Microsoft fixes IE but then screws it up.
By protecting users with it's new patch Microsoft has stopped the browser from accessing legitimate sites. The patch corrects the Phishing vulnerability but now will prevent browers from automatically getting into passworded sites with all the info in the URL. There is some info on this in the knowledge base to fix the servers but that is a lot of work for sites you do not own. Traffic has definitely dipped for a lot of sites. We will see how this pans out.
ZDNet UK - News - Microsoft IE patch leaves users locked out

Vonage groing strong with 100,000 subscribers
NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Vonage, which provides phone service over high-speed Internet lines, on Monday said it had signed up its 100,000th customer, representing a doubling of its subscriber base in less than five months.

Vonage of Edison, New Jersey, which has been offering the service for two years, said it added more than 15,000 lines in January alone and 50,000 since September.

The company offers telephone service for a competitive flat-rate price via residential broadband Internet connections. Residential pricing plans start at $15 and run up to $35 or more for unlimited calling in the United States and Canada.

Vonage has said it is targeting 250,000 customers by the end of this year and it is expanding internationally.

The company recently struck a deal with Texas Instruments Inc. (nyse: TXN - news - people) in which the communications chip maker will build circuits that make it simpler for customers to set up Internet phone-calling without additional connection equipment.

Offering calling at prices that undercut traditional phone companies, Vonage faces challenges from some U.S. state and federal regulators who argue it should lose its Internet exemption and meet the regulatory demands of traditional phone service providers.
Forbes.com: Vonage signs 100,000 customers for Internet phones

Microsoft leaks details on Xbox Next
Wonder when the prices will drop on the old Xbox
Microsoft has quietly circulated the specifications for its next-generation Xbox video-game console, indicating how the company plans to carry on its war against dominant player Sony."
Mercury News:

Heavyweights in cahoots for mobile DRM
Another move in the cat and mouse game for stopping file traders
A number of industry leaders have joined together to get the widely-scorned concept of Digital Rights Management employed more rapidly in the mobile devices sector.

Heavyweights from several fields, including Intel, mmO2, Nokia, Panasonic, RealNetworks, Samsung and Warner Bros. Studios, have announced their plans for a licensing and compliance framework called Content Management License Administrator (CMLA).

According to the founding companies, the aim of the framework is to address necessary business concerns and enable the rapid delivery of high-quality digital content to mobile handsets and other devices that deploy Open Mobile Alliance's (OMA) Digital Rights Management version 2.0 specification.

The creation of CMLA coincides with the introduction of the OMA's DRM version 2.0 interoperability specification developed and provided through the OMA. The OMA DRM 2.0 specifies an interoperable service enabler for Digital Rights Management (DRM), and is regarded a major enhancement to the OMA DRM 1.0 specification.

The CMLA will address critical digital content delivery concerns by providing a licensing and compliance framework to provide the necessary encryption keys and certificates to licensed device manufacturers and service providers to enable interoperability between new devices and service. The CMLA will also facilitate open participation in the OMA DRM system by defining standard agreements among service and content providers and device makers, according to its founders.

If all goes well, the CMLA expects to have agreements available for device makers, service providers and content participants in the first half of 2004 with a toolkit including encryption "keys" delivered by the end of 2004.

From the dumb story of the week file
Tacking Jr. or II onto a boys name is too common, a new father decided, so the self-described engineering geek took a software approach to naming his newborn son. Jon Blake Cusack talked his wife, Jamie, into naming their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0. Version 2.0 was born Tuesday at Holland Community Hospital, and the proud parents took him home Friday. "I wanted to find something different to name him besides Jon Blake," Cusack, who is self-employed with Westshore Design and Cusack Music, told The Holland Sentinel.

UK Teenager Sentenced for Hacking U.S. Research Lab
LONDON (Reuters) - A London teenager was sentenced on Monday to 200 hours of community service for hacking into the computer system of a U.S. physics research laboratory to store his personal collection of music and film files.

Joseph James McElroy, 18, of Woodford Green, told Southwark Crown Court in London that he hacked into 17 computer systems at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago over a two-week period in June 2002 to store and exchange hundreds of gigabytes worth of computer files with his friends.

The U.S. Department of Energy had sought 21,000 pounds ($38,000) in compensation for the breach, which forced technicians to shut down a portion of the computer network for three days, the court was told.

The government-funded laboratory does advanced research into subatomic particles, plus research on nuclear weapons.

In October, McElroy, a student at Exeter University in southwest England, pleaded guilty to violating Britain's Computer Misuse Act. The law, which covers a broad range of computer crimes from hacking to virus writing, carries a maximum prison term of five years.
Judge Andrew Goymer waived demands to repay the U.S. Department of Energy on grounds the breach at no point compromised the laboratory's confidential research data.
The laboratory, renowned for discovering the smallest elements of matter in the universe, has one of the largest computer facilities on the planet capable of storing vast amounts of research data.

For years, people have been hacking into corporate and university computer systems to store massive caches of film and music files when their own computers run out of disc space.

In such piggy-backing schemes, large institutions and corporations are chosen because the files can go undetected for long periods amid a sea of data.

A joint investigation between the Department of Energy and New Scotland Yard's Computer Crime Unit in Britain traced the break-in to McElroy in July 2003 after they identified his IP address, an identifier that matches computer users with their computer.

McElroy told police he was unaware the computers belonged to a government-funded research laboratory.

Time Warner sucks! Stay away from Time Warner VOIP.
Vonage is the best, My friend Julia can tell you cable companies suck at the VOIP.

From Cnet News.com
The Time Warner unit speeds the rollout of its Net-based phone service, because it more urgently needs the "voice piece" of its triple play of offerings designed to fend off gains by satellite companies.

Time Warner Cable is accelerating the rollout of a Net-based telephone service to fend off competitive pressure from satellite companies and act on a hunch that broadband phone offerings will be a big success, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons said Wednesday.
Time Warner Cable's Digital Phone service is now in Raleigh, N.C.; News.context What's new: Time Warner Cable is accelerating its VoIP investments, expecting to offer Net-based phone service to most of its subscribers by the end of 2004.
Bottom line: Thanks to their rapid deployment of new broadband phone services, cable companies are poised to reap new revenues--and potentially take market share from phone companies and satellite competitors.
For more info: Track the players Kansas City, Mo.; and Portland, Maine. The $40-a-month telephone plan, which offers unlimited local, in-state and domestic long-distance calling, will be available in three more cities in the next few weeks and in "almost the entire cable footprint by the end of the year," Parsons said during a conference call, following Time Warner's quarterly financial results announcement. It's an accelerated timetable, according to a Time Warner representative.
Parsons said Time Warner is making a "bigger investment" in Digital Phone this year because of the service's potential as a revenue generator. Digital Phone will also help defend Time Warner Cable against satellite companies that are making headway selling cable TV and broadband services, Parsons said. Most satellite cable providers do not sell a telephone service.
"We think the addition of the voice leg of the stool gives us an offensive weapon to go back and win back some of our customers," Parsons said. "The rollout will be a major focus for us all this year."
Time Warner Cable's shortened VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) timetable highlights cable's increasingly powerful position as a conduit for all things digital--a trend that poses a dangerous challenge to local phone companies and satellite providers in the race to provide much coveted "triple play" services, which combine voice calls, high-speed Net access and video programming.
All of the major U.S. cable companies have announced plans to sell phone services over a broadband connection, heralding the collapse of the last barriers to local phone competition. By contrast, planned video services over telephone wires--the missing triple play link for the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs)--are much further away from widespread commercial deployment.
In addition, cable's entry into phone service represents a major threat to a raft of upstart services that piggyback VoIP products on third-party broadband connections. Companies such as Vonage, VoicePulse and Packet8 have been selling broadband phone packages for between $20 a month and $35 a month, but they have signed up relatively few customers to date. "We think the addition of the voice leg of the stool gives us an offensive weapon to go back and win back some of our customers." --Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons
Local and long-distance phone companies have also joined the game. In October, regional phone company BellSouth announced plans to sell VoIP to small and midsize businesses. Qwest Communications International rolled out a VoIP service in Minnesota in December. Verizon Communications said it plans to begin selling Internet telephony services to broadband customers early this year. In addition, SBC Communications last year began testing VoIP services.
AT&T is also laying the groundwork for a national VoIP plan that will be available to anyone with a broadband connection. AT&T has not yet disclosed its pricing plans.
One of the biggest appeals of broadband phone plans for consumers is their cost, usually about 30 percent less a month than similar offerings from traditional phone companies. Broadband dialing services also offer features like caller ID and call waiting for free; regional Bell operating companies or long-distance providers usually charge extra.
Cable is in a strong position to capitalize on a predicted consumer shift to VoIP service over the next five to 10 years.
"This is one of the big fears among the RBOCs--that cable companies will make a major push in local telephone markets," said Mark May, an analyst at Kaufman Bros.
Although Cox Communications and Comcast already offer digital phone service over cable to some 2.2 million subscribers, most their products use a different underlying technology, known as TDM (time division multiplexing). Cox has also begun testing a VoIP phone service in Roanoke, Va., the 12th market in which the company has begun selling cable TV, broadband and its Cox Digital Telephone service. Get Up to Speed on... VoIP Get the latest headlines andcompany-specific news in ourexpanded GUTS section.
Meanwhile, Cablevision Systems last year rolled out VoIP service to its approximately 4.4 million cable customers in the New York tristate region. Dubbed Optimum Voice, the service is offered exclusively to subscribers of Cablevision's Optimum Online high-speed Internet access service, for a flat rate of $34.95 per month. The package offers customers unlimited local and long-distance calling, along with a list of other features, such as call waiting, caller ID, call return (*69), three-way calling and call forwarding, according to Cablevision.
Parsons' comments about the Net phone business underscore a new direction for Time Warner. After suffering major setbacks from its merger with America Online, the company has largely stabilized its finances by reducing debt and selling off underperforming businesses such as the Warner Music Group. In 2004, Parsons' message to investors focuses on growth, much of it stemming from its Time Warner Cable division.
Executives have also publicly discussed their ambitions to grow Time Warner Cable through acquisitions. Time Warner has listed companies such as Cablevision, Adelphia Communications and Charter Communications as possible takeover targets. However, these efforts could be hamstrung by an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice over Time Warner's accounting practices. Executives did not offer an update to the investigations, nor did they offer a time frame for any resolution.