From emale at deadhead.net Fri Jun 5 01:43:54 1998 From: emale at deadhead.net (Steve) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 00:43:54 -0800 Subject: Online speech Message-ID: <199806050742.AAA29893@accessone.com> English Court May Test U.S. Ideals on Online Speech Carl S. Kaplan NY Times 6/5/98 In what many lawyers believe is the first case of its kind, and one that could test whether expansive American notions of free expression can prevail on the global Internet, an American university is being sued for libel in England for its role in the online posting of a student's statements about an English citizen. Dr. Laurence Godfrey, a British lecturer in physics and computer science, has sued Cornell University and one of its former graduate students in the High Court of Justice in London, saying defamatory messages were posted by the student to a Usenet newsgroup three years ago. Godfrey says that the messages, which were accessible on the Internet to readers in England and around the world, originated on Cornell's computer system. He says he asked Cornell officials to prevent further publication after the first message was posted, but the university refused, citing concerns about freedom of expression and the First Amendment. Many Internet lawyers have been predicting that Internet service providers and private individuals would eventually be sued in libel-friendly foreign courts -- raising havoc with American notions of free expression. David Post, who teaches Internet law at Temple University School of Law, said the Godfrey case was a matter of "the chickens coming home to roost." Barry Steinhardt, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, added that the Godfrey case was "an impossible situation, preposterous." "To the extent that ISPs are subject to idiosyncratic [foreign] laws of defamation, it is more likely they will censor their users," Steinhardt said. Godfrey charges that the former graduate student, Michael Dolenga, at the time a Cornell graduate student in biochemistry, used the university's Internet service to post five messages to the Usenet newsgroup known as "soc.culture.canada" in 1994 and 1995. The messages were in response to comments the British lecturer had made about Canadian politics and culture. The complaint is not public, and therefore details about the student's comments are unavailable. The comments were not archived, and the parties in the case would not characterize the comments specifically. In a recent interview, however, Godfrey said generally that all the messages contained statements that were untrue and highly damaging. He characterized some of the statements as "very serious allegations of a personal nature." "I suffered damages as a result of these allegations," Godfrey said. "The messages were read by people [in England]. There are quite a lot of British participants on the Canada newsgroup." Godfrey's complaint, which was filed in October, seeks damages of 50,000 pounds and an injunction barring the defendants from further publishing defamatory statements about him in England and Wales. English lawyers for Cornell filed an answer in April contesting the claim but apparently consenting to the jurisdiction of English courts. The parties are now engaged in pre-trial information gathering. Dolenga did not properly file a response to the court, and therefore a default judgment was issued against him in February, meaning that Godfrey has won that portion of the case, although any action against Dolenga will have to wait until the full case is settled. James Mingle, general counsel for Cornell, said the lawsuit was "completely without merit." He argued that Cornell would not be held liable for the allegedly libelous postings, even if it were given notice of them, because under English law the university would not be considered a "publisher" of any statements or messages that are posted by its students. "As a legal matter and a practical matter, we are not responsible," Mingle said. "We have a million e-mail messages a day." He suggested it would be impossible for university officials to vet the content of all the messages on its system. Mingle said that he would also urge the English court to consider the case in light of expansive American principles of free expression. These cases "are really a major concern," he said. "It's very troubling to us that we can be yanked into a foreign court and forced to defend a case." If Godfrey is successful, he added, then any American Internet service provider can be "yanked anywhere in the world." Dolenga, when asked for comment, said the lawsuit was "frivolous." Under United States federal law, an ISP cannot be held liable for libelous statements posted on its service by a subscriber or third party. The rule holds true even if the ISP was given notice of the allegedly defamatory messages. That point was at issue in the recent case of Zeran v. America Online Inc., which was decided in favor of AOL by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The plaintiff, Kenneth Zeran, has petitioned the Supreme Court for a review. Under English law, however, the extent to which an ISP can be held liable for hosting defamatory messages is an open question. No court has yet spoken on the issue. As a general rule, English libel law holds that any party that participates in the chain of publication of a defamatory statement can be the target of a lawsuit. In Britain, a traditional defense known as "innocent dissemination" is available to bookstores, printers and distributors who can prove they were unaware that their products carried defamations. However, Mark Gould, a law professor at the University of Bristol, in England, said by e-mail that this defense, which was codified in a 1996 law, has not been used by an ISP. Gould added that in the Godfrey case, the fact that Cornell took no action when notified of the allegedly defamatory messages "makes it impossible for [the college] to claim innocence." Godfrey, 45, said he is aware that American standards of free expression are different from England's. But he defended his lawsuit by asserting that if an American found himself defamed by an author in England, "would that person have any hesitation in bringing a suit in the States, where his reputation was damaged?" In addition, Godfrey argued that under English law an ISP should not be allowed to let irresponsible material go out over its system and just "wash its hands." However, Post, the Temple University law professor, argued that if Internet publishers are subject to the laws of all nations where their postings are received, the law of the most repressive nation will dominate. "Does [this] make any sense?" he asked, adding later, "This is not a well-designed legal system if everybody is subject to the laws of every jurisdiction." Steinhardt of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said he hoped that cases like Godfrey's would drive nations to establish international treaties or a common set of principles to redress certain Internet problems. Some lawyers point out that as a practical matter, a libel judgment issued in England may not be enforceable against a defendant in the United States. At least one American case, holding that English libel law is repugnant to U.S. constitutional standards, refused to enforce a London libel judgment. Godfrey said he was aware of the precedent but said he was convinced, nevertheless, that he would be able to collect damages should he be successful. Cornell's Mingle said the university does not have any substantial assets in England, which, presumably, leaves open the possibility that the school has minimal assets there that Godfrey may seek. Godfrey is not a stranger to Internet litigation. He is also suing the University of Minnesota in London for allegedly publishing a student's defamatory statement about him on a Usenet newsgroup. Bill Donohue, deputy general counsel for the university, said he is contesting a London court's jurisdiction over the matter. A pre-trial hearing on the jurisdiction issue is scheduled for July 29, he said. In addition, Godfrey filed a lawsuit last month against a London-based ISP, Demon Internet Limited, for defamation over a message posted last year on a Usenet newsgroup. Two years ago, Godfrey received an undisclosed sum in settlement of his Internet libel case against another British physicist. He has also won a libel settlement against an ISP in Australia. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From steve at accessone.com Mon Jun 8 02:02:26 1998 From: steve at accessone.com (Steve) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 01:02:26 -0800 Subject: AOL Message-ID: <199806080801.BAA17004@accessone.com> The AOL Lesson: How to Get Ahead by Mistreating Customers Jesse Berst, Editorial Director, ZDNet AnchorDesk How's this for a success formula? Give the worst service in the business. Mislead customers so flagrantly that you're sued by 44 states. Repeat for five years. Believe it or not, this is how America Online became the world's most powerful, most important Internet portal. Consider, for a moment, what AOL did wrong: Abysmal customer service. According to the most recent Inverse rankings of ISPs, AOL is worst in reliability. AOL routinely finishes dead last in surveys of this type. Misleading advertising. AOL has been sued three times in less than three years over billing problems and access glitches. Deceptive privacy practices. More than once, AOL has been caught making unethical use of its members' names, only to back down in the face of customer outrage. According to business textbooks, these crimes should have sunk the company long ago. Instead, AOL has become the dominant online service. So let's look at what it did right -- so right it cancelled out the company's mistreatment of customers. Focus on ease of startup. Others concentrated on ease of use. Or quality of content. AOL focused on making it easy, easy, easy to get started. That's because the company always knew it was going to... Aim at mainstream consumers. AOL targeted people who wouldn't know any better. People who would be afraid and confused to switch once they finally got online. And then it delivered simple, everyday services those consumers could use and understand. Taken together, these first two moves let it... Rely on customer lock-in. Mainstream consumers will put up with almost anything -- poor reliability, bad service, higher prices -- rather than go through the pain of starting over again. In the early years, whenever Steve Case had the choice between improving customer service or sending out more signup disks, he chose the disks. Case understood the overwhelming importance of market share. It's easy to believe new markets are about quality and customer service. But look at previous media revolutions. Movies. Magazines. Television. Yes, the content has to be good enough. But the battle is won by controlling the distribution network. Movie studios. Magazine distributors. Television networks. Those are the true power brokers in those media. And America Online is the first true power in the Internet era. Because it realized that it is much better to have lots of unhappy customers than a few happy ones. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From steve at accessone.com Tue Jun 9 23:31:43 1998 From: steve at accessone.com (Steve) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 22:31:43 -0800 Subject: Anybody wanna donate a van? Message-ID: <199806100530.WAA15800@accessone.com> Bookmobiles Now Offer Internet Access Pamela Mendels NY Times 6/10/98 The bookmobile for the Burlington County Library in southern New Jersey offers patrons an ever-changing collection of about 4,500 books, videocassettes and other materials. This month, assuming all goes according to plan, the big white vehicle with royal blue trim and a wheelchair lift will also be offering access to the Internet. And in doing so, it will join a small but growing number of those venerable, if lumbering, libraries-on-wheels that have either already gone cyber or expect to do so soon. "Essentially the same sort of services provided in the library, bookmobiles are trying to provide on the road," said Bernard F. Vavrek, a professor of library science at Clarion University in Clarion, Pa., and director of the Center for the Study of Rural Librarianship. Many of the bookmobiles that have gone online have done so primarily to make operations run more efficiently for the peripatetic librarians and their patrons, by connecting them electronically to the innards of the stationary library's computer systems. Others also hope to allow patrons who depend exclusively on the bookmobile (and therefore might not be able to use a conventional library's online resources) to get a chance to see what the Internet is like. Vavrek could not say exactly how many bookmobiles have gone online. Of the roughly 900 library systems in the country that have bookmobiles, he estimated that "less than 100" have some sort of electronic connection so far. But, he added, he believes that number is growing, as evidenced by much active interest in the subject recently on a bookmobile listserv maintained at Clarion. Among the institutions with plans to put their bookmobiles online shortly are libraries in Montgomery County and Chester County, both outside Philadelphia. One of the old-timers in the field is the bookmobile operated by the Newark Public Library in Ohio which has been online using cellular telephone technology for almost two years. The system, which displays text only, is used mainly by librarians for electronic checking in and checking out, said Wilma J. Lepore, director of the Newark Public Library, which serves an area about 45 miles east of Columbus. Among the bookmobiles that have gone digital and offer graphics as well as text are two -- one for children, one for senior citizens -- run by the San Francisco Public Library. Last month, the vehicles, each equipped with a laptop computer and wireless technology, launched their online services. Librarians in the vehicles now can connect to the library's internal computer system and do such things as put books on reserve for bookmobile patrons. They also can conduct Web searches for patrons and, if time permits, allow visitors to do some surfing themselves, said Karen S. Buntin, children's bookmobile librarian. Buntin recently performed a bookmobile Web search for a teacher looking for magazines about pre-school education. In Burlington County, the bookmobile is expected to be equipped with two laptops and a personal computer, according to Sarah C. Thompson, bookmobile supervising librarian. She is hoping that will mean equipment enough for patrons to do their own Web searches. There will be one big constraint, however: time. The bookmobile visits 53 different stops over a two-week period, so there will be little opportunity for patrons at any stop along the way to spend hours surfing. But Thompson is hoping the Internet access, which is being paid for by a $15,000 grant from Bell Atlantic New Jersey, will prove especially helpful to the 40 percent of Burlington County bookmobile patrons who live in the retirement communities of southern New Jersey. "We plan to go to these places and do introductory demos on computer systems," she said. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From steve at accessone.com Tue Jun 23 16:10:10 1998 From: steve at accessone.com (Steve) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 15:10:10 -0800 Subject: Linux Message-ID: <199806232209.PAA03123@accessone.com> Thought the hardware folks might be interested in this - ============================= How Linux Could Kill Windows NT Jesse Berst, Editorial Director ZDNet AnchorDesk 6/23/98 Linux. It's not a serious challenger to Microsoft Windows NT. But it could be. If three things take place. Linux has roughly 5 million users worldwide, compared to about 200 million for all versions of Windows. Lately I've been seeing signs of momentum. Corel is shipping Linux as the operating system on its NetWinder network computer. Sun Microsystems is backing Linux as an alternative operating system for its UltraSPARC platform. VARs and system integrators have begun to use Linux for customer projects. They like the fact they control the source code, so they can mix and match the components they need and build custom extensions. But these are baby steps. Three things are needed if Linux is to duel Windows NT for real. 1. Enterprise-quality technical support. Linux still feels risky to large corporations, who feel they need support from a single point of contact, not from a loose alliance of libertarian programmers. It makes some IT professionals wonder if they could get fired for choosing Linux. Of the three obstacles, this is the easiest one to solve, because it is largely perception versus reality. Companies such as Caldera and Red Hat now offer user-friendly commercial versions with nationwide support. 2. Tier One applications. The leading applications must be available in Linux versions. The situation is improving but very slowly. Corel ships WordPerfect for Linux and plans to develop a suite of business applications. Most other vendors won't do Linux versions until there's enough demand. And there won't be demand until there are enough applications. That leaves Linux trapped between a chicken and an egg. 3. A standard interface. This issue will prove hardest of all because it flies in the face of the Linux gestalt. It's not a technical issue. At least one firm has already built a Win95 clone. Rather it's the problem of getting the fiercely independent Linuxites to agree to a single standard. Remember, the core community is made up of Unix geeks who think graphical interfaces are for sissies. Would you like to see the rug pulled out from under Microsoft? Here's how it could happen. IBM ships and supports Linux. Oracle does Linux versions of all its products. A consortium of top vendors picks a standard Linux interface and creates a compatibility logo. Possible? Absolutely. Microsoft's long-range strategy would come crumbling down if it was forced to give away Windows NT. It plans to upgrade all of us to NT, and charge us twice what it gets for NT. Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not. Copyright (c) 1998 ZDNet * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From bb615 at scn.org Tue Jun 23 11:50:23 1998 From: bb615 at scn.org (Rod Clark) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 18:50:23 +0000 Subject: Need help/direction in Seattle In-Reply-To: <199806240001.SAA10708@www.fone.net> Message-ID: <199806240157.SAA22163@scn.org> Nicole, I've sent your note to the scn at scn.org mailing list. You might also consider posting it in the seattle.forsale.housing Usenet newsgroup. Rod Clark ----- Hello Seattle!!! Could you please direct this to wherever it might get best results quickly? I'm a grandmother in Southern Colorado who must go to Seattle for a few weeks to help my disabled daughter and my granddaughter with some big life changes... They need me quickly. Looking for a cooperative exchange for housing near Tukwila... I'm a happy and sensible professional woman, mature, non smoking, excellent grant writer, organizer and project manager... will house sit, do computer work, volunteer to the extent possible... Have good transportation... I am not at all a "needy" sort of person and will appreciate a useful and mutually beneficial arrangement. If the trade seems beneficial I could consider staying longer. Thanks so much! Nicole Langley langley at fone.net Voice: 719-379-0044 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From steve at accessone.com Fri Jun 26 10:53:06 1998 From: steve at accessone.com (Steve) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 09:53:06 -0800 Subject: Community Message-ID: <199806261652.JAA28939@accessone.com> Vietspace's Web Community Links A People Scattered Around the Globe By ANH DO Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION 6/26/98 Boston architect Long Tran finds a boyhood friend through a Vietspace feature about Vietnamese students in Los Angeles. Scientist Tien Kieu scans the Web site's headlines in Melbourne seeking economic news about the land he left behind. And in a cozy Paris suburb, mother and daughter Kim and Lana Bui sign on to Vietspace to read folk tales, the lilting tones of the woman explaining to the girl how their race originated in "100 Eggs, 100 Children." "I look at this as a fusion of two worlds," says Mrs. Bui, 48 years old. "The idea that one can use modern technology to teach old-fashioned morals and link our children to the past is marvelous." Vietspace keeps tabs on a lively, evolving population and averages 10,000 hits a day from Web surfers young and old. The Vietnamese virtual community is tying together a people that has been scattered all over the globe as a result of war. Users are so enthused about connections they're making through the page, which started as a California family business, that they're sending news from various corners of the world each week. Tidbits filter in from Russia, Canada and Japan, while political updates arrive every day from Vietnamese journalists working out of Washington, D.C. "We couldn't do it alone. Organizations and individuals help by contributing and by word of mouth," says Minh Manh, who with her husband and his brothers -- all armed with high-tech degrees and Internet know-how -- set up Kicon, named after Vietnamese revolutionary Ky Con, but spelled Kicon to resemble "icon" in programming lingo. Kicon (pornounced "key-con") pieced together Vietspace just over two years ago. Kicon's entrepreneurs thought an on-line community could unite refugees who fled Vietnam when the war ended in 1975, giving them access to information about their interests and each other. Pooling $150,000 in family savings, they bought high-speed computer equipment and rented a three-room office in Garden Grove, a few miles from Little Saigon -- where nearly 2,000 immigrant businesses form the heart of the Vietnamese overseas community in California's Orange County. Ms. Manh, husband Thach Le and his brothers, Tuong and Thanh, began their community by contacting Vietnamese-language radio and newspapers, putting those businesses on-line and broadcasting live Webcasts to the audience Kicon wanted to target across the U.S., Asia, Europe and Australia. "In southern California, there's a lot of information for anyone interested in Vietnam and the Vietnamese. But if you live in smaller Midwest communities or more remote locations, there's little or nothing," says Ms. Manh, 34 years old, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Indiana's Purdue University. With limited capital, the family and a marketing friend formed casual business contracts, using their technical expertise to craft home pages for small companies and local groups. They often waived their fee until the venture pulled in advertising, and then split the profits. To succeed, analysts say, virtual communities targeting a particular ethnic group must develop relationships with non-Internet organizations and use that to boost their business. "The key expense is member acquisition," says John Hagel, a Silicon Valley consultant and co-author of "Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities. "Think about it in stages. Start segmenting to find the people who would be most attracted to this kind of community. In many cases, it's often the young, or the ones in their 20s who are more computer-aware and who might be the earliest people to adopt this." Mr. Hagel says that such communities take advantage of a geographically dispersed audience to build what he calls "a critical mass of customers." He says virtual communities are more than just a social phenomenon: what begins as a gathering connected by common interests evolves into a group with influential purchasing power. In this cloister, members exchange information on such things as a product's price and quality, allowing the on-line business more leverage in negotiating with vendors and getting their participation. Kicon may be moving toward that goal. Vietspace automatically links Vietnamese around the world to news ranging from politics and arts to literature and film. One section is devoted to kids and another to music, featuring releases from the hottest overseas performers, including the "Paris by Night" recordings that are taped in different countries and selling out in video stores from San Francisco to Saigon. And the site plans electronic commerce ventures to sell books and compact discs. >From those humble beginnings, Vietspace has since grown by leaps and bounds. Kicon now has three full-time employees, with a part-time staff of five. Among its followers, the page now attracts a huge segment of Vietnamese baby boomers in their late 30s and early 40s -- smart and PC-oriented, with many working in the science and health professions. Tien Kieu, who conducts research for the University of Melbourne's School of Physics, says he likes the convenient, up-to-date contents and multimedia format of Vietspace and visits it almost weekly. "Since we all want to do something for the community and our country, it's best to have some kind of medium to exchange ideas and concerns and come up with common goals," says Jamie Nguyen, a New York University dental student. "Besides, information is power, and the best way to get information is through the Net." As in better-known on-line communities such as Geocities and The Well, there's a strong face-to-face element to Vietspace, aside from electronic dialog. Frequent Vietspace chat rooms invite users to interact with the famous and the controversial, such as Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky, Vietnam's former prime minister, who now makes his home on an island near Seattle. But unlike the more mainstream sites, Vietspace tries to stay neutral on issues that tend to inflame their fellow immigrants, such as criticizing the Communist government in their homeland and its record on human rights. "If I go to film a student protest, I show the whole clip on-line. I don't edit the tape," says co-creator Thanh Le, 29 years old. "The Internet ... gives us an opportunity to at least participate in the community that has the biggest Vietnamese population outside of our own country, and it allows different generations to get involved at the same time." Older immigrants tune in, he says, to hear the likes of VNCR, the highly rated Vietnam California Radio station operating next door to Kicon, while youngsters learn Web skills in school, then go home and get their parents on-line. Internet entrepreneurs have tried to analyze Kicon's formula, searching for their community-building secret. In California's intensely competitive market, several smaller companies such as Vietline and Little Saigon Net are offering similar community models, with an emphasis on entertainment, religion, making friends, and, of course, politics. The Kicon folks feel they may be on the right track because of their versatility. "Even though we focus on Vietnamese interests, this is not the only thing we do," Ms. Manh says. Kicon shies away from being labeled "ethnic-specific," pointing out that the Vietspace Web site generates just 20% of its revenues, while 80% of the company's earnings actually come from developing software for clients such as local businesses and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the world's largest electricity generator. Moreover, the company recently introduced a real-time chat system for international languages, using Java and Castanet push technology to avoid the usually cumbersome process of typing non-English fonts such as Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian or Japanese on a keyboard. The focus is always on what they can do next. Its pet project focuses on using animation to teach American-born children how to speak and read Vietnamese via the Net. All the while, users continue to log on to Vietspace. "The Web site lets us expose ourselves, especially if we want to know what the people from our country are doing, what they're talking about," says Mr. Tran, the Boston architect. "Naturally, this makes me think that cyberculture not only relates to real life, it seems destined to always be a part of our life." Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END From kurt at grogatch.seaslug.org Mon Jun 29 11:51:18 1998 From: kurt at grogatch.seaslug.org (Kurt Cockrum) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 11:51:18 -0700 Subject: SPAM: it's a dog-eat-dog world Message-ID: <199806291851.LAA30539@grogatch.seaslug.org> I noticed the following little snippet from a self-propagating MLM scam/spam I received: [...snip...] Attention: Anyone who would like to be removed from my mailing list, simply respond with a "remove" in the subject box. Also, if you would like the e- mail address of the company that is selling the list with your e-mail address on it, let me know in the body of the response. [...snip...] Astonishing! This guy is offering to turn in his dealer! Not only that, in the same spam was an offer to sell bulk e-mail software! Are the sharks starting to turn on each other? (yow! wish this were televised :) --kurt Black holes are where God divided by zero. L. J. Beedle * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * * . To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to: majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe scn END