From 7ygv3r at geocities.com Wed Aug 2 00:34:58 2000 From: 7ygv3r at geocities.com (7ygv3r at geocities.com) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 00:34:58 Subject: SCN: Emerging Stocks Message-ID: <733.722241.160766@unknown> IT'S HERE !!!! The premiere issue of an OTC stock newsletter that is published by a company which has been reporting on Wall Street since 1992 -- and will now be covering the OTC Market -- is ready for mailing. If you are interested in finding the next Dell Computer or Microsoft at $.25, go to this URL and register for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION: http://www.otcstockletter.com ABSOLUTELY FREE, ABSOLUTELY GREAT! You were sent this message because your address is in our subscriber database. If you wish to be removed, please send your remove request to REMOVE at otcstockletter.com and we will remove you from our subscriber list. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Thu Aug 3 07:55:52 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 07:55:52 -0700 Subject: SCN: Web design Message-ID: <39892588.1218.26E131@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ==================== A Message to Web Designers: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It by Jeffrey Selingo (NY Times)---When Salon.com revamped its Web site in May, readers greeted it with hundreds of e-mail complaints. They criticized the horizontal scrolling, the small type and the headlines that no longer linked directly to articles. Within days, Salon's editor, David Talbot, posted a note to readers saying, "You win!" and the site reverted to some of its old design. The Salon revolt speaks volumes about the growing impatience that Web users are having with constant face lifts of their favorite sites or with sites that are difficult to navigate. In the early days of the Internet, users flocked to Web sites with the latest gee-whiz technology, and other sites soon replicated it. Some sites posted Web cameras even if they had nothing to show; others experimented with animation, even if it was of a construction worker, to alert users that a page was not quite ready. Today, the Web "is much less fashion driven," said Jakob Nielsen, a Web-usability consultant at the Nielsen Norman Group, a consulting firm in Mountain View, Calif. "In the early days, users embraced change because the Internet wasn't useful," Mr. Nielsen said. "Now they punish change because they need the Web. It's a useful tool." As a result, users expect more of the Internet than simply entertainment. And they easily become frustrated with sites that don't deliver the goods. Alycia Eck is using the Internet to look for a used car. Unable to browse the car lots on her own, Ms. Eck searches for pictures on the Web but has found that most Web sites warn that the picture she sees may not be of the actual car. And her e-mail to lenders goes unanswered. "I thought it would be like that Saturn commercial where the kid orders a pizza one day from his dorm room and the next day he orders a car," Ms. Eck said. "They haven't taken the time on their Web sites to get me to come in and see the car." Indeed, for the most part, consumers don't trust Web sites to give them the information they need. A common debate among site designers is how much information to put on the home page. Is it easier to scroll down a front page with possibly hundreds of links or to click through several pages? Popular home pages are now a mix of a directory and a search engine. The growing consensus is that users want "the broad and shallow," said Louis Rosenfeld, president of Argus Associates, an Ann Arbor, Mich., consulting firm that specializes in organizing Web sites, a field known as information architecture. "People don't trust that if the site makes choices for them on the main page, that those would be the ones they would go by if they were clicking through," Mr. Rosenfeld said. "We're finding, rather surprisingly, that they would rather a front page of 100 links." As they did during the early days of the Internet, users still demand speed. That will become more important, Web designers say, as more users connect to the Internet through their mobile phones, with their small screens and sometimes unreliable service. At the same time, the needs of users are becoming more sophisticated. Designers say that customization and anonymity are the two things users want most right now. For example, consumers favor features like My Yahoo and Amazon.com's Recommended lists. So companies are looking for ways to customize their sites for users, but without the usual annoyances, like passwords. Consumers are reluctant to register for sites until the site proves useful, Mr. Nielsen said. "People don't want to buy into something unless they know they're going to use it often," he said. The biggest complaint on message boards about Web designs is information overload. Users on the message boards say that companies have concentrated too much on design and content and not enough on how the information is structured. For the most part, users say, search engines on sites are unreliable. Either the search results yield too many choices, with useless ones at top, or some sites have employed broad-based search engines, like Google, that traverse the whole Web instead of just the particular site. In the end, Mr. Nielsen said, users want a site that is designed to help them find what they want, not what the marketing department wants to promote. A few weeks ago, a woman was trying to describe to a friend bedding she had seen in a Garnet Hill catalog. So the woman, Denise Russo, decided to try the company's Web site. She had even planned to place an order, but she said she had to "click through what seemed like 700 pages to get the picture I was looking for, and then it was too small and I couldn't enlarge it." "The whole experience was way too annoying," Ms. Russo added. "I'm never going back there." Unlike magazine or book editors, site designers are hampered by a lack of commonly agreed upon conventions on the Web. Some similarities in Web designs are emerging. For example, nearly every publicly held company has an investor-relations area on its Web site where users can quickly find the latest press releases, annual report and stock information. But Mr. Rosenfeld said he doubted that Web users would ever see similarities on the Web like the chapters and indexes they find in books. "A book is a self-contained information space, and it's finite," Mr. Rosenfeld said. "A Web site could be designed in any way the human mind could imagine." At least 90 percent of Web sites need to be redesigned in some way, said Mr. Nielsen, the Web usability consultant. But most Web sites, he added, are not redesigned for the right reasons. In the early days of the Internet, sites were redesigned every few months to take advantage of the latest technology. Now a site may be changed simply because a designer is bored with it or because a company executive had a problem with it. Few companies test their sites with users, Mr. Nielsen said, or if they do, they ignore the advice. Mr. Nielsen suggests subtle redesigns and encourages companies to explain how to perform old functions on the new site. For example, when eBay revamped its auto auction site in April, canceling some of its previous auction categories, it touched off a spate of complaints from users who had listed their items during the switch. "This is the worst mistake that eBay has made," a customer wrote on the site's message board. "I hope that someone at eBay has the foresight to listen to its sellers and buyers and change it back." The company later made changes. At Salon, the editors say that 90 percent of the redesigned site is still intact, including a new color scheme, a navigation bar across the top of the page, a switch to four columns from three and a search box on every page. And Salon editors say the negative reaction to the redesign will not discourage them from redesigning again in a year or two. "People have an understandable and justifiable preference for what they're accustomed to," said Scott Rosenberg, vice president of site development and managing editor of Salon. "They don't want to be bothered to learn new ways of doing things -- and unless you can make clear to them that a new way is superior to the old, familiar way, why should they?" Copyright 2000 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Thu Aug 3 14:55:48 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 14:55:48 -0700 Subject: SCN: Web design Message-ID: <398987F4.25788.16BBBFF@localhost> This freeware HTML editor is well worth a look: www.evrsoft.com/1stpage And for a pretty good summary of what web design should be all about, check out this book (available at the library): Visual Explanations, by Edward Tufte, pages 146-150 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From douglas Fri Aug 4 06:15:12 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 06:15:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: looking for an Executive Director (Bay Area) N-TEN Message-ID: <200008041315.GAA29776@scn.org> From: Joan Fanning Subject: [Riders] N-TEN Looking for an Executive Director Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2000 17:20:29 -0700 Reply-To: joan at npower.org Hello All: N-TEN is now looking for an executive director - the job description is below. If you know of anyone who is interested in this job (or have any questions about this job) please have them send me an e-mail. Feel free to distribute this job posting to anyother people or lists. Thanks! Joan Fanning Executive Director NPower-"Putting Technology Know-How in the Hands of Non-Profits" 1080 W. Ewing PL. Suite 300 Seattle, WA 98119 http://www.npower.org 206-286-8880 206-286-8881 (fax) ********************************************************************* N-TEN Position Description Position: Executive Director Reports to: N-TEN Board of Directors Location: California - Bay Area Supervises: Administrative Staff, consultants and contractors FLSA Status: Exempt Salary: $65,000 to $80,000 + benefits Starting Date: September 1, 2000 (Applications accepted through August 15th) Background & Position Description N-TEN (The Non-Profit Technology Enterprise Network) is a new organization devoted to supporting the individuals and organizations who empower non-profits to use technology to achieve their missions. N-TEN is a national 501�(3) membership association and serves: (1) individuals and organizations who provide nonprofits with technology assistance; (2) nonprofits whose approach to technology is self-help; and (3) members of the philanthropic community with an interest in the effective use of technology. N-TEN is looking for an accomplished leader, with an understanding of and passion for the unique mission of N-TEN, to serve as the organization's founding Executive Director. The candidate will be able to demonstrate a unique and extraordinary passion for helping non-profits use technology to achieve their missions, success in leadership of complex processes and a clear understanding of the functions of a member organization and coalition building. Duties include strategic planning, fund raising, program development and supervision of implementation, membership development and marketing, staff development and supervision, program planning and innovation, budget development, monitoring and fiscal management. We seek a visionary with exceptional implementation, interpersonal and communication skills to create N-TEN in partnership with its members, the board and other stakeholders. Executive level experience in a nonprofit organization in desirable. This individual will be confident, bright, and have the appropriate skills and presence to work in an effective, collegial and collaborative manner. Experience working with boards, committees, key leaders and major donors will be extremely valuable. N-TEN is an equal opportunity employer. We offer competitive salaries, an excellent work environment and benefits. Please e-mail resume to: joan at npower.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From douglas Fri Aug 4 06:48:08 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 06:48:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Borderhack! Message-ID: <200008041348.GAA02797@scn.org> From: "fran ilich" To: "Doug Schuler" Subject: borderhack! (mx-usa, sep 1-3) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 13:36:32 -0600 Countdown to Borderhack! by luis humberto rosales and fran ilich translation by bl�s vald�s In 1997, during a European event called "Documenta X", an idea for a Germany/Poland border festival was put forward. The festival was make a camp where activists and artists could express their outrage towards the treatment of illegal immigrants at the mentioned border. The camp became a reality in 1998, under the name kein mensch ist illegal (no one is illegal). In spite of several attempts by the police to cancel and sabotage the event, cyberculture personalities, artists, musicians, activists and human rights supporters successfully organized marches, talks, concerts and workshops. Three years have passed since "Documenta X" and kein mensch ist illegal has grown enormously. It�s no longer confined to one place. Several camps are now organized along the borders that separate the European Union with the former soviet countries, borders where migrants are often the victims of abuse. This year�s camps are about to take place, but with an added feature. Kein mensch ist illegal has migrated to America, more specifically, to the city of Tijuana, Mexico, considered by many the most physical and intense border area in the world. Headed by Laboratorios Cinem�tik, a mixmedia group experienced in the promotion of cyberculture and electronic music, the Tijuana kein mensch ist illegal camp takes the name of "Borderhack!". Instead of trying to dissolve the border, the goal of the camp is to apply to it a little reverse engineering, in other words, to try to understand its structure and to discover its workings. Excerpts from the Borderhack! Manifesto: "That is why we propose this Borderhack, a camp that does not pretend to destroy the border, but, in a worst case scenario, only to make us conscious of it. In the world of computers, Hacking is understood as the penetration, exploration or investigation of a system with the goal of understanding it, not of destroying it, and that is exactly what we are trying to do: to understand the border, to know what it represents and to become aware of the role that we play in it. All this with the goal of improving the relations between two worlds (the first and the third), Mexico and the US. We not only want to understand why this relationship has been severed by the influence of certain sectors of society, that have fostered a climate of violence and racism, but also to understand the strange attraction that unites us. And what better way to accomplish this than by doing it right on the physical border?, spending three days trying to get to the bottom of the problem and really understand what is it that unites us and what is it that separate us. For Laboratorios Cinem�tik, a group that has always lived on the border (physically as well as electronically), the camp is the logical step to take. In a way, it serves as an upgrade to the work they have been carrying out since 1994, which includes the First International Cyberculture Festival in Latin America: Cinem�tik 1.0 (1998) as well as the events done in collaborations with Calarts and Natalie Bookchin. It also serves as an excuse to celebrate the third anniversary of the Cinem�tik cyberculture online forum. And maybe even to promote the nettime-latino mailing list. Borderhack will take place in Tijuana on September 1, 2 and 3 of the year 2000. The location of the camp will be in the Playas de Tijuana (Tijuana Beach) part of the city, in front of the actual border fence that divides the third and the first world, just beside the Pacific Ocean. The camp will offer net art, border cinema, isdn connections, conferences and workshops, not to mention the participation of the global hacktivist and net-media art community. "The idea to synthesize the camp is born out of our condition of dilettante border kids, out of many years of crossing the border and doing a little window shopping, pretending that we could be part of the American Dream of wealth, happiness and freedom. We are confused, we accept it. On one side the Malls are filled with happiness, and on the other, the wrong side, we are forever condemned to produce goods that we will never enjoy ourselves. That is, unless we are lucky enough to come by a green card. This is the border. Our border. A place where we earn pesos and consume in dollars. Where we almost live in the US. Where we can smell the future coming from the freeways, from Silicon Valley, from Hollywood, but yet we are trapped in a muddy hill with unpaved streets. To reach the freeway we need a car, something that we could never afford. The only way for us to cross the border is by foot, without a penny in our pockets. We resign ourselves to earn minimum wage thru our whole lifetimes, to looking through store windows as if they were postcards from Europe (it could be jupiters or earth�s, for us is the same), knowing that we could only reach the other side in our dreams. We are the good neighbors of the US, always here, always smiling, ready to serve the next margarita. The border is one-sided, only when going from Mexico to the US. The other way around is a free zone: with no need for visas, tune ups, secondary inspections or paid permits. The border exists only when going North. The wall is "one way". Our exchange rate is 10 to 1 in favor of the dollar, of the Americans. And then, at the end of the day we ask ourselves, kein mensch ist illegal (no one is illegal)? Or are we all simply condemned to be illegal?" _______________________________________________ Tj mailing list Tj at kein.org http://www.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/tj nos vemos en el futuro. ilich. editor sputnik bits. co-editor sputnik atomos. http://www.sputnik.com.mx http://calarts.edu/~ntntnt/ http://egroups.com/group/cinematik http://loquesea.com.mx/electronik http://www.kein.org/pipermail/tj/ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Fri Aug 4 07:26:21 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 07:26:21 -0700 Subject: SCN: Privacy Message-ID: <398A701D.29441.2EFCC8@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ======================== (Carl S. Kaplan, NY Times)---The goal of the plan announced by President Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta, sounded admirable: to overhaul the nation's privacy laws, harmonizing a patchwork of inconsistent rules and extending to e-mail and mobile phone messages the same strict safeguards against government snooping that now apply to telephone calls. But in the fine print of Podesta's speech was a detail that some privacy advocates found alarming: a rollback of the tight privacy protections that many believe currently apply to Internet communications over cable modems and networks. In short, they say, the government is proposing to giveth somewhat and taketh away a lot. In response, the government's chief privacy officer, Peter P. Swire, said in an interview that a whittling down of certain features of cable privacy laws is necessary to prevent cable-based Internet networks from becoming a haven for criminals. Whichever side is right, the administration's announcement has kicked off what is likely to be an intensified debate over the level of privacy protection that online speech has from government interference. In prepared remarks for a National Press Club talk on July 17, which followed by some weeks the public disclosure of the F.B.I.'s controversial e-mail snooping software dubbed "Carnivore," Podesta made several recommendations for updating and fixing electronic privacy laws. Mainly, he pointed out that telephone calls currently receive significant privacy protection under two different federal laws while most e-mails receive less protection. For example, a federal prosecutor who wants to install a wiretap on a telephone line must get approval from a high-level official in the Justice Department before seeking a court order authorizing the tap. Moreover, a judge will issue an order only if there is "probable cause" to believe that one of a special list of serious crimes has been or will be committed by the target. To keep things on the straight and narrow, the law also requires that the wiretap evidence be suppressed if the government does not dot all the i's. When federal law enforcement agents want to intercept the contents of most real-time e-mails, they must also apply for a court order and demonstrate probable cause. But by contrast, they need not seek high-level Justice Department approval, the crime sought to be prevented can be any federal crime and there is no statutory suppression penalty if proper procedure is not followed. In arguing that all e-mails should be given the same enhanced protections as telephone calls, Podesta in effect declared that the telephone wiretap law should be the privacy baseline. By saying that, however, he also signaled his intention to greatly lower the standard that may be protecting a relatively small but fast- growing class of e-mails and other electronic communications: messages created by users of cable-based Internet services. That's because the laws governing the cable television industry, the Cable Act of 1984 and the related sections of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 have privacy protections for cable subscribers that make the telephone wiretap laws seem positively pallid. Take a case where an F.B.I. agent wants to intercept real-time e-mail generated by a cable-modem user. Under section 551(h) of the Cable Act, the government has to secure a court order based on "clear and convincing evidence" that the target may be involved in a crime. That's a higher standard that the "probable cause" required for a phone tap. More significantly, the Cable Act requires that a cable service subscriber who is the target of a government request for information be given notice and the opportunity to contest the request in court. That wrinkle pretty much rules out the possibility of surreptitious interception of cable-Internet e-mails, said Paul M. Schwartz, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who specializes in privacy and the Internet. The Clinton administration appears to believe that applying the Cable Act to cable-based e-mails would deal a death blow to the ability of agents to secretly monitor communications over cable platforms, thus hampering law enforcement. "The problem under the Cable Act is that you must give prior notice before getting access to customer records," Swire, the government's privacy czar, said in a recent interview. "You can't give notice and still carry out lawful surveillance. Targets would stop revealing anything incriminating. If you know your [cable] modem is going to be tapped, you're not going to do that sort of business over that line." Swire added that the purpose of the Cable Act privacy protections was to safeguard the programming choices of cable television subscribers. He said that the government's draft privacy laws -- circulated to Congress earlier this week -- would retain the old cable protections against government snooping as they related to show lists. Civil libertarians and other privacy advocates remain unpersuaded. They ask: If there is to be uniformity in the privacy treatment of messages -- whether they be telephone calls, e-mails, cable-based e-mails or cordless phone communications -- why not set the baseline at the Cable Act? "The question here is whether to harmonize up or down," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based privacy organization. "We think the Cable Act is one of the best privacy protections in our law. And we're not very pleased to bring it down," he said, adding later: "This is the first time the government is arguing that a privacy law currently in place is too strong and needs to be lowered. It's a very troubling thing." Rotenberg acknowledged that under the Cable Act the government would have to tip off a potential e-mail surveillance target before the surveillance began. But "so what if there is a tip off," he said. "Surreptitious surveillance is really a big deal. We're talking about government monitoring covertly the activities of its citizens. If there is not a procedure to make people aware of that, then we've gone pretty far up the curve to Big Brother surveillance," he said. Rotenberg also took issue with Swire's argument that the Cable Act privacy protections were designed to protect viewing habits only. When the law was passed in 1984, he said, "it's clear that Congress knew people would use cable-based systems for voting, online banking and other interactive activities." Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed the privacy baseline should be pegged more toward the Cable Act. A court order for e-mail eavesdropping based on "clear and convincing" evidence of crime is not too high, he maintained. "The interception of communications is very invasive and the standard ought to be high," he said. In his speech, Podesta said that more than 1.4 billion e-mails are exchanged every day. Of the 50 million households online in the United States, about 2.2 million log on to the Internet and send mail through cable modems. Legal experts say that it's an open question whether the Cable Act applies to cable-based Internet activities. Barbara Esbin, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in communications law and who formerly worked at the Federal Communications Commission, said courts have split on the issue and that the F.C.C. has not yet issued a ruling -- although it is scheduled to address the issue in the fall. But it's clear the government is worried the Cable Act might apply. And some cable-based Internet service providers are acting as if it did. Swire said that he has been informed by the Department of Justice that some cable providers have been reluctant to turn over their Internet service records to law enforcement officials and have pointed to the Cable Act as their excuse. A report issued in March by the President's working group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet also noted somberly that "some cable companies that provide Internet service have relied on the [Cable] Act to refuse to disclose subscriber information pursuant to state Grand Jury subpoenas." Copyright 2000 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From douglas Fri Aug 4 07:38:15 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 07:38:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: SCN ranking Message-ID: <200008041438.HAA09723@scn.org> I'm passing on some information that I got from Bob Hewitt (who got it from Randy). "The domain: scn.org, is ranked #1974 out of 809865 domains in the WebsMostLinked.com database." http://www.websmostlinked.com/index.htm That's certainly well within the top 1% -- IF this web site is to be believed... -- Doug * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Fri Aug 11 08:58:01 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 08:58:01 -0700 Subject: SCN: Jurisdiction Message-ID: <3993C019.32428.6F4E13@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ======================== (Carl S. Kaplan, NY Times)---In Europe, where memories of World War II are still fresh in the minds of those who lived through it, the sale of Nazi and Fascist memorabilia often sparks indignation. Today, that passion is being played out in a courtroom in Paris, where French authorities are seeking to force an American company, Yahoo Inc., to restrict French citizens from gaining access to Nazi artifacts that appear on its English-language auction site, which is available to online surfers around the world. Whatever the outcome of the hearing today, the case points up an enduring legal and cultural puzzle about speech and commerce in borderless cyberspace: What happens when the laws and traditions of a country that receives an online message clash with the laws and values of the land where the message originated? In this case, which began in May, the question is posed in even starker terms. Should Yahoo Inc. bow to a French law condemning the trivialization of the Nazi era, or should France yield to Yahoo's rights of freedom of expression as embodied in the United States Constitution? "The Yahoo case points up a dilemma in the law of jurisdiction," said Henry H. Perritt Jr., dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and an expert in Internet law. "If a Web site is accessible to all, and is subject to jurisdiction by every nation on earth, then the laws of the lowest common denominator nation" will govern the Internet, he said. "On the other hand, if we say that the only important law is the one where the content provider resides, then local values of foreign nations will not be enforced. We also run the risk of creating havens for shyster practices." The Yahoo case first rose to public attention on May 22, when Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez of the Superior Court of Paris ordered Yahoo Inc., based in Santa Clara, Calif., to "dissuade and render impossible" the ability of Web surfers in France to gain access to sales of Nazi-related objects that appear on an auction service hosted by Yahoo.com. Judge Gomez ruled that the display in France of Nazi souvenirs, for the purpose of sale, is a violation of French law (article R.645-2 of the Criminal Code). He also said the online exposition of Nazi artifacts in France is "an offense against the collective memory of a country profoundly wounded by the atrocities committed by and in the name of the Nazi criminal enterprise." Judge Gomez further declared that because Yahoo Inc. permitted the visualization in France of the Nazi objects, a harm had been suffered in France. Accordingly, the Paris trial court was "competent" to assert jurisdiction over Yahoo Inc., said Judge Gomez. The court's ruling marked the first time that a French Judge had issued a prior restraint against a foreign Internet company. The suit was originally filed by two groups in France, the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) and the Union of French Jewish Students. Objecting to what they charged was a "banalizing of Nazism," according to court documents, both organizations sought to stop the English-language auction sales from appearing in France. On Yahoo.com's auction site, more than 1,200 Nazi-related items -- everything from Nazi flags and uniforms to belt buckles and medals - - are offered to cyberspace consumers under the shield of U.S. notions of free expression. Yahoo's France-based subsidiary, Yahoo France, does not host auctions for Nazi memorabilia. At a hearing on July 24, representatives for Yahoo told the court that while the company was opposed to racism and respected French law, it was technically impossible for it to block French surfers from its Yahoo.com auction site. Lawyers for the other side disagreed, but also argued that if Yahoo couldn't filter out French surfers it should remove the Nazi items from its U.S.-based site. More arguments on the issue of the feasibility of filtering are scheduled for tomorrow. Yahoo, which has financial assets in France, faces the possibility of steep fines if it doesn't comply with the court's May order. Legal scholars in the United States differ over how the Yahoo case should be resolved. Yahoo defenders argue that while France can impose its own law on its citizens, it's not entitled to impose its views on the rest of the world. "What the government of France is trying to do is apply its laws outside its borders," said Michael Traynor, a lawyer in San Francisco who is acting as special counsel to Yahoo in the case. "If anybody in France feels that they don't want to view Nazi artifacts, they don't have to look at anything they object to. It's a voluntary act to look at information." Traynor added that he believed that the French law in question might violate certain free expression standards embodied in European human rights laws, to which France is subject. He said Yahoo might eventually appeal an adverse result from Judge Gomez, either to an appellate court in France or to the European Court of Human Rights. Dean Perritt of the Chicago-Kent Law School said he is hopeful that an appellate court in France will find that Yahoo Inc. is not subject to jurisdiction in that country because Yahoo.com has not "targeted" its auctions to French citizens. "It seems to me that Yahoo de-targeted France in the sense that the Yahoo France Web site, which is in French, does not have the items in controversy," he said. "For French authorities to go after Yahoo.com nevertheless is an exorbitant exercise of jurisdiction that is inconsistent with emerging best practices." But Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at the University of Chicago and an expert in Internet jurisdiction, takes a different view. He said that it is appropriate for a French court to assert jurisdiction over Yahoo because "Yahoo has something on its Web site that is being accessed by French citizens that violates French law." It is true, Goldsmith said, that France in a sense is trying to impose its law on a United States. company. But the alternative is for a United States company to impose its home-town laws regarding permissible expression on France. "The harmful effects are running in both directions," he said. For Goldsmith, the answer to the dilemma is for Yahoo to adopt some kind of filtering technology that reasonably screens out French citizens. Judge Gomez shouldn't insist that Yahoo make it "impossible" for French surfers to gain access to its U.S.-based Nazi auctions, just more difficult, he said. "If the technology is 95 percent effective, it will have a significant effect on the ability of French citizens to get the content," Goldsmith said. "That's all France needs to do." Goldsmith added that many Internet-related jurisdictional conflicts could be solved by the use of fast-improving technology that screens out surfers on the basis of country of origin. Thomas P. Vartanian, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who heads a committee on cyberspace law for the American Bar Association, said that he expects to see more cases like Yahoo in the coming years "unless the world can agree on what the standards for jurisdiction should be." Vartanian and an international group of lawyers recently completed a two-year study that, among other things, called for the creation of an international body to develop uniform global principles of Internet jurisdiction. The risk of inaction, Vartanian warned in an interview, could result in a smothering of the emerging e-commerce golden goose. Copyright 2000 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From douglas Wed Aug 16 16:41:13 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 16:41:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: ICT stories -- Message-ID: <200008162341.QAA05865@scn.org> >From Mike Gurstein... Message-ID: <007801c007d5$1094f580$e6051a26 at TUBC> From: "Michael Gurstein" To: "CI" Subject: Fw: ICT Stories Contest - Win a trip to Cairo - Deadline September 1st Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 15:49:37 -0700 ----- Original Message ----- From: To: infoDev Forum Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 3:38 PM Subject: ICT Stories Contest - Win a trip to Cairo - Deadline September 1st > The ICT Stories Contest 2000 > > Four Winners will be selected for an all-expense paid trip to Cairo, Egypt in > October 2000. > They will attend the infoDev Annual Symposium and present their project > experiences during a special event. > Enter your story today to be eligible - the deadline is September 1, 2000. > > Visit the website for more details and to enter your story online. > http://www.iicd.org/stories/ > > Suggestions on writing your experiences: Use the following questions to guide > you through the process > *Who were the people and organizations involved in the project? > *What problem/opportunity was this project aimed at? > *What were the objectives of the project? > *What specific ICT resources did you employ? > *Did you achieve your objectives? Why or why not? > *How did the use of ICTs help or hinder your project? > *What is the future of the project? > *What advice would you give to people working on similar initiatives? > > You may also email your story to pstreet at worldbank.org > > We look forward to reading about your projects! > > -------------------------------------------------- > Pamela Street > The World Bank > Information for Development Program (infoDev) > Email: pstreet at worldbank.org > Enter the ICT Stories Project Competition: http://www.infodev.org/stories/ > ---------------------------------------------------- > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to infodev-l as: [mgurst at ccen.uccb.ns.ca] > To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-infodev-l-463N at lyris.bellanet.org > _______________________________________________________________________ This listserve is a free service offered by the Vancouver CommunityNet For more info on services offered by VCN see http://www.vcn.bc.ca/groups/ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Wed Aug 23 22:44:10 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 22:44:10 -0700 Subject: SCN: Intellectual property Message-ID: <39A453BA.19436.35C7C24@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ============================ Whose Intellectual Property Is It, Anyway? by Peter Wayner, author of "Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans" (NY Times)---There's a war going on. It isn't between ethnic groups, provinces, religions or nations. It is between nimble people who want to think for themselves and big dinosaurs of corporations that want to keep the upstarts penned up and docile. This is the war of Open Source, and it is being fought in conference rooms, law offices, hacker redoubts and university dormitory rooms and in the hearts of millions of people surfing the Web. On one side are the big conglomerates that sell gadgets, music, toys, movies, text, cars and tools to the world. They're discovering that intellectual property laws covering trademarks, patents and copyrights can be potent tools to block criticism and keep consumers on a very short leash. All it takes is a SWAT team of well- financed lawyers to stomp out opposition. On the other side are the folks who think that they actually own what they purchase. They may be car buffs who want to rebore their engine blocks, musicians who want to make copies of tunes to play in their cars or computer owners who want to fix nasty bugs. They all want to get at the guts of the technology because that's where the power is. In computer terminology, they want to tinker with the source code, the instructions for the computer that are understandable by a programmer. If you have access to the source, you can change the way the machine behaves. Computer programmers routinely adopt the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi from "Star Wars" and intone, "Use the source, Luke." In the past, getting at the source of one thing or another was one of the hallmarks of the American can-do spirit. The movie studios routinely celebrated the gritty mechanic or lowly grunt soldier who saved the day with a wrench and an intuitive feel about how machines work. In the past, you were supposed to understand how machines did their jobs. Today, that kind of curiosity makes you a hacker. The big movie and music conglomerates want to portray the meddling kids who fiddle with DVD players as pirates who are just one click away from breaking into the Pentagon and launching nuclear missiles. To the conglomerates, poking around inside a gadget is just another form of theft. Lawyers for the Motion Picture Association of America and major movie studios, for instance, have recently been scouring the Net, looking for copies of a program for unlocking DVD movies called DeCSS. They aren't just suing people who use the program to sell bootleg copies -- you don't need DeCSS to do that. They want to stomp out the knowledge of how the program works, and they want to make sure that no one on the Net even links to the software. The people making the software available contend that they're not pirating movies but are simply arranging to play DVD movies on their Linux machines. They're using the source code in much the same way that Bo and Luke Duke welded a few enhancements to their car in the television show "The Dukes of Hazzard." This desire for control of intellectual property has been inspired in part by the software industry. Most people who buy a piece of software would be stunned to learn that they don't own software that cost $100 -- they've just licensed it. These licenses often include strict prohibitions on taking the software apart, or reverse-engineering it. If you want to customize the software or find a way to fix the bugs, you're out of luck. If the software runs slightly differently on your computer, you can't do any reverse-engineering to fix it. The companies adopt the rule: "Thou shall not know the source." One of the most infamous license restrictions came attached to Microsoft Agent, a product that helped programmers create little animated helpers on the screen. Buried in the click-wrapped license is a phrase that prohibits anyone working with the product from using "the Character Animation Data and Image Files to disparage Microsoft, its products or services." Luckily, I'm not using Microsoft's tools to write this. The scariest proposal from the World Intellectual Property Organization, an arm of the United Nations, aims to let big corporations protect facts in their databases. If all goes according to the group's plans, facts will pass out of the public domain when a corporation collects them. Once a company creates a database, it'll be able to stop others from copying the facts in the database without a license. It will own those facts. While that may protect big databases, it will also constrain little ones. Facts will go from being things owned by everyone to things that can be herded and owned by a single person or company. The good news is that at least in the software world, the battle against intellectual property constraints is going surprisingly well. In the last 15 years, the open-source software world has produced a collection of operating systems, applications and tools that is often better than most of the commercial systems out there. The next generation of the Macintosh OS, for instance, is based in large part on open-source operating systems like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Computers based on GNU software (like Unix, but free) Linux or FreeBSD are used to run more than half of the sites on the Web, and they're found in increasing numbers in offices around the world. Even new appliances like the TiVo digital video recorders are based on Linux. Open-source developers share all of their source code in the hope that others will use it, improve it and perhaps contribute enhancements to the rest of the world. The licenses that control the software make no attempt to stop people from sharing; in fact, they encourage it. There are no thefts of information, and there is no basis for any lawsuits like the one aimed at Napster. The authors want you to enjoy the software and pass it on. Many people are surprised that the world of open-source code exists at all. How do programmers eat if they don't sell their software? In most cases, they are paid for the work their software performs rather than for the software itself. Many are programmers who use the software for their projects. The Apache Web server, for instance, is produced by a team of people who design Web sites. They charge for the service and share the basic software. In other cases, charging for the software is more trouble than its worth. Many open-source teams achieved success before the influx of capital and hype. They relied on the freedom to cooperate, and that's often much more valuable. The forces of openness have made surprising strides in the last 10 years. The work of a bunch of hobbyists, teenagers and programmers working in their spare time now often eclipses the work of the biggest companies and their proprietary software. I.B.M. tried for years to dethrone Microsoft with its OS/ 2 operating system. Now the company is backing Linux. This success scares the dinosaur companies that rely upon intellectual property laws to protect their earnings. If they can't deliver the best solutions to the people themselves, they're reaching to the courts to ensure that no one will supplant them. The lawsuit against the DVD-playing program, for instance, will do more to stop new companies that want to play legitimately purchased DVD movies than pirates. The lawsuits against Napster may be aimed at piracy, but they could also stomp out small record labels and unsigned artists who want their music to float freely through the world of Napster. But the big labels want to shut down the entire service. If the current laws are not strong enough, they want new laws that will stop people from making some kinds of open technology. They imagine a world where technology will control and limit people instead of liberating them. Historically, new technologies that appear to undermine old business models have not been as dangerous as they seemed at first. The photocopier was supposed to destroy the book market, but now the bookstores are bigger than before. The VCR was supposed to destroy network television, but now we have more networks than before. Ever since Gutenberg replaced the monks in the scriptorium, the new technology for copying has made artists and the companies that employ them richer than ever. The notion of opening the source code to the world is just part of that tradition. Companies have tried to use legal mechanisms to keep their customers under tight rein, but that has never succeeded. If anything, innovation stagnated and the industries declined. Reverse- engineering and the old greasy-knuckled can-do spirit are an important part of guaranteeing competition and protecting the consumer. Imagine if Ralph Nader or Rachel Carson had been hamstrung by the new rules on intellectual property? Many of the car companies now actively encourage the aftermarket, which provides both cool performance enchancers like superchargers and safety devices like infant seats. The open-source war is not going to be easy for society. The intellectual property laws do help protect creators and their innovations, and corporations instinctively grab as much power as they can get. But if the strength of these laws grows and the teams of lawyers that enforce them become more powerful, society will become much poorer. Copyright 2000 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Thu Aug 24 19:02:48 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 19:02:48 -0700 Subject: SCN: DeCSS Message-ID: <39A57158.12062.2A26658@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ========================= DeCSS judge: Code isn't free speech (Damien Cave, Salon.com)---A federal judge sided with Hollywood Thursday, ruling that the publisher of an online hacker magazine broke copyright law when he posted DeCSS, a program that decrypts DVDs and allows the digital videos to be watched on computers running the Linux operating system. Judge Lewis Kaplan's 89-page decision comes in the first case to interpret the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), and it outlines a narrow interpretation of the controversial law. Eric Corley, aka Emmanuel Goldstein, the publisher of 2600, immediately promised to appeal and challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA. In the meantime, Kaplan ordered that Corley stop linking to sites that post DeCSS (the judge had previously issued an injunction that prevents Corley from posting the code himself); and Kaplan made him responsible for the legal fees incurred by the eight movie studios that sued him. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been footing his legal bills.) Kaplan rendered his decision by rejecting every one of Corley's arguments in favor of DeCSS, stating, for example, that the potential fair and legal uses of the technology -- like watching DVDs as opposed to copying them -- do not exempt people who distribute it from liability. And the First Amendment argument failed. Kaplan decided that the claim of speech was not enough when the result of that speech has dire effects. "Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement," he wrote. Ultimately, Kaplan found that DeCSS violates the "anti- circumvention" clause of the DMCA, contributes to stealing and thus, should be stopped. "For now at least, Congress has resolved this clash in the DMCA and in plaintiffs' favor," he concluded. "Given the peculiar characteristics of computer programs for circumventing encryption and other access controls measures, the DMCA as applied to posting and linking here does not contravene the First Amendment." Here are some reactions to the decision: Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America: I'm rather jubilant now. What Judge Kaplan did was blow away every one of these brittle and fragile rebuttals. He threw out fair use; he threw out reverse engineering; he threw out linking. I've been saying for months now that when you take what is not yours without the permission, you're stealing. It's a harsh word, but it's true. The judge puts it in more hospitable words, but his decision said the same thing. The big impact is that it sends an alarm bell ringing throughout Silicon Valley, through every office of every venture capital firm. It's saying to them that if you want to continue pouring money into the rat holes of these Web sites that are stealing or aiding or abetting stealing, you better take a second look at that investment. I think you're going to see this decision radically dry up funding. What the courts are saying is that if you don't use technology legitimately, then you don't have the right to use it. And that's going to have a very strong effect. Martin Garbus, lead defense attorney for Corley: The judge and I have different interpretations of the First Amendment, but I think even if we didn't, it's difficult for a judge to set aside a law like DMCA, something that Congress considered for three or four years. So there's no surprise here. We understood what his views were from the point when he issued a preliminary injunction, we've been preparing an appellate record. We always knew we'd have to go to the appellate stage and there, I think we'll win. We'll either win at the appellate court level or in the Supreme Court, which is where we'd love to be in February. Regardless, we'll emphasize fair use. That's the First Amendment issue. The other First Amendment issue is linking. The implication of this decision is that you write a story saying you can get crack at 125th and Amsterdam, and you could be held responsible. That shouldn't be the case. We'd like to see one of three things happen: A judge can say since the DMCA doesn't have a fair use clause, then it's unconstitutional; or a court can say fair use is there but Kaplan didn't see it and that saves the DMCA; or a judge can read fair use into the statute. That would be more imaginative, finding that fair use is the essence of the law and thus must be in the statute. I'd prefer the second because I think the statute says it. Shawn C. Reimerdes, developer of the file-sharing program Yo!NK and one of the original three defendants in this case; in April, he settled with the studios, agreeing not to post DeCSS on his Web site or link to the sites that host the program's code: It's not surprising but it's unfortunate. Kaplan's saying essentially that the DMCA is there for the companies and no one else. It's absurd. In the conclusion, he's saying that the defendants believe that all information should be available without charge to anyone "clever enough to break into" a computer system. What a silly statement; he's not even calling them hackers, he's saying they're some kind of thief or criminal. He does say, though, that they raised concerns about copyright, so I hope that the appellate courts will decide on that. As for the linking section, it's absurd too. The fundamental design of the Web is that things are linked one to another -- you can't make that illegal. I'm really surprised that he left the linking in. I thought he'd realize the implications. I mean he says that if you're linking to information, then you're liable for what that information does? It's crazy. Mark Lemley, a copyright expert and University of California at Berkeley law professor whom Kaplan quoted at length in his Jan. 20 injunction, which prohibited Corley from posting DeCSS: I think it's unfortunate, in particular that the court concludes that the DMCA bypasses fair use. The court's conclusion has some support in statute, but that interpretation -- if that's what the statute does say - - is really problematic. From a policy perspective, there's a reason we have fair use, so if we abolish it as this decision seems to do, then we've pretty radically changed the copyright law. It's also problematic from a constitutional perspective. The Supreme Court has said that one of the reasons copyright law is constitutional is because it has limitations built into it -- one is the idea-expression dichotomy, which says you can't copyright facts or ideas, you just get to protect your way of expressing them. The other is fair use, which lets people copy things for certain legal reasons like library use. Because of these limitations, copyright law doesn't intrude on free speech, so it's legal. But if you can bypass fair use in this large class of cases, then there's some question as to whether the statute itself ought to survive Supreme Court scrutiny. Kaplan spends a lot of time on the First Amendment, but not on this issue. The opinion doesn't talk about the constitutionality of the DMCA. This was argued in the trial; I would have expected to see some treatment. The linking thing is also troubling. The court clearly tries to limit the circumstances in which linking leads to liability, but nonetheless, the fact that you're saying it's illegal to make reference to information that resides somewhere else -- well, that's got some troubling implications for, among other things, the news media; if Salon, for example, wants to show its readers what all the fuss is about [with DeCSS], reporters could be pulled into court and asked why they decided to link to the information. I can imagine that there will be a lot of litigation over the intent of the press, and a lot reporters in court. Copyright 2000 Salon.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From femme2 at scn.org Wed Aug 30 12:04:50 2000 From: femme2 at scn.org (Lorraine Pozzi) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 12:04:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Computer Trainer position (fwd) Message-ID: Hope this is not a duplicate post. Anyone interested in moving to the Bay area for a job? I think it looks interesting, but can't apply. Lorraine ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 10:54:04 -0700 From: Paul Lamb To: UPFORGRABS-L at cdinet.com Subject: Computer Trainer position Folks: Still searching for the perfect teacher for CTC position in the San Francisco East Bay (see below). $10 for person who makes a winning referral:) Peace, Paul Lamb Street Tech "Bringing Technology Jobs to the Streets" 2101 Shoreline Drive, #423 Alameda, CA 94501 Tel: (510) 749-0934 Fax: (510) 749-4932 Email: plamb at home.com www.streettech.org --------------------------------------------------------------- Street Tech (www.streettech.org) is looking for dynamic, motivated computer instructor and computer lab coordinator to teach evening (Monday-Thursday) and Saturday morning classes, develop curriculum, and conduct on-site maintainance at pioneering computer training and job placement program for undserved young adults in the San Francisco East Bay. MCSE and A+ certification preferred, with experience teaching Basic computer skills, hardware, Microsoft Office Suite, Windows 95/98 operating systems (NT a must!), Internet/Web, and networking. Network Administration and other professional IT experience a plus. Position is full time, although temporary arrangements will be considered. $42-44,000 a year + full benefits and health club memberhsip.Submit cover letter, resume, and 3 professional references ASAP to plamb at home.com or fax (510) 749-4932. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bb156 at scn.org Thu Aug 31 12:24:52 2000 From: bb156 at scn.org (Andrew Higgins) Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 12:24:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Re: SCN II? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: When might we expect the notes for the June meeting? -Andrew 2� 2� Dreaming Of SCN 2! - Special Meeting held June 28, 6:30pm 2� Good discussions and ideas - Notes coming soon on the SCN Web site. 2� We'll post a pointer here when they're up. Email steveg at scn.org with 2� questions. 2� * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * *