From steve at advocate.net Fri Sep 1 12:03:57 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 12:03:57 -0700 Subject: SCN: Copyright Message-ID: <39AF9B2D.32546.129DEA5@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ========================= (Atlantic Monthly)---P. Bernt Hugenholtz is the co-director of the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam and head of the Intellectual Property Task Force of the Legal Advisory Board of the European Commission. Since receiving his law degree at the University of Groningen, Hugenholtz has written numerous books, studies, and articles on a range of topics involving copyright and information technology, notably on the protection of computer software and databases, and copyright problems relating to the Internet and the emerging networked world. Although he is a strong advocate of copyright, Hugenholtz in recent years has warned that efforts to protect copyright on the Internet are going too far too fast. In an e-mail exchange, The Atlantic Monthly's Charles C. Mann asked him to describe what worried him. CCM: You've described how the "fear and greed" of copyright holders and content users are interacting to push publishers to impose ever more restrictions on the freedom of readers and listeners and to push users to copy ever more material without paying for it. What consequences are you most worried about? (PBH): I'm not worried about rightsholders enforcing copyright against pirates or other unauthorized users, either online or offline. Taking down Web sites containing illegal MP3s or other pirated content is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. I'm not even worried about enjoining Napster or similar intermediaries from being instrumental in the mass-scale swapping of illegal content. In fact, the Napster injunction came as no surprise to me. What does worry me is the ongoing tendency of copyright to proliferate, to become overprotective. In the old days of analog media (say, five years ago) the copyright monopoly was limited to acts of exploitation -- book publishing, public performance, broadcasting, etc. In the digital environment, because acts of usage necessarily involve some sort of digital copying, the monopoly has expanded to include every conceivable act of transmitting, viewing, receiving, or simply using a copyrighted work. In the old days, reading a book and listening to music were irrelevant acts (from a copyright perspective). In the digital environment, this has changed fundamentally -- and in so doing the balance between copyright and freedom of expression and information is undermined. And there's more reason for concern. The potential of using "code" (information technology) and contracts as substitutes or add-ons to copyright threatens to further erode existing freedoms. In a nightmare scenario, conditions of use preprogrammed into information products will largely determine what end users may or may not do. Even if, for example, the law would recognize a right to use samples of a musical work for the purpose of quotation or criticism, the code/contract layer would effectively prevent such legitimate use. If this scenario becomes reality, not only will all forms of piracy be eradicated, but what little is left of freedom of expression will be as well. It is one of the great challenges of modern-day copyright law not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. CCM: You're saying that because reading something online or playing a music or video file necessarily involves making copies on a computer's hard disk and in its RAM that suddenly laws about copyright come into play when you're simply reading or listening -- a situation that would have been unimaginable before. Similarly, you're arguing that the kind of click-on licenses customary in the online world have worrisome implications, because the licenses may, for instance, prohibit people from sharing or lending digital texts and recordings in the way that they now can share or lend books and compact discs. But what is the legal basis for such fears? In the United States, for instance, people have rights to "fair use" that are provided by federal law. Wouldn't those rights simply override the restrictions imposed by click-on licenses? Wouldn't I more or less automatically have the right to make the digital copies necessary to read an online book I lawfully purchased or borrowed? PBH: The relationship between copyright exemptions (such as fair use) and contract law is a very difficult, and as yet largely unresolved, legal issue. The copyright laws do not tell us whether it is possible to "contract around" (i.e., override by license) the user freedoms the copyright laws provide. Various legal doctrines may play a role. First, preemption: federal statutes may not be undermined by state law. Since copyright law in the U.S. is a federal prerogative, and contract law is largely a matter for the states, you could argue that federal copyright exemptions prevail, by definition, over the more restrictive terms of a state license. Second, fundamental rights or public interest considerations: one might argue that certain user freedoms reflect fundamental freedoms or other values of such general public interest that they may not be "contracted away." This has been expressly recognized in the otherwise rather "license-friendly" Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) [which is presently under consideration in many state legislatures in the U.S.]. Freedom of speech is an example of such a fundamental freedom. I think we would all agree that a license preventing users from reviewing or criticizing an information product would be invalid. Still, there's nothing in the Copyright Act to indicate that exemptions are indeed mandatory, not merely default rules. The European directives on computer programs and databases are unique in that they do provide for a set of non-overridable user freedoms, such as the right to make back-up copies, to study and even reverse engineer a program, etc. From a user's perspective Belgium is paradise; here, due to a recent amendment that went largely unnoticed, all copyright limitations are declared mandatory. CCM: I didn't know that. In this country the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits people from going around "technological measures" that publishers take to protect their copyrights. Many free-speech activists believe that this will inhibit people's freedom -- they point to the current DeCSS litigation, in which some volunteer programmers tried to make software to play their lawfully acquired DVDs on their computers and were sued by the motion picture studios. (The plaintiffs use the Linux operating system, which doesn't have any DVD software, so they were trying to write their own.) Does the Belgian law mean that you simply can't prohibit certain user freedoms? What would that mean for the DMCA? Can Americans go to Belgium to ignore it? PBH: I'm not advocating the Belgian solution as a model. In fact, I don't believe all exemptions should be made non-overridable. For example, under existing U.S. copyright law many bars and restaurants are exempted from paying royalties for music performed (over the radio) on their premises -- a typical example of an exemption which was lobbied into the Copyright Act by a powerful pressure group. What if a restaurant owner would voluntarily agree to pay royalties, say, as part of a larger licensing package that would involve other uses as well? I don't see why such an agreement would have to be invalid. The point is: some exemptions are more important than others. Depending on the rationale of a particular exemption, it may or may not be overridable. Also, making all copyright exemptions non-overridable wouldn't solve all our free-speech concerns. We would still be faced with the threat of "code" (technological measures) preventing users from performing acts of legitimate use, or invoking copyright exemptions in practice. The code versus exemptions debate is at the heart of the DMCA controversy. A similar debate is currently heating up in Europe in the context of the forthcoming European Copyright Directive. According to the latest draft, which was adopted by the Member States in June but still awaits approval by the European Parliament, [European Union] member states may take certain pro-active measures if it turns out technological measures would prevent legitimate users from invoking copyright exemptions. What measures, the Directive doesn't tell us. Perhaps publishers will be compelled to deposit unencrypted copies of technologically protected works at national libraries or archives for public inspection. Maybe publishers will have to supply unencrypted copies on demand of legitimate users. We'll have to see how the member states will implement the directive in the years to come. Copyright 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly 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 Sep 7 22:27:40 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 22:27:40 -0700 Subject: SCN: Links Message-ID: <39B8165C.21253.8711F78@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ======================= Assessing Linking Liability (Carl S. Kaplan, NY Times)---As law professors love to say, consider the following hypothetical case: There are two Web sites. The first one, an online news report, publishes an article about copyright infringement that featuring a hyperlink at its end which leads readers to a site the article’s publisher knows contains unlawful material -- an illegal software code, perhaps, or a pirated music file or an unauthorized copy of a secret religious text. Meanwhile, the publisher of the second Web site, a lone crusader who believes that all information should be freely available to everyone, publishes an article with the exact same link. Question: May a court place the two publishers in the scales and reasonably conclude that one is engaging in lawful linking activity while the other has perpetrated a legal no-no? In a largely overlooked portion of a recent decision, a federal judge has indicated the answer is, yes indeed. According to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District, in Manhattan, a link can be bad or good. It mainly turns on whether the linker's intent is laudable or not. Depending on whom you talk to, Judge Kaplan's reasoning is either a swipe at the First Amendment, which may protect Internet links as a form of expression, or it is a reasonable rule of thumb that balances the rights of speakers and intellectual property owners in the digital age. Still, at least a few things seem clear, according to legal experts. For one thing, Judge Kaplan's attempt to distinguish between good and bad links is novel. "We've never seen this kind of test before," said Dan L. Burk, an Internet law scholar and professor at the University of Minnesota's law school. Martin Garbus, a lawyer who represents Corley, said in an interview that he will shortly file a notice of appeal of Judge Kaplan's entire ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit. He said he was hopeful the appeals court would hear the case on a fast-track basis. After the decision, Corley removed the hyperlinks from his site, but continued to publish the web addresses of the sites where the decoding software can be found. Provided it survives appeal, Judge Kaplan's ruling could serve as an important guiding light for other judges, Burk said. That's because questions about the liability associated with linking to allegedly wrongful material are beginning to crop up in court cases - and the stakes are high. The World Wide Web is a network built upon links. So a legal rule that unnecessarily inhibits linking could stifle the development of the Web. On the other hand, a rule that tolerates overly permissive linking to infringing material could encourage and support mass piracy. Judge Kaplan's stab at a solution to the linking puzzle as part of his August 17th decision in the highly-publicized DeCSS case, which pitted eight movie studios against Eric Corley, who, under the name Emmanuel Goldstein, runs a print and Web publication, "2600: The Hacker Quarterly." The movie studios sued Corley to stop him from posting or linking to hundreds of sites carrying a piece of software – DeCSS – which the studios claim allows users to decode digital versatile discs (DVDs). They claimed the software code, invented by hackers in Europe opens the door to copying and unauthorized viewing of movies. Judge Kaplan, in an 89-page decision, agreed with the movie studios, ruling that Corley's posting of the DeCSS code violated a portion of a federal law. That law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, makes it illegal for anyone to provide to the public or traffic in a device that is designed to circumvent a measure controlling access to a copyright-protected work. Significantly, Judge Kaplan also agreed with the studios’ argument that Corley's decision to post hundreds of links to sites containing the DeCSS software also violated the anti-trafficking provision of the copyright act. Corley's posting and linking "amount to very much the same thing," wrote Judge Kaplan. A few days after his opinion, he issued a permanent injunction barring Corley from posting DeCSS code or linking to sites containing DeCSS code. In the portion of his opinion that dealt with the linking issue, Judge Kaplan conceded that he had a "genuine concern" that a blanket legal rule barring Corley's linking might trigger a "chilling effect" that would inhibit Web site operators from posting links. Such a chilling effect in the context of links -- which contain mixed elements of expression and functionality -- would raise "grave constitutional concerns," he said. In addition, Judge Kaplan expressed the worry that assigning liability based on a link to site which happened to contain DeCSS in the midst of other perfectly appropriate content could be "overkill." Seeking to avoid such pitfalls, Judge Kaplan established what he considered to be a very strict test. He said there may be no injunction against, nor liability for, linking to a site containing content considered illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act unless it can be proven by clear and convincing evidence that those responsible for the link (1) knew at the relevant time that the offending material was on the linked-to site; (2) knew that the offending material may not be legally offered, and (3) created or maintained the link "for the purpose" of disseminating that illegal technology. A "strong requirement of that forbidden purpose is an essential prerequisite to any liability for linking," Judge Kaplan wrote. He added in a footnote that courts will look at all relevant circumstances when evaluating a link, including whether a publisher advertises that link as a means of providing an unlawful product or directly "deep links" to a page containing only the offending material. Kaplan's views on linking are troubling to at least some experts in Internet law. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA's law school, said that the history of the First Amendment shows that legal rules proscribing speech on the basis of the speaker's intent may seem promising, but in practice are often not sufficiently protective of speech. That's because people can be successfully sued or prosecuted even though it’s not clear they intended other people to violate a law, Volokh said. "In these kinds of cases, it's easy for a plaintiff to say that a defendant intended some consequence," Volokh said. "Maybe the defendant did intend something and maybe he didn't. It's up to a jury to decide, and who knows what they'll do. So this leads to a classic chilling effect and potentially a very serious one," he said. With respect to Internet linking, "all it would take is one or two publicized lawsuits and people may start to get antsy," Volokh said. "Maybe some online news publishers like The New York Times wouldn't get cowed, but others may become more hesitant" to link, he said. Mark Lemley, an intellectual property expert who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley's law school, said another problem with Judge Kaplan's legal standard on linking is that it is intrusive. It subjects "a whole bunch of people to potential liability and inquiries about why they did this thing," he said. He added that the ruling will encourage intellectual property owners to file more cases against linkers and issue "cease and desist" letters demanding that links be removed. Other experts, however, applauded Judge Kaplan's linking analysis. Bruce Keller, a New York lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law and who has represented The New York Times in legal disputes, said that Judge Kaplan "did what he could to create a workable safety valve." "If you are a First Amendment purist it may leave you a little uncomfortable but the First Amendment does not condone clear violations of intellectual property rights," he said. Richard Raysman, a New York-based lawyer who specializes in e- commerce, and who has written about linking, said Judge Kaplan's reliance on the notion of intent to distinguish between good and bad links was reasonable. "It's a fine distinction and it could cause some serious problems if misused but it's a fair distinction," he said. Since Judge Kaplan's ruling, the Motion Picture Association of America, acting on behalf of Hollywood movie studios, has sent out about 100 e-mails to Web site operators asking them to cease posting or linking to DeCSS, according to Gregory P. Goeckner, a vice president and deputy general counsel of the MPAA. He said the e-mail recipients were carefully chosen, based on "evidence that there was a deliberate intent to provide DeCSS." He added that the MPAA didn't send e-mails to the operators of every site currently linking to DeCSS. 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 Fri Sep 8 09:12:58 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:12:58 -0700 Subject: SCN: Web and AOL Message-ID: <39B8AD9A.10711.8C1D9F@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ========================= Web of Deterioration (John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine)---How often have you had to help a friend find something on the Web? This seems to happen over and over. And for the life of me, I can't see why it has continued for all these years. The scenario goes like this: (1) A friend can't find something; (2) the friend moans to you; (3) you go online and find it in 15 seconds; (4) you explain what to do; (5) a week later the process repeats. I now understand why AOL is doing better than ever. AOL used to be referred to as "training wheels for the Internet." Nobody says that anymore. It seems as if people like training wheels, and they're going to keep them on their bikes no matter what we say. In fact, if you told many people today that AOL is "training wheels for the Internet," they'd look at you as if you were from Mars. To most AOL users, AOL is the Internet. Talk about a marketing coup de grace! The success of AOL brings into focus numerous issues that many of us technologists simply do not get, and many of them threaten to compromise freedom and advancement on the Web. Here they are: The Public's Failure to Become Savvy. This should concern us all. While typical PC Magazine readers may possibly think that they have a competitive edge because they can do things AOL mavens cannot, they must also realize that there is a potential for AOL to take over content distribution to such an extent that other sources of information dry up. This should concern you deeply. It's your duty to show people the way out! The Success of the Sticky Site. How the heck did this ever happen? I've never thought much of the idea of so-called sticky sites that do everything they can to keep people locked into one domain. Don't you hate hitting a browser's Back button to get out of a site, only to find yourself trapped? The Web is about linking all over tarnation. Is it possible that people simply are not comfortable in an open world and need to be locked into a prison? The Passive Nature of Users. This is something that we don't like to talk about, but when you read the feedback letters for online columns, it's fairly apparent that users are passive. They'll accept whatever kludge is presented to them, and most people today like the status quo. Worse, there is every indication that younger kids, who were raised around computers, have no interest in them. They might get into a game or two, but that's about all. Porn. Sophisticated users don't want to admit this, but there is too much porn on the Web--and it's keeping people from floating around too much for fear of running into it. The idiocy of browser design has allowed browsers to reopen with more porn each time you try to back-arrow out of a site, or when you try to close the browser. The fact that this is tolerated by the World Wide Web Consortium, which makes the standards, baffles me. I can see my mom clinging to a closed system like AOL after having a porn-storm experience out in the wild. If that's not bad enough, there was the recent bust of some porn king who apparently couldn't get rich enough selling porn, so he double-billed his customers' credit cards. What a sweetheart! Can you imagine the headaches that the credit card companies had to go through over this kind of mess? Media Scare Stories. While hundreds of thousands of people chat online every day, the media plays up the story about the misanthrope who "uses the Internet" to dupe some innocent girl into his lair, where he kills her. "They Met on the Internet," the headline blares, as if the Internet were essentially the worst bar you could find in the worst part of town. You'd go there only to get into a fight or get killed. No woman should set foot in the place. That depiction makes people not even want to associate with the Internet, and it's a depiction that is definitely on the rise. When you put these issues together, they add up to big Web problems--a situation that spells money and profits for several of the big Web sites, where site operators know how to play it safe. AOL is the perfect example. Watch how every other big site does what it can to clone the AOL model. Yahoo! is ahead of the pack, producing an almost-aol environment. You can do e-mail there, go to an auction, read personals, read news. You can check in to Yahoo! and never check out, because--like AOL--it has created its own set of features to complement what's on the Web at large. Unfortunately, the Web is about freedom. And like all freedom, unless it is exercised and protected, this freedom is lost. The way things are going on the Internet, freedom will be lost very soon unless something is done. Copyright 2000 Ziff Davis Media * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 franklill at email.msn.com Thu Sep 14 16:25:25 2000 From: franklill at email.msn.com (franklill) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 16:25:25 -0700 Subject: SCN: SLS Listserve Message-ID: <000001c01f2b$0db9a960$6a321e3f@oemcomputer> I've sent a couple messages to Kurt Cockrum at kurt at scn.org concerning the SLS listserve but have not heard back from him. Is he still handling that area? Frank Lill ----- Original Message ----- From: "franklill" To: "Brian High" Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 4:07 PM Subject: SLS Listserve Haven't heard back from you or Kurt???? Also, who in SCN is going to make the changes to your member data base for the new city of Sammamish? Obviously, SLS needs to do it, too, and I would like to compare notes with someone. I'll be adding an event to the SLS web page and would like to advertise it at the SCN level. Who do I send the message to? Frank Lill ----- Original Message ----- From: "franklill" To: "Brian High" Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 7:01 AM Subject: Fw: SLS Listserve I still haven't heard back from Kurt on this. Is he still the person handling the listserves for SCN? Frank Lill ----- Original Message ----- From: "franklill" To: "Kurt Cockrum" Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 9:31 AM Subject: Fw: SLS Listserve Haven't heard back from you on this. Frank Lill ----- Original Message ----- From: "franklill" To: "Kurt Cockrum" Cc: "Brian High" Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 12:28 PM Subject: SLS Listserve The SLS SCN has been working just great. Thanks again for all of your past help and for letting us use the test version of Majordomo. A subset of the full SLS list is comprised of people who are designated volunteers. Would it be possible to have a second SCN Listserve for these people? There are about 60 people on this list. Frank Lill * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Sep 15 09:31:35 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 09:31:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: CPSR annual meeting Message-ID: <200009151631.JAA04349@scn.org> Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility wants to help you be part of the solution - join us on October 14. DRAWING THE BLINDS: RECONSTRUCTING PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE October 14-15, 2000 Dunlop Hall University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA KEYNOTE: David Farber, Chief Technologist, Federal Communications Commission NORBERT WIENER AWARD DINNER honoring MARC ROTENBERG - Founder of the ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER (EPIC) October 14, 2000 (7:00 - 10:00 pm) Penn Tower Hotel Ballroom Philadelphia, PA, USA CPSR's ANNUAL MEETING Sunday, October 15 Free and Open to the Public You can register online at https://swww.igc.apc.org/cpsr/annMtg2000.html A limited number of hotel rooms are being held for us until 5 pm Eastern Time on Thursday, September 14th for $115. If you need one of these rooms, put a note in the comments field of the online registration form, and I will get back to you with details. If you, your company, your department, or your organization would like to be a co-sponsor, please contact cpsr at cpsr.org and/or check out http://www.cpsr.org for information. THE CONFERENCE: Subject to appearances by invited speakers Vice President Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Governor George W. Bush SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14 8:15 - 9:00 am Registration 9:00 - 9:15 am Welcome 9:15 - 10:00 am KEYNOTE: David Farber, Chief Technologist, Federal Communications Commission 10:00 - 10:20 am Break 10:20 - 12:00 pm TECHNOLOGY: THE PROBLEM OR SOLUTION? Technology has completely changed the game when it comes to the collection and use of personal data. While privacy abuse abounds, can the same technology be built to protect us? 12:00 - 1:30 pm Lunch 1:30 - 3:00 pm CONSTRUCTING PRIVACY FROM PROTOCOLS TO INTERFACE The foundations for privacy need to be built into technology at the outset - from the most basic of protocols to the interface. How can we put privacy first as a top priority element in computer design? 3:00 - 3:15 pm Break 3:15 - 4:45 pm IS 1984 HISTORY? Public awareness of privacy dangers has moved beyond the "I-have- nothing-to-hide" stage to real concern. Is this concern strong enough to counter the data-gathering momentum or have we already reached a point of no return? SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 7:00-10:00 pm WIENER AWARD DINNER Penn Tower Hotel Ballroom Philadelphia, PA, USA CPSR's Norbert Wiener Award for Social Responsibility in Computing Technology is being awarded to Marc Rotenberg, founder of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). TICKETS FOR THE DINNER MAY BE PURCHASED WITHOUT REGISTERING FOR THE CONFERENCE. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15 CPSR ANNUAL MEETING 9:00 am - 4:00 pm Class of '62 Auditorium University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA CPSR's Annual Meeting gives the organization's members and friends an annual opportunity to meet and brainstorm over the organization's agenda for the coming year. Free and Open to the Public -------------------------------- Invited Speakers David Banisar- Privacy International Nathaniel Borenstein - University of Michigan Ray Everett-Church - AllAdvantage.com David Farber - University of Pennsylvania & Chief Technologist, FCC Simson Garfinkel - author of "Database Nation" Beth Givens - Executive Director, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Austin Hill - President of ZeroKnowledge Ashok Khosla - President, Brightmail Steven Lucas - President, PrivaSeek David Marvit - Director of Technology, Disappearing Inc. Dierdre Mulligan - Counsel, Center for Democracy and Technology Peter Neumann - Chief Scientist, SRI International Nick Nicholas - Alliance for the Preservation of Email eXchange Jeff Rosen - author of "The Unwanted Gaze" Marc Rotenberg - Electronic Privacy Information Center Paul Schwartz - Professor, Brooklyn School of Law Andrew Shen - Electronic Privacy Information Center Conference Committee Rick Barry, Lorrie Cranor, Karen Coyle, Gene Haldeman, Harry Hochheiser, Steve Teicher, Coralee Whitcomb, Susan Evoy Check in at http://www.cpsr.org/ for updates *************************************************** (For your security, please do not return this form as email) REGISTRATION Name ______________________________________________ (as it should appear on nametag) Address ____________________________________________ City__________________________ State ____ Country __________________ Zip __________ Telephone ( )_____________________ Email ________________________________________________ Company/School Name _________________________________ Payment method: Check__ Visa __ MasterCard __ Card# ___________________________ Exp Date ______ by later or 9/19 on-site* New or Reactivating CPSR MEMBERSHIP with Conference or Dinner $10 $10 (Add $15 for postage if living outside US) (register at Member rates) CURRENT MEMBER OF CPSR Conference $50 $65 Conference + Dinner $80 $110* Low Income/Student with ID $10 $15 Low Income Conference + Dinner $40 $70* NON-MEMBER Conference $70 $85 Conference + Dinner $120 $170* Low Income/Student with ID Conference $25 $30 Conference + Dinner $55 $90* ONLY SATURDAY WIENER AWARD DINNER Member $40 $70* Non-member $60 $90* Low Income/Student $35 $65* MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES Complimentary Conference Wiener Award Dinner $30 $30* ADDITIONAL DONATION TO CPSR ___________ TOTAL ENCLOSED $____________ How did you hear about the conference ? ___________________________________________________ * If space is available. Final counts go to caterer October 6th. Send completed registration form with payment to: CPSR, P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, CA 94302 Or register on the World-Wide Web at https://swww.igc.apc.org/cpsr/annMtg2000.html CHECK IN AT HTTP://WWW.CPSR.ORG/ FOR UPDATES. > -- > Susan Evoy * Managing Director > http://www.cpsr.org/home.html > Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility > P.O. Box 717 * Palo Alto * CA * 94302 > Phone: (650) 322-3778 * Fax: (650) 322-4748 * > Email: evoy at cpsr.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: wg-education-core-unsubscribe at cpsr.org For additional commands, e-mail: wg-education-core-help at cpsr.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 Sep 15 09:26:00 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 09:26:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: *URGENT, letter on Bank net plans* Message-ID: <200009151626.JAA03290@scn.org> The following letter is critical of the World Bank's Internet plans. If you agree with the letter, they'd like you to "sign" by sending a note to the Bretton Woods Project . -- Doug ****************************************************************** * Help Shape the Network Society * * Sign the Seattle Statement! * * http://www.scn.org/cpsr/diac-00/seattle-statement.html * * Discuss the Seattle Statement! * * http://www.scn.org/cgi-bin/diac-00/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro * ****************************************************************** Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 16:41:51 +0100 To: G.Crawford at leeds.ac.uk, , From: Bretton Woods Project Subject: *URGENT, letter on Bank net plans* Cc: , , , Doug Schuler , Pedro47 at aol.com (ALEJANDRO BENDANA JUBILEE SOUTH), , , tanayuyar at superonline.com (Tanay Sidki Uyar Turkey), "hd39" , woodwarddavid at hotmail.com, trasparencia at laneta.apc.org, prchaz at koel.indiax.com, finance at evb.ch, Tschad-Oel at oln.comlink.apc.org, , smitu at unv.ernet.in, , lrc at phil.gn.apc.org, prisma at nicarao.apc.org, tongtong at gn.apc.org, james.cameron at bakernet.com, vandana at twn.unz.urnet.in OPEN LETTER ON WORLD BANK INTERNET PLANS Below is an open letter to World Bank President Wolfensohn explaining the concerns of many researchers and NGOs about the Bank's plans to develop a major (60 million dollars over 3 years) internet initiative, supposedly involving civil society as a key partner. The World Bank is planning a major sales pitch for its Gateway plans at its Prague Annual Meetings starting next week. The Bank's Gateway team is claiming that just a few European malcontents still have problems with the plans and so the Bank should move full steam ahead. If civil society groups worldwide do not express their reservations/opposition clearly now, the Gateway is likely to eclipse the independent web initiatives many of us are involved in. Undoubtedly some would phrase this stronger and some slightly weaker, this aims to be quite neutrally-phrased to get a good, quick, range of signatures. It does not aim to change Wolfensohn's mind but act as a public statement. ** Please sign by the afternoon of Tuesday 19 September. ** Send signatures (with name and affiliated organisation, where appropriate) to: ** Please forward to others who might sign, too. Apologies if you receive this more than once. ** The final letter, plus signatories, will be posted on the Bretton Woods Project website next week and circulated at the Prague meetings.** FURTHER INFO/LINKS For official information about the Gateway plans, see: www.worldbank.org/gateway For a civil society discussion on the Gateway (where many of the letter's points are discussed), see: www.bellanet.org/gdgprinciples Throughout October the Bank will hold an electronic consultation on the Gateway on: www.worldbank.org/devforum Alex Wilks, Bretton Woods Project, UK [The Bretton Woods Project works with NGOs and researchers to monitor the World Bank and IMF. See: www.brettonwoodsproject.org] Open joint letter of concern about the Global Development Gateway 19 September 2000 Dear Mr Wolfensohn, The Bank, under your direction, is developing a major new internet initiative which aims to become "the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development". To achieve this it would need to include all shades of opinion and be a broad, multi-stakeholder initiative, including civil society. Many civil society groups, including the undersigned, have held discussions with the Bank and among themselves about the Gateway. We are writing to inform you that many of the major issues we have raised have not been addressed. It seems, especially from the report "Global Development Gateway Issues Identified During Consultations" recently produced by the Bank's Gateway team, that you and the Bank's Board may have been misinformed about the extent and nature of civil society concerns and our disappointment in the Bank's response. These concerns are not only serious in how they relate to the missed opportunity of the Gateway, but also because they have the potential to confuse potential funders, people asked to be Topic Guides, site visitors, and many others. It is not the case that, as hinted in the above report of the consultations, that these views are only held by opponents of the World Bank or groups based in Europe. In fact a wide range of NGOs, academics and also officials are extremely sceptical about the initiative. Among the key problems identified with the Bank's Gateway plans are: 1) insufficient independence of Gateway governance. The Gateway global and national governance structures do not adequately protect civil society interests. Whilst an independent foundation has been established, the constitution of the Board and Advisory Committee do not give grounds for confidence that the Gateway will be truly independent of the Bank, national governments and big business. Particular concerns are the role of the Bank in making appointments relating to the Global Gateway, governments' leading roles in Country Gateways and companies's ability to buy Gateway Board membership (and "co-branding" opportunities) with annual payments of a million dollars. Creating a nominally independent entity has thus not solved the acute accountability issues around the Gateway, issues which are very sensitive in portal development, essentially an editorial activity similar to publishing newspapers. 2) alternative design options rejected. Very early in discussions about the Gateway a number of civil society groups suggested an alternative design approach which would use the latest spidering software to allow distributed, user-driven topic aggregation. This would overcome the difficulties of the chosen Gateway design which gives power and impossible judgements to individual editors, and empower groups across the world to post and group information according to their needs. Yet the Gateway still favours a vertical, edited approach which will cause many problems of credibility and useability. 3) communication/consultation insufficient. Whilst there have been a number of consultation exercises, it appears that the Bank has overemphasised the production of pilot sites and fundraising rather than communicating with diverse audiences about the GDG's intentions and what might best meet their needs. Many important groups still know nothing about the Gateway and many who do have tabled questions which have not been answered. 4) overambition and unfair competition; The Gateway, whilst based on good intentions to increase coordination of web activity, is too ambitious and cannot meet all of its goals. At the same time its huge budget (60 million dollars over three years) and marketing reach are likely to have huge opportunity costs for the many existing and planned portal ventures in this area. It is not appropriate for the heavily subsidized Gateway to compete with these (for profit and non-profit) initiatives, including in many of the "pilot" countries. This approach clearly contradicts normal World Bank policy advice. At present, because of the above concerns and others, it is unlikely that a Civil Society Committee for the Gateway will be formed soon, despite two months of discussion about it. In fact a large number of civil society groups are likely to continue with independent initiatives to improve electronic information coordination rather than join the Gateway. We ask you to provide full responses to the above points as soon as possible. Yours sincerely, INITIAL SIGNATORIES Alex Wilks, Bretton Woods Project, UK Lawrence Surendra, environmental economist, India, formerly Director, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives Roberto Bissio, Executive Director, Third World Institute, Uruguay Mark Lynas, UK Editor, Oneworld.net OTHER SIGNATORIES (e-mail name, position and organisation to: . Note organisation is for identification purposes only, not implying an organisational view. Reply by Tues 19th September.) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 jamesr at scn.org Fri Sep 15 17:00:13 2000 From: jamesr at scn.org (jamesr at scn.org) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 17:00:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: BigBrother/Jamie Message-ID: Question: Who is this "Jamie", who is on the Big Brother show. She is a contestant... What area of Seattle does she live. We call her Miss Beauty_Queen AKA Miss Hollywood and Miss Froggie. Call me at home if you know the answer....................James Bye....... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 flowergarden at 37.com Fri Sep 15 21:24:35 2000 From: flowergarden at 37.com (flowergarden at 37.com) Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 00:24:35 -0400 Subject: SCN: ADV: ===>> FREE 1 yr. USA Magazine Sub sent worldwide-200+ Choices! Up to $81. Message-ID: With your first purchase of any size of any new or renewal subscription AT OUR GUARANTEED LOWEST RATE (we BEAT all competitor's prices before you pay us and will even go back 6 months later if you find a better deal and refund you the difference!); customers living overseas pay only for FPH (foreign postage & handling) on the free subscription. FOR MORE INFO OR TO BE REMOVED FROM OUR MAILING LIST: Just fill out the below form and return to us via email at: friendlyservice at bonbon.net Remove requests will be immediately honored and request for more information will be fulfilled within 24 hours. For more information, if you do not get a reply within 24 hours, then please fax us at: 1-602-294-5643 or write us via smail at: or send via smail (first class mail or airmail) to: Tempting Tear-Outs Att. Free-catalogue-by-email Dept PMB 200 3835 Richmond Ave. Staten Island NY 10312-3828 USA When replying, your reply must include only this form*: (*If you can't figure out how to cut and past this text, just type it out in the same format): *------------cut here/begin-------------------------------------------* No thank you. Please remove me from your mailing list. My email address is: Yes, please send me more info. I realize I am not committing myself to buying anything at this time and I would just like more info on the offer and a FREE copy of your magazine subscription catalogue. Here are my details: Name (First Middle Last): Internet email address: Smail home address: City-State-Zip: Country: Work Tel. #: Work Fax #: Home Tel. #: Home Fax #: Cellular (Mobile) Tel. #: Beeper (Pager) Tel. #: How did you hear about us (name of person/company who referred you or the area of the internet that you saw us mentioned in): Referred by: Tempting Tear-Outs 091300-ng Name of USA mags you currently get on the newsstand or in the store: Name of USA mags you currently get on a subscription basis, through the mail: Name of USA mags you would like price quotes on when we call you: Catalogue version desired (list number of choice below): *------------cut here/end--------------------------------------------* CATALOGUE VERSION CHOICES: 1. This version can be read by everyone, no matter what type of computer you use, or what type of software you use. It is a simple format, with just our entire catalogue pasted into the body of a single email message, 316K in size. If you use pine or elm on a unix system or an advanced software version such as Eudora Pro 3.0 or later, you will most likely receive it as a single email message. However, if your software limits incoming email messages to a certain size, say 32K or so, then your software will split it into multiple email message parts. Whether you receive it as a single email message or multiple part email messages, you can easily paste it into one whole text document with your word processor, in about 10 minutes or so. 2. For more advanced computer users: attached plain ascii text file ~316K - you must know how to download an attached text file and then be able to locate it on your hard drive or system home directory; it can then be opened with any pc or mac word processing software. If in doubt, don't ask for this version. This isn't for internet *newbies.* Better to order option 1 and spend a few minutes pasting them into one whole text document with your word processor, than to waste hours trying to figure how to deal with this option. This version is great for doing keyword searches and jumping around within the catalogue with your word processing software, if your normal email reading software doesn't allow this. WHO WE ARE: Tempting Tear-Outs is an advertising company that brings potential new customers to the companies they advertise for. MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY MAKING THE FREE OFFER AND THE FREE OFFER ITSELF: The company making the offer is a magazine subscription agency based in the USA. They have over 1,100 popular USA titles available to be shipped to ANY country, including of course, to anywhere in the USA! They offer a FREE 1 yr. subscription to your choice of over 200 of the titles in their catalogue to any new customer using them for the first time. The dollar value of the freebies, based on the subscription prices directly from the publishers, ranges from $6.97 all the way up to $50.00! For new customers in the USA, there is no charge for FPH (foreign postage & handling), so the freebie is 100% free! For new customers living overseas, the only charge on the freebie would be for the FPH (foreign postage & handling). Their president has been in the magazine subscription business since 1973 and they are very customer-service oriented. They will even help you with address changes on your magazines, even if you move from one country to another country. They have thousands of happy customers in over 59 countries. Their price guarantee is very simple: they guarantee that their subscription prices are the lowest available and they will BEAT any legitimate, verifiable offer before you pay them or match it afterwards, by refunding you the difference in price PLUS the cost of the postage stamp you would use sending in the special offer to them, even 6 months after you pay them, as long as it was current at the time of your offer. Does that sound fair? Wouldn't it be great if everything you bought came with that price guarantee? Sometimes they are less than half of the next best deal out there, sometimes just a little cheaper, but always you get the lowest rates without having to shop around. With 1,100+ titles on their list, they would like to think that they have also the best selection around! Within the USA, for their USA customers, they are cheaper than all their competitors and even the publishers themselves. This is their price guarantee. The 1 yr. freebie that you get with your first order is completely free! Overseas, (even after you factor in the cost of the FPH (foreign postage & handling) and the conversion from USA Dollars to your currency), on the average, they are generally around one-fourth to one-half of what the newsstands overseas charge locally for USA magazines. On some titles they are as little as one-tenth of what the newsstands charge. They are also the cheapest subscription source for delivery overseas, including directly from the publishers themselves! Some publishers don't even offer subscriptions overseas.........but overseas subscriptions are this company's specialty! They feel that magazines should not be a luxury overseas. In the USA, people buy magazines and then toss them after reading them for just a few minutes or hours. They are so cheap in the USA! Well, this company would like to make it the same way for their overseas customers. They are also cheaper than all their competitors in the USA and overseas, including the publishers themselves! It is also *highly unlikely* you will find any of their USA competitors calling you overseas, in order to offer that personal touch, just to sell you a couple of magazines! But that is what this company specializes in and loves doing! Around one-half their business comes from overseas, so they are very patient with new customers who only speak limited English as a 2nd language. Subscription prices quoted for overseas consist of the subscription price, plus the FPH. You add the two together and that is your total cost. The exception is the 1 yr. freebie you get with your first order. On that title, you pay *only* the FPH for the 1 yr. term. Their prices are so cheap because when you deal with them, you cut-out all the middlemen. HERE IS HOW YOU CAN GET MORE INFO AND GET STARTED WITH THEM: Simply email or fax or smail back to us the reply form listed at the top of this message. We will then forward your form on to the subscription agency. They will then email their "big and juicy" catalogue to you, in whichever of the two formats you chose. The catalogue is FREE and makes for hours of fascinating reading, on its own. It includes the complete list of freebies, a complete list of all the titles they sell, as well as detailed descriptions on most of the titles, along with lists of titles by category of interest and their terms of sale. They will then give you a friendly, no-pressure, no obligation, 5-minute call to go over how they work and to answer any questions that you might have, as well as give you up-to-the minute price quotes on any titles you might be considering. They will call you in whatever country you live in, taking the time difference into account. As they like to emphasize the personal touch they give to each new customer, all first-time orders can only be done via phone, so they can answer all your questions completely and personally. Once you have placed your first order via phone, you will be able to place future orders and make inquiries on your account, get price quotes, etc., all via email, if that is most convenient for you. Within the USA, they accept payment via check over the phone, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Diner's Club and Carte Blanche. Overseas, they accept Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Diner's Club and Carte Blanche, even if your credit card is a local one in local currency (that most merchants in the USA would not normally be willing to accept). That's our introduction of our client that we represent. We hope that we have piqued your interest and that you will take the next step to get their free catalogue! Thank you for your time and interest. -- Tempting Tear-Outs. For more info on marketing & consulting rates, please write us on your company letterhead, w/business card, via smail to: Tempting Tear-Outs, PMB 200, 3835 Richmond Ave., Staten Island NY 10312-3828, USA. This email message has been sent to you by: Tempting Tear-Outs, PMB 200, 3835 Richmond Ave., Staten Island NY 10312-3828, USA. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Sat Sep 16 10:15:46 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 10:15:46 -0700 Subject: SCN: ISP Message-ID: <39C34852.8512.225732@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ======================= (John C. Dvorak, Forbes)---Imagine buying a car that comes with an "Acceptable Use Policy" to which you have to agree. In the policy are pages and pages of provisions, such as, "You may not use this car to commit illegal acts, including but not limited to speed law violations and illegal U- turns" and "You may not engage in seditious conversations within the confines of the car." Finally, you are told that if you violate the policy the car will be repossessed and your money will not be refunded. You'd think the carmaker was crazy. But this is the kind of idiotic agreement you are already making if you use almost any Internet access service. Take the license for the popular AtHome cable modem system (check it out at www.home.com/aup). It puts severe limits on how you can use the service. The agreement can change without notice, and you are legally bound by any new demands. "They could suddenly demand you wear a bra and panties and dance in the street, and you are contractually bound to it, the way this is written," says Andrew Weill, a partner at Benjamin, Weill & Mazer, an intellectual property firm in San Francisco. Yet the AtHome agreement is not unusual. Internet access providers and Web sites are doing anything possible to limit their liability and minimize their responsibilities. Stephen Davidson, past president of the Computer Law Association and a lawyer with Leonard, Street & Deinard, calls the AtHome policy a "mutating bill of rights." But don't expect mercy from a court of law. Says he, "If this policy is presented properly to the user, then the court will uphold it as a contract, despite the fact that nobody reads it. They were given the chance to read it." Much of the AtHome contract is defensive legalistic blather designed to keep the company out of court. The more onerous aspects of the agreement are the bandwidth limitations imposed by AtHome. These suggest to me that the service is having a hard time delivering on its promised bandwidth, 225 kilobits to 1 megabit per second upstream and 10 megabits downstream. The most ludicrous example of this is the chat room policy: "Any computer or other device connected through the services may not maintain more than two simultaneous chat connections. This includes the use of automated programs, such as 'bots' or 'clones.' Automated programs may not be used when the account holder is not physically present at the device." Anyone who regularly chats online tends to have two or more chats going at once, since data speeds are so slow. The conversations take forever. If AtHome is concerned about someone typing to more than two people at once, then something is terribly wrong with the architecture. According to the terms of the agreement, if I get up to get coffee during a chat and my computer sends an automatic message saying "I'll be right back," then I'm in violation. And, yes, they can catch you because AtHome gives itself the right to spy on your every activity, although it says its policy is not to do it routinely. Isn't that comforting? So let's stop right here. Big Web sites have legal notices. Software packages have lengthy license agreements. Does anyone besides me sense a creeping Soviet Union-type atmosphere here? Even ignoring the eavesdropping, there is weird psychology in all these contracts: People perceive them as a joke, knowing they can get away with violations without much fear of getting caught. In a Soviet-style system you are in violation of some law at any given time; you just assume you won't get caught unless someone is out to get you. When we live our lives this way, we end up as a community of Soviet-style scofflaws. I believe this environment has given rise to services like Napster. Young people, who were raised with computers, are more likely than older people to ignore copyright laws and to freely trade music without fear of serious reprisals. No legal expert thinks any of this is going to subside in the short term. "All this cyberactivity is a new frontier for the law. It will take years to sort itself out," says Davidson. Copyright 2000 Forbes.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 paramail at para-protect.com Sun Sep 17 07:52:00 2000 From: paramail at para-protect.com (paramail at para-protect.com) Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 15:52:00 +0100 Subject: No subject Message-ID: <000a01c020b6$d56bc380$3200000a@sawgrass> subscribe scn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From douglas Tue Sep 19 09:52:43 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 09:52:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: NYT ad on open access to cable Net, AOL-TW Message-ID: <200009191652.JAA00460@scn.org> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 12:44:18 -0400 To: km at cme.org From: Jeff Chester Subject: NYT ad on open access to cable Net, AOL-TW Tomorrow, Wednesday September 20th, this ad sponsored by Tompaine.com will run on the Op-ed page of the New York Times. It supports "open access" to the cable broadband Internet, and criticizes the position taken by AOL, Time Warner, and AT&T. It also features a new "open access" alert effort by the ACLU. ad copy: http://www.tompaine.com/img/op_ad_000919_large.jpg ACLU action alert: http://www.aclu.org/action/broadband106.html For more information, you can contact me at 202-232-2234. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Aki at cpsr.org Tue Sep 19 02:10:23 2000 From: Aki at cpsr.org (Aki) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 18:10:23 +0900 Subject: SCN: ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET Message-ID: <000601c02219$716d7720$8138e7d8@Erik> Internet Policy Institute's America: On the Net Town Hall Meeting ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET The Internet Policy Institute America: On the Net Tour Stops In Seattle On October 4th Town Hall Meeting Open To The Public WHAT: Nationally-known journalist Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal will moderate the meeting. WHEN:Wednesday, October 4, 2000, 4:30 p.m. Registration at 4:00 p.m. (seating is limited) WHERE: West Ballroom, Husky Student Union University of Washington 113 HUB Seattle, WA RSVP by September 27, 2000 on our Web site, www.seattleonthenet.org, or via telephone by dialing (888) 966-7366. Do you care about privacy on the Internet? Who do you believe should regulate the Internet? Should commerce on the Internet be taxed? How can we assure that all Americans benefit from phenomenal growth of the Internet? These are among the issues about which you can make your views known at one of this year's most important discussions about Internet policy - America: On the Net. America: On the Net was launched by the Internet Policy Institute to discover what Americans really think about the Internet. You are invited to attend the interactive town hall meeting in Seattle, to be held on October 4th at the Husky Student Union on the campus of University of Washington. Your ideas, issues and concerns will be conveyed as part of the IPI's program to brief the next President and his administration, policymakers and business leaders. The Internet Policy Institute is the nation's first independent, nonprofit research and educational institute designed to provide objective, high-quality analysis and outreach on the key issues affecting the global development and use of the Internet. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Thu Sep 21 11:06:30 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 11:06:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: community networking evaluation Message-ID: <200009211806.LAA15286@scn.org> Hello, There are lots of interesting ideas on how to *evaluate* community networks on the "Community Connector," http://databases.si.umich.edu/cfdocs/community/evaluation.cfm. The main site is... http://databases.si.umich.edu/cfdocs/community/index.cfm --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 douglas Thu Sep 21 17:17:48 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 17:17:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: No subject Message-ID: <200009220017.RAA19051@scn.org> Hello! Enclosed is an announcement about the proceedings from the Seattle conference. (Better late than never!) I'm sending this to a few lists that I believe are appropriate. Please accept my apologies if you get more than one copy of this! BTW, please free to forward this announcement to any person whom you think would be interested. Thanks! -- Doug ******************************************************************** * Shaping the Network Society: * * The Future of the Public Space in Cyberspace * * * * DIAC-2000 Symposium Proceedings now available!! * * * * For individual or classroom use (See below for bulk orders info) * ******************************************************************** In May 2000, 400 activists, technologists, artists, researchers, journalists, students, and citizens ventured to Seattle to help Shape the Network Society, to help meet the needs of PEOPLE -- not business or government. The proceedings from this symposium contain 34 insightful and innovative papers from the civic activists and researchers who are making this happen. Topics include telecenters in Mexico, Hungary, and other regions, using technology to build civic society in Nigeria, shaping virtual communities, labor organizations and new communication technology, navigating very large-scale digital conversations, counterculture and cyberculture, Internet governance, domain name policy, health promotion with ICT, progressive communications and networking, and many many others. See table of contents (http://www.scn.org/cpsr/diac-00/toc.html) for the complete list of papers and workshop descriptions. Please help us find a good home for these proceedings. Discount prices are available for orders of 10 of more. Why not have your company or school library purchase one? ___________________________________________________________________ 100 Free Proceedings! Thanks to the National Science Foundation we will be distributing 100 free copies of the proceedings to people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Canada, the US, and elsewhere. If you feel that these proceedings would be useful to you and you feel that you or your organization can't afford them, please don't hesitate to apply for a free copy using the form at http://www.scn.org/cpsr//diac-00/proc-contents.html. Just fill in your information and tell us how you plan to use the proceedings. We will begin sending the free copies out in October. ___________________________________________________________________ Purchase Information Cost (for orders of 1 - 9 proceedings): $15 each Please add the following for postage for each copy ordered. * $3 for addresses in the US * $6 for addresses in Canada * $9 for addresses in Mexico * $7 for addresses in other western hemisphere countries * $10 for addresses in Europe * $12 for addresses in Asia and Africa * $14 for addresses in Pacific Rim countries Discounted cost (for orders of 10 or more proceedings): $12 each Please add the following for postage for each copy ordered. * No postage for addresses in the US * $3 for addresses in Canada * $6 for addresses in Mexico * $4 for addresses in other western hemisphere countries * $7 for addresses in Europe * $9 for addresses in Asia and Africa * $11 for addresses in Pacific Rim countries All prices listed in US dollars. To order, use the secure online membership form at [ https://swww.igc.apc.org/cpsr/sec-membership-form.html ] --putting your order in the comments field, or send a check in US$ to CPSR PO Box 717 Palo Alto, CA 94302 USA Cyberspace is likely to become the dominant medium through which people create and share information and ideas in the future. How these conversations about the environment, culture, leisure, and political decisions, are conducted is everybody's business! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Sep 21 23:12:33 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 23:12:33 -0700 Subject: SCN: Toxic computers Message-ID: <39CA95E1.5210.3866636@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ====================== Lead, mercury, chromium -- that's what computers are made of. So why aren't electronics makers keeping them out of landfills? (Jim Fisher, Salon)---I was packing 17 dead monitors; nine cannibalized Macintosh CPUs; six obsolete PCs; five printers; five fax machines; three flatbed scanners; six boxes of PCI cards and other stripped components; a garbage bag of cables; a dead Macintosh SE from 1991; a box full of brick-sized Seagate 2.9 GB SCSI drives, external CD-ROM drives, fried power supplies and failed memory; and a giant 21-inch Apple Studio Display crate filled with keyboards, office phones and miscellaneous plastics. My U-Haul was headed to the Computer Recycling Center in Santa Clara, Calif., one of the few places within 75 miles of San Francisco that accepts cast-off computer equipment for disposal. I later learned of recyclers closer to home, though that morning the CRC was my only lead, and I confess to a certain thrill in returning my toxic e-junk to the county of its birth. Our company's IT department, to which I belong, had conducted its usual triage on the castoffs collected during three years at a growing Internet company, salvaging what seemed useful and abandoning the rest. The dead matter was crammed into the truck and I was at the wheel. Companies assume that system administrators, who seem to know everything else about computers, have information they don't about recycling electronics. The truth is that these monitors, printers and CPUs that silently disappear after a couple of months in a storage closet rarely make it to a recycler; instead they're sacrificed in a space crunch, hastily loaded on to a handcart and more often than not left outside the freight elevator with a stickie that says "Basura." I'd recently come across a statistic, however, that pointed out that monitors contain an average of 5 to 8 pounds of lead per unit, thanks to the radiation shield in the cathode ray tube (CRT). It turns out it's worse than that: Lead constitutes approximately 25 percent of monitors by weight, and the estimate of 5 to 8 pounds per unit is based on 14- and 15-inch monitors. The standard-issue monitor today, at least for workers in the clean new economy, is 17-inch or above. In addition, lead is spackled across printed circuit boards as part of the soldering alloys that fuse electrical connections. It's no surprise that consumer electronics constitute 40 percent of the lead found in landfills. Some reminders about lead: If ingested, it can have toxic effects on the central and peripheral human nervous systems, and cause brain damage in children. It can seep into groundwater, poisoning plants, animals and microorganisms. More than two decades after the U.S. government banned lead from house paint, the feds estimate that 4.4 percent of children between the ages of 1 and 6 suffer from lead poisoning, typically from tainted paint flaking off old walls. In short, it's a toxin, and doesn't belong in the dump. Leave an old monitor by the freight elevator, however, and that's just where it's going. "If you landfill a CRT, it will get crushed in the process," says Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an organization founded in 1982 in response to a rising number of birth defects and other health problems near the leaking Fairchild Semiconductor plant in San Jose. "The fine particles of glass laced with lead eventually degrade. With rainfall getting into the dump site, the water will become contaminated with lead, and that lead-filled water will leach out of the landfill and into the groundwater." It's a process that may take several decades, but it will happen: It's as ineluctable as the flaking of paint. "Lead is an element," Smith says. "It isn't going away. You can burn it, you can stomp on it, you can bury it; it isn't going away. It's going to get back into the life cycle." None of this is a secret to the U.S. electronics industry. Yet rather than developing consumer take-back programs for the recycling of its obsolete products, PC makers and other consumer electronics companies are lobbying to stop a European Commission proposal that would demand that they take responsibility for the hazardous materials in their wares. The European Commission's draft directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) would hold producers legally responsible for the reuse and recycling of their products, and phase out some of the worst toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of electronics. The WEEE Directive so alarmed the U.S. computer industry -- specifically the American Electronics Association, whose over 3,000 members include Microsoft, Intel, IBM and Motorola -- that it prepared a legal position paper claiming the directive violates -- surprise -- the international trade rules of the World Trade Organization; the association managed to convince the United States Trade Representative to adopt its key positions. Targeted are the directive's phaseouts of hazardous chemicals because, as the USTR states in its 2000 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, "viable substitutes may not exist" -- though plenty of people will tell you they do. "The United States supports the drafts' objectives to reduce waste and the environmental impact of discarded products," the National Trade Estimate Report states. "The Administration has expressed concerns, however, on the adverse impact on trade from the current proposals' ban on certain materials ... and with the provisions regarding producers' retroactive responsibility for the collection and recycling of end-of-life products." While it's hard to say just how much USTR and AEA lobbying has influenced the directive, a list of revisions in the various drafts (the most recent version is the fifth) casts a recognizable shadow. The deadline for the phaseouts of hazardous chemicals has retreated from 2004 to 2008; the list of materials scheduled for phaseout has shrunk; the minimum recycling rate for cathode-ray tubes has dropped by 20 percent; provisions mandating the use of recycled plastics have vanished; and most worrisome of all, the most recent draft splits the directive into two separate legal documents: one dealing with the phaseouts of toxic materials, the other with everything else. "I'm concerned they're going to focus on one [document] and relegate the other to obscurity," says Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who's convinced the U.S. electronics industry will continue to fight, particularly against the phaseouts. "[The directive] is not just talking about producers who are home-based in Europe; it's talking about everyone who wants to sell into the European market. Everybody wants to do that. Everybody has to do that. If this thing holds, it's going to set the de facto global standard." For the time being, the de facto global standard is that the industry sells products to consumers, and consumers are responsible for their disposal. No matter that consumers have no control over -- much less any idea of -- what materials are used in the manufacture of electronics. I was appalled to learn the extent of the toxins in my e-junk. Along with the lead in my cathode ray tubes and circuit boards, my U- Haul was loaded with chemicals with documented risks to public health and the environment: There was cadmium in my semiconductors, SMD chip resistors and infared detectors; there was mercury in my switches and position sensors; chromium in my steel housing; brominated flame retardants in my circuit boards and connectors; nickel, lithium, cadmium and other metals in my batteries; and in my cabling and older casings was polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a widely used plastic that during both production and incineration releases dioxins, which are among the most toxic chemicals known. All that was missing was a 55-gallon drum. I had started my recycling mission by asking around for referrals. Few were forthcoming -- not from my co-workers, not from friends in IT departments at other companies. The typical suggestion was to donate the equipment to schools or nonprofits. "But the stuff doesn't work," I found myself sputtering. "It's defunct. It's 'end-of-life.' What's a school going to do with fried 486s and blown cathode-ray tubes?" It wasn't until I showed up in person at the Market Street offices of the Solid Waste Management Program in San Francisco, and asked with some belligerence what to do with my dead computer, that I was handed a comprehensive Commercial Re-use and Recycling Directory, listing a handful of local electronics recyclers. In the meantime, I learned that schools and nonprofits have wised up in recent years. Many reject anything less than a Pentium 166, and refuse individual donations as a matter of policy. With the growing demand for newer and faster machines, "the nonprofits became everyone's dumping ground," says Dan Schimenti, purchasing manager for HMR-USA, a San Francisco recycling business that was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the city's Solid Waste Management Board to purchase a $350,000 monitor- crushing machine. "They don't want 486s, they don't want low-end Macs." It's not just CPU speed that's the problem: Few schools or nonprofits can afford the skilled help necessary to refurbish old equipment. "Most schools in California are budgeted for a single, part-time computer repair person," says Steven Wyatt, executive director of the Computer Recycling Center. "Given what schools pay, it's also the case that they don't always get computer people with lots of experience and skills." To make things easier, the CRC makes a point of donating clusters of machines with identical components and drivers -- a practice that makes it easier for schools or nonprofits to make them functional, but difficult for individual defunct computers to find useful second lives. At the Santa Clara warehouse (just a few blocks from an Intel Superfund site) pallets of shrink-wrapped CPUs and cathode-ray tubes tower nearly to the ceiling. On the warehouse floor, a group of volunteers and paid technicians test newly donated systems. Nonworking equipment, or equipment that can't fit into clusters, is carted to the back room to be dismantled for recycling. Recycling electronics means determining which parts can be sold intact and which must be unloaded as scrap. For example, monitor manufacturers can use intact cathode-ray tube guns, and third-party service companies -- the businesses that contract with computer makers to manage their warranty programs -- can use parts from old product lines. Eventually, however, one is left with electro-scrap and mixed plastics that can't be reused. The only buyers are specialized recyclers, such as MBA Polymers in Richmond, Calif., a business that's developed a commercial process for recovering mixed plastics, or Micro-Metallics in San Jose, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Noranda, Inc., which operates a smelter in Quebec. Electronics recyclers like Micro-Metallics, says Schimenti, "get thousands of tons of circuit boards" each year, which they strip of recoupable components, like microprocessors and memory chips, before shipping them off to smelters. The end product is "a metal stream ... that is worth money based on the composition of the metals. It's got a lot of lead, because of all the solder connections, and there's also steel, aluminum and copper." Needless to say, smelting is a dirty business, and one that's heavily regulated in the United States and Canada. It's no coincidence that almost no smelting is done near the population centers of the Bay Area. While the Noranda smelter is probably the largest consumer of electro-scrap generated in North America, it is a best-case scenario. Due to regulations and pollution laws, it's often cheaper to export the scrap to countries where such laws, if they exist at all, are more lax than those in Canada and the United States. Not surprisingly, reliable figures on the export of electro-scrap are hard to find, especially after the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes, which the United States refused to join, began monitoring and regulating "toxic trade" of hazardous materials between developed and developing nations. Even so, an estimated 1 million of the 1.7 million monitors recycled in 1997 were shipped abroad for disassembly and processing. "There are a lot of countries that make a huge business in the processing, recycling, smelting and disassembly of electronics, and it is done in an environmentally unfriendly manner," Schimenti says. "Different countries have done it over the years, but when they reach a certain economic level, they stop." The perfect example is Taiwan, which only a decade ago was desperate for raw materials like copper, silver and steel. "So what did they do? They imported it [and smelted it themselves]. That's their source; they're not mining the stuff." Now that Taiwan is on its feet, it's no longer in the market for scrap. After a tour through the HMR facility, filled like the Computer Recycling Center with towers of palletized, shrink-wrapped computer components, Schimenti takes me out to the warehouse yard, where I hear the scream of drills and the crack of plastics before noticing four workers, bent over a workbench, dismantling monitors stacked in refrigerator-sized crates. They break the monitors into five key components: the plastic casing, the metal chassis, the yoke, the circuit board and the cathode-ray tube. The tubes, looking like giant chocolate kisses, are thrown onto a conveyor belt and carried into an environmentally sealed container to be crushed. The lead and glass are then separated with a heavy magnet and discharged for shipment as commodities. "We deal with trailing-edge electronics," Schimenti tells me once we're inside. "The new Pentium 650, the new Mac G4 -- that's not us. We're trailing-edge. We're last year's stuff." Despite the fact that California requires cathode-ray tubes to be handled as hazardous waste, I found no mention of consumer electronics on the Web sites of local waste management agencies, including San Francisco's Hazardous Waste Management Program and Santa Clara County's Hazardous Waste Recycling and Disposal Program. These programs provide detailed instructions on what to do with wastes such as aerosols, antifreeze, used tires and motor oil, but they share a glaring omission of electronics, with the exception of used batteries. The one local program I found that did mention electronics -- the city of Mountain View's -- did more to discourage computer recycling than help it along: "Electronic equipment ... has too many intricate parts for recycling to be economical," the site reads. "It is labor intensive to separate the multiple, and sometimes minuscule, material types for recycling, and markets aren't readily available for small quantities of some of the material types. Therefore, recycling of electronic equipment is not common at this time." Would the folks in Mountain View, Silicon Valley's ground zero, really rather have local companies like Netscape, Rambus, Veritas and scores of start-ups dump their old lead-filled monitors and circuit boards in the local landfill? I have to assume not -- but why do they make information on recycling e-junk so hard to obtain? Robert Haley, residential and special projects coordinator at the SF Recycling Program, says "the thing about solid waste [administrators] is that every new product that gets invented, we have to then figure out what it is and deal with it. It takes us a little while to catch up." "That's why the producers have to get involved. They know what's in there, yet a lot of times they won't tell us because it's proprietary," adds Haley. A good example is the new flat-panel displays, which some organizations believe contain the kinds of gases that contribute to global climate change. No one knows for sure, however, because the industry won't say. "Are [the manufacturers] thinking about what's going to happen with these displays two years from now? They're not required to, but they should be. That should be part of their job." Fortunately, not all domestic manufacturers shy away from the problems of producer responsibility. At Apple Computer -- whose P.R. department failed to return several calls for comment -- "Design for Environment" guidelines are becoming closely tied to the development cycle, with Apple Product Environmental Specifications (APES) tables measuring various product attributes with an eye to reuse and recycling options. Similar design guidelines are in place at Hewlett-Packard, whose recycling facility in Roseville, Calif., is an encouraging example of how a large producer can responsibly dispose of its retired products and manufacturing overruns. In the computer industry, "The cost of recycling -- because there is a cost, it doesn't happen for free and it doesn't generate positive revenues -- has never been a part of the commercial equation," says Renee St. Denis, an environmental manager at the Roseville facility, which began as an in-house operation salvaging repair parts from old HP product lines. "To this day, the industry-wide solution to what we call 'breakage'" -- the mixed plastics, metals and glass left over after cannibalization -- "is to put that stuff in a container and ship it to China." In fact, when St. Denis joined the group in 1994, that's just what the Roseville plant was doing with breakage from 600,000 pounds of equipment recovered each month from its North American manufacturing plants, as well as from HP employees exchanging their own computers for newer models. "My job ... was to find out for sure what was happening [with the breakage]. I found out for sure, and didn't like it very much." Soon after her arrival, all shipments to China had stopped, and St. Denis was coordinating with Micro-Metallics to jointly manage a recycling facility on-site, with the breakage disassembled in Roseville and sent directly to Noranda's smelter in Quebec. It may not be an ideal solution, but when dealing with 3.5 to 4 million pounds of recovered equipment per month -- the current volume processed at Roseville -- one can't do much better than ship the scrap to one of the largest, most monitored smelters in North America. When asked for her position on producer responsibility, however, St. Denis chooses her words carefully. "What we talk about [at HP] is the concept of shared responsibility vs. extended producer responsibility ... Shared responsibility is the concept that there are several players along the value chain. Distributors get value out of our products, and even the consumer who uses the product at home or in the office gets some kind of value out of it." "We feel the responsibility for how you dispose of it at end-of-life needs to be shared," she explains. "That doesn't mean that we think we shouldn't play a role or bear some of the cost; it just means that we shouldn't do it all." Today, although Roseville gets a small but steady volume of equipment from commercial customers exchanging old equipment when purchasing new models, what goes on at places like Roseville is of little relevance to the average consumer. Individual users and small-to-medium businesses are more likely to purchase an HP product through a third-party distributor, such as a computer superstore or mail-order business, than from a sales representative who deals with large commercial customers. While an HP sales representative is prepared to take back end-of-life products as part of a purchase, try striking the same bargain with your CompUSA clerk next time you buy, say, a new Pavilion PC Minitower off the shelf. These days, more than half of all American households own a computer and one study, conducted six years ago at Tufts University, found that 75 percent of all computers ever bought in the United States are gathering dust in a closet, basement or garage. A report by the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center found that in 1998, only 6 percent of computers were recycled compared to the number of new computers put on the market that same year. That same report estimated that by the year 2004, there will be nearly a third of a billion obsolete computers in the United States. Today the average life span of a computer is estimated to be about two years -- down from five years in 1997. We cannot just stockpile this stuff indefinitely; people need their space. Eventually the e-junk is going to get chucked. Wyatt of the Computer Recycling Center tells me of a law firm that donated two dozen Pentium machines in May. "Their reasons for getting rid of the computers were speed, small hard drives, not enough RAM -- the usual complaints," he says. "The computers had the manufacturer stickers right on them." The stickers told when the computers were first put into service. The dates on the stickers? May, 1999. It's not hard to believe. In my own company, it's rare that I'm able to repurpose a year-old computer without a manager interceding and authorizing new equipment. And the managers have a point: used computers, like used cars, are less reliable than new models. The entropy ratio is accelerating; computers are breaking down at faster rates. The approaching rule of thumb: one computer per user per year. Why can't we just treat old computers like used toner cartridges, and ship them back to the manufacturer with a pre-paid return label? It's a logistical problem, says St. Denis: "It's easy with cartridges: the old one is exactly the same size as the new one, so it'll fit right in the packaging ... [Whereas] if you were to trade in your PC, it's probably a different size, a different shape; even the boxes have changed." Meanwhile, agencies like the Solid Waste Management Program are rushing to classify and divert the increasing stream of electro-toxins from landfill. A new pilot program, begun Aug. 15 -- just a few weeks after my cruise in the U-Haul -- announced a free recycling service for obsolete and nonworking computers, with dropoff locations at eight San Francisco computer stores and four metal recyclers, including HMR-USA. Equipment dropped off at the stores will be picked up in bulk by the recyclers. The program's next goal is to arrange for the capture of electronics directly at residential public disposal areas, or "transfer sites." For the time being, however, there's little hope for diversion (the legal term for the reduction or elimination of targeted materials from a waste stream). Take a load of cathode-ray tubes to your local dump, as I did that morning on my drive to Santa Clara, and you won't find much resistance. In fact, workers at the Sanitary Fill Company at Candlestick Point, the main disposal site for San Francisco residents, gave me a blank look when I asked if they accepted old monitors. I pointed to the cathode-ray tubes in my U-Haul; they handed me a brochure with tonnage rates. To them, it was general refuse. I thanked them and got back on the freeway. Contrast this with trying to dispose of tires, mattresses or household hazardous wastes such as paint, used oil, solvents, batteries or coolant. "Dump a mattress at the landfill, it could cost you a hundred bucks," Schimenti says. "[The waste companies] don't want them, and they're going to process them in a different way." They don't want them because, by law, the waste is marked for diversion. With the exception of Massachusetts, which in April became the first state to ban cathode-ray tubes from landfills, no such diversion exists for computer systems, despite the hazardous materials in their components. Had I paid the $16 listed on the brochure, my cathode-ray tubes and lead-laden computers would have become part of the municipal waste stream, loaded onto containers and hauled to Altamont Landfill in Livermore. (San Francisco, despite a per-capita waste- generation rate 1.5 times that of the national average, does not have a landfill within city limits.) This same landfill made news last year when its operating company, Waste Management Inc., inadvertently dumped 6,000 cubic yards of lead-tainted dirt, disgorged from the infield of San Francisco's new ballpark, on the Altamont hills outside Livermore. The mistake cost taxpayers just under $1 million, the price of gathering up the spill and shipping it to a hazardous- materials dump in Kings County. The point here is not negligence. It was actually the state and not Waste Management Inc. that was to blame in this case. The point is that lead and other toxins do not belong in Altamont or in municipal landfills anywhere. The cities know it, the states know it, the feds know it. Yet today, there's nothing to stop electronics, with their toxic cocktail of heavy metals, from getting dumped. The only reason we know about these hazardous materials is because of nonprofit watchdogs like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and taxpayer-funded agencies like the Solid Waste Management Board. "We're still learning," Haley says. "We're trying to get the information and build the infrastructure, but really the industry has to come to the table and try to help with this. They're the ones making the money, they need to pay the infrastructure costs ... They're not going to do it unless someone compels them to do it, because right now they can make money without having to be responsible for it." 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 bb156 at scn.org Mon Sep 25 21:23:08 2000 From: bb156 at scn.org (Andrew Higgins) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 21:23:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Re: SCN II In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The only response to my first posting was a modification of the MOTD reneging on the promise to post notes from the June meeting. No other answer has been given. Do notes exist for the June meeting? Are they to be put up on our web site? Is there another meeting scheduled? Did I, and did others, waste time coming out that night? -Andrew ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 2� 2� On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Andrew Higgins wrote: 2� 2� 2� When might we expect the notes for the June meeting? 2� 2� -Andrew 2� 2� 2� 2� 2� Dreaming Of SCN 2! - Special Meeting held June 28, 6:30pm 2� 2� Good discussions and ideas - Notes coming soon on the SCN Web site. 2� 2� We'll post a pointer here when they're up. Email steveg at scn.org with 2� 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/ * * * * * * * From steve at advocate.net Mon Sep 25 17:32:46 2000 From: steve at advocate.net (Steve) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 17:32:46 -0700 Subject: SCN: Amazon and privacy Message-ID: <39CF8C3E.22345.25BF2AE@localhost> x-no-archive: yes ====================== (Ed Foster, InfoWorld)---They know where you live. They know what you buy, where you go, and maybe even your friends. In fact, as they've made quite clear with the recent changes to their privacy policy, Amazon.com thinks they own you. Earlier this month, readers began reporting that they'd received a message from Amazon informing them of unspecified changes to Amazon's privacy policy. After trying to read through the new policy and its many associated documents, few could be sure just what had changed from the old policy, but many spotted various areas of concern. Several readers opined that there didn't seem to be much Amazon couldn't do under the new policy. "The privacy policy artfully obscures the fact that it imposes no restrictions at all on [Amazon's] behavior," wrote one reader. "A large notice at the top [saying] 'We can do whatever we want with your information as long as we first say what we will do,' would be more to the point." "Amazon used to give you the option of writing to never at amazon.com so they'd never share your personal information with a third party," wrote another reader. "What's happened to that? It looks like they can share your information with anyone now, and you don't have an option to say no." Early reports about the new privacy policy focused on one particular term saying customer information would be one of the transferred assets "in the unlikely event that Amazon.com" is acquired by another company. That certainly deserves to be a point of controversy because it means Amazon customers won't be entitled to the same protection that privacy watchdogs argued Toysmart.com customers deserved when the online retailer liquidated its assets this year. The more I studied Amazon's new privacy policy, the clearer it became how that particular issue is something of a red herring. Just before the "unlikely event" provision, the policy states quite boldly that customer information is a business asset of Amazon's and that the company can buy and sell assets as it chooses while "we continue to develop our business." And the promise in Amazon's old privacy policy that they would not "sell, trade, or rent your personal information" was replaced by a provision claiming the right to share customer information with "affiliated businesses" -- virtually any company with which Amazon has dealings. And what kind of customer information can Amazon buy, sell, or otherwise transfer? Cleverly enough, this is detailed in secondary documents -- not the main policy. Information that is collected about you includes your e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, credit card information, social security number, driver's license number, purchase history, products you've searched for, your URL clickstream to and from Amazon's site, e-mail addresses of those on your Trusted Friends list, and people, including their addresses and phone numbers, to whom you've shipped purchases. It appears that even information about people who aren't customers can become Amazon's assets. Amazon spokesman Bill Curry argues that I am not interpreting the new privacy policy correctly. "The policy says very clearly that Amazon is not in the business of selling information about its customers," he says. "In the classic mail-order marketing sense, the list is not for sale." Under the policy, Curry points out, Amazon can share information related to the transaction only with business affiliates -- otherwise it must get each customer's consent. Curry adds that Amazon no longer needs a "never" address -- but it will honor people who signed up while it existed -- because the company has removed any doubt about what it might and might not share in the future. "The new policy is more stringent than the old one, because previously we said we might choose to share information in the future," Curry says. "We've removed the uncertainty, so 'never' goes away." I can agree the uncertainty is gone, but only because I think it's certain that Amazon will do as it pleases. I could argue point by point where the loopholes are in the restrictions Curry says Amazon is imposing on itself, but it's not worth the effort. Why not? Because this new one could change at any time. It contains a pointed sneakwrap term: "Our business changes constantly," it reads. "This Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also, and use of information that we gather now is subject to the Privacy Notice in effect at the time of use." Got that? The information they gather now is subject to the privacy policy in effect, then. Copyright 2000 InfoWorld Media Group, 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 ==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ==== * * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * * From steve at groupworks.org Tue Sep 26 03:09:12 2000 From: steve at groupworks.org (Steve Guest) Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 03:09:12 -0700 Subject: SCN: Re: SCN II References: Message-ID: <001701c027f0$32a3be00$74340f3f@edarcana> Hi Andrew I am sorry that I did not respond personally to your last email. Yes you are correct the notes are not yet quiet ready to place on the main web site. We do have them up in draft format. If you would like to see them they are at http://www.scn.org/scn2/Scn2-GM-brainstorm.htm. I must say that these are still draft and are not as pretty as our normal pages, but they have the content from that evenings brainstorm session. So no your efforts were not wasted and thanks again to all that participated. Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Higgins" To: Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 9:23 PM Subject: Re: SCN II > > The only response to my first posting was a modification of the MOTD > reneging on the promise to post notes from the June meeting. No other > answer has been given. Do notes exist for the June meeting? Are they to be > put up on our web site? Is there another meeting scheduled? Did I, and did > others, waste time coming out that night? > > -Andrew > > ææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææææ ææ > 2¢ > 2¢ On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Andrew Higgins wrote: > 2¢ > 2¢ > 2¢ When might we expect the notes for the June meeting? > 2¢ > 2¢ -Andrew > 2¢ > 2¢ > 2¢ > 2¢ 2¢ Dreaming Of SCN 2! - Special Meeting held June 28, 6:30pm > 2¢ 2¢ Good discussions and ideas - Notes coming soon on the SCN Web site. > 2¢ 2¢ We'll post a pointer here when they're up. Email steveg at scn.org with > 2¢ 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/ * * * * * * * From douglas Tue Sep 26 21:46:22 2000 From: douglas (Doug Schuler) Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 21:46:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Progessive Tech Project (FYI) Message-ID: <200009270446.VAA25306@scn.org> Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 19:28:05 -0400 From: " Stephen Snow" To: Subject: Fw: Grant Opp For those mot on the Digital Divide mailing list, this might be of special interest. please pardon any cross-posting. steve snow shsnow at mindspring.com > > > > > Deadline: Monday, November 6, 2000 > > > > Introduction > > The Progressive Technology Project is pleased to announce its Fall 2000 > > grants pool. PTP plans on making 12-15 grants of up to $10,000. Please > > note the process will be highly competitive. How to apply is described > > below. > > > > Mission and Goals > > The Progressive Technology Project (PTP) seeks to strengthen citizen > > action, increase public participation by under-represented communities and > > build stronger grassroots organizations by supporting the effective use of > > information technology. PTP provides capacity building technical > > assistance and grant making to assist grassroots groups in the use of > > information technology to strengthen their social change efforts. > > > > PTP's goals include: > > > > > > Build the capacity of grassroots groups to sustain new technology skills > > that advance their ability to improve the quality of people's lives > > Explore, create and share models of technology use that increase > > organizations' effectiveness by adding value to grassroots organizing > > Develop a program of technical assistance to address the unique needs that > > grassroots organizations face in their use of technology > > Leverage resources to support the use of information technologies by > > grassroots organizations > > Create a place for strategic discussions about the relationship between > > grassroots organizing and technology > > > > Many people and communities are being left behind by the growing divide > > between those who have access to information technologies and those who > > don't. Grassroots groups in particular have not been able to take > > advantage of the powerful potential that technology offers to advance > > their work. PTP works to support the development of skills, capacities and > > best practices that enable communities and organizations most often left > > out of the information economy to harness the potential of technology. PTP > > exists to build an infrastructure that supports grassroots groups' use of > > information technologies to strengthen their efforts to create just > > communities. > > > > Target Community: Grassroots Community Organizing > > PTP's grants pool is designed to support grassroots organizations that > > engage in multi-issue social, economic and environmental justice efforts > > to empower low-income people and communities of color. To be eligible for > > funding, organizations should: > > > > > > Increase the capacity of people to impact public policy and hold decision > > makers accountable locally and at broader levels > > Seek to address the underlying causes of social, economic and > > environmental problems > > Engage in leadership development with people traditionally left out of > > civic decision-making > > Be directed by and accountable to their members/constituents and make > > decisions democratically > > Work strategically to empower low-income people and communities of color > > > > PTP believes that community organizing at its best is about developing > > relationships, skills and understandings among people that increase their > > ability to change unjust conditions in their communities and beyond. > > > > Please note that the above criteria are key elements of eligibility for > > PTP funding. Please contact PTP with any questions concerning > > organizational fit. > > > > At this time, PTP will only be accepting proposals from organizations > > focused on and based in the United States. PTP will not consider funding > > for organizations that primarily engage in the following activities: > > scholarships/fellowships; technical service provision; direct services; > > technology projects unrelated to grassroots social change efforts; child > > care programs; emergency shelters; medical services; books; publications; > > capital improvement and job training or readiness projects. > > > > For a full description of the PTP and its grant guidelines and how to > > apply, please visit their website at > > http://www.progressivetech.org/Program/GrantMaking/fallguidelines.htm > > > > For more information about PTP contact them directly with any questions. > > info at progressivetech.org > > > > ----------- VISTAnet Footer: Please cut this out when replying > > Unsubscribe Instructions: To address - listserv at maelstrom.stjohns.edu > > Send message - unsubscribe VISTAnet > > If you're stuck, ask for help at VISTAnet-request at maelstrom.stjohns.edu > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 barbgal_usa at yahoo.com Thu Sep 28 13:28:47 2000 From: barbgal_usa at yahoo.com (Barb Weismann) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:28:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SCN: Fwd: Social Security Help] Message-ID: <20000928202847.3188.qmail@web4803.mail.yahoo.com> > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: > > Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 8:50 PM > > Subject: Social Security Help > > > > > > > > > > > > > << >Social Issue. > > > > > > > >Our Senators and Congressmen don't pay in to > Social > > > Security, and, of > > > >course, they don't collect from it. The reason > is that > > > they have a > > > >special retirement plan that they voted for > themselves > > > many years ago. > > > >For all practical purposes, it works like > this: When > > > they retire, they > > > >continue to draw their same pay, until they > die, > > > except that it may be > > > >increased from time to time, by cost of living > > > adjustments. For > > > >instance, former Senator Bradley, and his > wife, may be > > > >expected to draw $7,900,000, with Mrs. Bradley > drawing > > > $275,000 during > > > >the last year of her > > > >life. This is calculated on an average life > expectancy > > > for each. This > > > >would be well and good, except that they paid > nothing > > > in on any kind of > > > >retirement, and neither does any other Senator > or > > > Congressman. > > > > > > > >This fine retirement comes right out of the > General > > > Fund, our tax money, > > > >while we who pay for it all, draw an average > of > > > $1000/month from Social > > > >Security. Imagine for a moment that you could > > > structure a retirement > > > >plan so desirable that people would have extra > > > deducted so that they > > > >could increase their own personal retirement > income. A > > > retirement plan > > > >that works so well, that Railroad employees, > Postal > > > Workers, and others > > > >who aren't in it, would clamor to get in. > > > > > > > >That is how good Social Security could be, if > only one > > > small change were > > > >made. That change is to jerk the Golden Fleece > > > retirement out from under > > > >the Senators and Congressmen, and put them in > Social > > > Security with the > > > >rest of us. Then watch how fast they fix it. > > > > > > > >If enough people receive this, and get this > out in the > > > public view, > > > >maybe some substantive change can happen. > > > > > > > >How many can YOU send this to? >> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >  > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - 35mm Quality Prints, Now Get 15 Free! http://photos.yahoo.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/ * * * * * * *