Digital-Lifestyles

Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

  • Ofcom’s Broadband Ambitions, Appoints Telecoms Adjudicator

    The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has outlined its next steps and long term aspirations for the development of broadband.

    Ofcom believes that their initial focus on rollout and coverage has paid off, with 512kbps services now common place and around 15% of the population taking advantage of broadband.

    The regulator now wants to define and focus on a phase two: “the new generation of broadband services likely to emerge as competition increases between providers.”Ofcom are still as keen as ever to promote local loop unbundling, and have been successful at goading BT into faster action to improve third-party access to exchanges – they they note that the pace in the UK does not match those in other countries: “If there is sufficient progress in reducing costs and improving operational processes, local loop unbundling in the UK has the potential to deliver the same kind of growth and innovation emerging in, for example, France and Japan, where tens of thousands of local loops are unbundled each month.” Although Ofcom’s first attempts at promoting LLU failed, they are pleased that BT is finally getting the message, and is reducing costs.

    By promoting greater competition in access networks, Ofcom believes that they can increase adoption of VoIP services in the next 3 to 5 years, with the majority of households benefiting from video-quality broadband by the end of the decade.

    To assist in the further progress of LLU and broadband rollout, Ofcom are keen to promote the establishment of a Telecommunications Adjudicator, an independent post designed to resolve working-level implementation disputes. Indeed, they have today named Peter Black as the man for the job – a former senior executive at BT, Thus and NTL, Black is an experienced telecommunications exec.

    The post is supported by BT, AOL, C&W, Video Networks, Wanadoo and others. Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter said in a Statement: “We welcome the fact that 12 of the most significant companies have signed up to the independent Adjudicator scheme; and we hope this drives growth in the future.”

    Ofcom’s aspirations

  • Digital Envoy Granted Internet Geo-Location Patent

    Digital Envoy, an Atlanta, USA company, has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which determines the location of Internet users based solely on their IP addresses.

    US Patent number 6,757,740, titled, “Systems and Methods for Determining, Collecting, and Using Geographic Locations of Internet Users,” covers the core methods used to determine the location of Internet users to the city level utilizing IP addresses. Furthermore, this patent claims a priority dating back to 1999 when the patent was first filed, and before any other current geo-location company was in existence.

    Geo-location is not thought to be a unique idea, Digital Envoy are keen to protect there, so called “non-invasively” process.

    “We feel that no other provider will be able to offer accurate geo-location solutions without infringing on our patent rights,” Friedman said in a statement. “We plan to aggressively defend our patent in order to protect the techniques, methods, and applications of this technology that offer so much value to our partners and customers.”

    Digital Envoy and Google have been a technology partners for several years with Google currently paying US$8,000 a month for its use of the Digital Envoy technology and has offered to increase that amount by 50 percent, Kratz said. Not really reflecting the value Google is getting out of it for their location-based adverts.

    There are many other uses for knowing the location of a Internet users, including providing information based on where they are or restricting the material to different areas. The last of this is of particular use to media companies.

    US Patent 6,757,740, “Systems and Methods for Determining, Collecting, and Using Geographic Locations of Internet Users”

    Digital Envoy

  • Teenager Arrested for Filming Spider-Man 2 on Camcorder

    An American teenager has been arrested in a California cinema as he tried to take a video Spiderman 2 on his handheld camcorder.

    The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has taken a number of actions to focus the public attention on not copying films in cinema. There is now a message displayed at the start of each film stating that it is a criminal offence to video it and they recently offered a $500 (€406) inducement to cinema staff who reported camcorder usage.

    The message in UK cinemas reads “You are not permitted to use any camera or recording equipment in this cinema. This will be treated as an attempt to breach copyright. Any person doing so can be ejected and such articles may be confiscated by the police. We ask the audience to be vigilant against any such activity and report any matters arousing suspicion to cinema staff. Thank you.”

    It is understood that in this case the projectionist who was apparently using night vision goggles to scan the audience will be claiming their bounty.

    If found guilty, the unnamed 16 year old film goer could face up to a year in prison and a maximum fine of $2,500 (€2028).

    The MPAA claim that camcorder piracy accounts for 92% of all illegal copies of films sold on the Internet and street corners worldwide and say that it is now illegal, in the US, to even take recording equipment into a cinema.

  • Google, Orkut and Affinity Engines’ Social Networking Suit

    Google is facing legal action after Affinity Engines (AE) accused them of using their code in their Orkut social networking site.  This is all splendid timing for a company that is planning a major IPO.

    They claim that the code was taken to Google by Orkut Buyukkokten, who had also promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn’t develop a competing social network product.

    It’s not looking good for Google – nine bugs present is Orkut are also present in Affinity Engines’ inCircle product. In addition to the bugs, AE claim that there are textual similarities between the two sets of source code.

    Google refuted the claims in a statement to Wired News: “Affinity Engines has not provided any evidence to Google that their source code was used in the development of orkut.com. We have repeatedly offered to allow a neutral expert to compare the codes in the two programs and evaluate Affinity’s claims, but Affinity has rejected that offer.”

    Orkut is a Turkish citizen and was working on inCircle when he ran into some visa problems. Taking a job at Google was a way to get round this, but he kept working on inCircle – though signed agreements not to develop any further social-networking technology and confirming that any code he developed belonged to AE.

    The name of Google’s new social networking site couldn’t be a more obvious indicator of who has been working on it.

    Orkut

    About inCircle

  • FindLaw: 56% of Americans Oppose RIAA Lawsuits

    A survey by legal website FindLaw has found that 56% of those polled were opposed to the legal actions currently being undertaken by the music industry. With the Recording Industry Association of America stepping up its action and the new Pirate Act coming into effect, then this dissatisfaction can only increase.

    3,400 people have been sued since last September – more than 600 of those cases have been settled for an average of US$3000 (€2,473) each, netting the RIAA at least US$1.8 million (€1.48 million). No case has gone to court, no artists, ostensibly the victims of file trading, have received any of this money. Recent figures suggest that CD sales are up 10% on last year, legal music download sites are doing such good business that the market is rapidly becoming crowded.

    FindLaw surveyed 1000 participants and found that 56% were against the lawsuits, 37% supported the action, and 7% had no opinion. Opposition is higher amongst younger people, with nearly two thirds of those between 18 and 34 objecting.

    Quoted on the FindLaw site, Professor Sharon Sandeen,intellectual property law tutor at the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota said: “Although the RIAA’s lawsuits are unsettling to many, they are based upon sound law because it is a clear violation of copyright law to make a verbatim copy of a protected sound recording,” says “The underlying public policy at work is the notion that without copyright laws, musical artists would be less inclined to create music and, as a result, there would be fewer sound recordings. So the individuals who complain about the lawsuits should ask themselves: ‘Would I rather live in a world with freely distributed but less music, or pay for the music I enjoy so that there will be more of it?’”
    “I suspect that many people, when educated about the purpose of copyright law, support the law,” Sandeen continued. “Public opposition to the lawsuits may be due, in part, to what some people consider hard-handed tactics by the RIAA.”

    FindLaw, legal news and commentary

  • Peppercoin Aiming for More Efficient Micropayments

    The basic flaw with small monetary transactions, whether internet related or not, is that the processing charge levied by banks and credit card companies eats a big chunk of the value of your original sale.

    The road to creating an efficient micropayment system is littered with the corpses of those who didn’t make it – ecash, digicash – weathered corpses stripped clean from their deaths in the late 90s.

    Yet, deep down inside, we know that micropayments must work. Like the first farmer who experienced frustration when he tried to pay for some wood with a cow, only to be told “Sorry mate, I can’t change that – have you got anything smaller?”, we know there must be a way of making transactions more efficient.

    Peppercoin, backed by the R in RSA, Ronald Rivest, have brought the micropayment system up to the 21st century, and have launched version 2.0 of their service. Peppercorn 2.0 is aimed at online retailers who shift low-priced digital content and physical goods, or offer subscriptions and pay-per-use services – so it won’t just be ringtones then.

    The company has concentrated on making the experience as transparent as possible for the user, as customers can use their credit card to pay a merchant without having to register or create an account. Neither do they have to pre-deposit any money to get started – I can think of at least two micropayment systems from about 1997 that owe me at least US$3.

    Merchants and vendors don’t even have to be web-based – one of the key applications of Peppercoin is in coin-op games. The new version of Golden Tee Golf (coming to a pub near you) will feature the Peppercoin system to provide cashless purchases. If I’m hearing you say big deal, then consider that punters spent US$350 million (€288 million) playing this one game last year alone. Peppercoin are well aware that when you allow people to use their credit card at point of sale, they will usually spend more.

    The new service works by aggregating low-priced transactions across many consumers, merchants and payment providers, reducing the average processing fee for each individual sale. Customers pay by entering their credit card details online, or by swiping their card through a reader on the device they are paying to access.

    Customer service is cleverly automated to keep costs down, with integrated bills and automated pre-dispute resolution dealing with most cases before expensive people have to get involved.

    How efficient is the payment system? Peppercoins fees work out at about 10% of a US$1 transaction, which the company claims is 70% less than the usual card not present processing fee.

    Peppercoin

  • Man Charged For Google Adwords Extortion

    Michael Bradley, a California resident who claims to have developed a program to generate fraudulent clicks on Google’s Adword service, was arrested at the company’s offices and charged with extortion.

    Bradley had threatened to sell the software to spammers if Google did not give him US$150,000 (€123,400).

    The fact that the software is designed to trick Adwords into registering more clicks, and therefore more revenue for the customer from Google, coupled with trying to extort money out of Google by then threatening to sell the software earned him a speedy arrest and freedom on a US$50,000 (€41,100) bond.

    He’s pleading not guilty.

    More about adwords

  • US Senate Passes Pirate Act Without Hearing

    The US Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) act has been passed by the voice vote in in the Senate on Friday. The act still has to be passed by the House and signed by George Bush, but already carries a US$2 million (€1.64 million) budget for civil lawsuits against violators in 2005.

    The act allows the Department of Justice to sue alleged copyright infringers, in addition to those cases brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA are naturally very pleased that they have some backup in the hundreds of cases they have bring launching.

    “I commend the passage of these common sense proposals that offer flexibility in the enforcement against serious crimes that damage thousands of hard-working artists, songwriters and all those who help bring music to the public,” Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “These acts will provide federal prosecutors with the flexibility and discretion to bring copyright infringement cases that best correspond to the nature of the crime, and will assure that valuable works that are pirated before their public release date are protected.”

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation rightly points out on their website that no money from any of these cases goes to the artists whose work is being infringed.

    Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator who is one of the sponsors of the act, has a related project up next, the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act. This act sets out to penalise companies for producing technologies that can potentially be used to pirate content – such technologies include CD writers and iPods. Aside from the obvious loss of personal freedom and backwards technological step, the EFF is concerned that the act could be misused – if your competitor manufactures something that you don’t like, say the iPod for example, then you can claim that it has the potential to infringe copyright.

    The Department of Justice

    The Electonic Frontier Foundation

  • AOL Buys Advertising.com

    America Online Inc, the world’s largest distributor of disposable CDs and apparently also an interactive services company, has announced that it has signed an agreement to hand over US$435 million (€359 million) in cash for Advertising.com, the internet’s third largest advertising network.

    Advertising.com plans and optimises online campaigns for more than 800 advertisers, and also works with some 1500 online publishers to bring them 110 million unique visitors every month. About 70% of all US internet users encounter Advertising.com’s work in the course of a month’s surfing.

    This is AOL’s biggest deal since it merged with Time Warner, and shows that there may be some life in online advertising after the bubble burst after all. AOL, having ditched its broadband product and now staring at declining dial-up business, is understandably keen to drive growth in other areas, and believes that content and services are what it’s best at.

    Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO, America Online, Inc., said, “Online advertising is showing very strong growth across the industry, and the acquisition of Advertising.com underscores AOL’s determination to strengthen its competitive position. Advertising.com has built a profitable, scalable and highly attractive business. This acquisition is a strategic move that will bolster AOL’s advertising business, building on the strides made in the past year.”

    Advertising.com

  • Microsoft Asks for Hearing Delay

    Microsoft have asked the European Union, by way of a 100 page appeal, to delay a Commission ruling regarding its distribution of Windows Media Player.

    If the stay request is granted, it may well delay the the EU court’s final verdict by several years – during which time Microsoft will be able to continue distributing Windows Media Player in its usual manner. Obviously this renders the EU ruling against Microsoft completely useless.

    The ruling was intended to force MS to share interface information with competitors so that they could integrate their own media players with Windows, and to provide a version of Windows which does not have Media Player pre-installed.

    Brussels also fined the company €497 million (US$602 million), but this will make little impact on a company with at least €50 billion (US$60 billion) in cash reserves.

    Since the appeal may take up to five years, which is effectively forever in digital media terms, Microsoft will be able to expand the installed base still further without sharing information with competing software manufacturers, or providing a choice of media player to those who don’t want WM9 – or WM11 as it may well be by the time the ruling comes into effect. Microsoft originally had (from March 24 this year) 90 days to offer Windows without Media Player, and 120 days to begin sharing information.

    Europa