Jaani.net

May 7, 2006

Managing Your Contacts

Today's law firms have thousands of contacts. The best contact management software does more than just store them, it tracks relationships and helps with lead generation. Steven Maxwell, a recruitment officer, found that his company was able to avoid contracting with an executive search company in two-thirds of its hires last year, thanks to software that made the data searchable, ranked the contacts by the quality of the relationship and is even accessible by Web-enabled cell phone.

Posted by Jaani at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

Electronic Redaction Doesn't Always Hide What It's Supposed to Hide

Individuals at all levels of an organization must understand its technology before it's deployed, especially if classified or other highly sensitive information is at risk. The increasing use of PDFs -- a step forward in that they make disseminating information easier -- presents new security risks. To play it safe, law firms, corporations, government agencies and the military all must implement best practices for redacting sensitive data from electronic documents.

Posted by Jaani at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

I'm the Blue Security Spammer

A Russian junk e-mailer takes credit for this week's attacks on antispam firm Blue Security. He did it to gather fresh e-mail addresses, he says. By Joanna Glasner.

Posted by Jaani at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

Disclaimers could make emails into contracts

England's 400 year-old cyber signature law

The High Court in Manchester has ruled that an email cannot be recognised as a legal written offer if it does not contain a signature or name within the body of the mail. The inclusion of a user name in the message header is not enough.…

Posted by Jaani at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2006

Clarifying the Spam Act: Federal Court Finds Contravention

In the first prosecution of its kind under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) (‘Spam Act’), Nicholson J of the Federal Court of Australia yesterday found Clarity1 Pty Ltd and its managing director to have contravened provisions of the Act.

Inter alia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (‘ACMA’) submitted to the Court that in the twelve months after the Spam Act commenced in April 2004, Clarity1, through its director, sent out over 56 million mostly unsolicited commercial emails.

Justice Nicholson rejected the company’s defence that the recipients of emails had consented to receive them. His Honour further rejected the defence that the company could use harvested lists acquired before the Spam Act commenced to send spam emails at any time:

‘The fact that address-harvesting may have occurred at a time when no such prohibition was in the law, does not prevent the application of the provision in its term from the date it came into force’

‘This has been an important test case for the Spam Act’, said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman. ‘Justice Nicholson’s findings should give Australians confidence in the effectiveness of this important legislation. … This case provides a strong indication to Australian spammers that their activities will be vigorously pursued by ACMA’, said Mr Chapman.

Posted by Jaani at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

New York Firm Settles Personal E-Mail Case

A company accused of using unauthorized personal data “mined” by other firms from about six million e-mail addresses across the US has agreed to reform its practices under a $1.1 million settlement. New York Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer said Datran Media used e-mail addresses and other personal data it obtained from several companies.

Posted by Jaani at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2005

Law Firm Blogging and Practice Development

'Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton used to reach more than 7 000 current and prospective clients by e-mail newsletter. But with new spamming laws and better anti-spam software, the firm was "running the risk of being blacklisted," says Vickie Spang, Sheppard Mullin's chief marketing officer. The solution? Blogging. And not just one blog -- six of Sheppard Mullin's practice areas have blogs. To encourage new content, the firm lets associates count blogging time toward billable hours.'

Posted by Jaani at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)

Instant Messaging in Law Firms

This somewhat alarmist article urges caution when using instant messaging ('IM') in a legal environment:

As the use of instant messaging becomes more widespread, companies must grapple with how to handle it. In some cases IM can legally be considered a document, subject to the same retention policies as other business records. Because there is a functionality that allows all IM to be preserved, a company potentially is subject to a claim of spoliation if it doesn't save all chat messages. Instant messaging is fun, casual and quick -- but it can be dangerous.

The author seems to miss the fact that almost all good messaging clients have built-in (or add-on) logging, and in some cases, encryption support. It's actually easier to store and search through chat logs than emails, since all text is stored in conversation threads sorted by date and conversants.

IM is quick, transactional, and free from the social and grammatical pleasantries that we heap upon our email. Oh, and there's no spam. What's not to like?

Posted by Jaani at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2005

Do Not Call: Telstra Sues Telemarketer Spammer

Telstra has initiated proceedings against Orion Group, a Tasmanian telemarketing corporation and reseller of wholesale telephony services. Telstra alleges that Orion has harassed its customers, transferred users to its services without permission, and misrepresented Orion’s relationship with Telstra.

“Telstra alleges the sales representatives have been unduly harassing customers in their telemarketing activities and have been transferring customers without their expressed consent,” the company said.

“Telstra took this action after corresponding with the Orion Group, seeking an undertaking that it would cease the alleged illegal activities.

“This undertaking was not provided.”

Orion Group today said it was responding to the papers lodged by Telstra on Monday. “We are in the process of responding, I can’t say anything more at this point,” company secretary John Lawrence said.

Telstra said it had also written to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (‘ACCC’) to notify it of the Orion Group’s alleged misconduct.

Telstra said it had been concerned for some time about the complaints of customers regarding alleged high-pressure sales tactics and misrepresentations from some sales staff.

“We are concerned at the pressure some of these callers are placing on customers, particularly the elderly, those with a hearing impairment or who have English as a second language.”

As a repeat callee/victim of Orion’s, I can confirm first-hand that their tactics are disgraceful and contrary to all standards of decency. In my experience, their operators were rude, abbraisive, persistent and largely incomprehensible. I have received over 15 calls from persons claiming to be their representatives, most during meal times, despite my express withdrawal of calling permission.

So incensed was I that I wrote them the following letter, carbon copied to the Telecommunications Ombudsman:

[Orion representative],

For the past four weeks I have been received communications from a telemarketing call centre, at various times of the day and night, purporting to be acting under your authority. I write to express my concern that I continue to receive such messages and alert you to the possible legal consequences of your company’s contemptible disregard for privacy and decency.

I can understand telemarketing being performed by a company for market research, to advertise a special promotion, or even to facilitate general expansion. I can almost understand it outsourcing that task to offshore call centres with poorly trained staff, inadequate complaints procedures, and little to no knowledge of your products or services. But what I cannot understand is why, after being called on six separate occasions and at each stage requesting to be removed from your database, I still continue to receive calls.

I would question the efficacy of a marketing campaign that turns your would-be customers into vitriolic antagonists. Further, as your communications appear to have been made using a VoIP phone, the messages may be covered by the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). Section 16 of that Act makes it an offence punishable by fines of up to $1.5m per violation to send unsolicited commercial messages in contravention of the Act. I have already made clear on at least five of the six aforenamed occasions that these communications are unsolicited and requested to be unsubscribed.

What, if any, is the connection between this call centre and Orion Telecommunications? Do your directors really believe this is the most effective way of advertising its products and services? …

Hopefully the prospect of continuing legal action will stem the (unfortunately steady) stream of calls during my upcoming examination period. Kudos to Telstra for defending its customers’ rights on this one.

Posted by Jaani at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

Court Battle Over Internet Calls

koweja writes "The federal appeals court has is hearing a petition to overturn an FCC rule that extends current wire-tapping laws to cover VoIP calls. The petition comes from various privacy advocacy groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology. Aside from the obvious privacy issues, the rule requires that providers use equipment that allows wiretaps, which would require many companies to "upgrade" in order to comply."

Posted by Jaani at 9:51 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2005

US leads spam 'dirty dozen'

The United States is still the superpower of spam, beating China and South Korea to again claim the dubious honour in the latest survey of the origin of unwanted email clogging the world's inboxes.

Posted by Jaani at 6:32 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

Is It RIP for VoIP in China?

VoIP development is posing a threat to state-protected telecom carriers, calling into question China's willingness to let technology advances into the marketplace.

Posted by Jaani at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

VoIP Provider Spills Customer E-Mail

VoIP provider Packet8 accidentally disclosed the e-mail addresses of 21,000 of its subscribers. If criminals get the list, Packet8 customers could become the target of phishing attacks.

Posted by Jaani at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)

New Legal Threat To GMail

wellington writes "Google is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service. Independent International Investment Research, a British company that specialises in research and has several leading City investment banks as clients, argues that it launched "G-Mail web based email" in May 2002."

Posted by Jaani at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

Killing your career with e-mail

Melinda Bird and Katrina Nugent must be cursing e-mail's 'reply all' and 'forward' functions after they lost their jobs.

Posted by Jaani at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 3, 2005

E-Negotiate and Wait

'One of the benefits of electronic commerce is speed, partly due to the elimination of administrative delays. Yet conducting contract negotiations through exchanges of drafts by e-mail could not only harm the process, but also, paradoxically, slow it down, says lawyer Stanley P Jaskiewicz.'

Posted by Jaani at 8:40 PM | Comments (0)

"New liability frontier: instant messages"

'As usual in the business context, spontaneous [equals] dangerous, at least in a legal sense. "You can try to control it through policy," says one consultant who advises companies on electronic discovery and risk management...'

Posted by Jaani at 8:38 PM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2005

Legal Implications of Corporate Weblogging

‘NEW YORK (Reuters) — As Corporate America wades into the burgeoning world of internet weblogs, companies are being warned they could face legal hazards when employees are let loose in the free-wheeling blogosphere. …

What, for instance, would happen if someone at a publicly traded company unwittingly divulged confidential financial information or a trademark secret on one of these Web diaries? There already have been cases of people being fired for writing about life inside their companies on blogs not affiliated with their employers. Experts say the real test will come when courts must consider the legal ramifications of what employees say on corporate blogs.’

‘There’s very, very little case law at this point’, said Paul Arne, co-chairman of the technology group at law firm Morris Manning & Martin LLP. He recently conducted a telephone seminar for other corporate lawyers to discuss blogging.

It’s no surprise that big businesses are increasingly interested in blogs. An estimated 40 000 to 50 000 new blogs are created each day, according to Intelliseek, a technology company that tracks developments in the medium. At Sun Microsystems, about 2,000 employees blog, including President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz.

Posted by Jaani at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2005

Media Laws Risk Irrelevance, ACCC Says

'Australia's competition watchdog has warned that media laws need to keep pace with new technologies such as broadband Internet and third-generation (3G) mobile phones.'

Posted by Jaani at 9:43 PM | Comments (0)

Three Charged in US With Violating Anti-Spam Law

'Three people accused of running a huge computer spam operation have been indicted on charges of violating a law aimed at cracking down on unsolicited e-mails, prosecutors said. James Schaffer, Jeffrey Kilbride and Jennifer Clason were each charged on Thursday with two counts of fraud and one count of criminal conspiracy under the US law known as CAN-SPAM, which is meant to diminish unsolicited e-mail messages.'

Posted by Jaani at 8:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2005

Judges in a Funk Over Junk Faxes

No group would seem to be more similarly situated or innumerable than junk fax recipients, but New Jersey judges are at odds over whether those besieged by unwanted paper may sue as a class. This month one judge certified as a class those who received unsolicited faxed advertisements for Spanish Yellow Pages and related entities in the past six years. But another judge recently ruled the other way in reversing her grant of class certification last year.

Posted by Jaani at 4:28 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2005

Blogs Pose Liability Issues for Employers

Law firms, newspapers and other businesses are encouraging employees to post blogs on company-sponsored Web sites, hoping the blogs will boost their marketing and customer service efforts. Media lawyers, however, are warning that blogs pose serious libel and defamation issues, noting that staff-written blogs legally are indistinguishable from articles in a newspaper or broadcast.

Posted by Jaani at 9:37 PM | Comments (0)

August 9, 2005

Microsoft to Fight Crime With Spammer's Millions

daria42 writes "It looks as if the $7 million Microsoft won from spam king Scott Richter won't go into a Swiss bank account and never be seen again after all. The company plans to dedicate a cool $5 mil to helping law enforcement agencies address computer-related crimes. Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults", with the rest being flagged to pay Microsoft's legal costs."

Posted by Jaani at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 7, 2005

Did 'Spam Factory' Steal Data?

Jurors weigh 144 charges against e-mail marketing contractor Snipermail.com, which is accused of swiping data from Acxiom. It's the largest data-theft case the government has prosecuted to date.

Posted by Jaani at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 4, 2005

More Hacking to Result From FCC Rule on Internet Calls?

New regulations making it easier for law enforcement to tap Internet phone calls will also make computer systems more vulnerable to hackers, say digital privacy and civil liberties groups. While the groups don't want the Internet to be a safe haven for terrorists and criminals, they complain that expanding wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls -- or Voice over Internet Protocol -- will create additional points of attack and security holes that hackers can exploit.

Posted by Jaani at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

August 3, 2005

Airline Tests RFID on the Fly

The US federal government moves ahead with a trial of e-passports that are readable at a distance, despite criticism that they endanger Americans. United Airlines pilots and crew are the test subjects.

Posted by Jaani at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2005

Critics Slam Net Wiretapping Rule

An FCC decision that forces broadband and VOIP companies to enable government surveillance of their networks stretches federal law to the breaking point, civil libertarians say.

Posted by Jaani at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

Telcos Prep for IPTV Play

While cable companies focus on adding data and voice services, telephone companies get ready to roll out television programming using IP technology. The goal: beat cable at its own game. By Michael Grebb.

Posted by Jaani at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 3, 2005

Spamming Conviction Appeal: One Overturned, One Upheld

A US judge has dismissed a felony spamming conviction that had been called one of the first of its kind, saying he found no ‘rational basis’ for the verdict and wondering if jurors were confused by technical evidence.

Ruling on Tuesday, Judge Thomas D Horne also said jurors may have [become] ‘lost’ when navigating Virginia’s new anti-spam law in the case of Jessica DeGroot. DeGroot, 28, and Jaynes, 30, were each convicted in November for using false Internet addresses to send mass email advertisements through an AOL server in Loudoun.

Jaynes’ attorney, David A. Oblon, had argued that the spamming was not conducted in Virginia and that there was no evidence that e-mails were unsolicited. Oblon said he would appeal.

More background about the case can be located here. View the CNN trial report here.

What this The Age article doesn’t mention, however, is that the conviction of the other accused, Jaynes, was upheld, it being accepted that he was the leader of the operation. Essentially, then, this isn’t as big a deal as many are claiming.

Source: The Age

Posted by Jaani at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)

February 2, 2005

Congress Can Spam, But it Definitely Can't Legislate

A year after a sweeping United States anti-spam law went into effect, there is more junk e-mail on the Internet than ever. Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.

To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules:

“Can Spam legalised spamming itself,” said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organisation that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws.

Source: Tom Zeller Jr, New York Times

Posted by Jaani at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

Verizon Customer Sues over Spam Filtering

A disgruntled Verizon customer has filed a class action lawsuit against their internet service provider (‘ISP’), seeking compensation for losses incurred as a result of their aggressive mail filtering policy.

Since 22 December, Verizon’s mail servers have been configured to automatically reject connections from Europe and other parts of the world, including China and New Zealand. Says one frustrated customer:

I have been affected by this nonsense Verizon policy. Even British government email accounts were blocked and my contacts there were unable to correspond with me… At no stage was I informed of this email block and thus (sic) was not given the chance to communicate with members of the British government by other means.

Verizon claims that their filtering strategies represent industry ‘best practice’ and are necessary to contain the deluge of unsolicited bulk commercial emails (‘spam’), which they claim comprise up to 90% of all data received by their mailservers. If the case makes it to trial, this action could spell bad news for ISPs and web hosts everywhere; Courts have proved very reluctant to support automated filtering processes. Worringly, such decisions have frequently rested on technologically inaccurate legal bases. In Germany, for example, intentional mail filtering has been outlawed on the basis of confidentiality laws.

As a commercial website hosting provider, I am only too aware of the difficulties associated with spam filtering. Set thresholds for mail filtering too high and customers complain of getting spammed; set them too low and they, well, file a class action lawsuit. Finding a balance between the two can be difficult — but is it really a cause for legal action?

Verizon’s policy may be a trifle ludicrous (filtering out entire TLDs never helped anyone, after all) and its manner of implementation (and lack of disclosure to its customers) verges on the ridiculous, but it is — at least in principle — a good idea. Most users agree that some measure of server-side protection is necessary. Unfortunately, this lawsuit — if successful — may give a cause of action to anyone wrongfully denied access to their incoming e-mail, the practical effect of which would be to prevent any mail filtering taking place at all. This would strike a major blow to the collective efforts of Spam Assassin, SPEWS, Spamhaus, et al, and comprise an enormous victory for spammers.

My solution, as a web services provider, is two-fold: first, give the client access to enable or disable spam filtering as they see fit. Upon activating the filtering service, they should be prompted to set their own threshold and tweak settings to their liking; a prominent warning should be displayed, warning them that as filtration processes are automated, some false-positives are inevitable. Second, retain all suspect messages in a special mailbox on the server that the client can access within 30 days of receipt. Not only does this model legally protect the ISP, it also ensures that — regardless of whether one person’s spam is another’s ticket to financial success and sexual posterity — the end user is in control of their own mail preferences.

Posted by Jaani at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

March 2, 2004

Universal Spam Solution Rebuttal

These days, it seems that spam (which has, despite being a trademark of Hormel Foods Corporation, fallen into common usage as a result of Monty Python) is an unavoidable consequence of having and utilising an e-mail address of some sort. Various proposals have been put forth, some legislative, others software-based, but all have failed to curb the growing tide of unsolicited electronic mail.

The following document is an amusing (if depressingly accurate) universal rebuttal for any spam solution one cares to propose:

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
[...]
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems [...]

Considering more than two thirds of the world's spam originates in the United States of America, which recently passed the most aggressive anti-spam legislation thus seen, legislative solutions clearly aren't being enforced stringently enough.

Posted by Jaani at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2003

Ephemeral Tech Support

In more sedate news, the Washington Post has an interesting, if overstated, article about how the ephemeral nature of the internet is affecting academic research. Apparently, sources cited in research papers and theses change their Universal Resource Indicators ('URIs') very frequently, rendering references obsolete and gradually delegitimating the citing work.

One solution to this problem is to upload a local copy of the document in question (with the author's permission), or maintain an updated bibliography for each paper on one's own website (at a static location), which could then be referenced once at the beginning of the article. All the more reason for everyone to have their own website.

Dell Computers has made a wise move in deciding to rehire its corporate technical support team around United States based members, after a slew of complaints about their offshore support team. Customers reportedly found the previous technical support team, located in India, unresponsive and difficult to understand.

Telstra conducts a similar practice here, much to the annoyance of many. Too often, a poorly trained and underpaid staff member will answer your call, read a canned response off a script, and leave you more confused than when you started. Hiring local employees promotes the local IT industry, but in an age of digital cost-cutting, many companies aren't willing to foot the bill for quality technical support.

JohIn also sends word of a rather bizarre bootleg Pokemon toy. deal non-demoninational-celebration-of-your-choice gift, assuming you aren't revolted by the eyes.

Lastly, this man appears to have taken blogging to a new level, by affixing left-oriented placards to public highways. Some of the images are amusing, but others appear to be doctored. Technically, this isn't blogging (keyword: web-log), but it highlights an interesting connotation of the word: independent-left-leaning-new-media. Kindly alert me if I begin to fall into the same trap.

Posted by Jaani at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2003

The Culture of Mobility

The rapidity of mobile communication technology development has exceeded all expectations, but significant social and legal implications remain unexamined. Five years ago, the first tidings of discontent surfaced in response to the mobile revolution that was about to sweep through Western society - the public/private dichotomy was becoming blurred, and people were afraid of what technological solidarity would bring.

These warnings were, for the most part, dismised as remanants of the same backward attitude that has previously stunted technological growth. Today, however, the issues have multiplied: hidden camera privacy concerns abound; geographic user tracking is a reality; many phones support out-of-the-box conversation recording; remote interaction is increasingly preferred to face-to-face contact; business can now intrude upon almost any familial situtation; conversations are interrupted to start new ones (which often drop out, anyway). How ironic, then, is the fact that the technology that promised to bring us closer together has instead produced widespread isolation and mechanised what were previously genuine interactions.

Just yesterday, on the train, I saw a group of teenagers (only a few years younger than myself), heads downturned, fingers stabbing wildly at tiny buttons on their mobile phones, their intense stare illuminated by the diffuse glow of an active-matrix display. For some reason, I found this quite a bizzare sight - a collectivity on completely different worlds. Well, at least the train was quiet (excepting the blips and drones of the games they were playing, the tat-a-tat-tat of several other businesspeople typing SMS messages to their friends/colleagues/boss/babysitter, and the occaisional ring tone more reminiscent of an 8-bit video game than the latest Top 40 trash).

What's most interesting is that people (certainly not those my age) don't seem at all perturbed (thankyou John) by this; at any rate, annoyance doesn't seem to reach the point of actually driving one to switch off one's phone or (heaven, forbid!) find creative ways to amuse oneself. Forgive this rare display of antidiluvian disillusionment; no doubt, tomorrow, I will be playing snake as avidly as the next person. But it is certainly worth noting (at least in a non-critical, reflective way), that people are submissive to a new social norm of connectivity - to abstain from participation in a communication network is itself to send a message, one which is perceived as more anti-social than extracting oneself from any real personal interaction in order to answer an incoming call!

This photojournalism piece highlights some of the changes undergoing many aspects of Japanese culture, and is a rather insightful look at how mobile phones have permeated many previously isolated social contexts. Though Australian mobile phone usage pales in comparison to that at the epicentre of portable technology, Japan has been a fair indication of what Australia can expect 18 months down the track. As strange as it sounds to hear a 19-year-old caricature of the netizen marketing stereotype say this, I don't like what I see.

During lectures yesterday, no less than 7 phones rang. As amusing as the colourful flashing lights and chirping renditions of 80s pop songs were, these absentminded twits disrupted the entire lecture. One person even had the nerve to answer the call! But far from repudiating such behaviour, it has become blas�, a near certainty that in a given class/lecture/tutorial, someone will forget (or, in contumelious disregard for their fellow students, deliberately choose not) to disable their incoming call alert. Perhaps worse still, those that do answer their phones don't seem to realise that they've done anything wrong. Indeed, in the eyes of most students, they probably haven't. Nevermind the fact that it's reprehensable disrespectful (and above all, frustrating) to the lecturer and other students. Mobile etiquitte is sorely lacking, though this may be able to be remedied by liberal defenestration. </rant>

I've often wondered just why mobile phones are so attractive as social accessories. Personalisation is probably an element; manufacturers certainly exploit the desire for individualism by allowing their phones to be extensively customised. The phone becomes an extension of its owner. When a phone rings with a notable ring tone, it has the effect of making its owner the centre of attention. In this sense, mobile phones are devices of power, and are increasingly iconified as a symbol of status or authority. Though mobile phones are undoubtedly useful devices, the exesses of teenage mobile culture appear to be a manifestation of egocentric tendancies. Or perhaps this writer just has phone-envy.

Posted by Jaani at 1:39 PM | Comments (2)

August 1, 2003

Anti Anti-Spam?

The legal issues surrounding junk e-mail detection and removal continue to discourage internet service providers from employing pro-active filtering techniques. Many ISPs are concerned about being sued for filtering false-positive (incorrect) "junk" e-mail messages in compliance with the various anti-spam regulations currently under consideration in the United States.

Service providers are placed in a difficult situation. Brian Gillette, creator of trimMail Inbox, notes with concern that "If I'm an ISP and I stop a $150,000 equipment sale because I decided it was spam, I'm in for a lawsuit."

But spam is becoming a major problem. According to Radicati Group (in their report 'Anti-Spam Market Trends, 2003-2007,' February 2003), unsolicited mail will comprise 45% of all electronic mail sent this year. Howard Beale, spokesperson for the Federal Trade Commission, commented at a hearing on the proposed legislation that, "spam threatens to destroy e-mail."

However, the new laws are criticised as preventing truly anonymous e-mail. I think commentators are missing the point when they say this threatens the ideal of an anonymous internet (and question whether this ideal is actually good at all). People who don't want to make their identities known can easily subscribe to a free web-mail service and use that to send their messages (which are usually limited to a reasonable daily limit), while those who have no problems with divulging what is, in reality, only their IP address, have a way to track down people sending many thousands of e-mails. Of course, to work effectively any anti-spam system needs a federal-level authority - an institution these bills fall short of creating.

Sounds a bit far fetched to me. If a small minority wish to communicate freely, use Hotmail. Oh wait, nevermind. Of more concern are the bills' violations of a founding principle of the internet: information should flow freely and without censorship. If mail is filtered at an ISP level, it takes individual choice away from users, and is a potential violation of their service agreements.

But I digress. The bills are a step in the right direction, and better than nothing when it comes to politics. Forgive my cynicism, but the most probable reason politicians are so interested in pushing these bills in the first place is because they receive so much spam themselves.

Posted by Jaani at 7:01 PM | Comments (2)