InternetPolicy.net

P2P group proposes royalties, code of conduct

Reuters reported yesterday that a voluntary code of practice has been adopted by an association of companies that facilitate peer-to-peer file-sharing. "P2P United members -- Lime Wire, Grokster, Blubster, BearShare, Morpheus and eDonkey 2000 -- said they would help law enforcers track down child pornographers, would make it easier for users to protect sensitive material on their hard drives, and would not secretly install spyware on users' computers. The group also said it would encourage users to learn about copyright laws but would not install filters or otherwise limit users' ability to trade copyrighted material... Kazaa, the music file-sharing service that is the most widely used peer-to-peer network, is not a member of the group. P2P United invited the recording companies to sit down and negotiate a method so they could be paid for the copies users make of their materials..."

ICANN: regional mutiny brewing?

A posting on ICANN Watch by Milton Meuller draws attention to a move by regional DNS registries to develop a framework for cooperation that could become an alternative to ICANN. The registries involved are the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry, and Réseaux IP Européens. While presented as a precaution, to ensure that the regional services are not adversely affected by a shutdown of ICANN, it looks an awful alot like an attempt by the regionals to create a stronger bargaining position, or even to make ICANN more disposable. Here's how Professor Meuller puts it:

"Already reeling from widespread accusations of impotence in regard to VeriSign's reviled Sitefinder service and from attacks on its legitimacy by governments at WSIS, ICANN now finds that the Regional Internet Address Registries (RIRs) are proposing to set up an alternative structure to coordinate address space assignments in the event that ICANN 'fails.' The Draft 'Open Letter to ICANN from the Regional Address Registries' notifies ICANN of RIR plans to create a new 'Number Resource Organization' that would contract with all of the RIRs and replace the Address Supporting Organization (ASO)..."

Hack geography

mi2g, a firm specializing in "digital risk assessment," just published their September country report on the origins and targets of hack attacks. Cyberatlas posted these table-summaries of the mi2g data:

Origin of Digital Attacks, 2003
Brazil	95,544
Turkey	14,795
USA	2,955
Indonesia	2,360
Egypt	2,365
UK	1,707
Morocco	1,650
Pakistan	1,398
Mexico	1,317
Malaysia	1,215
Source: mi2g

Most Attacked Countries Since September 2002
USA	71,868
Germany	17,529
Brazil	14,785
UK	13,417
Source: mi2g

India: new rules for cyber cafes

"The Asian School of Cyber Laws (ASCL) is working with the Information Technology (IT) ministry [to frame] a code of conduct and practices for cyber cafes/chat room centres around the country," according to India's Financial Express. ASCL is very much oriented toward security issues, so their rules for cafes will probably be designed to help police gather evidence of cybercrimes.

"Reporting on the Information Society" award

From the ITU weblog: "The inaugural 'Reporting on the Information Society' awards, given jointly by the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) and Panos, aim to encourage and bring to international recognition thoughtful and incisive reporting on developing countries' progress to becoming iInformation Societies.'

"Four awards of $2,000 each will be made for published journalism by developing country journalists (print, radio, TV or web) that goes beyond describing projects or new investment initiatives to analyse broader questions such as the social impact of ICTs, particularly on rural or disadvantaged groups, or national and global communication policy issues.

"The winning entries will be disseminated internationally and honoured at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, December 2003. To submit a piece of work for consideration, send a clipping, audio or video tape, transcript or web reference by email to: [email protected] ; or by post to: Kitty Warnock, Panos Institute, 9 White Lion St, London N1 9PD, UK. Deadline for submissions: Oct 15th 2003."

Spammers fight back with DoS attacks

Justin Shore wrote today on CircleID about the escalating fight between spammers and spam-blockers - which the spammers seem to be winning.

Shore's essay was triggered by an announcement earlier this week that a long-time spam-fighter, Ron Guilmette, is shutting down his DNS-list of IP addresses from which spam has originated, because of "Distributed Denial of Service" attacks launched by spammers against his server. In his announcement to the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, Guilmette said that he "rode out the first massive DDoS against my site, which lasted for 10 days...but over the past three days I have been massively DDoS'd again, and I think that the handwriting is now on the wall. I will simply not be allowed to continue fighting spam... I always knew that spammers had no principals and no ethics, but up until recently, I had no idea that they could or would...engage in quite this level of criminality. I guess that, naively, I just never thought hard enough about how much money was actually at stake (in the spamming trade) or what that might mean in terms or the determination of spammers to win at all costs. I don't know what else I can or should say at this point, other than that it is my fervent hope that people of good will and good intentions, people who believe in common values like civility, honesty, decency, and privacy, will someday be able to take back the net from the criminals who are clearly in the driver's seat at the moment...."

Guilmette is only the latest victim in a series of DDoS attacks and capitulations, according to a revealing article by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe. But Justin Shore gets the last word: "It's truly a sad day for spam fighters everywhere... how does one go about attracting the attention of law enforcement when your network is under attack? ...Legal remedies take too long and are cost prohibitive (unless you're the [Department of Justice]). Subpoenas and civil lawsuits take months if not years. Relief is needed in days if not hours."

Fight over net governance at PrepCom-3

From a report by Rebecca Wanjiku of the Highway Africa News Agency:

"...Following more an hour of intense discussions over the wording and provisions of the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action, delegates to the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) third preparatory committee could not decide whether Internet policies should be managed by governments or by the private sector. The US delegation said that if it did not get its way on the relevant clause, its president would not attend the Summit...

"Brazil led the galaxy of nations arguing against leaving the management of the Internet with ICANN. Canada, the European Union, Mexico and Malaysia rallied behind the US and maintained that the entire management of the Internet must be placed in private hands. China, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and the Arab nations argued that governments should determine the direction of Internet-related public policies and an intergovernmental body should be established under the UN framework...

"There is further resentment against paying the US government, through ICANN, for monitoring the use of Top Level domains. They believe the current system is unfair because sovereign states effectively become subject to the rules of one country - the USA - when using the Internet. The US delegation urged delegates to postpone its decision until 2005 when ICANN will have finalised its negotiations with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) over control of top-level domains. However, opposing governments felt that the current summit might be the right time for them to make the decision. The issue remains contentious and was referred to the main drafting committee for further deliberations."

"One Unwired Day"

Today is Intel's One Unwired Day promotion for free public hot-spots and Centrino. Their hotspot finder page lists participating hotspots in many countries.

EU Parliament limits patentability

A note just in from Darius Cuplinskas with news relating to our item about Acacia's streaming media patents: The European Parliament today voted to approve a directive on the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions" with amendments that clearly restate the non-patentability of programming and business logic. The vote on this proposal had been repeatedly delayed due to controversy surrounding the issue of patenting business processes and software logic. During the debate yesterday, EC Commissioner Bolkestein had warned that the Commission and Council would withdraw the proposed directive if the Parliament voted in favor of the amendments that it supported today. Therefore there is a chance that the directive's wording might be changed during upcoming consultations with the Council of Ministers. Unlike sessions of the European Parliament, that is not a public process. Check the website of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure for more discussion, documentation, links and updates about software patents in Europe.

Yahoo Groups blocked in India

India's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has blocked the country's access to all Yahoo Groups because they were technically unable to block access to one online group created by a tribal movement banned as a terrorist organization in 2000. The online group known as kynhun was set up by the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council. According to an article by Andrew Orlowski on The Register, "Last year the Indian ISP Association discussed blocking sites including Yahoo! unless their owners paid the trade body a fee. The plan was never implemented."