“If AOL Time Warner Inc. and rival Microsoft Corp. agree to collaborate, instant messaging services could see a boom — especially within businesses, analysts say.

As part of Thursday’s broad anti-trust litigation settlement, the two rivals agreed to discuss making their messaging systems work together. The talks would come after a long, bitter fight to make AOL open its system to instant messengers using competing services, such as Microsoft’s MSN.” (Reuters)

Not before time! Hopefully if AOL and MSN become interoperable the same interoperability will also spread to other clients…lesbian free movie downloadmovies adult sexblack fucking movie clipsmovie free bouncing boobsmovie trip euroadult movie links freesamples movie fuck freejapanese erotic movie free Mapaux silverado mp3 2002mp3 96 avalonsonyericsson 98 ringtones p800credit emissions commuter 480converter wma mp3 4uviagra generic 1 cialisvs 20 viagra 10gamble brooksville fl drive 20264 Map

Reporters Sans Frontieres reports that “on some estimates” around 30,000 people in China are employed just to monitor Internet usage and censor views. Their report gives a lot of interesting detail on just how and how thoroughly message board censorship is practiced in China.

This week’s edition of On Digital – the radio programme from the BBC World Service – includes a segment on the report.

For more on Internet censorship in dictatorships, check out the recent book “Open Networks, Closed Regimes“.

Tom “plasticbag” Coates mused a while back about webloggers getting into bed with marketing companies and asks what can/should be done about it.

In the interests of full disclosure, any books I mention – particularly now that I am using Blaxm (which alas does not seem to be taking off) – I link to Amazon using an Amazon affiliate link. So far 46 people have followed those links but none have actually bought books.

It’s not that I even particularly like Amazon or that I expect the money I might get from any transaction to do anything more than perhaps take me to dinner once a year – it’s just that the software exists that makes it easy to make such links thanks to Amazon’s market dominance and if I am linking to Amazon anyway why not get free money if it were offered me?

I also recently received a registration code for some email software because someone who read it noticed I have just written a book about email. I will review it shortly but I assure you that the free license did not influence my review (as you will see when it comes out!)

So far I don’t think weblogging is big enough to make it worth marketers making large scale efforts to co-opt people but it’s definitely something to watch out for – particularly with the avowedly commercial weblogs like Gizmodo.loan aafesloan 450 fico home equityscholarship p loan u advantage ocredit 25,000 unsecured poor loanstudent loan barred statute albertafor loans calculator amorization autoalberta student legal loanspayday loans 1hr$40,000 loan with interest adoption 0no cosigner all loans

Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas: Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule

This set of studies seems to indicate that Internet access can be successfully controlled for state ends in practice. How? Not mainly through technological means but through intimidation. You don’t need to monitor everyone’s email and web access to frighten people – you just need a society where people censor themselves and are aware that at any time their Internet access could be being monitored. Indeed by making state government more effective and efficient it may even strengthen authoritarian regimes.


The book mentions an interesting resource – the Global Internet Liberty Campaign – “a free-lance journalist is traveling the world to report on the methods of Internet censorship used in the various countries and the ways possible to gain access to sites that are censored by governments and other groups”.home accredited loansunion acu creditcollege online accreditedamerican credit expresscredit alpena alconaaea credit unioncare accreditation ambulatory for association healthassociation american laboratory for accreditation Map

The anti-war site moveon.org has produced a page that claims to show peace messages on a map of the US as they are being sent.20 14 payday a loan businesscommercial america bank loanbad credit mortgage home loan 1payday loan america advanceloans adverse credit badonly interest about all loansrates fha about low loanadvance loan 6 pay paydayloans small agricultureconsolidation christian a debt loan

Lawrence Lessig (above) was undoubtedly the star speaker at
The Politics of Code conference yesterday. His presentation was certainly the zippiest one and I particularly liked the diagram pictured above that shows simply how laws designed to protect copyright against violation (outer circle) by protecting copyright protective code (middle circle) can block access to copyright material even when existing copyright law (inner red circle) allows fair use access.

It was encouraging to hear that he believes that due in part to meetings like this one the public in the UK, US and elsewhere are slowly starting to grapple seriously with the issues though he told me that there is nobody he could name who has produced what he feels is a good theoretical alternative to the current regulatory messes…union amoco creditmortgage accreditedaccredited online degreeacceptance agricreditcredit addison avenue unionadelphia creditorunion credit federal alloyfederal union aea credit Map

Microsoft has agreed to make substantial changes to its “Passport” online identity software (as used by Hotmail and .NET among other MS services) to make it comply more effectively with EU privacy guidelines. As the BBC reports,

European data laws impose significant burdens on those that hold information about customers to try to ensure that it is not abused or stored for long periods without good reason.

The agreement reached with Microsoft means that when Europeans sign up for the service they will be asked to designate themselves as EU residents and then decide how much information they are happy to share with the software giant.

This is the area I am studying at the moment so I found this special report interesting.

It is a little lightweight but cites some useful books. It maintains among other things that the Internet may not after all be a big threat to authoritarian regimes and that it may lead to more direct democracy in democratic countries. It also goes over familiar ground on the issue of privacy.

Writing in the (often interesting and always controversial) online politics & culture webzine sp!ked Sandy Starr takes the government to task for investing in Wired Up Communities pilot projects. Why? Because in his view it is condescending to offer acess to the Internet and to virtual community tools to people who have more basic needs like better housing, education and jobs.

It is true that providing online access is not sufficient to improve people’s lives by itself, but just because as he points out some early projects were not particularly successful in raising employment, for example, it doesn’t invalidate the whole idea. These are only pilots – there is still much to learn. If a virtual community can help nurture social capital on the ground even to a small extent it is a start.

Sandy concludes:

“If the circumstances in which people live were genuinely improved, then they could get wired up on their own. And they could form online communities – if that’s what they wanted to do – without interference from a third party”

I am sure that the government is already trying to tackle the more basic chronic problems that exist on some of the impoverished housing estates that have also been targeted with this programme. Why not see if kick-starting online usage could help matters?

Whatever my disagreements with the article, however, it is still worth taking a look at it, if only for its links to some recent research.

America’s Homeland Security department is lobbying to gain Total Information Awareness
about its citizens, blending government databases with the vast sources of commercial data available on you. The good news? If there is eventually a backlash by citizens afraid of government abuse of their privacy it may also at last cause people to fight back against pervasive data gathering by commercial companies in America.