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region.
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Vol. 3, No. 9
3-6-03
David Rocci is in deep, deep
trouble. As part of a plea
agreement reached last week, he agreed to turn his web site and domain name over
to the Justice Department. He will be sentenced for his crimes this Friday in
Alexandria, VA. He is
22.
David landed himself in this
predicament by selling modification chips for the X-Box and PlayStation consoles
on his web site. Under the terms of
the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is a felony to sell any device or
software program which allows a user (you or me) to circumvent any type of copy
protection on a movie, game or music CD.
While this in itself should be cause for concern for those of us
interested in our rights of fair use, what is more disturbing is the fact that
the Justice Department, instead of closing down Rocci’s web site and others that
is has seized and letting the domain names go back to public use, is holding on
to them. In the case of Rocci’s
site (www.isonews.com), the DOJ displayed
a notice stating that it now owns the site. But for how
long?
We have all seen sting
operations in movies so I won’t delve into specifics here. Suffice it to say that there is nothing
stopping the Justice Department from seizing a web site, maintaining the
original content and reading any e-mail or forum discussions generated
therein. The Justice Department’s
own web site (http://www.usdoj.gov/privacy-file.htm)
clearly states that anyone accessing the site is giving their consent to be
monitored. It does not take a great
leap to see how unsuspecting surfers could have their postings analyzed for
hints of misdeeds. While the
federal government undoubtedly scans news groups and discussion forums now, it
would be much more efficient to bring people to a government-run site and
analyze such things as a person’s IP address and how often they access the site
to look for new information.
And so the question becomes
not whether someone accessing a web site has committed a crime, but whether or
not the information that person is accessing can be considered criminal
intent. It is illegal to grow
marijuana in your back yard, but do your daily actions warrant closer scrutiny
because you visit sites supporting the legalization of pot? Are you a potential national security
risk because you read the news articles posted on the American Communist Party
web site? Although these examples
may seem extreme, many of us who spend our free hours on the Web end up surfing
to some pretty strange locations, either on purpose or by
accident.
There is also an economic side to consider. As our ever-increasing security awareness brings new debate as to what “free speech” really means, many web site operators will choose (and have chosen) to move their base of operations overseas. While Australia and Germany have strict laws concerning Internet content, there are still plethoras of hosting services available in places where no questions are asked as long as the bills are paid on time. So “questionable” content will never go away; it will just move out of reach of our federal government. And stateside web hosting services and developers will suffer because of it.
It is said in the online
world “information wants to be free.”
In the early days of the Internet, the dream of many was one of open
communication where ideas would be put out to the world for acceptance or
condemnation, and we would all benefit from the debate. But now, all Americans must wrestle with
the question of how many of our online free speech rights we are willing to
surrender in the name of national security, getting drugs off the streets and
keeping unsupervised kids from getting their hands on (gasp!) illegal chips for
the family X-Box. I fear that too
many of us are willing to surrender everything.
Matt
Datillo
After reformatting my hard
drive and reinstalling Windows XP Pro I found that like a lot of people I wasn’t
able to get web pages that used Java to work. We see a lot of questions
concerning this in team mail and one solution to it was to use Sun’s version of
Java (which you can find here: http://java.sun.com/getjava/). I tried this and seemed to have problems
getting this to work like I wanted it to. So I figured that if I looked long and
hard I could find the version that Microsoft used to include with its versions
of Windows. Here is the link to it:
http://www.softnews.ro/public/cat/10/18/10-18-20.shtml. To top it all off it is a free download.
After you install it you will need to go to Windows update and install the
security update.
Micah D.
Lackey
(Editor’s Note: To download the file click on the “FREE
Download” link, not the Microsoft Corporation link. Also once downloaded hang on to this
file since future updates to Internet Explorer will likely break Java
again.)
IBM has issued a voluntary
recall notice on 15” G51 and G51t monitors manufactured from June ’97 through
September ’97. These monitors pose
a fire hazard and you should discontinue using them immediately. http://www.pc.ibm.com/g51recall/
lists the details and contact information.
IBM will send prepaid shipping materials and boxes to owners of these
monitors and repair them at no cost.
iTunes
Here's a neat little trick
while you are listening to streaming audio in iTunes. You may have noticed that
iTunes displays the URL of the stream in the iTunes window as the stream is
playing. Press the command key and click on the URL. It will open your default
browser and take you to the site.
Conserve Battery in Laptops
An
effective and simple way to conserve the battery power on your iBook or
PowerBook is to Turn OFF Airport if you are not using it from the network
preferences. This will cut off power to the Airport card and increase your
battery life.
Recommended
Download
I am one of those that believe that the time for
Screen Savers has come and gone. In fact other than Marine Aquarium (http://www.serenescreen.com)
nothing
out there seemed all that impressive. Until I came upon a screensaver called
Fluid. This program is based on Open GL and will blow your socks off. You can
even create themes from it.
Fluid can be downloaded for free from the
Concept House website.
http://www.concepthouse.com/products/Fluid/.
Give it a try. Tell me what you think.
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
Q: My Norton's Antivirus
subscription has run out. I don't wish to renew at this time but I keep
getting a reminder from Norton's that it's time to renew. The options are Later
or Now and then the later has number of days till reminder pops up again but it
only lets you select "one" day. How do I remove this reminder while
keeping my Norton's Antivirus software?
A: Without knowing the actual version of
Norton's you are using, I am going to give you some vague instructions. Within
Norton's there is a module called "Live Update." This where the program will
update itself. It should have some settings in there to allow you to turn off
the automatic update and thus kill that reminder. It is usually found under
TOOLS > OPTIONS or somewhere along those lines.
Now I gotta ask... why would
you NOT want to keep your virus dat file updated? I know it costs around $20.00
to renew the subscription... but it's better then getting a virus...
right??
Also if you really don't
want to update the virus dat files I would suggest you do
this...
Uninstall Norton's antivirus
completely. Then go to www.grisoft.com and
download their FREE antivirus program. It does a good job protecting your PC and
it is FREE Woo-Hoo!
Matt
Mercurio
If you have
tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please
email them to bob@iglou.com.
Copyright 2003,
The 84 Online Team. All rights
reserved. Publication, rebroadcast
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Information
provided in this publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind,
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Although the information provided is known to work on most systems, it
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