Cyberspace September 2011

Also published in the Journal of the Law Society of New South Wales

What about the children?

Software licences are usually long, poorly drafted and unreadable. A lot of this is in an attempt to protect the author from liability which is never likely to arise. However, there are other hazards for them... The USA has the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits collection of email addresses from children under 13. You may be aware that Facbook prohibits children under 13 from using its product to avoid COPPA issues. However, a number of iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod etc) applications have collected email addresses from kids, and W3 Innovations has just paid the Federal Trade Commission $50,000 as a result.

This is by no means a first for the FTC, but it reinforces the need to: think globally when writing software; consider that there are different requirements for users of various ages; and consider other diversity issues. More importantly, the FTC considers that it applies to any website from anywhere in the world which is directed at USA children. http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm

FOI Twitter

The UK body responsible for FOI has made it clear that applications can be submitted to government bodies via Twitter. The Information Commissioner's Office http://goo.gl/EuMLR said that "While Twitter is not the most effective channel for submitting or responding to freedom of information requests, this does not mean that requests sent using Twitter are necessarily invalid. They can be valid requests in freedom of information terms and authorities that have Twitter accounts should plan for the possibility of receiving them." It is important that the request comply with the Act, such as using a real name. Since that occurs rarely on Twitter the ICO said that it is sufficient for the user's Twitter profile to have the required information.

Section 15 of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cwlth) http://goo.gl/Nq8Ho alows for a request be made in writing, giving details for notices such as an electronic address, and it be made by sending by electronic communication to an electronic address specified by the agency. I'd have to say that a request via Twitter can satisfy all those requirements, especially with the obligation on the agency under s 15(3) to assist in making a compliant request. I look forward to hearing about the first one.

Tips & tricks

1. IP Australia has released a simple tool to assist in choosing business names (http://goo.gl/Ggjje). It can assist in the early stages of branding development by helping to rule out some names.  
2. The Australian Business Number lookup (http://goo.gl/XXeQ8) has a new interface, and also makes it easier to cross check details on ASIC's site. This is a great way to check an ABN, ACN, business name or company name. With a little interpretation it can also alert you to when you're dealing with a trustee, so you can make the appropriate contractual amendments, or whether a business is registered for GST..  
3. Legify (http://legify.com.au) is a great way to quickly look up Australian legislation and regulations.  
4. My current favourite iOS applications are TuneIn Radio, TripIt, TripView, Evernote, GoodReader, ShopShop, Remember the Milk, Roboform, Tom Tom Australia, Collins English-French Dictionary, LogMeIn Ignition, Mocha RDP and Bloomberg.

Unsocial networking

The English Crown Courts have been busy sentencing prisoners for their roles in the London riots. A number of these were for using Facebook to incite rioting, and they received four years imprisonment. The Crown Prosecution Service (http://goo.gl/DPgrX) said that they were convicted under ss 44 and 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 for using "Facebook to organise and orchestrate serious disorder...". The pages were quickly closed and no riots occurred as a result, and the defendants were previously of good character, but the pages caused panic and revulsion in the community.

First published by Andrew Calvin andrew@calvin.it

© Copyright 2011 Andrew Calvin, Sydney, Australia

Cyberspace August 2011

Managing foreign evidence

There are war crimes trials all over the world at present, and the United Nations teams that support them have a difficult job support them in multi-language proceedings. IDC recently wrote a paper (http://www.idc.com) on how the UN supports millions of documents in many formats and many languages. A litigation support system must meeting the UN’s rules as well as other standards such as the local law, rules, and regulations.

Trials of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic set the scene for processes to support these complex and very lengthy trials, with legal teams from many countries. Not only was the evidence in several languages, but it also had to be free-text searchable and made available in other languages. The Yugoslavian trials have used over 13 languages.

What’s so hard? Free-text in multiple languages is challenging, because the system needs to understand that words spelled the same may mean very different things, and word-stems that you think might work just won’t. A library in French is a bibliotheque, whereas a librairie is a bookshop. Caution in French can mean bail; and chair in French means flesh. During war crimes trials these things can cause grave confusion. But these are basic problems - when you have millions of documents from many sources it is important for a system to understand if the word is being used as a noun or verb, and to know that Mr Black is not a colour. We haven’t even considered the difficulties arising from Eastern European character sets such as Cyrillic.

There are other issues - quite often the evidence in such trials is from the media - newspaper reports and television footage. This material must be carefully managed, made available to legal representatives, and a chain of custody ensured so that there can be no allegations of tampering.

The Yugoslavian trials used products by ZyLAB, who have a small presence in Australia but are not well known in the litigation support space. The IDC paper reported that the same free text search results could be achieved querying in multiple languages, and the various types of professionals working on matters had customised workspaces. The paper doesn’t cover this, but I imagine in such cases there will be prosecution and defence lawyers, military, law enforcement, anthropologists and others who all need varying levels of access to this information.

Security

Do you like using your smart phone or iPad on the bus? Of course you are careful to hide the keyboard when entering a username or password,  but that may not be enough. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog a jailbreak app for iOS allows your seat-mate to aim the camera at your device and look for the slight blue glow on the virtual keyboard after typing. It can then reassemble the username and password.

The Cloud...

Dropbox is a popular application that will synchronise the contents of folders between many computers, mobile phones and tablets. It’s tempting to use it as the filing system for a small firm where the principal is on the move and needs documents.
However, Dropbox recently accidentally turned off its password authentication system for four hours, and it has also been disclosed that your documents are not fully encrypted on their servers. In other words, they can provide your documents to others under subpoena. So much for that part of the cloud.

On the topic of the cloud, an iPad app idocument REVIEW (http://goo.gl/wK2rm) offers you the chance to review discovery on your iPad from the cloud while biding your time in the registrar’s list. I’ve not used it, but it seems that you upload your documents to the vendor, who processes them  and you then sync them to your iPad. You then review the docs on the iPad, and upload a datafile back to the vendor when you’re done. It might even be therapeutic.

Australian web host Distribute.IT hacked

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported (http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/4800-aussie-sites-evaporate-after-hack-20110621-1gd1h.html) that Distribute.IT has irretrievably lost the data for 4,800 web sites hosted on its infrastructure.

I have no idea if this is accurate, but we can easily examine some possibilities...

There are many ways to back up these days, and a popular way is to use "snapshots" which capture (on the initial snapshot) a copy of the data, and on subsequent snapshots only the delta (or changes) are snapped. This is very quick and involves no downtime. Many snapshots can be kept and restores can be instant.  Many storage network providers such as NetApp work in just this way. The primary backups are on spinning disc and it's fast and convenient.

However, prudence suggests that a belt and braces approach is best. Normally an enterprise will have a primary data centre and a redundant data centre at a separate physical location. If one centre loses power or collapses in a heap due to storage or networking issues the redundant centre comes on-line. Since they are on separate subnets and likely to be fire walled, a hack on one centre won't affect the other. Controls can also be put in place to prevent automatic mirroring of more than a certain percentage of changes without human intervention.

So, snapshots provide a great first line of defense, but there is no substitute for disconnected storage. Even Google uses tapes to back up data, as shown in some recent Gmail outages. It doesn't have to be tape, but either way you have disconnected storage, stored off-site, that can't be affected by a hack or a fire. A weekly offline backup in combination with 2 hourly snapshotting would seem to be an enterprise grade approach to Disaster Recovery.

What's Disaster Recovery? Just that. If you have a disaster, you can recover. What's an example of a disaster? Let's see, maybe a hacker getting in, trashing your servers, your SAN and your snapshots? What's your plan to recover from that? My corporation does very real, very detailed DR tests and they are audited. DR is a real problem, and there are real solutions.

If you did your tape or other offline backup weekly, you may lose up to a week's work, but that's better, way better, than nothing.

Now we also need to consider the terms of service between Distribute.IT and its clients. I have not seen it, but it is common to see any or all of the following clauses:

- disclaimer for any indirect or consequential loss arising out of system unavailability;
- limitation of liability to the equivalent of one year's hosting fees or re-supply of the services;
- disclaimer for any direct losses.

These all mean that customers will have minimal recourse to the web host, and even more so if they go out of business. You might check whether your web host is appropriately insured for events like this, and you should have a chat with your broker about your own insurance. Business interruption insurance may not cover something like this, so you need to treat your web site like a core business asset - just the same as a insuring your factory or buildings.

Andrew Calvin
andrew@calvin.it

Not really tech

I recently had the chance to do some laps of Eastern Creek International Raceway in a brand new (2011) Volkswagen Golf R and  Golf GTI.

I have to say that the Golf R (it’s 4WD) exhibited outstanding handling, particularly under heavy brakes while turning. An exercise in obstacle avoidance showed that you could easily steer while either letting the ABS do its job, or cadence braking.
The day was unbelievably wet, and the track had pools of water as well as a VERY slippery section. The stability coming over the hill just before the straight inspired confidence, and despite the downpour it was very comfortable at 180 km/h down the straight.

The Golf GTI was similar, and a great drive. It tended to lift at the back a little, but like the R, once you learned to trust it it looked after you in the wet.
Both cars had excellent ABS, but some braking exercises showed that good cadence braking could beat the ABS.

I’ve got a Polo GTI on order at the moment, but that Golf R really inspired me.

Westpac web site & EFTPOS down

It seems that as of 5 May 2011 the Westpac Bank web site is down, and the Westpac/St George EFTPOS network is down. Many merchants are affected.

Apple storing location data

There's been a fuss this week about a file on the iPhone and iPad that stores location data - consolidated.db.

There's an article at http://weblogs.dailypress.com/technology/pressforward/blog/2011/04/iphone_location_tracking_conso_1.html where an IT professional discusses how this is not news, and has been written about previously.

I agree with the general approach that these sorts of files are nothing to get excited about - I imagine such a file rapidly improves geolocation startup. I've just been traveling through Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia and was quite surprised at how fast my iPhone 4 located my current position - a few seconds after getting off a plane.

Cyberspace April 2011

One of the issues in smaller practice is often the lack of a document management system (DMS). We’ve discussed cloud computing and document management many times over the years, but it’s not done yet.

Some accounting packages have a DMS module as an add-on, but it may be too complex or expensive for small teams. There are quite a number of software-as-a-service offerings available, and these provide robust version control and security. The real value of a DMS lies in access control, filing in ways more flexible than just folders, search and version management. What would make it even better for the mobile lawyer is access to documents from anywhere without security concerns. I’ve written in the past about Zoho and other products that can do this for you, but they tend to all have their own specialist interface rather than using Word, which most of us rely on.

A few recently launched methods (although they’ve been around in beta for a long time) of using the power of Word or Excel while storing the documents online are Google Cloud Connect, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Skydrive (www.skydrive.com) using either the full version of Office or the Web App version. They all make document sharing easy.

Each has its strengths: Google’s concurrent editing is useful for some, and use of labels and collections is great for organising your documents - particularly those that ‘belong’ in more than one folder. However, the Cloud Connect add-in for Office really doesn’t have all the features that it needs. It’s easy to create and store a document using Word, but it’s not clear how you use Word to later edit it. Having said all that, the ability to really organise your documents can be very valuable. Let’s say you prepare a great property development agreement for your client. You would file it under the client and matter, but you could also tag it with “property”, “precedent”, “PDA” and anything that will help you find it and use it as a precedent at a later date. Just search on PDA in a couple of years and quickly find those documents for re-use. You could easily file presentations and papers under appropriate tags and re-use and share that research material with your colleagues.

Office 365 requires some money, time and energy in getting the product up and running and has many features. It works well if you use a lot of Microsoft products. Skydrive is clever and the web-based version of Office works very well (no local copy required), but filing will be a mess after the first few hundred documents, as it is purely folder-based

Something that no-one other than the dedicated DMS companies has addressed for document storage is how the document lifecycle is managed. I haven’t seen any tools in cloud-based systems that allow you to assign disposal policies to folders, tags or classes of documents. You shouldn’t do bulk deletes based just on the date - you need to keep board minutes for the life of a company, but you can delete that old conveyancing file. Another problem may occur if you own a major asset and dispose of it - how do you get the documents out of the system and give them to the purchaser? Or perhaps you decide to move to another cloud provider - how is it easy to get your data moved?

My company regularly receives requests to produce documents that relate to third parties, often when we are not even involved in the relevant litigation or inquiry. Let’s assume we used Skydrive to store our documents, and that was common knowledge - could someone subpoena Microsoft for our documents? A non-disclosure agreement may result in Microsoft notifying us, but without further action Microsoft may just have to comply with the subpoena.

Cybercrime in Australia

The Federal Attorney-General recently released a public consultation paper relating to Australia’s consideration of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. It is possible that Australia will become a signatory to the treaty.
It is, it seems, the only treaty dealing with the issues of online fraud, hacking, theft of data, child pornography and damage to data. That seems surprising, since it was agreed on 23 November 2001!
The convention is typical in that it prescribes matters that parties should adopt in local law, although Article 2 provides that it should deal with offences committed internationally as well. The principal areas dealt with are:   

• Title 1 – Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems
• Title 2 – Computer-related offences (fraud)
• Title 3 – Content-related offences (child pornography)
• Title 4 – Copyright and related rights
• Title 5 – Aiding, abetting, corporate liability

Each of the areas is to be governed by the criminal law (although parties have a discretion)
After setting out the offences, it goes on to deal with matters such as protection of rights, but also preservation of data for investigative purposes. The latter is where things can get murky, as it starts to delve into areas requiring ISPs to do certain things. While every business quite rightly has record-keeping obligations, I trust that these laws will be proportionate and not driven by self-interest of just one stakeholder.
Article 20 deals with real-time collection of traffic data, but notes that the law should be able to   

compel a service provider, within its existing technical capability… to produce traffic data, in real-time, associated with specified communications…

Let’s hope the focus here doesn’t just end up on theft of copyright material. Better still, let’s hope that rights holders find great ways to easily licence their material!

Matters such as extradition, information sharing for investigations and mutual assistance generally are also dealt with in Chapter III.   In summary, this Convention seems like a good thing, but as always, the devil is in the detail (or in this case, the local law).

Adobe Phishing Scam

Watch out for an email advertising new updates for Adobe Acrobat. The site is http://www.adobe-new-updates.com

While the email is quite amateurish, some people may be taken in, particularly given the frequency of updates to Acrobat.

The text is:

Adobe is pleased to announce that a new version of Acrobat PDF Reader was released today with new features, options and improvements.
http://www.adobe-new-updates.com
What's new in this version :
* Read, search, and share PDF files.
* Convert to PDF.
* Export and edit PDF files
* Add rich media to PDF files
* Combine files from multiple applications
* Increase productivity and process consistency
* Streamline document reviews
* Collect data with fillable PDF forms
* Protect PDF files and content
* Comply with PDF and accessibility standards
To get more and upgrade to this version, go to  :
http://www.adobe-new-updates.com
Start downloading the update right now and let us know what you think about it.
We're working on making Adobe Acrobat Reader better all the time !
Talk soon,
The people at Adobe       
Copyright © 2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: phishing

Cyberspace March 2011

Better results

Google has launched an extension for Chrome named “Personal Blocklist”. It allows you to block certain domains from appearing in your search results such that if you regularly search for legal terms, and a useless or low quality site always turns up in the results, you can block it. Google will receive notification of the blocking, and may tailor its results to the world at large. The idea is simple - let the world edit out poor quality sites. No doubt people will attempt to abuse this by trying to block competitors or sites that they have a beef with, and I suspect Google has processes in place to detect this.


What are poor quality results? Sites that steal other people’s data, shallow aggregators, or those that use words caught by search engines but don’t deliver on the promise. Other descriptions are webspam and content farms. Content farms are proliferating and can be lucrative, as the idea is that a publisher pays writers to churn out (usually low quality) content that helps drive searchers to the site. The publisher makes money by placing advertising on the site.  Even reputable publishers are guilty of this type of poor quality from time to time, particularly when a ‘review’ of a product is nothing more than regurgitating a press release or release notes from a software update. Worse still, content is frequently simply copied from blogs and other sites (some of my pieces now appear on the internet under others’ by-lines).

Two factor security

Security is a hassle. Like being tidy, it involves more work than being slack - having strong passwords that are different for every site you use is a hassle. But the net is full of stories of the problems created when accounts are hijacked, such as the old ‘I was robbed in London’ story. An email account is cracked and an email is sent to the entire address book asking for a money transfer because of theft of wallet/passport/credit cards/etc. To prevent this you use multi-factor authentication. 


There are systems such as the RSA dongle my company uses for remote access, where I have to login using a username, password, and a 6 digit number from a keyfob that changes every 60 seconds. Even if you have my password you can’t do anything without the RSA device. Paypal also offers this facility, and Google is now offering two factor authentication for its accounts as well. The authorisation code is either an SMS, using an app on common phones, or even an automated phone call. Given that many businesses now use Google Apps for serious work this is a major enhancement to the platform.

Privilege and email

A recent USA case of Holmes v Petrovich Development Company, LLC (http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C059133.PDF) noted that an email sent by an employee to her lawyer from her work computer was not a ‘confidential communication between a client and a lawyer’ within the meaning of the Californian legislation. i.e. there was no waiver of privilege, since there was no privilege in the first place. This particular legislation contemplates the use of email generally, and privilege is not affected by the general fact that third parties assist in the delivery of email.  However, the employee had acknowledged her workplace rule that communications are not private and may be monitored. The court likened this to claiming privilege when consulting her attorney in a workplace conference room in a loud voice with the door open.  The privilege legislation requires that the communication be transmitted by a means which... discloses the information to no third persons other than those who are present to further the interest of the client in the consultation...” It follows that even if she had been suing a third person there would have been no privilege in the emails since her employer had a right to read them.

The Daily: my goodness

So Rupert Murdoch launched "The Daily" yesterday - it's a downloadable newspaper designed for the iPad. You can get a two week free trial, and after that it's USD$1 per week.

I installed it today, and what a piece of excrement it is.

The software works ok, provided you don't like to have feedback as to what your iPad is doing. There are a few clever ideas which make it a neat screensaver if your iPad is in a dock. But the content? That's where it collapses in a heap.


The Top Stories for 2 February 2011 are:

• Egypt - riots against Mubarak
• Snow in America
• A look inside a USA maximum security prison
• A dog disco in Manhattan
• Natalie Portman is pregnant
• The Super Bowl

I'm speechless. Even if you ignore the fact that a cyclone the size of France, Germany & Switzerland, with the power of Hurricane Katrina has passed across Australia in the last 24 hours, there might just be something more to write about than a doggie dance.

If you're not bored by all this, then you can read "Gossip" or "Sports" and a few other things. Oh, and you can enter your star sign to get more crap your horoscope.

Even if you accept that this is aimed solely at the USA, does Rupert think that iPad owners (let's face it, huge Geeks) want to read any of this rubbish? They're more likely to be reading Ars Technica or TechCrunch than wondering how Natalie's doing in her pre-natal classes.

I may not have the smarts of Mr Murdoch's minions, but I predict doom.

Cyberspace February 2011

iPad
I confess that I bought an Apple iPad. Several things drove this, but two things stand out: instant on, and portability. “Instant on” was really important because the use-cases I imagined for the iPad involved note taking and immediate access to information. Waking up any laptop from sleep, even with a solid state drive, was too slow for me. I wanted something that was as fast to “turn on” as a pen and paper. I'd previously experimented with using a netbook as a notetaker but, frankly, it wasn't as slick as I'd hoped.  

I had tried photographing my notes using my, ahem, iPhone and sending them to Evernote, which does a great job of text recognition. While this was quite successful it had too many moving parts for long term use, and while other iPhone applications can recognize text without Evernote, they all suffered from that same problem. So typing my notes seemed to be the way to go, and the iPad seemed a better option than a notebook. Typing on the iPad is just ok, provided you have a case to prop it up (I like the Apple, ahem, case), and it’s possible to get reasonable speed provided you rely on auto-correct and proof it later. Even better is the case with a Bluetooth keyboard from Think Geek.

Portability was the other key point - the iPad is easy to carry to meetings and in a small brief case. It travels well too, and I travel a lot.  Last year I travelled overseas with my Dell 10" Mini, and that worked quite well, but it stayed in the apartment while I used my iPhone with its GPS and French apps (the Metro app is outstanding). However, I've just been to Japan and took everything - iPod Classic 160, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Dell. At least I only needed one charger (the Dell, and charged the others off it), but I found my old dual band phone didn't work at all due to Japan’s complex mobile system.

It turns out that I can’t live with just the iPad. Some web sites just don't render fully on it, and if you're trying to book your next accommodation then that is a big deal. However, sitting around the dinner table looking at Google Maps or Earth was a pleasure. It was also easy to pass around for others to look at while we were in a cafe, unlike a laptop. Checking out my partner’s photos from her new Canon 7D using the camera dongle was also a nice experience, although the Dell was just as good (but clunky to get out in a cafe).

I'm even writing this article in a hospital room while my daughter sleeps - tapping the glass is almost silent. However,switching between my text editor and a web browser would be tedious compared to a PC. But this isn’t a PC, so that's ok. I can type and sync my notes across all my desktops, iPhone, BlackBerry and iPad in Evernote or Dropbox.

While the iPad is a business tool for me, it’s not a bad way to watch a podcast or movie on a plane, or read the paper on the bus. My daughter tells me that Facebook is pretty good on it too. And on that topic, Facebook now provides your name, address and phone number (if you've entered them) to third party application vendors. You can block that, but should you have to?

OneNote app for iPhone & iPod Touch

The OneNote app is now available on the iTunes store, but only in the USA at the time of writing. It's a good start for avid OneNote users, but lacks search and the ability to file notes. Synching to SkyDrive works well, although the servers are overloaded and returning error 400 to many users. However, you can't limit synch to just wifi, so watch your mobile account!

Unlimited means Unlimited

In October 2010 I wrote about some comments made by Perram J in the Federal Court of Australia regarding the use of “unlimited” with reference to internet bandwidth.

His Honour has now given judgement in Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Singtel Optus Pty Ltd [2010] FCA 1177 (29 October 2010).

The case centres around advertisements for broadband, and in particular the 150 GB plan, which is really 75 GB + 75 GB (the plan I use, actually). His Honour said:

Viewed in isolation at the moment of its delivery this advertisement plainly misleads consumers into thinking that they will receive 150GB of broadband when they are getting no such thing unless they assiduously ensure that they exhaust all of their off-peak usage allowance before exhausting their peak usage allowance.

I understood this before signing up, and I’m pretty happy with the plan, but it is true – you do have to use your morning allowance completely before using up all your afternoon/evening allowance.

The Court eventually held that Optus should adequately disclose that speed limiting will be applied once peak usage is reached. In other words – speed limited unlimited data is not “unlimited”!

So, in Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Singtel Optus Pty Ltd (No 2) [2010] FCA 1200 (2 November 2010) the Court ordered that:

1. The respondent [Optus], for a period of three years from the date of these orders, whether by itself, its servants or agents or otherwise howsoever, be restrained from advertising broadband internet plans under which:

1.1 for a specified monthly sum, the customer is supplied with a monthly data allowance which is divided between peak and off-peak periods; and

1.2 if the customer exceeds the monthly data allowance for the peak period the speed of the internet service will be limited for both the peak and off-peak periods for the remainder of that month without clearly and prominently disclosing in the advertisements for those plans the facts set out in paragraph 1.2 above.

2. The respondent pay the applicant’s costs to date.

The Court also later ordered corrective mailouts and advertisements.

And it’s not finished yet – the matter was listed for directions on 23 November 2010 in relation to the orders, costs and preparation for the penalty hearing. I’ll keep an eye on it.

 

Chinese internet domain name scam

There are a lot of scams on the internet.  A particularly popular one is the Chinese domain name scam. A person will write to you from China, apparently from a domain name registrar, letting you know that someone in China wants to register a domain name that uses your trademark. The email will be very similar to the one below.

It's a scam. Don't fall for it, because no-one is applying for the names, and you probably don't do business in China anyway.
Some of the email simply doesn't make any sense at all, such as "Network Brand". You will also see variants referring to "internet keyword". They're just silly.

Some people enjoy emailing them back and asking them to call - you can have a lengthy international call at their cost about the weather in China, or the food in China, or anything else you might like to talk about...

From: John [mailto:mrjohn@lh-group.org]
Sent: Friday, 3 December 2010 8:01 PM
Subject: URGENT!! Asia Domains Registration Announcement
Importance: High Mrjohn@lh-group.org (Please forward this email to your CEO or the responsible man for your IP. Thanks) Dear CEO,
As one of the leading internet solutions organizations in China, we have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on Today, a company named "Asia Investment Co.,Ltd." it intends to register '' yourdomainname'' as Network Brand and the following domain names:
yourdomainname.com.cn
yourdomainname.com.hk
yourdomainname.com.tw
yourdomainname.in
yourdomainname.net.cn
yourdomainname.org.cn
yourdomainname.tw
But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company. so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names or not. If you have authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you haven't authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Exceeding the limited time, we will unconditionally finish the registration for "Asia Investment Co.,Ltd.". Looking forward to your reply.
Best Regards,
John
LH Group
Email:john@lh-group.org
Tel:+86-23-68927971
Fax:+86-23-68923769
Web:
Address:Room 4-19,NO.6, Xinsheng Village One, Yangjiaping,Jiulongpo District, Chongqing, China(the original Rongzhou Garden Block A)2010-12-3 Please consider the environment before you print this e-mailwww.lh-group.org

Cyberspace December 2010

Classified adverts

The theory isn’t new, and the tactic is really just a development, not evolution, but the government is interested in your online boasting. Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com) recently published a document said to be from the USA Department of Homeland Security. Social networking “provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners... Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities.” It’s easy to see that these sorts of things will weed out fraudulent engagements, marriages, social security dependencies and so on. I despise people who carry on these sorts of activities, but for the rest of us: do you really need to do the modern equivalent of taking out a classified advert to tell the world at large what you did on the weekend? Do you?

 

Kiwis

New Zealand has the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill 2010 before parliament at the moment. It aims to solve the problem of “lack of public knowledge that file sharing may infringe copyright” by amending the Copyright Act 1994! Yep, that’ll fix it. Three notices to the account holder may be issued, noting that infringing activity will be logged by their ISP (yes, the ISP are now the police). After three notices are issued the copyright holder may apply to the Copyright Tribunal for a compensation award (up to $15,000) and the District Court may order suspension of internet access for up to six months. “Claims will generally heard on the papers” but a hearing may be requested. Lawyers are only allowed with leave, which looks unlikely to be given. There is a mechanism for challenging notices, and they expire after 9 months.

So the account holder will always suffer the penalty. I wonder how that will affect group house arrangements for uni students, or parents with teenagers? At least with camera speeding offences you can nominate the responsible driver for the penalty. ISPs can charge the copyright holders for any extra work but the regulations may prescribe those rates, which may be uncommercial.

It seems to ignore the problem of actual damage. File sharing is where material “is downloaded, made available, or transferred to another.” Infringment means an incident of file sharing. A song costs AUD$1.69 on iTunes usually. Are we going to see these proportionate awards for damages? And “made available” may mean that no damage occurred at all. Will damages be awarded for no damage?

Some parts show some thought, such as enforced delays between the notices to give the account holder time to try to stop the problem. However the challenge procedure is a problem, since it must be done within a week (bad luck if you’re travelling or busy, and your kids and housemates are at home all day on holidays...). And if you lose your internet for six months be careful you don’t have your online accounts closed for lack of use.

What makes this Bill completely unacceptable is the ability to suspend an internet account. It is, for many people, the removal of a basic utility just as important as electricity. Tough if you’re a small business operator with kids or enjoy working from home every now and then, or share a group house and study using the Internet, or even just store your documents “in the cloud”. You’re going to have think very very carefully about who is using your internet and for what purposes. Perhaps we’ll see some decent routers with built in protection, but that will definitely be at a cost. Of course, if it does make it into law then there will be the obvious temptation to bring it here.

Cyberspace November 2010

Domain name security

A blogger, Ben Metcalfe (http://benmetcalfe.com), announced that his domain name vb.ly was cancelled by the Libyan domain registry in September 2010. This was one of his organisation’s main domains, and it was seized apparently because his content ran afoul of Libyan Islamic law. The site merely converts long URLs into much shorter ones (which is why he registered this particular domain), and according to Metcalfe was in compliance with the Registry’s rules. The domain name was made available, along with other short names, for re-registration by Libyans.
Domain names can be a significant asset, and some emerging markets have produced interesting domain names, such as .fm and .am for radio stations, .it for IT professionals, .me for personal sites, .mo (a product site for the mower fly.mo?),  and someone already has calv.in, yet these are all actually country top level domains.

The lesson here is that some registries may be heavily influenced by their respective governments or other bodies, and simply don’t behave in ways that you might expect - but is perfectly in accordance with local custom. If you don’t know the country and its customs well, then investing heavily in a domain there may be as risky as investing in real estate without local advice.

Stalkers

This advice false into the category of “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but...” Facebook recently introduced “Places” (http://www.facebook.com/places/) and I promply forbade my daughter from using it (it turned out I didn’t have to - she worked it out for herself). If you have a mobile phone such as an iPhone that has a GPS in it, you can just click a button to share on your Facebook feed exactly where you are at that moment. Conversely “When you use Places, you'll be able to see if any of your friends are currently checked in nearby and connect with them easily.” But you know what? If your friends are out and about without you then there might be a reason why you weren’t invited...

There are many other services like this, such as foursquare and GoWalla (Google introduced Latitude some time ago to deafening silence). While there are some fun or even useful possible scenarios for this (“I’m in a castle in Bacharach, Germany”, “Now I’m in a spa in Finland”), the opportunity for it to work out to your detriment is immense. It would be fun to brag on holidays but for a teenager who’s “friended” 500 people she’s never met, as well as a few enemies and stalkers, it’s a recipie for bullying and harrassment. Another problem with these products is that they are not always accurate - my phone sometimes shows me in the Sheraton across the street from my office. When I’m in the MLC centre, am I at a law firm, having lunch, shopping at Harvey Norman, or at my dentist? When I’m having a drink with a mate, why does it look like I’m at our competitor which is next door to the bar?

Careless friends

Friends can be unintentionally careless with information; “... when you share your information with a network, you’re trusting everyone on that network to protect your privacy ... there’s always the potential when using location-based social media that someone you don’t want to see could find your exact location.” (http://goo.gl/9boD). Unless your friends list is limited to a truly trusted set of people (assuming they care where you are anyway) then there is no reason to share anything at all. Being burgled while on holidays just isn’t fun.

If you really want to brag in style, set up a blog, snap a photo of that chateau and mail it to your blog with a few carefully chosen words. For more information read the EFF’s take on it (http://www.eff.org/wp/locational-privacy).

Sydney Buses and vision disability

This is a photo out of the 288 in Sydney. Sydney Buses places advertising on the glass, which impairs viewability. I noticed this particularly tonight while trying to photograph the Sydney Opera House while crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Vision impaired people have a tough time, and I understand that such window films make it worse. I'm led to believe that the State government's response is that only several windows are covered- not the whole bus.

Only a non-bus-user would find this answer acceptable. We rarely get to choose where we sit; usually we take what we get. There may be reasons why a vision impaired person can't sit on the sunny side of a bus.

These style of advertisements should be phased out. It's just one more indignity for the disabled traveller.

What does “unlimited” mean?

This is something I’ve posted about on whirlpool.net.au – “unlimited” in the English language means “something without limits.”

To my amusement, some other whirlpool posters think that “unlimited” can mean “something with limits.” Optus used to agree, but no more…

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Justice North of the Federal Court of Australia thinks that limiting speed after a certain amount of downloads isn’t really “unlimited.”

Us lawyers are a funny lot.

Cyberspace October 2010

The contenders

I’ve been using a Blackberry Pearl 8100 for over two years, and for the last year I’ve simultaneously used an iPhone 3GS. Which do I prefer (considering the 8100 is old and doesn’t have 3G)? The iPhone, but it comes at a cost in an enterprise environment.

Email: I use them both with a personal Gmail account and my corporate Exchange account. I’m advised that the email on iPhone is not as secure as Blackberry, so we are looking at extra software to achieve this for our iPhones. It will also let use segregate personal and corporate data, which allows us to remote wipe corporate data without touching anything else. The BlackBerry email interface is faster and has access to all the Exchange functions I need, including setting up out-of-office. On the iPhone you need to log into Outlook Web Access (assuming you offer this service) in Safari, which is a hassle. The iPhone can often struggle with (read “not display”) Rich Text emails sent from Microsoft Outlook, which can be a huge problem. You should ask your correspondents to set the default format for Outlook to HTML.  It also frequently shows an attachment named “winmail.dat” rather than the actual attachment.

Meetings: Dealing with meeting invitations is much slicker on the BlackBerry. In fact, any inbound message whether email, SMS or meeting invitation is all in the one inbox. On the 3GS that requires three applications.

Documents: Our document management system provider (Objective) has apps for both devices, but document reading is much easier on the iPhone. Only a few BlackBerrys have large screens.

Phone: The BlackBerry’s phone is excellent – great call quality, voice recognition, volume and battery life. A new battery will give 5-7 days between charges (using a mini-USB charger). The iPhone must be charged every day using the Apple cable. The iPhone phone volume is a bit quiet. The Bluetooth on the BlackBerry to be easier to use than the iPhone. On the 8100 I leave it on all the time and it seamlessly connects to my various car and other devices, whereas the iPhone is a bit more fiddly.

The BlackBerry’s data connection is also more reliable – it works in many places where the iPhone says it has no reception (both are on Optus). The BB also doesn’t throw lots of on-screen error messages when it loses connectivity.

Looking up addresses in the corporate address book (i.e. not local) is faster and easier on the BlackBerry.

Applications

The Maps application on the iPhone is easier than the BlackBerry. Out of the 200,000 apps on the iTunes store I’d say 50% are worthless, 30% of marginal use and 0.5% are really good. BlackBerry has App World, with vastly fewer but high quality apps. However, it’s not broad enough for me. Non-factory iPhone apps I have used extensively and relied on are TomTom GPS, iXPenseIt, RememberTheMilk, RoboForm, TuneIn Radio, Evernote, TripIt, Darkroom Pro, Google Reader, Paris Metro and PennyTel. The lack of all of these would be a deal breaker for me. Both phones have games, but these aren’t important for me.

Typing on the 8100 is too quirky for some, but I think it’s great. The predictive text is very good and the half-qwerty keyboard keeps the phone small and light. The iPhone is much bigger, and a bit slower to type on. It’s a trade-off between size and functionality.

Other players

Windows Mobile has been a pretty horrible product, but there’s hope. Version 7 due later this year looks like it will finally become something really good to use. Quite a few manufacturers will build the hardware. Avoid a 6.x phone in the meantime. Android phones are also built by several vendors, and some of them now such as the Samsung Galaxy S are great devices, rivalling the iPhone in bells and whistles.

Cyberspace is published each month in the Journal of the Law Society of New South Wales.

Why you shouldn't use Facebook

If the matters raised in the linked Sydney Morning Herald article are true (SMH), I'd say that this is enough of a reason to simply not use Facebook at all. The lack of response to reporting by users, and the lack of response to NSW Police indicates that it is an organisation that should not be doing business in NSW.

"We tried reporting [the account] on Facebook," she said.

"We got all her friends to report it on Facebook. Facebook won't reply. They don't want to contact us. They don't want to know about it, basically. You cannot ring Facebook."

After trying and failing to shut down the profile, the mother contacted police.

She says they told her they could shut down the account, but two hours later informed her that would not be possible.

"They said Facebook won't co-operate with the police," she said.

NSW Police declined to comment on a continuing investigation, other than to say that they had "commenced inquiries".

This website (SMH) revealed last week that Facebook management failed to reveal the activity of an international child pornography syndicate operating on the site and ignored admissions by one of the ring's Australian members.

Google blogger 11th birthday

Here we are at Google Sydney tonight! The Australian Blogger team talked a little about Blogger's past, and we had sparkling wine and sushi.

Cyberspace September 2010

Dumb

I’ve said it many times: using your ISP email address (bbloggs@bigpond.net.au) is not a great idea, as your email address will change every time you change ISP. The free alternative is an account such as Gmail, ZoHo or Hotmail, and I always recommend Gmail. Why? I logged into Hotmail today to check out the ‘new’ interface that has just been rolled out. A quarter of the screen was an advertisement for solving a ‘man’s problem’ together with a picture. Why would I recommend such a product to my mother, client  or daughter?

Gmail has much better spam filtering, and the advertisements are far, far less obtrusive. Even better, you can set up a Standard Google Apps Account and get your own domain name, 50 email accounts and all for $10 per year! In 10 minutes you could be theboss@mylawfirm.com.

Linux

My annual review of linux (mostly ubuntu) has come up, and this time it’s Jolicloud 1.0 (http://www.jolicould.com). It’s an Ubuntu derivative which I’ve been following since early alpha releases. It’s aimed at non-tech users with a low power computer. I put it on my Dell Mini 1020 (with an Atom processor and 2 GB of RAM). It’s probably 10% faster than Windows Ultimate (which it dual boots into). I haven’t found a compelling reason to use it yet, but it works fine and is free. It took me over an hour to work out how to install the excellent media player XBMC (www.xbmc.org), which on my charge out rate means it cost more than the PC. On the other hand, it took about 2 minutes to install the supported version of Hulu (based on XBMC). Could I live with it? Almost - it does everything I need a netbook to do (including Skype), is a little snappier than Windows, but does lack a few things. I use Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) extensively, and on Windows it caches all my data locally so I can use it while offline - it doesn’t do that on linux.

Backup

You may have heard that Liverpool City Council chambers burned down on 14 August 2010. It is reported that it lost its strategic plans, engineering documents and development applications. The Deputy-Mayor was quoted as saying that not everything was backed up, and as of 17 August the web site was still down. Of course a lot of paper was lost as well, perhaps including your client’s submissions to council. In hindsight, as the solicitor for a local resident, how would you protect your client’s position? Whenever I send out originals that are important to me I always scan the final set to PDF. It’s usually quick and easy on our A3 double-sided scanners with document feeders. It’s harder with large plans, but I will often already have an electronic copy of those.

Do you still keep a mail book? When I was a boy this was an exercise book, and all couriers and post were entered into it every day. This has saved the day several times over my career, and is a good office protocol. Now you can prove when those documents were posted to LCC. In a similar vein, you might keep an execution register. This normally records usage of company seals, but you might also use one where you hold a power of attorney.

Finally, this points out why you shouldn’t maintain your servers on your premises. Off-site hosting can take many forms, can be cheaper than doing it yourself, is more secure, and is far less likely to suffer a fire or water incident than your office. Give it some thought.

Advertisers using third party Google keywords

This article's a bit late, but the European Court of Justice dealt with several claims against Google in March 2010. It remitted three claims back to the French Supreme Court to be dealt with in accordance with its ruling that it was permissable, for example, Honda to buy adwords such as BMW so that mentions of BMW could show Honda advertisements.

For further reading you might like to read the Cour de cassation in judgement # 861 (08-13.944) handed down on 13 July 2010, where it held that GIFAM's claim against Google failed. As a result, Google has subsequently announced that it will change its adwords policy to be more closely aligned with that in the USA.

Media streaming devices–what is the best media box?

XBMC on Apple TV v Western Digital WD TV Live Plus

I’ve been a very happy user of XBMC for many years on three platforms: Original XBOX, Apple TV and Windows. When I bought the Apple TV I was moderately happy being able to watch my podcasts on TV, but it wasn’t until I installed XBMC on it that the Apple TV came to life. You should note that I use the standard Apple Remote on the Apple TV.

I needed another media box recently, and because the Apple TV might be up for a revamp in a few months I decided against that or a Mac Mini. A good media centre PC would cost the same as a Mac Mini, so I looked at dedicated boxes.

Word on the internet was that the Western Digital WD TV Live Plus (launched in June 2010 in the USA) was the one to get, so I did.

How does the Live Plus compare against XBMC on the Apple TV? Ignoring the features they don’t share, the video interface on XBMC is much, much better.

On XBMC you can sort your video folders by most recently modified, which pushes all your new TV recordings to the top of the list. That alone is a complete win for the XBMC. You can also delete, rename and move files and folders on the XBMC, although I really only just use the delete feature as soon as I’ve watched something.

Fast forward, skipping and volume control on XBMC is fantastic. On the WD TV you can only fast forward, and it’s not anywhere near as convenient or useful as on XBMC. No volume control on WD TV means you need to run two remotes, or use an all-in-one.

Use case 1; you record TV for time shifting – you record it, watch it at your leisure and then delete it. Clear winner is XBMC.

Use case 2: you want the extra features of the WD TV and don’t fit into Use Case 1? Get the WD TV. MediaFly support is sensational – you can do a lot of watching just in MediaFly alone.

Use case 3: you want to rip DVDs to ISO and watch them. Get the WD TV, but only because it’s cheaper and that bit functions out of the box.

iOS 4 broke your wireless data on iPhone?

I was correct in my previous post… iOS 4 broke the APN in my iPhone 3GS.

I have a genuine unlocked iPhone bought from the Sydney CBD Apple Store. iOS 4 broke my data and it stopped working.

It was an easy fix – go to http://www.unlockit.co.nz on your iPhone and follow the instructions.

iPhone 3GS update to iOS4 – breaks data

I updated the OS on my iPhone 3GS yesterday from 3.1.3 to 4. Like a lot of other people, my wireless data over 3G or GPRS is now broken…

I have a gut feeling it’s something to do with the APN (access point), since I use a Virtual Mobile Operator and they probably use a different APN to the carrier (Optus). Time to investigate…

What was Apple thinking?

The updates to iTunes issued on 22 June 2010 came with some updated terms,,,

Take a good look… 101 pages! And then you say you’ve read and agree to them! Weasel words would say that you have the chance to read them – even email them to yourself – but that really is rubbish. This is almost(?) a systematic abuse of Apple’s customers by doing nothing to attempt to help them to enter into any kind of meeting of minds or mutual understanding of the relationship. Rubbish.

Australian Privacy Commissioner downplays Google Wi-Fi data collection

According to the Sydney Morning Herald on 22 June 2010 the Australia Privacy Commission, Karen Curtis, is not nearly as worried as Senator Stephen Conroy would like to believe.

Curtis rejected Senator Conroy's claims that banking transactions were captured, while also noting that Google did not collect personal information transmitted over encrypted Wi-Fi networks.

“Australian banks use secure internet connections and my Office is not aware of any instances where banking information has been collected,” she said.

This is unsurprising, given the nature of SSL/TSL connections that banks and many other organisations use.  In addition, the SMH reported that the data was collected in "0.2 second snatches", so I think it's a reasonable bet that often no data at all was collected other than "internet background noise" in many many cases.

So, once again the facts prove Stephen Conroy wrong. It will be good when he loses his ministry portfolio.

Australian Government requiring covert surveillance of all Australian citizens?

Asher Moses reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 17 June 2010 that:

The federal government is hiding controversial plans to force ISPs to store internet activity of all Australian internet users - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland denied web browsing histories would be stored, saying the government was only seeking to identify "parties to a communication", such as senders and receivers of emails and VoIP calls.

The most laughable part about the Australian Labor Government's approach to this is this statement on behalf of the Attorny-General, Robert McClelland. He hasn't been noted for the same amount of stupidity leaving his mouth as his colleague, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. However, this is what was reported:

McClelland's spokesman defended the lack of transparency, saying the government had consulted broadly with industry about the plan but "it would not be appropriate to disclose policy discussions which are the subject of consultations with the industry".

What kind of clownish statement is this? I think you should be having policy discussions with the people of Australia (whom you allegedly represent), rather than hiding behind this statement, which is both meaningless and lacking in substance.

Cyberspace July 2010

Content delivery

Google recently announced "Google TV" (http://www.google.com/tv/), which promises to deliver internet video content to your TV. I'm a bit sceptical about it at present since recent travels to France and Hong Kong have opened my eyes to what we're missing out on today.

 

Everything over the internet

In Paris we had a Freebox (http://free.fr) connected to the TV instead of an aerial. It plugged into the powerpoint just like any other set-top box. Elsewhere in the apartment was a typical modem, and the TV box wirelessly received signal from it. It also provided a telephone service and a wi-fi network for the apartment. Calls to most countries were free, so you get internet, tv and telephone for €30 per month. The TV has 168 channels in the basic package, with up to 396, and Free is presently laying 100 MB fibre in Paris to further improve services.

 

Hong Kong has something similar, provided by PCCW (http://pccw.com) since 2003. As a subscriber, you get home internet access, 7,000 wi-fi hotspots around Hong Kong, 3G mobile data, and up to 170 channels of TV (which can be chosen singly). Because the TV is delivered over the network you can also shop, order take-away food and a number of other services optimised for delivery to the TV screen (not all web pages play nicely when rendered on a TV). You can even subscribe using an existing Sony PlayStation 3, rather than rent another box, and some video is on demand, rather than being scheduled.

 

Both of these services are easily "consumer accessible", but in Australia we have a mish-mash of product without simple delivery. Some ISPs provide unmetered bandwidth for certain activities; iiNet has its Freezone, BigPond doesn't charge to download from movies.bigpond.com, and Internode has several offerings including the ABC's iView, and internet radio. Optus "Zoo" tries, but doesn't satisfy. In fact, very few people would be satisfied if this these were their only "TV" connection. However, other things are on the horizon.

 

In May 2010 Foxtel lodged an exclusive dealing notification with the ACCC. Foxtel will supply video and associated services to iQ set top boxes via the internet, but only over Telstra's BigPond system. The data will be unmetered or very cheaply supplied, but if you don't use BigPond then you won't received the service. Users will be able to "download a wide variety of content such as movies and television programs... [and] watch the content on demand", purchasing content "on a per programme basis or on a bundled basis."

 

Putting aside the third line forcing issue, this is really only a very small step compared to the Freebox product. Products such as an unhacked Apple TV, TiVo or Windows Media Centre have virtually no commercial content in Australia. We also can't listen to Pandora internet radio, watch BBC iView, nor find anything watchable on Hulu or Boxee. There are many fragmented steps toward a simple IPTV delivery system (including the proposed Google TV, Telstra T-Box (http://www.telstra.com.au/latest_offers/tbox/) and iiNet's resale of FetchTV), but until content providers in Australia rethink their delivery channels we won't see anything like free.fr.

Even if there was a Freebox in Australia, could our infrastructure support it? Probably only for a few, since only ADSL2, cable, Ethernet or fibre could support this sort of content delivery. Legislation to require fibre to be laid in greenfield residential developments has been delayed again (although I think the government should prescribe performance requirements, rather than a particular type of technology). The NBN (http://nbnco.com.au) is focussed on regional areas at present, relies on local ISPs being interested in that area, and may use wireless and satellite, which often provides a poor internet experience due to latency.