[EAS]Digital Dilemmas

[pjk]

Subject:   Digital Dilemmas

Dear Colleagues -

> The biggest decisions about the internet's future will be political
> and social, not technological.

<http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1534303>

This recent survey in The Economist on "The Internet Society" by
David Manasian, legal affairs editor, is an excellent entry point
for further reading on such subjects as privacy, copyright and
politics. As usual for Economist surveys, the online version has
live links to related material, such as an extensive list of sources
at <http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=1534334>.

> A group of record companies managed to shut down Napster for
> copyright infringement in 2002. But when they took another
> file-sharing service, Kazaa, to court late last year, they
> discovered that Sharman Networks, the distributor of its software,
> is incorporated in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu and managed
> from Australia; its computer servers are in Denmark; its source code
> is thought to be stored in Estonia; and its developers, who still
> control the underlying technology, live in the Netherlands. The
> service has 60m users in over 150 countries. Even if the American
> court decides against Kazaa, it may not be able to enforce its
> judgment.

     --PJK