June 2004 Archives

By Anthony Effinger

Sitting at a table for eight in his personal dining room, beneath a vintage poster for ``The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,'' Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Chief Executive Officer Barry Meyer rails against people who download his studio's movies for free from the Internet.

During a three-course lunch with President Alan Horn, he even takes issue with the term piracy for fear of ennobling the pests who have devoured much of the music business and are moving to films. ``It's not swashbuckling,'' Meyer says. ``It's theft.''

By Tom Cross

As the Internet has grown and matured, it has become obvious to everyone involved that the DNS Whois system, as it currently exists, is not a sustainable way to share contact information for resolving network problems. ICANN, in an attempt to save DNS Whois, has plunged head long into the process of developing new policies aimed at fixing it. While I respect all of the hard work that has gone into this process, the results thus far have only made it clearer that this system faces intractable problems. ICANN should see DNS Whois for what it is, a relic of a simpler time, and focus instead on the IP address Whois systems, where their efforts might reap meaningful results.

July 16, 2004 - San José Palacio Hotel, San José, Costa Rica

You are invited to a Private Seminar

- Comprehensive Wealth Preservation Offshore

- Offshore Asset Protection

- Liability Exposure Strategies

- Non-Insurance Methods of Risk Management

By Dan Verton

It started as a relatively simple business-to-business hub. It became an industry-altering secure collaboration platform.

That's perhaps the best way to describe Exostar's (US) effort to develop an external collaboration environment. But it wasn't just any collaboration project. ForumPass 2.0, as it was later named, was deemed so secure that five of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies use it to store and share their most sensitive data.

The first version, developed in 2001, was based on Parametric Technology's ProjectLink software and designed to facilitate collaboration among companies involved in joint development projects. However, the concept met substantial resistance from a user community that has historically been dead set against placing sensitive intellectual property in a third-party environment with little or no control over who can access the data.

By Kwan Weng Kin

SINGAPORE'S reputation for protecting intellectual property has assured Japanese companies in game software and know- ledge-intensive industries that their products will be safe from digital thieves.

Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan said yesterday that many Japanese business executives whom he met during his three-day stay here had praised Singapore's enforcement of intellectual property rights.

'The type of activities which Japanese companies are bringing to Singapore are knowledge- intensive. They have a high R&D content and Japanese companies are extremely concerned to see that their products will not be pirated, copied or their intellectual property stolen,' Dr Tan told Singapore reporters.

The All-Russian exhibition-forum "Counterfeit Protection-2004" is enjoying great success in Moscow. The organisers include the Russian government, the State Duma, Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service (FSB), National Consumers Protection Fund, the National Agency for Combating the Spread of Counterfeit Goods and others.

The event shows off the latest equipment, methods, systems and forms of control over the quality of Russian and foreign producers' goods and brands, as well as measures to beat the counterfeiters.

Conferences are being held as part of the exhibition. One of them, "The Legal Aspects of Intellectual Property Protection" was organised by the Russian Agency for Patents and Brands (Rospatent). According to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, ending the production of counterfeit goods is a priority for his government.

By Paul Roberts

A majority of security executives surveyed say that their companies do not have plans to cope with the effect of an unconventional terrorist attack, even though most believe that a terrorist attack of some kind is likely in the coming months, according to the results of a poll from CSO magazine released on Wednesday.

The survey of 476 chief security officers (CSOs) and senior security executives found that 60 percent believe that a terrorist attack is likely in Boston or New York City, which are hosting the Democratic and Republican political conventions in coming weeks. While 63 percent of CSOs say their companies have planned for such attacks if conventional means, such as bombings or hostage taking, are used, 61 percent say that they have not planned for unconventional attacks using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to a statement released by CSO.

By Roy Mark

WASHINGTON -- The digital revolution has degenerated into an underworld of organized crime, dirty tactics, black ops and terrorism, said science fiction writer and cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling Tuesday.

Keynoting a morning session of Gartner's 10th Annual IT Security Summit here, Sterling said, "This is the birth of a genuine, no kidding, for-profit, electronic, multi-national criminal world. The global criminal world of oil, narcotics and guns now has broadband."

And, according to Sterling, they are fully utilizing the technology.

New Delhi: The escalating, hi-tech world of cyber crimes in India is taking the police force back to the classroom.

Long been outsmarted by the new breed of IT criminals, who use sophisticated equipments to prey on victims on the Internet, the cops are being trained to handle everything - from porn and e-mail abuse to theft of intellectual property.

And helping them in their endeavour are Indian IT companies, who are not only holding workshops to train cops in cyber-sleuthing techniques but also providing them with state-of-the-art gadgets to fight crime on the Net.

What started as an experiment in Mumbai in March this year will soon be replicated in other cities, says the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the IT industry umbrella group.

By Adam Turner

Security experts slammed Microsoft's decision to deny a vital security update to computer users allegedly running pirated copies of Windows XP.

Microsoft rates the upcoming Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP as "critical" but the software giant will ensure that it cannot be installed on versions of XP using the 20 most common activation codes used by pirate copies.

While conceding that the internet will be better off if more users install the pack, Microsoft's efforts to block the update on bootleg copies of Windows XP could leave thousands of computers open to hijacking - posing a threat to all internet users.

By Jack M. Germain

When you get down to the basics, using broadband connections in the workplace to download files for personal use does more than steal productivity and cheat employers out of bandwidth costs. Employees generally are not aware of the damage their P2P and instant-messaging use does to their companies.

Take an Enterprise Search & Categorization Multimedia Tour featuring Gartner Analyst Whit Andrews. Hear experts and customers discuss key issues every commercial and government enterprise must consider when implementing enterprise search and categorization solutions.

File-sharing through the dozens of software piracy mills on the Internet and well-known peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa , Morpheus , iMesh, eDonkey, Gnutella, LimeWire and Grokster accounts for thousands of illegally downloaded music files, games, movies and software. Computer security experts warn that more harm than the mere theft of intellectual property by piracy occurs through participation in file-sharing over the Internet. For example, use of file-sharing operations usually leads to situations in which computers -- and even networks -- are infected with spyware, malware and backdoors left ajar for hackers.