CourseCast of the Week

Episode 0033, 01/25/2008

Title: Auctions, Privacy, Education, and Warfare

Description: 700 MHz Spectrum Auction, Private IP Addresses, Online Education, Internet Warfare

Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the Week, Episode 33, recorded January 25th, 2008. This is Ken Baldauf bringing you this week's technology news and information. This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions.

Story 1 - Auction for Big Spenders Commences

January 24th marked the beginning of an auction that is expected to fetch as much as 10 to 30 billion dollars. No, it's not for the crown jewels, or Elvis' sequenced suite, or the country of Bolivia. It’s for air, more precisely, for a license to send signals in the 700 Megahertz frequency range through air, in the U.S. The 700 MHz frequency is being returned to the FCC from television services that no longer need it to send analog signals. It's the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, that's responsible for assigning frequencies ranges of the wireless radio spectrum for various uses. For example, AM and FM radio, cell phone networks, garage door openers, wireless baby monitors, remote control toys, and the button you press on your key chain to unlock your car all use radio signals licensed from the FCC. By regulating the wireless spectrum, the FCC assures that FM radio stations, don't interfere with aircraft to tower communications, and your remote control toy car doesn't open your garage door.

The 700 MHz spectrum is highly coveted as a strong frequency range that carries many signals long distances and through solid objects. It's known as "beach-front" property, or the wireless spectrum, and since available wireless spectrum is rare, this may be the last of the beachfront. This spectrum will be divided up, with some reserved for emergency communications and the rest sold in parcels. It might be used to provide new mobile communication, media, and Internet technologies. It might be used to provide a third option for high-speed Internet access along with Cable and DSL - only wireless! Or it could be used to give one of the cellular carriers a huge advantage over its competition. Google, Verizon, AT&T, and dozens of others will be bidding billions to own chunks of this spectrum. Whoever ends up with the biggest chunk of the sweetest frequencies could dictate the future of wireless technologies. Since the auction rules require secrecy and anonymity, we won't know the outcome until the auction closes weeks or months from now. I'll keep you posted!

Source: "Bids Total $2.78 Billion in Opening Day of Auction for Airwaves" (NYTimes), "FAQ: Inside the High-Stakes 700-MHz Spectrum Auction" (Wired)

Story 2 - Pssst! You're IP Address is Showing!

The head of the European Union's group of data regulators, Peter Scharr, contends that an IP address should be treated as personal and private information. An IP address is a 32-bit number assigned to every Internet user's PC when the PC connects to the Internet. Google contends that IP addresses are associated with devices and not people, and therefore need not be treated as private. Mr. Scharr counters that since most users use the same device repeatedly to go online, the IP address, in most cases, represents the user of the PC.

There is strong evidence that Mr. Scharr is correct. After all, it’s the IP address that the RIAA uses to track down individuals that illegally download music. Internet service providers can easily associate an IP address with the user to which it was assigned at a given time and day. Online marketing practices use the IP address, along with other technologies, to target advertising to individuals. Clearly, if the EU is able to classify IP addresses as private and personal information, it would go along way to insure greater privacy online at the price of perhaps fewer conveniences.

Source: "Are IP Addresses Personal Information?" (TopTechNews), "Google Balks at EU Take on IP Addresses" (TopTechNews)

Story 3 - Free Online Education

A coalition of educators, foundations, and Internet pioneers is urging governments and publishers to provide publicly-funded educational materials free online to the Internet community. "Open education allows every person on Earth to access and contribute to the vast pool of knowledge on the Web," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and one of the authors of the declaration. "Everyone has something to teach and everyone has something to learn."

Google is getting in the spirit. Research.google.com will soon provide terabytes of open-source scientific datasets for free access to all.

Source: "Publicly Funded Educational Materials on Net Urged" (TopTechNews), " Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data" (Wired)

Story 4 - International Tensions Heightened by 20-Year-Old Hacker

You may recall a story I relayed last year about tensions between Russia and Estonia. Estonia, previously occupied by Russia, sparked social unrest when its government moved a statue of a Russian soldier from the center of town to a cemetery. The day of the move, Estonia's Internet lines were overwhelmed by a Denial of Service Attack that brought business in the country to a virtual standstill. Estonia blamed the cyber attack on the Russian government; the Russian government denied it. Tension mounted between the two countries.

This week, a 20-year-old Estonian was arrested for the cyber attack. It appears that he acted independently making use of an international botnet that he created for the purpose of carrying out the attacks. The fact that this is turning out NOT to be the first example of International Internet warfare is an embarrassment to many who reported it as such. However, it’s equally alarming to witness the power of one tech-savvy teenager on international relations.

Source: Student behind DoS attack that rekindled bad Soviet memories (Ars Technica), "Student fined for attack against Estonian Web site" (ComputerWorld)

New Briefs

  • Harvard researchers have created a device that can be used to translate brain tissue into high-resolution neural maps --- a circuit diagram of the human brain. (Wired)
  • It turns out that when the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of its losses were due to illegal downloads by college students, it was a little off. This week, it said that it's more like fifteen percent. (Yahoo! News)
  • According to security firm WebSense the number of legitimate Web sites that have been hacked to distribute malware and spyware now outnumber Web sites specifically created for the purpose. (Ars Technica)
  • According to a study by the Business Software Alliance, software piracy in Indonesia, China, Russia, Thailand, India, and elsewhere is holding back economic growth around the world by billions of dollars each year. (Ars Technica)
  • A new take-off on the classic phishing scam is emerging. The new version, called vishing, sends fraudulent e-mails asking customers to phone an 800 number where an answering machine, or even a live operator, will ask for your private information in order to steel your identity. (ARS Technica)
  • You should feel a little more secure knowing that this week, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved new security standards to protect the country's electric grid from a cyber attack. (Ars Technica)
  • You know those cool digital picture frames that present a slide show of your favorite photos? A batch sold at Best Buy over the holidays was infected with a computer virus. It appears nothing digital is safe these days! (TopTechNews)
  • There's a new kid on the digital music block. Last.fm has launched with free programmable streaming music from all of the big record labels. Artists and labels are compensated from ad revenue. (Reuters)
  • Credit card issuer GE Money has lost a computer tape containing personal data of 650,000 customers of about 230 retailers including J.C. Penney’s. (Reuters)
  • The video-game industry had an incredible year last year with earnings up 43 percent from 2006. (TopTechNews)
  • Both Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have announced that they will begin testing in-flight Internet service over Wi-fi (ComputerWorld).
  • Students at both MIT and the University of Maine have received settlement letters from the RIAA asking for them to pay for music they have allegedly stolen. University of Maine students will receive assistance from the University’s Law school to fight the accusations in court. (ITBusinessEdge, Wired)

Well, that's it for this week's CourseCast. Links to this week's stories and many more news and information resources are provided at the CourseCast Web site at www.course.com/coursecasts. E-mail us with your suggestions for the show at course.coursecasts@cengage.com. Until next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!