Before Wednesday, Rogers drew the ire of many a Canadian with its plan to offer a maximum 2GB voice-data plan at $115 a month. Lots of other carriers are offering unlimited data plans for the iPhone, which generates much more Web traffic on sites like Google than other smartphones.

Rogers Communications, Canada’s dominant wireless carrier, has responded to the outcry over its
iPhone rate plans with a new option for nearly unlimited data.

The new plan doesn’t go that far, obviously, but the limit will be extremely difficult for most people to hit. Rogers said 6GBs of data usage a month would enable you to watch 104 hours of YouTube videos every month, or send and receive more than 150,000 e-mails on your iPhone 3G.

Why Rogers still needs to insist on an upper limit for data usage is beyond me, but at least the company is offering an option that will allow most users to avoid overage charges. Still, it’s only a limited-time offer: You have to activate an iPhone 3G by the end of August to qualify for the special plan. And you still have to sign a three-year contract.

What’s the bad news? Symphony is still in beta, and it has the bugs to prove it. It’s kind of slow, too. But you can’t argue with the price. Why spend upwards of $400 on Office when you can get most of the same features (and a less intimidating interface) for nothing?

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Symphony (available for Windows and Linux) offers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It supports Office 2003 file formats as well as OpenDocument and others. And it relies on an ingenious tabbed interface that keeps all your documents under the same roof–no switching between apps like with most other suites. I particularly like the sidebars, which keep frequently used settings close at hand while reducing toolbar clutter.

(Credit:
IBM)

I’m not their lawyer, and I’ve never been their lawyer, and I haven’t produced any official or unofficial legal advice about their research, but because I spoke with them about this, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give you any opinions about the research other than this brief statement.

In addition to the issues surrounding US legal liability, and ethical concerns over human subject testing — there is one other problem: International law.

It is this same law that groups such as the ACLU and EFF sued AT&T and other telecom companies for violating, when they shared customer communication with the US National Security Agency. AT&T was able to obtain retroactive immunity from the US Congress, but only after spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists.

While the US government did not send officials to this annual meeting of privacy researchers, the Canadian government did. A representative for Dr. Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario was in the audience during the presentation.

In order to learn more about the legal issues at play, I spoke with Kevin Bankston, the EFF lawyer who wrote the Legal guide for Tor server operators, and who also lead the EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T. Bankston told me that:

Dr Garfinkel specifically deals with one of the researcher’s claims:

No. You may be technically capable of modifying the Tor source code or installing additional software to monitor or log plaintext that exits your node. However, Tor relay operators in the U.S. can create legal and possibly even criminal liability for themselves under state or federal wiretap laws if they affirmatively monitor, log, or disclose Tor users’ communications …. Do not examine the contents of anyone’s communications without first talking to a lawyer.

During the question and answer session after his presentation, Bauer stated that the researchers were still not sure what they were going to do with the data set, and were exploring possibilities for releasing it to researchers in an anonymized and non-personally identifiable way. This statement was met with boos from the audience, which was mainly made up of privacy researchers and activists, a number of whom run their own legitimate Tor servers.

“I agree that their logging the content exiting their nodes would appear to constitute interceptions of those electronic (not wire) communications under the Wiretap Act, and I don’t think they qualify for the narrow provider exceptions [18 USC 2511, 2 (a) I], so I still see the same potential civil and criminal liability that was noted in our FAQ.”

The goal of the project was to learn what kind of traffic was flowing over Tor — a free network providing anonymous web and other Internet services to hundreds of thousands of users world-wide. Some of Tor’s users include pro-democracy dissidents, journalists and bloggers in countries like China, Egypt and Burma who would otherwise face arrest and torture for their work.

Should I snoop on the plaintext that exits through my Tor relay?

“Whether you run an ISP, a search engine, a Tor server node, or a research project, the principle of Data Minimization should rule. Universal privacy practices require that strong limits be placed on the processing and storage of personal data. In today’s online world of constant data availability, privacy requires data minimization at every stage of the information life-cycle: If you don’t need the data, don’t collect it in the first place; if you don’t need it any more, then destroy it securely — don’t keep it any longer than you need to. Full stop.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which wrote a legal guide for operators of Tor servers, strongly advises server administrators against snooping on their users. A section in the legal guide makes this clear:

Tor relies on volunteers who donate computing power and bandwidth to run approximately 2500 publicly accessible proxy servers, which are then used by hundreds of thousands of people to hide their Internet traffic.

In his presentation of the work at the PET Symposium yesterday, Kevin Bauer, one of the graduate students who wrote the paper shed some light on the limited amount of legal analysis performed on the project.

In addition to possible legal issues, the project also raises serious ethical concerns related to the study of users’ communications without their consent.

I met with the research team once before they had finished their research, although I don’t know how far along they were at that point. At the meeting, I gave them a very brief sketch about federal Wiretap law and they gave me a very brief sketch of their research. They seemed to have put in place a number of controls to try to minimize the risk of liability. I haven’t seen the final paper (as far as I can recall).

Bauer said that the researchers “spoke informally with one lawyer, who told us that that area of the law is ill defined” based on this, the researchers felt that it was “unnecessary to follow up with other lawyers.”

In a response to questions by this blogger, Professor Ohm seemed to attempt to distance himself from the researchers, writing by email:

The researchers found that HTTP (web traffic) was responsible for 58% of their servers’ bandwidth. They also found that the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, while accounting for only 3% of the number of connections, was responsible for over 40% of the overall bandwidth. They also observed that German users were responsible for over 30% of the requests through their server.

Furthermore, one of the strongest privacy protections inherent in the Tor system is the complete lack of logging. That is, if law enforcement agencies approach a Tor server administrator seeking information on a user of the system, the admin can truthfully reply that they have no logs, and thus have nothing that they can be compelled to produce.

The lawyer they spoke to was Professor Paul Ohm, who teaches at the University of Colorado Law School. Ohm has previously collaborated with two of the researchers on an earlier publication, which discussed the legal risks faced by academics engaged network monitoring research. Ohm, a former federal computer crimes prosecutor, has also been the subject of some media attention in recent months, after he publicly stated that ISP-level advertising and traffic-shaping systems may violate US wiretap laws .

In a paper published earlier this year, Dr. Simson Garfinkel explored some of the common myths and pitfalls for computer security researchers that study real users and their behavior, and the need to submit their projects to an IRB review.

Although this would certainly be convenient, most institutions only allow a determination of exemption to be made by the IRB itself.

Information listed on the website of the University of Colorado’s Human Research Committee states that: “All research involving human participants that is conducted by UCB faculty, staff or students must receive some level of review by the Human Research Committee.”

While state laws vary, one immediate concern would be the Wiretap Act, a federal law that broadly prohibits snooping by network operators and others. The core prohibition of the Wiretap Act is found at section 2511(1)(a), which prohibits any person from intentionally intercepting, or attempting to intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication.” A violation of these rules is is a Class D felony, and can result in fines up to $250,000 and up to 5 years in jail.

Wise words indeed.

No Human Subjects Committee Review

A group of researchers from the University of Colorado and University of Washington could face both civil and criminal penalties for a research project in which they snooped on users of the Tor anonymous proxy network. Should federal prosecutors take interest in the project, the researchers could also face up to 5 years in jail for violating the Wiretap Act.

Taking questions before their presentation, two of the authors told me that they still have a copy of the data that they collected, and admitted that it was not currently stored on an encrypted disk. They did stress that it was, however, being kept in a “secure” location.

What this means of course, is that law enforcement agencies could easily subpoena this data, thus legally compelling the researchers into handing over the data. This places the users of the Tor network at a significant risk, one that certainly violates the expected social norms of the system.

While the researchers are Americans, and conducted their study on a server based in the US, there is certainly an international angle to their study. Users from around the world sent traffic through the researchers’ server, and as such more strict Canadian and European intercept and data privacy laws may apply.

When asked for comment on the research project, and any potential impact for Canadian citizens who may have used the snooping Tor server, Cavoukian issued the following statement:

The team of two graduate students and three professors neither sought legal review of the project, nor ran it past the Human Subjects Committee at their university, putting them in a particularly dangerous position.

A request for clarification on these issues left with the director of the University of Colorado Human Research Committee had not been returned by press time.

The academic paper, “Shining Light in Dark Places: Understanding the Tor Network” (pdf) was presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium yesterday, in Leuven, Belgium. The authors are listed as: Damon McCoy, Kevin Bauer, Dr. Dirk Grunwald, Dr. Tadayoshi Kohno and Dr. Douglas Sicker.

Other concerns

In a second part of the study, the researchers ran an ‘entry node’ to the network for 15 days, which allowed them to determine the source IP address of a large number of Tor users. They used this to learn which countries use Tor more heavily than others. Note that in this second part of the study, the researchers did not have access to the destination site information, nor were they able to observe the kinds of traffic going through their server.

Legal Risks

In order to study Tor, the researchers setup their own ‘exit node’ server on the University of Colorado’s high-speed network. For 4 days in December 2007, they logged and stored the first 150 bytes of each network packet that crossed their network, thus revealing what kind of traffic was crossing the network, and the remote websites that Tor users were visiting. While the authors do not state how many sessions they snooped on, they do state that their server carried over 700GB of data.

Myth: Because the Common Rule exempts research involving subjects that cannot be identified, IRB approval is not required when using anonymized data

Caveat Emptor

No Legal Review Sought

Of particular concern to all Institutional Review Boards is any research that involves the study of participants under the age off 18, and other at risk or vulnerable persons. Given that the users of the Tor network have gone out of their way to seek anonymity, and that in some cases, their discovery could lead to arrest or torture, it would seem that these users would almost certainly be considered to be vulnerable. Furthermore, it is quite likely that the snooped communications include at least a few users under the age of 18 — something that the researchers did not address in their paper.

HT2.0 isn’t a universal solution, so sure, if you love surround sound don’t bother. HT2.0 is an alternative approach, ideal for small bedroom, den or office systems. My own HT2.0 system uses high-end speakers and electronics and sounds better than most multichannel home theaters I’ve heard. More speakers are just more speakers, but better speakers sound better. It’s really as simple as that.

(Credit:
Denon)

Here's a typical speaker setup menu.

This is how a 7.1 setup would look.

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)

You can use a stereo receiver, like Denon’s DRA-397 ($399) or a 5.1/6.1/7.1 channel A/V receiver for your stereo home theater. I covered some of this ground in a previous blog, “Attention home theater shoppers: Think twice before buying a center channel speaker!,” and judging by the reader comments, I should have provided a more detailed roadmap for HT2.0 bliss.

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)

Sure, home theater sound is synonymous with five, six, or seven speakers and a subwoofer. And sure, multichannel audio can sound great, and more and more of today’s films rely on a room-filling surround experience to convey their full impact. But a lot of folks cringe at the very idea of dealing with a mess of wires and speakers filling their living rooms. Enter HT2.0, a concept I’ve been writing about for nearly ten years; stereo home theater really can sound amazing on films that don’t rely on special effects. If you mostly watch dramas, comedies, older films or documentaries, HT2.0 may be all you need.

And here it is set for HT2.0

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)

Yes, they still make stereo receivers–like this Denon DRA-397.

Setting up a HT2.0 system is a lot easier than a multichannel one, and of course, you won’t have to deal with as many wires and speakers. That said, I wouldn’t recommend cutting your speaker budget just because you’re buying fewer speakers–buy two higher quality ones–and if you don’t want to deal with a subwoofer, the speakers shouldn’t be too small. Depending on your room size, a midsize bookshelf speaker, like Paradigm’s excellent Titan Monitor v.5 ($499/pair) or Usher Audio’s smaller S-520 ($400/pair) will provide adequate bass response. If you room is large, say over 400 square feet, you might want to add a sub, and go for a HT2.1 channel system.

But was a CGI baby talking stocks really more memorable than young quarterback Eli Manning somehow escaping a near-certain game-ending sack to curl out and heave a pass 30-plus yards to a falling David Tyree–who didn’t as much “catch” the ball as clutch it with one hand to his helmet?

Instead, we viewers got a gem of a game, the kind that leaves lifelong fans seriously wondering if they’ve even witnessed a better Super Bowl, or football game, in their memory.

TiVo might be overstating the fabulosity of the advertisements aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast.

But, TiVo would rather crow about which multimillion-dollar ad spot (which you’re likely to forget by next week, anyway) was watched the most. The talking E-Trade babies “upstaged” every other commercial, according to TiVo audience stats, including the Doritos user-generated mouse trap, the Life Water “Thriller” spot, as well as the one where Justin Timberlake is dragged all over creation for the sake of Pepsi.

Even if you’re not a sports person, that game was “one for the ages,” as sportswriters like to say. Even in the midst of a five-hour broadcast inflated with as many empty pleas for your dollars and attention as Fox could possibly fit, the star was the game itself, a succinct demonstration of why it is that we love sports.

From a sports perspective, it was the classic set-up, the epic storyline fans, broadcasters, and writers love: An established football dynasty, the New England Patriots, on the verge of achieving the rarest of feats (an undefeated season) prepared to steamroll the fifth-seeded New York Giants en route to a much-deserved place in the annals of sports.

Maybe I’m belaboring the point, but TiVo’s urge to jump on the coattails of an amazing exercise in athletic competition seems to cheapen a classic matchup, and, more importantly, an unforgettable end to a story.

See the headline TiVo used to lead its press release regarding the most-watched ads during the game: “Talking and Trading Baby Blows Away Star-Studded Super Bowl Competition.”

Most open-source software advocates have opposed Microsoft’s effort to standardize Open XML and the SFLC is no exception.

Also, software developers who write code based on a Microsoft-derived specification, such as Open XML, could be limited in how that code is used. “Any code that implements the specification may also do other things in other contexts, so in effect the OSP does not cover any actual code, only some uses of code,” according to the analysis.

Update 5:30 p.m. PDT: A Microsoft representative pointed to previous statements on the intellectual property and Open XML. In a blog in January of this year, Jason Matusow, the company’s director of corporate standards, said that there are no intellectual property issues with Open XML, dismissed claims that there are, and listed the steps Microsoft has taken to clear up any concerns regarding Open XML.

This is an unfortunate report, these all represent issues that have been raised in a campaign that includes innuendo and supposition, leaving out inconvenient information and language and ignoring the same, similar, or less attractive, language that exists for ODF.

Finally, the SFLC said that OSP-covered specifications are not compatible with the General Public License (GPL), which covers thousands of free and open-source products.

Microsoft is awaiting the results of a crucial vote, expected by March 29, from representatives of national standards bodies.

Specifically, the SFLC concluded that the patent protections only apply to current versions of the specifications; future versions could not be covered, it noted.

A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for comment.

While not attempting to clarify the text of the OSP to indicate compatibility with the GPL or provide a safe harbor through its guidance materials, Microsoft wrongly blames the free software legal community for Microsoft’s failure to present a promise that satisfies the requirements of the GPL. It is true that a broad audience of developers could implement the specifications, but they would be unable to be certain that implementations based on the latest versions of the specifications would be safe from attack. They would also be unable to distribute their code for any type of use, as is integral to the GPL and to all free software.

The OSP is meant to allay concerns over violating Microsoft patents that relate to Open XML, Microsoft’s document specifications that the company is trying to have certified as a standard at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). For example, a company could create an open-source spreadsheet or server software that can handle Open XML documents.

As the final period for consideration of OOXML by ISO elapses, SFLC recommends against the establishment of OOXML as an international standard and cautions GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.

The SFLC on Wednesday published a legal analysis of Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (OSP), a document written to give developers the green light to make open-source products based on specifications written by Microsoft.

Prominent legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Center said that the legal terms covering Microsoft’s Open XML document formats pose a patent risk to free and open-source software developers.

Update 9:00 a.m. PDT, March 13: Gray Knowlton, group product manager for
Microsoft Office, published a detailed rebuttal of the SFLC’s analysis, saying that Open XML’s terms are the same or more liberal than rival document standard OpenDocument (ODF), which is supported by Microsoft foes IBM and Sun Microsystems.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead has questioned whether its “pay-what-you-wish” model would work for small bands, but I’ve got to think that a small band must depends on piracy (and any other means) to drive revenue. For a small band, or any software company trying to disrupt incumbent vendors, adoption is the first order of business.

You may call this process “piracy” if you wish–for me it is an act of generosity and it both increases our audience size and record sales. And as I always say on the night–if you’re going to do it anyway you may as well feel good about it! I believe the official term is “viral marketing,” and we depend utterly upon it.

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I don’t think piracy is the salvation of the entertainment industry, but I think there’s an interesting germ of an idea in this TechDirt article about Show of Hands and its dependency on piracy to drive business. As one band member suggests:

But it looks like it’s not done yet. Now that the Apple TV has inched its way into relevance, the company may be able to control almost everything you do in the home and out on the town. If it can, what more can it dominate?

But let’s not forget that Apple is a multi-faceted company. Instead of selling just Macs, Apple is the worldwide leader in the MP3 player market, has an extremely popular smartphone, is the world’s second largest music retailer and is well on its way to becoming the largest.

Knowing that, Apple is very much in the driver’s seat as it enters the next decade. Sure, quite a few things can happen between then and now, but Apple’s position in the market is second to none.

And while some would scoff and say that that means Windows will have a 60 percent market share, they should first consult the numbers. As it stands, Apple only commands about 15 percent of the higher education demographic, but now that 40 percent are ready and willing to buy a Mac, that statistic has been dropped on its head. Aside from that, Macs have become the computer of choice for college students and have supplanted Dell as the most popular brand.

What does that say about the future of the computing market? Sure, Windows machines are still more popular in other demographics, but if 40 percent of the world’s next leaders leave college and decide to enter the world of Mac, how much longer can we expect Microsoft to maintain its stranglehold on the industry?

So why will that happen? Believe it or not, it’s not the stretch some may think it is. Let’s face it — Microsoft dominated the industry for years through sheer power and control along with a little business know-how thrown in. And although some like to believe that Bill Gates and company walked in one day and took the industry over, it didn’t happen that way. Instead, it took years and a slew of deals to propel Microsoft to the top — something Apple is working on now.

So far, Apple is widely considered to be the “cool” brand that offers the best looking computers, the best music players, the slickest cell phone and a great library of songs, movies and podcasts on its iTunes store. In essence, it controls your entertainment and communication.

Aside from that, Macs are gaining ground each month and although Apple still commands an extremely small portion of the worldwide market — about 3 percent — things may change sooner than you think.

So you’ve probably been told by numerous Apple zealots that their favorite company is the greatest in the world. And while they’re all wrong for believing it, their company will eventually become the most dominant in the tech industry. Sorry to break it to you, but it’s true.

Now I know what you’re saying — “will this be an Apple fanboy rant about the wonders of Steve Jobs?” Hardly. The fact of the matter is Apple is poised to become the most powerful company in technology and along the way it’ll definitely court its share of individuals who will despise its every move. And let’s face it — a company doesn’t become the most dominant by being the nicest on the block.

Of course, Apple’s dominance won’t come over night and chances are, it probably won’t happen for a few years, but rest assured that the chances of any other company supplanting Apple as the heir apparent to the tech throne are slim. If anything, look for Google to control the online world and Apple to control hardware and entertainment.

An interesting study was recently conducted by Morgan Stanley. The investment firm surveyed US college students to see what their plans were after graduation and what computer they planned on buying. Amazingly, almost 40 percent of those surveyed said they would buy a
Mac.

Social music sites such as LastFM, Pandora, iLike and many more are making the fans into tastemakers with the ability to promote and share great new music at the touch of a button.

I was surprised to read on David Kusek’s blog (Future of Music) that Indie’s share of the music market is galloping toward 30 percent. I’m not sure where Kusek gets that number, though I was able to find some corroboration, but that is a surprising rise for a once obscure slice of the music pie.

Indie Labels now account for upwards of 30 percent of total music sales, up from the low 20’s just a few years ago. This is a profound shift in the powerbase that favors the independent artist and innovator.

It’s also perhaps indicative of how music distribution is changing music preferences:

Tastemakers, yes, but also kingmakers. I’ve found a range of new music (Yes, Indie, for the most part) through Pandora and other such services. Really, really good music. That’s how I initially found Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Band of Horses, The Essex Green, Surfan Stevens, Super Furry Animals, and more.

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I can’t remember the last time I’ve walked into a music store, and I can’t remember the last time I found a new metal band. (My high school days revisiting me.) Indie, in my admittedly limited experience, seems to do online distribution better than other genres of music.

Way back at CES 2008, Dish Network announced a DTV converter box called the TR-40 that was going to cost $40, include an electronic program guide and it seemed like it was going to be a simple, cheap choice for buyers looking to handle the upcoming analog-to-digital TV transition. Shortly afterward, the TR-40 became the DTVPal and the price went up to $60. Then the TR-40 CRA came out, which was exactly the same as the DTVPal, except it cost $40. And, as of now, you can buy both products from the DTVPal Web site, essentially giving you the option of donating an extra $20 to Dish Network for exactly the same product. If you’re confused, don’t worry–so are we.

Now, Dish continues to muddy the waters with the DTVPal Plus, which is essentially exactly the same as both the TR-40 CRA and the DTVPal, except it includes a more sensitive tuner and costs $70. A DTV converter box with a stronger tuner might be worthwhile for some buyers, but we’re disappointed Dish hasn’t been more forthcoming about the company’s DTV plans. Buyers of the original DTVPal may feel slighted since they only had to wait a couple months to save $20 (on the TR-40) or have the option of buying a box with a stronger tuner. And while we’re on the the subject, what’s up with the TR-50, Dish?