Welcome to Gahtan’s Technology and Internet Law Blog

Evan Williams’ Ten Rules for Startups:

Be Narrow
Be Different
Be Casual
Be Picky
Be User-Centric
Be Self-Centered
Be Greedy
Be Tiny
Be Agile
Be Balanced
(bonus!): Be Wary

From Saunderslog

According to Globes, the Israeli Ministry of Communications has instructed Internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure that their systems do not carry international calls over VoIP. However, the effect of this directive will likely simply favor the use of peer-to-peer voip networks such as Skype which were not included within the scope of the directive even though many now also offer PSTN termination (such as SkypeOut).

Between these types of announcements and the problems some people seem to have with their local ISPs attempting to block VOIP calls, a good solution may be to build in more flexibility to use non-standard port numbers for VOIP traffic. That would likely make VOIP more difficult to block as a service.

Update: There are some reports that this action may be related to cutting down on the selling of cheap international phone cards. As Jeff Pulver notes, a number of Israeli companies were among the pioneers in the development of VOIP and Israel generally has inexpensive international call rates.

Microsoft recently issued a covenant not to sue in respect of its Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. However, SUN and a number of commentators have already identified holes in the covenant.

From Groklaw.

A number of people, including me, have posted now and then about unfair or bad provisions contained in end user license agreements. Apparently someone has now set up a new site to consolidate reviews of and to rate end user license agreements (and hopefully other types of agreements also). The site operators have so far not revealed themselves. Sources of feedback also appear to remain anonymous.

EULAscan

eWeek has an item about the growing problem of malicious keyloggers. These programs often evade detection by anti-virus tools and can be difficult to detect once installed. Some are customized to steal personal or financial information (and can lie dormant until the user visits a financial site) while others look for intellectual property such as Microsoft Corp. Word or CAD/CAM files.

According to an item on PCWorld:

Increasing competition from Internet phone providers like Vonage and from services such as Skype is causing traditional telephone carriers around the world to look at methods to slow or stop IP-based calls that cross their networks. The key technology, from a firm called Narus, can detect VoIP packets and either block them or deprioritize them to reduce call quality. A number of foreign telephone carriers have already enlisted the company’s services.

Narus bills their product as CALEA compliant. So carrier may end up installing it in order to comply with lawful intercept requirements and would then have the functionality to cripple third party VOIP applications.

According to Narus’ website, the product has already been deployed by a number of carriers including T-Mobile.

As a follow up to an item about Rogers blocking podcasts, Mark Evans called Rogers who said they were not blocking podcasts but rather providing priority to email and web traffic (Saunderslog).

While it does make sense for some IP services to be provided with higher priority than others, this could take us down a slipper slope. Who decides what traffic gets priority? Would all real time traffic get priority or would real time traffic from competitive services (non-Rogers VOIP or IP-TV applications) be left with low priority? For example, if web and email traffic are given a higher priority, everything else by default would get low priority.

Recently, the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner signaled its decision to not investigate US data brokers citing lack of jurisdiction to compel the production of evidence from entities located outside of Canada. The Privacy Commissioner’s view on this issue was communicated by way of a response to a complaint received approximately 11 months earlier and did not directly relate to the recent Maclean’s article about US data brokers obtaining cell phone records of Canadians. It is interesting to note that calls for action regarding the cell phone incident have focused on the Privacy Commissioner rather than the police. Although I’m not a criminal lawyer, I would think that if personal data, such as cell phone records, is obtained through impersonation or under false pretenses then a crime may have been committed and should be investigated as such.