I listen to the radio a lot. I guess I am of the last generation when listening to long wave radio from such exotic and faraway places as Dublin was genuinely exciting.

One of the benefits of the digital age is being able to get ready access to the BBC World Service. Pretty much every day I dip into and out of it. One of the programmes I listen out for is Business Daily as they are not locked into the cycle of following market news and can roam far and wide.

Over the weekend Tim Disney (nephew of Walt Disney and himself a director and producer but not of anything you would want to see) was interviewed about the impact of new technology and came-up with the following pearls:-

1. Whilst he extolled it for what it could do he added the problem is that everyone has it;

2. Complained that DVD sales are falling whilst saying he himself uses the Netflix (streaming) system; and

3. Argued (vaguely) that the film industry needs some sort of collection agency to raise revenue. Has he seen what a success the record industry has made of this with ASCAP, BMI etc?

Whilst there are serious issues facing the 'content industries' the combination of noblesse oblige with an ostrich sensibility is not helping them.

South Tyneside Council have gone one better than Ryan Giggs. Whereas the veteran playmaker took legal proceedings against Twitter in the London (as reported below) the Council have obtained a subpoena in California to reveal the identity of the person behind a Twitter account.

The other difference between the parties is that Giggs presumably is paying for his lawyers whilst the residents of South Tyneside, who had no choice in the matter, are picking up the tab.

Clearly the Council are upset over the content published on the Twitter account but by taking this action they have fallen foul of the Streisand Effect. They would have been much better advised to have put-out a statement denying the accusations and spending the money on something useful.

Tags: Twitter, Giggs

Following-up on the study referred to below is an interesting thread at the (excellent) Meta Filter site here.

One element which is worth highlighting is the reference to the credit card companies cancelling when chargeback rates exceed 1%.

Tags: Spam

Credit to the games company Crytek Ltd

To reveal "the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity" install the Ghostery plug-in to your web browser.

Blog disclaimer - on this website I use Google Analytics, Disqus (for comments), ShareThis (for comments) and (although it is not revealed by Ghostery) LiveStats.

Tags: Cookies

I wrote earlier this month about the clueless guidance notes from the Information Commissoners Office in readiness for implementation of the EU directive on cookies. To illustrate the point please see how they have deal with it on their website here.

Such has been the tide of criticism that has engulfed ICO they announced the day before implementation that they will not take enforcement action for one year. A classic British fudge.

Tags: ICO, Cookies

The whole business of this kerfuffle throws-up a number of questions which are far more interesting than the identity of the footballer:-

1. The reach of English law over Twitter

Twitter's operation, both legally and operationally, is based in the States. The first hurdle the footballer's lawyers have to deal with is establish jurisdiction unless Twitter voluntarily submit. I cannot see them doing this as it will undermine their entire business and upset vast swathes of their users.

2. Identification of the infringing party

Assuming they do not want to take contempt of Court proceedings against all the people who have spread the identity through Twitter they will need to identify the first person (people?)

Even if they can do this do they really think it is going to help them to have people fined and/or slung in jail over this business?

3. The Streisand Effect

Defined in Wikipedia as "The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely."

4. Is a secret still secret when (lots of) people know it?

The Court this week made what was a temporary injunction permanent and appears to take the view that the answer to the above question is yes.

The Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland has tackled this head-on today by publishing a (barely) concealed picture of the footballer on its front page today.

My advice to the footballer in question is that, having dug himself in an almighty hole his only hope now to stop it spreading further is that the predicted end of the world happens and quickly.

Tags: Twitter, Giggs

Having traced the value chain the UCal study then looks to identify 'bottlenecks' which can be squeezed to throttle the level of spam traffic.

Spam operators are clearly adept in constantly reinventing their networks in a manner which is similar to the evolution of the flu virus. To every security initiative they are able to constantly adjust to stay one step ahead. In 2004 Bill Gates announced that spam would be finished within two years.

The weakness in the spam system comes when it interacts with the bank system. Not surprisingly the study found relatively few banks involved:-

a. Most herbal and replica purchasers went through one bank is St.Kitts;

b. Most pharmaceutical affiliate prgrams used two banks in Azerbaijan and Latvia; and

c. Software was handled entirely by two banks in Latvia and Russia.

All these countries have 'form' when it comes to money-laundering. It follows that macro solutions (such as the introduction of new legislation and subsequent enforcement) is unlikely to be effective. Instead the study suggests the micro solution of tackling it through the finance networks.

There are only two finance networks which between them dominate the market in the Western World - Visa and Mastercard. Rather than engaging in a game of whack-a-mole with each individual offending bank the proposed solution is hidden in the (very) small print of administration of the system. Each transaction within the networks is assigned a Merchant Category Code to identify the type of good being supplied. If issuing banks refuse to settle transactions in which the card is not present for the relevant codes it would cut-off the flow of money.

The obvious response of the spammers to any such move would be to deliberately mis-code their transactions. However the networks already have in place mechanisms to deter such behaviour through the imposition of substantial fines and/or suspension on those merchant accounts responsible. Making the cost of doing business prohibitive on the spammers is the key

Tags: Law, Spam

Whilst I have little idea of what is taught in MBA schools, I can recommend the paper "Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain" produced by (amongst others) a team at the Department of Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. A link is here.


Our intrepid band of researchers opened-up the spam floodgates and then traced the process back through advertising, click support and realization (sic). To this end they made sample purchases using a sales of pre-paid credit cards which were subsequently traced through to delivery


A typical example of what they found (in this case the Pharmacy Express operation) involved:-


1. The spam email linked to a domain registered in Russia;


2. The machine providing name services resides in China;


3. Hosting resolved to a machine in Brazil;


4. The storefront for Pharmacy Express is associated to Mailien pharmaceutical affiliate program based in Russia;


5. Having ordered goods from the storefront users are redirected to a portal which serves content via an IP address in Turkey;


6. Funds are transferred to a bank based in Baku, Azerbaijan (handy for next year's Eurovision Song Contest FInal); and


7. The goods are shipped from Chennai in India.


This is an outstanding example of trans-national cooperation, not least because I confidently predict that it runs on a trust-basis as no lawyer would be capable of adequately documenting it (let alone enforcing it).

Tags: Spam, Law

"Exclusive data reveal that while The Donald garnered $260 million in free publicity during his six-week presidential fling, most of it was negative."

Randall Lane in the Daily Beast and the link is here.

A further sorry example of the failure of regulation. On this occasion the Information Commissoner's Office which is responsible for data protection in the UK:-

1. Andrew Crossley and the porn downloaders

Mr Crossley ran a law firm whose business was centered on chasing people it alleged had illegally downloaded porn films. Armed with a list of IP addresses they sent-out reams of 'pre-settlement' letters offering not to take proceedings for, typically, £500 a time. All went swimmingly until they had to turn-up at Court at which point it emerged that their client did not own the necessary copyrights, that there had been abuse of the process used to get hold of the IP addresses, that the fee-sharing agreement they had in place was in breach of the relevant regulations and, in summary, the whole process was a shambles. Mr Crossley is looking at a substantial wasted costs order and a trip to the disciplinary tribunal.

Through his activities Mr Crossley attracted the attention of the Anonymous group of hackers who mounted a denial of service attack on his website which took it down. Things then got worse, much worse when in restoring the website the content of his servers were left exposed and unencrypted. The ICO said of this business "Sensitive personal details relating to thousands of people were made available for download to a worldwide audience and will have caused them embarrassment and considerable distress. The security measures ACS Law had in place were barely fit for purpose in a person’s home environment, let alone a business handling such sensitive details."

The ICO then levied a whopping fine of...£1,000 having decided that Mr Crossley was broke. This is entirely wrong. They themselves say that a £200,000 would have been in order was the lawyer not already washed-up. In this case they should have fined him the full amount and then, if necessary, not collect the balance.

2. Cookies

A EU directive takes effect on 26th May which requires website operators to obtain the consent of site visitors to the use of cookies. Riding to the rescue we have the ICI which published guidance on 9th May. Whilst the guidance stretches to 8 pages it amounts to 'don't ask us as we don't have a clue'.

In finest Yes, Minister tradition...

"We will be keeping the situation under review and will consider issuing more detailed advice if appropriate in future. In particular, we may supplement this advice with further examples of how to gain consent for particular types of cookies."

Amazon already have in the States a cloud-based music storage system.This enables its customers to upload music to a remote server so that they can access it from different devices. Google have followed this up with an announcement of their own service today.

Keeping true to form Google report that the demands of the record industry were wholly unrealistic and, if accepted, would have meant the service was emasculated. They have therefore launched this without the agreement of the record industry.

The thinking of the record industry can be seen here in a statement by the General Counsel of BMI (which is a publishing rights body in the States). They believe "that the public performing right has long applied to on-demand, interactive streaming". This means that if one decides to upload music from a record, CD, download to a cloud-based service that BMI believe that they should be paid before the uploader can listen.

Perhaps BMI and their industry friends should concentrate on working on ways to encourage new and innovative ways of encouraging their consumers to take paid content rather than sticking their heads in the sand and complaining how unfair it all is.

Tags: media