Morocco scraps blogger's two-year jail sentence

Last week, Mohamed Erraji was jailed and fined 5,000
dirhams ($626). He was later released on bail pending the
appeals court ruling.

"The case is not acceptable and the case was abandoned and
thrown out of court," said Ahmed Belouch, presiding judge at
the appeals court in the southern city of Agadir.

Erraji wrote in online newspaper Hespress that Morocco had
been destroyed by the practice of handing out charity or gifts
such as taxi licenses to a lucky few, which encouraged people
to beg.

"This has made the Moroccans a people without dignity, who
live by donations and gifts," he wrote in reference to the
King's charity work.

Judge Belouch cited flaws in prosecuting the case of the
29-year-old blogger, including the failure to summon him to
attend trial 15 days before he actually appeared in court and
his unlawful detention ahead of the trial.

Family members and human rights groups said police arrested
Erraji on September 5 and his trial last 10 minutes. He had no
defense lawyer.

"The ruling today showed the situation of human rights has
changed in Morocco and there is improvement in court dealings
with cases related to rights of opinion and free press," said
Abdellatif Ouammou, who was Erraji lawyer. (Reporting by Lamine
Ghanmi; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

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Amazon tees up content delivery service

By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET

AmazonAmazon CTO Werner Vogels

Amazon is in the midst of creating a new content delivery service aimed at developers and businesses that it expects to launch by year's end.

According to an Amazon Web services blog posted Thursday:

This new (and as yet unnamed) service will provide you with a high performance way to distribute popular, publicly readable content to your customers all over the world, with low latency and high data transfer rates.

Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels wrote in a separate blog that his company is "expanding the cloud" with this service: "Using a global network of edge locations this new service can deliver popular data stored in Amazon S3 to customers around the globe through local access."

Amazon's service will allow customers to store their content in an Amazon S3 holding tank and then mark it as publicly readable when its ready. According to Amazon, customers will then "make a single API call to register the bucket" and have a domain name assigned for their content. When clients "request the object via the returned domain name they'll be routed to a nearest edge location," which aims to deliver content at high speeds.

Amazon's content delivery service is hoping to make its money by allowing customers to pay as they go when using the service. Pricing has not been made public.

GigaOm's Om Malik said that Amazon's service will be disruptive to content delivery network (CDN) incumbents, such as Akamai and Limelight Networks:

Amazon is going to bring a level of transparency to a business that has a sales model much like an brokerage firm in the 1980s. Amazon wants to make buying CDN services as simple as buying a book. Amazon executives told me that company is going to be charging its customers on usage instead of long-term contracts current players foist on their clients.

Seeking Alpha's Dan Rayburn agrees, with one caveat:

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6 Internet providers disclose Web tracking for ads

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

Bresnan Communications LLC

Bresnan's test involved about 6,000 customers in and around Billings, Mont., from April 1 to June 26. The company notified customers by sending e-mails to customers' Bresnan addresses and posting notices on its site. Customers were given an opportunity to decline, or opt out, of targeting, and 18 people took advantage of that option.

Cable One Inc.

Cable One, a unit of The Washington Post Co., conducted a test in Anniston, Ala., with about 14,000 customers for six months starting Nov. 20. The company did not provide specific notice of the trial, nor did it let customers opt out of participation. It said tests are routinely conducted and fall under general notices and agreements posted on the company's Web site and mailed to subscribers annually. The company said it would have sought affirmative consent, known as opt in, had it continued with full deployment.

CenturyTel Inc.

CenturyTel's trial had 20,000 customers, mostly in and around Kalispell, Mont. The trial ran from November to June. The company sent e-mail notifications of an updated privacy policy, to which a paragraph on NebuAd was added. The company said 82 subscribers opted out during the trial. Before suspending a broader launch, CenturyTel started informing customers of it via e-mail and bill inserts.

Embarq Corp.

The nation's fourth-largest traditional phone company, Embarq conducted a test this year with 26,000 subscribers in the Gardner, Kan., area. The company did not directly inform customers of the test but included a general notice within its privacy policy posted online. The company said 15 people opted out.

Knology Inc.

Knology's trial covered an unknown number of customers in West Point, Columbus and Augusta, Ga.; Panama City, Fla.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Huntsville, Ala. Tests began in West Point in January and expanded until the company stopped all trials on July 14. The company says customers were informed through a service agreement posted on its Web site, and subscribers who happened to see it had a chance to opt out of participation. The company did not say how many did.

WideOpenWest

From early March until July 8, WOW used NebuAd's system on its 330,000 customers in its entire service area, which covers Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, Evansville, Ind., Chicago and Detroit. Besides Web postings, WOW notified customers after the fact via e-mail and physical mail and reminded them on billing statements to review privacy notices online. The company said it received 3,355 opt outs, though an unknown number came from the same customer.

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Russia Web site owner killed after arrest

By Steven Musil, CNET

Russia

Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the www.Ingushetiya.ru Web site, was arrested at Nazran airport in southern Russia after disembarking a flight, according to a statement by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Yevloyev was later found dumped on the side of the road, suffering from a gunshot wound to the head, the news site's deputy editor, Ruslan Khautiyev, told the Associated Press. Yevloyev later died at a hospital, Khautiyev said.

Yevloyev had angered the region's Kremlin-backed administration with bold criticism of police treatment of civilians in the region, the AP reported. A court in June accused him of spreading "extremist" statements and ordered him to close his site, but it reappeared under a different name.

The Russian prosecutor general's office said it would open an investigation into the "incident."

"While police officers were attempting to transfer M. Yevloyev to an Interior Ministry office, an incident occurred," said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigative committee of the prosecutor general's office, according to the Interfax news agency. "M. Yevloyev received a gunshot wound to the temple area."

A lawyer for Yevloyev ridiculed the explanation and said police dumped Yevloyev on a road after shooting him.

"It was in no way a mistake," the lawyer, Kaloi Akhilgov, told Reuters.

Reporters Without Borders said it was "outraged" by Yevloyev's death.

"His death must not go unpunished," the media group said in a statement. "It is vital that the international community, especially the European Union, should demand to know what really happened and who was responsible."

Yevloyev is the latest high-profile journalist to be killed in Russia in recent years. Anna Politkovskaya, who covered the war in Chechnya, was shot to death in the entryway to her Moscow apartment in 2006.

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Ad targeting based on ISP tracking now in doubt

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
15 minutes ago

A slow-building privacy storm moved in on NebuAd Inc., the Silicon Valley startup that can facilitate the Web tracking. And its potential partners, the Internet service providers, failed to make the case that they should be in the ad business at all, rather than simply being the pipes that pass Internet traffic back and forth.

One by one, cable and telephone companies that had conducted trials using NebuAd's ad-serving system have indefinitely suspended expansion plans. In interviews, executives at the Internet access providers blamed an unfavorable climate as Congress considers tightening federal oversight.

"A bunch of them have dropped (NebuAd) like hot potatoes," said Gigi Sohn, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge.

Annmarie Sartor, a spokeswoman for broadband provider CenturyTel Inc., said the company was ready to proceed until "Congress started questioning privacy."

"We were going to launch this summer," she said. "The trial from our viewpoint was successful."

Bresnan Communications LLC, The Washington Post Co.'s Cable One Inc. and Knology Inc. also have ended trials without immediate plans to move forward, joining the previously disclosed suspensions by Embarq Corp. and WideOpenWest. Charter Communications Inc. dropped plans for a summer pilot because of the scrutiny.

Although NebuAd claimed late last year that Internet providers representing millions of customers run NebuAd's system, it's unclear how many, if any, partners remain.

NebuAd, whose chief executive, Bob Dykes, freely spoke with The Associated Press about its plans several months ago, declined comment for this story. Spokeswoman Janet McGraw said via e-mail, "We do not have any specific business updates at this point."

Across the Atlantic, a similar company called Phorm Inc. has also faced complaints since its February announcement of partnerships with three access providers reaching 70 percent of Britain's broadband market — BT Group PLC, Virgin Media Inc. and Carphone Warehouse Group PLC's TalkTalk.

Shares in Phorm have declined about 75 percent since peaking 11 days after the announcement. A company representative said Phorm CEO Kent Ertugrul, who earlier praised his own company's commitment to privacy, was traveling and unavailable for an interview.

Both systems work with Internet service providers to scan customers' Web traffic for patterns. Then NebuAd or Phorm determines which advertisements are likely to interest those customers.

If you've visited several sites on golf, for instance, NebuAd could label you a golfer. Then Web sites that participate in ad networks created by NebuAd can be triggered to show you an ad for golf clubs or golf resorts, while someone else who frequents sites on Jaguars might see an ad from an auto dealer instead.

The thinking is that Internet users are more likely to pay attention and find advertising less annoying if the pitches are relevant to them. That's why Web sites or the networks that deliver online ads can charge advertisers more for running targeted ads, even when they use cruder methods for trying to discern people's interests.

For Internet service providers, the rise of NebuAd or Phorm means they could share in ad revenue now going mostly to the networks of Web sites affiliated with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

"Naturally if there is a way to take a meager slice of that revenue in some way, it's something which companies will want to look at," said Adam Liversage, a spokesman for BT Group, which plans to start trials "pretty soon" with Phorm.

Both NebuAd and Phorm say their systems do not register visits to sites related to "sensitive" subjects like health or sex, nor do they read e-mails or track consumers by name.

CenturyTelUnited Online Inc

Yet Front Porch's promotional material continues to circulate. Its promise: "New FREE Revenue for Broadband ISPs!"

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Want IE8 Beta 2? You May Have To Jump Through Hoops

Mark Long, newsfactor

MicrosoftInternet Explorer

For Windows XP users with IE8 Beta 1 already installed, Windows XP Service Pack 3 and IE8 Beta 2 would become permanent, said Jane Maliouta, the deployment product manager for IE8 at Microsoft. "You will still be able to upgrade to later IE8 builds as they become available, but you won't be able to uninstall them," she said.

Incompatibility Issues

Developers will need to be careful because IE8 Beta 2 will not work with several key services, applications and add-on programs, including certain versions of the Windows Live Mail. IE8 Beta 2 users also are currently unable to view movies on demand from Netflix, though Microsoft said the two companies are working to resolve the compatibility issue as quickly as possible.

Maliouta strongly encouraged those who have already downloaded IE8 Beta 1 to follow several steps before installing the new Beta 2 version. First uninstall the Beta 1 version and SP3 for Windows XP, followed by reinstalling SP3, and only then install IE8 Beta 2.

"If you have IE8 Beta 1 installed, the IE8 installer will automatically uninstall any earlier versions and then install the latest version of IE8 Beta 2 for you," Maliouta said. "You will be prompted to reboot twice. The first reboot is to remove IE8 Beta 1 from your machine and the second one to complete the IE8 Beta 2 installation."

According to Microsoft, IE8 Beta 1 was only intended for use by developers. Consumers running Windows XP need not worry about downloading IE8 Beta 2 so long as they did not install Beta 1.

However, consumers testing IE8 Beta 2 on their Vista-enabled machines must jump through a few hoops should they decide to revert to IE7. According to Microsoft, they'll have to click the Start button, type "Programs and Features" in the Start Search box, and click Programs and Features in the Programs list. Then in the Tasks pane, they'll need to click "View installed updates," select IE8 Beta 2 and then click "Uninstall."

Dueling Releases

The relatively unpolished state of IE8 Beta 2 is not all that unusual. Early versions of Firefox 3 likewise were subject to various compatibility issues and performance limitations.

Both Mozilla and Microsoft are doing all they can to gain browser market share. For example, Mozilla's recent release of its "experimental" Ubiquity plug-in is an attempt to steal some of the thunder from some new features destined for IE8, called Accelerators and Web Slices. For its part, Microsoft has already added several new capabilities to IE8 Beta 2 that mimic what Firefox 3 already has on tap, including the rival browser's so-called "AwesomeBar."

Mozilla's campaign to set a world software-download record for Firefox 3 earlier this year has increased the pressure on Microsoft to turn the tide. Though the software giant has stabilized its market-leading share of the browser market in the last three months, Microsoft's numbers have fallen seven percentage points in the past 12 months, and 24.5 percentage points since August 2005, according to a new global survey conducted by Janco and the IT Productivity Center.

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Comcast Limits Homes To 250GB in New Public Policy

Steve Bosak, newsfactor

Comcastnetwork congestion

The new policy was posted on Comcast's Web site early Friday, and the meter starts running on Oct. 1.

Charlie Douglas, director of corporate communications for online services, said, "The amount of data measured is aggregate monthly usage of uploads and downloads."

The amended service policy states in part: "It's no secret we've been evaluating a specific monthly data usage or bandwidth threshold for our Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customers for some time." The threshold is high for the majority of Comcast users.

Examples of what a 250GB limit equates to are cited in the amendment, such as sending 50 million e-mails, downloading 62,500 songs, 125 standard-definition movies, or uploading 25,000 high-resolution digital photos. The policy says the median monthly usage for residential Comcast customers is 2GB to 3GB per month.

Bandwidth Hogs

Some observers say Comcast has a reasonable argument. The company has expanded rapidly into business and residential phone service, meanwhile maintaining its large cable-television enterprise. There is only so much available bandwidth at any given time.

Comcast is moving data, voice and television and high-definition video over the same pipes. It only takes a few peer-to-peer file-sharing applications to cause unexpected congestion.

Making Policies Public

Comcast's previous efforts to address the problem brought a rebuke from the Federal Communications Commission. Comcast was caught throttling down the connections of BitTorrent P2P users on its network without their knowledge.

When the matter came before a congressional subcommittee, Comcast admitted to the practice and was ordered to stop gating individual connections. The FCC and Congress felt the targeting of individual accounts without notification was the main issue.

In its new policy Comcast is not limiting bandwidth on the sly, nor is it keeping its policies private. In fact, the company is posting a banner ad on its home page and sending flyers detailing the new policy to each of its customers in September. The company has also posted suggestions for using download-metering software that will track usage, much like the minute counters on cell phones.

Douglas emphasized, "This does not affect our commercial customers." Comcast has been aggressively moving into unified data services for commercial accounts, and some, especially those involved in backup and disaster recovery, could go over the 250GB limit, but that service is separate from residential accounts, said Douglas.

"We need to remember that the amount of usage we are talking about, more than 250GB a month, does not apply to more than 99 percent of our customers. So the less than 1 percent who are notified today receive a phone call from Comcast asking them to moderate their usage, which the vast majority of them do voluntarily," Douglas said.

Other broadband providers are also likely to publicize limits.

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