Bayosphere

Dave Farber has written an essay (PDF, 400k) for IEEE. The title is “Balancing Security and Liberty.” Worthwhile reading.

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Cartels and monopolies are the bane of competitive markets. We’re seeing an attempt to consolidate far more than is warranted in a key market — direct satellite broadcast.

How this merger goes through the regulatory system will determine a lot about the future of communications in America. More in my Wednesday column.

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Mercury News: Tentative Microsoft accord reached. Sources say terms are weaker than those handed down by judge last year.

If the sources are correct, the expected has occurred — a sellout of the American public by an administration that had long since made clear it would do exactly that.

What a sham this has been. What a shameful process, leaving a lawbreaker free to do practically anything it wishes. What a signal to the business community.

If the terms reported are accurate, the states are among the last chance for a serious remedy, as is the European Union and its increasing annoyance with Microsoft. Do they have the stamina and the courage to continue when the most powerful player of all has abandoned the public interest? It will take plenty of both.

Keep in mind that this deal may not happen in the ways the media are reporting so far. Some of the reports have trial-balloon characteristics, and it’s possible the terms will have one or two teeth, as opposed to the almost total cave-in we’re reading about so far. Maybe I’m grasping at straws.

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If the regulatory authorities permit Dish Network to take over DirecTV, you may as well say goodbye to antitrust enforcement altogether. This deal would create an effective monopoly. It’s like allowing a merger of all cable-TV systems nationwide.

I’m a customer of Dish, which is a fine company. It’s competitive and pro-customer precisely because of the competition it faces. Take away its only serious satellite competitor? I don’t think so.

We’re heading toward a time, if this deal goes through, when we’ll have two choices in the information-delivery services on which we will rely. That’s not enough.

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I’m heading back to Asia today, to teach at the University of Hong Kong and make several regional reporting trips. Watch this space…

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Rob Fixmer (Interactive Week): Don’t make cyberspace into a police state. We need to protect our borders and our identities with equal vigilance. But if Americans think they are being spied upon, by government or businesses, as they make their way about the Net, as they send e-mail to grandma, watch videos, buy personal gifts or build Web pages, we will have turned cyberspace into a police state.

Most people have no idea how much they’re being spied on. The data massagers in big business collect and sell more about us than we tend to realize. It’s sleazy, and legal.

Now comes the “anti-terrorism” law, which will dramatically increase the amount of government surveillance. Maybe there won’t be lots of abuse. If not, that would be a first in human history — the first time government got massive new powers over its people but failed to abuse them in some manner.

I’ve long assumed that someone might be reading my e-mail, that is, someone other than me and the people with whom I was corresponding. It just stood to reason. E-mail is a very insecure system even without Carnivore.

Will the government be scooping up everyone’s communications, then sifting through them? Not for a while. But the technology is evolving quickly enough, with storage getting incredibly cheap, so that it’s becoming possible for such a situation to develop.

It’s probably best to assume, now and in the future, that someone has access to your data traffic. If that worries you, use PGP or some other encryption method for the most sensitive communications. If it doesn’t worry you, you’re more comfortable with surveillance than you should be.

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Microsoft Responds to MSN.com Browser Issue. The decision to block anyone from the site was clearly in error.

Ed Foster (Infoworld): The 500-employee limit. Why, in fact, does Microsoft even have this policy in its OEM agreement if it’s not going to be enforced uniformly? I don’t know, but I doubt that Microsoft’s OEMs could legally enforce this policy — at least not the way it was presented to Mr. Hurtz. It is gross discrimination, and it’s particularly unfair that it targets companies based on number of employees.

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Well, today’s the official launch of Windows XP. Microsoft deserves credit for finally coming up with a consumer OS that doesn’t crash all the time.

But the control-freak stuff, and Microsoft’s relentless push to bring people into its own product orbit, is too much for me. I won’t be buying XP or using it (except to test features).

I’m still going to try Living Without Microsoft…

Whatever you think about Microsoft or its business practices, give the company and Bill Gates a nod for holding the launch in New York.