iTnews: Virtual law and you

As a journalist at iTnews:

Businesses in recent years have increasingly turned to virtual worlds for opportunities in advertising, recruiting, and online expansion. As real-world money and people migrate online, new questions are being raised about the legal implications of virtual behaviour.

In a forthcoming book titled “Virtual Law”, cyberlaw scholar Greg Lastowka explores the future of virtual crime and how real-world legal cases involving property rights, criminal activities, contractual duties, copyright and trademark laws, have emerged from disputes in virtual worlds such as Second Life.

An associate professor at the Rutgers-Camden law school, Lastowka spoke with iTnews about his book, and what virtual law might mean for businesses.

What are the business potentials of virtual worlds?

Today, most virtual worlds are marketed as entertainment services. However, there seems to be an increased interest lately in virtual worlds that are oriented toward less structured and more social experiences.

In environments like Second Life, users have much more control over the world and there are no game goals that guide participant behavior. Virtual worlds like Second Life are not marketed as games, but as platforms where individuals and companies might pursue their own goals and businesses.

For instance, in Second Life, people sell personal services, engage in advertising, and seek profits from transactions in virtual property, all using a virtual currency that can be exchanged for real currency. So it seems the business opportunities in virtual worlds vary depending on whether you have a game world or a more social world.

Game worlds are primarily businesses for their creators and are usually built around a monthly subscription model and the sale of "expansion" software and additional services. Often, game worlds prohibit third parties from creating businesses on their platforms.

More social worlds might pursue subscription models as well, but they might also sell players virtual property, like the furniture that is sold to players in the world of Habbo Hotel. They also pursue advertising revenues.

The Second Life model of an open virtual world is perhaps the most interesting. Second Life sees itself as a platform on which third parties will make investments and try to build their own businesses. So the business model of the provider is tied to the business models of the participants.

What are the legal risks of virtual worlds for businesses?

Most subscribers to game worlds have rather small-scale monetary investments in them, so it seems doubtful that players would resort to litigation. But some do, and providers of game worlds generally design end-user license agreements and terms of service as a first line of defense.

Players must click through the agreements before installing the software and the game companies claim this is a binding contract. So far, game companies have been very successful in defending these licenses and contracts in litigation.

Providers of more open worlds, like Second Life, face potentially more significant legal risks because they attract greater and more concentrated investments. When a company or an individual has invested several thousand or more dollars in doing business in a virtual world, they will be more likely to bring a court challenge if they feel the game company has jeopardized their investments.

Additionally, because the virtual world acts as a host, it may find itself in the middle of disputes between competing investors. For instance, one business operating in the virtual world might claim that another business in the world infringed its trademarks or copyrights. In that case, they may want the platform owner to assist them in stopping the infringer. This might put the platform owner in a tricky position.

Finally, those who invest in more open virtual worlds may be taking substantial legal risks. As I said, the contract terms drafted by virtual world providers are generally very favorable to their interests. They make it difficult for third-party investors to make claims if troubles occur.

Obviously, if you are making business investments on a platform that you do not control and where the owner offers no real assurances, this can be risky.

Have there been any past legal cases relating to virtual worlds?

Yes, there are some cases now on the books, although the number is small, given the novelty of virtual worlds. I know of fewer than twenty lawsuits, though I imagine the number may be somewhat larger than that given that many suits have not been reported.

The cases I know of have dealt with various disputes: intellectual property issues, computer abuse issues, and enforcement of contracts, for instance. There was even one case that dealt with the issue of whether player volunteers should be understood as game company employees.

What happened in the most significant of these cases?

I do not know which case is really the most significant, but the recent case of Bragg v. Linden Research has attracted a good deal of attention. The Bragg case involved a participant in Second Life who happened to also be a lawyer. He sued Linden Research, the owners of Second Life.

Bragg alleged he had lost several thousand dollars worth of virtual property investments when the platform owner cancelled his account. He alleged that the company had essentially stolen or destroyed his personal property and he deserved compensation.

The owners of Second Life countered that their contract provisions controlled the dispute. According to the terms of the contract, the dispute needed to be submitted to arbitration in California.

Also, the contract drafted by the company seemed to say, essentially, that Bragg had no real interest in the virtual property. Linden also claimed that Bragg had exploited their software in order to purchase part of the property he alleged was confiscated. So they brought a counterclaim alleging that Bragg violated computer hacking law.

The suit was settled after Second Life brought a motion asking that the arbitration provision be enforced. The court denied that motion. The court stated that the term would not be enforced because it was "unconscionable". In other words, the court found the provision procedurally and substantively unfair to Bragg.

It is interesting that the court also seemed interested in reaching the deeper issues presented by the case. In its opinion on the arbitration provision, it said: "Ultimately at issue in this case are the novel questions of what rights and obligations grow out of the relationship between the owner and creator of a virtual world and its resident-customers."

What are some topics your book will cover - can you give us a preview of your favourite of these topics?

The book is going to tackle several issues. There will be some general material on the basic structure and types of virtual worlds, the history of the technology, and how virtual worlds work as businesses. There will be some more theoretical material on how law adapts to new technology and particularly internet technologies. I will also have discussions of virtual world litigation and how it has raised interesting questions in various legal fields, such as criminal law and intellectual property law.

One of my favorite topics is the question of how legal rules relate to rules of games. Strangely enough, the law seems to recognize and give some deference to private and traditional game rules. There is even a United States Supreme Court that, in deciding the interpretation of a federal statute, makes a serious distinction between the essential and non-essential rules of golf.

I find that real interesting. In the case of game-like virtual worlds, understanding the idea of a "jurisdiction of play" might be one key to making legal sense of these environments.

What has drawn your interest to the legal implications of virtual worlds?

One of my first experiences with a computer was when I was in elementary school in the late 1970's. As part of an enrichment program, I was allowed to play the text-game "Adventure" on an old mainframe computer that was programmed with punch cards. That game was the inspiration for a host of early virtual worlds.

I started programming similar games on an Apple II computer before I was a teenager. So you might say I have had a long fascination with virtual worlds.

As a law student, I was generally interested in questions about the interface of law and technology. In law school, I wrote a student publication on the new legal issues arising around search engines.

When I realized that there were also interesting issues being raised by online games and virtual worlds, I was eager to write about that as well. Luckily, I met Professor Dan Hunter (who is teaching now at the University of Melbourne), and we co-authored one of the first law review articles on law and virtual worlds.

In the past few years, I have explored about a dozen virtual worlds. Still, I think I am still something of a "noob". While really enjoy exploring the environments and learning about them, I am not a dedicated participant in any of these worlds at present. My family simply would not let me spend twenty hours a week in a virtual world – like many participants do.

What do you expect of the law and virtual worlds in the near future?

I expect the law in this area will get more interesting. Virtual worlds are interesting because they combine together aspects of creative fiction, games and real communities. Many of the rules of these environments are going to be flexible as both a matter of law and technology.

As bandwidth and participation both increase, we are going to see more interesting legal issues being raised. If we see the development of more virtual worlds that operate as open platforms for third-party investments, I imagine litigation activity will increase as well.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, I think few people realized how important e-commerce and internet law would turn out to be. I am not certain that Amazon.com will be replaced by a virtual bookstore (two dimensional space is sometimes easier to navigate), but we can be fairly confident that, over the next few years, we will see more courts and legislatures looking more carefully at disputes taking place in virtual worlds.

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iTnews: Mobile Internet: the wireless convergence

As a journalist at iTnews:

The national telecommunications industry has experienced some strife in recent days. Weighed down by regulatory issues to do with a once-government-owned incumbent copper network, international comparisons of Australian broadband pricing and availability have proved to be embarrassing at best.

But while Telstra and the recently formed Group of Nine tiptoe through a tangle of broadband regulations and negotiations with the ACCC, other telecommunications service providers are treading into a brave new world of wireless communications.

Since the launch of Hutchison's third-generation mobile network in April 2003, mobile telecommunications service providers have expanded their offerings from traditional voice calling to include video calls, multimedia downloads and Internet access.

According to 2007 survey results from the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association's (AIMIA) Australia Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, 30 percent of survey respondents reported using 3G technology, reflecting an 11 percent growth in 3G penetration from previous years' results.

While voice calls and SMS were found to be the most frequently used services, survey participants also reported having used their phones for MMS, content downloads, and video calling. Seven percent of survey respondents used their mobile phones for sending and receiving e-mail.

Speaking at a wireless discussion organised by the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) last week, AIMIA's Head of Mobile Claudia Sagripanti said that while 11 percent of Australians are reportedly accessing the Internet via their mobile phones, public uptake of the technology remains deterred by cost.

"Data charges are a big issue for consumers because they [consumers] don't know exactly how much they are being charged," she said.

But cost is not likely to be an issue for long, as service providers race to deliver networks that are faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before.

When Telstra launched its $1 billion NextG network in October 2006, the network claimed to reach 98.8 per cent of the Australian population, delivering voice and broadband services at speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. The network has since been upgraded to deliver speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps, and is expected to reach speeds of up to 40 Mbps by next year.

Hutchison too upgraded its 3G mobile network in February last year to incorporate High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology, increasing the network's maximum download speed to 3.6 Mbps.

Mobile telecommunications are expected to heat up as Optus and Vodafone prepare to launch their own 3G networks by the end of the year.

Optus is working with Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks to build a national network that operates in the 900 megahertz (MHz) and 2100MHz frequency spectrum.

Meanwhile, Vodafone has earmarked Christmas 2008 for the launch of its $500 million 3G mobile broadband network that is set to cover
95 percent of the Australian population.

At first glance, mobile Internet speeds pale in comparison to ADSL2+ wired broadband offerings that operate at speeds of around 20 Mbps.

When compared with average Australian broadband speeds of 1 Mbps as reported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) last year, however, HSDPA may present a reasonable alternative to wired services.

But with network rivalry comes cost reductions for businesses and consumers.

"Wireless services are now competing with the incumbent copper wire line service," said Grant Stepa, Australia and New Zealand Managing Director of Airspan Networks, while expounding the merits of WiMAX technologies at last week's ATUG wireless discussion.

"Hence price points mirror – and in many cases are lower than – those of traditional telephone services."

"This is a threat to the incumbent's fixed and mobile pricing regime, and the end users are at an advantage," he said.

World Wide WiMax

WiMax is a wireless telecommunications technology that is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard. Governed by the WiMax Forum, which was formed in June 2001 to promote the development of a WiMax standard, the technology has applications in high-speed data and telecommunications, as well as presenting a wireless alternative for last mile broadband access.

Already, the technology has received great attention in developing nations and countries such as China, Russia and Tanzania.

Last October, networking giant Cisco announced two initiatives aimed at bringing high-speed broadband access to consumers and businesses in emerging countries.

Called "Country Transformation" and "Digital Inclusion", the projects are expected to make use of the company's wireless portfolio of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi mesh and mobile WiMax products to drive the provision of wireless broadband in developing areas.

Canadian broadband and wireless product and services vendor Redline Communications has launched a Tanzanian WiMax network in a partnership with African service provider, Hotspot Business Solutions. The network debuted in November 2007 to service the Tanzania's commercial centre in Dar es Salaam, and is expected to be expanded to cover six major cities nationwide.

In Taiwan, officials announced in October last year that the island will spend $664 million in a WiMax development program in efforts to garner the lion's share of WiMax manufacturing.

Also in motion are plans for an island-wide Mobile WiMax network, called the M(mobile)-Taiwan program.

As voice and data telecommunications services converge, Airspan's Stepa expects WiMax to be a convenient, portable alternative to the local loop copper network in Australia.

"What we're seeing in Australia is a proliferation in the deployment of fixed and nomadic wireless broadband services," he said.

"Once a wireless service is in place, it is an easy next step to deliver a converged suite of services that include traditional Internet and VoIP."

The penetration of WiMax in Australia is championed by Internet Service Providers such as Internode and Unwired.

In January this year, Internode launched what it claimed to be the first region-wide wireless broadband service in Australia to use WiMax. The service delivers speeds of up to 6 Mbps in specific areas near Adelaide, and is targeted towards people unable to get ADSL because they live too far from a telephone exchange.

Unwired's Sydney-based wireless network was launched in 2004. In August 2005, the company received a $37 million investment from Intel for the promotion of mobile WiMax in Australia. Unwired currently is working with Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Navini and Alcatel to bring Mobile WiMax technology to Australia.

HSPA's battle

Meanwhile, Hutchison and Telstra, along with mobile manufacturers Ericsson and LG, have snubbed WiMax in favour of HSPA and other 3G technologies.

According to Klaas Raaijmakers, who is the Head of Broadband of Hutchison's 3 Mobile, the telecommunications company now is servicing a larger, more diverse market than ever before.

"We're moving away from the traditional tech-savvy users; we're seeing more female customers, for example," Raaijmakers said, citing greater affordability, convenience and portability between home, work, places of study, and overseas as customer-reported benefits.

Meanwhile, Airspan's Stepa said that 3G and WiMax may not necessarily be competing directly for market share.

"We're not fighting 3G", he said, noting that vendors and network carriers tend to "choose their horses" when it comes down to delivering a service in any particular area.

Motorola and Samsung are two examples of vendors that manufacture mobile phones for both WiMax and 3G networks.

Rob Inshaw, Nortel Network's Australia and New Zealand General Manager of Carrier Solutions, agrees.

"3G and WiMax service different markets," he said, forecasting that WiMax is likely to appeal to more tech-savvy users who value mobile access to the Internet more than traditional telephony services.

Inshaw cited increased and improved communication applications, a hyperconnected environment in which people are using multiple devices to connect to other people and other machines, as well as the availability of what he called "true broadband" as driving forces behind the development of more advanced wireless technologies.

Currently available HSDPA networks support speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps. Future incarnations of the technology, dubbed HSPA Evolved, are expected to deliver speeds of 42 Mbps, and will involve antenna array technologies.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are next on the 3G roadmap. LTE networks are expected to achieve downlink speeds of up to 200 Mbps and uplink speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

"What is true broadband? I think it's being able to do what you want, when you want," Inshaw said, estimating that Web services should ideally take a maximum of four seconds to load before the average user tends to lose interest.

Forecasting spectrum capacity problems to hinder the speeds deliverable by 3G technologies, Inshaw said that future developments in the 3G space may bring the services available to 3G networks closer to those offered by WiMax.

"3G will continue to evolve over the next four years, and will eventually offer similar services to WiMax," he said.

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iTnews: Angels give wings to Australian start-ups

As a journalist at iTnews:

As a nation that is home to a well-developed education system and world-class research institutions, Australia is often lauded as fertile grounds for innovation. But the outlook for young entrepreneurs may not be so rosy.


The technology industry is rife with anecdotal evidence that although ideas may be born down under, start-ups often move to larger markets such as the U.S. or Asia to grow.

"Australia does have good innovation networks, markets for development, access to capital and funding," said Rob Fitzpatrick, who is the Director of Commercialisation at national research organisation, NICTA.

"The biggest challenge for start-up companies," he said, "is in Angel funding, which is just not well organised in Australia."

Angel funding is one of the few avenues for start-up companies in their very initial stages to obtain seed funding to further grow their business. In return, Angel investors receive a percentage share in the start-up company.

It is a high risk, high return investment, and one that is not particularly common in the Australian culture.

In the U.S., however, it's a different story. According to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, Angels are the largest source of seed and capital funding in the U.S. As of 2007, there are more than 250 angel groups in the U.S., which is approximately equal to the total number of angel groups in all other countries combined.

Thankfully, globalisation is allowing U.S. Angels and other similar groups to spread their wings over start-ups in other countries too. TechStars is one U.S.-based group that extends its start-up funding and incubation program to companies across the globe.

The program offers up to US$15,000 in seed founding to ten start-up companies each year, in exchange for five per cent equity. Over the course of three months, selected start-ups will be given access to legal advice, office space, and experienced mentors.

Start-ups in the program will also be required to spend most of the three months at TechStars's offices in Boulder, Colorado – a potentially expensive relocation that might offset the seed money altogether.

But it's not just about the money, according to Techstars founder and Angel investor David Cohen.

"If you're thinking about the money, you're not thinking about the right thing," he said.

"The funding we provide is simply enough to keep you alive while you are here - that's all a motivated first time entrepreneur should need."

"The value of the mentorship and connections we provide should be the true motivator," he said.

Of the ten start-ups enrolled in TechStars's 2007 program, eight companies are now venture - or angel - backed and profitable, Cohen pointed out, with some companies even receiving credible acquisition offers.

Credibility is traditionally a big issue for start-up companies, which Cohen said could be mitigated by the support of established backers like TechStars.

"If you're two people, a dog, and an idea, it's hard to convince customers or partners that you're capable of delivering something interesting and worthwhile," he said.

"The other major problems are lack of market (startups doing things nobody wants) and team problems (founders who can't stick together)," he said. "I would specifically exclude access to funding - it's very easy if you have a great team, execute well, and are building stuff people want."

Admittedly, the atmosphere for start-ups in the U.S. could be the strongest in the world, with early stage capital widely available for good ideas and teams.

While saying that he tends to focus mostly on his local area, Cohen speculated that there seems to be a reasonable amount of start-up activity in Western Europe and Australia also.

"We get lots of interest in TechStars from Australia," he said. "Last year we did have one founder from Sweden, but otherwise they have all been US-based."

"Last summer was our first [year in operation]. There were ten companies consisting of 26 founders. One of those founders was from Sweden. Ultimately, they incorporated in the USA, [after] intense debate."

According to Sydney-based venture capital company OneVentures, however, the Australian market does offer some advantages over the larger, more established U.S. market.

"U.S. companies do get advantages of immediate access to a much larger market but often this is highly competitive and market entry is costly," said Michelle Deaker, the company's founder and CEO.

"It is traditionally difficult to raise capital for emerging high growth technology companies in this [Australian technology] market, but I would like to say that entrepreneurs shouldn't give up hope."

Besides assessing capital and resource management, Deaker highlighted company structure, market entry, team building and strategy as issues that plague start-ups. Formerly the co-founder and executive director of her own start-up, E Com Industries, Deaker said that Angel investors can sometimes help in providing professional networks as well as capital to help entrepreneurs.

In addition to leveraging any opportunities in the local market, Deaker also recommends looking offshore for opportunities to grow a start-up business.

"The AU market is small," she said. "Stepping offshore can be daunting but maybe necessary to make the business into an entity that an investor would be interested in and allow the company to capture a bigger market or seek capital from offshore investors."

"The government supports offshore activity with Export Market Development Grants for example. We [OneVentures] do our best to help smooth the way for this process."

NICTA's Fitzpatrick agrees that the market for technology companies goes beyond any international boundaries. He cited a NICTA project in the mobile telecommunications application area that currently is in negotiations with developers in China.

"Most of our start-ups are now born global," he said.

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iTnews: Nortel and TAFE sign training agreement

As a journalist at iTnews:

In a bid to address the high demand for local technical skills in the Australian ICT and telecommunications industries, telecommunications vendor Nortel has announced a new training agreement with TAFE New South Wales.

The agreement places Nortel's Technology Solutions Academy courseware as part of the 2008 curriculum in nine TAFE NSW Institutes across the state. Nortel’s courseware includes three books - a lab guide, a student guide and a resource guide – that all focus on the generic VOIP technology.

On completion of an accredited course at TAFE, students have the option to sit an exam for Nortel Professional certification. The course consists of between 80 to 100 hours of theoretical work and 20 hours of lab work, and can be either taught as a stand alone, or incorporated into a current curriculum.

"Our main challenge at TAFE is to meet the skills requirement of industry, and at this particular time in Australia we're faced with incredible demand for technology and telecommunications skills," said Susan Hartigan, relieving general manager of TAFE NSW’s Business division.

"By adding Nortel technology training solutions to our teaching and learning resources, TAFE NSW will not only become more attractive to prospective students, but will also provide our current students with a competitive advantage in the workforce."

TAFE NSW is also partnered with a number of different companies across various industries to provide its students with a mix of theoretical and industry knowledge, with a focus on gaining experience with current technologies, Hartigan said.

"This agreement with TAFE NSW is another major milestone for us,” said Mark Stevens, managing director of Nortel Australia and New Zealand, “especially at a time where graduates are faced with managing the unprecedented growth in corporate networks and the onset of new communication and transmission technologies like unified communications, WiMAX and Metro Ethernet networks."

Although Nortel’s Technology Solutions Academy program is available to all colleges and universities that offer IT courses, TAFE was the first Australian institute to sign up for the program, according to Frances Lambert, Training Program Manager of Nortel’s Knowledge Services Asia.

The certification gained from completing the TAFE course will not be any different from the certification gained from completing an independent Nortel course, Lambert said.

The first course to be offered through the new agreement will centre on VoIP technologies and will be available from March 15. Other upcoming courses include BCM 50 on March 25, Basic Data Networking on April 15, and Real Time Networking on May 1.

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iTnews: AI news reader brings academia to the real world

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

When he found himself staring at a screenful of irrelevant headlines in search of the few news stories of interest, Artificial Intelligence enthusiast Alex North decided that it was time to delegate the task to a machine.

Thus was born tiinker, which was launched this week by North's start-up company, Deep Grey Labs, as an intelligent news aggregator that learns the interests of individual users and selects stories tailored to each individual.

"The amount of information available on the internet is growing so quickly it is impossible to keep up without a way to weed out the chaff, so to speak," said Oleg Sushkov, co-founder of Deep Grey Labs.

"tiinker came about because we saw a need for a good news filter due to the huge number of news articles and blogs being published every day - many more than any person could reasonable keep up with."

Targeted at the 'average' Internet user who reads news online, tiinker joins an array of online news aggregation tools such as Slashdot, Digg, and Google News.

But while these existing sites either employ a group of users or editors to choose the news stories that are centrally displayed, tiinker has been designed to use machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to tailor news feeds to individual users' preferences.

"tiinker is aimed at people who want something to just work for them automatically, not people who want absolute control," North said.

"People who might usually visit the websites of a few newspapers and blogs can come to tiinker instead and have stories picked for them, and from a far wider range of sources than they could cover otherwise."

For the past year, tiinker has been a full-time venture for Sushkov and North, who are both recent graduates of the school of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

The intelligent news aggregator was one of three ideas that the pair thought up, with the aim of applying their academic knowledge in a real world product.

"There are a number of machine learning and AI [Artificial Intelligence] techniques in the backend, tuned and combined in a way we believe to be unique," North said. "Our studies in AI at uni were a good preparation for developing this - we knew what to try first and how to make it work well."

"Deep Grey Labs was started with a mission of applying research to making products and services for people," he said. "Too much research is locked away in academia, where no-one is interested in building a product out of it."

But while a bulk of Deep Grey Labs' development has been framed by Sushkov's and North's studies at the University of New South Wales, the start-up has received little financial and technical support from the university.

"Apart from casual tutoring work and the support of friends and colleagues, we've had little real support from the UNSW; IP [Intellectual property] rules make it very difficult for us to collaborate," North said.

So what's next for the boys at Deep Grey Labs?

"Hopefully making some money so we can eat," North said.

"If tiinker and Deep Grey Labs are successful we'd like to expand a little and take on another problem sometime."

"We're aiming to have a profitable business so that we can go on and apply AI and machine learning research to yet more services to help people."

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iTnews: Australian telcos champion Voice over Broadband for SMBs

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is not a new term. Touted as a low cost alternative to traditional telephony, VoIP has a major role in a new wave of converged network solutions that are pervading the telecommunications market.

But while consumers and large enterprises have adopted the technology to some degree, Australian small to medium businesses (SMBs) have traditionally been deterred by VoIP's reputation for poor call quality at the cheaper end of the spectrum, and the large set-up costs of premium, business-grade services.

With the new introduction of Voice over Broadband offerings from telecommunications behemoths AAPT and Optus, however, VoIP adoption by SMBs is set to take a new turn.

Telecommunications solutions for businesses have been tiptoeing towards Internet telephony for some time. Although the copper wire still dominates a majority of outbound phone calls, traditional IP PBX systems that rout intra-office calls via a Wide Area Network have been utilised by large enterprises since the turn of the century.

"If you're using an IP PBX, and you set up your system so that you can call another office at another location through the Wide Area Network, phone calls that you make within the office are technically VoIP," explained David Cannon, senior analyst of telecommunications at IDC.

Cannon mentioned IDC's global telecommunications network as an example of a typical IP PBX set-up. When calling a counterpart in IDC's New Zealand or Singapore offices, Cannon makes an internal VoIP phone call. Meanwhile, other outbound calls to non-IDC phone numbers are still routed through the PSTN copper line.

But the reign of the copper line may not be long lived, as Internet telephony marches beyond IP PBX, and towards complete VoIP offerings that encompass all outbound communications.

Internet-based VoIP services such as Skype are fulfilling an increasing portion of small businesses' telephony needs – as well as those of the casual workplace instant message addict. And now, with the support of the likes of AAPT and Optus, as well as ISPs like iiNet and Primus, Voice over Broadband technology is expanding VoIP's reach to the SMB market.

"Voice over Broadband is probably the most interesting subject matter at this point in time, in terms of VoIP for SMBs, because it’s actually being championed by Telstra's primary competitors, being providers of other network infrastructure," Cannon said.

Cannon highlighted Optus and AAPT as the primary providers of Voice over Broadband services in Australia. The first SMB-centric VoIP service was launched by AAPT in 2006; however, Cannon is of the opinion that Voice over Broadband has only really become a viable telecommunications option for SMBs in the past six months.

Like the services that came before it in the Internet telephony space, Voice over Broadband relies on its low operating cost to attract users. Current offerings of Australian service providers involve packaged Internet and phone line deals, which cut down on line rental.

Such Voice over Broadband packages are estimated to save businesses around $15 per line per month on access fees alone, not to mention the added convenience that consolidated suite voice and data connections provides.

"Historically, what's going on is that the price of local, national and international phone calls have gone down," Cannon said. "The only part of the telephony bill that isn't coming down is the access price.

"The fee that you pay for access of phone lines, whether it be PSTN or ISDN, is sitting around about $33 per month. With a broadband connection at 512 kbps plus, telcos can deliver multiple phone lines on top of that.

"That means that over that one broadband line, you can literally replace the PSDN or the ISDN access component, and at the same time, you can consolidate your VPN connection, and you can also consolidate your Internet connection, all through that one pipe."

Current offerings

AAPT's Business Connect boasts to be the first fully managed and customised VoIP solution developed especially for Australian medium enterprises.

Launched in July 2006, the service was recognised at the 2007 Australian Telecommunications Users Group Awards as one of the most innovative products in the communications sector.

"Business Connect demonstrates AAPT's success in expanding our existing capability as a telecommunications service provider to a complete ICT provider in the business market" said Gregg Roy, general manager of AAPT Business Solutions.

"It is an innovative, market-first VoIP solution for medium business that represents true convergence of Information Communications Technology," he said.

To entice SMBs to make the jump to Voice over Broadband, AAPT's Business Connect advertises no set up costs and a service that is compatible with existing analogue phone equipment.

Other benefits include: the ability to rout a single incoming call to multiple phones – for example, an office line, home phone, as well as a mobile number – which increases the contactability of sales staff; the ability to forward voicemail to e-mail inboxes; low per-minute call rates and free inter-office phone calls.

One adopter of AAPT's Voice over Broadband technology is Global Insight Market Research. The Queensland-based full-service market research firm makes an estimated 2,000 calls per month, so cost was no small consideration in the search for a telecommunications service provider.

"We were interested in moving from our traditional telecommunications infrastructure to something that could streamline our operations and provide advanced functionality not available in standard services," said Murray Dempsey, managing director of Global Insight Market Research in an AAPT Business Connect case study.

"The AAPT Business Connect solution offered us great call rates and volume discounts, halving our communications spend by allowing us to use a DSL connection for all our communication needs. We no longer need to maintain and pay for separate access for voice and data needs."

While Business Connect primarily targets medium-sized businesses, Optus has opened its arms to the entire SMB sector with its ipPhone service. Launched in June 2007, the service bundles 12 cent flat local and national calls with a variety of traditional telephony features including call transfer, call hold and call wait, as well as newer Internet telephony features like the ability to rout incoming calls to multiple lines.

Available to Optus Business DSL customers, ipPhone comes in two flavours - Optus ipPhone Premier and Optus ipPhone Express. The former offers superior call quality at $19.95 per month excluding the set up costs of a professional installation. The latter is priced at $12 per month and comes as a simple, plug and play service.

According to Optus' estimates in its IP Index 2005, almost one half of its IP customers already utilise a VoIP solution, and a further 17 per cent are evaluating or trialling VOIP technology. Optus expects VoIP adoption to yield between 30 and 50 per cent in cost savings for a typical organisation.

"Broadband penetration has really accelerated in the SMB market over recent years and as a result customers are now looking at how they can better utilise their communications infrastructure," said Paul Kitchin, managing director of Optus SMB.

"Optus recognises that SMBs want and need more than the traditional core telecommunication products of fixed, mobile and internet to complete daily business operations," he said.

Shove over, Telstra?

Despite the benefits touted by its champions, the uptake of Voice over Broadband technologies has been slow. IDC's Cannon estimates VoIP to occupy no more than 300,000 phone lines in a six million line market, representing a mere five per cent of Australian phone lines.

"It's not [a large uptake]," Cannon said, "but then again, because the big, competitive telcos have only launched these products in the last six months, in reality, it's [VoIP] got a long way to go."

One major hurdle that VoIP currently faces is its reputation for poor, unreliable audio quality. And indeed there have been VoIP service providers for which the popular opinion holds true.

As network infrastructure improves, however, so does the quality of Internet telephony. Using the business-grade broadband connections of today, which advertise 99.95 to 99.99 per cent availability uptime, Cannon expects the call quality degradation associated with VoIP services to be negligible.

Recent guidelines developed by the Communications Alliance to regulate the quality of VoIP services and Internet Protocol (IP) networks are also expected to increase the uptake of the new wave of converged voice and data offerings.

"I think that a phone call going astray here and there isn't that huge of an issue," he said. "I think that that happens regardless [of if a company is using VoIP or PSTN], and people can accept that.

"It's just that a majority of the time, the audio quality in particular needs to be clean. You can achieve that now, certainly with the business-grade broadband infrastructure that's out there."

So, should Telstra be kissing its landline monopoly farewell?

Cannon is doubtful. The quality of IP infrastructure is still not as good as the traditional PSTN, and as he points out, current champions of Voice over Broadband also have large shares of the traditional telephony market.

"I would say that it [VoIP] doesn't at this point in time pose a threat [to Telstra]. Anything that is a competitive service is threatening, but I wouldn't suggest that Telstra are about to lose market share as a result of this product – not at this point in time,"
he said.

"Going forward, maybe five years from now, perhaps," he said.

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Linux.com: Online library reaches million book milestone

As a freelance contributor to Linux.com:

An international venture called the Universal Library Project has made more than one million books freely available in digitized format. The joint project of researchers from China, India, Egypt, and the US has the eventual aim of digitizing all published works of man, freeing the availability of information from geographic and socioeconomic boundaries, providing a basis for technological advancement, and preserving published works against time and tide.

One and a half million books in more than 20 languages, including Chinese, English, Arabic, and various Indian languages, are now accessible via a single Web portal. The online library includes rare and out-of-print books from private and public collections around the world.

"There are plenty of books that are no longer in copyright, and that have long been forgotten, but which would be useful to scholars, students, and just the general population," says Michael Shamos, a copyright lawyer, computer science professor, and co-director of the project at the Carnegie Mellon University in the US.

"There is a tremendous amount of knowledge that we thought would be lost to mankind if we didn't start digitizing," he says.

The project believes digital books on the Internet should be free to read, instantly available, easily accessible, printable on-demand, translatable to any language, and readable to both humans and machines. Additionally, with the advent of low-cost technology like the One Laptop Per Child project's XO laptop and ebook readers, digitized books are expected to reduce the cost of learning by replacing the repetitive cost of books with a one-off computer purchase and freely downloadable information.

According to the researchers' estimates, the Universal Library collection currently represents a mere one percent of the approximately 100 million books to ever have been published. Shamos expects only half of the published books in existence to be found in physical libraries around the world, so the task of physically locating a rare book can be a tedious process.

"The only way you can obtain an out-of-print book is to find a library that has one, and either travel to that library, or obtain that book through an interlibrary loan," he says. "It's a very slow process, especially considering that without seeing the book, you might not know if there's anything interesting in it for you."

When the project was initiated in 2002, members expected other research and commercial projects to digitize only around 50,000 books. Google Book Search is one such project that was started since that time; in recent years, it has come under fire for alleged breaches of copyright. While Shamos expressed a high regard for Google's efforts and the publicity it has attracted to book digitization, he said the Universal Library Project had "similar but different" goals.

"We want to digitize all published works of man; I don't think that anybody at Google would ever say that's what their goal is," he says. "Their goal is to sell advertising, and one of the ways that they find to sell advertising is to create a Web site that has such rich content that people want to visit it all the time. I don't think that Google has any interest in putting Sanskrit works up on their Web site."

Like Google, the Universal Library Project faces issues in publishing copyrighted books online. As such, books currently under copyright are only available in part via the Web portal, while books that are not bound by copyright restrictions are fully and freely available online.

Citing a need for information to be freely available, Shamos expects these copyright restrictions to become less of an issue in time, as publishers adapt to the low-cost business model that digital books offer.

"Copyright is going to become less and less significant [because] through digitization, the cost of publishing is vanishingly small," he says. "As the cost of copying goes down, the value of works goes down, and the ability to make profit from them goes down.

"There is a difference in reading for pleasure and reading for information; what is going to happen, I think, is that copyright is going to end up focusing on works of entertainment and not works of information."
High numbers

The Universal Library Project is the brainchild of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and has received $3.5 million in seed funding from the National Science Foundation. The project has also received in-kind contributions from the Zhejiang University in China and the Indian Institute of Science in India that have been valued at $10 million each, and has more recently forged a partnership with the Library at Alexandria in Egypt.

With more than 1,000 workers in about 50 scanning and digitization centres around the world, the Universal Library collection is growing at an estimated 7,000 books per day. There is a fair way to go before the project reaches its lofty book digitization goals; even so, the researchers have set their sights on eventually including content like music, artwork, lectures, and newspapers in the library.

"We believe that by having a universal library with all published works of man, and having multiple sites all around the world that house the entire content, it will be impossible to destroy these works," Shamos says.

"There can never again be a destruction of the library of Alexandria. There could be a destruction of the building, but there can't be a destruction of the works, and so this makes the creation of man impervious to changes in political regime, culture, Moirai."

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iTnews: Sun's petabyte datacentre in a box makes its Aussie debut

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

In a bid to tackle the array of data storage issues facing today's IT industry, Sun Microsystems has unveiled a prototype of an eco-friendly, mobile virtualised datacentre in Sydney Harbour this week.

Dubbed "Project Blackbox", each datacentre packs more than three petabytes of storage in a 20-foot shipping container. Sun's new offering is expected to allow customers to quickly and easily add datacentre capacity that can be moved as their circumstances change.

"Everybody's either out of space, power, or capacity; one of the three," declared Cheryl Martin, Sun's senior director of business development for Project Blackbox.

Boasting a processing speed of 4.5 teraflops, Project Blackbox is designed to house computational, storage and network infrastructure. Each datacentre can handle up to 700 CPUs, and supports a range of operating systems and third-party equipment.

All storage equipment is contained within a standard-sized 20 x 8 foot shipping container to add to the datacentres' mobility. For safety, the shipping containers are also fitted with GPS devices and reinforced with steel bars, and all equipment is mounted on earthquake-worthy shock absorption springs.

The datacentre can be deployed anywhere there is AC power, water and a network connection. When connected to a portable power supply, such as a generator, Project Blackbox can even operate on the move; a capability that is expected to benefit mobile operations in the military, oil and energy industries.

Instead of requiring air-conditioning, which can require large amounts of power, Project Blackbox uses a water-cooled heat exchanger and a series of fans to keep the temperature low within the shipping container. Sun estimates its cooling technique to be 40 percent more efficient than a traditional datacentre.

Project Blackbox was said to have been inspired by customer feedback that indicated a demand for convenience, flexibility, and eco-friendliness when increasing datacentre capacity.

Martin highlighted four target markets for the datacentre: companies looking to augment their current storage capacity; companies in need of temporary storage solutions; specialised industries such as the military, oil or gas; and large scale network services that are undergoing rapid expansion.

Since the U.S. launch of its first prototype in October 2006, Project Blackbox has been deployed by select customers, including the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the U.S., and Russian telecommunications provider, Mobile Telesystems.

One datacentre has also been deployed in Sun's High Performance Computing grid in Menlo Park, U.S. Martin said Sun expects to use more of its new datacentres in-house as soon as there are more available.

Contrary to its name, Project Blackbox is usually shipped in a white shipping container, but Martin said the container can also take on custom paint jobs. She noted a particularly strong demand for datacentres with a camouflage veneer.

The datacentre will be available to Australian customers in March 2008, costing upwards of $700,000.

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iTnews: Aussie company comes under fire for probing scandalous poker site

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

The engagement of Australian consultancy Gaming Associates to investigate an alleged $7 million scandal has raised more questions about the integrity of Absolute Poker and its parent companies.

Gaming Associates was commissioned last month to conduct an audit into a suspected security breach that gave one player full view of the cards held by his opponents.

The audit comes several months after the scam was first uncovered by a group of players on the Two Plus Two online discussion boards. Current investigations have, as yet, failed to placate users of the popular U.S.-based forum.

"This proposed investigation makes us uneasy for a few reasons," said Mason Malmuth of Two Plus Two Publishing. "First, according to its press release, Absolute Poker is funding the investigation directly, with no third party involved to ensure objectivity.

"Finally, Two Plus Two believes that a report from Gaming Associates, an Australian company apparently dealing primarily with Antigua and Barbados companies, may not maintain the same weight and reliability as the international law firm retained by Two Plus Two."

Earlier this month, Two Plus Two Publishing was approached by an Absolute Poker representative, who wanted Two Plus Two to release a statement supporting Absolute Poker on its forums, Malmuth said.

Malmuth responded with a fraud investigation proposal in which Two Plus Two would act as an unbiased, non-profiting arbitrator between Absolute Poker and the investigators. The offer was declined.

"Two Plus Two is essentially the only entity that would be considered unbiased in this matter. So anything done with our name on it would have much credibility," Malmuth told ITnews.com.au.

"We felt this problem was bigger than Absolute and that by doing this investigation it would be good for the whole industry.

"Absolute Poker has now told us that they have no interest in our proposal. So I expect nothing will come from it," he said.

Gaming Associates' audit report is not expected until 7 December. In the meantime, however, the online poker community has been handing out its own version of Citizens' arrests.

Fingers have been pointed at Absolute Poker's co-founder, Scott Tom, and former Operations Director, Alan 'AJ' Green, and punishments range from degradingly edited images, to accusations of drug abuse, and even to what might be perceived as threats to Tom's family.

"Is this Scott's first wife and child," asks one discussion board user. "What's her name? Any previous wives and/or children? Any other weak spots besides father? Mother, siblings, other family members?"

"Does anyone know AJ's educational background," another post reads. "Where did he go to college? What were his majors and/or minors?"

Official statements released by Absolute Poker to its users seem to confirm allegations that an employee had been involved in the alleged security breach.

"Based upon our preliminary findings, it appears that the integrity of our poker system was compromised by a high-ranking trusted consultant employed by AP whose position gave him extraordinary access to certain security systems," writes Joe Norton, owner of Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, which holds 100 per cent interest in Absolute Poker.

"We consider this security breach to be a horrendous and inexcusable offence," he said.

Absolute Poker is currently in the process of reimbursing players who were affected by the cheating account. It is yet to be seen if the scandal leaves a permanent scar on online poker, which requires a great deal of trust between players, their opponents, and gaming platforms.

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iTnews: Petascale computers: the next supercomputing wave

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

Supercomputing has come a long way in the past half-century. Far from CDC's single-operation scalar processors in the 1960s, present day terascale computers in development by companies like Intel boast up to 100 processor cores and the ability to perform one trillion operations per second.

Now, academics have turned their attention to petascale computers that are said to be capable of performing one quadrillion – that's one million billion – operations per second. Running at nearly ten times the speed of today's fastest supercomputers, petascale computing is expected to open the doors to solving global challenges such as environmental sustainability, disease prevention, and disaster recovery.

"Petascale Computing: Algorithms and Applications" was launched this month as the world's first published collection on petascale techniques for computational science and engineering. Edited by David A. Bader, associate professor of computing and executive director of high-performance computing at Georgia Tech, the book is geared towards generating new discussion about the future of computing.

To gain a little insight into petascale technologies, iTnews spoke with Bader about high performance computing and the future.

What is petascale computing?

Petascale Computing is the present state-of-the-art in High Performance Computing that leverages the most cutting edge large-scale resources to solve grand challenge problems in science and engineering.

What will be the primary use of petascale computers?

Science has withstood centuries of challenges by building upon the community's collective wisdom and knowledge through theory and experiment. However, in the past half-century, the research community has implicitly accepted a fundamental change to the scientific method.

In addition to theory and experiment, computation is often cited as the third pillar as a means for scientific discovery.

Computational science enables us to investigate phenomena where economics or constraints preclude experimentation, evaluate complex models and manage massive data volumes, model processes across interdisciplinary boundaries, and transform business and engineering practices.

How significant will the development of Petascale Computing be to the advancement of science and technology?

Increasingly, cyber-infrastructure is required to address our national and global priorities, such as sustainability of our natural environment by reducing our carbon footprint and by decreasing our dependencies on fossil fuels, improving human health and living conditions, understanding the mechanisms of life from molecules and systems to organisms and populations, preventing the spread of disease, predicting and tracking severe weather, recovering from natural and human-caused disasters, maintaining national security, and mastering nanotechnologies.

Several of our most fundamental intellectual questions also require computation, such as the formation of the universe, the evolution of life, and the properties of matter.

What are the challenges faced by Petascale Computing?

While petascale architectures certainly will be held as magnificent feats of engineering skill, the community anticipates an even harder challenge in scaling up algorithms and applications for these leadership-class supercomputing systems.

Several areas are important for this task: scalable algorithm design for massive concurrency, computational science and engineering applications, petascale tools, programming methodologies, performance analyses, and scientific visualisation.

High end simulation is a tool for computational science and engineering applications. To be useful tools for science, such simulations must be based on accurate mathematical descriptions of the processes and thus they begin with mathematical formulations, such as partial differential equations, integral equations, graph-theoretic, or combinatorial optimisation.

Because of the ever-growing complexity of scientific and engineering problems, computational needs continue to increase rapidly. But most of the currently available hardware, software, systems, and algorithms are primarily focused on business applications or smaller scale scientific and engineering problems, and cannot meet the high-end computing needs of cutting-edge scientific and engineering work.

This book ["Petascale Computing: Algorithms and Applications"] primarily addresses the concerns of petascale scientific applications, which are highly compute- and data-intensive, cannot be satisfied in today's typical cluster environment, and tax even the largest available supercomputer.

When can we expect petascale computers, and who from?

Realising that cyber infrastructure is essential to research innovation and competitiveness, several nations are now in [what has been called] a 'new arms race to build the world's mightiest computer'.

These petascale computers, expected around 2008 to 2012, will perform ten to the power of 15 operations per second, nearly an order of magnitude faster than today's speediest supercomputer.

In fact, several nations are in a worldwide race to deliver high-performance computing systems that can achieve 10 petaflops or more within the next five years. Several leading computing vendors, such as IBM, Cray, Dawning, NEC, Sun Microsystems, and others, are in a race to deploy petascale computing systems.

How do you think technology will progress in 2008 and beyond? What is likely to be the next set of challenges we will face?

We expect to see the first peak petascale systems in 2008, and sustained petascale systems soon thereafter. Many grand challenge investigations in computational science and engineering will be solved by these magnificent systems.

Already, discussions are taking place on the complex applications that will require the next generations of supercomputers: exascale systems that are 1000 times more capable than these petascale systems.

Certainly amazing technological innovations and application development will be necessary to make exascale computing a reality.

Yours is the first book on petascale techniques to ever have been published. What do you hope it will achieve?

My goal in developing this book was to inspire members of the high-performance computing community to solve computational grand challenges that will help our society, protect our environment, and improve our understanding in fundamental ways, all through the efficient use of petascale computing.

This is the premier book that captures the first wave of applications anticipated to run on these petascale computers. Already, international interest in this milestone book is very high, since it is the first book ever to discuss applications of petascale computing.

This book in petascale computing will be a resource for training these [future] generations of students and researchers in how to leverage state-of-the-art high performance computing systems to solve grand challenges of national and global priority, such as sustainability of our natural environment by reducing our carbon footprint and by decreasing our dependencies on fossil fuels, improving human health and living conditions, understanding the mechanisms of life from molecules and systems to organisms and populations, preventing the spread of disease, predicting and tracking severe weather, recovering from natural and human-caused disasters, maintaining national security, and mastering nanotechnologies.

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