The federal Internet tax ban is back on the federal table, at least in the U.S. Senate. Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) spent April 23 working on bringing back a bill to ban taxes on Internet connections, which got paralyzed in 2003 when local and state governments - and enough Capitol Hill lawmakers - feared a permanent ban would mean billions in lost tax revenue.
McCain chairs the Senate Commerce Committee and wants to ban taxes for four years on services connecting you to cyberspace, with states exempted from the original Net tax moratorium - which was born in 1998 and expired in November - given three years to eliminate their Net access taxes if any. Under the McCain proposal, those states taxing DSL connections would have two years to dump those taxes. The problems include Senate Republicans divided on the issue - the House broadened the original permanent Net tax ban idea to cover DSL, satellite, and cable Net hookups - with some saying the Feds have no business telling local governments how to tax telecommunications.
Google may have a taxing problem of its own, having nothing to do with tax levies and everything to do with its chastity belt, so to say. Online shoppers who use an optional Google feature to block those naughty porn sites may not realize the feature is blocking an awful lot of Websites having nothing to do with porn or sex but have letter strings within their names that spell them out. CNET News says Google's SafeSearch filter flaws could have serious consequences - like impacts on sales, since Google's the most widely used search engine in cyberspace - for Website operators whose sites get blocked despite their cybercelibacy.
On the other hand, Google is causing anything but taxing times when it comes to its anticipated initial public offering. Washington Post columnist Cynthia Webb says it "promises to spark a feeding frenzy reminiscent of the dot-com days," with Google expected to make it official "within days," though which day it does it isn't yet known. What may be known is what Google is said to expect in market value with the IPO: up to $25 billion
Getting value is what America Online and Road Runner hoped to get, when they said this week they're going beep-beep on a deal in which AOL offers members Road Runner subscriptions while Road Runner promotes an AOL channel on its homepage, all the better to sign up new broadband users. The deal puts Road Runner subscribers in reach of buying AOL for Broadband in addition to their standard connection for $14.95-24.95 a month, with AOL getting paid for every new Road Runner subscriber they sign up and paying Road Runner for every AOL for Broadband customer it gets.
The brakes, not the horn, were applied to images of dead soldiers' homecomings at military bases posted online, at least until the Pentagon gave a brief reprieve to a ban on showing those images April 22. The brass wasn't thrilled about MemoryHole.org's showing the pictures, which they obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. The images showed coffins of those who died in Iraq arriving at a Delaware Air Force base, the standard return destination for most such casualties. The Pentagon called the Air Mobility Command's decision to grant the FOIA request a big mistake, but news groups pounced on a selection of the estimated 361 images. MemoryHole.org is a site whose purpose is fighting government secrecy.
It isn't exactly a secret that cyberwarfare has a lot of people in and out of government worried. Unlike a lot of people, though, the National Security Agency had one idea on how to beef up for cyberwarfare: they're running an exercise this week and weekend, teaming themselves against teams of military cadets. "Anything hooked up to the Internet is vulnerable," one cadet told ZDNet News. "I'm not really scared. I'm looking forward to the best exploits the NSA can throw at us."
AT&T probably wasn't looking forward to at least one thing SBC decided to throw at them - a lawsuit, accusing AT&T of ducking at least $141 million in connection fees for telephone calls carried partially over the Internet, and seeking not just to recover the missing moolah but stop AT&T from "perpetuating its unlawful conduct," as the suit itself put it. This filing happened just a few days after AT&T was told by federal regulators their calling long-distance calls carried online as local calls, paying lower than normal fees, was verboten.
Speaking of verboten, bad enough: A former SAS software programmer facing online child porn charges. Worse: The case may have rudely interrupted his plans for his wife - plans for her death, that is. Brian Schellenberger's been accused of trying to hire someone to put the hit on his wife. Brian Schellenberger is already in the cage awaiting his child porn trial, but now a federal grand jury indicted him for allegedly "using interstate commerce with the intent that a murder be committed for a promise or agreement to pay." The allegedly intended victim filed for divorce a week after Schellenberger's child porn bust, in which complaint she is said to have accused her husband of wanting to kill her.
Nobody wanted to kill anybody over the computer network of the University of Alabama's men's honors program which has porn on board - even a slightly whacky depiction of a dinosaur (actually a man in costume) and a woman doing the Bedrock Bop. But the Mallet Assembly's residence hall, Byrd Hall, which uses the Office of Residential Life's high-speed Net service, isn't breaking the rules, which the Crimson White says let students keep the porn since porn isn't illegal to see. "Doug Sandford, information security manager at Seebeck Computer Center, said UA officials do not monitor the Capstone's network for content," the Crimson White said. "He said IT officials are not 'thought police' and mostly deal with regulating the system's load balance to make sure it runs speedily and efficiently."
Now, let us begin your weekend on a sort-of lighthearted note - especially a note to Dear Abby, from a woman who found some old nude photos on the Net... of her best friend. The woman said the friend was a one-time film and television actress who didn't do porn films but did do, ahem, some on-set photographs that "could definitely be called pornographic." She found the pictures, she told Dear Abby, while searching for her new e-mail address.
"She's not much of a Net surfer, but her sons are," wrote the woman, asking whether she should tell her old friend. Said Dear Abby (who is actually, these days, founder Pauline Phillips's daughter, Jeanne), "If there were nude pictures of you on the Internet, wouldn't you want to know? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Better she should hear the news from you."
We're pretty sure that this sort of thing does not happen every day to everybody. Does it?
