ENLAN Spans The Nation

The idea of having all your company locations on a single extended LAN is one that is gaining traction. Why continue to manage a nightmare of dozens or hundreds of connections to link an array of branch offices or retail locations when a single managed network can handles this for you?

TW Telecom calls this service ENLAN for Extended Native LAN. It provides users with a fast reliable and secure network that extends to encompass what is normally considered the WAN or Wide Area Network territory.

The WAN has traditionally been the jurisdiction of the telecom companies. If you needed to leave your own property, you were forced to convert your traffic to a telco standard to travel on their network and then convert back at the remote location. No more. A combination of Ethernet and MPLS is making the WAN invisible. It all now looks like one big LAN.

The way this works is that the core of the extended LAN is the TW Telecom MPLS Cloud. As a multi-protocol network, the MPLS Cloud can transport whatever digital format is required. That includes voice, video and data packets as well as traditional TDM services.

Ethernet is a perfect fit with MPLS networks. TW Telecom lets you keep everything in the Ethernet protocol, just like it is on your LAN. Rather than going through a speed bump when you have to exit your edge router and enter the WAN, you simply hook up to an Ethernet connection that leaves your facility. When this Ethernet access network reaches the MPLS Cloud it is assigned to one or more L2 Tunnels where it is transported to its intended destination. From there another Ethernet access connection takes it to the remote location.

Note that all connections are Ethernet and the transport takes place through layer 2 tunnels. That allows you to keep a switched Ethernet protocol linking all your desired locations. It looks just like one big LAN, even though you are traversing a MPLS cloud network on the way from point to point.

Being able to stay at the layer 2 switching level is one advantage of ENLAN. Another is that the Ethernet access connections and MPLS tunnel bandwidth is scalable. You can order bandwidths from 2 Mbps up through 1 Gbps. Your access is through IEEE standard 10/100/1000/10000 Mbps Ethernet interfaces. With scalability you can get the bandwidth you need to support your operations right now and then easily upgrade as needed.

Is ENLAN or Ethernet / MPLS networking right for your business or organization. To find out quickly and easily, simply request a quick quote for the bandwidth and locations you need to support. Then see if you can justify not saving a small fortune on your network services.

Cloud Recovery Mirrors Your Servers and Data

Redundancy is a time honored way to protect what is valuable, especially what you need to run a business. That’s why we do periodic backups. You just never know when those flying heads are going to crash into the disk platter and destroy thousands, even millions of dollars worth of valuable data. But how about the entire operation of your business? Do you have that protected?

Just having a backup disk in the company safe won’t be much help if your servers smoke or a tornado comes along and leaves nothing but a concrete pad where your building once stood. With so much of most businesses depending on computer automation, it makes sense to replicate everything. All you need is a completely duplicate IT infrastructure.

Sounds good, but where do you come up with the capital to replicate your server rooms, applications, complete data set in real time, and the glue that ties all this together? Relax, you don’t really have to. Qwest will take now take care of that for you.

What’s new is Qwest Real-Time Application Recovery. It’s a partnership with Geminare, a company that has pioneered RaaS or Recovery as a Service. Qwest has the WAN network structure and robust data centers to host a copy of your business. Geminare has the technology to make the process seamless to the user.

One thing you don’t need is a big capital budget. In fact, you don’t need any additional hardware on-site at all. This is a cloud based service that’s fully managed by Qwest. They replicate your servers, applications and data on a real-time basis. When disaster strikes, availability to access your data and applications continues uninterrupted. Your office building can be blown away, flooded or burned down. The business goes on as if nothing ever happened. Thus is the magic of the cloud.

How do you pay for this? There’s a monthly fee for the service. For that you get automatic failover, continued access to applications and data, immediate remote operational capability, complete data protection, platform and application support, real-time disaster recovery tests and 24/7 support. There’s near-zero down time, no capital expense, no technological lock-in and no administrative costs. Qwest takes care of all those details. It’s like they are a duplicate IT center that you rent by the month.

Is cloud recovery something that could mean the difference between staying in business or going under in the event of a major disaster? Is it worth what it costs when you consider the implication of lost business or the capital and operating expense of doing this yourself? Why not find out quickly and easily. Get competitive quotes on cloud recovery, networking and other services now. Don’t wait until you are in real trouble. It would be too late then.

Local news rivals doom publisher pay walls

The local news sites being developed by Yahoo, AOL, Huffington Post and a growing number of other online players will dash the hopes of most newspaper publishers of charging for access to their online content. While newspaper executives have agonized for the better part of two years about whether and how to charge for their costly-to-produce content, every indication is that the portals,

Big sums at stake in Serbia

On 27 July 2010, the Belgrade Commercial Court issued a first instance decision in which it ordered the public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) to pay Serbian copyright organization SOKOJ the not insubstantial sum of EUR 1,293,739 (US$ 1,653,614) for broadcasting music without paying royalties to its composers.

This is apparently just a skirmish in a very long battle between SOKOJ and RTS, with the prospect of an appeal in the offing. According to SOKOJ, this is "the most important decision ever made in the field of copyright protection" [presumably in Serbia, at any rate] and that it makes it clear that the legislation in this area must be respected. There's plenty of money at stake as well as principle: if the decision becomes final. RTS will have to pay SOKOJ nearly EUR 2 million (US$ 2,556,334) after the addition of interest. These sums are very large if one takes into account the cost of living in Serbia.

The 1709 Blog hopes to find out more about this dispute and, in particular, about the grounds of any defences.

Source: PETOSEVIC newsletter here.

Enterprise SIP Trunking Consolidates Phone Lines

How long has it been since you took a good hard look at your telephone network? No, not just reviewing the bills for outrageous long distance usage or lines that are no longer in use. Have you taken a look recently at the map of where your phones are and how they connect to each other and the outside world?

If your organization has more than a single location, you may well have developed a spider’s web of connections that are costing you a pretty penny every month. This is especially true if your company has grown by acquisition. Whatever you have set up at headquarters is no doubt completely different from the configuration at other sites. What you have in front of you is a terrific opportunity to save money and perhaps even improve service.

I’ll suggest starting with a clean piece of paper. Draw a little circle for each of your sites, assuming there are only a few to a few dozen. This will work for any number of locations, but no need to burn through pencils trying to map them. What you want to do is draw a line that goes from location to location and back to headquarters in something resembling a circle. This will be your converged network for voice, data and even video. From there you make redundant connections to your service providers. You’ll need a couple of connections even if you have a single provider, just for a safety failover. What are you staring at now? A big cost savings, that’s what.

What I’m describing is a networking system that makes sense for medium and large scale organizations. XO communications, a highly rated competitive carrier, calls this “Enterprise SIP Trunking.” They lay out the details in their white paper on “SIP Trunking for the Enterprise”.

So what’s special about a SIP trunk and why are you missing out if you don’t have one? The idea is simple. SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is the switching language for VoIP telephone system. In small systems it is so integrated into the product that you may not even know it’s there. But for enterprise level users, what you want to do is integrate the technology of SIP trunking into your local and wide area networks. That gives you the ability to use a single network for both telephone and data transfer. One network instead of two is where the cost savings start.

The other opportunity for cost savings is to consolidate your phone connections to the outside world and stop using the public telephone network to make calls between locations. Every time you go off your network and onto the public phone system you pay a toll. It may only amount to pennies at a time, but all those internal calls will wind up generating a considerable phone bill at the end of the month.

You are also paying a pretty penny to have separate phone lines at each location. You need enough lines for each site to ensure that calls always get through. That means that most of the time you have lines sitting idle that you pay for anyway. Meanwhile, another site just got a huge burst of traffic and customers are hearing busy signals because all of those lines are in use. Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a pool of outside lines and share them among locations? That way the sites that have bursts of traffic will get the lines they need and the sites not needing those lines won’t be hoarding them just in case they’re needed.

What XO recommends is creating a MPLS-VPN network that securely connects all of your locations for voice, data and video. All phone calls within offices and between locations stay on your own network, so you don’t pay per-minute toll charges. Calls to and from outside parties go through an IP-PBX system at headquarters or a hosted PBX system at your service provider. This system assigns all of the outside lines as needed.

Does SIP Trunking make sense as a cost saver for your business or organization? Regardless of size or number of locations, there are probably ways you can save on your telecommunications costs while maintaining quality of service. Discuss your situation with one of our friendly Enterprise VoIP consultants at no charge and see what other opportunities are available to you. You’re likely to be pleasantly surprised by the results.

US record labels say that copyright law "isn't working"

Speaking at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum, The President of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, has said that the current U.S. copyright law "isn't working" for content owners and contains a number of loopholes - the main one he objected to is, of course, the safe harbour protection given to internet service provides (ISPs), web companies and telecomms providers. According to CNet, Sherman said the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act "isn't working for content people at all," saying "You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It's simply not possible. We don't have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare." Sherman added that YouTube is doing a good job of filtering and removing copyright-infringing videos but added that Google could do much more than simply having YouTube remove videos making the example thsat "If you enter in "Beyoncé MP3" as a Google seach the "the chances are, the first thing you'll see is illegal sites." In response Lance Kavanaugh for YouTube, said that the DCMA is working exactly as Congress intended it to. "There's legal plumbing to allow that to happen, to allow those small companies to innovate without [the] crushing fear of lawsuits, as long as they follow certain rules," he said. "Congress was prescient. They struck the right balance". Youtube recently avoided liability in a case brought against them by Viacom, owners of MTV, for hosting MTV content without Viacom's permission because they operated a take-down system although Viacom plan to appeal the decision.

Sherman's comments, on an Act which was heavily lobbied over by ISPs, internet companies and the content owners - is based on the growing concern that the Act contains real and dangerous loopholes (well, dangerous for content owners) which allow ISPs and other web-based companies to ignore online copyright infringement without any legal comeback - although despite his concerns, Sherman added that he did not see new legislation as the solution to this at this stage - preferring to reach agreements with web firms directly. He explained: "We're working on [discussions with broadband providers], and we'd like to extend that kind of relationship - not just to ISPs, but search engines, payment processors, advertisers. But Sherman then added "if legislation is an appropriate way to facilitate that kind of cooperation, fine" saying it may be necessary for the U.S. Congress to enact a new law formalizing agreements with intermediaries such as broadband providers, Web hosts, payment processors, and search engines - one presumes the RIAA are contemplating asking the US legislature for new laws along the same lines as the various "three strikes" laws passed in the UK, France, Taiwan, South Korea and New Zealand.

The RIAA have also signed up to a new letter sent to Google and US ISP Verizon regarding their recent announcement on so called "net neutrality". The consortium of American content owners which included indie labels body A2IM and collecting societies BMI, ASCAP and SESAC, called on the two web giants to add cracking down on piracy to their joint mission.

Interestingly in related news, online advertising firm Triton Media is being sued by several movie studios for "contributory" and "induced" copyright infringement, over its alleged dealings with unauthorized websites offering their content for free. Disney and Warner Bros filed suit against Triton, alleging the firm helped websites like PirateCity.org and Watch-Movies-Links.net profit from piracy by handling their advertising sales. The studios said the advertising agency knew the sites were offering unauthorized content because they sent notices to Arizona-based Triton. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Triton providing advertising services to the sites in the future, and unspecified monetary damages.

In other RIAA news, Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston University graduate student who lost his case against the recording industry for illegally downloading and sharing music has said that he will be appealing a federal judge’s order that he pay four record labels $67,500 in damages for copyright infringement, even though that amount is only a tenth of what a jury said he should pay for copyright infringement on 30 songs. The original order was a whopping $675,000. “Sixty-seven-and-half thousand dollars only sounds reasonable because it was so much before’’ said the 26-year-old former Providence resident, who then added that he would have to declare bankruptcy if forced to pay the smaller award. His lawyer, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, has filed a one-page notice saying he will appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Nesson said in an interview that he plans to challenge several rulings Judge Nancy Gertner made at trial, including her refusal to let jurors hear that Tenenbaum offered to settle the labels’ claims against him in November 2005 for $500. The four record labels who brought the action (Sony BMG, Warners, Arista and Universal) have filed a similar notice and RIAA spokeperson Cara Duckworth said in a statement yesterday that the labels “had no choice but to appeal the erroneous and unprecedented decision’’ by Judge Gertner on July 9 to slash the award by 90 percent". “The ruling casts aside a jury verdict squarely within the range established by Congress and clearly supported by the undisputed harm to the recording industry and the egregiousness of the defendant’s conduct,’’ she said.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20014468-38.html
http://tinyurl.com/29326mq (Hollywood Reporter)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_v._Tenenbaum

Are You A Sentio Being?

You are a perceptive individual, the kind who senses when technology is on the move. You always want to be in the game. You know when the price point is right to get the greatest value from your purchase. That time is now. Enter the LG Sentio, a high-value free smartphone.

How can high value and free go together? It’s partly a matter of jumping into a technical advance at the right time and partly knowing where to shop. Shop online and you’ll be surprised at how much technology you can get for your dollar.

Let’s take a look at the slim and stylish LG Sentio for T-Mobile. This is a 3G touchscreen phone with a 3 Megapixel digital camera that can capture and send video as well as stills. It has integrated GPS support for location-based services like TeleNav and Google Maps. Social networking is also built-in so you can track Facebook, MySpace and Twitter while you are on the move.

What’s different about this smartphone, compared to touchscreen models in the same class, is that the Sentio comes preloaded with fun widgets. You’ll get Need For Speed, Guitar Hero 5, Bubble Bash 2, Millionaire, and Pac-Man ready to use. When you get tired of those, download other games, ringtones and graphics from the mobile Web.

Something else that comes with your Sentio is an international charger. Why would they include on of those? Well, you might just be traveling internationally and need to top off your battery from time to time. Many phone are useless overseas because they don’t work on the international cellular networks. This one is set up for T-Mobile and is compatible with the GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 and UMTS 1700 and 2100 bands. It has HSDPA and EDGE data download speeds, depending on just what is available where you happen to be.

As one who must stay connected, you’ll be happy to know that the included email client supports POP, IMAP, SMTP and Web-based email services like AOL, Yahoo, Windows Live and Gmail. You can instant message with AIM, MSN Live and Yahoo services. Of course, standard SMS messaging is also available. So is multimedia messaging for sending pictures and video messages.

Need to kick back with some tunes? The built-in MP3 player will oblige. It handles MP2, AAC, AAC+ eAAC+, WMA and MPEG4 formats. You also have the option to stream stereo music to and from compatible A2DP Bluetooth devices.

Do you sense a high value opportunity here? If so, learn more and order your LG Sentio for T-Mobile Wireless now. If you wish to keep on shopping, you can browse by carrier or check out today’s specials for free and low cost cell phones at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Yahoo readies San Francisco news site

Moving quickly to leverage its $90 million-ish acquisition of Associated Content, Yahoo has begun recruiting writers to begin building a local news site for the San Francisco area. Though hundreds of news shops of every shape and size already cover Northern California, Yahoo will be an instantly formidable competitor because of its vast market reach. In a breathless email blast to registered

Telephony In The Cloud

Thinking about cloud networking, what normally comes to mind is meshed data networks transferring packets from location to location. But some companies are also moving their telephone services to the cloud. What advantages and challenges does this present?

In a way, the original public switched telephone network is the oldest existing example of a cloud network. It is a managed system, carefully engineered to assure availability and quality of service, that serves a vast number of users simultaneously. Each customer connects to the cloud via a direct line to the nearest cloud port at the local central office. Users don’t really care to know what goes on in those vast switching offices. They just want to be able to make a call from one location to another at will.

Some companies engineer their own telephone cloud networks using ISDN PRI digital lines to connect PBX systems at multiple offices. The advantage of doing this compared to using the public network is that you don’t have to pay for each call. Only those calls to and from the outside world are subject to a fee.

The more modern approach is to set up converged voice and data networks between business locations so that only one network need be maintained. MPLS networks are often used to implement this cloud network, as they are capable of maintaining quality of service at reasonable cost. On a large scale, this is known as enterprise VoIP. There may be only one IP PBX system at headquarters that coordinates all calls, or each location may have a smaller system. ISDN PRI trunk lines connect to the public telephone network for off-net calls.

SIP Trunking offers an alternative to the ISDN PRI trunk lines for transporting voice traffic. A SIP trunk is part of the VoIP system and acts as the network connection to a remote service provider. That service provider handles termination of calls to the public phone system as needed. Since they terminate calls for many customers, per minute costs can be lower than ordering phone lines locally.

Some companies go even further and get all their telephone services from the cloud. All they have is individual SIP telephones or analog phones with adaptors connected to their company LAN. A private line connection or SIP trunk connects to what is called a virtual PBX system at the service provider. It handles all telephone switching, on-net and off. This system is ideally suited to “virtual” companies that don’t have a bricks and mortar presence. The employees are scattered over a wide geographical area. Thanks to the virtual PBX, they are interconnected just like they would be within a physical office building. Even the receptionist is virtual, routing incoming calls by voice or keypad requests.

Would a cloud networking approach help your company improve productivity while reducing costs? You can find out with a simple inquiry to an expert consultant regarding enterprise VoIP telephone services.

Too many California girls?

A few weeks ago, this blog reported here about the efforts of Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) to collect royalties from commercial users of music throughout the United States. Notably, PROs have developed proprietary technology that can recognize millions of songs even by just a few notes. Using this technology, the PROs can easily recognized when music they represent has been "sampled," interwoven in part into a new piece of music by another artist, thus generating royalty obligations.

Now comes news that Rondor Music International, the publishing company that controls the rights to the Beach Boys' "California Girls" has sent a claim notice to Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg, and their co-writers and publishers demanding that they add the Beach Boys' members as co-authors of their song "California Gurls" because the song references the Beach Boys' classic song.

The incident highlights the potential deviation of interests between writers/performers and the publishers managing the rights. The Beach Boys, when asked, responded that they love Perry's song and appreciated the influence their own song had in the creation of California Gurls. In fact, Brian Wilson said "the melody is infectious, and I'm flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag," and Mike Love summed up his opinion by saying,

"[it] obviously brings to mind our 'California Girls,' it's just in a different vernacular, a different way of appreciating the same things. The Beach Boys have always accentuated the positive, and [Perry's] is a positive message about California Girls, so what's not to like?"

Music publishers like Rondor, by contrast, don't appreciate imitation without remuneration. The Perry/Snoop Dogg song absolutely evokes the Beach Boys' classic, but it has its own flavor and lyrics, with the exception of one nearly identical line ("I really wish you all could be California girls"). Is there enough overlap to warrant co-writing credits and copyright interests? Rondor certainly believes so: "It is up to the six writers and various publishers of 'California Gurls' to decide whether they honor the claim or not." On the other hand, there are certainly agruments, like fair use, that could lead to a finding against Rondor if this incident ever lands in court. No hint yet on what action Rondor may take if the Beach Boys aren't granted the co-writing credits sought.

Insatiable Demand For Ethernet Bandwidth

Not so long ago, 10 Gbps was considered an enormous amount of bandwidth. So enormous that it only made sense for carrier backbone networks. Not anymore. Now enterprises are gobbling up that much WAN bandwidth and looking for more.

Who could possibly require 10 Gbps, short of an Internet service provider or MPLS network operator? Financial services, streaming entertainment media and medical campus connectivity are three applications on the cutting edge of high bandwidth demand, as reported in Carrier Ethernet News. How much more would they like? Some are licking their chops at 40 Gbps and even 100 Gbps.

How can a carrier keep up? Make no mistake about it, competitive service providers are in a scramble to make sure they have enough capacity to supply this burgeoning demand for higher and higher bandwidths. The once impressive T1 line is now considered a small business service. DS3 still hangs on for medium size business applications. OCx SONET, recently the darling of large enterprises, is starting to see its flame flicker on the way out. What’s happening is more than a simple escalation of bandwidth requirements. It’s a wholesale move from legacy telecom services to Ethernet connectivity.

Why Ethernet? There are a couple of strong forces at work nudging WAN bandwidth suppliers in the direction of offering Ethernet rather than some other type of connection. The first is a realization that analog telephony, the impetus behind the buildout of the massive PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), is now the smallest piece of the bandwidth pie. It’s the PSTN standards of T-Carrier & SONET that created the digital WAN services that have been pressed into service for data packet transport. The big piece of the pie is digital data and biggest piece of that pie is video.

No only are data packets the predominant information that needs to be moved from one place to another, but the networks generating those data packets are nearly all based on Ethernet. Why switch to something else just to get from one Ethernet network to another?

That’s what many carriers have concluded. Their new state of the art national and international networks are all designed to transport Ethernet packets. Those packets may represent voice from enterprise VoIP telephone systems, video conferencing or video streaming, medical images, or data file transfers. Interfacing and management of Ethernet bandwidth is more compatible with local area networks running Ethernet, but that’s not all. In most cases, Ethernet bandwidth is cheaper on a Mbps or Gbps basis than any other service.

How much cheaper? That depends on what facilities are available in your location more than anything. If you have competitive Ethernet services available, it’s not uncommon to get twice the bandwidth for the same money or keep the bandwidth you have now and get a big cost savings.

Can you ignore the Ethernet revolution? Only at the peril of your budget! It’s quick and easy to see what Ethernet bandwidth services are available for your business location. Why not take just a minute and put in a request for services and pricing now?

ProClip Mounting System - HTC EVO 4G (Sprint) - Holder with Tilt Swivel

It's out! Sweet!

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Thank you for your interest in our products and have a terrific day!

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ProClip Mounting System - HTC EVO 4G (Sprint) - Holder with Tilt Swivel

MPLS VPN Access Solutions

You’re convinced that an MPLS networking solution is the answer to connecting your geographically diverse business locations. But just how are you going to connect to the MPLS cloud from all those locations?

What you need is individual access networks for each location that will connect to the ingress tag router serving that geographical area. Right now the most popular connection technology is the venerable T1 line. Why? Because T1 lines are almost universally available, highly reliable, private, symmetrical, and relatively high bandwidth. Relatively means 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. For many businesses that exchange data files and even some voice traffic, this may be enough line speed. That’s especially true for branch offices and retail locations that simply need to connect to headquarters. But some applications may be limited by a 1.5 Mbps ceiling.

The next thing you can do is take advantage of T1 bonding to increase access line speed. T1 lines are readily combined, or bonded, to double, triple or otherwise expand bandwidth. There’s a practical limit of around 10 or 12 Mbps for this approach, but that can be more than adequate for many needs. Even video and medical image transmission can get by with this level of bandwidth as long as demands aren’t too high.

What if you need higher bandwidth levels to access your MPLS network? DS3 is still a good intermediate level solution at 45 Mbps. It’s a mature technology and available in many areas, no not nearly as prolific as T1 when you get beyond the metropolitan and suburban cores.

How about Ethernet as an access solution? Metro and Carrier Ethernet services are highly popular for a number of reasons. First, costs are often lower and sometimes much lower than traditional last mile connections for the amount of bandwidth you are ordering. For instance, it is not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet service for the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. 10 Mbps Ethernet is probably the most popular choice for new connections. It is priced attractively and available in most metro areas.

Another feature of Ethernet access services are that they are readily scalable up to the capability of the installed port. You may well start out at 3 Mbps but then find you need to double or triple that as business activity picks up at a particular location. No problem. A simple phone call to your service provider may be all you need to get that location upgraded. That can happen rapidly and independently of connection speeds at other locations.

If you are originating and terminating Ethernet packets, it only makes sense to use Ethernet connections to access the MPLS network. The network itself can easily transport Ethernet as well as other protocols. This gives you the option to keep everything in the Ethernet protocol and perhaps even create a multi-location LAN for ease of network management.

Higher bandwidth access connections, such as DS3 or Fast Ethernet, require fiber optic connections. With your building lit for fiber, you may be able to scale your bandwidth up to OC3, OC12, or OC48 SONET levels or GigE and 10 GigE Ethernet.

What type of MPLS VPN access connections do you need to support your multiple locations? Explore the complete range of options available to you now as MPLS VPN Access Solutions.

Database rights: a reader asks

A reader has posed the following question, to see what the readers of this blog might think:

"Company A purchases the majority share of Company B; a share purchase agreement is signed. The IP clause in the agreement states that Company A has the use of the IP rights of Company B, including Company B's database (a customer list, updated from time to time). After the purchase, Company A merges the information in the database with its own data (with the approval of Company B).

Company B subsequently goes into liquidation. There has been no assignment of the rights in the database, but the database has been substantially changed due to the merging of the data with Company A's own data. I know that, if the merging with the data was a "substantial change" to the contents which would be sufficient to satisfy the requirement for a "substantial new investment", then the amended database would qualify for a new 15 year term of protection. If this is the case, I would think that Company A is the author of the new database, and is entitled to keep using it (and entitled to tell the administrator they can't sell the new database).

However, I don't think Company A can do anything about the database in the form it was in when Company B initially created it, because at that time, Company B was the author of that database".

Do you agree? Please post your comments below.

Flagship newspapers wane in audience mix

The flagship newspaper produces barely half of the weekday audience delivered by some major metro publishers, according to an analysis of data recently issued by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. While papers like the Kansas City Star continue to pursue the traditional model of publishing only the main title and a free once-a-week advertising product sent to the homes of

Cloud Networking Services Extend Business Footprint

If you have a single office in a single city, you may have need for cloud computing or hosted PBX, aka telephony in the cloud. But chances are your communications needs are more about connecting to a service provider’s cloud than requiring a cloud of your own. It’s quite different for companies with multiple business locations. Cloud networking services are just what you need to interconnect two or more locations so they can act as one.

What is cloud networking? It is the use of public or private networks that connect geographically diverse sites on a one to one, one to many or many to many basis. The Internet is a cloud. So are privately run MPLS networks and their Frame Relay predecessors. You can even create your own cloud, if you like. You do this by leasing dedicated lines between locations and setting up your own routing scheme to determine how locations may communicate.

In fact, the ad-hoc private network is how many growing businesses get started with multi-location connections. They start off with a T1 point to point data line that connects their main office to a branch site. As more offices or retail locations are added, more lines are connected. At some point, you are dealing with a spider’s web of private lines that need constant management and are costing a small fortune.

This is where cloud networks shine. The idea behind the cloud is that costs are amortized by users sharing the resources of the cloud. Each user is required to provide a connection from each of their desired locations to the cloud network. The connections between locations and the transport of voice, data or video through the shared portion of the network is the responsibility of the cloud. The name “cloud” comes from the convention of drawing this shared network in the shape of a cumulus cloud. It signifies that you don’t manage what goes on in there. That’s someone else’s job.

Actually, you do need to be concerned about what’s going on in that cloud even though you don’t directly operate or control it. You don’t want your valuable information damaged or intercepted during the transport process. Take the biggest cloud in the world, the Internet. It has the advantages of being near universally available and relatively cheap to use. But the Internet also has the disadvantages of being a “best effort” service with no guaranteed performance parameters and enough security concerns to give you pause. How can anyone use the Internet for serious business applications?

In some cases you can’t. Two-way real-time applications have a tough time with the unpredictable performance that is inherent in the design of the Internet cloud. But it still works just fine for Web access, email, small scale data backup to remote servers, and one-way video that is properly buffered. In fact, your business probably needs access to the Internet just to communicate with customers, place orders or do research. If you are going to send sensitive business data between locations using the Internet cloud, however, you’ll need to protect yourself by encrypting those packets so they can’t be read by unintended parties. That process is called tunneling. The overall connection is called IP VPN. VPN, meaning Virtual Private Network.

If the internet is too flakey or scary to support your business, the cloud you’ll be most interested in is called MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This is a privately run network with a regional or nationwide footprint. The combination of private ownership and proprietary technology means that performance can be guaranteed and security is inherently better than the public Internet. That’s why MPLS networks are also called MPLS VPN networks, even without packet encryption. Of course you can still encrypt your data to add even more security... something of a belt and suspenders approach.

A specialized type of cloud networking is telephone service. Instead of hooking all your phones with individual lines to the local phone company or managing an in-house PBX system, you connect your phones to the cloud using SIP trunks. This is also called hosted PBX. Users that all connect to the same cloud may communicate over this private network. When you need to make or receive calls with the general public, those calls are connected to the public telephone network by the service provider.

Can your company benefit from cloud networking or better cloud services? It’s fast and easy to find out. Just take a second and put in an inquiry for availability and pricing of competitive cloud networking services.

German industrial expansion: blame it on copyright?

"The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?" by Frank Thadeusz, published on Spiegel Online here, has already been the subject of this post on the IPKat by Mark Schweizer which has already attracted a fair degree of serious comment. The author's byline, "Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might", tells you why it's so interesting. Enjoy!

Samsung Intercept Brings Free Android Smartphone to Sprint

There’s a new design that’s becoming a standard in the smartphone market. It’s the combination of a 3 inch touch screen display with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the Android operating system. Sprint gets this package in the Samsung Intercept. Would you like to intercept one online? What if you knew it was available free? Would that make a difference?

It’s truly amazing that you can get a phone with these capabilities free of charge when you order it online with new Sprint PCS service. Even the shipping is free. You don’t pay a premium for the service, either. The plans are priced the same as they are in stores.

Here are some of the highlights that emphasize what a deal the Samsung Intercept M910 really is. It starts with the large 3 inch touch screen display. This gives you the ability to select from a wealth of Android apps and run your application on a space large enough to make it usable and enjoyable. You’ll enjoy streaming multimedia on the go. Watch live TV and video on demand with full motion video and vivid sound.

What kind of connectivity can you expect to make that streaming video a pleasant experience? You’ll connect at 3G data speeds where available on the Sprint PCS network. You also have the option of connecting to wireless hotspot networks with the WiFi connectivity in this phone. No all smartphones give you WiFi connectivity, so be sure to look for it if you want to use this capability.

Messaging is obviously a high point of this design. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard lets you enter your messages efficiently by pressing actual physical keys and getting that tactile feedback you don’t enjoy when tapping your fingers on glass. In addition to standard text messaging, you can send and receive picture and video messages with multimedia messaging. The built-in camera offers 3.2 Megapixels to give you photos good enough to print as well as share via messaging. You can also capture video with this camera.

Other features of note for the Samsung Intercept include integrated GPS support for location-based services like Google Maps. Bluetooth for hands free conversation is included, as well as stereo Bluetooth so you can stream to your music to A2DP compatible devices, like wireless stereo headphones. Visual voicemail is a new feature. You can listen to your voicemail messages in any order and easily manage your inbox without calling-in.

The Intercept is a great work phone as well as a personal cellphone. It supports viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that come in as email attachments. The included Web browser offers full HTML capability. Email capability includes Microsoft Direct Push as well as mobile email like Gmail and Yahoo!

Does this make your current cell phone seem like something from a generation ago? You needn’t suffer with inadequate functionality when you can get a high performance Android smartphone like this for free. Note: This phone is also available in a satin pink finish. Learn more and get your Samsung Intercept for Sprint or other high performance smartphone. There are many models available and most are free or offered at a tremendous discount through Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Are pop videos overrated?

Last week Mr Justice Floyd allowed an appeal from a decision of the Copyright Tribunal over the royalty TV channels should pay for broadcasting music videos. CSC Media Group, which operates seven TV music channels, licenses its videos from Video Performance Ltd (VPL). As VPL is a collective licensing body, CSC had the right to refer the terms of its expiring licence to the Copyright Tribunal. Last year, the Tribunal determined that the correct fee for CSC to pay VPL should be 12.5% of revenues rather than the existing 20% (pro-rated according to amount of VPL content used).

Decisions of the Tribunal can be appealed on a point of law. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 requires the Tribunal to set reasonable terms and in determining what is reasonable it should have regard to the terms of other similar licences. The High Court argued that the most relevant licence for the Tribunal to consider was VPL’s licence to BSkyB, which had a 20% royalty. Although the Tribunal had referred to the BSkyB licence, it only did so after it had already made its mind up that the royalty should fall within a window of 10–15%. This meant that the BSkyB licence was given insufficient weight in its decision-making process. The Tribunal had ‘had regard’ to it, but not primary regard. The Tribunal had erred in law: it had jumped through the right hoops – but in the wrong order.

But is it really undisputable good sense to use the BSkyB licence as the principal measuring stick for the CSC licence when both were from the same collective-licensing body? Both licensees must have experienced a similar imbalance of bargaining power – VPL was the only possible licensor for the content they required and it had apparently made the 20% non-negotiable for years. If anything, BSkyB may have been even more unenthusiastic about the terms than CSC – unable to make good business out of music video, it wasted no time in selling off its channels even before its licence was signed.

The record labels vs the broadcasters - what’s phones got 2 do with it?

Here's a novel way to resolve a dispute between two parties. Ask the government to put an obligation on a third party to cure all your ills. The long-running dispute between US radio broadcasters and the recording industry over the royalties broadcasters should have to pay to use recorded music has taken an unexpected turn with a proposed settlement where a suggested new federal mandate would require all new mobile phones to come with a built-in FM radio chip. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has long been fighting any proposals that would require radio stations to pay royalties to record labels and performers for the right to play their sound recordings on the air. The US (unusually) has no current legal requirement for a royalty for the use of recordings for FM stations - although now in the US internet, cable and satellite radio services and stations do have to pay an equivalent of the UK’s PPL royalty: Broadcasters have long argued that airplay provides free promotion and drives music purchases and concert ticket sales.

The new idea is to push forward a proposed settlement that would establish a tiered system of royalty payments that would bring in a total of roughly $100 million for the music industry. Commercial radio stations with more than $1.25 million in annual revenue would pay royalties totalling 1 percent of revenue. The smallest commercial and not for profit stations would pay either 1 percent of revenue or $100 annually, whichever is less.

The prospect that the US government could dictate key design decisions for mobiles has alarmed electronics manufacturers as well as consumer groups, not least as many say they don’t actually want or need FM on their phones, that it is an outdated and redundant idea and that practical problems such as a second antenna, reduced battery life, additional weight and more bulk would be unattractive to consumers. Gary Shapiro, Presient of the Consumer Electronics Association said “Consumers clearly aren’t interested in (ad laden) FM radio on their mobile phones and other consumer gadgets - especially with the availability of Pandora, Slacker and other similar smartphone music apps that are now widely popular" adding the “backroom scheme” from the broadcasters and the labels to have Congress mandate broadcast radios in portable devices, including mobile phones, “is the height of absurdity” adding “Rather than adapt to the digital marketplace, NAB and RIAA act like buggy-whip industries that refuse to innovate and seek to impose penalties on those that do.”

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committees have passed bills that would give recording labels and artists a share of advertising revenue that the FM radio stations generate by playing their recordings, but neither of those contained a FM chip mandate. As both bills have stalled due to fierce broadcaster resistance, legislators asked the NAB and MusicFirst (for the labels and for recording artists) to try to negotiate a compromise. Hence the new mobile idea.

It seems that the parties are nowhere near concluding the deal despite optimism from the record labels with Recording Industry Association of America boss Mitch Bainwol saying that whilst “Nothing is locked down just yet" the parties were on "the precipice of an historic breakthrough”. Hmmmmmmmmm!

http://www.myce.com/news/riaa-broadcasters-want-fm-radio-mandatory-on-smartphones-33362/

Voice And Data On One Line

Nearly all businesses today have a need for both telephone and broadband Internet service. Most businesses installed telephone first and Internet later. That’s led to a mix of line services to meet specific needs. Is there a better solution?

Today’s digital technology allows you to have both telephone service and broadband Internet access coming in on a single line. That often offers considerable cost savings over two separate services. But what about quality of service?

You might cringe at the thought of combined telephone and Internet if you’ve had a bad experience with VoIP over residential broadband. Usually it’s the phone service that suffers. Voices get garbled, you may hear an echo on the line, people start talking over each other with a delay in the speech, and calls can even be dropped. That’s what can happen when you just plug a VoIP phone or adaptor into a shared broadband service with uncontrolled bandwidth.

There are much better solutions available for business users. VoIP telephony can sound excellent and be as stable as traditional analog telephony. The trick is to carefully engineer the line to ensure adequate bandwidth, jitter, latency and voice packet priority.

A service called Integrated T1 does just this. A single T1 line with 1.5 Mbps dedicated bandwidth in both directions connects the business location to the service provider. There are no other users sharing this line. A specialized router called an Integrated Access Device converts analog telephony signals to digital packets. Those voice packets are assigned a portion of the line bandwidth to ensure they don’t get overwhelmed by data packets from Web sites and other Internet services. This bandwidth is assigned dynamically. As more phones are in use, more bandwidth is reserved for phone calls. When calls hang up, that bandwidth is reassigned for broadband Internet access.

Integrated T1 service works best for smaller businesses that need 6 to 12 phone lines plus modest broadband Internet service. It is possible to add more bandwidth as the business grows by bonding additional T1 lines.

Another service that combines voice and data on a single line service is called SIP Trunking. SIP is the signaling protocol used by enterprise VoIP telephone systems. You may already have a VoIP telephone system in your office. If so, you can get both voice and broadband Internet service over a SIP trunk. Like Integrated T1, SIP trunking manages quality of service to ensure that data and voice packets don’t interfere. SIP trunks, however, can have much higher bandwidth that T1 lines. Large SIP trunks can carry hundreds or even thousands of telephone calls.

Are Integrated T1 or SIP Trunking the right solution to give your company a substantial cost savings? Find out with a competitive service quote from Enterprise VoIP. You may be paying far more than you need to with your existing mix of telephone and broadband services.

Why Look For Fiber Lit Buildings?

Are you familiar with the term “fiber lit building?” It’s a fairly new concept. A fiber lit building is one where fiber optic service is already installed? How do you find them? Just use this handy resource...



The Ethernet Buildings Lit Building Locator is something of a mapping service. Think of it as a treasure map. The treasure itself is the availability of large bandwidth services without the need for expensive construction costs. If you have a need for higher levels of bandwidth, the lit building is where you want to be.

What kind of bandwidth are we talking about? With fiber optic connections, there really isn’t much of an upper limit. You’ll run out of money before you tap out all the bandwidth that can be brought in on fiber. A fiber strand can easily support Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE. With wavelength multiplexing, dozens of 10 Gigabit services can be multiplexed onto a single fiber. Most cables have many strands, even dozens or a hundred individual glass fibers bundled together.

Now, in a practical sense terabits per second of bandwidth probably won’t be provisioned to buildings where you would rent space. Even so, it’s nice to know that you can get DS3, OC3, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth to support your organization. Those are typical services running over fiber optic connections. Which ones are available will depend on what has been installed in a particular building. If you need a different service, even if it isn’t current installed, you may well be able to request that protocol and bandwidth level with minimal or no construction costs assessed.

How do you find out where the lit buildings are and what type of services are available at them? Simply run a quick inquiry using the Lit Building Locator for a location map. You can then request pricing for particular services of interest.

Another ECJ reference on monitoring and SABAM

This blog has already reported here on the ECJ reference in the case of SABAM v Tiscali.

To that case has now been added another reference from the Belgian courts in the case of Netlog v SABAM. At this stage, details in English are hard to come by, but it appears that Netlog, a social networking site, was subject to a similar attack from SABAM as that which Tiscali/Scarlet received. The difference, of course, is that as a social network, Netlog sits in a different point in the value chain than the ISP and therefore at a different point in the intersection between the various applicable legislation (e-commerce directive, data protection legislation, IP enforcement directive).

The Belgian court rejected SABAM's demands for Netlog to implement filtering and sent the case to the ECJ. It has been filed under case number C-360/10 - but at this stage, the author has been unable to track down any further details of the questions. Netlog's lawyers were quoted as saying they had won on all counts (although I guess his clients would have been even happier for the case to have been dismissed, rather than sent to the ECJ for another year or two of litigation).

The Importance Of Buying Ernest

If you are a company with dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations, what you’d really like to deal with is a national local phone company for your telecom needs. But national local is an oxymoron, right? Can there even be such a company?

There is and it’s called Ernest Communications. This organization is unlike no telephone company you’ve dealt with. It’s focus is large nationwide multi-location accounts needing telephone lines, data lines, wireless mobile, or all of these.

What type of businesses fall into this category? National or regional chain stores come to mind immediately. Also, hotels, motels, gas stations, financial services, healthcare, real estate offices, insurance companies, entertainment venues such as theaters, and quick service restaurants. You can probably think of more categories, including the business you are in.

Any company depending on franchises, branch offices or service centers is in the business of supporting a multitude of small local operations. Every one of them has communications needs. Now, would you like to deal with a hundred or thousand separate local service providers or one larger company that has the staffing, expertise and products to handle all your business. Not only does this make your life easier by having a single point of contact, but you’ll likely save money due to the economy of scale.

Ernest Communications has taken advantage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to gain access to the nearly 200 million local lines that make up the Public Switched Telephone Network. Ernest provides your local telephone service plus they include most of the common custom calling features such as Call Waiting and Caller ID. Directory Assistance and IntraLATA toll charges are included in flat rate and blended rate plans. They’ll block all 3rd party and casual billing charges. Long distance rates are competitive.

Nearly all locations now require reliable broadband as well as telephone services. Ernest can provide high speed Internet access with speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 45 Mbps with performance governed by Service Level Agreements (SLA). You’ll get professional installation and 24/7/365 monitoring, which is not always the case with other providers.

Does your company have enough employees at one or more locations that you use a key telephone system or in-house PBX? Ernest can provide you with the ISDN PRI digital telephone lines that you need.

Many companies also now depend on wireless communications as well as line services to get the job done. Think about field service and sales people. Ernest has perhaps the only nationwide wireless solution designed specifically for business use. You’ll be able to choose from a variety of handsets, smartphones and mobile data devices, including BlackBerry devices. You also have your choice of shared, pooled, bundled and pay-per-use plans.

Getting your telecom services from a single provider has the advantage of giving you a single bill that combines all your voice, mobility and data services. Plus you have the ease of management that comes from having a single point of contact for moves, adds, changes and deletes that are part of normal business activity.

Could your regional or national multi-location business simplify operations and save money by working with a nationwide communications company? Why not get a competitive quote for your voice, data and mobility services and see for yourself. Our Telarus consultants can help you with this, plus any of your higher bandwidth or international communications needs.

Moral Rights... and unhappy bedfellows

It is a fact universally acknowledged (at least among comparative copyright lawyers) that moral rights and common law countries aren’t the happiest of bedfellows. When the United States acceded to the Berne Convention in 1988, one might have expected them to introduce comprehensive moral rights protection in accordance with Article 6bis Berne Convention. What we did get was the Visual Artists Rights Act 1990 (VARA), incorporated into the Copyright Act as § 106A. VARA bestows moral rights only on the authors of specific kinds of works, namely

“paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, still photographic images produced for exhibition only, and existing in single copies or in limited editions of 200 or fewer copies, signed by the artist.”

As that leaves the overwhelming majority of works out in the cold, the cases where § 106A is invoked are few and far between. However, a highly interesting lawsuit relying on § 106A is currently before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

The Plaintiff is David Ascalon, a renowned sculptor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ascalon). The Defendants are the Department for Parks and Recreation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (“DPRH”), the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg (“Federation”), and David Grindle, an artist and/or restorer. In the early 1990s, the Federation and the DPRH decided to create a memorial site to honour the victims of the Holocaust. Mr Ascalon submitted the winning entry for a commemorative sculpture, which was duly made and erected on the site. It consisted of a shining stainless steel core in the shape of a Star of David, around which was wrapped a serpentine shaped structure of a darker and wearing type of steel. The shining stainless steel, suggesting permanence, represented the Jewish people and their endurance under unimaginable suffering. The rusting steel structure represented the barbed wire fences of the Nazi death camps, implying oppression, decay and misery.

In 2003, there was some concern as to the state of the rusting steel part of the sculpture and whether restoration work would be required. According to the statement of claim (http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/28/Holocaust.pdf), Mr Ascalon offered to carry out any necessary restoration work, but was eventually not taken up on that offer. Amazingly, in 2005 he received a cease and desist letter from the Federation, demanding he stop referencing the sculpture. In 2007 he learned that, unbeknownst to him, the sculpture had been altered in several ways. Not only had the dark steel structure been replaced by a structure of the same shining stainless steel as the core structure, but his name had been erased from the sculpture as well. Instead, it sported the caption “Restored by David Grindle 2006” and the names of the “Restoration Advisors.”

The Statement of Claim describes the effect thus:

“The modification of the sculpture has changed it so that now the same shiny stainless steel that represents the enduring Jewish people is also used to depict the Nazi regime and atrocities of the Holocaust. This alteration is abhorrent, and runs completely contrary to the core vision of the Memorial, which was based on the notion of creating a striking and stark visual contrast between the Jewish people and their Nazi oppressors. The sculpture as modified now creates a visual equivalency between good and evil, which is a mutilation and bastardization of the artwork and its purpose.”

Looking at the pictures, I must say I agree. Sadly, the case might be less clear-cut than my civil heart wants to believe: According to § 106A(a)(2), the author of a work of visual art

“shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation.”

I suppose by grinding off Mr Ascalon’s name the Defendants successfully avoided violation of § 106A(a)(2). Nice.

§ 106A(a)(3) states that the author shall have the right

“(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right; and
(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.”

Distortion? Oh yes. Mutilation? I should think so. But now the old Article 6bis BC problem raises its ugly head once more: Does “prejudicial to his honor or reputation” only refer to modifications or also to distortions and mutilations? Most courts and commentators agree that the better view is that the prejudice requirement applies in all cases. VARA does not define the terms “prejudicial,” “honor,” or “reputation,” but I have no doubt that it would be harmful to Mr Ascalon’s honour and reputation in artistic circles if anyone were led to believe that he agreed to the changes made to his work. But since his name does not appear on the sculpture anymore (and he is demanded to cease and desist from referencing his work), is the modified sculpture still capable of being prejudicial to his honour or reputation? Or can anyone distort and mutilate a work to their heart’s content as long as they at the same time disassociate the author from it? Gilliam v American Broadcasting Company 538 F.2d 14 (1976) springs to mind, where Judge Gurfein pointed out that the Lanham Act would do nothing for the Plaintiffs if the Defendants had clearly labelled the truncated versions of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” as not in keeping with what the Plaintiffs had intended. § 106A(a)(3)(B) might not be the answer either. While no prejudice to honour and reputation is required, as the work, though probably of “recognized stature”, arguably was not destroyed but merely damaged (I assume it is not beyond repair).

A further complication stems from § 106A(c)(2), pursuant to which the modification of a work of visual art which is the result of conservation is not a destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification unless the modification is caused by gross negligence.” It will be interesting to see what the court makes of this case. Moral rights are an extension of the author’s personality and VARA is supposed to protect “both the reputation of certain visual artists and the works of art they create” (House Report, 1990 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 6915). In my view that implies rather more than a law against misrepresentation like the Lanham Act, and it should not be possible to circumvent § 106A(a)(3) by removing the author’s name and otherwise trying to disassociate him from his work.

(Source of photographs: http://img823.imageshack.us/cpreredodetail.jpg/)