billso.com

A few weeks ago, my face-to-face IS 7010 students talked about the high-definition DVD format war. Apple, Sony, Disney and Fox supported Blu-ray. Warner’s defection from the HD DVD camp last month was an indication that Blu-ray was winning the battle, according to this New York Times article.

The rival HD DVD format was supported by Universal, Paramount, Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel, according to this Wikipedia article.

Of course, Blu-ray discs won’t play in a standard HD DVD player, and vice versa. Engadget has a chart that compares the two formats here.

This format war is reminiscent of the Beta vs VHS video tape battle in the 1970s and 1980s.

It seems that this format war is over, and Blu-ray has won. Wal-Mart had been pushing HD DVD in its stores, but the company announced yesterday that they will no longer sell HD DVD movies, according to the New York Times. The shift was announced on Wal-Mart’s corporate blog in this article. Engadget has sounded the death knell, partly because Wal-Mart sells 20% of the DVD in the USA.

Toshiba made one desperate last attempt to promote their HD DVD technology with an expensive commercial during the Super Bowl earlier this month. However, Netflix and Blockbuster had previously announced they would support Blu-ray. Now Toshiba is suspending their HD DVD marketing.

Computer manufacturers have long wanted a single standard high-def DVD format. Software publishers don’t really need high-def DVDs and the moment, and game publishers have to go along with whatever format is used in the game consoles.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on allegations that US Customs agents have inspected and confiscated laptop computers, iPods, and mobile phones during passenger inspections. Passengers claim they were asked to provide passwords and open files. In some cases, mobile phones were inspected and returned with purged call logs. One person claims their laptop has been held for an over a year.

According to this article, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus have filed a civil lawsuit against the Federal Government, based on 20 complaints from Northern California residents. The goal is disclosure of the US government’s boder search policies. One sourse of concern is an apparent pattern of racial profiling, in which agents targeted Asian and Muslim passengers.

The US Department of Justice asserts that electronic equipment falls into the same category as a briefcase, and may be searched and confiscated for inspection.

However, the scenarios described in this article sound more like coercion or out-and-out robbery.

Of course, many corporate travelers have confidential or private information on their computers and phones. The Post article cites a Canadian law firm that sends corporate travelers headed to the United States with “empty hard drives”. There’s an operating system and a web browser on the laptop, of course, but employees access their email and documents through a secure Internet connection such as a virtual private network (VPN). This helps keep confidential data off the drive, as the law firm fears discovery by search more than a hacked Internet connection.

BoingBoing and the Consumerist each had articles about the Post report, although both blogs misidentified US Customs as the TSA.

Sadly, the activities alleged in this lawsuit do not surprise me. BusinessWeek recently reported on Indian IT outsourcing firms that have systematically underpaid IT workers who were brought to the United States on H1-B visas. These workers make tempting targets, as their outsourcing companies can send the workers back home for any reason. By the time some workers determined they would never get their back-pay, they were no longer in the US. It seems that only a few lawyers or client companies will step in to help these guest workers.

Last Thursday, I posted a brief article about Internet problems in India, Africa and the Middle East. Two undersea cables had been cut in the Mediterranean Sea, near Egypt.

In the following days, two more undersea cables were damaged. The International Herald Tribune printed an article about the third cable cut, and Wired followed suit with its own article, including a helpful map.

This Tuesday, as Reuters was reporting that a repair ship had reached one of the cut cables, reports surfaced of a fifth cable cut in the same region. BoingBoing has been following the cable cut story, and linked to a report from a Dubai newspaper. CrunchGear also reported on the fifth cut, and added a global map of high-speed fiber-optic connections. Wired claims the fifth cut is actually a cable failure that occurred before the Egypt cuts.

Bruce Schneier has a brief article with several links that I’ve used in this article.

All of these cable failures can be repaired. Here’s a link to pictures of various cable repair ships.

In the meantime, attention is focused on something most Internet users take for granted: the fiber backbone that supports the Internet.

Cisco Systems, the world’s largest network equipment company, has released its largest switch ever. The Nexus 7000 can move 15 terabytes of data per second, and is designed to connect distant data centers together. According to Forbes, that is fast enough to move the entire Wikipedia in about 40 seconds. The 1-meter tall box will require special cabling and cost US$200,000 a year to maintain and operate.

As companies move their servers and data storage into larger data centers, these types of switches are necessary. The continued growth of web-based applications is also supporting this trend. Networks are a lot like plumbing, but there’s only a finite amount of water on the planet. The amount of data produced and stored continues to grow.

According to a Reuters article, John Chambers, the long-time CEO of Cisco, believes network growth will continues at a fast pace for the next ten years as ISPs and data centers add capacity.

In this post on his blog, Kevin Kelly discusses how the Internet is a massive copying machine. This is a major reason that digital rights management (DRM) does not protect business models very well.

The music and movie industries have focused on protecting content and managing copying, instead of building and offering value that is difficult or hard to copy. U2’s manager recently attacked ISPs, search engines and other companies for aiding and abetting music and video file sharing on the Internet. (CBC).

Kelly, on the other hand, proposes a network economy where sharing and abundance are key success factors that every content publisher must satisfy. He also identifies 8 key success factors that spur customers to buy instead of copy.

It’s difficult to copy reputation and trust, but it’s rather easy to offer or measure these attributes. Just look at eBay.

Reputation and trust are relevant in education. Jason Schultz published links to several YouTube videos of students demonstrating how to cheat in school. BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow discussed his own experiences with cheating when he linked to Schultz’s post.

Schools offer interpretation, which is another form of value that is difficult to copy. Grading, evaluation, advising are good examples of content that is very difficult to copy. These also have elements of personalization, which help increase their value.

Patronage is another factor. Some users want to pay for content, even if it can be downloaded free of charge.  Physical forms that cannot be downloaded through the Internet can also make content more valuable – cover art and booklets are examples in the music industry.

Convenience is also an important value generator. Immediate access to content may be more important to some users than eventually finding free access through peer-to-peer networks or file sharing. Metadata, XML and web services are some of the tools that small and independent publishers use to sell their content.

Blogs are also part of the value system that is created as multiple value chains link together from end to end. BoingBoing is a good example – that blog has several editors who promote their solo media projects through the web site. I discovered Kelly’s article on a BoingBoing post, as a matter of fact.