Saturday, October 05, 2002

From an article in the NY Times (requires free registration), a great quote from a memo written in 2000 by the then-CEO of Global Crossing, Leo J. Hindery Jr who recognized that Global Crossing was in big trouble.: "Like the resplendently colored salmon going up river to spawn, at the end of our journey our niche is going to die rather than live and prosper," he wrote. "The stock market can be fooled, but not forever, and it is fundamentally insightful and always unforgiving of being misled," Mr. Hindery added. "Without looking like we are shaking our bootie all over the world, sell ourselves quickly to whichever of the six possible acquirors offer our shareholders the highest value." Mr. Hindery left Global Crossing shortly after sending the memo to the Global Crossing Chairman, Gary Winnick. 6:32:36 PM    comment []

An article earlier this week in Wired: Washington lawmakers are considering legislation that would allocate $100 million to thwart Internet censorship by authoritarian regimes. Well, Bravo. But am I the only one that sees a colossal contradiction here? This legislation is brought to us by the same crowd that is bought and paid for by the megalomaniac dinosaur content companies who are doing their best to stifle fair use. And oh by the way, guess what technology is being used to tharwt censorhip? Peer-to-Peer. Ironic isn't it? So far, the fight against censorship has largely been taken up by the private sector and the hacker community. Hackers are working on two anti-censorship packages under development. One, called Peekabooty, aims to provide a peer-to-peer platform for uncensored Web access. Another, Six/Four, being developed by the Hacktivismo group, is more ambitious, planned as a full-scale peer-to-peer platform for all Internet activities, including Web browsing and instant messaging. But neither package is near completion.   6:22:01 PM    comment []

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