China: Cyberterror or Academic Research?

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Peter Vogel

A Chinese graduate student’s “paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.” was recently reported to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. The paper entitled “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” was published in Safety Science a year ago. American scientists who read the paper agreed that there was no way that the power grid could be taken down as explained in the paper. Famous last words! The US is barely managing Cybersecurity and this paper should give us all pause to consider the implications.

Google Set to Depart

China is demanding that Google obey Chinese law as it departs which seem imminent now. Since Google entered China in 2006 it has been censoring content just as “China routinely blocks Internet content, shutting off access to sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” The dominant search engine in China, Baidu continues to be successful albeit with Chinese censorship. Time will tell about other US based Internet companies such as Microsoft and whether they will stay in China and participate in Chinese censorship.

Chinese Media Furor

A recent report about a Chinese provincial Governor’s response to a scandal led to “rare display of unity, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists posted a letter of protest on the Internet demanding the Governor’s resignation.” Li Hongzhong, the Governor of Hubei Province, was incensed that a reporter had the gall to question him about a waitress at a karaoke bar killed a government official in self-defense. The waitress was later released and the Governor got a lot of heat on the Internet. Given the economic power and population, the Internet will continue to impact China whether the Chinese government wants the Internet impact or not.

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Social Networking - More Chinese Censorship and More Users

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Peter Vogel

No surprise that the Chinese government blocked social networking on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the military crackdown at Tiananmen Square. As a matter of fact just before the Olympic Games began in August 2008 China limited Internet access as the government wanted control over information before and during the Games. Many people from the West were surprised since China was hosting the international Games, but it seems logical that a totalitarian government would not change its behavior in such a circumstance.

More Social Networking

It’s about time that smaller businesses got the clue that they need to use social networking to promote their activities, so it’s no surprise to read reports that small businesses are directing their efforts to attract traffic with social networks. Targeted advertising works even better on the Internet, but learning how to identify potential customers has always been a primary goal of marketing.


In February 2009 the Federal Trade Commission issued its FTC Staff Report entitled “Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising” following public hearings and “sixty-three comments on the Principles from eighty-seven stakeholders, including individual companies, business groups, academics, consumer and privacy advocates.” Since the US relies on self-regulation of privacy these comments were all considered before releasing the Principles. One need merely review Google’s Analytics site to how much information about is captured about our activity on the Internet. The fact that this monetized is one thing, but the potential loss of privacy has many alarmed.

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Conviction of Software Pirates in China is Significant

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Peter Vogel

A report that 11 people were convicted in China of violating Chinese copyright laws is most significant because of the cooperation and joint efforts between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and China’s Ministry of Public Security. These convictions are a good sign that software counterfeiters are risk which is critical to Microsoft who estimates it global sales at more than $2 billion. Unfortunately it appears that these 11 individuals who were convicted did not have millions in sales, but did account for about $200,000 of products. There is still a separate trial in China against other alleged counterfeiters of software products from Symantec and Microsoft.

Selling Counterfeit Software on eBay

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is actively pursuing sales of counterfeit software on the Internet in what it calls the Auction Litigation Program. In July 2008 the SIIA reported that Jeremiah Mondello pled guilty to counts of copyright infringement, mail fraud and identity theft for sale of counterfeit software on eBay. He was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison in addition to the confiscation of his computers and $220,000 in cash.

How Big is Software Piracy?

In 2008 the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and International Data Corporation (IDC) issued their 2007 Global Software Piracy Study. The BSA/IDC Study has a breakdown country by country, and some regions of the world are worse than others. The bottom line is that this BSA/IDC Study estimates that in 2007 about 38% of all software used in the world was counterfeit which accounted for approximately $47 billion.

Can the Software Pirates be Contained?

Counterfeit software is an enormous business and these convictions in China and the US should have an impact on other software pirates, but not all countries around the world are willing to pursue software counterfeiters. Given the percentage of illegal software in many countries it seems unlikely that it is possible to ever stop this software piracy. For instance the BSA/IDC Study indicates that about 21% of software in the North America is counterfeit with a value of $9.1 billion which is accounts for about 19% of all of the counterfeit sales in the world.
 

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