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But sir, all of these songs are under the Open Content License! atta1 writes "In an article on The Register, EasyInternetcafe has lost its court battle against British Phonographic Industry (BPI) over burning downloaded music to CD."

When last mentioned (August of last year), EasyInternetCafe was trying to avoid fines from BPI for letting Internet cafe customers burn to CD music they'd downloaded there.

After all, somebody's got to write 'em. g_adams27 writes "Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. Now it looks like Washington might be taking his bet... and they want us to help out!

A congressional aide appears to be drafting legislation based on Larry's suggestions and is asking the Politech list for suggestions. The proposed law is posted here."

IP leases are nicer than telephone leases. Lots of people were interested in the story posted the other day about VoIP support in GnomeMeeting. I mentioned there that theKompany had a VoIP application for Zaurus owners; Shawn Gordon of theKompany writes with information about a forthcoming desktop version as well.

"So we released tkcPhone a few weeks ago, we found some issues with Net2Phone that we've just finished sorting out today, and we've about wrapped up the tkPhone beta, which we expect in a day or two. Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support. We also can have a system tray notifier and a roomier user interface. Because we spent so much time optimizing everything to work on the Zaurus, it means your desktop performance is going to be very good.

We decided to use SIP as opposed to H323 for a lot of reasons: smaller, faster, lighter, newer, easier hardware requirements. So with our phone a regular sound card and a headset/mic will typically suffice for what you need or want to do. Our arrangement with Net2phone means that in addition to PC-to-PC calls, you can make PC-to-phone and PC-to-mobile calls as well. The prices range from free to as little as $0.02 per minute in the U.S. and $0.03 minute internationally. You're already paying for your internet access, might as well start to piggyback this stuff.

tkPhone is not free however, it is $9.95 for the electronic version of the application. We expect to have it up for sale about February 10, 2003."

And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both the Bayonne project (mentioned several times before)and asterisk (also discussed here).

You mean they're against my inalienable right to watch movies for free? geekee writes "An article on CNET states that the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) will include DRM support in the MPEG-4 open standard. Without DRM, the ISMA doesn't believe MPEG-4 will be able to compete against proprietary standards such as that provided by Microsoft since content owners 'want continually improved tools, with rights management.' For instance, Movielink, an online movie rental source, has opted to support Microsoft and RealNetwork formats because of their DRM capabilities. An interesting thing to note is that Apple is a member of the ISMA, and has previously declared its opposition to DRM."

Money talks, and sometimes it says nasty things. scubacuda writes "Since eBay removed the alleged libelous statements, Roger Grace has agreed to drop his libel lawsuit for $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Tim Neeley (who wrote that the magazines he bought from Grace had arrived late and in a worse condition than advertised). Interestingly, eBay removed the feedback not because it was 'negative,' but rather because 'the contact information for the seller was not correct.' Chris Donlay, eBay spokesman, says, '[T]hat is one of the circumstances in which we will consider removing the feedback,' EBay attorneys even went to far as to claim that Grace's original lawsuit is 'completely without merit.'"

(Here's the Slashdot post from last Saturday, 'Attorney Sues eBay over Negative Feedback'.)

"What kind of set up did you start off with: 10 computers, 256kbit DSL, a dedicated T3 or something else? I am currently looking at 8 computers with some form of DSL (this should be the most cost effective solution). Cable might be available, but it depends on the location.

This internet cafe is primarily aimed at gamers, and I am interested to know how much success small internet cafes have had with bulk software purchases (say X = number of computers (8 to 10), X licenses for Half-Life and X licenses for Starcraft etc). I think I can get into contact with suppliers in Australia, but X licenses may still not be enough to be bulk. What suppliers (in the Australia/Pacific region) have other internet cafes delt with and bought software from? Please pass along any lessons learned if so.

What kind of times are the most popular? Being open all day costs a lot, so I was thinking of being open 5~6pm to about 11pm, seven days a week, and also having an 'all night special' on friday nights. What times do you run your internet cafe? What kind of special all night things do you have? For the readers out there, what times would be optimal for you and what kind of 'specials' would you want?

I am also interested how you deal with security. I have been thinking of basically hiring a bouncer to deal with gatecrashers and such (but this is rather expensive). Is security this much of a problem? I mean, how do you deal with a car of five drugged and drunken idiots intent on (as in smashing window/door down intent) getting some counterstrike goodness (or just seeing what happens when you stick someones head inside a broken monitor)? Do internet cafes attract this kind of person? I was talking to my parents, and they were saying that drunken people just drive around looking for a joint to gatecrash, and being open at 11pm just sounds like trouble to me. So does your internet cafe hire bouncers or some other form of security?

I had thought I would get people to 'register' first, and then book appointments beforehand - perhaps even some sort of video security system on the front door (or maybe even fingerprint ID/keycards). Has anyone tried anything like this and has it been successful? Can you recommend any such systems in existence? Any kind of 'register' before use system will always cause hassles for new users, and put off the casual gamer, which is also a problem...

The security situation also has a lot to do with location. I am currently looking at an area close to the local university, and also a location within the university. Getting a site within university would solve a lot of the security problems (university has its own security staff) so this would help, but I am not sure if there is a space currently for rent.

What kind of system should I run? Obviously most games are only going to run on windows, (and wine is a bitch, and imagine the bitchiness multiplied out against X machines), but I don't want to buy windows licenses (and I also don't want to pirate software) so where can I pick up some second hand windows 98SE licenses for a small cost? Would it be legal, if I was to advertise I will pay $20 for your win98SE license? Or would I be better off buying X licenses for Micro$oft Super Advanced Multigaming iExecution eServer Special Edition?

Anyway, I am not sure I have even thought through all the issues yet, and I am sure there may be something I have forgotten something, but this is just an idea I had, and the figures work out pretty nicely on paper, for a student income ^_^.

If you have any suggestions, please write me! I will be very interested to hear what you think.

Samuel Williams
coolfr3ak@gmx.net
http://utopia5.mine.nu/"