Via: "Your Name"
Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 31 January 2006
10:17 pm ET
After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.
On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side
navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era
with about as little fanfare as possible:
"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram
and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may
cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any
questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."
The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when
long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable
alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could be
counted as the final nail in the coffin.
Western Union has not failed. It long ago refocused its main business to
make money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are now $3
billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial Services, Inc.
and is a subsidiary of First Data Corp.
The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor Samuel
Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted from
Washington to Baltimore. In a crude way, the telegraph was a precursor
to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for the first
time, across great distances.
Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing
Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph Company
after acquisition of competing telegraph systems. By 1861, during the
Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines.
Other company highlights:
* 1866: Introduced the first stock ticker.
* 1871: Introduced money transfers.
* 1884: Became one of the original 11 stocks tracked by the Dow
Jones Average.
* 1914: Introduced the first consumer charge card.
* 1964: Began using a transcontinental microwave beam to replace
land lines.
* 1974: Launched Westar I, the first U.S. dedicated communications
satellite.
On Jan. 26, the last day you could send a telegram, First Data announced
it would spin Western Union off as an independent, publicly traded company.
Via: Seth Johnson
> http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/28/sony_screwing_artist.html
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060428/ap_en_mu/music_downloads_royalties;_ylt=AowpM.my63biaeu.FU8A_rRxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--
Via: Monica Narula
(apologies for cross posting)
[1] Art Brodsky, "A Democratic Internet", tompaine.com (April 25,
2006), also see http://www.savetheinternet.com
DISCUSSION DRAFT: APRIL 10, 2006
STATEMENT OF INTEL CORPORATION CONCERNING THE WORLD INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY ORGANIZATION'S PROPOSED TREATY ON THE PROTECTION OF
BROADCASTING ORGANIZATIONS
CONTACT:
Jeff Lawrence, Director, Digital Home and Content Policy
Brad Biddle, Senior Attorney, Systems Technology Lab
BACKGROUND. The World Intellectual Property Organization is drafting a
proposed "Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations." For
many countries (including the United States) the treaty, if adopted,
will create an entirely new type of intellectual property right. Under
the treaty, broadcasting organizations obtain new legal rights to
control uses of content that they broadcast-rights that are separate
from and in addition to any existing copyright rights in the content.
Adopting countries can choose to extend these new rights to "webcast"
content in addition to traditional broadcast content.
INTEL'S POSITION. Intel opposes the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. Proponents
have not demonstrated that the benefits of creating new exclusive rights
outweigh the burdens that these new rights impose. These burdens
include:
- Control of mobile device and digital home innovation. The treaty could
give broadcasting organizations the right to control uses of content
within the home-uses that are legitimate and non-infringing under
copyright law. For example, makers of digital video recorders could be
required to obtain licenses and agree to limitations imposed by
broadcasters in order to enable "time shifting" of broadcast content.
Similarly, mobile device designers could be required to get permission
from broadcasters (in addition to copyright owners) in order to enable
innovative uses of broadcast content. This regime will increase consumer
costs and reduce technical innovation.
- Technical Protection Measure (TPM) provisions will become regulatory
mandates that limit design freedom. The treaty requires that the new
broadcaster rights be protected by TPMs. Because broadcasting signals
are generally subject to government standards, TPMs will need to be
incorporated into these standards. Government-mandated TPMs will limit
design freedom and distort markets.
- Liability risk for software developers, device makers, and ISPs. Under
copyright law, in some circumstances one party can be liable for
infringement committed by an unrelated party. The treaty raises similar
questions of secondary liability for infringement of its new broadcaster
rights, but provides no guidance or safe harbors that limit risks for
those non-infringing parties that might inadvertently enable
infringement. These unquantifiable risks will inhibit innovation and
market development.
- Increased rights clearance complexity. Users of content already face a
nearly impenetrable thicket when trying to clear traditional copyright
rights. Adding more complexity to the clearance process will inhibit
innovative uses of content.
- Harm to copyright owner interests. Content users will pay licensee
fees to broadcasters in addition to copyright owners, likely resulting
in reduced revenues for copyright owners. Reduced incentives for
creators may result in less created content.
- Harm to public interests. The treaty could limit "fair uses" and other
publicly beneficial uses of content, and restrict content that is
otherwise in the public domain.
Intel believes that efforts to enact the WIPO Broadcast Treaty should be
abandoned. Alternatively, and less optimally, Intel believes that the
scope of the treaty should be dramatically narrowed, to focus
specifically on signal theft.
Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net
Via: Seth Johnson
(Website text pasted below. -- Seth)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [FC-discuss] EUCD / DADVSI : what is going on with the
new Frenchcopyright law ?
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:25:15 +0200
From: Jean-Baptiste Soufron
To: Public discussion list
The new french copyright law is just about to be studied at the
High House of Parliament. Its name is Droit dAuteur et Droits
Voisin dans la Société de lInformation (DADVSI) which means
Authors Rights and Neighboring Rights within Information Society,
and its content is heavily debated over the Internet. Given the
high number of questions I get on this topic, I thought a short
explanation of the whole thing might be an interesting piece for
english speaking readers.
> http://soufron.typhon.net/article.php3?id_article=132
Do not hesitate to ask questions or commentaries.
Best,
Jean-Baptiste Soufron
cersa-cnrs paris 2
+33 (0)6 17 96 24 57
http://soufron.typhon.net
Via: Sunil Abraham
-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Phet Sayo
Laos, Honduras sign WIPO's patent treaty
GENEVA, Switzerland, April 20 (UPI) -- Laos and Honduras signed on to
the patent cooperation treaty of the World Intellectual Property
Organization.
By becoming a member country of the treaty, the U.N. organization said
that patent applicants from a member country "can seek patent protection
for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries.
This is because the effect of such an international application in each
'designated state' is the same as if a national patent application had
been filed with the national patent office of that country. Without the
PCT, an applicant would generally be required to file separate national
patent applications with the office of each country in which patent
protection is sought."
In addition, WIPO stated that "PCT membership gives better access to the
national patent systems in multiple countries. As the system offers a
more user-friendly and cost-effective option for applicants seeking
patent protection in multiple countries, PCT membership will normally
result in an increase in the number of patent applications filed and a
corresponding increase in revenues for the national patent office. PCT
membership may also result in reduced publication costs for those
national offices which recognize the international publication of PCT
applications for the purposes of national law."
The treaty currently has 130 member countries.
- --
Sunil Abraham, sunil@mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org
"Vijay Kiran" IInd Floor, 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur
Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA
Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521
UK: (44) 02000000259
Via: Richard Stallman
Sigh, yet another reason to run Linux? YARRL
It's a good reason to run GNU/Linux (or BSD); Linux alone won't run on
a PC. (See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.)
However, we who champion free software should not take that as a
reason to accept this law as no threat to us. It does not threaten us
directly, but the more people become accustomed to surrendering their
freedom and having no rights, the harder it will be to defend any
rights at all.
Via: "anil k gupta"
very interesting observation about dispersed property.
there are many ways of thinking about it:
a) the degree of dispersal may not be directly correlated with the extent
of assimilation in the 'property envelop' of different users, for
instance, a tune or beat may be assimilated by a music composer mopre than
just listener, though both may have been benfitted by the dispersal
b) the 'piracy' may, if at all, may be calculated by the extent to which
the originality exists at the 'dispersal' end, if the disperser of the
innovation is itself not having the full title of the music ( jackson
having pirated many african beats), then extent of piracy at the recepient
level is difficult to sustain
It is a very interesting observation and much good theoretical and
empiracl work can follow
keep it up
anil
> Recently we were part of the Leonardo/SFAI Digital Salon where we
> spoke of "The Strange Destiny of Open Source in the Nation State" and
> Steve Cisler talked of Piracy.
>
> Some thoughts that have arisen after the quite impassioned discussion
> that evening around piracy, how it is constituted and how to think it
> beyond a simple anxiety of the loss of property:
>
> What if we think of' 'dispersed property' and 'pirate acts'. The
> present scenario is of an increasing dispersal of 'property' through
> everyday immaterial goods. This makes us enveloped by 'property'.
> Many acts that touch upon this 'property envelop' do infringe
> property rights. There is, thus, a ubiquitous presence of daily small
> 'pirate acts' by almost anyone.
>
> Perhaps a simple listing of such daily acts and the reality of
> 'property dispersal' will be relevant in the displacement of the idea
> of the 'pirate' as a figure out there - removed and away from us -
> ruining 'social order and meaning'. The figure of the 'pirate'
> increasingly haunts all discussion of 'intellectual property'. It is
> figure on whom various fears and anxieties of capitalism's core
> 'productive values' are projected - from free riders to free lunch,
> to criminality, to idleness, to laziness, to profiting without
> labour, to destruction of innovation, etc.
>
> If we can imagine daily life enmeshed within immaterial forms of
> property as a series of relays and disruptions produced by multiple
> 'commoning acts', 'property acts' and 'pirate acts' - then we can
> have an account of everyday life and practice that does not freeze
> all of us into singular 'figures'; figures that do not address how we
> all navigate the contemporary in complex ways.
>
> best
> jeebesh
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> commons-law@sarai.net
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
Via: solomon benjamin
Hi,
To 'displace' the idea of the pirate, and with that,
question powerful binaries seems very important via
the concept of 'dispersed property'. Some wandering
thoughts as this relates to city economy, settlement,
and politics that binds these both.
Here, several point raised by Hans Christ (at the
Kunstverein at Stuttgart)who distinguished between
piracy of a 'brand', versus say the creation of
products seen in city economies. The latter are varied
-- embracing economies the weekly markets and hawkers
on pavements, of small firms located in trade and
manufacturing arrangements. In many of these forms of
re-tooling that derive from 'reverse engineering' open
up a relatively new line of products that are
customized via the locality of demand and use: what
Jeebesh refers to the small day to day acts by
everyone as a pirate! If so, the notion of the
'pirate' soon dematerializes -- just as attempts to
'fix' property. Diane Singerman's wonderful book on
the economy, legality, and politics of neighborhood
life in Cairo (Avenues of Participation) makes an
important and relevant point that many of these
'small' acts (that also disperse property) add up to a
larger (quiet) politics of subversion are not
percieved by those carruing them out as being
'political'.
Breaking beyond this binary and into considering the
dispersal of property that comes from such quiet
politics. Sigificanlty, underlying economy, the
politics of land destabilizes and disperses property
via the consolidation of ever complex forms of land
tenure. Its hardly surprisign that most 'old /
traditional/ walled' city quarters of cities (Cairo,
Delhi, Lahore, Jaffa) layer complex tenure forms of
land with those of inter-connecting economies. But
these are not just 'traditional' and locked into a
linealirity and binary of a development kind (The
anthropologist Robert Redfeild's 'Folk to Modern'
society). In Bangalore and also Bombay, we see
contemporary forms of tenancies that underpin complex
forms of economy. And these dispersed proproties are
deeply material in that they open up complex forms of
fundsing. In India, Pakistan (and perhaps other parts
of South Asia) multple land tenure forms release funds
to be invested into a locality of economy. This also
happens in middle eastarn tenure forms, and recently
Nathalie Boseul, mentioned that a similar arrangement
exists in the Korean context too. Former (Formal)
economist termed these as traditional / informal as
perhaps such destablization of property hardly fitted
into their developmentalist frameworks.
Such systems of tenure, (unsettled) economy, provide
for a politics that is deeply threatening to the
dirgisme of both the 'Market' and the Nation State.
Witness the huge corporate funding backed by very
regrssive state power to digitize land records, to
control the 'Informal Sector' (via Master Planning),
the 'anti-piracy raids', and to weaken municipal
government that has consistantly build a political
realm around dispersal of property and economy.
If ones takes these arguments furthe to consider the
computer 'grey' markets of Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi,
it may reveal the importance of moving beyond and away
from notions of 'open source' and propriatry (within
which the figure and concept of piracy lies). Instead,
just as we can conceptualize other forms of economies
that unsettle 'property' from within the 'commodity
logic' (as observed by Jeebesh in an earlier time),
can we consider more fundamentally, more interesting
issues of dispersed property rooted in complex forms
of occoupancy -- in space, in economy and in politics.
What, for example, would an environment of re-tooled
and re-machined "networked" society look like in an
anarchic territory. This is not neccessary speculative
or utopian. A closer look at the streets of East Delhi
around Shakarpur in East Delhi as they link to the
'nodes' of Nehru Place and Palika Bazzar in other
parts of Delhi, and perhaps connected to Lamington
Road in Bombay. And its not just the 'grey' market
outlets but rather the small business accounting
software customized for more speaiclized applications
like those of small chemists and pharmacies, or then
more recently in the auto marchine re-toolers of west
bangalore. I suspect that the notion of 'open source'
can hardly describe these situations. This is not just
as it refers to a very very specific form of economic
arrangements, but more due a conceptual fracture and
an unease with the bulk of economies being too 'wild'
to be boxed into a binaries.
Cheers
Solly
--- Jeebesh Bagchi wrote:
> Recently we were part of the Leonardo/SFAI Digital
> Salon where we
> spoke of "The Strange Destiny of Open Source in the
> Nation State" and
> Steve Cisler talked of Piracy.
>
> Some thoughts that have arisen after the quite
> impassioned discussion
> that evening around piracy, how it is constituted
> and how to think it
> beyond a simple anxiety of the loss of property:
>
> What if we think of' 'dispersed property' and
> 'pirate acts'. The
> present scenario is of an increasing dispersal of
> 'property' through
> everyday immaterial goods. This makes us enveloped
> by 'property'.
> Many acts that touch upon this 'property envelop' do
> infringe
> property rights. There is, thus, a ubiquitous
> presence of daily small
> 'pirate acts' by almost anyone.
>
> Perhaps a simple listing of such daily acts and the
> reality of
> 'property dispersal' will be relevant in the
> displacement of the idea
> of the 'pirate' as a figure out there - removed and
> away from us -
> ruining 'social order and meaning'. The figure of
> the 'pirate'
> increasingly haunts all discussion of 'intellectual
> property'. It is
> figure on whom various fears and anxieties of
> capitalism's core
> 'productive values' are projected - from free riders
> to free lunch,
> to criminality, to idleness, to laziness, to
> profiting without
> labour, to destruction of innovation, etc.
>
> If we can imagine daily life enmeshed within
> immaterial forms of
> property as a series of relays and disruptions
> produced by multiple
> 'commoning acts', 'property acts' and 'pirate acts'
> - then we can
> have an account of everyday life and practice that
> does not freeze
> all of us into singular 'figures'; figures that do
> not address how we
> all navigate the contemporary in complex ways.
>
> best
> jeebesh
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> commons-law@sarai.net
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
