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Television Media

JumpTV Hopes to Succeed where ICraveTV failed. 73

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yeah-this-won't-work-either dept.
SubtleNuance writes "32BitsOnline is reporting in this article that a Montreal, Canada startup called JumpTV.com will launch a service similar to the foiled ICraveTV.com. Using BorderControl.com, a more robust -and controversial- system of assuring a users geographical location, the startup is hoping to succeed where its predecessor failed." It figures out where you are (based on your IP) and then gives you television from you area (if its got it) in the form of a an online VCR. How long will this one last?
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JumpTV Hopes to Succeed where ICraveTV failed. More

JumpTV Hopes to Succeed where ICraveTV failed.

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  • RFC1597 [slashdot.org] reserves addresses in these ranges for LAN usage:
    • 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
    • 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
    • 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
    172.16.1.1 is in Netherlands too.
  • ATI.com doesn't work either....
  • Ask yourself: what is JumpTV trying to do? Are they implementing a solution that will classify visitors according to political boundries with a 100% accuracy rate? Or, are they simply doing this to give the appearance of implementing such a solution, in order to avoid future liability?

    Clearly in this situation, it's the latter. Tech companies often have to do lame things just to avoid liability, and this is one of those cases. The question is, will a court of law recognize the effort as sufficient? My guess is no, as the solution they offer can easily be circumvented (the animated flags on bordercontrol.com sure are pretty, though).
  • Not if you expect the content you're requesting to actually reach you.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • It was not so much the fact that non-Canadians could receive Canadian TV transmissions - oh, I'm sure those re-transmission issues still bothered American broadcasters and content providers, but it wasn't the killer issue.

    No, what got iCraveTV in the end was the ad revenue. There were ads around the iCraveTV window, and not a cent of it was going back to the copyright holders in any way, shape, or form. iCraveTV was profiting off copyrighted works without the holders' permission, and that is what got them in the end.

    JumpTV is doing things the "right way" in the eyes of the major content providers by getting copyright approval the same way the cable companies are classed up here - as retransmitters. They'll pay fees into a communal royalty fund all cable companies dump money into.

    Now, from what I've read of the posts here, it looks like the BorderControl system is easily fooled. Gee, there's a shock. They're in "test" mode right now, so they may work these issues out by launch in 2001.
  • Why don't these people court the networks and do it right?

    Well, they are going to the Copyright Board to get approval; if they get it, the company will pay a royalty into the same fund the cable companies dump money into.

    For that matter, why aren't there US network affiliates in Canada?

    In fact, there used to be a couple affiliates in Ontario back in the '50's. They were eventually purchased by either CBC or CTV (I forget that detail), but a lot of Canadians can still receive US TV signals if they live near the border; Torontonians can receive Buffalo signals, and Windsor/Essex County is absolutely lousy with Detroit stations. Many cable provider here in Southern and Central Ontario (and almost certainly BC) carry US network affiliates out of the nearest US city, and pretty much every provider in Canada carries the so-called "superstations," [opinion]which tend to suck if you ask me.[/opinion]

    I doubt a US affiliate could exist today in the current regulatory environment; it would somehow have to broadcast 50% Canadian content based on CRTC regs. Unless Canadian-produced TV shows start taking over US TV, this probably wouldn't happen.
  • Don't forget the classic form, 31337.

    - Moebius (2krad4u)
  • It figured out where I was with sucess, but I started trying some other ip address's, and I tried 192.169.1.1, it came back with a pirate flag, and said pirate where normally the country would be.. heh, pretty interesting I think..

    Geist
  • Try "quit.tampabay.rr.com". It maps to an IP of 0.0.0.0. That's a fun name to use for pranks too.
  • This isn't about methods for checking on where people live, it's about making an effort.

    I do occasional work for a satellite company in Canada, so I feel that I have a decent grip on the methods used by DISH Network + DirecTV (U.S.) and Bell ExpressVu + Starchoice (CAN.) For "authenticating" their subscribers. They can't say for certain that subscriber "A" isn't in the allowed geographical region unless the satellite reciever dials in - and even that can be faked.
    The reason Replay went down the tubes was not for broadcasting to the U.S., but for not attempting to prevent U.S. citizens from recieving their broadcasts.

    ---
  • Does the station that provides local content need to be a network affiliate? The cable systems in my region got together and funded a cable channel that provides local news and weather, sort of a local version of CNN.
  • I think most people here DO get it. That's the point. They're trying to solve a legal problem with a technical solution. It's almost always FUNNY when people do this.

    Besides that, they're trying to cover themselves legally in a country where "justice" is increasingly up for sale to the highest bidder. They're up against CBS, NBC, FOX, etc. They're GOING to lose. If they did real-time DNA checks to a birth records database, they would STILL lose because the big companies would just appeal to a judge they've bought out.

    BTW: What does it take for me to move north of the border? It seems to be an increasingly appealing proposition these last few years.
  • I'm at Sun Canada, IP address 129.155.8.255, communicating via a firewall. They think I'm at 192.9.51.3, in the U.S.

    They don't handle large international companies very well...

  • www.harris.com (IP reported: 192.52.233.12) is in Germany according to BorderControl. Hmm. I thought we were in Melbourne, Florida!

  • Why the heck would I want to go onto the web to watch my local stations when I have a perfectly good IdiotBox to do that with?

    This is the sort of technology which will obviously be favored by local broadcasting (which are still firmly rooted in a 1920's frame of mind), worried that their lose viewers to other broadcasters in other markets. What only seems fair if the locals suck and don't want to take the risk of changing content and the way to they provide it.

    It would be too bad if local businesses get into webcasting and then beg the government to block my access to webcasts from outside my area. If this isn't a violation of my rights, it should be.

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
  • For that matter, why aren't there US network affiliates in Canada?

    I wasn't aware that candians had the same low standards for television content that US audiences do.

    I lived in Michigan and could sometimes catch canadian TV, which often had many things on which were much cooler than I could find on local stations. At least Tim Horton's has finally crossed the border, now Michganders can enjoy some real donuts! :9

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000

  • BTW: What does it take for me to move north of the border? It seems to be an increasingly appealing proposition these last few years.

    So glad you asked that, friend. I would start off by looking at the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website, which you can find here [cic.gc.ca]. If you're a highly skilled geek, I don't anticipate too many difficulties -- but then again, I was born here, so how would I know?

    The UN rated Canada the number 1 place in the world to live for several years in a row; nevertheless, if you get serious about moving up here, be prepared for higher taxes, an increasingly crappy exchange rate, lower pay, and having to wait for all the cool new toys to be released in Canada.

    Of course, in exchange, you get stronger beer and health care.

  • http://www.theonion.com/onion3308/realtimetv.html

    Although with the olympics going on, I wouldn't mind actually having a television

  • I'm canadian and I can't use it, bordercontrol says my isp is in the US.

    www.digicom.qc.ca
    UNITED STATES
    (206.191.92.3)

  • One with more money than brains perhaps?
    Hell this stupid bordercontrol site's gotten just about more wrong than right! sigh.
  • Great technology... I am located in: Unknown. I guess its not quite ready for primetime yet. Anyone else showing up as unknown?
  • Expect lots of machines to be rooted for this purpose :)

  • Re:Tunnelling (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Doesn't even have to be willful on our part. All of my company's network connections originate from our US Headquarters. So even here in Japan, BorderControl assumes I am in the States.

    Still, inherent flaws in the system haven't stopped cookies from infesting the world, so why shouldn't this?
  • you should probably refer to rfc1918 [isi.edu] instead. It obsoletes 1597.

  • Actually I think just about every cable company in Canada carries US network stations, no matter what city you are in. For example here in Alberta every city, including Edmonton which couldn't even pull in a ghost of a signal from south of the border, carries a full raft of channels from Spokane, Washigton. In fact the PBS station in Spokane gets the majority of their viewer donated funding from Albertans.

    In Vancouver, the only US signal you can get by antenna is KVOS in Bellingham (which is actually kind of a Vancouver station - they originally had their studios in downtown Vancouver and when buying programming they must compete with the native Vancouver stations for market area rights). However the local cable carries 6 or 7 broadcast stations from Seattle/Tacoma.

    (Conversely, the only Canadian station you can get on Seattle cable is CBC. They tried to remove it a few years ago but met with vocal protest from a group of loyal local CBC fans.)

    So basically, any major city in Canada has all they major US networks available on cable, relayed from the nearest US city, no matter how far from the border they are.

    Trickster Coyote
    Are you ready for the red pill? [cyberjournal.org]
  • ...the duplication of information has a negligable cost. The creation of *new* and *valuable* information has an associated scarcity: the skill and talent of the individuals that do so (write music, write software, orginize data, etc.)

    This implies that it makes sense for the market to regulate this industry as it has others. It should allocate funds and resources to those who the public appreciates the most. Whether this should be done in a productized form or as a service remains to be seen, but some notion of intellectual property will be required to protect these artists from blatant profiteers that have no skill or talent of their own.

    The above is not a nitpick, it's a correction to what seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of economics and scarcity. Fluid things like skill and talent *do* count as scarcity... they're just harder to measure (productivity don't really say much).

    Also, speaking as a Canadian that's living south of the border, one partialy reason Canada is "with it" with the net is because of the diligent efforts of Electronic Frontier Canada [www.efc.ca], and AOL Canada, both of whom provided solid testimony during the CRTC "regulate the net" hearings. I would also venture that since the U.S. is 10x bigger, it's more prone to tackle these issues before Canada gets to them... So the battle in Canada will get bloodier within time.

    Also keep in mind that Canada doesn't protect speech to the extent the U.S. does. (See the Ernst Zundel case)

  • You need to read RFC 1918.

    Of course bordercontrol cannot properly resolve the geographical location of a 10.x.x.x or a 192.168.x.x. Those are not real IP numbers, but reserved for private use.

    There is NO geographical location for a 10 net or a 192.168 net. You are behind an IP Masquerading box.

    Now, if you connected to this TV system, your IP would be converted by the firewall to a real IP address which would then be sent to bordercontrol to find the correct geographical location of your ISP, or wherever the box is translating addresses. Tbeir computers cannot, and will not ever receive connections from the addresses 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x. I imagine that the netherlands is the default (perhaps corresponding to an integer value of zero?)

  • Hmm, it seems they've fixed the problems people mentioned (private address 10.0.0.1 being in the Netherlands, etc.).

    What's funny is that if you put in a private address now, you see a pirate flag (skull and crossbones) appear! I guess they know what some people host on their own private networks :-)

  • Tunnelling (Score:5)

    by alehmann ( 50545 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @11:18AM (#773384) Homepage
    Considering the fact that you can tunnel packets through a host in another geographical location using SSH or other methods, this method is inherently flawed.

  • Check out what NBC is doing... (Score:3)

    by ca1v1n ( 135902 ) <snook.guanotronic@com> on Sunday September 17, 2000 @11:19AM (#773385)
    For the Olympics, NBC has a deal with hundreds of American ISPs where they transmit the streams to the ISPs, whose customers are located only within the U.S. Perhaps JumpTV would have better success if they tried something like that, though I suspect they don't have the same clout that NBC does to get something like that implemented.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by sxyzzx ( 125040 )
    What kind of dumbass VC would fund this?
  • Hmm, not a bad idea though, since there are less big ISPs in canada, and those ISPs could certainly drum up business by carrying TV this way. That would probably take care of all the immediate legal loose ends (although bordercontrol might too), and allow the company to work on something even more difficult: finding a way to make a decent profit from this.

    sig:

  • bordercontrol.com gives very funny results (Score:4)

    by xmedh02 ( 100813 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @11:21AM (#773388) Homepage
    Try to check them with 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1. You are in -- Netherlands! :-)
    Besides, if you use an anonymizer or a proxy server, it is its IP address, not yours that applies.
    A snail-mail letter sent to your real street address in the right area with some activation code would do much better than this silly check.. Of course, then you ask your aunt in Montreal to forward this letter to you and you can see her TV channels etc..
  • Considering the fact that you can tunnel packets through a host in another geographical location using SSH or other methods, this method is inherently flawed.

    over 90% of the people who may use this will not know/bother with packet tunneling, they are the 'point-n-click' demographic.
    Any system has weaknesses. There is no way to do something that can't somehow be circumvented by someone, at some time.
  • Go to the site and type in something like 192.168.1.1 ... Netherlands? Didn't know my network was physically located somewhere else... Or even my hosts, rchrd1.on.wave.home.com and hadeandragon.com, BorderControl says they're in the States (supposed to be Canada)... This doesn't seem very trustworthy one bit.. If ICraveTV was shut down partly for having bad security measures, this one'll be down soon too...

    (Too bad there isn't a way to use WHOIS information to determin locality... It has all other information, registrar, who registered it, name servers, etc. why not geographical location?)
  • An easy way to make sure you're not doing anything L33T would be to check that you are using Win 95,98 or Me.

  • Harvard Medical School is in Morocco (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try med.harvard.edu, according to BorderControl.com it is in Morocco. Now, gettng private networks wrong is one thing, but this is kinda silly.
  • Y'know, Netherlands might not be so bad... I hear there's a lot of pr0n that's aired on normal TV over there...

    ;^)

  • Funny?! They're right on the money! (Score:3)

    by Jacco de Leeuw ( 4646 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:06PM (#773394) Homepage
    My 192.168.x.x network is in the Netherlands, so they are spot on! ;-)

    Jacco
    ---
    # cd /var/log

  • For example .. server1.wrongway.de, which is sitting about 100 feet away from me right now (and yes I'm in the US) appears to be located in germany according to bordercontrol. Anyways perhaps they could use the ARIN/RIPE/... databases to figure out where an IP is :-)

  • It is is a joke! (Score:3)

    by xmedh02 ( 100813 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:09PM (#773396) Homepage
    Try entering a nonexistent domain name at bordercontrol.com [bordercontrol.com], such as apdokxxas.com [bordercontrol.com] -- it gives (at least to me) USA, Japan, Canada, Germany or nothing on random.

    This should be used to authenticate country of origin?

    From the article:
    Fenton [the system administrator(sic!)] said he has tried many times to fool Border Control, but has yet to outsmart its massive database of Internet protocol (IP) addresses linked to geographic information. (Web surfers can test the technology themselves at http://www.bordercontrol.com/ )

    And keeping geographical info on IP addresses in an apparently static database?

    I can't explain all this otherwise -- it is just a joke. I don't know, who made the joke though -- 32bitsonline, this JumpTV, or the authors of this "Border Control".

    Or do they really mean it?

  • Geographical Franchises (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:09PM (#773397) Homepage
    I wonder how long the current model of geographical franchises for television distribution is going to last. The technical and economic reasons for the system are disappearing. This is already starting to happen in the telephone business, many companies are starting to offer regional or nation-wide local calling areas. Satellite radio broadcasting is due to appear soon. Direct broadcast satellites already provide cable-like video service to millions of homes.

    Why do we need local network affiliate broadcasters to relay the network feed? Why not just provide the network feed to anyone who wants to watch or distribute it, provided they don't modify it without permission.

    What happens when it becomes practical to distribute high quality video streams via the Internet? Canada blocks direct broadcast satellite transmissions from the USA, apparently because they can't regulate it and mandate "Canadian content". Why shouldn't I be able to watch the CBC and BBC, in addition to NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and the other American networks. How about the goat pr0n channel from Tierra del Fuego?

  • BorderControl gives at least a couple of unknowns that couldn't be that hard:

    web.mit.edu (little hint..99% says 18.*.*.* is in Cambridge, MA)
    apple.com

    Looks like a lot of people are going to be out of luck if they get authenticated through BorderControl.
  • Well, if you don't like BorderControl, try Realmapping [realmapping.com]. They claim to have "world's most accurate IP database for country, language, region and target group recognition of Internet users". Which means "more than 97.5% accuracy in regards to country and language".

    They don't want to say how they achieve this (it's their trade secret) but I would guess they are using the RIPE/ARIN etc. databases. I mean, the WHOIS databases and traceroute give me a fairly accurate indication of where the IP address is located, and at least they are free ;-)

    Actually, they are giving away a hint about their procedure:

    "It boils down to this: The first step is automatically building up different databases containing information about the 4.25 billion IP addresses available. On the basis of these databases, our input team makes an interpretation and a manual allocation for the different databases. These allocations are automatically checked for consistency and compared - once again automatically - with all available information".

    They must have one hell of an NDA for their manual verification people ;-)

    Jacco
    ---
    # cd /var/log

  • "is reporting" means they heard from somebody "will launch" means its vapor "system of assuring a users geographical location," means you will get spam " the startup is hoping to succeed where its predecessor failed" means there will be an IPO and after they make money on that they will go bankrupt

    _joshua_
  • One of my (other) ZeroKnowledge Systems nyms looks to the outside world like it originates from Canada. It'll be interesting to see if that will be enough to let me use their service.

  • Read underneath apdokxxas.com. It says "That host does not exist"

    The flag and IP address that appears underneath probably has something to do with how they're searching their database. Probably would have been more user friendly to not display any flag or IP if the host doesn't exist.

  • No... (Score:1)

    by cronio ( 13526 )
    you need to get a sense of humor.

  • Nobody here gets it... (Score:5)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @01:18PM (#773404) Journal
    Why does nobody on Slashdot get it? Border Control isn't to block Americans from using JumpTV. It's to stop JumpTV from getting sued in the US (or at least, losing a lawsuit in the US). If JumpTV can demonstrate that they took reasonable measures to block Americans from using the service, they're homefree legally, and all that Big Media can do is go after American individuals who use the service (which they probably won't do, and may not even be able to do legally).

    Is Border Control reasonable? Conceptually, it's a reasonable comprimise between usability and security. Anybody who knows what they're doing can use it, but then, I would hope that the more computer-savvy among us would be using their time more productively than TV. The implementation may suck, but that's probably mostly irrelevant legally (it will probably get fixed up with time).

    We're now in a world were companies are forced to take measures they know will be ineffective, in order to satisfy legal requirements. It's not just the law that's moving too slowly (although it scares me even more when it moves too quickly)--society as a whole hasn't adjusted to the net. I can effectively "be" almost anywhere in the world in just a few seconds, at least to the extent that I can be doing things that are subject to the laws of different countries. The result is the vast number of logical inconsistancies and flaws in our social fabric.

    The mess with intellectual property is one example. We've created an artificial scarcity of an unlimited resource (information) so that information will fit into traditional markets, which are the most efficient way of allocating scarce resources, but aren't so hot with unlimited resources.

    It's funny that watching JumpTV from my place in Canada could be perfectly legal if I'm dialing into a Canadian ISP, but, if I forget to change my settings after a quick trip to the States, I could be committing a crime.

    Just as a little tweak to all those Slashdotters south of the 49th parallel, have you noticed the recent trend towards greater 'Net freedom in Canada and less freedom in the US? I totally admire the US Constitution, and wish Canada had something just like it, but your government seems to be ignoring it more and more. By contrast, the Canadian government seems to be fairly with it when it comes to the Net. Here are some examples of Canadian freedom: the ruling that the CRTC (our FTC) can't regulate the 'Net, Ontario's encouraging citizens to use strong crypto, the CSE's Public Key Infrastructure project... The US has DMCA, COPA, COPPA, UCITA, and is also the home of the RIAA, the MPAA... Too bad about our taxes... Oh well, I guess you can always Blame Canada for all those copies of DeCSS hosted up here. :-)

    To all the nitpicky karma whores: if you find some minute flaw in my post, please don't flame the hell out of me for it--use your imagination to figure out what I meant, and just read things that way. I am so bloody sick of getting a billion replies because some inconsequential detail of my post was slightly wrong. Show some adaptability. And yes, I know about the Canadian Charter of Rights. Not quite the same as the Constitution. The charter starts by saying "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
  • What they're doing is perfectly legal in Canada. The whole point of this is to try to lock out non-Canadian viewers, so they don't get sued by US TV broadcasters.
  • > The charter starts by saying "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

    Incorrect.

    It actually starts with the preamble [justice.gc.ca] which states:
    Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:


    Cheers
    --
    They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Ben Franklin, 1759

  • I STILL think this is a really dumb idea... (Score:3)

    by corian ( 34925 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @05:20PM (#773407)
    > It figures out where you are (based on your IP)
    > and then gives you television from you area (if
    > its got it) in the form of a an online VCR.

    Of course, I can get the local stations just using an antenna and my TV or my All-In-Wonder tuner.

    What would be REALLY good is to be able to watch TV from Japan/Mexico/wherever they have _interesting_ shows, and that I would LOVE to be able to stream over the internet.

    Of course, I suppose that people in other countries feel the same way about wanting to see American TV, which is what caused the whole problem with iCraveTV (since it interferes with the licensing fees US stations charge to foreign stations to be able to pay their shows).

    Limiting the business plan to something that fits within the current legal situtation results (i.e., check location and only allow access to local stations), doesn't give any added value to what we have already. So, unless they have some other interesting ideas waiting in the wings, I can't really see them being able to attract too much interest.
  • Perhaps because pedophilia pisses people off, which can, and usually does, cause a flame war? You're right, it's offtopic, but it's also flamebait. If moderators could use more then one criteria, they definitely would.

  • I've got ONE word for you... (Score:3)

    by David E. Smith ( 4570 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @11:35AM (#773409)
    ... proxies.

    An (admittedly cursory) glance at bordercontrol.com suggests that the bulk of their screening is done based solely on a user's IP address. Even that database is probably fallible, but that's beside the point.

    You can tunnel your request through a host in another country via SSH. You can use proxies for Web stuff. All you need to do is to find someone who'll let you use their box for this -- it'll probably be on a fairly small scale, as bandwidth isn't always cheap. (I've a friend in Vancouver who'd probably be quite glad to let me use his DSL line for this. :)

    And it'll be hard as $PROFANITY to stop this -- how can they know that my bud isn't actually using the service himself, as opposed to routing traffic down to me in Missouri? And even if they get all draconian on us and start blocking individual users, I've got other friends in other jurisdictions...

    This is not gonna work. Sorry, JumpTV, you'd better skip down to live 5 of your business plan ("take the money we made from naive investors on our IPO and buy a small island named after some dead French saint") real quick-like.

  • knows where I am! It says my IP address of 10.1.1.43 is located in the Netherlands! I even tried one of my other IP addresses, 192.168.3.15, and it said I was in the Netherlands! That thing sure is smart!
  • >Try to check them with 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1. You are in -- Netherlands! :-)

    Which is kinda odd, considering that a traceroute shows that www.bordercontrol.com is one hop behind fw.jumptv.com - I bet *that* box isn't in the Netherlands :-)

  • Is it just me, or are these companies going about this the wrong way? If you piss off the US broadcasters, you are most likely going to lose. Why don't these people court the networks and do it right? For that matter, why aren't there US network affiliates in Canada?

    Does anyone know the details of Canadian policy around this?
  • Wow, watch me get marked down to redundant.. I just tried those same things, and posted the results.. I should have read the comments first! At least I am not alone in my wierd ramblings!
  • They will ultimately fail since all of these media companies just don't seem to get with the times. Whether they like it or not the cat is out of the bag, free distribution of all forms of media is on the rise and will continue to accelerate. I think they will probably cave in to pressure from litigating media giants but maybe two or three years from now the tide will turn... at least I hope so.

    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
  • Bring it on baby, I'm ready for it...

    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
  • The term "leet" is derived from the word "elite" .. which is pronounced "e-leet" .. hence the shortening.

    The use of the word "leet" goes back to the days of BBSes (perhaps earlier, that's when I first heard it) .. if your board was "elite" that meant you carried pirated software, amongst other things such as cracking utilities and such.

    The phrase "leet" has evolved from the early use of the word "elite" and has shifted more towards script kiddies than piracy and real cracking, though it is still used freely in both respects. Also, as you pointed out, the use of 3's for e's goes back to the way these "leet" folk have continualy changed their "accent" in talking online .. in the early BBS days high ascii was used in certain cases, and now you will frequently see phrases such as "3y3 4m 4 l337 h4x0r!@$(%" ..

    I know this is probably not the whole story, but its my part from my perspective.. I unfortunately have never been extremely 1337 :)

  • I grew up in Calgary, which was Mountain Time Zone. All our US channels were from Spokane, WA, which was in Pacific Time Zone. (and hence all the good shows were on *way* too late to watch. SNL started at 1:30 am!) When my family went into BC for holidays (West of Calgary for the geographical illiterate), the US stations there were from Montana. Go figure...

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

  • so, if WWW.FBI.GOV is in the UK, but only has jurisdiction within the US, and WWW.CIA.GOV is in the US, but only has jurisdiction overseas...

    ...then I suspect we might be seriously screwed.

    --craig
  • I tried a few too...
    127.0.0.1 is ... unknown?? I thought on every system 127.0.0.1 points to itself... ?
    bordercontrol.com is in Canada...
    and 255.255.255.255 is in the stantes. I wonder who owns that one...
  • Well, having read the Candian Charter of Rights recently, I must say that I like it very much. :) Having not read the US Constitution, I won't comment on it. There is one thing about your post that I'd like to say(and I don't disagree with you, I think this post is more of a possible clarification).

    I think the amount of freedom a people have is less dependant on a piece of paper than it is on general attitude, and perhaps more specifically the government's attitude. Keep in mind that the US Constitution and the Candian Charter of Rights are just pieces of paper - politions will ignore them if they want to. I think Canada is lucky in that for the most part our politions DON'T ignore those pieces of paper. Not because they'd get thrown out(not many people would notice if they broke a small law, after all), but rather they wouldn't ignore it because to do so would be wrong.

    I hope this keeps up, but I think people like Mike Harris(premier of Ontario) are working away from it. Not because of what he's doing, but in how he's treating the people. Most of the stuff Mike has done so far has produced rather painful short-term problems, but they're better for the long-term. Unfortunatly, when people bitch he doesn't explain how it's better in the long-term, he tells them to shut up, or he lies. That bothers me, really it does. It seems like he doesn't care about people any more. The next step would be to stop caring about whether the laws he passes are right or wrong.

    I think that's what happened in other parts of the world.

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • I have not used ZeroKnowledge before so I could be wrong but doesn't ZeroKnowledge work by forwarding your data through thier servers? ZeroKnowledge is a Canadian company so I'm guessing that their servers are located in Canada . So wouldn't you have a Canadian IP once you go through their servers?

    Like I said I haven't used it so I could be totally off here, but if I'm right it could be a good way to get past this.

  • IPv6 (Score:1)

    by Kev Vance ( 833 )
    And if you thought keeping a big database of all the IPs under IPv4 was inaccurate, just wait until we all switch to IPv6! Oh, wait, that's never going to happen :)
  • There could be only one explanation. You are less than 100 feet from USA-Germany border and the server is on the other side :-)
  • "Canada is lucky in that for the most part our politions DON'T ignore those pieces of paper. Not because they'd get thrown out(not many people would notice if they broke a small law, after all), but rather they wouldn't ignore it because to do so would be wrong"

    I'll just refrain from mentioning Sgt. Pepper and the opec incident.

    We as Canadians are not nearly as free as we like to think we are. That being said, neither are the Americians.
  • I'm assuming you didn't want an answer, but here's one anyway.

    Some of us appreciate local programing like say, NEWS, weather, sports, traffic, and what not. Not to mention community events bulletins and LOCAL advertising. How many times have you been watching fox thinking that you really should switch over to MCI, even though you can't.

    I don't agree with content restrictions, but local branding is a nice feature, IMNSO.

  • You're probably right about the flaw if the strength of a court defense relies on their access-by-IP security model, but it may not be a fatal flaw. The article says they are planning to pay "blanket" royalties (ala cable companies) so they may have found the right combination of access control, payola, and legal loopholes to stay alive.
  • Why do companies try things like this? Are they stupid or just brasin (sp). They are going to get sued. It's going to be like the MP3.com ruling. "...they don't have the authority to determine if the content for them...deliberate copyright infringement..."
  • Yes, the general method of stopping something is to make it hard enough that only a few people do it.

    Except, computers allow things to be automated, so things are different in cyberspace.

    If there existed a micropayment system for paying for bandwidth, you could bet that a well-represented cross-section of canada would quickly set up redirectors.

    If the practice of companies paying you to use your idle CPU and bandwidth becomes prevalent, then do-gooders couldn't point at the software and say that it's inherently evil (ala Napster). So the task would boil down to charging 25% of the population for something that they don't view as "stealing", especially since they're passing on the commercials too.
    --

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