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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005 Study Shows Online Citations Don't Age Well Internet Fuels Gambling Among College Students Dutch ISPs Issue Warnings to File Traders Sweden Raids ISP for File Trading Chicago Looks at City-Wide Wi-Fi STUDY SHOWS ONLINE CITATIONS DON'T AGE WELL A study conducted by two academics at Iowa State University has shown a remarkably high rate of "decay" for online citations. Michael Bugeja, professor of journalism and communication, and Daniela Dimitrova, assistant professor of communication, looked at five prestigious communication-studies journals from 2000 to 2003 and found 1,126 footnotes that cite online resources. Of those, 373 did not work at all, a decay rate of 33 percent; of those that worked, only 424 took users to information relevant to the citation. In one of the journals in the study, 167 of 265 citations did not work. Bugeja compared the current situation to that of Shakespearean plays in the early days of printing, when many copies of plays were fraught with errors due to the instability of the printing medium. Anthony T. Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University and author of a book on footnotes, agreed that citation decay is a real and growing problem, describing the situation as "a world in which documentation and verification melt into air." Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 March 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/03/2005031402n.htm INTERNET FUELS GAMBLING AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS Gambling is seeing a significant upsurge among college students in the United States, a trend many attribute to the combination of television coverage of glitzy poker tournaments and the availability of gambling Web sites. Poker tournaments are showing up on campuses including Columbia University and the University of North Carolina, with waiting lists of students hoping to participate. A poker society at the University of Pennsylvania receives hundreds of responses during the first 30 minutes after a tournament is announced, according to the group's president. Some students, such as Princeton University senior Michael Sandberg, have made large amounts of money--in the past six months, Sandberg has won $30,000 in Atlantic City and another $90,000 playing cards online--and have come to regard gambling as an attractive and lucrative career option. Keith S. Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, commented that university administrators are not working to raise awareness of the risks of gambling, nor are they offering resources for how to get help, which they do for issues such as substance abuse or date rape. New York Times, 14 March 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/education/14gamble.html DUTCH ISPS ISSUE WARNINGS TO FILE TRADERS Five Internet service providers (ISPs) in the Netherlands have agreed to send notices from the Brain Institute, the antipiracy arm of the country's entertainment industries, to subscribers suspected of illegally trading copyrighted music, movies, and software. The ISPs did not go so far, however, as agreeing to disclose the identities of those users to entertainment companies. Maaike Scholten, spokesperson for two of the five ISPs, described the move as "a service, a warning to clients that they are doing things that are against the law." In 2003, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that file-sharing applications are legal, leaving copyright owners the option of pursuing individuals who use such applications for copyright violations, as in the United States. Tim Kuik, director of the Brain Institute, said his organization hopes to reach settlements with illegal file traders but anticipates it will be forced to file civil lawsuits against some. Associated Press, 14 March 2005 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/world/2005-03-14-dutch-download_x.htm SWEDEN RAIDS ISP FOR FILE TRADING Police in Sweden raided the Stockholm offices of Bahnhof, the country's largest and oldest Internet service provider (ISP), long suspected of facilitating rampant copyright violations. According to John Malcolm of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which had urged Swedish authorities to carry out such a raid, Bahnhof operated some of the largest and fastest servers in Europe. Of the four servers seized in the raid, one is thought to be the largest pirate server in Europe, according to the MPAA. Malcolm said the raid uncovered evidence not only of organized piracy in Sweden but also of such activity throughout Europe. Equipment seized in the raid reportedly contained 1,800 digital movies, 5,000 software files, and 450,000 audio files. Reuters, 11 March 2005 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7882727 CHICAGO LOOKS AT CITY-WIDE WI-FI Officials in Chicago have authorized a study of the feasibility of a city-wide wireless network, despite a bill in the state legislature that would ban municipalities from acting as utilities for such services. Reportedly at the urging of commercial broadband providers, State Sen. Steven Rauschenberger introduced a bill that would forbid cities from either offering broadband service or "reselling" such service to a company that would then manage it. Alderman Edward Burke said he would introduce legislation that would give the city the right to install a broadband wireless network before the state could pass the law that would prevent it. Christopher O'Brien, chief information officer for Chicago, said a city-wide network would likely consist of about 7,500 antennas on light poles and would cost more than $18 million. One option, said O'Brien, would be to enter into an agreement with a company that would install and maintain the network and would pay the city rent for the use of the light poles. Federal Computer Week, 14 March 2005 http://www.fcw.com/article88275 ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE RESOURCES The EDUCAUSE Resource Center is a repository for information concerning use and management of IT in higher education. 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