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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2005 UT Hacker Gets Fine, Probation Tutoring Online, Overseas Kazaa Found Guilty of Copyright Violations in Australia CA Hops on the Open Source Bandwagon Growth of Online Banking Stalls Amid Hacking Fear UT HACKER GETS FINE, PROBATION A former student at the University of Texas at Austin has been sentenced for hacking into the university computer system, a charge on which a federal jury convicted him in June. Christopher Andrew Phillips has been ordered to pay $170,000 in restitution for his crimes and to serve five years of probation. Phillips was found guilty of damaging the university's computers and of illegally possessing close to 40,000 Social Security numbers. The jury acquitted him of intending to profit from the personal information he obtained. In addition to the fine and probation, Phillips is forbidden from using the Internet for five years except for school or for work and only under the supervision of his parole officer. In a statement, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said, "[Phillips] found out the hard way that breaking into someone else's computer is not a joke." Houston Chronicle, 7 September 2005 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3342919 TUTORING ONLINE, OVERSEAS Online tutoring services, which typically offer cost and scheduling advantages over local programs, have begun outsourcing some tutoring positions. Although some online tutoring companies that serve the U.S. market limit tutors to people living in North America, some now employ tutors in countries including India, South Africa, the Philippines, and Chile. As with other examples of outsourcing, the primary motivation is cost: Growing Stars, a California-based tutoring company, charges $30 an hour for U.S.-based tutors and $20 an hour for tutors in India, who are paid the equivalent of $230 per month. Burck Smith, chief executive and co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based online tutoring company SmarThinking, said his company has seen demand grow by 50 percent over the past few years, and the company signed 20 new clients, including high schools and colleges, for services this fall. Critics of online tutoring argue that there is already little oversight to such programs, resulting in questionable quality, and that using tutors from overseas only serves to make monitoring even more difficult. New York Times, 7 September 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/education/07tutor.html KAZAA FOUND GUILTY OF COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS IN AUSTRALIA An Australian court this week ruled in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its lawsuit against the developers of the Kazaa file-sharing service for copyright violations. The ruling is the second major blow to file traders this year, after the U.S. Supreme Court in June found Grokster liable for the copyright violations of its users. The court in Australia said that Sydney-based Sharman Networks, which owns and operates Kazaa, is well aware that its network is widely used to illegally trade copyrighted files and has done little to curb the practice other than adding warnings on the site. Those warnings, as well as an end user agreement that users must sign, "are ineffective to prevent, or even substantially to curtail, copyright infringements by users," said Judge Murray Wilcox in his ruling. Wilcox ordered Sharman to install filters on Kazaa to limit copyright violations within two months or discontinue the service. Wilcox also ordered Sharman to pay the majority of the RIAA's legal costs, and later this year a hearing will be held to assign damages that Sharman must pay to the entertainment industry. Internet News, 6 September 2005 http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3532336 CA HOPS ON THE OPEN SOURCE BANDWAGON Following IBM's lead, Computer Associates International (CA) has announced that it will allow open source developers to use 14 of its patents free of charge. Earlier this year, IBM, which has been one of the strongest corporate backers of open source technology, said it would forgo royalties on 500 of its patents. The CA patents that will be offered address application development, data analytics, and systems management. CA also announced an agreement with IBM under which the two companies will exchange license rights. According to Mark Barrenechea, executive vice president of technology strategy and chief technology architect at CA, the deal will give customers easier access to the range of intellectual property available without charge. ZDNet, 7 September 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5852500.html GROWTH OF ONLINE BANKING STALLS AMID HACKING FEAR A new survey by Ipsos Insight shows that the number of people who use the Internet for banking has reached a plateau, but that those who do their banking online are conducting growing numbers of transactions. According to the survey, roughly 39 percent of Americans use the Internet for personal banking--the same number as a year ago. Concern over online security for personal information was identified as a leading reason why more people are not turning to the Web for banking. Survey respondents expressed concerns about the possibility of hackers stealing sensitive information, about online scams that dupe users into revealing personal data, and about the practice among some banks of selling customers' personal information to third parties. Of those who conduct banking online, most are using the Web for growing numbers of financial transactions, including paying bills and managing retirement accounts, according to the survey. CNET, 6 September 2005 http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5851061.html ***************************************************** 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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