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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, JANUARY 09, 2006 High Court Passes on UT E-Mail Case U.K. Scrutinizes IT in Schools Legal Downloads Surge After Christmas HIGH COURT PASSES ON UT E-MAIL CASE The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case involving the University of Texas (UT) and White Buffalo Ventures, which operates a dating Web site focused on UT students. In 2003, UT officials blocked 59,000 e-mails from LonghornSingles.com, saying that they violated the university's antispam policy. According to officials at the school, the overall volume of spam messages was crippling the institution's servers, and the administration had also received complaints specifically about the LonghornSingles.com e-mails. White Buffalo Ventures had ignored a cease-and-desist letter, prompting the university to block all of its messages. White Buffalo took UT to court, said that its messages complied with all provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act, and argued that the federal law should take precedence over any UT policy. In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, saying that the university was within its rights to block the e-mails. Wired News, 9 January 2006 http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,69981-0.html U.K. SCRUTINIZES IT IN SCHOOLS The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has initiated two reviews of IT in British schools. The first focuses on Microsoft, specifically its licensing models, to see if the current state of affairs provides acceptable return on investments. According to Owen Lynch, chief executive of BECTA, extra attention should be paid to situations in which a single vendor controls a significant portion of the market, in order to guarantee that "schools and colleges have access to a range of products and services which represent good value for money." BECTA will look at licensing arrangements with the software giant and consider the costs of being locked in to ongoing contracts with the company. In its other report, BECTA will investigate issues of interoperability between computer systems at educational institutions and those at students' homes. The review will consider ways in which students can have access to similar applications at home and at school, and it will look at compatibility problems when students must use different applications at home. The Register, 9 January 2006 http://www.theregister.com/2006/01/09/becta_microsoft_licences_review/ LEGAL DOWNLOADS SURGE AFTER CHRISTMAS Sales of music tracks online surged over the holidays, indicating what might be new baseline levels for the market. During the Christmas week, 9.5 million tracks were downloaded from legal online music services, a new record for single-week sales. The following week, that number jumped to nearly 20 million tracks, triple the number sold during the same week a year earlier. Analysts attribute much of the gain to the ballooning number of portable MP3 players in the hands of consumers and to strong sales of gift cards. For the year, legal downloads rose 147 percent to 142.6 million. Although a drop always follows the holiday spike, analysts said the holiday numbers could indicate a market that will grow to perhaps 750 million or 1 billion tracks in 2006. Such numbers still pale compared to downloads on P2P services, which are estimated at 250 million per week, but experts say the upswing in legal downloads signals a changing tide for online music. CNET, 8 January 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6023769.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. To access resources including articles, books, conference sessions, contracts, effective practices, plans, policies, position descriptions, and blog content, go to http://www.educause.edu/resources ***************************************************** CONFERENCES For information on all EDUCAUSE learning and networking opportunities, see http://www.educause.edu/31 ***************************************************** COPYRIGHT Edupage copyright (c) 2006, EDUCAUSE
