Expertiza_Wiki - User contributions [en]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-08T19:11:41Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of its free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messenging users. Their closest competitor was MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was essentially a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant-messaging providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument that no matter what phone carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competitors pointed out has forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that Yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoperability but had other things to figure out first, such as spam and privacy issues. Although these companies' instant messengers' clients still can't contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a third-party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients, AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC, to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although Trillian was not the first of its kind, it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with their users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even received help from its rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant-messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encrypting its users' messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi-platform instant-messaging client. Pidgin was released as freeware under the Gnu license. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and was growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, many of these clients try to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to their users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryption for its users' messages. Pidgin also has a few problems. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the administrator's account, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, they are still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messenger was released with Windows XP. Windows Messenger was pre-installed in XP and set up as the user's default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (e.g., Vista), Windows has ditched the built-in instant messenger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger altogether. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer their front-running instant-messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if Microsoft heard out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note and Ethics==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messenger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emerged closer in the instant messaging competiiton, and Microsoft has backed down.

* Although the ethics of a monoploy are simple, AOL was believed to be unfairly stomping out the competition. This sqashing of smaller companies lost many dollars for small buisness owners while large companies such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! were gaining an unfair advantage by being the only alternative users could turn to.

* Microsoft also was unthecial in his providing instant message clients with its operating system. Although it does own the operating system and the Instant messaging client, the fact that it makes the Windows Messenger the default messaging client makes a decesions for the user to cut off other IM clients.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

===Trillian===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

===Pidgin===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html Market Share]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/12/40830?currentPage=all Monopoly] ''AP, wired.com''

[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-12MSNYahooMessengerPR.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2005] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-12iminteroppr.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2006] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

===Microsoft===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E4DC1F3DF932A25757C0A9649C8B63 HailStorm Ditched] ''John Markoff, nytimes.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

[http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=40481&DisplayTab=Article Windows OS Market Share] ''windowsitpro.com''

===Source Files===

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://pg-server.csc.ncsu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CSC_379_SUM2008:Topics Description of the Topic]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T19:31:27Z

Ctcoggin:

== Cyberstalking ==

=== What Is Cyberstalking ===

Cyberstalking is use of the internet in order to stalk someone.

With the recently buildup of social networks, webcameras, and other means of online communications, Cyberstalking was become a serious issue. These stalkers begin by using search engines or social networks to find a person. Once they have accomplished that this stalker creates an obession at looking at thier victims information. Many times cyberstalking escalates even further to where cyberstalkers will try to trace thier victims IP address to find thier home and/or work place.

=== Soical Networks ===

Social networks are a huge part of many peoples lives today. Such networks as [http://www.facebook.com Facebook] and [http://www.myspace.com MySpace,] just to name two giants, have around 100 millions users each and are still growing. These social networks provide many people with entertainment and ways to keep in touch with friends,however; these sites are also gateways for cyberstalkers to find victims.

*'''MySpace and Cyberstalkers'''

MySpace is a huge social network that started in August of 2003. On MySpace users can post pictures, videos, and put information in an "About Me" section. While this seems standard of any socal networking site, MySpace has numerous account of cyberstalking. To be able to create an account of MySpace a user has to be atleast 14 years old. Thankfully, anyone whose age is set from 14-15 has thier profile automatically set to private. These teens have become under srutiny for the racey pictures they are putting on thier profiles. Recently there have even been television commericals warning teens to be cognasient of what they put on thier profiles.

Cyberstalking has become big news to MySpace users. As [http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019 comscore] has released an article saying that MySpaces audience continues to shift towards an older demographic. Although many of these older users are harmless, the threat of pedophiles still exitsts. Many teens post personal information and pictures nievly thinking that only thier friends are going to see them. Besides these adults gaining and possibly abusing MySpace, there is also an abundancy of younger users providing an incorrect, older age in order to gain access to MySpace. This sets the stage for cyberstalking of young children. Wired recently published an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/29000-sex-offen.html#previouspost article] dicussing how myspace is having to deal with over 29,000 sex offenders accessing its site.'

Young children are not always the target of cyberstalking, Wired also posted an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/more-charges-in.html article] discussing how a hacker took control of a internet celebrities MySpace account and demanded sexual pictures in return for the account. There have also been [http://www.wftv.com/news/15369433/detail.html instances] where users find themsevles being physically stalked by people who find them on MySpace. This stalking is very serious as it can lead other serve crimes.

*'''Facebook and Cyberstalkers'''

Fackbook cyberstalkers or "creepers" as they are called in parody videos, are no joking matter. Sure in the videos it's the guy trying to get a laugh or some girl who is way too concered about what everyone else is doing, but in the real world, Facebook stalking can be very dangerous.

With the recent glitch found in Facebooks search options users need to begin to rethink thier privacy. Stalkers can find anything from your sex, ethnicity, sexual prefrence, and many other once thought private items simply utilizing a glitch in Facebook's advanced search option. This person can learn many thing about you without ever adding you as a "friend." To battle this glitch Facebook opened up the [http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/facebook-glitch-reveals-source-code-is-it-theirs-anyway.html soruce code of the search page], making it more vulerable to hackers, competitors, and stalkers alike.

According to an online source, Facebook is becoming the new Big Brother. While you may think that only your friends are looking at your profiles, there are many others such as employers who may look at your profile with or without your acknowledgement. The more information people put on Facebook, the more these people are at risk. Althought employers are not necessarily the bad guy, there are others such as discussed in the MySpace topic above with more malicious intents.

*'''What To Do and Ethics'''

How can users keep themsevles safe? There are many options. First off a user can get rid of thier account. Althought this option seems a bit irrational, it is the safest. The second is to go and locate the privacy options for your profile. here users can get many options. They can specify individual people and what those people have access to on thier profile. They can set restrictions for all of thier "friends." Or they can set it to allow any user to look at thier profile. If there is a parent who is concerened about his/her child getting on these sites, the parent can get an internet filter set up to block access to these sites.

The ethics behind Facebook and MySpace come down to a few topic:

*Should thier be more default privacy for users who are new to the service?

*In stalking cases should the companies assume some sort to liability?

*Should the companies take more initiative to make sure that users are of age and to keep sex offenders out?

==Topics to Cover==
Provide a general overview of cyberstalking as it occurs today. Discuss recent instances and analyze the ethics. What ethical considerations are raised by tools that facilitate cyber-stalking? Should threats of violence through cyberstalking be considered the same as in-person threats or threats communicated through traditional means?

==Links==

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
* http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/privacy/cyberstalking/
* http://brief-treatment.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/3/279
* http://media.www.thedailyaztec.com/media/storage/paper741/news/2008/01/31/City/Cyberstalkers.Pose.A.Dangerous.Threat-3178798.shtml
*http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2007-03-07-facebook-stalking_N.htm

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T19:30:52Z

Ctcoggin:

== Cyberstalking ==

=== What Is Cyberstalking ===

Cyberstalking is use of the internet in order to stalk someone.

With the recently buildup of social networks, webcameras, and other means of online communications, Cyberstalking was become a serious issue. These stalkers begin by using search engines or social networks to find a person. Once they have accomplished that this stalker creates an obession at looking at thier victims information. Many times cyberstalking escalates even further to where cyberstalkers will try to trace thier victims IP address to find thier home and/or work place.

=== Soical Networks ===

Social networks are a huge part of many peoples lives today. Such networks as [http://www.facebook.com Facebook] and [http://www.myspace.com MySpace,] just to name two giants, have around 100 millions users each and are still growing. These social networks provide many people with entertainment and ways to keep in touch with friends,however; these sites are also gateways for cyberstalkers to find victims.

*'''MySpace and Cyberstalkers'''

MySpace is a huge social network that started in August of 2003. On MySpace users can post pictures, videos, and put information in an "About Me" section. While this seems standard of any socal networking site, MySpace has numerous account of cyberstalking. To be able to create an account of MySpace a user has to be atleast 14 years old. Thankfully, anyone whose age is set from 14-15 has thier profile automatically set to private. These teens have become under srutiny for the racey pictures they are putting on thier profiles. Recently there have even been television commericals warning teens to be cognasient of what they put on thier profiles.

Cyberstalking has become big news to MySpace users. As [http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019 comscore] has released an article saying that MySpaces audience continues to shift towards an older demographic. Although many of these older users are harmless, the threat of pedophiles still exitsts. Many teens post personal information and pictures nievly thinking that only thier friends are going to see them. Besides these adults gaining and possibly abusing MySpace, there is also an abundancy of younger users providing an incorrect, older age in order to gain access to MySpace. This sets the stage for cyberstalking of young children. Wired recently published an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/29000-sex-offen.html#previouspost article] dicussing how myspace is having to deal with over 29,000 sex offenders accessing its site.'

Young children are not always the target of cyberstalking, Wired also posted an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/more-charges-in.html article] discussing how a hacker took control of a internet celebrities MySpace account and demanded sexual pictures in return for the account. There have also been [http://www.wftv.com/news/15369433/detail.html instances] where users find themsevles being physically stalked by people who find them on MySpace. This stalking is very serious as it can lead other serve crimes.

*'''Facebook and Cyberstalkers'''

Fackbook cyberstalkers or "creepers" as they are called in parody videos, are no joking matter. Sure in the videos it's the guy trying to get a laugh or some girl who is way too concered about what everyone else is doing, but in the real world, Facebook stalking can be very dangerous.

With the recent glitch found in Facebooks search options users need to begin to rethink thier privacy. Stalkers can find anything from your sex, ethnicity, sexual prefrence, and many other once thought private items simply utilizing a glitch in Facebook's advanced search option. This person can learn many thing about you without ever adding you as a "friend." To battle this glitch Facebook opened up the [http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/facebook-glitch-reveals-source-code-is-it-theirs-anyway.html soruce code of the search page], making it more vulerable to hackers, competitors, and stalkers alike.

According to an online source, Facebook is becoming the new Big Brother. While you may think that only your friends are looking at your profiles, there are many others such as employers who may look at your profile with or without your acknowledgement. The more information people put on Facebook, the more these people are at risk. Althought employers are not necessarily the bad guy, there are others such as discussed in the MySpace topic above with more malicious intents.

*'''What To Do and Ethics'''

How can users keep themsevles safe? There are many options. First off a user can get rid of thier account. Althought this option seems a bit irrational, it is the safest. The second is to go and locate the privacy options for your profile. here users can get many options. They can specify individual people and what those people have access to on thier profile. They can set restrictions for all of thier "friends." Or they can set it to allow any user to look at thier profile. If there is a parent who is concerened about his/her child getting on these sites, the parent can get an internet filter set up to block access to these sites.

The ethics behind Facebook and MySpace come down to a few topic:

*Should thier be more default privacy for users who are new to the service?

*In stalking cases should the companies assume some sort to liability?

*Should the companies take more initiative to make sure that users are of age and to keep sex offenders out?

Provide a general overview of cyberstalking as it occurs today. Discuss recent instances and analyze the ethics. What ethical considerations are raised by tools that facilitate cyber-stalking? Should threats of violence through cyberstalking be considered the same as in-person threats or threats communicated through traditional means?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
* http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/privacy/cyberstalking/
* http://brief-treatment.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/3/279
* http://media.www.thedailyaztec.com/media/storage/paper741/news/2008/01/31/City/Cyberstalkers.Pose.A.Dangerous.Threat-3178798.shtml
*http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2007-03-07-facebook-stalking_N.htm

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T19:28:38Z

Ctcoggin:

== Cyberstalking ==

=== What Is Cyberstalking ===

Cyberstalking is use of the internet in order to stalk someone.

With the recently buildup of social networks, webcameras, and other means of online communications, Cyberstalking was become a serious issue. These stalkers begin by using search engines or social networks to find a person. Once they have accomplished that this stalker creates an obession at looking at thier victims information. Many times cyberstalking escalates even further to where cyberstalkers will try to trace thier victims IP address to find thier home and/or work place.

=== Soical Networks ===

Social networks are a huge part of many peoples lives today. Such networks as [http://www.facebook.com Facebook] and [http://www.myspace.com MySpace,] just to name two giants, have around 100 millions users each and are still growing. These social networks provide many people with entertainment and ways to keep in touch with friends,however; these sites are also gateways for cyberstalkers to find victims.

*'''MySpace and Cyberstalkers'''

MySpace is a huge social network that started in August of 2003. On MySpace users can post pictures, videos, and put information in an "About Me" section. While this seems standard of any socal networking site, MySpace has numerous account of cyberstalking. To be able to create an account of MySpace a user has to be atleast 14 years old. Thankfully, anyone whose age is set from 14-15 has thier profile automatically set to private. These teens have become under srutiny for the racey pictures they are putting on thier profiles. Recently there have even been television commericals warning teens to be cognasient of what they put on thier profiles.

Cyberstalking has become big news to MySpace users. As [http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019 comscore] has released an article saying that MySpaces audience continues to shift towards an older demographic. Although many of these older users are harmless, the threat of pedophiles still exitsts. Many teens post personal information and pictures nievly thinking that only thier friends are going to see them. Besides these adults gaining and possibly abusing MySpace, there is also an abundancy of younger users providing an incorrect, older age in order to gain access to MySpace. This sets the stage for cyberstalking of young children. Wired recently published an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/29000-sex-offen.html#previouspost article] dicussing how myspace is having to deal with over 29,000 sex offenders accessing its site.'

Young children are not always the target of cyberstalking, Wired also posted an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/more-charges-in.html article] discussing how a hacker took control of a internet celebrities MySpace account and demanded sexual pictures in return for the account. There have also been [http://www.wftv.com/news/15369433/detail.html instances] where users find themsevles being physically stalked by people who find them on MySpace. This stalking is very serious as it can lead other serve crimes.

*'''Facebook and Cyberstalkers'''

Fackbook cyberstalkers or "creepers" as they are called in parody videos, are no joking matter. Sure in the videos it's the guy trying to get a laugh or some girl who is way too concered about what everyone else is doing, but in the real world, Facebook stalking can be very dangerous.

With the recent glitch found in Facebooks search options users need to begin to rethink thier privacy. Stalkers can find anything from your sex, ethnicity, sexual prefrence, and many other once thought private items simply utilizing a glitch in Facebook's advanced search option. This person can learn many thing about you without ever adding you as a "friend." To battle this glitch Facebook opened up the [http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/facebook-glitch-reveals-source-code-is-it-theirs-anyway.html soruce code of the search page], making it more vulerable to hackers, competitors, and stalkers alike.

According to an online source, Facebook is becoming the new Big Brother. While you may think that only your friends are looking at your profiles, there are many others such as employers who may look at your profile with or without your acknowledgement. The more information people put on Facebook, the more these people are at risk. Althought employers are not necessarily the bad guy, there are others such as discussed in the MySpace topic above with more malicious intents.

*'''What To Do and Ethics'''

How can users keep themsevles safe? There are many options. First off a user can get rid of thier account. Althought this option seems a bit irrational, it is the safest. The second is to go and locate the privacy options for your profile. here users can get many options. They can specify individual people and what those people have access to on thier profile. They can set restrictions for all of thier "friends." Or they can set it to allow any user to look at thier profile. If there is a parent who is concerened about his/her child getting on these sites, the parent can get an internet filter set up to block access to these sites.

The ethics behind Facebook and MySpace come down to a few topic:

*Should thier be more default privacy for users who are new to the service?

*In stalking cases should the companies assume some sort to liability?

*Should the companies take more initiative to make sure that users are of age and to keep sex offenders out?

Provide a general overview of cyberstalking as it occurs today. Discuss recent instances and analyze the ethics. What ethical considerations are raised by tools that facilitate cyber-stalking? Should threats of violence through cyberstalking be considered the same as in-person threats or threats communicated through traditional means?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
* http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/privacy/cyberstalking/
* http://brief-treatment.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/3/279
* http://media.www.thedailyaztec.com/media/storage/paper741/news/2008/01/31/City/Cyberstalkers.Pose.A.Dangerous.Threat-3178798.shtml

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T19:25:33Z

Ctcoggin:

== Cyberstalking ==

=== What Is Cyberstalking ===

Cyberstalking is use of the internet in order to stalk someone.

With the recently buildup of social networks, webcameras, and other means of online communications, Cyberstalking was become a serious issue. These stalkers begin by using search engines or social networks to find a person. Once they have accomplished that this stalker creates an obession at looking at thier victims information. Many times cyberstalking escalates even further to where cyberstalkers will try to trace thier victims IP address to find thier home and/or work place.

=== Soical Networks ===

Social networks are a huge part of many peoples lives today. Such networks as [http://www.facebook.com Facebook] and [http://www.myspace.com MySpace,] just to name two giants, have around 100 millions users each and are still growing. These social networks provide many people with entertainment and ways to keep in touch with friends,however; these sites are also gateways for cyberstalkers to find victims.

*'''MySpace and Cyberstalkers'''

MySpace is a huge social network that started in August of 2003. On MySpace users can post pictures, videos, and put information in an "About Me" section. While this seems standard of any socal networking site, MySpace has numerous account of cyberstalking. To be able to create an account of MySpace a user has to be atleast 14 years old. Thankfully, anyone whose age is set from 14-15 has thier profile automatically set to private. These teens have become under srutiny for the racey pictures they are putting on thier profiles. Recently there have even been television commericals warning teens to be cognasient of what they put on thier profiles.

Cyberstalking has become big news to MySpace users. As [http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019 comscore] has released an article saying that MySpaces audience continues to shift towards an older demographic. Although many of these older users are harmless, the threat of pedophiles still exitsts. Many teens post personal information and pictures nievly thinking that only thier friends are going to see them. Besides these adults gaining and possibly abusing MySpace, there is also an abundancy of younger users providing an incorrect, older age in order to gain access to MySpace. This sets the stage for cyberstalking of young children. Wired recently published an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/29000-sex-offen.html#previouspost article] dicussing how myspace is having to deal with over 29,000 sex offenders accessing its site.'

Young children are not always the target of cyberstalking, Wired also posted an [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/more-charges-in.html article] discussing how a hacker took control of a internet celebrities MySpace account and demanded sexual pictures in return for the account. There have also been [http://www.wftv.com/news/15369433/detail.html instances] where users find themsevles being physically stalked by people who find them on MySpace. This stalking is very serious as it can lead other serve crimes.

*'''Facebook and Cyberstalkers'''

Fackbook cyberstalkers or "creepers" as they are called in parody videos, are no joking matter. Sure in the videos it's the guy trying to get a laugh or some girl who is way too concered about what everyone else is doing, but in the real world, Facebook stalking can be very dangerous.

With the recent glitch found in Facebooks search options users need to begin to rethink thier privacy. Stalkers can find anything from your sex, ethnicity, sexual prefrence, and many other once thought private items simply utilizing a glitch in Facebook's advanced search option. This person can learn many thing about you without ever adding you as a "friend."

According to an online source, Facebook is becoming the new Big Brother. While you may think that only your friends are looking at your profiles, there are many others such as employers who may look at your profile with or without your acknowledgement. The more information people put on Facebook, the more these people are at risk. Althought employers are not necessarily the bad guy, there are others such as discussed in the MySpace topic above with more malicious intents.

*'''What To Do and Ethics'''

How can users keep themsevles safe? There are many options. First off a user can get rid of thier account. Althought this option seems a bit irrational, it is the safest. The second is to go and locate the privacy options for your profile. here users can get many options. They can specify individual people and what those people have access to on thier profile. They can set restrictions for all of thier "friends." Or they can set it to allow any user to look at thier profile. If there is a parent who is concerened about his/her child getting on these sites, the parent can get an internet filter set up to block access to these sites.

The ethics behind Facebook and MySpace come down to a few topic:

*Should thier be more default privacy for users who are new to the service?

*In stalking cases should the companies assume some sort to liability?

*Should the companies take more initiative to make sure that users are of age and to keep sex offenders out?

Provide a general overview of cyberstalking as it occurs today. Discuss recent instances and analyze the ethics. What ethical considerations are raised by tools that facilitate cyber-stalking? Should threats of violence through cyberstalking be considered the same as in-person threats or threats communicated through traditional means?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
* http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/privacy/cyberstalking/
* http://brief-treatment.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/3/279
* http://media.www.thedailyaztec.com/media/storage/paper741/news/2008/01/31/City/Cyberstalkers.Pose.A.Dangerous.Threat-3178798.shtml

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T15:31:54Z

Ctcoggin:

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T15:31:37Z

Ctcoggin:

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T15:01:04Z

Ctcoggin:

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T14:52:32Z

Ctcoggin:

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T14:43:51Z

Ctcoggin:

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 5, Group 3

2008-08-07T14:42:29Z

Ctcoggin:

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-05T02:54:50Z

Ctcoggin: /* Monopoly: a Thing of The Past. */

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of its free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messenging users. Their closest competitor was MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was essentially a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant-messaging providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument that no matter what phone carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competitors pointed out has forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that Yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoperability but had other things to figure out first, such as spam and privacy issues. Although these companies' instant messengers' clients still can't contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a third-party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients, AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC, to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although Trillian was not the first of its kind, it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with their users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even received help from its rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant-messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encrypting its users' messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi-platform instant-messaging client. Pidgin was released as freeware under the Gnu license. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and was growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, many of these clients try to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to their users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryption for its users' messages. Pidgin also has a few problems. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the administrator's account, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, they are still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messenger was released with Windows XP. Windows Messenger was pre-installed in XP and set up as the user's default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (e.g., Vista), Windows has ditched the built-in instant messenger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger altogether. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer their front-running instant-messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if Microsoft heard out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note and Ethics==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messenger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emerged closer in the instant messaging competiiton, and Microsoft has backed down.

* Although the ethics of a monoploy are simple, AOL was believed to be unfairly stomping out the competition. This sqashing of smaller companies lost many dollars for small buisness owners while large companies such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! were gaining an unfair advantage by being the only alternative users could turn to.

* Microsoft also was unthecial in his providing instant message clients with its operating system. Although it does own the operating system and the Instant messaging client, the fact that it makes the Windows Messenger the default messaging client makes a decesions for the user to cut off other IM clients.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

===Trillian===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

===Pidgin===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html Market Share]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/12/40830?currentPage=all Monopoly] ''AP, wired.com''

[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-12MSNYahooMessengerPR.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2005] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-12iminteroppr.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2006] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

===Microsoft===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E4DC1F3DF932A25757C0A9649C8B63 HailStorm Ditched] ''John Markoff, nytimes.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

[http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=40481&DisplayTab=Article Windows OS Market Share] ''windowsitpro.com''

===Source Files===

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://pg-server.csc.ncsu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CSC_379_SUM2008:Topics Description of the Topic]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-05T02:54:14Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of its free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messenging users. Their closest competitor was MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was essentially a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant-messaging providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument that no matter what phone carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competitors pointed out has forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that Yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoperability but had other things to figure out first, such as spam and privacy issues. Although these companies' instant messengers' clients still can't contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a third-party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients, AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC, to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although Trillian was not the first of its kind, it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with their users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even received help from its rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant-messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encrypting its users' messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi-platform instant-messaging client. Pidgin was released as freeware under the Gnu license. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and was growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, many of these clients try to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to their users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryption for its users' messages. Pidgin also has a few problems. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the administrator's account, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, they are still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messenger was released with Windows XP. Windows Messenger was pre-installed in XP and set up as the user's default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (e.g., Vista), Windows has ditched the built-in instant messenger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger altogether. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer their front-running instant-messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if Microsoft heard out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note and Ethics==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messenger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emerged closer in the instant messaging competiiton, and Microsoft has backed down.

* Although the ethics of a monoploy are simple, AOL was believed to be unfairly stomping out the competition. This sqashing of smaller companies lost many dollars for small buisness owners while large companies such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! were gaining an unfair advantage by being the only alternative users could turn to.

* Microsoft also was unthecial in his providing instant message clients with its operating system. Although it does own the operating system and the Instant messaging client, the fact that it makes the Windows Messenger the default messaging client makes a decesions for the user to cut off other IM clients.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

===Trillian===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

===Pidgin===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html Market Share]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/12/40830?currentPage=all Monopoly] ''AP, wired.com''

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-12MSNYahooMessengerPR.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2005] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-12iminteroppr.mspx Yahoo Microsoft IM merger 2006] ''Microsoft, microsoft.com''

===Microsoft===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E4DC1F3DF932A25757C0A9649C8B63 HailStorm Ditched] ''John Markoff, nytimes.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

[http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=40481&DisplayTab=Article Windows OS Market Share] ''windowsitpro.com''

===Source Files===

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://pg-server.csc.ncsu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CSC_379_SUM2008:Topics Description of the Topic]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-05T02:30:45Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of its free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messenging users. Their closest competitor was MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was essentially a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant-messaging providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument that no matter what phone carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competitors pointed out has forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that Yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoperability but had other things to figure out first, such as spam and privacy issues. Although these companies' instant messengers' clients still can't contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a third-party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients, AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC, to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although Trillian was not the first of its kind, it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with their users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even received help from its rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant-messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encrypting its users' messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi-platform instant-messaging client. Pidgin was released as freeware under the Gnu license. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and was growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, many of these clients try to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to their users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryption for its users' messages. Pidgin also has a few problems. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the administrator's account, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, they are still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messenger was released with Windows XP. Windows Messenger was pre-installed in XP and set up as the user's default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (e.g., Vista), Windows has ditched the built-in instant messenger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger altogether. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer their front-running instant-messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if Microsoft heard out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messenger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emerged closer in the instant messaging competiiton, and Microsoft has backed down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

===Trillian===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

===Pidgin===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

===Microsoft===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

===Source Files===

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://pg-server.csc.ncsu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CSC_379_SUM2008:Topics Description of the Topic]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-05T02:29:44Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of its free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messenging users. Their closest competitor was MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was essentially a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant-messaging providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument that no matter what phone carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competitors pointed out has forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that Yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoperability but had other things to figure out first, such as spam and privacy issues. Although these companies' instant messengers' clients still can't contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a third-party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients, AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC, to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although Trillian was not the first of its kind, it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with their users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even received help from its rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant-messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encrypting its users' messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi-platform instant-messaging client. Pidgin was released as freeware under the Gnu license. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and was growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, many of these clients try to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to their users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryption for its users' messages. Pidgin also has a few problems. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the administrator's account, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, they are still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messenger was released with Windows XP. Windows Messenger was pre-installed in XP and set up as the user's default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (e.g., Vista), Windows has ditched the built-in instant messenger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger altogether. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer their front-running instant-messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if Microsoft heard out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messenger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emerged closer in the instant messaging competiiton, and Microsoft has backed down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

===Trillian===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

===Pidgin===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

==Microsoft==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

===Is Microsoft trying to cut off its competition and increasing the market share of Windows?===

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

==Source Files==

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://pg-server.csc.ncsu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CSC_379_SUM2008:Topics Description of the Topic]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 4, Group 2

2008-08-02T03:16:39Z

Ctcoggin:

==Open Government==
Most bills are passed by legislatures without ever being read by most legislators. Letters, articles, reports, all often never escape the physical mediums (paper) of their existence. Although technology has developed to the point where all non-private information in the United States government can, in theory, be made openly available, the support structures and culture of information sharing has not caught up to make full use of them. Efforts are being made to use digitization and sharing technology; one of the most notable digitization efforts is THOMAS, a joint effort by the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office (GPO).

Examine the ethical implications of making policy with inadequate access to information, and the efforts being made to address those concerns. Is there a need for a change in existing support structures and culture of information sharing in government? Should support structures and culture change to encourage greater information sharing, if it required the government to slow down decision-making processes?
==History==
Open government is the doctrine that all levels of political administration should be open to public viewing and scrutiny. The origins of which date back to the Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth century. More recently, the passing of the [http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)] in the United States in 1966 is seen as the beginning of a modern movement toward open government. After its passing, several countries have followed suit in the subsequent decades.

The FOIA allows for complete or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents from the US Government based on a series of conditions. It applies to all government agencies. There are nine exemptions to the FOIA:
*Classified national defense and foreign relations information
*Internal agency rules and practices
*Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
*Trade secrets and other confidential business information
*Inter-agency or intra-agency communications protected by legal privileges
*Information involving matters of personal privacy
*Records compiled for law enforcement purposes
*Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
*Geological information on wells

[http://thomas.loc.gov/ THOMAS] is a database kept by the Library of Congress detailing legislative information since 1995. The database is named after Thomas Jefferson. It includes information including:
*Bills and resolutions
*Congressional activity
*Congressional record
*Committee information
*Treaties
*Historical documents

A new political philosophy is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance open source governance], which details a post-national state where any interested citizen can add to the creation of a policy, by way of a wiki or another mechanism. The core of such a government structure is a "central codebase" that are maintained by public registry. The policies are distributed to local areas that can alter the policy for their own uses and can send improvements back to the core.

== Benefits ==

One of the advantages of an open source government is that more of the government's actions and intentions become transparent by posting reports about said activity in a widely accessible place (such as the internet). This gives a much wider range of people the opportunity to decide for themselves if they actually support what their leaders and representatives are doing.

For example, one common problem with bills is that they typically get "riders," which are extra provisions that are appended to the bill and may or may not have anything to do with the original intent of the bill. Typically they are used to covertly pass items through the bill-approval process that would otherwise be met with opposition. At this time, the threat of being discovered is minimal because the riders tend to be written in a very verbose, jargon-fill manner, which very few people are willing to examine and interpret.

It is not really a question of how to obtain access to information about these bills and various attachments. All of this information is available to the general public (e.g. via [http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html THOMAS]); anyone is well within their bounds to perform their own research. It is more a question of how to obtain access to this information that is easily digestible and understandable. As stated, the wording of bills can be very confusing. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to sit down and understand what a bill is meant to accomplish. People have access to the information, they just don't have access to the abridged version of that information.

Open source governance would help to change that by first bringing together individuals and interest groups (such as the Sunlight Foundation[http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/]) who do have the patience to analyze bills and riders. By cooperating and collaborating, these individuals can better coordinate their efforts and disseminate their findings to a wider audience. Once a larger percentage of the the general population is more aware of what is contained in the bills, they will be better informed and be able to make sound decisions on whether or not they support what sorts of things are included in the bills.

In theory, this would reduce the amount of riders that get passed through, because law-makers would have a more difficult time passing things through that might not necessarily have popular support. At a minimum, they would be more mindful of what sorts of things they choose to include in a bill because a responsive and well-informed populace would quickly voice their opposition to anything objectionable.

==Problems==

Although the idea of allowing this information to be viewed by many people sounds great, there are many potential problems.

*Funding

Funding is probably the larget problem with open government. Many people tend to overlook the cost of getting these documents transfered from a paper form to internet, user-friendly, model. Also, where would this money come from? Would the government use the peoples tax dollars or would apprpriations from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget national budget] be made? With these costs tagged on to the nation's already tremendous national debt, the country would be faced with the decesion to either cut corners in other departments or plunge further into debt.

*Conflicting Interest

With all of the information availible to many people of different political backgrounds their is sure to be many conflicting interests. Many of the people reading the documents may not fully understand it's contents and become confused and/or angry about what the document is actully doing. Also, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_group interest groups] that research the bills could be at risk by putting this information up for everyone to see. Readers of this information could start to disagree with these groups and the information that they are providing the government. With the disagreement of who is right and who is wrong, it would become increasingly difficult for legislators to propose new legislation.

*Time

The time span of creating these documents would be astronomic. Although there are current databases the contain important information for captial hill(stated above), the thought of putting all permitted information in a format accessible to all those interested in a reasonable timeframe, would be extreamly difficult.

==Additional Links==
* http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html
* http://www.lessig.org/blog/
* http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/digitizing-faqs.html
* http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 4, Group 2

2008-08-02T03:11:30Z

Ctcoggin:

==Open Government==
Most bills are passed by legislatures without ever being read by most legislators. Letters, articles, reports, all often never escape the physical mediums (paper) of their existence. Although technology has developed to the point where all non-private information in the United States government can, in theory, be made openly available, the support structures and culture of information sharing has not caught up to make full use of them. Efforts are being made to use digitization and sharing technology; one of the most notable digitization efforts is THOMAS, a joint effort by the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office (GPO).

Examine the ethical implications of making policy with inadequate access to information, and the efforts being made to address those concerns. Is there a need for a change in existing support structures and culture of information sharing in government? Should support structures and culture change to encourage greater information sharing, if it required the government to slow down decision-making processes?
==History==
Open government is the doctrine that all levels of political administration should be open to public viewing and scrutiny. The origins of which date back to the Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth century. More recently, the passing of the [http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)] in the United States in 1966 is seen as the beginning of a modern movement toward open government. After its passing, several countries have followed suit in the subsequent decades.

The FOIA allows for complete or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents from the US Government based on a series of conditions. It applies to all government agencies. There are nine exemptions to the FOIA:
*Classified national defense and foreign relations information
*Internal agency rules and practices
*Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
*Trade secrets and other confidential business information
*Inter-agency or intra-agency communications protected by legal privileges
*Information involving matters of personal privacy
*Records compiled for law enforcement purposes
*Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
*Geological information on wells

[http://thomas.loc.gov/ THOMAS] is a database kept by the Library of Congress detailing legislative information since 1995. The database is named after Thomas Jefferson. It includes information including:
*Bills and resolutions
*Congressional activity
*Congressional record
*Committee information
*Treaties
*Historical documents

A new political philosophy is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance open source governance], which details a post-national state where any interested citizen can add to the creation of a policy, by way of a wiki or another mechanism. The core of such a government structure is a "central codebase" that are maintained by public registry. The policies are distributed to local areas that can alter the policy for their own uses and can send improvements back to the core.

== Benefits ==

One of the advantages of an open source government is that more of the government's actions and intentions become transparent by posting reports about said activity in a widely accessible place (such as the internet). This gives a much wider range of people the opportunity to decide for themselves if they actually support what their leaders and representatives are doing.

For example, one common problem with bills is that they typically get "riders," which are extra provisions that are appended to the bill and may or may not have anything to do with the original intent of the bill. Typically they are used to covertly pass items through the bill-approval process that would otherwise be met with opposition. At this time, the threat of being discovered is minimal because the riders tend to be written in a very verbose, jargon-fill manner, which very few people are willing to examine and interpret.

It is not really a question of how to obtain access to information about these bills and various attachments. All of this information is available to the general public (e.g. via [http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html THOMAS]); anyone is well within their bounds to perform their own research. It is more a question of how to obtain access to this information that is easily digestible and understandable. As stated, the wording of bills can be very confusing. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to sit down and understand what a bill is meant to accomplish. People have access to the information, they just don't have access to the abridged version of that information.

Open source governance would help to change that by first bringing together individuals and interest groups (such as the Sunlight Foundation[http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/]) who do have the patience to analyze bills and riders. By cooperating and collaborating, these individuals can better coordinate their efforts and disseminate their findings to a wider audience. Once a larger percentage of the the general population is more aware of what is contained in the bills, they will be better informed and be able to make sound decisions on whether or not they support what sorts of things are included in the bills.

In theory, this would reduce the amount of riders that get passed through, because law-makers would have a more difficult time passing things through that might not necessarily have popular support. At a minimum, they would be more mindful of what sorts of things they choose to include in a bill because a responsive and well-informed populace would quickly voice their opposition to anything objectionable.

==Problems==

Although the idea of allowing this information to be viewed by many people sounds great, there are many potential problems.

*Funding

Funding is probably the larget problem with open government. Many people tend to overlook the cost of getting these documents transfered from a paper form to internet, user-friendly, model. Also, where would this money come from? Would the government use the peoples tax dollars or would apprpriations from the national budget be made? With these costs tagged on to the nation's already tremendous national debt, the country would be faced with the decesion to either cut corners in other departments or plunge further into debt.

*Conflicting Interest

With all of the information availible to many people of different political backgrounds their is sure to be many conflicting interests. Many of the people reading the documents may not fully understand it's contents and become confused and/or angry about what the document is actully doing. Also, the interest groups that research the bills could be at risk by putting this information up for everyone to see. Readers of this information could start to disagree with these groups and the information that they are providing the government. With the disagreement of who is right and who is wrong, it would become increasingly difficult for legislators to propose new legislation.

*Time

The time span of creating these documents would be astronomic. Although there are current databases the contain important information for captial hill(stated above), the thought of putting all permitted information in a format accessible to all those interested in a reasonable timeframe, would be extreamly difficult.

==Additional Links==
* http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html
* http://www.lessig.org/blog/
* http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/digitizing-faqs.html
* http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 4, Group 2

2008-08-02T03:02:32Z

Ctcoggin:

==Open Government==
Most bills are passed by legislatures without ever being read by most legislators. Letters, articles, reports, all often never escape the physical mediums (paper) of their existence. Although technology has developed to the point where all non-private information in the United States government can, in theory, be made openly available, the support structures and culture of information sharing has not caught up to make full use of them. Efforts are being made to use digitization and sharing technology; one of the most notable digitization efforts is THOMAS, a joint effort by the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office (GPO).

Examine the ethical implications of making policy with inadequate access to information, and the efforts being made to address those concerns. Is there a need for a change in existing support structures and culture of information sharing in government? Should support structures and culture change to encourage greater information sharing, if it required the government to slow down decision-making processes?
==History==
Open government is the doctrine that all levels of political administration should be open to public viewing and scrutiny. The origins of which date back to the Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth century. More recently, the passing of the [http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)] in the United States in 1966 is seen as the beginning of a modern movement toward open government. After its passing, several countries have followed suit in the subsequent decades.

The FOIA allows for complete or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents from the US Government based on a series of conditions. It applies to all government agencies. There are nine exemptions to the FOIA:
*Classified national defense and foreign relations information
*Internal agency rules and practices
*Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
*Trade secrets and other confidential business information
*Inter-agency or intra-agency communications protected by legal privileges
*Information involving matters of personal privacy
*Records compiled for law enforcement purposes
*Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
*Geological information on wells

[http://thomas.loc.gov/ THOMAS] is a database kept by the Library of Congress detailing legislative information since 1995. The database is named after Thomas Jefferson. It includes information including:
*Bills and resolutions
*Congressional activity
*Congressional record
*Committee information
*Treaties
*Historical documents

A new political philosophy is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance open source governance], which details a post-national state where any interested citizen can add to the creation of a policy, by way of a wiki or another mechanism. The core of such a government structure is a "central codebase" that are maintained by public registry. The policies are distributed to local areas that can alter the policy for their own uses and can send improvements back to the core.

== Benefits ==

One of the advantages of an open source government is that more of the government's actions and intentions become transparent by posting reports about said activity in a widely accessible place (such as the internet). This gives a much wider range of people the opportunity to decide for themselves if they actually support what their leaders and representatives are doing.

For example, one common problem with bills is that they typically get "riders," which are extra provisions that are appended to the bill and may or may not have anything to do with the original intent of the bill. Typically they are used to covertly pass items through the bill-approval process that would otherwise be met with opposition. At this time, the threat of being discovered is minimal because the riders tend to be written in a very verbose, jargon-fill manner, which very few people are willing to examine and interpret.

It is not really a question of how to obtain access to information about these bills and various attachments. All of this information is available to the general public (e.g. via [http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html THOMAS]); anyone is well within their bounds to perform their own research. It is more a question of how to obtain access to this information that is easily digestible and understandable. As stated, the wording of bills can be very confusing. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to sit down and understand what a bill is meant to accomplish. People have access to the information, they just don't have access to the abridged version of that information.

Open source governance would help to change that by first bringing together individuals and interest groups (such as the Sunlight Foundation[http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/]) who do have the patience to analyze bills and riders. By cooperating and collaborating, these individuals can better coordinate their efforts and disseminate their findings to a wider audience. Once a larger percentage of the the general population is more aware of what is contained in the bills, they will be better informed and be able to make sound decisions on whether or not they support what sorts of things are included in the bills.

In theory, this would reduce the amount of riders that get passed through, because law-makers would have a more difficult time passing things through that might not necessarily have popular support. At a minimum, they would be more mindful of what sorts of things they choose to include in a bill because a responsive and well-informed populace would quickly voice their opposition to anything objectionable.

==Problems==

Although the idea of allowing this information to be viewed by many people sounds great, there are many potential problems.

*Funding

Funding is probably the larget problem with open government. Many people tend to overlook the cost of getting these documents transfered from a paper form to internet, user-friendly, model. Also, where would this money come from? Would the government use the peoples tax dollars or would apprpriations from the national budget be made? With these costs tagged on to the nation's already tremendous national debt, the country would be faced with the decesion to either cut corners in other departments or plunge further into debt.

*Conflicting Interest

With all of the information availible to many people of different political backgrounds their is sure to be many conflicting interests. Many of the people reading the documents may not fully understand it's contents and become confused and/or angry about what the document is actully doing. Also, the interest groups that research the bills could be at risk by putting this information up for everyone to see. Readers of this information could start to disagree with these groups and the information that they are providing the government. With the disagreement of who is right and who is wrong, it would become increasingly difficult for legislators to propose new legislation.

*Time

==Additional Links==
* http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html
* http://www.lessig.org/blog/
* http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/digitizing-faqs.html
* http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-01T01:46:34Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messanger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emergered closer in the instant messaging competiton, as well as Microsofts back down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

==Microsoft==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

==Source Files==

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

'''Commerce/anticompetitive/instant'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-01T01:46:06Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messanger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emergered closer in the instant messaging competiton, as well as Microsofts back down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]''icq.com''

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

==Microsoft==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

==Source Files==

Title: '''Instant Messaging'''

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-01T01:45:16Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messanger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emergered closer in the instant messaging competiton, as well as Microsofts back down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]''wikipedia.org''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging] ''wikipedia.org''

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]''google.com''

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]''Jeff, bigblueball.com''

==Microsoft==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]''wikipedia.org''

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]''windows.com''

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]''windows.com''

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]''microsoft.com''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET/ List of Microsoft codenames#.NET]''wikipedia.org''

==Source Files==

Title: Instant Messaging

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-01T01:40:14Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messanger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emergered closer in the instant messaging competiton, as well as Microsofts back down.

==Bibliography==

===Instant Messaging===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable]

[http://www.icq.com ICQ]

===AOL===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name"]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging]

[http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk]

[http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html]

===Microsoft==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger]

[http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]

[http://home.live.com/ Windows Live]

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

==Source Files==

Title: Instant Messaging

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-08-01T01:26:41Z

Ctcoggin:

== Study Guide ==

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Final Note==
* As for interoperability, users can only hope for now. Although there have been talks between the "big three" about some kind of combined instant messanger, the three cannot agree on how to do it.

* As for the scare about AOL's "monopoly" and Microsoft's cutting off its competition, the people no longer have to worry as Microsoft/Yahoo! have emergered closer in the instant messaging competiton, as well as Microsofts back down.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 3, Group 4

2008-07-30T15:54:40Z

Ctcoggin:

= Bundling Malware =
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

==Bundling==

Many freeware and shareware applications have been incuding spyware and ad-ware applications along with thier products. Many of these products include:

*Peer to Peer applications
*Free Email Clients
*Game Downloads
*and many others...

These companies choose to bundle this ad-ware/spyware with their product in order to gain a profit. One bundle that computer users see the most is Internet Explorer toolbars. These toolbars although not malicious, put advertisements and slow down Internet Explorer.

There are more harmful bundles; however, [http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2004/12/spyware_for_fre.html technogoogles] recently published an article discussing how [http://www.imesh.com imesh], a peer to peer music network, has been using Marketscore. Marketscore diverts the users internet connection through a proxy, this proxy looks at the user’s internet usage and credit information.

===Why Bundle?===
Software developers bundle with malware in order to gain a profit. There are some developers that do not bundle and simply put out their products out of the goodness of thier hearts. Other developers need the money but do not have enough money to go about advertising their products so they bundle it with malware in order to make a small profit. With this profit, if the developer continues to make software, he/she may now have enough money to go about advertising for thier next product and will not have to bundle it with malware.

==Regulation Attempts==

Windows has the largest problem with being compromised with spyware and ad-ware. Since it is used by a majority of computer users, spyware and ad-ware code writers target it more than its competitors. To deal with this, windows has a firewall included in its operating system. Windows has also recently released [http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm?mkt=en-us&s_cid=WL2Hdr Live OneCare] as a subscriptions antivirus and malware removal software. Other companies such as Norton and McAfee have upgraded their antivirus software to help users remove harmful malware.

===Government on Malware===

Existing U.S. laws that can be used to fight "spyware" are:

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Title 5 of the Federal Trade Commission.

There is also new legislation, known as the "Spy Act", and its main objective is to protect Internet users against “cybertrespassing” -- namely security and privacy breaches -- brought about by spyware or adware. The Spy Act makes it illegal for non-owners or unathorized users to infiltrate and sabotage a computer used by financial, government, or communications personel. The Spy Act also makes it unlawful for a non-user of a computer to transmit information collection programs to a computer protected under the legislation, unless the program gives notice before executing its collection functions and specifies its functions, or unless the user has already given consent under a previous notification. Infractions for this law are set at a costly three million.

===Freeware Removal===

There is also freeware that users can download to help remove spyware and ad-ware.

*[http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html Spybot Search and Destory] Spybot is a free program that users can download to help with removal of harmful spyware.

*[http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Ad-aware] Ad-aware is a free program that allows users to search their computers for ad programs, including annoying pop-ups, and remove them.

==Ethical Concerns==

*Will the average user be aware of the introduction of malware onto their system? -- Many malware/adware programs are installed during other installations where the user might (unintentionally) click through to the next screen without noticing they even have an option.
*Is it ethically correct to include non-desirable software in downloads/installations? -- Companies/organizations include malware to make money or mine data from users without even compensating or notifying them.
*Can users easily remove all traces of malware? -- Certain programs either make it extremely difficult to remove their attached malware or they choose to disable their software once stripped of malware. Both of these situations put users in an undesirable position.
*Who is receiving the information mined by malware programs? -- Companies could go so far as to sell information gathered by malware to other third parties, creating extreme privacy concerns for end-users. As for where and how this information is stored once it has been collected, that's another ethical issue entirely.

==Links==
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

* [http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx]
* [http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191 http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191]
* ''see TA for print article''
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/]
* [http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html]
* [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/ http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/]
* [http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html]
* [http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 3, Group 4

2008-07-30T15:54:17Z

Ctcoggin:

= Bundling Malware =
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

==Bundling==

Many freeware and shareware applications have been incuding spyware and ad-ware applications along with thier products. Many of these products include:

*Peer to Peer applications
*Free Email Clients
*Game Downloads
*and many others...

These companies choose to bundle this ad-ware/spyware with their product in order to gain a profit. One bundle that computer users see the most is Internet Explorer toolbars. These toolbars although not malicious, put advertisements and slow down Internet Explorer.

There are more harmful bundles; however, [http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2004/12/spyware_for_fre.html technogoogles] recently published an article discussing how [http://www.imesh.com imesh], a peer to peer music network, has been using Marketscore. Marketscore diverts the users internet connection through a proxy, this proxy looks at the user’s internet usage and credit information.

===Why Bundle?==
Software developers bundle with malware in order to gain a profit. There are some developers that do not bundle and simply put out their products out of the goodness of thier hearts. Other developers need the money but do not have enough money to go about advertising their products so they bundle it with malware in order to make a small profit. With this profit, if the developer continues to make software, he/she may now have enough money to go about advertising for thier next product and will not have to bundle it with malware.

==Regulation Attempts==

Windows has the largest problem with being compromised with spyware and ad-ware. Since it is used by a majority of computer users, spyware and ad-ware code writers target it more than its competitors. To deal with this, windows has a firewall included in its operating system. Windows has also recently released [http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm?mkt=en-us&s_cid=WL2Hdr Live OneCare] as a subscriptions antivirus and malware removal software. Other companies such as Norton and McAfee have upgraded their antivirus software to help users remove harmful malware.

===Government on Malware===

Existing U.S. laws that can be used to fight "spyware" are:

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Title 5 of the Federal Trade Commission.

There is also new legislation, known as the "Spy Act", and its main objective is to protect Internet users against “cybertrespassing” -- namely security and privacy breaches -- brought about by spyware or adware. The Spy Act makes it illegal for non-owners or unathorized users to infiltrate and sabotage a computer used by financial, government, or communications personel. The Spy Act also makes it unlawful for a non-user of a computer to transmit information collection programs to a computer protected under the legislation, unless the program gives notice before executing its collection functions and specifies its functions, or unless the user has already given consent under a previous notification. Infractions for this law are set at a costly three million.

===Freeware Removal===

There is also freeware that users can download to help remove spyware and ad-ware.

*[http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html Spybot Search and Destory] Spybot is a free program that users can download to help with removal of harmful spyware.

*[http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Ad-aware] Ad-aware is a free program that allows users to search their computers for ad programs, including annoying pop-ups, and remove them.

==Ethical Concerns==

*Will the average user be aware of the introduction of malware onto their system? -- Many malware/adware programs are installed during other installations where the user might (unintentionally) click through to the next screen without noticing they even have an option.
*Is it ethically correct to include non-desirable software in downloads/installations? -- Companies/organizations include malware to make money or mine data from users without even compensating or notifying them.
*Can users easily remove all traces of malware? -- Certain programs either make it extremely difficult to remove their attached malware or they choose to disable their software once stripped of malware. Both of these situations put users in an undesirable position.
*Who is receiving the information mined by malware programs? -- Companies could go so far as to sell information gathered by malware to other third parties, creating extreme privacy concerns for end-users. As for where and how this information is stored once it has been collected, that's another ethical issue entirely.

==Links==
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

* [http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx]
* [http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191 http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191]
* ''see TA for print article''
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/]
* [http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html]
* [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/ http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/]
* [http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html]
* [http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:58:41Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Off-the-Record Messaging ,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:58:08Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. Pidgin also uses a cryptographic protocol, [Off-the-Record Messaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging,] to provide strong encryptions for its users messages. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:54:51Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]===
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:54:32Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

==[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]==
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:53:31Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a freeware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages.

==[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 Pidgin]
[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Created in 1999 by an Auburn Unviersity Sophomore, Pidgin(gaim), like Trillian, is a multi platform instant messaging client. Pidgin was relases as freeware under the GNU. As of late 2007, it boasted three million users and growing. Pidigin users are able to communicate with users of: Windows Messenger, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac), XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, Internet Relay Chat, MySpaceIM, Novell GroupWise, SILC, Yahoo!, Zephyr, Lotus Sametime, QQ, and Bonjour. As with Trillian, there are many of these clients that tryo to keep Pidgin users from being able to talk to thier users. There are also a few problems with Pidgin. There is no audio or video support, passwords are stored in a file on the Administrators acccount, and there have been some accounts where is messed with the Windows theme.
Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#.NET]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:28:24Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a free ware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages. Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T13:27:03Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]]
Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a free ware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages. Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

Although it may come across as if windows is trying to cut off its competition at the knees, in newer versions of Windows (ie Vista), windows has ditched the built in instant messanger. In fact, Windows ditched Windows Messenger all together. Not only was it not pre-installed on the machines, but it was no longer thier front running instant messaging product. Windows now had come out with [http://home.live.com/ Windows Live] and with it, [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messenger]. This new messenger no longer came pre-installed on the machine nor did it make itself the default messaging client. All and all it seems as if microsoft herd out its users and took a step back.

As for the scare of Microsoft's [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(VS.85).aspx HailStorm,] a project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites, it was never released.

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 3, Group 4

2008-07-29T12:59:39Z

Ctcoggin:

= Bundling Malware =
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

==Bundling==

Many freeware and shareware applications have been incuding spyware and ad-ware applications along with thier products. Many of these products include:

*Peer to Peer applications
*Free Email Clients
*Game Downloads
*and many others...

These companies choose to bundle this ad-ware/spyware with their product in order to gain a profit. One bundle that computer users see the most is Internet Explorer toolbars. These toolbars although not malicious, put advertisements and slow down Internet Explorer.

There are more harmful bundles; however, [http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2004/12/spyware_for_fre.html technogoogles] recently published an article discussing how [http://www.imesh.com imesh], a peer to peer music network, has been using Marketscore. Marketscore diverts the users internet connection through a proxy, this proxy looks at the user’s internet usage and credit information.

==Regulation Attempts==

Windows has the largest problem with being compromised with spyware and ad-ware. Since it is used by a majority of computer users, spyware and ad-ware code writers target it more than its competitors. To deal with this, windows has a firewall included in its operating system. Windows has also recently released [http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm?mkt=en-us&s_cid=WL2Hdr Live OneCare] as a subscriptions antivirus and malware removal software. Other companies such as Norton and McAfee have upgraded their antivirus software to help users remove harmful malware.

===Government on Malware===

Existing U.S. laws that can be used to fight "spyware" are:

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Title 5 of the Federal Trade Commission.

There is also new legislation, known as the "Spy Act", and its main objective is to protect Internet users against “cybertrespassing” -- namely security and privacy breaches -- brought about by spyware or adware. The Spy Act makes it illegal for non-owners or unathorized users to infiltrate and sabotage a computer used by financial, government, or communications personel. The Spy Act also makes it unlawful for a non-user of a computer to transmit information collection programs to a computer protected under the legislation, unless the program gives notice before executing its collection functions and specifies its functions, or unless the user has already given consent under a previous notification. Infractions for this law are set at a costly three million.

===Freeware Removal===

There is also freeware that users can download to help remove spyware and ad-ware.

*[http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html Spybot Search and Destory] Spybot is a free program that users can download to help with removal of harmful spyware.

*[http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Ad-aware] Ad-aware is a free program that allows users to search their computers for ad programs, including annoying pop-ups, and remove them.

==Ethical Concerns==

*Will the average user be aware of the introduction of malware onto their system? -- Many malware/adware programs are installed during other installations where the user might (unintentionally) click through to the next screen without noticing they even have an option.
*Is it ethically correct to include non-desirable software in downloads/installations? -- Companies/organizations include malware to make money or mine data from users without even compensating or notifying them.
*Can users easily remove all traces of malware? -- Certain programs either make it extremely difficult to remove their attached malware or they choose to disable their software once stripped of malware. Both of these situations put users in an undesirable position.
*Who is receiving the information mined by malware programs? -- Companies could go so far as to sell information gathered by malware to other third parties, creating extreme privacy concerns for end-users. As for where and how this information is stored once it has been collected, that's another ethical issue entirely.

==Links==
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

* [http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx]
* [http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191 http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191]
* ''see TA for print article''
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/]
* [http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html]
* [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/ http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/]
* [http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html]
* [http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html]

CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 3, Group 4

2008-07-29T12:58:41Z

Ctcoggin:

= Bundling Malware =
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

==Bundling==

Many freeware and shareware applications have been incuding spyware and ad-ware applications along with thier products. Many of these products include:

*Peer to Peer applications
*Free Email Clients
*Game Downloads
*and many others...

These companies choose to bundle this ad-ware/spyware with their product in order to gain a profit. One bundle that computer users see the most is Internet Explorer toolbars. These toolbars although not malicious, put advertisements and slow down Internet Explorer.

There are more harmful bundles; however, [http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2004/12/spyware_for_fre.html technogoogles] recently published an article discussing how [http://www.imesh.com imesh], a peer to peer music network, has been using Marketscore. Marketscore diverts the users internet connection through a proxy, this proxy looks at the user’s internet usage and credit information.

==Regulation Attempts==

Windows has the largest problem with being compromised with spyware and ad-ware. Since it is used by a majority of computer users, spyware and ad-ware code writers target it more than its competitors. To deal with this, windows has a firewall included in its operating system. Windows has also recently released [http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm?mkt=en-us&s_cid=WL2Hdr Live OneCare] as a subscriptions antivirus and malware removal software. Other companies such as Norton and McAfee have upgraded their antivirus software to help users remove harmful malware.

===Government on Malware===

Existing U.S. laws that can be used to fight "spyware" are:

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Title 5 of the Federal Trade Commission.

There is also new legislation, known as the "Spy Act", and its main objective is to protect Internet users against “cybertrespassing” -- namely security and privacy breaches -- brought about by spyware or adware. The Spy Act makes it illegal for non-owners or unathorized users to infiltrate and sabotage a computer used by financial, government, or communications personel. The Spy Act also makes it unlawful for a non-user of a computer to transmit information collection programs to a computer protected under the legislation, unless the program gives notice before executing its collection functions and specifies its functions, or unless the user has already given consent under a previous notification. Infractions for this law are set at a costly three million.

===Freeware Removal===

There is also freeware that users can download to help remove spyware and ad-ware.

*[http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html Spybot Search and Destory] Spybot is a free program that users can download to help with removal of harmful spyware.

*[http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Ad-aware] Ad-aware is a free program that allows users to search their computers for ad programs, including annoying pop-ups, and remove them.

==Ethical Concerns==

*Will the average user be aware of the introduction of malware onto their system? -- Many malware/adware programs are installed during other installations where the user might (unintentionally) click through to the next screen without noticing they even have an option.
*Is it ethically correct to include non-desirable software in downloads/installations? -- Companies/organizations include malware to make money or mine data from users without even compensating or notifying them.
*Can users easily remove all traces of malware? -- Certain programs either make it extremely difficult to remove their attached malware or they choose to disable their software once stripped of malware. Both of these situations put users in an undesirable position.
*Who is receiving the information mined by malware programs? -- Companies could go so far as to sell information gathered by malware to other third parties, creating extreme privacy concerns for end-users. As for where and how this information is stored once it has been collected, that's another ethical issue entirely.

==Links==
Some types of malware are legal, such as ad-ware and spyware that often comes bundled with (frequently free or trial-use) software applications. Examine recent attempts to regulate ad-ware and spyware, and the ethical concerns addressed. What ethical considerations are there in deciding to bundle ad-ware and spyware with software? Is regulation needed?

* [http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/apr04/04-20Spyware.mspx]
* [http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191 http://www.zdnetasia.com/sitemap/?pt=l&dt=prod&id=39001191]
* ''see TA for print article''
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/ms_client_protection/]
* [http://www.io.com/~cwagner/spyware/old-index.html]
* [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/02/five-factors-shifting-the-future-of-malware-and-platform-security/]
* [http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/37297.html]
* [http://www.pcworld.com/article/118069/spyware_bill_passes_house.html]

Commerce/anticompetitive/instant

2008-07-29T01:26:13Z

Ctcoggin:

== Instant Messaging ==

Instant messaging (IM) has quickly turned the internet into a vast communication forum. It was not always this way however, Instant messaging actully started before the internet. Instant messaging first appeared on multi user Operating systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System CTSS] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics Multics]. The users communicated to help with printing quotas and other small tasks. The usefulness of this "Instant Messaging" soon caught on and systems like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancin%27_Roundtable Freelancin' Roundtable] were started. A few years after the come and go of programs like Roundtable, GUI based instant messanger clients were born, starting with [http://www.icq.com ICQ]. What started with a small program developed by five Isralis, quickly spread over the internet becomine a must have program for an internet user. Soon after the launch of ICQ, other clients began to take claim in the instant messaging market. Today the most common IM clients are AOL Insant Messanger (AIM), Yahoo Instant Messanger and MSN Instant Messanger (MSN). These clients not only allow for sending text to other users but have evolved and now let users send pictures, files, games, and videos between one another.

== Study Guide ==

==AOL==

American Online (AOL) was the first to follow ICQ with the release of it's free instant messaging software AOL Instant Messagner (AIM) in 1997. AIM allowed users to create a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenname "Screen Name",]or alias, to mask thier online identity. AIM users were able to communicate with one another and have "buddies", people who the user communicated with often, stored on a "buddy list". Soon after its launch, AIM became in instant success. According to a June 2006 report, AOL had fifty-three million active instant messanger users. The second closest being MSN with twenty-seven million.

=== Problems with AOL ===

*Monopoly?

Aim which once held over 90% of the market share for instant messaging was in question of being a monopoly. AOL would not allow users of other instant messaging programs to contact AOL users using AIM. The other instant messagaing providers thought that this was unfair and presented the argument of phone companies and how no matter waht carrier you have you can talk to someone on another service provider. This "monopoly" as the competiors pointed at have forced small IM clients to shut down. AOL retaliated by saying that market studies have shown that yahoo and MSN have the greatest growth in users. AOL also stated that they would like to work toward interoberabilty but it has other things to figure out first such as spam mail and privacy issues. Although these companies instant messangers clients still cant not contact one another, there have been some breakthroughs.

===[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(instant_messenger) Trillian]===

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Released September 10, 2002, Trillian is a thrid party program that allows the users of multiple instant messaging clients: AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC to talk to one another. Trillian is a free ware program just like its AOL, MSN, and Yahoo counterparts. Although trillain was not the first of its kind it got the most attention. After gathering a few million users AOL and Yahoo tried to block Trillian users from connecting with thier users. To counter this Trillian released multiple patches and even recieved help from it rival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29 pidgin,] a similar instant messaging program. Trillian also used [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureIM SecureIM] as a way of encypting its users messages. Although programs like Trillian and Pidgin may not have been the fix that many were waiting for, it is still gaining many users and helping lessen AOL's "monopoly."

===Monopoly: a Thing of The Past.===

[[Image:new.gif|New Information]] Since AOL has been so popular and contained 90% of the market share, other companies (ie Microsoft and Yahoo!) have been making dealings to combine. These two giants allready combined from an instant messaging standpoint in 2005, their users are at 49 million just a few million short of AOL's service. To counter this, AOL has been doing dealings with Google. Google has invested a 5% stake in AOL. With this stake, Google has integrated its [http://www.google.com/talk/ Google Talk] to be able to work with AOL's AIM service. This puts AOL at about 53.8 million users, just a few over that of Microsoft and Yahoo!. This closeness in users shows that obviously AOL's "monopoly" is a thing of the past.

==Microsoft==

Mirosoft has had two runs in the world of instant messaging, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger Windows Messenger] and [http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Windows Live Messanger]. The first, Windows Messanger was released with Windows XP. In Windows XP, Windows Messenger was pre-installed and set up at the users default messaging client. This caused many users to be upset and think that Microsoft was only trying to cut off its competitors.

*Is Windows trying to cut off its competition and increasing its marketshare of Windows?

==Bibliography==

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/34413-im-market-share.html

[http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/commerce/anticompetitive/instant/study.php CSC 379 Instant Messenger Study Guide]

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