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French Tax on CD-R
French Multimedia
video game producers are not happy. They are asking the government to
redirect a percentage of earnings on the sale of CD-R to their coffers.
Reason for the ire: As the use of this platform has increased in popularity
over the past few years, video game piracy has exploded accordingly. Market
research organization GFK
considers that 30% of the 250 million blank CDs sold in France are used
for copying video games or the equivalent of a US$300 million earning
loss. Representatives of the French video game industry, among whom the
heavyweights UbiSoft, Vivendi and Infogrammes, are asking that a portion
of the personal copying tax levied on the sale of each CD-R be redirected
to the creators of multimedia content. For the moment, this tax of US$1.00
benefits only the French music and movie industries. Christophe Ramboz,
CEO of Vivendi Universal Games, suggests that the money be used to finance
the development of new versions of such popular video games as Rayman
3, Alone in the Dark 5, or Amerzone 2 (Source : AFP).
E-commerce in France
: blatantly last and blatantly weak
Statistics don't
lie: According to a new survey published by the offices of the French
Inspector of Finance, companies and consumers in France are shunning the
Web when it comes to doing business. Only 49% of enterprises own a web
site compared to 76% in Sweden. Other countries that fare better include
Japan, the United States, Germany and the UK. The numbers are even worse
on the consumer side since only 12% of households had an Internet connection
at the end of 2000, compared to almost 50% for Sweden. A qualifier is
needed here though since 16% of French households still use the services
of France Telecom Minitel network (www.minitel.fr),
a lasting communications epiphenomenona in the developed world. Analysts
seem to agree that the still ongoing popularity of Minitel acts as brake
to the development of the Internet as a major source of online commerce.
But Minitel or not, the overall numbers are still at best marginal : only
0.14% of retail business comes from the two networks put together. The
answers will have to come from such mundane issues as secured payment
means, personal information usage, distribution alternatives, etc. (Source:
Le Monde)
E-publishing
and Medicine
Following on the footsteps of the pharmaceutical industry belated decision
to come up with affordable medicine for illnesses such as AIDS and tuberculosis,
six of the largest medical publishing companies have decided this summer
to provide free access to hundreds of online medical journals to a wide
array of health organizations in poor countries. This decision, an initiative
of the World Health Organization (WHO), follows a similar program
put together by the United Nations at the end of 2000 called Health InterNetwork
which seeks to distribute software programs and disseminate statistical
and health policy documentation to Third World nations. WHO will make
the medical journals available through a secure website. For more information
please check www.who.int.
Google and your personal information
Google is a
powerful and popular search engine and as for the ubiquitous Windows OS,
it is fast becoming the search engine of choice for a lot of Internet
users. A recent Internet search survey by two journalists from the Montreal
daily, Le Devoir, has proven that you can come to face with very confidential
information when you know how to use that tool. Since early November,
Google allows for the indexing of documentation in Word, Excel or Powerpoint
in addition to the regular web pages all of us can find on the Internet.
By asking for judicious combinations of requests, our two journalists
have managed to find very revealing and privy information : telephone
and credit card numbers, social insurance numbers, IP and email addresses.
The Google corporation clearly states that it does not consciously look
for or index information that exists on secured servers, only information
that exist in public servers. And it warns users to always protect one's
private data by protecting it. According to the survey, .com, .net, .org
and .mil domains names are the most prone to reveal confidential information
while country or government domain names such .ca seem to be much better
protected. Google states also that not all database software offer the
same level of protection and for companies or individuals looking for
extra protection, it is always wise to invest in software that can do
the job. (Source www.ledevoir.com)
Broadband from the Cold
The research and measurement company Netvalue identifies, in a
recent study on broadband usage in Europe, Sweden (13.8%) and Denmark
(13.2%) as leading the continent for Internet high speed connections by
households. Eight countries were surveyed with Italy and the UK coming
last at 0.9% and 2.3% respectively. In the middle, we have Norway (5.1%),
Spain (6.1%), France (6.4%) and Germany (7.8%). The broadband breakdown
is quite interesting since it shows that households in Europe are getting
their high speed connections mostly from cable and ADSL, to the detriment
of satellite and T1/leased lines. Those numbers though will not rain on
the parade of both Kurt Hellstroem (CEO of Ericsson) and Serge Tchuruk
(CEO of Alcatel) who consistently repeated during IDATE 2001 that Europe
is bound to see a phenomenal increase in broadband usage or 47 million
users by 2006 or ten times more than today. In the meantime, local telephone
providers such as France Telecom have only lately decided to allow for
competition and the unbundling of ADSL lines. For more information on
the survey, see www.netvalue.com
Don't Delete that Picture!
A recent article on digital photography, published in the BBC
News site by photographer Jayne West, stirred quite a reaction.
She argues that "with digital capture, the most pressing issue is
that we are losing the past. We lose the sequence of images that captures
the events leading up to whatever image is chosen for publication."
The digital camera has given the "digital" photographer the
power to erase memory or context as she puts it since she can delete her
work as she goes about snapping those pictures. What concerns her also
is that, even when stored in some hard disc, the raw material is lost
because unedited. Reaction to the article was swift ranging from "you
can store unedited images in 128 Mb flash cards", to "don't
blame the technology, blame the reporter!", or "that is the
price we pay, speed to press versus archiving." One reader however
noted the real major issue with digital photography is that in a few year's
time, "a digital family album stored on CD or on the hard disk of
a PC may not be readable in the future when current technology is long
out of date." All of this sounds like Betamax revisited…
Multimedia Arts
and Universities
Two Montreal
universities, Concordia and UQAM, will be announcing this
upcoming week the creation of Hexagram, a US$25 million research
center fully dedicated to original Multimedia Arts exploration. The experience
is quite unique. The center will bring together 60 professors and researchers
and 200 graduate students for the purpose of creating innovation and creation
synergies in digital content and new media arts. The fields of activity
are quite varied : virtual reality and virtual models, artificial intelligence,
robotic arts, video games, interactive television. There will event be
research done on digital clothing… Eventually, Hexagram will move
beyond its original objective of wanting to marry technology and artistic
expression as it will also seek to develop commercial applications with
private sector enterprises. (Source Le
Devoir, for more information on Hexagram please see, www.concordia.ca)
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