More on wireless broadband — a downbeat assessment, this time
Salon story.

Wi-Fi Nation is on indefinite hold, at least until computer-carrying consumers can roam beyond the invisible tether of the base station at the office, or the AirPort in the family den. With tens of millions of customers ready to be wireless by next year, and the price of a Wi-Fi laptop dropping below $1,000, why isn’t AT&T setting up antennae for us, instead of shutting down its Digital Broadband service?

The answer is less about technology than the shifting flows of capital in the 21st century. The wireless Internet won’t be rolled out telecom-style, like DSL or cable modems. In the wake of embarrassing failures to create top-down networks, it will be built from the ground up, by a patchwork quilt of players. Imagine the gradual knitting together of cellular roaming service in the ’90s, but with 10,000 antenna owners rather than 10 giant carriers. Rather than risking billions of investors’ dollars on a ubiquitous rollout, entrepreneurs will play for smaller stakes in more proven local or niche markets: When we come, they will build it.

What the broadband industry doesn’t get — Internet users are not couch potatoes

WASHINGTON, D.C.-As Americans gain experience online, they use the Internet more for their jobs, to make more online purchases and carry out other financial transactions, and to write emails with more significant and intimate content.

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project compares a group of Internet users’ online behavior between March 2000 and March 2001. The report on these findings, called “Getting Serious Online,” shows that over time Internet users become more purposeful, efficient, and self-assured in using the Web and email to support some of life’s most important activities.

“The Internet has gone from novelty to utility for many Americans,” says Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “They are beginning to take it for granted, but they can’t imagine life without it.”

See here for full text of the report.

Global noose tightens on copyright
Financial Times story.

A landmark international treaty reinforcing the protection of copyright in cyberspace comes into force on Wednesday amid controversy in the US and Europe over whether tougher copyright rules stimulate or inhibit creativity on the internet.

The copyright treaty, negotiated by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) in 1996, and a sister treaty protecting sound recordings that comes into effect in May update copyright law for the digital age.

They have added some controversial features, which have already led to a string of legal challenges in the US, one of the first countries to introduce implementing legislation.

The treaties outlaw attempts to circumvent encryption and other techniques designed to prevent unauthorised copying and ensure royalties are paid.