- July spam captures exceed all of 2002 +/-
(Silicon.com) Anybody still unconvinced about the scale of the spam epidemic should consider this fact: MessageLabs intercepted more spam in the last month than in the whole of 2002. While this is in part proof that filtering is more widely used, it is also an indication as to just how much spam is being sent and received each day. According to MessageLabs spam accounted for 50 per cent of all e-mail again during July. MessageLabs' anti-spam service scanned more than 156.6 million e-mails during July. Of those 79.7 million were identified as spam and intercepted.
- US - Bye, bye landline phones +/-
(CNN) In number, cell phones are creeping up on landline phones. They already comprise about 43 percent of all U.S. phones, according to the International Telecommunication Union, up from 37 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. landline phones has dropped by more than 5 million, or nearly 3 percent, since 2000, the Federal Communications Commission reported in June. The United States hasn't been the quickest to adapt. Already, more than half the phones in the world are cellular. Cell phones overtook landlines earliest in some developing countries that hadn't laid ground lines by the time cellular technology arrived. In Cambodia, for instance, nearly 90 percent of phones are cellular. Cell phones started outnumbering traditional phones in European countries in the late 1990s, partly because phone pricing systems favored wireless. Typically, Europeans don't have unlimited local calls on their home phones - one big advantage of landline service in America.
- US - Downloaders shrug off copyrights +/-
(MSNBC) Two-thirds of Internet users who download music don't care whether they're violating copyright laws, according to a new survey that highlights the uphill enforcement battle facing the recording industry. The survey by the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project estimated that roughly 35 million American adults use file-sharing software, about 29 percent of Internet users. see Music Downloading, File-sharing and Copyright: A Pew Internet Project Data Memo
- US - Software piracy on the wane +/-
(CNET News.com) The latest report from the Business Software Alliance concludes that software piracy declined in the United States during 2002. The special interest group, an antipiracy organization that's comprised of members such as Apple Computer, Cisco Systems and Microsoft, released results of its state-by-state analysis of software piracy across the United States on Tuesday. According to BSA's report, the nation's piracy rate dropped 2 percentage points in 2002 compared with 2001, to 23 percent. The International Planning and Research (IPR) conducted the study for BSA."