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The first undersea cable to bring high-speed internet access to East Africa has gone live. The fibre-optic cable, operated by African-owned firm Seacom, connects South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia. The firm says the cable will help to boost the prospects of the region’s industry and commerce. The cable – which is 17,000km long – took two years to lay and cost more than $650m.

Seacom said in a statement the launch of the cable marked the “dawn of a new era for communications” between Africa and the rest of the world. The services were unveiled in ceremonies in the Kenyan port of Mombasa and the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.

School benefits

The cable was due to be launched in June but was delayed by pirate activity off the coast of Somalia.  It’s hanging and keeps wasting time and frustrating me
Kenyan internet user

Cable ushers in broadband era

The BBC’s Ben Mwangunda in Dar es Salaam says five institutions are already benefiting from the faster speeds – national electricity company Tanesco, communications company, TTCL, Tanzania Railways and the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Dodoma. The BBC’s Will Ross in Nairobi says the internet revolution trumpeted by Seacom largely depends on how well the service is rolled out across the region.

To the disappointment of many consumers, our correspondent says some ISPs (internet service providers) are not planning to lower the cost of the internet, but instead will offer increased bandwidth. But businesses, which have been paying around $3,000 a month for 1MB through a satellite link, will now pay considerably less – about $600 a month.

The Kenyan government has been laying a network of cables to all of the country’s major towns and says the fibre-optic links will also enable schools nationwide to link into high quality educational resources. But our correspondent says it is not clear whether the internet revolution will reach the villages, many of which still struggle to access reliable electricity.

After becoming the first major music label to officially join YouTube’s content party in 2006, Warner Music Group is now the first to leave. Revenue sharing renegotiations between the two respective giants broke down this weekend, and Warner has opted to remove all of its content—including user-created videos that feature its music—from Google’s video showcase.

The key ingredient of Warner’s content licensing disagreement with YouTube won’t surprise anyone: money. Two years ago, Warner surprised the industry by being the first major label to sign a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube that green-lighted user videos that had otherwise illegally put its music in their soundtrack. Keep in mind, this was a month before Google bought the video sharing startup for a whopping $1.65 billion in October that same year, which made Warner’s decision to come to terms with what was then an upstart look pretty bold.

Part of Warner’s original deal (the other majors also cut similar deals of their own later) gave it a slice of YouTube’s advertising revenue pie, as well as a per-play fee that is reportedly a fraction of a penny. Because of YouTube’s explosive growth and eventual market domination, Warner was banking on those fractions adding up eventually.

That apparently hasn’t panned out. Warner’s contract is up for renegotiation now, and it seems to have fallen short of the “tens of millions” that other labels, like Universal Music, are touting as coming from their YouTube deals. There is no word on exactly what terms Warner is looking for or how much more money it wants, but talks between the companies have stalled. In an official statement, Warner says that it “simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.” Ars has learned that Warner is still hoping for a resolution with YouTube, but the takedown of its content began at midnight Saturday morning.

YouTube warned its users about the takedown with an official blog post that discussed the ups and downs of music licensing for YouTube. Arguably understating the situation as “complicated,” YouTube apologized for not being able to “maintain these innovative agreements,” then directed users to audio-license clearinghouses like AudioSwap, where they can find pre-sanctioned music that should keep the takedown notices at bay.

Ars has also learned that no other labels have reached new agreements with YouTube, but they haven’t gone as far as Warner has in terms of pulling their content or snuffing user-generated videos, either. Besides providing an unpleasant surprise to YouTube users, Warner’s spat serves as another reminder that digital content licensing is still in its infancy, and growing pains are inevitable.

Source:  Yahoo!

Korea is facing a spiraling backlash for failing to nail down the culprit behind the latest cyber attacks on key government and corporate websites.

Security experts are now warning of a possible fourth wave of attacks on the weekend.

The government, which reportedly was alerted to the on-line attacks as early as July 4, was criticized for its delayed response.

“It took over eight hours to respond to the attacks on Tuesday, which seemed to be a prolonged response, especially considering the signs were there days before,” said Rep. Park Young-sun of the DP.

Lawmakers have been continuously briefed on the attacks.

The National Intelligence Service told them yesterday that a North Korean cyber warfare unit appears to be responsible for spreading the distributed denial of service virus.

The spy agency has yet to offer concrete evidence to prove the link between the attacks and North Korea since Pyongyang was not on the list of nations from where the cyber assault may have been launched.

In a briefing to members of the parliamentary Intelligence Committee, the agency said the latest attacks were traced to 86 internet protocol addresses in a total of 16 countries including South Korea, the United States, Japan and China, among others.

But the agency said “this does not necessarily rule out North Korea,” according to lawmakers who attended the briefing. It also claimed that the North was clandestinely operating hacking missions in China and Eastern Europe.

The DDoS attack hit the United States on July 4, shutting sites including the White House. Washintgon has so far failed to confirm the origin of the cyber assault.

The government has held series of emergency meetings since Tuesday’s attack that left over 25 websites infected at both home and abroad.

This particular type of virus shuts down websites by creating an excess in online traffic, jamming a website.

Corporate websites were the hardest hit, as sites such as Auction generate profit from on-line buyers.

The government yesterday said it had requested a 20 billion won ($15.6 million) to cover the costs for countering the recent cyber attacks and establishing preventive measures.

The military said it would push to formulate a cyber command by January next year, up from the initial target of 2012.

On-line security firms are warning of a fourth possible assault over the weekend, advising users to take preventive measures. ‘

The attacks seemed as of yesterday to dwindle due to active countermeasures including the demolition of the “zombie” computers used by hackers without the owners’ knowledge to spread the virus.

Source:  Reuter