Not my usual fare, but since this is the second week of the Olympics, I have two issues that I’m going to comment on.

First, the Washington Post reports that the DC Boxing and Wrestling Commission granted a license to Mike Tyson. William Gildea, of the Post, wrote a great editorial on this today. The District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams makes the city look like a bottom feeder — anything goes if the price is right. I urge Abe Pollin, who by spending his own money to build the MCI Center singlehandedly revitalized the Chinatown area of DC, to pass on this event. The odds of another embarrassing event happening are very good and DC shouldn’t risk it, especially in an area of the city that is finally turning around.

Second, as a hockey fan, I’ve found the Olympic ice hockey games (both men’s and women’s) to be compelling. In spite of the Canadian team’s problems adjusting to the lack of a red line (two line passes allowed — I encourage the NHL to change their rules to match the international rules), all of the teams have been playing exceptional hockey. The US vs. Russia men’s game, chock full of NHL players, showed how good hockey can be. It was a fast paced game, with great end to end action, played by some of the best players in the world. The playing style differences were minimized because of the number of Russian NHL players. In short, it was one of the best hockey games that I’ve ever seen. I look forward to watching women’s US vs. Canada final tomorrow.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program —

I was recently thinking about Digital IDs and secure e-mail and it occurred to me to visit Verisign’s web site to see if they were still selling them. It turns out that they are ($14.95/per year), but it took me several clicks to find out where to get the ID. They have that buried in their site (it’s not even on the main page anymore) because that part of the business failed. No one is acquiring digital IDs for themselves.

Why not? Clearly, sending out e-mail is the equivalent of send a postcard — anyone that wants to read it along the way can do so very easily. How do you know that AOL or Earthlink or your cable provider aren’t reading your mail? They might say they aren’t, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t. Yet no one secures their e-mail today.

Without making a value judgement on this, I wonder if this is really a larger statement about privacy. What doesn’t slap us on the face doesn’t concern us. Sure, we close the window shades at night so no one sees us changing our clothes, but we don’t think about the fact that our cellular telephone conversations can be heard by anyone with the right equipment. Same with e-mail.

Likely, some major incident will occur that will change our perspective on this. People are changing their attitudes about social security numbers now that identity theft is happening. Anti-virus software is becoming pervasive as the problem with viruses reaches epidemic proportions. Perhaps a similar revolution will occur with the right impetus. Maybe when someone creates a web site with all of the e-mail traffic flying through AOL, we’ll think twice about sending cleartext e-mails.

In the mean time, if you have something important to send me, get a PGP key. You can download the free, non-commercial version of PGP for Windows (which integrates with Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora), from international PGP web site. My PGP key is located here. You should be able to copy it into your key ring directly. If you want someone to try this out with, send me an encrypted note. Be sure to post your key on one of the keyservers so I can get it.

You heard the news about Movie88 here first. Here’s the follow up article from CNet, with a quote from Jack Valenti, the chief of the MPAA. Seems that the MPAA asked the Taiwanese government to shut Movie88 down, which they apparently did. Any bets that the MPAA threatened to boycott Taiwan?

While I’m on the soapbox about exclusive rights, I think the lack of streaming video segments from the Olympics was a poor decision. I understand the fear of piracy, but considering how poor coverage is, the Olympic committee needs to do something about this for the next set of games. It would be spectacular to be able to see a particular competitor’s performance by watching a short video stream. Imagine being able to see Chris Witty’s victory in the 1000m speed skating event on demand. The technology exists — but NBC and the Olympic committee have prevented it because they fear it will erode their ability to sell commercials.

Get a grip, people. Start each streaming video clip with a 15 second commercial. Use a 100k video stream that keeps the quality low enough that no one will want to pirate it, but high enough that you can get a sense for how the event came off.

The 20th century media mentality must end.