Warning: Verizon Wants Your Content

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Today presence, which is mostly associated with IM, is managed manually. Users have to tell the IM client if it is busy or available and the user's status is displayed in his buddy list. Using a combination of IP Multimedia Subsystem or IMS, an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia to mobile users, and Web 2.0 technologies, Verizon can extend this notion of presence so that the network automatically knows if you are not to be disturbed because you're watching the final game in the World Series. Or it can tell if you've turned on your cell phone and are ready to accept calls on that device instead of on your home or office phone. Of course, the biggest issue with services that use this level of intelligence to detect presence is privacy. Verizon executives said any service that offered this kind of information about where and which devices subscribers used would also have the option to go "off network," so that a user's presence could not be detected.