[JackSpratts]

Wily Crows Disconnect Wired Tokyo
Leo Lewis

TOKYO'S futuristic image as the world's most technologically advanced broadband internet-enabled city is under attack from a vicious but decidedly low-tech foe: the crow.

Their destructive and unpredictable behaviour during the May-to-June mating season is always problematic for the Japanese capital. But this year the aggressive ink-black birds have created a new headache by developing a taste for fibre-optic internet cable.

In the past six weeks, hundreds of homes and offices have been left without high-speed internet services after the crows discovered that broadband cable can be pecked into usable strips more easily than power cables or telephone copper wire.

Crows have discovered that the broadband cables, which are strung from telegraph poles across Tokyo, are the perfect consistency for building nests.

Although the birds' appetite for fibre-optic cable was spotted last year, broadband service providers have begun reporting a sharp surge in instances of cable-pecking, in line with the rising population of crows.

Crows are drawn to Tokyo because of the large quantities of discarded food available. Every year there are reports of the birds attacking domestic pets or small children.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19480143^15405^^nbv^15306-15322,00.html





Spiders Attack Manchester Phone Network
Chris Williams

A shocked Reg reader was told by a BT engineer his girlfriend was having problems with her phone because spiders had eaten through the line.

An OpenReach techie was called out to the Manchester suburb of Chorlton on Monday after problems with voice calls. According to our correspondent, after a quick shimmy up the offending telegraph pole he calmly reported spiders had chewed through the line.
Our correspondent was understandably puzzled, noting the ADSL connection he had arranged two weeks previously was functioning fine.

The problem was fixed and the engineer went on his way, leaving we at Vulture Central losing sleep over whether spiders are indeed seeking to bring the technological world sobbing to its knees. We contacted BT to ask whether arachnid attacks are becoming a bigger problem in Britain's telecoms infrastructure.

A spokesman said someone had the wrong end of the stick, and the engineer had just said there were spiders living in the pole top box, and the line had corroded, rather than being munched. Our correspondent assures us the engineer did say the spiders had eaten the wire.

Conspiracy theorists are claiming BT would deny the problem, and are linking the spiders' attack to the recent case of mysterious green goo (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/05/bt_green_goo/) which put the wind up BT engineers in Aldershot.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06...in_manchester/





Researchers Find Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives
R. Colin Johnson

In 2001, an American spy plane collided in the air with a Chinese fighter and was forced to land on Chinese island. Since then, researchers have been looking for a way to quickly erase computer hard drives to deny access to sensitive intelligence data.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta), working with L-3 Communications Corp. (New York), said they have developed a technique for quickly erasing hard-disk drives. The team reports development of a prototype fast-erasure system to prevent sensitive information from reaching enemy eyes.

At the time of the U.S.-China incident, there was no way the U.S. crew could quickly erase hard drives on the surveillance aircraft before landing on Chinese soil. The Chinese eventually gained access to U.S. military secrets.

Erasing a hard drive usually takes hours using special procedures that repeatedly scramble information on a disk drive. Still, given unlimited resources and time, special magnetic snooping techniques can often recover at least some of the original information.

The researchers sought a method that not only securely erased information but also performed the erasure during emergency situations where minutes, not hours, were available.

The researchers concluded that permanent magnets are the best solution. Other methods, including burning disks with heat-generating thermite, crushing drives in presses, chemically destroying the media or frying them with microwaves all proved susceptible to sensitive, patient, recovery efforts.

Permanent magnets for erasing magnetic media have been available since the dawn of disk drives, but the team found that commercial systems were either magnetically too weak, too large and heavy or could not meet air-safety standards. Instead, the team crafted a new generation of super-powerful magnets to penetrate hard disk enclosures to quickly erase magnetic media. Special high-strength magnets as powerful as those in medical imaging equipment proved sufficient for permanently erasing all information on a disk drive in a single pass.

To create a magnetic field strong enough to penetrate the metal housing around a disk drive and erase the magnetic media inside, the researchers designed a neodymium iron-boron magnet with special pole pieces made of esoteric cobalt alloys. A motorized mechanism pushed disk drives past the magnets; a back up twist-knob allows operators to manually pull drives through the magnetic field.

The 125-pound prototype is being streamlined into a deployable version that is light enough for aircraft, operates independently of aircraft electrical systems, produces no noxious gases or flames and includes fail-safe procedures to prevent inadvertent erasures. The team verified that it was impossible to recover information from disk drives erased with the permanent magnets. They used a magnetic force microscope to map even the smallest magnetic domains on the surface of an erased disk drive to ensure that the patterns found there were completely random.

The team claimed the magnetic eraser could also be used for commercial applications like quickly erasing VHS tapes, floppy drives, data cassettes and hard drives.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=97378





You Tubin’

Spamming my YouTube Account, Cause if I don't who will?
Allied

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlliedX
Click and enjoy.

I've uploaded 13 videos. 2 were deleted cause of copyright BS. 1 was removed because of content restrictions. I guess Pink getting her nipple pierced was nudity in the eyes of YouTube.

My newest video is a tribute to Wonder Woman I made,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkNnWnSf2Pk

Another one of my favorites is Dubbya picking his nose,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKWyCUe7IJU
Now that you know where's his finger has been, do you really want it on the button

If you only watch 1, shame on you they're all great. But if you have to choose just 1,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3g497_DZKs


* * *

YouTube's banned me. First time I've ever been banned from anywhere. - Allied

* * *

Did they give you a reason..?? - Lion7718

* * *

No, but I got my 3rd DMCA notice just a few hours before.

1st DMCA, a montage of Stewie clips with TripleH's The Game playing. I made it myself.
http://www.metaldrone.com/Shared/Stewies_Time.avi
2nd DMCA, one of the origional Simpsons sketches from the Tracey ulman show.
http://www.metaldrone.com/Shared/The...cary_Movie.AVI
3rd DMCA, clip from Wrestle Mania 22, TripleH and John Cena's intros.
...I don't really feel like uploading that one. It's big.
- Allied

* * *

Well that just bites the big one.....at least i got too see these 2
Thanks Allied - Tiremonkey2000

* * *

I think Im going to remove some of my uploads before I get banned, Ive already got one notice
Melvin Smiley

Edit: I made most of my videos private, so I can post them up without much worry

Dancing outlaw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUe1l64eg9I

Fake Tv ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LToocbCFhpc

Across the Hubble Universe - Beatles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAaRZcKgFCA

Bill Hicks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd19kU8ERuo


I can no longer find my own videos I market as private from my own account! Weird

http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.p...topic=9560&hl=





Police Launch Eye-In-The-Sky Technology Above Los Angeles
Zachary Slobig

Police launched the future of law enforcement into the smoggy Los Angeles sky in the form of a drone aircraft, bringing technology most commonly associated with combat zones to urban policing.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, which looks like a child's remote control toy and weighs about five pounds (2.3 kilograms), is a prototype being tested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Police say the drone, called the SkySeer, will be able to accomplish tasks too dangerous for officers and free up helicopters for other missions.

"This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers, or survey a fire zone," said Commander Sid Heal, head of the Technology Exploration Project of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "The ideal outcome for us is when this technology becomes instrumental in saving lives."

The SkySeer would also be a helpful tool to nab burglary suspects on rooftops and to chase down suspects fleeing on foot. The drone comes equipped with low-light and infrared capabilities and can fly at speeds up to 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour for 70 minutes.

The plane collapses and can fit into a shoulder pack smaller than a golf bag. Its portability and ease of assembly could be a big advantage for law enforcement.

"It's basically a high-tech kite that field officers could set up in a matter of minutes," said Heal.

A small camera capable of tilt and pan operations is fixed to the underside of the drone which sends the video directly to a laptop command station. Once launched, the craft is set to fly autonomously with global positioning system (GPS) coordinates and a fixed flight pattern.

As technology improves, the drone will be outfitted with zoom capabilities. For now, the craft simply flies lower to hone in on its target.

Sometimes birds take notice of the slow-flying SkySeer. "In fact, we talked about making it look like a bird to make it more environmentally benign," said Heal.

The stealth quality of the SkySeer is a big advantage, according to police.

"The plane is virtually silent and invisible," said Heal. "It will give us a vertical perspective that we have never had."

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department operates a fleet of 18 helicopters, priced between three and five million dollars each. The SkySeer will cost between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars.

"We never have enough helicopters," said Heal. The police helicopters are in near-constant use, and the SkySeer would alleviate some of this pressure.

Unmanned surveillance crafts may become the norm in urban policing, says Heal.

"Who knew five years ago we would be shooting photos and video with our phones?" he said. "I could see this drone technology replacing some demand for conventional aircrafts 10 years into the future."

Sam De La Torre, designer of the drone at Octatron Industries, has been working on the project for two years and has seen demand from other police forces. "The Los Angeles Police Department has signed on as well," he said. "It's the wave of the future."

Though the SkySeer is not capable of spying into windows just yet, for some a future of nearly invisible eyes in the sky is an unsettling introduction of science fiction into daily life.

"A helicopter can be seen and heard, and one can make behavior choices based on that," said Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Do we really want to live in a society where our backyard barbeques will be open to police scrutiny?"

But police say that such privacy concerns are unwarranted because surveillance is already ubiquitous. "You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."

For now, the sheriffs will continue trial runs of the SkySeer to get a handle on its capabilities. "Everything works in the lab," said Heal. "But you don't really know until you get it in the field."

During Friday's field test, the future of law enforcement looked like the fall of Icarus from Greek mythology. As De la Torre banked the Skyseer left at an elevation of about 300 feet (91 meter), the high-tech kite took a sudden nosedive and crashed in a vacant lot a few hundred yards (meters) from reporters.

"There must have been some sort of communication interference," said De La Torre as he inspected the multicolored wires and circuitry spilling out of his damaged drone.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060617...e_060617210138





No Pictures Please:

Researchers Develop System to Thwart Unwanted Video and Still Photography

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have completed a prototype device that can block digital-camera function in a given area. Commercial versions of the technology could be used to stymie unwanted use of video or still cameras.

The prototype device, produced by a team in the Interactive and Intelligent Computing division of the Georgia Tech College of Computing (COC), uses off-the-shelf equipment -- camera-mounted sensors, lighting equipment, a projector and a computer -- to scan for, find and neutralize digital cameras. The system works by looking for the reflectivity and shape of the image-producing sensors used in digital cameras.

Gregory Abowd, an associate professor leading the project, says the new camera-neutralizing technology shows commercial promise in two principal fields – protecting limited areas against clandestine photography or stopping video copying in larger areas such as theaters.

“We're at a point right now where the prototype we have developed could lead to products for markets that have a small, critical area to protect,” Abowd said. “Then we’re also looking to do additional research that could increase the protected area for one of our more interesting clients, the motion picture industry.”

Abowd said the small-area product could prevent espionage photography in government buildings, industrial settings or trade shows. It could also be used in business settings -- for instance, to stop amateur photography where shopping-mall-Santa pictures are being taken.

James Clawson, a research technician on Abowd’s prototype team, said preventing movie copying could be a major application for camera-blocking technology.

“Movie piracy is a $3 billion-a-year problem,” Clawson maintains -- a problem said to be especially acute in Asia. “If someone videotapes a movie in a theater and then puts it up on the web that night or burns half a million copies to sell on the street – then the movie industry has lost a lot of in-theater revenue.”
A Georgia Tech camera-neutralizing prototype could soon be used to stop movie piracy and other forms of unwanted digital-camera photography. Shown here with the device are, left to right, Jay W. Summet, PhD student; James R. Clawson, research technician; Gregory Abowd, associate professor at Georgia Tech, and Khai N. Truong, assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

Moreover, movie theaters are likely to be a good setting for camera-blocking technology, said Jay Summet, a research assistant who is also working on the prototype. A camera’s image sensor -- called a CCD -- is “retroreflective,” which means it sends light back directly to its origin rather than scattering it. Retroreflections would probably make it relatively easy to detect and identify video cameras in a darkened theater.

The current prototype uses visible light and two cameras to find CCDs, but a future commercial system might use invisible infrared lasers and photo-detecting transistors to scan for contraband cameras. Once such a system found a suspicious spot, it would feed information on the reflection’s properties to a computer for a determination.

“The biggest problem is making sure we don’t get false positives from, say, a large shiny earring,” said Summet. “We need to make our system work well enough so that it can find a dot, then test to see if it's reflective, then see if it's retroreflective, and then test to see if it's the right shape.”

Once a scanning laser and photodetector located a video camera, the system would flash a thin beam of visible white light directly at the CCD. This beam – possibly a laser in a commercial version – would overwhelm the target camera with light, rendering recorded video unusable. Researchers say that energy levels used to neutralize cameras would be low enough to preclude any health risks to the operator.

Still camera neutralization in small areas also shows near-term commercial promise, Abowd said. Despite ambient light levels far higher than in a theater, still cameras at a trade show or a mall should be fairly easy to detect, he said. That’s because image sensors in most cell phones and digital cameras are placed close to the lens, making them easier to spot than the deeper-set sensors of video cameras.

Camera neutralization’s potential has helped bring it under the wing of VentureLab, a Georgia Tech group that assists fledgling companies through the critical feasibility and first-funding phases. Operating under the name DominINC, Abowd’s company has already received a Phase 1 grant from the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) with VentureLab assistance.

Abowd said that funding availability will likely decide which technology -- small- or large-area -- will be developed first. DominINC will apply soon for GRA Phase 2 money, Abowd said. Those funds would be used to aid anti-piracy product development, as would any funding coming from the film industry.

Other potential funding, from industry and elsewhere, would likely be used to develop anti-espionage small-area applications.

Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech’s chief commercialization officer, said motion-picture groups are actively looking for technology to foil piracy. Movie distributors might even promote camera-neutralizing systems by refusing to send films to theaters that don’t install anti-piracy systems.

There are some caveats, according to Summet. Current camera-neutralizing technology may never work against single-lens-reflex cameras, which use a folding-mirror viewing system that effectively masks its CCD except when a photo is actually being taken. Moreover, anti-digital techniques don’t work on conventional film cameras because they have no image sensor.

Good computer analysis will be the heart of effective camera blocking, Summet believes.

“Most of the major work that we have left involves algorithmic development,” he said. “False positives will eliminated by making a system with fast, efficient computing.”

Also involved in the camera-neutralizing project are Shwetak Patel, a College of Computing PhD student; Khai Truong, a former Georgia Tech PhD student who is now at the University of Toronto, and Kent Lyons, a College of Computing post-doctoral student. A paper on this technology was published and presented at the Ubicomp 2005 conference in Tokyo, Japan, last September.
http://www.gtresearchnews.gatech.edu...nti-camera.htm





Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.

But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Swift executives have been uneasy at times about their secret role, the government and industry officials said. By 2003, the executives told American officials they were considering pulling out of the arrangement, which began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. Worried about potential legal liability, the Swift executives agreed to continue providing the data only after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced.

Among the safeguards, government officials said, is an outside auditing firm that verifies that the data searches are based on intelligence leads about suspected terrorists. "We are not on a fishing expedition," Mr. Levey said. "We're not just turning on a vacuum cleaner and sucking in all the information that we can."

Swift and Treasury officials said they were aware of no abuses. But Mr. Levey, the Treasury official, said one person had been removed from the operation for conducting a search considered inappropriate.

Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution.

But at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Mr. Levey agreed to discuss the classified operation after the Times editors told him of the newspaper's decision.

On Thursday evening, Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said: "Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country. One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."

She added: "We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them. We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."

Referring to the disclosure by The New York Times last December of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, she said, "The president is concerned that once again The New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is working to protect our citizens."

Swift declined to discuss details of the program but defended its role in written responses to questions. "Swift has fully complied with all applicable laws," the consortium said. The organization said it insisted that the data be used only for terrorism investigations and had narrowed the scope of the information provided to American officials over time.

A Crucial Gatekeeper

Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

The cooperative's message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a "24-7" operation. Customers' names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said.

The data does not allow the government to track routine financial activity, like A.T.M. withdrawals, confined to this country, or to see bank balances, Treasury officials said. And the information is not provided in real time — Swift generally turns it over several weeks later. Because of privacy concerns and the potential for abuse, the government sought the data only for terrorism investigations and prohibited its use for tax fraud, drug trafficking or other inquiries, the officials said.

The Treasury Department was charged by President Bush, in a September 2001 executive order, with taking the lead role in efforts to disrupt terrorist financing. Mr. Bush has been briefed on the program and Vice President Dick Cheney has attended C.I.A. demonstrations, the officials said. The National Security Agency has provided some technical assistance.

While the banking program is a closely held secret, administration officials have held classified briefings for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, the officials said. More lawmakers were briefed in recent weeks, after the administration learned The Times was making inquiries for this article.

Swift's 25-member board of directors, made up of representatives from financial institutions around the world, was previously told of the program. The Group of 10's central banks, in major industrialized countries, which oversee Swift, were also informed. It is not clear if other network participants know that American intelligence officials can examine their message traffic.

Because Swift is based overseas and has offices in the United States, it is governed by European and American laws. Several international regulations and policies impose privacy restrictions on companies that are generally regarded as more stringent than those in this country. United States law establishes some protections for the privacy of Americans' financial data, but they are not ironclad. A 1978 measure, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, has a limited scope and a number of exceptions, and its role in national security cases remains largely untested.

Several people familiar with the Swift program said they believed that they were exploiting a "gray area" in the law and that a case could be made for restricting the government's access to the records on Fourth Amendment and statutory grounds. They also worried about the impact on Swift if the program were disclosed.

"There was always concern about this program," a former official said.

One person involved in the Swift program estimated that analysts had reviewed international transfers involving "many thousands" of people or groups in the United States. Two other officials placed the figure in the thousands. Mr. Levey said he could not estimate the number.

The Swift data has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, the officials said. In some instances, they said, the program has pointed them to new suspects, while in others it has buttressed cases already under investigation.

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

In terrorism prosecutions, intelligence officials have been careful to "sanitize," or hide the origins of evidence collected through the program to keep it secret, officials said.

The Bush administration has pursued steps that may provide some enhanced legal standing for the Swift program. In late 2004, Congress authorized the Treasury Department to develop regulations requiring American banks to turn over records of international wire transfers. Officials say a preliminary version of those rules may be ready soon. One official described the regulations as an attempt to "formalize" access to the kind of information secretly provided by Swift, though other officials said the initiative was unrelated to the program.

The Scramble for New Tools

Like other counterterrorism measures carried out by the Bush administration, the Swift program began in the hectic days after the Sept. 11 attacks, as officials scrambled to identify new tools to head off further strikes.

One priority was to cut off the flow of money to Al Qaeda. The 9/11 hijackers had helped finance their plot by moving money through banks. Nine of the hijackers, for instance, funneled money from Europe and the Middle East to SunTrust bank accounts in Florida. Some of the $130,000 they received was wired by people overseas with known links to Al Qaeda.

Financial company executives, many of whom had lost friends at the World Trade Center, were eager to help federal officials trace terrorist money. "They saw 9/11 not just as an attack on the United States, but on the financial industry as a whole," said one former government official.

Quietly, counterterrorism officials sought to expand the information they were getting from financial institutions. Treasury officials, for instance, spoke with credit card companies about devising an alert if someone tried to buy fertilizer and timing devices that could be used for a bomb, but they were told the idea was not logistically possible, a lawyer in the discussions said.

The F.B.I. began acquiring financial records from Western Union and its parent company, the First Data Corporation. The programs were alluded to in Congressional testimony by the F.B.I. in 2003 and described in more detail in a book released this week, "The One Percent Doctrine," by Ron Suskind. Using what officials described as individual, narrowly framed subpoenas and warrants, the F.B.I. has obtained records from First Data, which processes credit and debit card transactions, to track financial activity and try to locate suspects.

Similar subpoenas for the Western Union data allowed the F.B.I. to trace wire transfers, mainly outside the United States, and to help Israel disrupt about a half-dozen possible terrorist plots there by unraveling the financing, an official said.

The idea for the Swift program, several officials recalled, grew out of a suggestion by a Wall Street executive, who told a senior Bush administration official about Swift's database. Few government officials knew much about the consortium, which is led by a Brooklyn native, Leonard H. Schrank, but they quickly discovered it offered unparalleled access to international transactions. Swift, a former government official said, was "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" for financial data.

Intelligence officials were so eager to use the Swift data that they discussed having the C.I.A. covertly gain access to the system, several officials involved in the talks said. But Treasury officials resisted, the officials said, and favored going to Swift directly.

At the same time, lawyers in the Treasury Department and the Justice Department were considering possible legal obstacles to the arrangement, the officials said.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for their records held by banks or other financial institutions. In response, Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act two years later, restricting government access to Americans' banking records. In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target.

For many years, law enforcement officials have relied on grand-jury subpoenas or court-approved warrants for such financial data. Since 9/11, the F.B.I. has turned more frequently to an administrative subpoena, known as a national security letter, to demand such records.

After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift. They also said the law protected individual customers and small companies, not the major institutions that route money through Swift on behalf of their customers.

Other state, federal and international regulations place different and sometimes conflicting restrictions on the government's access to financial records. Some put greater burdens on the company disclosing the information than on the government officials demanding it.

Among their considerations, American officials saw Swift as a willing partner in the operation. But Swift said its participation was never voluntary. "Swift has made clear that it could provide data only in response to a valid subpoena," according to its written statement.

Indeed, the cooperative's executives voiced early concerns about legal and corporate liability, officials said, and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control began issuing broad subpoenas for the cooperative's records related to terrorism. One official said the subpoenas were intended to give Swift some legal protection.

Underlying the government's legal analysis was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Mr. Bush invoked after the 9/11 attacks. The law gives the president what legal experts say is broad authority to "investigate, regulate or prohibit" foreign transactions in responding to "an unusual and extraordinary threat."

But L. Richard Fischer, a Washington lawyer who wrote a book on banking privacy and is regarded as a leading expert in the field, said he was troubled that the Treasury Department would use broad subpoenas to demand large volumes of financial records for analysis. Such a program, he said, appears to do an end run around bank-privacy laws that generally require the government to show that the records of a particular person or group are relevant to an investigation.

"There has to be some due process," Mr. Fischer said. "At an absolute minimum, it strikes me as inappropriate."

Several former officials said they had lingering concerns about the legal underpinnings of the Swift operation. The program "arguably complies with the letter of the law, if not the spirit," one official said.

Another official said: "This was creative stuff. Nothing was clear cut, because we had never gone after information this way before."

Treasury officials said they considered the government's authority to subpoena the Swift records to be clear. "People do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions," Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary, said.

Tighter Controls Sought

Within weeks of 9/11, Swift began turning over records that allowed American analysts to look for evidence of terrorist financing. Initially, there appear to have been few formal limits on the searches.

"At first, they got everything — the entire Swift database," one person close to the operation said.

Intelligence officials paid particular attention to transfers to or from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because most of the 9/11 hijackers were from those countries.

The volume of data, particularly at the outset, was often overwhelming, officials said. "We were turning on every spigot we could find and seeing what water would come out," one former administration official said. "Sometimes there were hits, but a lot of times there weren't."

Officials realized the potential for abuse, and narrowed the program's targets and put in more safeguards. Among them were the auditing firm, an electronic record of every search and a requirement that analysts involved in the operation document the intelligence that justified each data search. Mr. Levey said the program was used only to examine records of individuals or entities, not for broader data searches.

Despite the controls, Swift executives became increasingly worried about their secret involvement with the American government, the officials said. By 2003, the cooperative's officials were discussing pulling out because of their concerns about legal and financial risks if the program were revealed, one government official said.

"How long can this go on?" a Swift executive asked, according to the official.

Even some American officials began to question the open-ended arrangement. "I thought there was a limited shelf life and that this was going to go away," the former senior official said.

In 2003, administration officials asked Swift executives and some board members to come to Washington. They met with Mr. Greenspan, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and Treasury officials, among others, in what one official described as "a full-court press." Aides to Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Mueller declined to comment on the meetings.

The executives agreed to continue supplying records after the Americans pledged to impose tighter controls. Swift representatives would be stationed alongside intelligence officials and could block any searches considered inappropriate, several officials said.

The procedural change provoked some opposition at the C.I.A. because "the agency was chomping at the bit to have unfettered access to the information," a senior counterterrorism official said. But the Treasury Department saw it as a necessary compromise, the official said, to "save the program."

Barclay Walsh contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/wa...rtner=homepage





Report: FBI Spied on Arthur Miller
AP

In the summer of 1956, playwright Arthur Miller married screen idol Marilyn Monroe in a Jewish ceremony, an event of high-level gossip for much of the world and of high-level curiosity for the U.S. government.

"An anonymous telephone call" has been placed to the New York Daily News, an FBI report notes at the time. The caller stated that the "religious" wedding – Miller was Jewish and Monroe had converted – was an obvious "cover up" for Miller, who "had been and still was a member of the CP (Communist Party) and was their cultural front man." Monroe also "had drifted into the Communist Party orbit."

The memo is one of many included in Miller's FBI files, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. Miller, who died last year at age 89 at his home in Roxbury, was a longtime liberal who opposed the Vietnam War, supported civil rights and, in one play, "The Crucible," linked the Cold War pursuit of communists to the Salem witch trials of the 17th century.

His files only became available after his death, but the government's interest in Miller was well established in his lifetime. In 1956, the House Un-American Activities Committee asked him to give names of alleged communist writers with whom he had attended some meetings in the 1940s. Miller refused and was convicted of contempt of Congress, a decision eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

For a decade before his congressional testimony, the FBI kept track of the playwright, but ended up making a more convincing case that Miller was a dissenter from the Communist Party rather than a sympathizer.

"Miller became disillusioned with the party because the party did not stimulate in him the ability and inspiration to do creative writing as he had expected when he joined the Party," one informant told the FBI.

According to a 34-page FBI report, compiled in 1951, Miller was identified by an informant as being "under Communist Party discipline" in the 1930s and, as of the mid-1940s, a member.

According to Miller, he had never been "under Communist discipline," although "there were two short periods – one in 1940 and one in 1947 – when I was sufficiently close to Communist Party activities so that someone might honestly have thought that I had become a member."

In an essay published in 1999, Miller recalled that "practically everyone I knew stood within the conventions of the political left of center; one or two were Communist party members ... and most had had a brush with Marxist ideas or organizations.

"I have never been able to believe in the reality of these people being actual or putative traitors any more than I could be," he wrote.

Miller's first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck," came out in 1944, around the same time that the earliest FBI files are dated. His professional and personal life were closely watched, usually through newspaper clippings, but also from informants (whose names have been blacked out in the records) and public documents.

The FBI not only kept records of Miller's political statements, from his opposition to nuclear weapons to his attacks against the anti-communist blacklist, but of his affiliation with such organizations as the American Labor Party ("a communist front") and the "communist infiltrated" American Civil Liberties Union.

In vain, the FBI probed for communist influence in the content and in the productions of his plays. One memo cites an "informant" who reported that "several communists" have been turned down for roles in various "Arthur Miller playlets."

Miller's plays, the informant concludes, "although occasionally supported by the Communist Party, do not follow Marxist ideology." A separate file states that "Miller was not looked on with favor by the Communist Party," which regarded him as "'just a civil rights guy."'

Miller's fame made him a target of the government, but also protected him. For example, a memo from 1955 noted an admiring article by Holiday magazine and concluded that "because of Miller's "limited activity with the CP (Communist Party) and his position in the business world, it is felt that an interview would result in embarrassment for the Bureau."

His files essentially end in 1956, except for a brief reprise in 1993, when a background check was submitted to Bernard Nussbaum, the White House counsel to President Clinton. The occasion was not subversive activity, but the imminent presentation of a National Medal of the Arts.

Although his alleged communist ties were reviewed and he was identified as a "participant in activities calling for an end to the war in Vietnam," no other "pertinent information" turned up and he received his medal.

At the ceremony, Clinton praised Miller as a major playwright of the 20th century, and cited "The Crucible" for its admirable focus on "issues of conscience."
http://news.newstimeslive.com/story....&channel=Local





Library Chief Draws Cops' Ire
Merry Firschein

Library Director Michele Reutty is under fire for refusing to give police library circulation records without a subpoena.

Reutty says she was only doing her job and maintaining the privacy of library patrons. But the mayor called it "a blatant disregard for the Police Department," which needed her help to identify a man who allegedly threatened a child.

Reutty, the director for 17 years, now faces possible discipline by the library board. Members of the Borough Council have suggested she receive punishment ranging from a letter of reprimand in her personnel file to a 30-day unpaid suspension. But the Library Board of Trustees said it would reserve judgment until a closed-door hearing next month.

Police received a report May 10 that a 12-year-old borough girl was allegedly sexually threatened by a man outside the municipal building. The library is on the second floor. The girl told her parents, who called police.

The suspect, who has been identified as a 23-year-old Hackensack man, did not molest the girl, said borough Police Chief Michael Colaneri. The investigation is ongoing through the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, Colaneri said.

The girl told police the man was carrying a library book with a certain title. The next day, borough police detectives asked Reutty to tell them who took out that book.

Reutty said she refused to give the information to police without a subpoena -- in accordance with New Jersey state statutes governing access of private information from libraries, she said.

Police came back with a subpoena later that day. Reutty conducted the search and told police she could not find a book with that title.

So, police asked her to show them all the records of everyone who took out or renewed a book for the previous 10 days. Reutty asked for another subpoena because those records are computerized and not kept at the library.

On May 12, Reutty said, she complied with the second subpoena -- which required a special computer program by the Bergen County Cooperative Library System. Police found the information right away, which helped them to identify the suspect, according to Colaneri.

But borough officials say Reutty intentionally stonewalled the police investigation by putting the library first. They also charged that she did not follow procedure by contacting the borough's attorney when she received the subpoena. Instead, she called a lawyer from the state library association.

The whole episode is "shocking," Reutty said Wednesday. "I followed the law. And because I followed the law, at the end of the day, the policemen's case is going to hold strong. Nobody is going to sue the library and nobody is going to sue the municipality of Hasbrouck Heights because information was given out illegally."

On Tuesday, about 20 librarians from around the state attended a joint meeting of the Borough Council and the library Board of Trustees in a show of support for Reutty.

The group included the executive director of the New Jersey Library Association, who told borough officials that the organization would revise its rules governing subpoenas.

"I will ask the Attorney General's Office and the [state] Police Association to sit down with us and look at those regulations," said NJLA head Patricia Tumulty.

Reutty is the first vice president/president-elect of the librarians' organization.

Several residents spoke in Reutty's defense, saying she must have been confused about the borough's rules.

But Reutty dismissed that interpretation. "The main issue here is privacy of information, and all of this could have been handled by education," she said.

Reutty did the right thing, said Arthur Miller, her lawyer. "At no time did Michele Reutty say to any police officer or anybody else that she would not give the information if it was properly requested," Miller told the council. "She said you've got to get proper court authorization."

Borough labor lawyer Ellen Horn, who also represented the library trustees, said Reutty was "more interested in protecting" her library than helping the police.

"It was an absolute misjudgment of the seriousness of the matter," Horn said at Tuesday's meeting.

Reutty said the issue has grown to encompass a larger issue.

"I think it would have been so easy for me to just resign when all of this started happening," she said. "But it's not just me anymore. This is so that other librarians, when faced with a subpoena, will do the right thing."
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?...Y3dnFlZUVFeXkz





Wisconsin Law Bars Forced RFID Implants
Marc Songini

Wisconsin this week will become one of the first states to ban the forcible implantation of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into humans.

The ban begins on Wednesday, when legislation signed on May 30 by Gov. James Doyle goes into effect. The act dictates that no person may force another to have a microchip implanted in his body. Violators face fines of $10,000 each day until the chip is removed.

A spokeswoman for Doyle said the law targets RFID technology, though it bans the implantation of any microchip without consent.

"I'm hoping other states will follow," said state Rep. Marlin Schneider, a Democrat who sponsored the bill. While Schneider acknowledged that he knows of no case where an RFID chip was forcibly implanted into a person, he said he believes that proactive legislation is necessary as the technology quickly advances.

Schneider said he is also concerned about current commercial uses of RFID technology. "There are a number of issues here, potentially," he said.

Proposed laws that seek to limit the use of RFID devices because of data privacy and security concerns are under discussion in a total of 19 states, according to Douglas Farry, managing director of the government affairs practice at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, a Washington-based law firm.

Such legislation could have broad implications for RFID product manufacturers, distributors and users, he said.

Further Repercussions

Even for companies that use RFID strictly for inventory control or supply chain management, such laws could lead to IT spending on the security infrastructure changes needed for compliance, Farry said.

He urged that RFID advocates do more to educate the public and governmental bodies about the benefits of the technology and thus remove the sinister stigma that some opponents have fostered.

Kevin Brown, director of information systems at Daisy Brand LP, a Dallas-based maker of sour cream products that uses RFID systems, said, "It is understandable for the states to begin this type of legislation where technology has the potential for abuse."
Brown said that in his opinion, makers of RFID technology should educate the public on its capabilities and use. "My hope is that our policymakers can balance the need to legislate the use of technology while not impeding the creative forces of innovation," he said.

Scott Silverman, chairman of Applied Digital Solutions Inc., whose Delray Beach, Fla.-based subsidiary VeriChip Corp. supplies RFID chips for human implantation, said he doesn't object to the Wisconsin law. "In theory, we're in agreement with the posture taken," he said. "For medical uses, we've been clear all along that it's a voluntary product."

Silverman said that other potential beneficial uses of the technology would include implanting RFID chips in immigrant guest workers for identification at border crossings and employer sites.

As the use of the technology becomes more widespread, Silverman said, he expects that all the RFID-related legislation "will shake itself out."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...ticleId=111542





Senate Bill Compromise Paves The Way For "Net Neutrality Lite"
Ken Fisher

A vote on one telecommunications bill that seeks to address Net Neutrality is expected later this week, but just what will be voted on is far from clear. Dubbed the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S.2686), the Senate bill backed by Ted Stevens (R-AK) could be voted on as early as this Thursday, June 22. The vote would take place in the Commerce Committee's weekly session, a necessary step before reaching the attention of the full Senate.

Stevens' bill takes a studied approach to Net Neutrality, literally. The bill's current form would authorize the FCC to study the issue of Net Neutrality for a period of five years in order to separate reality from the rhetoric, as it were. The FCC would also handle complaints of abuse during that time. But Stevens' ranking colleague on the Commerce Committee, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), has said that this is too little, and Inouye has offered his own legislation as a tactic to push Stevens into a compromise.

Thus for Stevens, the issue is one of bringing Inouye on board. A loyal Republican, Stevens largely backs the White House's position on the issue, believing that the FCC itself is already equipped to handle complaints of abuse and that new laws are not truly needed. As a general opponent of "government interference" in business, Stevens is also a firm believer that it would be inappropriate for the FCC to prevent internet service providers from developing new services, such as Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements.

A new draft of the Stevens' bill looks to strike a balance between his concerns and his hopes to see this legislation through, making good on comments he made last week. The draft of the legislation aims to protect consumers' rights by forbidding the blocking of any traffic or application, while stopping short of instructing companies on what they can and cannot do with "their networks." This approach differs from so-called strict Net Neutrality by essentially leaving businesses untouched. Proponents of this approach believe that it would protect consumers by securing access to all public Internet traffic and services, while opponents argue that internet service providers could simply impair the performance of the public Internet to their own advantage. At the heart of the matter is bandwidth. Would internet service providers have to effectively downgrade Joe Consumer's bandwidth in order to sell his neighbor a "quality of service" add-on that would prioritize his own traffic? Stevens believes that this latter concern, while important, is already under the purview of the FCC.

One competing House bill, the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (HR 5417), would make it an antitrust violation to "block impair, discriminate or interfere with anyone’s services or applications or content," but the bill also addresses the kinds of service improvements that Stevens would rather not touch. For example, this House bill would make it illegal to offer Quality of Service improvements for specific data types unless those improvements were available universally (that is, you can't favor your own VoIP service to the exclusion of others). The bill's fate is looking grim, however, as a competing bill passed a House vote earlier this month. The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE Act) is quite similar with respects to the Network Neutrality provisions in Stevens' new draft bill, and it also leaves businesses largely untouched. An amendment that would have made the law more strict was shot down 269 votes to 152.

Should Stevens' new bill make it out of committee, we believe that it would likely pass in the Senate, meaning that the House and Senate would have largely similar bills that could be reconciled and then put into law by the end of the year. If this happens, "public Internet" protections will likely be encoded into law, but the more divisive topic of service "innovation" would be left largely unaddressed. Call it Net Neutrality Lite, if you will.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060618-7078.html





Net Neutered:

Why Don't They Tell Us Ending Net Neutrality Might Kill BitTorrent?
Robert X. Cringely

Last week's column was about Bill Gates' announced departure from day-to-day management at Microsoft and a broad view of the Net Neutrality issue. We'll get back to Microsoft next week with a much closer look at the challenges the company faces as it ages and what I believe is a clever and counter-intuitive plan for Redmond's future success. But this week is all about Net Neutrality, which turns out to be a far more complex issue than we (or Congress) are being told.

Net Neutrality is a concept being explored right now in the U.S. Congress, which is trying to decide whether to allow Internet Service Providers to offer tiers of service for extra money or to essentially be prohibited from doing so. The ISPs want the additional income and claim they are being under compensated for their network investments, while pretty much everyone else thinks all packets ought to be treated equally.

Last week's column pointed out how shallow are the current arguments, which ignore many of the technical and operational realities of the Internet, especially the fact that there have long been tiers of service and that ISPs have probably been treating different kinds of packets differently for years and we simply didn't know it.

One example of unequal treatment is whether packets connect from backbone to backbone through one of the public Network Access Points (NAPs) or through a private peering arrangement between ISPs or backbone providers. The distinction between these two forms of interconnection is vital because the NAPs are overloaded all the time, leading to dropped packets, retransmissions, network congestion, and reduced effective bandwidth. Every ISP that has a private peering agreement still has the right to use the NAPs and one has to wonder how they decide which packets they put in the diamond lane and which ones they make take the bus?

Virtual Private Networks are another example of how packets can be treated differently. Most VPNs are created by ISP customers who want secure and reliable interconnections to their corporate networks. VPNs not only encrypt content, but to a certain extent they reserve bandwidth. But not all VPNs are created by customers. There are some ISPs that use VPNs specifically to limit the bandwidth of certain customers who are viewed as taking more than their fair share. My late friend Roger Boisvert, a pioneer Japanese ISP, found that fewer than 5 percent of his customers at gol.com were using more than 70 percent of the ISP's bandwidth, so he captured just those accounts in VPNs limited to a certain amount of bandwidth. Since then I have heard from other ISPs who do the same.

As pointed out last week, though, there is only so much damage that an ISP can do and most of it seems limited to Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone service where latency, dropouts, and jitter are key and problematic. Since VoIP is an Internet service customers are used to paying extra for (that, in itself, is rare), ISPs want that money for themselves, which is the major reason why they want permission to end Net Neutrality--if it ever really existed.

The implications of this end to Net Neutrality go far beyond VoIP, though it is my feeling that most ISPs don't know that. These are bit schleppers, remember, and the advantages of traffic shaping are only beginning to dawn on most of them. The DIS-advantages are even further from being realized, though that will start to change right here.

The key question to ask is what impact will priority service levels have on the services that remain, those having no priority? In terms of the packets, giving priority to VoIP ought not to have a significant impact on audio or video downloads because those services are buffered and if they take a little longer, well that's just the price of progress, right? Wrong. Let's look at the impact of priority services on BitTorrent, the single greatest consumer of Internet bandwidth.

Though e-mail and web surfing are both probably more important to Internet users than BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file transfer scheme uses more total Internet bandwidth at something over 30 percent. Some ISPs absolutely hate BitTorrent and have moved to limit its impact on their networks by controlling the amount of bandwidth available to BitTorrent traffic. This, too, flies in the face of our supposed current state of blissful Net Neutrality. A list of ISPs that limit BitTorrent bandwidth is in this week's links, though most of them are, so far, outside the United States.

BitTorrent blocking or limiting can be defeated by encrypting the torrents, but that increases overhead, causes a bigger bandwidth hit, and defeats local caching schemes that might help reduce bandwidth demand. So blocking BitTorrent actually makes life worse for all of us, which may be why most U.S. ISPs aren't doing it.

So let's assume that ISPs are allowed to offer tiered services. What impact will that have on BitTorrent? The answer lies in the nature of the TCP/IP protocol. Here is an analysis from a friend who is far more savvy about these things than I am:

"If you look at the amount of overhead TCP needs it's exponential to how slow each connection is; the slower (the connection) the more overhead because the window sizes are smaller and more control packets are being used for verification. And you know what? BitTorrent is FAR WORSE. Remember that for each file you download on BitTorrent you connect to dozens, possibly even hundreds of people, and the slower each of those connections is the more the overhead increases.

"About a month ago the amount of torrents I may (have been) automatically downloading at any given time was between 10 and 30. This means that I was getting no more than 1Kbps from every peer, which meant about half of my bandwidth usage was in BitTorrent protocol overhead and not in downloading file data. I brought this (overhead) down (by 40 percent) by just having five torrent downloads at a time and queuing the rest, and I even got the files faster. I then did some more scheduling and what not to get (my bandwidth use down by a total of 70 percent) and I still downloaded about the same amount of real file data.

"So what happens when everyone's VoIP or other preferred packets get preference over my torrent packets? Since I have no knowledge of the other people's usage in my aggregate network I can't adjust well for changes in the network. The BitTorrent traffic that is going will have exponentially increased overhead due to the slow downs, increasing overall Internet packet overhead (with BitTorrent already 30+ percent of all Internet traffic). Which means that allowing the telco's to subsidize the cost of improving their infrastructure by having preferred packets could exponentially increase the cost accrued by the larger internet and backbone providers just to keep costs down at the aggregate level."

To recap: Giving priority to some traffic puts a hurt on other types of traffic and when that other traffic constitutes more than 30 percent of the Internet, the results can be severe for all of us. On the Internet everything is connected, and you can't easily ignore the impact of one service on another.

With this new knowledge I did a simple test that you can do, too. I have a Vicomsoft Internet Gateway that does very fine traffic shaping, though there are many similar products available, like ClarkConnect and some others that are open source. Many routers can do traffic shaping, too. I did a couple BitTorrent downloads of specific files, measuring how much time and total bandwidth was required. Then I deleted those files, changed my Internet Gateway settings to give priority to my Vonage VoIP packets, called my Mom on the phone and started downloading the same two BitTorrent files.

Vonage and many other VoIP services use an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) device to connect your phone to the network. That ATA can do traffic shaping, too, which requires that it be connected inline between your broadband modem and router. Of course I didn't realize this until AFTER my test was done.

My test results were clear. I had no problem downloading the same BitTorrent files, but it took longer. That was no surprise. After all, I WAS talking to my Mom, which would have taken some bandwidth away from BitTorrent. But the more interesting result was that the total bandwidth required to download the same files using traffic shaping versus not using traffic shaping was almost 20 percent more, which undoubtedly came down to increased BitTorrent overhead due to contention and retransmissions involving the priority VoIP service.

Traffic shaping causes different patterns on the local network, especially aggregate networks that use creative technologies to send Ethernet frames over old telephone and cable infrastructure. It's taken a very long time to get Internet technologies to where they are today, and all the protocols built on top of those technologies operate under certain assumptions. Just like a web site sent over TCP assumes that TCP will make sure all the packets will get to their destination, rich application protocols like BitTorrent operate under assumptions like known patterns in bandwidth changes on aggregate networks.

Let's say Net Neutrality goes away and the broadband ISPs start offering tiered services. My simple test suggests that one possible impact is that Bit Torrent traffic, which currently uses, say, 30 percent of Internet bandwidth, is going to expand to about 36 percent simply because of inefficiencies created by the tiered services. This will increase the backbone costs for ISPs and will take back at least some of the very performance advantage they are supposedly selling to their priority customers.

The result of ending Net Neutrality under this scenario, then, is that the ISPs make money from tiered services but with higher overhead costs and lower priority service levels than one might expect. The ISPs then might try banning BitTorrent to keep it from messing with their tiered services, but we've already establish this can't practically be done on a technical level because torrent encryption can always get around the ban. The only way, in fact, to limit BitTorrent traffic would be to have it made illegal and now we're back again to the clueless Congress that started this whole mess.

I don't think these latter ideas are even in the heads of broadband ISPs. They simply haven't thought that far. But eventually, as they try trimming this and expanding that to solve a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place and can't otherwise be solved, they'll come up with something all of us will hate. I guarantee it.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060622.html





Internet Phones Must Pay Into Subsidy Fund

Consumers who use wireless or Internet-based telephones could see their bills rise, as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved on Wednesday an interim new plan for funding phone service subsidies.

The FCC ordered Internet telephone services like Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG.N) to contribute part of their revenue into the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service to rural and low-income areas as well as communications services and Internet access for schools, hospitals and libraries.

The agency also increased the amount wireless telephone providers would have to pay into the fund. The move may lead to higher wireless and Internet telephone bills because the companies typically pass the fees on to customers.

Companies offering long-distance and international telephone services as well as high-speed Internet service via digital subscriber lines (DSL) must currently contribute 10.9 percent of that revenue into the $7.3 billion fund.

However, DSL providers will no longer have to contribute to the program after mid-August, so the FCC had to act to avoid a potential shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Consumers' DSL bills could go down if the savings were passed through to them.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and the other commissioners said the move was only an interim step to overhauling the contribution system. Martin has pushed for a payment based on telephone numbers.

``Our work in this area is far from complete,'' he said.

Under the plan adopted by the FCC commissioners, providers of Internet telephone service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, would have to pay about 7 percent of their revenue into the fund under the current contribution factor.

A spokeswoman for Vonage said the company did not expect the decision to have a big impact on customers, particularly since bills were already expected to drop because of the elimination of a 3 percent excise tax.

``It's likely to be around net zero, or a slight increase for our customers,'' Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz said.

Wireless carriers would also have to increase their contribution to the fund by about 1 percentage point to 4 percent of their revenue under the new FCC plan.

Agency officials said they expect the new levels to take effect in the fourth quarter. The contribution factor is usually adjusted each quarter, based on payments received from providers.

If the wireless or Internet telephone providers could prove that their long distance and international revenue were less, they would be allowed to use a smaller percentage as the basis for their contribution to the fund.

There are also efforts in Congress to reform the USF, with senior members of the House of Representatives calling for it to be reined in amid allegations of waste, fraud and abuse. Top lawmakers in the Senate want to revamp and expand the program.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...s-fcc-usf.html





Big Mac

Apple Set to Take Bigger Bite of the Market
Arik Hesseldahl

Some of the people in the survey group owned an iPod, and here the results are stunning. In this category, 7.6 percent say they'd switch even if the Mac can't run Windows. With Windows, that percentage swells to above 20 percent. One starts to see some statistical evidence that iPod is giving Mac the "halo effect" you've no doubt heard about.

Windows PC users cite plenty of reasons for not wanting to own a Mac. One of the biggest has historically been the inability to run Windows applications many of them needed for business on an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) computer. However, that and other reasons are becoming less valid, and evidence is mounting that a potentially tectonic shift in Apple's place in the PC market could be coming in the next few years.

In case you hadn't heard, Apple's Macs can now run Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows. Also, by the end of the year -- with luck, by the end of the summer -- all Macs will be built with microprocessors from Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) . That, combined with the runaway success of the iPod music player, augurs a considerably brighter picture for Mac sales and worldwide market share starting about 2008.
Lots More Interest?

Charles Wolf of Needham and Co. says Apple could end up with a global PC market share north of 5 percent by 2011, compared with a 1.9 percent sliver in 2005. How does he reach that conclusion? He asked Windows users. Wolf had Harris Interactive (Nasdaq: HPOL) poll about 2,400 people on their intentions to buy a Mac. About 300 didn't own a computer and another 100 or so already owned a Mac, leaving 2,092 people who use Windows on home computers.

Those people were asked to attach a percentage to their likelihood of buying a Mac. Mind you, gauging people's intentions is tricky. Of those who say they're 40 percent likely to do something, generally speaking only 1 percent actually ever end up doing it, Harris says. So if 1,800 people give answers in this range, only 18 will actually do it. But once people start saying they're 50 percent likely to do something, they're a lot more serious about doing it, according to the pollster. Wolf's survey was adjusted way down to allow for this statistical tendency.

Even after that, however, the results yield some pretty interesting findings: Assuming that the Mac cannot run Windows applications, 4.3 percent indicated an interest in switching from a Windows PC to the Mac. That translates to about 90 people out of the 2,092 in the sample. When asked if they would switch to the Mac if it could run Windows, the percentage saying yes doubled to about 8 percent.
"Halo Effect"

Some of the people in the survey group owned an iPod, and here the results are stunning. In this category, 7.6 percent say they'd switch even if the Mac can't run Windows. With Windows, that percentage swells to above 20 percent. One starts to see some statistical evidence that iPod is giving Mac the "halo effect" you've no doubt heard about.

That users are so much more likely to switch when they know Mac can run Windows gives Apple a plateful of marketing food for thought. For years, the biggest complaint among people who use Windows and are interested in switching to the Mac has been the lack of certain applications they consider available only for Windows.

Boot Camp, the software that lets Mac users toggle over to Windows, is in beta testing now, and expected to become a standard feature in the next Mac operating system -- Mac OS X version 10.5, aka Leopard -- due in early 2007. It gives Apple a high card in the "switch to Mac" game.

Wolf stresses that he "bent over backwards" to interpret the survey results conservatively. Even then, they suggest 772,000 Macs, about 17 percent of the 4.3 million units expected to be sold this year, will be purchased by people switching away from Windows, Wolf says. He bases that projection on forecasts for future PC sales growth from market research firm Interactive Data.
Mac Attack

In the following two years, however, the phenomenon gathers steam. His figures for 2007 -- the year the Intel transition is complete and Windows-ready Leopard launches -- show 1.7 million Windows users switching to the Mac out of 6.7 million Macs sold, implying a 25 percent rate. The year after that shows nearly 3 million switchers, or about 29 percent of a total 10.2 million Macs sold.

By 2008, assuming IDC forecasts for worldwide PC sales of 279 million units are correct, the Mac could account for 3.7 percent of the worldwide market. The company's share starts to approach 5 percent by 2010. That's more progress than Mac users have seen in many years.

Meanwhile, some 80 million people are going to visit an Apple store this year, and half of them will be Windows users. I've heard that the new Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan is seeing 12,000 people a day, and it's not hard to believe. I was there the other night -- at 9:45 p.m. on a Monday night -- and counted more than 200 people in the place.
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/Wr...e-Market.xhtml





The Next Cheap Thing

NComputing Is Reviving a '90s Concept With A Device That Could Give PC Access To The Masses
Peter Burrows

Stephen A. Dukker is talking a mile a minute, his excited voice filling the small conference room. He's fiddling with a laptop PC, some cables, and a tiny gizmo that looks like something you might pick up in the accessories aisle at Radio Shack (RSH ) as he prepares to demonstrate the wares of tiny NComputing Co. "I have not been this excited about a company...ever," says Dukker, NComputing's chairman. "I'm afraid I'm going to have a stroke, I'm so excited!"

That's because Dukker is convinced NComputing has discovered one of techdom's holy grails: a computer cheap enough for the world's PC-less masses. Actually, not a computer. NComputing's gizmo—this one, the unsexily named L100 model—once attached to a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, can be used to tap into a PC somewhere else, across the room or across the continent, at a far lower cost than owning a PC yourself. Dukker's cost is less than $50 per user, vs. $250 for a cut-rate desktop PC. And if volumes rise as he hopes, that price could fall below $10. "Pretty soon, we'll have reached the point that the hardware is essentially free," says Dukker.

It's the return of the "thin client," one of Silicon Valley's most hyped concepts of the 1990s. Luminaries such as Oracle Corp. (ORCL ) chief Lawrence J. Ellison and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s chairman Scott G. McNealy gushed back then over the idea that rather than own powerful PCs, Netizens could use these disk-less, processor-less "dumb" devices to access files and programs, stored on some remote server, via the Internet. It kind of made sense. After all, the disk drive and processor in your PC make up about 40% of the materials cost. And who uses all that processing power, anyway? For many of us, a PC is for sending e-mail and surfing the Web. Unless you're designing rocket ships or flying them in some graphics-rich video game, you barely test a PC's limits.

Ahead Of Its Time

But reality stepped in. With PC prices falling ever lower, customers had a choice between a full-fledged PC and an unproven thin-client device that cost just about as much. The few models that sold were priced over $500 after expensive software licenses were taken into account. So they never really caught on. Today, all the attempts to reach the world's poor are focused on finding ways to make cheaper PCs. One of the most publicized efforts is the nonprofit "One Laptop per Child" program led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nicholas Negroponte. The computer uses free Linux software rather than Microsoft's Windows and comes with a crank for people who don't have access to reliable power, or the means to pay for it.

But maybe, just maybe, the thin client was simply ahead of its time. Broadband connections, after all, are far more widespread today. And millions of people are comfortable with using Net-based software such as Google (GOOG ) and MySpace (NWS ). Now venture capitalists are starting to fund thin-client companies again, such as Teradici Corp. of Canada. Even PC giant Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ) is ramping up sales of $300-plus thin-client terminals to companies that want to cut the cost of managing software-packed PCs. HP sees a day when consumers will pay a phone company or Net service provider only for the minutes of computing they use over a dumb terminal. "This is not just a 'wouldn't it be nice,"' says Philip McKinney, chief technology officer for HP's Personal Systems Group. "There are a lot of things that are starting to converge that begin to make this make sense."

Here's where Dukker would beg to differ. He says it's already happening. Despite having no real sales or marketing effort, NComputing has sold more than 100,000 units since 2004, and is on pace to sell nearly that many in the remainder of the year. Most are going to small companies and school districts in places like Brazil, Thailand, and Ghana. But interest is picking up with U.S. schools as well. Since stumbling upon NComputing's Web site, Tracy Smith, the director of technology for the Fremont School district in rural southeastern Idaho, has replaced 240 ancient PCs running Windows 98 with 80 NComputing devices. "I haven't told our Dell salespeople I'm doing this. But that's 240 computers that Dell didn't sell me."

O.K., so Dukker isn't turning the computer industry on its head just yet. But the role of change agent is one that is familiar to him. In 1998, Dukker's eMachines came roaring out of the gate to log $814 million in sales in its first year by selling nearly marginless machines that forced HP and IBM to get serious about sub-$1,000 PCs. Now that price band makes up more than 80% of all home PC sales. But there are legions of potential customers for whom even today's rock-bottom PC prices are too high. Former eMachines executive Young Song started NComputing (he's now CEO) after discovering that the company was unable to entice some people with $299 machines that had been returned and refurbished. To tap that market, Song says, "I knew we needed a new technology."

He needed a new job, as well. Song left eMachines soon after Dukker was pushed out in 2001, when the company nearly went broke. In 2003, Song connected with co-founder Klaus Maier, who had worked for more than a decade on software that would let you divvy up an operating system and distribute it among many users over the Internet.

By late 2004 they'd converted that software into a cheap chip packaged inside a plastic enclosure with the circuitry to control a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Thus was born the non-PC. Add in energy savings (the devices consume about 5% as much power as a PC) and lower support costs (there's little inside that can break), and you start to see the logic. Dukker will really push his case once NComputing completes a $20 million-plus round of venture financing. Co-founder Song says the goal is to sell one million units by 2008, and not just as PC replacements. NComputing is talking with makers of TVs, cash registers, factory equipment—anything that could benefit from offering a PC-like experience.

Sounds big. But then so did the thin client. And there is one big potential legal obstacle. NComputing's technology in effect lets as many as 30 people use a single copy of Microsoft's Windows. NComputing doesn't resell Windows but leaves it for customers to interpret whether they're covered by their Windows license. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) hasn't said exactly how it feels about that yet, but you can imagine the possibilities. There's also the practical consideration of depending on uninterrupted Internet service in the Third World to use one of these devices. Says MIT's Negroponte in an e-mail: "Please remember that in my world, connections are spotty."

So maybe Dukker's campaign is a bit of a windmill tilt after all. "There's always been this idea that people have way too much computing power on their desks, but the fact is that people don't want to cede control back to a central authority," says Stephen Baker, a PC analyst for NPD Group. "History tells me this is likely to be a nichey product that doesn't get a lot of traction."

That's not dampening Dukker's spirits at all. "We are a signpost that there's a new approach that could drive the cost of the client device to nothing," he says. "This could change the world."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...gn_id=rss_tech





NEC Plans To Sell Packard Bell Unit

NEC said Wednesday that it was in talks to sell part of its European personal computer operations, which would lead to its withdrawal from the home-use PC market in that region.

Shares in NEC, one of the largest Japanese electronics conglomerates, rose slightly on the news. The company declined to give details, including the name of the potential buyer and a sale price for the wholly owned unit, Packard Bell.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper reported Wednesday that NEC would sell the majority of its holding in the unit and that it was talking with Lap Shun-hui, a China-born entrepreneur who is one of the founders of eMachines, a maker of low-cost personal computers that has since been bought by Gateway.

A price has not been decided, but it appears to be less than ¥10 billion, or $87 million, the paper said. Packard Bell has annual sales of about ¥130 billion, but it has been unprofitable in the past few years.

Goldman Sachs said a sale of the European operations would be positive. "We view favorably NEC returning to a stance of exiting businesses where it has little chance of creating value," a Goldman analyst, Ikuo Matsuhashi, wrote in a note to clients.

NEC holds the top position in Japan, with more than 20 percent of the PC market, but it has had limited success overseas.

In 2005 it had a market share of 2.8 percent, according to the research firm Gartner.

Its PC operations posted an operating loss of ¥7 billion in the financial year that ended March 31 on sales of ¥680 billion, accounting for 14 percent of group revenue of ¥4.8 trillion.

NEC runs European PC and server operations for corporate clients through another local unit, and that business will continue regardless of the outcome of the talks on the sale of Packard Bell, an NEC spokesman said.

Shares in NEC closed up ¥5 at ¥586, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/21/business/nec.php





Telecom Giants in Europe Plan $30 Billion Deal
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany are expected to announce today that they will merge their telecommunication network equipment businesses in a deal valued at more than $30 billion, people involved in the transaction said last night.

The merger is likely to set off a new global wave of consolidation and a round of price wars as the telecommunication industry continues to remake itself after last decade's boom-and-bust cycle.

The cross-border deal, which was approved by the boards of both companies, would create the world's third-largest network equipment concern behind Ericsson and a combined Lucent and Alcatel, which announced plans to merge three months ago. The transaction is also likely to put considerable pressure on Motorola, which will fall to the No. 4 position among network equipment makers in the world, just as its business is turning around as a result of its hot-selling Razr cellphones.

The network equipment industry makes the fiber optic cables, routers and wireless beacons that act as the backbone of the communications world for telecommunications carriers like Cingular and Verizon. While Nokia's cellphone business will remain largely unaffected as a result of the deal, it could use the combination to provide network equipment to carriers that includes advanced features for its phones.

Motorola has been able to couple its network equipment for Nextel, which is now part of Sprint, with technology for its walkie-talkie handsets with much success.

The combination of Nokia and Siemens is being driven, in part, by the fact that so many of the world's biggest carriers — the clients of the equipment makers — are merging themselves, as AT&T's has by acquiring BellSouth and Sprint has in a deal with Nextel. The deal is also being spurred by growing competition from emerging rivals in Asia, which are increasingly finding ways to deploy new technologies while lowering costs.

The deal involves creating a new company into which both Nokia and Siemens will merge their network equipment businesses, people involved in the transaction said. It is being structured somewhat like a joint venture because both companies will own the business, they said.

Analysts have been predicting mergers between the largest telecommunications equipment makers in the five years since the Internet bubble collapsed. As wireless and conventional phone companies merged and the binge in spending on state-of-the-art fiber optic networks subsided, carriers slashed their budgets for new equipment.

At the same time, new low-cost competitors entered the market, particularly from Asia. Huawei, based in China, for instance, has been able to win contracts in Asia in places where Lucent and others had previously been successful.

Siemens was particularly vulnerable. The company sold its cellphone handset division to BenQ, of Taiwan, last summer. BenQ still uses the Siemens brand name and Siemens factories in Germany, but the Taiwanese company ultimately hopes to build a brand of its own.

With its retail presence diminished and prices for network equipment falling, Siemens was long thought by industry analysts to be considering ways to cushion itself in an increasingly volatile market. The company sells equipment to wireless carriers like Cingular in the United States.

Siemens is also likely to face increased pressure when Alcatel and Lucent complete their merger because Alcatel provides G.S.M. wireless technology and Lucent is a leader in the rival C.D.M.A. technology. With Siemens joining forces with Nokia, the combined company will have more money to develop products and additional customers.

At the same time, Nokia has been looking to strengthen its network business to compete better with Motorola, analysts said.

Both companies are also likely to compete for contracts in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where wireless networks are still being expanded.

A deal between Nokia and Siemens leaves open the question of what will happen to Nortel, the Canadian network equipment maker. The company has weathered several years of accounting troubles and its stock has been pummeled during that time. Nortel is one of the largest companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Canadian officials might be reluctant to see it fall into foreign hands.

Nokia and Siemens expect their combination will create about $1.5 billion in annual savings by cutting back office costs and creating other efficiencies, the people involved in the transaction said. Both companies decided to structure the deal so that they would continue to retain stakes in the combined business, so they could gain if the value of the entity rises because of the enormous expected savings, these people said. The structure of the deal is somewhat surprising because Siemens was expected to sell or spin off its network equipment business.

Ken Belson contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/bu.../19merger.html





Norway to House Seeds in Doomsday Vault
Doug Mellgren

It sounds like something from a science fiction film—a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

But Norway's ambitious project is on its way to becoming reality Monday when construction begins on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to house as many as 3 million of the world's crop seeds.

Prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland were to attend the cornerstone ceremony on Monday morning near the town of Longyearbyen in Norway's remote Svalbard Islands, roughly 620 miles from the North Pole.

Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen has called the vault a "Noah's Ark on Svalbard.''

Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

The seeds, packaged in foil, would be stored at such cold temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years, according to the independent Global Crop Diversity Trust. The trust, founded in 2004, has also worked on the project and will help run the vault, which is scheduled to open and start accepting seeds from around the world in September 2007.

Oil-rich Norway first proposed the idea a year ago, drawing wide international interest, Riis-Johansen said.

The Svalbard Archipelago, 300 miles north of the mainland, was selected because it is located far from many threats and has a consistently cold climate.

Those factors will help protect the seeds and safeguard their genetic makeup, Norway's Foreign Ministry said. The vault will have thick concrete walls, and even if all cooling systems fail, the temperature in the frozen mountain will never rise above freezing due to permafrost, it said.

While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard's free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust.

The Nordic nation is footing the bill, amounting to about $4.8 million for infrastructure costs.

"This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters,'' Cary Fowler, the trust's executive secretary, said in a statement, adding that crop diversity is also threatened by "accidents, mismanagement and shortsighted budget cuts.''

Already, some 1,400 seed banks around the world, most of them national, hold samples of their host country's crops.

But these banks are vulnerable to shutdowns, natural disasters, war and lack of funds, said Riis-Johansen.

Storing duplicate seeds in the Svalbard vault is meant to offer a fail-safe system for the planet.

The idea of a global seed bank has been around since the early 1980s, but unresolved issues, such as ownership rights to genetic material, stalled it until the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization adopted the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in 2001.

While Norway will own the vault facility, countries contributing seeds will own the material they deposit—much as with a bank safe deposit box. The Global Crop Diversity Trust will help developing countries pay the cost of preparing and sending seeds.
http://www.livescience.com/othernews...nge_seeds.html





Sony Music Wants Bloggers To Promo Videos, Music
Michael Kanellos

Sony BMG Music Entertainment wants to give bloggers free music and video--sort of.

The music conglomerate is promoting a new site, called Musicbox Video, that showcases videos, artist interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and other material from a broad portfolio of its artists. Want to see a film clip of Bruce Springsteen singing "The River" from the 1980 movie "No Nukes" or some clips from Franz Ferdinand? The site has it.

But Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers--who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios--to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site. Individuals thus could create sites focused around certain artists by linking to video channels on the Musicbox site dedicated to them, or link to several channels which, in the aggregate, comprise the most mawkish artists (in the view of the blogger) that Sony has to offer.

The turnabout largely comes amid a revamp of the company being conducted by CEO Howard Stringer. It is also taking place because the videos, in Flash, can't be pirated, at least not easily.

Sony also sells ads on the service. DreamWorks Animation SKG and Hewlett-Packard have already signed up to show commercials. The ads pop up before the first video plays. Roll-overs, sponsorships and other forms of advertising will likely be integrated into the system.

Thousands of touch points

The partner behind the curtain on the deal is Brightcove, the IPTV start-up founded by former Macromedia exec Jeremy Allaire. Brightcove hosts the service, sells the advertisement and writes the code that allows individuals to link to the material.

Other studios and publishers are looking at putting up similar video deals, he said.

"The media organizations are starting to embrace the idea that their library of assets can be exploited through thousands of touch points," he said. "It is an opportunity to embrace that urge among consumers to post videos."

Music and movie producers currently allow third parties to host their content, but these deals typically take several meetings and ornate contracts, Allaire stated.

Music companies have also not typically made money off videos, which for two decades, have existed to promote songs on MTV. Videos are now available on company-authorized sites, which contain ads, but traffic is sporadic. Linking essentially provides an avenue for syndication.

Brightcove also provides video hosting for the Discovery Channel, Reuters and others. Only some of them, however, are allowing for Web syndication.

Success, of course, will depend upon Brightcove's ability to meet any traffic demands and maintain security.

Customer attitudes toward Sony will also play a part. Individuals do not get to program the content on the different Musicbox channels--just the channels they add. If a site links to the Shakira video channel, for example, the site owner does not get to block out select videos or keep ones around they happen to like: Sony determines what videos will be available during certain days or weeks on the channel.

Once one of the strongest brands in the world, Sony angered customers earlier this year by installing software on consumers' PCs that exposed them to vulnerabilities. The software was loaded onto PCs through Sony BMG CDs.

Sony has also seen its once dominant position in televisions and electronic devices get eroded by Samsung, Panasonic, Microsoft, Apple Computer and others. Layoffs and other changes have been imposed in an effort to right the situation.
http://news.com.com/Sony+Music+wants...3-6085036.html





USB Teddy Bear Holds Data, Scares Children
Stan Horaczek



Generally, when someone makes a teddy bear-themed gadget, his/her intention is to overwhelm bystanders with cuteness. But whoever created this little guy, whose head has to be removed in order to access the internal USB drive, must have watched one too many Tim Burton movies. No word on how much it holds or if there are any plans to make these available for purchase, but with your own bear, a thumb drive, some thread and a closet full of skeletons, you can probably make your own without too much effort.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/19/u...sung-bd-p1000/





The BPI Talks Exclusively To WiredFire

The past few weeks have been chaotic on the news front, with the dramatic disclosures surrounding The Pirate Bay drawing everyone’s focus away from what has probably been one of the busiest weeks in technology related news in recent times.

Half the world seems to be ganging up on Apple over their use of AACS DRM and cheap labour, Microsoft have announced their concern at diminishing profit margins, Bill Gates has announced his resignation as CEO of Microsoft, the Dutch courts have announced a ruling that could impact on the legality of indexing sites and the BPI have relinquished their control over owners recording their own music and announced their intention to prosecute Russian operators, Allofmp3.com. Few could dismiss such remarkable events as boring or inconsequential.

Perhaps one of the least reported issues concerns that of the BPI. Peter Jamieson, Chairman of the BPI has stated “traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates”.

“We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.”

And about time, too, for that interpretive view of copyright law was completely unenforceable and at odds with the Human Rights Act, which specifies that “Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions”.

For that matter, the Copyright Designs and Patents Act extends copyright protection to the original content and does not apply to second generation copies. Not only can you copy what you already own, but copying a second generation copy of another recording (e.g. downloading a copy) appears to lie outside of existing law. Not that the BPI have ever targeted those who download anyway.

Mark Richardson, Managing Director of Independiente Records risibly claimed in a joint statement “It is early days for digital music. At this point in time the cost of distribution for downloads is actually higher than for CDs. Regardless of that, however, distribution remains a relatively small part of the investment record companies make in music. All of the key costs for a piece of music remain virtually the same whatever format you distribute it on.”

Clearly there should be far fewer costs in distribution, there is no physical product to produce, package, store, transport, distribute, merchandise, handle or sell. There are no record stores, sales staff, or whatever to fund as part of the consumer cycle. If, and I use that word very guardedly, the costs of distribution are higher, how come iTunes can sell download media perfectly legally for a fraction of the price of the physical media? Mr Richardson would do well to remember the old adage that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. And perhaps the BPI would do well to remember that in life, you are often judged by the company you keep.

Jamieson went on to criticise iTunes for their use of non interoperable DRM, calling on Apple to open up its software in order that it is compatible with other players. “We would advocate that Apple opts for interoperability”

All fascinating stuff, but what of this issue regarding Russian music vendors AllofMP3.com? According to XTN, iTunes accounted for 44% of UK paid downloads. Russian pay site allofmp3.com came second with 14% followed by Napster at 8% and both MSN and Wippit trailing with 6% each.

Time for WiredFire to talk to the experts, in this case an exclusive interview with Matt Phillips, Communications Manager of the BPI who are said to in the process of suing AllofMP3.com.

Nick: Has this arisen because of the XTN figures showing the popularity of allofmp3.com?

Matt: “No, Nick. But it's true that the growing awareness of the site (partly due to the PR around the XTN figures) has made it an increasingly big problem for us”

Nick: Will the action be based in the UK and then migrate to Russia once you have obtained judgement, or will it be under Russian law?

Matt: “It will be a civil case brought in the UK. There are provisions within UK law to bring an action outside the jurisdiction”

Nick: Why are the BPI involved and not the Russian arm of the IFPI? Why isn't the IFPI instigating this action?

Matt: “Nick, AllofMP3 are infringing our members' rights by illegally supplying UK consumers with music downloads. They are able to do this at cut prices because, despite their claims, they do not pay a penny to the artists or the labels”

But AllofMP3.com are on record as having stated that this is not true, and that they currently pay royalties to ROMS for redistribution within Russia. According to their own press release “AllOfMP3.com does regularly transfer substantial amounts of royalties to the Russian organizations for collective management of rights such as ROMS and FAIR, which have granted the site licenses to legally deliver music through the Internet.”

Matt went on to say “Rather than initiate legal actions against the UK users of the site, which we would be perfectly entitled to do, there are provisions in UK law to bring a civil case against the site itself outside the jurisdiction.

IFPI are also seeking to close down the site, and there are two ongoing criminal cases against the directors behind the site that have been brought by our equivalents in Russia, but the IFPI are not part of the BPI's legal actions”

Matt didn’t explain how it was that UK users of AllofMP3.com could be liable under existing law, inasmuch that S22 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act. This section states “The copyright in a work is infringed by a person who, without the licence of the copyright owner, imports into the United Kingdom, otherwise than for his private and domestic use, an article which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of the work”. Quite clearly the BPI would have a very difficult time indeed trying to enforce action against any individuals importing copyright material for their own private and domestic purposes. And they know it.

Matt was most emphatic that AllofMP3.com are not trading under some grey area – or “loophole” - under Russian law, rather that the problems are more an issue of delays in Russian enforcement, adding “you should note that the US are also piling pressure on the Russian authorities to get the site closed down”.

However, AllofMP3.com states that “The Russian site AllOfMP3.com is not operating or advertising its business on the territory of other countries”, and in many respects, consumers are indeed as free to shop internationally as they are in their local shopping mall.

Whether the BPI action is likely to be that successful is open to widespread conjecture. On the surface they would appear to have quite a solid case under UK civil law, given that their site appears to be targeting English consumers. But enforcing any judgement overseas is going to be an altogether different issue – especially if AllofMP3.com can demonstrate that they have been complying with the laws of their own country and that their export market is incidental to their primary business model.

Perhaps the biggest clue as to their future intentions is detailed within their press release:

“On September 1, 2006 the changes to the Russian copyright legislation will come into force. Since January 2006 the site has been making direct agreements with rightholders and authors at the same time increasing the price of the music compositions and transferring the royalties directly to the artists and record companies. The aim of AllofMP3.com is to agree with all rightholders on the prices and royalties amounts by September 1, 2006

We believe in the long term and civilized business based on respecting the law, considering the customers' demands as well as the interests of both national and international rightholders”.

Whilst it appears that AllofMP3.com seem set to straighten up their act, this promises to be an interesting time for observers.

Whatever the outcome, we feel that it is about time that the true cost of digital music is properly reflected in the retail price. Ridiculous statements such as those made by Mark Richardson that “the cost of distribution for downloads is actually higher than for CDs” do nothing to attract any sympathy from those of us who have spent not inconsiderable fortunes in amassing our modest CD and DVD collections.

Whilst the BPI are to be commended for their more realistic approach to digital file transfers than their US counterparts, the RIAA, their curious choice of allies in the form of Mark Richardson of Independiente Records is certainly doing them no favours.

WiredFire are grateful to Matt Phillips of the BPI for giving so much of his time to this interview.
http://wiredfire.org/index.php?q=node/78





Net Students 'Think Copying OK'

Students of the "Google generation" often do not understand what plagiarism is, says an expert on the issue.

Many of the new generation of students raised on the internet see nothing wrong with copying other people's work, says Professor Sally Brown.

Prof Brown, of Leeds Metropolitan University, will tell an international conference that the net has made copying and pasting too easy.

She suggests personalising assignments would make plagiarism difficult.

Prof Brown, pro vice-chancellor for assessment, learning and teaching at Leeds Metropolitan, will be speaking in Gateshead this week.

In her presentation for the conference, she says students do not necessarily see anything wrong with copying other people's work.

She says they say things like "if they are stupid enough to give us three assignments with the same deadline, what can they expect?" and "I just couldn't say it better myself".

Some do not understand about the rules while others know there are rules but get them wrong, she says.

Widespread problem

They might have poor academic practices - not keeping good records of where the material they were using came from, for example, she adds.

"They are post-modern, eclectic, Google-generationists, Wikipediasts, who don't necessarily recognise the concepts of authorships/ownerships."

Research indicates that plagiarism - whether done as deliberate cheating or not - is widespread in UK universities.

And all of them had a problem with it, Prof Brown says.

"The ones that say they haven't got a problem have got their heads in the sand."

She outlines four basic strategies for tackling plagiarism:

• try to deter and punish
• make the penalties known and try to educate the students on the issue
• try to "design it out" - her preferred option - for example by setting assignments that required personal knowledge or keeping a diary or showing work in progress
• change the culture in which students are working - the hardest option

'Bullying tactics'

A big issue - but one hard to tackle - was students who deliberately paid someone else to produce work for them, Prof Brown says.

She says she has even heard of students bullying other people into doing their work.

But group working could also present problems.

"There is a very wobbly line between collusion, co-operation and cheating," Prof Brown says.

"And students don't know where the wobbly, fuzzy lines are."

Increasingly, software is being used to detect work that is similar to other people's.

But Prof Brown has this warning: "The good plagiarists aren't caught."

The JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service's second international plagiarism conference is at The Sage, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, from Monday to Wednesday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...on/5093286.stm





Blu-Men

Unboxing the Samsung BD-P1000
Evan Blass

Life sure is good in The Man Room. First these guys got a hold of Toshiba's HD-A1 HD DVD player before almost anyone else, and now they've also managed to score a Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray unit a full six days before the official release, capturing the entire unboxing process for us to enjoy. Since the first Blu-ray titles won't go on sale until tomorrow, initial impressions are limited to the player's design, menu layout, and upscaling abilities, with the HD-A1's output used as a reference point in the latter category. The good news here is that the 500 extra bucks you'll have to spend to pick up the Samsung do indeed give you a few initial advantages over the Tosh, such as the snazzier packaging (big deal), more attractive case, and perhaps most importantly, significantly faster startup and load times. On the downside, the HD-A1 showed slightly better upconverting abilities than the Blu-ray model, and The Man Room also experienced a rather unnerving shrinking and flickering of the menus when connecting to a 1080i projector. As for us, we're gonna wait until some reviews start showing up online before we decide to either shell out the cash or wait for the Sony, the Pioneer, or maybe even the PS3 to come out. Keep reading to check out the remote and a shot of the main menu...
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/19/u...sung-bd-p1000/





Toshiba Says to Launch HD DVD Recorder in July

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said on Thursday it would launch the next-generation, high-definition optical disk recorder based on the HD DVD format on July 14 in Japan.

Toshiba expects the world's first HD DVD recorder, equipped with hard disk drive, to sell for 398,000 yen ($3,466).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/wa...rtner=homepage





Toshiba Losing $200 Per HD-DVD Player, Firm Finds
Mark Hachman

Toshiba is losing approximately $200 or more on each sale of its HD-A1 HD-DVD player, an analyst firm said Friday.

iSuppli, which has published so-called teardown analyses of the Apple Intel-based iMac and other devices, said that the components needed to assemble the HD-A1 came to approximately $674, significantly higher than the $499 estimated price the company charges.

Testing, cables, the remote control and packaging probably has pushed Toshiba's cost to more than $700, the company said.

Unsurprisingly, the firm came to the conclusion that Toshiba is buying its way into the market. Blu-Ray players from Samsung, Sony and others will start shipping this summer, for about $999.

However, establishing a beachhead in the next-generation DVD market could pay off, as in the U.S. alone, estimated DVD player sales totaled about 16 million units in 2005, excluding PC sales and game consoles, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, via The Digital Bits.com. In 2004, player sales totaled just under 20 million units, as manufacturers have shifted to new models with recording capabilities to boost their sales prices.

"It's unusual to find this level of subsidization outside of the video-game console and mobile-phone markets," said Chris Crotty, senior analyst of consumer electronics at iSuppli, in a statement. "Presumably, Toshiba anticipates making back any initial HD-A1 losses with subsequent products. There is little question that Toshiba had to use a high-cost design for its first model. But there is a big question as to whether pricing its player so much less than Blu-ray is worth the financial risk."

In 1997, the year that the DVD Video format and its first players were launched, approximately 349,000 DVD players were sold, according to the CEA. The average price was just under $490, according to the CEA.

iSuppli forecasts that factory shipments of all next generation DVD equipment—both HD-DVD and Blu-ray—will rise to 65 million units in 2010, up from 1.6 million units in 2006. The firm predicts that both formats will win ground in the marketplace for some time, without a clear winner.

Interestingly, iSuppli found that the HD-A1 uses a Pentium 4 as its main processor, meaning that the device is more similar to a PC than a consumer-electronics device. The Pentium 4 is paired with other programmable componentrs, namely Broadcom Corp.'s BCM7411 for High-Definition (HD) video decoding and four ADSP-2126x SHARC programmable Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) from Analog Devices Inc., the firm found.

In all, the total cost of the chips within the HD-A1 is about $247, including $125 spent on a 1-Gbyte DIMM from Hynix, three other types of DRAM, as well as a 256-Mbyte flash chip from M-Systems and a 32-bit MirrorBit flash chip from Spansion.

"The Toshiba HD-A1 is basically a combination of a low-end PC and a high-end DVD player," noted Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli, in a statement.

CE devices typically use optimized ASIC chips that are tuned for exactly the functions the device needs to perform. While creating such components requires design dollars on the back end, the per-chip cost savings usually results in a net savings over the life of the unit.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20060623/...Ym hvBHNlYwM-





Which New DVD Format? Neither Just Yet
David Pogue

WELCOME to high-definition-DVD-FAQs.com, your one-stop info resource about the next generation of home movie equipment! Here you'll find all the frequently asked questions about the new DVD players ... and, better yet, the answers.

Forrester Research says that 17 percent of American households have high-def TV screens; no wonder the electronics industry thinks that DVD technology is ready for an upgrade, too. After all, the 60,000 movies already available on DVD may look good on your TV today — but they're not true high definition. You're not seeing the full color, clarity and contrast your high-def screen is capable of.

Your timing in visiting our site couldn't be better — the very first Blu-ray DVD player, Samsung's BD-P1000, arrives in stores next week. Read on for details on this revolutionary new player.

And now, on with the Frequently Asked Questions!

What about the format war?

Yes, there are two incompatible types of high-definition DVD players: HD-DVD (backed by Toshiba, Microsoft, Sanyo, NEC and movie studios like New Line and Universal) and Blu-ray (backed by Sony, Apple, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Pioneer, Dell and movie studios like Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate and Disney).

Most movies will be available in only one high-def format. Whichever you choose, you won't be able to play some of your favorite movies on DVD. Isn't competition fun?

Which format plays movies better?

The two formats offer equally spectacular picture and sensational sound. The image is much sharper than before, and the detail is incredible.

Video buffs notice the difference right away. Most people, however, would notice a difference only if an ordinary DVD and a high-def DVD were playing side-by-side on big screens.

What about features?

Both DVD formats let you summon pop-up, on-screen menus without stopping the movie, so you can switch languages or change scenes without a detour to a main menu. Nice.

Both formats make possible new kinds of DVD extras, like picture-in-picture director commentaries (rather than just audio commentaries). And Blu-ray discs can offer a Scene Search function: a clickable menu of the actors and the scenes in which they appear.

All of this is so far theoretical, however. We here at high-definition-DVD-FAQs.com have sampled 10 early HD-DVD movies and 7 Blu-ray discs — and not one of them offers any of these features. In fact, for the most part, the DVD extras aren't even in high definition. Clearly, the first order of business for the movie studios was just converting the actual movies to high-def DVD; filling in the blanks can come later.

Which is the best high-definition player?

You mean, of the two available so far?

The new Samsung Blu-ray player costs a cool $1,000 — twice as much as the Toshiba HD-DVD player that arrived last month. (Both players also play standard DVD's, even "up-converting" them to improve the picture on high-def screens.)

Samsung concedes that $1,000 isn't exactly pricing for the masses, and stresses that its new machine is intended for well-off early adopters. Which is sort of self-evident, isn't it? "The target audience for this player is whoever will buy it. ... "

Then again, that $1,000 buys you a number of advantages over the Toshiba; for example, the Samsung is substantially smaller (17 by 12.1 by 3.1 inches). Lighter, too. And absolutely great-looking: the piano-black, pseudo-lacquered finish of the front panel wraps around to form the entire top surface. The front panel glows with cool blue accents.

The Samsung also has memory card slots, so that you can watch your digital camera's pictures in high definition. They look really amazing that way.

In fact, Samsung must think they look really, really amazing; even in its fastest slide-show mode, each photo lingers on the screen for at least 15 seconds. We love our kids and all, but that's about 12 seconds longer than necessary.

I heard that the Toshiba takes more than a minute to start playing a DVD. How about the Samsung Blu-ray deck?

Only 30 seconds.

That's still not as fast as a traditional DVD player, though. And the Samsung introduces several-second pauses here and there — between the studio logo and the menu screen, between the menu and the start of the movie, and so on.

Samsung's engineers fill these intervals with what may be the world's worst "please wait" symbol: an hourglass icon, as in Microsoft Windows. It's our guess that most people would rather be spared the constant reminder that they've stuck a glorified PC under their TV sets. What's next — the Blu-ray Screen of Death?

The hourglass appears almost constantly during those excruciatingly slow photo slide shows. Worse, it appears right smack in the middle of each photo, often on a loved one's forehead.

I'm a videophile. Can you give me all the geeky specs that make my heart pound?

That's what we're here for!

The Samsung can connect to your TV using any of these connector types: HDMI, DVI (with an optional HDMI adapter), component cables or composite (RCA) cables. It hooks up to your sound system using coaxial, optical or stereo outputs, and understands Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby DTS and MP3 audio tracks.

The Samsung can pump out the highest-def high-def picture there is: a 1080p signal. (That means the image is formed by 1,080 horizontal lines, painted progressively down the screen.) Not many TV sets can even display 1080p yet, and there's not what you'd call a world of difference between 1080p and the Toshiba's best effort, 1080i (which is 1,080 lines, appearing as alternating, interlaced sets of 540).

But for those early adopters with $1,000 to spend, at least they know their system is futureproof.

How's the remote?

Hey, Samsung — we just paid you $1,000. How about tossing us a bone — like illuminated buttons on the remote? Ever heard of someone watching a movie with the lights turned low?

The Play/Pause and Stop buttons are larger than the others and distinguished by recognizable rubber bumps, which is a good thing.

On the other hand, the remote is filled with buttons that don't seem to do anything. (Some of them, like Cancel, are just a tease.) And there are no fewer than three different Menu buttons. (They correspond to the player's menu, the movie's menu and the in-movie pop-up menu.)

Should I buy one?

It's pretty early to consider a high-def DVD player. Keep in mind that for the next six months, the movie selection will be pitiful. The day the Samsung arrives, for example, a grand total of nine Blu-ray movies will be available, including "50 First Dates," "Hitch" and "The Fifth Element." Lions Gate will add five more the following week (like "Crash" and "Saw"), but even by the end of July, the entire Blu-ray library will consist of 24 flicks. (At least 130 other movies are slated for Blu-rayification, but release dates haven't been set.)

Besides, if you can wait until November, you'll be able to buy a Blu-ray player for only $500 — in the form of Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, which will double as a Blu-ray DVD player. Furthermore, rumor has it that dual-format players (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) are in the works for 2007.

But I really want it!

Are you sure? It's really awfully early. It's so early, even Samsung is a little sheepish about the glitches. "Blu-ray Disc is a new and evolving format," the user manual says. "Accordingly, disc compatibility issues with new and existing format discs are possible. Not every disc will play back."

I know, but I still want it.

Listen: What part of "It's too early" don't you understand?

If you buy one now, you risk making a huge investment in Blu-ray gear and movies (about $20 each), and then watching in horror as HD-DVD winds up winning the format war. Or vice versa. If that's your fate, you'll have to junk your whole investment.

In that case, don't forget to visit our sister site, Modern-day-Betamax-suckers.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/te...ogue.html?8dpc





Review

The First Blu-Ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A
mikemuch

"ExtremeTech has a review of Pioneer's BDR-101A-- the first Blu-ray burner available. The drive can do anything with CDs, is kind of slow with DVDs, and doesn't support double-density Blu-ray media, but hey, it's a start, and can burn 25GB in 42 minutes. Check out its burn speed benchmark performance at the link above."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardwar.../2258200.shtml





Blue on Blu-Ray

Review

The Fifth Element (Blu-ray)
M. Bracke

"I don't want one position, I want all positions!"

Did I pick the wrong movie for my first Blu-ray review? As any self-respecting tech-geek knows, the first disc you choose to fire up a new format can be akin to a religious experience. Okay, maybe I'm going overboard, but really -- what hardcore home theater nut doesn't remember what the first laserdisc was that they ever bought? Or the first DVD? So it goes now with Blu-ray. And coming only a mere two months after the launch of HD DVD, it has been a bit of an embarrassment of riches -- when was the last time two major new consumer electronics formats launched so close together?

Anyway, for my inaugural Blu-ray experience, I went with 'The Fifth Element.' Not, honestly, because I love the movie, but because it has long been regarded as one of the finest-looking standard DVDs out there. So I figured the Blu-ray version must be a home run, right? Well, not so fast. Unfortunately, as you'll find out later on down in the video section, this one didn't quite meet my expectations. So I apologize upfront that what may be the first Blu-ray disc review you read won't be an unequivocal, four-star rave. That said, this is only one of many, many Blu-ray titles to come, and we all know you can't judge a new format just by one disc.

But I digress. How's 'The Fifth Element' as a movie? Well, I for one have always had mixed feelings about the films of French auteur Luc Besson. He's certainly audacious, with a bravura visual style, a vigorous sense of pacing and seemingly no fear when it comes to engaging in narrative flights of fancy. Yet many of his films have thus often felt a bit disjointed to me, as if all the cinematic razzmatazz is more important to Besson than the story he is trying to tell. And of all his films, I may feel this most acutely with 'The Fifth Element.'

The plot is classic goofy sci-fi (though perhaps the story is besides the point?) As 'The Fifth Element' begins, we learn four stones were taken from Earth in 1914 by a race of giant mechanical turtle-like creatures called the Mondoshawan in order to keep humankind safe from evil. Flashforward 300 years and as the Mondoshawan are returning to Earth they are attacked by a group of mercenary dog men, the Mangalores, which leaves our planet defenseless. But out of the wreckage of battle, scientists are able to salvage a claw that they use to regenerate a new "perfect being" called Leeloo (Milla Jovovich). Too bad she escapes from the lab, and crash lands on the cab hood of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis). They are soon thrust into a sort of treasure hunt to save all mankind. They must restore "the fifth element" -- a sarcophagus that stands in the middle of the four stones -- to restore harmony to the galaxy. Er, something like that.

To be honest, I often had absolutely no idea what was going on during a lot of 'The Fifth Element.' This is one loud, colorful, pop tart of a movie. It's like 'Blade Runner' meets 'Xanadu' meets 'The Apple,' only even more outlandish. The plot is so crazy and convoluted, just missing 30 seconds of it is the equivalent of missing 30 minutes of another movie. Certainly, many sci-fi fans will love this -- Besson wisely hints at a larger mythology, which gives the world he creates a life outside of just the visuals. But it is also hard to take any of it seriously, because it is all so day-glo-tastic, and the cast is having such a good time chewing the scenery, there ultimately seems to be little at stake aside from the ballooning costume budget.

Oh, did I mention who else is in this movie? Simultaneously amusing and obnoxious is a pre-'Rush Hour' Chris Tucker, who as DJ Ruby Rhod seems to be channeling Prince and that guy from the 'Mannequin' movies. Then there is Ian Holm as Vito Cornelius, a member of an eternal line of clerics (don't ask). Normally a very serious actor, even Holm looks like he is struggling to keep a straight face during most of the movie. And who can forget Gary Oldman as the freaky arms merchant Zorg -- it is saying something that of all the actors here, he might actually be the most restrained. Even in the ridiculous get-ups he is asked to wear (all designed by Madonna favorite Jean-Paul Gaultier, of course).

I suppose many sci-fi fans will love 'The Fifth Element.' I certainly did have fun, even if I never, ever bought a single second of it. It is a big, bright, colorful explosion of a movie -- and certainly looks cool. Ultimately, I don't know how influential this movie has become (if at all), and it certainly cribbed most of its best visuals from movies like 'Blade Runner.' But Besson still manages to create a film with an unquestionably unique cinematic sensibility, even if I remain left with absolutely no idea of what it is supposed to be about.


The Video: Sizing Up the Picture

Okay, here it comes -- the big question. Does Blu-ray deliver the visual goods? Can it match, or even beat rival HD DVD? Of course this is just one title, my first title, so I can't judge the format unequivocally. And, unfortunately, again, I probably picked the wrong disc for my initial Blu-ray test drive, because quite simply 'The Fifth Element' is just not the best HD I've seen, either compared to HD DVD or even-over-the air HD broadcasts. 'The Fifth Element' can't even compare to the best Blu-ray itself has to offer, because I did briefly sample a few other titles prior to sitting down with this one, and all appeared to deliver superior video quality even at a mere glance.

However, make no mistake, this is a good-looking picture if you're not too critical. I bet the average consumer who saw this disc up and running at their local Best Buy would probably think it was darn swell. However, I felt there were some deficiencies inherent in the source material itself that keep this one from hitting a homer, or even a solid triple. Though not as noticeable perhaps on the standard DVD releases (even the Superbit), 'The Fifth Element' looks oddly soft in HD, with a lack of detail and three-dimensionality that ranks it as not-quite-demo material in the high-def sweepstakes.

But first a couple of positives. Most noticeable are the vivid and clean colors. Reds, especially, really pop, and I also loved all the vibrant purples and greens. Contrast is also nicely rendered, with solid blacks and clean whites. But, unfortunately, the big problem here is still the softness. This transfer is just not that sharp, at least compared to the best HD I've seen. The print is also a bit dirty in spots, which really surprised me. This all gives the image a flatter look that I'm used to on HD -- what I expected would be eye-poppingly three-dimensional throughout just plain isn't. Oftentimes, I felt like I was watching a standard DVD upconverted to 1080i -- good, but kinda fake-looking. Indeed, when I compared the Blu-ray version of 'The Fifth Element' to the Superbit upconverted (both via my Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray deck), the difference was not as apparent as between most of the the HD DVD and DVD releases I've seen. Still, complaints aside, 'The Fifth Element' does look very good, and this is hardly a bad transfer. It just is not the best that Blu-ray has to offer.

One final note. Unlike Toshiba's first-generation HD DVD players, the Samsung BD-P1000 is capable of outputting full 1080p (at 30 fps only) via its HDMI output. However, again, without the same title available on both Blu-ray and HD DVD, nor a 1080p-capable HD DVD player on the market, it is simply unfair to try and proclaim one format superior to the other. Until we can compare apples to apples, raw technical specs indicate that both formats should be able to deliver the same high level of video quality, at least when the playing field is level.


The Audio: Rating the Sound

Unlike the backers of the HD DVD format, Sony is taking a different tack with the audio on their Blu-ray offerings. Like all of the initial Blu-ray titles I've received thus far from the studio for review, 'The Fifth Element' includes neither a Dolby TrueHD nor a Dolby Digital-Plus soundtrack. Instead, Sony presents the film in PCM 5.1 surround -- meaning uncompressed audio. (Optional English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround tracks are offered, however.) Also gone is the DTS 5.1 surround track included on the previous Ultimate Edition and Superbit DVD versions. So, trying to compare this disc to any HD DVD Dolby Digital-Plus track would be pointless (different formats, different movies). I can only compare the uncompressed PCM track here to the Dolby Digital and DTS tracks on the previous DVDs.

Audio format issues aside, I can honestly say the PCM track here does sound noticeably superior to both the previous Dolby and DTS tracks. Of course, it helps that 'The Fifth Element' has indeed stood the test of time as a film with absolutely terrific sound design. This disc produces one heck of an involving and enveloping soundfield, with full use of all channels for more than just the odd effect or music cue here or there. The sense of space and imaging to the mix is often quite stunning. Pans from channel to channel are almost transparent, even more so in PCM. Dynamic range is also a bit fuller than on the old DTS track, and especially the Dolby Digital. Low bass also really delivers some punch, but it is tight with no distortion. And thankfully, I did not have to ride my volume control at all during the movie, trying to balance dialogue with bombastic effects -- this mix is very even and the levels are just right.

If just this one disc is any indication, I can safely say after having reviewed a couple of dozen HD DVD titles that Blu-ray is certainly capable of delivering a soundtrack as good as any I've heard on the rival format. Of course, the real test will be a direct comparison of the same movie head-to-head on HD DVD and Blu-ray. But until the studios begin to release their titles on both formats, I think it is fair to say neither format can really be said to be technically superior to the other -- at least for now.


The Supplements: Digging Into the Good Stuff

As expected, Sony has ported over the same extras that were included on the previous "Ultimate Edition" DVD release of the film (though not all of them). Unfortunately, that release wasn't so great. Director Luc Besson declined to be involved, so all of the bonus content felt like reheated EPK material (and it was). So certainly, the appeal of this Blu-ray release won't be because of its extras.

First, though, note that like all of Sony's first Blu-ray titles, 'The Fifth Element' boasts what the studio is dubbing "Seamless Menu Navigation." Basically, it is the same nifty real-time menu system that Warner uses on their HD DVD releases. You can access all the disc's chapters, options and extra features "live" while the movie is playing, with no interruption. However, Sony has not integrated Warner's zoom function, which allows you to magnify the picture, nor a chapter bookmarks function. At least that I could find.

Now, on with the extras. There was never commentary proper on the Ultiimate Edition of "The Fifth Element,' but there was a trivia fact track, which is replicated here. As usual with these types of features, there is lots of needless if fun trivia, from bits on the cast and production to how many times the number "five" appears in the movie. Cute. But the real centerpiece of the Ultimate Edition DVD was its five featurettes, all with the word "Element" in their titles (clever, huh?) Alas, all that material was culled from the same set of EPK interviews with the cast and crew, and Luc Besson was nowhere to be found. It was never gonna win any awards, I must say

"The Visual Element" (18:24) features profiles of French comic book legends Jean-Claude Mézières and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, lifelong friends who worked together for the first time on 'The Fifth Element.' "The Digital Element" (9:46) is a visit with Digital Domain, who created the film's many CGI-assisted effects, including the flying cab ride through the sky and Leeloo's big leap, which here is examined via a raw-to-final film comparison. "The Star Element"(20:21 total) features three interviews with Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Chris Tucker. All appear to be taken on-the-set, so unfortunately it is pretty dated stuff. "The Alien Element" (25:14 total) dissects four of the film's cool creatures, and includes outtake and other conceptual footage. Finally, we get "The Fashion Element" (7:44), a visit with costume designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. A funny, engaging guy, you certainly can't say his viewpoint is boring, even if some of his stuff in 'The Fifth Element' feels like throwaways from Madonna's "Blonde Ambition" tour.

HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There?

No exclusive HD bonus content (unless you count the menu navigation system). But as one of the first Blu-ray titles, I wasn't really expecting any.

Final Thoughts

'The Fifth Element' is a tough one to rate. Simply by virtue of it being one of the first Blu-ray titles, it had to look perfect or I would likely have been disappointed. And it does look good, no doubt -- it just is not the best HD I've seen. Also a problem is that this film has been released so many times before on standard DVD that maybe only some exclusive HD content here would have elevated it above being just a decent upgrade. Still, it is clear even from this release that Blu-ray can deliver on the bottom line, so I only expect to be even more impressed by the coming Blu-ray titles in the week's ahead.
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/fifthelement4.html





'Cars' Wins Box Office For 2nd Weekend
David Germain

Animated autos retained the pole position as "Cars" came in No. 1 at the box office for a second weekend with $31.2 million, holding off the wrestling comedy "Nacho Libre" and another car tale, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift."

"Cars," from Disney and Pixar, beat a rush of new movies, lifting its 10-day domestic total to $114.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Paramount's "Nacho Libre," starring Jack Black as a cook at a Mexican orphanage who takes up wrestling to buy better food for the kids, debuted in second place with $27.5 million.

The third in the "Fast and the Furious" racing franchise, Universal's "Tokyo Drift" opened at No. 3 with $24.1 million. The movie stars Lucas Black as a speed freak who gets caught up in Japan's illegal racing scene.

"Speed" co-stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock reunited for the Warner Bros. romantic drama "The Lake House," which took in $13.7 million to place fourth. The time-bending tale casts Reeves and Bullock as pen pals corresponding with each other two years apart.

The weekend's other new wide release, 20th Century Fox's "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties," opened weakly with $7.2 million, coming in sixth. The live-action and animated sequel features the voice of Bill Murray as the comic-strip fat cat.

"Garfield" had been competing for the same family audience as "Cars," whose voice cast includes Owen Wilson and Paul Newman in a comedy about a race car that learns the value of slowing down.

"I guess the family audience picked their favorite and decided that this is what it was going to be," said Chuck Viane, head of distribution at Disney, which recently bought its animation partner Pixar, the maker of "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and the "Toy Story" movies.

The week's two sequels came in well below their predecessors. "The Fast and the Furious," with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, opened with $40.1 million in 2001, and Walker's 2003 followup "2 Fast 2 Furious" debuted with $50.5 million.

"Garfield: The Movie" took in $21.7 million over opening weekend in 2004.

In limited release, the IFC Films crossword-puzzle documentary "Wordplay" opened solidly with $34,959 at two New York City theaters. The film, featuring interviews with such crossword enthusiasts as former President Bill Clinton, comic Jon Stewart and the musical duo the Indigo Girls, expands to more theaters Friday.

Hollywood's overall business rose for the fifth-straight weekend. The top 12 movies took in $139.1 million, up 7 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Batman Begins" opened with $48.7 million.

Estimated ticket sales were for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Cars," $31.2 million.

2. "Nacho Libre," $27.5 million.

3. "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," $24.1 million.

4. "The Lake House," $13.7 million.

5. "The Break-Up," $9.5 million.

6. "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties," $7.2 million.

7. "X-Men: The Last Stand," $7.15 million.

8. "The Omen," $5.35 million.

9. "The Da Vinci Code," $5 million.

10. "Over the Hedge," $4.05 million.

---

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal; DreamWorks is a unit of DreamWorks SKG Inc.; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount and Paramount Classics are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line, Warner Independent and Picturehouse are units of Time Warner Inc.; Lionsgate is owned by Lionsgate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





New Superman Movie Dazzles Critics In First Reviews

"Superman Returns," which opens in the United States next week, is receiving knock-out first reviews from critics, with newcomer Brandon Routh tipped to win over audiences as the latest crime-fighting "Man of Steel."

Hollywood's two trade newspapers, Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter, gave the movie strong reviews, with The Reporter describing it as "a heartfelt Superman movie that plays to a broad audience thanks to an emotionally troubled Man of Steel."

Daily Variety critic Todd McCarthy said director Bryan Singer had imprinted the Warner Bros. movie with its own personality. "'Superman Returns' is never self-consciously hip, ironic, post-modern or camp. To the contrary, it's quite sincere, with an artistic elegance," he said.

Routh won praise for his apparent effortlessness -- with his resemblance to Superman predecessor, the late Christopher Reeve, not going unnoticed.

The movie's plot has Superman returning to Earth following a mysterious absence of several years. Back home, an old enemy plots to render him powerless once and for all while the superhero's great love, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), has moved on -- or has she?

Newsweek said Singer, who left the popular "X-Men" franchise to make "Superman Returns," did the right thing from the start of "this gorgeously crafted epic" by showing respect for the most foursquare comic superheroes of them all.

The magazine added that "Routh may or may not be a real actor, but he effortlessly lays claim to the iconic role, just as Reeve did. Indeed, he virtually duplicates Reeve in the way he plays Kent as a diffident, awkward Midwestern colt."

"Next to Singer's champagne, most recent superhero adventure movies are barely sparkling cider."

Time magazine said Singer and writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris had revived and revised the story's premise. "The result is an action adventure that's as thrilling for what it means as for what is shows," Time said.

The film is Superman's first big-screen appearance since the 1987 movie "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace" starring Reeve.

Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner Inc.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsAr...ilm+NewsNews-2





'Star Trek' Fans, Deprived of a Show, Recreate the Franchise on Digital Video
Danny Hakim

Paul Sieber was wearing a "Star Trek" uniform in the deep Virginia woods when he found himself surrounded by a leathery-looking gang.

Fortunately, the ruffians were dressed up as Klingons, and Mr. Sieber, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, was preparing to film them with a $6,000 digital video camera. At times like this, Mr. Sieber, the writer and director of "Starship Farragut," must come to grips with the obvious — not all Klingons are trained actors — and bellow, "Quiet on the set!"

From these Virginia woods to the Scottish Highlands, "Star Trek" fans are filling the void left by a galaxy that has lost "Star Trek." For the first time in nearly two decades, television spinoffs from the original 1960's "Star Trek" series have ended, so fans are banding together to make their own episodes.

Fan films have been around for years, particularly those related to the "Star Wars" movies. But now they can be downloaded from the Web, and modern computer graphics technology has lent them surprising special effects. And as long as no one is profiting from the work, Paramount, which owns the rights to "Star Trek," has been tolerant. (Its executives declined to comment.)

Up to two dozen of these fan-made "Star Trek" projects are in various stages of completion, depending what you count as a full-fledged production. Dutch and Belgian fans are filming an episode; there is a Scottish production in the works at www.ussintrepid.org.uk.

There is a group in Los Angeles that has filmed more than 40 episodes, according to its Web site, www.hiddenfrontier.com, and has explored gay themes that the original series never imagined. Episodes by a group in Austin, Tex., at www.starshipexeter.com, feature a ship whose crew had the misfortune of being turned into salt in an episode of the original "Star Trek," but has now been repopulated by Texans.

"I think the networks — Paramount, CBS — I don't think they're giving the fans the 'Trek' they're looking for," said Mr. Sieber, a 40-year-old engineer for a government contractor who likens his "Star Trek" project, at www.starshipfarragut.com, to "online community theater."

"The fans are saying, look, if we can't get what we want on television, the technology is out there for us to do it ourselves," he added.

And viewers are responding. One series, at www.newvoyages.com, and based in Ticonderoga, N.Y., boasts of 30 million downloads. It has become so popular that Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov in the original "Star Trek," is guest starring in an episode, and George Takei, who played Sulu, is slated to shoot another one later this year. D. C. Fontana, a writer from the original "Star Trek" series, has written a script.

For many Trekkies, contemporary science fiction on television — like "Battlestar Galactica" and the more recent Star Trek spinoffs — are too dark.

"Modern science fiction takes itself too seriously," said Jimm Johnson, 37, who presides over Starship Exeter.

John Broughton Jr., who founded the Farragut project, agreed. "One thing about the classic 'Star Trek' is at the end of the episode, it was pretty much a happy ending," he said. "It was sort of like 'The Brady Bunch.' It was all tidied up."

Mr. Broughton, a wiry Navy veteran with spiky hair, is a serious collector of all things "Star Trek." His avocado tunic, he said, is made from bolts of the nylon used for the original "Star Trek," purchased at $100 a yard. His boots are made by the son of the man who made the boots used in "Star Trek," he said. His megaphone, bought for $325 on eBay, was the one used by William Shatner when he directed "Star Trek V."

In the woods with the Klingons, Brad Graper, 52, finished detailing a pair of Nerf guns painted gray, with sections of chrome tailpipe added to them as gun barrels. Mr. Graper sat at a cluster of picnic tables in this lush 1,814-acre park. Klingon re-enactors from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania played extras.

"I'm General DuraD," Mr. Graper said. "The D and the D are capitalized."

Around him, Klingons applied swarthy face paint and black hair dye, adjusted silvery sashes, and tottered in platform boots. They usually portray the more heavily costumed Klingons from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the series spinoff that started in 1987. Those Klingons had big ridges on their heads requiring elaborate prosthetics.

"This is the first time I've ever done an original Klingon," said Sally Arkulari, 46, who works on a large farm in Lancaster, Pa. "It's a lot less work."

Ms. Arkulari is a tall woman, in a shimmering green dress, heavy eyeliner and orange hair extensions. What's her view on the Klingon woman?

"Love 'em because they're so tough," she said. "Part of that is not my personality. I need to be more aggressive as a person, and I'm not, so I like that."

The couple of dozen people on the set are either related, are friends or met at a Star Trek convention. David Sepan, 31, who plays a security officer, is a spacecraft analyst at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and monitors a space probe heading to Mercury. Mr. Sieber is a family friend. Mr. Sepan's sister Amy, 29, is Farragut's makeup artist and costume designer.

"I'm also Dr. Christina Hawley," she said, and then performed a line from her script: "Captain — he's dead!"

Holly Bednar, 42, who plays an engineer, is the executive director of a theater in southern Maryland and one of the few participants here with theater experience. Her husband, Mike Bednar, 45, is the prop man, cameraman, science officer and a friend of Mr. Broughton's. The Bednars were childhood sweethearts who lost touch for 23 years and then reconnected and got married in 2004.

Ms. Bednar came late to "Star Trek" and considers herself in the married-to-Trekkie category.

"It was kind of a nice thing for Mike and I to work on together," she said. "For Mike, it's the 'Star Trek' stuff. For me, it's the acting."

At 11 a.m., Mr. Sieber rounded up the Klingons and explained plot points. "You guys are generating a cloaking field from the planet around the orbiting weapon," he explained. Heads nodded. "They heard a rumor from some Orion spies that you guys might be trying to do something on this planet, not knowing that there's this many of you here, and that's why they end up getting ambushed."

Fair enough. The group packed into a caravan of cars and headed into the woods at the park south of Washington. They had the camera, a boom mike, even a Hollywood scene marker. Mr. Sieber yelled "Action!" A trio of Klingons charged a gully, crouched into firing positions and tumbled as they pretended to be shot.

Later, they filmed 12 takes of a scene in which Mr. Broughton, as the captain of the Starship Farragut, and the Bednars walk through the gully, talking. There are sound problems, battery problems, glare problems.

Next scene: the three jump behind a fallen tree. They pretend to be pinned down by Klingons.

"Reinforcements! Crossfire!"

In a quiet moment, Mike Bednar reflected on what brings a man into the woods, wearing a form-fitting blue tunic, jet-black pants and shiny ebony boots, and carrying a camera. He recalled meeting Mr. Broughton years ago, when his friend was ending his stint in the Navy.

"I used to joke with him, 'You'd never get me in a "Star Trek" uniform, even on Halloween, it's not going to happen,' " he said. "Next thing I know, I'm wearing a uniform."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/ar...b75&ei=5087%0A





Battling the Copyright Monster
Fiona Morgan

How does a filmmaker document the world around her when the sights and sounds that make up that world are copyright protected?

Law professors Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins co-wrote and produced the comic book Bound By Law? Tales From the Public Domain. It explores the legal barriers documentary filmmakers in particular must hurdle, or simply avoid.

Aoki, a professor at the University of Oregon who studied art before going to law school, drew the panels. Likenesses of Boyle and Jenkins, both professors at Duke University Law School, act as guides for the story's fictional heroine, a young filmmaker named Akiko.

The story is itself an exercise in fair use, using copyright images and references to documentaries such as Eyes on the Prize and Outfoxed. The book was recently released under a Creative Commons license. A free digital version is available online. Soft Skull Press will publish a print version later this year. Images of some of the comic book's pages are available at the Wired News Bound by Law gallery. Wired News spoke with the three authors by phone recently about the book's creation.

Wired News: Who is the audience for this book?

James Boyle: Our first audience is documentary filmmakers and film students. But we're also trying to reach people who might not think of themselves as documentary filmmakers, people who have video blogs for example, who are using digital tools and editing software to put things online.

But beyond that, there's a larger audience of people who are interested in the effect of copyright on culture, in the free-culture movement, people who are interested in what a world without gatekeepers might look like.

WN: What inspired you to make it a comic book?

Keith Aoki: In my former life as an artist, I was a student of Art Spiegelman, and one of the things he instilled in me is a deep appreciation for the history of comics. Jamie and Jennifer and I are children of the Mad magazine generation, which taught kids to be very distrustful of authority, of ads and hype. That was my first encounter with using copyrighted imagery and turning it around on itself to make a critical comment on the culture.

Boyle: A lot of people imagine that mashup culture is something unique to the digital age, but it goes all the way back to Benjamin Franklin taking popular songs and changing the lyrics to make a comment or a protest about a political situation. The notion that you might need to take a copyrighted, or in that case widely recognized, piece of art and use it in your own work goes all the way through our culture. It's just that in the digital realm it happens so much more and so much faster. The technology lets more people do it more often and reach a wider audience.

WN: Why did you decide to focus on documentary film in this book? What is it about that art form in particular that makes it an especially good topic?

Jennifer Jenkins: First of all, documentaries are incredibly important records of our history and culture. They're visual histories, and they're increasingly based on copyrighted culture. Our book describes several instances in which the telling of that history has been thwarted by permissions issues. An example is Jon Else having to pay $10,000 for a four-and-a-half-second clip of The Simpsons playing in the background of his film (Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle). The makers of Mad Hot Ballroom had to pay that same amount to EMI because a cell phone rings in the background of one of the scenes, and the ringtone is the theme from Rocky. These examples really resonate with people. They understand that these are instances where copyright is not working the way it's supposed to.

Boyle: The history of our culture is in large part the history of a mass of copyrighted material. The question is, are we going to put our own history off-limits to the documentarians, the historians of the future? Copyright is supposed to encourage the dissemination of knowledge, but in those cases it does exactly the opposite.

WN: In the book, you talk about copyright law being out of balance. Can you explain that?

Boyle: There are several ways this has happened. For one thing, copyright now lasts longer than it ever has before, so anyone who's telling the history of American culture after 1923 is using stuff that's copyrighted. That's a long time ago. A lot of people who were working in the past were working under certain rules, knowing that work would soon be in the public domain. Well, we're unfortunately unique as a generation completely cut off from the past 80 years because of the continual extension of copyright terms.

The second thing is that there are a lot of claims under copyright that really have nothing to do with copyright law. This is what Larry Lessig calls the "permissions culture," where people ask permission for the use of tiny fragments that end up in the background of their films or music out of fear or under threat of lawsuit.

And the third thing is the technology. In the '50s, it was quite hard to violate copyright. You needed a printing press or a movie studio. Now all of us make copies of things all the time.

A fourth thing that cuts the other way is the fear-and-loathing syndrome. There's a whole generation of filmmakers and digital creators whose only experience of copyright is as a hassle, as an obstruction, as a cease-and-desist letter preventing them from making or distributing their work. They see copyright as a pointless labyrinth they have to make their way through to make their art. We actually view ourselves as copyright defenders, showing how copyright is supposed to work. We're saying this imbalance could cause us to lose the next generation of artists, if they think of copyright as worthless.

WN: In what way would those artists be lost?

Boyle: One possibility is for people to throw up their hands and say, "I think this whole copyright culture is ridiculous." The people who have that attitude are probably not going to be respectful of copyright at all, even in cases where they should. So they go underground and do it illicitly. There's a cost to that, which is that their work never enters the mainstream.

WN: You urge artists to assert strong claims of fair use because if we don't use it, it could go away. How would that happen?

Boyle: One of the four factors that a court considers when considering a fair-use claim involves, in part, whether there is a market for the work. Let's say I contact you and say, "You had an eight-second clip from my TV show playing in the background of your documentary. Pay me $8,000." You might say, "No way, it's fair use." I would argue, "No it's not, because there's a market for eight-second clips of TV shows like mine, and you're hindering me from taking advantage of that market." Well, there is no market for that, so it is fair use. But what happens when people give in and pay? The more people do that, the more of a market there turns out to be, and now I have a more legitimate claim.

WN: You gave out copies of the book at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. What kind of response have you gotten from filmmakers?

Jenkins: The filmmakers were incredibly enthusiastic. When you tell someone, "Why don't you read this book about copyright?" they think, "Oh God, no, anything but that!" So one of the things we were trying to do is to enlighten and demystify copyright, and by doing so empower filmmakers with better information so that when they deal with copyright issues, which they have to do all the time, they're not simply working off rumors or complicated and one-sided information sources.

Boyle: One thing I would add is that none of us is presenting this as legal advice. This book is there to educate people so they can know what questions to ask.

WN: Will you tackle any other art forms?

Jenkins: The next comic book is about music and copyright, which is rich territory. We've started to sketch it out. We're going to go into the history of music and how copyright has affected it over time. The do-not-sample rule has driven a lot of sampling-based music genres underground. Meanwhile the more commercial rap and hip-hop that gets produced involved a tremendous amount of permissions -- some impressive percentage of the cost of producing an album is permissions fees, cleared by an army of record company lawyers.

Boyle: One of the questions we're going to be asking is, "Would we have genres like jazz, blues or soul if those musicians had to work in the current climate of copyright protection?" Imagine if, in the history of jazz, anyone who played a sample of any bar of someone else's music had to clear each and every sample and pay permissions, or else just go underground and play at backstreet bars and never make a record. Would we have a better culture? Would this lead to advancement in the arts? I don't think so.

Aoki: Picture a conversation between Bach, Robert Johnson and John Lennon, in comic book form.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,...n_technology_3





'The Road to Guantánamo' Offers Grim Chronicles That Anger and Stir
A. O. Scott

THE release of "The Road to Guantánamo" comes shortly after the suicides of three prisoners held in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the midst of renewed concern, in the United States and abroad, about the mistreatment of detainees and the policy of holding suspected terrorists at the detention camp. In a sense, then, the film, which is based on the testimony of three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantánamo for more than two years, does not tell us anything new. It is nonetheless a wrenching and dismaying account of cruelty and bureaucratic indifference, a graphic tour of a place many citizens of Western democracies would prefer not to think about.

It should be emphasized that the movie, directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, is not a documentary. It does rely on talking-head interviews with the former prisoners — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhel Ahmed, known collectively as the Tipton Three for the town in northern England where they grew up — and faithfully reproduces their version of events. Most of what the audience sees on screen, however, is a re-enactment, conducted mainly by nonprofessional actors. By the time the action reaches Guantánamo — those scenes were shot in Iran — the artifice is unmistakable, since no camera could have penetrated the actual isolation cells, interrogation rooms and chicken-wire cages of Camps X-Ray and Delta. But earlier sequences in Pakistan and Afghanistan have the shaky, grainy urgency of real life captured on the fly.

This is not the first time Mr. Winterbottom has mingled the techniques of documentary and fictional filmmaking; he did it whimsically in his mischievous nonadaptation "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," pruriently in the moodily hard-core "9 Songs" and soberly in "In This World," his grim chronicle of young refugees in flight from Afghanistan. Nor is he alone in teasing the cinematic boundary between storytelling and truth-telling. He seems to have been inspired at least partly by Iranian films like "Close-Up," "The Apple" and "Where Is the Friend's House?," which used ordinary people and on-location photography to recreate real events.

Those films can induce a kind of vertigo in the viewer, an almost philosophical confusion about the literalness of the filmed image. And "The Road to Guantánamo" can be disorienting, especially in its first half, as it switches back and forth between the recollections of the three main characters and the raw immediacy of their restaged ordeal. It is sometimes hard to match the speakers with the amateur actors playing them, or to establish a clear sense of who they are.

Curiously, their personalities emerge only in the dehumanized environment of Guantánamo itself, when their heads have been shaved and they are dressed in identical orange jumpsuits. There, as the combination of tedium and brutality stretches time and tests their endurance, the movie begins to gather the emotional force that is likely to leave you sickened, shaken and angry. For their part, the former detainees look back calmly and speak about their worst moments with a combination of detachment and puzzlement. How did this happen to them?

"The Road to Guantánamo," relying as it does on their testimony, does not entirely answer that question. In September 2001, Mr. Iqbal flew to Pakistan to meet the woman his mother had chosen for him to marry. Shortly afterward, Mr. Ahmed, who had agreed to be the best man at the wedding, arrived with two other friends, Mr. Rasul and Monir Ali.

The story of how they ended up in Afghanistan is left a bit hazy, in spite of vivid images of miserable bus rides over bumpy, unpaved roads. The idea of crossing the border into Afghanistan seems to have arisen almost on a whim. They wanted to see for themselves what was going on and to participate in a humanitarian aid mission organized by the imam of a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. Sitting in an outdoor restaurant one evening, they talk excitedly about the size of Afghan flatbreads, as if they were planning a culinary road trip.

As the war against the Taliban intensifies, the four young men travel first to Kandahar, then to Kabul and finally to Kunduz, where they are captured by Northern Alliance soldiers. At that point, an arduous, possibly ill-advised adventure turns into a nightmare, as they are first accused of being Al Qaeda fighters and then, after months of harsh treatment, coerced into confessing that they are.

There may still be some die-hards who respond to pictures of hooded prisoners and detailed accounts of physical and psychological abuse with accusations of anti-Americanism. The filmmakers and the Tipton Three are fairly circumspect with regard to their own political beliefs, but their ideological commitments are really beside the point. A news clip shows President Bush referring to the Guantánamo detainees as "bad guys," and it is not necessary to believe that the Tipton Three were good guys — one of them had a police record in Britain — to be appalled at their treatment.

And also profoundly depressed. "The Road to Guantánamo," while far from a great movie, nonetheless effectively dramatizes a position that has been argued, by principled commentators on the left and the right, for several years now: that the abuse of prisoners, innocent or not, is not only repugnant in its own right. It also squanders a crucial strategic advantage in the fight against terrorism, namely the moral superiority of liberal democracy to the nihilism and extremism that oppose it.

The facts on which "The Road to Guantánamo" is based are horrifying, and in its most effective moments it provokes strong feelings of helplessness and dread. But by far the scariest thing about this movie is that, for too many people in this country and elsewhere, it may already have lost the power to shock.

"The Road to Guantánamo" is rated R (Under 17 not admitted without a guardian) for language and violence.

The Road to Guantánamo

Opens today in New York;

Arlington, Va.; Berkeley, Encino, Irvine, Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Francisco and San Rafael, Calif.; Cambridge and Waltham, Mass.; and Washington.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross; director of photography, Marcel Zyskind; music by Harry Escott and Molly Nyman; production designer, Mark Digby; produced by Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter; released by Roadside Attractions. Running time: 91 minutes.

WITH: Riz Ahmed (Shafiq), Farhad Harun (Ruhel), Waqar Siddiqui (Monir) and Arfan Usman (Asif).
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/06/2...guan.html?8dpc





'Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man': A Documentary Song of Praise
Stephen Holden

When Leonard Cohen speaks, the elevated cadences of language are strewn with poetic images so precisely articulated in a rumbling bass-baritone voice that they all but erase the distinction between his song lyrics and personal conversation. Each word is carefully chosen and pronounced with oratorical flourish. Even when his sepulchral drone isn't bending itself around a melody, its sound is musical.

Here is one sample of his conversational style, from Lian Lunson's wonderful documentary portrait, "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man." Reflecting on the inspiration for his song "The Traitor," he muses that it is about "failing or betraying some mission you were mandated to fulfill and being unable to fulfill it and then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it but to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself."

If a strain of gallows humor didn't underlie many of Mr. Cohen's pronouncements, such observations might sound insufferably pretentious. But he continually undercuts his own solemnity. Here is he is on his own mystique as a silver-tongued Casanova: "My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly the 10,000 nights I spent alone."

"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" combines pieces of an extended interview with this Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and author, now 71, with a tribute concert organized by Hal Willner at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005. Titled "Came So Far for Beauty" (after a Cohen song), the event featured performances of many of Mr. Cohen's best-known songs by Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright and Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), among others.

Some of the performers offer pungent personal comments. Mr. Cave recalls discovering Mr. Cohen's "Songs of Love and Hate" album while living in a remote Australian town and suddenly "feeling like the coolest person in the world because it separated me from everyone and everything I detested."

Bono and Edge from U2, who did not participate in the Sydney event, offer extravagant tributes and near the end of the film are shown accompanying Mr. Cohen in a New York club performance of "Tower of Song." Edge likens him to "the man coming down from the mountaintop with tablets of stone having been up there talking to the angels."

Bono observes, "As dark as he gets, you still sense that beauty is truth."

Mr. Wainwright, who performs more songs than any other guest, sings "Everybody Knows," "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" (Mr. Cohen's self-deprecating and indiscreet reminiscence of a sexual encounter with Janis Joplin), and "Hallelujah" (the Cohen song Mr. Wainwright and Jeff Buckley have made something of a downtown standard).

He locates the dark humor at the bottom of "Everybody Knows," a bleak prophecy about the end of the world as we know it. Backstage he recalls the first time he met Mr. Cohen, who was in his underwear, cooking soba noodles and feeding bits of sausage on a toothpick to revive a baby bird. It wasn't until Mr. Cohen disappeared and returned wearing an Armani suit, Mr. Wainwright said, that he realized he was in the presence of a legend.

Two of the other more memorable performances come from Antony, who cries out "If It Be Your Will" in an eerie, shivering falsetto, and Teddy Thompson (son of Richard and Linda), who stamps the more obscure Cohen song "Tonight Will Be Fine" with the concert's most intense vocal.

Reflecting on his life and work, Mr. Cohen recalls first encountering poetry in the Jewish liturgy at a synagogue. Some of his more recent recollections are of a purgative sojourn in a Zen monastery during the 1990's on Mount Baldy, where he studied with a Japanese Zen master.

But a Zen-like austerity has always been present in his writing. A Zen spirit also informs his modest self-assessment of his life's work.

"I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while," he says. "Also the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune."

"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It contains some strong language.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Opens today in Manhattan

Directed by Lian Lunson; directors of photography, Geoff Hall and John Pirozzi; edited by Mike Cahill; music by Leonard Cohen, performed by Nick Cave, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Antony, Linda Thompson, the Handsome Family, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, Jarvis Cocker, Perla Batalla, Julie Christensen, Joan Wasser and U2; produced by Ms. Lunson, Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey; released by Lionsgate. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 104 minutes.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/06/2...es/21leon.html





Al Gore's Documentary Wins Special Award
AP

The Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" will receive a rare recognition from the Humanitas Prize, which honors screenwriting that helps "liberate, enrich and unify society."

"An Inconvenient Truth," which chronicles Gore's quest to draw attention to global warming, will receive the organization's first Special Award in over 10 years, president Frank Desiderio announced Wednesday.

"It's a very important film," he said in a statement. "We want to shine a light on it."

The documentary's director, Davis Guggenheim, said he was "thrilled" with the recognition, adding that Humanitas "supports the achievements and sacrifices of filmmakers trying to change the world."

Since 1974, the Humanitas Prize has presented awards and grants to TV and film writers whose fictional work reflects "the positive values of life." Documentaries are occasionally recognized with Special Awards. The last such honors went to Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers in 1995 for their documentary "What Can We Do About Violence."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





Heh!

‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ Reruns Return to TV

Paul Reubens' crazy character returns to television July 10
AP

After being shuttered for more than 15 years, the doors to “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” are being reopened.

The Emmy Award-winning show will get new life on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup, which will air all 45 original episodes beginning July 10, company officials announced Monday.

“I’d say this is a dream come true,” actor Paul Reubens said in a statement.

Reubens, 53, created the bow-tie wearing Pee-wee Herman in 1978 as a member of the L.A.-based comedy troupe, the Groundlings. Known for his big laugh and small suit, Pee-wee gained worldwide fame in 1985 as the star of his own movie, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton.

The film’s success led to “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which originally aired Saturday mornings on CBS beginning in 1986.

In 1991, a year after production wrapped on the final season of “Playhouse,” Reubens was arrested in Florida for indecent exposure.

Reubens returned to the big screen with an acclaimed performance in 2001’s “Blow.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13171374/





A Way to View 'Desperate Housewives' While Cruising the Nile
Eric A. Taub

Thanks to a handful of hardware and software products, viewers can see their favorite programs anywhere in the world at the same time they are being broadcast back home.

As long as the user has access to a high-speed Internet connection, both live and recorded programs can be transmitted from one's home across the globe, to be viewed on a PC or often other types of portable devices, like a palmtop, a cellphone or a portable game unit.

If this notion intrigues you, one word of warning: do not expect the picture quality to rival that of your expensive flat-panel HDTV back home. Because of bandwidth restrictions, the evening's episode of "CSI" displayed on your PC while sitting in a Hong Kong coffeehouse can often look no better than an old VHS tape, and depending on the vagaries of the connection, sometimes much worse.

Still, it is the ability to place-shift both live and recorded programming from one's home to a hotel in Hamburg or Seoul that has excited a legion of young people and early technology adopters.

According to some analysts, that legion is destined to remain small. Forrester Research estimates that the total potential audience for remote video access devices will rise to only 1.5 million customers by 2010, with total sales of 1 million. The most likely customers include business travelers and sports fans who can't bear the thought of missing an important game.

"It is quite comforting to be able to watch my programming in a foreign destination," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a research firm. "Still, the audience for this is initially limited."

Mr. Bajarin expects the technology to catch on with younger people eventually. The novelty of the technology has generated considerable publicity for companies including Sling Media, maker of the Slingbox, and Sony, which makes the LocationFree device.

Users of both systems attach a control unit to a home's TV or other video device like a digital video recorder or DVD player. The unit digitizes the incoming video stream and then transmits it over the Internet, assuming it is plugged into a broadband connection, like a digital subscriber line or cable modem. At the receiving end, a PC or other device can get access to the video data if the user knows the Internet protocol address of the home station.

But doing so is not simple; a certain level of technical prowess is required to properly connect the base station's cables and then ensure that the PC can actually communicate with the base. Internet IP addresses and passwords need to be entered, and router ports may need to be opened.

Despite several efforts, I was unable to configure properly either of two PC's to recognize a LocationFree base station without professional help. According to Josh Bernoff, a Forrester analyst, Slingbox's growth could be slowed because of "technical challenges" involved in setup.

In addition to the ability to watch programs in different geographic areas, LocationFree, Slingbox and a software solution from Orb Networks also allow users to watch TV anywhere in the house on a PC, as long as it is connected to the wired or wireless home network.

While the technology is compelling, the marketplace is crowded with competitors. Consumers can also download programs from the Internet or their PC to portable devices, like the Apple iPod, the Archos Media Player, Creative Zen Vision or the ZVUE.

Short films are available on a wide range of Web sites, among them Google Video, Yahoo Video and YouTube. Fee-based feature films can be purchased from sites like CinemaNow and MovieFlix and then viewed on a PC or a TV.

Still, it's the ability to watch local programming like news and sports as well as personalized recorded programming that may hold a special sway for viewers.

Live TV programming transmitted over the Internet is intended to be viewed on a nontraditional screen, like a PC or cellphone, or Sony's own L.C.D. screen for LocationFree. While video can be transferred to a standard TV, picture quality would suffer. And by working with personal, alternative viewing devices, unauthorized viewing (and potential complaints from companies that own transmission rights) can be minimized. Allowing an episode of "24" to be viewed in England on a standard TV screen could raise the hackles of the local British network that licensed the series for scheduling months later.

"We run our programming on a laptop or cellphone, and they do not represent big viewership opportunities," said Richard Buchanan, Sling Media's vice president for marketing.

For those who love the idea of watching "Cold Case" in Newcastle, right now, here are some options to consider:

Locationfree TV.

Sony's LocationFree TV was the first hardware device to enable remote viewing of live TV — as long as you watched on the company's L.C.D. screen that came bundled with the base station.

After slow sales, Sony reconfigured its approach and now markets the LF-PK1/M, a $280 stand-alone paperback-size base station, as well as the original $1,500 LFX11 bundle, which includes the L.C.D. TV.

LocationFree can transmit programming to that L.C.D. TV as well as to a Mac, a Windows PC or PSP portable game player. Mac software costs an additional $40.

The company has announced that it will work with developers to enable programming to be transmitted to mobile phones and P.D.A.'s, but no date has been set.

Slingbox

Sling Media's Slingbox ($250) resembles a Chunky candy bar; company officials say it looks like a gold ingot. Programming is encoded into the Windows Media format. Newly released software allows programming to be displayed on devices running Windows Mobile Edition for Pocket PC, as well as 3-G mobile phones. Mac-compatible software is due by year's end.

Because of the low bandwidth available, watching Slingbox-transmitted video on a cellphone "is like watching a slide show," Mr. Buchanan said. "You see one frame every 3 or 4 seconds, with synched audio, or audio only."

Orb Networks

A free software-based approach from Orb Networks allows users of Internet-connected PC's, cellphones and palmtops to gain remote access to live TV programming, photos, prerecorded video and music stored on a home PC.

The software is installed on a home PC running Windows XP. This PC acts as the base station; to work, it requires a video tuner card available from Hauppauge and several other manufacturers.

One caveat: to stream programming, the home PC-cum-base station must always remain powered on.

In the remote location, the user gets access to the programming through a standard Web browser. While the software is free, the company expects to make money by working with various content partners and by aiming Web-based promotions to users.

TiVoToGo

Using TiVo's free TiVoToGo service, owners of Series 2 TiVo models can transfer recorded programming to a PC or portable Windows Mobile-based device for later viewing.

To do so, the TiVo is connected to a home network using a wired or wireless setup. TiVo Desktop software allows users to pick the programs that will be transferred to the PC.

TiVo programs can also be transferred to a video iPod, a PlayStation Portable, a PocketPC or a Smartphone by using third-party software, like the $30 MyTV ToGo application.

TiVoToGo works only with TiVo Series 2 models and Windows PC's; a Mac version has been promised but no release date has been announced. TiVo units that incorporate DirecTV tuners are not compatible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/te.../22basics.html





'DRM' Protects Downloads, But Does It Stifle Innovation?

Consumers now have the ability to buy digital versions of music and movies from a vast (and growing) online catalog. But that convenience has come at a price: Most of the digital content is packaged with technology called digital rights management, or DRM, a sort of copy protection that limits what users can do with the material.

The Participants

Fritz Attaway is executive vice president and special policy advisor with the Motion Picture Association of America1, where he handles communications, copyright and international trade matters impacting MPAA member companies, which include Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Walt Disney Co., among others. Before joining the MPAA in 1976, Mr. Attaway worked as an attorney with the Federal Communications Commission.

Wendy Seltzer teaches at Brooklyn Law School and is a fellow with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society2. She was previously a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation3, specializing in intellectual property and First Amendment issues. She frequently writes4 about these and other issues online. Prior to her work at EFF, Ms. Seltzer was an attorney at Kramer Levin in New York.
* * *

The music and movie industries defend DRM as a means of protecting artists and publishers -- without it, they say, it would be too easy for users to abuse copyrights by illegally swapping files over the Internet. They also argue that without DRM technologies, publishers wouldn't have been willing to distribute their content in online music and video stores, such as Apple's iTunes.

But some consumer advocates argue that DRM often goes too far, treating customers as would-be criminals and putting burdensome restrictions on what they can do with music and movies that were legally purchased. (ITunes, for instance, allows users to burn music to an unlimited number of CDs, but limits the number of computers on which users can play purchased music.)

The Online Journal asked Fritz Attaway, a senior executive with the Motion Picture Association of America, to debate the issue over email with Wendy Seltzer, a law professor who specializes in intellectual property and First Amendment issues. Their exchange is below.

Mr. Attaway begins: Hello, Wendy. It is a pleasure to meet you in cyberspace. I am looking forward to a lively and informative discussion.

The answer to the question, "Is digital rights management being implemented in a positive way?" is a resounding yes. Positive, but not perfect. Let me explain.

Digital rights management is the key to consumer choice. The better the DRM, the more choices consumers will have in what they view, when they view it and how much they pay for it. The only valid criticism of DRM is that some of the DRM technology currently in use is not sophisticated enough. But it is getting better. Users of next-generation DVD technology will have more choices than they do today because the DRM technology will be more sophisticated.

Why is DRM the key to consumer choice? Because it allows content owners to tailor their offerings to what consumers want. Unless you believe in the tooth fairy, you understand that in order to make movies, which today average around $100 million in production and promotion costs for major studio releases, there must be a return. In other words, you must be able to get people to pay for the privilege of watching them. Many consumers want to own a permanent copy of movies. Others are only interested in having an opportunity to watch a movie once. DRM technology allows studios to offer copies of movies that consumers want to own, and a viewing only opportunity, usually at a much lower cost, to those who don't want a permanent copy. It is a win/win proposition for both the owner of the movie and the consumer.

I think I have used my allotted space, so Wendy, I will turn it over to you.

Ms. Seltzer responds: Thank you Fritz, it's a pleasure to have the chance to talk with you here.

Core to the question of DRM implementation today is the legal backdrop, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's7 anticircumvention provisions. The DMCA stops us from innovating in technology around DRM-restricted media, by declaring those innovations to be "circumventions" if not pre-approved by the copyright holders. The DMCA thus stifles technology innovation and scientific investigation, as well as interfering with end-user activities that don't infringe copyright. Our culture and our technology opportunities are poorer for the DRM-DMCA combination.

You raise the example of DVD as a success story, but DVD players have hardly changed in the last decade. True they've gotten cheaper, but I still can't buy one (lawfully) that lets me take clips to create my own movie reviews or "Daily Show"-style send-ups of my favorite films. I still can't play movies on my GNU/Linux computer. When Kaleidescape8 tried to build a DVD jukebox to allow people to burn movies to an enclosed hard drive rather than shuffle jewel cases and discs, the company earned high reviews -- and a pricey lawsuit.

DRM plus DMCA protects existing business models, such as that of the blockbuster movie, but at the expense of new developments that could create more value for both creators and users of content. In the era of podcasts and YouTube, I'm quite interested in seeing what those users can do as they become creators.

Mr. Attaway writes: Wendy -- I have been hearing that the DMCA will stifle technology innovation since the day it was enacted in 1998. But there is absolutely no evidence to support that assertion. In fact, the record supports the very opposite conclusion -- the DMCA has been an incredible stimulus to both technology and marketing innovation. Just look at some of the new viewing opportunities that have become available to consumers in the past few months:

• Warner Brothers partners with Free Record Shop using P2P distribution

• Disney offers feature length film on iTunes

• CBS delivers college basketball "March Madness" online

• ABC offers free downloads at ABC.com

• Google Video beta launched -- essentially going with a wholesale reseller model -- creating an iTunes-like store.

The DMCA may protect old business models, but it also stimulates new business models, and movie studios are at the forefront in the creation of new business models based on innovative technology.

DRM does not interfere with end-user activities any more than the electronic tags on the dresses you buy at the mall. DRM prevents you from breaking the deal you
make, taking something you haven't paid for. If you pay for one copy of a DVD movie, the DRM prevents you from making 50 copies. What is wrong with that?

What about "fair use" -- a legal term meaning a use of a copyrighted work that is not specifically authorized by the owner? The ability to exercise fair use is greater today that it has ever been. The copyright office has conducted two proceedings since enactment of the DMCA and found that the DMCA has had no significant impact on the ability to exercise fair use. Every time the DMCA has been challenged in court on grounds that it interferes with fair use, the court has found that claim to be unfounded.

Bottom line: While you can assert that DRM and the DMCA have stifled innovation and fair use, the facts demonstrate the very opposite.

Ms. Seltzer says: Fritz, I think we're talking about different parts of the media experience here. You talk about new viewing opportunities, while I'm talking about technologies that allow "viewers" to become creators building on shared cultural reference. Each of the models you mention is a new way to package viewing, but none of them recognizes the wishes of users who want to do more than view, or those who want to view in novel ways that haven't been licensed yet.

Fair use protects the public's rights in copyright. It gives the right to make "transformative" uses of copyrighted works, such as parodic remixes and home-made music videos. The same tech law that prevents making 50 copies of a purchased DVD often prevents doing creative things with one.

Along with the broader doctrine of noninfringing use, fair use also leaves room for unanticipated uses -- the "time-shifting" of the VCR, the "pause" button on a TiVo video recorder, the "time-stretch" function of my home-built MythTV11. None of those innovators needed to ask permission before offering their products. Under DMCA and proposed legislation, they would need to ask before working with DVDs, digital television, or digital radio broadcasts.

Further and unfortunately, it's hard to point to media technology that was never invented because its developers were too afraid of the legal climate to leave their garages.

If DRM is a dress tag, it has "enabled" the sale of dresses that, Cinderella-like, expire at midnight, and that prevents me from taking them to the tailor when styles change. I don't want that in my media any more than in my dresses.

Mr. Attaway responds: Wendy -- I think we are getting to the philosophical heart of the issue. You want to be able to take for free the intellectual property others invested their time, talent and money to create. I think those creators ought to be able to control, within reasonable bounds, how their property is used, and certainly to be able to extract the economic value of their investment.

"Transformative" uses are fine, but they cannot be given priority over the incentive to create new works. A central tenet of our fair use doctrine is that fair uses do not interfere with the ability of the creator to exploit the economic value of her work. You would strip the ability of content owners to prevent the making of unlimited copies for friends and family and even sale on the street corner, so that a few people might be able to make "transformative" uses of the works. I say the interest of society in the creation of new works should be the priority.

The good news is that as DRM technology becomes more sophisticated and discerning, content owners will be able to protect the economic value of their works AND provide consumers the flexibility to make transformative and other fair uses. Our goal should be to improve DRM, not kill it.

At the risk of over working the dress analogy, you suggest that your dress should not disappear at midnight. But if you only paid to use the dress until midnight, what is wrong with that? As I said, DRM only requires you to abide by the deal you have made. If you make a deal to rent a movie, you should not expect to be able to make a permanent copy.

Ms. Seltzer responds: Fritz, I have not been asking for media free of charge. I have been asking for it free of usage and interoperability restrictions that go beyond copyright. The difference is critical -- I fully support a market in which creators are compensated for their works, but not one in which a creative industry can monopolize cultural reference and the technology around its works.

The copyright balance is that both creators and the public get the returns on investment, neither to the exclusion of the other. None of us creates from scratch, rather one creative work is input to the next.

I'd gladly pay more for fully usable media. The problem is that I don't just want to see my own creative output, but the works of the public around me. DRM hides the choices from us until we have a whole ecosystem of limited-use devices: iPods that need their songs re-purchased after one too many computer crashes; first-generation HDTVs that won't work with the next generation of HD-DVD players; and movies you don't realize you can't re-mix until you have a flash of inspiration after Jon Stewart's Oscar show.

I would ask you how you justify DRM that does not stop the commercial pirates -- we all know they use even more sophisticated copying than the still-available DeCSS12 -- but does interfere with noncommercial transformation.

Mr. Attaway responds: Wendy, you have brought up what should be the key word in this discussion: balance. You are absolutely right -- copyright is a balance. And DRM is essential to achieving that balance.

Consumers should have a choice to either own a copy of a movie for multiple viewing, or to just view it one time for a much lower price. And movie companies want to provide that choice, and many more. But without DRM, every transaction would have to be priced as a sale, not just of one copy but of many copies, in order to account for unrestrained copying. Why would anyone purchase a higher-priced sale copy of a movie if he could simply rent, rip and return -- that is, rent, make a copy and return the original?

To repeat my refrain, if there is a problem, it is that DRM technology is not sophisticated enough to provide the optimum balance. The content industry is working hard with the technology industry to improve DRM and the options available to consumers. Good public policy will encourage that process by promoting the development and implementation of DRM.

With regard to your comment that many DRM technologies can be circumvented by commercial pirates, you are correct, but DRM is not intended to prevent commercial piracy. It is intended to insure that most consumers will keep the deal they make with movie distributors. Like the lock on your door, they are not a guarantee against theft, but they "keep honest people honest."

My plane is about to leave, so I must sign off. This has been great fun. I hope we will have an opportunity to continue this important discussion at a future time.

Ms. Seltzer concludes: Thanks Fritz. We're both talking about balance, but our equilibrium points are very different. You seem content if we can pay in lots of different ways to see the same movies on a constrained set of devices. I see balance in an ecosystem of big and small media and independent innovation of technologies around them. I want to see what iPod for movies and TiVo for radio look like, and not just from companies who can strike deals with the major movie studios and record labels before they start.

DMCA-backed DRM lets the majors dictate the terms, well beyond price, on which we can use and interact with media. It makes copyright's limited monopoly into a technology regulation, a gate on hardware and software development through which only "approved" devices can pass. More sophisticated DRM will not improve that problem, just make the approvals more onerous and the range of consumer electronics smaller.

Nobody wants a door lock that locks its homeowner out too often. The law can support DRM in the short term, but as more and more honest people trip against its restrictions on their noninfringing activities, I predict they'll press Congress to change the law to allow for creativity in media and technology again.

Have a good flight. I too enjoyed the conversation and look forward to continuing it.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article..._20060720.html





FCC Kicks Off Review of Media Ownership Rules

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday launched what is expected to be a fierce battle over whether to relax media ownership restrictions on television, radio and newspapers, a move that could spark consolidation in the industry.

A top priority of Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's agenda has been to allow a company to own a newspaper and a radio or television station that serve the same market and he repeated his desire to revamp the 1975 ban preventing such cross-ownership.

``The commission should take into account the competitive realities of the media marketplace while also ensuring the promotion of the important goals of localism and diversity,'' Martin, a Republican, said at the FCC's monthly open meeting.

Companies such as Tribune Co. and Media General Inc. have pressed the FCC to lift the cross-ownership ban, citing cost savings, among other reasons. They and Martin have contended there is plenty of competition.

The FCC tried to ease ownership restrictions in 2003, but an appeals court put them on hold, saying the agency failed to justify the limits it set. The public comment period will last four months and the effort could take at least a year.

The two Democrats on the five-member commission criticized the new effort. And consumer advocates have already formed alliances to lobby against making consolidation easier, arguing it would squeeze out independent voices and reduce local content.

``Even under the old rules, consolidation grows, localism suffers and diversity dwindles,'' said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. ``If we make the wrong decision, our communities will suffer and our country will suffer.''

Other rules to be reviewed include whether a broadcaster should be permitted to own more than one television station in smaller media markets, if a company can own more radio stations in a market and if the FCC should eliminate a rule that prevents two of the top four television networks from being owned by the same company.

Some have speculated Martin may seek a faster, separate track for lifting the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban.

``This must not be allowed to happen,'' Copps said.

He and fellow Democrat Jonathan Adelstein also criticized Martin for refusing to commit to issuing proposed new rules for public review before voting to set final rules.

Martin countered it appeared the Democrats were rushing to judgment about the outcome before the review had begun, rather than the other way around.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who was recently sworn in and who gives Martin a Republican majority at the agency, gave little clue about his thoughts on the rules.

``Our rules must take into account the dramatic changes that have occurred in the media landscape since the commission adopted them,'' he said. ``At the same time, we must ensure that the rules continue to promote the long-standing values of competition, diversity and localism.''

The agency plans to hold six public hearings and conduct some economic studies and analyses on the impact of adjusting the ownership rules, Martin said. Copps pushed for as many as 12 hearings.

While media industry executives generally support relaxing the ownership rules, not all shareholders agree with more consolidation.

Tribune has been under fire from its No. 2 shareholder, the Chandler Trusts, which would rather see the company separate its broadcast and publishing businesses, arguing that owning complementary media properties was not boosting profits.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/busin...ownership.html





Nielsen's New Plan: Measure Video Consumption, Not TV Watching
Nate Anderson

Nielsen Media Research has just announced an ambitious and far-reaching change to its traditional methodology for measuring television viewership. Recognizing that video is being consumed not just on televisions but on computer screens, cell phones, and iPods, the company plans to measure viewership on all of those platforms as well. The goal is to give television networks a more complete picture of where, when, and how their content is being consumed.

Television is in a state of flux at the moment as networks try to make sense of the massive changes that digital distribution has made to their traditional business model. With consumer attention increasingly drawn to video games, DVRs, computers, iPods, and television shows on DVD, television advertising revenue has gone flatter than an LCD screen.

Nielsen already tracks DVR usage to address fears by advertisers that they're paying too much for commercials that consumers ultimately skip anyway (they also plan to use GPS trackers on some people to determine when and for how long they're sitting in front of the television). Networks have responded by boosting product placements in their shows (a form of advertising that cannot be skipped), but have also realized that they need to embrace new delivery mechanisms.

Nielsen's new service aims to fill a hole in the current process of measuring digital downloads. Currently, companies like NBC know exactly how many episodes of The Office, for instance, are downloaded from iTunes. What they don't know is how many times those episodes are being watched and whether they are actually transferred to an iPod—information that would be valuable when trying to sell product placements. Likewise, a network such as ABC will have objective, third-party data on its new streaming service that will enable it to better sell ads.

"What marketers really want is some sort of single-source measurement, to find out what a day in the life of a media consumer is: What they're watching on cell phones, what they are watching on iPods, what they are watching on linear TV and when they are watching," said Brad Adgate, a research executive at New York-based ad buyer Horizon Media.

Nielsen hopes to integrate all these measurements to give networks and marketers alike better knowledge of how and where video is consumed. Though this is no announcement about the "death of television," it does show that the market has realized that it's all about the video itself, not the device where that video is watched. And increasingly, that device is not the television.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060615-7066.html





Married to Morticia

TV Producer Aaron Spelling Dies at 83
Bob Thomas

Aaron Spelling captivated generations of television viewers with shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "Beverly Hills 90210" and left an indelible stamp on American pop culture, but he never won the critical acclaim he sought.

One of the most prolific TV producers in history, Spelling chafed at the lowbrow label critics assigned his many hit series. He called his shows "mind candy" while critics referred to them as "mindless candy."

Spelling died Friday at his Los Angeles mansion after suffering a stroke on June 18, according to publicist Kevin Sasaki. He was 83.

"The knocks by the critics bother you," the man behind "Melrose Place" and "Dynasty" told The Associated Press in a 1986 interview.

"But you have a choice of proving yourself to 300 critics or 30 million fans. ... I think you're also categorized by the critics. If you do something good they almost don't want to like it."

Spelling's other hit series included "Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," "Burke's Law," "The Mod Squad," "Starsky and Hutch," "T.J. Hooker," "Matt Houston," "Hart to Hart" and "Hotel." Most recently he produced "7th Heaven" and "Summerland."

He also produced more than 140 television movies. Among the most notable: "Death Sentence" (1974), "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" (1976) and "The Best Little Girl in the World" (1981).

During the 1970s and 1980s, Spelling provided series and movies exclusively for ABC and is credited for the network's rise to major status. Jokesters referred to it as "The Aaron Broadcasting Company."

"Aaron's contributions in television are unequaled. To me, he was a dear friend and a truly genuine human being," Jaclyn Smith, the only original "Charlie's Angels" actress who stayed with the show for its entire run, said in a statement Friday.

Spelling liked to cite some of his more creditable achievements, like "Family" (1976-80), a drama about a middle-class family, and "The Best Little Girl in the World."

Among his prestige films for TV: "Day One" (1989), about the making of the atomic bomb; "And the Band Played On" (1992), based on Randy Shilts' book about the AIDS crisis.

Spelling had arrived in Hollywood virtually penniless in the early 1950s. By the 1980s, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $300 million. He gave his second wife, Candy, a 40-carat diamond ring.

The Spellings' most publicized extravagance was their 56,500-square-foot French chateau in Holmby Hills. The couple bought the former Bing Crosby estate for $10 million and leveled it to the ground, along with two other houses. Construction cost was estimated at $12 million.

Born on April 22, 1923, Spelling grew up in a small house in Dallas "on the wrong side of the tracks," he wrote in his 1996 autobiography. He was the fourth son of immigrant Jews, his father from Poland, mother from Russia.

At 8, he suffered what he termed a nervous breakdown and spent a year in bed. He later considered that period the birth of his creative urge.

Spelling enlisted in the Army Air Corps after graduating from high school in 1942.

After combat and organizing entertainment in Europe during the war, he enrolled at Southern Methodist University, where he wrote and directed plays. He continued working in local theatrics after graduating.

Finding no work in New York, Spelling moved to Los Angeles, where he staged plays and acted in more than 40 TV shows and 12 movies. His skinny frame suited him for the role of a beggar in the MGM musical "Kismet." He worked for three weeks, repeating his one line: "Alms for the love of Allah."

That experience resulted in two decisions: he abandoned acting for the typewriter; he married a young actress he had been courting, Carolyn Jones, who played Morticia in "The Addams Family" series. They divorced after 13 years, and she died of cancer in 1983.

Spelling's friendship with such actor-producers as Dick Powell, Jack Webb and Alan Ladd led to his rapid rise as a prolific writer and later producer of TV series. In 1960, Powell, head of Four Star Productions, hired him to produce shows. "Burke's Law" became the first hit series Spelling created.

After Powell's death, Spelling teamed with Danny Thomas, scoring a huge success with "The Mod Squad." In 1969, Spelling began an exclusive contract with ABC. Former ABC programming chief Leonard Goldberg joined him as partner in 1972.

After ABC canceled "Dynasty" in 1989 and his contract with the network ended, Spelling found himself without a show on the air for the first time since 1960.

"I was so depressed, I would have quit, but I like TV too much," Spelling wrote in his memoir. After a year's respite, he returned with "Beverly Hills 90210," which helped launch the fledgling Fox Network. "Melrose Place" gave Fox another hit.

Throughout his career, Spelling maintained the same image: the skinny frame, slightly hawkish face. He usually posed with a pipe in his mouth, a custom he adopted early after seeing stars with pipes in fan magazine photos.

Spelling and his second wife, Candy, had two children, Tori, who became a star on the two Fox serials, and Randy, who appeared in the short-lived "Malibu Shores."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





The vacancy fit for a king

Who Will Be The Next Bill Gates? Or Will There Be Several?
Peter Elstrom

Perhaps no one knows precisely why Bill Gates chose June 15 to announce to the world that he would give up his day-to-day involvement at Microsoft over the next two years. Or at least no one other than Gates and his wife Melinda.

Yet Paul Saffo, director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., can almost visualize the moment. "I think he looked in the mirror one day and said, 'You're fired,'" says Saffo.

Hotly debated over the past few years is whether Microsoft is a mature company, with few growth prospects left. What's indisputable is that the software giant is on the decline in terms of power, if not profits, as numerous upstarts, led by Google, have proven themselves more nimble and innovative in taking advantage of the Internet.

And over the past six difficult years, it's been Gates who has had the role of technical architect for the company's many products. So Gates' decision to leave Microsoft does more than vacate his posts at the software company. It also serves as public notice that the position at the center of the tech industry that Gates and Microsoft have occupied for decades is up for grabs.

(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal News.)

There may be more than one. As the PC era gives way to the Internet Age, a number of stalwarts are struggling to make the leap. At chipmaker Intel, where co-founder Andy Grove gave up his post as chairman last year, the company has lost its unquestioned position of dominance under a fierce assault from rival Advanced Micro Devices. In the wake of Michael Dell's decision to cede the chief executive title at computer maker Dell, the company has struggled mightily. Steve Jobs at Apple is one of a few industry veterans who continues to adapt and thrive.

Who will step up to be the industry's next king—or queen? Who will be able to drive the development of new technologies in such dramatic ways that he or she leads the way for the rest of the top companies? Someone at one of the existing giants? At a startup no one has yet heard of? Or perhaps it will be a disheveled twentysomething now spending long, caffeinated hours writing code in a dorm room in Boston or Bangalore.

The spotlight will be on a number of emerging players over the coming years, to see who will step forward and claim the crown. At the top of the list of candidates are an obvious few: Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google; Linus Torvalds, who heads development of the Linux operating systems; Marc Benioff at Salesforce.com; and even Ray Ozzie, who is taking over Gates’ job as chief software architect at Microsoft and has been instrumental in prodding Microsoft to make some of its software available online.

"I'd put Google well in front of the others," says analyst Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray.

There's little doubt about the ambition of Page and Brin. While their search engine has become a money machine, they're moving far beyond the search word advertising business, introducing a new initiative nearly every week. One move this month was to unveil a free online spreadsheet that competes directly with Microsoft's Excel, part of an ongoing effort to systematically knock down the pillars of Microsoft's business.

Will Google assume the mantle of leadership from Microsoft the way the software giant took over from IBM? Perhaps. But even if Page and Brin live up to the great expectations for their company, the nature of Google's power is fundamentally different than that of Microsoft. Gates succeeded through Microsoft's tight control of the PC, by locking in customers and suppliers that needed its software. Google has no comparable lock. It operates in the wide-open world of the Internet, where people can find an alternative search engine or spreadsheet or video with the click of a mouse.

"Google won't have the dominance that Microsoft had," says Saffo. "They can't. They have an open platform, and that's fundamentally different from what Microsoft did. That's the only way you can do it these days. You have to let other companies in."

Indeed, the nature of power in the technology biz is changing. The ubiquity of the Internet means that there is more potential in reaching out to other companies and individuals than there is for a company operating on its own. "The way you get big now is by empowering the small," says Saffo. " Google does it. They empower all of us to search."

This opens up opportunity for a new kind of tech leader. Pierre Omidyar founded eBay with the idea that anyone, anywhere, could auction off almost anything on its auction site, and Niklas Zennstrom has carried the idea further with the Net telephone service Skype, which eBay purchased last year for $2.6 billion.

The other potential tech titans in the business of empowering others include Jonathan Schwartz, the newly appointed chief executive at Sun Microsystems, and Charlie Giancarlo, the chief development officer at Cisco Systems and a potential successor to CEO John Chambers.

These are all leading luminaries in Silicon Valley. Still, the next tech king may come from someplace completely unexpected. For instance, while Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel in Santa Clara, Calif., may still be best positioned to lead the way in the semiconductor industry, there are opportunities for people like Paul Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm in San Diego to become preeminent. Qualcomm makes the chips for wireless phones and has been pushing the cell phone as a means to do everything from surfing the Web to watching television broadcasts.

Jacobs may have the numbers on his side. Some 600 million cell phones are expected to be sold this year, or roughly three times the number of PCs. One of Jacobs' favorite pronouncements? "The wireless Internet will have a greater impact on the world than the wired Internet."

Even farther afield are the entrepreneurs of developing countries, including China and India. Up-and-comers there have the advantages of huge domestic markets and a proximity to a new crop of tech customers. It could be a significant edge. The most popular search engine in China is not Google or Yahoo, despite the American companies' concerted efforts. Rather, it's Baidu, a company founded by Robin Li that went public last year. The top online auction site is not run by eBay, but by Alibaba, a Chinese company founded by Jack Ma that has also taken over the operations of Yahoo in that country.

In the end, there may not be only one or two leaders who step to the forefront of the industry. As technology has changed, so too, has the structure of the business behind it. The industry may never again be dominated by the likes of a Bill Gates or an Andy Grove, because it has grown so big, so diverse, and so international.

"We're not talking about a replacement for Bill Gates," says Rashtchy. "This is going to be a much more diverse group."

Kevin Werbach, a technology analyst and consultant, agrees. "It will be different," he wrote in an e-mail interview. "No one in this next generation was present at the creation" of the personal computer industry in the '70s, the way Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Grove, etc. were."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13422438/





Online News With a New Angle
Leslie Walker

To see who will create the Internet newscast of the future, look into a mirror.

You and millions of other readers are being cast as Internet news anchors by a fresh crop of Web sites that may well represent the future of news.

Chief among them is Digg, a technology news site where story position is determined entirely by readers who submit links to articles and vote on them. Digg's computers use special formulas to analyze which stories readers are voting for and commenting on the most and then elevate those to its home page. What's displayed on Digg are summaries and links to articles on other news sites and blogs, not the actual stories.

Having attended plenty of meetings at which editors debate what goes on a newspaper's front page, I am fascinated by this attempt to create a front page of Internet news by analyzing reader behavior.

Digg ( http://www.digg.com ), which launched in September 2004, draws 8.5 million monthly visitors, who make 2,000 daily story submissions. Yesterday, top entries included a review of the Opera 9 browser and a story about MySpace adding restrictions.

Today, Digg plans to announce a makeover that will expand its repertoire beyond computing and into general news categories and add customization features to go live next week.

"We are leveraging the collective wisdom of the Internet masses to sift through these stories and apply their interests to it," said Jay Adelson, chief executive of the 15-employee company, based in San Francisco. "Digg's philosophy is to create more user-controlled experiences that will give every type of reader the news they want."

In a nod to its popularity, Digg got a well-heeled competitor last week -- AOL's Netscape.com, a general Web portal being transformed into a Digg clone with a few twists. Netscape's and Digg's news summaries are free and will be supported by advertising. The new Netscape site is in preview mode ( http://www.beta.netscape.com ) and will officially launch July 1.

Its key differentiator is the human touch -- real, live reporters and editors. In addition to letting visitors vote on stories to determine their play, Netscape is hiring eight full-time and 15 part-time journalists to add an editorial sensibility on top of its popularity-based layouts.

"While people are quick to praise the wisdom of the crowd, being an old-school journalist, I look at the wisdom of the crowd and know it can quickly turn into a mob mentality," said Jason Calacanis, who founded Weblogs Inc. but now runs Netscape's makeover for AOL.

Netscape's staff picks one story to spotlight in a box at the top of the home page, while the articles below are arranged solely by popularity.

That makes the site a hybrid between Digg's user-shaped layout and the editorially dictated pages of traditional news sites, such as washingtonpost.com. The Post's and the New York Times' sites have hybrid-like features. The Post lists the stories that have been e-mailed or viewed the most, while the Times prominently displays a "most popular" story box on its home page.

But these hybrids are mostly the reverse of Netscape's -- a few user-controlled layouts in the form of most-viewed and most-e-mailed story lists, which are subordinated to the main, editor-controlled news layouts.

Calacanis described the role of Netscape editorial staff as "meta-journalism," which he defined as adding original research or context to stories that visitors deem popular. "Maybe it's a follow-up interview, fact-checking or research," he said.

One example he cited involved a story about an AOL subscriber who called customer service to cancel his account and tape-recorded the call. The AOL employee resisted the cancellation in the call, which was posted online.

"We called the person who had the AOL account and interviewed him," Calacanis said. AOL wound up firing the customer service staffer, he added.

The Netscape experiment is still early, but I am skeptical that its hybrid model will add any value to the core idea behind Digg -- exploiting the Internet's ability to give readers input on the journalism they consume.

Netscape would need high-powered reporters to add first-rate commentary and fact-checking. So far, its commentary strikes me as so anemic and wordy that it interferes with the site's real goal -- letting readers see what others find interesting.

This idea of peering over the shoulder of others is powerful. Digg offers a feature called "Digg Spy" that presents random lists of user actions in real time. It shows random activity occurring at any moment, such as who is voting on or submitting which stories. Digg has another social feature that lets users narrow their spying to stories submitted by or commented on by friends -- or any stranger they may choose.

Digg also is at the vanguard of a growing movement to build profiles of what people are doing online to help determine what they see. For example, Digg automatically creates profiles of registered users' interests by storing a record of the articles they've commented on or voted for.

"So down the road, Digg will become smarter and be able to recommend stories, based on your past Digging activities and those of your friends," said Digg co-founder Kevin Rose.

Adelson said Digg and its rivals eventually will give mainstream news sites valuable insights into what the public considers newsworthy.

"If you want to know what a particular group of people or the mass public care about today, I can know within seconds, versus waiting for the publication cycle to happen so you can look at your subscription data or Nielsen ratings," Adelson said.

Whether you buy into his optimism or not, Digg is experimenting with something important. And as news consumption becomes more personalized online, I believe this concept of letting readership patterns shape story presentation will offer valuable ways to preserve the shared news experience of the mass-media era.

Already, it is giving us intriguing new glimpses of what the masses are actually reading.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062101864.html





Let the snarking begin

Digg: 'Newspaper Of The Web', Or Its Gossip Column?
Donna Bogatin

When it comes to technology news, Jay Adelson, Digg CEO, believes in the “collective wisdom” of the “Internet masses” to actively promote good tech stories. Starting next week, his belief in the tech masses will be matched with a belief in the general masses, when Digg expands its service to include entertainment, gaming, science, world and business news…

As I discuss in “Social freeloaders: Is there a collective wisdom and can the Web obtain it?,” a “collective wisdom” of any masses, let alone the “Internet masses,” is hard to come by. Wikipedia, which calls itself the “free encyclopedia”, is beset by “nonsense pages,” revert wars,” and “vandalism.”

For Michael Arrington, “Digg is looking more and more like the newspaper of the web.” Given that the only “news” Digg actually provides is commentary on other’s news, in what it calls “digg user news" (your latest diggs, or someone else's), however, I hope Digg does not represent our newspapers of the future.

Perhaps we should call Digg a gossip column, for while Digg commentary is entertaining and colorful, it is often not newsworthy. Here is a taste of current Digg “news” commentary/gossip about Comcast tech support:

 Yes I hate Comcast too. But really, I just hate anyone who charges an arm and a leg (or $30+) a month for medium speed internet,

 YouTube is down for some reason. Any mirrors? I wonder if Digg brought it down, or are they just doing mantinace?,

 yeah dood, youtube, which uses 200 terabytes of bandwidth a day, was dugg to death :P,

 YouTube is down retard, Just a quick question. How do you know this is even real? Anyone can record someone sitting on their couch and claim it's a service call,

 Welcome to web 2.0. It doesn't have to be true as long as people want to believe it,

 Yeah it's funny, for as seemingly smart and intellectually independent the tech savvy crowd seems, we easily become a blind mob. Basically a commodity of smart cows, Comcast may suck, but I kind of feel for the tech. Nobody should have to wait on hold for an hour. More than ten minutes should be unacceptable. Besides, he was sitting right next to the air conditioner. When you sit next to the air conditioner, you're going to sleep, no questions asked,

 was going to post this 3 days ago but Digg said there were duplicate stories (even though they didn't show up via a search) so I didn't submit the story. And now 2 versions of the same story have been posted with people ignoring the duplicate warning! guess from now on the duplicate warning should just be ignored all the time eh? http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=156

Digg's 8 Million 'Social Freeloaders'

According to Digg CEO Jay Adelson, “The point of Digg is to capture the interests of the Internet masses and use that interest to help organize the huge amounts of information on the Web." Digg’s masses, however, are passive readers of other’s “Diggs,” rather than active contributors to a Digg “collective wisdom.”

Digg reportedly attracted 8.5 million visitors in May, but only has 304,000 registered users, submitting, on average, about 2000 stories a day. As I point out in “Social freeloaders: Is there a collective wisdom and can the Web obtain it?,” the Social Web that is purported to be harnessing a “collective wisdom” of millions, is merely reflecting the opinions of a small number of self-selected active contributors:

Wikipedia’s “small core community” that does the vast majority of the work reflects the extremely low ratio of contributing users to non-contributing users throughout the new social Web that relies on user contributions for its content.

The average YouTube user is watching the content, not generating it, for while more than 35 million videos are viewed daily, only 35,000 are uploaded” and at Riya photo search, searchers outnumber the uploaders, 20 to 1.

Perhaps the social Web will come to be known for its freeloaders, rather than its uploaders.

A user-contribution reality-check is undoubtedly in order. As it stands now, Internet users are being honored for a "collective wisdom" which has not been harnassed, and Social Web properties are preparing to "sell" access to the non-existent "collective wisdom":

If you want to know what…the mass public care about today, I can know within seconds, versus waiting for the publication cycle to happen so you can look at your subscription data or Nielsen ratings, Adelson said.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=157





The Jolie Interview: The Humble Star and Eager Newsman
Alessandra Stanley

It must be a law of celebrity physics: When journalists act like movie stars, movie stars act like journalists.

It is always tempting to dismiss an actor's passionate embrace of charity work as a gimmick — method giving. But on Tuesday night Angelina Jolie gracefully slipped past viewer cynicism, speaking with candor and self-deprecation about the plight of third world refugees, a cause that led her to give birth to a daughter in Namibia last month. When CNN's Anderson Cooper marveled that she gives away a third of her earnings, Ms. Jolie laughed. "Yes, well, I have a stupid income for what I do for a living," she said.

Mr. Cooper, the silver-haired CNN anchor, did not conduct an interview with the elusive actress; he held a conversation in which he seemed a little too eager to put himself on par with his guest as if the two of them belonged to an elite club of the concerned and caring. "You're not just talking the talk; you are walking the walk," he told Ms. Jolie, and then proceeded to talk a lot about his own walk through war zones and disaster areas, as if somehow that was an eccentric choice for a journalist.

He even managed to wedge in a mention of Hurricane Katrina: "One of the stories that we're doing, in this program, is about Niger," he said. "And I was there last summer right before Hurricane Katrina. And one in four children in Niger dies before the age of 5, which to me, I still cannot wrap my mind around."

By choosing CNN's most pious anchor for her first interview since the delivery, the actress ensured that the topic would be refugees, not her postpartum slimness or Brad Pitt's spurned ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston. Ms. Jolie is not the first or only celebrity to siphon fame and media attention to a worthy cause, but she is the star of the moment, a glamorous sex symbol at the peak of her career.

Even more than Bill Gates or Bono, she signals a shift in mores among the hyper-rich. After 25 years of ever-escalating exorbitance, the pendulum has swung toward conspicuous nonconsumption. Extravagance is measured not by how much is spent, but how much is given away.

And that can't be bad. Ms. Jolie may be susceptible to extreme gestures (it was only a few years ago that she wore a vial of her husband's blood around her neck and a tattoo of his name on her arm and elsewhere), but her current obsession is a lasting fancy that is impossible to fault. She has adopted two orphans (she revealed that she and Mr. Pitt are planning to take in a third), traveled extensively for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and lavished time, money and her fame to a difficult cause.

She hasn't lost her fondness for body ink, however: she told Mr. Cooper she wears the phrase "know your rights" tattooed on her back, which shows when she wears a low-cut shirt. "I wore it to a prison once," she said saucily.

She and Mr. Pitt have mastered the art of celebrity jujitsu, turning tabloid brawn against itself. Their latest coup was selling the first picture of their new baby, Shiloh, to the highest bidder, then donating the proceeds to charity, reportedly several million dollars.

Hollywood doesn't offer many savory alternatives, as Matt Lauer's ghastly interview with Britney Spears on NBC's "Dateline" last week proved. That display may have been the nadir of celebrity narcissism. Even Cher has taken on the cause of helmet safety for American troops in Iraq and was scheduled to discuss it with Mr. Cooper last night.

As much as Ms. Jolie used the occasion of motherhood to showcase her humanitarian work on CNN, the network used her humanitarian work to showcase its own talent. And that was a bit much. Mr. Cooper, who just published his autobiography, "Dispatches From the Edge," and was on the cover of Vanity Fair, has surely received plenty of publicity and praise.

For understandable reasons CNN relentlessly promoted the exclusive, and the network even persuaded Paula Zahn and Larry King to take time from their shows to interview their colleague about his scoop. Both seemed a little put out by the task. "You're talking more about the interview than the interview," Mr. King said to Mr. Cooper. "Are you getting a little tired of it?"

Apparently not. On ABC's "Good Morning America" yesterday Mr. Cooper once again explained why Ms. Jolie chose CNN. "I do a lot of reporting in Africa; I'm interested in Africa," he said. "It was sort of a natural fit."

He praised Ms. Jolie for doing the interview solely to draw attention to the plight of refugees and not to promote a movie. He then seamlessly moved on to vigorously promote his best-selling book.

With journalists like that, its a small wonder celebrities are starting to do their own reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/ar...on/22watc.html





DigiBarn
Interview by Eric Steuer

The DigiBarn is a computer museum located in a 90-year-old barn in California's Santa Cruz Mountains. It is also an online repository of Creative Commons-licensed photos, video, audio, and technical documentation that tell the history of personal computing. The DigiBarn's collections include small and big computers, game systems, software, and schwag.

We recently spoke with the DigiBarn's curator, Bruce Damer about the museum and its use of CC licensing.

Creative Commons: What is the DigiBarn project? How did it start?

Bruce Damer: The DigiBarn is a large physical collection of computing artifacts that is housed in a barn in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Silicon Valley in Northern California. The DigiBarn is also a sprawling cyber-collection at digibarn.com, which represents both physical artifacts and thousands of community contributions that tell the story of the invention of personal computing, the graphical user interface, and the digital lifestyle. We go beyond just giving the specs for a given computer to weaving together the stories of those who built the industry. We also showcase all the ephemera — from company t-shirts to software to internal prototypes.

I started collecting this history while working with Xerox and Xerox PARC in the 1980s. I formally commissioned the physical museum in 2001 with the help of my friend and neighbor Allan Lundell, a well known video chronicler of Valley history and the first west coast editor of Byte magazine. Behind the project are literally thousands of contributors and hundreds of volunteers who have emptied their garages, told us their stories, and done heavy lifting for the physical and online exhibits.

CC: What are your goals for the DigiBarn?

BD: To capture the story of the birth of personal computing and the origins of the digital lifestyle we are all now living. The artifacts and the story are rapidly being lost and every week someone passes away who had something to contribute to the telling of that story. In a decade or two most of the people who brought us the modern computing world will be gone. In the meantime we are trying to capture oral histories from these people, both the famous and the not-so-famous.

CC: In what ways does the DigiBarn use Creative Commons licensing?

BD: A key goal of the project was to collect and deliver our shared computing heritage to the public for noncommercial use, hence our choice of the Creative Commons framework. In fact, we were very early adopters, supporting the beta testing phase of CC back in 2002, and the DigiBarn site was featured content at the CC launch.

We provide noncommercial share-alike (with attribution) use of hundreds of thousands of photos, written stories, tech specs, scanned documents, audio interviews and video shorts about the history of computing from the late 1940s to today. From artists using our vintage computer photos to produce cool video mixes to academics writing papers and books, thousands of CC-licensed DigiBarn digital objects have found their way into the culture.

CC: How has the DigiBarn grown over the years?

BD: The DigiBarn is well on its way to having a complete collection of every model of significant personal computer (along with all associated materials) from 1975 to the late 80s. We stop collecting artifacts after about 1990, as by that date innovation and diversity in hardware and software was slowing and most computers were pretty much commodity items produced by a few manufacturers. We have also focused on early workstations including the Xerox Alto and Star, which were the first networked machines with graphical interfaces and mice. The only large systems we have are two Cray supercomputers (a Cray 1 and Cray Q2 prototype). These are impressive machines and true things of beauty. Since the web site launched in 1998, the cyber-collection has swelled to over a half million objects.

CC: You also curate a collection of key technical documentation. Can you talk a bit about your experience with this?

BD: Some of our key technical documentation, including video and audio interviews with key innovators, has begun to upset the apple cart in the patent domain. Our November 2004 30th birthday event for "Maze War," the first-ever first-person shooter, uncovered so much prior art that Sony contacted us about several patent challenges on multi-player gaming. It turns out that by recovering the history of "Maze War," we had knocked the wind out of several patent claims, which are now headed to settlement instead of to court. In a sense, each bit of digital archeology we dig up and publish openly under CC could roll back the invention envelope, protecting basic innovations in common use from being restricted through inappropriate granting of new patents.

There is another case regarding several loads of original documentation that contained some of Apple Computer’s key early business plans, prototypes and technical design documents. Some of this material had recently been ordered discarded by Apple management, yet these documents were key to understanding the history of Apple and where early innovations came from. It could also have been argued that these records Apple was abandoning were in fact part of a common cultural heritage. The DigiBarn accepted the donations with the full understanding by the donors that they would be made available to the world under CC license and there was no objection. You can see several of these contributions including the Woz Wonderbook and the Preliminary Macintosh Business Plan – 12 July 1981 on our site. More of these fascinating documents will be posted soon.

CC: How can people help the DigiBarn project?

BD: The DigiBarn is an all-volunteer effort with significant personal outlays of funds and time. We are hoping to find financial support to cover at least some of our volunteers' time and for basic infrastructural improvements to the barn building (we have a big winter moisture problem to solve on the lower floor). We are therefore seeking donors of both funds and other forms of support to keep this effort going. We may establish a foundation for urgent oral history capture if such support can be found. If anyone out there is interested in helping out, please contact us.

We would like to thank Professor Lessig and the Creative Commons team for giving us a legal framework that has made the DigiBarn project possible. We are always encouraging other museums and collectors to adopt CC licensing as we feel it is an important vehicle that makes it possible to place historical digital archives into a container of commonly shared cultural heritage.
http://creativecommons.org/education/digibarn





Dell Laptop Explodes At Japanese Conference
INQ reader's amazing snaps

AN INQUIRER READER attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.

Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: "The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes".

Should you witness such an event, his advice is, "Don't try anything courageous/stupid, stay away, away, away!"

"For the record, this is a Dell machine," notes Guilhem. "It is only a matter of time until such an incident breaks out on a plane," he suggests.

Guilhem managed to catch all the action in these amazing pictures.

"Fire extinguishers leave a mess on your suit and belongings; pack your stuff (if you can) and leave, leave, leave!" he advises.

We don't have any further details of the model of the computer in question. In light of the evidence, however, we'd suggest you avoid actually using a laptop on your lap. Ouch.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550





Higher-Capacity Lithium-Ion Batteries

Nanostructured electrodes and active materials could shrink batteries for portable electronics and electric vehicles.
Kevin Bullis

A forest of copper rods about 100 nanometers in diameter create much more surface area for high-capacity battery electrodes.

Researchers in France have created lithium-ion battery electrodes with several times the energy capacity, by weight and volume, of conventional electrodes. The new electrodes could help shrink the size of cell-phone and laptop batteries, or else increase the length of time a device could run on a charge. What's more, the nanotech methods used to make these electrodes could provide a simple and inexpensive way to structure new materials for next-generation batteries for plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles.

The key advance is the development of an inexpensive and simple way to organize tiny particles into a desired nanostructure, says Patrice Simon, a chemistry professor at the Université Paul Sabatier, who participated in the work along with other researchers at the university and Université Picardie Jules Verne.

In a conventional battery electrode, ions and electrons will move quickly into and out of the active material -- allowing fast charging and discharging -- only if the material is deposited in a very thin film. Thin films, however, limit the amount of active material that can be incorporated into a battery. For high-capacity batteries, engineers typically increase the thickness of the active material, trading off fast charging and high-power bursts for more energy storage.

This new nanostructure allows for both high power and high storage capacity. Active materials are applied in a very thin film to copper nanorods anchored to sheets of copper foil. This thin film allows for fast movement of ions and electrons -- providing the power. At the same time, the high surface area of the forest of nanorods makes it possible to pack much more active material into an electrode than thin films typically allow, thus increasing energy capacity. The rods provide 50 square centimeters of surface area for every square centimeter of electrode.

In addition, the high ion and electron mobility of the thin layer makes it possible to use a new active material and a new chemical reaction for lithium-ion batteries. This new chemistry is attractive because it can accommodate far more lithium ions, and their electron counterparts, than the chemistry used now, thereby potentially storing more energy.

The new electrodes, which would be used as the negative electrodes in lithium-ion batteries, also showed the ability to retain their high capacity after being charged and discharged many times, suggesting that the electrodes may have a long useable lifetime, Simon says, although more extensive tests are needed to confirm this supposition.
http://www.techreview.com/read_artic...17&ch=nanotech





Researchers Hack Wi-Fi Driver To Breach Laptop

One of many flaws found allowed them to take over a laptop by exploiting a bug in an 802.11 wireless driver
Robert McMillan

Security researchers have found a way to seize control of a laptop computer by manipulating buggy code in the system's wireless device driver.

The hack will be demonstrated at the upcoming Black Hat USA 2006 conference during a presentation by David Maynor, a research engineer with Internet Security Systems and Jon Ellch, a student at the U.S. Naval postgraduate school in Monterey, California.

Device driver hacking is technically challenging, but the field has become more appealing in recent years, thanks in part to new software tools that make it easier for less technically savvy hackers, known as script kiddies, to attack wireless cards, Maynor said in an interview.

The two researchers used an open-source 802.11 hacking tool called LORCON (Lots of Radion Connectivity) to throw an extremely large number of wireless packets at different wireless cards. Hackers use this technique, called fuzzing, to see if they can cause programs to fail, or perhaps even run unauthorized software when they are bombarded with unexpected data.

Using tools like LORCON, Maynor and Ellch were able to discover many examples of wireless device driver flaws, including one that allowed them to take over a laptop by exploiting a bug in an 802.11 wireless driver. They also examined other networking technologies including Bluetooth, Ev-Do (EVolution-Data Only), and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).

The two researchers declined to disclose the specific details of their attack before the August 2 presentation, but they described it in dramatic terms.

"This would be the digital equivalent of a drive-by shooting," said Maynor. An attacker could exploit this flaw by simply sitting in a public space and waiting for the right type of machine to come into range.

The victim would not even need to connect to a network for the attack to work.

"You don't have to necessarily be connected for these device driver flaws to come into play," Ellch said. "Just because your wireless card is on and looking for a network could be enough."

More than half of the flaws that the two researchers found could be exploited even before the wireless device connected to a network.

Wireless devices are often configured to be constantly sniffing for new networks, and that can lead to security problems, especially if their driver software is badly written. Researchers in Italy recently created a hacking lab on wheels, called project BlueBag, to underscore this point by showing just how many vulnerable Bluetooth wireless devices they could connect with by wandering around public spaces like airports and shopping malls. After spending about 23 hours wandering about Milan, they had found more than 1,400 devices that were open to connection.

"Wireless device drivers are like the Wild, Wild West right now," Maynor said. "LORCON has really brought mass Wi-Fi packet injection to script kiddies. Now it's pretty much to the point where anyone can do it."

Part of the problem is that the engineers who write device drivers often do not have security in mind, he said.

A second problem is that vendors also make devices do more than they really need to in order to be certified as compliant with a particular wireless standard. That piling on of features can open security holes as well, he said.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/...ibreach_1.html





Wi-Fi Freeloader Arrested in Washington
Eric Bangeman

We have covered this type of story before: a man finds an open wireless access point, parks in front of the home or business containing the WAP, surfs away on his laptop, and the police are called. The story has played itself out once again, this time in Vancouver, WA, where 20-year-old Alexander Eric Smith was arrested after a three-month stretch where he periodically parked in front of a coffee shop off-and-on with a laptop and used its WAP.

The kicker? He never bought so much as a small latte.

Brewed Awakenings manager Emily Pranger finally tired of his presence and called 911. Police came and told Smith to surf elsewhere. After returning, he was taken into custody and charged with theft of services.

Note that unlike other cases, he was not charged with unauthorized use of a computer network. Instead, the premise for his arrest is that he used Brewed Awakenings' free WiFi network without buying anything from them.

Open WAPs are tempting in certain situations. When camping, I've driven into town in search of an open WAP to check e-mail or get my Lounge fix. However, law enforcement types seem to be paying more attention to WiFi leeching these days. An Illinois man was fined US$250 earlier this year after pleading guilty to remotely accessing another computer system without the owner's approval. That followed the conviction of a Florida man for felony unauthorized access to computer network in 2005.

Fears over what people might be doing over wireless networks appear to be driving the concern over wardriving. It turns out that Smith is a convicted sex offender. It therefore follows that he was using the coffee shop's WiFi to look a porn or something equally nefarious </sarcasm>.

What I find fascinating is that when newspapers and TV stations report on occurrences such as this, they generally magnify the scope of the problem and put an alarmist spin on it.

On a random neighborhood street in Vancouver, a KATU News laptop detected 11 networks, five of which were unsecured, meaning anyone could log on to them for free.

A computer expert told KATU News there is no way to know if someone is using your wireless connection without permission.

Actually, there is. In addition, it is so trivial to turn on security for a home (or business) WAP, that there is no reason anyone should leave a WiFi network unprotected unless he or she really wants it to be open to all comers. Perhaps the sensationalized reporting that usually follows cases like this arises out of the fact that most people (media included) don't really understand how computers in general—and wireless networking in particular—work. Until people are better educated, those tempted by open access points are better off carefully considering whether or not to open up the laptop and start surfing.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060622-7111.html





5 Steps to a Safer Wireless Network
Sonja Ryst

Use Wi-Fi at home or the coffee shop? Your computer could be vulnerable to hackers. Here are some easy ways to stay protected

Florida police faced a porn paradox. They were investigating a complaint by Tallahassee Community College that someone was subscribing to porn Web sites on the school's nickel. They traced the prurient behavior to the apartment of two women who had no criminal records and denied wrongdoing.

Investigators gave the residents the benefit of the doubt and kept on probing. They discovered that a neighbor had hacked into the women's wireless network and connected his computer to theirs (all the while getting his fill of porn, illegally billing a college account).

Turns out, the women had never changed the password on their router, giving the intruder easy access to their wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, connection. "If you run Wi-Fi…you need to take the time to secure it," says Bob Breeden, assistant special agent in charge at the Florida Law Enforcement Dept. The Florida residents are hardly alone. Their experience is replicated countless times across the country on a daily basis. Most people don't even know when their Wi-Fi is stolen, Breeden says.

CINCH TO HACK. And the problem may only worsen as more people surf wirelessly on laptops. JiWire's Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder, an online Wi-Fi hotspot directory, found 114,910 free and paid Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide in January, an 87% increase from a year earlier.

The hardware needed to get a wireless connection is much more prevalent now too. Round Rock (Tex.)-based Dell (DELL ), for example, says that about 90% of the notebooks it sells in the U.S. include a wireless card. It has been a standard feature on their new computers since 2003.

But wireless surfing on a laptop — whether at home or in public — is often a cinch for hackers to intercept. When people set up wireless network connections at home, they don't always have the technical knowledge to enable security. And safeguards for public network connections can be looser still.

"When you go into a wireless environment, the dangers are so much worse" than on a regular Internet connection, says Richard Rushing, chief security officer at security provider AirDefense.net. Savvy wireless hackers don't even have to attack your computer to break into it on a wireless connection — they can just sit and wait for you to provide your information to them. When you're out in public and happen to find something that says "Free Internet Access," you're essentially trusting an unknown network, Rushing says.

KEEPING COVERED. Of course, most Wi-Fi freeloaders are looking for little more than a free surf on an open Internet connection. But some can break into an insecure network to read the data stored on a hard drive, plant malicious software on a computer, or, as the Florida case shows, commit criminal activity using someone else's computer address.

Here are some easy steps to network security that won't cost much extra time or money. While these won't guarantee laptop safety, they add an extra layer of protection beyond a firewall and antivirus software.

1. Use Your Corporate Network. If your company provides you with a laptop that accesses the corporate network, use it for wireless surfing whenever possible. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, hide your communication with the office network.

Mani Dhillon, director of product marketing for Linksys, says that whenever he surfs wirelessly in a public environment like a hotel, he uses the company's VPN. "When you're in a Starbucks, everyone is sitting next to each other with PCs, and anyone willing to pay money for [the Wi-Fi hotspot] has access to the airspace," Dhillon says. "In that case, I would recommend you use a VPN."

2. Keep a Clean Preferred List. The preferred list is like speed dial. Since it puts your most recent network connections at the top, it takes the longest to seek out the first places you visited—typically the relatively secure ones like your home network. "You want to keep that list short," says Rushing.

If you look at the settings for the wireless connection on your PC, you'll see a list of wireless devices that your computer can connect to automatically—just press the "start " key and highlight "settings." From there you can reach your "network connections" and choose your wireless one. After you've highlighted it, click on "wireless properties" and look for the second tab labeled "wireless networks." Your preferred list is tucked all the way inside there.

Also, when you're surfing in a public place, don't simply turn off your computer and leave when you're finished. Remember to click on the icon that disconnects your computer from the wireless networ. Otherwise, that network address will remain in your preferred list. If you have a coffee-shop hot-spot in your list, you might connect to it automatically the next time you go there to work while drinking a latte. Without your noticing, the preferred list might even automatically drop you from your corporate network and put you on the coffee-shop network instead.

3. Enable Security on Your Router. When you buy a router for wireless surfing at home, its security doesn't normally go on automatically. Some providers have online tutorials that describe how you can enable the router's security. Linksys, for example, lists every step in detail at its Web site.

Once you've finished that process, you can check to make sure you did everything correctly by using the free download from McAfee's (MFE ) Wi-FiScan.

4. Pick a Good Password. Your login information may be available to the public, unless you change it. Ulrich Wiedmann, director of research and development at McAfee, says he was able to uncover the default login and passwords for three of his neighbors' networks by entering the name of their router maker into a simple Google search.

5. Enable Web-Mail Security. Call your e-mail service provider to find out how to enable the security for your Web-mail. While the security options vary, many don't automatically turn on.

Those who use the Atlanta-based Internet service provider EarthLink (ELNK ), for example, have their login password and usernames protected by default from hackers. If you want an extra layer, you must go inside your preferences folder and look at your Web-mail options. The last option on the list, "session security", starts in the off position. Once you turn it on, EarthLink will prevent wireless hackers from reading your connection with the service provider, essentially hiding the e-mails you receive. You can see the change when the address in your browser changes to "https" from "http."

It takes about five minutes to perform this step and doesn't cost extra for the user. But remember that the messages you send out to cyberspace remain unprotected. Most of your friends (maybe even your freelance accountant) will be receiving your e-mail from an http site, where hackers will be able to see what you sent.

Of course, nothing you do is foolproof. "There's a lot of advice and misinformation floating out there," warns McAfee's Wiedmann. "People will recommend things like hiding your network—except that you can't really hide it. You'll only hide it from people who don't have hackers' tools." Even if complete security is an unreachable goal, taking a few simple steps is better than doing nothing at all.
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...7s+top+stories





Can Murdoch Find Money in MySpace?
Andrew Ross Sorkin

It may be a huge hit with the youngsters, but social-networking phenomenon MySpace “is so irrelevant to the financial performance” of owner News Corporation that “it doesn’t even merit describing,” Henry Blodget wrote Thursday in his Internet Outsider blog. MySpace’s financial insignificance leaves Mr. Blodget wondering why the media giant spent $580 million to acquire MySpace’s parent, Intermix Media, six months ago.

MySpace is still a money-loser, Mr. Blodget writes, and “if the “profitable-monetization engine is ever going to really kick in, it ought to kick in soon.” Otherwise, he wrote, repeating a lesson many people learned around the turn of the last century, “traffic should not necessarily be viewed as a good proxy for business value.”

Mr. Blodget’s ruminations come as MySpace is announcing new restrictions meant to protect its younger members from online predators and inappropriate content. It will soon be harder for strangers to send messages to members under 18. Also, certain adult-themed advertisements will not be shown to younger members.

Meanwhile, News Corporation is considering auctioning off its search business to a large search provider like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft’s MSN, Marketwatch recently reported. “By having one of those companies use their well-established search engines to provide paid advertising search for MySpace, News Corporation can take advantage of those sites’ ad-serving technologies without trying to duplicate them,” it wrote.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=4531





On Tape: Rep Won't Let Customer Quit AOL

An incredible video from CNBC shows an AOL customer trying to cancel his account, but a phone rep won't let him do it. What customer Vincent Ferrari got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration.

It took him 15 minutes waiting on the phone just to reach a real, live person.

And, what happened next was recorded by Ferrari on audio and lasted about four minutes:

CLOCK READOUT - 00:00

AOL REPRESENTATIVE: Hi this is John at AOL... how may I help you today?

VINCENT FERRARI: I wanted to cancel my account.

AOL: : Sorry to hear that. Let's pull your account up here real quick. Can I have your name please?

VINCENT: Vincent Ferrari.

CLOCK READOUT - 00:30

AOL: : You've had this account for a long time.

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: : Use this quite a bit. What was the cause of wanting to turn this off today?

VINCENT: I just don't use it anymore.

AOL: : Do you have a high speed connection, like the DSL or cable?

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: : How long have you had that...

VINCENT: Years...

AOL: : ...the high speed?

VINCENT: ...years.

AOL: : Well, actually I'm showing a lot of usage on this account.

VINCENT: Yeah, a long time, a long time ago, not recently...

CLOCK READOUT - 01:47

AOL: : Okay, I mean is there a problem with the software itself?

VINCENT: No. I just don't use it, I don't need it, I don't want it. I just don't need it anymore.

AOL: : Okay. So when you use this... I mean, use the computer, I'm saying, is that for business or for... for school?

VINCENT: Dude, what difference does it make. I don't want the AOL account anymore. Can we please cancel it?

CLOCK READOUT - 02:21

AOL: : Last year was 545, last month was 545 hours of usage...

VINCENT: I don't know how to make this any clearer, so I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: : Well explain to me what's, why...

VINCENT: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, what's the matter man? We're just, I'm just trying to help here.

VINCENT: You're not helping me. You're helping me...

AOL: I am trying to help.

VINCENT: Helping... listen, I called to cancel the account. Helping me would be canceling the account. Please help me and cancel the account.

AOL: No, it wouldn't actually...

VINCENT: Cancel my account...

AOL: : Turning off your account...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account...

AOL: : ...would be the worst thing that...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:02

AOL: Okay, cause I'm just trying to figure out...

VINCENT: Cancel the account. I don't know how to make this any clearer for you. Cancel the account. When I say cancel the account, I don't mean help me figure out how to keep it, I mean cancel the account.

AOL: : Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what anybody's done to you Vincent because all I'm...

VINCENT: Will you please cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:32

AOL: : Alright, some day when you calmed down you're gonna realize that all I was trying to do was help you... and it was actually in your best interest to listen to me.

VINCENT: Wonderful, Okay.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:39

"I've never ever experienced anything like that," Ferrari told CNBC.

He recounts how the AOL representative - as a last resort even asked if his dad was home.

"I think I could've put up with everything, but at the point when he asked to speak to my father, I came very close to losing it at that point," said the 30-year-old Ferrari.

Ferrari then posted the call online, and the response was tremendous.

AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.
http://www.nbc10.com/news/9406462/detail.html





Not tonight R2

No Sex Please, Robot, Just Clean The Floor
Ed Habershon and Richard Woods

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines.

“Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen,” said Verruggio. “Robots will develop strong intelligence, and in some ways it will be better than human intelligence.

“But it will be alien intelligence; I would prefer to give priority to humans.”

The analysis culminated at a meeting recently held in Genoa by the European Robotics Research Network (Euron) that examined the problems likely to arise as robots become smarter, faster, stronger and ubiquitous.

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy? “The question is what authority are we going to delegate to these machines?” said Professor Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Are we, for example, going to give robots the ability to execute lethal force, or any force, like crowd control?” The forthcoming code is a sign of reality finally catching up with science fiction. Ethical problems involving machines were predicted in the 1950s by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov whose book I, Robot was recently turned into a Hollywood film. The Terminator and Robocop series of films also portrayed mechanical law enforcers running amok.

Present robots perform more mundane tasks: the most common consumer robots in Britain include self-guided vacuum cleaners such as the Scooba, lawnmowers such as the Robomow and children’s toys such as Robosapien.

But far more sophisticated machines are being developed. The National Health Service has used a robot called da Vinci to perform surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London. In Japan, human-like robots such as Honda’s Asimo and Sony’s Qrio can walk on two legs. More advanced versions are expected to be undertaking everyday domestic tasks and helping to care for the elderly in as little as 20 years.

“I would hope they would always be subordinate,” said Brian Aldiss, the science fiction writer. “But one will no doubt come to rely on them deeply.” Aldiss’s short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film AI, which addressed the subject of whether androids that have become as intelligent as humans should be denied equal rights.

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys? The greatest danger, however, is likely to lie with robots that are able to learn from their “experiences”. As systems develop, robots are likely to have much more sophisticated self-learning mechanisms built into them and it may become impossible to predict exactly how they will behave.

“My guess is that we’ll have conscious machines before 2020,” said Ian Pearson, futurologist-in-residence at BT. “If we put that in a robot, it’s an android. That is an enormous ethical change.”

To critics who scoff that intelligent robots are a long way off, the roboticists easily riposte that machines can already exert surprising influence over our lives — think about the influence of the internet.

Keeping control

New robo-ethics recommendations

• Safety Ensure human control of robot
• Security Prevent wrong or illegal use
• Privacy Protect data held by robot o Traceability Record robot’s activity
• Identifiability Give unique ID to each robot

Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics

• Robot may not injure human or, through inaction, allow human to come to harm
• Robot must obey human orders, unless they conflict with first law
• Robot must protect itself if this does not conflict with other laws

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...230715,00.html





A Strange Loss of Face, More Than Embarrassing
Sharon Waxman

Philip K. Dick has gone missing, and now Hollywood finds itself an android short.

An actual android.

This famed science fiction writer, whose work was the source for many a Hollywood blockbuster, from "Blade Runner" to "Minority Report," has been dead since 1982. Last year an admiring doctoral student and evident computer whiz, David Hanson, built a life-size facsimile of Mr. Dick, using the latest artificial intelligence technology, robotics and a skinlike substance he calls "frubber."

The android, which looked just like the author and was able to conduct rudimentary conversations about Mr. Dick's work and ideas, was at the cutting edge of robotic technology, able to make eye contact and believable facial expressions.

The robot made several public appearances last year, including at the Comic Con in San Diego, where he (it?) was on a panel for the coming movie, "A Scanner Darkly," which is based on a Dick novel.

Indeed, Warner Independent Pictures, which on July 7 is releasing the film, an experimental, animated thriller directed by Richard Linklater, had intended to send the robot on a promotional tour to promote the film.

That is, until its head went missing.

"We thought we might have him do a junket, we would have pitched him to Letterman," said Laura Kim, a senior executive at Warner Independent, the art-house arm of Warner Brothers. "I don't know if they would have had him on, but it would have been fun and interesting and perfect for the film."

What happened to the android is a mystery, one that is more than mildly intriguing to fans who knew Mr. Dick as a futurist who advocated freedom and compassion for robots in an evolving world, and that has been debated in the technology press.

Less intrigued, rather more like depressed, is Mr. Hanson, the robot maker who left the head on an America West flight from Dallas to Las Vegas in December. En route to San Francisco, Mr. Hanson, 36, had to change planes in Las Vegas, something he hadn't expected.

He had been traveling for weeks, pulling all-nighters in a race between his work as a roboticist (he also made a much-discussed robotic head of Einstein); as the founder of a fledgling company, Hanson Robotics; and his doctoral work. But unlike his creation, Mr. Hanson is, apparently, distressingly human.

"They woke me up, I got my laptop from under my seat, and being dazed, I just forgot that I had the robot in there," said Mr. Hanson, referring to the head in a black, American Tourister roller bag, left in the overhead compartment.

After landing in San Francisco, he notified the airline, whose officials apparently found the head in Las Vegas, packed it in a box and sent it on the next flight to San Francisco. Mysteriously, it never arrived.

"It's hard to know where they went wrong," said Mr. Hanson. "Did it go on to another city? Did it get mistagged? Did it end up in a warehouse? What happened?" He still doesn't know, though he is in touch with America West every few weeks in a vain quest for answers.

The rest of the android's body was traveling separately, and arrived at San Francisco without incident.

The robot was only coincidentally tied to the film, an unusual project that looks much like a graphic novel come to life: it uses live-action photography overlaid with advanced animation.

The movie, a cautionary tale about drug use, stars an animated Keanu Reeves as an undercover police officer who is ordered to start spying on his friends, played by Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. When he is directed to begin surveillance on himself, he finds himself in a paranoid web, where people's true loyalties become impossible to decode.

Over time, Mr. Dick — who himself struggled with drug abuse — has become a cultural hero in science fiction circles, known for futuristic novels and stories that pose many of the moral and philosophical dilemmas that come with advancing technology.

And Hollywood has had its own love affair with the writer, successfully basing huge franchise movies on his work, including "Blade Runner," with Harrison Ford, and "Total Recall" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as smaller films like "Impostor" and "Paycheck."

For Mr. Hanson the missing android is an open sore, straining his relations with Mr. Dick's foundation and the author's two surviving daughters, who provided access to much of Mr. Dick's nonpublished materials, which were downloaded into the android's brain. Sorry, database.

It took Mr. Hanson and a team of other experts six months to build the robot, and required $25,000 from student loans and investors. He also regards it as an artist might a masterpiece, one of a kind and invaluable in its own right.

The film's promotion might have been an opportunity to educate a wider public about Mr. Hanson's — and Mr. Dick's — preoccupations regarding the limits of technology, and the dangers. The robot, Mr. Hanson said, referring to the author by his initials, "realizes science fiction, it transitions it from fiction to reality, to some extent."

"It implies that transition," he continued. "And it's supposed to provoke one to consider issues that P.K.D. was considering."

However satisfying to those with a sense of irony, Mr. Hanson is not comforted by the idea of his homage to Mr. Dick on a jaunt somewhere or, more likely, stuck in storage.

"It's almost like it has some free spirit to it," he said. "A lot of people have said that it's almost like a P.K.D. narrative, like one of those absurd twists that would occur in a P.K.D. novel. But emotionally it doesn't feel that way to me."

In Hollywood, though, executives have found a way to turn the loss to their advantage. Noting the oddity of the story, Ms. Kim said of the android: "He was perfect for the film. Now he's disappeared — and that's perfect for the film too."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/movies/24andr.html

















Until next week,

- js.


















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