How To Crack 128-bit Wireless Networks In 60 Seconds
Shawn
Just for fun (since I'm a dork), I was looking for a wireless stumbler for Macintosh that supported a GPS unit because I thought it would be interesting to map how many wireless networks there are in my neighborhood (I usually can see 15-30 unique wireless networks from any given point). In my search, I ran across one called kismac that does exactly what I wanted (it even generates the maps for you, so I didn't need to code something to plot the GPS coordinates on a map):
I download it and start playing around with it. It turns out it also has security testing functions within it (although I would guess that most of the people using the cracking functions are just trying to gain access to "secured" networks... which is beside the point I suppose).
Anyway, so I start monkeying around with those functions to see if I could learn something about WEP encryption on my own 2 wireless networks (I have a Linksys WRT54G and an Apple Airport Express which I use for beaming iTunes music to the living room stereo), both are currently secured with 128-bit wireless security and I did not change anything in them for the purpose of this video. My "word list" is just the standard dictionary word list that comes with most any UNIX distribution (like Mac OS X) and resides in /usr/share/dict/.
So here's the scary part, from the time it started scanning for wireless networks to the time I was able to crack both wireless network keys (which is all you need to gain access to the wireless network), it took right around 60 seconds. Check out this video...
Okay, so what just happened here? I just cracked my two 128-bit wireless networks in roughly 60 seconds from start to finish.
Even as a relatively knowledgeable tech guy, this seems like utter insanity to me. Okay, obviously I didn't have some crazy, ultra-secure password for my networks, but I would guess 90% of all the wireless network passwords out there are based on simple (easy to remember) word(s). After doing some reading, an "ultra-secure" password/MD5 seed would be relatively useless anyway... all it would do is force the attacker to spend 10 minutes on it instead of 10 seconds, all of which is easily done from the kismac Network menu. It doesn't even matter if you setup your wireless network to be public or not, because kismac can see it even if the base station isn't showing the SSID publicly.
I'm going to poke around and see how secure RADIUS authentication is for a wireless network, but even if RADIUS is more secure, what normal person is going to have the technical knowledge and an extra few thousand dollars to setup and run a RADIUS server for their wireless network? I'm not even sure if I want to run a wireless network anymore to be honest... or maybe shut them down except for the times I'm actually using them (talk about annoying though).
http://www.shawnhogan.com/2006/08/ho...-networks.html
Twenty Five Years of the IBM PC
Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with the announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150.
Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a couple of modest e-mails worth.
The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it soon came to define the global standard.
It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution in home computing.
"It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything," said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the World Service's Analysis programme.
"But there were still things you could do with a computer that you couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing."
Global impact
Everything from automated spreadsheets to desktop publishing and the rise of the internet have since become possible.
The term PC had been in use long before IBM released its machine - but the success of the 5150 led to the use of the term to mean a machine compatible with IBM's specifications.
The machine was developed by a team of 12 engineers, led by Don Estridge, who was known as the "father of the IBM PC".
Development took under a year and was achieved by building a machine using "off the shelf" parts from a variety of manufacturers.
The machine had an "open architecture" which meant other firms could produce compatible machines. IBM banked on being able to charge a license for using the BIOS - the software which controls the heart of the machine.
But other companies reverse engineered the BIOS and were able to produce clones of the machine without having to pay IBM a penny.
That open architecture sparked an explosion in PC sales and also paved the way for common standards - something business had craved.
Since then the PC has come to dominate the home and the office and led the move to the online era with cheap global communication, e-commerce and for consumers the ability to find the answer to almost any question on the web.
Roger Kay, president of computer consultancy firm Endpoint, said the impact of the PC on all aspects our lives cannot be over-stated.
"I have for example an archive of correspondence from people that I diligently wrote letters to and all of a sudden that just stops," he said.
"I don't think I've got a personal letter for five years."
Moving this revolution forward are the one billion PCs that are now in use around the world.
In many ways, the PC has become in the developed world, an essential tool in our everyday lives.
End of an era?
But for how much longer?
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, told the firm's shareholders last month the PC era was coming to an end.
"We're now in a new era, an era in which the internet is at the centre of so much that we do now with our PCs," he told them.
"And it's important to start then from a different vantage point."
With the lion's share of the Microsoft global software empire founded on the success of the PC, Mr Ozzie's statement was a significant admission.
Mr Standage said Microsoft has come to recognise that it will inevitably have to move with the times.
He said: "The problem is that Microsoft has most to lose from the shift towards internet-based software and that means it has the least incentive to do anything about it because it likes the status quo.
"But if it doesn't switch to this new model other people will."
PC supremacy
The move towards internet based software calls into question the supremacy of the PC itself.
Vying to knock the PC off its pedestal are a new generation of media PCs that hook up to televisions and hand-held computer devices, from phones to pocket PCs.
With all this small mobile technology and the growth of wireless internet, will people on the move bother owning a PC at all?
Reports of the PC's demise may be a little premature. While the market may not be growing anymore, it remains an industry generating some $200bn a year.
In developing countries such as China and Latin America, the PC market is still expanding at double digit growth rates.
But the development of mobile technology may enable the developing world to leapfrog the PC era altogether.
Mr Standage said mobile technology is key to sharing the benefits of the PC age with developing countries.
"I think that adding features to mobile phones is probably a better way to democratise computing," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/4780963.stm
Investors, Including Bono, Buy a Piece of Forbes
David Carr
SINCE the death in 1990 of the legendary publisher Malcolm S. Forbes, his four sons and a daughter have sold his cherished assets here and there — his private jet, the collection of Fabergé eggs, a handwritten copy of Lincoln’s last address. The father suggested in his memoir that it was only natural and proper that his children do so, but even he might have been taken aback by the most recent divestiture.
On Friday, the family sold a significant minority stake in a newly formed company, Forbes Media, which includes the 89-year-old Forbes magazine started by their grandfather, B. C. Forbes; the Forbes.com Web site; and a number of smaller media properties, to Elevation Partners, a private equity group.
Malcolm Forbes, whose tastes in music ran to Scottish bagpipes, may have been even more surprised that among the new owners of the company is Bono, the singer in U2 who is one of six partners in Elevation.
“My father and grandfather would approve,” said Steve Forbes, who spoke by telephone from the offices of Forbes in Manhattan along with Roger McNamee, a managing director and co-founder of Elevation. “No one is the master of their own universe. Time and circumstances change. We wanted the wherewithal to pursue the enormous opportunities in front of us, and Elevation understands technology, media and print. They are not just a source of capital; they are a source of insight.”
Mr. Forbes emphasized that the company was looking for operational flexibility rather than familial liquidity, but it was clear that a business model that had been “blasted by the Web,” as Mr. Forbes put it, had taken a toll on the Forbes family. The magazine, swept up in the optimism of the digital boom in the late 90’s, paid dearly in terms of credibility and advertising pages when the market collapsed. Two runs for president by Mr. Forbes also proved costly.
There are bright spots: the company’s own aggressive investment in digital technologies is showing significant profits, and advertising sales at the magazine appear to be rebounding a bit. But the Forbes brothers have struggled to maintain profits at their business magazine, which is unaligned with a large media company, at a time when advertising continues to flee print.
The Forbes company and Elevation circled each other for several months — Mr. Forbes and Mr. McNamee both described it as a mating ritual — before getting down to serious negotiations in the last several weeks, concluding Friday with the signing of documents. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but some people said that the deal gave Elevation a stake of more than 40 percent at a cost of $250 million to $300 million.
Those people, however, did not have firsthand knowledge of the transaction, and no one directly involved in the deal would confirm those numbers. Even though Forbes has now taken on partners, it continues to be an exceedingly private enterprise.
Proceeds from the sale will be used both to invest in the business and to pay out money to members of the family.
Mr. McNamee called the alliance with Forbes a “brand-defining moment” for Elevation, a relatively new partnership conceived by a rock star and guided by some of the more successful venture capitalists on the West Coast.
“It says that we are in the business of helping content creators in the traditional media world manage the transition imposed by the Internet,” he said. Bono was not directly involved in the Forbes meetings, but Mr. McNamee said that the singer was attracted to the magazine because it “has a point of view,” adding that Bono “drove this part of the discussion and likes the fact that there has been a consistent philosophy throughout its history.”
But it was clear from talking with Mr. McNamee that his group was buying into a Web site with a magazine attached, as opposed to the other way around. Forbes.com had 10 million unique visitors worldwide, a very robust number, in June, according to comScore Media Metrix.
During the boom, Forbes invested tens of millions of dollars in its digital endeavors with an eye toward an initial public offering. That strategy did not pan out in the near term, but it left the company positioned for growth once the Web became a viable advertising proposition. With few hopes that the magazine would return to its glory years of the 1990’s as the largest magazine in terms of pages in the business news category, much of the value of the deal is built on potential profits from the Web site.
“The Web has disrupted traditional business models in the print world, and Forbes is poised to take advantage of a huge opportunity,” Mr. McNamee said. “What is not to like? We are like a kid in a candy store.”
While the magazine has not seen much in the way of investment or editorial impact in the last few years, the Web site is growing, with plans for a new travel site. It outdraws competing sites like CNN Money and BusinessWeek Online. Competitors complain that the site has used pay-for-click alliances to build traffic artificially and has deployed editorial gimmickry, like a feature on “Top Topless Beaches,” to increase traffic in unbusinesslike ways.
Mr. McNamee said that Forbes’s edge over its competition in the digital realm was very real, in part because the family came to understand the nature of opportunity on the Web more quickly than its competitors.
“The Web undermines the advantages of scale,” he said. “It is our view that the distribution model that used to dominate in media is largely unsustainable. We are in the first inning, and Forbes has really trusted content, a history of innovation on the Web and a very vibrant business.”
A share of the company had been shopped for months by J. P. Morgan, so the sale of part of the company was not unexpected, but the people on the other side of the table did come as a bit of a surprise. Elevation Partners is a two-year-old fund formed by veterans of the digital economy that raised $1.9 billion to invest in media and entertainment deals. This is the third deal for the fund, after investments in a video gaming partnership and a real estate Web business.
No one in the group has any significant experience in print properties, although they have abundant digital and finance expertise. The other managing directors include Fred Anderson, former chief financial officer of Apple Computer; John Riccitiello, former president and chief operating officer of the video game publisher Electronic Arts; Marc Bodnick, founding principal of the private equity group Silver Lake Partners; and Bret Pearlman, former managing director of the Blackstone Group. Mr. McNamee, who founded Silver Lake Partners and Integral Capital Partners, and Mr. Riccitiello will take seats on the Forbes board.
They now have a hand in a storied brand that has been buffeted by its status as an unaligned, independent magazine. Forbes’s competitors have significant corporate backing — Fortune is owned by Time Warner, BusinessWeek by McGraw-Hill, and Condé Nast will soon introduce a magazine to be called Portfolio.
There has been speculation that the rough going for most business magazines in the last five years — Forbes has a little more than half the ads it had at the height of the technology boom — combined with Mr. Forbes’s two runs for president (costing north of $70 million) left the family in need of additional liquidity. But Mr. Forbes said the partnership with Elevation was driven by ambition, not financial weakness.
“We have investment needs for real opportunities,” he said. “The whole world has opened up again, and we don’t want our children to think we just sat our hands. Yes, it has increased family liquidity — we do have estate-planning to do — but we are now poised to go against the behemoths.”
A media brand seeking cachet and capital could do worse than signing up Paul Hewson, a k a Bono. For the last 25 years, Bono has stayed atop a fickle business by embracing the latest technology in order to build global reach, constantly renewing the creative product and engaging in public stewardship along the way, including work on trade issues and global poverty.
Of course, Bono’s investment in a magazine that celebrates wealth and consumption is bound to raise eyebrows. But Mr. McNamee said the stake in Forbes did not necessarily clash with his politics and his rhetoric, saying, “The way you solve poverty is giving people the tools to overcome it.” Bono could not be reached for comment.
Timothy C. Forbes, chief operating officer of Forbes Media, is actually the music fan in the family, but Steve Forbes, whose hobbies run more toward flat-tax advocacy, said that “One” is his favorite U2 song. It begins somewhat portentously with a plaintive pair of questions: “Is it getting better, or do you feel the same? Will it make it easier on you, now you got someone to blame?”
With a name like Bono on the letterhead, Elevation is not-so-private equity, but Mr. McNamee said that Elevation — the word is a U2 song, the name of one of its tours and an equity fund — was Bono’s idea.
“He looks at this as a great opportunity to get involved in traditional media and move it forward,” Mr. McNamee said.
The deal has some specific benefits to the Forbes family. Those who know the brothers say that they are completely engaged in running the company and have little idea what they might otherwise do. So selling out, as was briefly discussed when Condé Nast was first contemplating getting into business publishing, was never really an option.
Steve Forbes said that the company had been looking for a partner on and off since 1999.
“This was a very good time to get the kind of wherewithal we need for the kind of expansion we need to have,” Mr. Forbes said. “This is a natural step for the company with right people. Forbes as always been about entrepreneurial capitalists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/bu...ia/07carr.html
History for the boob tube?
Picture Tubes Are Fading Into the Past
Eric A. Taub
The bulky, squarish, heavy picture tube, the standard television technology for more than 60 years, is heading for the dustbin of history much faster than anyone expected.
This year, the number of TV models in the United States that use glass cathode-ray tubes to produce an image has been reduced sharply. By next year, even fewer C.R.T. televisions will be made, and fewer retailers will sell them.
“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TV’s are gone,” said Geoff Shavey, the TV buyer for Costco. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TV’s.”
Costco, a discount warehouse chain, , has already cut its picture-tube offerings to three models this year, from 10 in 2005.
Instead, Costco and other retailers are selling growing numbers of wide-screen plasma and liquid-crystal display flat-panel TV’s, which are more expensive than traditional TV’s. But prices for both types continue to drop: 42-inch plasma TV’s can be bought for less than $2,000, and the smallest flat-panel sets will soon be fairly close in price to their tube counterparts.
Mr. Shavey said that a 32-inch wide-screen L.C.D. television was available for $700 at his stores, within striking distance of a tube set of similar size. But he added, “The demand for picture-tube TV’s is far off from what it was one year ago.”
One reason is that flat-panel TV’s make a strong design statement, prompting women to want to swap their old sets for sleeker ones, said Mike Vitelli, a senior vice president at Best Buy.
“For the first time in history, women care about the TV that comes in the house,” Mr. Vitelli said. “Men are not just getting permission to buy a flat-screen TV — they’re getting directed to do so.” Soon, he said, Best Buy will sell picture-tube TV’s only under its Insignia house label.
Consumer electronics companies also want out of the tube TV business, in part because profit margins have become so thin. The government has mandated that all TV’s eventually include a built-in digital tuner to receive over-the-air digital broadcasts, and while even picture-tube sets are being made compliant, manufacturers would rather switch to selling thin-panel TV’s, which can generate bigger profits.
“The end of picture-tube TV’s is accelerating faster than a lot of us expected,” said Randy Waynick, a senior vice president for Sony Electronics. The company, which offered 10 tube models two years ago, will pare that number to two next year, both of them wide screens. “Picture-tube TV sales reductions were far greater than forecast,” Mr. Waynick said.
Even if the profit margins were healthy, picture-tube TV’s would be ill-suited for a market that wants ever-larger screens. Picture-tube TV’s were once made as large as 40 inches corner to corner, but the units were the size of baby elephants, sometimes weighing hundreds of pounds and protruding several feet from the wall.
Panasonic is getting out of the picture-tube business altogether. A year ago, the company offered 30 picture-tube models in the United States; now it sells one, a 20-inch analog set. “This year will be the last year for Panasonic picture-tube TV’s,” said Andrew Nelkin, a Panasonic vice president.
Toshiba has cut its picture-tube models to 13 — from 35 last year — and expects the number in 2007 to be “significantly reduced,” said Scott Ramirez, a vice president of marketing. “Beyond 2007, the picture-tube business is very questionable for any company,” he said.
Picture-tube TV’s represented 78 percent of the market in 2004 but will account for only 54 percent this year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade group. In the same period, sales of flat-panel units have jumped from 12 percent of all TV’s sold to an expected 37 percent this year. Front- and rear-projection TV’s will account for about 9 percent of sales in 2006, according to the group.
“C.R.T. as a technology is fading out of the market,” said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis for the association.
The ascendance of flat-panel TV’s signals another sea change for the TV industry: the switch from somewhat square screens to wide rectangular ones. The vast majority of flat-panel TV’s are built in a wide-screen shape that allows movies to fill all or most of the screen. More television series are being produced for this format, and consumers are growing more accustomed to viewing programs this way, electronics executives say. “A wide screen gives a much more impressive picture,” Mr. Shavey said.
New technologies seldom replace their predecessors entirely, and picture-tube TV’s will still be available for those who prefer them. But they will increasingly be available only in discount stores, where they will be sold under house brand names and by less prominent manufacturers like Funai, which owns the Symphonic, Sylvania and Emerson brands.
“We think there is a continual business for us in C.R.T. TV’s,” said Greg Bosler, executive vice president of the TTE Corporation, which owns the RCA brand. Mr. Bosler, who counts Wal-Mart as a key customer for its TV’s, noted that a 27-inch L.C.D. TV was still priced around $800, while an RCA digital picture-tube set of the same size could be bought for $350; an analog version was $240.
Even so, the company expects to double its flat-panel offerings next year. It will reduce its tube models to about 15 in 2007, from 26 this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/te...gy/07tube.html
More Than Ever, Hollywood Studios Are Relying on the Foreign Box Office
Laura M. Holson
In 1998 the director Bryan Singer was asked to give a speech at the Tokyo International Film Festival to introduce his movie “Apt Pupil.” Mr. Singer, who often traveled to Japan, decided to surprise the crowd by speaking in Japanese.
After a brief greeting, Mr. Singer hoped to say, “I look forward to seeing you after the film.” But instead he bungled the translation, suggesting that he was looking forward to having sex. The crowd gasped. “It was,” he said in an interview on Thursday, “a disastrous mistake.”
So before he returned to Tokyo last week to promote “Superman Returns,” Mr. Singer said, he practiced his Japanese — a lot.
Much has changed since, besides Mr. Singer’s mastery of Japanese, as Hollywood increasingly looks to global markets to bolster the bottom line. Movie attendance has declined in the United States over the last decade, forcing studios to cultivate a wider audience. And combined with the increasing cost to make and market films, many here agree that having an overseas strategy is more important than ever.
Industry analysts predict an increase in worldwide movie attendance over the next five years, with Asia and Central and Eastern Europe the fastest-growing regions. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, global spending on film entertainment from 2006 to 2010, including movie tickets and DVD’s, is projected to grow at an annual rate of 5.3 percent.
But the rules that apply to movie marketing and distribution in the United States — a barrage of talk-show interviews and television advertising — do not necessarily translate in Hamburg, Tokyo or Moscow. In France, for instance, American studios are barred from advertising movies on television. Japanese audiences are notoriously fickle, and marketers appeal to women by stressing a movie’s romance. (At the “Superman” premiere in Tokyo, Mr. Singer said they gave away prizes.) And don’t even try to release a film anywhere in the world during a major sports event like the World Cup.
“People just won’t show up,” said Mark Zoradi, who runs worldwide marketing and distribution for the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, which produced “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
This summer, “The Da Vinci Code” was the standout overseas, surprising even the producers who relied on the international cast to generate interest in the film. “Pirates” turned out to be a hit, but even Disney knew it would be no match for the World Cup. As for “Superman Returns,” there are 13 territories yet to open, 3 of them top international markets. For now, it is unclear how much of a profit the movie, which cost $209 million to make, will take in.
•“The Da Vinci Code”
Domestic box office so far: $217 million
Foreign box office so far: $528 million
At the premiere of “The Da Vinci Code” at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, the producer Brian Grazer watched in awe as Tom Hanks’s limousine was swarmed by a horde of eager fans.
“People were throwing their bodies on the back of his car; they were this close to getting run over,” Mr. Grazer recalled in a recent interview, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “It felt like guerrilla warfare. Fans in foreign countries are excited when they see a third-rate actor. If they get someone like Tom Hanks, they go batty. It is like seeing Elvis.”
Casting an A-list movie star almost ensures a worldwide hit these days. But in the case of “The Da Vinci Code,” Mr. Hanks’s appeal was also a valued marketing tool because his nice-guy reputation was an antidote to the movie’s controversial subject matter.
Few movie stars, Mr. Grazer said, can get away with saying, “It’s only a movie,” as Mr. Hanks did when asked about the plot. (In the film, the Roman Catholic Church covers up the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children.)
Mr. Grazer relied on Mr. Hanks and the film’s similarly good-natured director, Ron Howard, to appeal to scathing critics. “I thought we needed someone kind of forgiving around the world,” Mr. Grazer said, noting that he had canceled 27 interviews in Cannes to avoid the hostile media.
“The Da Vinci Code,” based on the best-selling book, was conceived as a global endeavor from the start. The book, though, “would attract only so many people,” Mr. Grazer said.
So, he and executives at Sony Pictures Entertainment hired well-known actors from France and Britain, where the movie was filmed. These included two British actors, Ian McKellen, who starred in the “X-Men” franchise, among many other projects, and Paul Bettany as well as the French actress Audrey Tautou. In choosing them, Mr. Grazer said, he read articles and reviews to make sure that the actors were “culturally relevant.”
Sony did not wait until Cannes to bring out Mr. Howard and Mr. Hanks. In February and March, Mr. Howard traveled to several countries to show 30 minutes of film to reporters, said Jeff Blake, chairman of Sony’s worldwide marketing and distribution. Mr. Hanks went to Japan twice to promote the movie. And the press junket was conducted on an 833-mile train ride from London to Cannes, a journey chronicled by 250 journalists.
People apprised of the marketing budget said Sony spent about $70 million to market the movie abroad. It paid off. “The Da Vinci Code” brought in double the amount at the box office abroad than in the United States.
•“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”
Domestic box office so far: $380 million
Foreign box office so far: $392 million
When Mr. Zoradi met last year with his boss, Richard Cook, who is Walt Disney Studios’ chairman, to discuss the studio’s 2006 release schedule, they had a problem. Disney was distributing two expensive movies in the summer, the animated “Cars” and a sequel to “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But unlike earlier summers, it faced tough competition from the unlikeliest rivals — 20 sweaty men chasing a ball around a grassy field.
The World Cup soccer championships were scheduled to begin in Germany on June 9, just as the summer movie season moved into high gear. Both Mr. Zoradi and Mr. Cook knew that even the savviest marketing campaign was unlikely to coax fans from their television sets. So, Disney decided to release “Pirates of the Caribbean” over several weeks instead of on the same day worldwide.
Disney opened “Pirates” in the United States on July 7, two days ahead of the World Cup final match between France and Italy. That was not a problem. Among Americans, soccer is not as popular as it is overseas, and the American team had been eliminated early. Industry analysts pointed out, too, that the morning matches did not cut into evening movie attendance.
Europe proved more challenging. The international campaign for “Pirates” began on July 6, with releases in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. “We took a bet that England and Australia wouldn’t be in the World Cup finals,” Mr. Zoradi said.
It was a good guess. But there were other factors working in the movie’s favor. Not only was it a sequel, but the cast, including Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, was largely British.
“Pirates” opened No. 1 in all those markets, bringing in $25.3 million in Britain, $8.4 million in Australia and $1.2 million in New Zealand that first weekend. The studio then waited until July 12 — three days after the World Cup ended — to continue releasing “Pirates,” first in Scandinavia, then in the Netherlands, most of Asia, Latin America, Japan, Germany and, finally in August, France and Spain. The rollout ends in Italy on Sept. 13 because many movie theaters there are not air-conditioned and families are on vacation in August.
So what does Disney plan for its last installment of “Pirates?” With no major sports events planned, Disney is expecting a global release the last weekend in May 2007.
•“Superman Returns”
Domestic box office so far: $190 million
Foreign box office so far: $146 million
How do you make a superhero fly? That was the challenge for Warner Brothers this year when it reintroduced “Superman” after a 20-year absence. Superman, unlike characters in the “X-Men” or “Pirates” franchises, is distinctly American, and that made it a challenge to market abroad. “The problem with Superman was that he was Midwestern, not a cultural fit,” said Sue Kroll, president of international marketing at Warner Brothers.
After the release of “Batman Begins” in 2005, Ms. Kroll said Warner held discussion groups to understand, among other things, why the critically acclaimed film did not perform as well as expected overseas. (It brought in $372 million worldwide, only $167 million of that from the international box office.) Ms. Kroll said the studio learned that Batman’s character was too dark.
Warner also studied how Superman was perceived abroad. In Germany, audiences wanted his personality to have more dimension, Ms. Kroll said. In Japan, the groups responded to Superman’s physical strength but sought a more complicated character. “Everything we learned was not surprising,” she said. “He was one-dimensional. There was a huge cheese factor. He felt old and outdated.”
Ms. Kroll and her team were charged with updating the superhero’s image. But each country had its own rules to market films. France, for instance, barred American movie studios from advertising on television. So, Warner’s French marketing team came up with an outdoor campaign based on The Daily Planet, where Clark Kent and Lois Lane worked. The ads, one with the headline “Superman Est de Retour!” (Superman is back!), were plastered on the back of buses beginning in May, as well as in bus shelters and in transit stations.
Con Gornell, Warner’s executive vice president for European marketing, said French staff members proposed the idea last November. The studio began its French campaign in May at the Monaco Grand Prix, where a team of drivers wore Superman-style jumpsuits.
Then, too, the studio began giving away three million copies of a French edition of The Daily Planet on the streets of Paris and 10 other cities. Like many studios these days, Warner heavily promoted Superman on the Internet. On a Daily Planet Web site, French speakers could post photos of Superman, track Superman on a map, watch a video blog from the director or play a game. Mr. Gornell said executives in other countries modeled aspects of their campaigns after the French effort.
How successful was it? Since July 12, “Superman Returns” has brought in a respectable $10.5 million in France. But in the weeks ahead, Superman is facing a foe mightier than Lex Luthor: Johnny Depp in “Pirates.” That movie earned $18 million in France over the weekend, its debut.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/bu...s/07movie.html
Movie Transfers to DVDs to Become Easier
May Wong
A film industry group is set to remove some of the procedural hurdles that prevented the legal recording of movies onto blank DVDs in a further sign that Hollywood studios are preparing to expand what consumers can do with downloadable movies.
Under rule changes expected to be finalized soon by the DVD Copy Control Association, retailers could create movie jukebox kiosks with which customers can select, say, an obscure title and burn it to a DVD on the spot.
Online merchants, like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, could start to allow video downloads to be transferred onto DVDs.
The impending technical and policy changes involve the copy group's proprietary technology known as the Content Scramble System, or CSS. The association, an arm of Hollywood studios, licenses the encryption technology to makers of DVD players and other electronics companies and applies it widely to movies on DVDs to restrict illegal copying.
The association said it will soon expand licensing to movies that are digitally distributed on demand or a la carte - and not just for movies that are mass produced on DVDs.
The group also is working with disc makers to produce CSS-compatible blank DVDs.
Hollywood studios have been experimenting more with digital distribution. But until recently, they have been reluctant to allow consumers to transfer online purchases onto DVDs, limiting playback largely to computers or entertainment systems that are linked to a computer network.
Last month, online movie service CinemaNow became the first to allow customers to transfer mainstream films onto DVDs using an alternative encryption method, but users complain the movies sometimes can't be played on standard DVD players.
That problem should disappear when CSS is available for digital downloads, said Jim Taylor, a general manager at digital video software company Sonic Solutions.
"It'll open the floodgates for a lot more premium content to be burned onto DVD," Taylor said of the changes.
Sonic has already teamed with online movie provider Movielink to provide burn-to-DVD offerings that will be CSS-compatible.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-18-10-25
The Many Voices of Wikipedia, Heard in One Place
Robert Levine
As hard-core Wikipedia contributors gathered here during the weekend to consider the next phase of the online encyclopedia’s life cycle, Jimmy Wales, the site’s founder, said that the emphasis going forward would be on quality, not quantity.
With 1.2 million entries in Wikipedia, “there’s a sense in the English community that we’re going from the era of growth to the era of quality,” Mr. Wales said in an interview. “That could mean quality control — making sure the information is accurate — and it could mean a clearer presentation, or more information.”
Wikipedia has become known as the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but in practical terms, it is mostly a cadre of devotees who contribute to the site and obsess over it.
About 400 of them paid to attend the second annual Wikimania conference, an event that showed far more professional trappings than the first. It was held at Harvard Law School rather than a German youth hostel, the organizer was paid for her work and the corporate sponsors included Amazon.com, Nokia and Coca-Cola.
“This has a different scale,” said Delphine Ménard, the organizer, who planned Wikimania 2005 as a volunteer. “We have a public we need to reach.”
Although there have been some well-publicized errors — some intentional, some not — published on Wikipedia, the site has also earned some good marks for accuracy. A survey in the science journal Nature found four errors in Wikipedia for every three in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Then again, as several contributors at Wikimania acknowledged, the site could be judged more harshly on other criteria. Entries can ramble, and there are times when the idiosyncratic enthusiasms of contributors rule the day. (The “wiki” name is derived from a Hawaiian term meaning quick or fast, according to the site.)
“One of the running jokes is that there are better articles on Pokémon than on certain kinds of science,” said Alex Schenck, 19, a volunteer site administrator who delivered a presentation on the factors behind Wikipedia’s success. “That could be true.”
Mr. Wales said that the frequency of changes could decrease, suggesting that, as time passed, the Wikipedia product would become more important than the collaborative process supporting it.
For instance, he said, the German-language Wikipedia will soon begin creating some “stable entries,” good enough to publish in a textbook or other traditional media. Most likely, he said, these entries will exist in two versions, one of which can still be changed by the public.
If that experiment goes well, Mr. Wales said, the English-language version of Wikipedia could follow suit in the next year.
“Stability is important not in itself, but in the sense of feeling more comfortable that we’re presenting our best work,” he said.
Mr. Wales said he expected less of a free-for-all atmosphere as the site grew up. “There was a time when you could come to Wikipedia and there was a red link to Africa, and you could write that Africa was a continent,” he said. “Now the links that are left are less and less famous, less and less big.”
Angela Beesley, a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit entity that supervises the site, said in an interview that she was less concerned with the sprawling nature of some Wikipedia entries than with “accuracy, then balance.”
As for the sometimes choppy writing, “it’s difficult to organize whole articles, so people don’t edit them as a whole,” she said. “That’s something we need to encourage.”
At times the conference itself seemed to be dealing with the same issues. One member of the foundation’s board, Florence Nibart-Devouard, stormed out of a news conference because she had not been told about the announcement being made. And on Thursday afternoon, signs concerning registration had the opening time crossed out, replaced by the word “later.”
“It’s a funny thing,” Mr. Wales said. “I had no idea that anyone was putting up signs. Someone somewhere said there should be signs, and someone did it. It’s effective.”
“But,” he added, “it’s chaotic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/te...gy/07wiki.html
Dell Reflects on 25 Years of PCs
Tom Krazit
The man who founded the world's largest PC company thinks the best is still to come after a quarter-century of the IBM PC.
Twenty-five years have passed since IBM launched its version of the personal computer. Apple may have captured the attention of early computer hobbyists with its first products, but IBM's PC made the business world sit up and realize that personal computers could be much more than toys.
Michael Dell started off using PCs to create homework shortcuts, the way many young people at the time discovered the new devices. Few people, including Dell's parents, realized exactly how large the potential was for the personal computer. More than 20 years after he founded PC's Limited, he admits his parents never quite embraced his decision to leave the University of Texas at Austin to start the company that would eventually bear his name and record $56 billion in revenue during its last fiscal year.
Michael Dell
As the PC industry looks back on 25 years of growth and success, CNET News.com spoke to Dell about his early experiences with the PC, the factors that led to its rapid acceptance among home and business users, and the future of the device. Here are excerpts from that conversation, and videos can be found on the right side of the page.
Can you start off by telling me a little bit about what your first-ever PC was?
When I was in junior high school, I started playing around with--at the time they were RadioShack PCs--so they were the first PCs that I was able to play around with.
Do you remember how much that cost or what the specifications were?
They were probably $800 or something like that, not super expensive and not very powerful either. They had cassette drives instead of hard-disk drives. It was even before the floppy disks. (I'd) largely do programming with Basic. I was kind of fascinated with the computing power and what that could do and what that would mean. It was just an enchanting device for me.
What were you doing with it? Were you playing simple games or...?
Just my math homework, playing around writing programs. (I was) just fascinated with the machine that could do so many computations so quickly. At the beginning of the genesis of the PC industry, it seemed like there was going to be a lot of excitement with the device like this, as it went into medicine and business and education and entertainment. Of course, nobody knew exactly what would happen, but it was a very exciting time.
When do you think you realized that this device was going to go from more of a niche device to something that almost everyone would have at some point?
I dropped out of college because that's what I thought would happen. So, that for me was in 1984 and I started a company around that idea, believing that more and more people would know how to use PCs, that they would become easier to use, that even people could buy them without going to a store. We had a sense for it in the early '80s but certainly couldn't say we imagined it. It is just the way it happened.
Do you recall any specific event or anything that dawned on you in back around that time? I mean, you must have had to sell the idea of dropping out of college to your parents.
I didn't really sell them on it. They weren't really in favor of it. So I was, you know, rebellious--an 18, 19-year-old and just did what I wanted to do and all worked out OK.
It seems to have. So to ask you to speculate a little bit, one of the things that helped the rise of the PC 25 years ago was the way that IBM gave up control over certain parts of the PC to other companies, allowing Microsoft to license the operating system. Can you sense what the world might be like if that hadn't happened, if IBM had maintained very tight control of that device?
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I mean, that was clearly a big factor because what it developed was an ecosystem which became and is still today incredibly important in the evolution of computing, not only in the personal computer sense, but even in the enterprise. Before that time you actually had all sorts of proprietary or semi-proprietary PCs, and the cry out from the community of users was, "Hey, how do we get a standard so that we can develop applications one time and they work on any kind of device?"
I think you could argue that the market would have been much smaller, would have developed much more slowly. Parts would have been much more expensive and computing would have never had the impact that it's had now. You could also say that if IBM and Microsoft hadn't done that, somebody else would have come along and did it, so I would believe that as well.
That original PC in 1981 was certainly a pivotal moment because it caused this ecosystem to start to flourish and allowed all sorts of companies to participate, whether they were developing add-in cards or software applications or chipsets or extending the architecture in new ways and bringing products to market that provided value, provided an alternative.
What kind of changes do you see in store for the PC over the next 20 to 25 years? Are we going to see something radically different or an evolution of the thing that we now know?
I remember about 10 years ago somebody said we were in a post-PC era. I said, "That's kind of interesting. Well, tell me about the post-PC era--what does that all
mean?"
It turns out, the unit volumes for PCs have continued to grow, so now this year roughly 240 million PCs are sold all over the world. What you are going to see is that there are all sorts of new devices, but the PC has had an amazing ability to adapt and evolve and it's not really just one PC. You have all these different shapes and forms and sizes and workstations and portables, big ones and small ones and multiple processors and single processors and handheld machines and all sorts of varieties.
The physics that underlie the hardware are not slowing down at all, so the rate of improvement there is tremendous. I think there are still enormous opportunities in the user interface to make it an easier or simpler device.
I still believe the industry is in its early innings in terms of its development and (rate of) change, and certainly the pervasiveness of very high-speed broadband connections, fiber, very high-speed wireless, which will change where and how computing occurs around the world. But the PC is an indispensable part of how productivity and entertainment, education, medicine works today in society.
When you look back now and you see how far the PC has come, can you pick a couple of things that you think were instrumental in getting that device to where it is today?
I think you have a foundational element, which is the semiconductor revolution, which provided enormous improvements in power and integration and scale in being able to combine large numbers of transistors together into increasingly smaller and less-expensive packages, so that the functionality was improving at a very, very rapid rate, across all aspects of the system, whether it was processor performance or graphics performance or IO performance, network, bandwidth, all those things. That's the foundational element that's been absolutely critical.
Then, you have this ecosystem effect, which was kicked off by the famous IBM decision with Intel and Microsoft. So you have this ecosystem of literally tens of thousands of companies that are participating and billions of users. Dell has sold over 200 million PCs worldwide and this year over 40 million of them, so that ecosystem of users and companies contributing makes it much more powerful than what any single company could do themselves.
We certainly, I think, helped make PCs more affordable, (have) driven the technology transitions and reduced the time period from when technology was introduced to when it's actually available. We made the whole supply chain in the industry much more efficient; that drives efficiency, drives costs down and certainly that makes the market much larger.
The one other thing I want to ask you is what you currently use, right now at home, as your home PC.
I am using a Dell Precision 690, which is our high-end workstation. It's a two-socket system and it's got two dual-core Woodcrest (Xeon 5100 processors) in there. It's got a port with 64 (gigabytes) of memory, but I have only got 32 (gigabytes) in there.
Come on.
And I have got two of our 30-inch monitors, so it's 8.2 million pixels of resolution, which is kind of nice. And I have managed to get a fiber connection to my house, so I kind of dig into that speed on the Internet.
http://news.com.com/Age+of+computing...6099132-2.html
State of the Blogosphere, August 2006
dsifry
Three months have passed since my last State of the Blogosphere report, so time for an update on the numbers. For those of you who just want the most interesting tidbits, I've tried something new this time around - I've put in boldface the most significant information. There's also a summary at the bottom of the post for those of you who just want the significant details.
50 Million Blogs and Counting.
On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog. The blogosphere that Technorati tracks continues to show significant growth. The chart below (click to get a full-sized version) has the details:
Technorati has been tracking the blogosphere, or world of weblogs, since November 2002, and I'm constantly amazed at the growth over the years. The blogosphere has been doubling in size every 6 months or so. It is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
Whenever I write about these statistics, I'm always asked by people, "Can it continue to grow this quickly?" Frankly, I can't possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace - after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down.
Rather than just postulate on this, we now have enough data to actually look at the real numbers - The rate at which the blogosphere has doubled over time, as shown in the chart below:
As this chart shows, back in November of 2003, the blogosphere had doubled in size in 40 days - probably because Technorati was new and was just picking up all of the blogs that were out there in the world. In January of 2004, the blogosphere was doubling at a rate of once ever 120 days, which is about once every 4 months. By July of 2004, the blogosphere was doubling every 180 days, or about once every 6 months. Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months. That means things have slowed somewhat - the rate of doubling has increased by about half a month to once every seven months.
What I found so interesting in these numbers is that the graph has stayed so flat in the range of 150-200 day doublings for so long. From January 2004 until July 2006, almost two and a half years later, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
Can this possibly continue? Will I be posting about the 100 Millionth blog tracked in February of 2007? I can't imagine that things will continue at this blistering pace - it has got to slow down. After all, that would mean that there will be more bloggers around in 7 months than there are bloggers around in total today. I shake my head as I am writing this - the only thing still niggling at my brain is that I'd have been perfectly confident making the same statement 7 months ago when we had tracked our 25 Millionth blog, and I've just proven myself wrong.
Let's look at the number of new blogs tracked each day, to get another look at the numbers:
As of July 2006, about 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
Surely some of these new blogs in Technorati's index are Spam blogs or 'splogs'. The spikes in red on the chart above shows the increased activity that occurs when spammers create massive numbers of fake blogs and try to get them into our indexes. This is going to be a fight that is going to continue as long as people find the web useful, and there's really no way to make sure that we catch every single spam blog before it goes into our indexes. We've been working extremely hard on understanding these spam patterns, and eliminating the spam from our indexes as quickly as possible, and making sure that these identified sources of spam (and spam creation patterns) never even make it into the index when they attempt to do so in the future.
What we have found, after lots of analysis and spam elimination, is that we see about 8% of new blogs that get past our filters and make it into the index, even if it is only for a few hours or days. In other words, we're always going to pay a price to make the blogosphere as open a place as possible, and Technorati will always have some results that are spammy. We're going to have to continue be extremely vigilant to make sure that new attacks are spotted and eliminated as quickly as possible. About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, for example, but we're able to drop them before we even send out a spider to go and index the splog.
Of course, we're also going to make some mistakes - so if you think your blog is possibly misclassified, go and have a look at your blog profile (here's mine, for example)- simply type in your blog homepage URL to see what Technorati thinks it knows about your blog. If you don't see your newest posts showing up, make sure that you've claimed your blog. If all else fails, please let us know about it, and we'll try to fix it for you. Please note that if you have multiple URLs for your blog (e.g. Typepad users often have multiple URLs for their blogs, as do some other services) to please try the alternative URLs as well before dropping us a support ticket.
OK, back to the fun. Here's a look at the daily posting volume in data that Technorati tracks:
First off, the total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second. This is about double the volume of about a year ago. Along with the aggregate posting volume information, we've put in some annotations of the events that occurred at the time of the spikes, showing that the blogosphere continues to react strongly to various world events. It is important to note that it is the relative increase in posting volume rather than the absolute increase that is most relevant here. In other words, because more people are blogging now, the total number of posts on a particular day don't tell the whole tale of the impact of an event - For example, The National Spelling Bee was not as large an event in the blogosphere as Hurricane Katrina. What is important to note in these charts is the relative size of the spike in relation to the posting volume at that time.
Another interesting item to note is the level of influence that blogs are having, especially compared with the mainstream media (MSM). This chart is somewhat biased towards western sources of the MSM, and if you see a source that is missing from this (or the next) chart, please let me know.
What is interesting is that some of the most influential weblogs are being treated in much the same way as traditional MSM, as measured by the number of bloggers who are linking to them, as shown in the chart below:
The blogs are in red, MSM in blue. What becomes more interesting to me, however, is that as you continue down the long tail of media sites, the number of blogs starts to grow - to 11 of the top 90 sites, or 12.2% of the total, especially given the budget differentials, as shown below:
Next, let's look at the language distribution of the blogosphere. One of the most interesting statistics that has changed since the last State of the Blogosphere is that English has retaken the lead as the #1 language of the blogosphere. However, it's not by much - the Japanese blogosphere has grown substantially as well.
In April, English edged out Japanese with 34% of all postings to 33% of all postings, with Chinese taking the #3 spot with 14% of all postings.
In May, English extended its lead to 41% of all postings in the blogosphere, to 31% in Japanese and 10% in Chinese.
In June, Chinese caught up somewhat, with 39% of all postings tracked by Technorati in English, 31% in Japanese, and 12% in Chinese. It is important to note that, as in the report in April, that there are some significant underreporting issues, especially in Korean and in French, as described in that report.
Finally, I thought it would be interesting to look at what times of day show significant posting volume by language. The chart below shows this information using Pacific time (Technorati is located in San Francisco, so we're biased towards that time zone) as our base:
It is interesting to note that the most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time. Japan, which is 17 hours ahead of San Francisco, shows a different pattern - more posting occurring during the evening hours into the night, as well as the early morning hours before work begins. I'm not entirely sure what to make of these numbers, but it would appear that English-speaking people are more likely to blog during work hours and early evening in the USA, while they are more reluctant to blog during work time in Japan. More research is definitely needed to understand when and where people are blogging. Perhaps a more experienced cultural anthropologist or sociology researcher can provide better insight here, if you're interested, drop me a line at dsifry AT technorati DOT com.
In summary:
• Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs.
• The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.
• From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
• About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
• About 8% of new blogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
• This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
• The most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time
As always, I'm very interested in your comments and feedback.
http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html
Nokia Agrees to Buy Loudeye for $60M
Jari Tanner
Nokia Corp. said Tuesday it has agreed to buy U.S.-based digital music distributor Loudeye Corp. for about $60 million as the world's No. 1 cell-phone maker seeks to grab a larger share of the growing digital mobile music market.
Under the deal, Nokia will pay $4.50 for each share of Loudeye, a provider of digital music platforms and digital media distribution services.
"By acquiring Loudeye, Nokia can offer consumers a comprehensive mobile music experience, including devices, applications and the ability to purchase digital music," the Finnish company said.
Loudeye shares rose $2.56, or 145 percent, to close at $4.33 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Nokia's U.S. shares fell 10 cents, or 0.5 percent, to finish at $19.46 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Analyst Ben Wood at Collins Consulting said the acquisition shows that Nokia is taking the offensive in its music strategy in the face of strong competition, particularly from Sony Ericsson's popular Walkman phones.
Nokia has previously cooperated with Loudeye in enabling mobile operators to provide a music download service over mobile phones such as Nokia's high-end N91 handset.
The company now aims to provide a music download service under its own brand sometime in 2007, possibly putting it in direct competition with its own operator customers.
Operating in over 20 countries, Seattle, Wash.-based Loudeye employs 130 people and had sales of around $20.3 million in 2005.
Loudeye has deals with all the major record companies and provides a music distribution "engine" that is then branded by third parties who want to set up an online music store. Companies using Loudeye include Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Coca-Cola Corp.
Michael Brochu, Loudeye president and chief executive, said his company and Nokia can together "deliver a comprehensive mobile music experience" to Nokia mobile device owners.
Nokia, which sold 15 million music-enabled devices in the second quarter, claims to be the biggest seller of digital music players in the world. In the same period Apple Computer Inc. sold 8.1 million iPods.
Many of Nokia's handsets include music players, but only in March did it start sales of its first music optimized phones, the 3250 and the N91.
The deal with Loudeye is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending approval from shareholders' and regulatory authorities, Nokia said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-08-17-01-22
UC Libraries Join Google's Book Project
Michael Liedtke
The University of California is joining Google Inc.'s book-scanning project, throwing the weight of another 100 academic libraries behind an ambitious venture that's under legal attack for alleged copyright infringement.
The deal to be announced Wednesday covers all the libraries in UC's 10-campus system, marking the biggest expansion of Google's effort to convert millions of library books into digital form since a group of authors and publishers sued last fall to derail a project launched 20 months ago.
"We think this is a pretty significant step forward," said Adam Smith, the group product manager overseeing Google's book-scanning initiative.
UC joins three other major U.S. universities - Stanford, Michigan and Harvard - that are contributing their vast library collections to Google's crusade to ensure reams of knowledge written on paper makes the transition to the digital age. The New York Public Library and Oxford University also are allowing portions of their libraries to be scanned.
The project is expected to last years and cost tens of millions of dollars - a bill that Google is footing. It's something Google can easily afford, given the nearly 8-year-old company has already amassed nearly $10 billion in cash.
Google's motives aren't entirely altruistic. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company wants to stock its search engine with unique material to give people more reasons to visit its Web site, the hub of an advertising network that generates most of its profits.
The endeavor has riled authors and publishers because Stanford, Michigan and Harvard are all allowing Google to create digital copies of books still protected by copyright. UC also is giving Google access to the copyrighted material.
Only so-called "public domain" books no longer protected by copyrights will be shown in their entirety. Google doesn't plan to show anything more than a few snippets from copyrighted material - a "fair use" approach that the company believes is allowed under U.S. law. Latest News
UC libraries join Google's book project
Both the Association of American Publishers and Authors Guild, the two trade groups suing Google, contend the company shouldn't be allowed to stockpile digital versions of copyrighted material without permission.
Although the lawsuits aren't directly targeting the university libraries, UC's alliance with Google irritated the publishing community.
"It's a curious decision to make, given the pending litigation and legal uncertainties" surrounding the project, said Allen Adler, vice president of legal and government relations for the Association of American Publishers.
UC's move also disappointed the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, a group representing not-for-profit publishers. "We are concerned and we aren't happy," said Nick Evans, member services manager for the group. "There are no guarantees how this information might be used in the future."
The lawsuits are expected to remain in the evidence-gathering stage through the remainder of this year.
Google's arguments in the dispute received a recent boost in Germany earlier this summer after a publisher in that country abandoned its effort to prevent its copyrighted works from being copied.
UC's libraries already have been involved in another book-scanning initiative called the Open Content Alliance that's spearheaded by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., two of Google's biggest rivals. That project, which continues, focuses exclusively on books without copyright protection.
The decision to link up with Google to widen the scope of UC's book scanning was made by university president Robert Dynes without a vote by the board of regents. "There are so many benefits to this," said Jennifer Colvin, a spokeswoman for UC's library. "We respect copyrights, but we also want to give full access to our public domain material."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-11-43-11
Airwaves Auction May Bring In Billions
John Dunbar
High-speed Internet access, streaming video, music downloads and other special new features may soon be in store for mobile phone owners thanks to an unprecedented airwaves auction.
The auction, conducted by the Federal Communications Commission, has attracted 168 interested bidders, each hoping to offer the next generation of wireless services.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the sale will raise between $10 billion and $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury. Already, it has brought in $4.3 billion from bidders who made payments simply to qualify to participate.
The auction, which was beginning Wednesday, will add badly needed capacity to the maturing cellular telephone market and allow for clearer connections and sharper pictures in addition to a host of new services.
Bidders are competing for the right to use portions of the radio spectrum - a publicly owned, extremely valuable highway in the sky that allows sound, data and pictures to be transmitted from one place to another.
The FCC, in addition to conducting the auction, is responsible for making sure spectrum licensees do not interfere with one another's signals and that they use the airwaves in the public interest.
The auction, to be conducted via telephone and online, may go on for weeks.
Companies will be bidding for 1,122 licenses, good for an initial term of 15 years. The licenses can then be renewed every 10 years.
While it is impossible to say who the big winners in the auction will be, the FCC's qualification process, which requires bidders to provide money up front depending on how many licenses they plan to bid on, provides a list of front-runners.
The top qualifier is Wireless DBS LLC, an alliance that includes two competing direct broadcast satellite providers: EchoStar Communications Corp. and the DirecTV Group. The bidders paid $972.5 million.
Second was SpectrumCo, a consortium of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and Bright House Networks, with $637.7 million. Third was T-Mobile License LLC, at $583.5 million. T-Mobile is expected to be among the most aggressive bidders.
Analysts say EchoStar and DirecTV are investing in the future. Increasingly, cable television operators and telephone companies are offering bundles of services to customers that include high-speed Internet access, phone service and video while satellite companies have been limited primarily to video.
"The DBS (direct broadcast satellite) guys need a viable triple-play strategy," said Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Media Access Project. Triple play means video, voice and broadband.
The new spectrum could allow the satellite companies to offer wireless phones and broadband access. However, the costs of the auction are just the beginning.
If EchoStar and DirecTV were to build a new national cellular phone network from scratch, for example, it would require billions of dollars and take years. The joint bid has helped to fuel rumors of a potential merger between the two companies.
The cable industry, while it offers a greater menu of consumer services, needs wireless capability to be able to field a full range of services.
Feld said the cable companies may also be getting into the auction simply to drive up the cost to the satellite companies, their primary competitors.
"But if they win, certainly they'll be able to put the spectrum to good use," he said.
Wednesday's auction is the most high profile since late 2000 and early 2001, when a spectrum sale attracted $16.9 billion in bids.
The total amount of spectrum for auction is 90 megahertz, more than twice the amount occupied by Verizon Wireless Inc. The amount of spectrum, combined with the fact that the licenses for sale span the nation means a major new player could emerge.
"If someone wanted to put together a national footprint they could do that in this auction," said former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
While there is enough spectrum available to create a new network, a more likely result will be an upgrade and expansion of services for wireless customers.
T-Mobile probably is the most motivated bidder in the auction. Compared to other wireless companies, the cellular phone service provider is starved for bandwidth. Other wireless carriers, like No. 1 Cingular and No. 2 Verizon, have also made large upfront payments and are expected to be active.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-02-55-30
Sony to Launch a New Wireless Handheld
May Wong
Hoping to tap into the growth of wireless networks across college campuses, other public spaces and within homes, Sony Corp. will announce Tuesday a new pocket-sized gadget for instant messaging and other Internet-based communications.
The Sony mylo, slated for availability in September at a retail price of about $350, is a first-of-its-kind product that uses Wi-Fi networks, analysts say. It is not a cellular phone and thus doesn't carry monthly service fees. And though it could handle Web-based e-mail services, it doesn't support corporate e-mail programs.
Instead, the slim, oblong-shaped gizmo that has a 2.4-inch display and slides open to expose a thumb keyboard is specifically geared toward young, mainstream consumers for messaging and Internet-based calls, commonly known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls.
As long as a Wi-Fi network is accessible, a mylo user could chat away or browse the Web.
The mylo - which stands for "my life online," - will be marketed toward 18- to 24-year-olds, the multitasking generation that relies heavily on instant messaging and is already viewing e-mail as passe, Sony said.
The consumer electronics giant has partnered with Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. to integrate their instant-messaging services, and is looking to expand mylo's support to other services as well, most notably the leading messaging provider, Time Warner Inc.'s America Online.
Sony has also teamed with eBay Inc.'s Skype VoIP service, which offers free voice chats for its registered users.
The so-called personal communicator doubles as a portable media player. It can play music, photos and videos that are stored on its internal 1 gigabyte of flash memory or optional Memory Stick card. It also can stream songs between mylo users within the same network, as long as the users grant permission to share their music files.
Danielle Levitas, an industry analyst at market researcher IDC, called the mylo a "unique, compelling" product, but said it might fare better at a lower price of $299 and with added partners such as AOL.
In addition, though Wi-Fi is spreading across colleges, coffee houses, airports and even entire cities, Levitas said the wireless technology isn't ubiquitous enough yet to help Sony break mylo out of a niche market.
"You need enough Wi-Fi out there to make this a compelling product to reach a wider audience," Levitas said.
Still, Sony is betting that mylo will draw great interest not just among college students but also among households where youngsters might be fighting over the use of a computer just for chatting or Web surfing.
"Our mylo personal communicator lets you have the fun parts of a computer in the palm of your hand," said John Kodera, a director of product marketing at Sony.
Sony said the new gadget will be sold only in the United States. It will be available through Sony's online store and at select retailers in college towns.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-08-08-21-34
Wi-Fi for the Masses
Martha Baer
It looks like a large Styrofoam takeout container. The 14-pound box would fit into a backpack were it not for the two antennas, set well apart. It can withstand subfreezing temperatures and 165-mph winds; it's even lightningproof. With the lid bolted down tightly, the box offers no clue as to what's inside. But disassembled, it reveals intricate innards that look like nothing so much as a city viewed from a plane: A million tiny wires crisscross like streets and weave among square parks the size of your thumbnail.
The magic of the box occurs when you mount it on the horizontal arm of a city lamppost, so that its long ears reach up to the sky. Install 30 of them per square mile (which isn't hard, since an installer using a single tool can put up a unit in 15 minutes) and they immediately begin communicating with one another via radio waves. Data, the same information that flows through the wired Internet, begins traveling between them. Establish some hub connections to usher the data back onto the Net and you've created a wireless network that can transmit signals all over real, life-size cities -- into parks, schools, juice joints, bars, offices, playgrounds, and homes.
The boxes, known as routers or nodes, are made by Tropos Networks, a Silicon Valley upstart that's landed in the middle of a burgeoning movement among U.S. cities to create municipal wireless networks, or metroscale Wi-Fi -- essentially, an effort to deliver wireless bandwidth to the masses. Since Tropos began selling its equipment in 2002, dozens of municipalities have signed up. The Twin Cities suburb of Chaska, Minnesota, built a wireless network to cover its 16 square miles and serve all 18,000 of its residents. Corpus Christi, Texas, bought 300 Tropos nodes to cover 24 square miles and has since decided to expand to 147 square miles. As it rebuilds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans plans to cover the whole town with a Tropos network. This summer, Anaheim, California, will hit the switch, giving 325,000 citizens across 50 square miles ubiquitous broadband Internet access. Tropos-powered networks also are in the offing in Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Launched with what Bill Gurley, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Tropos investor, calls "four guys under 30 and an algorithm," the Sunnyvale-based company spent less than $3 million getting its first product to market. Since then, it has grown into the leading equipment provider in this incipient market, with more than $15 million in revenue in 2005 and a projected $45 million in 2006. It has had roughly 350 customers to date--including some in far-flung locales such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Doha, Qatar -- and partnerships with EarthLink, Google, Motorola, IBM, and others. Given its recent contracts, the company is well ahead of competing equipment makers.
Yet Tropos faces some difficult tests before it can realize its vision. The new, large-scale projects in San Francisco and Philadelphia will get the technology out of dress rehearsal and in front of a major audience. These launches will be key to the company's fate. As hundreds of other cities look on, contemplating whether to install their own cheap broadband, and as a phalanx of massive data carriers like Verizon and Comcast glower over what may be a new threat, Tropos will march out onstage. Says CEO Ron Sege: "The best thing we can do is make sure the big cities do well, for everyone to say, 'Oh, my God, it works.'"
What Stops the Internet From Being Everywhere?
In San Francisco, there is a new cafe every year that has "the best coffee in town." At the moment, it's Ritual, a chic place in the Mission District with leather couches, wireless Internet, and PowerBooks on every table. The two founding engineers of Tropos -- Narasimha Chari, who goes by "Chari," and Devabhaktuni "Sri" Srikrishna -- are sitting at a small table, drinking lattes and reflecting on recent news. About a year ago, the mayor of San Francisco put out a request for proposals, looking for the optimum plan for "unwiring" the city -- that is, for creating a citywide Wi-Fi network. Just the day before, out of a half-dozen contenders, the selection had been announced -- and Sri and Chari's list of big wins had gotten one municipal contract longer.
But the two men, both 32, scarcely stopped to rest. That's because each successive contract brings them closer to answering a question that's intrigued them since they met as undergraduates at Caltech about 15 years ago: "What stops the Internet from being everywhere?"
The inquiry arose out of mutual concerns about India and other developing countries. As a brainy boy growing up in Calcutta, Chari would take long excursions through the city searching for textbooks containing just the kind of math and science materials you can download in seconds today from the Internet; he knew that connecting people in poor and remote regions could be a profound form of change. Sri, for his part, had a deep desire to be useful and an appetite for solving engineering problems. So while attending graduate school in the late 1990s (Sri at MIT, Chari at Harvard), the two men would hang out in the bars around Cambridge and talk about how to get the Internet everywhere on the planet.
The intellectual challenge soon became as enticing as the moral one. It was a problem of cost efficiency: How could you bring the power of computer networks to villages hundreds of miles from the nearest cable TV, places where people can't even afford phones? It was a technical problem, of bouncing signals around in the air over large areas and then back to the nearest data wires. And finally it was a problem of overcoming natural physical limitations: the distance transmitted signals could travel, for one, and the amount of stuff that can be sent simultaneously. "It's just a very fascinating subject," says Sri. "We never really set out to start a company."
Any solution had to be dirt cheap. Even in the United States, broadband is so expensive, both to provide and to purchase, that its growth has not kept up with consumer appetites. Today many rural areas around the country have no high-speed data services, simply because it costs so much to dig up the streets and lay wire. Jupiter Research, a market research firm, estimates that 35 percent of Internet users in exurban or rural areas can get only dial-up connections. In some cases, the necessary conduits reach town, but jackhammering the last bit of pavement to serve a smattering of houses is more of a burden than it's worth. "There are some places where the economics are prohibitively expensive," says Brian Blevins, a Verizon spokesperson.
For Chari and Sri, the alternative to digging would have to be radio, and while drinking beer and poring over dense technical books, they came across a radio technology developed in the 1970s for military uses. The technology worked on battlefields, but its inventors and the engineers who came after assumed that it wouldn't scale. Sri and Chari thought otherwise. They suspected that if you could program the nodes of these radio networks cleverly enough, teaching them to move information around quickly, you could make the network as big as you wanted.
Their idea was a variation on the principle of the bucket brigade or steppingstones. If you can't get the signal to reach all the way to the wired Internet, make it hop from one transmitter to another until it does. And give it some basic rules for finding the most efficient pathway there.
Here at Ritual, for instance, e-mail data comes in over wires to a base station or router somewhere in the room and then heads through the air to the nearby laptop. Everyone in the cafe is just one hop from the wired Net. This configuration requires every user to be within about 100 feet of the device that's plugged in, and it's why wireless broadband is generally limited to offices and cafes. But what if you told that router to select another router for passing along its message, and told that router to select yet another after that? If you taught those routers to make efficient choices that wouldn't require arduous processing, eventually the Internet would spill out into the streets.
Sri and Chari got hold of some Wi-Fi gear -- a cheap type of radio technology recently introduced to the enterprise market for office environments--and started playing with their routing ideas. They mounted antennas on cars and tooled around Cambridge, testing the performance of nodes programmed to obey their new steppingstone rules. "When we started doing this," Chari says, "people laughed at us, saying Wi-Fi is an indoor technology. But our approach has always been, don't take anyone's word for it."
The two men soon realized that they were no longer solving a math problem: They were developing a product. So they picked up and left Boston for northern California. They hooked up with two friends of friends who understood finance and formed a company. It was not a particularly opportune time. "In 2001, we were out there looking for funding. It was awful," says Chari. But Bill Gurley, whose firm, Benchmark Capital, invested early in companies such as eBay and Red Hat, liked their ideas. "I don't think anyone at that time was thinking about municipal wireless," Gurley recalls. "But what was keeping Wi-Fi from going outside?"
Well, nothing. In the United States, most towns already own the infrastructure for suspending 14-pound boxes in the sky: lampposts, traffic lights, telephone poles, city buildings. The Tropos routers themselves cost only about $3,500 each. So with 30 per square mile installed in a city like San Francisco, you'd spend about $5 million on boxes to serve more than 700,000 citizens. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, building a fiber network costs $2,000 "per home passed," in the industry's argot; providing DSL costs a few hundred dollars. Compare both with Philadelphia's estimate that the cost per home passed of its Wi-Fi network will be $30. On the user end of the equation, the hardware economics look even better. The Wi-Fi cards that early adopters were sliding into their laptops in 1999 went for about $2,000 apiece. Today the devices are preloaded into nearly all new computers and cost less than $10 each. Right now, as Chari and Sri drain their lattes at Ritual, there are an estimated 50 million Wi-Fi-ready computers out there.
So Bill Gurley got onboard. He liked the open standards of Wi-Fi technology and how quickly the price on the user's side was dropping. He loved Chari and Sri's vision of teaching routers with limited range and capacity how to build bucket brigades and choose the most promising pathways, based on the condition of the network. "It's very elegant," Gurley says. He also liked the growth potential of the market and the focus on software. "As a venture capitalist, I love everything about the Tropos model," he says.
In January 2002, Benchmark Capital ponied up $2.2 million for the young company to work with. Other VC firms followed, including the Intel Communications Fund and Siemens Venture Capital. And so did Ron Sege.
Good Enough Beats Best
Ron Sege (pronounced seh-gee) is a tall stick of a guy with blue eyes and blond eyelashes, whose elaborately stitched jeans were meant for a younger man. At 49, he is on his second wife, his second batch of kids, and the fourth small company he intends to make large. In a sense, Sege is a Web 2.0 guy all around, bringing hard-earned experience to a young company with a still-unproven business model. As he puts it, "I've seen this movie before."
Sege began working in technology in the 1980s, but really hit his stride in the '90s, as a manager at 3Com, the company that spawned Ethernet technology. 3Com had a few hundred employees when he arrived; by the time he left in 1998, he had 4,000 employees under his leadership alone. He learned a lot about growth in his 10 years at 3Com, but more interesting was what he learned about the power of lowering your standards. "From a tech perspective, good enough beats best," he says. Ethernet, the protocol that allows office PCs to share databases and printers and storage in a small local network, was far from perfect. "But it was inexpensive, easy to use, and anybody could design to it." Sege learned the beauty of this approach to business -- float a quick and dirty product, let users and other product developers improve on it, and push it as a dominant shared platform. "Wi-Fi has many of the same attributes," he says.
After 3Com, Sege took a job as executive vice president of Lycos, one of the first Internet portals, where he helped engineer an Internet-bubble buying spree that included acquisitions of Matchmaker.com, Quote.com, and Wired Digital. "That was my media mogul period," Sege says with a laugh. He left Lycos in 2001 and joined Ellacoya Networks, a company based in Merrimack, New Hampshire, that creates software to help broadband providers ease congestion in their networks.
Bill Gurley, tipped off by a Benchmark partner who'd worked with Sege in the past, saw in the Ellacoya CEO someone who'd ridden small companies through significant growth and who understood a good deal about data networks. He contacted Sege and told him about Tropos. The company made sense to Sege. Taking off-the-shelf indoor base stations and sticking them up on power poles--that was a formula he understood. Sri and Chari had already come up with the tricks, the proprietary algorithms for handling data traffic and monitoring the system from one main PC, which would set Tropos apart from its direct competitors. (The company has 30 software patents and patents pending.) In 2004, Sege came onboard -- "to do all the stuff not involved with writing software."
At first, that meant selling Tropos boxes and software to a small but eager market the start-up had identified: police and fire departments. After September 11, the consequences of poor emergency communications became painfully clear to city leaders nationwide, and many municipalities were attempting to do something about it. What few civilians realize is that their heroes with hoses and their men and women in blue have always relied on only one of their senses for passing information: their ears. They use the same two-way radio technology today that police departments adopted in the 1930s. Some forces have introduced computers into their cruisers for searching DMV or criminal databases, but these hookups are as slow as your first dial-up modem. Forget about downloading a mug shot. Maps, surveillance videos, traffic updates, real-time messaging? Impossible. What emergency responders need is broadband. And it has to be broadband that's everywhere, broadband that moves.
Tropos could deliver that. Sege traveled the country, giving presentations to police and fire departments, steadily signing up customers. Oklahoma City bought Tropos technology to build a network for its police department covering 620 square miles. In Milpitas, California, about 10 miles from the Tropos headquarters, a 40-node Tropos mesh allows police to look up DMV photos and monitor video surveillance of high-crime areas.
So Sege and his team were surprised in the spring of 2004 when they got an order from Chaska, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb that wasn't looking to serve its police force. The town's city council wanted cheaper connectivity -- for all of its residents, who were stuck paying $45 per month for high-speed access from Sprint and Time-Warner Cable. The goal was to provide broadband access for all of its citizens for no more than $20 a month. "Tropos was selling a system for public safety departments. Our IT guys thought, 'Why couldn't you do 3,000 connections instead of 300?'" says Chaska's city administrator, Dave Pokorney.
For Tropos, this was exhilarating. Chaska had come up with this plan on its own, with no help from Tropos, which was focusing its efforts on public safety. The company had helped create networks designed to serve the general public, but only in parks or other circumscribed areas. Chaska was out ahead of them--and within three months, the city had a real-life metroscale network available to anyone in town.
Sleeping Giants
Everyone at Tropos agrees on what made the company take off. It happened in August of 2004, when Philadelphia, the largest municipality to date to do so, announced plans to blanket the city with Wi-Fi. The idea was to deliver cheap, and possibly free, broadband Internet access to the 1.5 million souls -- digital haves and have-nots alike -- who lived within the city's 135 square miles.
This was a bold, pioneering step, lauded by civic groups and techies around the country. But the news hit one party particularly hard: Verizon. At the time, the vast majority of Philadelphians who wanted fast connections to the Web had been coming to Verizon for DSL. Now the company would have a new competitor. The proverbial sleeping giant was caught off guard.
Verizon's lobbyists marched straight to state lawmakers in Harrisburg and demanded action. And they got it. A telecommunications bill that had been lingering around the capital for more than a year suddenly came up for a vote, and it had a brand-new provision attached to it. The measure said that Pennsylvania cities intending to create high-speed data networks must give the dominant local phone company the right to build first. If the incumbent proceeded within 14 months, the city would be required to drop its plans. For the leaders of Philadelphia, that meant doing nothing for more than a year before getting their project under way. It also meant that cheaper service -- some subsidized for the poor -- would happen only at the whim of Verizon.
But the prospect of an Internet cloud floating through every park and into the city's overlooked neighborhoods had already intrigued many Philadelphians, and the state legislature's intervention galvanized people to protect the idea. "The school district, the nonprofits that wanted to serve poor neighborhoods, even our tourism organizations saw the potential," says Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer and a 14-year veteran of Silicon Valley businesses. "When the legislation came up, we put the pressure on. We had 3,000 people call, write, and e-mail the governor."
Tropos, which already had been tapped to install two pilot projects in public parks, watched the events unfold. Sege hired a Washington lobbying firm, which showed up in Harrisburg, attempting to sway leaders to spare local governments from restrictions. In late November 2004, just as the bill was approved, Philly's Wi-Fi enthusiasts got a break. "It was almost like diving to get the catch in the end zone," says Sege. The state agreed to exempt Philadelphia from the requirements. (All other Pennsylvania municipalities remain bound by it.)
The way Sege sees it, Verizon's in-your-face tactics were the best thing that had ever happened to the start-up. The giant telecom's reaction made dozens of other cities take notice. If Verizon was so ruffled, people seemed to think, then Philadelphia must have been on to something interesting; the technology's potential must be real. "The phone was ringing off the hook," says Sege. Cities around the country, from Minneapolis to Tempe, Arizona, began announcing plans for wireless networks. Several months later, the technology was validated by another waking giant when Cisco announced it would begin building routers for muni Wi-Fi. Tropos sales went from 90 municipal clients in all of 2004 to 75 in just the first half of 2005.
The next step in the Philadelphia project was to respond to the city's RFP, and Tropos now had to get down to details. The company had the gear and the software for monitoring and troubleshooting the network, but there was a lot the small company was lacking. Customer service for one thing. And billing. And consumer sales. Rather than build those capabilities in-house, Sege began searching for an established Internet service provider with which to partner. EarthLink fit the bill. The ISP, based in Atlanta, had thrived as a middleman, buying wholesale dial tone, wrapping it up in an attractive brand, and selling it to Internet surfers. But as the world shifted to faster wires and fiber optics, EarthLink had little to offer. Unlike the phone companies, it owned no connections into the home.
In January 2005, Bill Gurley paid a visit to EarthLink's board of directors. He presented his case for a partnership, in which Tropos would provide infrastructure -- the actual broadband network -- and EarthLink would handle customer support and sales. In response to Gurley's presentation, EarthLink sent a team to visit Chaska to see for themselves if the new technology worked. The group toured the town and climbed under tables testing the network's reliability. They interviewed folks in bars. And they were sold on it. "Municipal Wi-Fi is really important for us," says Donald Berryman, EarthLink's president of municipal networks. "It's one of the top three investments we're making in future products. It can help us control our destiny because we'll own the network." Tropos and EarthLink have since landed deals with five cities and have proposals out to five more.
But Will It Really Work?
Not surprisingly, the Bells and other data-access providers haven't backed down. Since the maneuver in Pennsylvania, giants like BellSouth and Comcast have fueled a fight against muni Wi-Fi across the country. Lawmakers in Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, and Oregon, among others, have proposed legislation to keep local governments from building their own networks or at least make it more difficult for them to do so. Fourteen states, including Florida and Colorado, have already passed restrictions. "We have not supported a ban on municipal networks," says Verizon's Brian Blevins. "But we've felt where there's vibrant competition, the networks can undercut and disrupt a market that's working very well."
Critics of muni Wi-Fi argue that if local governments participate in building broadband networks, they'll exploit unfair tax and regulatory advantages, irresponsibly drain public coffers, and mismanage the services. To counter the legislative gambit, Sege and others have taken to evangelizing in Washington, D.C., and state capitals. They've made some progress. In June 2005, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced a federal bill in answer to the activity in the states. The Community Broadband Act of 2005, still in committee, would "preserve and protect the ability of local governments to provide broadband capability and services." Says one Lautenberg staffer: "The senator doesn't think there should be obstacles -- we're 16th in the world in terms of broadband penetration." A bill awaiting a vote by the House, on the other hand, would create barriers -- for instance, requiring cities to partner with a private company. A restriction like that, though seemingly innocuous, would have prevented Chaska from building its network.
These policy struggles are not the only hurdles Tropos is facing as it lunges for profitability in 2007. There are big technical questions. It's one thing to build a wireless network for 8,000 households in the suburbs of Minnesota. But it's something else entirely to do so in one of the nation's biggest metros. "Nobody's demonstrated that you can have 135 miles of Wi-Fi," says Julie Ask, a research director at Jupiter Research. Radio signal is notoriously unpredictable. When your cell phone drops out every time you round the corner of Elm Street, that's because the mobile provider didn't predict a problem there. Home devices from cordless phones to baby monitors might cause interference. Tempe, Arizona, where Tropos competitor Strix Systems provided 500 wireless routers, discovered that signal wasn't getting through house walls beyond 150 yards from the routers. Many Tempe users found they needed an additional $100 device to receive and send data from indoors. Tropos could face similar problems.
Dozens of municipalities have joined in, but there is not much of a record. "As a mayor, why wouldn't you say, 'I want to bridge the digital divide'?" says Ask. "EarthLink wants to point to Philadelphia and say, 'Hey, it works,' but until there's proof ..." After a city government invests $20 million, no users will be happy if their connections go down or their webpages load slowly. The last thing Tropos needs is for annoyed customers to head back to Verizon.
Another looming question is what business models will work. Will consortia like the EarthLink-Tropos team for San Francisco prove easy for cities and profitable for the participating companies? Will the Bells hedge their bets and start offering their own systems? Will cities build their own public Internet utilities, just as many today deliver power without the help of private entities? In any of these scenarios, Tropos' business doesn't change. The Bells, the city governments, the ISPs--they'll all need to buy boxes from someone. As experiments are made and the best models emerge, Sege insists that Tropos will stay relevant.
First, of course, he has to deal with Philadelphia, which is building its 15-square-mile test area this summer and plans to roll out the full network in 2007. "I honestly believe that a lot of people are waiting to say, 'We told you it wouldn't work,'" Sege says. Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff doesn't seem to mind that tension. "There's a lot of pressure on Tropos and EarthLink. But that's to our benefit because they're trying really hard," she says. "It's like you live in a fishbowl. It's not just other cities, but the world that's watching."
Martha Baer is co-author of Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World. This is her first story for Inc.
http://today.reuters.com//business/s...2547061490.xml
Wi-Fi al fresca
Nature Without The Poison Ivy
A public-private partnership will result in Connecticut's first state park to have wireless internet access.
Farm River State Park, a 57-acre waterfront parcel with nesting osprey, owls and other wildlife in East Haven, will soon be a center for environmental study and education, an outdoor classroom for a regional magnet school and a base for boating programs. The state, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Trust for Public Lands, bought the parcel, along with a 15-acre marina, for $1.75 million in 1998. It will be managed by Quinnipiac University, in Hamden. An $86,000 state grant was used to make the park internet accessible.
The idea is to electronically bring the park's wildlife directly into the Quinnipiac classrooms. A Web camera will be placed near nesting ospreys, so students can view the birds' activities on computer screens.
Students can use the wireless park to do "real-time environmental monitoring," such as water temperature, quality and salinity. Farm River is the first state park to be managed by a private entity. Quinnipiac will pay the state $1, and will finance improvements, including restoring utilities to the marina and renovating a former home to be used as a base for research and educational programs. In exchange, Quinnipiac will have use of the park for its educational programs and will collect money from slip rentals. That money will be used for park improvements and upkeep.
Managing the park ties in with the University’s desire to get involved with primary and secondary science education. Some essential but unglamorous details have yet to be worked out, including the park’s lack of parking and rest rooms.
Source: Connecticut Town & City,
the newsletter of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. V. 34 - No. 3, Pgs 28 & 29.
Disney Profit Beats Wall Street's Expectations
AP
Strong DVD sales and continued growth at domestic theme parks drove higher third-quarter profit and revenue at The Walt Disney Co.
The Burbank-based media conglomerate on Tuesday reported gains in all four business divisions, including its movie studio, which had been lagging of late and last month laid off 650 people in a worldwide restructuring.
Results also benefited from a one-time gain related to its acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios.
Shares of Disney rose 86 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $29.84 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Disney also said it would sell its 50 percent stake in US Weekly magazine for about $300 million. Disney bought its share of the magazine for $40 million in 2001 as the magazine expanded from monthly to weekly publication. The gain will be reported next quarter.
Disney reported net income of $1.13 billion, or 53 cents per share, for the quarter ended July 1, compared with net income of $811 million, or 39 cents per share, in the same period last year.
The results handily beat analysts' estimates of 44 cents per share, as surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Revenue grew 12 percent to $8.62 billion in the most recent quarter from $7.72 billion in the year-ago period.
Revenue at the company's movie studio division grew 17 percent to $1.7 billion on strong DVD sales of its hit film, ''The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,'' and theatrical revenue from the Pixar film ''Cars.''
The company also spent less in the quarter to release films under its Miramax label.
Last month, Disney announced a restructuring of its studio to concentrate more on Disney-branded films and to consolidate worldwide marketing and distribution. Disney said it expected to take an after-tax charge of $25 million for employee termination benefits, most of which will be incurred in the fourth quarter.
Disney will book profit from its blockbuster, ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'' in the fourth quarter. The film has already pulled in nearly $800 million worldwide.
Increased attendance and spending at Disney's domestic theme parks boosted revenue at that division by 11 percent to $2.7 billion.
The company said it expects attendance to be flat in the fourth quarter because of tough comparisons with turnout for last year's Disneyland 50th anniversary celebration.
Strong growth at the company's ESPN television network and continued success of Disney Channel shows, including ''High School Musical,'' resulted in a 10 percent increase in revenue to $2.7 billion at Disney's media networks division.
Revenue fell at ABC because of heavy spending on new fall programming. But Disney said it saw strong growth in ad sales as last season wore on. It expects continued growth as it expands its Internet delivery of shows.
The company continued to be disappointed in sales of its ESPN-branded mobile phone service. Disney recently lowered the price of calling plans and added a new handset. Executives declined to say how long they would stick with the service before possibly pulling the plug.
''The results at least initially were disappointing, and we're monitoring this carefully,'' Chief Executive Robert Iger said in a conference call with analysts.
The company just launched a Disney-branded mobile phone service.
The success of ''Cars,'' a film aimed squarely at young boys, fueled a 6 percent rise in revenue to $445 million at Disney's consumer products division.
The company said it will continue to invest in its video game business in coming years.
For the first nine months of its fiscal year, Disney reported net income of $2.592 billion, or $1.28 per share, compared with $2.154 billion, or $1.03 per share, in the same period last year.
Revenue grew to $25.5 billion from $24.2 billion in the same period last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi... tner=homepage
European Panel Investigates DVD-Standards Rivalry
James Kanter and Ken Belson
European investigators are in Hollywood with questions about whether studios have been pressured by rival manufacturers of next-generation DVD’s to favor one standard over another.
Several companies, including Sony and Toshiba, are engaged in a battle that could shape the future of home cinema and determine which movie companies make the biggest profits. Sony, along with Panasonic, Samsung, Dell and seven major studios, are backing a technology called Blu-ray; Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel and others support a rival standard called HD DVD.
Some studios like Disney and Universal are making DVD’s in only one format.
But since each format, which promises sharper pictures and enhanced audio, is incompatible with the other, consumers who buy one technology might not be able to play DVD’s made for rival equipment.
The European Commission is investigating whether the technology giants are stifling competition through exclusive contracts with studios and computer makers. The Hollywood studios have been asked to reveal any dealings about high-definition DVD’s with technology companies contained in e-mail messages, faxes, PowerPoint presentations, meeting notes, internal reports and even conversations.
Some analysts said that the inquiry could end up focusing more on Sony because it potentially has more leverage to persuade studios and manufacturers to back Blu-ray. Sony runs a movie studio, makes PlayStation video game hardware, and sells and makes DVD’s.
“The Sony PlayStation guys are highly secretive about what will and what won’t be in the box, while the movie company guys are highly secretive and somewhat justifiably paranoid about piracy,” said Paul Jackson, a principal analyst with Forrester Research in Amsterdam.
As a result, “Sony will probably be looked at most closely,” said Mr. Jackson, adding that Europe would “want to make sure Sony is not justifying an exclusionist policy” intended to tip the market in its favor, or lock customers and consumers into a single technology.
Sony, in an e-mailed statement, said that it was cooperating with the commission and that “there are no indications of any complaint, nor of any antitrust concerns on the part of the commission or anyone else.”
Keisuke Ohmori, a spokesman for Toshiba, said it was also cooperating but highlighted that its format was a “really open standard defined democratically.”
Mark Gray, a spokesman for Europe’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, declined to comment.
But Sony deserves particular scrutiny, said Guy Marriott, the chairman of the International Optical Disc Replicators Association, which represents units of European media companies like Bertelsmann and EMI that pay companies like Sony and Toshiba to use DVD technology to produce discs.
Mr. Marriott complained to European regulators last year, accusing the technology companies of abusing their ownership of patents for manufacturing and formatting DVD’s by refusing to lower their fees enough to match the drop in prices of DVD’s on world markets. Many of those technology companies are also creating the next generation of discs.
He said he believed that Toshiba was more prepared than Sony to negotiate with his group.
“With Sony, we can’t get anyone to talk with us,” Mr. Marriott said.
The exhaustive inquiry seems to be an indication that regulators in Brussels, fresh from their battle to force Microsoft to open up the computer software market, are set to remain more aggressive than their American counterparts in seeking to prevent technology companies from locking up standards markets.
In the last three years, Europe has stung Microsoft with fines totaling hundreds of million of euros. The regulators have also imposed conditions on Microsoft that went beyond those of American regulators.
Europe can fine companies caught violating antitrust laws up to 10 percent of their global annual sales. But fines in any case involving DVD formats seem less likely than a settlement, under which companies like Sony agree to lower their prices as the revenues earned by other DVD manufacturers tumble in the future.
There is also the possibility that studios now working in one format may decide to make DVD’s in both standards to avoid further scrutiny from regulators. Warner Brothers and Paramount, for instance, make DVD’s in both high-definition formats.
So far, neither the Department of Justice nor the Federal Trade Commission has asked questions about the next-generation DVD formats, and antitrust specialists cautioned against leaping to the conclusion that Europe would take action against Sony, the studios, or other companies, just because an investigation was under way.
Stephen Kinsella, a Brussels-based antitrust partner with the law firm of Sidley Austin, suggested that European investigators had learned important lessons during a bruising, seven-year struggle to impose changes on the way Microsoft does business. Mr. Kinsella said investigators were more wary than in the past about intervening in the fast-changing technology industry.
Mr. Kinsella said he “didn’t get the impression that the regulators have formed a view yet” on whether Sony or Toshiba were acting anti-competitively.
He said that regulators might be aiming their questions at the Hollywood studios to try to nip any anti-competitive behavior in the bud, rather than punish them later.
“The E.U. seems to be saying, ‘You’re all on notice that we’re looking at this,’ and that could bring out of the closet any other potential complainants,” Mr. Kinsella said.
Mr. Kinsella also cautioned that regulators might take several months, perhaps longer, to wade through the data they requested from the studios, making any imminent crackdown highly unlikely.
In the questionnaire, which was sent to the studios and technology companies in July, investigators are mainly concerned that the technology companies are using unfair means to force the studios to favor one format.
European investigators ask for specific evidence that may show technology companies are extending to Hollywood studios offers they cannot refuse by using direct payments or valuable incentives like the free use of patented technologies, promotional funding, and offers to manufacture the next-generation discs at below-cost prices.
The investigators ask the movie studios to reveal “whether you made any promise or entered into any agreement” to release movies exclusively in one of the two competing formats. The investigators also turn the heat directly on the studios, by asking if they have been working in concert to help one of the two formats to succeed.
Several other questions concern the potentially crucial neighboring markets for devices to play video games.
Mr. Marriott, the chairman of the European disc replicators’ group who brought the original complaint, said he was disappointed that the questionnaire concentrated exclusively on next-generation DVD formats rather than on current formats of most concern to his members.
James Kanter reported from Paris for this article and Ken Belson from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/te...gy/09sony.html
Bloggers Drive Inquiry on How Altered Images Saw Print
Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosman
As of yesterday afternoon, Adnan Hajj was the most-searched term on the Technorati Web site, which tracks what is being discussed in the blogosphere. And a rendering of his work was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.
Mr. Hajj, a Lebanese photographer based in the Middle East, may not be familiar to many newspaper readers. But thanks to the swift justice of the Internet, he has been charged, tried and convicted of improperly altering photographs he took for Reuters. The pictures ran on the Reuters news service on Saturday, and were discovered almost instantly by bloggers to have been manipulated. Reuters then announced on Sunday that it had fired the freelancer. Executives said yesterday that they were still investigating why they had not discovered the manipulation before the pictures were disseminated to newspapers.
The matter has created an uproar on the Internet, where many bloggers see an anti-Israel bias in Mr. Hajj’s manipulations, which made the damage from Israeli strikes into Beirut appear worse than the original pictures had. One intensified and replicated plumes of smoke from smoldering debris. In another, he changed an image of an Israeli plane to make it look as if it had dropped three flares instead of one.
Still, Reuters officials said they were unaware that any American newspapers had run the two pictures in question, although dozens of papers, including The New York Times, have printed his pictures over the years.
The Times, which ran a picture of his as recently as Saturday on its front page, has published eight of Mr. Hajj’s Associated Press and Reuters photographs since March 2005. Times editors said a review of those pictures found none that appeared to have been changed improperly.
Still, his activities have heightened the anxiety photo editors are already experiencing in the age of digital photography, when pictures can be so easily manipulated by computer.
These advances, made broadly available to the public and professional photographers alike through Photoshop or similar software, may have made readers more skeptical of what they see in newspapers.
“They doubt the media because they understand what digital photography is,” said Torry Bruno, the associate managing editor for photography at The Chicago Tribune. “Everyone who plays with that knows what can be done.”
As a safeguard, he said, any pictures that The Tribune considers for its front page are printed out in color, 8-by-10 hard copies and displayed on the wall of the Page 1 conference room so that editors can review them throughout the day.
“I really think editors have to be diligent at looking carefully,” Mr. Bruno said. “Sometimes you can miss it on the first glance.”
But even as technology makes it easier to manipulate photographs, the blogosphere is making it easier to catch the manipulators.
Mr. Hajj’s picture ran on the news service on Saturday. The first inkling of a problem came in the form of a tip that morning to Charles Johnson, who runs a Web site called Little Green Footballs. Mr. Johnson had been among the first in 2004 to question the authenticity of documents that CBS News used to suggest that President Bush had received favorable treatment in the National Guard.
It is not clear where the tipster first saw the photos, but they were available on the Internet. Mr. Johnson, who has a background in graphic design, said that as soon as he saw the pictures, he could tell they were fake. He posted the news on his Web site on Saturday at 3:41 p.m. California time (he is based in Los Angeles), which was early Sunday morning in Beirut.
The post was spotted by a Reuters photographer in Canada, who quickly notified the editors on duty, and they began an investigation.
Paul Holmes, a senior Reuters editor who is also responsible for the agency’s standards and ethics, said the agency dealt with the matter within 18 hours.
“By the time I checked my e-mail at 10 Sunday morning, we had killed the doctored photo and suspended the photographer,” he said. The agency subsequently stopped using the photographer and has removed the 920 digital photographs of his in its archives. It is reviewing them to see if any others have been improperly altered.
The agency is also investigating how the photo slipped through its editing process.
“On Saturday, we published 2,000 photos,’’ Mr. Holmes said. “It was handled by someone on a very busy day at a more junior level than we would wish for in ideal circumstances.’’ He said this aspect of the problem was the result of “human error,” not malicious intent.
Mr. Hajj told Reuters he was merely trying to remove a speck of dust and fix the lighting in the photos, Mr. Holmes said. Several bloggers have contended that Mr. Hajj was driven by a political agenda, critical of Israel. Mr. Holmes said Reuters was trying to contact Mr. Hajj but he was not responding to messages.
The agency has tightened its procedures so all photos from the Mideast are now reviewed by senior editors.
Other news outlets have also tightened their procedures after learning the hard way about the heightened risk of photo manipulation. Last month, The Charlotte Observer fired a photographer who enhanced the color of the sky in a local photo to make it more dramatic. The Los Angeles Times fired a photographer in 2003 after he altered an Iraq photo that it ran on the front page.
Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press, said his agency fired a photographer “in the last year” for changing a picture; he gave no further details.
The volume of photos that cross news desks and the speed with which they must be handled adds to worries of photo editors.
Mick Cochran, the director of photography for USA Today, said the paper screens about 4,000 photos every day, looking for more than digital manipulation, especially in war zones where many American outlets hire local photographers because they can travel more easily than Americans.
“We wonder, is he behind enemy lines?” he said of the kind of scrutiny that goes into examining pictures to make sure they have not been staged. “Is he getting access that isn’t normal? How did he get there?”
Jonathan Klein, the chief executive of Getty Images, said the only way to avoid such problems was to “employ people of integrity, and if you find infractions, not only take action, but take visible action.’’
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/te...y/09photo.html
CEA Attacks RIAA 'Audio Flag' Demand
Nate Mook
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) this week issued a harsh rebuke to the Recording Industry Association of America's efforts in lobbying Congress to force on the industry an "audio flag" in all digital broadcasts that would prevent them from being recorded.
The RIAA is fearful that the advent of digital broadcasts enables individuals to make near-perfect recordings of content streamed over the airwaves. For example, satellite and HD radio offer customers CD-quality sound, which could pose a threat to music sales if people are able to save individual tracks for later listening, the RIAA claims.
As a result, the RIAA has demanded that Congress mandate a special "flag" be included with all digital radio that would tell a hardware device the content could not be recorded. The television and movie industries are pushing for a similar feature be included in digital TV broadcasts, but the effort has met fierce resistance.
The problem, the CEA explains, is that the RIAA is arriving late and refusing to take part in the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, which was established to help prevent mass redistribution of copyrighted works over the Internet. The RIAA is attempting to push through its own agenda, CEA president Gary Shapiro says, which threatens "fair use" and the consumer electronics market at large.
One major stumbling block is that these digital technologies are already on the market, without an audio flag. If Congress were to legislate such a requirement, current devices could become illegal and companies forced to pull products from stores at cost of billions of dollars.
The CEA is also concerned that the right of consumers to make limited copies and recordings for their own private listening would be squashed if the RIAA has its way. The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio in May over a device that lets users save songs, demanding $150,000 for every song recorded by customers.
"As we have repeatedly said, we are prepared to discuss ways to limit the mass indiscriminate redistribution of music over the Internet. Instead, the RIAA wants to ban 'disaggregation,' which it now calls 'cherry picking' in the hope that it can give legitimacy to its policy ideas by using a sweeter name," said Shapiro.
"In short, the RIAA wants to stop consumers from doing what they've been doing since a tape recorder was first used to capture a song played over the air for private use. The recording industry's campaign over disaggregation is nothing but a thinly veiled attack on lawful, private, noncommercial, in-home consumer recording practices."
The CEA adds that the RIAA hasn't even proposed any technical specification for an audio flag, and chides the music industry for what it calls "misguided lawsuits and overly broad legislation."
"The RIAA's interest lies solely in preserving its existing ways of business, with the hope that it can maximize profits by limiting innovation and undermining long-standing consumer rights," said Shapiro, noting that, "the RIAA should not be surprised that we will continue to fight its legislative efforts on Capitol Hill, and that we expect to prevail by defending innovation and consumer rights."
http://www.betanews.com/article/CEA_...and/1155249439
The RIAA vs. John Doe, a Layperson's Guide To Filesharing Lawsuits
Grant Robertson
Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs. The People put together
an article that explains how the RIAA's militant enforcement arm legal team find, obtain records on and sue ISP account holders who may or may not have ever been users of P2P applications. It's a great reference, but (no offense intended to Ray) it's dry like a bread-sandwich.
I decided to take a stab at rewriting it in something closer to English than lawyer. In hopes that it would be more accessible.
So, with thanks to Ray Beckerman, let's take a look at The RIAA vs. John Doe, in what I hope serves as a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits.
The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits
The RIAA lawsuits pit a very few, very large record labels (sometimes referred to as "The Big Four") against average people who are customers of an Internet Service Provider. These average people are also mothers, grandmothers, dialysis patients and university students. In some cases they're even deceased. In one very highly publicized case, the person was actually not-very average at all; they didn't even own a computer.
The RIAA does not involve musicians in the lawsuits it files. For example, if you're sued for the alleged swapping of a song by Puff Daddy, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs name isn't on the lawsuit in the place where it says "Plaintiff". The Plaintiff in these cases are one or more of the very large record labels or their subsidiaries that are members of the RIAA (i.e. Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, etc).
The person being sued may have never shared a file, or logged on to a P2P network. They haven't been convicted of any crime involving copyright protected material, nor have they been charged with one. They've simply been sued in a "civil" action. In the United States, anyone can sue anyone else for anything at any time. It's quite possible (and maybe even more likely than not) that these average people didn't violate anyone's copyright.
In any event, the burden of proof for a civil suit is much lower than that of a criminal prosecution. There is no possible way that anyone who has been sued by the RIAA could be convicted of any crime with the evidence the RIAA collects.
In fact, to clear up a point of media confusion, often the defendants in these suits are incorrectly referred to as "downloaders". In actuality the RIAA has no ability to show, and has done no investigation to prove that anyone downloaded anything at all.
So, what is the RIAA suing these people for, if not for downloading music? This is where things get just a tad bit technical, but hang with me and I'll try to explain.
How the RIAA identifies the people they sue
First, a techie, working on behalf of the RIAA, searches a peer to peer network for say, "Avril Levine" just like any other P2P user would. Search results are returned, and the techie then sifts through them and focuses in on a single "file".
The "file" in question may have the name "Avril Levine - Sk8r Boi.mp3", and in many cases on P2P networks, there may be several files that carry that same file name. I should point out, just because a file has the name "Avril Levine - Sk8r Boi.mp3", that it's just a name. I could rename "resume-Grant_Robertson.doc" to "Avril Levine - Sk8r Boi.mp3" and, unless you downloaded and listened to the file with an Mp3 player, you'd never know.
As Rumsfeld put it, "absence of proof is not proof of absence." The RIAA holds fast to that philosophy; when they present evidence to the court, they don't play the judge the song they claim you downloaded. The RIAA only shows the judge a screen capture of the filename, along with a username from the peer to peer network
The techie, working on behalf of the RIAA, uses another program -- separate from the P2P software -- to find the Internet address (IP address) from which it appears the file they've searched for can be downloaded. They take a screenshot of the peer to peer software on the techie's computer, with the peer to peer "username" and the filename they searched for, and they attempt to link the "username" to the IP address.
This is where the investigation portion of the RIAA's campaign ends, and the lawsuit portion begins. If you're a really sharp reader you may be asking yourself how the RIAA can sue an IP address, or a peer to peer "username" in a court of law. Well, the short answer is, they can't. Don't worry, the RIAA has very smart, very well paid lawyers who have figured out a way around that problem.
The Lawsuit Begins
The RIAA sues "John Doe" in state court. They can't sue in the state court of the person who is paying for Internet access (and therefore, the IP address), because at this point they aren't even sure in what state that IP address might be. Instead they sue John Doe in the state where the Internet Service Provider's main offices are located. In most cases, this isn't the state where the IP address (or John Doe) lives.
This is a legal gray area. In most cases the RIAA lawyers know that the IP address (and therefore John Doe) isn't in the state in which they are filing suit. That means John Doe isn't actually subject to the laws of the state in which they've been sued (after all, I can't sue you in New Jersey for something you did in Florida when I'm in California.. it just doesn't work that way). That being the case, John Doe has no real way to argue that he isn't subject to the laws of the state in which he's been sued (John Doe doesn't even know he's been sued yet.. in fact, no one knows who John is yet)
The RIAA doesn't just sue one "John Doe" at a time. They instead sue hundreds of John Does at a time, all at the same ISP. This is another legal gray area, because under the "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure", there is no reason to sue all these separate people in the same lawsuit. If the courts required the RIAA to adhere to the letter of the law, they would be forced to sue each John Doe individually, which would greatly increase the amount of effort and paperwork required. Unfortunately, most ISP's can't waste the time and resources that it would require to argue against the way the RIAA is suing their customers. Since the ISP can't argue on behalf of "John Doe", the RIAA wins this stage.
John Doe gets a letter from his ISP, along with paperwork from the court case against him. The paperwork tells him (in legal speak, and -- in many cases -- in a way he does not understand) that a legal order has already been granted against him. So, instead of getting a letter telling John Doe that he needs to do something to protect himself in the courts, John Doe is sent a letter stating he is no longer protected.
At this point, John Doe isn't even given documents that brought this whole process to bare. These documents include:
• the summons and complaint
• the order that was filed without John's knowledge
• the court rules needed to defend himself
So, John Doe now knows he's being sued, or at least that something is rotten in Denmark. What john doesn't know is what the case is about, what the RIAA is basing the case on, or why the court has already ruled against him.
Regardless, John is given days to file a motion to stop the subpoena of his account information. John's not a lawyer, but he needs one, fast! Unfortunately he won't be able to tell the lawyer what he needs to do. Lawyers are smart, but they aren't magic. A lawyer can't make an informed decision about a clients' case unless he has all the facts. Because the ISP has only informed John that he's lost some sort of motion to discover who he is, John's lawyer doesn't have the information about why he's lost the motion, or what they told the court John did.
John's lawyer is at a disadvantage. In many cases, the time John has to defend against the court order is lost in trying to figure out what any of this mess is about. Unless John's lawyer is aware of the tactics the RIAA uses to keep the defendant's lawyer on his toes, John's lawyer is really unable to tell John what is the smartest thing to do. Lawyers went to law school; when they give advice, they don't give it half-assed. TA lawyer will either tell you what they are sure of, or they tell you they aren't sure. In this case, John's lawyer isn't sure, so he can't tell John what to do.
What's maybe even worse is, if John's lawyer could figure out what has already happened, he'd need to file a motion to dismiss the order. John's lawyer would be happy to do that, and it's likely that his motion would win, and the whole thing would stop right here because, let's face it, the evidence the RIAA has against John is really, really flimsy. Unfortunately John's lawyer probably can't. Lawyers are given the ability to practice law state by state. To practice law in all US states, John's lawyer would have to take 50 bar exams and keep up with 50 states worth of ongoing requirements to practice law. Most lawyers are only admitted to practice in a handful of states, and in the case of really expensive lawyers, in federal jurisdictions and maybe in front of the Supreme Court. John's lawyer would have to refer John to a lawyer that can practice in the state his ISP's main offices are in, and that takes time.
If you can't defend yourself in court, you lose. Remember that time that your friend decided to show up in court to contest that speeding ticket? The Police Officer who wrote your friend the ticket didn't show and, your friend walked away victorious. Tthe judge threw that ticket right out the window. The same thing happens to the RIAA when John doesn't show up for court. The judge does the only thing he can do under the law, he rules against John because John didn't show up to defend himself.
Homer Simpson once said "The two sweetest words in the English language.. De Fault". John probably doesn't agree with Homer Simpson on that one, but the RIAA lawyers do.
The RIAA asks the court for "immediate discovery" but, John still isn't in court. Typically in the US justice system if one party in a trial asks the court for something the other party has to be made aware that they've asked. That gives both sides an equal opportunity to argue in front of a judge over whether the motion should or should not be granted. Once upon a time it was rare that the court would grant a motion without the defendant present (or "ex parte"), now it seems to be regular practice to grant "ex parte" discovery orders, which puts John (once again) at a big disadvantage.
For what it's worth, courts in both Canada and the Netherlands have routinely balked at this stage in similar cases. They've refused to grant the motion that would allow the RIAA to find out who John Doe is, stopping the RIAA (or the IFPI) dead in its tracks. In both countries the courts claimed that the information presented to them is way too flimsy to warrant extreme action like making the private account information of John Doe a public matter.
John probably wishes he was in one of those two countries right about now. The judge grants the RIAA's motion for "immediate discovery", which, in English, means that the RIAA can subpoena the ISP for John's account information. The subpoena is legally binding, and unless the ISP wants to fight each subpoena individually (which is crazy.. and would cost millions when dealing with hundreds at a time) the ISP has to give the RIAA all the information they have on John Doe.
What the RIAA does isn't illegal, but it does exploit the law to its edges to take advantage of the courts and the ISP. Nevertheless, the RIAA now has the information it needs.
The RIAA, now having our John Doe's real name and address, drops its suit against John Doe.
Since the case has been dropped, there is no appeal. No other judge gets a crack at interpreting the questionable tactics and strategy that the RIAA used to win the motion.
Where one lawsuit ends, John's trouble begins in earnest. The RIAA now knows who he is, and where he lives. They don't send two jackbooted thugs to John Doe's house in the night to make a "point". That would be far too brutish and, as a society we've mostly grown beyond bashing each other with sacks of oranges in the middle of the night and running away. The RIAA uses the modern equivalent of the midnight raid; the settlement offer.
The RIAA Settlement Offer
The RIAA drops a U.S. postal stamp on John Doe and sends him a settlement demand. Two people can enter into just about any contract for any purpose in the United States (well, unless they're gay and want to marry.. but that's for another time) and the RIAA asks John to enter into a contract with them.
The contract states that the RIAA won't sue John, which is pretty attractive when you're John Doe facing all the legal might the multi-billion dollar recording industry can muster. We don't hold people at gun point (or hit them with bags of oranges in the middle of the night), we hold them at the point of a lawsuit.
The contract, that same one that says that the RIAA won't sue John if he signs it, says John agrees that the RIAA is right when it says he owes them $3,750. It also says that the RIAA doesn't plan to negotiate with John, and contains several one-sided provisions that place restrictions on John and what he can do if he wants to keep from being sued while not placing any restrictions on the RIAA and what it can do. The contract also says that John agrees that peer to peer filesharing is copyright infringement (which isn't actually true.. sharing copyrighted files is copyright infringement, but there are other uses for peer to peer filesharing that aren't infringing).
The settlement contract also doesn't keep John from being sued by other interested parties. Remember when we told you that if you were sued for sharing Puff Daddy that Sean Combs wasn't the Plaintiff? Well, when you sign the settlement, you agree that you did what the RIAA says you did. If the artist wants to sue you next, they still can. The RIAA settlement makes it clear that they aren't protecting (indemnifying) you against other lawsuits.
So, John can give the multi-billion dollar recording industry and its team of lawyers almost $4000 and they'll go away. Four thousand dollars is a used car, and not a very nice used car at that. On the other hand, if John doesn't settle, and if the RIAA takes him to court and wins, they could get as much as $750 per song. The list of songs they say John shared is really long, and at $750 each it's way more than that $3750 they're asking for. Plus, if John loses his court case He'll still have to pay his lawyer, plus pay the RIAA, and maybe even pay the RIAA's enormous legal fees.
You begin to understand why most people, when presented with an RIAA lawsuit, just settle. Losing a legal fight with the RIAA could mean John loses his house, his retirement, his kids college fund, everything he has worked for. Winning will probably still be more expensive than settling, unless John can get the court to force the RIAA to pay his legal fees when he beats them.
Beating the RIAA would be really sweet. But, it's a big gamble if John doesn't. What happens if John refuses to settle (or just doesn't respond)?
What Happens When The RIAA Files Suit After Offering A Settlement
John says, "No deal" and the RIAA says, "See you in court". The RIAA sues John in the district where he lives.
When the RIAA files the complaint against John, it's just a boilerplate filesharing complaint they use every time someone fails to settle with them. They don't customize each one, which makes this a cookie cutter process for them. They simply go back to the start of this process, subpoena hundreds more names, and send out new settlement letters.
The complaint accuses John of "downloading, distributing, and/or making available for distribution". The RIAA also attaches to the complaint two lists of files they accuse you of sharing. The long list, "Exhibit B" contains, in essence, a list of every possible thing they think you might have even been capable of sharing at the time. This is the same list they sent you when the settlement offer was given. The short list, "Exhibit A" is a list of files they will ask for damages for. The RIAA is claiming that these files were shared via an IP address that, when subpoenaed, the ISP mapped to your Internet connection.
What the complaint doesn't contain is any detail on how, when or where the alleged copyright infringement took place.
What if our John Doe just ignores the whole thing? Remember that "default judgment" when he wasn't able (or aware) to show up? The RIAA makes a motion for (and usulally gets) a default judgment against John Doe for $750 per song listed in Exhibit A (the short list).
Songs on iTunes are 99 cents, and 65-70 cents of that goes to the record company according to most estimates. At $750 per song, you're on the hook to the RIAA for over 1000 times the value of their alleged loss. The RIAA is claiming, without any evidence, that you kept over 1000 people from buying legal copies of the song by giving them a free copy.
The huge dollar figure the RIAA claims you've cost them has come under quite a bit of attack. A current case in Brooklyn, NY may ask the court to rule that $750 per song in damages is unconstitutional.
If our John decides to go to court, what are his legal options and how does he defend himself? Again, this gets complicated and, there are no easy answers. John is being given a baptism by fire in the US legal system.
Some defendants have tried challenging the "boilerplate" complaint the RIAA has been using. So far, challenging this boilerplate complaint has met with mixed success. A great number of these cases are still in "litigation", (the process of filing motions, hearing arguments and running up big legal bills for each side) so it's very hard to say with any certainty what strategy our John Doe and his lawyer should adopt. The only way for us to look at the options John has is to look at the path other cases have followed.
Widely celebrated victories are few, but they do exist. They include Candice Chan, the mother of Brittany Chan who has been made famous as the 13 year old Jane Doe from Michigan, and just recently, Debbie Foster and her daughter Amanda from the state of Oklahoma.
These two cases took very similar paths. The attorney's for both Foster and Chan made what's called a "motion for summary judgment." This is similar to playing cards with your buddies and "calling" the other player's cards. It's the legal version of saying "put up, or shut up".
In both cases, the RIAA, when asked to "put up" and show the evidence they had against the defendant, withdrew their complaint.
In the case of Debbie Foster, the judge ruled that even though the RIAA had withdrawn the complaint, they are still potentially liable for the attorney's fees that Foster incurred by defending herself. The court has asked Ms. Foster and her attorney to come up with a dollar amount for legal costs, and will quite possibly force the RIAA to pay the fees for which Ms. Foster would otherwise be liable.
In the case of Chan, the first known victory in one of these complaints, the RIAA was rather upset after withdrawing the complaint. The RIAA went back to court and sued the 13 year old girl directly (rather than through her parents). The RIAA asked the judge to appoint a "Guardian ad litem" (like a surrogate parent for the purposes of trial), and the judge refused. The judge's reasons for not appointing a guardian were technical, and related to the fees a guardian would accrue during a long case. Still, the RIAA was sent home packing in a very public display of sour grapes.
It might seem that asking for "summary judgment" (that legal version of "put up or shut up) is the way to win against the RIAA. Unfortunately it isn't so simple.
In three other recent cases, when a motion was made for summary judgment, judges declined. The reason given by the judges in all three cases? They didn't know enough about peer to peer technology to make a ruling. One judge speculated that the RIAA may have the ability to show the court that the defendant really did download or upload something, and thus that the complaint's basis of "making available" copyrighted material may be invalid.
In all three of those cases, the common factor is that the judge has declined to decide up front if "making available" actually constitutes copyright infringement.
In any event, being sued by the RIAA is not an enjoyable way to spend your time. The burdens placed upon our fictional John Doe are pretty steep, especially considering the fact that the RIAA may not be able to prove that John himself actually did anything wrong. This scenario is being repeated all over the United States, in courtroom after courtroom.
What happens to the $3750 (or the $750 per song) when you pay the RIAA? The artist you allegedly ripped off doesn't see a dime of compensation. The proceeds from the RIAA lawsuits are rolled back into the legal fund the RIAA uses to pay its legal costs. So, in essence, every person who settles for the $3750 only feeds the machine, so it can be unleashed on another person.
The best advice if you are sued by the RIAA is to quickly retain a lawyer who has some experience dealing with RIAA cases. Having knowledgeable council early on won't stop the process from being difficult, but can give you a better chance of protecting your rights.
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2...haring-lawsui/
EFF, ACLU, American Association of Law Libraries, Public Citizen, ACLU of Oklahoma, Come to Aid of Deborah Foster, File Amicus Brief in Support
Ray Beckerman
In a landmark legal document, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, and the American Association of Law Libraries have submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the motion for attorneys fees that has been made by Deborah Foster in Capitol Records v. Debbie Foster, in federal court in Oklahoma. This brief is mandatory reading for every person who is interested in the RIAA litigation campaign against consumers. I tried to edit the brief, and to pick out selected passages, but found it such compelling reading that I decided to reproduce it in its entirety. So here it is. For a copy in *pdf format, with pagination, table of contents, caption, and table of authorities, go to :
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp..._foster_amicus at Internet Law & Regulation or
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Capit...rt_of_fees.pdf at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
-R.B.
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I. STATEMENT OF IDENTITY AND INTEREST
The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is a nonprofit educational organization with over 5,000 members nationwide. AALL's mission is to promote and enhance the value of law libraries to the legal and public communities, to foster the profession of law librarianship, and to provide leadership in the field of legal information and information policy.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nationwide, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with over 500,000 members dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality embodied in the U.S. Constitution. The ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation is one of its regional affiliates. The protection of principles of freedom of expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment is an area of special concern to the ACLU. In this connection, the ACLU has been at the forefront in numerous state and federal cases involving freedom of expression on the Internet. Although this case was pled purely as a copyright case, its resolution has clear implications for the development of free speech on the Internet.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a member-supported, nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to protecting civil liberties and free expression in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF represents over 11,000 contributing members. Part of EFF’s mission has been protecting the public from the abuse of copyright laws by copyright owners. As such, EFF has opposed the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its broad dragnet of lawsuits against small-scale individual file sharers that sweeps up the guilty and the innocent alike. EFF’s interest in this case is ensuring that the court is adequately briefed on the facts related to the RIAA’s mass litigation program and its effects on innocent people ensnared within its nets before ruling on whether Deborah Foster is entitled to attorneys fees.
Public Citizen is a national consumer advocacy organization with approximately 100,000 members, including about 900 members in Oklahoma. Its Internet free speech project is devoted to protecting the right of consumers and others to communicate freely over the Internet. Along with fellow amici EFF and ACLU, Public Citizen has successfully argued in several cases that when a party believes that it has been wronged by Internet speech, it is obligated to show wrongdoing on an individual basis by each proposed defendant, rather than lumping hundreds of otherwise unrelated defendants together and taking advantage of guilt by association. The RIAA and its member companies must comply with this rule like any other plaintiffs. A concomitant of the rule is that, when confronted with a substantial claim of innocence by an individual defendant, the plaintiff must respond reasonably and responsibly, and dismiss the action promptly if that is appropriate, instead of simply proceeding with the litigation in the hope that the defendant will run out of money and agree to a standard settlement. Because awards of attorney fees when music industry plaintiffs fail to behave responsibly are a necessary incentive to reasonable behavior in a litigation program which is itself intended to "send a message" to the general public to induce responsible use of the Internet, Public Citizen joins this brief.
II. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
This is an important case. While it may appear to many as just one woman defending herself against several large corporate copyright plaintiffs, as the court is undoubtedly aware, this lawsuit is but one battle in the broader war the RIAA is waging against unauthorized internet copying. As a result of this war, the RIAA has wrought havoc on the lives of many innocent Americans who, like Deborah Foster, have been wrongfully prosecuted for illegal acts they did not commit for over a year despite their clear innocence and persistent denials. Using questionable methods and suspect evidence, the RIAA has targeted thousands of ordinary people around the country, including grandmothers, grandfathers, single mothers, and teenagers. In its broad dragnet of litigation, the RIAA has knowingly entangled the innocent along with the guilty, dragging them through an expensive and emotionally draining process of trying to clear their names.
In deciding whether or not to grant defendant Deborah Foster’s Motion For Attorneys Fees, the court should consider the broader context of the RIAA lawsuit campaign—especially the positive effect that a fee award would have on encouraging the RIAA to be more diligent in conducting its pre-suit investigations, more prompt in dismissing suits when a defendant asserts substantial claims of innocence or mistaken identity, and more responsible in asserting its legal theories. Moreover, a fee award would encourage innocent accused infringers to stand up and fight back against bogus RIAA claims, deter the RIAA from continuing to prosecute meritless suits that harass defendants it knows or reasonably should know are innocent, and further the purposes of the Copyright Act by reaffirming the appropriate limits of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights.
III. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
This case is of critical importance to thousands of people throughout the country. Though Deborah Foster is just one woman, her battle is one that many others hope that they too can fight. The RIAA has sued over 18,000 individuals (and counting) for allegedly sharing music through file sharing networks. Using questionable methods to identify individuals it believes are violating its rights, the RIAA has carelessly cast a broad net of litigation that ensnares both the guilty and the innocent.
Yet the innocent rarely get a chance to clear their names. When the RIAA threatens suit against an individual, it makes sure to offer her a carefully chosen sum that is substantially smaller than the legal fees required to fight the accusations, even for defendants that are completely innocent non-infringers. Faced with the threat of costly litigation to defend their names and the possibility that hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages might be wrongly assessed against them by a jury, many innocent people accept these unfair settlement offers because they cannot afford the legal costs to fight back. Wielding the threat of copyright lawsuits as a club, the RIAA has already bullied thousands of average Americans into settling. Though the RIAA has the right to enforce its copyrights through lawsuits and settlements, it does not have the right to do so against people it knows or reasonably should know are innocent.
The inequities that Ms. Foster and her fellow wrongfully-accused have faced do not end there. The RIAA is not only continuing to prosecute the innocent in spite of clear evidence to the contrary but also attempting to expand the scope of its copyright protections beyond what the statutes provide. This copyright “grab” stems from the plaintiffs’ erroneous theories of secondary liability in copyright law. These theories, which the RIAA knows are wrong, attempt to put parents, employers, teachers, and other internet account holders on the hook for third-party computer activities—even when the defendant has no knowledge or ability to supervise the actual alleged infringers. Because of the vast differential in resources between plaintiffs and defendants and the strict liability and statutory damages regime of copyright law, these cases often settle, sending the message that these erroneous theories are actually correct. Unless individuals like Deborah Foster can afford to take a stand and fight back, the public may eventually believe that they have fewer rights when accused of responsibility for improper file sharing by others than they do, thus inflicting irreparable harm to the purposes of copyright law. Thus, an award of attorney’s fees helps defend the public’s legal rights and furthers the proper administration of copyright law.
In sum, this court’s decision will help determine whether defendants like Ms. Foster, who have proven their innocence to the RIAA, can afford to take a stand against their much larger foe. Equity demands that these fees be awarded in order to compensate Ms. Foster for the costs of defending against the RIAA’s unwarranted prosecution, to prevent the RIAA from knowingly continuing such erroneous prosecutions in the future, and to encourage future innocent defendants to stand up for their own innocence and advance meritorious defenses that will clarify the scope of copyright law. Thus, for equitable, compensatory, and deterrence reasons, the court should award fees to Ms. Foster.
A. The RIAA’s Campaign Against Individual Filesharers
Three years ago, the RIAA began a campaign of mass-produced lawsuits against consumers and music fans accused of sharing files on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks. Hoping to make examples out of thousands of ordinary Americans, the RIAA commenced investigations of individual file sharers in June 2003 and filed its first round of lawsuits in September 2003, suing 261 individuals for copyright infringement. Recording Industry To Begin Collecting Evidence And Preparing Lawsuits Against File "Sharers" Who Illegally Offer Music Online, Jun. 25, 2003,
http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503.asp; Recording Industry Files Copyright Infringement Claims Against P2P Service, Sept. 19, 2003,
http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/091903.asp. From this beginning, the RIAA gradually expanded its program, ramping up its monthly rounds of lawsuits to as many as 800 per month. To date, over 18,000 lawsuits have been filed against individuals. See generally RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later (2005),
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/RIAAatTWO_FINAL.pdf.
In order to identify file sharers from P2P networks, the RIAA enlists a set of procedures that are of questionable accuracy. The RIAA’s investigators sign into file sharing networks hoping to identify users who are sharing particular songs. However, users on P2P networks are difficult to identify. Each user has a “screenname” that represents her presence on the network. This screenname is usually some kind of vague or anonymous nickname, e.g. “musicfan21”. Moreover, on many systems, multiple users can have the same screenname, further obfuscating association with a particular identity. Thus, neither that screenname nor anything else available from the P2P network alone can tie a virtual-world user directly to a specific real-world person.
Faced with this situation, the RIAA has turned to another source of information to try to match users with identities. Specifically, it records the Internet Protocol (IP) address (a sort of street address on the information superhighway) of the allegedly infringing computer logged into the P2P network and then subpoenas the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that issues the IP address for the identity of the account using that IP address at the time of the alleged infringement. However, this sort of identification is inaccurate and prone to errors is some circumstances. In order to understand why, one must first understand some technical details about IP addresses.
B. IP Addresses as Inadequate Identifiers
As noted above, an IP address is an identifier, much like a street address or telephone number, that is assigned to an internet access point so that other computers on the internet can locate it when they need to send it information, such as a website, a picture, or a music file. However, IP addresses differ from street addresses and telephone numbers in several significant ways. First, IP addresses are often dynamic (as opposed to static), meaning that every time a particular computer signs onto the internet, it can receive a different IP address than the previous time. ISPs also often share IP addresses back and forth between separate access points to maximize their availability at any given time.
Second, an IP address is not necessarily limited to a single computer or a single user. Often, a group of computers can share the same IP address, much like in a household, where multiple people can share a single telephone number. For instance, some ISPs provide home internet service subscribers with only a single IP address. Families who want to set up a wireless home network so that multiple computers around the house can access the internet can use what is called a wireless “router” to share that IP address among the computers. The router acts like a mailroom in a large company building. All messages get sent to the same physical address (the street address or the IP address) and the mailroom (router) makes sure the message gets to the right person. However, from the point of view of someone outside the building, all the people within the building share the same address. Knowing only the address from which a message originated tells nothing about who in the building sent or received the message. Similarly, knowing only the IP address tells nothing about which computer was using the IP address at the time.1
Finally, even if it could identify a particular computer that used a particular IP address, the RIAA still would not know what person was using the computer. At most, an ISP can tell the RIAA the name and billing address associated with the account. This information alone is not enough to accurately identify the person who actually engaged in the alleged file sharing. Many homes, business, and universities allow multiple people to use multiple computers throughout the day or night. Many do not even log in under a separate username
1 In fact, even store-bought devices such as the TiVo Digital Video Recorder can use a home internet network to log into
www.tivo.com and download TV schedules for home recording. When the TiVo device does this, it would appear to an outside observer as if one of the family members is logging onto the internet because it would use the same IP address as the family members use when they log in.
and password. So even if a given IP address does identify a particular account or computer being used, there is no way to know which actual person is using it. This is much like identifying the street address of a restaurant or other business and trying to use that information alone to identify a specific customer who might have been shopping or snacking at a particular time and date. While such a system may occasionally yield an accurate result, the possibilities for false positive identifications are serious and significant.
C. The RIAA’s Drift Net Litigation
Because of its suspect investigation methods, the RIAA’s vast legal campaign against file sharers acts as a blunt instrument, battering both the innocent and the guilty in broad and indiscriminate strokes. The RIAA itself has likened its campaign to drift net fishing, admitting that “[w]hen you go fishing with a net, you sometimes are going to catch a few dolphin.” Dennis Roddy, The Song Remains the Same, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 14, 2003, available at
http://www.post-gazette.com/columnis...oddy0914p1.asp. One of the first innocents caught in the RIAA’s net was Sarah Ward, a grandmother in Massachusetts who was accused of using a Windows program to download hard¬core rap music, even though her computer was a Macintosh that could not possibly run the program. RIAA v. The People, supra, at 4. Another, Marie Lindor, was sued even though she did not own a computer at the time of the alleged infringement. Download Suit Defense: ‘No PC,’ Red Herring, Feb. 3, 2006, available at
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15592. The RIAA even sued an 83-year-old deceased grandmother, Gertrude Walton, who was accused of sharing files under the user name “smittened kitten” even though she hated computers even when she was alive. See Toby Coleman, Deceased Woman Named in File-sharing Suit, Charleston Gazette, Feb. 4, 2005, at P1A.
Yet despite being faced with clear evidence of innocence, the RIAA often delays dropping lawsuits against these innocent defendants, causing further unnecessary financial and emotional harm to these defendants until pressed by legal fees and the threat of summary judgment. Ms. Foster first informed the RIAA that she was not involved with the filesharing and that her husband or daughter might have done it in October 2004. (Koransky Decl. ¶ 2). Nevertheless, the RIAA still filed suit against her in November 2004, at which time she again denied any involvement. (Gerber Decl. ¶¶ 2-3). Even when Ms. Foster’s daughter offered to admit liability in April 2005, instead of dropping the case against Ms. Foster, the RIAA amended the complaint to allege a frivolous claim of secondary liability. (Cooper Decl. ¶ 2). The RIAA continued to string Ms. Foster along until this court finally granted a voluntary dismissal over a year later. These sorts of tactics unnecessarily burden innocent defendants with undue legal costs and emotional distress, especially when the plaintiff is in possession of uncontested evidence of their non-infringement. Furthermore, by refusing to immediately dismiss frivolous suits, the RIAA also unnecessarily burdens the courts and clogs up judicial resources.
D. Innocent Defendants are Forced to Settle
Because of the disproportionate financial and organizational power exhibited by the RIAA in its lawsuits, most defendants have settled rather than go to court. The settlements have ranged from $3,000 to $11,000. RIAA v. The People, supra, at 6. Yet these settlements mask the scope of the problem of wrongfully-accused defendants. As a preliminary step in its litigation process, once the RIAA has identified the account holder, it will contact that person offering a settlement. Faced with the Hobson’s choice of either settling now or facing large legal costs and potential uncertainty over recovering their attorneys fees, innocent defendants may find themselves making the logical though unsavory choice of settling.
However, some individuals like Deborah Foster have been brave enough to take a stand against the RIAA’s litigation machine and defend their innocence. For these individuals, the costs of mounting a defense can be astronomical, limiting this option to those who have sufficient resources. One person who can afford to mount a defense with his own funds is Shawn Hogan, a millionaire software developer who made his fortunes as CEO of Digital Point Solutions. David Goldenberg, Shawn Hogan, Hero, Wired Magazine, available at
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/start.html?pg=3. Hogan was accused by the Motion Picture Association of America of downloading a movie (one he claimed he already owned on DVD) from a file sharing network. Id. Hogan has dedicated himself to fighting the accusations, regardless of the cost, which he expects to surpass $100,000. Id.
While millionaires like Hogan can afford these exorbitant legal fees, the majority of those wrongly targeted by the RIAA cannot. Thus, where wrongly-targeted defendants are successful in their defense and the record demonstrates that the plaintiff knew or, had an adequate investigation been conducted, should have known that the defendant was innocent, the court should award them attorney’s fees, not only to undo some of the harm the RIAA has imposed and encourage future innocent defendants to stand up for their innocence, but also to further the purpose of the Copyright Act by providing incentives for the RIAA to limit its campaign to meritorious suits that involve actual copyright infringement and to promptly drop suits against those individuals it knows or reasonably should know are innocent.
IV. ARGUMENT
The RIAA’s driftnet litigation campaign unfairly exploits the economic position of an untold number of innocent individuals who cannot afford to defend themselves against its legal machinery. Absent the promise of an award of attorney’s fees when the copyright holder unreasonably persists, innocent defendants have little incentive to risk the turbulent and uncharted waters of a protracted legal battle. Congress gave the court the power to alleviate this imbalance of power. Section 505 of the Copyright Act enables a court to award attorney’s fees based on equitable discretion. Where, as here, one of these innocent defendants prevails in clearing her name and the plaintiff knew or should have known that she was innocent but continued to harass the defendant, the court should award attorney’s fees to compensate the victim, to deter the legal assailant, to encourage future innocent defendants to fight back, and to maintain the proper administration and balance of copyright law.
A. Courts Must Exercise Equitable Discretion in Deciding Whether to Award Attorney’s Fees to Prevailing Parties.
In civil cases arising under the Copyright Act, § 505 of the Act provides that “the court may . . . award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs.” 17 U.S.C. § 505. The decision of whether to award attorney’s fees is completely up to the discretion of the court, which must apply the same standard for awarding fees to both prevailing plaintiffs and defendants. Fogerty
v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517, 534 (1994). “There is no precise rule or formula for making these determinations, but instead equitable discretion should be exercised in light of the considerations . . . identified.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Among the factors a court should consider in using its equitable discretion are “frivolousness, motivation, objective unreasonableness (both in the factual and in the legal components of the case) and the need in particular circumstances to advance considerations of compensation and deterrence.” Id. at 535 n.19 (citing Lieb v. Topstone Indus., Inc., 788 F.2d 151, 156 (3d. Cir. 1986)).
In Fogerty, the Court acknowledged that awarding fees to prevailing defendants in copyright cases could be just as important to furthering the purposes of copyright law as awarding fees to prevailing plaintiffs.
Because copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works, it is peculiarly important that the boundaries of copyright law be demarcated as clearly as possible. To that end, defendants who seek to advance a variety of meritorious copyright defenses should be encouraged to litigate them to the same extent that plaintiffs are encouraged to litigate meritorious claims of infringement. Id. at 527. Thus, the Supreme Court has recognized the importance of providing the right incentives to both plaintiffs and defendants to ensure that they will proceed with meritorious claims or defenses without worrying about potential attorney’s fees.
One circuit court has also singled out the particularly important incentives awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing defendant can create. The 7th Circuit in Assessment Technologies of Wi, LLC. v. Wire Data, Inc., 361 F.3d 434, 437 (7th Cir. 2004), held that “[w]hen the prevailing party is the defendant, who by definition receives not a small award but no award, the presumption in favor of awarding fees is very strong.” There, the plaintiff “was rather transparently seeking to annex a portion of the intellectual public domain” and the defendant needed to be encouraged to fight in order to clarify the boundaries of copyright law. Judge Posner, writing for the majority, worried that “without the prospect of such an award, the party might be forced into a nuisance settlement or deterred altogether from enforcing his rights” because the party “could not obtain an award of damages from which to pay his lawyer—no matter how costly it was for him to defend against the suit.” Id.
B. Equity Favors Awarding Attorney’s Fees for Deborah Foster’s Successful Defense.
In the present case, equitable discretion and “the considerations of compensation and deterrence” both strongly favor awarding Deborah Foster attorney’s fees for her successful defense. First and foremost, an award would provide much needed compensation to Ms. Foster for her personal expenses in defense of the RIAA’s meritless copyright suit against her. This is particularly noteworthy because Ms. Foster defended herself without any assurance that such fees would be forthcoming, even though she had communicated her innocence early and often to plaintiffs and plaintiffs continued to prosecute her case.
Moreover, it would be equitable to do so because, as the record shows, this is a prime example of the RIAA’s inadequate investigation into whether the defendants it names are actually the ones doing the file sharing, instead relying on the questionable methods described above. Though the RIAA has a right to sue those who actually infringe on its copyrights, it does not have the right to carelessly target innocent defendants and subject them to the costs of defending against baseless accusations. Where the RIAA does net an innocent “dolphin” in its drift net, it must release it as soon as possible. Where, as here, it continues to harass the defendant for over a year in spite of clear evidence of innocence, the court should provide restitution using the tool Congress envisioned for this purpose—Section 505.
Awarding attorney’s fees here also provides the necessary incentives for the RIAA to exercise greater care in its mass litigation campaign and avoid bringing similarly frivolous suits in the future. Plaintiffs are multi-billion dollar corporate copyright holders who can easily afford to bring innumerable suits in their efforts to stamp out all possible sharing of their music on the internet. Defendant, on the other hand, is an innocent individual with severely limited resources. Unless the court awards Ms. Foster her fees, plaintiffs will continue their campaign unchecked and undaunted. They will simply continue to subpoena and sue anyone whom they even remotely suspect might be an alleged infringer, refusing to walk away even when presented with plain and unequivocal evidence that they were wrong. Only a strong fee award can deter such behaviors and prevent future Ms. Fosters from having to subject themselves to this same expensive and draining ordeal after they have put forth prime facie evidence of innocence.
Moreover, the RIAA’s mass-produced lawsuits, numbering in the hundreds each month, allow it to take advantage of economies of scale. The marginal cost of each additional lawsuit is minimal for the RIAA, while the return of each settlement is quite high. The economics of this situation provide the RIAA with strong incentives to sue as many people as it can, without regard to actual guilt. Awarding attorney’s fees in cases where the RIAA knowingly and wrongfully prosecutes someone would cause the RIAA to more thoughtfully consider the merits of its case before proceeding with the suit and to immediately drop cases against those it knows are innocent.
Innocent defendants like Deborah Foster, on the other hand, cannot take advantage of the RIAA’s economies of scale. Only those with significant resources and fortitude will be able to take a stand against the RIAA’s juggernaut litigation campaign. Failure to award fees to a prevailing defendant would work a grave injustice, not only upon the present defendant, but also upon all future innocent defendants who want to mount a defense but cannot afford the legal costs.
C. Awarding Deborah Foster Attorney’s Fees Would Further the Policies of the Copyright Act.
Awarding attorney’s fees here would also further the policies of the Copyright Act by encouraging innocent defendants to fight against erroneous legal theories rather than settle. As the Court recognized in Fogerty, “a successful defense of a copyright infringement action” could help further the policies of copyright law by demarcating the boundaries of copyright law “as clearly as possible.” Fogerty, 510 U.S. at 527. The RIAA’s drift net legal strategy blurs rather than sharpens the boundaries of copyright law by sending misleading messages about the scope of secondary infringement doctrines. Such overenforcement tips the balance of copyright in favor of the copyright owners and allows them to steal away from the public a set of rights that legitimately belong to them.
The core of copyright law is a balance between the rights of copyright owners to exploit a limited monopoly as an incentive to create new works and the rights of the public to have access to those works created. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 429 (1984). This balance must be accurately communicated to the public so that the public can take full advantage of the rights to which it is entitled. Copyright owners and courts can communicate such a message through litigation. By indiscriminately suing parents like Ms. Foster and other account holders as part of its mass litigation legal strategy, the RIAA knowingly sends a distorted message to the public—that any account holder is secondarily liable for the actions of anyone who uses her account to download music. Though this message about secondary liability is wrong and would not hold up in court 2, it can only be corrected if defendants successfully defend themselves. If innocent defendants cannot recover attorney’s fees by successfully challenging the RIAA’s baseless claims, the majority of defendants will settle rather than fight. As a result, the public may take the RIAA’s incorrect message as the truth. Instead, courts should use attorney’s fee
2 In order to be held liable, the account holder must either have knowledge and materially contribute to the infringement, Ellison v. Robertson, 357 F.3d 1072, 1076 (9th Cir. 2004) or have the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and a direct financial interest in it, A&M Records v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1022 (9th Cir. 2001).
awards to encourage legitimate defenses of copyright infringement against clearly erroneous theories advanced by plaintiffs to help affirm the correct boundaries of copyright law and send the correct message to the public. Fogerty, 510 U.S. at 527.
Overenforcement of copyrights also cuts against the primary purpose of copyright law and steals from the public the set of benefits copyright law was intended to provide it. “The copyright law . . . makes reward to the owner a secondary consideration. . . . Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts.” Sony, 464 U.S. at 429, 431¬32. In Assessment Technologies, the Seventh Circuit recognized that harms to the public would occur where a copyright owner used “an infringement suit to obtain property protection . . . that copyright law clearly does not confer, hoping to force a settlement or even achieve an outright victory over an opponent that may lack the resources or the legal sophistication to resist effectively.” 361 F.3d at 437. Here, the RIAA is attempting to do just that. If the RIAA is allowed to misinform the public about the scope of secondary liability law, the public will refrain from behaviors that are actually encouraged by copyright law. Fearing secondary liability, parents may restrict their children’s internet access. Hotels, public spaces, and businesses may stop providing public internet access to their patrons. Access to creative works may be chilled.
Unless innocent defendants can recoup their fees after a successful defense against copyright claims holders that unreasonably persisted in claims that they knew or should have known were fallacious, the RIAA will be able to expand its control over behavior beyond what is sanctioned by copyright law. Therefore, to support the strong copyright public policy of access to information, the court should award fees in this case.
V. CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed above, the defendant Deborah Foster should be
awarded attorney’s fees.
Dated: August 9, 2006 Respectfully submitted,
By: /s/ Patrick E. Carr Patrick E. Carr, OBA #1506
pcarr@carrcarr.com
A. Laurie Koller, OBA #16857
lkoller@carrcarr.com
Attorney at Law
www.workingforyou.com
4416 South Harvard Avenue Tulsa, OK 74135 918-747-1000 918-747-7284- fax
Jason M. Schultz (CA Bar # 212600) Electronic Frontier Foundation 454 Shotwell Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415-436-9333 415-436-9993 Fax
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...on-of-law.html
Baseball Appealing Fantasy Legal Victory
Jeff Douglas
Major League Baseball says it will appeal a federal court ruling allowing an online fantasy baseball business to use names and statistics without paying for a licensing agreement.
MLB and its players' union also said Wednesday they expect to win back the right to demand money from fantasy sites like St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc., which prevailed in its lawsuit in a federal court's summary judgment issued Tuesday.
CBC, which runs CDM Fantasy Sports, sued MLB Advanced Media last year, claiming the statistics and names used in fantasy baseball should be free.
"We are disappointed by the Court's decision yesterday. ... We expect to appeal the decision, and remain confident that we will prevail in that effort. We continue to believe that the use of the players, without their consent, to create this type of commercial venture is improper," MLB Advanced Media and the MLBPA said Wednesday in a statement.
The ruling has been called a defining moment for millions of fantasy sports players and the more than 300 online leagues that run them. But it is unknown who will ultimately win or how it will impact the growing fantasy sports industry, which players spend about $1 billion on annually.
Big time fantasy sports league providers such as Yahoo, ESPN and CBS Sportsline are trying to sort out what Tuesday's federal court ruling could mean for their current MLB licensing agreements reported to be worth roughly $2 million a year to use names, statistics, team logos and images on fantasy sites.
None of the three companies were willing to comment on the lawsuit.
Yahoo Inc. is a leader in the fantasy sports market, with more than 6.7 million registered players. The company said the ruling changes nothing from a consumer standpoint.
"We've been a leader in fantasy sports and will continue to be," said Yahoo spokesman Dan Berger.
Charlie Wiegert, a former newspaper advertising salesman who helped start his cdmsports.com fantasy sports empire in a basement in 1992, said they have a 90 percent chance of winning the appeal and closing the case.
"I would hope that Major League Baseball will look at this decision and say 'OK, we lost that one and let's move on.' They don't need to be antagonizing their fantasy fans anymore," Wiegert said.
Jon Karelitz, who has been playing fantasy football and baseball since 2003, says he can understand arguments on both sides.
"It is illegal to use someone's name for financial gain," said the 26-year-old Chicago lawyer, who wins or loses games with his friends based on the statistical success of the actual players on the field. "However, when the name is simply being used to identify statistics, the line is much grayer."
MLB Advanced Media spokesman Jim Gallagher said the league has distinguished that gray area from the beginning.
"We've agreed that the stats and names are in the public domain," Gallagher said. "But when you start to use teams logos and other images as CBC did, you need a license, it's that simple."
Like many other fantasy baseball leagues, CBC had a licensing agreement with the MLBPA from 1995 through the 2004 season and paid royalties to the association.
"I could have bought a really nice house with all the money we gave them," Wiegert said, adding that the 9 percent royalties they paid MLB over 10 years reached seven figures.
MLB Advanced Media scaled back the number of license agreements with fantasy leagues from 19 to seven in 2005 after working out a $50 million licensing deal with the MLBPA. CBC and other smaller fantasy businesses did not get license agreements renewed with the league. That's when CBC sued.
This summer, the MLBPA sent cease and desist orders to about 20 or 30 smaller online fantasy baseball league operators that were operating without agreements.
CBC has continued to operate without an agreement along with others as fantasy sports has grown at a rate of up to 10 percent each year, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-17-58-33
Study: Marketers to Blame For Pop-Up Ads
Anick Jesdanun
Marketers appeared to be directly responsible for more than half of the pop-up and other online advertisements run through so-called adware networks, reducing the companies' ability to plausibly deny knowledge of that connection, a report has found.
Critics say adware has become one of the top scourges of Internet use because it can degrade computer performance, track a user's browsing habits and mysteriously appear on computers without a user's full knowledge. Major companies often blame an intermediary when they are found to advertise through such programs.
But the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group that has conducted research on such programs, said Wednesday that 55 percent of the ads, particularly those coming from smaller companies, used no intermediaries at all.
"There are a lot of companies that are clearly working directly with adware companies," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director for the center.
The report did not name the advertisers.
Researchers studied the patterns by loading two computers with adware and installing a packet logger to track the Web addresses accessed.
When there is an intermediary, the software would visit one site, which would pull information from another site, which would possibly retrieve the actual ad from a third location. When adware gets the ad from the first site, there likely isn't an intermediary.
Schwartz acknowledged, however, that the finding is possibly inflated because the study does not take into account intermediaries that pass along ads via e-mail. In such cases, the ad would appear to come directly from the company, even when an intermediary was used.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-18-26-32
Mme. Amanpour Sets Us Straight
Virginia Heffernan
Christiane Amanpour has several enlightening docs coming up on CNN, including “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,” which will appear on August 23, and “Where Have All the Parents Gone?,” about AIDS orphans, which will appear sometime in September.
She’s also been collaborating in interesting ways with CNN’s online news service, Pipeline.
I asked her what’s good about broadband news. Her responses — and my annotations — follow.
“Pipeline has the time and space not just for short stories and reports, but to play archive reports, to play entire interviews with newsmakers, rather than short snippets and soundbites.”
Excellent.
“I think this is a good service, albeit a little strange sometimes: a couple of weeks ago, for instance, I was on the Northern Israeli front waiting to talk live with the Pipeline anchor, while in my ear (ifb) I was hearing an archive report of mine from Lebanon 1993!!!”
I heard that time-warp report too. It’s called “Beirut Rises from the Ashes.” The lesson is, “Lebanon: Not the Same As It Was in 93.”
Hey, come to think of it, why is that archived report — you have to join Pipeline to see it — getting so much play on Pipeline these days? Are people listening to other counterfactual old news reports? How’re “Tsunamis: They Just Don’t Happen Anymore” (1997), and “Gore: A Landslide in the Offing?” (2000) doing?
“I still believe that while broadband news and the Internet and dotcom news sites, etc. are very practical, I do not think they yet, and may never, carry the same weight, journalistic heft and emotional, or serious social or cultural impact as great TV news. Why? Because “it’s the pictures stupid. And the storytelling.” Simple as that. Of course there are pictures online, but it’s nowhere near the same as watching a magnificently shot TV news report on a big screen with proper sound quality.”
The screen-size question is always a live one, but this makes me think about sound. Do most televisions in people’s houses have “proper sound quality”? Do explosions or cries have to sound a certain way to spur people and governments to action? Not sure.
“Added to that, it does not have the same “community effect” as TV news. In other words, everyone sitting in their own little corner watching only the news they want to watch on small computer screens does not change the world! At least not yet. I know from personal experience what solid TV (and print) reporting did during the Bosnia war for instance (1992-95). It finally helped end the genocide there. I am not sure that kind of impact is possible from the current state of alternative media.”
Not sure about this either. The watch-comment-post-read-forward-contribute-upload-downl oad system of involvement online has turned the broadband news people, in my experience, into a regular 4H club. I’m not sure there’s less community — and less world-change potential — on hypothetical BNN than on CNN.
“I also believe that the field is overcrowded and it works both ways: on the one hand some amateurs occasionally have great access and can provide special insight and pictures. But in my opinion it’s quite rare and you cannot easily afford to replace the experience, and judgement of professionals who have been out there doing this for years. This is not a snobbish comment nor a put down, it’s just a fact and any profession would say the same. People often ask me how I manage to keep my emotions in check in the face of all the terrible things I have witnessed in the last 16 years on the road, and I always liken myself to an ER doctor. (You just have to get the job done, without losing your humanity and without falling apart.) So I use the same medical metaphor in this case: who do you really want to get your news from?”
Batty Mott Street herbalist or mean surgeon at Mass General?
“I reject and try to hold the line — my line at least — against the inclination by some to turn news reporting into a “happy-camper war-and-disaster-zone travelogue.” I am uncomfortable watching deadly serious places and moments treated as the latest in extreme-adventure playgrounds for your own heroics or Petri dishes for examining your own feelings! Reporters notebooks are great, until they start replacing hard news.”
Yes yes yes and absolutely.
http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=52#more-52
Attention Scenesters!
A Head Start on the Future of High-Def
HIGH-TECH projects often take longer to complete than anticipated; just ask Microsoft’s Windows team.
But it seems as if we’ve been hearing about high-definition video since the Eisenhower administration. The Federal Communications Commission’s mandatory cutoff of old-fashioned analog TV broadcasts, now scheduled for 2009, has been delayed, what, 500 times?
Part of the holdup is the extent and expense of the switch to the new, better-looking format. To achieve HDTV nirvana, you have to replace every element of your video setup: the TV set, cable box, DVD player, DVD movie collection — and even your camcorder.
Next month, Canon will release the world’s smallest and least expensive high-definition tape camcorder, a one-handable beauty called the HV10. Its list price is $1,300. As any gadget freak can tell you, however, that’s an inflated, fanciful figure provided for — well, for no good reason. The online price, once the camcorder is on store shelves, will be lower.
The HV10 is not the first high-def consumer camcorder by any means; Sony began blazing this path at the beginning of 2005. In fact, Sony’s third HD camcorder, not counting pro models, has been available for months: the HC3 ($1,500 list price; under $1,200 online), the previous price and size champ.
As Canon rolls out its HV10, Sony’s HC3 seems to be squarely in its cross hairs. Both camcorders produce video in the 1080i format, which you can edit in Apple’s iMovie or many Windows programs (Premiere, Vegas, PowerDirector and so on). Both have built-in, automatic lens caps but lack headphone and microphone jacks.
Both are HDV camcorders, which means that they record onto standard, easy-to-find, inexpensive MiniDV cassettes. The eyepiece viewfinder is immobile and nonextendable on both. And both cameras are so compact, the other parents at the baseball game will have absolutely no clue that you’re filming in high definition.
OF course, they’ll also have no idea that you paid more than $1,000 for your camcorder, compared with as little as $300 for a standard-def model — at least until they see the result on a high-definition TV.
That’s when they’ll see what all the fuss is about. The clarity, color fidelity and detail of good high-def video is absolutely astonishing, and its wide-screen shape makes even home movies look like Hollywood movies. With four times the resolution of a standard TV picture, high-def movies look like the view out a window.
This image-quality business, as it turns out, is the new Canon’s specialty. Talk about being blown away the first time you play back your recordings — let’s hope you have a sturdy couch.
Several advances are responsible for the brilliant picture quality. First, Canon has paid extra attention to two of the most important aspects of HD recording: focus and stability. Because the high-def picture is so sharp and so wide, moments of blurriness or hand-held jitters are far more noticeable and disturbing than in regular video.
So the front of the HV10 bears a special external sensor that, when you change your aim, handles the bulk of the refocusing extremely rapidly. A standard through-the-lens focusing system does the fine tuning after that. Together, these two mechanisms nearly eliminate the awkward moment of blurry focus-hunting that mars other camcorders’ output. (Take care to avoid covering the focus sensor with your fingers as they wrap around this vertically oriented, chunky camera.)
The HV10 also aims to iron out camera shake with a true optical stabilizer. A gyroscope inside the lens mechanism sends real-time feedback to the sensor itself, resulting, Canon says, in a more stable picture than you’d get from electronic stabilizers like the one in Sony’s HC3.
In practice, the Canon’s stabilizer works fantastically when you’re zoomed out; if you use two hands, the picture is indistinguishable from a tripod shot. As you zoom in, however, camera shake becomes more noticeable; at the 10X maximum, keeping the video rock-solid requires either a tripod or nerves of steel.
Now, depending on where the Canon’s street price winds up, Sony’s HC3 may be slightly more expensive. But it offers some goodies that the Canon lacks: a minutes-remaining readout for the battery; a “nightshot” mode for filming in total blackness, infrared-style; and an accessory shoe for video lights and microphones (proprietary Sony accessories only).
The Sony model also has an HDMI jack. HDMI is a single cable that carries high-definition video and audio — a common, extremely convenient connector on high-def equipment. Connecting the Canon to a high-def TV, on the other hand, requires plugging in five connections: left and right audio, and three component-video jacks.
But the Canon offers some perks of its own. In addition to its superior stabilizer and focusing system, it does better in low light, with fewer of the dancing, grainy pixels that mar the HC3’s dim-setting work. It also has a built-in video light that’s a real help — at least within interview range — at nighttime parties, postconcert wrap-ups and “Blair Witch”-style memos to posterity.
Neither camera takes very good still photos. But for what it’s worth, the Canon’s photo-shutter button works even while you’re filming. When you consider how often you might want both stills and video in life — the wedding kiss, the baseball swing, the diploma handshake — this is a great feature.
The Canon even counts to 10 every time you begin filming — a small “1 sec, 2 sec” counter appears on the very bright, very sharp flip-out screen. It’s an ingenious idea because it alerts you, even more effectively than the red REC dot, to when you are, and are not, recording.
Finally, the HV10 can convert all your old analog video, like VHS and 8-millimeter tapes, into digital form (not high definition), for ease in computer editing and reassurance in longevity.
The HV10’s only serious drawback, in fact, is one that it shares with recent Sony models (including the HC3): a really pathetic wide-angle view. Even at the most zoomed-out setting, these camcorders are zoomed in, if that makes any sense; in camera terms, its zoom range is 43 to 436 millimeters. Fitting a whole six-foot person into the frame involves backing up 15 feet, which often puts you into the street, the sea or the restroom.
Now, you could argue that it’s too soon to be buying any high-def camcorder. How, for example, will you show off your finished high-definition masterpieces? High-def DVD recorders are still on the drawing boards, and high-def VCR’s are an expensive oddity. At the moment, the only way to play back your high-def work is to connect the camcorder to your TV.
But the world’s eventual switch to high definition is inevitable. Meanwhile, time is passing. If anything is worth filming, isn’t it worth filming in the best possible quality starting right now? (My infant son, for example, had the good sense to take his very first steps while I was rolling with a high-def camcorder. I’ll always be grateful for that piece of video.)
True, a high-def camcorder is still much more expensive than a standard-def one. But if that’s not an obstacle, remember that you’re actually buying two camcorders in one; you can film in either standard or high-definition video on the same tape. And you can play back either kind of video on either kind of TV set, too (standard or HDTV), which makes these camcorders exceptionally versatile.
In the meantime, by entering the high-def camcorder market a year and a half after its rivals, Canon has played the same conservative waiting game it once used with digital cameras and camcorders. Its goal, of course, is to watch and learn as the pioneers get all the arrows in their backs.
If the HV10 is any indication, the company is off to a very good start.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/te...7d/5QOd1YuPOJA
It Has Come to This: Computer Orders Restaurant Workers Around
Bill Christensen
Hyperactive Bob, the kitchen production management computer system from Hyperactive Technologies, is now being licensed to Zaxby's, a fast-food restaurant chain with locations in the Southern states. Zaxby's has 330 counter-service chicken specialty restaurants. This artificially intelligent computer system not only takes orders, it gives them as well.
Hyperactive Bob makes use of different forms of robotics technology to help manage fast food restaurants:
Sensing the environment:
The system uses robotic vision to count the cars in the parking lot, gathers feedback from employees and collects point-of-sale information in real time.
Artificial Intelligence:
Hyperactive Bob analyzes historical and real-time data to learn about each restaurant individually. Hyperactive Technologies claims that HB is more accurate than most seasoned employees.
Taking Charge:
Hyperactive Bob uses touch screens to tell employees what to do. Employees are instructed how much of which foods to cook; when the food is ready, they tell HB.
Hyperactive Bob operates on practical PC hardware and Windows .Net, Winnov Videum 4400 VO (4 channel video capture card), ELO Touch Screen Displays and Color 380 TV Line Cameras . According to the company, HB "leverages existing QSR infrastructure to offer a very low total cost of ownership, with little maintenance or support, and provides an accelerated return-on-investment that is realized in less than one year."
Hyperactive Bob is frighteningly close to Manna, a science-fictional system proposed by Marshall Brain in his novella-length story of the same name. In the story, Manna is a PC-based system that makes use of sensors around the restaurant to gain information; it then instructs employees.
Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down. The software was also attached to the time clock, so it knew who was working in the restaurant...
Manna told employees what to do simply by talking to them. Employees each put on a headset when they punched in...
If you think that going through your day with a computer telling you what to do every minute sounds creepy, it gets much worse. In the story, human workers are really just the remote "manipulators" and "sensors" of the system. Hopefully, no one will tell the makers of Hyperactive Bob about the Manna story; it has too many practical suggestions for the enslavement of humans.
http://www.livescience.com/scienceof...ctive_bob.html
Lieberman Defeat a Win for 'Netroots' Politics?
Caroline McCarthy
It may have been frequently described as a referendum on the war in Iraq, but last night's Connecticut Democratic primary battle could also be considered an indicator of the Internet's future as a political tool.
Buzz about the political blogosphere and its potential power reached the national scene during the 2004 presidential race, when former Vermont governor Howard Dean made a name for himself with a campaign that was largely run online. Dean's defeat in the primaries, however, led many to believe that perhaps the Internet's potential as a campaign tool was overrated.
But now that 18-year incumbent and one-time vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman has failed to win the Democratic nomination for Connecticut's Senate seat thanks to millionaire cable-TV executive and political novice Ned Lamont, candidates from across the political spectrum may be looking at the "Netroots" more seriously.
Lamont's campaign had an official blogger, regular support from liberal mega-blog DailyKos, and a YouTube group called "Nedheads" that currently ranks 13th in membership on the popular video site. And most Lamont supporters are eager to paint Lieberman as quite the technophobe, a task made easier when the senator's official Web site mysteriously crashed on primary day. Lieberman's campaign suspected the work of malicious Lamont followers; liberal bloggers laughed it off and suggested that perhaps Lieberman's staff hadn't anticipated the amount of bandwidth they'd need to handle election-day traffic.
A Netroots turning point?
According to Lowell Feld, the official "Netroots Coordinator" for Jim Webb, the Democrat who will be challenging incumbent Republican Senator George Allen in Virginia this November, last night's primary was a sign that the blogosphere (or Netroots, a truncation of "Internet grassroots") has established itself as a powerful force in electoral politics.
"The enthusiasm and interest in (the Lieberman-Lamont primary) was incredible," says Feld, a Lamont supporter, citing the various blogs as well as major news sources that experienced bandwidth problems during the primary as a consequence of Internet users trying to find out the race results. "That shows you something right there."
"The Lamont campaign is the best example to date of a tech-savvy campaign," says Zack Exley, who worked at liberal political action committee MoveOn.org when it first emerged during the 2004 elections and later did work for John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid before branching out into nonprofit work. A tech-savvy campaign, he says, is one that "understands that the purpose of technology in politics is to get boots on the ground in the real world, and to actually sway voters and turn out voters in reality," a point sometimes missed by campaigns grounded in the online realm.
Lamont's best online tactic, according to Exley, was his first one: The Greenwich businessman's initial campaign announcement said that he would run only if 10,000 volunteers and donors pledged their support. "I think that was the most innovative thing that he did online," Exley observes, "and it really allowed his campaign to start so much faster than it otherwise would have. It allowed him to almost immediately generate powerful grassroots and financial support for his campaign." Exley thinks we'll see other politicians adopt that model, including those in the 2008 presidential primaries.
Besides the blogosphere's strength as a recruitment tool, it can help a candidate by simply being loud enough to attract the attention of the mainstream media, Feld said. "The interest (within traditional media) was enormous," he said. "Why was the interest so enormous? Sure, Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, but was it that interesting of a race inherently? Once the Netroots really got in there and started publicizing it and getting enthused about it, it certainly ratcheted it up a few notches."
Yankee Group analyst Jennifer Simpson describes the Netroots as an emerging strategy for bringing together and publicizing already-existing political sentiment. "What we are beginning to realize about blogs is that they represent some feelings that are already out there. By making those feelings available on the Net, you are able to spread them." Prominent blogs, such as DailyKos on the left and RedState on the right, "can really begin to influence who's doing what." But Simpson is reluctant to make assumptions. "It can be very hard to assess the exact power of blogs," she said.
When asked about future implications, Simpson maintains that it's too early to tell, and stresses that a statewide primary election is very different from a national election like the presidency. The "blogosphere" represents "an ongoing and expanding array of tools" for political campaigns, she says, but national campaigns will need to reach a much wider audience and consequently will have to rely on both traditional and new media.
But that won't diminish the enthusiasm among the pro-Lamont crowd, excited over not only their victory but also the potential to further shake up the establishment. On both sides of the political spectrum, Lowell Feld says, "the Netroots is very difficult to control. It's a force, an independent force. You can try to guide it and shape it, but it doesn't necessarily succumb to that at all."
http://news.com.com/Lieberman+defeat...3-6103833.html
Officials Probe Lieberman Web Site Crash
Pat Eaton-Robb
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site remained offline Thursday, and federal and state authorities were investigating why it crashed on the eve of this week's defeat in a high-profile primary.
The site, Joe2006.com, appeared to have suffered from a so-called "denial of service" attack, in which computers overwhelm a site with fake traffic, preventing real visitors from getting through or, in this case, causing it to crash, said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant in Brookline, Mass.
Lieberman said the outage is hindering efforts to raise campaign money.
"But of course that's the world we live in, that anybody, anywhere in the world, if able to, can hack into another site anywhere else in the world," Lieberman said Thursday while visiting Waterbury.
The Lieberman campaign denied speculation among liberal Web pundits that the centrist Democrat's Web site had simply crashed because it used a low-budget Web host unable to handle the volume.
Web hosting can cost anywhere from a few dollars a month for a personal Web site to thousands of dollars for large corporate sites.
The campaign spends about $100 to $150 a month on Web hosting services with MyHostCamp, said Dan Geary, who administers the site for the campaign. Geary said that MyHostCamp, which is owned by a friend of Geary's, gave the site more than enough bandwidth - 200 gigabytes a month - to handle a crush of visitors.
He said an analysis of the server suggested an attack that focused on specific components of the Web site such as internal files and e-mail.
But Smith said that even if there's enough capacity, as important is the amount of security it has to keep intruders out.
"There are measures that can be implemented to protect against this type of attack," Smith said. "I think they went a little cheap here. This kind of looked like a low-budget hosting service."
Geary insists security was adequate, saying MyHostCamp's servers are monitored by a larger company, Server Matrix, and administered by a major Web hosting company, The Planet.
"Was it the greatest security ever? Well it just got hacked so, no," Geary said. "But we had industry-standard security. We could stop bows and arrows and bullets, but not a tank, and that's what this attack was."
Joseph E. Horzepa, general counsel for The Planet, said he could not comment on specific customer issues, but said the company was "very sensitive to security."
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the state is investigating, along with the FBI.
"The state has computer forensic expects, both in the state police and elsewhere," he said. "We have some expertise and federal authorities have very impressive resources. I am very optimistic that ultimately any wrongdoer will be apprehended."
Denial-of-service attacks are hard to trace, though, because they often commandeer computers infected with certain viruses. Owners usually have no idea their computer is even accessing the Web site.
Geary said the campaign is moving the site to another server and working on increasing security. He could not say when the site might be back online.
He added that online donations were run by another company and that donor information was not compromised.
Lieberman is running as an independent after losing Tuesday's Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont by about 10,000 votes.
Visitors to the site Thursday received a message that read in part: "We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately."
Lamont and his campaign have already done that, said Liz Dupont-Diehl, the campaign's spokeswoman.
"We also offered our assistance to the Lieberman campaign to help them resolve their technical problems and even offered to host their site so it would not remain down," she said.
Geary acknowledged that he has no idea who hacked into the site.
Late Thursday afternoon, the message on the site had been changed to, "Watch for our re-launch - and thanks for coming by!"
The site also was attacked by hackers a month ago. They were able to replace Lieberman's page with one that said, "We ownz u site."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-10-21-06-14
Until next week,
-
js.
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