[JackSpratts]

"I gave my parents a machine running Linux, and they know no different. I showed them where to click to start the Internet, and they got on with it. It doesn't faze them at all." – Wayne Lee


"A threat to intellectual property rights in the Internet remains underestimated." – Vladimir Kolesnikov


"What does this litigation do? It destroys people's lives. It's not a tool that should be used except in the most drastic circumstances." – Terry McBride


"This ruling makes it clear that the Google Cache is legal and clears away copyright questions that have troubled the entire search engine industry." – Fred von Lohmann




































February 18th, ’06









MPAA: DRM "Helps Honest Users"
Ken "Caesar" Fisher

The justifications for Digital Rights Management are many, but they usually involve some flavor of anti- piracy rhetoric. Consumers have accepted DRM into their lives, by and large, but there is a growing awareness that not all DRM is created equal. Rather, consumers appear to gravitate towards DRM solutions that aren't complex or messy; one has only to look at iTunes to see a successful enterprise built atop DRM. In my own experience, I've found that most of Apple's customers view Apple's FairPlay DRM favorably, largely because it doesn't create inconveniences, and it is moderately permissive. But no one goes to the iTunes Music Store because of the DRM. No, the more accurate way to look at it is to say that people go there in spite of it.

The MPAA, however, has a very different spin on DRM. In their view, DRM is your friend, and life without DRM could be messy and complex. So says Dan Glickman, of the Motion Picture Association of America:

"Content owners use DRMs because it provides casual, honest users with guidelines for using and consuming content based on the usage rights that were acquired. Without the use of DRMs, honest consumers would have no guidelines and might eventually come to totally disregard copyright and therefore become a pirate, resulting in great harm to content creators," he said.

Without DRM, you might become a pirate. Welcome to this Brave, New World, friends. The MPAA is here to save us from ourselves.

This cleverly veiled justification comes in response to a question from the BBC about the efficacy of DRM: is DRM useless if movies end up on P2P networks regardless? Glickman's response was slick, and it needed to be. DRM doesn't stop piracy, but the MPAA loves it. Why? It makes them lots and lots of money.

Want to make a back- up of that SpongeBob movie before the kids destroy it? Too bad: the helpful MPAA didn't want you to do that anyway. You could buy another one, though. Want to transfer your DVD to a mobile DVD? Too bad! Perhaps you could buy the UMD though? The helpful MPAA is too worried that you might slip, trip, fall, and accidentally become a pirate while exercising your fair use rights. Fortunately, you can buy your way to safety.

It's all about the Benjamins

Mr. Glickman, I have a question for you (and I know one of your underlings will read this): if DRM is about helping honest users, then why does your DRM make fair use impossible? Why does your DRM make it impossible to backup movies that I have bought? Why is it impossible to legally put DVDs that I've purchased onto my iPod? Why is it impossible for me to extract clips from your movies for educational purposes? These are all things I have a legal right to do, but can't, because of the DMCA: a law that your organization cheerleads for.

Perhaps I don't need an answer from Mr. Glickman. He also told the BBC that DRM aims to "support an orderly market for facilitating efficient economic transactions between content producers and content consumers."

Hold up now. Which is it? I don't remember Jack Valenti and friends saying anything about new economic transactions, really. I do remember plenty of talk about terrorists and drug dealers thriving off of piracy, however, and I remember those kinds of hyperbolic arguments being used to justify draconian laws. Is this the kinder, gentler side of the MPAA? Who knows, but it is surprising to see Glickman essentially admit what's going on: DRM is about economic transactions, that's for sure. But the notion of "facilitating economic transactions" would be better expressed as "legislatively creating a market" for those economic transactions, because that is what DRM is all about. First you make it illegal to circumvent DRM (hello, DMCA), then you put DRM on everything. It's the double- dip, the "pay for this a few times" approach to business. That's why we can't make backups, and that's why they absolutely hate the idea of taking DVD content and putting it on a mobile. You should pay for that. And that. And that there, too.

Indeed, one only has to look at the concept of "customary historic use" to see the dismantling of fair use spurred in large part by the MPAA. Or consider the Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005. This legislation wants to see something you have been able to do for more than 20 years (namely, record TV) reduced to another method of "facilitating economic transactions" by stripping you of that historical right. Hollywood never got over Betamax and VHS being legal, and DRM is their plan for an 11th hour victory.

DRM's purpose is to help honest people stay honest? What a joke.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060210-6153.html





Lavigne's Managers Help Fund Music Fan's Downloading Battle

Officials at Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne's management company are helping a fan fight America's Recording Industry over an illegal song-sharing charge.

Nettwerk Music Group bosses are to fund a Texas fan David Gruebel's legal campaign against corporate chiefs, who are suing him for damages after he illegally downloaded Lavigne's SK8ER BOI hit, among other songs.

NMG chief executive officer Terry McBride says, "What does this litigation do? It destroys people's lives. It's not a tool that should be used except in the most drastic circumstances."
http://contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed....tle_14_02_2006





Top Russian Prosecutor Wants File Sharing Legalized
MosNews

Russia’s top prosecutor has called for legalizing file sharing in the Internet, hoping that the move would help combat piracy, Prime-Tass reported on Tuesday.

“A threat to intellectual property rights in the Internet remains underestimated.” Deputy Prosecutor General, Vladimir Kolesnikov, told the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma.

“Establishing legal websites could help decrease piracy on the web,” he said.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/02/14/dwnldfiles.shtml





Nevada Court Rules Google Cache is Fair Use

Important Milestone for Digital Copyright Law

San Francisco - A federal district court in Nevada has ruled that Google does not violate copyright law when it copies websites, stores the copies, and transmits them to Internet users as part of its Google Cache feature. The ruling clarifies the legal status of several common search engine practices and could influence future court cases, including the lawsuits brought by book publishers against the Google Library Project. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was not involved in the case but applauds last week's ruling for clarifying that fair use covers new digital uses of copyrighted materials.

Blake Field, an author and attorney, brought the copyright infringement lawsuit against Google after the search engine automatically copied and cached a story he posted on his website. Google responded that its Google Cache feature, which allows Google users to link to an archival copy of websites indexed by Google, does not violate copyright law. The court agreed, holding that the Cache qualifies as a fair use of copyrighted material.

"This ruling makes it clear that the Google Cache is legal and clears away copyright questions that have troubled the entire search engine industry," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF senior staff attorney. "The ruling should also help Google in defending against the lawsuit brought by book publishers over its Google Library Project, as well as assisting organizations like the Internet Archive that rely on caching."

Field v. Google ruling:
http://www.eff.org/IP/blake_v_google...vada_order.pdf
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_01.php#004345





California Tying Education Tech Grants To Copyright Education
Ken "Caesar" Fisher

Legislation is being considered in California that would see the state's educational technology grant program tethered to requirements for teaching copyright law to students. Introduced nearly a year ago, AB 307 would amend section 51871.5 of the Californian Education Code to include new preconditions for public schools applying for funding under the oversight of the California Technology Assistance Project. The project is designed to provide a network of technical assistance to schools and their districts in implementing education technology as determined by the Californian State Board of Education.

Schools that wish to apply for grants will need to demonstrate that they have a plan to educate their students in three areas: the "ethical behavior in regards to the use of information technology," "the concept, purpose, and significance of a copyright," and "the implications of illegal peer-to-peer network file sharing."

The bill is the brainchild of California Assemblyman Ed Chavez, who decided that such legislation was needed after observing studies that show that the largest groups of P2P users are teens and people in their 20s.

"This activity has resulted in multi-billion dollar losses to the content industries in California particularly the music and filmed entertainment industries," according to a comment from Chavez's office. "When computers at public schools and college campuses are used for illegal file sharing, precious and costly bandwidth is consumed resulting in increased costs to taxpayers. An educational program targeted at students could help stem this activity. Many students, teachers, and parents do not realize that downloading a copyrighted song or film over the Internet is illegal and no different than stealing a CD or DVD from a retail store."

Assemblyman Chavez's office also indicated that the MPAA has formally supported the bill, and the RIAA is also a backer. Citing a Pew Internet and American Life Project report, the Assemblyman's office indicated that they are concerned about Americans' "dismissive" views on copyright.

The bill has been referred to the Committee on Education, and few expect it to meet much resistance on its path to becoming a law. Should it pass, the Visual and Performing Arts Framework for California Public Schools will be used to determine the content of the teaching.

Propaganda or power to the people?

School districts around the country are considering their own educational efforts as they relate to technology, although most are grappling with more basic issues such as access to computing technology, training, and making technology relevant to education. Nevertheless, educators and politicians are starting to understand that the educational environment is an ideal setting for educating students about copyright law, but there are no shortage of concerns regarding what that education will entail. While stopping unbridled P2P usage is at the top of most curricula, fair use isn't.

A case in point is the MPAA's public education effort on their own site. The industry association once hosted a FAQ for DVD usage, but many believe that it was so riddled with errors and misstatements that the MPAA simply removed the FAQ. The MPAA, for instance, had described the DMCA as being designed to implement World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties, when the DMCA in fact goes far, far beyond anything required by the WIPO treaties in question (treaties that have not yet been fully honored or ratified by most other nations). Such matters may seem minor, but to many educators, they're anything but.

Other the other hand, many parents and politicians are more concerned with results than methodology, especially in this age of lawsuits aimed at fire sharers. In their view, an educational program, even if it is biased in the direction of the entertainment industry, is better than nothing at all.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6184.html





Taiwan Set To Stay On Piracy List

Intellectual Property: A group of powerful US businesses has recommended that Taiwan stay on the list for another year, citing a big increase in Internet piracy
Charles Snyder

The chances that Taiwan will soon be removed from a US government list of countries with troubling rates of intellectual property violations sank drastically on Monday when a powerful US business group recommended that it be kept on the list for another year.

While the group, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), commended Taiwan for making improvements in its fight against piracy of software, videos, music, films, TV shows and books, it complained about what it called a troublesome increase in Internet piracy in Taiwan, including piracy over the government's TANet network.

The recommendations of the group, a confederation of seven trade associations representing 1,900 firms in the high- tech, entertainment and publishing industries, are usually automatically followed by the US Trade Representative office, which publishes its annual list of countries with piracy problems in the spring.

Taiwan is now on the so-called "Watch List" under the US "Special 301" trade law. Taiwan was on the more serious "Priority Watch List" until January last year, but was lowered to its current status by the trade representative's office at the recommendation of the IIPA. It had been on the priority list since 2001.

While inclusion on the Watch List presents no imminent danger of trade sanctions, it is expected to severely hamper Taiwan's efforts to make progress toward a free trade agreement with Washington, which the country's officials have been working on for several years.

It also represents another point of political contention between Taipei and Washington.

The IIPA estimates that US companies lost US$376.9 million last year as a result of piracy in Taiwan, mainly in the entertainment software and motion picture industries. While that was well below the record US$847.9 million the IIPA estimated that US firms lost in 2002, it is up from the US$320.4 million figure for 2004.

The IIPA zeroed in on the Internet when making its recommendations for action.

"Taiwan is beset by rapidly increasing instances of Internet piracy, especially through unauthorized peer-to-peer [P2P] file sharing services. As the problem grows, so must the response," the group's report said.

Internet piracy "has become the predominant form of piracy for most industries in Taiwan," the IIPA says.

For instance, it says the number of online infringements involving business software traced to Taiwan exceeded 344,000 in the first 10 months of last year, up from under 50,000 for the whole of 2004. Music, books and other types of intellectual property are also showing sharp rises in online violations.

The group said that enforcement must be expanded by the two agencies responsible, the Joint Internet Infringement Inspection Special Task Force and the IPR Police.

This should include extra resources for training, equipment and manpower for the two ill-equipped agencies.

In addition, companies providing Internet access should be asked to cooperate, and the law should be changed to clarify their liability and provide for penalties.

The TANet network "is being used widely throughout Taiwan for Internet piracy, including P2P file sharing," the group said, with the Ministry of Education claiming that it has no lawful obligation to impose controls on the situation.

The report also urged effective action against the illegal photocopying of books, especially academic texts, journals, English-language teaching materials and professional reference books.

Other recommendations include effective monitoring of exports of counterfeit cartridge-based video games and their components, and an expansion of the new Intellectual Property Court to handle more copyright cases.

The report also recommends that China remain on the US Trade Representative's Priority Watch List for another year.

It estimates that US businesses lost nearly US$2.4 billion due to piracy in China, making it the world's worst offender in piracy of intellectual property.

Taiwan's Response

Jack Lu, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Intellectual Property Office, said that his agency was aware of the IIPA's suggestions, and that it would try to negotiate with the group and clear up any doubts it had before an official announcement is made in early May.

Taiwan has made a concerted effort to improve the protection of intellectual property and had high hopes of being removed from the list, office Director-General Tsai Lien-sheng said last month.

Citing a preliminary estimate, Tsai said that Taiwan's piracy rate had dropped from 43 percent in 2004 to 36 percent last year.

Additional reporting by Jessie Ho
http://news.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=u...cid=1104271940





China Portals Offer Tonza Pirate MP3s like Jet Li "Fearless" Theme

If you read Chinese, and you spend time on sites like Baidu and Yahoo.cn, please roll your eyes and skip this post -- nothing here will be news to you.

I do not read Chinese, though, and I've never clicked around much on the big Chinese portals -- so when I spent some time poking around this weekend, I was surprised to see that at least two of the biggest ones offer "MP3s" as a top-level tab. If you're a non-Chinese-reader, run Yahoo China's "MP3" tab through Babelfish, and you'll see that it offers a ton of bootlegged hit songs in various DRM-free file formats.

In the "MP3s" section of Baidu and Yahoo China, I stumbled on Taiwanese pop star Jay Chow (aka Zhou Jie Lun)'s theme song for Fearless (Huo Yuan Jia), the new Jet Li action movie about 19th-century martial arts hero Huo Yuan Jia. Here's one ripped MP3 of the song, here's another -- it's wicked catchy. Sort of hiphop meets backstreetboys meets chinese opera (sung in falsetto by a dude). After I listened about forty times, I found the movie's official site (gah, no US release dates! I'd gladly pay to see it!), and the music video: high, low.

I like the part in the music video where the dude is being such a hard-ass rapper and he punctuates the end of a line with the FAN. Like, "BLAYUMM-- how you like me now, with my figgidy-FAN?!" I give Jay-Z like five minutes to rip this off cover this.

Incidentally, the little popup media window that appears when you select an MP3 on Yahoo China says (via Babelfish), "The force recommendation use fart fart dog (PPgou) downloads acceleration software high speed downloading, the speed multiplies!" Whatever fart fart dog is, it's nice to know that The Force believes it's helpful.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/14...ls_offer_.html





All pics on site

China Pirates

If you think Malaysia’s state of piracy is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. China is where Uncle Ho got his MBA in Piracy. They can pirate anything and nothing’s stopped them for doing it. Proton ripping off Alfa’s grill for the Perdana V6 and Alfa’s sport rims design for the Proton Gen2 is nothing compared to what Chinese car manufacturers are capable of.

1. Laibao SR-V

This car by Shuanghuan Motors. It’s a complete blatant rip-off of the Honda CR-V although only in exterior design. The interior is damn chapalang the last time I saw it. Couldn’t find photos of it for this post. The engine’s using a very old Toyota engine, probably old stocks. Shuanghuan also ripped off Audi’s 4 rings to use as it’s logo. It’s using 2 rings instead.

Both Honda and Audi have gone after Shuanghuan with lawsuits. Honda was asking for 100 million yuan as compensation but so far nothing has resulted probably because of protection by the China government.

2. Geely Merie

This has gotta be the most bold rip-off of all time! Most fo the Geely cars are based on the old C- class and E-class Mercedes Benz. Even Ssangyong does it, although theirs was a proper legal transfer of design. But I’ve never seen such a bold attempt at ripping off the latest C class.

Check that out, it’s the latest peanut-eye Mercedes C class. Wait, it’s not a Mercedes?! It’s a GEELY MERIE! Sheesh, just looking at it really makes me feel geli, or should I say it makes me feel “Geely”?

Even the back is the same. I wonder what the Chinese translation for Kompressor is. Maybe they’ll just rename it to Kopier instead? Kopycat?

Yeah, take the body design of a car designed with a sporty look and comes with 16 inch rims (17 inch on the C32) and you stick 13 inch rims on them. Look at the size of the wheel arch compared to the relatively small 13 inch wheels they put on it. The people at Geely are too cheap for 16 inch rims and tyres. Oh wait, the wheels have gone through their Kompressor(tm) technology… must be.

3. Chery QQ

The Chevrolet Spark, or known by it’s nickname Chevy Spark was designed solely for the China market, designed for city driving - fuel economy and easy parking. But not even a year after the Spark was introduced, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp released a model that looked suspiciously strikingly similiar called the Chery QQ. WTF? Chevy = Chery. ROTFLOL! A GM spokesperson said: “If you didn’t have the name tags on the car, you couldn’t tell them apart. It’s such a knockoff that you can pull a door off of the Chevy Spark and it fits on the QQ - and it fits so well that the seals on the door hold.“

These two models are going to be available in Malaysia so you can see China’s excellent piracy skills with your own eyes. Chevrolet just starting bringing the Spark into Malaysia and Naza wants to bring in the QQ. The Spark will cost about RM40,000 but rumours are saying that the QQ would cost almost 10K cheaper, although they are just rumours.

Others

I have strong suspicion that the car above called the “Deer” by GreatWall Motors is actually a ripped-off Toyota Hilux. The fact that it’s called Deer when Toyota trucks and MPVs in Indonesia are called Kijang makes me even more sure.

What else?

Sing SUV - Nissan X-Trail
Geely - Ripped off Toyota’s logo
Hongda (wtf? Big Red?) - Ripped off Honda

What are you waiting for? Go get your MBA in Intellectual Property Piracy from any university in China today!
http://paultan.org/archives/2004/12/05/china-pirates/





So Long, Dalai Lama: Google Adapts to China
Joseph Kahn

SO what does the Dalai Lama look like, anyway?

Chinese Tibetans or other Buddhists who might be curious could try finding images of the spiritual leader on Google.cn, a new search engine that Google tailored for China and is now, two weeks after its unveiling, on full display to local Web users.

Is he that guy with puffy cheeks wearing a Western suit? No, that's Liu Jianchao, China's foreign ministry spokesman, demanding that the Dalai Lama stop trying to split the motherland. What about that balding man leading a big delegation? No, that's Chen Yi, a late Chinese vice prime minister, offering grain to the Tibetan people.

Only one of the 161 images produced by searching in Chinese for the Dalai Lama on Google.cn shows the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet since 1940. He is pictured as a young man meeting senior Chinese officials. That was before 1959, when China's People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet and the Dalai Lama fled into exile.

For people outside China, or Chinese who can circumvent the Internet firewall, the 2,030 images on unfiltered Google.com favor the Dalai Lama of today. He is the genial-looking guy in the burgundy and saffron robe, here meeting President Bush, there speaking to 40,000 people in New Jersey.

Several of the biggest media and technology companies have come under attack for helping the Chinese government police the Web. Yahoo provided information about its users' e-mail accounts that helped the authorities convict dissidents in 2003 and 2005, Chinese lawyers say. Microsoft closed a popular blog it hosted that offended Chinese censors. Cisco has sold equipment that helps Beijing restrict access to Web sites it considers subversive.

But few have cooperated as openly as Google. Google's local staff works closely with Chinese officials to ensure that search results from Google.cn do not include information, images or links to Web sites that the government does not want its people to see.

Google.com, the company's main international search engine, is still available in China, though it often operates inefficiently because it produces links that cannot be opened inside China's firewall.

Google.cn, Google says, works faster and serves its users better — and Google places a blunt but discreet disclosure of censorship on the bottom of Web pages that include elided search results. Even so, critics say, the service violates Google's motto, "Don't Be Evil." They say the company has lent its expertise and good name to blocking information on religion, politics and history that the Communist Party feels might undermine its monopoly on power.

"It was one thing when you hit on links that did not work. You could see what was blocked," said Liu Xiaobo, a leading dissident writer. "The new Google hides the hand of the censor."

In other words, it's no longer possible to tell what the censors are hiding, only that something is being censored.

In some cases, the manipulations are fairly subtle. Students wanting to learn more about the "Republic of China" on Google.cn would be steered to information about the period from 1912 to 1949, when the mainland was called Republic of China and the Communists had not yet taken power. The same search on Google.com provides links to sites in archrival Taiwan, which still formally goes by that name.

In other cases, the omissions are glaring. Searches for photos of Tiananmen Square on regular Google produce many shots of a man blocking a column of tanks outside the square, the iconic image of the 1989 democracy movement and the later crackdown.

Google.cn features soldiers raising the national flag and tourists taking snapshots of each other in the square, the sun shining in a sapphire sky.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/we...ew/12kahn.html





Web Firms Face Grilling on China
Amy Schatz

Executives from Google Inc. and other Internet companies head to Capitol Hill next week, where they will become feature players in an awkward debate: Are U.S. companies giving in to China too easily?

Last month, Google announced an agreement with the Chinese government to censor search results from its Chinese site. It was the latest Internet company to accede to the Chinese government's censorship restrictions, following Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

The hearing will likely produce more embarrassing publicity for the companies, and it may drive legislative momentum among lawmakers concerned about China's influence on the U.S. economy. Congressional aides are expecting a standing-room-only crowd, and the reception from politicians may be chilly.

"I was asked the question the other day, do U.S. corporations have the obligation to promote democracy? That's the wrong question," says Rep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican and chairman of the House human-rights subcommittee that is holding the hearing. "It would be great if they would promote democracy. But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship."

Mr. Smith plans to introduce legislation next week that would impose restrictions on Internet companies seeking to expand into China but also provide some legal protection from Chinese demands.

The bill would require U.S. Internet companies to keep email servers used for Chinese traffic offshore. That would help prevent the Chinese government from compelling the release of Internet user data. The bill also calls for creation of an office inside the State Department that would make an annual determination about which countries are restricting Internet use. It would provide a framework for users to pursue legal action against U.S. Internet companies over privacy violations.

The disclosures about Internet companies cooperating with the Chinese government are having a wider political impact. Last week, Sens. Lindsey Graham, (R., S.C.) and Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) cited Internet companies' efforts to help the Chinese government monitor citizens' online activity as a reason to permanently revoke China's most-favored-nation trading status.

Ironically, the controversy comes as Google, Yahoo and others are fighting for "Internet freedom" in the U.S. Google is resisting a Justice Department request for information on user searches to help prosecute violations of a federal child-pornography law. Meanwhile, the company has joined competitors to resist plans by telephone and cable companies keen on exerting more control over Internet lines, which has led to concerns about discrimination and content blocking.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs





Bill Would Keep Servers Out Of China
Jim Hopkins

Free-speech advocates have blasted Google and other Internet companies for bowing to China's demands that they censor or fork over information the communist government deemed objectionable.

A partial screen shot of Google.cn's search returns on the words "Tiananmen Square":

Now, Congress is stepping in with proposed legislation that could hobble the companies as they plunge deeper into one of the world's hottest economies. This is Round 2 for Congress. Last year, it scrutinized and slowed other business deals with ties to China's government among oil companies and computer makers.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is drafting a bill that would force Internet companies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to keep vital computer servers out of China and other nations the State Department deems repressive to human rights. Moving servers would keep personal data they house from government reach. But that also could weaken the firms' crucial Internet search engines. (Related: AOL tries to speak Chinese.)

Smith's bill — still being written — has already drawn interest from another lawmaker, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., with long-held concerns about U.S. business cozying up to the Chinese government. "This is greed in high technology, and it's not a pretty sight," Rohrabacher says.

Smith has scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the issue, which Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco Systems will attend. He is unmoved by their stance that conducting business in China in limited ways will better nurture human rights than abandoning the nation of 1.3 billion altogether.

If anything, Smith says, China's human rights record has slipped, even as more U.S. companies pile into the country. "It's gotten worse," he says.

Google last month launched Google.cn, a version of its No. 1 search engine that prevents Chinese residents from seeing, for example, photos of tanks confronting Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. Also last month, Microsoft acknowledged shutting down a blog run by a Chinese journalist critical of the government.

Last fall, Yahoo acknowledged giving information to Chinese officials that led to a 10-year prison sentence for a journalist accused of divulging state secrets. Last week, Reporters Without Borders, a journalism group critical of Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese officials, accused it of working with the Chinese government in another case that led to a dissident being jailed. Yahoo said it was unaware of the case.

The companies say they are unhappy with the restrictions yet must honor local laws.

Smith asked Cisco to attend because he wants to learn more about how its network hardware might be used outside the USA to help repressive governments ferret out dissidents.

Cisco says it does not cooperate with governments for such uses, though it notes the hardware "can be used for many different purposes."

Smith's bill would also establish codes of conduct for Internet companies operating in repressive regimes. It would set export controls for technology such as website filtering devices that can limit free speech. And it would create a State Department office to investigate suspected persecution of Internet users in foreign countries.

Smith, a member of Congress since 1981, is vice chairman of the Committee on International Relations, which oversees the State Department.

Smith's legislation isn't a slam-dunk. If it gets as far as a vote in the House, "every business interest" will jump in, says David Brady, a professor of political science at Stanford.

"It's not just a Yahoo issue," says Michael Callahan, a Yahoo attorney. "It's all international firms operating in China."

Google draws attention

Internet companies, like virtually every other business, are racing to China's sizzling economy. Its gross domestic product, the combined value of its goods and services, is expected to rocket 8.2% this year from 2005, vs. 3.3% growth in the USA, says the International Monetary Fund.

Google's China site launch drew more attention than steps taken by its rivals for reasons that have broadly made it into an inviting target.

The company's founders laid out a widely publicized "don't be evil" pledge when they took the company public. That set it up for even closer scrutiny, Brady says. And it gave critics of the China website an entrée. Soon after its launch, opponents of China's control of Tibet waved signs saying "Google Don't Be Evil" outside the company's headquarters in Silicon Valley's Mountain View, Calif.

Google's site launch came days after it rebuffed a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding that it turn over data on how millions of users search the Internet.

In contrast, Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online all cooperated with Justice.

Google's leadership in online search and its lofty stock price have generated worldwide headlines, transforming it into one of the globe's most powerful corporations. But now, amid the Justice subpoena, the China launch and investor angst about e-commerce prospects, Google shares have lost nearly 25% from their high. They closed Friday at $362.61, up $3.84 a share, after sprinting to a record $475.11 high last month.

Forced compromise

Google says its China site tackles problems Chinese users have with Google.com, which is unavailable about 10% of the time there. When working, it is often slow. The Google News service is rarely available, and Google Images — a storehouse that includes the Tiananmen Square photos — is down half the time.

Google blames those problems on the fact that its servers are now housed outside China, crimping response time as users reach sometimes thousands of miles to servers in the USA. Accepting government content limits meant Google could win a license to operate within China and locate servers there, says Senior Policy Counsel Andrew McLaughlin.

But it was a compromise. "We are not happy about government restrictions on access to information, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access," he told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in a statement for a briefing earlier this month.

In any case, the company's uncensored Google.com will still be available to Chinese citizens.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/...hina-net_x.htm





In Rare Briefing, China Defends Internet Controls
Joseph Kahn

Chinese authorities are determined to stop "harmful information" from spreading through the Internet, but the controls it places on Web sites and Internet service providers in mainland China do not differ much from those employed by the United States and European countries, a senior Chinese official responsible for managing the Internet said today.

The official, Liu Zhengrong, who supervises Internet affairs for the information office of the Chinese State Council, or cabinet, did not dispute charges that China operates a technologically sophisticated firewall to protect the ruling Communist Party against what it treats as Web-based challenges from people inside China and abroad.

But he sought to place the massive Chinese efforts to control the Web in the best possible light, stressing repeatedly that Chinese Internet minders abide strictly by laws and regulations that in some cases have been modeled on American and European statutes.

"If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," he said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same."

The briefing was one of the few times any senior official has spoken in detail about China's management of the Internet. Officials assigned to enforce the government's media controls operate behind closed doors and rarely make public statements about their work.

The Internet policies of China have come under closer scrutiny abroad after Google and Microsoft acknowledged helping China censor information available through Web searches and blogs, and Yahoo has been accused of providing data that helped convict dissidents who used its e-mail accounts.

Mr. Liu said the major thrust of the Chinese effort to regulate content on the Web was aimed at preventing the spread of pornography or other content harmful to teenagers and children. He said that its concerns in this area differ minimally from those in developed countries.

Human rights and media watchdog groups maintain that Chinese Web censorship puts greater emphasis on helping the ruling party maintain political control over its increasingly restive society. Such groups have demonstrated that many hundreds of Web sites cannot be easily accessed inside mainland China mainly because they are operated by governments, religious groups or political organizations that are critical of Chinese government policies or its political leaders.

Mr. Liu said that Chinese Internet users have free rein to discuss many politically sensitive topics and rejected charges that the police have arrested or prosecuted people for using the Internet to circulate views.

Human rights groups argue, and Chinese court documents show, however, that legal authorities have cited e-mail communications and postings on domestic and foreign Web sites as evidence against Chinese dissidents accused of "incitement to overthrow the state" and "leaking state secrets."

Mr. Liu objected to what he suggested were biased criticisms of Chinese Internet controls that ignored similar restrictions that foreign governments and private companies impose on their own Web sites.

He cited, for example, statements on Web sites run by The New York Times and The Washington Post that reserve the right to delete or block content in reader discussion groups that editors determine to be illegal, harmful or in bad taste. Chinese media Web sites are also monitored in that way, he said.

"Major U.S. companies do this and it is regarded as normal," Mr. Liu said. "So why should China not be entitled to do so?"

Journalists and Web site operators in China say that domestic news and discussion sites must ban a long list of topics deemed off limits by party officials or face penalties. Such controls appear to have only superficial similarities to attempts by private companies in the United States and Europe to monitor content on Web sites they operate.

Mr. Liu also said the powers that the Bush administrations gained under the Patriot Act to monitor Web sites and e-mail communications and the deployment of technology called Carnivore by the F.B.I., which allows it to scrutinize huge volumes of e-mail traffic, are examples of how the United States has taken legal steps to guard against the spread of "harmful information" online.

"It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front."

The Bush administration has maintained that its efforts to monitor online communications pertain mainly to preventing terrorist attacks.

Mr. Liu said there are now 111 million Chinese Web users and that in the past five years, China has expanded the bandwidth available to connect with overseas Web sites nearly 50-fold to 136,000 megabits per second, underscoring its strong commitment to allow its citizens to gather information and interact with people around the world.

The number of Web sites that mainland Chinese users cannot access amounts to a "tiny percentage" of those available abroad, he said.'
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/14/intern... ner=homepage





China Denies Internet Controls Lead To Arrests

Chinese people can freely access the Internet and the government has never arrested anyone for expressing an opinion on the Web, an official state newspaper said on Wednesday. Chinese regulations were also in line with international practices and no different from rules in other countries like the United States which seek to block sites with harmful content, the China Daily said, quoting a senior Internet watchdog official.

"No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the Internet," Liu Zhengrong, vice head of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, was quoted as saying.

Several U.S. tech companies that operate in China have faced criticism in recent months for helping China enforce censorship laws and track down government critics who communicate online.

Microsoft Corp. pulled the Web log, or blog, of a critic of the Chinese government after getting a government order to do so, and Yahoo Inc. has been criticized for helping Chinese authorities link journalist Shi Tao to a U.S.-based Web site, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for Shi.

Liu defended China's record.

"After studying Internet legislation in the West, I've found we basically have identical legislative objectives and principles," he said.

"Companies, including Internet firms, that provide services in China must observe Chinese statutes," he added. "Global companies should know how to provide lawful services ... It is their own business when it comes to specific methods and approaches."

Liu said China blocked only "a very few" foreign sites which have pornographic or terrorist-linked content, or have other information that is in violation of Chinese law.

Google Inc.'s Chinese search engine, for example, blocks many terms associated with topics related to democracy or independence for Tibet, part of China, and Taiwan, a self-ruled island which China considers its own.

China encouraged people to report Web sites that contain "harmful information", Liu said, just as in countries such as Britain.

The government had imposed "lenient" penalties on sites that carry harmful or illegal information, and no Web sites had been shut down for abusing those rules, he added.

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had set up a task force to help U.S. technology companies protect freedom of expression in countries like China that censor online content.

But some U.S. sites, like those of Yahoo, also imposed controls on what can be said online, Liu said.

"It is unfair and smacks of double standards when (they) criticize China for deleting illegal and harmful messages while it is legal for U.S. Web sites (to do so)", he said.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...HINA-MEDIA.xml





Beijing Censors Taken to Task in Party Circles
Joseph Kahn

A dozen former Communist Party officials and senior scholars, including a onetime secretary to Mao, a party propaganda chief and the retired bosses of some of the country's most powerful newspapers, have denounced the recent closing of a prominent news journal, helping to fuel a growing backlash against censorship.

A public letter issued by the prominent figures, dated Feb. 2 but circulated to journalists in Beijing on Tuesday, appeared to add momentum to a campaign by a few outspoken editors against micromanagement, personnel shuffles and an ever-expanding blacklist of banned topics imposed on China's newspapers, magazines, television stations and Web sites by the party's secretive Propaganda Department.

The letter criticized the department's order on Jan. 24 to shut down Freezing Point, a popular journal of news and opinion, as an example of "malignant management" and an "abuse of power" that violates China's constitutional guarantee of free speech.

The letter did not address Beijing's pressure on Web portals and search engines.

That issue gained attention abroad after Microsoft and Google acknowledged helping the government filter information and Yahoo was accused of providing information from its e-mail accounts that was used to jail dissident writers. The issue will be the subject of Congressional hearings in Washington on Wednesday.

In addition to shutting down Freezing Point, a weekly supplement to China Youth Daily, since late last year, officials responsible for managing the news media have replaced editors of three other publications that developed reputations for breaking news or exploring sensitive political and social issues.

The interventions amounted to the most extensive exertion of press control since President Hu Jintao assumed power three years ago.

But propaganda officials are also facing rare public challenges to their legal authority to take such actions, including a short strike and string of resignations at one newspaper and defiant open letters from two editors elsewhere who had been singled out for censure. Those protests have suggested that some people in China's increasingly market-driven media industry no longer fear the consequences of violating the party line.

The authors of the letter predicted that the country would have difficulty countering the recent surge of social unrest in the countryside unless it allowed the news media more leeway to expose problems that lead to violent protests.

"At the turning point in our history from a totalitarian to a constitutional system, depriving the public of freedom of speech will bring disaster for our social and political transition and give rise to group confrontation and social unrest," the letter said. "Experience has proved that allowing a free flow of ideas can improve stability and alleviate social problems."

Some of the signers held high official posts during the 1980's, when the political environment in China was becoming more open. Although they have long since retired or been eased from power, a collective letter from respected elder statesmen can often help mobilize opinion within the ruling party.

One of those people who signed the petition is Li Rui, Mao's secretary and biographer. Others include Hu Jiwei, a former editor of People's Daily, the party's leading official newspaper; Zhu Houze, who once ran the party's propaganda office; and Li Pu, a former deputy head of the New China News Agency, the main official press agency.

Party officials and political experts say President Hu, who was groomed to take over China's top posts for more than a decade, has often attended closely to the opinions of the party's elder statesmen.

Mr. Hu is widely thought to favor tighter media controls. Party officials said he referred approvingly to media management in Cuba and North Korea in a speech in late 2004.

But he has also solicited support from more liberal elements. Last year Mr. Hu organized high-profile official ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of the birth of Hu Yaobang, the reform-oriented party leader who lost his posts in a power struggle and whose death in 1989 was the initial cause of the student-led democracy demonstrations that year. Some of the officials who signed the petition were close associates of Hu Yaobang.

The reaction against the shutdown of Freezing Point was organized by its longtime editor, Li Datong, 53, a party member and senior official of the party-run China Youth Daily. Mr. Li broadcast news of the secret order on his personal blog moments after he received it and has since mobilized supporters to put pressure on the Propaganda Department to retract the decision.

Under his stewardship, Freezing Point became one of the most consistently provocative journals of news and public opinion. It published investigative articles on sensitive topics like the party's version of historical events, nationalism and the party-run education system. Freezing Point ran opinion articles on politics in Taiwan and rural unrest in mainland China that caused a stir in media circles in recent months.

The cause cited for closing Freezing Point was an opinion piece by a historian named Yuan Weishi. He argued that Chinese history textbooks tended to ignore mistakes and provocations by leaders of the Qing Dynasty that may have incited attacks by foreign powers in the late 19th century.

Mr. Li often tussled with his bosses at China Youth Daily and officials at the Propaganda Department. But he has also cultivated support among the party elite. He often speaks supportively of President Hu and quotes extensively from the writings of Marx, who he says favored a robust free press.

He has maintained that the Propaganda Department had overstepped its authority by ordering Freezing Point closed, and he filed a formal complaint to the party's disciplinary arm.

"The propaganda office is an illegal organization that has no power to shut down a publication," Mr. Li said in an interview. "Its power is informal, and it can only exercise it if people are afraid."

He added, "I am not afraid."

Mr. Li scored an initial victory last week, when propaganda officials told China Youth Daily to draft a plan to revive Freezing Point, which had been formally closed for "rectification," Mr. Li and another editor at the newspaper said. Some media experts had predicted that the authorities would not allow Freezing Point to reopen, and the new order was treated as a signal that officials had misjudged the reaction to its closing.

Shortly after the contretemps at China Youth Daily broke out, the former editor of another national publication attacked the bosses who had replaced him, saying they had exercised self-censorship in the face of pressure from propaganda officials.

Chen Jieren, who lost his position last week as the editor of Public Interest Times, posted a letter online entitled "Ridiculous Game, Despicable Intrigue." The letter disputed his bosses' statement that he had been dismissed for "bad management skills" and said he had a struggled constantly against senior officials for the right "to report the truth with a conscience."

One recent issue of Public Interest Times mocked the poor quality of English translations on official government Web sites.

In a separate incident earlier this year, a group of editors and reporters at the party-run Beijing News declined to report for work after the editor of the paper, known for breaking news stories on subjects the Propaganda Department has ruled off limits, was replaced. Many of the protesters have since resigned, reporters at the newspaper said.

The resistance against censorship could signal a decisive shift in China's news media controls, already under assault from the proliferation of e-mail, text messaging, Web sites, blogs and other new forums for news and opinion that the authorities have struggled to bring under their supervision.

Even most of the major party-run national publications in China, including China Youth Daily, no longer receive government subsidies and must depend mainly on income from circulation and advertising to survive.

That means providing more news or features that people want to pay for, including exclusive stories and provocative views that go well beyond the propaganda fare carried by the New China News Agency or People's Daily. Few serious publications survive for long without subsidies if they do not have popular content, editors say.

"Every serious publication in China faces tough choices," said Mr. Li of Freezing Point. "You can publish stories people want to read and risk offending the censors. Or you can publish only stories that the party wants published and risk going out of business."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/in...a/15china.html





Outrunning China's Web Cops

Net-savvy outfits are finding ways to let citizens see banned sites
Ben Elgin, with Bruce Einhorn in Hong Kong

From an undisclosed location in North Carolina, Bill Xia is fighting a lonely war against China's censors. From morning till well into the night, the Chinese native plays a cat-and-mouse game, exploiting openings in Beijing's formidable Internet firewall and trying to keep ahead of the cybercops who patrol the Web 24-7 and have an uncanny ability to plug holes as quickly as Xia finds them. A member of the banned Chinese sect Falun Gong, Xia is so fearful that Beijing will persecute his family back in China, that he refused to be photographed for this story, reveal where exactly he was born, or even provide his age beyond saying he's in his 30s.

Xia is part of a small group of Chinese expatriates who are making a modest living helping Web surfers back home get the information their government would rather they not see. Chinese citizens hoping to read about the latest crackdown on, say, Falun Gong or the most recent peasant rebellion in the provinces can use technology provided by Xia's Dynamic Internet Technology Inc. to mask their travels to forbidden Web sites.

Voice of America (VOA) and human rights organizations also are paying DIT to help evade the censors and get their message out to the Chinese masses. Says Xiao Qiang, who teaches journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and runs the China Internet Project: "These tools have a critical impact because the people using them are journalists, writers, and opinion leaders."

So far, DIT, UltraReach, and other outfits like them have lured less than 1% of China's estimated 110 million Net users. But Google (GOOG ) decided in January to censor information inside China, a practice already followed by Microsoft (MSFT ) and Yahoo (YHOO )!, arguing that it's the only way the search engines can crack the Chinese market.

So Xia is convinced that the services he and others provide will become increasingly crucial to keep information flowing and, ultimately, he hopes, build an open society back home. "Once in a while I feel more homesick than usual," says Xia, who says he hasn't seen his family in seven years. "But it's such a great project, and it helps so many people."

The seeds of DIT were sown when Xia arrived in the U.S. for grad school in the '90s. Stunned by America's openness, he realized his perception of reality had been warped growing up in China. "I was a believer of the propaganda," he recalls. And when Xia was exposed to all of the information on the Internet, it "started tearing apart what I'd accepted before." At the same time, the repression of Falun Gong at home angered him, though he insists it is Beijing's curbs on free expression that led him to found DIT in 2001. A year later he began building up a roster of clients, including VOA, Human Rights in China (HRIC), and Radio Free Asia.

Fleeting Window

The simplicity of DIT's approach belies its effectiveness. The company distributes software, called FreeGate, which disguises the sites a person visits. In addition, DIT sends out mass e-mails to Chinese Web surfers for clients such as VOA, which is banned in China. The e-mails include a handful of temporary Web addresses that host off-limits content and springboards to other forbidden sites.

Keeping one step ahead of the censors is what this game is all about. China's cybercops are so efficient that these gateways typically stay open for only 72 hours, according to Ken Berman, an information technology director at the State Dept.-affiliated International Broadcasting Bureau, which hired DIT and UltraReach to help make VOA's Web content available in China.

Yet despite being outmanned and outspent -- Xia has a tiny staff, an annual budget of about $1 million, and relies mainly on volunteers -- DIT's customers say it has been remarkably successful. Xia's staff monitors the success rate of the hundreds of thousands of e-mails they send out each day. If one gets bounced back, the language must be scoured and the offending words detected and added to the company's blacklist. Workarounds are often developed, much like spammers finding holes in a corporate e-mail filter. For instance, an e-mail that contains "VOA" might get squelched, but one with a zero substituted for the "O" could get through.

As Google and other U.S. search companies increasingly cooperate with Beijing, DIT is helping the groups like HRIC break through the firewall. Before Google began censoring its results in China in January, HRIC appeared in the top three search results. Although China's Google users would have had difficulty accessing the HRIC sites, which are blocked, they at least knew they existed. Today they don't appear at all in China. But thanks to DIT and others, visitors to its Chinese-language newsletter spiked to more than 160,000 in January, up sixfold in the past 18 months. Says Xia: "If information isn't available on the Internet, it might as well not exist."

Every time something momentous happens in China -- and Beijing smothers news about it -- more people use his software, Xia says. In 2003, when the SARS epidemic peaked and Chinese authorities seemed to be withholding information, the number of DIT users spiked by 50%, he says -- and they doubled after reports surfaced in December that Guangdong police had shot protesting villagers.

Such moments invigorate Xia, making the effort worthwhile. And by the looks of things, the services he and his peers provide will be in demand for quite a while to come.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...8/b3972061.htm





Scaling The Firewall Of Digital Censorship
Oliver Moore

More than fifteen years after the Berlin Wall was shattered with hammers and bulldozers, a Canadian-designed computer program is preparing to break through what activists call the great firewall of China.

The program, in the late stages of development in a University of Toronto office, is designed to help those trapped behind the blocking and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments. If successful, it will equip volunteers in more open countries to help those on the other side of digital barriers, allowing a free flow of information and news into and out of even the most closed societies.

The program is part of a quiet war over freedom of information. Even as countries considered repressive, such as China, North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia, pour money into stopping the free exchange of data, small groups of activists keep looking for ways around the technological barriers.

At the University of Toronto, in the small basement office of Citizen Lab, researchers are getting ready for the release of Psiphon, the latest weapon in the fight.

"I was always interested in the idea of using computers for social and political change," said Nart Villeneuve, who has been dabbling with the project for about two years. "It was a matter of creating a program for really non-technical people that was easy and effective."

Psiphon is designed to eliminate a drawback of anti-filter programs: incriminating the users behind the firewall. If found by authorities, that anti- filter software can lead to coercive interrogation, a bid to uncover the suspect's Internet travel secrets using a tactic known to insiders as "rubber- hose cryptoanalysis."

Mr. Villeneuve built a system that won't leave dangerous footprints on computers. In simple terms, it works by giving monitored computer users a way to send an encrypted request for information to a computer located in a secure country. That computer finds the information and sends it back, also encrypted.

An elegant wrinkle is that the data will enter users' machines through computer port 443. Relied on for the secure transfer of data, this port is the one through whichreams of financial data stream constantly around the world.

"Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions," said Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab.

A drawback to Psiphon is that the person behind the firewall has to be given a user name and password by the person offering up the computer. With this kind of setup, Mr. Villeneuve said, activists may end up working with specific dissidents and people in repressive countries may rely on relatives abroad to help them get connected. Canadians, with ties to every country in the world, are in a particularly good position to use such a system.

Although this reduces the program's reach, a relationship-based system could also minimize improper use. People who know the owner of their proxy computer are less likely to abuse their system, the logic goes.

"The big novel thing here is that you have a one-to-one connection," said Danny O'Brien, activism co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group. "That's a great innovation, because so many people have computers that are always on, and this lets you deal with someone you can trust."

If the remote user begins to view illegal material, their access can be limited in several ways, such as allowing access to text only. In extreme cases, Mr. Villeneuve said, people found with evidence of illegal activity on their computer would be able to prove through forensic analysis that it had been done by the remote user.

The team at Citizen Lab is now racing to put the final touches on the program in time for its public debut at the international congress of the free-speech group PEN in May. Billed as a uniquely Canadian approach to "hactivism," the first generation of Psiphon will then be made publicly available.

Its release is set to come against a backdrop of ever-diminishing free access to the Internet. Just last month the popular search engine Google agreed to self-censor, restricting access to certain content and websites in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, an international NGO, said the country has managed to create "a culture of fear and self- censorship." They are helped, she added, by Western countries willing to sell Internet-monitoring equipment to Beijing and bend to its terms.

Mr. O'Brien noted that public knowledge of monitoring can have as major an effect as the surveillance itself.

"You don't need to arrest every dissident and you don't need to take down every website. You just need to give the impression that you're watching," he said. "Merely establishing that you are being watched has a great effect on freedom of expression."

Activist groups around the world work to shine a spotlight on such repression, hoping that publicity and pressure will bring about change.

Although Psiphon is a purely Citizen Lab project, Prof. Deibert's team is also part of the Open Net Initiative. It's a partnership that includes Harvard and Cambridge universities and tries to document the extent of state interference on the Internet.

In Prof. Deibert's words, they try "to turn the tables on the watchers, to watch the watchers."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...y/Technology//





Livedoor Founder Is Charged With Securities Violations
Martin Fackler

Takafumi Horie, the founder of an Internet company whose brash tactics challenged Japan's business establishment, was charged Monday with violating securities law by spreading false information to inflate a subsidiary's stock price.

The formal filing of charges by Tokyo prosecutors marked the latest chapter in the downfall of Mr. Horie, 33, who seemed to personify the bare-knuckles, individualistic brand of capitalism that many here say Japan needs.

In a statement on Monday, Tokyo prosecutors said they had charged Mr. Horie and three other former executives of his company, Livedoor, with inflating the sales and profit figures of a subsidiary, Livedoor Marketing, to push up its stock price. Prosecutors also said that Mr. Horie and the others had issued press releases containing false information about the subsidiary, which was called ValueClick Japan until Livedoor took it over two years ago.

If found guilty, Mr. Horie faces up to five years in prison or a fine of five million yen ($42,300).

"The key to Livedoor's rapid growth was actually criminal activities that damaged the fairness of securities trading," the statement said.

"This case is just the tip of the iceberg," it continued. "We will continue a thorough investigation to bring everything to light."

Though prosecutors did not elaborate Monday, the major Japanese news media, who are routinely briefed by prosecutors, said the authorities were preparing new charges against Mr. Horie for reportedly inflating the profits of the parent company, Livedoor, as well.

Mr. Horie resigned as chief executive of Livedoor after his arrest on Jan. 23.

Since then he has been in jail, insisting, during interrogations running as long as eight hours a day, that he was unaware of any wrongdoing and vowing to have his say in court, according to Japanese news media reports.

He reportedly spends his free time in a tiny cell reading an encyclopedia.

Since Tokyo prosecutors raided Livedoor's luxurious central Tokyo offices last month, Mr. Horie's business empire has started coming apart at the seams.

Livedoor's share price has plunged 90 percent, to 61 yen (52 cents), since then, wiping out more than $5 billion in market value. Business partners have canceled alliances, employees have begun jumping ship and, according to media reports, Mr. Horie's girlfriend, a television star, has canceled plans to become engaged.

The T-shirt-clad entrepreneur built the company over the last decade, turning a college project into one of Japan's most popular Internet portals and acquiring dozens of smaller Internet companies. Along the way, though, he stepped on many influential toes, especially last year, when he tried a hostile takeover of a powerful media company, Fuji Television.

After the raid, some outraged followers posted messages on Mr. Horie's blog saying he was singled out for political reasons.

Others expressed bitter disappointment for believing in a man now accused of criminal misdeeds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/bu...4livedoor.html





Spyware Barely Touches Firefox
Gregg Keizer

Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware- infected PC than people who go online with Mozilla's Firefox browser, academic researchers from Microsoft's backyard said in a recently published paper.

"We can't say whether Firefox is a safer browser or not," said Henry Levy, one of the two University of Washington professors who, along with a pair of graduate students, created Web crawlers to scour the Internet for spyware in several 2005 forays. "But we can say that users will have a safer experience [surfing] with Firefox."

In May and October, Levy and colleague Steven Gribble sent their crawlers to 45,000 Web sites, cataloged the executable files found, and tested malicious sites' effectiveness by exposing unpatched versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox to "drive-by downloads." That's the term for the hacker practice of using browser vulnerabilities to install software, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes not.

"We can't say IE is any less safe," explained Levy, "because we choose to use an unpatched version [of each browser.] We were trying to understand the number of [spyware] threats, so if we used unpatched browsers then we would see more threats."

Levy and Gribble, along with graduate students Alexander Moshchuk and Tanya Bragin, set up IE in two configurations -- one where it behaved as if the user had given permission for all downloads, the other as if the user refused all download permission -- to track the number of successful spyware installations.

During Levy's and Gribble's most recent crawl of October 2005, 1.6 percent of the domains infected the first IE configuration, the one mimicking a na�ve user blithely clicking 'Yes;' about a third as many domains (0.6 percent) did drive-by downloads by planting spyware even when the user rejected the installations.

"These numbers may not sound like much," said Gribble, "but consider the number of domains on the Web."

"You definitely want to have all the patches [installed] for Internet Explorer," added Levy.

In the same kind of configurations, Firefox survived relatively unscathed. Only .09 percent of domains infected the Mozilla Corp. browser when it was set, like IE, to act as if the user clicked through security dialogs; no domain managed to infect the Firefox-equipped PC in a drive-by download attack.

Compare those figures, and it seems that IE users who haven't patched their browser are 21 times more likely to have a spyware attack executed -- if not necessarily succeed -- against their machine.

Most of the exploits that leveraged IE vulnerabilities to plant spyware were based on ActiveX and JavaScript, said Gribble. Those two technologies have taken the blame for many of IE problems. In fact, Firefox boosters often point to their browser's lack of support for ActiveX as a big reason why its security claims are legit.

Levy and Gribble didn't set out to verify that, but they did note that the few successful spyware attacks on Firefox were made by Java applets; all, however, required the user's consent to succeed.

Microsoft's made a point to stress that Internet Explorer 7, which just went into open beta for Windows XP, tightens up ActiveX controls by disabling nearly all those already installed. IE 7 then alerts the user and requires consent before it will run an in-place control.

Good thing, because one of the research's most startling conclusions was the number of spyware-infected sites. One out of every 20 executable files on Web sites is spyware, and 1 in 25 domains contain at least one piece of spyware waiting for victims.

"If these numbers are even close to representative for Web sites frequented by users," the paper concluded, "it is not surprising that spyware continues to be of major concern."

The moral, said Levy, is: "If you browse, you're eventually going to get hit with a spyware attack."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20060210/tc_cmp/179102616





Microsoft Warns Of "Critical" Security Flaws

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned of two "critical" security flaws that could allow attackers to use its media player or Internet Explorer Webbrowser to possibly take control of a computer.

Microsoft, the world's top software company whose Windows operating system runs on 90 percent of the world's computers, issued patches to fix the problems as part of its monthly security bulletin. It listed both as critical vulnerabilities.

One flaw is a vulnerability in some versions of the Windows Media Player for playing music or video files. The flaw makes it possible for an attacker to use a malicious file that controls the appearance of the player to launch other programs on a computer.

"Application vulnerabilities, such as the issue in Windows Media Player, are a growing cause of concern," Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager at Symantec Corp., a leading maker of security software, said in a statement.

Another vulnerability in some versions of Internet Explorer would make it possible for an attacker to take total control of a PC.

Last month, Microsoft issued fixes for two security flaws in Windows that could let an attacker commandeer someone's computer.

Microsoft has been working for more than three years to improve the security and reliability of its software as more and more malicious software targets weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software.

The latest patches can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/security.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...T-SECURITY.xml





Backdoor to Billy

UK Holds Microsoft Security Talks
Ollie Stone-Lee

UK officials are talking to Microsoft over fears the new version of Windows could make it harder for police to read suspects' computer files.

Windows Vista is due to be rolled out later this year. Cambridge academic Ross Anderson told MPs it would mean more computer files being encrypted.

He urged the government to look at establishing "back door" ways of getting around encryptions.

The Home Office later told the BBC News website it is in talks with Microsoft.

Unlicensed music

Professor Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, was giving evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee about time limits on holding terrorism suspects without charge.

He said: "From later this year, the encryption landscape is going to change with the release of Microsoft Vista."

The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption which can be linked to a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's motherboard.

The system is aimed at preventing tampering with computers but it would also help prevent people from downloading unlicensed films or media.

"This means that by default your hard disk is encrypted by using a key that you cannot physically get at...

"An unfortunate side effect from law enforcement is it would be technically fairly seriously difficult to dig encrypted material out of the system if it has been set up competently."

Guessing passwords

Professor Anderson said people were discussing the idea of making computer vendors ensure "back door keys" to encrypted material were made available.

The Home Office should enter talks with Microsoft now rather than when the system is introduced, he said.

He said encryption tools generally were either good or useless.

"If they are good, you either guess the password or give up," he said.

The committee heard that suspects could claim to have lost their encryption key - although juries could decide to let this count this against them in the same way as refusing to answer questions in a police interview.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Office has already been in touch with Microsoft concerning this matter and is working closely with them."

Increased awareness about high-tech crime and computer crime has prompted the Home Office to talk to IT companies regularly about new software.

Government officials look at the security of new systems, whether they are easy for the general public to hack into and how the police can access material in them.

Preventing tampering

A Microsoft spokeswoman said Windows Vista was designed to be the most secure version of Windows yet.

She said: "It is our goal to give PC users the control and confidence they need so they can continue to get the most out of their PCs.

"At the same time, we are working with law enforcement to help them understand its security features and will continue to partner with governments, law enforcement and industry to help make the internet a safer place to learn and communicate."

The system, part of what is called "trusted computing" mechanisms, is designed to stop malicious programs being installed surreptitiously on computers.

The Trusted Computing Group has been working for some years on a hardware-based system which is built into the motherboards of many Intel- based computers.

But most people will not be able to use its features until Microsoft Windows Vista is launched.

Critics say the companies behind most trusted computing want to use digital rights management to ensure users cannot use programs they have not approved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...cs/4713018.stm





Microsoft Anti-Spyware Deleting Norton Anti-Virus
Brian Krebs

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.

According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)."

When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple entries (registry editing is always a dicey affair that can quickly hose a system if the user doesn't know what he or she is doing) so that the program can be completely removed and re-installed.

I put in calls to Microsoft and to Symantec on this issue, but am still waiting to hear back from both companies.

Microsoft said it is shipping updates that fix this problem, but judging from the growing number of other threads on this in that forum, this is shaping up to be a pretty big issue for companies that have deployed Microsoft's free anti-spyware product inside their networks. It's a good idea to keep in mind that Microsoft's Anti-Spyware product is in beta mode: The company's product page explicitly says that Microsoft Anti-Spyware should not be deployed in production systems. I'm not apologizing for Redmond in any way; it just seems like too many people ignore warnings about beta products.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...eleting_1.html





Does Mac Have Potential For Hacker Attacks?
Thomas Zizzo

The Apple Macintosh enjoys a reputation as one of the more secure systems out there, but the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in two of Apple’s most popular applications serves as a reminder that no Internet user is immune to attacks.

In January, four critical security vulnerabilities were discovered in the Apple QuickTime and iTunes applications, raising security concerns over the increasingly popular media player formats.

Solution providers said customers need to be aware of the risks these applications might bring, but expressed faith that Mac OS X remains secure, at least for now.

The Mac generally is called a platform that is secure from exploits and viruses in part because the user base of Macs is very small compared with that of the Windows PC, making the Mac community a less attractive target.

Not everyone sees it that way, however.

“I really think that is a misnomer,” said Ian Blanton, director of consulting for Tech Superpowers, an Apple solution provider in Boston.

Blanton said viruses can reach any system connected to the Internet, regardless of the operating system. And the fact that there has not been a known, live virus that has successfully propagated through the Mac OS X poses a challenge that could be too good for some hackers to pass up, he added.

“That makes Macs an even bigger target,” he said.

Vulnerabilities affecting QuickTime and iTunes for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Windows XP were recently discovered by end-point security vendor eEye Digital Security. The vulnerabilities could allow a remote attacker to overwrite heap memory in QuickTime and iTunes files, causing the computer to crash and enabling the attacker to execute code that controls certain commands. Someone looking to exploit these vulnerabilities would have to convince a potential victim to click on a link sent via e-mail. Apple responded by quickly sending out a patch, but the discovery has raised questions regarding the long-standing notion that Macs are impervious to security exploits.

An Apple spokesperson did not formally comment on the vulnerabilities but said the company’s Web site provides information on OS 10 security.

The concern is that since iTunes and QuickTime are becoming increasingly popular, those applications could become attractive targets for potential exploits, said Steve Manzuik, security product manager for eEye, Aliso Viejo, Calif. (Apple said it has sold 500 million iTunes downloads and more than 40 million iPods.) Plus, the applications are difficult for IT departments to manage since they easily can be downloaded for free, he said.

“The potential is there. We haven’t seen any exploitation, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” Manzuik said.

Apple’s VAR partners aren’t too concerned at this point about exploits, viruses or worms being spread on Macs, but they agree that security shouldn’t be ignored. “It’s always a concern,” said Alberto Palacios, president of Create More, San Francisco.

It’s easy to write a virus for the Mac; the difficult thing is making it propagate, Palacios said. Anytime an application is installed on a Mac, several pop-up windows will ask the user if they are sure they want to install and run the program. Unless a hacker physically has access to the computer, it’s almost impossible to unknowingly infect it with a virus, he said.

But given the growing popularity of iPods and iTunes, the threat for an industrious hacker to be the first to hack a Mac is real, Palacios said. “I do believe [Mac] is becoming a bigger target,” he said.

Apple takes security very seriously, said George Swords, marketing manager for PowerMacPac, an Apple reseller in Portland, Ore. Mac users should always have the latest software updates installed, and antivirus security software should be used to guard against forwarding infected e-mails to friends that have PCs, he said.

The Mac also comes with its security defaults activated, unlike a Windows PC, which requires security features to be turned on, according to Swords. “Out of the box, everything is locked down on a Mac,” he said.

The likelihood of a live virus spreading through Macs is small, and hopefully it will never happen, he said. “I don’t ever want to see that in the press,” Swords said.
http://www.crn.com/sections/security...leId=179101530





Mommy, Help Me Download 'Farmer in the Dell' to My MP3 Player
Michael Barbaro

As digital electronics have invaded Toyland, putting video projectors and cellphones into the hands of 7- year-olds, companies that cater to preschoolers have deliberately sat on the sidelines, determined to hold up the wall between adult technology and children's play.

But the wall is about to come crashing down.

At least that is how it will look from the floor of the America International Toy Fair, the industry's biggest annual trade show in the United States, which begins tomorrow at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.

Fisher-Price, synonymous with Elmo and Power Wheels, will introduce a digital music player and digital camera for children ages 3 and older that will be sold during the 2006 holiday season.

Tek Nek Toys will show off a small digital music player with built-in speakers and flashing lights, called CoolP3 Fusion, for children 4 and up. Emerson Radio will introduce a SpongeBob SquarePants speaker system for MP3 players and SpongeBob SquarePants digital camera.

In perhaps the most extreme example of the trend, a company called Baby Einstein will introduce a baby rocker with an MP3 adapter and speakers.

But proponents of traditional make-believe play, who objected last year when toy companies marketed digital electronics to "tweens" — children 8 through 12 — are expected to protest even more loudly when they are advertised to toddlers.

"This is a big leap," said Reyne Rice, a toy trends specialists for the Toy Industry Association. "A 3-year-old with a digital camera is unusual."

But the financial incentive to develop the technology has grown. Children's electronics have proved to be a bright spot in an otherwise slumping toy industry.

From 2003 to 2005, sales of children's electronics rose 3 percent, to $600 million, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.

No wonder, perhaps, that last year Hasbro introduced a digital video camera for children ages 8 and older and Disney introduced an MP3 player for children as young as 6.

Executives at Fisher-Price, a division of Mattel, said the company's MP3 player and digital camera, both priced at $70, are specifically designed for young children, with a rugged design that can survive repeated four-foot drops and big easy-to-use buttons that simplify the technology.

The Kid-Tough Digital Camera, for example, has two view finders — much like a pair of binoculars — rather the single window found on the adult version; two large handles to steady it before shooting a picture; and a two-step process for deleting unwanted pictures verses the four- or five-step version on a typical camera.

Because not all preschoolers can read a song title before hitting the play button, the Digital Song and Story Player relies on easily recognizable icons to symbolize each song, like a star for "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or a barn for "Old McDonald."

Both products take a minimalist approach. The digital camera has only five buttons. "We analyzed what kids did with these products and what appealed to them and threw out what they didn't need," said David Ciganko, vice president for product design at Fisher-Price.

Company executives said the digital camera and music player promote creative expression — like snapping a photo of family members, or, perhaps given the age of the photographers, stuffed animals, or learning the words to a children's song.

Lisa Mancuso, vice president for marketing at Fisher-Price, said that with the camera "there is a sense of accomplishment, of 'Mommy, look what I did.' "

With both technologies, however, it is mommy and daddy who will have to do some of the accomplishing. A parent's help is required to download new songs on the digital music player and upload photos to a computer before printing. Fisher-Price said it has developed easy-to-use software that makes the setup fairly simple.

Independent toy analysts expressed concern about the products. Marianne Szymanski, creator of Toy Tips, a research firm based in Milwaukee, said that for the most part digital electronics promote a solitary pattern of play, for example, a child sitting alone listening to music on headphones.

"I am not saying tech is bad, but we need toys that encourage social interaction in the preschool years, not those that don't," she said.

For now, Fisher-Price's rival at Hasbro, Playskool, is steering clear of digital electronics for preschoolers. Lorrie Browning, general manager of infant and preschool toys at Hasbro, said Playskool was using electronics — but inside traditional toys like a new teddy bear, T. J. Bearytales, that gestures while it tells stories.

"What we are hearing more and more from parents," she said, "is that it's really important that children not lose the key basic building blocks for their development."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/te...gy/11toys.html





As an Alternative to a Trip to a Video Store, Movies Through a Set-Top Box
Saul Hansell

Will people pay $230 and hook a new gizmo up to their television sets so they do not have to drive to the video rental store?

That is the question to be answered by MovieBeam, a service being introduced in 29 major markets today. The service was originally developed and tested in three cities in 2004 by the Walt Disney Company. Disney has brought in new investors and streamlined the service's pricing to offer it on a broader scale.

MovieBeam is built around a technology that broadcasts movies slowly over unused portions of the television signals to set-top boxes that store them on a hard disk. Users will have a choice of 100 movies — mainly those that have been recently released on DVD's — with 10 new titles replacing old ones each week.

Consumers will buy the MovieBeam box for $250 from electronics stores. They can send for a $50 rebate, but must also pay a $30 activation fee, making the effective upfront cost $230. The service does not charge a monthly fee, but movies cost $3.99 each for current titles and $1.99 for older ones. (The company will also offer some movies in a high-definition format for an additional $1.) The customers will be able to watch the movie for a 24-hour period.

Tres Izzard, a former Disney executive who is now the chief executive of MovieBeam, said the service was meant to appeal to the 30 million people who rent at least four movies a month. Four-fifths of those rentals, he said, are releases of the sort that will be in the MovieBeam service.

"The hard drive is the back wall at a Blockbuster," Mr. Izzard said. He said that the service would allow customers to rent those films without driving or waiting for DVD's to come in the mail, as they do with services like Netflix.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said he was skeptical that people would pay more than $200 for a box from MovieBeam, plus a fee per movie, when cable systems are offering movies on demand at similar prices through their digital services.

"The pricing model seems to be somewhat questionable here," he said. "People will ask why they need to spend that much money for a box."

Mr. Izzard argued that digital cable reaches only a minority of cable households and that MovieBeam might be more economical to viewers who like movies but do not want the other channels offered by cable systems. The service does not have to appeal to everyone, he said; it will break even if it attracts 500,000 customers. The company will sell the boxes at a slight loss.

Disney sold a majority of MovieBeam for $48.5 million to a group of investors including Cisco Systems, Intel and several venture capital funds. The MovieBeam box will be sold under Cisco's Linksys brand name.

The major studios have agreed to provide movies to the service, except Sony, with which negotiations are continuing, Mr. Izzard said. Disney's studios will make movies available on the service on the same day they are released on DVD. The other studios will make them available several weeks later when they are released to video-on- demand services offered by cable systems and Internet rental services like Movielink.

As with other video-on-demand services, most of the rental fee is paid to the studios. Still, studios have been wary about the expansion of video-on-demand services because they could eat into DVD sales, the most-profitable form of movie distribution.

Mr. Izzard said that with MovieBeam's broadcast system, the cost of delivering a movie was negligible. In contrast, industry executives say sending a movie over the Internet typically costs 50 to 75 cents for a transmission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/bu...a/14movie.html





Fakin' It: A Marketer Intends to Tease Consumers
Julie Bosman

EVEN among the countless bits of gimmickry taking up space on the Internet, the ads for Pherotones did look a little fake.

"Can my ring tones make you sexy?" read one ad posted last month on the Hollywood gossip blog Egotastic.com, depicting a red-haired doctor in a white lab coat. "Experience the ring tone secret I discovered in Denmark that's too hot for mainstream science," the ad promised, directing visitors to a Web site, pherotones.com. There, users could download special cellphone ring tones that, when played, were supposed to attract the opposite sex.

But rather than the revolutionary product that Pherotones promised, the ads were the beginning of a buzz marketing campaign under the guise of a fake product (Pherotones) and a fake doctor (Dr. Myra Vanderhood) with a fake Web site (Pherotones.com), all for a real client with less than $250,000 to spend.

The real client is Oasys Mobile, a little-known cellphone content provider that sells games, cellphone wallpaper and ring tones that can be downloaded. Oasys, based in Raleigh, N.C., enlisted the advertising firm McKinney & Silver, in Durham, N.C., to introduce its brand inexpensively — with a nontraditional campaign that it hoped would grab the attention of its desired 18-to-24-year-old demographic.

"You have a brand that nobody knows what it is and you have a consumer that's very specific," said David Baldwin, the executive creative director at McKinney, a unit of Havas. "They don't engage in traditional marketing. But they live online and they live with their cellphones."

So McKinney manufactured the idea of Pherotones, enlisting an actress to play the part of Dr. Vanderhood, the fictional Danish spokeswoman pictured in the ads for Pherotones.

McKinney also hired the Viral Factory, an agency in London that specializes in viral campaigns, to create a video that they hoped would spread around the Web. The video features a mock wedding ceremony where the ring tone on a male guest's cellphone compels the groom to run from the altar and passionately embrace the stunned guest. (So far, the video has been downloaded about 3,000 times on Web sites like YouTube, Punchbaby and Kontraband.)

In mid-December, McKinney placed a Pherotone entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is written and updated by thousands of anonymous Web users. It was taken down after a month when Wikipedia discovered that it happened to be untrue.

But the overall campaign is garnering interest: after placing ads on blogs like Gawker and Defamer, Pherotones.com is now averaging 10,000 page views a day. Last week on Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs, Pherotones.com was in the top 10 percent of the most popular blogs worldwide. It has also attracted attention on insider blogs like AdRants, a Web site that closely tracks the advertising industry.

The campaign has also revived a question that is routinely asked in the advertising industry: is it acceptable to use advertising to trick consumers?

One recent study has indicated that the buying public is willing to be fooled. A study by Northeastern University released last month found that even when participants who pitch products in word-of-mouth campaigns identify their commercial affiliations, it usually does not affect consumers' willingness to pass the marketing message on.

And the planners of buzz marketing campaigns often say that in order to reach the modern multitasking consumer — who may be simultaneously watching television, talking on a cellphone, reading the Internet and sending instant messages — advertising must be a two-way conversation to have an effect.

"The consumers in that target demographic do not want in-your-face marketing," said Gary Ban, the chief executive for Oasys Mobile. "We wanted something that was risqué, funny and something that involves the consumer. If you're doing something that they can identify with, that they can participate in, that's basically something that that generation can tune into."

Nearly 80 percent of marketers spend money on buzz marketing, said Marian Salzman, the executive vice president of JWT (and the trend-spotter responsible for spreading the term "metrosexual" to the masses). And the buzz marketing business is gaining financial muscle: the trade publication Advertising Age estimated that buzz marketing annually is a $100 million to $150 million industry.

The advertising industry has taken note of the power of buzz and viral marketing, which are loosely defined as efforts that encourage consumers to spread marketing messages to each other. A Burger King spoof on the Internet in 2004, for example, centered on a subservient man in a chicken suit, has collected more than 17 million unique visitors, said a spokesman for Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the agency that created the ad.

In 2004, Volvo ran ads in European car magazines claiming that 32 people in Dalaro, a small village in Sweden, all bought Volvo S40 sedans on a single day — more than the local Volvo dealer would typically sell in a year. A short video posted on the town and the "sale" on Volvo's Web site became an Internet cult phenomenon in Europe, with more than 400,000 people visiting the Web site in the first six weeks. The Mystery of Dalaro campaign resulted in impressive sales figures; in the first half of 2004, Volvo sold double the number of S40's it had sold in the first half of 2003.

But how does a company judge the effectiveness of the campaign? The same way any other ad campaign is assessed, Ms. Salzman said.

"I think you measure it first in brand momentum and then in sales," Ms. Salzman said. "Is it building in brand velocity and then are sales following?"

Now Oasys will be able to test the campaign's effect on sales: starting today, the Pherotones Web site is revealing its client by directing visitors to Oasysmobile.com.

Raising the ire of people who initially believed in the power of Pherotones is simply a negative consequence of the whole effort, said Mr. Ban of Oasys Mobile.

"You run the risk in any campaign like this that you might offend somebody," he said. "But even if you offend somebody, it seems to spread the gospel of the campaign."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/bu...dco.html?8hpib





What's Online

A Rant. All 406 Pages of It.
Dan Mitchell

A NEW e-book tells a "sordid story" of business fraud, according to one reviewer. The book's author says it is "the largest fraud case in American history."

Enron? WorldCom? No. It's much, much larger than either of those, though the use of the word "fraud" in this case is more a literary device than a legal definition. The book is "The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal" (newnetworks.com). The author is Bruce Kushnick, a longtime irritant to the telecommunications industry.

His targets are the Baby Bells, which he contends owe every American household about $2,000 because they reneged on their collective promise to deploy ultra-high- speed broadband Internet access via optical fiber to millions of homes.

By now, according to Mr. Kushnick, 86 million homes should be wired at 45 Mbps — at least 15 times as fast as the best commonly available D.S.L. service. The count of homes wired at that speed so far is zero.

The phone companies made this promise as Congress was getting ready to pass the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, he points out. In return, they received benefits — including tax breaks and changes in state laws lifting limits on their profits — amounting to more than $200 billion, Mr. Kushnick writes. But instead of building the infrastructure, they spent money on more immediately profitable services like plain old copper-wire D.S.L. and hoary long-distance networks, according to the 406-page e-book.

"It's like ordering a Ferrari and getting a bicycle," Mr. Kushnick writes in his introduction.

Meanwhile, countries like South Korea and Japan were building out their infrastructure and making 100 Mbps service their national standard.

And here at home, "this 'bait and switch' caused a ripple effect," writes Steve Stroh, a research analyst, in a blog at bwianews.com.

"While one can argue about the dimensions of that ripple effect," he writes, "some effects are obvious — the cable companies only had to offer a modest speed increase above D.S.L. to be competitive. It seems reasonable to think that cable-modem speeds would be much higher in trying to compete with fiber, or the prices much lower."

ELSEWHERE IN TELCOLAND For years, David Lazarus, a business columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, has been nipping at the heels of SBC (now called AT&T), offering a steady stream of caustic criticism, often from a consumer point of view. John Battelle, journalist and proprietor of Seachblog (battellemedia.com), reports that AT&T has had enough, and has pulled its $5 million annual ad purchase from the newspaper.

The move, Mr. Battelle writes, is "misguided."

"After all, negative press is still press, and it's an opportunity to respond, to learn, to grow, to do better. Even if you disagree with the press, at least take the time to engage in a conversation."

A company representative told him, "our marketing strategy and media buying plans are proprietary," and declined to comment further.

And why is this in a blog about search engines? Mr. Battelle writes: "Because this is your new competitor, Google. Get to know them. As you offer free Wi-Fi to all of San Francisco (and, one might argue, the rest of the country/world), and undermine AT&T/SBC's broadband business, hardball players like SBC are going to go after you.' "

ONLINE SITCOM "Powerloafing With Cubicle Carl" (powerloafing.com) probably won't make NBC's prime-time lineup, but the online sitcom does, appropriately enough, make for an amusing workday diversion. The show — more silly than biting — is recorded in the living room of a North Hollywood apartment. All the action in each episode (they run about 5 minutes) takes place in Carl's cubicle. It's the creation of Mike Upchurch, who has written and produced for "The Chris Rock Show" and "MadTV." The latest episode, which imagines the Starship Enterprise as a typical office environment, may elicit no more than a chuckle or two, but that alone puts it way ahead of, say, "The War at Home."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/te...ine.ready.html





NFL Notes: Al Michaels Traded To NBC

Al Michaels was traded from ABC to NBC for a cartoon bunny, four rounds of golf and Olympic highlights.

The rights to "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit," a bunny created by Walt Disney in the 1920s before he invented Mickey Mouse, were transferred from NBC Universal to The Walt Disney Co. as part of the agreement to release the broadcaster from his contract with ABC and ESPN.

"As the forerunner to Mickey Mouse and an important part of Walt Disney's creative legacy, the fun and mischievous Oswald is back where he belongs," Disney president Robert Iger said.

Michaels had been with ABC for three decades and had been the play-by-play announcer for "Monday Night Football" for the past 20 years.

"Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice," Michaels said, referring to what the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets as compensation for releasing coach Herm Edwards from his contract. "I'm going to be a trivia answer someday."

A four-time Emmy Award winner, Michaels agreed last July to stay with ABC/ESPN as the Monday game switched to the cable network next fall. But he asked to back out and instead will broadcast Sunday night NFL games on NBC with John Madden, his partner on ABC during the past four seasons.

As part of the deal, NBC sold ESPN cable rights to Friday coverage of the next four Ryder Cups through 2014. NBC also granted ESPN increased usage of Olympic highlights through 2012 and other NBC properties through 2011. NBC, in turn, gets expanded highlight rights to ABC and ESPN events.

NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol said ABC Sports and ESPN president George Bodenheimer called last month to initiate talks, which culminated in an agreement Tuesday.

"He told me this incredible story that Walt's first really big production as a cartoonist for the cinema had been a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was before Mickey," Ebersol said. "And for reasons that aren't still totally clear to me, Walt lost those rights. He didn't have the money to hold onto them."

Disney and his partner, Ub Iwerks, created the rabbit in 1927 at the request of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, and made 26 silent cartoons. After Disney learned that Universal held the rights, he created a new character, eventually named Mickey Mouse, who resembled Oswald, but with shorter ears.

Universal continued to make Oswald films from 1929 to 1938 — Mickey Rooney was one of his voices — and Oswald appeared in a comic book from 1943 to 1962.

"We earn nothing from those rights; they've had no value in the United States," Ebersol said.

Michaels, 61, began to think about hopping networks during the past season, realizing he wanted to work with Madden, producer Fred Gaudelli and director Drew Esocoff, who also are moving from ABC to NBC.

"As the weeks went on, I began to realize more and more how much I was going to miss being with those people," he said. "That's my family, that's my broadcasting family, and they're moving out of the house, and I wanted to move back in with them."

Cris Collinsworth, who was going to be Madden's partner, instead will be a studio analyst.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...845_nfl10.html





Frequent Netflix Renters Sent To Back Of The Line

The more you use, the slower the service, some customers realize
AP

Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.'s online DVD rental service 2 ½ years ago, but he still feels shortchanged.

That's because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn't penalize him for returning his movies so quickly.

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva's home in Warren, Mich. — down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company's automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

The same Netflix formula also shoves Villanueva to the back of the line for the most-wanted DVDs, so the service can send those popular flicks to new subscribers and infrequent renters.

The little-known practice, called "throttling" by critics, means Netflix customers who pay the same price for the same service are often treated differently, depending on their rental patterns.

"I wouldn't have a problem with it if they didn't advertise `unlimited rentals,'" Villanueva said. "The fact is that they go out of their way to make sure you don't go over whatever secret limit they have set up for your account."

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix didn't publicly acknowledge it differentiates among customers until revising its "terms of use" in January 2005 — four months after a San Francisco subscriber filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company had deceptively promised one-day delivery of most DVDs.

"In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service," Netflix's revised policy now reads. The statement specifically warns that heavy renters are more likely to encounter shipping delays and less likely to immediately be sent their top choices.

Few customers have complained about this "fairness algorithm," according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

"We have unbelievably high customer satisfaction ratings," Hastings said during a recent interview. "Most of our customers feel like Netflix is an incredible value."

The service's rapid growth supports his thesis. Netflix added nearly 1.6 million customers last year, giving it 4.2 million subscribers through December. During the final three months of 2005, just 4 percent of its customers canceled the service, the lowest rate in the company's six-year history.

After collecting consumer opinions about the Web's 40 largest retailers last year, Ann Arbor, Mich., research firm ForeSeeResults rated Netflix as "the cream of the crop in customer satisfaction."

Once considered a passing fancy, Netflix has changed the way many households rent movies and spawned several copycats, including a mail service from Blockbuster Inc.

Netflix's most popular rental plan lets subscribers check out up to three DVDs at a time for $17.99 per month. After watching a movie, customers return the DVD in a postage-paid envelope. Netflix then sends out the next available DVD on the customer's online wish list.

Because everyone pays a flat fee, Netflix makes more money from customers who only watch four or five DVDs per month. Customers who quickly return their movies in order to get more erode the company's profit margin because each DVD sent out and returned costs 78 cents in postage alone.

Although Netflix consistently promoted its service as the DVD equivalent of an all-you-can eat smorgasbord, some heavy renters began to suspect they were being treated differently two or three years ago.

To prove the point, one customer even set up a Web site — dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com — to show that the service listed different wait times for DVDs requested by subscribers living in the same household.

Netflix's throttling techniques have also prompted incensed customers to share their outrage in online forums such as hackingnetflix.com.

"Netflix isn't well within its rights to throttle users," complained a customer identified as "annoyed" in a posting on the site. "They say unlimited rentals. They are liars."

Hastings said the company has no specified limit on rentals, but "`unlimited' doesn't mean you should expect to get 10,000 a month."

In its terms of use, Netflix says most subscribers check out two to 11 DVDs per month.

Management has previously acknowledged to analysts that it risks losing money on a relatively small percentage of frequent renters. The risk has increased since Netflix reduced the price of its most popular subscription plan by $4 per month in 2004 and the U.S. Postal Service recently raised first- class mailing costs by 2 cents.

Netflix's approach has paid off so far. The company has been profitable in each of the past three years, a trend its management expects to continue in 2006 with projected earnings of at least $29 million on revenue of $960 million. Netflix's stock price has more than tripled since its 2002 initial public offering.

A September 2004 lawsuit cast a spotlight on the throttling issue. The complaint, filed by Frank Chavez on behalf of all Netflix subscribers before Jan. 15, 2005, said the company had developed a sophisticated formula to slow down DVD deliveries to frequent renters and ensure quicker shipments of the most popular movies to its infrequent _ and most profitable _ renters to keep them happy.

Netflix denied the allegations, but eventually revised its terms of use to acknowledge its different treatment of frequent renters.

Without acknowledging wrongdoing, the company agreed to provide a one-month rental upgrade and pay Chavez's attorneys $2.5 million, but the settlement sparked protests that prompted the two sides to reconsider. A hearing on a revised settlement proposal is scheduled for Feb. 22 in San Francisco Superior Court.

Netflix subscribers such as Nathaniel Irons didn't believe the company was purposely delaying some DVD shipments until he read the revised terms of use.

Irons, 28, of Seattle, has no plans to cancel his service because he figures he is still getting a good value from the eight movies he typically receives each month.

"My own personal experience has not been bad," he said, "but (the throttling) is certainly annoying when it happens."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11262292/





BitTorrent to Power ISP's Video Service
John Borland

One of the largest Internet service providers in Britain is teaming with the company responsible for the BitTorrent software to test a new high-speed movie download service, the companies said Friday.

NTL, the largest broadband provider in the United Kingdom, will be testing the file-swapping service as a way to deliver video more cheaply than traditional downloads. Another company, called CacheLogic, will add its data-caching technology to improve the network's efficiency.

The deal is the first public step forward for BitTorrent's hope to turn its technology, widely used for swapping illegal copies of video, into a tool used by movie studios and ISPs for legal services.

"NTL has seen a huge percentage of their traffic in the BitTorrent protocol," said BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin. "But in the past, neither rights holders, ISPs nor BitTorrent derived any economic benefit from it."

The technical trial will begin in April and will go through the summer, the companies said. Navin declined to say what content will be used in the trial, but noted that NTL is a cable company, and thus has rights to video content.
http://news.com.com/BitTorrent+to+po...3-6038269.html





µTorrent's WebUI: Monitor Your Downloads Remotely
Scott Young

Update: Some people were questioning how I got access to these files. While µTorrent itself is developed by ludde, with access to the source and the original creator, there is a µT development "team". We work on stuff like the website, managing the forums and that sort of thing, and get previews of this alpha stuff for that reason. ;)

Lately, the µTorrent development team have been working on a WebUI (web-based user interface) to allow users to remotely manage their BitTorrent downloads. (Don't know what µTorrent and BitTorrent are? Check out my earlier review of µTorrent.)

As the WebUI is still undergoing alpha testing, it is currently inaccessible to the public (when the UI goes final, you'll need to install a bunch of extra "add-on" files to make it work, as the WebUI currently takes up about 110 KiB of disk space after compression - almost as large as µT itself).

However, here's a little intro to the WebUI and how it works. Click the screenshots to enlarge them.

The WebUI runs through your web browser, and is accessible via HTTP through the port you use for BitTorrent. Of course, I'm running on port 31337. Basically what this means is that you can access the WebUI, once installed, by going to http://localhost:port/gui/ index.html in your web browser. localhost basically is a shortcut to "this computer" - so obviously, this will only work if you're accessing the WebUI from the same computer as µTorrent is running on.

It's probably more useful to access the WebUI via your IP address (perhaps using dynamic DNS ). So, if your IP address is 64.233.167.99, and you run µTorrent on port 666, you could access the WebUI at http://64.233.167.99:666/gui/index.html from any PC, assuming you've done all the necessary port-forwarding to allow µT to serve the UI.

Of course, you wouldn't want just anyone to access your UI, so it's locked with a password configurable from µTorrent's Advanced Options menu. Here's the GUI operating on my computer under Opera:

You can get these torrents from legaltorrents.com.

The buttons below the address bar are all part of the WebUI, but I've included the Opera toolbar too just so you can see how the URL works. From left to right, the buttons are basically the same as those in the regular desktop version of µTorrent: add, delete, start, pause, stop, and move a torrent up or down. There's also a fully functional search bar at the right-hand side of the window. Clicking the search icon will open up a menu allowing you to pick a search engine, and entering a query into the box then hitting Enter will pop up with the results in that engine. (Unfortunately, at this stage, the WebUI uses an internal list of search engines - although it can be edited, this may not be the case with the final version. Perhaps it will be able to take the list from µTorrent's Search Engines setting.)

Clicking the plus button (add torrent) spawns a little dialog allowing you to upload a torrent from the current hard disk. This way, you can visit your favourite torrent site, download a .torrent file, and add it to µTorrent, so it's downloading while you're away and ready for you when you get back.

The DHTML columns are fully resizable and sortable, just like in µTorrent (though there is no "secondary sorting" feature). However, sorting the columns is done using JavaScript with no communication with µTorrent, so sorting won't be reflected in µTorrent.

Double-clicking a torrent brings up the Torrent Properties dialog, which you can't move, but it does display most of the info in µTorrent's General tab. You can access the Files tab, too:

You can also right-click on torrents in the main window or in the Files tab, but not all of the options from desktop µTorrent are available:

As for browser support, the WebUI is currently fully functional in Firefox 1.5.0.1, partially functional in Opera 9.0 TP2 (no right-clicks work, even when JavaScript is permitted to control right-clicks), and partially functional in IE (no right-click in the Files tab, occasional graphics glitches and crashes).

Like I said earlier, the WebUI is still under construction and will be released to the public when a more stable version is available. A 'lite' version using less DHTML will be available eventually, too. This is essentially just a preview to see what's coming up in µTorrent development.

If you want remote access to your BitTorrent client now, there are several BT clients offering some sort of WebUI: Azureus (via the Swing Web Interface plugin), ABC and G3Torrent, though apparently the functionality is quite limited and some of the clients are no longer under active development (I haven't tried them out myself). You could also try using a VNC system (like TightVNC), which is what I would recommend, though it's a bit more bandwidth- intensive than a real WebUI - so you can keep using µTorrent.
http://splintax.blogspot.com/2006/02...downloads.html





Warner Music Quarterly Revenues Miss, Shares Down
Yinka Adegoke

Warner Music Group Corp. on Tuesday reported its quarterly profit almost doubled thanks to strong sales of digital songs and lower costs, but revenue missed market expectations and its shares fell.

The company, whose artists include Madonna, Green Day and Sean Paul, said fiscal first-quarter revenue fell 4 percent to $1.04 billion. Analysts surveyed by Reuters Estimates had forecast revenue of $1.09 billion.

"If you're bullish on WarnerMusic you'll be pleased about the profits and digital sales. But the bears are winning out after the company missed analyst revenue expectations," said Banc of America analyst Eric Handler.

Warner Music's shares were down 41 cents, or 2 percent, at $20.39 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Warner said the decline in revenue reflected exchange-rate fluctuations and the May 2005 sale of its sheet music business, which had contributed $15 million in the year-earlier period. Excluding those items, it said revenues were flat.

Net income for the first quarter ended Dec. 31 rose to $69 million, or 46 cents per share, from $36 million, or 31 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total costs and expenses for the quarter fell 6 percent to $900 million.

Digital revenue rose to $69 million, up 30 percent from the September quarter and nearly triple that of a year earlier, because of online music sales at services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s <AAPL.O> iTunes music store and Napster <NAPS.O>, as well as mobile ringtones.

The United States accounted for about 70 percent of digital music sales, which were split evenly between Internet downloads and ringtones.

Warner Music also said it received another subpoena in February from the New York state attorney general's office in connection with an ongoing antitrust investigation into the pricing of digital music downloads.

The company in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it intended to comply with the inquiry. Warner Music had received an earlier subpoena relating to the investigation in late December.

Spokesmen for both Warner Music and for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer declined to comment.

Warner Music underwent a restructuring after its 2004 sale by Time Warner Inc. <TWX.N> to an investment group led by media mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. for $2.6 billion.

The company has focused on cutting costs, exploiting its catalog and investing in digital music. It went public in May last year.

(Additional reporting by Robert MacMillan and Kenneth Li)
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...h=warner+music





The Software You Buy vs. the Free Stuff
Paul J. Lim

ARE tax software programs — like TurboTax from Intuit and TaxCut from H & R Block — still worth the cost in this era of free Web-based help?

It may depend on the complexity of your return. For those with complicated taxes, the answer is probably yes, especially if you are talking about TaxCut Deluxe, which is cheaper than many Web-based tax tools yet offers more useful advice.

But millions of taxpayers who earn modest incomes and have simple returns to file may want to consider using the Free File program from the Internal Revenue Service instead of buying off-the-shelf software. Established three years ago, Free File is a partnership of the I.R.S. and private tax preparation sites that typically allows taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of around $50,000 or less to complete their returns electronically — free.

But you will not be alerted to this program if you visit the individual Web sites of the Free File partners, which include giants like TurboTax and TaxCut.

Instead, you have to go first to www.irs.gov. There, you will see a prominent link to the Free File site. And once you pick a tax preparation service, the I.R.S. will link you to Free File.

What if you earn too much to qualify for the program?

In that case, taxpayers with simple returns might consider a free program like TaxAct Standard, a bare-bones offering that you can download onto your PC or use on the Web. Although there is a charge of $12.95 to buy the corresponding state program, the combined price for the most basic level of TaxAct is still cheaper than the most basic online tools offered by TurboTax and TaxCut. (It is confusing, but the same companies that sell boxed tax programs also provide Web-based tools under the same names.)

If you have a relatively complicated return — for instance, one that requires you to seek help in determining how certain capital gains should be treated or whether certain home-office deductions are legitimate — the traditional off-the-shelf programs are likely to be a better bet.

This year, the nation's two leading software programs —TurboTax and TaxCut — have bundled what previously were three different offerings into one.

At most retailers, TurboTax and TaxCut now combine their federal and state programs into a single box and throw in a free tax-deduction program at the deluxe level or higher. The bundled offers are only slightly more expensive than the previous cost of buying just the federal versions of these programs.

The deluxe version of TaxCut, for instance, sells for $29.99. This includes TaxCut for the federal return, one free state version and DeductionPro, which helps taxpayers find and maximize deductible expenses. The deluxe version of TurboTax, which also includes a free state program and the program ItsDeductible, costs $39.95. ( Amazon.com has recently been offering these two programs at $5 off their list prices.)

By comparison, if you prepared your federal and state taxes by using the equivalent Web-based versions of either TaxCut or TurboTax, you would have to pay $44.90.

Perhaps the best thing that TurboTax and TaxCut did this year was to get rid of most of their annoying rebate offers that required customers to buy separate federal and state programs — and then to mail in a form to get a refund for the cost of the state program.

Among full-service software programs, TurboTax Deluxe and TaxCut Deluxe are more expensive than TaxAct Deluxe. That program, when bundled with a state version, sells for just $19.95 through www.taxact.com. (If you choose not to download the program and instead buy the CD, you will be charged an extra $5.95 for shipping.)

But in a test drive of the three programs, I found TaxAct Deluxe to be much more cumbersome than TurboTax or TaxCut. For instance, to fill out basic W-2 information on TaxAct, you have to click through 13 separate pages. Because I had to fill out W-2's for myself and my wife, it would have been faster to have used a pencil.

This narrowed my choice to TurboTax, the nation's most popular tax software program, and TaxCut, which I preferred last year when I reviewed such programs.

This year, I again preferred TaxCut over TurboTax — and, again, the choice has to do with organization.

To be sure, the distinction is small, and both programs are good at answering basic questions. But in my case, I had numerous questions concerning home-office expenses and deductions, and I thought that TaxCut was a bit more intuitive.

When I reached the business income section, TaxCut immediately asked me about my home-office expenses, as well as questions about other business costs. These included both direct and indirect costs associated with utilities, repairs, maintenance and insurance for my home office.

When I was filling out the same information on TurboTax, I was first asked to list all my business expenses, which included a section on utilities. But then the program told me specifically not to include home office-related utilities because they would be handled later — several clicks away. The delay in getting to my home-office deductions made me wonder whether I had put the information concerning my basic utility costs in the right section. To figure that out, I had to toggle back and forth several times between two sections of the program.

Much to my surprise, I liked another thing about TaxCut: the short video clips at the start of every section of the program. Usually, I would skip through such videos. But TaxCut offered surprisingly useful reminders and warnings, including information on recent changes in the tax laws concerning contributions to individual retirement accounts, charitable gifts and issues related to home offices.

This is not to say that TurboTax is a bad program. In fact, it has made noticeable improvements. Last year, I found it difficult to navigate backward in this program. If I felt that I had not filled out a section properly, for instance, I sometimes got lost trying to get back to that page.

This year, it is not only easy to retrace your steps, but it is also simple to skip through portions of the tax form that do not apply to your situation.

But TaxCut has also improved. You can now fill out your personal information on one screen, instead of having to click through four pages. And after you answer a few simple questions at the start of each section, TaxCut will allow you to skip the unnecessary ones.

WHEN it comes to TaxCut, H & R Block is also leveraging something new: its nationwide chain of more than 12,000 tax offices. Starting this year, H & R Block will offer free personalized audit support for users of any version of TaxCut filed electronically. In other words, if you use TaxCut 2005 and discover nine months later that you are being audited, you can call H & R Block. The company will have a tax professional at a local branch help you in gathering the necessary paperwork. And, if needed, a tax specialist will go with you to the audit.

Of course, a major point of buying good software is not to be audited. But this is a nice safety net for a program that is solid all around. And to cap it off, TaxCut is around 25 percent cheaper than its main competitor. For me, that sealed the deal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/bu.../12review.html





It’s magic! Geekgraffiti…geekfiti!



Open-Source Users Break Free From Commercial Software
Barry Collins

Danny and Linda Lee, who are both in their mid-50s, know as much about computers as they do about gangsta rap.

Yet Mr and Mrs Lee's computer at their home in Bedhampton, Hampshire, England, doesn't run Microsoft Windows. Nor is it a newbie-friendly Mac.

"I gave my parents a machine running Linux, and they know no different," says their son Wayne. "I showed them where to click to start the Internet, and they got on with it. It doesn't faze them at all."

Wayne and his parents are among the growing legions turning their backs on conventional, commercial computer software and, instead, trying open-source programs.

These are usually developed as a global collaboration by volunteers, then made freely available online — and the software is rapidly becoming as good and as easy to run as that of brands costing hundreds of dollars.

Products range from Web browsers through to a complete operating system, and most software will run on both Windows PCs and Macs.

There is an important distinction to be drawn between freeware and open-source software, though.

Freeware doesn't cost a penny, but the public cannot view the computer code that comprises the program, should they wish to develop add-ons or modifications. Internet Explorer is freeware, but nobody is allowed to improve the program except Microsoft, its creator.

The Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org) believes that the collaborative approach leads to better, more reliable software because it invites peer review.

Unlike Microsoft Windows, say, programmers around the world can go under the hood of open-source software, find out how it works and collaborate to fix bugs or suggest improvements.

Once the preserve of geeks, open source has gone public in the past year, to the extent that programs such as Firefox have become household names.

When a minor update for this browser was released last December, it was immediately downloaded 10 million times, helping to double its annual market share to 10 percent, the researcher Net Applications reports.

And Firefox is no one-off phenomenon: Forty million people have downloaded OpenOffice, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office.

"I use OpenOffice at home, and I've found that it reads almost all Microsoft Word documents," says Wayne Lee. "I've had no problems at all, and neither have my kids."

Paul Holst of Red Hat U.K., which makes a version of the Linux open-source operating system, says: "The challenge for open source is to make the experience as seamless as possible. I know from experience with my parents that if you install something and it doesn't work within two to three minutes, you've lost them. Once people experience the technology and realize that it's credible, they demand more from their proprietary software."

Even if there is little need to beware of geeks bearing gifts, can free software, created by volunteers, truly be as competent as commercially developed packages? Many experts now think so.

"We are beginning to see free software that is really good," says Rob Jones, editor of Personal Computer World magazine. "The problem is that the people who would benefit most don't know it exists. People who don't want to spend a lot of money on software aren't the hard-core technology enthusiasts."

If that includes you, read the recommendations below for six open-source packages capable of dealing with day-to-day computing needs. Once you have taken a first step down the open-source path, you will find that these programs differ little from products you are used to.

Wayne Lee says: "If I repair a machine for friends, I change the icons around, so when they click on the Internet Explorer logo, it opens Firefox instead. Most people don't notice the difference."

If you are inclined to drill deeper online, you will find communities of enthusiasts eager to improve and add to existing software, often at your request.

Take the Firefox evangelists at forums such as mozillazine.org. A member has asked for an add-on so that he can watch the latest stock-market prices in a side-bar while browsing the Web. This tool will be created to order.

Hundreds of simple yet potent free extensions, both to Firefox and to the Thunderbird e-mail package, already exist at www.mozilla.com/extensions.

One instantly converts foreign currencies on a Web page into pounds. Another delivers thumbnail previews inside Google search results. A third tucks local weather reports permanently inside your browser.

The chances of Microsoft ordering its team of programmers to make such niche add-ons for the now down-at-heel Internet Explorer are, frankly, remote.

Nicholas McGrath, Microsoft's director of platform strategy, says: "We build products according to what our customers want. There are a number of exciting projects in the open-source community, and organic is great when it comes to yogurt, but not when it comes to software development. Customers want to know software is going to be supported, that it will work reliably."

So, what do you do when open-source software goofs up?

With commercial brands, there is frequently a technical-support team. In the open-source world, advice is provided by the online community.

It's an approach that has pros and cons. On the one hand, help is usually provided by knowledgeable people with first-hand experience. On the downside, there is usually nobody on a phone line to deal authoritatively with urgent problems.

The open-source movement is guided by the principle that software should be free, as in speech, rather than beer.

The most famous exception is the Linux operating system, where you pay mainly for documentation and support. It accounts for more than one-fifth of the business-server market, says the research firm IDC, although Linux struggles to gain a foothold in the home, largely because computer manufacturers are reluctant to ship it on their machines.

There are good reasons for this hesitancy: Finding compatible accessories can prove a headache.

As McGrath observes: "The PC plays the key role as the digital hub in the home. Those setups need a lot of different working parts — digital cameras, media players, home networks. All those parts are designed to work with Windows as standard."

Games, too, are nearly always designed to run on Windows.

The tide, however, is beginning to turn.

Dell, the world's largest computer manufacturer, now offers a series of notebooks and desktops without operating systems installed, and the cost saving can be as much as $250.

Linux operating systems are considerably cheaper than Windows XP and, broadly speaking, more secure, too. Now that Dell is prepared to ditch Windows, Linux has to be taken seriously.

Free distribution and the Net's universal reach have empowered a computer-literate generation that is no longer prepared to pay for software or wait ages for updates.

The giants, such as Microsoft, won't be pushovers, especially with new versions of Internet Explorer and Windows due later this year.

Nevertheless, the free-software brigade has created a buzz. The world's richest company is certainly on its toes.

SIX OF THE BEST OPEN-SOURCE FREEBIES

WEB BROWSER: Firefox, www.mozilla.com/firefox

This highly customizable browser is probably the most successful open-source software to date, with 20 million downloads. Why? Because it is quicker, more powerful and less likely to be attacked by security bugs than Internet Explorer. One of Firefox's chief attractions is tabbed browsing, which means you can open several Web pages simultaneously without cluttering your desktop with separate windows. The plug-ins on offer are often fab, too.

Verdict: The best Web browser around, bar none.

OFFICE SUITE: OpenOffice 2.0.1, www.openoffice.org

Microsoft Office dominates the market, but at $300 or more, it's a hefty investment for the home. The latest version of OpenOffice looks so similar, most people will barely notice the difference — and it is free. The software is also compatible with Microsoft (so there is no fear that the kids' homework won't work at school), although it struggled with some heavily formatted Word documents in my tests, although such problems are not unique to OpenOffice.

Verdict: A convincing imposter.

E-MAIL: Thunderbird, www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

As loyal a servant as Parker himself, Thunderbird is more than adequate for home e-mail needs. Similar in design and performance to Outlook Express, Thunderbird soars ahead of its rival with many customizable plug-ins (to give extra functions) and a neatly implemented RSS reader, which brings the latest news from favorite Web sites. However, it made a mess of importing my Outlook address book, confusing first and last names at will.

Verdict: Very good, if occasionally eccentric.

MEDIA CENTER: Media Portal, mediaportal.sourceforge.net

A thinly disguised imitation of Microsoft's Media Center XP edition, the portal provides access to all music, photos and video from one screen or a remote control. It also enables television recording for those with a tuner in their PC. Media Portal is not a full operating system, nor is it as intuitive as Media Center — and you will need to tweak several well-hidden settings — but it is a poke in the eye to those who say open-source software is too complex.

Verdict: A multimedia marvel, after a little tinkering.

INSTANT MESSAGING: Gaim, gaim.sourceforge.net

While Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo childishly still refuse to let their instant-messaging (IM) services talk to one another, Gaim makes them mutually compatible, in a similar manner to Trillian, the superb (but not open-source) freeware. Gaim lacks some of the advanced features offered by the IM packages (there is no alert for incoming Hotmail messages, for example), yet its true beauty lies in its convenience and sheer simplicity. Even better are the nifty free plug-ins.

Verdict: A must-have for all ultra-popular IM chatterboxes.

IMAGE EDITING: The Gimp, www.gimp.org

The perversely named Gimp is a open-source rival to Photoshop, the professional's image editor of choice. As such, it is a reasonably complicated beast, not made any easier by a two-stage installation on Windows. The Gimp has most of the features any digital-camera enthusiast will ever need, and the appearance can be customized to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop (at least on Macs). Competition among budget image-editing software is now fierce, but The Gimp is powerful — and free.

Verdict: Respectable photo-editing tool; not for beginners.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184234,00.html





It's True: These Museum Exhibits Are Fake
Mary Blume

The Museum of Modern Art here has finally reopened with a major Pierre Bonnard exhibition, and over on a quiet residential street in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris the Musée de la Contrefaçon has a timely new show on winter sports gear.

The Musée de la Contrefaçon, or museum of counterfeits, doesn't deal with art forgeries or even with the parlous subject of replicas; though its tasteful copy of the "Winged Victory" is gone, reproduction Régence chairs still decorate its few rooms. Backed by the Union des Fabricants, a manufacturers' group whose roots go back to 1872, it is dedicated to the fight against commercial fakes, from the Rolex watches sold by streetside peddlers to Peugeot hubcaps. Illicit traders, according to European Union figures, net more than E1.5 billion, or about $1.8 billion, per year.

As in everything, there are fashions. The museum used to display fraudulent inner soles and spools of thread and tins of Capitaine Cook marinated herring labeled Capitaine Cody and Capitaine Foc. As consumer tastes change, the humble herring has been replaced by, say, cellphones: in one day, July 28, 2004, customs officers at Charles de Gaulle Airport found 29,000 "Nokias."

The display of winter sportsgear not only signals a growth industry but has its premonitory side as the Winter Olympics approach, and with them shady dealers in fake goggles and parkas. In the spring, with the World Cup, the same vendors will be on hand with seasonally adjusted goods.

The Museum of Counterfeits is possibly the only museum that needn't court wealthy donors since manufacturers are only too glad to hand over samples that have been used in successful lawsuits. Nor, for obvious reasons, does the museum have a boutique-a fake fake Chanel or Vuitton would perhaps be an ironic step too far.

The crowds that flock to Bonnard won't be at the Counterfeit Museum; the joys of spotting the fake Cartier from the real or of gazing at a vitrine of ersatz ink cartridges can pall. On the other hand, the exhibits extract drama from the fear factor.

If visitors are not as moved as they should be by the claim that counterfeit goods cost France E6 billion a year, with a resulting loss of more than 30,000 jobs, there are scary warnings of fines for buyers, which can go up to E300,000 with a jail term of three years, and health risks from phony medicines (do not, advises a caption, order off the Internet), fabrics that cause skin disease and exploding pressure cookers, to say nothing of defective aircraft parts and booze that blinds.

With counterfeit goods accounting for 5 percent to 7 percent of global trade, production lines thrive from Thailand to Brazil, with North Africa now overtaking Southwest Asia as the major growth area. The museum shows fake sneakers made in the Marais district of Paris as well as Bulgarian "Lacoste" boots and a plastic bag full of greedy little crocodiles ready to spawn hundreds of "Lacoste" shirts.

International terrorist groups and money launderers now find the counterfeit trade a profitable revenue- raiser. Even drug traffickers have been rethinking their profit margins: a label states that while a kilo of cannabis leaf fetches only E2,000 in Europe, a kilo of pirated CDs nets E3,000.

An odd exhibit is the "Vuitton" caps seized in Mauritius - odd because while they use the LV print they are not based on any model produced by Vuitton's milliners.

The packages of fake Marlboros look very convincing, and soothing since they lack a strident health warning, as do the Monte Cristo No. 3 cigars, but Mr. Clean becomes Netta, Nescafé becomes Casa Café and Tabasco is Tabard.

A star of the show is a wax mannequin dressed from head to almost toe (for some reason he is shoeless) in awful-looking phony Saint Laurent. He carries a shopping bag that is pretty good except that the words "pour hommes" come out "pour bommes." The caption suggests that in China h and b are easily confused.

Inevitably there is a Kelly bag, Swiss Army knives, Levis, Bic razors, pens and cigarette lighters and endless sports shoes. In 2004 more than 40 million pairs of sports shoes were sold in France, excluding ski boots, and not all were kosher. One Air Max Nike model that went on sale this January was already available in a fake; while the real shoe cost E180, its imitation sold for E50.

Fake sneakers are more dangerous than one might think, the museum warns, "because the shoe is a product in immediate relation with our muscular and nervous functioning." Fakes offer no arch support and their soles fall off.

In general, forgeries of luxury goods are decreasing in favor of mass-produced items.

In addition to floppy disks, Microsoft software and DVDs, toys are a growth industry and the museum outlines carefully the difference between its fake and real Barbie dolls. The true Barbie has supple joints, can be easily dressed or undressed with its Velcro fastening and its hair is carefully planted to permit styling. "False Barbies," the caption warns, "quickly go BALD."

In olden times, the most copied French liquor was Bénédictine, with nearly 1,000 imitations. Dubonnet was available as Duponey and there was a mysterious bogus Pernod labeled "vrai Per'nod Suisse, fabriqué à Oujda, Maroc."

Among the more old-fashioned drinks, Cointreau is actively copied as Coinceau and Coinfereaux, but the trend is to premium brands: Dom Pérignon appears as Perinon and Dom Popingnon. It is best to avoid bottles in foreign bars, the label states. "Fake liquor may have no taste or be fatal."

The oldest exhibit in the museum dates from the first century B.C. and is French. At the time, it seems, Greek and Roman wines were considered the best, a 28-liter amphora having the same market value as one Gallic slave. The museum has an amphora whose stopper is a crude imitation of the mark of Marcus Cassius Caius and which, instead of a fine Phalerian, presumably contained an inferior growth from the midi of Gaul.

As people used to say in those days, caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/...ures/Blume.php