Vulnerability in WinZip Could Compromise Security
Larry Seltzer
Security analysts on Friday reported that versions of the popular ZIP file management program WinZip have a serious security flaw.
According to security intelligence firm iDefense Inc., an error in the parameter parsing code in these versions "allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code."
The attacker would have to construct a specially designed MIME archive (with one of .mim, .uue, .uu, .b64, .bhx, .hqx and .xxe extensions) and distribute the file to users, the company explained.
Once opened, the attack would trick WinZip into executing code contained in the attacking file. iDefense said it had a functioning proof-of-concept attack demonstrating the problem.
The malicious file could be distributed by e-mail, on a Web page, or through peer- to-peer networks.
Files handled by WinZip are not normally executable, so many users are less- hesitant to launch them, even when they come from unknown sources. This problem makes those files much more inherently dangerous.
According to iDefense, versions 7 and 8, as well as the latest beta of WinZip 9 are vulnerable to this attack. However, the released Version 9 of WinZip is not vulnerable.
In addition to upgrading, users can prevent an attack by turning off automatic handling of these file types by WinZip in Windows Explorer. In Windows XP, choose Tools-Folder Options, select the File Types tab, scroll down to the appropriate file types, and either delete them or reassign file handling to another program.
Meanwhile, security experts advised users to be suspicious of these file types, as they are not widely used.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1540361,00.asp
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MP3 Getting DRM Antipiracy Locks This Year
John Borland
The venerable MP3 music format, the technology most widely associated with unrestricted file swapping, is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying.
Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents behind the MP3 digital music technology, are in the midst of creating a new digital rights management add-on for the popular format, a Thomson executive said Tuesday.
The move is aimed at pushing more deeply into the world of authorized music distribution through services such as Apple Computer's iTunes or the new Napster. All those new services sell music wrapped in digital locks--most in incompatible proprietary technologies by companies such as Apple, Microsoft or RealNetworks--while MP3 songs today are typically distributed free of copy controls.
"Eventually, digital distribution will be a significant mass market," said Rocky Caldwell, Thomson's director of technology marketing. "We think it will be served well by (digital rights management) that is based on standards. No one else seems to be proposing that."
The move is recognition of a dawning new era in digital music, in which pay-per-song services are beginning to gain ground on the anarchic file-swapping networks and in which CDs themselves may ultimately be overtaken by digital downloads.
The first era in Internet audio belonged undeniably to MP3, an audio standard codified by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) a dozen years ago. Thomson and Fraunhofer, the German companies that hold patents in the MP3 technology, have long been collecting royalties from software and hardware companies that use the format.
But the same features that made MP3 attractive to tens of millions of ordinary computer users made the big record labels deeply suspicious of the format. For years, they've been looking for a digital song format that would include tools to prevent people from making unauthorized copies or swapping tunes on networks like Kazaa.
Microsoft, with its Windows Media and associated digital rights management technology, has been one big beneficiary of that, with its format used in Napster, Musicmatch and other song stores and bundled on physical CDs. Apple's own Fairplay copy protection tools have also won the big record labels' approval and form the heart of the company's iTunes Music Store.
Thomson and Fraunhofer's rights management technology will be based in large part on open standards the MPEG group and the Open Mobile Alliance are adopting, Caldwell said. The companies will provide free use of the copy protection technology to anyone who licenses the MP3 format, he said.
As with any other digital rights management format, the technology will have to be supported by software players and chipmakers before devices are able to play songs protected by it. The companies are in talks with chip manufacturers and music distribution services now, Caldwell said.
Caldwell said he expected to see devices and services supporting the protected MP3 format by the end of 2004. The plans were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5167841.html
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HarddiskOgg
On-the-fly-line-in-to-Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3-encoding
What is it?
HarddiskOgg takes a wave input stream from any Windows 95/98/2000/XP compatible sampling device (including microphone input and line in) and converts it to an Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3 (optional) stream. This happens in realtime, so basically it is a harddisk recorder in
Ogg Vorbis.
Features:
· Real-time encoding with bitrates from 32kbit/sec. up to 320kbit/sec.
· Stereo or mono recording from 8kHz to 48kHz
· Automatic numbering of output files
· Can be placed in the systray and activated by a single click
· Smart on-the-fly normalization for low-volume sources
· Uses the high quality, patent free Ogg Vorbis encoding engine. Ogg Vorbis easily outperforms MP3 in sound quality, especially at lower bit rates.
· LAME MP3 encoder compatible. However, due to patent issues HarddiskOgg ist not distributed with the LAME encoding DLL. If you want MP3 support, fetch LAME_ENC.DLL from the web, but make sure you have the appropriate rights for doing so.
· Command line mode for easy integration or scheduled recordings
· No fluff or stupid skinned interface, just works.
· HarddiskOgg is FREEWARE!
http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php
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Court Says Net-Spread DVD Code Isn't Trade Secret
Bloomberg
A computer code that unlocked encrypted DVDs was so widely distributed on the Internet that it did not qualify as a trade secret, a California appeals court has ruled.
The DVD Copy Control Assn., which licenses encryption software for the movie, computer and consumer electronics industries, sought an injunction in 1999 to block programmer Andrew Bunner from republishing the code on the Internet.
The group dropped its case against Bunner last month.
The 6th District Court of Appeal in San Jose ruled that a trial judge improperly barred Bunner from publishing the DeCSS computer code. The code, originally published by a Norwegian teenager, incorporated encryption keys from the original CSS program licensed by the DVD Copy Control Assn.
"There is a great deal of evidence that by the time DVD CCA sought the preliminary injunction prohibiting disclosure of the DeCSS program, DeCSS had been so widely distributed that the CSS technology may have lost its trade-secrets status," the appeals court said.
Robert Sugarman, an attorney for the association, did not immediately return a call for comment.
In 2001, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said in another case that it was illegal to distribute DeCSS and upheld a ban on the publication.
Bunner's attorney, Allonn Levy, argued that the preliminary injunction violated his client's free-speech rights.
"Both common sense and the 1st Amendment dictate that a trade secret that isn't secret anymore just isn't protectable," Levy said in an e-mail.
The appeals court said Bunner was entitled to recoup the costs of his appeal.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology
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HP, Philips Lock Up Broadcast Content
Clint Boulton
With the proliferation of file-sharing networks, protecting digital content has never been more challenging for copyright holders and regulators.
To stem the problem, the Federal Communications Commission recently drafted new "Broadcast Flag" rules to protect content from being intercepted between recording depots such as computers or TiVo to personal televisions.
Against this backdrop, Hewlett-Packard (Quote, Chart) on Tuesday teamed with longtime partner Philips (Quote, Chart) to announce a new digital rights management (DRM) (define) technology to enable direct recording of "copy-once" content from digital broadcasts.
New discs from the companies' are expected to be used in future products that meet the FCC's content protection requirements, as well as current DVD players and DVD+R/+RW recorders. The technology can also be applied to other recording formats, the companies said.
The FCC's Broadcast Flag ruling proposes that broadcasters may include code called a "Broadcast Flag" in their transmissions to protect the content from being snatched as it travels from one appliance to another and rebroadcast over the Internet.
For example, digital TV content broadcast over the air will include a data tag, or broadcast flag. Any digital TV tuner built after July 2005 must not allow broadcast-flagged programs to be recorded in such a way that they can be redistributed in their high-definition format, where they might be shared with other consumers. This is the idea behind copy-once recording.
The technology, which includes high-bandwidth DRM technology from chipmaking giant Intel (Quote, Chart), has been submitted in the first round of filings to the FCC in order to be among the first technologies approved for the recording of content marked with the Broadcast Flag.
Both HP and Philips, of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, are looking to be early movers in a space that is expected to be lucrative. For example, for all of the flack Microsoft takes over security affronts to its software, the company's DRM technology is very popular and ubiquitous in Windows Media software.
Analysts have said that millions of dollars can be made from licensing fees related to DRM.
In related news, HP has joined the Content Management Licensing Authority (CMLA) as a founding contributor to support adoption of mobile handsets and other devices that deploy Open Mobile Alliance's Digital Rights Management (DRM) version 2.0 specification.
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3320371
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Announcer alleges major media company is biased.
The Passion Of Howard Stern
Eric Boehlert
From the moment last week when Clear Channel Communications suspended Howard Stern's syndicated morning show from the company's radio stations, denouncing it as "vulgar, offensive and insulting," speculation erupted that the move had more to do with Stern's politics than his raunchy shock-jock shtick.
Stern's loyal listeners, Clear Channel foes and many Bush administration critics immediately reached the same conclusion: The notorious jock was yanked off the air because he had recently begun trashing Bush, and Bush-friendly Clear Channel used the guise of "indecency" to shut him up. That the content of Stern's crude show hadn't suddenly changed, but his stance on Bush had, gave the theory more heft. That, plus his being pulled off the air in key electoral swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.
This week, Stern himself went on the warpath, weaving in among his familiar monologues about breasts and porn actresses accusations that Texas-based Clear Channel -- whose Republican CEO, Lowry Mays, is extremely close to both George W. Bush and Bush's father -- canned him because he deviated from the company's pro-Bush line. "I gotta tell you something," Stern told his listeners. "There's a lot of people saying that the second that I started saying, 'I think we gotta get Bush out of the presidency,' that's when Clear Channel banged my ass outta here. Then I find out that Clear Channel is such a big contributor to President Bush, and in bed with the whole Bush administration, I'm going, 'Maybe that's why I was thrown off: because I don't like the way the country is leaning too much to the religious right.' And then, bam! Let's get rid of Stern. I used to think, 'Oh, I can't believe that.' But that's it! That's what's going on here! I know it! I know it!"
Stern's been relentless all week, detailing the close ties between Clear Channel executives and the Bush administration, and insisting that political speech, not indecency, got him in trouble with the San Antonio broadcasting giant. If he hadn't turned against Bush, Stern told his listeners, he'd still be heard on Clear Channel stations.
In a statement released to Salon, the media company insists that "Clear Channel Radio is not operated according to any political agenda or ideology."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...ern/index.html
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Loudeye Snags Antipiracy Start-Up
Dinesh C. Sharma
Loudeye, a digital music services provider, said Tuesday that it has acquired privately held Overpeer for its antipiracy tools and services.
Under the deal, the company is taking over New York-based Overpeer for about 1.7 million shares of Loudeye common stock. That values the deal at just under $4 million, based on Loudeye's closing price Monday.
Loudeye said Overpeer's products such as antipiracy services and data-mining and promotional tools will be meshed with its products and services for media companies.
Overpeer's data-mining tools are designed to let online music companies keep an eye on real-time downloading across file- sharing networks and take action to curb copyright infringement, Loudeye said. Last month, Overpeer recorded 25 billion digital download hits, blocking illegal copying of material across 150 million unique user sessions, Loudeye added.
Loudeye teamed up with Microsoft last year to promote its service that helps other companies set up online music stores much like Apple Computer's iTunes. Loudeye asserts that there is room for an intermediary in the business despite the tiny profit margins, so it is looking for customers interested in digital music distribution as a promotional tool for another products or services, rather than as a standalone business.
"Overpeer's strong technology and products are a natural fit with our digital music and media solutions, and we share a common goal of driving legitimate digital media revenue and monetizing content across all digital distribution channels," Loudeye Chairman Anthony Bay said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5168110.html
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Macrovision Corporation Reports Record Net Revenues And Earnings For Fourth Quarter 2003
Press Release
Macrovision Corporation (Nasdaq: MVSN) announced today that fourth quarter 2003 net revenues were a record $39.9 million, compared with $30.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2002, an increase of 32%. Pro forma earnings for the quarter (before amortization of intangibles from acquisitions, in-process research and development write-off, non-cash deferred compensation expense, and impairment losses on investments) were $11.9 million or 29% higher than the $9.3 million recorded in last year’s fourth quarter. Pro forma diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.24, or 26% higher than the comparable earnings per share of $0.19 in the fourth quarter a year ago.
Net revenues for the full year of 2003 also set a record high, increasing to $128.3 million from $102.3 million for 2002, an increase of 26%. Pro forma earnings for 2003 were $37.8 million, 8% higher than the $35.1 million recorded in 2002. Pro forma diluted earnings per share for 2003 were $0.76, 10% higher than the comparable earnings per share of $0.69 last year.
Net income for the fourth quarter of 2003 was $10.7 million, compared with $0.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2002. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.21, compared to $0.02 a year ago. Net income for the full year of 2003 was $29.7 million, or 146% higher than the $12.1 million recorded in 2002. Diluted earnings per share for 2003 were $0.60, 150% higher than 2002, which were $0.24.
Cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and long-term marketable securities were $269.6 million as of December 31, 2003.
“We are pleased with our fourth quarter results,” said Ian Halifax, CFO at Macrovision. “Our revenues benefited from a strong holiday season for our DVD copy protection solution, and increased sales in our enterprise software electronic licensing business. The fourth quarter was important to us for a number of reasons, notably the launch of Macrovision FLEXnet™, the Universal Software Licensing Platform™; passing the 2 billion protected track milestone with our CDS™ copy-protection technology for music CDs; and the U. S. Patent Office’s declaration of a DRM patent interference proceeding between Macrovision and InterTrust Technologies Corporation.”
http://technology.press-world.com/v/60558.html
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Groups To Intervene In Canadian Song Swapping Case
Judge allows arguments on privacy, copyright
Recording industry wants swappers named
Tyler Hamilton
Two public-interest groups were given the right yesterday to intervene in a landmark music-piracy case that has the potential to weaken privacy rights in Canada. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) is asking for a federal court order that would force Internet service providers to disclose the identities of 29 alleged Internet music swappers. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein adjourned the proceeding until March 12 so technical and privacy issues associated with the order could be studied further.
The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), based at the University of Ottawa, and Electronic Frontier Canada were both granted leave yesterday to make legal arguments in the case related to privacy, due process and copyright law. The two groups, which asked for intervener status Thursday, must now file written arguments on each issue by Friday, said Philippa Lawson, executive director and legal counsel for public-interest clinic. "This needs to be probably debated and resolved," said Lawson. The decision to issue a court order, she added, could set a dangerous precedent for future cases related to copyright infringement, defamation and other civil wrongdoing. Lawson also said that although copyright law in Canada is unclear, she fears the accused will be forced to settle with the recording industry because they don't have or can't afford legal representation. "This is frightening for a defendant," she said. "It's important the court clarify what is legal under copyright law before CRIA can back people into corners and bully them into settlements."
The accused, if found guilty, face civil penalties of between $500 and $20,000 per pirated song. The industry association said the 29 music swappers it is pursuing are "egregious" uploaders — those with between 800 and several thousand songs stored on their computers. The association opposed the intervener request, but Justice von Finckenstein acknowledged the case was entering a "new area of law" and that the outcome could have wide ramifications. Richard Pfohl, general counsel for the association, said the fact the recording industry must apply for a court order to get Internet subscriber data is evidence privacy laws are working. Privacy is more at risk when people use a file-sharing network, he said. "Peer-to-peer services typically employ spyware or Trojan horses that can open up users' personal computers to thieves." The Internet service providers being asked to hand over information include Bell Canada, Rogers Cable, Telus Corp., Vidéotron Ltd. and Shaw Cable.
Shaw is the only company openly fighting the court order.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851
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Pirate Copies Of Monster On Internet
DDC
JOHANNESBURG - Withinh hours of Charlize Theron winning the Oscar for her role in Monster, pirated copies of the movie were released for download from the Internet.
"Downloadable copies of the movie first appeared on the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network this morning, just hours after the Oscar ceremony," said lawyer Reinhardt Buys.
"The file is quite big (437 MB) and would take anything between five and 20 hours to download."
When JM Coetzee won the Nobel prize for literature some months ago, copies of his books also appeared on file-sharing networks hours after the announcement.
Monster joins movies such as The Lord of The Rings and Matrix that were available on the Internet even before they were released in the US.
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/03/02.../amonster.html
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File-Swap 'Killer' Grabs Attention
John Borland
A new political battle is brewing over Net music swapping, focusing on a company that claims to be able to automatically identify copyrighted songs on networks like Kazaa and to block illegal downloads.
Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic has been making the rounds of Washington, D.C., legislative and regulatory offices for the last month, showing off technology it says can sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast.
The company's technology is still being tested and could yet prove unworkable. But limited demonstrations have already turned some heads in legislative offices.
"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," said one senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity. "We are open to all kinds of different solutions at this point. Having the technological ability to do this certainly opens up some opportunities."
Audible Magic has predictably become a protege of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has helped the company gain entree to official Washington circles. The group says Audible Magic's technology, or something like it, should be adopted by file-swapping companies if they are serious about not supporting widespread copyright infringement.
The RIAA's backing, and the month-long press tour, has given the technology new credibility in legislative, regulatory and university circles. After watching a demonstration at RIAA headquarters in late January, University of Rochester Provost Chuck Phelps said he instructed his technology staff to evaluate the technology for use on his campus.
The RIAA isn't pressing for legislation or enforced usage of Audible Magic's software, at least not yet. Indeed, in an election year, any serious congressional attention to the issue is unlikely. But peer-to- peer companies are keenly aware of the potential for political strong arming--and of the threat it poses to the world of file swapping.
Privacy advocates and file-swapping backers have been deeply critical of any technology that would enforce monitoring or blocking of file swapping or any other Internet service. They argue that filters could infringe on free speech and block technological innovation, all to serve the entertainment industry's relatively narrow interests.
Nevertheless, the vast popularity of file-swapping networks like Kazaa remains largely based on trades of copyrighted songs, videos and software, according to many Net analysts. Being forced to install song-stopping filters inside software such as Kazaa--much as a court required of Napster in its heyday–-could severely disrupt the ability of file swappers to freely trade songs.
In past months, peer-to-peer executives including Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming have repeatedly told legislators that it was technically impossible or infeasible to install adequate filtering systems on their networks. Now some are switching focus, saying that even if filtering is technically possible, mandating it would be a disastrous mistake.
Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific technology as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a file-sharing war," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a file-swapping company trade association. "It is time that (the entertainment industry) be politely told that theirs is not the only social and economic interest at stake."
P2P United members have not seen Audible Magic's technology, Eisgrau noted. His group sent letters to RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol and Audible Magic earlier in the week asking for a demonstration.
In an interview with CNET News.com, Bainwol said he would be delighted to do so: "The peer-to-peer community has said they are serious about filtering. But they've said they can't filter. We're saying, well, the good news is that you can."
From Napster's death to Audible Magic
The idea of filtering file-swapping networks got its first test run in Napster's last days, when courts mandated that the company block trades of copyrighted songs with near-perfect accuracy. The company first tried to block key works, but that failed when users simply renamed their songs.
Later, it began blocking using audio "fingerprinting" technology supplied by partner Relatable, and the amount of material available through the service dropped from tens of millions of files to just a handful almost overnight. Napster closed its doors to the public not long afterwards.
Audible Magic's song-identifying technology is the product of a group of former Yamaha sound engineers, who originally created the software to help movie post-production studios search massive databases of sound effects such as footsteps or door slams. In the late 1990s, they joined forces with former Hewlett-Packard marketer Vance Ikezoye and his newly formed Audible Magic startup, and turned their attention to identifying digital media files such as songs.
The company's technology works by identifying "psycho-acoustical" properties--essentially the computer equivalent of listening to the song itself. That means that the identification procedure is flexible. A song might be compressed into a lower quality recording, or have a few seconds of silence taken out at the beginning or end, or be otherwise transformed, and the technology will still recognize it as the same song, the company says.
The identification technology has already won credibility, used by songwriters' and publishers' trade association SESAC to identify when songs are played on broadcast radio in order to collect royalties. Several CD pressing plants also use the technology to track what they're manufacturing and ensure that their customers aren't trying to create counterfeit discs.
But it has been the company's peer-to-peer-focused efforts that have now brought it squarely to the forefront of the copyright debates.
Audible Magic is offering two different versions of its technology, one focused on networks and one on file-swapping software itself.
For several years it has tested a network-based "appliance," which would sit inside an Internet service provider (ISP) or business network and monitor data traffic as it goes by. If it identifies a copyrighted song, the technology would stop the transfer in progress.
A test of that technology was held at the University of Wyoming last year, but was ended after students complained about privacy invasions. In response, Ikezoye offered a university-focused version that simply blocks the copyrighted songs, and does not link specific trades to specific computer users.
That's helped spur new interest in the technology, such as from the University of Rochester's Phelps, although announced customers are still few and far between.
Inside your software?
The company's main demonstration for the last several weeks has been a version built into a piece of open-source Gnutella software. Similarly, it could be built into any other popular file-swapping package, company CEO Ikezoye said.
In that software-based version, the technology watches what songs are being downloaded, and when it has enough data to make a match--usually about a third to half of the file--it uses the Net connection to call Audible Magic's database. If it finds a match with a copyrighted song, it stops the download midstream.
Similarly, when files are put into a shared folder, the demonstration software calls up the Audible Magic database. If it finds a match, it prevents the song from being shared with other people on the network.
That second version of the software has not been tested on a large scale. While it appeared to function well in a single-user demonstration, implementing it on a widespread basis, particularly in software such as Kazaa or Morpheus where tens of millions of search requests a day are made, could have unforeseen consequences.
Moreover, for the filtering to work on a large scale, Ikezoye said that pressure--probably through legislation--would have to be put on file-swapping companies, which would be unlikely to voluntarily adopt his technology universally.
"This implementation clearly requires the cooperation one way or another of the peer-to-peer vendors," Ikezoye said.
Audible Magic's technology is far from perfect, even if it works as demonstrated. It's most critical weakness is likely to be encrypted files and encrypted networks, which its audio recognition software can't break through. Nor is it difficult to imagine hackers creating "cracked" versions of file-swapping software that have the song-recognition technology broken or stripped out, if legislators were to mandate its use.
Audible Magic is not the only company seeking to build filters for file swapping. Napster creator Shawn Fanning's new company Snocap is working on similar technology, with an aim toward giving record companies and music studios a way to make money from peer-to-peer networks.
But the file-swapping controversies are today as much rhetoric and politics as they are technology, and the last few weeks may have quietly seen a change in the file-swapping debates.
"I've achieved my objective, which is to say our technology works," Ikezoye said. "It is interesting that the question has shifted from 'Is this possible?' to 'How should this be deployed?'"
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5168505.html
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Analysis: The Future Of Digital Music
Jonny Evans
Apple's iTunes Music Store was under discussion at New York's Digital Music Forum yesterday, even though the company did not officially attend the event.
RealNetworks vice president of music services Sean Ryan offered the keynote at the show. He said: "2004 will be a great year for digital music", and said that successful services need to supply a: "mix of offerings, multiple services (a la carte and subscription), control of the media player, and the ability to efficiently acquire customers and to get music off the computer"
With the industry ready to reach critical mass, Ryan shared his belief that the industry is now closed to new start-ups. "The time is over for start-ups in this sector," he said.
Ryan observed that a roughly 50/50 split exists between subscription and a la carte services, and warned that format incompatibility "will be the bane" of the year, predicting this would "ease" in 2005.
Format wars 'may slow growth'
The latter remarks look at the emerging digital music format war. Real offers its own formats, which also support Apple's basic format of choice, AAC. Real's offering does not support the extended proprietary version of AAC (which integrates an Apple-developed digital rights management system called FairPlay). In the other corner sits software giant Microsoft, which parades a concept of "consumer choice" to promote its Windows Media Audio (WMA) standard that it would like to see emerge as the industry standard in the sector.
Apple's outgoing chief financial officer Fred Anderson touched on the format war on Monday, saying: "With the HP deal we are going to get tremendous momentum behind establishing our digital music standard AAC as the digital music standard."
Anderson also confirmed that Apple is "hard at work" on bringing iTunes Music Store to other geographies, and agreed the company expects that doing so will "impact more on iPod sales".
He added that iPods are "doing really well in Europe", adding: "I hear in the UK it has generated the same sort of cultural change as you see in New York."
The format war highlighted by Ryan may be a tough campaign. Apple will fight to keep its leading position in the new industry. Anderson said: "We are not going to let anyone else take our leadership position".
The world on a (digital) plate
A conference panel on selling music online alleged that: "consumers want everything, everywhere and they want it now". Speakers from Napster, MusicNet, AOL Music, MusicNow, the Orchard and Payment One made a several key points on the topic.
They agreed that consumers want a lot from their digital music stores and operators that deliver what they want will "define the space". They also stressed the need to "sort out" format incompatibilities, and agreed that individual track downloads are easier for consumers to understand, and will therefore remain "attractive" to them.
Steven Marks, senior vice president of legal and business affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), discussed the music industry's strategy to create a legitimate online music business.
He believes that educating consumers doesn't work without the litigation the RIAA is currently employing against 2,500 file sharers. He agreed that peer-to-peer services could emerge as part of the digital music industry mix, but existing groups would need to "legitimize" their services. He also said that "current laws" regarding copyright are "good enough". "We have no plans to overhaul copyright law," he added.
P2P levels the field
Peer-to-peer champions at the show observed that peer-to-peer services are seeing massive growth, and claimed independent labels and artists have seen sales increases through such services, as they gain access to consumers – this reflects the major labels dominance of existing ways to reach consumers, TV, radio and retail. "Peer-to-peer provides an entry point for smaller players" they said. Approximately 12 billion tracks are downloaded using such services, they said.
Jonathan Potter, who leads the Digital Music Association, warned that Apple may face unexpected resistance to its success: he described the "antiquated" rights system that exists in the US that hindered development of legitimate services, and limits the number of tracks services can offer today.
He warned that some music industry dinosaurs regard Apple's success as an indication that usage restrictions are too lax, and "should be tightened". He admitted to a sea-change in the industry's treatment of the new services, "labels care about our success", he said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=8078
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Music Sales Sing An Upbeat Tune Again
Edna Gundersen
After moping through three years of downhill album sales, the music business is gleefully toasting a turnaround. Experts point to improved legal download services, curbs on piracy, a brightening economy and a diversity of products and formats as reasons consumers are buying more music.
Album sales last week were up 8% over the corresponding week a year ago and so far this year are up 12% over 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Mid-February registered the biggest sales in any weekly cycle, excluding the Christmas season, since SoundScan began tracking in 1991.
That surge, attributed to Valentine's Day gift shopping, a post-Grammy spike and the new Norah Jones album — it sold 1 million copies its first week — goosed the momentum of a rebound that began in September and posted gains in year-to-year comparisons for 11 of the next 15 weeks.
Before September, gloom prevailed as 2003 sales fell short of 2002 in all but two of 36 cycles. By late August, year-to-date sales had dipped 8.6% behind 2002, but a fourth-quarter rally reduced the gap to 3.6% by the end of 2003.
Heading into its sixth month, the spurt may be cause for celebration, but there's a whiff of foreboding in the festive air, as many worry that ballooning sales could go flat faster than today's champagne bubbles.
"It's not surprising to see CD sales up, but I'd be surprised to see sales rise significantly over the next year," says Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. "The long-term trend continues to be downward and could stay that way for two decades as the business moves to digital distribution. During that period, we'll see random fluctuations."
Though physical CDs still account for 96% of music sales, a digital transition is inevitable, Leigh says. Store-bought singles in particular are losing ground to downloads. Last week, consumers bought 164,000 singles in stores vs. 2.1 million tracks online.
Escalating online sales suggest that lawsuits targeting pirates are reining in peer-to- peer activity at renegade sites. Conflicting results of recent studies both support and refute that notion, Leigh says.
"One thing is certain," he says. "Legitimate online sales are up sharply, but it's still a fraction of what's being traded peer-to-peer."
To overtake free-for-all networks, paid services need to provide easier access, fewer restrictions and deeper inventory.
"There's no Beatles catalog, for instance," Leigh says. "Some popular artists aren't there yet, and that's the No. 1 reason subscription services get cancellations."
Rob Sisco, president of Nielsen Music, believes lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America rekindled sales, not by striking fear in music pirates but by educating users.
Most illegal downloaders "would not be willing to walk into a retail store, take CDs that struck their fancy and walk out without paying," Sisco says. "That (piracy) is stealing had to be pointed out, and it was pointed out at a perfect time, when legal alternatives were available, and the business had some exciting product to offer."
SoundScan's upticks in both digital and CD sales coincided with the start of the RIAA campaign and persisted through 2003. "The facts are very encouraging," Sisco says. "It's an absolute bona fide trend: Everything's up."
Contending that a rise in quality is aiding the reversal, Sisco says the current market offers bountiful choices of "wonderful music" for all age groups, particularly boomers grabbing CDs by Jones, Josh Groban and Harry Connick Jr.
The surge also fits the theory that a rising tide lifts all boats.
"The momentum around home entertainment has been building over a long period," says Gary Arnold, Best Buy's senior vice president of entertainment. "The film industry has been delivering mega-hits to DVD, and that brings more traffic into our stores."
He foresees further boosts in sales as consumers adjust to different formats and delivery systems.
"The music industry has always existed on selling multiple configurations," Arnold says. "We have a mature configuration, the CD, dominating now, but we're seeing other formats catch on, and the technology will grow. Music DVDs have exploded; they've become the live album for this generation."
Last year, cassette sales fell 40% while music DVDs climbed 105%. Rather than delivering a death blow to content, format extinction historically ushers in a technology upgrade that enhances content.
Arnold also sees positive results from Universal's move last fall to a $12.98 suggested list price for most CDs. It allowed retailers to trim some new releases to $9.99.
"We think $10 is a magical price point more closely in line with what consumers think CDs should cost," Arnold says. "It's part of the positive news that's making the music business more exciting. We may have ups and downs, but right now, music is back."
At least for the moment.
"Admittedly, one thing helping comparisons is that after a couple years of decline, you have easier numbers to beat," says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard director of charts. "I suspect sales will continue this momentum until September, when we hit a real test."
Then weekly album counts will have to compete with the robust totals racked in late 2003.
Music's wobbly ride in the new millennium warrants concern, he says, but it's not the wild roller coaster that swept the dot-com universe from boom to bust. The rally justifies cautious optimism and deflates doomsday headlines.
Mayfield says, "It's been a temptation to look at the sales declines in 2001 and 2002 and the first eight months of last year and say, 'Gee, it's over for record companies and music stores.' Certainly, illegal downloading and CD burners have been an insidious threat. Digital distribution will impact the future.
"Yet during the same week that we reached 2 million transactions in digital track sales, more than 17 million albums were sold. Retail stores and physical CDs have a long life ahead."
The technology that allows piracy to cannibalize CD sales also may be spurring music's growth by introducing new means to discover artists. The Internet, satellite radio and proliferating video channels are expanding music's reach.
"Once labels figure out how to deal with the new realities, I suspect there will be more gain than harm," Mayfield says.
During the slump, experts pointed to a souring economy, rampant piracy, high CD prices and lousy music as causes. Mayfield takes issue with the last argument.
"I have to laugh when people say music sucks," he says. "There are as many as 30,000 titles introduced to the market every year. We're talking about an awful lot to choose from. Even in down years, there's always a great interest in music. People wouldn't be stealing if they didn't think it had value."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...ic-sales_x.htm
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DVD XCopy — Now What?
Company Raises Rabble Over Court-Forced Changes to Software
Cade Metz
One week after a California court ruled that DVD XCopy violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 321 Studios removed the ripping engine from its popular DVD copying application.
Planning to appeal the court's decision, 321 had requested a stay in the case, but the stay has yet to be granted, and under the court's ruling, the company was required to stop selling a version of the product that could lift (rip) data from copy-protected DVDs. The company, which will continue to seek a stay although the major movie studios have opposed it, has started a protest campaign (
www.protectfairuse.org) against the court's decision, encouraging people to contact the press, the major movie studios, and congress to voice support for DXD X Copy and fair use rights.
Ripper-free versions of the product, renamed DVD XCopy Xpress RF and DVD XCopy Platinum RF, are already available from the company's Web site (
www.321studios.com). Although these versions can't rip data off copy-protected DVDs, they can still duplicate data from DVDs that lack copy protection, compress the data, and move it to blank disks.
So what does this mean for consumers? In some cases, they may still be able to purchase the old version of the product. DVD XCopy has long been available at popular retail stores, including CompUSA, Fry's, and Wal-Mart, and although the court ruling bars 321 Studios from selling ripper-equipped versions of the product to such stores, the stores themselves are not banned from selling versions already on their shelves.
Legal Woes for Consumers
Strictly speaking, if you do get your hands on the old version or already own it, you're legally prevented from using it with copyrighted disks. According to Evan R. Cox, an intellectual property attorney and a partner in the San Francisco office of law firm Covington & Burling, the DMCA does not allow individuals to make copies of copy- protected DVDs, even for personal use. The copyright office could make such an allowance, but hasn't.
Almost certainly, some will continue to use the old product — and it's likely that the only people prosecuted will be those who sell copies of DVDs or share them with large numbers of others. The recording and movie industries have, of late, been showing a far greater inclination to prosecute suspected content pirates.
On Sept. 8, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued 261 ordinary American computer users, accusing them of using peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Grokster, Kazaa, and Morpheus, to illegally distribute and download large amounts of copyrighted music over the Internet. And, in mid-February, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched new civil actions on behalf of its member companies against two Chinese factories, one in Zhanjiang and the other in Henan, accusing them of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted movies on DVD.
Jack the Rippers From the Net
DVD XCopy may have been neutered, but other engines for ripping copy-protected DVDs remain. Consumers can, for instance, still download separate DVD rippers such SmartRipper or DVD Decrypter or one of dozens of others available across the Web, most of which are free. Very often, however, sites will warn that you're not allowed to download such tools if you're from the United States. Once you use a ripper to move data from a copy-protected disc to a hard drive, DVD X Copy can then compress the data and move it to a second DVD.
While the court has succeeded in removing the easiest-to-use DVD duplication application from American markets, the action is unlikely to stop DVD ripping. The Web is full of other utilities and even tutorials on how to use the various engines and DVD burning applications together.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...ag_040303.html
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Banned DVD Copiers Get Spam Treatment
John Borland
Missed your chance to get software--now deemed illegal--that will copy DVDs? Just check your in-box.
It's been just a few days since St. Louis start-up 321 Studios reluctantly complied with a court's order to remove the "ripping" feature, which allowed computer users to make copies of Hollywood studio films, from its popular line of software.
But already unsolicited bulk e-mail is showing up in in-boxes telling consumers that if they act fast, they can buy the last copies of the "banned" software.
"Your last chance to own this powerful software," read one ad CNET News.com received Monday from a Minnesota company that called itself ProDVDCopy.com. "Limited pieces available and then they're gone forever."
With such little fanfare, DVD copying software has left the realm of ordinary legal controversy and entered the exalted realm of herbal Viagra and Nigerian investment schemes.
But this e-mail advertising campaign carries a legal risk for its source. While it's not illegal under federal law to use DVD copying software, the same law that Hollywood used to stop 321 Studios from distributing its own software bars anyone from distributing software that breaks through digital copy-protection locks.
In her ruling late last month, federal Judge Susan Illston said that 321's software did run afoul of that law. Last Friday, 321 Studios said it was destroying "tens of thousands" of copies of its software as a result and releasing a new version that would not make backups of Hollywood films that were guarded against copying.
ProDVDCopy could not immediately be reached for comment. A call to a support line listed in the e-mail advertisement reached a company called "CrazyEight." The domain name was registered just two weeks ago, on the same day that Illston issued her ruling ordering 321 Studios to stop selling its software.
An attorney working with the Motion Picture Association of America said anybody unrelated to 321 Studios will not be covered by Illston's injunction against the software company, but that distributing the software remains illegal. Any distributor could be independently sued.
"Anybody who sells prohibited circumvention software is doing something unlawful," said Pat Benson, an attorney with Mitchell Silverberg & Knupp, the firm representing the MPAA.
A representative for 321 Studios could not immediately be reached for comment.
The last-minute sales tactics aren't likely to make much of a splash in the larger debate over DVD copying, however. An assortment of other DVD copying software packages remains on the market, although Hollywood studios have already sued several of these other distributors.
Other, noncommercial pieces of DVD copying software are widely available on the Internet. "Cracked" versions of 321 Studios software, or versions in which registration keys have been illicitly bypassed, have long been available on file-swapping networks such as Kazaa or eDonkey.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5167878.html
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“We’re Number One!”
US Tops International Spammers' List
Matthew Broersma
A study pinpointing the origination points of junk email messages shows that North America leads by a mile - but this is only part of the story.
The United States is by far the leading originator of most of the spam received around the world, according to a study published on Thursday by UK antivirus company Sophos.
The US accounted for more than half of all spam received, at 56.74 percent, Sophos said, with Canada a distant second place at 6.8 percent. The top-ranked European country was the Netherlands at 2.13 percent, while the UK scored ninth with 1.31 percent. The top-ranked European spammers -- the Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK and Spain -- together accounted for 7.82 percent of all spam received.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040227/152/en657.html
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Metallica To Sell MP3s of Each Live Show
Jerry Del Colliano
No band has taken (or perhaps deserved) more fan criticism for their stance on peer to peer file sharing than Metallica. In a move starting in April and clearly designed to restore some of the band’s lost good faith with its most hardcore fans, Metallica will now record and sell live versions of each of their concerts for $9.95 in MP3 formats and $12.95 for FLAC files.
The band’s outspoken drummer, Lars Ulrich, is quoted on LiveMetallica.com saying “This is the next logical step in a process that began back in 1991 when we first implemented the Taper Section at our shows, where our fans were encouraged to bring in their own gear to record the show, and then take home their very own bootleg of the concert they had just seen. This technology will enable our fans to get the best possible recording of the show, without having to hold a microphone in the air for the entire night!”
The most serious fans can pre-order 34 shows before they are happen which allows the band a creative new way to make significant new revenues from their most enthusiastic fans each and every night of a tour. At the same time the band continues to try to outfox illegal bootleggers by taking their products directly to their customers.
As a business, this move is likely to be a smash hit. Yet on another level, if the band wants to repair burnt bridges with more of their fans they might find a way to record a studio album that is also a hit. Their St. Anger album, featuring their producer playing bass for much of the record, is considered to be one of rock’s worst studio records ever – up there with Van Halen III.
http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/...metallica.html
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Bach Archive To Digitize Scores
AP
The Johann Sebastian Bach Archive in Leipzig, Germany, will restore and digitize original scores by the composer, with the idea of giving people access to the works via the Internet, officials said Thursday.
The project will restore 44 original compositions from Bach's second Leipzig cantata cycle, as well as scores, manuscripts and books about Bach from the 17th to 19th centuries.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology
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Apple Computer, Beatles Firm in Court Over Name
Reuters
Apple Computer Inc. and the Beatles' record company, Apple Corps, went to court in Britain on Wednesday over who gets to use the name now that the computer company has entered the music business on the Internet.
The two companies reached a deal in 1991 after a fight over the trademark, signing an agreement that set out who could use the name and logo, and when.
But the British record company says the American computer company broke the deal by using the Apple name to market its new iTunes Internet music service.
In a preliminary skirmish Wednesday, Apple Computer asked the court to rule that the full legal battle should be dealt with by California courts, not British courts.
The computer company's lawyer said the 1991 agreement allowed Apple Computer to use the name for data transmission services, even if the data included material such as music, which was within the record label's "field of use."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology
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DMCA News
Court Doesn't Extend Database Protection
Declan McCullagh
In the first case of its kind, a federal court in New York has ruled that one company's snatching of a database from a rival's Web site does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald said in an opinion released this week that Berkshire Information Systems did not run afoul of the controversial 1998 copyright law by allegedly downloading up to 85 percent of a proprietary advertising-tracking database from the Web site of competitor Inquiry Management Systems (IMS).
Buchwald said, however, that she would allow the case to proceed to trial because Berkshire may have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law commonly used to convict computer intruders. The law, invoked in the recent Adrian Lamo case, permits both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits when an Internet-connected computer is accessed "without authorization."
IMS is a Canadian company that monitors 2,500 magazines and claims to be the largest ad-tracking service for the United States. Its customers are magazine sales representatives, who can browse through the IMS "e-Basket" database and learn where advertisers are spending their money and which ones might be receptive to an advertising pitch.
Lenox, Mass.-based Berkshire offers a competing service called MarketShareInfo.com that measures competitive advertising by product, share of market, share of book, editorial ratio and sales territory.
If IMS had won on its DMCA arguments and if the decision had been upheld on appeal, the case would have significantly expanded the scope of legal protection that database owners enjoy.
Currently that topic is a contentious one on Capitol Hill, where Congress is debating what new legal protections, if any, to award to databases. One proposal is backed by big database companies like Reed Elsevier and Thomson but opposed by Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, Google, Yahoo and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Because Berkshire may have somehow obtained a legitimate password to the Web site, the judge said, IMS' argument that the bulk downloading "circumvented" a security system was a stretch. "Whatever the impropriety of defendant's conduct, the DMCA and the anti-circumvention provision at issue do not target this sort of activity," Buchwald wrote. Section 1201 of the DMCA says "no person shall circumvent a technological measure" that protects copyrighted material.
IMS could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024-5165624.html
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Universal And Shanghai Media Plan Music Venture
ILN
Universal Music Group and Shanghai Media Group are expected to announce today the formation of a company that will adopt a new business model designed to be less vulnerable to piracy. Sum Entertainment will develop and manage new artists for music-related entertainment events, such as television programming, sponsorships and distribution over new media such as mobile phones.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...940575,00.html
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German Retailer Halts Controversial Radio-Chip Card
BERLIN (AP) - German retail giant Metro Group said Friday it will stop putting ``smart tag'' chips inside customer loyalty cards, a practice that sparked protests by privacy advocates who say the cards could allow stores to secretly track consumers as they shop.
Metro has given out about 10,000 of the cards with embedded Radio Frequency Identification chips since April as part of a broader effort to bring wireless technology into its stores and warehouses.
Cardholders will receive replacements with bar codes, Metro spokesman Albrecht von Truchsess said.
``There are concerns about having customer cards with RFID chips,'' he said. ``We have to take them seriously and discuss them. With such an emotional debate going on, we said it's just not worth it.''
Metro's plans to roll out a wireless inventory tracking system in November, involving about 100 of its top suppliers and 250 of its stores, are not affected, von Truchsess said.
Metro has been testing the technology since April at a so-called ``future store'' in the German town of Rheinberg, near its Duesseldorf headquarters.
The RFID chip in the customer cards has allowed cardholders at the store to preview films cleared for viewers who are at least 16 -- the age at which Metro customers can get a card. Approaching a playback device with the card rolls the movie clip.
Metro played down the suspicions by privacy advocates and consumer groups, saying the RFID-equipped cards were never used to store or process customer behavior. ``We never saw a privacy problem,'' von Truchsess said.
RFID chips broadcast a signal with information about a product and have been embraced for inventory control by major retailers including Wal-Mart.
In such schemes, receivers send information harvested from chips to central computers in order to precisely track goods in the supply chain.
The technology offers the prospect of more accurate inventory control than traditional bar codes, and also could help with concerns such as food safety by making the tracking of perishables easier.
A plan by clothing giant Benetton Group SpA to introduce smart tags in garments, allowing them to be tracked from factory to store, raised privacy concerns last year and Benetton subsequently said it was undecided on the project.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8059767.htm
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1st Amendment Trumps Candidate's Claim On Web Site Name
Alex Quinones
WASHINGTON - A federal judge Thursday denied Republican congressional candidate Robin Ficker's claim on the domain name "robinficker.com," saying the Web site owner had a First Amendment right to use the candidate's name.
"By entering the public arena as a candidate for political office, (Ficker) has invited comments and critique, which operates in the spirit of healthy democracy of this country," U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. wrote in the four-page ruling.
The Web site, robinficker.com, includes disparaging stories about Ficker, who is running in the GOP primary for Maryland's 8th Congressional District. At one point, the site redirected Web surfers to the official campaign site of one of Ficker's opponents in the primary, Chuck Floyd.
Ficker sued John Tuohy, the owner of the domain name robinficker.com. Tuohy is also a paid political consultant to Floyd, who has paid Tuohy $13,500 for his services, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunhera...cs/8050576.htm
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Judge Throws Out Evidence In Internet Sex Case
Ruling: Chat Room Conversations Subject To Wiretapping Laws
TheWMURChannel
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- A judge's ruling to throw out key evidence in a computer solicitation case could have a sweeping effect on how police catch pedophiles over the Internet.
Ruling Could Lead To Other Appeals
Judge Robert Morrill's ruling in Rockingham County Superior Court is drawing criticism from the law enforcement community because it challenges the way police conduct Internet investigations. Roland Macmillan, 30 of Exeter, N.H., is scheduled to go on trial March 15 on charges of using a computer at the Exeter Public Library to meet and eventually lure a 14-year-old girl for sex.
He never met the girl because he was actually chatting with an undercover Portsmouth police officer posing as the girl. The officer was using a special kind of software called Camtasia, so the online conversation could be recorded. Morrill compared the computer conversation to a phone conversation. He said the evidence against Macmillan was obtained illegally because the officer never received permission from the Attorney General's Office as required under the state's wiretapping law. "He was having a conversation with someone in a chat room," said Brad Russ, of the Office of Juvenile Justice. "It was not a private conversation." Russ is the former Portsmouth police chief and now works for the federal government. He said the ruling would make it next to impossible to go after Internet predators, and he said the recording software is necessary to prevent entrapment. "It allows us to make sure their procedures are appropriate, and it also allows officers to capture the evidence for a jury and judge to review," Russ said. Russ warned that the decision could encourage convicted sex offenders to challenge their convictions. Macmillan's defense attorney said that in these cases, police are violating a person's right to privacy. "Police could still intercept these calls," defense attorney Phil Desfosses said. "There is a warrant procedure in the wiretapping statute. They must go to the AG's office." The county attorney is considering appealing the judge's decision to the state Supreme Court. It's unclear if Macmillan's trial will go forward in two weeks or be delayed until after the ruling is appealed.
http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/2886945/detail.html
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How I Lost the Big One
When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar.
By Lawrence Lessig
IT IS OVER A YEAR LATER AS I WRITE THESE WORDS. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by well- wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred.
But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this story to myself, I can't help believing that my own mistake lost it.
ERIC ELDRED, A RETIRED COMPUTER PROGRAMMER in New Hampshire, was frustrated that his daughters didn't seem to like Nathaniel Hawthorne. And in 1995, he decided to do something about it: put Hawthorne on the web. An electronic version with links to pictures and explanatory text, Eldred thought, would make this 19th-century work come alive.
It didn't work—at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause. Eldred went on to build a library of public-domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free.
Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public-domain works. Just as Disney turned the Grimms' fairy tales into films more accessible to a 20th-century audience, Eldred put the works of Hawthorne, and many others, in a form more accessible—technically accessible— today. Like Disney, Eldred was free to produce new versions of works whose copyright had lapsed. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter had passed into the public domain in 1907.
In 1998, Robert Frost's poetry collection New Hampshire was slated to pass into the public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library. But Congress got in the way. For the 11th time in four decades, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights—this time by 20 years. Eldred would not be free to add any works published since 1923 to his collection until 2019. Under the new law, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then, if Congress extended the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than one million patents will pass into the public domain.
This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, or CTEA, enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician. According to his widow, Mary Bono, Sonny Bono believed that "copyrights should be forever."
Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he would publish as planned, the CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law passed in 1998, the No Electronic Theft Act, his act of publishing would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a retired programmer to undertake.
It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I am a constitutional scholar whose first passion is constitutional interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the progress clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as different in an important way. Every other clause granting power to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something—for example, to regulate "commerce among the several states" or "declare War." But in the progress clause, the "something" is something quite specific—to "promote . . . Progress"—through means that are also specific—by "securing" "exclusive Rights" (i.e., copyrights) "for limited Times."
In my view, our constitutional system placed such a limit on copyright as a way to ensure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eldred discovered, copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again. And while it is the valuable copyrights— Mickey Mouse and "Rhapsody in Blue"—that are responsible for terms being extended, the real harm done to society is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that still have commercial value. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.
Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. Most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends. Copyrights in this context do no good.
More
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China Clamps Down on Web News Discussion
It restricts Internet reporting and bans the airing of sensitive issues. Insiders say officials fear the Web's ability to fire up public opinion.
Mark Magnier
BEIJING — China this week launched a major crackdown on one of the most vibrant parts of the Internet, the news discussion groups that have pushed the boundary of free speech in the country and forced greater government accountability.
The new rules ban independent reporting that hasn't been approved by the government, discussion of sensitive issues such as economic failures, and Web postings that challenge the Communist Party.
Officials at the Information Office of the State Council, which regulates online media, were not immediately available for comment.
But according to documents made available to The Times, Information Office gatekeepers outlined the strict guidelines to senior managers from China's largest Internet portals in a meeting this week.
"The reason why they did this is very obvious," said Li Fang, chief editor of Netease Review. "The Communist Party thinks the Internet news comments are putting them under too much pressure from public opinion."
Although the government has gone after individual columns and news discussion sites in the past, insiders say this is the first time it has adopted such a systematic approach to the genre.
People who work in this area said they were afraid of getting fired, or persecuted politically, as a result of the new campaign.
The action comes as Beijing prepares to host the annual National People's Congress meeting next week. China tends to tighten control over the media in advance of major meetings, party congresses and leadership changes.
Internet employees say this year's meeting is not particularly important, however, and suspect that the real reason lies elsewhere. They believe that senior party officials have been rattled by the medium's ability to shape public opinion and air citizen outrage, citing the recent "BMW case."
In December, a court in remote Heilongjiang province handed down a suspended sentence to a woman for what many saw as murder. A farmer and his wife reportedly scratched the woman's BMW with their cart, at which point the woman got out, yelled at a group of peasants, then got back behind the wheel and plowed into the crowd, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people. There were reports that the driver was politically well-connected.
The light sentence — in a country where justice is often harsh — generated a furor so intense that some Internet news discussion sites reportedly received more than 50,000 postings in a single day. The provincial governor was prompted to publicly deny that he was related to the woman. Apologies from other officials and promises to investigate the case followed.
With the government in danger of losing face, insiders say, censors on Jan. 6 issued orders to news discussion group websites to remove all coverage of the issue from their home pages. That was followed on Jan. 15 by orders to delete all past postings or any mention of the case.
"The BMW case has created instability, disturbed people's thoughts and damaged the image of the Internet," officials reportedly said. "The Web must know its responsibility and avoid creating conflict between the people and the government."
The new guidelines go even further.
Online news editors were reportedly told that they could run only news already vetted in major state-controlled newspapers above the provincial level. Nor are postings by ordinary Internet users permitted without prior approval.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...,4778483.story
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Lindows Offers Discount To P2P Buyers
Gillian Law
Lindows Thursday said it is offering a 50% discount to customers who download its commercial software using its new peer-to-peer system.
LindowsOS is now available for $25 over peer-to-peer, instead of the normal $49.95, Lindows said.
The company has established a peer-to-peer system, based on open source software called BitTorrent, that it says is ideal for transferring large applications with high- demand peaks. The data is broken down into chunks and then reassembled after it has been transferred, the company said in a statement. A typical 500M-byte LindowsOS file, for example, will be broken into about 1,000 pieces, each about 500K bytes in size.
All active downloaders on the network cooperate by exchanging numbered chunks until each user has the whole file, Lindows said. The system uses cryptographic hashing, or document numbering, developed by a group called SHA1 (or Secure Hash Algorithm 1) to automatically verify that each piece is what it should be.
New software upgrades will create spikes in demand, but the number of people on the network will grow proportionately as people join the "download cooperative," the company said.
Lindows expects the peer-to-peer system to become the main download system for its larger files. The current FTP system is capped at 200K bit/sec, and with up to 1,000 people downloading at the same time this can lead to delays of up to four hours, the company said. Peer-to-peer will allow immediate download at a faster speed, it said.
Costs are also reduced, as there is less need for hosting infrastructure such as servers, firewalls and routers, Lindows said.
The BitTorrent system requires users to install a small piece of free software, available for Linux, Macintosh and Windows users, Lindows said.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0304lindooffer.html
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Losing Control of Your TV
The latest anti-piracy move will prevent you from making high-quality copies of broadcast TV programs. And the new "broadcast flag" technology enables all manner of other restrictions.
Simson Garfinkel
In the future, the Motion Picture Association of America will control your television set. Every TV sold in the United States will come equipped with an electronic circuit that will search incoming TV programs for a tiny electronic “flag.” The MPAA’s members will control this flag, putting it into broadcast movies and television shows as they see fit. If the flag is present, your TV will go into a special high-security mode and lock down its high-quality digital outputs. If you want to record a flagged program, you’ll have to do so on analog tape or on a special low-resolution DVD. Any recording will be limited to analog-quality sound. This security measure is not designed to protect the television from viruses or computer hackers— it’s designed to protect TV programs from you.
This future arrives on July 1, 2005.
Legally known as the Advanced Television Systems Committee Flag, but better known as the broadcast flag, this little bit of Machiavellian technology was folded into the Federal Communications Commission’s rulebooks last November. Reaction since then has been mixed. Most journalists writing about the flag have said that it won’t affect most consumers—unless they try to record high-quality digital video in their living room and play it back in their bedroom. The Center for Democracy and Technology called the FCC’s ruling a historic compromise that will preserve many consumer rights while preventing rampant video piracy as television goes digital, but CDT also notes that the FCC’s whole process for approving the broadcast flag sets a dangerous precedent that could easily turn against consumers. Indeed, many technologists that I’ve spoken with believe that the broadcast flag introduces dangerous Trojan Horse technology—a technology that could be rejiggered with even stronger anti-consumer provisions as time goes on. “Any broadcaster who uses it should lose their license because it is a misuse of the public’s trust,” says Andrew Lippman, a senior research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.
In fact, all of these things are true.
To understand why the MPAA lobbied so hard for the broadcast flag, you need look no further than the world of recorded music. Twenty years ago the music industry started putting pop tunes on optical compact discs. The music was completely unprotected—meaning that there was nothing to prevent it from being copied—but at the time nobody really cared. Each CD stored far more information than did many mainframe computers of the era. So even though the data was there for the taking, if you took it, there was no place that you could put it.
I bought both an Apple Macintosh computer and a Sony portable CD player in the spring of 1984. The digital music on my Dark Side of the Moon album took up nearly 600 megabytes of space; the Mac had on its floppy disk a mere 400 kilobytes of storage. There was no way that I could rip that music!
Three things changed this balance. The first was the relentless march of technology. By 1988, my desktop computer had a hard disk that stored 20 megabytes; in 1992 I bought a drive that could store a full gigabyte—big enough to hold the contents of a CD. The second factor was a real scientific breakthrough: the MP3 sound compression technique, which let me squeeze that Pink Floyd classic down to 50 megabytes. The third factor, of course, was the widespread deployment of broadband Internet connections, which made it possible for me to share those 50 megabytes with 10,000 of my closest friends.
Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.
That’s all history, and for much of the past five years the Recording Industry Association of America has been trying to put the technological genie back in the bottle. They shut down the original Napster, they recently raided the offices of Kazaa in Sydney, Australia and they’ve started filing lawsuits against small-time users of file-sharing software. It’s a messy and expensive business, but the RIAA doesn’t see any other choice.
The MPAA would like to avoid repeating the RIAA’s contentious experience with digital media. But the MPAA’s first attempt didn’t go so well. Realizing that DVDs were sure to be popular, the major studios got together and designed an encryption scheme for DVDs that was supposed to prevent movies copied onto a hard drive or burned onto a recordable DVD from ever being played. But just a few years after the technology hit the market, the DVD encryption scheme was cracked. Free software that you can download from the Internet lets you take a DVD, decrypt it, and then crunch it down so that it will fit on a single 700 megabyte CD. You can make copies for your friends or, if you want, take that brand new Cat In the Hat DVD and upload the files to the Internet so that everybody in Sri Lanka can mock its production values.
“And that is not all!” said the Cat. “Oh no, that is not all!”
Within a few years, all of the TV signals moving over the airwaves will be digital. And unprotected digital content moving unrestricted over the airwaves is the MPAA’s nightmare scenario. The industry’s great fear is that high-quality digital broadcasts would be scooped up by techno-geeks with digital television cards wedged in to the back of their PCs. These merry pranksters would presumably then leak Hollywood's precious bits onto one of those high-speed international broadband circuits—perhaps one that goes from California to Hong Kong.
And that, says Fritz Attaway, the MPAA's executive vice president for government relations and Washington general counsel, is the flag’s real purpose. Speaking to Wired News last month, Attaway explained that the purpose is to protect the industry’s lucrative overseas syndication market. Why would people in Malaysia, Singapore, or Hong Kong want to watch American television shows months or even years after they are aired in the United States—as they do now—when instead they could see the shows the following day?
Of course, the broadcast flag will do more than stop such international retransmission: it will keep you from sharing your high-quality digital recordings with anyone—like those annoying people who are always sending out e-mail messages asking if anybody in the office remembered to tape last week’s episode of Buffy, because they didn’t have their own VCR set up properly. As if! Once the broadcast flag is operational, we’ll all be spared from these requests.
Even though I don’t watch much broadcast TV, I am still strongly opposed to the broadcast flag. The first reason is “mission creep.” Having successfully lobbied a regulatory agency to put anti-consumer copy protection technology into the television set, what’s to stop a greedy content industry from asking for more? The broadcast flag could be expanded into a whole family of little flaglets, and together giving the system a much more expressive repertoire. One flag might say, “you may not time-shift this program.” Another flag might tell your TiVO “you may not fast-forward or skip this program’s commercials.” A very special flag might disable your TV’s channel changer and “off” buttons. There might even be a Mission Impossible flag that makes your digital video recorder self-destruct in five seconds (or at least erase every movie owned by Universal Studios.) Who knows what Hollywood will dream up next!
And yet, the broadcast flag is not some poor ghost created to walk the airwaves until the foul crimes done against the recording industry by the likes of Napster are burnt and purged away. No, it is instead just another step in Hollywood's ongoing project to remake both consumer electronics and desktop computers so that they are more to the industry's liking.
After all, the flag won’t achieve its goal of eliminating off-the-air piracy. For starters, it applies only to equipment that will be sold after July 2005; naturally, the hacker weblogs are advising people to stock up now on unencumbered digital TV cards for PCs—cards that don’t implement the broadcast flag. After July 2005, every new digital TV card will be encumbered with this spiffy new technology.
Another lurking problem with the broadcast flag proposal is that it only applies to material that’s broadcast—not material that’s sent through cable or beamed down from a satellite. Those systems have their own copyright protection technology. But the more standards that industry deploys, the greater the chance for something to go wrong. Not only will compatibility be difficult, but it’s likely that some pieces of equipment won’t properly honor the copyright control technologies and some of Hollywood’s valuable content will sneak out.
So what happens when the broadcast flag has obviously failed? The MPAA will be back, this time demanding that even stronger anti-consumer technology be bundled into consumer electronics and desktop computers. Ultimately, Hollywood will settle for nothing less than the elimination of any consumer technology that can make high-quality recordings.
After all, we’ve been down this road before—just a little more than 25 years ago, in fact.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...nkel030304.asp
Kazaa Loses Round One in Australia
John P. Mello Jr.
MIPI General Manager Michael Speck argued that Kazaa is costing the record industry and music creators "billions of dollars in lost royalties" each year. "The industry is committed to the growth of legal online music providers, and stopping Kazaa's illegal activities is a necessary step in that process," he said.
An attempt to exclude evidence from a music piracy case seized in sweeping raids by the Australian recording industry has been rejected by a federal court judge.
The evidence was gathered February 5th by Music Industry Privacy Investigations (MIPI), the enforcement agent of Australia's recording industry, in court-ordered raids at 12 locations throughout the country, including the Sydney headquarters of Sharman Networks, maker of Kazaa , one of the most popular file-sharing programs on the Internet.
The raids were sanctioned by Judge Murray Wilcox, who issued an Anton Pillar order for them. Such orders are an extreme measure and are used when there is an imminent threat that evidence will be destroyed.
Sharman challenged the order, contending the MIPI withheld facts from the judge that would have dissuaded him from issuing it.
In addition to rejecting Sharman's challenge of the Pillar order, Judge Wilcox also refused the company's request to delay the Australian proceedings until a similar case now being heard in the United States is completed.
Although Judge Wilcox rejected Sharman's application, he did not grant MIPI uncontrolled access to the evidence it gathered February 5th. Instead, he suggested that the recording industry group and Sharman work out a scheme for accessing the evidence.
Both parties are due back in court March 23rd.
Lawyers for Sharman told reporters after the proceeding that they will withhold comment until they review the 23-page opinion.
"It is now time for Kazaa to stop using delaying tactics and face the music," MIPI General Manager Michael Speck said in a statement released following the decision.
"Kazaa's application was to avoid evidence seeing the light of day," he added. "It is part of an obvious attempt to protect the largest copyright infringement business in the world."
Speck argued that Kazaa is costing the record industry and music creators "billions of dollars in lost royalties" each year. "The industry is committed to the growth of legal online music providers, and stopping Kazaa's illegal activities is a necessary step in that process," he said.
Another step in the process may involve pressuring file-sharing software makers to incorporate technologies into their applications that will thwart trading of copyrighted material on the Internet.
One such technology, developed by Audible Magic of Los Gatos, California, has been making the rounds of offices inside the Beltway over the last month under the auspices of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Audible Magic is hawking two products: an "appliance" that allows network administrators to block sharing of copyrighted material over their networks, and a client-based program that can be incorporated into a file-sharing client to prevent downloading or uploading of copyrighted materials by individuals.
The products can listen to a audio file, create an acoustic fingerprint for it and compare that fingerprint with those in its database of copyrighted material -- all on the fly and, according to Audible Magic, with a minimum of performance degradation, an assertion challenged by some in the file-sharing industry.
"In real-world terms, not only would Audible Magic bring networks to a crawl, thus putting us out of business, but how long do you think that it would take a 16-year-old kid in Estonia to write a program that would strip it from any P2P application?" Wayne Rosso, CEO of Optisoft in Madrid, Spain, told TechNewsWorld via e-mail.
"And of course everyone in the food chain would have to buy into this one technology, which isn't going to happen," he added. "It's a ridiculous exercise in futility."
Technology solutions that exclusively try to block sharing of copyrighted material are full of challenges, according to Pat Breslin, CEO of Relatable in Alexandria, Virginia, a maker of acoustic fingerprinting products. "Attempting to block the flow of content without offering an alternative is a battle against a guerrilla war," he told TechNewsWorld.
According to the RIAA, technologies like Audible Magic's prove that peer-to-peer software makers can control illicit file sharing on their networks if they have the will to do so.
"Their argument is artful, as it is utterly false and cynical," Adam Eisgrau, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based P2P United, which represents several major peer-to-peer providers, countered in an interview with TechNewsWorld.
"They're conveniently sliding over the fact that in order to work, they must compel the reengineering of a communications technology, of a software package -- in fact, of an industry," he added.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33036.html
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P2P Ops Decry RIAA Filter Claims
p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA claims it's identified software that's the answer to unauthorised music sharing.
It can "sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast," as a CNET News story tells it here.
"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," a "senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity" told CNET.
The RIAA now wants to know why the commercial p2p companies aren't using it, or something close to it, to filter unauthorised material on peer-to-peer networks.
After all, "The RIAA uses it to help identify musical evidence," boasts sales blurb on the site of Audible Magic, the company that makes RepliCheck 'song-recognition software', as it's known.
Sadly, the 'filter' may not actually filter, contrary to claims made for it by the RIAA and Mitch Bainwol, its chief. And the music industry enforcement unit's contentions may once again be based on bluff and blunder, as is all too often the case.
Deciding whether or not Audible Magic's song-recognition software does much more than simply recognize songs calls for expert technical knowledge, not something either the RIAA or congress are famous for. But high on the list of experts able to analyse the software are the p2p operators themselves.
They're itching to get their hands on RepliCheck but so far, although it seems everyone on Capitol Hill has watched the software in action, the people it concerns the most - the commercial p2p community - haven't managed to see a copy, let alone test it in the wild.
Not that they haven't tried.
On January 24 their trade group P2P United hand-delivered a letter to RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) boss Bainwol demanding access to the Audible Magic 'song-recognition software' being touted under the aegis of the RIAA.
More than a week after the letter was delivered, P2P United members still haven't been able to conduct a hands-on trial. And yet somewhat disingenuously, Bainwol told CNET News he "would be delighted for them to do so".
Moreover, Audible Magic quotes Frank Creighton, RIAA svp of anti-piracy, as saying, "We have joined forces with trade associations and rights holders to combat the theft of intellectual property" and "Audible Magic's RepliCheck helps protect artists and our business from copyright infringement, and it takes a huge burden off our employees."
The 'rights holders' Creighton is talking about are, of course, the Big Five record labels, which own the RIAA in
the first place. And the 'trade associations' are other RIAA-like enforcement organs - also owned by Big Music.
What's it all about?
In 2000 Audible Magic Corporation, then a startup "that provides solutions for identifying audio content over the Internet", bought Muscle Fish, a Berkeley-based company founded by acoustic engineers formerly from Yamaha Music Technologies, Inc.
"Muscle Fish engineers pioneered the use of content-based analysis and classification of audio files with over six years of extensive research and development," it says, going on:
"Muscle Fish's invention ... measures a variety of psycho-perceptual characteristics of the audio file. These measurements can be used to analyze, compare, classify, and retrieve audio files. The technology has been demonstrated to be accurate at exact pattern matching for a range of file formats, including streaming audio on the Internet. In addition, it can be used to match and identify 'similar sounding' audio files, returning a list of closest matches to the user."
"Psycho-perceptual characteristics". Science-speak at its best and magic for Bainwol and congress.
"The value of the Muscle Fish acquisition will be seen not only in audio content identification, but with the digital
media access, control and monetization opportunities it enables," said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic ceo and co- founder in 2000. "We are already working with a number of customers on some very intriguing applications and have multiple patents pending, so stay tuned."
There's a Muscle Fish paper entitled CLASSIFICATION, SEARCH, AND RETRIEVAL OF AUDIO by the app's creators, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar and James Wheaton, which explains how it call comes together.
It all looks great but the bottom line is - although it seems this software can recognize all kinds of audio material, how does it 'filter' content, let alone block it?
But not to worry - we're sure Bainwol can explain it.
In the meanwhile, introducing filters into centralised apps such as the old Napster would be possible. But one of the main points about programs developed by P2P United members FreePeers (BearShare), Manolito P2P (Blubster), LimeWire (Limewire), Grokster Ltd (Grokster), MetaMachine (eDonkey2000) and Streamcast Networks (Morpheus) is: they're decentralized.
This means users looking for material to trade or simply access search a number of individual computers on individual p2p networks until they find what they want. This same decentralized search process make it impossible for 'filters' to track searches.
To write programs able to interdict porn or anything else would mean completely changing the characteristics of existing p2p software, which would in turn mean changing the nature of the existing commercial p2p business.
That's not only impractical, it's dangerous, says Adam Eisgrau, P2P United executive director.
Software of this kind would amount to "a warrantless wiretap capability with no public accountability," he told p2pnet. The music industry is demanding nothing less than, "the developers of neutral and legal software programs with great social utility redesign their products to the dictates of a single private industry.
"Anyone who values privacy ought to be outraged and alarmed."
http://p2pnet.net/story/896
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Worm Writers Continue Verbal Warfare
Lisa Valentine
By communicating with each other, the worm writers become more vulnerable to being caught. "The more they interact with each other," argues Symantec senior director of engineering Alfred Huger, "the more they expose themselves to people who want to answer the question of who they are."
The MyDoom, Bagle, and Netsky worm writers are attacking each other in a game of one-upmanship, apparently releasing new worm variants just so they can make profane comments to each other.
New variants -- with accompanying remarks -- have been released in a flurry since the weekend, with most of the commentary directed toward the Netsky writer. The MyDoom and Bagle writers seem to have ganged up on Netsky because of its penchant to erase the other viruses from machines it infects.
F-Secure reports the following dialogue:
Bagle J to Netsky: "Hey, NetSky, f*ck off you b*tch, don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war ?"
MyDoom G writes "To netsky's creator(s): imho, skynet is a decentralized peer-to-peer neural network. we have seen P2P in Slapper in Sinit only. they may be called skynets, but not your sh*tty app."
Retaliation Against Netsky
"Of the three viruses, the Netsky virus doesn't really seem to have any purpose except to remove the other two viruses," Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering for global support and services, Symantec, told NewsFactor.
Instead, could the Netsky writer simply be a modern-day vigilante, protecting
computer users from MyDoom and Bagle? "It's really difficult to speculate, but the net effect is that the MyDoom and Bagle virus writers were obviously a little put out about this," said Huger.
This type of turf war involving roving gangs of virus writers has occurred in the past, "but not to the degree that it is right now," said Huger. For example, hackers commonly leave comments about each other embedded in their tools, and worms that break into commercial systems will sometimes include messages directed at a corporate target.
'State of War'
Virus writers also have been known to use embedded messages in code to further their political views. In 2003, the Indian Snakes virus-writing gang used the W32/Yaha-Q worm to respond to Pakistani hackers defacing an India-based Web site, Chris Belthoff, senior security analyst, Sophos, told NewsFactor.
Sophos has gone so far as to declare "a state of war" between the creators of the Netsky and Bagle worms, both of which have spread widely across the Internet in a number of different guises. "Many new versions of the two worms have appeared this week, clogging business e-mail systems as companies attempt to deal with the barrage of unwanted messages," said Belthoff.
Both authors may have access to an underground network consisting of thousands of compromised computers owned by innocent users, which are being exploited to launch every new version of their worms, Belthoff explained.
Impact on Enterprise
"This is the first time I've seen this for e-mail-based viruses, especially the volume of the back and forth. It seems the authors are releasing variants just so they can have their piece," said Huger.
By communicating with each other, the worm writers become more vulnerable to being caught. "The more they interact with each other," argues Huger, "the more they expose themselves to people who want to answer the question of who they are."
All this worm back-and-forth is having an impact on the enterprise. "For corporate users, the worms are having an impact on their e-mail gateways -- we're seeing a pretty large volume out there," noted Huger.
http://enterprise-linux-it.newsfacto...ry=netsecurity
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Dictionary-Starved Bug Writers Hurl Abuse
Matthew Clark
The world's e-mail users appear to be caught in the crossfire of a three-way shootout between the authors of Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom.
In the last few days, a number of variants of the now infamous bugs have appeared, often within hours of one another, with each new version as destructive as the last. Bagle is now in its 11th incarnation, Bagle.K, while the most recent versions of Mydoom and Netsky seem to be "H" and "F" respectively, according to F-Secure.
All of the bugs are self-propagating e-mail worms that come delivered in e-mails that are disguised with an assortment of spoofing features, file names, file types and subject lines. Some versions of the bugs also have the capacity to spread via person to person (P2P) file- sharing networks like Kazaa.
But what is even more interesting about the recent versions of these worms -- most of which have been given "medium" threat ratings -- is some of the text buried in the bugs' files. These messages are presumably from the virus writers and they consist of taunts and insults, painting a picture of what appears to have ballooned into a full-scale cyber-underworld war.
In one message, Netsky's authors accuse MyDoom's creators of unfairly lifting Netsky concepts. "MyDoom.f is a thief of our idea!" a message in Netsky.C said. A line in Netsky.F, from a group that calls itself Skynet AntiVirus said, "Bagle - you are a looser!!!"
A poorly spelled retort to Netsky's architects from Bagle.J's authors included the line, "Hey, Netsky, f**k off you b***h, don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war ?"
Besides the name-calling, other references from Netsky's creators suggest that the cohort is unhappy with the Netsky name, preferring instead to be known as Skynet, the name for the computer system that destroys humanity in the Terminator films.
MyDoom.G's creators, meanwhile, entered the fray with a profane message to Netsky's creators, disparaging their claim to be authors of a skynet: "to Netsky's creator(s): imho, skynet is a decentralized peer-to-peer neural network. we have seen P2P in Slapper in Sinit only. they may be called skynets, but not your s****y app."
Though crude and unimaginative, the commentary does complement features in many of the newer variants of the bugs, including characteristics that can remove rival bugs from an infected system.
And while some have said that the fight between the three could add up to a battle for control of thousands of infected "zombie" computers, others have looked at the apparent war with less regard. "It's possibly an insight into the maturity and mentality of the people who create these things," said Dermot Williams, the managing director of Dublin-based e-security firm Systemhouse Technologies.
Williams noted that such activity isn't entirely new and pointed to the recent arrest in Belgium of a female virus writer known as "Gigabyte" who authored such bugs as Coconut-A, Sahay-A, and Sharp- A. In some of her malware, Gigabyte included text disparaging Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus giant Sophos, who often comments on the industry. Gigabyte called Cluley a sexist and claimed that he insulted female virus writers. "All of this points to the mentality going on here -- the childishness of it all," William noted.
http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9397181.html
Until next week,
-
js.
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