"I have managed to get people talking about the Internet because of something interesting rather than pedophiles and viruses." – Luca Mori
"It was a breathtakingly incompetent investigation ... a disaster." – Marlys Edwardh
"It just goes to show in a market dominated by overlapping and incompatible [music download] services there is just not going to be room for every player. There is no way the market will be able to support all these closed ecosystems." – Michael Gartenberg
"We think this is a really good experiment, because copy protection is not doing anything to stop people from stealing when you can just get unprotected tracks off of a CD or get music illegally online. We think it's good to make it easy for consumers to get digital music on whatever device they want and for companies like us to not be reliant on one particular technology company for how our consumers can access music." – Dave Goldberg
"During the early tapings of 'Soap,' Mr. Johnson recalled, the boom operator kept turning the microphone toward the puppet for his lines." – Jesse Green
"They combed out Ann Miller’s hair and found the Lindbergh baby." – Charlie Hauck
"I stopped her on the street because I recognized her from the gym. She was the one sitting around naked in the locker room the longest. I remember looking at her and thinking that with a body like that, I would too." –Amy Arbus
September 23rd, '06
Voters Keelhaul Pirate Party
Quinn Norton
The Swedish national elections on Sunday ushered in a huge shift in the political landscape of that country -- but failed to bring the copyright reform movement its first political victory.
The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.
Final numbers won't be in until Wednesday the 20th, but the Pirate Party appears to be pulling .62 percent of the vote, or about 33,000 votes, according to party leader Rick Falkvinge. "This percentage may change somewhat as more districts are counted ... but I don't expect it to change to a significantly different number."
The results were surprising and disappointing for the party, which has been bathed in online buzz since it was founded. But U.S. and other elections have shown that online momentum often fails to turn up political results.
The Pirate Party's single-issue platform includes a 5-year limit to commercial copyright, the abolition of patents and stronger privacy protections online.
Falkvinge says the party plans to marshal on. "Morale in the group is good and we are learning from this experience, as we are taking new aims for the European Union election in 2009 and the next Swedish election in 2010," says Falkvinge
The ruling Social Democrats lost power to the Moderate Party in a razor-thin election result that centered around economic issues, such as unemployment and reform of the welfare system. The close election likely diverted some sympathetic voters back into traditional voting blocks.
"Politics that limits itself to certain questions, and specifically takes no standpoint in others, is probably very hard," says Rasmus Fleischer, of Piratbyran -- the Swedish pro-piracy advocacy group. Fleischer doesn't believe the election result will deeply impact copyright reform movements in Sweden or abroad. "Lots of people have joined the Pirate Party based on a general will to act, to do something for a changed copyright climate, and the election campaign has been the big thing... I'm quite sure that these questions will not cool down in Sweden."
Many in the piracy movement won't be sad to see the backside of the Social Democrats, who expanded enforcement against copyright violators, resulting in this year's raid against the Pirate Bay torrent site and a scandal over American copyright holders' influence with the government.
"I think that copyright-related policy has played some part in the election, contributing to a general dislike of the Social Democratic government," says Fleischer. But how the next government will act on these issues is anyone's guess.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...?tw=wn_index_4
DRM is Old and Busted, According to BitTorrent Cofounder
Jacqui Cheng
BitTorrent cofounder Ashwin Navin believes that DRM is not the answer to legal online video services despite his company's getting ready to launch its own DRM-based movie service in the near future. In an interview with IDG News Service, Navin said that he believes the only reason DRM is so widespread is that the industry is immature and doesn't know how else to protect their profit margins.
Navin says that DRMed files are bad for both consumers and the content providers because "typically a DRM ties a user to one hardware platform," citing iTunes for not allowing consumers to transfer purchases between platforms or hardware environments. TV and movie content providers don't really want to limit users so strictly, he believes, because they want their content to be consumed by as many people on as many platforms as possible.
So what's his solution? Advertising-supported video downloads. This would allow providers to freely distribute videos to everyone, presumably low-cost or free of charge to the consumer, in order to increase their reach without losing money to file sharing. Sound a lot like regular old network television? It is, except via the Internet. Navin says that he sees this as the future for legal downloads, and BitTorrent hopes to eventually help "drive that evolution wherever we can."
For now, though, BitTorrent is sticking to the current industry standby of DRMed downloads to stay current with competition. BitTorrent's movie service will launch in the US later this year and go international sometime next year. He indicates that the service will use BitTorrent's seeding technology to help users download content much quicker, hoping that this will be the feature—along with unique content—that will lure users over to BitTorrent's service.
Navin also mentions that he is working with hardware makers to create devices that will be able to torrent files from the Internet, saying that he hopes to get hardware-makers and content providers to get in on his platform soon. For now, DRM is a must-have for video content providers and Navin is confident that BitTorrent's service will be successful.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060922-7810.html
Microsoft Media Player Shreds Your Rights
No more backups, or Tivo
Charlie Demerjian
THINK DRM WAS bad already? Think I was joking when I said the plan was to start with barely tolerable incursions on your rights, then turn the thumbscrews? Welcome to Windows Media Player 11, and the rights get chipped away a lot more. Get used to the feeling, if you buy DRM infected media, you will only have this happen with increasing rapidity.
One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same thing.
So, in WiMP10, you just backed up your licenses, and stored them in a safe place. Buying DRM infections gets you a bunch of bits and a promise not to sue, but really nothing more. The content mafia will do anything in its power, from buying government to rootkitting you in order to protect those bits, and backing them up leaves a minor loophole while affording the user a whole lot of protection.
Guess which one wins, minor loophole or major consumer rights? Yes, WiMP11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you are really SOL. Remember that feeling I mentioned earlier? This is nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb enough to let it happen.
Read the links, the entire page is scary as hell, but the licensing part takes the cake. "Windows Media Player 11 does not permit you to back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses)", Wow, new terminology, old idea, you are a wallet with legs waiting to be raped. "The store might limit the number of times that you can restore your rights or limit the number of computers on which can use the songs or videos that you obtain from them. Some stores do not permit you to restore media usage rights at all." Translation, not our problem, and get bent, we got your cash.
But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times." This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service pack, masquerading as a 'critical security patch' takes away the optional part of the 'copy protection'? Now do you understand why they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their firewall will stop it even if you ask?
Then when you go down on the page a bit, it goes on to show that it guts Tivo capabilities. After three days, it kills your recordings for you, how thoughtful of them. Going away for a week? Tough, your rights are inconvenient to their profits, so they have to go. "Recorded TV shows that are protected with media usage rights, such as some TV content recorded on premium channels, will not play back after 3 days when Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2 for Windows XP is installed on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. No known workaround to resolve this issue exists at this time." Workaround my *ss, this is wholesale rights removal by design.
What WiMP11 represents is one of the biggest thefts of your rights that I can think of. MS planned this, pushed the various pieces slowly, and this is the first big hammer to drop. Your rights, the promises they made, and anything else that gets in the way of the content mafia making yet more money gets thrown out. Why? Greed. Your rights? History. You were dumb enough to let it happen, don't say I didn't warn you. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523
Ex-RIAA agency "can't find" artists it owes money to, like Public Enemy Fred von Lohmann sez,
Cory Doctorow
SoundExchange (which is in charge of collecting and distributing royalties collected from satellite radio and webcasting) can't seem to locate the artists to whom these royalties are to be paid. If the monies are not disbursed, SoundExchange gets to keep them. Apparently SoundExchange was worried about publishing the list for fear that "middlemen" would try to swipe a piece of the action for connecting artists with their royalties. (Did they ever think to reach out to the fans?)
They finally published a list of the artists they "can't find."
Check out all the major label artists they can't find:
Cassandra Wilson (Blue Note)?
J. J. Cale (Mercury)?
Jane Siberry (Warner)?
Jeff Buckley (Columbia Records -- they're still putting out his stuff posthumously, with help from his mother!)?
Loverboy?!!
Booker T & the MGs?!!!
Public Enemy? !!!!!!
SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES? !!!!!
Not to mention major indie artists like:
Pizzicato Five
L7
Pete Rock
And they can't find Public Image Ltd, despite the fact that they found Johnny Rotten's "other band," the Sex Pistols? They can't seem to find "Neko Case & Her Boyfriends", despite the fact that they seem to have found Neko Case?
The only silver lining here is that to look at the list is to realize that webcasters are bringing real musical diversity back to America -- it's a much richer list than you'd get by aggregating playlists from FM radio!
For SoundExchange's sake, I hope there's a reasonable explanation for this.
Update 2: Fred sez, "Turns out SoundExchange WAS part of the RIAA until 2003. Now it's independent -- although each of the major labels has a board seat. Anyhow, the point is the same -- SoundExchange certainly has deep connections with the major label establishment, so. Here's the FAQ re SoundExchange.
Update: Laura sends in links to other pools of unclaimed royalties for artists: EMI, EMI music publishing, Sony BMG, Universal Music, Harry Fox, CMRRA
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/21...cy_cant_f.html
Copyright Hindering Scholarship In The Humanities And Social Sciences
Press Release
A report from the British Academy, launched on 18 September, expresses fears that the copyright system may in important respects be impeding, rather than stimulating, the production of new ideas and new scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
It is in the nature of creative activity and scholarship that original material builds on what has gone before – ‘if I have seen further, it is because I had stood on the shoulders of giants’ – therefore provisions that are overly protective of the rights of existing ideas may inhibit the development of new ones.
Existing UK law provides exemption from copyright for fair dealing with material for purposes of private study and non-commercial research, and for criticism and review. “There is, however, little clarity about the precise scope of these exemptions, and an absence of case law” said John Kay, who is Chair of the Working Group which oversaw the Review. “Publishers are risk-averse, and themselves defensive of existing copyrights.”
The situation is aggravated by the increasingly aggressive defence of copyright by commercial rights holders, and the growing role – most of all in music – of media businesses with no interest in or understanding of the needs of scholarship. It is also aggravated by the unsatisfactory EU Database Directive, which is at once vague and wide-ranging, and by the development of digital rights management systems, which may enable publishers to use technology to circumvent the exceptions to copyright which are contained in current legislation.
The Academy publishes with the report a draft set of guidelines for Fellows and scholars on their rights and duties under copyright legislation. They include
• authors and producers of original creative material should understand that their interests in copyright are not necessarily identical with those of publishers and should not rely on publishers to protect them
• the law should be clarified - statutorily if necessary – to make clear that the use of copyright material in the normal course of scholarly research in universities and other public research institutions is covered by the exemptions from the copyright act.
• publishers should not be able to use legal or technological protection through digital rights management systems to circumvent copyright exemptions
• the growth of digital databases should be monitored to ensure that ready access continues to be available for the purposes of scholarship
This report parallels a report from the Royal Society,
Keeping science open: the effects of intellectual property on the conduct of science (2003), which expresses related worries about the ways in which intellectual property, its interpretation and its use, impact on the progress of science.
http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/release.asp?Newsid=219
Tech Manufacturers Rally Against Net Neutrality
Anne Broache
Producers of networking hardware and applications gathered around a podium at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday with a single message: Not all "high-tech" companies support so-called Net neutrality legislation.
At a press conference here, more than a dozen representatives from companies like Corning, Tyco and Motorola urged the U.S. Senate to pass a massive communications bill--attacked by Net neutrality fans for failing to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment of Internet content--as soon as possible.
Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat and a primary sponsor of a narrower House of Representatives measure approved in June by a 321 to 101 vote, joined the industry representatives in calling for Senate action "right away." He stressed that the legislation will "deliver much-needed relief to cable rates" sought by his Chicago-area constituents.
Supporters say the Senate measure, which was approved by a committee vote in June but has since gotten hung up chiefly over Net neutrality, is crucial because it would make it easier for new video service providers--such as telephone companies hoping to roll out IPTV--to enter the market, increase competition for cable, and thus spur lower prices. Among other benefits, they say, it would also permit municipalities to offer their own broadband services.
"There are a lot of good things in this bill," Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc., said of the Senate's efforts. "Let's not let this get tied up over the most contentious thing out there, which is Net neutrality."
"Don't be confused by these spurious complaints about Net neutrality," Rush said. "Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem."
There are some Net neutrality rules in the Senate bill that would grant more authority to the Federal Communications Commission, but not as much as companies like Google and eBay would like.
Rush's stance differs from that of many of his Democratic colleagues. He told reporters after the press conference that no new legislation is needed both because no problem exists and the FCC has shown it can quickly deal with any complaints. In a 2005 case, a small telephone company agreed to stop blocking voice over Internet Protocol calls after the regulators stepped in.
Not to be upstaged by the recent lobbying efforts of Net neutrality fans, opponents of the regulations have stepped up their activities this week.
Opponents ramping up
On Monday, the Senate Commerce Committee's Republican members, who generally oppose protections sought by Internet companies and consumer groups, presented the findings of a poll of 800 registered voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The survey found that 91 percent of respondents had never heard of Net neutrality, although 78 percent said it was important to enact a "consumer bill of rights" that guarantees them full access to legal Internet content and prohibits providers from blocking or interfering with the data they send and receive.
In connection with Tuesday's press conference, more than 100 companies from the networking and communications sector, including Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and Qualcomm, also signed their names to a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Democratic Leader Harry Reid. The one-page document encouraged them to schedule a vote "in the very near future," adding that it was "too soon to enact network neutrality legislation."
The "consumer bill of rights" approach embedded in the Senate bill is sufficient to protect consumer concerns over access to Web content and services, the companies said. Opponents of the provision, such as Google, Amazon.com and a broad coalition of consumer and advocacy groups, have said it falls short because it would not restrict network operators like Verizon and AT&T from favoring their own content or brokering deals with Internet content companies for special treatment, potentially squeezing out garage innovators who can't afford to pay for such perks.
An aide to Frist said Tuesday that it remains unclear when a vote will be scheduled. She said Frist is still waiting on Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, the communications bill's chief sponsor, to confirm he has the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster.
http://news.com.com/Tech+manufacture...3-6117241.html
Kazaa: Hope for a Final Ruling
Simon Hayes
LAWYERS for the recording industry and two senior Sharman Networks and Altnet executives will try to reach a settlement to the last round of the Kazaa legal action today, months after the bulk of the litigation was settled for $US115 million ($153 million).
Sharman Networks, which runs the Kazaa filesharing system, settled the music piracy case with the record companies back in July, but action continues against Sharman chief technology officer Phil Morle, and Anthony Rose, chief technology officer of the company's US business partner Altnet.
The recording industry is seeking undertakings and costs from the two.
The music industry appealed against Justice Wilcox's decision late last year to dismiss with costs the case against Mr Morle and Mr Rose, and the parties did not reach an agreement when the action against Sharman was settled.
Lawyers will meet today for a mediation hearing.
Mr Rose said he had spent more than $1 million defending the case.
"It came as a shock to discover that rather than paying the money that they were ordered by the court to pay me (in legal costs), the Australian music industry lawyers now want money from me," he said.
"As part of the global settlement with the music companies, Sharman and Altnet paid the music companies more than $150 million.
"One would have thought that this would have covered their legal bills.
"Ultimately, this is all a local sideshow.
"Altnet and the music companies are now working together globally as partners, and we are preparing for the next generation of our licensed content distribution business.
"Having been completely exonerated by the court, I look forward to a successful mediation and finalising this outstanding litigation."
Mr Morle was not available for comment.
A spokeswoman for the record companies said they were hopeful of reaching a settlement. "Anthony Rose and Phil Morle elected not to be part of the negotiated settlement with the record companies and Kazaa," she said.
"The record companies are seeking a restraint on Mr Rose and Mr Morle not to infringe copyright. This is the same restraint agreed to by the other parties.
"We hope mediation will achieve a settlement that is acceptable to all parties."
Altnet said last month that it would market an anti-piracy tool that could be applied to a range of peer-to-peer networks.
The company's Global File Registry uses special patented technology to identify pirated files and substitute them with an offer to sell a licensed track instead.
Global File Registry has been endorsed by a number of entertainment industry lobby groups, including the Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20435149^15319^^nbv^15306,00.html
For sale by owner
A Needy Napster Searches for Takers
Arik Hesseldahl
Napster, the subscription music-download service, is looking for a buyer. The company—which got its start as a free music-download, file-sharing site—said Sept. 18 that it has hired UBS Investment Bank to find a major strategic partner or to be acquired completely.
The possible sale is the latest sign of the pressure facing music-download sites, many of which are allying with makers of music-playing consumer electronics devices. Napster lags far behind market leader Apple, with its iPod-iTunes combination, and RealNetworks, owner of the Rhapsody service. Microsoft plans its own music player, called Zune, and download service later this year.
Napster has appeared ripe for a buyout since wireless phone giant Nokia acquired Loudeye in August. "It just goes to show in a market dominated by overlapping and incompatible services there is just not going to be room for every player," says Michael Gartenberg, a digital media analyst with Jupiter Research. He says that between Apple, Real and SanDisk, Nokia and Loudeye, Microsoft, and Sony's download service, there are no fewer than five distinct and incompatible music services, and that more may emerge before the end of the year. "There is no way the market will be able to support all these closed ecosystems," he said.
Shaky Emergence.
Napster sought bankruptcy protection in 2002 amid pressure from music labels. It re-emerged on the digital music scene after Roxio, a digital media software concern (now a unit of Sonic Solutions), acquired the rights to the name and the pressplay music download service, which had been a joint venture of Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment.
The service was relaunched under the well-known but also well-worn name of Napster 2.0 in October, 2003. Reaction to the launch was underwhelming, and it showed little real business. The main reason for its failure to gain much traction was that by the time of its launch, Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store had already been in business for six months, selling a million songs.
Since then, RealNetworks' Rhapsody service has emerged as a solid No. 2 to iTunes, while other online media outlets, including Yahoo! and Time Warner's AOL, have built music download services in partnership with privately held MusicNet.
Samsung Interested?
Possible acquirers might include Creative, which is finding its role as an also-ran vendor of digital music and media players under attack by SanDisk and could use its own service to integrate with its players. Or with attention on music downloads quickly shifting away from dedicated players toward mobile phones, wireless phone manufacturers such as Motorola or South Korean electronics giant Samsung might show interest. Samsung not only sells wireless phones but digital music players as well, and on Sept. 1 announced a plan to launch a music download service aimed at markets in Britain, France, and Germany in partnership with MusicNet.
Samsung and Napster have a history of partnerships, including the creation of a Samsung-made, Napster-branded player launched in 2003. Other partnerships with Blockbuster, XM Satellite Radio, and Ericsson all showed results, but failed to give Napster the substantial boost in subscriber base it has been seeking.
As of the quarter ended June 30, Napster had sales of $28.1 million with a $9.8 million loss. It reported a subscriber base of 512,000, compared with 1.61 million subscribers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...gn_id=rss_null
Yahoo Tests 'Right' to MP3 Downloads
Netco puts McCartney album online
Ben Fritz
Yahoo! is looking to end Apple's and Microsoft's dominance of the technology behind online music.
In a first for mainstream pop music, Yahoo! will sell Jesse McCartney's new album "Right Where You Want Me," from Disney-owned Hollywood Records, in the unprotected MP3 format.
That means consumers will be able to play it on any digital music device, including Apple's iPod. MP3 files are the only type that will play on an iPod besides those downloaded from iTunes.
But because they have no copy protection, MP3 files can be easily traded on peer-to-peer networks, emailed to friends or burned onto an endless number of CDs.
"We're trying to be realistic," said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. "Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward."
Yahoo! previously sold an exclusive version of Jessica Simpson song "A Public Affair" as an MP3, but it has never offered a major-label album for sale elsewhere without copy restriction, nor have any of the other digital musicstores (Daily Variety, July 20).
Labels and Netcos will be watching sales of the album, which Yahoo! will promote heavily throughout its network of Web sites to see whether consumers are more interested in buying unprotected MP3 files and whether it has any impact on piracy.
Yahoo! only has rights from Hollywood to sell the album in its entirety, for $9.99, not by individual track. ITunes and other musicstores also will sell "Right Where You Want Me" with copy protection.
Since online music sales started, diskeries have insisted on copy protection in hopes of restricting piracy and promoting Internet sales.
Yahoo!, which has the Net's most popular music Web site but hasn't become a significant player in digital music sales, has been pushing for labels to change their policy and sell music in MP3 format. If it gets more labels on board, Yahoo! could reach the vast audience of iPod owners, as well as those sporting Microsoft's soon-to-launch Zune, which both play only MP3s and songs downloaded from their partner musicstores.
"We think this is a really good experiment, because copy protection is not doing anything to stop people from stealing when you can just get unprotected tracks off of a CD or get music illegally online," said Yahoo! Music topper Dave Goldberg. "We think it's good to make it easy for consumers to get digital music on whatever device they want and for companies like us to not be reliant on one particular technology company for how our consumers can access music."
Because Apple doesn't license the copy-protection technology behind iTunes, musicstores like Yahoo!, Napster and Rhapsody that want to sell major-label music have to use Microsoft's alternative.
EMusic is currently the only online musicstore that sells songs in MP3 format, but it specializes in indie music and doesn't have any major-label tracks.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...&cs=1&nid=2570
Philly Orchestra Opens Online Store
AP
The Philadelphia Orchestra will become the first major U.S. orchestra to open its own online music store for consumers who want to download performances.
While other orchestras make their performances available online, they have done so through third-party distributors. The Philadelphia Orchestra will be the first in the U.S. to sell the downloads directly through its Web site, officials said.
"It's one more way we can address the changing media landscape and get the orchestra sound out there," spokeswoman Katherine Blodgett said Thursday.
Prices for MP3-format recordings range from about $5 for major works to $10 for full concerts. A CD-quality format called FLAC will cost a bit more.
The online store comes after the orchestra and its unionized musicians resolved a disagreement over fees for concert recordings and for radio broadcasts, which have resumed after a nearly 10-year absence.
The orchestra expects to offer at least a dozen new downloads each season.
---
On the Net:
http://www.thephiladelphiaorchestra.com
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-21-12-39-40
Free, Legal and Ignored
Colleges offer music downloads, but their students just say no; too many strings attached
Nick Timiraos
As a student at Cornell University, Angelo Petrigh had access to free online music via a legal music-downloading service his school provided. Yet the 21-year-old still turned to illegal file-sharing programs.
The reason: While Cornell's online music program, through Napster, gave him and other students free, legal downloads, the email introducing the service explained that students could keep their songs only until they graduated. "After I read that, I decided I didn't want to even try it," says Mr. Petrigh, who will be a senior in the fall at the Ithaca, N.Y., school.
College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use such digital download services as Napster, Rhapsody, Ruckus and Cdigix. As a result, some schools have dropped their services, and others are considering doing so or have switched to other providers.
To stop students from pirating music, more than 120 colleges and universities have tried providing free or subsidized access to the legal subscription services over campus networks in the past few years. About 7% of all four-year schools and 31% of private research universities provided one of the legal downloading services, according to a 2005 survey of 500 schools by the Campus Computing Project, a nonprofit that studies how colleges use information technology. Universities typically pay for the services, some with private grants and others through student fees. While a typical monthly subscription to Napster is $9.95, the schools have been able to cut special deals, funded in part by record companies.
Purdue University officials say that lower-than-expected demand among its students stems in part from all the frustrating restrictions that accompany legal downloading. Students at the West Lafayette, Ind., school can play songs free on their laptops but have to pay to burn songs onto CDs or load them onto a digital music device.
There's also the problem of compatibility: The services won't run on Apple Computer Inc. computers, which are owned by 19% of college students, according to a 2006 survey of 1,200 students by the research group Student Monitor. In addition, the files won't play on Apple iPods, which are owned by 42% of college students, according to the survey.
"People still want to have a music collection. Music listeners like owning their music, not renting," says Bill Goodwin, 21, who graduated in May from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. USC decided last year that it was finished with Napster after fewer than 500 students signed up, and it moved to Ruckus, hoping students would find that service more appealing.
Meanwhile, both Cornell and Purdue will no longer offer their students free music next year. An anonymous donor had paid for Cornell to offer Napster for two years, but the student government passed on a chance to keep the service by charging students a fee. "There hasn't been an overwhelming response to keep it," says Kwame Thomison, Cornell's student assembly president. "Students that enjoyed the service enough can pay for it themselves."
The number of students using Napster at George Washington University dropped by more than half between the first and second year, from one-third to one-seventh of eligible users. Alexa Kim, who oversees the Washington school's program, attributes the higher use at the start to the service's novelty and to press attention during the inaugural year. She adds that the university hasn't decided if it will renew its contract.
Colleges started offering the services in part because they were concerned that the recording industry might try to hold them liable for their students' copyright violations. So far no schools have been sued by the recording industry.
Universities also have another reason for reducing illegal downloading: The large amount of bandwidth used by movie and music downloads chokes universities' computer networks. The subscription services complement university filtering programs that can identify users who are misusing school networks. "The bandwidth that I recovered saved us $75,000 a year in network costs," says Matthew Jett Hall, assistant vice chancellor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. The university's Napster program requires users to pay $2 a month for unlimited downloads.
The Recording Industry Association of America says it has been happy with the progress the program has made so far. "Universities tend to move not all that quick to do things like this, so it's really quite an achievement," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.
Some schools that don't offer free downloads dismiss the subscription services as too costly for the results they achieve, especially because so many students now buy music from Apple's iTunes Music Store. "We were not in a position to offer an alternative to iTunes," says Lev Gonick, the chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "The alternatives looked like they had more sizzle than steak."
There is also little consensus among administrators about how successful the services have been in eliminating piracy. Although some say complaints from the recording industry have dropped sharply, no one can tell if that's because fewer students are engaging in illegal file-sharing or if the industry simply doesn't want to go after schools that are spending money to combat the problem. "The RIAA's push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we'll protect you from our lawsuits," says Kenneth C. Green, the Campus Computing Project's director.
The RIAA denies the charge. "We do sue students and send takedown notices to universities that have legal services all the time," says Mr. Sherman. Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property, he adds, because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property." And he disputes the idea that the subscription services have fallen out of favor. The number of campuses that subscribe will increase "pretty significantly" in the fall, he says.
Even at schools where more than half of the students use the services, few choose to buy songs. Only 2% of students at the University of Rochester in New York reported buying a song that they had downloaded from Napster in a fall 2005 survey of about 700 students. In the same survey, 10% said they downloaded songs from other services -- not necessarily legally -- after finding one they liked on Napster.
"There isn't that much we can do," acknowledges Aileen Atkins, Napster's senior vice president for business affairs and general counsel. "If they have an iPod, they're going to buy it on iTunes. It's a fact of life."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs
iPod Fans 'Shunning iTunes Store'
Despite the success of Apple iTunes, few people stock their iPod with tracks from the online store, reports a study.
The Jupiter Research report reveals that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on a iPod will be from the iTunes shop.
Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.
The report's authors claimed their findings had profound implications for the future of the online music market.
Ripped disks
They estimate that during 2006 Europeans will spend more than 385m euros (£260m) on digital music - the majority of this spending will be on tracks from Apple's iTunes store.
However, the report into the habits of iPod users reveals that 83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly. The minority, 17%, buy and download music, usually single tracks, at least once per month.
On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites.
The report warned against simple characterisations of the music-buying public that divide people into those that pay and those that pirate.
"It is not instructive to think of portable media player owners, nor iPod owners specifically, as homogenous groups," warned the report.
It said: "Digital music buyers do not necessarily stop file-sharing upon buying legally."
The importance of "free" to digital music fans should not be underestimated, warned the report, and should be a factor for newer digital music firms, such as Spiral Frog, which use an ad-supported model.
Perhaps the only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music - especially CDs.
"Digital music purchasing has not yet fundamentally changed the way in which digital music customers buy music," read the report.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/5350258.stm
Chatterbox
spykemail
You can call college students a lot of things - including stupid. But apparently we're not stupid enough to embrace crappy music services when we can do better using P2P file sharing software.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...346243&tid=141
The Missing Sony Exhibit
Michael Geist
The Canadian Sony rootkit class action settlement heads to court next week amid mounting questions about the deal. The EFF calls attention to a number of missing provisions, including no security reviews and no ongoing obligations to provide uninstallers for the rootkit. There is also a financial hit in Canada, with Canadian consumers receiving roughly ten percent less than U.S. consumers due to currency differences.
By far the biggest difference, however, is that the U.S. agreement is subject to injunctive relief linked to actions brought by several U.S. agencies and attorneys general. The Canadian agreement, by contrast does not include such relief. The justification for this difference is contained in Exhibit C, the only key settlement document that Sony has not provided to the public.
I have now obtained a copy of Exhibit C, which is an affidavit from Christine J. Prudham, Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs of Sony BMG Canada (Prudham is the same person who appeared today at the Copyright Board discussing how Sony BMG Canada released just 16 new Canadian records last year). The affidavit seeks to explain why Sony BMG Canada believes it is appropriate to grant Canadian consumers fewer rights than their U.S. counterparts. While there is the suggestion that Canadians would benefit indirectly from a U.S. injunction, the heart of the argument revolves around a series of copyright-related arguments that are utterly without merit. First, Prudham expresses concern that copyright is a federal matter and that the class action is being heard by a provincial court. This makes no sense - there is concurrent jurisdiction over copyrights (the Robertson v. Thompson copyright case currently before the Supreme Court originated in provincial court) but, more importantly, the case isn't about copyright but rather consumer protection, contractual issues, and privacy.
Second, Prudham argues that there is currently a "legal vacuum around TPMs in Canada", concluding that "Sony BMG Canada is not willing to potentially prejudice itself by agreeing to the Injunctive Provisions in the Canadian Agreement." This argument is simply embarrassing - there is no legal vacuum around TPMs in Canada. While Canada does not have anti-circumvention legislation, this is not a legal vacuum and is in no way relevant to this consumer class action lawsuit. The prejudice that Prudham refers to is not legal prejudice, but rather the "political prejudice" that will arise when Sony appears before a parliamentary committee discussing anti-circumvention legislation and is asked about the $25 million settlement arising from the rootkit fiasco and the fact that the company is subject to a potential injunction over the use of the technologies that it is seeking to protect.
Third, Prudham swears in this affidavit that "to impose in Canada the Injunctive Provisions provided for in the U.S. Settlement because of the U.S. Government Inquiries, based on U.S. legislation, would amount to adopting in Canada the U.S. approach to the 1996 WIPO Treaties without giving the Canadian Government the opportunity [to] decide what its policies will be on TPMs in light of the 1996 WIPO Treaties." This statement is complete rubbish. The U.S. actions have nothing to do with the DMCA and, moreover, the Canadian government is quite capable of doing whatever it wants on TPMs regardless of the terms of this class action settlement.
The Sony rootkit fiasco has been a series of missteps that have demonstrated the dangers of TPMs. This latest twist - shrouded for weeks in secrecy - only serves to place Sony in a further bad light and to cast doubt about its sincerity in addressing a major mistake that has harmed its reputation with consumers, musicians, policy makers, and the politicians.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1433/125/
Belgian Court Rules Against Google News
AP
A Belgian court has ordered Internet search company Google Inc. to stop publishing content from Belgian newspapers without permission or payment of fees, a Belgian press association said Monday.
The Belgian Association of Newspaper Editors, which handles copyright matters for the French- and German-speaking press in the country, lodged the complaint over Google News, a search service in which headlines, excerpts of stories and small versions of photographs are reproduced to refer visitors to full articles on newspaper sites.
The association said the Belgian Court of First Instance has threatened daily fines of $1.27 million in its ruling earlier this month. Margaret Boribon, secretary general of the association, said individual newspapers will have to decide on fees for their articles separately, so it isn't clear how much Google would owe Belgian newspapers for a day's content.
Google currently is defending a separate lawsuit filed in the United States by Agence France-Presse, arguing the service is protected under "fair use" provisions of copyright law.
In the Belgian case, Google spokeswoman Rachel Whetstone said the news service is "entirely consistent" with copyright law and benefits news organizations by referring traffic to their sites.
She added that the Belgian newspapers did not need to take the case to court because Google lets any news organization decline to participate upon request. Google has removed the Belgian newspapers from its Belgium index and is in the process of removing them from its global index, she said.
The Google News service, which debuted in 2002, scans thousands of news outlets and highlights the top stories under common categories such as world and sports.
Many stories carry a small image, or thumbnail, along with the headline and the first sentence or two. Visitors can click on the headline to read the full story at the source Web site.
Legal scholars say Google could argue that the service adds value by significantly improving the news-consuming experience.
But the French news agency AFP sued Google for at least $17.5 million in damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., arguing that the Google service adds little value because its news site looks much like those of AFP subscribers, albeit one where software and not human editors determine the placement of stories on a page.
Separately, Google has agreed to pay The Associated Press for stories and photographs. Neither Mountain View-based Google nor New York-based AP have disclosed financial terms or other details because of a nondisclosure agreement.
Google has indicated AP's content will serve as the foundation for a new product that will be introduced in the coming months as a complement to its popular Google News service.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-18-13-28-14
Google Won't Follow Belgium Court Order
Rachel Konrad
Google Inc. refused to comply Wednesday with a Belgian court decision that required the company to publish the original text of the ruling on its sites, calling that requirement "unnecessary" and "disproportionate."
Earlier this month, the Belgian Court of First Instance ordered the Internet search engine to stop publishing content from Belgian newspapers without permission or payment of fees. Local newspaper editors argued that Google's popular news site, which features small photos and excerpts from news reported elsewhere, stole traffic from individual newspapers' sites.
Google complied with the ruling, which threatened to impose daily fines of about $1.27 million against the Mountain View-based company. Google is removing the Belgian newspapers from its indexes.
The court also demanded that Google post the original text of the ruling on its Belgian sites, Google.be and news.google.be. The court is scheduled to rule Friday on whether Google must publish the text or face fines of $634,000 per day.
Google spokesman Steven Langdon said he hopes both aspects of the ruling will be overturned.
"We believe that Google News is entirely lawful and brings real benefits to publisher by driving web traffic - and users - to their sites. It is important to remember that we never show more than the headlines and a few snippets of text," Langdon said in an e-mail. "If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper's web site.
The company will continue to defy the court's requirement that Google post the judgment to Belgian sites, he said. The company plans to appeal the entire ruling, he said.
"We argued in court today that this was disproportionate and now, given all the publicity the case has received, unnecessary," Langdon wrote.
Google News, which debuted in 2002, scans thousands of news outlets and highlights the top stories under common categories such as world and sports. Many stories carry a small image, or thumbnail, along with the headline and the first sentence or two. Visitors can click on the headline to read the full story at the source Web site.
Legal scholars say Google could argue that the service adds value by significantly improving the news-consuming experience.
The French news agency AFP sued Google for at least $17.5 million in damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., arguing that the Google service adds little value because its news site looks much like those of AFP subscribers, albeit one where software and not human editors determine the placement of stories on a page.
Separately, Google has agreed to pay The Associated Press for stories and photographs. Neither Mountain View-based Google nor New York-based AP have disclosed financial terms or other details because of a nondisclosure agreement.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-20-18-16-23
Belgium Court Rejects Google Appeal
Aoife White
Google Inc. lost an appeal Friday of a Belgian court's requirement that the Internet search company publish on its home page the ruling in a recent case it lost.
Google spokesman D.J. Collins said the company would appeal again at a Nov. 24 hearing when the court takes up a broader challenge, saying the requirement was "disproportionate and unnecessary." Google faces daily fines of about $640,000 for refusing to post the Sept. 5 ruling on its Belgian home pages, Google.be and news.google.be.
The company plans to appeal the main part of the ruling as well, even as it is already complying. The court ordered Google to stop publishing news excerpts and small photos from Belgian, French and German newspapers without first paying them or getting their permission.
Google said it is removing Belgium's French-language newspapers Le Soir, La Libre Belgique and La Derniere Heure from its indexes, but it did not post the ruling itself.
"We believe it was disproportionate and unnecessary, given the extensive publicity the case has received already, especially while its substance has yet to be debated in court," Collins said.
Google said its service is lawful and drives traffic to newspaper sites because people need to click through to the original publisher to read the full story. Local newspaper editors argued that Google's popular news site stole traffic from individual newspapers' sites.
Collins said it was up to the plaintiff - Copiepresse, the Belgian association that manages copyright for Belgium's French-language newspapers - to decide when the daily fine starts and finishes.
Google did not attend the first hearing on Aug. 29, saying it was unaware of the complaint. Belgian law allows the case to begin again with a clean slate in these circumstances - as it did at another hearing on Wednesday.
Google News, which debuted in 2002, scans thousands of news outlets and highlights the top stories under common categories such as world and sports. Many stories carry a small image, or thumbnail, along with the headline and the first sentence or two. Visitors can click on the headline to read the full story at the source Web site.
The French news agency AFP sued Google for at least $17.5 million in damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., arguing that the Google service adds little value because its news site looks much like those of AFP subscribers, albeit one where software and not human editors determine the placement of stories on a page.
Separately, Google has agreed to pay The Associated Press for stories and photographs. Neither Google nor New York-based AP have disclosed financial terms or other details because of a nondisclosure agreement.
A group of newspaper trade associations announced plans Friday for a pilot project by year's end to automatically grant republication authorizations to Internet search engines.
The World Association on Newspapers, the European Publishers Council, the International Publishers Association and the European Newspaper Association said jointly that the new tool should answer problems such as Google's dispute with Belgium newspapers and make newspaper content more widely available. The group did not say whether the tool would include a payment mechanism, promising to provide more details within weeks.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-23-07-18-11
DVD Chips 'to Kill Illegal Copying'
Embedded radio transmitter chips to track movie, music and software discs
Simon Burns in Taipei
DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios.
The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers' homes.
Home DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and refuse to play discs which are copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region, the companies behind the technology expect.
"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation.
Ritek is the world's largest DVD maker, and its U-Tech subsidiary will make the discs.
U-Tech and IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips used in the discs, announced today that production of the 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan.
U-Tech's global network of factories stamps out some 500 million pre-recorded DVDs and CDs a month for major movie studios, recording studios and video games companies.
After ironing out bugs in the manufacturing process, U-Tech will work with major movie studios on a large-scale test of an RFID-based supply chain management process at its manufacturing plant and distribution centre in Australia.
RFID readers will then be built-in to home DVD players to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management system.
U-Tech described this as the "real end game" for the chip-on-disc technology, which would "eliminate optical disc piracy in the entertainment and IT sectors" .
IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read from at least six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The passive chips require no battery, as they are powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.
"I have envisioned using RFID to improve product visibility and enhance security in the optical disc industry for some time," said Yeh.
"Launching the chip-on-disc system has made this dream a reality and holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide."
Gordon Westwater, president of IPICO, added: "[This is the] first step towards new international standards to safeguard optical media, and the subsequent adoption of the chip-on-disc concept as a global standard."
U-Tech Australia, where the project will undergo a large scale trial, did not reply today to vnunet.com's request for comment on the new embedded RFID chip process and the precise schedule for its rollout.
Press relations staff at U-Tech's office in Taiwan refused to provide more information about the technology.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...-fights-piracy
Podcasters Unite to Challenge Copyright Landgrab
Electronic Frontier Foundation rallies the troops
Will Head
A new broadcasting right proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (Wipo) is being opposed by freedom organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The Broadcast Treaty seeks to allow 50 years of copyright-like control over the content of broadcasts, even when the broadcaster has no copyright in what it shows, according to the EFF.
The campaign group is urging podcasters to sign a letter opposing the treaty being extended to cover the internet.
"A TV channel broadcasting your Creative Commons-licensed movie could legally demand that no one record or redistribute it, and sue anyone who does," explained the EFF.
"TV companies could use their new rights to go after TiVo or MythTV for daring to let you skip advertisements or record programmes in DRM-free formats. "
Some countries also support expanding the treaty to cover the internet. " That means that anyone who feeds any combination of 'sound and images' through a web server would have a right to meddle with what you do with the webcast simply because they serve as the middleman between you and the creator," said the EFF.
"If the material is already under copyright, you would be forced to clear rights with multiple sets of rights holders. Not only would this hurt innovation and threaten citizens' access to information, it would change the nature of the internet as a communication medium."
The Broadcast Treaty also does not incorporate traditional fair use, a legal defence to copyright infringement, according to EFF fellow and author Cory Doctorow.
"Fair use does not apply to the broadcast right. It will have its own rules for fair use, separate from copyright," Doctorow wrote on the Boing Boing blog.
"You will have to pay your lawyer twice: once to make sure you've got a fair copyright use, and again to make sure you've got a fair broadcast right use. And you might get sued twice: once for violating copyright and again for broadcast right violations."
Doctorow encouraged podcasters to fight the legislation and sign the EFF open letter.
"If you are a podcaster, or better yet a podcasting organisation, sign this letter now," he wrote. "It will be presented on Monday morning to the Wipo committee that's creating the Broadcast Treaty in Geneva. This is your best-ever chance to be heard."
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...lated_articles
Cross-media world hits European broadcasters
Advertising Revenues Falling for Traditional TV Firms
Robert Jaques
New advertising formats and direct business partnerships between content providers and advertisers pose a "tremendous threat" to the core business of European commercial broadcasters, industry experts have warned.
Yankee Group said that European free-to-air broadcasters are facing a "severe decline" in advertising revenue as a result of this shift.
The analyst firm believes that broadcasters must refocus their traditional business model to retain these budgets and margins, and explore new and emerging TV distribution and merchandising options.
The Yankee Group report noted that free-to-air broadcasters also face significant cost pressure from the analogue switch-off and the transformation to digital.
On average, only 30 per cent of most European broadcasters' revenue comes from channels other than advertising, the study estimates.
As a result, European broadcasters should begin exploring alternative broadcasting methods to generate greater revenue in today's on-demand world.
"European broadcasters cannot escape from branded entertainment and advertisers' demands for cross-media platforms," said Anette Schaefer, Yankee Group director for broadband and media Europe.
"Free-to-air broadcasters should prepare content for the digital switch to internet, IPTV and mobile as well as create new, scalable cross-media platforms while advertisers and brands engage with TV broadcasters to explore new ways to research and interact with consumers."
The study found that, even with lower production costs, the demand for HDTV is on the rise.
To compete in a pan-European or global market, production houses should engage with global brands that have restrictions in their core markets to develop global entertainment programmes.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...-hits-european
A Video Business Model Ready to Move Beyond Beta
Richard Siklos
VIDEO mania is in full swing. Amazon is finally doing movie downloads. Apple is touting a new wireless gizmo to beam movies from laptops to TV screens. NBC is introducing a video syndication service that might pit it against Google and Yahoo, and it’s joining the other big networks in putting its shows online for free with advertising. MTV is working with Google to populate its video content all over the Web.
It is wholly unclear which, if any, of these or any of the dozens of other recent efforts that have been announced will break away from the pack, which is why many of them are couched as “tests” and “experiments.” (Whoever thought up this idea of Web sites forever being in “beta” deserves a prize as the spinmeister of their generation.)
Still, a few things are clear from the recent news flow. First of all: yes, the world has gone batty over video. Thirty-second clips, three-minute spoofs, half-hour sitcoms, TV dramas that haven’t been shown in decades, rap videos, Hollywood blockbusters and feeds from TV news outlets big and small are flooding online. The term video itself is already starting to sound old — the equivalent of songs before the advent of MP3’s and downloads.
The good news — and my second point — is that there’s gold in them there hills. Video delivered over the Internet is clearly shaping up to be an actual business that advertisers are interested in. The broadcasting (netcasting?) of television programs and clips on the Web moves the debate away from Internet-versus-TV because if TV executives put their best material online and get paid for it, the proposition becomes Internet-cum-TV.
The research firm eMarketer estimates that video-related advertising will top $2.3 billion within four years. And let’s not forget that Google is on track to exceed $7 billion in revenue this year — and that is predominantly from old-fashioned, Yellow Pages-style text ads. Heck, they don’t even have pictures, let alone moving images.
Much attention has been focused on the economics of selling digital versions of Hollywood movies (like in Amazon’s new Unbox service) as an alternative to DVD sales and rentals and to stem piracy. But what has yet to be exploited — what Google, Yahoo and many other aggregators are vying for — are pieces of the $60 billion or so that will be spent on television advertising in the United States this year.
NBC’s new syndication business, dubbed NBBC, for National Broadband Company, promises to match up content creators with Web sites that might be interested in showing the video. All three parties will get to take a cut of the embedded advertising revenue. There is much to quibble with about the way NBBC came out of the gate; its executives dissed most blogs as unworthy of their content and sneered at the homemade content that is proliferating on YouTube.
On the other hand, any video service using NBBC is nonexclusive, so there is really no reason not to use it (which explains why little corners of NBC competitors like Fox and CBS are participating in the NBBC rollout, through their IGN.com and CSTV businesses, respectively).
Some aspects of the NBBC concept can lead to head-scratching. If I have a great piece of video on my Web site, for instance, is it more valuable to syndicate it through NBBC or to just have it spread virally across the Web? A simple link will take people to the video and any ad accompanying it for free. But that’s why it’s an experiment.
The clever thing about NBBC, though, is that it’s an entirely new business — to the extent it will distribute other companies’ programs — that is designed to bring in new money. Even if free advertiser-supported video on the Web takes off, it’s far from clear whether those ad dollars will be greater than the dollars NBC may lose from viewers who will no longer watch its show on regular TV, or download or DVD and so on.
Which brings us to Apple’s potential convergence-buster, dubbed iTV (the name is — you guessed it — beta). Betting against Steven P. Jobs has not been a sound proposition in recent years, but there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about whether iTV, which doesn’t actually exist yet, will have the technological wherewithal or enough compelling content to matter. But it does draw people closer to a world where inexpensive liquid crystal displays will moot the long-running debate about convergence because people will just plug in their cable or Internet or Wi-Fi and do what they please.
“The real win here is in high-value, high-quality, high-definition content on your TV set,” said Josh Bernoff, a vice president at Forrester Research. “To do that is going to require more than what Amazon and frankly more than what Apple is doing. We’re still waiting for that device.”
Or maybe it’s here and we just can’t afford it. TiVo last week brought to market its Series 3 digital recording box, which appears to have the ability to do everything from record in high-definition to take video files through a broadband Internet connection either directly or wirelessly. At $799, however, it’s the most expensive TiVo toy yet.
And if you want to really — really — get your hands on as much video as one could possibly enjoy, may I recommend the new DirecTV Titanium service? Introduced recently as the ultimate luxury for anyone who calls their home a “crib” with a straight face, it’s basically everything the satellite provider has to give for a flat fee of $7,500 a year.
That means every regular, pay and high-definition channel, every sports package, pay-per-view movies (at no cost), and a whole bunch of tuners and digital video recorders to do with as you please. There is also 24-hour a day “concierge” service for technical help and anything else.
Best of all, none of it is in beta.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/bu.../17frenzy.html
Warner Distribute Videos Through YouTube
Michael Liedtke
Warner Music Group Corp. has agreed to distribute and license its copyrighted songs and other material through online video trendsetter YouTube Inc., marking another significant step in the entertainment industry's migration to the Internet.
Under a revenue-sharing deal announced Monday, New York-based Warner Music has agreed to transfer thousands of its music videos and interviews to YouTube, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup that has become a cultural touchstone since two 20-something friends launched the company in a Silicon Valley garage 19 months ago.
Perhaps even more important for YouTube is that Warner Music has agreed to license its songs to the millions of ordinary people who upload their homemade videos to the Web site.
"We are very excited," YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley said in a phone interview Sunday. "This is a real landmark for our company."
Warner Music ranks as the country's third largest recording company with annual revenue of $3.5 billion.
Besides it namesake label, the Warner Music family includes Atlantic, Asylum, Elektra and Rhino - a group that includes vintage recording artists like Led Zeppelin, the Doors and Ray Charles, as well recent hit makers like Linkin Park, Green Day and Faith Hill.
Privately held YouTube is hoping the Warner Music deal will serve as a springboard for similar alliances with other long-established media outlets looking to connect with the Web site's audience, which watches more than 100 million videos per day.
"Technology is changing entertainment, and Warner Music is embracing that innovation," said Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. "Consumer-empowering destinations like YouTube have created a two-way dialogue that will transform entertainment and media forever."
Many of YouTube's most widely watched videos already include copyrighted music, raising the specter of a legal showdown with record labels and artists seeking to protect their right to be paid for the material.
Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris signaled the industry's exasperation with YouTube just a few days ago when he indicated the world's largest record label is prepared to sue the site unless it does a better job of preventing copyright violations.
Other labels, though, have recently been experimenting with releasing some of their commercial videos on YouTube. Capitol Records recently posted videos by The Vines, Cherish and OK Go on YouTube.
On the television front, NBC has been using YouTube to promote its fall programming under a partnership announced in June.
Even as rampant copyright violations have popped up on the site, Hurley and his partner Steve Chen have insisted that they want to work with music, movie and television executives to help them take advantage of a new distribution channel as YouTube tries to translates its popularity into profits.
YouTube so far has been subsisting on $11.5 million in venture capital, spurring predictions that the company either will have to raise more money or sell out to a deep-pocketed buyer as it tries to fend off increasing competition from Internet powers Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.
In Sunday's interview, Hurley reiterated YouTube's intention to remain independent - a goal that may be even more realistic if the Warner Music deal pays off.
The financial terms of YouTube's arrangement with Warner Music weren't disclosed.
Both companies are betting they will be able to make money from the ads that will show up alongside Warner Music's own videos as well as amateur videos featuring copyrighted material.
To make the deal happen, YouTube developed a royalty-tracking system that will detect when homemade videos are using copyrighted material. YouTube says the technology will enable Warner Music to review the video and decide whether it wants to approve or reject it.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-18-08-16-51
U.S. War on Drugs Spreads to YouTube
Ted Bridis
The White House is distributing government-produced, anti-drug videos on YouTube, the trendy Internet service that already features clips of wacky, drug-induced behavior and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana plants.
The decision to distribute public service announcements and other videos over YouTube represents the first concerted effort by the U.S. government to influence customers of the popular service, which shows more than 100 million videos per day.
The administration was expected to announce its decision later Tuesday. It said it was not paying any money to load its previously produced videos onto YouTube's service, so the program is effectively free. Already by Tuesday, thousands of YouTube users had watched some of the government's videos.
"If just one teen sees this and decides illegal drug use is not the path for them, it will be a success," said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The government's YouTube videos include a previously televised, 30-second ad of a teenager running from a snarling dog and bemoaning pressure from his friends to smoke marijuana.
"Then today, they said I should try to out run Tic Tic, the lumber-yard dog," the teen says. "And I don't think I can. I'm an idiot."
President Bush's top drug-policy adviser, John Walters, said the agency was using emerging technologies to try to reach its audience. "Public institutions must adapt to meet the realities of these promising technologies," he said.
YouTube Inc., a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup, has become one of the Internet's hottest properties since two 20-something friends started the company 19 months ago. The free service allows users to share and view videos, most of which are amateurishly produced and include clips of young people singing and dancing - usually badly.
The government's short public service announcements - all of which were produced previously for television - are highly polished. They will compete for viewership against hundreds of existing, drug-related videos that include shaky footage of college-age kids smoking marijuana and girls dancing wildly after purportedly using cocaine. Other YouTube videos describe how to grow marijuana and how to cook with it.
"Welcome to the great experiment," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. He predicted computer-savvy critics of U.S. drug policies will quickly edit the government's videos to produce parodies and distribute those on YouTube. "This seems pretty new and pretty adventurous."
The government linked its videos with the terms "war on drugs," "peer-pressure," "marijuana," "weed," "ONDCP" and "420," so anyone searching for those words on YouTube could find its anti-drug messages. All the videos were associated with a YouTube account named "ONDCPstaff" and identified as an 18-year-old living in Washington. The figure 420 is a popular reference for marijuana, and officials said the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy was created 18 years ago.
Michael Bugeja, who studies how different groups use the Internet, said the White House plan is misdirected because online video services don't afford serious consideration to weighty topics.
"It's the wrong forum and the wrong target," said Bugeja, an author and director of the journalism school at Iowa State University.
---
On the Net:
U.S. anti-drug videos:
http://www.YouTube.com/ONDCP
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-18-23-08-02
Truth or Illusion: What's Real on YouTube?
Chris Stevens
A single homemade YouTube video can receive millions of visitors a day, so it's little surprise that advertisers are keen to exploit the site. This presents a unique problem though: how can an advertiser attach itself to video content that is inherently independent, user-generated and unendorsed?
This month, the answer seems to have finally occurred to the advertising industry. Instead of sponsoring easily ignored advertising on the page around YouTube videos, advertisers have taken to manipulating the videos themselves.
Over the past few weeks, visitors have flocked to home videos by a YouTube user known as Lonelygirl15. Her pretty smile and endearing accounts of her life drew many millions of visitors, inspired hundreds of fan sites and set the Internet buzzing with interest. But soon viewers became suspicious. The high quality of video lighting, slick editing and lack of copyrighted music led to accusations that Lonelygirl15 was a hoaxer.
Last week, the Lonelygirl15 videos were indeed exposed as a hoax. The girl depicted was an aspiring actress named Jessica Rose. She subsequently discussed the videos on CNN, The Tonight Show and MTV -- not bad exposure for a previous unknown. The creators of the video were revealed to be film professionals who describe their efforts as a "new art form".
These filmmakers are misguided though -- this isn't art, it's deception for profit. Misrepresenting commercials as independent user-generated content, actors as members of the public, and fiction as fact is not art, it's advertising. The Lonelygirl15 videos were created for the explicit purpose of promoting a product, in this case the actress Jessica Rose.
With Lonelygirl15 the deception seems to have been relatively innocuous: the aim was self-promotion, not the subliminal exhibition of the autumn Gap range. But it makes you wonder what's next. The Internet is notoriously untrustworthy as an information medium, but what appears to be independent user content is generally accepted at face value. At the very least we assume that it's really little Johnny from Utah play-fighting a lightsaber battle with broom handles and not a viral marketing campaign for Lucasfilm.
For companies with massive advertising budgets and a pressing need to engage with an increasingly cynical audience, the Lonelygirl15 advertising model is irresistible. Television advertising, try though it might, finds it harder to overcome the delineation between programming and advertising. We have 'commercial breaks' and the majority of us understand when we're being sold to. But when advertisers mimic the user-generated content on YouTube to promote their products, none of these rules apply.
Subliminal product placement and promotion on YouTube is one thing, but it's beginning to look like the site has given rise to an entirely new and vicious form of trench warfare between competing brands. This new format, dubbed the smear-video, depicts a rival brand's product exhibiting fictitious faults.
Because of the anonymous nature of YouTube, a smear-video can rarely be proven to have originated with a rival brand. The video will appear to show a product exhibiting a fault at the hands of a genuine user, but will in fact be a carefully scripted and executed fraud. Take the 21-second YouTube video entitled 'Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!', which showed a smiling woman snapping a Samsung Ultra Edition mobile phone in two. According to some reports, Samsung says the phone must have been artificially rigged to snap. The video has now been removed from YouTube. Whose agenda does this video serve?
Interestingly, William Gibson predicted these kinds of corporate video manipulations in his book Pattern Recognition. Gibson's 2003 novel describes an advertising exec who is desperate to hunt down and capitalise on an artist whose quirky Internet videos have gained huge popularity. The modern reality is worse than Gibson's vision -- it seems a corporation won't even need to track down an artist when it can provide an absolutely convincing simulacrum of independent user-generated video.
Self-promotion is not a new concept and advertisers have always used actors staging 'customer testimonies' to promote their brands. Most TV advertisements depict a fictitious customer expressing what appears to be their genuinely held belief in the endorsement of a product. But with YouTube we now have to deal with endorsement videos without being given any contextual clue that we're watching an advertisement.
There's no litmus test for genuine user-generated videos on YouTube. So, next time you watch a video of a kid setting his trousers on fire, take a moment to think about whether those Nike Airs he's wearing came from his shoe cupboard, or from the costume department lurking just offscreen.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/0,39029477,49283663,00.htm
Microsoft Launching Online Video Service
Elizabeth M. Gillespie
Microsoft Corp. is hoping to tap the explosive popularity of online video sharing by joining startups and major Internet rivals with its own video service.
"Soapbox on MSN Video" will let Internet users watch and post videos, rate or comment on them and share favorites by e-mailing them or linking them to their personal Web pages or blogs.
Rob Bennett, general manager of MSN's entertainment and video services unit, acknowledged that Silicon Valley startup YouTube Inc. has an early lead, having already attracted tens of millions of users in the year and a half since it launched. Rivals Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL also have similar offerings.
But Microsoft believes there is "still plenty of room to innovate, and go beyond what I would say most services provide ... just sort of the basics, a very kind of primitive experience that is not that engaging," Bennett said. "It's not that fun to use. It just gets the job done."
During a preview Monday, Bennett said Soapbox videos will be displayed in slightly larger windows than those competing services offer, and users will be able to expand videos to the full screen while they are playing, rather than having to jump back to the beginning and start over.
Soapbox will group videos in various categories, including most recent, most viewed, most commented on and top favorites. It will let users "tag" clips with keywords designed to make them easier for people to find.
A beta "test" version will initially be available on an invitation-only basis to some Microsoft employees and regular MSN testers, Bennett said. He said Soapbox will be expanded to a wider audience "very quickly," but he could not say how soon.
Though Microsoft has some catching up to do, Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox said it is jumping into online video sharing more quickly than it's done in other newly emerging and competitive fields.
"Right now with video, everybody's throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks," Wilcox said, "and since everybody else is throwing spaghetti, Microsoft is throwing its own."
Wilcox suggested Microsoft's success with Soapbox will hinge on how much traction it gains with people who want to share their videos with tight-knit networks of family and friends.
"YouTube reaches the bazillions," Wilcox said, "but while Soapbox can do that, Microsoft's emphasis will be the people that you know ... me or you at the center with concentric circles going outward."
Microsoft hasn't yet pinned down its strategy for making money off Soapbox. Bennett said the company is considering various options for incorporating advertising, including posting ads directly on pages with videos or hosting advertiser-sponsored contests that seek video contributions from users.
Soapbox will support a maximum file size of 100 megabytes - comparable to YouTube and Yahoo - and will work on computers running both Microsoft Windows and Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers. It will work with either Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox Web browsers and accept the major media formats, including Windows Media Player and Apple's QuickTime.
Microsoft has a partnership with The Associated Press for a separate service, called the Online Video Network, in which the news cooperative's member Web sites can offer free video news clips and share in advertising revenue the service generates.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-19-00-57-03
Fox Unveils a Division for Religious-Oriented Films
Sharon Waxman
Hollywood took another step toward America’s vast and apparently growing Christian audience on Tuesday, as 20th Century Fox unveiled a new division, FoxFaith, that will release up to a dozen religious-oriented films each year.
Many of the films, with budgets ranging from about $3 million to $20 million each, will be released straight to DVD. But the studio said that at least six a year would be released nationally in theaters by an independent distributor working with Fox, starting on Oct. 6 with “Love’s Abiding Joy,” a western based on the novel by the Christian writer Janette Oke about a couple facing the trials of life on the American frontier.
“What we’re trying to do is create great movies that are story-driven, that happen to tap into Christian values,” said Simon Swart, the general manager of Fox’s North American home entertainment division. “The genesis of the FoxFaith banner is that it’s a Good Housekeeping seal, a marketing umbrella for these pictures, so that people can have confidence the movies won’t violate their core beliefs.”
The move reflects the growing weight of evangelical Christians in popular culture. It is the latest in a series of incremental steps taken by Hollywood studios in recent years to capitalize on the Christian audience.
FoxFaith grew out of Fox’s home entertainment division, which had huge success with the DVD of “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s controversial drama about the Crucifixion, selling 15 million units. After that film became a blockbuster hit in 2004, Hollywood studios, which had traditionally shied away from overtly religious messages, began cautiously creating alliances with Christian movie producers and consultants, mostly through their home entertainment divisions.
At Sony, Peter Lalonde of the Christian-oriented Cloud Ten Pictures worked with the home entertainment division to make and release “Left Behind III: The World at War,” the third in a series based on the popular end-of-times books by Timothy LaHaye, which went straight to DVD last year. The studio will also be releasing films by Provident Films, a Christian production company, starting with “Facing the Giants,” an inspirational story about a small-town football team, to be released in about 30 theaters on Sept. 29.
The Walt Disney Company has gone after the Christian audience on a more ambitious scale, and successfully courted that audience ahead of the release of its big-budget epic “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” last December. That film, which the studio showed to religious leaders ahead of the release because of its Christian themes, took in $744 million at the worldwide box office.
In another sign of the times, a veteran Hollywood executive turned evangelical Christian, David Kirkpatrick, has founded Good News Holdings, a Christian media company that, among other projects, is developing a film based on the Anne Rice novel “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” slated for production next year. A spokesman said he had no studio partner at the moment.
But the new division at Fox is thus far the biggest concerted effort by a major Hollywood studio to seek out films that will feed what many see as a growing, and underserved, Christian audience.
Matt Crouch, a Christian producer, said the move by Fox was a drift toward the mainstream for religious filmmaking, similar to what happened with Christian music a few years ago. “We have an audience, and we know how to get to that audience,” said Mr. Crouch, who financed and produced “One Night With the King,” a $20 million film telling the biblical story of Queen Esther and King Xerxes.
Mr. Crouch said that movie would be released on Oct. 13 in about 900 theaters, with Fox booking a few dozen of them. Fox will also distribute the DVD of the film, which does not have an overtly Christian point of view, around Easter and the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the ancient tale.
Theatrical distribution of films acquired by FoxFaith will be handled by another company, the Bigger Picture, which is not owned by Fox or its parent, News Corporation. But the studio will market the movies both theatrically and on DVD and video. Fox has already built a network of 90,000 Christian congregations that receive regular information about its films, and that distribute promotional materials.
Some Christian-oriented films of the last few years have been successful despite generally crude production values and amateurish acting. But budgets have been creeping upward, and the Fox initiative is likely to provide access to more professional talent.
And while up to now Christian movies have featured very few known actors, “One Night With the King” has Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole in supporting roles.
Fox has already had success selling Christian movies on DVD, including “Love Comes Softly,” “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and “The Visitation,” sold at Christian retail stores and other outlets. Another film, “The End of the Spear,” was released independently on 1,400 screens in January, taking in $12 million at the box office and selling one million DVD’s for Fox. The film tells the story of a family of missionaries who are murdered by Indians in Ecuador. The surviving family members befriend and help the Indian tribe that killed their parents.
“Love’s Abiding Joy,” with a $3 million budget, was directed by Michael Landon Jr., son of the producer and star of the television series “Little House on the Prairie.” The film, about a couple building a farm on the prairie in the 1880’s whose faith helps them to overcome challenges, will be released in about 200 theaters.
Jeff Yordy, Fox Home Entertainment’s vice president for marketing, said the studio was looking to acquire similar films, while avoiding any that might have political overtones — for instance, films with an anti-abortion message.
“That’s the mission: quality, story-driven entertainment that meshes with the values of our target audience,” he said. “But it’s entertainment first. We’re not in the business of proselytizing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/movies/20fox.html
AIM Bot Creates "Fight Combos" to Spread Exes
Online attackers have created an instant-messaging bot program that chains together a number of executable files, similar to the combination moves in fight games, depending on the attacker's need.
The software, dubbed the AIM Pipeline worm, uses modular executable files to infect machines with different functionality but also to make the bot network's growth more robust: if a Web site hosting one of the components gets shutdown, the other pieces of the worm can still spread.
"These guys have made their files interact with one another, yet managed to keep their standalone functionality intact so they don't go pear-shaped if a link in the chain goes down," Christopher Boyd, the security research manager for FaceTime Security Labs and the webmaster for VitalSecurity.org, stated in a blog posting to that Web site. "The file simply moves onto the next one--or it just gets on with it's business. Randomness is at the heart of this attack; the thousand-strong bot net at the heart of this operation would suggest a thriving business, too."
Boyd likened the technique to the fight combos common in martial arts video games.
America Online has blocked the URLs used in the messages sent by the AIM Pipeline worm since last Tuesday, AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said in an e-mail to SecurityFocus.
Bot software has become a major threat in the past few years. In a recent report, Microsoft labeled bot nets and backdoor Trojan horses as the most serious threat its users face. Bots generally are programmed to allow for easily adding new ways of compromising machines, such as the recent flaw in the Windows Server service. Recognizing the threat, law enforcement officials have increasingly focused on tracking down the people who create and spread bot software, such as the writer of the Zotob worm and a man whose bot software caused malfunctions at a Seattle-area hospital.
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/305
Toshiba to Recall Sony Laptop Batteries
Yuri Kageyama
Toshiba is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries made by Sony Corp. because of problems with recharging them, the latest in a string of embarrassing defects and production glitches for Sony.
The recall affects 100,000 batteries for laptops sold in the United States, 45,000 in Japan, and the remainder in other parts of the world, Toshiba Corp. spokesman Keisuke Omori said Tuesday, declining to quantify the number of problems reported by customers.
The defect is not directly related to the problem behind last month's recall of Sony laptop batteries by Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which cited concerns the batteries could overheat and catch fire. Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million faulty batteries, while Apple Computer Inc. recalled 1.8 million.
In both those cases, the troubled lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony Energy Devices Corp., a Japan-based subsidiary of Sony.
The Toshiba recall involves battery packs for Dynabook and Satellite models made from March through May this year, and they will be replaced for free, Omori said. The batteries sometimes stop recharging or run out of power, but no injuries or other accidents have been reported, he said.
The new recall also comes soon after production problems forced Sony to delay some key product launches.
Earlier this month, Sony said it would postpone the European launch of its PlayStation 3 video game machine by four months until March due to problems producing a component. In additional, while the much-awaited console is set to hit stores in November in the United States and Japan as planned, fewer units will be available, according to Ken Kutaragi, the executive in charge of the project.
And last week, Sony said it will postpone by a week until Sept. 23 the Japanese launch of its new digital Walkman because of a malfunction of an unspecified part of the portable music player.
The problems at Sony come as the electronics and entertainment company behind the Walkman portable music player has been trying to bolster its brand image under the leadership of its first foreign executive, Welsh-born Howard Stringer.
Sony has been fighting to make a comeback after falling behind Apple in portable music players and other rivals, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, in flat-panel TVs. Sony has been successful in selling slimmed down TVs lately with panels made in a joint venture with Samsung.
Sony shares edged down 0.8 percent to close at 4,930 yen ($42) in Tokyo, while Toshiba shares climbed 0.5 percent to 796 yen ($6.70).
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-19-08-22-47
Dell Battery Explodes at Yahoo HQ, Hundreds Evacuate
Ryan Block
We just got word that a Yahoo employee's laptop went up in flames today at their Mission College campus down in Silicon Valley, causing hundreds of Yahoo employees to be evacuated from an 8-story building. The culprit: you guessed it, a Dell machine whose faulty cell that should have been replaced (don't they have corporate memos at those big companies?) instead caught fire. From what we now know it doesn't seem like anyone was hurt, but let this be a lesson, people: you have the means, now take Dell up on the freaking recall before something disastrous happens.
Update: So it looks like Yahoo uses HP and Mac laptops -- not Dells -- making it very likely this was someone's personal machine that they brought to work. Wrong day to bring your laptop to the office, man.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/20/d...dreds-evacuat/
China Reports Major Anti-Piracy Move
AP
Chinese law enforcement agencies destroyed nearly 13 million pirated compact discs, DVDs and computer software Saturday in the government's latest campaign to curtail rampant theft of intellectual property, state media reported.
The destroyed items were confiscated in the first half of an ongoing 100-day nationwide campaign against piracy, the Xinhua News Agency said. Police seized the items in raids that took in the scope of pirated goods networks, from unlicensed factories to street vendors, Xinhua said.
Among the seized goods, according to the report, nearly half came from Guangdong, the economically dynamic southern province that abuts Hong Kong.
Over the past two years, China has ratcheted up efforts to stamp out the rampant theft of intellectual property, partly in response to pressure from the United States and European Union and partly to protect new Chinese companies that are starting to produce their own competitive goods. Still, illegally produced CDs, DVDs and computer software are widely available on city streets, and Chinese leaders acknowledge that it will take years to eliminate the practice.
In enforcing the latest crackdown, police and copyright officers closed down 8,907 shops and street vendors, 481 publishing companies and 942 illegal Web sites, Xinhua said. Police have uncovered ten illegal production lines for CDs and DVDs, four of them in Guangdong, the report said.
Article
Microsoft Files 20 Software Lawsuits
Microsoft on Tuesday announced 20 lawsuits against resellers allegedly engaged in the distribution of infringing software and software components. The lawsuits, filed against 20 defendants throughout the United States, focus on companies that allegedly distributed counterfeit software or software components or participated in hard-disk loading, Microsoft said.
Hard-disk loading is the installation of unlicensed software on computers that are then sold to unsuspecting businesses or consumers. Lawsuits were filed against companies in nine states: Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Texas.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+files+...3-6117055.html
Leonsis to Step Down from AOL Management
Anick Jesdanun
Ted Leonsis, the AOL senior executive who helped steer his company's transition into a provider of free services supported by advertising, will step down from active management while continuing in an advisory capacity.
Leonsis, 50, currently vice chairman of AOL and president of its ad-focused audience business, said Friday he still plans to work every day but wants to avoid burnout by reducing the need to attend constant meetings and pore over reports over the weekend.
Dropping those duties would let him devote more time to such interests as sports and films, he said. He is majority owner of hockey's Washington Capitals and a minority owner of basketball's Washington Wizards. He also is producer of the documentary "Nanking," scheduled to premiere next year.
"I wouldn't mind going to one of my hockey games or taking time off to go to Sundance (film festival) and not feel guilty," Leonsis said in a phone interview from the company's Dulles, Va., headquarters.
Leonsis, who will retain his title of vice chairman, said he will remain influential as a visionary and strategist after the change takes effect Jan. 1.
"I have carte blanche to run in and yell at people and tell them how to change things," he said.
AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller credited Leonsis as "the driving force" behind the shift in business models at AOL.
Over the past two years, AOL has been making more and more of its services free, to boost advertising revenue and offset declines in its subscription-based Internet access business. The transition accelerated last month with AOL's decision to give away AOL.com e-mail accounts and various software once reserved for paying subscribers.
AOL is not expected to name a replacement. The company plans to soon announce management changes to reflect last month's strategic shift and said Leonsis' decision was unrelated to that.
Earlier, the Time Warner Inc. unit formerly known as America Online said it expects to drop as many as 5,000 employees from its payroll, out of a global work force of 19,000. Those positions are mostly in marketing and customer service.
Leonsis joined AOL in 1993, when the company acquired Redgate Communications Corp., a new-media marketing company he founded.
He said he plans to pursue other entrepreneurial opportunities, both for AOL and on his own. One idea, he said, was to combine his interests in movies, the Internet and philanthropy to create a platform for filmmakers to make pieces on human rights for distribution in theaters and online.
Article
Annals of Self-Invention
Philip Gefter
FASHION anarchy looks almost quaint in Amy Arbus’s portraits of downtown Manhattan denizens in the 1980’s. Their style was witty, tilted, nose-thumbing, a result of practical concerns about the cost of clothing and an expressive desire to invent a persona of one’s own.
A new book, “On the Street, 1980-1990” (Welcome Books), assembles 70 images from the more than 500 Ms. Arbus made over 10 years for The Village Voice. Her photographs capture the fun — as well as the posturing — in a straightforward documentary style.
“The idea from The Village Voice was for me to go out and find people wearing something that turned my head,” Ms. Arbus said by phone from the Cohen Amador Gallery in Manhattan, where an exhibition of 25 of the photographs is on view through Oct. 14. “I found the subjects by just wandering around my neighborhood.”
“Michiyo Saito, East Seventh Street, 1989,” was taken in front of a shop that sold clothes imported from Japan. Ms. Arbus had walked by one day and looked inside. Everyone who worked there wore clothes from the shop. She photographed each of them outside in the street.
Ms. Arbus said some subjects she stopped in the street to photograph would mention having seen her pictures of their friends in her Voice column. “I wasn’t trying to document a particular group of people,” she noted, “but I eventually realized it was a scene, an extended community.”
The picture of Madonna was taken before her meteoric rise. “I stopped her on the street because I recognized her from the gym,” Ms. Arbus said. “She was the one sitting around naked in the locker room the longest. I remember looking at her and thinking that with a body like that, I would too. In the picture she looks as if she knew what was about to happen to her.”
Inevitably Ms. Arbus’s work will be compared to that of her mother, Diane. “I’m flattered if people see some correlation,” Ms. Arbus said. “But my work is much more intentionally and less technically sophisticated. My work is less confrontational. It was clear to my subjects that I adored how they looked. I tried to make them feel like they were getting an award for their creativity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/ar...gn/17geft.html
When Is Thin Too Thin?
Eric Wilson
THEY were alarmingly thin. Snejana Onopka, Natasha Poly and Hana Soukupova, models in demand among the fashion designers who showed their collections in New York last week, appeared so gaunt and thin that their knees and elbows were larger than their concave thighs and pipe cleaner arms, and their bobbling heads looked as if a slight breeze could detach them from their frail bodies.
Linda Wells, the editor of the beauty magazine Allure, said there were moments during the shows when she could hear gasps in the audience at their appearance.
“What becomes alarming is when you see bones and start counting ribs,” Ms. Wells said.
At a Vogue party on Monday for a young designer competition, the model Jessica Stam expressed similar dismay. “There are a lot of girls doing the shows who are very thin and frail,” she said. “I don’t know if they are healthy or not, but I don’t think the frail, fragile look is very feminine, and I don’t think it’s attractive.”
Yet there remains an ideal among designers who seem to prize an ever thinner frame to display their clothes. Some who attended the New York shows question whether acceptable boundaries have been crossed, as when fashion glamorized images of heroin abuse in the early 1990’s. Despite perennial complaints that models are too thin, there is a new sense of concern that designers are contributing to unhealthy and potentially life-threatening behavior among models vying to appear in their shows.
“We are minutes away from a catastrophe,” said David Bonnouvrier, the chief executive of DNA Models, which represents many of the top faces in the business. In an interview, Mr. Bonnouvrier said designers and model bookers were encouraging extreme thinness, so much so that several of the models he represents, when asked about their weight, have refused to seek medical attention for what are probable eating disorders.
“This goes against everything we stand for as an industry,” Mr. Bonnouvrier said. “I am kicking and screaming about it now because this should be an industry of beauty and luxury, not famished-looking people that look pale and sick.”
Over the last decade fashion magazines have responded to such criticism by including a range of body types in their layouts, but when designers first show their collections at runway shows, they tend to use models who are little more than spectral wisps, expressionless hangers for their clothes.
Last week the organizers of Madrid fashion week, usually an overlooked event in comparison with the major shows in New York, London (this week), Milan and Paris, said they were banning models with a height-to-weight ratio below what the World Health Organization considered normal. In effect, models who weigh less than 125 pounds are prohibited from working the runways. Organizers of the event said they wanted to project “an image of beauty and health.”
Complaints about the idolization of role models who suggest unhealthy lifestyles are culturally endemic. Celebrities like Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton have all been subjects of tabloid headlines asking, “Are they too thin?” In all likelihood, the answer is yes, but that does not stop magazines from displaying their pictures or, likewise, designers from casting thin models in their shows.
“What’s happening right now is an extreme,” Ms. Wells said. “Some of the models really are too thin, but that is such a tricky thing to say.”
The news media squall about underweight models, which is engulfing the fashion events in Madrid and now in London, centers largely on whether fashion shows perpetuate an unhealthy image of beauty, encouraging eating disorders among young women.
The producers of these fashion events have largely dismissed the concerns. On Saturday a British cabinet member, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, called for London designers to follow the example of Madrid by banning underweight models. But the British Fashion Council, led by Stuart Rose, the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, said it would not interfere with the designers’ aesthetic. And some designers said it was misleading to equate thinness with being unhealthy and that the standard cited by the organizers in Madrid did not take into account age and puberty, which may cause a model who is unusually tall to appear frighteningly thin.
“We’re talking about this because Madrid chose to do something now,” said Katie Ford, the chief executive of Ford Models. “Do I think because you’re thin that you’re anorexic? No. The runway represents a very small segment of the entire fashion business. On the runway, model size has been frequently a representation of the designers’ image at that point of time.”
But that debate has overshadowed the likelihood that some of these models, who have thus far been limited to runway shows but who aspire to more lucrative magazine work, are suffering from real eating disorders.
“I feel that people are taking the wrong angle on this whole issue,” Mr. Bonnouvrier said. “These models look sick.”
Although it would seem reasonable that the agencies that represent the models have a responsibility to monitor their health, Mr. Bonnouvrier and other agents described an environment that is dictated by the designers. A model’s success depends on fitting an ideal image. He said that many of the models come from broken homes or poor countries, speak little English and are conforming to those demands as a means of survival. If he complains, he said, they will simply switch to another agency.
“I want to really emphasize the point that we have very little leverage over our clients should they have such problems when they continue to be confirmed by the most important designers, photographers and magazines in this industry,” Mr. Bonnouvrier said. “A young model suffering from eating disorders is an ancient topic. What is new, however, is the alarming number of young models that are suffering and yet still work.”
There has been some resistance among designers. Amanda Brooks, who assists Bryan Bradley of Tuleh with model castings, said a top runway model was turned down because she looked too thin. “You could see her hip bones,” Ms. Brooks said. “We couldn’t imagine putting her in a dress.”
Some designers dispute that they are solely to blame for models’ weight issues. “I think we’re all to blame,” said Michael Vollbracht, the designer of Bill Blass. “I’m very aware of these girls who look too thin or unhealthy, and at one point during the casting I had to walk out of the room. We called a model’s agency and said, ‘Do you even watch these girls?’ ”
Milla Jovovich, the model and designer of a fashion collection called Jovovich-Hawk, said that dangerously thin models have been around since she was modeling as a child, as have the complaints, though little has ever been done in terms of prevention.
“There need to be more rules and regulations within the modeling industry,” Ms. Jovovich said. “A lot of problems that are very gray areas need to be put in black and white.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/fa...DELS.html?8dpc
Nicholson and Scorsese, Partners in Crime at Last
Dennis McDougal
THERE was a time, not so very long ago, when the first-ever pairing of the director’s director, Martin Scorsese, with the star’s star, Jack Nicholson, would have been a guaranteed hit. But that was before DVD’s, MySpace, YouTube and, most recently, the decline and falter of Tom Cruise. When Viacom’s chairman, Sumner Redstone, evicted Mr. Cruise from Paramount last month, citing his “erratic behavior,” it signaled a new era when no amount of star power could assure that a picture would be seen as an event.
As an exercise in casting of course Mr. Scorsese’s crime drama “The Departed,” set for release by Warner Brothers on Oct. 6, is a considerable achievement. Along with Mr. Nicholson’s performance, it includes contributions by Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin, among others.
But it is the Nicholson-Scorsese match-up that catches the eye, and reminds us how much the game has changed in the last decade.
Ten years ago Mr. Nicholson still packed a punch. The Joker who’d made off with $60 million for his turn in “Batman” in 1989 sauntered away at the age of 60 with his third acting Oscar for “As Good as It Gets” in 1998. And while Scorsese scholars have to go back 16 years to “Goodfellas” (1990) for a bona fide commercial and artistic triumph, this 63-year-old director has stayed in the game largely thanks to the awards-season hoopla around “The Aviator” and “Gangs of New York” and a recent pair of well-received PBS documentaries: “The Blues” (2003) and “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan” (2005).
But in cyberspace a year ago is ancient history; a whole decade ago is prehistoric. A recent Los Angeles Times survey held that 54 percent of those 24 and under — traditionally the target motion picture audience — would rather watch a DVD at home than go to the local multiplex. Why waste $10 and two hours to watch the big screen when there’s a Web to surf free? And would this audience even know that that the movie at the multiplex is a remarkable two-fer?
Graham King, a producer who on “The Departed” is teaming with Mr. Scorsese for the third time following “Gangs” and “The Aviator,” is betting that “there’s a real Friday night audience” for the new movie. He predicts young women will flock to see Matt and Leo, while their dates and their elders will want to see Jack plumb the depths, and Mr. Scorsese execute a good cop/bad cop thriller, packed with twists and surprise.
“It’s incredibly character driven,” Mr. King said. “And Jack,” who plays the fictional Boston mobster Frank Costello, “is the icing on the cake.”
Early Internet reports suggested that Mr. Nicholson had continuously tinkered with William Monahan’s script in an effort to increase Costello’s shock value. But Mr. King preferred the word “collaboration” to characterize the star’s involvement. He disputed the notion that Mr. Nicholson patterned Costello after the notorious Whitey Bulger, who disappeared in 1995 after ruling Boston’s underworld for a generation. Widely reported to be bisexual as well as sadistic, the 77-year-old Mr. Bulger is still wanted by the F.B.I. on 18 counts of murder.
“It’s not unrealistic that we see a criminal character like Costello go off the deep end,” said Mr. King, comparing the character to crazed villains in earlier films by Mr. Scorsese, like those portrayed by Robert DeNiro (“Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas,” “Cape Fear”) and Daniel Day-Lewis (“Gangs of New York”). “There’s nothing indecent or negative in ‘The Departed,’ but he is completely losing his mind.”
Ubiquitous Web reports described Mr. Nicholson, now 69, eating an insect, wielding sex toys, bathed in blood and more or less personifying evil. If the version now being screened for the press is a bit tamer than the buzz advertised, it is not by much.
And yet even that might not be enough to keep these two giants of the 70’s from slipping into anachronism.
So “The Departed” becomes a question-mark film. Will it reintroduce Mr. Nicholson to a new generation, as “Batman” once did? Or will his Frank Costello smack of geriatric retread: “The Last Detail’s” Badass Buddusky meets “The Shining’s” Jack Torrance, only more debauched?
Will this film even the score for Mr. Scorsese, about whose Oscar near-misses Jon Stewart joked, “Three 6 Mafia, one; Scorsese, zero”? Or will it simply provoke nostalgia for an era when Nicholson and Scorsese together would have been a sure thing?
In any case no one can accuse these two old pros of lacking self-awareness. According to a scene included in a trailer for the film, “The Departed” has Frank Costello asking after an acquaintance’s sick mother. Sadly the man tells him, “She’s on her way out.”
“We all are,” growls Mr. Nicholson. “Act accordingly.”
Dennis McDougal is currently at work on “Five Easy Decades,” a biography of Jack Nicholson, for John Wiley & Sons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/movies/17mcdo.html
My Plan to Save Network Television
Charlie Hauck
LET’S say you’ve created a network television series for the 2006-2007 season. It’s beautifully calibrated to appeal to the only viewers of any value to advertisers: young people. It’s about a family of migrant lifeguards. They travel to beaches all over the world in revealing swimwear, saving lives and drinking popular beverages. They have a soon-to-be-famous catch phrase, which they use in the face of any adversity: “You can’t stop progress.”
The attractive brothers and sisters are in their late teens and early 20’s. Mom is played by a movie hottie still in her 30’s whose film career has stalled. Dad’s reserve unit was called to Iraq. He can come home during sweeps week.
But after your premiere the Nielsen ratings bring distressing news: old people are watching your show. Maybe they like the family’s pet cockatiel. Maybe one of the lifeguards reminds them of the young Alan Ladd. But they are wreaking havoc on your demographics, the lifeblood of a series. Your show is “skewing old.”
Many assume that mature viewers, with their $2 trillion a year in spending power, would be welcomed by the networks. Well, they aren’t. Advertisers want to lock in viewers’ buying habits early in life, not struggle with them to change brands in their last few decades. The key demographic in the weekly Nielsen ratings report is 18-49. Anyone outside that range is undesirable. People over 49 do not buy interesting products. They detract from the hip environment advertisers seek. The shows they watch tend not to become “water cooler” shows. They are not, as one media buyer puts it, “an opportunity audience.”
The majestic glacier that is network television is very gradually melting. Many young viewers, particularly males in their 20’s, have been stolen away by such lures as the Internet, iPods, the Xbox and opera. This makes the young people who do watch all the more valuable to advertisers. They have far greater disposable income than older people, and they actually dispose of it. Advertisers gladly pay steep premiums for those young eyes. But it is more difficult to single them out when older viewers clutter the demographics.
The fact is, mature viewers are threatening the well-being of network television. I have a bold but common-sense suggestion: old people should not be allowed to watch TV.
I anticipate the predictable charges of “discriminatory,” “unfair,” “idiotic.” Well, millions of elderly people live in age-restricted retirement communities, and you don’t hear young people whining about that. Right-thinking older Americans will see this as a chance to do something for their country. Nurturing a nation’s consumer base is as vital as protecting its streams and forests. It’s time for people over 49 to “take one for the team.” Besides, it’s really not such a terrible sacrifice; they have Sudoku now.
Once the necessary “49 and Out” federal legislation is enacted, we’ll need a system in place to block older viewers’ network access. Fingerprinting, iris scans, re-purposed V-chips, psychoacoustic masking? Perhaps it would be possible to borrow some of the amazing technology being developed in the Transportation Security Administration’s laboratories; they aren’t using it at the airports.
Boomers will feel they should be exempt from this law. They’re “younger” than previous old people. They’re in tune with contemporary culture. If you’re a boomer and thinking along those lines, take this simple test:
“They combed out Ann Miller’s hair and found the Lindbergh baby.”
If you laughed at that, if you understood the references, you have no business in front of a television set.
This ban applies only to the Big Four broadcast networks. Older viewers would still be free to tune into the many cable channels. At programs like “The O’Reilly Factor,” an onslaught of people still in their 50’s will be greeted with flowers.
A warning to certain lobbyists for the elderly, who may resort to selfish interpretations of the Constitution to thwart this needed legislation: beware the backlash. Nielsen Media Research, the keeper of the ratings, is owned by VNU, an increasingly powerful media conglomerate headquartered in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, where laws governing euthanasia are extremely lenient. “You can’t stop progress.” I’m just saying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/op...805&ei=5087%0A
Top Ten Box Office
Weekend:
Sep. 15 - 17, 2006, in millions
1 Gridiron Gang
$14.4
2 The Black Dahlia
$10.0
3 Everyone's Hero
$6.1
4 The Covenant
$4.8
5 The Last Kiss
$4.6
6 Invincible
$4.1
7 The Illusionist
$3.6
8 Little Miss Sunshine
$3.3
9 Hollywoodland
$2.7
10 Crank
$2.7
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...ryid=1009&cs=1
Brits Hit On-Demand
U, U.K.'s Top Up team on PictureBox
Elizabeth Guider
'Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason' joins a select seven films launching Blighty's new on-demand service.
Universal Pictures and the U.K.'s Top Up TV are launching a subscription-on-demand service in Blighty this fall called PictureBox.
It will be available on Top Up TV's new Anytime service, and will feature a broad array of current and library movies, including titles from NBC Universal.
Arrangement was unveiled Monday by Beth Minehart, senior VP of international on-demand licensing for NBC Universal Intl. Television Distribution and Top Up TV CEO Ian West.
Subscribers will pay a monthly fee to view pics that will be delivered and stored in Top Up's Anytime digital TV recorder. Films will be refreshed constantly, with a new title uploaded daily.
PictureBox will launch with seven movies, including "The Bourne Supremacy," "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," "Shakespeare in Love" and "The Fast and the Furious." PictureBox is owned by Universal Pictures.
Top Up TV launched in March 2004 on the U.K.'s digital terrestrial TV platform Freeview.
It recently unveiled its Anytime service, boosting the program choice available to Freeview customers.
"This deal underscores the rapid growth and success of Freeview in the U.K.," NBC U Intl. TV prexy Belinda Menendez said. "PictureBox is one of the first services of its kind for premier film content."
Top Up TV's Anytime service gives customers the chance to view programs from 18 channels, including UKTV Gold and MTV as well as premium movies from PictureBox.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...ryid=1009&cs=1
Iger Downloads a Million
Mouse has sold 125,000 pics through iTunes
Jill Goldsmith
Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger said the Mouse has sold 125,000 movies for about $1 million total since the studio put a handful of pics on iTunes less than a week ago. He predicts the venture will top $50 million easily for the full year.
"It's just a beginning. But it makes a difference," he told investors at the Goldman Sachs media conference in Gotham Tuesday.
Disney's also streaming content on ABC.com. It hasn't been as active moving its content to other platforms, noted Goldman analyst Anthony Noto.
Iger stressed the Apple deals are not exclusive "and certainly Steve Jobs understands that as a major shareholder of Disney."
Asked what Jobs' role at Disney is, Iger said he's a board member and that he's been to two board meetings.
"For me, he's become a tremendous sounding board. To go to Apple and spend the day ... (It's) a great opportunity for me and the company. He's a great ... adviser, and I'm lucky to have him."
("Does that mean it's becoming the Apple Broadcasting Company?" joked one investor in the audience. "He makes it sound like he can't find the men's room without Steve Jobs.")
Addressing recent cuts at the studio, Iger noted that while the 1990s were a time of expansion and growth for Disney, the company is focused now on returns on its investments.
He said the studio movie executives in charge of live action, for instance, are compensated based on the internal rate of return on their slate.
He said the cuts lowered overhead costs by $100 million, as Disney makes only 10 pics a year. "It's quality over quantity ... We were making movies for the wrong reasons," he said.
He sees fiscal 2007 buoyed by DVD releases of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" and "Cars."
At ABC, he acknowledged the network could really use a new hit. "We would take one. Two would be great. Three, fantastic."
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...ryid=1009&cs=1
Pirates of the Caribbean Hits Billion Dollar Mark
Jack
Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest has grossed over a billion dollars worldwide after just ten weeks in circulation according to
figures provided by Nielsen EDI and Variety. The sequel has garnered $417,140,749.00 domestically and $592,194,000.00 internationally bringing cumulative box-office receipts to $1,009,334,749.00 and making it the third biggest moneymaker of all time. The Johnny Depp fantasy adventure continues finding treasure, hauling in over two million a week with a per screen gross of some $1600.00 and engagements on some 1600 screens.
Meanwhile the undead pirates aren’t buried yet. The DVD is slated for a Christmas release with a third and final installment wrapping principal shooting around Thanksgiving for a scheduled debut next Memorial Day weekend.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...931#post248931
Children’s Boot Camp for the Culture Wars
Stephen Holden
“Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” declares Pastor Becky Fischer with jovial satisfaction in the riveting documentary “Jesus Camp.” Ms. Fischer, an evangelical Christian, helps run Kids on Fire, a summer camp in Devils Lake, N.D., that grooms children to be soldiers in “God’s army.”
A mountainous woman of indefatigable good cheer, Ms. Fischer makes no bones about her expectation that the growing evangelical movement in the United States will one day end the constitutional ban separating church and state. And as the movie explores her highly effective methods of mobilizing God’s army, that expectation seems reasonable.
Ms. Fischer understands full well that the indoctrination of children when they are most impressionable (under 13 and preferably between 7 and 9) with evangelical dogma is the key to the movement’s future growth, and she compares Kids on Fire to militant Palestinian training camps in the Middle East that instill an aggressive Islamist fundamentalism. The term war, as in culture war, is repeatedly invoked to describe the fighting spirit of a movement already embraced by 30 million Americans, mostly in the heartland.
At Kids on Fire we see children in camouflage and face paint practicing war dances with wooden swords and making straight-armed salutes to a soundtrack of Christian heavy metal. We see them weeping and speaking in tongues as they are seized by the Holy Spirit. And we see them in Washington at an anti-abortion demonstration.
Filmed during the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the movie visits a church at which the congregation prays in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of President Bush. Justice Alito’s eventual approval is hailed as another step forward in the movement’s eventual goal of outlawing abortion, the No. 1 issue on its agenda.
“Jesus Camp” is the second film by the documentary team of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady to explore the molding of young minds. The first, “The Boys of Baraka,” followed a group of “at-risk” African-American boys from a decaying Baltimore middle school to an austere wilderness school in rural Kenya. Removed from a toxic urban environment, they flourish, until tribal conflict in the region forces the school to suspend operation.
The majority of the children in “Jesus Camp” are home-schooled by evangelical parents who teach them creationism and dismiss science. Handsome 12-year-old Levi, who wears his hair in a mullet, is being groomed as a future evangelical preacher. Already exuding star quality, he strides through a group of children, waving his arms and mouthing dogma about how his generation is so important.
Pretty 10-year-old Tory speaks earnestly of dancing “for God” and not “for the flesh.” Nine-year-old Rachael is already an evangelical recruiter who fearlessly approaches adult strangers.
Ms. Fischer speaks of “dead churches” (traditional Protestant churches in which the congregations sit passively and listen to a sermon) and declares these are places that Jesus doesn’t visit. In evangelical churches where people jump, shout, weep and speak in tongues, she contends, the spirit is present.
The great unanswered question is what will happen to these poised, attractive children when their hormones kick in and they venture beyond their sheltered home and church environments.
“Jesus Camp” includes one articulate and alarmed dissenting voice: Mike Papantonio, a talk show personality for Air America. A self-professed Christian of the dead church variety, he engages in a pointed but friendly debate with Ms. Fischer when she calls in to his show. But the only moment of real tension occurs during a side trip to a megachurch in Colorado Springs where the preacher Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (and a Bush friend), turns to address the camera in a tone of suspicion and hostility. It is the movie’s only glimpse of the evangelical movement’s ugly, vindictive side.
“Jesus Camp” doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive survey of the charismatic-evangelical phenomenon. It offers no history or sociology and only scattered statistics about its growth. It analyzes the political agenda only glancingly, centering on abortion but not on homosexuality or other items. Because it focuses on the education of children, Ms. Fischer speaks of the evils of Harry Potter. But there is no analysis of Biblical teaching nor mention of “end times” or the rapture.
Who would deny that the movement’s surging vitality is partly a response to the steady coarsening of mass culture, in which the dominant values are commercial and the worldview is Darwinian in its amorality? Spread globally by television, the least-common-denominator brand of “secular humanism” — the evangelicals’ perceived enemy — is indeed repugnant.
It wasn’t so long ago that another puritanical youth army, Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, turned the world’s most populous country inside out. Nowadays the possibility of a right-wing Christian American version of what happened in China no longer seems entirely far-fetched.
“Jesus Camp” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Its frank discussion of politics and religion could upset.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/09/2...es/22camp.html
Broadway for Dummies (and Ventriloquists)
Jesse Green
ALTHOUGH Bob was the first to say hello when I entered the crowded room, he wasn’t especially pleasant. Cute, yes, with apple cheeks and glossy brown hair, but he seemed to smirk at me. And was that a touch of condescension in his voice? Still, I felt compelled to respond: barely three feet tall, with huge, imploring eyes, he was clearly hungry for company, like a lonely child. I later found out that Bob is pushing 30. Still, he’s had so much work done that you might assume he was a stunted ’tween, were it not for the guy with an arm up his back.
That would be Jay Johnson, similarly glossy-haired but blonder, taller and human. He too seems youthful, if not as strikingly boyish as he was three decades ago when he and Bob first appeared on the television satire “Soap”: Mr. Johnson as Chuck, a shy ventriloquist, and Bob as a character sometimes called (but not to his face) Bob the Dummy. (The preferred term is “puppet,” or “wooden-American.”) The show, which ran from 1977 to 1981, made them stars of a certain sort: the sort that appears most often in reruns, on cruise ships, in comedy clubs and at annual meetings of textile workers.
But now the duo, if that’s the right term for the collaboration between a 57-year-old man and a glorified log are in town to star in, of all things, their own Broadway show. It is a sign of how far they’ve come, and how far Broadway has, too, that “Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!” — which starts previews Tuesday — has an open-ended booking in a theater named for the first lady of the American stage.
Sure, their Off Broadway outing at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2004 received ecstatic reviews, but that house seats 165, while the Helen Hayes seats 600. And though Off Broadway has recently done well with aerialists, clowns, synchronized percussionists and other refugees from Novelty World, the uptown climate for such performers has not been exactly balmy. Just ask the Hayes’s most recent tenants, Kiki and Herb.
That pair of boozy losers joined a litany of recent acts, including such formerly dependable perennials as Jackie Mason and Dame Edna, who have come and gone without making a profit. But Mr. Johnson isn’t deterred. “Entertainment is entertainment,” he said. “We have the same chance as any other show that opens its doors. Remember, this is the town that embraced ‘Puppetry of the Penis.’ I would think our show has more universal appeal than that art form.”
Still, Mr. Johnson and his various characters (he voices 11 in the show) are grabbing every publicity opportunity that comes their way: singing “New York, New York” with Martin Short and Donny Osmond at the open-air “Broadway on Broadway” concert last Sunday; agreeing to appear this Tuesday as part of Ventriloquist Week on “Late Night With David Letterman,” despite concerns that the gig might prove undignified.
Dignity may seem a strange thing to worry about when you play with puppets for a living, but Mr. Johnson, despite having appeared on “The Love Boat,” sees himself as part of a noble tradition. He was pleased to reveal that Bob — well, a former and slightly more ethnic-looking Bob — was in negotiations to be inducted into the Smithsonian’s popular entertainment collection.
That might explain why the puppet was so haughty when I met him, taping a public service announcement for the League of Women Voters. But Mr. Johnson, who said he is dyslexic, “like 100 out of 17 people,” kept flubbing his lines, while Bob, who was strangely letter-perfect, seethed. “I can get another ventriloquist, easy,” he snapped. It was at this point that my brain started knotting up, as when faced with a logical pretzel like “This statement is false.”
Ventriloquism (the word roughly translates from the Latin as “belly speaking”) is creepy. So why is it — at least as Mr. Johnson performs it — so powerful? It takes about a nanosecond to accept the illusion: to think of Bob as a separate entity and to look at him when he speaks.
During the early tapings of “Soap,” Mr. Johnson recalled, the boom operator kept turning the microphone toward the puppet for his lines. I too fell into the trap, at one point congratulating Bob on being a better ad libber than his partner. And when Mr. Johnson accused another co-star (Spaulding, a tennis ball) of harassing the makeup woman, I couldn’t figure out who was behaving badly.
As he does for everything regarding ventriloquism, Mr. Johnson has a good explanation for these phenomena. (He’s a doctorate waiting to happen.) Basically it boils down to the supremacy of the senses over the intellect. We believe what we perceive, not what we know. In “The Two and Only,” which is part autobiography, part club act and part dissertation on the history and psychology of the form, he reveals all his best tricks. But that doesn’t matter. His complete demystification of the process does nothing to derail, or decreepify, it.
People want to believe the impossible. Though the show is being marketed in self-affirmative, Oprahesque terms — it’s said to be about “throwing your voice, and finding it” — the emotions that really animate the enterprise are murkier: dread (that unliving things might start talking) and desperation (that they might not).
“The history of ventriloquism comes from necromancy, which is talking to the dead,” Mr. Johnson told me later. He suggested that many people who have claimed to communicate with the spirit world — the oracles at Delphi, Drosselmeyer in “The Nutcracker,” the Wizard of Oz — were just throwing their voices.
Actually, Mr. Johnson explained, the trick at the heart of ventriloquism isn’t “throwing” the voice but “treating” it. Thanks to a throat-muscle manipulation that opera singers call a coup de glotte, the amplitude of the emerging sound waves is constricted in a way that the human ear misinterprets as distance. Keeping the lips immobile and shifting focus supports the illusion. To demonstrate, Mr. Johnson took a hotel keycard from his wallet and carefully rubbed the magnetic strip with the cap of my pen. “Open the door,” the card clearly whispered. No matter how well I knew it was Mr. Johnson making the sound, my brain wouldn’t process it that way. “It’s pure physics,” he said. “And indirection. And once you add a puppet, you’ve got yourself an act.”
We were having a normal, nonventriloquized conversation, without Bob, and in that context Mr. Johnson seemed uncommonly mild. Perhaps it was from a long habit of playing the straight man, or perhaps because the puppet becomes the repository for the wilder drives its master can’t master. Certainly Bob looks capable of violence; his head, with its metallic innards, is often mistaken for a bomb at airport security checkpoints. But Mr. Johnson points out that a calm puppet just isn’t very interesting; the creators of “Soap” told him to lose his first professional sidekick, a sweetheart named Squeaky, because they wanted a more ribald tone. They understood that to compensate for a lack of physical expressiveness, most puppets must be endowed with extreme dispositions. They’re pretty much smart alecks, imbeciles or hags.
Though it takes a lot to make them interesting, Mr. Johnson said, it doesn’t take much to make them seem real. Since the invention of the telephone, a voice alone is enough to imply a body, sufficient proof of existence. How much more alive is a talking manikin, which we can see as well as hear? In any case Bob gets mail, and not from children. When fans come backstage, they do not want to hear that he’s been put in a box; Mr. Johnson has to say he’s in the shower.
Even for ventriloquists the suspension of disbelief can get out of hand. Some answer the phone in their puppets’ voices or include them in family pictures. Candice Bergen, in her memoir “Knock Wood,” suggests that her father, Edgar Bergen, unconsciously instigated a rivalry between her and her “brother,” Charlie McCarthy; his bedroom was bigger than hers.
Several times I caught Mr. Johnson engaging in what I thought was similar behavior: calling a puppet’s face-paint “makeup” and speaking of its skills as if they were independent of his own. When working on television, he admitted, he’s gone even further. “Don’t tell me to have Bob look into the camera,” he instructs directors. “Say, ‘Bob, look into the camera.’ ’’
But these were merely shortcuts, he explained, adding that he disdains anthropomorphic antics; he once broke up with a girlfriend because she sent Squeaky a birthday card. The only time he has ever used his skill “for evil” was in playing Marco Polo in the pool with his kids. Ventriloquism as he sees it is nothing more or less than an art: he is part vocalist, part instrumentalist, part dramatist. Despite this division of roles, he dismisses the split-personality theory as a vestige of more superstitious times, exacerbated by novels like William Goldman’s “Magic” and to some extent by “Soap,” in which lonely, repressed souls act out through their art. Instead of voicing the puppet, the puppet voices them.
At any rate, Mr. Johnson said, he was never lonely or repressed. (He now lives with his wife, Sandra, in a sprawling, gated four-bedroom ranch in the Encino area of Los Angeles; Bob lives in a carrying case in a closet.) What drew him to ventriloquism was merely the fun it seemed to offer. It began with the telephone, with the sound of his hard-of-hearing grandmother yelling across the wires; why couldn’t he have voices like that to play with? Obliging, his mother disconnected the receiver, and Jackie and Gaga (who still appear in Mr. Johnson’s act) were born.
They were not, from the evidence, exceptionally fascinating, except perhaps to a 5-year-old whose imagination was quickly outstripping his family’s. “To buy a doll for a boy from Texas,” he says in the show, “you might as well just send him to New York and be done with it.”
Not so fast; first he had to learn not only the coup de glotte but also how to manipulate real puppets with movable heads, mouths and eyes while sustaining the interaction between real and unreal characters. (Mr. Johnson believes that his dyslexia actually helped in this regard.) Next he needed stage experience, which he got working summers at sweltering theme parks in Texas and Georgia, 10 shows a day. His partner by then was Squeaky, whom he had adapted from a cousin’s Jerry Mahoney toy. Mr. Johnson found the work invigorating, and even after performing the same bit 918 times wanted more. But Squeaky, less sturdily built, was a wreck.
And so at 17, when he’d saved up enough money, Mr. Johnson scoured the puppet makers’ catalogs — “a high school annual for wooden kids,” he said — and contacted a master ventriloquist named Arthur Sieving. Then 70 and living in retirement with Harry O’Shea, his (nonhuman) companion of 50 years, Mr. Sieving believed that a puppet was not a toy or a homunculus but a fine instrument, and should be treated as such.
When he judged Mr. Johnson’s intentions to be sufficiently high-minded, he set about carving a new Squeaky, on the condition that it never be put away without a black cloth over its face. “So that the life you had given him,” Mr. Johnson explained, “would be there when you came back.”
No wonder people roll their eyes (even more than Bob does) when they think of ventriloquists. And — no offense to “The Two and Only,” which is thoughtfully shaped and ultimately touching — the idea of a tarted-up hand puppet succeeding at the Helen Hayes portends a terrifying future in which the next stars of “Phantom” are Topo Gigio and Madame. Already magicians seem to be colonizing the Broadway margins, and by his own admission Mr. Johnson is a step down that ladder. The pecking order among variety acts, he said, goes from magicians to ventriloquists to jugglers to prop comedians and, scraping the bottom, to mimes.
But ventriloquism is more complicated than any of those. Though it involves, like a card trick, the production of awe through indirection, it does not depend on keeping the audience in the dark. With magic, the achievement of the illusion is the end of the story; with ventriloquism it’s just the beginning, a means to an end. What is the end? It seems ludicrous to say it’s the same as in any kind of drama: conflict, empathy, catharsis. Especially when the “art” is so often limited by its stock characters. They are, finally, wooden.
But it’s amazing what your brain fills in when it wants to: from only three moveable parts, expression suddenly appears. From a few changes in pitch come recognizable voices. The desire to make that happen, Mr. Johnson said, is powerfully, and universally, human. Certainly he makes it seem so, toward the end of “The Two and Only,” when he describes visiting Mr. Sieving’s widow a few days after his death in 1974. Grieving, she asks Mr. Johnson to operate Harry O’Shea and have him “talk” to her just one more time.
Is there any doubt that the voice she heard when Mr. Johnson complied was her husband’s? The act may have been flim-flam, but her tears were quite real.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/theater/17gree.html
A Scholar Is Alive, Actually, and Hungry for Debate
Marc Santora
At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death.
Yesterday, a call to Mr. Chomsky’s house found him very much alive. In fact, he was struggling through “10,000 e-mails” he had received since the remarks by Mr. Chávez, who urged Americans to read one of Mr. Chomsky’s books instead of watching Superman and Batman movies, which he said “make people stupid.”
At 77, Mr. Chomsky has joined the exclusive club of luminaries, like the actor Abe Vigoda and Mark Twain, who were reported dead before their time, only to contradict the reports by continuing to breathe.
“I continue to work and write,” he said, speaking from his house in Lexington, Mass.
Mr. Chávez, while addressing world leaders at the United Nations, flagged “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” which Mr. Chomsky published in 2003, as a must-read. Mr. Chomsky said he was glad that Mr. Chávez liked his book, but he would not describe himself as flattered.
“We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people’s eyes,” he said.
Mr. Chomsky said he had taken no offense at Mr. Chávez’s remarks about his being dead. In fact, Mr. Chávez’s promotion of the book propelled it yesterday into Amazon’s top 10 best sellers.
While retired from teaching full time, Mr. Chomsky still goes to his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, occasionally lecturing and also working on a new book.
At the United Nations, the remarks by Mr. Chávez on Wednesday set off a firestorm that almost overshadowed the visit by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has been under intense global scrutiny for its nuclear ambitions. From the podium of the General Assembly, the Venezuelan leader said he smelled lingering sulfur, left by President Bush, who had spoken there the day before and whom he branded “the devil.”
Mr. Chávez continued mocking Mr. Bush yesterday in Harlem, where he announced the expansion of a program to send cheap Venezuelan oil to poor families in New York. He told a group gathered on the street that the president was an “ex-alcoholic” who had “a lot of hang-ups” and tried to walk “like John Wayne.”
Mr. Chomsky said that he would not choose to use the same harsh oratory, but added that the Venezuelan leader was simply expressing the views of many in the world. And he said Mr. Chávez’s anger was understandable.
“The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government,” he said. “Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?”
Proving that he was still up for a lively debate, Mr. Chomsky then went on to talk about income inequality in Latin America, the history of the United Nations, Iraq, Iran, Fidel Castro and, finally, the man who so fervently admires him, Mr. Chávez.
“I have been quite interested in his policies,” Mr. Chomsky said. “Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive.” Most important, he said, Mr. Chávez seems to have the overwhelming support of the people in his country. “He has gone through six closely supervised elections,” he said.
So would Mr. Chomsky oblige Mr. Chávez’s wish for a meeting, helping ensure that the South American leader will not have that regret to live with anymore?
“I would be happy to meet him,” Mr. Chomsky said.
But that encounter may have to wait: Mr. Chávez was to return to Venezuela as soon as today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/ny...rtner=homepage
News From The North
The TankGirl Diaries
17.9.2006
Active Election Day in Sweden
According to Swedish Television, the Swedes have been voting actively in their parliamentary election today. The queues have been hours long in some voting places but everything has gone smoothly and people have waited patiently for their turn to vote.
The doors of voting places will close two hours from now, and at that same moment the Swedish TV will start its traditional 'Valvakan' show - a special program covering the counting of the votes and analysis of the results late to the night. Party leaders and other key people will of course be interviewed a number of times, and live coverage will be provided from the various venues where the members of different parties have gathered to spend the evening. No official results for the small parties - including Pirate Party - will be available today but should any interesting information about the pirates pop up during the Swedish Valvakan, I will pass it to you.
18.9.2006
Center-Right Coalition Wins in the Election, Pirates Unlikely to Get to the Parliament
As the counting of the votes continued late into the night in Sweden, the main result of the election started to become clear: Swedes will have a new government soon. The center-right 'Alliance' consisting of four parties seems to get a clear enough majority to form the next coalition government for Sweden. The Alliance victory was due to the sensational success of The Moderate Party - their share of votes was now 26.1 - almost 11 % more than in the previous election, promising to give them 97 seats in the new parliament where they now have only 55 seats. The chairman of the Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt, will evidently become the next prime minister of Sweden. The present prime minister Göran Persson has already announced to leave his post as the party leader of the Social Democrats due to the poor election result. The Left Party also lost a lot of votes while the Green Party was the only member of the present government coalition to increase its support.
How did the Pirate Party do? All we know at this stage is that the total share of votes for the small parties was 5.7 % - no information about the breakdown of these votes between different small parties is yet available. This share is 2.6 % more than in 2002 parliamentary election but it still seems too small to give Piratpartiet realistic chances to cross the 4 % vote thresold. Judging from the comments on Pirate party's discussion board the pirates themselves do not seem to believe they have made it to the parliament. So they are merely wishing to have a large enough share of that 5.7 % to get certain benefits for the party for its future political work. Even a 1.0 % share of votes would benefit them as they would get the expensive printing and laborous distribution of voting ballots done by the state election officials in the next election. 2.5 % is the next interesting limit, as that would entitle the party to financial support from the Swedish state - the more above 2.5 %, the larger the support.
18.9.2006
Small Party Results Starting to Show
After the preliminary counting of the votes during the election night, the official counting began this morning at 8 am in all election districts. With the official counting the results for the small parties have also started to the appear to the
web pages of the election officials. A lion's share of small party votes seems to be going to the anti-immigration party Sverigedemokraterna (about 2.5 % of total votes); the Feminist Party seems to come strong second (about 1.2 %); and Pirate Party seems to take a similarly clear third place, its vote share being presently around 0.6 %. The best the pirates can wish for at this stage is to reach 1.0 % of the votes while the counting proceeds, which would make their task much easier in the next election as the Swedish state would print and distribute their ballot papers for them with that result.
The result will no doubt be a disappointment to the pirates who organized themselves fairly well and put up a good campaign despite having existed less than 9 months as a party. But then we have to remember that this was the very first time the emerging political pirate movement has tried to get to the parliament anywhere, and while the Swedes have been focusing on their own election campaign the movement itself has already started to spread around the world, especially in Europe.
The pirates have also already now managed to make a strong impact on the Swedish politics. All parties have had to take their stands on the filesharing issue, and right after the election the Green Party (the only succesful government party in the election) came out with a program demanding legalization of 'downloading' of copyrighted material from the net and only modest fines for public sharing of copyrighted material so that filesharing could not be used as an excuse for violating the privacy of net users with Big Brother type spying methods.
19.9.2006
German Pirate Party Goes Official
While the Swedish pirates were beginning the last week of their election campaign and the international focus of the pirates was keenly on Sweden, 53 founding members of the
German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei Deutschland) gathered together in Berlin to formally found this sister party to the Swedish Piratpartiet. The founding on September 10th was preceded by a long, active and thorough online discussion on the political principles and the agenda of the new party. Like the Swedish Pirate Party, the German sister party defends the freedom of private citizens to exchange culture and knowledge with each other, is highly critical of the ongoing efforts to build a Big Brother style control society and demands reforms to the patent system which has in practice turned against its original idea of inciting innovation for the good of the entire society.
21.9.2006
Final Results of the Swedish Election Ready
The official counting of the votes has been
finished in Sweden. Pirate Party ended up as the third largest of the 'small parties' with 34.918 votes, competing tightly for the second place with the
Feminist Initiative that took 37.954 votes. By far the largest small party was the anti-immigration party
Sweden Democrats who took 162.463 votes, only some 50.000 votes shy of getting their candidates through to the parliament.
The result means that on the average every registered Pirate Party member managed to get about 3 other voters to cast their vote for the pirates. Even if the result did not bring the much-desired parliamentary power to the pirates, they managed to establish themself as a serious candidate in the coming elections, and they will certainly not be ignored by the Swedish media in the future as an insignificant small party. They also managed to make filesharing and privacy issues an important election theme, and the public debate on these issues continues in Sweden.
The Swedish political climate has been very mobile during recent years. This is highlighted by the poor success of
June List. This small party had a sensational success in the EU Parliament election in 2004 capturing 14% of the Swedish votes and three EU parliament seats. In this election Pirate Party won June List with a margin of almost 9000 votes.
23.9.2006
Swedish Pirate Party to Launch A National Youth Organisation
It did not take long for the Swedish Pirates to recover from their disappointment of not making it to the parliament on the first try. Active discussion on the future political activities is already going on in their forums, and new members keep joining the party daily. The party executives have kept their own post-election meeting and laid out their short and long term plans. In the long term the party will now strengthen its national organization that was put together quickly under the time pressure of the elections. The main long term targets will be success in the 2009 EU Parliament elections - where they will co-operate with other European pirate parties - and in the next Swedish parliamentary election in 2010. The party is still forced to operate on a minimal budget but now they get some extra income from the Relakks anonymizing service that they have helped to promote.
The main short term initiative declared by the party leader Rick Falkvinge will be the launching of a national political youth organization for the party. This organization, called Ung Pirat (Young Pirate), will serve as an umbrella organization for otherwise independent, locally operating pirate youth associations. This move was motivated by the promising success of the pirates in the
School Election 2006 - a special election organized for the older basic school and high school students mimicking closely the real parliamentary election. 1286 schools were involved, and a total of 381.896 votes were given in the election. The Pirate Party got 4.5% of the national votes despite having blank ballots only at their use in contrast to the parliamentary parties who had preprinted ballots provided by the Swedish election officials. In some schools the pirates got 20-30% of the votes, and the record was 40%. Now that there is time to build up the political movement, investing in the younger generation seems like a smart move to guarantee success in the future elections.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...t=22742&page=5
http://reflectionsonp2p.blogspot.com/
Opposition Wins Swedish Election
Stockholm (dpa) - A four-party centre-right coalition has won over the Social Democrats in Sweden's parliamentary elections Sunday, ending 12 years of Social Democratic minority rule.
"The Swedish people have voted for a new government," Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the conservative Moderate Party, told enthusiastic party supporters.
Prime Minister Goran Persson of the Social Democrats conceded defeat minutes later, calling the election "a setback."
"When the votes are counted we can see that we are in minority," Persson said after his party dropped from 39.8 per cent in 2002 to 35.3 per cent, the party's poorest showing in decades, according to the tally released by the Election Authority.
Persson said that he would hand in his government's resignation Monday, and announced that he planned to step down as Social Democrat leader at an extra party conference in March 2007.
The 57-year-old Persson has been premier for the last 10 years and was named leader of the Social Democrats in March 1996.
The opposition Alliance for Sweden coalition was formed two years ago in a concerted attempt to challenge the Social Democrats.
With 5,718 of 5,783 districts counted, the alliance scored 48 per cent compared to 46.3 per cent for Persson's ruling Social Democrats and their parliamentary backers, the Green Party and the Left Party.
Translated into seats, the four-party Alliance for Sweden would have 178 seats in the 349-seat parliament compared with 171 for the Social Democrats and their allies.
The 41-year-old Reinfeldt was the clear winner of the elections, winning back voters who fled his party in 2002, and with 26 per cent the Modedrate Party scored its best result in the post-war era.
Reinfeldt's party gained some 11 percentage points from 2002.
During his three years as leader, Reinfeldt has revamped the party, moved it more to the centre and played a key role in forging the two-year-old opposition alliance with three other non-socialist parties - the Centre Party, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats.
Reinfeldt underlined that the election victory was the result of "a joint effort" by the four parties.
"After a lot of hard work, Sweden will have a new government," said Goran Hagglund, leader of the Christian Democrats.
Despite a favourable economy, the Social Democrats lost votes, suggesting that the electorate were weary of the party's rule, observers said.
Support for the Left Party also fell, while the Green Party increased slightly.
Several opinion polls had predicted a close race between the two rival blocs but suggested that the minority Social Democrats, who have ruled the country of 9 million people for the last 12 years, would be voted out of office.
In all, 6,891,172 voters were eligible to participate in the parliamentary elections.
Voter turnout was about 80 per cent, on par with 2002 participation.
In addition to national elections, voters were to elect 20 county council assemblies and 290 municipal assemblies.
Local advisory referenda were also held in 22 municipalities. Voters in the capital, Stockholm, and a dozen neighbouring municipalities were to vote on congestion charges.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_....php?id=112982
Study: Interest in Political News Steady
Anick Jesdanun
Despite generally less interest in politics during the summer months and for midterm elections, Americans were as likely to look up political news and information online in August as they did during the peak of the 2004 presidential campaign.
Nineteen percent of U.S. adult Internet users, or 26 million, sought such information on a typical day in August, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday. That's about the same as the 18 percent recorded in November 2004.
There was a jump from the last midterm elections - 13 percent sought political information in July 2002.
John B. Horrigan, Pew's associate director, credited greater availability of high-speed Internet connections at home, which tends to boost usage of just about everything online, along with better political materials from campaigns, news organizations, activists and bloggers.
He said the interest in political news appears to be growing faster than the desire for general news, and the study found that younger people were more likely to seek out such information.
Pew conducted the telephone study Aug. 1 to Aug. 31, interviewing 1,021 Internet users. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...09-20-21-07-24
Sometimes a mouse is just a mouse
Could You be Addicted to the Internet?
I can't live without IE
Dr Stephen Juan
Can you be addicted to the Internet?
Asked by Ian Anderson of Aberdeen, Scotland
Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is one of the new psychopathologies of the internet era.
The first mention of "internet addiction" was in a 1996 paper by Drs O.Egger and M Rauterberg of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
The first case of IAD in the clinical literature was presented by Dr KS Young of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh campus in Bradford, Pennsylvania and appears in the February 1997 Psychological Reports. Bradford is now the home of the Centre for Internet Addiction.
The case concerns a 43-year-old housewife who was addicted to the internet yet who otherwise had no prior history of any other psychiatric problem.
It is unknown how many people suffer from IAD. There are several symptoms of IAD. These include:
• A need for an ever increasing amount of time on the internet to achieve satisfaction or a dissatisfaction with the continued use of the same amount of time on the internet.
• Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days, weeks, or up to a month after a reduction or cessation of internet use. These include distress or impairment of social, personal, or occupational functioning such that there is psychological or psychomotor agitation such as anxiety, restlessness, irritability, trembling, tremors, voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers, obsessive thinking, fantasies, or dreams about the internet.
• Internet engagement to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
• Internet often accessed more often or for longer periods of time than was intended.
• A significant amount of time is spent in activities related to internet use (for example, internet surfing).
• Important social, occupational, or recreational activities eliminated or reduced due to internet use.
• Risk of loss of a significant relationship, job, educational, or career opportunity due to excessive internet use.
• Internet engagement used as a way of escaping problems or relieving feelings of guilt, helplessness, anxiety, or depression.
• Concealing from or lying to family members about the extent of internet use.
• Internet user driven to financial difficulty due to incurring unaffordable internet fees.
Stephen Juan, Ph.D. is an anthropologist at the University of Sydney. Email your Odd Body questions to
s.juan@edfac.usyd.edu.au (mailto:s.juan@edfac.usyd.edu.au)
Google Helps Find Ancient Roman Remains
A computer programmer looking at Google Earth satellite images has reportedly discovered the remains of an ancient Roman villa near Sorbelo, Italy.
Luca Mori of Sorbelo was looking at a satellite image of his area, located near Parma, when he noticed unusual shading near his home, the London Telegraph reported Wednesday.
He said the area had an oval shaded form more than 500 yards long, with some unusual rectangular shadows nearby.
Archaeologists subsequently determined the rectangular lines were, most likely, a buried structure and the oval area was likely the course of an ancient river.
Mori contacted the National Archaeological Museum of Parma, which investigated.
"At first they thought the site might be Bronze Age, but a closer inspection turned up ceramic and stone pieces that showed it was a Roman villa built some time just before the birth of Christ," he told the newspaper.
Mori said he was happy with his discovery. "I have managed to get people talking about the Internet because of something interesting rather than pedophiles and viruses," he told the Telegraph.
http://www.happynews.com/news/google-helps-find.htm
Thanks Multi!