[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Politicians should not decide which pictures should be shown or which books should be read. They should stay out of it, regardless of which party they belong to." – Lars Lundgren


"Little girls today want to know what kind of shoes they're wearing, what kind of bag they're carrying, what kind of dress they're wearing, what kind of car they're driving. Why can't that be Miss America, someone with a positive image?" – Sam Haskell


"No artists have ever starved because too many people knew about them." – Halfdan Hussey


"It's ridiculous. You can go into these stores now and buy 100-inch screens. The law is just outdated." – John Whitehead


"It's idiotic. There is no legal ground (for the charges)." – Peter Sunde


































February 2nd, 2008





Sweden to Charge Pirate Bay in Copyright Case
Anna Ringstrom

Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.

Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.

Public prosecutor Hakan Roswall said last week he will charge the Swedish site's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison.

The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site.

No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers and no swapping of files actually takes place there. Rather, Pirate Bay locates file sharers on the Internet and acts as a directory of so-called torrent files.

BitTorrent is a protocol that enables big file transfers. The torrent files, downloadable from Pirate Bay, contain the information needed to download film or music files from others.

"It's not merely a search engine. It's an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available," Roswall told Reuters.

"It's a classic example of accessory -- to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it's in the physical or the virtual world," he said.

No Legal Grounds

But the people behind the site say they cannot be held responsible for material that is being spread.

"It's idiotic. There is no legal ground (for the charges)," Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told Reuters.

The case is partly based on evidence collected in a 2006 raid against Pirate Bay's servers, located then in Stockholm.

Pirate Bay was started by a Swedish anti-copyright group in 2003. Later the site was run by Sunde and two others, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij. Neij owns the domain.

It does not charge users and earns money from advertisers.

Roswall said it could take more than convictions in Sweden to stop Pirate Bay. "Because the infrastructure is scattered among several places around the world... no separate country will be able to stop the site," he said.

But he believes advertisers could have second thoughts about using Pirate Bay if a guilty verdict is handed down. "That can be the sort of thing that influences the site in the long run."

Sunde said there were no plans to shut down the site in the event of a conviction. He said he, Svartholm and Neij were unaware of the location of Pirate Bay's current servers.

He said Pirate Bay had 2.5 million registered members and about as many visit the site every day.

In 2007, some 600,000 out of nine million Swedes downloaded feature films, according to Mediavision. The Swedish research firm expects the number to rise to some 800,000 this year.

IFPI estimates there are 20 illegal music downloads worldwide for every one legal sale, IFPI spokesman Alex Jacob said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...c =22&sp=true





Shiver me timbres

Pirate Bay Operators Indicted

Four people involved in the running of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were indicted in Sweden on Thursday on charges of being accessories to breaking copyright law.

Hans Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundström, are suspected of organising and running The Pirate Bay, and thus "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws," according to charges filed by senior public prosecutor Håkan Roswall.

According to the prosecutor, their work with the site has meant that they "promoted other people's copyright breaches."

The charge sheet includes 33 cases of alleged copyright infringement, of which twenty involve music, nine are movie-related and four refer to computer games.

The prosecutor has called for the accused to pay damages of 1.2 million kronor ($185,000) to the Swedish state. He has also asked for the suspects' computers to be confiscated.

Evidence gathered by the prosecutor includes information provided by the suspects as well as interviews with staff at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Sweden's Anti-Piracy Agency (APB), a non-governmental organization representing the entertainment industry.

The prosecutor has also pointed to documents detailing data traffic and a series of e-mail messages.

Roswall further noted that The Pirate Bay had sold advertising on its site.

While Håkan Roswall did not wish to comment on the charges, IFPI's managing director Ludvig Werner said he was pleased with the way the case was progressing.

"It is very satisfying that the prosecutor shares our view that the The Pirate Bay's activities are illegal and has brought charges accordingly.

"Sweden has developed an unflattering reputation as a sanctuary for internet pirates. The trial is going to generate a lot of interest worldwide," said Werner in a statement.

Magnus Eriksson, a spokesman for pro-file sharing lobby group Piratbyrån, predicts that The Pirate Bay will survive the trial even in the event of a guilty verdict.

"The Pirate Bay is not going to be down for a single minute. The Pirate Bay is now established in a number of countries, so there's no one place in which to push the off button," he said.

Eriksson added that he would be surprised if the suspects were convicted of the alleged offences.

"It's not very likely. In the course of the investigation there have been attempts to bring up various things that The Pirte Bay has supposedly been guilty of. Before it was financial crime, and now this accessory thing seems to be the last straw for the prosecutor," he said.

Asked whether musicians and film-makers did not have a right to be paid for their work, Eriksson replied that file-sharing contributed to a greater general interest in music and film.

"Artists have a lot of ways to earn money, and in that respect they are actually helped by file-sharing.

"These charges will not help artists. Instead they are part of a wider campign from the anti-piracy side to stop people downloading," said Eriksson.
http://www.thelocal.se/9830.html





The Pirate Bay Breaks 10 Million Users
Thomas Mennecke

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to making history, and today is no different. In an achievement that conjures an achievement from the annals of file-sharing history, The Pirate Bay has broken an impressive milestone. Today, The Pirate Bay asserts itself as the self-proclaimed "World's Largest Tracker" by topping over 10 million peers, while managing over 1 million torrents.

Let's consider these staggering numbers. 10 million simultaneous users represents a number never duplicated by any file-sharing entity. The largest P2P networks, such as FastTrack and eDonkey2000, both topped out with approximately 5 million users. Gnutella, fronted by LimeWire, is more difficult to calculate, however reasonable estimates place Gnutella's population among the P2P heavyweights. Despite these impressive stats, The Pirate Bay has managed to exceed all previous file-sharing populations.

10 million users is more than the population of New York City (8.1 million) and The Pirate Bay's home country, Sweden (9 million). To imagine the scale of The Pirate Bay's ubiquity, it would be similar to every person in New York City running a BitTorrent application and using The Pirate Bay as their tracker - and even then, there would still be 2 million individuals to spare. Skype manages to have similar ambitions to The Pirate Bay; as of the time of this writing, the VoIP P2P network has approximately 9.1 million individuals connected - but still short by 1 million users.

The Pirate Bay has also managed to break another achievement, as the BitTorrent tracker is now managing over 1 million torrents. Specifically, The Pirate Bay's statistics show that "10.044.335 peers" are currently connected, with "1.015.489 torrents" managed by the tracker.

"We're very happy to be part of all of this and we hope our users keep sharing those files!," Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay told Slyck.com. "And we're looking to break 20 million as well."

The Pirate Bay's journey to this milestone was interrupted in late May of 2006, when it's server farm was raided by Swedish authorities. Its machines were confiscated, leaving many to wonder if the tracker would ever return. To put matters in perspective, The Pirate Bay had only 2.1 million peers during those events. Now, The Pirate Bay's server farm is scattered globally, giving the administration, and indeed many of its users, the confidence that it will be immune from any future prosecution.

That confidence is under attack by entertainment industry, pressured ISPs, and governments world wide who are attempting to thwart that critical mass of users. ISP bandwidth throttling and filtering could be on the way shortly, with the aim of cracking down on the productivity of the file-sharing community. Despite this pressure, concerns are held in check with the knowledge that history is on the opposition's side.
http://www.slyck.com/story1643_The_P..._Million_Users





France's Plan to Turn ISPs into Copyright Cops on Track
Eric Bangeman

The French government is pressing ahead with plans to cut off the Internet access for those caught sharing files via P2P. Under a plan announced last November by President Nicolas Sarkozy, those caught sharing copyrighted content via P2P would have their Internet access cut off under a three-strikes-and-you're-offline scheme.

Jean Berbinau, general secretary of French regulatory body Autorité de Régulation des Mesures Techniques (Regulatory Authority for Technical Measures), said that legislation enacting Sarkozy's plan should be passed by summer. "We have to do something, but it is only transitional, only to give time to the industry to adapt and maybe to encourage a new business model," Berbinau said at the MIDEM music trade show, according to the Financial Times.

New business models have already begun appearing without much in the way of help from the French government. DRM is on life-support at Sony and is dead at the other three major labels. Amazon has announced plans to take its DRM-free MP3 store international, and it's possible to listen to just about any song you want via Last.fm's new free streaming service.

That's not stopping France from moving ahead with its plan, which would require ISPs to invest heavily to stay on top of P2P traffic and begin playing the role of copyright police. French ISPs will have to begin monitoring their networks for illegal traffic, which will require additional investments in DPI equipment as well as additional administrative overhead. Those costs are, in turn, likely to be passed on to their subscribers.

Unsurprisingly, the IFPI is a big fan of France's plans to turn ISPs into copyright police. "This is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far," said IFPI CEO John Kennedy when the plan was first announced. "By requiring ISPs to play a role in the fight against piracy, President Sarkozy has set an example to others of how to ensure that the creative industries remain strong in difficult markets so that they can remain major economic and cultural contributors to society."

The IFPI would love to see other countries follow France's example. In its 2008 report on digital music, the trade group called on ISPs around the world to take up the mantle of content filtering. 2007 was the year ISP responsibility started to become an accepted principle," said the group. "2008 must be the year it become [sic] reality."

If it does indeed become a reality in France this summer, French 'Net users will have to learn to accept the inevitable loss in privacy that goes with having one's traffic monitored by ISPs.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-on-track.html





Australian Govt Draft Says Piracy Stats are Made Up
Smaran

A private draft prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology for the Attorney-General’s Department says that piracy stats aren’t backed up by fact and that copyright holders “failed to explain” how they came up with financial loss figures.

The draft questions whether the techniques used by copyright holders (record companies etc.) to determine piracy statistics are valid and if the data they come up with is accurate.

The Business Software Association, an international software body, claimed that in the year 2005 piracy in Australia cost them $361 million. The draft says these figures are “unverified and epistemologically unreliable.” It even goes so far as to call some of the stats used by copyright holders “absurd,” and adds that “of greatest concern is the potentially unqualified use of these statistics in courts of law.”

According to the draft, the RIAA’s Australian arm, the MIPI did not know how they calculated piracy stats, because the IPFI never told them. Strange? Maybe that’s just how things work with international organisations.

The reasoning behind the statements in the draft is that anti-piracy organisations calculate losses by counting each pirated good that is sold. They are making the assumption that each person who buys a pirated CD, for example, would have bought an original one instead. This cannot be backed up, as many of those people might not have been able to buy, or might not have bought the original CD.

The draft concluded with a statement asking for statistics that cannot be verified to be withdrawn. “Either these statistics must be withdrawn or the purveyors of these statistics must supply valid and transparent substantiation.”
http://torrentfreak.com/australian-g...stats-made-up/





EU Court: File Sharers Don't Have to be Named

European Union countries can refuse to disclose names of file sharers on the Internet in civil cases, the EU's top court said on Tuesday in a blow to copyright holders trying to fight digital piracy.

The European Court of Justice ruled on a dispute between Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae and Spain's top telecommunications operator, Telefonica.

Telefonica argued that, under a national law based on EU rules, it had to disclose the name of an Internet subscriber only for criminal actions, not civil ones.

"Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings," the court said in a statement.

Promusicae wanted names of Telefonica Internet clients who shared copyright material on the Web using the Kazaa file exchange software, so it could start civil proceedings against them.

Civil proceedings are cheaper than criminal proceedings, which typically require a higher burden of proof.

"There are several community directives whose purpose is that the member states should ensure, especially in the information society, effective protection of industrial property, in particular copyright," the court said.

"Such protection cannot, however, affect the requirements of the protection of personal data. The directives on the protection of personal data also allow the member states to provide for exceptions to the obligation to guarantee the confidentiality of traffic data," the court added.

EU rules do not preclude the possibility of EU countries laying down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings, it said.

"However, it does not compel the member states to lay down such an obligation," the court said.
http://www.news.com/EU-court-File-sh...3-6228185.html





Whoops—Italy Inadvertently Legalizes Some P2P Music
Eric Bangeman

The Italian parliament may have unwittingly legalized sharing music over P2P networks. A new copyright law, passed by both houses of parliament, would allow Italians to freely share music over the Internet as long as it was noncommercial and the music degraded.

Italian copyright attorney Andrea Monti told Italian paper la Repubblica (Google translation dug up on Slashdot) that whoever authored the law failed to take into account that the word "degraded" has a "very precise meaning." All music sold on the major music download sites is degraded, whether it's a 192kbps MP3 or 128kbps AAC file. Under the new law, music fans would be able to freely share their (not lossless) music libraries over P2P networks.

The law does limit such sharing to "educational or scientific" use, but the effect of the law will be to make prosecuting P2P use more difficult, Monti believes. Despite that, the president of the Italian counterpart to the RIAA told la Repubblica that the law doesn't faze his group because of those limits.

The new law is a another blow to the music industry, which has seen some significant legal setbacks in Europe over the past few months. Earlier this week, the European Court of Justice ruled that ISPs could not divulge the identities of their subscribers in civil copyright cases, just criminal cases. Such cases are increasingly difficult to bring in some EU nations, as German prosecutors have refused to pursue criminal infringement complaints, calling them "petty offenses." A Swiss antipiracy firm dodged this problem by filing criminal copyright infringement cases, then switching to civil actions once the identity of the 'Net user in question was obtained; the Swiss government has now told them to drop this practice.

Should Italian lawmakers decide that their inadvertent decriminalizing of music file-sharing isn't such a good idea, they'll have to pass another law. The legislation they just passed can no longer be altered, needing only publication in the Official Journal before becoming law.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...p2p-music.html





S.J. Film Festival Turns to File-Sharing Service to Find More Viewers
AP

Organizers of the Cinequest Film Festival have turned to file-sharing in an effort to attract a broader array of participants.

But the software they chose also enables illegal sharing of movies, music, software and other content. And that raises the ironic prospect of an up-and-coming filmmaker getting a legitimate distribution deal after succeeding at Cinequest, only to see his future work traded illegally using the same software that gave him his break.

Cinequest co-founder and executive director Halfdan Hussey says pushing the envelope for new distribution models is a risk he and young filmmakers are willing to take.

Filmmaking is less expensive now, and so are the means to reach the audience.

"The access barrier has been brought way down now. So many people can step over that barrier," Hussey said Tuesday at the soiree launching this year's festival. "You don't lose money by expanding awareness of your work."

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Vuze, Inc. is handling the technology for the online "Viewer's Voice" feature for Cinequest. Vuze users can view the films and vote on the their favorites. The Cinequest organizers then use a combination of ratings and total download figures to select one full-length film and one short to add to their lineup.

"If that gets you a deal and down the road a few people get a few freebies, I think it ultimately just enhances their value," Hussey said.

"No artists have ever starved because too many people knew about them," he added.

The annual festival, now in its 18th year, runs from Feb. 27 to March 9 in San Jose.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8126587





Pacnet Ordered to Turn Over Customer Records
Victoria Ho

A High Court judge has ordered Internet service provider Pacific Internet (Pacnet), to turn over details of its subscribers who had previously downloaded anime titles illegally.

Justice Woo Bih Li also dismissed Singapore-based anime distributor Odex's previous appeal against a verdict that prevented it access to Pacnet's subscriber records.

Odex last year carried out a series of suits against local ISPs (Internet service providers) in a bid to extract the identities of illegal downloaders--a move it said was necessary to protect the Japanese animation industry.

Although it won its court cases against local ISPs StarHub and SingTel, Odex's suit against Pacnet was overturned in a surprise verdict.

Justice Woo ruled that Odex was not the right party to make the court application. Instead, Pacnet will now have to turn over its subscriber records to the Japanese copyright holders, not Odex.

So far, the six Japanese anime distributors that have joined in the case are Sunrise, Kadokawa Pictures, GDH, TV Tokyo MediaNet, Yomiuri Telecasting and Showgate. Odex said it expects other copyright owners to make "similar applications to the court soon".

A Pacnet spokesperson said: "Pacnet is glad that the court has ruled in favour of us and has dismissed Odex's appeal with costs. We will abide by [the] ruling and provide these copyright owners with the details of about 500 IP addresses."

Odex in August last year assembled representatives from the copyright-holding anime companies for a press conference to display these parties' support for Odex's action against piracy.

Said Odex, of the court ruling: "This ruling in favour of the Japanese copyright owners is a significant boost for us and our principals, as we have always acted for and on behalf of the copyright owners. We are very pleased that Pacnet will now be required to hand over information on the infringing accounts to our copyright owners."

"[This] will now pave the way forward for further enforcement actions by the copyright owners. This decision also shows that those who persist in engaging in illegal downloading of anime programs can no longer use a breach of privacy as a reason to hide behind their ISP."

Pacific Internet recently merged with Asia Netcom to become Pacnet.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/busine...2037118,00.htm





Federal Court Doesn’t Quite Recognize Copyright in C&D Letter

Techdirt has a post on a rather triumphal press release put out by a law firm claiming that “[t]he US District Court for the District of Idaho has found that copyright law protects a lawyer demand letter posted online by the recipient.” That’s one way of interpreting the judge’s ruling, but I don’t think it’s the right way.

Here’s what happened. An anonymous poster (”Tom Paine”) said some things on a message board that a company called Melaleuca didn’t like. Melaleuca’s lawyers sent a letter to the message board’s administrators asking them to take down the posts to which they objected. Then, a second anonymous poster (”d2″) posted Melaleuca’s cease-and-desist letter to the message board.

Melaleuca wanted to know Tom Paine’s identity so that they could take some action against him. But bringing a John Doe lawsuit would be expensive and time-consuming. Then Melaleuca had a clever idea: because section 512 of the Copyright Act allows pre-litigation subpoenas to uncover the identities of anonymous online copyright infringers, they could get Tom Paine’s identity by (1) accusing d2 of infringing the copyright in their cease and desist letter, then (2) claiming that d2 and Tom Paine were the same person.

Well, it almost, sort of worked.

They were successful in getting d2’s identity, because the court found the test for issuance of a section 512 subpoena to be a lenient one: If the Copyright Office issues a registration, the court found, that’s all the copyrightability analysis a court must undertake in order to enforce a pre-litigation subpoena under section 512. The court did not say that the C&D letter was copyrightable, or that posting it was not fair use. Instead, the court merely said that Melaleuca had met the low bar of showing a prima facie case of infringement. As the court put it:

[T]he Court will not go into an in-depth analysis of the merits of a copyright infringement claim in determining whether to quash this subpoena. It is sufficient in this instance that Melaleuca has registered the Sheppard Letter with the Copyright Office.

Unlike the Patent and Trademark Office, the Copyright Office (for various very good reasons) does not perform an in-depth examination of each registration. As Melaleuca’s lawyer notes, “a US copyright registration is usually ‘rubber stamped’ and obtained on an expedited basis in about five business days.” Close cases, such as an attempt to register a virtually purely functional work such as a legal demand letter, usually result in the issuance of a registration, the validity of which is later contested in court. The district court in this case decided that the validity of the copyright should be determined after the plaintiffs actually filed their lawsuit for copyright infringement. It did not, as the press release implies, make a conclusive determination of copyrightability.

Melaleuca was thwarted in its ultimate goal of unmasking “Tom Paine.” The court found that Melaleuca had presented insufficient evidence that “d2″ and “Tom Paine” were one and the same, and quashed that portion of the subpoena which sought Tom Paine’s identity. (The edited version of the decision on the lawyers’ web site conveniently leaves that part out, but it makes up a substantial part of the court’s decision, which is available here.)
http://www.joegratz.net/archives/200...-in-cd-letter/





Major Labels Allow P2P Music Sharing on QTrax
Eliot Van Buskirk

After years of fighting peer-to-peer file sharing companies, the major record labels have decided that if they can't beat them, they might as well join them -- in one case, anyway. At the MIDEM conference in Cannes, QTrax announced deals with all of the major music labels and publishers to offer the first free and legal ad-supported P2P service to include major label music.

"You can't change the attitudes and habits of what is now probably amounting to two generations who believe that music ought to be free on the internet," said QTrax CEO Allan Klepfisz. "Those people are not going to be discouraged by Supreme Court decisions, they're not going to be discouraged by technological interference. Ultimately, what will discourage them is a demonstratively better service."

Klepfisz pegs the catalog of the service over 25 million songs, which would dwarf those of iTunes and other online music stores. The songs will be wrapped in Microsoft's Windows Media subscription DRM. This means that unlike the free, ad-supported services offered by imeem and Last.fm, QTrax's songs can be downloaded onto compatible players. The application is based on the Songbird engine, so sharing and downloading occurs within a Firefox browser -- no separate application required.

As of now, the tracks are not compatible with the Apple iPod, but Klepfisz said that the service would be compatible with iPods before too long -- an indication that Apple could apply the subscription technology developed for iTunes Movie Rentals to the music market.

To get the industry onboard with P2P, QTrax signed over "the lion's share of revenue" to labels and publishers, paying out on per-download and per-play bases. The site also categorized the music of the world into three lists. One list includes artists who do not permit their music to be made available online in any capacity. "The blacklist is fast-disappearing -- my prediction is that in a year, the blacklist won't be in existence," said Klepfisz. The white list consists of the standard digital catalogs from the major and indie labels -- the same five-plus million songs that are on iTunes.

The gray list constitutes the difference between what's available on iTunes and what's available on BitTorrent. "Then you have the gray list, which is that vast body of stuff that's out there on P2P, where there are rights holders, but the rights holders themselves may not even know that a song is being downloaded frequently... To the best of our ability, we identify the rights holder and pay them a percentage of the advertising revenue. In the minority of cases where we can't identify a rights holder, we will actually put up the song for claiming, and will reserve the portion of the ad pie until that song is appropriately claimed." As with other free, ad-supported services, revenue comes from advertisers who want to target ads to specific types of listener.

Advertisers have long understood the power of music to move product, and some have developed specific music strategies for working with new services such as QTrax, according to Klepfisz. But without the labels' sign-off on this service, a sanctioned P2P service of this size never would have been possible.

With these deals, the labels have demonstrated openness towards revenue streams that deviate from the record store model.

"This is a tacit acknowledgment that 'bulletproof' wasn't working," said IDC consumer audio analyst Susan Kevorkian. "And it hasn't been working. But it was an experiment the music industry needed to undertake in order to figure out how to address digital distribution. It was a very long learning process, but fortunately there's still the possibility of finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/01/...labels-al.html





Music Labels Say no Deal with Qtrax
Yinka Adegoke

The world's biggest music companies, including Warner Music Group Corp and Sony BMG, denied that they have agreed to license songs for a free download service that was launched by Qtrax on Monday.

Qtrax told Reuters and other media outlets last week that it had deals with the major labels representing about 75 percent of all music sales, to let users download songs for free in a new service to be supported by advertising revenue.

But by Monday, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner had publicly denied that they had agreed to back the new Qtrax service.

A source close to Universal Music, the largest of the group, said it also had not signed a deal for the new Qtrax service and is still in discussions.

And a source close to EMI Group said that while its song publishing unit has an agreement with Qtrax, its recorded music arm, EMI Music, does not.

"Sony BMG can confirm it has not signed a deal with Qtrax for the ad-supported service," said a spokesman for Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG.

EMI Music, Sony BMG and Warner all previously had agreements with Qtrax, which was testing a paid music download service. Sources say those agreements expired in the last year and did not cover the new free, ad-supported model now being promoted by Qtrax.

The first denial came from Warner late on Sunday and appeared to force the startup to backtrack on its earlier claims of having deals with all majors.

Qtrax said late on Sunday, "We are in discussions with Warner Music Group to ensure that the service is licensed and we hope to reach an agreement shortly."

Qtrax did not immediately respond to further queries about its agreements with other companies.

Qtrax is not the first startup company proposing a new business model for marketing music to run into licensing difficulties with major labels.

Social music network Imeem was sued by Warner Music before agreeing on terms with all majors late last year. A free ad-supported download service from SpiralFrog has struggled to sign any other major record company since launching last September with music from Universal Music.
http://www.reuters.com/article/music...44446320080129





Amazon to Begin International Rollout of Amazon MP3 in 2008

Press release

Amazon.com today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store where every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including the PC, Mac, iPod, Zune, Zen, iPhone, RAZR, and BlackBerry. Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as over 33,000 independent labels.

"We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can't wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. "We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year."

Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth's Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes(R) or Windows Media Player(TM); and burn songs to CDs for personal use.

Most songs available on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the over 3.3 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 bestselling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 bestselling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise. Buying and downloading MP3s from Amazon MP3 is easy. Customers can purchase downloads using Amazon 1-Click shopping, and with the Amazon MP3 Downloader, seamlessly add their MP3s to their iTunes(R) or Windows Media Player libraries.

The company is not disclosing a specific launch timeline for individual Amazon international websites.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....346&highlight=





Threatens sanctions

Judge Accuses RIAA of ‘Gamesmanship
p2pnet news

A judge has accused Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA of using “gamesmanship” tactics in joinder cases where defendants are linked together.

One such is Arista v Does 1-27 in which two of the victims are being officially represented by two University of Maine School of Law’s Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic students.

These kinds of cases allow the corporate enforcer to efficiently terrorise a number of people simultaneously, in effect.

It also means they’re spared the time and expense of going after their victims one by one and, “it is difficult to ignore the kind of gamesmanship that is going on here” writes magistrate judge Margaret J. Kravchuk.

“A cadre of owners and licensees of certain copyrighted sound recordings, including Arista Records, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, Capitol Records, Elektra Entertainment, Motown Record Company, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America and Warner Bros. Records, brought this copyright infringement action against a collection of University of Maine students, identified to date only as Does 1-271 having certain IP addresses provided by the University, for their alleged use of an online media distribution system to unlawfully download and/or distribute various copyrighted works,” she says .

She sustained the action, but, “suggests sanctions for RIAA lawyers’ ‘gamesmanship’ in, “pretending to have grounds for joinder” when in fact there aren’t any, says Recording Industry vs The People.

“Suppose,” she writes, “instead of university students, the record companies chose to target all individuals within the District of Maine who had used these P2P services and had TimeWarner Cable for their ISP.

“Would all those individuals be properly joined in a single complaint? I think the Plaintiffs know the answer to that question because on May 5, 2007, many of these same plaintiffs filed a very similar lawsuit, Atlantic Recording Corp., et al. v. Does 1-22, 1:07-cv-057-JAW. A procedure similar to the one used in this case was adopted in that case, but no motions to dismiss or motions to quash were filed and presumably the plaintiffs obtained the discovery they sought.”

The case was voluntarily dismissed in July last year.

And the allegation that all the claims came from the same series of transactions or occurrences because the defendants all used the same ISP, “sounds good,” says Kravchuk, “but makes little sense when one appreciates that having a common ISP says nothing about whether the use of that service by two or more people amounts to the same transaction or occurrence”.

In 1:07-cv-057-JAW, “Following that dismissal the same counsel filed at least three separate cases in this court,” says the judge, adding:

The relevant allegations in the respective complaints simply state that the defendants were “identified as the individual[s] responsible for that IP address at that date and hour” without reference to how the identification was made. However, there is certainly a “plausible inference” that the identifications were made as a result of the May lawsuit. It is curious that no attempt was made to join these cases as arising from the same transaction or occurrence if my plausible inference is accurate. I think no such attempt was made because it is apparent that the cases would not be properly joined.

These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined.

Says Beckerman:

“It’s highly unusual for a judge to suggest Rule 11 sanctions. It shows that this judge really understood the pernicious and dishonest game the RIAA lawyers are playing.

“Rule 11 sanctions can be imposed not only on the record companies but on their lawyers as well. For a lawyer to have on his record that Rule 11 sanctions have been imposed against him, can be a really serious matter. [RIAA legal reps] Holme Roberts & Owen will not be pleased that the lawyers handling the RIAA cases allowed that to happen.

“If Rule 11 sanctions do wind up being imposed against the RIAA lawyers, I don’t think you’ll see any more mass John Doe cases.”
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14814





RIAA Chief: We Don't See a Need for Mandatory ISP Filtering
Nate Anderson

U2's manager might love the idea of legally-mandated filtering, but the head of the RIAA says that there's no need for such an approach in the US. The RIAA still wants to see a thousand filters bloom, of course, but it holds out hope for a "marketplace solution" to the issue.
NetZero tests broadband waters

Cary Sherman, the RIAA chief, made his comments today at a Washington, DC tech conference where he expressed his differences with U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness generated applause in Cannes this week at a music industry event by calling for mandatory content filtering at the ISP level. "Paul is European," said Sherman, according to CNet, "and in Europe there has been much more of a regulatory approach to these issues."

The RIAA does not support this approach in the US, opting instead to back the tradeoffs of the DMCA. That law allows ISPs a "safe harbor" for the content passing through their networks so long as they respond to takedown notices and legal requests in a timely fashion.

But the group welcomes voluntary filtering of the kind promised by AT&T. This is sometimes said to be in the best interests of ISPs because it can help them control bandwidth. Verizon, which has bandwidth to burn, though, has showed no interest in becoming a copyright cop.
Verzion: we don't need filters

Tom Tauke, who heads Verizon's lobbying efforts, said at the same conference that his company had no interest in following AT&T down the yellow brick road to Filtertown. "We don't want to get into the business of inspecting the bits and figuring out what is and is not appropriate traffic," he said, according to CNet.

Tauke also gave voice to the obvious downside of voluntary filtering, one not often mentioned by pro-filtering groups like the RIAA. In addition to obvious worries about customer privacy (and outright anger) at deep packet inspection of all their bits, Verizon understands that becoming a copyright cop carries a high price: it's only a matter of time before the company would face pressure to police other industries. As commerce and leisure activities increasingly go online, such a move could burden ISPs with the need to police all sorts of traffic for all sorts of behaviors.

With its fiber-to-the-home strategy, open network initiative, and opposition to filtering, Verizon seems headed down a different path from AT&T.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...filtering.html





P2P Users Blast Comcast in FCC Proceeding
Matthew Lasar

Two weeks into a Federal Communications Commission public comment period on whether Comcast deliberately degrades P2P broadband traffic, there's no shortage of angry users who feel cheated and want the tampering to stop. Evidence is also mounting that Comcast is blocking more than just P2P traffic.

"On numerous occasions, my access to legal BitTorrent files was cut off by Comcast," a systems administrator based in Indianapolis wrote to the FCC shortly after the proceeding began. "During this period, I managed to troubleshoot all other possible causes of this issue, and it was my conclusion (speaking as a competent IT administrator) that this could only be occurring due to direct action at the
(Comcast) level."

The comment cycle began on January 14. It came at the request of net neutrality advocates whose petition to the FCC cited an Associated Press investigation concluding that in some instances Comcast "hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent."

The cable giant claims that it has delayed access when usage was high, but has not deliberately singled out any sites or services. But Free Press, Public Knowledge and others groups want the Commission to issue a declaratory ruling on whether the practices with which Comcast and others have been charged violate the FCC's Internet policy statement.

That declaration, issued in August of 2005, said that the FCC "has jurisdiction necessary to ensure that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or Internet Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services are operated in a neutral manner."

So far most of the filers in this proceeding have written their own comments rather than rely on Web auto forms. They say they want the Commission to find out what Comcast is really up to.

"If you so much as open a BitTorrent client on a computer on the Comcast network, your entire connection drops to almost a crawl," one filer complains. "Comcast is throttling my connection speed when I am transferring files from work to home," another reports. "They are also interrupting my connections."

And a third: "I have experienced this throttling of bandwidth in sharing open-source software, e.g. Knoppix and Open Office. Also I see considerable differences in speed ftp sessions vs. html. They are obviously limiting speed in ftp as well."

And a fourth: "Late during the summer of 2007, I experienced that Comcast's Bandwidth throttling system was affecting Lotus Notes traffic. Several users at my company experienced an inability to communicate with our Lotus Notes email servers if they were uploading over 1mb of data. This problem caused a lot of headache for my company."

Some commenters corroborate charges that the ISP inserts RST packets—the equivalent of a telephone hangup signal—into large file streams that the company doesn't like.

"I believe that Comcast Communications is using an application called Sandvine to insert a proverbial 'dial tone' into a data stream," a commenter writes. "There are security measures put in place to prevent a hacker from sneaking data into a data stream, but as Comcast can monitor those streams they can perfectly forge an RST packet that will be interpreted as coming from the other party."

Another filer agrees:

"I personally feel that Comcast is inserting RST packets into other TCP protocols, not just BitTorrent," he writes. "We run a custom chat server on port 2001. The connection will never stay up for longer than an hour before the connection is reset. A year or so earlier, this was never the case, and our connection would stay up for days on end. When the traffic is encrypted (in an SSH tunnel), the connection stays up, fine."

Ditto, says yet another sysop:

"I suggest that they have selected specific ports that are known to carry sustained high bandwidth traffic and destinations or origins that could not possibly afford to enforce a restraining order and limited that traffic as best they could by rewriting packets to disturb the flow of traffic."

And several filers argue that Comcast's alleged practices already fall under the jurisdiction of a federal law: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

"I suspect that violating criminal law is sufficient reason for the FCC to regulate Comcast's actions," one supporter of this argument writes. "Need we also mention false advertising, and terminating users accounts for passing an invisible and undocumented monthly bandwidth quota?"

Others are less certain of how exactly the FCC or the courts should regulate Comcast's ISP behavior, but they are sure that the Commission-or somebody-should force the company to be honest with consumers about its practices.

"If Comcast's technology is unable to meet the demands of its users and Comcast is forced to slow popular traffic, then maybe they are over-selling the service," a commenter says. "This calls into question their advertising model. If they advertise X rates, but only delivery Y rates, then it should be sold as Y."

Another consumer argues that honesty would only be fair, given that "in many places, Comcast (and other cable companies) may be the only high speed provider as DSL is not always available. Until competing services such as Verizon FIOS can reach out, many users are stuck with this level of service."

"I don't like the idea of making an example out of them [Comcast]," he concludes, "but a hefty fine and requiring them to publish their bandwidth caps may mitigate much of this down the road."

Comcast has yet to file a response to any of these user complaints and suggestions. The corporation will probably wait until the comment period of the proceeding ends and the reply-to-comments window opens on February 14th.

February 28 will be the last day to participate in this proceeding. The docket number is 07-52.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...roceeding.html





Fixing US Broadband: $100 Billion for Fiber to Every Home
Nate Anderson

The US is in desperate need of 100Mbps "big broadband." That's the conclusion of a new report from EDUCAUSE (PDF), a group that represents IT managers at over 2,200 colleges and universities. But these 100Mbps connections are coming slowly; in the meantime, countries like Japan already have them. To avoid falling further behind, the report calls for a national broadband policy to be passed this year, one that includes $100 billion for a fiber-to-the-home infrastructure that will connect every household and business in the country.

The report opens by citing the familiar, dreary facts: US broadband might now be widely available, but it's slow and relatively expensive. Between 1999 and 2006, the US fell from third place to 20th in the International Telecommunications Union's broadband usage measurements. When it comes to average connection speeds, the US isn't beaten just by Japan but also by France, Korea, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Germany. And it's not about population size or density, either; Finland, Sweden, and Canada beat us on most broadband metrics despite having lower population density. Finally, we're getting beat on price, coming in 18th worldwide when it comes to cost per megabyte.

Why? Two reasons. First, the US has not made a national investment in broadband infrastructure, unlike most other developed countries. The lack of national leadership (usually explained as a need to let the market do its thing without interference) has meant that broadband is still not treated as a utility that is made available to all people at reasonable prices. States have recognized the problem, and many (such as California and Kentucky) have launched innovative public/private partnerships of their own to bring broadband to all members of the state.

Second, the market hasn't worked as well as it might in part because there's little competition. Consumers are lucky to have two choices, but even in those cases the costs (in time, money, and hassles) make it nontrivial to switch. All OECD countries except for Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the US have adopted "unbundling" rules that allow competitors access to "local loops." In the US, where such rules used to exist, companies like Speakeasy could offer DSL service via AT&T's local loops without the need for building a parallel national network themselves.

The EDUCAUSE report points out that "broadband prices in countries without unbundling policies exceed prices in countries with unbundling policies," and the fact that speeds in such countries are often higher than in the US should put to rest the old argument that unbundling necessarily destroys infrastructure by eliminating investment incentives.

The solution, according to the report, is one that has been adopted in other countries and some US states already. EDUCAUSE calls for the construction of a national fiber network that would reach every home and business, with the $100 billion cost split equally between the federal government, the states, and a private- or public-sector entity that would actually build and maintain the network. Because fiber networks can increase speeds simply by carrying more wavelengths at once, the report notes that such an investment in infrastructure might "provide adequate broadband connectivity for several decades."

All that's needed is $8 billion a year for four years from the feds, with the states also coming up (collectively) with the same amount. Put another way, 116 days of the Iraq war could fund the entire federal $32 billion contribution. We've made such investments before, and not just in roads and highways; the Universal Service Fund continue to dole out billions of dollars to fund rural phone connections, for instance.

What's at stake isn't simply faster download speeds for movies. As the report (like many others before it) points out, a robust broadband infrastructure creates economic opportunity. It also opens the door to more telework, better communications tools, e-health opportunities, and distance learning.

While some free-market groups have criticized any move towards federal investment and regulation of broadband and have taken issue with the OECD numbers often used in these debates, there's actually plenty of data on the table about US broadband—and none of it suggests that we are a world leader anymore. As Google's Derek Slater noted on the company's blog, "Whether or not one agrees with EDUCAUSE's particular strategy, the paper demonstrates that a clear, concerted national broadband strategy of some kind is required to reach that bigger, better broadband future."

Surprisingly for such reports, the EDUCAUSE paper is quite readable, and it's well worth a look by anyone interested in broadband policy. The president's report on broadband is due to be released today; look for coverage of that here.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...very-home.html





Faulty Cable Blacks Out Internet for Millions

• India and Egypt among countries hit by outage
• Damage to undersea connection to blame

Bobbie Johnson

Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections.

The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online.

Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with the Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.

The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world's longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan.

Reports suggested that the lack of alternative routes for internet traffic meant only a small proportion of surfers were managing to get online. Egyptian officials said that around 70% of the country's online traffic was being blocked, while officials in Mumbai said that more than half of India's internet capacity had been erased, which could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country's burgeoning hi-tech industry.

"There has been a 50% to 60% cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Charia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India told Reuters.

The shutdown highlighted the often frail nature of international communications: despite the vast number of individuals who have access to the web, nearly all internet traffic is routed through a small number of cables submerged deep below the oceans. It is then forwarded through an internet backbone consisting of just 13 servers which handle and direct all online requests.

Amr Gharbeia, a blogger from Cairo, said the inability to communicate with the outside world had caused confusion and concern among Egyptians. "When I woke up this morning there was no internet at home, and then I visited two or three other places during the day and they had no access either," he told the Guardian.

He said the lack of information about the outage meant that many people had been left wondering if the Egyptian authorities - who have previously jailed online critics and threatened to close down websites they deem a threat - had blocked web access in an act of censorship.

"We started getting paranoid because we've seen the internet temporarily shut down before in countries like Pakistan," he said. "But I think we only have two internet gateways that go outside of Egypt, so perhaps only the smaller one is currently working."

The outage will take several days to fix, and could have a drastic impact around the region and across the globe. As well as hitting communications, businesses and the hi-tech industry in affected countries, it could also have repercussions for banks and even stock market trading.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...d=networkfront





How One Clumsy Ship Cut Off the Web for 75 Million People
Bobbie Johnson

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority. "People who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do," said ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur.

But as backroom staff at businesses across the globe scrambled to reroute their traffic or switch on backup satellite systems, experts said the incident highlighted the fragility of a global communications network we take for granted.

"People just don't realise that all these things go through undersea cables - that this is the main way these economies are all linked," said Alan Mauldin, the research director of TeleGeography. "Even when you're using wireless internet, it's only really wireless back to your base station: the rest is done over real, physical connections."

Despite the clean, hi-tech image of the online world, much of the planet remains totally reliant on real-world connections put in place through massive physical effort. The expensive fibre optic cables are laid at great cost in huge lines around the globe, directing traffic backwards and forwards across continents and streaming millions of conversations simultaneously from one country to another.

One expert suggested that this week's accident should be a "wake-up call" to convince governments that keeping such connections secure should be a higher priority. Officials must spend more time and energy making sure that critical communications such as mobile phones and the net are adequately protected - whether from disaster or a terrorist strike, said Mustafa Alani, head of security and terrorism at the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai.

"This shows how easy it would be to attack," he said. "When it comes to great technology, it's not about building it, it's how to protect it."

Although the direct effect of the Mediterranean accident is being felt as far west as Bangladesh, the greatest impact has been in India, which has the world's fifth largest internet population and an economy that is increasingly reliant on hi-tech communications. The Indian stock markets had already closed when reports of the collapse first surfaced on Wednesday, but the impact of a 50% drop in bandwidth was being felt keenly yesterday - particularly by the country's expansive outsourcing industry.

American corporations were reporting a number of problems with their Indian-based support services and call centres as the domino effect kicked in, although a spokesman for BT - one of Britain's biggest outsourcers - said the company had so far seen little direct evidence of problems. Countries in east Asia and the Pacific remained unaffected as they pipe most of their internet traffic to Europe through the US, but it could be several weeks before things are back to normal in the affected countries.

"It will depend on how bad the damage is, but they'll find the sections in question and bring them up onto a ship for repair before sinking them again," said Mauldin. "It could take a week or possibly two weeks."

The fibre optic wires in question - called Flag Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 - are some of the most vital information pipelines between Europe and the east. The latter, which runs in an uninterrupted line from western Europe to Singapore, had only recently been opened after a mammoth £500m, three-year installation project. Between them, the two lines are responsible for around 75% of all connectivity in the Middle East and south Asia.

"The problems are really at pinch points where increasingly huge amounts of information are coming through," said Jim Kinsella, chairman of Interoute, Europe's largest fibre optic network provider. He said that improvements are scheduled for submarine cabling, but that plans to send more internet traffic over land connections rather than under the sea had been set back by political wrangling.

"The whole subsea franchise operation is due to change dramatically in the next 18 months, but the question is how we cope in the meantime. You always have to assume that this kind of thing is going to happen."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...iness.internet





Nigerian 5-Year-Olds Repair OLPCs in "Hospital"

Affordable laptops are simple to repair
Brian Clark Howard

At the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City, former One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explained that the discount laptops have met with a number of roadbumps in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Part of the problem has been wavering support from lawmakers there and negative local press. But part of the problem has been literal bumps.

Jepsen explained that children in Nigeria learn at metal desks that are bolted together in pairs. They are supposed to seat two young learners, but more typically seat five in common crowding conditions. This means the desks are constantly getting jostled around, and the brand-new XO OLPCs get knocked to the floor. Even though they were built to be extremely rugged, occasionally a screen will get broken.

In the developing world, a consumer can't just drive to the nearest repair shop. That's why Jepsen and team designed the XO to be so easily repairable (it even comes with embedded extra screws). The key components can be easily swapped out with a screwdriver, including the $1 backlight for the LCD display (something that usually cannot be readily replaced on typical laptops). Even motherboards can be swapped out easily, though actually repairing one takes some expertise — about as much as repairing a TV, suggested Jepsen, depending on what's wrong.

How simple is it? In Nigeria a 5-year-old girl with a can-do spirit took it upon herself to troubleshoot and repair the OLPCs of her classmates, said JJepsen. A teacher encouraged her, and the class set up a "Laptop Hospital," where the kids learn to repair their own hardware.

How is this green? Shipping is greatly reduced if people can fix their own gadgets on site. Jepsen pointed out that communities in Peru that now have OLPCs take 20 days to reach via roads from major cities. Instead of tossing whole products that have one or two problems, people can swap out individual pieces, leading to much less resource use.

Plus, the whole reason for the OLPC was to serve as a powerful educational tool. When young people, or any consumers, learn better how things work, and take responsibility for them, their experience is enriched. And they learn to take care of things better, which leads to longer life, and less resource use.

Plus, part of the OLPC's ease of repairing also translates to its ease of recycling, which is a big bonus for the planet. Too many devices are difficult to break down into reusable materials.

The OLPC also wins praise for it's incredibly low power use (2 watts, compared with 30 to 40 watts for a typical laptop). It was designed to work with alternative sources, since so many parts of the developing world don't have reliable, or affordable, grid electricity. Jepsen said power sources being deployed include simple hand cranks, $10 solar panel kits, wind turbines, stationary bike motors, and even a device that harnesses the power of cows walking in a pasture.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-h...-repair-460201





Slashdot Founder Questions Crowd’s Wisdom
Brad Stone

One of the oldest rivals to the community news site Digg is pointing to recent unrest at the site as evidence that the social news model is flawed.

Last week, frequent users of Digg protested changes in its algorithms that were designed to emphasize broader voting in determining which stories make it to Digg’s well-trafficked main page. Digg executives Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson listened to and addressed the protesters in an attempt to defuse their objections and prevent their threatened exodus from the community.

Meanwhile, to Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco, founder of the pioneering technology news site Slashdot, the chickens were coming home to roost.

Mr. Malda, 31, spoke from his home in Michigan about Slashdot’s new site, Idle, a compendium of links to non-technology-related video and news bits. The new site, which is currently in testing mode, is clearly aimed at taking some audience away from weird-news-of-the-day sites like Digg and Fark.com.

“We read or watch everything submitted to us,” Mr. Malda said of his site, which rather traditionally employs a small cadre of editors to select which stories make it to the main Slashdot page. “Historically, if it wasn’t about tech, we rejected it. But we realized we could put it somewhere and let the Slashdot community talk about it and enjoy it as well.”

But Mr. Malda could not help using the discussion about Idle to address problems at Digg, and what he sees as the flaws of the community news model.

“A lot of these community news sites are all about Ron Paul,” he said. “Ron Paul may be a valid candidate. But what that is really demonstrating is that you are seeing 1 or 2 percent of a community shaping where the whole community is going. A small dedicated group of people can manipulate these sites very easily.”

Mr. Malda said that Digg must move to deemphasize that vocal minority in the overall voting. But then it would inevitably alienate its core user base. “All these sites start with a nucleus of dedicated people. Then as the gawkers join in you see a dilution. People who were there originally feel alienated and feel that the thing they helped created is being perverted.”

“I try not to paint Digg as my arch-nemesis. The Digg method and Digg community are a wider audience than Slashdot,” he said. “But with sites like Digg, it’s the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob. You never know what you’re going to get.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...dom/index.html





The Debigulator

Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones

vLite is a free download that can cut the operating system's size by half or more.
Paul McDougall

A free software tool that promises to strip down the Windows Vista operating system -- which even some Microsoft officials have called "bloated" -- to a minimalist state is attracting big interest on the Internet.

vLite, created by developer Dino Nuhagic, automatically removes a number of non-essential Windows Vista components in order to pare the OS's heavy footprint by half or more.

vLite allows users to preselect numerous Vista features for automatic removal prior to installing the OS on their personal computers. Among them: Windows Media Player, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN Installer, Wallpapers, SlideShow, Windows Mail and other utilities.

"It's not just about hard disk space. There is also an increase in OS responsiveness and you don't have to tolerate all kinds of things you don't use," said Nuhagic, in an e-mail to InformationWeek explaining why he launched the project.

vLite, however, isn't for the technically timid. The software warns that the changes it imposes on Vista are "permanent, so be sure in your choice."

Nuhagic said he doesn't know exactly how many downloads vLite has seen -- but a forum that asks users to submit suggestions for the next version has drawn almost 50,000 views.

The emergence of tools like vLite reflect the frustrations voiced by many computer users over Vista's bulk and resource requirements.

Loaded with an abundance of features and tools designed to ease navigation and bolster security, the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista both require a whopping 15 GBs of available disk space for installation. By contrast, Windows XP -- Vista's predecessor -- requires 1.5 GB of available space for installation of the Professional version.

With Vista bearing a footprint 10 times larger than XP's, even Microsoft officials are expressing concerns about Windows' growing waistline. Speaking last year at the University of Illinois, Microsoft distinguished engineer Eric Traut said the operating system had become bloated.

"A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system. That may be a fair characterization," said Traut.

In response to such concerns, Traut said Microsoft has adopted a new, modular approach to OS development that will yield more streamlined products beginning with Windows 7 -- a successor to Windows Vista that's expected to be available some time in 2010.
The approach calls for Windows developers to use a bare bones version of the OS -- dubbed MinWin -- as the building block for their next programming effort. MinWin is built on about 25 MBs of data -- making it smaller than Windows Vista by an order of magnitude.

Until it's ready, there's always programs like vLite.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=205920302





FCPS: It’s Illegal To Make Websites!
Robert Afnani

Yeah, yeah. I make websites. Once upon a time, I ran a huge network of over 50 proxy websites. They were cool and all, but eventually they absorbed a ton of server usage and, since there really wasn’t much of a ROI given that I couldn’t find an ad network that could fulfill the “should-be-doing-work-rather-than-browsing-blocked-websites” demographic, I wasn’t making sufficient money. The CTR with Adsense was hopeless, not to mention that each proxy, one by one, started getting blocked by the big guys. By ‘big guys’ I mean Websense and rest of the shit ton of “Network Security” softwares. So there really was no light at the end of the tunnel, and I shut them all down.

Anyways, just a few weeks ago, I made a new proxy. A private proxy, nothing of commercial value, but one that I, along with a small group of friends, would personally use. It was called “Afnani’s Moo Proxy”, and was located at robertafnani.com/moo/ (now offline, but if you really care you can check it out at robertafnani.com/mooold/).

Before long, a lot of people in my school, and even other schools in the area caught wind of it, and basically everyone at Langley HS started using it. How could I tell, you ask? Well, it’s kinda obvious with Awstats shows only a few unique IP addresses accessing the site, yet a shit ton of pageloads and gigabytes upon gigabytes of bandwidth usage. Great. I made a proxy on my domain name and now its the shit everyone’s talking about. I must be a badass now.

This is when everything starts to go raw. Just the other day, I was pulled into an administrator’s office (whose name shall be undisclosed), and slapped in the face with a possible suspension. I am accused of violating my rights as a student, and intentionally attempting to disturb the learning environment of students in my school.

I was accused of breaking the law. Of providing a means for students to do illegal activities in school. And I got all the blame. Supposedly, if students were reading instructions, and I quote, on “how to make a bomb”, I’m the one who should be facing criminal prosecution, as I’m the one who provided all the means for retrieving the information.

Of course, I tried to argue my way out of it. Proxies are perfectly legal to create. I can do whatever the hell I want outside of school, especially if it involves my job, which takes part mostly on the Internet.

Much to my dismay, however, apparently I have no rights at FCPS schools. I asked the administrator and the tech guy (who, if I may add, is a great guy, and not the one at fault here) to point out on the Student Network Access Agreement what policy/rule I violated. They refused to, because there was no law that made what I did ‘illegal’. I wasn’t hacking the network, I wasn’t dickin’ around with the hardware; I made a damn website, and no where on the entire agreement does it say anything about not being able to make websites outside of school.

Being the one with lower hand, I had to submit to their will, so as to not get into any more trouble. In the end, my computer account at school was banned, but the verbal abuse and harassment to me was worse. Hell, I was pulled out of class during my final exam for the first semester of Philosophy, so who knows what grade I’m going to be getting on that test. And I was facing a possible suspension from the school premises for doing this.

I’m the little man in this situation: my school thinks they have all the power in the world, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am now forced to take all my proxies offline, otherwise I face “repeat network abuse” and will get in a LOT of trouble (recommendation for expulsion, anyone?).

Langley High School has no right to do this. Suppose “robertafnani.com” wasn’t the domain for this proxy. I’m damn sure the IT guys wouldn’t WHOIS the proxy and attempt to arrest/accuse the owner of commiting a crime. I feel as though I am discriminated against, and that my school’s actions against me were unjust. They’re abusing their power and if I can’t get any help from the press, then there’s no stopping this administration.

Worst part is that now I’m tagged as being a ‘computer hacker’ and a ‘potential threat’ to the school system. A mass email was sent out from the administrator who accused me of this to all the teachers, administrators, librarians, etc in the entire school, which basically says I’m a criminal and I need to be watched when getting within a 10-foot radius of a computer.

I find it unfair that Fairfax County Public Schools feels they can impose this kind of totalitarianism on me, I’m now a criminal for making proxies. For making a website. A legal website. On my private server. Outside of school. Great.

God help me.
http://robertafnani.com/2008/01/31/f...make-websites/





Scottish Tories Launch Campaign Against "Ineffective" ID Cards

Scottish Tories launch new criticism of the U.K. government for a national biometric ID; "Despite what Gordon Brown and the Labour government says, ID cards won't stop terrorist attacks and won't prevent identity fraud," leader says.

The Scottish Tories Friday launched a campaign against identity cards, denouncing them as costly, ineffective, and an invasion of privacy. Their leader, Annabel Goldie, said: "Despite what Gordon Brown and the Labour government says, ID cards won't stop terrorist attacks and won't prevent identity fraud. Hard-working Scots will each have to fork out almost £100 for this total invasion of privacy. And on top of that, they will have to travel to a biometric scan centre in order to have their biometrics taken."

The Scotsman's Joe Quinn writes that the Conservatives also claim the U.K. government is planning to "blackmail" students into having ID cards to access loans and bank accounts. A leaked Home Office paper showed young people would be targeted from 2010 -- the date originally set for the extension of the scheme to anyone renewing a passport. That is thought to have been put back to 2012. The report said, however, that the "first priority" was to issue ID cards from next year to those in positions of trust, with airport workers singled out for specific attention. A spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service said: "We will begin issuing ID cards for foreign nationals this year and the first ID cards for British citizens in 2009."
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5435





Leaked UK Gov't Doc Reveals Plan to "Coerce" Brits into National ID Register
Cory Doctorow

Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible!

If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post.

UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about "coercing" its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The 'ID card' is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident - creating what NO2ID calls 'the database state'.

NO2ID's national coordinator, Phil Booth, exhorted bloggers, freedom lovers and anyone who gives a damn about personal privacy to mirror the annotated document on their site.

"The charade is over. While ministers try to bamboozle the British public with fairytales about fingerprints, officials are plotting how to dupe and bully the population into surrendering control of their own identities."

"Biometric ID cards are a sham; a magician's flourish to cover the biggest identity fraud there has ever been."

1.2MB PDF Link (mirror this file!)
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/29...ovt-doc-r.html





Microchips Everywhere: a Future Vision
Todd Lewan

-- Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future:

_Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items _ and, by extension, consumers _ wherever they go, from a distance.

_A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them.

_In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets _ all the while, silently reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.

Science fiction?

In truth, much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists _ and new and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed.

Some of the world's largest corporations are vested in the success of RFID technology, which couples highly miniaturized computers with radio antennas to broadcast information about sales and buyers to company databases.

Already, microchips are turning up in some computer printers, car keys and tires, on shampoo bottles and department store clothing tags. They're also in library books and "contactless" payment cards (such as American Express' "Blue" and ExxonMobil's "Speedpass.")

Companies say the RFID tags improve supply-chain efficiency, cut theft, and guarantee that brand-name products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating tedious checkouts.

At home, convenience is a selling point: RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV, so that you see "personalized" commercials for foods you have a history of buying. Sniffers in your microwave might read a chip-equipped TV dinner and cook it without instruction.

"We've seen so many different uses of the technology," says Dan Mullen, president of AIM Global, a national association of data collection businesses, including RFID, "and we're probably still just scratching the surface in terms of places RFID can be used."

The problem, critics say, is that microchipped products might very well do a whole lot more.

With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department.

By placing sniffers in strategic areas, companies can invisibly "rifle through people's pockets, purses, suitcases, briefcases, luggage _ and possibly their kitchens and bedrooms _ anytime of the day or night," says Rasch, now managing director of technology at FTI Consulting Inc., a Baltimore-based company.

In an RFID world, "You've got the possibility of unauthorized people learning stuff about who you are, what you've bought, how and where you've bought it ... It's like saying, 'Well, who wants to look through my medicine cabinet?'"

He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves to stalkers might scan locked car trunks, garages or home offices from a distance. "Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster diving," says Rasch, who's also concerned about data gathered by "spy" appliances in the home.

"It's going to be used in unintended ways by third parties _ not just the government, but private investigators, marketers, lawyers building a case against you ..."

Presently, the radio tag most commercialized in America is the so-called "passive" emitter, meaning it has no internal power supply. Only when a reader powers these tags with a squirt of electrons do they broadcast their signal, indiscriminately, within a range of a few inches to 20 feet.

Not as common, but increasing in use, are "active" tags, which have internal batteries and can transmit signals, continuously, as far as low-orbiting satellites. Active tags pay tolls as motorists to zip through tollgates; they also track wildlife, such as sea lions.

Retailers and manufacturers want to use passive tags to replace the bar code, for tracking inventory. These radio tags transmit Electronic Product Codes, number strings that allow trillons of objects to be uniquely identified. Some transmit specifics about the item, such as price, though not the name of the buyer.

However, "once a tagged item is associated with a particular individual, personally identifiable information can be obtained and then aggregated to develop a profile," the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a 2005 report on RFID.

Federal agencies and law enforcement already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers, companies that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and many other sources, then offer summaries for sale. These brokers, unlike credit bureaus, aren't subject to provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, which gives consumers the right to correct errors and block access to their personal records.

That, and the ever-increasing volume of data collected on consumers, is worrisome, says Mike Hrabik, chief technology officer at Solutionary, a computer-security firm in Bethesda, Md. "Are companies using that information incorrectly, and are they giving it out inappropriately? I'm sure that's happening. Should we be concerned? Yes."

Even some industry proponents recognize risks. Elliott Maxwell, a research fellow at Pennsylvania State University who serves as a policy adviser to EPCglobal, the industry's standard-setting group, says data broadcast by microchips can easily be intercepted, and misused, by high-tech thieves.

As RFID goes mainstream and the range of readers increases, it will be "difficult to know who is gathering what data, who has access to it, what is being done with it, and who should be held responsible for it," Maxwell wrote in RFID Journal, an industry publication.

The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion; last year alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide, and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion _ generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.

Heady forecasts like these energize chip proponents, who insist that RFID will result in enormous savings for businesses. Each year, retailers lose $57 billion from administrative failures, supplier fraud and employee theft, according to a recent survey of 820 retailers by Checkpoint Systems, an RFID manufacturer that specializes in store security devices.

Privacy concerns, some RFID supporters say, are overblown. One, Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, says the notion that businesses would conspire to create high-resolution portraits of people is "simply silly."

Corporations know Americans are sensitive about their privacy, he says, and are careful not to alienate consumers by violating it. Besides, "All companies keep their customer data close to the vest ... There's absolutely no value in sharing it. Zero."

Industry officials, too, insist that addressing privacy concerns is paramount. As American Express spokeswoman Judy Tenzer says, "Security and privacy are a top priority for American Express in everything we do."

But industry documents suggest a different line of thinking, privacy experts say.

A 2005 patent application by American Express itself describes how RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers could emit "identification signals" when queried by electronic "consumer trackers." The system could identify people, record their movements, and send them video ads that might offer "incentives" or "even the emission of a scent."

RFID readers could be placed in public venues, including "a common area of a school, shopping center, bus station or other place of public accommodation," according to the application, which is still pending _ and which is not alone.

In 2006, IBM received patent approval for an invention it called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items." One stated purpose: To collect information about people that could be "used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."

Once somebody enters a store, a sniffer "scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person," and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual's "exact identity." A device known as a "person tracking unit" then assigns a tracking number to the shopper "to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."

But as the patent makes clear, IBM's invention could work in other public places, "such as shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc." (RFID could even help "follow a particular crime suspect through public areas.")

Another patent, obtained in 2003 by NCR Corp., details how camouflaged sensors and cameras would record customers' wanderings through a store, film their facial expressions at displays, and time _ to the second _ how long shoppers hold and study items.

Why? Such monitoring "allows one to draw valuable inferences about the behavior of large numbers of shoppers," the patent states.

Then there's a 2001 patent application by Procter & Gamble, "Systems and methods for tracking consumers in a store environment." This one lays out an idea to use heat sensors to track and record "where a consumer is looking, i.e., which way she is facing, whether she is bending over or crouching down to look at a lower shelf."

The system could space sensors 8 feet apart, in ceilings, floors, shelving and displays, so they could capture signals transmitted every 1.5 seconds by microchipped shopping carts.

The documents "raise the hair on the back of your neck," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips," a book that is critical of the industry. "The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise."

Corporations take issue with that, saying that patent filings shouldn't be used to predict a company's actions.

"We file thousands of patents every year, which are designed to protect concepts or ideas," Paul Fox, a spokesman for Procter & Gamble, says. "The reality is that many of those ideas and concepts never see the light of day."

And what of his company's 2001 patent application? "I'm not aware of any plans to use that," Fox says.

Sandy Hughes, P&G's global privacy executive, adds that Procter & Gamble has no intention of using any technologies _ RFID or otherwise _ to track individuals. The idea of the 2001 filing, she says, is to monitor how groups of people react to store displays, "not individual consumers."

NCR and American Express echoed those statements. IBM declined to comment for this story.

"Not every element in a patent filing is necessarily something we would pursue....," says Tenzer, the American Express spokeswoman. "Under no circumstances would we use this technology without a customer's permission."

McIntyre has her doubts.

In the marketing world of today, she says, "data on individual consumers is gold, and the only thing preventing these companies from abusing technologies like RFID to get at that gold is public scrutiny."

RFID dates to World War II, when Britain put transponders in Allied aircraft to help radar crews distinguish them from German fighters. In the 1970s, the U.S. government tagged trucks entering and leaving secure facilities such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a decade later, they were used to track livestock and railroad cars.

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart gave RFID a mammoth push, mandating that suppliers radio tag all crates and cartons. To that point, the cost of tags had simply been too high to make tagging pallets _ let alone individual items _ viable. In 1999, passive tags cost nearly $2 apiece.

Since then, rising demand and production of microchips _ along with technological advances _ have driven tag prices down to a range of 7 to 15 cents. At that price, the technology is "well-suited at a case and pallet level," says Mullen, of the industry group AIM Global.

John Simley, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, says tracking products in real-time helps ensure product freshness and lowers the chances that items will be out of stock. By reducing loss and waste in the supply chain, RFID "allows us to keep our prices that much lower."

Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN, an anti-RFID group, says, "Nobody cares about radio tags on crates and pallets. But if we don't keep RFID off of individual consumer items, our stores will one day turn into retail 'zoos' where the customer is always on exhibit."

So, how long will it be before you find an RFID tag in your underwear? The industry isn't saying, but some analysts speculate that within a decade tag costs may dip below a penny, the threshold at which nearly everything could be chipped.

To businesses slammed by counterfeiters _ pharmaceuticals, for one _ that's not a bad thing. Sales of fake drugs cost drug makers an estimated $46 billion a year. In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that RFID be incorporated throughout the supply chain as a way of making sure consumers get authentic drugs.

In the United States, Pfizer has already begun chipping all 30- and 100-count bottles of Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs.

Chips could be embedded in other controlled or potentially dangerous items such as firearms and explosives, to make them easier to track. This was mentioned in IBM's patent documents.

Still, the idea that tiny radio chips might be in their socks and shoes doesn't sit well with Americans. At least, that's what Fleishman-Hillard Inc., a public-relations firm in St. Louis, found in 2001 when it surveyed 317 consumers for the industry.

Seventy-eight percent of those queried reacted negatively to RFID when privacy was raised. "More than half claimed to be extremely or very concerned," the report said, noting that the term "Big Brother" was "used in 15 separate cases to describe the technology."

It also found that people bridled at the idea of having "Smart Tags" in their homes. One surveyed person remarked: "Where money is to be made the privacy of the individual will be compromised."

In 2002, Fleishman-Hillard produced another report for the industry that counseled RFID makers to "convey (the) inevitability of technology," and to develop a plan to "neutralize the opposition," by adopting friendlier names for radio tags such as "Bar Code II" and "Green Tag."

And in a 2003 report, Helen Duce, the industry's trade group director in Europe, wrote that "the lack of clear benefits to consumers could present a problem in the 'real world,'" particularly if privacy issues were stirred by "negative press coverage."

(Though the reports were marked "Confidential," they were later found archived on an industry trade group's Web site.)

The Duce report's recommendations: Tell consumers that RFID is regulated, that RFID is just a new and improved bar code, and that retailers will announce when an item is radio tagged, and deactivate the tags at check-out upon a customer's request.

Actually, in the United States, RFID is not federally regulated. And while bar codes identify product categories, radio tags carry unique serial numbers that _ when purchased with a credit card, frequent shopper card or contactless card _ can be linked to specific shoppers.

And, unlike bar codes, RFID tags can be read through almost anything except metal and water, without the holder's knowledge.

EPCglobal, the industry's standard-setting body, has issued public policy guidelines that call for retailers to put a thumbnail-sized logo _ "EPC," for Electronic Product Code _ on all radio tagged packaging. The group also suggests that merchants notify shoppers that RFID tags can be removed, discarded or disabled.

Critics say the guidelines are voluntary, vague and don't penalize violators. They want federal and state oversight _ something the industry has vigorously opposed _ particularly after two RFID manufacturers, Checkpoint Systems and Sensormatic, announced last year that they are marketing tags designed to be embedded in such items as shoes.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says, "I don't think there's any basis ... for consumers to have to think that their clothing is tracking them."
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...future_vision/





Keeping an Eye on China’s Security
Keith Bradsher

Since Imperial times, Chinese governments have relied on neighbors to inform on each other as a way to preserve social control.

But with China now becoming wealthier and its citizens more mobile, the government is now embracing the extensive use of street-by-street surveillance technology — and the United States government is becoming less sure that American companies should be playing a central role in the effort.

The Commerce Department is drafting new rules on what security equipment American companies can sell to China. The move comes in response to rapid advances in surveillance technology and the increasing involvement of American companies in the Chinese market as the Olympics approach.

People involved with the process said the Commerce Department was singling out biometric technology — face-recognition software, in particular — which Chinese security agencies could use to identify political and religious dissidents.

E. Richard Mills, the department’s chief spokesman, confirmed that the agency had begun drafting new rules, but said it was unclear whether the regulations would have the overall effect of tightening or loosening export controls. Mr. Mills said any changes would have to be reviewed by other government agencies and submitted to public comment.

Chinese security agencies are rapidly increasing their spending on video systems with powerful computer analysis tools. American companies, with heavy financial backing from American hedge funds, have played a central role in helping Chinese cities install thousands of street surveillance cameras and use computers to process the video.

Congress has become concerned about the export controls on such activity. “It remains extremely important to have such controls in place so that our country’s exports do not enable governments abroad to repress the fundamental freedoms that we cherish here at home,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who presides over the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. “I will be watching closely as this process develops to ensure that current U.S. export controls are not weakened.”

Honeywell, General Electric and United Technologies have all been aggressively pursuing contracts in China to sell advanced surveillance equipment from the United States, partly in preparation for the Olympics; all said in statements that they comply with current regulations, and G.E. said that it “would fully expect to be supportive of and compliant with any future changes.”

I.B.M. has also been active in the market, but had no immediate comment.

Mr. Mills said that the Commerce Department’s decision this month to begin overhauling the relevant export regulations reflected a general effort at the agency to make sure that all export controls were up to date.

Congress banned the transfer to China of any equipment related to crime control after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.

At the time, the Commerce Department had some export restrictions on crime-control equipment, dating back to 1975 and also covering shipments to other totalitarian countries, like North Korea. The regulatory overhaul that has just started, and applies to very modest exports of crime-control equipment to totalitarian countries as well as China, is the first since the early 1990s.

William A. Reinsch, the Clinton administration’s under secretary of commerce for export administration, is now the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington group that represents multinationals on trade issues. Mr. Reinsch said that he was concerned that the new rules could limit American export opportunities and give new ones to European and Asian companies.

Whenever new export controls are drafted, federal agencies tend to add more products to the list of restricted goods, and agencies seldom agree to remove any items, he said.

Mr. Mills said that the Commerce Department would analyze what products are available from companies not based in the United States before issuing any new export-control regulations.

At a public security convention for police buyers in November in Shenzhen, China, Bosch of Germany had a large booth near Honeywell’s to promote its surveillance cameras. Panasonic and Siemens have also been selling security systems in China, according to the Security Industry Association, a trade group in Washington.

China Security and Surveillance Technology concluded an agreement last week with LG Electronics of South Korea to distribute LG’s closed-circuit television equipment and accessories in China for three years.

But American companies heavily promote their equipment as being the most advanced on the market, in part because much of it was developed to fight the threat of terrorist attacks in the United States. Current American regulations allow the export of most surveillance equipment if regulators believe it could be used in a factory or office complex and is not intended exclusively for police work.

In addition to multinationals that export surveillance equipment from the United States, there are other security companies that are incorporated in the United States — and are mainly bankrolled by American hedge funds — but with virtually all of their employees in China.

These companies include China Public Security Technology and China Security and Surveillance Technology. Both companies have been very active in installing street cameras in China and providing software for them.

Executives at both companies said in telephone interviews on Wednesday that they used Chinese technology and did not expect to be affected by new American regulations. The rules cover only equipment shipped from the United States or made overseas using technology exclusively developed in the United States.

“I don’t see it would have any effect on our business,” said Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China Public Security Technology.

Morton Sklar, the executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA (formerly the World Organization Against Torture USA), a Washington advocacy group, said the group was preparing to file a Freedom of Information Act request Friday, seeking detailed information on how the Commerce Department has been enforcing its export regulations on crime-control equipment until now.

The group is also investigating whether it can sue American companies and hedge funds over their involvement in the Chinese security industry, and United States government agencies over their allowing that involvement, Mr. Sklar said.

With the migration of close to 10 million peasants to cities each year eroding its centuries-old system of citizens watching one another, China’s leaders decided a year ago to start relying much more on technology to maintain internal control.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/bu...1security.html





China Tightens Online Video Rules
Geoffrey A. Fowler

CHINA is stepping up efforts to control its blossoming online video industry with new regulations on the ownership of video websites and requirements for censoring content.

But it remains unclear how the new regulations, posted online Tuesday, would affect domestic and foreign players in the industry.

The regulations, issued jointly by the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, stipulate that online videos can be broadcast or streamed only by state-owned or state-controlled companies. That would treat dozens of video websites like television broadcasters and newspapers, which also are controlled by the state.

"This directive, if implemented, would be bad news for the streaming sites," says Duncan Clark, the Beijing-based chairman of advisory firm BDA (China). Most of China's popular video websites are run by private companies, and have in recent years been the focus of attention from venture-capital investors.

Mr Clark says that executives at many video-sharing sites he has spoken with seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach toward the regulations, which are supposed to take effect January 31. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which reports to government propaganda officials, had announced that it would regulate online video content, but took few steps to do so.

Gary Wang, the chief executive of popular Chinese video site Tudou.com, says he is "seeking explanations" from the government on how his site will implement the regulations. But he calls them "a positive step" toward clearing up previous ambiguities, adding that the regulations didn't take the industry by surprise.

It was unclear how the regulations would affect foreign video-sharing sites that are popular in China, such as Google's YouTube.com. That site, unlike Google.com.cn, Google's Chinese search site, doesn't have an internet content licence from the Chinese government. Access to YouTube inside China was temporarily blocked during a recent high-profile government meeting.

The measures appear to be geared more toward censorship than toward regulation of the still unprofitable industry, says BDA's Mr Clark. "It's clearly a question of control of information, with political content being the No. 1 concern," he says.

The regulations stipulate that licensed online video broadcasters must take the initiative to censor and report any video content that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography. Most video sites already employ teams to censor pornographic and politically sensitive content.

"Those who provide internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism ... and abide by the moral code of socialism," the rules say.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15318,00.html





NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

A city councilman and the cops don't want you to have that Geiger counter without their permission
Chris Thompson

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.

OK, none of that has actually happened. But Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, knows that it's just a matter of time. That's why he and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it's not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you "will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety," the first draft of the law states.

Last week, Falkenrath made his case for the new law before the City Council's Public Safety Committee, where Councilman Peter Vallone introduced the bill and chaired the hearing. Dozens of university researchers, public-health professionals, and environmental lawyers sat in the crowd, horrified by the prospect that if this law passes, their work detecting and warning the public about airborne pollutants will become next to impossible. But Falkenrath pressed on, saying that unless the police can determine who gets to look for nasty stuff floating in the air, the city would be paralyzed by fear.

"There are currently no guidelines regulating the private acquisition of biological, chemical, and radiological detectors," warned Falkenrath, adding that this law was suggested by officials within the Department of Homeland Security. "There are no consistent standards for the type of detectors used, no requirement that they be reported to the police department—or anyone else, for that matter—and no mechanism for coordinating these devices. . . . Our mutual goal is to prevent false alarms . . . by making sure we know where these detectors are located, and that they conform to standards of quality and reliability."

Vallone nodded his head, duly moved by Falkenrath's presentation. Nevertheless, he had a few concerns. When the Environmental Protection Agency promised that the air surrounding Ground Zero was safe, Vallone said, independent testers proved that such assurances were utterly false. Would these groups really have to get a permit before they started working? "It's a good question, and it has come up prior to this hearing," Falkenrath replied. "What I can assure you is that we will look extremely carefully at this issue of the independent groups, and get the opinion of the other city agencies on how to handle that, and craft an appropriate response." And if people use these detectors without a permit, Vallone asked, do we really have to put them in jail? Afraid so, Falkenrath answered.

Councilman John Liu was considerably less impressed. Why, he asked, should a community group like Asthma-Free School Zones have to tell anyone, much less the police department, that they're testing for air pollution? "We have no interest in regulating air-quality sensors around schools," Falkenrath promised. "That's not what this is about."

"But then can't we just get that in the legislation from the outset, as opposed to putting it in the regulations afterwards?" asked Liu.

That, said Falkenrath, was asking too much. "It becomes a very slippery slope, and it would then be possible for many other entities to sort of drive things through that loophole."

And Liu was just the start of the critics' parade. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said the bill aims to fix a problem that doesn't even exist. "I cannot think of evidence or events in our recent past involving false alarms that would create any urgency for this sweeping legislation," he said. "If Manhattanites have any anxiety related to this bill, it is the very marked anxiety that residents have about their air quality."

Dave Newman, an industrial hygienist for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, claimed that under this law, the West Virginia air-quality experts who tested the air after 9/11 would have been a bunch of criminals. Dave Kotelchuck, deputy director of the New York/New Jersey Education and Research Center, pointed out the absurdity of having police regulate and permit research science. "Think about industrial-hygiene folks who are going from Boston to Atlanta to measure, and have atmospheric detectors," he said. "They land in LaGuardia and JFK. As soon as they land, because possession is a misdemeanor, they've committed a misdemeanor. They're not going to test in New York City; they're just travelling through. But possession, which is the way the law has stated it, alone is a misdemeanor—not use. Not attempting to make measurements—just possession. That is just unwarranted."

After an hour of this, poor Peter Vallone looked shell-shocked. He had planned to fast-track this legislation—in fact, the law was supposed to have been voted on last week—but that was before the critics had heard about it. As the opposition mounted, Vallone pulled the proposed legislation just before the meeting's end and agreed to give it a second look. "When I was first given a briefing only weeks ago, the potential problems did occur to me," he said in a later interview. "But the extent of the opposition, on such short notice, was a bit surprising."

But don't think Vallone has given up or anything. He and his colleagues will try to accommodate all the concerns when they redraft the bill, he said, but one way or another, the cops are going to have this new power. "No one's going to be completely happy in the end," Vallone said, "but I think the police department gave some very impressive testimony on the stand, and also expressed a willingness to listen to concerns." After all, if you let research scientists and community groups do their jobs, the terrorists will have already won.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/080...n,78873,2.html





Keelty Calls for Media Terror Blackout
Samantha Maiden and Natalie O'Brien

LIBERAL frontbencher Chris Pyne has attacked Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty's call for a media blackout on terrorism investigations.

The Opposition justice spokesman said today that Mr Keelty had gone “too far” in his call for further restrictions.

Mr Keelty last night called for a media blackout on terrorism cases until all legal avenues have been exhausted - a proposition that would have banned coverage of the Haneef affair.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute at the NSW parliament, the commissioner launched a scathing attack on media coverage of terrorism cases, saying it undermined the judicial system.

He warned that there had been a discernible shift towards media campaigns designed to drum up support for people under investigation.

"I am not saying that correct processes and procedures should be cast aside, nor should public institutions be immune from public accountability in the discharge of their public service," he said.

"But I am saying that a public discussion about them should be delayed, in deference to judicial processes - not subjugated, not quashed, not silenced, just delayed until the full gamut of judicial process has been completely exhausted.

"Information about the investigation and wider discussion about elements of the crime become available as part of open court processes or after the legal process is complete."

If Mr Keelty had his way, the AFP proposal would have prevented public scrutiny of the case of Mohammed Haneef, which collapsed as a result of mistakes by the AFP and the Department of Public Prosecutions.

The Indian-born doctor was arrested while working at the Gold Coast Hospital in July. He was charged 12 days later with supporting a terrorism organisation after his SIM card was linked to failed bombings in London and Glasgow.

The charges were dropped after media coverage, including reports in The Australian, of the case revealed the weak evidence being used to hold Dr Haneef and deny him a visa.

Mr Keelty lashed out at the media's handling of the case, and other cases, and called for the creation of a media body, such as a "society of editors", that police and intelligence chiefs could use as an off-the-record forum to set matters straight.

In a speech focusing on terrorism reporting in Australia, Mr Keelty acknowledged the AFP's domestic counter-terrorism role had caused the most controversy over the past year. He said police had been widely criticised for their handling of several cases and accused of lacking "street smarts" when it came to interviewing terrorist suspects.

He said, given the bad publicity suffered by the AFP recently, it would be understandable if the public believed the AFP had failed the community.

He accused reporters unfamiliar with reporting on terrorism cases of getting things wrong and mixing up information.

He said police video and audio records of interviews - which were introduced to ensure greater transparency and accountability - were now being "leaked" to the media to add weight to the public campaigns.

"When a record of interview is given to the media, with accompanying commentary, we run the risk of jeopardising the accused's ability to receive a fair trial ... it may serve as a public relations tool in the short term but it has the potential to severely harm a case in the longer term," he said.

He also called for a halt to criticism of public institutions.

Mr Keelty said that police were damned whether they responded to such criticism of not.

"We do not comment during ongoing investigations to avoid jeopardising the integrity of the investigation but ... by not responding, we risk the erosion of confidence from the community in governments, police and intelligence agencies."

However, Mr Pyne today warned that media freedom had to be defended.

“The press play a vital role in holding this country’s institutions accountable," he said. "They should not be banned from covering counter-terrorism cases ‘until the full gamut of judicial processes has been completely exhausted'.

“As long as national security is not being violated, the freedom of the press should always be defended in our democracy. Many argue that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ and that justice includes the scrutiny of those responsible for upholding it.

“The Australian media have an exemplary reputation in respecting the boundaries of national security sensitivities.”

Mr Pyne said he agreed with Mr Keelty that these matters should be handled sensibly and sensitively by the press.

“However, a delay in reporting until all judicial processes have been exhausted could, in effect, mean a delay of years as cases are taken from trial to appeal."

Additional reporting: Nicola Berkovic
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...30-421,00.html





Myanmar Arrests Blogger, Watchdog Says
AP

Myanmar's junta has stepped up surveillance of the Internet, arresting one blogger who wrote about the stifling of free expression in the military-ruled nation, a media advocacy group said.

The blogger, Nay Myo Latt, was taken into custody in Yangon on Wednesday after writing about the suppression of freedoms following last fall's crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, Reporters Without Borders said.

Despite international condemnation and pressure following the demonstrations, there is little evidence that the junta is easing its repressive rule or moving closer to reconciliation with pro-democracy forces led by Suu Kyi.

The arrested blogger, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, owns three Internet cafes, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a release seen Thursday.

Myanmar authorities have stepped up their surveillance of the Internet since the beginning of the month, pressuring Internet cafe owners to register personal details of all users and to program screen captures every five minutes on each computer, the release said.

This data apparently is sent to the Ministry of Communications, it said.

The only blog platform that had been accessible within Myanmar, the Google-owned Blogger, has been blocked by the regime since Jan. 23, preventing bloggers from posting entries unless they use proxies or other ways to get around censorship, the group said.

''This blockage is one of the ways used by the government to reduce Burmese citizens to silence. Burma is in danger of being cut off from the rest of the world again,'' the statement said.

Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, Wednesday warned the public to ''hope for the best and prepare for the worst'' in her country.

The democracy icon was allowed to meet with executives of her National League for Democracy party, who afterward voiced her unhappiness that there is no deadline for talks to bring about democratic reform.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





Sentenced to Death: Afghan Who Dared to Read About Women's Rights
Kim Sengupta

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. The UN, human rights groups, journalists' organisations and Western diplomats have urged Mr Karzai's government to intervene and free him. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence.

The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh was Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, a key ally of Mr Karzai. The Senate also attacked the international community for putting pressure on the Afghan government and urged Mr Karzai not to be influenced by outside un-Islamic views.

The case of Mr Kambaksh, who also worked a s reporter for the Jahan-i-Naw (New World) newspaper, is seen in Afghanistan as yet another chapter in the escalation in the confrontation between Afghanistan and the West.

It comes in the wake of Mr Karzai accusing the British of actually worsening the situation in Helmand province by their actions and his subsequent blocking of the appointment of Lord Ashdown as the UN envoy and expelling a British and an Irish diplomat.

Demonstrations, organised by clerics, against the alleged foreign interference have been held in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where Mr Kambaksh was arrested. Aminuddin Muzafari, the first secretary of the houses of parliament, said: "People should realise that as we are representatives of an Islamic country therefore we can never tolerate insults to reverences of Islamic religion."

At a gathering in Takhar province, Maulavi Ghulam Rabbani Rahmani, the heads of the Ulema council, said: "We want the government and the courts to execute the court verdict on Kambaksh as soon as possible." In Parwan province, another senior cleric, Maulavi Muhammad Asif, said: "This decision is for disrespecting the holy Koran and the government should enforce the decision before it came under more pressure from foreigners."

UK officials say they are particularly concerned about such draconian action being taken against a journalist. The Foreign Office and Department for International Development has donated large sums to the training of media workers in the country. The Government funds the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in the Helmand capital, Lashkar Gar.

Mr Kambaksh's brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, is also a journalist and has written articles for IWPR in which he accused senior public figures, including an MP, of atrocities, including murders. He said: "Of course we are all very worried about my brother. What has happened to him is very unjust. He has not committed blasphemy and he was not even allowed to have a legal defence. and what took place was a secret trial."

Qayoum Baabak, the editor of Jahan-i-Naw, said a senior prosecutor in Mazar-i-Sharif, Hafiz Khaliqyar, had warned journalists that they would be punished if they protested against the death sentence passed on Mr Kambaksh.

Jean MacKenzie, country director for IWPR, said: "We feel very strongly that this is designed to put pressure on Pervez's brother, Yaqub, who has done some of the hardest-hitting pieces outlining abuses by some very powerful commanders."

Rahimullah Samander, the president of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association, said: "This is unfair, this is illegal. He just printed a copy of something and looked at it and read it. How can we believe in this 'democracy' if we can't even read, we can't even study? We are asking Mr Karzai to quash the death sentence before it is too late."

The circumstances surrounding the conviction of Mr Kambaksh are also being viewed as a further attempt to claw back the rights gained by women since the overthrow of the Taliban. The most prominent female MP, Malalai Joya, has been suspended after criticising her male colleagues.

Under the Afghan constitution, say legal experts, Mr Kambaksh has the right to appeal to the country's supreme court. Some senior clerics maintain, however, that since he has been convicted under religious laws, the supreme court should not bring secular interpretations to the case.

Mr Karzai has the right to intervene and pardon Mr Kambaksh. However, even if he is freed, it would be hard for the student to escape retribution in a country where fundamentalists and warlords are increasingly in the ascendancy.

How you can save Pervez

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh's imminent execution is an affront to civilised values. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion. If enough international pressure is brought to bear on President Karzai's government, his sentence may yet be overturned. Add your weight to the campaign by urging the Foreign Office to demand that his life be spared. Sign our e-petition at www.independent.co.uk/petition
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...ts-775972.html





Subpoena Sought For Browsed News Articles
The Xoxo Reader

A new filing in the Autoadmit Internet defamation lawsuit (previously discussed here on two occasions) reveals how the plaintiffs' lawyers have attempted to discover the identities of the defendants, who posted under pseudonyms on a message board without IP logging. The defendants had posted links and excerpts of several Web pages that mention the plaintiffs, including a Washington Post article, a college scholarship announcement, and a federal court opinion. Now the plaintiffs are asking those Web sites for logs of everybody who accessed those articles in the hours before the allegedly defamatory content was posted. (All the more reason to read the web through Google cache!)

The plantiff's motion for expedited discovery includes copies of the lawyers' letters to hosting providers, ISPs, and others. It also includes replies from the recipients, many of whom point out that the lawyers' requests are technically impossible to fulfill. No matter; the plaintiffs are asking the court to issue subpoenas anyway. This thread contains a summary of the letters in the filing.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/27/2127223





Times Reporter Subpoenaed Over Source for Book
Philip Shenon

A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday.
The subpoena was delivered last week to the New York law firm that is representing the reporter, James Risen, and ordered him to appear before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Feb. 7.

Mr. Risen’s lawyer, David N. Kelley, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan early in the Bush administration, said in an interview that the subpoena sought the source of information for a specific chapter of the book “State of War.”

The chapter asserted that the C.I.A. had unsuccessfully tried, beginning in the Clinton administration, to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material in that chapter appeared in The New York Times.

“We intend to fight this subpoena, so we’ll likely be engaging in some sort of litigation,” Mr. Kelley said. “Jim has adhered to the highest traditions of journalism. He is the highest caliber of reporter that you can find, and he will keep his commitment to the confidentiality of his sources.”

Mr. Risen and a colleague at The Times, Eric Lichtblau, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their disclosure of the administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants; Mr. Risen’s book expanded on their reporting about the domestic eavesdropping effort.

Mr. Risen, who is based in Washington and specializes in intelligence issues, is the latest of several reporters to face subpoenas in leak investigations overseen by the Justice Department.

A former reporter at The Times, Judith Miller, was jailed for 85 days in 2005 after initially refusing to identify a confidential source to a grand jury that was investigating the leak of the name of a covert C.I.A. operative. Ms. Miller testified after being granted a waiver by her source, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

Martha K. Levin, executive vice president and publisher of Free Press, which published Mr. Risen’s book and is a unit of Simon & Schuster Inc., said in a statement that “the American people have been well served by Mr. Risen’s reporting.” Ms. Levin’s statement also said that “the ability to publish confidentially sourced information about our government’s practices and policies is one of the bedrock principles of a free and open society.”

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said the paper “strongly supports Mr. Risen and deplores what seems to be a growing trend of government leak investigations focusing on journalists, particularly in the national security area.”

Ms. Mathis would not say why the material about the C.I.A. program involving Iran appeared in Mr. Risen’s book but not in pages of The Times. “We don’t discuss matters not published in The Times,” she said.

The Justice Department would not comment on the work of the grand jury that issued the subpoena to Mr. Risen. “The department does not comment on pending investigations,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/wa...01inquire.html





Partner Offers $10K Bounty for Blogger’s Identity
Martha Neil

A Chicago lawyer who is being criticized, along with his law firm, in an anonymous Internet blog supposedly authored by a fellow attorney has offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who can provide him with the identity of "Troll Tracker."

The anonymous blogger, who claims to be "just a lawyer; interested in patent cases but not interested in publicity," has criticized Raymond Niro and his 30-lawyer IP boutique, Niro Scavone Haller & Niro, for representing clients who own patents but don't necessarily make products. Instead, the firm earns licensing fees from users of the patented technology—and potentially sues users if they don't pay up, explains the Chicago Tribune.

Although Troll Tracker claims a First Amendment right to criticize the firm anonymously on the blog, Niro says the blogger should take responsibility for his or her views. Plus, he points out, knowing the identity and affiliations of the blogger likely would affect the way that readers perceive the Troll Tracker's critique.

"I want to find out who this person is," says Niro, who initially offered a $5,000 reward in last month's issue of the IP Law & Business trade magazine, and has since upped the ante to $10,000. "Is he an employee with Intel or Microsoft? Does he have a connection with serial infringers? I think that would color what he has to say."
http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/par...ggers_identity