[JackSpratts]

P2P Customer/Consumer Survey – Analysis
P2PUnite

The analysis of the P2P consumer/customer survey is done. It turns out that we now have even stronger reason to believe that file-sharers do not cause financial loss to the entertainment industry. But that is not all...

Introduction

Why is this survey important? Why does it matter if file-sharers buy commercial products, too?

It is important because file-sharers are depicted as a threat to society in the propaganda issued by organisations like MPAA and RIAA. Such organisations justify the persecution of file-sharers by citing severe financial losses on behalf of the companies they represent. If we can show that file-sharing in fact does not entail financial loss to the commercial companies, it follows that the actions taken against file-sharers are, at best, misguided. The message to the **AA organisations is that the file-sharers and the customers are one and the same. It should be important to the organisations to make and stay friends with file- sharers, rather than infuriating them by heavy-handed legal actions.

That is not all we have to say, though. There are two other main conclusions to be drawn from the survey results:

1. The results from this survey suggest that the “harm” done to commercial companies is not so much in terms of financial loss, as in loss of control. Many of those that took part in the survey said that they had purchased products that they had first discovered through some file-sharing network. We can combine that piece of information with many comments found in posts on file-sharing forums, to reach a preliminary conclusion about the impact of file-sharing. File-sharing may challenge the power that commercial companies are used to wielding. File-sharing help people to discover products that are not heavily promoted by the entertainment industry. In this sense, it may be true that file- sharing is indeed a threat to the companies that the **AA organisations represent. In addition, file-sharing may become a means for artists to free themselves from their dependence on commercial companies.

2. So, the survey shows that it is far from certain that file-sharing causes financial loss to the entertainment industries that are behind the **AA organisations. What more is, it also suggests that file-sharing may in fact be behind increased financial gain. It seems that file- sharing can lead to people buying more fan-material, going to more concerts, and indeed buying more computer hardware and blank media (CDs and DVDs).

How the survey was conducted

File-sharing being what it is – criminalised and highly decentralised – makes it impossible to have the kind of control that one expects from a scientific study. This is by no means a scientific study. Our results are supported, though, by the The Leading Question-survey made by a market research firm. That study showed that P2P users are the ones most likely to buy music online.

We posted an invitation to take part in the survey at nine different file-sharing forums. People were encouraged to spread the invitation, so there is no telling how far it traveled in the P2P networks, nor where/how those that participated encountered it. The survey was open for a month, from July 4 to August 3 2005 , and a total of 1,122 unique users participated.

Multiple entries from the same IP-number have been deleted into containing only one (the first) response, in order to make sure that the results could not be manipulated by one user answering the survey many times. This also means that some “legitimate” double answers have been purged from the survey, though. Users that share the same connection have not been able to take part more than once per connection. This purging of IP-number does not mean that we can tell who the people that answered to the questions are. All we can tell is that a (user with a) certain IP-number has taken part.

Detailed comments on the survey results

The tallies would suggest that various businesses most likely make quite the revenue from P2P-activities, and that for many users file-sharing seems to be a way of economizing rather than simply saving money. File-sharing is used to choose where to spend the money – file-sharers do buy products.

We started up (question no 1) by asking just in what way file-sharing activities affected the personal economy. As can be seen, most are on the same level of "outcome". Many, though, manage to save a little money and some even end up spending more than they used to.

We cannot say if the answers would have been the same, though, if we had placed this question at the end of the survey instead. If you start thinking about the cost for computers, (other) hardware, etc, you may find that you spend more money because of file-sharing than you are usually aware of.

Question no 2 displays purchases made after having found a product on a file-share network. Few - 11% only - claims to have never bought such a product. However, there is a discrepancy with the percentage in question no. 3 - where in all fairness it should be 11% as well, but sinks surprisingly to 8%.

This isn't easy to explain, and a source for speculation by each and all. Perhaps question no. 2 is replied to "in principle" and question no. 3 "in reality". If that is the true interpretation, there are obviously those out there that have no intention of spending money by principle or other reasons. But even if we calculate with the highest amount, 11%, it is a really LOW amount of users who never purchases products found and downloaded online. The answers to questions 2 and 3 quite contradict the kind of arguments made by the *AAs of the world. They show that you can not measure "money lost" by trying to measure the distribution of files on the P2P networks.

Since 49% of all file-sharers do purchase products "once in a while", a rather high amount of the speculated loss of income from file-sharing can be detracted immediately. As many as 30% even claim to make purchases monthly, and even though there is no telling in this survey of how much the person downloads in comparison with how many products they purchase, the numbers are clear. This is one shopping-happy crowd.

One thing of real interest here, is that these answers show that file-sharing generally is not used in order to save money. Instead it is used both as a means to evaluate content before buying it, and to discover music and movies other than those you would find anyways. In this sense, we see file-sharing as a tool for making the world of art and entertainment more "democratic". File-sharing networks give more power to the customers, who can not be fooled into buying products that turn out to disappoint them and they certainly give more power to artists, who no longer have to rely on large companies to help them find their audiences.

Question number 4 - about other purchases made - is interesting, because while the entertainment business cry "foul" there are other businesses out there who are probably very happy. The computer and electronic media businesses are probably smiling all the way to the bank.

“Other purchases” also include things related to music and movies, such as going to concerts and buying fan material. One must consider that many times customers feel that when they pay for a product the money end up in the wrong pockets. Often we read (in P2P forums) about how consumers don't trust the music industry to pay their artists fairly and many support their idols by going to live concert and buy merchandise instead of buying the CD, which they choose to download instead. This is also contradictory to the general view that file-sharers have no wish to support the artists. When reading around it would seem that many file-sharers feel that that argument is quite the lie.

Going to the movies, well, this is something that the industry probably need not worry about. Almost half of the participants (46%) go to the movies - as a result from file- sharing. This is perhaps why one can hear spreading of laughter in the salon when the nowadays complimentary "do not participate in file-sharing" splashes across the scene. Often movies are discussed in P2P forums, both before and after they have been released in movie theatres.

At the P2P boards, one can also read about how parents download to check out a movie, to see if it's something appropriate and worth taking the whole family to. Money is tight for most, and this sort of consumer control takes place all the time. Hardly anybody mistakes the movie-going experience with having checked a title out in a file-share network, there simply is no competition. However, the loss feared is suspected to be that people find out it's a "dud" too soon and is perhaps one reason why the movie-industries problems are not often respected.

A no doubt surprisingly high amount of file- sharers knowingly avoid downloading in favour of a purchase (question no 5). Only 12% claims to have never done that.

Why would that be? Well, a good example of this is the kind of trust you have in the product release. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, rated highly on the trust-scale amongst file-sharers. The discussions around message-boards were plentiful, and arguments for why not downloading it were common. Most that downloaded claimed to do it in order to be able to see it again after having seen it in the movies, others because it wasn't showing in their areas but they were going to see it in the cinema once available. If anybody were of the notion to NOT see it "properly" as it were it was uncommon and they were generally considered to be a bit cooky. Not saying they were, obviously, to each their own, but generally speaking - file-sharing networks contains a lot of discussions like this.

Another example would be releases of products that are released for charity. Usually very few users download such releases and many times people post their concerns about how a charity should be paid for, as it's for a good cause. The file-sharers are quite simply not non-thinking, downloading zombies, but quite aware of the world, just as well as their personal finances. File-sharers are not immoral criminals who simply want something for nothing.

In fact, people even download copies of files they already own (question no 6). The entertainment business would rather have you buy several copies, that much is clear. But is that really what their customers want? And when is the customer's interest cared for? And how big of a dent does this put in the speculated numbers displayed in terms of revenues lost? Is it REALLY that simple, that somebody is stealing - for wanting an extra copy of the CD in the car? There's an obvious grey-area here, one can argue that when buying a product, you're only allowed to use it in one location, but all in all it doesn't quite cut it with consumers, generally speaking. When we buy, we own it too and want to use it as we choose. This is probably a question that everybody can relate to, being file-sharer or not. Just to what degree should a company be allowed to regulate what you purchased and now own.

Finally a spread of gender and ages of the participants in this survey (question no 7).

One should perhaps comment on the fact that those that participated in this survey no doubt are to be considered "hard core" to a degree. The vast majority of file-sharers most likely never visit P2P communities online. Those that have participated here, have in most cases been made aware of this survey through such a place.

This may explain the low number of female participants. It is more common that men participate at online boards, whereas women, although not being strangers to file-sharing, rarely do. It is also worth noting that, while a lot of file-sharers are indeed teenagers, file- sharing is an activity that people of all ages take part in. The majority of file-sharers in our survey are over twenty years of age. File-sharing does not merely concern youngsters with little or no money to buy music, as some newspaper articles would have us believe. File- sharing is for everybody, regardless of age, sex and nationality.
http://www.p2punite.org/files/P2PCustomer_survey_0.doc





A Whole New World Of File Sharing

BitTorrent gears up for online distribution of large files such as movies and games
Dawn C. Chmielewski

Bram Cohen arrives in San Francisco's Mission District, his hair disheveled, his face stubbled with a day's growth of beard and his black BitTorrent T-shirt proclaiming him for
what he is -- the poster boy for a popular and disruptive Internet file-swapping technology.

Time was, guys like this would be found hunched over a computer keyboard in a distant Baltic republic, working anonymously for some offshore corporation.

But now that the Supreme Court has clarified the do's and don'ts of file-sharing, the creator of BitTorrent -- which allows video and other large files to be quickly downloaded -- has no reason to hide. Indeed, Cohen, 29, recently relocated from Seattle to San Francisco, and he and his chief operating officer are making the rounds on Sand Hill Road looking for venture capital for their new company, BitTorrent. They've forged a partnership with paid-search provider Ask Jeeves, and recently the duo flew to Burbank for high- level talks with the Motion Picture Association of America.

BitTorrent already has struck deals with video game publishers to distribute games with its technology.

Cohen's bid to commercialize BitTorrent is a measure of how far the entertainment industry has come since the late 1990s, when Napster introduced millions of people to the power of peer-to-peer technology for downloading songs -- and mobilized scores of lawyers to shut it down.

The recording industry continues its legal campaign to crush the once-wildly popular Australian-based Kazaa file-sharing service. But the studios are now moving to embrace BitTorrent technology -- which gracefully and cheaply distributes giant files -- even as they sue those who use it to trade bootlegged movies, TV shows or video games.

``We have no aversion to peer-to-peer technology. For us, it is in some respects kind of a promising delivery method,'' said Darcy Antonellis, senior vice president of worldwide anti-piracy for Warner Bros. Studios. ``We obviously have issues with its illegal uses, but to the extent that the use of the technology can be legitimized, we're all for it.''

It helps that Cohen never cast himself as an anarchist who bragged that his technology would vanquish the old entertainment industry. He has gone out of his way to castigate those who use BitTorrent for piracy.

The trick, of course, is converting the 40 million or so people Cohen says have downloaded BitTorrent's free software into paying customers.

Over a lunch of veggie burritos and nachos, Cohen and BitTorrent's 28-year-old chief operating officer, Ashwin Navin, talk about their plans for turning a garage operation dependent on donations and T-shirt sales into a Hollywood player.

Any examination of BitTorrent's potential needs to start with an understanding of how it differs from other file-swapping technologies. BitTorrent breaks giant files into tiny bits and spreads the distribution load among dozens or hundreds of computer users. It's built on the notion of cooperative distribution -- to get pieces of the file you lack, you must offer up chunks in exchange.

This approach turns typical online distribution on its head: the more popular the file, the faster the download times. The inverse is also true: It took 72 hours to download Bram Cohen's September 2003 lecture at Stanford University.

BitTorrent dramatically improves the economics of the Internet as a broadcast medium.

With distribution costs removed, budding filmmakers like Ben Buie of HighlyDef Productions in Altanta can suddenly afford to release ``On Our Way Up,'' a full-length docudrama, based on the lives of three brothers, shot in high-definition video. Buie uses Prodigem, a Mountain View start-up, to manage the delivery and collect payment.

``We actually thought about hosting it ourselves, and the bandwidth costs would have been enormous,'' said Buie. ``With BitTorrent, download is distributed over several users. There was really no cost of entry.''

The power and efficiency of BitTorrent lured Navin, the embodiment of a high-energy ``biz dev'' guy, away from search giant Yahoo, where he worked in corporate development figuring out digital distribution strategies.

``BitTorrent solved a lot of issues that I think an aggregator like Yahoo or download.com faces,'' said Navin, who joined the newly incorporated company in October. ``Do we host? Does the publisher host? If we host, how much do we charge? BitTorrent makes that whole question irrelevant.''

Navin and Cohen, the computer networking savant, share a vision of BitTorrent evolving into a true distribution platform that not only delivers video, but also helps people discover interesting content online. Eventually, they hope to collect a fee for connecting its audience to commercial content.

The first step along this path came in May, when BitTorrent introduced a search feature to help people find specific ``torrent'' files they're seeking. Search unlocked a fresh source of revenue for BitTorrent: sponsored links provided through a partnership with Ask Jeeves in Oakland.

BitTorrent's search engine also points to obviously pirated content, such as copies of the new Steven Spielberg blockbuster ``War of the Worlds,'' available with Danish subtitles from a Swedish site called thepiratebay.org.

When asked how he would respond to BitTorrent's use as a tool for piracy, Cohen said he would follow the same rules that apply to other search engines. The studios would provide notice of the infringing work, and he would remove links to the stolen content, rendering it inaccessible.

The challenge for BitTorrent or any other existing file-sharing technology is whether pirated content can co-exist alongside paid movies or television shows.

From the perspective of the Motion Picture Association of America, the solution is obvious: BitTorrent should use filtering technologies to block the exchange of pirated works.

``There is a whole new market that's being developed with filtering tools, ways of allowing these technologies to develop while preventing copyright infringement,'' said Dean Garfield, the MPAA's legal affairs director. ``We're hopeful that Bram will be a partner in moving BitTorrent in that direction.''

Negotiations between the MPAA and BitTorrent are continuing, talks that Cohen characterizing as `friendly.'' BitTorrent is also in discussions with two studios he declined to identify.

In the past, negotiations have failed because of the entertainment industry's reluctance to put a pirate in business, said Hilary Rosen, the former head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Peer-to-peer companies, meanwhile, have been reluctant to go dark or filter out copyrighted works, for fear of losing their loyal users, she said.

The recent Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case has changed the tenor of discussions. It made clear that tech companies that tout their file-sharing technology as a tool for piracy, or provide technical support to aid in the theft, are legally liable.

A number of established file-swapping services ``are coming to the table, either with the MPAA or with individual studios, to talk about ways they might alter their mode of operations,'' said one senior media attorney involved in the discussions.

Cohen said the Grokster ruling freed entertainment companies to seriously consider the file-swapping technology, once the scourge of Hollywood.

``They've been worried about using our technology,'' said Cohen. ``It's been made clear now that piracy is bad, not the technology is bad.''

As negotiations progress, BitTorrent is focused on content that might not otherwise be available for download because the bandwidth costs would prohibitive. Linspire, a San Diego software developer, uses BitTorrent to distribute its Linux-based software, including its recently released Linspire Five-0 operating system. BitTorrent saves Linspire about $20,000 a month, a company spokeswoman said.

BitTorrent also has reached agreements with game publishers to distribute about 1,000 licensed titles in the coming weeks, including such recognizable games as ``Tomb Raider 3'' and ``World of Warcraft,'' said Navin.

Blizzard Entertainment uses an enhanced version of BitTorrent to distribute software updates to the 1 million World of Warcraft players who inhabit its online virtual world. Allowing players to download from one another speeds the process significantly and saves money. ``Those who want to download directly from us can still do so, but the process is considerably slower,'' said a spokeswoman.

``This tool is designed to solve a very real problem,'' said Navin. ``What we hope is the folks it was designed for will embrace it as quickly as possible.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12274166.htm





CRIA's Higher Risk Strategy

Of all the reactions to today's SCC decision to skip the appeal of the private copying decision, I thought the Canadian Recording Industry Association's was the most remarkable. I've obviously commented regularly on its high risk strategy of suing individual file sharers. I think this is a bad strategy for many reasons. Suing your customers (and we should be clear, file sharers are the industry's best customers) is never a good idea. Further, the immense energy devoted to fighting file sharing, despite ample evidence that any industry woes have little do with the practice, is wasted time that could be spent actually responding to the market.

Today's response represents an even higher risk strategy. CRIA is now going to war not only with its customers, but now also with its artists. There have been several indications of this in the past year, namely CRIA's opposition to artists on ringtone compensation and on satellite radio.

But opposing the artists on private copying takes this strategy to new heights. CRIA today claimed that artists will make up private copying levy losses through the marketplace. The truth is that artists and rights holders lost $4 million today, the amount collected from the iPod and digital audio recorders during a fairly brief period. Longer term, they lost tens of millions of dollars of potential compensation. These are not the nickels and dimes that CRIA derides. If anything, for Canadian artists the levy represents a potentially important revenue stream that will not be easily recouped.

Today's decision also likely means the end of a private copying levy that CRIA spent 15 years fighting to get. The system is clearly broken and policy makers will either drop it completely (perhaps supplemented by a fair use doctrine that will permit copying such as store bought CDs to personal iPods) or expand the levy so that it resembles a European approach that extends to both audio and video, while providing even greater compensation.

Further, today's decision represents a serious blow to the iPod, which has been an incredible boon to the music industry. Simply put, copying store bought CDs onto iPods, as CRIA's own Graham Henderson has supported, may now be unlawful in Canada since it is difficult to find an exception within the Copyright Act that would permit that form of copying. While perhaps some in the industry may think this is a good thing as it transitions users to re-purchase the same music yet again as MP3 files from services such as iTunes, I think it will ultimately lower the value that consumers associate with music to the detriment of everyone in the industry.

Finally, it is worth noting what this decision does not mean. While CRIA claims yet again that this means that file sharing is unlawful in Canada, the issue is still unsettled. They argue that "unauthorized file sharing to hard drives of any kind, including those on home computers, is illegal." Not so. A good argument can be made that computer hard drives are not the equivalent of the hard drives embedded in digital audio players. I don't think anyone knows for sure and I doubt CRIA will try to test the issue. There is high risk and higher risk but that lawsuit would involve perhaps the highest risk.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php...mid=85&nsub =






Apple Launches iTunes in Japan

Apple Computer launched its iTunes online music store in Japan on Thursday, bringing its market-leading download service to the world's second-largest music market by album sales.

Apple has sold more than 500 million songs in 19 countries since it introduced iTunes in the United States over two years ago. While iTunes by itself is not viewed as a big money maker for Apple, it has helped drive sales of its wildly popular iPod portable music player.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said iTunes would charge 150 yen ($1.35) each for 90 percent of its songs and 200 yen for the other 10 percent, undercutting some existing services such as Sony's Mora, which charges 210 yen per song.

At least 15 Japanese companies including Avex Group Holdings will provide music for the iTunes store, Apple said. Columbia Music Entertainment said Thursday it would also provide songs.

"We've got a lot of Japanese content on the store and we'll be adding even more as the months go on," Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a packed news conference in Tokyo. "We think it's going to set the standard for online music pricing in Japan."

Apple has sold about 22 million iPods since their introduction in October 2001, making it by far the most widely used digital music player in a market researcher In-Stat expects to nearly quadruple to 104 million units a year by 2009.

Analysts have said the lack of an iTunes online store aimed at users in Japan was a major reason behind Sony's securing the top market share for flash memory-based players in the Japanese market in recent months, overtaking the iPod shuffle.

Apple retains the top spot overall in Japan thanks to brisk sales of its hard-drive based players. It controls about 36 percent of the market, ahead of Sony at 22 percent.

Jobs said the iTunes service in Japan would also offer podcasts, which are sound files, and audio content such as radio shows.
http://news.com.com/Apple+launches+i...3-5817814.html





TV, phone signals mixed but broadband relatively strong

Comcast Profit Rises 64%, Charter Loss Narrows
Deborah Yao

Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable television operator, reported Tuesday that second-quarter profit rose 64 percent as its video and high-speed Internet businesses gained steam.

Net income rose to $430 million, or 19 cents per share, from $262 million, or 12 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 10.5 percent to $5.6 billion from $5.1 billion last year.

The results easily beat analysts' estimates for profit of 15 cents per share on revenue of $5.54 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

The second quarter was much tougher for Charter Communications Inc., the suburban St. Louis cable operator controlled by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen. While its quarterly loss narrowed from a year ago, it still was wider than what Wall Street expected.

Shares of cable providers have been depressed recently on concerns about emerging threats to their video and Internet businesses from phone companies.

Charter lost $356 million, or $1.18 per share, in the three months ended June 30, compared with a loss of $416 million, or $1.39 per share, a year ago. Analysts expected a loss of 91 cents per share.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.32 billion. Gains in high-speed Internet and telephone customers helped narrow the quarterly loss. Charter shares declined 3 cents to $1.30 on the Nasdaq.

Comcast's shares rose 49 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $31.10, also on the Nasdaq.

Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, said Comcast shares rallied because investors breathed "a sigh of relief that the second quarter is over," since that period is usually a seasonally poor one for cable.

College students disconnect their service for the summer and retirees vacationing in places such as Florida also cancel subscriptions as they head home.

In the quarter, Comcast benefited from gains in video and high-speed Internet service but Charter lost ground in cable TV. However, business at Charter's Internet and phone units rose.

Comcast's video revenue increased 5.9 percent to $3.4 billion, driven by higher monthly revenue per basic subscriber and a 13.3 percent increase in the number of digital cable customers.

Comcast added 284,000 new digital customers in the second quarter of 2005 and now has more than 9.1 million. High-speed Internet revenue increased 28.8 percent to $982 million, and Comcast ended the quarter with more than 7.7 million high- speed Internet subscribers.

However, the company added only 297,000 subscribers in the latest period, down from 327,000 in the year-ago quarter.

Comcast acknowledged that local phone companies have been aggressive in cutting prices on their digital subscriber line, or DSL, service. SBC has lowered promotional prices on high-speed Internet service to $14.95 a month and Verizon has been aggressively cutting rates as well.

Among all Comcast's business units, the only revenue decline occurred in its phone service, which fell 4 percent to $170 million. Comcast has been behind other cable companies in signing up digital phone customers.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Comcast was considering plans to set up a major sports network, but Comcast executives insisted they have no plans to establish a sports network to rival ESPN.

Juli Niemann, an analyst with RT Jones in St. Louis, said Charter's financial troubles are costing the company at a time when firms such as Verizon Communications and SBC are starting to compete for the cable TV market.

"We've got pricing wars going on, service buildup, and Charter can't compete," Niemann said. "They don't have the money to compete. In the meantime, all their competitors are moving ahead."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...customwire.htm





Some MySpace Users Skittish About Fox
Mary Papenfuss

There's a Fox in MySpace, and bloggers are squawking.

Nervous members of the wildly popular online social networking spot are blasting its purchase by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., expressing dark fears about the powerful billionaire's alleged motives and the possibility of privacy breaches, monitoring, censorship - and access fees.

"It's something we're very concerned about," said Scott Swiecki, 34, of Tempe Ariz., who's a member of the MySpace group "Faux News" as well as another group that combines the Murdoch name with an expletive. "There are a lot of counterculture people on MySpace. My concern is Fox will add fees and censor content."

News Corp. purchased Intermix Media Inc., the owner of MySpace, for $580 million last month, mainly so that Fox Interactive Media can reach the site's 22 million registered users.

MySpace, which launched just two years ago, is currently the most popular social networking site in the world. It makes it easy for people to customize their home pages with personal photos, art, color and music, along with market-revealing lists of favorite activities, books, music and films. Users can get site-wide bulletins, but they mostly communicate with friends or intriguing strangers they've expressly allowed into a network. Bands often use the site to debut their music.

The only automatic "friend" for everyone who joins the site is MySpace's co-founder, Tom Anderson. He has his own profile - single, 29, Santa Monica - and a list of 18 interests, 24 favorite bands, and 12 heroes, including "my mom" and author George Orwell.

After the sale was announced, spoofers added a profile for Murdoch, too: straight, married, 74 - which says he has joined the site for "networking" and lists his occupation as "world domination."

Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of the Los Angeles- based MySpace, told The Associated Press that the News Corp. acquisition will change nothing about the site - other than to extend MySpace's international reach.

But some of the hipsters in the online hangout fear their freewheeling ways, celebrated in naughty notes, brash blogs and provocative photos, won't mesh with the values of Murdoch's media outlets, like Fox News, which they believe are right-wing mouthpieces for the Bush administration.

"I'm opposed to what Rupert Murdoch has done to the media, and I don't want him involved in MySpace," said user Nathan Hall, 26, of Milwaukee.

News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett said the company has "no intention of imposing any sensibilities on MySpace," and that none of the anti-Murdoch messages will be deleted.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Sirius Widens 2Q Loss but Boosts Outlook
AP

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. posted a larger second-quarter loss on Tuesday but beat Wall Street's expectations and raised full-year forecasts for revenue and subscribers.

Sirius' loss widened to $177.5 million, or 13 cents per share, from $136.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson financial had expected a loss of 15 cents.

Revenue surged to $52.2 million from $13.2 million last year. Average monthly churn - the percentage of customers who cancel subscriptions - during the second quarter of 2005 was 1.4 percent versus 1.6 percent a year ago.

The New York-based company reported costs of $160 for each customer added for the second quarter of 2005, a 32 percent improvement from the same period last year.

As of June 30, Sirius had 1.8 million subscribers, including second-quarter net additions of 365,931 subscribers, more than double last year's 128,678 net additions.

For the third time this year, the company raised its 2005 year-end subscriber guidance to 3 million subscribers, up from its previous estimate of about 2.7 million subscribers.

The company attributed the revised outlook to continued momentum in the retail and automotive distribution channels, and expectations of strong consumer demand for Sirius' exclusive programming, including the NFL, Martha Stewart Living Radio and Howard Stern. Sirius will launch its second season of NFL coverage and introduce Martha Stewart's radio channel this month. It expects Stern to join its lineup in January 2006.

Sirius expects to $225 million in total revenue in 2005, up from previous guidance of $215 million. The company also expects to report an adjusted loss from operations of about $540 million in 2005, wider than prior estimates of $510 million.

Even though it beat Wall Street's estimates, Sirius's shares fell 2 cents to $6.93 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Investors had bid up the shares over the past three months, off their recent low of $4.67 reached in late April.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Internet Ad Pioneer Now Shunning Pop-Ups
Anick Jesdanun

A pioneer of software that tailors pop-up ads to Internet users' browsing habits is beginning to shun a practice that has invited much derision and plenty of lawsuits. A new service Claria Corp. is launching this month will still deliver advertising to the computer desktops of Web surfers. Only this time, they won't be annoying pop-ups.

So-called personalization - targeting surfers with ads based on their online outings and errands - was always Claria's goal, says its co-founder and chief executive, Jeff McFadden.

Pop-ups delivered via adware, which is often criticized as sneaky in its installation, were merely a stepping stone as Claria waited for the technology to improve and the behavioral-targeting market to ripen, he said.

"It was never a destination," McFadden told The Associated Press. "There's a lot of people who aren't fans of the pop-up model."

Some might consider that an understatement from the head of a company whose name has become synonymous with adware, which many consider a cyberparasite or worse.

Although Scott Eagle, Claria's marketing chief, said market forces ultimately drove the decision, he acknowledged the new strategy could help improve the image of a company that has bothered more than consumers.

The New York Times Co. and L.L. Bean Inc. are among businesses that have sued Claria for delivering pop-up ads that they said subverted paid advertising or lured visitors to rivals. Claria even changed its name in 2003 from Gator Corp., though the company insists it wasn't a response to mounting criticism.

"It is a little naive of them to believe they can introduce a product and have the sins of the past forgotten completely," said Jeff Lanctot, vice president of media at Avenue A/Razorfish, an ad- placement agency whose sister company makes behavioral-targeting technology that could compete with Claria's.

"They have to be completely aboveboard and take extra steps other companies don't have to do to gain trust back," said Ari Schwartz, associate director with the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Many of Claria's critics remain skeptical.

Claria's new services will still require a software download "just like the old Claria software," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard University student who specializes in spyware research. "The question is how sneaky they are going to be about it."

Claria's software typically comes bundled with free products such as its own eWallet password-storage program and file-sharing software like Kazaa. Though licensing agreements disclose the ad components, many computer users don't bother reading them. And that prompts complaints that Claria isn't doing enough to obtain consent.

In the new model, Claria will work with developers of toolbars and instant-messaging programs as well as reputable Web sites - and largely have them bear responsibility for branding and getting consumer consent.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau says pop-ups peaked at 6 percent of all online advertising two years ago and have been declining since. America Online Inc. stopped selling pop-up ads in 2002, and most Web browsers now block them.

Even so, Claria claims it commanded 20 percent of the adware market with $100 million in revenues last year, mostly from pop-ups delivered through software on some 40 million computer desktops.

The 7-year-old company, which has 235-odd employees at its Redwood City, Calif., headquarters and other locations, began a pilot in May of a new ad network called BehaviorLink that serves banner ads targeted to a user's interests.

With software for it installed, someone reading online news articles on maternity might get pitches for baby products.

And while Claria's pop-up ads sometimes covered up someone else's Web site, BehaviorLink ads come with the site's permission. In some cases, Claria buys ad space and resells it at a premium; in others, Claria works out a revenue-sharing arrangement.

Companies like Revenue Science Inc. and Tacoda Systems Inc. also offer behavioral- targeting services but they use browser "cookies" instead of software downloads, meaning they could potentially reach more users overall but won't have Claria's across-the-Web targeting capabilities.

The product Claria is launching this month, in a test version, is called PersonalWeb.

It generates "personalized Web portals" on the fly so that a user who just checked baseball scores and movie show times might get a page pulling top items from ESPN and Moviefone.

The page will also display targeted ads from BehaviorLink.

An existing portal can also buy Claria's technology to incorporate personalization. Though Yahoo Inc. and others now have customization features, they rely on users to set preferences and are not automatic.

BehaviorLink and PersonalWeb combined, Eagle said, will mean more time spent on each site and more value for each ad.

Traditional advertising has up to 30 times the potential of adware pop-ups, he said, making Claria a possible target for acquisition. He insisted, though, that Claria was happy to remain independent, and he refused to comment on reports that Microsoft Corp. has been in talks to buy Claria.

Claria still must navigate some challenging terrain on privacy and consent, and many key decisions still need to be worked out.

For example, although Claria said it would obtain permission before activating PersonalWeb, it is negotiating on a site-by-site basis whether that permission would be limited to a specific site that runs PersonalWeb or cover the entire network.

Claria says its data on browsing habits are all anonymous, but it is open to letting partners link such information with personally identifiable information.

Whatever happens, users will be fully informed before they accept, said Reed Freeman, Claria's chief privacy officer. Benefits to the consumer, he said, will be easier to explain than the previous trade-off between free software and more pop-ups.

Larry Ponemon, one of three outside privacy consultants hired by Claria, said complaints about privacy stem more from annoyance with pop-ups rather than any data collected. Non-adware companies might capture more data but get fewer complaints, he said.

Claria still must win over the Web sites that once sued it. Eagle said most have been willing to listen, even if they have yet to sign deals.

Advertisers that have shunned pop-ups, meanwhile, have been more willing to run traditional ads through Claria, Eagle said, though he declined to name any of the 250 advertisers participating in BehaviorLink's pilot.

Elias Plishner, head of the interactive group at Universal McCann ad agency, said many companies that previously weren't willing to "dip their toes into behavior marketing" might now be willing to give Claria a chance.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Russia Bars ABC News for Interview With Rebel
Steven Lee Myers

Russia announced today that it was barring journalists from ABC News from working here, effectively expelling a foreign news organization for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia's step came in retaliation for ABC's broadcast of an interview with Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel who has ordered or carried out some of the worst terrorist acts in the country's history, including the school siege in Beslan last September that left 330 people dead.

The decision underscored not only Russia's sensitivity to foreign perceptions of the war in Chechnya, but also a seething and evidently growing antipathy toward the United States and other countries viewed as hostile toward Russia.

The defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, had already called the network an "outlaw" and ordered the military to cease any contact with it after the interview, featured on the ABC News program "Nightline" on Thursday. The Foreign Ministry took the unusual step of summoning the top American diplomat in Moscow the next day to complain formally.

The ministry went further today. In a statement published on its Web site and repeated on state television by its deputy spokesman, Boris N. Malakhov, it said that Russia would not renew the accreditations of journalists working for ABC once they expire. Foreign journalists cannot work legally in Russia without the accreditation.

In the meantime, the statement said that no officials would cooperate with the network, saying the interview amounted to "propagandizing terrorism."

The Kremlin under President Vladimir V. Putin has long faced criticism for tightening state control over the media in Russia, especially when it comes to political opposition and the second war in Chechnya, which began nearly six years ago and grinds on still.

But it was the first time that the Russian government directly - and openly - targeted an entire news organization for its reporting.

Only on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry appeared to rule out such a step, even as it criticized the interview with Mr. Basayev, who appears on the United Nations' and the United States' lists of wanted terrorists.

David Westin, the president of ABC News, expressed regret and defended the broadcast, saying that the network could not allow "any government to deter us from reporting the news fully and accurately."

"The mission of a free press is to cover news events, even those involving illegal acts to help our audience better understand the important issues that confront us all," he said in a statement.

The State Department said in a press briefing earlier today that it was still seeking to confirm the ban.

"If that's true, we'd regret that decision," said a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey. "I don't think - if, in fact, ABC is to somehow be banned from reporting in Russia - that that would be a positive statement about freedom of expression."

Russia has previously denied accreditation or visas for foreign journalists, though usually without a clear explanation. In 2004, a correspondent from the Danish newspaper Politiken, Vibeke Sperling, complained that she had been denied a visa because of her reporting on Chechnya and other sensitive topics.

In 1995, the government revoked the visa of Steve LeVine, a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post, citing a technicality involving the revoking of his visa in Uzbekistan. He was the first American expelled by the Kremlin since 1986, when Nicolas Daniloff of U.S. News and World Report was arrested and charged with espionage before being expelled during a flare-up in cold-war tensions with what was then the Soviet Union.

ABC, like many news organizations following the end of the cold war, has scaled back its reporting staff in Moscow, and is now represented by its bureau chief, Tomasz Rolski, who has Polish citizenship.

It was not immediately clear when his accreditation was due to expire. Several other employees in Moscow and based elsewhere could be affected by the loss of accreditation. Foreign journalists typically receive accreditation for one or two years.

The Foreign Ministry also threatened unspecified steps against the journalist who conducted the interview, Andrei Babitsky. Mr. Babitsky, a Russian with an American work permit whose reporting on Chechnya has long irritated the Kremlin, works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague. In a telephone interview, he said he arranged the interview and offered it to ABC on his own initiative, while on leave from his regular employer.

Russian and foreign reporters alike face restrictions on covering Chechnya, though a prohibition on traveling there without government escort is routinely sidestepped and has, so far, been tolerated.

"This interview was made in violation of Russian law, since he had no corresponding accreditation," the statement said. "The circumstances of organizing and conducting the interview will be clarified with his employers."

Other foreign news organizations, including TT in Sweden and Channel 4 in Britain, have broadcast prerecorded interviews with Mr. Basayev this year, but ABC's interview sparked an even greater torrent of condemnation, some directed at the United States generally. The Foreign Ministry tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade ABC not to show it.

Anatoly Safonov, Mr. Putin's special representative for counterterrorism, told Interfax last week that the interview hindered international cooperation against terrorism and gave "new impulse to the activities of terrorists."

Journalist advocacy groups reacted with surprise and dismay. Lucie Morillon, the representative in Washington for Reporters Without Borders, called the decision appalling.

"We see this as a blow for freedom of press and the presentation of news in Russia," she said in a telephone interview. "It is a warning to other foreign news organizations. It's like telling them, 'If you don't cover the Chechen conflict the way they want, you won't be able to work in Russia.' "

In the interview, Mr. Basayev acted defiant, though at times he appeared muddled. Some of his remarks had little basis in reality, including a claim that Russian forces shot down two passenger airliners that exploded in midflight last August. He had previously claimed responsibility for organizing the two suicide bombers who blew up the planes, killing 90 people.

Mr. Basayev acknowledged he was a terrorist, but blamed Russia for spawning his deeds. He also warned of new attacks.

Mr. Babitsky said he spent two days - June 22 and 23 - with Mr. Basayev and six other fighters, one a foreigner he called an Arab. His report offered a rare glimpse into what remains of Chechen separatist resistance: small groups of sickly men living stealthily in thick forests, fearful of lighting campfires for fear of detection by reconnaissance planes droning overhead.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Babitsky said he believed the interview had taken place in Chechnya, but added that he could not be sure they were not elsewhere in the remote mountains along Russia's southern border.

He said was not yet aware of any official steps being taken against him, but he expected them; he has not returned to Russia since the interview. He said Russia was overreacting out of frustration and embarrassment.

"In six years the power structures could not catch terrorist No. 1 in Russia," he said, referring to the police, military and security services operating in Chechnya. "Now they put all the blame on journalists."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/in... tner=homepage





The Archives

Rescued From Dustbin, Paper Medical Record Tells Its Tale
Barron h. Lerner, M.D.

"I wonder if patient could tolerate such a procedure emotionally," wrote a doctor about Mrs. E., a 44-year-old breast cancer patient being considered for a last-ditch brain operation called a hypophysectomy.

"I believe she stands a very real chance of another remission by hypophysectomy," wrote one of his colleagues.

This debate about Mrs. E.'s treatment, which occurred in 1960, comes from her paper medical chart, an aging document full of descriptive longhand notes by doctors, nurses and social workers. It was rescued from a New York medical center that was disposing of its old records because of space limitations.

With the push toward electronic medical records, physicians' notes are becoming less discursive and more standardized. As a result, stories like Mrs. E.'s may disappear. But they can teach us a great deal about the ordinary, and sometimes unexpected, events encountered by patients in the past.

Mrs. E. had watched the lump in her left breast grow for almost two years before seeing a doctor in 1954. A black domestic worker originally from the Caribbean, she was raising three children by herself and feared losing her job. "I hope it is not too late," she told a social worker.

But it was. When the doctors operated, they removed not only her breast, but also the chest wall muscles and the rib cage on the side of the cancer. At that time, such radical operations were in vogue.

So was concealing information from patients. Mrs. E.'s chart reveals what one would expect from this era. She was told a white lie - that she had a "tumor."

The word "cancer," with its ominous implications, was avoided.

But the chart was also full of surprises. The hospital's social workers routinely visited Mrs. E. at her "poor tenement house" because she could not afford taxi fare.

"She seems a person accustomed to facing difficulties with fortitude," one social worker wrote admiringly of Mrs. E.

The hospital also gave her holiday gifts and money to purchase a breast form.

In 1957, for reasons that are unknown, Mrs. E.'s doctor decided to tell her that she had breast cancer and would die from the disease. That the doctor decided to tell this to a poor black woman, who was less educated than most private patients, was especially surprising.

Mrs. E., another doctor noted in the chart, "is an example of a pt. who has been 'told the truths.' "

By 1960, despite additional treatments, the patient had worsened and thus became a candidate for a hypophysectomy. This operation, first performed in 1889, involved cutting into the skull and removing the pituitary gland, located in the lower portion of the brain. The gland produces hormones, which stimulate the growth of some breast cancers. Removing the gland was aimed at providing temporary relief of a patient's symptoms when no other options existed.

But the operation was a difficult one, especially for patients like Mrs. E., who had already undergone significant surgery and radiation. How was the decision reached about whether to proceed in Mrs. E.'s case?

Much has been written, appropriately, about how doctors have done a poor job of involving patients in making medical decisions. But in this case, perhaps because the doctors themselves were unsure whether the procedure would help, a patient with few resources became a participant in the process. One physician wrote in the chart that the "possibilities and risks have been fully explained to the patient."

Mrs. E. initially told a social worker that the idea of additional surgery was "overwhelming."

She feared going blind or dying, she said, two complications mentioned by the doctors.

But later, the social worker reported, the patient was "debating with herself the pros and cons" of surgery. Eventually, the possibility of relief from her pain led Mrs. E. to consent to the operation.

Mrs. E. withstood the surgery well and went home four weeks later. A visiting social worker remarked that she was feeling better, adjusting "amazingly well" and eating "like a horse."

Within a few months, though, Mrs. E. broke her hip as a result of the spread of the cancer. She died soon thereafter.

Was the hypophysectomy worthwhile? We will probably never know what Mrs. E. thought. Medical records in the 1960's, like those today, too often omit the patient's voice.

But thanks to Mrs. E.'s medical chart, we at least know how one woman with a grave disease ultimately accepted a dramatic operation that was her only hope.

Her chart - and its story - will soon be sent to the archives of the medical center for safekeeping.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02case.html





The Independence of Liz Phair


Pascal Perich for The New York Times

Liz Phair, 38, performs tonight at Joe's Pub in the East Village. Her latest album, "Somebody's Miracle," is to be released in October.

David Carr

Liz Phair, former crown princess of indie music, has news for all those who wish she would go back to opening up a vein so listeners can feel her pain.

She does not feel theirs.

"I don't remember that time as fun or happy," she said, recalling the days in 1993 after she released "Exile in Guyville," a gender-bent song-for-song retort to the 1972 Rolling Stones album, "Exile on Main Street." The CD was hailed as a revelation, but since then, she has steadfastly refused to live down or up to her early reputation as the coolest girl at the party. Ms. Phair has made four CD's since "Exile," and the latest, "Somebody's Miracle" - due out in October - will do nothing to quiet critics and fans who suggest she traded mesmerizing musical idiosyncrasy for a more common, commercial sound.

"If you are an old fan and it doesn't fit what you need, don't buy the disc," she said with firmness, but no rancor. "People hang their hopes on you fitting into their CD collection in way that they have made a space for, but I'm playing a longer game than that."

Ms. Phair, 38, who has spent the past few years as a piñata for critics, is nonetheless in a very sunny mood. She is in the midst of a lo-fi, nine-city tour with her boyfriend and accompanist, Dino Meneghin. Sitting on Pier 25 in Lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon before playing at Joe's Pub last night and tonight, she had to be persuaded to sit down at a picnic table rather than hop in a nearby kayak and paddle into the Hudson. The duo is doing three songs a night from the new record and then mostly winging it, grabbing requests shouted from the audience and playing B-sides and oldies as whimsy indicates.

"Every night we play a challenge song, which is one we might have rehearsed and then one hack job where we just do our best," she said. With its acoustic setting and reach-back into her oeuvre, the tour should be a crowd pleaser, which is something Ms. Phair has not been spending much career time on. Her last record, self-titled, but radio ready, drew particularly visceral criticism.

"Hating, I can understand," she said. "I hate stuff too. I can get with that. But some of it is personal and weird. I don't like being approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something from me that I didn't have. I don't represent anything. I am just like you and everyone else. I am trying to live my life as best I can."

Ms. Phair is a fickle cult figure, who was surprised by the adoration when it was forthcoming and seemed mystified by the disappointment that came behind it.

She jumped up to take pictures of passing boats and sipped on a half-caf iced soy latte - "I tamper with everything, including coffee," she said - seeming relatively self- aware, if not as self-involved in a way that made for compelling songwriting in the past.

"Am I coasting on some early success? Yeah," she said. "It was a good lucky break for me. But I would rather earn my way back again than simply conform to what people are expecting."

In the one version of Ms. Phair's career, she took all her early promise and squandered it on her last album with a production team that confected Avril Lavigne. She pointed out that the record did pretty well, not huge, but enough to keep her and hers - she has an 8-year-old-son - in food and shelter.

Ms. Phair said the record's singles, a particular genre of music, required plenty of compromises. "I would argue with the producers and listen and then say, 'Yeah, take my guitar off the record, because you know you want to.' I fought for the songs I wanted and cared about and tried to piece it back together in a way that was meaningful to me."

Her label, Capitol, put major juice and money behind the singles, and she trudged from morning show to morning show, plugging it with whatever wacky guys happened to be sitting in front of the mics. But it was not a strictly commercial undertaking, she added. The mostly nude cover art and a one-song ode to the health effects of semen meant Wal-Mart and Starbucks were not much interested in "Liz Phair" by Liz Phair. The fact that the project was self-titled only doubled the rejection.

Ms. Phair pointed out that she never signed with a major label to begin with and has tried to make the most of what has happened: Matador, the indie label she signed with, made a deal with Atlantic, and a later deal with Capitol Records, and so on.

"I figured if I was going to float, I would have to find a way to navigate these waters and still maintain what I like to do," Ms. Phair said. "I like doing the photo shoots, the interviews, the videos, but the bottom line is that I like to sit in my bedroom and write these little songs. I am still making records and still have a measure of control over my music, and that is not easy to come by."

But, she added, "I think what I do is still pretty identifiable. I think I have a quirkiness and a melodic sense that you won't confuse with anyone else."

Tiny, with a bustier framed by an overlay of white blouse and a skirt that demonstrates motherhood has not changed her penchant for showing some casual leg, Ms. Phair would be hard to mistake for someone else. Her do-me feminism and frank sexual lyrics may be part of what put the mostly-male rock criticism community in a tizzy to begin with.

Ms. Phair has lived her life in opposition to whatever has been placed in front of her. "Exile" was a bitter, compelling retort to both the Rolling Stones and all the snotty girls in her suburban neighborhood.

The gesture of "Somebody's Miracle" is more complicated. Conceived as another song-by-song response - this time to Stevie Wonder's 1976 album, "Songs in the Key of Life" - it tacked away from that concept to become an album that gives solace to whoever shows up. There are singles, throwaways and full-on confessionals - enough to satisfy or embitter various parts of her fan base, depending.

Which is just about pleasing to Ms. Phair, who might be seen as a diva without portfolio or a sly genius, depending.

"After all, I'm not sitting in an office telling someone that their insurance policy doesn't cover their chemotherapy," she said. "Theoretically, I am trying to make a piece of music come to life, to try and bring joy and meaning to people's lives. That's a pretty good deal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/ar...ic/02phai.html





Keeping Your Enemies Close – BitTorrent and The Art of War
Russell de Pina

In the 6th century, Sun Tzu wrote, “To know your enemy is to become your enemy. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.” Apparently, Hollywood has become hip to this strategic gem in its continuing battle against copyright infringement in the form of file trading. For those in the know, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like Kazaa and Grokster are so 1999. Today, the networks frequented by file trading enthusiasts are those powered by software called BitTorrent.

The magic of BitTorrent is that it improves the performance of file sharing networks by shifting the burden of bandwidth from the publisher and distributes it amongst the users downloading a file. In effect, when users download a “torrent file,” they are also uploading it to other users at the same time. Also, the dynamics of the network are such that the more popular a file, the faster it downloads. This makes it quite possible to transfer very large files, like movies and video games for example. You would assume that Hollywood, based on its prior responses to distribution enabling technologies, would be suing the pants off of Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, but you would only be half right.

Since he released the first version of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen he claims publicly that he has never downloaded any content with BitTorrent and that his sole motivation for creating the tool was to provide a means for publishers to make content available to the masses without heavy bandwidth requirements needed to support large numbers of transfers. This is quite a different manifesto from that of Shawn Fanning, who created Napster expressly for the purpose of [illegally] trading music content. Unfortunately, while there are many legitimate uses for P2P technology, the P2P networks that receive the most attention in the media have been those dedicated to copyright infringement. However, with the emergence of legal alternatives for downloading music files, and the “scorch and burn” lawsuit campaign of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) many users have turned away from pirate networks like Grokster and Kazaa. Of course, there is another reason why BitTorrent has become so popular – movies.

Which is why Hollywood is simultaneously fighting BitTorrent and working with them at the same time. Because the technology works so well at moving large files across the Internet, many movie and video game companies recognize the value of the tool for legally distributing their content. Rather than adopt former Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) chief Jack Valenti's position of “sue them out of existence.” A kinder, gentler MPAA is encouraging BitTorrent to develop filtering technology to weed out infringing content. Blizzard Entertainment uses an enhanced version of the software to distribute its “World of Warcraft” game amongst the 1 million players inhabiting its online world. The company has also made an agreement to provide distribution for the Tomb Raider 3 game title.

The tenuous peace with BitTorrent marks the recognition by “Big Media” that while there exists bad applications of technology, that the technology itself is not the bad guy. We should be hopeful that further development of the technology will illustrate how technologists and Big Media can work and profit together.
http://eurweb.com/printable.cfm?id=21657





ObjectWeb ProActive Breaks World Computational Record

Xavier MOGHRABI writes "The OASIS team, form INRIA-University of Nice Sophia Antipolis-CNRS I3S announced the calculation of N-Queens for N=25, setting a new world record in grid computation.

The number of solutions is: 2,207,893,435,808,352

The nQueens problem consists in placing n queens on a nxn chessboard with that no queens are enable to capture each others.

Thanks to the ObjectWeb ProActive library, the computation was achieved in Peer-To-Peer mode (P2P), just using the spare CPU cycles of INRIA desktop machines. As such , the computing platform was highly heterogeneous: Linux, Windows, various JVMs, PII to Xeon bi-pro from 450 Mhz to 3.2 GHz, etc.

The total duration time was slightly over 6 months (4444h 54m 52s 854), starting October 8th until June 11th, using the spare CPU cycles of about 260 machines. The cumulated computing time was over 50 years: 53 years 2 days 16 hours 27 minutes 1 seconds 117 ms!

More information about Proactive and ObjectWeb is available at:
http://proactive.objectweb.org/
http://www.objectweb.org/"

http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.../08/03/1731210





U.K. Government Begins The Peer-To-Peer Show
David Quainton

165 U.K. government departments are to migrate to an internal IT network to improve security and workflow.

The Government Secure Intranet (GSi) program replaces their previous system, called Legacy, which has come under some scrutiny in recent years. The new system, completed on July 31, has communications company Energis effectively acting as an ISP for a private network within which government departments can communicate.

"Government is an absolute target for worms, viruses and malware. What we needed to create was a safe network in which government departments can communicate and operate more efficiently," said Andrew Swaffer, GSi client director at Energis.

The service will feed some 350,000 staff and has already been put into use by some of the larger departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

All government departments have an option which level of service they take, from the simple peer-to-peer service to anti-spam and content and image control. Currently around a sixth are using the anti-spam service – the content and image control will be available from September.

If the migration is successful Energis plan to extend it to local authorities.

"It's a big challenge, but there are business and operational benefits to what we're doing here," said Swaffer. "The biggest obstacle is that in order to get on board local government has to sort it's own systems out first. It's a huge task."

In June

SC reported the U.K. critical national infrastructure was being targeted by hackers intent on delivering malware to systems. Swaffer and colleague Paul Hayman, director of government and public sector at Energis, said they have already seen examples of such targeted attacks. According to the company five percent of government emails received contain some sort of virus. Dictionary attacks were also cited as a growing threat.
http://www.scmagazine.com/news/index...&newsType=News




Peer-To-Peer Anonymizer
Robert W. Smith

The developers of the AN.ON Project of the TU Dresden [Technical University Dresden], which is cooperating closely with the Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein [State Center for Data Protection, Schleswig- Holstein] (ULD), have completed a new version their program JAP. JAP is a client program for a network run by the AN.ON Project, which network is designed to allow users to surf anonymously.

In the past the operators of AN.ON have engaged in the odd scuffle with investigating authorities, who would like to see the service switched off altogether. The new JAP version has a kind of peer-to-peer technology built into it. Users of the current software release will now be able to make part of the bandwidth of their anonymous Internet connection available to other Internet surfers. They will thereby be offering independent access points to the Internet - and be contributing, the programmers hope, to the freedom of the World Wide Web.

Users of the likewise popular anonymzing service TOR of the Electronic Frontier Foundation will now also be able to use JAP as access software. To do so they have to enter JAP as (socks) proxy in the application to be anonymized. Users of older versions of JAP will have to switch to the current release 00.05.001 as the older versions will in future no longer be supported.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61985





Stop That File Sharing!

Installing XP SP2 can sometimes cause Simple File Sharing to turn on and conflict with GPOs. Here's a workaround.
Don Jones

This tip is part 1 in a series of 5 on living with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Windows XP SP2 is undoubtedly a great upgrade to WinXP, but it does introduce a few complications in any environment. Reader Aaron Spurlock writes in with this issue:

"It appears that WinXP SP2 turns simple file sharing back on for all computers, including those in a domain environment. It has caused me to rip my hair out several times wondering why I can't push anti-virus updates, why group policies aren't functioning, and why I cannot remotely administer computers."

After some back-and-forth and some virtual machine-based testing, we determined that adding XP to a domain turns Simple File Sharing (SFS) off, as it should; adding SP2 left SFS off. Just adding SP2 left SFS in its default state of on, and joining to the domain turned SFS off. Perfect. However, one of Aaron’s clients had just installed a computer from SP2-slipstreamed media and joined the computer to the domain—and SFS was left on. Weird.

Aaron’s solution was to deploy a batch file logon script that imports a registry file. Here’s the file he used:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
"forceguest"=dword:00000000

Ironically, you can control this setting from within a Group Policy object (GPO), but with SFS turned on, GPOs can’t download and apply properly. Oh, well. If you’ve got more insight on the SFS on-or-off problem, drop me a line at don@scriptinganswers.com. In the meantime, hopefully Aaron’s reg hack will help anyone who’s been dealing with this.
http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/print....torialsID=1049





Internet Worm Targeting File Sharing Amd IM Networks

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2005-08-02 20:41. Internet

Sophos has issued a warning about the W32/Hagbard-A worm that can pose on file-sharing networks as one of over 400 different downloadable programs, including disk images of popular PS2 and XBOX console games such as "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "Need For Speed Underground 2".

The worm once downloaded will attempt to spread using the Windows Messenger. An instant message will be sent to others with a link: "please download this...its only small brb."

"Because this worm can arrive in the form of an instant message, some users may be fooled into thinking it has come from a friend or colleague rather than a virus on their PC," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The reference to 'brb' is shorthand for 'be right back'. What the recipient doesn't realise is that once infected remote hackers can gain unauthorized access to the data on their computers."

Downloading pirated software and/or clicking on any IM links should always be avoided but, for some reason the public doesn't seem the get the message.
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/1179





'Darknets' Could Make File-Sharers Invisible To Authorities

Free-speech advocate working on system to share information anonymously.
Gil Kaufman

The music industry shouldn't get too comfortable with its recent Supreme Court victory over Grokster. An Irish programmer announced at a computer security conference last week that he is developing a new peer-to-peer file trading system that would be virtually invisible to the pryingeyes of government and corporations.

Promoting the idea of a "darknet," free-speech advocate Ian Clarke, 28, said he's developing a new version of his Freenet file-sharing system that will make it easier to trade digital information anonymously, in a bid to combat censorship and political repression — but not to necessarily violate copyrights — according to a report by The New York Times.

Clarke's announcement comes just a month after the Supreme Court ruled against P2P networks Grokster and StreamCast, deciding that their publishers can be held liable for copyright infringement as a result of using their products (see "File-Sharing Networks Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringements, Supreme Court Rules").

Clarke's new software — which he plans to release in a few months — differs from current open P2P networks, instead using a closed system that requires new users to be trusted by an existing member to enter into their "web of trust," keeping out those they don't know.

Though the new software will allow users to trade any kind of digital information they want securely, Clarke insists that his real goal is to help political dissidents in countries where computer networks are monitored by the government. He does admittedly dislike copyright laws and believes that his technology could create a world in which all information is freely exchanged. This is Clarke's second attempt at this kind of software, following his 2000 release of the original Freenet, which failed to catch on because it was harder to use than programs such as Grokster and LimeWire.

"The classic use for Freenet would be for a group of political dissidents in China, or even in the United States," Clarke said. It could, of course, also be used to trade movies, music, video games and other copyrighted software as well, he said, admitting, "It's an inevitable consequence of our design." And what if the anonymity provided by the software fell into the hands of terrorists intent on keeping their communications secret? Clarke said the benefits would still outweigh the potential harm.

"I think things like terrorism are the result of the absence of communication," he said.

Clarke isn't the only one looking to create closed P2P networks.

Computer-security researcher Ross Anderson is working with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a new P2P network that will also be unveiled in a few months. Like Clarke's, it is designed to resist censorship and allow for secure exchanges safe from monitoring.

Both developers will likely face opposition, which has already begun across the globe.

Japanese programmer Isamu Kaneko was arrested last year after two users were charged with sharing copyrighted material anonymously through his WinNY system. Also, the recording industry recently filed suit against users of Blubster, a Spanish P2P network that has privacy features.

Like the earlier P2P craze unleashed by the original version of Napster more than six years ago, darknets will likely be with us for a while, according to J. D. Lasica, author of "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation."

"Serious file traders have been gravitating toward them," he told the Times. "There is just this culture of freedom that people feel they're entitled to, and they don't want anyone looking over their shoulders."
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/150...headlines=true





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

Report Finds Canadian ISP Blocked Hundreds Of Sites

The OpenNet Initiative has released a report on the blockage of a union website by Canadian ISP Telus blockage. The report reveals that there were additional 766 websites that shared the same IP address and thus were also caught by the Telus action. These included an engineering company, a breast cancer fundraising site, an alternative medicine site based in Australia, and a Colorado based electronic recycling company. Report at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bul...-010-telus.pdf


1st Circuit Refuses To Order Japanese Site Blocked

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to order a Japanese site blocked. The case arose as part of a Lanham Act trademark action as the U.S. trademark holder argued that the Japanese site infringed its trademark. Case name is Cecil McBee v. Delica. Decision at http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opin...4-2733-01A.pdf





'Unacceptable potential risk' of competition more likely

Boston Airport Battles With Free Wi-Fi
Declan McCullagh

A free Wi-Fi service that competes with Logan Airport's paid-for service poses an 'unacceptable potential risk' to security forces gear, according to airport authorities

Boston's Logan International Airport is attempting to pull the plug on Continental Airlines' free Wi-Fi node, which competes with the airport's $7.95 (£4.48) per day pay service.

In an escalating series of threatening letters sent over the last few weeks, airport officials have pledged to "take all necessary steps to have the [Wi-Fi] antenna removed" from Continental's frequent flyer lounge. Continental's free service poses an "unacceptable potential risk" to communications gear used by the state police and the Transportation Security Administration, the letters claim.

For its part, Continental says that a 1996 law prevents local officials from meddling with wireless service and has asked the Federal Communications Commission to intervene. Its letter to the FCC argues that the agency has "exclusive jurisdiction" over Wi-Fi and should keep local authorities at bay.

"We believe that offering free Wi-Fi at Boston's Logan airport is consistent with the FCC's regulations and its prior rulings on similar issues and that it is permissible under the terms of our lease," Continental spokeswoman Julie King said Wednesday. The airline provides free wireless access at all of its Presidents Club lounges worldwide.

The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), the state government agency that operates Logan airport, was not available for comment.

At stake is a sizable chunk of revenue that Massport receives from its pay-per-use Wi-Fi service, which is operated by a commercial provider called Advanced Wireless Group. Massport did not respond to queries about the current sum, but the Boston Globe reported two years ago that the contract gives Massport "up to a maximum of 20 percent of annual gross revenues, which could exceed $1m annually."

Whether Continental will be allowed to continue its free service in its Presidents Club lounge may depend on the FCC's interpretation of an obscure set of rules that grew out of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. While Congress appears to have intended to authorise outdoor antennas and satellite dishes under a certain size, the airline claims the law covers Wi-Fi antennas built into access points — an interpretation the FCC also mentions on its Web page on the topic.

Massport is conceding nothing. Deborah Lau Kee, an attorney for the state agency, wrote in a July 5 letter that the FCC's regulations may not even be "lawful." Kee added that Continental is free to purchase access from Massport's partner at a "very reasonable rate structure for airline use based on the number of emplanements at Logan airport or on the number of 'hits'."

The FCC has started its investigation of Continental's request and is accepting public comments until 29 August.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050804/152/fous1.html





'Copyrighting Songs, Movies Will Soon Be Obsolete’
Glenn Chapman

Software that will allow people to anonymously swap music and other files on the Internet could render copyrighting of songs and movies obsolete by year's end, a creator said on Wednesday.

A test version of the 'darknet' software was made available on a Freenet Project website early on Wednesday and a refined edition could soon be ready "for general consumption", Ian Clarke of Freenet told AFP.

The software is intended to allow computer users worldwide to exchange files online in a way that hides them from industry investigators, vindictive politicians and others, Clarke said.

Music recording industry goliaths have fought to crush such renegade file sharing, which they claim fosters piracy of copyrighted material by musicians. Darknet software has so far been treated as a tolerable bane by copyright defenders because programmes have been difficult to use and limited to sharing between groups of no more than five or 10 computer users.

"We've devised a way you can have a darknet with potentially millions of users," Clarke said. "We hope we will have something suitable for launch this side of Christmas."

The Recording Industry Association of America won a recent US Supreme Court ruling that said online services that aid illicit file swapping are responsible accomplices in what amounts to theft.

Clarke said that Freenet is altruistically advancing technology and defending democratic ideals of unrestrained communication. "Our goal has never been to encourage copyright infringement, however, you cannot have freedom of communication and protect copyright laws," he continued. "The two are mutually exclusive."

Darknet software is a natural progression in increased security for computer users, Clarke said. The programme would let people weave clandestine global networks of peers they trust in an "invitation only" manner.

He predicted Freenet clandestine networks would undergo rapid "viral spreading." Clarke equated the forming of covert online allegiances with the way French resistance fighters warily gauged who to trust during World War II.

"If you are foolish enough to establish a link to an agent of the Chinese government then the only person hurt by that would be you," said Clarke, who maintained Freenet was created to battle Internet tyranny in places such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

"You will have an option of being part of a global network without fear," Clarke said. "The whole copyright thing came out of left field for us."

People who make music and films deserve to be compensated for their creations, but must wake up to the fact that copyrighting is an impotent remnant of a past era, according to Clarke.

Demanding legal or political intervention to prop up copyrights is misguided, Clarke said. "In a capitalist system, if things change, you adapt," Clarke said, advising studios to invest in technology instead of lawyers.

"If you are selling water in the desert and one day it starts to rain, what do you do?" he asked rhetorically. "Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?"

Freenet's user-cloaking software was tested by about 2,000 members of Orkut, an online social network created by Internet search giant Google, with "very positive results," Clarke said.

If Freenet's darknet software lives up to its promise, then "techniques used today to trace individual users simply will not work," according to Doug Tygar, a computer professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tygar predicted the release of effective, wide-scale darknet software is inevitable. "I think the music industry will have a strong challenge working in these kinds of environments," Tygar said, advising studios to evolve to survive.

RIAA representatives declined an offer to comment for this article on Wednesday. "We are not against file sharing," Jonathan Lamy said in an interview a day earlier. "It has been an abuse of technology by bad actors."
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13909982

















Until next week,

- js.



















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