[JackSpratts]

Average PC is a Smorgasboard for a New MP3-Eating Trojan
Jacqui Cheng

It's no secret that people like to collect music on their PCs, with music files taking up more and more hard drive space as time goes on. Recent data from Comscore says that as of April of this year the typical computer in the US contains an average of 880 MP3 files, taking up roughly 3GB of hard drive space. Compared to the average number of Word documents (197), PDFs (100), and Excel files (77), music files make up the single most common type of file found on an average computer by a long shot.

But that very hobby could bite an avid MP3 collector in the butt if a new worm makes its way into their computers. A newly-uncovered worm called W32.Deletemusic does exactly what its name implies—it goes through a PC and deletes all MP3 files in sight. And that's it. Simultaneously low-threat and highly annoying, the worm makes its way from computer to computer by spreading itself onto all attached drives of a given PC, including flash drives and removable media. If that media is then removed and inserted into another computer, it continues its music-eating rampage on the new host.

This isn't the first time such a worm has gone after MP3 files. Nopir-B made its rounds some two years ago and posed as DVD copying software, according to security firm Sophos. When users tried to run it, Nopir-B scolded them for participating in piracy and proceeded to delete all MP3s from their computers. Similarly, last year's Erazer trojan deleted not only MP3 files, but AVIs, MPEGs, WMVs, and ZIP files as well in a "crusade" against piracy.

Of course, these worms don't take into account the fact that many MP3 files may not be pirated at all—they could be legitimate downloads, ripped from CDs, or even recorded by users themselves. And while losing an entire music collection that you've dedicated so much time into ripping, labeling, and organizing can be devastating, there is no real payload for the worm's efforts. Such foresight isn't exactly the forte of these trojan-writers, according to Sophos' Graham Cluley. "The authors of this worm are more likely to be teenage mischief makers than the organized criminal gangs we typically see authoring financially-motivated malware these days," he said in a statement seen by IDG News Service.

A quick poll among the Ars Technica staff shows that not only do we all have a disproportionate number of MP3 files compared to the national average, some of us would be quite a bit more inconvenienced than others if we were to get bitten by the W32.Deletemusic bug. The number of music files on our computers ranged from the low end of 1,400 all the way up to a staggering 35,000, and we're sure that some of our readers could probably give those numbers a run for their money. And that's why Cluley advises that users should turn off any autorun functionalities on their computers to prevent the worm from spreading.

W32.Deletemusic affects computers running Windows 2000/95/98/Me/NT/Server 2003/Vista/XP.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ng-trojan.html





Storm Worm's Virulence May Change Tactics
Erik Larkin

The swiftly spiking onslaught of the Storm Worm may signal an upcoming change in how its creators intend to wield their weapon.

I caught up with Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at managed security company SecureWorks, at the Black Hat conference. He says that since June 1st, his company has blocked a boggling 20 million attack e-mails carrying the Storm Worm payload. That's up from just over 70,000 attacks seen during the longer span from the beginning of the year through the end of May.

"It's getting out of hand," Stewart says.

And that's just from the networks they're seeing. Mail security company Postini recently said that the during the most recent Storm Worm flood, it saw 120 million attack e-mails in the span of five days.

The misnamed Storm Worm isn't actually a worm; it's a bot, used to corral infected computers together into a network called a botnet, which can then be issued commands by a central criminal controller. One common command is to send vast amounts of spam.

For example, "sending out billions of e-mails per day is effortless" for the Storm Worm botnet, Stewart says.

From the number of infected machines he's found, Stewart estimates that the Storm botnet could comprise anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million infected computers. And that raises questions, along with eyebrows.

"Why do you need a botnet that big?" he asks. "You don't need a million [infected computers] to send spam."

For spam, a million-strong botnet might be overkill. But botnets can do much more - like launching denial-of-service attacks. These attacks aim to overwhelm a Web site or Internet server by sending it a constant stream of garbage data at a particular Web site or Internet server.

Garbage data from one source isn't hard to deal with. But multiply that by a million, and you're talking about a raging deluge.

The Storm Worm is capable of launching DoS attacks, and has already been used for them. So the huge rise in the malware's spread may mean that its creator is getting ready to expand his revenue stream and rent out his botnet for powerful DoS attacks.

The good news is that if you're smart, it's not hard to avoid becoming a Storm Worm victim. So far, the bot spreads as e-mail attachments sent to addresses harvested from infected machines. There's a good chance you've seen it already, in the guise of a fake news story or a supposed e-greeting card.

If you were smart enough to avoid opening those attachments, and are smart enough to continue to avoid all unexpected attachments in the future, you'll likely stay safe from the Storm Worm. Unfortunately, as the malware's continued spread proves, there are plenty who aren't so smart.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...virulence.html





Consumer Reports on 'State of the Net': It's a Jungle Out There
Paul McNamara

A “State of the Net” survey due out Monday from Consumer Reports, the most widely trusted name in consumer protection, makes clear that Americans continue to have ample cause to distrust Internet interactions … yet many remain woefully ignorant in terms of protecting themselves – and their children -- from the most obvious dangers.

The combination has cost consumers $7 billion over two years, according to Consumer Reports. (It also reminds us that IRS employees are hired from the same gene pool in which we all swim.)

The sweeping study does include nuggets of good news, however, including a contention that less spam is hitting consumer inboxes.

In addition to the survey, a related Consumer Reports test of nine security software suites finds that one from Trend Micro offers the best combination of performance and price.

Among the survey findings:

Computer viruses have prompted 1.8 million households to junk their PCs over the past two years, while spyware has claimed another 850,000 machines in just the past six months.

Not surprisingly given those numbers, 17 percent of PC users lack any virus protection and a third of respondents fail to guard their machines against spyware.

Extrapolating from the survey results, some 650,000 people have bitten on a spam-promoted product or service offerings over the past six months (and there’s no way that they all live in Florida).

Five percent of those surveyed who have children under the age of 18 report that their kids have inadvertently been exposed to pornography through spam, while the Consumer Reports press release made no mention of how many kids opened smutty spam on purpose.

While lawmakers continue to hound MySpace 24/7, we learn that not all parents are worried sick over the notion that Junior or Missy may be divulging too much 411 online: Among respondents whose kids go online, 13 percent of the youngsters registered on MySpace failed to meet the site’s 14-year-old age minimum, and 3 percent were younger than 10. As the press release notes: “And those were just the ones the parents knew about.”

The September issue of Consumer Reports includes all of the gory details.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18117





Hackers: Social Networking Sites Flawed
Jordan Robertson

Social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com are increasingly juicy targets for computer hackers, who are demonstrating a pair of vulnerabilities they claim expose sensitive personal information and could be exploited by online criminals.

The flaws are being demonstrated this week at the Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, which draw thousands of people to Las Vegas each year for five days of training and demonstrations of the latest exploits.

Black Hat, the more genteel of the two events with heavy industry sponsorship and big admission fees, ended Thursday with some 4,000 attendees. Defcon, larger and more roguish, started smoothly Friday, without any of the registration problems that irked fire officials last year and caused lengthy delays. Organizers said more than 6,800 people attended the first day, with more expected Saturday.

There was a moment of drama in the afternoon when organizers received a tip that an undercover NBC producer was covertly filming some of the sessions. The woman was identified during one of the presentations, and she hustled away from the convention site without comment.

An NBC spokeswoman said the network doesn't comment on its newsgathering practices. Defcon organizers said NBC had been offered press credentials but declined.

Infiltrating password-protected social networking sites has been an increasingly fruitful area of study for hobbyists and professional computer security researchers.

One hacker, Rick Deacon, a 21-year-old network administrator from Beachwood, Ohio, says he's discovered a so-called "zero-day" flaw — or a problem that hasn't been patched yet — in MySpace that allows intruders to commandeer personal Web pages and possibly inject malicious code.

Deacon is scheduled to present his findings Sunday. So far, it only affects older versions of the Firefox Web browser and does not affect Internet Explorer, he said.

The attack uses a so-called "cross-site scripting" vulnerability, a common type of flaw found in Web applications that involves injecting code onto someone else's Web page.

The vulnerability could not be independently verified, but experts said these types of attacks are a particular problem for social networking sites, where it's difficult to police the content of the millions of posts each day.

Deacon said the flaw he discovered requires that a user click on a link that leads to a Web page where the computer's "cookie" information is stolen. Deacon said he discovered the problem several months ago along with several other researchers and alerted MySpace, but the company didn't fix the problem.

"Facebook and MySpace both patch things that they find, but it's like a sandbox," Deacon said. "There's so much. And there are probably hundreds more cross-site scripting vulnerabilities there. There's no way they can find them all."

A MySpace spokeswoman declined to comment specifically about Deacon's presentation. The company said in a statement that "it's our responsibility to have the most responsive, solely dedicated 24-7 safety and security team, and we do."

In a separate demonstration, Robert Graham, chief executive of Atlanta-based Errata Security, showed a program for snooping on the computers on public wireless networks to steal the "cookie" information and hijack e-mail accounts and personal Web pages on social networks.

In his Black Hat presentation, he took over the e-mail account of an audience member using Google Inc.'s Gmail service. Graham said his program demonstrates the vulnerability of public wireless connections.

"Everyone has gotten into their minds that passwords over WiFi are toxic, so let's fix that, and they have," Graham said. "What I'm saying is that everything else is just as toxic."

Graham's demonstration would not have worked if the audience member had been using the encrypted version of Gmail.

Google declined to comment specifically on the presentation but said the company is expanding its capacity to enable automatic encryption for all Gmail users.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070806/...ulnerabilities





Hackers Click Locks Open at Conference in US

Hackers gathered in Las Vegas on Saturday showed ways to crack electronic key-card systems and deadbolt locks used at security-sensitive places including the White House and the Pentagon.

"If you can't physically protect your computer, you are screwed," said Zac Franken, a hacker who engineered a way to outwit door locks relying on key cards.

"Most people think that computers inside buildings are secure. How many computers do you see left logged on at night?"

Franken's creation was among the real-world lock-cracking revelations made at the DefCon hackers conference, where a room is devoted to the "sport" of lock picking.

Medeco deadbolt locks relied on worldwide at embassies, banks and other tempting targets for thieves, spies or terrorists can be opened in seconds with a strip of metal and a thin screw driver, Marc Tobias of Security.org demonstrated for AFP.

"This is incredible; it's unreal," Tobias said while showing the ease with which the locks can breached.

"Medeco has one of the best designed locks in the world, but with this kind of attack it's all irrelevant."

US-based Medeco is owned by ASSA ABLOY Group, a Swedish conglomerate that describes itself as the world's leading manufacturer and supplier of locks. Medeco officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.

"This is not the only company," Tobias said. "There are lot of them; lots of deadbolts with similar weakness."

Tobias said he notified Medeco by email repeatedly during the past two months about cracking their deadbolt locks and hasn't gotten a reply.

Tobias says he refuses to publish details of "defeating" the locks because they are used in places ranging from homes, banks and jewelers to the White House and the Pentagon. He asked AFP not to disclose how it is done.

"This can cause a lot of trouble," Tobias said. "They need to fix this. If you have one of these on your house or wherever you'd better be concerned."

Franken is equally protective of the simple electronics he uses in a device that can be spliced into wires connecting key card readers to computer systems that control door locks on many businesses.

"The access control system is inherently insecure," Franken said. "I just walk up, pop off a cover held on by two screws, put my device in and we're away."

Easy targets for the "physical hack," involving manipulating hardware instead of computer software, are electronic key scanner pads at doors where workers step outside for cigarette breaks, according to Franken.

Once the device is spliced into place, encoded cards can be used to command it to replay the last valid entry code or have the system deny access to people with legitimate cards, Franken demonstrated.

"Basically, I can now lock all the valid users out while I can still get in," Franken said. "There is no patch for this."

Tobias advocates for a "Hogwarts School for Reality," which like the fictional school of magic made famous in the "Harry Potter" novels would aim to inspire children to act creatively -- in this case by applying technology to security needs on and offline.

"It's no difference breaking into a lock or a computer," Tobias said.

"If you can get past locks you get to the computers. This is the real world; we need the real world Hogwarts."
http://www.physorg.com/news105532486.html





Point and Click Gmail Hacking at Black Hat
Humphrey Cheung

I’ve just received an email that says “I like sheep”, but it wasn’t sent by my friend – it was sent by a hacker posing as my friend. At the Black Hat security convention, Robert Graham, the CEO of errata security, surprised attendees by hijacking a Gmail session on camera and reading the victim’s email. He went even further by demonstrating the attack to us in person, taking over another journalist’s Gmail account and then sending us sheep-loving emails.

The attack is actually quite simple. First Graham needs to be able to sniff data packets and in our case the open Wi-Fi network at the convention fulfilled that requirement. He then ran Ferret to copy all the cookies flying through the air. Finally, Graham cloned those cookies into his browser – in easy point-and-click fashion - with a home-grown tool called Hamster.

The attack can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application and Graham has tested it successfully against popular webmail programs like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. He stressed that since the program just uses cookies, he only needs an IP address and usernames and passwords aren’t required.

“I see ten people’s cookies on my screen, I just need to click on the guy’s IP address and I’m in. Once you get someone’s Google account, you’d be surprised at the stuff you’d find,” said Graham.

Graham gave us a first-hand demonstration of the attack in the press room. George Ou, Technical Director of ZDNet and author of the blog “Real World IT” , bravely volunteered to be the victim by making a new Gmail account called getmehacked@gmail.com. Ou logged onto Black Hat’s wireless network and emailed me a prophetic message, “Hey Humphrey, I'm about to be hijacked.”

While Ou was typing, Graham was running Ferret and sniffing all the cookies that were being sent from Ou’s laptop and Google. Graham then clicked on Ou’s IP address and Gmail page, complete with Ou’s recently sent message on the screen. We photographed both Graham’s and Ou’s laptop at that time and posted it to the picture gallery. You’ll see that the contents are exactly the same.

Reading email is one thing; sending email is much more exciting. Graham typed out a short message, “I like sheep” and sent it to my account. A short moment later, my Outlook popped with that message. Interestingly enough, that message also appeared on Ou’s screen.

But if that wasn’t scary enough, Graham told us that he can even log in the next day or possibly several days later into the Gmail account. “I can just copy the data to a file and replay it later. I’ve been able to log into Gmail accounts one day later,” said Graham.

Since the attack relies on sniffing traffic, using SSL or some type of encryption (like a VPN tunnel) would stop Graham in his tracks. However, many people browsing at public wireless hotspots don’t use such protections.

“You’re an idiot if you use T-Mobile hotspot,” said Graham.

You would think that Graham would be having lots of fun testing out his tools. After all, the ability to read and send other people’s email with impunity would be enough power to send most people (especially at Black Hat) through the roof, but Graham says that isn’t so.

“I’m not having too much fun because I usually can’t send emails that say ‘I like sheep’”, said Graham. Not wanting to break the law, his victims have usually been his friends or co-workers, but that’s about to change because of the free-fire nature of the upcoming Defcon convention’s wi-fi network.

“People expect to be hacked at Defcon, so I’m going to have a blast there,” Graham said. He added that the Hamster tool will be released in the next few days.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33207/108/





Undercover Reporter Outed, Flees DefCon Conference

The DefCon security conference is buzzing after an undercover NBC-Universal reporter fled the building after being publicly exposed for using a spy camera to film attendees.

DefCon organizer Jeff Moss called out Michelle Madigan, an Associate Producer for NBC-Universal, from stage during the "Tactical Exploitation" session.

"It came to our attention that a reporter might be here with a hidden pinhole camera," Moss told the crowd, which he said left two options. One was to let her corner some 13-year-old kid and get him to admit to hacking. The other was to escort her away.

Amidst clapping and jeering from the crowd, Madigan quickly left, followed by a good-sized crowd of reporters and attendees. And ironically, became the big story she had hoped to capture.

According to a senior security staff member who goes by the name Priest, a number of unnamed attendees tipped off conference staff about Michelle Madigan's plans to use a hidden camera at the conference. All of us press signed an agreement to not take photos or video without express permission, so using a hidden camera is a major rule-breaker.

"We knew from the moment she took off," Priest said.

Another Defcon 'goon,' or security person, who wants to stay anonymous says he asked Madigan if she wanted press credentials when she arrived, but she turned him down. He asked if she wanted to see the press rules and regulations, and she again said no. Amazingly, he says Madigan then said she had to go to the bathroom and put on a hidden camera.

Not the most adept attempt at going undercover. Her hidden camera was inside a black bag Madigan carried over her shoulder, the security person says. The bag is visible in the image above.

According to the security person, it was "painfully obvious that [Madigan] was panning her purse around the room."

Basically, Madigan badly screwed up here. She didn't only violate DefCon's clear rules - she crossed the line for journalistic ethics. She's got no sympathy here in the press room as I write this.

Ironically, the drama may bring to light some similarities between the hackers and the reporters here to cover them.

"Ten percent of you guys, just like ten percent of us, have given you all a bad name," says Priest. "The criminal element is a very small element of this community."
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005078.html





Middle America, Meet The Hackers
Andy Greenberg

Don't try to hack the hackers.

That's what Dateline NBC's Associate Producer Michelle Madigan learned at this year's DefCon, the largest gathering of hackers, crackers and security professionals in the world. Going undercover, she hoped to reveal cybercriminals talking openly about their illegal exploits. Instead, the sting backfired: A conference organizer outed her in a room filled with thousands of her would-be targets.

The crowd, usually a friendly group despite some vampirish clothes and complexions, wasn't pleased. As a few chanted "burn the witch," Madigan scurried out of the Riviera Hotel to her car, with about 150 hackers-turned-hecklers in pursuit.
In Pictures: Hacking Outside The Box

DefCon's inhospitable treatment of Madigan wasn't just because she was missing a press badge, says one conference spokesman who goes by the handle "Priest." She had also missed the point. By focusing on the bad apples, Priest says, Madigan was glossing over DefCon's true spirit: smart people getting together to mess around with technology.

"Middle America thinks we're stealing your social security numbers, raping your children and breaking into your bank account," he says. "The reality is, we are the ultimate explorers. We see a technology, and we want to know how it works."

That exploration goes well beyond invading the closed corners of the Internet. DefCon's more than 6,000 attendees hack everything: their cars, to increase horsepower and remove pesky safety and emissions controls; their brains, using biofeedback receptors attached to videogames to relieve anxiety disorders; even the war in Iraq. One Navy engineer gave a presentation detailing the nine months he spent hacking insurgent bombs, jamming their radio frequencies to prevent detonation.

"The people who built the Mars rovers are hackers," says Jeff Moss, also known as "Dark Tangent," the hacker who has organized DefCon for the last 15 years. "We generally like hacks that aren't nefarious, that involve figuring something out from the ground up. That's what we try to reward here."

That kind of harmless hacking was channeled into a variety of competitions at the conference, including a lockpicking contest and a game of capture the flag, in which teams earned points by stealing bits of each other's data.

Of course, DefCon still attracts some true "black hat" hackers, bent on learning the newest tools for illegal intrusion, sabotage, espionage and credit card theft. And what attracts cybercriminals also attracts cybercops; any attendee who can verify the identity of an undercover cop wins an "I Spotted the Fed" T-shirt.

But as the danger of online crime shifts from amateur hackers to organized cybergangs in Eastern Europe and Asia, the Feds are increasingly cooperative with DefCon's shenanigans. This year, at least six federal employees revealed themselves in press conferences and panel discussions. More bizarrely, two federal agents were married during the conference's closing ceremony.

In fact, DefCon's species of armchair hackers are more of a distraction for law enforcement than a real menace, says Jim Christy, director of future exploration at the Department of Defense's Cyber Crime Center. He's more focused on the potential for major attacks on critical infrastructure or government Web sites, like the kind that rattled Estonia's government Web sites in May, or the "Titan Rain" attacks that penetrated the U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of State computers in past years.

"Run-of-the-mill individual hackers are just noise as we try to focus on the real problem," he says. "We have to investigate every threat, but we're often dealing with ankle biters."

When DefCon's hackers do venture into the illegal, it's often based on impulses that are more libertarian than malicious, says a hacker known as "Dead Addict," another of DefCon's organizers. "We simply don't take the law as a moral compass," he says.

Dead Addict, a lanky 34-year-old dressed in all black and a bowler hat, points out that he began using the Internet in the early '90s, even before the advent of Internet service providers. At the time, only users with university connections could legally connect. He, and many others without university accounts still found ways to borrow access, essentially breaking the law. In that sense, Dead Addict argues, Internet culture has always bent, and sometimes broken, the legal rules.

That's not to say that true cybercrime doesn't hold a certain temptation. Though Dead Addict now works for a major technology company, he says he was once offered a job with a so-called "online pharmacy."

"I politely declined," he says. "But if I'd taken that job, I'd probably be basking on some tropical beach right now."

Dead Addict says that many of the hackers that gave DefCon its renegade reputation in earlier days have now grown up and, like himself, launched legitimate careers in security with big-name tech companies. But a lucrative day job leaves DefCon's hackers to focus on what Dead Addict says is the original sense of hacking.

"It's about a passion for technology. It's thinking about what technology can do, rather than what it was originally intended to do," he says. "It's about a bunch of people with time on their hands saying, 'Wouldn't it be cool if ...?'"
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/06/sec...?partner=links





How to Bring Down Internet Explorer With Six Words

Thanks to Kelly Yancey, who found a Japanese Blog that discussed an interesting bit of HTML, it reminds me of the Doctor Who special called ‘The Christmas Invasion’, where the Prime Minister destroys the retreating Sycorax spaceship, much to the Doctor’s annoyance.

The Doctor: Don’t challenge me, Harriet Jones. ‘Cause I’m a completely new man. I could bring down your Government with a single word.
Harriet Jones: You’re the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. But I don’t think you’re quite capable of that.
The Doctor: No, you’re right. Not a single word.
[pause]
The Doctor: Just six.
Harriet Jones: I don’t think so.
The Doctor: Six words.
Harriet Jones: Stop it!
The Doctor: Six.
[approaches Alex, whispering in his ear]
The Doctor: Don’t you think she looks tired?

How to bring down IE with six words…

… or more specifically five HTML tags and a CSS declaration.
<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input /></table>

In short, it sends Internet Explorer down in flames. IE is not known for great CSS support at the best of times, I suppose here that some piece of badly written code within IE did not expect the wildcard and so IE is going round in an infinite loop, causing a memory error or buffer overrun or one of these other horrible things that languages without inbuilt memory management are susceptible to.

Kelly reported that it was only IE6, however, I tested in IE7 and had a similar effect.

Houston we have a problem.
http://commandline.org.uk/2007/how-t...ith-six-words/





All links at source

Pure Java™, Pure Evil™ Popups
Giorgio

Imagine you’re a web advertiser.
Imagine you can open a popup window from a web page defeating any popup blocker.
Imagine this popup can invade the whole desktop, full screen.
Imagine this popup has no title bar, no menus, no toolbar, no location bar, no border and no buttons. No mean to close it.
Imagine user can’t move or minimize this popup. It will go away only when the browser is killed or your show is done…

Now imagine you’re a phisher.
Imagine you can use this almighty popup to draw anything you want. A fake browser or — why not? — a whole fake desktop to collect user’s data.

Impossible wet dreams of clueless evildoers?
No, it’s just 100% Pure Java™ Reality.

If you’re using Opera or a Gecko-based browser, a similar full screen evil can be performed with just a few JavaScript lines. No need to compile and host any applet, thanks to the LiveConnect technology.

I’ve notified Sun on 29-Jul-2007.
My bug report has been evaluated and publicly disclosed by Sun yesterday (06-Aug-2007) as a request for enhancement.
Update (08-Aug-2007):

Looks like responsibly filing a bug in the Sun’s bug tracker, religiously waiting one week for its classification by Sun engineers and having it finally published by Sun itself as a non-security-related RFE is not enough to go public. I should have known that security reports should be submitted to security-alert at sun dot com to be properly handled. When Maarten Van Horenbeeck (SANS ISC) did it, Sun requested him to request me “to keep the issue confidential, and hold the blog post, till Sun has completely fixed it and is ready to issue a Sun Alert to warn users“. At that time, my post had already been read and commented by many “hackers” supporting full disclosure. Therefore, I respectfully answered (directly to security-alert at sun dot com, with SANS in CC) explaining why retracting it would have been useless, but apologized for my mishandled report and offered any other help, including my promise to use security-alert at sun dot com instead of the regular bug tracker for future responsible disclosures. I received no answer yet, but in the meanwhile my bug report has been reclassified and made inaccessible. I still wonder why should I have known better than a Sun Bug Tracker employee what the proper channel for a security report was…

Will this take more or less than ten days to be fixed?

In the meanwhile, NoScript is your friend

Demos
Applet based, works in any browser
JavaScript based, works in Opera and Gecko-based browsers
http://hackademix.net/2007/08/07/java-evil-popups





Bloggers Consider Forming Labor Union
Ashley M. Heher

Do bloggers need their own Norma Rae?

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

The effort is an extension of the blogosphere's growing power and presence, especially within the political realm, and for many, evokes memories of the early labor organization of freelance writers in the early 1980s.

Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will not only showcase the growing professionalism of the Web-based writers, but also the importance of their roles in candidates' campaigns.

"I think people have just gotten to the point where people outside the blogosphere understand the value of what it is that we do on the progressive side," said Susie Madrak, the author of Suburban Guerilla blog, who is active in the union campaign. "And I think they feel a little more entitled to ask for something now."

But just what that something is may be hard to say.

In a world as diverse, vocal and unwieldy as the blogosphere, there's no consensus about what type of organization is needed and who should be included. Some argue for a free-standing association for activist bloggers while others suggest a guild open to any blogger — from knitting fans to video gamers — that could be created within established labor groups.

Others see a blogger coalition as a way to find health insurance discounts, fight for press credentials or even establish guidelines for dealing with advertising and presenting data on page views.

"It would raise the professionalism," said Leslie Robinson, a writer at ColoradoConfidential.com. "Maybe we could get more jobs, bona fide jobs."

But not everyone is on board.

"The reason I like blogging is that it's very anarchistic. I can do whatever I want whenever I want, and oh my God, you're not going to tell me what to do," said Curt Hopkins, the founder of the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

"The blogosphere is such a weird term and such a weird idea. It's anyone who wants to do it," Hopkins said. "There's absolutely no commonality there. How will they find a commonality to go on? I think it's doomed to failure on any sort of large scale."

About 11 percent of American Internet users have created Web pages or blogs for others while eight percent have created their own online journals or Weblogs, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

With pages focused on everything from bird watching to celebrity footwear, more than 120,000 blogs are created every day and more than 58,000 new posts are made each hour, according to data from Technorati, which tracks more than 94 million blogs worldwide.

Few bloggers are paid for their posts, and even fewer are able to make a living doing the work. But many say they often devote as much energy and time to their online musings as they do to their salaried careers.

While bloggers work to organize their own labor movement, their growing numbers are already being courted by some unions.

"Bloggers are on our radar screen right now for approaching and recruiting into the union," said Gerry Colby, president of the National Writers Union, a local of the United Auto Workers. "We're trying to develop strategies to reach bloggers and encourage them to join."

Unsurprisingly, there's decidedly less support for a union movement among conservative bloggers.

Mark Noonan, an editor at Blogs for Bush and a senior writer at GOP Bloggers, said he worries that a blogger union would undermine the freewheeling nature of the blogosphere, regardless of its political composition.

"We just go out there and write what is on our mind, damn the critics," he said. "To make a union is to start to provide a firm structure for the blogosphere and that would merely make the blogosphere a junior-league (mainstream media). ... Get us a union and other 'professional' organizations and we'll start to be conformist and we'll start to be just another special interest."

But that's not how Kirsten Burgard sees it.

Sitting at a panel titled "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize" at this week's YearlyKos Convention for bloggers in Chicago, Burgard said she'd welcome a chance to join a unionized blogging community.

"I sure would like to have that union bug on my Web site," said Burgard, a blogger who uses the moniker Bendy Girl.

Madrak hopes that regardless the form, the labor movement ultimately will help bloggers pay for medical bills. It's important, she said, because some bloggers can spend hours a day tethered to computers as they update their Web sites.

"Blogging is very intense — physically, mentally," she said. "You're constantly scanning for news. You're constantly trying to come up with information that you think will mobilize your readers. In the meantime, you're sitting at a computer and your ass is getting wider and your arm and neck and shoulder are wearing out because you're constantly using a mouse."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070806/...CLvrwARiFk24cA





‘Fake Steve’ Blogger Comes Clean
Brad Stone

For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and one of the world’s most famous businessmen.

The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley’s overall aura of excess.

The acerbic postings of “Fake Steve,” as he is known, have attracted a plugged-in readership — both the real Mr. Jobs and Bill Gates have acknowledged reading the blog (fakesteve.blogspot.com). At the same time, Fake Steve has evaded the best efforts of Silicon Valley’s gossips to discover his real identity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.

“I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,” said Mr. Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. “I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.”

Mr. Lyons writes and edits technology articles for Forbes and is the author of two works of fiction, most recently a 1998 novel, “Dog Days.” In October, Da Capo Press will publish his satirical novel written in the voice of the Fake Steve character, “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.”

Unlike the off-the-cuff ramblings on his blog, “Options” is a well-plotted satire that imagines Apple’s chief executive grappling with his real-life stock option backdating troubles and getting help, and bad advice, from friends like Larry Ellison, Bono and Al Gore.

The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons’s unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of “Fake Steve” to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com).

Mr. Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year, when a small group of chief executives turned bloggers attracted some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. “I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it.”

Mr. Lyons says he recalled trying out the voices of several chief executives before settling on the colorful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.

Though many speculators have guessed Fake Steve was an Apple insider, Mr. Lyons says he has never interviewed Mr. Jobs nor written a story about the company. “I have zero sources inside Apple,” he said. “I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story.”

Mr. Lyons said writing as Fake Steve became addictive. He developed a unique lexicon and catalog of insults for the character. Bill Gates is Beastmaster, and Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, is Squirrel Boy.

Last month, when a reader asked Fake Steve about Apple’s succession plan, he replied: “My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power. The truth is, I am not human — I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder.”

Mr. Lyons receives around 50 e-mail messages a day through the blog, many with ideas for posts, and says the site had 700,000 visitors last month. Recently someone claiming to be Mr. Jobs’s daughter, Lisa, wrote to tell him, “You don’t sound at all like my father, but your blog is hilarious.”

The guessing game around his identity was intense, with speculation centering on a variety of plugged-in journalists, former Apple employees and even Mr. Jobs himself.

Over the last year, Forbes’s publisher, Richard Karlgaard, even got into the act, speculating about Fake Steve’s identity on Forbes.com several times. At one point he wrote: “The guessing game has begun. Who is writing it? Send me your guesses. I’ll gladly buy the most expensive iPod for the first to identify Fake Steve Jobs.”

Mr. Lyons said he felt bad and later revealed himself to his bosses and colleagues.

Mr. Karlgaard said he had a good laugh and holds no grudges. “I think it is the most brilliant caricature of an important part of American culture that I’ve seen,” he said. “We’re really proud that he’s one of ours.”

Forbes had planned to move the Secret Diary to Forbes.com in September, although it may now accelerate the move.

The Fake Steve saga calls to mind the guessing game behind “Primary Colors,” the political roman à clef written in 1992 by Joe Klein, then a Newsweek writer. Newsweek reacted differently, however, firing Mr. Klein when he allowed other writers at the magazine to speculate on the book’s author without tipping them off.

Mr. Lyons clearly used the Fake Steve persona to further some of his own interests and positions. For example, articles in other business publications and their journalists were a frequent target of criticism from Fake Steve, while Forbes got off comparatively easy.

Fake Steve also had it in for the devout fans of the open-source operating system Linux, calling them “freetards.” Mr. Lyons has written several articles for Forbes in which he has been critical of the cultlike aura around the free software movement and its founder, Richard Stallman.

He said that he never intended his blog to be mean-spirited and that he is a fan and customer of Apple. “If I really thought the Apple guys were going to find this guy and kill him, I wouldn’t want to do it. I was kind of hoping it would be puckish and fun. I think the guys in the Valley like the fact that it makes them into fictional characters. It’s a comic strip.”

Asked whether he was worried that he would be called to account for some of Fake Steve’s stinging, personal posts, Mr. Lyons chuckled and said, “Yes.”

As for Mr. Jobs himself — the real one — he did not seem all that interested when told the identity of his online doppelganger. He said in an instant message conversation that he had no interest in reading Mr. Lyons’s novel.

John Markoff contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/te...y/06steve.html





Matt Damon Gets Best Box-Office Return on Salary

Hollywood actors regularly earn millions of dollars per movie, but are they worth it?

Apparently some are.

A Forbes magazine survey published on Monday showed Matt Damon offers the best box-office return on his salary, more than twice that of Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise.

For every dollar "The Bourne Ultimatum" star was paid for his last three roles, the films returned $29 in gross income.

Jennifer Aniston was the top-ranked actress, making No. 5 on the list with a gross income return of $17.

Damon's first two outings in the Bourne trilogy have so far grossed around $850 million worldwide at the box office and in DVD sales, Forbes said. The latest installment opened last weekend, taking $70.2 million at the U.S. box office.

Aniston's rank was mainly the result of her role in "The Break Up," which grossed around $288 million worldwide.

Aniston's ex-husband Brad Pitt came in at No. 2, earning $24 for every dollar of his salary, while Aniston's former boyfriend Vince Vaughn grabbed third spot with $21, tying with "Pirates of the Caribbean" star Johnny Depp.

"The biggest stars in Hollywood are not the actors that deliver the biggest returns," Michael Ozanian, Forbes senior editor, said in a statement.

The survey found movies starring Hollywood heavyweights Hanks, Cruise and Will Smith averaged $12, $11 and $10 in gross income respectively for every salary dollar.

Funnymen Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey ranked near the bottom with Sandler bringing in $9 in gross income, and Ferrell and Carrey $8.

"American comedies don't translate as well as action flicks to foreign audiences," Forbes said.

Coming in at the bottom of the list was Oscar-winner Russell Crowe, whose past three movies -- "A Good Year," "Cinderella Man" and "Master and Commander" -- all disappointed at the box office and earned an average gross income of only $5 for each $1 of the Australian's salary.

Forbes.com calculated the net revenue for a film by adding the worldwide box office and U.S. DVD revenues and then taking away the budget. The net revenue was divided by an actor's total compensation to produce gross income. The average gross income of an actor's past three movies produced their return.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...42283420070806





"Bourne" Grosses $70 Million to Top Box Office

The amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne is back, and this time he clobbered Homer Simpson.

"The Bourne Ultimatum," the third movie in the espionage action series starring Matt Damon as a one-time CIA hit man searching for his past, grossed $70.2 million its opening weekend to rank as North America's top film at the box office, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

That tally marks the biggest first weekend ever for a movie in the month of August, surpassing the $67.4 million opening posted by "Rush Hour 2" the same weekend in 2001, according to "Bourne" distributor Universal Pictures.

The latest "Bourne" total also far exceeded the debut ticket sales generated by the first two films in the franchise.

By comparison, "The Bourne Identity" opened at No. 2 with $27.1 million in June 2002, and the "The Bourne Supremacy" landed at No. 1 in July 2004 with $52.5 million.

Those two films went on to gross nearly $485 million worldwide combined.

Last week's domestic box office champion, "The Simpsons Movie," a feature-length version of the long-running TV cartoon, slipped to second place in its second weekend with $25.6 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales.

Despite its 65 percent dropoff from week to week, "The Simpsons," from 20th Century Fox, has now racked up about $128.6 million domestically.

Universal Pictures is a division of NBC Universal, which is controlled by General Electric Co., while News Corp. owns 20th Century Fox.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070805/...boxoffice_dc_2





MPAA: Damage Caused By Uploader Can’t Be Measured in Money. Now Give Us Money
enigmax

According to the MPAA, a file-sharer who uploaded three movies to the internet caused damage so great it caused them an ‘irreperable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money’. Despite cash being completely inadequate to solve this 3-movie download armageddon, the MPAA is having a go anyway - demanding damages, costs and fees.

The MPAA just filed a lawsuit alleging that a resident of Rome made illegal copies of, and also uploaded - three movies to the internet using an “online media distribution system”, probably BitTorrent.

According to the report, no address was given for Mr James Wilson - the man accused by the MPAA of ‘willful and intentional’ copyright infringement. According to them, he made unauthorized copies of just three movies - ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘House of Wax’ and ‘Robots’ and uploaded them to the internet.

According to the lawsuit, the Plaintiffs (Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox), “bring this action to stop defendant from copying and distributing to others over the Internet unauthorized copies of the Plaintiff’s copyright motion pictures”

Noting that there was no financial motivation to the infringement it continues: “Defendant’s infringements allow Defendant and others to unlawfully obtain and distribute for free unauthorized copyright works that the plaintiffs spend millions of dollars to create and/or distribute”

The MPAA knows a thing or two about drama, it’s their business after all, so when assessing the trouble Mr Wilson had caused them by sharing 3 movies, they told it straight: “Defendant’s conduct is causing, and unless enjoined and restrained by this Court will continue to cause, the Plaintiffs great and irreparable injury that cannot be compensated or measured in money”

Of course, that doesn’t stop the MPAA trying to measure the costs: aside from demanding that any copies of the movies are destroyed (3 DVDRs I guess) they want substantial damages and costs for bringing the legal action.

Incidentally, the movie ‘House of Wax’ was also listed in the 2005 MPAA press release(.pdf) proclaiming the demise of EliteTorrents- so when the MPAA talks about ‘injury that cannot be compensated or measured in money’ I wonder if they’re thinking of how the last 6 months have been for Scott McCausland, sitting in prison.

And he shared just one movie.
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-damage-...give-us-money/





Dancing Ballmer Subjected to Zune Dance Therapy

Steve's happy feet stomp all over iPod ads
Joe Fay

If you’re sitting at your desk, staring out of the window and wishing you were running around in the sun, spare a thought for one Microsoft employee who will soon be doing just that. Permanently.

The japester appears to have used an internal Microsoft website to direct, well, just about anyone to this re-reinterpretation of Steve Ballmer’s infamous monkeyboy dance. Or is it a re-reinterpetation of Apple's iPod advertising campaign? In these mashed-up days, it's hard to tell.

As our informant says, “Who says Microsoft "ain't down" with the web2.0 kids.”

Well, the Web 2.0 kids for a start probably.

Just for added August-ness, the same page throws up this.

Which should be a joke, but feels just a little too real for our comfort.

Bootnote

Thanks to Reg reader Richard for the tip off.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/01/ballmer_dances/





Windows XP SP3 Leaked
Peter White

Robin Hood was revered because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. And while it's not quite the same thing, there isn't a whole lot of sympathy being thrown towards Microsoft when it was heard that a testing release of Windows XP SP3 was leaked and is floating around the internet now. Everyone loved watching Mel Gibson prove he's an idiot. Everyone loved watching Kramer lose his mind. And everyone loves when things don't go as planned for Microsoft. We love when people who seem to have everything together show that they don't. Plus this Windows leak is an hilarious slap in the face to Steven Sinofsky's little attempt at complete secrecy. It's so fitting that he'd be unsuccessful at keeping things secret, since he looks a bit like a really terrible magician.

SP3 was given to a limited pool of testers in July, after being repeatedly delayed. It was originally planned to be release in 2005. Boy, did that ever go well. The leaked version of SP3 is not quite the finished product, or even a completed Beta, but that hasn't stopped it from becoming an incredibly popular torrent download. It comes in at around 340 Mb and can be found pretty much everywhere. But then again, you'd never download something illegally like this, would you?
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/08...xp-sp3-leaked/





Judge Says Unix Copyrights Rightfully Belong to Novell
John Markoff

In a decision that may finally settle one of the most bitter legal battles surrounding software widely used in corporate data centers, a federal district court judge in Utah ruled Friday afternoon that Novell, not the SCO Group, is the rightful owner of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system.

In the 102-page ruling, the judge, Dale A. Kimball, also said Novell could force SCO to abandon its claims against I.B.M., which SCO had sued. Judge Kimball’s decision in favor of Novell could almost entirely undermine SCO’s 2003 lawsuit against I.B.M.

The ruling could remove the cloud over open-source software like Linux, an operating system loosely modeled on the proprietary Unix. The unresolved ownership has been seen as a limiting factor in the willingness of computing managers for businesses large and small to adopt open-source software, which can be adapted freely by software developers and can be legally shared or modified by end users.

“It was argued that this was supposed to suggest riskiness in open source, but it turns out that the open-source world was rock solid from the beginning,” said Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University and the founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center, which advocates open-source software.

SCO’s shares declined by 1 cent, to $1.55, in after-hours trading. The company’s stock reached $19.41 after the lawsuit against I.B.M. was filed in 2003.

In that suit, SCO said I.B.M. had violated a contract by copying code from the Unix operating system to Linux, an open-source operating system that is distributed free and that I.B.M. uses on some of its computers.

SCO had said that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of Unix, which it said it had purchased from Novell in 1995.

“The court’s ruling has cut out the core of SCO’s case and, as a result, eliminates SCO’s threat to the Linux community based upon allegations of copyright infringement of Unix,” said Joe LaSala, Novell’s senior vice president and general counsel.

Executives for SCO did not immediately return phone calls on Friday evening.

The Unix operating system, which has become popular with some independent-minded PC users as well as in the corporate world, was developed by AT&T researchers at Bell Labs beginning in 1969. During the 1970s, the operating system became highly influential in academic computing and in computer science departments.

In the ’80s, it had a significant impact in the computer workstation and minicomputer markets, although it never gained a significant foothold in the personal computer business until Steven P. Jobs brought a version of Unix with him when he returned to Apple Computer in 1997. Some PC makers have begun to offer versions of Linux instead of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.

Open-source software advocates said the ruling vindicated the open-source approach to software development.

“This is a meaningful message in terms of people adopting open-source software,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium formed to foster the operating system. “This says that Linux is a safe solution and people can choose it with that in mind.”

Several legal experts said that minor legal questions might still remain in SCO’s suit against I.B.M., related to promises that I.B.M. may have made in a failed joint development effort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/te.../11novell.html





Nokia to Tuck in Microsoft DRM Software

Mobile phone giant Nokia will start to use Microsoft's copy protection software to boost the use of wireless entertainment, like music and videos, the two companies said Monday.

Microsoft's technology enables people who use Nokia cell phones to share protected pieces of content--like music, games or videos--between phones, PCs and other devices.

Nokia, the world's largest cell-phone maker, will license Microsoft's PlayReady digital rights management (DRM) technology, and build it into its S60 software, the most widely used software platform in the cell-phone industry.

Nokia's S60 software, built on U.K.-based Symbian's operating system, is used extensively in Nokia's lineup, but also in advanced cell phones of LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.

Its closest rival is Microsoft's own Windows Mobile, but analysts said the deal should benefit both.

"It is in both (companies') interest that there is compatibility between the two and content can flow between devices," said Geoff Blaber, senior analyst at consultancy CCS Insight.

In 2005 the two companies signed their first cooperation agreement to put Windows Media player on to Nokia phones, raising eyebrows as the two had been fierce competitors in the mobile software industry.

As cell phone prices fall, handset vendors are looking for new revenue from potentially lucrative software operations, while at the same time Microsoft is looking for new revenue from the mobile space.

In June, Nokia said it would reshape its whole organization to better focus on software and services.

Nokia said it expects many S60 and its lower-tier Series 40 phones, which are also included in the deal, using PlayReady technology to hit the market in 2008.

"This takes it to a huge portfolio of Nokia devices," CCS's Blaber said. "The deal makes perfect sense for Nokia. There isn't so comprehensive a DRM solution available for mobile space."

The companies said they expect the deal to widen the entertainment offering on cell phones.

Entertainment services--games, music, TV, adult content and gambling--would grow to $38 billion by 2011 from around $18.8 billion in 2006, according to research firm Informa.

Music has been the main driver for mobile entertainment so far, the breakthrough of mobile television broadcasts is expected to give the market a new boost.

"This is a new thing and developing at a rapid clip. Can it get better and move to the mainstream? Absolutely. Nokia and Microsoft, being large influential companies, are trying to push the ball forward," Chadd Knowlton, general manager for content access and protection at Microsoft, told Reuters.

"Mobile television, that's going to be much more mainstream than today's entertainment features," Knowlton said. Microsoft and Nokia said they would also work together to enhance and simplify consumer access to digital content using mobile devices.

"This partnership will enable a very broad range of content to be available for consumers," said Sebastian Nystrom, a director at Nokia's technology unit.

Nokia is widely expected to launch an online music and mobile content store, a rival to Apple's iTunes, in coming months, using technology gained from last year's acquisition of U.S. digital music distributor Loudeye.

Nystrom declined to comment on the possible effect the Microsoft deal could have on services built on the Loudeye acquisition, but said: "Overall, PlayReady will be the key component in offering such services to consumers."
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...64683520070806





China's iClone
Dan Koeppel

The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. The miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?

I made a hastily arranged flight to China to find out. Ella Wong, a marketing manager at Meizu, the Chinese company building the new phone, had invited me to come to the annual Hong Kong Electronics Fair only days before it began this April. We had been trading e-mails for weeks, negotiating access to the miniOne and the operation that produced it. Meizu cloned Apple's iPod Nano last year, establishing itself as a significant force in a music-player market far larger than Apple's: international consumers who had little access to either Macintosh computers or the iTunes music store. The miniOne was going to be on display at the fair, and Jack Wong, Meizu's CEO, would also be there. If I made a good impression, I would be invited to the company's headquarters and research facility on the mainland. "You'll be warmly welcome," Wong wrote me.

My journey was more than a pilgrimage born of techno-lust (though there was an element of that as well). Nearly every type of product can be—and is—cloned in China, sometimes so well that the ripped-off manufacturers inadvertently service the fakes when warranty claims come in. Cloners make air conditioners with the LG brand name in the country's remote west, along what was once the old Silk Road trading route. But cloners don't have to sell their wares under the same brand name: In Anhui province, near the Yangtze River, one of China's biggest auto manufacturers builds a part-for-part replica of a top-selling Chevrolet model, then slaps a new badge on the car. In the south, one cloning operation didn't just copy a technology company's product line—it duplicated the entire company, creating a shadow enterprise with corporate headquarters, factories, and sales and support staff.

But the miniOne represents the vanguard of this cloning revolution. Meizu isn't aspiring merely to copy the designs of a Western manufacturer on the cheap. The company plans to give the miniOne capabilities beyond the original. Does this signal the start of something bigger in China—the years of reverse engineering serving as a de facto education for the engineers who will soon transform China into a design and engineering powerhouse? Is China on the cusp of going legit?

Several hours after I arrived at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, I finally found Meizu's (maddeningly unlisted) booth and asked for Ella Wong. She was sitting at a table, talking to a pair of potential customers. When she finished, I introduced myself. "Thanks for making this happen," I said. "Would this be a good time to start talking about the miniOne, or to make arrangements to meet Jack Wong?" I handed her a business card and a stack of magazines with stories I'd written. She thumbed through a few pages and smiled. "The phone? Mr. Wong? Oh, that may not be possible," she said. Silence. What about our e-mails, the conversations, the invitation? She was struggling to be polite. It isn't customary in China to be forced into an outright yes or no. "Come back," she said, "maybe in September."

Counterfeit Road
Sitting in a ground-to-a-halt taxi during rush hour along Beijing's third ring highway (five encircle the city; many more are under construction) gives a visitor plenty of time to rubberneck. The cars are familiar: Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota all have a presence here. But even vehicles with unfamiliar names cut recognizable silhouettes. There's a small SUV, emblazoned with the Laibao brand name, that looks like a twin sister to Honda's CR-V. Although the Geely Meerie is copied from a Mercedes C-class, it costs only 120,000 yuan, or about $15,000.

But at the sweet spot of the Chinese car market are vehicles that sell for around $5,000, just shy of the average middle-class Chinese family's annual income. When you're stuck in traffic, you're surrounded mostly by the ruler in that category: the Chery QQ.

The QQ is a part-for-part reproduction of a car known, depending on where it is sold, as the Chevy Spark or the Daewoo Matiz (the genuine vehicle is built as part of a joint venture between General Motors and the Korean company). Sparks are sold all over the world—in the U.S., an upgraded $10,500 variant called the Aveo is cheaper than any other car you can buy. But when the $5,000 QQ first appeared in 2003, GM—and American officials—were astonished. "If you didn't have name tags on the cars, you couldn't tell them apart," said Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin after a 2004 trip to China. "It's such a good knockoff that you can pull the door off the Spark and it fits on the QQ, so close that the seals on the doors match right up."

The ability to clone such technologically sophisticated products is a recent development in China. A report issued by the consulting firm A.T. Kearney breaks the growth of China's cloners into five distinct periods. The first, in the 1980s, was primitive, consisting mostly of cheap textile knockoffs like Mickey Mouse shirts. The second, starting around 1990, still involved clothing and accessories, but with enough authenticity—high-quality Nike and Reebok fakes led the way—to be accepted as handy substitutes by thrift-conscious Westerners. By the middle of that decade, Chinese copiers had moved from basic trademark infringement into low-end technology products: Duracell batteries and DVDs. From there, the study says, an era of "advanced technology piracy" began. Functionally close-to-the-mark products like Callaway golf clubs and counterfeit automotive safety glass appeared in 1998. By the millennium, piracy had reached levels of refinement that saw China offering functional duplicates of Intel processors, Viagra tablets and Bosch power tools.

In many ways, this is similar to the path industrial powerhouses like Japan and South Korea have taken. China has gone from making only cheap, toss-away goods, like budget toys and portable CD players, to creating alternatives to nearly every one of the West's most admired brands. But China is unique in that—as with its modernization in general—it's doing so at an accelerated pace, going from shoddy to quality in little more than a decade.

How to Clone Anything
The easiest way to clone a product is to use a "ghost shift": A factory contracted to make legitimate goods moves to 24-hour operation, churning out copies—some made with inferior materials, and others exactly the same, designed to be sold on the black market—from midnight to morning.

The only problem with ghost shifts is that they can't run full time. In the mid-'90s, developers began to build shadow factories—identical plants, often constructed from the same blueprints legitimate manufacturers used to launch their ventures. Sometimes the plans were sold by managers at the genuine facilities. Other times, local officials and organized crime conspired to create a second set of blueprints.

As technology companies became aware of the extent of the cloning problem, many began to use selective outsourcing. Less-secret components would be built in China, while more proprietary items, like circuit boards, might be manufactured domestically. Even so, sometimes a company's products are cloned even if it has no working relationship with China at all. The Thomas G. Faria Corporation, an American company that builds dashboard gauges for boats and military Humvees, discovered an entire plant in China dedicated to cloning its product, even though it had never done any manufacturing overseas, or even outside of Connecticut, where it is based. The clones were found all over the world, and although they worked poorly, they looked the part. "These clones bear our name and address," David Blackburn, the company's CEO, told the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. "The label . . . contains our catalog part number and the initials of a calibrator, as well as a final tester."

Cloners look for opportunity first, and manufacturers often give it to them, often in the form of a hot product that is released in a limited number of markets. Desire spreads worldwide, and the cloners are ready to fill any gaps that emerge in supply or distribution. (That's what's happening now with the iPhone, which for nearly a year will be sold in North America only.)

In November 2005, LG Electronics, a Korean company that is the world's third-largest mobile-phone maker, released a device that in many parts of the world was as anticipated as the iPhone was here. The "Chocolate" features a slide-out keypad, a large color screen and a very Apple-like navigation wheel; it plays music as readily as it makes calls and sends text messages. LG has sold 10 million of them worldwide—the same quantity Steve Jobs has set as the initial iPhone goal.

LG's phone began to sell out as soon as it was released, but it took four months for the Korean electronics giant to release a version for China. By then, it was too late: A doppelgänger Chocolate had hit the market first, and had become the preferred choice for Chinese shoppers. Quality wasn't an issue. The fake phone was "exactly like the real one in design," a company spokesperson told Chosun Ilbo, Korea's largest daily newspaper. "Chinese people think it's LG electronics that manufactures the fakes."

Last year, fed up with a torrent of bootleg cellphones that was costing the company a billion dollars a year, Samsung hired investigators to trace the phones back, through multiple supply channels, to their manufacturers. The results of that investigation, along with analysis done by independent researchers, uncovered some of the technical strategies undertaken by reverse-engineering operations.

The cloners start by deciding what phones would be most profitable to clone. They then learn everything they can about the device. They attend trade shows, furiously snapping photos of not-yet-released products until someone notices and shoos them away. They will be first in line to buy the new product whenever it hits stores. And they will look for shortcuts, such as a patent filed in China that can act as the beginning of an actual production guide.

The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.) Both processes take about a month. By then, ancillary items—plastic casings, accessories, manuals and packaging—are ready as well. Full production begins at another factory, one that is already building phones, within about eight weeks from the time the engineers are hired. After a run of about 30,000 units, the cloners move the operation to a new facility in order to avoid detection.

Samsung was impressed by the efficiency of the cloners, so much so that the company offered them jobs. The cloners said no. Earning about $1.25 per phone, the cloners said, they found it easier and more profitable to make fakes. The only known result of the investigation? Samsung now takes care to release products in China shortly after they come out in Korea. Its only defense is to give cloners a smaller window of opportunity.

Company Copy
In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players. Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities. "On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk. Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail addresses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs.

The investigation led to raids last year on 18 of the manufacturing sites and the seizure of nearly 50,000 fake products. Yet the factories themselves are still operating, just not using the NEC name. The ringleaders of the scam have yet to be caught; like the Samsung copiers, they are thought to still be making fakes.

Death to the Bootleggers
The Chery QQ demonstrates more than just the skill of modern cloning. It also illustrates the danger. Easy-fit doors and rearview mirrors aside, there are differences—scary differences—between the Spark/Matiz and the QQ. As news of the copycat car spread last year, a German automotive club conducted and videotaped a comparative crash test between the two vehicles. When the Matiz hits the barrier, the front end crumples. The rear of the car bucks upward and then thuds back to the ground. An impact chart shows serious yet nonfatal injuries to both the driver's and passenger's head and legs (the chart distinguishes impact with color: the redder the deadlier). The Chery hits the obstacle at the same speed. The rear end of the car lifts higher than the Matiz and begins to rotate. The driver-side door pops open. Hood, engine and roof crumple into the passenger compartment. The frame buckles, bringing the vehicle flat to the ground. On the impact chart, the driver's head, neck and chest are brown and red: not survivable.

Over the past few months, concern over the safety of Chinese copies, as well as legitimate products with Chinese ingredients or brand names, has become more real to consumers in the U.S. In June, the FDA warned consumers about Chinese-made toothpaste, millions of tubes of which were on-sale in the U.S. The substance in the toothpaste—diethylene glycol, a toxic component of antifreeze—had been used as a substitute for glycerin, a common sweetener. A similar substitution killed about 100 people in Panama last year.

Ironically, well-publicized, embarrassing cases like this could actually provide some of the impetus necessary to vault China into the sixth stage of cloning—making better-than-real products. "If Western-style controls are put in place, that's just another way the infringers will learn how to do a better job of what they do," says Danny Friedmann, a Dutch intellectual-property expert who runs a blog called IP Dragon.

Although there have been legal victories against cloners, most of the time they have been minor and fleeting. Last year, Sony won a lawsuit against a Guangzhou company that was copying the company's camcorder batteries. In another of the most watched cases, Prada, Chanel, Gucci, Burberry and Louis Vuitton sued Beijing's organized "Silk Market," one of the city's most well-visited locales for fake goods, and shut it down. Despite the low monetary damages—$75,000 for Sony, and $12,500 in the Silk Market affair—the victories were hailed by some as part of a growing recognition in China that counterfeiting needs to be halted. The cases demonstrated the "strong resolve of the Chinese authorities in protecting intellectual-property rights," says Tan Loke Khoon, head of the intellectual-property practice in Hong Kong and China at the law firm Baker & McKenzie, which brought the two lawsuits.

But on my visit to Beijing, the Silk Market hadn't just reopened. It had expanded, turning itself from a seedy array of tiny stalls into a full-fledged modern shopping mall: a forbidden city of fakes. That's part of the dilemma in "fixing" the counterfeit problem, Friedmann says: "There's an impression that China is strongly controlled by the central government. The truth is that there's power everywhere. China is filled with 'little emperors' who can do whatever they want."

Yet when a cloner is brought to justice—especially if the case makes headlines, embarrassing the Chinese authorities—punishment can be both swift and harsh. On May 29, Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of China's FDA, was sentenced to death after taking the equivalent of $850,000 in bribes. The bribes were given in part to secure the approval of a counterfeit antibiotic that later killed 10 people in 2006. The Chinese court said the sentence was warranted and that Zheng had "endangered public life and health," as well as "the efficiency of China's drug monitoring." According to Jiang Zhipei, a Chinese supreme-court justice specializing in intellectual-property cases, punishments like this show that "the judicial system is working actively to make people aware of how important this is." Zheng was executed on July 10.

Growing Beyond Fakes
The end of Chinese cloning will come when Chinese products become good enough to stand on their own, just as Japan's did in the 1970s and Korea's did in the 1980s. The difference is that China is moving much faster toward this goal than Korea or Japan ever did. Less than a year ago, the Chery QQ was junk. On July 3, Chery and Chrysler announced an agreement to build Chery vehicles that will wear the Dodge badge. Chrysler will sell the cars in Eastern Europe and Latin America beginning next year, and in 2009 will bring them to Western Europe and North America. The deal grew from Chery's plan to improve quality by outsourcing engineering and design to Western companies. There's little doubt that Chery will learn from its new partners.

An important factor in this transformation is China's improving consumer economy. Just as the Chery deal made the news, the Beijing government instituted a nationwide minimum wage. Although the move was made as a response to rising food prices, it increases production costs for Chinese manufacturers, forcing them to move away from rock-bottom products. In cities, Chinese paychecks have already risen fast enough to create a thriving consumer class. As those consumers demand better products, China's manufacturers will begin to develop items that meet export standards.

Take, for example, the iPhone. The key to its simple interface is a screen that responds to several touches at once. It makes rapid text entry possible and allows keyboard-and-mouse-type navigation through Web pages and the phone's built-in applications. The screen is built by a German company called Balda, but the technology itself, licensed to Apple's supplier, is neither American nor European. It was originally developed to aid in the rapid input of Asia's huge, character-based alphabets. It comes from China.

The Next iClones
Copies of the iPhone are now dividing into two categories: the inspired-bys and the wholesale duplicates. The first category includes work-alikes manufactured by well-known cellphone makers, like HTC—one of the largest manufacturers of smartphones—and Sun Microsystems. HTC announced that it will be bringing its "Touch" model to the U.S. this fall. In May, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz followed in the footsteps of Steve Jobs (and Meizu's Jack Wong) by displaying his own one-off version of a touchscreen prototype at a software-developers convention. Sun's chairman, Scott McNealy, had no qualms about making the iPhone comparison: "We have our own shirtsleeve version of Steve Jobs announcing a phone," he told the audience.

The number of duplicates is also growing. Although Meizu may have gone silent because of fears of an Apple lawsuit—after my visit in Hong Kong, they stopped responding to my e-mails and phone calls—other companies are moving ahead. A few days before Apple's launch, an online video surfaced depicting a sleek new product called the P168. The phone came in a black box, marked with both the iPhone and the Apple logos. The video showed the phone being unpacked and operated (the start-up screen also featured the Apple branding). There were features that the iPhone didn't have, such as the ability to operate on two different networks at once; six speakers; and, addressing a major prerelease complaint about the iPhone, a removable battery. I asked my translator if she could find one on the street. They weren't available in Beijing—yet—but a few weeks later, a friend discovered one in Guangzhou. The manufacturer of the P168 wouldn't comment for this story, but the hardware was real, and it worked.

Neither the miniOne, the P168 nor even HTC's model are likely to carry the mystique or quality of the iPhone. But that's not really the point. Those phones will be available to millions more consumers than Apple's product, at a lower price. The rest of the world will accept the clones as if they were the original. That will make them no different than a flood of Chinese products—cars, pharmaceuticals, food, appliances—that are emerging from the shadows and climbing the learning curve to the point that they will no longer be clones at all. They'll be the real thing.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technol...cbccdrcrd.html





U.S. Supports Patent Ruling in a Setback for Qualcomm
Matt Richtel

In a decision watched closely by the mobile phone industry, the Bush administration let stand an earlier ruling that requires Qualcomm to pay licensing fees to its competitor Broadcom.

Qualcomm, which makes chips used in many mobile phones, has argued that the ruling, made in June by the U.S. International Trade Commission, could lead to a ban on the importation of millions of new phones that use power management technology covered in a patent controlled by Broadcom.

But serious disruption in the phone market is unlikely, said Susan Schwab, the U.S. trade representative, in upholding the ruling Monday.

Schwab noted that since the June ruling, two major mobile phone carriers had reached agreements to pay licensing fees to Broadcom, allowing them to bring the latest phones into the country.

Schwab also noted that Broadcom had agreed to give a royalty-free license to public safety organizations using new phones, a move that she said ameliorated Qualcomm's claim that Broadcom's demand for fees could hamper public safety. The decision is a blow to Qualcomm, which makes chips for phones used on mobile phone networks operated by Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T. Qualcomm has argued that the licensing fees of $6 a phone that Broadcom demanded were prohibitively expensive.

Broadcom, a chip maker, has countered that Qualcomm is using its power management technology without paying royalties. Broadcom has sued Qualcomm over the issue, but the suit was stayed pending a decision by the trade representative.

Lou Lupin, general counsel for Qualcomm, said the company planned to appeal for an emergency stay of the ruling. He said Qualcomm's argument that the June ruling would hamper public safety appeared to have been at least partly undermined by Broadcom's agreements with the two mobile carriers. Verizon reached a deal with Broadcom last month. The other company has not been publicly identified.

David Rosmann, vice president for intellectual property litigation at Broadcom, said the company would seek an immediate enforcement of the ruling that would bar the importing of phones with unlicensed Broadcom technology. Rosmann said such a ban would probably affect fewer than 10 percent of phones, and only new models that are not yet on the market.

Qualcomm loses patent rights

Qualcomm said a U.S. judge has ruled that the company has waived its rights to enforce certain patents asserted against Broadcom related to a video compression standard, Reuters reported from New York on Tuesday.

The court held that Qualcomm had deliberately concealed two patents from the standard-setting body responsible for developing the H.264 video standard and therefore was precluded from enforcing the patents, Qualcomm said. The company plans to appeal the decision. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/...ogy/patent.php





'Bionic Woman' and 'Cavemen' Top New Shows Among TV Watchers

NBC and ABC newbies outpace competition in three critical categories
Chandra Williams

Consumer research and consulting firm OTX (Online Testing eXchange) issued a press release today outlining which of the broadcast networks' new Fall 2007 shows are currently generating the most awareness, interest (in terms of definite intent to watch), and buzz among potential U.S. viewers aged 18 to 49. Although the data doesn't hold true for every demographic, it does indicate which freshmen series networks are doing a better job of promoting to audiences, as well as which new shows are resonating most with the public.

I am not surprised in the least that the Peacock Network's Bionic Woman ranks first on two scales, awareness and intent to view. But, considering all of the negative criticism and predictions coming from assorted TV critics and bloggers, I do find it odd that ABC's sitcom Cavemen leads the pack when it comes to buzz; I haven't heard a kind word about the show yet. Maybe people just want to gauge for themselves if the series is as bad as many who have viewed early cuts are claiming.

Other Fall 2007 rookies that have scored big with Americans include CBS' controversial reality offering Kid Nation (third in awareness and buzz, and tied for fifth in intent to watch), ABC's imaginative crime dramedy romance Pushing Daisies (fourth in awareness and buzz, and tied for fifth in intent to watch), CBS' Latino family drama Cane (fifth in awareness and tied for fifth in intent to watch), and Fox's next adapted Gordon Ramsay reality concoction Kitchen Nightmares (third in intent to watch and tied for fifth in buzz).

Noticeably absent from every metric are ABC's upscale male-oriented drama Big Shots, CBS' vampire crime drama Moonlight, The CW's coming-of-age sitcom Aliens in America, Fox's Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton-led sitcom Back to You, and NBC's fantasy drama Life.

Below are all of the tabulated results released.


Top 10 New Shows | Awareness

Bionic Woman (NBC)
Cavemen (ABC)
Kid Nation (CBS)
Pushing Daisies (ABC)
Cane (CBS)
Next Great American Band (FOX)
K-Ville (FOX)
Journeyman (NBC)
The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Reaper (CW)
Gossip Girl (CW)
Chuck (NBC)

Top 5 New Shows | Buzz

Cavemen (ABC)
Bionic Woman (NBC)
Kid Nation (CBS)
Pushing Daisies (ABC)
Kitchen Nightmares (FOX)
Private Practice (ABC)

Top 5 New Shows | Intent to View (Will Definitely Watch)

Bionic Woman (NBC)
Cavemen (ABC)
Kitchen Nightmares (FOX)
Private Practice (ABC)
Cane (CBS)
Pushing Daisies (ABC)
K-Ville (FOX)
Kid Nation (CBS)
Reaper (CW)
Next Great American Band (FOX)
Journeyman (NBC)
The Big Bang Theory (CBS)

Story





Judge Blocks Anna Nicole Smith Surgery Video
Steve Gorman



A two-hour video of buxom stripper-turned-heiress Anna Nicole Smith undergoing breast augmentation surgery has been blocked from distribution by a California judge.

The estate of the late tabloid celebrity, who died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in February aged 39, won a court order barring a plastic surgeon in Texas from selling or circulating videos of procedures he performed on Smith in 1994.

Court documents from the case, including the judge's ruling made on Friday, were posted on the Internet by the Web site CelebTV.com. Smith's death, and the haggling over custody of her child, sparked a media frenzy in the United States.

A lawsuit filed by her estate's executor, Howard K. Stern, accused the Houston physician, Dr. Gerald Wayne Johnson, of taping the surgery without Smith's consent and sending copies to a Los Angeles-based memorabilia dealer, Thomas Riccio.

The suit says Johnson's wife and Riccio agreed to share in proceeds generated from a planned release of the footage to various media outlets.

The exact nature of the surgery was not specified in the lawsuit. But a June 2007 letter signed by Johnson and attached as an exhibit said he performed "breast augmentation reconstructive surgery" on Smith in October 1994, the year she married billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall.

The letter also says his office "routinely records all such procedures with the knowledge of the patient" and that he retains "all rights to this video which is our policy to keep confidential during the patient's lifetime."

If the patient dies, Johnson wrote, "it is then up to my sole discretion as to how and when I will disseminate or make public any or all of the images within the video we have produced."

Johnson's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

Last month, Stern won a separate court order barring Riccio from distributing the surgery video, and Riccio has complied, Stern's lawyer, Vivian Thoreen, told Reuters on Wednesday.

She said the Johnsons were believed to have retained copies of all the footage and Friday's court order requires them to turn over all the material to Stern.

"We believe it's an estate asset," Thoreen said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070809/...ole_video_dc_1





Britney Spears Desperate To Do Playboy
Diana Barbarich

Britney Spears is reportedly keen on posing for a Playboy spread.

News of the World are claiming that the toubled pop-tart is desperate to do a nude spread for the mag.

The mother-of-two, who is on the verge of losing custody of her two-children - was offered US $1 million to pose nude for the mag during the height of her pop career.

Earlier this month Spears had a meltdown on the set of her OK! Magazine photo shoot.

The Toxic singer reportedly left the shoot wearing US $10,000 worth of borrowed designer items.
http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news?id=18012105





Playboy Mansion at Center of Sexual Assault Claim

The Los Angeles Police Dept. said on Wednesday it was investigating an allegation of sexual assault at the Playboy Mansion, the famed site of unabashed hedonism for more than 30 years.

News reports said the alleged incident took place at the weekend during a pajama party hosted by Playboy magazine's 81-year-old founder, Hugh Hefner, who has lived and worked at the expansive property since 1971.

According to Playboy.com, the annual Midsummer Night's Dream bash was attended by the likes of socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton, movie director Garry Marshall, rock star Dave Navarro and Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau.

An LAPD statement said detectives had started their investigation into "a possible sexual assault" on Monday.

"For reasons of law and confidentiality that are critical aspects in investigations of this type, no additional information will be released at this time," the statement said.

A spokesman for Playboy Enterprises Inc., the adult-entertainment firm that owns the mansion and published the flagship magazine, also declined comment.

The mock-Tudor mansion sits on a lush six-acre (2.4-hectare) lot that Hefner bought for $1.05 million according to Playboy.com.

Located in the chic suburb of Holmby Hills, the estate has hosted thousands of parties over the years, drawing guests who luxuriate in the freewheeling atmosphere. These days, it is often rented out as a corporate entertainment venue.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...40505520070809





Authorities Drop Investigation of Reported Sex Assault at Playboy Mansion
AP

Authorities dropped an investigation into a reported sexual assault at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion because of insufficient evidence, prosecutors said Friday.

The case was submitted to county prosecutors, and no charges will be filed, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.

The investigation was launched Monday into claims that a 22-year-old woman might have been raped while unconscious, officials said. The allegation involved a 17-year-old boy.

"She recalls at one point having sexual intercourse with the minor and pushing him away," said Sandi Gibbons, a district attorney’s spokeswoman.

Authorities could not corroborate the woman’s statement, Gibbons said. The woman also has claimed memory loss and declined to pursue the case, officials said.

Rob Hilburger, West Coast publicity director for Playboy Enterprises, said police told the company Friday that the investigation had ended.

"Safety and security at the mansion remain a priority, not only for those who live there, but for all invited guests," Hilburger said. "We thank the LAPD for their quick and thorough investigation into this matter."

The Playboy Mansion is in the wealthy Holmby Hills area of West Los Angeles
http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/mor...icleid=1016652





Virtual Sex Machine Spawns Lawsuit
Phil Davis

Kevin Alderman didn't bring sex to "Second Life." He just made it better.

The 46-year-old entrepreneur recognized four years ago that people would pay to equip their online selves — which start out with the smooth anatomy of a Barbie or Ken doll — with realistic genitalia and even more to add some sexy moves.

Business at Eros LLC has been brisk. One of his creations, the SexGen Platinum, has gotten so popular that he's now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it.

The $45 SexGen animates amorous avatars in erotic positions. It is software code, written in the scripting language of "Second Life" and placed in virtual furniture and other objects. Avatars click on the object and choose from a menu of animated sex acts.

Alderman filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla., last month alleging an avatar named "Volkov Catteneo" broke the program's copy protection and sold unauthorized copies. Alderman, who runs his business from home in a Tampa suburb, allows users to transfer his products, but prohibits copying.

"We confronted him about it and his basic response was, 'What are you going to do? Sue me?'" Alderman said. "I guess the mentality is that because you're an avatar ... that you are untouchable. The purpose of this suit is not only to protect our income and our product, but also to show, yes, you can be prosecuted and brought to justice."

Catherine Smith, director of marketing for "Second Life" creator Linden Lab, said she knew of no other real-world legal fight between two avatars.

However, Linden Labs itself has been sued more than once by subscribers over seizures of virtual property. In 2005, Japanese media reported that a Chinese exchange student was arrested for stealing virtual items from other players in an online game, "Lineage II."

"Second Life" isn't a game. There are no dragons to slay or other traditional game objectives. San Francisco-based Linden Lab describes it as "an online digital world imagined, created & owned by its residents."

Linden Lab provides a free basic avatar, a 3-D virtual representation of the user in male or female form. Everything else costs real money. A 16-acre virtual island costs $1,675 plus monthly maintenance fees of $295. Virtual money, called Lindens, can be exchanged with real dollars at an average rate of about 270 Lindens per $1.

Avatars can be equipped with flowing gowns and tiny tattoos, and users with programming and Photoshop skills can reshape themselves into a virtual Greta Garbo or just about any shape imaginable. With a little cash, users can also have people like Alderman transform the avatars for them.

At Alderman's "Second Life" shop, shoppers can try out a dragon bed powered by one of his SexGen engines. Along with programmers and designers, he employs a sales staff who hang around the shop like real salespeople to pitch the perfect sex toys. He is investing in a $25,000 motion-capture suit, a low-end version of one used to create digital characters in movies, to create more realistic sex moves for "Second Life" avatars.

As customers demand more real life in their "Second Life," though, these virtual creations can collide with reality.

"Virtually every aspect of real life is getting duplicated, and all the laws that can be applied to the real world are being applied in 'Second Life,'" said Jorge Contreras Jr., an intellectual-property attorney in Washington, D.C.

Last year, "Second Life" was rocked by a scandal over users who had modified their avatars to look like children and simulated pedophilia. Last month, Linden Lab shut down gambling in "Second Life" after concerns arose that virtual games of chance might violate U.S. gambling laws when members cashed in Lindens for real money.

Now comes Alderman's SexGen suit, which was filed July 3 and seeks unspecified damages. It accuses the unknown owner of the Catteneo avatar of violating copyright and trademark protections by copying, distributing and selling copies of Alderman's software.

Alderman's attorney, Francis X. Taney Jr. of Philadelphia, said the lawsuit has gotten a lot of attention because it involves sex, but is fundamentally about long-established law.

"It's a piece of software and software is copyrightable," Taney said. "It's also expressed in graphics, which also are copyrightable. There is some sizzle. People like to say it's really far out there, but at the end of the day I equate it to basic intellectual property principles."

Unlike many popular online worlds, such as "World of Warcraft," Linden Lab grants its users broad rights to create and sell content with few restrictions. Users can install copy protection and seek U.S. copyright and trademark protections, all of which Alderman did for the SexGen software.

"Whenever you create a situation where people are buying and selling things and potentially misappropriating them from their rightful owners, it is only a matter of time before the legal system gets called in," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "This seems like a relatively straightforward case. It sounds like there is a real copyright issue."

Taney believes he knows who Catteneo is in real life, but is confirming it through subpoenas of records of eBay Inc.'s PayPal payment service as well as chat logs and trade history in "Second Life." He said Linden Lab and PayPal turned over their records, and he is preparing another round of subpoenas.

"We're proceeding carefully," Taney said. "This guy has claimed the information he gave to Linden was bogus. We are looking for ways to cross check and corroborate the information."

Catteneo, who did not respond to several interview requests sent through the "Second Life" messaging system, will likely have a hard time hiding.

"There is a whole lot less anonymity online than people think," von Lohmann said. "There are over 20,000 people who have been sued for downloading music. They may have felt anonymous, but they're weren't."

Alderman is unlikely to be the last to drag an avatar into court as the designers in "Second Life" try to protect their creations in the same way clothing designers such as Gucci try to eliminate realistic knockoffs

In recognition of the growing legal issues "Second Life" is likely to generate, the country of Portugal recently set up an arbitration center in the virtual world, though it has no power to enforce its decisions.

The legal issues may be similar offline and online, but von Lohmann said the trials could be a lot more interesting.

"In a virtual world, you have the ability to gather evidence you don't have in the real world," he said. "Everything that happens in 'Second Life' is reflected on computer servers. Depending on how long they keep the records, you could actually replay the event as it happens."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...f084453D13.DTL





Courtney Loves Responds to Lily Allen Comments
Nme

Courtney Love has spoken out about on alleged comments Lily Allen made about her on MySpace.

The comments were widely reported, but Love said Allen claimed they were down to the fact that her MySpace site was hacked into.

Allen allegedly wrote: "I am not bfs (best friends) w/ (with) C (Courtney) Love, one night with her made me realise why Kurt (Cobain killed himself."

Posting on Myspace.com/courtneylove, Love wrote: "Thanks to Lily Allen for her lovely apologising for having had her MySpace broken into.

"I wouldn't pick on me if I was Miss Lily, as it wouldn't take TOO much to swat, but we've known each other far too long, like each other far too much and if she was gonna say something nasty she has the acerbic wit and intelligence to say something cutting, that would actually really hurt, not some cliched hoary old chestnut some obsessed blogger would say.

"She tells me her MySpace was broken into - even if I REALLY think she did blog it mindlessly some 8am after being up far too long for a young healthy woman I don't care and I appreciate and accept her thoughtfulness for apologising for what was printed, if she is telling the truth and it really doesn't much matter - everyone slams everyone early in their careers, (Sonic Youth)'s Kim Gordon still slams me, I mean how much more boring can you get? (than Kim Gordon - slam!) Does anyone care?"
http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/45594662





How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?
Peter Guralnick

ONE of the songs Elvis Presley liked to perform in the ’70s was Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” its message clearly spelled out in the title.

Sometimes he would preface it with the 1951 Hank Williams recitation “Men With Broken Hearts,” which may well have been South’s original inspiration. “You’ve never walked in that man’s shoes/Or saw things through his eyes/Or stood and watched with helpless hands/While the heart inside you dies.” For Elvis these two songs were as much about social justice as empathy and understanding: “Help your brother along the road,” the Hank Williams number concluded, “No matter where you start/For the God that made you made them, too/These men with broken hearts.”

In Elvis’s case, this simple lesson was not just a matter of paying lip service to an abstract principle.

It was what he believed, it was what his music had stood for from the start: the breakdown of barriers, both musical and racial. This is not, unfortunately, how it is always perceived 30 years after his death, the anniversary of which is on Thursday. When the singer Mary J. Blige expressed her reservations about performing one of his signature songs, she only gave voice to a view common in the African-American community. “I prayed about it,” she said, “because I know Elvis was a racist.”

And yet, as the legendary Billboard editor Paul Ackerman, a devotee of English Romantic poetry as well as rock ’n’ roll, never tired of pointing out, the music represented not just an amalgam of America’s folk traditions (blues, gospel, country) but a bold restatement of an egalitarian ideal. “In one aspect of America’s cultural life,” Ackerman wrote in 1958, “integration has already taken place.”

It was due to rock ’n’ roll, he emphasized, that groundbreaking artists like Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who would only recently have been confined to the “race” market, had acquired a broad-based pop following, while the music itself blossomed neither as a regional nor a racial phenomenon but as a joyful new synthesis “rich with Negro and hillbilly lore.”

No one could have embraced Paul Ackerman’s formulation more forcefully (or more fully) than Elvis Presley.

Asked to characterize his singing style when he first presented himself for an audition at the Sun recording studio in Memphis, Elvis said that he sang all kinds of music — “I don’t sound like nobody.” This, as it turned out, was far more than the bravado of an 18-year-old who had never sung in public before. It was in fact as succinct a definition as one might get of the democratic vision that fueled his music, a vision that denied distinctions of race, of class, of category, that embraced every kind of music equally, from the highest up to the lowest down.

It was, of course, in his embrace of black music that Elvis came in for his fiercest criticism. On one day alone, Ackerman wrote, he received calls from two Nashville music executives demanding in the strongest possible terms that Billboard stop listing Elvis’s records on the best-selling country chart because he played black music. He was simply seen as too low class, or perhaps just too no-class, in his refusal to deny recognition to a segment of society that had been rendered invisible by the cultural mainstream.

“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi,” Elvis told a white reporter for The Charlotte Observer in 1956, he used to listen to Arthur Crudup, the blues singer who originated “That’s All Right,” Elvis’s first record. Crudup, he said, used to “bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw.”

It was statements like these that caused Elvis to be seen as something of a hero in the black community in those early years. In Memphis the two African-American newspapers, The Memphis World and The Tri-State Defender, hailed him as a “race man” — not just for his music but also for his indifference to the usual social distinctions. In the summer of 1956, The World reported, “the rock ’n’ roll phenomenon cracked Memphis’s segregation laws” by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds amusement park “during what is designated as ‘colored night.’”

That same year, Elvis also attended the otherwise segregated WDIA Goodwill Revue, an annual charity show put on by the radio station that called itself the “Mother Station of the Negroes.” In the aftermath of the event, a number of Negro newspapers printed photographs of Elvis with both Rufus Thomas and B.B. King (“Thanks, man, for all the early lessons you gave me,” were the words The Tri-State Defender reported he said to Mr. King).

When he returned to the revue the following December, a stylish shot of him “talking shop” with Little Junior Parker and Bobby “Blue” Bland appeared in Memphis’s mainstream afternoon paper, The Press-Scimitar, accompanied by a short feature that made Elvis’s feelings abundantly clear. “It was the real thing,” he said, summing up both performance and audience response. “Right from the heart.”

Just how committed he was to a view that insisted not just on musical accomplishment but fundamental humanity can be deduced from his reaction to the earliest appearance of an ugly rumor that has persisted in one form or another to this day. Elvis Presley, it was said increasingly within the African-American community, had declared, either at a personal appearance in Boston or on Edward R. Murrow’s “Person to Person” television program, “The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.”

That he had never appeared in Boston or on Murrow’s program did nothing to abate the rumor, and so in June 1957, long after he had stopped talking to the mainstream press, he addressed the issue — and an audience that scarcely figured in his sales demographic — in an interview for the black weekly Jet.

Anyone who knew him, he told reporter Louie Robinson, would immediately recognize that he could never have uttered those words. Amid testimonials from black people who did know him, he described his attendance as a teenager at the church of celebrated black gospel composer, the Rev. W. Herbert Brewster, whose songs had been recorded by Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward and whose stand on civil rights was well known in the community. (Elvis’s version of “Peace in the Valley,” said Dr. Brewster later, was “one of the best gospel recordings I’ve ever heard.”)

The interview’s underlying point was the same as the underlying point of his music: far from asserting any superiority, he was merely doing his best to find a place in a musical continuum that included breathtaking talents like Ray Charles, Roy Hamilton, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Howlin’ Wolf on the one hand, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and the Statesmen Quartet on the other. “Let’s face it,” he said of his rhythm and blues influences, “nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”

And as for prejudice, the article concluded, quoting an unnamed source, “To Elvis people are people, regardless of race, color or creed.”

So why didn’t the rumor die? Why did it continue to find common acceptance up to, and past, the point that Chuck D of Public Enemy could declare in 1990, “Elvis was a hero to most... straight-up racist that sucker was, simple and plain”?

Chuck D has long since repudiated that view for a more nuanced one of cultural history, but the reason for the rumor’s durability, the unassailable logic behind its common acceptance within the black community rests quite simply on the social inequities that have persisted to this day, the fact that we live in a society that is no more perfectly democratic today than it was 50 years ago. As Chuck D perceptively observes, what does it mean, within this context, for Elvis to be hailed as “king,” if Elvis’s enthronement obscures the striving, the aspirations and achievements of so many others who provided him with inspiration?

Elvis would have been the first to agree. When a reporter referred to him as the “king of rock ’n’ roll” at the press conference following his 1969 Las Vegas opening, he rejected the title, as he always did, calling attention to the presence in the room of his friend Fats Domino, “one of my influences from way back.” The larger point, of course, was that no one should be called king; surely the music, the American musical tradition that Elvis so strongly embraced, could stand on its own by now, after crossing all borders of race, class and even nationality.

“The lack of prejudice on the part of Elvis Presley,” said Sam Phillips, the Sun Records founder who discovered him, “had to be one of the biggest things that ever happened. It was almost subversive, sneaking around through the music, but we hit things a little bit, don’t you think?”

Or, as Jake Hess, the incomparable lead singer for the Statesmen Quartet and one of Elvis’s lifelong influences, pointed out: “Elvis was one of those artists, when he sang a song, he just seemed to live every word of it. There’s other people that have a voice that’s maybe as great or greater than Presley’s, but he had that certain something that everybody searches for all during their lifetime.”

To do justice to that gift, to do justice to the spirit of the music, we have to extend ourselves sometimes beyond the narrow confines of our own experience, we have to challenge ourselves to embrace the democratic principle of the music itself, which may in the end be its most precious gift.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/op...=1&oref=slogin





Where Have all the ‘Hit Records’ Gone?
Franklin Paul

They call it a “hit record,” but these days vinyl has nothing to do with what’s hot in musical entertainment.

Recording industry bible Billboard this week said it will supplement its “Hot 100″ singles chart with information about songs streamed over the Internet. That’s right — songs not bought at a store or downloaded onto a digital music player or heard on the radio. These are songs available through Web sites like Yahoo Music or AOL Music.

The move comes two years after Billboard succumbed to the 800-pound gorilla called iTunes and baked digital downloads into its charts.

“In the new Billboard Hot 100 formula, radio audience will average about 55 percent of the chart’s total points. Digital sales will account for about 40 percent, and streaming media will determine 5 percent. Physical singles — in line with the music industry’s retreat from that product over the past decade — will account for less than 1 percent of the chart’s new formula,” Billboard said.

You’d be hard pressed to find a physical copy of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”, Plain White T’s “Hey There Delilah”, or Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” in a record store, since big music knows there is big money in digital media, including the next medium Billboard may start to track — ringtones.

This makes me wonder. When is the last time you bought a physical CD or a single? (I’ll answer first: I bought a CD this year — one CD.)
http://blogs.reuters.com/2007/08/03/...-records-gone/





Amazon Leads Investment in Music Site AmieStreet
Yinka Adegoke

AmieStreet, a digital music site that prices songs of new artists according to their popularity, said on Monday that Amazon.com Inc. is leading a first round of investment in the start-up.

Started last October by three Brown University graduates, AmieStreet allows musicians to post songs with a variable pricing model, which is different from the one-price model used by Apple Inc.'s popular iTunes Music Store.

A new song on AmieStreet.com is initially priced at zero cents. The song is automatically given a starting price after users begin to download the song. The price rises gradually with popularity, to a maximum of 98 cents.

"The idea of having customers directly influence the price of songs is an interesting and novel approach to selling digital music," Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president for business development at Amazon, said in a statement.

Terms of the investment were not disclosed. AmieStreet said Amazon led the round, which included a few private investors.

Amazon said in the spring it will open a digital music store by the end of the year. So far it has announced it will sell music from one major record company EMI Group and a large number of independent labels.

The vast majority of individual songs sold on iTunes cost 99 cents each regardless of their popularity.

Executives at Warner Music Group and other music labels have complained that songs should not all be sold at one price, but Apple has refused to budge on the issue though iTunes does have varied pricing on some albums and promotions.

AmieStreet co-founder and chief marketing officer Joshua Boltuch told Reuters the new funding would allow the start-up to expand its social networking features.

"We really wanted to do a better job of displaying the networking going on the site," he said.

Boltuch said the company hopes to offer more services to communities that have developed on the site as fans share or recommend songs or artists to others.

Existing social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo also serve as a promotional and marketing service for artists trying to build a fan base around their network pages.

AmieStreet earns most of its money from sharing revenue from music sales. According to its Web site, up to 70 percent of the price of a song or album goes to the artist. The company would not say how much music sells or if it is yet profitable.

Boltuch and his co-founders Elliott Breece and Elias Roman, graduated from Brown last year and had been running the company out of their shared house in a Long Island suburb of New York, with early funding from friends and family.

Boltuch said the new funding would also be used to expand their new office space and facilities in New York.

Some months after the site's test launch, the three founders were invited to Seattle in the spring to meet Amazon executives, including founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, to discuss how they might work together.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...32885420070806





Terra Firma Gains Deal To Take EMI Private
FMQB

Terra Firma's bid to close on EMI is close to being finalized as more than 90 percent of EMI's shareholders have accepted the offer of 265p per share (or £3.2billion pounds including debt) to purchase the music group. Regulatory authorities in Brussels and Washington have given their approval.

In an internal memo obtained by FMQB, Chairman of the EMI Group Eric Nicoli said, "Accordingly, all material conditions to the offer have now been satisfied and it is expected that the offer will become wholly unconditional later this month. After this time, there are a few further formalities to complete the process of making us a privately-owned company, including the delisting of EMI from the London Stock Exchange, but as soon as the offer becomes wholly unconditional, Terra Firma will be the controller of the EMI Group and all of its operations worldwide."

He added, "In the Terra Firma team, we have owners who believe in the music business and are highly committed to EMI, and it puts an end to the incessant speculation about the future ownership of the company and the uncertainty that brings to us all. In fact, EMI will be the only purely privately-held of the four so-called music majors and I believe that will be of enormous benefit to all EMI stakeholders."

Change is expected to occur at the company after Terra Firma closes the deal, but Nicoli says, "This will be change for the good. In the past eight years, as well as my role at EMI, I have been non-executive Chairman of three private equity owned companies, all of which benefited from, and were very successful in, private ownership. Terra Firma can provide us with the stability and investment we need right now to come through this difficult period of industry transition and to accelerate our programme to be the world's most innovative and consumer-focused music company, as well as the very best home to musical and executive talent. We are proud to represent a unique roster of awesomely talented artists and songwriters, and our priority will continue to be to create an environment in which they can flourish."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=449623





Chrysalis Founder Holds Key Card Amid Sale Talk
Gavin Haycock

Senior management at music group Chrysalis are keen to pursue a sale, but a major issue yet to be resolved is what direction founder, chairman and key stakeholder Chris Wright wants to take the business, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Interest in Chrysalis has intensified in the wake of private equity firm Terra Firma's 2.4 billion pound ($4.87 billion) bid for EMI, the world's third-largest music firm.

Warner Music is also considering the possibility of going private, according to a New York Post report on Wednesday that sent the company's shares up nearly 15 percent.

The going-private discussion at Warner Music, home to artists such as Madonna and Kid Rock, "is understood to be in its infancy," that report said.

Now the recent disposal by Chrysalis of its radio assets for 170 million pounds has analysts asking how much longer the considerably smaller British rival to EMI can stay independent.

"Chrysalis Music is well placed to build upon and exploit its position as a leading international independent music business and that is our focus," Chrysalis Music CEO Jeremy Lascelles said on Wednesday.

That independence could come via an appropriately structured bid or with Wright taking the business private, analysts said.

"The balance of probability is edging more towards private rather than public status," said Bridgewell Securities analyst Patrick Yau.

Buyers In The Wings

Dresdner Kleinwort's Richard Menzies-Gow upgraded Chrysalis to buy from hold on Tuesday, saying there was little logic for Chrysalis' music business to stay public.

"We believe there are numerous interested suitors ready to offer an attractive price for the business, more than is currently implied in the share price," said Menzies-Gow.

Potential bidders cited by analysts include Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony and Michael Jackson, Publicis unit Universal Music -- the world's biggest music firm and private equity vehicles that focus on music publishing.

However, with a 26 percent stake, Wright can influence any decision but his intentions remain unclear, Menzies-Gow said.

Music industry sources said all major music publishers would be interested in looking at Chrysalis, but so far there were no signs that the company was seeking to solicit any offers.

Chrysalis shares ended 9.3 percent higher at 127-1/2 pence, the second-best performance among London media stocks. The shares have risen 13 percent since July 30, the day shareholders approved the sale of the company's radio assets.

With Wednesday's gains, Chrysalis has a market value of just over 210 million pounds.

Rich Asset Pool

Analysts say the jewel in Chrysalis' crown is its music publishing assets. The company's catalogue has around 65,000 publishing copyrights and spans decades and genres.

Blondie, Billy Idol, David Bowie and Jethro Tull feature among its singer/songwriters while current chart acts include Feeder, OutKast and Ray LaMontagne. Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Madonna rank among artists who have recorded material from Chrysalis songwriters. The company, whose artists also include Damon Albarn, owns classic masters by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck plus Beatles' producer royalties.

Analysts think the music publishing business of Chrysalis alone could fetch around 180-200 million pounds following the sale of its radio assets to Global Radio, the private equity firm chaired by former ITV Chief Executive Charles Allen.

"It seems clear to us that the remaining businesses are themselves prime take-private or consolidation candidates, a suspicion underlined by the scaling back of the corporate overhead over the next year and a half," said Bridgewell's Yau.

Phil Riley, CEO of Chrysalis Radio, is expected to resign from the board once the radio disposal is completed. Group CEO Richard Huntingford and Finance Director Michael Connole are due to step down by the end of the year. Investor relations and a number of group functions are also going.

Menzies-Gow thinks that with Lascelles and Finance Director Neil Fenton expected to step into respective group positions, it is unlikely there will be a sale of Chrysalis in the short term.

Dresdner thinks and exit is more likely to be over the next two to four years, particularly as the company has paid down its group debt to just 20 million pounds.
http://www.reuters.com/article/busin...STING_dealtalk





Chatterbox

remember what the sticker said that came on your ipod.

"please don't steal music"

First thoughts when seeing that for the first time:

"Okay then, I'll just infringe the copyrights instead"
http://suprbay.org/showthread.php?t=735





News From The North



The TankGirl Diaries


Swedish MP Challenges Prime Minister on P2P Legislation

Karl Sigfrid, a member of the Swedish parliament and a member of the ruling Moderate Party, has challenged country's prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt - also a Moderate - to keep the promise he gave to the Swedish filesharers in a television interview before the Swedish parliamentary election last summer. Right before the election the entire Swedish political field felt the heat from the newly founded Pirate Party whose popularity was quickly rising and who threatened to steal a number of seats from the established political parties. When asked about his party's stance on filesharing, the party chairman Reinfeldt stated that he is not going to criminalize an entire generation of young Swedes just because they are sharing music and movies online. He also said that the Swedish justice system has better things to do than to chase filesharers.

Reinfeldt's liberal conservative Moderate Party - positioned right from the center by European standards - was then in opposition. In the election they got a landslide victory that made Reinfeldt the prime minister of the 9 million people Scandinavian country. Now, after being almost a year in power, Reinfeldt's government is pushing for legislation that would give copyright organizations police-like powers to snoop the IP addresses of filesharers and to demand their personal information from the ISPs without due process and without a chance for the targets to defend their privacy. This would open Sweden for the similar mafia-style extortion practices as utilized by the RIAA in the USA. To prevent this from happening, Sigfrid wrote a long and thorough debate article to one of the biggest Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter. In the article, he refers to the recent recommendation by Juliane Kokott, the Advocate General of European Union's Court of Justice, which is the highest court in Europe. The Advocate General recommended that ISPs should not be allowed to reveal the identities of their customers in civil cases, which most of the p2p cases are. The new law proposed by the Swedish government would have a precisely opposite effect, giving the copyright industry special rights to violate the privacy of net users in order to harass filesharers.

Sigfrid notes how recent studies show that only 25% of the nation supports present copyright laws while already 44% of the Swedes including virtually the entire younger generation would legalize all private filesharing. "The technical evolution has made the present copyrights obsolete", Sigfrid writes. "The selling of CDs and DVDs from shops and via mail is being replaced by modern filesharing technologies. The decay of the record industry is a fact that we cannot and should not even try to prevent. To try to stop filesharing through legislation in order to save the record industry is as futile as it would be to try to ban cars in order to save the horse cart industry." Sigfrid also notes that many remarkable free market economists - including Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek - have criticized copyrights as monopolies that harm the market economies instead of helping them. "Instead of making tougher copyright laws we should make them more lenient, and we should legalize private P2P altogether", Sigfrid says.

Sigfrid's bold challenge to the prime minister has made him an instant hero among the Swedish pirates but the main figures of the Moderate Party have not yet responded at all to his article. Prime minister Reinfeldt has advised, through his representative, the reporters to contact justice minister Beatrice Ask in the matter, and justice minister herself has suddenly become unavailable for the press along with her state secretary Magnus Graner.
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=14028





Swedish Pirate Chief in Berkeley: “We Will Trigger a Global IPR Revolution”
TankGirl

Rick Falkvinge, the founder and chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party, has been touring on West Cost, giving inspiring keynote talks and raising loud ARRRRRs from the audiences at OSCON Open Source Convention in Portland, at Hillside Club in Berkeley, and at both Google and Stanford University in Stanford. Here is the core part of his opening speech at the classy Hillside Club in Berkeley, where the panel guests included Fred von Lohmann from EFF, Anthony Falzone from Stanford's Fair Use Project and Karl Fogel from QuestionCopyright.org.

Rick Falkvinge:

“We don't care if the record labels lose money”

The filesharing debate tends to focus on economic principles. Does filesharing reduce record label profits? And at that point it it often goes: yes it does, no it doesn't, he said, she said... trench warfare style discussion. And that's not very productive. If you have a lot of conflicting reports just giving the opposite conclusions, you unfortunately tend to lose the audience.

So we have taken a different focus. We honestly don't care if the record labels lose money. Because at its heart copyright is a commercial monopoly. It was created in a time when books were distributed by horse and cart to bookstores. And if you were to find an infraction of copyright in those days – you could see a copied book in a bookstore; you could see an unauthorized concert – and the key here is that you could see those in public places with a naked eye.

Today, however, copyright has trapped into our private communication. It's illegal for me to send a piece of music in e-mail to any of you guys here today. And if copyright is to be enforced in this new environment, that means that every piece of private communication must be monitored by law enforcement and by corporate interest groups watching over copyright in order to make sure I don't send their piece of music in private communication. And that includes every letter sent to my lawyer or doctor.

“Lady Justice has a problem”

They are also attacking not only the postal secret but something called the common carrier principle, which means basically that the messenger is never responsible for the contents of the message. They are now saying that Internet service providers should be responsible for what their users do on Internet. So, Lady Justice has a problem. On one side of the scale is one income source for the entertainment industry – essentially a luxury consumption. On the other side of the scale are two foundations for a democratic society. Hmm....

It actually gets worse still. If you allow corporate interest groups to start monitoring private communications, you lose whistle blower protection. Because if you have somebody uncovering a scandal and mailing a reporter about it, that means that that mail will get read along the way by somebody who is just trying to enforce copyright. But since the mail will have been read along the way, it does not matter what they can or cannot do with that information. It can not be unread – the whistle blower protection is gone. And by extension goes freedom of the press. Because if you cannot find any sources for misbehaving government, then what are you going to print? Weekly horoscope? Quarterly profits of the record business? You get the picture... So instead of the whistle blower protection you get self-censorship. If you know you're under surveillance, you tend to put a lid on yourself. You tend to not say what you would say if you know you're in private.

“To form an identity you need private communications”

I'll tell you an anecdote on this from when we were at the Gay Pride Parade in Stockholm. It was sort of a theoretical construct for me at the time that if you don't have access to private communications you lose you're right to form an identity. That's because forming an identity is a process that takes place in a very private exchange between you and a couple of friends. So while I was logically and rationally reasoning about this, when I said this to a couple of people at the Pride Park in Stockholm, you could see that it hit them very hard and very emotionally. You could see the penny drop; you could see them going back to the time when they went through this process. So these people really understand what this is about and why it is important to be able to to have private communications.

So this is what the conflict is about. The copyright industry would like you to believe that it is about lost profits that they would in some magical way have a right to; that it is about percentages of sales diminishing. It's not. It's about vital civil liberties that are a foundation of a democratic society that need to be eroded or abolished in order to maintain a crumbling monopoly.

“Politicians are lost – but the copyright industry is not”

The problem is that the politicians do not understand this. They genuinely do not. They're too occupied by their health care, their defense policy, their energy policy, school, tax and so forth. For them this becomes basically an issue like what color is this school in back of beyond nowhere going to be. So they just brush the issue aside. The copyright industry, however, unfortunately understands this perfectly. I'm going to give you two examples of this.

In Brussels – which is the European equivalent of Washington D.C. - the copyright lobby recently tried to make amendments to a bill that would give four years in prison to anybody accepting filesharing – passively accepting. This is assumed to happen at the Internet service provider level. And those four years in prison would have given the copyright industry a practically unlimited access to warrantless wiretapping inmost states of Europe. Like I said: there goes the postal secret. They do understand this.

Another example is that when I was at a copyright insiders' seminar in Sweden just six weeks ago the Danish chief antipiracy jurist stepped onto the podium and said: “You know guys, we really need to filter the Internet. But the politicians do not understand filesharing, nor do they understand why it is so important for us to filter the Internet. So what we need to do is to associate filesharing with child pornography – because politicians understand child pornography and they want to filter that.” This is how unscrupulous and cynical these people are.

“These are not lunatic ideas. We are just ahead of the Bell Curve.”

So our solution was to bypass the politicians. We did pretty well and we are continuing to do pretty well. To sum up our platform, we're saying that:

- in terms of copyright, attribution is good, it's part of why many people create
- filesharing should be free
- copyright has nothing to do in my private communications, it should get out of there
- the commercial copyright term of lifetime plus seventy years is ludicrous, no investor makes calculations based on a lifetime or 125 years
- DRM is evil
- patents are even more evil, they range from useless to pointless to immoral to diabolical
- privacy is good
- due process is good and a transparent government is even better

And this is the whole of our platform. We do not care about energy policy, about school policy and so on and so forth. We focus on where we have something to add to the debate. And we have influenced other parties as well. After the election it turns out that we actually took quite a few votes from the other parties. They came to us and said: “Er... guys... we don't understand this issue... do you think you can explain it to us?” Of course we would! That's what we wanted all along: for the politicians to care about the issue. I'm just sort of disappointed that we had to take their votes and threaten to take their jobs over it.

So we've talked to many other parties in Sweden who are starting to pick up the ideas. The Norwegian Liberal party even went so far as to copy our entire stance on copyright, word for word, sentence for sentence – and they are in the Norwegian parliament. So the ideas are spreading. They are not like fringy lunatic ideas. They are just ahead of the Bell Curve. We built an an organization. On the election day we had 2,000 volunteers covering 93% of the polling stations nationwide. I'm extremely happy with that number. And, like I said, we had a record first election.

To give you two more numbers: my personal candidacy for parliament came at rank 15 out of over 5,700 candidates. I didn't get a seat because the party didn't get enough votes, but it tells you something about how strongly people feel about these issues. Also, in the school mock elections we got 4.5% - and those people are going to vote next time around. It's also notable that we were not on the school ballot. So those were all write-ins.

“Let's play who-wants-to-be-prime-minister”

So we're aiming for 4%. How can people with only 4% of the seats have any influence? How can you contain your laughter looking at 15 or 16 people out of 350 who claim to be pirates? Well, it turns out that there are two blocks in Swedish parliament who always come very tied. So we aim to be a wedge in between them. That means both of these blocks will need our support to form a majority government. That means we get to sit down and play who-wants-to-be-prime-minister. And whoever wants to be the prime minister the most, will need to give us the best offer in terms of intellectual property reform. Then we will go along in whatever they want in everything else, and we'll have a reform.

Why Sweden then? Why would anybody care about a frozen country of the size of a shoebox around the European Arctic Circle? Well, it happens to be a perfect place to trigger a global intellectual property reform. First of all, the copyright laws in Europe are at the state level. There are no laws at the federal level in Europe. That means Sweden is at liberty to change its laws, as long as it can justify doing so. Second, if you look at how the global production is divided between the three major economic centers, out of the 60 trillion dollars GDP in global production the U.S. Has 12 trillion, Europe has 12 trillion, and China has 10 trillion. That means that the U.S. Copyright lobby can not threaten trade sanctions against Europe – because the two parties are equally strong. This is not the case like if this would originate in South America, which is not as strong.

So I'm going to argue that the best way to initiate a copyright reform in U.S. Is actually to take the Scenic Route through Europe. Because the first country that says “No, we actually don't think that this is good” is going to set off a chain of events that will force a global change in this age of the Internet.
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=13933





US Pirate Party Seeks Legitimacy, Starts in Utah
Jacqui Cheng

It's a common sentiment among tech-savvy audiences that the current copyright and patent system in the US is "broken" to some degree. And while some politicians have put issues like patent and copyright reform at the top of their lists, there aren't many political parties out there that make it one of their sole issues. That's where the US "Pirate Party" hopes to step in; the group is now hoping to establish itself as an officially-acknowledged political body in the state of Utah.

Established in 2006, the US arm of the international "pirate party movement" says that it believes the government should encourage creativity and freedom instead of smothering it. According to the group's web site, "Creativity has come to a standstill in this country for those who wish to work within, and benefit from, the confines of the law." The Pirate Party cites current copyright and patent laws as the reason for this, and "that our law not only allows this, but enables this, is a travesty and a crime against innovators everywhere."

However, contrary to what the party's name implies, the US Pirate Party does not condone piracy. "We've chosen to adopt the Pirate name so as to pay homage to the creative artists of the past, or as they would now be known, Pirates, thieves, and copyright infringers," reads the web site.

The group has now begun to accept statements of support in order to establish itself as a viable political party in Utah. Apparently known for its "strong history" of political diversity and technological progress, Pirate Party spokesperson Andrew Norton says that Utah seems to be the ideal state to register in. The group needs 2,000 signatures from registered voters before next February in order to establish itself as a political party. Doing so will allow the Pirate Party to place candidates on the state's primary ballot under the party's name—otherwise, they must list the individuals as unaffiliated or write-in candidates.

"Voters in Utah are now one step closer to being able to voice their opinions on the key issues our party stands for," Norton said in a statement. But there's a big gap between being "established in Utah" and "viable political force"—and that's not even taking into account the extremely narrow scope of the party's supported issues. The two-party system in the US is extremely entrenched, and even the strongest independent forces are still working hard to make a significant dent in the US government. Even if the group succeeds in getting established in Utah, the Swedish Pirate Party's failed efforts to gain a parliamentary seat foreshadow the steep uphill battle that the group will face in coming years.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-in-utah.html





Raid Casualty Comes Forward to Tell His Story

Hours before the raids were news and broadcast across the net and the mass media, an XS member (FallsInc) tried to warn those of us in the inner circle that the noose was about to tighten around US Modchip shops. In all honesty many amongst us didn't give too much credence to the tip. Those of us running this site aren't running Modchip shops. To our Utter shock and dismay, hours later we watched as one shop after another in the US market either went down, stopped answering the phones and stopped taking orders. Shops, big and small across 16 states were raided, and had modding, piracy, and alot of unrelated goods and materials confiscated under the wide brush strokes of the DCMA.

The following is a firsthand account, written in his own words of the last 24 or so hours in the life of FallInc.

FallsInc - When ICE hit me, they had a warrant for my grandma's house where I had all my packages sent. They had a picture of the house, and a description of it, meaning they were ready to come find me. When they were there, they didn't find much, since I hadn't had my computer and most modding stuff there for a while, but I continued to have the orders sent there for security of the packages. They went in the house and woke everyone up and watched them get dressed and started going though everything that was in my old room, and the stuff I had in the garage. They took anything that was related to gaming. They opened all the mail I had waiting for me there (which included someone's Xbox and $150 for a mod and 400gb), and took all the consoles and all console parts that I had stored there they even took my original xbox1 games, that were in retail cases. They took my 360, power brick and video cable, while its modded with xtreme 5.1b, it has never had 1 single burned game booted on it. They also felt it necessary to take all my old Xbox parts, mostly dead, my controllers for the 360 and Wii (?) and packed it in a box, and left.

They got my phone number from my grandma and they called me, but I was sleeping, just like everyone else in Ohio. They eventually figured out where I was, and came to find me at my girlfriends' house. They asked me about modding and what I did, and how I did it. They showed me the list of modchips that they collected, and asked me if I ever imported modchips from Canada. I told them I did, but I didn't know it was a Canadian site until after I made the order. They asked me how much money I made, and how many mods I've done, and how many chips I still had, and where they were and where my computers were.

I wasn't forced to turn over my stuff since they didn't have a warrant for where it all was, but they told me that if I volunteered it, it would look better when the case is reviewed. They also said that I would have a better chance of getting it back (at first, they promised that I would get it back in 10 days, but once we got to the location, that was changed to "better chance" and "looks better in the eyes of XX". I did the only thing I felt I could do, I let them take what they wanted. We went to where I had my workshop area. They took my laptop, and desktop, and the soldering iron (which was one of their main things to find for some reason). All the chips and relative parts were taken on the recommendation of the computer forensics guy who was to be doing the analysis on my things.

In their defense, the ICE people who came to my girlfriends house were nice people, and they tried to help me make the right decision. I knew they were just doing their job, but I have been out of work since early may, and modding is the only thing that was keeping me above water with the bills. Now I can't mod, and I can't even sell anything off to pay for bills either since it has all been confiscated due to a ludicrous interpretation of the DCMA. Now it's all said and done, and I just have to wait for them to decide what I did wrong, but while I'm waiting, I have NOTHING of any worth anymore, other than a computer monitor, and my car. Because of what happened I'm not allowed to see my girlfriend and our 4 month old daughter, and last night, I slept in my car and my girlfriend sent me a text message telling me it felt like someone was taking me away from her. They took my life away. I would like to formally thank Microsoft and Nintendo for cracking down on the little guy with a soldering iron in his garage, rather than going after the people that are responsible for the bootlegs being available.

HSD - Xbox-Scene and it's affiliate sites do not condone or endorse piracy, however we do strive to discuss, educate, and explore methods of modifying and operating game consoles in ways not originally intended or envisioned by the manufacturers. We whole heartedly believe in the right to backup your investment. This act in and of itself isn't legal in many jurisdictions. Running a "modchip" store, site or service in many jurisdictions isn't legal. XS advises that anyone, regardless of country you are in take the time to educate yourselves on what is legal, and not legal in your jurisdiction. FallsInc wasn't some large modchip site or service. He was an individual making a few coins on the side. While his story won't be the last we'll hear about the raids, we do encourage everyone reading, especially those in the US to take the time and the measures necessary to ensure that you won't be in the next batch of raids.

This isn't JUST a problem for the United States. Europe isn't exempt from the broad strokes of the bloated DCMA legislation. Europe in 2001 passed the EU copyright Directive which has many similarities to the DCMA. There are many good resources on the net about the DCMA and the EUCD. Wikipedia is a good start Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

I'd like to thank FallsInc for coming forward and sharing his story with us.
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...llysyVJWYQ.php





Rights and Wrongs on Copyright
Steven Musil

Rapper Eminem feels like he's getting shortchanged by the Internet--and it's a feeling shared by many.

The rapper, whose music is available through Apple's iTunes, is suing the company for copyright infringement, saying that his music publishers have not given Apple permission to offer the artist's music for download. Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, the companies representing Eminem, demand that Apple stop offering downloads.

Part of the problem may be confusion over who owns the rights to downloads. Apparently, Eminem is asserting that record companies do not hold these rights exclusively. Apple pays a portion of the revenue it collects from Eminem downloads to Universal Music Group, which distributes the music, but not to Eminem's publishers.

Meanwhile, many bloggers feel they are being ripped off by automated digital plagiarism, in which software bots copy thousands of blog posts per hour and publish them verbatim onto Web sites on which contextual ads next to them can generate money for the site owner.

Such Web sites are known among Web publishers as "scraper sites" because they effectively scrape the content off blogs, usually through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other feeds on which those blogs are sent.

Lorelle VanFossen, a writer who has a popular blog about blogging, is frustrated by her near-daily encounters with plagiarism.

"I make my living from my writing, and when people take it because they are ignorant of copyright laws--or think that because it's on the Internet, it's free--it makes me really mad," she said. "It's stealing content, in my mind."

More typical conflicts over content use on the Net involve tech start-ups that are sued by media conglomerates for copyright infringement. Quite often, the defendants call on Ira Rothken, a medical researcher turned lawyer who has backed long-shot copyright cases. Rothken is defending TorrentSpy, a search engine often used by file sharers to locate pirated films. TorrentSpy is facing a copyright suit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group that represents the top film studios.

In May, a federal magistrate judge ordered the company to turn over user information stored in its servers' random access memory (RAM). The courts have never before ruled that RAM, a computer's temporary memory, is a tangible document that must be produced and turned over to litigants in civil cases, according to legal experts. Rothken has filed an appeal, and on August 13 will try to persuade a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles to reverse the decision. At stake is nothing less than Internet anonymity, say some legal experts. If companies can be compelled to turn over RAM any time they face a civil suit, then no U.S. Web site can ever again promise not to share user data, according to Rothken.

Theft of content is one thing, but a tech trade group is accusing a handful of sports leagues and media companies of trying to intimidate the public by issuing inaccurate warnings about making "unauthorized" copies of their work, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)--a trade group that represents tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo--names the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC-Universal, Morgan Creek Productions, DreamWorks Pictures, Harcourt and Penguin Group.

An example of what CCIA is referring to is the little speech that TV or radio announcers make during breaks in games. Most sports fans can recite at least a smidgen of the boilerplate. While the statements have become a tradition during professional football and baseball broadcasts, the CCIA claims such statements are false and are harmful to consumers and technology companies. Similar warnings can be found in books, CDs and DVDS, according to the CCIA.

Some CNET News.com readers also expressed frustration with the current state of copyright laws.

"With the way things are right now, consumers are not seeing any of the benefits of the 'digital age' and are instead seeing their rights slip away in a barrage of draconian laws," one reader wrote to the News.com TalkBack forum.
http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+R...?tag=nefd.lede





Q&A: William Gibson, Science Fiction Novelist

Heading into Spook Country with the cyberspace guru
Steve Ranger

Science fiction novelist William Gibson has been exploring the relationship between technology and society ever since he burst on to the literary scene with his cyberpunk classic Neuromancer in 1984. He invented the word 'cyberspace' and his influential works predicted many of the changes technology has brought about. silicon.com's Steve Ranger caught up with him in the run up to the launch of his latest novel, Spook Country.

silicon.com: You've written much about the way people react to technology. What's your own attitude towards technology?
Gibson: I'm not an early adopter at all. I'm always quite behind the curve but I think that's actually necessary - by not taking that role as a consumer I can be a little more dispassionate about it.

Most societal change now is technologically driven, so there's no way to look at where the human universe is going without looking at the effect of emergent technology. There's not really anything else driving change in the world, I believe.

Has the impact of technology been positive or negative?
I'm absolutely agnostic about it and if I was either a Luddite or a technophile I couldn't possibly function in my job. I think that, generally speaking, technologies are morally neutral until humans beings pick them up and use them for something.

It's a positive thing depending on what happens when we use it. Nothing that I can see other than the market drives the emergence of new technologies. The technologies that change society most profoundly aren't legislated into existence.

There's a blue plaque in London that says, in effect, 'Broadcast television was invented here'. Nobody in that room above the shop was filled with a kind of eldritch horror and a vision of a world of closed circuit surveillance - it was the last thing they were thinking.

All of the big changes that emergent technologies bring us are, for the most part, completely unanticipated by the people that introduce those technologies. It's out of control by its very nature and if you could control it, it wouldn't work.

Unlike many of your novels, which are set in the future, Spook Country is in the near past. What's different about writing about the past rather than the future?
I'm writing speculative fiction about the year before last [rather than] speculative fiction about the year after next Tuesday which is what I was doing for a while.

There's not a lot of clever, made-up, semi-imaginary new technology cluttering the thing up but all the pressures in these books the characters are feeling are ultimately technologically driven, so I'm using the same tools to look at the same things but without the conceit that one is viewing this in some imaginary future.

So what's the difference?
It's much harder to just make shit up to get oneself out of a tight plot spot. When I'm writing about the future if I get really stuck I can just go back and reinvent some other aspect of the amazing whatsit machine that makes it possible to drive the truck past the checkpoint, or whatever it is.

For me it's harder work to irradiate the content of a shipping container [in Spook Country] in a way that at least convinces me, than it is to dream up some gizmo from Chiba city that will crawl in there and do it all by itself.

So why not write about the future?
The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. I think we've been in a very long, century-long period of increasingly exponential technologically-driven change.

We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that - we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilisation collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too.

You can see it in corporate futurism as easily as you can see it in science fiction. In corporate futurism they are really winging it - it must be increasingly difficult to come in and tell the board what you think is going to happen in 10 years because you've got to be bullshitting if you claiming to know. That wasn't true to the same extent even a decade ago.

What would you say are the big themes of Spook Country?
In the process of doing the tour I will be informed by interviewers of what the broad themes are. I haven't been interviewed sufficiently to be able to tell you. It's set in the same world as Pattern Recognition and involves some of the same characters but they're a few years down the road and the world has changed a bit. I suppose one of the things it's trying to do is take some measure of how much the world has changed since Pattern Recognition.

How has technology changed writing?
The thing that has affected me most directly during Pattern Recognition, and subsequently, is the really strange new sense I have of the Google-ability of the text. It's as though there is a sort of invisible hyperlink theoretical text that extends out of the narrative of my novel in every direction.

Someone has a website going where every single thing mentioned in Spook Country has a blog entry and usually an illustration so, every reference, someone has taken it, researched it and written a sort of little Wikipedia entry for it and all in the format of a website that pretends to be from a magazine called Node, which is an imaginary magazine, within Spook Country, and which turns out to be imaginary in the context of the narrative.

I have this sense when I write now that the text doesn't stop at the end of the page and I suppose I could create web pages somewhere and lead people to them through the text which is an interesting concept. I actually played with doing that in Spook Country but I didn't know enough about it. Everything is bending towards hypertext now.

You've done a reading in Second Life. What did you make of that
It's a lot more corporate than the vision I had. What I find most interesting about Second Life is that I've noticed now, very occasionally, I'll see on the street someone who looks as though they have escaped from Second Life. There are people who look all too much like Second Life avatars and I don't know if they were there before or whether I just hadn't notice them.

How well do you think your earlier novels such as Neuromancer have stood the test of time?
Any imaginary future as soon as you get it down on screen starts to acquire an instant patina of quaintness - it's just the nature of things.

If I were a smart 12-year-old picking up Neuromancer for the first time today I'd get about 20 pages in and I'd think 'Ahhaa I've got it - what happened to all the cell phones? This is a high-tech future in which cellular telephony has been banned'.

So I completely missed that [mobile phones]. When people ask me about Neuromancer as a predictive construct, they always ask about the technology. They don't ask about globalisation which wasn't even a word when I started that book but the world of Neuromancer is a post-globalised world and it's hurting from it and that may carry a lot of people through it today. But if that wasn't there then maybe it would be hopelessly dated.

Except for the Soviet Union - which is another whopping anachronism looming in the background of Neuromancer - there don't seem to be any nation states in that world, it's completely corporate.

So what's next?
I think what I may be doing here with this current batch of books is attempting to take the measure of the present, which will allow me to try that sort of projection again. I sort of hope so, otherwise I don't know what I'll do!
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9168006,00.htm





Product Packages Now Shout to Get Your Attention
Louise Story

In the last 100 years, Pepsi had changed the look of its can, and before that its bottles, only 10 times. This year alone, the soft-drink maker will switch designs every few weeks.

Kleenex, after 40 years of sticking with square and rectangular boxes, has started selling tissues in oval packages.

Coors Light bottles now have labels that turn blue when the beer is chilled to the right temperature. And Huggies’ Henry the Hippo hand soap bottles have a light that flashes for 20 seconds to show children how long they should wash their hands.

Consumer goods companies, which once saw packages largely as containers for shipping their products, are now using them more as 3-D ads to grab shoppers’ attention.

The shift is mostly because of the rise of the Internet and hundreds of television channels, which mean marketers can no longer count on people seeing their commercials.

So they are using their bottles, cans, boxes and plastic packs to improve sales by attracting the eyes of consumers, who often make most of their shopping decisions at the last minute while standing in front of store shelves.

“The media is fragmented, and we can’t find people — we can’t get them to sit down and listen to our argument on a television spot,” said Jerry Kathman, chief executive of LPK, a brand agency based in Cincinnati. “The package can convey that argument.”

As recently as the 1990s, most package designs were retained for seven or more years. Now marketing executives say they are constantly planning package overhauls. The average life of a package before its next makeover is down to two years, they add.

Shoppers have also grown accustomed to looking for a little visual pop on aisle shelves as design has become a mainstream marketing tool — Target stores in particular use that visual pop as a key advertising theme, for example. Sameness carries a risk that a product will fade into the background.

“Consumers are looking for what’s new,” said Kimberly Drosos, director for package development at Unilever North America, which recently changed the shape of its Suave shampoo bottles for the first time in 25 years, and sells Axe shower gel bottles shaped like video-game joysticks.

Ms. Drosos added: “They say, ‘What else do you have for me? That was nice last year, but I want the packaging to be refreshing.’ ”

There are many other reasons behind the shift. Some packaging changes are occurring because companies are trying to shrink container sizes and reduce their environmental impact, or because of new approaches for old products (Orbit now sells gum in a bottle made to fit in a car’s cup holder). Some brands are bragging that their bottles of cleansers and other household products are attractive enough to be left out in plain view, rather than hidden in a closet or drawer.

“It’s an inexpensive way to really deliver that newness to people’s homes,” said Becky Walter, director for innovation design and testing at Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Huggies and other brands. “It’s not like they have to go out and purchase new furniture.”

Evian is among the marketers using packaging to add a sense of luxury to ordinary products — its new “palace bottle” water, for example, is being sold in restaurants and hotels. The bottle has an elegant swanlike neck and sits on a small silver tray. Technology is also driving the changes — like the thermochromatic ink in the Coors label that changes the color of the label’s mountains with the temperature of the beer bottle.

And in the next few years, Pepsi drinkers may smell a sweet aroma that is sprayed out when they pop open Pepsi cans — such as a wild cherry scent misting from a Wild Cherry Pepsi can. Executives at the company have also considered cans that can spray a light water mist when they are opened, but they are unlikely to add that feature soon because of the cost, they say.

Laurent Nielly, who heads packaging innovation for Pepsi in North America, said young people — Pepsi’s central audience — have shorter attention spans than previous generations, so bottles and other containers have to change more often. Pepsi is experimenting with the designs on its Mountain Dew bottles, selling aluminum bottles covered in graffiti-like designs that will be changed 12 times from May to October. The bottles are sold only in eastern Virginia now, but the soda maker may expand the approach if sales of the bottles go well.

If products aren’t spraying consumers, they may someday be talking to them.

Some companies are studying technology to put a computer chip and tiny speaker inside a package. This idea might be particularly useful for big companies like Unilever that want to cross-promote their various brands. So a package of cheese could say “I go well with Triscuit crackers” when a shopper takes it off the shelf. As the costs of the chips come down, marketing executives said this and other technologies would appear more on shelves.

All these packaging makeovers may make trips to the grocery stores more entertaining. Or the result could be confusion, if not downright annoyance.

“If you’re walking down a row in a supermarket and every package is screaming at you, it sounds like a terrifying, disgusting experience,” said Tracy Lovatt, director for behavioral planning at BBDO North America, an advertising agency in the Omnicom Group. “But if brands use this wisely, new packaging can be quite powerful. It’s the thing that will interrupt you at the store, and get you to spend time with that brand, and then, hopefully, buy in.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/bu...ackage.html?hp





It’s an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World
Louise Story

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.

Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion six months ago.

Now Mr. Kenny is reshaping the digital advertising strategy for the entire Publicis worldwide conglomerate, which includes agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and the Starcom MediaVest Group and the global accounts of companies like Procter & Gamble, American Express, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

More simply put, the goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.

“Our intention with Digitas and Publicis is to build the global platform that everybody uses to match data with advertising messages,” Mr. Kenny said. “There is a massive transformation happening in the way consumers live and the data we have about them, but very few companies have stepped up to it yet.”

Publicis announced last Tuesday an important step in its digital plan: the acquisition of the Communication Central Group, a digital agency in China founded in 1995, for an undisclosed amount. The agency, to be called Digitas Greater China, will give Publicis a foothold in the Chinese advertising market, which analysts within Publicis estimate is growing at about 20 percent a year, much faster than global growth in the market, which hovers around 5 percent a year.

“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years,” Mr. Kenny said. “These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.”
Beyond the growth potential, Publicis executives see these economies as important sources of low-cost labor for a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.

Greater production capacity is needed, Mr. Kenny says, to make enough clips to be able to move away from mass advertising to personalized ads. He estimates that in the United States, some companies are already running about 4,000 versions of an ad for a single brand, whereas 10 years ago they might have run three to five versions. And he predicts that the number of iterations will grow as technology improves.

The Publicis digital plan can be viewed as a reaction to the changes in how consumers live, but it is also a response to competition among Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Publicis is trying to carve out a niche as a middleman between those online giants and the consumer brand companies that buy advertising. The role is not unlike the way agencies have long connected advertisers to offline media like television networks, newspapers and magazines.

“How do we see Google, Yahoo and Microsoft? It’s important to see that our industry is changing and the borders are blurring, so it’s clear the three of those companies will have a huge share of revenues which will come from advertising,” said Maurice Lévy, chairman and chief executive of the Publicis Groupe.

“But they will have to make a choice between being a medium or being an ad agency, and I believe that their interest will be to be a medium,” he added. “We will partner with them as we do partner with CBS, ABC, Time Warner or any other media group.”

Mr. Lévy’s view of the dominant Internet portals diverges from that of other advertising executives. Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the WPP Group, another ad agency conglomerate, has publicly called Google a “frenemy” and has recently acquired 24/7 Real Media, an advertising network that positions his company to compete more directly with Google and other online portals.

Mr. Lévy, who has a penchant for grand ambitions, says he does not plan to compete with Google — rather, he wants Google to need Publicis.

He is widely credited with the transformation of Publicis from a small French ad company into one of the world’s largest advertising holding companies, competing with the WPP Group, Omnicom and the Interpublic Group. Now his stated goal is to stir up the digital sea before he retires in 2010.

By Mr. Lévy’s account, the Publicis purchase of Digitas was the deal that set in motion a string of online acquisitions, as companies like Google, Microsoft and the WPP Group spent billions to buy the online advertising companies DoubleClick, aQuantive and 24/7 Real Media, respectively. Just last month, AOL purchased the behavioral ad network Tacoda.

“We took the initiative, and it has triggered a frenzy of acquisition in the industry,” Mr. Lévy said. “It’s something that can be checked by the date. It’s quite clear we triggered it.”

Digitas, like many digital agencies, started out as a direct marketing firm, reaching consumers mainly through the United States Postal Service. As the Internet emerged, Digitas developed a platform it calls Dashboards to break online ads into their components and figure out which pieces work for which audiences.

Digitas uses data from companies like Google and Yahoo and customer data from each advertiser to develop proprietary models about which ads should be shown the first time someone sees an ad, the second time, after a purchase is made, and so on. The ads vary, depending on a customer’s age, location and past exposure to the ads.

Digitas executives say that consumers end up with a better experience — even a service — if the ads they are shown are relevant and new.

“We now know how many times they’ve seen this ad, so stop annoying them,” said Mark Beeching, executive vice president and worldwide chief creative officer of Digitas. “The more you can standardize and automate in terms of making different versions, hallelujah. That money should be spent creating more content.”

Along with automation, low-cost workers abroad will help create more versions of ads. The Publicis Groupe’s new employees in China, gained through the CCG deal, are paid well by Chinese standards, said Neil Runcieman, former chief executive of CCG and now chief executive of Digitas Greater China.

Mr. Kenny said that Digitas constantly struggles to find enough employees with the technical expertise to use complex data to slice and dice ads for companies like General Motors and Procter & Gamble. As Digitas invests in countries like China and India, he said, the Publicis Groupe will benefit from the global talent pool — and perhaps create more demand for advertising in those countries.

“There’s this rising tide of advertising in emerging economies,” Mr. Kenny said. “But we can also help it rise by sending jobs there.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/bu...06digitas.html





Pay-For-Visit Advertising
theodp

US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/09/1331207





Jack Cole, Creator of People Locator, Dead at 87
Margalit Fox

Jack Cole, a businessman who used early computer technology to sort the world — or at least millions of the people in it — by street address, creating a series of reverse directories that remain invaluable to detectives, debt collectors, telemarketers and anyone who needs to find someone, died on July 29 at his home in Spearfish Canyon, S.D. He was 87.

The cause was cancer, his daughter, Susan Wright, said.

Sixty years ago, Mr. Cole began publishing the Cole Directory, a set of reverse guides to various United States cities. Known familiarly as crisscross directories, Cole Directories list a city’s residents by address and by telephone number.

The first city directories in the United States were published in the 1780s. Though most were arranged alphabetically by last name, a few early ones were organized by street address. For the next century and a half, compilers of these directories trudged door to door, painstakingly recording the residents of every apartment in every building on every block in the city.

What Mr. Cole did, starting in 1947, was to use I.B.M. punch cards to streamline the process, turning an ordinary telephone book into what today would be called a searchable database. (Cole Directories, which cover about 200 cities, are now published in print and digital forms by the MetroGroup Corporation of Lincoln, Neb.)

Mr. Cole’s books, which quickly became a staple of public library reference shelves, were a boon to people in a range of fields: a direct-mail marketer could aim at customers in prime neighborhoods; a detective could press neighbors for the whereabouts of a deadbeat; a reporter on the trail of an ax murderer could phone the family next door to be told, “He was always such a quiet boy.”

Jack Ridnour Cole was born on Feb. 12, 1920, in Lincoln. He earned an undergraduate degree in business from the University of Nebraska and afterward went to work for I.B.M.

Moving to Dallas to work as an I.B.M. sales representative, Mr. Cole hit upon the idea for his directory. He hired typists to keyboard the entire Dallas telephone book onto punch cards. Directories for other cities soon followed, with Mr. Cole drawing on census records, tax rolls and other data to supplement the information in the phone book.

Mr. Cole’s wife, the former Lois Keller, whom he married in 1941, died in 1997. Besides his daughter, Ms. Wright, of Prescott, Ariz., he is survived by two sons, Dana, of Lincoln, and Jeffrey, of La Quinta, Calif.; a sister, Patricia Cole Sinkey, of Lincoln; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

After selling his directory business in 1973, Mr. Cole turned to other ventures, among them a chain of hunting and fishing lodges. In recent years, after retiring to a cabin in Spearfish Canyon that had been in his family since the 19th century, he became active in environmental causes.

Among her father’s effects in the cabin, Ms. Wright said, was a Cole Directory for Rapid City, S.D., some 50 miles away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/ob...es/07cole.html





Defendant Wins Breathalyzer Source Code
Declan McCullagh

What happened, according to court records and other documents:

When Dale Lee Underdahl was arrested on February 18, 2006, on suspicion of drunk driving, he submitted to a breath test that was conducted using a product called the Intoxilyzer 5000EN.

During a subsequent court hearing on charges of third-degree DUI, Underdahl asked for a copy of the "complete computer source code for the (Intoxilyzer) currently in use in the state of Minnesota."

An article in the Pioneer Press quoted his attorney, Jeffrey Sheridan, as saying the source code was necessary because otherwise "for all we know, it's a random number generator." It is hardly new technology: One criminal defense attorney says the Intoxilyzer is based on the antique Z-80 microprocessor.

A judge granted the defendant's request, but Michael Campion, Minnesota's commissioner in charge of public safety, opposed it. Minnesota quickly asked an appeals court to intervene, which it declined to do. Then the state appealed a second time.

What became central to the dispute was whether the source code was owned by the state or CMI, the maker of the Intoxilyzer.

Minnesota's original bid proposal that CMI responded to says that "all right, title, and interest in all copyrightable material" that CMI creates as part of the contract "will be the property of the state." The bid proposal also says CMI must provide "information" to be used by "attorneys representing individuals charged with crimes in which a test with the proposed instrument is part of the evidence," which seems to include source code.

Campion's office, on the other hand, claims the source code is confidential, copyrighted and proprietary. It has asked for what's known as a "writ of prohibition" barring the source code from being released.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected the request, saying "a writ of prohibition is an extraordinary remedy and is only used in extraordinary cases."

This isn't the first time breathalyzer source code has been the subject of legal scrutiny. A Florida court ruled two years ago that police can't use electronic breathalyzers as courtroom evidence against drivers unless the source code is disclosed. Other alleged drunk drivers have had charges thrown out because CMI refuses to reveal the Intoxilyzer source code.

Excerpt from Minnesota Supreme Court's ruling:
The district court ordered the production of the "complete computer source code" for the Intoxilyzer 5000EN. In support of its order, the district court found that under the contract between the state and CMI, the state owned the source code for the Intoxilyzer 5000EN. The court of appeals concluded that the district court's finding was not clearly erroneous given the concession in the state's petition seeking the writ of prohibition that it owned that portion of the source code created exclusively for the Intoxilyzer 5000EN...

Having carefully reviewed the record presented and the arguments of the parties, we conclude that we cannot decide the copyright issues raised. Although the parties direct us to copyright law regarding works for hire and derivative works, they provide only a superficial application of that law to the facts of this case. Perhaps that is because the factual record before us is inadequate, thereby making any determination regarding either copyright theory impossible.

Resolution of this issue, however, does not require us to apply federal copyright law because we also conclude that the commissioner has failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that the information sought is clearly not discoverable and that he has no adequate remedy at law. While on the one hand the commissioner argues that ownership of the source code for the Intoxilyzer 5000EN is to be determined under federal copyright law and that under that law he does not have possession, custody or control of the source code, on the other hand he concedes that the state owns and thus controls some portion of the source code. That concession is supported by the express language of the RFP granting CMI the right to supply the Intoxilyzer 5000EN to the state.

Further, given the express language of the RFP that requires CMI to provide the state with "information to be used by attorneys representing individuals charged with crimes in which a test with the (Intoxilyzer 5000EN) is part of the evidence" when production of the information is mandated by court order "from the court with jurisdiction of the case," it is not clear to us that the commissioner is unable to comply with the district court's order. Accordingly, we cannot conclude that the district court ordered the production of information that is clearly not discoverable...

We do not agree that the commissioner lacks adequate remedies at law. As discussed above, irrespective of whether the state owns any portion of the source code, CMI agreed, in the RFP, to provide the attorneys representing individuals charged with crimes "in which a test with the (Intoxilyzer 5000EN) is part of the evidence" information necessary to comply with a court's order. We conclude that the commissioner's ability to enforce its contract with CMI constitutes an adequate legal remedy.

None of the four circumstances justifying the issuance of a writ of prohibition...are present in this case. We, therefore, hold that the court of appeals properly denied the commissioner's petition for a writ of prohibition.
http://news.com.com/Police+Blotter+D...3-6201632.html





BitTorrent Addresses Closed Source Issues
Thomas Mennecke

BitTorrent gained prominence in the file-sharing community largely due to its open source nature. What began as an unknown file-sharing client quickly diversified into a vast collection of applications. Developers were able to take the original BitTorrent source code and forge their own creations. The result of this ability includes the development of Azurues, BitComet, Transmission, and of course, uTorrent (micro Torrent).

The mainline BitTorrent client had some following, however never came close to the consumer penetration of uTorrent or Azureus. With its nearly 17 million users, fully functional user interface, low memory footprint and nearly indistinguishable CPU consumption, the closed source uTorrent became an attractive target for BitTorrent, Inc. On December 7, 2006, Bram Cohen, CEO or BitTorret, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, developer of uTorrent, formally announced BitTorrent, Inc.'s acquisition.

It was reasonably assumed that not a whole lot was going to change after the acquisition. Bram Cohen had assured everyone that the community experience surrounding uTorrent would remain intact.

"What does this mean for the uTorrent community? Not much, at least not at first. The intention is to maintain the website as it is, and keep the forums and community active."

That's all good and well, but the primary concern revolves around the open source nature of the BitTorrent protocol. The BitTorrent protocol is, or at least was, open prior to uTorrent becoming the official client (BitTorrent version 6.0). With uTorrent primed to become the official client, many were concerned that the BitTorrent protocol would become closed. According to the uTorrent acquisition FAQ, this concern was addressed directly.

"Q: How will this impact the BitTorrent open source development community as a whole?

A: There will be no impact to the BitTorrent open source development community. We are committed to maintaining the preeminent reference implementation of BitTorrent under an open source license."

BitTorrent 6.0, the official mainline client based on uTorrent, was released on July 28, 2006. Unlike previous official releases, there was no corresponding source code. While it's understandable that uTorrent's code may not be released, concerns remain that the protocol may advance while leaving the open source community behind.

"Sorry, source code for BitTorrent 6.0, like the source code for uTorrent, will not be released. However, versions 5 and earlier were of course released under open source licenses, and remain available for you to modify and redistribute subject to the terms of their respective licenses."

It's true enough that earlier versions of the BitTorrent protocol are available, however considering that BitTorrent is continuously evolving, older versions offer little benefit to a forward looking developer. To many in the BitTorrent community, BitTorrent, Inc. has turned its back on the open source movement. Addressing these concerns, Ashwin Navin, President of BitTorrent, Inc., spoke to Slyck.com.

"That's a true statement," Ashwin told Slyck.com, referring to the uTorrent acquisition FAQ. "We'll always maintain an open source version, although it may not necessarily reflect the latest client on the site."

There are two aspects to the BitTorrent open source debate - the protocol itself, and the client. What helped motivate BitTorrent's decision to close the mainline client?

"There are two issues people need to come to grips with. Developers who produce open source products will often have their product repackaged and redistributed by businesses with malicious intent. They repackage the software with spyware or charge for the product. We often receive phone calls from people who complain they have paid for the BitTorrent client."

As a company that distributes a free product, no one should ever have to pay for the BitTorrent client. Ashwin told Slyck.com that by keeping the source closed, it creates a "certain amount of distinction" between the official client and maliciously repackaged software.

Considering that uTorrent has always been closed source, these facts may not upset too many people. uTorrent became the single most popular BitTorrent client, despite its closed source nature. Yet there's still one remaining issue, that being the protocol.

With previous versions (prior to 6.0), the protocol was just as open as the old mainline client. This has changed with the release of 6.0. Developers, community members and newcomers to the BitTorrent scene have expressed concern that keeping up with the latest protocol developments may be difficult, if not impossible.

However this will not be the case, Ashwin told Slyck.com. Although the latest documentations won't be published for the world to see, an aspiring BitTorrent developer or a hardened coder can still obtain the specifications on the latest protocol extensions by obtaining a SDK license.

"I don't think we've ever said no" to an aspiring BitTorrent programmer, Ashwin said.

While the BitTorrent client and the latest protocol may not be published, therefore technically closed source, the protocol is still open. The details of the protocol extensions, including all the latest revisions, are still available to whoever wants them, providing they obtain the easily obtainable SDK license. BitTorrent's recent move isn't going to make everyone happy, but those wishing to help develop the BitTorrent community probably won't notice much of a difference.
http://www.slyck.com/story1566_BitTo..._Source_Issues





Latest Beta is BitTorrent's Best Release Yet
Michael Calore

BitTorrent, Inc. has released the beta version of its next peer-to-peer sharing client. The beta release of BitTorrent 6.0 is the most elegant official BitTorrent client yet. And that's not too surprising, since the company has simply dressed up BitTorrent's younger, leaner cousin and branded it as a new release.

Fans of Ludvig Strigeus' tiny µTorrent client will be happy to learn that this 6.0 beta is the first release to fully incorporate the µTorrent code into the official BitTorrent client. BitTorrent purchased µTorrent in December, 2006. The company took over development of the independent client while keeping Strigeus involved in the role of technical advisor.

At first glance, it looks like BitTorrent has just taken the µTorrent client, made a few minor enhancements and re-released it under the BitTorrent brand name.

"It's basically the same code base as µTorrent, but we've done a bunch of maintenance to the code," says BitTorrent CEO and co-founder Bram Cohen. "There are a bazillion tiny little things going on in there."

Indeed, the user interface of the new beta looks almost exactly the same as the old µTorrent. The multi-pane interface remains, as does the tabbed info window that sits at the bottom, under your list of active torrents. The icons are more refined and there's a new menu bar option called "Get Stuff" that simply launches the BitTorrent download store in a browser window. µTorrent has always had an admirably clean user interface, and these additions aren't intrusive. One more bit of µTorrent's legacy remains as well -- there are no Mac or Linux versions. BitTorrent 6.0 beta is a Windows-only download, but support for Vista was added recently, and it's present in the new beta. Cohen also says his team is working on a Mac OS X client, which will be released soon. A Linux client is further out, but the current Windows client runs under Wine.

The client performs admirably on Windows XP. It's a 1MB download, so it's quite a bit heavier than the last build of µTorrent, which was around 200KB in size. The client still uses an incredibly small amount of memory -- it averaged around 6MB while downloading a single torrent. The client did have a bit of a tough time maintaining upload connections when we first started it up, but after about 2 or 3 minutes, the fluctuations went away.

There are two minor limitations in BitTorrent 6.0 beta that shouldn't cause too many headaches. First is the absence of any embedded search engines other than the default, which runs searches at BitTorrent's content store. You can add search engines for other torrent trackers like etree.org and dimeadozen if you want, but you'll have to add them by hand (under preferences > user interface), and if you had them in your last client, they won't carry over when you install the beta. Second, unlike with previous upgrades, you'll be forced to manually re-add all of your active torrents to your queue (and restart them) when you first fire up the new beta.

Cohen says these are simply issues with the beta software. Any bumps in the upgrade path will be ironed out when the client leaves the beta phase and becomes an official release. The transition will be seamless in the final release of BitTorrent 6.0, he says.

Also, fans of µTorrent needn't worry about their favorite client being swallowed up or disappearing. BitTorrent will continue to maintain two clients -- one version of the original µTorrent at uTorrent.com (which it acquired along with the client last year) and an officially branded version at BitTorrent.com.

"Any enhancements to the core engine will go into both clients," says Cohen, "but then the BitTorrent client will be further enhanced on top of that."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/20...look-late.html





Democracy Arrives for Web TV with Miro Player

Imagine having to use a different TV set to watch every TV channel - one for Channel 4, one for Sky, one for Viacom channels. Because every media company wants to control the user interface for online video, that's the current future we're looking at, with Amazons UnBox player for films bought from Amazon, iTunes for films downloaded from Apple, and so on. The only way round it would be if all of them collaborated on a single player - tho small producers would doubtless get left out in the long run. And even then, as Cory Doctorow rightly says, online video is too important to leave in the hands of one company.

Miro, is a video player created by a non-profit foundation in America created under the open source GPL license, which basically allows anyone else to re-use it and adapt it for free. Better still it's an excellent video player. Search for and download YouTube videos? Manage video on your own machine and play and open ANY FORMAT? Subscribe to video podcasts and webisodes? Download legit BitTorrents. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. And because it's an open source system, there's lots of people building on it and improving it all the time (this system has been developed for years as 'Democracy Player') and you don't need to worry about hidden nasties like the Amazon EULA, which requests users to. The Participatory Culture Foundation, which develops it, has also created the Broadcast Machine, which makes it easy to run your own iTunes-subscribable video channel on your website.

Good news for anyone who is concerned about online video ending up in the pockets of one greedy media tycoon.
http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/1229/182/





Ex-Keyboardist Sues Marilyn Manson
FMQB

Former Marilyn Manson keyboardist Stephen Gregory Bier Jr. — a.k.a. Madonna Wayne Gacy — is suing the band leader, claiming that Manson used the band's money to fund his lavish lifestyle, drug habit and the production of his upcoming film, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, among other things. The breach-of-contract lawsuit says specifically that Manson took assets belonging to the rest of the band to purchase Nazi paraphernalia, African masks made of human skin and the full skeleton of a four-year-old Chinese girl, all of which he has on display in his California mansion, according to MTV News. Bier is seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive damages as well as lost salary, bonuses and attorneys' fees, which he "believes to be in excess of $20 million."

Bier also says in the lawsuit that after the band achieved mainstream success, Manson's antics cost them financially as lawsuit after lawsuit was filed against them. These include a suit resulting from Manson's alleged attack on a security guard in 2000 and a sexual misconduct suit filed a year later. The suit also says that in 2000, Manson "forced the band to spend a substantial sum of money to pay a video production company to keep certain video footage out of an upcoming DVD about the band... [as] this video footage showed Manson making racist statements and jokes about African-Americans while feeding his pet snake," according to MTV.

The suit goes on to say that when Bier questioned Manson about his exorbitant money spending, Manson claimed the cash had come from sales of his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. But Bier says it was the band's shared assets, not Manson's own money, that was used to "supply his [cocaine and Vicodin] habit," as well as to fund his stint in a $3,000-a-day rehab facility. Then, when Bier tried to use some of the money he earned as part of Marilyn Manson to buy a home, he was denied access to it by the band's business managers.

The lawsuit also reportedly names Manson's management, lawyers and accountants as defendants, along with Manson's film production company, the band's merchandise company and the corporation that was established to oversee the group's various tours.

Meanwhile, Manson has denied the charges. He told MTV News, "The fact that he's claiming that I've treated him unfairly, financially, is really ridiculous. And I would never spend my money on a Chinese girl skeleton. That would be crossing the line. It's a Chinese boy, for the record," he joked, before continuing. "[Bier and his lawyers are] going for shock value, obviously, and I couldn't be less surprised by how unshocking these things would be to the public."

Manson said he will defend himself against the allegations. "I wish there was some sort of legal angle to this whole thing, or some sort of common sense, or just even camaraderie after all the years that we knew each other," he continued. "I don't have an explanation for it. It just seems like another ex-bandmember suing me and trying to assassinate my personality as a means to financial gain, and it just seems old. It's just not fair. If I spent my money on anything, it was my family, and paying his salary for a year when we weren't even touring."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=451653





Iran Detains Scores at "Satanic" Rock Gig: Media

Iranian police detained more than 200 people and seized alcohol and drugs in a raid on a "satanic" underground rock concert, media in the conservative Islamic state reported on Saturday.

Iran, which has launched an annual summer crackdown on "immoral behavior", bans alcohol, narcotics and parties with unrelated men and women dancing, drinking and mixing. Western popular music is frowned upon.

The police operation took place on Wednesday night in the town of Karaj near the capital Tehran, at an event with local disc jockeys, rock and rap groups performing, the media said.

"Most of those arrested are wealthy young people ... who came to this party with the goal of attending a provocative, satanic concert," daily Tehran-e Emrouz quoted a senior police official, Reza Zarei, as saying.

Karaj's public prosecutor, Ali Farhadi, said invitations had been sent out via the Internet and that people from Britain and Sweden were among those held. Zarei suggested they were expatriate Iranians visiting the country.

Farhadi said 150 bottles of alcoholic drinks, 800 "obscene" CDs and different kinds of drugs had been confiscated by police, as well as "inappropriate" dresses that those behind the event were giving to female guests as gifts.

"Some 230 people who attended a rock party in Karaj were identified and arrested," Farhadi said on the Web site of Iran's state broadcaster.

He said 20 video cameras had also been seized and that the organizers had planned to blackmail girls after filming "inappropriate and obscene" videos of them.

Under sharia, Islamic law, imposed after Iran's 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing to disguise their figures and protect their modesty. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMos...23282220070804





'Charm' School

'Voodoo' Principal Axed For Spell-Ing
Todd Venezia and Erin Calabrese

When rules and discipline failed to keep students at a Manhattan high school in line, the principal allegedly tried another technique - black magic.

Maritza Tamayo turned Unity HS on Sixth Avenue into a Hogwarts wannabe with a campaign of magical Santeria rites, which included white robes, mystic headdresses, splattered chicken blood, burning incense and tarot cards, officials said.

All the hocus-pocus was an attempt to "calm the students down," said a report released yesterday by Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon.

Tamayo allegedly called on the expertise of a friend, Gilda Fonte, of The Bronx, who is a priestess in Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion similar to voodoo. It combines the worship of Nigerian deities and Roman Catholic saints.

Together, they conducted the dark and secret ceremonies during winter break in January 2006, while no children were present. Tamayo then got an underling to pay part of the schoolhouse shaman's $1,800 service fee, the investigator's report said.

"It's very poor judgment," said Condon, who recommended Tamayo be fired.

Yesterday, the Department of Education agreed and canned Tamayo from the $133,000-a-year job she had held since 1997.

According to the report, the wayward wizardry began when Tamayo told an assistant principal that it would take the powers of Santeria to "cleanse the building" of bad spirits that caused students to act up.

The assistant principal, Melody Crooks-Simpson, told investigators that Tamayo told her she needed to "burn sage" inside the building and "sprinkle chicken blood on the building," the report said.

Crooks-Simpson said that Tamayo's alleged plan to solve the school's problems by dabbling in sorcery sent chills up her spine, so she decided not to attend.

But magic wasn't the only problem for Tamayo. She also allegedly used $250 in school money - and forced teachers to put up another $100 - to pay Fonte to drive students to the school to take their Regents exam.

Tamayo yesterday denied the allegations to The Post.

She insisted that she is a devout Lutheran who doesn't practice Santeria but simply likes to adorn her home and office with lots of plants and primitive and religious art from Colombia and her husband's native Peru.

"I have plants [at work] because I like plants. I have a doll that a student left because it was Black History month, so I kept it," Tamayo said at her apartment in Forest Hills, Queens.

She said she had no reason to perform rituals at Unity, anyway. "It's not a school that has fights," she said.

Tamayo said the allegations sound like the work of a vindictive union rep.

"She didn't like the incense. It was in my office. She didn't have to smell it," Tamayo said.

The principal said that when the rep recently told her, "I'm going to retire in September, and I'm going to go out with a bang," she wondered what she meant.

"Maybe this [the accusations] is what she meant."

Additional reporting by Yoav Gone and Heidi Singer
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08082007...alabrese.ht m





Wonder Walls

The Reform Institute and Brickfish Partner to Beautify the U.S.-Mexican Border

User Generated Content Campaign Increases Awareness and Awards Entrants for Their Artistic Interpretations
Press Release

Brickfish, the online content marketing platform, today announced a partnership with non-partisan public policy think tank, The Reform Institute, to launch the “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” campaign. The thought-provoking contest invites entrants to offer their opinions on the U.S.-Mexico border fence debate with original designs for decorating it. The online contest, located at www.Brickfish.com/politics/Borderfence, encourages participants to combine imagination and passion with artistic interpretations of what border-crossers should see when traveling from one side of the border to the other.

“Congress has failed to legislate much-needed comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our dysfunctional immigration system and balances security with the needs of our economy,” said Cecilia Martinez, executive director of The Reform Institute. “Instead, Washington has authorized construction of the border fence. We created the ‘Design Your Portion of the Border Fence’ campaign to offer an attention-grabbing and fun way for independent thinkers, Internet activists, and passionate individuals everywhere to engage in debate and creatively express the message they feel that the fence conveys about the U.S. We are expecting some pretty outrageous entries, from murals emblazoned with peace signs to bold warnings telling people not to cross.”

Tapping into the highly controversial debate surrounding the creation of a U.S.-Mexican border fence, entrants are asked to submit an original design that expresses a stance on the issue. The campaign requires entrants to decide which side of the border fence they are painting, Mexico or U.S., and to get creative. The grand prize winner, selected by The Reform Institute Art Jury, will receive $1000. A paid, limited time freelance position with The Reform Institute will be offered to the entry that presents the most passionate stance on the issue. In addition, one entry representing each side of the debate will be awarded $500. Anyone can visit the campaign to view, vote on and share their favorite entries across the Internet.

According to Martinez, the Brickfish platform creates a perfect environment for increasing public awareness on the important topic of immigration reform. The Company’s content-driven, peer-to-peer approach enables interested people to share their views and opinions through User Generated Content (UGC) in a truly open and transparent way. Audience members can vote on, review and share campaign entries through email, Instant Messaging and hundreds of Internet sites, thereby leveraging the viral nature of the Internet and social media to make a difference.

“The Reform Institute is committed to a nonpartisan approach that recognizes the value in advocating open dialogue on a wide range of topics facing the world today,” said Shahi Ghanem, CEO of Brickfish. “The ‘Design Your Portion of the Border Fence’ campaign encourages people who may otherwise be disenchanted with the political process to invest energy in supporting an important cause. Our goal is to raise awareness of vital issues and get people more people actively involved in making change.”

The “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” contest ends September 12. For more information about Brickfish, visit www.Brickfish.com.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en





Checking the Board



Connecticut Artist Wins Top Prize at Kent Art Show
Brian Saxton

It's a bright summer day in New York City and three young people are studying a bulletin board on the corner of a busy street in the SoHo district.

A few feet away, another young woman is arranging dresses for sale under a wide umbrella.

For Newtown artist Ruth Newquist, the moment is impossible to resist.

"I just love SoHo," Newquist said Thursday. "It's exciting. The buildings are full of history and the people there dress in such wonderful colors."

What Newquist saw that day she later recorded in a vibrant watercolor that has earned her the top award in this year's President's Show at the Kent Art Association.

In addition to a $500 prize, it's also won Newquist the chance to hang her own show in the association's gallery next year.

"I'm pretty excited," Newquist said. "The show will allow me to exhibit 22 of my paintings."

Association president Alexis Lynch, who said this year's show attracted 191 entries, said the three independent judges chose Newquist's work for three reasons.

"It was her style, her composition and her technique that caught their eye," Lynch said. "They thought it was a sensational work of art."

Newquist's winning picture, "Checking the Board," is symbolic of her love for painting cityscapes and especially snapshots of SoHo, which caught her imagination when she retired in 1995.

Today she paints in oils and watercolors and is known for cityscapes and New England rural and urban landscapes.

"Color is my focus -- it creates the mood, and each one of my paintings has its own mood," Newquist said.

Painting has been a lifelong journey for Newquist, who spent 25 years teaching art at New Fairfield High School.

Inspired by a childhood love of art, Newquist, who grew up in Pennsylvania, earned a bachelor's of fine arts from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia while studying with such great painters as Ranulph Bye, Reginald Marsh and Frank Reilly.

Today Newquist, who works out of her studio in Newtown, is a signature artist member of the National Watercolor Society and an artist member of the Salmagundi Club in New York City.

Newquist is also a member of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club and the Hudson Valley Art Association in New York; the North Shore Art Association in Gloucester, Mass.; and the Connecticut Watercolor Society.

Her honors include the top watercolor award in the 2001 Salmagundi Club annual members exhibition and the Thomas C. Picard Award for an oil painting in the 2002 Salmagundi Club annual members exhibition.

"Painting can sometimes be a struggle, but for me it's pure joy," Newquist said.

Newquist, who also studied with the Art Students League in New York City, moved to Newtown in 1967. Four years later, her husband, Laurence, an artist, founded the Society of Creative Arts in Newtown.

Her husband died in 1997, but Newquist is still actively involved with SCAN and its sponsorship of art shows, exhibits, classes and demonstrations.

Newquist took a SCAN watercolor workshop this week conducted by Don Andrews of Fairhope, Ala., an internationally recognized artist and instructor.

Newquist said SCAN now has 300 members, 20 demonstrations and three shows a year, indicating a growing public interest in art.

"I think it shows people are looking for ways to relax or dream," Newquist said. "They want to get away from the chaos of everyday living."

Sitting on a stone bench outside the Newtown Meeting House on Main Street, Newquist reflected on her work.

"We artists never stop working," Newquist said. "We see pictures everywhere. That's the wonderful thing about being an artist."
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/st...&source=tabbox





Connecticut Painter Still at the Canvas as 100th Birthday Nears
Dave Collins

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Alan Tompkins has built an impressive resume as an artist and teacher during his 99 years.

Degrees from Columbia and Yale; a painting selected for the prestigious annual exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute in 1936; federal commissions to paint murals at four post offices; numerous book illustrations and portraits; a stint as the General Electric Co.'s design supervisor in the 1940s. Add to that teaching jobs at Cooper Union School of Art and Columbia University, and director of the Hartford Art School.

But as he approaches 100, he's devoting much of his time to establishing that he is, indeed, a painter.

"When you have lectured and taught at other places, there's a tendency for people to say you're a teacher," he says. "What they don't realize is that when I taught at Columbia, I taught six hours a week and the other 94 hours I was painting in my studio.

"I am a painter, a professional painter. I resist using the word artist even. But I painted. I've devoted my life to it, and that's one of my wishes is to be known as a painter."

That's why Tompkins has his work on view in an exhibit at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. The free show, which runs through Aug. 23, coincides with the school's 130th anniversary, the University of Hartford's 50th anniversary and Tompkins' 100th birthday, which is Oct. 29.

The show is called simply "An Exhibition of Paintings by Alan Tompkins" and includes pieces from recent years and some dating back to the 1940s and 1950s.

Tompkins, partly bald and bespectacled, sits at a conference table in an office at the art school one recent morning. He wears a brown jacket, gray pants, and a gray and white striped shirt, and struggles a bit with some questions because his hearing isn't what it used to be.

But there are no signs of weakness in his responses. He is firm and authoritative in his speech, and gets a little annoyed when he's asked what he depicts in his paintings.

"You seem to have the idea that painters look at something and paint it," he says. "That's not the case. I would say in none of these paintings was there something set up to look at to paint. That's something that hobbyists do, and I want to make it very clear that I'm not a hobbyist. I'm a professional."

In her 2006 book, "Alan Tompkins - Painter," Linda Powers Tomasso describes him as a "sensitive, sophisticated painter intellectually grounded in twentieth century modernism" and "an extraordinarily articulate spokesman for his discipline."

Influenced by Picasso, Klee, Matisse and others, Tompkins says the inspiration for his paintings comes from life and his thoughts about it. His favorite subjects are the human figure and landscapes.

"Cathie Red," an oil on canvass, is a portrait of his late daughter. The colors are mostly muted shades of brown and gray, except for his daughter's bright red sweater, white shirt and black hair. She is sitting in a chair, arms folded, her eyes, nose and mouth barely visible.

One of his earliest works, "Hitchhiker," shows a man with an angular face and build in a dark suit on a dark day holding out his thumb on the side of a rural road.

"Faculty Club Dining Room" is a sad, almost ghastly piece, with people sitting at tables with their heads tilted downward. Tompkins uses muted shades of gray, bluish green and gold pastels. The faces are blurry, conveying a sense of mourning or prayer. A beam of white light flows from what appears to be a window surrounded by plush drapery.

But ask Tompkins to discuss his works in more detail and he can't.

"If I did so, I would be speaking against my theory," he says. "There is no verbal equivalent to a painting. The minute you try to do it, you're off the track. You're losing your way. Words are incapable of repeating what graphics can give you."

He also says that words can get in the way of appreciating art, and believes exhibits should be viewed in silence. He mentions the silent viewings held every Wednesday at the New Britain Museum of American Art, which is 20 minutes away and houses one of his paintings.

"Think how rare that is today," he says. "Turn on your television set and you get a thousand images thrown at you with music. You go to the movies, always music and voice. When you use the sense of sight by itself, there is a whole richness of life that can be revealed to you through the graphic elements."

Tompkins grew up in the suburbs of New York City, well before the barrage of electronic devices like televisions and computers. He was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., in 1907, the youngest of three children. His father, Edward DeVoe Tompkins, was deputy commissioner of docks for the City of New York, and his mother, Maude Peck, was a teacher and administrator in city schools.

He was schooled at Citizens' Military Training Camps at Fort Devens, Mass., where President Calvin Coolidge awarded him a medal for the best graduating student in 1925, according to Tomasso. He went on to Columbia, starting as a pre-engineering student because of his father's profession. But he flunked calculus and switched his major to art history (the school didn't have an art school at the time) after he did a portrait of the college's dean, who was impressed.

He graduated from Columbia in 1929 with a bachelor's degree and traveled abroad before getting a bachelor's in fine arts at Yale University in 1933. Three years later, "Hitchhiker," was accepted into the prestigious annual exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A leading critic at the time, C.J. Bulliet, said "Hitchhiker" was the best piece in the show. While Bulliet said it was "a show of a thousand yawns," he declared Tompkins' painting as "chief of the yawnless pictures."

"That was the first sort of public notice that I had, and I was only two or three years out of Yale at the time," Tompkins says.

In the 1930s, the federal government awarded him commissions to paint murals at three post offices in Indiana, and a fourth in North Carolina. Tompkins and his family moved to Stratford, Conn., in 1938, and he took on jobs for book illustrations, murals and portraits while teaching part time at Cooper Union.

The 1940s brought a four-year stint as a designer at GE, where Tompkins' designs for kitchen appliances were patented. He left GE in 1947 and took a part-time teaching job at Columbia while continuing with side jobs.

The family moved to Hartford in the early 1950s when Tompkins was named assistant director of the Hartford Art School. He became director in 1957 and helped oversee the school's merger with Hillyer College and the Hartt College of Music to become the University of Hartford.

Tompkins, who designed the new university's seal, was named vice chancellor for the visual arts. He left the art school administration in 1969, but continued teaching art history and visual studies courses for five more years before retiring.

His wife, Florence, died in 1984. A year later, his daughter, Catherine, died of cancer, and his remaining child, Alan, died suddenly of cancer in 1999. His grandson, Charles Tompkins, a 38-year-old financial adviser from Seattle, flew to Connecticut recently to help his grandfather set up the new exhibit. He said his grandfather's longevity has been a blessing to his family.

"We're very, very thankful ... that he has been granted this extended 100 years to share his work with us and his enthusiasm for art," Charles Tompkins said.

"I think it's extended his life by many years to have this passion. That's a good enough message for anyone out there who's looking for an inspiration: If you're passionate about something, keep doing it."

Alan Tompkins insists he has no special thoughts about turning 100, and said his new show was not planned to coincide with his centenary.

"Suddenly, I looked at the calendar and found that I was going to be 100," he said. "That was an afterthought."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-10-11-59-06





Two Outlaws, Blasting Holes in the Screen
A. O. Scott

THE story of “Bonnie and Clyde” has been told so many times that it has acquired the patina of legend. It’s the kind of historical fable that circulates to explain how the world once was and how it came to be the way it is now: a morality tale in which the wild energies of youth defeat the stale certainties of age, and freedom triumphs over repression.

I’m not talking about the adventures of the actual Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who robbed and shot their way through Texas, Oklahoma and adjacent states in the bad old days of the Great Depression. Their exploits have been chronicled in books, ballads and motion pictures, never more famously than in the movie named after them, which first opened in New York 40 years ago this month. The notoriety of “Bonnie and Clyde,” directed by Arthur Penn from a long-gestating script by David Newman and Robert Benton and produced by Warren Beatty, who also played Clyde, has long since eclipsed that of its real-life models.

The ups and downs of the movie’s early fortunes have become a touchstone and a parable, a crucial episode in the entwined histories of Hollywood, American film criticism and postmodern popular culture. “Bonnie and Clyde” was a scandal and a sensation largely because it seemed to introduce a new kind of violence into movies. Its brutality was raw and immediate, yet at the same time its scenes of mayhem were choreographed with a formal panache that was almost gleeful.

Their horror was undercut by jaunty, rambunctious humor and by the skittering banjo music of the soundtrack. The final shootout, in which Mr. Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s bodies twitch and writhe amid a storm of gunfire (not long after their characters have successfully made love for the first time), was both awful and ecstatic, an orgy of blood and bullets. The filmmakers seemed less interested in the moral weight of violence than in its aesthetic impact. The killings were alluring and gruesome; that the movie was so much fun may well have been the most disturbing thing about it.

As we endure another phase in the never-ending argument about movie violence — renewed by the recent popularity of extremely brutal horror films like the “Saw” and “Hostel” cycles; made momentarily acute by the Virginia Tech massacre last spring; forever hovering around the edges of dinner-table conversations and political campaigns — it’s worth re-examining this legend to see if it has anything left to teach us.

“Bonnie and Clyde” had its North American premiere on Aug. 4, 1967, at the Montreal film festival. When it opened in New York a short time later, the initial critical reception ranged from dismissal to outright execration. Leading the charge was Bosley Crowther, chief film critic of The New York Times, who attacked “Bonnie and Clyde” as “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy.” Crowther’s short, merciless review — the film’s “blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste” — was followed by a Sunday column that made the case at greater length.

The most celebrated, and consequential, brief for the defense was longer still. In more than 9,000 words in the Oct. 21 issue of The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, then a freelance contributor, hailed “Bonnie and Clyde” as “the most excitingly American movie since ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ ” which had come out five years earlier. Hardly an unqualified rave (“probably part of the discomfort that people feel about ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ grows out of its compromises and its failures,” she noted), Kael’s article instead made a sustained argument for the film’s status as a cultural event.

“ ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ ” she wrote, “brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies things that people have been feeling and saying and writing about. And once something is said or done on the screens of the world, it can never again belong to a minority, never again be the private possession of an educated, or ‘knowing’ group. But even for that group there is an excitement in hearing its own private thoughts expressed out loud and in seeing something of its own sensibility become part of our common culture.”

And so “Bonnie and Clyde” was the somewhat improbable vehicle — a period picture made, with some reluctance, by a major movie studio (Warner Brothers) at the insistence of an ambitious young movie star — by which a new mode of expression and a new set of values entered the cultural mainstream. The movie was quickly marked as a battlefield in an epochal struggle: between “the kids” and their stodgy, respectable elders, between the hip and the square.

According to the standard accounts, now duly taught in classrooms and rehearsed around baby-boom Elderhostel campfires, hip triumphed. By the beginning of 1968 the squares had been routed. Time magazine, which had run a dismissive review, put Bonnie and Clyde, as rendered by Robert Rauschenberg, on its Dec. 8 cover, accompanying an essay by Stefan Kanfer called “The New Cinema: Violence ... Sex ... Art.”

Crowther, after 27 years at The Times, retired. His place was taken by Renata Adler, a writer for The New Yorker who was not yet 30. Kael, already a contentious and influential figure in the world of movie criticism, joined the staff of The New Yorker, where for the next quarter-century she would reign as the most imitated and argued-about film reviewer in the English-speaking world. “Bonnie and Clyde” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.

That it won only two — best supporting actress for Estelle Parsons and best cinematography for Burnett Guffey — may have helped to assure its enduring cachet. Too complete a victory would have led to a loss of credibility. Hip is, by definition, an oppositional stance that the embrace of the establishment can only compromise.

The products of the liberal Hollywood establishment — the earnest, socially responsible dramas that Crowther frequently championed and that Kael in particular despised — did not retreat in the face of a generational challenge mounted by “Bonnie and Clyde” (and also, less noisily, by “The Graduate”). The big Oscar winners that year were “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” both movies about gray-haired, socially empowered white men whose prejudices are demolished by Sidney Poitier, at the time Hollywood’s all-purpose answer to America’s race problem.

At the height of the ’60s, the solution proposed by those movies — that basically decent men could work toward mutual understanding and respect — might have seemed wishful at best. The Oscar ceremonies took place on April 10, 1968, a week after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The summer before, “Bonnie and Clyde” had opened against a backdrop of rioting in Newark and Detroit. Part of the film’s mythology has been a product of that coincidence. American cities were burning, the war in Vietnam and the protests against it were escalating, and a new revolutionary consciousness was in the air, somehow shared by college students and third-world guerrillas, by artists and the urban poor.

As J. Hoberman notes in “The Dream Life,” his revisionist history of the ’60s and its movies, “ ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ popularized the attitude Tom Wolfe would derisively call ‘Radical Chic.’ ” Its hero and heroine exist in a state of vague solidarity with the poor and destitute — the banks they rob are the real enemies of the people, and they are admired by hard-luck farmers and sharecroppers — but they themselves are much too glamorous to pass as members of the oppressed masses.

They are not fighting injustice so much as they are having fun, enjoying the prerogatives of outlaw fame. They exist in a kind of anarchic utopia where the pursuit of kicks is imagined to be inherently political. In this universe the usual ethical justifications of violent action are stripped away, but the aura of righteousness somehow remains.

When pressed by his brother, Buck, about the killing of a bank employee — “It was him or you, right?” — Clyde mumbles that he had to do it, even though the audience knows there was no real question of self-defense. Later, Bonnie’s humiliation of a Texas ranger is justified because the ranger is such a brutal, reactionary authority figure. His subsequent pursuit of the criminals, in contrast, is treated as sadistic and irrational.

But the Barrow gang’s own sadism is evident when the outlaws kidnap a nervous undertaker and his girlfriend after stealing the man’s car. The couple turns out to be the very embodiment of square: He complains about his hamburger; she reveals that she lied to him about her age. These people are along for the ride, but they just don’t get it.

Not Getting It has been, ever since, the accusation leveled against critics of a certain kind of movie violence by its defenders. The easiest way to attack movie violence is to warn of its real-world consequences, to worry that someone will imitate what is seen on screen. The symmetrically literal-minded response is that because violence already exists in the world, refusing to show it in movies would be dishonest.

Neither of these positions quite acknowledges the particularity of cinematic violence, which is not the same as what it depicts. Even the most bloodthirsty moviegoer would be likely to leave a real fusillade like the one at the end of “Bonnie and Clyde” sickened and traumatized, rather than thrilled. The particular charge of that scene, and others like it, is that it tries to push the pretense — the art — as close to trauma as possible and to make the appreciation of that art its point. Missing the point is what marks you as square.

The Hollywood and critical establishments, both of them in the early stages of a generational upheaval, did not miss the point for long. “Bonnie and Clyde” was hardly the first picture to push against the limits of what was conventionally seen as good taste. But it conducted its assault in the name of a higher form of taste, fusing the bravado of youth with the prestige of art. It legitimized the connoisseurship of violence, which does not present itself as an appetite for cheap thrills, but rather as a taste for the finer things.

Thus the geysers of blood at the end of Sam Peckinpah’s “Wild Bunch” two years later could be savored for the director’s visual and formal audacity. The unflinching brutalities of ’70s movies like “The Godfather” and “Chinatown” became hallmarks of the honesty and daring of the New Hollywood. (At the same time the harsh, righteous vengeance unleashed in the “Dirty Harry” and “Death Wish” movies appalled many of the same critics who dug the radical chic of “Bonnie and Clyde.”)

By the 1990s, as a newer generation of filmmakers began to fetishize the glories of post-“Bonnie and Clyde” American cinema, stylized, tongue-in-cheek violence became a sign of rebellious independence. The ear-slicing sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” seemed like a deliberate attempt to replicate the kind of shock produced by the wildest moments in “Bonnie and Clyde,” but without the pretense of political or social relevance. This year the best-picture Oscar went to “The Departed,” a movie whose jolting, cold-blooded killings occasioned little objection.

And to raise objections at this point is, perhaps, worse than square. It seems philistine. But I can’t escape the feeling that, just as it has become easier since “Bonnie and Clyde” to accept violence in movies, and more acceptable to enjoy it, it has become harder to talk seriously about the ethics and politics of that violence. The link between real and pretend violence has been so completely severed that some of the ability of movies to offer a critical perspective — to elicit thought as well as gasps and chuckles — has been lost. We’ve become pretty comfortable watching the infliction of pain, and quick to laugh it off.

Don’t misunderstand: I still get a kick out of “Bonnie and Clyde,” but it’s accompanied by a twinge of unease, by the suspicion that, in some ways that matter and that have become too easy to dismiss, Bosley Crowther was right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/mo....html?ref=arts


















Until next week,

- js.



















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