Using Web Cams, the Young Turn to Risky Sites
Brad Stone
Popular Web sites like YouTube and MySpace have hired the equivalent of school hallway monitors to police what visitors to their sites can see and do by cracking down on piracy and depictions of nudity and violence.
So where do the young thrill-seekers go?
Increasingly, to new Web sites like Stickam.com, which is building a business by going where others fear to tread: into the realm of unfiltered live broadcasts from Web cameras.
The site combines elements of more popular sites, but with a twist. In addition to designing their own pages and uploading video clips, its users broadcast live video of themselves and conduct face-to-face video chats with other users, often from their bedrooms and all without monitoring by any of Stickam’s 35 employees.
Other social networks have decided against allowing conversations over live video because of the potential for abuse and opposition from child-safety advocates. “The only thing you get from the combination of Web cams and young people are problems,” said Parry Aftab, executive director of the child protection organization WiredSafety.org. “Web cams are a magnet for sexual predators.”
The larger Internet companies have come under increasing pressure to make their sites safer for children and friendlier to copyright holders, so start-ups like Stickam are pursuing their own slices of the market, often at the price of taste, ethics and perhaps even child safety.
“Letting people do whatever they want is one way for these sites to differentiate themselves,” said Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst. “It is the race to the bottom.”
Video-sharing sites in particular are filling niches abandoned by YouTube, which is now owned by Google and had more than 25 million visitors last month. Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has banned nudity and taken down copyrighted material when rights holders file specific complaints.
Last March, under additional pressure from copyright holders, YouTube placed a 10-minute limit on clips.
Smaller start-ups who are not able, or willing, to be as diligent are seeing their audiences explode as users seek the more freewheeling environment that typified YouTube’s early days. Users post 9,000 new videos a day to Dailymotion, which had more than 1.3 million visitors in November, up more than 100 percent since May, according to the tracking firm ComScore Media Metrix.
A recent search on Dailymotion, which is based in Paris, found hours of copyrighted material: entire episodes of NBC’s “Heroes” and CBS’s “Without a Trace,” recordings of Beatles concerts and plenty of nudity. The firm places no length restrictions on uploaded video.
Benjamin Bejbaum, the chief executive of Dailymotion, said the firm’s 30 employees move quickly to take down video when users or rights-holders flag it as inappropriate or illegal. Mr. Bejbaum’s company is seeking the kinds of revenue-sharing deals with copyright holders that Google has struck, he said.
Dailymotion currently shows ads to its users in France, which make up 40 percent of visitors to the service, and is studying an entry into the United States.
Another new video-sharing site, LiveLeak, based in London, has positioned itself as a source for reality-based fare like footage of Iraq battle scenes and grisly accidents. Last week, popular clips on the site included one of an agitated man in Muslim dress on a fast-moving treadmill and video of an American A-20 aircraft bombing Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
Hayden Hewitt, a co-owner of LiveLeak, said that people who have been barred from YouTube for uploading explicit footage of the Iraq war have migrated to his site. LiveLeak “won’t ban anyone for showing the truth,” Mr. Hewitt said. The site also features ample sexual content that would never make it onto YouTube or MySpace.
To support itself, LiveLeak runs ads from the syndicated ad network Adbrite. Mr. Hewitt said the company was not trying to get rich or dethrone YouTube, but to create a place on the Web for unvarnished reality.
Few of these new video sites, though, worry child-safety advocates as much as Stickam, which mostly attracts young people comfortable with the idea of a continuous self-produced reality TV show starring themselves. Stickam, based in Los Angeles, says it has 260,000 registered users — 50,000 of them say their age is 14 to 17 — and is adding 2,000 to 3,000 each day.
Advanced Video Communications, a Los Angeles company that builds video conferencing systems for companies, founded Stickam (pronounced stick-cam) late last year to demonstrate its technology. Its first product was a program that let users bring a live Web cam feed directly onto their MySpace pages and other social networks and bulletin boards.
In October, MySpace blocked the Stickam service. MySpace’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said the firm “has not implemented video chat features, given the safety implications for our users.”
By then, Stickam was testing its own social networking service to compete directly with MySpace. The new site prohibits anyone under 14 from joining, and its terms of service forbid “obscene, profane and indecent” behavior. But since the company does not verify a user’s age, and because users’ broadcasts are live, even the firm’s chief executive, Hideki Kishioka, concedes those rules are unenforceable. The company is “relying on users to monitor each other,” he said.
Even enthusiastic Stickam users say the site often feels lawless. “People are very vulgar and like to ‘get their jollies’ from harassing people, mainly girls, to take off their clothes,” said Chelsey, a 17-year-old user from Saskatchewan in Canada, who signed up after her 13-year-old sister violated the site’s age rules and joined the service.
“I’m pretty sure none of their parents know or even think about the things that they are doing on this site,” said Chelsey, who said in an e-mail message that she did not feel comfortable using her last name in an interview.
Other companies that offer Web cam chats say that the technology seems to attract abuse. “There are just some people who, if you give them a Web cam, are going to take off their clothes,” said Jason Katz, founder of PalTalk, an eight-year-old service that lets users converse over Web cams on various topics. Unlike Stickam, PalTalk asks for a credit card and charges a monthly fee, which it says prevents minors from signing up.
At least one major media company has embraced Stickam. Last month, Warner Brothers Records opened a page on the service for two of its artists, Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone, and trained a Web cam on them as they recorded a music video. More than 9,500 users watched the event and chatted with the performers during breaks in filming.
Robin Bechtel, Warner’s vice president for new media, said she thinks Stickam “could be the next MySpace” and that people would migrate to even controversial video sites if they have features that MySpace and YouTube did not. “People are going to go where the content is,” Ms. Bechtel said. “If Stickam has celebrities and is entertaining, they will go there.”
Mr. Kihioka of Stickam said that in some respects, his site was actually safer than other social networks. Live video feeds let users “know who they are talking to,” he said. “Unlike MySpace, it is hard to disguise yourself.” But he added that his company had the same concerns about child safety as MySpace and was working on an automated system that would monitor live video feeds for indecency.
Child-safety experts are not convinced. They say that sites like Stickam are the motivation for them to work closely with sites like MySpace and YouTube to create safeguards.
“If we discourage the use of the more corporately responsible social networking sites, kids will go underground to more edgier ones,” said Donna Rice Hughes, president of the Internet safety organization Enough Is Enough in Virginia. “Then we’ll have more of a problem.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/te... ner=homepage
Kid Tested
Ruby Kulles, 7, is engrossed in an illustrated children's book from the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation. Kulles is part of Kids Team, a research arm of the Foundation at the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab, involving children in the design and testing of the Library's interface for children's books across digital media. The bright green computer she is using is a test model of the new, low-cost laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization (
www.laptop.org).
ICDL Foundation has the world's largest collection of children's literature available freely on the Internet. It's on the Web at www.childrenslibrary.org.
(Photo Credit: Aaron Clamage)
Low-Cost Laptop Could Transform Learning
Brian Bergstein
Forget windows, folders and boxes that pop up with text. When students in Thailand, Libya and other developing countries get their $150 computers from the One Laptop Per Child project in 2007, their experience will be unlike anything on standard PCs.
For most of these children the XO machine, as it's called, likely will be the first computer they've ever used. Because the students have no expectations for what PCs should be like, the laptop's creators started from scratch in designing a user interface they figured would be intuitive for children.
The result is as unusual as - but possibly even riskier than - other much-debated aspects of the machine, such as its economics and distinctive hand-pulled mechanism for charging its battery. (XO has been known as the $100 laptop because of the ultra-low cost its creators eventually hope to achieve through mass production.)
For example, students who turn on the small green-and-white computers will be greeted by a basic home screen with a stick-figure icon at the center, surrounded by a white ring. The entire desktop has a black frame with more icons.
This runic setup signifies the student at the middle. The ring contains programs the student is running, which can be launched by clicking the appropriate icon in the black frame.
When the student opts to view the entire "neighborhood" - the XO's preferred term instead of "desktop" - other stick figures in different colors might appear on the screen. Those indicate schoolmates who are nearby, as detected by the computers' built-in wireless networking capability.
Moving the PC's cursor over the classmates' icons will pull up their names or photos. With further clicks the students can chat with each other or collaborate on things — an art project, say, or a music program on the computer, which has built-in speakers.
The design partly reflects a clever attempt to get the most from the machine's limited horsepower. To keep costs and power demands low, XO uses a slim version of the Linux operating system, a 366-megahertz processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and no hard disk drive. Instead it has 512 megabytes of flash memory, plus USB 2.0 ports where more storage could be attached.
But the main design motive was the project's goal of stimulating education better than previous computer endeavors have. Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab two years ago before spinning One Laptop into a separate nonprofit, said he deliberately wanted to avoid giving children computers they might someday use in an office.
"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. "I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools."
To that end, folders are not the organizing metaphor on these machines, unlike most computers since Apple Computer Inc. launched the first Mac in 1984. The knock on folders is that they force users to remember where they stored their information rather than what they used it for.
Instead, the XO machines are organized around a "journal," an automatically generated log of everything the user has done on the laptop. Students can review their journals to see their work and retrieve files created or altered in those sessions.
Despite these school-focused frameworks, its creators bristle at any suggestion XO is a mere toy. A wide range of programs can run on it, including a Web browser, a word processor and an RSS reader - the software that delivers blog updates to information junkies.
The computer also has features anyone would love, notably a built-in camera and a color display that converts to monochrome so it's easier to see in sunlight.
"I have to laugh when people refer to XO as a weak or crippled machine and how kids should get a `real' one," Negroponte wrote. "Trust me, I will give up my real one very soon and use only XO. It will be far better, in many new and important ways."
Although the end result is new, the lead software integrator, Chris Blizzard of Red Hat Inc., said 90 percent of the underlying programming code was cobbled together from technologies that long existed in the open-source programming community.
In keeping with that open nature, details and simulations of the user interface, nicknamed Sugar, have been available online, to mixed reviews.
Some bloggers have said that even as Sugar avoids complexities inherent in the familiar operating systems from Microsoft Corp. or Apple, it just creates a different set of complexities to be mastered.
How hard that is should be one key measure of the project's success. One Laptop plans to send a specialist to each school who will stay for a month helping teachers and students get started. But Negroponte believes that kids ultimately will learn the system by exploring it and then teaching each other.
Still, no one appears to doubt the technical savvy Sugar represents.
Wayan Vota, who launched the OLPCNews.com blog to monitor the project's development because he is skeptical it can achieve its aims, called Sugar "amazing - a beautiful redesign."
"It doesn't feel like Linux. It doesn't feel like Windows. It doesn't feel like Apple," said Vota, who is director of Geekcorps, an organization that facilitates technology volunteers in developing countries. He emphasized that his opinions were his own and not on behalf of Geekcorps.
"I'm just impressed they built a new (user interface) that is different and hopefully better than anything we have today," he said. But he added: "Granted, I'm not a child. I don't know if it's going to be intuitive to children."
Indeed, the XO machines are still being tweaked, and Sugar isn't expected to be tested by any kids until February. By July or so, several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory. Negroponte said three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks. The Inter-American Development Bank is trying to get the laptops to multiple Central American countries.
The machines are being made by Quanta Computer Inc., and countries will get versions specific to their own languages. Governments or donors will buy the laptops for children to own, along with associated server equipment for their schools. The project itself has gotten at least $29 million in funding from companies including Google Inc., News Corp. and Red Hat.
But that's not to say everything has fallen into place for One Laptop.
India's government originally expressed interest but backed out. Even though Brazil plans to take part, it is hedging its bets by evaluating $400 "Classmate PCs" from Intel Corp. Brazil's government is a big fan of open-source software as a cost-saver, but at least in initial tests, officials have said those Classmate PCs just might run Windows.
___
On the Net:
http://www.laptop.org
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061231/..._dollar_laptop
Pirates, Penguins and Potboilers Rule the Box Office
David M. Halbfinger
A year after Hollywood rediscovered weighty political and social issues in movies like “Syriana,” “Crash” and “Brokeback Mountain,” the box office story of 2006 was that moviegoers finally said, “Enough.”
They showed no appetite for a critique of their eating habits in “Fast Food Nation.” They weren’t ready to fly along on “United 93,” no matter how skilled its exposé of homeland insecurity. They didn’t care to see combat or suffer its after-effects in “Flags of Our Fathers.” And even Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t interest them in touring the ravaged Africa of “Blood Diamond.”
While Al Gore’s prophecies in “An Inconvenient Truth” produced a respectable $24 million for Paramount, it was the message-movie exception that proved the rule. The big money was to be made making people laugh, cry and squeeze their dates’ arms — not think.
“What worked was classic, get-away-from-it-all entertainment,” said Rob Moore, Paramount’s marketing and distribution chief. “What didn’t was things that were more challenging and esoteric.”
Comedy, animation and adventure, all with a PG-13 rating or tamer - and for young adults, R-rated horror flicks - were the escapist recipe for success.
Reminding moviegoers of what was on the news, and in an election year at that, only turned them off. (Unless it was on the news nine years ago, as in “The Queen.”)
While Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” set a new opening-weekend record and topped the box office tables with $423 million, the winner among studios was Sony Pictures, which said it would end the year with nearly $1.7 billion domestically - besting its own industry record - and $3.3 billion overseas.
In an off year for its Spider-Man franchise, Sony managed to win a record 13 weekends, led by Adam Sandler (“Click”); Will Ferrell (“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”); an animated hit (“Open Season”); James Bond (“Casino Royale,” which has grossed $155 million, a franchise record); and Will Smith (“The Pursuit of Happyness”).
Mr. Smith’s film broke $100 million, and he appears to have bolstered his stature as Hollywood’s man who can do no wrong, a bankable star in dramatic, romantic, comedic or action roles.
(When actors play against type, however, it can be deadly, as Russell Crowe showed in Ridley Scott’s film “A Good Year,” for 20th Century Fox. Coming after his nose dive in “Cinderella Man,” Mr. Crowe’s belly-flop raised questions about his status as a top box office draw.)
Then there was what Jeff Blake, Sony’s marketing and distribution czar, called “that rare adult blockbuster,” Ron Howard’s “Da Vinci Code.” Fans of the book ignored the film’s reviews, and it grossed $218 million.
“Really, we brought the adults back to the movies this year, which is part of the reason why we’re doing so much better,” Mr. Blake said of the industry, tipping his hat to Warner Brothers’ “Departed” and 20th Century Fox’s “Devil Wears Prada.”
Sony also got a boost from its Screen Gems unit; four of its horror films opened at No. 1. Typical was “When a Stranger Calls,” made for just $15 million, which grossed $48 million domestically.
Over all, the top tier of the box office held its usual contours: 5 blockbusters exceeded $200 million, and 12 fell in the $100 million to $200 million zone. In addition, 39 exceeded $50 million, 7 more than in 2005. Total domestic box office reached $9.4 billion, a shade shy of the 2004 record but 5 percent more than in 2005, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers, which tracks box office results. Attendance was up 3.3 percent.
No. 2 Disney had its second-best year ever worldwide, with more than $3.27 billion internationally, and exceeded $1 billion domestically for the 10th time, thanks largely to “Pirates” and the year’s No. 2 movie, Pixar’s “Cars,” with $244 million.
Mark Zoradi, who runs marketing and distribution for Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, said basic entertainment had proved to be the cure for the industry’s woes. “People love to go to the movies to laugh, to feel emotion and cry,” he said. “That’s why ‘Cars’ is so big. It wasn’t a straight-out slapstick comedy. At its core, it was an emotional movie with comedy in it.”
The slate of movies at year’s end was much stronger than on the same weekend a year earlier: up 10 percent in the aggregate, and 12 percent when comparing just the top 12 grosses. Fox’s “Night at the Museum,” the Ben Stiller comedy, led the field, raking in $38 million for a total so far of $117 million.
Among animated films, Fox’s “Ice Age: The Meltdown” came in at No. 2, nearly hitting $200 million. Bruce Snyder, president for domestic distribution, said Fox had been wise to get its movie into theaters well before the deluge of more than a dozen other computer-animated movies about animals.
One that suffered was Warner’s “Ant Bully,” which was sandwiched between Sony’s “Monster House” and Paramount’s “Barnyard” and came away with just $28 million in sales. Paramount, too, might have regretted the title of its “Flushed Away,” which cost $150 million but grossed only $62 million. “Happy Feet” was a much-needed big hit for Warner, which had been less than overjoyed by the $200 million gross of “Superman Returns.”
Despite the animation glut, the potential payoffs — Paramount’s “Over the Hedge” grossed $155 million, and “Happy Feet” reached $176 million on Sunday — are huge enough to make this a recurring phenomenon.
For Fox it was a strong year; “X-Men: The Last Stand” was the No. 3 movie, at $234 million, and Meryl Streep’s performance turned a formulaic comedy into a worldwide hit in “Prada.” Fox also had the year’s most original film, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which was made for less than $20 million and grossed more than $125 million.
Among thought-provoking movies, “Flags of Our Fathers” showed how treacherous it can be to open an Oscar contender in September or October. While “The Departed” was a hit, “All the King’s Men,” “Hollywoodland” and “Running With Scissors” all bombed. Back-to-school audiences much preferred Lions Gate’s “Saw III.”
Warner missed, meanwhile, with “Blood Diamond,” a big action movie that also had something to say. Alan Horn, the studio’s president, said he thought the film had managed the feat, but audiences didn’t, and the film has grossed $36 million so far.
“The audience is telling us that either they want lighter fare, and they just don’t want to go there and have a movie as thematically heavy as ‘Blood Diamond’ is, or it’s the quality of the movie,” he said.
Audiences apparently weren’t eager to read, either. With directors like Clint Eastwood, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Mel Gibson pushing for authenticity, the studios wound up releasing subtitled movies that were shot largely or entirely in Japanese, Moroccan, Mexican, Mayan and Russian. But even Brad Pitt couldn’t draw big crowds for “Babel,” and the Fox Searchlight release of the Russian blockbuster “Night Watch” proved that some cultural exchanges will remain a one-way street.
It remains to be seen whether “Letters From Iwo Jima,” Mr. Eastwood’s critically adored Japanese companion piece to “Flags,” could lure sizable audiences once it expands from a micro-release.
Fifth-place Paramount was cheered by the low-budget comedies “Jackass Number Two” and “Nacho Libre,” but was counting for redemption on “Dreamgirls,” which opened to packed houses on Christmas Day. In just 852 theaters, the movie grossed $38.5 million through New Year’s weekend, and the studio was counting on Oscar attention to make it a megahit.
Universal, in a leadership transition, struggled to fill a gaping hole in its slate. The studio hasn’t released a movie that it made since August, and won’t have one till April. (“The Good Shepherd,” its lone prestige release at year’s end, was financed by Morgan Creek.) Its biggest movie was “The Break-Up,” at $118 million, but more typical were duds like “Miami Vice,” “Man of the Year,” “Let’s Go to Prison,” and “The Black Dahlia.”
New Line’s year, finally, was summed up by “Snakes on a Plane,” a trip you’d want to forget, as long as you could survive it. The studio’s standout performers were “Final Destination 3” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.” New Line’s stab at exploiting the religious Christian market, “The Nativity Story,” cost $35 million, but grossed just $37 million.
By comparison, a tiny proselytizing football movie called “Facing the Giants,” made for just $100,000 by a Southern Baptist congregation in Georgia, grossed $10 million in a limited release.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/movies/02boff.html
Controversy Rules Oscar Contenders
Charles Lyons
“I didn’t go there to make a point,” said Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, about traveling in Iraq to make “My Country, My Country,” one of four documentaries about the war contending for Oscar nominations this year.
“I don’t think I would risk my life to make a point,” she added, seated in her comfortable TriBeCa office early last month. “But I did feel it was important to understand this war — and to document it — and I didn’t think that the mass media was going to do it.”
Ms. Poitras, 42, used her own camera and recorded sound herself as she followed an Iraqi physician for eight months. An outspoken Sunni critic of the American occupation, he was seeking a seat on the Baghdad Provincial Council during the national elections in January 2005, but did not win.
“My Country, My Country” may not capture the best-documentary Oscar, or even be selected as one of the five nominees, to be announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Jan. 23. (The awards ceremony is on Feb. 25.) But its presence on the highly competitive feature-length documentary shortlist — 14 other films are on that list — highlights a shift toward gritty, guerrilla filmmaking, a willingness to tackle controversial subjects, no matter the obstacles.
Issue-oriented documentaries dominate the shortlist, chosen by the 138 members of the documentary branch of the academy. Eighty-one films met the eligibility requirements; of those, the members who voted selected 15 and will further narrow the field to the 5 nominees.
“This is the year of the angry documentary, of the ‘Take back America’ documentary,” Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films, said in a telephone interview. “The theatrical documentary,” she added, “has replaced the television documentary in terms of talking back to the administration. That’s one of the only places where one can do it.”
But one pioneering filmmaker, Albert Maysles, did not seem enthusiastic about the trend. “I am a strong advocate of distancing oneself from a point of view,” he said recently. “What is good for the documentary world in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ ” — Michael Moore’s 2004 film — “is that Michael’s heart was in the right place” for viewers who agreed with him, he said. “But he damages his cause because he is out to get people. He’s using people in a nonloving fashion to serve the purpose of his argument. If what you think is correct, what do you have to fear in telling the full story?”
Stanley Nelson, the director of another shortlisted film, “Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,” said that while Mr. Moore was “over the top,” his work occupied a significant position within the genre. Speaking at an Upper West Side coffee shop, Mr. Nelson said, “What’s fascinating about documentary today is the different ways to approach it.”
Referring to his own film about Jim Jones, who led the mass suicide in which more than 900 people died in Guyana in 1978, Mr. Nelson said: “It was essential for us not to say that this guy was only evil. Just by being somewhat objective, we were being revolutionary.”
Mr. Nelson’s comment reflects a climate in which the pursuit of objectivity in documentaries is hardly the norm, as it had been during the 1950s and ’60s. In that period, American filmmakers like Mr. Maysles advocated “direct cinema,” where the camera was thought of as a fly on the wall, capturing but not commenting on life. Still, some of the shortlisted documentaries adopt this approach more than others in treating subjects like these:
Global warming: Davis Guggenheim’s box office hit, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with former Vice President Al Gore.
Religion: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s “Jesus Camp,” about born-again Christian children at an evangelical summer camp in North Dakota; Amy Berg’s “Deliver Us From Evil,” about Oliver O’Grady, a former priest and convicted pedophile; and Mr. Nelson’s film about Jim Jones.
Race: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s “Trials of Darryl Hunt,” about a wrongly convicted African-American man.
Free speech: Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s “Shut Up & Sing,” on the fallout after Natalie Maines, of the Dixie Chicks, publicly criticized President Bush on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The political campaign process: Frank Popper’s “Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?,” which follows the 2004 grass-roots campaign of Jeff Smith, a Missouri Democrat, for Congress.
The two-party political system: Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan’s “Unreasonable Man,” a profile of Ralph Nader.
In addition to Ms. Poitras’s film, the three other shortlisted documentaries on the Iraq war are James Longley’s “Iraq in Fragments,” Deborah Scranton’s “War Tapes” and Patricia Foulkrod’s “Ground Truth.”
Ms. Kopple, a two-time Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker who once worked for Mr. Maysles, said more people were seeing documentaries because they wanted to watch passionate stories about unforgettable characters.
“Audiences are smart enough to decide for themselves if they agree with the point of view onscreen,” she said. “I’m not sure that ‘distance’ is a positive thing in nonfiction filmmaking. I think there’s a time and place for distance; in television journalism, for example.”
She agreed with Mr. Maysles about letting a story unfold naturally. “The most important factor, in my opinion,” she said, “is not do we grow too close to our subjects, it’s are we willing to go on a journey with them that may not end up as we first envisioned it?”
One director who took such a journey was Mr. Guggenheim with “An Inconvenient Truth.” Speaking from Los Angeles, he recalled the beginning of his own transformation after watching a presentation by Mr. Gore on climate change, which became the centerpiece of the film.
“All movies are personal,” Mr. Guggenheim said. “When I make a movie, I don’t have activism in mind; I have an experience in mind. Before I saw Al’s slide show, I was not an environmentalist. But when I saw it, it shook me to the core.”
In a telephone conversation in New York with Ms. Ewing and Ms. Grady, the directors of “Jesus Camp,” Ms. Grady said their film was as “balanced as humanly possible for us.”
“It’s unattainable to have no point of view at all,” she said. “We’re human, and we did the best we could.”
With its concentration on national politics, the academy passed over a clutch of well-made films that in other years might have fared better: for example, Christopher Quinn’s “God Grew Tired of Us: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan”; Doug Block’s “51 Birch Street,” an exploration into the lives of his parents; and Ward Serrill’s “Heart of the Game,” about girls’ basketball.
Similarly, the three remaining shortlisted movies, all set in foreign countries other than Iraq, may face an uphill battle. They are Lucy Walker’s “Blindsight,” about six blind Tibetan children; Yael Klopmann’s “Storm of Emotions,” about the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip; and Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi’s “Sisters in Law,” a profile of two Cameroon women — a judge and a prosecutor — fighting for women’s rights.
However the academy members vote, Ms. Poitras said she already considered “My Country, My Country” successful. She cited a scene she had shot at the Abu Ghraib detention center: a 9-year-old Iraqi boy is being held for some unspecified reason by American Army officers who call him a dangerous juvenile. Moments such as these, she said, “will bring a sense of questioning and shame about some of the things we are doing in Iraq.”
So even a filmmaker like Ms. Poitras, who by her own account employed a subtle and patient approach, may have made a point after all. In the current climate for documentaries, she certainly is not alone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/mo... tner=homepage
Pop Music and the War: The Sound of Resignation
Jon Pareles
“I was a lover, before this war.” Those are the first words sung on TV on the Radio’s “Return to Cookie Mountain,” one of the most widely praised albums of 2006. Whatever the line means within the band’s cryptic lyrics, it could also apply to the past year’s popular music. Thoughts of romance, vice and comfort still dominated the charts and the airwaves. But amid the entertainment, songwriters — including some aiming for the Top 10 — were also grappling with a war that wouldn’t go away.
Pop’s political consciousness rises in every election year, and much as it became clear in November that voters are tired of war, music in 2006 also reflected battle fatigue. Beyond typical wartime attitudes of belligerence, protest and yearning for peace, in 2006 pop moved toward something different: a mood somewhere between resignation and a siege mentality.
Songs that touched on the war in 2006 were suffused with the mournful and resentful knowledge that — as Neil Young titled the album he made and rush-released in the spring — we are “Living With War,” and will be for some time. Awareness of the war throbs like a chronic headache behind more pleasant distractions.
The cultural response to war in Iraq and the war on terrorism — one protracted, the other possibly endless — doesn’t have an exact historical parallel. Unlike World War II, the current situation has brought little national unity; unlike the Vietnam era, ours has no appreciable domestic support for America’s opponents. Iraq may be turning into a quagmire and civil war like Vietnam, but the current war has not inspired talk of generationwide rebellion (perhaps because there’s no draft to pit young against old) or any colorful, psychedelically defiant counterculture. The war songs of the 21st century have been sober and earnest, pragmatic rather than fanciful.
Immediate responses to 9/11 and to the invasion of Iraq arrived along familiar lines. There was anger and saber-rattling at first, particularly in country music; the Dixie Chicks’ career was upended in 2003 when Natalie Maines disparaged the president on the eve of the Iraq invasion. There were folky protest songs about weapons and oil profiteering, like “The Price of Oil” by Billy Bragg; in a 21st-century touch, there were denunciations of news media complicity from songwriters as varied as Merle Haggard, Nellie McKay and the punk-rock band Anti-Flag.
Rappers, who were already slinging war metaphors for everything from rhyme battles to tales of drug-dealing crime soldiers, soon exploited the multitude of rhymes for Iraq, while some, like Eminem and OutKast, also bluntly attacked the president and the war.
In 2006 songwriters who usually stick to love songs found themselves paying attention to the war as well. “A new year, a new enemy/Another soldier gone to war,” John Legend sings in “Coming Home,” the song that ends his 2006 album, “Once Again.” It’s a soldier’s letter home, wondering if his girlfriend still cares. “It seems the wars will never end, but we’ll make it home again,” Mr. Legend croons, more wishful than confident.
John Mayer starts his 2006 album, “Continuum,” with “Waiting on the World to Change,” a pop-soul ballad defining his generation as one that feels passive because it’s helpless: “If we had the power to bring our neighbors home from war,” he sings, “They would never have missed a Christmas/No more ribbons on the door.” The best he and they can do, he muses, doubtless to the disgust of more activist types, is to wait until “our generation is gonna rule the population.”
There is more rage in the guitar onslaught of albums like Pearl Jam’s politically charged, self-titled 2006 album. Contemplating the death of a soldier in “World Wide Suicide,” the song lashes out at a president “writing checks that others pay,” but ends up wondering, “What does it mean when a war has taken over?” And in “Army Reserve,” a wife and child wait: “She tells herself and everybody else/Father is risking his life for our freedoms.” The righteousness of old protest songs has been replaced by sorrow and malaise.
After three years of war, bluster has toned down, even in country music. Merle Haggard, a populist who has always been skeptical of the war in Iraq, tersely insists, “Let’s get out of Iraq, get back on the track, and let’s rebuild America first,” on his most recent solo album, “Chicago Wind.” In another song on the album, Toby Keith, whose “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” was one of country’s most bellicose war songs in 2002, joins Mr. Haggard for a duet, suggesting a reconsideration.
Like the electorate, all pop can agree on across political lines is sympathy for the troops. Bruce Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” included an old song, “Mrs. McGrath,” about a soldier crippled in battle; the album’s expanded edition added an updated version of a blunt Pete Seeger song from 1966, “Bring ’Em Home.”
On the hawkish side, the country singer Darryl Worley had a 2003 hit, “Have You Forgotten?,” that justified the Iraq invasion as a reaction to 9/11. Now, he has a current Top 20 country hit that reiterates his support for the war but concentrates on its human cost, describing a returned soldier’s post-traumatic stress in “I Just Came Back From a War.”
In a song called “Bullet,” the rapper Rhymefest portrays a soldier who enlisted as a way to get scholarship money for college and dies “with a face full of hollowtips.” Even as cozy a singer as Norah Jones starts her next album, due this month, with “Thinking About You,” a song about a lover killed in combat.
There were plenty of other songs directly about the war in 2006. But beyond topicality, the war also seeped into popular music more obliquely. The year’s best-selling country album, “Me and My Gang,” by Rascal Flatts, includes “Ellsworth,” a song about “Grandma” and her dead husband, a veteran who left behind “his medals/A cigar box of letters.” Gnarls Barkley’s ubiquitous hit single, “Crazy,” is about self-destructive insanity: “You really think you’re in control? Well, I think you’re crazy.”
Thoughts of mortality fill albums like “The Black Parade,” by My Chemical Romance, and “Decemberunderground,” by A.F.I. War isn’t the only factor behind all the foreboding in current popular music, but it’s certainly one.
The 2000s are not the late 1960s, culturally or ideologically, but the musical repercussions of the Vietnam War may hint at what comes next. As that war dragged on, the delirious late 1960s gave way to not only the sodden early 1970s of technique-obsessed rock and self-absorbed singer-songwriters, but also to a flowering of socially conscious, musically innovative soul, the music that John Legend and John Mayer now deliberately invoke. It’s as if this wartime era has simply skipped the giddy phase — which didn’t, in the end, turn bombers into butterflies — and gone directly to the brooding. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 was quickly followed by the rejuvenating energy of punk and hip-hop; there’s no telling what disengagement from Iraq might spark.
Music and the other arts, unlike journalism, don’t echo the news. They can be counterweights and compensations, the fantasies that work out, rather than the facts that don’t. In the weeks before Christmas, I started noticing that nearly every time I wandered into a store or heard holiday music from a radio, John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” — that chiming, purposefully optimistic song with the somber undercurrent — was on the playlist. When even Muzak programmers are facing up to life during wartime, pop is no escape.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/ar...rtner=homepage
Looking for a Lucky '07 in Music
Jim Farber
This time last year, anyone who heard the words "Gnarls Barkley" would have thought someone just garbled the name of a basketball player. And the only time anyone uttered the term "blunt" was in reference to either a murderous object or an illegal drug device.
As it turned out, 2006 saw Gnarls Barkley's single "Crazy" and James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" dominate the airwaves, turning those performers into names everyone knows. Which goes to show, no one knows exactly which scores and stumbles a given year will bring.
Luckily, we don't need a crystal ball to report the arrival of a host of albums and concerts people will spend some time listening to and/or arguing about in the first blush of 2007.
Here's a sneak peek:
Breakthrough stars scheming to follow up a hit:
Pretty Ricky: The Miami-based teen-dream quartet returns Jan. 23 with "Late Night Special," featuring more of their eager sleaze.
Fall Out Boy: Feb. 6 brings "Infinity on High," the first album from these Chicago-born emo whiners since the "From Under the Cork Tree" CD turned them into platinum stars.
Bobby Valentino: The followup to the 2005 debut from this R&B smoothie (and Ludacris protege) slips into stores Feb. 13.
Joss Stone: The British blue-eyed soul shouter puts out her not-yet-titled, but still hotly anticipated, second CD March 6.
An American Idol out to prove it in the studio:
Katharine McPhee: The self-titled, and much delayed, debut from Idol 5's first runnerup finally (!) arrives Jan. 30.
Vintage stars boasting cover stories:
Carly Simon: The deep-voiced chanteuse soothes the world's woes with lullaby takes on songs from "Oh! Susannah" to the Cat Stevens-penned title tune, "Into White" (Jan. 2).
John Waite: In which the former singer of the Babys and Bad English covers himself by redoing his earlier hits, along with some potential new ones. "Downtown: Journey of a Heart" comes out Jan. 9.
Comebacks from those missing in action:
America: A double CD from the sweet-voiced '70s folk-rockers, covering unexpectedly hip material (from the likes of My Morning Jacket and Nada Surf) along with reruns of their old hits, rendered live. Titled "Here & Now," the disk arrives Jan. 16.
Maxwell: The first new work from the sultry R&B singer in over five years, "Black Summer Night" appears Feb. 13.
Brand names on the rebound:
John Mellencamp: A possible commercial comeback from the heartland rocker. The very politically minded "Freedom Road" arrives Jan. 23, boosted by the song "Our Country," already ubiquitous in a car ad.
Norah Jones: "Not Too Late," the third CD from the burgundy-voiced star, arrives Jan. 30. It's Jones' first since the death of her original producer, Arif Mardin.
Barbra Streisand: This two-CD concert set, titled "Live Streisand," was cut during Babs' recent opening shows in Philly and New York. They were the shows where her political bits got loudly heckled. Will the protests, and her F-bomb retorts, make the cut? (Feb. 6)
Surprises:
Belinda Carlisle sings French ballads, for some reason, on "Voila!" (Feb. 6)
Rickie Lee Jones gets religious on her Christian-themed CD "The Sermon on Exhibition Boulevard." (Feb. 6)
Erasure goes country for "On the Road to Nashville." (Feb. 20)
Dolores O'Riordan, singer of the Cranberries, flies solo (sometime in the coming year).
http://www.newstimeslive.com/enter/story.php?id=1027281
Old Media Fights Against Titans of Tech
Chris Nuttall
Silicon Valley schmoozed with the stars of Hollywood at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in 2006 but the 2007 sequel of America's biggest trade show is giving the Titans of Tech only B-Movie status.
Tom Cruise embraced Terry Semel at the Yahoo chief executive's keynote address last January while Robin Williams cracked a joke with Google co-founder Larry Page and Tom Hanks appeared with Intel's Paul Otellini.
They will not be providing a repeat performance when CES opens on Monday January 8.
Attendees will instead listen to a line-up heavily skewed towards traditional media companies and the telecommunications, cable and satellite companies that deliver their content.
CES, with the chief executives of leading companies mingling with 2,700 exhibitors and 150,000-plus attendees, has come to reflect current trends in consumer electronics, computing and the internet in addition to serving as the shop window for products yet to come.
The CES of 2006 caught the moment of internet and technology companies trying to converge with and grab a significant share of the consumer electronics space.
The 2007 keynotes suggest that old media and carriers are fighting back and approaching the internet on their own terms.
Mr Semel had argued that the internet – and Yahoo – had become the delivery channel of choice for content. He announced Yahoo Go, an interface for the TV similar to Microsoft's Windows Media Center.
That has barely registered with consumers over the past 12 months and Intel's unveiling of Viiv, its brand for multimedia living room PCs, has yet to become anything like a household name.
Google announced a content distribution agreement with CBS at CES last year and went on to acquire YouTube.
But it still faces lengthy negotiations to strike agreements with all the leading content providers.
Those companies have re-thought how they will make their content available over the past year.
Walt Disney-owned ABC began selling TV shows such as Desperate Housewives on Apple's iTunes service in October 2005.
Now the shows can be watched for free on its own website, helping viewers to catch up and then carry on watching on the regular TV medium.
Robert Iger, Disney's chief executive, will be a keynote speaker next week as will Les Moonves, CBS chief executive.
The heads of the leading cable, satellite and phone companies will debate new options for content delivery becoming available to consumers, such as AT&T and Verizon's plans to deliver comprehensive TV services via phone lines or fibre-optic cables to the home.
AT&T will deliver Internet Protocol TV but its medium will be a different beast from downloading content from Google's video sites.
CES will also recognise the growth of the mobile phone and the expansion of content and services to it.
The chief executives of Motorola and Nokia will deliver significant speeches at the start of a year when more than a billion phones are expected to be sold worldwide.
Bill Gates will give his customary eve-of-CES speech on Sunday and is expected to focus on Vista – the much-delayed Windows operating system finally released to consumers this month.
Vista software will also help usher in a whole new range of hardware products.
These will include a fresh crop of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs).
The mini-laptop/display devices should cause more excitement than the pricey versions with poor battery lives launched under Microsoft's Origami Project banner last year.
At the 2006 CES, it was the large screens of high-definition televisions that stood out and some of the displays will be even larger this year.
"I would not be surprised to see a 108-inch Samsung display," says Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies.
"But whereas last year you saw an unbelievable tour de force of displays in all sizes, this year it's going to be more of the same – the big deal is that they are much cheaper than a year ago."
The CES celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
It first took place in New York in 1967, featuring 110 exhibitors and attracting 17,500 attendees.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16430928/
YouTube Software Threat to Google Plans
Richard Waters
YouTube's failure to complete a key piece of anti-piracy software as promised could represent a serious obstacle to efforts by Google, its new owner, to forge closer relations with the media and entertainment industry.
The video website, the internet sensation of 2006, promised in September the software would be ready by the end of this year. Known as a "content identification system", the technology is meant to make it possible to track down copyrighted music or video on YouTube, making it the first line of defence against piracy on the wildly popular website.
YouTube said on Friday the technology would not be formally launched this year and YouTube's offices were closed until the new year. While providing no further details about when the system would be made formally available, it said tests of the system had been under way with some media companies since October and the system remained "on track".
Mike McGuire, a digital media analyst at Gartner, said the important part systems such as this played in building better relations between internet companies such as YouTube and the traditional media industry meant there was likely to be little patience for missed deadlines. "The technology industry really has to start living up to the media industry's expectations," he said.
If the delay lasts for more than a week or two into the new year, suggesting more than just a slight technical hitch, "this is certainly going to be a serious issue", Mr McGuire added.
Leading music companies have already made clear they see completion of YouTube's anti-piracy technology as an important step in any closer co-operation. Failure to build adequate systems to protect copyright owners could also add to the risk of legal action against the site.
Doug Morris, chief executive of Universal Music Group, hinted at legal action against YouTube late last summer, accusing both it and MySpace of being "content infringers [that] owe us tens of millions of dollars". Universal went on to sue MySpace but was one of the companies to reach a partnership with YouTube, partly based on the ability of its promised content identification system to track down copyrighted music.
The delay to the software could also spell wider problems for Google, which has been trying to negotiate partnerships that will give it access to content from a number of big media and entertainment companies. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Friday night, a YouTube spokeswoman said the company had never promised general availability by the end of the year.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16398962/
Patent Lawsuit Names Leading Technology Firms
John Markoff and Miguel Helft
In 1997, Jonathan T. Taplin, a veteran film and television producer, stood up at a cable industry convention and asserted that in the future all movies would be distributed over the Internet. He recalls being laughed out of the room.
Mr. Taplin may laugh last. Online distribution of movies has arrived, at places like Apple Computer’s iTunes Store. And even though Mr. Taplin’s own video-on-demand company, Intertainer, shut down operations five years ago, it says it deserves some credit — and cash.
Last week, Intertainer filed a broad lawsuit asserting that Apple, Google and Napster are infringing on a 2005 patent that covers the commercial distribution of audio and video over the Internet.
Founded by Mr. Taplin and two other Hollywood entertainment executives in 1996, Intertainer developed technology to distribute movies on demand through cable and phone lines for viewing on televisions and personal computers. It gained investors including Intel, Microsoft, Sony, NBC and Comcast.
“Intertainer was the leader of the idea of entertainment on demand over Internet platforms before Google was even thought up,” said Mr. Taplin, now an adjunct professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He and a secretary constitute the entire remaining staff of Intertainer.
Theodore Stevenson, a partner at McKool Smith, the Dallas firm representing Intertainer, said the company filed suit against Apple, Google and Napster because they were perceived as leaders in the market for digital downloads. He declined to specify the damages that Intertainer was seeking.
Apple, Google and Napster all declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Intertainer’s tale is somewhat different than other intellectual property suits brought by technology licensing firms. By 2002 the company seemed to have a growing business, with 125,000 Internet subscribers for its servers and 35,000 TV subscribers through the Comcast cable system.
But in the fall of 2002, the company shut down its service and filed a lawsuit against some of the backers of Movielink, a competitor backed by five Hollywood studios, including Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers. At the time Mr. Taplin said the studios were using Movielink as a price-fixing vehicle to kill Intertainer.
An antitrust investigation by the Justice Department into Movielink was dropped in 2004.
The studios settled the lawsuit last March for an undisclosed sum, and Mr. Taplin said in a phone interview Tuesday that Intertainer would henceforth pursue a patent licensing business.
The company holds nine patents, including United States Patent No. 6,925,469, which was issued in 2005 and is intended to cover the management and distribution of digital media from various suppliers.
Despite initial backing from Microsoft and Intel, Mr. Taplin said the two companies were not involved in the decision to bring the Apple, Google and Napster lawsuit. He said that decision was made by Intertainer’s board and that none of his original corporate backers have board seats. Several of the company’s original investors have taken patent licenses, he said, but he would not name the companies.
Despite the company’s decision to file the case in a federal district court in Texas that has traditionally looked favorably on plaintiffs in patent lawsuits, several digital media experts said that Intertainer might have a difficult time enforcing its patent because of its relatively recent filing date of 2001.
By that time, for example, Real Networks, the Seattle-based pioneer in streaming digital media, had begun an Internet subscription service for digital content.
Legal experts said it was difficult to handicap Intertainer’s claims. “There are so many of these lawsuits nowadays,” said Eric Goldman, director the High-Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. “It is hard to figure out which ones are a serious threat and which ones are not.”
Mr. Goldman also said it was unclear what specific technology or service was covered by the Intertainer patent.
“I have the same problem with this patent as so many of the patents of the dot-com boom days: I don’t know what it means,” Mr. Goldman said.
Mr. Stevenson, the Intertainer lawyer, said the patent covers a system that can be used by content owners to upload their content and used by consumers to download it. “It is pretty basic to the architecture of digital content delivery nowadays,” he said.
Mr. Taplin, who once worked as a road manager for Bob Dylan and produced several movies, including “Mean Streets,” “The Last Waltz” and “To Die For,” has a history of activism on technology issues. In 2002, he encouraged those attending a technology conference to urge the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that broadband providers would not be able to block specific Web sites — an early version of a hot-button issue that has become known as network neutrality.
Earlier that year, he testified before the Senate against legislation that would have forced high-tech manufacturers to incorporate technology to prevent piracy in their software and hardware.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/te.../03patent.html
Stealing Your Family Vacation: Memories of a Media Card
Have you ever taken an embarrassing or exposing picture with your digital camera, but then immediately deleted it from the camera before anyone had a chance to see it? Well, we've got some news for you... that picture may still exist — and we might just have it!
Over the last few years, there has been a lot of media coverage about the kinds of data that can be recovered from used hard drives and cell phones. Everything from sensitive financial information to text message records has been pulled off these devices. The result of this exposure is that people are learning to secure their data and ensure that they properly wipe their storage devices before getting rid of them. But what are people doing with alternate forms of digital storage such as compact flash cards found in cameras, or Sony Memory Sticks that are used in PSP's? Well, we decided to investigate and this article details our results.
The Project
Early in 2004 we purchased roughly 10 hard drives off of eBay for research purposes. Our goal was to see just how much data was out there for the taking. While the results of this test were never officially reported, we found that eight of the ten formatted drives still had data on them. Using tools like Autopsy and EasyRecovery Pro, we were able to recover social security numbers, bank account details, medical records and more.
Now here we are three years later and things are a little bit better, with regards to the proper wiping of data on resold hard drives. However, at the same time, the gadget market has exploded, and with it so has digital media. Digital cameras, console systems, handheld devices, MP3 players and more are all taking advantage of cheap flash memory cards. The result is that the average consumer will have several of these media cards lying around, many of which will rarely be used because they are too small or aren't compatible with the currently owned camera. Thankfully, for us, eBay is the perfect place to dump these cards.
Unfortunately, many of these media card owners have no way to view the card, and if they do, assume that their data is properly deleted using the cameras formatting feature — at least this was our theory. So, over a period of a couple weeks we kept a close eye on eBay and snatched up a few older/smaller compact flash media cards on which we would test our theory.
File Structures and Recovery
File recovery is not a complex or overly technical process to understand. In many ways, file recovery is just glorified searching. The reason for this is that most files have a standard format, so recovering a specific file means searching a drive for data in that format. In the case of a JPG, the beginning of the file will always start with the hex values of FF D8 and end with FF D9. So, to locate all JPG's on a hard drive, a program will scan the disk until it comes to a FF D8, mark the position, continue scanning until FF D9, and extract the data in between.
There are some issues that can complicate this process. For example, large files are often fragmented across the hard drive. In this case, the scanner may detect the FF D8 value, but will fail to find the end of the file. The same would apply to a file that was partially overwritten. In addition, not all file types are easy to spot because they are raw data (i.e. text file). In this case, a program has to scan for specific strings, such as 'HTML', which may indicate a web page file.
There are many programs on the market that perform data recovery. Some are free, such as PhotoRec. Others are a bit more costly and can run you in the range of $1000 (Forensic Toolkit and DataRecovery Pro). For this exercise we are going to use PhotoRec that you can download at
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec.
Recovering the Data
The following will walk you through the steps and screens of PhotoRec as we attempt to recover deleted files from a compact flash media card. The only requirement is that you have the card inserted into some kind of reader, and that Windows recognizes the card and assigns it a drive letter. Once this criteria is met, double click the photorec_win executable, which will open a window that lists all the drives and their sizes (figure 1).
Figure 1: PhotoRec listing the drives available for recovery
Select the drive that most closely indicates the size of the card you are recovering files from. The larger the drive, the longer the recovery process will take.
Next select the partition table type, which will be 'Intel' for the normal media card (figure 2).
Figure 2: Select the correct partition table
Next select the 'empty' partition, which basically tells PhotoRec to process the whole disk.
Figure 3: Choosing the right options
Finally, select the destination folder and hit the letter Y (figure 4). At this time, the program will start searching the media card for files that it will extract out and save to your hard drive (figure 4).
Figure 4: Select the output folder
Figure 5: PhotoRec recovering data
Once the recovery is complete, go to the defined directory and view the images. As you can see, data recovery does not have to be difficult, time consuming, or expensive!
The Statistics and Results
Our budget for this project was roughly $100. While limiting, small capacity cards are relatively cheap. In all, we spend $70.47 on a selection of 16 cards (plus another $42.60 on shipping!). Of these, one got lost in the mail and another was dead upon arrival.
The following outlines our findings. Note that some of the cards contained content that was never deleted, which we indicate in the 'Viewable Data' field.Card
Statistically, this indicates that 78% of the cards we obtained on eBay contained recoverable data. In total, we found 240 pictures, 17 movies, and a wide range of files from the card with computer files. The following lists the main subjects of the images.
· Lots of close ups of pets, babies, teenagers, young adults and couples posing (with clothes on)
· Teenager practicing gang signs?
· Disney world vacation
· Insurance company pictures (someone took pictures of various insurance agency signs from Georgia)
· Niagara Falls and Jehovah Witness Watchtower Expose
· Construction contractor digital log
· People partying, getting drunk, and passing out
The evidence suggests that people are not aware that their privacy is at risk. In addition, the fact that some of the cards contained undeleted images is a bit disconcerting. At a bare minimum media card owners should have deleted the viewable images.
While these statistics may seem high, they are inline with other studies performed on used hard drives purchased from eBay. For example, in a research project performed by PointSec in 2004, it was discovered that roughly 88% of used drives contained sensitive information. In 2005, a follow up study found that 71% of drives contained recoverable data. So, it is not surprising to discover that a majority of our media cards also contained files.
Deleting the Data
Fortunately, deleting the data is not too difficult or expensive. If you are a Windows XP Professional owner, then you already have the tools needed to ensure your drive is clean. All you need to do is click Start — Run and type in cmd. Then at the command prompt, type in the following:
cipher /w:<drive letter>: Where <drive letter should be replaced by the media card drive letter that is listed in Windows Explorer (figure 6).
Figure 6: Using cipher to wipe a media card.
Another option for those of who prefer a GUI interface is a freely available program called Eraser. Using this program, you can over write all the empty space on a drive, which will also overwrite any data that was not truly deleted. Figure 7 illustrates this program in action.
Figure 7: Using Eraser to wipe a media card
Summary
In this digital era your data can reside almost anywhere. Hard drives, USB sticks, camera cards, PDA's, phones, or even a digital picture frame could hold information you wouldn't want the world to see. It only takes a few minutes to properly delete your data storage device, and if you don't know how, then it might just be worth it to physically destroy the item instead of reselling it. Hopefully the results of this project has helped to highlight the fact that all forms of digital storage should be treated the same, regardless of their size, shape, or how many MB's it might hold.
http://www.informit.com/guides/conte...eqNum=234&rl=1
Sharing files
Fewer Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup
David Pogue
If there’s one New Year’s resolution even more likely to fail than “I vow to lose weight,” it’s “I vow to start backing up my computer.”
After all, setting up and remembering to use a backup system is a huge hassle. The odds are good that you don’t have an up-to-date backup at this very moment.
Fortunately, 2007 may turn out to be the Year of the Backup. Both Microsoft and Apple have built automated backup software into the latest versions of their operating systems, both to be introduced this year.
At the same time, an option that was once complex, limited and expensive is suddenly becoming effortless, capacious and even free: online backups, where files are shuttled off to the Internet for safekeeping.
Online backup means never having to buy or manage backup disks. You can have access to your files from any computer anywhere. And above all, your files are safe even if disaster should befall your office — like fire, flood, burglary or marauding children.
As it turns out, the Web is brimming with backup services. Most of them, however, offer only 1 or 2 gigabytes’ worth of free storage.
That may be plenty if all you keep on your PC is recipes and a few letters to the editor. But if you have even a fledgling photo or music collection, 2 gigs is peanuts. You can pay for more storage, of course, but the prices have been outrageous; at Data Deposit Box, for example, backing up 50 gigabytes of data will cost you $1,200 a year.
Nobody offers unlimited free storage, but lately, they’ve gotten a lot closer. Two companies, Xdrive and MediaMax, offer as much as 25 gigabytes of free backups; two others, Mozy and Carbonite, offer unlimited storage for less than $55 a year.
(Note that this roundup doesn’t include Web sites that are exclusively dedicated to sharing photos or videos, like Flickr and MediaFire. It also omits the services intended for sending huge files to other people, like YouSendIt and SendThisFile; such sites delete your files after a couple of weeks — not a great feature in a backup system.)
XDRIVE This service, owned by AOL, offers 5 gigabytes of free storage. It’s polished, easy to use, and as fully fledged as they come. Right on the Web site, you can back up entire lists of folders at a time, a method that works on Macintosh, Windows or Unix.
If you use Windows, however, an even better backup system awaits. You can download Xdrive Desktop, a full-blown, unattended backup program. It quietly backs up your computer on a schedule that you specify, without any additional thought or input from you.
Better yet, a new disk icon appears on your PC (labeled X), that represents your files on the Web. You can open and use its contents as though it’s an ordinary, if slowish, hard drive. A Mac version of Xdrive Desktop is in the works.
As a bonus, you can share certain backed-up folders, so that other people can have access to them from their Macs or PCs. (This requires, however, that they sign up for their own free Xdrive accounts.) You can view your backed-up photos as an online slideshow, or organize and play your backed-up music files on the Web page.
Upgrading your storage to 50 gigabytes costs $100 a year, which isn’t such a good deal. But if your Documents folder fits in 5 gigabytes, then congratulations; you’ve got yourself a free, effortless, automatic backup system. Happy New Year.
CARBONITE This one’s as pure a backup play as you’ll find; there’s no folder sharing, photo viewing or music organizing. The Windows-only backup software is completely automatic and stays entirely out of your way, quietly backing up whenever you’re not working. You get no free storage — the service costs $50 a year — but you do get something else few others offer: an unlimited amount of backup storage.
Carbonite is aimed at nontechnical audiences. It’s sold in computer and office-supply stores, for example, and it’s the easiest online backup software to use — in fact, to not use, since it’s completely automatic. The only change you’ll see are small colored dots on files and folders that have been backed up — and a Carbonite disk icon in your My Computer window that “contains” all the backed-up folders and files.
At the moment, Carbonite doesn’t back up individual files that are larger than 2 gigabytes. It also doesn’t back up pieces of files, so if your 500-megabyte Outlook e-mail database changes, the whole database must be backed up again. And, of course, there’s no Macintosh version. The company says that a new version, due in April, will wipe out all three of these drawbacks.
MOZY In many regards, the recently introduced Mozy is a Carbonite copycat. The price is $55 a year, storage is unlimited, an automated background Windows program keeps your PC continuously backed up and a Mac version is planned.
Mozy offers 2 gigabytes of backup at no charge. If you’re willing to do the company’s marketing for it, you can nab another free gig for every four people you persuade to sign up.
Mozy is more flexible, too — and more technical. It can back up only changed portions of files. You can specify times and dates for backups (instead of offering only the Continuous option, like Carbonite). You can view 30 days’ worth of backups, too — a feature that prevents you from deleting a file from your PC accidentally and then finding its deletion mirrored in your latest backup. And Mozy offers dozens of novice-hostile options like “Enable Bandwidth Throttle” and “Don’t back up if the CPU is over this % busy.”
MEDIAMAX Talk about value. How does 25 gigabytes of free storage strike you?
The service began life with an emphasis on organizing and sharing photos, video and music — which it still does well. But its new Windows backup program, now in beta testing, adds automated unattended backups of any kind of computer files, just like its rivals.
It’s pretty bare-bones; for example, it offers no continuous real-time backup, no choice of weekdays — only an option to back up every day, every three days, or whatever. And you can back up only folders, not individual files or file types.
In times of disaster, MediaMax will give you your files back, but won’t put them in their original folders. More important, the free account lets you download or share only one gigabyte of data a month. That pretty much means that to restore your hard drive after a crash, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid account. Still, when you’re standing there, sobbing over the smoking remains of your dead hard drive, you probably won’t mind paying $10 or $25 to get your stuff back.
SUMMING UP Now, there are some disadvantages to all of these services. One of them is time: even with a high-speed Internet connection, the first backup can take days to complete. Maintaining your backup is much faster, of course, because only new or changed files are uploaded to the Web. But if disaster ever strikes, retrieving your files can also take days. (Mozy offers a solution that gets you your files faster: a DVD of your files, shipped overnight for an added fee. For example, to FedEx a 50-gigabyte backup to you on DVDs, Mozy charges about $90.)
Then there’s the security thing. All four companies insist that your files are encrypted before they even leave your computer. But if you still can’t shake the image of backup-company employees rooting through your files and laughing their heads off, then this may not be the backup method for you.
Corporate longevity may be a more realistic worry. Since the Internet itself is very young, no Web-based outfit has a particularly long track record. Any of these services could be discontinued or sold at any time, which makes it wise to make the occasional on-site backup, too.
In any case, the main thing is to have some kind of backup. After all, there are only two kinds of people: Those who back up their computers, and those who will.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/te...aef&ei=5087%0A
Pulling It All Together
Damon Darlin
WILLIAM D. WATKINS has seven terabytes of data storage tucked into a cabinet in the media room of his beach home in Aptos, Calif. That is not a big thing for Mr. Watkins, the chief executive of Seagate, which makes hard disk drives. But it is enough space to hold 600,000 songs, 584,000 photographs and 1,000 hours of TV shows.
All of that material can be displayed on the giant flat-panel TV spread across one wall in the media room and distributed to the six TVs and numerous speakers throughout the house.
Call it tech envy, but I wondered if I could set up a system on a wireless home network so my own photos, videos and movies could be viewed from any TV in the house, and an entire collection of music could be summoned from any stereo. Could I do it with equipment available at a big chain like Best Buy or Circuit City?
“The answer to that is easy: no,” said Dan Sokol, a technology analyst with the Envisioneering Group, electronic engineering consultants in Seaford, N.Y. The problem, according to Mr. Sokol, is that there are dozens of pieces of incompatible electronic equipment involved in this kind of project.
I refused to take Mr. Sokol’s “no” for an answer — and set out to build a home media network for less than $1,000. I understood there would be plenty of hurdles. Devices coming out of the world of information technology, like PCs and networking equipment, are just beginning to communicate with the devices that come out of the world of home electronics, like TVs and stereos.
Both industries have been working out standards through an alphabet soup of trade associations. They are hoping that all of those devices, and cellphones, printers and digital cameras, will start making sense to each other this year. Best Buy just started selling a whole system in a box that will handle entertainment and control your thermostats and lights for $15,000.
Device manufacturers are convinced that consumers will want interconnectivity. Parks Associates, a technology industry consulting firm, estimates that by 2010, some 30 million American homes will have a home entertainment network. (Right now only about half of the 43 million American homes with broadband Internet connections even have a home network, so this seems like an optimistic projection.)
“Connected entertainment is near and dear to our heart,” said Jan-Luc Blakborn, director of digital entertainment at Hewlett-Packard. “We clearly see connected entertainment as an area where we can grow. It is starting to happen.”
At present I can buy a Sonos or Squeezebox device to play music throughout the house — but those can only handle music. Another device, the Slingbox, can send TV programs to a PC anywhere in the world over the Internet. But I do not want to watch TV on a 15-inch notebook screen when I can watch it on a 42-inch TV.
Then there is TiVo. It had the potential to become the leading home entertainment hub. A free download of TiVo Desktop software to a PC allows video from your TiVo to be watched anywhere and anytime on that PC. If you have a second TV, any program recorded on one TiVo box can stream effortlessly to any other TiVo elsewhere in the house.
But this is really an example of a lost opportunity. TiVo stores video in a proprietary digital format that prevents it from being viewed on non-TiVo devices, and the files are not recognized by other hardware, which is the problem that led Mr. Sokol to declare that my efforts would be futile.
James Denney, vice president for product marketing at TiVo, said the company had not set out to be the center of everything. “Our approach is that there isn’t one hub in the house,” he said. “Our role is a display device near the TV.”
TiVo also does nothing for my collection of DVDs. It is difficult to watch a movie on DVD over a home network without first copying it to a hard drive. Software for doing this is widely available, but it is illegal to bypass the copy protection on a DVD, even one that you own. Systems for sending copy-protected video around the house are still largely works in progress.
Another problem I encountered was a lack of advice. Few of the devices needed to assemble my network are even advertised by retailers or manufacturers. Sony, for instance, has a number of devices under the LocationFree name that can be used to move TV shows to a PlayStation Portable game machine or a small TV monitor outdoors, but it seems to be keeping this a secret. Hewlett-Packard is selling what it calls the MediaSmart TV, a 37-inch L.C.D. set that locates your wireless home network and pulls in content. It is a nice product, but it will not work for this project; it costs $2,000.
To build a homemade networked entertainment system, I needed a network, of course. Older wireless routers using the 802.11b standard will move video data so slowly that it will be nearly unwatchable. So the wireless router has to be upgraded to 802.11g or the even newer 802.11n standard.
Here is where this project started getting expensive. Wireless devices anywhere on the network that are still using the older technology will slow the whole network. I have to upgrade them, too, for about $50 each.
Music, movies and photos can be stored on the hard drive of any computer connected to the network. But because TV shows or movies can fill up a PC’s hard drive much faster than photos or music files do, it can make sense to centralize everything on an always-available external hard drive.
“The way I view it, being a nerd, the storage device is as important as the media center,” said Mike Scott, technical media manager at D-Link, a maker of home networking equipment.
There are now drives on the market that can hold as much as a terabyte, enough space to hold about 90 hours of high-definition TV. That much storage will cost a bit more than $500, but prices keep falling.
I decided to use a kind of external hard drive known as a network-attached storage device. Although they cost about $100 more than regular drives, they come with software that will organize files and help all the devices on the network find the drive. The Maxtor Shared Storage II drive that I chose, which holds 1 terabyte and costs about $680, was up and running in less than 10 minutes.
One alternative is buy a $100 device called a network storage link that is plugged in between a regular external drive and the router. That offers more flexibility if I buy a lower-capacity drive that needs to be upgraded later.
The next step is attaching a media adapter to a TV or a stereo to pick up the programming from the network. D-Link sells one called the MediaLounge Media Player for less than $300. (A fancier model just hit the market for $600.) This is essentially a DVD player with a built-in wireless adapter that enables it to locate photos, movies and music on the network’s hard drives. A similar device from D-Link, which costs about $180, can connect to any stereo receiver so that music files are always accessible. The drawback is that I needed one of these adapters for every TV and stereo.
The home entertainment network that I jury-rigged wasn’t nearly as slick as Mr. Watkins’s setup. But then it only cost me about $850, not including the cost of my existing computers and TV. I spent more time moving music and video files to the hard drive than I spent actually setting it up. Once the content was there, I could do exactly what I wanted to do: view whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted.
If all of this sounds like too much effort, you can always wait. Almost every consumer electronics company is set to announce its answer to home entertainment connectivity at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. As with all consumer electronics, the devices coming out next year will do more for less. I can only hope they will be just a little bit easier to put together.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/te.../04basics.html
30 Terabyte drives? I’ll take two.
Inside Seagate's R&D Labs
Rob Beschizza
Gordon Moore is to transistors, Seagate CTO Mark Kryder is to "areal density" -- a measure of how tightly data can be packed onto the surface of a disk. In a conference room overlooking the Allegheny River, he describes the coming storm in magnetic technology.
"When I joined Seagate, the idea of conquering 100 Gb per square inch seemed unimaginable," Kryder said. "Even 20 seemed unlikely."
In the eight years since then, however, Kryder and his colleagues at Seagate Research have stuffed 421 Gb per square inch onto test platters, and they're only getting warmed up. On a crisp December day -- one that also saw the death of Seagate founder Al Shugart -- Wired News yanked them out of the lab to get an exclusive tour of their Pittsburgh research headquarters, and a look at what you'll be buying in 2012.
White-coated scientists lurk in dust-free rooms, protected from environmental contaminants by massive glass panes and a complex air- recycling system. Amid dozens of labs at the 300,000 square-foot facility, machines of Gilliam-esque oddness and complexity whirr, surrounded by piles of technology it will take years for even a few of us to use.
The world's brightest young electrical engineers handle grains of magnetic matter so tiny they are measured by the nanometer, clumped into the smallest possible configurations that can hold a single bit of data.
Operating at the very edge of understood physics, the magnetic material can be shrunk only so small, thanks to the so-called superparamagnetic limit -- a barrier Seagate has spent millions of dollars fighting.
"When you go down (to the disk surface), you'll find it's made of a lot of tiny grains," Kryder said. "Each is a single crystal of magnetic material.... The reality is, if you make the grain small enough, it becomes unstable."
Their current solution to this problem is recording data perpendicular to the plane of the media. This technology, however, is expected to peak out at about 1 terabit per square inch. In the next decade, Seagate plans to hit the market with twin technologies that could fly far beyond, ultimately offering as much as 50 terabits per square inch. On a standard 3.5-inch drive, that's equivalent to 300 terabits of information, enough to hold the uncompressed contents of the Library of Congress.
First up is heat-assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR, which uses lasers to momentarily heat the disk surface and allow the drive heads to write information. When the surface of the drive cools, the bits settle into a more stable state for longer-term reliability. The technology allows a smaller number of grains to be used for each bit of data, taking advantage of high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum.
"The sizes are at the tens of nanometers in HAMR," said Mark Re, senior vice president of research. "There's really cool physics."
"Time constants are of the order of 150 picoseconds," said Kryder. "That's a very short timeframe."
But laser-powered disk drives are only one side of the coin. It will take so-called bit-pattern media to add the tail to HAMR's head.
"HAMR helps with the writing process," said Eric Riedel, head of interfaces and architecture at Seagate Research. "Bit patterning allows us to create the media."
On current disks, each bit is represented by an island of about 50 magnetic grains, but these patches are irregularly shaped, like ink on newsprint: Each dot must cover a certain area if it is to remain distinct. By chemically encoding an organized molecular pattern onto the platter's substrate at the moment of creation, however, HAMR can put a single bit on every grain.
"It allows you to redefine a lot of things that were limitations you had to live with," said Seagate researcher René J.M. van de Veerdonk. "With these technologies you have circumvented them."
Disk sectors will become a thing of the past, replaced by self-organized magnetic arrays, lithographically patterned along a platter's circumferential tracks.
"An iron platinum particle is stable down to 2.5 nanometers," Re said. "And to write on it, you'll need HAMR."
Though together seen as the future of mass storage by Seagate's researchers, HAMR and bit patterning are just two of the technologies under development at the research center in Pittsburgh, which prides itself on a collaborative work environment.
Seagate isn't solely interested in traditional mass storage, either, and plans to crash flash memory's party with "Probe," a non-volatile, magnetic-based media that will come in tiny form factors.
Seagate and its competitors spend billions annually on research, but the consequences of technological decisions made now may not become apparent for years to come.
Like angels dancing on the tip of a needle, two bits can't be in the same place at the same time. But you can still pack 'em damn tight.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72387-0.html
Music Industry Softens on Podcasts
Jacqui Cheng
Sony BMG has decided to dip its toes into the world of podcasted music with its recent agreement with marketing agency Rock River Communications Inc., making it the first (and only, for the time being) major music label in the US to license music for podcasting.
While you may not have heard of Rock River Communications, you will most likely recognize what they do. The agency creates promotional mix CDs for companies like Volkswagen, The Gap, Verizon, Chrysler, and more to hand out at retail stores and dealerships. Rock River, in an attempt to move past CD-only distribution, is now creating promotional podcasts for Chrysler and Ford Motors.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford and Chrysler are both paying Sony BMG a flat fee to license music for podcast distribution for one year, no matter how many copies are downloaded. On the customer's side, the podcast will be free and can be kept forever. Rock River says that they are in talks to license music from more music labels in the future for podcasting.
It's no secret that the music industry has always been very much against any form of digital distribution that is not DRMed. Unprotected files of songs or podcasts with songs in them could be chopped out of the podcast and widely distributed via those nasty P2P networks, with no royalties paid back to the labels as they usually are in radio. The Internet, after all, is often viewed by the music industry as the Wild West in that regard.
However, labels are beginning to slowly test the waters with unprotected files—in Weird Al's case, offering MP3s for free via his web site helped propel him into the Billboard Top 10 for the first time in his career. Sony BMG's actions seem to indicate that the company is willing to do some cautious risk-taking in hopes that the podcasts will spur customer interest in buying more music, and other labels are sure to keep an eye on Sony's success.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070102-8530.html
Catch the Next Chapter on Your iPod (It’s Even Cheaper)
Andrew Adam Newman
On a recent afternoon Laura Wilson was speaking through a microphone to Oliver Wyman, who was on the other side of a pane of glass. “Just hit Samaritan a little harder,” she said.
The two were in a recording studio near Times Square, producing the audio version of “The Intellectual Devotional,” a book of daily readings by David Kidder and Noah Oppenheim. Ms. Wilson, a producer with the Audio Renaissance publishing company, wanted Mr. Wyman, the reader, to give the word more stress in a sentence that began, “Ethnic Samaritans, now living in northern Israel ...”
That same afternoon, in a studio a few blocks away, another reader, Julie Fain Lawrence, was recording “Simply Sexy,” a steamy Harlequin title by Carly Phillips.
Mr. Kidder and Mr. Oppenheim’s philosophical musings might, at first blush, appear to have little in common with Ms. Phillips’s bodice-ripper. But the two audiobooks share something that was unheard of a decade ago: they are both being released exclusively in a downloadable format.
When finished next month, they will not exist in CD form but will be available only to mouse-clickers on Audible.com, one of several Internet sites featuring digital audio versions of books, periodicals and spoken-word content.
Unlike onscreen e-books, which never quite caught on, downloadable audiobooks have taken off, driven by the explosive popularity of the iPod.
According to the Audio Publishers Association, downloads have grown sharply, rising to 9 percent of audio book sales in 2005; that is a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Audible .com, which pioneered downloadable audio books nine years ago, also sells them through iTunes and Amazon and has a membership model similar to that of NetFlix; its membership has grown 54 percent over the last year, to 345,200. Going exclusively to a downloadable format saves publishers the expense of duplication, packaging and distribution. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. And the savings are often passed along. Audible’s full-price version of “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama costs $20.97 (although various discounts are available), while the CD version retails for $29.95; undiscounted, unabridged versions of Michael Crichton’s “Next” are $34.97 by download and $49.95 on CD.
Because of lower production costs, titles that a few years ago would not have had audio versions at all are now being recorded; the decision is based largely on projected hardcover sales. And if they prove popular enough as downloads, some of those productions will eventually be made into three-dimensional audiobooks.
The audio versions of Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” and the New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s “Orchid Thief” were both first available only to downloaders. Only after both hardcovers performed well — Ms. Orlean’s book was made into a movie (“Adaptation”), and Mr. Bourdain’s inspired “A Cook’s Tour,” his celebrity chef show on the Food Network — were both books rolled onto CDs.
In 2002, when “Three Junes” by Julia Glass was published, “we hadn’t originally bought audio rights and we didn’t plan to,” said Madeline McIntosh, publisher of Random House Audio Group. “Then in the 11th hour, word came through that the book had been selected for the “Today” show book club and was going to get a lot of visibility.”
The publisher scrambled to record the book and put it on Audible. It sold on the site exclusively until a year later, when Random House released a physical version of the audiobook concurrent with the paperback.
With virtually no promotional budgets, audiobook publishers rely on riding the coattails of the print version’s publicity, marketing and advertising. (Book ads increasingly include “Also available as an audiobook,” which audio publishers, protractedly battling the belief that listeners are readers’ intellectual inferiors, consider a breakthrough.) So while the success of a download-only title on Audible.com is a factor in determining whether to release a CD, publishers still link that decision more closely to hardcover sales.
Two Penthouse magazine books, “Between the Sheets: A Collection of Erotic Bedtime Stories” and “26 Nights: A Sexual Adventure,” were released in download-only audio versions in 2002, but like the books’ temptresses, they have had long legs. Sales remained so brisk that in 2006 “Between the Sheets” was the bestselling download-only title on Audible. So in August, four years after they were first recorded, Random House Audio released both titles on CD. With 7 of the top 10 download-only sellers on Audible in the erotica genre, the company has been a trailblazer in the category, albeit a conflicted one.
“We can tell our children that we helped to spawn the audio erotica industry,” Beth Anderson, the publisher of Audible, said with a laugh. “We started it not necessarily because we wanted to be in the erotica business, but because it seemed like a niche that wasn’t being filled.”
When Audible started nine years ago, “porn” and “sex” were popular Web search terms, even more so than now. So as an Internet company, Audible chose to offer racy titles. It now has hundreds of briskly selling erotica offerings, most available only as downloads, and increasingly geared toward women, including the “Herotica” series edited by the sex guru Susie Bright.
Such titles can be procured online discreetly and can be listened to discreetly as well. “One of the things that makes erotica sell better for us than other places is that when you’re on the subway listening to your iPod, no one knows whether you’re listening to The Wall Street Journal or a Penthouse book,” Ms. Anderson said. (This is perhaps alarming, given that a recent survey in AudioFile magazine found that 53 percent of listeners played audiobooks while driving their cars.)
Ms. McIntosh, the Random House Audio publisher, said that while the company was beginning to roll Penthouse titles onto CDs, based on their download success, “we don’t expect much in terms of bricks-and-mortar sales.”
Rather, she expects them to sell well on Amazon and through adult catalogs, where they can be bought by listeners who, as she put it, “might be embarrassed to bring them up to the register.” An added advantage: with a book on an iPod, there is nothing to hide under the mattress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/books/04audio.html
P2PNet's Final Days?
p2pnet.net special
p2pnet is on the verge of going offline. Our income dropped by 80% as of December 28.
Several times in 2006 I said I was able to keep going only thanks to the advertisers and some people believe that, like certain other sites, I'm raking it in. But scraping by would be more accurate. Revenue generated by the advertisements keeps us going and at the beginning of 2006, it amounted to slightly less than $C3,000 a month. This allowed me to feed my family, pay my mortgage and service the debts I'd incurred largely to establish p2pnet. Because it took quite a while to get to that point and before it was reached, we lived off our savings and a couple of bank loans. So I wasn't then, and definitely am not now, getting rich. Moreover, all costs and expenses have gone up considerably.
Early in the year, the Big 4 Organized Music gang turned on LimeWire, one of my advertisers. LimeWire pulled their booking, and then it was BearShare's turn. Two down, and I was in deep trouble. Again, I had to borrow money to stay online. But in July a small group in Europe offered to make up the difference between what I was getting in ad revenues and what I needed to keep posting, and that's the way things stayed during the summer and fall.
Then a few weeks back, one of my remaining advertisers unexpectedly cut back on its booking as well and finally, on December 28, the money from Europe was also abruptly cut off. This means my income has now been slashed by four-fifths which is, of course, a huge amount.
In a Q&A with Slyck, "p2pnet isn't an entrepreneurial effort," I said. "It's a commitment. And the staff is me." I went on, "I write everything that doesn't have someone's by-line on it - between 10 and 20 stories a day, 24/7. I slow down on Saturday and usually post only three or four items on Sunday. I also do the graphics, excepting photos, of course. I do my best to serve up news, information and commentaries that haven't been spun, filtered and pre-digested by self-serving entities."
Actually, sometimes, it's been 30 stories and I normally get up at between 3:30 and 4:00 am and work until around the same time in the afternoon, and that's fine with me. But if I'm to continue doing that, and if p2pnet is to survive, it has to reliably generate income. And this, in turn, means I must find firstly, a host (not in North America, preferably), and partners or collaborators who can take on p2pnet's development and help me turn it into a self-supporting entity.
Maintaining the status quo
It's the digital 21st century and I'm totally fascinated by the amazing possibilities and opportunities offered through peer-to-peer communications, p2p. In a world that was free and open, I'd have been writing about the excitement generated by the new collaborations between and among independent creators, developers and musicians, and the corporate music industry.
Instead, I'm writing about how Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo - to keep us locked in time back in the tightly controlled, physical 20th century.
Nor are they alone. The same applies to Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, the major Hollywood studios, and to all the other huge corporations such as Microsoft, Apple Computer, Google, Yahoo. The line forms on the right, babe.
To them all, 'free speech,' 'openness' and 'competition' are filthy words.
Direct access to knowledge, information and data
In the Q&A mentioned above, "p2pnet.net has become well known for its original news content," said Slyck, going on:
Do you see news regarding p2p and file-sharing becoming less obscure and more mainstream in the years to come? For example, do you see p2p and file-sharing niche publishing becoming as prominent as other niche publishing sites (such as sports or political publishing)?
I answered:
A kind of an independent parallel communications portal has already developed. And it's becoming mainstream. People tend to think of the music/movie file sharing thing as separate from 'important' world events. However, sooner or later, what's happening with in this arena will also happen in other areas, and let's not forget the studios and media outlets the entertainment industry owns, which is most of them, have tremendous influence over what people think and do around the world. The establishment print and electronic media depend almost wholly on corporate advertising and the goodwill of governments and their many and various agencies to survive, which means the news and information they carry is often very badly skewed. In the parallel universe, blogs and sites such as p2pnet carry the news and I think eventually, there'll be a huge Blog-cum-Web Page Directory. It'll have information categories people will use to find out what's happening, where to find services and products, and so on. And it won't be another kind of search engine.
Because thanks to the Net, for the first time in history, people can do more than wave banners, stage marches and write letters to the editor.
Thanks to the Net, they can use blogs and web pages and email and chat and IM and forums and comment areas to talk to each other, p2p, person-2-person, completely by-passing the corporate media.
And it's frightening the living daylights out of the Powers That Used To Be.
For the first time in history, people have direct access to the knowledge, information and data which hitherto have been completely denied them, carefully filtered and controlled by the governments and companies which should be serving us, making our lives rich and full, but which are instead doing the exact opposite in their own vested interests.
I was one among the first people to start a dedicated, 24/7, 12/12, site aimed at unspinning the spin spun by our corporate controllers who want to keep us firmly in the dark and under their collective thumbs.
I believe people should be able to say whatever they want without fear. I also believe that for the first time ever, that's possible. And that's why p2pnet has never demanded that people who want to say something must register before hey can speak their minds.
I want p2pnet to keep on doing what it's been doing and if you'd like to help, and you think you can, or if you'd like to become an active part of keeping it online in some way, please get in touch:
jon@p2pnet.net. No reasonable offers or suggestions will be turned down : )
Or should I should just give up and sell the p2pnet.net domain name, although I have no idea what it's worth, if indeed it's worth anything at all? What do you think? Please tell me.
And one other thing.
Normally, I leave 99.999% of comments up, whatever they say. But for this, I'll delete negative posts which move things off track. So if you see something from Gachnar or any other troll that's not directly relevant, please don't respond to it. I'll delete it.
Cheers! And thanks. And all the best now and for the future ....
Jon Newton
Vancouver Island
British Columbia, Canada.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/10870
Voice Over IP Under Threat
Fernando de la Cuadra
There has recently been considerable alarm about the possibility of a malicious code spreading via Skype. Skype is a system that allows voice communication over established Internet connections, in an environment very similar to that of telephone calls. It even allows calls to be made to telephones from a computer, with lower tariffs than that of a normal call.
The real problem that a malicious code for Voice over IP (VoIP) would suppose is that it opens a whole new field for hackers to create new types of malware. Initially, one might think of malicious code that uses VoIP in order to propagate, as was the case with the Trojan mentioned at the beginning. In reality, this represents nothing more than finding a new communication channel. New? No! There are already many worms that spread using numerous instant messaging systems. So this Trojan has not really done anything that hasn't been going on for many years now.
The problem lies in using the full characteristics of VoIP in order to spread malicious code. Imagine a dataflow across an audio channel (perhaps at a frequency that is not audible to humans) that could crash the voice system, causing a denial of service. Or that this dataflow could be used to create a system status that would allow execution of malicious code. This would be something genuinely new with respect to propagation of code, unlike other hundreds of codes that use messaging systems simply to propagate. But this is nothing more than speculation.
Evidently, this would require a large degree of innovation, research and development on the part of the creators of malicious code, and I genuinely doubt that they would bother. The situation that we find ourselves in now is a long way from that kind of ‘paradise’ in which hackers were not such bad types, and were only after achieving personal notoriety. Now, practically all malicious codes created are designed specifically to generate profits for their authors, whether it be through scams, fraud, identity theft, stealing passwords…
The precautions that users should take in the face of this new panorama are not that different from those adopted until now by the majority of reliable antivirus developers: a good system for scanning files and a good database of virus identifiers, that’s all. This is how things have worked until now, and the results have been more or less acceptable. Protection has been, well, adequate.
But virus creators are well aware of how antivirus applications operate and, needless to say, they create new strategies to evade detection. And as security providers are becoming much faster at detecting malicious code, so virus creators need to find a way to counter this speedy response.
Their method until now has been to send out massive amounts of malware (generally with the same techniques used for sending spam), and, on the other hand, continual renewal of the code. Where previously there could be dozens of versions of each example, recently there have been hundreds of variants of a single worm, many released on the same day.
If this strategy were implemented in IP telephony systems, such as Skype, we could well see many highly dynamic malicious codes, so that the technologies used until now (based on virus signatures) would not be sufficient for protecting users. If it were necessary to update virus signatures quickly enough to outstrip the speed of ‘flash threats’, which additionally could change elements of their code in a single day, no antivirus laboratory could cope with the task. In order to prevent this new range of code that tries to exploit telephony systems, we cannot rely solely on virus signatures. This would simply be too slow to thwart the hackers.
Let's imagine a scenario that could become commonplace in the near future: A user has an IP telephony system on his computer (both at home and at work). In his address book on the computer there is an entry, under the name “Bank”, with the number 123-45-67. Now, a hacker launches a mass-mailing attack on thousands or millions of email addresses using code that simply enters users’ address books and modifies any entry under the name “Bank” to 987-65-43. The problem has now been created.
If any of these users receives a message saying that there is a problem in their account, and asking them to call their bank (a typical phishing strategy), they may not be suspicious, as they are not clicking on a link in an email (as they have been advised not to do to avoid this type of fraud) nor calling a number in the email (another typical ploy). If they use their VoIP system to call the ‘bank’, they will be calling the modified number, where a friendly automated system will record all their details.
Traditional antivirus systems might well not have sufficient time to react to a completely new code, as the attack can be carried out in just a couple of minutes. If it is a known code, there would be no problem, it would be in the database and it would be detected. In the case of completely new code, the protection system needs to be able to see what is happening on the computer, and when the malicious code tries to take any type of dangerous action (in this case changing entries in the address book), the code will automatically be blocked.
In this way users will be properly protected against any possible waves of attacks using voice over IP systems. For traditional problems (known malicious code), signature-based scanning; for new problems, new technologies (intelligent detection of unknown code).
http://www.it-observer.com/articles/..._under_threat/
What Threats Does Skype Face?
Joris Evers
In late December, a security firm sent out an alert that a worm was spreading via Skype. It turned out to be a false alarm.
No worm has spread on Skype, and while security experts have painted a target on the popular Internet telephony application, its defenses have been pretty solid, according to the company's chief security officer, Kurt Sauer.
That's not to say there is no work to be done on security at Skype, part of eBay. The company is looking at integrating payment features, which obviously need securing, Sauer said. Also, Skype is in talks with security companies to provide add-ons to its software to secure text-based communications, he said.
Skype is often described as a boon for security because all calls are encrypted and there is no central server that could be targeted in a cyberattack. However, the application has also caused headaches for many IT administrators because it can find ways to make a Net connection despite strong firewall controls on corporate networks.
Sauer took a break from Skype security for an interview with CNET News.com, accompanied by Chief Operating Officer Michael Jackson.
Q: What do you do as chief security officer for Skype?
Sauer: I came to Skype three years ago. I came from Sun Microsystems, where I was doing work on peer-to-peer authentication. I came to audit the cryptography work that had been done in the Skype client as it existed. Since then, I've taken on the role of overseeing the security architecture of the Skype product family. That's grown into also dealing with incident response for security vulnerabilities. Since the acquisition by eBay, I also look at things like Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for security.
How significant a part of your job is dealing with security vulnerabilities in the Skype client?
Sauer: There are teams of people who are responsible for dealing with a lot of the nuts and bolts. Security of the architecture and where we're driving the product probably takes up about half my time. The other half is spent on compliance-related issues.
Do you see any exploitation of any security flaws in the Skype client? Have Skype users been under attack?
Sauer: We have not had any known exploitation of Skype vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities divide themselves into different categories and we have not seen attack vectors in Skype's products that allow worms or viruses to replicate. Instead, they have tended to be one-off problems that can cause Skype to fail.
There have been several bugs related to the Skype URL, where clicking on a malicious link could cause a PC to be compromised. Were these issues all reported to you privately?
Sauer: Yes. I had experience with security vulnerability response work when I was at Sun. What I wanted to bring to Skype from that experience was transparent communication with vulnerability reporters.
I don't think that we're ever going to be able to say that we're done tinkering with how we ensure the quality of our software.
One of the ways that you can really piss off the security researcher community is to be completely opaque, not say anything back. Some researchers don't want to talk to you, but to the extent they want to engage in a dialogue, we try to do that.
If you look at the robustness of the Skype code, would you say it has become much better over the years you have been with the company?
Sauer: Close to three years ago we had problems in our quality assurance process. We were working on building code tests and unit testing to improve the quality of the code. Things that happened between a year and two years ago turned into a need for better organization of the actual code development. So now I've introduced a lot more peer review over software before it gets to the final release.
Processes to make sure the software gets out is as flawless as it can, you feel those have all been established now?
Sauer: I don't think there's any organization that can't learn. I don't think we are the perfect software engineering organization. With each level of additional control, there is a certain amount of cost and time. You have to make rational decisions about how much overhead you're willing to place in the product development cycle. I don't think that we're ever going to be able to say that we're done tinkering with how we ensure the quality of our software. But having peer review is actually one of the best defenses to bad code that you can have because people don't ever want to show crappy code to a co-worker.
Flawed code isn't the only way users could get hit. We've seen worms hit all the popular instant-message tools. Is that a threat for Skype, too?
Sauer: I haven't seen any. You can't send executable code through a chat. A lot of what IM clients are going through is figuring out how to properly protect users against things like attacks against browsers that are launched through links. To that extent, we're looking at how we can partner with companies like antivirus vendors.
Symantec and, I think, McAfee have products that do things like doing risk scoring for links. It would be a really interesting thing for us to allow for a third-party specialist application to be able to make risk assessments of things like link content to help users make informed choices. We're certainly in active discussions about how we could do that.
Some security experts have predicted that Skype could be used as a way for hackers to remotely control networks of compromised computers, botnets. Have you seen that happen?
Sauer: I haven't, but you can certainly use Skype for application-to-application messaging. I'm not going to say you can't do that, but we have not seen instances of that happening. We do think that the Skype client has sufficient controls to prevent things like auto spreading because of the current authorization model. For example, I can't send you a file unless you've authorized it.
Have you seen any proof-of-concepts of malicious software that targets Skype?
Sauer: We've had some security researchers share concepts of things in the past. They were just simple ideas that we agreed not to disclose.
Some folks see Skype itself as a security threat, especially in businesses with controlled environments. Skype can find its way outside of the corporate firewalls even if IT people try to hammer it shut. Is Skype a security threat?
Sauer: That's what the most recent copy of our network administrator guide and Skype 3.0 is all about. It's trying to provide controls that let IT administrators run their networks the way that they want to.
A lot of administrators have objected to users coming in and installing Skype on a desktop. One place like that is eBay, it was amusing when we had the acquisition.
A lot of administrators have objected to users coming in and installing Skype on a desktop. One place like that is eBay, it was amusing when we had the acquisition. I came out and popped in to talk to the IT people who where all stunned because they were trying to keep Skype out. eBay has been a really good learning opportunity for us about how a business that is not Skype would use Skype in their business. One of the things that eBay expressed was a strong desire to be able to push out policies and allow those policies to be.
You touched upon encryption, which people and even certain countries are concerned about because they want to control what kind of communication goes on. How do you deal with that, have you ever caved and given anybody the encryption keys to Skype?
Sauer: Since we don't have the encryption keys, therefore we can't give them to somebody.
So even you can't listen on my Skype calls?
Sauer: The way that Skype works is that the people who are communicating communicate on a secure channel between themselves with keys that are generated by them and not generated by Skype.
So the answer to the question--if even you can't listen on somebody's Skype calls--is...?
Sauer: What we say to that is that we provide a safe communications experience. I'm not going to tell you that we can or can't listen in to that.
And you don't provide government, or any agency or any company, a way that they could listen in on Skype conversations.
Sauer: We don't.
Skype is offering more paid services, such as SkypeOut for calls to regular phones. Recently I've heard complaints from Skype users who had their credit card payments declined, even though their card was good. Are you experiencing a fraud increase?
Sauer: Anybody who sells nontangible goods with value is a target for fraudsters. I've had friends of mine contact me about this very sort of thing. We don't publish how we do it, but it is our protection mechanism. I'm not going to tell you what our precise method of protecting credit cards is, but I will say that if you're going to use the same credit card on a bunch of accounts, it's probably not going to work.
Is there an increase in fraud? Is it a major concern for you?
Jackson: It's a concern because it's a pain in the ass. We have an antifraud algorithm to trap the people who are cheating us, but it traps a lot of good users as well. It is a very fine balance that does affect the business itself because we're declining a lot of good transactions and pissing regular users off.
Rounding out Skype and security, what is your major concern, what keeps you up at night?
Sauer: The thing that keeps me up at night is our future development activity. We have a lot of new initiatives. We talked about things like adding the ability to send money to Skype. These are new areas that bring with them new consumer risks, so we have to work closely within our engineering teams to make sure we have total buy-in on how we're going to do something so that we don't mis-engineer anything.
http://news.com.com/What+threats+doe...3-6146092.html
Minimised Web Usage Urged
Hong Kong - January 3, 2007
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority advises net-surfers to minimise non-essential visits to overseas websites, uploading or downloading large files and activities like online gaming and peer-to-peer file sharing.
It issued the advisory today citing the resumption of US stock market trading today at 10pm Hong Kong time. The increase in Internet traffic is expected to slow down surfing speed and maybe cause jams.
Over the past week there has been continued improvement in Internet access. The major Internet service providers have recovered about 80% of their international connection capacity. IDD and roaming services are almost back to normal.
http://news.gov.hk/en/category/infra...103en06004.htm
Google Invests in Another Video Company
With the launch of it's own video service - Google Video - and the recent acquisition of YouTube, it is clear that Google wants to be a major player in the online video market. Further perpetuating these efforts, Google is now set to invest in a Chinese video distribution company called Xunlei ("Thunder").
Xunlei offers a peer-to-peer (P2P) application which is designed to make the exchanging of large video files easy and reliable.
Xunlei boasts 100 million users, and is looking to make business deals with content providers. The investment is still pending at this time, but it looks like it will go through. So far there is no word as to the amount of the investment.
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/940
Germany's Data Protection Officer Calls for Improvements in Telephone Surveillance
Craig Morris
Germany's Data Protection Officer Peter Schaar has called for a revision in the plans for new regulations of telephone surveillance. As he put it in the German daily Berliner Zeitung, "there has to be a clearer distinction between the ban on collecting such data and using it. The law should stipulate when the police have to stop phone tapping and when information can be gathered but not used for investigations."
Schaar complained that the current draft only prevents the collection of this data if the phone call only concerns a core area of privacy. "In practice, this means that phone tapping will always be allowed," he said. "This is going too far. I do not believe that these regulations comply with the stipulations that the Constitutional Court handed down."
Schaar also warned against allowing private firms to have access to the planned archives of telephone, cell phone, and Internet data. "Telecommunications data retention is no longer merely about combating terrorism, but also about economic interests." One example Schaar mentioned was the music and movie industry, which wants to have access to this data so that it can press charges against people who share copyrighted works in peer-to-peer networks, for example. Schaar reiterated his fundamental criticism of the German Ministry of Justice's plans.
The German data protection officer also spoke out against having the Internet generally monitored by the police. "There should be no general monitoring of the Internet." Rather, he explained, the police should only be able to conduct searches on the Internet if they are following concrete leads for crimes or criminal sources. "I believe that it would be problematic to have the police generally logging into chat rooms without any suspicion of wrongdoing."
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/83094
RIAA Fights to Keep Wholesale Pricing Secret
Eric Bangeman
A proposed order in a file-sharing lawsuit would force the recording industry to divulge closely-held details of their wholesale pricing arrangements. UMG v. Lindor is one of the highest-profile file-sharing cases in the news today, due in no small part to the efforts of Marie Lindor's attorney Ray Beckerman, who maintains the Recording Industry vs The People Blog along with Ty Rogers.
Lindor, like hundreds of others, was sued by the RIAA after a John Doe lawsuit resulted in her ISP turning over information to the record labels tying an IP address allegedly used for illegal downloading to her. Lindor has mounted a vigorous defense against the charges rather than settling with the RIAA as a large number of other defendants have.
The record labels are strenuously opposing Lindor's attempts to gain access to the pricing information. They have argued that it shouldn't be divulged, and if it is, it should only be done so under a protective order that would keep the data highly confidential. The RIAA regards the wholesale price per song—widely believed to be about 70¢ per track—as a trade secret.
The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. At issue are "most favored nation" clauses that require a distributor to guarantee a record label the best possible rate. Here's how it works: if Apple signs a deal with UMG for X¢ per track and later agrees to pay Sony BMG Y¢ per track, then Apple will also have to pay UMG Y¢ track, assuming X < Y.
Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to "serve their strategic objectives for other cases," which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details—such as the identities of the parties—would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.
The pricing information could be crucial for Lindor as she makes the argument that the damages sought by the RIAA are excessive. In this and other cases, the labels are seeking statutory damages of $750 per song shared. Lindor argues that the actual damages suffered by the RIAA are in line with the wholesale price per song, and if that is indeed the case, damages should be capped accordingly—between $2.80 and $7.00 per song—if infringement is proven.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070103-8536.html
RIAA Admits 70 Cent Price is 'In the Range'
NewYorkCountryLawyer
"In its professed battle to protect the 'confidentiality' of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by the defendant is 'in the range'.(pdf) From the article: 'The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, former New York Attorney General (and current Governor) Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' as the labels are not supposed to share contract information with one another ... Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to 'serve their strategic objectives for other cases,' which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details--such as the identities of the parties--would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.'"
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/01/04/2059245.shtml
End of the RIAA Terror Reign?
Jon Newton
2007 could be the worst year yet for Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany). It could be the year their whole, flimsy sue ’em all house of cards comes crashing down in America.
At the end of this month, on January 26, to be precise, oral evidence will be presented in Elektra v Barker, a landmark case brought by the multi-billion-dollar Big 4 record labels against one of their own customers, a single New York woman whose job it is to help mentally disabled people. And the case could could affect every man, woman and child in the US who loves music, with repercussions echoing around the world.
It’s being brought by the Big 4’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) against mental health worker Tenise Barker who is, says the ’trade’ organization, a file sharing criminal who’s depriving its owners of their rightful earnings.
Nor is she the only one being accused. Warner, et al, have leveled the same sweeping charge at some 20,000 or so other American men, women and even young children.
"Were the courts to accept this misguided view of copyright law, it could mean that anyone who has had a shared files folder, even for a moment, that contained copyrighted files in it, would be guilty of copyright infringement, even though the copies in the folder were legally obtained, and even though no illegal copies had ever been made of them," Ray Beckerman, one of the lawyers representing Barker, told p2pnet last year.
None of the sue ’em all cases has yet been heard to its conclusion in any court of law. Yet the Big 4 present the people being pilloried as though they’ve been fairly and legally tried and convicted of the non-existent crime of file sharing. And the mainstream media faithfully report the cases just as though the material on which they’re based is accurate and originates with credible and reliable sources.
Moreover, until now many, if not most, of the often elderly and technically inept judges hearing RIAA cases seem almost to have relied on RIAA ’experts’ and lawyers to tell them what to do.
But this time around things will be different. The arguments will be heard by judge Kenneth M. Karas, 42, someone who’s familiar with the kind of technology he’ll be hearing about, and someone who’s likely to ask his own informed questions, at length and in depth. And the grilling could be bad for the RIAA whose ’expert testimony’ is already being held up to close and unwelcome scrutiny in other cases.
In fact, Karas could well set the standard for the future and if you’re in New York on January 26, or you can get there, Show Up! Let Karas and the rest of America know just how important it is.
Assertion is as ridiculous as claims
The Big 4 are trying to spin the proposition that if there’s a shared files folder holding bought and paid-for copyrighted song files on your hard drive, and it’s been online for even a single moment, you’re an illegal distributor: a hard-case crook: a criminal. And that’s the case even if you’re only a child of 12, say Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.
The assertion is as ridiculous as their claims that files shared equal sales lost. What it means is: if you let someone else, or a lot of someone elses, listen to tracks you thought you’d bought when you shelled out $20, or however much it was, the Big 4 labels, who collectively and singly are worth billions of dollars, lose money. A huge amount of money.
Their answer? Not produce better music (they’re heavily and constantly criticized for lthe formulaic ’product’ they turn out). Certainly not start charging reasonable wholesale prices so their buyers an in turn ask a fair rate for downloads. Instead, fix prices at criminally high rates, and then sue their own customers in an attempt to force them to buy the ’music’.
Knock, knock, who’s there?
In Canada in 2004, Warner Music, et al, tried to get a Canadian court to force five Canadian ISPs to reveal the identity of 29 clients so the Big 4 could sue them.
However, "No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorised the reproduction of sound recordings," justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled. "They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer user(s) via a P2P service."
The importance of Elektra v Barker can be gauged by the fact it’s become a battle of the giants. Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is in lock-step with the Big 4’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in trying to drive it through.
On top of that, "the American Association of Publishers requested permission to file a brief, and the US Department of Justice submitted a ’Statement of Interest’ arguing against the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Recording Industry vs The People.
However, equally significant is the fact the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA ), US Internet Industry Association (USIIA) filed an amicus brief in support.
The case has shocking implications for the Net.
How did it start?
Here’s how Tenise Barker described it to p2pnet.
I heard a knock at the door one evening. ’Who is it?’ I asked. ’Tenise Barker,’ a woman’s voice rang out. ’Yes,’ I answered through the closed door because the voice did not sound familiar to me. ’I have some mail for you. It came to my apartment,’ said the voice on the other side of the door.
I was surprised by what I heard. I looked through the peephole. I saw a Caucasian woman, which seemed odd because she said she had mail for me, and I didn’t know of any Caucasian people living in my building. I opened the door. ’Tenise Barker?’ the woman asked. ’Yes,’ I said. She handed me a large envelope with a big smile on her face and said, ’Have a good night,’ as she walked away. I stood there with the door still open looking into the empty hallway for a few seconds after she left because I was a little confused about what had just transpired. I went into my apartment, locked the door, opened the envelope and learned that I was being sued for file sharing. I was shocked, afraid, and upset all at the same time. The envelope contained a letter that told me I had two weeks to respond to the summons. I did not know what to do.
The next day I called a friend of mine who works at a law firm to see if I could get some advice. She said that she would try to talk to an attorney at the firm to see what they’d suggest. She and I went back and forth for about a week because the attorney she wanted to speak to was away. Finally when she spoke to the attorney, the attorney suggested I find a lawyer who’s familiar with copyright laws. With one week in the wind and another in the balance, I contacted another friend who informed me of a site that listed lawyers who were taking on the cases of people being sued by the record industry. My search led me to Ray Beckerman.
My whole experience with being sued by the RIAA has been frightening, and very stressful. The fear of not knowing what the outcome of this case will be has been a constant source of stress. Attorney fees have been added to my list of expenses, and I can’t imagine how costly this whole experience will end up being when this is finished. At one point I considered settling, not out of guilt, but because I wanted this case over with so I could move on with my life. However, I learned that if I settled I would have to pay about $6000. I would be given six months to pay it, and it had to be paid in full. Furthermore, settling the case didn’t protect me from being sued by artist and musicians. I was caught up in a catch-22. I felt trapped because I could not afford to be sued, and I could not afford to settle. Nevertheless, I knew that I was in this for the long haul.
It is my understanding that the RIAA is suing me because I have music files on my computer. I couldn’t believe that. I was unaware of copyright laws. I mean, why create P2P file sharing if it’s a crime? Why create the ability to rip files if it’s a crime? Is the RIAA going to go after the manufactures of computers next because they create the devices that make it possible for people to rip music files? Are P2P file sharers solely at fault? Or are they pawns being sacrificed in a corporate game of chess?
I love music. I grew up in a house where music was played all the time. We had milk crates filled with albums. We had so many records that people would come to our house and be amazed by the size and content of our music library. Any song they requested we had it. So to be sued for having music files on my computer is an insult. It’s a slap in the face. This experience has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wanted to swear off music. I wanted to boycott the giants who were targeting me. However, music is in my blood. As I said before I love it, so I continue to purchase it. I know it all sounds bizarre because in a way, I’m funding their attacks against me and others like me. A catch-22, that’s exactly what this is, and I’m caught in its grips. I just pray that in the end this will all work out in my favor.
Will this be the beginning of the end of the RIAA’s attacks on their own customers?
Stay tuned.
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...e%3D5445&cid=0
The Pirates of Osan
p2pnet.net news special
Charles N. Haid currently resides in South Korea. Haid isn't his real name but, he tells p2pnet, it's close enough so that if he ever wants to properly identify himself, the connection will be evident.
He'd been reading our accounts of how the members of the Big 4 Organized Music gang are terrorizing their own customers, turning the music industry into even more of a wholly self-serving enterprise than it is already.
And he was particularly moved by the plight of Patti Santangelo and her children, wondering why Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, weren't dedicating all of their massive resources to nailing the real villains in the piece, the counterfeit criminals, organized and amateur, who are fast becoming as rich as the labels themselves as they ply their illicit trades in underground black markets and street corners around the world.
Instead, as he emphasises, not just the labels, but also the major Hollywood studios, are seriously dividing their resources as they attack innocent and helpless men and women, and even children, whom they accuse of being "thieves" and "criminals" guilty of the non-existent crime of file sharing.
But he wasn't merely expressing general disgust. He had something very specific to say about what he describes as the extensive and ongoing illegal sale in Songtan in South Korea of almost everything imaginable that can be counterfeited such as designer clothes and watches, like the ones in the pic below, photographed on a stall trading openly in the city's streets.
Counterfeit movie DVDs are also prime items, he says.
'Tons of other goods and services'
Haid is, he says, associated,"with the highest levels" of leadership at the American Osan Air Base fighter wing in South Korea. Some 48 miles south of the DMZ, it's the most forward deployed permanently-based wing in the US Air force and is, "charged with providing mission ready Airmen to execute combat operations and receive follow-on forces," says its site. "Our wing with its 24 PAA, F-16 and A-10 squadrons, along with a C-12 airlift flight and a myriad of base support agencies conducts the full spectrum of missions providing for the defense of the Republic of Korea."
Songtan City is, "just outside the gate and is the most popular shopping and night life area for Americans stationed or living at Osan Air Base," says an online guide. "Excellent deals can be found on custom-made suits, unit coins and plaques and tons of other goods and services. Check out the interactive map for businesses downtown."
According to Haid, the 'other goods and services' include counterfeits of all kinds and, "Many months ago, I documented much of this activity and e-mailed every company and association which might be interested (such as Rolex, Coach, Chanel, RIAA, MPAA, etc.)," he declared.
Why tell p2pnet? Because, said Haid, he'd given up trying to expose the dealings through normal accepted channels and detailed letters.
It was time to go public. "There are many American civilian contractors who support the military in everything from network admin to airplane repair," he told us. "It is important for me to do my part in ending the corruption here, and it can't be done fighting it head-on."
Action against digital piracy'
Piracy used to chiefly mean robbery on the high seas. And to 'counterfeit' something was, and still is, to copy it, usually with the intent of re-selling it as the original with currency, art, and antiquities probably as the most popular counterfeit items.
Since the end of the 20th century, the entertainment and software cartels have been running a huge media campaign under which 'piracy' is now principally used to portray peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing as a deadly menace and a crime ranking with murder and rape, rather than as a means by which movies and music, among other things, are being handled in the digital 21st century.
According to Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel, and Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, the Big Six Hollywood studios, their hundreds of millions of men, women and child customers around the world aren't reasonable people looking for a fair return for their money. Rather, they're all potential hard-case, hard-core copyright "thieves" and intellectual property "criminals".
The cartels try to equate files shared with sales lost and routinely and regularly lump file sharers together with 'pirates,' or counterfeiters, as they used to be known.
There is, of course, absolutely no relationship between the two. Counterfeiting is a crime, and no doubt about it. Sharing is, though, merely sharing. No money changes hands. No one is deprived of something he or she used to own. And it's never been demonstrated that a file shared equals a sale lost.
Nonetheless, that's the assertion as the corporate entertainment industries relentlessly sue their own customers in a desperate attempt to control how, and by whom, movies and music are distributed online.
They say file sharing represents a Number One problem for economies around the world.
However, HavocScope puts marijuana at the top of its 'illicits' list, with an estimated value of $141.80 billion. Next are counterfeit technology products, then drugs (cocaine, #3, opium/heroin, #4), 'pirated' web videos, counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs, 'pirated' software, human trafficking, amphetamines/meth, and animal and wildlife smuggling.
'Pirated' movies are way down the list at #11, and worth an estimated $18.2 billion, and finally, at an estimated $4.5 billion, music is number 21.
'Excellent deals can be found'
The South Korean economy is now the 10th largest (nominal value) in the world, says Wikipedia. One of the world's most technologically advanced and digitally-connected countries with the second highest broadband Internet connections per capita among OECD countries, and a global leader in electronics, digital displays, shipbuilding and mobile phones, South Korea is also a place where counterfeiting is rampant, putting it in the #8 "illicit market" spot in the Asia Region, according to HavocScope.
"Pirated" software is worth $255.8 million, video games, $415.1 million, books, $43 million, movies, $40 million and music, $1.3 million, it says.
"Korea's theatrical sector is booming," said Variety last August. "In 2005, the market passed Germany to become the world's fifth-biggest at close to $900 million, and in the first half of 2006, it saw a further 29% growth in admissions. But parallelling [sic] the dilemma in some European countries, the DVD sector has shown virtually no growth in the past four years. This year, Universal and Paramount decided to abandon the market, and all signs point toward further decline."
There are, "many reasons for the weakness of DVD in Korea," the story has Peter Woo, managing director of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, saying. "We've been working hard to turn things around, but it's been difficult." And most frequently cited as the cause of the stunted growth in Korea is piracy, says Variety, going on:
"With some of the fastest broadband connections in the world, capable of downloading a DVD-quality feature film in 30 minutes, a widespread downloading culture has emerged among young Koreans. At the same time, the government has turned a blind eye to scores of vendors selling pirated DVDs in subway stations and on street corners throughout Seoul."
'Military regulations'
"The United States Air Force at Osan Air Base in Songtan, South Korea, is openly allowing American service members to purchase counterfeit goods, DVDs and pirated computer/console software from carts and shops located outside the main gate," Charles told p2pnet. He went on:
Leadership's excuse is that they cannot enforce Korean law. It is, however, within their power to put these places off-limits to American service members but they don't (due to corruption among some members of senior leadership).
Many months ago, I documented much of this activity and e-mailed every company and association which might be interested (such as Rolex, Coach, Channel, RIAA, MPAA, etc). I only got one reply that they would "look into it" and that was after a second e-mail.
After that, nothing. Nobody has shown any interest in following up on my allegations (and photos).
All of the counterfeit hot lines seem to be only for show.
I am disgusted how they will hassle normal people yet do nothing in a situation where simply bringing public attention will stop an organized commercial counterfeit operation.
The Air Force could quickly put it all off-limits to reduce publicity and without customers, the counterfeiters would go out of business.
Confirming my allegations requires next to no effort. The open sales of counterfeit and pirated goods aren't hidden and they go on from around noon until late at night on the main street in Songtan.
All ranks openly purchase these goods and do so in front of "town patrol".
Military regulations are quite clear in their requirements to place establishments off-limits which engage in illegal activity.
Yet nothing is done. And none of the anti-piracy/anti-counterfeiting organizations such as the MPAA and RIAA seem to care.
p2pnet asked Charles if it would be possible to get pictures of counterfeiting sales and over ensuing weeks, he obliged, saying, "The shocking part is that EVERYBODY knows about this. It's not hidden. Counterfeit goods are sold openly. There are at least three carts and a couple of stores selling copied DVDs with a TV and a DVD player so you can test them.
"Some are original promo copies of newly released movies and some are recorded in a theater with a camcorder."
'NO fear'
Why is this allowed to continue in the face of loud and continuing protests from both the US trade office and the cartels?
"I have a couple of friends who are American club owners," says Charles. "I get a lot of gossip from Korean friends who talk to the Korean club owners. Many lower-ranking officers have an idea about what is going on, are angry and will talk over beer.
"They will complain but they will not sacrifice their career by taking any action.
"The Korean businesses which engage in illegal activities have NO fear because they control Osan Air Base leadership's actions toward "downtown".Officers at Osan do a two-year tour. The Korean businesses have been here for decades.
"They know every trick to getting the base to do whatever they want. There are hundreds of things they do but some of them are:
1 Political pressure. The local "business association" has close, long-term relationships with Korean military leaders. American officers on a two-year tour will do anything to avoid a bad recommendation from a Korean officer. There is no gain by attacking a system that has gone unchanged since the Korean war.
2 Careerism. "A good tour at Osan is an uneventful tour at Osan." Officers are faced with ignoring what is going on and moving on to their next base or making a big stink, losing their career and still having nothing happen. The business association knows this and brings attention to anyone who might want to "destroy the friendly relationship between the United States military and their host nation".
3 Relationship building. Somehow, all the business association leaders have base passes. They play golf with leadership to "build community relations". They buy dinners, trips and gifts. It makes it difficult to put a business off-limits if the owner is your golfing buddy, takes you out to expensive dinners and arranges a shopping trip for the officer wives. As long as no outside attention is coming, it is better to pretend he isn't doing anything illegal.
4 Family relationships. For some reason, Osan always has a number of senior officers in positions of responsibility who have Korean wives. These wives are frequently related to local business owners. There is massive social pressure for the wives to guide their husbands to make decision which benefit the local business community.
5 Bribes. Payoffs are made to some members of Osan leadership to insure cooperation. Then they are owned. Other officers know or suspect what is going on but they will lose their career if they get involved. There is a "protect the Air Force" mentality and ratting out a senior officer might get a public thanks but will certainly be a career-ender. There are people who will deny some of this but the best proof is that open illegal actions are still going on even when the base is directly informed about them.
We heard from Charles again today. He says he understands the US Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General, is now looking into the situation at Osan.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/10890
BBC Embraces Internet File-Sharing Network; it May Get Swallowed Whole
Gareth Powell
The news that the British BBC plans to make hundreds of episodes of its popular British television programs available on a file-sharing network has three separate stories behind it.
The first is the BBC has done a deal between the commercial arm of the company, BBC Worldwide, and the Java-based BitTorrent client technological firm, Azureus. The file sharing means that users of Azureus` Zudeo software in the United States can legally download titles, such as ‘Little Britain.’
This coincides with the second pieve of news which is that the BBC, which is paid for by compulsory subscription, is not getting a rise next year. Indeed, it is getting a slightly less money if you allow for inflation.
Many critics - Richard Ingrams in The Independent leading the charge - have asked why ANY money should be given to the BBC.
Good point.
The truth is most voters are number into paying the charge but with other free entertainment systems’ arriving almost by the hour its importance diminishes. And there is no doubt that the BBC is substantially overstaffed in many areas. Listening to it I find it difficult to support its quite extraordinary demands for a budget increase next year.
So it has embraced the enemy, the Internet, and this new moves shows that it sees the writing on the wall. If entertainment is available elsewhere for free why should you pay the BBC - protected by some of the most severely enforced and Draconian laws in the world = serious money for that which you do not need?.
The third part of the story is that there now is simply no television maker who does not realize the product must, at some time, be released through the Internet. All that is argued now is when.
Simultaneous release is being dabbled with. It will soon grown into a major force. A tsunami of telly.
There is now no major television studio that does not grasp the power of YouTube. It is almost a given that a feature show is going to release teaser clips for YouTube and major advertisers are going to make what you make care to think of as YouTube original clips running about two to three minutes.
Which means the whole balance of power is shifting. Instead of resting with monolithic giants who think that only way to deal with revolution is to keep shouting ‘piracy’ in a strangulated scream it will rest more and more with the creators. And they will know whether they have got it right within a week of releasing it to YouTube.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...allowed-whole/
BitTyrant - the New "Selfish" BitTorrent Client Server
soulxtc
It's like Azureus on steroids, claiming to increase download speeds by a startling 70% but, at what costs?
.First off I'd like to say that I'm a little hesitant to report this new suped-up version of Azureus as it has the potential to degrade download speeds for everybody.
As the creators of the BitTyrant client server note, "When all peers behave selfishly, (i.e. use BitTyrant) performance degrades for all peers, even those with high capacity."
Having said this, the news IS the news, and word of this new client is making its way across the net.
The basic premise behind BitTyrant is that it makes active decisions as to how many and with what peers to transfer data to, as compared to current BitTorrent client servers that exchange data according to a predetermined number of peers and settings.
The current data transfer protocol doesn't factor in the strength or capacity of individual peers. It's tit-for-tat irregardless of upload capacity.
Well, with BitTyrant, a modified version of Azureus 2.5, a "dynamic adjustment algorithm" is incorporated that "...maintains estimates of the rate at which peers will provide data...and the rate required to earn reciprocation., " and using this data selects "...highest capacity peers and send(s) them data at the minimum rate that will cause them to reciprocate."
The creators claim that this dynamic adjustment algorithm modification makes it much, much, faster than its regular Azureus 2.5 cousin.
They note:
During evaluation testing on more than 100 real BitTorrent swarms, BitTyrant provided an average 70% download performance increase when compared to the existing Azureus 2.5 implementation, with some downloads finishing more than three times as quickly.
It's a pretty bold claim but, after testing it out for myself, I have to agree.
I grabbed a torrent from TorrentSpy which was 350MB in size and had 1200 seeders and 1300 leechers.
Now normally I would average about a 70 kB/s DL speed or so for a total download time of around 30min.
With BitTyrant I averaged speeds of around 300kB/s, and it finished downloading in about 12 minutes.
This is all performed with a max 875 kB/s broadband internet connection.
Now, these statistics aren't scientific by any means but, for those of you who use public torrent tracker sites like TorrentSpy, you'll agree that 12 minutes for a 300MB file is pretty darn fast.
What's also interesting to point is that with Azureus you have the option of throttling the UL speeds PER/torrent tracker. By using BitTyrant you then get a maximized DL speed based on that THROTTLED UL speed.
As an example, I throttled a torrent tracker down to a 20 kB/s max UL speed. Even on a PUBLIC torrent tracker site, with 60 seeders and 113 leechers, it still managed to get an average 120 kB/s DL speed! Pretty darn amazing if I say so myself.
Is it fair to use BitTyrant? Will it harm the BitTorrent community? On the surface I'd like to say yes it does but, it does make a pretty good argument for itself.
The creators make the point that if a user is getting data from you at a rate of 30kB/s, then offers you less in return that it's unfair to you and wastes your precious upload capacity on somebody who is not mutually beneficial.
It constantly reassesses the "relationship" between yourself and each of the persons you're connected to in a torrent swarm.
Is it fair to you? Yes. Fair to others? Kind of. Fair to the BitTorent community? Probably not.
Some people have lousier connections than others, and so to start "hoarding" bandwidth and only sharing it with "worthy" people can have a seriously destructive effect on the file-SHARING and the BitTorrent community in particular.
From the client's FAQs:
Q: Won’t BitTyrant hurt overall BitTorrent performance if everyone uses it?
This is a subtle question and is treated most thoroughly in the paper. The short answer is: maybe. A big difference between BitTyrant and existing BitTorrent clients is that BitTyrant can detect when additional upload contribution is unlikely to improve performance. If a client server were truly selfish, it might opt to withhold excess capacity, reducing performance for other users that would have received it. However, our current BitTyrant implementation always contributes excess capacity, even when it might not improve performance. Our goal is to improve performance, not minimize upload contribution.
So who knows what the answer is for sure but, "maybe" is certainly not a good enough reason to start screening with whom and how much you share.
If we start being overly selective we'll begin to have our own P2P caste system, with AOL and dial-up as the outcasts and the guys with the T1 connections serving as the gatekeepers of precious data download streams.
For those that disagree, and think that it's only fair to get an equal amount of data in return for what you upload to others, BitTyrant is easy to set up and configure.
It's basically Azureus 2.5, and a guide on setup and installation can be found here.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8193/Bi...+client+server
A Primer
Make the Most Out of File Sharing
File sharing gives free access to music, films, software and more. We explain how how to do it
Nigel Whitfield
File sharing is one of the most popular applications on the internet. Every day, thousands of people download files from other internet users’ computers.
The file could be a fix for a PC problem, the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, a home video, or an obscure piece of music. The problem is that the vast majority of such downloads breach copyright agreements.
Some people rejoice in the free availability of just about anything you could imagine, while others look on aghast and wonder how actors, writers, singers and musicians will ever make a living when no-one pays for anything.
Technical experts worry about the dangers of viruses being spread, but marvel at the ingenuity of the way file sharing works while businesses back the efforts to get the technology itself banned. Whatever your opinion, one thing’s for sure – file sharing is now a major part of internet use, one that even organisations such as the BBC are investigating.
In this feature we’ll explain how file-sharing technologies work, set out the political risks associated with them and demonstrate legitimate uses for file sharing.
To understand what file sharing is, let’s start with a more traditional way of accessing information on the internet. Whether it’s via the web, or via an FTP server, when downloading a file it is stored in a particular place, such as Microsoft’s web server. To access it, you connect to that server and download a copy of the complete file using a web browser or a file-transfer program.
That works pretty well, but there are some problems with it. For example, what happens when there’s a really important new file available, like a security fix for Windows?
Everyone tries to download it at more or less the same time, and as a result you see “Server too busy” messages, or when the download does start, it’s incredibly slow. There’s another issue with downloading files in that way; the process is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
In the newspaper business, for example, printing presses are the single point; with files, it’s the web servers. If the hardware fails, no-one can access the file. File sharing – called peer-to-peer technology in the business – has provided solutions to both problems – just about anyone could make a file available, and by spreading it around more than one computer, you’re not relying on a single web server to provide the file to everyone.
What exactly does peer-to-peer mean? Ordinary file sharing – such as that used on a home network – isn’t very different from the usual way of making a file available on the web; everything’s stored in a single location.
But with a peer-to-peer system, there’s no central server. Instead, the files are stored on individual computers, and transferred between them using the internet. There are often multiple copies of each of the files, and no single point that a computer must connect to in order to fetch the file or information that’s been requested. Your computer is one ‘peer’ connected to the same network (the internet) as the other peers – hence the name.
Crucially, no single peer is required to obtain the entire file. You download a little bit of the file from each PC – the clever bit of peer-to-peer technology is how it works out which bit to retrieve from which PC – and remember, they’re spread all over the world.
This means that a peer-to-peer system can be very resilient. If one computer is operating slowly, a file can be requested from one of the others that has a copy of it, and if one or more of the PCs in the network crashes or is switched off, the others can carry on operating.
What’s out there?
Like it or not, just about everything in our lives is going digital – music, video, newspapers, photographs.
Anything you like can be scanned, saved and turned into a computer file. And once it’s in a file, you can – most of the time – do anything you like with it on a computer.
Even though there are attempts made to protect material – such as the encryption on DVDs – it doesn’t usually take very long for those to be circumvented. There are tools that will strip the copy protection from music you’ve paid for, enabling you to play it on any device, instead of just the approved ones. The music industry calls that piracy; other people think it’s just like making a tape of an LP to listen to in the car, instead of buying a second copy on cassette.
Few would argue, though, that it’s right to buy one copy of a film or a CD and then give away free duplicates to absolutely everyone you meet in the street, but that’s effectively what file sharing can allow people to do. This is why it’s such a legal hot topic, especially since you don’t need to invest in a big web server to distribute a popular file. Once one person has it, they can share it with others.
It’s the potential for free sharing of things that would otherwise cost money that has music and movie companies reaching for their lawyers.
How will the musicians be rewarded if their songs are shared freely, the music companies ask? But to counter that, music fans point to unsigned bands that have become popular precisely because their music was free.
Free downloads give people a chance to hear music that the overly commercial record companies wouldn’t have invested in – and when such bands are, eventually, signed to a record contract, many people will still buy the CDs.
It’s an argument that even the record industry must have some sympathy with, since free tracks are regularly made available on services such as iTunes. Before the advent of online music stores like iTunes, with their easy access to large back catalogues, many fans saw file sharing as a way to get copies of rare or unavailable tracks, in some cases ones that had never been made available on CD.
However, file sharing isn’t just about music. The original legal battles were fought mostly over music files, which are usually small enough to download in a few minutes. But as technology has improved, it’s become possible for much larger files, such as TV programmes or software, to be shared easily and effectively – thanks in large part to the advent of the distribution tool Bittorrent (on which more later).
If you know where to look, you can download TV shows as soon as they air in the US, or even obtain full versions of major software packages. The obvious concern for companies is that when this happens, people may not pay for a legitimate version; although, as with music, others suggest that people try before they buy.
If you rely on a piece of software for business, you’re likely to buy a real copy eventually, so you can get support. But if you can’t even try it first, will you buy it when you’re not sure if it’s suitable?
There’s another downside to file sharing besides the thorny legal issues, too, and that’s security. You’re not fetching information from a trusted source like the Microsoft website – you’re accessing it from the hard disk of a complete stranger.
The file that you think is an exciting piece of shareware could have a virus or adware embedded in it, although it is possible to scan downloaded files before opening them. Or the song you’ve been searching for could be a poor copy from a scratched album, with the last 20 seconds missing.
And you should also note that some file sharing sites provide links to pornography - and lots of it. You are unlikely to find it without specifically searching for adult terms but be warned; torrent sites are awash with hardcore videos and images.
Legitimate use
Although it might not be immediately apparent, there are plenty of legitimate ways for file sharing to be used.
For example, if you’re working with a group of people on a collaborative project, file sharing can be an easy way to ensure everyone has access to the documents they need, whether they’re spreadsheets, Word files or graphic designs.
It’s even possible to use file sharing to let friends on the other side of the world download your wedding video. It won’t necessarily be quick, but if you don’t have a DVD recorder on your computer, it’ll be cheaper than buying one. And it’s this potential for distributing information widely and cheaply that major organisations like the BBC are investigating.
As more people want to watch video online, the problems of distributing files are magnified. Even a large security update is probably under 20MB. A good-quality TV programme could be 10 times that size, and making it available online – as the BBC has said it would like to do with much of its material – would lead to massive bottlenecks and require huge servers to cope with the demand.
File sharing – and the increasing take-up of broadband – opens up the possibility of spreading the load across tens of thousands of computers, making it much easier for people to see the programmes they want. The same is true of other large files – using file sharing can be a quick and efficient way to distribute them, without the problems associated with putting a file on a single server.
To understand why organisations think file sharing can be useful – and why some others are so distrustful of it – it’s helpful to know a little more about how it works, and take a brief look at its history.
Past, present and future
There’s a very important component to peer-to-peer file sharing that people don’t always think about
: when you fetch a file from Microsoft’s website, for example, you know how to do it – you type
www.microsoft.com into the browser. But if files are spread across different computers, how on earth do you know where to look?
Peer-to-peer file-sharing systems get round that by grouping the computers that are sharing files into an ad-hoc network. To join the network, the computers have to be running special software, such as Kazaa, Limewire or Bittorrent.
When you want to access a file, the software finds out which of the currently connected computers have that file, and then your computer fetches the file directly from one of them or, in the case of Bittorrent, from several at the same time.
The first really popular file-sharing system was the original version of Napster, which allowed people to share their collections of files – usually music files – with other internet users.
When you set up Napster, your computer would send the Napster server a list of the files you had available to share. It would then build up a master index, allowing other people to search for files easily, and then connect to your computer to download things that they wanted.
But if you had a really popular file, several people would be trying to fetch it at the same time, and transfers would be slow – just like the old problem with a web server. More worryingly, the Napster index was, essentially, a list of music that was mostly copyrighted and being shared illegally.
It’s no surprise that eventually the music companies succeeded in shutting it down.
Napster was succeeded by Kazaa, and a network called Gnutella – Limewire is just the name of one of the programs compatible with the Gnutella network.
To avoid Napster’s problem, there’s no central index. Instead, when you look for a file, the request is passed from one computer to another, a bit like asking a friend who says, “No, I can’t help you, but I’ll ask my neighbour.”
Your request is passed on, and any positive answers are passed back, supplying the internet address of the computer from which the file can be downloaded.
It’s slower than Napster, and there’s still the same problem of popular files sometimes being slow to download, but there’s no central server to rely on, and no central authority for someone to contact if they want to complain about a file being shared. That’s made it much harder for organisations like the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to shut such systems down.
The big name in file sharing right now, however, is Bittorrent. It’s popular because it’s uniquely suited to downloading large files – such as video clips, or software installation packages – and does it quickly. With Bittorrent, when you start downloading a file, you don’t do it from just one other computer.
Instead, files are divided into segments, and different segments are fetched from different computers. That’s especially useful with a typical broadband connection where you can receive information faster than you can send it.
Once a piece of the file arrives on the computer that’s requested it, that piece will be shared with anyone else who needs it, so everyone is helping to spread the load around. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so interesting to companies like the BBC – the Corporation’s Interactive Media Player is designed to make recent and archive material available over the internet.
By using Bittorrent technology, that can be done without the need for servers which could cope with tens of thousands of people all wanting to download the latest EastEnders or Little Britain. Instead, everyone who takes part in a download also contributes.
There are plenty of files on Bittorrent that can be shared without breaking the law. For example, when we visited
www.bittorrent.com, pop group The Cardigans were offering the video of their latest single, and there were hundreds of free games available for download.
It’s best to start out by downloading the original Bittorrent. Don’t get a client from elsewhere – some clients try to charge money for downloads, or infect your PC with adware or viruses.
Once downloaded, follow the instructions to make a default installation of the software.
Once complete, go back to Bittorrent.com and find the file you want. Click on the green download link, and choose the ‘Open with’ option, selecting Bittorent from the drop-down menu. If you can’t find the downloaded file, select it in the Bittorrent window, click on the blue Info button, and select the Open Folder button on the right-hand side.
Reasons to be careful
Whether it’s the BBC sharing licence-fee funded material, a software company sending out test files, or just friends sharing a home movie, file sharing can be a really useful tool.
But it’s as well to remember that there are problems too. While the BBC will be using customised software and you can be fairly sure of what you’re getting, in many cases there’s nothing to stop someone sharing a file that isn’t what it says. It could be a virus instead of a music file, or a message from Madonna telling you that you shouldn’t be trying to rip off her songs.
As a rule of thumb, if the content you find on a file-sharing site is available to buy in the shops, or is currently on TV or at the cinema, it’s more than likely to be illegal to download it.
Remember that it is an offence and could result in prosecution. Although there haven’t yet been many cases in the UK, record companies will attempt to find out from internet service providers the identity of people sharing copyrighted files; and by its nature, file sharing can’t be completely anonymous.
But there are other things to watch out for, besides viruses. Earlier versions of the Kazaa software, for example, are notorious for containing adware and spyware, while some Bittorrent software may crash the computer. Before downloading any file-sharing software, check the web for advice and information, and keep adware detection software up to date.
That’s not all, either. You may find plenty of things to download, but don’t forget that many broadband accounts either have a download limit, or a fair-usage policy. Service providers can detect which users are using file-sharing software, and those are often the first ones singled out for attention.
Heavy users of file-sharing systems could find their connections blocked at peak hours to prevent them from slowing the service for others, or even disconnected completely.
While you can sometimes change the settings on a PC and router to avoid these measures, it’s not foolproof.
Most of the material linked to on file-sharing sites is illegal, and we do not recommend you break the law. But file-sharing technology has a bright future and we hope the entertainment industry fully harnesses it for legitimate use.
File sharing nasties
If you’re using file-sharing programs, it’s important to be aware of the risks.
Firstly, if sharing files from your computer, make sure that you have a folder just for files that you want other people to see, and copy them there. Don’t simply share your wholehard disk.
Make sure the anti-virus software is up to date, with on-access virus scanning enabled, so any downloaded file is checked before it is opened. Never assume that because a file looks like a music or video file that that’s what it is.
Read the information for the file-sharing program you’re using and make sure the computer’s firewall is as restrictive as possible, while still allowing the program to work.
Finally, check the options in the software,and decide how much of the connection you want to allocate to file sharing – too much, and you’ll find everyday tasks like web browsing will slow down.
The MySpace effect
Even more than the web, file sharing is a great leveller; it allows anyone to distribute their music or video clips easily and cheaply. Social networking sites like MySpace and BeBo allow unsigned bands to post their music online, where it can be discovered by fans and shared around the world. Aspiring film makers can do the same, showcasing their clips around the world.
With millions of people using sites such as MySpace, record companies and musicians see it as a key way to get sample tracks out in the public – so much so that some even employ publicity agents to give the impression of a struggling band and hype up their online presence.
Meanwhile, established performers like Billy Bragg point out that while bands may distribute their music easily online, the terms for sites like MySpace – before he persuaded them to amend them – effectively meant that the websites owned the music that unsigned bands uploaded.
File-sharing links:
Bittorrent
Bittorrent’s site provides software, films, games and more that you can access – legally
BPI
The British Phonographic Institute is the industry organisation for the UK’s record business
Brian’s Bittorrent FAQ
A useful site for information and troubleshooting Bittorrent
Gnutella
http://www.gnutella.org Home of the Gnutella network, with links to a range of software downloads
Guardian Digital Music
A guide from the Guardian to downloading music legally
Kazaa
Downloads and information from the popular Kazaa file-sharing software
Limewire
The most popular software for accessing the Gnutella file-sharing network
MPAA
The Motion Picture Association of America has its own view on file sharing
Pro-Music
http://www.pro-music.org Set up by the BPI, this site explains its version of the truth about file sharing.
http://www.itweek.co.uk/computeracti...e-file-sharing
For Sale
The Future Of The Music Market
Published By: Redshift Research
Date: September 2003
Report Code: #RR-5501
Price: $495 (USD)
The Future Of The Music Market looks at what is driving the slump in music sales. It draws on data from more than 60 countries around the world, examining a selection of markets with very different experiences of economic growth, file sharing, CD pricing and music quality. Based on this analysis, the report looks at how various factors have affected music sales in the past, and how the factors are likely to affect US music sales in the future. It examines what can be done to reverse the decline, and asks what impact the changing CD market will have on the online music sector.
The report addresses the following strategic questions:
What impact has peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing had on US CD purchases over the last three years?
What impact has economic growth, CD pricing, music quality and spending on video games had on CD sales?
Will P2P file sharing continue to grow over the next two years?
How will US music sales move over the next two years?
How will record label revenues from CDs be affected?
What can be done to maximize US music sales?
Where do online music services fit into the picture?
The Future Of The Music Market uses the following research results to address the above questions:
Analysis of music sales trends in over 60 countries around the world.
A breakdown of P2P use in over 60 countries based on data gleaned from networks Napster, Kazaa and Audiogalaxy.
Data on economic growth and music prices on a country-by-country basis.
The average quality rating given by independent music critics to over 300 albums released since 1998.
Statistical techniques to isolate and measure the effect of each variable on music sales.
Table of exhibits:
US Music Sales, 1998-2002.
The Number Of Users Logged On To The Leading P2P System From 1999 Onwards.
The Number Of Files Available Through The Leading P2P System From 1999 Onwards.
The Estimated Impact Of All Factors On US Music Sales Over The Last Three Years.
How Music Sales Compare In Strong-Growth And Weak-Growth Economies.
Music Critic Quality Ratings For Leading US Album Releases.
How Music Sales Compare In High-P2P And Low-P2P Economies.
Music Sales In Countries With Rising CD Prices Versus Sales In Countries With Falling CD Prices.
The Projected Change In US CD Sales, 2003 and 2004.
The Projected Growth Of The Fasttrack P2P Network.
Strategies And Pitfalls Of Targeting Individual P2P Users.
How UK Radio Maintains Musical Diversity.
How Online Music Services Contribute To The US Music Market.
http://www.it-director.com/research.php?code=RR-5501
Opera: The True Browser Star
My heart belongs to Opera for its compactness, speed and security
Dennis Fowler
So Internet Explorer version 7.0 is finally with us. And so is Firefox version 2.0. Whoohoo. Such excitement.
Forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but my heart belongs to Opera. Back in the '90s I switched from IE to Opera for its compactness, speed, and security. While I've occasionally tried others, I've always come back to it.
Opera version 9 was released last June. It is now up to 9.02, and 9.1 may be available by the time you read this.
A browser prodigy, when Opera debuted in 1995 it could open multiple documents in a single browser window, a precursor of what are now tabs, which it added in 2000. No prima donna, its demands are modest. It sang like Callas on my outdated system in the mid '90s, and today, requiring nothing greater than Windows 95, 32MB of RAM and a Pentium 100 processor, it continues to play the Web's full repertoire, supporting all the bells and whistles set by W3C without dropping a note in terms of speed and security.
Featur-riffic
When it comes to features, Opera has always been a trailblazer, leaving Firefox and IE to play catch-up. For example, today's Firefox 2 saves your session in the event of a crash, so you can pick up where you left off when you recover. And you can save a group of tabs as a bookmark, new in both Firefox 2 and IE7.
Guess what? Opera pioneered these features back in version 7, released in 2003. Crash or prematurely close Opera and it's no loss, just relaunch for an instant encore. You can also save your browsing sessions under the File menu on the menu bar. And in version 8, Opera added a trash can icon to the page bar where closed tabs and blocked pop-ups are saved, just in case you need them.
Opera continues to lead the way with every major upgrade. Version 9 introduced thumbnail previews, which make it easy to find your way among multiple tabs -- just hover your mouse over any tab to see a thumbnail image of the Web page. Also new is the content blocker. See something you don't like on a Web page -- an ad or an offensive image, for example? Just right-click and choose "Block content" to make it disappear. Opera remembers your choice, so the next time you visit that page the content remains blocked.
Opera 9 also incorporates Widgets, small Internet applets that run directly on your desktop and can be saved on your system for quick future access. There are games, newsfeeds, reference tools, image tools, even a text editor. Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Yahoo have similar offerings, but the beauty of Opera's Widgets is that you can run them directly from the browser without having to have a Mac or get Vista or download Yahoo's Widget Engine. As of this writing there are more than 800 Widgets to choose from on Opera's Web site, written by programmers from all over the world.
Also native to Opera 9 are BitTorrent file transfers, available from Firefox only by downloading and installing an extension. BitTorrent is a file-sharing system in which users access files from each other rather than downloading from a central server. This load-sharing vastly speeds file transfers. Find the download you want by searching BitTorrent (available on Opera's configurable list of search engines) and initiate the download with a click. But if you use it, remember, BitTorrent requires sharing files you download with others. The sharing is terminated when you close Opera. BitTorrent is enabled by default, but it can easily be configured to limit bandwidth use, or disabled completely.
Tweak to your heart's content
This brings up another of Opera's strong points: It has always been highly configurable. If there's anything you don't like, chances are you can change it, often just by dragging and dropping. There are six toolbars to choose from, configure and place where you want. You can add colors and skins to personalize your window -- or strip it back to the bare bones.
The default list of a dozen or so search engines is editable. Opera can emulate a text browser, show images and links only, show only pictures that have links. You can block image downloads, which speeds things up on a dial-up connection. You can reconfigure your keyboard or create macros to open applications from Opera. Java can be turned on or off, cookies blocked or allowed, and so on, and so on.
Admittedly, finding and applying Opera's configuration tools used to be like trying to conduct Wagner's Ring Cycle without a score. Then, in version 8, the company consolidated the configuration options into four easy-to-use submenus under Tools on the menu bar, where they can easily be found for quick tweaking.
To really get under the hood, in version 9 there's a new Preferences Editor (enter "opera:config" in the address bar). With it you can configure anything, from Author Display Mode to Colors to Fonts to Security to Widgets. Each setting gets its own line with a checkbox or pick list, and each can be easily reset to the default setting which makes it fairly safe to tinker. Nevertheless, this is a powerful tool, so novices should stick to the menus if they aren't sure what they're doing.
Safe and secure
By default, Opera's security is conservative but not restrictive. Most cookies are allowed, most pop-ups rejected, and so on, but any of these settings can be changed under the "Quick preferences" menu. Of course, since Opera doesn't support Active X controls or Visual Basic, it avoids those notorious IE vulnerabilities.
There's also the "security by obscurity" factor. With a small share of the browser market, Opera doesn't present much of a target for black hats -- and that's the way I like it. (Which means, I suppose, that by writing this I'm shooting myself in the foot, shining a spotlight on Opera. But I hate to see you missing out on a great thing.)
Opera's ultimate security feature is what I call the "nuclear option." With two mouse-clicks you can instantly close all tabs, toss your cookies, erase the history of pages linked to, links typed in and the list of downloads, clear bookmark visited times (but not the bookmarks), delete all form-filling information, and erase all stored passwords. And of course you can configure this list to suit you.
Version 9.1, due out later this year, adds anti-fraud and anti-phishing features. I have yet to see a beta of the release, but Opera's record is good on making sure things are right before releasing them to the public.
A browser for everyone
What's that? You use an operating system other than Windows? From Mac OS X to Linux to Solaris to FreeBSD and more, Opera's Opera's got you covered, and most versions are available in multiple languages besides English.
In short, Opera has an unmatched repertoire of features, including what is probably the fastest browser rendering engine available. I've only scratched the surface here, not covering mouse gesture navigation, for example, or voice activation. Some people chide Opera for having a plethora of features as if it were a dirty word, claiming all the choices confuse the user with unnecessary complexity. I suspect it's because these features are something their browser doesn't have...yet. An unused feature isn't a complexity unless it gets in the user's way, and that simply doesn't happen with Opera.
Despite all the features it packs in, the Opera 9.02 for Windows U.S. installation file is only 4.6 MB, about 18% smaller than Firefox's 5.6 MB -- and the Opera download includes an e-mail client (POP3, SMTP and IMAP), IRC chat, and Usenet and RSS newsfeed readers.
As for IE7, I'm told to expect a Wagnerian 14.7MB download. Thanks, but no thanks.
Related Links
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Download Opera 9 (Opera)
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...4194304;fpid;1
Press Release
Cloakware Now Deployed on More Than 500 Million Devices Worldwide
Best-of-Breed Security Solutions Protecting the Digital Assets of Major Corporations Throughout the World
Cloakware Inc., the world’s leading provider of products and services to protect digital assets, today announced that the world’s leading manufacturers of PCs, portable devices, mobile phones and set-top boxes have deployed the company’s self-defending security solutions on more than 500 million devices.
Cloakware Robustness Solutions secure drivers, IPTV systems, games, as well as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and other content and applications. For mobile phones, PCs and set-top boxes, manufacturers include Cloakware protection in software that is pre-installed on the device, downloaded or shipped on media for installation or use with the device.
Despite the pervasiveness of Cloakware’s industry leading security solutions, many of the Fortune 1000 companies and leading consumer electronics manufacturers that deploy the company’s technology prefer not to be named.
“For our customers, the ability to provide a robust, reliable level of security against unauthorized file sharing, hacker attacks, piracy, reverse engineering and other security risks represents a distinct competitive advantage,” said Jeff Waxman, CEO of Cloakware. “Our ability to tailor solutions to their specific needs adds flexibility that supports and enhances innovation and enables customers to develop new product lines with the confidence that they can meet or exceed DRM and other security requirements.”
Cloakware is the only company offering turnkey solutions for all major content protection standards and protocols, supported on a broad range of device platforms, to enable OEMs to meet tight release deadlines with a robust product. Cloakware also provides secure interoperability between DRM systems to support transfer of licensed digital content among different devices.
In order to carry licensed digital content, OEMs need to ensure conformance with industry Robustness and Compliance Rules – a set of security measures that must be deployed into a device to ensure that all licensed content is protected from piracy. Cloakware Robustness Solutions provide the hardened SDK and key injection tools required to quickly implement content protection that meets license requirements. As a result, device manufacturers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can work with best-of-breed content protection implementations that will withstand hacker threats and continue to generate revenue.
Broad deployment is possible because Cloakware Robustness Solutions support all standard DRM systems used by the majority of consumer devices, cell phones and systems, including PCs and set-top boxes, that play copyrighted content. These standards include:
· Windows Media DRM 10 for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD): WMDRM-PD enables secure delivery of protected content for playback on portable devices such as mobile phones and personal media players. Cloakware supports WMDRM-PD on a number of CE device platforms including Linux and Symbian operating systems on ARM and MIPS in addition to pSOS on the TriMedia chipset.
· Microsoft Windows Media DRM 10 for Network Devices (WMDRM-ND); WMDRM-NDT/NDR enables secure delivery of protected content for playback on a home entertainment network. Cloakware supports WMDRM-NDT/NDR on a number of CE device platforms including Linux on x86 chipset and pSOS on the TriMedia chipset.
· Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management (PVP-OPM)and Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP): PVP-OPM and COPP are Microsoft protocols that authenticate graphics drivers and ensure that copy protection is reliably signaled to the graphics adapter. Cloakware secures PVP-OPM for Vista and COPP for the Windows XP SP2 operating systems.
· Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol (DTCP-IP): DTCP-IP is a specification for the protection of copyrighted content transferred over a digital home network. Under this specification, digital content may be shared securely between devices in a user’s home but not shared with third-parties outside the home network. Cloakware supports DTCP-IP on Windows XP and Vista on x86 platforms, and will support numerous CE device platforms including Linux, WinCE and Symbian operating systems on ARM, MIPS and x86 chipsets by year-end 2006.
· Open Mobile Alliance Digital Rights Management(OMA DRM): OMA DRM specifies the end-to-end protocol for distributing protected content to devices. The OMA DRM security protocols are built on a PKI infrastructure and require that both the Rights Issuer and the Devices have access to private keys, certificates and trust anchors. Cloakware supports OMA DRM on a number of CE device platforms including Linux, WinCE and Symbian operating systems on ARM, MIPS and x86 chipsets. In addition, Cloakware provides a robust cryptographic OMA solution on Windows x86 platforms.
“Cloakware has both the experience and broad expertise to analyze the robustness requirements for each device and respond with a flexible product offering that targets those needs precisely and completely,” Waxman said. “Our customers’ confidence in our ability to secure DRM—and ensure both content delivery and their revenue streams—is reflected in the fact that we now support 500 million devices worldwide.”
About Cloakware
Cloakware is the world's leading provider of products and services to protect digital assets. The company’s software protection and anti-tamper solutions protect software, media, passwords and data from piracy and unauthorized access and use. Cloakware solutions are on more than 500 million devices, protecting the assets of some of the world's largest, most recognizable and technologically advanced companies. Cloakware’s patented code transformation technology takes software protection to the next-level. Unlike after-fact protection techniques of yester-year, Cloakware’s integrated software protection makes security inseparable from software. Cloakware’s reverse-engineering protection combined with break-through “white-box cryptography” delivers unmatched security. Partnering with Microsoft and in collaboration with Intel, Cloakware helps consumer electronics and Fortune 1000 companies and Federal agencies all benefit from reduced development costs, improved time to market and mitigated risks. The company is headquartered in Vienna, Va., and has offices in Ottawa, Canada and the UK, and regional sales offices throughout the US.
For further information: Cloakware Inc. Heather MacIntosh, +1-866-465-4517 x227
heather.macintosh@cloakware.com or Schwartz Communications, Inc. Avi Dines/Katherine Hunter, 781-684-0770
cloakware@schwartz-pr.com
http://www.cloakware.com/news_events...pr.php?PRID=51
School Shock at Vandal Web Video
BBC
A head teacher has spoken of his shock at seeing a video clip posted on a public website of a laughing pupil hurling a rock at a classroom window.
The shaky 15-second footage shows a clearly identifiable boy grinning as he strides up to throw the missile.
Head teacher Gordon Cunningham said it had been the Year 9 pupil's last day at Easthampstead Park School in Berkshire before he and his family emigrated.
"It's horrendous," he said. The police would be informed.
The clip, featured on a popular video-sharing website, also shows a boy and a girl dressed in school uniform who appear to have been encouraging the attack, while other voices can also be heard.
'Teacher deserved it'
Shouts can be heard of: "Everybody ready? Right come on, here we go," as the boy takes a run up towards the window.
The rock or lump of concrete that he throws smashes the glass - although the window does not break completely - and the clip ends with the group running away and laughing.
On the website, the video is accompanied by an explanation from the perpetrator saying his teacher deserved it for the way he had been treated all year.
Alerted to it by BBC News, Mr Cunningham said: "You can see from the video this is an act of wanton violence.
"It's not just the audacity of it, but to video it and then put it on a public website...."
He said it appeared to have been a parting shot at the end of the boy's last day at school, before his family moved to Canada.
'Fifteen minutes of fame'
The school said it would be in contact with the family. The other identifiable students had already been disciplined.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers' union, said: "Such behaviour is completely unacceptable and could have resulted in injury to staff and pupils as well as to the property.
"Unfortunately, any yob or vandal can now have their 15 minutes of fame, aided and abetted by readily accessible technology and irresponsible internet sites which enable such behaviour to be glorified."
She said the union supported a zero tolerance approach in schools to pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers, and called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites which gave them licence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...on/6226223.stm
Computer Addiction Worries Faculty
MUMBAI: When news of final-year BTech student Srikant Mallepallu's death began to reach IIT students, mainly through chatrooms and web portals frequented by them, many felt a sickening feeling of deja vu.
"When I saw the link to a news story 'IIT student commits suicide' in my inbox, I couldn't believe it was happening again," said a batchmate of Srikant. Despite two suicides in one year, the IIT "system" remains unchanged, feel students.
Yet again the issue of excessive computer use by students is being discussed by faculty members.
After the suicide of Vijay Nukala, a fourth-year physics student last year, whose attendance had slipped with excessive computer use, authorities at IIT acknowledged that all-night (and sometimes day) gaming, music downloading and file-sharing, chatting and blogging were disrupting life on the campus, affecting attendance, grades and even non-academic life.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/N...ow/1014974.cms
WiFi on the Highway: Avis to Offer 3G-to-802.11 Bridge
Eric Bangeman
Business travellers will soon have another option for connectivity when they are on the road. Start-up Autonet Mobile and car rental giant Avis are partnering to offer renters a device that will provide laptop users with WiFi access on the road. You can take "on the road" literally in this case, as the device is designed to create a WiFi hot spot accessible from within 100 feet of the car.
Autonet Mobile's In-Car Router is about the size of a laptop and draws power from the car's cigarette lighter outlet. The hardware itself is a bridge for a cellular provider's 3G network (Avis will likely have contracts with 3G providers around the country), acting as a WiFi gateway for those connected to it. Other 3G-WiFi bridges are already available from the likes of Linksys and Kyocera, but this appears to be the first targeted exclusively at vehicles.
Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz told the International Herald Tribune that the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, including all major US cities. Pratz claims to have minimized the problem of dropped signals with a technology similar to that used by the space shuttles to maintain an Internet connection.
In the absence of a WiFi network, laptop users can already get on the Internet at faster-than-dial-up speeds via 3G PCMCIA cards from the major cellular provides. Should you need to share that connection, it's easy enough to do so without using additional hardware via functionality built into your favorite modern OS.
Is it time to add surfing the Internet to the already-alarming list of distractions facing drivers? Actually, we're already way past that point. I've used my cell phone and laptop to check e-mail and get on IRC or even engage in some light browsing while on the road (only when someone else was behind the wheel). Autonet Mobile's solution—assuming it has indeed overcome the technical obstacles inherent in maintaining connectivity while travelling at high speeds—seems targeted at a niche market. Once Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) and 802.20 networks—which will provide broadband-class connections on the go—come online in the next few years, the shelf life for devices like the In-Car Router may prove to be relatively brief.
If the In-Car Router comes with a vanilla AC adapter for use outside of the car, it could at the very least provide an additional marketing hook for Avis as it battles for rental customers. Will it offset the increase in insurance premiums due to accidents caused by drivers distracted by YouTube?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070102-8531.html
Local news
Connecticut Motorist Nails Roo
Wallaby becomes casualty far, far from home
AP
Wallabies, the smaller cousin of a kangaroo, are native to Australia, but try telling Ellen Jagielo that.
The Marlborough woman was driving home Tuesday night when she struck and killed one along Route 66.
"I didn't know what it was," Jagielo said Wednesday. "I feel terrible. He's beautiful."
No one knows where the animal came from or why it was hopping out of a wooded area in Marlborough near Hebron.
"This is the weirdest car vs. animal call I've ever responded to," said Marlborough Resident Trooper Mark Packer.
Department of Environmental Protection officials suspect someone had been keeping it illegally and it escaped. But Jan Veilleux, of Plymouth wonders if it was her "Joey" _ a pet wallaby that escaped from her home in July 2004. She said a wayward wallaby could have easily hopped to Marlborough.
"They move fast," she said.
Veilleux, who has other wallabies and a red kangaroo, said she has an exotic animal license.
Jagielo said when she phoned her auto insurance company to report her car bumper had been damaged by a kangaroo, she was met with an awkward silence.
"Ma'am, this call is being taped," the woman from Allstate told her.
There also was disbelief from her co-workers at Manchester Memorial Hospital when she called to say she'd be late for work Wednesday morning and told them why. When she did arrive, there was a "kangaroo crossing" sign on her door, a stuffed kangaroo on her desk, and a picture of a wallaby on her screen saver.
"Nobody believes me," Jagielo said. "They wait for the punch line."
http://news.newstimes.com/news/updates.php?id=1027489
Until next week,
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js.
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