TMO Reports - Analyst 'Teen Tour' Shows iPod Dominating Music Player Market
Staff
A survey of nearly 600 teenager in eight states shows the Apple iPod and iPod mini are dominating "mindshare and market share" with those under 16 years of age, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
Of those surveyed, 16% said they currently own a iPod product. 25% said they planned on buying one by years end. Of the most wanted Christmas gift this year, an iPod ranked fourth among the teenagers behind clothes, money, and a car.
32% of the polled students were looking to buy a portable digital audio player with 12 months. Of those, 75% expected they will buy an iPod.
The survey was released Wednesday and obtained by The Mac Observer. Of the 600 polled, 40% were male and 60% female. The average household income in the regions where the survey was conducted was about US$64,000 versus the national average of $42,000.
Mr. Munster and his research team also found that illegal file sharing is still very popular among teenagers. 65% indicated they downloaded music on a regular basis. Of that number, 73% have used an illegal file sharing site such as Kazaa or Limeware.
"We believe many of these students will seek legitimate alternatives to illegal file sharing as they get older," Mr. Munster wrote. "We expect file sharing to become increasingly difficult as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and record labels use technology and the law to stem the bleeding."
Mr. Munster did not ask those surveyed which personal computer they specifically own or use, TMO has learned.
Mr. Munster continues to recommend Apple as a stock to buy with an 'Outperform' ranking.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/10/06.10.shtml
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Sony To Take On iTunes In Europe
Sony next week will launch a marketing blitz in Europe for its new Connect music download store, its latest effort to derail the runaway momentum of Apple Computer's iTunes service.
The Japanese consumer electronics giant said on Thursday it would heavily promote the Connect service in new advertisements for four Walkman products, including the recently launched NW-HD1 player.
Also, Sony said its second wave of European expansion is still on track for later this year as the battle for Europe's Web-savvy music fans intensifies.
On Wednesday, Apple said it would announce a series of European launches next month that would enable music fans in most of Western Europe to buy song downloads from iTunes.
The rivals chose to announce their expansion plans at the Popkomm music trade show in Berlin.
The event has expanded its focus in recent years from a talent-finding occasion to a more high-tech affair as the music industry seeks to find new formats such as downloads, cell phone ring tones and DVDs to substitute for falling CD sales.
Scores of combatants
But competition is fierce. Scores of companies, including Sony, Apple and retail chain Fnac, have entered Europe's fledgling download market looking to get a cut of a promising new business.
Meanwhile, the world's largest record labels, including Universal Music and EMI, are determined to see industry-backed services flourish in Europe to woo back music fans from free file-sharing networks.
Sony and Apple currently operate music download services in Britain, Germany and France. While Sony has not released any figures, industry analysts suspect it is trailing Apple's iTunes in Europe.
Sony and Apple are keeping their launch plans a closely guarded secret. However, Sony said in July that the Nordic and Benelux regions, plus Austria and Switzerland, were markets it expected to enter in the future.
Analysts say it will take a few years before download services provide a significant sales boost for music companies. One major problem is the bewildering array of competing technologies.
Peter Durr, senior marketing and sales manager for Sony Europe, said it is crucial for Sony and its rivals to reach a consensus on making various compression and antipiracy technologies interoperable, thus giving the consumer more choice.
"We all have to sell music, not formats. That's what consumers want," Durr said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5390339.html
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The whine of the robber baron
Ballmer: iPods Packed With Stolen Tunes
Andy McCue
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to a gathering of reporters here, didn't pass up the opportunity to take several digs at archrival Apple Computer.
At the heart of his criticism of Apple was DRM (digital rights management) technology, which aims to help content providers such as record labels and movie studios control their intellectual property--or at least ensure all royalties are paid and copyrights observed.
"We've had DRM (digital rights management) in Windows for years," Ballmer said. "The most common format of music on an iPod is stolen."
He added: "Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier to use."
However, Ballmer conceded it isn't going to be an easy battle to win. "Most people still steal music," he said. "We can build the technology, but there are still ways for people to steal music."
The Microsoft chief also claimed some domestic familiarity with the issue.
"My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it," he joked.
http://news.com.com/Ballmer+iPods+pa...3-5395870.html
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GB
Net Song-Swappers Face New Anti-Piracy Push
Bernhard Warner
A new round of lawsuits aimed at prolific Internet song-swappers could be announced as early as Thursday as music officials meet in London to discuss the next step in their global war on Internet piracy.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and British Phonographic Industry scheduled a news conference in the city for Thursday to announce "further measures in the fight against Internet piracy." IFPI and BPI officials declined on Wednesday to say whether that meant new legal action.
To date, more than 3,000 people have been sued in the United States, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada and there has been speculation that more Internet file-sharers will be sued.
Music industry officials in Britain and France, the world's third and fourth largest music markets, have said they will join the legal fight if music fans continue to download free songs from Internet file-sharing networks and share them with others.
Music sales have been showing some sign of recovery, but the piracy-battered industry is still keen to use legal threats to limit usage of popular file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey to stifle a rampant online trade in free music.
BPI officials had said they would not sue in Britain until paid download services such as Apple Computer's iTunes and Napster had established themselves and campaigns to make consumers aware of the law had been run.
"Lawsuits would not surprise me at all. The BPI has been saying for a long time they would do this. They just haven't said when. I would suspect the BPI would feel that by now anyone sharing songs online should know better," said Struan Robertson, a Glasgow-based technology lawyer for law firm Masons.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6431520
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Trojan Pretends To Do Good
Dan Ilett
Security company Symantec is warning Internet users of a Trojan horse that removes adware but alters the settings in computers.
While Downloader.Lunii eliminates a variety of adware programs--often known as spyware--the Trojan also tries to maliciously change the security settings of Windows PCs and then downloads files from unknown Web sites, Symantec said.
"It's common that a Trojan will try to change as much security as possible," said Nigel Beighton, Symantec's director of enterprise strategy. "They often try to change Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee software."
Symantec classified Lunii as a low-risk Trojan.
Trojan horses are often referred to as spyware because of their ability to stealthily run in the background of a computer without being detected. Antispam organization Spamhaus recently warned that spyware has taken control of tens of thousands of networked computers. Spammers and hackers then use these "zombies" to launch denial-of-service and spam attacks, the company said.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to criminalize the act of altering PC configurations, taking control and downloading software onto a PC without the owner's consent.
Symantec has recommended users to switch off any unnecessary services--Windows functions such as printer and file sharing--and to keep security patches up to date.
http://news.com.com/Trojan+pretends+...3-5400982.html
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eDonkey’s still a dream
Making XP a Welcome Guest on Mac
Leander Kahney
I just acquired a brand new Windows XP Pro computer. It's not the fastest machine on the block, but it cost $250. Plus, it has a dual-monitor Power Mac G5 attached.
My new PC is Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. Launched Tuesday, Version 7 of the PC emulator lets Mac users run Windows software or connect to PC- only peripherals or networks.
After testing it for several days, I'm very impressed. Virtual PC is fast and stable. It is remarkably full-featured and works pretty seamlessly. Microsoft is often knocked by Mac users, but Virtual PC proves the company can turn out very good software for the Mac. (Microsoft acquired Virtual PC from Connectix in 2003. Version 7 is the second update of the software from Microsoft).
I installed Virtual PC on two test machines: an eMac (1 GHz, 640 MB of RAM) and a Power Mac G5 (1.6 GHz, 1.25 GB of RAM), both running Panther (Mac OS 10.3.5).
Microsoft says Version 7 was "significantly rewritten" for the G5 processor, and is trumpeting significantly improved performance, claiming 10 percent to 30 percent speed gains on previous versions.
On the eMac, VPC was perfectly useable -- for short periods of time. For many tasks, the interface is pretty snappy, but it still suffers from sporadic lags and delays, which makes it maddening to use for anything but specific tasks. Admittedly, the eMac isn't loaded with RAM, which would likely improve performance.
But on the G5, VPC's performance is perfectly acceptable. OK, it's slower than a typical XP- capable PC, but in general, VPC is responsive enough not to drive you bonkers.
I spent a couple of pleasant evenings tooling around on the web, watching videos, playing music and downloading Windows-only P2P software. Though a little jittery at times, VPC didn't make me purple with rage, as I'd come to expect from previous versions.
Installation was effortless, trouble-free and surprisingly quick: about 20 minutes. I didn't time it, but it seemed quicker than installing Windows on a real PC. Setup was certainly much easier than configuring a bona fide PC. VPC automatically detects things like network settings and printers, so there are no setup wizards to slog through. Launch Internet Explorer, and VPC automatically whisks you onto the internet.
Downloading the latest security patches from Microsoft was a breeze, and luckily VPC wasn't attacked before they were installed (this version of XP includes SP2). Even though OS X is generally well-protected, Windows XP on VPC is by no means immune from viruses, Trojans, spyware and other nasties. Unfortunately, antivirus software must be purchased separately.
Here at Wired News, there's a Windows PC under my desk that's used for only one task -- a simple procedure in our online publishing system that works only with Internet Explorer on Windows. Happily, it also works fine with IE on VPC.
I also watched MTV's machinima Videos Mods. You can't watch them in Safari, but again, they work just fine in VPC -- if the videos are run in the foreground. The video gets jerky if other apps or windows are launched.
Likewise, music playback in VPC is fine in the foreground but jittery anywhere else. The G5, on the other hand, happily plays music in the background, and even rips CDs, while running VPC and several other apps.
There are plenty of nice touches. VPC supports Windows keyboard shortcuts, dragging and dropping files from OS X, and cut, paste and copy. VPC puts a nifty Start menu in OS X's dock that allows apps to be launched right from the desktop, just like the Start menu in Windows. Also, applications running in VPC have their own dock icons, making it easy to see what software is running on the host and hosted machine.
Startup isn't super fast: about 65 seconds to the login screen, and three- and-a-half minutes to get fully up and running. Shutdown is quicker. VPC has a "fast save" feature that shuts down XP and VPC in one go. There are no "Save document?" dialog boxes, and the system is restored to the same state on relaunch.
As a test, I downloaded several of the most popular applications from Download.com. Not everything worked. The file-sharing eDonkey application wouldn't launch (no idea why) and a scrolling shooter game said it was "unable to create 3-D environment."
VPC's graphics support OS X's OpenGL, but there's no native support for 3-D graphics hardware, much to the disappointment of the forums. And attempts to connect to Wired News' VPN failed.
But in general, VPC Version 7 is a very worthy upgrade, good for Mac users who need a PC for occasional tasks. And it likely runs like a champ on Apple Computer's latest dual-processor hardware.
VPC requires a G3, G4 or G5 processor running at 700 MHz or better; 512 MB of RAB; 3 GB of hard drive space; and Mac OS 10.2.8. and up. By itself, VPC costs $130. Bundled with Windows XP Professional, it sells for $250; with XP Home Edition it costs $220. An upgrade to Version 7 will set you back $100.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125...w=wn_tophead_7
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Deaf To Reason
The recording industry keeps playing bad cop instead of embracing change
David S. Bernstein
MAYBE THE RIAA doesn't mind the PR fallout of dragging 12-year-old girls into court for listening to Nelly, but the Justice Department has shown little inclination for that kind of grief.
IT’S BEEN A YEAR since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) brought lawsuits against 261 people, many here in Massachusetts, for sharing music files over the Internet without permission from the copyright holder. (See "Sue You, Sue Me Blues," News and Features, September 26, 2003.) Since then, the buzz about the recording industry’s war against music- swapping services, such as the phenomenally popular Kazaa, has died. Online distributors — and Wall Street — are much more interested in the new, legally approved services debuting almost weekly: iTunes, VirginDigital, Rhapsody. Do customers prefer a streamed "jukebox" or straight downloading? Would they rather pay per song, or through a monthly subscription?
The only ones still interested in the legal battle, it seems, are the recording companies themselves, who are letting these new online opportunities slip through their fingers as they remain obsessed with file-sharing miscreants and their enablers. In fact, those companies, through the RIAA, have actually stepped up their assault. "It is absolutely hotter than ever in the legal world," says Mark Fischer, an intellectual-property attorney with the Boston office of law firm Fish & Richardson. Last Thursday, the trade group filed 762 additional lawsuits against members of the general populace, bringing the total of such actions to about 5400.
But they really want the big fish: the companies that make and distribute the peer-to-peer (P2P) software. So, earlier this year they sued the maker of Grokster, a program that enables P2P users to download music files from any other computer that uses the same software. Joe in Milwaukee can copy the latest Jill Scott single from Jane in Phoenix, with no copyright police checking permission slips. The RIAA argued in the Grokster case that the software’s manufacturer should be held accountable for the lawlessness it fosters. On August 19, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said no.
The infuriated association is now trying to overturn the ruling through legislation, which it’s desperately trying to move through Congress before it recesses at the end of this week. The RIAA is also backing several other pieces of legislation, including one that would curtail the advertisements that provide the P2P networks’ revenue. "Their approach has been to attack the customers, the companies, and the revenue streams," says Sam Yagan, CEO of MetaMachine, which operates the eDonkey P2P service. "If they had spent all that money and effort [on] making a deal with [P2P networks], I think they could have co-opted the whole system by now."
Instead, however, the recording companies seem hell-bent on squashing the cheaters and oblivious to the emergence of potentially profitable distribution models. Apple’s year-old iTunes, which sells two million individual song downloads a week — with copyright permission — for 99 cents a pop, has demonstrated that many, many people will pay for a convenient, well-organized, legal, pay-per-download service. Wal-Mart, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Sony, America Online, eBay, and Buy.com have followed Apple’s lead. Others, including Virgin and telecommunications provider RCN, are testing monthly subscription services. Indeed, the RIAA estimates that the total number of legal, paid music downloads rose from 19 million in the second half of 2003 to 54 million in the first half of 2004. Add to that "streaming" services that offer radio-like listening access without permanent downloading.
In other words, there are lots of ways to try to squeeze pennies out of music lovers, and lots of serious companies are already trying to do so. (Even more want in on the action: Yahoo, Viacom, and others are expected to enter the market soon.) "This all validates how much music means to people," Fischer says. The recording industry, which owns the product everybody is so eager to get, seems to be the group with the least idea of how to take advantage of it.
INSTEAD, THE industry has stepped up efforts to attack music-lovers in court. Actually, it is now suing "John Does" who own IP addresses with large stashes of shared music files, since the courts ruled last December that Internet-service providers don’t have to cough up the names behind those IP numbers. The effect is the same; the RIAA eventually unearths users’ identities, and forces them to settle — usually for around $5000 each — to avoid potentially huge penalties. "You’ve got an industry where you view every customer like they are coming into your store planning to rob you," Fischer says.
However, since the odds of any individual being hit by one of those lawsuits remain negligible, this litigation orgy has done little to deter inveterate file-sharers. (On the other hand, RIAA spokesperson Jonathan Lamy is probably correct in suggesting that without the lawsuits, illegal file-swapping would be even more rampant.) Illegal downloads still dwarf legal ones, a status quo that threatens to prevent the growth of the paying market, since none of the legal music- distribution services is reliably profitable yet.
You’d think the recording industry would be working to make them profitable. Think back to the fledgling music-video days of the early 1980s: record labels not only made the videos, they offered up their stars for interviews and promotions, and set up deals for exclusive rights or early access to hot videos. The industry is just beginning to do the same for digital distribution companies, instead of treating them like part of an assault on its precious, fading compact-disc sales. Sites such as iTunes now tout exclusive tracks and pre-release access to singles, along with all manner of artist promotion, such as Tom Petty’s playlist suggestions.
The industry could boost the legitimate services by opening up its catalogue beyond the roughly 700,000 titles it makes available to them now. Consider that eDonkey has about 100 million unique titles available at any given time, according to Yagan. But the best way the labels could help these legitimate sites gain traction, and lure users away from the Kazaas and Groksters, is with a sizable copyright-payment discount. Currently, about 65 to 70 cents from each song download go to the copyright holder, usually a record company. That sets a floor for how low prices among music-download services can go; at present, rates fall between 79 and 99 cents a song. A dramatic discount from the recording companies would allow those prices to drop, and could make a huge impact on the business. When RealNetworks offered a half-price promotion last month, it sold five times its usual weekly number of songs. Of course, 25-cent song downloads would make downloading an album considerably cheaper than buying the $16 CD, so the industry isn’t ready to make that plunge.
But the labels are missing the fact that store-bought CDs, while probably retaining a place in the consumer’s world, cannot provide what today’s users want: total portability of their music. If users can connect electronically to every song or album they have ever paid for, wherever they may roam, well, the CD just can’t match that. "Culturally, people in the recording business are still slow in recognizing the change that is happening," says Fischer.
And the industry’s blind hatred of P2P has it dragging its feet on another opportunity: the illegal services themselves. Companies such as Sharman Networks, which produces Kazaa, aren’t hackers seeking the thrill of thumbing their nose at Sony; they have a viable business model, driven primarily through advertising. The record companies could be getting a piece of that action. MetaMachine’s Yagan admits that he has been waiting — practically begging — to make a deal with the record companies. "There is no reason the music industry can’t make money through peer-to-peer distribution and through direct purchase," he says. Yagan has had discussions with "senior people," but no deal to date.
IT’S PROBABLY no coincidence that those discussions began after the Grokster decision in August, which left the recording industry scrambling for solid ground. Just as makers of videocassette recorders are not liable for the use of those products to record illegally, Grokster and other P2P software companies are off the hook for users’ behavior.
The RIAA issued a terse two-paragraph press release after the decision, calling on P2P companies to step up to their "responsibility as corporate citizens to address the rampant illegal use of their networks." Sure they will — right after VCR makers do, or the makers of TiVo and other digital recording devices, for that matter.
The RIAA is considering appealing to the Supreme Court, Lamy says. But first it’s trying to get Congress to undo the decision via the pending Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act, or Induce Act for short. Sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee chairs Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), this bill would make it illegal to "lure consumers into breaking the law," as the RIAA says, by distributing P2P software.
The bill was originally introduced back in June, but gained urgency after the Grokster ruling. Unfortunately for its proponents, the Induce Act has run into trouble. The bill’s initial wording brought a panicked response from technology-industry groups, who feared that it would unintentionally outlaw recording devices as varied as iPods and TiVo.
Hatch and Leahy issued a new draft in late September. But the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington, DC, quickly released a letter warning that the bill would potentially affect makers of iTunes, instant-messaging systems, and e-mail software, among others. Groups as varied as the civil-liberties-minded Electronic Frontier Foundation and the conservative Heritage Foundation have joined forces to oppose the act. "The parties are still talking and working on it," says Tracy Schmaler, Leahy’s press secretary.
The Induce Act is not the only legislation the RIAA wants to push through before the congressional hiatus. The Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act, which seeks to make the use of camcorders in movie theaters a federal offense, also includes provisions outlawing the distribution of pre-release materials, specifically over P2P networks. Versions of the bill passed the Senate in June and the House last week. But there is no time for a formal conference committee to iron out the differences between the two, according to Don Stewart, spokesman for Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), a co-sponsor of the bill. Cornyn and others are trying to work something out quickly in private meetings.
Similarly endangered is another Hatch-Leahy bill, the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act. This one would give the Justice Department authority to bring civil cases against copyright infringers. Currently, Attorney General John Ashcroft can bring only criminal cases, which he has been loath to do. Maybe the RIAA doesn’t mind the PR fallout of dragging 12-year-old girls into court for listening to Nelly, but the Justice Department has shown little inclination for that kind of grief. Legislation is moving forward at the state level too; California just put restrictions on file-swapping into law, and others are working on similar bills. Whether they will have any practical effect remains to be seen.
That’s been true of all the recording industry’s flailing actions since it first recognized a threat from P2P networks. As Fischer points out, investors aren’t betting heavily on the industry’s top players to win this war. That might change if the RIAA starts spending more time on developing the future rather than fighting it.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/...s/04176012.asp
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Filters, FUD, and Democracy
Shackling the innocent may not discover the guilty
Richard Chirgwin
Those who want to see the Internet filtered, regardless of incidental consequences like the closure of lots of small ISPs, are gaining ground in the wake of the series of arrests around Australia this week.
It's damned hard to argue against the proposition that “something must be done”, because the spectre of child pornography and exploitation is too ghastly to ignore.
But it's also too damned easy to fall into what Yes Prime Minister called “the politician's syllogism”:
(a) Something must be done;
(b) This is something;
(c) Therefore we must do this.
Now. Let's ignore for a moment the fate of the smaller ISPs – and by the way ignore the disproportionate impact this would have outside the big cities, in places where one or two local ISPs provide the only competition to Telstra – and focus instead on the proposition that filtering is the necessary, inevitable, and best way to approach the problem.
Filtering and Democracy
The first concern I have is that it's always hard to defend abstract rights in the face of specific threats. But the way current proposals for filtering are constructed – by, for example, the Australia First party and the Australia Institute – filtering would represent a genuine threat to democracy both immediately and in the future.
The immediate threat is simple: filters are not open to genuine scrutiny. Nearly all of them are created outside of Australia, and many are known to exhibit the political bias of their authors in their behaviour.
Even if this were not so, it's impossible to verify a filter's behaviour without access to its blacklist – and those blacklist are proprietary secrets held by companies which are mostly domiciled in other countries. We cannot know whether “filter X” is blocking legitimate information, except by anecdote.
I don't have to state a position on censorship in general to point out that this is contrary to Australia's censorship practise. For films, console games and books, the content subject to censorship is known to the public; if Lord of the Rings is given an M rating, citizens can find out why that happened and make an informed decision about whether a 13-year-old is fit to see the movie.
But censorship in secret is not democratic.
In the longer term, filtering poses an even greater danger to democracy: it creates a mechanism subject to abuse by a hostile government or agency – or even a corrupt individual with access to the technology.
That's because the presence of a filter in the path creates a point at which the filter's operator can capture information about users attempting to reach blocked sites. This is, in the corporate market, given as a selling point by filter vendors: you don't just know that you've blocked inappropriate content, you can identify which users are trying to misuse the company's Internet connection.
Whether this is right or wrong on the business desktop is still hotly debated (my view is that the company pays for the connection, and as long as it makes its rules known, it has the right to impose rules on how the connection is used). But as a regime imposed on roughly half the population of a country, it's unequivocally wrong.
What the Australia Institute and Family First are advocating is a machinery whose abuse would reach far beyond suppressing the trade in child pornography. Should a government wish to know who is interested in asylum-seeker issues, for example, all it needs to do is put the relevant Websites into the blocklist, and get the filters to capture user data on the way through.
It's a very dangerous mechanism, and like many of the instruments of spying, once created it's hard to dismantle.
Family First might be too unschooled to understand this, but the Australia Institute has been around longer, and reads (and conducts) enough research to be moderately clued.
Effectiveness
Before I address the effectiveness of filtering, I have to take a side-glance at the Family First party's assertion that national filtering would only cost $45 million.
I'd love to know which vendor sales rep ran that calculation through the spreadsheet, so I could challenge every assumption point-by-point. Yardsticks for such things are few, but if we look at the $100 million or so BigPond had to spend just upgrading its mail system, it's hard to credit that a greenfields implementation of a complex and demanding technology would be had so cheaply. I suspect the party's information is garnered from price lists rather than TCO studies...
The Australia Institute certainly reads enough of the research for Michael Flood to offer us this gem in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:
"The review of the Broadcasting Services Act in May by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts found a national system of blocking access to blacklists of websites and web addresses was feasible, and would not slow computer response times.”
(The “feasibility” stated in this report was sorely qualified. The very first statement the report makes about filtering, in the Executive Summary on page 3, is this: “technologies have not developed to the point where they can feasibly filter R-rated content hosted overseas that is not subject to a restricted access system.” The report also states that "Complex analysis filtering technologies are not practical in a national proxy filtering system.”)
However, the feasibility of filtering isn't the big issue. What's really at issue is its effectiveness – and here is where filtering on a national scale falls down. The sites we're talking about – sites posted by people who already know they're comitting a criminal act – are extremely mobile. A blacklist filter catches the site's identity in a snapshot; the site relocates itself; the filters have to catch up; and the cycle starts again.
Filters would make it harder for consumers of illegal content to find the location, and that's a good thing. But the greatest evil is on the supply side – the so-called “rings” of paedophiles who abuse the children, take the pictures, and host the Websites. Their access to their market is inhibited by filtering – but their more active crimes, committed against individual children, occur before the Website is hosted.
And, as even Flood admitted in his column, Website filters don't work on peer-to-peer networks.
The P2P Problem
I fear that Flood is already behind the times – as are all arguments about Web filtering. According to a study by P2P technology provider CacheLogic, P2P traffic has already overtaken Web traffic on the Internet.
Now, a study created by a company with an interest in a particular result, with results yet to be replicated as far as I know, can't be given absolute credence. But even if the numbers are inaccurate, the premise is sound: P2P traffic is already a very significant proportion of overall Internet traffic.
The next theatre in the war against content crimes is in the P2P networks – and here, the simplistic answer of “filter the content” is nearly impossible to pursue.
Filtering is superficially attractive. But before we call on policy-makers to pursue it, someone needs to set down the principles under which filtering is acceptible in a democratic society. It has to use open blacklists, so that the political discrimination already observed in other countries doesn't pollute Australia's access to information; it has to be anonymous, using filters which themselves don't capture user information (this must be considered part of a separate regime, with user information only captured under an appropriate court order); and it should be funded not by ISPs but by the government – because there isn't a good reason to bankrupt the honest so as to capture the evil.
And the regime has to recognise that filtering already fights yesterday's battle. Tomorrow's battle, against paedophiles on P2P darknets, is a much more difficult challenge.
http://www1.commsworld.com.au/NASApp...NT&from=h ome
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Software Speeds File-Sharing Service
Dawn C. Chmielewski
Napster founder Shawn Fanning's little dorm-room project at Northeastern University in Boston is the stuff of technological legend.
Meet another pair of dorm-room tinkerers from across the Charles River at Harvard who have improved on Fanning's original approach to Internet file-sharing.
Like many a college freshman, Ben Wilken was acquainted with Napster and its progeny. What intrigued him most -- aside from getting free music -- was solving what he considered the technology's main shortcoming: the inability to search the entire network for a rare file.
Wilken's work attracted the interest of classmate Francis Crick, grandson of the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Together, these two recent graduates have created Neonet. The technology powers the new version StreamCast's Morpheus file-sharing service that will be unveiled today at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.
Neonet technology speeds the search process by distributing the information needed to locate a specific file. As a new file is added, the unique computer code associated with it is indexed. Clusters of computers keep an index of a range of files.
This broadens the scope of the search because multiple computers spread across the network are keeping track of files.
``It was kind of an idea whose time had come,'' said Wilken, noting that students at MIT were exploring similar ways of organizing online content. ``But we did it our own way. We developed it for file-sharing. We applied it to search terms.''
Wilken struck out on his own, working day jobs and rising $100,000 from family and friends to support the development of Neonet. Crick, still a student, slept in the basement of Wilken's Cambridge home and worked for free.
Ultimately, Wilken sold his company, Skyris Networks, to Stirling Bridge in August 2003. It now licenses the technology to Morpheus.
Enhanced search tends to speed downloads as well because it locates more sources to contribute to the download of an individual file. In one test, Crick found 827 sources of a single Mozart composition on Morpheus.
That's different from Napster's approach, in which a central computer kept a list of every file on the network and operated like an old-fashioned telephone operator, connecting those searching for a particular file with someone else distributing it.
And Neonet also is a departure from the FastTrack network that powers Kazaa and Grokster. FastTrack assigns the search task to individual computers on the network. This approach tends to confine searches, at least initially, to small clusters of computers. It only broadens the search if the file can't be found.
StreamCast is touting the new, improved version of the Morpheus software in ads on college campuses.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...9848049.htm?1c
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Sony's Home Server Stores 1 Terabyte
Michael Kanellos
A terabyte of storage sounds like something a missile base may need, but Sony has started selling a consumer device with that much room.
The Vaio Type X, which is available only in Japan, is a home server that contains four 250GB hard drives: two for PC files and two others for audiovisual materials such as stored TV programs and music. The machine, which costs about $5,000, also comes with seven TV tuners and a special interface that lets consumers see thumbnails of what they record.
Sony released the device at CEATEC, a large tech show taking place here this week.
The unusual configuration results from the vagaries of Japanese television. The country has seven network stations, and cable is not as common as in the United States. With Type X, people can record shows from all seven stations automatically and then delete what they don't want to watch.
The 500GB dedicated to TV is enough to record six channels for five-and-a- half days nonstop, a Sony representative said. The interface helps consumers sift through the morass. It lets customers look at thumbnails of all the programs recorded during the same time slot or search for a program by name. It also groups shows by categories--sports or children's programming, for example--selected by the owner.
A hard partition exists between the PC drives and the audiovisual drives; however, owners can manually slip a file from one side to the other.
Sony does not have plans to bring the device to the United States.
In related news, Sony released a new version of its all-in-one W computer. The new model has speakers jutting out from the sides, so it operates as a home stereo when not functioning as a PC. It is being released in Japan, and Sony will study whether conditions are right to bring another all-in-one PC to the United States.
http://news.com.com/Sonys+home+serve...3-5397103.html
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Copyright and the Mouse: How Disney's Mickey Mouse Changed the World
Jack Kapica
Digital Journal — It all started with the Mouse.
A few years ago, the Walt Disney Company noticed that its star, Mickey Mouse, was aging. At the turn of the century, he would be almost 75 — venerable for a mouse, and more so for one in the entertainment field. And that meant the little black rodent would end up in corporate hell.
Corporate hell, in Disney’s case, was the public domain. Once in it, Mickey would belong to the world, and no longer be obliged to toil solely in Disney’s vineyards.
Mickey was born in 1928, when he made his debut in a three-minute cartoon called Plane Crazy. It was one of the first works by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, who founded their animation studio in a Hollywood garage in 1923. The manic mouse proved so popular that they brought him back in Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon.
Walt Disney died in 1966, survived by the mouse that helped him earn 30 Academy Awards and amass a fortune with a string of subsequent hits such as Bambi, Fantasia, Pinocchio and Dumbo.
But Disney’s death also ushered in a long creative drought for the House of Mouse, which was kept afloat largely by recycling its old hits, released regularly for each new generation. Michael Eisner, when he took over as president in 1984, rebuilt the animation studios and made a series of new acclaimed films according to a tight annual schedule and strict rules that became known as “the Disney formula.”
Eisner’s approach proved to be much more corporate than Walt’s. His strategy was to continue marketing the old movies while making new movies for both children and adults (Touchstone Pictures), along with strategic corporate takeovers such as the purchase of the TV network Capital Cities/ ABC in 1995.
It’s worthwhile indulging in Disney’s corporate nostalgia, because it has a direct bearing on technology. What Disney did next to protect Mickey Mouse is now echoing throughout the high-tech industry.
Eisner knew that the old Disney films were still the company’s prime source of revenue, even with the success of such post-Walt films as The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. He also wanted to keep the old movies from slipping out of the company’s possession, especially after he had purchased ABC, which would serve as a broadcast platform for his products.
The Lion King, for instance, followed Eisner’s belief that a single film was not merely a potential box-office money-maker but an industry unto itself, capable of being spun off into a Broadway musical and licensed to play in other cities; it would also merchandise soundtrack albums and T-shirts. It could, in short, be elevated into a recognizable brand, to be applied to a variety of products with a market life much longer than a single hit film. It was just a logical extension of the practice of strategically re-releasing the old hits every so many years.
To protect his marketing model, Eisner looked carefully at the European Union, where the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1996 extended copyright protection from the author’s life, plus 50 years to life, plus 70. He and other Hollywood moguls worked on the premise that such copyright protection could also be applicable to popular culture, and lobbied Washington to extend the U.S. life-plus-50 limit by 20 years to cover movies and music.
To accomplish this, Eisner and his Hollywood colleagues took a two-pronged attack. First, they drafted Sonny Bono, a junior Congressman whose career as a pop singer had plummeted after he and his wife Cher divorced. Bono drafted a bill proposing the 20-year extension and the House of Representatives, in a fit of distracted lawmaking (this was during the national hysteria over the Monica Lewinsky scandal), rushed its passage by a voice vote in 1998.
The second prong was to revamp the Copyright Act and toughen a piece of legislation that would halt the trade in digitized copyright material.
The same distracted Congress, under siege by an opposition mired in moral outrage, passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which essentially gave copyright holders a mighty hammer to smite those who ignored copyright laws. The DMCA, as it came to be known, was officially created to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Copyright Treaty of 1996. But it was a much more draconian piece of legislation than the WIPO called for, essentially allowing copyright holders to bypass the courts in getting warrants to charge violators.
Obsessed by Lewinsky’s dalliance with President Bill Clinton, few people looked at either bill very carefully. Critics who did called it “the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act” or the “Copyright Theft Act,” noting that its primary purpose was to protect Hollywood’s profits and not necessarily its creative products.
And those profits aren’t puny. As a single example, Disney found itself the target of a surprise takeover bid by cable giant Comcast Corp., which in February, 2004, offered $49 billion (US) for Disney, later increasing it to $67 billion (US). The bid was abandoned in April, but it did serve to show just how much property Eisner was protecting.
The impact of the two acts of Congress was that corporate interests could hang on to all sorts of creations that could be protected by copyright for nearly a century. For instance, no works copyrighted in the U.S. would enter the public domain until Jan. 1, 2019, when all works created in 1923 would become eligible. By then, of course, the studios — and the recording industry, which followed on Hollywood’s heels — would have figured out how to combat the new threats to their classic marketing models: digital technology and the Internet.
Though Congress was convinced that by passing the two copyright bills it was protecting works of artistic merit and lasting cultural richness, other industries were beginning to realize that these lavishly pro-business laws could also be used to protect stuff that was on neither film nor paper, such as computer code, component design and architecture and a host of other intellectual properties.
Serendipitously, in 1998 (the same year the copyright laws were passed) a U.S. court ruled, in a precedent-setting case, that business processes could also be considered intellectual property — and therefore could be patented. Patent registrations ballooned over the next few years, especially during the dot-com boom, when companies were creating entirely new models of doing business every day, and sought to protect their e-commerce inventions.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a group representing some of the largest makers of enterprise-grade software, used the precedent to step up a global campaign to stop the trade in software piracy. Its Canadian branch, the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST), reports how many millions of dollars the Canadian economy loses to piracy each year. It also noisily trumpets the results of its major lawsuits, all of which have so far ended with out-of-court settlements.
With the tightened laws regarding copyright on one hand, and the expansion of the definitions of patents and trademarks on the other, the road had been paved for a whole new approach to business. Tech manufacturers, especially, began to wrap ideas into a patent or a copyright so they could improve their profit margins without having to actually produce any new product. Instead, they could license it to other manufacturers or hand it over to their legal departments, which would then drag offenders into court. It helps that people charged with copyright infringement are usually competitors.
This has created an atmosphere where corporations ask patent attorneys to approve all sorts of questionable things — a recent patent-infringement suit was launched against online retail giant Amazon.com for using one-click purchasing and virtual shopping carts. Those techniques were created by a software maker called Open Market, and the patent on them was loudly criticized when it was granted. Open Market was bought in 2001 by Divine Inc., a seller of enterprise services, which subsequently went bankrupt. Divine’s assets were sold in 2003 by an investment firm called Saratoga Partners, which then sold the Open Market intellectual property to Soverain Software, an e-commerce company. It is Soverain Software that is now taking Amazon.com to court over the “shopping cart” patent.
More similar suits are inevitable, says one patent lawyer, because between 40 and 50 per cent of new patents are frivolous or unnecessary. The owners probably sought the patent just to profit through licensing or litigation.
So it was without extreme dismay that we heard U.S. businessman Donald Trump musing that he would like to claim the intellectual-property (IP) rights to the cliché “You’re fired!” — a line he delivers to the losing candidates in The Apprentice.
This situation has not arisen spontaneously. Efforts to awaken companies to their IP rights have been made by a number of groups, among them the Licence Executives Association, a worldwide organization with 5,500 members in North America whose purpose is to promote understanding and use of intellectual property as a revenue stream and as protection against copycat competition.
This non-profit organization, which gathered recently for its annual meeting at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, is a low-key group, most of them lawyers and accountants. Their day jobs are to get products and processes patented, license them and prosecute people who violate their rights. They’ve been around since 1966, but only since 1998 have they really begun to find themselves closer to the core of the businesses for which they work.
These are the people who, when they find publications printing words such as Kleenex or Plexiglas without capital letters, thus making them generic, send sharp letters to the publication demanding apologies. Protecting patents, trademarks and copyrights must be done vigilantly, they say, because the first thing courts look for in a case of infringement is whether IP owners have ever protected their product, signifying that they care about their property. “You have to be aggressive,” one LES executive said. “Use it or lose it.”
Among the crusaders is Peter Ott, a Toronto accountant whose company, Peter Ott and Associates, specializes in price tags to put a value on any given work or process or item, so that companies can set a price when licensing their wares (or when estimating the damages if someone else has used them illegally).
As far as Ott is concerned, his business is a quiet one in which his greatest challenge is to persuade his corporate clients to exploit their products in new ways. And given Canadian law, which is not as aggressive as the U.S.’s, he’s right. But his counterparts south of the border live in a more litigious society, and their boisterous corporate strategies are now as much influenced by their legal departments as by executives in marketing and sales. The classic example of this is the music recording industry, whose immediate response to the arrival of peer-to-peer file-sharing of music was not to change its marketing or sales strategy, but rather to drag offenders to court, even college kids or pre-teens downloading “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”
This is especially true of the high-tech industries. Most of them are terrified of rapacious behaviour like Microsoft’s strategy of “embrace and extend,” which to them means to absorb the creative work of competitors. But it has also become true of other fields in which patents and copyrights are central.
“Congress intended the DMCA to target criminals who pick digital locks to engage in mass piracy,” said Gwen Hinze, a lawyer representing the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog organization in the U.S. that has been highlighting problems posed by the DMCA. “Yet, in practice, the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions have stifled the legitimate activities of scientists, scholars, business competitors, journalists, publishers, consumers and the general public.”
The EFF has been sounding the alarm about misuse of the DMCA ever since it was passed. An organization dedicated to guarding the free-speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution, it maintains a document called “Unintended Consequences” that lists lawsuits specifically involving new technologies that are peculiar examples of cases derived from the law. The EFF acknowledges that the “anti-circumvention” aspects of the DMCA were designed to stop copyright pirates from defeating protections built into copyrighted works. But in practice, the EFF says, the consequences are radically different from their intended spirit. Some examples:
In 2000, a multi-industry group called the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) told a team of computer researchers from Princeton and Rice universities and Xerox Corp. that they would be sued under the DMCA if they delivered a certain paper at a conference. The paper outlined how the team had taken up a challenge by SDMI and cracked its digital watermarking technology in audio files. The SDMI, stung by the team’s success, threatened the suit if the winning team published the report on how they had done it.
Similarly, Microsoft invoked the DMCA against the Web-geek forum
Slashdot, which had published charges from people who believed Microsoft had made changes to a user-authorization security standard known as Kerberos. Kerberos is an open-source system, meaning it is not protected by copyright. But Microsoft argued that its implementation of Kerberos wasn’t covered by the General Public Licence.
In 2002, a college student wrote a small software program that allowed him to embed TrueType fonts in documents. He released the program as open source and used it himself on a series of open- source fonts. But Agfa Monotype Corp., a type foundry, threatened to sue him under the DMCA saying that his program, which converts numerous fonts at once so they can be embedded in documents, could be used to convert proprietary fonts made by Agfa as well.
The EFF’s Unintended Consequences document keeps getting updated; it’s currently in its third edition. Next, it may include a recent threat of a suit launched by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) against ClearPlay, creator of a technology that allows DVD players to skip over violence, swearing, nudity and other objectionable content in movies.
The DGA is arguing that ClearPlay is altering copyrighted works without permission. “ClearPlay software edits movies to conform to ClearPlay’s vision of a movie, instead of letting audiences see and judge for themselves what writers wrote, what actors said and what directors envisioned,” the DGA said in a statement. “Ultimately, it is a violation of law and just wrong to profit from selling software that changes the intent of movies you didn’t create and don’t own.”
Last October, SunnComm, maker of a CD copy-protection technology called MediaMax CD3, threatened to sue Alex Halderman, a Princeton student who wrote a review of the system in which he revealed how the copy-protection technology could be circumvented. Halderman revealed that you simply had to hold down the Shift key while loading a CD. That act would temporarily disable the Autorun feature used by the copy-protection technology.
SunnComm claimed Halderman had violated the DMCA because he had reported the name of the driver installed by MediaMax CD3 and, once identified, it could easily be removed from the computer. SunnComm concluded in a statement that Halderman and Princeton University had “significantly damaged SunnComm’s reputation and caused the market value of SunnComm to drop by more than $10 million.”
SunnComm suddenly found itself in the centre of a firestorm of protest on the Internet, most of it accusing the company of releasing a shoddy product, and defending Halderman for pointing out its weaknesses. SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs dropped the suit abruptly, but was unrepentant in his citation of the DMCA. “This cat- and-mouse game that hackers and others like to play with owners of digital property is over,” he huffed.
Another case involves recording giant EMI Group Plc, one of the world’s largest music companies, which sued California-based Electronic Arts Inc. for using copyrighted music in some of the video game maker’s sports titles, including Madden NFL 2004, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and MVP Baseball 2004. The case is interesting because, in 2003, EA had entered negotiations with EMI for the rights to certain songs, but then released the games before the rights had been granted. Though EA tried to continue negotiating for the rights, EMI chose to go the legal route instead and launched a lawsuit for tens of millions of dollars in damages — a sum far greater than whatever EMI would have received from the song right sales.
Utah-based SCO Group, owner of copyrights on the Unix operating system, has launched a series of lawsuits against operating system rival Linux, claiming some of the Unix code had found its way into Linux. The suit against IBM Corp. alone is for $5 billion (US).
The SCO case is nightmarish in its complexity and perhaps the most dramatic example of using the DMCA to profit from a troubled product. With the future of the $19-billion Unix market cloudy, SCO’s suits appear to be designed to allow the company to relax and simply collect licence fees from Linux users.
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Much of the problem in all these cases is the rhetoric surrounding them. While copyright and patents are designed to protect artists and creators, the clout built into acts such as the DMCA is increasingly being used by corporations as a bludgeon against competitors. The companies that are most directly affected still cling to the language of artists in defending themselves.
So now movie studios roll a short film before the previews in theatres in which a stuntman explains how his work is threatened by online pirates who trade movies without paying. Meanwhile, record companies trot out pop stars like Madonna to support their position on file-swapping.
The key word used by all who invoke copyright infringement is “theft,” which places the DMCA at the heart of a moral argument involving the right of individuals to benefit from their labours. But “theft” is invoked even when a suit has little to do with an individual creator. Technology is often created by a corporate entity, which owns all its employees’ labour, and when it sells the technology, it sells all the rights to it — including rights to license it. So when industries get involved in copyright disputes, it almost never has anything to do with individual creators, who are cited as the people who are supposed to benefit from the updated laws in the first place.
Copyright is such a useful tool for large companies, says one noted copyright lawyer, because copyrights have always been about monopoly. Creators of works that can be covered by copyrights or patents would love to enjoy the fruits of their labours for as long as they can, and not have to worry about letting their works slip through their fingers like fine sand. But, individuals are less interested in dealing with subsidiary rights, derivative rights, licensing rights and all the marketing done by corporate entities like Disney, which has developed a terrific vault of proprietary material of enduring popularity no matter how old it gets.
Stiffening the copyright laws to favour corporate ownership has created serious contradictions such as this. Western society has a long history of borrowing ideas, and if the borrowing is done on a small scale, we just accept it as part of the way things are done.
But when laws become so tight that suits are easy to file, the language in defence of the suits becomes increasingly moralistic in an effort to deflect attention away from the possibility that they may be little more than a venal desire to cripple the competition.
Worse, the rhetoric has become even more hysterical, linking copyright infringement to terrorism.
In the spring of 2004, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966, was sitting in a U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, describing the horrors of a world in which the Internet allows flagrant disregard for private property. He was quoting from an article written by Sgt. 1st Class Eric Hortin for the Army News Service in which the sergeant explained that peer-to-peer file-swapping technology was a threat to national security.
“Internet piracy is going to grow malignantly over the years,” he said. “The U.S. Army believes [file traders] constitute a threat to national security.”
How not paying for a movie constitutes a security threat remains a mystery, but the damage was done. In legislators’ minds, peer-to-peer file-sharing, when violating copyright, is almost synonymous with terrorism and could perhaps even be regarded as traitorous.
In the meantime, down the hall, another U.S. Senate committee had just passed a broad anti-piracy package, which would (among other things) make the use of camcorders in movie theatres a federal crime.
As a result of such extreme language, the Electronic Frontier Foundation started a campaign in April to persuade Washington to revoke patents the EFF considers harmful to innovation and free expression. The EFF took the action after the release in October of a report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which recognized that courts are being tied up in legal action over questionable lawsuits. The FTC recommended finding a better way to challenge a patent’s validity without going to court.
The EFF is not the only voice trying to recapture the genie of corporate greed that has escaped from the bottle. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, has recently published a book called Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. To demonstrate his commitment, Lessig released the book for free on the Internet, as Ann Godoff, publisher of Penguin Books (which released the paper-based version) smiled nervously in approval.
In the book, Lessig argues for a more liberal public domain, with voluntary licences that would allow creators to choose whether to release work freely or to allow their works to be altered. He believes that excessively long copyright protection, and the aggressive tactics of media conglomerates, have upset a traditional balance between intellectual creativity and property.
Penguin said in April that the results of Lessig’s experiment were successful. After one month on the book shelves, sales had reached 2,600, a respectable showing. But Lessig said the virtual book was a much greater success. After one month, downloads from two of his websites amounted to more than 66,000 copies, and 100,000 had been downloaded from Amazon.com.
He doesn’t want to eliminate copyright, Lessig told a Reuters reporter, just “eliminate the middleman.”
Lessig believes that, ultimately, the current tight copyright laws will actually kill commercial ventures, not make them more profitable. “What so many examples around the world demonstrate,” he says, “is that free content actually helps push commercial content.”
Maybe it’s time to tell that to Mickey Mouse.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4031
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Got Juice? Not for Long, You Don't
In the escalating arms race between battery power and consumption, The Cells are losing to The Gadgets—Big time. Question is, can the chemists catch up to the engineers?
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/general...702771,00.html
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Microsoft To Tune Up Media Center PC
Ina Fried
With the next generation of Media Center PCs, you'll be able to have your TV and record it too.
For the first time, Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition is supporting multiple tuners, meaning that consumers will be able to watch one channel while recording another or record two stations at once, CNET News.com has learned. The feature is one of several improvements Microsoft has made with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, an update that the company plans to announce next week.
At the same time, Microsoft is also allowing computer makers to create Media Center PCs that lack the TV recording feature altogether, a move that will allow computer makers to offer PCs with the operating system for less than $800. It's all part of an effort by Microsoft to position Media Center as a more mainstream consumer OS.
Without an all-new version of Windows until Longhorn in 2006, Microsoft is hoping that an improved Media Center OS can help reignite interest in the 3-year-old Windows XP operating system. The launch of the updated Media Center, along with several new companion products, will form a key part of Microsoft's fall marketing blitz designed to sell consumers on the benefits of XP.
The entertainment-oriented Media Center OS is similar to other flavors of Microsoft's flagship Windows XP, but adds a second interface that can play movies, music, digital pictures or television and be controlled via remote control. In its first two incarnations, Media Center has attracted only a niche of the PC market, largely those interested in recording TV shows onto their hard drives.
Microsoft has thus far been largely mum about the new version of Media Center OS, though details have begun to trickle out. As previously reported, the new version has several new features designed to address current shortcomings, such as the ability to burn CDs and DVDs from within the remote-controlled interface.
Sources tell CNET News.com that the product will also include the ability to exchange MSN-compatible instant messages while doing other things, such as watching television or viewing a photo slideshow. The instant messages appear as an overlay to the TV or other main image.
Media Center Edition 2005 will offer limited support for high-definition television, but only the type of high-definition signal received through an antenna--not high-definition satellite or cable. Microsoft declined to comment on the new version of Media Center or its features.
Much of the focus with the new version, which is code-named Symphony, has been on improving the audio and video quality, with the goal being to rival consumer electronics devices such as DVD players and digital video recorders that cost far less and have outshined the Media Center in quality. With this version, sources say, they believe Microsoft has at least caught up to TiVo. The program guide has also been improved, including the ability to browse upcoming movies using "cover art" images.
New products for the Media Center family
Microsoft has also announced plans for two products that will complement the new OS. One is a handheld device known as a Portable Media Center that will allow content from a Media Center PC to be taken on the go. The other is a type of set-top box known as a Media Center Extender, which allows consumers to view content in one room that is stored on a Media Center PC in another room.
The company is expected to use next week's "Experience More" event in Los Angeles to tout other digital home efforts, including several moves designed to make it easier to move content around the home while still offering digital rights management. For example, Microsoft has been developing technology, code-named Janus, that paves the way for a new class of portable music devices capable of playing music that is rented on a subscription basis rather than purchased. And, in addition to Media Center extenders, which work only with Media Center PCs, Microsoft has a broader Windows Media Connect effort designed to let many different living-room products grab video, music and photos that are stored on a Windows XP computer.
Some details have come from the companies making Media Center products. Two tuner manufacturers, Hauppauge and Vixs have announced dual-tuner products that are designed specifically to work with Media Center 2005.
Computer makers are also starting to tip their hand. Sony, for example, posted several new models to its SonyStyle Web site. Best Buy has also started listing at least one of the new Sony models.
The machines are part of Sony's existing "R" series of Vaio Desktops. In addition to sporting the new OS, the machines add faster processors and larger hard drives as well as the option to automatically create a backup of data using RAID. For now, Sony's machines stick to offering a single TV tuner.
Hewlett-Packard has announced its Digital Entertainment Center, a Media Center device that is designed to look more like a consumer electronics device than a PC and is also expected to offer dual tuners, among other features. HP has yet to announce pricing or when the device will be available, though. The company is also expected to have more traditional Media Center PCs and is expected to offer an upgrade program for existing Media Center PCs, but details are not yet available.
Dell, Gateway and Toshiba are among the other big-name computer makers expected to offer machines with the new operating system, sources said.
As for the Media Center extenders, HP has announced plans to offer such a device and online retailer Buy.com has started taking orders for a similar product from Linksys. Creative and Samsung recently started selling the first Portable Media Centers.
All of the Microsoft devices find themselves competing, at least to some degree, with non-Microsoft alternatives. In the portable category, RCA and Archos offer competing portable video players that do not interface directly with Media Center. There are also other companies that offer features similar to Media Center both for Linux and Windows-based machines.
Intel showed off many such designs at its recent developer forum, though it is unclear how many big-name PC makers will choose to offer entertainment-oriented PCs that are not Microsoft-based. Instead, the challenge may come more from consumer electronics makers.
Devices that could both burn DVDs and record TV shows were once rare but are increasingly more common. Cable and satellite operators are also starting to ship digital video recorders in larger numbers, again potentially challenging Microsoft's Media Center ambitions.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+tun...3-5398217.html
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Local DC++ File-Sharing Hub To Be Shut Down
Service Allowed Students to Trade Rapidly; DC++ Web site Blames Spectator Editorial for Shutdown
Kathy Gilsinan
Columbia's private DC++ hub, a local file-sharing network used by hundreds of students to rapidly swap music, movies, and other files, will shut down tonight at midnight, its proprietor said.
The student administering the service, who declined to be named because he is concerned about his legal liability, said that he received a "cease and desist" letter from University lawyers over the weekend, and decided to pull the plug.
Other DC++ hubs, such as the popular "i2hub" that claims to link more than 250 campuses, should remain unaffected, as will LimeWire, BitTorrent, and numerous other public networks.
Unlike peer-to-peer file-sharing devices like KaZaA, which require commodity or commercial Internet access and thus use up network bandwidth, Columbia's DC++ hub includes only other members of the Columbia community. That makes it immune to external upload/download quotas instituted two weeks ago by AcIS, the office that administers the University computer network.
The student operating the Columbia hub blamed a staff editorial in the Sept. 28 Spectator for prompting the University to issue him the letter.
The editorial, commenting on the new download quotas, advocated "mature piracy" of the kind that does not involve using external networks, in order to limit exposure to viruses and spyware. The editorial described the quotas as "not, realistically, all that limiting" and speculated that they represented a tacit acknowledgement by the University that file-sharing is now a given on college campuses. It supplied an Internet address where students could learn about Columbia DC++.
As of early this morning, the Columbia hub's greeting message read in part: "you may thank the Columbia Spectator for printing the article that shut this down."
In an interview, the student operating the web site said he assumed that administrators had not known details of the service before the editorial was published, and was acting to protect its legal liability. "The RIAA does read school newspapers, and they do investigate incidents like this," he said, referring to the music industry group that has sued consumers for trading songs online.
AcIS, however, has been aware of DC++ for some time; a "GetSafe!" page dated August 2004 listed it first in a list of programs that present virus risks.
Phone calls to AcIS administrators' offices made after 5 p.m. were not answered yesterday.
In a letter to the editor following the publication of the editorial, Assistant Director of AcIS Walter Bourne cautioned that "the Recording Industry Association of America and other organizations representing copyright owners may well find ways to monitor such intra-University use and take action against individual students."
"I think it's completely unfortunate if Spec hastened the demise of the thing," said Nick Summers, Spectator's editor-in-chief, who said he uses DC++ all the time. "In retrospect, maybe putting the web address in the staff edit was a mistake."
But, he said, "If you're trying to keep something under the radar, having a dot com address [in the first place] is not the way to do it." He added, "The idea that [AcIS] wouldn't know about this is basically just absurd," he said.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com.
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Internet Grants to Schools Halted as the F.C.C. Tightens the Rules
Stephen LaBaton
Public libraries and schools around the nation have suddenly stopped receiving any new grants from a federal program that is wrestling with new rules on how it spends $2.25 billion each year to provide high-speed Internet and telephone service.
The moratorium at what is known as the E-Rate program began two months ago, with no notice, and may last for months, causing significant hardships at schools and libraries, say state officials and executives at the company that runs the program.
The suspension came after the Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the White House, imposed tighter spending rules that commission officials say will make it easier to detect fraud and waste in the program.
As much as $1 billion in grants the states say they expected to receive by the end of the year may be affected, one official estimate says. That has led state administrators to either take money from other educational programs or postpone paying their phone and Internet companies.
"We are fearful that they could shut down our service," said Curt Wolfe, chief information officer for North Dakota. The federal program contributes more than 60 percent of the money, or about $1.7 million a year, that pays for Internet services and to link video services for the state's 100,000 students, he said.
"If this isn't resolved this month, we're going to be in very serious trouble," he said. "We don't have extra funds to get us through this, and this is a major issue for every state."
Robert Boucher, who works for the Wisconsin education agency that arranges for the financing of the state's schools and libraries, said the state had not received commitments for about $22 million, or about two-thirds of the amount necessary for Internet and telephone services for the state's 426 school districts and 387 public libraries.
The tighter spending rules also forced the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit group that runs the program under the commission's oversight, to hastily liquidate more than $3 billion in investments last week. The sale generated a loss, but officials said they had not yet calculated the amount.
And the changes are expected to lead to higher charge imposed on telephone companies - and passed on to consumers - later this year or early next year. The increase may be necessary, senior officials at the universal service company said, because of a cash squeeze created by the tighter spending rules and an F.C.C. decision over the last nine months to reduce the phone companies' contributions to the E-rate program.
Although commission officials said they had made the decisions leading the moratorium in close consultation with the White House Office of Management and Budget, administration officials sought on Friday to distance themselves from the F.C.C.'s moves and said that the budget office had never issued a formal legal opinion on the appropriateness of some of the changes. Commission officials say the changes were crucial for better monitoring of the program.
"The E-Rate program is vital for America, but we must insist that it complies strictly with the highest government accounting and auditing standards," Michael K. Powell, chairman of the commission, said. "Any delays are temporary while we place the program on sounder footing. We are committed to ensuring these funds flow responsibly to America's classrooms and libraries as soon as possible."
The E-Rate program was created by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a way to finance telephone and Internet services for the states. The program expanded an earlier universal service program to include public schools and libraries and the Internet, giving money both for equipment and for service.
Derided by its opponents as the "Gore Tax" because it was advanced by Vice President Al Gore, the program has occasionally been attacked in Congress by some Republicans. In recent interviews, administration and commission officials denied that the changes were intended to hinder the program. But some officials have said that in tightening the rules, the government may have made unintentional mistakes.
The changes have created significant tension between the F.C.C. and the Universal Service Administrative Company. Executives say they have felt whip-sawed by the commission. For instance, the executives say, top officials in Mr. Powell's office approved in July a set of investment guidelines for the more than $3 billion held by the company. Two months later, the commission ordered the immediate liquidation of those investments to comply with the new budget restrictions.
Senator Olympia J. Snow, the Maine Republican who co-sponsored the provision that led to the creation of the program in 1996, expressed concern that the moratorium could jeopardize its longer-term prospects.
"This has the potential to imperil the program by leaving it in a state of such uncertainty," she said in an interview. "It raises questions about why these decisions were made."
She and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, sent a letter on Friday to Mr. Powel, seeking an explanation.
The Universal Service Administrative Company was set up to provide money to the states for phone and Internet services in four areas - schools and libraries; rural health care; remote or underserved areas that are more expensive for phone carriers to service; and low-income customers.
Officials say the spending restrictions have been applied only to the schools and libraries and to relatively small rural health care programs.
The Clinton administration decided to list the money held in the universal service accounts on the federal budget, which had the effect of reducing the deficit by billions of dollars. But after considerable debate, former officials recalled, the Clinton administration decided not to apply a series of restrictions that are imposed on money considered part of the public Treasury. As late as April 2000, William E. Kennard, the chairman of the F.C.C. at the time, issued an opinion that the fund should be maintained outside the Treasury, and by implication, not be subject to the rules that are now being applied to it.
Some lawmakers have recently criticized the E-Rate program as laden with fraud and waste, and the F.C.C. has given it more scrutiny. Last October, the F.C.C. in consultation with the White House budget office ordered the company to begin applying generally accepted accounting principles for federal agencies by Oct. 1, 2004.
But officials said it was only last summer when they began to realize that the change would have consequences that would sharply limit the program's ability to spend and manage its money. The problems have been made worse, some officials said, by the decision of the F.C.C. over the last nine months to reduce the level of contributions made to the library and school program by telephone companies by $550 million.
"There was a lot of pressure to keep the contribution factor down until the election passes, after which it will then have to rise again," said Anne L. Bryant, a member of the board of the universal services company and executive director of the National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members in 15,000 school districts.
F.C.C. officials say they reduced the contribution level because it appeared that the universal service company had been holding more than $3 billion, and they were concerned that it would be criticized for sitting on so much idle cash.
"It was the right decision to draw down, based on what we knew at the time," said Jeffrey Carlisle, chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau at the F.C.C. "But under what we know now, I'm not sure we would have made the same decision." He and other commission officials denied that this was a move to keep the rates down until after the election.
In recent weeks, officials from the company have had discussions with the F.C.C. and the budget office. Interviews with officials and correspondences between the parties reflect deep frustration between them.
In a Sept. 16 letter to Mr. Powell, Frank Gumper, the chairman of the Universal Service Administrative Company, predicted that the changes in the accounting and spending rules could delay "meaningful cash outlays" into 2006 and could delay more than $1 billion in financing commitments that would be ready to be sent by the end of the year. He also predicted that "a significant increase in the contribution factor in future quarters is likely."
The immediate cause of the crisis is the application of a federal budget law, the Anti-Deficiency Act, to the E-Rate program. The company had issued financial commitment letters to the states for amounts whose total exceeded the company's budget, because the schools and libraries as a whole spend less than 80 percent of the money they requested, company officials said. But F.C.C. officials say the Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits the company from making commitments greater than its cash on hand.
The Anti-Deficiency Act created a second problem. With the F.C.C.'s permission, the company had placed more than $3 billion in bonds and bond mutual funds to earn annual interest of more than $25 million. But under the act, those investments count as part of the company's total spending and offset the amount available for the states.
On Sept. 27, the F.C.C. instructed the company to "liquidate any such investments by Sept. 30." A few weeks earlier, Mr. Gumper said he expected that liquidation, which has been completed, would result in "an immediate loss" of $2 million and the forgoing of at least $25 million to $30 million in annual interest income.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/bu.../04fcc.html?hp
Internet Grants Cut, and F.C.C. Scolded
Stephen LaBaton
The Federal Communications Commission came under sharp criticism in Congress on Tuesday over a series of decisions that have led to the suspension of a $2.25 billion program that pays for telephone and Internet services at public schools and libraries.
The suspension, which began without notice two months ago, has caused hardships in many school districts and communities, which have had to postpone paying bills or take money from other projects. By one estimate, as much as $1 billion in expected grants could be suspended by the end of the year.
The company that administers the program issued a suspension on new grants as it wrestled with new accounting standards and tighter spending limits imposed on it by the F.C.C.
A hearing Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Committee had originally been called to examine waste at the so-called E-Rate program, which administers telephone and Internet services for schools and libraries. But three of the four senators present focused instead on the F.C.C.'s decision to impose tighter spending restrictions.
The fourth senator, John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the committee, pressed the witnesses about what steps were being undertaken to monitor the program in light of a series of fraud cases involving telephone companies and equipment makers over the last few years. He expressed irritation that Congress had not been notified about the suspension of the program.
Frank Gumper, the chairman of the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit organization that oversees the E-Rate program, told lawmakers that the F.C.C.'s decision last week to order a quick sale of more than $3 billion of the program's investments had resulted in a loss of almost $5 million.
Guidelines for making those investments had been approved in July by top officials in the office of Michael K. Powell, chairman of the F.C.C. But the investments had to be liquidated after the commission later concluded that they impinged on the company's ability to make payouts to schools and libraries.
Commission officials, who declined a request by the senators to appear at the hearing, have said that spending changes were necessary to audit and monitor the program more effectively. The officials have said they imposed the new restrictions in consultation with the White House budget office. But late last week, administration officials began distancing themselves from the changes, noting that the budget office has never issued a formal opinion on the matter.
At Tuesday's hearing, lawmakers and an executive of Universal Service said that many of the most significant changes would not make it easier to perform audits or root out fraud and waste.
That acknowledgment prompted concern from the lawmakers.
"It's really difficult to understand why these changes were made,'' said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican who helped draft the legislation that created the E- Rate program in 1996.
Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, also criticized the tighter regulations, which have led to a cash squeeze at the program, and the recent quick sale of the program's investments.
"I fail to see how these series of events have led to a more efficient management of the funds,'' he said.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, criticized the F.C.C.'s decision to reduce the contribution level by telephone companies and their customers by $550 million this year, only to find that the E-Rate program, under the new rules, is likely to suffer from a cash squeeze and may need to increase tariffs later to pay schools and libraries.
He and Ms. Snowe also criticized the commission's decision not to send any officials to the committee who could explain the decision to tighten the spending rules.
"I'm very disappointed that the F.C.C. declined to testify,'' Mr. Rockefeller said. "I do not think this is accidental.''
Mark Wigfield, a spokesman at the F.C.C., said that officials had been unable to attend because the hearing had only recently been scheduled for Tuesday and the officials had scheduling obligations that could not be changed. He said that top commission officials "are committed to working with the committee in the future.''
In a letter to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, Mr. Powell reiterated his view that the accounting and spending changes were necessary to both combat fraud and comply with a federal law that restricts spending. He said that some of the problems could be resolved if Congress were to adopt a provision that exempted the program from that law.
"I would welcome an opportunity to work with your staff to craft such legislation,'' Mr. Powell said.
But Ms. Snowe said after the hearing that there were too few days left in the Congressional session to adopt any new measures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/technology/06net.html
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Mark Cuban Prompts Dot-Com Redux
Stefanie Olsen
Hope and cynicism sparred to a draw on Tuesday at the glitzy opening banquet of the Web 2.0 conference here, as serial entrepreneur and reality TV show host Mark Cuban took the stage to talk about what's next for the 10-year-old Internet revolution.
Even before Cuban stepped onstage, some tech junket veterans seemed ready to be unimpressed. "It's like these people haven't seen each other for three years, and now they're back in the same room together," jabbed Chris Nolan, a former gossip columnist for the San Jose Mercury News who now runs political site ChrisNolan.com.
Cuban is indisputably a tech star and arguably one of the more deserving headliners at Web 2.0, whose roster included such what-have-you-done-for-me-lately veterans as Joe Krause, Brewster Kahle and Marc Andreessen, as well as genuine powerbrokers like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and venture capitalist guru John Doerr.
But Cuban's larger-than-life persona--played out on his ABC's reality series "The Benefactor" and on his blog--also seemed to draw a squeamish response from the crowd as a reminder of the hype of the dot-com heyday. After all, this was billed as a coming-out party for the new Web, and the Internet executives and venture capitalists in attendance would much rather forget the excesses of the old--or admit that they might live on.
The audience didn't seem to buy everything Cuban was selling. Even with his foot in one of the more promising technology developments--Web logs--Cuban was heckled by an audience member as being pompous about it: "Uhhhh...He's got a blog!"
Cuban responded by laughing and pointing to his more memorable public appearances in the sports world as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "I've never been heckled at a conference before," Cuban said.
To be sure, conference organizers seemed aware of the possibility of a looming hype machine. One panel early Wednesday featured stock analysts mulling the thesis: Is it a bubble yet?
Apropos of a night of vice presidential debates, much of Tuesday evening at the Nikko Hotel was political, whether it was tech executives and venture capitalists rubbing elbows in their renewed faith in the Internet economy or just espousing their campaign views.
John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google board member, pushed clean energy and stem-cell research--a dividing line between the Democratic and Republican platforms--during his evening conversation.
Cuban rocked the house (or the table of Electronic Frontier Foundation staffers) with his sentiments against the Induce Act, proposed legislation that is designed to make software developers accountable for copyright theft perpetrated with their technology.
"If you're at this conference, your livelihood is at risk if the Induce Act passes," Cuban said to a round of applause.
He added: "Orrin Hatch (the senator behind the legislation) wouldn't know a computer if it hit him."
Cuban picked up and ran with the ball on one of the conference's hot topics: Web search. On his investment in Mamma.com--a "meta" search engine that few people heard of before its stock surged on the Internet-search hype--he said once it entered into "pipe level" financing, he had to get out.
Icerocket, a more recent investment, he said was "really just my toy." Like on his TV reality show, he bet on the young founders because he simply liked them--and because search is ubiquitous.
On Google vs. Yahoo, Cuban said he liked both companies, but he especially approved of their competitiveness as "great theater."
That could be said of Cuban, too.
http://news.com.com/Mark+Cuban+promp...3-5400029.html
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ILN News Letter
Consortium Forms To Address DRM Incompatibilities
Several large electronics and media companies are collaborating to head off conflicts in digital rights management technologies. Members include Sony, HP, Philips, Matsushita, Samsung, InterTrust, 20th Century Fox, and Coral. The groups plans to develop DRM specifications.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...134651,00.html
Court Rules Against OSS Programmers In DMCA Decision
A federal court in St. Louis has ruled that open source software programmers who created the BnetD game server, which interoperates with the commercial Blizzard Games, violated the DMCA and Blizzard's end user license agreement. Blizzard successfully argued that the programmers violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and the license agreement's section on reverse-engineering. Decision at
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/doc...netd_30sep.pdf
Court Awards Damages To Students For Diebold DMCA Misuse
A federal court judge in California has ruled that e-voting company Diebold Election Systems misused the DMCA and has ordered it to pay damages and fees. The judge found that the company knowingly misrepresented that students had infringed the company's copyright and ordered the company to pay damages and fees to two students and a nonprofit internet service provider, Online Policy Group. Decision at
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/diebold.pdf
China Will Approve 'Healthy' Online Games
China has set up an official body to promote "healthy" online computer games for young people to play in its popular Internet cafes. The Professional Commission of Online Games will launch a national club for game-players and build a server of suitable games.
http://chinagames.notlong.com/
Malaysia To Issue Smart ID Card As National ID Card
Malaysia has announced plans to issue a new smart ID card that will serve as a national ID card. The card will combine the national ID, drivers license, immigration and health care records, as well as the ability to pay for transportation (through an e-purse) and utilize banking services.
<http://malaysiaidcard.notlong.com/>
California Congressman Calls For National ID Card
California David Dreier has proposed a new bill that would prohibit employers from hiring people unless the job applicants first obtain new federal ID cards with their photograph, Social Security number and an "encrypted electronic strip" with additional information. Any employer who fails to comply faces fines and prison terms of up to five years.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5395386.html
Frustrated U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Resigns
Amit Yoran, the U.S. government's cybersecurity chief, has abruptly resigned from the Homeland Security Department amid a concerted campaign by the technology industry and some lawmakers to persuade the Bush administration to give him more authority and money for protection programs. Yoran has privately confided to industry colleagues his frustrations in recent months over what he considers the department's lack of attention paid to computer security issues.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9811404.htm
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Annoy.com Webmaster Says War Art Censored
Paul Festa
An online free-speech activist is finding that even on the Internet, freedom of the press is for those who own one.
As Webmaster of Annoy.com, Clinton Fein once successfully challenged the federal government's online obscenity restrictions. In his new incarnation as a political artist, Fein now claims he's being muzzled by an online print shop that refused to print two of his works.
"From a constitutional standpoint there's not an issue, but from a corporate censorship standpoint it's an enormous issue," Fein said the day before his art opening at San Francisco's Toomey Tourell gallery. "It's not the role of printers to define the content of an artist."
Zazzle.com, a Palo Alto, Calif., online printing service, on Monday declined to release two of 10 prints Fein submitted last week. The prints in question criticize the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military.
The company made its decision after determining the prints violated the site's user agreement on the grounds of being both offensive to religious believers--in this case Christians--and excessively violent.
"The reason our QA staff decided to prevent distribution is that we have very clear guidelines, and we don't want to produce images of torture," said Zazzle vice president of business development Matt Wilsey. "We don't have a problem with political messages, but even if (the picture from Abu Graib) is iconic, it does represent humans torturing each other."
One of the images in question pictures an American flag whose stripes are replaced with the text of a U.S. military report on the abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib, and whose stars are replaced by the image of a hooded prisoner standing on a small box and holding up wires.
Another shows a crucified President Bush and asks, "Who would Jesus torture?"
Wilsey said the company had refused to print other controversial images, including those of Jews in German concentration camps and the Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps. He said Zazzle "occasionally" took heat for those decisions from clients like Fein.
Zazzle, incorporated in 1999 but not launched until last year, is one of a handful of online print shops tapping a market of artists, political candidates and activists, merchants and ordinary consumers who want the convenience of on-demand printing services and the potential to set up individual online stores hawking printed products.
Fein said he is still weighing his options with respect to Wednesday's exhibition opening and is considering legal action against Zazzle on breach-of-contract grounds.
While Zazzle's name is not attached to Fein's prints, the company said it is working to build its brand as a "family Web site." The company is a Disney licensee and maintains a ratings system to cordon off certain kinds of content displayed and sold on its site.
"We wish Clinton the best of luck and support his right to express his message," Wilsey said. "We just don't want to produce it."
http://news.com.com/Annoy.com+Webmas...3-5399766.html
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Western Australian Internet Body Slams Censorship Policy
Abby Dinham
The Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA) has slammed the Internet censorship policy created by the Family First Party in the wake of Australia's biggest ever child porn bust.
The group said it "shares the public's outrage" over the child pornography racket but it is "concerned that the actions of a small minority could be used as a justification for unwarranted restrictions on the rights of ordinary Internet users to access material freely online".
The Family First Party policy statement said it will "work to achieve government commitment to establish a mandatory filtering scheme at the ISP server level in this country", adding that "in the best interest of children the government must take a more proactive role".
The Party estimates that "set up costs" for the initiative will cost around AU$45 million. However, it adds that "some or all of the costs could be passed on to Internet users".
Yet, WAIA describes the policy as "poorly thought out and unworkable".
Media officer for WAIA, Jeremy Malcolm, said "Internet content filters at ISP level are expensive and ultimately, the user can get around them." He adds that he is "appalled" at the Party's admission that the initiative may have adverse effects on smaller ISPs.
"This policy would certainly put a dent in the pockets of ISPs and send some smaller ISPs under. It would also slow down Internet access," he told ZDNet Australia today.
The Family First policy document states that while the levy to fund the scheme would cost around AU$7 per user annually, the charge may put "cost pressures on smaller ISPs". Yet the document states that "there is arguably too many of these [ISPs] at the moment and adequate competition could be maintained with 30 ISPs rather than the hundreds in existence now".
Malcolm said "if the same reasoning was used in respect of farmers, there would be national outrage".
"WAIA supports the commercial operations of smaller ISPs. We believe it is vital for the marketplace to be composed of both large and small ISPs to fulfil the full range of the community's needs for Internet services," he said.
According to Malcolm, "parents should address this problem at their own end".
However, the Family First Party quotes the Australia Institute as stating "reliance on education and end use supervision and filtering take up fails to protect vulnerable children in dysfunctional households where there is neglect". It adds that lack of parental education on the issue has also not been taken into account when considering child protection.
"The present system of education and the promotion of end user filtering has clearly failed," it stated.
Malcolm responds that it is not the government's responsibility to fulfil parental obligations to child Internet users and that "dysfunctional parenting is a social issue that should be tackled at a community level".
"What's the difference between parents allowing their children to access pornography over the Internet or through access to their adult magazines or videos?" he said. Malcolm also points to the "well-funded" NetAlert parental education programs as response to concerns over supervision.
The Family First Party said according to a news poll conducted by the Australia Institute, 93 percent of parents of teenage children support an "automatic filtering of internet pornography going into homes".
Yet, Malcolm maintains that ISPs are already doing their part.
"ISPs already cooperate with law enforcement authorities in combating child pornography and other crimes under Australian law. They have no interest in allowing paedophiles and similar criminals to operate using their network," he said.
Malcolm said there is little "immediate danger" of this scheme being adopted by the new government, however he adds "there is some public feeling out there along these lines, but we need to make sure both sides of the coin are recognised".
"NetAlert and the crime fighting forces we have already are doing a fair job of combating this problem, but because it’s a global resource its never going to be 100 percent fixed," he said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9161776,00.htm
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University Releases New Technology To Enable Academic File Sharing
University Park, Pa. -- As the use of information technology expands in higher education, many faculty increasingly maintain collections of digital media that they use to inspire their students in the classroom. Some collections consist of a few hundred images, but some number in the thousands. Many of the repositories include digital images, but others might contain audio, video and scientific simulations as well. Regardless of the size of the collection or the type of media stored, the purpose is pretty much the same -- to create an environment where students want to learn.
"Digital media is being used more frequently in universities to enhance curricula, excite students and improve performance," said Mike Halm, senior researcher in Information Technology Services at Penn State. "Data, such as digital images, audio, simulations and video, can be used in creative ways to ignite classroom learning and motivate students to achieve."
Halm and other interested developers at Penn State began looking at ways faculty used digital media to engage their students and manage their electronic files. "What we found was a desire for better tools and services that would help faculty find, store and retrieve their resources easily."
By talking to Penn State educators who owned electronic collections, the developers also identified some of the overwhelming obstacles involved in discovering, organizing and distributing digital media. "Barriers were everywhere," said Halm. "Finding just the right information and managing it so it could be easily retrieved was a challenge. Sharing it with peers was next to impossible."
Realizing that peer-to-peer (P2P) technology offered unique opportunities to manage and exchange files, Halm and his team of researchers set out to develop an open-source software that could be used within the academic community to simplify the use of digital information by educators. Last week, that goal came one step closer to fruition, when Penn State and Internet2 developers released the open-source code for a new academic file-sharing technology, called LionShare, at the Internet2 Member Meeting in Austin, Texas.
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "LionShare merges electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools into a dynamic software application that promises to significantly improve the way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic endeavors," said Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology. "In addition, LionShare will simultaneously ensure a secure authenticated computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing capabilities."
According to Augustson, last week's LionShare source code release will provide programmers around the globe with the opportunity to contribute valuable feedback and suggestions, while team partners (Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) fine-tune the project software -- slated for universities and institutions to officially begin testing this upcoming January.
Penn State's efforts already are gaining public recognition. President Graham B. Spanier testified before Congress yesterday (Oct. 4) in an update on efforts to combat peer-to-peer piracy on university campuses. (See
http://live.psu.edu/ story/8351 for background.) Afterward, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, commented on Penn State's efforts in developing a legitimate peer-to-peer network for educational purposes.
"I applaud Penn State for undertaking its LionShare project," he said. "As I understand it, the LionShare project at Penn State is attempting to establish P2P networks optimized for scientific and research purposes. The hope is to connect scientists directly to one another and to the otherwise unavailable research, notes, data and unpublished material residing on their hard drives. In assessing the needs of scientists and researchers, the LionShare project has apparently found that they will share their materials most freely on closed networks with some level of security and authentication. The LionShare project will hopefully achieve its goal of establishing just such networks."
Berman's praise is welcomed by the developers. "We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated," said Halm, who currently serves as the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations from around the world have contacted us with questions about the technology and requests for the release date, and many groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the code is now available for testing."
Several educational and research institutions have expressed interest in LionShare's unique capabilities for resource exchange, including its ability to transfer audio, video, scientific simulations, text, documents, research papers, Web resources and a variety of other learning activities.
"LionShare has enormous potential," said Loukas Kalisperis, professor of architecture at Penn State. "With this single application, collaborating faculty can build digital repositories such as 3-D architectural image collections, Web-based video archives and art collections. Faculty will also have a range of tools at their fingertips for managing and exchanging their own personal collections, in addition to having access to large-scale data repositories throughout the United States and Europe."
Kalisperis is among a number of scholars and scientists who have offered their suggestions to team members as project plans unfolded this past year. Feedback from faculty at Penn State and other institutions is enabling developers to enhance the software's features with cutting-edge security, authentication and password-handling capabilities -- plus a high- performance text search engine and a technology developed by Simon Fraser that will make secure, single-search inquiries of certain worldwide digital repositories possible.
The continual dialogue with developers and potential network users has furthered significantly the development of the technology.
"With the source code release on Sept. 30, interested programmers and application developers can now access the code to use and/or modify for their needs and specifications," added Halm. "Feedback from programmers, as well as our peer institutions, will be essential in our efforts to further the development of the software. These efforts will culminate in the launch of an academic file-sharing network that researchers will be able to test and use this January."
To learn more about LionShare and to access the new source code, go to
http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/
About LionShare
The LionShare project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a collaboration among Penn State and partner organizations including Internet2; Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The LionShare project grew out of the Visual Image User Study (VIUS), an experimental software development project designed to assist Penn State faculty with digital file management.
http://live.psu.edu/story/8389