August
Defcon 12's Fear and Hacking in Vegas
Humphrey Cheung
The 12th annual Defcon hacker convention was held at the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. For three days, hackers exchanged ideas, presented new and sometimes scary information and partied hard. More than a hundred speakers gave dozens of talks on computer security, hacking and privacy issues.
For a mere $80 attendees received access to the talks, contests and the after-hours parties. In this article we will cover some of the more interesting contests and give you an overall feel for the convention so that you can decide whether you want to attend next year. Three download videos are included.
The Wall of Sheep is a projector screen that displays captured usernames and passwords. The Wall, which originally was named as the Wall of Shame, is a time-honored tradition at Defcon where a loose knit group of people continuously sniffs the network for any plaintext usernames and passwords on the wired and wireless networks. Since this is a hacker convention, attendees using the Defcon network should protect their logins by using VPN, SSH or other encryption technology. Some attendees apparently didn't get the message.
In the first few years, the usernames and passwords were written on paper plates and then taped to the wall. As the number of passwords found grew, a better solution had to be found. A computer security engineer, named "Riverside", wrote the Wall of Sheep software from scratch. He also was one of the original people who started the Wall. The usernames and passwords cycle up and down so people can see all the information gathered since the start of the convention. In addition only the first three characters of the password are shown in order to protect the privacy of the user.
Riverside said that some people have been so ignorant in using the wireless at Defcon. He gave several examples of people who had their passwords intercepted, who then tried to change their passwords on the same insecure network, only to have the information intercepted again! Riverside examines all the new attacks at Defcon and then implements a defense at his daytime job.
About 200-500 passwords are found every year at Defcon. The typical passwords are email, FTP and other login passwords.
This year, someone was dumb enough to email their tax returns in .PDF format at the convention. This traffic was immediately intercepted and the above humorous message was displayed on the projector. Also another person was emailing people asking how to get a fake ID. This was also intercepted and displayed. I have blacked out some identifying information to protect the users' privacy.
As Riverside explains, "The Wall has shown people the importance of using encryption, not just at Defcon but in all network traffic. I have had security experts who have attended Black Hat, SANS and other conventions thank me for showing them how vulnerable their traffic was."
Spot The Fed
Another time-honored tradition at Defcon is the "Spot the Fed" contest. Attendees win shirts for spotting federal agents in the crowd. Most of the time the Feds are very easy to spot as they generally appear healthier and wear a more conservative style of clothing than the normal Defcon attendee.
At the beginning of a talk, attendees will point out federal agents in the crowd. The accuser and the accused will both go up on stage. Then the accuser asks questions to determine if the guy really is a Federal agent or not. Some of the questions were, "Do you carry a gun for your job?" and "Do you have a security clearance?"
After enough questions are asked and answered, the crowd then shouts whether they think the person is a fed or not. The contest is done very well and usually the questioning is humorous. The feds that are "caught" take everything in stride and everyone has a good laugh.
Meet The Fed:Press Panel
At this press-only event, a seven-member panel of federal agents, led by Jim Christy Director of the DoD Cyber Crime Institute, fielded questions from reporters. Some of the agencies represented were: FBI, NSA, IRS, DoD, Air Force and Postal Service. The topics centered around privacy issues, child porn cases and identity theft.
Privacy And The Patriot Act
Privacy is a big concern for people, especially with the hacker community. The feds described laws as a pendulum that swings between safety and privacy. Right now the pendulum has swung towards safety, as demonstrated by the passage of the Patriot Act and other counter-terrorism measures that have been taken in the USA. As time goes on, the Feds say that the pendulum will eventually swing towards privacy.
The wiretap provision of the Patriot Act has made law enforcement much easier in certain cases. Before the Patriot Act, law enforcement obtained court orders to tap specific telephone numbers. This worked great as long as the person didn't move or buy another cell phone. In today's technological age, this didn't work too well as officials had to write another court order for a different phone number.
After the Patriot Act was passed, law enforcement can now obtain a court order to tap the electronic communications of a person. So if the suspect changes numbers, a new court order is not required.
Child Porn Cases
Child porn cases have exploded and now constitute about a quarter of all electronic crime cases involving forensics. Agents told us that the computer and the Internet have become great enablers for child pornography. Child pornography has always existed but now it is very easy for suspects to use digital cameras and the Internet to spread the pictures.
The volume of information being seized for forensic analysis has mushroomed. It is not uncommon to see multiple terabytes of storage being examined. Agents said that some cases are approaching the petabyte range. Usually is because of emails and email attachments. Only with the development of better search techniques can the evidence be examined, as it is physically impossible to read every single email in many of these massive cases.
Identity Theft Cases
Identity theft or "Phishing" cases have mushroomed in the last few years. One of the federal agents even admitted to being a victim of identity theft. In the process of moving out of an apartment, he placed a change of address/mail forwarding notice to the Post Office. The bad thing is that after the notice expires some mail can still go to the old address. A loan application was received by the new tenant and things went downhill quickly.
The new tenant was able to apply for the loan by using the agent as the cosigner. The agent says that even though he has spent a considerable amount of time trying to erase this mistake from his credit reports, it still comes up from time to time.
Recruitment
The agents said that they do recruit at Defcon and other security conventions. Recruitment has been way up since 9/11. As an example given by Christy, before 9/11 the NSA was receiving 600 resumes a month, while in the first three months after 9/11 they were receiving in excess of 20000 resumes a month. Interested hackers have often come up to the agents asking how they can use their skills to help protect their country.
Bluetooth Vulnerabilities
Hackers have found many flaws with Bluetooth devices. As these devices gain in popularity, the public needs to be made aware of vulnerability issues with the various Bluetooth devices such as phones, PDAs and wireless headsets.
Three of the most interesting attacks were Bluesnarfing, Bluetracking and Bluebugging. Bluesnarfing is attacking the Bluetooth device, usually a phone, to rip out information. Hackers can obtain phonebooks, calendars and stored SMS messages.
Bluetracking is tracking a person's movement by tracking their Bluetooth device. All Bluetooth devices have a unique address, similar to a MAC address on computer network cards. By using special sensors or antennas you can see where a particular Bluetooth device pops up and record a person's movement.
Bluebugging involves sending executable commands to the Bluetooth device. With the proper software, you could secretly turn on a phone and make it call you. Why is this important? You have just turned the phone into a listening device that can record without your target knowing it.
BlueSniper
When the Flexilis team walked in with their BlueSniper Bluetooth sniper, everyone wanted to know what this evil looking contraption could do. It looks like a mutant cross between a sniper rifle and Ghostbusters particle canon, complete with nuclear backpack. Thankfully, it is a very simple device that can do one thing well: find and attack Bluetooth devices from far away.
The BlueSniper is a rifle stock with a scope and yagi antenna attached. A cable attaches the antenna to the Bluetooth card, which can be in a PDA or laptop computer. The laptop can be carried in a backpack with the cables connecting into the backpack, giving it the Ghostbusters look.
The Flexilis teams demonstrated the gun with some home-brewed Bluetooth scanning software. They pointed the gun down the hallways and out windows. Almost instantly, vulnerable phones with their unique Bluetooth device numbers appeared on the laptop screen. The device is powerful enough to detect devices through building walls.
Vendor Area
The vendor area had several stores that sold everything from lockpicks to funny shirts. Most everything was available as a cash-only purchase. There are no paper trails here.
Irvine Underground was selling all types of lockpicks and lockpicking manuals. They also had a practice lockpick area where attendees could try out their newly purchased picks.
Hackers wanting to proclaim their skills to the whole world could buy cool shirts and stickers at the Jinx.com booth.
Wi-Fi Shootout Contest
Defcon had its second annual Wi-Fi Shootout contest. This contest pits teams against each other in the pursuit of the longest 802.11 link. Teams must be able to send a test message from laptop to laptop out in the searing Nevada desert. P.A.D. was the winning team with an amazing 55.1 mile successful link. This was done with regular Wi-Fi cards and no amplifier. The team said that they could have probably gone a longer distance, but they ran out of road to drive.
P.A.D.'s story is an amazing one. The three teenagers are 18 and 19 years old. The two antennas they used were converted satellite dishes and were so big that they had to be hauled in a trailer. They had started building them only 19 days before the contest. At the awards ceremony, they said that the link between the two antennas at eight miles was better than the link between two wireless laptops sitting right next to each other.
Tempers Flare
Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Republican National Convention talk given by a teenager called CrimetheInc (real name unknown). With a talk title like that, you know that sparks may fly, and they did. I cannot report exactly what the speaker said, as the tape has not yet been made available. Hopefully they will appear on the Defcon media archives page soon.
According to eyewitnesses who saw the talk, some attendees took offense to what the speaker was saying. At the end of the talk, someone ran up to the stage and tried to assault the speaker. Security grabbed the speaker and placed him in isolation for a few hours.
Conclusion
As the convention wore on, I could tell that it was taking a toll on attendees. The lobby of the Alexis Park looked like a graveyard of dead hackers, as many were passed out from the talks, drinking and general lack of sleep.
For only $80 USD, the Defcon convention is a great event to attend, if you are willing to accept a few problems. First, you may not get into the talk you want because seating is limited. Long lines make attendees wait 30 minutes or more for some of the more popular talks. In many cases, you are waiting in the 100+ degree heat of Las Vegas.
Meeting people and making friends is the great thing about Defcon. I was able to meet like-minded and not so like-minded people. Every night there were dozens of parties happening in separate areas of the Alexis Park. Beer and hard liquor flowed freely.
If you can accept a few problems and want to learn computer security, meet hackers and federal agents, and party till the early morning... Defcon is for you.
http://www.tomshardware.com/business...021/index.html
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British Band Releases New Album Via Altnet
Thomas Mennecke
Altnet, apparently the beacon of independent artists, is promoting the British pop band, the "Stereophonics." Altnet has recently become more active in the independent artist arena. Two weeks ago, Altnet announced a new initiative aimed at sharing revenue with independent labels through ad revenue.
Considering that major music labels seem uninterested in dealing with P2P companies, the next best alternative is independent music. With relaxed copyright enforcement policies compared to its RIAA counterparts, P2P companies have found dealing with independent labels is significantly easier.
To promote their latest work, the entire album or individual tracks will be available for $9.99 or $0.99 cents respectively. The video to their first track is available free to Kazaa users, providing you don’t accidentally download some kind of virus or trojan.
"Increasingly, artists and independent labels understand the value of
using peer-to-peer as a distribution mechanism to reach millions of fans," states Alan Morris, Executive Vice President of Sharman Networks.
"Using peer-to-peer" is an interesting choice of words. Although Altnet does utilize P2P technology, the prices offered are really no better than iTunes, Rhapsody or Napster.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=701
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Record Labels' Legal Blitz Hits 31 More Music Pirates
Jo Best
Music industry body the BPI has launched a fresh wave of legal actions against alleged file-sharers, nearly two weeks after it announced the settlement of cases against 23 file-sharers for average damages of £2,000 each.
The High Court has granted the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) an order requiring six ISPs to give up the names and addresses of 31 individuals believed to be serial music peer-to-peer uploaders.
The ISPs have 14 days to comply. Once officials have the details of the alleged song- swappers, they will contact them and offer them the opportunity to settle out of court or face court proceedings.
BPI general counsel Geoff Taylor said file-sharers come from all walks of life and advised parents to check that their children are not using illegal P2P services.
http://management.silicon.com/govern...9128622,00.htm
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Security Flaw in Popular Peer-to-Peer Filesharing Program
University Press Release
A Cornell University research group has discovered serious vulnerabilities in a widely-used peer-to-peer filesharing program. The weakness in LimeWire, a
popular client for the Gnutella filesharing network, would allow an intruder to read any file on a computer running the program, including confidential information such as internal documents, sensitive information and some password files. The problem occurs in both the free and paid versions of the program, in all operating systems for which it is available.
As soon as his group noticed the problem, Emin Gun Sirer, Cornell assistant professor of computer science, immediately notified Lime Wire LLC, the company that distributes the software. "Lime Wire responded immediately and had a patch ready within a few hours," Sirer reported, adding that the company needed several days to get the patches out to all of the 36 million people who had downloaded the program. LimeWire automatically posts a notice of the need to install a patch when it is turned on. Patches are available for all versions of the program except those that run on classic versions of the Mac OS, and the company is working on that, Sirer said.
The most serious vulnerability affects LimeWire versions 4.1.2 - 4.4.5. It enables intruders to connect to a computer even through a firewall. A second vulnerability affects versions 3.9.6 - 4.6.0, but can be stopped by a firewall. The latest, corrected version of the program is version 4.8.0; on the Mac platform, the latest corrected version is 4.0.10.
Both vulnerabilities can be exploited without any special tools, Sirer said, through an ordinary telnet login. Like other Gnutella clients, the LimeWire program is designed to allow users to download music and video files shared through the Gnutella network, and also to allow the user to provide shared files to others. The glitch in the program unfortunately allowed remote users to retrieve other files, not just those in the user's sharing folder.
Sirer is a specialist in peer-to-peer systems. He and his graduate student Kevin Walsh discovered the LimeWire problem while working on a new application, called Credence, that is intended to work with LimeWire to give users a way to determine how trustworthy data on the network may be.
"Much of the content in peer-to-peer filesharing networks is corrupt, damaged, or mislabeled. Such polluted content makes it difficult for correctly functioning peers to locate desired content," Sirer explains. Credence allows users to share ratings of objects, similar to the ratings on Amazon, but with features that discourage dishonest ratings. The idea has applications to many other types of peer-to-peer networks, such as those in which distributed workers collaborate. "As systems scale bigger and there is more collaboration on the net, we are going to need systems for evaluating the statements made by peers," he explained. "We are just computing the likelihood that what you say is true."
Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.
Credence:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/egs/credence/
LimeWire:
http://www.limewire.com/english/content/home.shtml
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/510473/
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Bug Fixed In Open-Source File-Sharing Software
Open-source file-sharing software company LimeWire has been forced to fix its software after a hole was discovered that allowed an intruder to read any file on a user’s hard drive - whether it was made available to share or not.
The hole was discovered by researchers at Cornell University in the US. The current version of LimeWire is 4.8.1 and the company has warned all users with versions prior to 4.8 to upgrade.
Some users of file-sharing or P2P programs do not configure their software properly and allow intruders or genuine users to access any parts of their PC, instead of just the areas where their intended shared information is located.
As well as creating their own privacy problems, such users can make available confidential information such as online banking details.
The LimeWire flaw, however, was down to software development problems.
According to Download.com, LimeWire has been downloaded 42 million times.
http://www.computerweekly.com/articl...earch=&nPage=1
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Nothing to Fear from Peer-to-Peer, Says Cinequest Film Festival
Leonard Jacobs
Despite the ubiquity of film festivals around the nation and the world, there was something remarkable about the 15th annual Cinequest Film Festival, which ended Sun., March 13, in San Jose, Calif. It was one of the first festivals -- perhaps the only one so far -- to offer commercial-free, DVD-quality downloads of its films to a desktop or laptop computer.
At a time when legal questions about peer-to-peer file sharing are before the U.S. Supreme Court and the actors' unions are wrestling with how to stop the illegal piracy of films and television programs -- a problem costing actors money each year -- Cinequest's innovation, courtesy of Kontiki, a file- sharing program, could be expected to raise eyebrows.
And raise them it did. After learning of Cinequest's digital- download option, Pamm Fair, the Screen Actors Guild's deputy national executive director for policy and strategic planning, said the union remains "vehemently opposed to any unlawful use of copyrighted materials" and would want to know more about Cinequest's antipiracy efforts before condoning or condemning the innovation.
"While peer-to-peer is a format many embrace for a litany of purposes," Fair noted, "whenever this and other technology is used to steal copyrighted materials, we firmly object. Our members are paid by unit sales for DVDs and this practice takes money directly out of their pockets."
Ben Hess, Cinequest's director of content acquisition, said the festival used "digital rights management" software tied to Windows Media Player and that "all content is encrypted," thereby preventing illegal peer-to-peer sharing.
His comments also came in response to a query regarding an interview with the festival's executive director, Halfdan Hussey, in Wired magazine. In it, Hussey touted Cinequest's digital download capabilities and predicted that in the future "the Internet will be a staging device for direct delivery of indie movies to a user's desktop or home entertainment center." This, he added, would likely "bring new revenue to independent filmmakers and distributors outside of the realm of Hollywood within the next two to four years."
The Cinequest Film Festival, Hess said, "respects the jurisdiction of the union and expects producers to observe the terms of their contracts." Once downloaded, "the films can be shared with others, but since films are downloaded with 'time- out' features, it makes them unusable after a certain date -- the date determined by the filmmakers who gave us permission to have the films available for download."
In addition, the application employed by the festival this year worked only for PC users: Mac owners could not use the Kontiki-powered system to play the encrypted films.
Hess also stated that the festival is keenly aware of SAG's stepped-up antipiracy efforts on behalf of its members. The union recently joined four other labor organizations representing the country's actors, writers, directors, and musicians in complaining of the injury caused by illegal downloads in a 21-page "friend of the court" brief filed in support of film and music companies led by Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. Last fall, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by a fleet of major studios against Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., two file-sharing services, arguing that the services illegally provide music and films over the Internet. The court's decision, expected later this spring, could force a rewrite of current copyright law.
"New technology does mean new revenue streams," concluded SAG spokesperson Ilyanne Kichaven, "and when there is no copyright infringement -- when it's contractually 'covered' -- there's no problem. But we must be vigilant. SAG has been very aggressive in working with other entities to prevent piracy and to find solutions to prevent the illegal use of performers' work. Our goal is to protect performers' rights."
http://www.backstage.com/backstage/n..._id=1000844058
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The Problem With Digital Versions of My Books
David Pogue
Chris M. writes: I love your book Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual, but 700 pages makes for a very heavy book to lug around! Is there any chance of creating an electronic version, like a PDF, that I could just keep on my laptop for reference?
The truth is, I try to avoid making electronic versions because they are instantly, and I mean INSTANTLY, pirated. On the warez (pirated software) Web sites, you can find every book Ive ever released in electronic form.
More upsetting, I do offer to release electronic copies of these books to blind readers, who can use screen readers to read the material aloud. But last year, a reader wrote to request a PDF of "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, claiming to be blind, and THAT book is now floating around the pirated software Web sites, too!
Here's one possible solution: check out SafariBooksOnline.com. It's a joint venture of over 15 computer-book publishers, including O'Reilly, Que, Peachpit, Addison- Wesley and Microsoft Press, that have agreed to put all the texts and graphics online, in searchable format. You have to pay for this service, but its not much, and it gives you access to hundreds of books all at once.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/te...4d0be8&ei=5070
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Marketing
Scanning the Media
The Rise of "Peer-to-Peer" Pop Culture
In the 1990s, the growth of the anime and game software industries was driven by a reduction in the size and weight of computers and the growth of the Internet. Digital technologies such as interactivity, computer graphics, 3D, Internet games gave birth to new ways of expression.
The structure of business is changing as well, due to diversification of the media through digital broadcasting, broadband Internet and mobile technology. Distribution costs are falling rapidly. The market is going global. Producers have a direct connection with consumers.
The digital transformation is driving the growth of new markets such as e-mail, web sites, mobile networks, ring tones, photo mail, and video mail. It is creating a new cultures, new customs, and new businesses. The popularity of fee-based content such as ring tones, fortune-telling, and games is shaping the popular industry and culture. In the mobile network arena, new venture firms have sprung up to develop contents to fill the mobile network market, These startup firms have created a multitude of web sites and created new markets practically overnight.
Even more important is the fact that this digital transformation is tearing down the wall between professionals and amateurs. Digital technology makes it simple for anyone to create and share information. The digital transformation makes the "Everyone is a creator" concept a reality.
In the analog age, content was created by a handful of professionals and consumed by the general public. The world was swept up by this "Hollywood Model" of production and distribution. With the digital era's "Peer-to-Peer Model" contents are created collaboratively, through participation, sharing, and exchange. The fact that Japan is holding its own in this race is strategically important for Japan improving its digital contents trade balance.
http://www.jmrlsi.co.jp/english/inth...05/08_ptp.html
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Remote Approach Launches PDF Tracking Service
Robyn Weisman
On Thursday, Toronto-based company Remote Approach announced the launch of its inaugural solution, an online service that provides its clients with the ability to track and administer PDF documents through a variety of distribution channels.
"A user uploads the PDF they want to track to Remote Approach, assigning variables like 'distribution channels' and 'groups' to add additional detail to the data captured. From there, they can download and distribute the PDF as desired," said John Bielby, president of Remote Approach Inc.
"Every time the PDF is read, it briefly interacts with the reporting repository to record the event. The user has access to live reports and data to see reports on views, distribution by channel or user group, or even download the logs into other systems and applications," Bielby said.
According to Bielby, clients of the service already are using it in several ways.
Some simply wish to know whether their customers actually read or forward a client's PDFs after downloading them from the client's Web site, while others engaged in peer-to-peer marketing want measurable data on whether their available PDF is being effective, given that traditional Web analysis can't measure such data.
"Using our service, [our clients] have been able to gauge the depth of their document penetration through the peer-to-peer networks. They can then use this data and reports to measure the effectiveness of their budget, identify more effective file names and determine timelines for document distribution," Bielby said.
Forrester Research principal analyst Bob Markham said that while other applications exist that are similar to Remote Approach's, he is not aware of any other solution that is subscription-based.
Bielby said that designing the solution as Web-based was intentional.
"We wanted to make sure anyone working with PDF documents would have access to our software and not roll out various versions for Windows, Mac, Linux [and so forth] over years, as some companies have chosen to do," said Bielby, adding that integration with other reporting applications was a key concern for Remote Approach.
Ektron integrates document management capabilites into its content management systems. Click here to read more.
In addition, Remote Approach took a Web-based services approach because it wanted the cost of entry to be low.
"Rather than taking on additional engineering projects and putting the client at risk with questions of whether their program was supported, we ensured that access to not only the reports but the raw data itself is available to our clients. With this method, they can not only use our reporting systems but can export the data to any other applications" that can access the data, Bielby said.
Next Page: Skepticism surfaces.
For his part, however, Forrester analyst Markham expressed skepticism about what he described as a lack of value for the customers of clients using this service.
According to him, clients of Remote Approach risk the possibility that their customers will rebel against what they perceive as intrusiveness if they perceive that they do not benefit on their end.
Remote Approach's service "doesn't offer the customer any type of security in the way Adobe [LiveCycle] Policy Server does, [such as] a small logo that indicates this [PDF] is authorized as an official document from the company. Nor does it offer 'active document' capabilities" that could, for example, update a product spec sheet for the end user, Markham noted.
In response, Bielby said that within the next few weeks, Remote Approach will be offering its clients the optional feature of including a Remote Approach logo at the top of any tagged PDF.
At the same time, Bielby pointed out that the purpose of the service is tracking, reporting and analytics.
He added that he does not think customers will find it too intrusive; no more information is being collected in this fashion than when a visitor surfs to a given Web page, because Remote Approach's service uses well-established reporting norms, he said.
"If a user is disturbed that when visiting Yahoo [his or her] IP address is recorded and a record of that page view is stored in the server logs, then [he or she] will be similarly unhappy with this service.
"It's overdue to provide PDF publishers the tools that Web publishers have had for some time. It will allow document publishers to know what their audiences like and dislike so they can produce more—or less—of it," Bielby said.
http://www.pdfzone.com/article2/0,1759,1776477,00.asp
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Legal form of peer to peer can revolutionize online music sales
Press Release
Looking at the playlist on a friend's computer, picking out your favorite hit and then downloading directly legally - a pipedream? Maybe not: At a business breakfast at CeBIT, Musicload will be presenting a model of how legal peer to peer could work.
Who doesn´t envy real music aficionados every now and then for the huge collections of digital music on their PCs? But logging on to their computers and downloading titles is illegal. Musicload is thinking about new ways, however, how private individuals can swap music legally while respecting rights to the titles. "We know how successful illegal swap exchanges can work," says Susanne Peter, Director of Marketing and Sales at T-Online´s Musicload. "Unfortunately, we haven´t had anything like this for sale in the music industry so far. And that is an opportunity which has yet to be taken advantage of - the formation of a real community."
How is legal peer to peer supposed to work? First of all, the original idea that Internet swap exchanges are based on still applies - although there are a few differences. For one thing, the holders of rights are involved in the system. Moreover, the providers offering titles guarantee high-quality files. The peer-to-peer model shows how users can link up with each other in the future, recommend music titles and swap them legally.
Simple principle
Here is one possible peer-to-peer scenario: Customer A enters a music portal as a buyer. He has registered his own music shop there and put together playlists. He then makes these playlists available to customer B, who is able to look at the playlists and their commentaries and recommendations and look for his favorite song titles. The next step is for customer B to download the titles onto his own hard disk directly from provider A´s hard disk. The files transferred are provided with the provider's legally acquired digital rights, which means that no copyrights are violated. Users of this service continue to pay a fee for each song - and the private provider gets a cut, too. He receives bonus points for transferring songs, for example, which he can use to purchase new titles at his favorite music portal.
Helping users communicate and promoting the community - while at the same time creating incentives for the legal exchange of music files. This is the concept being presented by Musicload at CeBIT.
Musicload from T-Online was launched on October 11, 2003. The portal now figures among the leading providers of legal music downloads. Musicload reached a total of 4,000,000 downloads in 2004. In the meantime, users download around 1,000,000 songs each month. With an offer that comprises almost 450,000 tracks, Musicload is particularly successful in the top ten singles charts. The T-Online platform works with all major record companies as well as independent labels. One track from Musicload costs between 99 cents and 1.59 euros, with album prices starting at 9.95 euros.
Award for quality: Musicload is Computer-BILD test winner in a comparison with twelve other providers ( issue 1/2005, "Test: Music Download Offers" ).
http://i-newswire.com/pr10160.html
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Share Video Online
Kim Komando
Digital videos are a great way to share memories, but they consume gobs of storage space, which makes it a challenge to share them. What do you do when your video is too large to fit in e-mail or even fit on a single DVD? The Web provides several storage alternatives.
For instance, consider using a photo-sharing Web site. Many let you share video with family and friends in addition to still images. The fees to use these sites vary depending on how much storage space you need.
Neptune Mediashare (
www.neptune.com) is one example of a service that lets you post video albums. When you sign up, Neptune gives you a Web page where you can share videos. You can password-protect the page if you want to restrict access to only the guests you designate. Neptune's fees range from $59 per year for 150 megabytes of space to $599 for 10 gigabytes.
Digital Silo (
www.digitalsilo.com) offers a similar service, but it also will convert your tapes and DVDs to digital files, and post them in your space. Invited guests can enter the space and watch the movies.
Conversion costs $44.95 per hour of tape. Film is $249 per hour, and DVDs run $34.95 an hour. These are one-time fees. The only other charge is a $9.95 annual membership fee. And you get enough storage for 240 hours of video.
Sending videos to other folks, so they can edit or archive the footage, can be a challenge. Most e-mail systems limit attachments to just a few megabytes, which isn't enough storage to send more than a couple of minutes of video at low or medium resolution.
Instead, consider setting up your own peer-to-peer (P2P) network on the Internet. Several programs make it easy.
Take ShareGear (
www.sharegear.com), for instance. This $49.95 Windows program can convert video directly from a digital camcorder. Then, you place the resulting file in the appropriate folder and let others know where to look. They link directly to your PC and download the file or files they need.
Grouper (
www.grouper.com) and Qnext (
www.qnext.com) are two more Windows programs that are free and contain no spyware. You can use them if your video files are already prepared. They allow you, family members and friends to set up shared folders on your respective hard drives.
If you don't want to mess with P2P software, you can use a video-sharing site. Streamload (
www.streamload.com) and Xdrive (
www.xdrive.com) are two worth considering.
Using them is simple. You establish an account and download software from Streamload or Xdrive. The software enables you to upload your media files. You tell friends and family how to access the sites. They then can download the files.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.d...50337/1003/BIZ
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A Universe Of Options
p2pnet.net News Feature
We've been running a weekly File Share Top Ten for quite a while now and we recently added a Movies File Share Top Ten. Soon, we'll be launching a monthly Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze download awards.
The statistics used in these charts are from p2p research company Big Champagne and they appear only in p2pnet. We run them because, as USA TODAY’s Edna Gundersen sums it up, “With infinite capacity and far- flung communication links, the Internet has opened a universe of options to music enthusiasts”.
We wanted to show what's really happening as opposed to what the members of the Big Four record label cartel say is happening.
"Peer into the depths of cyberspace and a big-bang picture unfolds," says Gundersen. “It's a phenomenon the music business has yet to capitalize on ..."
And that's because Big Music’s disingenuous claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the activity is on the p2p networks, and the p2p networks alone. There, hundreds of millions of digital files of all kinds – movies and music included - move around every hour.
“While paid downloads skyrocketed to 140.9 million tracks in 2004 from 19.2 million in the last half of 2003
(no earlier figures are available), unauthorized file-sharing dwarfs purchases," says USA TODAY. "Since mid-2003, 19 billion [our emphasis] peer-to-peer transactions have occurred, predominantly current hits. But new sounds and new bands are emerging from Web cabals, a blow to radio and labels used to setting the agenda.”
Great big megaphone
Gundersen quotes Big Champagne ceo Eric Garland as saying, "We're seeing a clear and consistent pattern of some acts being championed by online communities and later embraced by traditional media outlets.
"Nothing works like word of mouth, and online word of mouth is a great big megaphone. Instead of being able
to tell two or three friends, you have entire Web rings of like-minded people quick to pass along recommendations."
Earlier in the year, the Big Music cartel's IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries) claimed
paid-for downloads had risen more than tenfold to over 200 million, the implication being that the 230 sites are selling tracks like hot-cakes.
However, there is, to all intents and purposes, only one site. The 200 million (now 300 million) tracks waved by the IFPI are 99.9% iTunes sales, and they've accumulated since the site went up the year before last.
Three hundred million seems like a lot, even spread over several years, but in the real world of online music where the p2p networks rule, it amounts to nothing. The number of people logged on simultaneously at any minute of any day grew to nearly 10 million in April 2004, a 30% increase from the same period a year earlier, says an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study. And upwards of one billion songs are moving computer-to-computer every month, says p2p research firm Big Champagne.
Big Music's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) says its sue 'em all campaign is making an appreciable dent in file sharing. However, various academic and other studies prove that far from being intimidated by the RIAA, more and more people are sharing files every day.
Big Champagne stats say globally, on average, in February last year, 6,831,366 people were logged onto the p2p networks at any given moment, and that in the US, the figure was 4,039,989. The same figures for February, 2005, show this has risen substantially to 8,524,938 globally, and 6,183,636 for the US.
This is changing not only how people get their music fixes, but also from whom they're getting them.
As Gundersen points out, John Mayer's rise, “benefited from feverish swapping of mp3 files, the modern equivalent of tape-trading”.
His ‘Daughters’ is currently #9 in this week’s p2pnet Rock Top Ten, up from #10 last week.
Crucial to luring youth dollars
Norah Jones reached Big Champagne's top 10 before she got significant airplay and the O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Garden State soundtracks popped at Champagne months before cracking Billboard, says Gundersen, quoting Garland as saying he’s convinced every known piece of recorded music is available somewhere online, and that growing awareness of the inventory is gradually changing consumer habits.
Gundersen also hits THE important nail on the head, perhaps for the first time by a mainstream media outlet:
"Unlike iTunes or Napster, enthusiast sites place community above commerce, earning credibility and loyalty that are crucial to luring youth dollars. That's one of the sticky challenges facing an industry that alienated downloaders with steep CD prices and piracy lawsuits.”
As Cherry Lane Digital ceo Jim Griffin said recently, the labels, "cling to their pursuit of this notion of control
and calling those who do not comply thieves, and in doing so they leave billions on the table that should be divided fairly amongst creators and rights holders."
She says the war against file-sharers continues with the March 29 Supreme Court hearing when the
entertainment industry will for the third time try to have lower-court decisions that p2p companies are not responsible for what their users do with the applications they sell, overturned.
However, this ‘war’ is all in the mind of the entertainment industry. P2p is here to stay. The people, those
whom the entertainment inindustry is trying to sue into buying 'product,' have spoken, and loudly.
When the various corporate interests finally figure out they're operating in the digital 21st century and not the physical 1970s, the phony war will be over - until the next technological changes such as ultra-high-capacity storage and holographic media, perhaps, again threaten the corporate status quo.
Not only niche fans
USA TODAY has Big Champagne co-founder Joe Fleischer saying, "Certainly, copyright infringement and piracy are problems. But the very nature of computing is peer-to-peer, and no matter what happens, this type of activity will continue and grow. The lawsuits had an impact and made people aware that risk was involved."
What was the result?
“Now users are more secretive and 10 or 20 steps ahead (of the security measures)" and the major labels
haven't learned how to serve rabid niche fans, who learned to serve themselves, says Fleischer.
However, not only niche fans are rabid.
Thousands of new people are going online every day meaning for the first time in history, 'we' have a voice
'they' have to listen to. Eventually, the entertainment industry will be forced to acknowledge its customers as active participants rather than mindless cash-cows.
Moreover, the companies and governments forget the people they're suing are also the ones who are conceiving, developing, servicing and administering the very systems which keep the wheels turning and the money coming in.
Think about it.
In the meanwhile, what's really interesting abut the USA TODAYpiece isn't what's being said. It is, after all, nothing new.
Look, though, at who's saying it. It's been a long time since a news outlet of USA TODAY's ilk did more than simply parrot entertainment industry puff pieces as if they came from credible sources.
http://p2pnet.net/story/4177
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The File-Sharing Follies
Jon Newton
With a landmark Supreme Court hearing on online file sharing slated for March 29, Hollywood is stepping up its multimillion-dollar, international PR blitz to keep peer-to-peer networks in the public eye and to characterize men, women and children who share music and other files online as hardened criminals.
In the U.S., nearly 10,000 people have been sued. In Sweden the police raided the Stockholm offices of Bahnhof, Sweden's largest ISP. They were acting on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is looking for dirt on the sites it wants to shut down. According to Reuters, "U.S. copyright protection experts" -- i.e., the movie studio cartel's lawyers -- have considered Bahnhof a "haven for high-level Internet piracy for years."
Six UK ISPs have been ordered to give the Big Music cartel's UK representative, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the names and addresses of 31 people said to have uploaded large numbers of music files onto P2P networks. The BPI says it will probably ramp up its attacks on UK file sharers, likening the action to legal fights to curb drunken driving.
Backward Thinking
International singing star Joni Mitchell once said, "The deal that I got was just atrocious. I mean, it was like slave labor, really -- no points, no budget. And I've never really had a good deal in the business." She also said, "Now, this is all calculated music. It's calculated for sales, it's sonically calculated, it's rudely calculated. I'm ashamed to be a part of the music business . You know, I just think it's a cesspool."
Nor is Mitchell by any means alone in her view of the music business, which cynically casts itself as a tough but scrupulously fair entity that has the best interests of its artists and customers at heart. In truth, it's an industry run by venal, narrow-minded, technically ignorant people who have no idea how to treat music fans or the performers who have made them so very, very wealthy.
The executives are making a religion out of refusing to accept that they live in the digital 21st century. As Britain's The Economist says, "So far they [the record labels] have been slow to embrace the Internet, which has seemed to them not an opportunity but their nemesis."
The Supreme Court battle involves heavy and not-so-heavy interests from all parts of the corporate spectrum, all fighting for consumer dollars. But the most important people involved are the file sharers themselves -- customers whom the entertainment industry and its friends are trying to scare into buying their products.
Crooks and Customers
The principle of innocent until proven guilty is being mocked by the entertainment industry, which, with the assistance of the mainstream media, presents online file-sharers as crooks.
When someone shares a digital music or any other file online, however, it's not a criminal offense. No sales are made and no money changes hands. Not one file sharer has ever seen the inside of a U.S. court, let alone been convicted of anything.
Sharing a file with someone doesn't automatically mean the loss of a sale to the entertainment industry, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
File sharers are not criminals; they're victims of entertainment industry greed.
Victims of Greed
The music labels claim there's a thriving alternative to file sharing: corporate online music stores such as iTunes and Napster II. But this business is so tiny that it barely exists. Only an infinitesimal proportion of online music lovers use such sites. And that's because, in their greed, the labels wholesale their MP3 tracks for between 65 and 75 cents each, forcing the retailers to charge around a dollar a track. And the labels want to increase, not decrease, this already extortionate price.
So, of course, few are buying. Instead, they get their music from one of the P2P networks, or from a site such as AllofMP3.com, which sells MP3s for pennies instead of dollars.
Meanwhile, the true criminals -- the duplicators who use CDs and DVDs as masters for making counterfeit copies for software, music and movies -- count their profits, virtually untouched.
http://p2pnet.net/story/4226
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Malaysia
Intellectual Property Court Proposed
The Government plans to set up a special court to try intellectual property cases, including disputes on patent rights and trademarks, and to deal with the issue of piracy.
Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Mohamed Shafie Apdal said the draft proposal for the setting up of the Intellectual Property Court had been submitted to the Attorney-General for study.
Speaking to Malaysian journalists covering Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's six-day visit here, Mohamed Shafie said disputes involving intellectual property rights and piracy cases were currently heard by ordinary courts in Malaysia.
The judges might not have an in-depth knowledge of the technical issues which were sometimes complicated and involved losses worth millions of ringgit, he said.
With the special court, the judges would specialise in the field and be able to make fair and accurate decisions, he said after visiting the British patent office here on Thursday.
Mohamed Shafie was briefed on the running and management of the office which could help Malaysia open its own patent office back home.
He said intellectual property was important in developed states as it involved big businesses and well-known brands with wide international networks.
Malaysians, meanwhile, had low awareness on the need to have their products patented and recognised internationally, he said.
“Malaysians are not interested in registering their patents, so the producers and country of origin are not getting the benefit from it,” he said.
Despite this, patent theft and piracy were no longer a serious problem in Malaysia following strict enforcement by the authorities, he said.
Mohamed Shafie also said Malaysia would host a regional conference on intellectual property law enforcement this year in collaboration the World Intellectual Property Organisation. – Bernama
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp...ation/10396757
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CompUSA Settles Government's Rebates Complaint
The nation's leading computer retailer, CompUSA Inc., has agreed to settle a government complaint charging the company with deceiving consumers who bought computer products but failed to receive promised cash rebates from $15 to $100 each, the Federal Trade Commission said Friday.
The regulatory agency ordered Dallas-based CompUSA to overhaul its rebate programs to guarantee consumers will receive payments when they were promised. It also required CompUSA for the next 20 years to ensure all manufacturers of products sold in its stores pay rebates promptly.
Retailers often advertise computer equipment for remarkably low prices adjusted for rebates, knowing that only a fraction of consumers apply for such payments. The settlement with CompUSA marked the first time the government held a retailer responsible for rebates offered by its manufacturers, the FTC said.
The FTC's settlement made CompUSA responsible for unpaid rebates on behalf of one of its manufacturers, QPS Inc., which went out of business but made CD drives and other products sold in CompUSA stores.
FTC lawyer Kerry O'Brien said thousands of customers could be eligible, amounting to rebates totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The settlement required rebate payments for any eligible consumers that CompUSA can identify through its records, and for any eligible buyers who contact CompUSA or the FTC through its main telephone number, 877-382-4357, over the next 75 days.
``If you're a retailer and you're advertising someone else's rebates, you can't turn a blind eye to their problems fulfilling those rebates,'' O'Brien said.
A spokesman for CompUSA in Dallas, Mark Walker, declined to comment.
The FTC said CompUSA falsely represented to customers who bought QPS products that rebates would be paid within six to eight weeks, but it said some customers waited up to six months or never received money. It also accused CompUSA of continuing to advertise QPS rebates despite knowing about these serious delays, up until QPS filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2002.
The FTC said CompUSA also inappropriately delayed rebate payments on its own branded products.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11113521.htm
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In brief
ILN News Letter
Canadian MP Says Extended License Copyright Proposal Delayed
Marlene Catteral, a Canadian MP and chair of the Canadian Heritage parliamentary committee has told a university audience that the government has delayed plans to introduce a much-criticized copyright proposal to establish a extended license for educational institutions. The proposal would have created a license for Internet materials that were not publicly available.
Catteral speech at
http://www.uottawa.ca/copyright/imag...02marlener.mov
EU Drops Investigation Of Microsoft Content Guard Investment
European Union regulators said today that they are dropping an antitrust review into Microsoft and Time Warner's investment in antipiracy-software company ContentGuard because French technology company Thomson SA was joining the venture. The EC said Thomson's purchase of a one-third stake in ContentGuard would mean no shareholder would have overall control.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...379745,00.html
Bahrain Frees Three Men Jailed Over Critical Website
Bahrain has freed three men detained for running a website critical of the government, but they still face charges over spreading material seen as hostile to the Gulf Arab state's government and royal family. The men were detained two weeks ago on charges of stirring hatred against the government and spreading false news in the U.S.-allied island state.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050314/80/fe9km.html
Australia To Consider Blocking Anonymous Political Postings
Roused by last year's furore over anonymous political websites such as
www.johnhowardlies.com, the Australian government plans to clamp down on web publishers who refuse to identify a person who authorises their content. Special Minister of State Eric Abetz has said that the move would ensure internet publishers were bound by the same rules as television, radio and print.
http://auanonymouspostings.notlong.com/
Creating Code 2.0 Open To All
Professor Lawrence Lessig today will put his 1999 book "Code" online today and invite Internet users to help him write an updated version. Contributions can be made at
http://codebook.jot.com/
Coverage at
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...y/11148136.htm
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'Creative Commons' Is Rewriting Rules Of Copyright
Artists, authors warming up to file-sharing innovation
Ariana Eunjung Cha
When Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia released their latest single, "No Meaning No," several months ago, they didn't try to stop people from circulating free copies on the Internet. They encouraged it.
They posted the entire song and its vocal, drum and guitar components online and invited everyone to view, copy, mix, remix, sample, imitate, parody and even criticize it.
The result has been a flood of derivative work ranging from classical twists on the hip-hop piece to video interpretations of it. The musicians reveled in the instant fan base. They decided to publish their next entire album, due later this spring, the same way, becoming the first major artists to do so.
"No Meaning No" was released under an innovative licensing scheme called Creative Commons that some say may be better suited to the electronic age than the hands-off mindset that has made copyright such a bad word among the digerati.
More than 10 million other creations -- ranging from the movie "Outfoxed" and songs by the Beastie Boys to the British Broadcasting Corp.'s news footage -- have been distributed using these licenses. The idea even won the support of Hilary Rosen, formerly of the Recording Industry Association of America, and Jack Valenti, the past head of the Motion Picture Association of America, known for their aggressive pursuit of people who share free, unauthorized copies via the Internet.
Interest in Creative Commons licenses comes as artists, authors and traditional media companies begin to warm to the idea of the Internet as friend instead of foe and race to capitalize on technologies such as file-sharing and digital copying.
Copyright revolution|
Apple Computer Inc. gave many reasons to be optimistic. Music lovers, who once scoured the Internet for free and pirated copies of songs, are now showing they're willing to pay for online music. The company says it's selling 1.25 million songs, at 99 cents a track, each day.
Rare is the consumer electronics company or music label that isn't experimenting with something similar. Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, EMI and Warner Music Group, for instance, inked deals to distribute songs on a fee-based download service run by Wurld Media, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., peer-to-peer software company.
Many of the innovators who touched off the file-sharing revolution are seeking to win corporate support for their work. Shawn Fanning, who as a teen developed Napster, is working on software that would let copyright holders specify permissions and prices for swapping. Vivendi Universal is a backer.
Perhaps the most significant cooperative effort, however, is the set of new licensing schemes under which "No Meaning No" was released -- the brainchild of Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig.
Lessig argues that the current system of copyright laws provides little flexibility -- either you give up all permissions for use of your work or you withhold everything. He proposed a set of copyright licenses that would allow artists to keep "some rights reserved" rather than "all rights reserved."
They could, for instance, choose to allow their works to be enjoyed and copied by others for any purpose, restrict such activity to noncommercial use, or allow use of portions of the work. To that end, Lessig co-founded the nonprofit Creative Commons, whose aim, as he describes it, is to "help artists and authors give others the freedom to build upon their creativity -- without calling a lawyer first."
Now the notion of copyright is being reconsidered.
"What we're doing is not only good for society but it's good for us and our business because we get our music out," says Brian Hardgroove, co-founder of Fine Arts Militia.
Mixing and matching|
The way Lessig sees it, art has always been about stealing, recycling and mixing. Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were said to borrow from each other's brushwork. The 1990s hit "Clueless" with Alicia Silverstone was a modern adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma."
Technology offers an unprecedented ability to digitize works, copy them, take them apart and put them back together again. But Lessig says he worries that the extension of copyright laws is keeping many works out of the public domain, hampering creativity. When the Constitution was written, copyrights covered 14 years, extendable to 28 years. With the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, these rights last until an author's death plus 70 years.
Lessig's goal with Creative Commons was to create a body of digital work, which he calls "artifacts of culture," for the public domain, accessible to all.
In the year since the licenses were unveiled, a steady stream of works beyond popular music and videos has joined the Creative Commons public domain archive: material for more than 500 Massachusetts Institute of Technology classes, audio of every U.S. Supreme Court argument since 1950 from the Public Library of Science, the archives for Flickr's photo-sharing site. Fritz Attaway, Washington general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said work licensed under Creative Commons licenses and those released under traditional copyright restrictions can co-exist.
"I think it's helpful to educate consumers that there is a place like Creative Commons where one can access intellectual property that has been freely made available to the general public without compensation and that that should be distinguished from sites that are permitting access to infringing material," he said.
Making profits|
Still, even the most optimistic say that Creative Commons will be only part of the solution to ending the long-running battle over copyright. Attaway said he doubts the major movie studios or record labels would ever license large quantities of their work for distribution using Creative Commons licenses because they make plenty of money off the current system.
Hollywood producers Robert Greenwald and Jim Gilliam are among those challenging such assumptions. They released their movie "Outfoxed" under a Creative Commons license. Their controversial documentary accused Fox News of being a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. Just weeks after it was released in theaters, the producers posted 48 minutes of original interviews from the work online.
Gilliam credits the Internet with boosting interest in the movie because it reached a wider audience than it could in theaters alone. He said many of those who viewed parts of the work online ended up ordering a $9.95 DVD.
"This isn't necessarily just some altruistic thing," Gilliam said. "You can make money off of this, too." John Buckman, an entrepreneur from Berkeley, has used the Creative Commons licenses as the foundation for his new online record label, Magnatune, where all artists must agree to allow free use of their work for noncommercial purposes. The site features 326 albums by 174 artists in six different genres, including classical and heavy metal. Magnatune makes 50 percent of its money from downloads and 50 percent from licensing fees, he said.
Cash-strapped filmmakers can use the songs as they like for free, paying only when they start making money, he said. "As much as musicians are having a hard time making a living, filmmakers and other creative people are having a hard time finding music to use in their works."
The start-up is making money, he said -- possibly as much as $2 million this year.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/mo...s/11149026.htm
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Court Questions Broadcast Flag Challengers
John Borland
The Washington D.C. Court of Appeals is asking a coalition of library and consumer groups for proof they can legally challenge antipiracy technology imposed by the Federal Communications Commission.
The American Library Association, Public Knowledge and others are challenging the FCC's broadcast flag ruling, which would require consumer electronics devices to support code that can block Internet transfers of some video content. Judges said Tuesday that they weren't sure the consumer and library groups had legal "standing"--a measure of how directly affected they or their members will be by the FCC's ruling. The court asked the groups to explain their position further before proceeding with the case.
http://news.com.com/2110-1028_3-5618365.html
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Censorship
Senator Suggests Targeting Net 'Indecency'
Declan McCullagh
Congress may be preparing for another round in the Internet "decency" wars.
Sen. Ted Stevens, the influential chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has indicated that Internet decency regulations could be inserted into legislation that was originally intended to boost fines for off-color radio and TV broadcasts.
"We ought to find some way to say, here is a block of channels, whether it's delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is, to a home, that is clear of the stuff you don't want your children to see," the Alaska Republican told reporters Friday, according to an audio recording. (VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol.)
Stevens didn't describe how broadband or VoIP decency regulation would work, and a spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Elsewhere in his remarks, the senator said that indecency rules should be extended to cable and satellite, and "we're looking to create tiers, or create a system like the movie business...to let us develop a ratings system."
The first round in the Internet decency wars took place nearly a decade ago when the U.S. Congress enacted the Communications Decency Act, which punished the transmission of indecent or "patently offensive" material with up to two years in prison and fines of $250,000. In 1997, the Supreme Court overwhelmingly rejected those portions of the law.
But the court's opinion didn't say anything about the constitutionality of a law that would require certain types of Web publishers to rate sexually explicit sites through a mechanism like the Platform for Internet Content Selection, which is built into the Internet Explorer browser.
"It looks like Stevens is talking about some sort of ratings system for the Internet," said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "But you really can't have the FCC or the federal government be the taste police for the American citizens. It's just not going to work."
Stevens' committee is reviewing a decency bill, already approved by the House of Representatives, that would raise the maximum fines for radio and TV broadcasters. In early March, Stevens said he wanted to see those indecency standards extended to cable and satellite. (The Federal Communications Commission has defined indecency to include everything from Howard Stern's broadcasts to certain four-letter words.)
Conservative groups have been alarmed by any expansion of the broadcast decency bill, warning that lobbying from cable and satellite providers would reduce the legislation's chances of being enacted.
"We would hope that there would be legislation to control the onslaught of the Internet," said Randy Sharp, director of special projects at the American Family Association. "The best approach would be for Sen. Stevens to address this issue in a separate bill. If it's attached, it will get bogged down."
One explanation for Stevens' remarks is that he's worried about the trend of movies and TV shows being offered for downloading through the Internet, which places the material outside the purview of the FCC.
"I think Stevens is probably laying the groundwork for another assault on speech online," said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the free-market Progress and Freedom Foundation. "He's obviously pointing the way to other members of Congress, saying that if they want to control the media, they have to start at cable and satellite first and then target the Internet...This foreshadows the coming debate we'll have over IP-enabled services in the video space."
This isn't the first time that Stevens has worried about sexually explicit material on the Internet. Last year, he co-authored a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking that peer-to-peer networks be investigated because they provide access to pornography.
http://news.com.com/Senator+suggests...3-5618332.html
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Wireless Carriers Should Shield Kids from Smut
U.S. wireless companies should adopt controls and age verification methods to keep children from getting adults-only content through mobile telephones, the industry's trade group said on Thursday.
CTIA, which represents major wireless companies such as Cingular Wireless and Nextel Communications Inc. (NXTL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , said it is developing guidelines that would also call on carriers to classify content either as available to users of all ages or restricted to those at least 18 years old.
"The current timeline aims for adoption of the guidelines and announcement of the industry-wide agreement in the second quarter of 2005, with implementation of the guidelines by the end of 2005," CTIA President Steve Largent said in a letter.
CTIA's board of directors is expected to soon consider the guidelines. The plan also would include an education campaign.
He was responding to a request by the head of the wireless bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, John Muleta, who called on the industry to address the issue and educate parents about their abilities to control access.
About 21 million of 5- to 19-year-olds had wireless phones at the end of 2004, according to industry estimates. Unsolicited e-mail messages are barred on mobile phones, but no laws directly address indecency on them.
Many new wireless phones are able to surf the Internet, which has raised concerns about accessing adult content.
"The wireless industry has been, and will continue to be, at the forefront of meaningful efforts to inform consumers about the nature of the content available to them on mobile phones, and will put in place the tools to prevent unauthorized access to inappropriate content," Largent said.
After rising complaints from parents groups and lawmakers, the FCC has been cracking down on indecent content on broadcast radio and television. Congress is contemplating raising potential fines for broadcast decency infractions.
Last month, Muleta sent a letter to CTIA seeking safeguards on wireless phones as well.
"We're really glad they're paying attention to it," said FCC spokeswoman Lauren Patrich.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7869865
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Propaganda
Bush Defends Offering Video ‘News’ Releases
Richard W. Stevenson
President Bush on Wednesday defended his administration's practice of providing television stations with video news releases that resemble actual news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they used on the air were produced by the government.
Responding to a question during his news conference in the White House briefing room, Mr. Bush said he expected cabinet agencies to abide by a Justice Department memorandum circulated last week that concluded video news releases were legal as long as they were factual and not intended to advocate the administration's positions.
"This has been a longstanding practice of the federal government to use these types of videos," Mr. Bush said. "The Agricultural Department, as I understand it, has been using these videos for a long period of time. The Defense Department, other departments have been doing so. It's important that they be based on the guidelines set out by the Justice Department."
Mr. Bush said it would be "helpful if local stations then disclosed to their viewers" that any portions of the releases they used were produced by the government, but he added that, "evidently, in some cases, that's not the case."
The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the last four years. Many of them were broadcast on local news programs without any public acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Pressed on why the government does not require that broadcasters identify the material as being government-produced, Mr. Bush said that "there's a procedure that we're going to follow," and that if there is a "deep concern" about the releases appearing on the air as if they were journalistic reports, then local stations "ought to tell their viewers what they're watching."
The administration's use of the video news releases paid for by taxpayers has drawn criticism from some Democrats in Congress, and Democrats are also raising questions about the way in which television stations use them. In a letter sent on Monday to Michael K. Powell, the departing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the commission to investigate whether stations were misleading their viewers.
"Until now, attention has largely focused on whether certain V.N.R.'s created by the federal government violated the restriction on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda," Mr. Inouye said in the letter. "However, equally as serious is growing evidence that certain broadcasters are editing government-created V.N.R.'s to make it appear as if such information is the result of independent news gathering."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/politics/17video.html
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Study: Cookies In Security Crosshairs
Dinesh C. Sharma
An increasing number of people are blocking cookies or deleting them to protect their privacy or security, according to a new JupiterResearch study.
Nearly 58 percent of online users deleted the small files, which are deposited on computers to track Web site habits, the research firm's 2004 survey found. As many as 39 percent may be deleting cookies from their primary computer every month, according to the study, released on Monday.
The market researcher attributes the trend to heightened concern over privacy and security issues among Internet users. Many people are using anti-spyware and firewall applications, it said.
"Many of these applications block third-party cookies by default, and many more will regularly delete cookies from consumers’ computers," the report stated.
According to a consumer survey quoted by JupiterResearch, 38 percent said they consider cookies invasion of their security and privacy. Lawmakers and consumer lobbies have been considering the impact of cookies, and network security company Netcraft on Monday pointed out the risks to personal information posed by the theft of cookies by attackers using cross-scripting flaws.
For online businesses, the trend means that cookies may not be an accurate method of tracking regular visitors to their Web sites. If users block cookies, accurate measurement is compromised and higher number of numbers may be categorized as "anonymous," JupiterResearch said said.
"Given the number of sites and applications that depend heavily on cookies for accuracy and functionality, the lack of this data represents significant risk for many companies," analyst Eric Peterson said in a statement. "Because personalization, tracking and targeting solutions require cookies to identify Web visitors over multiple sessions, the accuracy of these solutions has become highly suspect, especially over longer periods of time."
http://news.com.com/Study+Cookies+in...3-5618296.html
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Ticket Fixer Takes On Credit Card Disputes
Matt Hines
First Glen Bolofsky wanted to help people fight parking tickets. Now he's hoping to solve another popular consumer nuisance: billing disputes with credit card companies.
Hardly a latter-day Robin Hood, Bolofsky is betting that his latest creation, Disputemycharge.com, could become as popular--and profitable--as his Parkingticket.com business. For a fee, Disputemycharge.com will aid people in resolving disputed credit card charges by communicating directly with merchants.
By using the site, Bolofsky says, consumers can avoid the lengthy charge dispute guidelines offered by many credit card issuers, and go directly to merchants for potential refunds.
"People need to have an advocate who is experienced on their side," he said. "Even many lawyers don't know all the regulations, and credit card companies aren't anxious to let this kind of info out. Our attorneys and law enforcement officials have the knowledge and background to navigate through the Byzantine process of getting those refunds."
Disputemycharge.com, which went live in mid-January, has already proven successful in hundreds of individual appeals. Much like Parkingticket.com, which uses some simple legal know-how to appeal parking violations in a number of U.S. cities, the credit card site's approach is uncomplicated, but apparently works.
Using the site, a customer enters the dollar amount of the disputed credit card charge, the name of the merchant involved in the transaction, and the nature of the disagreement. The service then generates a confidential letter that demands that the merchant refund the money in question, and the individual simply mails the document to any involved parties. By highlighting card holder rights that most credit card issuers won't publicize, Bolofsky says the letters have a staggering 95 percent success rate.
Blofsky's other creation, Parkingticket.com, claims to have resolved more than $100 million in fines since launching in 2001, and because it typically charges 50 percent of a ticket's original cost to provide its services, the privately held company is turning a profit.
Disputemycharge.com demands a flat rate of $9.95 for disputes under $100 and offers a money-back guarantee for $3 more. For disputes over $100, the company uses a sliding scale that it says "escalates minimally." For disputes of $1,000 or more, the company charges a customer 10 percent of the disputed amount with a guarantee, or 7 percent without any promises.
Bolofsky said the most frequently disputed charges are related to either recurring services such as gym memberships and cell phone subscription plans, where charges are automatically added to consumers' bills, or for on-the-go payments to companies an individual might not visit frequently in person, such as airlines, car rental companies and hotels.
By going directly to merchants to dispute charges, Bolofsky claims his company saves people a significant amount of time and frustration.
"People are using the service because they don't like talking to some customer service rep at a credit card company's backend operation and spending 30 minutes on the phone with them," he said. "Our system takes them less than five minutes, and they don't have to listen to any music on hold."
The entrepreneur said that most consumers don't know that when they dispute a charge with a credit card company, those companies are just as likely to side with the merchant responsible for the questionable fees. And because many large companies hire specialized personnel and legal departments to fend off paying out refunds, consumers are often left at a distinct disadvantage.
"It doesn't matter what industry you're talking about, whether it's Verizon, Hertz or JetBlue, they win more than half the disputes consumers make," Bolofsky said. "The banks like us because their card members are happy, and even merchants like us because they don't want to pay the charge-back fees demanded by most card issuers."
http://news.com.com/Ticket+fixer+tak...3-5606393.html
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Music Sharing Faces A New Battle
For years now, consumers have repeatedly heard that copying artistic works basically equals stealing directly from the artists.
But history may suggest otherwise.
One need look no further than the infamous Betamax case, when major Hollywood studios filed suit against Sony, claiming that the ability to tape at home on VCRs was copyright infringement and threatened the economic future of their industry. Nevertheless, Hollywood continues to thrive today despite DVD technology.
The precedent set by the Supreme Court's decision in 1984 is an issue that the court will begin hearing in another case that begins March 29, but this time involving the major record labels and peer-to-peer software providers that allow consumers to download and share music files.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which is the lobbying arm of major record labels in the United States, claims "P2P" sharing is taking money directly from the artists' pockets. So much so that it's filed a staggering 6,500 lawsuits against P2P users, including people as young as a 12-year-old girl and as old as a 71- year-old grandfather.
The RIAA is negotiating settlements for an average of $3,000, so hopefully Britney Spears is getting a fair cut. There are two problems with the RIAA's argument, though. One is the recording industry's repeated attempt to convince the public (and perhaps its artists) that it is "all one family." Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, has hammered this notion home at the Grammy Awards for the past two years.
But the idea of family hardly rings true when the Federal Trade Commission finds that more than 85 percent of the total market is held by just five major labels: Time Warner, Sony, EMI, UMG and BMG.
The other, and perhaps more critical, problem is that for many artists, P2P file sharing constitutes both a legal and essential way to distribute their music.
Ask Jason Mraz, the acoustic rock artist who says in briefs filed in the Supreme Court case that half of the fans who pay to see him in concert heard about him through illegal downloading.
Two lower-court rulings said owners of file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus are not liable for illegal downloads made through the use of their software.
Both the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America have stated that file sharing essentially robs artists of proper compensation for their work, but some artists opposing the industry's position make the claim that shutting down the file-sharing services would rob them of something priceless: a chance.
After all, if the RIAA had its way, Mraz could soon be performing to an empty arena.
http://www.bgnews.com/vnews/display..../4236e7f8ca79d
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Checking Out Spamalot
David Pogue
Last week, for my 42nd birthday, my wife "kidnapped" me to see "Spamalot," the new Monty Python musical directed by Mike Nichols, in previews. I laughed so hard that I nearly asphyxiated myself, especially in the first act. I got the distinct impression that I was seeing the next "Producers"-style Broadway smash hit before it had even opened. You read it here first.
Anyway, you can imagine my amusement to read (in The Times!) that somebody pretty easily cracked the e-mail signup page at montypythonsspamalot.com. There, for an unnamed "reporter from The New York Times" to see, were all 19,000 registered e- mail addresses, ripe for copying and adding to mailing lists.
Which, of course, would lead to--spam. Get it? The irony is just too good.
Especially because, as urban lore has it, the very term "spam," as applied to junk e-mail, originally came from an old Monty Python skit.
(P.S.--You gotta love Eric Idle, the driving authorial force behind "Spamalot." In his show memoir at the Web site, he writes: "Thank God for computers, because mine tells me I began writing the first draft of Spamalot on Monday December 31st 2001. I downloaded the text of the [Monty Python and the Holy] Grail [movie] from one of the many illicit websites, which thankfully saved me all the bother of typing out the script and I could paste and cut and rewrite as necessary." He downloaded his own script!? What would the Author's Guild have to say about THAT?)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/te...ts/17stat.html
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A Quest Beyond the Grail
Ben Brantley
THE meeting of the Broadway chapter of the Monty Python fan club officially came to order - or to be exact, came to disorder - last night at the Shubert Theater with the opening of "Monty Python's Spamalot," a resplendently silly new musical.
Favorite routines first created by that surreal British comedy team for the 1975 movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" were performed with an attention to detail found among obsessive history buffs who re-enact Civil War battles on weekends. Python songs were sung with the giggly glee of naughty Boy Scouts around a campfire. And festive decorations were provided in the form of medieval cartoon costumes and scenery helpfully described in the show as "very expensive."
It seems safe to say that such a good time is being had by so many people (including the cast) at the Shubert Theater that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity will find a large and lucrative audience among those who value the virtues of shrewd idiocy, artful tackiness and wide-eyed impiety. That includes most school-age children as well as grown-ups who feel they are never more themselves than when they are in touch with the nerdy, nose-thumbing 12-year-olds who reside within.
"Spamalot," which is directed (improbably enough) by that venerable master of slickness Mike Nichols, is the latest entry in the expanding Broadway genre of scrapbook musical theater. Such ventures, which include flesh-and-blood versions of Disney cartoons and jukebox karaoke shows like "Mamma Mia!," reconstruct elements from much-loved cultural phenomena with wide fan bases. Only rarely do these productions match, much less surpass, the appeal of what inspired them. Generally, they simply serve as colorful aides-mémoire for the pop group, television show or movie to which they pay tribute. Within this category, "Spamalot" ranks high, right up there with (try not to wince, Pythonites) the sweetly moronic "Mamma Mia!," which repackages the disco hits of Abba into a comfy singalong frolic.
This means it is possible for theatergoers who are not Python devotees to enjoy themselves at "Spamalot," which has a book and lyrics by Eric Idle (an original Python) and music by John Du Prez and Mr. Idle. It would seem unchivalrous not to share in at least some of the pleasure that is being experienced by a cast that includes Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce and a toothsome devourer of scenery named Sara Ramirez.
Still, the uninitiated may be bewildered when laughs arrive even before a scene gets under way. The mere appearance of a figure in a certain costume (say, a headpiece with ram's horns) or the utterance of a single word (i.e., "ni") is enough to provoke anticipatory guffaws among the cognoscenti. Punch lines come to seem almost irrelevant.
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was the first film feature from a troupe that revolutionized sketch comedy. First seen on British television in 1969 with the series "Monty Python's Flying Circus," this group of Oxbridge-erudite young Brits (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Mr. Idle) and one American soul mate (Terry Gilliam) combined the anarchy of the Marx Brothers with a rarefied British spirit of absurdity and a straight-faced irreverence regarding all sacred cows. "The Holy Grail" stayed true to the formula of the Python television series, channeling the troupe's vision of a disjointed world of colliding sensibilities and cultural references into a retelling of the myth of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Much of the joy of "The Holy Grail" lies in its imaginative use of its low budget, turning limited locations and homemade props into a comment on the bogusness of cinematic authenticity. And the cast peerlessly delivered its fatuous material with unconditional sincerity.
The moviemaker's self-consciousness that infused "The Holy Grail" has been reconceived in theatrical terms for "Spamalot." (Tim Hatley's deliriously artificial sets and costumes bring to mind a collaboration between a cynical Las Vegas resort designer and a stoned class committee for a junior-senior prom.) So the fractured tale of the quest of King Arthur (Mr. Curry) and his ditsy knights for the Holy Grail has been woven into another quest: that of bringing the king and his entourage to the enchanted land called Broadway.
This expressed goal makes "Spamalot" a two-tiered operation. On the one hand there is the dutiful acting out of the movie's most famous set pieces (the killer-rabbit scene, the bring-out-your-dead scene, the taunting Frenchman scene, etc.). On the other hand, and (surprisingly) it's the friskier hand, the show spoofs classic song-and- dance extravaganzas, suggesting what the satiric revue "Forbidden Broadway" might be like if it had an $11 million budget.
The vignettes lifted straight from the movie have an ersatz quality, in the way of secondhand jokes that are funnier in their original context. Broadway performance demands an exaggeration that doesn't always jibe with the unblinking earnestness of the Python style. (The interpolated song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" loses the shock appeal it had when it was first sung, by a chorus of men nailed to crucifixes, in another Python movie, "Life of Brian.")
That said, Mr. Azaria (part of the brilliant team of voices behind "The Simpsons" cartoon series) plies his sterling mimetic skills to evoke exactly such fabled figures from the film as the towering Knight of Ni (he wears stilts), the inept warlock known as Tim the Enchanter and the nasty French Taunter who specializes in English-baiting insults. (Mr. Azaria's main role, by the way, is Lancelot, who finds happiness when he discovers his inner Peter Allen.)
Mr. Curry, of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," is the best of the cast at translating classic Python style into a musical-comedy idiom. His stalwart, plummy-voiced Arthur wears a smile as inflexible as armor, and it deflects any suggestion that this manly king is in on the show's jokes.
Christopher Sieber - who, like most of the cast, plays an assortment of roles - is delightful as a Sir Galahad who tosses his blond tresses as if he were auditioning for a Clairol commercial. And Mr. Hyde Pierce (famous as the neurotic Niles on the sitcom "Frasier") appears to be having such a fine time that it seems impolite to observe that he is not a natural for this material. Still, in the role of the cowardly Sir Robin, he brings a genial Rex Harrison-style dapperness to a patter number about the importance of including Jews in any Broadway show.
The moments when "Spamalot" rises into the ether are those in which it pays homage - à la "The Producers" - to other kinds of Broadway musicals, with bobble-headed nods to the Vegas revue thrown in. The "Knights of the Round Table" number that introduces the swinging pleasure palace called Camelot is a deliciously cheesy, cheesecake-laden floor show, with Arthur morphing into a Rat Pack-style master of ceremonies. (Casey Nicholaw is the choreographer.)
But the tastiest satiric juice is provided by Ms. Ramirez, who plays Arthur's buxom but ethereal love interest, the Lady of the Lake. Whether warmly overseeing her (yes) Laker girls as they cheer the knights, mangling a soul ballad "American Idol"-style or working the stage like Liza at Caesars Palace, Ms. Ramirez knows how to send up vintage performance styles until they go into orbit. The evening's high point involves Ms. Ramirez and Mr. Sieber floating on stage in a boat, illuminated by a newly descended chandelier.
Music of the night, indeed. But what turns this fanged tribute to "The Phantom of the Opera" into more than a one-joke routine is the song, a cunning deconstruction of the repetitive, voice-taxing Andrew Lloyd Webber method titled "The Song That Goes Like This." "Spamalot" also cheerfully invokes the gleaming anthems of hope from shows like "Man of La Mancha" and the camp, pelvis-pumping chorus of "The Boy From Oz."
Do these disparate elements hang together in any truly compelling way? Not really. That "Spamalot" is the best new musical to open on Broadway this season is inarguable, but that's not saying much. The show is amusing, agreeable, forgettable - a better-than-usual embodiment of the musical for theatergoers who just want to be reminded now and then of a few of their favorite things.
'Monty Python's Spamalot'
Book and lyrics by Eric Idle; music by John Du Prez and Mr. Idle. Inspired by the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Directed by Mike Nichols; choreography by Casey Nicholaw; sets and costumes by Tim Hatley; lighting by Hugh Vanstone; sound by Acme Sound Partners; hair and wigs by David Brian Brown; special effects by Gregory Meeh; projection design by Elaine J. McCarthy; music director/vocal arrangements, Todd Ellison; orchestrations by Larry Hochman; music arrangements by Glen Kelly; music coordinator, Michael Keller; associate producers, Randi Grossman and Tisch/Avnet Financial. Presented by Boyett Ostar Productions, the Shubert Organization, Arielle Tepper, Stephanie McClelland/Lawrence Horowitz, Elan V. McAllister/Allan S. Gordon, Independent Presenters Network, Roy Furman, GRS Associates, Jam Theatricals, TGA Entertainment and Clear Channel Entertainment. At the Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
WITH: David Hyde Pierce (Sir Robin, Guard 1 and Brother Maynard), Tim Curry (King Arthur), Hank Azaria (Sir Lancelot, the French Taunter, Knight of Ni and Tim the Enchanter), Christopher Sieber (Sir Dennis Galahad, the Black Knight and Prince Herbert's Father), Michael McGrath (Mayor, Patsy and Guard 2), Steve Rosen (Dennis's Mother, Sir Bedevere and Concorde), Christian Borle (Historian, Not Dead Fred, French Guard, Minstrel and Prince Herbert) and Sara Ramirez (the Lady of the Lake).
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/03/...ws/18spam.html
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Who Will Free Fiona Apple?
Suddenly on the Internet: A flood of unreleased bootlegs sung by a goddess. What gives?
Mark Morford
It started with two little songs.
Two little, beautifully crafted, wonderfully quirky, secretly bootlegged, commercially unavailable versions of two Fiona Apple songs that very few people have ever heard because, well, they're from a Fiona Apple album called "Extraordinary Machine" that was actually never released anywhere in the world. Never. As in not ever.
And you could find those two amazing songs, the title track and one called "Better Version of Me," on many a not-so-secret download site and P2P service for the past year or more, and they were small balm indeed for the legion of Apple fans who were desperate for any taste or sigh or glimpse of the waiflike goddess, any snippet of new tune to come their way like manna, as Apple hasn't released any new work in over five years, since she was knee-high to a weird angry self-immolating 19-year-old diva prodigy.
Apple is, in case you forgot, the luscious Grammy-winning songstress who penned "Criminal" and whose second album had a title that was 57 words long (shorthanded as "When the Pawn ...") and who, as this column has long lamented, seemed to vanish from the pop music scene six years back and who I have been long hoping will return to reclaim her position as skinny doe-eyed ruler of the divine female songstress universe and squash the Norahs and the Avrils and the Vanessa Carltons and the Michelle Branches with her astounding breathy smoky jazzy throaty vocal skills and delirious songwriting prowess and soul-healing hip-gyration proficiency.
Alas, the wait has been endless. And painful. And barely allayed by the likes of astounding newcomers Rachel Yamagata and Cat Power and Jesse Sykes et al. But still.
But here's where it gets funky. "Extraordinary Machine" is an album that Apple finished over two years ago, but which was quickly shelved by the sad corporate drones over at Sony because they didn't "hear a single" and because it doesn't sound exactly like Norah Jones and because they're, well, corporate drones. They dictate cultural tastes based on relatively narrow and often deeply ignorant criteria related to marketing and money and fear of the new and the different. This is what they do.
In other words, it was shelved because it's different, unique, a little eccentric, all bells and oompah horns and strings and oddly lovely circuslike arrangements, and you as the co-opted overmarketed oversold listening audience can't really handle anything like that, anything challenging or interesting or distinctive or deeply cool or lacking in prepackaged backbeats that sound just like Kelly Clarkson or maybe "American Idiot," even if it comes from an stupendously talented world-class Grammy-winning artist. Right? Isn't that you? Doesn't matter. This is what they believe.
But now, a hot new twist. The rest of "Extraordinary Machine" has, somehow, been leaked onto this fair Internet. All of it. Every song, some at first sounding not all that complete and some reportedly with only tentative titles, but, then again, a DJ at a radio station up in Seattle (the End 107.7) somehow managed to get his hands on the whole album and has apparently been playing almost every track and it's all much more finished and incredible than anyone thought.
And fans have been whipping the tracks into high-quality MP3s and splaying them all over the Net, and Rolling Stone and MTV and other media have picked up on the odd story, noting how fans are calling into the station like mad and most everyone loves the songs and protest Web sites like freefiona.com (alongside dedicated fan sites like fionaapple.org) have popped up to try and get some action and yet Sony refuses to actually release the album and the corporate drones remain mum and everyone's wondering just what the hell's going on.
Is it the dumbest test-marketing scheme in Sony history? Is it a silly corporate ploy to gauge fan interest two years after the album should have been released? The DJ, apparently, ain't telling where he got his copy, but, so far, he has yet to receive a cease-and-desist from Sony, and, while some ISPs are sending threatening notes to bloggers who post the songs and the RIAA is probably having colon spasms, the songs aren't exactly all that difficult to find.
Fans, meanwhile, are gushing. The songs are, by and large, mesmerizing and distinctive and completely wonderful slices of funky art pop, showcasing Apple's trademark languid, off-time verse style and eccentric lyricism and increasingly rich and mellifluous and still quite gorgeous voice that never feels the need to yell or oversing or jump multiple octaves into obnoxious glass-shattering range.
As for Apple herself, well, rumor has it she really didn't care all that much about Sony's lameness two years back, really didn't feel a driving need to be slammed back into the soul-mauling pop music spotlight and therefore didn't really push all that hard to have "EM" released.
And while she is also reportedly very happy to hear about the current mad fan support regarding the album, according to a brief interview with producer Jon Brion, he says she also knows it ain't all that radio friendly and might not ever make a gazillion dollars and she doesn't really care. Which is, of course, what makes her so goddamn wonderful.
All of which simply serves as a potent reminder, an illuminative example of the everpresence of the Big Dance, the all-pervasive push-pull between the free voice and the corporate-controlled one, between the art and the marketing, between the rawly creative and the Wal-Mart floor display, between the Fiona Apple and the profit quotient.
And now, that dance has become more heated, more intense and vicious than ever before. The corporations have consolidated power, have turned into ugly profit-driven monoliths hell bent on clinging to their dwindling earnings and archaic business models despite the wild shifts in culture and technology.
As meanwhile any Net user worth her blog or encryption software knows multiple means for downloading a nice free copy of the latest astounding Rufus Wainwright album or a fine copy of the brilliant cult hit movie "Donnie Darko," sans money and sans guilt and sans anything resembling serious concern for the well being of SonyViacomDisneyMicrosoft.
This, then, is the bottom line. The rules are changing fast. Great songs want to be free. Fiona Apple is singing anew, despite the corporate crackdown and the RIAA sneers, and it's all just more proof positive that you can't really contain or restrain raw human talent, can't kill the need for true creative prowess, and that goddamn flower is gonna crack through that corporate concrete no matter how much weed killer they pour on it. The commercial dictatorship is crumbling. New songs are being sung, in spite of the old rules. Really, really good songs. Sung by a goddess.
You want to hear them? All you have to do is
click.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...otes031605.DTL
Until next week,
-
js.
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