[JackSpratts]

Rock Band Shows Fans How To Crack DRM

'Heavy hearted' musician publishes digital rights management workaround
Ken Young

A rock musician has expressed anger at digital rights management (DRM) technology after hearing complaints from fans who are having difficulty importing his group's songs to programs like iTunes.

Speaking on a music forum, Tim Foreman, bassist with San Diego rock band Switchfoot, wrote: "My heart is heavy with this whole copy-protection thing.

"We were horrified when we first heard about the new copy-protection policy that is being implemented by most major labels, including Sony (our own label), and immediately looked into all our options for removing this from our new album.

"Unfortunately, this is the new policy for all new major releases from these record companies. It is heartbreaking to see our blood, sweat and tears over the past two years blurred by the confusion and frustration surrounding this new technology.

"It is also unfortunate when bands such as ourselves, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, etc. are the target of this criticism, when there is no possible way to avoid this new industry policy."

Foreman then went on to provide details of how to crack the digital rights protection.

He justified his actions saying: "We refuse to allow corporate policy to taint the family we've developed together.

"We deeply regret that there exists the need for any of our listeners to spend more than 30 seconds importing our music, but we're asking as friends and partners in this journey together to spend the extra 10 minutes that it takes to import these songs."

John Buckman, founder of music download service Magnatune, said: "Users do not want DRM so I am not surprised that a band is doing this.

"Music sales are sold by the four majors and not many bands are actually in favour of DRM because it stops you ripping CDs and is implemented in a range of ways by the online music sellers like iTunes.

"Advising fans to get round the technology could be a bit risky. It is a crime in the US to subvert DRM and therefore it may be a crime to incite people to do so."

The title of Switchfoot's latest album, Nothing is Sound, seems strangely prescient.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...fans-round-drm




DRM wasn’t ready

Nokia Delays N91 Music Mobile Phone
Rex Merrifield

Mobile phone giant Nokia said on Tuesday it was delaying the launch of its premium N91 music phone until the first quarter of next year.

The company said it wanted to ensure that the phone, holding thousands of songs, would work on the widest range of music platforms and be a true "jukebox" mobile phone.

That compares with the Rokr music phone launched by Motorola Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. this month, which stores 100 songs and works with Apple's

iTunes music store.

The Finnish mobile firm had originally planned to get the N91 onto the market during the last quarter of this year, in time for the Christmas and end-of-year holiday seasons.

"What we basically decided is that we will postpone it a few weeks, push it out to Q1 and do this Microsoft DRM implementation solidly," Jonas Geust, vice president of music in Nokia's Multimedia division, said in an interview.

"And that's how we want to ensure that we get a great user experience already from launch."

Microsoft Corp.'s Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform allows the controlled transfer of music or other copyrighted material between computer or mobile phone.

Nokia said it wanted consumers to be free to choose how to get their music -- from CDs copied to a PC, directly from Internet stores, or from their mobile network operator -- and be able to harmonize their collections at the click of a button.

That would mean they are not locked into a single channel, such as Apple's iTunes.

The N91 multimedia phone's 4-gigabyte hard drive stores up to 3,000 songs, using advanced coding systems to minimize space needed. The phone will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks.

Music Choices

Geust declined to give Nokia's sales expectations or say which telecoms firms were keen to offer the N91 to their subscribers.

"What we can say is there is great interest from the big, big operators and we are actively working on integrating their preferred music services onto the devices," he said.

Asked what Nokia thought about the Rokr, Geust said competition would increase consumers' awareness of music devices, adding only: "We see quite a few limitations on the choices there, but those have been debated in public already."

Critics have said the Rokr's limited storage hampers its ability to compete with portable music players. It is being offered by U.S. operator Cingular; several operators in Britain are expected to offer it soon.

Nokia announced on Monday it was launching a new music edition of its 6630 smartphone to compete in the market for music on the move. That model, with a memory card that can store up to 15 CDs, would start shipping later this month in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Unlike the N91 it does not allow for music downloads from Internet music stores.

Nokia said it was using open computer platforms and wanted Internet service providers to develop applications to work with them.

"Let it be that whatever brands in the world are providing music services, or let it be iTunes, we welcome all of those initiatives and that is what we basically have been investing in and working on for years, by developing these platforms," Geust said.

Mobile users should be able to grab music by subscription, as offered by Yahoo Inc. <YHOO.O>, or on a pay-per-song basis and Nokia was in talks with mobile operators on this.

"We have a very strong joint interest to ensure that 3G networks are there to support the download of music," he said.

Nokia expected that pay-per-song downloads over the air direct to the mobile would be charged at a premium, compared to downloads over broadband connections at home.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/news...archived=False





On campus

Just What the Professor Ordered
Ian Ayres

IN time for the new school year, the Government Accountability Office has released a sobering report on the soaring price of textbooks. Over the past two decades, the report tells us, "college textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation."

We're used to paying $25 for a hardcover novel, but my casebook on contracts now sells to students for $103, and the best-selling general chemistry textbook (co- authored by my father-in-law) costs $148. At state universities, textbooks and supplies account for 26 percent of all student fees, including tuition. At junior colleges, they are a whopping 72 percent.

The G.A.O. report falls short, however, by attributing this run-up in prices to the development of "CD-ROM's and other instructional supplements." The real problem is the lack of price competition. A series of mergers has ensured that although there are hundreds of textbooks to choose from, the five largest publishers control 80 percent of the market.

It's easy for prices to drift upward when the person choosing the product doesn't really care how much it costs. Instead of competing on price, publishers compete for professors' attention with an excess of computerized bells and whistles.

Indeed, the pricing problems with textbooks are eerily analogous to those affecting prescription drugs. In both cases you have doctors (Ph.D.'s or M.D.'s) prescribing products. In neither case does the doctor pay for the product prescribed - in many cases, he or she doesn't even know what it costs. And the clincher is that in both cases, the manufacturers sell the same product at substantially reduced prices abroad.

The analogy to prescription drugs suggests a possible solution. Perhaps universities can take a lesson from managed health care. Health maintenance organizations are often criticized for being too stingy, but let's not forget that they've played an important role in containing health care costs.

So just imagine what would happen if universities started to provide textbooks to their students as part of the tuition package. Of course tuition would have to rise, but for the first time universities would start caring about whether their professors were too extravagant in the selection of class materials.

This "textbook maintenance organization" wouldn't require a huge centralized bureaucracy. Universities would probably give professors a textbook budget per student. Those who exceeded the budget would have to seek their deans' approval. Some enlightened colleges might even give a share of the savings to professors who don't use up all of their budgets.

Even publishers might not do so badly under this new system. Under the current arrangement, many students protest exorbitant prices by simply refusing to buy textbooks. They make do with slightly older editions, read library copies or share with other students.

Not only do publishers lose these sales, but teachers are irritated because students cannot read along in class or look up information that is relevant to the discussion. Under textbook maintenance organizations, we'd return to the old days where everyone was on the same page.

Still think a system where schools provide free textbooks would never work? Well, we already have one at the elementary and secondary levels. Unlike Hogwarts, which requires Harry Potter to buy books each year, most American public schools own their assigned books and buy new editions only when it's absolutely necessary.

Such a system at the university level would also do away with some conflicts of interest. Because at the moment, professors' incentives in choosing textbooks are in some ways more distorted than doctors' incentives in choosing drugs. You see, I earn a $10.30 royalty on every copy of my textbook that a student buys. Instead of just trying to get the best book for my class (and to do so I should weigh both quality and price), I might also consider assigning my own book and increasing my profit.

This is a self-dealing transaction, which would be presumptively illegal if professors owed a fiduciary duty to students. Some professors realize this and donate to charity the royalties they earn when they assign students their own books.

So this year, I am going to do something different. I will give $11 to each of my contracts students who buys my book. That way, we will all know that I assigned the book for the right reason. The textbook isn't included with my students' tuition, but at least in my contracts class the royalty will be.

Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School, is a co-author of the textbook "Studies in Contract Law."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/op...icle_popular_3





LionShare Provides Legal, Free File Sharing
Bethany Fehlinger

Penn State students can still use the test pilot version of Penn State's file-sharing service LionShare, but there is no exact timeline for the release of the official university-wide service.

LionShare is not yet a service for Penn State students and faculty but a research and development project, LionShare Project Director Michael Halm said.

The project uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that is downloaded and used for file sharing, Jim Frost, previous research project associate, said.

The project is an attempt to create a quality program from P2P that is not only powerful but also legal, said Richard Doyle, director of the composition program in the English department.

Halm said LionShare is "responsible file sharing related to academic content" and focuses on accessing files for collaboration of classes, project groups, research groups and contact with other universities.

"Historically, universities were focused on inquiry and the free exchange of information," Doyle said.

Frost said LionShare's only restriction is that copyrighted material cannot be shared. The program won't eliminate illegal file sharing 100 percent, but the user's name will be next to each file they shared, he said.

"We are trying to keep LionShare a legitimate, academic, file-sharing space," he added.

However, an enforcement policy to prevent illegal file sharing has not yet been developed, Frost said.

The LionShare 1.0 test pilot was presented yesterday at the Internet2 meeting in Philadelphia, and the program will be released to the public on Sept. 30.

Halm said Penn State still needs to figure out the infrastructure of the program so it can be provided as a service and able to handle the expected volume of usage.

However, unlike many anonymous file sharing applications, sharing and downloading files on LionShare will be private by using a Penn State access account, Frost said.

Using their access account name as a screen name, users can also take advantage of an instant-messenger application to talk to others on LionShare, Halm said.

Users that do not have an access account can still download LionShare but can use the service for searching and viewing only, Frost said.

Trey Conner (graduate-English) said his English 202C (Technical Writing) students installed LionShare on the computers in Waring Dining Commons over the summer and tested the program. Additionally, Conner said he told the students to write what worked and what did not in their class journals.

Conner, who collaborated with Frost on the project, said users can openly share and download files, but there are some limitations on who can use the service and what they can share.

LionShare is different from any other service provided by Penn State because it is more flexible with the size of files, and the viewing restrictions are up to the user. For example, users can restrict file sharing to classmates, Frost said.

The university was awarded a $1.1 million grant in 2003 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help develop the technology. The Simon Fraser University of Canada is also helping to develop LionShare with Penn State.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive...05dnews-05.asp





University, Entertainment Industry Leaders Address Campus File-Sharing In Report To Congress

Schools with legitimate music, movie services more than triple; local area networks, iTunes hacks among biggest challenges ahead

Informed by reports from college and university presidents across the country, the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities today (Sept. 21) issued an update to Congress outlining the latest efforts to address illegal file-sharing on campuses and the emerging challenges ahead.

The new report highlights considerable progress during the past academic year in the growth of legitimate music and movie services, the adoption of technological measures, and education and enforcement programs on campuses. According to the report, the number of schools with legitimate services on campus has more than tripled to nearly 70 in the last year. As a result, more than 670,000 students now have access to a legitimate music service through their university -- a number that is rapidly on the rise.

Despite these great strides, the report also cites several key challenges in need of immediate attention within the university community. According to the report, student-run file-sharing systems on schools' Local Area Networks (LANs) as well as the increased use of unauthorized hacks of the legitimate online service iTunes are emerging as significant problems.

"Universities have made impressive progress in combating piracy of music and movies through educational efforts, technical controls, and the adoption of legitimate on-line services," said Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and the Committee's co-chairman. "At the same time, we in higher education must expand the reach of our efforts and must continue to be vigilant."

"When it comes to file-sharing, students are beginning the new academic year this fall in a vastly different climate than we saw even one year ago," said Cary Sherman, RIAA president and the Committee's other co-chairman. "We are thrilled to see the number of schools offering legitimate services more than triple in the last year and remain hopeful that these partnerships will continue to flourish. At the same time, complacency looms as a constant threat to the tremendous progress we have made. As the landscape changes, so must the anti-piracy programs within the university community. There is much promise in the coming years, but our work is far from done."

Comprised of leaders representing universities, higher education organizations, and music and motion picture executives, the Joint Committee was formed in 2002 to develop collaborative solutions to address illegal file-sharing at colleges and universities.

The committee aims to provide a range of resources to school administrators in three basic areas: educational efforts (including practices surrounding the use of copyrighted works and student responsibility), technological solutions (including computer network management technologies available to reduce illegal file sharing and the development of legal, campus-based music and movie/entertainment services), and examining differences and exploring prospects for collaboration on legislative initiatives.

The report released today will be submitted to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, in anticipation of a hearing to be held by the Subcommittee on Thursday, September 22nd. It is a follow-up to an August 2004 report to the Subcommittee, which has long been focusing on illegal file-sharing on college campuses.
http://live.psu.edu/story/13595





Colleges Combat Illegal File Sharing
Iza Wojciechowska

In the wake of recent lawsuits over illegal file sharing, many universities are making moves to prevent their students from incurring legal action.

After giving last year’s freshmen iPods and digital recording devices, Duke continued its iPod revolution this year with selective in-class distribution. But in addition to the educational benefits the University hopes students will gain from such technology, the gadgets may also encourage illegal file sharing.

Though the University had nine official violations of its peer-to-peer sharing policy last academic year, no official action is being taken to change students’ accessibility to music and movie files.

Some universities, however, are trying to take initiative and protect their students from lawsuits by providing them with safe methods of transferring files to each other.

“We subscribe to Napster, and it’s personally funded by student activities fees from the student activities board on campus,” said Jeff Rehbach, facilities manager and policy advisor for library and information services at Middlebury College.

Middlebury students have been using the legal file-sharing system for two years and have thus far had no inquiries from the Recording Industry Association of America. Before it began using Napster, the college was averaging 10 to 20 legal cases monthly, Rehbach said, adding that so far Napster has proven a good investment for the student body.

At Duke, students are referred to the Office of Judicial Affairs after receiving more than three notices from the RIAA, which constitutes a policy violation.

Despite the complications, officials do not want to prohibit students from using file-sharing technology.

“Duke’s take is that peer-to-peer software can be used for both legal and illegal purposes, and given that fact, we will not block its use on the Duke network,” said Chris Cramer, information technology security officer.

Some schools like Emory University had similar concerns but took a more drastic step, blocking peer-to-peer software from their student networks altogether.

“We are not stopping them from downloading what they need for academic research or for their school—we are just not allowing them to do it via P2P applications,” said Jay Flanagan, security administrator for technical services at Emory.

He added that the administration was prompted to move in this direction because of viruses, hackers and copyright issues. Of more than 4,000 students on the network, only 10 have complained about the new policy, Flanagan said.

Administrators at the University of Washington also acknowledged the dual nature of peer- to-peer sharing, but they realized that it is inevitable that students will share music and movies. As a potential solution, UW is following in Middlebury’s footsteps this fall. It will implement the use of Napster for its students in addition to making local radio broadcasts available on the Internet.

“It allows us to move forward in experimenting with providing digital materials to our students in ways they may find interesting,” said Oren Sreebney, director of client services and learning technologies for computing and communications at UW. “We’re trying a whole bunch of different things in terms of trying to just move legally.”

Duke administrators, look into the possibility of acquiring Napster or similar programs annually, but as of now no changes are being considered to alter the current policies. “Every year we feel more strongly that there’s no reason to do this,” said Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs. “The market for downloadable music and other books and films is more publicly accessible every year.”

Moneta said having an institutionalized network would most likely have no impact on students, and those who download files illegally would probably continue to do so.

Such violations at the Napster-using universities may still be present, but diminished. Some students argue that the programs are not as beneficial as they may seem, in part because of incompatibility with computers and in part because of inconvenience.

“I don’t personally use the [Napster] policy because I have an Apple and it’s not available on my computer, but those who do use it say that the selection is extremely limited and really not worth the trouble,” Middlebury freshman Mario Ariza said.
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/.../4331417534424





File Sharing Options Plentiful

UNC yet to take definitive action
Brian Hudson

The UNC system has moved ahead with plans to allow system schools to install legal music downloading, but in the mean time, UNC-Chapel Hill officials are continuing to shop for a permanent service provider.

During the summer, UNC-system officials signed contracts with music providers Cdigix and Ruckus, and they signed a contract Thursday with Napster.

In the spring semester UNC-system schools established free pilot programs on six campuses that allowed students to use those three companies and Rhapsody.

The contracts with the companies are bare on details, and individual campuses are expected to set out the finer points of their music downloading programs, said Tom Warner, director of coordinated technology management for the UNC system Office of the President.

“It just sets a foundation so if one of the campuses, one of the schools would want to do this, there’s the foundation there,” he said.

UNC-CH has not made a definitive move on installing a permanent music downloading program.

“I will say we have not made any decision at this point,” said Jeanne Smythe, director for computing policy for UNC-CH.

She said Information Technology Services officials are continuing to hear proposals from companies, and they also are looking to how other system schools will react.

When implemented, the program probably will require students to pay individually, Smythe said, rather than requiring the entire student body to pay.

As UNC-CH officials hear proposals from downloading providers, the possibility of introducing legal movie downloading has come up in the discussions.

“Some of the providers have limited movie offerings as well as music downloading,” Smythe said.

But because downloading movies requires more Internet bandwidth, the idea is still on the drawing board.

“Understand we really are in the infancy here,” Smythe said.

UNC-system officials have not considered exclusive contracts with a movie downloading provider, Warner said, but they would consider it if it was something system schools pushed for.

“We just wait for the schools to tell us what they’re interested in.”
http://www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/di.../4330dcd4cb2e4





What's a Shut-In to Build? A Robot
Charles Isherwood

Jennifer Marcus, ensconced in the messy fortress of her bedroom, clicking away at the keyboard and refusing to take out the garbage, is a suburban mom's worst nightmare, for sure. But the feisty heroine of "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow," a new play by Rolin Jones, isn't beaming instant messages to her girlfriends, retailing gossip about boys or news of shoe sales. She's swapping technospeak with rocket scientists, hellbent on creating her very own android.

This boldly imagined, even far-fetched notion provides the dramatic impetus for Mr. Jones's fanciful comedy, which has been staged with playful affection by Jackson Gay. The glaring topicality of the title is a little misleading. The play, which opened last night at the Atlantic Theater Company, does not concern itself with the possibility of divine intervention in the course of human evolution. The intelligent design is Jennifer's scheme to whip up that robot, who will be dubbed Jenny Chow and will venture where her homebound creator cannot.

Jennifer, you see, is a Generation-Y (or is it Z?) model of that familiar type, the troubled genius. She sticks to her bedroom because she can't step outside the front door. Sometime in high school, a garden-variety obsessive-compulsive disorder morphed into a wicked case of agoraphobia. Now Jennifer's only contacts with live human beings are hissing confrontations with her irritable, overworked mom, idle exchanges with her pleasantly passive dad and occasional visits from the pizza-delivery guy, who is also her quasiboyfriend.

Mr. Jones unfolds his tale of pioneering science fueled by post-adolescent angst with pleasing agility. Although much of the play consists of e-mail exchanges improbably cast in dialogue form, "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" possesses a brisk theatricality that attests to Mr. Jones's own assured design skills and his gift for capturing the voices of pleasingly curious characters. ("Um, so I got a job re-engineering obsolete missile components after I lost my job at the mall," Jennifer explains, deadpan, to one of her correspondents.)

Mr. Jones and Ms. Gay, in collaboration with the gifted set designer Takeshi Kata and lighting designer Tyler Micoleau, also conjure onstage a poetic vision of today's world that feels fresh and true, funny and mildly saddening. It's a place where intimacy between ardent e-mail correspondents proves more durable than the bonds between members of a family living under the same roof, and emotional distance is more easily bridged by technology than human interaction.

In the pursuit of her goal, Jennifer forges firm digital relationships with a rumpled Russian-born scientist, an aeronautics engineer and a Mormon missionary (all played with boisterous energy by the skilled caricaturist Remy Auberjonois). Her mother Adele (Linda Gehringer), meanwhile, insisting on communication of the old-fashioned verbal kind, drives Jennifer deeper into her own personal cybercocoon.

Jennifer's loneliness - and perhaps her illness, too - derives both from the brilliance that set her apart and a deeper sense of unbelonging tied to her origins. An adoptee, she's Chinese by birth, and her dogged attempts to fit the mold of California girlhood (she was even the school mascot for a while) masked a profound alienation. As she and her mother have gradually evolved into antagonists, Jennifer has become more curious about her birth mother. The Jenny Chow project is her ambitious attempt to pursue some answers.

Mr. Jones's natural ear for the layered patterns of speech (and the distinctive syntax of the e-mail) is notable and commendable. (Michael Cullen and Ryan King are terrific as Jennifer's contrastingly quirky father and friend, respectively.) But a play cannot succeed equally as a sci-fi adventure story and a comedy-drama about a fraying family trying to stitch itself back together.

As we take off into the heady realm of fantasy, with Jennifer's robot lumbering to life and evincing signs of complex intelligence, the play loses altitude on other fronts. A drama about a young woman's uneasy relationship with the real world naturally begins to seem hollow when reality itself is gleefully abandoned.

Ms. Gay's direction also tends to favor the play's whimsy over its pensive underpinnings. Julienne Hanzelka Kim's energetic performance as Jennifer certainly holds the attention, but she overplays the character's brash juvenility. A 22-year-old agoraphobe would surely be less perky and more complicated than the exhaustingly bouncy figure presented by Ms. Kim.

Bright and engaging as "Jenny Chow" often is, the emphasis on the superficial excitements of woolly yarn-spinning over the more nuanced pleasures of truth-telling is a disappointment. (The lovely score, by Matthew Suttor, is one of the few elements that whispers insistently of the humanity that is elsewhere slighted.) Mr. Jones, a newly hot young playwright whose career is now steaming along (he's on the staff of Showtime's "Weeds"), will surely soon learn that a flight of fancy, however bold, is never as rewarding as a journey through the challenging maze of real experience.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/09/...ws/20desi.html





Sony To Slash 10,000 Jobs Worldwide
Miles Costello

Sony, the struggling Japanese electronics and entertainment group behind Walkmans and the Playstation computer games, is to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide, shut 11 factories and sell off £600 million of assets over the next two years as part of a radical overhaul designed to lift its profits.

Sony, which employs 6,000 staff outside Japan, said this morning it was introducing the swinging cuts as its moves to generate savings of nearly £1 billion (200 billion yen) by the end of its financial year 2007.

Sony said it will also cut the number of products it offers by a fifth.

At the same time, Sony reversed its forecast in July that it was on course to make full-year profits of nearly £50 million - the group now believes it will tumble to a near £50 million loss for the year.

The long-awaited restructuring at the company, which also makes Vaio PCs, is being spearheaded by Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's Welsh-born new chief executive who only took charge in June.

Sir Howard is only the second non-Japanese to run such a well-known brand in the country and was brought on board to rejuvenate Sony's flagging performance in the fiercely competitive market for consumer electronics.

The company has already disclosed plans to shut a CRT TV assembly plant in Wales with the loss of 650 jobs as it begins to focus more heavily on flat TV screens.

Under the terms of today's rethink, Sony said it will scrap its traditional corporate structure and centralise decision-making power under the chief executive of Sony Electronics. It said the move would allow it to "streamline" decision-making across all of its product areas and ensure "decisive" spending on planning, and research and development.

As it detailed its effort to revive its ailing sales, Sony said: "This will include rationalising unprofitable businesses, reducing the number of product models, and consolidating manufacturing sites, leading to a reduction of 10,000 in the global group headcount.

"We will also review our real estate, stock holdings and certain non-core assets with a view to making disposals amounting to 120 billion yen (£993 million) by the end of fiscal 2007."

Sony said it had "identified" 15 business categories for "downsizing, alliances and disposals" and reached the decision to "reduce the number of manufacturing sites by 11, from 65 to 54".

A spokesperson for Sony in the UK was not immediately available to comment about the implications for Sony staff and businesses in Britain.

To cover the cost of today's restructuring, Sony will take a charge of just over £1 billion although it expects to recoup this by end of its financial year 2008.

Sony has already been through two years of a three-year restructuring programme designed to reduce its cost base. As well as realigning its television business, which made substantial losses last year, Sony also wants to re- establish itself in the market for portable music players.

The once-mighty company, which invented the life-changing Walkman players, has been outflanked by the success of Apple's sales of iPods and its online iTunes music service.

Sony said today that it is aiming to achieve group sales of more than £39.8 billion and a profit margin of 5 per cent (4 per cent in the electronics division) by the end of its financial year 2007.
http://cache.directorym.com/creative...urce=140x600_B





So maybe broadcast TV isn’t all bad


No men allowed.

Model Tyra Banks Gets Nasty Rumor Off Chest On TV

Supermodel Tyra Banks underwent a sonogram on her own television show to quell rumors that she had breast implants.

But first she ordered all the men out of the audience, a spokeswoman for her program said on Wednesday.

Banks, 31, told the audience for her syndicated talk show on Tuesday that she was tired of rumors that her breasts were fake.

"It's something that's followed me forever and today I'm going to finally admit once and for all the truth about my breasts," the Victoria's Secret model said as she removed her push-up bra from underneath a T-shirt.

She took a break and returned wearing a bathrobe and accompanied by plastic surgeon Garth Fischer.

He and an assistant performed a sonogram in front of the audience that was broadcast with certain part of Banks' anatomy blacked out.

Fischer said, "I've performed approximately 8,000 breast implant surgeries, I've examined you, I've reviewed your sonogram … and Tyra Banks has natural breasts."

Banks added, "By no means am I against plastic surgery, by no means am I saying that breast implants are a bad thing, but it's just not a choice that I made … it's something that a lot of people think I have and that is so frustrating to me."
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=ne...3Fid%3D1147349





Books

A Jet-Set Don Juan, Right Up to the Final Exit
William Grimes

The cad, the bounder, the roué and the lothario. Where are they now, those male predators of yesteryear? Gone the way of the dodo. Already an endangered species when the Charleston came into vogue, they vanished with the arrival of the playboy, a sleek, fast-moving animal perfectly adapted to the modern era of jet travel, night clubs, film stars and gossip columns.

Porfirio Rubirosa - Rubi to his countless conquests and to grateful headline writers across the globe - stood head and shoulders above the rest of this international pleasure pack. Rubirosa, the Dominican Republic's answer to Pepé le Pew, provided the model that others could only emulate. A tireless presence at chic nightspots and watering holes, a keen race-car driver and polo player, a friend to the rich and infamous, a relentless pursuer of women with huge bank accounts, he went on a lifelong tear that ended, fittingly, with a spectacular car crash in 1965 after a night of heavy drinking at a Paris club. Even his 28-year old wife - his fifth - agreed that Rubi would have wanted it that way.

As Shawn Levy amply documents in "The Last Playboy," his bubbly, breathless and appropriately inconsequential biography, Rubirosa worked hard at having fun. Well into his 50's, when he crossed paths with the Rat Pack, he set a pace that few could match. Sammy Davis Jr., wrecked and staggering after a night on the town with Rubi, ran into his host the next day at lunch. Rubirosa, none the worse for wear, was leaning against the bar, elegantly turned out and casually sipping a Ramos gin fizz. Davis asked him how he did it. "Your profession is being an entertainer," Rubirosa said. "Mine is being a playboy." He found his vocation early. While attending school in Paris, where his father had been posted as ambassador, he took every opportunity to haunt the nightclubs of Montmartre. "Books didn't find in me a very faithful friend, nor did the professors find a conscientious student," he wrote in his memoirs. "The only things that interested me were sports, girls, adventures, celebrities - in short, life." That version of life requires money, and Rubirosa, despite his polished manners and undeniable charm, had none. That changed when he caught the eye of the Dominican Republic's new strongman, Rafael Trujillo, who saw in Rubirosa a potential ally who could win over the country's golden youth to his regime. For the next 30 years, Rubirosa profited by the connection, sometimes serving in diplomatic posts and, just as often, playing the unofficial role of goodwill ambassador and high-level fixer.

Rubirosa's first audacious move was to marry Trujillo's daughter, a potentially career-ending, or even life-ending, bit of chutzpah. In time, he would capture even bigger prizes. While a diplomat in Paris, he set his eyes on Danielle Darrieux, France's biggest female film star, who quickly became his second wife.

When, after the war, the couple were interviewed by Doris Duke, heir to the R. J. Reynolds tobacco fortune and one of the richest women in the world, Rubirosa suddenly decided that the American version of the woman could be rather appealing too. Marriage No. 3 took place in 1947, followed quickly by divorce and, in 1953, by marriage No. 4, to Barbara Hutton, another fabulously wealthy American heiress. All the while, Rubirosa pursued his side interests with zeal. "One woman is not enough for him," Darrieux complained to the press. "A man like him needs a harem." Just what was the appeal? Mr. Levy, the author of "Rat Pack Confidential" and the film critic for The Portland Oregonian, makes a fairly convincing case that the Rubi magic came down to a combination of charm, mystique and, quite possibly, physical attributes, not limited to Rubi's darkly handsome features. (Mr. Levy writes that cheeky waiters referred to the largest pepper-mill in the house as "the Rubirosa.") Rubirosa spoke five languages, three of them fluently. His dress and his manners were impeccable, his appetite for women stupendous. He preferred that they be rich and beautiful, but in a pinch, anything with curves would do: the hat-check girl, a waitress, a low-rent prostitute. In his prime, he was unstoppable. "He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat," the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote. Even women determined to resist, and warned in advance, found themselves saying yes when Rubirosa mounted a full-scale offensive. Even Zsa Zsa Gabor, a grandmaster at the sex-for-money chess game, succumbed, although she drew the line at marriage. Her tempestuous relationship with Rubirosa provides Mr. Levy with some of his best material. Rubirosa, who surely saw in Ms. Gabor the challenge of a lifetime, pursued his prey ardently and relentlessly, in full view of the panting press.

It made for spectacular theater. When Ms. Gabor refused to leave her current husband, the actor George Saunders, Rubirosa struck her. Ms. Gabor called a news conference and showed up wearing an eye patch. "In Spanish, Rubirosa means a red rose, but to me it's a black eye," she told reporters. The headline in The New York Daily News read: "I Said No, So Porfy Poked Me: Zsa Zsa." Strapped for cash, Rubirosa proceeded to marry Barbara Hutton. The marriage lasted 75 days and netted the happy husband cash and property worth $3.5 million, enough to finance his polo ponies, tailored suits and lavish partiers for years to come. And Rubirosa, a superbly conditioned nightlife athlete, had lots left in him. Eartha Kitt, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, the Empress Soraya of Iran - there was scarcely an actress or princess alive whose name was not linked with Rubirosa's at some point in the 1950's and even the 1960's, when he began to slow down just a bit.

There's some poetic justice in Rubirosa's increasingly desperate attempts to keep up with his fifth wife, the French actress Odile Rodin. A ferocious nightclubber, she would frequently skip off to Paris, and the arms of her many male admirers, while Rubi stayed home in the suburbs, tending the garden and playing with his Chihuahua. He came to enjoy the simple pleasures, but then again, for Rubirosa, everything in life was simple.

"Women like to be gay," he once explained to a radio interviewer. "I like to be gay. They want to be happy. I try to make them happy." That's all there was to it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/books/16book.html





Music Biz Offers Anti-P2P Technology

Software automatically deletes illegally downloaded tracks
Iain Thomson

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is offering a software tool that claims to sniff out and disable peer- to-peer systems.

Dubbed the Digital File Check the software was developed to search a hard drive automatically and block any P2P applications, like Kazaa or eDonkey, from functioning on that machine.

It also deletes any music, film or image that may have been copied or distributed without the permission of the copyright holders.

"Digital File Check is a simple to use tool which will help people stay on the right side of the law," said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.

"We are committed to working with business to help them develop policy and ensure that they are not breaking the law by illegally file sharing music across company networks."

The BPI is also releasing a corporate guide to file sharing which will be distributed to IT managers to warn them of the dangers. The BPI estimates that P2P systems cost its members £376m in lost revenue in 2004.

A PDF of the BPI's corporate guide can be downloaded here.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...offer-anti-p2p





U.K. Startup Challenges Vonage, Skype

Switch Call, a little 16-man U.K. telecom startup that, until now, has specialized in B2B services, has launched itself into the consumer arena with a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offering that sets new lows for pricing and vows to take on the likes of Vonage and Skype. Its rates look to be about half those of Vonage’s in the U.K., and about 20-percent less than Skype charges for its SkypeOut service to the switched telephone network.

Normally, yet another VoIP startup would get little note, but Switch Call’s advent comes fast on the heels of eBay’s deal to buy Skype for as much as $4.1 billion and, notably, Switch Call’s revenues of $12.67 million last year are almost double what Skype recorded.

“The new service from Switch Call takes it head-to-head against rival services SkypeOut and Vonage,” the company said in announcing its service, making no bones about whom it is targeting.

What Switch Call is offering is a service that starts at $9 per month, with 500 minutes of calling included, or twice that for unlimited calls, roughly the same as Vonage charges for such service. Its long-distance calls to the United States and most places in Europe, however, are half of Vonage’s rates and 20 percent less than Skype. As with just about every VoIP service, calls between Switch Call users are free and unlimited.

Switch Call rates include a free VoIP phone as part of a one-time “joining fee” of $45 or $90, depending on the model of phone chosen. The company is offering phones that simply plug into a PC’s USB port, with no need for the traditional VoIP adapter. That feature, Switch Call argues, makes it the simplest VoIP service offered to set up, a selling point the company plans to tout heavily.

“Technologies tend not to become truly mass-market until they become simple as well as beneficial,” argues Switch Call Managing Director Nick Kaulbach. “Many people fully understand that VoIP services are beneficial to them based on their low cost. But until now, I think that there has not been a service simple enough to break through into the mass market.”

In a final swipe at Skype, which uses P2P technology instead of SIP, Switch Call also points out in its marketing material that its service is “NOT PEER TO PEER – No loss of bandwidth – unlike some of Switch Call’s better known competitors, Switch Call does not use up YOUR internet connection for OTHER PEOPLE’S calls!”
http://www.telecomweb.com/news/1127331418.htm





Keeping Skype @Bay
Ted Stevenson

Atlanta-based Verso Technologies last week announced the introduction of a carrier grade tool or 'application filter' designed to let cable operators and other IP service providers "selectively disable undesirable network traffic and improve service levels on their networks," according to a press release (WiR 9/17). The product is aimed specifically at peer-to-peer (p2p) applications, such as VoIP, instant messaging, conferencing, and other types of streaming media.

Skype is the poster child for such 'undesirable' traffic, from the point of view of facilities based network operators, as the VoIP technology provider and its peers bring no network capacity to the party; they essentially piggyback on others' pipes.

How big is this problem?

Monty Bannerman, president and CEO of Verso, pointed out to VoIPplanet.com that NANOG [the North American Network Operators' Group] has probes all over the primary backbones. "They've been able to measure the rise in peer-to-peer traffic," Bannerman said. "The last stats I saw—and that was at least a year ago—at that point over 30 percent of the backbone was p2p traffic—and rapidly growing." This is traffic that brings in not a penny for the carriers whose networks the p2p traffic traverses.

"It's one thing if you're just having a rise in certain kind of traffic and its driving more capacity and people are buying bigger pipes from you as a carrier. But if that same traffic is robbing your paid subscriber base, it's like eating poison every day," Bannerman said. "There are really two camps here." Bannerman continued. "There's the p2p camp that says Skype's an incredible new thing that everyone loves, but if you're watching your business model being eroded every day, you're in the other camp."

Bannerman pointed out that Verso has a deep experience in content filtering, through its NetSpective product line. " We've been looking at optimizing networks via content filtering for a long time. As a direct result of that core expertise, we've identified how you can identify p2p traffic on a network and have determined methods whereby you can selectively block it. Say, I just don't want to allow Napster—because of the potential liability—or Skype, because they're raiding my paid subscriber base. Or Kazaa or any other p2p. We have multiple means whereby we can both identify different kinds of traffic and then selectively allow or deny the traffic on the network."

As a matter of fact, in addition to the carrier grade filtering, the same technology is being included in NetSpective version 2.0, announced Tuesday at the VON conference in Boston.

So, does a network operator have the right to block certain traffic?

It all depends where that network is. Bannerman alluded to the fact that Verso's customer base is large and global and that there are different regulatory constraints in different countries. "Some don't allow p2p VoiP at all. In others, you're not allowed to block VoIP," Bannerman commented. "No matter where you go, you're going to almost have two camps: those that like this [filtering capability]—made up of people that have a revenue-based business model and don't want to see free services erode their base—and those that are strictly non-facilities peer-to-peer based where they don't have any infrastructure that they purchased, and want to gain access to someone else's facilities."

Although the FCC has at least once fined a broadband provider for blocking VoIP traffic, the long-term picture around this issue in the United States is far from clear. Alluding to this ambiguous climate, Bannerman said, "I believe that the answer to this is going to have to be regulatory."

As implemented today, Verso's carrier-grade application filtering involves selective blocking. "I can discriminate between forms of p2p, leave some on, block others," Bannerman said. "Today it's on/off, but selectively." He went on to describe Verso's "deep skill set" in QoS technology, derived in part from its NetPerformer product line that provides compression and QoS plus routing for VoIP over satellite. "Tomorrow, there's no reason I can't extend that by assigning a QoS by type of p2p traffic. So I could actually degrade certain types of traffic—or prioritize others."

Verso's carrier grade application filter runs on Intel-based NEBS-compliant hardware. "Now that the application has successfully completed its preproduction trials, we are working with tier-one carriers to conduct the first production field trail," said Bannerman. "We believe that the application has tremendous market opportunity because it addresses an increasingly critical carrier requirement as p2p traffic continues to grow worldwide."
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3550691





Avaya Acquires Embedded P2P Player
Robert Liu

Underscoring the growing importance of peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies in the voice-over-IP (VoIP) arena, Avaya kicked off the work week today announcing it has acquired Nimcat Networks, a developer of embedded P2P communications software.

As first alluded to last night on a popular VoIP blog by INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine’s Rich Tehrani, the deal is the clearest sign that P2P technologies are creating new competitive pressures for PBX vendors. The argument is that you will not need servers let alone a central PBX if you can just plug VoIP phones with embedded P2P software into a network that auto- recognize endpoints, as Tehrani concluded back in August.

Nimcat Networks' IP communications software, currently called nimX, is designed for just that – to be embedded within enterprise IP phones. By placing the intelligence in the phone and eliminating additional hardware, such as call processing and application servers, installation is vastly simplified and start-up costs are sharply reduced, Avaya stated in its press release.

Ottawa-based Nimcat Networks was acquired for CDN $46 million in cash.

Avaya said it expects the acquisition to be one cent dilutive in the company's fourth fiscal quarter, primarily related to approximately $3.2 million of in-process research and development costs. Research and development plans include incorporating Nimcat Networks software into Avaya IP telephony offers. This process is expected to take up to 12 months, after which Avaya will release its first integrated Nimcat Networks-based product.

The acquisition follows Microsoft’s deal to acquire P2P player Teleo and, of course, the widely reported acquisition of P2P leader Skype by eBay. The latest deal leaves Popular Telephony’s Peerio as the last company in the space, leading to the speculation that larger enterprise networking companies like Nortel or Cisco could be shopping around for a P2P partner.

And the business logic reasons are compelling. Nimcat’s nimX plug-and-play software delivers low total cost of ownership for customers who want a select set of telephony features and applications. Adding users is as simple as plugging another phone into the network.

Nimcat Networks software is based on the industry standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), clearly demonstrating Avaya's commitment to open and standards- based solutions. Developing solutions using the SIP standard can accelerate the integration of Nimcat Networks software into Avaya and other leading industry solutions.

"The addition of Nimcat Networks' capabilities is another step in our plan to make intelligent communications applications available to all customers regardless of size," said Mike Thurk, group vice president, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya. "Peer-to-peer technology is an important emerging communications architecture, and this move clearly illustrates our determination to maintain leadership in IP telephony innovation. When peer- to-peer is integrated with the rest of enterprise networks, businesses will be able to select communications applications to match the right level of functionality and cost to address the needs of different locations."

Avaya said Nimcat Networks will be part of its Global Communications Solutions group. The company expects to continue selling Nimcat Networks' software to other equipment manufacturers and to support existing Nimcat Networks customers.
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-avaya...ep/1183454.htm





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

RIAA Withdraws Contested File Sharing Suit

The RIAA has withdrawn a file-sharing lawsuit against a Michigan woman when it became clear that the woman had no experience or knowledge of computers. The court denied an attempt to relaunch the case against the woman's 13-year old daughter. Decision at
http://info.riaalawsuits.us/priority...an_order_1.pdf


BBC Test May Raise Internet TV Viewing

The BBC will later this month begin a test that could spur more television networks to broadcast their programs over the Internet. About 5,000 selected viewers in the UK will be issued a computer program called the iMP (interactive media player) that allows them to download and share most of the BBC's TV programs for up to seven days, including its long-running soap opera EastEnders, the nightly news and major sporting events.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...546878,00.html





Verizon Introduces Fiber Optic TV Service
Ken Belson

Verizon Communications began taking orders yesterday for its new television service, which the company hopes will draw business away from cable and satellite providers.

As part of a national strategy, about 9,000 Verizon customers in Keller, Tex., 30 miles west of Dallas, will be the first to subscribe to the television service, called FiOS TV. The service includes more than 180 digital video and music channels, 20 high-definition channels and video-on-demand for $39.95 a month, carried over fiber optic cables that were installed to replace older copper lines.

The service in Keller is part of Verizon's plan to compete head-on with cable companies that in the last 18 months have started selling digital phone lines. To keep customers from defecting, Verizon and SBC Communications are starting to sell digital programming to complement their phone and broadband services.

The companies have taken different routes. Verizon is spending billions of dollars to run fiber lines all the way to customers' homes - lines that also carry phone calls and broadband connections. SBC, by contrast, is running fiber lines to neighborhoods and using existing copper lines to reach homes.

Either way, the phone companies are trying to assemble bundles of phone, high-speed Internet and television services that match what the cable industry offers.

Verizon's new television product will include more local channels not often found on satellite systems, and customers can order additional programming based on a genre, like sports and movies.

"This is just the beginning of TV that rides on a wave of light into people's homes," Steve Banta, president of Verizon's southwest region, said.

The company plans to introduce FiOS TV in six other markets, including several in Florida, Virginia and California, by the end of the year, when its fiber optic network will be available to three million homes.

Verizon has signed deals to obtain programming rights from most major television and movie studios. The company also signed franchise agreements with individual municipalities in Texas before the state government passed a law this summer that would allow Verizon and others to obtain agreements from the Texas Public Utility Commission. Instead of negotiating with towns for an agreement, which can take up to 18 months, Verizon can get approval from the commission instead.

Texas, however, is the only state to pass such a law, which means Verizon must still negotiate deals with individual cities in other states.

Verizon expects to sign up 20 percent of homes that can receive FiOS service in Keller by the end of the year, according to Bob Ingalls, the president of the company's retail group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/te...23verizon.html





Report: Cable Broadband Prices Jump, While DSL Declines

The price gap between cable broadband service and phone carriers' digital subscriber lines widened to an all-time high in August, according to a survey by SG Cowen.

Cable-modem service was, on average, 75.8 percent more expensive than DSL during the month, up from a 53.3 percent gap in July. While phone carriers cut prices -- the average DSL price decreased by 9.2 percent -- cable companies raised them.

Leading the price decline was Verizon Communications which rolled out a slower service that cost just $14.95 a month, with a free month of service with a one-year commitment.

By contrast, cable broadband service got 4.1 percent more expensive, on average. Comcast Corp. raised prices an average of 7.9 percent, while Time Warner Cable raised by 5.8 percent, according to the survey.

Aggressive price cuts have helped phone carriers make headway in the broadband market and challenge cable companies, analyst Lowell Singer said in a note.

During the first and second quarters of 2005, cable companies captured 47.8 percent and 46.3 percent of net new broadband subscribers, respectively, down from 50.3 percent in 2004 and 60.8 percent in 2003. SG Cowen estimates that cable companies will capture about 47.3 percent of net new broadband subscribers in 2005.

Cable companies ``must continually reassess whether to accept share losses or to fight back by reducing high speed data pricing and accepting lower margins,'' Singer wrote.

Singer or one of the other authors of the report own shares of Cablevision; SG Cowen or one of its affiliates has managed or co-managed a public offering of Cablevision and Comcast securities in the last three years.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/12665600.htm





Study: Broadband Penetration Slowing
Marguerite Reardon

Americans are putting the brakes on broadband adoption growth, according to a new study.

The survey, published by independent think tank Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that high-speed Internet adoption, after growing quickly in the past several years, has been losing steam and is poised to slow even further. During the first six months of 2005, 53 percent of home Internet users said they use a broadband connection, up from only 50 percent during the previous six months.

This is a much slower growth rate than reported for the same periods a year earlier. From November 2003 to May 2004, high-speed Internet penetration grew by 20 percent, from 35 percent of home users in December 2003 to 42 percent in May 2004, according to the Pew data.

Results of the study will be presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference in Arlington, Va., Sept. 23 to Sept. 25.

Pew attributed the slowdown in broadband penetration to a maturing of the market. Early adopters, who are typically savvy about the Internet, well- educated and well-paid, have already signed up for broadband service.

Today's dial-up customers, by contrast, tend to be older adults with lower incomes and educational levels. Most importantly, they do not use the Internet to do much beyond basic Web surfing and e-mailing.

"The low-hanging fruit of early adopters is gone," John Horrigan, director of research at Pew, said Wednesday. "And the remaining dial-up population seems unenthused in terms of the Internet, so mathematically, that makes for a smaller fruitful pool for providers to select from."

At least one analyst agrees, in part, with Pew's analysis. "There's no question that broadband growth will slow over time," said Jim Penhune, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. "But what we're seeing now is providers using aggressive pricing to entice new customers."

DSL service has become available for less than the cost of a dial-up connection only in the past few months. In June, SBC announced a one-year promotion to offer its DSL service for $14.95. Just last month, Verizon Communications followed suit with a slower-speed offering that also costs $14.95. Some experts believe that this could have a significant impact on today's dial-up customers.

"The (telephone companies') challenge is persuading the people plunking along on AOL dial-up to switch to broadband," Penhune said. "And I think the $15 products are just the thing."

Cable companies are also going after these consumers by offering special pricing on "triple play" bundles of service that combine telephone, high-speed broadband access and TV service. Cablevision currently offers a package of all three for $90 per month. Whether dial-up consumers are enticed into subscribing to broadband services is yet to be seen, but it's clear that providers realize that they must change their strategy to win them over.
http://news.com.com/Study+Broadband+...3-5875981.html





You're not supposed to pay for it

Microsoft Sues More Resellers In Piracy Battle
Joris Evers

Information from an antipiracy hotline and "secret shoppers" has led to eight lawsuits against companies accused of peddling pirated Microsoft software.

The lawsuits were filed in Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota and New York against companies that allegedly sold counterfeit copies of software such as Office 2000 Professional and Windows XP, Microsoft said in a statement Monday.

Some of the resellers also allegedly dealt in fake and used Certificate of Authenticity labels, which are used to identify Microsoft products as genuine, the company said. A Certificate of Authenticity includes a product key code and is designed to prevent counterfeiting.

The lawsuits are part of Microsoft's continued crackdown on software piracy, which the company acknowledges cuts into its earnings. According to the Business Software Alliance, of all the software installed on personal computers worldwide in 2004, 35 percent was pirated, resulting in $33 billion in losses.

Tips from users who called Microsoft's piracy tip line (1-800-RU-LEGIT) and information derived from the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program helped identify some of the accused sellers of pirated products, Microsoft said. The software maker also used its own "secret shoppers" to gather evidence, it said.

Windows Genuine Advantage is a system designed to prevent people with pirated copies of Windows from downloading additional software from Microsoft. The WGA check became mandatory in July for people attempting to get product updates.

People who find out through WGA that they were duped into buying bogus Microsoft products in some cases can get free licensed versions of the software.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+sues+m...3-5873069.html





Commerce Department To Send Teams To Combat Piracy Abroad
AP

The Commerce Department is sending teams of experts into countries known for piracy and counterfeit goods in an effort to combat intellectual
property theft abroad, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Wednesday.

The groups, called Intellectual Property Rights Experts, will operate in Brazil, China, India, Russia and elsewhere. They will follow up and monitor cases as well as have daily contact with officials in those countries, Gutierrez said in a speech to Silicon Valley executives.

``We are doing everything possible to defend and protect what you create,'' he said at the Sunnyvale campus of chip-equipment maker Applied Materials Inc.

Intellectual property theft is a top concern in Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers around the nation.

``When software thieves go unpunished, innovation suffers and the economy doesn't grow as fast as it should,'' said Robert Holleyman, chief executive officer of the Business Software Alliance. ``Today's announcement will provide software makers with important on-the-ground assistance to combat theft in problematic regions.''

A recent study by the BSA and the research firm IDC found that 90 percent of software used in China was pirated. The figure was 64 percent in Brazil, 74 percent in India, 87 percent in Russia, 70 percent in Thailand and 58 percent in the Middle East.

In July, the Bush administration created a new position to coordinate government efforts to battle the foreign theft of intellectual property. President Bush named Commerce Department official Christian Israel to the post.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/12705678.htm





Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore
Natalie Angier

Incensed by what it sees as a virtual pandemic of verbal vulgarity issuing from the diverse likes of Howard Stern, Bono of U2 and Robert Novak, the United States Senate is poised to consider a bill that would sharply increase the penalty for obscenity on the air.

By raising the fines that would be levied against offending broadcasters some fifteenfold, to a fee of about $500,000 per crudity broadcast, and by threatening to revoke the licenses of repeat polluters, the Senate seeks to return to the public square the gentler tenor of yesteryear, when seldom were heard any scurrilous words, and famous guys were not foul mouthed all day.

Yet researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin's famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

Young children will memorize the illicit inventory long before they can grasp its sense, said John McWhorter, a scholar of linguistics at the Manhattan Institute and the author of "The Power of Babel," and literary giants have always constructed their art on its spine.

"The Jacobean dramatist Ben Jonson peppered his plays with fackings and "peremptorie Asses," and Shakespeare could hardly quill a stanza without inserting profanities of the day like "zounds" or "sblood" - offensive contractions of "God's wounds" and "God's blood" - or some wondrous sexual pun.

The title "Much Ado About Nothing," Dr. McWhorter said, is a word play on "Much Ado About an O Thing," the O thing being a reference to female genitalia.

Even the quintessential Good Book abounds in naughty passages like the men in II Kings 18:27 who, as the comparatively tame King James translation puts it, "eat their own dung, and drink their own piss."

In fact, said Guy Deutscher, a linguist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and the author of "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention," the earliest writings, which date from 5,000 years ago, include their share of off-color descriptions of the human form and its ever-colorful functions. And the written record is merely a reflection of an oral tradition that Dr. Deutscher and many other psychologists and evolutionary linguists suspect dates from the rise of the human larynx, if not before.

Some researchers are so impressed by the depth and power of strong language that they are using it as a peephole into the architecture of the brain, as a means of probing the tangled, cryptic bonds between the newer, "higher" regions of the brain in charge of intellect, reason and planning, and the older, more "bestial" neural neighborhoods that give birth to our emotions.

Researchers point out that cursing is often an amalgam of raw, spontaneous feeling and targeted, gimlet-eyed cunning. When one person curses at another, they say, the curser rarely spews obscenities and insults at random, but rather will assess the object of his wrath, and adjust the content of the "uncontrollable" outburst accordingly.

Because cursing calls on the thinking and feeling pathways of the brain in roughly equal measure and with handily assessable fervor, scientists say that by studying the neural circuitry behind it they are gaining new insights into how the different domains of the brain communicate - and all for the sake of a well-venomed retort.

Other investigators have examined the physiology of cursing, how our senses and reflexes react to the sound or sight of an obscene word. They have determined that hearing a curse elicits a literal rise out of people. When electrodermal wires are placed on people's arms and fingertips to study their skin conductance patterns and the subjects then hear a few obscenities spoken clearly and firmly, participants show signs of instant arousal.

Their skin conductance patterns spike, the hairs on their arms rise, their pulse quickens, and their breathing becomes shallow.

Interestingly, said Kate Burridge, a professor of linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, a similar reaction occurs among university students and others who pride themselves on being educated when they listen to bad grammar or slang expressions that they regard as irritating, illiterate or déclassé.

"People can feel very passionate about language," she said, "as though it were a cherished artifact that must be protected at all cost against the depravities of barbarians and lexical aliens."

Dr. Burridge and a colleague at Monash, Keith Allan, are the authors of "Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language," which will be published early next year by the Cambridge University Press.

Researchers have also found that obscenities can get under one's goosebumped skin and then refuse to budge. In one study, scientists started with the familiar Stroop test, in which subjects are flashed a series of words written in different colors and are asked to react by calling out the colors of the words rather than the words themselves.

If the subjects see the word "chair" written in yellow letters, they are supposed to say "yellow."

The researchers then inserted a number of obscenities and vulgarities in the standard lineup. Charting participants' immediate and delayed responses, the researchers found that, first of all, people needed significantly more time to trill out the colors of the curse words than they did for neutral terms like chair.

The experience of seeing titillating text obviously distracted the participants from the color-coding task at hand. Yet those risqué interpolations left their mark. In subsequent memory quizzes, not only were participants much better at recalling the naughty words than they were the neutrals, but that superior recall also applied to the tints of the tainted words, as well as to their sense.

Yes, it is tough to toil in the shadow of trash. When researchers in another study asked participants to quickly scan lists of words that included obscenities and then to recall as many of the words as possible, the subjects were, once again, best at rehashing the curses - and worst at summoning up whatever unobjectionable entries happened to precede or follow the bad bits.

Yet as much as bad language can deliver a jolt, it can help wash away stress and anger. In some settings, the free flow of foul language may signal not hostility or social pathology, but harmony and tranquillity.

"Studies show that if you're with a group of close friends, the more relaxed you are, the more you swear," Dr. Burridge said. "It's a way of saying: 'I'm so comfortable here I can let off steam. I can say whatever I like.' "

Evidence also suggests that cursing can be an effective means of venting aggression and thereby forestalling physical violence.

With the help of a small army of students and volunteers, Timothy B. Jay, a professor of psychology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams and the author of "Cursing in America" and "Why We Curse," has explored the dynamics of cursing in great detail.

The investigators have found, among other things, that men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center.

Regardless of who is cursing or what the provocation may be, Dr. Jay said, the rationale for the eruption is often the same.

"Time and again, people have told me that cursing is a coping mechanism for them, a way of reducing stress," he said in a telephone interview. "It's a form of anger management that is often underappreciated."

Indeed, chimpanzees engage in what appears to be a kind of cursing match as a means of venting aggression and avoiding a potentially dangerous physical clash.

Frans de Waal, a professor of primate behavior at Emory University in Atlanta, said that when chimpanzees were angry "they will grunt or spit or make an abrupt, upsweeping gesture that, if a human were to do it, you'd recognize it as aggressive."

Such behaviors are threat gestures, Professor de Waal said, and they are all a good sign.

"A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures, but just goes ahead and attacks," he added.

By the same token, he said, nothing is more deadly than a person who is too enraged for expletives - who cleanly and quietly picks up a gun and starts shooting.

Researchers have also examined how words attain the status of forbidden speech and how the evolution of coarse language affects the smoother sheets of civil discourse stacked above it. They have found that what counts as taboo language in a given culture is often a mirror into that culture's fears and fixations.

"In some cultures, swear words are drawn mainly from sex and bodily functions, whereas in others, they're drawn mainly from the domain of religion," Dr. Deutscher said.

In societies where the purity and honor of women is of paramount importance, he said, "it's not surprising that many swear words are variations on the 'son of a whore' theme or refer graphically to the genitalia of the person's mother or sisters."

The very concept of a swear word or an oath originates from the profound importance that ancient cultures placed on swearing by the name of a god or gods. In ancient Babylon, swearing by the name of a god was meant to give absolute certainty against lying, Dr. Deutscher said, "and people believed that swearing falsely by a god would bring the terrible wrath of that god upon them." A warning against any abuse of the sacred oath is reflected in the biblical commandment that one must not "take the Lord's name in vain," and even today courtroom witnesses swear on the Bible that they are telling the whole truth and nothing but.

Among Christians, the stricture against taking the Lord's name in vain extended to casual allusions to God's son or the son's corporeal sufferings - no mention of the blood or the wounds or the body, and that goes for clever contractions, too. Nowadays, the phrase, "Oh, golly!" may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. "Golly" is a compaction of "God's body" and, thus, was once a profanity.

Yet neither biblical commandment nor the most zealous Victorian censor can elide from the human mind its hand-wringing over the unruly human body, its chronic, embarrassing demands and its sad decay. Discomfort over body functions never sleeps, Dr. Burridge said, and the need for an ever-fresh selection of euphemisms about dirty subjects has long served as an impressive engine of linguistic invention.

Once a word becomes too closely associated with a specific body function, she said, once it becomes too evocative of what should not be evoked, it starts to enter the realm of the taboo and must be replaced by a new, gauzier euphemism.

For example, the word "toilet" stems from the French word for "little towel" and was originally a pleasantly indirect way of referring to the place where the chamber pot or its equivalent resides. But toilet has since come to mean the porcelain fixture itself, and so sounds too blunt to use in polite company. Instead, you ask your tuxedoed waiter for directions to the ladies' room or the restroom or, if you must, the bathroom.

Similarly, the word "coffin" originally meant an ordinary box, but once it became associated with death, that was it for a "shoe coffin" or "thinking outside the coffin." The taboo sense of a word, Dr. Burridge said, "always drives out any other senses it might have had."

Scientists have lately sought to map the neural topography of forbidden speech by studying Tourette's patients who suffer from coprolalia, the pathological and uncontrollable urge to curse. Tourette's syndrome is a neurological disorder of unknown origin characterized predominantly by chronic motor and vocal tics, a constant grimacing or pushing of one's glasses up the bridge of one's nose or emitting a stream of small yips or grunts.

Just a small percentage of Tourette's patients have coprolalia - estimates range from 8 to 30 percent - and patient advocates are dismayed by popular portrayals of Tourette's as a humorous and invariably scatological condition. But for those who do have coprolalia, said Dr. Carlos Singer, director of the division of movement disorders at the University of Miami School of Medicine, the symptom is often the most devastating and humiliating aspect of their condition.

Not only can it be shocking to people to hear a loud volley of expletives erupt for no apparent reason, sometimes from the mouth of a child or young teenager, but the curses can also be provocative and personal, florid slurs against the race, sexual identity or body size of a passer-by, for example, or deliberate and repeated lewd references to an old lover's name while in the arms of a current partner or spouse.

Reporting in The Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. David A. Silbersweig, a director of neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and his colleagues described their use of PET scans to measure cerebral blood flow and identify which regions of the brain are galvanized in Tourette's patients during episodes of tics and coprolalia.

They found strong activation of the basal ganglia, a quartet of neuron clusters deep in the forebrain at roughly the level of the mid-forehead, that are known to help coordinate body movement along with activation of crucial regions of the left rear forebrain that participate in comprehending and generating speech, most notably Broca's area.

The researchers also saw arousal of neural circuits that interact with the limbic system, the wishbone-shape throne of human emotions, and, significantly, of the "executive" realms of the brain, where decisions to act or desist from acting may be carried out: the neural source, scientists said, of whatever conscience, civility or free will humans can claim.

That the brain's executive overseer is ablaze in an outburst of coprolalia, Dr. Silbersweig said, demonstrates how complex an act the urge to speak the unspeakable may be, and not only in the case of Tourette's. The person is gripped by a desire to curse, to voice something wildly inappropriate. Higher-order linguistic circuits are tapped, to contrive the content of the curse. The brain's impulse control center struggles to short-circuit the collusion between limbic system urge and neocortical craft, and it may succeed for a time.

Yet the urge mounts, until at last the speech pathways fire, the verboten is spoken, and archaic and refined brains alike must shoulder the blame.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/20curs.html
















Until next week,

- js.





















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