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Old 10-08-06, 01:16 PM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 12th, '06


































"My goodness, it’s my whole personal life. I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder." – Thelma Arnold


"I was shocked, and I think other people will be shocked, to learn the information they've been handing over. What we're doing is implicitly trusting a handful of companies with a tremendous amount of our personal information." – Greg Conti


"I want to scream. My information is floating everywhere." – Susan Johnson


"We all have a right to privacy. Nobody should have found this all out." – Thelma Arnold


"Was it the greatest security ever? Well it just got hacked so, no." – Dan Geary


"We ownz u site." – Message left on Sen. Joe Lieberman’s website (D-CT)


"Fire the incompetents. Losing veterans' most sensitive personal information must have consequences." – Sen. John Kerry, D-MA


"I have managed to get a fiber connection to my house, so I kind of dig into that speed on the Internet." – Michael Dell


"The problem with Sweden is that it is a very rational country. This makes the organized pirates both rational and effective." – Geraldine Maloney


"Over the weekend, I hoisted the Jolly Roger, cleared a partition on a test machine, slid the CD into the drive, and prepared to join the ranks of Windows pirates." – Ed Bott



































Batten Down the Hatches

What the hell is happening at the VA? Every month brings news of massive data losses, of privacy invasions on war-like scales. Not long ago US senators prodded by big media pointed angry fingers at peer-to-peer for data theft of "strategic proportion." This was their most powerful argument against file-sharing, that the programs would destabilize America’s security by allowing anonymous transfers of her most sensitive information. The problem was it wasn’t true. It was pure hyperbole. A crass manipulation of the public’s trust for the benefit of a handful of international media giants, and their political games opened the biggest backdoor of all, leading directly to this catastrophe.

I’m somewhat encouraged by the senators’ intense if belated spotlight on actual data breaches, and on the media’s reporting of real losses elsewhere. We should by now be fully aware that the greatest threat to information security is not from the programs file-sharers use, but from the very tools the government gives its workers: laptops that contain the personal information of hundreds of thousands of individuals, data on ever expanding hard drives that is inexplicably unencrypted and allowed to be removed from secure locations and taken into vulnerable private homes.

Had Washington not frittered away its resources cynically demonizing file-sharing we wouldn’t be in this dangerous situation now.

The solution is straightforward: tighten up the rules for bringing work home and encrypt the data on these laptops.

Leave P2P alone. It’s a wasteful distraction that takes away much needed focus from the genuine threats facing America’s digital security.















Enjoy,

Jack


















August 12th, '06






CSI: BitTorrent

How'd They Know I Downloaded Meet the Fockers?
Daniel Engber

Download the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for The Explainer's free daily podcast on iTunes.

A wealthy software executive named Shawn Hogan has vowed to fight a copyright-infringement lawsuit in court rather than settle with the Motion Picture Association of America. According to the MPAA, Hogan made the film Meet the Fockers available for download through a BitTorrent file-sharing network. Hogan denies that he did anything of the sort. How do investigators find their targets?

They join the networks. In general, the movie and recording industries search out illegal file-sharers by hiring security firms to monitor popular file-sharing communities and report back on any activity that appears illegal. A company like MediaSentry, for example, will hop on to a file-sharing network and start searching for specific files. (The client provides a list of copyrighted material to check up on.) Investigators use customized versions of standard torrent trackers to sniff out the IP addresses of anyone who makes a given file available. Then they'll take snapshots of all the other files those users offer. They may also try to connect to one of these targets to see if they can make an illegal download.

At this point, the security firm will have the screen name and the IP address of the person they suspect of trading copyrighted material. An IP address is a unique identifier that your computer gets whenever you log on to the Internet. The only entity that knows which user goes with which IP address is the user's Internet service provider. That's why groups like the MPAA have tended to gather a bunch of IP addresses and then file a series of anonymous lawsuits. Once they've done that, they can ask a judge to subpoena an ISP for the names that go along with those addresses. With the names in hand, they can swap out the John Does in the lawsuits for real people.

Critics of this name-gathering approach say these sorts of network trawls can make mistakes. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue a Penn State professor named Peter Usher when investigators mistook a file bearing his name for a song by the artist Usher.

Some file-sharers claim that media-security firms also seed networks with dummy torrents to trick potential pirates into revealing themselves. (One file-sharing company says the MPAA hired a hacker to steal its trade secrets.) A couple of years ago, a pair of young hackers started circulating their own fake downloads that displayed a "Bad Pirate!" message and broadcast your IP address when you opened them up.

The Shawn Hogan case seems to have involved a different sort of investigation. Hogan's lawyer says the complaint against him comes from "Operation D-Elite," a government investigation of the Elite Torrents file-sharing network that resulted in a series of FBI raids in May of last year. The MPAA says its evidence against Hogan consists of a hash file—data that help users coordinate and verify their downloads.

Explainer thanks Seyamack Kouretchian of the Coast Law Group and Seth Schoen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://www.slate.com/id/2146883/





Software Mines Internet To Identify Music Piracy
Laurie Sullivan

Identity Systems will soon roll out software that lets media companies from music to movies search through unstructured text on the Internet to identify piracy.

The software called "Unstructured Data Module" applies analytics and algorithms to scan for hidden relationships in streams of digital data. Beyond information found in traditional databases and spreadsheets, the software digs into e-mails, file directory listings, search results for peer-to-peer (P2P) sites, and lists of top downloaded songs on Web sites, a company executive said Wednesday.

Today, the music industry and movie studios work mainly from neatly organized structured data files. But as the move to digital music accelerates and opens new channels, the industry must work in nontraditional formats to find the slightest variation in song titles and artist names as part of copyright compliance.

"The music industry has a pervasive challenge because song titles and artists' names can be among the hardest to match when the data set is large," said Ramesh Menon, Identity Systems' North American operations director. "We're finding more and more that music societies and publishers are seeking this type of solution as a critical part of copyright compliance."

EMI Music Publishing's copyright system, written in the COBOL programming language, runs on an AS400. The Identity Systems software runs separately on a standalone server.

The two platforms are used to manage royalties and monitor piracy by matching a list of songs received from music associations and music download sites, explains Alec Malyon, IT Director of Royalty & Copyright Systems at EMI. "I extract the master file from the AS400, add an algorithm for the titles, and use the Identity Systems software to match writers against the file we receive," he said.

Music download sites, such as Loudeye, which Nokia acquired this week for $60 million, sends EMI a file of roughly 5 million song titles to match against the music labels master file, for example. The record label has been working with Identity Systems to build a platform. What once took up to six days to process the data, now takes one.

EMI also has copyright watchdogs monitoring Internet sites to verify licenses and rights, taking action when necessary, such as last week's lawsuit brought against file-sharing site LimeWire LLC by some of the world's biggest record labels, including EMI Group Plc.

The complaint filed in Manhattan federal court claimed LimeWire's software allows users to download music without paying for it. It is the latest in a string of lawsuits the music industry has filed in an attempt to slow Internet piracy since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that content companies can take legal action against technology firms that encourage copyright infringement.

"In the case of an infringement, if there's a settlement or ruling, the company sends us a file," Malyon said. "Say the judgment is for $2 million. We match the list with our database to determine which artists and songs we represent, and that's how much they need to pay us."

Typically companies are growing their own, but its' an opportunity for the software vendors to help companies mine and secure the music so it can't be passed around, said Susan Feldman, research vice president of content technologies at IDC. "The Identity Systems software enables companies to identify variations in the data by doing a fuzzy match," she said.

Founded in 1986 as Search Software America (SSA), Identity Systems became a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia in 2006.
http://www.techweb.com/showArticle.j...SSfeed_TechWeb





Lessig Seeks Legal Ground For Content Exchange
Martin LaMonica

High-profile legal scholar Lawrence Lessig on Friday called for an initiative to create compatible content licenses as a way to exchange content and promote "free culture."

Lessig spoke at the Wikimedia 2006 conference here, where he heaped praised on the people who contribute to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

He said that free exchange of information, particularly in digital form, is enabling a free culture that invites more participation from people.

Lessig said Wikipedia is one of the most visible examples of what he called "read-write culture" where people not only "consume" content, such as movies and books, but also make contributions to cultural works as well. For example, he demonstrated Japanese anime videos that had been "remixed" with different music.

Wikipedia is an online encylopedia where anyone can make edits to pages. The guiding philosophy behind Wikipedia is to give all people access to as much knowledge as possible, according to its co-founder, Jimmy Wales.

"More than anything else in the world, you have ignited this belief" in read-write culture, Lessig said. "Use the great capital you have created to go far beyond where you have demonstrated the success of freedom."

To avoid "islands" of online content, Lessig proposed that licenses that allow people to redistribute and use content in derivative works become interoperable.

He noted that there are licenses that are similar to the Creative Commons license, which Lessig helped create, that allow people to redistribute and reuse creative works.

Lessig proposed that the Software Freedom Law Center, which provides legal advice for free to open-source software organizations, certify equivalent content licenses.

Thus far, no agreement has been reached to bridge the Creative Commons licenses and the GNU Free Documententation License, said Eben Moglen, counsel for the Free Software Foundation, on Friday. He said bridging the two could be the step to broader content licenses.

Lessig said the idea would be that a content creator could say that a derivative work can be used freely using a choice of equivalent licenses, which ultimately will promote exchange of content and thwart digital-rights management schemes.

"If we don't solve this problem now, it's an environmental problem we'll be faced with three, five, eight years for now. As islands of creativity, we now have no simple ways of interoperating," Lessig said.
http://news.com.com/Lessig+seeks+leg...3-6102451.html





The Web returns to health

'The Last Frontier' on Internet Draws Big Names and Their Money
Annys Shin

Ninety-five million Americans -- about 80 percent of online adults -- have searched the Web for health information in the past year, and the overwhelming majority have been disappointed.

More than 70 percent of those searchers either did not find what they were looking for or had a hard time knowing what to believe, according to market research studies by Jupiter Research and Yankelovich Inc.

That frustration has attracted some famous deep pockets, including America Online co-founder Steve Case, his former employer Time Warner Inc., the Carlyle Group and Allen & Co. Together, they have put more than $100 million into building virtual destinations that offer consumers something beyond disease encyclopedias.

Some want to make it as easy to choose a doctor as a restaurant. Others eventually hope to offer "virtual assisted living" by monitoring medicines or pacemakers remotely, so the elderly can stay in their homes longer.

"The health category is the last frontier where the Internet has not yet transformed that industry, the way it has done for travel, finance, and commerce," Wayne T. Gattinella, chief executive of WebMD Health Corp., said.

Harnessing the Web to make health care more user-friendly has been a holy grail for entrepreneurs since the earliest days of the dot-com boom. But like many online content businesses, they failed because they could not figure out how to make money.

"The mistake that's been made by a lot of entrepreneurs who have pushed those approaches was an 'if we build it they will come' philosophy," said Jay Savan, a benefits consultant in the St. Louis office of Towers Perrin.

Some sites, such as Drkoop.com relied too heavily on advertising revenue. Named for the former U.S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop, it was worth more than $1 billion at one point, but went out of business in 2001 not long after going public. Its assets -- mainly Internet domain names -- were later sold for $186,000 in bankruptcy court. It is now owned by the HealthCentral Network, an Arlington-based company that is part of the second wave of health information Web businesses.

The dominant player in the field, 10-year-old WebMD, survived by merging with Healtheon, founded in 1996 by Netscape co-founder Jim Clark. He saw the Internet as the best way to bring doctors and patients together and "get all the other [jerks] out of the way." The combined company, which also delved into insurance claims processing, physician practice management software and plastics, did not post a profit until 2003.

The nearly $2 trillion health-care industry remains as fragmented and frustrating as ever. But the market for online health information and services has changed enough to make it a viable business, investors, entrepreneurs and analysts said.

A May 2005 Pew Internet & American Life Project study -- which reported that about 95 million people have searched the Web for health information -- found more people were turning to the Web for information about diet, exercise and over-the-counter drugs. They also do more "health homework" online, such as comparing physicians and hospitals.

"The consumer is starting to expect the same information with respect to a health provider as they expect with an airline or investment vehicle," Gattinella said. "Those are the big forces that will accelerate changes in our industry in the next five years."

It will still be a while yet before finding a heart surgeon is as easy as booking an airline ticket on Orbitz or Travelocity.

"I don't see we're at an inflection point because there is still major limitation on quality information available . . . [and] still limitations on cost information. Those limitations on data are not about to disappear," said Paul Ginsberg, president of Health System Change, a non-partisan research organization in Washington.

But with out-of-pocket medical expenses rising faster than family income, and a small but rapidly growing number of the insured turning to health-savings accounts and high-deductible health plans, consumers have begun shopping around, if not for the best hospital for coronary bypass graft surgery, then at the very least for prescription drugs.

Just as important as changing consumer habits, advertisers are also spending more money on Web ads.

WebMD spun off last year in a successful initial public offering and has seen its ad revenue grow. Last week, it reported a narrower second-quarter loss of $1.16 million, down from $1.5 million a year earlier. Advertising contributed to a 38 percent revenue increase.

As a result, big-name investors are once again bankrolling health information Web sites.

Time Warner has sunk money into Waterfront Media, a four-year-old Brooklyn publisher of self-help information founded by Ben Wolin and Michael Keriakos, two former executives with spirituality and faith Web site Beliefnet.

Unlike three years ago, when money for Internet start-ups was harder to come by, the company this past year raised $6 million from several sources, including Time Warner, to build EverydayHealth.com. The site, set to launch later this year, will deliver personalized health information, even by phone or personal digital assistant, to more than 11 million people who have created profiles on one of Waterfront's existing health-related sites.

The Carlyle Group, Allen & Co., and Sequoia Capital last year invested in HealthCentral Network, formerly ChoiceMedia Inc., which bought a collection of sites created during the dot-com boom and revamped them into a network of 25 condition-specific destinations that offer physician-reviewed information and the ability to connect with ordinary people who have experienced the same illness.

Both HealthCentral Network and Waterfront rely on advertising, and could benefit from a shift among pharmaceutical companies away from television and toward the Web, where they have unlimited time and space to relay such information as side effects.

Revolution Health, probably the most ambitious of WebMD's would-be competitors, is backed by Case and board members/investors such as Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., Franklin D. Raines, former chairman and chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Stephen Wiggins, founder of Oxford Health Plans.

Its Web portal, Revolutionhealth.com, is slated to launch in the fall. Revolution Health plans to offer, in addition to the usual searchable encyclopedia of disease information, tools for finding doctors, making appointments and managing health-related expenses.

What sets Revolution Health apart is its offline investments in walk-in retail clinics at places such as Walgreens and Wal-Mart for minor medical issues, and in insurance providers that offer high-deductible plans directly to consumers.

"It's best to attack this problem through multiple prisms and build a set of services that can attract an audience and can aggregate benefits to those consumers as well as those who want to provide services to those audiences," Case said.

RevolutionHealth.com plans to make money by selling customized services to employers and health plans, selling advertising and charging membership fees for a suite of premium services, which may include access to better-quality doctors.

"We don't want to be the place you go to when you're not feeling well. We want it to feel more like your buddy list and your portfolio, a service that engages you because it's personalized, several times a day, not several times a year," Case said.

There were rumors earlier this year that Google was also looking into the delving into the online health information business, a development that does not surprise any of the current players.

"I think you'll see several other companies coming into this space because it is such a huge marketplace and so underpenetrated at this point," Martin J. Wygod, chairman of WebMD, told analysts during a May conference call.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080701152.html





AOL Posts 20 Million User Queries

'Research' document later removed after hundreds download data file

America Online posted on the Internet – for a brief time – all of the search requests made by more than half-a-million customers, setting users in a rage.

"The utter stupidity of this is staggering," one comment on the website TechCrunch.com said today.

The data released includes all the searches submitted by an estimated 650,000 users over a three-month period, the results of the search, whether the users clicked on the result and where it appeared on the result page.

The file, was posted over the weekend and quickly removed, and TechCrunch said that means someone at AOL realized the damage that was being done and "is also an admission of wrongdoing of sorts."

Either way, the website noted, the information, a file of 439 megabits compressed and about 2 gigabits in standard file formation, now is available because of the estimated 1,000 copies made during the time it was up.

Later seekers of the posting were given an "Error – Bad Request" response.

While the AOL usernames had been changed in the file to a random ID number, TechCrunch said analyzing all searches listed by a single user often can lead people to determine the identity.

"The most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net," TechCrunch said. "Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment.

"Combine them with 'buy ecstasy' and you have evidence of a crime," the website said.

For example, user Number 39509 searched for "oklahoma disciplined pastors," "oklahoma disciplined doctors," and "home loans."

Number 545605 searched for "transfer money to china" and "capital gains on sale of house."

The AOL file included information about 20 million total searches, and logged User IDs, questions, question times, rank of the clicks and destination URLs.

"The goal of this collection is to provide a real query log based on users," the page said. "It could be used for personalization, query reformulation or other type of search research."

The AOL page also provided two warnings.

"This collection is distributed for non-commercial search only. Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is STRICTLY PROHIBITED."

The second was: "Please be aware that these queries are not filtered to remove any content. Pornography is prevalent on the Web and unfiltered search engine logs contain queries by users who are looking for pornographic material."

One of the first comments in response to the posting was from a graduate student working on PageRank algorithms. She wanted to know if further details of the queries were available.

The posting comes just a few months after a judge rejected a blanket subpoena from the Department of Justice to Google, another major Internet presence. The DOJ had sought two month's worth of users' search queries, but Google resisted the subpoena, and Judge James Ware excluded search queries and limited the government's demand for URLs to 50,000.

At the time, Google called it a victory.

"While privacy was not the most significant legal issue in this case (because the government wasn't asking for personally identifiable information), privacy was perhaps the most significant to our users," the company's statement said.

"We believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have in our ability to keep their information private."

Google said the judge's ruling in that case meant "that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies."

Microsoft also has considered releasing similar data to researchers, although not the part that would allow data to be associated with an individual user.

AOL's website did not address the posting.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=51427





A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749
Michael Barbaro and Tom Zeller Jr.

Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.

No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from “numb fingers” to “60 single men” to “dog that urinates on everything.”

And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for “landscapers in Lilburn, Ga,” several people with the last name Arnold and “homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia.”

It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs. “Those are my searches,” she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her.

AOL removed the search data from its site over the weekend and apologized for its release, saying it was an unauthorized move by a team that had hoped it would benefit academic researchers.

But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines — and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.

Those risks have long pitted privacy advocates against online marketers and other Internet companies seeking to profit from the Internet’s unique ability to track the comings and goings of users, allowing for more focused and therefore more lucrative advertising.

But the unintended consequences of all that data being compiled, stored and cross-linked are what Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group in Washington, called “a ticking privacy time bomb.”

Mr. Rotenberg pointed to Google’s own joust earlier this year with the Justice Department over a subpoena for some of its search data. The company successfully fended off the agency’s demand in court, but several other search companies, including AOL, complied. The Justice Department sought the information to help it defend a challenge to a law that is meant to shield children from sexually explicit material.

“We supported Google at the time,” Mr. Rotenberg said, “but we also said that it was a mistake for Google to be saving so much information because it creates a risk.”

Ms. Arnold, who agreed to discuss her searches with a reporter, said she was shocked to hear that AOL had saved and published three months’ worth of them. “My goodness, it’s my whole personal life,” she said. “I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder.”

In the privacy of her four-bedroom home, Ms. Arnold searched for the answers to scores of life’s questions, big and small. How could she buy “school supplies for Iraq children”? What is the “safest place to live”? What is “the best season to visit Italy”?

Her searches are a catalog of intentions, curiosity, anxieties and quotidian questions. There was the day in May, for example, when she typed in “termites,” then “tea for good health” then “mature living,” all within a few hours.

Her queries mirror millions of those captured in AOL’s database, which reveal the concerns of expectant mothers, cancer patients, college students and music lovers. User No. 2178 searches for “foods to avoid when breast feeding.” No. 3482401 seeks guidance on “calorie counting.” No. 3483689 searches for the songs “Time After Time” and “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

At times, the searches appear to betray intimate emotions and personal dilemmas. No. 3505202 asks about “depression and medical leave.” No. 7268042 types “fear that spouse contemplating cheating.”

There are also many thousands of sexual queries, along with searches about “child porno” and “how to kill oneself by natural gas” that raise questions about what legal authorities can and should do with such information.

But while these searches can tell the casual observer — or the sociologist or the marketer — much about the person who typed them, they can also prove highly misleading.

At first glace, it might appear that Ms. Arnold fears she is suffering from a wide range of ailments. Her search history includes “hand tremors,” “nicotine effects on the body,” “dry mouth” and “bipolar.” But in an interview, Ms. Arnold said she routinely researched medical conditions for her friends to assuage their anxieties. Explaining her queries about nicotine, for example, she said: “I have a friend who needs to quit smoking and I want to help her do it.”

Asked about Ms. Arnold, an AOL spokesman, Andrew Weinstein, reiterated the company’s position that the data release was a mistake. “We apologize specifically to her,” he said. “There is not a whole lot we can do.”

Mr. Weinstein said he knew of no other cases thus far where users had been identified as a result of the search data, but he was not surprised. “We acknowledged that there was information that could potentially lead to people being identified, which is why we were so angry.”

AOL keeps a record of each user’s search queries for one month, Mr. Weinstein said. This allows users to refer back to previous searches and is also used by AOL to improve the quality of its search technology. The three-month data that was released came from a special system meant for AOL’s internal researchers that does not record the users’ AOL screen names, he said.

Several bloggers claimed yesterday to have identified other AOL users by examining data, while others hunted for particularly entertaining or shocking search histories. Some programmers made this easier by setting up Web sites that let people search the database of searches.

John Battelle, the author of the 2005 book “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture,” said AOL’s misstep, while unfortunate, could have a silver lining if people began to understand just what was at stake. In his book, he says search engines are mining the priceless “database of intentions” formed by the world’s search requests.

“It’s only by these kinds of screw-ups and unintended behind-the-curtain views that we can push this dialogue along,” Mr. Battelle said. “As unhappy as I am to see this data on people leaked, I’m heartened that we will have this conversation as a culture, which is long overdue.”

Ms. Arnold says she loves online research, but the disclosure of her searches has left her disillusioned. In response, she plans to drop her AOL subscription. “We all have a right to privacy,” she said. “Nobody should have found this all out.”


Saul Hansell contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/te... ner=homepage





Google to Keep Storing Search Requests
Michael Liedtke

Although he was alarmed by AOL's haphazard release of its subscribers' online search requests, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt said Wednesday the privacy concerns raised by that breach won't change his company's practice of storing the inquiries made by its users.

"We are reasonably satisfied ... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google, although you can never say never," Schmidt said during an appearance at a major search engine conference in San Jose.

The security breakdown, disclosed earlier this week, publicly exposed about 19 million search requests made by more than 658,000 AOL subscribers during the three months ended in May. Time Warner Inc.'s AOL intended to release the data exclusively to researchers, but the information somehow surfaced on the Internet and was widely copied.

The lapse provided a glaring example of how the information that people enter into search engines can provide a window into their embarrassing - or even potentially incriminating - wishes and desires. The search requests leaked by AOL included inquiries seeking information about murder techniques and nude teenage girls.

AOL's gaffe hits close to home for Google because the two companies have extremely close business ties.

Mountain View-based Google owns a 5 percent stake in AOL, which also accounted for about $330 million of the search engine's revenue during the first half of this year. AOL also depends on Google's algorithms for its search results.

Schmidt told reporters Wednesday he hadn't had time to contact AOL executives to discuss the problems underlying the release of the search data, but questioned his business partner's judgment.

"It's a terrible thing," he said during his conference remarks. "Maybe it wasn't a good idea to release it in the first place."

AOL already has publicly apologized for its handling of the search requests, calling it a "screw up."

In response to a reporter's question, Schmidt said some good could still emerge from AOL's error by raising public awareness about the issue. "It may be positive because we want people to know what can happen" to online search requests, Schmidt said.

Google keeps its users' search requests as part of its efforts to better understand what specific people are looking for on the Internet.

But by storing the search requests, Google and its competitors are creating an opportunity for the material to be mistakenly released or stolen, according to privacy advocates.

Schmidt said he is less concerned about those possibilities than the governments of countries around the world demanding to review people's search requests. "I have always worried the query stream is a fertile ground for governments to snoop on the people."

The U.S. Justice Department last year subpoenaed Google for millions of its users' search requests as part of a court case involving protections against online child pornography.

Google refused to comply, resulting in a high-profile court battle earlier this year that culminated in a federal judge ruling that the search engine didn't have to hand over individual search requests to the government.

In his meeting with reporters, Schmidt also covered familiar ground, including Google's plans to develop more advertising channels and form more revenue-sharing partnerships with content providers.

Toward that end, Google during the past week announced new business alliances with The Associated Press, Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks and News Corp.'s rapidly growing social networking Web site, MySpace.com. The search engine also plans to start distributing radio ads within the next few months.

Google continues to negotiate with other potential partners, although Schmidt indicated nothing is likely to come to fruition during the next few weeks. "The highest priority right now is not (making) more deals, but implementing the ones we have announced," he told reporters.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-10-07-39-32





Govts Pose Greatest Threat To Web Privacy: Google

Web search leader Google, which stores vast amounts of data on the web-surfing habits of its users, sees government intrusions rather than accidental public disclosures of data as the greatest threat to online privacy, its chief executive has said.

CEO Eric Schmidt told the Search Engine Strategies industry conference that Google had put all necessary safeguards in place to protect its users' personal data from theft or accidental release.

His remarks followed last weekend's discovery by online privacy sleuths that AOL, a key Google search customer, had mistakenly released personally identifiable data on 20 million keyword searches by its users.

Mr Schmidt said a more serious threat to user privacy lay in potential demands on Google by governments to make the company give up data on its customer's surfing habits.

"You can never say never," Mr Schmidt said during an onstage interview with web search industry analyst Danny Sullivan.

"The more interesting question is not an accidental error but something where a government, not just the US Government but maybe a non-US government would try to get in (Google's computer systems)," Mr Schmidt said.

Google won kudos earlier this year from privacy advocates for going to court to block a US Government request for data on Google users. Mr Schmidt warned that such intrusions could occur again.

Google operates one of the world's largest collections of computer databases at its California headquarters. It asks users for permission to store personal data, which it uses to speed web searches to help advertisers target ads.

But Google also operates computer data centres in other countries, including China, where its entry into the market earlier this year stoked controversy over the risks of doing business under China's censorship laws.

Mr Sullivan asked Mr Schmidt why Google does not purge its users' data from its computers every month or two to guard against building up too much history of any web user's search habits.

"We have actually had that debate," Mr Schmidt said, adding that security protections Google has put in place would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to steal customer data. He said keeping users' trust was Google's most essential mission.

AOL, the online unit of media conglomerate Time Warner, apologised on Monday and said it had launched an internal probe into how a research division of the company mistakenly released the data on its website two weeks ago.

The trove of personal data continues to circulate on the web, where it can be downloaded and probed for details on user interests.

Release of the data on searches by about 658,000 anonymous AOL users over a three-month period has provoked a firestorm of criticism over the risks created by collecting vast stores of personal data as many online companies do, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com.

Even though the users' names are not attached to the data, they can be identified by the personal nature of many web searches.

"It is obviously a terrible thing," Mr Schmidt said of the AOL data breach. "The data that was released was obviously not anonymised enough."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...8/s1711286.htm





Patient information Stolen From Vassar Brothers Medical Center
AP

Vassar Brothers Medical Center has received a deluge of calls since officials revealed that a laptop containing personal information identifying 257,800 patients was stolen.

The laptop was stolen in late June, but Poughkeepsie police have no leads, Detective Lt. William Siegrist said.

All of the patients who had personal information compromised have been notified, said President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Daniel Aronson.

But some patients did not receive a letter of notification until Thursday, and have not had the opportunity to place a fraud alert with any of the three national credit bureaus.

"I want to scream. My information is floating everywhere," said Susan Johnson, who received a letter Thursday.

The hospital was forced to bring in additional staff to field calls from concerned patients.

The information in the laptop dated back about 20 years, said Nick Christiano, the hospital's chief information officer.

"Patients and former patients were calling in who did not receive a letter concerned about their private information," Aronson said. "They don't have to worry."

Hospital officials said the laptop was kept secured to a mobile cart in a secured room in a restricted area.

"The room is normally locked and the room is secured so the public usually can't get in and medical personnel need a card," Aronson said.

Security videos did not reveal any suspects, police said.

The laptop served as the backup database for admissions to the emergency department in case of an outage. It was also used in two disaster drills.

Patient information was not encrypted, but protected with a password, spokeswoman Jeanine Agnolet said.

The hospital has adopted a new system for storing personal patient information, storing it on a server in a secure location. Laptops are locked and secured in data management sites on the medical center campus.

"You would need to be a high-level, tech-oriented person to get through," he said.

The hospital has notified police and necessary state agencies of the theft, hospital officials said.

Officials at the state Consumer Protection Board indicated the agency had not received a report.

"We take this very seriously," Aronson said. "We take the health of the community very seriously and the trust they entrust us with very seriously. We intend to make sure, through various means, that something like this never happens again."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE=





Oregon Sailor Who Deserted Charged With Espionage; Held In Brig
Michael Felberbaum

A sailor accused of taking a Navy laptop computer loaded with classified information and peddling its contents to a foreign government is being held for possible court-martial, the Navy said Wednesday.

The Navy said in a statement that Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann was successful in giving the classified information to an undisclosed foreign government before he destroyed the computer.

The classified information was described as "relating to the national defense of the United States of America ..."

Weinmann, 21, Salem, Ore., was held at the brig at Norfolk Naval Air Station on six charges returned at a July 26 Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury, the Navy said.

The charges include three counts of espionage, including a March 2005 visit to Bahrain to "attempt to communicate, deliver or transmit" the classified information to "a representative, officer, agent or employee of a foreign government," the Navy said.

Months later, the Navy said, Weinmann deserted the submarine USS Albuquerque for more than eight months to travel to Austria and Mexico to "communicate, deliver or transmit" the information to a foreign government.

In March, near Vienna, the Navy alleges, Weinmann used a mallet to destroy the computer's hard drive.

U.S. Fleet Forces Command spokesman Ted Brown would not comment on which government or governments Weinmann is charged with spying for, what he was asking for in exchange for the information, or how he obtained the computer.

Weinmann was picked up at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on March 26 and transferred to Norfolk, the Navy said.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reported his confinement last week and on Wednesday detailed the charges against the sailor.

The Navy also charged Weinmann with failing to properly safeguard and store classified information, making an electronic copy of classified information, communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it, and stealing and destroying a government computer.

Weinmann, a fire control technician previously assigned to the submarine based at New London, Conn., faces a maximum punishment of death if his fleet commander decides to press for a court-martial.

Weinmann's Naval attorneys have declined to comment.

In Oregon, Ariel Weinmann's father, Rob, said FBI agents and Navy intelligence officers twice searched the family's house.

"I know his values, that in a lot of ways he was very naive, gullible. I definitely don't want him to be a scapegoat," Rob Weinmann said in an interview with KGW-TV.

He said his son joined the Navy in 2003 and was "really gung ho, really excited. He was going to make a career out of being in the Navy."

He said his son had become disillusioned with his mission when he disappeared in 2005.

"Eight months we never heard anything from the Navy about him, they never inquired about him, nothing, until the one day the FBI showed up at our door," he said.

Rob Weinmann said authorities told the family about the sensitive information on the laptop.

He said the family now communicates with their son through censored letters.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-19-57-39





2 Teens Accused In Theft of VA Computer
Brian Westley

Two teenagers were arrested Saturday in the theft of a laptop and hard drive containing sensitive data on up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, authorities said.

The equipment was stolen May 3 during a burglary at the Maryland home of a Veterans Affairs employee. The laptop and hard drive were turned into the FBI June 28 by an unidentified person in response to a $50,000 reward offer.

The equipment contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of veterans discharged since 1975, in what was the worst-ever breach of government data.

Jesus Alex Pineda, 19, and Christian Brian Montano, 19, both of Rockville, Md., were arrested early Saturday, Montgomery County police said.

Pineda was charged with first-degree burglary and theft over $500. Montano was charged with first-degree burglary, conspiracy to commit first-degree burglary, theft over $500, and conspiracy to commit theft over $500.

Police said charges were pending against a third male suspect who is a juvenile.

"I commend the FBI, Montgomery County Police, VA's Office of Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies for their professionalism and diligence throughout this investigation," Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson said in a statement. "Today's announcement that arrests have been made is good news."

Authorities said the suspects did not specifically target the VA employee's home in Aspen Hill, Md., and did not realize the hard drive contained veterans' information until the case was publicized.

Police did not have any information about attorneys for the suspects. A bond hearing could be held Monday at the earliest, officials said.

The VA announced last month that the FBI has determined with a high degree of confidence that the files were not compromised.

"While this arrest is good news, we were lucky that the data belonging to veterans was not accessed and misused," Steve Buyer, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

"The vulnerability is real and with the help of Congress, VA must move forward with information security reform," said Buyer, R-Ind.

Congress is investigating the steps leading up to and after the theft. It also is pondering legislation to improve information security.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-07-06-33





Credit Protection Due Vets In Data Theft
Hope Yen

Millions of veterans and active-duty troops whose sensitive personal information was lost by the Veterans Affairs Department will receive some form of credit protection against identity theft, the government said Wednesday.

Separately, the Transportation Department inspector general's office said that one of its laptop computers containing names, birth dates and Social Security numbers for 132,955 Florida residents was stolen July 27 from a government vehicle in suburban Miami.

Transportation officials were helping police investigate the theft of the laptop, which was stolen in Doral, Fla. It is believed to contain data for about 80,667 people issued commercial driver's licenses in the Miami-Dade County area; 42,792 Florida residents holding airman certificates; and 9,496 individuals who obtained personal or commercial driver licenses in Largo near Tampa.

The laptop was protected by a password, and there was no evidence the data has been used illegally, the department said.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said his department had arranged for a data analysis company to detect potential patterns of credit misuse for up to 26.5 million veterans whose names, birth dates and Social Security numbers were on a laptop and hard drive taken last May from a VA data analyst's Maryland home.

VA subcontractor Unisys Corp. also agreed to provide one year of free credit monitoring for as many as 38,000 veterans after the company last week lost a desktop computer containing their data at its offices in Reston, Va.

Letters will be sent in coming days to veterans affected in the Unisys case describing how to sign up for the free credit monitoring.

"Protecting veterans from fraud and abuse remains an important priority for VA," Nicholson said in a written statement. "Data breach analysis will provide VA with additional assurances that veterans' personal information remains unharmed."

The VA said ID Analytics, of San Diego, will provide the extra level of protection for those whose records were taken in the May 3 burglary.

In that case, the FBI recovered the laptop and hard drive and determined with a "high degree of confidence" that the data wasn't accessed or copied. Two teens were arrested last Saturday in what now appears to have been a routine burglary.

The VA had offered free credit monitoring for millions of veterans after the theft but withdrew the offer when it was determined the data had not been compromised. Instead, the agency said it would provide some form of credit analysis.

ID Analytics will provide an initial analysis of several industries to determine if there has been any suspicious activity involving the veterans' information. It will then provide follow-up reports every three months for an unspecified period at no cost to veterans or the government, the VA said.

The VA is struggling to repair its image following the high-profile theft last May, which prompted more than a dozen congressional hearings and a blistering VA inspector general's report faulting both the VA employee and his superiors for poor judgment and lax security policies.

Nicholson pledged to make the VA a model for information security. But the VA's announcement on Monday that Unisys had lost data for veterans who received care in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh prompted fresh criticism.

"VA remains unwavering in its resolve to become the leader in protecting personal information, training and educating our employees in best practices," Nicholson said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-10-00-02-18





Senate's top Democrat Urges VA's Nicholson to Resign After Latest Data Loss
AP

The Senate's top Democrat says Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson should resign, calling his leadership a threat to national security after the VA lost another computer containing veterans' personal data.

``Enough is enough,'' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday. ``Less than a month after promising to make the VA the 'gold standard' in data security, Secretary Nicholson has again presided over loss of the personal information of thousands more veterans.''

Reid is the third Senate Democrat -- joining Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Kerry of Massachusetts -- who has called for Nicholson's ouster following high-profile data thefts at the government's second largest agency.

``Unfortunately, this dangerous incompetence has become all too common in the Bush White House, and it has made America less safe,'' Reid said.

A VA spokesman did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

On Monday, the VA announced that one of its subcontractors, Unisys Corp., had lost a desktop computer containing personal data for as many as 38,000 veterans who received care at VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The computer was located at Unisys' offices in Reston, Va.

Federal and local authorities were investigating the incident, which is believed to involve veterans' names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, insurance carriers and claims data including medical information.

The disclosure came two days after authorities said they had arrested two teens in connection with the May 3 theft of a laptop and external drive containing the personal data of 26.5 million veterans at a VA employee's home in suburban Maryland.

On Tuesday, lawmakers from both parties criticized the latest data loss, which they said needlessly put veterans and active-duty troops at risk of identity theft.

In recent weeks, the VA has also acknowledged losing sensitive data for more than 16,000 veterans in at least two other cases in Minneapolis and Indianapolis.

``We clearly appear to have a systems problem with VA data security that needs to be fixed,'' said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Leahy said it was time for Bush to hold Nicholson accountable. In May, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush had ``full faith and confidence'' in Nicholson's leadership.

``Each week seems to bring another alarming example of incompetence by the Bush administration to protect the personal information of Americans,'' Leahy said. ``Certainly, our nation's veterans -- who have been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country -- deserve better.''

Kerry agreed. ``Fire the incompetents,'' he said. ``Losing veterans' most sensitive personal information must have consequences.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/15227134.htm





Cyber-Thieves Steal $700K Via ATM Hacking
Chris Preimesberger

Cyber-thieves who hacked into the ATM information of at least 800 retail customers in California and Oregon have stolen as much as $700,000 from personal accounts during the last two months, according to police reports.

People who used ATM cards to purchase items at Dollar Tree, a national retail toy store chain, in Modesto and Carmichael, Calif., and Ashland, Ore., have turned in reports of unauthorized withdrawals in the computer-based scam.

Federal and local investigators would not discuss with eWEEK how the thieves stole the information. How many shoppers have been victimized is also an open question.

Brady Mills, supervisor of the Sacramento field office of the U.S. Secret Service, confirmed to eWEEK Aug. 4 that the agency is investigating the thefts and that the bureau has been on the case for about two months.

But Mills would only say that the case is "ongoing" and wouldn't offer any more details about possible suspects or about the process in which the money was stolen.

Dollar Tree Stores is a U.S.-based chain of retail stores headquartered in Chesapeake, Va. Every item sold in the stores is offered for either $1 or less, thus making it a true dollar store. As of July 29, 2006, Dollar Tree operates 3,156 stores in 48 states.

Dollar Tree customers in Modesto began reporting unauthorized ATM withdrawals from their bank accounts on June 12, a report in the Modesto Bee newspaper said.

Local police said that more than 600 accounts were drained of approximately $500,000, according to the report.

On Aug. 1, police in Ashland confirmed that at least 200 people lost more than a total $200,000 due to unauthorized bank account withdrawals after shopping at Dollar Tree stores in the Rogue Valley region of southern Oregon.

In the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, a shift manager at the Dollar Tree store told eWEEK on Aug. 4 that there hadn't been any ATM-related theft reports for "about two or three weeks" but did confirm that there were "a number of ATM theft claims filed at the store in June and July."

She referred eWEEK to Dollar Tree Store headquarters, which was closed for the day.

Possible Scenarios

Although the details of how the cyber-thieves actually pulled off the Dollar Tree scam are not publicly known, there are some common scenarios that have been known to be troublesome for the ATM/credit card companies and their customers, Dr. David Taylor of enterprise data security specialist Protegrity in Stamford, Conn., told eWEEK.

"I'd say it's most likely that an insider's information was compromised somehow," Taylor said.

Taylor mentioned that there are plenty of federal and state regulations about how encrypted financial data is transferred from location A to location B through a corporate network via the Internet, wireless and phone lines.

"But what about all that unencrypted data [for the day's receipts and for backup purposes] that's still sitting around at the point of sale? That's the [identity and credit card] information that's ripe for the picking," Taylor said.

National chains like Dollar Tree are often franchised to individual owners who often don't have the money to fully secure their sales data as well as a corporate data center.

Click here to read about an insurance company that lost 540,000 employee records.

"If a company has 100, 200 or more stores, that starts getting pretty expensive to completely secure each location," he said. "Generally, local store systems are poorly protected."

Taylor said that the main problem is in the passwords that applications use to communicate with servers.

"The passwords that apps use to link up with servers are often not changed for long periods of time—and they certainly are not as easy to change as a person's PIN," he said.

All a hacker has to do once he or she has compromised a system—through phishing, pharming or some other method—is to know where the right logfiles are on the system during a batch job, and the personal information is easy to obtain, Taylor said.

According to Taylor, IT security administrators are loathe to take down systems more than a few hours at a time every year to change application passwords because so many businesses rely on 24/7 online and ATM purchase systems.

"Business people don't want to see the system down for maintenance like this because they have made commitments to keeping it up for customer service on a round-the-clock basis. It's a real problem," Taylor said.

The bad guys already know all this information, and "what we need is for more of the good guys to know this and do something about it," he added.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759...119TX1K0000594





Black Hat Takes Vista to Task
Sean Michael Kerner

Microsoft spent a whole day here at the Black Hat conference extolling the security enhancements in its upcoming Vista operating system.

Joanna Rutkowska, a security researcher with security firm Coseinc, spent a day picking it apart.

Then again, what else would you expect from a session at a hacker convention titled: "Subverting Vista Kernel For Fun And Profit"?

Rutkowska took the stage in front of a capacity audience and proceeded to explain how to get around Vista.

She demonstrated two potential attack vectors. One could allow unsigned code to be loaded into the Vista kernel. The second vector involved taking advantage of AMD's Pacific Hardware Virtualization to inject a new form of super malware that Rutkowska claimed to be undetectable.

Rutkowska's Vista kernel attack did not rely on any known bugs in Vista, which is still in beta testing. She stressed that her demonstration did not rely on any implementation bug nor any undocumented Windows Vista functionality.

She characterized her approaches as "legal," using documented SDK (define) features.

One of the new features in Vista Beta 2 is that it requires all kernel mode drivers to be signed. The general idea is to prevent malware from being injected. Rutkowska's effort suggested that Microsoft still has some work to do on this feature.

Rutkowska's method for injecting unsigned (and therefore potentially malicious) drivers into the Vista kernel involved taking advantage of paged memory to bypass Vista security.

In her demo, the shellcode used disabled signature checking, thus allowing any unsigned driver to be subsequently loaded. Taking her attack a step further, she implemented a one-click tool, which she called "Kernelstike" to execute her Vista kernel exploit.

Call it fresh meat for sharks: The audience erupted into spontaneous applause, followed by whoops and woo-hoos throughout her demonstration.

"The fact that this mechanism was bypassed doesn't mean Vista is insecure. It just means it's just not as secure as advertised," Rutkowska said.

Rutkowska brought suggestions that could potentially prevent the subversion of the Vista kernel. One of them involves denying raw disk access from usermode, though she said that approach would likely break many applications.

Rutkowska said she disabled kernel memory paging on her own machine and is just using physical memory instead. She did admit, however, that her machine had 4 GB of RAM and as such paging makes little sense.

Rutkowska also demonstrated a new form of super malware that she said she could use against Vista. The attack involved compromising chipmaker AMD's 64 SVM hardware virtualization features with a tool she called "Blue Pill."

It creates a hypervisor that can control the operating system. A network backdoor can then be inserted onto a compromised Blue Pill machine. Rutkowska developed such a backdoor. She named it "Delusion." She said it was undetectable.

When she connected to it, the remote shell on the compromised Blue Pill machine greeted Rutkowska with the following response: "Hi this is Delusion. Where do you want to go today?"
http://www.internetnews.com/security...le.php/3624861





Hacking the hackers

Defcon Aims To Thwart Counterfeit Badges
Dan Goodin

The thousands of people who waited an hour or more to get into Defcon drove home what a hot ticket this 14-year-old computer-hacking event has become.

In years past, when would-be attendees couldn't afford the admission price, they put their hacking skills to work by creating counterfeit badges. This year, organizers turned to Joe Grand, a designer of consumer electronics hardware, to come up with something that couldn't be easily duplicated. Admission this year costs $100.

"This particular badge, because it's electronic, is hard to counterfeit," Grand said as he pointed to a circular plastic badge with two blinking lights at the top. "To make something like this in a few days could cost a lot of money."

The circular badge's deceptively simple design features the Defcon logo of a skull and crossbones and a smiling face. Two light-emitting diodes designate the eyes, and a tiny microprocessor inside causes them to blink in four different ways.

But the processor isn't something sold at Radio Shack or other electronics stores, said Grand, whose San Diego-based company, Grand Idea Studio, licenses hardware designs to electronics manufacturers. Trying to embed the processor into plastic less than 1/8-inch thick would also be a difficult undertaking.

Grand has added other features to the circuitry in the hopes that attendees will give the badges new capabilities. He said he wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out a way to make the processor act as a remote control that can turn hotel televisions on and off.

In past years, attendees have managed to counterfeit badges anyhow, despite designs meant to thwart copying. A shiny gum wrapper was once used to replicate a badge's holographic icon, Grand said. Another time, hackers were able to duplicate badges even though they had liquid pulsing through them.

"Every time they've taken steps to stop counterfeiting, and every time somebody always figures out a way to counterfeit the badge," Grand said.

Grand's design, and the inevitable attempts to circumvent it, are part of the spirit of Defcon, where some of the world's best-known hackers gather to share ideas and try to one up each other in their endless crusade to get machines to act in ways they weren't designed to behave.

Defcon is also an opportunity for computer-security experts to air some of the latest research.

Greg Conti, a computer science professor at the United States Military Academy, prepared a report that shows just how much information free Web services such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have about typical Internet users. He wrote a program that allows anyone to see the kind of personal details - including a complete list of every search item ever entered, every location surveyed on a map, and entries put in electronic calendars - routinely stored by such sites.

"I was shocked, and I think other people will be shocked, to learn the information they've been handing over," Conti said in an interview ahead of his presentation. "What we're doing is implicitly trusting a handful of companies with a tremendous amount of our personal information."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-04-17-20-12





Stocks Fall After Apple Computer Delays
AP

Stocks fell Friday on news that Apple Computer would delay its latest quarterly report because of irregularities related to past stock-option grants.

A widening scandal around the backdating of options, which has already resulted in five indictments and a series of restatement announcements at other companies, could roil Wall Street. UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's No. 2 insurer, on Wednesday said it would delay filing its quarterly report while it evaluates its stock options granted since 1994.

Apple said it expects to make ''significant changes'' to results for the third quarter because of irregularities related to past stock-option grants.

Every sector fell except for consumer discretionary stocks, which were buoyed by cheery retail sales numbers reported by the Commerce Department. Retail sales rebounded in July, by 1.4 percent, the biggest gain in six months. June's revised sales numbers were down 0.4 percent, much weaker than the 0.1 percent dip originally reported.

In morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 34.82, or 0.31 percent, to 11,089.55.

Broader stock indicators also dropped. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 5.05, or 0.40, to 1,266.76, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 13.11, or 0.63 percent, to 2,058.63.

Bonds fell, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at 4.96 percent, up from 4.93 percent Thursday. The U.S. dollar was higher against other major currencies and gold prices also rose.

Crude oil futures rose. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $74.15, up 15 cents, in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Apple's stock fell 86 cents to $63.21. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said it expects to have to restate past results to take non-cash charges for compensation costs related to stock option granting practices.

Canadian resort operator Intrawest Corp. rose $7.73, or 29 percent, to $34.24 after it agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Fortress Investment Group LLC for about $1.81 billion cash. The $35-per-share cash offer represents a 32 percent premium over Intrawest's Thursday closing price of $26.51 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down 7.29, or 1.06 percent, to 678.98.

Decliners led advancers by roughly 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume was 144.54 million, down from 188.30 million Thursday.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.42 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.32 percent, Germany's DAX index was down 0.29 percent, and France's CAC-40 was up 0.14 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi...ll-Street.html





FCC Reaffirms Commitment To Broadband Over Power Lines
Nate Anderson

The FCC has reaffirmed its rules (PDF) governing broadband over power lines (BPL) after challenges from the broadcasting industry and from amateur radio operators sought to derail the BPL train. The rules were passed in 2004, but immediately stirred up opposition among groups worried about potential interference. The television industry wanted to exclude BPL from all frequencies above 50MHz, while amateur radio operators wanted FCC approval withdrawn until it could be conclusively demonstrated that BPL posed no interference issues. The aviation industry also had a complaint, and it wanted the FCC to exclude BPL from certain frequencies that it used. All the claims were denied.

The decision means that BPL deployments can go ahead as planned. The FCC is a booster for BPL because it fits with their current strategy of encouraging broadband competition between types of service rather than among providers of the same service. If BPL trials go well, the service could offer an alternative to cable and DSL. Commissioner Kevin Martin points to BPL's ease of deployment as one of the reasons for his optimism about the technology's future. "BPL has unique advantages for home networking because consumers can simply plug a device into their existing electrical outlets to achieve broadband connectivity," he said. "Promoting the deployment of broadband continues to be one of our top priorities and today's action is another step towards reaching that goal."

Commissioner Copps, one of the two Democrats, issued a separate statement in which he talked up BPL's potential to break up the broadband "duopoly." "We all have high hopes for Broadband over Power Line and I think we would all like to see some non-duopoly pipes bringing broadband access to, particularly, hard to reach Americans," Copps said. "We are behind the game in putting high-speed, high value bandwidth to work for all our citizens. You know something is wrong when the best case scenario is that a consumer has a choice between two broadband connections, both of which are more expensive and considerably slower than what consumers in other industrialized nations enjoy. And that's how it works in our wealthy metropolitan areas. Over much of the rest of America, it just gets worse."

BPL has had a rocky road to market, though recent trials across the country have shown that the technology can work. Whether it ever achieves the market penetration necessary to challenge cable and DSL remains to be seen, but with both BPL and WiMAX on the horizon, Internet providers might at last be spurred into making the kinds of upgrades necessary to bring America up to par with other world broadband leaders.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060804-7422.html





PBS Firing of Host of ‘The Good Night Show’ Draws Protests
Elizabeth Jensen

When it comes to outrage, parents of toddlers know how to make themselves heard.

The Public Broadcasting Service has weathered recent criticism from free-speech advocates saying that the network is being overly cautious in a new policy to censor foul language in nonfiction programs by digitally obscuring the mouths of speakers. But the outcry has been dwarfed by the thousands of complaints, mostly from parents, over the PBS Kids Sprout network’s firing of Melanie Martinez, the host of “The Good Night Show,” after learning that she appeared years ago in two videos spoofing public service announcements advocating teenage sexual abstinence.

As the controversy has escalated, Ms. Martinez, a 34-year-old New York actress who is married and the mother of a 3-year-old, has become for many a symbol of political expediency run amok. On Thursday PBS’s own ombudsman, Michael Getler, tackled the topic for a second time and wrote that Ms. Martinez’s firing had “too much of a whiff of after-the-fact loyalty oaths and purity checks on performers who do lots of different things.”

Ms. Martinez, who has largely kept silent since her firing was made public on July 20, said in a telephone interview that while she was grateful for the support, she did not relish her new role. Above all, she said, “I’m sad that I don’t have a job and also sad I don’t have that job.”

As host of “The Good Night Show,” a block of evening series that includes “Dragon Tales,” “Bob the Builder” and “Thomas & Friends,” Ms. Martinez introduced cartoons and demonstrated arts and crafts between the segments. “I had the best time making it,” she said. “It was two glorious seasons that I filmed.”

The 30-second videos that led to her firing, made in 2000 and 2001, graphically satirized abstinence programs but were not pornographic. They were downloaded some two million times from a Web site called technicalvirgin.com that was once lauded by Maxim and Howard Stern but has since been dismantled.

David Mack, the co-writer, producer and director of the videos, said in an interview that he removed them in 2004. “When we heard Melanie was auditioning for a PBS kids show, we thought it was not the sort of thing that we would want out there,” he said, adding that “it was an old joke that had run its course.”

But pirated copies of the videos were still ricocheting around the Web, on youtube.com and Google Video, neither of which existed when the videos were made. “We did not conceive of that coming back to haunt us,” Mr. Mack said, adding, “I feel terrible.”

According to both Ms. Martinez and Sprout, she became aware that the videos were still online and told her bosses in mid-July. But Ms. Martinez said she had also disclosed the work, which she called “smartly written,” when she applied for the job at Sprout, a digital cable and satellite channel that broadcasts reruns of shows like “Barney and Friends” and “Sesame Street” and is seen in about 20 million homes. “I’ve never hidden anything on my résumé as far as my acting career,” she said, but “it never came up.”

Asked about Ms. Martinez’s contention that she disclosed the work on her résumé, the president of Sprout, Sandy Wax, said in a statement released through a spokeswoman that “the first time we learned of Ms. Martinez’s appearance in the Technical Virgin video was when she disclosed this information to PBS Kids Sprout on July 14, 2006. Prior to this date, we had no knowledge of the existence of these videos or Ms. Martinez’s role in them from the information we were provided at the time she was cast in the role of ‘Melanie’ a year ago.”

The president of PBS, Paula Kerger, told The Los Angeles Times last week that Ms. Martinez would probably not have been hired had executives known of the videos because “she’s not an actress — she really is supposed to embody the service itself.”

In a statement to parents posted on its Web site, sproutletsgrow.com, Sprout says that “the dialogue in this video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host and may undermine her character’s credibility with our audience.”

That didn’t sit well with many parents, who deluged the network with complaints and started two petitions to have her reinstated. Many messages noted that toddlers were unlikely to be surfing the Internet and stumble across the past work.

Sprout is a joint venture of PBS, the cable system operator Comcast Corporation and the producers Hit Entertainment and Sesame Workshop. But PBS has taken the brunt of the ire, with some Internet posters suggesting that protestors withhold donations.

PBS and Sprout would not say how many complaints they had received. Mr. Getler wrote that he had received about 250 e-mail messages, with just one supporting Sprout’s decision. PBS Viewer Services, he wrote, received some 1,700 e-mail messages, about 6 in favor of the Sprout decision, while some 5,000 people have signed the petitions against it.

“It struck me as ironic that at the very time PBS is fighting against new Federal Communications Commission rulings about indecency that the network argues will inhibit documentary filmmakers and freedom of speech, it delivers a subjective punishment to a popular performer for something done seven years ago that was clearly a spoof,” Mr. Getler wrote.

PBS representatives declined to comment. Jenni Glenn, a Sprout spokeswoman, said: “We understand that some viewers are going to be disappointed, and we know that change is difficult for viewers, especially children.” But she said there was no possibility that the decision would be reversed. Sprout hopes to have a new host by the end of the year, she said.

Ms. Martinez said that as a classically trained actress, who has toured with the National Shakespeare Company and appeared with many downtown theater companies, “I’ve done lots of roles and worn many costumes. I did not think a spoof P.S.A. would come up like this again.”

Now, after a visit to her parents in Texas, “where I got that parent hug I needed,” she said she was back in New York, “auditioning and taking meetings, and we’ll see.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/05/ar...ion/05pbs.html





Lily Allen, Britain’s New Pop Star, Has Cheek, and Bite, to Spare
Sia Michel

Lily Allen is a newly minted British pop star, a MySpace hero with 57,000 virtual friends, and the symbol of a new, swaggeringly confident young woman. But that doesn’t mean that this 21-year-old gets any special treatment at home, where she lives with her mom and a baby brother she has immortalized in song as a stoner wastrel in a “stupid fitted cap.”

“I was doing international phoners this morning, and my mum kept clomping around in her big black shoes,” Ms. Allen complained. “I was like, ‘Mom — I’m on Australian radio, leave me alone!,’ and she didn’t even care.” Last week Ms. Allen’s ska-inflected, sharply written and hilariously bratty debut album, “Alright, Still,” entered the British pop chart at No. 2, with a healthy 73,000 copies sold. (It has since gone gold, with more than 100,000 sold.)

The album followed a No. 1 single, “Smile,” a lilting reggae confection that sounds so sunny on first listen that it is shocking to realize that it is a vengeful goodbye to a contrite cheater. “At first when I see you cry/ Yeah, it makes me smile,” Ms. Allen sings in her bright, innocent soprano. In the video she hires thugs to beat up the lad, trash his apartment and — horror of horrors — scratch his vinyl records. When he becomes a sniveling mess, she tenderly consoles him. Then she doses him with laxatives.

Compared with other characters on the album, he gets off easy. Woe is the man who inspired “Not Big,” a slam against a lover who is “rubbish in bed.” Ms. Allen has apparently mined a lot of material from what she calls “two major relationships and one not-so-major relationship.”

“No boy’s ever done anything that crazy to me,” she said, speaking via cellphone as she rode to a hotel in Belgium. “I think I do all the crazy things, and that’s why they end up leaving me.” She giggled hysterically.

Ms. Allen is one of the oddest female artists to emerge in years. She is obsessed with black music, from rock-steady to Jay-Z, but she seems blithely unconcerned with issues of authenticity and appropriation. She sings of shoving girls around at clubs, but has pictures of cute puppies on her blog. She is a pretty, petite woman whose trademark outfit — a vintage evening dress accessorized with flashy sneakers, a 60’s updo, heavy eyeliner, door-knocker earrings and gold chains — recalls Gwen Stefani in the way it stylishly synthesizes a dizzying array of influences. She looks so traditionally feminine that her foul mouth and bellicose nature are amusing surprises.

Like a cross between Oasis in its trash-talking heyday and a beef-starting American rapper, she loves to needle bigger stars. She saves most of her vitriol for male rockers, who cannot fire back without looking like lass-bashing bullies. She recently raised hackles by declaring guitar rock boring, and mocks old ladies in “Nan, You’re a Window Shopper,” a reggae spoof of a 50 Cent song.

“I just can’t keep my mouth shut,” she said. “I don’t really mean to offend anyone. I think I say things that, if I weren’t in the public eye, no one would bat an eyelash at.” During the interview she seemed shy and unconfrontational, bursting into nervous laughter at innocuous questions like “Why are you in Belgium?”

Her feud-mongering has generated loads of news media coverage, which has helped spur her success in Britain. Now Capitol Records has announced that it will release her album in the United States this February. “Lily is compelling on so many levels,” said Andy Slater, the label’s president and chief executive. “She clearly has a point of view, and she’s the first artist I’ve seen this year that offers a sort of rally cry for women under 25.”

In their MySpace “friends comments,” Ms. Allen’s female supporters have praised her rebelliousness (she says she shared her demos on the site despite her label’s concerns); her accessibility (she maintains her own page and often e-mails fans); and her regular-girl problems (she is not as skinny as Kate Moss).

Catchy and timelessly summery, “Alright, Still” lacks the voice-of-a-generation heft of the Arctic Monkeys’ “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,” another recent British smash built on MySpace buzz. She offers a milquetoast social critique on the calypso track “LDN” (text-message shorthand for “London”): In her hometown, “Everything seems nice/ But if you look twice/ It’s all lies.”

But Ms. Allen does capture a sense of universal teenage angst with her cinematic tales of bad breakups, club spats and backstabbing friends. She symbolizes a new blogging-age, middle-class girl: cockily ambitious, skeptical yet enthusiastic, technically savvy, musically open, obsessed with public expression and ready to fight back.

“She appeals to so many different people,” said Malik Meer, an editor at NME, the British music weekly, which recently featured her on its cover. “She’s young and female, a bit urban and street, but also fashiony. She’s very now.”

Ms. Allen’s revenge-crazed frontwould grow insufferable if it were not relieved by her lost-girl sadness. Songs like the sarcastic swinging 60’s romp “Everything’s Just Wonderful” relay a sense that darkness lurks below every cheery surface. Ms. Allen has alluded to a chaotic childhood in interviews, which might explain her hellfire response to rejection. “Everything was quite comfortable, but everyone was mental,” she told a British newspaper.

She is the daughter of a film-producer mother and a comedian father (Keith Allen, a scenester friend to many rock stars). They split when she was 4. She has said that she changed schools more than a dozen times, became a raver, dropped out and ended up selling Ecstasy in Ibiza when she was 15. On the island she met an A & R representative who introduced her to the duo Future Cut, who later helped write and produced half of her debut.

This past November, while signed to the Regal/Parlophone label, she started her MySpace page and uploaded some demo tracks and party-ready mix tapes (one seamlessly incorporates Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Rod Stewart and yodeling). She says that she did not have a grand strategy, that she was mostly impatient for people to hear her music.

“I knew who Arctic Monkeys were and that they had grown a following through the Internet, but I didn’t know it was on MySpace,” Ms. Allen said. “I didn’t even really know what it was.”

The response was so immediately overwhelming that the label moved up her album release date. Now Ms. Allen is too busy even to update her blog. “My page is in a really bad state at the moment,” she said with a sigh. “There are 15,000 people waiting to be approved as friends. It’s just too much.”

“Alright, Still” has a broad appeal: to people who like sugary, well-made pop, and to people who won’t admit they love sugary, well-made pop unless it comes with a veneer of cutting-edge cool. Ms. Allen’s instant success has earned the inevitable backlash. A rapper recorded the “Smile” parody “Vile” (the video involves sock puppets). And Ms. Allen has been slammed for coasting on her father’s fame, for gentrifying reggae, for being anti-male, for aping the British rapper Mike Skinner of the Streets and for feigning a working-class, East London accent.

“It’s stupid, because I lived in London my whole life,” she said irately. “Other people from England sing in an American accent, and that’s 3,000 miles away. I have a more real accent than they do. East London is five miles down the road.”

When asked what she thinks of another white girl reggae singer — Paris Hilton, the “Stars Are Blind” diva — Ms. Allen was uncharacteristically cautious: “Um... no comment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/05/ar...ic/05alle.html





Vindication: Police Drop Wiretap Charges
Andrew Wolfe

Police won’t prosecute a man for using his home security system to record detectives on his front porch, Nashua Police Chief Timothy Hefferan announced Friday.

Michael Gannon was arrested June 27 after he made the videotape to record conversations among detectives who were at his door looking for his 15-year-old son, who was being investigated in connection with a mugging downtown. When Gannon brought the videotape to a police station to complain that a detective was rude to him, he was arrested on felony wiretapping charges.

The case attracted attention around the world, as news spread via the Internet. The Telegraph and city police received scores of phone calls and e-mails condemning the charges.

In addition to dropping the case against him, Nashua police also have concluded that Gannon’s complaint about the detective was justified, although the chief added that Gannon himself was “provocative” and “disrespectful.” The chief declined to say what discipline the detective might face.

Hefferan also commended detectives for their “tenacity and initiative” in investigating Gannon’s 15-year-old son, who was later charged in connection with the mugging. Police also found a stolen handgun inside the house, they reported, but it’s not clear who had possession of it, Hefferan said.

Gannon, 39, expressed relief.

“Glad to hear some good news finally,” he said. “I’ve been worried, a little scared, because they said they were going to hold 21 years over my head.”

After the case became public, the chief had said he would ask a prosecutor, First Assistant County Attorney Roger Chadwick, to review the case against Gannon.

On Friday, after conferring with the prosecutor, Hefferan said he decided to drop the matter.

“It’s the same sense that I had early on when I first learned of this, the morning after it occurred,” Hefferan said. “It wasn’t a real good feeling that I had for it . . . . We felt it would be extremely difficult to convince a jury of this.”

While police believe Gannon had violated state wiretap laws, Hefferan wrote in a statement announcing his decision, police and prosecutors concluded the case wasn’t strong enough to bother prosecuting.

Gannon’s cameras recorded both audio and video, and a sticker on the side of his Morgan Street home warned that persons on the premises were subject to being recorded. Police had charged that Gannon violated state wiretap laws by recording officers without their knowledge while they were standing on his front porch.

It is a crime under state law (RSA 570-A:2) to use any sort of electronic device to eavesdrop or record conversations without the consent of everyone involved. It’s a felony to record other people’s conversations, and a misdemeanor to record one’s own conversations without the other person’s consent.

Gannon said detectives came to his home late at night and refused to leave when he asked them to do so. He took a videocassette to the police station as evidence, saying he wanted to file a complaint against Detective Andrew Karlis, whom he said was rude.

Police have investigated Gannon’s complaint and concluded it was founded, Hefferan said. Hefferan said some action would be taken, but he couldn’t discuss it because the detective has already been publicly identified.

“I have sustained the complaint, and believe one of our detectives did not afford a member of the public the level of courtesy that they expect and deserve, regardless of how provocative, uncooperative or disrespectful that individual may have been to the officer during the same encounter,” Hefferan wrote.

Gannon disputed that he was rude to police, saying he simply asked them repeatedly to leave and used vulgarity only when they ignored his request.

“I told them get the eff out of my house,” Gannon said, adding, “I don’t see how me saying ‘Goodnight, gentlemen’ about 40 times is rude.”

“All I did is file a complaint, and I end up going to jail . . . They put my family through hell,” Gannon said. “I’m not saying my kids are perfect, but the way they came on, they acted like my kids killed the president or something.”

Gannon was released after his wife posted $10,000 bail. Before opting to drop the case, police offered a plea deal, Gannon had said: a 30-day, suspended jail sentence if he admitted to a single misdemeanor charge of evidence tampering.

Gannon refused.

“I felt that I did nothing wrong, so I wasn’t guilty,” he said Friday.

After Gannon turned down that deal, a prosecutor said his case would be sent to the Hillsborough County Attorney’s office for further prosecution. But Hefferan’s decision Friday ends the case.

Gannon appreciated the numerous phone calls he received from people offering their support, “people saying they backed me and all that.”

“But at the same time, I’m facing all these trumped charges, running scared,” he said. “I was more worried about the 21 years than anything else.”

Gannon said he hopes police will return and reinstall the security cameras, which they seized from his home during a search after his arrest.

“They broke them off the mounts and ripped the wires right out of the wall,” Gannon said. “They took it, they can return it, that’s my feeling.”

Hefferan said police will return Gannon’s equipment. He has yet to determine whether police can make public a copy of the videotapes, however. Because the recording is technically illegal, he said, it would be a crime to distribute it.

“I’m not sure whether I can do that,” Hefferan said.

The state wiretap law notwithstanding, Hefferan said citizens and businesses have the right to set up security systems that include audio recording, but they must post clear, obvious notice to warn anyone within range. The “obscure little sticker” Gannon had posted on the side of his house wasn’t enough, Hefferan said.

The case is being discussed in a forum on the Telegraph Web site, at www.nashuatelegraph.com/gannon.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/...WS01/108050086





Despite Protest, Hong Kong Surveillance Law Passes
Keith Bradsher

Pro-Beijing lawmakers approved legislation here today giving broad authority to the police to conduct covert surveillance, including wiretapping phones, bugging homes and offices and monitoring e-mail.

The bill passed the 60-member Legislative Council on a vote of 32 to 0 soon after pro-democracy lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest early this morning. The Democratic Party and its allies had tried to introduce nearly 200 amendments to the bill through four days of marathon debates, but all were defeated or ruled out of order.

Ambrose S.K. Lee, the secretary for security, welcomed the legislation, saying it was necessary to fight crime. “I wish to assure the residents of Hong Kong that the law now is a good balance between effective law enforcement on the one hand and the protection of privacy on the other,” he said.

But James To, the Democratic Party lawmaker who is the chairman of the legislature’s security committee, said the law gave too much discretion to the police and to the chief executive. He contended that the law would make it too easy for the government to monitor political opponents.

He objected to the law’s broad authorization of covert surveillance for the sake of public security and to the creation of a three-judge panel chosen by the chief executive to review such surveillance.

The government has said that it would not apply a political litmus test in choosing the panel’s members from among the two dozen judges eligible for it. But Mr. To was skeptical.

“We don’t know whether it’s a political vetting or not,” he said.

The government also promised not to use covert surveillance for political spying, but blocked efforts by democracy advocates to write an explicit ban on political surveillance into the law.

Since long before Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, the police here relied on a section of the city’s telecommunications ordinance for their authority to conduct covert surveillance.

But a Hong Kong court ruled early this year that the section did not comply with the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution. The court effectively gave a deadline of Aug. 8 for the adoption of new legislation. The territory’s highest court, the Court of Final Appeal, upheld the decision and the deadline two weeks ago,

The police have said little about the extent of covert surveillance here. Prosecutors seldom introduce evidence in court based on covert surveillance partly to avoid having to answer questions from defense lawyers about the surveillance and about whether any exculpatory evidence was also gathered.

The new law sharply limits the ability of defense lawyers to ask such questions during trials, a provision that was opposed by the Hong Kong Bar Association.

Recent court cases have provided hints that the surveillance is extensive. Some experts said that establishing a clear legal framework for the surveillance represented an improvement.

“It’s going on anyway — it’s a lot better to have something on the statute books even if it is fairly draconian,” said Stephen G. Vickers, a top police intelligence official during British rule here who is now the president and chief executive of International Risk Ltd., a security consulting firm.

The bill was particularly controversial because it does not prohibit covert surveillance of journalists and because it imposes only a few restrictions on covert surveillance of lawyers. Lawyers are subject to surveillance, but while they are in their homes and offices they can only be monitored if they are personally suspected of committing serious crimes or posing a threat to public security.

The government promised to review the legislation in 2009. Its allies in the legislature defeated a sunset provision introduced by pro-democracy lawmakers that would have required the government to reauthorize the bill for any new covert surveillance warrants to be issued after Aug. 8, 2008; the pro-democracy lawmakers walked out in protest after the defeat of the sunset provision, clearing the way for final passage.

Chinese state security agencies maintain very extensive operations here that have reportedly expanded considerably following the huge democracy protests that filled the streets in 2003 and 2004. The legislation approved today would theoretically cover these agencies’ activities as well, but Chinese agencies have tended to operate with considerable independence from the Hong Kong government and its institutions.

Debate over the covert surveillance bill raised a broader constitutional issue for the courts. Rita Fan, the pro-government president of the legislature, ruled that a series of opposition amendments were not permissible because of longstanding rules in the legislature barring members from introducing amendments to government-sponsored bills if the amendments would affect government revenues or spending.

Leung Kwok-hung, an independent lawmaker and the legislature’s only avowed Trotskyite, filed a legal challenge on Saturday to the legislature’s rules, contending that they limited powers granted to the legislature by the Basic Law. The executive branch of government here has been insistent on controlling public revenues and spending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/wo...n er=homepage





Judges Consolidate Suits Over Bush Telecom Spy Program In San Francisco

A federal panel of judges has consolidated 17 lawsuits throughout the United States filed against telephone companies accused of assisting the Bush administration monitor Americans' communications without warrants.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the cases to U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who last month declined to dismiss one of the lawsuits brought against the federal government and AT&T Inc., according to an order released Thursday.

The consolidated lawsuits also target Verizon Communications Inc., Bellsouth Corp. and their affiliates. The panel ruled 26 other lawsuits with similar allegations also may be moved to Walker, who took the bench in 1990 after being nominated by the first President Bush.

Last month, Walker rejected government assertions that the AT&T case had to be dropped because it could expose state secrets and jeopardize the war on terror.

Walker ruled July 20 the warrantless eavesdropping has been so widely reported there's no danger of exposing secrets. No hearing has been set, and the Justice Department has asked Walker to halt the case pending appeal.

The lawsuits challenge President Bush's assertion that he can use his wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. The suits accuse the companies of illegally making communications on their networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants.

A five-judge panel of federal judges consolidated the cases because they dealt with similar allegations, choosing Walker because the AT&T case was the most advanced.

The case is In Re National Security Agency Telecommunications Records Litigation, 1791.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/15244496.htm





Holographic Storage A Reality Before The End Of The Year
Peter Pollack

While a few consumers have dived headlong into the war over over HD-DVD Blu-ray HD-DVD I mean Blu-ray dang it, there are those of use who have elected to avoid that particular religious issue until we figure out which format is likely to offer the better afterlife. Should any real market success take long enough to occur, our procrastination may be rewarded with what could turn out to be the real next-gen optical media. Long-promised but rarely seen, commercially available holographic storage devices will become a reality before the end of the year, in the form of a system developed by InPhase Technologies and built by Hitachi Maxell.

Holographic storage has been Three-to-Five Years AwayTM for some time now. While we here at Ars may only have been talking about it for around 5x10-2 centuries, the idea was originally proposed at least as early as 1963 by Polaroid researcher Pieter J. Van Heerden. Lucent later did some work on the concept, then in 2001, the company spun off InPhase with the goal of developing a commercial application for the technology. In a nutshell, holographic storage increases density in an optical medium by storing the data in three dimensions instead of two.

How much greater data density? In the Hitachi Maxell device, a single disc about 1cm larger in diameter than a CD will buy you 300GB. By way of contrast, HD-DVD currently offers a maximum of 30GB on a 2-layer disc, and Blu-ray tops out at 50GB. Although upgrades are in the works that promise to increase the capacity of both of those formats, even the most pie-in-the-sky predictions fall short of what is planned for merely the first commercial generation of holographic storage. Future plans for that medium include boosting the capacity to 800GB in two years, and 1.6TB per disc by 2010.

Don't get too excited, though. First generation systems tend to be expensive—on the order of US$15,000 for the reader/writer and between US$120-$180 for the discs. Also, the media is write-once, meaning that the system will be targeted at enterprise users who need a high-density backup solution. Even then, IT departments may need assurances that the photopolymer medium will remain stable over time.

Still, the real money lies in coming up with a product that can be sold in the mass market. With that in mind, InPhase and Hitachi Maxell have been discussing what form a consumer version of the technology might take. One possibility that has been mentioned is a disc around the size of a postage stamp, which would probably hold about 75-100GB.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060804-7424.html





SCO Stock Continues Downward Spiral
Bob Mims

"This is now no more than a case study, albeit a very important one, for the software industry," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of the pro-Linux Open Source Development Labs. "It shows that Linux and open source software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace. SCO . . . is dead."

In the months after the SCO Group's Linux-related lawsuit against IBM (NYSE: IBM) was filed nearly three and a half years ago, the tiny Utah software company saw its stock soar tenfold.

On Tuesday, though, the Lindon company's stock was a long way from its October 2003 high of US$20.50 per share. After a sustained slide fed by poor earnings results and courthouse reversals, SCO shares closed Tuesday at $2.28 per share.

That was 2 cents per share lower than the company's stock sold for on March 25, 2003. That was the same day SCO, alleging IBM had transferred SCO's proprietary Unix code into its Linux releases, filed its $5 billion complaint against Big Blue in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court.

Bigger Than Both of Us

On June 27, the day before U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells gutted two-thirds of SCO's nearly 300 allegations against IBM, shares traded at $4.17. Coming on the heels of SCO's more than doubling its second-quarter losses, to $4.7 million, investors apparently began to lose heart. Prices -- stable for some weeks around $4 -- resumed their tumble.

SCO spokesperson Blake Stowell declined comment. Investors contacted either refused to go on record about the company's market woes, or in the case of SCO's two largest stockholders -- Ralph Yarro, also board chairman, and Glenn Krevlin of Glenhill Capital -- did not immediately return calls.

Market watchers said Tuesday that unless SCO succeeds in getting U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball to review and overturn Wells -- a rare occurrence -- it appears the company's future will be dismal.

"This is now no more than a case study, albeit a very important one, for the software industry," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of the pro-Linux Open Source Development Labs. "It shows that Linux and open source (freely distributed) software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace. SCO . . . is dead. This plan (litigation) didn't work at all, and now they are paying the price."
You Should See the Other Guy

Gordon Haff, Illuminata analyst, agreed, saying SCO's strategy appeared to have been one of "throwing out a wide range of claims and allegations in the hope that at least one will stick." He, too, saw Linux -- increasingly seen as an alternative to Windows -- as having grown only stronger from SCO's challenge to its programming integrity.

"It's always hard to prove a negative, to state categorically that Linux adoption wasn't hurt in some way and to some degree," Haff said. "But Linux's continued popularity and adoption certainly suggest that any harm was relatively limited and temporary."
George Weiss of Gartner (NYSE: IT) observed that SCO's stock slide, at least in part, may be linked to lagging interest in the Unix-based products SCO offers in favor of improved applications emerging from various flavors of Linux.

"It's nothing definitive, but one [information technology] manager told me that their application vendor is abandoning SCO and leaving the user in the lurch," Weiss said. "Effectively, he will be forced to migrate, most likely to Linux."

Such doubts, if widespread, "could be a factor influencing stock analysts who like to monitor the vendor's channel," he added.
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/52225.html





Google: We Won't Sell Music

Don't look for Google to get into digital music sales anytime soon.

The Internet search giant used a keynote slot at the annual NARM (National Association of Recording Merchandisers) conference to quash rumors of a so-called "Gtunes" store--much to the delight of retailers attending the confab.

"We are not going to be selling music," Chris Sacca, head of business development for Google, said in a Thursday address to music merchants and distributors during the August 2-5 event in Kissimmee, Fla.

Talk of a Google digital music solution has been swirling for more than a year. A Bear Stearns analyst predicted in January that a Google rival to Apple's iTunes Music Store could come in as little as six months. And speculation intensified as the company branched into selling music videos from Sony BMG via Google Video, and offering a new dedicated music search function.

But in the wake of a cool reception to Google video sales, and in the face of a challenging environment for digital rights management and device compatibility, the company appears to be putting the brakes on expectations for a retail play in music and other areas of digital entertainment.

Instead Sacca stressed the need for partnerships and innovations to NARM attendees.

Sacca says the big opportunity in digital music is in developing the ecosystem: one that allows consumers to move content from the home to the car and between devices with ease.

"Once again there is an opportunity (to improve) ease of use," Sacca said, likening it to the way Napster transformed search and discovery, and Apple revolutionized portability and shopping. "But to really grasp this takes a certain amount of humility to look beyond your walls."

Sacca didn't say how, if at all, Google plans to play a role in this. He noted the need for open source systems and protocols to drive collaboration among companies.

He did tout Google's ability to be used as a predictive tool for the success of albums and singles with its trends feature, which tracks the popularity of search terms over time.

"We're already in the music business, because we're the complement to the offline life," he said. "After people hear the name 'Gnarls Barkley' their next move is to go and check on Google for it."
http://news.com.com/Google+We+wont+s...3-6102577.html





So Google Is No Brand X, but What Is 'Genericide'?
Frank Ahrens

Last month, we noted that "google" had entered Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. It was a landmark for the search engine -- going from nonentity to common usage in only eight years. One would think that a company that existed only in the minds of two college dudes a few years ago would be happy that a major publication such as The Washington Post prominently marked the occasion.

One would, that is, until one got a letter from Google's trademark lawyer.

Google, evidently, took offense to this passage in last month's article: "Google, the word, now takes its place alongside the handful of proper nouns that have moved beyond a particular product to become descriptors of an entire sector -- generic trademarks."

This characterization of Google, the letter warned, is "genericide" and should be avoided. Such letters are cranked out every day by companies keen on protecting their trademarks. Wham-O Inc. wants writers to eschew "Frisbee" for "plastic flying disc," for instance. I'll note that in my Palm. Excuse me -- my "personal digital assistant."

Google, however, goes the extra mile and provides a helpful list of appropriate and inappropriate uses of its name. To show how hip and down with the kids Google is, the company gets a little wacky with its examples. Here's one:

" Appropriate: He ego-surfs on the Google search engine to see if he's listed in the results.

Inappropriate: He googles himself."

But this one's our favorite:

" Appr opriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.

Inappropriate: I googled that hottie."

It's a matter of debate whether it's appropriate or inappropriate for a market-leading company worth $113 billion to use the word "hottie" in official correspondence. What is beyond debate is the eye-popping fact that Google's trademark complaint arrived via a hand-addressed letter in the actual mail.

Wonder if they Google(TM)-d me to get the address.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080401536.html





Devices That Bridge a Music Gap
Rob Pegoraro

The Internet can bring a radio signal or a recording from the other end of the country to your house, but getting that music from your computer to your stereo can take a little more work.

Computers are a natural at downloading music off the Internet, but most have terrible speakers and don't even occupy the living room in the first place. Stereo systems provide all the volume and sonic fidelity you'd need, but they don't connect to the Internet.

Several years ago, computing vendors started selling a new type of gadget, the wireless media receiver, to fix this problem. It plugged into your stereo but connected to your computer via a wireless network to allow playback of your Web radio feeds and music files: no need to string audio cables from laptop to stereo, or burn audio CDs of each new set of MP3s.

Unfortunately, most of these things did little to smooth over the hassles of home networking and file-sharing.

Now, though, enough time has passed to see the worst contenders swept out of the market, while the survivors have managed to craft some attractive, useful devices. The only thing that's holding them back now may be the online music services that help make their existence necessary in the first place: Each of three receivers I tested from Roku, SlimDevices and Sonos did fine with Web radio and MP3s, but balked at downloads from one or more of the big online stores.

Roku's SoundBridge M1001, at $200 ( http://www.rokulabs.com/ ), was the cheapest of the bunch. This slim cylinder connected to a wireless network with minimal fuss -- once I'd entered the network password by selecting its 26 characters, one at a time, with the remote control's buttons. (Roku supports WEP passwords, not the newer, more secure WPA encryption.)

Unlike the SlimDevices and Sonos hardware, the SoundBridge doesn't need any special software. If you use iTunes, turning on that Apple program's music-sharing option makes your music library available to the receiver; if you use Windows Media Player, Microsoft's free Windows Media Connect software does the same.

You can browse your computer's music by the usual categories of artist, album, song and composer, cue up a set of songs and then shuffle their playback. The SoundBridge's two-line, fairly low-resolution LED display, however, can be hard to read from the couch.

The SoundBridge played standard-issue MP3 and Windows Media Audio files as well as WMA files bought off the MSN Music store and songs rented from the Rhapsody music service. But it couldn't do anything with songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store -- and instead of skipping to the next track, the SoundBridge halted playback until I responded to this error message with a tap of the remote: "Can't play protected content. [OK]" No, it's not OK!

The blame for that incompatibility falls on Apple, which won't license its FairPlay copy-control system to Roku or other wireless-receiver vendors, even though Apple doesn't sell a true wireless media receiver of its own. (Apple's AirPort Express can play iTunes purchases but lacks a remote control and display.)

SlimDevices' Squeezebox v3, at $299 ( http://www.slimdevices.com/ ), had the same trouble with iTunes downloads but also couldn't play WMA purchases -- the firm says it hasn't seen enough demand for that option to justify the cost of adding it. Entering a wireless password wasn't much more fun with this trim, rectangular device (though it accepts both WPA and WEP encryption), and then I had to install extra software.

And yet the Squeezebox might be the best receiver of them all, considering the creative features it bundles.

It helps that its open-source SlimServer software, available for Windows 2000 and XP, Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 and Linux, takes seconds to install and then stays out of your way. It will re-create an iTunes or Windows Media Player library on the Squeezebox, including all your custom playlists and Web radio presets, and can play Rhapsody streams too (though I couldn't get that feature to work).

But the Squeezebox can also connect to SlimDevices' SqueezeNetwork, a free Internet service that features a goody bag of extras. You can play an archive of concert recordings, tune into a customizable set of Web-radio broadcasts, relax to a "Natural Sounds" collection of soothing sonic backdrops (surf, rivers, rain and so on) and subscribe to RSS Web-site feeds (though you see only the briefest summary of them on the Squeezebox's display). And you can get a 90-day free trial of the fascinating Pandora music-recommendation service, which plays music similar to the work of the artist of your choice.

The Squeezebox's display, larger and more legible than Roku's, taxes your eyes less. Its remote, however, needs work; I had to look in the manual to figure out that I had to hold down the left-arrow button for a few seconds to point the SoundBridge to a new music server.

The Sonos ZonePlayer system ( http://www.sonos.com/ ) provides the same basic service as the SoundBridge and Squeezebox, but it's aimed at people in a higher tax bracket -- the entry-level Sonos bundle costs $999. If you need to broadcast different feeds of your computer's music to separate locations around your house, Sonos can do the job quite nicely. But if you just want to hear your computer's music in the living room, this constitutes massive overkill.

That $999 bundle includes two ZonePlayer 80 receivers, $349 sold separately, and a handheld controller, $399 by itself. Because this hardware sets up its own wireless system instead of piggybacking on your WiFi signal, the first ZP80 needs a wired Ethernet connection to either your network's router or the PC or Mac holding your music (running Win 2000 or XP, or Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4).

Sonos offers about the same compatibility with online music stores as SlimDevices; its clean, simple server software supports Rhapsody streams (with this system, they played on the first try) but not iTunes or WMA purchases.

The Sonos controller provides a much better view of your music -- album art included -- thanks to its color LCD, but it was also a little sluggish to operate. And it drained its rechargeable battery at a frightening rate; a day of moderate use left it with only half a charge.

All these devices have one strange thing in common: They're most practical if you avoid buying music online, instead copying it off your CDs -- or those of friends -- or grabbing it off file-sharing services. Is that really what the online-music industry wants people to do?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...7.html?nav=trm





News From The North



The TankGirl Diaries


7.8.2006

MPAA: "Nordic Pirate Movement 'The Big Threat' to Movie Industry Right Now"

"Net pirates are organizing themselves in Europe", writes Göteborgs-Posten in its fresh story, published in newspaper's Economy & Politics section. "While filesharing debate is raging in North it is still fairly new elsewhere in Europe. But filesharing is advancing also there. Both the pirates and the industry are eager to share their best tips to their colleagues in other countries."

The newspaper goes on to describe how the political pirate movement has been spreading to ever new countries both in the form of Piratbyrån-style lobby organizations and as new sister parties to the Swedish Piratpartiet. Besides quoting various media company representatives from around Europe Göteborgs-Posten also interviews Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån. "The idea is that we will inspire freshly started groups in the rest of the world. There is a need for an international lobby. We believe we have knowledge to share, and to some degree we can also give economical help", says Tobias.

A particularly interesting quote in the story comes from Geraldine Maloney who works for the MPAA in its European office. She considers the Nordic pirate movement as 'the big threat' against movie industry right now: "The problem with Sweden is that it is a very rational country. This makes the organized pirates both rational and effective."
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...d.php?p=247884

http://reflectionsonp2p.blogspot.com/





Michael Moore Fest Ignores Plea To Pull Film
Gregg Kilday

Ignoring a request to remove the documentary "Jesus Camp" from its lineup, Michael Moore's Traverse City (Mich.) Film Festival plans two screenings of the film, one Friday and one Saturday.

The documentary, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, looks at a summer camp for born-again Christian children, and has won top jury awards at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and AFI SilverDocs Film Festival.

After Magnolia Films acquired North American distribution rights last week, the company asked festival organizers to drop the film because it was concerned that any association with the polarizing director of "Fahrenheit 9/11" could damage its prospects in conservative circles.

"The reality of the world we live in today is that if Michael Moore endorses it, tens of millions will automatically reject it," said Magnolia Films president Eamonn Bowles.

Because the film presents the material in a manner that is considered by many who have seen it as fair and objective, Bowles considers it "a Rorshach test. It's very neutral, right down the middle, and different people take away different things from it."
He plans to release "Jesus" in more conservative Christian markets where art films aren't commonly shown, in addition to the indie company's traditional art house venues.

The film's producers originally gave the festival permission to screen the film several weeks ago, before Magnolia became involved. Magnolia sent a formal letter to the festival a week ago asking that it cancel its scheduled screenings but did not hear back, Bowles said late Thursday.

A festival staff member confirmed that the movie is scheduled to screen Friday and Saturday afternoons at the two-year-old festival. Calls to festival directors seeking further comment were not returned.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1-MostViewed-1





Facing Voters, Georgia Congressman Gets an Assist From Documentary
Brenda Goodman

The money, endorsements and opinion polls favor her opponent, but Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, who represents Georgia’s Fourth District, has been counting on a movie for last-minute help with the Democratic primary runoff vote here on Tuesday.

The movie, “American Blackout,” is a documentary that embraces Ms. McKinney as a progressive heroine while chronicling the alleged disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida and Ohio in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

After winning prizes on the festival circuit, including a special jury award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie, directed by Ian Inaba, was headed for commercial release on cable television until Ms. McKinney’s scuffle with a Capitol police officer last March helped put a damper on that plan. Ms. McKinney, who is black, was accused of striking the officer, who is white, after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building. A grand jury declined to indict Ms. McKinney.

But “American Blackout” was rushed to Atlanta last week, where it opened on Friday at the Landmark Midtown theater, and instantly became a factor in Ms. McKinney’s fight to ward off a challenge from Hank Johnson, a former DeKalb County commissioner.

Ms. McKinney has been promoting the movie on her campaign Web site. And though she is famous for letting reporters’ questions ricochet cleanly off her wide smile, she has made herself available to the news media in recent days to talk about film, which she says spotlights issues the mainstream media have ignored.

“I’m not going to talk about myself, personally,” Ms. McKinney said during a phone interview last week, “but the larger disservice is being done to the American people who rely on the press to provide the facts.”

Whether political documentaries affect the outcome of elections is an open question. Michael Moore released his anti-George W. Bush film “Fahrenheit 9/11” in the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, but Mr. Bush was re-elected. Earlier this year Robert Greenwald announced distribution plans for the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress,” which he produced, during a primary. Mr. DeLay, a longtime Republican representative from Texas, eventually resigned his seat and left Congress, but the documentary was only a tiny factor in the media storm following his indictment on money laundering charges last year.

“I think they do reinforce and intensify people’s feelings,” Michael Cornfield, who teaches political strategy and message at George Washington University, said of political documentaries. Do movies influence how or if people vote? “That’s more aspirational than empirical,” he said.

Still, they try. In late July the producers of “American Blackout,” which was made by the Guerilla News Network, a nonprofit group with operations in New York and California, announced plans to release the film on DVD, including as a special feature interviews with four men, their faces and voices disguised, identified only as black officers with the Capitol Police. The officers, who call the Capitol Hill “the last plantation,” say their white colleagues often made a sport of stopping black members of Congress at security checkpoints, thus bolstering contentions that Ms. McKinney’s troubles with the police were the result of provocation.

“I’m so happy that filmmakers are taking on the role of investigative journalists,” Ms. McKinney said. “And I’m so happy that we have an alternative media that has arisen as a result of the public’s craving for fact rather than faction.”

To make “American Blackout” Mr. Inaba trailed Ms. McKinney for three years, beginning in 2002, as she became the subject of a number of negative news reports because of a quote extracted from a California radio interview. Taken out of context the paraphrased statement seemed to suggest that Ms. McKinney believed the Bush administration was involved in a conspiracy that led to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Inaba restores the two sentences that preceded her infamous “What do they have to hide?” query, showing that she had asked why both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney placed phone calls to Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, then Senate Majority Leader, urging him not to investigate the disaster. “What do they have to hide?” Ms. McKinney asked.

Mr. Inaba’s cameras were still recording later that year, when Ms. McKinney was placed in the crosshairs of a successful “Anybody but Cynthia” campaign to get Republicans to cross party lines for the 2002 primary to vote her out of office.

“American Blackout” is Mr. Inaba’s first feature-length film. He left careers in investment banking and software development to pick up a camera because, he said, he “wanted to make something.” Before he plunged into documentary filmmaking, he directed a politically themed music video called “Mosh” for the rapper Eminem and a video for the rock group Nine Inch Nails, which, Mr. Inaba said, wasn’t distributed because the group was afraid it would be too controversial.

Ms. McKinney, for her part, was able to reclaim her seat in 2004 after running a largely grassroots campaign. It was a victory she called “one of the greatest political comebacks of all time.”

Two years later, though, after a rash of public criticism over her run-in the Capitol Police officer, the portrayal of Ms. McKinney’s phoenix-like career in “American Blackout” looks eerily familiar.

Republicans have endorsed and funded her relatively unknown challenger, Mr. Johnson, and the Web site that championed her ouster in 2002, goodbyecynthia.com, is once again up and running.

“Voters are very energized and tuned in and believe this is a very important race,” said Deb McGhee Speights, press secretary for Mr. Johnson. “We believe the voters will make their decisions in this election based on something closer to home than a movie.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/movies/07cynt.html





Remake ‘The Wicker Man’? Now That’s Scary
Charles Lyons

WE don’t commit murder up here,” Christopher Lee, as Lord Summerisle, says about midway through the 1973 British cult film “The Wicker Man.” “We’re a deeply religious people.” The line is delivered with just the right genteel inflection to unnerve viewers, who until this point have been watching a movie that feels more like a musical, drama or mystery than a horror film.

But almost nothing about the “The Wicker Man” — which co-starred Edward Woodward as a smug Christian policeman, Sergeant Howie, who travels from the Scottish mainland to a remote island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young girl — was by the numbers.

A folksy musical score, composed by Paul Giovanni, created a feeling of merriment and innocence, even as Sergeant Howie encountered a shockingly lustful, secret society. The unlikely islanders, celebrating May Day with naked dancing among their Celtic-inspired rituals, included a gyrating Swedish beauty, Britt Ekland. Then came veiled suggestions of human sacrifice, during a slow descent toward trouble.

Such idiosyncrasies of style and content were part of the charm that lured the writer and director Neil LaBute into making a contemporary “Wicker Man,” which will be released in the United States by Warner Brothers on Sept. 1. But it has been no simple matter to honor the film, which was written by the late Anthony Shaffer, while upgrading it for a new audience, even as fans and at least one of the original filmmakers watch warily from the sidelines.

Reached in London recently, Robin Hardy, who directed the original, sounded annoyed by the idea that his picture was being remade at all, and said he was waiting impatiently for a copy of the new script. “The simple fact is that I asked to see the script last August, and they said they would send it to me within two weeks,” he said.

When they finally catch up with the remake, Mr. Hardy and devotees of the original will learn that Mr. LaBute — the 45-year-old playwright whose debut film “In the Company of Men” examined male cruelty toward women — has rediscovered the gender wars in his new version.

Set off the coast of Washington State (and shot near Vancouver), Mr. LaBute’s film stars Nicolas Cage and Ellen Burstyn, along with Kate Beahan, Molly Parker and Leelee Sobieski in an ensemble cast. It transforms Sergeant Howie (Mr. Cage) into a suave, right-leaning California motorcycle cop, while changing the original’s weird community from patriarchy to matriarchy. With the exception of Mr. Cage’s character, the men live at the beck and call of their calm leader, Sister Summerisle, played by Ms. Burstyn.

In a telephone interview in mid-July from Los Angeles, where he was overseeing the final mix of sound elements (the music was composed by Angela Badalamenti), Mr. LaBute said he was interested in probing the assumed white male authority position that Mr. Cage’s character represents, and the inevitable power struggle between men and women. As for the original, Mr. LaBute expressed admiration for its “singularity” but made no apologies for his departures. “It’s like a child leaving home,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of, ‘I’ve come to this as a fan of what you’ve done, but I am going to have to depart from it.’ ”

He added: “There are people out there who say, literally, ‘I don’t care if it’s good or bad, I hate the fact that they are doing it.’ So, that’s a difficult audience to work with. You have to forge yourself ahead and say, I’m making something which, if people are fair with, I think they’ll see that you’re coming to this with good intentions, and trying to retain the spirit of the thing without being slavish to it.”

Mr. Hardy said he had nothing in principle against movie remakes but insisted that “The Wicker Man” was not the most inspired choice for source material, given its unique qualities. “The main thing is that under European law, and also under the rules of simple courtesy, when you remake somebody’s film, you are supposed to give them an idea of how you are going to do it,” he said.

Andrew Hurwitz, a founding partner of New York law firm Epstein, Levinsohn, Bodine, Hurwitz & Weinstein (who does not represent anyone involved with either version), said the laws to which Mr. Hardy referred, known as Droit Morale, or Moral Rights, are distinct from the economic rights that come with owning a copyright. Mr. Hardy said he would be entitled to pursue an injunction against the film in Europe if he doesn’t get to read or see the film before it is released, though he stressed that he would not do so. A spokesman for Lionsgate, which is among the film’s distributors abroad, declined to comment on the potential effect of an injunction.

Mr. Hurwitz said that while it is true that European courts, particularly in France, give greater respect to the moral rights of authors than do American courts, he does not think an injunction would be likely, “unless the remake,” he said, “once viewed, radically distorted the integrity of the underlying film, the way colorization of a black and white film has been found to do.”

Norm Golightly — a partner in Mr. Cage’s Saturn Films, which is one of the movie’s producers — said in any case that he would be delighted to show Mr. Hardy the film prior to release.

In a separate telephone interview, Mr. Cage said there would have been no reason to remake “The Wicker Man” if Mr. LaBute hadn’t approached it from a new vantage point. “I think it’s a homage,” Mr. Cage said of the new film. “It’s a way of us saying this is a wonderful film. It’s not us saying that we are better. If anything, it is a tip of the hat, and perhaps it will inspire people to look at the original again.”

The new movie is likely to bring additional viewers to the original: Anchor Bay Entertainment expects to re-release “The Wicker Man” on DVD on Aug. 22.

Mr. Cage said seeing the original for the first time several years ago left him with a profound feeling that he couldn’t shake for weeks. And Mr. LaBute, who first saw the film while working at the Magic Lantern theater in Spokane, Wash., in the 80’s, said he set out to do “exactly what I felt like the first one had done to me: it took me to a place that felt entirely new, and also entirely worth it.”

Mr. Shafer, who before writing the script had immersed himself in accounts of Druids and their sacrifices, and Celtic fertility rights, once called “The Wicker Man” an “anti-horror film,” for it was conceived as a reaction to the tongue-and-cheek Hammer horror films including “Scars of Dracula,” “Dracula A.D. 1972,” and “Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed” that were made in England from the 50’s through the 70’s.

“We thought it was time to make a film based on a lot of the real background to those Hammer films,” Mr. Hardy explained. “We wanted to turn it on its head and have a real pagan society.” The appeal of that world, he added, was as responsible as the suspense for the movie’s continued impact.

“I personally think it is because we were able to create a society, an imaginary society, which was very attractive to people,” he said of the success of “The Wicker Man.’’ “These people were classless and happy in their religion and their lives, able to express themselves through music and song and dance, and that was very beguiling to the audience.”

Mr. LaBute said the new film probably has a number of scenes that are bloodier than anything in the original. Still, he said, he deliberately exercised restraint in using special effects that, as he put it, provide only a “moment’s pleasure.”

“Even if there are a few people who are pushing you in saying, ‘We would love it if this movie was “Saw” for the first weekend, and it was “The Sixth Sense” for the next five weeks,’ ” he said, “you ultimately have just one film that you can create.”

The movie he finally created, he said, will echo its forebear’s intelligence, even if that means making the contemporary audience work a little harder than usual: “If ‘The Wicker Man’ is a thinking person’s horror film, that’s great.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/movies/06lyon.html





For Big Media Players, Bold Moves Are Back
Richard Siklos

IT’S late in the day and it’s 100 degrees outside — our normal patience quotient is at the fraying end,” Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner was saying into the phone the other day during an interview. His executives had just presented the latest strategy for improving the fortunes of the company’s AOL division, basically making it a free service.

The test of Mr. Parsons’ unflappability was the incessant baying of reporters and analysts about whether the profit forecast by the company was realistic.

Much of the Street is skeptical of AOL’s plan to phase out most of its declining Internet access business — which accounted for 75 percent of AOL’s $2 billion in revenue in the latest quarter — in favor of the growing business of selling ads to people who could now use the AOL portal and e-mail services free over broadband connections.

While the boldness of the strategy was laudable, it was less clear how the company could offset the loss of mountains of revenue with a combination of increased ad sales and cost-cutting.

But — blame a different kind of heat — the AOL plan does reflect a new audaciousness that is returning to Rupert Murdoch, Robert A. Iger and other masters of Big Media as they grapple with the unending technological upheaval of the day.

After the wave of big mergers that shaped the industry in the 1990’s and early part of this decade, and the dot-com debacle (chief among them the AOL-Time Warner merger itself), many of these companies were understandably gun-shy about changing their business models and embracing the Web. But then a second wave of digital excitement took hold — led by Google’s initial public offering — and many traditional media stocks went into a malaise.

What has become clear is that something had to give. Financial engineering — mergers, breakups, stock buybacks and the like — has not been enough by itself to get investors excited in these companies. Whether it works or not, the new AOL gambit shows the prevailing belief that no one ever dug themselves out of a hole by playing cards at the two-dollar table.

This may explain why two big media stocks in particular have broken out of the doldrums that stalled the sector this year: the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company.

At the News Corporation, maverick thinking is de rigueur for Mr. Murdoch, the chairman. But what is new is that the company’s shares, after a long slump similar to what Time Warner has endured, have risen 34 percent from a two-year low last October. No wonder Mr. Murdoch pulled out all the stops at a retreat for his top executives last weekend in California, where the likes of Bono, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton served as motivational speakers.

Mr. Murdoch has proved time and again that he will do the unexpected — even if it contradicts not only the conventional wisdom but his own past wisdom. How else to explain his recent musing in an interview on “The Charlie Rose Show” about possibly merging DirecTV, in which News Corporation owns a controlling share, with its archrival EchoStar? “Well, we’d have to get through the negotiating stage, which would be very painful,” Mr. Murdoch said with some understatement.

After all, an attempt a decade or so ago to go into the satellite business with Charles W. Ergen, EchoStar’s chairman, ended in acrimony. Then, in 2002, Mr. Murdoch played his part in helping to scuttle Mr. Ergen’s own deal to merge with DirecTV — setting the stage for Mr. Murdoch to swoop in and add it to his global media empire.

In one tactic back then, News Corporation’s Washington lobbyists distributed a thick binder of analyses and letters decrying such a merger as anticompetitive, in advance of the various regulators turning it down. It was called “The Essential Guide to the EchoStar/DirecTV Deal.”

Mr. Murdoch insists that he and Mr. Ergen are friends, and there are some signs of détente. DirecTV and EchoStar emerged last week as partners in a group that may bid for broadcast spectrum they could use to offer a broadband Internet service to their customers.

But Mr. Murdoch is now arguing that a merger is viable because the world has changed with the advent of Internet video and the nascent entry of telephone companies into the video business. “I think it would be much harder for the government to turn it down today,” he said.

Once again, the analysts are not exactly falling in line with this thinking. Douglas S. Shapiro of Bank of America Securities says that a focus of scrutiny in the earlier merger attempt was the impact in the vast rural markets, where there is little alternative to the satellite companies. “That is sort of the definition of an antitrust no-no,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The idea that Internet video is going to change the dynamic in the near term is pretty far-fetched.”

The point is that Mr. Murdoch revels in the far-fetched. This is the Australian national who became an American citizen in order to buy TV stations here. Now that they have served their purpose, he is looking to sell some of those stations. And while some American publishers have sweated the decision to reduce the size of the broadsheets they print, Mr. Murdoch switched the vaunted Times of London to a tabloid format two years ago with hardly a second thought.

Disney, meanwhile, sharply changed course under Mr. Iger, its new chief executive, who acquired Pixar Animation for $7.4 billion earlier this year. He then went further and scaled back Disney’s own feature film production.

As the analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital noted in a report last week, Pixar’s “Cars” has earned less overseas than the last Pixar hit, “The Incredibles,” trailing it by an average of 54 percent in five countries, including Britain and Japan, after several weeks of box-office results.

While it may be too early to judge the ultimate success of the Pixar acquisition, “it is certainly worth considering how much lower Pixar’s stock would be today” because of “Cars,” Mr. Greenfield wrote. It was a polite way of asking: Just how much did Disney overpay?

For now, at least, it may not matter. The market applauded Mr. Iger’s aplomb in grabbing Pixar and bringing its leaders, John A. Lasseter and Steven P. Jobs, into the Disney fold. Since the Pixar deal was announced, Disney shares have climbed 15 percent, adding $8.7 billion to the company’s market capitalization.

Everything turns in cycles, of course. The list of former chieftains and moguls now on the sidelines because of their flights of visionary thinking is a long one. Whatever its outcome, the new strategies unfolding at AOL, the News Corporation and Disney are shining examples that bold is back and staying the course is no longer an option. Hold on to your hats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/bu.../06frenzy.html





"Love Me, Love My Blog," as Netorati Couple-Surf
Sara Ledwith

A man and a woman sit side-by-side in a New York cafe, drinking beer, sharing food, and not saying a word. Instead of chatting, they are typing on a laptop about the tunes played through a shared iPod.

"Realising that communicating via typing was far more comfortable ... we conducted ... our date without speaking. We traded headphones back and forth and typed and ordered beer and wine and more food ... The waitress thought we were crazy," wrote singer Amanda Palmer at http://www.dresdendolls.com/diary.

As the Internet evolves -- with its webcams, iPods, Instant Messaging, broadband, wi-fi and weblogs -- its image as a relationship-wrecker is changing.

Now a sociable habit is emerging among the Netorati: couple-surfing.

Coined by bloggers responding to a column on the online version of "Wired" (http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71074-0.html), couple-surfing describes "netaholics" or "infomaniacs" who surf alongside each other -- doing together what used to be seen as a solitary activity.

It can make cyber-love more playful and informative than the caches of steamy emails left in the late 1990s.

"It's difficult to communicate things like images, sounds and URLs through speech," writes Stanley Lieber (I'm not really Stanley Lieber... and I'm not really from NYC) on the blog.

Started by Nick Currie, alias iMomus, at http://imomus.livejournal.com/199557.html, the blog has attracted over 200 contributions, showing a vast array of ways couples use the Net.

Couple-surfing can apparently be as mundane as telling each other to take the trash out, as intimate as sharing a book by a blazing log fire, or as showy as a masked ball.

"Our new relationship was often the subject of my LJ (blog) entries and I would often say things in there that I wouldn't tell him to his face," writes Kathryn. Another couple -- married for 12 years -- say that for a while they communicated through weblogs without ever discussing their feelings face to face.

"Tender Electroverts"

The Net is a boon for people who are verbally shy, and provides a great way to resolve disputes about facts, say some fans. Some couples play online games together, and computing seems to be a zone where men can be manly.

"For my birthday, he upgraded my RAM and I thought it was incredibly romantic," writes Jess.

But in the same way as real-life interests may diverge, couples who do not share what one blogger called "common geekdom" can find surfing divisive.

A mother from Sweden calls for breakfast tables to be redesigned to accommodate computers, "as it is kind of sad for a son not to see his own father at the table ignoring him and everyone else while he reads the news ..."

And even between geeks -- or "tender electroverts", as blogger Tim H dubs them -- questions of privacy and secrecy raise tensions. Amanda Palmer published the entire typed "conversation" she had with her friend in memoriam, saying he had recently died.

Relate, Britain's largest relationship counselling body, says about one in 10 couples who seek its help cite some sort of computer-related problem, and the trend is on the rise.

"Increasingly, people are saying that time spent on the computer -- not necessarily chat rooms or sexy or suggestive sites -- is an issue," said Denise Knowles, a Relate counsellor.

Her organization has a fact sheet (http://www.relate.org.uk/mediacentre...rrelationship/) to help couples at risk from Internet addiction or extramarital cybersex. It also runs an anonymous email-a-counsellor service.

But Knowles points out that the Net itself is often the medium, not the root, of problems.

"The Internet has highlighted or exposed difficulties in relationships that might have gone unnoticed had there not been a computer in the house," she said.

Currie agreed. Like any absorbing activity, "couple-surfing" only works if both partners are equally enthusiastic, he said.

"After listening to what everybody had to say (on the blog) and thinking about my own relationship, I came to the conclusion that surfing doesn't damage relationships -- as long as both partners are equally into the Internet," he said by e-mail.

"The question then is whether one of them is just faking it!"
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...archived=False





Survey: Online Sexual Solicitations Down
Anick Jesdanun

Fewer youths are receiving sexual solicitations over the Internet as they become smarter about where they hang out and with whom they communicate online, researchers said Wednesday.

The findings, from a telephone-based survey sponsored by the government-funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, run counter to recent media reports and congressional hearings suggesting a growing danger of online predators as more youths turn to social-networking sites like MySpace.com.

"It may be signs people are paying (attention) to warnings they receive about online dangers," said Janis Wolak, one of the study's authors and a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "They are being more cautious about who they are interacting with online."

But the study found that aggressive solicitations - the ones involving requests for contact by mail, by phone or in person - remained steady compared with a similar study five years earlier. And the report found growth in online harassment and unwanted exposure to pornography.

The report defines solicitation broadly as any request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information - as long as it was unwanted or came from an adult. Not all requests were deemed by the youth as distressing.

In the latest study of online youths ages 10 to 17, conducted from March to June 2005 as MySpace began its rapid ascent, 13 percent of respondents reported a sexual solicitation, compared with 19 percent in a 1999-2000 survey. In both studies, about 4 percent reported aggressive solicitations.

Many of the contacts came from other teens rather than adults, and few rose to the level of predation, the survey found.

"A significant portion of what they are calling sexual solicitation is merely teens being teens," said Nancy Willard, an online safety expert who helps schools develop programs and who was not involved in the study.

She said the drop should demonstrate to parents and policymakers that "the dangers are real but they are not as significant as they have been hyped in recent months."

Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have been increasingly warning of online predators at sites like MySpace, whose youth-oriented visitors are encouraged to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages.

Lawmakers have responded by trying to restrict access to MySpace and other social-networking sites from schools and libraries that receive certain federal funds. A bill the House overwhelmingly passed last month is pending in the Senate.

Driven largely by word of mouth, MySpace has grown astronomically since its launch in January 2004 and is now the second-busiest site in the United States, according to comScore Media Metrix. The site, owned by News Corp., registered its 100 millionth user Wednesday; about 20 percent are registered as minors, according to the company.

MySpace's usage was much smaller when the latest survey was conducted, but Wolak said she did not believe the conclusions would be different today. She said solicited kids had been engaging with strangers the same way, be it through a chat room, instant messaging or a social-networking site.

"People have fears that these crimes involve offenders and predators who look at these (social-networking) sites and then seek to identify these kids," Wolak said. "That's not really what's going on."

Researchers did find that in more than a quarter of the solicitations, youths were asked to submit sexual photographs of themselves, some of which may be a crime under federal child-pornography laws.

In general, youths responded to solicitations simply by leaving a Web site, blocking solicitors or ignoring them. Relatively few incidents, however, were reported to law enforcement or school administrators.

The survey of 1,500 children who had used the Internet at least once a month during the previous six months has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Nearly 55,000 households were reached to find enough participants.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-22-52-51





Microsoft Releases 12 Security Fixes

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released 12 security fixes for its Windows operating system and Office business software.

Seven of the patches are to fix Windows flaws that carry the company's highest danger rating.

In its monthly security bulletin, Microsoft also said that two of the fixes are for vulnerabilities in some versions of its Office software that carry the highest "critical" rating. One of those fixes also applies to the 2004 version of Office for Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh systems.

All of the patches are to fix weaknesses that could allow an attacker to take complete control of a person's computer.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-09-07-48-04





Homeland Security: Apply MS06-040 Patch
Ryan Naraine

Less than 24 hours after Microsoft shipped security fixes for 23 serious software vulnerabilities, the U.S. government's Department of Homeland Security issued a firm notice to Windows users: immediately apply the patches in the MS06-040 bulletin.

In a somewhat unusual move, the DHS warned that the patches cover a remote code execution vulnerability that could be used in a network worm attack similar to Blaster, Slammer of Sasser.

"Windows users are encouraged to avoid delay in applying this security patch. Attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in operating systems routinely occur within 24 hours of the release of a security patch," the agency said in an public advisory.

The department warned that a successful attack could be launched remotely to take control of an affected system and install programs, view, change or delete data, and create new accounts with full user rights.

"This vulnerability could impact government systems, private industry and critical infrastructure, as well as individual and home users," the DHS added.

The DHS recommended that home users opt for Microsoft's Windows Update to automatically download and apply all the appropriate security fixes.

The MS06-040 bulletin addresses a buffer overflow in Server Service, which is used to provide RPC (remote procedure call) support, file print support and named pipe sharing over a network.

Because the flaw presents a remote, unauthenticated attack vector, an anonymous attacker could send specially rigged network packets over the Internet to launch malicious code on vulnerable systems.

A worm attack exploiting this bug would affect unpatched versions of Windows 2000, Windows XP (SP1 and SP2) and Windows Server 2003 (SP1 inclusive).

The use of the built-in Internet Connection Firewall in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 would help block network-based attempts to exploit the vulnerability.

Microsoft also recommends that TCP ports 139 and 445 be blocked at the firewall.

The US-CERT (U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team) has already warned that the flaw has been used in active attacks, even before Microsoft released the patch.

Immunity, a New York-based security company that sells penetrating testing tools, on Aug. 9 released proof-of-concept exploits for MS06-040 to customers in its Partner Program.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2001412,00.asp





Windows Defense Handcuffs Good Guys
Joris Evers

A protective feature in Windows is locking out the good guys, but letting in a lot of bad guys, according to security software makers.

Microsoft designed PatchGuard to safeguard core parts of Windows, including Vista, against malicious code attacks. But some security companies say that the feature makes it harder for them to protect Windows PCs, as it locks them out of the kernel, the core of the operating system.

"PatchGuard is hurting security vendors more than it is hurting malware writers," Bruce McCorkendale, a chief engineer at Symantec, told CNET News.com in an interview Wednesday. "There are types of security policies and next-generation security products that can only work through some of the mechanisms that PatchGuard prohibits."

Symantec is not alone in its complaints, but it is the largest security company to speak out publicly. Sana Security and Agnitum, two smaller vendors, said they share its concerns, but giants Cisco Systems and McAfee declined to comment for this story.

Microsoft defends the technology, which applies only to 64-bit versions of Windows. Cybercrooks have found ways to exploit the kernel for malicious purposes, making the protection offered by PatchGuard key to securing the operating system, said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's Security Technology Group.

"It is more important to prevent the installation of malicious software than it is to allow third-party vendors, no matter what the software, to extend the kernel," Toulouse said. "This is not specific to security software. This is a global change to 64-bit Windows to provide a more security computing experience."

Microsoft's push into the security market has put many defense providers on guard. Symantec, especially, looks wary; it has said it will compete with Microsoft as long as there is a level playing field. Now, for the first time, Symantec is saying that Microsoft is limiting the security choices of consumers--which could be interpreted as anticompetitive behavior.

"PatchGuard will make it harder for third parties, particularly host intrusion prevention software, to function in Vista," said Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith. "Third parties have two choices: continue to petition Microsoft to create an approved kernel-hooking interface so products like theirs can work, or use 'black hat' techniques to bypass the restrictions."

Barriers to the kernel
PatchGuard debuted a year ago in Windows XP x64 Edition, but the technology was never broadly adopted. That's set to change when Windows Vista hits store shelves in January, analysts expect. As people buy PCs with 64-bit processors use of the 64-bit edition of Windows will increase.

In particular, PatchGuard inhibits host intrusion prevention products, security vendors and analysts said. These "HIPS" products are an upcoming class of security software that determines whether a program is malicious by looking at its behavior, rather than using the classic signature-based approach, which checks a program against a database of known threats.

On top of this, PatchGuard blocks features to protect against tampering with security tools, McCorkendale said. Malicious programs increasingly try to disable security software, and the tamper-protection features aim to prevent that.

"There is a whole bunch of companies out there that have pioneered next-generation security, that are limited by PatchGuard," McCorkendale said.

There's another "disturbing side effect," according to a Symantec blog posting. While legitimate security vendors can no longer make extensions to the Vista kernel, attackers have already found ways to disable and work around PatchGuard, it says.

Sana Security and firewall maker Agnitum sounded a similar alarm.

"Bad guys can bypass PatchGuard today," said Vlad Gorelik, chief technology officer at Sana Security, which makes host intrusion prevention software. "Microsoft has this assumption that if you put a shield in, the bad guys will stay out. That is not the way it works. But now they force security vendors to bring a knife to a gun fight."

The barrier to the Windows kernel forces security companies to adopt hacker tactics, Gorelik said. "We will have to come up with alternative mechanisms for doing the same thing," he said. "In some cases, we can actually take a page out of the bad guys' text book and bypass PatchGuard."

With PatchGuard, Microsoft is effectively taking control of security for the Windows core, Gorelik said. Previously, third parties could also provide defenses for that part of the operating system, he said. Now, if PatchGuard breaks, it will be up to Microsoft to fix the flaw and make Windows PCs secure.

"They would have to patch the kernel if someone bypasses PatchGuard," Gorelik said, noting that the kernel is the toughest thing to fix in the operating system.

Security vendors are calling on Microsoft to allow exceptions in the kernel shield for trusted third parties.

"There is definitely a legitimate need to lock down the kernel," McCorkendale said. "I don't suggest they eliminate PatchGuard. What I am asking for is an exception. There are less restrictive means available, and we have proposed many solutions to Microsoft. But it has fallen on deaf ears."

Microsoft opposes the idea of making exceptions, as it would increase the number of entry points that miscreants could take advantage of, Toulouse said.

"When you get into the concept of exceptions, you get on a slippery slope," he said. "What made a lot of sense to us is simply to restrict the kernel without exception, creating a level playing field that all of the vendors, including Microsoft, can then operate by." Toulouse's argument is that Microsoft's security software is also unable to touch the kernel.

Dropped ball
With the advent of threats such as rootkits, which that nestle deep inside the operating system, Microsoft should protect the Windows core, analysts said. However, the company has dropped the ball on letting other software makers in on what the new kernel protections mean for them, said John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner.

"This is a complex issue, but Microsoft has definitely been deficient in including the impacted software makers early on," Pescatore said. "That definitely does work to their advantage from a competitive viewpoint. However, the rootkit issue has to be fixed, and kernel protection has to be stronger for all operating systems."

Indeed, Symantec is playing the anticompetitive card for the first time. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company had said it would beat Microsoft by using its security wits as long as the competition is fair. Now the fairness seems to be gone, McCorkendale said.

"It seems a bit disingenuous of Microsoft. They are getting into the security market and are disallowing this whole class of security products that they don't have," McCorkendale said. "It does not feel like a level playing field at that point."

McCorkendale stopped short of saying that Symantec would sue Microsoft or complain to antitrust authorities. However, Yankee Group analyst Jaquith believes that step is getting closer, especially if Microsoft were to give its own security products a way to bypass PatchGuard.

"Microsoft's anti-kernel hacking feature could conceivably create a formidable barrier to entry to their competitors in the security market," Jaquith said. He expects Microsoft to deliver host intrusion prevention capabilities in its Forefront products next year.

"I think you'll see the larger security companies run to the Department of Justice and the European Union faster than you can say 'Penfield Jackson'," Jaquith said, referring to Thomas Penfield Jackson, the judge who oversaw the landmark U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft.
http://news.com.com/Windows+defense+...3-6104379.html





Microsoft Piracy Check Draws Complaints
Allison Linn

When Microsoft Corp. said it planned to begin checking for pirated copies of its Windows operating system using the method it set up to send people security fixes, even some of the company's traditional critics could sympathize.

After all, although Microsoft rakes in billions, piracy of its flagship products remains a huge, costly problem, particularly in developing countries such as China and Russia. The Business Software Alliance estimates that 35 percent of software installed on PCs worldwide is pirated.

Nevertheless, 18 months after announcing the Windows Genuine Advantage piracy check, Microsoft faces controversy and backlash, including two lawsuits. Some say the company clumsily handled several elements of the program, including a key privacy issue.

"They have a right to say, `If you want patches from Microsoft, you know, you should let us make sure you're not running a pirated copy of Windows,'" said Gartner analyst John Pescatore. "That's a valid claim, and with the Windows Genuine Advantage tool, I think, they tried to go a little too far."

Microsoft introduced the piracy check in mid-2005 as a condition for downloading security fixes and other software, such as anti-spyware technology, from its Web site.

Now the anti-piracy check is also being sent to customers whose computers receive security updates automatically. For now, users can take extra steps to opt out of the piracy check. But Microsoft strongly encourages people to run it, calling it a "high priority update," and says the check might become mandatory at some point.

Once installed, the program checks whether it believes the user's version of Windows is legitimate. It gathers information such as the computer's manufacturer, hard drive serial number and Windows product identification.

Microsoft still offers important security fixes even if the company alleges the version of Windows is pirated, although those users can't get non-security downloads, such as a test version of the new Internet Explorer browser. Those users also receive a barrage of notices that they are running an illegal copy of Windows.

While Microsoft had told users the new software would gather information related to piracy, some people became alarmed when they discovered that the software also was performing a daily check-in with the company.

Microsoft said the daily "call home" was a safety measure designed to let the company shut the program down quickly if something went wrong. But critics saw the undisclosed communications as a breach of privacy and trust.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the concern is that users did not know about or control the interaction.

"It feels very much like a digital trespass - you know, someone is getting access to your system without your consent," he said.

Microsoft conceded that it should have told users it was making the daily connection. It has since discontinued the daily check and revised its disclosures. The system will, however, continue to occasionally check in with Microsoft to make sure it still believes a person's software is legitimate.

Even so, although many had sympathized with Microsoft's original anti-piracy efforts, to some this misstep was enough to call into question the entire program.

"To use the security mechanism to install marketing software that is designed to increase Microsoft's revenue but actually interferes with some people's use of their PCs is a real breach of faith with customers," said Brian Livingston, editor of Windows Secrets, a newsletter and Web site that offers tips for using Microsoft software.

He thinks the episode will have a long-term, negative effect on how well people regard the software maker.

"The trust has been broken," he said.

Microsoft faces two federal lawsuits over the software, both of which accuse the company of violating laws that seek to combat spyware. The lawsuits seek class-action status.

Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler insists the piracy check is not spyware.

"These lawsuits are without merit and they really distort the objective of our anti-piracy program," he said.

Pescatore, the Gartner analyst, said he thinks Microsoft has found a good middle ground by backing off on the daily checks, and he doesn't think most users will be affected by the controversy.

But for those who were already suspicious of Microsoft, this adds more fuel.

"I definitely think that there's paranoia - I would argue unwarranted paranoia," said Russ Cooper, a security researcher at Cybertrust Inc. who approves of the privacy check.

Microsoft has taken great pains to improve its privacy policies since it came under intense fire about five years ago for a system called Passport that sought to store all sorts of personal information under one log-on. The program was scaled back considerably and, despite some ongoing concerns, Rotenberg said Microsoft has come to play a leading role in privacy issues.

"Since that time you can say simply, they got privacy religion," Rotenberg said.

But he thinks Microsoft has misstepped with the piracy check, and should separate it from the system for sending security updates.

Because the piracy check isn't mandatory - for now at least - Microsoft is using incentives to try to get people to download it. One short-lived offering, called Private Folder, gave people a special place on their computers to password-protect data they didn't want to share with family members or co-workers. The company was forced to pull that product amid complaints that the secret folders would create headaches for corporate technology experts trying to manage big computer systems, and raise other problems if consumers forgot their passcodes and couldn't get at their data.

Despite such flubs, Microsoft appears if anything to be redoubling its commitment to crack down on illegal Windows copies, part of a larger push to increase profits from the highly lucrative franchise.

Microsoft takes legal action against those it believes are distributing pirated copies - and it says it has used data from the piracy check to help track down some sellers. The company also is working with government officials in places like China to try to make piracy less acceptable.

But in a meeting with financial analysts in late July, Microsoft also made clear it is counting on the individual check as part of its overall bid to grow sales by slashing piracy.

Kevin Johnson, co-president of the Microsoft division that includes Windows, said: "We're really trying to amplify the fact that being genuine enables a set of benefits and value."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-14-22-34





Another WGA Failure
Ed Bott

I just experienced a Windows Genuine Advantage failure. Only it’s not a false positive, like the horror stories I’ve been hearing for nearly two months now. No, this one was a false negative. The whole story says a lot about how Microsoft is approaching the WGA issue.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to some of the folks on the WGA team and asked them to send me a pirated version of Windows XP. I'm reluctantly running a pirated version of Windows and can't get caught no matter how hard I try. According to Microsoft, 80 percent of the 60 million people who have been nabbed by the WGA validation tool are running versions of Windows with stolen or pirated volume license keys. These versions of Windows are supposed to be available only to corporate customers and only as upgrades. Unlike retail versions, they don’t require activation, which makes them an ideal target of pirates and bootleggers.

According to Microsoft, many of the people who end up with these “non-genuine” copies of Windows are themselves victims. The unauthorized OS might have been installed by a repair shop, or they might have purchased what they thought was a legitimate copy of Windows from an unscrupulous reseller. I wanted to install a pirated copy so I could experience exactly what these customers go through and report the results to you. I still can’t quite believe how difficult it’s been. Here’s the story so far.

On July 18, Microsoft's WGA team promised to send me a disk with a product key from their blocked list. It was supposed to arrive via overnight service, but it was never sent. After several follow-up messages, I was assured on July 26 I would have something by the end of that week. The package finally arrived the next week, on August 1. It contained a CD-R with a handwritten label that read “Windows XP SP2 – VLK,” and a 25-character product key on a small slip of paper.

Over the weekend, I hoisted the Jolly Roger, cleared a partition on a test machine, slid the CD into the drive, and prepared to join the ranks of Windows pirates. Unfortunately, the product key that Microsoft had sent me didn’t work. Instead of a smooth installation, I got an error message: "The Product ID which you entered is invalid. Please try again." I fired off a request for assistance to my contacts at Microsoft. Nearly 72 hours later, I still haven’t received a response other than a note that confirms my message was forwarded to the correct person.

No problem, I thought. I’ll just do what any red-blooded pirate would do and Google for a working product key. It took me about 15 minutes to find a web page containing five volume license keys that had reportedly been posted on September 9 2004. Surely if I can find a leaked VL key on a search engine, Microsoft can too, right? If these keys have been floating around the Internet for two years, surely they’ve been tagged as stolen by Microsoft, and I’ll get a WGA failure that I can show the world.

I restarted the installation using the VL media Microsoft had supplied me and entered one of the bootleg keys I found. It worked. After installation completed, I set up an Internet connection and downloaded a slew of updates, including the WGA Validation tool and the WGA Notifications utility. I then restarted, fully expecting to see a series of stern messages telling me I’d been busted.

Only that’s not how it worked out.

My bootleg key worked perfectly. I went back to Windows Update and downloaded a series of Optional Updates and drivers that are only available to Genuine Windows users. I went over to the Internet Explorer homepage and downloaded the latest beta of IE7, passing a validation test twice – once on the download and again on the installation. And five minutes ago I went over to the Windows Defender page – this is another free utility that’s only available to Genuine Windows users – and the validation check waved me right through.

That’s where I stand right now. The folks who are running the WGA program are having troubles getting the little stuff right, like putting a CD in the mail and proofreading the product key they sent with it. They haven’t managed to identify a stolen product key that’s been floating around the Internet for nearly two years. I'm reluctantly running a pirated version of Windows and can't get caught no matter how hard I try.

But these same people want us to believe that the WGA software they’ve developed is nearly foolproof. They claim that all but “a fraction of a percent” of those 60 million people who’ve been denied access to Microsoft updates and downloads are guilty, guilty, guilty.

Right.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=110&tag=nl.e539





Google to Distribute MTV Clips With Ads
AP

In a further reach for online video, Google Inc. will begin distributing clips from MTV Networks' shows to other Web sites through its budding video service in a model that offers content creators a new source of distribution and revenue.
The deal announced Sunday will begin as a test later this month, offering 100 hours of programming from clips of "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and MTV's Video Music Awards. The partnership will expand video through Google's advertising network to a variety of sites and is likely to spawn further such deals, making video a far more integral element of online advertising.

Video has become one of the fastest-growing formats online as new delivery mechanisms, faster computers and wider broadband adoption make the medium more accessible to a broader audience.

"Collaborating with Google gives us a terrific opportunity to take our content and distribute it even more widely on the Web in a seamless and targeted way," said Tom Freston, president and chief executive of Viacom, MTV's parent.

Officials declined to say how the revenue would be appropriated, citing confidential terms of the deal. Viacom will receive more than two-thirds of the revenue from the ad deal, The New York Times reported Sunday on its International Herald Tribune Web site, citing an unnamed executive involved in the deal.

Viacom spokespeople said it was not yet clear how many sites in Google's network would be selected for the partnership's test phase.

The companies also will sell episodes from 17 Viacom Inc. programs for $1.99 each through Google Video. MTV also sells its programs through Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store for the same price.

The video deal comes less than a week after Google disclosed that it has agreed to pay The Associated Press for news stories and photographs. That content will become part of Google's news offerings.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-19-16-22





AOL Likely to Tap Video, IM to Seek Edge
Anick Jesdanun

Giving high-speed Internet users its services for free may help AOL stop an erosion of customers, but analysts say that alone won't be enough to draw new visitors and break into the Web's top three.

Key to AOL's success will be how well it taps its strengths in video and instant messaging and introduces new services, like this week's offering of a free online storage bin for music, photos and other digital memories.

Not that AOL was wrong in deciding to give away e-mail accounts and software once reserved for paying subscribers, analysts said. The company needed to stop its customer exodus and the defection of potential eyeballs to rivals like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Now, Time Warner Inc.'s Internet unit needs to shed its image as a has-been dial-up access provider stuck in the '90s.

"Are they going to keep that yellow dude, whatever his name is?" asked Gartner research analyst Allen Weiner, referring to AOL's "running man" icon. "It's what people recognize as AOL, but to me it represents all those unwanted discs."

In making the drastic strategy shift Wednesday, AOL executives showed a willingness to let go of the company's legacy access business and accept larger declines in subscribers, who pay as much as $26 a month. AOL expects at least 6 million, or one-third, of its U.S. subscribers to stop paying within the year.

AOL also braced for drastic cuts in payroll - as many as 5,000 jobs - in a quest to find more than $1 billion in savings from marketing, network and other costs, such as the promotional trial CDs that AOL infamously has stuffed into mailboxes. Some were fetching $5 on eBay on Friday.

The changes will "better position AOL to fully take advantage of compelling online trends," namely the boom in Internet advertising, Time Warner's chief executive, Richard Parsons, told analysts Wednesday.

Only time will tell whether he's right.

The numbers do show promise. In the second quarter, AOL saw a 40 percent jump in advertising revenue.

But that's largely because it's making more money per page viewed - an increase of 58 percent from last year. According to comScore Media Metrix, page views - a key figure because it reflects the number of ads displayed - decreased 26 percent in June. Subscriber defection is to blame, because they account for 80 percent of page views.

AOL believes it will stop the declines, essentially by no longer sending its subscribers to rivals with free e-mail.

The company also is counting on winning back people who have left within the past two years by letting them reclaim their old AOL.com e-mail addresses. E-mail is a particularly important driver of traffic to other ad-supported services because it's something people check regularly.

But David Hallerman, a senior analyst with research company eMarketer Inc., doesn't expect many returns. Former AOL subscribers, he said, already have spent the time giving friends and family new e-mail addresses when they decided to ditch AOL.

"It's not like you look cool to have it, so you wouldn't want to have to change it again," he said.

Even tougher will be AOL's ability to draw new users entirely.

Time Warner and AOL executives offered few specifics Wednesday, although Jupiter Research senior analyst David Card points out that AOL has been rolling out new services steadily, including those tied to its popular AIM instant-messaging platform.

In recent months, AOL introduced a social-networking site called AIM Pages, the ability to receive free incoming calls through AIM Phoneline and a business version of the AIM software with free Web conferences - all designed to keep users viewing AOL content and ads.

AOL also has the potential to tap the archives of other Time Warner units for video, as it already has with old Warner Bros. television shows like "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Growing Pains."

Beyond TV, Time Warner has magazines and movie studios, and AOL's success will be guided by "how it chooses to leverage that content," said Jennifer Simpson, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

On Friday, AOL launched a test version of a new video portal the company envisions as a television guide for the Internet. The idea is to present dozens of video-on-demand channels, just like cable TV, while allowing visitors to search for video located elsewhere on the Internet, including rivals like YouTube.com.

AOL also is looking beyond content with free services like virus protection and parental controls. The storage service it announced Thursday beat what rivals offer, with enough room for 1,250 songs or 2,000 photos.

Executives hinted more will come.

Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online services group, acknowledged AOL's strengths with Time Warner content and with instant messaging, particularly in the United States. But he said he's not worried.

"They clung to the past a little longer than everyone else," he said. "They are embracing a model that the rest of the industry has already made traction on. They have some assets, but I don't think they have any assets that are runaway victories."

In the all-important category of search, AOL is fourth, behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. AOL benefits from a 5 percent ownership by Google, which provides AOL's search results and keyword ads. But for routine searches, many users go directly to Google, denying AOL the opportunity to distract visitors with an ad-supported video or two.

AOL also trails those three in unique visitors. It held steady in June, even as its rivals all grew - Google by 23 percent.

Meanwhile, fast-growing sites like YouTube and News Corp.'s MySpace are looking to capture ad dollars, too.

AOL's strategy shift will make it harder for rivals to pull share from AOL, but won't necessarily help AOL grow, said tech analyst Rob Enderle.

"In this business you are either growing or shrinking," he said. "Treading water is probably not going to cut it here."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-04-20-50-02





Besieged Lebanese Turn to Internet
Zeina Karam

Like many of her compatriots, artist Zena el-Khalil has turned to blogging on the Internet to express her longings and fears amid the fighting in Lebanon.

Writing from Beirut, the 30-year-old tells of wanting to have children and worries about Israeli air raids on the capital.

"Word on the street is that Israel is threatening to hit Beirut now. I feel so helpless," she said in a recent entry in her online diary. "I called my husband and told him to come home right away. If I die, I want to be in his arms."

Another blogger, 27-year-old Jamal Ghosn, bemoans the casualties among Lebanese children. "Lebanese children don't hug teddy bears when they sleep, they sleep with Katyushas in their beds, in case you didn't know," he wrote with bitter sarcasm.

Young Lebanese, feeling increasingly hemmed in by the siege of their country, are turning to the Internet to vent anger about the war and express private longings intensified by the death and destruction.

But widespread electricity cuts caused by fuel shortages and Israel's bombardment of power stations have at times shut off even this outlet.

Operating his computer by battery late one night after the neighborhood generator went off, blogger Mazen Kerbej, a 30-year-old musician, quipped: "It's quite funny to write on a laptop connected to the world with a candle next to the keyboard to see the letters."

Lebanese bloggers burst onto the Internet in unprecedented numbers last year following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the subsequent "Cedar Revolution" - the mass anti-Syria demonstrations that preceded the Damascus regime's withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon after an 18-year presence.

But the bloggers' enthusiasm had subsided as politicians became mired in squabbles over relations with Syria and other issues. But the Web musings have surged again since Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

Besides blogging, Lebanese at home and abroad are using e-mails, text messages and other communications to share their feelings and ideas for ending the conflict. Anti-war petitions, cartoons and articles have been flying around the Internet since hostilities erupted July 12.

One e-mail making the rounds in Lebanon carries a picture of an "Israeli checklist" with check marks next to the words bridges, power plants, airports, children and the economy. "Hezbollah" is the only word on the list left unchecked.

Another that has circulated to thousands contains photos of wounded Lebanese infants and children juxtaposed with photos of Israeli children writing "greetings" on artillery shells.

Hanady Salman, managing editor of the As-Safir newspaper, said she never had the time or interest to keep a diary. But when Israeli missiles struck a convoy of Lebanese villagers fleeing the southern village of Merwaheen on the third day of the war, killing at least 15 people and blowing children into nearby ravines, the 38-year-old mother was galvanized.

She began e-mailing pictures of the death and destruction to everyone she knew, hoping to gain attention for what was happening. Sending pictures quickly turned into diary-style e-mails that have become hugely popular.

"It's a great way to get across your side of the story, to reach out to people. I thank God every day that there is the Internet to do that," Salman said. "It makes me feel like I'm somehow contributing, I'm doing my share."

Salman now has about 200 people on her mailing list.

On a recent morning, she wrote: "Last night the air raids were so close, I was almost out of my mind. Israeli fighters were flying so low, I couldn't wait to go home and hug my little baby (we live on the 12th floor, remember?)."

A popular Web site, Electronic Lebanon, is publishing the diaries of Salman and others from across Lebanon, written in English. The site has had more than 479,000 visits and 2,250,000 pages viewed since the start of the war.

While the devastation has fired the desire of bloggers to tell the world of Lebanon's pain, witnessing it firsthand proved too powerful for one.

"I so want to write, but I still have no words," blogger Muzna al-Masri wrote of her Aug. 2 tour of southern Lebanon. "This was Tyre, after all, the lovely city and its beach that I always wanted to call home.

"I still haven't cried, I feel I am not entitled to. If I were to cry, what would I leave to the people that have lost loved ones and houses full of memories?"
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-15-38-52





Reuters Pulls Doctored Photo

Photo from Beirut freelancer represents "a serious breach of Reuters standards."
Miki Johnson

Reuters pulled a photograph of burning buildings in Beirut yesterday after a post on the Little Green Footballs blog outed it as digitally manipulated.

The photo, filed on Saturday by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, ran with the caption "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs."

That smoke bore "repeating patterns" and came from at least two buildings that appeared to be identical, according to Little Green Footballs editor Charles Johnson. These repetitions were "almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop 'clone' tool," the post concluded.

Reuters issued a "picture kill" immediately after being notified of the manipulation along with a statement that "photo editing software was improperly used on this image," and replaced it with a corrected version of the photo.

Hajj, who has freelanced for Reuters since 1993 and has been suspended pending an internal inquiry, "denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," according to the Reuters statement.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters standards, and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by [Hajj]," the statement continued.

Other blogs and online forums, including the SportsShooter web forum, Left & Right, and Ace of Spades, have joined Little Green Footballs in criticizing Reuters for letting a photo so "obviously doctored" pass through its editing regiment and have questioned the veracity of other photos by Hajj.
http://www.popphoto.com/photographyn...red-photo.html





Storied Photo Agency Finding Focus
Adam Goldman

Magnum Photos has long been one of the world's most revered photo agencies: Its photographers have captured iconic images of James Dean and Che Guevara and helped define the art of visual story telling.

But as the Internet emerged as a dominant force over the last decade, Magnum was slow to embrace change, leaving its future and role in the photography business in doubt.

"I think it's fair to say that Magnum was still functioning on a dying business model," said Mark Lubell, director of Magnum's New York office. "There were fractious debates inside of Magnum about where the agency should be going."

But Lubell believes Magnum Photos Inc. is finally starting to find its focus. Lubell has embarked on an ambitious turnaround since taking over in 2004, despite having a limited photography resume.

He updated Magnum's business roadmap, and has launched an effort to sell more pictures online while cutting costs and the agency's longtime dependence on selling photos to primarily newspapers and magazines. Those licensing fees have been instrumental in keeping Magnum afloat.

"Mark has probably saved Magnum in a way and Magnum has enabled Mark to reach his full potential as a person," said Burt Glinn, 81, Magnum's second-oldest living member.

Magnum, which currently represents 60 photographers and 10 estates and has four offices around the world with 93 employees, is on track to make money this year, Lubell says.

Every year, agency members review the portfolios of aspiring Magnum photographers and those who pass muster are invited to become nominees. If they continue doing high-level work, they can eventually become associates and ultimately full-fledged members.

The agency essentially acts as the agent for Magnum photographers, getting a fee from each assignment generated - mostly from magazines but also from corporate clients. Magnum also has a publishing division. The photographers own Magnum and control its fate.

Arguably the most famous photo agency in the world, Magnum was founded in 1947 by such giants as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson to protect the lucrative copyrights to their pictures.

Magnum photographers distinguished themselves not only using their cameras but also their courage. Three of Magnum's photographers, including founders Capa and David Seymour, were killed while on assignment.

"For a young photographer, it's a mythical place," said photographer Chris Anderson, 36. "Something you always dreamed you might be a part of."

War, though, wasn't the only story Magnum shooters covered. They have captured indelible moments like Dennis Stock's 1955 picture of James Dean in Times Square and Steve McCurry's 1985 portrait of a young Afghan refugee that landed on the cover of National Geographic.

But managing a cooperative and the inevitable internal conflicts was not easy. Magnum eventually became well-known for reasons other than its notable pictures.

The biggest clash happened in 2001. One of Magnum's most famous photographers, James Nachtwey, left and formed another collectively owned agency called VII.

Magnum stumbled as other companies responded to the rapid shifts in technology, like the Bill Gates-owned Corbis Corp., and Getty Images Inc., both located in Seattle.

Getty dominates the industry and reported more than $730 million in revenue in 2005, while Corbis said it generated $228 million last year.

Lubell declined to give out financial information but compared Magnum as the Rolls Royce of the automotive industry - small but equal in prestige and influence.

Early on, Corbis and Getty both recognized the power of the Internet and quickly moved to digitize their photo archives so people could search for images online. People bought more images because they were readily available. That created more volume and bigger profits and drew a lot of traffic to their Web sites.

The capital investment was enormous, but the payoffs were substantial, said Patrick Donehue, vice president and chief photographer at Corbis.

"It really required a complete transformation," Donehue said.

About three years after Nachtwey departed, Magnum gambled on its future, deciding to take a chance on Lubell, hoping the young, albeit savvy, businessman could change its fortunes.

Lubell, 36, was not a photographer. He helped take a company public after graduating from Syracuse University, and he later worked for a dot-com near ground zero that closed after Sept. 11.

Without a job, he was asked to run a popular but chaotic photography exhibit called "Here is New York" that sold images related to the attacks, donating the money to charity.

One of the exhibit's creators, Gilles Peress of Magnum, was impressed with Lubell and his handling of the show's unexpected popularity.

Peress asked Lubell to come to Magnum as a consultant in November 2003. After initially resisting, Lubell agreed to a three-month stint. Shortly afterward, the director of the New York bureau, the most important among the four, resigned and Lubell took over in January 2004.

Lubell came into the New York office with a three-year plan that involved increasing revenue 20 percent each year while decreasing expenses by 10 percent.

"This was my turnaround project with an incredible brand name and legacy," Lubell said. "I was a little worried about whether people would allow change."

Lubell said Magnum's business strategy hadn't changed since the 1960s, and the agency had slowly begun to lose its position in the market. Lubell recognized that one-off events - like a successful book about 9/11 - disguised a fragile bottom line.

"If you take those spikes out, you started to see there was some real weakness in this business model," he said.

Lubell turned to the Web to increase brand awareness.

Lubell, along with his Internet team, created Magnum in Motion, an interactive photo essay, late last year to lure people to the site, and he inked a deal with the online magazine Slate in December 2005 to feature Magnum's photos and the essays. The section, called "Today's Picture," logs 9 million to 10 million unique visitors a month, Lubell said.

Lubell also says he's currently exploring plans to move Magnum's cramped New York offices to a new location and start a foundation to fund photography projects. A redesign of the Web site is expected soon.

Magnum can still compete against behemoths like Getty and Corbis because its photographers, Lubell believes, are some of the best in the world. That will always give Magnum an edge, he says.

"Content is king as Barry Diller says. We have the content. We have a million plus images in our archive," Lubell said. "Getty and Corbis don't have the name recognition we have. We have a competitive advantage. Magnum is an amazing asset that hasn't even been tapped."

Glinn, who famously covered Fidel Castro's 1959 march on Havana, has seen a lot. He's witnessed war. He's witnessed revolution. He's witnessed Magnum's ups and downs. He thinks Magnum photographers have plenty more to witness.

"We've lost a lot of money over the years but we've persevered," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-17-09-48





Wired News Pulls Freelancer's Stories
Rachel Konrad

Online technology publication Wired News removed three articles from its Web site Wednesday after editors couldn't confirm the authenticity of at least one source.

All three stories were written by freelancer Philip Chien, a Florida author and space enthusiast who quoted and cited Robert Ash. In the articles, published in June and July, Chien described Ash as a "space historian" and an "aeronautical engineer and amateur space historian."

When a Wired News senior editor telephoned Ash to verify the quotation, Ash said he was not a space historian and never conducted an interview with Chien.

Ash is a professor in the aerospace engineering department of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and had been involved in numerous NASA projects. He did not respond to telephone calls and an e-mail Wednesday from The Associated Press.

Chien, a freelance writer who has worked for online, print and television news outlets, is the author of a book on the Columbia space shuttle disaster. He wrote two stories for Wired News in 2004 and five in the past several months.

Chien said Wednesday that Wired News editors didn't give him an adequate opportunity to defend his sourcing before pulling his articles.

"They informed me they were going to do it but didn't give me any notice," Chien said in a phone interview with The AP. "Things have been distorted and taken out of context, but I don't want to say anything more than that."

Wired News requires all freelancers to provide e-mail addresses and phone numbers for everyone quoted or cited in stories. The contact information Chien provided for Ash was a free Hotmail account that included the name Robert Stevens in the address.

Editors became suspicious when they realized that Chien had quoted a man named Robert Stevens in at least three articles he wrote for newspapers, referring to him variously as a retired engineer, a NASA engineer and an amateur astronomer.

Wired News editors were also suspicious about another of Chien's sources in the space industry, a man named Ted Collins. Editors traced Collins' ostensible Hotmail account to an Internet forum about the space shuttle, in which Collins praised Chien's book, "Columbia: Final Voyage."

"I've seen a bunch of Phil Chien's stories online and always enjoyed his insightful questions in the press conferences, but hadn't heard that he had written a book," the posting read. It included a link to Chien's Web site and inquired whether the accompanying CD-ROM would be available through Amazon.com.

In an explanation e-mailed to Wired News, Chien acknowledged he created the Ted Collins' Hotmail account and used it in an attempt to mislead editors. Chien said Collins died in 1997, but said he liked his quotes so much he wanted to use them posthumously in the past three months.

The incident comes just over a year after another sourcing problem for Wired News.

In May 2005, Wired News acknowledged it could not verify the accuracy or authenticity of roughly 160 news stories by freelance journalist Michelle Delio of New York City. Editors said they could not prove the existence of more than 40 people quoted in Delio's articles, which covered subjects ranging from computer viruses to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That episode resulted in strict sourcing policies for Wired News freelancers, who must now turn in contact information for anyone quoted or cited in any article.

"It's regrettable, obviously, that this happened," said Wired News editor-in-chief Evan Hansen. "But at the same time it speaks to the processes we've put in place."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-10-06-53-38





2 Editors Resign at Web Site Linked to Journalism Review
Katharine Q. Seelye

The managing editor of CJRDaily.org, an online adjunct of The Columbia Journalism Review, and his deputy both quit yesterday after the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism told them he was cutting the site’s budget nearly in half.

The dean, Nicholas Lemann, said in an interview that the amount of money raised for the Web site could not sustain the online staff, and he was using a portion of the magazine’s discretionary money for a direct-mail campaign to try to increase subscriptions to the print magazine. The journalism review, which comes out six times a year, has a circulation of 20,000.

Mr. Lemann said he was faced with the same quandary confronting most news organizations today — how to pay for an online staff when the site is free to readers.

The Web site will soon start to sell advertising, hold conferences and sell archival material, he said, but even that revenue will not support the cost of the staff. He said he had been “out fund-raising every day,” but had not scraped together enough to finance the site at full strength.

As a result, he said, he has decided that a campaign to gain subscribers for the print magazine, while expensive, will result in more income, which will help maintain an online staff that he said would still be bigger than that of most other magazines.

“I have the same issue that everyone else in journalism has, and this is our best lunge toward a solution,” Mr. Lemann said.

The decision prompted the site’s top editors to quit, reducing the staff from eight to six.

Both Steve Lovelady, 63, the managing editor, who had been managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and deputy Page 1 editor of The Wall Street Journal, and Bryan Keefer, 28, the assistant managing editor, resigned in protest yesterday.

“It’s a fundamental policy dispute about the allocation of resources,” Mr. Lovelady said. “Nick has decided to spend the money on a direct-mail campaign for the magazine, in hopes of saving subscription revenue. To me, that sounds like something out of the 19th century. He’s taking the one, fresh, smart thing he has and gutting it.”

Mr. Lovelady said the size of his staff could not be compared with those of many other magazine Web sites, because CJRDaily produces its own original content, while many other such magazine sites simply put print content online. Mr. Keefer said that, like Mr. Lovelady, he did not want to preside over the shrinking of something that he helped build.

“I appreciate the position Nick is in,” Mr. Keefer said, “but I don’t want to be a part of the direction he’s taking things in.”

The journalism school started the Web site in 2004, with the help of foundation grants, to scrutinize the mainstream media’s coverage of the presidential campaign.

The site, which was originally named campaigndesk.org, was supposed to last for the duration of the campaign. But its cheeky tone and its quick, often-incisive analysis of political news proved so popular that Mr. Lemann and others decided to extend its life and broaden its scope to cover the entire media landscape. Thus was born CJRDaily.org.

(The journalism review has its own Web site, CJR.org, which essentially reprints the magazine. Mr. Lemann said he planned to merge CJRDaily with the magazine’s Web site, making them one brand.)

In 2005, CJRDaily.org received an honorable mention from the National Press Club in the category of “distinguished contribution“ to online journalism. It now receives nearly 500,000 page views a month, Mr. Lovelady said, up 30 percent from the beginning of the year.

Mr. Lemann’s decision to transfer money from the site to a small-circulation print magazine would seem to run counter to some of his own writings on the importance of the Web.

He wrote recently in The New Yorker, “As journalism moves to the Internet, the main project ought to be moving reporters there, not stripping them away.”

In the interview, he said redirecting money to the magazine did not contradict that view because he was still maintaining a relatively large online staff.

“We’re making a powerful commitment to the Web because we really believe in it,” he said. But he said he also believed in print.

“I don’t think print is going away,” he said. “Keeping the print magazine brings in revenue, and print can do some things that the Web can’t.”

Jay Rosen, a blogger and journalism professor at New York University, said the move was a “strategic error” and that the review should drop its print version to reduce costs and go entirely online.

“I’m sure their current subscribers want it in print, but you have to look at your potential subscribers,” he said. “Since the profession is going toward the Web, in the long run, that’s the smarter move.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/bu...dia/11mag.html





It only hurts when I surf

Hospitals Now Offer High-Speed Internet
Kelley Schoonover

Feel like watching a movie? Need an extra blanket or some food? For years, guests at hotels have gotten these amenities with a phone call or a few clicks of the TV remote.

Now this instant gratification is available to patients in hospitals across the nation through interactive television, high-speed Internet and other comfort-oriented perks designed to make them feel like hotel guests.

LodgeNet Entertainment Corp. has installed interactive TV systems in 10 hospitals in New Jersey, Missouri, Alabama, Washington state, Texas and South Dakota, and has contracts with twice that many, said Gary Kolbeck, the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company's vice president of health care business development.

LodgeNet, whose customers include major hotel chains such as Hilton and Ritz Carlton, has been offering the hospital services for about a year and a half.
Kolbeck said the trend is driven in part by baby boomer patients with high expectations and the need to generate revenue in a competitive market.

"To me it was just a no-brainer," said Albert Pilkington III, chief executive of Fairmont General Hospital in Fairmont, W.Va. "It puts more time in my employees' hands and it improves the quality of service."

Fairmont General's system, which Pilkington expects to be online within 90 days, will include a numeric keypad that can be used for everything from choosing a movie or a video game to ordering items from the gift shop or requesting room temperature changes.

Pilkington said the system also can provide educational programming that is specific to a patient's condition and treatment. These programs can be viewed as many times as the patient wants.

The system also includes a real-time patient satisfaction survey that allows staff at the 207-bed hospital to address concerns or complaints immediately.

"We're a very patient-oriented hospital," he said. "Service is a big deal for us. It's probably our main focus."

Pilkington declined to disclose the system's price, except to say, "it'll be a six-digit purchase." He said there will be no additional cost for patients.

The cost to install a similar system in 400-plus patient rooms at West Virginia University Hospitals' Ruby Memorial is estimated at $600,000, said spokesman Steve Bovino. He could not say when the system will be in place.

"When it comes to health care, or any other service for that matter, consumer expectations continue to rise," said Randy Bury, chief administrative officer for Sioux Valley Hospital USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Bury said Sioux Valley's system creates a more homelike environment for patients or visitors who often feel stuck "with nothing else to do."

Sioux Valley officials initially planned to phase in the system in the 500-bed hospital over four months, but Bury said positive feedback from patients spurred them to implement it all within a couple of weeks.

"What was happening, we'd have a patient in a unit with the system who got used to it, then that patient would be transferred to another unit without the system and would be dissatisfied," he said. "We started hearing that loud and clear."

Some hospitals have taken the concept of creating a hotel-like atmosphere even further.

Interactive TV is just one of many perks available at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano in Plano, Texas, which offers room service from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

"Guests can have breakfast at 2 p.m.," as long as it's within their dietary requirements, said Deanne Kindred, vice president of finance. Each patient can order from a menu that has been specifically created for him or her.

"It's not like the old Jell-O in the plastic cup," she said.

Besides wireless Internet access for laptop users, Baylor also has a "business center" on each floor, equipped with personal computers so that visitors can have access to the Internet and e-mail.

Other amenities offered at the 96-bed medical center include a Starbucks, a terraced garden, valet parking and toiletries for patients or family members. Staff refer to patients as "guests" and information is obtained from the "concierge desk," said Kindred.

Bury said guest-oriented hospitals will soon be the norm rather than the exception.

"If you don't have it, you might as well start planning," he said, "because consumer expectations are going to be there."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-06-22-37-32
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