[JackSpratts]

Milestones


Adrienne Shelly, Keri Russell and Cheryl Hines

A Slice of Americana, Served With a Sad Smile
A. O. SCOTT

Stuck in a marriage to a man she loathes, inconveniently pregnant with his child, oppressed by long hours waiting tables for a grouchy boss, Jenna finds relief baking pies. As lovingly filmed as they are made, these creations serve as both therapy and art. Jenna gives them whimsical names — “I don’t want Earl’s baby pie,” for instance — and combines unlikely ingredients to unfailingly delicious effect.

Adrienne Shelly, who wrote and directed “Waitress” (and who plays one of Jenna’s co-workers), demonstrates a similar confectionary gift. The movie, her third and last feature before she was murdered in November, blends familiar elements into something both satisfying and surprising. Part feminist fable, part romantic fairy tale, it is by turns tart and sweet, charming and tough, rather like its heroine and like Keri Russell, the plucky, pretty, nimble actress (still perhaps best known as Felicity, from the television coming-of-age melodrama of the same name) who plays her.

The small-town Southern diner where Jenna works is a homey, comfortable place, and if you feel as if you’ve been there before, it is probably because you remember the movie “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” or the long-running sitcom, “Alice,” that followed it. Ms. Russell does not much resemble Ellen Burstyn or Linda Lavin, whose Alices were single mothers rather than young wives, but Ms. Shelly’s mousy, nervous, lovelorn Dawn and Cheryl Hines’s no-nonsense Becky are close kin to Vera and Flo, Alice’s reliable comic sidekicks.

Ms. Hines’s brassy turn — I waited in vain for her to say, “Kiss my grits!” — is a welcome change from her duties as Larry David’s straight man on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” And her zany warmth, along with Ms. Shelly’s mischievous mousiness, fill out the movie’s affectionate, comical view of workplace sisterhood.

Becky and Dawn have their own troubles, but neither would willingly trade places with Jenna, whose husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto), is the main source of her misery. A babyish, possessive bully, he is fearsome when angry and annoying the rest of the time. When Jenna reluctantly tells him of her pregnancy, he makes her promise that she won’t ever love the baby more than she loves him, completely oblivious to the fact that she probably has old shoelaces she loves more than him.

Not that impending motherhood fills her with joy. Though she decides immediately to go through with the pregnancy — the word “abortion” is never uttered — the prospect of having a child thwarts her half-formed project of escape. Solace is available in increasingly frenetic pie-making, and also in the company of her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion), a new arrival in town who has an awkward, friendly manner that complements her own mixture of frankness and indecision.

Their smoldering crush quickly ignites into a full-blown affair, though Jenna preserves a measure of decorum by continuing to address him as “Doctor Pomatter.” Their romance is a rare example of movie adultery (he’s married too) without punishment or apology, and it works because both actors are so darn likable.

As is just about everything else on screen, from the pies to the waitresses’ uniforms to the snappy, pop-song rhythms of the editing. Andy Griffith shows up from time to time, playing the crusty, soft-in-the-middle owner of the diner, to lend a further twinkle of homespun Americana to a film that takes place in a carefully imagined semi-mythical realm.

It is not so much that Ms. Shelly has banished realism from her story, but rather that she has tamed and shaped it, finding a perfect, difficult-to-achieve balance of enchantment and plausibility. The story, in which resilience is rewarded, and meanness is banished, is comforting without feeling unduly sentimental, thanks to its mood of easygoing, tolerant honesty. If “Waitress” were more strenuously uplifting, it might be labeled a feel-good movie, but it isn’t that. It’s just a movie that leaves you feeling good.

Except, that is, for a real-world shadow that inevitably falls across its bright surface. Last year Ms. Shelly was killed in a Manhattan apartment she used as an office after the movie had been finished and accepted at Sundance, but before audiences could see it. She was 40, with some fine work as an actress behind her (notably in the Hal Hartley films “Trust” and “The Unbelievable Truth”) and her long flowering as a filmmaker still ahead.

Knowledge of her senseless, untimely death makes the final scenes of “Waitress” especially painful to watch, and the sturdy, modest accomplishment of the film can hardly begin to make up for the loss. But it is something: it is lovely, touching and infused with life.

“Waitress” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some sex and some swearing, but all in all, as sweet as pie.

WAITRESS

Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly; director of photography, Matthew Irving; edited by Annette Davey; music by Andrew Hollander; production designer, Ramsey Avery; produced by Michael Roiff; released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 104 minutes.

WITH: Keri Russell (Jenna), Nathan Fillion (Dr. Pomatter), Cheryl Hines (Becky), Adrienne Shelly (Dawn), Eddie Jemison (Ogie), Lew Temple (Cal), Jeremy Sisto (Earl) and Andy Griffith (Old Joe).
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/05/0...es/02wait.html





It Ain’t That Pretty, That Life of Zevon’s
Janet Maslin


I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD
The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

By Crystal Zevon.

Illustrated. 452 pp. Ecco. $26.95.

One self-imposed epitaph Warren Zevon delivered after learning he had terminal cancer was this: “It’s a damned hard way to make a living, having to die to get ’em to know you’re alive.” Like so much of what he said, wrote and sang, it was quotable, savagely funny and true.

Near the end of his life (he died at 56 on Sept. 7, 2003), doing some of his best work in the face of adversity, Mr. Zevon remained stuck in a commercial vacuum. The great promise of his sensational early albums had never brought him the wide following he deserved. So he decided to make the most of a terrible situation, advising his manager to exploit his illness in any way that might advance a soon-to-be-over career. (The manager refused. Still, there were posthumous Grammys.) And he called upon his estranged wife, Crystal Zevon, to take care of him. He also wanted her to take notes.

Ms. Zevon fulfills his wishes with “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” a no-holds-barred oral history that captures a lovable but wildly aberrant personality, draws upon a fascinatingly diverse cast of characters and peers into the heart of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter community in its prime. The widow’s role is awkward, given her ex-husband’s gun-toting rages, heavy substance abuse, iffy parenting and unflagging ability to chase new women. She also uses an awkward format that has her writing in both the first person (as speaker) and third (as editor). And she takes for granted readers’ familiarity with the music of her lifelong companion. (This book has no index or discography.)

But her affection, candor and dogged pursuit of information make this book an unforgettable journey into the depths of Mr. Zevon’s mad genius. There is much for Ms. Zevon to balk at, but she has the temerity for this tough job. The rare thing for which she apologizes is not having tried to interview Bob Dylan, one of many stellar musicians who had a way of turning up at Zevon recording sessions, given the high regard in which fellow artists held him. “I guess I was just scared,” she says.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” uses Zevon song titles like “Werewolves of London,” “Detox Mansion,” “Mr. Bad Example” and “My Dirty Life and Times” as chapter headings. It doesn’t use the one that best sums up this story: “Ain’t That Pretty at All.” The Mr. Zevon on these pages is surprisingly image-conscious, abusive, petty, jealous, sordid, vain, shopaholic and even banal; among his obsessive-compulsive tics was buying the same kind of gray T-shirt over and over again. His diary entries often focus on such things, so they are less scintillating than the literary lyrics for which he is known. Among the livelier entries is this one: “Went over to Ryan’s. Later in the evening I got stuck in the elevator — Fire Dept. had to come. Not as much fun as it sounds.”

But this lack of show-business artifice is precisely what makes the Zevon story so telling. What was even more unusual than his dark thoughts — like resenting the fact that Jackson Browne and Neil Young had lost people close to them and written beautiful, much-admired songs about those deaths — was his willingness to admit to those thoughts. On his deathbed, discussing the merits of having a funeral, he said, “I just don’t want to have to spend my last days wondering whether Henley” — Don Henley of the Eagles, who did not attend — “will show up.”

Mr. Browne is one of many mentors who tried to help Mr. Zevon, knowing that their wild-man compatriot was his own worst enemy. “My role as benefactor took its toll on our friendship,” Mr. Browne says astutely, but it was a friendship that endured to the end of Mr. Zevon’s days. Mr. Browne also points out that when he introduced Mr. Zevon to an audience as “the Ernest Hemingway of the twelve-string guitar,” Mr. Zevon said he was more like Charles Bronson. “Warren didn’t have literary pretensions,” Mr. Browne says. “He had literary muscle.”

He also had literary tastes (he was the rare rock musician who went looking for bookstores while on the road) and literary antecedents (he is aptly compared here to Dorothy Parker and, by Bruce Springsteen, to Nathanael West). And he had literary cronies, some of whom he met by showing up at their book signings. “He was more self-deprecating about his talent than we were about ours, and we genuinely stink,” Dave Barry says about the Rock Bottom Remainders, the all-author band with which Mr. Zevon sometimes played.

“I don’t think his fires were out, but I think he’d banked his fires,” says another band member, Stephen King, who knew Mr. Zevon during the singer’s middle and later years.

Most of his friends from this period had no idea of the wreckage caused by Mr. Zevon’s early alcoholism. After years of hair-raising benders (many of them described in the book), he became sober for 17 years, only to be thrown off the wagon by a diagnosis of certain death. These last megabinges shamed Mr. Zevon and angered some of his new friends. “I said the one thing this guy should not do is die a cliché,” says the writer Carl Hiaasen, who worried that Mr. Zevon’s two children would have to read about their father’s fatal drug overdose in a newspaper. But they didn’t. And he had three months to get acquainted with twin grandsons.

The Zevon legacy, which will be greatly bolstered by this intimate portrait despite the warts it reveals, also carries on in other ways. In his diary, Mr. Zevon reported meeting a yuppie family who called their dog Zevon. With classic Zevon acerbity, he told them, “I don’t think this is what grandfather had in mind.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/books/30masl.html





Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?
Motoko Rich

Last year Dan Wickett, a former quality-control manager for a car-parts maker, wrote 95 book reviews on his blog, Emerging Writers Network (emergingwriters.typepad.com/), singlehandedly compiling almost half as many reviews as appeared in all of the book pages of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Mr. Wickett has now quit the automotive industry and started a nonprofit organization that supports literary journals and writers-in-residence programs, giving him more time to devote to his literary blog. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, meanwhile, has recently eliminated the job of its book editor, leading many fans to worry that book coverage will soon be provided mostly by wire services and reprints from national papers.

The decision in Atlanta — in which book reviews will now be overseen by one editor responsible for virtually all arts coverage — comes after a string of changes at book reviews across the country. The Los Angeles Times recently merged its once stand-alone book review into a new section combining the review with the paper’s Sunday opinion pages, effectively cutting the number of pages devoted to books to 10 from 12. Last year The San Francisco Chronicle’s book review went from six pages to four. All across the country, newspapers are cutting book sections or running more reprints of reviews from wire services or larger papers.

To some authors and critics, these moves amount to yet one more nail in the coffin of literary culture. But some publishers and literary bloggers — not surprisingly — see it as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books. In recent years, dozens of sites, including Bookslut.com, The Elegant Variation (marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/), maudnewton .com, Beatrice.com and the Syntax of Things (syntaxofthings.typepad.com), have been offering a mix of book news, debates, interviews and reviews, often on subjects not generally covered by newspaper book sections.

For those who are used to the old way, it’s a tough evolution. “Like anything new, it’s difficult for authors and agents to understand when we say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not going to be in The New York Times or The Chicago Tribune, but you are going to be at curledup.com,’ ” said Trish Todd, publisher of Touchstone Fireside, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. “But we think that’s the wave of the future.”

Obviously, the changes at newspaper book reviews reflect the broader challenges faced by newspapers in general, as advertisement revenues decline, and readers decamp to the Internet. But some writers (and readers) question whether economics should be the only driving factor. Newspapers like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution could run book reviews “as a public service, and the fact of the matter is that they are unwilling to,” said Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.

“I think the reviewing function as it is thoroughly taken up by newspapers is vital,” he continued, “in the same way that literature itself is vital.”

Mr. Ford is one of more than 120 writers who have signed a petition to save the job of Teresa Weaver, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s book editor. The petition, sponsored by the National Book Critics Circle, comes as part of the organization’s effort to save imperiled book coverage generally. “We will continue to use freelancers, established news services and our staff to provide stories about books of interest to our readers and the local literary community,” said Mary Dugenske, a spokeswoman for the newspaper, in an e-mail message.

Coming as it does at a time when newspaper book reviews are endangered, many writers, publishers and critics worry that the spread of literary blogs will be seen as compensation for more traditional coverage. “We have a lot of opinions in our world,” said John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle. “What we need is more mediation and reflection, which is why newspapers and literary journals are so important.”

Edward Champion, who writes about books on his blog, Return of the Reluctant (edrants.com), said that literary blogs responded to the “often stodgy and pretentious tone” of traditional reviews.

The brute fact is that while authors and publishers may want long and considered responses to their work, sometimes what they most need is attention. Last year, when Random House published “This Is Not Chick Lit,” a story collection with contributions from authors like Jennifer Egan and Curtis Sittenfeld, it generated a lot of online chatter as various bloggers debated whether the book was pretentious or a welcome correction to an oversubscribed genre. “All the slow but steady online exposure helped build a grass-roots thing,” said Julia Cheiffetz, the book’s editor at Random House, who noted that “This Is Not Chick Lit” is now in its sixth printing with 45,000 copies in print.

But while online buzz can help some books, newspapers can pique the interest of a general reader, said Oscar Villalon, books editor at The San Francisco Chronicle. Blogs, he said, are “not mass media.” The Chronicle, for example, he said, has a circulation of nearly 500,000, a number not many blogs can achieve.

On the other hand, committed readers who take the time to find a literary blog may be more likely than a casual reader of the Sunday newspaper to buy a book. “I know that everyone who comes to my site is interested in books,” said Mark Sarvas, editor of The Elegant Variation, a literary blog that publishes lengthy reviews.

And newspaper book reviews, which are often accused of hewing too closely to “safe choices,” could learn something from the more freewheeling approach of some of the book blogs, said David L. Ulin, who edits the book review at The Los Angeles Times.

“One of the troubles with mainstream print criticism is that people can be too polite,” Mr. Ulin said. “I feel like an aspect of the gloves-off nature of blogs is something that we could all learn from, not in an irresponsible way, but in a wear-your-likes-and-dislikes-on-your-sleeves kind of way.”

Maud Newton, who has been writing a literary blog since 2002, said she has the freedom to follow obsessions like, say, Mark Twain in a way that a newspaper book review could not, unless there was a current book on the subject. But she would never consider what she does a replacement for more traditional book reviews.

“I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger,” Ms. Newton said. “But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things.”

One thing that regional newspapers in particular can do is highlight local authors. “While I’m all for the literary bloggers, and I think the more people that write about books the better, they’re not necessarily as regionally focused as knowledgeable, experienced long-term editors in the South or Midwest or anywhere where the most important writers come from,” said Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Many local authors view the decision at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a betrayal of important local coverage.

“With the removal of its cultural critics, Atlanta is surrendering again,” wrote Melissa Fay Greene, author of “Praying for Sheetrock” in an e-mail message. “We all lose, you know, not just Atlantans, with the disappearance from the scene of a literate intelligence.”

Of course literary bloggers argue that they do provide a multiplicity of voices. But some authors distrust those voices. Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. “Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,” Mr. Ford said, “in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/bo...ece&ei=5087%0A





Superhero Worship, Gotham to Riverdale
George Gene Gustines

There is no better day to visit your neighborhood comic store than tomorrow: Free Comic Book Day, the annual industry promotion in which participating retailers nationwide will give away titles ranging from “Little Archie” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” to “The Lone Ranger” and “Transformers,” a spectrum as wide as the stores that sell them.

And there is no better city in which to make that visit than New York. While it may be better known as a financial, cultural and culinary capital, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the home of DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment also boasts the best comic book stores.

“It’s a wonderland for anyone who loves the medium,” said Brian K. Vaughan, a popular writer of comics for both DC and Marvel who works from West Hollywood but is an ex-Brooklynite. “The worst comic book store in New York City is better than the best comic store in at least 40 other states.”

From the more than 40 comic shops in New York City, here are five — one in each borough — that are especially worth checking out. They were arrived at through a combination of polling industry contacts, scouring online postings by fans and distilling the lessons of my own 25-year comic book habit. Try them tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day; on a Wednesday, when new comics arrive; or any other day of the week.

Manhattan

Chuck McKinney, 41, a voice-over actor and Web cartoonist, loves Midtown Comics. “The store is big, clean, well stocked and organized; and everyone gets a discount,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “And best of all there are lots of hot, ethnic straight guys to check out while I’m buying my comics.”

Besides the eye candy — perhaps the first time anyone has graded a comic store in quite that way — Midtown Comics on West 40th Street offers an immense, light-flooded space, 5,000 square feet over two floors. The main floor has plentiful copies of new releases, a wide selection of collections in book form and DVD obscurities like “The Bionic Six,” an animated series from 1987 about a family with robotic enhancements. For some fans these DVDs are golden.

The second floor has back issues, T-shirts, adult comics, science fiction novels, lunchboxes, piggy banks and plenty of toys. The display cases offer statues and busts depicting heroes, villains and classic scenes, like Jor-El and Lara gazing at their son in the rocket that will carry him away from Krypton.

Both Midtown locations (there’s also one on Lexington Avenue) often play host to appearances by writers and artists, and the regular discount — $20 in credit for every $100 spent — accrues at either branch.

The store is my own personal place of comics worship, and computing the amount I spend there would be alarming. My most recent purchase: a Superman-logo T-shirt for $17.99. Nothing else. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Midtown Comics, 200 West 40th Street, and 459 Lexington Avenue, at 45th Street, (212) 302-8192 (both stores); midtowncomics.com.

Brooklyn

If Midtown Comics is like Barnes & Noble, where you can expect to find all the big titles, Rocketship is like an independent bookstore: It may not have everything, but you can’t fault the owners’ taste or expertise.

“We both love, love, love comics,” said Mary Gibbons, 29, who owns the store along with Alex Cox, 30. They met as employees at St. Mark’s Comics in the East Village.

“St. Mark’s was toy-heavy with collectibles,” she said. “In this neighborhood everyone is here for the story.”

The love of a good story is emphasized in the store’s layout. While the new issues are presented alphabetically, collections and graphic novels are arranged by genre: superheroes, crime/horror/suspense, fantasy, war/western and more. It’s an easy way for newcomers to dive in.

There is also a section devoted to top authors like Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman and Harvey Pekar, along with rising stars like Brian Lee O’Malley, the writer-artist behind “Scott Pilgrim” (about a 20-something slacker in Toronto and his battle against his new girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends).

A gallery in the front of the store displays original pages, typically from an independent artist; on the staff-picks table comics like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” written by Joss Whedon, and Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi’s “Houdini: The Handcuff King” sit alongside more expected (but no less exceptional) fare like Marvel’s collection of its recent “Civil War” epic and DC’s hardcover edition of the first six issues of the maniacally brilliant “All-Star Superman.”

In honor of the store’s independent sensibilities, I picked up, for $14.95, Volume 1 of “Buddha,” an interpretation of his life by the Japanese comics pioneer Osamu Tezuka.

Rocketship, 208 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens, (718) 797-1348, rocketshipstore.blogspot.com.

Staten Island

Steve Whalen, an aspiring filmmaker, has worked at Jim Hanley’s Universe for about seven months and has shopped there since he was a child. He likened this store to Disneyland, where everything is expected to run smoothly. “But when we don’t have a comic, things get more out of control than they would in a supermarket,” he said.

The store is packed with new comics, collected editions, toys and some back issues. There are usually three or four recent issues of each book at hand, making it easy to catch up on current stories.

Jim Hanley’s also has a branch in Midtown Manhattan, which is often the setting for appearances and autograph sessions. Robert Kirkman, the writer of “The Walking Dead,” a gripping tale about the last survivors of a global zombie infestation, and the new series “The Astounding Wolf-Man,” a Free Comic Book Day selection, will be there tonight from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.

After resisting the purchase at my regular store, I decided to buy Volume 1 of “Alpha Flight Classic,” published by Marvel, for $24.99. It collects the first eight issues from the 1984 series about a team of Canadian superheroes.

Jim Hanley’s Universe, 325 New Dorp Lane, (718) 351-6299, and 4 West 33rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 268-7088; jhuniverse.com.

Queens

Last year collected editions of comics in paperback outpaced single-issue sales for the first time, according to Milton Griepp, the publisher and founder of ICv2, an online trade publication. But while publishers have started to dig into their vaults to reprint older material, sometimes the only way to read a classic story is to get your hands on vintage issues. Silver Age Comics in Astoria has a plethora of them, dating back to the ’30s and ’40s.

“The market has diminished for average back issues,” said Gus Poulakas, 40, the owner of Silver Age. “But it seems like people are focusing on key books, like the first appearance of Superman or Batman or a particular artist on a book, like Neal Adams on ‘X-Men.’ ”

Looking through the boxes of older issues at this store is like revisiting one’s childhood (O.K., mine). A recent visit ended with the purchase of “Batman and the Outsiders” No. 5 and “The New Teen Titans” No. 37, a 1983 two-part crossover between the superhero teams led by Batman and Robin, for $4. Older, more notable issues — which Mr. Poulakas sells through his Astoria store, a branch in the West Village, his Web site and eBay — will cost a lot more. “I used to have the first Batman, Detective No. 27,” he said. “That was kind of my Picasso piece.” He still has the first issues of “Human Torch” and “Fantastic Four” for sale.

Silver Age Comics, 22-55 31st Street, Astoria, (718) 721-9691, and 47 West Eighth Street, West Village, (646) 654-7054, silveragecomics.com.

The Bronx

“Most stores try to do something else with comics, like comics and baseball cards,” said Neil Shatzoff, the owner of Magnum Comics and Cards. “My choice was costumes.” That business decision is obvious in the abundance of masks and ghoulish get-ups that crowd half of one of the store’s longest walls. There are “Predator” helmets and pig-face masks for adults, and ninja and superhero costumes for children. Not surprisingly the store does a good Halloween business. And, thanks to a primarily Jewish neighborhood, “we end up selling a lot for Purim as well,” Mr. Shatzoff said.

The rest of the stock is typical: a good selection of back issues, a display of autographed comics. One of the best features is on the wall opposite the costumes: row after row of action figures. They run the gamut from DC and Marvel superheroes to more esoteric characters like Rocky (Sylvester Stallone’s, not Bullwinkle’s), the Las Vegas Elvis and Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Gazing at the array of colorful toys is like visiting an animal shelter: You want to open your home to all of them. My longstanding rule on action figure purchases: only members of the Justice League from 1982, when I first discovered them, and all Teen Titans, my favorite comic. That was my excuse for buying, for $14.95, Natasha Irons, the armored teenage daughter of the superhero Steel. She seems destined to become a Titan.

Magnum Comics and Cards, 3723 Riverdale Avenue, at West 238th Street, Riverdale, (718) 884-0714.

The annual Free Comic Book Day promotion takes place tomorrow [Saturday] at participating stores across the country. Information: (888) 266-4226 or freecomicbookday.com. The Web site includes a store locater, lists of titles that will be free and a schedule of in-store appearances by creators.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/books/04comi.html





Real D: The Future of Cinema

"In the next 10 years it'll be as ubiquitous as colour or sound." Prepare to be blown away.
Cam Shea

Australia, April 27, 2007 - If we were to tell you that a revolution in cinema — one that's potentially as profound as the advent of sound or colour — was not just on the horizon, but already sitting in hundreds of theatres around the United States and indeed the world, what would you say? If we were to tell you that these cinemas — kitted out with new technology and the content to showcase it — were merely the first waves lapping against the 21st century's multimedia shores, heralding a tsunami of support from filmmakers, studios, production houses and theatre owners, what would you say?

There is indeed a revolution in cinema taking place. It's quietly slipped under the radar of most technophiles, beginning its assault on the way we consume media clothed in thoroughly unassuming garb — the Disney Digital 3-D film, Meet the Robinsons. Yes, we're talking about 3-D. And no, we don't blame you for being skeptical. Most people in their mid-20s or later think of 3-D movies from the old school perspective — goofy red and blue coloured glasses, strained eyes, possible migraines. And most importantly, a so-so 3-D effect. No more.

3-D is back, packing sophisticated, highly refined, and most importantly, affordable technology courtesy of a company called Real D, and it's here to stay. Seriously, go and see Meet the Robinsons in 3-D. It's not the first film to be released using Real D's technology, but it's the first to be designed from the start with both 2-D and 3-D versions in mind, and is an eye-opening experience that will really key you into the potential of the technology. Of course, that's only the beginning and over the course of this article, you'll learn just how seriously the film industry is taking 3-D and why, in only a few years, this presentation will most likely become the standard for the movie going experience.

To help us do so, we interviewed a "who's-who" of the 3-D scene. We spoke to Joshua Greer, the President and Co-founder of Real D; Kyle Odermatt, the computer graphics supervisor responsible for stereoscopic 3-D on Meet the Robinsons; and Steve Schklair, the founding principle of Cobalt Entertainment and its subsidiary 3ality Digital Systems, who is a producer on U2 3-D — the first live-action concert film in 3-D — and a hugely important player in the resurgence of 3-D.

The Real D technology has been a long time coming. Greer told us that a lot of the core technology which forms the basis of the Real D system has been refined over the last 20 years in industrial applications. Whether it's aerial mapping and reconnaissance by the military, or CAD design for the automotive industry, there are numerous areas where seeing in 3-D can be vital, which inexorably led to the development of technology. One of the most significant companies involved was StereoGraphics, which Real D acquired three or four years ago to provide their base technology.

"From that point," Greer says, "we then spent another three years refining the technology further, bringing in a lot more advanced optics, a whole new generation of digital projectors, and completely refined the system again, to really make it at the quality we have today."

Importantly, they also refined the system to the point where it could be displayed on a single projector. Greer laughs as he tells us that "it seemed in concept a really simple idea, but it took us a hell of a lot longer than we ever imagined to actually make it work and work well."

This helps make the system cost-effective to install, which is obviously a hugely important concern for any new technology. In fact, as Greer told us; "All of our technology is designed to sit off of what is becoming the digital cinema standard. So, currently all of our systems run on DLP based projectors. There are three vendors that produce that, as well as about 10 different servers that are produced. So you need to have that base projector and server."

That's far from the end of the story though, with "a number of pieces of technology, both hardware and software, optical and digital" also factored in as part of the Real D system. There's the specially formulated silver screen, which, while not new tech in and of itself, is the result of "an incredible amount of time and energy working with the vendors to re-engineer that for the quality we have today." There's an optical device called the Z-Screen that sits in front of the lens of the projector. It acts as "a special liquid crystal modulator that polarizes the light, the left eye and right eye information, in opposite circular states." And then there's the eyewear. Forget the ancient red and blue though, as Real D uses "a specially polarized type of eyewear called circular polarized lens, which is very different from traditional 3-D in that it allows you to tip your head without losing the 3-D effect — something you can't do with typical 3-D systems." Then there's "a series of hardware and software drive modules that do our electronic noise reduction and synchronize the projector, and actually help juice the projector — we actually run them at 144 frames a second." Phew.

In other words, this system is based on technology that's been around for 20 years, refined to within an inch of its life, and the results speak for themselves, all without the (literal) headaches of the older systems.

Discussing the technology with Odermatt, in light of his experience on Meet the Robinsons also demonstrates that filmmakers are approaching the technology with a refreshing maturity.

"We don't want to stop the movie for a 'stereo moment'…" he told us. "If you're aware of the device then you're probably being pulled away from the story and the characters, and we really do want to make it that immersive experience." To avoid that, "it really became a conversation with the director very early in on what use of depth could provide in terms of enhancing the storytelling. Pretty much like with all aspects of art direction, whether it be the colour palette we choose, or the staging, or even going to things like the soundtrack or score, as they ebb and flow over the course of scenes or sequences to really convey a mood, we wanted to do the same thing with stereoscopic depth."

One specific example he gave us demonstrated how mood can be enhanced using stereoscopic depth.

"When the character is at his emotional low early in the film, things are very, very flat," he revealed. "The overall amount of depth that we used was quite shallow. Then as we traveled to the future world which is supposed to feel very different from the present world, we expand the depth tremendously, and then later on in the film when it reaches its climax and our characters are at their happy place, then really we are maximizing the depth settings so that you feel expanded in your emotional mood just like you do in the visual presentation you're seeing."

Another indication that 3-D is no longer just a gimmick is the lengths to which filmmakers are going to ensure that the viewing experience is comfortable. For a start, they're avoiding radical changes in depth from scene to scene, which forces the viewers' eyes to focus and refocus. They've also done tests to find out the extremes to which they can push the technology while keeping the audience comfortable. It's a lot like designing a rollercoaster — the audience wants to feel the Gs, but you can't hit them with too sustained a blast.

As Odermatt put it: "There are areas in the film where you can push things very, very far, but only for the briefest of times. Then, when you want to have a long stretch of enhanced depth, you really do have to back off so that people can handle it and have it be a comfortable viewing experience."

Moving forward, Disney is wholly committed to the technology, both as a means to reinvigorate the cinema experience and as a tool to make their films more immersive. Indeed, as Odermatt told us, "All of our projects going forward are intended for stereoscopic release as far as I'm aware."

And now that Pixar is owned by Disney, what of John Lasseter, the studio's chief creative officer and resident genius?

"He really is very excited about it and he's looking forward to doing, I believe, his next project this way", Odermatt enthused. "And he was very interested in hearing all the lessons we'd learned over the course of trying things on this film and he was thrilled with the result."

Disney isn't the only company betting big on the return of 3-D. Greer spelled it out from Real D's perspective.

"In the last five years, we've now had interaction with every major studio and almost every major filmmaker, and the reaction is almost unanimously, overwhelmingly positive. Very few filmmakers have come out after seeing our experience and not said, 'This totally changes the way I think about films.' Certainly James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Bob Zemeckis — the biggest filmmakers in the world are all thinking now about making in 3-D, as opposed to just making in 2-D. And, obviously, the studios as well. We're now working with virtually every major studio and about 25 different production companies. Every studio either has, or is about to, green light a production for 3-D, and in the case of a company like Dreamworks, they just recently announced, starting 2009, all their properties are being designed for 3-D first, and may be released exclusively in 3-D. Which is great news for us."

The groundswell of support is certainly there, but how important is this to cinema as an artform? Greer, who admittedly has more than a vested interest in the technology, believes that "what's really happening now with the filmmakers that are being turned on to 3-D is we're seeing a new creative renaissance. And at the end of the day it's about the story, but even more importantly how you tell the story, and what's happening with these filmmakers is the way they're thinking about 3-D now, as opposed to being just a gimmick, but actually as a storytelling device, is really, frankly, going to reinvigorate the experience of cinema again. So 3-D in and of itself, if we do our job right, in the next 10 years it'll be as ubiquitous as colour or sound. It's not like anyone goes out now looking for a black and white television. It's just a natural part of the world."

3ality Digital's Schklair takes a similar line of thought.

"Let's compare it to Dolby 5.1 audio. I don't think you can go to a movie anymore that isn't in 5.1. As audio became more immersive it stayed, because there's no downside to actually having that as a playback. Yes, you can still do your stereo and your mono tracks for certain releases, but at the high end there's the assets to make something more immersive. Picture is the same way… 3-D is back, but this time it works, as opposed to all the past experiments that were done with different technologies that didn't work."

This isn't just a technology, either. It's a business model that's actually proving itself in the market.

"As Real D continues to put platforms into the market," he told us, "more and more content will be made so it can reach those theatres as well as the 2-D theatres. At this point there's so much momentum, it's self-sustaining. This technology is now here to stay."

Schklair and 3ality Digital are betting big on 3-D, with a massive new production facility that incorporates '3ality Digital Entertainment' for feature film development and production, and '3ality Digital Systems' for technology, 3-D production and post-production. The first fruits of that commitment will be played out on the world stage at the Cannes film festival, where U2 3-D will be screening. This feature length, live-action concert film ties in footage of U2 in concert from a number of stops on their South American tour. I know what you're thinking: Live action 3-D? Will that really work? Well, early industry reports are that it's amazing, and Real D's Greer describes it as "without doubt the most mind-blowing, incredible capture of 3-D we've ever seen — and we've seen just about everything."

Schklair puts the difference between U2 3-D and Meet the Robinsons this way: "Think of this as, whatever 3-D you saw in that film, think of this as that film on steroids."

According to Schklair, there are numerous advantages to working in live-action as opposed to CG. "We're out there in the real world so we can set the depth so that the backgrounds and the foregrounds get the maximum impact, whereas when you're doing multi-layered shows like animation, that's a little more difficult to do. I believe in live-action we can achieve incredible depth that would take too much experimentation in animation to get the same effect."

Indeed, shooting in live-action means that the team can experiment extensively without blowing out the budget, and the end result is that they've taken a few more risks in terms of depth. What does a 3-D presentation bring to U2 3-D that a traditional display simply can't?

"It's such a totally different experience seeing it in 3-D. It's presence; it's immersive; it feels like you're actually there."

For U2 fans, this is going to be the ultimate way to see the band play live, aside from, perhaps, being in the front row. Footage was shot at a number of locations on the band's South American tour, but it was in Buenos Aires that the crew went all out, putting nine 3-D cameras into the stadium for the "final climactic shoot." According to Schklair, "We had to pull equipment from all over the world to do this, because there was more technology and cameras and fiber than has ever been pulled to any one shoot ever."

One fascinating aspect of the shooting is that they put the cameras "onto small rigs that have between 10 and 13 axis of motion control that are working and moving the cameras at all times during the shoot. As the camera moves closer or further away from the subject of the shot, the cameras themselves are moving on this rig to keep a consistent depth on the screen so there's a comfortable viewing experience." That's "in addition to the software that's doing the image processing to keep the images — not just aligned, but comfortable".

The end result, however, is that the technology is as invisible as possible for the filmmaker, with "camera systems and recording systems that work almost as simply, if not as simply, as 2-D camera systems."

U2 have embraced the technology as well: "They're very creatively involved in the project," Schklair told us. "The director has worked with the band for a number of years and she's collaborating very closely with the band in terms of the edit… This is a very, very creative band, and their input is valuable."

Excited yet? You should be. Perhaps Greer put it best when he said: "We're binocular beings. We see with depth in every part of our life, except in our media. And for us it's a really exciting moment in history to actually have an opportunity to see an evolution like this as big as colour or sound. We're very excited in what we've contributed, we're even more excited to see the creative community really embrace this as a new artform. It's really a dream come true for us."

There you have it. The next big thing is already here and knocking on the doors of cinema complexes and filmmakers around the world. If the current climate surrounding the technology is any indication, 3-D is going to grow almost exponentially over the next few years. As an indication, the industry is on track to deliver 15 to 20 films utilizing the technology in 2009, and Real D themselves are hoping to have as many as 6,000 to 10,000 theatres built by then as well. Guess the future is so bright we've gotta wear shades. As long as they're sporting circular polarized lenses, mind you.
http://au.movies.ign.com/articles/784/784033p1.html





The incredible shrinking Shatner

Coming Online Soon: The Five-Minute ‘Charlie’s Angels’
Bill Carter

The question probably never occurred to viewers in the 1970s and 1980s, but suddenly it is highly relevant: exactly how much worthwhile entertainment content was there in shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” “T. J. Hooker,” and “Starsky and Hutch”?

The Sony Corporation and its production studio, Sony Pictures Television, which controls the rights to those and many other relics of a distant era of television, have come up with an answer to that question: three and a half to five minutes.

That’s the length Sony has shrunk episodes down to in order to create what the company hopes is an appealing new business in retooling old shows for a new era of entertainment. Sony even has a name for these shrunken slices of television nostalgia: minisodes.

Sony Television is planning in June to introduce an Internet-based service called the Minisode Network, initially offering the mini-shows for an exclusive run on MySpace. (The company may consider establishing a separate Internet channel called the Minisode Network later.)

However and wherever it appears, the network will consist of a lineup of tightly edited versions of shows lifted off the shelves of Sony’s television library. These are not clips of the shows, but actual episodes with beginnings, middles and ends, all told in under six minutes.

As Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Television, described it, “So in ‘Charlie Angels,’ they have a meeting, Charlie’s on the intercom telling them what the assignment is, there’s a couple of fights, and then a chase, and they catch the bad guy. Then they’re back home wrapping it up.”

“T. J. Hooker,” an especially formulaic cop show from the early 1980s, can be seen in short bursts of action as William Shatner interrogates suspects, fires shots and chases bad guys. “Shatner is just hilarious,” Mr. Mosko said.

That sums up the main aim of the minisodes. Nobody expects these shows to captivate anyone with their exciting plotlines, writing or ageless acting. “It’s really campy and fun,” Mr. Mosko said.

What he would like it to be as well is lucrative. Like other holders of vast libraries of filmed entertainment, Sony Television has been seeking ways to squeeze new value out of old assets.

“We’ve been looking for a legitimate way to make money from our library,” Mr. Mosko said. “Something that could bring new life to shows that have been on the shelf for awhile.”

The idea for condensed editions of these classic shows sprang from a casual conversation over a year ago between Mr. Mosko and another Sony Television executive, John Weiser, the head of distribution. They had noticed that an increasing number of people liked watching snippets of entertainment on Web sites like YouTube, rather than entire shows. The two Sony executives were aware that Viacom had been successful foraging through old libraries of shows on its cable channels like TV Land and Nick at Nite.

“Take classic shows and, rather than try to jam them into the digital world, look at what the consumer wants,” Mr. Mosko said. The plan gained even more traction when Sony executives saw the “Seven-Minute Sopranos,” a condensation of the 77-hour HBO series that was posted on YouTube in March.

One advantage Sony Television holds over a channel like TV Land is that the company holds the rights for all the shows it will use on the Minisode Network. TV Land must license all the shows it runs.

Clips from shows do appear on the TV Land Web site, as do, occasionally, some full-length episodes. But often, according to the network, the license deals for TV Land do not include the kind of extensive digital rights that would allow wide use of the episodes on the Internet.

So while you can go on the TV Land site and see the famous clip from “I Love Lucy” of Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up with the conveyer belt at the candy factory, you cannot see that whole episode — or even a condensed version of it.

Mr. Mosko said Sony had gone through all the proper channels to make sure it covered all the rights associated with editing the shows this way and posting them as episodes on the Internet. “We have all the credits on every episode,” Mr. Mosko said.

“There are no expensive costs,” Mr. Mosko said. “It’s just editing. Our people are really having fun with this. We’re not overthinking the process. You could almost look at this and say a group of college kids put this together.”

The hourlong action shows at Sony’s disposal proved especially easy to edit down, Mr. Mosko said. Comedies have proved slightly harder to condense, he said, because certain jokes have setups and reference points that must be included for the jokes to make sense.

Sony is even making a mini-version of “Ricki Lake,” one of its syndicated talk shows. “It’s great,” Mr. Mosko said. “The people get introduced, there’s a big fight, then they come together, and cry and hug. You get everything in five minutes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/te...gy/30sony.html





Kaleidescape Prevails in DVD Ripping Case
Julie Jacobson

Manufacturers, dealers, and champions of digital rights everywhere can rejoice: Video server maker Kaleidescape has beaten the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA).

The DVD CCA, which licenses the Content Scramble System (CSS) for protecting DVDs, had claimed that Kaleidescape breached a contract when it created products that enable (indeed encourage) individuals to copy protected DVDs onto hard-drive servers.

Kaleidescape argued, first and foremost, that nothing in the DVD CCA licensing agreement prohibits the development of products that allow users to copy their DVDs. (For the full background, see "Copy Protection Group Sues Kaleidescape.")

Indeed, that's exactly what Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled today in the non-jury trial at the Downtown Superior Court of Santa Clara in San Jose, Calif.: There was no breach of contract.

As Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm explains, "The DVD CCA went on a fishing expedition for three years, trying to find a breach." In the end, he says, Judge Nichols agreed that "nothing in the agreement prevents you from making copies of DVDs. Nothing requires that a DVD be present during playback."

Because of this ruling, the Judge did not have to get into copyright issues, so the Kaleidescape ruling has no copyright implications. It is not a statement on the legality of ripping DVDs.

There was the possibility that copyright issues could have come into play. The DVD CCA submitted to the Court a particular document, the "CSS General Specifications," that it asserted was part of the licensing agreement.

Malcolm argued that the particular document, which is "available only after you sign the license and pay the fee," is not part of the contract.

The paper describes the CSS spec, he says, but it does not prescribe any type of action.

The CSS General Specifications document includes wording about thwarting the "unauthorized copying" of DVDs. The issue of what constitutes an unauthorized copy could have come up, but Judge Nichols ruled that the document in fact is not part of the DVD CCA licensing agreement.

Specifically, the document indicates that CSS is meant to keep "casual users from making unauthorized copies of DVDs," Malcolm explains. "We would have argued that users are authorized under U.S. law," specifically the doctrine of fair use.
Other Implications of the Case

Might the DVD CCA appeal? There is always that chance, of course, but Malcolm says the Judge was extremely thorough in his ruling, which might make it tough for the DVD group to win on appeal.

Will the DVD CCA change its licensing agreement to prohibit licensees from making DVD servers? "They could do that," Malcolm says, but it could take a very long time to get all of the appropriate board approvals.

Malcolm suggests, "What we may see instead is that more of their [DVD CCA's] members may want to compete in this market rather than ignore it."

Malcolm has argued in the past, and I've agreed, that the reason the DVD CCA sued Kaleidescape in the first place is that the organization's influential board members didn't have products to compete with the Kaleidescape server. (See DVD CCA Is an Innovation-Stifling Cartel).

So how will case affect other video server vendors in the same boat? It won't affect many of them because most of the video server vendors in our industry do not have licenses from the DVD CCA. (Malcolm's take on that: "I never wanted to take the approach, like other video server manufacturers, that makes outlaws out of customers.")

It could be that the evil ways of the DVD CCA have kept server manufacturers from going legit. In fact, by suing Kaleidescape, the DVD CCA was essentially telling manufacturers that they are better off making DVD ripping products without the CSS licenses.

Not all DVD server vendors, however, would be in compliance with the DVD CCA's regulations, which prohibit the exposure of DVD decryption keys on a publicly available bus. In other words, protected content cannot leave a closed ecosystem, as in a PC network. "We have gone to a lot of trouble to comply with that," Malcolm says.

AMX is one company that does have a DVD CCA license, and it came out in court that the consortium is pursuing or would pursue the vendor, according to EE Times, which followed the case.

AMX probably doesn't need to worry now.

Although this particular decision does not have far-reaching implications for the fair-use movement, it certainly doesn't hurt.

"This is one small victory," Malcolm says.

Small, indeed. Even the newly introduced Fair Use Act of 2007, which is meant to tone down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, would not allow consumers to rip DVDs.
http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/18137.html





DVD CCA Likely to Appeal Kaleidescape Ruling
Julie Jacobson

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), licensor of the Content Scramble System (CSS), was quick to issue a statement after a judge ruled in favor of Kaleidescape in a breach-of-contract dispute. Kaleidescape makes video servers that enable users to copy their DVDs onto a hard drive for easy access to movies from anywhere in the home.

The following is the complete statement from the DVD CCA.

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) intends to appeal the adverse California Superior Court decision in its breach of contract case against Kaleidescape, Inc. DVD CCA had alleged that Kaleidescape violated its contract with the DVD CCA for the Content Scramble System (CSS) by building a video player system that makes copies of CSS-protected DVDs.

Following the decision, DVD CCA's litigation counsel, William Sloan Coats issued the following statements:

"Clearly, we are disappointed by today’s events, but remain undeterred. This is a straightforward breach of contract case, nothing more. In its contract with DVD CCA, Kaleidescape – like all CSS licensees -- agreed to use CSS for its intended purpose: preventing users from making copies of copy-protected material. Kaleidescape’s system does the opposite – it facilitates the copying of CSS-protected DVDs onto a hard drive so content can be viewed without the original disk. We will evaluate our options for next steps and then make a final decision. But, an appeal is expected.

"While not pleasant, DVD CCA must enforce agreements and require adherence to specifications to protect the interests of all CSS licensees … from personal computer companies to electronics manufacturers to content producers like movie studios. All of these companies, big and small, innovate and develop products according to an agreed set of rules. Use of these commonly-agreed guidelines has helped place the DVD among the most successful consumer entertainment products ever, with more than 50,000 high quality titles available for use at home or elsewhere at affordable prices."

In spite of the ruling, DVD CCA continues to believe Kaleidescape, through the manufacture and sale of its system, is in violation of the terms of the CSS license. DVD CCA expects that point to be vindicated upon appeal.
http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/18139.html#null





Hilarious - AACS Publishes HD DVD DRM Process Key in a Take Down Notice
Ubuntuguy

The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) issues a DMCA take down notice - but the take down notice itself contains the hexcode process key that they are complaining about. (look at the second url...http://linuxnotes.blogspot.com/2007/...56-c5-63.html). I guess the AACS will now have to issue a take down notice to this take down notice.
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Hilari..._do wn_notice





Yahoo! Defeats Sony BMG Infringement Suit
Susan Butler

A federal jury in New York decided late today that Yahoo!'s Launchcast is not liable to Sony BMG Music Entertainment for copyright infringement.

After a six-year litigation, the jury decided that Launchcast was not required to negotiate licenses as an "interactive" service with Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Instead, the service's compulsory licenses as a "non-interactive" service, which it obtained from SoundExchange, were sufficient. The jury found Yahoo! not liable for copyright infringement.

No court has decided when an online music service crosses the line from non-interactive to interactive; this case only applies to Launchcast. While most experts agree that a service is interactive when a user can select and play a particular song on demand, it has been unclear whether a service that customizes playlists for a user is interactive or non-interactive. An interactive service requires the digital company to negotiate licenses with the copyright owners of sound recordings at negotiated prices; a non-interactive service may obtain a compulsory license (with or without the owner's permission) from SoundExchange at rates set by law.

Belinda Johnson, Yahoo!'s deputy general counsel, tells Billboard.biz that the verdict reinforces Yahoo's view that Launchcast was in compliance with copyright law.

"We disagree with the decision that the Launchcast service is nothing more than radio on the Internet, and fully intend to appeal," Sony BMG said in a statement.

Check back at Billboard.biz for a full report on this morning's closing arguments and some jurors' explanation for the verdict.



Links referenced within this article

Legal and Management
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/indus...management.jsp
Digital and Mobile
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/indus...tal_mobile.jsp


Find this article at:
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...ffbf2b11a8c44d





Yahoo to Buy Right Media for $680 Million Cash, Stock
Adam Satariano

Yahoo! Inc., the most-visited U.S. Web site, plans to acquire the remaining stake in Right Media Inc. it doesn't already own for $680 million in cash and stock, aiming to increase online advertising sales.

Right Media runs an online advertising auction site used by more than 20,000 buyers and sellers, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said today in a statement. Yahoo acquired 20 percent of privately held Right Media in October.

As it competes with Google Inc., Yahoo wants to persuade more Web publishers to use New York-based Right Media's service to sell advertising slots that they weren't able to market. The deal gives Yahoo a new channel for excess demand and a chance to sell ads more efficiently on its less-visited Web pages.

``This acquisition is an important step in our long-term vision to build the industry's leading advertising and publisher ecosystem,'' Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel said in the statement. ``We believe that Yahoo's open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry.''

Menlo Park, California-based Redpoint Ventures is the other stakeholder in Right Media. DoubleClick Inc., the company Google plans to acquire for $3.1 billion, has been testing a similar product that lets companies and Web publishers place ads through an exchange.

Shares of Yahoo, up 11 percent this year, rose 16 cents to $28.50 at 7:04 a.m. New York time in early Nasdaq Stock Market trading today.

Spokeswoman Helena Maus didn't immediately return a call seeking comment after business hours.

Sales Growth

Yahoo's first-quarter profit and sales fell short of analysts' estimates after its new advertising program, Project Panama, didn't generate the revenue gain some investors expected. Ad revenue in the period rose 6 percent to $1.47 billion, and net income fell 11 percent to $142 million, the company said on April 17. Sales rose 9 percent to $1.18 billion, excluding revenue passed on to partner sites.

Sales at Mountain View, California-based Google advanced 66 percent to $2.53 billion, excluding revenue passed on to partners. Net income climbed to $1 billion from $592.3 million, a year earlier, Google said April 19.

Yahoo's share of U.S. Web search queries was unchanged in March at 28 percent, compared with the same month a year earlier, according to ComScore Inc. Google's share rose to 48 percent from 43 percent, the Reston, Virginia-based research firm said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...yLc&refer=news





Brookfield High Graduate Cashes In
Robert Gold

Michael Walrath grew up in Brookfield with dreams of being a professional writer.

"I was going to write the great American novel," Walrath, 32, said.

But the Brookfield High School graduate has made his impact in a far different realm.

Yahoo announced this week it is buying Walrath's company, Right Media, for $680 million. Right Media holds online auctions for Web advertisements.

Advertisers, publishers and ad networks buy and sell ads through Right Media. Yahoo purchased 20 percent of the company last fall for $45 million.

It will remain an independent division of Yahoo, with Walrath staying in his leadership role.

"It's not a severing. It's a way to continue to grow a business," Walrath, CEO of Right Media, said.

Walrath's company employs 200 people worldwide but now is part of an online giant that employs 12,000.

Pete Walrath, the founder of Hat City Entertainment, a Danbury area monthly magazine, said he isn't surprised by his brother's "rocketing to the top."

Pete Walrath called his brother a natural leader who is not afraid to take on a challenge. "I think he is a straight-shooter," he said. "He is an honest man. His actions are genuine."

Michael was far from an Internet geek in college.

"Sometime midway through college is when I got my first e-mail address and I didn't know what to do with it," he said.

Walrath studied English at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He remained a casual Internet user after graduating. He had a few jobs after school, including running the gym program at New York Sports Club in Stamford. At that time, he and another worker paid attention to the growing popularity of Internet companies.

After his co-worker got a job at DoubleClick in 1999, Walrath applied for a job at the New York online advertising firm.

"It seemed like an exciting place to be and the Internet was hot," he said.

He got a job selling online ads and immersed himself in the industry for more than three years. He rose to the executive ranks in 2003, at the age of 27, and decided to start his own company.

He started working the phones, using his contacts, and quickly picked up America Online as a client. At first, the business helped arranged ad sales, but the big change came in 2005.

That's when he started his company, which is the auction service for publishers, advertisers and others.

"If we could do it right, we could fundamentally change the way ads are bought and sold," he said.

At the start, the business processed about 350 ads per second. That has grown to 80,000 ads per second.

Walrath, who lives in Long Island with his three young children and wife Michelle, said he expects the business will keep growing.

"It is not an end. It is not an outcome," he said. "I'm just super excited about what we are going to accomplish over the next several years."

His mom, Patty, said she and her husband, Peter, have gotten plenty of calls of congratulations this week from friends.

"Many people have used the phrase 'It couldn't happen to a nicer guy,'" she said. "And of course we agree."

Patty Walrath said her son's character is what makes her proud.

"He's a wonderful person. He's very likable and very good to people. This is just icing on the cake."

Could Walrath parlay his online success into a book?

"I'll write the story down for my own memory as much as I can," he said. "I am not arrogant enough to think the masses care enough about my little company."
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/st...&source=tabbox





The Pangs of Two Becoming One
Dan Mitchell

Google's $3.1 billion deal for the online advertising firm DoubleClick could put the company at odds with itself.

Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.

The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and IBM and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google's search managers.

But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick's Performics division.

Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own 'unbiased' organic search results."

The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.

This seems unlikely. Reliable search results are the core of Google's franchise. Industry-watchers, including Kevin Newcomb of SearchEngineWatch.com, tend to think Google will likely sell off part or all of Performics.
http://news.com.com/The+pangs+of+two...3-6180040.html





Google Earth: From Space to Your Face…and Beyond
Mark Aubin

Would you believe the inspiration for Google Earth was a photo flipbook?

It was 1996 and I was working at Silicon Graphics (SGI), which was then on the verge of releasing "InfiniteReality" — hardware for the Onyx workstation that enables people to create graphics with extraordinarily realistic texture. Our goal was to produce a killer demo to show off the new texturing capabilities to maximum advantage. During a brainstorming session, someone passed around the great Charles and Ray Eames book, POWERS OF TEN — A Flipbook, and suggested that our demo move through imagery the way the book does. After discussing a number of possibilities, we decided that we would start in outer space with a view of the whole Earth, and then zoom in closer and closer.

We'd begin by heading toward Europe, and then, when Lake Geneva came into view, we'd zero in on the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps. Dipping down lower and lower, we'd eventually arrive at a 3-D model of a Nintendo 64, since SGI designed the graphics chip it uses. Zooming through the Nintendo case, we'd come to rest at the chip with our logo on it. Then we'd zoom a little further and warp back into space until we were looking at the Earth again.

We called this demo "Space-to-Your-Face." And after showing it literally thousands of times to people all around the world, it's clear to me that we are universally fascinated with seeing our world from this perspective. During one school group demo, the teachers actually jumped up from their chairs and started pointing to places on the screen as we "flew" over the globe. They were ecstatic. The one comment we kept hearing: I've got to have this for my classroom!

Only a few years later, advances in computer and internet technology made it possible to deliver high-resolution imagery at sufficient speeds to enable a fluid flythrough on a standard PC anywhere in the world. So I decided to leave SGI and team up with a few others to found Keyhole, where we launched the first digital globe product to stream nearly unlimited, high-quality 3-D imagery over the Internet. In October of 2004, Google acquired Keyhole and Google Earth was born – bringing the kind of content previously available only in government and industry research labs to people everywhere.

And the story doesn't end there. Once people started using Google Earth, they started asking questions. Good ones. For instance: Why are some parts of the globe blurry, and others crystal clear? Where do you get your imagery? And how often do you update it?

Most people are surprised to learn that we have more than one source for our imagery. We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth's surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes – even kites. The traditional aerial survey involves mounting a special gyroscopic, stabilized camera in the belly of an airplane and flying it at an elevation of between 15,000 feet and 30,000 feet, depending on the resolution of imagery you're interested in. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. As the plane takes a predefined route over the desired area, it forms a series of parallel lines with about 40 percent overlap between lines and 60 percent overlap in the direction of flight. This overlap of images is what provides us with enough detail to remove distortions caused by the varying shape of the Earth's surface.

The next step is processing the imagery. We scan the film using scanners capable of over 1800 DPI (dots per inch) or 14 microns. Then we take the digital imagery through a series of stages such as color balancing and warping to produce the final mosaic for the entire area.

We update the imagery as quickly as we can collect and process it, then add layers of information – things like country and state borders and the names of roads, schools, and parks — to make it more useful. This information comes from multiple sources: commercial providers, local government agencies, public domain collections, private individuals, national and even international governments. Right now, Google Earth has hundreds of terabytes of geographic data, and it's growing larger every day. And that's not counting the extraordinary "open source" projects people have built to enhance it.

Yes, some parts of the world are still blurry. But in the ten years since the idea for the project was planted, the momentum behind it has only grown exponentially. Personally, I can't wait to see what happens in the next ten as we turn the pages of our own "flipbook."
http://www.google.com/librariancente...s/0604_01.html





Small and Smaller
Michel Marriott

LONG among the hottest items in Europe and Asia, ultraportable notebook computers — supercompact, lightweight laptops that slip into briefcases as easily as a legal pad — appear to be finding favor with American tastes. In cafes and corporate boardrooms and on college campuses, the sleek machines are in growing evidence.

Their increasing appeal to Americans, some ultraportable computer makers say, reflects the same attraction as ever-smaller music players and credit-card-size digital cameras, in both styling and mobility.

“The mind-set of the American consumer is changing,” said Mike Abary, vice president for Vaio product marketing at Sony Electronics in the United States. “It has come to place more value on mobile products. These ultraportable notebooks are mobile products, like cellphones and MP3 players.”

The small notebooks offer many if not most of the productivity and entertainment features popular in much larger, bulkier computers, like built-in optical drives for CD and DVD use. (Sorry, no high-definition Blu-ray or HD-DVD capabilities yet). They also tend to be more expensive than their larger counterparts — in some cases, four times as expensive — with prices just above $2,000.

The price notwithstanding, ultraportable notebooks can stir techno lust in even the most practically minded. In fact, computer makers say, one of the largest single groups buying ultraportables are businessmen and businesswomen.

“People want portability,” said Michael A. Vorhaus, managing director of Frank N. Magid Associates, a television and entertainment consultant company based in Los Angeles. “People want BlackBerrys for e-mail and cellphones for text messaging, but that is not enough.

“American consumers want a decent-sized screen,” said Mr. Vorhaus, who noted that a recent online survey indicated that 54 percent of Americans between 18 and 30 own a laptop. “They want 12- and 11-inch screens that they can slip into a briefcase or a backpack and do everything they want except make calls on it.”

The diminutive size of the ultraportables — although not so small to be confused with ultramobile personal computers, or UMPCs, which are practically palm-size — is not for everyone, said Stephen Baker, vice president for industry analysis at the NPD Group.

While affirming that ultraportables represent “a nice concept,” he questions whether the benefit of a smallish notebook computer is worth its premium price.

“It’s unclear what that gets you,” he said. “A couple of less pounds?”

Mr. Baker added that he generally considers computers with screens as large as 12 inches not in the ultraportable category. He draws the line at those under 10 inches.

While a precise definition of ultraportable varies, the broader attributes of the category are as easy to discern as telling a sports car from a sport utility vehicle. Standard notebook computers generally have screens that measure 15 inches or so when measured diagonally (17-inch screens are also popular, many retailers report). Many computer makers, including Toshiba, Sony and Hewlett-Packard, classify ultraportable notebooks as those with screens measuring 12 inches or less.

Computer makers note that when laptops have smaller screens, the rest of the computer must adhere to a proportionality that usually forces the keyboard — as well as the overall size of the computer — to be smaller than standard. In turn, the body thins and the computer gets lighter. Many ultraportable notebooks weigh around four pounds or less, while an entry-level Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook with a 15.4-inch screen, in contrast, weighs 6.19 pounds.

In past years, packing components so closely together to achieve what computer makers call a smaller “footprint” encouraged many laptop manufacturers to use less powerful microprocessors than those in larger computers to reduce heat and not overtax smaller batteries. But advances in microprocessor design and cooling systems have significantly reduced the need for such striking compromises, especially in the higher-priced ultraportable notebooks, experts say.

“We are excited about the fact that laptops can now pack more power into a smaller, more lightweight and energy-efficient package,” said Karen Regis, manager of the mobile platforms group at Intel.

Or as Mr. Abary of Sony put it, “Miniaturization is an art of engineering.”

Showcasing such engineering, he said, is the Vaio VGN-TXN15 by Sony, released this spring. It is part of the company’s TX series of full-featured, ultraportable notebooks. The TXN15 has an 11.1-inch screen in a wide (16:9) aspect ratio and weighs 2.8 pounds. Mr. Abary said much of the notebook’s economy of size, weight and strength was managed with innovative engineering as well as the use of carbon fiber for its chassis.

The Vaio TXN15, which costs $2,300, is powered by a 1.2-gigahertz Intel Core Solo Ultra Low Voltage microprocessor and, depending on use, offers a standard battery life of 5 to 11 hours, Sony engineers said. The TXN15 also features a fingerprint security sensor and is equipped with sensors to protect the hard drive if the notebook is dropped or severely jostled.

Besides its internal read-and-write DVD drive, the TXN15 includes Sony’s Instant Mode, which enables quick access to features like the notebook’s music and movie playback without running its operating system, Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Another extra is its built-in EV-DO system, which uses Sprint’s wireless cellular broadband network for mobile Internet access. The TXN15 has more conventional Wi-Fi ability as well.

And unlike some ultraportables, the TXN15 has not significantly shrunk its keyboard. Mr. Abary said the keyboard was near full size.

Another svelte and sophisticated new ultraportable notebook, the Fujitsu Lifebook P7230, weighs 2.63 pounds, even less than the Sony TXN15, and is encased in a stylish magnesium body. Its screen is smaller, too — 10.6 inches. This notebook is fully featured and powered by a 1.2-gigahertz Intel Core Solo microprocessor. Depending on a long list of options, its price ranges from $1,650 to $2,180.

Breaking the three-pound barrier is a major factor in achieving an “unconsciously portable” state, said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile products and marketing for Fujitsu Computer Systems. That, he explained, is the top weight so “you don’t realize you have it.”

Averatec, a South Korean company with an office in Santa Ana, Calif., is a relative newcomer to notebook computers, which it has been making since 2002. The Averatec 2371, its latest ultraportable notebook, which has a 12.1-inch screen and weighs about four pounds, aims to be a solid performer but light on the budget, said Darren Lee, the company’s director of product marketing.

The 2371 costs $900 to $950, depending on options, and is available on the company’s Web site (www.shopaveratec.com) and from other online retailers. This month, Averatec will introduce a smaller and lighter ultraportable, the 3.4-pound 1579, at $1,300.

Averatec ultraportables, widely available online and at stores like Circuit City, Sam’s Club and Staples, cost $850 to $950.

“We don’t have the buying power of the rest of the guys,” Mr. Lee said. “We chose to take a margin percentage hit, and they do not.”

Like the computers the company makes, he said, “we are a very small organization.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/te.../03basics.html





12 Nations Put on Copyright Piracy List
Martin Crutsinger

The Bush administration on Monday targeted China, Russia and 10 other nations for extra scrutiny in the piracy of American movies, music, computer programs and other copyrighted materials.

The 12 nations were put on a "priority watch list" in the area of copyright piracy, which costs the American industry billions of dollars in lost sales annually.

"We must defend ideas, inventions and creativity from rip-off artists and thieves," U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab said in a statement accompanying this year's report.

The administration earlier this month announced that it was filing two new trade cases against China before the World Trade Organization. One of those cases charged that China was lax in enforcing its laws on protecting American copyrights and patents.

The annual report, known as a "Special 301 Report," for the section of U.S. trade law that it covers, said that China has a special stake in upgrading its protection of intellectual property rights, given that its companies will be threatened by rampant copyright piracy as they increase their own innovation.

For Russia, the report said the United States will be closely watching to see how Russia fulfills the commitments it made to upgrading copyright protection as part of a U.S.-Russia accord reached last year which was seen as a key milestone in Russia's efforts to join the World Trade Organization.

In addition to Russia and China, the 10 countries placed on the priority watch list were Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela.

In elevating Thailand to the priority watch list, the administration said it was concerned by a range of issues including what an administration statement called a "deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights."
http://business.bostonherald.com/tec...ticleid=197659





"Brandjacking" Common on Web: Report
Eric Auchard

Corporate brands face multi-pronged assaults from fraudulent online attackers, according to a report published on Monday that quantifies the scope of the most common threats.

MarkMonitor, which supplies Internet brand protection services to companies, said its new "Brandjacking Index" found "cybersquatting" -- in which illicit sites usurp popular trademarks -- false association, phishing and clickfraud as major threats.

A four-week survey of public Web sites completed early in April found cybersquatting posed the greatest threat to brands. Phishing -- the criminal use of e-mail to trick consumers into divulging passwords, credit cards and other personal details -- and domain "kiting" -- the rapid registering and dropping of similar- sounding Web site names -- are on the rise.

The study tracked daily mentions on 134 million public Web records for the world's top 25 brands, along with major brands from eight industrial categories such as autos, apparel, food, food and high-tech. The study ran from March 9 to April 6.

MarkMonitor found major brands suffered, on average, 286,000 examples of cybersquatting during over the four-week long survey, far and away the most common abuse detected.

Clickfraud -- or siphoning off consumers via fake pay-per-click ads -- was identified 50,743 times, while e-commerce fraud occurred 21,093 times and kiting 11,015. These figures represent the four-week average for each brand.

Frederick Felman, MarkMonitor's chief marketing officer, said in an interview that cybersquatting is a starting point for other forms of abuse, including search marketing tricks designed to pull traffic away from reputable Web sites.

"Brand-holders face a double whammy: The volume of these abuses is significant, while abusers are becoming alarmingly savvy marketers," Felman said.

MarkMonitor said media and Internet companies are the biggest targets of cybersquatting, while banks and other financial services are the mostly likely victims of kiting and phishing.

That media and Internet brands are the most attractive targets -- drawing 31 percent of what MarkMonitor collectively terms "brand abuse" -- reflects the fact that 10 of the top 15 sites on the Web fall in this category.

The number of phishing attacks grew 104 percent during the month of March from the same month in 2006, the survey found, with more than 229 brand name companies, mostly financial services firms, coming under assault.

Financial services made up 41 percent of all phishing attacks in the first quarter of 2007, up from 29 percent in the first quarter of 2006. The latest quarter was the first time banks had outpaced online auctions such as eBay Inc. as targets. Auctions suffered 36 percent of phishing attacks.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...34673920070430





The Unauthorized State-Owned Chinese Disneyland
rmnoon

Apparently Japanese TV and bloggers have just discovered Disney's theme park in China, where young children can be part of the Magic Kingdom and interact with their favorite characters (like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs). The park's slogan is "Because Disneyland is Too Far," and there's even an Epcot-like dome.

The only problem? Disney didn't build it, and they didn't authorize it. What's more? It's state-owned!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/04/019218





Lindsay Confesses Love for Paparazzi



FORGET alcohol - Lindsay Lohan is addicted to shopping. "I talk about my impulses with my therapist - I have a shopping problem. I love to shop too much," she told Nylon magazine. As for life in front of the cameras, Lohan said, "I get embarrassed about the paparazzi if I'm in a chic restaurant, or when I was in the AA meetings . . . I feel really disrespectful because those people are doing that for themselves and it's no one else's business. But that was the only time it was embarrassing. Other times, I obviously like it . . . I wouldn't ever want them to not take my picture . . . I'd be worried. I'd be like 'Do people not care for me?'"
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04292007...t_pagesix_.htm





Eastman Kodak Posts 1Q Loss on Lower Sales, Shares Tumble
Ben Dobbin

Eastman Kodak Co. posted a smaller first-quarter loss Friday - its ninth quarterly deficit in the last 2 1/2 years - as it applies the final cost-cutting touches to a drastic digital makeover. The results still missed Wall Street expectations and its shares dipped nearly 5 percent.

The photography company lost $151 million, or 53 cents a share, in the January-March period versus a loss of $298 million, or $1.04 a share, a year ago when it took hefty charges tied to its massive overhaul.

Sales fell 8 percent to $2.12 billion from $2.89 billion a year ago, hurt by Kodak's move away from lower-priced cameras in favor of marketing pricier but more profitable models.

Its overall digital sales fell 3 percent to $1.2 billion, while revenues from film, paper and other traditional, chemical-based businesses slumped 13 percent to $896 million.

Excluding one-time items totaling $76 million, or 26 cents a share, Kodak lost $98 million, or 35 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast a loss of 2 cents a share on sales of $2.1 billion.

In last year's first quarter, Kodak's operating loss was $157 million, or 55 cents a share.

Its shares fell $1.25, or 4.8 percent, to $24.72 Friday. They have traded in a 52-week range of $18.93 to $27.57.

Now in the final stretch of a costly four-year shift away from its shrinking film business and into the highly competitive digital arena, Kodak has piled up $2.7 billion in restructuring charges and accumulated $2.1 billion in net losses over the last 10 quarters.

Cost-cutting "is working and it's progressing fast," with costs dropping to 19 percent of revenues from 22 percent a year ago, said Ulysses Yannas, a broker with Buckman, Buckman & Reid in New York.

"It's been an awful four years," he said. "That's what happens when you make some mistakes in the past."

Many analysts think Kodak waited too long to acknowledge its analog businesses were in an irreversible slump. In September 2003, it finally outlined an ambitious strategy to become a digital heavyweight in photography and commercial printing by 2008.

Kodak formally wrapped up the $2.35 billion sale of its 110-year-old health-imaging business to Canadian investment firm Onex Corp. on Monday. It has already paid down $1.15 billion in debt and plans to funnel some of the remaining cash into inkjet printers and other new digital ventures.

The company said its trio of home printers, unveiled in February, produce documents and photos using ink cartridges that cost roughly half as much as the competition's. Analysts think the move could trigger a price war in a market dominated by Hewlett-Packard Co.

"Our new consumer inkjet business model has created a very attractive opportunity for Kodak and I intend to aggressively pursue it," Chief Executive Antonio Perez, who helped develop HP's lucrative inkjet-printer division, said in a conference call with analysts.

Encouraged by consumer demand, Perez said he'll sink up to $50 million more in the printer business this year - on top of about $400 million already invested. He expects to ship at least a half-million inkjet printers by year-end.

That largely prompted Kodak to cut its full-year forecast for digital operating profits to $150 million to $200 million from an earlier range of $200 million to $300 million. Digital sales in 2007 were still expected to grow by 3 percent to 5 percent, it said.

In February, the picture-taking pioneer said it was eliminating 3,000 more jobs - bringing its planned tally of layoffs to 28,000 to 30,000 since 2004. By year-end, its work force will slip below 30,000, less than half what it was just three years ago. Its work force peaked at 145,300 in 1988.

Sales of consumer digital imaging products fell 14 percent to $778 million largely because of its emphasis on improving digital profit margins. Graphic communications sales eased 1 percent to $864 million.

Film products sales fell 8 percent to $458 million, a much smaller drop than in previous quarter as sales in its entertainment imaging unit rose 8 percent.

"Entertainment film is obviously of huge importance for them from a cash standpoint," said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research in Short Hills, N.J.

"For now, you've got a situation where your fundamentals are relatively weak but there's still some future hope from the standpoint of entertainment not rolling over yet and inkjet. A lot of the long-term value-oriented shareholders are going to look past this quarter and look to the new opportunities as opposed to selling the stock right now."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE=





Teaching the Color Printer the Language of Humanity and a Palette of Precision
Claudia H. Deutsch

To the human eye, that flower in the photo is reddish orange, that sky is light blue, that sun shines brilliant yellow.

But when software tells a printer to reproduce that image, it uses a long, unwieldy set of numbers and letters to describe those colors — and a totally different set of characters to describe shades that are a tad lighter, or a bit darker, or a whole lot brighter. The upshot is that most laymen would have to attend the computer equivalent of Berlitz to learn how to get the shades they want.

But if Xerox has its way, that will not be true much longer. This week the company introduced the software equivalent of a translator that can turn plain color speech into fluent computerese. Type the command, “Make the sun a brighter yellow,” and the printer will read, “Go with color CIELAB[88, -3, 64].”

“You shouldn’t have to be a color expert to make the sky a deeper blue or add a bit of yellow to a sunset,” said Geoffrey Woolfe, a principal scientist in the Xerox Innovation Group, who is based in Webster, N.Y., near Rochester. “So we’re providing that middle layer that turns plain speech into mathematical code.”

Color experts are already impressed. “They’ve taken common words and modifiers and transformed them into mathematical directions,” said Roy S. Berns, a professor of color science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which has just inaugurated a doctoral program in color science.

There are still problems to be ironed out, of course. For now, the software does not differentiate between colors in different parts of an image — in other words, it can tell the printer to make all the blues darker, but it cannot yet tell it to darken the sky but lighten the ocean and leave the blue dress alone. And it is still working on a lexicon of languages — after all, a “brighter” color to one person is a “crisper” color to another and a “sharper” color to a third.

“To understand what someone means when he says the pinks need to be brighter, the software must know what pink means and what brighter means.” Professor Berns said. “And there are individual, cultural and regional differences in the way people use those words.”

Mr. Woolfe readily acknowledges the problems, and he concedes that the product is a couple of years away from commercialization. He envisions the final version as having the capability to learn. Say particular users keep typing, “no, darker” when they ask for chartreuse. “The machine will respond with a color chart that shows what it views as chartreuse, and then will let the user show what he means by the word,” Mr. Woolfe said. If it turns out the user thinks chartreuse is forest green, the software will act accordingly from then on.

Xerox also expects to display a preview version on the screen to show how the colors in the print might differ from the image on the monitor, so that the user can modify the colors before printing. Mr. Woolfe said later versions might include voice recognition, so users could literally tell the printer what colors they wanted.

“The important thing,” he said, “is that people without technical skills will finally have an easy way to get the colors they want.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/te...=1&oref=slogin





One Man Writes Linux Drivers for 352 USB Webcams

Face to Face Michel, the pipe-smoking French Linux guru
Fernando Cassia

A LONE HOBBYIST programmer sitting at his home in France is responsible for adding 352 USB webcams to the list of those supported by Linux. He tells the INQUIRER about this often unknown and unrecognised achievement.

Near three years ago, I purchased the cheapest USB webcams -actually, one pair- I could find at the time, without taking into consideration whether those webcams worked with Linux or not. I ran one desktop PC with Win2K and one of the webcams was plugged to that box. I quickly found out several things: first, "Made in China" webcams surely are cheap, but that comes at a price of often having no support web site, no physical address of the manufacturer, and no updates to its drivers. The Win2K drivers for the "DigiGR8" 301P had apparently a memory leak under Win2k, forcing me to reboot the win2k box on a daily basis. Basically it just stopped working after a dozen hours of continuous use, and rebooting was the only solution.

I then concluded I had enough with Win2K and decided to install my Linux distro of choice -back then Sun Microsystem's ill-fated Java Desktop System for Linux R2. It soon became evident that the device was a power-sucking brick as far as Linux compatibility was concerned. After finding the chipset used by the webcam and writing to both the chipset manufacturer and the webcam builder and receiving no reply whatsoever, I was on my own. I asked on the newsgroups, and was told that the ZC0301 chipset, manufactured by "Z-Star Corp" -a firm now apparently going by the name Vimicro Corp- was on the "Linux (in)compatibility list".

Imagine my surprise when, by pure chance, I found out last week that there are now Linux drivers for hundreds of those cheap "Made in China" webcams with strange brand names and a Vimicro chipset inside. The surprise was more shocking when I realized that drivers for 235 webcams -at the time of this writing- are the work of a single unknown hero who works from his home in France, does so with no corporate sponsorship, and what's even more outrageous, very few people know about the existence of those drivers and about the person behind them.

FC: Who are you and what do you do?
MX: My name is Michel Xhaard, I am a Physician and work in Doppler and Ultrasound imaging for years. I am now near 60 years old.

FC: Interesting, as it kind of breaks the "young school kit" stereotype of the Linux advocates. When did you start in this project and why?.
MX: I started working on the "spca50x" project in 2003, when I bought two webcams for my daughters for Christmas but there was no support under Linux for those.

FC: So you decided to take matters in your own hands. How did you know where to start?
MX: After asking the gPhoto team, Till Adam (http://hubbahubba.de/) and Thomas G. (http://home.tiscali.dk/tomasgc/labtec/) provided me with some useful help to start. Few weeks later we had full support of the Sunplus spca504b chipset in Gphoto -userspace picture support- and Spca50x for video streaming.

FC: Why "GSPCA"? What does it stand for?
MX: "Generic Software Package for Camera Adapters" :)

FC: So how did the ice ball grow to reach today's 253+ webcams supported with several different chipsets?
MX: Starting with the Sunplus chipset support, I realised that most code in the core driver could be "shareable" to support several webcam chipset(s). That is why the "GSPCA" drivers now support over 250 webcams from different chipset vendors.

FC: May I ask you why you decided to host your project web site on Free.FR? Don't you think Sourceforge.Net or other such OSS project repository would be more appropriate? What if Free.FR disappears?. In a sense, don't you think it's as risky as hosting an OSS project on Geocities or Tripod?
MX: I like "free.fr" because it is, well, free :) Have you seen the same content in Geocities.com or tripod.com ??. Check out ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/
Also, you can be sure that "free.fr" will not disappear. I personally don't like Sourceforge.net because it can be at times too slow, and there's a lot of dead projects ...

FC: Are you aware that your site is not very well indexed?. I came across not one but three pages claiming that the ZC0301 was not supported, or that there was a Linux driver project, which got abandoned (true, but outdated). Don't you think that having a domain name would help?
MX: Yes.

FC: How do you feel knowing that there are a few really big corporations with million dollar budgets all peddling Linux, and you do all this critical work of helping Linux gain webcams support -by the hundreds!-, yet not a single one of those big firms has decided to formally sponsor your work?
MX: my work is not "Linux Kernel centred" my goal is to provided video input support for Linux users, and I am not sure that these big companies are interested in the end user :).

FC: well, I think they should. Google does, for instance, since they bought this Nordic firm days ago which does cross-platform video conferencing software in Java. So if they want everyone to do video conferencing regardless of OS, drivers suddenly is an issue. OK, you won't say it but I will: shame on RedHat, Novell, Linspire, and IBM, to name just a few, for not caring about this. Is there anything you want to add?.
MX: Yes, that despite the old picture you are going to use on the article, notice that I stopped smoking in June 2006. :) [I'm sure Mr. Ballmer will be sending you tons of tobacco after reading this article]. :)

FC: Thanks very much Michel for your time, and for the drivers as well. I see that the ZC0301P chipset used in my "DigiGR8" webcam is listed, but I haven't been able to make my webcam work yet, so let's cut the chat and start the (virtual) hair-pulling exercise.
MX: You're welcome.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39291





Wikipedia Co-Founder Wants Open-Source Search Engine
Michael Kanellos

Does the world need open-source search tools? The people at Wikipedia think so.

The folks behind the public encyclopedia have launched Wikia, a project to develop a search engine, crawlers and other indexing tools through a collaborative, open-source process.

Contributors will likely include graduate students as well large companies that want to include search functionality in their products but don't want to pay royalties to a search company, according to Wikia CEO Gil Penchina. Another constituency will likely be smaller search companies that don't have the time or money to do everything required for a complete search service themselves.

"Everyone has to crawl the Web, but it costs a lot of money," Penchina said. "There has been a lot of interest in academia for better tools."

The concept is being promoted largely by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Jabber founder Jeremie Miller. The ultimate goal of the project is to bring "absolute transparency, collaboration and human intelligence to complement search algorithms," according to a press release.

"Jeremie is a brilliant thinker and a natural fit to help revolutionize the world of search," Wales said in a statement. "I believe Internet search is currently broken and the way to fix it is to build a community whose mission is to develop a search platform that is open and totally transparent."

Not mentioned in the press release is the fact that Wikia is a for-profit venture. The complete business plan has yet to be worked out, but profits and revenue may be derived from advertising or services, Penchina said. The intellectual property behind Wikia, however, will be freely licensed under standard open-source mechanisms.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9275175,00.htm





Moore's Law Can't Stand the Heat
Munir Kotadia and Ella Morton

Over the past few years, the amount of electricity required to power a server in a datacentre has more than doubled. So although buying the server costs almost 20 percent less than it did two years ago, that server costs significantly more to run.

This increase in operating costs is because the latest servers are stuffed with more computing horsepower than ever before. Even though the chip manufacturers are creating more efficient processors, technologies such as virtualisation are causing these chips to work harder and for longer periods of time.

The hidden cost here is that, with more transistors in each processor and more processors (and processing cores) in each server, the datacentre rack generates far more heat than it used to, which means traditional datacentre cooling systems can no longer keep up.

The problem is so bad that analyst firm Gartner expects to see more money being spent this year on power and cooling technologies than is spent on the actual servers themselves. In two years time, Gartner expects around half of datacentres to have insufficient power or cooling capacity to meet demand.

The cost of powering and cooling a server is currently 1.5 times the cost of purchasing the actual server itself, according to The Uptime Institute (TUI), which is a think tank dedicated to improving datacentre reliability.

In a white paper titled Data Centre Energy Efficiency and Productivity, Kenneth Brill, founder and executive director of TUI, said that if current trends continue till 2012, best-case estimates show that powering and cooling a server will cost three times as much as purchasing the hardware. The worse case scenario is that power and cooling will cost 22 times more than the hardware.

This prediction has led the TUI to go as far as saying the benefits gained from Moore's Law -- which states that the number of transistors crammed into silicon will double every 24 months -- will be nullified by the increasing cost of powering and cooling those processors.

In a recent article for CIO.com, Brill argued that Moore's Law can no longer be seen as a "good predictor of IT productivity because rising facility costs have fundamentally changed the economics of running a data centre".

Brill gives an example where one of TUI's members spent US$22 million buying new blade servers but then had to fork out US$54 million to boost power and cooling capacity. This increased the return on investment figure from US$22 million to US$76 million.

He warns CIOs that their "facilities and infrastructure" costs, which currently account for between one and three percent of the IT budget, are likely to shoot up to between five and 15 percent within a few years.

"That is enough for the CEO and CFO to begin scrutinising how the IT budget is being spent," he said.

Bill Clifford, chief executive of datacentre management software firm Aperture, believes there is an impending crisis: "Many users are simply unaware of the dangers they are introducing to their datacentres".

Clifford said that in the past, cooling issues could be resolved in a matter of weeks as suppliers of cooling equipment could cope with demand. But with the increased demand, the lead time for new equipment can be up to 18 months, putting firms at risk of experiencing datacentre downtime.

Virtualisation is the silent enemy
Virtualisation has been touted as a technology that can be used to reduce power consumption because it allows computing tasks to be consolidated to fewer servers. Unfortunately, reducing the number of physical servers by increasing the workload on the remaining servers can result in increased power consumption.

According to Kris Kumar, MD of Sydney-based datacentre design specialists 3iGroup, virtualisation is the "silent enemy" because once you virtualise a server, it is likely to run at about 80 percent of its capacity. Before virtualisation, that server was running at about 15-20 percent of capacity -- and therefore using less power.

"In real power terms, a 300 watt server which was running at 20 watts is actually now running at 280 watts. You are reducing the footprint but putting in more processing power, so the power per footprint has gone up," Kumar told ZDNet Australia.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/hard...9275034,00.htm





I.B.M. to Announce an Advance in Making Chips Faster and More Energy-Efficient
John Markoff

Scientists at I.B.M. have designed a new material that could increase the speed of semiconductors and reduce their energy consumption.

The advance, to be announced Thursday, involves a manufacturing process that uses heat to create trillions of atomic-scale holes in a thin layer of material deposited on top of the conducting wires at different stages of chip making. The material is then extracted through the holes, leaving insulating vacuum channels around the miles of ultrathin wires that make up a modern microchip.

Because the holes manifest themselves as a result of the heating rather than being drilled or etched, the process is known as self-assembly. It creates features far smaller than the limits of conventional chip making systems.

The material is being manufactured at the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

Using a so-called air gap — actually a vacuum — as an insulator is not a new idea. But the approach makes it possible to add the technique to mainstream chip manufacturing.

Moreover, the researchers say the insulation technique is merely the first application of a new family of technologies that may one day make it possible to make complete electronic circuits on a molecular scale without photolithographic machines.

The technique can increase chip speed as much as 35 percent with a 15 percent reduction in energy consumption, the researchers say. Increases of this magnitude are seen only rarely in the industry, according to I.B.M. executives.

They say the impact of the performance improvement is roughly equivalent to the boost generally found in moving from one generation to the next in chip manufacturing equipment.

“This is an enormous advance,” said John E. Kelley III, senior vice president for technology and intellectual property at I.B.M. He said the deployment of the new insulation technique would be equivalent to I.B.M.’s shift from aluminum to copper in the material used to make wires in semiconductors a decade ago.

I.B.M. has already built test microprocessors using the new processor at its manufacturing plant in East Fishkill, N.Y., and the company says it expects to deploy the process fully in its manufacturing lines in 2009.

“This is a surprise,” said David Lammers, director of Wesrch.com, a Web portal for technical professionals. The industry has begun to publish research papers about the technology, known as air-gap insulation, but it was not expected to be widely deployed in the technology generation that the industry is expected to deploy two years from now.

The new material suggests that I.B.M. may be taking an approach different from that of the Intel Corporation, which in January announced that it would redesign the way it makes transistors to take advantage of a new insulating material.

I.B.M. said that it planned to share the new technology approach with its manufacturing and technology partners. That could prove crucial for Advanced Micro Devices, which relies on I.B.M.’s manufacturing capacity, and which is currently struggling to keep from falling behind Intel in the market for mainstream commercial microprocessors.

The industry has struggled for more than a decade to combat the electrical leakage that results as it shrinks the basic building blocks of the microelectronic era to ever-smaller dimensions. Current leakage is translated into heat, and that has become a limiting factor in the effort to build ever more powerful processors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/te...gy/03chip.html





Consultant: Antipiracy Group Pirated My Data
Nate Anderson

Glen Gieschen runs a "counterfeit intelligence monitoring organization" called Gieschen Consultancy, and he tracks piracy busts around the world. He never thought he'd be doing one of his own, though—especially against the International Chamber of Commerce, one of his former clients.

Gieschen is now going public with his story, claiming that the ICC ripped off "massive amounts of data and content" from one of Gieschen's web sites on the day before the ICC contract with Gieschen was scheduled to end. When he arrived at work on April 18, Gieschen noticed that someone was slurping down massive amounts of data from one of his sites. He traced the IP address of the downloads to the ICC's Commercial Crime Services branch in London, but thought nothing of it because the group was a client of his.

And then, several days later, the ICC launched a service of its own that apparently featured much of the same data, often in the same format and presentation.

"Although they had breached various agreements during the contract period and held back payments, it was difficult to believe the ICC would knowingly commit intellectual property theft," Gieschen said. But when he contacted the ICC to find out what was going on, he says he was warned about a defamation lawsuit if he took his claims public.

Gieschen is going public anyway, trying to point out the alleged hypocrisy of the ICC. "It is extraordinary," he said, "that an organization committed to fighting counterfeiting and piracy would steal the intellectual property of another organization."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...d-my-data.html





TSA Hard Drive Goes Missing, 100k Worker Records At Risk

'Unclear whether device is still within HQ or stolen' says agency
Gregg Keizer

The federal agency responsible for securing the nation's airports said today that it can't find an external hard drive packed with the personal records of about 100,000 current and former employees.

Authorities at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) noticed the drive missing yesterday, but aren't certain where it is. "It is unclear at this stage whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen," the agency said.

Assuming that the drive was in fact stolen -- it went missing from what was called a "controlled area" at TSA headquarters in Washington D.C. -- officials have asked the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service to investigate.

Records of workers employed by the TSA from January 2002 until August 2005 were on the drive. The data included names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, payroll information, bank account numbers, and routing information for direct deposit of paychecks.

TSA, a four-year-old division within the Department of Homeland Security, is best known for screening passengers at airport terminals.

This is not the first employee data incident at TSA. Last September, it told about 1,200 former workers that a contractor may have mailed their Social Security numbers and birthdates to wrong addresses.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...ntsrc=hm_topic





Business Magazine Fails to Heed its Own Tech Advice
Richard Pérez-Peña

Business 2.0, the technology-aware magazine published by Time, periodically reminds readers of the importance of backing up computer files. A 2003 article likened backups to flossing - everyone knows it's important, but few devote enough thought or energy to it.

Last week, Business 2.0 got caught forgetting to floss.

On the night of Monday, April 23, the magazine's editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up.

Good thing the magazine, based in San Francisco, is a monthly. "If it had happened a week later, we would have been in trouble," said Josh Quittner, the editor.

But all is well, he said, and the magazine will go to press on schedule next week. The recovery was made much easier, paradoxically, by a bane of modern business: litigation, or at least the fear of it. "The text had all been copy-edited and sent off to the lawyers, so it had been saved as e-mail," Quittner said.

But the page layouts were truly gone, he said, and "our heroic art department had to rebuild all the art assets." He said they had caught up by Thursday.

Until the night of the crash, the magazine had never had to rely on its backup server, Quittner said, so no one had noticed that its programming was either obsolete or dysfunctional, or both. Just last November, the magazine had listed off-site backup as being among "the usual precautions."

Business 2.0 has drawn attention for skewering firms, including, occasionally, other magazines, in its annual list of the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/...s/magazine.php





Clear Channel Divests Another 201 Stations
FMQB

As part of its plan to divest 448 radio stations in 88 markets, Clear Channel has announced that it has signed definitive agreements with various parties to sell another 201 stations in 38 markets. The company expects these transactions to close during the second half of 2007. Clear Channel has now sold 362 radio stations in 72 markets for a total consideration of approximately $820 million.

Clear Channel continues to pursue the divestiture of 86 more stations in 16 markets, including Charlottesville, VA, Rome/Utica, NY, San Luis Obispo, CA and The Florida Keys.

Meanwhile, the proposed buyout of the company by private equity firms T.H. Lee and Bain Capital is in jeopardy as financial advisors such as ISS and JP Morgan have advised Clear Channel shareholders to vote against the sale. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the proposed deal on May 8.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=401293





Reuters Confirms Preliminary Approach for Possible Takeover
Robert Barr

Reuters Group PLC said Friday that it had received a preliminary takeover approach, sending shares of the British news and financial information company soaring 25 percent.

The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada, in a story on its Web site Friday, identified the bidder as Thomson Corp., citing people close to both companies who confirmed details. Thomson is a financial data and information provider based in Stamford, Conn.

In a note to Reuters staff, Chief Executive Officer Tom Glocer said he could say little about the approach.

"However, I want you to know that in considering this proposal I and my colleagues on the Reuters board will be guided by what is in the best interest of Reuters and its stakeholders, including employees."

Jason Stewart, a spokesman for Thomson in Stamford, Conn., said Friday morning that the company will not comment "on rumors or speculation."

In its notification to the London Stock Exchange, Reuters said it had received "a preliminary approach from a third party which may or may not lead to an offer being made for Reuters."

"There is no certainty an offer will be made or necessary approvals, including those required under Reuters constitution, will be received," the statement added.

News of the proposal came just three days after Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. offered to buy Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion.

Reuters shares rose 25 percent Friday to 615 pence ($12.24) on the London Stock Exchange, sending its market capitalization to 7.74 billion pounds ($15.4 billion).

Numis Securities said in a research note that Thomson is close to selling its U.S. college education business for $5 billion, "giving it firepower for the deal."

Thomson did not immediately return a call for comment.

Reuters' constitution, set when the company floated shares in London and on the Nasdaq stock market in 1984, bars anyone from holding 15 percent or more of its issued shares, the company's Web site says.

If anyone tries to obtain 30 percent or more of the shares, Reuters may use a single Founders Share to pass or defeat any motion at a general meeting.

As the preliminary approach indicated, analysts believed Reuters could yield to a takeover despite its structure.

"The restrictions of the constitution, however, are by no means insurmountable and an agreed bid is possible," said Sam Hart, an analyst at Charles Stanley.

Numis said it believed Thomson would be a "suitable" owner in terms of the Reuters constitution. "Further, should Thomson fall foul of the Reuters Trust, which we view as unlikely, we believe a carve-out of the media business (7 percent of revenues) would be possible," Numis said.

Reuters has been attempting to increase revenue by focusing on new areas of business growth, including media and trading settlement, and expanding into new markets. Last year, it opened its first wholly owned development center in Beijing.

In March, Reuters reported a 30 percent drop in full-year profit as it continued its investment program targeting new markets, but was upbeat about 2007. Reuters said net profit for the year ending Dec. 31 came to 305 million pounds ($598.5 million), while revenue rose 6.5 percent to 2.57 billion pounds ($5 billion).

News Corp. made its offer for Dow Jones & Co. on Tuesday but the deal, which would add The Wall Street Journal to Murdoch's global media empire, faces doubtful prospects since Dow Jones' controlling shareholders have said they would vote against it.

The Reuters news lifted shares of other European media companies, with publishers Wolters Kluwer NV up 4.2 percent at 23.82 euros ($32.37) and Reed Elsevier gaining 4.3 percent to 14.29 euros ($19.42). Pearson PLC, the publisher of the Financial Times newspaper, was up 4.3 percent to 913 pence ($18.17).
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...05-04-09-33-48





Now Murdoch Must Persuade the Family
Joe Nocera

Two years ago, with Dow Jones stock mired in the low 30s — and unhappy members of the controlling Bancroft family selling off some of their shares — Roy A. Hammer, the longtime trustee for the family, quipped to a reporter: “We’d rather sell at $60 a share. If you know any buyers, send them my way.”

Yesterday, of course, we learned that a buyer had shown up willing to pay that exact amount. And not just any buyer, but a man who for years has openly lusted for Dow Jones’s trophy property, The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch, the chairman, chief executive and all-around dictator of the News Corporation — and the shrewdest of all the old-school media moguls — has both the means and the motive to buy Dow Jones.

Moreover, Mr. Murdoch was willing to make a bid so high and so lacking in the normal economics of deal-making that he effectively scared away any potential competitors pretty much the moment his own offer was unveiled. “The offer is absolutely, insanely high,” said James H. Lowell 2nd, who, until last fall, served as a financial adviser to the Bancroft trustees.

Elsewhere in our coverage, you can read all the reasons the deal makes sense for Mr. Murdoch — and only him. There’s The Journal’s powerful editorial page, which meshes with his own conservative politics. The fact that he has a new financial network in the works that will compete with CNBC — and CNBC has a critical alliance with The Wall Street Journal he would like to bust up. His belief that he can use the News Corporation’s online expertise to leverage Dow Jones’s content in ways the company itself hasn’t been able to. Also, he has proved with The New York Post that he’s willing to lose money on an asset that serves a strategic purpose.

“I think he has been pretty consistent in the idea that content is king,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas money manager who is a longtime News Corporation shareholder. “This fits with everything he is doing.”

Myself, I wound up marveling at Mr. Murdoch’s timing. It has been a little over a year since Peter R. Kann, Dow Jones’s longtime chief executive, gave way to Richard F. Zannino, his former No. 2. Although Wall Street has a far higher opinion of Mr. Zannino than it did of Mr. Kann, the stock has barely budged. The newspaper business has continued to deteriorate. Mr. Zannino has discovered that turning around Dow Jones is no easy task — and he might be better off selling it if he could, and walking away the hero.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Bancrofts have become dissatisfied with the performance of the stock and the company’s seeming inability to do anything about it. Like both The New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones & Company has two classes of stock, with the Bancrofts controlling the so-called Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of the ordinary common stock.

But that stock is ensnared in irrevocable trusts, and managed by lawyers at Mr. Hammer’s firm, Hemenway & Barnes, who have often seemed more sympathetic to Dow Jones management than to their own clients. Given Mr. Hammer’s statement of a few years ago, Mr. Murdoch probably believed that a $60 offer might well bring the family around to the idea that selling the company was their best option. The fact that the family had hired advisers after he first made his offer in a letter two weeks ago might have also given him hope.

Financially, of course, his offer is the family’s best option. Indeed, it’s their salvation.

“This is the best-case scenario,” said William G. Bird, the newspaper analyst at Citigroup. “When you think about other alternatives that might lead you to $60 a share, there aren’t any. It’s not earning a heck of a lot. And it is a business that is going to continue to suffer and decline in the near term.”

When I called Mr. Hammer to ask what he thought about Mr. Murdoch’s bid, he told me that he was retired and that he hadn’t spoken to any Bancrofts or anyone on the Dow Jones management about it. But both he and the majority of the family have long harbored a deep dislike for the way Mr. Murdoch runs his newspapers. And they have long believed that turning the paper over to him — even at such a substantial premium — would be a betrayal of The Wall Street Journal’s glorious heritage as a great and serious newspaper, which they’ve owned for over 100 years.

So perhaps it wasn’t that much of a surprise that late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hammer’s protégé, Michael B. Elefante, who now represents the Bancroft trusts on the Dow Jones board, issued a statement saying family members and trustees representing “slightly more than 50 percent of the outstanding voting power of Dow Jones” would vote against Mr. Murdoch’s proposal.

If that does happen, though — if the family tells Mr. Murdoch to take a hike — the likely outcome will be that Dow Jones stock will drop, not back to the mid-30s, where it was before yesterday, but far, far lower. And one has to wonder how the young Bancrofts will feel about Dow Jones’s heritage then.

For people in the newspaper business, it is a wonderful gift that the family is so willing to stand behind The Wall Street Journal, even as its economics deteriorate. But when families that own one key asset become divided, the solution is usually to sell the asset. Just ask the Binghams of Louisville. Or the Chandlers of Los Angeles.

A Bancroft family member once told me, “Without The Wall Street Journal, we’re just another rich family.” So long as the family feels that way, Rupert Murdoch will be able only to admire The Journal from afar. But if that ever changes, it’s his.

My guess is that his $60-a-share offer may well begin the process of finally moving the family in his direction.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/02.../02nocera.html





Film’s Wall Street Predator to Make a Comeback
Michael Cieply

Greed is still good.

Or so those at 20th Century Fox hope. Even as their boss, Rupert Murdoch, pursued an uninvited takeover bid for Dow Jones this week, Fox movie executives quietly sealed a deal to revive Gordon Gekko, the suspender-loving financial prowler who made grabbing seem good in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, “Wall Street.”

When last seen, the corrupt Gekko, an Oscar-winning role for Michael Douglas, was on the brink of surrendering his white cuffs for handcuffs, having been sold out by his protégé Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen.

“He went to jail,” acknowledged Edward R. Pressman, who produced the original movie and reached an agreement with Fox this week to develop a sequel in which Mr. Douglas will resume his machinations on a global scale in the hedge-fund era. Mr. Pressman declined to say more about the plot. But the title, he said, will be “Money Never Sleeps,” after one of Gekko’s guiding principles in the first film, written by Stanley Weiser and Mr. Stone.

“Wall Street” was only a modest hit when Fox released it. But it won a passionate following in the financial world, where many found something to love in the predatory Gekko. Speaking by telephone from Bermuda, Mr. Douglas said he wouldn’t mind if he never had “one more drunken Wall Street broker come up to me and say, ‘You’re the man!’ ”

Mr. Stone will not direct the sequel, although the producer said that Messrs. Pressman and Douglas and their new writer, Stephen Schiff (“True Crime”), pressed him to do so for months. Mr. Schiff, who expects to deliver a script later this year, said the Bud Fox character was likely to be missing as well. But a restyled Gekko, he predicted, might start setting trends all over again.

“If you weren’t wearing suspenders before ‘Wall Street,’ you were certainly wearing them after,” he said. As for moral development, don’t expect too much from a villain who taught us that lunch is for wimps, and who bragged: “I create nothing. I own.”

“I don’t think he’s much different,” Mr. Douglas said. “He’s just had more time to think about what to do.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/movies/05movi.html





Cablevision Nears Deal With Dolans
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Cablevision Systems is nearing a deal to sell itself to its founding family, the Dolans, for about $10.5 billion in cash, according to people involved in the discussions.

With the addition of debt, the total price would come to nearly $23 billion.

A deal would resolve a tortured stalemate between the Dolans and the board over the future of the company. During the last three years, the Dolans have sought and failed three times to buy out the public shareholders of Cablevision, which has 3.1 million cable subscribers in the New York metropolitan region.

The company also owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers.

The board of Cablevision met Tuesday evening to discuss the deal, the people involved in the discussions said. There remain several critical issues, they warned, which may postpone or even derail a deal altogether. The Dolans have appeared close to clinching deals with the board before, only to suffer setbacks at the 11th hour.

While the Dolans are the controlling shareholder, Cablevision’s special committee of independent directors has not been afraid to stand up to them.

A spokesman for Cablevision declined to comment.

The possible deal, worth about $36 a share, is 20 percent higher than the previous buyout offer for the company, which was rejected in January, and 10 percent higher than Cablevision’s closing stock price yesterday of $32.67

Founded in 1973, Cablevision encompasses three business units, led by the telecommunications services division. That business consists of cable television, high-speed Internet access and telephone service. Its Rainbow programming unit is home to channels like AMC and the Independent Film Channel. And its Madison Square Garden business consists of the professional sports teams, its MSG Networks programming and its entertainment sites.

The Dolans have long been led by Charles F. Dolan, Cablevision’s founder and chairman, and a son, James L., the chief executive.

The two men have at times waged public campaigns against each other, notably over Voom, an ill-fated satellite TV venture. James eventually won that battle, and Cablevision shut down the unit in 2005.

That same year, the Dolans made an offer to break the company in two and buy Cablevision’s cable television assets. But they were forced to withdraw the offer before the board formally rejected it. The family then offered to buy the company for $27 a share last year, and later sweetened the offer to $30 a share.

That bid was rejected after a bitter public battle by the board, which said it had warned the family that it would not accept its offer. Its directors said that they had already given the Dolans “general guidance” about how much the family would need to pay to reach a deal.

The major players in that decision was a special committee of the board consisting of Thomas V. Reifenheiser, a former media banker at Chase who had represented Cablevision, and a retired Navy vice admiral, John R. Ryan, who was a chancellor of the State University of New York. The two men wrestled with a decision for months before rebuffing the Dolans, who with a 20 percent equity stake and 70.4 percent of the voting power control the company.

Investors have in the past been concerned about whether the Dolans were trying to take the company private at a discount. Such skepticism has been heightened by the flurry of management-led buyouts in recent years that have led shareholders in some instances to question whether such cozy arrangements were giving them the best possible deal.

In January, Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Research, wrote a note titled “Do Not Let Chuck and Jim Dolan Steal CVC.”

In that note, Mr. Greenfield said that he considered Cablevision worth at least $33.50 a share.

Wariness over the intentions of the Dolans have been fed in part by the family’s declaration that it would sell the company to no one else.

Yet there has long been a potential suitor who could conceivably pay more for Cablevision: Time Warner Cable. The cable unit of Time Warner, which was spun off earlier this year, has a regional network that would be enhanced by Cablevision’s subscriber base.

The latest buyout, if it goes through, will be an agreed deal.

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/bu...ia/02deal.html





Court Denies Vonage Bid for Patent Case Retrial

A U.S. appeals court has denied a request by Internet phone company Vonage Holdings Corp. that it order a retrial in the patent infringement case brought against it by Verizon Communications Inc.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a ruling dated Wednesday, turned down a motion by Vonage to have an infringement verdict by a lower court vacated because of a landmark patent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

The appeals court said Vonage can cite the new Supreme Court ruling as part of its pending appeal of the case.

Vonage had argued that the March 8 infringement verdict in favor of Verizon should be reconsidered after the Supreme Court loosened a key legal standard, making it easier to invalidate some patents on the grounds they are obvious inventions.

Verizon wants to stop Vonage from using its patented technologies. A federal jury in March found Vonage had infringed three patents.

On April 6, a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, said he would bar Vonage from adding new customers while it appeals the patent infringement finding. However, the federal circuit appeals court has stayed the injunction while Vonage appeals the case.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2125721,00.asp





Verizon Profit Drops 8.4% as Network Investment Rises
Crayton Harrison

Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. phone company, reported an 8.4 percent drop in first-quarter profit after accelerating spending on its $22.9 billion high-speed fiber-optic network.

Net income fell to $1.5 billion, or 51 cents a share, from $1.63 billion, or 56 cents, a year earlier, New York-based Verizon said today in a statement. Sales climbed 6.4 percent to $22.6 billion, surpassing analysts' estimates. Verizon divested two business units in 2006, which also reduced profit this year.

The network, which carries a television service, is part of Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg's bid to compete with cable-TV companies siphoning off Verizon's residential phone customers. The business is designed to complement Verizon's wireless service, which added 1.7 million subscribers in the latest quarter, beating larger rival AT&T Inc.

``Wireless was stronger than we expected,'' said Jonathan Atkin, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco. ``They've started the year with a very solid result.'' He rates the shares ``sector perform.''

Verizon shares rose 6 cents to $37.95 at 9:46 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock had gained 1.7 percent this year before today.

Verizon Wireless, the mobile-phone company co-owned by Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc, now has 60.7 million total customers. The rate at which customers left the company, or ``churn'' rate, fell to 1.1 percent from 1.2 percent a year earlier.

Wireless Gains

AT&T said last week that it added 1.2 million wireless customers in its latest quarter. The San Antonio-based company reported that total churn was 1.7 percent during that period.

Verizon's sales exceeded the $22.5 billion average of estimates in a Bloomberg survey. Earnings per share, excluding discontinued operations and other items, totaled 54 cents. The average estimate in a survey of analysts compiled by Bloomberg also was 54 cents.

Costs to build the network drained 11 cents a share from earnings, matching Verizon's forecast.

``It's a land grab right now, and you want to grab as much land as possible early on,'' Credit Suisse analyst Christopher Larsen said in an interview. ``This is something they can make money selling.''

TV Customers

Seidenberg aims to make the network available to 9 million homes this year, a 50 percent increase. Verizon signed 141,000 TV customers on its fiber network in the quarter, increasing its total to 348,000. AT&T, the largest U.S. phone company, signed up 10,000 TV customers in the first quarter, when it launched a major expansion of its video service.

Verizon lost about 408,000 customers for residential landlines in the quarter. Cable TV providers will serve 13 percent of U.S. residential phone customers by the end of this year, almost double the percentage a year earlier, Toronto research firm Convergence Consulting Group Ltd. forecast this month. In contrast, phone companies will have just 1 percent of TV subscribers.

Verizon's income from discontinued operations fell to 5 cents in the first quarter from 13 cents a year ago. The company spun off its directory publishing unit last year to form Idearc Inc. in November and sold its interest in a Dominican Republic phone business to America Movil SAB in December.

The company also sold Telecomunicaciones de Puerto Rico Inc. to America Movil in March.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...W5E&refer=home





Qwest Profits Up, Revenue Down
Bob Mook

Qwest Communications International Inc. nearly tripled its profit due to increased revenue in data, Internet, video and mass markets, and business services in the first quarter, the company reported Tuesday.

The Denver-based telecommunications company earned a profit of $240 million, or 13 cents a share, on revenue of $3.4 billion for the three months ending March 31.

Analysts had estimated Qwest's average earnings per share at 9 cents, according to Yahoo! Finance.

In the first quarter of 2006, Qwest (NYSE: Q) posted a profit of $88 million, or 5 cents a share, on revenue of $3.47 billion.

Qwest CEO Dick Notebaert said he "wasn't worried" about the 1 percent decline in revenue because a one-time transaction from the first quarter of 2006 skewed the results.

"If you exclude that, we're basically flat," Notebaert said, adding that Qwest expects to get a revenue boost in upcoming quarters because of a lucrative $48 billion government contract it will share with AT&T and Verizon.

In late March, Qwest was chosen by the General Services Administration to be part of Networx Universal, a massive upgrade of the government's telecommunications services that will serve all federal agencies.

While revenue from local phone service fell by 7.5 percent, revenue from mass markets data and Internet revenue rose by 46 percent. High-speed Internet subscribers grew by 167,000 in the first quarter. Much of the growth in the Internet sector was driven by Qwest's "Price for Life" offer for residential customers, according to a statement from the company.

Notebaert pointed out that 59 percent of Qwest's customers use the company for more than one service. The average revenue per customer rose from $49 to $52 a month, Notebaert said.

Shares of Qwest closed up 23 cents at $9.11 Tuesday.
http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/den...0/daily14.html





17 Firms to Build $500M Undersea Cable
Sean Yoong

Seventeen major telecommunications companies signed a pact Friday to build a $500 million undersea fiber optic cable between Southeast Asia and the United States they claim will be relatively safe from earthquakes and tsunamis.

The link will offer "a timely increase in both the capacity and diversity of Internet links between Asia and the U.S., bearing in mind the disruptions caused by the recent Taiwan earthquake," Abdul Wahid Omar, chief executive of Telekom Malaysia, said at the signing ceremony.

Internet users will get faster and more reliable service once the high-bandwidth cable starts operating in December 2008, he said.

Telekom Malaysia, which is leading the consortium of companies, said construction of the 12,428-mile link would begin immediately. It said it would be the first submarine cable system linking Southeast Asia directly to the United States.

The fiber optic cable, dubbed the Asia-America Gateway, will connect the U.S. West Coast with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, as well as offer "seamless interconnection" for those locations with Europe, Africa and Australia, Telekom said in a statement.

It will "provide an alternative and a more secure link for traffic from the region to the U.S.A.," Telekom said. "This low-risk route was designed to avoid the volatile and hazardous Pacific Ring, thus mitigating the effects from natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis."

A magnitude 7.1 quake snapped undersea cables near Taiwan on Dec. 26, disrupting phone and Internet communications across Asia as companies scrambled to reroute traffic through satellites and undamaged cables. Services were gradually restored in the days after the quake.

Malaysian Communications Minister Lim Keng Yaik said the cable will strengthen communications and business ties between Asia and the United States by ramping up international broadband capacity at competitive costs.

"This impressive joint effort will go a long way in increasing broadband uptake in this region, which will in turn increase the overall appeal for global investments and increase the competitiveness of the countries," Lim said.

Parties involved in the project include AT&T Inc. from the United States, the British Telecom Global Network Services, Eastern Communications Philippines Inc., India's Bharti AirTel, Thailand's CAT Telekom, Indonesia's Indosat and PT Telkom, Telecom New Zealand International, Singapore's StarHub and Australia's Telstra.

Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent and Japan's NEC Corp. have been awarded the contract for the construction of the link, officials said.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D8OOSREO0.htm





Homeless Man Disrupts Internet2 Service
Adam Gaffin

A fire started by a homeless man knocked out service between Boston and New York on the experimental Internet2 network Tuesday night.

Chris Robb, an engineer at Indiana University's Global Network Operations Center who works on Internet2, says Level 3 Communications cables used by the network went up in flames. The cables were on the Longfellow Bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge across the Charles River.

Robb, who co-authors the Internet2 Network Upgrade blog, writes that Level 3 engineers estimate it could take one to two days to restore the circuit. Engineers are looking at rerouting a Chicago-to-New York OC-192 circuit that normally goes through Boston to Washington until service is restored.

Robb writes: "Question: When can a cigarette take down your network? Answer: When you throw it at a bridge and light it on fire."

Authorities say the fire, which also disrputed service on the Red Line subway, started around 8:20 p.m. when a homeless man tossed a lit cigarette. The cigarette landed on a mattress, which ignited and led to a two-alarm fire.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...net2-fire.html





Phone Taps in Italy Spur Rush Toward Encryption
Peter Kiefer

Drumming up business would seem to be an easy task for those who sell encrypted cellphones in Italy. All they have to do is browse the major newspapers for likely customers.

Piero Fassino, national secretary of the Democratic Left Party, could have benefited from an encrypted phone before comments he made regarding a sensitive bank takeover made the front pages.

Luciano Moggi, the former head of the Juventus soccer club, could have used one, too. His phone conversations, intercepted by investigators and then leaked to the media, led to Italy’s soccer game-fixing scandal.

And Prince Victor Emmanuel might wish he’d had a secure cellphone before his conversations, made public, resulted in his arrest last year on charges that he provided prostitutes and dealt in illegal slot machines.

Not even Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy’s top spy agency, was immune; transcripts of some of his conversations found their way into the newspapers.

“Initially, we thought we would market to the big businesses, to lawyers and the government,” said Ferdinando Peroglio, commercial director of Caspertech, a four-year-old Turin company that sells encrypted cellphone software. “But after the Juventus soccer scandal, we had so many clients that we had never thought to contact.”

Three years ago, the company’s only clients were the government and the military; last year 60 percent of sales were to ordinary civilians.

Mr. Peroglio refused to provide exact sales numbers but said Caspertech’s sales increased 100 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Enrico Comana, chief executive of Snapcom Italia, the Italian unit of an Israeli company that offers a similar product, sees the same trend.

“There is about 700 to 800 percent more interest now than at the same time last year,” he said.

What has spurred encryption sales is not so much the legal wiretapping authorized by Italian magistrates — though information about those calls is also frequently leaked to the press — but the widespread availability of wiretapping technology over the Internet, which has created a growing pool of amateur eavesdroppers. Those snoops have a ready market in the Italian media for filched celebrity conversations.

When it comes to phone tapping, Brazil, Greece and Spain are other desirable markets, the encryption companies say, but in Western Europe, Italy remains peerless.

“No one is ever going to discuss sensitive issues with you on the phone,” said Carlo Bonini, an investigative reporter for La Repubblica, the Rome daily.

Earlier this year, Mr. Bonini’s name was among thousands that surfaced in an illegal wiretapping scandal involving employees of Telecom Italia, the Italian phone company.

Twenty people were arrested, including the former chief of Telecom Italia security, in what investigators say was an attempt to use the intercepted phone conversations to blackmail Italian public figures.

A proposal that would impose stiffer fines and longer jail terms for journalists and others who make public the contents of illegally monitored conversations has passed the lower house of the Italian Parliament and now needs Senate approval.

Mr. Bonini said he understood the need to curb the publication of some of these transcripts but argued that the issue was less about privacy and more about Italy’s notoriously slow judicial system.

“I don’t think that we don’t need a stricter privacy law — we already have it,” Mr. Bonini said. “We need consequences. We need to see sanctions. If no one is ever held accountable, then there is no way to stop the phenomenon.”

The phone encryption companies sell a range of products — all legal, they insist — that they say can protect both cellphone text messages and actual voice conversations.

The high-end package, which runs about $2,200 at both companies, includes a phone, which must be a model capable of using the encryption software. Caspertech’s software can be used only on phones running the Windows Mobile operating system, while Snapcom offers software that can be used on other platforms as well.

On the lower end is software that can encrypt your SMS text messages for about $410. In the midrange, you can scramble your faxes or mask the content of your fixed-line calls for $1,500 and up.

For full secrecy, however, the phones on both ends of a voice conversation must carry the software in advance of the call.

Peter van der Arend, chairman of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s lawful interception committee, said in an e-mail message that the technology appeared to be legal.

But does the over-the-counter encryption technology actually work?

Rolando Rosas, the United States development director for Snapcom, which operates in 40 countries, said he believed that its software was 90 percent reliable. “Nothing is 100 percent fool-proof — nothing, nothing, nothing,” he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/te...rssnyt&emc=rss





Bush Administration Proposes Retroactive Immunity for Phone Companies
Nate Anderson

Retroactive immunity from prosecution is a beautiful thing if you're a major telecommunications provider in the US, and phone companies are about to receive it if the Bush administration gets its way. The administration's new appropriations request for intelligence agencies was recently disclosed at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and it includes a massive gift to the phone companies who have been (can we drop the "allegedly" at this point?) helping the NSA and other agencies. Prepare yourself for the longest single sentence you have ever read:

Government has another chance to assert "state secrets" in AT&T case
Notwithstanding any other law, and in addition to the immunities, privileges, and defenses provided by any other source of law, no action shall lie or be maintained in any court, and no penalty, sanction, or other form of remedy or relief shall be imposed by any court or any other body, against any person for the alleged provision to an element of the intelligence community of any information (including records or other information pertaining to a customer), facilities, or any other form of assistance, during the period of time beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on the date that is the effective date of this Act, in connection with any alleged classified communications intelligence activity that the Attorney General or a designee of the Attorney General certifies, in a manner consistent with the protection of State secrets, is, was, would be, or would have been intended to protect the United States from a terrorist attack.

That's from section 408 of the proposed bill, and it's buried beneath the innocuous headline "Liability Defense." As the government explains later in an analysis of the bill, "companies that cooperate with the Government in the war on terror deserve our appreciation and protection—not litigation." Any court case dealing with the issue would be thrown out of court, and the protection would include all phone company interaction with the intelligence community since September 11.

The issue of whether any of this behavior was legal is not important. The government has already argued that legality doesn't matter when it comes to the phone companies, since even a ruling that their actions were illegal would expose the existence of the intelligence-gathering program in question. Therefore, such cases should not even be considered by the courts.

Kenneth Wainstein, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, told the assembled Senators that this provision of the bill would simply "fill a gap in our laws" by allowing the phone companies to assist the government.

When news of the NSA's alleged wiretapping of American firms (with their knowledge) broke back in 2005, we reported on the powerful technology apparently being deployed inside secret rooms at telco facilities. Despite the fact that this raised all sorts of questions about domestic surveillance and legality, Congress decided that it simply wasn't worth looking into after hearing from Vice President Cheney about the matter.

With Congress unwilling to figure out what was going on, individuals and advocacy groups began filing lawsuits against the phone companies. The EFF and others argued that communications privacy laws had been violated, but the government countered by claiming that a "state secrets" privilege meant that the cases should simply be thrown out. Though some cases were dismissed, the EFF's case against AT&T continues, though it would also be dismissed if the proposed new legislation passes.

With the Democrats now holding much more power, though, it's not clear that the blanket immunity grant will survive. However, the bill itself needs to pass in some form in order to keep funding the US intelligence apparatus.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...companies.html





On the Lookout for Criminals

Lawmakers want to require computer technicians to report suspected child abuse
Dirk Perrefort

State lawmakers are asking computer repairmen to join the ranks of teachers and other professionals who are required to report suspected child abuse.

State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, who serves as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the proposed legislation would require anyone who repairs or services personal computers to report suspected child abuse, including child pornography, to the state Department of Children and Families.

"If they become aware of suspected material they would have an obligation to notify the authorities," he said. "Repairmen in the past have been reluctant to come forward because they were concerned for their own liability. This would solve that problem because they would be required to come forward."

Dan Tannenbaum, the owner of Newtown Computer Repair, said that while he hasn't come across anything suspicious in the past, he would certainly report it if he did.

"I've seen some pretty rough stuff in the past, but it all involved consenting adults," he said. "I consider myself lucky that I haven't seen any illegal pornography."

He added that while computer repair professionals rarely "troll" through a customer's personal files such as photographs, pornography sites are often found to be the culprit when a computer crashes.

"A lot of these sites contain cookies or spyware that can attach to your computer," he said. "A lot of the infections we encounter result from that."

Tannenbaum, who has given lectures in the past to police and parents about Internet safety, said he actually called the state Attorney General's office last week to see what his legal responsibility is.

"They said there was nothing in place at this point," he said. "I'm happy that the state legislature is working on that. If it were up to my own judgment, I would certainly turn the person in."

Calvin York, the owner of Computer Helper in Brookfield, said anyone, whether or not they're mandated, should report suspected child abuse.

"Anyone who sees it or is aware of it should report it," he said. "I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't know that we would find a computer, though, that would indicate abuse other than maybe photographs."

Stephen Sedensky, Danbury's State's Attorney, said that while he doesn't recall any cases that involved a tip from a computer repairman, it is not unusual for a film developer to report suspicious material.

"They've been doing that for quite awhile," he said. "If they see something suspicious on a roll of film they usually report it to the police."

He added he supports the proposal and would like to see some mechanism that would make computer repair professionals aware of their obligation under the law.

The proposed legislation was referred Thursday by the state House to the legislature's Public Safety and Security Committee.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/st...&source=tabbox





Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?

Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape -- in Second Life.

I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool's joke.

Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.

Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I'm not talking about the "consensual" rape built into some games (although if you're interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).

There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.

Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor.

If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?

But I have a hard time calling it "rape," or believing it's a matter for the police. No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant's sweat or other excretions still damp on your body.

That's not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online. Virtual rape is not just a prank, one the target needs to get over or expect as part of a role-playing world. (And if you are inclined to pooh-pooh this, first read author Julian Dibble's chapter about a rape that occurred in a text-only MOO in the early '90s.)

A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.

Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens -- they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape. In that context, a sexual assault can indeed have a deep impact on a person's life, especially if they are actual rape survivors.

Some suggest that the best way to deal with a virtual rape is to ignore it, or simply log off and come back as another user.

But in a game, you don't want to lose the long-term investment you've made in your character. And these days, your real world income or professional reputation can depend on your online self.

In a 3-D marketplace, your avatar's name is your brand. You can change the appearance of your cartoon without much impact, but changing your name makes it too difficult for customers or clients to find you.

If an online environment becomes too hostile or scary, or causes you such great anxiety you cannot work or interact with friends, more has been taken from you than your playtime. Your friends will gather around to give you emotional support -- but your customers will wander off and shop elsewhere.

Adult communities facilitate our need to go deeper into our sexual selves, even into secret places around gender and taboos that we cannot acknowledge anywhere else. We feel safe because of the peculiar blend of disclosure and anonymity provided in online communities, and we journey along paths we might not even glance at in the physical world. We don't expect to have our control wrenched away or our minds assaulted or even the intensity of our anguish during and after.

The truth is, anywhere people gather, we bring all of our potential with us -- for love, for sex, for community and creation, and for violence and destruction, too. That's why we still enjoy pondering whether cybersex is real sex and whether an online affair is more or less damaging to a relationship than a physical affair. It's a tacit acknowledgement that while the time-space continuum may change, people don't.

Rape is the ultimate perversion of sexual intimacy. Like sex, rape has mental and emotional elements that go beyond the body and the damage to the mind and spirit generally takes much longer to heal than the body.

But that doesn't make the psychological upheaval of virtual rape anywhere near the trauma of real rape. And I can't see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.

It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.
See you next Friday,

Regina Lynn

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty.../sexdrive_0504





Teacher Fury at Rating Website

Teachers are trying to sue and shut down a website that names and shames them and gives them a mark out of five.

The website names individual schools and teachers, scoring their performance, and in many cases defaming them.

One Sydney principal, who is given a score of 1.7 out of five for "overall quality", is described as rude, condescending, pompous and arrogant.

"Who could allow someone like her to run a school? … [she] is a terrible principal. She is a bully who does not care about the students or the school's wellbeing, but rather how they appear to the outside world."

The NSW Department of Education has blocked access to the site from all school computers, but is powerless to shut it down, because it is based in America.

The NSW Teachers Federation is looking at how it can take legal action against the company.

Its president, Maree O'Halloran, said a number of teachers had complained they had been defamed on the site.

The issue will be raised with the new director-general of education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, when Ms O'Halloran meets him next week.

"It is clearly an absolute disgrace that people are anonymously able to make comments about teachers that are quite atrocious," she said.

"We are aiming to have the site shut down. The problem is that it is legally based in the US. Our next step is to consider how we could use defamation action."

Comments about individual teachers and principals are posted anonymously and teachers are badged with either a smiley or frowning face, depending on their rating. One maths teacher at a Sydney school is described as being unable to control a class or spell.

"He can't teach at all and going to his class is like having an unofficial free period. He can't control the class to save his life and his teaching is repetitive and boring. Yet he labours on and you have to wonder why."

The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to "scurrilous American websites".

The NSW Department of Education has given legal advice about cyber bullying to all schools.

A Sydney high school sent a memo to parents last year, asking them to monitor their children's internet access after students were suspended for threatening school staff on a website.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...788228075.html





Chinese Community Rallies Behind Student Removed From Clements
Bob Dunn

Members of the area Chinese community have rallied behind a Clements High School senior who was removed from the campus and sent to M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center after parents complained he’d created a computer game map of Clements.

About 70 people attended the Fort Bend Independent School District’s April 23 meeting to show support for the Clements senior and his mother, Jean Lin, who spoke to FBISD Board trustees in a closed session.

While an agenda document does not specify details, the board is holding a special meeting tonight to address the boy’s actions and the discipline that was meted out as a result, sources close to the matter say. The boy’s name was not identified last week, and the district has declined to discuss his case.

Richard Chen, president of the Fort Bend Chinese-American Voters League and a acquaintance of the boy’s family, said he is a talented student who enjoys computer games and learned how to create maps (also sometimes known as “mods”), which provide new environments in which games may be played.

The map the boy designed mimicked Clements High School. And, sources said, it was uploaded either to the boy’s home computer or to a computer server where he and his friends could access and play on it. Two parents apparently learned from their children about the existence of the game, and complained to FBISD administrators, who investigated.

“They arrested him,” Chen said of FBISD police, “and also went to the house to search.” The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy’s room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn’t in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.

“They decided he was a terroristic threat,” said one source close to the district’s investigation.

Sources said that although no charges were filed against the boy, he was removed from Clements, sent to the district’s alternate education school and won’t be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies with classmates.

“All he did was create a map and put it on a web site to allow students to play,” Chen said. “The mother thinks this is too harsh.”

FBISD officials declined to comment on the matter Monday. “Our challenge is, people in the community have freedom of speech and can say what they want, but we have laws” covering privacy issues, especially involving minors, that the district has to respect, said spokeswoman Nancy Porter.

Speakers at the FBISD Board’s April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior’s punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people.

The Asian community “faces new pressures” as a result of the shootings, William Sun told board members. “We urge the school and community not to label our Asian students as terrorists.”

“We should teach our children not to judge others harshly” and not to target people as being a threat because of their race, said Peter Woo, adding that the school district should lead the way in such efforts.

But Chen said Monday he and other community members don’t consider FBISD’s actions in the case to be racially motivated, and don’t think they blew the incident out of proportion.

“They all think the principal has to do something – but how much? We do understand with the Virginia Tech incident…something has to be done,” Chen said. “Someone just made a mistake, and we think the principal should understand that.”
http://www.fortbendnow.com/news/2847...er-pc-game-map





Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops
Winnie Hu

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

Liverpool’s turnabout comes as more and more school districts nationwide continue to bring laptops into the classroom. Federal education officials do not keep track of how many schools have such programs, but two educational consultants, Hayes Connection and the Greaves Group, conducted a study of the nation’s 2,500 largest school districts last year and found that a quarter of the 1,000 respondents already had one-to-one computing, and fully half expected to by 2011.

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

Those giving up on laptops include large and small school districts, urban and rural communities, affluent schools and those serving mostly low-income, minority students, who as a group have tended to underperform academically.

Matoaca High School just outside Richmond, Va., began eliminating its five-year-old laptop program last fall after concluding that students had failed to show any academic gains compared with those in schools without laptops. Continuing the program would have cost an additional $1.5 million for the first year alone, and a survey of district teachers and parents found that one-fifth of Matoaca students rarely or never used their laptops for learning. “You have to put your money where you think it’s going to give you the best achievement results,” said Tim Bullis, a district spokesman.

Everett A. Rea Elementary School in Costa Mesa, Calif., where more than 95 percent of students are Hispanic and come from low-income families, gave away 30 new laptops to another school in 2005 after a class that was trying them out switched to new teachers who simply did not do as much with the technology. Northfield Mount Hermon School, a private boarding school in western Massachusetts, eliminated its five-year-old laptop program in 2002 after it found that more effort was being expended on repairing the laptops than on training teachers to teach with them.

Two years ago, school officials in Broward County, Fla., the sixth-largest district in the country, shelved a $275 million proposal to issue laptops to each of their more than 260,000 students after re-evaluating the costs of a pilot project. The district, which paid $7.2 million to lease 6,000 laptops for the pilot at four schools, was spending more than $100,000 a year for repairs to screens and keyboards that are not covered by warranties. “It’s cost prohibitive, so we have actually moved away from it,” said Vijay Sonty, chief information officer for the district, whose enrollment is 37 percent black, 31 percent white and 25 percent Hispanic.

Here in Liverpool, parents have long criticized the cost of the laptop program: about $300,000 a year from the state, plus individual student leases of $25 a month, or $900 from 10th to 12th grades, for the take-home privilege.

“I feel like I was ripped off,” said Richard Ferrante, explaining that his son, Peter, used his laptop to become a master at the Super Mario Brothers video game. “And every time I write my check for school taxes, I get mad all over again.”

Students like Eddie McCarthy, 18, a Liverpool senior, said his laptop made him “a lot better at typing,” as he used it to take notes in class, but not a better student. “I think it’s better to wait and buy one for college,” he said.

More than a decade ago, schools began investing heavily in laptops at the urging of school boards and parent groups who saw them as the key to the 21st century classroom. Following Maine’s lead in 2002, states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota helped buy laptops for thousands of students through statewide initiatives like “Classrooms for the Future” and “Freedom to Learn.” In New York City, about 6,000 students in 22 middle schools received laptops in 2005 as part of a $45-million, three-year program financed with city, state and federal money.

Many school administrators and teachers say laptops in the classroom have motivated even reluctant students to learn, resulting in higher attendance and lower detention and dropout rates.

But it is less clear whether one-to-one computing has improved academic performance — as measured through standardized test scores and grades — because the programs are still new, and most schools have lacked the money and resources to evaluate them rigorously.

In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against.

Mark Warschauer, an education professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of “Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom” (Teachers College Press, 2006), also found no evidence that laptops increased state test scores in a study of 10 schools in California and Maine from 2003 to 2005. Two of the schools, including Rea Elementary, have since eliminated the laptops.

But Mr. Warschauer, who supports laptop programs, said schools like Liverpool might be giving up too soon because it takes time to train teachers to use the new technology and integrate it into their classes. For instance, he pointed to students at a middle school in Yarmouth, Me., who used their laptops to create a Spanish book for poor children in Guatemala and debate Supreme Court cases found online.

“Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research,” he said. “If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”

In Liverpool, a predominantly white school district of nearly 8,000 students, one in four of whom qualify for free or reduced lunches, administrators initially proposed that every 10th through 12th-grade student be required to lease a laptop, but decided to make the program voluntary after parents protested. About half the students immediately signed up; now, three-quarters have them.

At first, the school set up two tracks of classes — laptop and non-laptop — that resulted in scheduling conflicts and complaints that those without laptops had been shut out of advanced classes, though school officials denied that. In 2005, the school went back to one set of classes, and bought a pool of 280 laptops for students who were not participating in the lease program.

Soon, a room that used to be for the yearbook club became an on-site repair shop for the 80 to 100 machines that broke each month, with a “Laptop Help Desk” sign taped to the door. The school also repeatedly upgraded its online security to block access to sites for pornography, games and instant messaging — which some students said they had used to cheat on tests.

Maureen A. Patterson, the assistant superintendent for instruction, said that since the laptop program was canceled, she has spoken to more than 30 parents who support the decision and received five phone calls from parents saying they were concerned that their children would not have technological advantages. She said the high school would enlarge its pool of shared laptops for in-class use, invest in other kinds of technology and also planned to extend building hours in the evening to provide computer access.

In a 10th grade English class the other day, every student except one was tapping away on a laptop to look up food facts about Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger King for a journal entry on where to eat. The one student without a computer, Taylor Baxter, 16, stared at a classmate’s screen because she had forgotten to bring her own laptop that day.

But in many other classrooms, there was nary a laptop in sight as teachers read from textbooks and scribbled on chalkboards. Some teachers said they had felt compelled to teach with laptops in the beginning, but stopped because they found they were spending so much time coping with technical glitches that they were unable to finish their lessons.

Alice McCormick, who heads the math department, said most math teachers preferred graphing calculators, which students can use on the Regents exams, to laptops, which often do not have mathematical symbols or allow students to show their work for credit. “Let’s face it, math is for the most part still a paper-and-pencil activity when you’re learning it,” she said.

In the school library, an 11th-grade history class was working on research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks even as their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/ed...hp&oref=slogin





Ohio U. Says P2P Ban Works
Andrea L. Foster

Since Ohio University enacted a partial ban on peer-to-peer network traffic a week ago, 200 students have had their Internet connections temporarily disconnected, Brice Bible, the university's chief information officer, said today. He said the university has been careful to monitor network activity so that students engaged in legal file-sharing can still do so. But, he said, all of the peer-to-peer traffic he has seen has been illegal. The policy seems to be working, Mr. Bible added, since the number of students trading music files online has been steadily declining.
http://www.technology4teachers.com/node/1301





Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
Noah Shachtman

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC) restricts more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.

Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in a court-martial, or "administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."

Despite the absolutist language, the guidelines' author, Major Ray Ceralde, said there is some leeway in enforcement of the rules. "It is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication," he noted in an e-mail. "Some units may require that soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting."

But with the regulations drawn so tightly, "many commanders will feel like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging -- or even using e-mail," said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his service in Iraq. "If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs," added Nuding, writer of the "pro-victory" Dadmanly site. "I think this means the end of my blogging."

Active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors -- even soldiers' families -- are all subject to the directive as well.

But, while the regulations may apply to a broad swath of people, not everybody affected can actually read them. In a Kafka-esque turn, the guidelines are kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Many Army contractors -- and many family members -- don't have access to the site. Even those able to get in are finding their access is blocked to that particular file.

"Even though it is supposedly rewritten to include rules for contractors (i.e., me) I am not allowed to download it," e-mails Perry Jeffries, an Iraq war veteran now working as a contractor to the Armed Services Blood Program.

The U.S. military -- all militaries -- have long been concerned about their personnel inadvertently letting sensitive information out. Troops' mail was read and censored throughout World War II; back home, government posters warned citizens "careless talk kills."

Military blogs, or milblogs, as they're known in service-member circles, only make the potential for mischief worse. On a website, anyone, including foreign intelligence agents, can stop by and look for information.

"All that stuff we used to get around a bar and say to each other -- well, now because we're publishing it in open forums, now it's intel," said milblogger and retired Army officer John Donovan.

Passing on classified data -- real secrets -- is already a serious military crime. The new regulations (and their author) take an unusually expansive view of what kind of unclassified information a foe might find useful. In an article published by the official Army News Service, Maj. Ceralde "described how the Pentagon parking lot had more parked cars than usual on the evening of Jan. 16, 1991, and how pizza parlors noticed a significant increase of pizza to the Pentagon.... These observations are indicators, unclassified information available to all … that Operation Desert Storm (was about to) beg(i)n."

Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, called Ceralde's example "outrageous."

"It's true that from an OPSEC (operational security) perspective, almost anything -- pizza orders, office lights lit at odd hours, full or empty parking lots -- can potentially tip off an observer that something unusual is afoot," he added. "But real OPSEC is highly discriminating. It does not mean cutting off the flow of information across the board. If on one day in 1991 an unusual number of pizza orders coincided with the start of Desert Storm, it doesn't mean that information about pizza orders should now be restricted. That's not OPSEC, that's just stupidity."

During the early days of the Iraq war, milblogs flew under the radar of the Defense Department's information security establishment. But after soldiers like Specialist Colby Buzzell began offering detailed descriptions of firefights that were scantily covered in the press, blogs began to be viewed by some in the military as a threat -- an almost endless chorus of unregulated voices that could say just about anything.

Buzzell, for one, was banned from patrols and confined to base after such an incident. Military officials asked other bloggers to make changes to their sites. One soldier took down pictures of how well armor stood up to improvised bombs; a military spouse erased personal information from her site -- including "dates of deployment, photos of the family, the date their next child is expected, the date of the baby shower and where the family lives," said Army spokesman Gordon Van Fleet.

But such cases have been rare, Major Elizabeth Robbins noted in a paper (.pdf) for the Army's Combined Arms Center.

"The potential for an OPSEC violation has thus far outstripped the reality experienced by commanders in the field," she wrote.

And in some military circles, bloggers have gained forceful advocates. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, for example, now regularly arranges exclusive phone conferences between bloggers and senior commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Major Robbins, for one, has argued strongly for easing the restrictions on the soldier-journalists.

"The reputation of the Army is maintained on many fronts, and no one fights harder on its behalf than our young soldiers. We must allow them access to the fight," Robbins wrote. "To silence the most credible voices -- those at the spear's edge -- and to disallow them this function is to handicap ourselves on a vital, very real battlefield."

Nevertheless, commanders have become increasingly worried about the potential for leaks. In April 2005, military leaders in Iraq told milbloggers to "register" (.pdf) their sites with superior officers. In September, the Army made the first revision of its OPSEC regulations since the mid-'90s, ordering GIs to talk to their commanders before posting potentially-problematic information. Soldiers began to drop their websites, in response.

More bloggers followed suit, when an alert came down from highest levels of the Pentagon that "effective immediately, no information may be placed on websites … unless it has been reviewed for security concerns," and the Army announced it was activating a team, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, to scan blogs for information breaches. An official Army dispatch told milbloggers, "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be."

That unit continues to look for security violations, new regulations in hand.
http://www.wired.com/politics/online.../army_bloggers





Army Hears Anti-War Mellencamp But Nixes Baez

Rocker John Mellencamp and folk singer Joan Baez are both vehemently against the war in Iraq, but only one of them was permitted to perform for recovering wounded U.S. soldiers last week.

Mellencamp has sung many anti-war tunes but left politics out of his performance last week at Walter Reed Medical Center, a concert he put together after learning of the poor living conditions and bureaucratic delays soldiers experienced there.

He invited Baez to join him, but she said the Army told her she was not welcome.

"Four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part," Baez said in a letter published in The Washington Post on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Walter Reed did not return calls seeking comment.

Baez said she has always advocated nonviolence and had refused during the Vietnam conflict to sing for the forces then because she felt it would have condoned a war that was ripping apart the country.

"I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam," Baez wrote. "Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan."

In a CNN interview, Baez declined to speculate about why the Army nixed her participation.

"I would assume that the bureaucracy in the Army is the toughest in the world, I have no idea what was going on there," she said.

Baez is no stranger to Iraq war protests. But she told CNN the Walter Reed concert would not have been an appropriate venue for airing her view on the war.

"I was going to do only two songs, one with Mellencamp and one by myself," she said. "It wasn't a huge platform for me to be holding forth, it was just two songs."

In August 2005, Baez appeared alongside protester Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in the Iraq war and set up camp near President George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch seeking a second meeting with him.

An attempt to reach a representative for Mellencamp was not immediately successful.

Before the concert, Mellencamp told MSNBC News that the concert was not about politics and he was "going down there and showing support for these kids who really don't make any policies and who basically are following orders."

(Additional reporting by JoAnne Allen)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...41164320070503





Action by Police at Rally Troubles Los Angeles Chief
Jennifer Steinhauer and Julia Preston

Chief William J. Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that the episode here in which police officers clashed with demonstrators and journalists on Tuesday at an immigration rally was the “worst incident of this type I have ever encountered in 37 years” in law enforcement.

Eight officers and at least 15 civilians were hurt, the police said, with people still calling the department on Thursday to report injuries. Mr. Bratton said 240 nonlethal projectiles were fired by the police into the crowd.

“Clearly, something went wrong here,” he said in a interview.

After a request by Mr. Bratton, the F.B.I. announced Thursday that it would open a civil rights inquiry into the incident, which has drawn outrage from immigrant and civic groups and journalists’ organizations and a rebuke from the City Council. On Wednesday Mr. Bratton announced two internal investigations by the Police Department.

News video images of the incident that erupted at a peaceful gathering in MacArthur Park, west of downtown, showed the police marching into the crowd, shoving and knocking down demonstrators and journalists with batons and firing rubber bullets at close range.

In television and press interviews throughout the day, Mr. Bratton said he was troubled by the police action he saw on the videos, and he sought to assure the city that he intended full disclosure of the facts.

Organizers of the May Day rally, whose theme was a call for broad changes to immigration laws, said they had held extensive negotiations with the police in preparing for the demonstration. They said the police did not follow the agreed-upon procedure in case of a disturbance.

“It completely broke down,” said Victor Narro of the National Lawyers Guild, who was the organizers’ liaison with the police.

Bob Baker, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, appealed in a statement for “no rush to judgment.” He said the clash had started after the demonstrators threw rocks and bottles. “Our officers gave a legal dispersal order and were met with violence,” Mr. Baker said. “In the coming days it will become clear what transpired.”

According to demonstrators, organizers and journalists who witnessed the incident, a band of youths who were not affiliated with organizations formally participating in the rally confronted the police at least one block from the park. The youths, some covering their faces with bandanas, taunted the officers and by some accounts threw rocks and bottles at them.

Police officers in riot gear lined up in rows and pushed the youths back down the street into the park, the witnesses said. “They started moving in,” said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, an event organizer. “They started beating up on anybody that didn’t move.”

The police said they declared the assembly unlawful and issued orders to clear the park. But many demonstrators said they did not hear the orders, and others, who spoke only Spanish, did not understand them.

Nine people were arrested for various offenses, including assault with a deadly weapon for throwing rocks at officers, the police said Wednesday.

For the past two days, local television viewers have seen video of Christina Gonzalez, a reporter for the Fox News affiliate, KTTV Channel 11, being repeatedly shoved by an officer with a baton. When Ms. Gonzalez knelt to help a camerawoman, Patti Ballaz, whom the police had pushed to the ground, an officer angrily threatened Ms. Gonzalez with arrest and then grabbed her shoulders, spinning her abruptly to the side.

“You can’t do that!” Ms. Gonzalez cried out. “You know that!”

Ms. Ballaz suffered a hairline fracture of a wrist.

Another reporter, Patricia Nazario from KPCC-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate here, said she was talking to her editor on her cellphone when an officer struck her in the back with a baton.

Ms. Nazario said she faced the officer and told him she was a reporter. He struck her again with the baton on her left thigh, she said.

“It happened so fast and I was on the ground,” she said. “It was like they were robots, on autopilot.”

After examining videos of the events, Marc Cooper, associate director of the University of Southern California Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, said, “It seems to be a prima facie violation” of policies the police worked out with the American Civil Liberties Union in 2002 in the wake of scuffles with the press at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000.

The incident occurred as Mr. Bratton seeks to become the first police chief to earn a second five-year term since the city imposed term limits on high-ranking police officials in 1992. Although he has reduced the city’s crime rate by roughly 25 percent, his department has been dogged by the widely held perception that officers are often needlessly forceful.

The 1991 beating of Rodney G. King by the police and the acquittal a year later of the officers charged with using excessive force prompted riots; in the 1999 Rampart scandal, an antigang unit was accused of framing people, robbing suspects and other brutal conduct.

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Los Angeles, and Julia Preston from New York. Ana Facio Contreras contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/us/04immig.html





Kent State Tape Is Said to Reveal Orders
Christopher Maag



An audio recording of the shootings 37 years ago at Kent State University includes the voices of Ohio National Guard leaders ordering troops to fire into a crowd of students, according to a man wounded in the shootings, who obtained a copy of the recording.

If confirmed as authentic, the recording could solve the central mystery of the shootings on May 4, 1970, which became a defining moment in the protests against the Vietnam War.

Alan Canfora, who was shot in the right wrist, played a copy of the recording at a news conference here on Tuesday.

Through grainy static and the high-pitched calls of protesters, it was possible to faintly hear someone shout “Point!” Mr. Canfora said the full command is recorded on the tape, with multiple voices shouting “Right here!” “Get Set!” Point!” and “Fire!” Those words, however, were difficult to discern when he played the recording. A 13-second volley of gunfire follows, during which four students were killed and nine were wounded.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” Mr. Canfora said. “The voices are right there, very clear. There was an order to fire.”

The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, which published its final report on the shootings in September 1970, never addressed whether commanders ordered troops to fire, saying only that the events immediately before the shooting “are in bitter dispute.” Based on the newly available recording, Mr. Canfora said he would call on Congress, the Justice Department and Ohio’s attorney general, Marc Dann, to open new investigations into the shootings.

James Sims, a spokesman for the Ohio National Guard, declined to comment.

The audiotape of the shooting was recorded on a reel-to-reel machine by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State student whose dorm room overlooked the demonstrations, said Joe Bendo, Mr. Strubbe’s friend and spokesman. Mr. Strubbe declined to comment.

The tape originally was reviewed by the Justice Department, which contracted with the acoustics analysis firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman, now called BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., to remove static and digitally enhance parts of the tape. James Barger, the scientist who analyzed the tape more than 30 years ago, still works at BBN. Through a spokeswoman, he said that no National Guard voices were audible on the tape.

The original tape sits in a safe deposit box near Kent, where it has been locked for over 30 years, Mr. Bendo said.

The copy obtained by Mr. Canfora came from the Yale University Library, which received it in 1989 as part of a large donation of materials from David E. Engdahl, a lawyer who represented the shooting victims in a civil lawsuit in the late 1970s. Mr. Canfora discovered the tape in the Yale archives a few months ago, he said, while researching a book.

Mr. Canfora, 58, works for the Summit County, Ohio, Board of Elections. He said he spends much of his free time teaching students about the Kent State shootings as director of the Kent May 4 Center, a nonprofit group that operates an informational Web site and organizes annual ceremonies to commemorate the shootings.

Many people who witnessed the shootings have said they believe they were ordered by National Guard commanders.

After four days of occasionally violent protests against President Richard M. Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia, thousands of students gathered on the Commons at Kent State for a noon rally. Gen. Robert Canterbury of the Ohio National Guard ordered the students to disperse. When they refused, General Canterbury directed his troops to advance on the crowd with M-1 rifles locked and loaded, bayonets fixed.

Soon the troops found themselves trapped by fences on an athletic field. As they retreated to the top of the hill, a number of soldiers on the right flank turned and fired into the crowd.

“It was very precise. They all turned in unison,” said Jerry M. Lewis, professor emeritus of sociology, who witnessed the shooting, wrote a book and taught a class on the events. “That’s why we’ve argued for years that there was an order or a signal to fire.”

Of Mr. Canfora, whom he has known for more than three decades, Mr. Lewis said, “He’s an incredibly thorough researcher. However, his interpretation tends to be conspiratorial.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02kent.html





Musicians Unlock Mystery Melody in Chapel
Kate Kelland

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years.

A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.

Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as "frozen music."

"The music has been frozen in time by symbolism," Mitchell said on his Web site (www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html), which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code.

"It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception."

The 15th Century Rosslyn Chapel, about seven miles south of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, featured in the last part of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" -- one of the most successful novels of all time which has been turned into a Hollywood film.

Stuart Mitchell said he and his father were intrigued by 13 intricately carved angel musicians on the arches of the chapel and by 213 carved cubes depicting geometric-type patterns.

"They are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here," he told Reuters.

Years of research led the Mitchells to an ancient musical system called cymatics, or Chladni patterns, which are formed by sound waves at specific pitches.

The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were able finally to unlock the melody.

The Mitchells have called the piece The Rosslyn Motet and added words from a contemporary hymn to complete it.

They have also scheduled a world premiere at a concert in the chapel on May 18, when four singers will be accompanied by eight musicians playing the piece on medieval instruments.

Simon Beattie of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust said he was delighted to have the mystery finally solved, and was intrigued by the music itself.

"It's not something you would want to put on in the car and listen to, but it's certainly an interesting piece of music," he said. "It's got a good medieval sound to it."
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...14372920070501





In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly
Brad Stone

There is open revolt on the Web.

Sophisticated Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.

The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious threat to the studios, because it requires some technical expertise and specialized software to use it to defeat the copy protection on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. But its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world.

An online uproar came in response to a series of cease-and-desist letters from lawyers for a group of companies that use the copy protection system, demanding that the code be removed from several Web sites.

Rather than wiping out the code — a string of 32 digits and letters in a specialized counting system — the legal notices sparked its proliferation on Web sites, in chat rooms, inside cleverly doctored digital photographs and on user-submitted news sites like Digg.com.

“It’s a perfect example of how a lawyer’s involvement can turn a little story into a huge story,” said Fred von Lohmann, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. “Now that they started sending threatening letters, the Internet has turned the number into the latest celebrity. It is now guaranteed eternal fame.”

The number is being enshrined in some creative ways. Keith Burgon, a 24-year-old musician in Goldens Bridge, N.Y., grabbed his acoustic guitar on Tuesday and improvised a melody while soulfully singing the code. He posted the song to YouTube, where it was played more than 45,000 times.

“I thought it was a source of comedy that they were trying so futilely to quell the spread of this number,” Mr. Burgon said. “The ironic thing is, because they tried to quiet it down it’s the most famous number on the Internet.”

During his work break on Tuesday, James Bertelson, an engineer in Vancouver, Wash., joined the movement and created a Web page featuring nothing but the number, obscured in an encrypted format that only insiders could appreciate. He then submitted his page to Digg, a news site where users vote on what is important. Despite its sparse offerings, his submission received nearly 5,000 votes and was propelled onto Digg’s main page.

“For most people this is about freedom of speech, and an industry that thinks that just because it has high-priced lawyers it has the final say,” Mr. Bertelson said.

Messages left for those lawyers and the trade organization they represent, the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, which controls the encryption system known as A.A.C.S., were not answered. In an e-mail message, a representative for the group said only that it “is looking into the matter and has no further comment at this time.”

The organization is backed by technology companies like I.B.M., Intel, Microsoft and Sony and movie studios like Disney and Warner Brothers, which is owned by Time Warner.

The secret code actually stopped being a secret in February, when a hacker ferreted it out of his movie-playing software and posted it on a Web bulletin board. From there it spread through the network of technology news sites and blogs.

Last month, lawyers for the trade group began sending out cease-and-desist letters, claiming that Web pages carrying the code violated its intellectual property rights under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One letter was sent to Google, which runs a blog network at blogspot.com.

The campaign to remove the number from circulation went largely unnoticed until news of the letters hit Digg. The 25-employee company in San Francisco, acting on the advice of its lawyers, removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database earlier this week, then explained the move to its readers on Tuesday afternoon.

The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech. Some also said that the trade group that promotes the HD-DVD format, which uses A.A.C.S. protection, had advertised on a weekly Digg-related video podcast.

On Tuesday afternoon and into the evening, stories about or including the code swamped Digg’s main page, which the company says gets 16 million readers each month. At 9 p.m. West Coast time, the company surrendered to mob sentiment.

“You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company,” wrote Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, in a blog post. “We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.” If Digg loses, he wrote, “at least we died trying.”

Jay Adelson, Digg’s chief executive, said in an interview that the site was disregarding the advice of its lawyers. “We just decided that it is more important to stand by our users,” he said. Regarding the company’s exposure to lawsuits he said, “we are just going to prepare and do our best.”

The conflict spilled over to Wikipedia, where administrators had to restrict editing on some entries to keep contributors from repeatedly posting the code.

The episode recalls earlier acts of online rebellion against the encryption that protects media files from piracy. Some people believe that such systems unfairly limit their freedom to listen to music and watch movies on whatever devices they choose.

In 1999, hackers created a program called DeCSS that broke the software protecting standard DVDs and posted it on the hacker site 2600.com. The Motion Picture Association of America sued, and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, citing the 1998 digital copyright act, sided with the movie industry.

The DVD code disappeared from the 2600 site, but nevertheless resurfaced in playful haiku, on T-shirts and even in a movie in which the code scrolled across the screen like the introductory crawl in “Star Wars.”

In both cases, the users who joined the revolt and published the codes may be exposing themselves to legal risk. Chris Sprigman, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said that under the digital copyright act, propagating even parts of techniques intended to circumvent copyright was illegal.

However, with thousands of Internet users now impudently breaking the law, Mr. Sprigman said that the entertainment and technology industries would have no realistic way to pursue a legal remedy. “It’s a gigantic can of worms they’ve opened, and now it will be awfully hard to do anything with lawsuits,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/te...gy/03code.html





DRM Group Vows to Fight Bloggers
Darren Waters

Bloggers "crossed the line" when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said.

Thousands of websites published the key, which had been uncovered in a bid to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technology on HD-DVD discs.

Many said they had done this as an exercise in free speech.

An AACS executive said it was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key.

Key master

A row erupted on the internet after popular website Digg began taking down pages that its members had highlighted were carrying the key.

The website said it was responding to legal "cease and desist" notices from the Advanced Access Content System.

Digg's users responded by posting ever greater numbers of websites with the key, and the site eventually sided with its users.

Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group, said it had received "good cooperation from most folk" in preventing the leak of the key.

He described the row between Digg and its users as an "interesting new twist".

"It started out as a circumvention effort six to eight weeks ago but we now see the key on YouTube and on T-Shirts.

"Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.

"They can discuss the pros and cons. We know some people are critical of the technology.

"But a line is crossed when we start seeing keys being distributed and tools for circumvention. You step outside of the realm of protected free speech then."

He said tracking down everyone who had published the keys was a "resource intensive exercise". A search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key.

Mr Ayers said that while he could not reveal the specific steps the group would be taking, it would be using both "legal and technical" steps to prevent the circumvention of copy protection.

"We will take whatever action is appropriate," he said. "We hope the public respects our position and complies with applicable laws."

He added that the copy protection on the HD-DVDs was "absolutely not broken".

"There has been a lot of misunderstanding. The key that has been leaked has now been revoked."

The leak of the key meant that some HD-DVD titles could have their copy protection removed and then could be watched on two different software players. The leak of the key did not affect hardware players, he said.

But he accepted that DVDs that had had their copy protection removed were "now in the clear" and could be copied.

He said AACS brought stronger tools to the table than previous copy protection system and said the system had been designed to cope with breaches.

"This is the first round and will not be the last," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6623331.stm





Digg's DVD-Decoder Fiasco

Lawyers' efforts can be counterproductive
John C. Dvorak

You'd think the world would be coming to an end after a computer enthusiast discovered and decoded a 32-digit hexadecimal number found in all HD-DVD players (and possibly Blu-ray players, depending on whom you ask). This number is apparently the key to crack the data encryption that prevents the copying of discs.

The code didn't take long to leak onto the Web, and then onto one of the most popular news-sharing sites, Digg.com. Digg immediately got a threatening letter from a lawyer and took down the posting with the code.

As is often the case, a firestorm of user protest ensued. Digg eventually apologized and put the post back on the site, where it proliferated like crazy. It was too late anyway; the code was everywhere because of the so-called scandal.

As a publicity stunt, Digg's waffling could not have worked better -- for Digg.

But the episode reemphasizes the new era in corporate control of trade secrets: It's harder to keep a secret than ever before, and lawyers are not helping.

I think it's time I doled out some advice for the corporate executives who can't bring themselves to admit that it is not 1952 anymore. It's harder to keep a secret than ever before, and lawyers are not helping.

First of all, lawyers can be idiots and have no sense of public relations. According to the New York Times and others, this entire current fiasco was started by the too-common threatening letter.

When an attorney sends out threatening letters to people these days, especially to bloggers and other Internet mavens, these documents get scanned and published online to be widely distributed.

Most of these letters are written to sound intimidating, often with a lot of language that's mean-spirited. People, sometimes by the millions, read these and get angry not at the lawyer, but at the company that hired the lawyer. This can lead to a public-relations disaster.

Once something goes out on the Net, it gets copied and posted elsewhere. Even if the original is taken down, other versions appear immediately.

The legal profession has not adjusted to this new phenomenon, and as long as they are being paid by the billable hour, they figure the PR folks (also paid by the billable hour) can fix any problem.

The thinking seems to be a one-dimensional "we did our jobs," CYA approach. Attorneys will claim that they were compelled to act to protect the client. But if ruining a client's image and reputation, and often turning it into a laughingstock is done in the name of "protecting," then perhaps the legal profession should reconsider whether it's being counterproductive.

The epitome of this has been how the MP3 music-sharing scene -- which was underground and not taken seriously by anyone except a few college kids back in the mid-1990s -- was marketed by lawyers, who waged a holy war against trading at the behest of the Recording Industry Association of America.

This war did nothing but popularize a system of sharing music files, and I can assure you that it went from fringe to mainstream only because of highly publicized legal actions against people who essentially were judgment-proof.

In less than a decade, the music business was decimated.

It's same kind of situation with this mysterious number that cracks the DVD encryption. First of all, nobody, myself included, knows what to do with the code. It is practically useless. Nobody, myself included, knows what to do with the DVD code. It is practically useless.

If the lawyers did nothing, it would have languished as a curiosity with perhaps a few crackers developing some software with it. The end result would be a few cracked copies of DVDs running on a few computers here and there.

Because of the lawyers and the nasty letters, now everyone online knows how important this number must be. Boom! Now users get to work on it.

Heck of a job, lawyers.

Investors should be aware of the overall dangers the legal profession present to companies, and how its current and generalized naiveté can sink fortunes overnight.
While I know of no corporation that has been bankrupted by this sort of fiasco, it will happen eventually if lawyers doesn't catch up with the times.

Or perhaps some executives should think for themselves.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...%7D&siteid=rss





Better not

09 f9: A Legal Primer
Fred von Lohmann

As was reported back in February, an enterprising hacker unearthed and posted one of the decryption keys used by AACS to decode HD-DVD movies (other keys and exploits have been made available in the weeks since). Now the AACS-LA (the entity that licenses AACS to makers of HD-DVD players) has set its lawyers on the futile mission of trying to get every instance of at least one key (hint: it begins with 09 f9) removed from the Internet.

Predictably, this legal effort has backfired, resulting in eternal Internet fame for the key in question. In addition to having been posted on hundreds of thousands of web sites (and resulting in the temporary shutdown of Digg.com), the key has already spawned a song, a quiz, a domain name, and numerous T-shirts.

So now might be a good time to review a few of the basic legal issues raised by the posting of the keys. (This is an overview of the legal landscape, not legal advice, and I am not expressing any view about how a case might come out if AACS-LA sued anyone.)

What is the AACS-LA's argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA's ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person shall ... offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that that -

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

The AACS-LA presumably would argue that the key is a "component" or "part" of a "technology" that circumvents AACS. Moreover, AACS-LA would likely argue that the key was "primarily ... produced" to circumvent AACS, that is has no other commercially significant purpose, and that it is being "marketed" for use in a circumvention technology. The takedown letters seem to take the position that both the poster and the hosting provider are engaged in "trafficking."

The AACS-LA will also doubtless point to the DMCA cases brought against 2600 magazine for posting the DeCSS code back in 2000 (EFF was counsel to the defendant). In that case, both the district court and court of appeals concluded that posting DeCSS to a website violated the DMCA.

Who can sue over the posting of the key? The DMCA entitles "anyone injured by a violation" to bring a civil lawsuit seeking damages (including statutory damages ranging between $200 and $2500 for each "offer"). In addition, if a person violates the DMCA "willfully and for purposes of commercial gain," a federal prosecutor could bring criminal charges (with the famous exception of the Sklyarov case, however, criminal prosecutions have generally been limited to situations where the DMCA violation was also accompanied by evidence of commercial piracy).

What about just linking to a place where the key is posted? The courts in the DeCSS case wrestled with the proper test to apply when someone links to a location where a circumvention tool can be found. Ultimately, the district court held that an injunction against linking could be issued after a final judgment if a the plaintiff could show, by clear and convincing evidence,
"that those responsible for the link (a) know at the relevant time that the offending material is on the linked-to site, (b) know that it is circumvention technology that may not lawfully be offered, and (c) create or maintain the link for the purpose of disseminating that technology."

The court of appeals upheld that ruling, while admitting that the issue presented a difficult First Amendment question.

What about the DMCA safe harbors? While no court has ruled on the issue, AACS-LA will almost certainly argue that the DMCA safe harbors do not protect online service providers who host or link to the key (the AACS-LA takedown letters do not invoke the DMCA "notice-and-takedown" provisions, nor do they include the required elements for such a takedown, thereby signaling the AACS-LA position on this). The DMCA safe harbors apply to liabilities arising from "infringement of copyright." Several courts have suggested that trafficking in circumvention tools is not "copyright infringement," but a separate violation of a "para-copyright" provision.

It's difficult to say how a court would rule on this question, but it does create a specter of monetary liability for hosting providers, even if they otherwise comply with the "notice-and-takedown" procedures required by the DMCA safe harbors.

Is the key copyrightable? It doesn't matter. The AACS-LA takedown letter is not claiming that the key is copyrightable, but rather that it is (or is a component of) a circumvention technology. The DMCA does not require that a circumvention technology be, itself, copyrightable to enjoy protection.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005229.php





Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

http://blog.digg.com/?p=74


















Until next week,

- js.



















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