[JackSpratts]

Repress U
Michael Gould-Wartofsky

Free-speech zones. Taser guns. Hidden cameras. Data mining. A new security curriculum. Private security contractors. Welcome to the homeland security campus.

From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention"--as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name--have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.

Building a homeland security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission:

1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.

From 2003 to 2007 an unknown number of them made it into the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice system (TALON), a secretive domestic spying program ostensibly designed to track direct "potential terrorist threats" to the Defense Department itself. In 2006 the ACLU uncovered, via Freedom of Information Act requests, at least 186 specific TALON reports on "anti-military protests" in the United States--some listed as "credible threats"--from student groups at the University of California, Santa Cruz; State University of New York, Albany; Georgia State University; and New Mexico State University, among other campuses.

At more than a dozen universities and colleges, police officers now double as full-time FBI agents, and according to the Campus Law Enforcement Journal, they serve on many of the nation's 100 Joint Terrorism Task Forces. These dual-purpose officer-agents have knocked on student activists' doors from North Carolina State to the University of Colorado and, in one case, interrogated an Iraqi-born professor at the University of Massachusetts about his antiwar views.

FBI agents, or their campus stand-ins, don't have to do all the work. Administrators often do it for them, setting up "free-speech zones," which actually constrain speech, and punishing those who step outside them. Protests were typically forced into "free-assembly areas" at the University of Central Florida and Clemson University, while students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."

2. Lock and load. Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles. Lock-and-load policies that began in the 1990s under the rubric of the "war on crime" only escalated with the President's "war on terror." Each school shooting--most recently the massacre at Virginia Tech--adds fuel to the armament flames.

Two-thirds of universities arm their police, according to the Justice Department. Many of the guns being purchased were previously in the province of military units and SWAT teams: for instance, AR-15 rifles (similar to M-16s) are in the arsenals of the University of Texas campus police. Last April City University of New York bought dozens of semiautomatic handguns. Some states, like Nevada, are even considering plans to allow university staff to pack heat in a "special reserve officer corps."

Most of the force used on campuses these days, though, comes in less lethal form, such as the rubber bullets and pepper pellets increasingly used to contain student demonstrations. Then there is the ubiquitous Taser, the electroshock weapon recently ruled a "form of torture" by the United Nations. A Taser was used by UCLA police in November 2006 to deliver shock after shock to an Iranian-American student for failing to produce his ID at the Powell Library. A University of Florida student was Tased last September after asking pointed questions of Senator John Kerry at a public forum, his plea "Don't Tase me, bro!" becoming the stuff of pop folklore.

3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. On ever more campuses, closed-circuit security cameras can track people's every move, often from hidden or undisclosed locations, sometimes even into classrooms.

The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators reports that surveillance cameras have found their way onto at least half of all colleges, their numbers on any given campus doubling, tripling or, in a few cases, rising tenfold since September 11, 2001. Such cameras have proliferated by the hundreds on private campuses, in particular. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, has more than 400 watching over it, while Harvard and Brown have about 200 each.

Often it can be tricky to find out where the cameras are and just what they're meant to be viewing. The University of Texas battled student journalists over disclosure and ultimately kept its cameras hidden. Sometimes, though, the cameras' purpose seems obvious. Take the case of Hussein Hussein, a professor in the department of animal biotechnology at the University of Nevada, Reno. In January 2005 the widely respected professor found a hidden camera redirected to monitor his office.

4. Mine student records. Student records have in recent years been opened up to all manner of data mining for purposes of investigation, recruitment or just all-purpose tracking. From 2001 to 2006, in an operation code-named Project Strike Back, the Education Department teamed up with the FBI to scour the records of the 14 million students who applied for federal financial aid each year. The objective? "To identify potential people of interest," explained an FBI spokesperson cryptically, especially those linked to "potential terrorist activity."

Strike Back was quietly discontinued in June 2006, days after students at Northwestern University blew its cover. But just one month later, the Education Department's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, in a much-criticized preliminary report, recommended the creation of a federal "unit records" database that would track the activities and studies of college students nationwide. The department's Institute of Education Sciences has developed a prototype for such a national database.

It's not a secret that the Pentagon, for its part, hopes to turn campuses into recruitment centers for its overstretched, overstressed forces. The Defense Department has built its own database for just this purpose. Known as Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies, this program tracks 30 million young people, ages 16 to 25. According to a Pentagon spokesperson, the department has partnered with private marketing and data-mining firms, which in turn sell the government reams of information on students and other potential recruits.

5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out. Under the auspices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been keeping close tabs on foreign students and their dependents through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). As of October 2007, ICE reported that it was actively following 713,000 internationals on campuses, while keeping more than 4.7 million names in the database.

The database aims to amass and record information on foreign students throughout their stay inside the United States. SEVIS requires thick files on the students from the sponsoring schools, constantly updated with all academic, biographical and employment records--all of which will be shared with other government agencies. If students fall out of "status" at school--or if the database thinks they have--the Compliance Enforcement Unit of ICE goes into action.

ICE, of course, has done its part to keep the homeland security campus purified of those not born in the homeland. The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.

6. Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory. Needless to say, not every student is considered a homeland security threat. Quite the opposite. Many students and faculty members are seen as potential assets. To exploit these assets, DHS has launched its own curriculum under its Office of University Programs (OUP), intended, it says, to "foster a homeland security culture within the academic community."

The record so far is impressive: DHS has doled out 439 federal fellowships and scholarships since 2003, providing full tuition to students who fit "within the homeland security research enterprise." Two hundred twenty-seven schools now offer degree or certificate programs in "homeland security," a curriculum that encompasses more than 1,800 courses. Along with OUP, some of the key players in creating the homeland security classroom are the US Northern Command and the Aerospace Defense Command, co-founders of the Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium.

OUP has also partnered with researchers and laboratories to "align scientific results with homeland security priorities." In fiscal year 2008 alone, $4.9 billion in federal funding will go to homeland-security-related research. Grants correspond to sixteen research topics selected by DHS, based on presidential directives, legislation and a smattering of scientific advice.

But wait, there's more: DHS has founded and funded six of its very own "Centers of Excellence," research facilities that span dozens of universities from coast to coast. The latest is a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, the funding for which cleared the House in October. The center is mandated to assist a national commission in combating those "adopting or promoting an extremist belief system...to advance political, religious or social change."

7. Privatize, privatize, privatize. Of course, homeland security is not just a department, nor is it simply a new network of surveillance and data mining--it's big business. (According to USA Today, global homeland-security-style spending had already reached $59 billion a year in 2006, a sixfold increase over 2000.) Not surprisingly, then, universities have in recent years established unprecedented private-sector partnerships with the corporations that have the most to gain from their research. DHS's on-campus National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START), for instance, features Lockheed Martin on its advisory board. The Center for Food Protection and Defense relies on an industry working group that includes Wal-Mart and McDonald's offering "guidance and direction," according to its chair.

While vast sums of money are flowing in from corporate sponsors, huge payments are also flowing out to "strategic contracts" with private contractors, as universities permanently outsource security operations to big corporations like Securitas and AlliedBarton. Little of this money actually goes to those guarding the properties, who are often among the most underpaid workers in the universities. Instead, it fills the corporate coffers of those with little accountability for conditions on campus.

Meanwhile, some universities have developed intimate relationships with private-security outfits like the notorious Blackwater. Last May, for example, the University of Illinois and its police training institute cut a deal with the firm to share its facilities and training programs with Blackwater operatives. Local journalists later revealed that the director of the campus program at the time was on the Blackwater payroll. In the age of hired education, such collaboration is apparently par for the course.
Following these seven steps over the past six years, the homeland security state and its constituents have come a long way in their drive to remake the American campus in the image of a compound on lockdown. Somewhere inside the growing homeland security state that is our country, the next seven steps in the process are undoubtedly already being planned.

Still, the rise of Repress U is not inevitable. The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances. Sometimes such opposition even yields a free-speech zone dismantled, or the Pentagon's TALON declawed, or a Project Strike Back struck down. A rising tide of student protest, led by groups like the new Students for a Democratic Society, has won free-speech victories and reined in repression from Pace and Hampton, where the university dropped its threat of expulsion, to UCLA, where Tasers will no longer be wielded against passive resisters.

Yet if the tightening grip of the homeland security complex isn't loosened, the latest towers of higher education will be built not of ivory but of Kevlar for the over-armored, over-armed campuses of America.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/gould-wartofsky





IFPI Fantasy: 2008 the Year ISP Filtering "Becomes Reality"
Nate Anderson

When we dubbed 2008 the "Year of Filters" two weeks ago, someone at the IFPI must have been reading. The worldwide music trade group has just released its 2008 report on digital music, and it opens by talking about the "sea change" that is sweeping the globe. No, it's not digital music, it's ISP filtering. According to the IFPI, "2007 was the year ISP responsibility started to become an accepted principle. 2008 must be the year it become [sic] reality." If you don't smell a coordinated, worldwide campaign to prod ISPs to board the Filter Express, it's time to haul yourself to an otolaryngologist.

The campaign has been in progress for some time. Here in the US, the MPAA has been banging on the filtering drum for some time with its argument that content filtering is actually in ISPs' best interests. One the one hand, this is true (filtering can reduce peak traffic loads from P2P software), but it's an argument that fails to acknowledge just how much work ISPs have done at all levels of government to make sure that they are a "dumb pipe" to the Internet. Bills like the US DMCA granted ISPs immunity for the content that travels over their networks, but that immunity could be lost if ISPs start filtering.

The MPAA did score a huge win in 2007 as AT&T publicly committed to implementing some sort of filtering scheme across its network, but it hasn't yet managed to get most universities and colleges to do the same thing (either voluntarily or through government regulation). It has tried—in some cases using data that was inflated to three times the actual level—but so far has had limited success.

The ultimate prize would be a government mandate for filtering of the kind now facing ISPs in France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy supervised a "memorandum of understanding" between the government, ISPs, and content owners last year that achieves modest consumer gains but requires ISPs to disconnect repeat copyright infringers.

The IFPI's new report says that the "Sarkozy plan leads the way," and the group clearly intends to push for this model to be replicated elsewhere (something similar was also mentioned as a possibility in the UK's Gowers Report from 2006).

Despite 40 percent worldwide growth in digital sales, IFPI claims that the ratio of unlicensed tracks to legal downloads is still about 20 to one. These illicit downloads are said to be the cause of lower sales, though one study cited by the IFPI shows that P2P downloading didn't affect the buying habits of 64 percent of consumers and actually led 6 percent of file-swappers to buy more music. The other 30 percent did say that they purchased less music after grabbing their songs for free, but this is only a minority of P2P users.

In fact, the IFPI's own numbers show that in the US, for instance, 17.6 percent of all Internet users regularly share files. If 30 percent of those users buy less music, that means that file-swapping only leads 5.9 percent of all US Internet users to buy less music. The number is even lower if we take the US population as a whole.

Forgive us if we're skeptical here, but implementing a draconian solution like deep packet inspection of all Internet traffic in order to get a few percent of the population to buy more music doesn't sound much like progress, or even rationality.

In any event, that's not the way the IFPI sees it. Despite the growth of digital (in South Korea, online sales have even overtaken physical sales), the IFPI says that "the time for action is now," because "revolution and innovation are not going to be enough to secure a healthy future for the music industry."

Fortunately, "revolution and innovation" are actually words that can be applied to the music business now, and the IFPI report rightly cites the explosion of interesting new formats and business models for music. Apart from the well-known download services like iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic, subscription services like Napster, Rhapsody, and the Zune Pass offer unlimited music for a monthly fee. Ad-supported music from sites like Imeem and Last.fm makes it easy to explore new tunes legally, while models like Nokia's "Comes With Music" are baking the cost of a music subscription into a consumer electronics device. In addition, musicians are selling directly to fans and even allowing people to set their own prices.

So in many senses, 2008 looks like a bright year for music, but the heavy-handed emphasis on filtering as the One True Answer gives us pause. After all, once ISPs around the world have filtering technology installed and a mandate to use it, it's only a matter of time before they are asked to look for other sorts of crime and defend other sorts of industries.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-reality.html





AT&T, P2P Filtering, and the Consumer
Thomas Mennecke

The ISP is a far ranging concept that exists in the online world. ISPs such as Optimum Online, Napster, Usenet Server, and YouTube, offer a rainbow of different services. Some ISPs connect to the Internet, while others allow you to participate on the newsgroups. At the end of the day, however, they are all protected by the grace of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA has a safe harbor provision which effectively absolves the ISP from playing a copyright traffic cop on their network.

This provision has been a blessing for Internet providers such as AT&T, a company who was a significant proponent of the safe harbor provision during its previous iterations. As a result, the Internet community was baffled when AT&T recently stated they would consider filtering unauthorized content. The fact that any ISP would voluntarily police their own network has many scratching their heads. Why bother doing someone else’s job, putting up with the expense, and possible consumer backlash?

James Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs, reignited the Internet’s attention during a panel discussion at a CES (Consumer Electronics Show) earlier this month. Accompanied by NBC Universal General Council Rick Cotton, James gave new life to the very real possibility that network filtering was coming to an ISP near you. With AT&T in control of a significant portion of the Internet backbone, any decision made could have a ripple effect on millions of customers. The news hasn’t gone over well with bloggers, journalists, and countless AT&T customers screaming bloody murder on an infinite number of forums.

Just about anyone involved in the debate has their own theory why AT&T is doing this. Some compelling theories suggest AT&T is working in conjunction with the entertainment industry. The theory suggests AT&T needs support for eliminating net neutrality, and is playing politics with the entertainment industry to meet this end. Tim Wu of Slate cleverly discusses a few other theories, such as net neutrality and bandwidth control.

So why is AT&T going through the potentially arduous task of policing its own network? Slyck.com spoke with James Cicconi, who discussed why AT&T was taking up the filtering cause.

“We’re not taking on a legal enforcement role,” Jim Cicconi, told Slyck.com. “We’ve been clear. We don’t feel we have a legal responsibility. We’re not doing that in a legal sense. We do recognize it’s a real problem. There are property rights involved with copyrighted content. Simply saying there’s no legal responsibility doesn’t mean we have no responsibility. We also have responsibility to our customers. [A lot] of pirated material is used to transfer viruses, malware, and things of that nature.”

“[Unauthorized content] raises the cost for our customers. We have a very a small percentage using a majority of the bandwidth. The volume of illegal content is a factor of cost.”

“If someone is using a p2p network on a cell 24/7, it can adversely impact the service of their neighbors. It has the effect of not providing the service paid for. Overwhelming usage is from BitTorrent traffic. No one wants to get to the point [where] we say, “You can’t do that.”

As AT&T has begun evaluating and testing their filtering technology, BitTorrent users have been left to wonder if they’ll suddenly wake to an idle transfer. However, James Cicconi told Slyck.com that AT&T hasn’t implemented any filter on their public network just yet. Providing the technology can be developed, it wouldn’t be imposed until a rather lengthy public trial and endorsement. During the CES panel discussion, Cicconi stated “what we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working.” This left us to wonder if AT&T had already begun testing their network.

“It’s not that AT&T has done anything. Rather, the current system isn’t resulting in a reduction in piracy. I don’t believe the current model of suing users is successful or will be in the long term. And so what I was positioning there, we’re working with the industry, a model to identify copyrighted content. I think we’re pretty clear we haven’t [publicly] tested a system...”

“We’ve [internally] tested several systems, and we’re going to see if there’s a way to identify pirated content on the network. That asks the question of what to do if we develop such as technology. The actual deployment raises a lot of questions, [such as the impact on] customer rights and government policy. We wouldn’t proceed without answers to those questions.”

Consumers can take some comfort in the knowledge that AT&T isn’t moving forward until the public and government weigh in. Judging from the current public reaction, however, the unofficial response is an emphatic “no!”. Comments posted to various articles written on this subject matter are overwhelmingly negative against AT&T’s position, citing Internet censorship, cohorting with the entertainment industry, and attempting to defeat net neutrality standards. Regardless of the reason, public opinion thus far has been overwhelmingly against the plan.

“We hear from our customers directly and indirectly. It’s a very competitive business, ravenously so. I think our company is very, very sensitive to customer attitude - we have to consider this.”

AT&T is also looking to be heard from their perspective, and offers consumer protection as a carrot on the filtering stick.

“[There are] a lot of cases where people are being sued - their neighbor using their computer, or unprotected router - and downloading illegal content. If someone develops a system where filtered technology [stops this], one would feel it’s a lot better. Then customers would be protected. I don’t know if it exists, but I point out that if it were child pornography, I don’t think most people would have a problem with that. You have another level of moral dilemma, but it’s still illegal traffic. There are a lot of people defending copyrighted sharing, but how many would say it’s legal and right? Cooler heads need to come together and discuss whether the internet is a zone where there are no morals or standards of content.”

As with any threat of filtering, clamors of free speech violation inevitably surface. However, rectifying the distribution of copyrighted material is difficult to justify, at least to AT&T. There’s also the invisible line between what’s OK to distribute, and what’s not.

“I don’t think downloading a pirated movie is a free speech right. Other areas, such as pornography, people do see a line. What we’re saying [is]…let’s see if we can develop a means to see illegal or pirated material transferring. If we do have a means, how and where should we use it? No one’s running out there and all of a sudden identifying such traffic. We’re not going to do that. We are partnering to identify. If it’s possible, we need to have a policy discussion on what the right thing is to do. Should we ignore it? If we have the means to stop it, can we, without suing someone?”

“We’re not going to take actions of that nature without a thorough vetting with government and customers.”

About 10 years ago, most ISPs, including AT&T, were lobbying for the safe harbor provision in the DMCA. They got their wish, and since then ISPs have enjoyed immunity from any copyrighted material traversing their network. We asked Cicconi whether they felt that voluntarily filtering their network would negate the effectiveness of the DMCA, and put liability back on the ISP.

“No...We’ve made very clear to the content providers that...we don’t have the legal responsibility, except perhaps forwarding notices. We don’t have the responsibility to be an enforcement agent. We’ve also made clear we’re not changing that position. We’ve also said we’re willing to partner with the industry to address this. If they want to hold us to a legal requirement, we’re not going to partner with any such company. Content companies recognize they can’t impose any such responsibly. They’re not attempting to. But, I don’t see any movement to do that. If someone tries, we’ll end up in court. We’re not going to, under any circumstance, undertake enforcement responsibilities.”

Whenever the word “filter” and “P2P” are in the same sentence, fear almost always surrounds the potential loss of legitimate content. As many are already aware, BitTorrent is the de facto standard of distribution for many creative commons and copylefted content. BitTorrent, Inc. has worked to fill their site with both free and pay content, all distributed by this protocol. Additionally, many unsigned and signed bands alike utilize P2P for the distribution of their work. Any filter that’s developed would have to take on the daunting task of separating legitimate content from unauthorized content, and then further distinguishing intentionally free information.

“We’re very sensitive to legal content,” Jim reassured us. “We know World of War Craft updates and patches are distributed over BitTorrent. There are many mainstream applications and patches [that are] distributed via BitTorrent. BitTorrent isn’t an evil protocol, it’s a very efficient means. It’s a challenge for network operators. [Data streams] can run so long cooperatively. The challenge is, that it is constant. With video it’s exponential. The network…is not built to handle the volume.”

According to Cicconi, AT&T is doing everything it can to handle the traffic by investing billions of dollars each year, but even AT&T doesn’t have the money to keep up. Smart traffic management is the answer, especially with a challenging, multi-use application such as BitTorrent.

“There’s nothing wrong with BitTorrent. There’s very legitimate usage, [and] one would hope that it would grow. We’re focusing on pirated content over BitTorrent, [not BitTorrent per se.] The only issue is the sheer volume of traffic. It’s no different than any other traffic management challenge.”

Reflecting on AT&T’s proposal, many file-sharers can recall instances where the entertainment industry was sure it found the golden P2P bullet - only to see the threat slowly fade away. The threat of corrupt files destroying networks never came to fruition, suing network administrators did little to stop the technological advancement of file-sharing protocols, and ISPs that tried throttling bandwidth were met with encryption. While the mainstream P2P user is alarmed at these recent developments, most veterans have come to accept at worst there will be a brief adjustment period. Is AT&T concerned about the inevitable technological arms race spiraling out of control?

“The short answer, sure. That’s part of the learning that’s going on with some of our engineers to understand the experience they’ve had today. Try to anticipate what actions may be taken. Encryption is an obvious challenge. Just because there’s a challenge shouldn’t [mean we] ignore it.”

“Defending the internet doesn’t mean defending all conduct that occurs on the internet. Do we want the internet to be a civil place…or the wild west where you need to protect yourself. We have a lot of bad content [on the network]. Should we find ways to find and stop it? It’s an identical question to other illegal content.”

A common theme throughout our conversation with Jim Cicconi was “obligation” and “responsibility”. Jim Cicconi emphasized these words, as he often drew the analogy of witnessing a shoplifter or mugging. Does one help during that circumstance? We may not be legally responsible, but do we have a moral obligation?

It’s difficult for the average netizen to imagine a large corporation such as AT&T would feel any moral obligation, let alone to one that has helped prop up the broadband and digital entertainment revolution. Yet AT&T sees several issues – their moral obligation to deter theft, the need to save money, and providing a good service to everyone else not using P2P. Whatever the reasons and theories conjured for AT&T’s motivation, there are a few certainties. Filtering isn’t coming any time soon, and if AT&T is honest regarding their sensitivity to the customer’s opinion, it may never actually happen.
http://www.slyck.com/story1640_ATT_P...d_the_Consumer





AT&T Quarterly Profit Profit Rises

AT&T Inc on Thursday posted a higher quarterly profit after better-than-expected wireless growth, sending its shares up almost 3 percent in pre-market trading.

The company also affirmed its outlook for 2008.

The biggest U.S. telephone company said its fourth-quarter profit was $3.1 billion, or 51 cents per share, compared with $1.9 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Most of the year-ago quarter excludes earnings from BellSouth, which AT&T bought at the end of 2006.

Before merger-related costs and other special items AT&T's profit rose to 71 cents a share from 61 cents in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose to $30.3 billion from $15.9 billion.

The results were in line with the average analyst forecast of earnings per share of 71 cents before items, on revenue of $30.5 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

"We had an excellent fourth quarter, which affirms our outlook for 2008," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

The company also approved a buyback of 400 million shares, or 6.6 percent of its shares outstanding, and expects to complete the transactions by the end of 2009.

AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple Inc's iPhone, said it added 2.7 million net wireless subscribers in the quarter compared with average estimates of 1.9 million from four analysts contacted by Reuters. Estimates ranged from 1.35 million to 2.36 million.

The company said it maintained double-digit growth in revenue and subscribers for its broadband business and saw subscribers to its U-verse video service rise to 231,000 by the end of the quarter from 126,000 the previous quarter. Stephenson said the company was on track to reach more than 1 million U-verse subscribers by the end of 2008.

AT&T earlier this month said it was seeing some softness in its consumer business, which represents about 20 percent of the company's revenue, but said this had less of an impact in wireless than in wireline services.

Shares in AT&T were up 2.9 percent to $37.60 in pre-market trade. (Reporting by Sinead Carew and Michele Gershberg, editing by Mark Porter)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...21857520080124





Nokia Profit Soars 44 Percent
AP

Nokia Corp., the world's No. 1 mobile phone maker, on Thursday said that fourth-quarter net profit surged 44 percent to $2.6 billion and that it had reached its long-term goal of 40 percent market share in handset sales. The company's stock soared.

Finland-based Nokia said that net sales in October through December grew 34 percent to 15.7 billion euros ($22.9 billion), and that it sold more than 133 million handsets -- up 27 percent from the same period in 2006.

''Nokia's excellent fourth quarter contributed to a year of high growth and increased profitability for the company,'' Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.

In Helsinki, Nokia stock surged 12.4 percent to $33.81 after the announcement.

Nokia's strong performance was in stark contrast to that of closest rival Motorola Inc., which saw shares plunge more than 23 percent Wednesday after new CEO Greg Brown said the recovery of its ailing handset division will take longer than expected.

Schaumberg, Ill.-based Motorola said net profit fell 84 percent in the fourth quarter and mobile phone sales were down 38 percent.

Nokia, which is based in Espoo near the Finnish capital, Helsinki, has sales in 130 countries. It employs some 130,000 people worldwide.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...zfweQD8UC7R580





Nintendo Earnings Nearly Double on Wii
AP

Nintendo's profit for the first nine months of the fiscal year nearly doubled from the previous year, propelled by booming sales of its hit Wii game machine, the company said Thursday.

Group net profit at Nintendo Co., which also makes Super Mario and Pokemon games, totaled 258.93 billion yen ($2.43 billion) for the nine months ended Dec. 31, up 96.3 percent from 131.92 billion yen for the same period in fiscal 2006. Nintendo didn't give a quarterly breakdown.

The Wii, with its wandlike remote-controller, is winning over novices -- including the elderly and women -- to video games.

The machines, which first went on sale in late 2006, have been snatched up as soon as they arrive at stores, outstripping the competing PlayStation 3 from Sony Corp. and Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp.

Nintendo said it has now sold more than 20 million Wii machines worldwide, 14.29 million of them during the latest three quarters.

New Wii games, including ''Wii Fit,'' ''Super Mario Galaxy'' and ''Wii Sports,'' have been a success.

Sales during the nine months jumped rose 84.7 percent from a year ago to 1.316 trillion yen ($12.35 billion) from 712.59 billion.

The Kyoto-based company kept its profit forecast at 275 billion yen ($2.58 billion), for the full fiscal year through March 31, but raised its sales forecast to 1.63 trillion yen ($15.29 billion), up from an earlier estimate of 1.55 trillion yen.

Nintendo said its DS portable machine, which comes with a touch panel, has also been very popular, marking 24.5 million units in sales during the nine months through December 2007, adding to cumulative sales of 64.79 million.

The DS has also introduced new kinds of gaming, including brain teasers, virtual pets and cooking recipes.

Nintendo said it expects to sell 18.5 million Wiis and 29.5 million DS machines for the fiscal year through March 31.

Nintendo shares slipped 2.4 percent in Tokyo to 53,200 yen ($499) shortly before earnings were released.
http://www.physorg.com/news120374181.html





Canadian Artists Stump for Tougher Copyright Laws
Canwest

In anticipation of a new federal copyright law, an alliance representing writers, musicians and actors has released a platform detailing what they think is best for Canadian artists.

The Creators Copyright Coalition's report, released Monday, calls for artists to be given the sole right "to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form" and "to transfer the work or any substantial part thereof to another medium."

The group, which includes the Writers Guild of Canada and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, also wants Internet service providers (ISPs) to "share in the responsibility" for their online content, and to "share liability" when copyright infringement occurs on their networks.

"Creators have been waiting far too long for copyright reform. It is time to protect the rights of all authors and performers in the Internet age," Bill Freeman, chair of the coalitionsaid in a statement.

The government's new copyright law proposal was expected to be introduced before the new year, but was stalled by protests and concerns from various interest groups, including the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group set-up by Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor (and copyright law activist).

Many esteemed artists and coalition members have spoken out in support of the platform.

"While the digital age has offered music creators wonderful opportunities, it is clear that the rampant unpaid online consumption of music and other content has had a devastating effect. We need up-to-date copyright legislation that will protect the value of our rights, ensuring us a future where creators will be compensated for the use and enjoyment of our work," songwriter Stan Meissner said in a statement.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/can...html?id=253564





Canadian Privacy Commissioner: Just Say No to Intrusive DRM
Nate Anderson

Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, is wary of DRM, and she's not afraid to tell other branches of government about her concerns. Stoddart has just sent a public letter to Jim Prentice, the Canadian Minister of Industry, telling him that his impending copyright reform bill should not protect any DRM that gathers and transmits personal data.

Stoddart wouldn't care much about DRM if it "only controlled copying and use of content." But DRM can also collect personal information and send it back to the "copyright owner or content provider, without the consent or knowledge of the user." Even if users do find out (and object), they wouldn't be able to strip the DRM or circumvent it because Prentice's bill will reportedly contain US-style anti-circumvention provisions.

Stoddart points to the Sony BMG rootkit fiasco as a real-world example of the problem. The Windows-only content protection software included on selected CDs cloaked its presence, collected information about what discs were played, and sent the data (and a user's IP number) to Sony BMG. That made the software a privacy concern, not just something for IP lawyers to debate. "That this occurs when individuals are engaged in a private activity in their homes or other places where they have a high expectation of privacy exacerbates the intrusiveness of the collection," Stoddart wrote.

Her concern in the letter is narrow, but it's heartening to see parts of the Canadian government, at least, taking issues of consumer privacy seriously. Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has spearheaded much of the opposition to Prentice's bill, says that the letter "provides an important reminder that it is more than just copyright law that hangs in the balance as the government's plans could ultimately place Canadians' privacy at risk."

Prentice had initially readied the bill for presentation late last year, but the media firestorm over its introduction has already delayed it for over a month, with no word on when it will be officially introduced.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...usive-drm.html





Long-time DRM foe Yahoo Music Planning DRM-free MP3 Store
Jacqui Cheng

When it comes to opening new online music stores, DRM-free is the name of the game. Now that all of the Big Four music labels have either completely dropped or are in the process of dropping copy protection requirements from their music, online retailers are rushing to sell the newly-freed songs faster than a Mac user gravitates to an iPhone. Although Amazon has now made a name for itself as the first (and currently, the only) MP3 store to offer DRM-free tracks from all of the Big Four labels, Yahoo now plans to throw its hat into the ring later this year.

The news of Yahoo's plans came by way of two anonymous record label execs speaking to the Associated Press. The companies are still working out the details of such a venture and are only holding preliminary talks at this time, but it wouldn't be outlandish to guess that Yahoo is attempting to work out a deal with all of the big dogs—Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI.

Yahoo Music general manager Ian Rogers has long been lobbying the music industry to drop DRM. Yahoo was one of the first to begin testing sales of DRM-free MP3s in December of 2006, when it started selling unprotected tracks from EMI. Since then, the DRM-free music biz has exploded, with DRM-free offerings found through iTunes, Amie Street, Amazon, eMusic, magnatune, PureTracks, and 7digital. But none of them (save Amazon) have DRM-free music available from nearly all major artists, leaving Amazon as the place to go for the widest selection of unprotected music.

Until Yahoo joins the party, that is. Yahoo has the potential to wrangle the Big Four into a deal and become the second major music store to offer DRM-free music from them all (plus, undoubtedly, a smattering of independent labels as the others already do). Why Yahoo and not the others? Because, save for iTunes, the other music stores are either not very interested in big music, or just plain aren't very big (eMusic is a decent size, but focuses mostly on indie labels). The music labels are also still holding out on iTunes a bit to get back at Apple for holding the keys to the castle for so long. So who's left? Yahoo and Amazon.

If 2007 marked the death of music DRM, such a venture through Yahoo could make 2008 the year that DRM-free music actually becomes widely available. Not only that, but all music stores offering DRM-free music will be forced to come up with new ways to appeal to customers. Exclusive content and bundles are something that iTunes already offers, but the competition will surely need to step up.

For example, Yahoo (and others) could offer songs at higher bit-rates than Amazon and the rest of the competition (Amazon currently offers songs at 256kbps), or an entirely lossless format. It could offer ogg support in order to really set the music free. Or, better yet, offer downloads in a variety of formats so that the user can choose whatever he or she wants. AllOfMP3 (technical legalities aside) lets users choose both bitrates and codecs on the fly—how cool would that be in a legit music store?

The store could also give an enormous boost to Yahoo, which has continued to struggle through some restructuring in recent months. The company already offers a music subscription service (in addition to streaming audio and video), but indicated last year that it planned to ease off of the subscription model. If Yahoo does manage to launch a DRM-free music store to rival Amazon, Steve Jobs will surely be fuming over iTunes still being stuck with DRM.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...mp3-store.html





Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
Smaran

Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.

Coelho’s view is that letting people swap digital copies of his books for free increases sales. In a keynote speech (embedded below) at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich he talked about how uploading the Russian translation of “The Alchemist” made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more. He said:

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

He’s convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.

So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That’s just the beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a Wordpress blog, Pirate Coelho, where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:

Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…

In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language and books, and how online “piracy” and BitTorrent have helped him not only be more widely read, but also sell more books! It’s a must watch.
http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-au...-books-080124/





It’s the end of the world as he knows it

DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble
Lance Ulanoff

I say we're on the road to ruin. It's one panic after another, and with each new stopgap plan, the music industry—really the entire digital content industry—digs itself in deeper.

Music lovers are dancing in the streets as one major music company, online music service, and online retail outlet after another walks away from onerous digital rights management restrictions. They'll sell you DRM-free music, as long as you accept lower audio quality. Bands like Radiohead and Coldplay are even letting consumers set their own prices.

My colleague Dan Costa applauds these moves, saying "the music just wants to be free." Yuck, since when did Dan start talking like a hippie? It reminds me of that saccharine-sweet "Free to Be You and Me" album from the seventies.

So now it's a good idea to give away music in the hope that people will think you're so cool that they'll pay anyway. Right. There were reports that many people did pay for Radiohead's album, but I'll be surprised if that's repeated very often. Also, not every band is Radiohead or Coldplay—groups that can make money elsewhere (like concert halls). How many bands are touring these days? The ones making money could probably be counted on a couple of hands, and none have the drawing power of teen music queen Hannah Montana.

DRM haters say that DRM-free is the wave of the future. You don't restrict how people consume content. You can't block their right to take it with them on their music players or port it through their homes. I say we're on the road to ruin. It's one panic after another, and with each new stopgap plan, the music industry—really the entire digital content industry—digs itself in deeper.

Let's back up and look at the basic principles of content, commerce, and our economy. I'll start with my daughter. The other day she asked me why everything can't be free. I explained that buying and selling is not a new phenomenon. Bartering goes back thousands of years, and it creates an incentive for people to do things and make things. So people who made wooden chairs could trade them for, say, rice, fresh fruits, or meat. In time, a monetary system was introduced to generate a larger economy. People still created things to get that fruit, but now they could get these goods without having to deliver the chair directly to the guy who wanted to sit. Instead, they could deliver it to someone who would sell dozens of chairs. That guy would give them money and then they could buy the fruits and meats from someone nearby, helping to generate a local economy.

My daughter seemed happy with the explanation, but as I told it, I realized that the content economy is at a tipping point. Growing up, I bought countless books, a bunch of music, and a fair number of videotapes. No one really thought about content ownership. We bought movies and music and figured we owned them. Not that we could do much with them. Sure, we could copy some pages out of a book at the library's photocopy machine, and some people created mix tapes from their favorite albums, and others got in the habit of recording movies from TV to VHS. These were not rampant problems, and no one panicked.

The digitization of everything changed all that. Now we're acutely aware that we really do not own any of the content we consume. We access or play an instance of it, but ownership lies really with the creators or, if they signed the rights away, to the media conglomerate that sold the right to consume it—on a limited basis—to you. Thanks to digitization and the Internet, replication on a massive scale became super-easy. This led to file sharing, Napster, lawsuits, the demise of Napster, its rebirth, the introduction of DRM, and now DRM's slow demise.

The music industry's moves have been terrified reactions to staunch the bleeding of millions of dollars in revenue down the drain. For maybe a year, music companies thought they had the situation under control, but then album sales tumbled. Retailers, musicians, and some music-industry execs thought DRM was the culprit, and they soon joined the chorus of consumers calling for its head. Now consumers are getting their wish, and the music industry will continue to crumble.

Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy, yet everyone's cheering. Has the world gone mad?

Not that the other solutions are any better. I love how intelligent people think subscription-based music services are the way to go. All you can eat for $15 a month. Talk about devaluing your product. People can download enough songs to fill 100 albums and pay under $20. How does anyone make money this way?

Worse yet, if you sign up for a subscription, you're saying that it's okay for the music service to wipe out your music collection if you cancel. Imagine walking into your living room as all your books disappear because you changed libraries, or your DVD collection disappears because you switched from Blockbuster to Netflix.

Both giving away content free of charge and taking everything away from consumers if they cancel fly in the face of everything we know about a functioning economy. People will become dissatisfied. Artists will stop making content because they're not getting paid. When there is no content, people will stop buying gadgets to consume that content. In short order, one part of our digital economy will collapse, and it could be followed by countless others.

I don't have the answer, but I welcome your suggestions.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2251666,00.asp





Apple May be Crippling DTrace to Protect its DRM
Erik Kennedy

One of the more exciting under-the-hood improvements in the latest release of Mac OS X is its support for the powerful DTrace framework for application profiling and system administration. Created and licensed to the open source community by Sun, DTrace is a kernel-level tool for tracing and profiling the execution of code. Our own John Siracusa touched on the benefits that DTrace offers for Mac developers and users in his review of Leopard back in October. The inclusion of DTrace in Mac OS X should lead to better understanding of how applications behave on a Mac and reduce the turnaround time for bugfixes and new releases.

However, there exists a class of applications for which DTrace not only doesn't function, but is actively prevented from producing results. That is the conclusion of DTrace co-creator and Solaris kernel hacker Adam Leventhal anyway, who posted a disturbing blog entry on Friday detailing some of the changes Apple made to its implementation of DTrace.

According to Adam's research, Apple has deliberately crippled DTrace functionality for certain applications. The mechanism involves a process flag called P_LNOATTACH which, when set for a particular process, prevents DTrace from recording any data about that process. Adam uncovered this process flag while trying to track down some unusual DTrace output and discovered an ugly fact: Apple's implementation of the P_LNOATTACH mechanism is designed to prevent certain processes from reporting to DTrace. But, whenever any such process is running, any system-wide analysis will be skewed by the fact that some DTrace reports vanish into the ether. In other words, DTrace may not work properly on the system level whenever a protected process is in the mix.

As one of the applications tagged with the P_LNOATTACH plag happens to be iTunes, it's logical to assume (as Adam does) that this is yet another consequence of digital "rights" management rearing its unsightly head. I'm of two minds on the subject. It's within Apple's right (and potentially a part of its contract) to try to keep people from circumventing its DRM technologies, repugnant as they may be. When it starts to interfere with the proper operation of the OS, though, that seems to be going a little far. Here's hoping Apple can find a way to fix the problems with DTrace to at least retain its usefulness without crippling it.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/appl...rotect-its-drm





iTunes Plus and 30 Cent Upgrades: What's the Deal?
Jacqui Cheng

In May of last year, Apple introduced DRM-free music downloads under the moniker of "iTunes Plus." They went for $1.29—30¢ higher than the typical, protected AAC track through iTunes. At that time, users could pay that 30¢ difference in order to "upgrade" their protected music to 256Kbps AAC files without DRM, which people mostly viewed as an acceptable solution.

But in October, Apple dropped the price of all its iTunes Plus tracks to 99¢. Now, unprotected music from Apple costs exactly the same as protected music, giving the iTunes Plus versions a little more traction in a growing DRM-free market. The only problem? Users still had to pay to upgrade their music to iTunes Plus. We mentioned this odd inconsistency at the time, but chalked it up to the slow and cumbersome turnover that the iTunes Store had that week. Surely, it would be fixed eventually.

Well, it's three months later, and Apple is still charging 30¢ to upgrade a regular old iTunes track to an iTunes Plus track. From a consumer perspective, this sucks. The two cost exactly the same now, so if users had "mistakenly" bought music from iTunes before the DRM-free revolution, they now have to pay to be free. Of course, it goes without saying that customers who have bought nearly any kind of DRMed music have had to re-purchase their music if they want it DRM-free, but Apple advertised this option as an upgrade because of the price difference. Now there isn't one.

A lot of readers have e-mailed us about this, so we tried to do a little bit of digging for y'all.

There are a few reasons why this could be. iTunes may pay a per-file royalty to the music labels, as Audible does. Audible doesn't allow users to re-download purchased content over and over because of the royalty system set up with publishers, the company told Ars. Similarly, iTunes only lets users re-download purchased songs once in a lifetime—if you don't back up that music and have already used up your one re-download quota, tough cookies for you. It wouldn't be outlandish to assume that iTunes has a similar deal with the labels, and therefore can't allow users to merely upgrade their music (and then re-download the unprotected tracks) for free.

We contacted Apple PR to see if we could get an official answer on the topic, but Apple declined to comment. So instead, we inquired with a few of our sources within Apple to try and find out what the real deal was, but we didn't get many answers there either. One person said he he was only aware of bandwidth costs associated with re-downloading the files (of course, this doesn't mean other costs don't exist, just that he wasn't aware of them). He said he thought that 5¢ per song was much more appropriate, but alas, even within Apple, company decisions are often a mysterious thing.

Does that answer many of your questions? Not really. But we'll keep poking and prodding and let you know if we find anything else.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/appl...whats-the-deal





With This Bridge Device, Songs Can March Directly From One iPod to Another



Danielle Belopotosky

If a friend’s digital music collection leaves you with playlist envy, instant gratification is one step closer. MiShare lets music connoisseurs swap files between iPods on the fly.

The device serves as a bridge between two iPods (though not the Shuffle or Touch models) and allows sharing of songs, videos and photos. It can transmit a 3-megabyte song in about 6 seconds, or a 60-megabyte album in under 2 minutes. Pushing a button copies the most recently played song; holding it down copies the whole playlist.

But miShare doesn’t eliminate the need to connect to a computer altogether. When you sync your iPod with iTunes, you are prompted to unlock any songs and videos that are protected by Apple’s anticopying system by entering the original purchaser’s user name and password.

Unprotected songs are available for immediate playback (but sharing responsibly is always a good idea).

The device, which will be available this month for $100 from mishare.com, is simple in form, but the manual is a must-read for the technologically timid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/te...h/17share.html





The Rough-and-Tumble Online Universe Traversed by Young Cybernauts
Felicia R. Lee

A baby-faced eighth grader, viciously bullied online, hangs himself. With a click of her mouse, a young woman with anorexia uses cyberspace to find tips on starving. A high school student, with a world of plot outlines available on the Internet, admits that he cannot recall ever actually reading a book.

If 21st-century parenthood is not scary enough, “Growing Up Online,” a documentary to be broadcast on the “Frontline” program on most PBS stations on Tuesday night, uses those real-life stories to ask an increasingly important question: What does it mean to be part of the first generation coming of age steeped in a virtual world seemingly outside parental control? The documentary touches on the much discussed fear of online sexual predators, as well as concerns about the ease of cut-and-paste plagiarism, using the Internet. It also examines how notions of privacy and the meaning of friendships change when a computer button can ferry your words and your images to strangers.

“It’s one of those societal shifts that’s happening so quickly there’s not a lot of good data on what this means for our kids’ brains or hearts,” said Rachel Dretzin, the writer of “Online.” Her documentary credits include “Failure to Protect,” a series about Maine’s child welfare system, and “Hillary’s Class,” about the 1969 Wellesley College graduating class that included the future Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Ms. Dretzin has also produced a 15-minute video on middle-aged sexuality for nytimes.com.)

Ms. Dretzin co-produced and directed “Online” with John Maggio, whose documentary work includes “Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: Einstein’s Letter,” part of a series on the History Channel.

“We came out of it feeling, you find what you’re looking for online,” Mr. Maggio said of making the film, adding that parents had a distorted fear of the online boogeyman. “If you’re basically a grounded kid, you’re going to be fine,” he said. “We need to teach people good citizenship, a sense of morality, right and wrong, that transfer to the Internet.”

Mr. Maggio and Ms. Dretzin, who are parents, maintain that for most young people, being online is no disaster and can be a source of creativity and information. In any case, there is no going back. “Growing Up Online” estimates that more than 90 percent of teenagers use the Internet.

The film begins with a look inside some homes and classrooms in Morris County in northern New Jersey. There affluent youths have their own computers, and the ones who live in housing projects crowd around computers at community centers. In each group some youngsters play war games, tweak their personal profiles, pose for racy photographs.

In one home a 7-year-old, Kurt, goes to the Club Penguin Web site (clubpenguin.com) to socialize, while upstairs his 13-year-old brother, Clay, picks the last name Calamity to freshen his MySpace profile.

Such behavior on its own is benign, but from a parent’s perspective, it opens the children to an unknown world. “It’s really hard to control what our kids are doing online,” says Anne Collier, a writer who provides online safety information for parents. “What we have here is really kind of the new Wild West. Nobody is really in charge.”

This is a virtual Wild West, though, conducted through cellphones, MySpace and Facebook.

“I have had, like, relationships with guys online, but like in school or in public, we’re not actually friends,” says a 16-year-old identified as Sara. She has an eating disorder and visits sites that celebrate anorexia.

Sara’s parents knew nothing of her eating disorder until after her interview with “Frontline.” Similarly, Greg Bukata, a teenager who lives in Chatham, N.J., reveals the tricks he employs to wriggle out of his father’s attempts to monitor his computer use.

“I’d go on my way and do what I wanted, and he’d think I’d be researching monkeys or something,” Greg says. He also says that he can’t remember the last time he read a book. Recently, he adds, he took five minutes to read an online condensed version of “Romeo and Juliet.”

At Chatham High School, Michael LaSusa, a co-principal, concedes that the classroom must compete with the flash of cyberspace.

“We have to be interactive because they’re accustomed to sitting in front of a screen and they’ve got five windows up and they’re talking to three people at the same time,” Mr. LaSusa says.

The younger generation regards online not as a separate place “but as just a sort of continuation of their existence,” says Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

“Cyberspace mirrors and magnifies offline behaviors, scaling up both the good and the bad,” Ms. Boyd said in an e-mail message. “On one hand, this is terrifying. On the other, it provides a great opportunity for parents, educators, social workers and other concerned professionals to understand and reach out to youth at an entirely new level.”

“Growing Up” shows one young woman with body piercings using the Internet to find the popularity and acceptance that have eluded her elsewhere, but it also shows the Halligan family of Essex Junction, Vt., confronting the very worst. Their son, Ryan, 13, killed himself in October 2003 after enduring online bullying.

After his son’s death, John Halligan logged on to Ryan’s computer to discover that he had been caught in a smear campaign of rumors about his sexuality. A popular girl at school flirted with him, using instant messaging, and then announced that the flirtation was a joke, Mr. Halligan learned. And Ryan had made an online friend with whom he visited a Web site that discusses the best suicide methods.

“The computer and the Internet were not the cause of my son’s suicide, but they helped,” Mr. Halligan says. “I believe they helped amplify and accelerate the hurt and pain that he was trying to deal with that started in person, in the real world.”

By the end of “Online,” Greg Bukata, for one, has quit the Internet, if only temporarily. He is seen graduating from Chatham High School, with plans to attend the United States Coast Guard Academy, where Internet use is prohibited for several weeks.

“It’ll be hard, but I need to disconnect,” he says. “I need to just pull the plug on this Internet life for a little bit and see what it’s like.”
http://nytimes.com/2008/01/22/arts/t...ront.html?8dpc





Coroner Baffled at Spate of Suicides
David Batty, Jemima Kiss and agencies

A coroner in south Wales said today he had "no idea" what lay behind the rising spate of suicides by young people in the area.

The comment by Philip Walters came as local police downplayed suggestion that they were investigating an internet "suicide chain" following claims that the deaths of seven young people were linked to the social networking site Bebo.

The latest victim, Natasha Randall, 17, was found dead at her family home in Blaengarw, near Bridgend last week. Two other teenage girls who knew her attempted to harm themselves the following day. Last night, one of them was still on a life support machine in hospital, while the second girl was discharged from hospital.

Police believe that all the victims may be linked, possibly because they met online.

Walters, the coroner for Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taff and Merthyr Tydfil, said the number of suicides in the area had been increasing "year on year" over the past three years.

He said: "There seems to be a larger number in Bridgend. The problem is that we've got these young suicides, but in very few cases do we get to the bottom of anything. I can't understand it.

"In the vast majority of these cases, we can't find any underlying reason for it. The thing that concerns us most of all is that we never know why."

South Wales police seized Natasha's computer and officers said they were attempting to trace any internet communication between the victims.

But a police spokeswoman denied that the force had ever said there was an established link between the deaths, which the tabloids have labelled "copycat suicides".

She said: "We have taken Natasha Randall's computer to see what kind of things she was saying and to build up a picture of what happened, rather than to investigate any specific site. That is a routine part of investigating a sudden death and we have never said we were looking at any internet sites."

The divisional commander of Bridgend police, Superintendent Tim Jones, said earlier there was no direct link between Randall's death and the suicide attempt made by a 15-year old girl in Pontycymmer on Friday.

He said police were tracing friends of the girls and visiting local parents

Over the past year six young men have killed themselves in the area, several of whom had posted profiles on the social networking website Bebo. Following their deaths other youngsters set up memorial sites where friends post messages and contribute a "virtual brick" to a "remembrance wall". Postings on the page for Natasha included messages reading: "RIP chick", "Sleep Tight Princess" and "Sweetdreams Angel".

Walters has already held inquests into the deaths of friends Dale Crole, David Dilling and Thomas Davies, but said there was nothing linking them to social networking sites.

He said: "The sites are global, so why would they cause an issue in Bridgend in particular?

"You can't link any of the deaths to these websites. There was no mention of them in any of the inquests that have already taken place."

Walters said an inquest into Natasha's death was opened and adjourned on Monday, and would be concluded later this year.

He said the cause of her death was not yet known, and added that he was awaiting toxicology reports, ordered in the case of every suspected suicide.

Before her death, Natasha, a first year student at Bridgend college, had also posted messages dedicated to people who had killed themselves. One message, dedicated to Liam Clarke, 20, who was found dead in a Bridgend Park on December 27, read: "Tasha Randall says: 'RIP Clarky boy!! gonna miss ya! always remember the gd times! love ya x' 'Me too!'"

Clarke was friends with another victim, Thomas Davies, 20, who killed himself just two days after the funeral of a third young man, David Dilling, 19, who also killed himself.

Yesterday, Davies' mother Melanie warned parents to keep a close eye on their children's internet use. She said: "I think the problem is they do not know how to speak like adults about serious issues like this. They can speak to each other on the computer but do not know how to express their emotions in other ways.

"Thomas would spend about three hours a night on the computer, talking to his friends. The thing is that most parents don't understand what they are doing or what they are talking about.

"He did go on Bebo and apparently he had a page on there. He must have discussed his other friends dying on there because it had upset him. Like most parents, I have no idea how to get on these sites or what other kids are talking about."

Police are also linking the deaths of Dale Crole, 18, of nearby Porthcawl, and Zachary Barnes, 17, of Bridgend, with the other deaths. Two weeks ago Gareth Morgan, 27, was found dead in his bedroom at his home in Bridgend.

A Bebo spokeswoman said: "The loss of any young life is always distressing. We will work closely with the authorities to provide any assistance which will help them with their investigations. We have close relationships with our member community, law enforcement agencies, and public safety partners to provide support and advice for our users. We are committed to providing our members with the safest possible environment online."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/23/news1





Don't Do the Dew

A case involving a pornographer and two teenage girls highlights a legal gray area.
Dave Maass

Tucson porn-proprietor Tyrone Henry wants you to know that blowing your load on the faces of blindfolded, underage girls who think they're participating in a facial cream marketing study is not fraud or any other crime, no matter what the Arizona Court of Appeals said last month. He also wants you to know he was framed.

Whether he did it or not, he's serving a seven-year sentence because of the creative legal work of a Pima County prosecutor, Brad Roach

In the summer of 2000, Roach was assigned to prosecute Tyrone Henry after two teenage girls said he lured them to his home to try out a product called "White Dew" facial cream he was developing. Instead of exfoliation, they said they got ejaculation.

The girls, 15 and 16 years old at the time, said Henry showed them examples of women with "clumpy" white cream on their faces and then blindfolded them. The girls said they heard heavy breathing and Henry say, "It's coming," and then felt a thick, warm substance applied to their faces. They said he took photos, paid them $10 a piece and convinced them to make follow-up appointments. Thinking about it later, they realized they'd been hoodwinked and called the police.

Roach admits the hardest part of the case was figuring out what charge he could hang on Henry. It wasn't sexual assault because he didn't touch the girls sexually, and they didn't touch him. And it wasn't indecent exposure because the girls were blindfolded.

"It was fascinating," Roach said. "I don't want to say it was a once-in-a-lifetime case, but it's only once in awhile do you get something this bizarre."

In the end, the only charge Roach could get to stick was "fraudulent scheme and artifice." The Division II of the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded that Roach had made the right decision, knocking down Henry's appeal.

"It was a huge loophole," Roach said. "No one in the Legislature had ever thought of it. It's not the sort of crime that had come up before."

A 30-YEAR-OLD WITH A degree in political science and one of the first black columnists for the Arizona Daily Wildcat, Henry defended himself in court, arguing that it couldn't be fraud since he didn't cheat them out of money or property. The court disagreed, finding that he duped them in order to obtain "sexual gratification," which could be considered a fraudulent "benefit" under state law.

"I was incredulous, absolutely incredulous," Henry said recently in a phone interview from the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. "We've all been in night clubs. You know how guys lay it on thick to lure girls back to their rooms. Under this ruling, that would be illegal because they achieve some sort of sexual gratification based on lies."

Henry said he will appeal next to the Arizona Supreme Court.

According to Roach, Henry will probably keep the state appeals attorneys' hands full. Henry and his mother, Raye Stiles, he said, are bulldog litigators.

"The thing to understand about Tyrone and his mother is that they're very active in weeding out people they perceive to be treating them unfairly," Roach said. "How that's played out is that they've filed complaints against nearly everyone in the Pima County Attorney's Office, the trial court, the appeals court, the clerk of the court and the court reporters. I didn't even know you could file a complaint against court reporters."

In person, Stiles doesn't have much hard edge. She's a lady in all senses of the word, and it makes discussing pornography with her difficult.

A year before, Tyrone was brought up on charges of child porn possession. Shortly after, Stiles, who didn't even know it was called "lobbying" at the time, successfully convinced the Arizona Legislature to loosen the state's illegal Internet porn statutes. At the time, she claimed Pima County was prosecuting innocent folk for possessing illegal material that had been sent to their e-mail accounts as spam. Although she was dismayed when she learned her son was running a porn site, she believes in his innocence.

Henry claims there was no scam. True, he was operating the "WhiteDewOriginal Facials.com" Web site, but that was just his perfectly legal shot at the American Dream.

ADULT WEB SITES cater to a wide variety of specific fetishes. The culmination of oral sex--the cumshot--is where Henry said he found his niche.

He went online in January 2000. In the first month, he only took in $800, but by June, he was pulling in $1,200 a month. If he was still in operation, he believes he'd be making between $15,000 and $20,000 a month.

Henry advertised for models in the Wildcat and hung fliers in campus laundry rooms. When potential models called, he said he would explain what his Web site was about, show them examples, and they'd sign two contracts: one for terms of compensation and the other a photo release.

He had previously dealt with about 10 models, each of whom earned between $100 and $200 an hour. Henry says the two teenagers knew exactly what they were getting into and they wanted the money.

"Once they got to my home, I figured out in the course of speaking with them that they were not adults and seized everything," Henry said. "They created a ruse to get that money for very little work. I think they got mad at me because I busted them."

The girls also testified that while blindfolded, they saw a camera flash several times. Henry's side of the story is that the girls gave him a "sob story" about how they needed the money, so he snapped a headshot of one of the girls and paid them $20.

Henry's story is corroborated by the prosecution's evidence. When the police searched his home, they found between 300 and 500 photos of women in various stages of getting cum on their faces. However, the only photo of the girls upturned was a single, nonsexual frame on an undeveloped roll of film.

In order to compensate for this weakness in the state's argument, Roach supplied the jury other "facial" images from Henry's Web site gallery. Henry protested this in his appeal. (In a separate, unpublished ruling, the Appeals Court denied hearing the complaint on procedural grounds.)

In all, the sole material evidence in the case was a globule of his sperm found on one girl's sweater. Henry claims the girls were playing with everything in his apartment, including his laundry basket.

"I'm a red-blooded American man and I operate an adult site; if you look through my clothes, you're going to find semen," Henry says.

It's more or less a game of "he-said they-said"--except what "they said" fit with Henry's MO. The girls' testimony matched that of several UA students who told the police a year before they'd been conned by Henry.

Stiles points to foul play. She said it's no coincidence that police arrested her son in the White Dew case the day after she threatened to file a complaint against the prosecuting attorney in the child porn offense. Raye also says the prosecution may have had racist motives.

"Frankly, I didn't even know he was black until months into the case," Roach said.

Roach says there are people--in his own office--who find it hard to believe that these girls could possibly be so stupid.

"I've got to come out on (the girls') defense," he said. "We as a society don't teach girls to be as assertive as they should. Teenage girls especially are in a position of low self-esteem....

"Tyrone's a good con man. He's good at what he did, and he's very smart. It's easy for us not being in their place to say they're stupid. I don't really believe they deserve blame."
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Cu...tent?oid=47130





Age is More than a Number

Australian researchers develop a software tool which determines a person's age; tool will be useful for national security, law enforcement -- and for restricting children’s access to inappropriate Web sites

An improved technique for estimating a person’s age that will have implications for national security, law enforcement, and restricting children’s access to inappropriate web sites, has been developed by Deakin University researchers in Australia. The head of Deakin’s School of Engineering and Information Technology, Professor Kate Smith-Miles, and Ph.D. student Xin Geng, are working on the automatic age estimation project known as AGES (AGing pattErn Subspace). "While recognition of most facial variations, such as identity, expression and gender, has been extensively studied, automatic age estimation has rarely been explored," Smith-Miles said.

Logging on to inappropriate websites by under-age computer users would be more difficult with the AGES technique able to determine whether the face of the person at the keyboard conforms to the age they say they are, Smith-Miles said. "That’s just one practical and obvious way in which the work we’re doing could be used," she said. It could also be used to estimate a user’s age and automatically choose the vocabulary, interface, and services suitable to the user, or by law enforcement officials to determine the age of a suspect more accurately and efficiently. Using mathematical algorithms, the AGES technique has proven to be more accurate in estimating age based on photographs of people’s faces than other existing methods. "In extensive experiments of over 2,000 faces, our method outperformed the existing approaches, and even outperformed human perception of age estimates when the humans were given only the same tightly cropped face images to view as those fed into our algorithm," she said.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5407





Editor Fires Parting Shot At His Chain
Richard Pérez-Peña

The ousted editor of The Los Angeles Times on Monday offered a scathing critique of the newspaper industry and specifically his longtime employer, the Tribune Company, arguing that cost cuts, a lack of investment and an aversion to serious news was damaging the business.

The editor, James E. O’Shea, left after he refused to carry out another in a series of newsroom budget cuts sought by the publisher in Los Angeles, David D. Hiller — 15 months after Mr. Hiller fired the previous editor over the same kind of dispute.

The current showdown and Mr. O’Shea’s parting comments made for a remarkable statement by an editor who was seen as a Tribune loyalist and was sent to Los Angeles to calm a rebellious staff.

“I disagree completely with the way that this company allocates resources to its newsrooms, not just here but at Tribune newspapers all around the country,” Mr. O’Shea wrote in a memo to the newspaper’s staff, echoing farewell remarks he made Monday morning in the newsroom.

The chairman and chief executive who took control of Tribune a month ago, Samuel Zell, sided with Mr. Hiller. Mr. Zell had criticized the previous management’s cost-cutting and said that further reductions were not the road to prosperity. But he has also said that he was giving Tribune managers greater autonomy.

“I’ve said loud and clear that I’m returning control of our businesses to the people who run them,” Mr. Zell said in a statement, in response to coverage of Mr. O’Shea’s departure. “That means David Hiller has my full support. He carries direct responsibility for the staffing and financial success of The L.A. Times. I understand that David and Jim, together, came to the conclusion that Jim’s departure was the best decision for the direction and future of The L.A. Times.”

Mr. O’Shea said repeatedly that he was forced out; other Times executives said he was fired. But Mr. Hiller said in an interview Monday, “I thought it was a mutual conclusion that it was time to part ways.”

Times executives, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said the confrontation had been brewing for more than a month and reached a turning point about a week ago.

Speculation about a successor focused on Russ Stanton, formerly the business editor at The Times, who has been the innovation editor for a year, overseeing the newspaper’s Web site. Mr. Hiller said he expected to name an editor in a few days.

Mr. O’Shea argued in the memo that The Times had shown several times — in revising its Sunday magazine, in adding fashion coverage — that it could generate more revenue and higher profit by offering more, not less.

“Even in hard times, wise investment — not retraction — is the long-term answer to the industry’s troubles,“ he wrote, while suggesting that Tribune executives have been unable to see the logic of anything but budget cuts.

“Journalists and not accountants should seize responsibility for the financial health of our newspapers,” he wrote, “so journalists can make decisions about the size of our staffs and how much news remains in our papers and Web sites.”

But Mr. Hiller said the paper was investing as much as it could, especially in its Web site, and the cuts were nothing more than an acceptance of reality.

“Last year, our operating cash flow went down by about 20 percent,” he said.

“Can you solve the newspaper industry’s problems by spending more?” Mr. Hiller said. “It’s an attractive theory, but it doesn’t work.”

Mr. Zell took control of Tribune last month in an $8.2 billion transaction that took the company private. He said at the time that he was confident that the company could find revenue.

In the last year, the newspaper industry has suffered a steep decline in advertising revenue, and Tribune has been hit harder than most. The slumping real estate markets in California and Florida have cut deeply into real estate ads, and Tribune has big papers in both states. In addition, analysts say that years of turmoil at The Times has hurt ad sales; Mr. Hiller agreed that the tumult has been a distraction.

The company’s most recent detailed financial report, for the third quarter of 2007, said that classified ad revenue was down 18 percent from the period a year earlier, including a 26 percent drop in real estate ads. Los Angeles had one of the worst declines.

Through three quarters last year, the company had an operating profit margin of 16 percent, down from 19 percent the year earlier. But with sharply higher debt service costs because of the takeover, net income fell by more than half, to 4 percent.

Times executives say the paper still has a double-digit operating profit margin, though the number has dropped steeply.

Mr. Hiller said that Mr. O’Shea asked for a $3 million increase in the newsroom budget. He said he told Mr. O’Shea at first that he expected to keep the figure at $120 million, unchanged from last year.

Mr. O’Shea argued that a flat budget amounted to a 4 percent cut, given the costs of covering a presidential campaign and the Olympics in Beijing — to say nothing of inflation.

Tribune took over the Times Mirror Company, the parent company of The Times in 2000, and with executives in Chicago repeatedly seeking a smaller newsroom, relations with Los Angeles have been rocky ever since. The Times has a news staff of about 870 people, down from more than 1,100 a few years ago, but still larger than the roughly 600 of the flagship paper, The Chicago Tribune.

Since the takeover by Tribune, turnover has been frequent in The Times’s top positions, in the newsroom and on the business side. Mr. Hiller is the third publisher installed by Tribune, and Mr. O’Shea’s successor will be the fourth top editor.

John S. Carroll, the first editor installed by Tribune, quit in 2005 rather than make more newsroom budget cuts. The next year, his successor, Dean P. Baquet, and the publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson — who, like Mr. O’Shea, was a longtime Tribune employee — were fired when they refused to do more cutting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/bu...a/22paper.html





'Do Not Deliver' List Would Bar Papers
Kristen Wyatt

Connie Finch doesn't read a newspaper, but she picks up plenty each morning. At least one free newspaper is dropped at the end of her driveway each day, and she picks up more newspapers left by her neighbors.

All of them end up in the garbage.

''We're not asking for it,'' Finch said. ''And it's just littering our streets.''

Complaints from the Westminster resident Finch and others about free home-delivery newspapers in Maryland have inspired State Del. Tanya Shewell to propose a ''Do Not Deliver'' registry that would work similarly to the ''Do Not Call'' registry for telemarketers. If approved, would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Shewell said her constituents complain that they're just ignored when they call a newspaper asking that delivery be stopped. She said people can't stop deliveries even when they leave town, meaning papers are left around as an invitation to burglars. The newspapers often litter roadsides and storm drains.

''I love free newspapers. We're not trying to hurt the business of the newspapers,'' Shewell said. ''All we're asking is for them to stop delivering to people who ask them to stop. People don't know where to call. They don't know how to stop it.''

The complaints started soon after the 2006 launch of The Baltimore Examiner, a free paper which delivers about 230,000 of its total 250,000 circulation to Maryland homes six days a week, making it the state's largest daily.

''I started getting calls from people who called numerous times and were promised it would stop, and it didn't,'' Shewell said. ''They're trashing up our community.''

Examiner representatives did not respond to several messages seeking comment.

However, the head of the Examiner's parent group said in Friday's edition of the newspaper that he is concerned about the complaints.

''My desire for the newspaper to not go to those who don't want it far exceeds their desire to stop getting it. ... I hate it when we annoy readers, and keeping that annoyance to a minimum is among my highest priorities,'' said Michael Phelps, CEO of Clarity Media Group's Baltimore-Washington Examiner Newspaper Group.

The newspaper industry is fighting the proposed registry, saying it isn't needed.

''Nobody wants to send out papers that are wasted, that people just throw away,'' said Jack Murphy, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association.

Shewell's bill would give newspaper publishers seven days to comply with a request to stop an unsolicited home delivery. If the deliveries continue, publishers could be fined $100 a day. It would also require free newspapers to print a toll-free phone number in a conspicuous location for people who would want delivery stopped.

Shewell's bill is likely to run into opposition from lawmakers in both parties who worry it could violate constitutional free speech protections.

''I like information,'' said state Sen. Catherine Pugh. ''If people are out of town, they can make arrangements for people to pick up materials in their yards. I just don't think government needs to do everything. We can take some responsibility for our own lives.''

The bill could prove a legal morass, said T. Barton Carter, a media law expert at Boston University. It's uncertain how valuable a ''Do Not Call'' analogy is, he said.

''Usually, when you're talking about print media and just delivering it to the outside, that's not seen as intrusive as calls. So, it's not clear it would survive a similar First Amendment analysis,'' Carter said.

If the law banned newspaper deliveries, it would also likely have to set up a ''Do Not Deliver'' registry for pizza delivery ads and other flyers routinely delivered to homes, Carter said.

''I know of all kinds of flyers for services, so would you be eliminating all of those? If you aren't, now you have a real problem in that you're singling out a certain type of distribution,'' said Carter.

George Wilbanks, publisher of the East County Times in Baltimore County, is among the opponents of Shewell's bill. His weekly newspaper has a circulation of 45,000, half of which are delivered to homes.

Wilbanks said newspapers already try to avoid sending papers to people who don't read them.

''If a person calls to us and says, 'We don't want your cotton-pickin' paper,' we don't want to be sending it to them anyway,'' Wilbanks said.

Most people do want the papers, Murphy said.

''Free newspapers in this state are very well read. And many, many people love them and read them every day,'' he said.

Finch, the frustrated Westminster homeowner, insists something should be done to stop newspaper deliveries people don't want. She said many of her neighbors put signs in their yards asking that papers not be delivered -- but the signs don't work.

''They literally throw the newspaper at the signs, so there's blatant disregard for what their wants and desires are,'' Finch said.

''If we wanted to subscribe to one, we would,'' Finch said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...8S18.DTL&tsp=1





BBC Follies
Jack

How one man’s decision to forgo TV led to a flurry of threatening letters from the beeb.
http://www.bbctvlicence.com/2006%20letters.htm





MySpaceTV, BBC Worldwide Link Up in Video Deal

MySpace on Wednesday said it signed an agreement with BBC Worldwide to bring short video clips from programs such as "Doctor Who" and "Top Gear" to its online community.

The agreement will allow MySpaceTV users to subscribe to a BBC Worldwide channel, then view and share clips from current and archived content. Clips will be available to MySpaceTV users globally.

Other BBC programs that will be featured include "Robin Hood," "Torchwood," "The Catherine Tate Show," "Red Dwarf" and "The Mighty Boosh."

Jeff Berman, the newly appointed executive vice president of marketing and content of MySpace, said the deal involved advertising revenue sharing, but declined to disclose specific details.

MySpace is owned by media giant News Corp, which also operates the Fox TV network, and has been pushing to add more video content.

The MySpaceTV feature launched in June 2007. Among other content, MySpaceTV features "Roommates," "LonelyGirl15," and "Prom Queen."

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...39384720080124





Robots and Ogre Power Paramount to Box Office Lead

From menacing Spartan warriors to chipper singing chipmunks, 2007's boxoffice attractions spanned the gamut. Following a heated summer, there was a cooling-off spell during the fall, but the year still saw the domestic box office gross climb to a record $9.62 billion.

As a result, when it came time for the major studios to carve up the pie, there were plenty of healthy slices to go around. For the first time ever, five studios crossed the $1 billion mark with their domestic tallies, led by Paramount Pictures with $1.49 billion.

The studio benefited mightily from its 2005 acquisition of DreamWorks, which contributed such early hits as "Norbit" ($95.3 million) and "Blades of Glory" ($118.2 million). Paramount got a $321 million shot of adrenaline by distributing DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek the Third." By the Fourth of July weekend, the $319.1 million-grossing "Transformers," a DreamWorks/Paramount co-production, assured the Melrose Avenue studio's eventual victory. The only studio to boast two $300 million-plus grossers, Paramount claimed a market share of 15.5 percent, up from its fifth-ranked 2006 share of 10.4 percent.

Warner Bros., which dipped to an uncharacteristic fourth place in market share in 2006, bounced back to second thanks in part to "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" ($292 million), the second-best domestic grosser in the series. Additional fantasy in the form of "300" ($210.6 million) and "I Am Legend" ($206 million to date) fueled the flames. For the year, the studio earned $1.42 billion with a 14.7 percent share, up from 11.6 percent in 2006.

Disney (No. 3, $1.36 billion) and 2006 champ Sony (No. 4, $1.24 billion) relied on the tried and true with respective threequels "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" ($309.4 million) and "Spider-Man 3" ($336.5 million), the year's No. 1 movie. Both lost market share.

Disney, which sharpened its focus on family-friendly fare, enjoyed a late hit with "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" ($143 million to date). Its market share fell to 14.1 percent from 16.1 percent in 2006, when it ranked No. 2.

Sony found a couple more $100 million grossers in "Ghost Rider" and "Superbad," and the studio's Screen Gems label delivered admirable returns from such movies as "Stomp the Yard" ($61 million) and "Resident Evil: Extinction" ($51 million). Its market share slid to 12.9 percent from 18.6 percent.

Universal rose one place to No. 5 as its market share jumped to 11.4 percent from 8.7 percent. "The Bourne Ultimatum" ($227.4 million) built on the success of its predecessors, while the studio also found lucrative laughter in "Knocked Up" ($148.7 million) and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" ($119.7 million).

D'oh! Fox slid three places to No. 6, and its market share dropped by almost a third to 10.5 percent. Thanks to holiday audiences' warm embrace of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" ($154 million to date), Fox squeaked into the billion-dollar club with $1.1 billion. Its top release was "The Simpsons Movie" ($183.1 million).

As they did in 2006, New Line and MGM brought up the rear, with respective shares of 5.1 percent and 3.8 percent, both about double from the year before.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...54312420080104





Airwaves, Web Power At Auction
Stephen LaBaton

The auction for rights to a highly valuable swath of the nation’s airwaves will begin Thursday and is expected to include multibillion-dollar bids from the nation’s two biggest wireless phone companies, Verizon and AT&T, as well as Google.

Although industry executives and analysts agree that Google is unlikely to win any licenses, the company already has an invaluable victory: in setting the auction rules, the Federal Communications Commission has forced the major telephone companies to open their wireless networks to a broader array of telephone equipment and Internet applications.

The radio spectrum licenses, which are to be returned from television broadcasters as they complete their conversion from analog to digital signals in February 2009, are as coveted as oil reserves are to energy companies. They will provide the winners with access to some of the best remaining spectrum — enabling them to send signals farther from a cell tower with far less power, through dense walls in cities, and over wider territories in rural areas that are now underserved.

And the licenses are on the auction block just as it is becoming obvious to industry players and investors that wireless broadband is rapidly becoming the next big thing, the mobile Internet.

The latest government report indicates that in 2006, mobile wireless high-speed subscribers grew nationwide by more than 600 percent, and that during the last half of the year, those subscribers made up nearly two-thirds of the total growth in all high-speed lines.

Equipment makers and content providers are rushing to bring out new products as consumers increasingly use mobile phones and laptop computers to wirelessly connect to the Internet.

“The spectrum that we are auctioning off is going to be the building blocks for the next generation of broadband services,” said Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in an interview last Friday. “It can carry lots of data, penetrates walls easily, travels far and allows for very good broadband wireless service. It will allow a wireless platform to be another competitor in the broadband space.”

The F.C.C. has set a minimum price of $10 billion for five blocks of licenses — 1,099 in all. The largest amount received by the commission in a previous license spectrum auction was $13.7 billion in 2006. Some analysts believe that record could be exceeded when this so-called 700 megahertz auction is completed in the next few months.

Each day, the commission will post the leading bids, but only the amount bid, not the names of the leading bidders.

The auction’s daily bids can be watched on the Web site, auctions.fcc.gov.

Because the commission’s anticollusion rules preclude the bidders from discussing their strategies or possible bids, none of the major companies involved in the auction would comment for publication.

In setting the rules for the auction to some of the most valuable radio spectrum licenses ever issued, the F.C.C. decided last year to endorse one of Google’s proposals by requiring that the winning bidders open their networks to a wider array of applications and phones. (Verizon and AT&T objected to the decision.)

The new rules have already begun to reshape the rapidly emerging wireless broadband industry. It prompted Verizon and AT&T to change their policies and open their networks to new applications and devices, just as Google and its allies had hoped.

“The issue has melted away,” Mr. Martin said. “It is no longer as controversial, as the major providers have moved to open up their networks.”

While Google has promised in return to bid at least the minimum reserve amount of $4.6 billion for one block of licenses, most analysts expect the company will be outbid because it is not expected to go higher.

“Google’s intent was to win the open access rule, and that’s what its bidding is about,” said Blair Levin, a former senior F.C.C. official who is now an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.

Despite losing the battle in the fight over whether to open their networks to rival software and equipment makers, Verizon and AT&T are likely to be winners in the auction. Since the licenses and build-out requirements for the networks are so expensive, experts say, it is unlikely that a new entrant will prevail, although some niche players in a handful of regional markets could take home some licenses.

“Most are of the view that we are unlikely to see a major new entrant coming in and establishing a new presence,” said Carol Mattey, the national leader of the telecom regulatory consulting services at Deloitte & Touche. “Given the amount of money that would have to be spent not only 0n the auction but also on building a new network, it is pretty unlikely that anyone new will come out.”

Verizon and AT&T as winners could be a mixed blessing for consumers. While the two companies would be able to offer more and faster services over greater areas, it also could mean that prices, which have already stabilized as a result of the widespread industry consolidation, will not fall.

One of the most closely watched licenses will be the so-called D-block, which is heavily discounted because the winning company must share the spectrum with public safety officials. But this month, a company interested in the license, Frontline Wireless, announced that it had closed, apparently because it was unable to obtain financing for the license, which has a reserve price of $1.3 billion.

The company was founded by Reed E. Hundt, a former chairman of the commission, along with veteran wireless executives and a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

The commission has not said what rules it would rewrite for a second auction if no bidder meets the minimum price of $1.3 billion for the D-block.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/bu...2spectrum.html





Top Bids $2.78 Bln as US Wireless Auction Opens
Peter Kaplan

Top bidders put up a total of almost $2.78 billion on Thursday in the opening rounds of the Federal Communications Commission's auction of coveted U.S. government-owned airwaves.

The figure represents the highest bids received for five separate blocks of spectrum at the beginning of the auction, which is eventually expected to net the federal government at least $10 billion.

Companies qualified to bid include major carriers AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, as well as possible new competitors like Internet company Google Inc, EchoStar Communications Corp and Cablevision Systems Corp.

Identities of bidders will be kept secret, under FCC rules, until the entire auction ends.

Analysts say the major carriers could use the new spectrum to offer consumers more advanced services such as broadband access via mobile phones and wireless broadband to laptop computers.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Incand Vodafone Group Plc.

The $2.78 billion worth of opening high bids included a $472 million offer for a closely watched block of spectrum, known as the "D" block, which will have to be shared with public safety agencies under FCC rules.

It also included an opening high bid of about $1.24 billion for the sought-after "C" block, which carries another condition requiring that it be open to all devices and software applications as long as the minimum price is met.

Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, said there was nothing unexpected in the bidding so far, and it will be until middle of next week before "we will start seeing what the likely outcome is going to be on the D block and whether the open-access conditions will be triggered on the C block."

The FCC issued results of the first two rounds of bidding for the government-owned spectrum shortly after the rounds ended at noon (1700 GMT) and 4:30 p.m.(2130 GMT).

The FCC has set minimum prices of $1.3 billion and $4.7 billion for the D and C blocks respectively. These blocks could be used to create a national network.

Other spectrum includes local chunks set aside in blocks designated "A" and "B". The final, "E" block, is considered less useful because it is limited to one-way data transmission.

The 700-megahertz signals are valuable because they can go long distances and penetrate thick walls. The airwaves are being returned by television broadcasters as they move to digital from analog signals in early 2009.

The electronic auction is expected to continue for weeks or even months and will end when no more bids are submitted. The FCC plans to hold multiple rounds of back-and-forth bidding each day on each of five blocks of spectrum available for sale.

Results from each round are made publicly available on the FCC's Web site about 10 minutes afterward.

Starting on Friday, the FCC is scheduled to hold three rounds of bidding each day until further notice. Bidding typically accelerates as the auction progresses. (Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...25560720080124





Security of Ballot Not 100%

Critics expect flaws as Md. switches systems
Stephanie Desmon and Stephen Kiehl

Outraged by the butterfly ballots and hanging chads of the disputed 2000 presidential election, political activists nationwide pushed for user-friendly voting systems that wouldn't lead to a repeat of the confusion that left the outcome in Florida - and the nation - in doubt.

Less than eight years later - after taxpayers in Maryland and other states spent hundreds of millions on easy-to-use, all-electronic, touch-screen voting machines - the debate has come full circle.

Fear of hackers and lost votes that can never be recovered is forcing out the new technology and giving new life to old-fashioned scanning machines that read tried-and-true paper ballots.

By 2010, four years before its $65 million touch-screen machines will be paid off, Maryland expects to be back on the paper trail, following states such as Florida and California, which have also decided that all-electronic systems make it too easy to compromise elections.

This week, Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed an initial outlay of $6.8 million toward the purchase of optical-scan machines, which will eventually cost $20 million. Lawmakers approved a return to the machines last year, but only if the governor could come up with the money.

Although optical scanners have produced occasional glitches, many experts say the system that Maryland plans to buy for the 2010 election is one of the most reliable and accurate available. The reason: It's backed up by paper ballots that can be saved and recounted if necessary.

"It's still a computer; you could still manipulate an election" with an optical scanner, said Dr. Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins University security expert whose findings helped launch the national anti-touch screen movement. "But if there's anything suspicious about the total, you have those paper ballots."

There have always been worries about election integrity. Even paper ballots produced talk of stuffed ballot boxes and tales of ballots getting "lost" on the way to election headquarters. When lever machines appeared in the 1930s, there were concerns that mechanical failures would deprive many of their franchise.

The debate seems to surface every time the technology changes.

A 2006 review of popular electronic voting systems by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that "the three most commonly purchased today are vulnerable to attacks and errors that could change the outcome of statewide elections. ...

"Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a voting system that could be impervious to attack," the report concluded.

Voters using optical-scan machines fill in a "bubble" or complete the drawing of an arrow pointing to their candidate. Then they feed their ballots into a scanner at the poll. If they've filled the ballot out incorrectly, the machine spits it back and the voter can try again. If a recount is needed, the ballots are stored so they can be re-scanned or hand-counted.

Touch-screen voting devices operate like automated teller machines: voters cast their ballots on computer screens and have a chance to review their choices before they're completed. But in the case of a recount, there is no paper ballot to examine - just an electronic record on the machine's magnetic memory card.

In recent years, backers and critics of electronic voting have vigorously debated whether hackers can break into a touch-screen voting system and sabotage an election - or steal it.

John Willis, Maryland's former secretary of state and a government professor at the University of Baltimore, said this discussion makes no sense today. Airlines, he noted, are abandoning paper tickets for electronic ones. Doctors are moving toward electronic prescription pads.

"In every other part of life, we're going the other way," he said. "I think it's a giant step backward. I can predict our elections will be no more secure and they will be less accurate - that's what the evidence shows."

Among the 19 Maryland jurisdictions using scanners in 2002, Willis said, there were nearly 15,000 voters who did not cast a ballot in the top-of-the-ticket race for governor. In 2006, when everyone used touch-screen machines, fewer than 10,000 voters failed to cast a ballot for governor.

But the Brennan Center study showed that nationwide, optical-scan machines had fewer residual or "no-votes" than touch-screens, meaning more people had their votes counted properly with optical scanners.

Maryland has had just two major elections with touch-screens - the 2004 presidential race and the 2006 gubernatorial election. Still, it isn't the only state to abandon them quickly.

Florida has also flip-flopped. In Sarasota, voters approved a measure requiring paper ballots after nearly 20,000 votes cast on touch-screen machines were not recorded in a close 2006 congressional race.

In Ohio last month, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered Cuyahoga County to abandon its touch-screen voting and use optical scanners for this March's presidential primary election. The county's touch-screen server crashed twice on election night last November.

Her decision came after a state review of voting systems found "critical security failures" with the electronic machines. A spokesman said Brunner has urged the legislature to replace all of Ohio's touch-screens with optical scan by the November election.
But that decision has generated an entirely different controversy. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday complaining that Cuyahoga County's optical scan ballots will be counted at a central location - not at the polls as Maryland intends. That means voters will not have a chance to correct errors on their ballots.

Optical systems do occasionally have problems. In Volusia County, Fla., outside Orlando, hundreds of votes were not initially counted in 2000 after an election worker turned off a machine that would not accept a ballot.

When the machine was restarted, its counter reset to zero even though 310 ballots had already been fed through. The error was found during a recount.

One of the original benefits of touch screens was that they allowed blind voters a chance to cast their votes secretly - a requirement of the Help America Vote Act, which funded new voting technology nationwide.

Optical-scan machines did not allow that. Now, though, technology has improved and an accessible, hybrid optical-scanning system is on the market.

In Volusia County, each precinct now has touch-screens for the disabled, as well as optical scanners. Voters can choose, but they overwhelmingly opt for the optical-scan machines, said elections supervisor Ann McFall.

Of 4,000 votes cast this week in early voting for the presidential primary, only 10 were cast on the touch-screens.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nat...,1820162.story





How Email Brings You Closer to the Guy in the Next Cubicle
Tim Harford

As a columnist (which is fancy for "journalist in jammies"), I ought to personify the conventional wisdom that distance is dead: All I need to get my work done is a place to perch and a Wi-Fi signal. But if that's true, why do I still live in London, the second-most expensive city in the world?

If distance really didn't matter, rents in places like London, New York, Bangalore, and Shanghai would be converging with those in Hitchcock County, Nebraska (population 2,926 and falling). Yet, as far as we can tell through the noise of the real estate bust, they aren't. Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko talks instead of "superstar cities," which have become the equivalent of luxury goods — highly coveted and ultra-expensive. If geography has died, nobody bothered to tell Hitchcock County.

Maybe it's because society hasn't wholeheartedly accepted the idea of working remotely. Or perhaps communications technology just isn't all it's hyped up to be. After all, the journalists and consultants who tell us that location is insignificant are biased. Like me, they're the people whose lives have been most transformed by the Internet and cell phones.

But I think the truth is more profound than either of those glib explanations: Technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, an expert on city economies, argues that communications technology and face-to-face interactions are complements like salt and pepper, rather than substitutes like butter and margarine. Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh.

The most obvious example is online dating. With sites like BBW (Big Beautiful Women) Datefinder and Senior People Meet, it's a lot easier to find like-minded flames. But that's not much use unless you live within driving range of your 98 percent-compatible love connection. The kind of contact that follows online winking is far from virtual.

It follows that matchmaking is most effective in densely populated areas, where there are plenty of fish but an awfully big sea. If you live in Los Angeles, online dating is the killer app. If you live in a small town, you've likely already met all your potential mates at church or a bar.

Of course, the rest of life isn't like courting. Or is it? In big cities, our communication tools are especially helpful because they keep us from getting lost in the crowd (which is not something you worry about in a one-street town). There are even services that tell you where your friends are by locating their cell signals.

New technologies can strengthen ties within your business, too. A 2007 study by economists Neil Gandal, Charles King, and Marshall Van Alstyne looked at the networks formed by 125,000 email messages from the staff of an executive-recruiting firm. It found that email's real value isn't in communicating with Kuala Lumpur but with Betsy in the next cubicle. The most productive workers have the densest intracompany email web.

This shouldn't surprise us. Email makes it quicker and easier to reach your colleagues — you don't have to interrupt them, and messages are easy to process. But email doesn't stop you from wanting facetime, too. Just the opposite: By enabling us to maintain productive business relationships with more people, it encourages more face-to-face contact. Have you noticed business travel dying out? Neither have I. Air travel is at record highs.

One day, perhaps, virtual communication will become so good we'll no longer feel the need to shake hands with a new collaborator or brainstorm in the same room. But for now, the world seems to be changing in a way that actually demands more meetings. Business is more innovative, and its processes more complex. That demands tacit knowledge, collaboration, and trust — all things that seem to follow best from person-to-person meetings. "Ideas are more important than ever," Glaeser says, "and the most important ideas are communicated face-to-face."

Which explains why the highest-tech industries are the most dependent on geography. In a study published in the American Economic Review, researchers examined 4,000 US-based commercial innovations and found that more than half came from just three areas: California, New York/New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Almost half of all US pharmaceutical innovations were invented in New Jersey, a state with less than 3 percent of the nation's population.

In theory, technology should allow new-economy firms to prosper as easily in Nebraska as in Silicon Valley. But far from killing distance, it has made proximity matter more than ever.

As for me, I've been finishing off this essay between a coffee date with my wife and some essential chitchat with my publishers at a central London restaurant. This old city isn't cheap, and it isn't easy. But with my cell phone and laptop to back me up, I can't afford to live anywhere else.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty...16-02/st_essay





Network Solutions Follow Up: Even Dumber and More Evil Than Before!
Vishen

A few days ago we wrote a post on how Network Solutions screwed us out of a domain and we recommended that people avoid Network Solutions at all cost.

The post made it to the front page of Reddit and got referenced on a number of blogs. Superb!

But here’s an interesting little development.

Most of the comments on my post were positive.

But one post stood out, from a guy called Jeff. He said:

Just wait 5 days, and then buy domain name from GoDaddy. Bit of a hassle. but no biggie. On the other hand, if you are going to use your new blog like this one (repost other peoples info in a way that’s more boring then how they did it. Or, taking a reddit thread, creating a bs post arround it, submitting it to reddit, and etc.) please don’t bother with it.

For the record, Jeff jeff, this was an original post, not a copy, nor did we use any threads from Reddit. We quoted a press release… So I was puzzled by this comment.

Furthermore, Jeff accidently left his email address (required when you comment on a post) as XXXXXX@NetworkSolutions.com.

Was he joking or did he really work for Network Solutions? I mused for 3 liberating seconds.

Digging deeper, I traced his IP address to come from Reston, VA, which according to Google Maps is just 6 short and evil minutes from Herndon, VA -

… the location of the Network Solutions Main Office!

Hmmmm. Somehow I suspect Jeff might be working for Network Solutions.

Well Jeff, whether you work for Network Solutions or not, let me reply as to why what they’re doing is wrong.
Trapping Internet Users into Paying Inflated Prices for Network Solutions’ Service by Holding Their Domains Hostage Is Atrocious

Network Solutions Has the #1 and #2 Spot on Google for “Who Is” and “WhoIs” respectively. Most users seeking to check a domain’s availability will end up on your site.

NOWHERE on the site does Network Solutions mention that they’re going to LOCK the domain for 5 days if you do not buy from them immediately.

You accused me of faking my post Jeff. But what I experienced was real.

And you claimed this policy by Network Solutions was no big deal and that I could buy my domain 5 days later from GoDaddy.

Well, actually it was a big deal.

My blog editor and I were shattered when we went on GoDaddy to purchase the domain (which your WHOIS had claimed was available) only to find it “had been snatched up.” We never knew that we could claim it in 5 days. How on earth are most internet users supposed to know that?

We knew someone had watched our search. And we passed on that domain as lost. We went with another domain for our blog.

This, I suspect, happens to most users. Your company’s policy causes innocent people to either think their domains are lost and give up - OR pay you ridiculously inflated prices for these domains.

What’s worse - is that you adopted this policy AFTER thousands of websites linked to your Who Is service and pushed it to the top of Google.

Now THAT is a betrayal of public trust.

So my opinion stands. Network Solutions should be avoided AT ALL COSTS.
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/netwo...an-before/345/





The Coming Wave of Gadgets That Listen and Obey
Michael Fitzgerald

INNOVATION usually needs time to steep. Time to turn the idea into something tangible, time to get it to market, time for people to decide they accept it. Speech recognition technology has steeped for a long time: Mike Phillips remembers that in the 1980s, when he was a Carnegie Mellon graduate student trying to develop rudimentary speech recognition systems, “it seemed almost impossible.”

Now, devices that incorporate speech recognition are starting to hit the mass market, thanks to entrepreneurs like Mr. Phillips. He is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of the Vlingo Corporation, an 18-month-old start-up in Cambridge, Mass., that is selling services to cellular carriers and other software companies that want to give their customers the ability to let their mouths do the walking — and the searching.

Vlingo’s service lets people talk naturally, rather than making them use a limited number of set phrases. Dave Grannan, the company’s chief executive, demonstrated the Vlingo Find application by asking his phone for a song by Mississippi John Hurt (try typing that with your thumbs), for the location of a local bakery and for a Web search for a consumer product. It was all fast and efficient. Vlingo is designed to adapt to the voice of its primary user, but I was also able to use Mr. Grannan’s phone to find an address.

The Find application is in the beta test phase at AT&T and Sprint. Consumers who use certain cellphones from those companies can download the application from vlingo.com.

Mr. Phillips has spent more than 15 years in the trenches at companies that nourished speech recognition. In 1994, he was one of the founders of Speechworks, which made early interactive voice-response systems, the now-ubiquitous automated services that answer when we call a company. In 2000, Speechworks was acquired by ScanSoft, which five years later bought Nuance Communications, keeping Nuance as the name. Mr. Phillips left that year to work at M.I.T. as a visiting researcher.

In 2006, he and a colleague from ScanSoft, John Nguyen, started Vlingo because they thought that speech recognition technology, cellular networks and phones were all becoming powerful enough to allow voice navigation systems on cellphones. “We couldn’t have done this five years ago,” he says.

Now, Mr. Phillips is in a race for market share. Another start-up, Yap Inc., based in Charlotte, N.C., is running a beta test of its service, which is similar to Vlingo’s but already has text messaging. Igor and Victor Jablokov, Yap’s co-founders, decided to start the company because they saw their teenage sister text-messaging while in a car.

She wasn’t driving at the time, but Igor Jablokov says cellular companies tell him in meetings that two-thirds of their teenage customers have either sent or read a text message while behind the wheel.

Big companies are also attracted to this market. Nuance started its Nuance Voice Control system last August, the same month that Vlingo’s appeared. Nuance’s system is in use at Sprint and Rogers Communications and can be downloaded to 66 models of hand-held phones, with many more on the way.

Microsoft is a significant potential competitor, thanks in part to its purchase of TellMe Networks last March. TellMe offers a speech-driven search application for cellphones that is available to customers of AT&T — only those who were part of Cingular before the merger — and Sprint. TellMe’s system is built-in on the new Mysto phone from Helio, a mobile phone operator started by Earthlink and SK Telecom, and is the engine for 1800call411, a free directory information service.

Over all, speech recognition was a $1.6 billion market in 2007, according to Opus Research, which predicts an annual growth rate of 14.5 percent over the next three years. Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus, said that companies that have licensed speech recognition technology would probably see faster revenue growth, as more consumers used the technology. The cellphone market holds the most potential, given its billions of phones, but cellular providers are still working out the business model for such services.

Igor Jablokov, Yap’s chief executive, says that he wants his application to be supported by advertising, but that the carriers with whom he is negotiating, which he declined to name, want to charge customers for the service.

To be sure, speech recognition technology has been available on personal computers since 2001 in applications like Microsoft Office, but few people use it. But in cellphone and other markets, speech recognition “is on the cusp of a curve,” says Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy News, an industry newsletter.

Speech recognition, already used in high-end G.P.S. systems and luxury cars from Cadillac and Lexus, is now spreading to less expensive systems and cars — witness those slapstick Ford Sync commercials, featuring vignettes like one showing a young woman who approaches her office building and says “door open,” expecting it to respond the way her car does. It doesn’t, and she and her coffee cup smack directly into it.

Sync was developed by Microsoft and Ford, and based on Nuance technology. And the speech technology chief at I.B.M. Research, David Nahamoo, says the company has an automotive customer testing speech recognition to help drivers find songs quickly while driving — no more pushing buttons.

Then there’s SimulScribe, a New York company that is one of several businesses using speech recognition to convert voice mail into e-mail. “Voice recognition has finally hit the point where someone like ourselves can take it over the hump for specific applications,” says James Siminoff, SimulScribe’s chief executive.

James R. Glass, a principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T., says speech technology “is going to end up everywhere speech can be useful.” He says machines will keep improving their ability to recognize the way humans naturally talk, even if they have strong accents, and that the technology will find myriad new uses.

THIS doesn’t mean that people will always choose to speak. Genevieve Bell, director of user experience at the digital home group of Intel, says people are unlikely to want to use speech recognition to handle their finances, at least in public spaces. It also may not work well in the living room.

Ms. Bell jokes that if she could, she would yell “cricket!” at the television anytime she walked into a room, so her favorite sport would appear on the screen.

Even a digital expert like her cautions that some people may never be satisfied with the quality of speech recognition technology — thanks to a steady diet of fictional books, movies and television shows featuring machines that understand everything a person says, no matter how sharp the diction or how loud the ambient noise. But soon we will be able to speak our minds to many of our machines, and have them obey our commands.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/27proto.html





Bad Idea: Non-Skippable Ads on DVDs

Is that hurtling car gonna crush Bruce Willis? Find out—right after these messages.

Yes, most standard DVD movies already come loaded with an annoying number of previews and coming attractions (which, thankfully, you can usually skip). But try this on for size: the bloggers at Zatz Not Funny unearthed a patent application from IBM that would allow for non-skippable ads at any point on a DVD. Wonderful.

According to the patent filing, a DVD could come embedded with a certificate that determines whether the disc should be played with advertisements; if the DVD is flagged for ads, then the non-skippable commercials could run at any point during the video. The ads could also be grabbed from the Internet (provided the player in question has a Net connection) or simply come pre-loaded onto the disc.

Now, before we all freak out, keep in mind that IBM's patent was filed over a year ago, and that there's a good chance the idea will never work its way onto our DVDs. Also, writer Davis Freeberg suggests some relatively benign possibilities for the patent: for example, maybe the ads would only be activated on budget versions of a disc (say, a $3.99 copy of the new "Die Hard" flick, as opposed to the standard $29.95 version) or even free DVDs.

I guess that's fine, as long as the no-commercial discs are still available. But here's what worries me: the possibility of downloading fresh ads from the Internet, an idea that might entice advertisers who've been loathe to buy commercial time on DVDs in the past. (Most standard DVD players can't connect to the Net, but Ethernet-equipped HD DVD players and upcoming Blu-ray decks certainly could.) In that case, I could easily envision discs with pre-roll ads—similar to those in movie theaters—through which you'd be forced to sit. Would disc prices drop if pre-movie ads became part of the package? Sadly, I doubt it; after all, the last time I checked, movie ticket prices continue to climb despite all the pre-roll commercials.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/8635





High Court Allows Computer Program Patent Claims

In a surprising (to this Kat at least) turn of events, the Honourable Mr Justice Kitchin has ruled today that the current UK Patent Office practice of flatly rejecting patent claims to computer program products is wrong. The judgment, in the matter of several GB patent applications in the name of Astron Clinica and others, is not yet available on BAILII, but the IPKat is making it available to his readers here at least until it is. Many thanks go to John Gray of Murgitroyd & Co. for passing the news on.

After comprehensively summarising the last couple of decades of legal developments, covering the usual suspects (Gale, the oft-misspelled Merrill Lynch, Fujitsu and various EPO decisions), Kitchin J arrived at the main question in this appeal, which was whether the UK-IPO was correct in construing that the Court of Appeal judgment in Aerotel/Macrossan inevitably prohibited the patenting of all computer programs, or whether the old approach of considering the 'potential' technical effect of a computer program (following the EPO approach) could be taken into account, in a similar way to considering the effect of a method claim that would inevitably be carried out by running a program (which all of the applications under appeal contained). The UK-IPO had concluded that Aerotel/Macrossan ruled out computer program product patent claims, and consequently reverted to its old practice of rejecting such claims.

Kitchin J, however, considered that the point did not actually arise in Aerotel/Macrossan, because the court was not even asked to consider the question of computer program products claims. Although the Court of Appeal had criticised many EPO decisions, it had not criticised the main decisions relating to this point, being T 1173/97 and T 935/97. Also, the new four step test approach should produce the same result as the 'old' approach, and the Court of Appeal had said as much by saying that Merrill Lynch must be followed.

Probably more importantly, Kitchin J recognised that it was highly undesirable to have provisions of the EPC construed differently at the EPO as compared with the courts in the different contracting states, and that decisions of the Boards of Appeal should be highly persuasive. Mention was also made of the contrasting approach taken in Germany, where the EPO line tends to be followed closely.

The apparent approval of the UK-IPO's rejection of computer program product claims in Oneida Indian Nation's Application was either rejected by Kitchin J as not actually meaning that, or was in the alternative respectfully disagreed with (as the High Court is allowed to do, in contrast with the Court of Appeal), depending on the different possible interpretations of Christopher Floyd's judgment.

In conclusion then, Kitchin J found that the appeals should be allowed. Each application concerned a computer related invention where the examiner had allowed claims to, in effect, a method performed by running a suitably programmed computer and to a computer programmed to carry out the method. The Hearing Officer had rejected corresponding program claims on the basis that they were necessarily prohibited by Article 52, and in Kitchin J's judgment he had erred in doing so. The cases were remitted to the UK-IPO for further consideration in light of the judgment.

The IPKat is, frankly, quite amazed by the judgment, because he was (apparently quite wrongly) convinced that there was no room for manoeuver after Aerotel/Macrossan, in particular in light of one of the central points of A/M being that the scope of the monopoly must be considered when construing the claim, which appears to have formed the basis of the UK-IPO's change of practice. He wonders whether the story has run its course for now, and if we can simply all go back to falling into line with the EPO, or if the UK-IPO will judge that this one is worth going further on. Will they? Can they? Should they? What would/does the embattled Lord Justice Jacob think? The IPKat would very much like to know, and he suspects his readers may be just about to tell him...
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2008/01...r-program.html





Prince Charles ‘Appears’ at an Energy Summit
Andrew C. Revkin

Prince Charles gave a keynote lecture at a summit meeting on advanced energy technologies in Abu Dhabi on Monday — not in the flesh, but as a three-dimensional hologram. By not flying there and back, he avoided adding about 20 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (the carbon cost of flying him and his entourage), according to conference organizers.

The technology for such holographic appearances is still in its early stages. The prince’s speech, for example, was not live (he recorded it weeks ago), but contained on a server flown to the Persian Gulf and now on its way back to London. The main constraint limiting live “telepresence” at this level of quality is the need for vast amounts of data flow.

According to a news release from Musion Systems, the British company that provided the projection technology, one reason for the holographic visit was critical British press coverage of the prince’s recent visit to the United States to accept an environmental prize. That trip generated tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

So far, the market for such imagery has been limited mainly to theatrical performances, like Madonna’s appearance with the band Gorillaz at last year’s Grammy Awards, or presentations by computer or Internet companies, most notably Cisco Systems, seeking to develop and promote such Web-based “travel.”

In his brief talk, Prince Charles, seen walking and gesturing at full height, stressed the importance of such technologies in a climate context. As John Vidal of The Guardian described it:

“His appearance was the talk of the 2,500 delegates at the World Future energy summit, most of whom had flown thousands of miles to discuss renewable energy and climate change and how to save emissions. The very sight of Prince Charles caused many to gasp….”

The scene has the feel of one of those early-days moments in the history of television. Could a true Star Trek-style Holodeck be in the offing?

Musion executives say it’s only a matter of time, and bandwidth.

For the moment, I’ve been doing a lot of still-rough Skype video chats with college and high-school students as a way to avoid flying.

Another route to relatively guilt-free travel is the approach taken by Sir Richard Branson, who is trying to develop sustainably produced biofuels suitable for jet engines. The test flight he announced recently is still scheduled for next month.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20.../index.html?hp





Author Says Welch's Tough Talk Strengthened GE

Jack Welch transformed General Electric Co from an old-economy manufacturer into a modern conglomerate, in part because of his insistence on a culture of straight talk, according to a new book by his former speechwriter.

In "Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the World's Greatest Company" (McGraw-Hill; $26.95), author Bill Lane recounts how the former chief executive insisted on sometimes-brutal directness and shoved aside tolerance for muddy thinking.

The man who earned the nickname "Neutron Jack" for violently overhauling the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company in the early years of his 1981-2001 reign comes across as a passionate, sometimes rude boss, quick to praise people whose ideas he admired and ready to pounce on those who did not meet his standards.

For example, Lane recalls the tirade resulting from his choice of a photo of Welch for GE's annual report.

"You a------!" Lane quotes the corporate chieftain as saying. "You put the wrong picture in the back."

Welch, who co-authored two of the more than a dozen books about him, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

'Exaggerated Everything'

During Welch's tenure, GE's stock price rose 50-fold, a run Lane credits in part to the chief's aggressive communications.

"He exaggerated everything," Lane said in an interview. "From the first day he got up there, he said we're going to be better than the best and every individual must give 110 percent of their effort."

Such rhetoric was "very, very effective," particularly with Wall Street, said Lane, who described his book as the first on Welch written by a GE insider.

GE shares have shown little growth after dropping sharply in the wake of the 9/11 attacks -- shortly after Welch's retirement.

"Jack was probably overpaid as far as stock price while he was there," Lane said. "I think (Welch's successor and current CEO) Jeff Immelt is being underpaid for GE's performance."

At Welch's insistence, Lane writes, GE managers eliminated the five-year strategic plans that had driven corporate planning meetings like the company's big annual gathering of its top brass in Boca Raton, Florida.

"Anyone who even claimed they could see four or five years into the future was considered a bullshitter," Lane writes.

Instead, Welch expected his team to provide simple but clear explanations of the challenges their businesses were facing and how they planned to overcome them.

"The old GE corporate civility, where a droning bore or dissembler worked through his script and was thanked regally by his boss, was over," Lane writes. "Civility was no longer a corporate virtue. Spatters of blood began to fleck conference room walls."

While much of the 315-page book focuses on Welch's tough-guy persona, there are lighter moments.

He gorged on frozen yogurt when he first discovered it, until he realized that even fat-free foods could pack on the pounds, Lane writes. In another anecdote, Welch stumbles around the darkened estate of Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates, unable to figure out the computerized lamps.

In the late 1990s, when GE was under fire from peace activists for producing weapons, Welch boarded a corporate helicopter and flew to a rural convent to meet with a Catholic nun who had been leading protests against the company.

The protests "really bothered Welch," Lane writes. "He wanted GE to be loved by everyone."

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/busin...47486620080126





Bono Gives IPod to Japanese PM for Aid
AP

Rock star Bono bowed deeply and gave Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda an iPod at the start of a meeting Saturday to try to get more Japanese support for the fight against poverty in Africa.

The gift broke the ice as Fukuda sat down with Bono, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other major supporters of more aid for Africa.

Fukuda asked the U2 frontman if his music was on the red recording device.

''No, but you can download it,'' said Bono.

''My son has some of your music,'' Fukuda told him.

After the private meeting, Fukuda told government and business leaders at the World Economic Forum that African development would be one of the three major themes of the G-8 meeting he is hosting in Japan this July.

Part of the proceeds from sales of the special-edition red iPod go directly to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa.

Earlier this week, Bill Gates said the Red-branded products have generated $50 million for the fund in the last year and a half.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...vuT4AD8UDJOCG1





Gates Foundation to Give $306 Million to Assist Poor Farmers
Celia W. Dugger

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions of dollars to improve the health of poor people in developing countries, will reach into its deep pockets on Friday for a newer philanthropic mission: to increase the productivity of impoverished farmers.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, intends to announce $306 million in grants that aim to provide the rural poor with better seeds, healthier soil and access to new markets for their crops, the foundation said Thursday. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people live in the countryside. The grants to be announced Friday by the foundation will bring its total for agriculture to $660 million, and it says it will increase the total to $900 million by next year.

This infusion of money and interest from one of the world’s most influential philanthropic families is helping to revitalize a field that has been starved of resources in the past two decades as foreign aid for agricultural development has plummeted. Several factors led to the fall, including competition for aid for health and education, as well as earlier failures in agricultural development.

The Gates grants come as global warming is likely to intensify droughts and floods in Africa and worsen the staggering rates of rural poverty on what already is the hungriest continent.

“People, ourselves included, recognize this is an urgent problem and is only going to get worse,” said Rajiv J. Shah, the foundation’s director of agricultural development. “We need to come together now.”

The foundation’s approach seeks to avoid problems that have led to disappointing results for other aid-financed agricultural projects.

Instead of relying on professionals from wealthy countries who eventually leave and take their skills with them, it seeks to educate, train and employ people from poor countries to conduct the scientific research and advise farmers about crop techniques and livestock care, among other tasks.

Rather than see the benefits of projects captured by better-off farmers, as in some past projects, the nonprofit groups receiving Gates foundation grants will focus on poor women because studies have found that they are more likely to use gains in income to educate their children and improve their families’ well-being.

Instead of counting on free markets to generate opportunities spontaneously, the nonprofit groups managing some of the grants will intervene to help farmers form groups to sell goods in bulk and provide them with access to the agronomic advice, processing facilities and transportation they need to take advantage of growing markets for products like milk and coffee.

In Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, for example, Heifer International — working with other groups and institutions — will help women who tend cows gain access to refrigeration plants, enabling them to sell milk for distribution to stores distant from their farms.

The foundation’s largest grant — $165 million — will go to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to improve the degraded soils of four million farmers in a dozen African countries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/wo...q=gates&st=nyt





Analysis: Metcalfe's Law + Real ID = More Crime, Less Safety
Jon Stokes

"We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" Thus spake security consultant Ed Giorgio in a widely-quoted New Yorker article on the US intelligence community's plans to vacuum up and sift through everything that flies across the wires. But Giorgio is wrong—catastrophically wrong. The story of Fidencio Estrada, a drug runner who bribed Florida Customs agent Rafael Pacheco to (among other things) access multiple federal law enforcement databases on his behalf, suggests that when it comes to the government collecting data on innocent civilians for law enforcement purposes, privacy and security are essentially the same thing.

The factual background in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals' recent decision to uphold a lower court's conviction of Estrada details how in early 2000, Pacheco accessed DHS's billion-record Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) database looking for any information that the feds had on Estrada. (Hat tip to CNET's Declan McCullough, whose blog post brought this story to my attention.) Pacheco also went into the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database in order to dig up information on the warrants that were out for Estrada's arrest. Pacheco then fed the info back to Estrada, who was better able to elude law enforcement in as he plied his narcotics trade.

Estrada and Pacheco were eventually busted, sentenced, and are currently doing time for their crimes, but their story shows exactly why the United States' headlong rush to build government databases full of data on noncriminals (i.e., mere suspects, like OneDOJ, and the completely innocent, like Real ID) are such a spectacularly awful idea. All it takes is one bad apple with the right level of access, and the entire database is compromised.

With great (network) power comes great responsibility vulnerability

Here's an ugly prediction that you can take to the bank: as the amount of data that the feds collect on innocent civilians grows, so will the number of people who are victims of crimes that were made possible by unauthorized access to a government database. I'm not just talking about identity theft, though that is a huge danger with Real ID, but violent crimes as well. As I explained in the OneDOJ post linked above, this prediction is just Metcalfe's Law at work:

This is, of course, a fundamental problem inherent in the very nature of any massive, centralized government data-sharing plan that spans multiple agencies and connects untold numbers of state and federal law enforcement officers: the usefulness of such a system to any one individual (a white hat or a black hat) grows roughly with the square of the number of participants who are using it to share data (Metcalfe's law). So the more white hats that any of these programs manage to connect to each other, the more useful the network as a whole will be to the small handful of black hats who gain access to it at any point.

That such databases will be "useful" to black hats means any number of things—useful for identity thieves, and useful for terrorists who seek to impersonate lawful citizens.

While I'm citing laws and trends from the world of computing that shortly will have a direct impact on all of our ability to carry out our lives in relative safety, let me bring up two more trends worth factoring into our deteriorating privacy/security equation: the rapidly diving cost-per-bit of mass storage and the increasing amount of bandwidth available on networks both public and private.

So the government wants to collect tons of detailed data on citizens in these large databases; meanwhile, the speed at which an attacker could siphon off that data is increasing, as is the frightening but real possibility that ever-larger swaths of that database can fit onto a single lost or purloined hard drive.

But perhaps all this talk of government databases squeezed onto hard drives that then fall into the wrong hands is just fear-mongering, and that's probably best left to professionals.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ss-safety.html





Airport Screeners Use Black Lights to Inspect ID Cards

TSA screeners at about 400 U.S. airports have began checking IDs with hand-held black lights; black lights help screeners inspect ID cards by illuminating holograms, typically of government seals, which are found in licenses and passports

Keep it simple. The newest tool at airport security checkpoints is three inches long and costs only a few dollars: A hand-held black light. USA Today's Thomas Frank writes that airport screeners are starting to use them this month to examine driver's licenses and other passenger ID cards presented at checkpoints to spot forgeries or tampering. Passengers with suspicious documents can be questioned by police or immigration agents.

Black lights will help screeners inspect the ID cards by illuminating holograms, typically of government seals, which are found in licenses and passports. Screeners also are getting magnifying glasses that highlight tiny inscriptions found in borders of passports and other IDs. About 2,100 of each are going to the nation's 800 airport checkpoints.

The closer scrutiny of passenger IDs is the latest Transportation Security Administration (TSA) effort to check passengers more thoroughly than simply having them walk through metal detectors. In the past six months, the agency has been taking over the checking of passenger IDs and boarding passes at airport checkpoints. For years, security guards hired by airlines have done that. "This is a significant security upgrade," TSA chief Kip Hawley says. Screeners are trained in spotting forged documents and will get some training in studying suspicious passenger behavior to pick out people who merit deeper scrutiny at the checkpoint, Hawley says.

The TSA screeners, unlike security guards, also get daily briefings on the latest airport security concerns. More than forty passengers have been arrested since June in cases when TSA screeners spotted altered passports, fraudulent visas and resident ID cards, and forged driver's licenses. Many of them were arrested on immigration charges. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Airport security consultant Rich Roth says screeners will do a better job than security guards checking identification because they have training and "a little more authority" to question passengers. Airlines welcome having screeners observe passengers while checking their IDs and boarding passes. "That's the kind of resources the TSA can devote to the document-checking that the airlines didn't," says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, a trade group of major U.S. airlines.

The TSA has taken over document-checking in about 400 of the 450 airports where it operates. The agency will take over the remaining 50 in the next couple of months, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe says.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5386





Senate Rejects Surveillance Law Renewal
AP

Senate Republicans blocked Majority Leader Harry Reid's attempt Tuesday to extend the life of a surveillance law due to expire Feb. 1, raising the stakes for a vote expected later this week on a new version of the law.

Reid, D-Nev., failed to get the unanimous consent he sought to extend the Protect America Act, which Congress hastily adopted last summer in the face of warnings from Bush administration officials about dangerous gaps in the government's ability to eavesdrop on terrorist e-mails and phone calls.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., objected to the extension, saying there was enough time before the law expires to pass a longer-term renewal of the government's terrorist surveillance authority.

Reid plans to bring to the Senate floor on Thursday competing versions of an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. If a bill is not approved then, Reid said he would require the Senate to work through the weekend to a bill passed.

The original FISA law requires the government to get permission from a special court to listen in on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States. Changes in communications technology mean many purely foreign to foreign communications now pass through the United States and therefore require the government to get court orders to intercept them.

The Protect America Act, adopted in August, eased that restriction. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say it went too far, giving the government far more power to eavesdrop on American communications without court oversight.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...veillance.html





Phone Companies Likely to Get Immunity for Wiretapping

Dems lack votes to block, but may delay it
Eric Lichtblau

Senate Democrats concede they probably lack the votes needed to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone utilities that helped the National Security Agency's eavesdropping, and they are seeking to put off the vote for another month.

The Senate delayed a vote in December, and it is scheduled to take up the issue again beginning Thursday.

Putting off the vote for a second time riled White House officials and Republicans on Tuesday, because they insist national security will be put at risk if Congress does not meet a Feb. 1 deadline to amend the eavesdropping law.

"We've had six months to get this done," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "We shouldn't need more time to get this done."

The debate has percolated since the disclosure in December 2005 that President Bush had authorized the security agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorist ties.

Since then, Congress has struggled with how it should respond to the president's actions. A temporary solution developed in August, when Congress, in a rushed vote just before its summer recess, agreed to give Bush many of the broadened eavesdropping powers he had sought.

Democrats came under fire from their supporters for submitting to White House pressure. The August measure expanded the powers of the security agency for six months, with the broadened authority expiring Feb. 1. It left out one element long sought by the White House, legal protection for telephone carriers against civil suits or criminal prosecution growing out of the eavesdropping.

The White House has continued its efforts to make the broadened eavesdropping permanent and for immunity for the utilities. Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to give a speech on the topic today at the Heritage Foundation.

The House approved a bill in November that omitted the immunity, as lawmakers opposed to the concept insisted that the companies should not be rewarded with legal protection for taking part in what some legal experts say was an illegal operation.

AT&T and other utilities face multibillion-dollar suits over their reported roles in the program.

The immunity issue has splintered Senate Democrats. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-Va., who leads the Intelligence Committee, has received approval from his committee for a plan that includes immunity.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has won passage of a competing plan that leaves it out.

Even if the Senate does approve a bill that includes immunity, it seems unlikely that such a plan could be signed into law before the Feb. 1 deadline, congressional officials said.

Because the House has passed a measure that did not include immunity, the issue would first have to go before a conference committee to work out an agreement between the two versions. That could take weeks.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8052110





Web Site Assembles U.S. Prewar Claims
John H. Cushman Jr.

Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials’ statements before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons.

The Center for Public Integrity, a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy, designed the new Web site to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake uranium,” in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words, including remarks by President Bush and most of his top advisers in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq, by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and two White House press secretaries, among others, can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”

The database is online at www.publicintegrity.org.

Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the research center say their work has documented “at least 935 false statements” on hundreds of occasions, particularly that Iraq had unconventional weapons, links to Al Qaeda, or both.

The database shows how even after the invasion, when a consensus emerged that the prewar intelligence assessments were flawed, administration officials occasionally suggested that the weapons might still be found.

The officials have defended many of their prewar statements as having been based on the intelligence that was available at the time — although there is now evidence that some statements contradicted even the sketchy intelligence of the time.

President Bush said in 2005 that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong” but that “it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/wa...tabase.html?hp





Judge: NYC Can't Use Secret Arguments
AP

The city must disclose its arguments about why documents on police surveillance of protesters before the 2004 Republican National Convention should be kept confidential, a judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV in Manhattan said the court won't consider a sealed affidavit by David Cohen, the New York Police Department's commissioner for intelligence.

''Permitting the submission of secret argument is antithetical to our adversary system of justice,'' Francis wrote, ruling that a revised statement by Cohen must be submitted publicly.

The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing on behalf of some of more than 1,800 people arrested at the convention.

Cohen said in the declaration dated Dec. 7 that some information ordered disclosed by Francis in August could reveal the identities of undercover officers and confidential informants. It could also disclose methods of operation that would undermine law enforcement, Cohen argued.

Francis said in his ruling that Cohen could refer to secret documents without revealing sensitive information, since the magistrate judge has viewed the documents himself.

Gail Donoghue, special counsel in the city law office, said: ''We are reviewing the ruling and considering all possible legal actions.''

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director at the NYCLU, said the ruling is another example of the federal court making it ''clear that the details of the NYPD's aggressive convention tactics cannot be kept behind closed doors.''

He added: ''If the NYPD wants to rely on its political-surveillance operation to defend its tactics, the department must disclose the details of that operation.''

The NYCLU is seeking police records for the lawsuits stemming from the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where President Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term in office. The NYCLU said the arrests violated the protesters' civil rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...n-Arrests.html





Collapsed UK Bank Attempts to Censor Wikileaks
James Hardine

Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn.

The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands!

The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/21/1318224





Google's Share of Search Market Falls, Nielsen Says
Bloomberg

Google, owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, lost market share last month for the first time since June, according to Nielsen Online. Google's share of U.S. Web queries fell to 56.3 percent in December from 57.7 percent the previous month, Nielsen said Friday in a statement. Yahoo dropped to 17.7 percent from 17.9 percent. The companies lost market share to Microsoft, which upgraded its search engine in September to include shopping, health, map and entertainment options. The Redmond, Wash., company captured 13.8 percent of searches, up from 12 percent in November. Shares of Mountain View-based Google fell 54 cents to $600.25 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo dropped 44 cents to $20.78. Microsoft slipped 10 cents to $33.01.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8018514





Three U.S. Lawmakers Back XM/Sirius Merger
Diane Bartz

Three U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers have come out in favor of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's proposed purchase of its rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc, the companies said on Thursday.

Republican Connie Mack of Florida backed the merger, as did Democrats Joe Baca and Bob Filner of California, the two companies said in a statement.

The Justice Department is evaluating whether the merger of the only two U.S. satellite radio companies would hurt competition. Congress has held hearings on the proposed deal but has no say in the Justice Department's antitrust evaluation.

On Thursday, shares of the two companies rebounded after falling sharply late Wednesday on concerns about whether the merger would win approval from antitrust regulators.

Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, who chairs a House antitrust task force, and Republican Steven Chabot of Ohio sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey earlier in the week expressing concern that senior department officials might intend to approve the merger over the objections of staff lawyers.

In afternoon trading, Sirius was up 16 cents or 4.86 percent at $3.45 a share while XM rose 85 cents or 6.43 percent to $14.06.

Sirius and XM also said that General Motors Corp supported the merger and had urged the Federal Communications Commission to avoid putting conditions on the deal. GM installs XM Satellite Radio in some of its vehicles. The FCC is reviewing the deal to determine its impact on the public.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...21997920071213





NCNW Opposes Satellite Radio Merger
FMQB

The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) submitted a letter to the FCC on Thursday to voice their opposition to the proposed merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, saying that it "poses a clear, present and unmitigated threat to decency and greater diversity of media ownership." The NCNW feels that if one satcaster was the home of a collection of so-called shock jocks such as Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony and Bubba The Love Sponge, then it would cater to the "lowest-common-denominator" of programming.

"One only has to evaluate the current programming now offered by Sirius and XM to recognize that our concerns and fears are well founded. Programming such as Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, and Bubba the Love Sponge - which help to perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes in our culture - drive the business of both companies," reads the letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. "A Sirius - XM satellite radio monopoly will focus its resources on only its most profitable audiences, with more of the same lowest-common-denominator programming of the Howard Stern variety. Yet the audiences of those shows do not reflect the broader spectrum of the American listening public."

The letter goes on to voice support for private equity firm Georgetown Partners, which is asking that Sirius and XM be required to hand over 20 percent of their channel capacity in order to "create competition and diversity" in satellite radio and ensure some family-friends programming. The NCNW wrote, "In achieving the triple imperatives of programming decency, diversity of programming, and diversity of ownership in the satellite radio market, Georgetown's proposal offers a bright future for this critically important medium that stands in stark contrast to the 'at risk' position promised by the Sirius - XM combination as currently proposed by the companies."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=558786





Nice ass

FCC Fines ABC Over 'NYPD Blue'; Network to Appeal

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday said it plans to fine the Walt Disney Co's (DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) ABC network $1.4 million for airing an episode of "NYPD Blue" in 2003 that showed a woman's nude buttocks.

The company said it opposes the fine and plans to appeal.

In a notice filed on Friday, the agency said 52 television ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones had aired the scene at 9 p.m. in violation of federal restrictions against broadcasting "obscene material" between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

The agency said it received "numerous complaints" about the scene, in which a young boy walks in on a nude woman about to take a shower.

Stations in the Eastern and Pacific time zones were exempt because they broadcast the Feb. 25, 2003, episode at 10 p.m. local time.

ABC said in a statement that it had broadcast the episode and others from the cop drama, which ran from 1993 to 2005, with appropriate parental warnings and with V-chip enabled program ratings when they were available.

The network added that the show had been on the air for nearly a decade when the episode in question aired "and the realistic nature of its storylines was well known to the viewing public." (Reporting by Gina Keating; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssT...30635020080126





Advertiser Sues Don Imus for Unscripted Comments

A book publisher that bought an ad on Don Imus's radio show is suing the shock jock and his former bosses at CBS Radio for more than $4 million, saying Imus insulted the book he was paid to promote.

It was the latest controversy to follow the radio personality, who was fired by CBS Radio in April 2007 for insulting a women's basketball team with a racial slur. He has since returned to the air with another network.

Flatsigned Press said in a New York state court lawsuit filed late on Wednesday that Imus' show had agreed to a script for the 30-second spot in January 2007 to promote a book by former President Gerald Ford on the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Imus laughed as he read the script, calling it "cheesy," the lawsuit said. "These bastards have been waiting for him to croak so they can unload" the books, Imus said on the air, according to the lawsuit.

Martin Garbus, Imus' lawyer, said "The lawsuit is without merit and will be dismissed."

Ford served on the Warren Commission that conducted the official inquiry and his book "John F. Kennedy: Assassination Report of the Warren Commission" was published shortly after Ford died in December 2006.

"Imus unilaterally changed the language of the live read, which was completely contrary the agreement agreed upon by the parties," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also names Infinity Broadcasting Corp., Sports Radio 66-WFAN and CBS Radio. Infinity, which used to be a division of Viacom Inc., became part of CBS Radio when CBS and Viacom split in 2006.

"Imus in the Morning" was produced and broadcast by the CBS-owned WFAN radio station in New York and syndicated on some 60 stations nationally. The program also was simulcast on cable television's MSNBC, but MSNBC did not air the ad and was not sued.

In December, Imus returned to radio with a nationally syndicated show broadcast out of WABC in New York in a deal with ABC Radio Networks, which is owned by Citadel Broadcasting Corp. (Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Eric Beech)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...28377720080125





In the Fatosphere, Big Is in, or at Least Accepted
Roni Caryn Rabin

For years, health experts have been warning that Americans are too fat, that we exercise too little and eat too much, that our health is in jeopardy.

Some fat people beg to differ.

Blogs written by fat people — and it’s fine to use the word, they say — have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere, where bloggers calling for fat acceptance challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity.

Smart, sassy and irreverent, bloggers with names like Big Fat Deal, FatChicksRule and Fatgrrl (“Now with 50 percent more fat!”) buck anti-obesity sentiment. They celebrate their full figures and call on readers to accept their bodies, quit dieting and get on with life.

The message from the fatosphere is not just that big is beautiful. Many of the bloggers dismiss the “obesity epidemic” as hysteria. They argue that Americans are not that much larger than they used to be and that being fat in and of itself is not necessarily bad for you.

And they reject a core belief that many Americans, including overweight ones, hold dear: that all a fat person needs to do to be thin is exercise more and eat less.

“One of the first obstacles to fat acceptance is breaking down the question of whether being fat is a choice,” Kate Harding, founder of the blog Shapely Prose, said in an interview. “No fat acceptance advocate is saying you should sit around and wildly overeat. What we’re saying is that exercise and a balanced diet do not make everyone thin.”

Ms. Harding, a 33-year-old yoga enthusiast from Chicago, promotes the idea of health at any size (she is a 16). She started Shapely Prose (kateharding.net) last April, after noticing that posts about fat in her personal blog hit a nerve. Since then, it has quickly become one of the most popular fat acceptance blogs, with an average of 3,710 page views per day, according to Sitemeter, a Web statistics program.

People come in different shapes and sizes, bloggers like Ms. Harding say, and for those who come extra-large, dieting is futile. Many of the bloggers label their sites “no-diet zones.” (Don’t even mention weight-loss surgery.)

“You relapse, and then you go on a diet again, and this time you’re going to do it, it’s really going to be it this time,” Marianne Kirby, a 30-year-old blogger from Orlando, Fla., who writes The Rotund (therotund.com), said in an interview. “And it still doesn’t work, not long-term — you end up heavier than before. And you say to yourself: Why did I fall for this again?’ ”

The blogs have drawn their share of negative, even vicious comments. But for overweight readers, the messages are empowering — and liberating.

“Girlfriend, let me tell you, I am finally coming to grips with myself,” one fan commented on Ms. Harding’s site. “I will always be fat. I accept that now.”

Harriet Brown, a 49-year-old blogger in Wisconsin and an occasional contributor to The New York Times, encourages readers to take her “I Love My Body Pledge” (at harrietbrown.com), in which they promise not to talk “trash” about “how fat my thighs or stomach” are, and not “call myself a fat pig.”

Fat Fu’s anonymous blog (fatfu.wordpress.com) has a ruthless deconstruction of recent research like the “fat friends” study, as well as one of the most comprehensive lists of links to the fatosphere, including online communities, fashions and health sites for fat people. The Big Fat Deal blog (bfdblog.com) suggests 10 ways to be a “body positivity activist,” including “Be yourself,” “Understand that a lot of people are hateful morons” and “Don’t be afraid to order the cheesecake.”

Many of the bloggers are women whose writing has a distinctly feminist flavor, but there are male fat-acceptance bloggers like Red No. 3 (red3.blogspot.com), who says: “See, I don’t have a problem with fat. My body is simply adorned, and I’ll take that.”

But some experts say this sort of message is dangerous and undermines public health efforts to rein in obesity. “We do have to be careful not to put all the blame on the individual,” said Dr. Walter C. Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. But he added, “The large majority of people who are overweight are overweight because of lifestyle.”

The bloggers argue that changes in definitions over time, along with flaws in the body mass index formula, have pushed more Americans into the “fat” and “obese” categories, and they point to provocative studies suggesting that there may be benefits to being overweight, including a large study that found that underweight Americans are more likely to die than those who are moderately overweight.

Several other recent studies on heart patients and dialysis patients have also reported higher survival rates among heavier patients, suggesting that the link between body size and health may be more complex than generally acknowledged. Another study of people over 60 found that being fit has more bearing on longevity than simply being thin.

The bloggers’ main contention is that being fat is not a result of moral failure or a character flaw, or of gluttony, sloth or a lack of willpower. Diets often boomerang, they say; indeed, numerous long-term studies have found that even though dieters are often able to lose weight in the short term, they almost always regain the lost pounds over the next few years.

Ultimately, these bloggers argue, being skinny may have far more to do with the luck of the genetic draw than with lifestyle choices.

“We accept that some people are tall and some people are short,” said Rachel Richardson, 28, of Cincinnati, who writes a blog called The F-Word (the-f-word.org). “Yet we seem to think all people should be thin — it just doesn’t make sense.”

Fat acceptance bloggers contend that the war on obesity has given people an excuse to wage war on fat people and that health concerns — coupled with the belief that fat people have only themselves to blame for being fat — are being used to justify discrimination that would not be tolerated toward just about any other group of people.

“I’m not surprised there are so many of these blogs now,” Ms. Richardson said. “Anti-obesity hysteria has reached a boiling point. Blogging is a way for people to fight back.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/health/22fblogs.html


















Until next week,

- js.



















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