[JackSpratts]

New DVDs
Dave Kehr




CULT CAMP CLASSICS

Warner Home Video has brought a very diverse group of 12 films together into four box sets collectively called “Cult Camp Classics.” Unsurprisingly, not all of them are cult films (if there is any fan frenzy over John Guillermin’s “Skyjacked,” it is certainly muted); a few aren’t even campy (Howard Hawks’s “Land of the Pharaohs” could be the most down-to-earth costume epic ever made); and none of them would qualify as classics, even in the Ed Wood pantheon.

What these films have in common is a starless obscurity that makes them difficult to release into the name-driven DVD market. If the condescending “cult camp” label gives them a commercial hook, I guess that’s for the good, at least as long as it means getting prints as carefully restored and transfers as technically perfect as these.

With a clean face and pressed clothes, even a desperately impoverished drive-in picture like Edward Bernd’s “Queen of Outer Space” (1958) can make a good impression. One of a large number of low-budget films from the Allied Artists library now owned by Warner Brothers, this tale of virile American astronauts landing on a Venus populated by scantily clad women (Zsa Zsa Gabor among them) probably looks better now than it ever did at the drive-in. With its once-faded DeLuxe color pumped back up to something like its original intensity, William P. Whitley’s cinematography takes on the Pop Art shimmer of Pedro Almodóvar’s early films, a crazy quilt of violently mismatched hues.

The two other titles in the “Sci-Fi Thrillers” box are “The Giant Behemoth,” a sleepy 1959 monster-stomps-city epic featuring some of the last work of the stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien (“King Kong”), and the strangely riveting “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman,” a sort of down-market science-fiction variation on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

A boozy, battling couple played by Allison Hayes and William Hudson slap each other around on various flimsy sets, until Ms. Hayes’s character resolves the standoff by shooting up to a height of 50 feet, thanks to an accidental encounter with a radioactive alien.

As an outrageously literal metaphor for unleashed female anger, “50-Foot Woman” achieves a kind of demented grandeur. Apparently the director, Nathan Juran, didn’t see the poetry: he signed it with a pseudonym, Nathan Hertz, his first and middle names.

Poor Dana Andrews comes in for a beating in the box Warners has titled “Terrorized Travelers.” This former A-list star, who had become the embodiment of the returning World War II veteran in William Wyler’s “ Best Years of Our Lives” (1946), was deep into a struggle with alcoholism by the time he appeared as the traumatized ex-fighter pilot in Hall Bartlett’s 1957 “Zero Hour!” and as the embattled husband and father in a duel with thrill-seeking teenagers in the 1967 “Hot Rods to Hell.”

The second film, in particular, draws on Mr. Andrews’s 1940s stardom, pairing him with his “State Fair” co-star Jeanne Crain under the direction of John Brahm, another ’40s figure. In a plot line that could be a parody of a World War II campaign picture, Mr. Andrews plays a debilitated authority figure (he can’t drive as a result of a devastating car accident) trying to transport his wife and children across the California desert to what seems like a grim new life managing a small-town motel.

The family’s caravan of middle-class decency is attacked by speed-crazed youths in souped-up cars, urged on by a decadent blonde played by Mimsy Farmer. The film may be stiffly executed, but its underlying anger and bitterness are hard to shake. Given the year of its making, “Hot Rods to Hell” may represent one of the last times that the aging, pre-boomer generation got to have its cranky say in a movie industry that would soon shut out most voices over 40.

John Cromwell’s 1950 “Caged” is at once an obvious and an inappropriate choice for a box devoted to “Women in Peril.” A researcher looking for a trashy women’s prison film would understandably be drawn to the lurid title.

But the movie is no spoofy, salacious Roger Corman “women in cages” picture. It’s a sober, well-filmed drama in the old Warner Brothers school of social issue movies, effectively an update of “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” with Eleanor Parker (too breathy and theatrical) as the fresh fish in the tank, and the unforgettable Hope Emerson, all 6 foot 2 inches of her, as a sadistic guard. Ms. Parker, Ms. Emerson and the screenwriters, Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld, were all nominated for Oscars.

The whole “Cult Camp Classics” enterprise is justified for me by the presence of “Land of the Pharaohs” in the “Historical Epics” volume. Howard Hawks’s only film in CinemaScope, it has been hard to see in its original format. This transfer not only gets the framing right (I noticed, for the first time, that Hawks has placed a rectangle around the opening credits to establish the correct aspect ratio for the projectionist) but also restores a long-lost four-track stereo soundtrack.

It’s still not a great movie (it features Joan Collins; need I say more?), but it’s far from the disaster it has often been portrayed as. For Hawks, the epic form is not about the DeMille pageantry of dancing girls and muscled Nubian slaves. (For that sort of thing, see its box companion, Richard Thorpe’s garish biblical blockbuster “The Prodigal”).

Rather, in typical Hawks fashion, Topic A is the business of getting a dangerous job done: in this case the construction, under the Pharaoh Khufu (Jack Hawkins), of the Great Pyramid of Giza. (To capture its scope, Hawks allows himself one of the few showy shots in his career, a 360-degree pan around the construction site that embraces thousands of extras.)

The art direction, by the incomparable Alexandre Trauner (“Children of Paradise”), alludes to the Fascist architecture so recently and disastrously popular in Europe, and Hawks makes the dictatorial Khufu an ambiguous figure: admirable for his ambition and energy, dangerous in his contempt for human life and fierce commitment to a cruel religion.

Hawks’s films always seem conspicuously secular in the context of the religiosity of much Hollywood cinema; “Land of the Pharaohs” is quietly, confidently skeptical of all things transcendent.

The Cult Camp Classics Collections: “Sci-Fi Thrillers,” “Women in Peril,” “Terrorized Travelers” and “Historical Epics,” $29.98 for each volume of three films; single titles are $14.98 each. All films in the collection are unrated, with the exception of “Skyjacked,” part of the “Terrorized Travelers” box, which is PG.

ALSO OUT TODAY

BLACK SNAKE MOAN A young nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) finds salvation when an aging blues man (Samuel L. Jackson) chains her to his radiator and teaches her old-time values. With Justin Timberlake; Craig Brewer directs. (Paramount, $29.99, R)

SHOOTER Mark Wahlberg as a disillusioned government assassin recruited for one last job. Antoine Fuqua directs; with Michael Peña and Danny Glover. (Paramount, $29.99, R)

MONK: SEASON FIVE All 16 episodes from the fifth season of the popular television series starring Tony Shalhoub as a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Universal, $59.98, not rated)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/mo...deo/26dvd.html





National Lampoon Stakes Revival on Making Own Films
Andrew Adam Newman

“Did you say ‘over?’ ” the character played by John Belushi asked in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” in 1978. “Nothing’s over till we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!”

It was arguably the high point for both the movie and National Lampoon itself, once a comedic standard-bearer that for most of the last two decades has run on little more than fumes, licensing its name to dozens of movies that failed spectacularly while producing few of its own. The company has not published the magazine that first made it famous in nearly 10 years.

“The National Lampoon, once a brand name above nearly all others in comedy, has become shorthand for pathetic frat boy humor,” an Associated Press review of “Van Wilder 2,” a movie made using the company’s name, said last year. Added Variety, “The four-years-in-the-making, badly recycled (not to mention awful) sequel might stain the honor of the Lampoon label if it hadn’t already produced several even worse films.”

But now, like the history-challenged Mr. Belushi rallying his fraternity brothers, National Lampoon is trying to escape its doldrums. Operating from new offices on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, the company will again make original films, including the first one it has produced in 18 years, “National Lampoon’s Bag Boy,” which will be released this year. The movie is about grocery store bagging competitions and will star Dennis Farina and Brooke Shields, among others.

The company also announced this month that it was beginning production on “National Lampoon’s Ratko: The Dictator’s Son,” a comedy that will be directed by Savage Steve Holland, whose films include “Better Off Dead.”

In all, National Lampoon plans to release four of its own movies annually and acquire up to eight more for distribution.

National Lampoon is hoping to build an audience through the college cable television network it purchased in 2002 and through the original videos it has been producing for Web sites like YouTube, Veoh and Lycos.

The point of the videos is to lure viewers back to nationallampoon.com, which is highlighted at the end of each clip. The site is an umbrella for comedy Web sites that the company has been cobbling together under its brand.

National Lampoon has also gone back into print. On June 12, it released “National Lampoon Animal House 29th Anniversary Edition,” a novel version of the movie that includes still pictures from the film.

The company released the book this year instead of on the 30th anniversary for comedic effect, but also because it is eager to evoke its glory days. The big question is whether National Lampoon’s brand of frat-boy humor still has currency for the college market, which it continues to serve, or appeals just to nostalgic boomers.

“College boys still love alcohol, they still love girls, they love to have a good time — those things haven’t changed,” said Daniel S. Laikin, the chief executive of National Lampoon.

Mr. Laikin became the largest shareholder in National Lampoon Inc., which is publicly traded, in 1999, and took over its operations in 2002. He owns 40 percent of the company personally and 30 percent with partners. The business has 30 full-time employees, up from 10 when he began running it.

“The company really had just been a licensing company in the ’90s,” Mr. Laikin said on the phone from Los Angeles. “We were just licensing the name and we had no creative input. When I came in, we had to re-energize the brand and cut back on the licensing, because the only way to take control of the brand was to make sure that ultimately we put it on projects that we are proud of.”

Mr. Laikin, 45, who previously ran a venture capital firm (now dormant) called Four Leaf Partners that invested in Internet companies, has brought dozens of other humor Web sites under the National Lampoon Network umbrella.

Collectively the sites drew 5 million visitors in May, nearly twice as many as Comedy Central’s 2.6 million, according to comScore, which tracks Web traffic. Another competitor, The Onion, drew 882,000 visitors.

While no individual sites in National Lampoon’s Web network stack up individually to Comedy Central’s, having that audience in aggregate has helped National Lampoon draw major advertisers, including the United States Army and most major movie studios.

But David A. Morrison, president of Twentysomething, a marketing firm in Philadelphia and the author of “Marketing to the Campus Crowd,” said that toga parties might have passed their prime.

“There’s a brand currency with National Lampoon that’s stronger with advertisers that remember National Lampoon from their days in college,” Mr. Morrison said. “But in terms of today’s college market — their actual target market — I think it’s something of a blank canvas as a brand.”

Daring at the time, the company’s signature movie is almost quaint by today’s standards. “ ‘Animal House’ set the bar, but that bar has been far surpassed in terms of gross-out humor or sexual innuendo,” Mr. Morrison said. “It’s tame compared to something you’d see on YouTube” or the movie “Borat” or the moronic stunts in either of the “Jackass” movies, he added.

National Lampoon magazine, which was started in 1970 by alumni of Harvard Lampoon magazine, made questionable taste unquestionably funny. A 1973 cover featured a dog with a gun pointed at its head and the text, “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” It was selected by the American Society of Magazine Editors in 2005 as the seventh greatest cover of the last 40 years. Today, comedians like Stephen Colbert cite the magazine as an influence, as does Al Jean, executive producer of “The Simpsons,” who subscribed before working for it himself in the 1980s.

Riding on the success of the magazine, which at its peak in the mid-1970s had a circulation of more than one million, three of its writers collaborated on the screenplay for “Animal House.” Produced for less than $3 million, it attracted $261 million at the box office and was selected as one of the top 100 American comedies by the American Film Institute. National Lampoon still earns royalties on the DVD sales.

But with the notable exception of the Chevy Chase film, “National Lampoon’s Vacation” in 1983, the company never again found major success in theaters. The monthly magazine steadily lost circulation in the 1980s, eventually printing just one issue a year before ceasing publication in 1998.

Rather than conceiving movies, the company merely sold its moniker. If there were any standards for what the company would staple its name to, they were lost on many.

P. J. O’Rourke, who wrote for National Lampoon in the 1970s, told The New York Times in 2005 that what became of the company “breaks my heart, to tell you the truth.”

You might expect National Lampoon to grow defensive at such comments, but no one is quicker to agree than Mr. Laikin. “Our first years when we took over, we had a few license deals on products that we would not necessarily do today,” he said. “We have had to recreate this company from the ground up, which required revenue, which we derived from the licensing.”

Today the company knows the place to find its audience is online and in college dormitories. Its cable television network is piped into more than 600 universities with a collective enrollment of 4.9 million, the company says. The audiences for that network, at least in theory, will find their way into movie theaters when the company begins releasing its own films.

National Lampoon will have more of a stake in “Bag Boy” and its other movies than before, since it is financing and producing them itself. Universal Pictures produced “Animal House” and Warner Brothers Pictures produced “Vacation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/bu...25lampoon.html





Already Under Fire, a Producer Is Going Further
Michael Cieply

For a while Wednesday night’s block party for “Transformers” was shaping up to be the hottest ticket in town.

But that was before Courtney Solomon, planning a celebration of his own, called in the SuicideGirls.

Having already provoked parents, women’s groups and the ratings board with explicit ads for the coming torture movie “Captivity,” Mr. Solomon and his After Dark Films now intend to introduce the film, set for release July 13, with a party that may set a new standard for the politically incorrect.

For starters, Mr. Solomon has ordered up what he calls the three “most outlandish” SuicideGirls available from the punk porn service, even if they’re as frisky as the ones he is told once set a Portland, Ore., restaurant on fire. Some lucky fans will get to take the women as dates for party night, July 10, on two conditions: “People take the date at their own risk, and everybody on the Internet gets to watch.”

Cage fighting too is likely. Mr. Solomon’s planners are angling for Kimbo Slice, the bare-knuckle bruiser whose vicious backyard brawls are a Web favorite and who made his Mixed Martial Arts debut on Saturday.

But the warren of live torture rooms is a must. As Mr. Solomon envisions it, individuals in torture gear will wander through the West Hollywood club Privilege grabbing partygoers. All of which is a prelude to an undisclosed main event that, he warned last week over slices of pizza a few doors from his company’s new offices on the Sunset Strip, is “probably not legal.”

“The women’s groups definitely will love it,” Mr. Solomon hinted. “I call it my personal little tribute to them.”

Mr. Solomon, a fast-talking 35-year-old, and his genre-film company were barely noticed until outrage at the “Captivity” billboards — which chronicled a young woman’s torment, with frames titled “Abduction,” “Confinement,” “Torture,” “Termination” — led to a rare censure by the Motion Picture Association of America this spring.

When the association’s ratings board suspended its process for a month as a punitive measure, “Captivity” missed its May release date and was bumped to June 22. But Bob Weinstein and his Dimension Films wanted that date for their competing horror film “1408,” and he persuaded Mr. Solomon to swap for Friday, July 13. Mr. Solomon quickly called that Friday “Captivity Day.”

The idea behind Mr. Solomon’s planned party of course is to put “Captivity” back on the map, no small task given the scheduling hiccups and recent woes in the horror genre. Over the last few months a series of horror films have done poorly, culminating with the disappointing performance earlier this month by Lionsgate’s “Hostel: Part II.”

A spokesman for Lionsgate, which is co-releasing “Captivity,” declined to comment on the party plans. Mr. Solomon supervises his own promotions, though he is required to get Lionsgate’s approval for advertising under an arrangement that was tightened up after the “Captivity” debacle.

If horror is indeed lagging, part of the cure, Mr. Solomon said, is for the genre to get even scarier. To that end he persuaded the director of “Captivity,” Roland Joffé, the much-honored filmmaker behind “The Mission” and “The Killing Fields,” to undertake reshoots. These added explicit torture , including a so-called “milkshake” scene that involves body parts and a blender, to a picture that was largely psychological in its thrust when After Dark acquired the rights to it.

Mr. Joffé did not return a call last week. Mr. Solomon, a Toronto-born entrepreneur who acquired the rights to the game Dungeons & Dragons while working from his bedroom and wound up directing its film under the tutelage of the producer Joel Silver, casts his struggle with those who object to “Captivity” as a Larry Flynt-style fight against censorship and repression. Yet this promotional master of Hollywood’s dark side is waging the battle with typical outrageousness. The movie, which is rated R, will screen only once before its opening, at an expected showing for women’s groups in New York, at which he wants to engage in a town-hall-style debate with detractors.

“We would not be receptive,” said Meaghan Carey, deputy director of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women. “We’re not going to go protest so they can get press.”

The party meanwhile appears to break new ground even in a city that has seen its share of big nights. “I’ve been doing this for years, and haven’t had one like it,” said Maureen McGrath, vice president for sales for the SBE Restaurant Group, which owns Privilege. “Usually they want premieres to be squeaky clean. It sounds like they want this to be the antithesis of that.”

Mr. Solomon went one better in describing his plans, which are loosely intended to mimic the past doings at a once-notorious Moscow bar, the Hungry Duck. “If ‘Captivity’ is what it is, and we’re the bad boys, then ‘Captivity’ deserves a bad-boy party,” he said. “It deserves a nasty party.”

The primary audience, he said, will be fans, who can cycle through the club free in groups of 50, along with an expected army of Web-based video bloggers — the real opinion-makers when it comes to horror — who will start getting their invitations this week.

“I’m aware of it,” said Brad Miska, co-owner of one of the more popular such sites, Bloody-disgusting.com. “If they let us bring a camera, we’re there.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/movies/25horr.html





Billion-Dollar Deal to Be a Partner in Some Warner Films
Brooks Barnes

In a sign that the flood of private money in Hollywood only continues to rise, Legendary, the production company of the venture capitalist Thomas Tull, will invest $1 billion in a portfolio of films co-produced by Warner Brothers Pictures.

The deal, which the companies plan to announce today, extends a partnership forged in 2005. At the time, Legendary, whose participants include AIG Direct Investments, Banc of America Capital Investors and Falcon Investment Advisors, invested $500 million in a group of Warner films. The deal included some flops but also yielded the surprise hit “300” and the blockbuster “Batman Begins.”

The new five-year agreement, arranged by Dresdner Kleinwort, a London-based investment bank, calls for Warner and Legendary to jointly finance up to 45 films. Included are movies like “Where the Wild Things Are,” an adaptation of the classic children’s book; “The Losers,” based on a gritty comic book; and a remake of “Clash of the Titans.”

Jeff Robinov, Warner’s president for production, called the mix “some of the coolest and most exciting titles in our slate.” Warner will continue to keep to itself some highly lucrative films — like the Harry Potter movies, for example — to itself.

In recent years, the major studios have sought private investors to help finance increasingly expensive movies. The film industry has also welcomed partners to offset the pain of piracy and slowing DVD sales. As a result, Hollywood has drawn significant amounts of new money from wealthy investors.

Many of those ventures have a mixed track record, and Hollywood has a long history of leaving outsiders with little to show for their investments but an empty wallet and a few star autographs. Last summer, the relationship between Legendary and Warner, owned by Time Warner, grew tense after two movies that they jointly financed, M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water” and the animated “Ant Bully,” faltered at the box office.

“You learn more about your partner when you go through a couple of movies that don’t work than you do when times are great,” said Mr. Tull in an interview. “This is a business that certainly has its challenges, but it’s one we believe in for the long term.”

Mr. Tull declined to say what rate of return Legendary has realized, except to note that the company was making money. He said the portfolio approach of dozens of films mitigates risk. Still, the size of the new investment, Mr. Tull said, reflects Legendary’s decision that it needed to put money into a greater number of films to “accomplish our goals.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/bu...a/26movie.html





Steve Jobs Directs Disney

Disney ditches direct-to-DVD sequels that Steve Jobs calls 'embarrassing'
Nick Spence

Disney is to scrap the lucrative direct-to-DVD animated sequels that Steve Jobs once branded “embarrassing”, according to Yahoo News.

Currently the largest Disney shareholder and a member of Disney's Board of Directors, Jobs, a longtime Disney fan, is thought to have influenced the decision.

In recent years DVD’s such as Lion King 1 1/2 and Bambi II have been commercial rather than critical hits for Disney. Little Mermaid III, which is currently in production, will be the last of the direct-to-DVD animated sequels.

In a 2003 conference call with financial analysts, Jobs said how much he hated the DVD sequels. "We feel sick about Disney doing sequels. If you look at the quality of their sequels it's pretty embarrassing." The change comes with a shake-up at the company's DisneyToon Studios, including the removal of longtime president Sharon Morrill.

DisneyToon Studios will become part of Walt Disney Feature Animation and report directly to Animation President Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, who assumed roles there after Disney bought Pixar Animation Studio last year for $7.4 billion in stock.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...S&NewsID=18376





Two ‘Mightys’ Disappoint at the Weekend Box Office
Brooks Barnes

The expensive Noah’s Ark comedy “Evan Almighty” nearly capsized in United States theaters in its premiere weekend, selling just $32 million in tickets.

Meanwhile, a strong opening for “1408,” based on a Stephen King short story, pumped life into the troubled horror genre.

Estimates for the three-day performance of “Evan Almighty,” directed by Tom Shadyac and starring Steve Carell, are alarming Universal Pictures because of the film’s outsize budget. The studio spent more than $200 million to produce and market the movie, making it the most expensive comedy in Hollywood history.

Expectations were high, because “Bruce Almighty” sold over $70 million in tickets during its opening weekend in 2003. Universal, which made the risky decision to aim its marketing at Christian audiences, conceded that the poorly reviewed “Evan Almighty” fell short of expectations. Still, executives said it was unfair to call its performance weak.

“We never expected it to be much higher,” said Nikki Rocco, Universal’s president of distribution. “It is not unusual for family films to open at a level like this and build. This film will have legs.”

Ms. Rocco emphasized that Universal had high expectations for “Evan Almighty” overseas. Comedies typically have a hard time playing across foreign markets, but Ms. Rocco said, “This is different; it’s God.” The movie opens in most international markets in August, she said.

While “Evan” struggled at the multiplex, a strong showing for “1408” curbed speculation that audiences were tiring of horror. The film, starring John Cusack as a skeptic who investigates a mysterious room at a New York hotel where suicides have taken place, sold a better-than-expected $20 million in tickets.

New installments of the gory “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises have performed poorly at the box office, fueling worries that the genre was fading. Healthy receipts for “1408,” produced by the Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films and distributed by MGM, could signal that audiences were simply shifting away from the gruesome disembowelment stories that have dominated in recent years.

“There has been too much of the same thing,” said Bob Weinstein. “This proves the horror genre is definitely not dead.”

Mr. Weinstein had another reason to be pleased; his studio’s “Sicko,” the latest documentary from Michael Moore, was playing strongly in sneak previews.

The weekend proved much more difficult for another high-profile movie, “A Mighty Heart” from Paramount Vantage. Starring Angelina Jolie as the widow of the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, “A Mighty Heart” rode a tidal wave of publicity to the box office but brought in only $4 million on 1,353 screens, for $2,952 a screen.

The total raises questions about the studio’s decision to try to attract a serious-minded audience during the summer, when frothy material dominates. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed it builds,” said a Paramount Vantage spokesman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/bu...boxoffice.html





NBC Exec: Think Of The Poor Corn Farmers Hurt By Movie Piracy
from the wait,-are-these-guys-serious? dept

NBC/Universal's general counsel Rick Cotton must just be trying to push his anti-piracy comments to absurd levels to see just how much he can get away with. We'd already written about his completely unsupportable statements on how law enforcement needs to spend less on traditional crime and focus more on piracy and counterfeiting. We also covered the highly problematic suggestion he made to the FCC that it force ISPs to monitor their traffic for any unauthorized material (complete with more bogus stats). However, as more people dig through that FCC filing there are some amazing quotes that really suggest that Cotton and NBC/Universal have no connection to reality with these pleas.

Public Knowledge picks up on NBC's showy concern for the American farmer:

"In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment."

There are all sorts of problems with this statement. As Public Knowledge points out, first off, movie theaters are doing great this year, suggesting the big "threat" of piracy had a lot less to do with its troubles than the fact that it just didn't have that many compelling movies the past few years. Also, corn farmers are doing quite well (and people still eat popcorn at home while watching pirated movies). Of course, that doesn't really matter. What's key here is that if Cotton and NBC actually believe this logic, then they don't deserve to be in business. By the very same reasoning, I could say "If all movies were pirated, then everyone would have that additional money they didn't spend on movies to spend on things like fancy dinners. Restaurants would be more crowded. Farmers would make more money by being able to sell more profitable food at higher prices." See how easy it is? It's also completely bogus, but it's just as accurate as Cotton's statement on the corn farmers. To suggest that the ripple effects don't ripple in other directions isn't just misleading, it's dangerously wrong. Of course, knowing how the entertainment industry works, next thing you know, they'll be demanding a cut of the profits corn farmers make, since, after all they're "profiting off the backs of the movie industry" without paying the industry for the benefit.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070621/004352.shtml





MPAA Sues Two Movie Streaming Sites
Thomas Mennecke

The MPAA announced today it has filed lawsuits against two web based movie streaming sites, YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com, in Federal Court. Most of the MPAA's legal enforcement has taken place against P2P and BitTorrent related communities, which are notoriously more difficult to knock off line. LokiTorrent, EliteTorrents and The Pirate Bay's destinies have all been influenced by the movie industry in one form or another, with varying levels of success.

Web based indexing or hosting has long been considered a highly dangerous venture, with costly litigation a near guarantee. Just ask AllofMP3.com, who has been battling for survival against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for over a year. With the MPAA's relatively successful track record in copyright enforcement, surely no one readily streams Hollywood or theatrical run movies for the entire world to see, right?

Welcome YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com. YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com stream various amounts of media; however videos appear to be their main focus. YouTVpc.com is the more daring of the two, as it readily streams theatrical titles such as "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" and "Shrek the Third." YouTVpc's videos are streamed from servers located throughout the world, as it does not host any files.

Peekvid.com's collection is mostly of older movies, and indexes no theatrical run films. Apparently the legal impact against sites like LokiTorrent and EliteTorrents, who indexed movie torrents on the BitTorrent network, had no influence on the decision making process of the site's owners. This made for easy prey for the MPAA.

“The sole purpose of these sites is to disseminate content that has been illegally reproduced and distributed. They are a one-stop shop for copyright infringement. These lawsuits should serve as a warning to other aspiring movie theft ‘entrepreneurs’ that they are not above the law and will face serious consequences for their activities. Profiting from the theft of other people’s creative works is illegal and must be stopped,” said John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA.

The fragility of web based distribution is so apparent that hardly anyone considers this a viable enterprise - especially in the United States. The MPAA took note that both sites are quite popular as Peekvid "averages over 53,000 unique users per day who view over 184,000 pages of content. YouTVpc – whose servers are located in Scottsdale, Arizona - averages more than 6,000 unique daily visitors who view over 21,000 pages of content per day." Additionally, the MPAA noticed the abundance of advertising. To the movie industry, this means YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com are profiting at their expense.

Neither site responded to Slyck's request for comment, and the legal justification for operating such a site is currently unknown. LokiTorrent or EliteTorrents could argue they only indexed torrent files of material existing on the BitTorrent network. With these two sites, although movies stream from other locations, the film is watchable via a flash player directly on either site. If LokiTorrent's and ElieteTorrent's impressive threshold for legal justification was dismissed, YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com might find their business model in trouble.
http://www.slyck.com/story1513_MPAA_...treaming_Sites





Hollywood Scrambles as Strike Looms
Michael Cieply

In Hollywood’s upper reaches this week, few are bothering to count past two. As in Adam Sandler has already booked his two “pre-strike” pictures, so let’s try Vince Vaughn.

Though it’s unclear whether the forthcoming contract expirations of the entertainment industry’s writers, actors and directors will lead to a work stoppage over the next year, Hollywood is nonetheless frantically hedging its bets.

Producers, executives, agents and filmmakers are aware that even a hard-working star can most likely squeeze in no more than two movies before June 30 of next year, when the last of the deals end. After that date no studio wants to be caught with filming on its schedule, especially under expensive “pay or play” deals. (Such arrangements require companies to pay actors or others even if the movie isn’t made.)

And that has turned moviedom’s midsummer months into an unusually tense season. Deal makers are frantically trying to line up top actors for their presumed two-picture limit, even as they try to avoid thinking about the inevitable vacuum that will come after the contract expiration dates, with or without a strike, because no films are being set to shoot next July.

“We’re trying to do in six months what we usually do in 12,” said Patrick Whitesell, a partner with the Endeavor agency, which represents Mr. Sandler and others caught up in the chase.

Mr. Sandler, as it happens, is supposed to start “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” for Sony Pictures soon, and is probably locked up on “Bedtime Stories” for Disney after that. Mr. Vaughn, meanwhile, has been mentioned in connection with a half-dozen projects, but his plans are complicated by the prospect of a heavy promotional schedule for the comedy “Fred Claus,” already shot and awaiting release by Warner Brothers in the fall.

The squeeze can be particularly painful for directors, who can easily invest 18 months in preparing, shooting and refining a picture, and may find themselves out of work for a year or more if they do not pin down studio, star and script in the next few weeks.

In one go-round, Paul Greengrass, finished with this August’s “Bourne Ultimatum,” with Matt Damon, a client of Mr. Whitesell’s, has been trying to round up that star to shoot “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” for Universal and Working Title Films. But Mr. Damon is also looking at “The Informant,” a conspiracy thriller to be directed by Steven Soderbergh for Warner Brothers.

If Mr. Damon commits to both, and everything falls into place with the studios, that would mean a long delay for “The Fighter,” a Paramount boxing film that is being lined up as a possible project for him with the director Darren Aronofsky. For that one, however, Mr. Damon would have to contend with weight fluctuations that would be difficult to control on a tight schedule. (Mr. Aronofsky is simultaneously developing another project for Universal, a spokeswoman for him said.)

In another closely watched decision, Jim Carrey, who is represented by the Creative Artists Agency, has been juggling at least three contenders for his presumed two slots. One, “Believe It or Not!,” would come from Paramount, with the director Tim Burton. Another, “I Love You Phillip Morris,” would be independently financed, with the directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who were writers of “Bad Santa”). Yet another, “Me Time,” might come from Fox, but no director has yet been named. And still other projects could come into the mix.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Carrey declined to comment. In the Rube Goldberg exercise of Hollywood scheduling, little can be done without a final script. So the heat has been turned up lately on film writers to deliver the goods, even as their television-writing brethren are facing a different sort of pressure, to deliver extra episodes of television shows that will become a network bulwark against a possible writers’ strike this fall. (The writers’ contracts expire in October, while those of actors and directors end next June.)

“What we’re seeing is a stockpiling” of dramatic episodes and an increase in strike-resistant reality programming, said Steven Katleman, a lawyer with the Greenberg Traurig firm, which represents a number of television actors, writers and producers. Mr. Katleman pointed, for instance, to a recent outsize order for 30 episodes of the NBC series “Heroes.”

The studios’ eagerness to book films that will be seen in late 2008 or the summer of 2009 has been particularly intense, given the unusual alignment of contract expirations and a broad expectation that writers and actors are bent on playing hardball on issues related to compensation for new forms of digital distribution.

“It’s a pretty lethal combination,” said Jack Kyser, senior vice president and chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Whether or not a real walkout occurs, Mr. Kyser said, the insistence that no film or television show be scheduled to shoot after next June will almost certainly cause a “de facto” strike.

A similar situation occurred in 2001, when studios shot extra shows and movies in the first two quarters of the year in advance of a negotiation with actors. Work then fell to a third of that level for the next several quarters, as measured by a count of filming days at locations around Los Angeles.

Things are even more complicated now, because actors, by accident of timing, are actually negotiating eight separate contracts over the next year, including those covering commercials and interactive work. Executives of the Screen Actors Guild declined to be interviewed about the scheduling of their various talks.

Asked about the rush to production, Barbara Brogliatti, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents entertainment companies, said, “As we enter these negotiations, we are hoping for the best, but we have a fiduciary duty to prepare for the worst.”

Given that major feature films require months of preproduction and may require 16 weeks or more in front of the camera, the “be prepared” spirit means that most big casting choices for the next two years’ film schedule will soon have been made.

And Hollywood won’t have much to talk about come spring, except labor negotiations, politics and the weather.

“Next year at Cannes, it’s going to be dead,” said Mr. Whitesell, referring to the telephone action that usually connects Hollywood festivalgoers with business at home. “I mean dead.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/mo...acto.html?8dpc





The Web Site Celebrities Fear
Allison Hope Weiner

While the networks tussled over which would land the first interview with Paris Hilton after her release from jail, the upstart Web site TMZ.com was breaking most of the news.

On June 3, TMZ.com was the only media outlet to capture on video Ms. Hilton’s surrender at the Los Angeles central jail for men, while other outlets waited outside the Lynwood women’s jail for her to arrive there. When Ms. Hilton was released early by the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Lee Baca, and when Judge Michael T. Sauer ordered the sheriff to take her back to court, TMZ.com was first to report that Sheriff Baca had initially refused to follow the judge’s order.

TMZ.com has so dominated the coverage on Ms. Hilton that Larry King, who is scheduled to interview her on CNN Wednesday night, will turn over tonight’s one-hour show to TMZ.com’s anchor and managing editor, Harvey Levin, the man who may represent the future of celebrity journalism.

In the past, media coverage of celebrities often hinged on the promotional agenda of studios, publicists and other handlers. Under the direction of Mr. Levin, a former lawyer and investigative reporter, and Jim Paratore, an executive consultant to the site, TMZ.com has quickly gained an audience by posting news articles garnered from documents, unofficial videotapes, exclusive paparazzi shots and other sources like law enforcement officials and courthouse clerks. (The name stands for “thirty mile zone,” referring to the area around Los Angeles populated by celebrities.)

“We work as hard at breaking a Britney Spears story as NBC would work on breaking a President Bush piece,” Mr. Levin said.

As a result, TMZ.com has become the celebrity handler’s worst nightmare. The site has had a series of damaging celebrity scoops, including the police report detailing Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic tirade, Michael Richards’s racist rant in a comedy club, an audiotape of the angry phone message Alec Baldwin left for his daughter and a photograph of Anna Nicole Smith’s refrigerator filled with methadone and Slim-Fast.

But TMZ.com’s reach extends well beyond the approximately nine million people who visit the Web site each month. The site has become a reliable source for the mainstream media, which has become less self-conscious about reporting every detail of celebrity missteps, according to Hilary Estey McLoughlin, the president of Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Brothers, which co-owns the TMZ site with AOL. Both Warner Brothers and AOL are divisions of Time Warner.

“There are times, like with the Paris Hilton story, where we’ve set the agenda for what local news and national news are covering,” Ms. Estey McLoughlin said. “Paris Hilton leads every newscast.”

Last week, for example, TMZ.com posted excerpts of O.J. Simpson’s unpublished book, “If I Did It.” Although it wasn’t the first Web site to have excerpts, TMZ’s involvement helped make the book again a national story.

Mr. Levin likens the influence of TMZ to a wire service. “We’ve become like The Associated Press in the world we cover,” he said.

That influence has also made him a feared figure in Hollywood. One publicist who declined to speak on the record because of fear of retaliation against his clients likened Mr. Levin’s power to that of the 1940s and 1950s gossip columnists like Walter Winchell.

“If you have something you know they will like, you tip them to it,” the publicist said. “It’s kind of the old way you dealt with the old-time gossip columnists. You have to occasionally feed them an item. You have to be in the game with them. If you’re a publicist and the only time you call up is to complain about an item, they’ll laugh at you.”

Even Hollywood criminal lawyers concede that dealing with TMZ has now become part of their legal strategy. Shawn Chapman Holley, who represents Nicole Richie, acknowledges that TMZ’s ability to get information has affected strategic decisions in Ms. Richie’s drunken-driving case.

“When we approach the bench, what we know and when TMZ will know it is a factor discussed with the judge,” said Ms. Holley. “Miss Richie’s case would be set for a particular day and to throw off TMZ.com, I would go in a day before. Unfortunately, TMZ.com figured out my strategy and were there when I arrived. So now I’m trying to figure out some other strategy.”

In some respects, TMZ, which first appeared in December 2005, represented a throwback to earlier journalism, when many reporters relied on documents rather than arranged interviews to break news.

“We had a seminal moment in the first month with the Paris Hilton car crash with her boyfriend,” recalled Mr. Paratore. “She was pulled over by police, and we caught the whole thing on camera, and it got picked up a lot. We could see people were really attracted to content like that.”

Initially, Mr. Levin was wary of creating a celebrity Web site. He had spent more than a decade as an investigative reporter for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. He had also created and executive-produced the canceled series “Celebrity Justice” and covered many high-profile trials, including the O. J. Simpson case.

But eventually, he found that the 24-hour news cycle appealed to his competitive metabolism. “I started seeing that if you don’t have time periods and publishing cycles, you can publish on demand and beat everybody,” said Mr. Levin.

TMZ.com has been ranked the No. 1 Hollywood news site for nine months against well-known brands like Entertainment Weekly’s EW.com, People.com and E! Online. Time Warner does not break out revenue figures for TMZ.com, but the site is profitable, according to people familiar with the numbers who did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak about the site’s finances. Beginning in July, TMZ’s 25 staff members will work out of offices in West Hollywood and one reporter will continue to work from New York.

The Web site’s success has drawn criticism not only from the stars it covers, but also from competitors who claim the Web site pays for articles. Mr. Levin argues that the site has never paid for a story, although it does pay for videotapes and photographs.

“We have a budget for that,” said Mr. Paratore. “But the budget is nowhere near the numbers being thrown around for the Paris Hilton interview.”

Along with turning celebrity stories into dramas that unfold in real time, TMZ has also contributed to the different tone of much entertainment coverage.

“Five years ago there was so much reverence in the discussion,” said Janice Min, editor-in-chief of Us Weekly. “I’ve seen a shift in the tone. It’s now equal parts reverence and contempt, and TMZ has been able to capitalize on that contemptuous feeling. TMZ pokes fun at celebrity — sometimes gentle, sometimes quite harsh — and to millions of people, that’s more engaging than reading a canned interview.”

Ms. Min said that she often checks the site and competes with it to break news. “But it’s great to have them out there,” she said. “It’s like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet where you never get full.”

Inevitably, however, TMZ comes to rely on a symbiosis with the people it covers.

“We supply them with news all the time because it goes around the world in 12 seconds,” said Stan Rosenfield, George Clooney’s publicist. “There’s a pragmatism that takes hold, because people read it.”

Howard Bragman, a publicist who owns the firm Fifteen Minutes, which represents Ricki Lake, Leeza Gibbons and Isaiah Washington, has also found some benefits to dealing with TMZ.

“Compared to many of the other outlets, they’re 1,000 percent better. If you have a good relationship with them, they’ll change an occasional word or swap an occasional picture, but that’s just for friends of the family,” he said. “And since it goes around the world in seconds, you can leak something to them without fingerprints and it looks like somebody else did it. I’ve certainly done that.”

Given that TMZ is a part of Time Warner, it would seem that the site’s interest in exposing celebrities’ bad behavior might conflict with the overall interest of the parent company that employs some of those same stars.

Mr. Paratore counters that the site’s relationship to Time Warner and questions that might arise from that relationship were dealt with before TMZ’s introduction.

“Everybody understands what it means to be in this business,” he said. “There have always been stories in Time magazine, People and Entertainment Weekly that have not always been flattering to other divisions within the company, and everybody understands that you can’t control it and they don’t try.”

Indeed, in some ways, TMZ is one of the few remnants of the AOL-Time Warner merger that has resulted in some cross-platform success. There are rumors that TMZ is going to open a bureau in Washington, but Mr. Levin dismisses those reports. He is too busy working on the new TMZ syndicated daily television show set to begin on Sept. 10.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/bu...dia/25tmz.html





Germany Bans Cruise Film Shoot
Louis Charbonneau

Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.

Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognise as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.

The U.S. actor has been cast as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Nazi dictator in July 1944 with a bomb hidden in a briefcase.

Defence Ministry spokesman Harald Kammerbauer said the film makers "will not be allowed to film at German military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult".

"In general, the Bundeswehr (German military) has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of the events of July 20, 1944 and Stauffenberg's person," Kammerbauer said.

Cruise's publicists could not be reached for comment.

Stauffenberg had been deeply opposed to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and planted a briefcase bomb under a table near Hitler in his "Wolf's Lair" headquarters on July 20, 1944. The bomb went off but only wounded the Fuehrer.

The film, slated for a 2008 release and to be directed by Bryan Singer and co-starring Kenneth Branagh, is called "Valkyrie" after Operation Valkyrie, the plot's codename.

The main site of interest would be the "Bendlerblock" memorial inside the Defence Ministry complex in Berlin. This is where Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators hatched the plot and where he and his closest comrades were executed when it failed.

Kammerbauer said the ministry had not yet received official filming requests from the producers of "Valkyrie".
http://uk.reuters.com/article/entert...pc=451&sp=true





Andy Griffith the 'New' Star on Independent Film Circuit in 'Waitress

At age 81, Andy Griffith has been discovered.

Sure, he will always be known as Sheriff Andy Taylor, the gentle father to son Opie and gunless lawman in Mayberry who dispensed a homegrown wisdom on the "The Andy Griffith Show." Or as the disheveled yet shrewd Atlanta defense lawyer Ben Matlock.

But he is now a new type of star in the critically acclaimed film "Waitress." A supporting character in a movie starring Keri Russell as Jenna, a top-notch pie maker trying to leave her brutish husband, Griffith steals the show as the cranky owner of the diner where she works.

"I'm glad to be back," Griffith said. "I loved working in the film, and I just thought it was actually wonderful."

The movie was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who was found slain in her Manhattan home office not long after "Waitress" was accepted at the Sundance Film Festival. Griffith said that Shelly, who also stars in the film, "knew exactly what she wanted to hear."

"She wanted me to be very firm, and she kept after me to be firm, be firm," Griffith said. "I said, 'I'M TRYING.' She said, 'That way.'"

Griffith lives a fiercely private life with wife Cindi in the North Carolina Outer Banks town of Manteo. Until "Waitress," he had not appeared in a live-action film since 2001. But he said he got three scripts at once and chose "Waitress" for the quality of Shelly's writing and because Joe "was a good, pivotal part. Joe means a lot to this film."

Producer Michael Roiff said he and Shelly could not believe their good fortune at landing Griffith for the role. Griffith was on the set for just four days of the 20-day shoot, but he did not disappoint.

"We were so excited about the performance he was delivering," Roiff said. "In the editing room, putting scenes together, she and I would just look at each other and think, 'How did we get so lucky? Who let this happen in our movie?'

"Literally, on the set and in the editing room, there was a continuous process of looking at each other and breaking out in that wise, small smile and realizing we were working with one of the best out there."

Critics agree, with The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern calling Griffith an "inspired" casting choice: "An octogenarian who looks his age, and looks like he's enjoying it, this comic virtuoso is as commanding as ever, but with a new dimension of restraint."

Equally important to Griffith is the praise of his friends, including Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, who played Griffith's son, Opie, in "The Andy Griffith Show" — which airs every day somewhere in the world, Griffith said.

"Ron Howard called me a few mornings ago. He and his wife had seen it and he wanted to tell me how much he liked it. And he thought I was good in it, too," Griffith said. Griffith has been a success on stage for decades, starring in the Broadway and movie versions of "No Time for Sergeants" and in Elia Kazan's 1957 movie, "A Face in the Crowd," in which Griffith's character, the coarse Lonesome Rhodes, becomes a television star who mocks his fans off-air. When "The Andy Griffith Show" ended its eight-year run in 1968, it bowed out as the No. 1 show in television.

It is a career that has brought Griffith plenty of accolades, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. But the honor that Griffith mentions now is the collection of photographs from "Waitress" he received when he finished filming.

After he spoke his last line, Shelly said, "This is Andy's last shot in the picture," Griffith recalled. "And there is a picture of her embracing me at that moment, and it's a wonderful picture. And when she said that, the whole company started applauding, all up and down the hall. It was like opening night at 'No Time for Sergeants,' which was a long time ago. That's been 50 years now."

Griffith is still looking for work. Asked when he will get a part in a Ron Howard blockbuster, Griffith chuckles again and mentions an earlier phone conversation with Howard. "And he said, 'Sometime, it will happen.' I look forward to it when it does happen.

"At least Ronnie still knows that I'm a pretty good actor."
http://www.happynews.com/news/626200...movie-star.htm





Walking With Presidents and (Hollywood’s) Kings
Jeanine Basinger

The first time I heard Jack Valenti speak, I noted that he was dapper, unexpectedly handsome and short. He had arrived at a meeting of the trustees of the American Film Institute to nominate his friend Kirk Douglas for the annual Life Achievement Award. When he had finished and whirled out, he was still dapper and unexpectedly handsome, but he had grown very big in stature.

I had witnessed Mr. Valenti in action, an in-the-flesh version of his autobiography, “This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood.” He had exuded charm, established himself as everyone’s pal with a few harmless anecdotes, taken the room by surprise with a passionate (and well-prepared) speech and rapidly moved on to his next battle, confident he’d get what he came for. (He did; Mr. Douglas got the award.)

Mr. Valenti, who died on April 26, was a warrior, and he knew how to win. He just looked harmless.

Mr. Valenti was born in Houston, the grandchild of Sicilian immigrants, and his parents taught him loyalty, love of the United States and the importance of education, values he never surrendered or compromised.

Still, “a fierce ambition burned in me,” he wrote. “I wanted to see more, know more and feel more than what seemed to be my lot.” He found three major combat zones in which to achieve his dreams — war, politics and movie-making — and he writes about each in a different manner.

Mr. Valenti’s earliest chance to make something of himself came in World War II. He entered the Army Air Corps and flew a B-25 on 51 combat missions over Europe, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor. His descriptions of that time, that place, are among the most vivid in his book. His prose throbs with memories of an experience that was simultaneously exhilarating, terrifying and “brutal, callous and cruel.”

After the war Mr. Valenti completed his education at Harvard Business School and returned to Texas, joining with a friend to form a highly successful advertising agency. When Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a fellow Texan, asked Mr. Valenti to organize President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Houston, scheduled for Nov. 21, 1963, Mr. Valenti managed on short notice to mastermind a flawless event. Pleased and impressed, Johnson impulsively invited him to go along on the next leg of Kennedy’s journey: a brief hop to Fort Worth and Dallas, set for the next day.

Mr. Valenti went, and found himself eyewitness to the assassination of one American president and the emergency swearing in of another aboard Air Force One. Mr. Valenti would never again return to his life as an adman in Houston. That fateful Nov. 22 and its aftermath became the defining event of his life, a frame to hold his story, a shadow over it but also a foundation under it.

Mr. Valenti served three years in the Johnson White House as a top presidential aide. In this section of the book he is circumspect. He’s a shrewd observer but careful with what he shares. Since he supervised Johnson’s speeches, decided whom the president would see (or not see) and where he would go (or not go) to speak (or not speak), a reader wishes for more. If Jack Valenti were a great writer (he’s not), a tattletale or even a Judas (he’s not), his book could have been one of the most important historical pictures of the tormented decade of the 1960s in the United States.

Mr. Valenti left Washington in 1966 when Lew Wasserman, the chief executive of MCA Universal Studios, offered him the opportunity to become the head of the Motion Picture Association of America. To accept, Mr. Valenti had to face Johnson’s wrath, and it says a lot about him that he did face it, carried the day and ended up still friends with that mercurial politician.

Writing about Hollywood, Mr. Valenti is looser, more willing to tell tales. His good-old-boy Texas storytelling skills are brought into irreverent play. He wryly describes his first meeting with the combined studio moguls (“the most skeptical audience in the Western world”). Full of Oval Office confidence, Mr. Valenti gave a rousing speech defining his job problems, only to hear Jack Warner, the tough-guy head of Warner Brothers, calmly tell him, “Your biggest problem will be the people sitting around this table.”

Ultimately, Mr. Valenti learned how to operate in Hollywood: “In any meeting, I had to know who could carry the room at a particularly sensitive moment.” He does not state the obvious: it was usually he.

His most enduring legacy from those years was his establishment in 1968 of the motion picture rating system, for which he fought ferociously and which he defended without apology. In the preface to his book Mr. Valenti warns the reader that he is writing for his grandchildren. In other words, he’s going to censor himself. Just as he kept a lid on fear under combat stress, a lid on President Johnson (no doubt a lid the size of Kansas) and a lid on the leaders of Hollywood, Mr. Valenti keeps his memoir firmly under control. He tells only what he wants to tell, disappearing behind platitudes or quotations from Emerson, Faulkner and others when camouflage is needed.

To compensate, he never apologizes for being a Democrat and gives opinions on literature (“I never fathomed James Joyce”), Cary Grant (“getting Cary to pick up the restaurant check was a miracle few had ever witnessed”), Oscar night (“a ghastly piece of business”) and more.

Mr. Valenti is only indirectly the hero of his own story, but he’s still a clever adman who knows how to sell his product. What emerges is a portrait of a man who was not, as some might think, merely a political toady. In his own way he was strong and relentless, with a tough definition for leadership: “I have my own formula, which is quite simple. It is rooted in the ability to engage in courtship, to cosset talent, to understand the human condition and to make decisions fast.”

When Mr. Valenti died at 85 of complications from a stroke, he had already unknowingly written his own most honest epitaph: “The professional does his job right every time, without regard for anything else.” He had lived his life as a gentleman and a patriot, always the smooth operator (with scruples), but a man of steel whenever that became necessary. He might have been the last of the breed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/books/26basi.html





New Commitment to Charity by Mexican Phone Tycoon
Elisabeth Malkin

Carlos Slim Helú may be the richest man in the world. And in Mexico, where tens of millions of people live in seemingly intractable poverty, that distinction has been drawing some heat.

Mr. Slim’s companies dominate Mexico’s telecommunications industry, and they have sold cellphones to 130 million people throughout the Americas. His businesses have a hand in just about everything: one company built Mexico’s largest offshore oil platform, another sells CDs. He has interests in retailing, banking, insurance, mining, road building and cigarettes.

Because Mexico’s income distribution is severely skewed, Mr. Slim has come to personify the small elite who control vast sections of the economy. So he has been feeling the pressure to give much of his enormous fortune away. Three months ago, he pledged to increase the endowments of his companies’ foundations to $10 billion from $4 billion in the next four years. He promises to spend money on education and health. And he has begun to frequent the international philanthropy circuit, speaking at conferences, and hobnobbing with Bill Clinton and some of the Kennedys.

In a recent two-hour interview in his office here, Mr. Slim promised that there would be no ceiling on his donations. “We want to get to the root of problems, no limits,” he said.

He has granted several interviews in his office, which is tucked above a branch of his bank and down the hall from a gallery showing works from his collection of European and Mexican art. The interviews, and a four-hour news conference in March, seem to be part of an effort to soften his robber baron reputation.

Fortified by Cuban cigars and Diet Coke, Mr. Slim mapped out a vision of what he planned to do with his fortune. “It is a life project, it is a challenge,” he said.

“Poverty is resolved with education and jobs,” he continued. “You don’t need to teach a man how to fish, as the Chinese used to say. Instead of giving him the fish, instead of teaching him how to fish, you have to teach him how to sell the fish so that he eats something else besides a fish.”

For that, he said, even before education, you need good health care, beginning with nutrition for pregnant women.

Skeptics argue that the value of Mr. Slim’s philanthropy has to be measured against the damage his telephone monopoly did to the economy. “At some level I can applaud his philanthropy,” said Denise Dresser, a political analyst and professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, “but it would be better for Mexico if he stopped blocking competition first.”

Mr. Slim is now 67, a widower with six adult children. He has passed the day-to-day operations of his companies to his sons and sons-in-law.

“He has a lot of money, and he can think about larger issues,” said Rossana Fuentes-Berain, editorial page editor of the newspaper El Universal, who has followed Mr. Slim’s career for the last 15 years. “He wants to be part of that world where making money is not an end in itself.”

The son of a Lebanese immigrant, Mr. Slim became rich by buying companies cheap and turning them around. His ascent through billionaire ranks began after the government sold the phone monopoly Teléfonos de Mexico in 1990 to a group he led with France Télécom and what was then Southwestern Bell.

Last year, Forbes magazine put him at No. 3 on its list of the world’s richest. This year, it bumped him up to second place, estimating his net worth at $53.1 billion. A Mexican online publication, Sentido Común, which tracks his fortune closely, reports that his companies’ value has grown so fast this year that he has now swept into first place with a fortune of $57 billion, just above Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Along the way he has fought off new competitors, and the efforts of Mexico’s antitrust regulator in the courts, and lobbied against legislation that may rein him in. Competitors say that his phone company, widely known as Telmex, stalls when it is required to link them to its national network and overcharges them to transport their signals. The governor of Mexico’s central bank has criticized Telmex’s control, arguing that it has held back the country’s competitiveness.

Mr. Slim concedes that Telmex has 90 percent of Mexico’s phone lines, but says that his competitors have poached half the most profitable ones. “We have never opposed the entry of a competitor,” he said. “Let them come on in.”

Still, Mexico — with just 16 phone lines for every 100 people — lags well behind countries including Poland and Turkey in the reach of basic phone service.

With cash generated in Mexico, Mr. Slim has built the largest cellphone company in Latin America, América Móvil, successfully competing in big markets like Brazil. He is expanding south with new construction and infrastructure companies, bidding to build roads and dams.

Mr. Slim combines an omnivorous attention to detail with a penchant for simplicity. Everything you need to make a decision, he says, should fit on one sheet of paper. That includes a preoccupation of his, baseball. He has pared down reams of baseball statistics to a handwritten page, where he ranks the top sluggers.

But his precision with numbers seems to vanish when it comes to his philanthropy. He gives no accounting of what he has spent and is still vague about where much of the new money will go.

What he does say is that he plans to set up two institutes for health and education. Each will be financed by an initial endowment of $500 million, said Arturo Elias, a son-in-law and his point man for philanthropy. A smaller sports institute that will promote amateur and student sports is to follow.

Mr. Slim tapped Dr. Julio Frenk, a former Mexican health minister who was on the short list to head the World Health Organization last year, to set up the health institute.

“The broad philosophy was already there,” said Dr. Frenk, now a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The institute will take on public health problems by sponsoring research, backing successful programs and disseminating health information.

“We don’t see the beneficiaries of these institutions as somebody in a subordinate position,” Dr. Frenk said. “We see them as citizens with a right, because health and education are a right. But their access to that right has been limited.”

Dr. Frenk’s involvement has given pause to Mr. Slim’s critics. “If you are going to do this seriously, you need to have people who are professionals,” Ms. Dresser said. “He’s moving in the right direction in that sense.”

He appears to be open to collaboration. Shortly after four top United States foundations wrote him in November inquiring about his philanthropy, he called to set up a meeting, said C. R. Hibbs, director of the Mexican office of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

In fact, Mr. Slim’s philanthropy may be better known in the United States, where his image is more benign. In September, he spoke at the Clinton Foundation’s annual meeting, where he was introduced as the most powerful man in Central and South America and the “greatest philanthropist” in Mexico. Last week, Mr. Slim pledged at least $100 million to Mr. Clinton’s foundation to fight Latin American poverty.

Fifteen years ago, Mr. Slim met Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, who has been raising money to give $100 laptops to children in the developing world.

Mr. Slim is one of Mr. Negroponte’s biggest backers, promising to spend $50 million to buy 250,000 laptops for children in Mexico and Central America. (The price is closer to $175 right now.) Their Internet connections will be free, Mr. Elias said.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Negroponte said Mr. Slim “is very generous when it comes children, education and Latin America,” adding, “I do not have to ‘sell him’ on the idea.”

A Kennedy family member, Anthony K. Shriver, said he approached Mr. Slim about five years ago to support the Mexican operation of Best Buddies, which pairs students with intellectually disabled people.

“I know that they give us millions of dollars,” Mr. Shriver said.

Among Mexico’s philanthropic movement, there is hope that others will follow Mr. Slim’s public commitment. Mexico’s nonprofit sector is tiny and opaque, said Michael Layton, who heads the philanthropy and civil society project at the autonomous technological institute.

“In the United States, people understand that the rich man is blessed by God to administer the community’s resources,” said Jorge Villalobos, director of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy. “In Mexico, this vision doesn’t exist.”


Mr. Slim makes no apologies for his fortune.

Wealth is “like an orchard, a fruit tree,” he said.

“You have to distribute the fruit, not the branch. You have to plant more seeds to create more wealth.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/bu...ss/28slim.html





Billionaire Thinks in Trillions for His Computer Designs
John Markoff

Twenty-six years ago as a Stanford University graduate student and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Andreas Bechtolsheim designed a simple but powerful personal computer workstation that would help define the modern technology era.

Today, at a high-performance computing conference in Dresden, Germany, he plans to introduce his newest machine: a supercomputer to be named the Sun Constellation System that will compete for the title as the world’s fastest when installation is complete this year.

“It is hard to believe that 30 years later I am still working on the same problem,” said Mr. Bechtolsheim, who is better known as Andy.

Between the milestones, Mr. Bechtolsheim, who is 51 years old, has designed a parade of computers that have continued to squeeze the most processing power or storage capacity into the smallest possible space. And, despite becoming one of the richest people in the world, he remains obsessed with designing ever more powerful computers. His new machine, which is currently being installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, is the latest example of his trademark elegant and simple engineering. It is set apart from other supercomputers made from tens of thousands of networked microprocessor chips by Mr. Bechtolsheim’s ability to orchestrate the range of computing disciplines that are needed to create the fastest computers.

As such, he is the leading candidate to inherit the mantle of Seymour Cray, a famous computer designer who consistently designed the world’s fastest computers from the 1960s until his death in a car accident in 1996. “He is this amazing blend of artist and engineer and that reminds me of Seymour,” said Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist and supercomputer user, who was an early customer of Sun Microsystems’ computers as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications during the 1980s.

Mr. Bechtolsheim’s 18-hour-a-day dedication to computer design is all the more remarkable because of his wealth. He has founded three successful companies in addition to being one of Google’s first financial backers. The initial $100,000 check he wrote to the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page is an investment now worth more than $1.5 billion.

None of that great wealth is apparent in the man who sits in a windowless conference room talking about supercomputing switching fabrics at a rapid-fire pace with his eyes closed and with one hand pressed against his face in concentration. A reporter who first interviewed Mr. Bechtolsheim in 1981 while he was still at Stanford, discovered last week that the computer scientist was still clad in Birkenstock sandals and still dressed like a graduate student.

Ola Torudbakken, a Sun engineer who worked for Mr. Bechtolsheim on the Texas supercomputer from his home in Norway, said it was routine to begin exchanging e-mail messages with Sun’s chief architect when it was 5 a.m. in California, then complete their conversations as late as midnight West Coast time when he was starting the next day’s work in Europe.

“I try not to bother him between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. when he is having breakfast with his family,” he said.

Since returning to Sun in 2004, Mr. Bechtolsheim has been appearing in technical settings, speaking about the problems impeding progress in the design of the fastest supercomputers. As supercomputers have shifted from custom processors to machines made from tens of thousands of off-the-shelf microprocessors, the design challenge has become how to permit the processors to share data needed to answer ever more complex scientific and engineering problems. Mr. Bechtolsheim has been critical of some of the biggest machines that have had high performance claims, but have performed poorly in real world applications.

“A lot of these high-end systems are superego machines,” he said, referring to the industry practice of competing for the ranking of the world’s fastest computing mcahine based on a single type of mathematical calculation. Indeed, some of the fastest supercomputers slow to a crawl when they are given types of problems that require the movement of significant amounts of data between processors.

Mr. Bechtolsheim thought he had found a solution to that problem by modifying an industry standard data switch, making it possible for any of the 13,000-plus Advanced Micro Devices Barcelona microprocessors to communicate with each other more than 10 times as fast as with existing switches.

Last April, his description of the breakthrough in a technical speech at an annual retreat of the world’s leading supercomputer designers in Salishan, Ore., raised some eyebrows among the world’s supercomputer designers. “It’s a pretty interesting architecture,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee and one of the researchers who keeps track of the world’s fastest computers. “It shows that Sun is still a player in terms of high- performance computing.”

Like Steve Wozniak, another Silicon Valley computer design luminary, Mr. Bechtolsheim became immersed in the world of computing in high school. According to John Fowler, the executive who runs Sun’s systems business, Mr. Bechtolsheim took a job in a machine shop while in high school in rural Germany. His boss asked him if he could build a system to make it possible to program an advanced milling machine. Mr. Bechtolsheim, constructed a computer and an operating system from scratch to control the machine. He then struck a licensing deal for his system which proved so successful that by the time he graduated from high school he was earning more than his father.

That led him to believe that studying computer science might be a worthy goal, Mr. Fowler said.

Before transferring to Stanford as a graduate student, Mr. Bechtolsheim attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in 1976 where he joined an early project to build a cluster-based supercomputer. Mr. Bechtolsheim literally filed down plastic computer chip packages in order to make them small enough to squeeze into the design of an early system board, recalled Brian Reid, who was a graduate student with him at Carnegie Mellon.

People who know him well say that that persistence underscores his determination as a designer.

Mr. Bechtolsheim’s newest machine will ultimately be tested against his most powerful rival, I.B.M., in the $10 billion market for high-performance computers. I.B.M., based in Armonk, N.Y., now dominates the high end of the fastest computing ranks and expects to maintain that position when the newest Top500 supercomputer rankings are announced today in Dresden.

Indeed, I.B.M. will introduce a redesigned version of its BlueGene supercomputer, to be named BlueGene/P today at the conference, saying that the new machine, scheduled to be installed next year, will finally break the petaflop computing barrier — the ability to execute a thousand trillion mathematical operations a second.

Executives at I.B.M. are skeptical about the new Sun supercomputer, noting that the system is late to be installed. “Having done six generations of machines,” said Dave Turek, the company’s vice president of Deep Computing. “I have come to realize that very little goes right the first time.”

A number of Silicon Valley technologists are, however, betting on Mr. Bechtolsheim. “He’s a perfectionist,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, who worked with Mr. Bechtolsheim beginning in 1983 at Sun. “He works 18 hours a day and he’s very disciplined. Every computer he has built has been the fastest of its generation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/technology/26sun.html





Murdoch Reaches Out for Even More
Jo Becker

This article was reported by Jo Becker, Richard Siklos, Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, and written by Ms. Becker.

In the fall of 2003, a piece of Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling media empire was in jeopardy.

Congress was on the verge of limiting any company from owning local television stations that reached more than 35 percent of American homes. Mr. Murdoch’s Fox stations reached nearly 39 percent, meaning he would have to sell some.

A strike force of Mr. Murdoch’s lobbyists joined other media companies in working on the issue. The White House backed the industry, and in a late-night meeting just before Thanksgiving, Congressional leaders agreed to raise the limit — to 39 percent.

One leader of the Congressional movement to limit ownership was Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. But in the end, he, too, agreed to the compromise. It turns out he had a business connection to Mr. Murdoch. Months before, HarperCollins, Mr. Murdoch’s publishing house, had signed a $250,000 book deal to publish Mr. Lott’s memoir, “Herding Cats,” records and interviews show.

An aide to Mr. Lott said the book deal had no bearing on the senator’s decision, and a spokesman for Mr. Murdoch chalked it up to coincidence. Still, the ownership fight showcases the confluence of business, political and media prowess that is central to the way Mr. Murdoch has built his global information conglomerate.

His vast media holdings give him a gamut of tools — not just campaign contributions, but also jobs for former government officials and media exposure that promotes allies while attacking adversaries, sometimes viciously — all of which he has used to further his financial interests and establish his legitimacy in the United States, interviews and government records show.

Mr. Murdoch may be best known in the this country as the man who created Fox News as a counterweight to what he saw as a liberal bias in the news media. But he has often set aside his conservative ideology in pursuit of his business interests. In recent years, he has spread campaign contributions across both sides of the political aisle and nurtured relationships with the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

More than 30 years after the Australian-born Mr. Murdoch arrived on the American newspaper scene and turned The New York Post into a racy, right-leaning tabloid, his holding company, the News Corporation, has offered $5 billion to buy a pillar of the business news establishment — Dow Jones, parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

The sale would give Mr. Murdoch control of the pre-eminent journalistic authority on the world in which he is an active, aggressive participant. What worries his critics is that Mr. Murdoch will use The Journal, which has won many Pulitzer Prizes and has a sterling reputation for accuracy and fairness, as yet another tool to further his myriad financial and political agendas.

“It is hard to imagine Rupert Murdoch publishing The New York Post in Midtown Manhattan, with all of his personal and political biases and business interests reflected every day, while publishing The Wall Street Journal in Downtown Manhattan with no interference whatsoever,” James Ottaway Jr., a 5 percent shareholder and former director of Dow Jones, said recently.

Members of the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, have sought elaborate assurances from Mr. Murdoch that he will preserve the independence of The Journal’s news coverage. Last night, advisers to both sides said they were close to reaching an agreement on editorial control, but it was unclear whether the Bancrofts would approve a deal. When he bought The Times of London in 1981 he gave similar assurances, but some former editors say he meddled with news operations anyway.

Mr. Murdoch declined a request for an interview, but has recently said he would preserve The Journal’s independence. Gary L. Ginsberg, a News Corporation executive, said it was “insulting” for anyone to suggest that Mr. Murdoch would compromise the integrity of “one of the world’s great newspapers” adding, “It’s not good business and it’s not good politics and it’s absurd on its face.”

From his beginnings as a proprietor of a single Australian newspaper, Mr. Murdoch now commands a news, entertainment and Internet enterprise whose $68 billion value slightly exceeds that of the Walt Disney Company.

The American newspaper industry has never seen a publisher quite like him. Mr. Murdoch has long been a pivotal figure in England and Australia, and in the dozen years since he has moved his base of operations to this country, he has insinuated himself into the political and financial fabric of the United States. His businesses have thrived in a highly regulated environment in part because of his remarkable ability to mold the rules to fit his needs.

This became clear in the regulatory fight over media ownership, a battle critical to Mr. Murdoch’s audacious creation of a fourth national television network, Fox. He has also turned his political clout on business rivals, as he did when he mounted a campaign recently against the Nielsen television rating agency.

“Rupert is sort of an 18th-century guy: the world is still forming, and he’s going to do what he can to hack out a place in the wilderness and defend it,” said Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner, who both competes and socializes with Mr. Murdoch.

Political Relations

Shortly before Christmas in 1987, Senator Edward M. Kennedy taught Mr. Murdoch a tough lesson in the ways of Washington.

Two years earlier, Mr. Murdoch had paid $2 billion to buy seven television stations in major American markets with the intention of starting a national network. To comply with rules limiting foreign ownership, he became an American citizen. And to comply with rules banning the ownership of television stations and newspapers in the same market, he promised to sell some newspapers eventually. But almost immediately he began looking for ways around that rule.

Then Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, stepped in. Mr. Kennedy’s liberal politics had made him a target of Murdoch-owned news media outlets, particularly The Boston Herald, which often referred to Mr. Kennedy as “Fat Boy.” He engineered a legislative maneuver that forced an infuriated Mr. Murdoch to sell his beloved New York Post.

Mr. Murdoch was able to buy back the tabloid five years later, but the sale represented a rare and, some say, transforming defeat.

“Teddy almost did him in,” said Philip R. Verveer, a cable television lobbyist. “I presume that over time, as his media ownership in this country has grown and grown, he’s realized that you can’t throw spit wads at leading figures in society with impunity.”

In fact, among the ranks of the lobbyists who have done Mr. Murdoch’s bidding in Washington in recent years is Anthony Podesta, Mr. Kennedy’s former counsel.

Over time, Mr. Murdoch has shown an ability to adapt to changing political winds. In Britain, his newspapers had a long history of being pro-Tory and anti-Labor, and he was personally close with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. But in 1997, two of Mr. Murdoch’s papers endorsed Tony Blair for prime minister. Mr. Murdoch became a frequent guest at No. 10 Downing Street, “effectively a member of Blair’s cabinet,” said Lance Price, who was a Blair spokesman from 1998 to 2001.

Mr. Murdoch had reason to court Mr. Blair: ensuring that the new government would allow him to keep intact his British holdings, which by then included The Times of London, multiple tabloids and a stake in Sky News. Many in the Labor Party under Mr. Blair favored the enactment of media ownership limits, which could have forced Mr. Murdoch to divest some of his interests. But Mr. Blair “quietly dropped the policy,” Mr. Price said.

“Blair’s attitude was quite clear,” Andrew Neil, the editor of The Sunday Times under Mr. Murdoch in London from 1983 to 1994, said in an interview. “If the Murdoch press gave the Blair government a fair hearing, it would be left intact.”

Mr. Murdoch’s trajectory in the United States has been similar. His credentials as a purveyor of conservative journalism notwithstanding, he operates like many less visible corporate executives in not allowing his personal politics to get in the way of his bottom line.

An analysis of campaign finance records shows that since 1997, Republicans have received only a slight majority — 56 percent — of the $4.76 million in campaign donations from the Murdoch family and the News Corporation’s political action committees and employees. Since Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 elections, the company and its employees have given more than twice as much to Democrats as to Republicans, the records show.

“We did seek more balance,” said Peggy Binzel, Mr. Murdoch’s former chief in-house lobbyist. “You need to be able to tell your story to both sides to be effective. And that’s what political giving is about.”

Mr. Murdoch has an army of outside lobbyists, who have reported being paid more than $11 million since 1998 to address issues as diverse as trade relations, programming decency and Internet regulation.

One firm focuses almost exclusively on parts of the tax code that affect the News Corporation. By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.

The News Corporation’s outside lobbying team has been a veritable political Noah’s ark. It has included Republicans like Ed Gillespie, former Republican Party chairman; former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York; and the firm headed by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York. But it has also included former Democratic members of Congress, as well as several high-ranking Clinton administration officials, including Jack Quinn, former White House counsel.

Mr. Murdoch’s association with the Clintons is perhaps the best example of his ever-morphing relationships with the powerful, and theirs with him. For years, the former president was a favorite target of The New York Post, which seemed to delight in referring to him as “former horndog-in-chief.”

In October 2002, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Murdoch had a lunch meeting at Mr. Clinton’s office in Harlem. It was arranged by Mr. Ginsberg, who had worked in the White House counsel’s office in the Clinton administration and is now the News Corporation’s executive vice president for corporate affairs.

More recently, Mr. Murdoch donated $500,000 to the former president’s Global Initiative and was one of its featured panelists at a 2005 event in New York. In 2006, The Post issued a surprising endorsement of Mrs. Clinton in her Senate re-election bid. On June 5 and 6 of this year, Mr. Ginsberg and Peter A. Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, were hosts of back-to-back fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, one in New York and one in Los Angeles.

The Nielsen Battle

In early 2004, an alarm went off at the News Corporation headquarters.

Nielsen Media Research was preparing to switch to a more sophisticated technology to calculate ratings that television stations use to set advertising rates for local programming. Results of a trial run showed sharp drops in ratings for shows carried on stations owned by the News Corporation, particularly those aimed at minority viewers.

With millions of dollars at stake, Mr. Murdoch sprang into action. He hired the Glover Park Group, a consulting firm with deep ties to the Clinton administration, to run a grass-roots ground war. Charging that the system was faulty and that it undercounted minorities, the firm started an extensive advertising campaign intended to delay the rollout of the new technology and staged protests around the country that drew such unlikely allies as the Rev. Al Sharpton. Among the Democrats who wrote to Nielsen opposing the new system was Mrs. Clinton.

The New York Post pursued the story, running news headlines like “Nailing Nielsen” and routinely failing to mention its parent company’s interest in the outcome.

The resulting two-year campaign was unusually brazen, even by Beltway standards. Protesters massed outside Nielsen offices in New York. The atmosphere grew so charged that Nielsen’s chief, Susan Whiting, hired a personal bodyguard and the company strengthened security at its headquarters, according to Nielsen officials.

At one point, Ms. Whiting publicly accused Mr. Chernin and Mr. Murdoch’s son Lachlan of threatening to do “everything possible to discredit you and the company in Washington” if she did not back down. Mr. Chernin and Mr. Murdoch publicly denied making the threat.

But the News Corporation turned to Republican allies to put pressure on Nielsen. Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican who was chairman of the Commerce Committee’s communications subcommittee, and Representative Vito J. Fossella, a New York Republican, introduced legislation that threatened Nielsen with government oversight.

One day after the bill was introduced, The New York Post ran an opinion article co-written by Mr. Fossella expressing outrage over plans for a museum at ground zero in Lower Manhattan. A news report in the paper that day raised the same concerns. Mr. Ginsberg said “the notion that Rupert had anything to do with that is laughable.”

Political contributions flowed to nearly all the legislation’s supporters. In 2005, the year the legislation was introduced, records show that the bill’s 29 sponsors and co-sponsors together received at least $144,650 in donations from the News Corporation’s political action committees and lobbyists.

Ultimately, the dispute was settled quietly. Mr. Murdoch succeeded in keeping the old rating system in place for several months in the three top markets, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Those months included the sweeps period, when advertising rates are set.

Mr. Ginsberg said the campaign was successful in highlighting concerns about tracking minority viewership and “educating certain groups as to how to use this new technology.”

But Dale Snape, who lobbied for Nielsen, said: “It was a classic example of him using all his resources to try to politically influence an outcome — he bought a Hill debate. It was scorched earth, and it was all about money. They created a public interest furor where there was none.”

Media Ownership Rules

For more than 70 years, the federal government has regulated media ownership to protect against any entity gaining too much power over the dissemination of information. And for much of the last two decades, Mr. Murdoch has chafed against those restrictions, winning exceptions and easing regulations.

Again and again, Mr. Murdoch won crucial skirmishes with the Federal Communications Commission. In this he was helped most by his Republican allies, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Bush administration, which has promoted measures to allow more consolidation.

During the Clinton administration, Mr. Murdoch was able to draw upon Republican support when the F.C.C. chairman at the time, Reed E. Hundt, opened an investigation into whether the News Corporation had violated commission rules in acquiring television stations to form the Fox Network.

According to two former F.C.C. officials, Mr. Murdoch’s chief in-house lobbyist at the time, Preston Padden, confronted Mr. Hundt’s chief of staff at a meeting at a coffee shop near the agency’s headquarters. Mr. Hundt would not be able to “get a job as dog-catcher” if the F.C.C. took away a single News Corporation television license, Mr. Padden warned, they said.

The warning, one of the officials said, “was designed to send a harsh signal that if we continued, they would do everything in the world to make our life miserable.” As Mr. Hundt later recalled in a memoir, Mr. Murdoch assailed him in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, and Congressional Republicans rose up against him.

In the end, the F.C.C. found that the deal had violated the rules. But Mr. Hundt declined to strip Mr. Murdoch of his licenses, reasoning that the fault lay with the Reagan-era F.C.C. for approving the acquisitions in the first place. Mr. Padden, who has left the News Corporation, refused requests for an interview.

It was the first of many victories for Mr. Murdoch in the new political climate that swept into Washington in 1994 when the Republicans won control of Congress. It was a fortunate time for Mr. Murdoch, whose business interests and political ideology were in ascendancy.

The new Congress overhauled telecommunications laws for the first time in decades, allowing media companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to expand by increasing the share of the national audience they could reach. So long as a company did not reach more than 35 percent of American households, it could buy as many stations as it wanted.

Mr. Murdoch’s lobbyists were also able to get a provision in the bill requiring the F.C.C. to review the cap periodically. It was just such a review that led the Bush administration to increase the cap again in 2003. By then, Mr. Murdoch had bought additional stations that put him over the 35 percent limit, as had another company, Viacom.

The F.C.C. chairman at that time, Michael K. Powell, proposed a broad loosening of media ownership rules, including raising the cap to 45 percent. (Two of Mr. Powell’s top advisers, Susan Eid and Paul Jackson, now work for Mr. Murdoch.)

Ultimately, a federal appeals court threw out the new rules. But by then, Congress and the White House had intervened, passing into law the 39 percent compromise.

Mr. Lott, an outspoken critic of media consolidation, agreed to the increase because it was still lower than what Mr. Powell had proposed, said his spokesman, Nick Simpson. Mr. Simpson added that Mr. Lott did not want to force companies to sell stations and that his book deal did not affect his view of Mr. Murdoch’s legislative agenda.

Many companies publish books by public officials. But because of Mr. Murdoch’s wide business interests, HarperCollins’s book deals have at times drawn scrutiny. Its decision to cancel a book critical of Chinese Communist leaders by Hong Kong’s last British governor was assailed as a move by Mr. Murdoch to protect his Chinese business interests, a charge he denied.

HarperCollins also provoked a firestorm when it gave Mr. Gingrich a $4.5 million book contract as Congress was preparing to redraw the media ownership rules.

Mr. Ginsberg pointed out that Mr. Murdoch later fired the Gingrich book’s editor for making what he regarded as an “uneconomical and unseemly” deal. He said that in general Mr. Murdoch did not involve himself in decisions about book contracts, and added, “If these books aren’t viable, they aren’t published.”

Mr. Lott’s book sold 12,000 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of all domestic retail and Internet sales. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, received $24,506 from HarperCollins for his modest-selling book “Passion for Truth,” according to financial disclosure forms. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, got $141,666 for her book “American Heroines,” which has sold better. All sit on either the Commerce or Judiciary Committees that most closely oversee the media business.

HarperCollins has also given book deals to Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, and a $1 million advance to Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, both of whose books are due out next year.

A former HarperCollins executive, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the company, said Mr. Murdoch was less hands-on than people assumed. “It’s not done in a direct way where he issues instructions,” the executive said. “It’s a bunch of people running around trying to please him.”

Ms. Binzel, the former chief government strategist for the News Corporation, said Mr. Murdoch got the breaks he did in the United States based on the merits, not his political connections. He took on the major networks and created more competition in the media marketplace, something regulators had long desired, she said.

“Rupert has always been a visionary, and when you bring in a visionary, they are frequently going up against the establishment,” she said. “So much of what Rupert has faced in Washington has been getting rid of rules that protect incumbents. The reason he convinced people to do that was that he was going to be providing something new.”

The Dow Jones Bid

Now, Mr. Murdoch is trying to convince the Bancroft family to sell him The Journal.

Dow Jones has proposed a committee to safeguard the paper’s editorial independence that includes a continuing role for some members of the Bancroft family and current Journal editors and executives.

Mr. Murdoch has said he prefers the model of committee used at The Times of London. His company bought The Times in 1981 and in order to win approval for the deal Mr. Murdoch agreed to an independent oversight committee and guidelines intended to prevent him from meddling in coverage.

According to interviews with former Times editors and affidavits filed in an unrelated 1995 libel suit, there were clashes over the publisher’s involvement in the paper from the very start.

Harry Evans, who was editor at the time of Mr. Murdoch’s acquisition and was forced out soon after, wrote a memoir vividly describing his constant fights with the new publisher. In his affidavit, Mr. Evans describes Mr. Murdoch’s ordering the publication of a cartoon that Times editors had deemed tasteless and his complaining that too many stories had a left-wing bent. Another former editor said Mr. Murdoch once pointed to the byline of a correspondent and asserted, “That man’s a Commie.”

Fred Emery, another former Times editor, said Mr. Murdoch once said to him: “I give instructions to my editors all around the world; why shouldn’t I in London?”

The turmoil of those first years subsided, in part, one former Times editor said, because Mr. Murdoch got rid of those who did not adhere to his politics. “He puts people in who will do his bidding,” said Mr. Neil, the former editor.

The current editor of The Times, Robert Thomson, paints a different picture: “I’ve had absolutely no interference and a lot of investment in a loss-making newspaper, for which Rupert Murdoch gets no credit.”

Under Mr. Thomson, the business pages of The Times expanded, and there are now 18 foreign reporters, compared with 8 when he came to the paper. The Times is the only British newspaper with a Baghdad bureau.

Mr. Thomson, who is expected to play an important role at The Journal if the News Corporation buys it, said Mr. Murdoch would invest in the paper and expand overseas coverage.

Over the years, as Mr. Murdoch built his empire, he has lusted after The Journal.

In the mid-1980s, he attended a black-tie press dinner in New York and found himself sitting next to Julie Salamon, then The Journal’s film critic and a former New York Times reporter. She vividly recalls his fascination with the inner workings of the newspaper and said he clearly expressed his desire to own it someday.

Ms. Salamon initially dismissed Mr. Murdoch. “The idea of this tabloid guy buying The Journal, which was then at the zenith of its success, seemed preposterous,” she said.

But by the end of the meal, impressed by Mr. Murdoch’s canny sense of the American media landscape, Ms. Salamon said, “I went home with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, like this guy might actually do it.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/...ss/murdoch.php





Inkless Thursday

Journal Reporters Protest Over Murdoch Bid
Richard Pérez-Peña

Many of The Wall Street Journal’s reporters did not show up for work this morning, to protest the expected sale of the newspaper’s parent, Dow Jones & Company, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and the fact that they do not have a contract.

The reporters will return to work by mid-afternoon, ending a “stay-out” that their union has been secretly planning for several days, organizers said.

It is not clear how many reporters participated in the action, or how it affected the Journal’s operation. The newspaper’s Web site continued to post articles on breaking news, some of them written by reporters who work for the online operation or for Dow Jones Newswires reporters, who were not included in the job action. But in calls to several Journal reporters, most of them said they had not gone to work today.

“We’re not asking anybody to stop doing their jobs or blow off a story,” said E. S. Browning, a reporter and chairman of the contract bargaining committee of the union, the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees. “The goal is to convey the depth of this feeling about the threat to the newspaper, and the fact that we’re still demanding a fair contract.”

Many Dow Jones reporters and editors have said they fear that News Corporation would water down and politicize the serious journalism the company is known for, and people at other news organizations say they have seen an increase in the number of Journal reporters inquiring about jobs.

Union officers said they spread word of the job action by word-of-mouth, not putting anything in writing until they released a statement this morning, and that some reporters did not learn of it until yesterday. Organizers told new reporters still on probation, who can be dismissed at will, to report for work.

The company declined to comment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/bu...dia/29dow.html





Moyers on Murdoch

If Rupert Murdoch were the Angel Gabriel, you still wouldn’t want him owning the sun, the moon, and the stars. That’s too much prime real estate for even the pure in heart.

But Rupert Murdoch is no saint; he is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity. When it comes to money and power he’s carnivorous: all appetite and no taste. He’ll eat anything in his path. Politicians become little clay pigeons to be picked off with flattering headlines, generous air time, a book contract or the old-fashioned black jack that never misses: campaign cash. He hires lobbyists the way Imelda Marcos bought shoes, and stacks them in his cavernous closet, along with his conscience; this is the man, remember, who famously kowtowed to the Communist overlords of China, oppressors of their own people, to protect his investments there.

The ambitious can’t resist his blandishments, nor his power to get or keep them in office where they can return his favors. Mae West would be green with envy at his little black book of conquests: Tory Margaret Thatcher, Labor’s Tony Blair, George Bush. Even Jimmy Carter couldn’t say no. Now, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who know which side of their bread is buttered, like having it slathered by their new buddy Rupert. Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.

You will not be surprised to learn that Murdoch’s company paid little or no federal income tax over the past four years. His powerful portfolio positions him to claim a big stake in Yahoo and his takeover of The Wall Street Journal, now owned by the Bancroft family, which, like Adam and Eve, the parents of us all, are tempted to sell their birthright for a wormy apple.

Murdoch and The Journal’s editorial page are made for each other. They’ve both pursued the right's corporate and political agenda of the past quarter century. Both venerate what The Journal editorials call the “animal spirits” of business. But The Journal’s newsroom is another matter – there facts are sacred and independence revered. Rupert Murdoch has told the Bancrofts he’ll not meddle with the reporting. But he’s accustomed to using journalism as a personal spittoon. In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he turned the dogs of war loose in the newsrooms of his empire and they howled for blood. Murdoch himself said the greatest thing to come out of the war would be “$20 a barrel for oil.”

Of course he wasn’t the only media mogul to clamor for war. And he’s not the first to use journalism to promote his own interests. His worst offense with FOX News is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he’s made of its journalism. Fox News huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting. His tabloids sell babes and breasts, gossip and celebrities. Now he’s about to bring under the same thumb one of the few national newsrooms remaining in the country.

But the problem isn’t just Rupert Murdoch. His pursuit of The Wall Street Journal is the latest in a cascading series of mergers, buy-outs, and other financial legerdemain that are making a shipwreck of journalism. Public minded newspapers are being dumped by their owners for wads of cash or crippled by cost cutting while their broadcasting cousins race to the bottom. Murdoch is just the predator of the hour. The modern maestro of a financial marketplace ruled by money and moguls. Instead of checking the excesses of private and public power, these 21st century barons of the First Amendment revel in them; the public be damned.

- Bill Moyers

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/bl...doch.html#more





Michael Moore Denied Entry Into the NYSE
John Amato

It seems the money-men don’t want Moore anywhere near them at the NYSE. Michael Moore went down to Wall Street to ask people to divest from health insurance companies and guess what happened? He couldn’t get in…CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo looks pretty flustered when Moore asks her if any other guest had ever been denied access with her before?

Moore: They’ll let me on the floor tomorrow?

Bartiromo: We don’t have the permission…(stumbling)…to do that…

Moore: Has anyone been denied with you as a guest?

Bartiromo: Ummm, hey…let’s talk about health care a second….

Chatterbox

Straight Shooter Says:

They’ll let Coultergeist in with her skanky black dress if she promises to say something hateful about Michael Moore.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/0...into-the-nyse/





Court Takes Sharp Right Turn in Monday Decisions
Mike Leonard

In a series of 5 to 4 decisions, the United States Supreme Court today veered sharply to the right. The Court voted along strict ideological lines to side with the Bush administration in deciding four contentious, high-profile cases.

The four cases ran the jurisprudential gamut. They included challenges to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the Endangered Species Act, and taxpayer-funded faith-based initiatives, as well as a free speech case involving an Alaskan student who waved a sign reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” in front of television cameras during an Olympic ceremony. In the end, the Court opened loopholes in McCain-Feingold and in the Endangered Species Act, dismissed a suit objecting to publicly-funded religious programs, and upheld the suspension of the Alaskan student.

In all four cases, the majority consisted of the same conservative bloc and the minority of the Court’s left wing. The conservative majority in all four cases included Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and the two Bush appointees, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer dissented.

One of the decisions is receiving particular attention due to its direct political implications. In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court struck down a provision of McCain-Feingold barring television ads financed by corporations or unions from mentioning political candidates by name within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that case-by-case consideration of an ad’s substance should override “amorphous considerations of intent and effect.” The decision went on to say that since the anti-abortion ads in question “may reasonably be interpreted as something other than an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate,” they failed, in the opinion of the majority, to qualify as “express advocacy,” which is legalese for an advertisement endorsing or opposing a political candidate.

“The court should give the benefit of the doubt to free speech, not censorship,” in setting the threshold for “express advocacy,” the majority wrote.

The four dissenters expressed their frustration at the reasoning of the majority, which they said has opened a gaping loophole in the ability of government to regulate campaign contributions. “After today,” they wrote, “the ban on contributions by corporations and unions and the limitation on their corrosive spending when they enter the political arena are open to easy circumvention, and the possibilities for regulating corporate and union campaign money are unclear.”

The uncertainty introduced into standards for determining “express advocacy” could also eliminate the law’s deterrent effect, since corporations and unions may now challenge attempts at regulation on a case-by-case basis, at worst earning an ex post facto rebuke or nominal fine.

Justice Breyer, writing for the minority, warned that today’s decision might indicate the end of McCain-Feingold.

The decision represented a reversal a 2003 decision by a more ideologically balanced roster of Justices.

Critics have noted that this Court has been unusually willing to contradict recent precedent. Just last month, a divided Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban after the Court’s previous lineup struck down a nearly identical Nebraska law as unconstitutional. Since the Supreme Court decided the presidency in 2000, there has been widespread concern among legal scholars that increasing politicization of the judicial branch could lead to a Court less concerned with interpreting the constitutionality of laws than with the short-term political ascendancy of its majority ideology.

Spurring the fear of Justices playing politics was the seemingly inconsistent line the Court took with respect to “[giving] the benefit of the doubt to free speech, not censorship.” The same majority that struck down McCain-Feingold’s blanket-proscription of corporate advertising on free speech grounds today failed to extend that courtesy to a high school student suspended for an off-campus prank.

In the most sensational of the four cases decided today, the Court sided 5 to 4 against a student suspended for unfurling a banner declaring, somewhat ambiguously, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” as the Olympic torch passed through Juneau, Alaska in 2002. The student appealed his 10-day suspension, and the case reached the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Chief Justice Roberts, again writing for the majority, declared that “deterring drug use by children” is a compelling enough cause to circumvent the usual free-speech protections enjoyed by students.

Justice Stevens, dissenting, noted that the banner comprised “nonsense” speech “never meant to persuade anyone to do anything,” rather than a cogent pro-drug argument or a rebuttal of the school’s anti-drug policy or message. In a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the Court’s famous 1969 proclamation in favor of student speech, Justice Stevens declared that students had capable enough minds to discern a harmless prank from a propaganda message. They “do not shed their brains at the schoolhouse gate,” he said.

“Students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech…at the schoolhouse gate,” the 1969 opinion read.
http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=2327





Justices End 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors
Stephen LaBaton

Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled today that it is no longer automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on setting minimum retail prices.

The decision will give producers significantly more leeway, though not unlimited power, to dictate retail prices and to restrict the flexibility of discounters.

Five justices said the new rule could, in some instances, lead to more competition and better service. But four dissenting justices agreed with the submission of 37 states and consumer groups that the abandonment of the old rule would lead to significantly higher prices and less competition for consumer and other goods.

The court struck down the 96-year-old rule that resale price maintenance agreements were an automatic, or per se, violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In its place, the court instructed judges considering such agreements for possible antitrust violations to apply a case-by-case approach, known as a “rule of reason,” to assess their impact on competition.

The decision was the latest in a string of opinions this term to overturn Supreme Court precedents. It marked the latest in a line of Supreme Court victories for big businesses and antitrust defendants. And it was the latest of the court’s antitrust decisions in recent years to reject rules that had prohibited various marketing agreements between companies.

The Bush administration, along with economists of the Chicago school, had argued that the blanket prohibition against resale price maintenance agreements was archaic and counterproductive because, they said, some resale price agreements actually promote competition.

For example, they said, such agreements can make it easier for a new producer by assuring retailers that they will be able to recoup their investments in helping to market the product. And they said some distributors could be unfairly harmed by others — like Internet-based retailers — that could offer discounts because they would not be incurring the expenses of providing product demonstrations and other specialized consumer services.

A majority of the court agreed that the flat ban on price agreements discouraged these and other marketing practices that could be helpful to competition.

“In sum, it is a flawed antitrust doctrine that serves the interests of lawyers — by creating legal distinctions that operate as traps for the unaware — more than the interests of consumers — by requiring manufacturers to choose second-best options to achieve sound business objectives,” the court said in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But in his dissent, portions of which he read from the bench, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said there was no compelling reason to overturn a century’s worth of Supreme Court decisions that had affirmed the prohibition on resale maintenance agreements.

“The only safe predictions to make about today’s decision are that it will likely raise the price of goods at retail and that it will create considerable legal turbulence as lower courts seek to develop workable principles,” he wrote. “I do not believe that the majority has shown new or changed conditions sufficient to warrant overruling a decision of such long standing.”

During the period from 1937 to 1975 when Congress allowed the states to adopt laws that permitted retail price fixing, economists estimated that such agreements covered about 10 percent of consumer good purchases. In today’s dollars, Justice Breyer estimated that the agreements translate to a higher annual average bill for a family of four of roughly $750 to $1,000.

The dissent was signed by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The case involved an appeal of a judgment of $1.2 million against Leegin Creative Leather Products Inc. after it cut off Kay’s Kloset, a suburban Dallas shop, for refusing to honor Leegin’s no-discount policy. The judgment was automatically tripled under antitrust law.

Leegin’s marketing strategy for finding a niche in the highly competitive world of small leather goods was to sell its “Brighton” line of fashion accessories through small boutiques that could offer personalized service. Retailers were required to accept a no-discounting policy.

After the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, upheld the judgment and said it was bound by Supreme Court precedent, Leegin took the case to the Supreme Court. Unless it is settled, the case, Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSK Inc., will now be sent down to a lower court to apply the new standard.

The Supreme Court adopted the flat ban on resale price agreements between manufacturers and retailers in 1911, when it founded that the Dr. Miles Medical Company had violated the Sherman act. The company had sought to sell medicine only to distributors who agreed to resell them at set prices. The court said such agreements benefit only the distributors, not consumers, and set a rule making such agreements unlawful.

Justice Kennedy said today that the court was not bound by the 1911 precedent because of the “widespread agreement” among economists that resale price maintenance agreements can promote competition.

“Vertical agreements establishing minimum resale prices can have either pro-competitive or anticompetitive effects, depending upon the circumstances in which they are formed,” he wrote.

But Justice Breyer said in his dissent that the court had failed to justify the overturning of the rule, or that there was significant evidence to show that price agreements would often benefit consumers. He said courts would have a difficult time sorting out the price agreements that help consumers from those that harm them.

“The upshot is, as many economists suggest, sometimes resale price maintenance can prove harmful, sometimes it can bring benefits,” he wrote. “But before concluding that courts should consequently apply a rule of reason, I would ask such questions as, how often are harms or benefits likely to occur? How easy is it to separate the beneficial sheep from the antitrust goats?”

“My own answer,” he concluded, “is not very easily.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/bu...zcourt.html?hp





Food, Toiletry Items to Pay Library Fines Instead of Cash
AP

People who owe overdue fines to the Wethersfield, Conn. Library can pay them off with pasta, canned foods or items such as toothpaste.

The library is collecting food and toiletries needed for the food bank in exchange for forgiving fines on overdue books and materials.

"It's a win, win for everybody. People make a tangible donation that helps somebody and at the same time erase their fines," Laurel Goodgion, the library's director, said Monday.

During the library's Food for Fines campaign, which began this month, several bags of food and toiletry items have been collected.

Fines for overdue books currently are 5 cents a day or $1 a day for DVDs and videos.

Goodgion says food and toiletry donations are good for all fines, even dating back a year ago. However, people will still have to use cash to pay for a lost or damaged book.

"We need the materials back or the money to replace those lost items and we can't do that with a can of tuna," Goodgion said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...06-26-07-10-03





This Isn't Free Speech: How THREESPEECH Hides it's Censorship

This is the comments thread to THREESPEECH's first podcast. We all know TS is effectively a sham blog set up by Sony to promote itself, presumably as no one else will.

Firstly, the irony of name withstanding, obviously TS are entitled to remove comments they don't like. But how they do that is very important. Especially as they state:

We won’t censor content so long as this space is used constructively.
But what I've found goes beyond merely deleting negative comments. Here's the long and the short of it:

Short Version: THREESPEECH will delete your "negative" comment (e.g. asking what "semi-offical" means) but from then on maintain a different version of the web site just for you so that you think your post still exists.

Long Version: After reading what Penny-arcade had to had tosay about Threespeech - I listened to their Podcast. It is seedy. As such I posted this on the comments thread:

I’ve just listened to the whole podcast.

The Internet has one commodity. Trust.

The viewers have to believe the creaters. And with this sites ambiguity thats impossible. How about a detailed explanation of the site. Answer these questions:

* Are you being paid by Sony, it’s marketing department, or by others on behalf of Sony to make this site? It seems the answer is yes.

* Are you given free reign to voice your true opinions? It seems the answer is no.

* What are Sony’s aims with this site?

I am ashamed. This site, and the podcast is so “on-topic” that it beggers belief. It’s like a concerted effort to “push” “hard-core” opinion on the Sony Brand products.

At no point did I see a genuine criticism of any of the platforms. And minor criticism was quickly distorted back into something positive.

Sony wins no fans by trying to insidiously promote itself in this way. To try and have it’s cake and eat it.

And I pity those involved. Because it’s clear you have asperations in the games media field and you’ve damaged your CV beyond repair with job.

I want Sony to do well with the PS3. The ability to install Linux (and thus Myth TV etc) will mean I’m far more likely to buy one over the 360. But this kind of marketing is truly offensive.

Comment by Lave — June 28, 2007 @ 4:51 pm

And thought nothing of it. For various boring reasons I have to run two browsers on my laptop. One runs locally. One runs on a machine 5 miles away and unix pipes the window to my machine. After a while my comment was still happily siting on the thread. But then when I happened to visit the site with the different machine's browser it was nowhere to be seen.

Here's a screencap of both browsers side by side. One has my comment the other doesn't.

Link as 1024*768

You can see for yourself. Do the following:

1) Go to the thread and read post 79.

2) Go to the comment field and post something (but please be nice - maybe even a link here... )

For your name put: Lave
For your email put: skeptobotURIGELLER@blogspot.com (remember to remove the fraud's name).
For your website put: http://skeptobot.blogspot.com

3) Reread post 79 and see how my post is back. Their server clearly thinks your me now. And is trying to hide it's censorship from you.

Free Speech indeed.

It's such a strange situation. From the postings of one guy there called Ben who replied to my comments that haven't been deleted - it seems he isn't being paid directly. No doubt he gets free stuff. But that the perk of any journalist. And he admits he has no control over what makes the first page and comments. So he's not much more than a patsy giving them some respectability.

But behavior like this makes it certain (even though it was already) that this is a Sony run site. Which I've no problem with - if they explain what that means, rather than making a blog that is clearly designed to fool people into thinking this is "honest" enthusiasm.
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/2007/0...reespeech.html





Down with aggregation

The Cult of the Amateur
Michiko Kakutani

Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, “The Cult of the Amateur,” Web 2.0 has a dark side as well.

Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” In his view Web 2.0 is changing the cultural landscape and not for the better. By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”

This book, which grew out of a controversial essay published last year by The Weekly Standard, is a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the “wisdom of the crowd.” Although Mr. Keen wanders off his subject in the later chapters of the book — to deliver some generic, moralistic rants against Internet evils like online gambling and online pornography — he writes with acuity and passion about the consequences of a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred.

For one thing, Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.” The crowd created the tech bubble of the 1990s, just as it created the disastrous Tulipmania that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century.

Mr. Keen also points out that Google search results — which answer “search queries not with what is most true or most reliable, but merely what is most popular” — can be manipulated by “Google bombing” (which “involves simply linking a large number of sites to a certain page” to “raise the ranking of any given site in Google’s search results”). The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. And he cites a recent Wall Street Journal article reporting that hot lists on social networking Web sites are often shaped by a small number of users: that at Digg.com, which has 900,000 registered users, 30 people were responsible at one point for submitting one-third of the postings on the home page; and at Netscape.com, a single user was behind 217 stories over a two-week period, or 13 percent of all stories that reached the most popular list in that period.

Because Web 2.0 celebrates the “noble amateur” over the expert, and because many search engines and Web sites tout popularity rather than reliability, Mr. Keen notes, it’s easy for misinformation and rumors to proliferate in cyberspace. For instance, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (which relies upon volunteer editors and contributors) gets way more traffic than the Web site run by Encyclopedia Britannica (which relies upon experts and scholars), even though the interactive format employed by Wikipedia opens it to postings that are inaccurate, unverified, even downright fraudulent. This year it was revealed that a contributor using the name Essjay, who had edited thousands of Wikipedia articles and was once one of the few people given the authority to arbitrate disputes between writers, was a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, not the tenured professor he claimed to be.

Since contributors to Wikipedia and YouTube are frequently anonymous, it’s hard for users to be certain of their identity — or their agendas. Postings about political candidates, for instance, can be made by opponents disguising their motives; and propaganda can be passed off as news or information. For that matter, as Mr. Keen points out, the idea of objectivity is becoming increasingly passé in the relativistic realm of the Web, where bloggers cherry-pick information and promote speculation and spin as fact. Whereas historians and journalists traditionally strived to deliver the best available truth possible, many bloggers revel in their own subjectivity, and many Web 2.0 users simply use the Net, in Mr. Keen’s words, to confirm their “own partisan views and link to others with the same ideologies.” What’s more, as mutually agreed upon facts become more elusive, informed debate about important social and political issues of the day becomes more difficult as well.

Although Mr. Keen’s objections to the publishing and distribution tools the Web provides to aspiring artists and writers sound churlish and elitist — he calls publish-on-demand services “just cheaper, more accessible versions of vanity presses where the untalented go to purchase the veneer of publication” — he is eloquent on the fallout that free, user-generated materials is having on traditional media.

Mr. Keen argues that the democratized Web’s penchant for mash-ups, remixes and cut-and-paste jobs threaten not just copyright laws but also the very ideas of authorship and intellectual property. He observes that as advertising dollars migrate from newspapers, magazines and television news to the Web, organizations with the expertise and resources to finance investigative and foreign reporting face more and more business challenges. And he suggests that as CD sales fall (in the face of digital piracy and single-song downloads) and the music business becomes increasingly embattled, new artists will discover that Internet fame does not translate into the sort of sales or worldwide recognition enjoyed by earlier generations of musicians.

“What you may not realize is that what is free is actually costing us a fortune,” Mr. Keen writes. “The new winners — Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, and the hundreds of start-ups hungry for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie — are unlikely to fill the shoes of the industries they are helping to undermine, in terms of products produced, jobs created, revenue generated or benefits conferred. By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’ Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/books/29book.html





Google Better than LimeWire?
Thomas Mennecke

In the never ending search for music, the end user is always confronted with a near limitless supply of options. P2P or iTunes? LimeWire or FrostWire? Usenet or BitTorrent? Perhaps I should just “ask Google”?

Ask Google. It has become the response to millions of questions over the last several years. There was once a time when people may have known the answer to a question, or could provide helpful insight. Yet those days are long gone as Google’s massive index provides an answer to every conceivable question imaginable. Is it possible that Google is a better provider of music than LimeWire? Maybe, why don’t you go ask Google?

That’s the question Jimmy Ruska asked Google, and received some very interesting answers. Jimmy Ruska developed two video tutorials which gained an impressive level of popularity on YouTube. His technique and results were astounding; it was quite possible with a bit of tweaking that Jimmy may have demonstrated that Google was better than LimeWire for downloading music. At least, that’s what Jimmy claims.

Most people understand that web based searching for music can provide a multitude of results, if you can cut through the spam. Jimmy’s first tutorial, which received over 300,000 views, brought about a novel concept when searching for MP3s. Instead of simply typing the desired file with the MP3 extension, Jimmy’s concept used the search tags ‘intitle: “index.of”’. This forces Google to only reveal directories, and not web pages. This exposes files that people may have stored on servers not necessarily linked on web pages.

The first iteration of his concept worked very well and received largely positive feedback on YouTube. However, that was only a sneak peak of things to come. A few months later, Jimmy automated his process and launched Jimmyr.com. His new search feature simplifies the search process for the end user by automatically entering most of the search parameters specified in his initial tutorial. Instead of remembering where to place periods and where quotations go, simply enter the desired query and let Jimmy’s search engine do the rest.

So the question returns to “Is Google better than LimeWire?” The resoundingly concrete answer is, “perhaps in some ways.” When it comes to ease of use, resourcefulness, and data information, LimeWire blows away Jimmy’s technique. Yet Jimmy’s search engine demonstrates that Google can indeed rival or compete with P2P technology.

As the record industry heaves up its latest attempt to crack down on file-sharing on college campuses, students are finding many of their P2P networks blocked. In the absence or crippling of P2P technology, Jimmy’s technique will certainly have many users answering, “Yes, Google is better than LimeWire.”
http://www.slyck.com/story1507_Googl..._than_LimeWire





File-Sharing on Windows Vista
Brandon McCaskill

Windows Vista has the dubious honor of probably being the most controversial OS that Microsoft (MS) has ever released. Critics have relentlessly assailed it as a resource hog, an attempt to copy OS X, being too little too late for an upgrade from XP, and/or as simply being XP with some window dressings.

Of all the characteristics of the new OS, perhaps none have received more attention than the content protection measures built into it. Combined with MS' announced Windows Genuine Advantage verification features, the issue has rapidly snowballed into a huge sphere of negative sentiment that Microsoft themselves have surprisingly done relatively little to mitigate.

Many users worried that their unprotected content would refuse to play, and there are various claims floating around the internet that this is the case. Others have fretted that Vista would block file-sharing altogether.

Due to the nature of most file-sharing, the lack of official information from MS or major tech news sources is understandable. Up to this writing, I was aware of only one such article - Paul Thurrott's Compatibility Guide, in which he reported that two programs widely used for content acquisition and sharing, AnyDVD and uTorrent, work perfectly. On the other hand, there seems to be a flood of uncertain information on the internet in the form of blog and forum posts.

As such, the Slyck team felt it was time to look into the issue ourselves and provide the file-sharing community with a clear picture of exactly what is and isn't possible on Vista.

PLEASE NOTE: This article is not intended to be a review of Vista itself. Nor is it a statement for or against that or any other available OS. It is certainly not an argument for or against switching or upgrading. Its primary purpose is to provide accurate information as to what works and what doesn't on a particular platform.

Testing was done on a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527 laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium. It can be picked up from your local Circuit City (for those who live in the US) for $599.99. Specs are quite modest:

CPU: Intel Core Duo (1.73GHz)
RAM: 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
GPU: Intel Integrated Graphics
HDD: 120GB 5400RPM SATA

During initial setup, Vista rated the system 3/5 for expected performance.

The investigation into file-sharing on Vista will cover 3 main areas: the operating system, clients, and hardware.

Operating System

Users do well to familiarize themselves with the following if they wish to do anything significant with Vista:

UAC - User Account Control, basically does for Vista what sudo does for *nix systems by giving users limited authority by default. Since many clients were developed on/for XP in which admin authority was a given, this is where users are likely to have the most issues, albeit minor ones that can easily be overcome. It can be disabled by following the instructions here, but that was not attempted for this article since it is not recommended for security purposes any more than disabling sudo would be a good idea for Linux.

UAC is invoked even for some native MS apps, so it's likely to be a permanent fixture in the Windows experience from here on out almost regardless of the software vendor. You won't see it for every program you launch, just some. This suggests that are ways to develop UAC-friendly apps, but perhaps most developers haven't gotten around to doing so yet. Programs, options and links that require a UAC prompt will have a small "Windows shield" logo superimposed upon their own icon(s).

Run as administrator - this allows users to run programs with admin authority. It can be invoked once by right clicking on an executable and selecting "Run as administrator," or permanently by right clicking -> Properties -> Compatibility -> and selecting the matching check box. Note that this option does not necessarily exempt the program in question from UAC. It only generally gives it access to parts of the OS that it normally wouldn't have.

Compatibility mode - Accessed from the same Properties -> Compatibility menu as "Run as administrator" above. Allows users to run programs as they would on previous Windows versions.

Permissions - Since users now have limited access by default, access to some files and folders often have to be enabled manually either to allow access, period, or to allow access without a UAC prompt. Users will probably need to do this for external hard drives, as it was necessary for this test. It is accomplished by right clicking the object in question -> Properties -> Security. Depending on how many files you have on the drive, you may have to wait a while as the OS changes the permissions settings on each one. Doing so for a 250GB USB2.0 drive took a couple minutes, but was a lot better than having to go through a UAC prompt for nearly every operation within Explorer.

In rare cases, you may also have to grant yourself ownership of a particular folder. To do so, click "Advanced" on the Security tab -> Owner -> Edit.

The reason for the above complications is to prevent major changes to the system without the user's specific and deliberate consent. Whether or not this is effective is the province of security articles and will not be debated here.

File transfer issue(?) - When transferring files from one drive to another and emptying the recycling bin, Vista will attempt calculate the remaining time to complete the operation. For some reason, it often spends more time doing the calculation than actually performing the requested operation. This appears to be because it tries to calculate the time first before starting the transfer. So far, MS has not delivered a default Windows Update for this issue, but has provided a hotfix for it. The hotfix isn't absolutely necessary, but if you're annoyed by the above problem, it should help you out. Once it is applied (no reboot needed), Vista will still do the time calculation but actually execute the transfer simultaneously, thus bringing the process back to XP-like speeds.

Other issues that users may have heard of, but are not very critical for the most part:

DRM - Our experience was that if you avoid protected content, you'll never see the DRM in Vista, period. MP3s, XviDs, etc. are handled with aplomb and unhindered regardless of their source. Not once was the impression given that the OS was maliciously interfering with my media files.

Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) - 5 days into using the system, while applying updates regularly, this was never encountered.

Clients

For obvious reasons, not every client out there could be reported on, but care was taken to test the most widely used ones. Some common non-P2P apps for content acquisition and playback were also tested.

Alt.Binz - On first startup after installation, the program complained that it couldn't load unrar.dll. When it closed thereafter, Vista presented a message saying that it detected that the program hadn't run correctly, and provided an option to run it as administrator. Accepting that option eliminated any further issues.

Aside: Vista apparently has a feature in which it can actively detect software compatibility problems and both offer and search for solutions of its own.

Ares - Works perfectly. Also, the bug some users experienced on XP with Ares killing their network connection appears to have been resolved.

Cabos - Works perfectly.

eMule - Works perfectly. May take a while to connect to Kad on initial startup after installation, but that has been a problem on XP also. Successfully imported incomplete downloads from an external hard drive previously attached to an XP Pro SP2 system and completed them.

Filetopia - Initial run attempt ended in nondescript error from the program before it even loaded. Running as administrator and in XP SP2 compatibility mode fixed that problem. No other issues.

Frostwire - Works perfectly.

KCeasy - This is the only client I had unresolved issues with. Connections seemed to be a bit iffy. On one run, it connected to all 3 networks (Gnutella, Ares and OpenFT) well, while on the next (done the next day), it could connect to the OpenFT network only. Even then, the connection was held for only 15 minutes, after which no connections seemed possible.

Markus Kern, KCeasy's developer, responded to our email inquiry.

“KCeasy's built in patcher for tcpip.sys, which raises the concurrent connection limit introduced in Windows XP SP2, is not working on Vista which might be one reason you see these disconnects," Markus told Slyck.com. "There are no other networking issues with KCeasy on Vista that I am aware of. The connection problems you see are most likely of general nature and may simply go away if you use KCeasy for a while so it is able to collect a stable node list.”

There are of course some things which could be done to generally improve KCeasy's connection stability but I haven't been working on it for a while due to time constraints.[/quote target=_blank>

Your mileage may differ, but on this end it was essentially zero with KCeasy. However, since the client is FLOSS, we can only hope that another developer will step in soon to patch the problem if Kern is unable to.

mIRC - Given the demise of AutoXDCC, I almost didn't consider any IRC clients until Slyck.com member lordfoul pointed me to this excellent guide that works just as well with Vista as it does with XP. Caveat: you will probably have to grant yourself ownership of the C:\Program Files\mIRC folder as Vista will not allow you to unzip the XDCC browser script to that location otherwise. Refer to the "Permissions" section above to see how to do this. Once that is done, operation is essentially flawless. Unfortunately, mIRC's biggest bug is one that has nothing to do with the OS it runs on - it costs $20 .

Pidgin - Formerly known as Gaim, Pidgin is an IM client, but it can also be used for file-sharing via IM file transfers. No issues were observed besides that pressing Esc no longer exited IM windows as it did in XP.

Shareaza - Crashed once on initial run when I tried to open my Library (shared files) using the Folders view within the app. Problem could not be reproduced, and operation was perfect thereafter.

Soulseek - Works perfectly.

uTorrent - Works perfectly.

VLC - An iPod video from MariposaHD crashed the client repeatedly. No problems with other formats.

Windows Media Player 11 (built-in) - Works perfectly. No playback issues whatsoever, including the high CPU usage reported by some other users.

Exact Audio Copy - Works perfectly with no UAC notifications at all. Given that EAC is actually recommended in published official MS OS guides, it's very likely it was tested for compatibility in-house.

foobar2000 - Works perfectly.

Firefox - A few bugs. 2 upload sites, Box.net and fileden.com, didn't work. In the former case, I couldn't even open the "Add Files" dialog, while on fileden.com the upload never even started. An email to support@box.net produced the response that Vista is not supported (Windows 2000, XP and OS X are). However, since IE7 handled both tasks easily and without complaint, I believe it is reasonable to conclude that the problem lies either with Firefox or the upload sites themselves.

WinMX - I did not test this software due to WPNP's now defunct status. However, according to WinMXWorld.com, there is a patch to enable connectivity.

Hardware

Given the buzz on the internet about Vista being a severe system hog, I expected a slow, poky experience with the specs on the test machine.

WRONG.

Even with Aero enabled, response is snappy and the PC multitasks easily without so much as an audible fan noise increase. Aside from the file transfer issue mentioned at the outset, no complaints about stability, speed or capacity can be made. Given the fact that this machine is equipped with integrated graphics, a high powered graphics card does not appear to be necessary either.

RAM usage is large by default, but that's because of a feature of Vista called SuperFetch. SuperFetch actively learns the user's program usage habits and preloads programs/files that are likely to be used into memory. The philosophy behind this is apparently that empty RAM, like idle CPU cycles, is about as useful as a 7 car garage with a single motorcycle in it. The real challenge is NOT how much RAM is used, but how well it is used and how fast data can be moved into and out of the existing capacity. As such, Vista's RAM usage will almost always be high and so is not a fair performance metric for the OS.

Test experience mirrors that of ZDnet blogger Ed Bott's 3rd Day with a similarly equipped $422 Dell desktop. Even on a (relatively) cheap machine, the OS barely seems to make the PC break a sweat. In fact, if the test laptop did this well while rated only 3/5, it's likely that a high powered OEM machine would have performed even better.

Conclusion

If you have XP Pro SP2 and are happy with it, you don't need Vista as long as the former is still supported, especially for P2P. But if you already have Vista or were planning to get it anyway, there's no need to wait for SP1. It's ready to go as is.

My firsthand experience leads me to believe that a lot of the negative "issues" buzzed about the OS on the net are just inaccurate, malicious or plain wrong. File-sharing is easy and indistinguishable from XP (minus the Aero look) once you understand how the OS is set up. DRM (or at least the effects thereof) is practically nonexistent unless you personally decide to buy protected content.

Ironically, if you're a Linux user, you may be slightly more comfortable with Vista's new "security everywhere, access denied by default" set than the average Windows user (this is not to be interpreted as an argument for or against switching).

Because there are quite a few things that I didn't have the space to cover here that are different between Vista and XP, there will be a slight learning curve even for experienced XP users if they really want to become Vista power users. While it's not absolutely necessary, it's a good idea to take advantage of MS' excellent and extensive documentation. I picked up Microsoft Windows Vista Inside Out from my local Barnes and Noble. Thanks to it, I was able to easily solve the Permissions issue I mentioned above. The same information can probably be found easily online via the Microsoft Knowledgebase, but if you prefer quick answers to 15 minutes of Google, you can take the route I did.

Microsoft has rightly been severely criticized over the years for being a monolith that's difficult to interact with directly, and unfortunately that's still the case. Still, if you'd like to keep up with where Vista's going and what the dev team is up to, check out the Windows Vista Team Blog.

In this author's opinion, 2 words sum up the Vista file-sharing experience:

All clear.

Unless you rely exclusively on KCeasy/the OpenFT network or religiously use Firefox for uploads, there is nothing to be concerned about. In any case, the problems with those 2 apps appear to be external to the OS itself - i.e. it's not that Vista's blocking them.

Because I never had to upgrade via an installation, I can't comment on exactly how the new OS works in that case. However from the above there's a distinct likelihood that there's a lot less truth and fairness to the nightmare stories floating around out there than their authors would like you to believe.

That's it. Go right ahead.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1514





EC Threat to BBC over Downloads

The BBC has been accused of forcing people to use Microsoft operating systems and has been threatened with a complaint to the European Commission.

The charge concerns the use of Microsoft technology in the corporation's forthcoming iPlayer.

The web service, set for launch later this year, allows viewers to watch shows up to 30 days after broadcast.

The BBC has said it does intend to allow access to its content from computers with other operating systems.

A statement from the organisation read: "The BBC aims to make its content as widely available as possible and has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services.

"It is not possible to put an exact timeframe on when BBC iPlayer will be available for Mac users. However, we are working to ensure this happens as soon as possible and the BBC Trust will be monitoring progress on a six monthly basis."

Next steps

The accusations against the BBC have been made by advocacy group the Open Source Consortium (OSC).

They argue that the iPlayer will force people to use and purchase Microsoft products because it will initially only work on Microsoft Windows computers. This would give the software company an unfair advantage and would be uncompetitive, they say.

BBC iPLAYER

• iPlayer will allow viewers to catch up on TV programmes for seven days
• Some TV series can be downloaded and stored for 30 days
• Viewers will be able to watch shows streamed live over the internet
• Users will not be able to download programmes from other broadcasters
• Classical recordings and book-readings are excluded from iPlayer

The OSC would like to see the iPlayer use formats that work on all operating systems. "The BBC has a mandate to provide equal access to people irrespective of platform," said Mark Taylor, president of OSC.

"We don't think it is appropriate to lock people into a particular desktop technology."

The OSC has compared the situation to the BBC offering programmes that only work on certain makes of television.

"We believe the BBC has a higher duty of care than a purely commercial organisation," Mr Taylor told the BBC News website.

The group, composed of organisations, businesses and individual proponents of open source software, has already complained to the telecoms and broadcast regulator Ofcom, as well as the DTI and BBC Trust.

Ofcom have previously stated that access to the iPlayer be "only one of many factors influencing the decision to purchase a new computer [or] operating system.

However, OSC disagrees and says the next step is to make a formal complaint to the European Commission (EC).

"We're preparing the full details at the moment and we will be sending a formal letter within the next week," said Mr Taylor.

The EC will then have to decide whether there is a case to answer.

Public interest

The Windows-only media player was approved by the BBC Trust at the end of April this year. The BBC had initially chosen to concentrate on a Windows-based system as it is the world's dominant operating system.

In addition, it allows the corporation to use Microsoft's off-the-shelf Digital Rights Management (DRM) system that means the programmes are deleted after 30 days.

All programmes, once downloaded, are only playable within iPlayer or using Window's Media Player 10 or 11.

The DRM also prevents them being copied to other mediums such as DVD.

When the broadband player was approved, the corporation's governing body asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer could run on different systems - such as Apple Macs - within "a reasonable time frame", initially twenty-four months.

The BBC has previously said it cannot commit to a two-year time frame as many decisions would have to be made by third parties.

A statement from the BBC read: "Our ability to deliver this open approach will be influenced by the availability of alternative DRM systems on the market.

"In order to maximise public value, the BBC must balance extending access to content with the need to maintain the interests of rights holders and the value of secondary rights in BBC programming. Without a time-based DRM framework the BBC would not be able to meet the terms of the trust's PVT (Public Value Test) decision."

However, the OSC argue that DRM-free downloads would be in the "public interest".

"In an ideal world all DRM would be removed," said Mr Taylor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/6236612.stm





Top Broadband ISPs Deny P2P Shaping

Telstra, Optus and iiNet say they do not know what their users download, nor will they slow their speeds to prevent them from doing so
Naomi Hamilton

Australia's leading broadband providers Telstra, Optus and iiNet all deny limiting P2P traffic within their networks in order to increase network speeds and save costs. This comes despite a recent admission from Westnet, along with several other ISPs, that it has been using traffic controls to limit P2P traffic for the past year and will continue to do so.

"Customers buy a speed and download quota from us. We don't examine what they do with it," said iiNet managing director, Michael Malone.

Telstra's BigPond spokesperson, Craig Middleton, said it does not limit P2P traffic and nor did it have plans to in the future.

"We have no policies [on P2P file sharing], but as a content provider (BigPond Movies, Games, Sport and Music) we support the legal purchase of content, not piracy," he said.

Optus was less conclusive.

"Optus uses various tools to manage its network and bandwidth to maximise the performance of its customers' connections," a company spokesperson said. "Optus continues to review and revise its strategies as usage trends change and technical options evolve. Optus does have the capability to prioritise data traffic and may use this capability in the future."

An increasing number of smaller ISPs such as Westnet, Exetel and Netspace have recently admitted to limiting P2P traffic - the most notable being BitTorrent files. The topic has garnered much debate on broadband discussion forum Whirlpool in the past month.

"The key purpose of the traffic prioritisation tools is to ensure latency sensitive applications, such as online gaming, web browsing, e-mail and VOIP, are not negatively impacted by peer to peer applications," said a posting this week on the Westnet blog.

"An important point to note is that Westnet has not enforced a fixed limit on the amount of bandwidth available to peer to peer applications. The amount of bandwidth available to peer to peer traffic is dynamically limited only when the bandwidth required to service the other applications exceeds expectations," it goes on to say.

"Traffic is the only cost that an ISP has to deal with, explained iiNet's Malone. "If customers download lots, then it costs us more money. Customer usage is going up steadily, but the cost of bandwidth is not going down. The combined result is that traffic costs are increasing at a pretty steady rate" he said. "The issue is just cost management."

However, Malone did not believe that throttling P2P traffic has anything to do with perceived legality issues.

"Australian ISPs are protected from liability as common carriers by the safe harbor provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act. I'm not hearing any ISPs saying that the driver is concern about liability. The rules in Australia are very clear. So that's not it."

The possible limitation of P2P traffic comes on top of download quotas set by Australian ISPs, which may irk many ISP customers. "All ISPs in Australia do limit users who download too much (BigPond is the only ISP in Australia that double dips by hitting uploads as well). We all have some sort of 'download quota' for a fixed price per month", said Malone.

"The problem is the average utilisation. ISPs work out their plans by making an assumption about what percentage of the quotas will get used, on average across the base. In the past, if customers had a 10GB quota for instance, then they didn't use all of it, they might have used (say) 30%. Today that number could be close to 90% on average, but there is no additional revenue. The assumptions have just changed, which has increased costs, but not revenue", he said.

Telstra, Optus and iiNet deny that the problems associated with P2P use on their networks have occurred as a result of over-subscribed bandwidth.

"If ISPs had 'over-subscribed' then customers would be getting congestion on everything. That's not happening at all with any of the ISPs who are de-prioritising P2P", said Malone. "More bandwidth costs more money. So ISPs don't buy any more than they need. If you can reduce the amount of bandwidth, then your costs are less and your prices can be more competitive."

Malone added that he considers the issues of P2P traffic are associated with philosophic argument, rather than reality. "The heavy users of P2P are outraged that their (non time critical) data is treated as lower priority than your web browsing or video conference. And realistically, 97% of your customer base don't even notice. Everyone is happy (except the leechers, who were too happy anyway, at the expense of the ISP)", he said.

"This is a storm in a teacup," he said.
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1929779828





How MySpace Is Hurting Your Network

Increasingly popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook account for huge volumes of DNS queries and bandwidth consumption.
Carolyn Duffy Marsan

Increasingly popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are accounting for such huge volumes of DNS queries and bandwidth consumption that carriers, universities and corporations are scrambling to keep pace.

The trend is prompting some network operators to upgrade their DNS systems, while others are blocking the sites altogether. Moreover, the "MySpace Effect" is expected to hit many more nets soon, as these network-intensive interactive features migrate from specialty sites to mainstream e-commerce operations and intranets.

"Social media is not just going to be in pure-play sites like MySpace and Facebook. It's going to become increasingly prevalent across retailers, media and entertainment," says Mike Afergan, CTO of Akamai, a content delivery network company that supports MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. "It drives a lot more requests and a lot more bit-traffic across these networks."

The demanding nature of social-networking sites was highlighted in May when the Department of Defense announced it was blocking worldwide access to 13 Web sites, including MySpace and YouTube.

"The Commander of DoD's Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations has noted a significant increase in use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites," Army General B.B. Bell said in a memo. "This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth availability, while posing a significant operational security challenge."

The Defense Department began blocking access to these sites on May 14 on its unclassified IP network, which is called NIPRNET for Non-secure Internet Protocol Routed Network.

The military isn't the only organization to notice how taxing these sites are on network resources.

"One of the things we're hearing more and more from carriers is that social-networking sites like MySpace and YouTube are contributing to an exponential increase in DNS traffic," says Tom Tovar, president and COO of Nominum, which sells high-end DNS software to carriers and enterprises.

Social-networking sites create large volumes of DNS traffic because they pull content from all over the Internet. Most of these sites use content-delivery networks to extend the geographical reach of their content so users can access it closer to home.

"A single MySpace page can have anywhere from 200 to 300 DNS lookups, while a normal news site with ads might have 10 to 15 DNS lookups," Tovar says. "It's an exponential increase."

Virgin Media, a cable service provider with 10 million subscribers (including 3.5 million broadband users) in the United Kingdom, has found that the amount of DNS traffic generated by social-networking sites has grown dramatically in the past 10 months. YouTube and Facebook traffic has doubled in that time frame but still represents a fraction of Virgin Media's overall DNS traffic. YouTube grew from 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent of the carrier's DNS traffic, while Facebook grew from 0.5 percent to 1 percent.
In contrast, MySpace now represents 10 percent of Virgin Media's DNS traffic, up from 7.2 percent last fall.

The social-networking sites "are generating much more DNS queries per user than other sites," says Keith Oborn, network systems product architect with Virgin Media. "Because of the way MySpace pages are structured, a single page can generate hundreds of DNS queries."

Oborn says the fact that many of these social-networking sites, including MySpace and YouTube, are served by content-delivery networks adds to the DNS traffic.

"They're making use of an awful lot of short TTLs [time to live values]," Oborn says. "That increases the load on the DNS servers. The same thing would happen for an enterprise customer as you see happening on a service provider network."

Oborn says it's rare for one Web site to account for 10 percent of DNS traffic.

"MySpace is the one that everybody knows about," he says. "It's the thing we need to keep a careful eye on in DNS land."

Virgin Media is addressing this phenomenon by upgrading its DNS infrastructure to the latest version of Nominum's software, which uses a technique called Anycast to provide load balancing for improved redundancy. Virgin Media will complete the upgrade this summer.

With the new configuration, Virgin Media says it "could do 2.5 million DNS queries per second, but all we need is 50,000 or 60,000," Obort says. "We have a lot of overcapacity in DNS, which is both cheap and good to have. ... It cost us a few hundred thousand pounds at most."

Virgin Media is anticipating continued growth in its DNS traffic, driven in part by social-networking sites. "Overall our DNS traffic is growing twice as fast as the number of users," Oborn says.

At the University of Kansas, social-networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, are among the 10 most popular destinations for a user population that averages 20,000 per day, including faculty, staff and students.

These sites "generate a lot of DNS requests since each item on the Web pages is spread over dozens and dozens of servers," says Travis Berkley, supervisor of LAN support services at the university.

The school hasn't needed to upgrade its DNS infrastructure yet to handle the extra traffic that social-networking sites generate. It runs BIND Version 9 software for its DNS servers.

"We have two servers that are the primary for campus, and they seem to keep up just fine," Berkley says, adding that "some departments have set up their own workgroup DNS servers."

One advantage for the the university is that it already limits how much Internet bandwidth students can consume from their dorm rooms. So even though the university doesn't limit access to social-networking sites, it can ensure that usage of these sites is limited to a fixed proportion of its Internet bandwidth.

"We did that independent of these sites or even peer-to-peer," Berkley added.

MySpace seems to be the biggest contributor of the social-networking sites in terms of fostering DNS queries. MySpace declined to comment for this article.

"MySpace is really a pain in the butt," says Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture at InfoBlox, which sells DNS appliances to carriers and corporations. "It generates an enormous number of DNS queries because of the way it refers to content. The domain names they are using all seem to be part of their own content-delivery network."

Liu says any organization running a recursive name server will feel the pinch from MySpace's DNS-heavy design. That includes carriers, universities and corporations.

"The recursive name server is ultimately responsible for getting the answer on behalf of the resolver on the laptop or desktop machine," Liu explains. "So it's the one that has to go out and navigate the Internet's name space, find the authoritative name server for MySpace.com and get the data back. Then it has to keep going back to the MySpace.com name servers to resolve the different domain names on a page. ... It might have to hit those MySpace.com name servers 45 times or more for a particular page."

MySpace's own DNS servers are less affected by this situation than those run by carriers or enterprises.

"The amount of horsepower it takes to handle a recursive query is more than it takes to handle an authoritative query," Liu explains. "MySpace has to run name servers that are authoritative for MySpace.com. ... The same piece of hardware can do an order of magnitude more responses when it's authoritative for MySpace.com than it can do acting as a recursive server. That's because it doesn't have to track the ongoing progress of the name resolution process; it just has to answer it."

The impact of sites like MySpace is also minor on the root servers and top-level domains. For example, VeriSign estimates that social-networking sites account for less than 1 percent of the DNS queries at the .com and .net level. VeriSign handles 32 billion DNS queries a day.

Experts agree that carriers and enterprises are the ones that will need to watch their DNS traffic trends in light of the "MySpace Effect."

"The rise of social-networking sites is just one of a number of factors that are causing the increase in DNS queries," Liu says. "Another would be antispam mechanisms and just the increasing penetration of broadband."

And it's not just DNS queries that social-networking sites like MySpace drive, but also large volumes of traffic.

"Social-media sites are driving a fantastic amount of usage," Akamai's Afergan says. "These sites are motivating their users to be interacting with their sites in a very engaging way, which is driving a large experience time."

Afergan says social-networking sites affect network utilization in two ways: the profile-based sites like MySpace generate a lot of requests per user for small files, while the video-based sites like YouTube demand a lot of bandwidth for large video files to be transmitted across the network.

"Most of our networking partners are seeing these sites drive an incredible amount of traffic, both in the number of requests and the bytes involved in those requests," says Afergan.

The heavy network demand of these Web sites is one reason that seven of the top 10 social-networking sites use Akamai's content-delivery service to offload traffic. It's also a reason that many carriers allow Akamai to put edge servers inside their networks to serve up rich content locally.

"Part of what we do for carriers is minimize the traffic on their networks," Afergan says, adding that Akamai's servers also reduce DNS traffic.

The impact of social-networking sites is primarily on carrier and university networks today, but it is likely to affect more corporations as they add social-networking features to their e-commerce and intranet sites.

IBM, for example, runs its own social network called BluePages, which allows employees to provide information about themselves to other employees.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola this month is set to launch a mobile phone-based social-networking community for Sprite drinkers called Sprite Yard.

"Imagine when there are thousands of these sites," says Ken Silva, CSO of VeriSign. "Then they will be a more significant share of overall DNS queries."

Silva worries more about the impact on DNS from the migration of telephony and television services to the Internet than he does about social-networking sites.

"If one big telephony provider migrates to the Internet, they could bring millions of users and generate big chunks of bursty growth," he says.

VeriSign is in the midst of a three-year, US$100 million upgrade to its DNS infrastructure, which supports the .com and .net registries and two root servers. The upgrade will increase the company's DNS capacity tenfold.

"Planning for these things like social-networking sites and large infrastructure moving to IP is what this upgrade is all about," Silva adds.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...g/article.html





FTC Shoots Down Net Neutrality, Says it is Not Needed
Ken Fisher

The Federal Trade Commission today dealt a serious blow to "Net Neutrality" proponents as it issued a report dismissive of claims that the government needs to get involved in preserving the fairness of networks in the United States.

The report, entitled "Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy," was drafted in response to growing concerns about broadband competitiveness and network neutrality. The FTC intends the report to be consulted as a guideline by policy makers and legislators, but it has no binding force. Nevertheless, the report's findings are yet another sign that US government agencies are not particularly interested in the network neutrality problem right now. In fact, the FTC is essentially saying that they can find no evidence of a problem to begin with.

In a statement, Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said, "This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more - not less - competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area."

The "hands-off" approach is the approach preferred by the telecoms, who will also be delighted that Chairman Majoras cleared them of any wrong-doing in their network management so far. Nevertheless, the FTC says that it will continue to monitor the situation, as will the FCC and DOJ. Perhaps more encouraging for proponents of such legislation, the FTC says that increased awareness of the debate will help them with monitoring the need for government regulation.

"As a byproduct of the ongoing debate over network neutrality regulation, the agencies have a heightened awareness of the potential consumer harms from certain conduct by, and business arrangements involving, broadband providers," the report states. "Perhaps equally important, many consumers are now aware of such issues. Consumers—particularly online consumers—have a powerful collective voice. In the area of broadband Internet access, they have revealed a strong preference for the current open access to Internet content and applications."

Indeed, while this appears to be another victory for the opponents of net neutrality, the language of the report suggests that should something more fishy arise, the FTC will be watching. In particular, the report says that the FTC will be watching a set of particular questions closely:

• How much demand will there be from content and applications providers for data prioritization?
• Will effective data prioritization, throughout the many networks comprising the Internet, be feasible?
• Would allowing broadband providers to practice data prioritization necessarily result in the degradation of non-prioritized data delivery?
• When will the capacity limitations of the networks comprising the Internet result in unmanageable or unacceptable levels of congestion?
• If that point is reached, what will be the most efficient response thereto: data prioritization, capacity increases, a combination of these, or some as yet unknown technological innovation?

As you can see, these are all very fundamental questions, and indeed the answer to all of them involves a giant helping of "wait and see."

Further reading:

• FTC Report (PDF)
• FTC Statement

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ot-needed.html





Bush Official Goes Nuclear in Net Neut Row
Gavin Clarke

Supernova 2007 A San Francisco tech show degenerated into a shouting match today, after a pugnacious Bush commerce official squared off with heated supporters of net neutrality.

John Kneuer, the assistant secretary for communications and information, quickly lost his temper and began shouting back at Supernova 2007 attendees after taking flack for saying the free market - not government intervention - would protect internet innovation and access.

Taking a brief time out from shouting his responses at delegates who'd rejected his claims the free market has ensured consumer choice in US broadband internet access, Kneuer remarked in an aside: "I started out very politely."

That came seconds after he told delegates what they really wanted was for the government to mandate terms and conditions of internet service in the US.

"That's absolutely what you are asking for!" he shouted to counter-shots of "no!" and "there is no market place!", referring to the fact a handful of phone and cable companies control the lion share of broadband internet access and service in the US.

Increasingly, it seems, those companies will be allowed by the Government to charge for different levels of internet service - ending net neutrality.

Kneuer, who previously served with a Washington DC law firm representing telecoms companies, had fueled the crowd's anger during a short Supernova presentation.

Identifying delegates as "application providers", he said it was their responsibility to compete with broadband incumbents by offering their own service, founded initially on portions of the 700Mhz spectrum. This spectrum will be sold under auction once terrestrial TV providers complete their move to digital in February 2009.

He ruled out government action on net neutrality, with measures such as safeguarding packet prioritization and quality of service. "The end state of that is innovation in the regulator space outstrips the innovation in the application space," Kneuer said.
"The challenge is for the right application company to play in the access layer... this is a green field opportunity to have a radically different market participant to bring concepts of open access. If there is a pro consumer benefit to open access and if consumers need and want that, the carrier that brings that to consumers will have a powerful need and advantage and bring competitive pressures on other access layer providers.

"I firmly believe market forces are going to provide even more open networks and access much, much, much better than I can do as a regulator," he said.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, was challenged to donate a portion of the spectrum to academic institutions for research purposes. Speaking after Kneuer, a researcher for Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) (http://www.caida.org/home/) expressed frustration that there's currently no reliable way to gather independent data on the internet.

Researchers are instead forced to rely on vendor figures or are refused information on the grounds of privacy or the law, principal investigator KC Claffy said.

"We need numbers on spam, but where do you get numbers on spam from - anti-spam vendors. These aren't the people you want to be getting numbers from when setting policy," she said. "Let's look at what a public network is really used for. We cannot answer that. And the carriers are about to ask us to pay for traffic, 99 per cent of which is spam! If the Commerce Department really wants to help us they will provide the research community with a really open network we can all study."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06...et_neutrality/





U.S. Net Access Not All That Speedy
Leslie Cauley

The USA trails other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet access and may never catch up unless quick action is taken by public-policymakers, a report commissioned by the Communications Workers of America warns.

The median U.S. download speed now is 1.97 megabits per second — a fraction of the 61 megabits per second enjoyed by consumers in Japan, says the report released Monday. Other speedy countries include South Korea (median 45 megabits), France (17 megabits) and Canada (7 megabits).

"We have pathetic speeds compared to the rest of the world," CWA President Larry Cohen says. "People don't pay attention to the fact that the country that started the commercial Internet is falling woefully behind."

Speed matters on the Internet. A 10-megabyte file takes about 15 seconds to download with a 5-megabit connection — fast for the USA. Download time with a 545-kilobit connection, about the entry-level speed in many areas: almost 2½ minutes.

Broadband speed is a function of network capacity: The more capacity you have, the more speed you can deliver. Speed, in turn, allows more and better Internet applications, such as photo sharing and video streaming. Superfast speeds are imperative for critical applications such as telemedicine.

In recent years, communities also have found that good broadband is essential to draw businesses and jobs.

For all those reasons, Cohen says, it is important for policymakers to act now: "In order to maintain our place in today's global economy — and to create the jobs we need — our government must act."

The CWA report is based on input from 80,000 broadband users (less than 5% of respondents used dial-up). In addition to drawing comparisons with other countries, the report ranks U.S. states on median download speeds. (Upload speeds are also rated.)

The Federal Communications Commission, which has broad sway over the emerging broadband market, defines "high speed" as 200 kilobits per second. The benchmark was adopted more than a dozen years ago when still-slower dial-up was the rule. Cohen says 200 kilobits is not even recognized as broadband in most countries today. "There is nothing speedy about it."

The FCC in April opened a proceeding that could result in the redefinition of what can be advertised as "broadband Internet service" in this country. "We're asking the question if the definition should be changed," spokeswoman Tamara Lipper says.

The comment period ended May 31, and a report from the FCC is likely in the fall.Internet on-ramp speeds by state
Median broadband Internet access speed for each state in testing by the Communications Workers of America. Test your speed at http://www.speedmatters.org.

State Median download speed (mbps) Speed rank

USA 1.973

Alaska 0.545 51

Alabama 1.777 25

Arkansas 1.326 42

Arizona 1.635 29

California 1.520 36

Colorado 1.354 41

Connecticut 2.244 15

District of Columbia 1.372 39

Delaware 2.657 9

Florida 2.368 13

Georgia 2.714 7

Hawaii 1.965 23

Iowa 1.262 47

Idaho 1.323 43

Illinois 2.184 17

Indiana 1.955 24

Kansas 4.167 2

Kentucky 1.607 32

Louisiana 2.751 6

Massachusetts 3.004 5

Maryland 2.589 10

Maine 1.534 35

Michigan 2.042 19

Minnesota 1.771 26

Missouri 1.432 38

Mississippi 1.620 30

Montana 1.312 45

North Carolina 2.225 16

North Dakota 1.308 46

Nebraska 1.994 22

New Hampshire 2.700 8

New Jersey 3.680 3

New Mexico 1.716 27

Nevada 1.617 31

New York 3.436 4

Ohio 1.359 40

Oklahoma 1.689 28

Oregon 2.390 12

Pennsylvania 1.567 33

Rhode Island 5.011 1

South Carolina 2.338 14

South Dakota 0.825 50

Tennessee 2.035 20

Texas 1.509 37

Utah 1.323 43

Virginia 2.394 11

Vermont 2.005 21

Washington 2.176 18

Wisconsin 1.551 34

West Virginia 1.117 49

Wyoming 1.246 48

Speed tests results for Sept. 2006 through May 2007; most participants had DSL or cable modem connections Source: CWA Communications

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...t-speeds_N.htm





Mapping the Internet

Routing traffic through peer-to-peer networks could stave off Internet congestion, according to a new study.
Duncan Graham-Rowe

The increased use of peer-to-peer communications could improve the overall capacity of the Internet and make it run much more smoothly. That's the conclusion of a novel study mapping the structure of the Internet.

It's the first study to look at how the Internet is organized in terms of function, as well as how it's connected, says Shai Carmi, a physicist who took part in the research at the Bar Ilan University, in Israel. "This gives the most complete picture of the Internet available today," he says.

While efforts have been made previously to plot the topological structure in terms of the connections between Internet nodes--computer networks or Internet Service Providers that act as relay stations for carrying information about the Net--none have taken into account the role that these connections play. "Some nodes may not be as important as other nodes," says Carmi.

The researchers' results depict the Internet as consisting of a dense core of 80 or so critical nodes surrounded by an outer shell of 5,000 sparsely connected, isolated nodes that are very much dependent upon this core. Separating the core from the outer shell are approximately 15,000 peer-connected and self-sufficient nodes.

Take away the core, and an interesting thing happens: about 30 percent of the nodes from the outer shell become completely cut off. But the remaining 70 percent can continue communicating because the middle region has enough peer-connected nodes to bypass the core.

With the core connected, any node is able to communicate with any other node within about four links. "If the core is removed, it takes about seven or eight links," says Carmi. It's a slower trip, but the data still gets there. Carmi believes we should take advantage of these alternate pathways to try to stop the core of the Internet from clogging up. "It can improve the efficiency of the Internet because the core would be less congested," he says.

To build their map of the Internet, published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers enlisted the assistance of 5,000 online volunteers who downloaded a program to help identify the connections between the 20,000 known nodes.

The distributed program sends information requests, or pings, to other parts of the Internet and records the route of the information on each journey.

Previous efforts had relied upon only a few dozen large computers to carry out this task, says Carmi. But by using this distributed approach, which meant collecting up to six million measurements a day over a period of two years from thousands of observation points around the world, it was possible to reveal more connections, says Scott Kirkpatrick, a professor of computer science and engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who also took part in the study. In fact, the project has already identified about 20 percent more of the interconnections between Internet nodes than ever before.

The researchers then used a novel hierarchical approach to map the connectivity data, taking into account how the nodes are connected. Each node was assessed based on how well connected it was to other nodes that are better connected.

Most previous research efforts only considered the number of connections as an indicator of the importance of a node without factoring in where those nodes lead, says Carmi. But taking this new approach, known as a k-shell model, allows for dead-end connections to be discounted, since they play a lesser role in the connectivity of the Internet.

Seth Bullock, a computer scientist at University of Southampton who studies network complexity and natural systems, finds it encouraging to see people taking a more sophisticated approach to modeling network structures, which are often quite crude.

But, Bullock warns, although there are potential benefits to improving the efficiency of the Internet using peer-to-peer networks, letting peer-to-peer networks grow in an unconstrained way could just as easily result in the creation of more congestion. For example, there would be nothing to prevent them from channeling data through the same nodes, thereby creating congestion elsewhere. Even so, there is currently a lot of interest in trying to figure out how to improve the Internet in the future; revealing its structure should help this process, says Kirkpatrick.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18944/





Bell Canada Agrees to Buyout Offer
Ian Austen

Bell Canada’s directors endorsed a privatization offer worth 34.8 billion Canadian dollars ($32.9 billion) from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Providence Equity Partners early today, the company said in a statement. If approved by shareholders, the deal would be Canada’s largest takeover to date, worth about 51.7 billion Canadian dollars after assumption of debt and other factors, and among the largest leveraged buyouts in history.

The announcement from Canada’s largest communications company came with unusual swiftness. Bell only received bids from three groups on Tuesday morning and the board began reviewing them yesterday. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts offered a similar, all-cash privatization. Cerberus Capital Management, along with Canadian partners, proposed a more complex structure that would have kept some Bell equity trading.

Teachers’ offer, which was enhanced on Friday, will pay 42.75 Canadian dollars a share. Within the last year, the company’s stock has traded for as little as 25.32 Canadian dollars.

With a 6.3 percent stake in Bell, Teachers’ is already Bell’s largest shareholder. It has made little secret of its dissatisfaction with Bell’s lagging share price and the company’s management. That situation ultimately led to a review by a special committee of Bell’s board and the company’s auction.

One player, however, was absent from those talks. Telus, Bell’s smaller but more successful competitor from Western Canada, announced its intention to bid. But just after Tuesday’s deadline for offers, it withdrew citing unspecific complaints about the auction process.

The unusually secretive process — Teachers’ and Providence had not even confirmed that they had made a bid — was unpopular with many investors who saw the value of their shares swing based on rumors and incomplete news reports.

Bell is one of Canada’s most widely held companies with retail investors making up 60 percent of its shareholder base.

While they will receive a healthy premium for their stock, those shareholders will lose Bell’s dividend payments, which are the chief attraction of the company for many small investors. Long-term shareholders may also face a substantial capital gains tax.
There has been speculation that Telus will return with a hostile bid. Its ability to pay with both cash and shares gives it the chance, in theory, to outbid Teachers’ and Providence, as does its ability to exact substantial cost savings from Bell. But if Teachers’ has negotiated a hefty breakup fee, that might make a Telus offer impractical.

Canadian law prohibits foreign control of telecommunications companies, making it impossible for foreign communications firms to enter the bidding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/bu...=1&oref=slogin





Internet Radio "Day of Silence" Hushes Thousands of Stations
Jacqui Cheng

Today is June 26, and that means that it's the Internet radio Day of Silence. The Day of Silence was organized by Radio Internet Newsletter publisher Kurt Hanson in order to protest against retroactive royalty rate increases that could end up putting many Internet radio stations out of business. The rates are due to go into effect in less than a month, and with no significant help from Congress as of yet, Internet broadcasters are resorting to silence to demonstrate what will happen if the proposed increases go into effect.

In March, the Copyright Royalty Board said that it planned to change the method by which Internet broadcasters would pay for royalties from a per-song to a per-listener rate. This, combined with new base fees of $500 for each separate station that a broadcaster managed, would require many Internet radio stations to pay crippling fees to the Copyright Royalty Board that would essentially put them out of business.

National Public Radio attempted to get a rehearing with the CRB, arguing that the decision was an "abuse of discretion," but their appeal was denied less than a month later. Still, the CRB offered a small reprieve from the threat of retroactive fees in May by extending the deadline for retroactive rates from May 15 to July 15. A couple of weeks later, SoundExchange tweaked its requirements so that smaller broadcasters won't have to pay increased royalties until 2010—a decision that was unpopular with SaveNetRadio, which argued that SoundExchange's offer would still punish larger webcasters while ensuring that smaller ones would never see any growth.

Hmm, where does Yahoo want me to go?

In response, thousands of Internet radio stations today are broadcasting static, silence, a message explaining the Day of Silence, or are simply not accessible at all. Yahoo! Music agreed to shut down its roughly 200 Internet broadcast stations in honor of the Day of Silence and only offers links to savenetradio.org. Real Rhapsody displays a message on its site when anyone tries to access its channels, urging readers to visit SaveNetRadio as well. Pandora went so far as to take down its entire web site to offer a message about the Day of Silence, and Live365.com shut down some 10,000 of its Internet radio channels today with a message on its web site asking listeners to contact their senators and representatives about the Internet Radio Equality Act.

Smaller-name broadcasters are participating in the Day of Silence too. LoudCity shut down 500 of its own stations today, and one of my personal favorites, .977 Music, is broadcasting silence as well. There are no 80s hits for me today. Noticeably absent from today's protest is popular Internet broadcaster Last.FM, however, despite the fact that the CBS-owned broadcaster will be required to pay the same fees as the others.

"This 'Day of Silence' is an encore of a successful media event that small webcasters organized on May 1, 2002 in response to a similarly royalty rate ruling from a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) five years ago," wrote Hanson on his web site. "That event garnered national attention and was subsequently followed by a rate cut by the Librarian of Congress and the passage of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act for the period 1998-2005."

He and other broadcasters hope that the outcome of today's Day of Silence will be just as favorable. The Internet Radio Equality Act was introduced to both the Senate and the House earlier this year, which would overturn the CRB's royalty hikes and instead introduce a more palatable rate of 7.5 percent of total revenues. However, neither entity has yet to vote on the legislation, leaving Internet broadcasters anxious as the July 15 deadline looms.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-stations.html





Bridge Studies Webcasters' "Day Of Silence"

Tuesday's Internet Radio "National Day Of Silence" saw thousands of Webcasters silence their streams in protest of the proposed Copyright Royalty Board fee hike. Now Bridge Ratings is releasing a two-part study on the effectiveness of the protest.

Bridge asked 3000 people ages 13+ if they listen to Internet radio, finding that 21 percent did, a consistent stat with previous research. Out of that 21 percent, 55 percent said they didn't tune in to Internet radio on Tuesday, while 45 percent said they did. When asked if their favorite station had gone silent on Tuesday, 62 percent said theirs had. Out of that group, 72 percent said they simply found a station that was streaming and listened to that instead, while 23 percent didn't listen to Internet radio.

Bridge will release the second half of the study tomorrow, seeing what the Internet radio audience's behavior was today, the day after the protest.

In related news, WXPN/Philadelphia says that over 11,000 listeners signed an online petition yesterday protesting the CRB rates. "We had hoped to garner a minimum of 5,000 signatures," said Roger LaMay, WXPN GM. "The overwhelming response of our loyal listeners sends a loud message to legislators and hopefully they will heed the call to save streaming radio."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=430490

Online Listeners Returned After "Day Of Silence"

Yesterday, Bridge Ratings released the first part of its study on the impact of Webcasters' "Day of Silence" protest on Tuesday. They found that out of Internet radio listeners surveyed, 55 percent said they didn't tune in to Internet radio on Tuesday, while 45 percent said they did. When asked if their favorite station had gone silent on Tuesday, 62 percent said theirs had. Out of that group, 72 percent said they simply found a station that was streaming and listened to that instead, while 23 percent didn't listen to Internet radio.

When online stations returned to normal on Wednesday, Bridge surveyed their panel again, with 89 percent tuning in once again to their favorite stations. Therefore, Bridge concluded that the "Day of Silence" did have a significant impact on Internet listenership, even if 45 percent of those surveyed did find an alternate station to listen to.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=431294




Integrity of Hardware-Based Computer Security Is Challenged

Withdrawn Black Hat paper hints at flaws in TPM security architecture
Tim Greene

A presentation scheduled for Black Hat USA 2007 that promised to undermine chip-based desktop and laptop security has been suddenly withdrawn without explanation.

The briefing, “TPMkit: Breaking the Legend of [Trusted Computing Group’s Trusted Platform Module] and Vista (BitLocker),” promised to show how computer security based on trusted platform module (TPM) hardware could be circumvented

“We will be demonstrating how to break TPM,” Nitin and Vipin Kumar said in their abstract for their talk that was posted on the Black Hat Web site but was removed overnight Monday.

“The demonstration would include a few live demonstrations. For example, one demonstration will show how to login and access data on a Windows Vista System (which has TPM + BitLocker enabled),” the abstract said.

BitLocker is disk-encryption technology in Microsoft’s Vista operating system that relies on TPM to store keys.

In an e-mail, Vipin Kumar says, “We have pulled back our presentation from … Black Hat. So, we won't be presenting anything related to TPM/BitLocker in Black Hat. … We would not like to say anything about the TPM/BitLocker for the time being.” He didn’t respond to inquiries about why the brothers withdrew.

A spokesman for the conference was unable to offer more information. “At their request, they are no longer presenting. That is all the info I have,” said the spokesman, Nico Sell, in an e-mail.

The conference brings together technically savvy security experts from business, government and the hacking community to discuss the latest security technologies. Frequently, Black Hat briefings become controversial because they point out previously unknown weaknesses in products or technologies.

The Kumars’ promised exploit would be a chink in the armor of hardware-based system integrity that TPM is designed to ensure.

TPM is also a key component of Trusted Computing Group’s architecture for network access control (NAC). TPM would create a unique value or hash of all the steps of a computer’s boot sequence that would represent the particular state of that machine, according to Steve Hanna, co-chair of TCG’s NAC effort.

This initial hash of a known, trusted machine would be stored in the TPM and compared to the hash that is created when that machine last booted up. As part of TCG’s NAC plan, if the hash values don’t match, that indicates the machine has been altered and might no longer be secure, says Hanna.

That check, known as remote attestation, would be part of decision making by a NAC policy server. In their description of their talk, the Kumars said they have developed a tool called TPMkit that bypasses remote attestation andwould let a computer that is not in a trusted state gain access anyway.

At the Black Hat conference in Amsterdam earlier this year the Kumars demonstrated a bootkit that can insinuate itself into the Vista kernel without setting off Vista security alarms. At the time, the pair said they thought TPM was the only way to ensure that unsigned code is blocked from executing during the Vista boot sequence.

The Kumars live in India and run a security consulting firm called NV Labs.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...black-hat.html





New York Legislators Keep e-Voting Software in Public Hands
Marc L. Songini

With this year's New York Senate and Assembly session now ended, local voting activists are chalking up a victory for the public at the expense of Microsoft Corp. and the e-voting industry.

The activists had feared that Microsoft and a handful of e-voting device vendors would quietly weaken the state's strict e-voting software escrow law before the current legislative session ended on Friday. Approved two years ago by the legislature, the law requires voting system vendors to place all source code and other related software in escrow for the New York State Board of Elections so it can be examined as needed. The law also dictates that a voting system vendor waives all intellectual property and trade right secret rights should the software need to be reviewed in court.

Microsoft, whose Windows software is used in some of the vendors' devices, sought to amend the law to avoid the strict escrow provisions. That move riled Empire State voting activists such as Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, who publicized Microsoft's efforts in his blog the week before the session ended. By focusing on Microsoft's plans, concerned citizens created a groundswell of support in the legislature to ensure the law remained untouched, Lipari said.

"We won for a change," he said on Friday. He estimated that about 3,000 constituent calls had been placed with the legislature about the issue. "There was a huge outpouring of support and the legislature noticed this. It was a forceful way to remind them to re-affirm their commitment to these strong laws."

New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, a Democrat from the 125th Assembly District, echoed that sentiment. "The voting machine vendors have known for two years what our laws said," Lifton said Thursday. "Now they're saying that those parts of their systems using Microsoft software have to be proprietary? It's just wrong. We're holding firm on our current state law which calls for open source code."

But Lipari had his worries before the matter was resolved. Earlier this month, in his blog, he called Microsoft the "800-pound gorilla of software development" as he called attention to its plans. Microsoft, he said, had been steadily lobbying legislators and circulating an unsigned document that would redefine the law.

"These changes would gut the source code escrow and review provisions provided in our current law, which were fought for and won by election integrity activists around the state and adopted by the legislature in June 2005," he warned at the time. He noted that the amendment would have redefined the escrow law to apply only to "election-dedicated voting system technology." Any piece of code that hadn't been specifically designed for use in a voting system would be exempt from the requirement.

"Microsoft's proposed change to state law would effectively render our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless -- and with it the protections the public fought so hard for," Lipari said.

Microsoft wasn't alone, Lipari said in an interview. Voting machine maker Sequoia Voting Systems and others also tried to weaken the state's escrow laws, he said. He was especially worried that in the last week of the legislative session many bills were being worked on, and it would have been easy to slip in language to change the escrow law. "This was a very dangerous week for all sorts of damage to be done," he said. "The fact that we caught this early, and brought it out into the light of day made it much harder to get away with."

Microsoft's Albany-based lobbyist deferred comment on the issue. For its part, Microsoft declined to confirm it had drafted the document in Lipari's possession. "We don't specifically discuss our lobbying efforts, but we have been in constructive dialogue with the New York State Board of Elections," a Microsoft spokeswoman said last week.

"Microsoft appreciates and understands the situation New York State is in with regard to compliance with the provision in its election law requiring voting machine software source code to be held in escrow," she said in an e-mail. "At present, Microsoft does not make its source code available for escrow under the election law because of our concern that this code could be disclosed to third parties without adequate protections for our intellectual property rights."

A spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, which uses some of Microsoft's development technology in its devices, defended her company's lobbying. "We also vigorously protect our intellectual property and trade secrets as well as the overall security of our voting system," she said. Sequoia currently complies with all current state and federal review and escrow laws, she noted.

Over the past year, she said Sequoia has worked with the Elections Board to satisfy its requirements without disclosing any third-party proprietary source code such as Microsoft's. After the legislature's session closed, she expressed frustration, claiming the issue remains unresolved. "We would ideally like to work with the board to reach a solution that works for all parties involved," she said Friday.

A spokesman for the New York State Elections Board downplayed the lobbying efforts. "The voting system vendors have been discussing this with us for some time," he said last week. "We continue to have a dialogue on the escrow subject."

That includes the board taking in and reviewing comments from voting rights advocates, as well as other interested parties, he said.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





EFF Press Release

Dangerous Ruling Forces Search Engine to Log Users

Public Interest Groups Urge Court to Block Radical Expansion of Discovery Rules

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) urged a California court Friday to overturn a dangerous ruling that would require an Internet search engine to create and store logs of its users' activities as part of electronic discovery obligations in a civil lawsuit.

The ruling came in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by motion picture studios against TorrentSpy, a popular search engine that indexes materials made publicly available via the Bit Torrent file sharing protocol. TorrentSpy has never logged its visitors' Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Notwithstanding this explicit privacy policy, a federal magistrate judge has now ordered TorrentSpy to activate logging and turn the logged data over to the studios.

"This unprecedented ruling has implications well beyond the file sharing context," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Giving litigants the power to rewrite their opponent's privacy policies poses a risk to all Internet users."

The magistrate judge incorrectly reasoned that, because the IP addresses exist in the Random Access Memory (RAM) of TorrentSpy's webservers, they are "electronically stored information" that must be collected and turned over to the studios under the rules of federal discovery.

This decision could reach every function carried out by a digital device. Every keystroke at a computer keyboard, for example, is temporarily held in RAM, even if it is immediately deleted and never saved. Similarly, digital telephone systems make recordings of every conversation, moment by moment, in RAM.

"In the analog world, a court would never think to force a company to record telephone calls, transcribe employee conversations, or log other ephemeral information," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "There is no reason why the rules should be different simply because a company uses digital technologies."

The decision also threatens to radically increase the burdens that companies face in federal lawsuits, potentially forcing them to create and store an avalanche of data, including computer server logs, digital telephone conversations, and drafts of documents never saved or sent.

The magistrate judge in the case has stayed her order while TorrentSpy appeals the ruling. The case is Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell, No. 06-01093 FMC, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California before Judge Florence-Marie Cooper.

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/torre...CDT_amicus.pdf
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_06.php#005334





NZ Banks Demand a Peek at Customer PCs in Fraud Cases
Stephen Bell

Banks in New Zealand are seeking access to customer PCs used for online banking transactions to verify whether they have enough security protection.

Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date.

The code, issued by the Bankers' Association last week after lengthy drafting and consultation, now has a new section dealing with Internet banking.

Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have "used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed and up-to-date, [or] failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems, such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and antispam software on [the] computer, are up-to-date."

The code also adds: "We reserve the right to request access to your computer or device in order to verify that you have taken all reasonable steps to protect your computer or device and safeguard your secure information in accordance with this code.

"If you refuse our request for access then we may refuse your claim."

InternetNZ was still reviewing the new code, last week, executive director Keith Davidson told Computerworld.

"In general terms, InternetNZ has been encouraging all Internet users to be more security conscious, especially ... to use up-to-date virus checkers, spyware deletion tools and a robust firewall," Davidson says.

"The new code now places a clear obligation on users to comply with some pragmatic security requirements, which does seem appropriate. If fraud continues unabated, then undoubtedly banks would need to increase fees to cover the costs of fraud," he says, so increasing security awareness and compliance in advance is probably the better tactic for both banks and their customers.

"Bank customers who are unhappy with the new rules may choose to dispense with electronic banking altogether, and return to dealing with tellers at the bank. But it seems that electronic banking and in particular Internet banking has become the convenient choice for consumers," Davidson says.

The code also warns users that they could be liable for any loss if they have chosen an obvious PIN or password, such as a consecutive sequence of numbers, a birth date or a pet's name; disclosed a PIN or password to a third party or kept a "written or electronic record" of it. Similar warnings are already included in the section that deals with ATM and PINs for Eftpos that was issued in 2002.

There is nothing in this clause allowing an electronic record to be held in a password-protected cache -- a facility provided by some commercial security applications.

For their part, the banks undertake to provide information on their websites about appropriate tools and services for ensuring security, and to tell customers where they can find this information when they sign up for Internet banking.

"One issue we have raised with the Bankers Association in the past is that banks should not initiate email contact with their customers," Davidson says.

The code allows banks to use unsolicited email among other media to advise of changes in their arrangements with the customer, but Davidson says they should only utilize their web-based mail systems.

"It is hardly surprising that some people fall victim to phishing email scams when banks use email as a normal method of communication, and therefore email can be perceived as a valid communication by end users," he says.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...rc =news_list





Power Supply Still a Vexation for the NSA

Summertime could pose hotter trouble for agency
Siobhan Gorman

A year after the National Security Agency nearly maxed out its electrical capacity, some offices are experiencing significant power disruptions as the agency confronts the increasingly urgent problem of an infrastructure stretched to its limits, intelligence officials said.

The spy agency has delayed the deployment of some new data-processing equipment because it is short on power and space. Outages have shut down some offices in NSA headquarters for up to half a day. And some officials fear that major problems could occur this summer as temperatures climb.

The NSA has been working to develop and implement short- and long-term plans to ensure a steady supply of electricity to the nation's largest intelligence agency; they range from creating rapid-response teams to revamping power substations, internal documents show.

The current shortage has been projected for nearly a decade. Some of the rooms that house the NSA's enormous computer systems were not designed to handle newer computers that generate considerably more heat and draw far more electricity than their predecessors.

It is the result of "mismanagement at very high levels," said Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst. "They let it get out of hand."

NSA spokeswoman Andrea Martino declined to comment on the reason for the electrical problems. "We cannot discuss the specifics that may or may not affect the agency's operations for national security purposes," she said, adding that Congress has been kept informed.

The agency has already been forced to delay installing some high-tech equipment to avoid overloading the system, according to a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

New equipment for data processing, as well as some purchased for one of the agency's signature initiatives, the mammoth modernization effort dubbed Turbulence, are among those that have been held up, the senior official said. The lengths of the delays are classified.

The issue has become a top priority for the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander. In recent classified testimony to Congress, he warned that the agency would have to shut down significant amounts of equipment and resort to rolling blackouts if drastic action were not taken, the official said. Alexander also told Congress that the NSA was delaying the deployment and installation of equipment, the official said.

His testimony was part of an effort to persuade lawmakers to add more than $800 million - the exact sum is classified - to the NSA's 2007 budget, the senior official added.

Congress recently approved the NSA request in a classified spending bill, said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence subcommittee that oversees the agency.

However, lawmakers also reprimanded the NSA, intelligence officials said, for using money for spy operations to pay for electrical expenses without congressional approval.

"It got to a point where it became a serious problem," Ruppersberger said, referring to the NSA's power shortage. "We're attempting to deal with it now."

For brief periods last summer, the NSA hit the ceiling of the power capacity at its Fort Meade campus, forcing the agency to turn off or idle technical equipment, the senior intelligence official said. The agency also had to shift the timing of power use for some computers responsible for processing data, to even out electrical loads, and continues to do so.

Some intelligence officials said they are worried that as this summer heats up, anticipated spikes in power demand could have dire consequences.

"I don't think it's going well," said one government source with direct knowledge of the power problem, who was speaking on condition of anonymity. "I am concerned with the possibility of a large-scale blackout and the damage it would cause across the board. ... We're experiencing problems in all of our buildings."

As the NSA has attempted to reduce electricity consumption, it has turned down air-conditioning and heating systems in parts of some buildings.

"In the morning, it's like a sweatshop," the government source said.

Last winter, according to one intelligence analyst, some employees wore gloves in the office to try to keep warm, adding that it made for challenging typing.

As part of its short-term effort to redirect power use and upgrade systems, the NSA has had to resort to partial, rolling brownouts at its computer "farms" and scheduled power outages, the senior intelligence official said, adding that these have become more frequent in recent months.

Among the most significant electrical issues was a series of outages in several buildings at NSA headquarters April 30 and May 1, which caused computers to unexpectedly restart and triggered blackouts that lasted between 45 minutes and four hours in some offices, according to the government source.

Ruppersberger said he was told the outages were scheduled. Martino would not comment on whether they had been planned but said in a statement that "routine power outages are carefully coordinated to ensure that backups are in place for mission assurance during repairs and upgrades to infrastructure."

The NSA's impending electrical crisis has been predicted since at least 1998. It had become an urgent priority by last summer.

As Alexander explained in a classified March 2007 memo, the three power substations that serve the main Fort Meade campus cannot support the agency's demands, according to the senior intelligence official. Each substation serves certain buildings, and power cannot easily be transferred to other substations if demand spikes, the senior official said.

The NSA's buildings are also exceeding the limits of their 1970s- and 1980s-era wiring, the senior official said.

Routine power demands have been disrupting work in some offices for up to half a day, the government source said. He noted, for example, that new office equipment has been overloading existing circuits in one office up to three times a week, taking anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours to get the power back on. This problem, however, is not yet widespread, the senior official said.

The problems cannot be fixed quickly because substantial re-engineering is required, the senior intelligence official explained.

The NSA's top brass is also concerned about a major space crunch. The agency's post-9/11 data deluge has pushed its computerized "data centers" to near capacity, the senior official said.

In an unclassified April 2007 memo, Alexander told NSA employees that he had created a "triage team" to address power problems as they arose. He said the NSA was taking steps to re-engineer some facilities to "better take advantage of existing power."

The agency is also employing conservation measures, according to the senior intelligence official, referring to the March classified memo. One example: incorporating "thrift savings" provisions into contracts, to create incentives for the use of power-saving equipment on new projects.

Other, longer-term measures include upgrading electrical infrastructure in buildings on the Fort Meade campus and the three substations, moving additional operations elsewhere to reduce demand and building new facilities. To handle the data overload, there are additional plans to move some of the agency's data-storage equipment to new government facilities in Tennessee and Texas. But those sites are not expected to be ready until about 2010.

"These measures are effectively addressing many of the short-term data-center, distribution, and campus-wide challenges," Alexander wrote in his April memo.

Ruppersberger said he believes Alexander's plan puts the NSA "on track" to fix the electrical problems. But he added that the agency still needs to show it can implement the plan.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV said these issues will not be resolved quickly.

"The NSA is committing significant resources to fixing the problem," the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement. "We believe they have a plan in place to address the situation, but it will take time and a considerable amount of money."

Some current and former officials question whether the short-term plans will buy enough time to resolve a mostly long-term problem.

According to an agency document, the NSA's power consumption is nearly three times higher than the average for Defense Department buildings. The main culprit: power demand from the NSA's 24-hour watch centers and supercomputers, as well as a large number of computers in each building.

Some current and former officials said they are frustrated that NSA leaders took so long to address the problem.

The problem was first brought to the attention of then-Director Kenneth Minihan in 1998 as he prepared to upgrade the agency's technology infrastructure. But he chose not to pay for electricity upgrades along with the new technology infrastructure, the senior intelligence official said. Minihan did not respond to requests for comment.

The issue has arisen periodically since then, including the planning for the NSA's modernization programs, but each time leaders chose to set it aside, the official said. As recently as 2004 and 2005, the question of an emerging power deficit came up as the NSA outlined an expansion of its field sites under then-Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden, but no formal plans were made to address electricity problems, the official said.

A spokesman said that Hayden, who now heads the CIA, rejected that accusation and said Hayden took steps to deal with the problem when he was there.

"During his service at NSA, there was major construction at regional (signals-intelligence) operations centers. One goal of that initiative was to ease the burden on the Ft. Meade compound," spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a written statement. "It's simply wrong to suggest that the director knew of a problem with NSA's electrical infrastructure and ignored it."

The regional centers did help, the senior official acknowledged, but they did not fix the outdated electrical system at headquarters, and some of the efforts were scaled back as Hayden left.

Early in 2006, an internal NSA team produced an extensive study of the power and space shortages that highlighted the urgency of the problem and predicted that the NSA would soon hit a "ceiling" in its electrical capacity, the official said.

Only when it hit that ceiling last summer, the official added, did the agency truly begin mobilizing to address the problem.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nat...home-headlines





Senate Issues Subpoenas in Eavesdropping Investigation
James Risen

The Senate Judiciary Committee today issued subpoenas to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department after what the panel’s chairman called "stonewalling of the worst kind" of efforts to investigate the National Security Agency’s policy of wiretapping without warrants.

The move put Senate Democrats squarely on a course they had until now avoided, setting the stage for a showdown with the Bush administration over one of the most contentious issues arising from the White House’s campaign against terrorism.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said the subpoenas seek documents that could shed light on the legal basis used by the administration to justify the wiretapping, as well as on disputes within the government over its legality.

In addition, the panel is seeking materials on issues related to the wiretapping , including those concerning the relationship between the Bush administration and several unidentified telecommunications companies that aided the N.S.A. eavesdropping program.

The panel’s action was the most aggressive move yet by lawmakers to investigate the N.S.A. program since the Democrats gained control of Congress this year. Mr. Leahy said at a news conference today that the committee issued the subpoenas because the administration has followed a “consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection” in dealing with Congressional efforts to scrutinize the program. “It’s unacceptable. It is stonewalling of the worst kind,” he added.

The White House, the vice president’s office and the Justice Department declined today to say how they would respond to the subpoenas. “We’re aware of the committee’s action and will respond appropriately,” Tony Fratto, White House deputy press secretary, said.

“It’s unfortunate that Congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation,” he added.

A spokeswoman for Vice President Cheney also said his office would respond later, while a Justice Department spokesman said, “The department will continue to work closely with the Congress as they exercise their oversight functions, and we will review this matter in the spirit of that longstanding relationship.”

The Senate panel’s action comes after dramatic testimony last month by James Comey, former deputy attorney general, who described a March 2004 confrontation at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft between Justice Department officials and White House aides over the legality of the program.

Before Mr. Comey’s testimony, the White House had largely been able to fend off aggressive oversight of the N.S.A. wiretapping program since it was first disclosed in December 2005. The Republican-controlled Congress held a series of hearings last year, and even considered several legislative proposals to curb the scope of the eavesdropping. But Mr. Cheney repeatedly pressured Republican Congressional leaders to pull back without forcing the administration’s hand.

When the Democrats won the 2006 midterm elections, many political analysts predicted that the N.S.A. program — which a federal judge declared unconstitutional — would be one of the first Bush administration operations to undergo new scrutiny. But in January, administration officials announced that it was placing the program under the legal framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a move it had previously refused to consider.

The Democrats have largely focused on objections to the war in Iraq in their first months in power, and had appeared reluctant to take aggressive steps to challenge policies on harsh interrogation practices, secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons and wiretapping without warrants, for fear of being labeled soft on terrorism.

For instance, at a confirmation hearing June 19 for John A. Rizzo as general counsel of the C.I.A., no member of the Senate Intelligence Committee directly challenged the agency’s practices of secret detention or harsh interrogation.

Mr. Rizzo successfully dodged the tougher questions by saying he preferred to answer them in closed session. The Senate Intelligence Committee has conducted closed-door oversight of the N.S.A. wiretapping program, but it has not been as aggressive as the Judiciary Committee in publicly challenging the administration over it.

But Mr. Comey’s testimony has given Democrats an opening to argue that they are focusing on the legal issues involved in the program, rather than on the merits of monitoring the phone calls of suspected terrorists.

“The Comey testimony moved this front and center,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is a member of the Judiciary Committee. “Alarm bells went off. His testimony made it clear that there had been an effort to circumvent the law.”

The Senate panel has been asking the administration for documents related to the program since Mr. Comey’s testimony, but the White House had not responded to a letter from Mr. Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the committee. As a result, the panel voted 13 to 3 last Thursday to authorize Mr. Leahy to issue the subpoenas, with three Republicans voting in favor of issuing them. Separately, the House Judiciary Committee has also threatened to issue subpoenas for the same documents.

The wiretapping is just one of several legal issues on which Congress and the administration are squaring off. For example, the White House is under pressure to respond to subpoenas issued two weeks ago by the House and Senate judiciary committees for witnesses and documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors. Thursday is the deadline for the White House to turn over documents linked to Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel and Sara M. Taylor, the former political director.

If the White House fails to produce the material, the House and Senate could begin a process leading to contempt resolutions to force compliance. Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney is in a separate standoff with Congress and the National Archive over his office’s refusal to follow an executive order concerning the handling of classified documents by his office.

Congressional Democrats were angered when Mr. Cheney declared that his office did not have to abide by the order that all executive branch offices provide data to the National Archives about the amount of material they have classified.

Mr. Cheney’s office said that he was not a member of the executive branch, because he was president of the Senate, and so was not bound by the order. House Democrats responded by threatening to cut off funding to his office.

David Johnston and Scott Shane contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/wa...nd-nsa.html?hp





Chertoff Cites License Option to Passports
AP

The nation's homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, visited the Peace Bridge on Monday and said he will explore secure driver's licenses as a means of border identification.

Chertoff, who met New York officials concerned about the effect of a new passport requirement on border crossing starting next summer, said he would consider possibly delaying it if New York and other states commit to quickly developing a secure license.

"This is about finding a way forward that's reasonable but also secure," Chertoff said.

Earlier this month, Chertoff faulted those who want to derail the rule requiring U.S. citizens to carry passports when returning from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, saying national security is at stake.

However, New York officials are worried about border delays and the effect on travelers and business.

The Peace Bridge, which runs between Buffalo and Fort Erie, Ontario, is the third busiest commercial crossing and second busiest passenger vehicle crossing along the northern border, handling $20 billion in trade annually between the United States and Canada.

Last September, Chertoff told Congress he would consider permitting travelers to use alternative forms of ID, such as driver's licenses, if they are improved to prevent tampering or other forgeries.

And last week, the Bush administration said it will delay the passport rule for six more months.

Beginning in January, land and sea travelers returning from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda will be allowed to present a birth certificate and driver's license in lieu of a passport.

That is expected to last at least until the summer of 2008, when officials hope to require passports or similar documentation at all land and sea crossings.

In March, Chertoff had said high-security driver's licenses aimed at letting U.S. citizens return from Canada without a passport could be adopted elsewhere if Washington state's experiment works.

The pilot project, signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire three months ago, calls for Washington to begin issuing new "enhanced" driver's licenses in January. They will look much like conventional driver's licenses, but will be loaded with proof of citizenship and other information that can be easily scanned at the border.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE=





May I see your papers please

National ID Plan May Have Killed Immigration Bill
Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Senate definitively rejected President George Bush's immigration bill on Thursday, just hours after senators expressed deep misgivings with portions that would have expanded the use of a national ID card.

Because the procedural vote was 46 to 53, with 60 votes needed to advance the immigration legislation, the proposal is likely to remain dead for the rest of the year.

Privacy advocates were quick to claim that a vote against Real ID cards the previous evening doomed the bill.

Wednesday's vote showed that senators were willing to delete the portion of the labyrinthine immigration bill that would require employers to demand the Real ID cards from new hires. Because some of the bill's backers had insisted that the ID requirement remain in place--as a way to identify illegal immigrants--they were no longer as willing to support the overall bill.

"The proponents of national ID in the Senate weren't getting what they wanted, so they backed away," said Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute who opposes Real ID. "It was a landmine that blew up in their faces."

In a press release, the two Montana Democrats, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, said they were happy that a pro-privacy approach killed the bill. "If Jon and I just brought down the entire bill, that's good for Montana and the country," said Baucus, who cosponsored the amendment deleting the employer verification rule.

But supporters of the overall legislation, which would have created a new category of "Z" visas for currently illegal immigrants, expressed dismay at its apparent demise.

Microsoft said it was disappointed by Thursday's procedural vote against advancing the bill, which will "likely result in the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform that is desperately needed to address the shortage of highly skilled talent."

"The American people understand the status quo is unacceptable when it comes to our immigration laws," Bush said.

Opponents of the bill, including Republican senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, said derailing it was a victory. "When the U.S. Senate brought the amnesty bill back up this week, they declared war on the American people," DeMint said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, another longtime foe of Real ID, said the Real ID requirements were a "poison pill that derailed this bill, and any future legislation should be written knowing the American people won't swallow it." Another section of the immigration bill would have given $1.5 billion to state officials to pay for Real ID compliance.

Even if the immigration bill is goes nowhere, however, the Real ID Act is still in effect. It says that, starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service.

States must conduct checks of their citizens' identification papers and driver's licenses may have to be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements. (States that agree in advance to abide by the rules have until 2013 to comply.)
http://news.com.com/National+ID+plan...3-6193916.html





28-Mile Virtual Fence Is Rising Along the Border
Randal C. Archibold



If the effort to catch people illegally crossing the border here in the southern Arizona desert is a cat-and-mouse struggle, the Homeland Security Department says it has a smarter cat.

It comes in the form of nine nearly 100-foot-tall towers with radar, high-definition cameras and other equipment rising from the mesquite and lava fields around this tiny town.

Known as Project 28, for the 28 miles of border that the towers will scan, the so-called virtual fence forms the backbone of the Secure Border Initiative, known as SBInet, a multibillion-dollar mix of technology, manpower and fencing intended to control illegal border crossings.

If successful, hundreds of such towers could dot the 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders.

But glitches with the radar and cameras have forced the project to miss its June 13 starting date, just as Congress focuses anew on border security in the Senate measure to overhaul immigration law.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department insist that Boeing, which has a $67 million contract to develop the project and others, will soon put it back on track, though they are not providing a new completion date.

Boeing referred requests for comment to the department.

“We are making good progress,” the executive director of the border program, Gregory Giddens, said.

Democrats in Congress are questioning why the problems were not disclosed at a hearing on the project on June 7. It was only afterward, in communication to Congressional staff members, that the delays came to light.

“The department’s failure to be forthcoming and the repeatedly slipping project deadlines not only impede Congress’ ability to provide appropriate oversight of the SBInet program, but also undermine the department’s credibility with respect to this initiative,” Representatives Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Loretta Sanchez of California, chairwoman of a border subcommittee, both Democrats, wrote in a letter on June 19 to the department.

In a report in February, the Government Accountability Office warned that Congress needed to keep a tight rein on the program, because, it said, “SBInet runs the risk of not delivering promised capabilities and benefits on time and within budget.”

Officials estimate total cost of the initiative through 2011 at $7.6 billion. The accountability office has suggested that figure is too low.

Boeing won the contract, which includes $20 million for Project 28, in September and has undertaken it with a sense of urgency, Mr. Giddens said, adding that he would prefer a delay over starting the project with malfunctioning equipment.

Rather than develop new technology, Boeing took existing cameras, sensors, radar and other equipment and bundled them into a system that although not technologically novel is unlike anything the Border Patrol now uses.

The cameras, set off by radar, are to beam high-quality images of targets miles away to field commanders and agents, making it possible to determine almost instantly whether they are watching a family outing or a group of illegal immigrants.

The information is to flow over a high-speed wireless network into laptops in dozens of Border Patrol vehicles that, in theory, would respond quicker and more efficiently to breaches than they do now.

“We are living the dividing line between the old Border Patrol and the new patrol of the future,” said David Aguilar, chief of the Border Patrol.

“It will not only detect, but identify what the incursion is,” Mr. Aguilar added, a step up from the existing ground sensors, fence cameras and footprint tracking that can lead to “false positives.”

With much of the 2,000-mile-long Mexican border a wilderness of plains, plunging ravines and soaring craggy hills, officials consider virtual fencing a pragmatic improvement to far-flung agents and physical fences — 88 miles now have primary fencing — that illegal immigrants knock down, bore through and slip over and under.

The towers are ringed with a six-foot-tall chain-link fence, and the Border Patrol can warn people away through a loudspeaker. Private guards are at the towers now.

On Thursday morning at a tower north of here, a reporter and a photographer walked right up to the tower, observing and photographing it for several minutes with no guard in sight.

Mr. Aguilar said he was not concerned about such access, speculating that no threat was discerned or the cameras were not turned on then.

Residents near the towers have raised concerns, questioning why most towers are miles from the border and whether they will allow unscrupulous agents to peer into their bedrooms.

“We don’t live in clusters,” said Roger Beal, who runs a grocery store in the isolated town of Arivaca, the site of a tower and about 10 miles from the border. “The homes here are not 10 feet apart. People value their privacy here, and we are just not used to being observed. Do it at the border. This isn’t it.”

Mr. Aguilar, the Border Patrol chief, said: “We are members of the community. We recognize their sensitivity. But we feel confident our officers are going to follow policy and common sense. Can I guarantee you nothing is going to happen? No, we are all human.”

Although the towers are in a region with heavy traffic in smuggling, Boeing chose to place them close to existing roads and away from the most rugged terrain to help captures.

Mr. Aguilar said the towers did not need to be right on the border, suggesting that traffickers would find it difficult to move their routes undetected in the rough terrain even if they figured out the locations of the towers. The expected locations have been published in a public environmental assessment.

The virtual fence is one piece of a flurry of border enforcement. The Border Patrol said it was on pace to hire thousands of agents, with the goal of a total of 18,000 by the end of 2008, up from just under 12,000 in 2006, when President Bush announced the push.

In addition, officials expect to have 370 miles of physical fencing by the end of next year. Drug seizures are increasing, and arrests for illegal immigration have dropped since last summer, when the National Guard arrived to supplement agents.

Though scholars say an array of factors, including economic and social trends in Latin America and the vagaries of the drug trade could explain the trends, Mr. Aguilar said they vindicated the stricter enforcement.

After the system is fully functioning, he said, “the net will be very, very tight.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/...ca/26fence.php





FBI to Restrict Student Freedoms
Canada IFP

US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside the United States, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI.

Federal agents are visiting some of the New England's top universities, including MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, to warn university heads about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.

FBI is offering to brief faculty, students and staff on what it calls "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents.

Unexplained affluence, failing to report overseas travel, showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope, keeping unusual work hours, unreported contacts with foreign nationals, unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials, attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know, and unexplained absences are all considered potential espionage indicators.

Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to monitor their colleagues for signs of suspicious behaviour and report any concerns to the FBI or the military.

"What we're most concerned about are those things that are not classified being developed by MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], Worcester Polytech [Worcester Polytechnic Institute] and other universities," Warren Bamford, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, told the Boston Herald. "It's to make sure these institutions receive training...[on] what spies look for. There are hundreds of projects going on that could be useful to a foreign power."

"My understanding is that what the FBI is proposing is not illegal, but it does raise questions about the chilling effect in regard to academia,"Chris Ott, Communications Manager of the ACLU of Massachusetts told WSWS. "What will it mean about feeling free to pursue information? People on the campuses will be afraid to ask questions or take on the investigation of certain areas, say, for example, nuclear energy. "

University administrators have expressed their appreciation of FBI efforts.

"It was a very nice offer," Robert A. Weygand, vice president for administration and a former Rhode Island congressman told the Boston Herald. "We are taking it under consideration."

Last year the FBI initiated the College and University Security Effort (CAUSE), in order to establish an "alliance" between the Federal agency and academic institutions.

According to the FBI, through CAUSE, Special Agents in charge meet with the heads of local colleges to discuss national security issues and to share information and ideas.
http://pressesc.com/01182668252_espionage_indicators





New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left



Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

The poll offers a snapshot of a group whose energy and idealism have always been as alluring to politicians as its scattered focus and shifting interests have been frustrating. It found that substantially more Americans ages 17 to 29 than four years ago are paying attention to the presidential race. But they appeared to be really familiar with only two of the candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both Democrats.

They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

Among this age group, Mr. Bush’s job approval rating after the attacks of Sept. 11 was more than 80 percent. Over the course of the next three years, it drifted downward leading into the presidential election of 2004, when 4 of 10 young Americans said they approved how Mr. Bush was handling his job.

At a time when Democrats have made gains after years in which Republicans have dominated Washington, young Americans appear to lean slightly more to the left than the general population: 28 percent described themselves as liberal, compared with 20 percent of the nation at large. And 27 percent called themselves conservative, compared with 32 percent of the general public.

Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large. They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The findings on gay marriage were reminiscent of an exit poll on Election Day 2004: 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters said gay couples should be permitted to legally marry, according to the exit poll.

In the current poll, 62 percent said they would support a universal, government-sponsored national health care insurance program; 47 percent of the general public holds that view. And 30 percent said that “Americans should always welcome new immigrants,” while 24 percent of the general public holds that view.

Their views on abortion mirror those of the public at large: 24 percent said it should not be permitted at all, while 38 percent said it should be made available but with greater restrictions. Thirty-seven percent said it should be generally available.

In one potential sign of shifting attitudes, respondents, by overwhelming margins, said they believed that the nation was prepared to elect as president a woman, a black person or someone who admitted to having used marijuana. But they said that they did not believe Americans would elect someone who had used cocaine or someone who was a Mormon.

Mr. Obama has suggested that he used cocaine as a young man. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a candidate for the Republican nomination, is a Mormon.

By a 52 to 36 majority, young Americans say that Democrats, rather than Republicans, come closer to sharing their moral values, while 58 percent said they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and 38 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans.

Asked if they were enthusiastic about any of the candidates running for president, 18 percent named Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and 17 percent named Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Those two were followed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, who was named by just 4 percent of the respondents.

The survey also found that 42 percent of young Americans thought it was likely or very likely that the nation would reinstate a military draft over the next few years — and two-thirds said they thought the Republican Party was more likely to do so. And 87 percent of respondents said they opposed a draft.

But when it came to the war, young Americans were more optimistic about the outcome than was the population as whole. Fifty-one percent said the United States was very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, compared with 45 percent among all adults. Contrary to conventional wisdom, younger Americans have historically been more likely than the population as a whole to be supportive of what a president is doing in a time of war, as they were in Korea and Vietnam, polls have shown.

The nationwide telephone poll — a joint effort by The New York Times, CBS News and MTV — was conducted from June 15 to June 23. It involved 659 adults ages 17 to 29. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for all respondents.
The Times/CBS News/MTV Poll suggests that younger Americans are conflicted in their view of the country. Many have a bleak view about their own future and the direction the country is heading: 70 percent said the country was on the wrong track, while 48 percent said they feared that their generation would be worse off than their parents’. But the survey also found that this generation of Americans is not cynical: 77 percent said they thought the votes of their generation would have a great bearing on who became the next president.

By any measure, the poll suggests that young Americans are anything but apathetic about the presidential election. Fifty-eight percent said they were paying attention to the campaign. By contrast, at this point in the 2004 presidential campaign, 35 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds said they were paying a lot or some attention to the campaign.

Over the last half century, the youth vote has more often than not gone with the Democratic candidate for president, though with some notable exceptions. In 1984, Ronald Reagan won his second term as president by capturing 59 percent of the youth vote, according to exit polls, and the first President George Bush won in 1988 with 52 percent of that vote. This age group, however, has supported Democratic presidential candidates in every election since.

The percentage of young voters who identified themselves as Republican grew steadily during the Reagan administration, and reached a high of 37 percent in 1989. That number has declined ever since, and is now at 25 percent.

“I think the Democratic Party is now realizing how big an impact my generation has, and they’re trying to cater to that in some way,” Ashley Robinson, 21, a Democrat from Minnesota, said in an interview after she participated in the poll. “But the traditional Republican Party is still trying to get older votes, which doesn’t make sense because there are so many more voters my age. It would be sensible to cater to us.”

That a significant number of respondents said they were enthusiastic about just two of the candidates — Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton — to a certain extent reflects that both candidates have been the subject of a huge amount of national attention and have presented the country with historic candidacies. Mr. Obama would be the first black president and Mrs. Clinton the first woman. Other candidates could begin drawing attention from this group as the campaign takes a higher platform.

More important, though, at least for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama is the impression this group has of them. In the poll, 43 percent of respondents said they held an unfavorable view of Mrs. Clinton, a number that reflects the tide of resistance she faces nationwide. By contrast, only 19 percent said they had an unfavorable view of Mr. Obama.

Marjorie Connelly, Marina Stefan and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/wa...hp&oref=slogin





Scholars Urge Bush to Ban Use of Torture

High school seniors present president with letter during annual program

President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.

The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.

"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

The students had been invited to the East Room to hear the president speak about his effort to win congressional reauthorization of his education law known as No Child Left Behind.

The handwritten letter said the students "believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions."

"We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants," the letter said.

Top honor
The designation as a Presidential Scholar is one of the nation's highest honors for graduating high school students. Each year the program selects one male and one female student from each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Americans living abroad, 15 at-large students, and up to 20 students in the arts on the basis of outstanding scholarship, service, leadership and creativity.

"I know all of you worked hard to reach this day," Bush told the students in his education speech. "Your families are proud of your effort, and we welcome your family members here. Your teachers are proud of your effort, and we welcome your teachers. And our entire nation is proud to call you Presidential Scholar."

The scholars travel to Washington each June for seminars, lectures and workshops with government officials, elected representatives and others.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19424797/



















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