[JackSpratts]

Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster
Matt Richtel and John Markoff

Add personal computers to the list of throwaways in the disposable society.

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.

He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.

"I was spending time every week trying to keep the machine free of viruses and worms," said Mr. Tucker, a vice president of Salesforce.com, a Web services firm based here. "I was losing the battle. It was cheaper and faster to go to the store and buy a low-end PC."

In the face of a constant stream of pop-up ads, malfunctioning programs and performance slowed to a crawl or a crash - the hallmarks of spyware and adware - throwing out a computer "is a rational response," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a Washington-based research group that studies the Internet's social impact.

While no figures are available on the ranks of those jettisoning their PC's, the scourge of unwanted software is widely felt. This month the Pew group published a study in which 43 percent of the 2,001 adult Internet users polled said they had been confronted with spyware or adware, collectively known as malware. Forty-eight percent said they had stopped visiting Web sites that might deposit unwanted programs on their PC's.

Moreover, 68 percent said they had had computer trouble in the last year consistent with the problems caused by spyware or adware, though 60 percent of those were unsure of the problems' origins. Twenty percent of those who tried to fix the problem said it had not been solved; among those who spent money seeking a remedy, the average outlay was $129.

By comparison, it is possible to buy a new computer, including a monitor, for less than $500, though more powerful systems can cost considerably more.

Meantime, the threats from infection continue to rise, and "the arms race seems to have tilted toward the bad guys," Mr. Rainie said.

The number of viruses has more than doubled in just the last six months, while the number of adware and spyware programs has roughly quadrupled during the same period, said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec, which makes the Norton computer security programs. One reason for the explosion, Symantec executives say, is the growth of high-speed Internet access, which allows people to stay connected to the Internet constantly but creates more opportunity for malicious programs to find their way onto machines.

Mr. Weafer said an area of particular concern was infections adept at burying themselves in a computer system so that the cleansing programs had trouble finding them. The removal of these programs must often be done manually, requiring greater technical expertise.

There are methods of protecting computers from infection through antivirus and spyware-removal software and digital barriers called firewalls, but those tools are far from being completely effective.

"Things are spinning out of control," said David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale.

Mr. Gelernter said his own family's computer became so badly infected that he bought a new one this week. He said his two teenage sons were balking at spending the hours needed to scrub the old one clean of viruses, worms and adware.

Mr. Gelernter blames the software industry for the morass, noting that people are increasingly unwilling to take out their "software tweezers" to clean their machines.

Microsoft executives say they decided to enter the anti-spyware business earlier this year after realizing the extent of the problem.

"We saw that a significant percentage of crashes and other problems were being caused by this," said Paul Bryan, an executive in the company's security business unit. Windows XP Service Pack 2, an upgrade to the latest Windows operating system that has been distributed to more than 200 million computers, includes an automated malware removal program that has been used 800 million times this year, he said.

At least another 10 million copies of a test version of the company's spyware removal program have been downloaded. Yet Microsoft executives acknowledged that they were not providing protection for people who have earlier versions of the company's operating system. And that provides little comfort for those who must navigate the perils of cyberspace.

Terrelea Wong's old computer now sits beside her sofa in the living room, unused, except as a makeshift table that holds a box of tissues.

Ms. Wong, a physician at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in South San Francisco, started getting a relentless stream of pop-up ads a year ago on her four-year-old Hewlett-Packard desktop computer. Often her entire screen would turn blue and urge her to "hit any key to continue." Sometimes the computer would freeze altogether.

After putting up with the problem for months, Ms. Wong said she decided last November that rather than fix her PC, she would buy a new one. Succumbing to the seduction of all the new bells and whistles, she spent $3,000 on a new Apple laptop.

She is instituting new rules to keep her home computer virus-free.

"I've modified my behavior. I'm not letting my friends borrow my computer," she said, after speculating that the indiscriminate use of the Internet by her and her friends had led to the infection problems.

Peter Randol, 45, a stockbroker for Charles Schwab in Denver, is at his wits' end, too. His family's four-year-old Dell computer has not been the same since last year when they got a digital subscriber line for high-speed Internet access. Mr. Randol said the PC's performance has slowed, a result he attributes to dozens of malicious programs he has discovered on the computer.

He has eliminated some of the programs, but error messages continue to pop up on his screen, and the computer can be agonizingly slow.

"I may have no choice but to buy a new one," he said, noting that he hopes that by starting over, he can get a computer that will be more impervious to infection.

Buying a new computer is not always an antidote. Bora Ozturk, 33, who manages bank branches in San Francisco, bought a $900 Hewlett-Packard computer last year only to have it nearly paralyzed three months ago with infections that he believes he got from visiting Turkish news sites.

He debated throwing the PC out, but it had pictures of his newborn son and all of his music files. He decided to fix it himself, spending 15 hours learning what to do, then saving all his pictures and music to a disk and then wiping the hard drive clean - the equivalent of starting over.

For his part, Mr. Tucker, the Salesforce.com executive, said the first piece of software he installed on the new machine two weeks ago was antivirus software. He does not want a replay of his frustrations the last month, when the attacks on his old machine became relentless.

"It came down to the simple human fact that maintaining the old computer didn't pay," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/technology/17spy.html





Adware Tries to Clean Up Its Image
Eric Hellweg

Don't look now, but the adware industry is trying to shed its pariah status -- the lowly image it has among not only consumers and privacy advocates, but also some investors.

The first move came as WhenU.com, a leading adware company, announced last week that it closed a $15 million round of
venture capital funding, led by Trident Capital. That announcement came a week after the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft was in talks to purchase Claria, another leading adware provider, which, in an effort to gain traction in more traditional markets, said it would stop distributing its software on the Kazaa file-sharing network. Meanwhile, adware firm 180solutions announced it was alerting consumers that have its software installed and offering them specific instructions on how to remove it.

Of course, such initiatives didn't come as a result of the adware industry finding digital religion. Instead, these developments signal that the industry is making an effort to repair its seriously damaged reputation -- and thereby grow its share of the multi- billion dollar online ad industry.

Adware's growth has risen almost in tandem with peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, since, until recently, many adware software companies paid to have their software coupled with these programs. Adware companies would send pop-up ads to users whether they were using the P2P network or not, and would track their online behavior, targeting them with ads relevant to the sites they visited.

But consumers have become more vocal in their opposition to dubious adware and spyware practices. A survey released on July 6 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that nine out of ten Internet users said they've changed their online habits to avoid spyware. Furthermore, Download.com, a leading site for downloading programs, tightened its software policy in April -- no adware or spyware is now allowed on any program distributed through its site

The U.S. government also has gotten involved, with a Senate anti-spyware bill, the SPY BLOCK (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge) Act (S. 2145), currently in committee, and a correlating anti-spyware bill, H.R. 2929, making its way through the House.

It's not simply consumer angst and political pressure, however, that have forced adware companies to make an about-face. Much of this decision is being driven by the bottom line. Adware companies have seen a negative business impact as a result of image issues. Claria, for instance, had to withdraw its planned IPO last year when the market gave the company a chilly reception, in large part due to adware backlash.

What's more, many consumer privacy advocates are unconvinced by the industry's efforts and remain determined to fight adware.

"I don't think the right way to view recent events is as any substantial resurgence for adware companies," says Ben Edelman, a noted spyware critic and consumer advocate. "These companies are PR masters, but the fact is, users hate their software."

For years, privacy advocates and consumers' rights organizations have raised several concerns with the adware industry. Consumers are often unaware that they've downloaded adware
onto their systems, since it's packaged among other programs. Also, it's often difficult to remove adware. And there's the often murky or non-existent disclosure of what information is tracked and to whom it is sent.

"I remain skeptical of this industry," says Chris Hoofnagle, director and senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Most of the changes they have made focus on PR
rather than substantive privacy reform."

Bill Day, WhenU.com's CEO, says he was well aware of consumer and privacy concerns when he joined the company in October 2004. Like most adware companies, it attaches its adware to free downloadable games and other consumer-focused software. Since then, he says he's worked hard to address these issues and to change the way his company operates.

"Installation is now very clear," Day says. "Branding that the ads are from us is now very clear. It's very easy to uninstall now." (Historically, one of the major consumer complaints against adware companies is that they have not included "uninstall" files with the program, and hidden the program on a user's hard drive, making it very difficult to find and erase the program.)

Each application now has an 800 number on it, which consumers can call if they have complaints about the ad or want to get rid of the software.

"We're only getting 10-20 calls per day on that line," Day says.

Trevor Hughes, executive director of The Network Advertising Initiative, a trade association for traditional, banner-based Internet advertisers, lauds the adware industry's recent initiatives, but also says much more is needed before the industry sheds its negative image.

"These companies need to distinguish themselves more clearly from spyware firms," Hughes says. "The entire industry needs to put down its competitive nature and define some best practices and standards...They need to put some teeth into those standards and then take them out to the world."

Day agrees that strict best practices are needed across the industry if adware companies are to continue their recent momentum. Even with the continued pressure from privacy advocates and consumer groups, though, he's bullish about WhenU and the industry's prospects. "The company has gone through a lot of scrutiny recently, and we've survived," he says.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...205hellweg.asp





A DVD Standoff in Hollywood
Ken Belson

The Hollywood studio executives who gathered here late last month at an annual home entertainment conference in Century City were all chuckles and backslaps. In front of several hundred industry managers, analysts and reporters, they talked breezily about hit movies, DVD sales and prospects for the holiday season.

Then, with a few minutes left in the session, the moderator asked the question everyone was waiting for: Can the studios break the deadlock between the rival camps developing the next generation of digital video discs, players and recorders?

The question was not academic. Hollywood has not been able to unite around one of the two new formats, called Blu-ray and HD DVD. As a result, tens of billions of dollars in potential sales hang in the balance.

Before anyone could answer, Thomas Lesinski, president of home entertainment at Paramount Pictures, jumped in and said it would not benefit the studios to discuss the issue in public while behind-the-scenes negotiations were going on.

Stunned by the curt response, the audience offered nervous laughter and the other executives fell silent.

Mr. Lesinski's testy reaction was a sign of how touchy the debate over the competing formats has become. To everyone's regret, the studios are split over which group to support. Sony's studio and Disney, with 39 percent of the DVD market, back the Blu-ray group that includes Sony, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and others. Warner, Universal and Paramount, with 43 percent of the market, support the HD-DVD standard developed by Toshiba and NEC.

Fox, MGM, Lions Gate and others, which control the remaining 18 percent of the market, have yet to declare their allegiance definitively.

Yet the result is the same: Hollywood has been unable to throw its weight behind one format, and because the rival discs are largely incompatible, the studios have been unable to persuade the manufacturers to reach a compromise or to get one side to withdraw.

Compounding matters, many Hollywood executives have staked their reputations - both corporate and personal - on one technology or the other, making it politically difficult for them to switch sides.

Yet the studios, retailers and makers of electronics, computers and video games are still gearing up for a format war over the new technology, which promises high- definition video, enhanced audio and a slew of interactive features.

Starting this Christmas, consumers will start seeing high-definition DVD players and movies in stores. But because there is no foreseeable end to the format fight, shoppers are expected to shy away from buying the machines and discs. After all, the equipment could quickly become obsolete, just as the Sony Betamax home machines faded in the 1980's after losing out to VHS.

With no great pleasure, Mr. Lesinski said in an interview that if both sides release competing discs and machines, the companies involved will probably generate half the revenue they would with only one format. Other industry analysts are even more pessimistic.

"Both sides have so much vested in their technology that no one wants to blink, given the potential upside," said Mr. Lesinski, whose studio, Paramount, is a division of Viacom. Paramount, along with Warner Home Video and Universal Studios Home Video, will release 89 movies this year in the HD-DVD format.

The three studios have backed the HD-DVD format because the technology is essentially an upgrade of existing DVD technology, so it requires less investment and time to produce. Toshiba says it can make the discs now for a few pennies more than the current generation of discs.

Yet, as Blu-ray advocates love to point out, their discs hold more data, and thus can offer better-quality video. The technology also gives the studios and game makers room to develop new, interactive features. These extra goodies, they say, will make Blu-ray more attractive to consumers, who will have to pay about $1,000 for the first machines.

"The way to do it is to have discs chock full of benefits," said Bob Chapek, the president of the home entertainment division of Buena Vista, a unit of Disney. "Some of these things chew up a lot of capacity."

But to get all that, the Blu-ray group companies are creating entirely new production techniques that require a lot more money and time. Though Sony, Panasonic and others now sell Blu-ray recorders and rewriteable discs in Japan, they are still testing the read-only discs that the Hollywood studios need.

Indeed, 20 miles south of Hollywood, in Torrance, Calif., Panasonic, a division of Matsushita, has built a pilot production line to show that Blu-ray read-only discs can be made cheaply and quickly. To do this, Panasonic is developing a new way of coating discs with their all-important protective layer.

The test line in a clean room at the factory now spits out a disc every 4.5 seconds, and Shinya Abe, who runs Panasonic's replication task force for producing read-only Blu-ray discs, said he expected that rate to fall to one every 3.5 seconds.

"We want to show Hollywood we can make read-only discs," he said.

Yet Mr. Abe and other Panasonic executives sidestepped questions about how many of the discs were usable for commercial purposes, saying it was up to the mass- market manufacturers to determine.

The issues of cost and time to market would matter less if sales of the current generation of DVD equipment were booming. But there are plenty of signs that they are not.

The studios know that the percentage of American homes with a DVD player is nearing 80 percent, or the saturation point, and that the latest converts typically buy fewer discs.

Indeed, while sales of discs are expected to rise 13 percent this year in the United States, the salad days of 20 to 30 percent annual growth are a memory. Most movie libraries are now out on DVD, and stores like Wal-Mart are slashing disc prices, which means less profit for studios.

To jump-start growth, the studios are turning to their television archives for new material. But those sales are expected to slow, too.

This is particularly bad news for studios, which rely more and more heavily on DVD sales as the video rental business shrinks and income from theaters flattens. For example, Americans spent $9.1 billion on feature movies on DVD last year, 47.9 percent of the money studios made from those films.

That's up from 28.7 percent in 1996, when videotapes still dominated.

The power of DVD sales was also apparent earlier this month, when shares of Pixar Animation Studios Inc. tumbled after the company said it expected fewer DVD sales of its film "The Incredibles."

Hollywood studio chiefs who are responsible for making five-year plans see the writing on the wall for the current generation of DVD's, and know they need something new to sell consumers. Most Hollywood executives who attended the conference here remained optimistic that ultimately they could reach a consensus and use their collective weight to persuade hardware makers to devise a hybrid solution.

"We're at the worst part of the storm now," said Mike Dunn, president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. But "this will get worked out in the back room."

Correction: July 16, 2005, Saturday:

A picture caption in Business Day on Monday with an article about the rival formats emerging for high-definition DVD’s — HD-DVD and Bluray — misspelled the names of two directors of Panasonic’s Blu-ray laboratory in Torrance, Calif. They are Keisuke Suetsugi, not Suetsujgi, and Yoshihiro Mori, not Yoshiichiro.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/te...dvd.html?8hpib






A Pass on Privacy?
Christopher Caldwell

Anyone making long drives this summer will notice a new dimension to contemporary inequality: a widening gap between the users of automatic toll-paying devices and those who pay cash. The E-ZPass system, as it is called on the East Coast, seemed like idle gadgetry when it was introduced a decade ago. Drivers who acquired the passes had to nose their way across traffic to reach specially equipped tollbooths -- and slow to a crawl while the machinery worked its magic. But now the sensors are sophisticated enough for you to whiz past them. As more lanes are dedicated to E-ZPass, lines lengthen for the saps paying cash.

E-ZPass is one of many innovations that give you the option of trading a bit of privacy for a load of convenience. You can get deep discounts by ordering your books from Amazon.com or joining a supermarket ''club.'' In return, you surrender information about your purchasing habits. Some people see a bait-and-switch here. Over time, the data you are required to hand over become more and more personal, and such handovers cease to be optional. Neato data gathering is making society less free and less human. The people who issue such warnings -- whether you call them paranoids or libertarians -- are among those you see stuck in the rippling heat, 73 cars away from the ''Cash Only'' sign at the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Paying your tolls electronically raises two worries. The first is that personal information will be used illegitimately. The computer system to which you have surrendered your payment information also records data about your movements and habits. It can be hacked into. Earlier this year, as many as half a million customers had their identities ''compromised'' by cyber-break-ins at Seisint and ChoicePoint, two companies that gather consumer records.

The second worry is that personal information will be used legitimately -- that the government will expand its reach into your life without passing any law, and without even meaning you any harm. Recent debate in Britain over a proposed ''national road-charging scheme'' -- which was a national preoccupation until the London Tube bombings -- shows how this might work. Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, wants to ease traffic and substitute user fees for excise and gas taxes. Excellent goals, all. But Darling plans to achieve them by tracking, to the last meter, every journey made by every car in the country. It seems that this can readily be done by marrying global positioning systems (with which many new cars are fitted) with tollbooth scanners. The potential applications multiply: what if state policemen in the United States rigged E-ZPass machines to calculate average highway speeds between toll plazas -- something easily doable with today's machinery -- and to automatically ticket cars that exceed 65 m.p.h.?

There is a case to be made that only a citizenry of spoiled brats would fret over such things. Come on, this argument runs, anyone who owns an anti-car-theft device -- LoJack in the United States or NavTrak in Britain -- is using radio tracking to make a privileged claim on government services. If your LoJack-equipped Porsche is stolen, you can call the local police department and say, in effect, ''Go fetch.'' Stolen cars with such devices are almost always recovered. Car theft has fallen precipitously, which benefits us all.

For some time, the United States has required commercial trucks to register their mileage and routes. Last year, Germany initiated a new, more efficient G.P.S.-based truck-tracking system that seems intrusion-proof. Authorities discard the records after three months, which means they can't use them to arrest criminal truckers or dun deadbeat ones. Can such forbearance last?

In Germany, where history makes lax surveillance seem the lesser evil, yes. But not in the United States. Since the Warren Court, voters have, again and again, risen up against any libertarian trammeling of government in its fight against crime. People waver on whether to trade privacy for convenience, but they're pretty untroubled about trading privacy for security. On occasion, E-ZPass records have been used to track down criminal suspects.

When such crime-fighting aids are available, people clamor for them. In October, the F.D.A. approved, for medical use, the VeriChip, a device the size of a grain of rice. It can be implanted under a patient's skin and activated to permit emergency personnel to gain access to personal medical records. It's extremely useful when patients are unconscious, but there is a suspicion that the real application lies elsewhere. Similar devices can easily be fitted with other types of transmitters. ''Active'' implants are already being put to other uses: to trace livestock and lost pets and, in Latin America, to discourage kidnappings. Those who can put two and two together will find this VeriUnsettling. Monitoring can quickly change from convenience to need. Would you support a chip-based security system for nuclear power plant employees? If you were in the Army Special Forces, wouldn't you want a transmitter embedded in you?

In more and more walks of life, if what you want to do is not trackable, you can't do it. Most consumers have had the experience of trying to buy something negligible -- a pack of gum, say -- and being told by a cashier that it's impossible because ''the computer is down.'' It now seems quaint that after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Congress argued over whether ''taggants'' should be required in explosives to make them traceable. Today everything is traceable. Altered plant DNA is embedded in textiles to identify them as American. Man-made particles with spectroscopic ''signatures'' can be used, for example, as ''security tags'' for jewels. The information collected about consumers is the most sophisticated and confusing taggant of all. It is a marvelous tool, a real timesaver and a kind of electronic bracelet that turns the entire world into a place where we are living under house arrest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17WWLN.html




Google's Growth Prompts Privacy Concerns

Google is at once a powerful search engine and a growing e-mail provider. It runs a blogging service, makes software to speed Web traffic and has ambitions to become a digital library. And it is developing a payments service.

Although many Internet users eagerly await each new technology from Google Inc., its rapid expansion is also prompting concerns that the company may know too much: what you read, where you surf and travel, whom you write.

"This is a lot of personal information in a single basket," said Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Google is becoming one of the largest privacy risks on the Internet."

Not that Hoofnagle is suggesting that Google has strayed from its mantra of making money "without doing evil."

Rather, some privacy advocates worry about the potential: The data's very existence - conveniently all under a single digital roof - makes Google a prime target for abuse by overzealous law enforcers and criminals alike.

Through hacking or with the assistance of rogue employees, they say, criminals could steal data for blackmail or identity theft. Recent high- profile privacy breaches elsewhere underscore the vulnerability of even those systems where thoughtful security measures are taken.

Law enforcement, meanwhile, could obtain information that later becomes public, in court filings or otherwise, about people who are not even targets of a particular investigation.

Though Google's privacy protection is generally comparable to - even better than - those at Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and a host of other Internet giants, "I don't think any of the others have the scope of personal information that Google does," Hoofnagle said.

Plus, Google's practices may influence rivals given its dominance in search and the fierce competition.

"Google is perhaps the most noteworthy right now by the simple fact that they are the 800-pound gorilla," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and privacy advocate. "What they do tends to set a pattern and precedent."

The concerns reflect Google's growing heft. As startups get bigger and more powerful, scrutiny often follows.

Google says it takes privacy seriously.

"In general, as a company, we look at privacy from design all the way (through) launch," said Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel at Google.

That means product managers, engineers and executives - not just lawyers - consider the privacy implications as new technologies are developed and new services offered, Wong said.

She also said that Google regularly seeks feedback from civil liberties groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both of which credit Google for listening even if it doesn't always agree.

Google's privacy statements specify that only some of its employees have access to personal data - on a need-to-know basis - and such access is logged to deter abuse.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt says a tradeoff exists between privacy and functionality, and the company believes in making fully optional - and seeking permission beforehand - any services that require personally identifiable information.

"There are always options to not use that set of technology and remain anonymous," Schmidt told reporters in May.

But what is meant by personally identifiable information is subject to debate.

Google automatically keeps records of what search terms people use and when, attaching the information to a user's numeric Internet address and a unique ID number stored in a Web browser "cookie" file that Google uploads to computers unless users reconfigure their browsers to reject them.

Like most Internet companies, Google says it doesn't consider the data personally identifiable. But Internet addresses can often be traced to a specific user.

Here's just some of the ways Google can collect data on its users:

_One of Gmail's selling points is its ability to retain e-mail messages "forever."

_Google's program for scanning library books sometimes requires usernames to protect copyrights.

_The company is testing software for making Web pages load more quickly; the application routes all Web requests through its servers.

_Google also provides driving directions, photo sharing and instant messaging, and it is developing a payments service that critics say could add billing information to user profiles.

Because storage is cheap, data from these services can be retained practically forever, and Google won't specify how long it keeps such information.

Without elaborating, Google says it "may share" data across such services as e-mail and search. It also provides information to outside parties serving as Google's agents - though they must first agree to uphold Google's privacy policies.

Much of the concern, though, stems from a fear of the unknown.

"Everybody gets worried about what they (Google) could do but what they have done to date has not seemed to violate any privacy that anyone has documented," said Danny Sullivan, editor of the online newsletter Search Engine Watch.

Eric Goldman, a cyberlaw professor at Marquette University, believes the focus ought to be on the underlying problem: access by hackers and law enforcement.

"We still need to have good technology to inhibit the hackers. We still need laws that make hacking criminal. We still need restraints on government surveillance," Goldman said. "Google's database doesn't change any of that."

Anne Rubin, 20, a New York University junior who uses Google's search, Gmail and Blogger services, says quality overrides any privacy concerns, and she doesn't mind that profiles are built on her in order to make the ads she sees more relevant.

"I see it as a tradeoff. They give services for free," she said. "I have a vague assumption that things I do (online) aren't entirely private. It doesn't faze me."

Larry Ponemon, a privacy adviser, says research by his Ponemon Institute found Google consistently getting high marks for trust.

By contrast, Microsoft, whose software sometimes crashes and regularly gets violated by hackers, didn't fare as well despite what Ponemon and others acknowledge are improvements in its approach to privacy.

"People confuse customer service with obligations to maintain privacy," Ponemon said. "Google has a product that seems to work. It gets almost like a free ride on privacy."

That's changing.

Google, a perennially secretive company, may share some of the blame. It goes out of its way to strip its privacy statements of legalese so they are easier to read. But the statements remain vague on how long the company keeps data.

In an interview, Wong said Google had no set time limits on data retention; such determinations are left to individual product teams. She said the information helps Google know how well it is doing - for instance, are users getting the results they want in the first five, 10 or 100 hits?

"We keep data that's collected from our services for as long as we think it's useful," she said.

Google says it releases data when required by law, but its privacy statements offer few details. Wong said Google doesn't surrender data without a subpoena, court order or warrant. But she would not offer any details on how many requests it gets, or how often, and federal law bars Google from disclosing requests related to national security.

For civil lawsuits, Wong said, Google warns users before it complies so they can file objections with a court - a fact the company doesn't publicize.

Mark Rasch, who was a Justice Department prosecutor in the 1980s and has since advised companies on getting data from Internet companies, says electronic records will only become more relevant for investigators searching for evidence of intent and knowledge.

"As Google becomes more involved in parts of your lives including chats and blog, then it's going to get lots more subpoenas," he said. "It's a lot more than just a search tool."
http://www.forbes.com/business/manuf...ap2141974.html





Large Volume of F.B.I. Files Alarms U.S. Activist Groups
Eric Lichtblau

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.

The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.

F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files.

But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the disclosure.

"I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?"

Protest groups charge that F.B.I. counterterrorism officials have used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity in what they liken to F.B.I. political surveillance of the 1960's. The debate became particularly heated during protests over the war in Iraq and the run-up to the Republican National Convention in New York City last year, with the disclosures that the F.B.I. had collected extensive information on plans for protests.

In all, the A.C.L.U. is seeking F.B.I. records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other matters.

The Justice Department is opposing the A.C.L.U.'s request to expedite the review of material it is seeking under the Freedom of Information Act, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the A.C.L.U alone. The A.C.L.U., which went to court in a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention and interrogation practices, said the F.B.I. records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages by the time the request is completed.

The much smaller files that the F.B.I. has already turned over in recent weeks center on two other groups that were involved in political protests in the last few years, and those files point to previously undisclosed communications by bureau counterterrorism officials regarding activity at protests.

Six pages of internal F.B.I. documents on a group called United for Peace and Justice, which led wide-scale protests over the Iraq war, discuss the group's role in 2003 in preparing protests for the Republican National Convention.

A memorandum by counterterrorism personnel in the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes passing reference to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions but also quotes at much greater length from more benign statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.

One section of the F.B.I. memo, for instance, quotes from a statement put out by protesters to rally support for convention protests: "Imagine: A million people on the street, representing the diversity of New York, and the multiplicity of this nation - community organizers, black radicals, unions, anarchists, church groups, queers, grandmas for peace, AIDS activists, youth organizers, environmentalists, people of color contingents, global justice organizers, those united for peace and justice, veterans, and everyone who is maligned by Bush's malicious agenda - on the street - en masse."

A second file turned over by the F.B.I. on the American Indian Movement of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and press clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the Denver area in connection with Columbus Day. In that case, a 2002 memorandum distributed to F.B.I. counterterrorism officials from agents in Denver said that "although the majority of demonstrators at the Columbus Day events will be peaceful, a small fraction of individuals intent on causing violence and property damage can be expected."

An agent in Denver requested that the F.B.I. open a preliminary investigation "to allow for identification and investigation of individuals planning criminal activity during Columbus Day, October 2002," the memorandum said. The file does not indicate what came of the request.

The documents are similar in tone to a controversial bulletin distributed among F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in October 2003 that analyzed the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San Francisco.

The 2003 memo led to an internal Justice Department inquiry after an F.B.I. employee charged that it improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel found that the bulletin raised no legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.

Still, the debate over the F.B.I.'s practices intensified last year during the presidential campaign. The F.B.I. questioned numerous political protesters, and issued subpoenas for some to appear before grand juries, in an effort to head off what officials said they feared could be violent and disruptive convention protests. And the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records regarding Internet messages posted by critics of the Bush administration that listed the names of delegates to the Republican convention.

Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups, said she was particularly concerned that the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division was discussing the coalition's operations. "We always assumed the F.B.I. was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at us like this is pretty jarring," she said.

At Greenpeace, which has protested both the Bush administration's environmental record and its policies in Iraq, John Passacantando, executive director of the group's United States operation, said he too was troubled by what he had learned.

"If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle the voices of their critics," Mr. Passacantando said.

Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the Justice Department in a highly unusual prosecution in 2003 after two of its protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge in Miami threw out the case last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/po...18protest.html





Museum Shows Power of the Printing Press
Jay Lindsay

It took about 500 years for Johannes Gutenberg's ideas about printing to become obsolete, but Gardner LePoer worried the artifacts of Gutenberg's legacy would be gone far sooner.

To LePoer, a newspaper editor turned printer, the printing press wasn't just a machine, but a driver of human history, empowering the masses by spreading the written word across cultures and classes.

In 1979, at the start of a computer age that finally replaced the traditional printing press, he and some friends incorporated The Museum of Printing to preserve the machines.

Today, the museum holds a wide collection of presses, and traces the development of a craft that LePoer also considers an art.

"Printing gives longevity to language," said LePoer, the museum's executive director. "When you do that well, it's art."

In 1440, Gutenberg invented replaceable wooden or metal letters used in printing, making the mass production of documents possible.

That "relief" printing, in which the documents are produced by pressing them onto a hard, raised surface, remained the standard until the mid-20th century, though with various refinements and updates.

One of them, the linotype machine, was named after its ability to set entire "lines of type" by keyboard, rather than by hand. The linotype made books commonplace and revolutionized the newspaper business by speeding up the process by which the news made it to print.

Before then, it took so long for printers to set stories by hand that some simply didn't make it into the paper.

"A lot of stuff in the paper wasn't news," LePoer said. "It was stories and poems that you could set ahead of time and pluck into the hole."

The museum boasts an 1885 prototype of the first linotype machine, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It also has an original plate from Page One of The New York Times the day after the moon landings, which reads (backwards): "MEN WALK ON MOON; Astronauts Land on Plain, Collect Rocks, Plant Flag."

Other machines demonstrate "intaglio" printing, in which an engraved copper plate is pressed by manually turning large wheels, for extra pressure, to produce a document which captures fine lines better than other printers.

A lithograph machine uses a flat stone and crayon which absorbs ink but sheds waters. Artists used the crayon on the stone to draw pictures, which could then be reproduced. In an advance that greatly speeded up lithography, called offset lithography, ink from a lithographic plate is pressed to a curved rubber surface, which can be rolled for quick production.

LePoer said the history of printing is the history of the spread of information. If one understands that past, the importance for society of staying on the vanguard of modern digital technology is clear, he said.

Catherine Tuttle, a teacher from Concord, N.H., visited the museum to learn more about printing and the use of text in art, but she said the link between the machines and cultural advance became plain.

"The machines preceded the literacy," she said. "The technology here shows you the progress of humankind."

Her husband, Peter Tuttle, added, "It gives you a sense of the chronology of where we all began and where we are."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050717/...rinting_museum





Media companies continue to battle online piracy, but...

File-Sharing Seems Set To Stay
Eugene Wee

THE US Supreme Court has spoken.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) network companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks may be liable for copyright infringement as they actively encouraged their users to share copyrighted material.

But does this mean that movie studios and record companies can stop worrying about the Internet piracy perpetuated by P2P software?

Experts say this is unlikely.

Industry insiders say the Supreme Court decision will do little to stop illegal file-swapping from continuing.

That's because in the majority of cases, P2P networks don't require the support or aid of any commercial venture to flourish.

Miss Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has represented StreamCast Networks, told CNet News that if both Grokster and StreamCast were to be shut down, their P2P networks will still continue to be operational.

''It operates in a decentralised way,'' she said. ''It doesn't need to call into a home base; it doesn't need product updates from any place. What's out there continues to be out there.''

And recent history seems to support Miss Seltzer's view.

Napster Shut Down

In 2001, the music industry managed to shut down Napster, the pioneer P2P network for music.

However, new software developers came up with next-generation P2P software, which led to an even bigger wave of P2P network users.

Kazaa, which is now owned by Sydney-based Sharman Networks, later became the most downloaded software in Internet history.

File-swapping activities have also been proceeding unabated despite the Supreme Court ruling.

Internet traffic tracker BigChampagne reported that the day after the ruling, the average number of people in the US using file-sharing networks remained unchanged at between 5.2 million and 5.4 million.

While the upcoming lawsuit against Grokster and StreamCast could shut them down for good, others will spring up in their place.

Experts said new P2P networks will continue to pop up as network operators are seldom in it for the money.

Many do it simply to prove it can be done. Others will pitch their file-sharing networks for legitimate uses, such as legal distribition of copyright movies to paying customers.

Also, the ruling affects only companies in the US. Those who want to provide P2P software need only set up shop overseas.

Already, Kazaa has been superceded by BitTorrent, the latest file-sharing system that allows much bigger files, such as movies, to be shared.

So no matter how many P2P companies are put out of business, the technology itself is likely to stay - for better or worse.
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/tech/st...,91732,00.html





Judge Dismisses Navy SEAL Suit Against AP
Gary Gentile

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against The Associated Press and one of its reporters that alleged the news organization violated privacy and copyright laws by publishing photos of Navy SEALs posing with Iraqi prisoners.

The lawsuit was filed after the AP distributed photographs that reporter Seth Hettena found posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site, Smugmug.com, by the wife of one of the SEALs.

All four counts of the lawsuit were dismissed Tuesday in San Diego by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Miller, who concluded that the claims lacked merit and that the AP did not violate any law by distributing the photos.

While Miller dismissed a claim of copyright infringement, he did leave open the possibility that the plaintiffs could clarify and refile those allegations. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said later that he would refile the copyright claims.

The photos, distributed worldwide with a Dec. 3 story by Hettena, appear to show the servicemen in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees and also what appear to be bloodied prisoners _ one with a gun to his head.

The story said the Navy had launched a formal investigation into the photographs after being shown them by an AP reporter, adding the photos did not necessarily depict any illegal activities.

The AP later reported that the Navy's preliminary findings showed most of the 15 photos transmitted by the agency were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures.

Miller dismissed three counts claiming that the AP invaded the privacy of the SEALs, noting that the SEALs were "active duty military members conducting wartime operations in full uniform who chose to allow their activities to be photographed and placed on the Internet."

He also agreed with the AP's legal response citing a California law intended to allow quick dismissal of meritless cases aimed at stifling free speech, meaning the news agency is entitled to recover its legal expense from the plaintiffs.

The judge's ruling said it would not be reasonable "for anyone to expect the images to remain private."

The plaintiffs had claimed that the AP should obscure the faces of the SEALs and that the lives of the servicemen were placed in danger as a result of the photos being distributed worldwide. But Miller said the expressions on the faces of some of the SEALs, some of whom were smiling as they posed with prisoners, "form an integral part of the story about potential mistreatment of captives."

"The Associated Press merely distributed a truthful story, with photos that depict a topic of great public interest," Miller wrote.

Dave Tomlin, the news cooperative's assistant general counsel, hailed the decision.

"The judge said repeatedly in his ruling that the AP and our reporter were only doing their jobs," Tomlin said. "We're very happy the court has affirmed what we said from the start about this groundless suit."

James Huston, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said he intends to appeal the decision, as well as refile the copyright claims.

"There appear to be facts in the opinion and on which the opinion is based that are not in the record," Huston said. He said no evidence had been presented about who took the photos. He also said the servicemen did not give permission to the SEAL wife to post the photos on the Internet.

The lawsuit had said the wife believed the nearly 1,800 photos she posted on the Internet site were protected from access by unauthorized users and required a password to view. The initial AP story, however, noted that the photos were found using the search engine Google, and were not password-protected until after the reporter purchased copies online and began inquiries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...071401361.html





In Canada: Cache A Page, Go To Jail?
Elinor Mills

A bill before Canada's Parliament could make it illegal for search engines to cache Web pages, critics say, opening the door to unwarranted lawsuits and potentially hindering public access to information.

The legislation in question, Bill C-60, is designed to amend Canada's Copyright Act by implementing parts of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization treaty, the treaty that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S.

Set for debate and an initial vote in the House of Commons after Parliament's summer break, C-60 addresses things such as file-sharing, anticopying devices and the liability of Internet service providers and would tighten the Copyright Act in ways favorable to record labels and movie studios.

But according to Howard Knopf, a copyright attorney at the Ottawa firm of Macera & Jarzyna, a brief passage in the bill could mean trouble for search engines and other companies that archive or cache Web content.

"The way it reads, arguably what they're saying is that the very act of making a reproduction by way of caching is illegal," Knopf said.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E- Commerce Law, agreed.

"Anyone with content on the Web could sue," and anyone caching content on the Internet could be sued, said Geist, who wrote about perils with C- 60 when it was introduced. "Somebody with an ax to grind, or business competitors, could start using the system to try to get content removed." The bill provides no deterrent to making false copyright-infringement claims, he said.

Such copyright issues remain a hot topic in the United States, where search engines have found themselves subjected to a litany of infringement complaints, particularly as they expand the types of content they make searchable on the Web.

Google has pulled links to Web sites that the controversial and litigious Church of Scientology claimed infringed copyright. The search giant was also forced recently to remove copyright video content users had uploaded and has also come under fire for its plan to digitize library collections. Amazon.com was recently sued by an adult magazine over photos in its images database, and Google was sued by the same company.

The concern over C-60 involves a section of the bill that deals with remedies open to copyright holders. That section contains the following language: "...the owner of copyright in a work or other subject-matter is not entitled to any remedy other than an injunction against a provider of information location tools who infringes that copyright by making or caching a reproduction of the work or other subject matter."

A government official from one of the departments that wrote C-60 said the section is meant to provide more protection for search engines. Under current Canadian law, copyright holders can sue companies they believe are reproducing their material without authorization. Though common practice is to send the alleged copyright infringer a cease-and-desist notice, such a warning is not now required under law, said Albert Cloutier, acting director of the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate at Industry Canada.

Under Bill C-60, copyright holders could sue for monetary damages only after giving notice. Before such notification, they'd be limited to seeking an injunction. The bill does not change the circumstances or terms for establishing copyright infringement, Cloutier said.

"We're saying that in cases where there is copyright infringement there is a safe harbor," Cloutier said.

Knopf said he believed the intent of the search engine provisions was to provide a partial safe harbor, but he said that due to "drafting issues"--in other words, careless language--he's concerned the effect may be the opposite, muddling one of the Web's prime paradigms.

"If you put stuff freely on the Internet and don't take available steps to control archiving...you have to expect that people are going to browse, print or save it and that Google is going to cache it and archive.org is going to archive it," Knopf said.

Existing law is unclear as to whether people who post information on the Internet have given implied permission to search engines for caching purposes, Cloutier said.

So far, there have been no cases in Canada of search engines being sued for copyright infringement, Cloutier and the lawyers said. However, "theoretically (they) could be liable for infringement. We don't know how the Canadian courts will treat the activity under current law," Geist said.

Regardless, even a provision like that in Bill C-60 wouldn't necessarily put search engines out of business in Canada; they could tailor their services to meet the law, as they do with legislation in other countries. For instance, Google has excluded illegal pro-Nazi content in Germany.

Besides, C-60 remains a bill, and the wording that worries Knopf and Geist could be changed in committee, Cloutier said. After the first vote in the House of Commons, the bill goes to committee for debate and revision before being sent back to the House for a final vote and, if it passes, to the Senate.

Both attorneys are hopeful corrections or clarification can be made before the bill becomes law. Otherwise, Knopf said, a can of worms could open--not just for major search engines such as Google and Yahoo but also for smaller sites such as the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a searchable repository of old versions of Web sites created as a nonprofit public service.

"It could be a problem if it goes into law in a vague way and causes search engines to think there is a risk (and)...to cut back on their activities," said Wendy Seltzer, founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a nonprofit legal-information project involving the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Harvard University and others. "The public as a whole loses if we lose the ability to see what's being made available online."
http://news.com.com/In+Canada+Cache+...3-5793659.html





Microsoft In $720k Piracy Win

MICROSFT has won settlements totalling $720,000 from a Queensland reseller and its former directors over the use of illegal copies of Microsoft software.

Microsoft said that since 1998 it had been in contact several times with Cross Link Marketing Group (CMG), which trades as Magic Computers, over the practice known as hard disk loading.

After receiving another tip-off in 2002 via its anti-piracy hotline, Microsoft gained agreement from CMG director Kell Walker that his company would no longer load PCs with unauthorised copies of Microsoft software

Microsoft filed civil proceedings in the federal court last year after a further tip-off received via its hotline.

Microsoft said that Mr Walker had agreed to pay $360,000 in damages, with former directors Rosalind Sumner (also known as Pee Loo Tan) and Wayne David Sumner consenting to a court order to pay the same amount.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html





Harry Potter and the Right to Read
Michael Geist

Appeared in the Toronto Star, July 18, 2005 as Harry Potter and the Amazing Injunction

Along with millions worldwide who scooped up the latest Harry Potter tome over the weekend, the 41 schools that make up Manitoba’s Frontier School Division no doubt purchased several copies for their students.

The link that connects Harry Potter and the school division that serves northern Manitoba extends beyond a mutual interest in children’s books. Both were at the centre of situations last week that illustrate how good news culture and heritage stories can easily be transformed when copyright law goes awry.

The Harry Potter incident is widely known since it generated global attention. A grocery store in Coquitlam, British Columbia inadvertently sold 14 copies of the new Harry Potter book prior to its official sale date of July 16, 2005. Reports indicate that Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher, mistakenly failed to include a notice on the shipping box that the books were not to be sold in advance.

When Raincoast was informed of the sales, it joined with author J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing, the British publisher, to seek a court order from the British Columbia Supreme Court to keep the book and its contents under wraps.

Had Raincoast limited the requested order to stopping Canadian booksellers from selling the book, the issue would have attracted little attention. Rather than adopting that approach, however, Raincoast also directly targeted the 14 purchasers who had lawfully purchased copies of the book.

The order compelled anyone with a copy of the book to return it to the publisher along with any notes and other descriptions of its contents. Moreover, it prohibited Canadians from reading or discussing any aspect of the book.

This bears repeating. In a free and democratic society, a book publisher sought and obtained a court order banning reading and discussion of a children’s book. In fact, Raincoast had asked the court to go even further, by compelling purchasers to disclose the names, addresses, and other contact information of any other person with whom they discussed the book’s contents.

After the public objected to the order (including at least one call for a Harry Potter boycott), Raincoast issued a public explanation that cited copyright and trade secret law as the legal basis for its actions.

The copyright law claim was particularly puzzling. While copyright law does provide copyright owners with a basket of exclusive rights, the right to prohibit reading is not among them. In fact, copyright law has very little to say about what people can do with a book once they have purchased it. As far as the law is concerned, they are permitted to read it, resell it, or use it as a door stop if they wish. Attempts to use copyright law to create a new form of end-user license that establishes restrictions on the permitted uses of a book is at odds with longstanding legal principles.

While Raincoast was embroiled in the Harry Potter controversy, the Manitoba Frontier School Division was facing a similarly troubling situation. Last year, the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas donated four reproductions of paintings by Paul Kane, one of Canada’s leading artists during the 1800s. The paintings were seen as a homecoming of sorts since one of the portraits features the only known likeness of aboriginal elder Ogemawwah Chack, “The Spirit Chief,” who is a direct ancestor of many local residents.

To help educate their students about this period in Canadian history, the school district wanted a photograph of Kane to accompany the display of the paintings. When it discovered that the National Gallery of Canada had such a photograph, it asked for a copy.

The National Gallery sought $150 to complete the request, more than ten times the fee charged by the National Archives for a similar service. Moreover, the Gallery claimed the right to see and approve final design proofs for the use of this public domain image.

Officials from the school division were stunned since they had purchased hundreds of copies of archival photographs and never paid more than the cost of reproduction. They wrote to Liza Frulla, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who recently told the House of Commons that she “does not need advice on protecting Canadian culture” given that “it is the story of her life”.

If protecting Canadian culture means putting it under a pricey lock and key, she is correct. Minister Frulla’s office declined to intervene, despite the fact that the museum is part of her mandate.

Last week, officials from the school division went public with their concerns, as they sought to call attention to the misuse of copyright law to restrict access to Canadian culture. While their story did not match Harry Potter for front page headlines, it nevertheless offers a vivid demonstration of the potential damage that can result from overbroad application of copyright laws.

Stories of this sort are not limited to Canada. As the Harry Potter and Manitoba events were unfolding, in the United Kingdom classical music producers criticized the BBC for offering free downloads of Beethoven symphonies, while in the United States, the Internet Archive, a remarkable resource of archived Internet content, was sued for copyright infringement.

Sadly, there is every indication that these cases represent only the tip of the iceberg in Canada. Bill C- 60, the federal government’s proposed copyright bill, envisions ever more limitations on the ability for individual Canadians to interact with their culture, while doing precious little to facilitate access in our libraries, schools and homes.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage or a judge on the British Columbia Supreme Court may be unwilling to stand up for cultural issues, but surely someone must be willing to do so. When copyright law is used to stop children from reading or learning about their cultural heritage, it is clear that something has gone wrong.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php...sk=view&id=896





Banjo on my knee

Voters Approve Citywide Fiber Project
Marguerite Reardon

Voters in Lafayette, La., on Saturday approved a bond offering to fund a citywide fiber-optic project, an issue that was the source of considerable friction during the past year.

Voters approved the measure 12,290 to 7,507, or 62 percent to 38 percent, according to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.

The city of 116,000 residents known for its vibrant Cajun culture has been planning to build its own fiber-optic network for more than a year. But local phone company BellSouth and cable operator Cox Communications challenged the city-owned utility, which plans to build and operate the network.

After a legal tussle earlier this year, a special election was called to decide whether the city could issue $125 million worth of bonds to fund the project.

Fiber 411, the citizens group that opposed the project, characterized the loss as a victory.

"I think we won," Tim Supple of Fiber 411 told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. "We started off wanting to get people the right to vote. We accomplished that. We tried to get people to understand the issue. We accomplished that, I hope. We won."

Lafayette's approval of the project could help rally citizens in the 14 states where municipal networks have already been banned or limited, said Joey Durel, president of Lafayette Parish.

"What the cable and phone companies do a lot better than provide service to customers is work politicians," he said. "Unless towns like Lafayette get moving, I'm afraid that more states could pass laws limiting these kinds of networks. If this referendum passes here in Lafayette, I think we'll start to see some states undoing those laws."

Lafayette isn't the only city that has faced resistance from incumbent phone and cable providers when it wanted to build its own communications network. City officials across the country including some in Provo, Utah; Palo Alto, Calif.; and Philadelphia also have faced strong opposition from local phone and cable companies when they proposed building their own networks.

These cities view building their own network as a way to bring their citizens faster broadband connections at cheaper rates, narrowing the so-called digital divide. But the Bell phone companies and cable operators argue that government intervention in their business is not justified and say they are far better equipped to operate complex and far-flung data networks.

"We believe Lafayette is already well-served by Cox and BellSouth," said David Grabert, a spokesman for Cox.

Millions of dollars have been spent lobbying state legislators and fighting court battles on both sides of the debate.

The issue has become so heated in recent months that two separate bills have been introduced at the federal level. U.S. Sens. John McCain, R- Ariz., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., have introduced a bill that would guarantee cities the right to build municipal communications networks.

On the other side of the debate, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, recently introduced a bill that would ban cities from running communications networks that compete against private-sector telecom companies. Sessions, a former SBC executive, argues that local governments should not compete with private companies.
http://news.com.com/Voters+approve+c...3-5792387.html





These Musical Genres Are Made for Mashing
Kelefa Sanneh

When it came time to pick a single to go with the movie adaptation of "The Dukes of Hazzard," the producers evidently faced a difficult choice. Did they want a raucous country song? A Britney Spears-style club track? An old hit that everybody knows? Something by the beloved veteran Willie Nelson, who appears in the film as Uncle Jesse? Something by the teen-pop-star-turned-reality-TV-star Jessica Simpson, who plays Daisy Duke?

Fortunately for listeners who enjoy a big-budget mash-up, the answer was yes.

That yes came in the form of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " (Columbia), a jumbled-up cover of the old Nancy Sinatra hit. The singer is Ms. Simpson, who delivers many of the rewritten lyrics in the heavy-breathing style usually associated with Ms. Spears. She is joined by Mr. Nelson, who sounds as if he's amused by his garish surroundings. The song gets a staccato dancehall-reggae beat, interspersed with snippets of guitar and harmonica, with an aim toward pleasing both the country and dance-pop constituencies.

In short, this is a song put together not only for a blockbuster film but also like one: carefully (and expensively) assembled with an eye toward capturing the attention of a few target demographics. Many analysts - including, recently, Edward Jay Epstein, author of "The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood," and Tom Shone, author of "Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer" - have written about how this hunger for blockbusters has changed our experience of movies. But "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " is an example of how strange the results can be when this formula is applied to music.

It has been three years since Eve and Gwen Stefani won the first Grammy Award for best rap/sung collaboration, and the new category was a testament (a few years late, of course) to the rising popularity of mix-and-match hits. A few years later, unexpected collaborations between big-name acts are more commonplace than ever, whether it's Jay-Z teaming with Linkin Park (for the hit CD "Collision Course") or Nelly joining forces with Tim McGraw to conquer both BET and CMT.

In mainstream music, unlike mainstream movies, genre still counts for a lot, which is part of the reason "These Boots" sounds so odd: you don't expect to hear those performers and those genres all colliding, those fiddles sawing away over that electronic beat, that honky-tonk chorus giving way to a rap section that evokes Ms. Stefani. Ms. Simpson has a much bigger voice than Ms. Spears, so it's odd to hear her hide it in order to pant the words in the verse. (By the time the first chorus arrives, she relents and gives us a bit of vibrato and melisma.) And Mr. Nelson seems to be ignoring the dancehall reggae beat altogether, delivering his lines under his breath, so quiet you can barely hear him. (This isn't Mr. Nelson's only recent foray into reggae: he has just released a reggae album, "Countryman.")

Of course, this song was a strange pop confection from the start, written by the great and weird singer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood for Ms. Sinatra, who needed a hit and got one that might have been bigger than she wanted. The original lyrics delivered an oddly equivocal response to a no-good man: "You keep samin' when you oughta be changin'," she famously purred, but the refrain both announces payback and defers it. "One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you" - but not, it would seem, today.

The new version has new verses that turn a scorned woman's vow into something not quite so dire: now the song is about how to beat a speeding ticket. "You believe you stopped me for a reason," she sings. "And I'm pretending my bending's just for fun."

Unfortunately, the music video doesn't re-enact this scenario, although it does just about everything else. That familiar orange car, the General Lee, pulls up, and Ms. Simpson does something contrary to the spirit of the original show: she opens the door. (Why can't she slither out through the window like everyone else?) The rest of the video unfolds in a rowdy bar, evoking everything from "Coyote Ugly" (her bar-top dance) to "Kill Bill" (an army of slinky but possibly deadly line dancers). For viewers worried that Ms. Simpson's short shirt and shorter shorts leave too much to the imagination, there's a climactic scene where she washes the General Lee - not very thoroughly, from the looks of things - while wearing a bikini. It just might be an homage to the infamous recent Carl's Jr. commercial starring Paris Hilton.

Given her ability to belt out ballads, it's odd that Ms. Simpson's career as a celebrity has had so little to do with music. By now she's much better known for her reality TV series, "Newlyweds," than for any of her albums; it's hard to think of another pop star who's so recognizable despite having so few recognizable hits. And because of her biography - she's Texan, and she has served as grand marshal at a Nascar race - she has become a de facto country star, even though she hasn't yet recorded a country album. (It seems inevitable, doesn't it?)

You can't have genre-scrambling pop songs if you don't have genres, and that's the paradox of "These Boots," which gets its charge from the fact that there are genre lines to blur. Which is to say that anyone repulsed by the success of this song should take heart: songs like this just might be helping to make themselves obsolete.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/ar...ann.html?8hpib

















Until next week,

- js.





















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