"I think [$0.99 per song] is too expensive, and it's not realistic to expect students to pay that much." – Carlos Guerra
"Every studio has a very intricate model for forecasting DVD sales pegged to opening-weekend theatrical performance but now those historic relationships, both in the U.S. and overseas, do not appear to be working, making any forecasting extremely difficult." – Richard Greenfield
"Technology operates at the speed of light and privacy protection is at a snail's pace." – Howard Simon
"For the civil liberties community, this could be a troubling appointment. Stu Baker often stood on the other side of important national debates on protecting privacy and preserving open government." – Marc Rotenberg
"It is essentially an electronic file on everyone whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not. I can't think of anything more un-American." – Howard Simon
"Given the volume of data to be retained, particularly Internet data, it is unlikely that an appropriate analysis of the data will be at all possible. Individuals involved in organised crime and terrorism will easily find a way to prevent their data being traced." – Report from the parliamentary committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
"It's increasingly clear that the future of CBS News is not just as a practitioner of broadcast journalism but of broadband journalism." – Andrew Heyward
July 16th, 2005
Dutch File Sharing Decision Made
Moves to identify illegal downloaders in HOLLAND have been blocked by a Dutch judge.
A court in Utrecht heard that anti-piracy group Brein made demands for five net service suppliers to hand over the names and addresses of file-sharers following investigative work by US company Media Sentry.
The judge presiding in the case ruled that the American firm had broken tough laws that protect privacy in Holland by identifying the file-sharers.
But Brein, which represents 52 media organisations including Sony Music, Universal and EMI, said it will take the case to a higher court.
As a result the victory could be short lived because the court ruled that the group did have the power to force net firms to surrender data if they found out the information legally.
Nine people who have already been identified by Brein, have reached out-of-court settlements with the organisation.
http://www.nme.com/news/113007.htm
High Court In Dublin Orders ISPs To Release Names Of File-Sharers To IRMA
Deirdre McArdle
IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association, has on Friday welcomed the decision of the High Court in Dublin to compel a number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to release the names of the 17 individuals engaged in serial file sharing of music. The High Court action comes after 15 months of educational initiatives to raise awareness of the cultural and economic damage done by illegal file sharing. "We will now be writing to the 17 individuals informing them of the seriousness of their actions," said Dick Doyle, Director General of IRMA. "We will offer them the opportunity of settling the action. If they refuse our settlement terms, we will be forced to pursue the matter through the Courts."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050708/95/fmyuk.html
Judge: MP3 Site, ISP Breached Copyright
Steven Deare
It took almost two years but major record labels in Australia have finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his Internet Service Provider for alleged music piracy.
Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.
Although Cooper didn't host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.
This is the first such judgement against hyperlinking in Australia.
Tamberlin found against all other respondents in the case, namely ISP Comcen, its employee Chris Takoushis, Comcen's parent company E-Talk Communications, and its director Liam Bal.
In October 2003, the record companies, which included Universal Music, Sony, Warner and EMI, alleged that Cooper cooperated with Bal and Takoushis to increase traffic to the ISP, and aide advertising revenue.
Subsequently, the court was told Cooper was unaware he may have infringed copyright law, while E- Talk and Comcen argued they didn't know of Cooper's actions.
In handing down his judgement today, Tamberlin said: "I am satisfied there has been infringement of copyright.
"I won't make formal orders as yet. But since there's been infringments ...the respondents must pay the applicants' costs."
Outside the Sydney court, Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Michael Kerin said the verdict sent a strong message to ISPs.
"This is a very significant blow in the war against piracy.
"The court has found against all the respondents. It sends the message that ISPs who involve themselves in copyright infringement can be found guilty.
"The verdict showed that employees of ISPs who engage in piracy can be seen in the eyes of the court as guilty," Kerin said.
Cooper was not present in court. His legal counsel, Bev Stevens, said the verdict was "extremely disappointing".
The parties will only be required to pay costs -- which will be decided in 14 days once the music industry serves short minutes of orders in reponse to the judgement.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communi...9202379,00.htm
Warning Notices On Account Of Links To AllofMP3
Robert W. Smith
The music industry has begun to carry out its threat and is sending warning notices to website operators who have set links to the Russian music download platform AllofMP3. On Thursday and Friday at the behest of music industry companies (edel, EMI, Sony BMG Music, SPV, Universal Music and Warner Music) the Munich-based law firm of Waldorf sent warning notices calling on the operators in question to remove the links by July 12. As the law firm has calculated the amount in controversy in the case of private persons to be 75,000 euros, the persons concerned are accordingly asked in these letters to pay the firm a fee of 3,980 euros each. Responding to questions by heise online the lawyer Johannes Waldorf stated that he had so far sent "fewer than ten" such warning notices.
In its warning notices the law firm points out that the District Court in Munich had lately by way of a temporary injunction (PDF) prohibited the operators of AllofMP3 from making available as download on the Web recordings protected by German copyright legislation. The injunction itself, which, however, has not yet been served on the operator of AllofMP3, was attached to the letters. In addition the notice says: "By establishing a hyperlink to the Internet page in question you are enabling the acquisition of copyright protected sound recordings of our clients via the illegal download offer. By illegally providing public access you are thereby objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings [...] or even aiding and abetting such activity."
Not only private persons, but a number of media companies too have received such warning notices. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag [Heise Publishing House], which among other things publishes heise online, has so far received from the law firm merely a notice calling upon it to remove all links to
www.allofmp3.com. There was no declaration of discontinuance attached. In a number of articles by heise online, including this one, a link to the Web address of the Russian music portal has been included for journalistic purposes.
In a different case Heise Zeitschriften Verlag had also been called upon by the law firm of Waldorf on behalf of clients of the firm from the music industry to remove a link to a company offering DVD copying software. When the publishing house took no heed of this demand the law firm of Waldorf obtained a temporary injunction from the District Court in Munich. According to the opinion of the court in Munich heise online by establishing the link to the software manufacturer's homepage had deliberately aided and abetted an illegal act. The music industry, however, failed in having the publication of the article prohibited outright. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag has filed an appeal against the court's decision of April 2005, which it regards as an unconstitutional infringement of the freedom of the press. The hearing at the Higher Regional Court in Munich is set for July 28 2005.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61571
P2P Volume Climbs Again in June, User Levels Near 9 Million
The average number of simultaneous users on P2P networks inched up again in June, reaching 8.9 million according to figures from BigChampagne. That is a modest 2.6 percent increase over May, and a substantial 20.1 percent jump over the same period last year. US users accounted for about 75 percent of the global total, with both figures closely aligned. The increase is notable heading into the summer months, which normally produce a drop in P2P traffic. That seasonal effect could confuse any effect that the recent MGM v. Grokster decision has on overall volume, though so far there has not been a notable dip. Overall, P2P traffic levels have been steadily increasing over the past few years. Current levels are now double what they were in September, 2003, when the RIAA first initiated lawsuits against individual file-sharers.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/resu...e=BigChampagne
Penn Students Find Expectations Of Legal Downloading Unrealistic
Campus opinions mirror findings of national survey
Erica Lederman
Two-thirds of U.S. college students see nothing unethical about downloading copyrighted music without paying, according a survey conducted by the Business Software Alliance.
The national survey also indicated that illegal downloading practices extend beyond the college campus and into the workplace. The survey suggests that music-sharing is a gateway practice into downloading software and other files.
Several colleges across the country have introduced a fee included in tuition to cover the cost of a file-sharing program. At Penn, many students have expressed interest in such a program, but most said that they would not want to have to pay a mandatory fee for the service.
Penn students seem to share the majority belief that downloading copyrighted music presents no ethical dilemma.
Lindsey Wu, who graduated from the School of Engineering and Applied Science in May, said, "I don't think it's unethical. People still buy CDs and usually only download to preview music."
Many students surveyed cited the lack of quality music available on CDs as justification for downloading music off the Web.
College senior Kim Lengle said she legally downloads music from Apple's file- sharing program iTunes so that she does not have to buy an entire album in order to listen to the few songs she enjoys.
"I think that what leads people to download music is not the cost of an album, but rather the quality of all [the] songs on the album. No one likes to buy an album with a majority of songs that they don't like," Lengle said.
Across college campuses, illegal downloading of music has become the norm, which worries the music industry.
Forty-five percent of college students currently use campus networks for downloading activities. University officials around the country are worried that the high-speed Internet access offered on campuses has contributed to widespread nature of illegal downloading.
Several programs are currently available that offer downloadable music either for a monthly fee or on a pay-per-song basis.
Rebecca Safley, a recent College graduate, said, "I used the [paid] Napster service, and it was a great idea."
But Wharton graduate student Carlos Guerra finds the current pay options not to be feasible.
"I think [$0.99 per song] is too expensive, and it's not realistic to expect students to pay that much," he said.
Unlike many of his fellow students on campus, graduate student Dan Leung thinks illegal downloading is unethical.
"But," he adds, "I do it anyway."
Rong Rong Xu, a Wharton senior, offered an explanation for the apparent disconnect between beliefs and actions for someone like Leung.
"It's the whole group mentality. If somebody else can [download music], then why can't I? It justifies the illegal act, and it becomes a generally accepted practice," he said.
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vn.../42d604130eee2
Sony BMG Reaches Licensing Deal With Imesh
Music giant Sony BMG has reached a licensing agreement with file-swapping service iMesh, one of the first such tie-ups since a U.S. Supreme Court decision clamping down on online copyright infringement.
The deal, confirmed on Friday by an iMesh representative, followed a high court ruling that unauthorized networks such as Grokster could be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users. Analysts said that decision added momentum to the move toward networks sanctioned by media companies.
Once one of the most popular of post-Napster song-swapping networks, iMesh, formed in 1999, was sued by the record labels in 2003 for copyright infringement and settled for $4.1 million.
The New York-based service said just after the June 27 Supreme Court ruling in favor of entertainment companies and against rival file-swapping network Grokster that it would roll out a music industry-"sanctioned" song-swapping service.
The privately held company also hired former Sony Music President Robert Summer as executive chairman to handle negotiations with the music industry.
Sony BMG, one of the big four music labels, is a joint venture between Sony and Bertelsmann.
Music trade publication Billboard reported on Friday that iMesh was also close to signing a deal with Universal Music Group in the next week to 10 days. A representative for iMesh had no immediate comment on the report.
Other peer-to-peer services have been formed to satisfy the entertainment industry's demand to be compensated for songs like Mashboxx, headed by former Grokster President Wayne Rosso, which has also reached a licensing deal with Sony BMG.
Rosso said he was near deals with the other major labels and that the ruling had unleashed intense interest from investors. "Everybody wants a piece of me," said Rosso.
Mashboxx works with Snocap, a venture headed by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, which identifies songs by their digital "fingerprint" and determines if they are copyrighted.
The iMesh service also uses a centrally managed rights clearinghouse so music companies and publishers can claim compensation for songs being traded.
Record labels in 2001 managed to close down Napster, the first song-swapping service, and then went on to challenge its successors like Grokster and Streamcast Networks in the courts.
Napster has since changed owners and transformed itself into a commercial online music service.
http://news.com.com/Sony+BMG+reaches...3-5781196.html
Detroit Is So Hollywood, and Vice Versa
Daniel Gross
THE capital of the American automotive industry and the capital of American entertainment don't seem to have much in common. Detroit wears Brooks Brothers, Hollywood wears Armani. Detroit eats meat and potatoes, Hollywood (when it's not dieting) dines on sushi and low-carb shakes. Detroit is Rust Belt; Hollywood is Botox Belt.
Crucial numbers in Detroit are market share and miles per gallon. In Hollywood, they're box office takes and agents' percentages. In Detroit, silicon can be found in painstakingly engineered auto parts. In Hollywood, silicone can be found in painstakingly engineered body parts.
But in this summer of shared discontent it suddenly seems the two industrial capitals have something in common. Both iconic American powerhouse industries formed in the early 20th century and saw their high point midcentury. Today, both are discovering that the strategy and tactics that until recently brought them huge profits have led them to re-examine their business models. Sure, the woes afflicting the two industries are vastly different - the Big Three automakers are struggling under the weight of health insurance and pension costs while Hollywood studios are buffeted by rapidly changing technologies and consumer tastes. While no Hollywood studio has seen its debt downgraded to junk, their respective plights reveal striking similarities - and perhaps, a similar way out.
Consumers today face an unprecedented array of choices for how to spend their transportation and entertainment dollars. And with each passing year, they seem less likely to choose to spend them on the stuff cranked out of Detroit and Hollywood assembly lines. In the postwar decade, the height of the American century, both rode high. The Big Three - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - held down an astonishing 95 percent of the United States car market in 1955. In 1948, writes Edward Jay Epstein, author of "The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood," some 90 million Americans, or 65 percent of the nation's population, went to a movie each week. That year, with TV in its infancy and the only real competition radio, Americans bought a whopping 4.6 billion tickets.
But decades of competition from upstarts - Japanese and Korean automakers for Detroit, television, video games and the Internet for Hollywood - have killed these two incumbents by a thousand cuts. In June, the no-longer-so-Big Three controlled just 58.3 percent of the United States market. Last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, only about 10 percent of the population managed to make it to the multiplex each week, and the number of tickets sold slumped 2.4 percent to a little more than 1.5 billion. So far this year, according to Exhibitor Relations, attendance is down another 7.8 percent.
In recent years, both industries thought they had settled on surefire formulas to cope with burgeoning competition, globalization and technological change. Develop a big, expensive blockbuster model, market it like crazy, and then return the next year with slightly tweaked, bigger and more expensive models. Sure as "Terminator 2" and "Terminator 3" followed the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle "Terminator," Hummer 2 and Hummer 3 followed the Hummer, another Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. But in both realms, the strategy has stalled. Just as audiences found "Ocean's 12" a pale imitation of "Ocean's 11," itself a remake of a 1960 film, drivers have turned away from the bigger and ever-less-fuel-efficient S.U.V.'s stamped out by General Motors and Ford. Sales of the battleship-size Ford Excursion are off 26.3 percent this year.
In recent months, quirky foreign makes like the Toyota Prius and Mini Cooper have captured the imagination of trendy buyers bored to tears by Detroit's pedestrian automotive retreads. How precisely does the 2005 Ford Taurus differ from the 2002 Ford Taurus?
Moviegoers apparently are having a similar reaction to Hollywood's buffet of warmed-over dishes. Most of the movies in wide release last week - the 19th straight week in which box office receipts were lower than the same week a year before - were either remakes or brand extensions: "War of the Worlds," "Batman Begins," "Herbie: Fully Loaded," "Star Wars: Episode III," "The Longest Yard" and "Bewitched." What's next, a remake of a lame 1970's-vintage television show like "The Dukes of Hazzard"? Well, yes.
For manufacturers, the sum of all fears is seeing the costs of the basic inputs to your product rise beyond your control. For the auto industry, the price of hot-rolled steel increased from $260 a ton in May 2003 to $535 a ton in May 2005, according to Purchasing Magazine. For studios, the price of Hollywood prima donnas has been rising far more rapidly than the consumer price index. Last year, according to the M.P.A.A., the average cost of making and marketing a film was $98 million - up more than 10 percent from 2003.
Worse, neither Detroit nor Hollywood has been able to pass on rising costs to consumers. The average movie ticket price rose just 3 percent in 2004, and is up just 3 percent this year. Meanwhile, Detroit has had to bribe customers to take cars off the lot with huge rebates. And now both Motown and Hollywood are engaging in gimmicky, unsustainable inducements to bring people in the door. On June 1, General Motors started offering its employee discount to all buyers, a move matched last week by Ford and DaimlerChrysler. In late June, AMC (the second-largest theater company, not the late carmaker) began offering money-back guarantees to coax people to sit through "Cinderella Man." Rival chain Cinemark quickly followed suit.
There's more. Both industries are extremely anxious over the threat of piracy from Asia. Hollywood frets over the quick availability of excellent copies of the latest "Star Wars" film; Detroit frets over the prospect of the Chinese car company Chery marketing its cheap QQ minicar, which GM contends is a brazen knockoff of the Chevrolet Spark.
And once-proud manufacturers in both industries no longer depend on earning profits from selling the products they make through the established distribution channel (dealers for Detroit, theaters for Hollywood) but on related activities. GM and Ford routinely lose money on their United States automaking operations, but are bailed out by their finance arms, General Motors Acceptance Corporation and Ford Motor Credit. They're essentially banks attached to unprofitable carmaking operations. Just so, the studios are really merchants of DVD's, broadcast and pay-per-view rights attached to money-losing manufacturers of movies made to be screened in theaters. According to Mr. Epstein, the author, the Hollywood studios garner just 17 percent of their film-related revenues from theaters.
The salvation of these iconically American industries won't come through gimmicks or slick marketing. Autos and movies are regarded as parochial industries. And to a large degree, Detroit and Hollywood remain insular company towns. But the relentless focus on their struggles in the home market they owned in the 20th century may obscure the success they're having in the markets that they could own in the 21st century. Last year, while United States box office revenues stagnated, box office revenues outside the United States surged 47 percent in dollar terms.
As moviegoers in India, Asia and Latin America flocked to "Shrek 2" and "Troy," the number of international tickets sold rose 13 percent last year. Meanwhile, GM's sales in China have risen 19 percent so far this year. As GM loses ground in Middle America, its market share in the Middle Kingdom has risen from about 8 percent in 2003 to 11 percent this year. Sure, Americans may look askance at the umpteenth version of the Ford Taurus, or at the umpteenth feature movie to revolve around a comic book hero. But as the number of middle-class consumers for Detroit and Hollywood's products continues to grow around the world, Americans may no longer be the target audience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/we...w/10gross.html
DVD sales cooling
Animator Warns on Profit
Geraldine Fabrikant
Shares of DreamWorks Animation SKG tumbled 13.2 percent yesterday after the company lowered its earnings estimates because of disappointing DVD sales and also pulled back on a planned $500 million stock offering.
In addition, the company said the Securities and Exchange Commission had started an informal investigation into the trading of its securities after a report on May 10 that news of disappointing first-quarter earnings had been released before the company announcement.
Yesterday's announcement was the second time in two months that the company, led by its chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the co-founders Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, with a blue-chip roster of investors that includes the Microsoft billionaire Paul G. Allen, had revised earnings forecasts downward. It closed yesterday at $23.27 a share.
The company said yesterday that it was lowering its earnings estimates for the year to 80 cents a share, from 90 cents. That compares with an earlier forecast of $1 to $1.25 a share. The company now expects to show a loss in the second quarter of 7 to 9 cents a share.
The major reason for lower expectations is slow sales of DVD's for "Shrek 2" and to some degree for "Shark Tale."
DreamWorks executives said it was too early to understand why there was a slowdown in DVD sales.
"We don't know whether this is a short-term issue or some larger shift that is going on," Mr. Katzenberg told analysts in a conference call. "It would be, I think, a mistake to try and assess it today."
When DreamWorks revised earnings in May because of low DVD sales, analysts said they believed that the problem might be specific to DreamWorks. Then nearly two weeks ago Pixar Animation Studios also cut forecasts because of disappointing DVD sales of "The Incredibles."
That led investors to wonder how broadly the trend would affect the industry, where much of the earnings growth has been fueled by DVD demand.
DreamWorks also said it would delay a $500 million stock offering. Although Mr. Katzenberg and Mr. Geffen, acting together, can propose an offering, they cannot participate in the selling of shares until October. The sellers in the offering would have included Mr. Allen's company, Vulcan Capital.
"Pulling the offering made sense," said Lowell Singer, who follows DreamWorks for SG Cowen & Company. "Paul Allen was interested in selling the stock when it was north of $30 a share. Clearly he is not interested in selling when it is below $23 a share. And clearly they would have had to come out with the news of lower guidance before they could issue a secondary."
Indeed, DreamWorks shares are now lower than when it went public at $28 a share in October 2004.
The S.E.C. is also investigating the possibility of insider trading in DreamWorks shares, according to a person briefed on the situation.
Although DreamWorks did not release its earnings until after the market closed on May 10, earlier that day Newsweek published a report on its Web site that said Mr. Katzenberg had briefed some insiders the previous morning, warning that earnings would be below expectations.
That day shares declined 5.19 percent on heavy trading to close at $36.50 a share. The stock fell an additional 12.19 percent the next day. DreamWorks said it was cooperating with the investigation.
DreamWorks also said that six class-action lawsuits had been filed against it and some officers and directors, accusing them of violating securities laws.
The company said that the lawsuits were without merit and that it would fight the charges.
For investors, the drop in DVD sales is worrisome. "Every studio has a very intricate model for forecasting DVD sales pegged to opening-weekend theatrical performance," said Richard Greenfield, who follows media for Fulcrum Global Partners. "But now those historic relationships, both in the U.S. and overseas, do not appear to be working, making any forecasting extremely difficult."
"The company has reduced estimates twice in eight weeks because of this lack of visibility," he said.
For Mr. Singer of SG Cowen, the problem in the foreign markets is particularly troubling.
"We have all been expecting a maturation of the domestic business given the broad penetration of DVD hardware in U.S. homes," he said. "However, we thought the foreign markets were a few years behind domestic, so we anticipated growth for a number of more years given the lower hardware penetration overseas."
What has happened at DreamWorks and Pixar, he said, is worrisome because they have had hits like "Shrek 2" and "The Incredibles."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/bu...reamworks.html
The media
M Is for Moronic
Max Blumenthal
"I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance," Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in May. Since he was appointed to his position by President Bush, he has set about to change the "tone" and rectify the "balance." For example, he helped secure $4 million to fund Wall Street Journal Report, a round-table discussion featuring the newspaper's right-wing editorial board; no liberals or Democrats need apply. Next he collaborated with Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to kill a legislative proposal that would have required appointments with local broadcasting experience to the CPB board. Last year, to justify his campaign for balance, Tomlinson commissioned a secret study to prove that certain programs aired on PBS radio and television are contaminated with liberal bias.
To carry out this delicate task, Tomlinson selected Fred Mann, a conservative activist with no credentials as an expert on journalism, broadcasting or media issues, who was obscure even within right-wing circles. Mann was paid $14,700 in taxpayer money to monitor a sampling of PBS shows and file a report to Tomlinson on the political partisanship of their content. Tomlinson seems to have planned for Mann's report to become a seminal conservative document. Republicans would wave it during House appropriations committee hearings as they argued for defunding PBS and realigning its programming. Right-wing talk jocks would blare talking points based on Mann's disturbing findings, which would at last provide definitive proof of a liberal media tilt. Meanwhile, insidious liberal activists boring from within public broadcasting studios would cower in humiliation from the exposure.
While Mann diligently went about his work listening to the radio and watching TV, monitoring episodes of PBS's NOW With Bill Moyers, The Diane Rehm Show and The Tavis Smiley Show--Tomlinson concealed his activities from CPB's board. When Mann filed his detailed report, Tomlinson hid it from the CPB board. Only an internal investigation by CPB's inspector general in mid May revealed the existence of the Mann report. And only when journalists at NPR managed to secure a copy were its contents reported. Reading the study, it is clear why Tomlinson tried to keep it a state secret.
The Mann report reads as if dictated by Cookie Monster while chewing on a mouthful of lead paint chips. Names of famous political figures and celebrities are chronically misspelled. PBS guests are categorized by labels--"anti-DeLay," "neutral," "x"--for often bewildering reasons. Mann appears to have spent endless hours monitoring programs with no political content, gathering such insights as that Ray Charles was blind.
Mann begins each of his PBS program summaries with a chart showing guests' ideological leanings. An "L" denotes guests he judges to be liberal; "C" beside conservatives; "N" beside those who are neutral. Among those Mann designated as conservative is the ex-rapper and actor Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg, best known for his role as a well-endowed porn star in the film Boogie Nights. While Wahlberg used his June 2, 2004, appearance on The Tavis Smiley Show to promote juvenile justice programs--a liberal hallmark--he also said in passing, according to Mann, that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ "was a good thing." Another Tavis Smiley guest, Everlast, the rock-rapper who once fronted the Irish-American rap trio House of Pain, was dubbed a "C" for his opinion that some rap music is "sending a bad message to youth." And Henry Rollins, the former singer for the legendary hardcore-punk band Black Flag, was labeled conservative for stating, in Mann's words, that "people who have problems with the war should support the troops." Apparently, feeling sympathy for American servicemen and women is strictly "C."
Mann's liberals are an equally curious bunch. Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, garnered his "L" after speaking glowingly of Ronald Reagan in a discussion with Tavis Smiley. Hagel is, of course, that comsymp who earned a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition last year. Another Rehm guest, Washington Post reporter Robin Wright, earned her "L" by articulating an analytical point Mann apparently had not heard expressed before. "Ms. Wright's viewpoint was that U.S. intelligence was geared to fight the Cold War and did not adapt to the new threat of terrorism," Mann writes, describing why he put the "L" word beside her name. For investigating three of Tom DeLay's associates for illegal fundraising in Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who was interviewed on NOW, was dubbed "anti-DeLay." Dr. Arthur Bodette was slapped with an "L" after discussing on Diane Rehm's show "the unlimited possibilities of new advances in DNA chips to screen for birth defects, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation."
Another unintentionally hilarious aspect of the Mann report is its sloppy typos. Apparently Tomlinson's budget didn't include a proofreader. Former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr appears as "Ken Staff," former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim as "Doug Zukheim" and former Congressman Newt Gingrich as "Next Gingrich."
There are also curious asides and digressions. In a description of the March 29, 2004, episode of NOW, Mann notes that 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser filled in for Bill Moyers as host. What did he make of this? He doesn't say. In his summary of former CIA operative Robert Baer's interview with Diane Rehm, Mann writes, "Mr. Baer's viewpoint was that [Ahmad] Chalabi leaked secret classified information to Iran regarding U.S. cracking Iran's codes. As to how Chalabi new [sic] this information, Baer speculated, it was probably a drunken operative." Reporting on Gen. Anthony Zinni's appearance on Rehm's show, Mann observes, "His viewpoint was that...Saddam was not a treat [sic]." Yes, and Nixon was not a cook.
Besides scrutinizing political PBS guests, Mann was paid to watch countless hours of nonpolitical programming and report back to Tomlinson with his insights. Thus Tomlinson was secretly informed that during one Diane Rehm episode, "Carole King talked about her career.... James Taylor inspired her." Or that, during The Tavis Smiley Show, actor Jamie Foxx "discussed the career of the late Ray Charles and the obstacles (blind and black) that he had to overcome to achieve success." Next to Foxx's name Mann affixed a lowercase "x," which, because Mann labeled neutral guests with an "N," may mean that Foxx's politics are beyond neutral. Either that or he's become a secret black Muslim.
Who is Fred Mann? For all we know, he could be a werewolf with supersensitive hearing that detects liberal bias inaudible to the average human's ear. But since he and Tomlinson have not provided the same level of accountability they are demanding from others, it is impossible to know. Reporters who have attempted to locate him, including NPR, have all failed. Perhaps only Van Helsing could uncover Mann's tracks. What is known is that in 1980, Mann worked on the senatorial campaign of Dan Quayle. Then, during Reagan's second term, Mann went to work at the Virginia-based National Journalism Center as its job bank and alumni director until he retired last year. The National Journalism Center is directed by M. Stanton Evans, a former editor of the conservative Indianapolis News, and a founder in 1960 of the right-wing youth group Young Americans for Freedom. Through the center, Evans nurtured movement activists like Mann and trained aspiring young media players, including Ann Coulter and Maggie Gallagher, the conservative Catholic columnist who took federal money from the Bush Administration to promote its policies.
The Mann report may be one of the strangest documents ever produced by the federal government; however, it is not totally without value. Though it may be botched as an indictment of liberal media bias, it inadvertently offers an unfiltered glimpse into the recesses of the conservative mind.
The conservative media game was neatly summarized by Matt Labash, a former senior writer for The Weekly Standard who now writes for National Review, in a 2003 interview on the website journalismjobs.com. Labash explained: "The conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un- objective.... It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."
But until Ken Tomlinson, no conservative imagined that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would provide taxpayer funding for the "great little racket."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20...A2BHNlYwM3NDI-
Arizona School Will Not Use Textbooks
AP
A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans.
Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper.
"The efforts are very sporadic," said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. "A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels."
Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District, said the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year.
He noted that the AIMS test now makes the state standards the curriculum, not textbooks. Arizona students will soon need to pass Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards to graduate from high school.
But the move to laptops is not cheap. The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 students for the entire year. The fast- growing district hopes to have 750 students at the high school eventually.
A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, Baker said.
It's not clear how the change to laptops will work, he conceded.
"I'm sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS
Data Theft: How to Fix the Mess
Joseph Nocera
IN the early 1970's, Senator William Proxmire, the Wisconsin Democrat who was the scourge of the banking industry, decided something needed to be done about the chaotic state of the credit card business.
Credit cards were still relatively new, and all over the country, banks were peppering Americans with unsolicited cards - sending them not only to the heads of households, but to their children, their dogs and their dead grandmothers. Thieves would follow the postman doing his rounds, steal cards out of mailboxes and use them. People were being billed for things they'd never bought with cards they'd never asked for - and the banks were demanding payment. Even though the banking industry insisted that only a small minority of transactions were fraudulent, the public outcry was enormous.
Here's what Mr. Proxmire did. First, in 1970, he drafted a bill that banned the practice of "dropping" credit cards on people without their consent. Four years later, he pushed through a bill that limited consumer liability to $50 if a credit card was used fraudulently.
The banking industry was apoplectic as these bills became the law of the land, especially the $50 limit. Why, bank lobbyists complained, should the institutions have to take the hit if a customer was so careless as to have his wallet stolen or credit card snitched? Shouldn't people be responsible for their own actions?
But in time, the banks came to see that it owed Senator Proxmire a debt of gratitude. He hadn't hurt the credit card industry. He had saved it. By forcing the industry to solicit customers, instead of simply dropping cards on them, he gave Americans the feeling that the decision to have a credit card was theirs, not some bank's.
And with the $50 liability limit, people no longer had to fear the dire consequences of having their card stolen. They could embrace credit cards instead of fearing them, which for better or worse they've been doing ever since; there are today over a billion credit cards just in the United States. Over the years, banks and consumers learned to deal with credit card fraud, so that it has become little more than an irritant. Banks don't even demand the $50; they cover the entire loss themselves.
The current "identity theft" crisis, in which we're learning, daily it seems, that institutions like Bank of America, ChoicePoint, Citigroup and many others have allowed our personal financial data to be lost or stolen, is fundamentally an outgrowth of our dependence on credit.
Credit cards are the primary means of buying things on the Internet. Credit card information is what is most often stolen in a data breach case, like the recent CardSystems Solutions fiasco, in which as many as 40 million credit cards may have been compromised. Even in the worst case, when data thieves get enough personal information to impersonate someone electronically, the bad guys usually wind up using that information to establish credit in order to buy things in that person's name.
So when I read the stories about data theft, I can't help thinking back on that credit card crisis of the 1970's. Now, as then, the chances of facing that worst outcome are pretty rare. The vast majority of modern cases classified as identity theft are really just old-fashioned credit card fraud, easily dealt with. (In fact, most of the time, the fraud is committed the old-fashioned way: through the lifting of a wallet.) According to TowerGroup, a financial services consulting firm, only about 160,000 people last year had their financial identities - as opposed to their credit card information, which numbers in the millions - stolen by fraudsters.
Many of the data losses are just that: lost data, not stolen data. The problem isn't even that new; the main reason we are learning about all these cases is a 2003 California law that required, for the first time, that consumers be informed when their personal information was compromised. Before 2003, there were plenty of examples of hacked data. But we didn't hear about those, so we weren't as worried about it.
But so what? In the end, it doesn't matter if the problem isn't new or the risk of being hurt by a data theft is small: the fear is palpable. "In the ChoicePoint case," said Robert Richardson, the editorial director of the Computer Security Institute, "people weren't just uncomfortable that their data was stolen."
"They were also upset to discover that this company that had insufficiently protected their data even had their data."
ChoicePoint is one of those murky "data aggregators," which describes itself as being involved in the "identification, retrieval, storage, analysis and delivery of data." Just reading the description is unsettling.
There is an uneasy sense that people simply do not have control of their own financial information. Most victims of identity theft have no idea how it happened. Their data is out there in the ether of the Internet or on the computers of companies they've never heard of. And if, heaven forbid, they should have their financial identity stolen, the prospect of disaster looms. Is it any wonder that, according to recent surveys by both the Gartner Group and Forrester Research, the percentage of people who say they have stopped using the Internet to pay bills, has risen substantially?
And yet so far, what we've mainly heard is that the onus is on us, the consumer, to become more vigilant. We are told to check our accounts online regularly and to sign up for services that will allow us to monitor our credit rating. True, banks are finally trying to do a better job of securing credit card and other personal data, but there is no legal requirement for them to do so, and there are plenty of bankers who think the problem is overstated.
"Ever since we've had credit, we've had fraud," said Jerry Silva, a TowerGroup analyst. "There is a feeling from the institutions that they've had this problem solved. And there is not a lot of ID theft, which is what all the hullabaloo is about."
Which is why I wish William Proxmire were still on the case. What we need right now is someone in power who can put the burden for this problem right where it belongs: on the financial and other institutions who collect this data. Let's face it: by the time even the most vigilant consumer discovers his information has been used fraudulently, it's already too late. "When people ask me what can the average person do to stop identity theft, I say, 'nothing,' " said Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security. "This data is held by third parties and they have no impetus to fix it."
Mr. Schneier, though, has a solution that is positively Proxmirian in its elegance and simplicity. Most of the bills that have been filed in Congress to deal with identity fraud are filled with specific requirements for banks and other institutions: encrypt this; safeguard that; strengthen this firewall.
Mr. Schneier says forget about all that. Instead, do what Congress did in the 1970's - just put the burden on the financial industry. "If we're ever going to manage the risks and effects of electronic impersonation," he wrote recently on CNET (and also in his blog), "we must concentrate on preventing and detecting fraudulent transactions." And the only way to do that, he added, is by making the financial institutions liable for fraudulent transactions.
"I think business ingenuity is top notch," Mr. Schneier said in an interview. "And I think if you make it their problem, they will solve it."
Yes, he acknowledged, letting consumers off the hook might cause them to be less vigilant. But that is exactly what Senator Proxmire did and to great effect. Forcing the financial institutions to bear the entire burden will cause them to tighten up their procedures until the fraud is under control. Maybe they will invest in complex software. But maybe they'll take simpler measures as well, like making it a little less easy than it is today to obtain a credit card. Best of all, once people see these measures take effect - and realize that someone else is responsible for fixing the problems - their fear will abate.
As Senator Proxmire understood a long time ago, fear is the great enemy of commerce. Maybe this time, the banks will finally understand that as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/bu.../09nocera.html
Worse Than Death
John Tierney
Last year a German teenager named Sven Jaschan released the Sasser worm, one of the costliest acts of sabotage in the history of the Internet. It crippled computers around the world, closing businesses, halting trains and grounding airplanes.
Which of these punishments does he deserve?
A) A 21-month suspended sentence and 30 hours of community service.
B) Two years in prison.
C) A five-year ban on using computers.
D) Death.
E) Something worse.
If you answered A, you must be the German judge who gave him that sentence last week.
If you answered B or C, you're confusing him with other hackers who have been sent to prison and banned from using computers or the Internet. But those punishments don't seem to have deterred hackers like Mr. Jaschan from taking their place.
I'm tempted to say that the correct answer is D, and not just because of the man-years I've spent running virus scans and reformatting hard drives. I'm almost convinced by Steven Landsburg's cost-benefit analysis showing that the spreaders of computer viruses and worms are more logical candidates for capital punishment than murderers are.
Professor Landsburg, an economist at the University of Rochester, has calculated the relative value to society of executing murderers and hackers. By using studies estimating the deterrent value of capital punishment, he figures that executing one murderer yields at most $100 million in social benefits.
The benefits of executing a hacker would be greater, he argues, because the social costs of hacking are estimated to be so much higher: $50 billion per year. Deterring a mere one-fifth of 1 percent of those crimes - one in 500 hackers - would save society $100 million. And Professor Landsburg believes that a lot more than one in 500 hackers would be deterred by the sight of a colleague on death row.
I see his logic, but I also see practical difficulties. For one thing, many hackers live in places where capital punishment is illegal. For another, most of them are teenage boys, a group that has never been known for fearing death. They're probably more afraid of going five years without computer games.
So that leaves us with E: something worse than death. Something that would approximate the millions of hours of tedium that hackers have inflicted on society.
Hackers are the Internet equivalent of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who didn't manage to hurt anyone on his airplane but has been annoying travelers ever since. When I join the line of passengers taking off their shoes at the airport, I get little satisfaction in thinking that the man responsible for this ritual is sitting somewhere by himself in a prison cell, probably with his shoes on.
He ought to spend his days within smelling range of all those socks at the airport. In an exclusive poll I once conducted among fellow passengers, I found that 80 percent favored forcing Mr. Reid to sit next to the metal detector, helping small children put their sneakers back on.
The remaining 20 percent in the poll (meaning one guy) said that wasn't harsh enough. He advocated requiring Mr. Reid to change the Odor-Eaters insoles of runners at the end of the New York City Marathon.
What would be the equivalent public service for Internet sociopaths? Maybe convicted spammers could be sentenced to community service testing all their own wares. The number of organ-enlargement offers would decline if a spammer thought he'd have to appear in a public-service television commercial explaining that he'd tried them all and they just didn't work for him.
Convicted hackers like Mr. Jaschan could be sentenced to a lifetime of removing worms and viruses, but the computer experts I consulted said there would be too big a risk that the hackers would enjoy the job. After all, Mr. Jaschan is now doing just that for a software security firm.
The experts weren't sure that any punishment could fit the crime, but they had several suggestions: Make the hacker spend 16 hours a day fielding help-desk inquiries in an AOL chat room for computer novices. Force him to do this with a user name at least as uncool as KoolDude and to work on a vintage IBM PC with a 2400-baud dial- up connection. Most painful of all for any geek, make him use Windows 95 for the rest of his life.
I realize that this may not be enough. If you have any better ideas, send them along.
E-mail:
tierney@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/op...ierney.html?hp