[JackSpratts]

Since 2002



V. VI, Number I






























"Certainly 'Southland Tales' has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety, though that perhaps goes without saying." – Manohla Dargis


"Chaos and anarchy…that's what going on." – Gene Simmons



































November 17th, 2007




Net Neutrality Foes Back FCC Investigation into Comcast Traffic Blocking
Nate Anderson

Network neutrality advocates and the industry-funded lobby groups that oppose it in Washington rarely agree on issues, especially when those issues involve network filtering or throttling. That's what makes last week's letter from Hands off the Internet (a telco-backed group opposed to government network neutrality regulations) such a surprise. The group told FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that it supported an FCC investigation into Comcast's alleged BitTorrent blocking.

As increased evidence of Comcast's traffic-shaping measures came to light over the last few weeks, a handful of consumer groups complained to the FCC on November 1. The groups argued that Comcast was violating the four principles found in the FCC's 2005 Internet Policy Statement (PDF). The groups then raised the stakes by calling for a $195,000 Comcast fine for every consumer affected by the problem.

Several of the signatories to that letter are also members of pro-network neutrality group SaveTheInternet.com, and they saw the incident as a perfect counterweight to claims that neutrality isn't necessary because no company has ever violated it. It's also exactly the sort of complaint that one might expect Hands off the Internet to oppose.

Instead, HOTI's letter reiterated the FCC's four principles and called them "the necessary safety net to protect consumers and the openness and freedom of the Internet." The letter went on to say that "the ball is in your court" and that the FCC has a duty to launch an investigation of Comcast in order to see if the company has violated the principles.

What's going on here? Harold Feld, the senior vice president of the Media Access Project, believes that Comcast's tribulations are a goldmine for the telcos, who want to press their advantage. The entire BitTorrent blocking ("delaying" in Comcast-speak) debacle just shows up a basic weakness of cable's current network architecture: bandwidth is shared by all users on a local node.

"Particularly with applications tolerant of minor delays (like downloading static web pages), it was easy for cable operators to share capacity among their subscribers while claiming a very fast always on speed based on the average user load for the system," says Feld, but notes that the system doesn't work well when users start saturating their links by using high-bandwidth applications.

Because P2P apps in particular can lead to consumer complaints from other subscribers on the local node, Comcast has taken to resetting certain types of traffic to keep the load lighter. In Feld's view, this just shows up problem's with cable's network that the DSL and fiber providers (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) are keen to drive home by keeping this issue in the public eye.

Instead of spending tons of cash to upgrade its hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network to fiber, Comcast cheaped out and instead bought some Sandvine gear to disrupt certain traffic instead.

"Looked at this way, you can see why the telcos (and therefore their sock-puppet HOTI) would be a shade peeved about Comcast's decision to 'manage' their network in such a 'cost effective' but deceptive manner," writes Feld. "Because if Comcast can keep pretending its network is just as good as FIOS when it isn't, and can even lie when asked about it directly by customers, then Verizon just wasted a couple of bazillion dollars and took a two-year stock beating for NOTHING."

With support both from the telcos and consumer groups, the FCC will certainly have to examine the issue. Its four principles haven't yet faced a good test case, and disrupting subscriber traffic in order to keep overall bandwidth down seems like a good one to start with. If Comcast's actions don't end up violating the FCC's four principles, then those four principles seem to mean little. But the FCC probably has little appetite for slapping huge fines on a company like Comcast, either.

Still, even opening up an investigation would be a win for consumers because it would show that the FCC considers itself to have the authority to act on such issues (and an interest in doing so). That alone should keep other ISPs treading cautiously, even without any new legislation. It could also be a win for the telcos, which would far prefer FCC oversight to Congressional laws.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-blocking.html





US Internet Control Lead Topic in Rio
Anick Jesdanun

Debate over U.S. control of core Internet systems threatens to overtake an international meeting in Brazil next week that was meant to cover topics including spam, free speech and cheaper access.

The Internet Governance Forum is the result of a compromise world leaders reached at a U.N. summit in Tunisia two years ago. They agreed to let the United States remain in charge.

But they established an annual forum to discuss emerging issues, including whether control of how Internet addresses are assigned — and thus how people use the Internet — should remain with the U.S. government and an American nonprofit.

Many countries complained U.S. dominance wasn't discussed enough during the first forum last year, in Athens. In meetings leading to the second round opening in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, China, Iran, Russia and Brazil, among others, won an opening-day panel devoted to "critical Internet resources."

Some governments are seeking more concrete results, such as a chairman's statement or negotiated agreement on next steps, though U.S. and U.N. leaders cautioned that specific decisions are unlikely and even inappropriate.

"If last year was viewed as a trial run, this year is in a sense a bit more important," said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. "If little comes out of this, I think there will be growing concern that the IGF is little more than a talk shop and a place to meet."

Some governments, particularly in developing countries, sought to strip the United States of its oversight so they could have more say over such policies as domain names in languages other than English.

They failed — at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society, first in Geneva in 2003, then in Tunis in 2005 — and some worry that attempts to renew the debate in Rio would overshadow the rest of the forum's agenda.

"What will be a shame is a repeat of Tunis pushing out these important issues," said Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy for Nominet, which operates Britain's ".uk" domain. "These were very, very hot issues during the world summit, issues over which people violently disagreed."

The four-day forum, with as many as 2,000 representatives expected from government, business and the civil society, is packed with parallel sessions on network security, fighting child pornography, the cost of access, language diversity, privacy and human rights.

A key theme is how to bring the Internet to the next billion people.

But much of the attention is on domain names, the monikers after the "dot" that are crucial for computers to find Web sites and route e-mail. By controlling the core systems, the United States indirectly influences much of the Internet.

The U.S. government, which funded much of the Internet's early development, retains veto power over the California-based nonprofit it selected in 1998 to oversee domain name policies, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

It's not clear how strongly critics of the status quo will push for change. Many recognize that world leaders have committed to holding the forum annually for five years, but they want to see some progress this year before heading to India next year and Egypt in 2009 (Lithuania and Azerbaijan both made bids for the final round in 2010).

"Let's progress slowly but that's not to say go backwards or just spin our wheels," said Hadil da Rocha Vianna, co-chairman of the forum's advisory group and director of science and technology at Brazil's foreign ministry. "So in Rio, the concrete results would be to advance in these debates, deepening themes debated in Athens."

Markus Kummer, the U.N. official who heads the forum's secretariat, said he has tried to temper expectations, stressing that the Tunis document creating the forum "clearly states it's not here to make decisions."

"I don't expect the meetings to change the world and come up with some real, major new decision on the re-architecture of this or that," Kummer said. "But I expect interesting meetings and interesting discussions (to improve) understanding of how the Internet works and what can be done to make it safer."

Kummer said participants are free and encouraged to take what they learn to other venues, such as national legislatures or international, treaty-based bodies where change is possible — including the U.S. Congress and American government agencies because the United States must agree to let go.

U.S. Ambassador David Gross, the State Department's coordinator for international communications and information policy, said participants range from government officials to individuals representing just themselves or millions of people.

"Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate," he said, making the forum "a very poor vehicle for anyone who would seek to come to any consensus, decision-making process."

Nominet's Taylor said success can be defined by the substance in dialogue and the exchange of good practices — not necessarily binding decisions or recommendations.

U.S. and ICANN officials say they welcome any discussions about their role over domain names as long as participants aren't seeking specific action, as they had at the U.N. summit.

"It's fine to have the panel, and it's fine to have the discussions about it," said Theresa Swinehart, ICANN's vice president for global and strategic partnership. "But for the forum to start going into a direction that ends up coming out with recommendations, it would result in becoming four days of negotiating text.

"That would defeat the purpose," she continued. "You lose the entire benefit of information-sharing. People would hold back on what they are saying."

___

Associated Press Writer Michael Astor in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071110/...net_governance





Mininova Enters List of 50 Most Popular Sites on the Internet
Ernesto

Today, Mininova reached another milestone by entering the list of 50 most visited websites on the Internet. Together with most other BitTorrent sites, Mininova has experienced some massive growth over the past year, which proves that BitTorrent’s popularity continues to grow.

Making it to the 50 most visited websites on the Internet is impressive, especially if you consider that 9 out of 50 sites are local google domains. Mininova currently ranks 46th, other sites included in the lists are Yahoo!, YouTube, Myspace, Wikipedia and EBay.

To give an impression how big they are, Mininova has well over 3,000,000 visits and 16,500,000 pageviews a day, and this number is still growing. Last month they already broke the 3 billion .torrent download barrier and we will probably see the 4 billionth download pretty soon.

Niek, one of the founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that the increase in traffic is facilitated by the new hardware they recently installed. “The faster the site is, the more visitors we get,” he said “However, more visitors make the site slower again, so we have to keep optimizing the site and hardware all the time.”

There is also a downside to this positive news of course. Mininova’s continuing growth is, in part, due to the downtime at Demonoid and the issues TorrentSpy and Isohunt currently have with the MPAA.
http://torrentfreak.com/mininova-enters-top-50-071112/





Torrent Site is More Popular Than CNN
Theo Valich

Mininova.org more interesting than politics

FROM TIME TO time, a lot of industry experts will start an argument how much Internet traffic comes from Spam e-mails and p2p protocols.

But it is not often that a torrent search engine can overtake prime sites covered with multibillion dollar news organizations, where a single staffer has higher salary than these guys have budget.

The honor of beating one of world's leading news sites goes to staffers from Mininova.org, who overtook CNN.com back in mid-October, but now it seems that ThePirateBay.org is also on the move. Lads from TPB.org just overtook News.com, and are on a way to overtake CNN.com as well.

In order to get the traffic back, Foxnews.com could consider introducing torrent search on its site.

In a small and quick search, we took Mininova.org and ThePirateBay.org and compared them to cnn.com, foxnews.com and news.com, C'Net's very sneaky domain that targets ton of mainstream users and brings them to a ICT-laden website

Alexa.com can have difficulties counting visitors (some sites don't move at all, and yet their stats are up, sites with stats that are up are going down - at least according to the site stat engine), but it is still very interesting to see how a small site run by couple of enthusiasts can easily become a site in Top 50 most visited ones.

It is hardly credible that some corporation would come and buy the site like Mininova, IsoHunt or ThePirateBay.org, but we'll see how things will develop in this arena.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...te-popular-cnn





Leading BitTorrent Admins Discuss The Future of BitTorrent
Ernesto

BitTorrent is by far the most popular way to transfer large files over the Internet, but where will it be five years from now? To get some answers to this question TorrentFreak asked the admins of Mininova, The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt and TorrentSpy what they think the future holds for BitTorrent and their websites.

It’s hard to predict the future, especially when it comes to technology. However, that didn’t put us off and we gave it a shot. We asked the people behind the 4 largest BitTorrent sites on the Internet to tell us how they envision the future of BitTorrent.

Despite the differences these four guys sometimes have, they all believe that no other P2P protocol performs better than BitTorrent at the moment. However, there’s no doubt that there will be changes in the future.

“Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol” says Justin from TorrentSpy. Peter (aka Brokep) from The Pirate Bay also thinks new protocols will take over eventually. “There will be other alternatives,” he said “Not necessarily ours but others will come.” Niek from mininova has more faith in BitTorrent but expects that the protocol will evolve rapidly, an opinion shared by Gary from IsoHunt.

Most of the admins also predict that mainstream production companies will eventually embrace BitTorrent and P2P and some of them hope to play an active role in the transition from old to new media distribution. Below you can read the full responses to the question I asked them: What do you think the future holds for BitTorrent and your website?

Niek from Mininova

I’m sure that we’ll see quite a few changes in the P2P landscape during the next couple of years.

From a business perspective, I notice that content producers recognize more and more the advantages of P2P distribution models (see e.g. the Pariah Island case). We all know that DRM is close-to-death, and major studios are now rethinking their business models, which is a good thing. We’d like to see Mininova play a major role in this shift, so stay tuned for some related announcements the coming weeks :)

Looking at the technical side of things, I expect that the BitTorrent protocol will evolve rapidly. See for example (audio and video) streaming, which is already possible and supported by several clients. Other interesting developments are BT-capable chips and TOR-like functionality. New protocols (like the one proposed by The Pirate Bay) might arise, but only time will tell whether these will substitute BitTorrent. Personally, I think BitTorrent can go a long way with some extensions and modifications.

Having said that, Mininova’s only focus won’t be BitTorrent: when the “next big thing” arises, we’ll definitely consider backing it.

Justin from TorrentSpy

I don’t really concern myself with the future of BitTorrent the protocol but I do care about peer-to-peer as a technology platform. Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol. However I firmly believe that the use of peer-to-peer for everything from data transfer to shared CPU power will take the Internet to the next level.

If we look at TV you will already see this trend. Media use in our society is transitioning from someone else deciding what you want (push) to something that allows what you want, when you want it (pull). Right now you turn the TV on at 8pm to watch your favorite show or skip channels until you stumble across something interesting. The future is a demand system where you can buy and watch an episode the network has “released” any time you want. Tivo is a first step in this direction.

Surprising as it may seem, this can be done pretty easily today, but is tied up in complex licensing schemes, conflicts between producers and distributors, and a wide array of selfish interests. Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…

Gary from IsoHunt

With so much momentum of content behind BitTorrent, I don’t see it going away anytime soon. Unless there’s a far superior and open protocol that is superior to BitTorrent in efficiency and convenience, for which BitTorrent is pretty hard to beat, I see we’ll like have new developments by extending the existing BitTorrent protocol. Although Bram Cohen talked about Merkle trees as a major revision in improving BitTorrent, and that didn’t go anywhere (at least not in open source). When BitTorrent Inc. do significant enough closed source changes to the protocol, BitTorrent will fork or new open protocols will rise.

For future of BitTorrent sites and IsoHunt, I’ve always been an advocate of open and public access. The more sites try to go underground, the more reasons the authority think there’s something dark at work and more they will take sites down by force - Oink and other private trackers for example. I’ve been blogging about P2P and its economic sense/legitimate use cases for a while (latest one on independent music), and I believe that’s what will give BitTorrent continued adoption and acceptance as a de-facto protocol and internet standard. It’s like the WWW: if people didn’t use the early web for other purposes than for porn (which was prolific in the web’s early days), the governments might have a different view and regulations on the internet now. It’s not what copyright infringement or “piracy” may be occurring, on P2P, BitTorrent or the internet. It’s what new use cases we nurture that benefits both end users and content producers, that will correct the stigma behind P2P and BitTorrent and accelerate their acceptance. Development on isoHunt and our other sites will for sure be done with this in mind.

Peter aka Brokep from The Pirate Bay

First of all, I don’t think it’s easy to predict the future. But I do think that it’s very important to be very promiscuous when it comes to the protocols we use. BitTorrent is currently the best but this might change. There will be other alternatives, not necessarily ours but others will come.

In five years things are probably very different from today, technology wise and politically. The latter thing is the biggest issue, not the technology. I would foresee that streaming is bigger and the companies still try to frame their users to use their locked down systems, maybe not DRM but rather streamed with their clients (like the BT DNA system) which will contain other copyright protection scams.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-future-o...orrent-071113/





AT&T Takes Another Step Towards Filtered Network with Investment in Vobile
Nate Anderson

AT&T announced earlier this year that was planning to introduce content filtering of some sort for all video passing across its network. Exactly what AT&T was thinking remained unclear: would the company truly attempt to reassemble the fragments of peer-to-peer transmissions, then extract video from all sorts of different codecs, then attempt to match it-in real time-to some database of copyrighted works? Would such a thing even be possible?

It's still not clear how AT&T plans to deploy its system, but the company is serious about it. Further evidence of that came today, when a brief Wall Street Journal writeup (subscription) pointed out that the company has just invested in Vobile.

Vobile's core product is a screening technology that it calls "VideoDNA." Like other systems of its kind, VideoDNA develops a unique signature from every frame of video. The signature is meant to be robust enough to survive various transformations and edits, and it can then be used to run matches against incoming content.

Vobile pitches its products as being especially suitable for content tracking and management purposes. Video-sharing sites could deploy the technology to flag user-uploaded content for possible copyright violations. But, as Vobile's site notes, VideoDNA is also quick enough to be deployed on video "when it's transported over a network."

AT&T has yet to publicly pick a winning technology (plenty of other companies are working on similar video identification technology), and it hasn't even revealed the scope of its plans. But the interest in video filtering doesn't appear to have faded after months of time in which executives could ponder the important questions of just how such a system would work and (perhaps more importantly) what customers would think of it.

Based on the complexity of the problem, we suspect that anything initially deployed by AT&T will fall far short of a robust P2P video filter. But should AT&T truly have its eyes on just such a prize, the company would be in a powerful position to impose its own policies on the entire US, since it owns major parts of the Internet backbone. It will also be in a plum position when it comes to dealing with the MPAA and with networks like NBC; both groups have been calling on ISPs to implement exactly this sort of filtering for months.

Vobile, for its part, is also serious about its work. Earlier this month, it added Gideon Yu to company's Board of Directors. Yu is the chief financial officer of Facebook, and also served as the CFO of a little startup called YouTube before it was sold to Google. Yu calls Vobile's tech "a revolutionary step forward for the industry." We may get a chance to find out just how excited consumers are about this revolutionary step forward if AT&T does end up adopting the Vobile VideoDNA tech.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...in-vobile.html





Next Up for Verizon FiOS: Invading Manhattan, Japan-Like Uber-Bandwidth

You might have heard about Verizon's new 20/20 symmetric FiOS—a sweet 20Mbps upstream and down. But 20 ain't 100, and we're damn jealous of the Japanese, so we got on the phone and asked the guys managing Verizon's tubes what's around the bend. The scoop for city dwellers is that we can expect "not too distant" announcements about FiOS availability in Manhattan thanks to ultra-bendable Corning fiber ideal for labyrinthine build-out in apartment high-rises. So, what's the holdup on the Japan- style 100Mbps fiber optic love? Doesn't Verizon have the pipes to supply it? Here are the answers to those questions, and the most important of them all: When is it coming to your house?

Joking aside, one of the biggest threads in comments about FiOS is always, "When will it be available to me?" Right now Verizon's is available to just 9 million households in 16 states, expanding by 3 million a year to cover a full 18 million by 2010. If you're not in an area covered by Verizon's landline phone service now, though, you're out of luck: Verizon doesn't plan on building it outside the current footprint, which is mostly in the Northeast.

For those who already have FiOS and want in on the 20/20 action, availability announcements in areas outside of NY/NJ/CT are coming soon—it makes sense they got it first, given they comprise the only area where the 20Mbps downstream option is the most popular package. (Everywhere else, the most popular packages are in the 5-15Mbps downstream range.)

If you want to know the evolution of super-sick bandwidth, Verizon currently uses the BPON standard, which has limits of 622 Mbps downstream and 155 up per optical line terminal. One of these can serve 32 households. There's no hardware upgrade required to jump to 20/20 service, just a new service profile and a flip of a switch. Of course 32 households couldn't run 20/20 full blast all at once—but according to Brian Whitton, Verizon's Executive Director of Broadband Access Technologies, simultaneous peak usage on that scale is such a remote possibility it's not really an issue. Yet.

Godzilla bandwidth comes into play with GPON, a type of service that can deliver a total pool of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up for the 32 households. Right now Verizon is testing that in Pennsylvania, seeing peak rates of 400Mbps down and sustained rates of 200Mbps. 200Mbps. That's enough to make even the most hardened Tokyo resident jealous with their measly 100Mbps downstream fiber service.

And guess what? "Virtually" every network hub built after January will be GPON-based, says Verizon. It has the network set up for easy upgrading, so to bump current hubs to GPON, technicians just have to swap out the boxes on each end of the fiber cable they've already laid. Not too much of a hassle, in other words. As each current hub hits its bandwidth limit, it too will be updated to super-fast GPON.

Here's the takeaway: The pipes for uber-AZN, droolworthy bandwidth will get here soon, but only if you live within Verizon's wireline network, and only if Verizon sees a demand for the service. Believe it or not, outside geekdom there's not as much demand as you'd think. The numbers for the 50Mbps downstream package they already offer are dwarfed by the cheaper, lower-end ones. So tell your friends to beg Verizon for the ability to download the whole internet in minutes, and maybe, just maybe, they'll respond. They offered the 20/20 service in response to demand, so crying loud and hard just might work.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/fat-pipes...dth-321154.php





Terabit-Class Data Pipes Movies in an Instant

Advanced maths brought to bear on fibre-optic speed problem
J. Mark Lytle

When it comes to internet speeds, we've long-since consigned the humble kilobit-class connection to the dustbin, so a mathematics-based breakthrough has us wondering if megabit - and even gigabit-level connections will one day sound as quaintly archaic.

Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University have tweaked existing protocols to enable standard fibre-optic cables to carry data at hundreds of terabits per second. At that speed, full movies could be downloaded almost instantaneously in their hundreds.

QAM made stable

At the heart of the development is a technique already used in some digital TV tuners and wireless data connections called quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). One glance at the Wikipedia explanation shows that it's no easy science, but the basics of QAM in this scenario require a stable wavelength for data transmission.

As the radio spectrum provides this, QAM-based methods work fine for some wireless protocols, however the nature of the optical spectrum means this has not been the case for fibre-optic cables ... until now.

The university team has solved the stability problem using a special laser that makes it feasible to pipe data down a glass fibre using the QAM method at blistering speeds. Although we shouldn't expect to be choosing from internet connections rated in Tbit/s anytime soon, the development could one day make us look back on ADSL as fondly as we now do our 56K modems.
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/inte...-in-an-instant





You're Switching My Apartment to Comcast? I'm Moving Out
P.Shapiro

Last week the apartment complex I live in near Greenbelt, Maryland, sent a letter stating that starting January 1, 2008, Comcast will be the only Internet service available for residents. That's reason enough for me to move.

You might have heard that Comcast's customer service is so low that the publishers of dictionaries are trying to think up new words to describe it. Abysmal is too kindhearted a way to describe it.

Yes, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) here in the United States recently outlawed apartment complexes entering into single source contracts like this -- which force a particular vendor on apartment residents. But I don't hold out much hope that the FCC is going to come to my rescue.

Which is why I'm looking to form a Verizon FIOS household (or apartment) with a few other community activists. I've posted a message on Craigslist and sent out emails to various email lists I'm on in the Washington DC and Baltimore areas.

More and more of my livelihood is shifting to the Internet, so it only makes sense to run away screaming from Comcast. That way I won't have to take a hammer down to their office or wait around while a Comcast technician falls asleep on a service call.

People, companies will continue treating us poorly until we say stop it. I won't put up with Comcast. I draw the line here.

I love my current apartment and would much rather not move. The letter forcing me to switch to Comcast is tantamount to an eviction notice.

The managers of this apartment complex are otherwise excellent. I have no complaints against them. That they would treat me so poorly as to switch me to Comcast, though? For shame.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/communityvo...switching.html





Comcast Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit Over Traffic Blocking
Eric Bangeman

Comcast's traffic management practices have landed the cable giant in court. Yesterday, a California resident filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Comcast of breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violating the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

John Hart describes himself as a Comcast customer who has seen performance hits when using "Blocked Applications" targeted by Comcast's traffic management application, Sandvine. In his complaint, Hart says that Comcast severely limits "the speed of certain internet applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing and lotus notes [sic]." Comcast accomplishes this by "transmitting unauthorized hidden messages" to the PCs of those using the applications.

Hart also takes issue with some of Comcast's high-speed advertising. He upgraded his service to the Performance Plus package in order to get faster uploads and downloads, and also to use the "Blocked Applications" referenced in the lawsuit. Comcast, he says, did not adequately disclose its traffic management practices when he signed up for High Speed Internet or when he upgraded.

Some Comcast customers have suspected that the ISP blocks some P2P traffic, but it wasn't until last month that the company was caught in the act. Testing performed by the Associated Press showed conclusively that Comcast was using forged TCP reset packets to block BitTorrent traffic. It then emerged that Comcast's traffic management practices were causing problems for other applications, including groupware client Lotus Notes.

Comcast has steadfastly denied blocking traffic, but its explanations of what exactly it is that the company is doing have been unconvincing. The ISP says that it sometimes "delays" traffic, but that the "delayed" traffic will always eventually make it to its destination. A Comcast spokesperson told me today that, while the company does engage in network management like any other ISP, "we're not blocking anything." As was the case with Threat Level, he referred me to the company's FAQ for more information on what the company does and does not do with P2P traffic.

At the beginning of November, a few public interest groups filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, accusing Comcast of running afoul of the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, and asking the Commission to prevent Comcast from engaging in any future traffic blocking. Hart's complaint also accuses Comcast of violating FCC policy by "impairing" the use of some applications while permitting other applications to operate without hindrance.

Hart is seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, damages, a change in the company's advertising to reflect its traffic-shaping practices, and an injunction barring Comcast from further interference with the "Blocked Applications."

A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that the company has not yet been served with the complaint, and therefore had no comment on the lawsuit.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-blocking.html





Vuze Petitions FCC to Restrict Internet Traffic Throttling by ISPs
Daniel Langendorf

Vuze, an application that allows users to search, browse, and download “DVD and HD-quality” video content using the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent (WiR-4/14/07), has petitioned the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to restrict Internet traffic throttling by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Vuze’s timing is important. John Hart filed suit in a California state court Tuesday against Comcast, which offers ISP services. The suit alleges that Comcast’s secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, the contracts users have with Comcast, and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes. Hart wants the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with Internet traffic.

Since it uses the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent, Vuze has been keenly aware of Comcast and the “bandwidth shaping” issue. Vuze filed its “Petition for Rulemaking” (PDF) to urge the FCC to adopt regulations limiting Internet traffic throttling, a practice by which ISPs block or slow the speed at which Internet content, including video files, can be uploaded or downloaded.

“Now is the time to embrace the sea changes in entertainment consumption that are occurring,” said Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa in a release. “The rapid convergence of the entertainment and Internet industries has enabled the delivery of high-quality video, and these throttling tactics represent growing pains as ISPs resist inevitable change.

“We hope our petition will trigger a pubic discussion, but we also need the FCC to act. The industry needs transparency into what ISPs are doing and an environment that fosters innovation in online entertainment.”

At issue is whether “throttling” should be allowed. “Throttling” is often characterized by ISPs as “network management” or “traffic shaping”, which Vuze and others contend interferes with the consumer Internet experience.

If these tactics continue unchecked, Vuze contends, the openness and fairness of the public Internet could be called into question.

In an email to last100, Vuze explained that one of the petition’s aims is to get ISPs, P2P providers, content creators and consumers to contribute to a discussion on the issue and help develop future solutions.
http://www.last100.com/2007/11/15/vu...tling-by-isps/





Senators Seek To Slow Down FCC Rule Changes
FMQB

U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Trent Lott (R-MS) will introduce legislation today that would impose a 90-day delay on an impending FCC decision about whether to relax the rules governing media ownership. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said he wants the agency to wrap up its examination of media ownership and reach a decision by December 18, but if this bill passes, that will slow down the process.

"We believe localism and diversity of media ownership is vital in a democracy," Dorgan said. "Our bill recognizes the importance of a wide range of media owners and local content, and requires a process that does not rush past those concerns to open the gates for even more consolidation of media ownership. We believe there is value to local ownership in the media."

"Communities count on getting their local news from their locally-owned television stations and weekly and daily newspapers," added Lott. "They know 'locally-owned' means they're invested in their communities and care about their well-being. If the FCC won't do their job to keep East and West coast media conglomerates from pushing out these local voices, then there is a role for the Congress to play."

The Media Ownership Act of 2007 - co-sponsored by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL), John Kerry (D-MA) and others - would require 90 days for the public to comment on any proposed media ownership rule changes put forward by the FCC. It would also require the FCC to complete a separate proceeding to evaluate how localism is affected by media consolidation. The bill would require that the public have an opportunity to comment on that proceeding during a 90-day period, and it calls for the establishment of an independent panel to examine female and minority ownership. This panel must issue recommendations and the FCC must act on them prior to voting on any proposed ownership rules.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=509769





Few Friends for Proposal on Media
Stephen LaBaton

The head of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday announced the details of his plan to relax the longstanding rule that had prevented a company from owning both a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same city.

But the deregulatory proposal of Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, may actually force some large media conglomerates to shed stations or newspapers.

For 32 years, supporters of the restriction have maintained that it prevents the growth of ever- larger media conglomerates and helps to keep diverse voices on the airwaves.

These critics denounced Mr. Martin’s proposal for containing what they said were loopholes that could lead to widespread consolidation.

At the same time, however, the newspaper industry’s main trade association and an executive at the Tribune Company separately criticized the plan and said it would not go nearly far enough to help them.

While the plan provides a path for Samuel Zell, the Chicago real estate investor, to complete the buyout of the Tribune Company, it also puts some obstacles in the way — most notably a possible delay in completing the deal until after the end of 2007, which would make it significantly more expensive for the buyers, primarily Tribune employees.

In a memo to employees on Tuesday, the head of Tribune suggested that he was dissatisfied, regarding Mr. Martin’s plan as not going far enough. He also said he would seek to have it expanded.

Under the proposal, Tribune will have to sell media companies in Hartford and possibly Chicago.

The head of the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, will have to fight for an exemption if he wants to continue to control The New York Post and two television stations — WWOR and WNYW — in the metropolitan area.

Other companies, including Gannett and Media General, would have to seek exemptions if they want to continue to hold newspapers and broadcast stations in smaller markets.

In 1975, the commission adopted a rule that generally restricted a company from owning both a newspaper and a station in the same city. Many companies that already had such holdings at the time, including The New York Times Company, which owns a radio station in Manhattan, were unaffected because of a grandfather clause.

Since then, some companies have received what are supposed to be temporary waivers until new rules are adopted. Most media companies are operating under a waiver, the grandfather clause or both. Those waivers are reviewed any time a station changes hands.

Mr. Martin’s plan would enable a media company to own both a newspaper and either a radio or smaller television station in the nation’s 20 largest markets. If the company owns a TV station, then there must be at least eight independent TV stations and newspapers in the same market.

Unless Congress intervenes, Mr. Martin appears to have the votes at the commission to have the rules adopted next month. But that could pose significant problems for Mr. Zell to complete the buyout of the Tribune Company by the end of the year.

Mr. Zell wants to complete the transaction by Dec. 31 to take advantage of tax rules that could save the newly formed company more than $100 million. In addition, if the deal is not closed by Dec. 31, the $34 a share that shareholders would receive would rise by an additional 8 percent.

Tribune executives have said that their banks need 20 working days after obtaining regulatory approval to line up $4.2 billion in financing to complete the deal. Mr. Martin expects to complete a vote on his plan on Dec. 18.

While Mr. Martin said he did not anticipate granting new long-term waivers to any companies — including Tribune, he said in a telephone call with reporters that a two-week exemption might be possible if he already knew he had the votes to complete the rule making by Dec. 18.

Terry Holt, a spokesman for Mr. Zell, referred all questions about the deal to Gary Weitman, a spokesman at Tribune. Mr. Weitman declined to comment. In an e-mail message to employees, the chief executive, Dennis J. FitzSimons, said Tribune still hoped to close the transaction by the end of the year. He also said that the company would “seek an expansion of cross-ownership relief” beyond what was contained in Mr. Martin’s plan.

Commission officials said that Tribune representatives had been in discussions with officials to try to come up with a way for the commission to provide enough of a signal of its intentions to satisfy the bankers.

But for media deals in the future, it is unclear whether the new rules will make it significantly easier for conglomerates to own both a newspaper and a station in most markets.

In telephone briefings with reporters, Mr. Martin said the commission would consider granting exemptions if other combinations were in the public interest, but that the “presumption would be against them.”

The proposal would require the commission in granting exemptions to consider the level of media concentration and make a finding that the companies involved would increase the amount of local news. It would require a commitment that both the newspaper and the station exercise independent news judgment. Finally, the commission would be obliged to consider the financial condition of the newspaper, and whether the owner was committed to invest significantly in the operations of a paper in distress.

In announcing his plan, Mr. Martin said he sought to strike a compromise that would assist what he said was a financially ailing newspaper industry while trying to be sensitive to concerns about the effects of media consolidation on the quality of news coverage.

“The newspaper industry has faced significant challenges recently and I feel we have to do all we can to ensure we continue to have a vibrant industry,” Mr. Martin said.

His plan was criticized by some lawmakers, who said it would lead to too much consolidation. They have introduced legislation to delay action by the commission.

“The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has put forward what I’m sure he regards as a reasonable compromise on the issue of media consolidation,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. “But he has yet to make the case for why any further media consolidation is necessary. Indeed, he is relying on an assumption that newspapers are doomed and that cross-ownership is necessary to save them. I believe this is not the case.”

The plan was also attacked by the Newspaper Association of America, which complained that it was too modest and that Mr. Martin did not go far enough.

“The fundamental issues he raises concerning the vitality of newspapers and assuring that local news remains available to the public in print and in broadcast are not confined to the top 20 markets,” said John F. Sturm, president and chief executive of the trade organization.

It was also challenged in a statement by the two Democrats on the commission, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein.

The two commissioners said that despite Mr. Martin’s portrayal of the plan as a modest one, the top 20 markets constitute 43 percent of the nation’s households. And they said the plan gave loose guidelines that would permit the commission to grant many exemptions in smaller markets.

“This is not to my mind a modest proposal,” Mr. Copps said. “It is gift-wrapped to look like a modest proposal. It strikes me as immodest and opens the floodgates to a lot of deals.”

But for the Tribune, at least, the rules are likely to lead to some sales of media properties. Tribune owns two TV stations and a newspaper in Hartford, which is not one of the Top 20 markets. It also owns a radio and a television station in Chicago, as well as The Tribune. (The rule, as proposed, lets a company own a newspaper and either a radio or TV station.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/bu...a/14media.html





FCC Wants More Info From XM and Sirius
FMQB

The FCC sent questionnaires to XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio that will provide an indication of areas where the FCC could ask for concessions if the proposed merger of the two satcasters is approved. The request seeks detailed information about many facets of their operations, such as exclusive distribution contracts, programming arrangements and technical aspects, according to the Wall Street Journal. The FCC also wants information on which channels will duplicate each other and could be consolidated, as well as details on interoperable technology to allow programming from both services to work on one radio. Both the FCC and the Justice Department are reviewing the proposed XM-Sirius deal to decide if it should be allowed.

Meanwhile, the two broadcasters have gained additional support for the merger idea from various U.S. Senators and the NASCAR organization. These new endorsements add to those from the League of Rural Voters, NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the National Council of Women's Organizations.

NASCAR filed a statement with the FCC that reads, "We hope that the proposed merger will lead to more flexible programming options for consumers, which will lead to an increase in the number of people that receive NASCAR-related satellite radio programming."

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) released a statement saying, "Sirius and XM have responded to the market's desire for more choice, and we applaud them for voluntarily offering subscribers new and innovative listening options. We are particularly pleased that they will offer family-friendly options that allow subscribers to block adult programming."

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) added, "This is a great example of how private industry can and will respond to the demands of consumers without the need for government intervention. We hope that other entertainment providers will follow XM-Sirius' lead and offer Americans increased choices and customization."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=507921





Sirius, XM Shareholders Give Green Light to Merger
Marguerite Reardon

Shareholders of both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio separately approved Sirius' $5 billion acquisition of XM on Tuesday.

Now the companies just need approval from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission before they can make the deal final.

But approval from these agencies is far from guaranteed. The FCC has been examining the deal very closely. Originally, the agency barred satellite radio companies from combining. But the rule could be changed, especially as satellite radio faces more competition from Internet music services, music playing phones and online music stores like Apple's iTunes that allow people to play music on iPods.

Sirius and XM argue that together they could offer consumers more choices and pricing options. The companies each offer packages that include music, talk, sports, and other programming for about $13 per month. If the deal is approved, the companies say they can offer plans starting at around $7 per month.

Some analysts expect the FCC to make a decision on the deal in early December.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9816130-7.html





musicFIRST Suggests Lower Performance Royalty Rates For Some
FMQB

Multiple reports say that the musicFIRST coalition is proposing to Congress that certain broadcasters get a break in the suggested performance royalty rates. Flat rates would be applied to "small commercial radio stations," noncommercial stations and college stations.

According to Radio Ink, musicFIRST's proposal would get rid of exemptions and let "small" commercial stations pay a flat, annual royalty rate of $5000, with non-comms and college stations paying out $1000 per year. Stations that are not music formatted, such as Talk stations, would not pay the performance royalty at all. Stations that use some music in their programming would potentially pay a "per program license option" while religious programming would be exempt altogether.

Next Tuesday, November 13, a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing will take place on the proposed performance royalty rates, with Lyle Lovett set to testify in its favor.

Earlier this week, musicFIRST took the NAB to task for the organization's insistence on referring to the performance royalties as a "tax." The organization sent a dictionary to NAB head David Rehr to clarify the definition of a 'tax.'
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=508769





Prince To Take On The Pirate Bay
Ernesto

Prince, described by some people as one of the most creative and talented musicians, hired the infamous “Web Sheriff” who announced lawsuits against The Pirate Bay in the U.S., France and Sweden. “Way to go on losing all your fans” was the first response of Pirate Bay admin Brokep.

In September we already reported that Prince hired the Web-Sheriff in an attempt to bring down the Pirate Bay. Web Sheriff now gave out some more details on the upcoming legal battles.

The Sheriff is convinced that he has a strong case and told CNET News: “There is no way that they will have any defense because it’s blatant piracy. They’ll either have to come out and fight or just try and ignore it. In that case, we’re going to win a default judgment against them. This could be a ticking time bomb for them. They can’t outrun this. We are very confident.”

Pirate Bay admin Brokep was not impressed by Web Sheriff’s expressed confidence, and told us earlier: “He’s welcome to try and sue us in Sweden, there’s no basis. And it’s so funny that he’s teaming up with the joke of the anti piracy world - Web Sheriff.”

In addition to suing The Pirate Bay, Web Sheriff also told CNET News that he will go after the companies that advertise on the popular BitTorrent tracker and that he will be involved an investigation into The Pirate Bay’s money streams.

This is not the first time the Web Sheriff, also known as John Giacobbi, clashes with The Pirate Bay. Some hilarious email correspondence is still available on The Pirate Bay’s legal threat page.
http://torrentfreak.com/prince-to-ta...te-bay-071111/





Prince Releases "Diss" Track On Greedy Fans
FMQB

Depending on which news source you follow, Prince may or may not be suing three fan Web sites for using his likeness without his permission. As reported earlier this week, those fan sites joined together as "Prince Fans United" and called the alleged legal action against them a violation of freedom of speech. However, a company helping Prince in his copyright issues told Reuters the Purple One is not suing his fans. "This is not about freedom of speech," said John Giacobbi, managing director of Internet policing specialist Web Sheriff. "The current issue is one between Prince's record label and three unofficial Web sites and relates to the use of Prince trademarks and photographs, many of which are Prince's copyright."

But whether legal action is being forged or not, one thing is for sure: Prince has taken out his frustrations musically and recorded a new diss track for the false fans and hangers on. The Funk jam, dubbed "PFUnk," is posted at Princefamsunited.com. "The only reason you say my name is to get your fifteen seconds of fame, nobody’s even sure what you do,” Prince sings. "I don’t care what people may say, I ain’t gonna let it ruin my day.” Toward the end, Prince tells his fans, “I love all y’all, don’t you ever mess with me no more."

So far the fans seem to be enjoying the diss track and are posting positive reviews on message boards. One poster on the Housequake.com board said, “It really is head and shoulders above anything on [Planet Earth] or 3121,” and another noted that it sounds like a Prince B-side from 1987.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=510536





Jacko Opens Up As Thriller Turns 25
FMQB

With December marking the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's landmark Thriller album, the reclusive singer actually granted an interview to Ebony magazine in which he talked about his solo career and the state of music and Hip-Hop today. The magazine comes out on Monday, but some excerpts have already been released.

When comparing his debut solo album, Off The Wall, to Thriller, Jackson said it was "a complete transition." "Ever since I was a little boy, I would study composition. And it was Tchaikovsky that influenced me the most," he tells Ebony, according to MTV News. "If you take an album like Nutcracker Suite, every song is a killer, every one. So I said to myself, 'Why can't there be a pop album where every [song is a killer]?'... I do that same process with every song. It's the melody, the melody is the most important. If the melody sounds good in my head, it's usually good when I do it."

The singer is rumored to be working with Kanye West and Will.I.Am on a comeback album, and while he did say, "I'm writing a lot of stuff right now" and "I'm in the studio, like, every day," he didn't reveal when a new album would be coming. He does, however, think that Ne-Yo, Chris Brown and Akon are "wonderful."

"When [Rap] came out, I always felt that it was gonna take more of a melodic structure to make it more universal, 'cause not everybody speaks English, and you are limited to your country," Jackson explained, according to MTV News. "But when you can have a melody, and everybody can hum a melody, then that's when it became France, the Middle East, everywhere! All over the world now, 'cause they put that melodic, linear thread in there. You have to be able to hum it, from the farmer in Ireland to that lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem to anybody who can whistle to a child poppin' their fingers. You have to be able to hum it."

There are no concrete tour plans in Jackson’s future, but he did say he doesn't see himself staying on the road in his old age. "Not the way James Brown did, or Jackie Wilson did, where they just killed themselves," Jackson said. "I wish [Brown] could have slowed down and been more relaxed and enjoyed his hard work."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=509667





Radiohead Set In Rainbows Release Date, Dispute ComScore Data
FMQB

Another day, another slew of news from the Radiohead camp. First off, the band has confirmed that their new album, In Rainbows, will get its CD release via XL Recordings overseas on December 31. The album will also be available on vinyl. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" will be the official single, with a physical single released in the U.K. on January 14. While ATO/Side One is still the reported frontrunner for In Rainbows' U.S. release, nothing has been officially confirmed yet.

Meanwhile, the band is disputing Tuesday's story that ComScore data found the majority of fans did not pay for In Rainbows via the unique choose-your-own-price option for its download. After ComScore found that under four out of 10 fans who globally downloaded the album opted to pay zero dollars, Radiohead released a statement calling the data "wholly inaccurate."

According to the band's statement, the ComScore report "in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project." They added, "the group's representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band's Web site, it is impossible for outside organizations to have accurate figures on sales."

Radiohead has also reportedly revealed the new box set of their earlier material was not their idea. A representative for the band told Pitchforkmedia that the set was conceived by EMI, and they opted not to participate in the project. And in related news, Nielsen Soundscan data shows that since the announcement of In Rainbows last month, sales of Radiohead's catalog have increased. According to Billboard, the Radiohead catalog sold a total of 35.8 percent more copies in the month after the new record's announcement than in the month before. Sales went up 16 percent in the week after In Rainbows was announced, and then 21 percent after the album went on sale.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=509579





The New Deal: Band as Brand
Jeff Leeds

IF you surveyed the crowd this summer at the punk-flavored Vans Warped Tour here, thick with unexpected piercings and regrettable tattoos, the Paramore fans were hard to miss. Many were clean-cut young girls sporting the same shaggy orange-and-blonde hairstyle as the one worn by the band’s singer, Hayley Williams, in the music video for this pop-punk band’s hit song, “Misery Business.”

“I just want to be just like her,” said a 12-year-old fan named Christine, who cried while standing in line to get autographs from Ms. Williams, 18, and her band mates. Ms. Williams cupped a hand over her mouth and spun away for a moment for fear of losing her own composure.

Paramore is undeniably ascendant: after three years of tireless runs through clubs and festivals, the band, from Franklin, Tenn., has built a passionate audience that has snapped up more than 350,000 copies of its recent second album, “Riot!,” more than doubling the sales of its debut. And now the band is selling out theaters on its biggest tour to date.

Though its success is in large part due to smart pop songwriting and a fashion-forward frontwoman, music executives and talent managers also cite Paramore as a promising example of a rising new model for developing talent, one in which artists share not just revenue from their album sales but concert, merchandise and other earnings with their label in exchange for more comprehensive career support.

If the concept takes hold, it will alter not only the way music companies make money but the way new talent is groomed, and perhaps even the kind of acts that are offered contracts in the first place.

Commonly known as “multiple rights” or “360” deals, the new pacts emerged in an early iteration with the deal that Robbie Williams, the British pop singer signed with EMI in 2002. They are now used by all the major record labels and even a few independents. Madonna has been the most prominent artist to sign on (her recent $120 million deal with the concert promoter Live Nation allows it to share in her future earnings), but the majority of these new deals are made with unknown acts.

It’s not possible to tabulate the number of acts working under 360 deals, but worldwide, record labels share in the earnings with such diverse acts as Lordi, a Finnish metal band which has its own soft drink and credit card, and Camila, a Mexican pop trio that has been drawing big crowds to its concerts. In the United States, Interscope Records benefits from the marketing spinoffs from the Pussycat Dolls, including a Dolls-theme nightclub in Las Vegas.

“Five or eight years ago an eyebrow would be raised,” said the music producer Josh Abraham, whose recent credits include recordings by Slayer and Pink. “Now it’s everywhere. You can’t talk about what a deal looks like without seeing 360.”

Like many innovations, these deals were born of desperation; after experiencing the financial havoc unleashed by years of slipping CD sales, music companies started viewing the ancillary income from artists as a potential new source of cash. After all, the thinking went, labels invest the most in the risky and expensive process of developing talent, so why shouldn’t they get a bigger share of the talent’s success?

In return for that bigger share, labels might give artists more money up front and in many cases touring subsidies that otherwise would not be offered. More important, perhaps, artists might be allowed more time to develop the chops needed to build a long career. And the label’s ability to crossmarket items like CDs, ring tones, V.I.P. concert packages and merchandise might make for a bigger overall pie.

Not everyone is sold on the concept. Many talent managers view 360s as a thinly veiled money grab and are skeptical that the labels, with their work forces shrinking amid industrywide cost cutting, will deliver on their promises of patience.

“That’s a hard speech for many people to buy into,” said Bruce Flohr, a longtime talent executive who signed the Dave Matthews Band to RCA Records and now works for ATO Records, an independent label. “You can speak to me that you’re going to work a record for 18 months. You’re going to work a record for 18 months when it’s selling 420 copies six months from now? Come on — really?”

Even inexperienced performers may resist sharing their take from the box office, particularly at a time when plunging CD sales have pushed artists to rely even more on their concert earnings.

But record executives argue that such deals could free them from the tyranny of megahits because there would be less pressure to make back the label’s money immediately. In the 1990s the arrival of computerized data from SoundScan, which tracks retail sales, meant the industry had an instant scorecard that tempted companies to push for Hollywood blockbuster-style opening weeks. The demand for quick payoffs persisted, even though a review of the last 15 years of Billboard data shows the albums that immediately seized spots on the upper half of the Billboard Top 200 chart would go on to sell fewer copies, on average, than the releases that slowly worked their way up.

“If we weren’t so mono-focused on the selling of recorded music, we could actually take a really holistic approach to the development of an artist brand,” said Craig Kallman, chairman of Atlantic Records, which signed Paramore, along with Fueled By Ramen Records. “What’s the healthiest decision to be made, not just to sell the CD but to build the artist’s fan base?”

The industry’s hunger for 360 deals might also subtly shift the ways labels view the scouting and cultivation of talent, a process known as A&R, or artist and repertory, development.

Rap acts, for example, might lose out, since their recordings can be expensive to produce and very few become touring successes. On the other hand, rappers can attract lucrative endorsements for products from sneakers to computers to soft drinks; many have started apparel lines. With an eye to a piece of that potential revenue, Atlantic recently signed the Brooklyn rapper Maino to a 360-style pact.

And labels may take a closer look at the progeny of the Grateful Dead: hard-touring jam bands that don’t necessarily sell many CD’s or score radio hits but do draw obsessively loyal fans who gobble up tickets and memorabilia. “We used to look at jam bands as bands that absolutely we shouldn’t sign,” Mr. Kallman said. “Now all of a sudden I’m saying: ‘Guys, you absolutely must find the next hottest jam band. I need the next Phish. Urgently.’”

A somewhat similar blueprint emerged in 2005 when Atlantic and a small partner, the Florida company Fueled By Ramen, signed Paramore with plans to build a brand-name rock band, one that now not only racks up sold-out shows but sells merchandise from flip-flops to tube tops. The band members, who were mostly teenagers when they signed, felt drawn to a comprehensive approach that allowed for slower growth, Ms. Williams said during a recent chat on the band’s tour bus.

The slow work of playing scores of clubs has paid off so far. It took time for Ms. Williams’s marketable girl-power persona to blossom. At first she usually wore a T-shirt and jeans, but after roughly two years of gigs, she had an epiphany.

“We were leaving Glasgow, Scotland, on the way to another city, and I remember saying, ‘I don’t want to wear this kind of stuff anymore, because I kind of feel like a dude,’” she recalled.

As the band developed, Atlantic and Fueled By Ramen underwrote many of its touring expenses, including, early on, the purchase of a van and payments to Ms. Williams’s mother to continue the band members’ high school education on the road, said John Janick, Fueled By Ramen’s top executive.

Paramore’s handlers wanted the band to hone its craft off the industry radar, forgoing the push to get radio play for any singles from the band’s first album, 2005’s “All We Know is Falling.” Instead, Fueled By Ramen tried to drum up support on Web sites like Purevolume.com, where users explore new music. “The band was so young, and they were trying to figure out who they were,” Mr. Janick said.

Paramore’s debut sold more than 140,000 CDs: no flop but far below typical expectations for a band considered a label priority. “We were given all the time in the world, and all the support we could ever ask for, to basically do nothing but play shows,” Ms. Williams said. Without the 360 approach, she said, “I don’t know that we would’ve been given that lenience.”

Though the concept could be applied to anyone, even fleetingly famous pop stars, the real potential of a 360-style pact does not emerge unless an act is popular long enough to attract either loyal fans who reliably buy tickets, or attention from business partners who might help market spinoffs like a fragrance or sneaker line.

“Let’s face it, if you’ve sold 1.5 million albums off one single, and here comes your clothing line, and here comes your personalized phone, you haven’t really built a fan base,” Mr. Flohr of ATO said. “You’ve built fans of songs.”

If 360s mean that labels might practice more patience in developing raw talent, however, they could hardly have picked a worse moment. In the open culture of the Internet fans can render judgment on burgeoning artists almost instantly, long before the musicians have a chance to hone their songs or road-test their performance skills. Indie-rock bands run a gantlet of blogs that might include a round of breathless hype that vaults them to Next-Big-Thing status then a thorough backlash, all before they even release an album.

While most labels now monitor blogs for new acts to sign, many executives insist that, once they commit to developing a new act’s career, they can discount much of the online banter. “It’s not just like, ‘Oh my god, they’re not hip in Williamsburg anymore, so therefore it’s over,’” said Steve Ralbovsky, a longtime A&R executive who signed artists including Kings of Leon at RCA Records and now runs his own unit, Canvasback, at Columbia Records. “You just have to realize there’s a world apart” from the blogosphere.

Mr. Ralbovsky, who has started to discuss 360-style pacts with several artists, said it will take “a couple of years” before anyone can determine whether a group’s ancillary income can offset the continuing slide in album sales. As for Paramore, executives say they still view the band as an investment, and decline to disclose financial details of Atlantic’s arrangement.

Particulars of a 360 deal might differ from label to label, but a recent Atlantic offer to another act provides an example of how one might be structured.

Atlantic’s document offers a conventional cash advance to sign the artist, who would receive a royalty for sales after expenses were recouped. With the release of the artist’s first album, however, the label has an option to pay an additional $200,000 in exchange for 30 percent of the net income from all touring, merchandise, endorsements and fan-club fees.

Atlantic would also have the right to approve the act’s tour schedule, and the salaries of certain tour and merchandise sales employees hired by the artist. But the label also offers the artist a 30 percent cut of the label’s album profits — if any — which represents an improvement from the typical industry royalty of 15 percent.

Mr. Kallman said that if Atlantic engages more artists in such agreements, it will have to devote more resources to a smaller roster and raise the stakes for each album. “Your batting average has to go up,” he said. If new artists don’t become successful, “I’ve doubled and tripled down on everything and I’m still playing to empty houses and not selling records.”

As for Paramore, the band’s chance to develop away from the spotlight of the mainstream marketplace has now ended. With its gathering fame, the band has already confronted a handful of tough decisions about how to maintain its identity. Ms. Williams said she rejected an overture from a shoe company that wanted to feature her — alone — in an ad campaign.

Still, to grow, the band will have to expand its reach. Josh Farro, Paramore’s guitarist, sounded wary. Until now “we didn’t want to get lumped into that whole machine, MTV and all that stuff,” he said. “We felt like it was just too soon. And we’d rather build a solid fan base.”

He added, “We have such crazy fans, and those are the ones that are going to stick with us forever.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/ar...ic/11leed.html





Divorces can be pricey

McCartney Sees Beatles Going Digital Next Year
Gary Graff

As he rolls out a new DVD and expanded edition of his latest album, Paul McCartney is predicting the Beatles' catalog will make its long-awaited arrival in the digital realm next year.

"It's all happening soon," McCartney told Billboard.com. "Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go -- there's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long.

"It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008," he said.

As a group, the Beatles rank among the highest-profile holdouts in putting their catalog online, but a recent settlement to a lengthy trademark dispute between Apple and their company, Apple Corps Ltd., was seen as finally clearing the way.

McCartney said any additional delays in bringing the Fab Four' music to the Internet have been due to "contractual" issues as well as deliberate planning by all parties involved.

"You've got to get these things right," he said. "You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years' time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?!"

The solo catalogs of all four Beatles have been available for download since October, when the music of George Harrison went digital. Apple has not said when it expects to release the Beatles' catalog, though the market has been expecting it since the trademark settlement in February.

In the meantime, McCartney is giving fans plenty to hear -- and see.

"The McCartney Years" is a three-DVD set that features videos and concert footage from throughout his solo career, including newly recorded McCartney commentary tracks as well as rare and unreleased material.

McCartney said he was initially disinclined to do a video collection -- "It's almost like your memoirs; you want to wait until you're sort of done," he explained -- but was persuaded by director Dick Carruthers and executive production consultant Ray Still.

"They sold me on it," said McCartney, who served as the set's executive producer. "They cleaned up the picture and sound, and I was like, 'Geez, I've never heard it like this. I've never seen it like this,' so I started to get excited."

"The McCartney Years" comes out in tandem with an expanded edition of his latest album, "Memory Almost Full."

The new version features three bonus tracks -- including a rare instrumental called "In Private" -- videos for the singles "Dance Tonight" and "Ever Present Past" -- and a DVD from his June 7, 2007, concert at London's Electric Ballroom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111501278.html





EMI Labels Sue Online Music Executive Robertson

EMI Group companies sued online music industry executive Michael Robertson for copyright infringement on Friday, some seven years after his former company paid recording firms more than $100 million to settle a similar case.

Several EMI-owned labels and publishers sued Robertson and MP3tunes, which runs the sites Sideload.com and MP3tunes.com, for willful infringement of copyright over the Internet, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Robertson said in a phone interview from San Diego he had not seen the lawsuit, but that the case appeared to be "retaliatory," as MP3tunes had sued EMI in San Diego in September over a take-down notice the record company sent for Sideload, a search engine for digital music files.

Robertson, 40, is chief executive of MP3tunes and was the founder of MP3.com, which was sued in 2000 by several major recording companies, including some of the plaintiffs in this case, according to the complaint.

MP3.com was later bought by Vivendi's Universal Music Group for $385 million. Universal at the time was the only record company of the five major labels that had sued it to refuse to settle its copyright infringement suit with MP3.com.

"These guys rush off to court and tell the court that I am terrible, and then they end up buying my company," Robertson said. "It is really a shame, because instead of using these technologies to improve their business, they make an enemy of every technology company out there."

In 2003, News.com parent company CNET Networks bought MP3.com. As for MP3tunes, EMI's complaint says that MP3tunes' two Web sites offer an integrated music service, allowing users to listen to music on their computers, obtain copies of songs online, transfer music to their computers and portable devices, and distribute it to others.

Sideload streams music to users, enabling them to listen to a wide array of music on demand, the complaint said. Robertson sold MP3.com and "ultimately started (the newer site, MP3tunes.com) as a vehicle to achieve a comparable infringing purpose," the complaint read. "MP3tunes, however, does not own the music it exploits; nor does MP3tunes have any legal right or authority to use or exploit that music."
http://www.news.com/EMI-labels-sue-o...3-6217961.html





RIAA: Jammie Thomas Has "No Basis" to Complain About Damage Award
Eric Bangeman

The RIAA has responded to Jammie Thomas' motion for a new trial or to have the amount of the jury award slashed. In their reply, the record labels argue that since Thomas agreed to the jury instructions and was aware of the possibility of a massive award, she has no basis to challenge the constitutionality of the statutory damages.

After a three-day trial last month, a Duluth, MN, jury found that Thomas willfully infringed on the record labels' copyrights by downloading and distributing 24 copyrighted recordings. Under the provisions of the Copyright Act, they could have awarded the labels anywhere from $750 to $150,000 for each of the songs. They ultimately settled on $9,250 per song for a grand total of $222,000.

In her motion, Thomas argued that the award was unconstitutionally excessive, citing testimony in UMG v. Lindor (a case that the labels call "unrelated" in their response) that the labels only make about 70¢ per song sold online. Thomas instead would like to see damages limited to those that the labels can actually prove, arguing that any award above the labels' actual damages is "purely punitive." At most, statutory damages should be capped at 10 times actual damages.

The RIAA offers a number of reasons why the judge should deny Thomas' motion. The trade group notes that statutory damages need not be tied to actual damages. "Defendant's argument that statutory damages must bear some reasonable relationship to actual damages has been considered, and rejected, by numerous courts," reads the reply. "[A]wards of statutory damages under the Copyright Act that fall within the limits set by Congress are for the jury to determine, whatever the amounts of actual damages (if any)."

During the trial, the RIAA made no attempt to quantify the damages it suffered as a result of Thomas' actions. The labels have said in the past that thousands of jobs have been lost and many groups left unsigned due to economic losses from piracy. Despite that, Sony head of litigation Jennifer Pariser testified the company had never stopped to calculate the actual damages it had suffered. Thomas is also wrong to focus solely on the damages caused by illicit downloading, argues the RIAA. The plaintiffs were also harmed by her "unlawful distribution" of the tracks on KaZaA, although the RIAA presented no evidence that any unlawful distribution took place during the trial.

The jury instructions come into play in the RIAA's response as well. The labels note that Thomas signed off on said instructions and verdict form that enabled the jury to come up with a damage figure up to the $150,000 maximum. As a result, she should not be allowed to argue now that the verdict is "somehow unconstitutionally excessive."

One of those instructions became a point of contention between the RIAA and Thomas. As the instructions were originally written, the RIAA would have had to have shown that Thomas actually transferred songs over KaZaA in order to demonstrate infringement. After the RIAA objected, Judge Michael Davis modified the instructions to say that making the songs available violated the labels' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether any transfer took place.

Thomas should be forced to pony up the full $222,000, the labels believe. "Defendant should not now be allowed to shirk her responsibility for her own calculated decisions first to engage in substantial online infringement of Plaintiffs' copyrights and then to try to conceal her infringement," argues the RIAA. "Where, as here, the amount awarded by the jury was less than 10% of what the jury could have awarded, there is no basis for a remittur or a new trial."

It's not known when Judge Davis will rule on Thomas' motion. If the verdict and damage amount stand, Thomas will undoubtedly continue her appeal, likely focusing on distribution question in the jury instructions. In the meantime, she's no doubt hoping that her thong underwear sales make a dent in the judgment.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...age-award.html





Major Movie Bust Fine Dwarfed by RIAA Tab
Eric Bangeman

If a woman found to have shared 24 songs over KaZaA was ordered to pay $9,250 for each track, what do you think an appropriate fine for uploading the first copy of The Simpsons Movie to the Internet? According to an Australian magistrate, AUS$1,000, or about US$890.

Jose Duarte, a 21-year-old resident of Sydney, was fined that amount after he pleaded guilty to a single count of distributing copyrighted material earlier today. Duarte was arrested in August after an international investigation spearheaded by Fox, which released the movie, fingered him as the first person to have uploaded The Simpsons Movie.

Duarte recorded the movie on his cell phone on the day of its release in Australia and quickly uploaded it to the Internet. According to his lawyer, Ken Stewart, Duarte actually uploaded it twice, believing he had failed. "It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish," Stewart told the AP. "I have sat and spent time with this young man... and I am quite satisfied that he had no idea what he was doing."

Prosecutor Chuan Ng said that Duarte's cap was up for only a few hours, which was enough time for it to be downloaded 3,213 times. Duarte's cap allowed some Simpsons fans in North America and Europe to see the movie before its official release in those regions.

So, $890 for The Simpsons Movie filmed on a cell phone and $9,250 for an MP3 of a Dream Theater tune. One of these penalties seems really out of proportion to the crime, and we'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which one. If nothing else, the two cases demonstrate the need for clearer, more reasonable penalties for copyright infringement—even in different countries.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-riaa-tab.html





New Media: Sue Downloaders? Nah, Just Tap Them for Donations
Mathew Ingram

Downloading movies from the Internet without paying for them is wrong, right?

So the only proper response for a producer would be to wait for the Motion Picture Association of America (or the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association) to sue downloaders and threaten to put them in jail, where they belong.

That's certainly one popular approach and the one the industry has chosen to take more often than not.

However, one independent filmmaker - who discovered his movie was being downloaded by users of file-sharing networks - has reached out to downloaders and asked them to make a donation to cover his costs.

Eric Wilkinson said he realized what was happening after watching the traffic to his website explode, with most of it coming from a file-sharing website. So he decided to try what he called the "Radiohead model," named for the British band that offered its latest album online in return for a donation.

Wilkinson posted a message on his MySpace page, but also took his appeal directly to downloaders at the file-sharing discussion forum - a site called RSLog.com - where he asked for donations to be made to his PayPal account.

The producer even gave downloaders credit for helping to promote his movie, saying their comments on Amazon, IMDB and elsewhere helped to create a buzz around the movie, which is called The Man From Earth. The film became the fifth-most-popular title on IMDB in a matter of weeks.

When some users of RSLog.com expressed skepticism that he was who he said he was, the producer posted a picture of himself on the forum and at his MySpace page. That seemed to convince most of the commenters, several of whom said they had already made donations to Wilkinson's account.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...inment/Movies/





Movie Reviews

Apocalypse Soon: A Mushroom Cloud Doesn’t Stall 2008 Electioneering
Manohla Dargis

“Southland Tales,” Richard Kelly’s funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired look at America and its discontents, opens with the very biggest of bangs. The place is Texas, the time is 2005, and a crowd of laughing men, women and children are celebrating the Fourth of July when a mushroom cloud blooms in the sky, igniting World War III. Not long after the smoke clears, Justin Timberlake, playing an Iraq war veteran with a thing for quoting Revelation, ominously intones in voice-over: “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a whimper but with a bang.”

The lines are borrowed from T. S. Eliot’s post-World War I poem “The Hollow Men” and reverberate through “Southland Tales,” which satirically imagines a wartime landscape unsettlingly close to a modern pessimist’s vision of the day after next. Mr. Kelly has purposely distorted Eliot’s poem, which ends with the whimper, not the bang, and speaks to a ravaged Europe. Now the wasteland is America, where, in the wake of nuclear attack, the Bud Light still flows freely (par-tee!), though not the fossil fuel. Having reinstated the draft to stock its war fronts — in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Iran, Syria and North Korea — America has gone into lockdown. Somewhere in Venice, Calif., the revolution tick, tick, ticks.

After the big-bang prologue, the story shifts to 2008, when on the eve of a presidential campaign competing interests are jockeying violently for power. Among the sprawling cast of unusual suspects are the “neo-Marxists,” mostly middle-age hippie chicks swinging Tasers and heavy rhetoric; a Republican presidential candidate and his Lady Macbeth of a wife; and a gaggle of totally awesome porn stars in hot pants and lip gloss who preach their own brand of liberation theology on cable television. Skulking on the sidelines is a mystery man with a spit curl who claims to have found a solution to America’s depleted reserves in something called Fluid Karma, which will light up the country by harnessing the ocean’s power.

There’s more stuffed in Mr. Kelly’s crowded fun house, including the linchpin figure, Boxer Santaros, played with lilting delicacy by Dwayne Johnson. After having gone inexplicably missing, Boxer — identified as an actor with ties to the Republican Party — has re-emerged on the grid in Venice, amnesiac and nestled in the arms of an entrepreneurial porn star, Krysta Now, given dignity and melancholic soul by a lovely Sarah Michelle Gellar. Together, Boxer and Krysta (she’s all about now, not later) have written an apocalyptic screenplay that they’re trying to pitch amid the intrigue and noise. Everyone wants a part of Boxer, but all he wants to do is research his role, which he does by riding shotgun with a mysterious cop (Seann William Scott, terrific).

What is “Southland Tales”? It’s a romp, for starters, a genre pastiche, a blast of conscience. It’s also overly plotted and at once too long and too short. It took Stanley Kubrick 102 tidy minutes to blow the world to Kingdom Come in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” one of Mr. Kelly’s touchstones. (His other influences: “Kiss Me Deadly,” “Double Indemnity,” David Lynch, Fox News, comic books, video games, “Saturday Night Live,” years spent living in Los Angeles.) By contrast, “Southland Tales” clocks in at 2 hours 24 minutes. It sounds padded, but I miss the 19 minutes shorn from it in the aftermath of its disastrous premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Being booed at Cannes can be a rite of passage or merely ritualistic, and it’s neither a novel occurrence nor especially notable: Sofia Coppola was booed, as were Antonioni and Bresson. Even so, the critical reaction to “Southland Tales” was harsh and in some instances as ugly as it can get when the wolf pack starts to circle, with one critic actually wondering if its director had ever met another human being. Since then, Mr. Kelly has streamlined the narrative, excising characters and plot threads (blink and you’ll miss a trace of Janeane Garofalo’s redacted performance), added some nifty special effects and secured domestic distribution. The film still sprawls, at times beautifully, at times maddeningly, but its ambition and pleasures remain undiminished.

American cinema is in the grip of a kind of moribund academicism, which helps explain why a fastidiously polished film like “No Country for Old Men” can receive such gushing praise from critics. “Southland Tales” isn’t as smooth and tightly tuned as “No Country,” a film I admire with few reservations. Even so, I would rather watch a young filmmaker like Mr. Kelly reach beyond the obvious, push past his and the audience’s comfort zones, than follow the example of the Coens and elegantly art-direct yet one more murder for your viewing pleasure and mine. Certainly “Southland Tales” has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety, though that perhaps goes without saying.

Neither disaster nor masterpiece, “Southland Tales” again confirms that Mr. Kelly, who made a startling feature debut with “Donnie Darko,” is one of the bright lights of his filmmaking generation. He doesn’t make it easy to love his new film, which turns and twists and at times threatens to disappear down the rabbit hole of his obsessions. Happily, it never does, which allows you to share in his unabashed joy in filmmaking as well as in his fury about the times. Only an American who loves his country as much as Mr. Kelly does could blow it to smithereens and then piece it together with help from the Rock, Buffy, Mr. Timberlake and a clutch of professional wisenheimers. He does want to give peace a chance, seriously.

“Southland Tales” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Adult language and gun violence.


SOUTHLAND TALES

Opens today nationwide.

Written and directed by Richard Kelly; director of photography, Steven Poster; edited by Sam Bauer; music by Moby; production designer, Alexander Hammond; produced by Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan and Matthew Rhodes; released by Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. Running time: 144 minutes.

WITH: Dwayne Johnson (Boxer Santaros), Seann William Scott (Roland Taverner/Ronald Taverner), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Krysta Kapowski/Krysta Now), Curtis Armstrong (Dr. Soberin Exx), Joe Campana (Brandt Huntington) and Nora Dunn (Cyndi Pinziki).
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/movies/14sout.html





After 5 Decades, Still Igniting the Screen



Manohla Dargis

In August 1952 the director of “Monika” began shooting this wistful story of young passion and the autumn that inevitably follows in its wake. It had been a busy year. He had directed one of his own plays and been hired as the director of a theater company. He had shot and finished another film, the 11th in an already complicated career, though it had yet to open. He was supporting two ex-wives and five children from those unions, as well as a third wife and an infant son. Ingmar Bergman had just turned 34.

More than 50 years later, “Monika” arrives in New York again to light up the screen, this time without a trace of impropriety. When the film first opened in America, it played in art houses and grindhouses, raising temperatures as “Summer With Monika” and “Monika: The Story of a Bad Girl.” It’s possible that many viewers (including the young Woody Allen) saw a shortened version that was peddled on the exploitation circuit as “A Picture for Wide Screens and Broad Minds.” (That may explain why this paper didn’t review it.) It’s unclear which “Monika” was seized in 1956 by the Los Angeles vice squad, which declared it indecent. A representative for the theater explained that it was an “art type.” Well, of course.

The reason for all the fuss was a 20-year-old actress named Harriet Andersson, or, more likely, the discreet glimpses of her naked breasts and the charmingly broad expanse of her unclothed rear. This was Ms. Andersson’s first important film role, and she is stunning with and without any clothing. Monika, an impetuous, mercurial and dangerously sentimental wild child, lives in a crowded Stockholm tenement apartment with her family. One afternoon she thrusts herself into the arms of Harry (Lars Ekborg), a shy young stranger slightly her senior. Motherless and seemingly without friends, Harry falls hard for Monika, and she tumbles in turn. When she cries out that she loves him, it’s like a stab to the heart, his and ours.

Swept away, the teenagers quit their jobs and take off in his father’s small motorboat for a summer idyll of long days and sultry nights. She makes coffee wearing nothing but a tiny sweater and enormous white briefs, tiptoeing through the weeds. They sing and dance and dream. She sunbathes on the boat’s deck, her shirt pulled low off her satiny shoulders and under Harry’s (and Bergman’s) appreciative gaze. When the food and the summer run out, the lovers return home, with her belly now gently swollen. As they motor through the city’s waterways, the buildings seem to bear heavily down on them, as foreboding as giants (or adults). The world shifts and settles, as does Monika’s smile, until each turns upside down.

Shot in rich black and white, “Monika” shows a director in absolute control of his medium and its singular expressivity. In the early city scenes Bergman crowds the frame with objects and people, creating a sense of claustrophobia for the lovers and for those of us watching them struggle to find a place of their own. Once they make their escape, the jammed, Cubistic cityscape gives way to pastoral vistas that melt into one another as the shimmering sun dissolves into images of glistening water and a sky as sheltering as it is limitless. In the sky’s boundlessness you intuit the expanse of new love, which Bergman also conveys through breathtaking close-ups of Monika and Harry nuzzling each other’s faces like foals.

The association of female sexuality with the natural order might be hard to take if Bergman didn’t complicate the cliché with such unexpected depth. With her vulgar manners and sudden cruelty, Monika comes across as a difficult, even impossible heroine, which seems very much to Bergman’s point. We can judge her if we so choose, but he refuses, as evident from the justly famous shot in which she looks directly into the camera for about 30 long seconds. In 1958 the young Jean-Luc Godard argued that with this shot Monika “calls on us to witness her disgust at involuntarily choosing hell instead of heaven.” I think Monika is defying us to judge her. She doesn’t belong to the world of domestic banality, and neither did Bergman.

Years later it’s easy to see why French New Wave directors like Godard and Truffaut were stirred by Monika’s purposeful stare. The shot thrills even now, so much so that I gasped while watching the beautiful new print that will be shown at the IFC Center. I had seen the film before on battered VHS, and Monika’s look certainly registers even in diminished shadow form. Yet the small, pale face that floated like an apparition on my television set has nothing in common with the monumental head that loomed down from the movie screen, devouring both the mise en scène and my attention. One head seems decorative, shrunken in size and feeling; the other communicates an epic of emotion, a fierce will, resistance.

Monika’s showdown with the lens — and with us — comes near the close of the film, long after summer has passed, and the camera has caressed her image again and again. She is seated at a table, having pushed the burning tip of her cigarette against the unlighted cigarette clenched in the mouth of the man opposite her. There’s something crude and forceful about the gesture and its transparent sexual suggestiveness. You can’t imagine her waiting for a man to light her up, as Paul Henreid does with Bette Davis in “Now, Voyager.” But Monika, who pulls her lovers into her bed without hesitation or shame, was a new woman for a cinematic practice that even today carries the shock and delight of the new.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/movies/14moni.html





Digital Actors in ‘Beowulf’ Are Just Uncanny
David F. Gallagher

When John Markoff wrote about the Contour digital special-effects system last year, he noted that it would be judged by its ability to help animators cross the “uncanny valley.” That is the no man’s land where artificial humans look both realistic and unrealistic at the same time, giving them a creepy vibe.

Contour’s big test comes on Friday with the arrival of “Beowulf,” a big-budget computer-animated version of the ancient tale, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring the Contour-captured faces of Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich and other stars. I got an early look at the 3D Imax version last night. When it was over, I felt relieved to be back in the company of uncreepy flesh-and-blood humans again.

I’ll leave the full review up to others; having met Steve Perlman, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind the Contour system, I was most interested in seeing how well it performed. The movie definitely pushes digital acting far beyond anything I’ve seen before — but it looks as if the last few yards of the journey toward convincing realism are going to be the really hard part.

It’s kind of perfect that Mr. Malkovich deigned to be digitized for this movie. In “Being John Malkovich,” a possessed John Malkovich ditches acting and becomes a world-famous puppeteer, manipulating a life-sized Malkovich marionette in a complex dance and getting standing ovations. But his audiences are always aware that there are strings attached. In the same way, it’s impossible to watch “Beowulf” without sensing that the “actors” are being pushed around by invisible forces, not living and breathing on their own. (For glimpses of this, check out the trailers.)

The movie’s animation is otherwise so sophisticated that it is hard to pin down just what is missing. Perhaps we have spent so much time looking at our fellow humans that we can detect a problem with something as subtle as the physics of a muscle contracting, just a fraction of a second before it pulls the lips into a smile. Contour is designed to capture the full shape of a face by picking up light reflecting from phosphorescent paint. But, judging from “Beowulf” at least, it is leaving something out. People who are meant to be enraged, or who are at risk of plummeting to their deaths, just look a little out of sorts.

The moviemakers have such confidence in their technique that they let closeups of our hero Beowulf’s face linger on the giant Imax screen for long moments, allowing viewers to admire every hair in his 3-D digital stubble. Grendel, the putrefying monster played by Crispin Glover, is only slightly scarier.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/1.../index.html?hp





Italian Musician Uncovers Hidden Music in Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'
AP

It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real.

A laptop screen shows musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper."

An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting.

"It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus."

Painted from 1494 to 1498 in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the "Last Supper" vividly depicts a key moment in the Gospel narrative: Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion, and the shock of Christ's followers as they learn that one of them is about to betray him.

Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003, after hearing on a news program that researchers believed the artist and inventor had hidden a musical composition in the work.

"Afterward, I didn't hear anything more about it," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "As a musician, I wanted to dig deeper."

In a book released Friday in Italy, Pala explains how he took elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology and interpreted them as musical clues.

Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.

This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style.

In his book -- "La Musica Celata" ("The Hidden Music") -- Pala also describes how he found what he says are other clues in the painting that reveal the slow rhythm of the composition and the duration of each note.

The result is a 40-second "hymn to God" that Pala said sounds best on a pipe organ, the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo's time for spiritual music. A short segment taken from a CD of the piece contained a Bach-like passage played on the organ. The tempo was almost painfully slow but musical.

Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert and the director of a museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown of Vinci, said he had not seen Pala's research but that the musician's hypothesis "is plausible."

Vezzosi said previous research has indicated the hands of the Apostles in the painting can be substituted with the notes of a Gregorian chant, though so far no one had tried to work in the bread loaves.

"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there, but it's certain that the spaces [in the painting] are divided harmonically," he told the AP. "Where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music."

Vezzosi also noted that though Leonardo was more noted for his paintings, sculptures and visionary inventions, he was also a musician. Da Vinci played the lyre and designed various instruments. His writings include some musical riddles, which must be read from right to left.

Reinterpretations of the "Last Supper" have popped up ever since "The Da Vinci Code" fascinated readers and movie-goers with suggestions that one of the apostles sitting on Jesus' right is Mary Magdalene, that the two had a child and that their bloodline continues.

Pala stressed that his discovery does not reveal any supposed dark secrets of the Catholic Church or of Leonardo, but instead shows the artist in a light far removed from the conspiratorial descriptions found in fiction.

"A new figure emerges -- he wasn't a heretic like some believe," Pala said. "What emerges is a man who believes, a man who really believes in God."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe....ap/index.html





Japan's Melody Roads Play Music as You Drive
Bobbie Johnson

Motorists used to listening to the radio or their favourite tunes on CDs may have a new way to entertain themselves, after engineers in Japan developed a musical road surface.

A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of "melody roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.

The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.

Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, enabling cunning designers to create a distinct tune.

Patent documents for the design describe it as notches "formed in a road surface so as to play a desired melody without producing simple sound or rhythm and reproduce melody-like tones".

There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan - one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Notice of an impending musical interlude, which lasts for about 30 seconds, is highlighted by coloured musical notes painted on to the road. According to reports, the system was the brainchild of Shizuo Shinoda, who accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer before driving over them and realising that they helped to produce a variety of tones.

The designs were refined by engineers at the institute in Sapporo. The team has previously worked on new technologies including the use of infra-red light to detect dangerous road surfaces.

But motorists expecting to create their own hard rock soundtrack could find themselves struggling to live the dream. Not only is the optimal speed for achieving melody road playback a mere 28mph, but locals say it is not always easy get the intended sound.

"You need to keep the car windows closed to hear well," wrote one Japanese blogger. "Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car sick."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...eed=technology





Politics Trumps Policy as Copyright Bill Approaches
Michael Geist

The annual Canadian Music Week celebration in Toronto is still several months away, but last week Ottawa staged its own version of the event. Two federal departments - Statistics Canada and Industry Canada - released bombshell studies that could influence forthcoming copyright reforms since they contradict the conventional wisdom about the economic state of the recording industry and the impact of Internet file sharing.

The Statistics Canada report on the state of the Canadian music industry was a long time in coming - it had been two years since the last release of its economic analysis that found an industry barely treading water. Notwithstanding the ongoing doom and gloom from industry associations, Statistics Canada now paints a much different picture.

According to Statscan, "Canada's sound recording and music publishing industries turned a relatively healthy profit in 2005, despite the worldwide decline in record sales and increased competition from other forms of entertainment." The recording industry experienced seven percent profitability - up from 0.1 percent in 2003 - with global restructuring, lowered costs, and digital distribution cited as the primary reasons for the profit increase.

The news was also very good for Canadian artists. Their sales increased by 3.3 percent and now account for 21 percent of total Canadian music sales. Even more noteworthy, Canadian artists continued to release more music - an increase of 8.8 percent, while foreign artists dropped by 5.6 percent. In other words, while the Canadian Recording Industry Association was giving dire speeches in 2005 claiming that Canadian artists could not find labels to invest in them, the data shows that the market for Canadian artists was growing with more releases and more revenues.

If the Statscan data comes as a surprise, the Industry Canada study will positively shock. Working with Decima Research as well as Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, two economists at the University of London, the department surveyed more than 2,000 Canadians on their music purchasing habits in an effort to identify the impact of Internet file sharing on music sales.

The industry has long claimed that file sharing is the primary culprit behind declining sales, yet the survey, the first ever to employ representative microeconomic data, found that the opposite is true. According to the data there is “a strong positive relationship between peer-to-peer file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases."

Moreover, when viewed in the aggregate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study's authors, "we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole."

While critics scoffed that the results did not "seem remotely plausible," the study is consistent with a 2004 Harvard study that examined the issue. Moreover, the authors may have underestimated the positive economic impact, since Internet file sharing is compensated in Canada by a private copying levy that has generated more than $200 million in revenues for the industry and its artists.

With independent data now confirming that the Canadian music industry is thriving and that Internet file sharing is not responsible for the declining sales at some record companies, these studies highlight the government's mounting challenge as it works to fulfill its Speech from the Throne commitment to introduce copyright reform in the current Parliamentary session.

Simply stated, prioritizing reforms that target the music industry in a bill that is expected within weeks will run counter to the government's own research analysis and open the door to a lengthy list of angry stakeholders. Indeed, sandwiched between the two reports, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters openly declared war last week against CRIA, characterizing its latest demands as "egregious and abusive."

They join many other groups frustrated with a copyright reform process that seemingly places politics before policy and fiction above fact. With opposition likely to come from broadcasters, education groups, consumers, privacy commissioners, and the technology community, copyright could emerge as an issue where the Liberals and Conservatives sing a different tune.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2367/159/





Democrats: Colleges Must Police Copyright, or Else
Declan McCullagh

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity," all of their students--even ones who don't own a computer--would lose federal financial aid.

The prospect of losing a combined total of nearly $100 billion a year in federal financial aid, coupled with the possibility of overzealous copyright-bots limiting the sharing of legitimate content, has alarmed university officials.

"Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid--including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," a letter from university officials to Congress written on Wednesday said. "Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."

The letter was signed by the chancellor of the University of Maryland system, the president of Stanford University, the general counsel of Yale University, and the president of Penn State.

They stress that the "higher education community recognizes the seriousness of the problem of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing and has long been committed to working with the entertainment industry to find a workable solution to the problem." In addition, the letter says that colleges and universities are responsible for "only a small fraction of illegal file sharing."

The MPAA says the university presidents are overreacting. An MPAA representative sent CNET News.com a list of campuses that have begun filtering files transferred on their networks, including the University of Florida (Red Lambda technology); the University of Utah (network monitoring and Audible Magic); and Ohio's Wittenberg University (Audible Magic).

For each school taking such steps, the MPAA says, copyright complaints dramatically decreased, in some cases going from 50 a month to none.

The MPAA's Martinez did warn that the consequences of violating the proposed rules would be stiff: "Because it is added to the current reporting requirements that universities already have through the Secretary of Education, it would have the same penalties for noncompliance as any of the others requirements under current law."

Neither the Recording Industry Association of America nor the Association of American Universities was available for comment on Friday.

Expanding on an earlier anti-P2P plan

The two Democratic politicians behind Friday's bill are Reps. George Miller from California and Ruben Hinojosa of Texas. Miller is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and Hinojosa is chairman of the higher education subcommittee.

They said in a press release that the legislation, called the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, or COAA, will be voted on by the full committee next week.

The peer-to-peer sections of COAA appear to be a revision of an amendment originally proposed over the summer by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to his chamber's sweeping higher education reauthorization bill.

Groups like the American Association of Universities and Educause attacked Reid's proposal at the time, saying it was incredibly worrisome because it would have yanked federal grants and loans from students who attend schools that don't do enough to prevent illegal file sharing.

The old language over the summer required schools to develop "a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property." The new language requires "a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

Reid's bill also would have required the Secretary of Education to devise a list of the 25 schools with the highest levels of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing, based on entertainment industry statistics. That's not in the new COAA legislation.

On the Senate side, after universities raised a fuss, the contentious amendment was eventually diluted to a requirement that higher education institutions merely advise their students, in writing, of the legal consequences of "unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material" and what steps the school was taking to combat such activities.
http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleg...3-6217943.html





Anti-P2P College Bill Advances in House
Anne Broache

The U.S. House of Representatives has taken a step toward approving a Hollywood-backed spending bill requiring universities to consider offering "alternatives" and "technology-based deterrents" to illegal peer-to-peer file sharing.

In the House Education and Labor Committee's mammoth College Opportunity and Affordability Act (PDF) lies a tiny section, which dictates universities that participate in federal financial aid programs "shall" devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading, such as subscription-based services, or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity." The committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.

Supporters and opponents of the proposal disagree, however, on what the penalty would be for failure to comply with the new rules. The proposed requirements would be added to a section of existing federal law dealing with federal financial aid.

Some university representatives and fair-use advocates worry that schools run the risk of losing aid for their students if they fail to come up with the required plans.

"The language in the bill appears to be clear that failure to carry out the mandates would make an institution ineligible for participation in at least some part of Title IV (which deals with federal financial aid programs)," Steven Worona, director of policy and networking programs for the group Educause, said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Worona acknowledged that "there does appear to be a great deal of confusion with respect to what penalties would be involved in not carrying out the mandates in this bill." Still, Educause, which represents college and university network operators, continues to "strongly oppose these mandates," he said.

House committee aides respond that failure to craft those antipiracy plans would not imperil financial aid awards. A fact sheet distributed by the committee this week attempts to dispel "myths" that it argues are being circulated by "supporters of intellectual property theft."

"The provisions do ask colleges, to the extent practicable, to develop plans for offering students alternative legal ways to file share, as well as plans to prevent file sharing, but this would not be included in the financial aid program participation agreements colleges enter into with the U.S. Department of Education," committee spokeswoman Rachel Racusen told CNET News.com in an e-mail after Thursday's vote. "Contrary to what critics are saying, these provisions would not put students or colleges at risk for losing financial aid."

Nor would the bill strip away financial aid if schools fail to stop piracy on their campuses, to sign up for "legal" subscription media services like Ruckus.com and Napster for their student body, to report student violations, or to implement any specific antipiracy policies, Racusen said.

The only piracy-related information that schools would have to provide to their students and employees in conjunction with their financial aid agreements is a description of "the policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials," Racusen said.

If institutions fail to heed the new rules, it would be up to the Department of Education to decide the consequences, a committee aide said. For related reporting requirements, such as school safety plans, that has typically involved simply keeping after universities to provide the mandated information, the aide added.

That reporting requirement was also the core of an amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and approved this summer as part of his chamber's counterpart higher education bill. University representatives have called that provision a "reasonable compromise."

But in an earlier draft of that amendment, Reid also wanted to require the Secretary of Education to devise a list of the 25 schools with the highest levels of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing, based on entertainment industry statistics. For those 25 institutions, their financial aid would have been conditioned on devising "a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property," according to university groups that opposed the measure.

That means the House provision, by expanding that requirement to all schools, not just the 25 on the watch-list, is seemingly broader than the original Senate amendment, according to Educause's Worona. After an outcry from universities, Reid ultimately scrapped that idea.

Opponents question fairness, privacy issues

The Association of American Universities wrote a letter to House committee leaders last week urging them not to revive that idea in their own forthcoming higher education bill. The letter was signed by the chancellor of the University of Maryland system, the president of Stanford University, the general counsel of Yale University, and the president of Pennsylvania State University.

"Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid--including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," they wrote last week. "Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."

An AAU spokesman said Thursday that his organization still has concerns about the final provision in the approved House bill but declined to elaborate, indicating the group is prioritizing other areas of the bill that cause schools greater heartburn.

Other opponents of the antipiracy provisions argue that merely requiring such a plan from universities at all, regardless of the penalties involved, is misguided. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance, argued that pressuring schools to strike deals with content providers could indirectly raise the cost of students' tuition, as schools will inevitably pass the costs of legal download services on to students in some fashion.

Another concern from opponents is the possibility of privacy invasions brought on by the technology-based deterrents schools would be encouraged--albeit not explicitly required--to adopt. In addition to the "plan" requirement, one section of the bill would offer voluntary grants over the next five years for schools, in partnership with outside organizations, to use toward efforts to concoct effective, reasonably priced antipiracy technology tools. Opponents argue those tools amount to spying on students' network activities.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a group that advocates for preservation of fair-use rights, said she doesn't buy the committee's arguments that no penalties will arise if universities don't develop antipiracy plans.

"If it had no teeth, (the Motion Picture Association of America) would be criticizing it," she said in a telephone interview.

The MPAA, for its part, has heartily endorsed the provisions, with CEO Dan Glickman saying in a statement upon the bill's introduction: "We are pleased to see that Congress is taking this step to help keep our economy strong by protecting copyrighted material on college campuses."
http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-6218834.html





RIAA College Litigations Getting A Bumpy Ride
NewYorkCountryLawyer

The RIAA's juggernaut against colleges, started in February of this year, seems to be having a bumpier and bumpier ride. The normal game is to call for a subpoena, to get the name and address of the students or staff who might have used a certain IP address. The normal game seems to be getting disrupted here and there.

A Virginia judge threw the RIAA's motion out the window, saying that it was not entitled to such discovery, in a case against students at the College of William & Mary. A New Mexico judge denied the application on the ground that there was no reason for it to be so secretive, in a case involving University of New Mexico students. He ultimately required the RIAA to serve a full set of all of the underlying papers, for each "John Doe" named, and to give the students 40 days in which to review the papers with counsel, and make a motion to quash if they chose to do so.

In a stunning development, the Attorney General of the State of Oregon made a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena on behalf of the University of Oregon, on grounds which are fully applicable to every case the RIAA has brought to date: the lack of scientific validity to the RIAA's "identification" evidence. The motion is pending as of this writing. Students have themselves made motions to vacate the RIAA's ex parte orders and/or quash subpoenas in over half a dozen cases. Much combat remains, but the RIAA's campaign is no longer a hot knife cutting through butter on the nation's campuses.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/14/1654230





Access Copyright Sues Staples/Business Depot for Copyright Infringement

Access Copyright, which represents almost 9,000 Canadian writers and publishers, is suing retailer Staples/The Business Depot for copyright infringement, claiming $10 million in damages over unauthorized photocopying by store customers.

The publishing organization said Thursday its lawsuit contains the largest claim to arise from copyright infringement of published works in Canada.

"Staples/Business Depot is a sizable, for-profit organization that has built part of its business through a lucrative service that exploits the published works of authors, photographers and publishers," Access Copyright said in a release.

"Companies that photocopy illegally are effectively taking money directly out of the pockets of creators and publishers who depend on book sales and copyright royalties for their livelihood."

Companies that profit from illegal photocopying "are undermining the work of others," said Maureen Cavan, executive director of Access Copyright. "Staples/Business Depot is no different from those organizations that profit from illegally downloading copyright protected music or the unauthorized sharing of videos and published works on the Internet."

Access Copyright said it has been investigating Staples/Business Depot since 1998 in response to concerns raised by creators and publishers.

"Despite repeated attempts by Access Copyright to reach a settlement and come to an amicable resolution, Staples/Business Depot has made no perceivable changes to their business practices."
http://canadianpress.google.com/arti...EDlnOdFhazb4TA





Montreal Police Charge Man with Trying to Pirate Film

A Quebec man has been charged for attempting to make a pirated copy of the new movie “Dan in Real Life.”

The 23-year-old man was caught last month while allegedly trying to record the movie in an east-end movie theatre, the TQS television network is reporting.

He is believed to be among the first people in Quebec arrested under a new anti-camcording law aimed at stopping movie piracy, introduced earlier this year.

The man reportedly handed over all his material after being caught, which included a device to post the films directly onto the Internet.

If convicted under the new law, the man could face up to two years in jail.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...filmarrest1115





OiNK Launches Legal Defense Fund
Ernesto

Last month the popular private BitTorrent tracker OiNK was effectively shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. OiNK admin Alan Ellis who was arrested during the raid now launched a legal defense fund to cover the legal costs and asks former OiNK members to help him out.

Alan has put a message on his reclaimed domain where he writes: “A PayPal account has been setup for those of you wishing to give a gift to help cover legal costs, if or when they arise. Although the account is not in my name (it can’t be), it is someone I trust.”

The donations will be used to cover the legal costs Alan is likely to make. If for some reason the money isn’t needed it will be donated to an animal charity (pigs?). The official OiNK fundraiser is hosted at saveoink.com, and unlike the scams we have seen before, it is totally legit.

OiNK was considered by many to be the best BitTorrent music tracker the world has ever seen. With 180,000 members it was without a doubt one of the most popular private BitTorrent trackers. Although most of its members found a new home by now, there is little doubt that it will be very hard to equal the success of OiNK

At this point it is still unclear what the charges against Alan will be, more details on this will come out next month. We will keep you updated of course.
http://torrentfreak.com/oink-fund-071111/





Infringus maximus!

Rowling Gets Injunction Against Harry Potter Lexicon
Nate Anderson

J.K. Rowling is suing the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which began life as a popular Potter blog, and wants a court to rule that she has the sole right to profit from the "descriptions, character details, and plot points" of the Potter tales. Now, a federal judge has issued an injunction against RDR Books to prevent them from completing the typesetting, selling the books, or even marketing it on Amazon.com.

The case has been percolating for a few weeks now, but the injunction last week makes this a good time to take a look at what's going on here. Steve Vander Ark, the lead author of the online Lexicon, wants to publish his material in book form. Warner Bros. and Rowling, who are jointly suing Vander Ark's publisher, call this a "willful and blatant violation of Plaintiffs' respective intellectual property rights," this despite the fact that Rowling has publicly praised the site in the past. The plaintiffs are under the apparent conviction that the material on the web site is fine, but that when put into a book, it becomes a copyright violation. Much of this has to do with money.

"There is a big difference between the innumerable Harry Potter fan sites' latitude to discuss the Harry Potter Works in the context of free, ephemeral web sites and unilaterally repackaging those sites for sale in an effort to cash and monetarily on Ms. Rowling's creative works in contravention of her wishes and rights," says the federal complaint, filed late last month in New York. Rowling, it turns out, has long wanted to produce her own companion book to the popular children's series and donate the money to charity. She believes that the Lexicon would eliminate much of the demand for her product (because past titles with "J.K. Rowling" on the cover have sold so poorly).

The complaint repeatedly stresses that Rowling has not "authorized" such a work, though whether such authorization is even necessary will certainly be one of the key points in the case. The Lexicon is stuffed with plot summaries, maps, and the sort of minutely detailed timelines you'd expect from such an endeavor. It's a huge treasure trove of information of Harry Potter characters and the world they inhabit.

This sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to popular series; both Narnia and Middle-Earth have a number of such guides, and the more-common CliffsNotes include exactly this sort of material for even recent books like Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Why it's a major copyright violation in this case isn't clear; the complaint sometimes suggests that it contains large passages lifted verbatim from the books, but at other times seems to be saying that simple plot summaries and collections of fictional facts are out of bounds (and it quotes a federal decision finding that detailed plot summaries of Twin Peaks episodes were copyright infringement).

Playground sparring

The complaint itself is a bit juvenile. There are repeated nonfactual statements sprinkled liberally throughout, such as the fact that RDR Books once "replied cursorily" and that the plaintiffs were "patiently waiting." This sort of thing grows quickly tiresome, but can also prove hilarious. Case in point: upon learning that the book would be essentially a "print version" of the online Lexicon, Warner Bros. asked for a copy of the web site... on paper. RDR Books replied "rudely," saying, "If you do not know how to print that material please ask one of your people to show you how." It's a valid point.

There's plenty of this playground sparring to go around. RDR Books at one point responded to Warner Bros. lawyers by claiming that the Harry Potter filmmakers had used a copyrighted Lexicon-produced timeline. Warner calls this "a complete fabrication."

Despite all the unpleasantness, Vander Ark still signs recent news posts, "still Jo's man, through and through." "There is a crazy part of me that believes that if she and I could just sit down and chat about this, we could get it all sorted out and put this miserable incident behind us," he wrote on November 10.

Unlikely. In a recent entry on her own site, Rowling complained, "It is not reasonable, or legal, for anybody, fan or otherwise, to take an author's hard work, re-organize their characters and plots, and sell them for their own commercial gain. However much an individual claims to love somebody else's work, it does not become theirs to sell." That in itself is a highly suspect claim. The weirdest thing of all is that similar items to the Lexicon have already been on the market for years.

Actually, I take it back; that's not the weirdest thing of all. That honor is reserved for the Lexicon itself, which certainly takes liberal advantage of fair use to print hundreds of little snippets from the Harry Potter books. But try to copy one line from the site for purposes of commentary and criticism, and you're met with the dialog box, "copyright 2001-2006 The Harry Potter Lexicon." Nice. (Note to the Lexicon's designers: disabling the right mouse click does not actually disable the ability to copy.)

William Patry, Google's senior copyright counsel, has looked into the case a bit. His conclusion? "I haven't spent a lot of time on the site and so don't know if there is other material that might be infringing, but I don't see how a list of spells with this type of commentary is anything other than fair use." Patry also notes that one of the cases cited by the plaintiffs in support of their position actually was "of a very different sort" from the current conflict.

So now a judge gets to work it out, possibly most Muggle-ish solution to this magical dispute that anyone could have imagined.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...r-lexicon.html





Martha Settles Dispute with Neighbors
AP

The dispute between Martha Stewart and some of her neighbors over her bid to trademark the name of their village has been resolved with a compromise: Katonah furniture, OK; Katonah paint, no way.

Stewart's company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., has agreed to seek a "Katonah" trademark only for furniture, mirrors, pillows and chair cushions. Those opposing the trademark have agreed not to challenge that application.

Stewart's Katonah furniture line is already for sale but not yet trademarked.

Stewart agreed to drop trademark applications for additional products, "such as hardware, paint, lighting and home textiles," according to a statement issued by Stewart's company, the Katonah Village Improvement Society and two Katonah stores.

Some residents of the tony hamlet in Westchester County, where Stewart has a 153-acre estate, objected to her using the name Katonah for commercial purposes and feared the trademark would harm existing businesses. Some American Indians had also objected, because the village, 40 miles north of New York City, is named for a 17th-century chief.

Bill Tisherman, who was vice president of the Village Improvement Society when the complaint was lodged, said Wednesday, "Martha Stewart caved. That's my opinion. She gave up a huge chunk of what she was looking for and that's good for the future of this town."

Stewart's company would not comment beyond the statement, which was dated Nov. 2.

Stewart had said she was honoring Katonah's heritage by using the name. In the statement, all parties expressed "mutual appreciation" for the town. Stewart said the trademark would not interfere with the use of the name Katonah by others - such as Katonah Paint and Hardware and Katonah Architectural Hardware, the stores that challenged her - and said she "has never challenged the right of Katonah-based businesses to use their town's name in their company names."

Stewart pledged to challenge use of the name only if "a product (like furniture) were branded with the name 'Katonah' in a way that infringed the company's trademark rights, which could cause confusion for consumers."
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_7460145

In the interest of full disclosure, I went to boarding school in Katonah…and didn’t like it - Jack.





Web Spending Hits New Record in Third Quarter

U.S. Internet advertising revenue rose 25 percent in the third quarter to about $5.2 billion, a new record, according to data released on Monday.

The report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that online advertising revenue has hit new highs in each of the first three quarters of 2007.

Revenue for the first nine months of 2007 totaled $15.2 billion, up nearly 26 percent from the $12.1 billion recorded during the first nine months of 2006, the report said.
Now on News.com
Chizen steps aside as Adobe's chief Oracle's rendezvous in San Francisco Can WiMax make it in the U.S.? Extra: Nine things to ask a tech start-up

"The continued robust growth of the industry indicates that marketers increasingly understand and appreciate the benefits of interactive advertising," IAB Chief Executive Randall Rothenberg said in a statement. "Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy."

The boom in online advertising has driven media and technology companies to build up their online advertising businesses, partly through acquisitions.

Among recent deals, Google agreed to pay $3.1 billion for ad-serving and tracking company DoubleClick, while Microsoft bought online marketer Aquantive for $6 billion.
http://www.news.com/Web-spending-hit...3-6218166.html





Google Hits European Hurdle on DoubleClick Deal
Victoria Shannon

European Commission competition authorities refused today to approve Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick, the Internet advertising company, and ordered an in-depth review amid opposition from rivals, publishers and consumer groups.

The commission, which rules on antitrust issues for the 27 countries in the European Union, said the merger raised competition concerns and required a more thorough review of its impact on the Internet advertising business.

The inquiry is one of very few major business challenges that Google, the world’s dominant Internet search engine and a star stock market performer, has encountered in its nine-year history. The company makes the bulk of its money by selling ad space next to search results, while DoubleClick, a privately held company, places banner ads on Web sites and sells analysis of who sees them.

“We are obviously disappointed,” Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, said in a statement. Saying the company would work with the commission, he added, “We seek to avoid further delays that might put us at a disadvantage in competing fully against Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others whose acquisitions in the highly competitive online advertising market have already been approved.”

The rivals that Mr. Schmidt named, as well as conventional advertising companies like Publicis in France, have been snapping up Internet media specialists over the last year. Microsoft purchased aQuantive for $6 billion in August after it failed to close a deal of its own for DoubleClick.

But they are well behind where Google is in the market now. By some estimates, Google on its own controls 70 percent to 80 percent of the paid-search advertising market. The addition of DoubleClick would give it the lead in graphical ad placement as well, rivals say. The commission said today that its initial investigation “indicated that the proposed merger would raise competition concerns in the markets for intermediation and ad serving in online advertising.”

In Washington, the Federal Trade Commission has yet to rule on the merger.

Officials say the agency is actively working on the case but they have not indicated when a decision might come. Regulators in Australia and Brazil have approved the deal.

The move in Brussels started the clock on a more exhaustive market analysis that will last until March, with a decision now due April 2, a year after Google first announced its intention to buy DoubleClick.

Google already had given the commission what some people termed “concessions.” As the first deadline for the European decision approached late last month, Google made some assurances about the future relationship of the two businesses, promising to “keep certain DoubleClick business practices unchanged,” according to a statement by Julia Holtz, Google’s London-based competition counsel.

The European Commission then gave itself another 10 days, which ended today, to collect and evaluate detailed information from customers in the Internet advertising market.

Yahoo, which had made the commission well aware of its objections, welcomed the probe in a statment today. Toby Coppel, managing director of Yahoo Europe, said it will provide “the thorough examination of the proposed merger that Yahoo believes is needed.”

In Brussels, many of the mounting objections filed to the commission in recent weeks centered on privacy issues, rather than questions about how a Google-DoubleClick merger would affect competition. A commission spokesman said that by law the commission inquiry could not make an antitrust decision on anything but the market impact.

BEUC, the umbrella group of European consumer organizations, as early as July had complained to the commission that the DoubleClick takeover would damage privacy rights and limit Internet content. Others joining BEUC included the European Publishers Council and the World Federation of Advertisers.

In Washington, as well, privacy questions have overshadowed competition issues. Last week, a group of congressional Republicans — normally the party associated with keeping government interference with companies to a minimum — called for a new hearing on the acquisition.

“Google is an information colossus already, but add on DoubleClick’s marketing power and you produce a single commercial entity that can know more about you and me than nearly everybody but Mom and the I.R.S.,” said Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas. “It looks like the old saw, ‘I know where you live,’ is only the start. They’ll know where we go, who and what we see, and what we buy, too. And they’ll know it forever.”

At a privacy conference last month, the F.T.C. commissioner, Jon Leibowitz, said Internet advertisers had so far not provided adequate self-regulation on privacy issues. “In practice, they often leave a lot to be desired,” he said.

The dominance of Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., reaches well beyond the United States, where it handled 57 percent of all Internet searches in September, according to ComScore, an Internet research company. In September, Google sites were the most visited sites in Britain, France and Germany, ComScore said.

In the United States alone, Internet advertising revenue rose 25 percent in the third quarter to about $5.2 billion, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers this week.

Revenue for the first nine months of the year was $15.2 billion, up nearly 26 percent from a year earlier, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/te...nd-google.html





Everyone Wants to Be Taking Pictures
Mireya Navarro

ON a slim-pickings afternoon at the Ivy on Robertson Boulevard last week, a small cluster of paparazzi gathered in front of the restaurant to photograph Phoebe Price. As the little-known actress posed on the sidewalk as if it were the red carpet, the group behind the cameras made for a more interesting picture — it included several photographers from photo agencies, a moonlighting Spanish-speaking cook and a tourist from Northern California who stood front and center snapping away with a one-use camera from Walgreens.

Not long after Ms. Price had left, another shift of agency photographers and amateurs were trolling the street, including a couple of teenage boys and Claudia Leverett, 32, a college student. She had recently turned occasional paparazzo by a chance encounter last July with Dustin Hoffman leaving the Ivy as Kimberly Stewart entered. Ms. Leverett joined the fray and sent the pictures to two paparazzi agencies on a lark.

“I made $780 for 13 pictures in not even 10 minutes of work,” said Ms. Leverett, who has since devoted her weekends and free afternoons to waiting near the Ivy and other celebrity hangouts with an old-fashioned 35-millimeter film camera.

Los Angeles has always been a celebrity photographer’s evergreen. But the explosive demand for celebrity pictures has led to an equally explosive growth in the number of celebrity chasers. The term paparazzi increasingly encompasses not only the photo agency photographer and the TMZ videographer, but also a teenager with a camera, an opportunist with a cellphone and even the waiter who once tipped photographers to celebrity sightings. This mix has intensified an already aggressive atmosphere and altered the ecosystem for both paparazzi predator and celebrity prey.

In the two years since prosecutors in Los Angeles threatened to file felony conspiracy charges against photographers engaging in dangerous tactics, and started monitoring them more closely, complaints of egregious illegal conduct, like assault, trespassing and reckless driving, by paparazzi have decreased, said William Hodgman, the head deputy of Los Angeles County district attorney’s target crime division. But now, Mr. Hodgman said, celebrities are followed by more celebrity news media and what some photographers call “people paparazzi,” which has reignited the pursuit. “The celebrities don’t feel any safer,” he said.

Even Barbara Walters, an unusual target by her own account, got a taste of the Hollywood-style media attention during a visit last month, when photographers would not stop snapping pictures as she left the Ivy; TMZ later used videos of the encounter to lampoon her on its new television show. On her show, “The View,” Ms. Walters called TMZ “mean” and “vicious.”

Some publicists say their clients find video cameras the most disconcerting. Comings and going are captured and posted not only on TMZ, X17 Online and other Web sites but also on the free-for-all anarchy of YouTube.

“One thing is a still photo of somebody looking out of sorts coming out of a bar,” said Annett Wolf of Wolf-Kasteler & Associates, a publicist who represents clients like Michelle Pfeiffer and Debra Messing. “Seeing a moving picture is much more jarring. And they keep running it over and over.”

As photographers new and old jostle, crucial rules of conduct seem to have gone out the window.

Mr. Hodgman said the competition has led to several assault prosecutions involving photographers attacking one another. Harvey Levin, managing editor of TMZ, which posts pictures and videos from its staff and from freelancers, said working conditions have reached “a dangerous level” because of the inexperience of many photographers.

Mr. Levin cited an incident in which the usually paparazzi-friendly actor Pierce Brosnan physically tangled with a photographer in Malibu, Calif., a few weeks ago while out with his son and two of the boy’s friends. Mr. Levin said the photographer departed from standard practice by talking directly to the children.

“There are some unwritten rules,” he said. “You don’t engage the children. You just don’t do this.”

Blair Berk, a criminal defense lawyer who represents many A-listers, said she noticed that children are now often the target, which she says makes any interaction more volatile.

“When you cross the line of threatening family members, that is intolerable,” she said.

Many celebrities court the attention. Britney Spears even has photographers give her directions and pump her gas. (Last week she drove over the foot of a photographer who was trailing her.) Gary Morgan, chief executive of Splash News, a paparazzi agency, has little sympathy for harassment complaints from the famous. “When a celebrity is going from the C-list to the A-list, they set up the pictures,” he said. “But as soon as they achieve A-list status, they become artists who don’t want publicity.”

And the truly private avoid certain restaurants and clubs.

Fraser Ross, whose four Kitson stores are near the Ivy restaurant, said even on Robertson Boulevard, stars can avoid the press by coming to the area in the morning when the camera hordes are thin because many photographers have worked the clubs until late.

In the morning, he promised, “You can walk down Robertson in a bikini eating French fries, and you wouldn’t be photographed.”

Still, the paparazzi crowd is the reason celebrities like Brad Pitt, Renée Zellweger, Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett have cited for moving, and Ms. Berk and some publicists say the exodus continues. Some actors have chosen the Santa Barbara area, others have gone as far Utah and Montana. For most, though, the only other choice, for work-related reasons, is New York, where traffic and crowds make the chase more daunting for photographers. Yet it may not offer much of a respite.

“NEW YORK unfortunately is becoming more difficult,” said Natalie Portman, who lives in Manhattan, at the premiere of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.” “I know people hate hearing us complain about it, but New York isn’t what it used to be for anonymity, unfortunately.”

In any case, Los Angeles remains the location of choice for the hunt. Mr. Morgan of Splash News said of the 1,500 photos sent daily by his agency, 70 to 80 percent are shot in the area. “The weather is bright and sunny, and the pictures look better in magazines,” he said. “You don’t want to see a picture of Madonna under an umbrella in London. They want to see her jogging.”

The corps of opportunistic paparazzi is likely to expand as long as the demand is there. For the last two years, Splash News has enticed these photographers to a site — peoplepaparazzi.com — that offers 60 percent of the profit. The check could be as high as $150,000 for a picture of Ms. Spears’s first wedding (although most photographs bought through the site run $50 to $250, Mr. Morgan said).

Not even big money is enough for Ms. Leverett, the collegian-photographer. She said the business is too cutthroat for her to make it a full-time job. For instance, she refuses to follow celebrities from their homes.

What she really wants, she said, is “to produce drama series like ‘E.R.’ ”

Paula Schwartz contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/fa...celebrity.html





Newspapers and Ads: Missed Delivery
Elinor Mills

When I was buying my car a few years ago, the first place I turned for information was Kelley Blue Book online.

When I moved a few months ago, I located free boxes on Craigslist. And if I were looking for a job, I would search on Monster.com.

It never occurred to me to look in the local newspaper classified advertisements. And if I were looking to buy a house, I'd go straight to real estate Web sites that have photos, maps and all sorts of details you'd never get in a newspaper ad.

If I'm any indication of the average person (and I like to think I am), no one should be surprised that newspapers are struggling and that newspaper alliances springing up to tackle online ads have that whiff of desperation.

As much as I like my local newspaper, I worry it has already lost the battle for online classified ads. I also have to wonder: why didn't its management see this coming somewhere in the late-1990s, like so many other people did? Actually, a bunch of newspapers did try back then, but that project failed. Hard to imagine why the new ones will succeed.

"I think that ship has sailed," said Michael Cassidy, chief executive and president of online ad network Undertone Networks. "Those dollars are gone. The classifieds game is over for them today."

Members of a newspaper consortium started last year by Yahoo are talking to Gannett and the Tribune Co., which have a separate such effort in the works. That would seem to undermine the Yahoo effort, possibly indicating its members aren't all that happy with the pace or scope of the Yahoo effort.

Ad spending on the Internet is rising steadily while newspaper ad spending is declining. Research firm eMarketer projects that U.S. online ad spending will grow 26.8 percent this year, while newspaper ad spending is projected to drop 4.6 percent this year, according to a Jack Myers Media Business Report.

Online revenue growth at newspaper sites was below 30 percent in 2006 and is expected to fall to 22 percent this year. For the first time, newspapers aren't maintaining share in total Internet ad growth, according to the The State of the News Media 2007 annual report. According to the report, written by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds of The Poynter Institute, "Newspapers have a tough time making the case that their business is headed in the right direction."

"You could argue that they are a little late to the party," said Edmonds, media business analyst at The Poynter Institute. "This year's (newspaper advertising) results have been even worse than the year before."

The fact is that people use the Web differently from the way they used traditional media. I still read The San Francisco Chronicle online, but mostly for local news and features. For this reason, display advertising is relatively strong on newspaper sites, Edmonds said.

But when I want to buy something, I go elsewhere--Zillow for real estate information; Amazon.com for books; Autobytel.com for auto prices; and Craigslist for just about anything else.

Newspaper execs realize this is happening.

Changing mindset

"In many newspaper markets, we have to change the way that we've been accustomed to thinking. Which is: 'there is only one newspaper in town,'" said Charlie Diederich, director of marketing and advertising for the Newspaper Association of America. "We might be seen as competing against a real estate Web site that has the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) data on it. It's a big change in the way we approach our world."

Some newspaper companies have been investing in the vertical sites. For instance, Gannett and other newspaper companies own stakes in classifieds Web sites like CareerBuilder.com, Cars.com and Apartments.com.

"We saw some of the changes that were happening in the industry quite a while ago," said Tara Connell, vice president of corporate communications at Gannett. "We've been responding to--I wouldn't call it competition, so much as a shift in the use of media by people. We've said consistently that we recognize people are shifting their habits and going to multiple platforms, and it's our vision and mission to get there."

Yahoo's consortium with Hearst, MediaNews, Cox and other newspaper companies was formed to sell job listings through Yahoo's classified job site, HotJobs. The deal has since been expanded to more than 20 publisher partners representing about 400 daily newspapers. Local salespeople at the member newspapers can sell local ad inventory on Yahoo, and Yahoo national salespeople can sell national sales onto local newspaper sites. Yahoo is also integrating some local newspaper content on its sites. On Friday, Yahoo announced the newest newspaper partner, the New York Daily News.

Separately, Gannett and Tribune, which are not members of Yahoo's consortium, are talking to other publishers, some of whom are in Yahoo's group, about forming another online advertising network. The Chicago Tribune first reported the effort on Tuesday.

Why the need for a second organization? Connell of Gannett confirmed that talks were going on but declined to comment beyond that. A Tribune representative did not return a call seeking comment.

Executives from Cox and MediaNews said talks with Gannett and Tribune were very preliminary and that the two efforts would not necessarily compete or overlap.

"The discussions are directed to putting together a national buy for newspapers online. (Whereas) the products we're dealing with on Yahoo are specialized," Dean Singleton, chairman and chief executive of MediaNews, told CNET News.com. "They wouldn't conflict."

"We would be able to sell (on) all the newspaper sites participating, across the entire country," said Leon Levitt, vice president of Cox Digital Media. "Newspapers are the No. 1 local site in virtually every market in the U.S., according to ComScore. The opportunity to sell ads on that is powerful."

But banding together may not fix things when you have companies that are traditionally slow-moving and risk-averse. And this isn't the first go-around at this for the newspaper industry.

Cox, Gannett, Hearst, Knight Ridder, The Times Mirror, Tribune, The Washington Post and Advance Publications formed a joint venture with the grandiose name of "New Century Network" in 1995 to support local newspapers in their online services, share content and establish an ad network across their sites. The venture was shuttered in 1998 because of lack of significant return on investment and an inability for members to agree on a common business plan, InternetNews.com reported at the time.

"It was a good idea 12 years ago. To do it today is not such a good idea when there are so many ad networks that have built up relationships with ad agencies," said Cassidy of Undertone Networks. "The biggest challenge (for newspapers) is going to be how to work amongst themselves."

"The culture in the newspapers is the real culprit. There is inertia," said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. "I don't necessarily think it's too late for them, but the challenge always with newspapers is execution."
http://www.news.com/Newspapers-and-a...3-6217916.html





Writers Strike Could Mean Big Changes in Advertising
Paul Thomasch

The Hollywood screenwriters strike is less than a week old, but already concerns are spreading that a long walk-out could drastically change the face of television advertising.

The $70 billion television advertising industry is still considered the best way to promote brands and products, despite the buzz over advertising in digital media like cell phones and video games.

A prolonged strike by screenwriters, however, could lead to big changes. Audience ratings are likely to slip without new TV shows to watch, and as viewers move elsewhere, so too will advertisers.

"I don't know how long it will take, but viewers will start to go to other places, and we as advertisers have to follow them," said Lisa Herdman, vice president of network programming at RPA, an advertising and media buying agency. "Whether we will go back to TV is another question altogether."

In many ways, experts say, the strike could not have come at a worse time for the television industry, given how much competition it faces for audiences and advertisers from the Web, iPods and every other sort of digital media.

"Marketers have more alternatives than ever before on how and where to spend their money," said Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media, an independent media services company. "There's more than the 30-second TV spot. There are opportunities out there and dollars are going to follow the eyeballs."

He added: "While television still remains the entertaining center of your living room, there is some concern that the longer this strike stretches out people's habits will change."

The Writers Guild of America went on strike on November 5 after the collapse of talks with the major film and television studios, halting nearly 20 years of labor peace in Hollywood.

At issue are writers' demands for a greater share of revenue from the Internet, widely seen as a key future distribution channel for most entertainment.

Audience Competition

Even before the strike, TV ratings were falling this season. Viewer numbers are down nearly 10 percent from a year ago and, moreover, the fall TV season has started without a major breakout hit from ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX.

"If this strike wasn't happening, we would be spending this time talking about the ratings and what are we going to do about them," RPA's Herdman said.

Chances that any of the new shows will catch fire become far smaller should a strike force networks to replace today's programs with reruns or unscripted content like news magazines or reality shows.

"The fact that so many new prime-time shows are struggling to find an audience, and now you're going to take them off the air for who-knows-how-long, the odds are that even the audiences they generated for the last several weeks are just not going to come back," said Jack Myers, a media industry veteran and editor of JackMyers.com.

Most prime-time scripted comedies and dramas are likely to shut down production later this month if the strike is not settled. At the moment, the impact is mainly being felt by talk shows like NBC's "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and CBS's "Late Show With David Letterman."

Few are willing to predict how long the work stoppage will last, but a strike by the Writers Guild in 1988 lasted for 22 weeks, delaying the start of the fall TV season that year and costing the industry an estimated $500 million.

"If it goes past Thanksgiving, we're looking well into the first quarter before there is a resolution," Myers said. "It's unlikely they are going to solve between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Positions harden, plus there are no obvious solutions."

The worst-case scenario would see the strike dragging out well into the spring, the season when the industry prepares for the upfront market, in which networks present their new programming schedules to advertisers and affiliates.

Around $9 billion of prime-time commercial deals are sold by the major networks in the weeks after the presentations.

"The networks would need to make a choice as to whether they wanted to present the schedule without pilots, in many cases without concepts, heavily weighted toward returning and reality programming, and with an inability to estimate ratings for the ad community," Myers said.

Under that scenario, "I think there is a very good chance the upfronts would be canceled," he added.

ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co., CBS is owned by CBS Corp, Fox is owned by News Corp and NBC is majority owned by General Electric.

(Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...38909520071111





Screenwriters Grab for a Half-Eaten Pie
Michael Cieply

As Hollywood digs in for a second week of a strike, the screenwriters might want to send a few angry picketers over to Will Smith’s place. Or Steven Spielberg’s.

And maybe the studio executives should think about joining them on the line. As it turns out, the pot of money that the producers and writers are fighting over may have already been pocketed by the entertainment industry’s biggest talent.

That is the conclusion of a surprisingly bleak new assessment of financial dynamics in the movie industry titled “Do Movies Make Money?” The researchers’ answer: not any more.

The report, prepared by the research company Global Media Intelligence in association with its partner Merrill Lynch, concludes that much of the income — past and future — that studios and writers have been fighting about has already gone to the biggest stars, directors and producers in the form of ballooning participation deals. A participation is a share in the gross revenue, not the profit, of a movie.

Through the twists and turns of contemporary deal-making, major studios in theory give away as much as 25 percent of a film’s receipts under such arrangements. The actual take is lower, because of certain adjustments. (This is Hollywood, after all.) But a Hanks, Cruise or Carrey whose movie brings $600 million back to the studio from all sources might easily wind up with a $20 million salary, and an additional $50 million on the back end, while an A-list director and producer could take in tens of millions more.

Industrywide, the tab for participation arrangements piled up to $3 billion or more last year, by the research company’s reckoning, helping push the business of making films, which was somewhat profitable a few years ago, into a loss.

Roger R. Smith, a former film executive who worked more than six months on the report, said the effect of participations is huge, because “they can easily be paid out on money-losing pictures.”

For the study, Mr. Smith and his team examined all films distributed in recent years by the six major studios, plus DreamWorks, which was independent before its acquisition by Paramount Pictures. It included movies from the primary studio operations, along with the bigger movies from specialty film units like Warner Independent Pictures. And not all of the films are completely owned by the studios, as some have equity investors.

The study estimated that all such releases last year would yield a combined loss of $1.9 billion after collecting the revenue from an entire first cycle of sales to domestic theaters, foreign theaters, home video, pay television and every other source of income.

Total sales for last year’s slate, the company figures, will ultimately be about $23.7 billion, down about 4.6 percent from 2004. Total costs, meanwhile, rose to $25.6 billion, up 13.2 percent.

As he began working up the numbers last spring, Mr. Smith, who is the executive editor and motion picture analyst for Global Media Intelligence, a unit of the London-based Screen Digest, anticipated a harsh response from the studio owners. But with writers on the warpath for a larger share of what they see as expanding corporate profits, Mr. Smith said he was now braced for skepticism from the labor side.

In fact, neither side should be cheered by figures that describe an industry that has increasingly doled out its wealth to star performers and filmmakers, at the expense of almost everyone else.

(The workings of the theatrical movie business contrast sharply with the economics of television. There, superstar writer-producers like John Wells of “E. R.” or Marc Cherry of “Desperate Housewives” are among those who get the biggest take.)

Part of the bad news for the film industry came from a sharp decline in foreign DVD sales. Those dropped 15.5 percent in the period, while domestic DVD sales fell at half that rate.

But the real killer was the growth in participations. Their precise amount is difficult to reckon, because deals vary and details are seldom disclosed publicly. But Global Media noted that at Disney — unusual in that its financial reports break out annual outlays for participations and residuals — the figure had grown at a compound annual rate of 37.6 percent for the last five years, to $554 million. If the other companies are spending at a similar rate, said the researchers, they are paying out shares worth $3 billion, while piling up an almost $2 billion loss on their new films.

A relatively small part of that goes to the guilds in the form of residuals, the contractual payments that writers get when their work reappears in various media — and which the writers are insisting be increased for media of the future.

According to a report from the Writers Guild of America West, which represents the lion’s share of Hollywood writers, movie residuals were just $121.3 million in 2006, a mere drop in the $3 billion bucket.

A big star, by contrast, can easily make $70 million or more from a single hit, if he or she enjoys a so-called first dollar gross deal.

There is a marketplace justice to such arrangements. Unlike the much-derided “net profit” deals granted weaker players — those points seldom get paid, because there is always some studio charge in the way — gross participations give valuable talent a real share of the action.

“Profit participations are negotiated between a willing buyer and a willing seller,” said Steven Blume, chief operating officer of Content Partners, a Los Angeles company that buys participations in return for cash. The terms, he noted, can change with every movie, making them more flexible than residuals, which become locked into long-term master contracts with the guilds.

But, from the studio point of view, this sort of payment is a bit like having a mortgage that doesn’t amortize. “These participations are paid in perpetuity,” Mr. Blume said.

And therein lie new problems for studios that may have gotten too comfortable with such payouts in the last decade or so.

According to Global Media Intelligence, studios a few years ago could count on rising DVD sales to lift their properties into profitability in a five-year first trip through the marketplace. Then, fully paid for, the movies would provide a smaller but near-endless stream of income from library sales over the decades.

Now, however, those same releases are joining the library with multibillion-dollar losses in tow — and they continue to be weighed down by gross participations that never stop.

Even Disney’s strong corporate performance in the last year does not necessarily bode well. The company’s studio unit, which was profitable for the year, had essentially flat revenue, at about $7.5 billion. Despite a huge hit in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” much profit, company executives said, came from the mining of its library with clever ploys like the “Little Mermaid” Platinum Release DVD, which sold nine million units without the burden of star participations.

Once it is understood that the biggest stars and directors can rake in dollars even from money-losing movies, it becomes easier to understand why companies dug in their heels when asked to make richer residual payments on media of the future than they offered on home video of the past. These would trigger higher payments to other guilds, and would probably create pressure from lawyers and agents in search of still fatter participation deals for their star clients.

It is also not hard to see why the situation is especially galling for movie writers, who typically do not share in the most lucrative gross deals. When it comes to finding more money, some of the stars and filmmakers who have joined them on the picket lines may be able to say where it could come from.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/bu...strike.html?hp





Hollywood Workers Fret as Strike Enters Week 2
Carolyn Giardina

Caterer Kim Thorpe helped serve a Thanksgiving lunchon the set of "How I Met Your Mother" Friday. It was the last day of production on the CBS comedy before shutting down because of the Writers Guild of America strike, which enters its second week Monday.

"People would come up to us and say this would probably be their only Thanksgiving dinner if this doesn't get resolved," she said. "I'm a single mom, and my son -- I don't know how I'm going to pay his tuition next month."

The strike casualties among the show's crew include camera operators, assistants, grips, electricians, hair and makeup artists and many more. And then there are the extras.

"We use a lot of extras each week, and these people barely make it," Thorpe said. "What are they going to do? It's so unbelievably painful to think about the size of this. Thousands and thousands of us have lost our jobs this week. The lady I buy my donuts from -- she has two kids in college. It a huge loss of income."

Upwards of 80,000 people in Hollywood are face the prospect of scripted series going dark one by one as they run out of scripts from striking writers.

Mortgage payments, health benefits, pensions, tuition and families are top of mind. There also is the realization that some will be forced to leave the business, and it's unlikely they will return.

Of those affected in production, some are filing for unemployment and others are looking for work in commercials or indie films, making these areas more crowded.

Things could get worse if the commercial production business slows down as some predict, with ad agencies growing hesitant to invest in spots that would air during reruns.

Few in the below-the-line community were willing to talk about the residuals issues at the heart of the strike.

One source in production senses some sympathy toward the writers. But another commented: "People don't like to express their opinions. It's Hollywood. They just would like to work."

One week into the writers strike, its ripple effect already is reaching television postproduction.

"We are feeling the beginning of it now," one source said. "For those doing post for television, the strongest impact will be felt in December."

Others are more optimistic, saying that they might have enough work until the end of the year.

Many post businesses remain busy in such other areas as commercials, indie film and studio mastering. But if the strike is prolonged, downsizing will be on the horizon.

"It's a sad situation; we are planning how we will respond and how quickly we have to start letting employees go," one executive said.

Robert Solomon, the president of Ascent Media Creative Services, a cluster of postproduction video and sound facilities, said his company is "going to be hard-pressed to have to think about letting people go" but has no plans of doing so in the near term.
"I'll fight like crazy to try to avoid (layoffs)," he said. "We continue to remain positive that people will persevere to find suitable solutions to their issues and we can get this back on track so that we don't do any permanent damage to either the overall industry for producing entertainment content or the post industry specifically."

But for those already affected by the strike, things look bleak.

"I'm not sleeping," Thorpe said. "I'm on the computer, looking for some sign of hope."

She recently made a T-shirt to wear to a WGA rally. It reads: "Getting back to the table is not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of compassion."

"They've got to get back to the table," she said. "Until they go there, there is no hope."
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...42478820071112





Writers’ Strike Opens New Window on Hollywood
Jennifer Steinhauer

David D’Orsa, who last week passed his days among the stars, says he may soon be serving up lattes. Leonard Dick told his children they need to get better at turning out the lights. Meredith Buyrucu will go to San Diego this weekend to eat in her mother’s kitchen, “which is kind of embarrassing,” she said, “since I’m 40 years old.”

When the Hollywood writers’ strike pulled back the curtain on the world of television, what Americans saw was not a cashmere-wrapped actress alighting from her Escalade, but rather a bunch of middle-aged writers in ill-fitting red T-shirts standing on a picket line on Pico Boulevard.

With the strike deep into Week 2, thousands of union writers are unemployed until further notice, and dozens of assistants, food stylists, electricians, makeup artists, landscapers and thousands of other “below the line” workers in the industry are finding that their work is drying up, too, punching a psychic wound through large swaths of Los Angeles.

“It is a major topic around town,” said Beth Holley, the office administrator at Global Effects Inc., a prop shop in North Hollywood. “I don’t think there are very many people who have not been affected directly or know someone affected.”

The city’s most defining industry, representing roughly 7 percent of its economy, has always operated with ample doses of smoke and mirrors. Elaborate marketing campaigns promote shows everyone knows will be canceled after a few episodes; unaffordable BMWs are leased by junior agents to save face at the Grill; actresses with eating disorders are given malteds to carry around on sets for waiting paparazzi. Much of what is said and done in Hollywood is meant to give the impression of solidity.

But in reality, one tug on a card can make an entire production implode, rendering scores of people instantly unemployed. Many are middle-class laborers who populate the San Fernando Valley and other neighborhoods outside the glamorous canyons that most Americans associate with show business.

Mr. Dick, a writer on “House” on Fox, said that wherever he goes in his red strike shirt — his daughter’s basketball game, for example — another writer approaches to commiserate. “You realize this really is a company town,” Mr. Dick said.

Producers who are usually absentee parents for the bulk of the fall season are now padding around the house, when they are not on a strike line. Writers with newly minted union cards wonder if they will ever get beyond their first jobs. Low level assistants have found themselves instantly out of work and desperate.

The Writers Guild of America West has a $13 million fund that will provide loans to “members who face financial hardship because their income is demonstrably affected” by the strike.

“I’ve got big N.Y.U. loans and health insurance that I have to pay for,” said Kimberly Mercado, who recently got her first writing job on the Fox show “New Amsterdam” and leased an Audi A4 to celebrate. “That was my big excitement,” Ms. Mercado said, adding that she hoped she would not have to give up the car.

The strike, which has been the talk of coffee shops and playgrounds, is something of a metaphor for the broader labor force of Los Angeles, a place of enormous geographical and class division. It has pit studio executives against writers — the bulk of whom are paid far less than high-profile strikers like Larry David — and writers against some trade professionals, whose feelings about the strike are ambivalent at best.

“Our people are middle-class workers,” said Ed Brown, a business agent at the local trade union that represents 6,000 crafts people. “These are not the people that people see at Hollywood insider parties. We are the collateral damage.”

Mr. D’Orsa, an assistant to the executive producers of the FX show “The Riches,” said he would soon be headed to Starbucks, résumé in hand.

Getbackinthatroom.blogspot .com is keeping a running tally of industry workers who have been laid off — almost 250 as of Thursday afternoon.

“I am unemployed thanks to both sides not wanting to lose face,” said Ms. Buyrucu, a costumer on “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC. “Yes, they have families, too, but they’re making the choice. We don’t have a choice.”

And yet for as dominant a role as the entertainment industry may play in the minds of Americans, and as prevalent as the red shirts of strikers are on the Westside of Los Angeles, the ebb and flow of the broader life of the city is undisturbed.

“It is tough to energize people to come up for middle-class and upper-middle-class people,” said Fernando J. Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “Hollywood has always considered itself in L.A. but not part of L.A. They consider themselves a national industry.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/us/16writers.html





The WGA Strike and the Death of Television

This WGA strike sucks, to be sure. If it goes on for more than three months (which is looking increasingly likely), pilot season won't happen, no new shows will be created, no new seasons will come back, and we'll be stuck with the dregs of reality TV for a full year. Yep, that means no last season of Battlestar Galactica, no new season of Lost, and no new episodes of The Office. It's no small thing, and not just because you'll be inconvenienced by marathons of Overweight Celebrity Chili Cook-Off Island or whatever the networks will throw up when they run out of new programming.

TV is not disappearing anytime soon, but clearly, it's going to be replaced by either the internet or some TV/internet hybrid. Like the music industry, the TV industry realizes that their tried-and-true business model is about to be useless, and it's lashing out in panic. Unlike the music industry, who stupidly attacked its fans, the TV industry is attacking its own creative source: writers. But the WGA wouldn't be striking if this wasn't important. We talked to both sides to get at the root of the trouble.

Eric Appel, who's written for Crank Yankers and The Andy Milonakis Show and consulted for MTVs Human Giant, told me:
"New media is where television is going. In a few years cable is just gonna be the internet. And unlike TiVo where you can skip the advertisements, in [new, network-run] streaming players you're forced to sit through the ads. The networks are making money on that, and the studios don't want to give writers any of it."

Imagine if the recording industry decided that the internet was merely a way to promote CDs and that no songs sold online counted when paying musicians. Their argument would be that people were just checking out those songs and might go buy the CD later, at which point the artist would get paid. This is essentially the argument the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is making.

Here's what a spokesperson told me:
"New media has proven to be an effective and cost-effective promotional and marketing tool for both films and television but there is not enough marketplace data to judge its true potential, ultimate impact on traditional media or viability as a business."
Basically, they claim they don't make any money off the internet so there's nothing to share with the writers, and since "each new month brings new ways to produce, distribute and consume media and entertainment" they don't want to agree to give writers any new media residuals.

As it stands, writers get a small percentage of revenue if a show is successful and reruns often, which is why Jerry Seinfeld drives a gold-plated flying car between his mansions in the Hamptons and Dubai. At the moment, they aren't paid any residuals for new media distribution, despite the fact that online content delivery is the future.

The problem with this logic is that if new media really didn't bring in any money, there wouldn't be a problem. The writers are asking for a percentage of profits from new media — a percentage of nothing is nothing, after all.

So what this battle basically boils down to is the producers trying to move away from a residuals system, one in which writers are paid once for their work and get nothing for creating huge hits. It'll make them a whole lot more money and writers a whole lot less. And it's not just the livelihood of writers at stake; this same issue is going to come up with actors and directors as well in the near future. It's a battle for how business will be done in TV's new age, and one that will affect the entertainment that all of us consume for the foreseeable future.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/solidarit...ion-322068.php





TV Shows See Strike as a Second Chance
Bill Carter

In the television business the grim reality of the writers’ strike has set in, with the prospect of a long shutdown of scripted shows growing stronger by the day.

But in what seems to be growing consensus among executives at the television networks, the strike could contain a faint glimmer of good news for one group of shows: struggling, barely surviving prime-time series.

“The strike definitely could be a good thing for some marginal shows,” said Preston Beckman, the executive in charge of scheduling for the Fox network. That theory was seconded by executives at the other networks and at several studios, most of whom asked for and were granted anonymity because of a code of silence about strike issues that is in place at the big production companies.

Very soon the networks will begin running low on original scripted episodes of shows. Any new episode will become an increasingly valuable commodity. No network is going to waste bought-and-paid-for episodes. So the marginal shows will stay on until their episodes run out, which, in most cases, will mean sometime between now and the end of January.

The executives pointed to specific shows that might have been facing cancellation or at least trips to the hiatus shelf in previous television seasons. Now, thanks to the strike, these shows will surely get to run their full complement of episodes — and perhaps win a shot at coming back next year.

In this group are first-season series like “Journeyman” and “Life” on NBC, “K-ville” and “Back to You” on Fox, “Big Shots” and “Carpoolers” on ABC and “Cane” on CBS.

Some holdover shows may also be affected for the better. Those possibilities include “Friday Night Lights” on NBC, “Men in Trees” on ABC, “’Til Death” on Fox and “Shark” on CBS.

In other seasons some shows like these, which have teetered on the ratings fence, might have been temporarily shelved or yanked off the air. Now, as Mr. Beckman noted, “they’re just going to be allowed to play out.” And as another senior network program executive put it, “We’re going to get a little extra look at some of these shows, and maybe they’ll help themselves.”

A show like “Friday Night Lights,” for instance, with its high critical praise and low ratings, could get a chance to break through in January, when it is likely to be among the few fall series with some new episodes left; the show started production early and managed to complete 15 episodes before the strike.

In general shows with self-contained stories may be deemed more viable because they have a better chance to do well in repeats. CBS’s schedule has so many crime dramas that repeat well, like “CSI” and “NCIS,” that it may be better off during the strike than its competitors.

ABC’s regular lineup meanwhile is dominated by serialized shows like “Desperate Housewives” that do not repeat well. But that could benefit the one new crime drama ABC owns, “Women’s Murder Club.” ABC could move that show off Friday, where its ratings have been marginal (it has a tryout tonight at 10), and see different results because most viewers haven’t seen the episodes in first run.

In January the series that had been held in reserve will get their shots on the air, usually in limited runs. These include shows like “Lost” and “Cashmere Mafia” on ABC, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” on Fox and “Jericho” on CBS. And some of these shows could do better than they would have otherwise, because by the time they get on, they would not have to face original episodes of shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House.”

Instead they will be facing either repeats or substitute programming like newsmagazines or reality shows. They could benefit from the weakened competition, or from being placed adjacent to hit reality shows like “American Idol” on Fox and “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC, leading them to stand out even more. For just this reason Fox is planning to insert episodes of “Back to You” after “Idol” in March.

“Some of these shows might do much better than they would have without the strike,” one senior network executive said.

Several network executives pointed out that the downside of the strike is still far greater than any tiny upside. As some marginal shows find a hope for new life, some incipient hit shows could see their early hopes squashed. New shows that have been building momentum, like “Samantha Who?” on ABC, “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS and “Chuck” on NBC, could get forgotten over months off the air while the audience moves on to other entertainment choices.

The biggest challenge for programmers may come if the strike continues long into the new year. Then development for next year’s shows will be severely affected because pilots for a new fall season may never get made.

Many drama scripts have already been turned in, but those almost always get worked on many more times before a pilot is commissioned. Comedies, few of which are ordered this early, are even more works in constant progress, so the strike could mean few or no new comedy pilots will get into finished shape.

That would leave networks in the position of having to put together a future lineup based on whatever spare parts seem to work this winter and a lot of shows that have not produced new episodes in a long time. Again, the result could be consideration for shows that otherwise might have looked replaceable.

“We may renew some series just because we know what we have with them, and we have no idea what else we’ll have,” one network executive said. “If we thought the show was being well produced and showed at least some promise, my guess is we would bring it back.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/ar...on/15life.html





Web Videos Stealing TV Viewers, and Marketers
Stuart Elliott

WHY are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.

As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers — not to mention marketers and media companies.

“Video has been liberated” from the TV set, Beth Comstock, president for integrated media at NBC Universal, said last week at a panel at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

“If you’re in the video business,” she added, referring to companies like her employer, the NBC Universal division of General Electric, “it’s exciting to see where it’s going.”

One direction online video is going is toward the creation of scripted episodic shows that are made expressly for Web sites. Many online video programs, sometimes called Webisodes, emulate television in one respect in that they are released at the same time each day or week.

But there is a difference between online and on the air: the alphabet soup of names for TV networks (e.g., ABC, CBS, ESPN) is replaced on the Internet with madcap monikers intended to be more memorable: Blame Society, Blip.TV, Crackle, Funny or Die, Heavy, My Damn Channel and Viropop, among others.

•

Another difference is that shows made for the Internet are usually much briefer than their TV counterparts, on the theory that few computer users are willing to sit at their monitors for 30 or 60 minutes at a time.

“We know people’s attention spans online are short,” said Mark Karlan, media strategist at Lowe Worldwide in New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, who is seeking online video advertising opportunities for the milk mustache campaign sponsored by the Milk Processor Education Program.

“Video has become a much larger part of our online strategy in the past year or so,” Mr. Karlan said, for reasons that include the chance to achieve “wide audience reach” with some programs while aiming others at audience segments like teenagers.

Examples of online video programming include “The Burg,” about the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, which can be watched at theburg.tv; “Meth Minute 39,” a cartoon series, found on channelfrederator.com, a Web site that is part of Next New Networks; and “Roommates,” the first original Web series on MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation.

The popularity of online video is beginning to draw familiar names. For instance, the producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of “Thirtysomething” fame are creating “Quarterlife,” which can be watched on its own Web site (quarterlife.com) or on myspace.com. Tom Green, the former MTV personality, is now the host of “Tom Green Live” on ManiaTV.com and tomgreen.com.

And comic actors like Michael Cera and Bob Odenkirk are involved in video ventures like “Clark and Michael,” found at clarkandmichael.com, and “Derek and Simon,” available at superdeluxe.com respectively.

“The proliferation, even in the last six or eight months, is where we see our chance, where we see opportunity,” said Craig Atkinson, digital director in Chicago of the OMD media agency, part of the Omnicom Group.

For one client, McDonald’s, Mr. Atkinson and Michael Solomon, associate director for strategy at OMD Chicago, worked with an online video network in New York, Broadband Enterprises, on the sponsorship of a Web series, “The Fantastic Two.”

The weekly episodes follow the hapless friends, Charly and Mitch, and their fantasy football league. There are guest appearances by William Perry, known as the Refrigerator when he played for the Chicago Bears in the 1980s. Here, he is called Fridgie Bear, a riff on the Huggy Bear character portrayed by Antonio Fargas in the ’70s TV series “Starsky and Hutch.”

There are also guest appearances on “The Fantastic Two” by McDonald’s products like Dollar Menu items, which are integrated into plot lines in the manner that, say, Nissan cars are written into the plot lines of episodes of the NBC series “Heroes.”

“This is unique for us in the level of integration,” said Anja Carroll, director for United States media at the McDonald’s Corporation in Oak Brook, Ill.

Besides the products in the episodes, there are humorous touches like animated characters overlaid on screen proclaiming, “Shameless product placement” when McDonald’s food items appear.

“For this target audience, we’re fine with” the tongue-in-cheek tone, Ms. Carroll said, referring to the men ages 18 to 24 who McDonald’s hopes will watch “The Fantastic Two” on a network of more than 400 Web sites assembled by Broadband Enterprises. (The episodes can also be watched on thefantastictwo.com.)

Mr. Karlan at Lowe has arranged with Broadband Enterprises for the milk campaign to be integrated into episodes of “Hollywood Fast Lane,” a series in the vein of syndicated TV shows like “Access Hollywood.”

No, the host of “Hollywood Fast Lane,” Shandi Finnessey, will not be sporting a mock milk mustache the way celebrities do in the print ads that Lowe creates. Rather, “a part of her sign-off might be suggesting that milk is a healthy alternative drink to have while you’re watching movies or a DVD,” Mr. Karlan said.

•

Broadband Enterprises is hardly alone in bringing branded entertainment to online video. The series “Roommates” on MySpace features the Ford Focus. And the Volvo C30 appears in episodes of an online series, “Mr. Robinson’s Driving School,” at drivingschool.msn.com.

The integration of products into plot lines “is critical to these deals,” said Matthew Wasserlauf, chief executive at Broadband Enterprises.

Even so, he acknowledged, “there’s certainly going to be a learning curve” as branded entertainment arrives online.

For instance, the tactic seems better suited for online video aimed at younger consumers, Mr. Wasserlauf said, because “that audience has become more savvy and recognizes that we’re saying to them: ‘You know how this works. Let’s have some fun.’ ”

There is speculation that the strike by the Writers Guild of America, which is affecting production of TV series, may further fuel the rise of online video.

However, Steve Sternberg, executive vice president for audience analysis at Magna Global in New York, a media agency that is part of Interpublic, predicted in a report this week that “viewers will still be in front of the set and ready to watch television programming when regular broadcast schedules resume.”

There are, though, casualties of the strike. TV Guide magazine said it would cancel a ceremony and a broadcast of its first Online Video Awards. The winners will instead be announced — where else? — online, at tvguide.com, on Nov. 26.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/bu...ia/16adco.html





Humor

The Writers’ Strike, Explained
Jack

Sure, it may seem complicted, and with all these highly paid slackers up against even higher paid slackers, it’s no wonder we’re so confused. But the in the battle royale between the media flaks who write the stuff and the media flaks who ah, execute it, there is this simple fact. Ka-ching.

The Daily Show’s Jason Roth explains.





NBC Direct Launched, Download Shows for Free
Jonathan Schlaffer

It’s here, and it’s no joke. NBC has launched NBC Direct where most shows can be watched online and some shows are available for full episode downloads. This comes after NBC decided to pull out of iTunes.

NBC Direct beta is currently only available to residents of the United States and only works with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 on Windows XP or Vista, for the moment so once again, Firefox and Mac users will be left out.

Mac and Linux support should roll out some time in early 2008.

As of right now, only shows from the current season are available to watch and there aren’t that many to choose from if you want to download a full episode to your computer. Shows available for download include the previous episodes of Bionic Woman, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and The Office and even more are available for online viewing but not download. It’s almost certain that further selections will be added in the future.

It should come as no surprise that videos will only play on the computer that it was originally downloaded to and cannot be shared.

This is certainly a very exciting service and here’s hoping it will remain free when it moves out of beta. I for one, am already hooked on it (and it’s only been out for a day).
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...hows-for-free/





High-Quality YouTube Videos Coming Soon
Rafe Needleman

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. Although YouTube's goal, he said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if viewers want it.

Why wouldn't they? Because the need to buffer the video before it starts playing will change the experience. Hence the experiment, rather than just a rapid rollout of this technology. On stage, he said the current resolution of YouTube videos has been "good enough" for the site untill now.

Chen told me he expects that high-quality YouTube videos will be available to everyone within three months.

Chen also confirmed that in YouTube's internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with--320x240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn't going to help much.
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9817732-2.html





Broadcasters Woo 'Lost Generation' in Deal with Social Networking Site Bebo

• Media Online television clips will target younger viewers
• 'Revolutionary' battle for millions of users

Owen Gibson

The UK's biggest social networking site yesterday announced partnerships with a string of broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, ITN and CBS, in a move hailed as one of the most significant yet in marrying old and new media.

Traditional broadcasters hope that distributing and marketing their programmes to Bebo's 40 million users will help them reconnect with the so-called "lost TV generation" of 13 to 24-year-olds who make up the social networking site's core audience.

It will allow Bebo users to collect and curate clips from BBC programmes such as Doctor Who and EastEnders, behind-the-scenes MTV footage, ITN entertainment news and a host of other items within their own "Personal Video Profile", displaying them on their homepage and sharing them with friends.

In future, broadcasters are also likely to use Bebo to premiere programmes before they are shown on television in an attempt to build up an early following.

One of their biggest challenges is to cut through the noise of competing channels and get viewers to sample their programmes.

Bebo's president, Joanna Shields, said the announcement marked a new phase for social networking sites.

"We're revolutionising the way media companies can reach audiences online ... particularly the hard-to-reach youth demographic," she said.

As well as welcoming the world's biggest media companies, she said the new platform would be open to niche broadcasters, giving them an opportunity to reach Bebo's millions of users.

A fierce battle is taking place for the eyeballs of elusive younger consumers, who are increasingly turning their backs on traditional media. Advertisers are terrified of no longer being able to reach young audiences, while broadcasters and other traditional media owners are seeing mass audiences eroded.

Bebo, which unveiled a new look yesterday, also vowed to collaborate with broadcasters and independent producers to create more interactive drama and entertainment shows developed especially for the web, following its recent hit Kate Modern.

It claims to be the most popular social networking site in Britain, with 10.9 million users spending an average of 35 to 40 minutes a day on it. Globally, it is third to rivals MySpace, which rose to prominence in the UK thanks to its role in breaking several big music artists, and Facebook, which has an older user base and has been embraced by office workers around the world.

Bebo was founded in 2005 by British-born web entrepreneur Michael Birch with his wife, Xochi, and has steadfastly refused a number of offers to sell to established media players.

The BBC and Channel 4 will initially use the Bebo network to promote their shows using short clips. Because it allows them to embed their own "media players" within the website, they are also likely to show full-length programmes in future.

Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4, said it was "the start of an exciting partnership and the launch pad for future innovations around new formats and existing successful shows". The broadcaster has already enjoyed some success by heavily promoting youth drama Skins through MySpace.

Shields, a former Google executive, said one of the key differences with Bebo's offering to broadcasters was that it was not attempting to make any money from their content.

Instead, broadcasters retain control of the rights and can use their own technology, showing their own advertisements around their clips.

The power of online video was first demonstrated by the explosion in popularity of video-sharing site YouTube, much of which was driven by traditional broadcasts being made available illegally, as well as from user-generated content.

While some broadcasters, including the BBC, have done deals with the Google-owned YouTube to feature their shows on their own branded channels, others, including Viacom and the Premier League, have threatened it with legal action.

Broadcasters have for some time been working on how to deliver on-demand programming over the internet and mobile devices.

The BBC has launched a public trial of its long-mooted iPlayer, which offers any programme from the last seven days, while ITV and Channel 4 also offer similar catch-up services. Apple offers paid-for downloads of TV shows through iTunes, while NBC and News Corp recently launched a video site in the US.

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, has made reconnecting with younger viewers a main plank of his Creative Future plan designed to maintain support for the licence fee in an age of digital choice.

But broadcasters have only recently turned their attention to spreading their programmes throughout the web. Web 2.0 logic dictates that broadcasters will stand a better chance of continuing to reach mass audiences if they are able to scatter clips, programmes and other background material throughout the web to users who will no longer head for "destination sites" to watch it.

To this end, media companies have been engaged in a desperate race to sign deals with new TV-over-the-internet platforms such as Joost, while at the same time policing the web for pirate content.

Shields likened the typical Bebo profile to a teenager's bedroom. It became an extension of their personality by hosting pictures and notes from friends and displaying their favourite bands and TV shows, she said.

She predicted the new deals would help mark it out from its rivals, describing Facebook as a functional BlackBerry equivalent and Bebo as a multimedia iPod Touch.

Computer screened

Bebo and other websites are now commissioning their own shows. Attempts at interactive online dramas are nothing new - US series The Spot was made in 1995 - but the popularity and marketing power of Bebo has arguably made them viable for the first time. Kate Modern, a thriller starring Ralf Little made by the team behind US YouTube phenomenon LonelyGirl 115, was watched 25m times in three months and allowed Bebo users to interact with the characters. It also featured sponsorship deals, such as one with Warner Music to put its act The Days into the storyline, and product placement of the kind that is banned on television. It will be followed by drama Sofia's Diary, made by Sony, and The Gap Year, an Endemol "interactive online reality drama", following six contestants travelling the globe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007...o.digitalmedia





Online Video Bad for Network TV, Good for Network Web Sites
Nate Anderson

Web video (both authorized and otherwise) is exploding in popularity, but is it simply drawing viewers away from the TV? Or are people watching more content then ever? That's a question tackled by University of Pennsylvania business school prof Joel Waldfogel in a recent paper (PDF, still in draft and recently mentioned on the Freakonomics blog). His study, though it has some major caveats, indicates that the availability of popular television shows on the web does in fact depress television viewing. It's a result that might make network admen weep, except that the decrease in TV viewing has a flip side: web viewers spend more total time watching network-owned properties.

Waldfogel surveyed 287 students at Penn about their TV-watching habits. The thinking was that tech-savvy students would be an excellent population for getting a sense of how web distribution of content will change the future of TV. (Also, students are widely available, and generally fill out surveys in return for M&Ms or beer money.) This is not, and was not intended to be, a wide-ranging statement about the general population.

Waldfogel asked the students to write down the TV series they had watched for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons, along with whether such viewing was on 1) television, 2) authorized web sites, or 3) unauthorized sites, including BitTorrent. (Note that self-reporting opens the survey results to inaccuracies.) Waldfogel then crunched the numbers and found a huge spike in categories two and three between the two seasons of responses. This is exactly what he expected, since YouTube surged to popularity at this time and the networks began making streaming versions of shows available from their own websites in mid-2006. In the first season he measured, 72 percent of all shows watched were on a television. By the second season, this had fallen dramatically to only 55 percent.

So students are migrating to the web; what's the result? We might imagine that the web would simply replace the television and the network would see no net gain or loss from moving shows online, but that's not what Waldfogel found. Instead, television time dropped but web time increased even more. The net result was that students in the survey spent an average of 1.5 more hours per week on network properties (TV channels plus authorized web sites).

Waldfogel's idea is that making TV shows more easily available to students (in essence, turning them into on-demand programming) actually stimulates more total content consumption by making viewers aware of more shows. Unauthorized clips, such as some of the network clips found at YouTube and other sites, may have the same effect. While a TV show that aired each week during a student's night class might never even be seen, the web offers that student a chance to see the show, get hooked, and start tuning in on a weekly basis. Whether that happens through a TV or over the web should be irrelevant to broadcasters, who can show ads in both places.

This is a small sample (and one based on surveys rather than observation) of students at a single large public university—hardly a definitive statement about how Americans will respond as more shows find their way online. Still, it's an intriguing first step for such research, and it suggests that tech-savvy users who can find a bit more time in their weekly schedules for watching content on a screen will be willing to do just that as networks make it easier for them to find and keep up with new shows.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...web-sites.html





The Fonda Factor
Abby Ellin

IF Debbie Hollingshead hadn’t fallen in love with Cathe Friedrich’s hairdo — a soft, feathered pixie cut evocative of Dorothy Hamill — her life would not be what it is today.

After stumbling across a photograph of Ms. Friedrich in a fitness magazine in 1999, Ms. Hollingshead showed the picture to her stylist and asked him to replicate it. Later, she logged on to Ms. Friedrich’s Web site, Cathe.com, to see the woman behind the hair: a hard-bodied mother of two, who has been a video fitness star for more than two decades. Ms. Hollingshead bought a DVD, and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

“I get a better workout with Cathe than I’ve gotten anyplace else,” said Ms. Hollingshead, 54, an aerobics teacher in Uniontown, Ohio. “She’s incredible.”

Incredible. Awesome. Amazing. These are just some of the adjectives grown women use to describe the fitness instructors who motivate them while they exercise at home. Despite the easy availability of group fitness classes and online workouts, many women over 35 prefer to exercise in private, with an instructor who can guide them past the burn of a deep lunge. Their fearless leaders are not perky 22-year-olds with dewy faces, but women in their 40s. In this world, the real stars are less pretty young thing and more yummy mummy.

Among them is Ms. Friedrich, 43, the aerobics boot-camp-and-kickboxing queen who has released more than 80 videos and DVDs since 1989 and has taught on FitTV, part of the Discovery network, three hours a day for the last four years. And Jari Love, 42, whose abs look as if they could deflect an oncoming bus and whose weight-training videos inspire an international following.

And, of course, the peppy “Walking Woman,” Leslie Sansone, 45, whose devoted power-walkers have even taken to following her around the supermarket. Her “Walk Away Your Waistline” was No. 6 in sales earlier this month at Collage Video, a fitness video clearinghouse in Minneapolis whose rankings have become an industry yardstick. (Ms. Love’s “Get Ripped and Chiseled” is No. 1, and Ms. Friedrich’s “4-Day Split” is No. 2).

“Leslie had a way of touching me through her video that was incredible,” said Kathy Halderman, 39, an administrative assistant and waitress in Liberty Township, Ohio, who credits Ms. Sansone with the 250 pounds she lost over four years. “I began to cry during the first workout not just because it hurt physically, but she was touching my soul and making me feel like I had a purpose and everything she was doing I could do.”

The video fitness world has evolved since a soufflé-haired Jane Fonda in leg warmers released her first VHS in 1982. It is no longer enough to merely look good in spandex (though that’s clearly a requirement), so today’s video fitness stars are selling the idea that their bodies look buff despite their having given birth multiple times. That age has not withered them. That exercise — not plastic surgery or Botox — has given them that youthful glow. (Ms. Love, Ms. Sansone and Ms. Friedrich all insist that they have had no plastic surgery on their faces or bodies). And that their workout plan is the key.

Many of their acolytes are busy women who not only find it more efficient to exercise at home, but more comfortable. Lorrayne Schaeffer, 41, a computer engineer in San Diego, exercises only at home, and only with Ms. Friedrich. “I feel intimidated at a gym,” she said. “At home I can do it on my own time not have to compete for the equipment — just me and Cathe and the crew.”

According to Jill Ross, director of product acquisition at Collage Video, 8.5 million fitness DVDs were sold in the United States from July 2006 through June 2007; the average home video user is about 45, and most instructors don’t hit their stride with viewers until around age 37. “You need a certain commanding presence,” she said. “If Oprah was 22, would she be fun to watch?” (Incidentally, Ms. Ross said, brunet video stars generally are more popular than blond ones, because they are perceived as more serious.)

Many of those making popular DVDs, like Kathy Smith, now 55, and Denise Austin, 50, witnessed the birth of the fitness industry. “Back then, the industry was so young, and so were the people in it,” said Carol Scott, the president of ECA World Fitness, an industry organization that offers training and workshops for fitness professionals. “What’s happened is that the same people are still doing it.” Exercise video producers are having difficulty finding new talent, she said: “In years prior, there weren’t a lot of big chains, there were exercise studios. They mentored the instructors. It doesn’t really exist on the same level anymore.”

Whatever their experience, older video stars appeal to consumers on a visceral level. “If you’re down in your basement every morning following someone,” said Denise Brodey, the editor in chief of Fitness magazine, “you like the idea that they look like you.”

Or how you’d like to look, anyway. Jari Love is a walking — and sculpturing and toning — billboard for what women covet and has found success despite her blindingly blond hair. (For the record, the color comes from a bottle.) A former model, actress and singer, and now the mother of two, Ms. Love entered the video arena at 38, after teaching strength training and aerobics for almost 20 years at a fitness club in Calgary, Alberta, that she is a partner in.

Since the release of the first weight-training DVD, “Get Ripped!” in 2005, she has developed a wide following. Jeffrey Fergason, president of Razor Digital Entertainment, which distributes Ms. Love’s videos, said the four titles have sold more than 250,000 copies. Ms. Love, who said she once weighed 165 pounds, has nary a centimeter of fat on her 5-foot-7, 122-pound body.

This inspires consumers. “Young girls already have that nice tight figure,” said Nash Cajee, 33, a yoga teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia, who owns Ms. Love’s “Get Ripped!” weight-training series. “They don’t have a lot of cellulite or saddlebags. But Jari’s 10 years older than me.” The fact that she’s 42, Ms. Cajee said, “and has a way better body than I do — a body that I would only dream of having — that’s incredible in itself.”

Thanks to the Internet, video fitness devotees have a place to congregate, on sites like www.videofitness.com, to extol the virtues of their favorite teachers. Some fans even meet in person. Ms. Friedrich, who said she has sold more than a million DVDs since releasing her first one 18 years ago, has held five gatherings since 1998 (she calls them “road trips”) in her Glassboro, N.J., studio, where women from as far away as Uganda congregate to exercise with her in the flesh. The most recent road trip, in August, sold out in three minutes, attracting 105 women.

“It’s a testament of what a super awesome person and instructor she is,” said Ms. Schaeffer, the computer engineer, who has attended most of the road trips.

Other women swear by Leslie Sansone. Since releasing her first video in 1980, Ms. Sansone, a mother of three in New Castle, Pa., has made over 90 titles. According to her site, lesliesansone.com, her business is worth $200 million.

She is often stopped by fans in airports and on the street, and sometimes sneaks around the supermarket so she isn’t followed. Her biggest selling point is her “real woman” status, she said. “I didn’t go into the industry by saying, ‘Feel my rock hard abs, feel my muscles,’” Ms. Sansone said. “I’m allowed to age. I don’t believe people expect me to be perfect.”

Catherine Saint Louis contributed reporting
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/fa...15fitness.html





Bring the Real World Home
Roger Cohen

In the gym at the NATO base in Kabul, U.S. soldiers hit the treadmills every morning and gaze at TV screens broadcasting Al Jazeera’s English news channel. When Osama bin Laden makes news, as he did recently with a statement about Iraq, America’s finest work out beneath the solemn gaze of their most wanted enemy.

This sounds like a scene from Donald Rumsfeld’s private hell. The former secretary of defense dismissed Al Jazeera as a “mouthpiece of Al Qaeda.” He once called the network, which is based in and owned by Qatar, “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.”

In an indication of what the Bush administration thinks of Al Jazeera journalism (and habeas corpus), it has locked up one of the network’s cameramen, Sami al-Hajj, in Guantánamo Bay for more than five years without charging him.

The choice of viewing at the NATO gym is a lot wiser than Rumsfeld’s choice of words or the terrible treatment of Hajj. America, and not just its front-line soldiers, needs to watch Al Jazeera to understand how the world has changed. Any other course amounts to self-destructive blindness.

The first change that must be grasped is America’s diminished ability to influence people. Global access to information now amounts to an immense à la carte menu. Networks escape control. To hundreds of millions of people accessing information for the first time, from central China to Kenya’s Rift Valley, the United States can easily look exclusive and less relevant to their future.

The second essential change is the erosion of American power. Samantha Power, the author and Harvard professor, calls this “the core fact of recent years.”

America’s hard power — its military — is compromised by intractable counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its economy is strained; witness the ever feebler dollar. Its soft power — the resonance of the American idea — has been hurt by a loss of legitimacy (Hajj languishing) and by incompetence (Iraq).

The third essential change is the solidification of anti-Americanism as a political idea. Jihadist Islamism is the most violent expression of this, but its agents benefit from swimming in a sea of less murderous resentments.

In response to all this, America can say to heck with an ungrateful world. It can mutter about third, even fourth, world wars. Therein lies a downward spiral. Or it can try to grasp the new, multinetworked world as it is.

To this world Al Jazeera English offers a useful primer. The network can be tendentious — bin Laden’s face up there for several minutes — in stomach-turning ways. But, over all, its striving for balanced reporting from a distinct perspective seems genuine.

A year after its launch, it reaches 100 million households worldwide. Its focus is on “reporting from the political south to the political north,” as Nigel Parsons, its managing director, put it. The world it presents, more from the impact than the launch point of U.S. missiles, is one that must be understood.

Yet, the network has been sidelined in the United States. Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told me: “There’s definitely an attitude here that these guys are the enemy. But in the Mideast, Asia and Europe they have a credibility the U.S. desperately needs.”

Moran met recently with Al Jazeera English executives seeking to extend the service’s Lilliputian reach here. Right now, you can watch it in Toledo, Ohio, through Buckeye Cablesystem, which reaches 147,000 homes.

Or, if you’re in Burlington, Vt., a municipal cable service offers the network to about 1,000 homes. Washington Cable, in the capital, reaches half that. Better options are YouTube or GlobeCast satellite distribution.

These are slim pickings. Al Jazeera English is far more accessible in Israel. Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, told me: “It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.”

Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that “cable providers shouldn’t give them access.”

Most cable companies have bowed to the pressure while denying politics influenced their decisions. “It just comes down to channel capacity and other programming options,” Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, told me.

Nonsense, says Representative Moran, blaming “political winds plus a risk-averse corporate structure.”

These political winds hurt America. Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.

Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/opinion/12cohen.html





Cable Ruling May Provide Opportunities For Google, Startups
Duncan Riley

The FCC may move to open up access to cable television on the basis that the big cable companies are too dominant, according to the NY Times.

The move would lower the cost of entry to new content providers and forcibly provide access where this has been denied previously. There is also the possibility that the FCC may force cable providers to unbundle channels, allowing consumers to pick and choose which channels they want as opposed to the current bundled channel practice.

Without knowing exactly what the final ruling will look like, anything that provides improved choice to consumers is a good thing; it’s also a good thing for Google and content focused startups.

In Google’s case, its TV advertising product, currently being trialled by Sky in the United Kingdom, could well have a range of new potential customers looking for innovative advertising solutions. Many of the existing players have rebuffed Google’s overtures, new players may not.

A long shot, depending on the extent of the FCC ruling, is Google taking part in the content provision side itself. Consider that a site like YouTube is a conduit to the provision of content in the same way that a cable station is, and Google is already well versed in negotiating content distribution deals with major providers. Google has the time, money, and growing technical experience to provide a cable television station or two, all naturally supported by Google TV ads. It’s a stretch, and perhaps a more likely scenario is that we might see Google partner with someone else (be it in a full partnership or minority investment) but either way it’s an opportunity someone in Google will at least look at. Consider this: Google is trying to buy mobile spectrum to increase the reach of their mobile advertising product, a couple of cable channels is a much cheaper and more manageable proposition then being a mobile operator.

Lower access costs to cable networks also provide opportunities for content creating startups. We’ve already seen Podshow on TiVo; any similar content creator, either alone or in conjunction with others, will always look at ways to broaden their distribution in an attempt to maximize viewing numbers. The internet may be the first choice for many when it comes to accessing content, but there is still a very sizable cable audience in the United States, one that may be receptive to innovative channels run by startups that have previously been net only players.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/10...ogle-startups/





CBS Offers Midtown Manhattan Free Wireless Internet Access
Allen Stern

Some awesome news out of Manhattan today. CBS Corporation has announced today that it will "light up" midtown Manhattan with the creation of the "CBS Mobile Zone," a wireless high-speed network enabling New Yorkers with Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones, laptops or other devices to access the Internet for free, and make voice over internet (VOI) calls.

The zone will be from Times Square to Central Park South and from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue and is a test in partnership with the MTA.

You might be asking what CBS gets out of the deal - ad impressions! New Yorkers who access the "CBS Mobile Zone," will be greeted by an ad-supported homepage that includes hyperlocal content such as breaking local and national news, sports highlights, weather reports, music discovery, wallpapers, ringtones, maps, a social network and the ability to search for nearby restaurants, shops and entertainment complete with geographically- targeted community reviews. Citi and Salesgenie.com(TM) have signed on to be early sponsors of the Wi-Fi HotZone.

"This is another example of how the assets of CBS Outdoor are enhanced by new technologies," said Wally Kelly, Chairman and CEO of CBS Outdoor. "What better way to show we are committed to turning our Outdoor assets
into next-generation interactive platforms than providing free Wi-Fi service in what is arguably the busiest stretch of real estate in the world. This offering will allow us to evaluate the prospect of applying Wi-Fi capabilities across our Outdoor properties globally."

They are also giving routers to local businesses in the Mobile Zone to enhance the signals. I wonder what the signal will be like on New Year's Eve! Just how many connections can this system handle was not disclosed.

Many of the companies covered on CN are included in the Homepage including: Tropos, BIG, Fon, Ning, Goowy, Veoh, Yelp, 1020, Aptilo and Can-Do Entertainment.

Very exciting news - I will do my best to test the system over the coming weeks and report back.
http://www.centernetworks.com/manhat...ta-partnership





Brazil Hopes to Expand Broadband to Entire Country in 3 Years
AP

Latin America's largest nation hopes to expand broadband Internet access across nearly its whole expanse in the next three years, Brazil's communications minister said.

Helio Costa, speaking late Tuesday at a U.N. forum on governing the Internet, said the project could cost $1.7 billion. Much of the cost would cover laying new fiber optic telephone lines.

"If we manage to get an agreement with the companies to substitute lines, we could cover 80 percent of the national territory," Costa told reporters.

The government also plans to use the infrastructure of state-owned oil and electricity companies, the communications ministry said in a statement.

"The only people left out will be a few communities in the interior of the country," Costa said.

Brazil has more than 32 million regular Internet users, the most in South America, its census department said this year, but most of Brazil's 182 million residents don't have access to broadband.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_7460745





Guilty as charged

Wi-Fi Piggybacking Widespread

Sophos has revealed new research into the use of other people's Wi-Fi networks to piggyback onto the internet without payment. The research shows that 54 percent of computer users have admitted breaking the law, by using someone else's wireless internet access without permission.

According to Sophos, many internet-enabled homes fail to properly secure their wireless connection properly with passwords and encryption, allowing freeloading passers-by and neighbours to steal internet access rather than paying an internet service provider (ISP) for their own. In addition, while businesses often have security measures in place to protect the Wi-Fi networks within their offices from attack, Sophos experts note that remote users working from home could prove to be a weak link in corporate defences.

Stealing Wi-Fi internet access may feel like a victimless crime, but it deprives ISPs of revenue. Furthermore, if you've hopped onto your next door neighbours' wireless broadband connection to illegally download movies and music from the net, chances are that you are also slowing down their internet access and impacting on their download limit. For this reason, most ISPs put a clause in their contracts ordering users not to share access with neighbours - but it's very hard for them to enforce this.

Survey results
Have you ever used someone else's Wi-Fi connection without their permission?

Yes 54%
No 46%

Sophos online survey, 560 respondents, 31 October - 6 November 2007.
Sophos recommends that home owners and businesses alike set up their networks with security in mind, ensuring that strong encryption is in place to prevent hackers from eavesdropping on communications and potentially stealing usernames, passwords and other confidential information.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=5617





5 Cool Wireless Research Projects Worth Checking Out
Bob Brown

Wireless is one of the hottest research areas among academics, who are looking at ways to make networks faster, less expensive and more energy-efficient. Here’s a whirlwind tour of some of the more intriguing projects underway at schools and labs across the United States (some of which are being presented at the HotNets IV conference being held in Atlanta next week.

A better way to do municipal wireless

The meltdown of some high-profile municipal Wi-Fi projects has the industry wondering what the alternative to bringing widespread wireless access to cities might be. Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and MIT say the secret to success might lie in exploiting the dense network of Wi-Fi access points already rampant in many cities.

In a paper titled “Architecting Citywide Ubiquitous Wi-Fi Access,” the researchers introduce the idea of convincing current and future Wi-Fi hosts to grant access to legitimate guests whose traffic would be tunneled securely though the network and without hampering the host with any responsibility for it. “We offer this as an economically viable alternative to investing millions in new infrastructure,” the researchers write.

“We argue that citywide ubiquitous Wi-Fi access can be architected at near-zero cost because the network infrastructure is already in place: A majority of city dwellers have a broadband connection and a personal Wi-Fi AP at home,” the paper states. The researchers propose creating a cooperative of trusted Wi-Fi access points that could include implementation of gateways and servers to ensure security.

Treating wireless networks differently from wired

The debate about going with a wired or wireless network remains in full swing (See “Wireless LANs vs. Wired LANs: One of Networking’s 50 Greatest Arguments"), but a perhaps lesser-known debate is whether to use old-fashioned wired network technologies to support wireless networks or to come up with new architectures suited specifically for wireless. MIT researchers Sachin Katti and Dina Katabi (we’ve tracked her wireless-boosting efforts in the past) support the latter in research outlined in a paper issued in September titled “MIXIT: The Network Meets the Wireless Channel.”

The researchers claim their approach can boost throughput by four times over state-of-the-art opportunistic routing schemes, which are prone to dropping whole packets if even a few bits come through incorrectly. They say these opportunistic routing schemes work fine in wired networks, but not wireless ones. “MIXIT increases network throughput by building on the inherent characteristics of the wireless medium; it embraces wireless broadcast and exploits both space and time diversities,” the paper states.

Seeking more energy-efficient sensor networks

A trio of University of California at Berkeley researchers say there is beauty in procrastination -- as in networked sensors that wait as long as they can to send data back to the program or person who needs access to it. But such delays won’t gratify users of all sensor networks, such as those relying on polled and schedule protocols.

In a paper titled “Procrastination Might Lead to a Longer and More Useful Life” the researchers acknowledge that loads of attention has been paid to making wireless sensor networks more energy efficient through improved operating systems, storage and communication. Their research focuses on ways to reduce synchronization costs and on exploiting the batching of data, as well as compression, without adversely affecting system users. While they find there could be some benefits to delayed communications, they also discovered challenges, such as figuring out how to establish routing schemes on the fly once sensors are waked up.

DARPA’s adaptive battlefield wireless plan

A new Department of Defense project is trying to use cutting-edge wireless research to create a tactical radio network that can adapt to keep soldiers linked with one another on the battlefield.

Project WAND (for Wireless Adaptive Network Development) will exploit commercial radio components rather than custom ones, and use a variety of software techniques and algorithms, many of them only just now emerging in mature form. These $500 walkie-talkie-size radios will form large-scale, peer-to-peer ad hoc networks, which can shift frequencies, sidestep interference and handle a range of events that today completely disrupt wireless communications.

WAND is an attempt to create low-cost radios with intelligent network software that does several things to make communications more pervasive, more efficient and more reliable in the battlefield. Read more about this project here.

Security architecture emerges for first responders

Princeton University researchers say they have come up with a new way to transmit crucial rescue information securely to first responders to such situations as natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

The new architecture supports what Princeton electrical engineering professor Ruby Lee calls "transient trust" – that is, the ability to swap sensitive data, such as floor plans of a building or personal medical information, securely on an as-needed basis. A paper called "Hardware-rooted Trust for Secure Key Management and Transient Trust" has been authored by ex-HP computer architect Lee (who leads the Princeton Architecture Lab for Multimedia and Security [PALMS]) and graduate student Jeffrey Dwoskin. The paper describes outfitting such devices as the handheld computers used by first responders with elements dubbed a "device root key" and a "storage root hash" to enable temporary access to information.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...-projects.html





10 Things We Hate About Laptops
Valerie Rice

Damaged. Lost. Stolen. Too big, too small. Insecure and unreliable. And just plain annoying. If you're in IT, there's just not much to like about laptops.

To be sure, portable computers have changed the way business operates, so much so that we literally cannot imagine a work life without them. That said, IT professionals, whether they're dealing with accident-prone users or keeping the network secure, say laptops are nothing short of a support nightmare.

Some cope by outsourcing support altogether (see To outsource or not at the end of this article); others by rigidly adhering to standards and trying not to personally take the hate mail they receive from disgruntled end users.

Either way, IT executives have a lot to say on the subject of laptops, nearly none of it good.

And that's ironic, or maybe just tough luck, because sales of laptops in the business sector are growing 20% a quarter, while sales of desktop computers are declining sharply, according to IDC in Framingham, Mass.

By this time next year, IDC says, shipments of business laptops will have surpassed that of desktops, and the gap will continue to widen. This year alone, laptop sales in the U.S. are expected to hit 31.7 million units.

IT has to support those 31.7 million machines, quickly and efficiently, whether the units are ensconced at a Starbucks or being dragged around remotest Africa, or even when the machine is run over by a train and sliced in half. (See When bad things happen to good laptops on the next page for more horror stories.)

But we didn't say IT had to like it.

Here we present, in no particular order, the top 10 things IT professionals absolutely hate about laptops. (And yes, we did have to edit down a very long list.)

1. Battery life still bombs.

Battery life has long been the Achilles heel of laptops, and even though battery life in newer models can now top four hours, it's not enough for mobile users and the IT pros who service them. Not nearly.

"I love my laptop, couldn't live without it, but I really hate it, too," says Dr. Joshua Lee, medical director of information services at the University of California at San Diego Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif. "Battery, battery, battery ... it is such a pain."

Lee, who is both a practicing physician and an IT director, means that literally. He oversees a team of 50-plus laptop-carrying doctors who sometimes are forced to stop a patient exam and go search for an AC adapter cord so they can continue making notes on the patient's records. "There's the hunting for the plug, then the unplugging and wrapping up of the cord ... it just feels weird to be doing all that in front of a patient," Lee says.

And, of course, there's always the chance that it's the wrong cord. Though the UCSD Medical Center primarily uses Dell laptops and desktops, other organizations aren't as standardized on a single brand. For example, at the Kansas Department of Transportation in Topeka, when laptops hit the road, it's not always with the right AC adapter. "Why can't power cords just be standardized?" asks a frustrated Sue Swartzman, data center manager. "Why do they even have those things? There has to be a better solution."

2. Laptops get banged up and broken.

The No. 1 place laptops get damaged is on airplanes, according to our highly informal survey of support managers. That guy in front stretches out, jams the tray table down and smashes the nice new laptop in the process.

"A lot of these laptops are assembled in China, and let's face it, they are flimsy," says Long Le, IT director at Atlas Air Inc., a large international air freight company in Purchase, N.Y.

Le oversees 300 laptops traveling to the far-flung reaches of Asia, South America and Europe. Not all of those laptops travel business class, so he sees a lot of broken hinges from tray-table mishaps, as well as cracked screens and cases and parts that just decide to fall off.

But not even business-class travelers are immune. At Harvard Business School in Boston, certain unnamed campus leaders and senior managers sometimes forget and check their laptops in their luggage, which makes CIO Stephen Laster crazy. "Laptops are way too fragile for that," he says, recalling more than a few cracked cases and screens.

But Laster doesn't stop there. With more than 3,000 laptops under his watchful eye, he's well aware the delicate machines are simply not suited for life in the real world. There are dangers everywhere: the spilled can of Diet Coke (particularly common at Harvard) or the venti latte (ditto) as well as everyday dangers like the drop into a puddle or the threat of children, who play with mom and dad's laptop a bit too roughly, and poof, there goes the door to the CD drive.

Imagine the potential dangers in the Manatee County Schools in Bradenton, Fla., where they've given each child a laptop of his own. While Tina Barrios, supervisor of instructional technology, says she's thrilled how well the rollout of nearly 10,000 Apple Inc. laptops has been received by her pint-size customers, she admits it's taken work to educate them on how to handle their new computing tools.

Of course, there have been a few problems. "The laptops seem to get tripped over a lot," she says, and then there are those few that have been dropped out of cars or trucks. It's not always a pretty outcome; luckily, she says, support is in-house. (For more on support issues, see To outsource or not.)

3. They're tough to fix, and they die young.

Laptops last, on average, three to four years as compared to the healthier four to five years of the average desktop, according to IDC. Even worse, anecdotal evidence indicates many truly mobile laptops never make it past the two-to-three-year mark.

Not only do laptops live shorter (and more difficult) lives than desktops, they definitely go down fighting -- which is to say they give IT departments a much harder time when it comes to upgrades and repairs.

Today's laptops are built just like today's cars, says Matthew Archibald, senior director of global information security and risk management at Applied Materials Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif. Buy a new car, and the owner's manual will tell you to change the timing belt at 50,000 miles, he explains. If you don't do it, the timing belt will go -- at exactly 51,000 miles. It's a kind of built-in obsolescence, Archibald says, and he sees the exact same scenario with laptops.

"As the cost of laptops has come down, the parts -- from drives to boards -- last a certain length of time and that's it," he says. "Add to that the fact that they're tougher to work on, take more expertise and create potentially a lot longer downtime to fix if they have to be shipped to a service center, they're very frustrating."

Applied Materials, which has gone almost completely mobile, has more than 12,000 laptops deployed. Archibald likes to do a technology refresh every two to three years on laptops, but in recent years, it's much closer to two years "because the hardware starts to fail."

Motherboards are often the first thing to go, hard drives may need to be updated, and smaller things like the screen hinges or the locking switch fail, too. But Archibald employs a hard and fast rule: If it costs more than $300 to refresh, it's time for a new machine.

4. They get lost.

Bob Vesely has a simple reason why he hates laptops: They're easy to lose.

Luckily for Vesely, IT manager at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, the number of laptops he oversees is small, around 40 or so. But Vesely nevertheless tries to guard them zealously, because in his organization, a lost laptop affects more than one user.

Once zoo staffers retire a laptop, it's sent to wildlife researchers in Papua New Guinea and other places. The zoo benefits from that research, so it's a win-win situation, assuming the machines don't get lost. Vesely most often sees laptops getting lost during business trips, he says.

When bad things happen to good laptops

At Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, laptops have been frozen solid (a liquid crystal display is a liquid, after all), recovered from the bottom of a creek bed (along with the car it was stolen from) and sliced in half when a train suddenly rolled back a few feet, right over the laptop balanced on the tracks.

At Atlas Air, tech support once took a call from a road warrior who was driving, computing and talking on the phone at the same time ... the call ended with a loud crash.

And our favorite, from an outraged Applied Materials user's actual e-mail:

"Were you aware that at my current salary of roughly $90/hour, the requirement to log in/unlock my laptop computer more than five to eight times a day, including mistyping, takes up to 20 minutes per day, 2.9 hours per week (I work 7 days a week), 145 hours per year (I take 2 weeks off for vacation).

"So, in effect, the security requirements for my laptop are costing the company more than $13,000 per year. When you multiply this for even 2,000 laptop users, your 'need for protection' is costing the company more than $26,000,000 a year. Can't we just turn it off and save the company money?"

Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase, "You do the math," doesn't it?

"Lost" has a whole different meaning at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), a 32,000-mile railroad route stretching between 28 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. At the railway, based in Fort Worth, Texas, consulting systems engineer Brad Hanson can have a tough time finding the company's laptops to upgrade them.

Because his tens of thousands of users are moving around constantly, finding their laptops when they need to be upgraded is like an elaborate Easter egg hunt, he says, where the eggs are always changing position.

5. They're difficult to secure, digitally and physically ...

Whether they're being hacked while using an insecure public Wi-Fi connection or being stolen from the airport men's room, laptops are vulnerable to theft in ways their deskbound cousins never are.

Applied Materials' Archibald says the threat of digital intrusion keeps him up at night, though thus far his company hasn't experienced any breaches directly.

Like many other IT managers, he's well aware that someone can physically look over the shoulder of a laptop user at a coffee shop or on the airplane, easily getting a gander at his password or a spreadsheet with next year's corporate financials neatly displayed.

And he knows that public Wi-Fi networks can be compromised in numerous ways, from false network-identification schemes (where users appear to be logging onto one network but are in actuality logged onto a different network), to insufficiently secure authentication pages, where data like network passwords can be captured and reused, to intercepted transmissions, a problem for users who don't use encryption while on the road.

BNSF has been lucky, too. Given the far-flung nature of the railway business, relatively few laptops have been stolen, Hanson says, but it does happen. One of the most recent incidents: A car was stolen with a company laptop inside. Both car and computer were recovered from the bottom of a pond (with the laptop data amazingly intact, if soggy).

Though Hanson is quick to point out that his company doesn't have any more laptops stolen than any other firm doing similar remote business, the railway does takes the theft risk to laptops seriously, recently giving all its users a detailed list of warnings and tips designed to help cut down on this particular type of loss.

6. ... and security precautions make users nuts.

It all comes down this plaintive cry: "Why can't I connect?" Or perhaps the better question is, why isn't it easier to connect? Between passwords, screen locks, complicated procedures to log onto virtual private networks and the risk of getting booted off an "insecure" Wi-Fi connection, well, it's not always easy for users to get online just anywhere.

And that's as it should be, says Greg Fay, chief information security officer for the State of Iowa, who admits he gets lots of practice trying to justify this stance. Although Iowa is not guarding trade secrets, "there is always something we're doing that we wouldn't like the media to know about until it's ready to go."

To address these security concerns, the State of Iowa is just a few months away from implementing a statewide standard -- a preboot, full-disk encryption for every laptop -- that it hopes will beef up security. But Fay doesn't think that will solve the issue of his users wanting to log on at Starbucks, a desire he tries to squelch as much as possible. Even with the full-disk encryption, an open Wi-Fi network still isn't guaranteed safe, he feels, and his users "just don't seem to understand that."

Users are in denial, agrees Applied Materials' Archibald, who quotes from a recent user e-mail that asked, "We're not building nuclear bombs here, why do I have to type in so many passwords?"

Many users don't understand that data in transit needs to be protected, unlike data at rest, Fay says, and they really don't want to understand it. They just want to be able to do what they want.

"To make our lives easier, we want a technology solution to security problems, not a user one," Fay says, meaning he's more than ready to stop wrangling with users about what they can and can't do on their laptops while out in public. A technology solution, one that would take the onus off the users (and presumably, off the IT call center) would be the way to go.

7. Wi-Fi is still the Wild, Wild West.

The challenge of configuring laptops for wireless connectivity, and keeping them up to date, is probably the single biggest nightmare IT professionals face daily, they say.

IT must decide which air cards to use, and if they're going to employ encryption or set up a VPN, and if so, for which employees and under what circumstances. Should the company support mom and pop providers for its users on the road, or only big, trusted carriers? What about employees with their own routers and networks in a home-office environment? The questions go on and on, as do the support issues, IT managers say.

And it's made worse by the fact that most users are clueless, says Vince Kellen, vice president of information services at DePaul University in Chicago. "Wireless overwhelms nontechnical people," he says flatly. "There are literally 20 to 30 different topics related to the choices we make about technology and upgrading, and the users just can't grasp the complexity."

So not only is he trying to stay ahead of the Wi-Fi curve, he's often making the case -- to do the right thing to stay secure -- to a user community that is at best confused and at worst completely uninterested.

BNSF's Hanson knows exactly what Kellen is talking about. "Wireless is the biggest nightmare we have right now," he says. "The technology changes all the time and we just can't keep up."

His particular pet peeve is air cards, where, he says, the standards take so long to settle and become "commercial" that by the time they do, they're obsolete, leaving him stuck with a long-term contract to purchase cards that no longer do the job. "The connection managers can't keep up, and then the cards don't work," Hanson explains. But to streamline support, the company has to standardize on something. Can someone say catch-22?

8. Laptops spawn a new breed of uber-entitled user.

Fay really hates the fact that his users watch TV. Those glossy ads of people effortlessly using laptops in a diner, or on a mountaintop or while driving, all give his users ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas that make them expect that they can be online anywhere and everywhere.

"Television [ads] make everything [seem] so easy and apparently so secure. We are constantly fighting that tide," he says. The problem, he explains, is that the very nature of mobile computing has given users the expectation that they ought to be able to work when and where they want to, regardless of what's involved in supporting them.

They want their instant connection and they want it now, and when the IT call center can't give it to them, well, watch out.

"I get e-mails constantly from people saying they can't get online at a friend's house, so they can't pick their football draft in their football pool, so I'm getting in the way of their personal life and I need to fix this situation immediately," Applied Materials' Archibald says. "I get beat up by users every single day who want to be able to do whatever they want, and have us support it."

When support staffers aren't struggling to get remote users online for their own personal needs, they're fending off users who want -- nay, demand -- that their laptops boot up instantly and stay on no matter what, no boot-up passwords and no screen locks, thank you very much. "Users tell me regularly 'the damn screen lock is killing my productivity,'" Archibald says.

9. They're too big or too small.

Laptops are either too large -- which causes users to complain about lugging all that extra weight around -- or they're too small, which means no one can type on them. Finding a happy medium seems to elude many IT organizations.

Harvard Business School offers both standard and three-quarter-size laptops, but CIO Laster says his users are willing to trade weight for a larger screen and keyboard. "Most people just hate those three-quarter-size machines," he says.

At the KDOT, Swartzman says she hears a lot of complaints she really can't do much about. Her users hate the touch pads, but don't want to bring an external mouse along. A fully featured laptop with a usable keyboard is too heavy, users say. Or they like a laptop's weight, but then the screen's too small. In other words, laptops "just aren't ergonomically friendly, and they're never the right size," she says of her 600 to 700 deployed units. "It's frustrating."

And even when they are the right size, well, that size might be too big to actually handle safely. At DePaul, Kellen says the "big" laptops are back in vogue -- a lot of his users want the larger screens for media viewing -- but the bigger they are, the more likely they are to get dropped, he says. And unfortunately, that isn't an isolated event on his campus.

And then there's the matter of actually being able to do anything with the keyboard at hand. Among IT professionals, there are two universal laptop truths: not everyone has slender fingers, and most people can't actually type. Add those up and you get "fat hand syndrome."

"Many of my users hate the keyboard layout on 17-in. laptops or smaller," KDOT's Swartzman says. "They've got fat fingers."

UCSD's Lee agrees, and thinks it's worse for some people than others. "On behalf of my orthopedic surgeon colleagues, can I just ask for a larger keyboard? They have big fingers and can't type. Small keyboards are a nightmare for us."

10. Software performance just ain't the same.

Users want all the power, speed, connectivity and full-bodied applications of a desktop machine, all packed into a unit that's effortlessly portable with long battery life.

The reality, though? Big applications just don't work as well on a laptop. Sure, your standard-issue laptop can chomp along nicely on a complex inventory spreadsheet or a 275-slide PowerPoint presentation. The problem comes when users want to multitask between the two, say when creating a presentation. Even the fastest notebook processor and cache memory bog down under that demand, support managers say.

When that happens, IT folks have to listen to the complaints and try to come up with a workable solution. Add on top of that the negative effects of memory-hogging antivirus software, points out DePaul's Kellen, and you have yourself one significant drag on laptop software performance.

Software drivers are another area of frustration for both users and support staff. On the road, laptop users can encounter a dizzying array of network connections, multimedia display ins/outs, and peripherals options -- not to mention the moldy five-year-old technology used in hotel "business centers."

That means IT managers need to equip their road machines with a comprehensive suite of drivers -- after, of course, defining what's "comprehensive" for which users -- and then keeping those drivers up to date.

As Applied Materials' Archibald says, "If it moves, you have to keep track of it, brand it, fix it and change it."

With drivers -- as with laptop computing in general -- there are always a lot of moving parts to keep track of.
http://computerworld.com/action/arti...tsrc =hm_list





Intel Launches New Chips with Smaller Circuits
Scott Hillis

Intel Corp, the world's biggest microchip maker, unveiled fast new processors on Sunday made with new techniques that can etch circuitry nearly 200 times smaller than a red blood cell.

The chips are the first in the world to be mass-produced with a 45-nanometer process, about one-third smaller than current 65-nanometer technology. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

"Across all segments we're increasing performance and increasing energy efficiency," said Tom Kilroy, general manager of Intel's enterprise group.

Known by the project name Penryn, the chips hold little in the way of fundamental design advances but are an important step in continuing the industry's track record of delivering chips that get smaller and faster every two years or so.

They use a new kind of transistor -- the basic building block of microchips -- that Intel unveiled earlier this year in what was hailed as one of the industry's biggest advances in four decades.

Penryn is the "tick" in Intel's "tick-tock" strategy of shrinking an existing chip design to a smaller size, then following up the next year with an all-new blueprint, known as a microarchitecture.

"They are taking a successful product and making it smaller, and in the process of making it smaller, it gets faster," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst of consultant Insight 64.

Brookwood said he reckoned the new chips, to be sold under Intel's Xeon and Core 2 brands, would be able to run most software up to 15 percent faster.

The 45 nanometer shift is also important to Intel because it means the company can make more chips from a single platter of silicon, boosting productivity and helping recoup investment on factories, which cost about $3 billion to build.

The company expects to make the majority of its processors on 45 nanometer by the middle of 2008, mirroring the progress of its 65 nanometer products, Kilroy said.

"We feel this tick-tock model is on track and our cadences allow us to ramp pretty fast," Kilroy said.

It cements Intel's manufacturing lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc, which only started making chips on 65 nanometers earlier this year but plans to try to roll out 45 nanometer technology in 2008.

Intel will initially sell a dozen versions of the chips for server computers that power corporate networks, with prices ranging from $177 to $1,279. A version for high-end consumers such as gaming enthusiasts will sell for $999.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...35220820071111





BitMicro Unveils 1.6TB Solid State Disk Drive

The Altima 4GB FC SSD is expected to begin in Q1 2008 with volumes shipping in Q2 2008
Chris Mellor

BitMicro has announced a flash memory-based solid state drive (SSD) with wide-ranging capacities of up to 1.6TB.

The drive, which comes in a 3.5-in. format and supports 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel connectivity, could take on a core element of the hard disk drive market, which uses the same format.

SSDs access data in microseconds, instead of the millliseconds that traditional hard drives use to retrieve data. The BitMicro E-Disk Altima 4Gb FC delivers more than 55,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and has a sustained data transfer rate over 230MB/sec. By comparison, a fast hard drive for example will run at around 300 IOPS.

BitMicro said its new line of SSDs range in storage capacity from 16GB to 1.6TB. The company Web site says it can reach the maximum capacity of 640GB in a 1-in. format, so two and a half 1-in. units would be needed to achieve a 1.6TB capacity.

The company said it has also developed two ASICs to boost SSD performance. The Enhanced Datamover and Storage Accelerator (EDSA) flash I/O controller supports large blocks of flash, enabling capacities to rise to the terabyte level.

EDSA works with the Logical Unifier of Extensive Transfer Arrays (LUNETA) ASIC, an interface controller designed to orchestrate massively parallel and multiblock I/O operations on large arrays of flash devices.

Competing products include Texas Memory Systems Inc.'s RamSan 500, a flash SSD with a dynamic RAM cache. That drive achieves up to 400,000 IOPS. Dutch company Attorn's HyperDrive 4 is a DRAM-based SSD that runs at 44,000 IOPS. Theoretically, DRAM should be faster than flash, but BitMicro's ASICS have made their flash faster.

Jeff Janukowicz, SSD research manager at IDC, said that some segments of the enterprise storage market require very high performance and reliability. "Increasingly, data centers will look to SSDs to satisfy these requirements," he said. "IDC expects worldwide enterprise SSD revenues to grow by 76% annually from 2006 to 2011."

Sampling for the Altima 4Gb FC SSD is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2008, with volumes shipping in the second quarter. No pricing information was released.

Some industry sources, such as FSC's chief technology officer, Joseph Reger, said that products such as BitMicro's could cause significant data center adoption of SSDs by 2010.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9047158





Google Options Put Masseuse in Crowd of Multimillionaires
Katie Hafner

Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google, then a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees. She was offered the part-time job, which started out at $450 a week but included a pile of Google stock options that she figured might never be worth a penny.

After five years of kneading engineers’ backs, Ms. Brown retired, cashing in most of her stock options, which were worth millions of dollars. To her delight, the shares she held onto have continued to balloon in value.

“I’m happy I saved enough stock for a rainy day, and lately it’s been pouring,” said Ms. Brown, 52, who now lives in a 3,000-square-foot house in Nevada, gets her own massages at least once a week and has a private Pilates instructor. She has traveled the world to oversee a charitable foundation she started with her Google wealth and has written a book, still unpublished, “Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google.”

When Google’s stock topped $700 a share last week before dropping back to $664 on Friday, outside shareholders were not the only ones smiling. According to documents filed on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google employees and former employees are holding options they can cash in worth about $2.1 billion. In addition, current employees are sitting on stock and unvested options, or options they cannot immediately cash in, that together have a value of about $4.1 billion.

Although no one keeps an official count of Google millionaires, it is estimated that 1,000 people each have more than $5 million worth of Google shares from stock grants and stock options.

One founder, Larry Page, has stock worth $20 billion. The other, Sergey Brin, has slightly less, $19.6 billion, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif. Three Google senior vice presidents — David Drummond, the chief legal officer; Shona Brown, who runs business operations; and Jonathan Rosenberg, who oversees product management — together are holding $160 million worth of Google stock and options.

“This is a very rare phenomenon when one company so quickly becomes worth so much money,” said Peter Hero, senior adviser to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which works with individuals and corporations to support charitable organizations in the region. “During the boom times, there were lots of companies whose employees made a lot of money fast, like Yahoo and Netscape. But the scale didn’t approach Google.”

Indeed, Google has seemed to exist in its own microclimate, with its shares climbing even as other technology stocks have been buffeted by investor skittishness. The stock touched an all-time high of $747.24 on Tuesday before falling more than $83 a share during the week to close at $663.97 on Friday. But even after that sell-off, the stock has risen more than 44 percent, or $203 a share, this year.

The days are long gone when people like Ms. Brown were handed thousands of Google options with the exercise price, or the pre-determined price that employees would pay to buy the stock, set in pennies. Nearly half of the 16,000 employees now at Google have been there for a year or less, and their options have an average exercise price of more than $500. But those who started at the company a year ago, or even three months ago, are seeing their options soar in value.

Several Google employees interviewed for this article say they do not watch the dizzying climb of the company’s shares. When it comes to awareness of the stock price, they say, Google is different from other large high-tech companies where they have worked, like Microsoft, where the day’s stock price is a fixture on many people’s computer screens.

At Google, the sensibility is more nuanced, they say. “It isn’t considered ‘Googley’ to check the stock price,” said an engineer, using the Google jargon for what is acceptable in the company’s culture. As a result, there is a bold insistence, at least on the surface, that the stock price does not matter, said the engineer, who did not want to be named because it is considered unseemingly to discuss the price.

Others admit that, when gathered around the espresso machine it is hard to avoid the topic of their sudden windfalls.

“It’s very clear that people are taking nicer vacations,” said one Google engineer, who asked not to be identified because it is also not Googley to talk about personal fortunes made at the company. “And one of the guys who works for me but has been there longer showed up at work in a really, really nice new car.”

The rise in Google’s stock is affecting the deepest reaches of the company. The number of options granted to new employees at Google usually depends on the position and the salary level at which the employee is hired, and the value is usually based on the price of the stock at the start of employment.

The average options grant for a new Google employee — or “Noogler” — who started in November 2006 was 685 shares at a price of roughly $475 a share. They also would have received, on average, 230 shares of stock outright that will vest over a number of years.

The Nooglers might not be talking about second homes in Aspen or personal jets, but they are talking about down payments on a first home, new cars and kitchen renovations. Internal online discussion groups about personal finance are closely read.

Google, like many Silicon Valley companies, gives each of its new employees stock options, as well as a smaller number of shares of Google stock, as a recruiting incentive.

The idea of employment at a place with such a high stock price is appealing, but it can also make the company less attractive to a new hire. Jordan Moncharmont, 21, a senior at Stanford University who was given stock options after he started working at Facebook part time, said Google’s high stock price can be a disincentive to a prospective hire as it translates to a high exercise price for options. “You’d have to spend a boatload of cash to exercise your options,” he said.

Mr. Moncharmont said he did not join Facebook to get rich, though he knows his Facebook options could make him wealthy someday.

When Ms. Brown left Google, the stock price had merely doubled from its initial offering price of $85. So Ms. Brown is glad she ignored the advice of her financial advisers and held onto a cache of stock.

As the stock continues to defy gravity, Ms. Brown, whose foundation has its assets in Google stock, can be more generous with her charity. “It seems that every time I give some away, it just keeps filling up again,” she said. “It’s like an overflowing pot.”

The wealth generated by options is giving a lot of people like Ms. Brown the freedom to leave and do whatever they like.

Ron Garret, an engineer who was Google’s 104th employee, worked there for a little more than a year, leaving in 2001. When he eventually sold all his stock, he became a venture capitalist and a philanthropist. He has also become a documentary filmmaker and is currently chronicling homelessness in Santa Monica, Calif.

“The stock price rise doesn’t affect me at all,” he said, “except just gazing at it in wonderment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/te.../12google.html





Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox?
Noam Cohen

Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could — an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it.

Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 15 to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple’s Safari.

Part of Firefox’s appeal was its origins as a nonprofit venture, a people-powered revolution involving the most basic Internet technology, the Web browser. Also, because the core code was open, Firefox could tap into developers’ creativity; they are encouraged to soup up the browser, whether by blocking ads from commercial Web sites, a popular add-on, or by creating “skins” to customize the browser’s appearance.

But in trying to build on this success, the Mozilla Foundation has come to resemble an investor-backed Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog. Siobhan O’Mahony, an assistant professor at the School of Management of the University of California, Davis, calls Mozilla “the first corporate open-source project.”

The foundation has used a for-profit subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, to collect tens of millions of dollars in royalties from search engine companies that want prominent placement on the browser. And by collecting that money as a war chest to compete against giants like Microsoft and Apple, the foundation has, at least temporarily, moved away from the typical activities of a nonprofit organization.

“The Mozilla community has been a bit hybrid in terms of integrating public and private investment all along — its history is fairly unique in this respect,” Professor O’Mahony said.

So far, the many contributors to Firefox seem pleased with its financial success. The bigger question is what Mozilla will do with all its money.

According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source — Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.

Despite that ample revenue, the Mozilla Foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants (according to the audited statement), or $285,000 (according to Mozilla itself), in 2006. In the same year, it paid the corporation’s chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits. (She is also chairwoman of the foundation.)

Ms. Baker, a lawyer who has worked for Silicon Valley companies since the mid-1990s, said her compensation “is yet another example of Mozilla as a hybrid,” adding that it made her “a poor stepchild, not even,” compared to the leaders of other equally influential Silicon Valley companies.

Ms. Baker says it was the community, not Google’s money, that made Firefox a player in the field. “Mozilla is successful because we have this giant set of people who care about it,” she said. “The fundamental infrastructure piece that keeps Mozilla independent from even a single source of income like Google is the diverse set of people.”

She added: “No amount of money would have allowed us to be as successful as we are.” Then, referring to Microsoft, she said, “We cannot outspend them.”

The rise of Firefox can be seen as an extension of the Netscape-Microsoft battle of the mid-1990s. After Microsoft largely wrested control of the market, Netscape decided in 1998 to release its code to the public, and immediately developers took up the challenge.

By 2003, AOL, which had acquired Netscape, released the browser code to the newly created Mozilla Foundation, and by November 2004, the first version of Firefox was released. At the time, it was promoted as pursuing the goals of being user-friendly, able to work on different operating systems and more secure. The corporation was created in 2005.

The browser’s other, unstated advantage, shared with other open-source projects, was A.B.M: Anybody but Microsoft.

“Firefox is able to tap many different audiences. Not everyone cares about keeping Web standards open, but a significant part of the contributing population fears that if Firefox loses share, then Web standards could become the purview of Microsoft alone,” Professor O’Mahony wrote in an e-mail message.

Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for Internet Explorer, noted that the market still showed a marked preference for Explorer, but he did concede that Microsoft, for structural reasons, could not show the enthusiasm Firefox developers have.

“We are much more reserved about thinking out loud as we make the browser better,” he said. “I can go through and talk about all the innovations we have made, but we don’t talk about them until they are done. People make very important decisions based on what Microsoft says; we have a responsibility about what we say out loud.”

Looming over Mozilla’s future, however, is its close connection with Google, which has been writing most of the checks that finance the Firefox project through its royalty contract.

When the connection with Google was revealed more than a year ago, the question on popular tech Web sites like Slashdot.org was whether Mozilla was acting as a proxy in Google’s larger war with Microsoft and others.

The foundation went so far as to directly address the issue, writing recently, “We do not vet our initiatives with Google,” and adding that it made sure that Google “understood the separation between a search relationship and the rest of our activities.”

Yet lately, the concern among Firefox users and developers about the Mozilla-Google relationship focuses more on what would happen if Google were to walk away, create its own browser or back another, like Safari. This discussion of life after Google represents an unexpected twist: the fear is that instead of being a proxy for Google, Mozilla may have become dangerously reliant on it.

Wladimir Palant, a longtime contributor to Firefox and developer of the popular Adblock Plus add-on that removes ads from Web pages, said he was pleased that the foundation had so much money saved up. And while he rattled off a number of priorities that he was glad the foundation had been pursuing, including improving the infrastructure and hiring more staff, he said No. 1 was, “Save some of the money for later.”

He said, “This will keep them independent of market tendencies and companies like Google.” If Google were to make an unreasonable demand, he said, “Mozilla will still have enough time to look for alternative money sources.”

Ms. Baker said that while she tried “to stay away from” that kind of speculation, “I take the view that we are doing something fundamentally important, and as that becomes clear, there could be other entrants.” She added: “Google is on everyone’s mind, but it could come from China, who knows?”

A Google spokeswoman would not comment on any of the issues raised by the Google-Mozilla relationship, but issued a statement: “Mozilla is a valued business partner because many users utilize Firefox to access Google products and services. We will continue to work with a variety of technology providers, including Mozilla, to ensure our mutual users have the best experience possible with our products and services.”

To an outside observer like Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia who focuses on the Internet, the alliance still makes a lot of sense.

“We’re living in a cold war between open and closed systems, and Google is happy to lend support to entities that it sees as allies,” he said.

While acknowledging that he does not know the secret terms of their contract, he said, by way of analogy, “No one is surprised that Turkey would get aid from the U.S. during the cold war.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/te...gy/12link.html





Mozilla Still Flummoxed by Firefox' Appetite for Memory
Ed Moltzen

Anyone who uses Firefox on Windows knows the browser has an almost insatiable appetite for memory, and it's not unheard of for PCs to allocate a half GB or more of memory just to the browser alone.

Mozilla continues to deny that Firefox leaks much memory, but Christopher Blizzard, a member of Mozilla's board, says fixing the issue is a priority - - especially now that the browser developers are seeking to plow directly into the mobile space.

Writes Blizzard:

As Mozilla starts down the path to running in the mobile space we are spending time looking at memory pressure issues more closely. . . (I)t sounds like the early data suggests that Mozilla really doesn't leak that much memory at all. But it does thrash the allocator pretty hard and that's what causes the perception of memory leaks.

Blizzard refers to findings of developer Stuart Parmenter, which contains more information about memory and browser use than you'd probably ever want to know. Parmenter attributes the problem to "memory fragmentation." Whatever it is, it can cause a PC to grind to such slow performance that sometimes it's just easier to "X" out of Firefox or reboot altogether.

Now, imagine that happening on a smart phone, and getting in the way of your ability to make or receive phone calls. This is just one of the many challenges Mozilla and its developers face as they try to move from the PC to the handheld arena.

"Over the next few months it will be very interesting to see what happens with both memory usage and perceived performance especially as we connect those numbers to a successful mobile strategy," Blizzard writes.
http://www.crn.com/software/202804814





Cellphone Straitjacket Is Inspiring a Rebellion
Laura M. Holson

First come the grumblings, then the torches and pitchforks.

Consumers have never been happy about their cellphone carriers and the services they provide — or refuse to provide. But they also have hardly the means to do anything, except switch from one carrier to the next.

But a rebellion is brewing in the communications industry that is expected to pit wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, against Silicon Valley powerhouses like Google. The tussle might undermine the control incumbent companies have over mobile phone consumers by giving them a few weapons to strike back.

The first salvo came last summer with the release of the Apple iPhone, which, with its easy-to-use features, redefined how mainstream consumers view hand-held devices. Last week, Google generated fanfare when it announced plans for the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of companies working to turn mobile phones into hand-held computers that can offer a variety of applications and services.

In addition, federal regulators are moving to create a more open national wireless network when it auctions off spectrum licenses in January that would allow bidders to build a network free from carrier constraint.

At the heart of the tension between the different camps is whether the wireless network should be open, much like the Internet is today, or remain under the watchful control of companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone. Carriers, who paid billions of dollars to build their networks, are unwilling to open them.

For others, change can’t happen soon enough. As such the alliances and partnerships struck now are likely to shape the industry over the next five years.

“It is the battle of the overdogs,” said Tom Wheeler, a venture capitalist and former chief of the CTIA, a trade group for the wireless industry. “They are all jostling back and forth to be leaders of the next generation. The question is, how do I position myself? It is a territorial battle.”

Indeed, the rift has spilled into public view. At CTIA’s Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco last month, a woman attending a panel discussion with representatives from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel, stood at a microphone wagging her finger and chiding them for being too controlling, as several others in the audience whispered and nodded in agreement. The next day, at a panel on social networking, executives griped that software developers would not prosper unless phone companies were less greedy.

“Definitely there is hostility,” said David Weiden, a partner at Khosla Ventures in Menlo Park who has previously worked at McCaw Cellular, Netscape and AOL. “There are enough catalysts for change now, and it is already happening.”

But the question many are asking is why the tension now, in contrast to, say, six months ago? The catalysts are threefold, said Mr. Weiden: the proliferation of new technologically advanced mobile phones, greater bandwidth and increased competition. But mainstream consumers too are being conditioned to expect more, particularly after the debut of the iPhone which offers easy-to-use Web browsing, Wi-Fi capabilities and high-quality video.

Indeed, Shahid Khan, a partner at the IBB Consulting Group in Princeton Junction, N.J., said he believes wireless networks will go the way of the Internet, where closed communities like AOL once dominated, then later morphed into hybrids. Now services like AOL co-exist, albeit in a less powerful state, alongside open networks.

“The industry is really at an inflection point,” said Mr. Khan.

Roger Entner, a senior vice president for communications at IAG Research, said telephone companies have to do a better job communicating with consumers who are accustomed to unfettered access on the Web.

“The carriers have done a pretty poor job in portraying their position and reasoning to the public,” Mr. Entner said. By contrast, venture capitalists and technologists are better at whipping up interest in sexy new technologies. “Silicon Valley has done a good job in telling the world what a wonderful nirvana the Internet is,” he said. “But 90 percent of the sites aren’t profitable.”

Telephone company executives know they are in a tricky spot. Ralph de la Vega, the president and chief executive officer of AT&T Mobility, said he does not sense tension in the industry. Instead, he politely called it “change.”

But he agreed that AT&T and others could better explain that companies like his are more open than most people think. In particular, he said, there are six operating systems currently available on AT&T mobile phones, as well as a variety of music services and e-mail options.

It should be noted, he said, that AT&T backed the iPhone. And Mr. de la Vega did not rule out the notion that his company would one day be part of Google’s alliance. “It is one of several operating systems we could use down the road,” he said. “We are still looking at what it means. If we think it’s something our customers want, we will be part of any alliance.”

Indeed, wireless carriers are circumspect. When a Verizon executive at the CTIA conference was asked by a reporter what he thought of the calls for openness, he said, “If I talk to you and someone sees me, I’ll get fired.” (He asked not to be named, fearing reprisals from colleagues.) Last week, Verizon executives were not available for comment because they were traveling.

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the relationship between software developers, carriers and handset makers can only change because the way that consumers relate to their phones is changing too.

“On a personal level, the phone feels more like property,” said Mr. Wu. “Once you start to make it yours, you feel like you have more rights to it. It will have a huge effect if you don’t feel free to do what they want.”

His view is that now that entrants like Apple and Google are in the game, companies like AT&T and Verizon are going to have to adjust. “Little companies are not going to change industry practices,” said Mr. Wu. That happens, he said, “when you have big, powerful players with a different ideology.”

Not surprising, he and others are focusing on what will happen with the auction of the 700-megahertz wireless band by the federal government in January. Last summer, Google said it would offer at least $4.6 billion for a stake if certain conditions for the auction were met. Some were, but Google has not said whether it would actually join the bidding.

There has been a lot of speculation about what other companies will step forward before the end of the year. Cable companies, software makers, even media companies, are among those weighing their options, industry executives said. “If Google doesn’t get it, what does it do?” asked Mr. Wheeler. “And if it does get it, what does Microsoft do? It’s a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, everyone wants to be near a chair.”

Mr. de la Vega said, though, that there is a big difference between buying a license and running a network. And few companies aside from AT&T and others have the expertise. Added Mr. Entner, “An open network is really awesome if you don’t have to operate it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/te...gy/12cell.html





Google Has Even Bigger Plans for Mobile Phones
Kevin J. Delaney and Amol Sharma

Google Inc. made a big splash last week with its new software for cellphones. But that's far from the limit of the Internet giant's wireless ambitions -- which could include running its own mobile network.

The company is gearing up to make a serious run at buying wireless spectrum, a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services, in a Federal Communications Commission auction in January. Google is prepared to bid on its own without any partners, say people familiar with the matter. It is working out a plan to finance its bid, which could run $4.6 billion or higher, that would rely on its own cash and possibly some borrowed money.A

STRONG SIGNAL

Google's wireless initiatives could eventually lead to a national network.
• Developed Android software for mobile phones.
• Made Google applications -- including email, chat and mapping -- available on cellphones.
• Sells advertisements for certain Web sites accessed by cellphone.
• Enables users to do Web and business searches with cellphone browsers, by text message or with a call.
• Is testing an advanced wireless network at Google headquarters.
• Operates a free Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, Calif.
• Expected to bid for wireless spectrum in a January FCC auction.

Google, meanwhile, already is running a test version of an advanced wireless network at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, gaining operating experience that could come in handy if it wins the spectrum and decides to run a full-scale national mobile carrier, according to people familiar with the matter.

The behind-the-scenes moves illustrate just how serious the Internet giant is about trying to reshape the wireless world. Its push could potentially expand the availability and decrease the cost of high-speed mobile Internet access to consumers and broaden the wireless applications they can use.

At the same time, Google's wireless projects could take it far from its core expertise, at a big potential cost in money and management attention. They could also antagonize telecom carriers, some of whom have relationships with the company, and other Google partners, who might view the wireless push as a competitive threat. It remains possible that last-minute developments could alter Google's strategy between now and a Dec. 3 FCC deadline for declaring an intent to bid.

A Google spokesman said in a statement that the company would reveal any plans to participate in the auction by then. "In the meantime, we are making all the necessary preparations to become an applicant to bid," he said. "Our goal is to make sure that American consumers have more choices in an open and competitive wireless world," the spokesman added.

The company has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions. That's one impetus behind the Android software for mobile phones that Google announced Nov. 5, alongside a group of industry partners including Taiwan's HTC Corp., a handset maker, and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile, a wireless carrier.

Google also views open wireless networks as key to sidestep any telephone and cable company efforts to make it difficult for consumers to access Google services, or to charge Google to deliver the services to consumers over their Internet connections. Carriers such as Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, say they guard their networks closely to provide high-quality phone and Internet service and protect consumers from security breaches and invasions of privacy.

Behind the scenes, Google also is eyeing financial opportunities, as revenue for U.S. wireless carriers hit $95 billion last year, the research firm Yankee Group estimates. Google could reap subscriber fees if it controlled an operator, and experiment with models such as a one-time licensing fee for consumers to use its network and no monthly access charges. Company executives have said that cellular handsets or services could eventually be subsidized by revenue from advertising consumers view on their cellphones.

Google may square off at the auction against large U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless that are looking for more spectrum, which is necessary to expand their own broadband Internet offerings and power services such as mobile TV.

Some carriers have privately expressed skepticism about Google's ambitions, saying it is vastly underestimating the challenges of operating a network, providing customer service and gaining traction as a new entrant in a crowded wireless market. Still, there is a fear among carriers that "because it's Google, because of the power of their brand and because they understand networks really well, it might work," said Blair Levin, a telecom analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. and former chief of staff at the FCC.

The FCC issues licenses to use portions of the airwaves for wireless networks and radio and television broadcasters. The frequencies on the block early next year are among the most valuable that have ever been auctioned. One reason is that they carry well over long distances, potentially requiring fewer transmission towers to cover large areas.

Google is focused mainly on bidding on what has been designated as the "C" block, a slice of the 700 megahertz spectrum. It is also considering other blocks of spectrum available as well, though they would provide only regional coverage or come with other limitations. Google has hired game-theory specialists to help plot its auction strategy, say people familiar with the matter.

Sean Maloney, an executive vice president at chip maker Intel Corp., argues that the frequencies on auction could hasten the spread of high-speed Internet access to rural areas and others who can't easily get it. "Seven-hundred megahertz is a national treasure," he says. The government is expected to turn over use of the spectrum to the winning bidders by early 2009.

Though it has made no firm public commitment about the coming auction, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has said Google probably would bid. Last month, he told journalists the company was considering joining with partners on a bid, but that it "won't make that decision until the very last minute as more information comes along."

Several people familiar with the matter said that the company believes that it would lose goodwill in Washington, if it didn't bid, given that it won changes to the auction rules that will force the winner of one block of spectrum to open its network to any mobile device or software application. One of the people familiar with the matter said Google is "going for it" and expects to bid on its own despite interest by potential strategic partners in each investing $1 billion or more in a joint bid effort.

The complexity of the possible bidding scenarios and auction outcomes has led Google executives to believe they would benefit from the flexibility of bidding alone. They were also concerned about alienating allies by selecting some and not others as bid partners, say the people familiar with the matter.

In addition, Google discovered Wall Street was enthusiastic about the company's ability to raise any needed cash, lessening the pressure to bring in others. Google currently plans to consider whether to bring on partners after the outcome of the auction is known.

Meanwhile, back at its headquarters, Google is already operating an advanced high-speed wireless network under a test license from the FCC, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has erected transmission towers on its campus for the network. Prototype mobile handsets powered by the Android software are currently running on it.

Experience with the technology could aid the company in operating a full-fledged carrier, one of the options it's considering. Google is betting it could potentially build and operate a wireless network faster and cheaper than traditional operators.

In that event, the company could try new wireless technology approaches. Google this year invested in a closely held United Kingdom company called Ubiquisys Ltd. that makes a technology called femtocell, which allows mobile phones in poor-coverage areas to use home Internet connections to make calls and transfer data. Such technology could potentially be harnessed as part of any Google wireless infrastructure.

If Google is successful in the spectrum auction, other possibilities on the table include leasing spectrum to partners. The company has separately had discussions about potentially investing alongside other parties in Clearwire Corp., which is trying to build a nationwide high-speed wireless network, say people familiar with the matter. Such talks with Google aren't currently at an advanced stage, they say.

ABI Research senior analyst Nadine Manjaro believes it's more likely that Google would form a partnership with an existing wireless network operator than try to build one on its own. "They have no experience in running a network, and it's not something simple to do," she says. Ms. Manjaro estimates the cost of building a national network on the spectrum available at $3 billion or more.

Don Clark contributed to this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/...580795065.html





Disney to Enter Japan Cellphone Market in Spring

Walt Disney Co, the No.2 U.S. entertainment company, said on Monday it plans to enter the Japanese mobile phone market early next year using local carrier Softbank Corp's network.

Disney, which plans to halt its U.S.-based mobile phone service at the end of the year, is betting on the popularity of its Tokyo resort to help it gain share in the world's biggest market of third-generation phones.

Disney would use Japan's No. 3 mobile phone carrier Softbank's for its mobile service and sell its phones at Softbank's 2,464 stores in Japan, the two firms said in a release.

Disney, whose U.S. mobile phones allow parents to track a child's location, took a $30 million charge last year when it shut down another phone service, Mobile ESPN, which it ran on space rented on Sprint Nextel Corp's network.

The tie-up with Disney would secure Softbank stable revenues from leasing unused basebands, but Disney's entrance into Japan increases competition in an already-saturated mobile market.

Initial costs of building base stations have prevented many would-be entrants into Japan's mobile phone market, dominated by NTT DoCoMo Inc, No. 2 KDDI Corp and Softbank. Disney would be the first company to launch mobile phones in Japan by renting space from a carrier.

In Japan, carmakers and telecom ventures have used carriers' networks, but the basebands have been used to enable car navigation or PC data transmission.

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi and Noriyuki Hirata; Editing by Malcolm Whittaker)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...T7016720071112





Off Goes the Power Current Started by Thomas Edison
Jennifer 8. Lee

Today, Con Edison will end 125 years of direct current electricity service that began when Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street power station on Sept. 4, 1882. Con Ed will now only provide alternating current, in a final, vestigial triumph by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, Mr. Edison’s rivals who were the main proponents of alternating current in the AC/DC debates of the turn of the 20th century.

The last snip of Con Ed’s direct current system will take place at 10 East 40th Street, near the Mid-Manhattan Library. That building, like the thousands of other direct current users that have been transitioned over the last several years, now has a converter installed on the premises that can take alternating electricity from the Con Ed power grid and adapt it on premises. Until now, Con Edison had been converting alternating to direct current for the customers who needed it — old buildings on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side that used direct current for their elevators for example. The subway, which has its own converters, also provides direct current through its third rail, in large part because direct current electricity was the dominant system in New York City when the subway first developed out of the early trolley cars.

Despite the clear advantage of alternating current — it can be transmitted long distances far more economically than direct current — direct current has taken decades to phase out of Manhattan because the early backbone of New York’s electricity grid was built by Mr. Edison’s company, which had a running head start in the first decade before Mr. Tesla and Mr. Westinghouse demonstrated the potential of alternating current with the Niagara Falls power project. (Among the customers of Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street power plant on that first day was The New York Times, which observed that to turn on its lights in the building, “no matches were needed.”)

But direct current clearly became uneconomical, as the short distances that it could be transmitted would have required a power station every mile or less, according to Joe Cunningham, an engineering historian. Thus alternating current in New York began in the outskirts — Queens, Bronx, Upper Manhattan and the suburbs.

The direct current conversion in Lower Manhattan started in 1928, and an engineer then predicted that it would take 45 years, according to Mr. Cunningham. “An optimistic prediction since we still have it now,” he said.

The man who is cutting the link today at 10 East 40th Street is Fred Simms, a 52-year veteran of the company. Why him?

“He’s our closest link to Thomas Edison,” joked Bob McGee, a Con Ed spokesman.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...thomas-edison/