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![]() ![]() "If Apple's goal still is the Steve Jobs holy war, then the status quo is not in their benefit." – Paul Berghoff June 16th, 2012 ![]() German Court Jails Movie Website Founder The founder of an illicit movie website has been given a four-and-a-half-year jail sentence in Germany. Prosecutors had said the "parasitic business" breached copyrights of the mainstream cinema and television industry. The regional court in Leipzig handed down a suspended plea-bargain sentence to the founder of kino.to, Dirk B., with conditions for his supervision outside of prison. The 39-year-old former floor layer confessed to 1.1 million copyright breaches. Prosecutors had condensed these into three test cases. They had originally sought 11 years jail. The Leipzig court also ordered Dirk B., to transfer 3.7 million euros ($4.7 million) in earnings from website advertising in Spain to Germany's state coffers. District Court judge Karsten Nickel said it was obvious that the operation was the "most serious" copyright breach to become known within German jurisdiction. The man from Leipzig had vacationed on the Spanish island of Mallorca after establishing the website kino.to in 2008, using the domain name assigned to Tonga. The site was actually based in Germany, with servers in the Netherlands. File content amounting to 135,000 films, television episodes and documentaries were later transferred to Russia as film industry lawyers sought justice. At its peak, four million visits were made daily to the web address, mostly by German Internet users, seeking movies for free. Once logged into the website, users were diverted to high-revenue advertisements. Better known than Dotcom's site Kino.to was far better known in Germany than Megaupload, the file-sharing site created by another German, Kim Dotcom. He is facing trial in Auckland, New Zealand and FBI efforts to get him extradited to the United States. The court proceedings surrounding "kino," which is the German word for cinema, had already resulted in a jail term of almost four years for the website's main programmer and three-year terms last December for three other participants. In recent months, German performance rights agencies and trade union organizations for artists, photographers, composers and authors have demanded adherence to German and EU copyright legislation. http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16023618,00.html ![]() The MPAA's Secret Lobby Campaign on Bill C-11 and a Canadian SOPA Michael Geist Over the past few years, the Motion Picture Association - Canada, the Canadian arm of the MPAA, has recorded nearly 100 meetings with government ministers, MPs, and senior officials. While their lobbying effort will not come as a surprise, last October there were several meetings that fell outside the norm. On October 18, 2011, MPA-Canada reports meeting with Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, Foreign Minister John Baird, and Industry Canada Senior Associate Deputy Minister Simon Kennedy, all on the same day. These meetings occured less than three weeks after the introduction of Bill C-11 and the decision to sign ACTA, and only eight days before SOPA was launched in the U.S. To get a sense of how rare these meeting were, this is the only registered meeting John Baird has had on intellectual property since Bill C-11 was introduced and ACTA was signed by Canada. Similarly, since the introduction of Bill C-11, James Moore has only two intellectual property meetings listed - this one with MPA-Canada and one in March 2012 with the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (in fact, Moore had only three meetings on intellectual property in all of 2011. Those meetings were with MPA-Canada, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce). Even the Simon Kennedy meeting was a rarity as he has had multiple meetings with pharmaceutical companies, but only two (MPA-Canada and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) that appear to have included copyright. Given how unusual it is for a single lobby group to gain access to two of Canada's leading cabinet ministers and a senior department official on the same day, it begs the question of how they did it. The answer does not come from the official Communication Report Summaries, which only list MPA-Canada Executive Director Wendy Noss. Rather, it comes from documents I recently obtained under the Access to Information Act that reveal the meeting was actually led by the head of the MPAA, former U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (the fact that the law does not require this to be disclosed highlights a major shortcoming in the Lobbying Act). On September 20, 2011, MPA-Canada wrote to Industry Minister Christian Paradis (and presumably to Baird and Moore) to request meetings with Dodd. Dodd was not permitted to directly lobby U.S. politicians due to a cooling off period, but faced no such restriction in Canada. The briefing note prepared for the meeting provides the strong sense that the government was already ready to cave on issues such as toughening the Bill C-11 enabler provision, which was characterized as a technical amendment. Anticipating MPAA demands for new rules for Internet providers, the note argues that C-11 strikes the right balance. Although the full content of the meeting is not known, given the discussion surrounding ACTA and SOPA/PIPA at the time, there seems likely that Dodd used the unparalleled access to push for SOPA-style amendments within Bill C-11, major changes to the enabler provision and ISP liability, and quick implementation of ACTA (the meeting with Baird in particular was presumably focused on ACTA, CETA, and the TPP). The Canadian government's decision to reject the near-universal criticism of the C-11 digital lock approach has long been linked to pressure from the U.S. government and U.S. lobby groups. With the MPAA secretly bringing Dodd to Ottawa to lobby some of Canada's highest ranking politicians within weeks of the introduction of the bill, the full scale of the lobbying pressure becomes increasingly apparent. Ministers were willing to meet with the top U.S. copyright lobby group, but not with Canadian creator, consumer, or education groups who offered a much different perspective on legislative reform. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6542/125/ ![]() Record Labels Are Paying Students to Narc on Students Who Pirate Music If you're still pirating music, stop. It's illegal and wrong and stealing and bad and yadda yadda. But it's also dangerous because you don't even know who you can trust anymore. There is no honor amongst thieves, record labels are using a task force of students to hunt down other students who pirate music. EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner are funneling money to an anti-piracy group called proMedia whose sole purpose is to hunt down copyright infringements. That's fine, record labels start anti-piracy groups all the time. What's unique about proMedia though is that the company uses students to go after students. The company, according to one anonymous employee who works there, employs around 35 students who crawl and comb through forums, blogs and file hosting sites to find people who pirate music. Even worse, the narc students track down other students who use P2P networks or BitTorrent and then force the pirate students to settle for thousands of dollars per offense with the evil record labels. Look, we know pirating is bad and people should stop but this is the digital equivalent of do good hall monitors ratting you out to teachers when you're ditching class. Actually, it's way more terrible and awful than that. Kids, stick together, protect each other and don't ruin yourselves. http://gizmodo.com/5917783/record-la...o-pirate-music ![]() Anti-Piracy Patent Stops Students From Sharing Textbooks Ernesto A new patent granted this week aims to stop students from sharing textbooks, both off and online. The patent awarded to economics professor Joseph Henry Vogel hopes to embed the publishing world even further into academia. Under his proposal, students can only participate in courses when they buy an online access code which allows them to use the course book. No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science. For centuries, students have shared textbooks with each other, but a new patent aims to stop this “infringing” habit. The patent in question was granted to Professor of Economics Joseph Henry Vogel. He believes that piracy, lending and reselling of books is a threat to the publishing industry. “Professors are increasingly turning a blind eye when students appear in class with photocopied pages. Others facilitate piracy by placing texts in the library reserve where they can be photocopied,” Vogel writes. The result is less money for publishers, and fewer opportunities for professors like himself to get published. With Vogel’s invention, however, this threat can be stopped. The idea is simple. As part of a course, students will have to participate in a web-based discussion board, an activity which counts towards their final grade. To gain access to the board students need a special code, which they get by buying the associated textbook. Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade. The system ensures that students can’t follow courses with pirated textbooks, as tens of thousands are doing today. Lending books from a library or friend, or buying books from older students, isn’t allowed either. At least, not when the copyright holders don’t get their share. Vogel’s idea leaves the option open for students to use second-hand textbooks, but they still have to buy an access code at a reduced price. This means publishers can charge multiple times for a book that was sold only once. Needless to say, publishers are excited about gaining more control in the classroom. Anthem Press of London has already expressed interest in the system and Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, also welcomes the idea. “For every rogue site that is taken down, there are hundreds more demanding similar effort. I can’t think of a more timely example of the need for additional tools,” he says. On the surface the idea might seem well-intentioned, but to proponents of an open knowledge society it goes completely in the wrong direction. If anything, the Internet should make it easier for students to access knowledge, not harder or impossible. While it’s understandable that publishers want to stop piracy, preventing poor students from borrowing textbooks from a library or friend goes too far. Perhaps it’s a better idea to approach the problem from the opposite direction. Thanks to the Internet, publishers are replaceable. And since many of the textbook authors are professors who get paid by universities, it is not hard to release books in a more open system. Professor Vogel believes that sending more money to publishers helps academia, which might be a flawed line of reasoning. Isn’t it much better to strive to make knowledge open and accessible, instead of restricting it even further? https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy...-books-120610/ ![]() DOJ Tries to Block Return of Data to MegaUpload User U.S. files motion asking a federal court to deny a request from a former MegaUpload user for the return of his football videos. Greg Sandoval Returning videos to Kyle Goodwin, a former MegaUpload user, would set a bad precedent, the U.S. said in documents, copies of which were obtained by CNET. The fate of "legitimate" user data that was locked up following the shut down of MegaUpload, one of the world's most popular cloud-storage services, continues to vex the court overseeing the case. Negotiations between the stakeholders involved, including MegaUpload, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the advocacy group representing Goodwin) and the U.S. Attorney's office, can't agree on what should be done with the information former users stored on MegaUpload's servers. Lawyers representing the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia asked a federal court on Friday to deny Goodwin's request for the return of his videos, most of which are of high school sports events. He said that the court has already heard Goodwin's request and that the videographer has already received all the relief to which he is entitled. The United States also reminded the court that the necessary circumstances don't exist for the court to exercise its "equity jurisdiction." Finally, the government said if the court grants Goodwin's request, it would open the door for any third party to petition the courts any time a search warrant affects them adversely. "Mr. Goodwin's proposed solution is to have the government bear the financial cost of restoring his data," the U.S. Attorney's office wrote in its filing, "even if that means releasing assets of the defendants which are subject to mandatory forfeiture. Twenty-three years ago, the Supreme Court made clear that a criminal defendant does not have a right to use someone else's money to finance his defense." The U.S. Attorney's office accused Kim DotCom, MegaUpload's founder, and six other defendants with operating a thinly veiled piracy service. MegaUpload's managers allegedly enriched themselves by encouraging users from around the world to make illegal copies of movies, music, and software and then store that material on the company's servers. DotCom and the other defendants deny that and say they oversaw a legitimate operation. The company said that it can't be held legally responsible for the copyright infringement committed by users. When MegaUpload was shut down and the company's servers subpoenaed by the government, all the user data was taken offline. Goodwin says that he was the rightful copyright owner of the video he shot and now just wants it back. The district judge overseeing the case in April requested all parties to try and come to a negotiated settlement about what should be done with the user data. Two weeks ago, Goodwin reported back to the court that talks had stalled and again asked for his videos back. The Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group for the six film studios, is concerned that pirated movies and TV shows aren't once again circulated but said last week that it has no objection to "legitimate" content being returned. It's worth nothing that the government, in its brief, wrote Goodwin has another legal option to pursue if he believes his possessions weren't treated fairly. "Mr. Goodwin," the government's lawyers wrote, "can sue MegaUpload or Carpathia [Hosting, the company that hosted MegaUpload's servers] to recover his losses." http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-574...gaupload-user/ ![]() US Judge Wants Data Returned to Megaupload Users Sarah Harvey A former New York federal judge has waded into the Kim Dotcom saga saying it is "outrageous" the US government is refusing to give Megaupload users back their data. In an article on wired.com Judge Abraham David Sofaer said he was "troubled" that the files of 66.6 million Megaupload customers were being kept as part of the US government case against Dotcom. "It's really quite outrageous, frankly," he said. "I was thinking the government hadn't learned to be discreet in its conduct in the digital world. This is a perfect example on how they are failing to apply traditional standards in the new context." Sofaer has teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is urging a US federal court to set up a system to allow Megaupload users to get back their legal content. Dotcom, 38, is currently on bail in Auckland awaiting an extradition hearing following a raid on his Coatesville mansion in January. Authorities say he used Megaupload and its affiliated sites to knowingly make money from pirated movies and games, and have charged him with multiple copyright offences. He and Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk are fighting moves to extradite them to the US. Dotcom's arrest has raised concerns about the safety of content stored in cloud services - online storage space - Computerworld editor Sarah Putt said. Users are increasingly turning to online storage systems such as Dropbox, Gmail, YouTube, iCloud, and Google Drive, to share and store their data. "Data sovereignty is a concern to all consumers and it reinforces the need for consumers to back up their data on to an off-site area," Putt said. "Just because you can put it in a cloud doesn't mean you can outsource your responsibility." Putt said Megaupload was used by many small business owners because it was relatively inexpensive and easy to use. http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/di...gaupload-users ![]() If Megaupload Users Want Their Data, They're Going to Have to Pay The U.S. government says it doesn't have the data and isn't opposed to users retrieving it Jeremy Kirk U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data -- as long as they pay for it. The government's position was explained in a court filing on Friday concerning one of the many interesting side issues that has emerged from the shutdown of Megaupload, formerly one of the most highly trafficked file-sharing sites. Prosecutors were responding to a motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in late March on behalf of Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio-based sports reporter who used Megaupload legitimately for storing videos. Goodwin's hard drive crashed, and he lost access to the data he backed up on Megaupload when the site was shut down on Jan. 19 on criminal copyright infringement charges. U.S. law allows for third parties who have an interest in forfeited property to make a claim. But the government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized. Megaupload's 1,103 servers -- which hold upwards of 28 petabytes of data -- are still held by Carpathia Hosting, the government said. "Access is not the issue -- if it was, Mr. Goodwin could simply hire a forensic expert to retrieve what he claims is his property and reimburse Carpathia for its associated costs," the response said. "The issue is that the process of identifying, copying, and returning Mr. Goodwin's data will be inordinately expensive, and Mr. Goodwin wants the government, or Megaupload, or Carpathia, or anyone other than himself, to bear the cost." The government also suggested that if Megaupload or Carpathia violated a term of service or contract, Goodwin could "sue Megaupload or Carpathia or recover his losses." The issue of what to do with Megaupload's data has been hanging around for a while. Carpathia contends it costs US$9,000 a day to maintain. Megaupload's assets are frozen, so it has asked a court to make the DOJ pay for preserving the data, which may be needed for its defense. So far, the issue remains unresolved. Meanwhile, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is free on bail, living in his rented home near Auckland and awaiting extradition proceedings to begin in August. Dotcom along with Finn Batato, Julius Bencko, Sven Echternach, Mathias Ortmann, Andrus Nomm and Bram Van Der Kolk are charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. The men -- along with two companies -- are accused of collecting advertising and subscription fees from users for faster download speeds of material stored on Megaupload. Prosecutors allege the website and its operators collected US$175 million in criminal proceeds, costing copyright holders more than $500 billion in damages to copyright holders. http://www.techworld.com.au/article/..._re_going_pay/ ![]() FBI Told to Copy Seized Dotcom Data Kurt Bayer and Edward Gay The FBI has been ordered to start copying 150 terabytes of data - including 10 million emails - contained on the seized computers belonging to internet mogul Kim Dotcom. In her ruling released today, chief High Court judge Justice Helen Winkelmann ordered that the copying process begin as soon as possible. But whether or not the information will then be passed to Dotcom's lawyers as they prepare a defence against his extradition to the US will be the subject of a future legal argument. Judge David Harvey in the North Shore District Court ruled last month that Dotcom's lawyers could receive copies of information held by the US authorities in the US and in New Zealand. That would include more than 130 computers and hard drives seized in the raids on Dotcom's multi-million dollar mansion in Coatesville, north of Auckland. Crown lawyers on behalf of the US Government sought a judicial review of that decision on the grounds the District Court could not make a ruling under the Extradition Act. The lawyers for the US Government argued Dotcom and his associates have access to some documents, including emails and their bank account records. They said that under US law, disclosure is only granted once the accused appears in a US court. Lawyers on behalf of the US Government also said they would not be able to disclose all the information in the 21-day period required. They told the court there were over 10 million emails seized and "voluminous'' financial records. FBI agent Michael Postin said in an affidavit that the items seized in New Zealand alone are estimated to contain more that 150 terabytes of data. To give an idea of how much work was involved, he said it had taken 10 days to copy 29 terabytes. Mr Postin said copying all of the data could take two and a half months. He said some of it could not be copied because it has been encrypted. However, Justice Winkelmann ordered that the authorities begin making copies of all the information. She said that the US Government had "ample means'' to do the work. '' ... [T]he expense involved in copying must be dwarfed by the other costs of an investigative and prosecutorial operation of this size.'' The judge went on to say that if Dotcom is extradited to the US then the work will not have been a waste of time. But she said it was not possible to determine yet whether or not the US Government had an obligation to release the information to Dotcom's lawyers. Justice Winkelmann ordered that a further two-day hearing be held to determine that matter. Dotcom and associates Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk face an extradition hearing in August which will determine whether or not they are to fly to the US to face charges including copyright infringement and wire fraud relating to the file-sharing website Megaupload. Prosecutors allege a "mega conspiracy''; Dotcom denies the charges and says his website was legitimate. Dotcom request to drop charges a waste of time - US Attorney's office Meanwhile the the US Attorney's office has rubbished Kim Dotcom's plea to have criminal charges dropped, saying the request is a waste of court time and resources. The Auckland-based Megaupload founder claimed earlier this month that America had no jurisdiction over his Hong Kong-based cloud-storage service. But according to court papers filed by Neil MacBride, US Attorney for Eastern District of Virginia, and reported in CNET News, Dotcom's request to dismiss criminal copyright charges should be denied. In a 20-page document, lawyers for the American government also argued that Dotcom's request to dismiss the charges was "premature" because none of the defendants have refused to appear before the court. Yesterday a former New York federal judge Abraham David Sofaer joined the Dotcom drama. He claimed it was "outrageous" that the US government was refusing to return 66.6 million files of data to Megaupload users. The ex judge told wired.com: "I was thinking the government hadn't learned to be discreet in its conduct in the digital world. This is a perfect example on how they are failing to apply traditional standards in the new context." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10813260 ![]() Hunting for Child Porn, FBI Stymied by Tor Undernet Anonymous shadow Internet's surfers beyond federal grip - this time Michael Morisy Recently released documents detail the federal government's inability to pursue cybercriminals shrouded by the tricky anonymity tools used by the Silk Road marketplace and other darknet sites - tools which are funded in part by the federal government itself. In this particular case, a citizen reported stumbling upon a cache of child pornography while browsing the anonymous Tor network's hidden sites, which are viewable with specialized, but readily available, tools and the special .onion domain. Documents, released through a Freedom of Information Act request by Jason Smathers on MuckRock, show that after being given details of the illicit material, investigators were stymied as to the origin of the pornography's host. In the investigators' own words, "there is not currently a way to trace the origin of the website. As such no other investigative leads exist." Smathers' request was originally for all Justice Department records mentioning the Silk Road marketplace. The Justice Department forwarded the request on to the FBI for processing. In fact, the FBI had received an almost identical request, also filed by Smathers, and rejected it, claiming at the time that responsive records could not be found. While he is currently appealing the FBI's initial response, 11 pages of responsive documents were withheld from the Justice Department's release. The FBI cited Exemption (b)7(d) in that case, which excludes from disclosure "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes which could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source and information furnished by a confidential source." The FBI and DEA had been directed to investigate Tor networks, and specifically the Silk Road marketplace where users can buy and sell legal and illegal goods anonymously using a combination of Tor and the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, by Senator Charles Schumer who stated that the DEA was "aware of the site" and most likely investigating it. A nearly identical request regarding Silk Road to the Drug Enforcement Agency was rejected as being too broad or burdensome to process, while the Secret Service claimed it had no responsive documents, as did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The DEA has touted infiltrating similar anonymous Tor marketplaces in the past. Despite the illegal ends of these marketplaces, the technology was begun and still operates with more noble aims: It was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Lab, and later maintained by the Tor Project, a non-profit group supported financially at various times by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, various governmental and NGO entities, Google and the National Science Foundation. The technology has proven important in puncturing through Internet censorship and tracking attempts around the world. http://www.muckrock.com/news/archive...-tor-undernet/ ![]() Manga Images 'Not Child Porn': Supreme Court Japanese manga comics depicting children in sexual poses are not child pornography, Sweden's Supreme Court has ruled, overturning a high-profile conviction of a Swedish translator. In a ruling issued on Friday, the court acquitted Simon Lundström, who had been found guilty of child pornography crimes by two lower courts before appealing his case to Sweden's highest court. "I'm obviously very relieved, in part because it makes life easier for me personally, but most of all I'm generally relieved for Sweden as a whole," Lundström told the TT news agency in an email. "It would have been very hard for me to relate to Sweden as a country if it turned out to be a place that prohibited certain expressions of the imagination." According to the Supreme Court's ruling, the drawings are pornographic and they do portray children. However, because the cartoons represent imaginary figures there is no way they could be mistaken for real children. "The criminalization of possession of the drawings would otherwise exceed what is necessary with regard to the purpose which has led to the restriction on freedom of expression and freedom of information," the court said in a statement. Lundström, described by Swedish media as a top manga expert, was found guilty by two lower courts of having 39 drawings portraying figures in sexual poses stored on the hard drive of his computer. In his initial trial, he explained that he had retrieved the pictures in order to stay up to date with the latest developments in the Japanese comic genre. A district court fined him 25,000 kronor ($3,500) but an appeals court lowered the sum to 5,600 kronor. During the Supreme Court trial, the images were shown on large screens in the courtroom. The pastel-coloured pictures showed children in different states of undress. The depicted persons have large eyes and many other features that are characteristic for manga-characters. They are both posing for the viewer and taking part in different sexual activities. Lundström's attorney, Leif Silbersky, expressed his satisfaction with the ruling. "It's heartening that common sense has prevailed. The Supreme Court has an excellent way of cutting through the formalities and coming to the right conclusion. The ruling is very good in its entirety," he told the TT news agency. In its ruling, the Supreme Court did however find that one of the 39 images possessed by Lundström could be considered to depict child pornography as it was sufficiently realistic. But the court ruled that possession of the image was nevertheless defensible and as a result acquitted Lundström for possession of that image as well. http://www.thelocal.se/41460/20120615/ ![]() After Rapes Involving Children, Skout, a Flirting App, Faces Crisis Nicole Perlroth A popular social networking app that has been used by adults to prey on minors in three rape cases is the latest cautionary tale of the potential risks of using technology to connect with people you don’t know. In the past two weeks, three men have been accused of posing as teenagers on the mobile social network Skout, which has become one of the fastest-growing new apps, attracting millions of new users monthly. In response, Christian Wiklund, Skout’s founder, said he had no choice but to suspend its service for minors, which he said made up a “significant” portion of its member base, while it works with security experts to add better safeguards. It took three years for Skout, a mobile start-up company, to find a business model. After switching from a Foursquare-like location check-in service to a flirting app that connects people with strangers nearby, the company was adding a million new users a month. In April, it secured $22 million in financing from Andreessen Horowitz. But after a spate of rape cases involving adults and minors who connected on Skout, the start-up is rethinking its business entirely. In one case, a 24-year-old man was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in Escondido, Calif. In the second, a 15-year-old girl said she had been raped by a 37-year-old man she met using Skout. In the third, a 21-year-old man in Waukesha, Wis., is facing charges that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy. In each case, the men are accused of posing as teenagers in a Skout forum for 13- to 17-year-olds. “I’m disgusted by what’s happened here,” Mr. Wiklund said in an interview on Monday. “One case is too many. When you have three, it looks like a pattern. This is my worst fear.” The cases raise larger questions about the safety of social networking apps and sites, which often forbid minors from using them or sequester them from adult users. But those sites find it nearly impossible to control who goes where. In Skout’s case, the majority of its users sign in through Facebook, which officially forbids members under the age of 13. Facebook has acknowledged that younger children still find ways onto the site. It said last week that it was fine-tuning controls that would allow children under 13 to join the service. Skout lets users trade photos, instant messages and virtual gifts and, using a smartphone’s GPS function, connect with other users nearby. The company initially marketed its service only to adults, but it started a separate service for 13- to 17-year-olds last year after learning that minors had gained access to the app. Mr. Wiklund said the app for minors was designed to afford enhanced safeguards like parental controls. The GPS location feature is opt-in, and it never shows a user’s location in more detail than within half a mile. He said a quarter of the company’s 75-person staff monitors the community for illicit behavior. It also uses machine-learning technology — what it calls “the creepinator” — which monitors photos for nudity and checks chats for inappropriate sexual messages, profanity, spamming, copyright infringement and violent behavior. Mr. Wiklund said Skout removes “tens of thousands of devices a month” from the service. But in at least one case, according to police, a 13-year-old boy sent nude photos to Daniel R. Schmidt, a 21-year-old posing as a 16-year-old in Skout’s under-17 community. The two agreed to meet in a secluded Milwaukee park, where they were found performing sexual acts, police said. A Skout spokeswoman, Lydia Chan, said the company monitors and prescreens all public photos, but, citing a continuing police investigation, she would not say whether it had picked up on the nude photos in this case. In that case, Mr. Schmidt has been charged with one count of second-degree sexual assault of a child. If convicted, he faces 40 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. In another case, in Portsmouth, Ohio, a 15-year-old girl said she had chatted with Gene Zimmerman, a 37-year-old man posing as a teenager on Skout, before they agreed to meet, police said. She told Scioto County, Ohio, detectives that she had thought the man was going to give her a car ride to meet her boyfriend, but instead, he brought her to his apartment and raped her, police said. Mr. Zimmerman was charged with first-degree rape. In the third case, after a 12-year-old girl went missing near Escondido, Calif., her mother notified police, who checked her cellphone and discovered that she had met someone through Skout. They said they had found the girl at the home of Christopher Bradley Nutt, 24. He has been charged with a host of counts, including sex with a minor, child molestation and using a child for child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty. Mr. Wiklund said he had learned of all three cases through local news outlets and had reached out to local and federal law enforcement officials to aid in their investigations. Starting Tuesday, he said, the company will suspend the app for teenagers and ban all devices registered with the app, using their unique device numbers, while it works with experts to scrutinize company practices and improve its age verification. Dating apps and sites are not the only places on the Web where illegal sexual behavior have been reported recently. On Tuesday, investors at Balderton Capital, a venture capital firm based in London, told a British technology site that it was returning a 13 percent stake in Sulake, a Finnish social gaming company, after discovering that one of the company’s products, Habbo, had been used by sexual predators and for teenage sex chats. Andreessen Horowitz has no plans to dump its investment in Skout. Scott Weiss, an investment partner there who led the investment in Skout, said one reason the firm had invested in the start-up was because of its impressive safety and security protocols. “I thought we were doing a lot, but obviously we have to do better,” Mr. Weiss said by phone on Tuesday. “This is a five-alarm fire. The entire company is re-evaluating everything it’s doing.” http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/0...-faces-crisis/ ![]() Biosensors to Monitor U.S. Students' Attentiveness Stephanie Simon The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured more than $4 billion into efforts to transform public education in the U.S., is pushing to develop an "engagement pedometer." Biometric devices wrapped around the wrists of students would identify which classroom moments excite and interest them -- and which fall flat. The foundation has given $1.4 million in grants to several university researchers to begin testing the devices in middle-school classrooms this fall. The biometric bracelets, produced by a Massachusetts startup company, Affectiva Inc, send a small current across the skin and then measure subtle changes in electrical charges as the sympathetic nervous system responds to stimuli. The wireless devices have been used in pilot tests to gauge consumers' emotional response to advertising. Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out. Existing measures of student engagement, such as videotaping classes for expert review or simply asking kids what they liked in a lesson, "only get us so far," said Debbie Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation. To truly improve teaching and learning, she said, "we need universal, valid, reliable and practical instruments" such as the biosensors. IS AROUSAL A SIGN OF LEARNING? Skeptics aren't so sure. They call the technology creepy and say good teachers already know when their students are engaged. Plus, they say it's absurd to think spikes in teenagers' emotional arousal necessarily correspond to learning. "In high school biology I didn't learn a thing all year, but boy was I stimulated. The girl who sat next to me was gorgeous. Just gorgeous," said Arthur Goldstein, a veteran English teacher in New York City who has long been critical of Gates-funded education reform. The engagement pedometer project fits neatly with the Gates Foundation's emphasis on mining daily classroom interactions for data. One of the world's richest philanthropies, the foundation reflects Microsoft founder Bill Gates' interest in developing data collection and analysis techniques that can predict which teachers and teaching styles will be most effective. The Gates Foundation has spent two years videotaping 20,000 classroom lessons and breaking them down, minute by minute, to analyze how each teacher presents material and how those techniques affect student test scores. The foundation has also asked 100,000 kids around the country detailed questions about their teachers: Does she give students time to explain their ideas? Does he summarize the lesson at the end of class? That data, again, will be correlated with test scores to try to identify the most effective teaching styles. The foundation has spent $45 million on such research, under the umbrella name Measures of Effective Teaching. 'MEASUREMENT MANIA' The engagement pedometer is not formally part of that program; the biosensors are intended to give teachers feedback rather than evaluate their effectiveness, said Robinson, the Gates spokeswoman. Still, if the technology proves reliable, it may in the future be used to assess teachers, Robinson acknowledged. "It's hard for one to say what people may, at some point, decide to do with this," she said. That alarms some educators who have long been critical of the Gates Foundation's efforts to boil down effective teaching to an algorithm. "They should devote more time to improving the substance of what is being taught ... and give up all this measurement mania," said Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University. Ravitch blogged about the biosensor bracelets a few days ago after a critic of the Gates Foundation flagged the grants on Twitter. Her posts generated a small storm of angry commentary online, with some teachers joking that they would have to start screaming at random intervals or showing the occasional soft porn film to keep arousal rates among their students sufficiently high. In fact the sensors do not distinguish between fear and interest, between boredom and relaxation, so researchers plan to videotape each class that uses the biosensors. That way they can see what was happening in the classroom at moments of peak engagement. "It could be that the bell rang or that someone sneaked up behind you," said Shaundra Daily, an assistant professor in the School of Computing at Clemson University, in South Carolina, who is setting up the middle-school research. Clemson received about $500,000 in Gates funding. Another $620,000 will support an MIT scientist, John Gabrieli, who aims to develop a scale to measure degrees of student engagement by comparing biosensor data to functional MRI brain scans (using college students as subjects). A third grant, for nearly $280,000, supports research by Ryan Baker, a Columbia University professor who specializes in mining data about educational practices. POTENTIAL FOR MISSION CREEP Daily and others working on the project say it's still far too early to tell if biosensor bracelets will be effective. But they can envision many ways to use the technology, which is sometimes referred to as "galvanic skin response measurement." Teachers could, for instance, use the bracelets to monitor student response to a video or a reading, then use that data to spark a lively discussion by zeroing in on the most engaging points, said Rosalind Picard, a computer scientist at MIT and a co-founder of Affectiva, which makes the sensors. Educators could also deploy the sensors to test different approaches: Are ninth-grade algebra students more engaged by an online lesson, by math-related video games, or by a traditional teacher lecture at the blackboard? To Sandi Jacobs, the promise of such technology outweighs the vague fear that it might be used in the future to punish teachers who fail to engage their students' Q Sensors. Any device that helps a teacher identify and meet student needs "is a good thing," said Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group that receives funding from the Gates Foundation. "We have to be really open to what technology can bring." (Editing by Jonathan Weber and Prudence Crowther) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...85C17Z20120613 ![]() Pirating of “50 Funniest Siri Answers” Stopped “Life With Siri” eBook successfully defends its copyright. Press Release Anyone who has a valid copyright on an eBook should be on the alert for pirating. As we discovered, a firm demand with a threat of legal action can quickly eliminate the pirating.Quote end Dery Books today announced that a prominent online file-sharing service has agreed to stop promoting free downloads of “The 50 Funniest Siri Answers,” the only eBook in the “Life With Siri” series of eBooks that is known to have been pirated. The author, Jodi Dery, stated, “It was a surprise to learn that a link had been posted on a file-sharing service to freely download one of our copyrighted eBooks. Upon learning that, we took immediate action by contacting that file-sharing service and demanding that the download link be deactivated. Fortunately, it turned out that the file-sharing service is a responsible organization. They promptly deactivated the download link.” Dery added, “There is a lesson to be learned by this experience. Anyone who has a valid copyright on an eBook should be on the alert for such pirating. That is easily done with Google Alerts. Then, as we discovered, a firm demand with a threat of legal action can quickly eliminate the pirating.” While most eBooks are primarily text-based, “Life With Siri” is essentially illustrative, using original screenshots to demonstrate how to most effectively use Siri, the perceptive, conversational “personal assistant” on the iPhone 4S. As Dery put it, “Presenting Siri’s responses in this illustrative manner -- with maximum use of illustrations and no more text than necessary -- helps to remember the best ways to get results you want from Siri. Even so, Siri is unpredictable and full of surprises.” Each of the “Life With Siri” eBooks is illustrated with original screenshots of conversations with Siri on the iPhone 4S, as well as original editorial comments, and each of these eBooks is protected by copyright. “The 50 Funniest Siri Answers” and its companion volume “The 50 Best Siri Tips” are available for download through Amazon (Kindle edition), Barnes & Noble (Nook Edition) and iTunes (iBooks Edition) at $.99 each. “Life With Siri, Volume One” combines both eBooks with additional material, and it is available from all three retailers at $1.99 per download. “Life With Siri, Volume Two”, is now also available at $1.99 per download. It contains 56 additional Siri tips and 52 additional funny Siri answers. http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2...web9575344.htm ![]() One Million We’ve been such a long way in such a little time. Just imagine where we can get with a bit more time… Frederic Jacobs One Million page views on movies.io. In a bit more than a week. We gotta be touching something right ? But what ? The movie industry is in a funny shape. I didn’t say bad shape. The Avengers made some extraordinary incomes and profit is flowing. They want you to feel bad for downloading movies although they are still making a huge amount of profit. Just do the math : Aiming the right people Interestingly, content owners are not the ones we are trying to take down. We are not coming up with new content that is gonna replace their blockbusters and people will still be watching their content. Movie theater incomes are in most cases enough to cover the production costs. Their business remains viable even if people continue downloading their movies. Camrips are lame and if you want to watch a movie, just go out with friends and watch is on a big theater screen in 3D. The real experience. So there will always be a business for people willing to see the movie with the full experience that is going with it. Camrips are not killing the movie industry. No one are taking them seriously. So, we found out that the big content owners/producers are not losing that much money in the digital age from downloading. They are not an issue. Their business could still work. So why is it for me so hard to watch that content ? Why is it for me such a pain to get these movies ? Hint : It’s all about distribution. The first mistake they made was to believe they could charge the same for a physical version and a digital version. Indeed. Digital information is so cheap to clone that you can’t justify charging the same for each copy as you used to. Steve Jobs cracked the problem in the Music industry but music labels never followed. He always said Price aggressively and go for volume Isn’t the main goal of content producers that their content is seen ? Well. If you would charge less for a movie I would be glad to pay for it. But prices for buying movies online are just abusively high. Second mistake, choosing a business model, not an experience. Back when I used to live in Belgium, we had at home a triple play offer covering the phone, internet and television. Each ISP has these kinds of offers featuring what they dare to call digital television. Each ISP has it’s own catalogue of movies which is part of their VOD (video-on-demand) offer. Each ISP negotiates different contracts with content owners and sign exclusive deals. So people are unable to have access to some content because of their service provider. This system is broken. All this is explained more clearly in the don’t make me steal manifesto. Third mistake, decoders. Here’s probably what sounded attractive to content-owners. They gave their content to ISPs and in exchange ISPs would protect it using their proprietary hardware so that it can only stay on your TV, that way no one would ever have a file of the movie. Sorry but this model is broken. If I buy a DVD I have the right to do what I want with it. I should be able to gift it to a friend, watch it at a friend’s place, borrow it to my grandmother … I shouldn’t be restricted by proprietary hardware. Oh did I also mention that this hardware really sucks at being intuitive ? Because it is a real disaster. Features Movies.io has gotten a bunch of extra features since it’s launch. I can only encourage you to check it out. I’ll try to regularly cover the addition of new features and to keep you posted of what’s in the works. Since yesterday, trailers are now part of the movies.io experience. You now can watch the trailers directly from the film page in an elegant and convenient way. Watchlists have been redesigned and it now easier than ever to add movies to several watchlists. If there is a feature that I really enjoy, it’s the feed feature. You may not have noticed it because there is no such thing anywhere else. Let’s say we want to organize a movie night at Jack’s place. Jack adds all his friends to a watchlist and add a feed to his torrent software. His friends, can decide what movie they would like to see and add it to the watchlist. When Jack gets home after having bought pizza and energy drinks for his homies, all the movies are already downloaded and ready to watch. The torrent software took care of adding the all the downloads to the queue. Isn’t that beautiful ? Subtitles search has also been added recently. It’s pretty cool and efficient. I’m happy to announce that localization is in the works and will be deployed soon following the huge demand. Credits I want to start by thanking by dear co-founder, Amos Wenger, he originally came up with Movies and gets all credit for that. I would never jump in such an adventure without someone like him, being bold enough to believe, like me, that we can make a difference in movie distribution. I would also would like to thank everyone else that joined the rocket ship. Dim, Arnaud, Romac, this goes to you guys. A last but not least shout out goes to Jyzas for staying up so late so often and being so inspiring ;) Thanks for your support. http://fredericjacobs.com/one-million ![]() Comcast Refuses to Help Copyright Holders Sue Its Subscribers Copyright holders like the RIAA and MPAA think it's their god-given right to sue BitTorrent users into eternal poverty for illegal file sharing. Well Comcast has had enough. The company is refusing to comply with subpoenas for user data. That's right, Comcast is sticking up for the little guy. In court documents (embedded below) the ISP says that the lawsuits over illegal file sharing have gotten out of hand and amount to court-ordered shakedowns of its customers. Indeed, as TorrentFreak points out, more than a quarter million people have been sued over file sharing in the last couple of years. The lawsuits are launched by copyright holders, but Comcast ends up aiding in the financial ruin of its customers by handing over subscriber data when the courts ask for it. Now Comcast has asked the courts to throw out all of the pending subpoenas: Among other things, the ISP argued that the court doesn't have jurisdiction over all defendants, because many don't live in the district in which they are being sued. The company also argues that the copyright holders have no grounds to join this many defendants in one lawsuit. Comcast goes on to accuse copyright holders of using illegal tactics to coerce hapless customers into paying hefty settlements rather than run the risk of getting nailed with obscene damages when they lose in court. Good for Comcast. Copyright holders do have legitimate grievances when it comes to file sharing, but their wholesale lawsuits are a perversion of justice. Comcast's motives aren't entirely altruistic—it's incredibly expensive for it to process all those requests—but, hey, if it means that ordinary people are going to get a leg up from a huge corporation, we won't argue. http://gizmodo.com/5918123/comcast-r...ts-subscribers ![]() Verizon Wireless Unveils Shared Data Plans; Rivals May Follow Verizon Wireless is revamping its prices with new service plans that include unlimited calls and texts and the ability for customers to share their data allowance among multiple devices as it looks to shake up the U.S. wireless industry. The biggest U.S. mobile operator is hoping to entice customers to connect more gadgets like tablet computers to its network with the new plans as customers will be able avoid paying separate data subscriptions for each device. Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc. The revamp, which Verizon Wireless has been considering for more than a year, is aimed at helping Verizon's top line as an increase in connected devices would mean more revenue. Some analysts expect rivals to begin offering similar plans. Today most consumers do not choose tablets with cellular connections as they prefer to stick to more limited range Wi-Fi wireless networks rather than pay a second cellular data fee. And while some consumers spend less time on the phone and send fewer text message, they are rapidly increasing their data usage, according to service providers. As a result, the biggest U.S. operators have been increasing their data prices even as they've lowered traditional phone call prices. While Verizon's new offer involves a higher fee per gigabyte of data, Verizon hopes that the inclusion of unlimited voice and texting and the shared data element would help make the plans popular with consumers. "What I'm doing is giving you the flexibility to share the data you've paid for," Chief Marketing Officer Tami Erwin told Reuters. "Customers who are using more than one device will very quickly see the value in this." Today, for example, a customer might have to pay extra for going over their data usage allowance even though they may not have used their full allowance for their smartphone. With a shared plan this would not be an issue, Erwin said. "This is really intended to drive growth. My expectation is it doesn't change our margins," she said. Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner said he expects Verizon's biggest rival AT&T Inc to follow with a rival offering very shortly and that other rivals will eventually add shared data plans. AT&T has said recently that it would look at providing shared plans. ACCESS FEES Under Verizon's new plans, available starting June 28, a smartphone customer would pay a monthly access fee of $40 that includes unlimited calls and texts, and a fee of $60 for two gigabytes of data, which could be shared with up to 10 devices. Each additional device requires another access tariff such as a $10 fee for a tablet or a $20 fee for a laptop. Today Verizon customers pay $30 for 2 gigabytes of data and $40 for the cheapest voice plan with 450 minutes of talk time and another $20 for unlimited text messages. But if a customer also wants to connect a tablet computer today they have to pay another $30 a month for another 2 gigabytes plan, leading to a total bill of $120 per month. For a customer who needs a combined data allowance of 4 gigabytes for their tablet and their smartphone, the total fee, including voice, would still be $120 under the new plan. On average Verizon Wireless customers use about 1 to 2 gigabytes of data on their mobile device, according to Erwin who said that customers' data usage keeps growing. She declined to comment on the trends for voice usage. Verizon Wireless customers will be able to choose to stick with the existing service plans but any new customers will be required to sign up for the shared plans from June 28 onward, even if they do not intend to connect a second device. Recon Analytics' Entner said that the new plans were a good deal for heavy data users. It will appeal to the top 20 percent of mobile users as they could potentially save money while many customers who are less interested in data usage may end up sticking with their current data plans. "This is for the technorati who have multiple devices," Entner said. But he noted that it could also be especially helpful for families where data and voice usage varies hugely between different people in the family. (Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...85B0M820120612 ![]() New App Allows Sharing of Mobile Internet Access Natasha Baker Traveling and looking for Internet access? A new smartphone app allows users to share mobile Web access for free with other people nearby who have the same app. Called Open Garden, the app forms a mesh network that enables each person connected to it to relay it to other users. "Every smartphone is a computer and a router, so we thought it was the right time to interconnect all of these devices together to make general access more ubiquitous," said Micha Benoliel, co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based company Open Garden. "As long as the devices are in proximity they recognize themselves seamlessly. If one device in the mesh has access to the Internet, then the other device can benefit from it," Benoliel added. If a smartphone user with Open Garden is in a cafe or hotel and does not have access to Wi-Fi, but someone else does, the user can piggyback on the other person's connection. Benoliel said the functionality could be especially useful for travelers eager to avoid hefty roaming charges. "You can be traveling and arrive at an airport and instead of paying expensive roaming charges, you can just connect to someone in the airport who has Open Garden," he said. When there is no direct Internet connection in the network, the app accesses the Web through links to other devices such as laptops or mobile phones. If the person whose connection is being shared leaves the network, the app automatically connects to the next best connection. The app is available for Android devices, Windows and Mac. It works as a mesh network only if it has been installed by other people nearby to form the peer-to-peer connections. Benoliel said the app can also be used to interconnect different devices, such as an iPhone and tablets, for free using the plan. The company is working on features to help users limit who shares their Internet and data connections and how much data they want to allocate to the app. In future versions, the company said users will be able to connect to social networks to specify desired network sharers. Despite criticism from mobile carriers concerned about losing revenue, Benoliel said the app could benefit them by helping to decongest crowded 3G and 4G networks by offloading them to WiFi, where there is more capacity. (Editing by Patricia Reaney editing by Andre Grenon) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...85A0BE20120611 ![]() Analysis: Apple's Big Enemy in Smartphone Wars: Delay Dan Levine Apple Inc has spent nearly three years fighting its rivals in a global smartphone patent war. Now, setbacks in two key U.S. court cases are laying bare why a drawn-out battle could be bad news for the iPhone maker. Last Thursday, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago federal court canceled Apple's long-awaited trial against Google Inc's Motorola Mobility division, which makes devices powered by the Internet search company's Android mobile operating system. The trial had been set to start this week. Then in an order late on Monday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, effectively dashed Apple's hopes of stopping the launch of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's new Galaxy S III smartphone, which also runs on Android. Koh had said Apple's push to get a court order blocking the June 21 launch would overload her calendar, given Apple's high-stakes trial over other Samsung devices set for July that she is overseeing. The latest decisions don't doom Apple's courtroom efforts - the company can appeal Posner's ruling, while Koh's directive had nothing to do with the merits of the Samsung case about to go to trial, or the legal arguments for an injunction on the new Samsung smartphone. But delays in moving its cases through the courts is a blow to Apple's efforts to get quick and favorable rulings that it hopes would give it an edge in the marketplace for mobile devices. Apple has waged the international patent war since 2010, part of its attempt to limit growth of Android, which last year established its dominance as the world's best-selling mobile operating platform. Apple's opponents, meanwhile, say the iPhone maker is trying to use patents to avoid competing solely in the market. A clear victory in one of the U.S. legal cases could strengthen Apple's hand in negotiating cross-licensing deals outside court, where companies agree to let each other use their patented technologies. "The stalemate is much more of a victory for the accused infringers than it is for Apple," said Brian Love, a professor at Stanford Law School who studies patent litigation. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet reiterated a previous statement, saying the blatant copying of its devices was wrong. Google spokesman Jim Prosser said the rise of patent litigation is due to too many vague software patents, and that Google's success makes it an attractive target. A Samsung representative declined to comment. Apple is not the only smartphone combatant that has faced setbacks in litigation over its technology. Last month, Oracle Corp came up empty in a trial against Google, a case where Oracle's damages estimates ranged up to $6 billion. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco rejected Oracle's copyright claims on parts of the Java programming language. The enterprise software company said it would appeal. LAND GRAB Apple is in a pitched battle with its competitors over who can develop the most innovative smartphone features. In an attempt to help keep Android at bay, the company announced new features for its voice-activated Siri software at its annual developer's conference on Monday. The company's first lawsuit in its global patent fight was against smaller competitor HTC Corp in a Delaware federal court in March 2010. Apple also filed an action against HTC before a U.S. trade panel, which has forced delays in sales of some HTC smartphones. Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of Destination Wealth Management, says HTC stock has suffered due to adverse court rulings. But for a larger player like Apple, the patent battle is important but not for its share price. Rather, it is used for a short-term edge in the land grab for smartphone and tablet sales, said Yoshikami, whose fund holds Apple shares. In a move that was widely seen as a preemptive strike against an imminent Apple lawsuit, Motorola sued Apple in October 2010 in Chicago, and Apple filed its own claims against Motorola the same month. That case landed before Posner, who issued a series of pre-trial rulings that eliminated nearly all of Motorola's patent claims against Apple from the prospective trial, while maintaining more of Apple's claims against Motorola. That meant Apple had more to gain in the trial, which was set to start on Monday. But in an order last week, Posner scrapped the trial after finding that neither side could prove damages. Apple had sought an injunction barring the sale of Motorola products, but Posner said that would be "contrary to the public interest." Nick Rodelli, a lawyer and adviser to institutional investors for CFRA Research in Maryland, rated Posner's decision an "incremental negative" for Apple. However, Rodelli doesn't think it will stand up on appeal, saying in part that Posner improperly denied Apple a hearing on its right to an injunction. Yet Stanford's Professor Love said that Posner's ruling, and the delay it causes in Apple getting the case to trial even if it wins an appeal, will reduce Apple's leverage during any potential licensing talks. In the Samsung lawsuit, filed last year in California, the iPhone maker says Samsung "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the claims and countersued. The trial centers around Apple's claims against multiple Samsung phones, as well as a Galaxy tablet. But those products are not the most pressing worry for Apple at the moment: Samsung's Galaxy S III phone is set to launch in the U.S. on June 21, and Apple fears blockbuster sales. But courts don't move as quickly as new technology. At a court hearing last week, Apple attorney Josh Krevitt complained that Samsung is able to release new phones before the legal system has time to address their patent violations. "Samsung is always one step ahead, launching another product and another product," Krevitt said. Koh last week said Apple could ask for a temporary restraining order against the Galaxy S III phone, but that would likely delay the trial over a Galaxy tablet and other smartphones. In her order on Monday, the judge said Apple would have to request a new hearing date if it wanted to stop sales of the Galaxy S III phone. That likely would not take place before the phone's scheduled launch. Apple has not said what its next move will be. Court-ordered mediation between the CEOs of Apple and Samsung did not produce a settlement in the wide-ranging litigation. Barring a last minute agreement, the trial is slated for July 30. Apple cannot afford to get bogged down in its global legal campaign against Android, said Paul Berghoff, a Chicago-based patent attorney with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff who is not involved in the litigation. "If Apple's goal still is the Steve Jobs holy war, then the status quo is not in their benefit," Berghoff said. (Reporting By Dan Levine; Editing by Martha Graybow, Amy Stevens and Phil Berlowitz) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...85B1L920120612 ![]() iPad Sees Small Drop, Nook Tops Kindle Fire In New Tablet Traffic Rankings Sarah Perez Web traffic from the Apple iPad saw a slight drop in early June, according to new data from the Chitika Ad network, which analyzed a sample containing hundreds of millions of impressions to arrive at its conclusions. In May, the iPad had accounted for 94.64% of all tablet web traffic, the company previously reported. Today, the company says the iPad has dropped to a 91.07% share. However, the iPad still has a wide lead over its competition, so the change is fairly negligible. Among the non-iPad tablet devices, the top tablet was the Samsung Galaxy Tab, with a 1.77% share of traffic, for example. Meanwhile, the Barnes & Noble Nook overtook the Kindle Fire in tablet traffic share, now accounting for 0.85% of tablet traffic versus the Kinde Fire’s 0.71%. Analysts at Chitika speculate that B&N’s new advertising campaign and launch of the new Nook Simple Touch reader (the one with the glowlight) could have had an indirect impact on Nook sales, and that even though the Simple Touch doesn’t support web browsing itself, Nook has benefitted in an increase in brand familiarity via its Simple Touch ads. However, given that the time frame for the study (June 4th through 10th) is so minimal, it’s hard to read too much into these conclusions just now. Take them for what they are – a single source’s spot check on tablet traffic. It’s something that paints a better picture over time, than it does in the moment. That said, neither the Nook or Kindle ranked in the top of the (non-iPad) charts this go around. Instead, the leaderboard began with the Galaxy tablet, followed by the Acer Iconica, Toshiba Thrive, then Asus Transformer before reaching the Nook. The Motorola Xoom was also ahead of the Kindle Fire, the latter which only managed to beat out the BlackBerry PlayBook, HP TouchPad and the Sony Tablet 5. I particularly like how Chitika has to leave the iPad out of its chart visualization altogether (pictured above), so we can even spot the differences between all these other tablets. http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/ipa...ffic-rankings/ ![]() Broadcast Moves Beyond the TV set as 17% of Consumers Get Network Content on Multiple Screens Jeff Sonderman People who watch a network’s video online also spend 25 percent more time watching that network on their television sets, according to a new comScore study. From the report: Ten thousand people participated in the comScore study. That finding comes from one of the first studies using a new method that examines how a single group of people consume video across TV, the Internet and mobile devices. The results show that TV networks, on average, are reaching more than a quarter of their total audiences via mobile or Internet media, and 11 percent are digital-only consumers. Among news, sports and youth-oriented networks, up to 30 percent of the audience was reached through multiple devices during the five-week study. TV networks reach 17 percent of their audience across both TV and computer screens, and another 11 percent are digital-only. Another interesting finding: 61 percent of consumers used the Internet at the same time as they watched TV at some point during the study. Nearly half of those used Facebook, specifically. http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/m...tiple-screens/ ![]() What Happened Last Night Tara Judah We all have nights we’d rather forget. But, sometimes it’s better to talk about it the morning after. And given that we’re in a relationship here (we the cinema, you the audience), it’s probably for the best that we tell you what happened and, most importantly, why it happened the way it did. Last night we had an unexpected, unwanted and unpleasant delay to our screening of Take Shelter – the first feature in our Wicked Wednesday double bill. I use the words unexpected, unwanted and unpleasant because we’d like you to know that it was for us very much as it was for you – and it was also something that arose out of our control. As the cinema in this relationship there are many aspects of your experience that are within our control; the atmosphere you take in when you visit the Astor is something we work hard at crafting to provide to the best of our ability, given that it too falls within the confines of often extraneous factors. But sometimes those extraneous factors, that we do our very best to work within and to work with, present themselves in such a way that we can’t control the outcome and consequently all we can do is deal with the problem at hand as quickly – and hopefully – as best possible at the times when they occur. The landscape of the industry is changing, rapidly. Most of you will already know this because we share with you the changes as they occur. Last year, we installed a new, state of the art, Barco 32B 4K digital projector. The reasons for doing so were varied and many. With so many wonderful classic film prints having been “junked” (destroyed) over the years and with the unavailability (certainly commercially) of so many film prints there has always been a huge void in what we were able to show in a theatrical environment (this is not even including the various issues surrounding the availability of valid film rights). The advent of digital projection and the increase in availability of digital formats for classic and cult films has indeed opened up some truly wonderful opportunities for us to present to you films otherwise confined to the small screen (among them films such as Taxi Driver, Dr Strangelove, South Pacific, Oklahoma! and Labyrinth, to name a few). Further to this, the major studios within the industry are moving towards what is being hailed as the “digital revolution”. The term itself is terrifying. Whilst there are many advantages to digital presentation there are, as with anything, pitfalls too. What we are seeing now is the removal of 35mm film prints in favour of digital presentation, most often DCPs (Digital Cinema Package). Unlike 35mm film prints that are tangible, come on spools, and run through a mechanical projector, DCPs are files that are ingested into the digital projector which is in many ways simply a very high-tech computer system. Because the physical file is ingested into a projector it can – if the cinema has enough space on its server – be kept there indefinitely and so, having created this situation themselves, the studios and distributors lock the files so that they can only be screened at the times scheduled, booked and paid for by the cinema. This means each DCP comes with what is called a KDM (Key Delivery Message). The KDM unlocks the content of the file and allows the cinema to play the film. It is time sensitive and often is only valid from around 10 minutes prior to the screening time and expiring as close to 5 minutes after the scheduled time. Aside from the obvious fact that this means screenings really do need to run according to scheduled time, it is also means the projectionist can’t test to see if the KDM works or that the quality of the film is right before show time. This isn’t always a problem. But when it is… When it is a problem we have what happened last night. The KDM we received for Take Shelter didn’t work. We discovered this about ten minutes prior to show time. Being a cinema, and holding evening screenings we couldn’t just call the distributor to get another one because they work office hours. So, our steps began with calling a 24 hour help line in the US. Once we went through the process of authenticating our cinema and scheduled screening we were told we had to call London to authorise another KDM for this particular screening. After calling London and re-authenticating our cinema and session, we were told we could be issued another KDM, but not before the distributor also authorised it. This meant another 5-10 minute delay as we waited for the distributor to confirm that we were indeed allow to show the film at this time. Once confirmation was received we waited for the new KDM to be issued. The KDM arrives as an email zip attachment that then needs to be unzipped, saved onto a memory stick and uploaded onto the server. This takes another 5-10 minutes. Once uploaded the projector needs to recognise the KDM and unlock the programmed presentation. Thankfully, this worked. However, until the very moment when it did we were as unsure as our audience as to whether or not the new KDM would work and therefore whether or not our screening would actually go ahead. This is one example of one incident in one cinema. There are thousands upon thousands of screenings at cinemas just like us all over the world constantly experiencing these same issues. Had we been presenting the film in 35mm it would have started on time. The projectionist would have had the film print made up, threaded up and aligned before you even took your seats, heck, before we even opened our front doors for the night. But this is the situation the industry has created and one that they continue to tout as superior to the presentation of 35mm film. I’m not saying there aren’t advantages to digital cinema but what I am saying is that there are problems. And worse still, problems that are often out of our control but that make us look incompetent. We employ fully trained projectionists at the Astor Theatre, you know, the kind who have more than twenty years experience each, who used to hold a projectionists’ license (when there existed such a thing), and if a reel of film were to break, or the projector were to need maintenance, or if a lamp needed changing, they would be qualified and able to solve the problem on the spot. With digital however there is no skill in the problem solving; it requires above all else, phone calls, emails and delays. The fact that I – who holds only the most elementary and theoretical training in cinema projection – can even be a part of the process of “solving” the issue at hand demonstrates clearly just how removed the industry is becoming from its own medium, its own unique essence. We’re not saying that digital is the devil but we want you know what’s at stake. The industry is determined to remove film prints from circulation – they openly say that there won’t be film prints in theatrical circulation within just a couple of years’ time. There are instances in the US already where some studios are refusing to freight 35mm film prints to cinemas. The pressure this puts on independent cinemas to “convert to digital” however is a topic for another blog post, another time. What I’d really like to leave you with here is the essence of how last night made us feel: the industry is shifting – not only its medium, not only its focus, but with it – and most significantly for theatres like us – it’s shifting the element of control. We’re in relationship with you, our audience, but it seems to me as though someone is trying to break us up. We want to continue to give you the experience you expect and deserve when you visit our theatre, and we want more than anything for you know that even though we can’t promise it won’t happen again, we’ll do everything we can to continue to fight for this relationship and the first step to repairing the damage done last night is to be honest with you about how and why it happened. https://astortheatreblog.wordpress.c...ed-last-night/ ![]() The Antivirus Era Is Over Conventional security software is powerless against sophisticated attacks like Flame, but alternative approaches are only just getting started. Tom Simonite Two weeks ago today, computer security labs in Iran, Russia, and Hungary announced the discovery of Flame, "the most complex malware ever found," according to Hungary's CrySyS Lab. For at least two years, Flame has been copying documents and recording audio, keystrokes, network traffic, and Skype calls, and taking screenshots from infected computers. That information was passed along to one of several command-and-control servers operated by its creators. In all that time, no security software raised the alarm. Flame is just the latest in a series of incidents that suggest that conventional antivirus software is an outmoded way of protecting computers against malware. "Flame was a failure for the antivirus industry," Mikko Hypponen, the founder and chief research officer of antivirus firm F-Secure, wrote last week. "We really should have been able to do better. But we didn't. We were out of our league, in our own game." The programs that are the lynchpin of computer security for businesses, governments, and consumers alike operate like the antivirus software on consumer PCs. Threats are detected by comparing the code of software programs and their activity against a database of "signatures" for known malware. Security companies such as F-Secure and McAfee constantly research reports of new malware and update their lists of signatures accordingly. The result is supposed to be an impenetrable wall that keeps the bad guys out. However, in recent years, high-profile attacks on not just the Iranian government but also the U.S. government have taken place using software that, like Flame, was able to waltz straight past signature-based software. Many technically sophisticated U.S. companies—including Google and the computer security firm RSA—have been targeted in similar ways, albeit with less expensive malware, for their corporate secrets. Smaller companies are also routinely compromised, experts say. Some experts and companies now say it's time to demote antivirus-style protection. "It's still an integral part [of malware defense], but it's not going to be the only thing," says Nicolas Christin, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. "We need to move away from trying to build Maginot lines that look bulletproof but are actually easy to get around." Both Christin and several leading security startups are working on new defense strategies to make attacks more difficult, and even enable those who are targeted to fight back. "The industry has been wrong to focus on the tools of the attackers, the exploits, which are very changeable," says Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer and cofounder of CrowdStrike, a startup in California founded by veterans of the antivirus industry that has received $26 million in investment funding. "We need to focus on the shooter, not the gun—the tactics, the human parts of the operation, are the least scalable." CrowdStrike isn't ready to go public with details of its technology, but Alperovitch says the company plans to offer a kind of intelligent warning system that can spot even completely novel attacks and trace their origins. This type of approach is possible, says Alperovitch, because, although an attacker could easily tweak the code of a virus like Flame to evade antivirus scanners once more, he or she would still have the same goal: to access and extract valuable data. The company says its technology will rest on "big data," possibly meaning it will analyze large amounts of data related to many traces of activity on a customer's system to figure out which could be from an infiltrator. Christin, of Carnegie Mellon, who has recently been investigating the economic motivations and business models of cyber attackers, says that makes sense. "The human costs of these sophisticated attacks are the one of the largest," he says. Foiling an attack is no longer a matter of neutralizing a chunk of code from a lone genius, but of defeating skilled groups of people. "You need experts in their field that can also collaborate with others, and they are rare," says Christin. Defense software that can close off the most common tactics makes it even harder for attackers, he says. Other companies have begun talking in similar terms. "It goes back to that '80s law enforcement slogan: 'Crime doesn't pay,' " says Sumit Agarwal, a cofounder of Shape Security, another startup in California that recently came out of stealth mode. The company has $6 million in funding from ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. Agarwal's company is also keeping quiet about its technology, but it aims to raise the cost of a cyber assault relative to the economic payoff, thus making it not worth the trouble to carry out. A company with a similar approach is Mykonos Software, which developed technology that helps protect websites by wasting hackers' time to skew the economics of an attack. Mykonos was bought by networking company Juniper earlier this year. Antivirus companies have been quick to point out that Flame was no ordinary computer virus. It came from the well-resourced world of international espionage. But such cyberweapons cause collateral damage (the Stuxnet worm targeted at the Iranian nuclear program actually infected an estimated 100,000 computers), and features of their designs are being adopted by criminals and less-resourced groups. "Never have so many billions of dollars of defense technology flowed into the public domain," says Agarwal of Shape Security. While the U.S. military goes to extreme lengths to prevent aircraft or submarines from falling into the hands of others, military malware such as Flame or Stuxnet is out there for anyone to inspect, he says. Agarwal and Alperovitch of CrowdStrike both say the result is a new class of malware being used against U.S. companies of all sizes. Alperovitch claims to know of relatively small law firms being attacked by larger competitors, and green technology companies with less than 100 employees having secrets targeted. Alperovitch says his company will enable victims to fight back, within the bounds of the law, by also identifying the source of attacks. "Hacking back would be illegal, but there are measures you can take against people benefiting from your data that raise the business costs of the attackers," he says. Those include asking the government to raise a case with the World Trade Organization, or going public with what happened to shame perpetrators of industrial espionage, he says. Research by Christin and other academics has shown that chokepoints do exist that could allow relatively simple legal action to neutralize cybercrime operations. Christin and colleagues looked into scams that manipulate search results to promote illicit pharmacies and concluded that most could be stopped by clamping down on just a handful of services that redirect visitors from one Web page to another. And researchers at the University of California, San Diego, showed last year that income from most of the world's spam passes through just three banks. "The most effective intervention against spam would be to shut down those banks, or introduce new regulation," says Christin. "These complex systems often have concentrated points on which you can focus and make it very expensive to carry out these attacks." But Agarwal warns that even retribution within the law can be ill-judged: "Imagine you're a large company and accidentally swim into the path of the Russian mafia. You can stir up a larger problem than you intended." https://www.technologyreview.com/new...s-era-is-over/ ![]() A Skype Call in Ethiopia Will Now Get You 15 Years in Prison Tom Cheredar A 30-second call using Skype in Ethiopia can land you a 15-year prison sentence, thanks to new legislation passed by the country’s government. The new legislation will criminalize the use of all Voice Over IP (VoIP) services, such as Skype or Google Voice, from within the country, according to an Al Jazeera report. The legislation, which was voted into law last month with little notice from international media, seems to close a loophole that was allowing some of its citizens to communicate without being monitored by authorities. The country’s sole communication infrastructure is operated by government-run telecom Ethio Teleco. The new legislation empowers the state-owned telecom to prohibit the use not only of VoIP services, but also of video chatting, social media, e-mail, and any other data transfer service capable of communicating information. So that encompass pretty much all communication except for speaking aloud and talking within your own mind. The law also gives the government the right to inspect any imported voice communication equipment as well as the power to ban any inbound packages that don’t have prior permission from the state, according to the Al Jazeera report. Anyone in the country who uses an illegal phone service will face up to 15 years in jail and heavy fines. Making a phone call over the Internet is punishable by 3 to 8 years in prison plus fines. Ethio Teleco also recently installed a system for blocking access to the Tor network that users browse anonymously and access blocked websites, according to Reporters Without Borders. Ethiopian authorities claim the drastic measures called for under the new law are necessary to protect against security threats. However, African Review notes that observers are saying the law is instead aimed at limiting freedom of expression and the flow of information between the nation’s 85 million people. http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/14/et...skype-illegal/ ![]() Accused British Hacker Charged in U.S. Over LulzSec Attacks Dan Whitcomb A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted a 20-year-old British citizen on charges related to attacks by the LulzSec hacking group on the Fox and PBS television networks and Sony's film and TV studio, authorities said on Wednesday. Ryan Cleary, who is already jailed in the United Kingdom where he faces prosecution over similar charges, is accused of joining other members of LulzSec in harnessing compromised computers, known as a "botnet," to steal confidential information, deface websites or attack servers. He was indicted on Tuesday. "Cleary is a skilled hacker. He controlled his own botnet, employed sophisticated methods and his broad geographic scope affected a large number of businesses and individuals," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous, has taken credit for hacking attacks on government and private sector websites. Anonymous and its offshoots, including LulzSec and AntiSec, initially focused on fighting attempts at Internet regulation and the blocking of free illegal downloads, but have since taken on such targets as Scientology and the global banking system. The charges come just over two months after accused LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment. In March, court documents revealed that Anonymous leader "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, had pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges and provided the FBI with information on fellow hackers. According to the indictment released by the FBI, Cleary and his unnamed co-conspirators hacked into the computer systems of News Corp's Fox Entertainment Group and Sony Pictures Entertainment and stole confidential user information. The indictment also charges Cleary and his co-conspirators of defacing the PBS website and launching "denial of service" attacks against an online gaming website and Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency. Cleary is charged with one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted. Eimiller said federal authorities would "allow the prosecution to take its course" against Cleary overseas before deciding whether to seek his extradition to the United States. He is next scheduled to be in court in the U.K. on June 25. Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, became notorious in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website. They attacked websites including those of MasterCard Inc, which had tried to block payments to WikiLeaks after apparent pressure from the U.S. government following the release of thousands of diplomatic cables. (Additional reporting by Mary Slosson; Editing by Eric Walsh and Lisa Shumaker) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...85D00620120614 ![]() Websites to be Forced to Identify Trolls Under New Measures BBC Websites will soon be forced to identify people who have posted defamatory messages online. New government proposals say victims have a right to know who is behind malicious messages without the need for costly legal battles. The powers will be balanced by measures to prevent false claims in order to get material removed. But privacy advocates are worried websites might end up divulging user details in a wider range of cases. Last week, a British woman won a court order forcing Facebook to identify users who had harassed her. Nicola Brookes had been falsely branded a paedophile and drug dealer by users - known as trolls - on Facebook. Facebook, which did not contest the order, will now reveal the IP addresses of people who had abused her so she can prosecute them. The new powers, to be added to the Defamation Bill, would make this process far less time-consuming and costly, the government said. Complying with requests would afford the website greater protection from being sued in the event of a defamation claim. The new rules would apply to all websites - regardless of where they are hosted - but the claimant would need to be able to show that the UK was the right place to bring the action. End to 'scurrilous rumour' Currently, in legal terms, every website "hit" - visit - on a defamatory article can be counted as a separate offence. This means many websites remove articles as soon as a defamation claim is made - either rightly or wrongly. "Website operators are in principle liable as publishers for everything that appears on their sites, even though the content is often determined by users," said Justice Secretary Ken Clarke. "But most operators are not in a position to know whether the material posted is defamatory or not and very often - faced with a complaint - they will immediately remove material. "Our proposed approach will mean that website operators have a defence against libel as long as they identify the authors of allegedly defamatory material when requested to do so by a complainant." Mr Clarke said the measures would mean an end to "scurrilous rumour and allegation" being posted online without fear of adequate punishment. "The government wants a libel regime for the internet that makes it possible for people to protect their reputations effectively but also ensures that information online can't be easily censored by casual threats of litigation against website operators. "It will be very important to ensure that these measures do not inadvertently expose genuine whistleblowers, and we are committed to getting the detail right to minimise this risk." Privacy concerns But Privacy International, an organisation that campaigns at an international level on privacy issues, says that there is a concern that "gun-shy website operators will start automatically divulging user details the moment someone alleges defamation in order to shield themselves from libel actions". "A great deal of the content posted by internet trolls is not actually defamatory, instead constituting harassment, invasion of privacy or simply unpleasant but lawfully-expressed opinion," said Emma Draper, head of communications at Privacy International. "However, if the choice is between protecting users' anonymity and avoiding a potentially costly lawsuit, many small operators are not going to be overly concerned about whether or not a user has genuinely defamed the complainant." http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18404621 ![]() Online Activities to be Recorded by UK ISPs, Draft Reveals Let’s hope it will remain a draft Alexandra A. UK Monitoring Bill: Big Brother to Become Reality If you were scared that your online activity was being tracked and possibly analyzed, let us inform you that you were very much accurate in your suppositions. No, this is not one of those conspiracy theories you hear on the news so often. The United Kingdom online monitoring law just got published showcasing some disturbing facts. The paper is 123 pages long and is actually a draft of the Communications Data Bill. You might not be so happy to find out that from now, every single thing you do online will be recorded and stored by the good old Internet Service providers (ISP). What do we mean by online activity? Well, everything. From exchanging emails, browsing history, instant messaging to the most important use of social networks. Nevertheless, campaigners have already started taking action, so the bill will soon be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint committee of Parliament. Here’s what Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group has to say about the bill: “The bill is as expected – an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on our privacy that will see the government track where we make calls, who we e-mail and what everyone does online. We are all suspects now. “ On top of that, this whole arrangement of spying on us will cost the government a whooping 1.8 billion pounds, the Home Office brought into attention. But the ministers are already on board with paying for the entire operation. Let’s Hope the Parliament Will Reject It At the moment, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) offers investigators and police officer the power to go digging around emails and browsing history but this is quite limited to a certain number of sites. Home Secretary Theresa May stated that: “as criminals make increasing use of internet-based communications, we need to ensure that the police and intelligence agencies continue to have the tools they need to do the job we ask of them: investigating crime and terrorism, protecting the vulnerable and bringing criminals to justice” thus implying the fact that the bill will prove to be beneficial to citizen’s safety. But won’t real criminals find other way to communicate or research their topics of interests. Will the government ban libraries as well or allow access only for those who prove to be mentally sane? But, ultimately, the Parliament will decide whether or not the proposal in the draft could constitute a solution to the above mentioned problems. This situation made me think about the reality expressed in Geoge Orwell’s book, Animal Farm and 1984. The Internet should remain free and let’s hope such laws will never see the light! http://www.maindevice.com/2012/06/14...draft-reveals/ ![]() 'Online Snooping' Scheme Expected to Cost at Least £1.8bn Home Office reveals pricetag for tracking emails, phone use and Facebook and Twitter accounts as Theresa May attacks critics as 'conspiracy theorists' Alan Travis Government data tracking reforms have been condemned as a 'snoopers' charter' by critics. Photograph: Creativeact/Alamy The government's "online snooping" scheme to track email, Facebook, Twitter and other web use comes with an official pricetag of at least £1.8bn and an official warning that the figure may well prove to be an underestimate, the Home Office has revealed. Ministers have already agreed to pay all the costs of the scheme, which will require phone and internet companies to collect and store for 12 months the records of internet and mobile phone use in Britain for access by police and intelligence services. The draft communications data bill published on Thursday says the move will cost £1.8bn over 10 years but that an official impact assessment says the pricetag is in line with the Treasury's "optimism bias" that understates the cost of major projects. It adds that the technical complexity of the scheme may well increase the costs and that the estimate does not allow for inflation or VAT. The former Tory shadow home secretary David Davis accused the home secretary, Theresa May, of proposing an "incredibly intrusive'' scheme that was exactly the same as the proposal David Cameron had attacked when Labour proposed it in office. May, in turn, branded the scheme's critics "conspiracy theorists", risking an even deeper breach with her own party's libertarian wing over the plan. The communications data that police and intelligence services may seek about an individual under the communications bill includes email addresses and phone numbers of people who have been in contact; when this happened; where; and the details giving the police records of suspects' associates and activities. It will remain the case that they will not be allowed to access the content of emails, texts, mobile calls and other confidential web use without a warrant signed by the home secretary. The Liberal Democrats are expected to scale back their criticism of the legislation after Nick Clegg's intervention secured a series of safeguards, including a scrutiny inquiry by MPs and peers that will report by the end of November. May defended the 550,000 individual requests for data each year made by security officials as a vital tool to catch serious criminals and terrorists. She told the Sun: "I just don't understand why some people might criticise these proposals. I have no doubt conspiracy theorists will come up with some ridiculous claims about how these measures are an infringement of freedom. But without changing the law, the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and paedophiles." May's comments were backed by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, who wrote in the Times that the powers could be "a matter of life and death". He said having greater powers to access data was essential to waging a "total war on crime" and that police risked losing the fight against crime unless parliament passed a law enabling them to collect more communications data. "Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society," he wrote. But the measure is expected to continue to attract fierce criticism from libertarian Conservatives. Davis said the fact that there were already half a million requests each year from the police and intelligence services showed just how intrusive it was. "This is exactly the same thing that Labour proposed in 2009. They went from a central database to this and we attacked it fiercely. In fact, David Cameron attacked it," said Davis, referring to a period when the Conservatives were campaigning against the spread of the "surveillance society". He said serious criminals would quickly find other ways to communicate and the only people it would catch were the innocent and the incompetent. "It's not content, but it's incredibly intrusive," Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "If they really want to do things like this – and we all accept they use data to catch criminals – get a warrant. Get a judge to sign a warrant, not the guy at the next desk, not somebody else in the same organisation." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...me-office-cost ![]() A Digital Citizen's Bill of Rights I believe that individuals possess certain fundamental rights. Government should exist to protect those rights against those who would violate them. That is the revolutionary principle at the heart of the American Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. No one should trample our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's why the Bill of Rights is an American citizen's first line of defense against all forms of tyranny. But where can a digital citizen turn for protection against the powerful? This question lay at the heart of the fight to stop SOPA and PIPA and keep the web open. While I do not have all the answers, the remarkable cooperation we witnessed in defense of an open Internet showed me three things. First, government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics. Second, we have a rare opportunity to give government marching orders on how to treat the Internet, those who use it and the innovation it supports. And third, we must get to work immediately because our opponents are not giving up. We need to frame a digital Bill of Rights. This is my first draft. I need your help to get this right, so I published it here in Madison for everyone to comment, criticize and collaborate. I look forward to hearing from you and continuing to work together to keep the web open. -Congressman Darrell Issa http://keepthewebopen.com/digital-bill-of-rights ![]() Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' Daniel J. Solove When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private." The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security. The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!" The argument is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry James's 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: "If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing." I encountered the nothing-to-hide argument so frequently in news interviews, discussions, and the like that I decided to probe the issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing-to-hide argument. I received a torrent of comments: • My response is "So do you have curtains?" or "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?" • So my response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant." • I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either. • If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life. • Show me yours and I'll show you mine. • It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business. • Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more? On the surface, it seems easy to dismiss the nothing-to-hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, "Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is." Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novella "Traps," which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," replies the prosecutor. "A crime can always be found." One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, "If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?" The Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues: "There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes' questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters." But such responses attack the nothing-to-hide argument only in its most extreme form, which isn't particularly strong. In a less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument refers not to all personal information but only to the type of data the government is likely to collect. Retorts to the nothing-to-hide argument about exposing people's naked bodies or their deepest secrets are relevant only if the government is likely to gather this kind of information. In many instances, hardly anyone will see the information, and it won't be disclosed to the public. Thus, some might argue, the privacy interest is minimal, and the security interest in preventing terrorism is much more important. In this less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument is a formidable one. However, it stems from certain faulty assumptions about privacy and its value. To evaluate the nothing-to-hide argument, we should begin by looking at how its adherents understand privacy. Nearly every law or policy involving privacy depends upon a particular understanding of what privacy is. The way problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them. As the philosopher John Dewey observed, "A problem well put is half-solved." Most attempts to understand privacy do so by attempting to locate its essence—its core characteristics or the common denominator that links together the various things we classify under the rubric of "privacy." Privacy, however, is too complex a concept to be reduced to a singular essence. It is a plurality of different things that do not share any one element but nevertheless bear a resemblance to one another. For example, privacy can be invaded by the disclosure of your deepest secrets. It might also be invaded if you're watched by a peeping Tom, even if no secrets are ever revealed. With the disclosure of secrets, the harm is that your concealed information is spread to others. With the peeping Tom, the harm is that you're being watched. You'd probably find that creepy regardless of whether the peeper finds out anything sensitive or discloses any information to others. There are many other forms of invasion of privacy, such as blackmail and the improper use of your personal data. Your privacy can also be invaded if the government compiles an extensive dossier about you. Privacy, in other words, involves so many things that it is impossible to reduce them all to one simple idea. And we need not do so. In many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests, because courts, legislators, and others fail to recognize that privacy is implicated. People don't acknowledge certain problems, because those problems don't fit into a particular one-size-fits-all conception of privacy. Regardless of whether we call something a "privacy" problem, it still remains a problem, and problems shouldn't be ignored. We should pay attention to all of the different problems that spark our desire to protect privacy. To describe the problems created by the collection and use of personal data, many commentators use a metaphor based on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell depicted a harrowing totalitarian society ruled by a government called Big Brother that watches its citizens obsessively and demands strict discipline. The Orwell metaphor, which focuses on the harms of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control), might be apt to describe government monitoring of citizens. But much of the data gathered in computer databases, such as one's race, birth date, gender, address, or marital status, isn't particularly sensitive. Many people don't care about concealing the hotels they stay at, the cars they own, or the kind of beverages they drink. Frequently, though not always, people wouldn't be inhibited or embarrassed if others knew this information. Another metaphor better captures the problems: Franz Kafka's The Trial. Kafka's novel centers around a man who is arrested but not informed why. He desperately tries to find out what triggered his arrest and what's in store for him. He finds out that a mysterious court system has a dossier on him and is investigating him, but he's unable to learn much more. The Trial depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people's information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used. The problems portrayed by the Kafkaesque metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition. Instead they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives. Legal and policy solutions focus too much on the problems under the Orwellian metaphor—those of surveillance—and aren't adequately addressing the Kafkaesque problems—those of information processing. The difficulty is that commentators are trying to conceive of the problems caused by databases in terms of surveillance when, in fact, those problems are different. Commentators often attempt to refute the nothing-to-hide argument by pointing to things people want to hide. But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty "premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong." Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy. The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy. In contrast, understanding privacy as a plurality of related issues demonstrates that the disclosure of bad things is just one among many difficulties caused by government security measures. To return to my discussion of literary metaphors, the problems are not just Orwellian but Kafkaesque. Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no information that people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited behavior but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system's use of personal data and its denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process. The harms are bureaucratic ones—indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the fusion of small bits of seemingly innocuous data. When combined, the information becomes much more telling. By joining pieces of information we might not take pains to guard, the government can glean information about us that we might indeed wish to conceal. For example, suppose you bought a book about cancer. This purchase isn't very revealing on its own, for it indicates just an interest in the disease. Suppose you bought a wig. The purchase of a wig, by itself, could be for a number of reasons. But combine those two pieces of information, and now the inference can be made that you have cancer and are undergoing chemotherapy. That might be a fact you wouldn't mind sharing, but you'd certainly want to have the choice. Another potential problem with the government's harvest of personal data is one I call exclusion. Exclusion occurs when people are prevented from having knowledge about how information about them is being used, and when they are barred from accessing and correcting errors in that data. Many government national-security measures involve maintaining a huge database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, because they involve national security, the very existence of these programs is often kept secret. This kind of information processing, which blocks subjects' knowledge and involvement, is a kind of due-process problem. It is a structural problem, involving the way people are treated by government institutions and creating a power imbalance between people and the government. To what extent should government officials have such a significant power over citizens? This issue isn't about what information people want to hide but about the power and the structure of government. A related problem involves secondary use. Secondary use is the exploitation of data obtained for one purpose for an unrelated purpose without the subject's consent. How long will personal data be stored? How will the information be used? What could it be used for in the future? The potential uses of any piece of personal information are vast. Without limits on or accountability for how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data's being in the government's control. Yet another problem with government gathering and use of personal data is distortion. Although personal information can reveal quite a lot about people's personalities and activities, it often fails to reflect the whole person. It can paint a distorted picture, especially since records are reductive—they often capture information in a standardized format with many details omitted. For example, suppose government officials learn that a person has bought a number of books on how to manufacture methamphetamine. That information makes them suspect that he's building a meth lab. What is missing from the records is the full story: The person is writing a novel about a character who makes meth. When he bought the books, he didn't consider how suspicious the purchase might appear to government officials, and his records didn't reveal the reason for the purchases. Should he have to worry about government scrutiny of all his purchases and actions? Should he have to be concerned that he'll wind up on a suspicious-persons list? Even if he isn't doing anything wrong, he may want to keep his records away from government officials who might make faulty inferences from them. He might not want to have to worry about how everything he does will be perceived by officials nervously monitoring for criminal activity. He might not want to have a computer flag him as suspicious because he has an unusual pattern of behavior. The nothing-to-hide argument focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or surveillance—while ignoring the others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, to the exclusion of other perspectives. It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a national-security program that demands access to personal information. The first way is not to recognize a problem. This is how the nothing-to-hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the program outweigh the privacy sacrifice. The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem. And the key misunderstanding is that the nothing-to-hide argument views privacy in this troublingly particular, partial way. Investigating the nothing-to-hide argument a little more deeply, we find that it looks for a singular and visceral kind of injury. Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is sometimes shared by those advocating for greater privacy protections. For example, the University of South Carolina law professor Ann Bartow argues that in order to have a real resonance, privacy problems must "negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease." She says that privacy needs more "dead bodies," and that privacy's "lack of blood and death, or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other [types of harm]." Bartow's objection is actually consistent with the nothing-to-hide argument. Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed. Like Bartow, proponents of the nothing-to-hide argument demand a dead-bodies type of harm. Bartow is certainly right that people respond much more strongly to blood and death than to more-abstract concerns. But if this is the standard to recognize a problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Privacy is not a horror movie, most privacy problems don't result in dead bodies, and demanding evidence of palpable harms will be difficult in many cases. Privacy is often threatened not by a single egregious act but by the slow accretion of a series of relatively minor acts. In this respect, privacy problems resemble certain environmental harms, which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Although society is more likely to respond to a major oil spill, gradual pollution by a multitude of actors often creates worse problems. Privacy is rarely lost in one fell swoop. It is usually eroded over time, little bits dissolving almost imperceptibly until we finally begin to notice how much is gone. When the government starts monitoring the phone numbers people call, many may shrug their shoulders and say, "Ah, it's just numbers, that's all." Then the government might start monitoring some phone calls. "It's just a few phone calls, nothing more." The government might install more video cameras in public places. "So what? Some more cameras watching in a few more places. No big deal." The increase in cameras might lead to a more elaborate network of video surveillance. Satellite surveillance might be added to help track people's movements. The government might start analyzing people's bank rec#ords. "It's just my deposits and some of the bills I pay—no problem." The government may then start combing through credit-card records, then expand to Internet-service providers' records, health records, employment records, and more. Each step may seem incremental, but after a while, the government will be watching and knowing everything about us. "My life's an open book," people might say. "I've got nothing to hide." But now the government has large dossiers of everyone's activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm. "But the government doesn't want to hurt me," some might argue. In many cases, that's true, but the government can also harm people inadvertently, due to errors or carelessness. When the nothing-to-hide argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its terms, then draws power from its unfair advantage. The nothing-to-hide argument speaks to some problems but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised with government security measures. When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say. https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Pr...ven-if/127461/ ![]() How Depressives Surf the Web Sriram Chellappan and Raghavendra Kotikalapudi IN what way do you spend your time online? Do you check your e-mail compulsively? Watch lots of videos? Switch frequently among multiple Internet applications — from games to file downloads to chat rooms? We believe that your pattern of Internet use says something about you. Specifically, our research suggests it can offer clues to your mental well-being. In a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, we and our colleagues found that students who showed signs of depression tended to use the Internet differently from those who showed no symptoms of depression. In February of last year, we recruited 216 undergraduate volunteers at Missouri University of Science and Technology. First, we had the participants fill out a version of a questionnaire called the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, which is widely used for measuring depression levels in the general population. The survey revealed that 30 percent of the participants met the criteria for depressive symptoms. (This was in line with national estimates that 10 to 40 percent of college students at some point experience such symptoms.) Next, we had the university’s information technology department provide us with campus Internet usage data for our participants for February. This didn’t mean snooping on what the students were looking at or whom they were e-mailing; it merely meant monitoring how they were using the Internet — information about traffic flow that the university customarily collects for troubleshooting network connections and such. Finally, we conducted a statistical analysis of the depression scores and the Internet usage data. There were two major findings. First, we identified several features of Internet usage that correlated with depression. In other words, we found a trend: in general, the more a participant’s score on the survey indicated depression, the more his or her Internet usage included these (rather technical-sounding) features — for instance, “p2p packets,” which indicate high levels of sharing files (like movies and music). Our second major discovery was that there were patterns of Internet usage that were statistically high among participants with depressive symptoms compared with those without symptoms. That is, we found indicators: styles of Internet behavior that were signs of depressive people. For example, participants with depressive symptoms tended to engage in very high e-mail usage. This perhaps was to be expected: research by the psychologists Janet Morahan-Martin and Phyllis Schumacher has shown that frequent checking of e-mail may relate to high levels of anxiety, which itself correlates with depressive symptoms. Another example: the Internet usage of depressive people tended to exhibit high “flow duration entropy” — which often occurs when there is frequent switching among Internet applications like e-mail, chat rooms and games. This may indicate difficulty concentrating. This finding, too, is consistent with the psychological literature: according to the National Institute of Mental Health, difficulty concentrating is also a sign of depressive symptoms among students. OTHER characteristic features of “depressive” Internet behavior included increased amounts of video watching, gaming and chatting. Earlier studies have looked into the relationship between Internet usage and depression, but ours is thought to be the first to use actual Internet data, collected anonymously and unobtrusively, rather than student-completed surveys about Internet usage, which are less reliable. What are the practical applications of this research? We hope to use our findings to develop a software application that could be installed on home computers and mobile devices. It would monitor your Internet usage and alert you when your usage patterns might signal symptoms of depression. This would not replace the function of mental health professionals, but it could be a cost-effective way to prompt people to seek medical help early. It might also be a tool for parents to monitor the mood-related Internet usage patterns of their children. Such software could also be used at universities, perhaps installed on campus networks to notify counselors of students whose Internet usage patterns are indicative of depressive behavior. (This proposal, of course, raises privacy concerns that would have to be addressed.) Mental health groups have recommended screening in multiple settings as a critical component of preventing mental health problems in young people. We believe that monitoring Internet usage could be part of the solution. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/o...-internet.html ![]() How 30 Days Without Social Media Changed My Life Steven Corona 30 days ago, I made the decision to give up social media for a month. Well, here I am, reporting that I'm still alive and that the past month has been life changing- the most successful month of my existence. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Hacker News were all on my blacklist, well- sort of. My goal for giving up social media was to create more value in my life, quit hoarding information, and appreciate the time that I spent with friends. So, full disclosure- I briefly used Facebook and Twitter 5 times during my haitus to pimp blog posts, and I'm okay with that, because it was for the sole purpose of sharing value (and getting more pageviews, duh). First day of social media withdrawl The first couple of days were full of withdrawl symptoms- I'd open a new tab in Chrome and start typing facebook.com without even thinking about it. I missed my constant entertainment from Twitter. It got better. I forgot all about Twitter within days. I still missed Facebook, mostly because it came up in conversation all of the time. Hey, did you see the picture Ryan tagged you in.. oh, nevermind. The benefits were immediately apparent. With a mind free to wander and explore, I started to create things, to make moves, rather than suck down a never ending stream of information. I wrote I've written more words in the past 30 days than I have in my entire life- well, maybe besides that year I took AP English. I have over 20 blog posts drafted that I'm working on tweaking to perfection. And I'm getting better at crafting words and articulating myself because of it. You have to flex the muscle to keep it strong. I sat down and tried to figure out what creating value in my life really meant, and had a difficult time with it. James Altucher talks about writing down ideas everyday, so that's what I started doing. Forcing yourself to come up with 30 new ideas every morning leads to some good ones bubbling up to the surface once in awhile. Try it. It lead to a book I totally pulled a Tim Ferriss and advertised a book without having written a single word. My concept, scaling php applications, is for a unique book, which I'm qualified to write, but didn't know if it would be interesting to others. I created a landing page and rolled the dice. The feedback was incredible, thousands of people signed up and hundreds were so excited that they pre-purchased it to get access to daily updates. Right now I'm wrapping up Chapter 4 and the book will be released on July 1st. I meditated My old morning routine: wake up, check facebook, check twitter. It sucked. With two huge voids, it was time for a revamp. I'm lucky enough to be able to wake up when my body tells me to, usually around 9 or 10, so I'm always well rested. Once I'm up, I immediately make breakfast, drink Yerba Mate (with a bombilla), and meditate outside for 5 or 10 minutes before updating my journal. Meditating was one of those things that sounded good in theory, but was always difficult for me to keep up with. Doing it for a short interval is perfect and even in spurts I find it incredibly beneficial, it clears my head and opens me up for the day. I built stronger friendships Not knowing what your friends are doing every second is liberating. It's amazing how much you have to talk about when you don't have a constant plug into their life. I built stronger friendships and forged a couple of new ones, including a relationship. Would I have made the same friends and started a new relationship if I was still on social media? Part of me can't help but think that the mystery of not knowing all the gory details that Facebook provides made them more intriguing to me. I competed Running has been a passion of mine for years. I love it. In some ways, I live for it (April 2012, I ran 3 miles every single day for the entire month). This month, I competed in a couple of 5Ks and even won some trophies. Look, there's us fighting with swords that we won for our 1st and 2nd place finishes… in our age group. Moving forward What's my plan now? Well, I'm back on social media. It's nice to finally see “that picture that Ryan tagged me in”. But I don't want to go back to my old routine, the new one is so much better. I love creating things- code, art, writing, whatever. I want to keep doing that, because the act of producing, being a maker, has changed my life. If I want to read or post on social media, I will do it consciously and thoughtfully- so I won't be using Twitter or Facebook from my phone. And no more Reddit. Like, it provided absolutely 0 value to me. I love the information diet that I'm on and all I need to do is not plug back in. http://stevecorona.com/how-30-days-w...hanged-my-life Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - June 9th, June 2nd, May 26th, May 19th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black
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