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![]() ![]() "It was a case of pure incompetence." – Drew Wilson "I don't remember a time when so many companies have been so visibly 'owned' and were so ill-equipped." – Adam O'Donnell March 2nd, 2013 ![]() DOJ Admits Aaron’s Prosecution was Political Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman The DOJ has told Congressional investigators that Aaron’s prosecution was motivated by his political views on copyright. I was going to start that last paragraph with “In a stunning turn of events,” but I realized that would be inaccurate — because it’s really not that surprising. Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron’s effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FBI over the PACER database. But Aaron actually didn’t believe it was — he thought it was overreach by some local prosecutors who didn’t really understand the internet and just saw him as a high-profile scalp they could claim, facilitated by a criminal justice system and computer crime laws specifically designed to give prosecutors, however incompetent or malicious, all the wrong incentives and all the power they could ever want. But this HuffPo article, and what I’m hearing from sources on the Hill, suggest that that’s not true. That Ortiz and Heymann knew exactly what they were doing: Shutting up, and hopefully locking up, an extremely effective activist whose political views, including those on copyright, threatened the Powers That Be: A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post. Keep in mind that Aaron did not in fact distribute the articles he downloaded from JSTOR. Keep in mind that he had the legal right to download each and every one of those articles individually. Keep in mind that the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto that the DOJ cites was written by a group, not by Aaron individually, several years before Aaron’s actions — and take it from me that several years could be an eternity in the evolution of Aaron’s political views. Keep in mind that many independent commentators made an extremely plausible case that Aaron was interested in doing statistical research on the archive of articles, not distributing them.* And keep in mind that the government’s ONLY evidence that Aaron wanted to distribute the articles was this co-authored manifesto. Does that seem like sufficient cause to destroy someone’s life? Let alone the life of one of the most promising technologists and entrepreneurs in the country? Yes, it does: If the system’s main purpose is to maintain the status quo at the expense of anyone who tries to disrupt it. This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power. And then they drove the man I loved to suicide because they didn’t like something he said once. And not only that: They are standing by their actions! The DOJ refuses to admit the possibility that this might have been a mistake: Reich told congressional staffers that the Justice Department believed federal prosecutors acted in a reasonable manner, according to the sources. And to make matters even worse, everything I’m hearing from the Hill confirms that the DOJ is actively opposing against any changes to the CFAA, the law Aaron was prosecuted under. (The same law that says that anyone using a fake middle name on Facebook is committing a federal felony.) If you know someone in the Obama administration, especially in the DOJ, ask them: How do you live with yourself right now? And if you don’t, ask yourself: Do you feel safer? UPDATE: I want to clarify something: Even if Aaron’s intention was in fact to distribute the journal articles (to poor people! for zero profit!), that in no way condones his treatment. But the terrifying fact I’m trying to highlight in this particular blog post is this: According to the DOJ’s testimony, if you express political views that the government doesn’t like, at any point in your life, that political speech act can and will be used to justify making “an example” out of you once the government thinks it can pin you with a crime. Talk about a chilling effect on freedom of speech. UPDATE #2: A DOJ official says (in the outlet “Broadcasting & Cable,” an odd choice if you ask me…) that my characterization of the prosecution as “political” is inaccurate. No argument as to why or how, so color me unconvinced. http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/44047...-was-political ![]() Rep. Chu Helps Form Caucus to Protect Intellectual Property Rights Daniel Siegal Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) is starting a new caucus to protect the intellectual property rights of filmmakers, musicians and other artists. Chu is launching the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus in partnership with Rep. Howard Coble of North Carolina, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet. The caucus will work to educate members of Congress and the general public about the importance of preserving and protecting the intellectual property rights of American creators of movies, music, software and other creative works. Intellectual property rights - as seen with the copyright and patent systems - govern how creators profit from the ideas they put in the marketplace. “American innovation hinges on creativity – it is what allows our kids to dream big and our artists to create works that inspire us all,” said Chu in a statement. “The jobs that result are thanks entirely to our willingness to foster creative talent and an environment where it can thrive and prosper.” Chu will be the most senior representative on the subcommittee from the Los Angeles area. http://www.pasadenasun.com/the626now...0,367113.story ![]() Press Release Candidate Bergmanson Decries New Six Strike Rule Today Comcast will become the first of six major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to institute a "six strike policy" aimed at targeting filesharing customers. Through software developed by the movie and music industries, ISPs will identify filesharing and begin targeting warnings and "educational messages" on filesharing for the first few incidents, followed up with throttling connection speeds. Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Carl Bergmanson decried the new policy saying, "The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download". He went on to say that while he believes copyright infringement is unethical, it is not surprising that as the law evolves to disrespect the public domain, that the public would grow to disrespect copyrights. http://www.politickernj.com/63481/ca...ix-strike-rule ![]() Former Obama Advisor Argues Comcast is a Threat to the Open Internet Yet other sectors of the Internet economy are working better than she admits. Timothy B. Lee Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard and a former advisor to President Obama, was not a fan of Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal. In fact, Crawford was so appalled by the transaction that she made the fight over the merger the focus of her book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. But Crawford's beef isn't only with Comcast. She sees the cable giant's growing size as a symptom of much larger problems with the telecommunications, media, and technology sectors. In her view, these communications industries fester with monopolies, collusion, and consumer-hostile business practices. A few big companies—AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, Apple, Google, and Microsoft—"tacitly cooperate by carving out their separate areas of expertise," leaving customers with low quality and high prices. Crawford's skepticism of the Comcast deal is well-founded, but her broader critique of the modern media landscape misses the mark. The sorry state of the residential broadband market is a genuine problem that calls for creative policy solutions, but the wireless, media, and online sectors of the economy are more competitive—and more consumer-friendly—than she admits. Crawford's over-diagnosis of what's wrong with the modern communications sector leads her to go overboard with her policy proposals. Rather than advocating a focus on constraining the power of broadband duopolists, she calls for a broad increase in government involvement in the communications industry. That approach didn't work very well the last time we tried it in the mid-20th Century. And it would likely work even worse today. Monopolies everywhere? A careful reading of Captive Audience gives some hints the industry's major incumbent firms might not be as omnipotent, or as collusive, as Crawford claims. At one point, for example, she describes how programmers like Disney and News Corp "mercilessly gouged" AT&T and Verizon when they were trying to put together video packages to deliver over their FiOS and U-Verse networks. In another, she describes how cable companies are "slowly losing market share in video," thanks to increased competition from Verizon, AT&T, Dish, and DirecTV. This is not a story of wink-and-nod collusion among the captains of the media industry. Rather, it's a story of big companies fiercely jockeying for position in a rapidly changing marketplace. Crawford's pessimism is particularly unconvincing in the wireless market. In 2003, she writes, "Americans were left with just three large wireless providers"—Verizon, Cingular, and AT&T Wireless. These three companies controlled about 60 percent of the market, with the other 40 percent controlled by "Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, Nextel Communications, Alltel, and others." In other words, we were "left with" at least seven competitors not three. That's pretty good for such a capital-intensive industry. Of course, the market has consolidated somewhat since then. We now have four national carriers. The feds were wise to block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile. But a market with three or four major carriers is the norm across the industrialized world. And it's certainly not, as Crawford describes it, "in some ways...even less competitive than the wired market." The typical wireless consumer has three or four options, whereas wired customers are lucky to have two choices. And Crawford's inclusion of Google, Apple, and Microsoft on her list of companies "tacitly cooperating" to carve up the market among themselves is even less plausible. Each of these three companies is pouring billions of dollars into their operating systems, mobile devices, search engines, and other products. It's hard to see any major problems requiring the attention of regulators. The problem with the communications industry, in other words, is not a problem with "bigness" in general. Apple, Microsoft, Disney, and News Corp. are "big" companies, but consumers who are dissatisfied with their products have plenty of alternatives. Rather, the problem is the structure of the residential broadband market makes it more prone to monopoly than other parts of the Internet economy. The third way Over our history, the United States has taken three different approaches to telecommunications regulation. Before 1968, policymakers took for granted that communications was a monopoly service and regulated it as a vertically-integrated public utility. Between 1968 and 1996, regulators focused on fostering competition by discouraging vertical integration. They broke up AT&T and regulated the Baby Bells to prevent them from killing off startups like MCI and AOL. Since Congress passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, policymakers have abandoned these pro-competitive policies, allowing the incumbents to consolidate and squeeze out smaller firms. Crawford advocates a return to the first of these three approaches. During the New Deal era, she says approvingly, the FCC "was given the job of providing America with a high-quality, general-purpose communications system at reasonable rates. For fifty years, the state oversaw the development of phone service." It's true that the regulations of the mid-20th Century helped promote universal and affordable telephone service. But granting AT&T a telecommunications monopoly also produced a half-century of technological stagnation. Crawford's framing of the debate—between the pro-regulatory stance of the 1930s and the anti-regulatory stance of the 2000s—ignores a third option: the pro-competitive policies of the 1970s. In 1968, the FCC forced AT&T to allow third parties to attach devices to the network, creating a market for answering machines, cordless phones, modems, and much more. In the 1970s, the FCC allowed MCI to enter the long distance market. And in 1974, the Ford administration began antitrust proceedings that would lead to the monopolist's breakup in 1984. The result was flourishing markets for long distance service, answering machines, cordless phones, and online services. And crucially, the FCC avoided heavily regulating these relatively competitive markets, resulting in a rapid pace of innovation. In other words, the key principle of the 1970s reforms was monopolies should be regulated while competitive markets should not be. And this is a principle neither Crawford nor modern conservatives seem to understand. Crawford seems to regard the competitive sectors of today's economy as just as dysfunctional, and in need of regulation, as the monopolistic sectors. Conservatives make the opposite mistake, reflexively opposing regulation no matter how concentrated an industry becomes. The result has been a stale and counterproductive debate between "free markets" and "regulation." But the key question is not whether regulation is needed, but what kind of regulation is needed in which sectors of the economy. History suggests regulators should regulate when doing so is necessary to constrain monopolies and promote competition. In particular, they should limit the size of monopolistic firms and prevent them from vertically integrating into competitive markets. But it's equally important for regulators to avoid excessive meddling in markets like the modern wireless sector where there is already robust competition. An important advantage of a policy agenda that's pro-competitive, rather than pro- or anti-regulatory, is it has a better chance of attracting broad bipartisan support. Crawford's sweeping indictment of big business is unlikely to find a sympathetic ear among conservatives or libertarians. Indeed, Crawford herself acknowledges this, arguing "America needs more people who can calmly and rationally oppose the free-marketeer rhetoric." But "free-marketeer rhetoric" is too popular among American voters for an explicitly anti-market movement to gain traction. The political right may be more receptive to a regulatory agenda focused on constraining companies, like Comcast, who enjoy monopoly power thanks to state-granted franchise agreements. During the 1970s and early 1980s, pro-competitive telecommunications policies enjoyed support across the political spectrum. It was the Republican Ford administration that launched the antitrust case against AT&T, and the Republican Reagan administration presided over the firm's breakup a decade later. There's no reason a regulatory agenda that is pro-competition, rather than merely anti-market, couldn't attract broad support in the future. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...open-internet/ ![]() The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP Corynne McSherry It’s been a long time coming, but the copyright surveillance machine known as the Copyright Alert System (CAS) is finally launching. CAS is an agreement between Big Content and large Internet Service Providers to monitor peer to peer networks for copyright infringement and target subscribers who are alleged to infringe—via everything from from “educational” alerts to throttling Internet speeds. As part of the launch, the Center for Copyright Information, which administers the program, has revamped its website. The website is supposed to help educate subscribers about the system and copyright. Unfortunately, it’s chock full of warning signs that this whole campaign is not going to go well. For example, on the process for targeting subscribers, the site explains that: "Before each Alert is sent, a rigorous process ensures the content identified is definitely protected by copyright and that the notice is forwarded to the right Subscriber." Just because content is copyrighted doesn’t mean sharing it is illegal. It would be better to have a rigorous process that ensures the use identified is actually infringing. It would be even better to have a process that was vetted by a truly independent entity, and public review of the full results. And then there are these nuggets: "While CCI encourages all consumers to secure their home networks, it is especially important for consumers who have received a Copyright Alert." In other words, if you’ve received a notice, you’ve better lock down your network, and fast. As we’ve explained, this seems designed to undermine the open Wi-Fi movement, even though open wireless is widely recognized to be tremendously beneficial to the public. "Subscribers are responsible for making sure their Internet account is not used for copyright infringement." Not so—at least not under copyright law, unless additional conditions are met. We don’t all have to sign up to be copyright police, though if your ISP is part of the deal—AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—you’ve signed up to be policed. Then there’s the generally maximalist approach to copyright. For example, while we were able to find at least a nod to fair use in CCI’s materials, they are also replete with statements like this (from the section on what students and teens need to know): "Whenever you create something like a poem, a story or a song, you own it – and no one else can use it without your permission." Not so: thanks to the fair use doctrine, others can in fact use the works you create in a variety of ways. That’s how we help ensure copyright fosters, rather than hinders, new creativity and innovation. Equally worrisome: the CCI site directs users to the Copyright Alliance to learn more about the history of copyright. The Copyright Alliance is hardly a neutral “resource”—it was a leader in the battle to pass SOPA and remains a staunch advocate of copyright maximalism. Finally, CCI is promising to partner with iKeepSafe to develop a copyright curriculum for California public schools. It will be called: "Be a Creator: the Value of Copyright." Based on what we’ve seen so far, that curriculum will do little to help kids understand the copyright balance. Instead, it is going to teach kids that creative works are “stuff” that can be owned and that that you must always check before using that “stuff.” Not to toot our own horn, but EFF has developed a copyright curriculum that explains what copyright law permits as well as what it forbids and, we hope, encourages students to think critically about creativity, innovation and culture. And it’s CC-licensed, so the CCI should feel free to save itself some time and money by using it. In the meantime, we are disappointed if not surprised by the tenor of the CCI’s approach to surveillance and education. Watch this space for more on the CAS and what you can do to challenge it. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/0...agent-your-isp ![]() Will the “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System Hurt Consumers And Small Businesses? Zach Walton Piracy is a problem that needs to be dealt with. I don’t think anybody is going to refute that. Where people are divided is how we actually deal with this problem. After years of reputation destroying legal battles against dead people and little girls, copyright owners think they have an answer. On Monday, the Copyright Alert System, or “Six Strikes”, went into affect across the five biggest ISPs in the U.S. The system hopes to catch those pirating content over P2P networks, and send them a notice detailing their infringement. The hope is that those who are caught will start using legal alternatives. To better understand the CAS, we have to look at what the Center for Copyright Information is doing with it. First, there are three tiers to the CAS that consumers should be aware of with each tier having two levels within it. The three tiers are as follows – educational alerts, acknowledgement alerts and mitigation measures. The first two warnings – “educational alerts” – tell consumers they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to scare people into buying content. The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called “acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing. The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be “mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan. The actual specifics of these tiers will be different across the five ISPs participating in the CAS. We don’t know what every alert will look like, but Ars Technica did manage to get a hold of what Comcast’s alerts would look like. As you would expect, the CAS hasn’t exactly garnered many fans. New Jersey Gubernatorial candidate Carl Bergmanson recently spoke out against it by saying ISPs have no right to monitor what you download: “The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download”. The EFF has also come out swinging against CAS. The group says the system presents a number of troubling statements that don’t just hurt Internet users but the Internet for itself. For instance, the group points out that the CCI Web site tells people to lock down their Wi-Fi connections so others don’t pirate on your connection. The EFF sees this as an attack on the open Wi-Fi movement and it would be especially troublesome for those who do share their Internet connections with others, like small businesses. Small businesses are where we run into the biggest problems. The CCI says that rights holders won’t target open Wi-Fi networks run by businesses. Your local Starbucks or Panera Bread are safe as they run off of a business network. The problem comes in the form of small businesses like a local coffee shop or bakery that runs free Wi-Fi off of a residential network. These businesses will be held liable for the actions of its consumers. The CCI argues that it won’t hurt small businesses running residential networks because the CAS will never terminate an Internet connection. That’s entirely true, and it’s good that copyright owners didn’t go as far to request that ISPs terminate connections. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the fifth warning and afterwards will either block popular Web sites or throttle connections. For a small business that has multiple customers all on the same network, that’s just as good as shutting off the connection. People who want to use the Internet at these places will find it too much of a pain and take their business elsewhere. This all brings us to the question of whether or not the CAS will even stop piracy. That’s obviously the goal, but it doesn’t look like an attainable one at the moment. In fact, the CAS is its own biggest enemy in the war on piracy. The alerts obtained from Comcast all have one troubling thing in common. They don’t list any of the alternative, legal sources for content. The main point of the program is to educate consumers on legal alternatives, and it can’t even do that. Consumers receiving the alert with no prior knowledge of the system will most likely see it as a scam email and won’t act upon it. Later tiers require consumers to watch an educational video on copyright, but it doesn’t say whether these videos will present legal alternatives. Fortunately, legal alternatives are doing a good enough job stopping piracy themselves. A recent report from the NPD found that legal alternatives like Spotify were driving music piracy down. It proves once again that easy access at a fair price can beat out piracy any day. Heck, the proliferation of streaming services even gave the music industry its first raise in revenue since 1999. So why do copyright owners think the CAS will work? Do they really expect piracy rates to magically drop once the alerts start flying out? Past examples would suggest that no such thing would happen. In fact, previous efforts on the part of copyright owners to curtail piracy have had the opposite effect. Just look at the shutdown of Megaupload or the blocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK. Both cases actually saw an increase in piracy. At this point, it’s still too early to tell how much the CAS will actually accomplish. At best, copyright owners will be able to proclaim that piracy rates are down as more people either use VPNs or move off of P2P and onto Usenet or Mega. At worst, consumers revolt and ISPs drop it after seeing that it’s costing them customers. Either way, piracy isn’t going anywhere. http://www.webpronews.com/will-the-s...piracy-2013-03 ![]() US Six Strike Policy – A Security Disaster for Users? Drew Wilson Last week, we pointed to a report that the US Copyright Alert System was beginning to roll out this week. Now that it has, we’ve seen how alerts will be sent to users and it’s far worse than we originally thought. Ars Technica able to obtain screenshots of what an alert looks like for Comcast users. What we originally thought was that the alerts would be sent via e-mail to the subscribers. We thought this because that was how DMCA notices are sent out. Instead, they will be injected into the users web browser session and shown when the user receives a strike. An excerpt from Ars Technica: Those accused of infringing can file an appeal for $35. (Here’s the CCI’s new video explaining the process and its new promo video.) Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesperson, also told Ars that the company already sent out a “small number” of alerts despite this being the first day of Comcast’s compliance. Douglas declined to disclose the actual number or why that number was being kept secret. When Ars asked him to confirm that Six Strikes would not be able to see a potential violation if the user was using a VPN, he responded: “I think you’re right.” Douglas did provide the language for alerts numbered one, two, four and five. He has not yet responded as to why Comcast is unable to provide the actual language for all six alerts or why he chose these particular ones to share with Ars. Comcast has also not shared any technical details as to how it serves up an in-browser pop-up alert. The first thing that is wrong with this is that there is the utilization of a browser pop-up. Any scam or phishing website can implement a pop-up window. Whether this is a light box, interstitial, or a simple page, it doesn’t matter. At minimum, it requires a little knowledge in plain HTML. Second of all, it’s only a matter of time before the language of all six strikes on all carriers are revealed. A scam website, for instance, can easily copy and paste the language and change the URLs to point to a malicious website. While an actual alert would be direct from Comcast, all a fraudster has to do is direct a user to the right page or open the right e-mail attachment. At that point, it could be game over for the less knowledgeable user. There are multiple ways this could be accomplished. It could be through an infected e-card. It could be through an infected e-mail attachment. It could be through an infected file from pretty much anywhere. It could be through a Facebook link in a post. It could even be through clicking on a bad URL on a search engine. In any event, the possibilities are almost endless on how a scammer can get you to click on a fraudulent copyright alert. In fact, scammers have used copyright as a means to bilk users out of money already. Last year, there was a virus that went out claiming that the FBI had locked down a users computer and demanded money to unlock the computer. The scam was bad enough that the FBI had to post comments on their website to explain to users that this is a scam. From the FBI: There is a new “drive-by” virus on the Internet, and it often carries a fake message—and fine—purportedly from the FBI. “We’re getting inundated with complaints,” said Donna Gregory of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), referring to the virus known as Reveton ransomware, which is designed to extort money from its victims. The Reveton virus, used by hackers in conjunction with Citadel malware—a software delivery platform that can disseminate various kinds of computer viruses—first came to the attention of the FBI in 2011. The IC3 issued a warning on its website in May 2012. Since that time, the virus has become more widespread in the United States and internationally. Some variants of Reveton can even turn on computer webcams and display the victim’s picture on the frozen screen. In a few variations, the scam says that the FBI detected copyright infringement on the users computer and that the fine would unlock the computer and make the problem go away. That scam is not far removed from the kind of scam that could arise from the Copyright Alert System (CAS) alerts. Because the CAS allows users to pay a fee to try and clear their name, there is now the expectation that money could be involved in an alert which would make it more difficult for the average Internet user to distinguish between a fraudulent alert window and a real one sent by the ISP. Preemptively, when a scam starts making the rounds hijacking the CAS system to bilk users out of their money, we recommend that if you receive an alert (especially when you are unsure if it’s real) get in contact with your ISP that involves using a method other than that alert window. A great way is to call your ISP. There might be a phone number in your last bill so you know it’s an authentic way to contact them and verify that the alert you received is real. In the mean time, if the users safety was ever taken into consideration, this idea of using a pop-up window should have been dismissed on the drawing board. The ISPs are involved in creating this system in the first place. ISPs should have known better because you’d think they would have someone with Internet security experience on staff. There are two possibilities as to why such a bad idea was implemented. The first was that ISPs really failed to take security into consideration when coming up with the idea of how to deliver a copyright alert. It was a case of pure incompetence. The other possibility might be that ISPs knowingly implemented such a poorly designed system in an effort to deliberately sabotage the whole system so that the system would ultimately be disassembled because implementation would be impossible. In any event, we don’t see how all parties involved in creating and implementing the system wouldn’t be legally liable sooner or later. The fact that they are using pop-ups in a browser session basically means that the ISPs giftwrapped and shipped their entire userbase to the wolves. Never mind all of the other fundamentally flawed aspects of the alert system such as false accusations and a guilt until proven innocent system. It’s only a matter of time before this policy becomes a critical liability for everyone in the US. http://www.freezenet.ca/us-six-strik...ter-for-users/ ![]() Here’s What an Actual “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert Looks Like Ars asks and Comcast obliges, giving us copies of Alerts 1, 2, 4 and 5. Cyrus Farivar Earlier this week, the Copyright Alert System (CAS)—better known as "Six Strikes"—finally debuted. On Wednesday, both Verizon and Comcast activated the service. The new system is funded by a group known as the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which is made up of five major American ISPs, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It's been in the works for years and may provide a significant change to the copyright infringement policing regime in the United States. At the end of a series of six alerts, accused infringing customers could have their home Internet connection significantly slowed down. Those accused of infringing can file an appeal for $35. (Here's the CCI's new video explaining the process and its new promo video.) Both Verizon and Comcast updated their terms of service as of Wednesday, and each informed customers of their participation in Six Strikes on their websites. (But, more than likely, most customers don’t spend much time checking out the corporate homepages of their ISPs.) Ars has reached out to all five of the participating ISPs—AT&T, Verizon, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast. Only the latter responded and agreed to provide copies of actual alerts. (Full disclosure: I am a Comcast customer.) Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesperson, also told Ars that the company already sent out a “small number” of alerts despite this being the first day of Comcast's compliance. Douglas declined to disclose the actual number or why that number was being kept secret. When Ars asked him to confirm that Six Strikes would not be able to see a potential violation if the user was using a VPN, he responded: “I think you’re right.” Douglas did provide the language for alerts numbered one, two, four and five. He has not yet responded as to why Comcast is unable to provide the actual language for all six alerts or why he chose these particular ones to share with Ars. Comcast has also not shared any technical details as to how it serves up an in-browser pop-up alert. There are a few things we noticed after reading through these alerts. The notice refers to a comcast.net e-mail address. Prior to updating some information on my own account earlier this month, I’ve never seen any messages sent to that account. I didn't even know that I had it. Apparently I’m not the only one. “I will note, just as a single data point, that I'm sure that I, personally have a comcast.net e-mail account and that I have no idea what it is,” Sherwin Siy told Ars. He’s the vice president of legal affairs at the advocacy group Public Knowledge and also a residential Comcast customer in Washington, DC. “Were I to receive one of these notices, a lot of my time would likely be spent trying to figure that information out so I could know what I was actually being accused of,” he added. Comcast’s Douglas also told Ars that all alerts were communicated via e-mail to users' comcast.net e-mail address and via an in-browser pop-up. That could suggest that if a Comcast user maintains a constant VPN connection, and doesn't check his or her Comcast e-mail account, she could plausibly say that she never received any alerts. The alert refers to a URL redirecting to a post titled "New Copyright Alert System." "Six strikes is fundamentally flawed" First, were a customer to receive this alert, she would get it out of the blue with no explanation as to what it is. Second, the Center for Copyright Information’s (CCI) emphasized that the CAS is an education-based, rather than a penalty-based, system. But none of the alerts appear to provide any education about copyright or point users to legal alternatives. “What is ‘improperly?' This is one of the problems with the system,” Derek Bambauer, a tech law professor at the University of Arizona, e-mailed Ars after he saw the alert pages. “Making a fair use of a copyrighted work is not infringement. Thus, even if I download an entire copy, if it's fair use, I am not an infringer—and yet, the private law of six strikes treats me as one.” Bambauer collaborated with Chris Soghoian, a policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, to submit Freedom of Information Act requests to learn more about the creation of the Six Strikes program. The two have a pending legal case to compel the Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget to release more information and related documents. “Six strikes is fundamentally flawed,” Bambauer added. “Part of the reason is that users were never at the table: the bargaining parties were content owners and ISPs. And ISPs have very limited incentives to defend free speech or protect against mistakes—especially if all of their major competitors are in the system, too. No way to vote against the system with your feet.” We’ve included copies of alerts two and five below. Have you received any CAS alerts from your ISP yet? Please share in the comments. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ooks-like/#p3n ![]() Six Ways Pirates Can Get Around the Coming 'Six Strikes' Darlene Storm Last August, Google changed its search algorithms so sites would rank lower based on “the number of valid copyright removal notices” that Google received. But “demoting pirate sites” was not enough, according to Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) report. The RIAA said it has “found no evidence” that Google’s plan is working since “these sites consistently appear at the top of Google’s search results for popular songs or artists.” Despite the fact that the European Copyright Society (ECS) found that hyperlinking is not copyright infringement, the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy organization BREIN will not be happy until there is no daily limit on reporting “pirate links” to Google, and “wants to increase the daily DMCA cap from 10,000 to 40,000 and eventually remove the restrictions altogether.” However, ECS wrote, “As Tim-Berners Lee, who is regularly accredited as being an inventor of the World Wide Web, has explained, a standard hyperlink is nothing more than a reference or footnote, and that the ability to refer to a document is a fundamental right of free speech.” The RIAA disagrees and if it had its way, even Google’s auto-complete feature would be wiped clean of “piracy-inducing keywords.” The RIAA report card concluded, "The search rankings for sites for which Google has received large numbers of instances of infringement do not appear to have been demoted by Google’s demotion signal in any meaningful way, at least with respect to searches for downloads or mp3s of specific tracks or artists.” Yet as Techdirt pointed out, most folks unhappy about their Google ranking would stop to learn about search engine optimization. Furthermore, the RIAA doesn’t seem to understand that if logged into Google, then different people see different Google search results. The bottom line: “The RIAA will never, ever be satisfied until Google wipes out all infringement with the magic ‘piracyBgone’ button.” 6 ways online pirating around the Copyright Alert System Six StrikesSpeaking of piracy and the RIAA, the Six Strikes escalated warning system is about to kick in and the idea of Hollywood—an unelected body of industry-connected officials who get to police the Internet—being given that power is such a horribly flawed plan that it is nearly inconceivable the Copyright Alert System (CAS) will soon launch. AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon have struck Six Strikes deals with the Center for Copyright Information devil (RIAA and MPAA members). Some of the ISPs’ Six Strikes plans, like that of Verizon, have leaked out onto the net. While not advocating piracy and I’m certainly not an expert on pirating, there seem to be many ways around Six Strikes—other than don’t pirate. 1. Since Six Strikes targets BitTorrent users, they should use a VPN or anonymizing proxy service—only 16% of file-sharers hide their IP now. Apparently even some FBI pirates don’t bother with hiding IPs, even though the FBI warns that pirating is a serious, not victimless, crime. 2. Switch over to Usenet or a similiar site. 3. Download from a free file-hosting service such as one listed in Google results that the RIAA is so vehemently opposed to. 4. Switch over to a streaming site without downloading movies. ICE may take it down, but you won’t be targeted by the Copyright Alert System. Torrent Freak reported, “The copyright alerts only target a subgroup of online pirates, namely BitTorrent users. The millions of users of file-hosting services, Usenet and streaming sites are not going to be affected.” 5. Switch to a higher priced business-class account with your ISP so your public Wi-Fi is considered “legitimate.” Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the CCI, claimed that “legitimate” businesses like Starbucks with free Wi-Fi would be immune to “Copyright Alerts.” Instead, “residential Internet accounts are the focus of our program.” If “very small businesses like a home-office or a local real estate office” use a residential account instead of paying big bucks for a business account, then “if an employee of the small business, or someone using an open Wi-Fi connection at the business, engages in infringing activity the primary account owner would receive Alerts.” On The Media’s Brooke Gladstone interviewed Lesser about the coming Six Strikes in general. To ensure it doesn't happen again when given an alert, aka a strike, one of the punishments is a tutorial for "ensuring their wireless connection is password protected." If and when the fifth and sixth alerts are issued, then after a “copyright tutorial,” a residential-classed account will get cut down to slower-than-molasses speeds of 256kbps for two or three days. Although Lesser previously said Six Strikes was not “punitive,” good luck trying to get anything done at those 1990s speeds. 6. Diehard ‘casual’ pirates could ride out the Six Strikes storm, since nothing more happens after the sixth warning. At the start of WYNC’s OntheMedia interview, it was said that Six Strikes is supposed to "stop serial illegal downloaders." Later during the interview, when asked what happens if you get Strike 7, 8 or 9, Lesser said, “Once they've been mitigated, they've received several alerts, we're just not going to send them any more alerts. Because they are not the kind of customer that we're going to reach with this program." Nothing more “under this program” will happen. "For us it is reaching the casual infringer which is a large percentage of peer-to-peer piracy," Lesser stated. The third-party tool MarkMonitor will be used to identify users who engage in copyright-infringing activities. It was approved as an accurate tracking methodology by an independent and impartial technical expert that is none other than Stroz Friedberg—a group that “was also the RIAA’s lobbying firm for half a decade.” If you feel "wrongly accused” then there is a $35 ‘review fee’ to see precisely what you are accused of. It's refunded if you win, but if the Copyright Alert System is so sure of itself then why charge at all? Why not let individuals know what they are accused of without this stipulation that the fee is to stop "frivolous appeals?" Again, I'm not advocating that copyright infringement is right and people should pirate. People work hard to create music, movies, content and they should be paid for it. But just as I was opposed to SOPA, it seems wrong to give Hollywood this much power into our private lives and over the Internet. http://blogs.computerworld.com/inter...ng-six-strikes ![]() Sony Slaps Swedish Uploader with Damages Sony Music is demanding 1.5 million kronor ($200,000) in damages from a Swedish man who fileshared Beyoncé's as yet to be released album in a case that has legal experts scratching their heads. The 47-year-old man in Gothenburg has been prosecuted and now faces a damage claim from the record company. Marianne Levin, intellectual property law professor at Stockholm University, told the TT news agency that it is tricky to put an exact price-tag on the harm that the suspect would have caused the artist and her record company. "I don't think they've showed in a satisfying way how to quantify the damage in these types of cases," she said. "And I question if it will ever be possible to do so." The man, who told police he had worked within the music industry, was charged in October 2012 for copyright infringement. He shared the US artist's new album, entitled 4, on The Pirate Bay site ahead of its planned release date. "Music sharing cases have been prosecuted in Sweden before, but authorities see this as an opportunity to test how far punishments can be pushed in a pre-release case," the website TorrentFreak commented on the case. http://www.thelocal.se/46486/20130301/ ![]() Pirate Party Buckles in Face of Pirate Bay Lawsuit Sweden's Pirate Party has decided to cut off internet access to filesharing site The Pirate Bay after lawyers representing Swedish copyright holders threatened legal action last week. The party has instead decided to provide The Pirate Bay with internet access via servers belonging to Pirate Party chapters in Norway and the Catalan region of Spain. On Tuesday last week, the Rights Alliance (Rättighetsalliansen), formerly known as the Anti-Pirate Bureau (Antipiratbyrån), sent formal letters to the Pirate Party and the Swedish internet service provider (ISP) Serious Tubes Networks demanding they stop providing internet access to The Pirate Bay. After considering how to respond to the lawsuit threat, the Pirate Party decided to stop allowing the popular filesharing site to use the party's servers in Sweden. "The reason is partly for survival and partly due to the personal pressure on individuals in the party," Pirate Party head Anna Troberg told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper (SvD). "It's a case of endurance when it comes to civil lawsuits, and it's all about who has the most money." She pointed to the fact that the Rights Alliance has multinational corporations behind it, whereas the Pirate Party is simply "sponsored by young people". The Pirate Party, founded in Sweden in 2006 and advocating for an overhaul of copyright laws, has been serving as a host for The Pirate Bay since 2010 after the filesharing site's previous hosts were served injunctions from several Hollywood movie studies. Troberg said on Tuesday that while the first battle may be over, two more are set to begin. "The Rights Alliance has succeeded in chopping off the head, but now two new heads are growing instead," she told SvD, adding that there are more than 60 Pirate Party chapters around the world. "It is extremely problematic that private companies dictate how we communicate with each other online," she added. Sara Lindbäck of the Rights Alliance claimed the letter was not politically motivated, rather sent in regards to the organizations' online capacities. "The Pirate Bay makes it difficult for rights holders to live off their own work, and internet providers are enabling them to continue," she told SvD. http://www.thelocal.se/46410/20130226/ ![]() Pirate Bay Quits Sweden to Relieve Pressure on Bandwidth Provider The Pirate Bay has moved from Sweden to Norway and Spain, but the move is temporary, site administrators said Loek Essers The Pirate Bay has opened two new gateways to its internal network in order to shield its current Internet provider, the Swedish Pirate Party, which had been threatened with legal action if it did not stop providing Internet access to the torrent search site by Tuesday. The Swedish Pirate Party had provided bandwidth to The Pirate Bay for about three years because it was hard for the site to find anyone else who would do so. But last Tuesday the Rights Alliance, an organization that represents the film industry, gave it an ultimatum: The Pirate Party had to cut off Internet access to the torrent search site or face legal action. The Pirate Bay's administrators said in a post on Facebook that, because of the legal threat and the potential cost of fighting it, "We've taken the decision to move on to Norway and Spain." The site changed its logo to taunt its opponents, replacing the usual pirate ship with a four-headed monster over the title "The Hydra Bay;" a reference to the mythical monster that would grow two heads for every one cut off. The move is not permanent, the site's administrators wrote, adding, "Next week (hopefully), we'll announce some MAJOR changes to the site." The changes will, however, be invisible to users, they said. This is not the first time the site has had legal problems. The founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty in 2009 of being accessories to crimes against copyright law, and the site is blocked in several countries. The Swedish Pirate Party has had a hectic time since the legal threats arrived, said the party's leader Anna Troberg in a news release on Tuesday. Individuals that would be targeted by the Right's Alliance lawsuit discussed possible consequences of litigation with their families because they could have had a big impact on their lives, she said, adding that it has been "a tough emotional process" for everyone involved. "It is somewhat odd to realize that your political engagement can come at such a high cost in Sweden in the year 2013," Troberg said. "I am therefore very happy that the anonymous heroes of The Pirate Bay very early on decided to help The Pirate Party out of the difficult situation." The Pirate Bay has opened two new gateways to its private network via servers provided by two sister parties of the Swedish Pirate Party, the newly formed Norwegian Pirate Party and the Catalonian Pirate Party, Troberg said. "It is wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to two sister parties. It is testament to the pirate movement's maturity and strength," Troberg said. The Pirate Party of Norway has established a network node for The Pirate Bay, which means that traffic to the site from its region of the world will pass through Norway, the party said in a news release on Tuesday. From Norway, the traffic is passed on through the site's servers throughout the world, it added. The party has an IP address that is used by the network of Pirate Bay servers. No data is stored by the party, it said. "We are providing The Pirate Bay with an exit node. This is not an ISP," said Geir Aaslid, Captain of the Pirate Party of Norway, via email. The Catalonian Pirate Party did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Because the Swedish Pirate Party considers the Rights Alliance's legal threat an abuse of the justice system, Troberg will recommend to a party board meeting in a few days' time that the party file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion, she said. The Alliance is either trying to scare the Pirate Party into silence with the threat of a costly civil law suit, or is trying to wear it down with a lengthy and costly process, she said. "It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others," she said. "It is good news that the site has moved from Sweden," because the Swedish Pirate Party has been necessary to let people have access to The Pirate Bay, the Rights Alliance lawyer Sara Lindbäck said on Tuesday. But she was not surprised that the site was still up. "It is unacceptable that the pirate Parties abroad now continue to give access to an illegal site," she said. There are, however, still steps the Rights Alliance could take to stop the sharing of copyright infringing work, she said. What those steps could be and when they would take place, Lindbäck declined to discuss in the media. She did refer though to the Pirate Bay blockades in the Netherlands, where ISPs were ordered to block access to the site. http://www.itworld.com/it-management...width-provider ![]() Court Orders UK ISPs to Block More Piracy Sites Dave Lee The High Court has ordered the UK's major internet service providers to block three websites offering links to pirated material. The ISPs must stop their users from accessing Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy. Music industry group the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said the sites infringed copyright on a "significant scale". Opponents have argued that blocking sites in this way was ineffective. The block follows a similar ruling last year involving The Pirate Bay, a much larger site founded in Sweden. Data seen by the BBC suggested that the blocking of The Pirate Bay had only had a short-term effect on the level of pirate activity online - with levels of peer-to-peer sharing returning to normal soon after. However, a recent report from market research firm NPD suggested that there had been a large reduction in the number of users illegally downloading music, with fans instead favouring legal options like streaming site Spotify. Speaking of Thursday's decision, BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission. "Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent." Loz Kaye, the leader of Pirate Party UK, which had offered UK users a workaround for the ban on The Pirate Bay, said the BPI was "out of control". "The British music industry has nothing positive to show from their site blocks and personal legal threats," he said. "Looking at sales figures from 2012, you can't draw the conclusion that stopping access to the Pirate Bay did anything to help artists. "The UK has now handed the power over what we see on the internet to corporate lobbyists." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21601609 ![]() U.S. ‘Pirate’ Streaming Site Operator Gets Amnesty Ernesto The Texan operator of Channelsurfing.net has made a deal with the United States Government to avoid prosecution. The man, who was arrested in 2011 after the domain name of his website was seized, stood accused of criminal copyright infringement for linking to sport streams. In the agreement, the U.S. attorney says that it’s in the best interest of all concerned to give McCarthy amnesty. February 2011 U.S. authorities seized several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites. One of the affected domains was Channelsurfing.net, a website where links to external sports streams were listed. The site itself did not host any streams, but linked to those offered by third-party sites. In addition to seizing its domain name, ICE and HSI classified the site as a criminal operation and a month later they arrested the alleged owner, the then 32-year old Brian McCarthy from Texas. The ChannelSurfing operator was charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement for his involvement with the site. The indictment stated that McCarthy “did willfully infringe a copyright for purposes of financial gain.” In the two years that followed there wasn’t much progress in the case. As it turns out now, the U.S. Government and McCarthy were working on an agreement not to prosecute, which was finalized earlier this month. The agreement, obtained by TorrentFreak, gives little detail on why prosecution is deferred, but it states that this is in the best interest of both parties. “…after a thorough investigation, it has been determined that the interest of the United States and your own interest will best be served by deferring prosecution in this District. Prosecution will be deferred during the term of your good behavior and satisfactory compliance with the terms of this agreement…” The deal means that McCarthy will receive amnesty. During the months to come he will have to demonstrate good behavior by not violating any laws, seeking a job, and complying with several other conditions. While the former Channelsurfing.net owner avoids prison, he is required to pay back the $351,033.54 he earned through the website. The decision to grant amnesty in this case is remarkable, considering the strong language the Justice Department used after the arrest and in the indictment. “This arrest sends a clear message that this office, working with its partners at HSI, will vigorously protect valuable intellectual property rights through arrests and domain name seizures,” U.S. attorney Preet Bhara said at the time. The deal McCarthy struck is, however, similar to that of Richard O’Dwyer, the UK student who operated the streaming site TV-shack. O’Dwyer was facing extradition to the United States but also signed a deferred prosecution agreement last November. Both sites merely linked to streams and neither operator was actively involved in the infringing broadcasts. Whether this was one of the reasons why the U.S. decided not to prosecute these cases is unknown. However, this is one of the main distinctions with the operators of the seized video streaming site NinjaVideo who were all convicted last year, some to hefty jail time. All in all it’s safe to say that the U.S. Government campaign against streaming piracy has mixed results. Aside from the above, the U.S. also had to return domain names to the operators of two other sites. Over the past year the authorities continued to seize domain names under the flag of Operation in Our sites. Perhaps tellingly, none of these domains were involved in video streaming. http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-pirate-s...mnesty-130226/ ![]() Manga Creator Hitode Jinbo Arrested for File-Sharing Adult manga artist arrested last week for allegedly using Share to upload games, anime Miyagi prefectural police arrested adult manga creator Hitode Jinbo (Haruna no Himitsu Mite Kudasai, Kazoku de Ikō yo!) in Kanagawa Prefecture on February 19 on suspicion of uploading video games, animated videos, and other files online without the copyright holders' permission. The 38-year-old suspect allegedly used the file-sharing program Share. Game and animation developer A1c, as well as one other company, had contacted the Miyagi prefectural police with a complaint about certain files being uploaded online, and the police began an investigation with A1c's cooperation. According to the Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS), the police arrested the suspect after he allegedly used three computers to use Share to upload about 15,000 files online for users to download. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...r-file-sharing ![]() Japanese Police Arrest 27 File-Sharers in Nationwide Show of Force enigmax Last year Japan introduced one of the toughest laws in the world for dealing with online piracy but with little visible action against file-sharers it was questioned whether the legislation would have teeth. That position has now dramatically switched, with police nationwide carrying out searches on 124 locations and arresting 27 people for online infringement. Those arrested face up to 10 years in jail. Following complaints that the music industry was in peril from the actions of illegal file-sharers, in June 2012 the Japanese government approved an amendment to its Copyright Law that would see mere downloaders of illicit content face criminal penalties. The new legislation, which kicked in October 1 2012, stated that those knowingly downloading copyright infringing material could face a two-year jail sentence or a fine of 2 million yen ($21,640). Existing legislation against uploaders of copyright content already provided for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($108,202) fine. The Japanese public hadn’t witnessed any large scale enforcement action since the law’s introduction nearly five months ago but all that changed a few days ago. The National Police Agency’s Cybercrime Project and rightsholders including the Recording Industry Association of Japan have just revealed the results of an intensive three day anti-piracy crackdown. The police say that they carried out raids on 124 locations in all 47 regions of Japan, to date arresting a total of 27 people for breaches of copyright law. The items being shared and/or downloaded unlawfully include movies, music, TV shows, games and business software. The Recording Industry Association of Japan confirmed that at least two of the arrests related to their products. The first concerned a 41-year-old who had allegedly uploaded music using the file-sharing software ‘Share’ and the second involved a 42-year-old who allegedly uploaded a video clip using the same tool. The MPA-affiliated Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association (JIMCA) say that a 40-year-old man was arrested February 19 for allegedly uploading copyrighted movies using the P2P software ‘Share’. An earlier raid netted the hardware pictured below. Japan Share raid In addition to the above, several other rights organizations were involved in reporting the remaining alleged infringers to the police. They are the Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS), General Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPAJ), Japan Video Software Association (JVA), General Institute of Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). While this is the first large coordinated action since the new legislation passed October 1, Japanese police have also conducted smaller operations against alleged file-sharers. They include • A man arrested for uploading English teaching materials (October 15) • Three men arrested for uploading video games using WinMX (October 16) • A man arrested for uploading word processing software to a cloud site (October 22) http://torrentfreak.com/japanese-pol...-force-130228/ ![]() Megaupload Founder Suffers Procedural Setback in U.S. Extradition Bid A New Zealand court ruled on Friday that the United States does not have to hand over all its evidence against Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a setback for the German national in a U.S. bid to extradite him for alleged online piracy, fraud and money laundering. The Court of Appeal overturned a lower court ruling that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should disclose all its evidence so Dotcom, released on bail last February, could fairly contest the case against him. The FBI accuses Dotcom, who founded the Megaupload file-sharing site which housed everything from family photos to blockbuster films, of leading a group that netted $175 million since 2005 by copying and distributing copyrighted content without authorization. Lower courts had ruled twice that Dotcom should have access to all material the FBI was basing its extradition case on. The Court of Appeal said the U.S. government had a duty of "candor and good faith" in making an extradition bid, but a summary of the evidence held would suffice. "It is for the requesting state to decide what information it wishes to put before the requested state in support of its request," the court said. It said there were safeguards for any accused, such as the New Zealand courts and government seeking more information if they are not satisfied there is a prima facie case to be answered. Dotcom maintains that Megaupload, one of the world's most popular websites before it was shut down in January last year, simply provided online storage services and should not be held responsible for stored content. William Akel, one of Dotcom's lawyers, said an appeal to New Zealand's Supreme Court was being considered. "How can you determine whether or not there has been compliance with candor and good faith if you don't know what documents are being relied on to support the case?" he said on Radio New Zealand. Since the initial raid, the courts have ruled that search warrants used in the raid were illegal, unfrozen some of Dotcom's assets for living and legal expenses, relaxed restrictions of travel, and ordered extensive evidence disclosure. A New Zealand government spy agency was also found to have illegally spied on him, bringing an apology from the prime minister, and opening the way for a damages claim. Dotcom, who also goes by the name of Kim Schmidt, is a German national but with residency in New Zealand, which made it illegal to spy on him. The extradition hearing for Dotcom and the other three defendants is scheduled to be held in August. (Editing by Nick Macfie) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...92006P20130301 ![]() NPD: Illegal P2P Music Sharing Declined 17% in 2012 as Internet Users Turn to Free, Legal Streaming Services Emil Protalinski The number of consumers using peer-to-peer (P2P) services to download music declined 17 percent between 2011 and 2012. As a result, the volume of illegally downloaded music files from P2P services declined 26 percent compared to the previous year. These latest figures come from NPD’s annual music study, which shows P2P wasn’t the only sharing activity to shrink. In fact, it looks like music sharing as an activity in general is dying out, at least if you look at some of the most popular ways of doing so: • Music files burned and ripped from CDs owned by friends and family fell 44 percent. • The number of files swapped from hard drives dropped 25 percent. • The volume of music downloads from digital lockers decreased 28 percent. NPD consumer surveys are based on a few thousand respondents, data which is then weighted to represent US population of Internet users (age 13 and older). The study further found that 40 percent of consumers who had illegally downloaded music via P2P services in 2011 reported they had stopped or downloaded less music from P2P networks, and nearly half of those who stopped or curtailed file sharing cited the use of streaming services as their primary reason. Although NPD attributes these losses to the rise of free Internet streaming services, the company didn’t provide numbers to compare how this medium is growing. As a percentage though, such a figure may blow things out of proportion a bit given how new the industry is with upstarts like Spotify and Rdio. Illegal music file sharing was once growing at breakneck speeds, but in recent years it has been steadily declining. It looks like in 2012 it took yet another big hit. NPD says P2P file sharing peaked in 2005, when one in five Internet users aged 13 and older (33 million people) used such services to download music. Last year, that number fell to 11 percent (21 million people). Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis at NPD, offered the following statement: For the music industry, which has been battling digital piracy for over a decade, last year was a year of progress. In recent years, we’ve seen less P2P activity, because the music industry has successfully used litigation to shut down Limewire and other services; many of those who continued to use P2P services reported poor experiences, due to rampant spyware and viruses on illegal P2P sites. Malware was definitely always a concern on certain P2P services, something free and legal Internet streaming services obviously don’t have. That being said, this was always a secondary issue: the first and foremost problem users were interested in addressing was (and still is) convenience. That’s the real reason streaming excels. http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/02/...ming-services/ ![]() Illegal Downloads Don't Matter AAP Game of Thrones director says 'cultural buzz' more important than ratings for survival. "I've never read a novel so I don't know why I'm here," US film director David Petrarca joked at Perth's Writers Festival at the weekend. But the man who has directed episodes of Game of Thrones, Hung and True Blood had a lot to say as a member of a panel discussing the rise of premium cable TV channels and its challenge to novels as a format of storytelling. The filmmaker said while novels were presented as a finished product, it was not known how long a television show might last, and so, it was constantly evolving. Panel mediator Rosemary Neill noted Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012 and that 10 per cent of the downloads came from Australia. But Petrarca shrugged and said the illegal downloads did not matter because such shows thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalised on the social commentary they generated. "That's how they survive," he told the crowd gathered at the University of Western Australia. Petrarca joked that it took Steven Spielberg several years to produce Oscar-favourite Lincoln, but that it could have been made within several months on a channel like HBO. He said while Hollywood was taking note of the success of cable channels, there was a "false line" between cinema and television. "Everyone wants to do premium cable now," he said. Even revered director Martin Scorsese was directing hit TV series Boardwalk Empire, not as a step down from Hollywood, but as merely another artistic format. "He's not sad about it," Petrarca quipped. He said HBO alone had 26 million subscribers in the US and 60 million worldwide, which meant there was plenty of money filtering in and allowing the channel to produce high quality content despite any illegal downloading. But Petrarca did not think novels were in danger from premium content channels. To illustrate his point, Petrarca held up his iPad to the audience and said he could use it to read or watch a television show in bed. He said the success of shows like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Mad Men - other than their great writing and production - came down to the fact that viewers could watch each episode in their own time. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...#ixzz2LywE7AZ2 ![]() Hollywood Targets "Rogue" Mobile Apps in War on Pirated Content Sue Zeidler Hollywood studios, which for years have waged a war against online piracy, are now going after so-called "rogue" mobile apps that use images from movies and television shows without their permission. Time Warner Inc Warner Bros Studio sent Google Inc a "take down" notice late last week demanding that the Internet company remove from its app store "Hobbit 3D Wallpaper HD," a mobile app that uses images of the Oscar-nominated film, according to a spokesman for the studio. Google responded to Warner's notice and removed the app within days, in the latest example of how Hollywood is stepping up its efforts to protect its intellectual property in the quickly expanding app market, which is pegged at $20 billion in 2013. For many studios and other content providers, mobile apps are a new source of income and a powerful way to engage audiences, sell games and merchandise. But these revenues are threatened if developers do not pay licensing fees. Walt Disney Co's Marvel unit, Sony Corp, Viacom Inc's Paramount, and News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox and Warner have all submitted infringement notifications to Google, according to information made available by Google and posted on ChillingEffects.org. The apps targeted by the studios contain images from movie titles such as "Clash of the Titans," "Spiderman," and "Green Lantern" and TV shows like "Glee" and "Gossip Girl." A Google spokesman declined to discuss any specific take down requests. He cited the company's policy to remove apps that show clear cases of copyright infringement and then notify the app developer. The "Hobbit 3D Wallpaper HD" app was developed by Any View, which did not return an email from Reuters requesting comment. Comcast's NBC Universal also issued a notice of infringement on apps using images of its film "Ted," according to documents on ChillingEffects.org. "We have spoken with studios that represent several of the properties and they are actively monitoring unlicensed mobile apps," said Reggie Pierce, chief executive officer of IP Lasso, which monitors brands on mobile apps. IP Lasso recently surveyed 100 apps that mentioned Oscars or the Academy Awards, and found that 90 percent of those apps available on major app stores, like Google Play and Apple Inc's app store, contain content that may not have been authorized by studios, TV networks or other creators, said Pierce. Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment on the specifics of any infringing apps, but said the company vets all apps before making them available. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said it is expanding its surveillance of apps that link users to sites that offer pirated films. "Smartphone apps that provide a direct link to infringing content have become a growing problem that needs to be addressed," said Marc Miller, senior vice president for internet content protection for the MPAA. "Not only do these apps offer access to creative content that has been illegally copied, but they also pose risks to consumers from malware and often fail to provide viewers with the quality product they could often get through a growing number of legitimate sources," he said. About 46 billion apps were downloaded in 2012, generating $12 billion in worldwide revenues from sales, advertising and in-app purchase, according to research firm Research and Market. The numbers of apps are expected to nearly double to 83 billion this year, and to generate $20.4 billion. "With the rise of the second screen comes a new band of villains who pose a serious threat to the entertainment industry's move to mobile," said Pierce. "Consumers have been led to believe if an app is available through iTunes or Google Play, then it must be safe." (Editing by Ronald Grover in Los Angeles, Tiffany Wu in New York and Stephen Coates in Sydney) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...92003Y20130301 ![]() Google Defeats Publishers Over Web Copyright in German Vote Cornelius Rahn & Rainer Buergin Google Inc. (GOOG) and other news aggregators may continue to show short news items on their Internet sites without being required to pay, German lawmakers decided in a parliamentary vote today in a blow to publishers including Axel Springer AG (SPR) and Bertelsmann SE. A majority of lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition allowed companies such as Google to display “single words or very small text excerpts” referring to publishers’ websites at no cost. For content exceeding these limits, publishers retain the exclusive right of use, according to the bill. Publishers, pressed by falling revenue from newspapers and magazines, argued search engines and aggregators like Google News should pay for displaying short excerpts from news stories. Google, which doesn’t display ads on its news aggregator pages in Europe, argued its so-called “snippets” are actually helping publishers by driving traffic to their sites. The bill by Germany’s Justice Ministry gives publishers one year during which they have the sole rights to commercially use their journalistic content. Google’s director of public policy in Europe, Simon Hampton, in November called this a “complete reversal of the legal situation today” and a reversal of current Web practices. French Settlement “As a result of today’s vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped,” Google said in a statement. “However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries.” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and French President Francois Hollande earlier this year signed an agreement to settle disputes with French news sites. Under the accord, Mountain View, California-based Google will help publishers lift Web advertising sales and set up a 60 million-euro ($78 million) fund to boost their digital publishing efforts. The search-engine operator in 2011 removed some Belgian newspaper content from its search engine after an appeals court upheld a 2007 ruling granted in favor of newspaper association Copiepresse, forcing Google to remove links and snippets of articles from Google.com and Google.be. Google later agreed to restore French- and German-language newspapers in Belgium to search results without displaying the papers’ full articles. The bill was passed in the Bundestag with 293 votes in favor, 243 against and three abstentions. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...arliament.html ![]() Skype App for Windows 8 Gets File Sharing Martin Brinkmann We have seen a couple of big companies release apps for Windows 8. Microsoft is obviously at the forefront here as it is not only interesting in making its applications available to users of the Windows 8 operating system but also to strengthen the ecosystem as well. We have seen a couple of cross-platform app releases for Windows 8 that lacked functionality. A prime example of this is the Dropbox client for Windows 8 which does not allow you to upload files to the cloud. Microsoft’s Skype application for Windows 8 has been limited to in comparison to the Skype desktop software. One of the features that it lacked until now was the ability to transfer files to other users of the application. You probably know that you can send and receive files using Skype’s desktop software which is a great way to transfer larger files to contacts directly without having to use email or other file hosting options. Skype 1.5 for Windows 8 now supports file sharing so that you can use the Windows 8 app to send and receive files from within the application. To send files to a contact simply click on the plus icon on the contact’s profile page in the Skype application and select the send files option from the menu that pops up. When you select the send files option in the Skype app, the default file browser is opened on the start screen interface. Here you can select one or multiple files from different directories that you want to send to the contact. Sending and receiving files in Skype for Windows 8 has been one of the most requested features according to Microsoft, and adding the feature to Skype improves the client application significantly. The file transfer feature is not the only change though. Microsoft notes that the Skype team has improved the overall performance and stability of the application on Windows 8, and that especially the start up of the application and the loading of contents has been improved in this regard. http://www.ghacks.net/2013/02/22/sky...-file-sharing/ ![]() Kim Dotcom's Mega to Expand Into Encrypted Email Internet entrepreneur fighting extradition from New Zealand says file storage service now has more than 3 million users Charles Arthur Kim Dotcom, the German-born internet entrepreneur fighting extradition from New Zealand over US claims of "criminal" copyright infringement, says he plans to launch an end-to-end encrypted email service to go with his Mega encrypted file storage offering. Speaking from New Zealand via a Skype video link to London, Dotcom said that his new Mega file storage service which launched in January now has more than 3 million registered users who have stored a total of 125m files in the first month of operation. "It took [US cloud storage company] Dropbox two years to achieve that," Dotcom, 39, said. "We can see really high demand for this storage." Next, he said, "we're going to extend this to secure email which is fully encrypted so that you won't have to worry that a government or internet service provider will be looking at your email." Dotcom is trying to overturn demands by the US government for him to be extradited from New Zealand, where he lives with his wife and children, to the US to face criminal charges relating to the operation of his MegaUpload service – which was shut down in January 2012 when New Zealand police arrested him and other staff from the company. At the time, Dotcom's assets were seized – and he said on Tuesday that he is still struggling to have them unfrozen, meaning that his legal team has gone unpaid for the past year. "I have the best legal team money can't buy," he said. He accused the US government of "hacking its law" by ignoring its own legislation. He said that the MegaUpload service, which allowed people to upload, share and stream files, had obeyed the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): "the DMCA was supposed to protect us and give us safe harbour" if users uploaded copyrighted files. "But they went after that and took us down." But speaking in London on Tuesday, Frances Moore, the chief executive of the IFPI which represents record labels internationally, said that the move against MegaUpload had had a positive effect: "Action by governments and courts have had a major impact and cloud locker services have seen a major reduction in traffic since the action against Kim Dotcom." Dotcom said be believed that Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who committed suicide ahead of a trial hearing in which a state prosecutor was seeking a jail term for the copying of files from the JSTOR scientific service, had become a "political target" after helping organise opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) early in 2012. "If you look at the charges against this young genius, they were a complete overreach of the law," he said. "JSTOR said there was nothing wrong. I think there was a political desire to destroy the life of this young man." Dotcom said that the MegaUpload service had been heading for a stock market flotation six months after the raid that closed it, and rubbished suggestions by the US government that MegaUpload was a "criminal enterprise". "I don't know of any examples of any criminal organisation that had ambitions to be a public company," he said. Dotcom – formerly known as Kim Schmitz – has previously run foul of financial authorities over his stock market dealings with other companies. In 2001 he bought €375,000 worth of shares in Letsbuyit.com, a near-bankrupt Swedish collective buying business, and said he would put €50m into it. That saw the shares jump in value, and he sold the shares at a €1.5m profit. He was subsequently convicted in 2002 of embezzlement. In January 2011 he was fined HK$8,000 by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission for failing to declare a shareholding in various companies there, but by that time had been granted residency in New Zealand – where documents obtained by the Associated Press in March 2012 showed immigration officials felt the "economic contribution" he could make to New Zealand outweighed "negative aspects" from his previous convictions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ncrypted-email ![]() RSA Conference 2013: Experts Say It's Time to Prepare for a 'Post-Crypto' World Dennis Fisher In the current climate of continuous attacks and intrusions by APT crews, government-sponsored groups and others organizations, cryptography is becoming less and less important and defenders need to start thinking about new ways to protect data on systems that they assume are compromised, one of the fathers of public-key cryptography said Tuesday. Adi Shamir, who helped design the original RSA algorithm, said that security experts should be preparing for a "post-cryptography" world. "I definitely believe that cryptography is becoming less important. In effect, even the most secure computer systems in the most isolated locations have been penetrated over the last couple of years by a series of APTs and other advanced attacks," Shamir, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said during the Cryptographers' Panel session at the RSA Conference here today. "We should rethink how we protect ourselves. Traditionally we have thought about two lines of defense. The first was to prevent the insertion of the APT with antivirus and other defenses. The second was to detect the activity of the APT once it's there. But recent history has shown us that the APT can survive both of these defenses and operate for several years." Shamir, who shared the panel with Ron Rivest of MIT, Dan Boneh of Stanford University, Whitfield Diffie of ICANN and Ari Juels of RSA Labs, said that the continued assaults on corporate and government networks by sophisticated attackers in recent years has become the most important development in the security world. The time, he said, has come for security researchers and others involved in defending networks to look for methods other than cryptography that are capable of securing their sensitive data. "It's very hard to use cryptography effectively if you assume an APT is watching everything on a system," Shamir said. "We need to think about security in a post-cryptography world." One way to help shore up defenses would be to improve--or replace--the existing certificate authority infrastructure, the panelists said. The recent spate of attacks on CAs such as Comodo, DigiNotar and others has shown the inherent weaknesses in that system and there needs to be some serious work done on what can be done to fix it, they said. "We need a PKI where people can specify who they want to trust, and we don't have that," said Rivest, another of the co-authors of the RSA algorithm. "We really need a PKI that not only is flexible in the sense that the relying party specifies what they trust but also in the sense of being able to tolerate failures, or perhaps government-mandated failures. We still have a very fragile and pollyanna-ish approach to PKI. We need to have a more robust outlook on that." Shamir pointed to the incident recently in which TurkTrust, a Turkish CA, was found to have issued subordinate certificates for Google domains to two separate parties, one of which was a Turkish government contractor. He said he wouldn't be surprised to see other such incidents crop up. "I think you will see more and more events like this, where a CA under pressure from a government will behave in strange ways," he said. "It brings into question whether the basis of security, the PKI infrastructure, is under severe strain." https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/r...o-world-022613 ![]() Analysis: The Near Impossible Battle Against Hackers Everywhere Joseph Menn Dire warnings from Washington about a "cyber Pearl Harbor" envision a single surprise strike from a formidable enemy that could destroy power plants nationwide, disable the financial system or cripple the U.S. government. But those on the front lines say it isn't all about protecting U.S. government and corporate networks from a single sudden attack. They report fending off many intrusions at once from perhaps dozens of countries, plus well-funded electronic guerrillas and skilled criminals. Security officers and their consultants say they are overwhelmed. The attacks are not only from China, which Washington has long accused of spying on U.S. companies, many emanate from Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Western countries. Perpetrators range from elite military units to organized criminal rings to activist teenagers. "They outspend us and they outman us in almost every way," said Dell Inc's chief security officer, John McClurg. "I don't recall, in my adult life, a more challenging time." The big fear is that one day a major company or government agency will face a severe and very costly disruption to their business when hackers steal or damage critical data, sabotage infrastructure or destroy consumers' confidence in the safety of their information. Elite security firm Mandiant Corp on Monday published a 74-page report that accused a unit of the Chinese army of stealing data from more than 100 companies. While China immediately denied the allegations, Mandiant and other security experts say the hacker group is just one of more than 20 with origins in China. Chinese hackers tend to take aim at the largest corporations and most innovative technology companies, using trick emails that appear to come from trusted colleagues but bear attachments tainted with viruses, spyware and other malicious software, according to Western cyber investigators. Eastern European criminal rings, meanwhile, use "drive-by downloads" to corrupt popular websites, such as NBC.com last week, to infect visitors. Though the malicious programs vary, they often include software for recording keystrokes as computer users enter financial account passwords. Others getting into the game include activists in the style of the loosely associated group known as Anonymous, who favor denial-of-service attacks that temporarily block websites from view and automated searches for common vulnerabilities that give them a way in to access to corporate information. An increasing number of countries are sponsoring cyber weapons and electronic spying programs, law enforcement officials said. The reported involvement of the United States in the production of electronic worms including Stuxnet, which hurt Iran's uranium enrichment program, is viewed as among the most successful. Iran has also been blamed for a series of unusually effective denial-of-service attacks against major U.S. banks in the past six months that blocked their online banking sites. Iran is suspected of penetrating at least one U.S. oil company, two people familiar with the ongoing investigation told Reuters. "There is a battle looming in any direction you look," said Jeff Moss, the chief information security officer of ICANN, a group that manages some of the Internet's key infrastructure. "Everybody's personal objectives go by the wayside when there is just fire after fire," said Moss, who also advises the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. HUNDREDS OF CASES UNREPORTED Industry veterans say the growth in the number of hackers, the software tools available to them, and the thriving economic underground serving them have made any computer network connected to the Internet impossible to defend flawlessly. "Your average operational security engineer feels somewhat under siege," said Bruce Murphy, a Deloitte & Touche LLP principal who studies the security workforce. "It feels like Sisyphus rolling a rock up the hill, and the hill keeps getting steeper." In the same month that President Barack Obama decried enemies "seeking the ability to sabotage our power grids, our financial institutions, our air traffic control systems," cyber attacks on some prominent U.S. companies were reported. Three leading U.S. newspapers, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Twitter and Microsoft Corp all admitted in February they had been hacked. The malicious software inserted on employee computers at the technology companies has been detected at hundreds of other firms that have chosen to keep silent about the incidents, two people familiar with the case told Reuters. "I don't remember a time when so many companies have been so visibly 'owned' and were so ill-equipped," said Adam O'Donnell, an executive at security firm Sourcefire Inc, using the hacker slang for unauthorized control. Far from being hyped, cyber intrusions remain so under-disclosed — for fear leaks about the attacks will spook investors — that the new head of the FBI's cyber crime effort, Executive Assistant Director Richard McFeely, said the secrecy has become a major challenge. "Our biggest issue right now is getting the private sector to a comfort level where they can report anomalies, malware, incidences within their networks," McFeely said. "It has been very difficult with a lot of major companies to get them to cooperate fully." McFeely said the FBI plans to open a repository of malicious software to encourage information sharing among companies in the same industry. Obama also recently issued an executive order on cyber security that encourages cooperation. The former head of the National Security Agency, Michael Hayden, supports the use of trade and diplomatic channels to pressure hacking nations, as called for under a new White House strategy that was announced on Wednesday. "The Chinese, with some legitimacy, will say 'You spy on us.' And as former director of the NSA I'll say, 'Yeah, and we're better at it than you are," said Hayden, now a principal at security consultant Chertoff Group. He said what worries him the most is Chinese presence on networks that have no espionage value, such as systems that run infrastructure like energy and water plants. "There's no intellectual property to be pilfered there, no trade secrets, no negotiating positions. So that makes you frightened because it seems to be attack preparation," Hayden said. Amid the rising angst, many of the top professionals in the field will convene in San Francisco on Monday for the best-known U.S. security industry conference, named after host company and EMC Corp unit RSA. Several experts said they were convinced that companies are spending money on the wrong stuff, such as antivirus subscriptions that cannot recognize new or targeted attacks. RSA Executive Chairman Art Coviello and Francis deSouza, head of products at top vendor Symantec Corp, both said they will give keynote speeches calling for a focus on more sophisticated analytical tools that look for unusual behavior on the network — which sounds expensive. Others urge a more basic approach of limiting users' computer privileges, rapidly installing software updates, and allowing only trusted programs to function. Some security companies are starting over with new designs, such as forcing all of their customers' programs to run on walled-off virtual machines. With such divergent views, so much money at stake, and so many problems, there are perhaps just two areas of agreement. Most people in the industry and government believe things will get worse. Coviello, for his part, predicted that a first-of-its kind - but relatively simple - virus that deleted all data on tens of thousands of PCs at Saudi Arabia's national oil company last year is a harbinger of what will come. And most say that the increased mainstream attention on cyber security, even if it fixes uncomfortably on the industry's failings and tenacious adversaries, will help drive a desperately needed debate about what do to internationally and at home. (Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Deborah Charles in Washington; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Jackie Frank) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91N03520130224 ![]() File-Sharing, Video and Social Apps are Tiny Threat, Palo Alto Finds Protection needed iside networks John E Dunn Social networking, file sharing and video applications are not the major security risk many admins believe them to be despite living up to their reputation as major bandwidth hogs, firewall firm Palo Alto has discovered. The firm analysed the firewall logs of 3,056 of its customers between May and December 2012, finding that the average network contained 30 video applications, 19 file-sharing applications and 17 social networking applications. These applications – including popular names such as Facebook, YouTube and Dropbox - consumed an average of 20 percent of available bandwidth but, surprisingly, accounted for only 0.4 percent of the threat logs (i.e. detected malware). Conclusion: blocking these apps won’t generate much of a security boost and could simply annoy users by cutting the ways they can communicate with one another and customers. Conversely, if bandwidth is the issue block or manage video applications because these were found to consume an average of 13 percent of network bandwidth. According to Palo Alto, the real security risk lies with a clutch of ten popular applications and that accounted for 97 percent of all software exploits. These included, web browsing, Microsoft SQL, MS SQL Monitor, MS Office Communicator, MS Remote Procedure Call, Server Message Block, SIP (VoIP), Active Directory, and DNS. Second conclusion: these internal applications and their vulnerabilities are the real target and protecting them should be priority number one. In Palo Alto’s view, “such an approach allows an attacker to exploit a system without ever crossing a perimeter IPS, underscoring the importance of organizations bringing IPS and threat prevention measures deeper into the network and not exclusively monitoring at the perimeter.” SSL was the second highest source of malware logs, Palo Alto also reported, many of them using non-standard ports. This underlined the extent to which command and control networks now use encrypted channels to communicate. "The volume of exploits targeting business critical applications was stunning and serves as a data centre security wake-up call,” said Pal Alto senior research analyst and report author, Matt Keil. "These threats will continue to afflict organisations until they isolate and protect their business applications by bringing threat prevention deeper into the network.” There were some interesting morsels elsewhere in the report, starting with Facebook’s total dominance within businesses; Google+ was found in only 5 out of 3,056 organisations. It’s a relatively new application but this is a pretty damning figure. So far at least, amost nobody is using Google’s service inside organisations. Palo Alto has put its Application Usage and Threat Report data into a series of visualisations. http://news.techworld.com/security/3...al-alto-finds/ ![]() Four Killed in 'Blasphemous Bloggers' Riot in Bangaldesh AFP BANGLADESH police fired live rounds in fierce clashes with Islamists demanding the execution of bloggers they accuse of blasphemy. Two people were shot dead by police in the northwestern town of Palashbari, and two others died elsewhere, police said. Parts of the capital Dhaka were turned into a battlefield as thousands of protesters attacked police with bricks and sticks in front of the national mosque. Officers there retaliated with rubber bullets and tear gas. The country's 12 Islamic parties called the protests after Friday prayers in nearly half a million mosques nationwide, demanding the execution of bloggers whom they say blasphemed Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Tensions have risen in the Muslim-majority nation over allegedly anti-Islamic blog posts by Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death last week near his home in Dhaka. In recent weeks Haider and fellow bloggers had launched huge protests demanding a ban on the largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, and the execution of its leaders for alleged war crimes in the 1971 independence conflict with Pakistan. Since Haider's death, Bangladeshi social media has been flooded with his alleged blog posts and with those by other bloggers mocking Islam, triggering protests by a number of Islamic groups and clerics. At Palashbari at least 4000 Islamists attacked police with home-made bombs and sticks, prompting officers to respond with live fire, district police chief Nahidul Islam told AFP. At least four people were killed and about 200 injured. In the northeastern city of Sylhet a young man died as police shot rubber bullets and tear gas after protesters went on a rampage, attacking and torching vehicles, Sylhet metropolitan police commissioner Nibas Chandra Majhi said AFP. Uzzal Dutta, an emergency doctor at the city Hospital, said 31 people were admitted and most had injuries from rubber bullets. One person was killed in the western district of Jhenidah. Police said clashes also broke out in the port city of Chittagong, the northern city of Bogra where 15,000 protesters. In Dhaka violence broke out outside the Baitul Mukarram national mosque, where protesters also attacked around a dozen journalists. Police tried to thwart the protest by locking the gates of the mosque where tens of thousands of people were performing their weekly Jumma prayers. Sayeed Khan, an emergency doctor at Dhaka medical college hospital, said that up to 50 people had been admitted, most with injuries from rubber bullets. "Several cases are very critical," he said. The government has warned of tough steps against those who incite social tension, and urged newspapers and blogs not to publish defamatory writings against the Prophet Mohammed. It has cracked down on anti-Islam blogs and also given police protection to some bloggers in the wake of Haider's murder. Police have yet to comment on a motive for Haider's killing. But his brother said Haider was targeted by Jamaat's student wing for his online activities. The killing of Haider was the second attack in Dhaka in less than a month against a blogger critical of Islamist groups. http://www.news.com.au/world/four-ki...-1226583945159 ![]() How “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” Ruled The Internet Four Canadian film students were assigned a project: Create a YouTube hoax video that gets 100,000 views. They got nearly 42 million instead. Here’s the definitive behind-the-meme look at how — and why — their homework snowballed into one of the most popular and rapidly spread videos ever. posted on Chris Stokel It's one depressingly typical minute of the 6.2 million uploaded to YouTube every day: In a Montreal park, nothing much is happening. The camera pans around a clear blue sky, tracing the arc of a golden eagle as it twists and turns through the air. The bird pulls a generous sweep around a large tree, 30 feet or more, shorn of its branches by the bitter frost that hits the Quebec city this time of year. And then things turn from dull nature documentary into snuff film. The eagle doesn't continue its elegant acrobatics. Instead, it suddenly picks up pace. The sweep becomes a swoop, and it's dropping altitude. Eleven seconds into the video, a small boy in a warm insulated jacket comes into frame. He's sitting faced away, staring into space. Eleven seconds into the video, you realize what's going to happen. Eleven seconds into the video, the eagle is 10 feet behind the little boy, and you're damned if the way the bird's wings are drawn up doesn't remind you an awful lot of the way Dracula wraps himself in his cloak before biting. It's horror-movie stuff. A second later, the eagle's talons have latched on and the boy's taken up off the ground; he's dead weight. A guy in a black-and-white striped sweater rooting around in a bag nearby runs over as the boy takes flight. He's in mid-air, and when the talons release, he's flying for a split second before hitting the ground. We hear an appropriately startled "Oh, shit!" and the cameraman sprints over, the grass speeding past as the lens points down. The little boy is crying. He's wearing a bright red hat with big googly eyes, and his face is that emotionless expression small humans get when they just don't have an appropriate response to what's gone on. The boy is alright, and the horror you felt gives way to relief. Thirty-five seconds in, the video replays the moment in slow motion because that's what happens at the end of every dunk on SportsCenter. The screen fades to black. And then you copy the video URL, go to your Facebook account, and paste it in the status box, add a "what the fuck!" or something equally trite, and share. You've just done precisely what Professor Robin Tremblay wanted you to do. Tremblay is a lecturer at Centre NAD, a technology university in Montreal, where he's been teaching a video-effects class since 1992. In October, he challenged his students — as he did the previous two semesters — to make a viral hoax video. If it got more than 100,000 views, then congratulations, you got an A. "The students have to shoot live-action, integrate 3-D effects, and make it so believable that it can look real," he explains in a thick French-Canadian accent. That's the core component of the VFX course and has been for years. "But I was always trying to think of new ways to teach it. New ideas. I think, 'Oh, maybe I should try a prank film.'" Though the primary aim of Tremblay's class was to teach his students how best to use software to create 3-D visual effects, the assignment became an object lesson in what we find interesting, why we find it interesting, and how we disseminate things we find interesting. What do we believe, and why? And unlike 2009's Balloon Boy debacle, which smacked of opportunism and exploitation, this was the rare public hoax that remains victimless and good-natured and unmotivated by malice or greed — one that could actually be a teachable moment, not just for the perpetrators, but for all of us who participated by clicking, or by telling others to. And these moments are worth examining closely because they're the ones in which we're all watching, and wondering, together, in real time, if only for a short time. Four of Tremblay's most industrious students, Normand Archambault, Félix Marquis-Poulin, Loïc Mireault, and Antoine Seigle, created a video called "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid" — 17 million views within a day, just shy of 42 million views in total, 14 million minutes in viewing time in the U.S. alone, embedded on major news websites worldwide, broadcast on morning talk shows, and linked from countless message boards — which proved this in historically impressive style. "I still don't understand how it went that big," says Marquis-Poulin, 23. "I go from step one to the final result. I see all the work we did. I can't comprehend somebody on their phone, watching the video, saying, 'Look at this! An eagle catches a baby! That's awesome.' I can't imagine how many people had this moment. It's weird." They got an A. http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisstokelw...d-the-internet ![]() A Race, a Crash and the Nascar Approach to YouTube Video Takedowns To say events at the Drive4COPD 300 race in Daytona Beach on Saturday were a nightmare would be an understatement. Nearly 30 fans sustained injuries after parts of driver Kyle Larson’s car tore through the stands in the wake of a final-lap crash involving multiple cars. A video of the wreck, shot by a fan and uploaded almost immediately to YouTube, detailed some of the carnage that swept across the stands and the race-goers that filled them. In a particularly intense moment, one person appeared to be pinned down by an errant wheel that flew off one of the wrecked cars. But just as quickly as it was uploaded, the video was taken down from YouTube at Nascar’s request, citing copyright concerns. Odd, that, considering a quick YouTube search for Daytona Crash 2013 returns a host of videos from the event, yet to be pulled. So what gives? Is Nascar lagging on taking down all the copyrighted content showing up, or is Nascar selectively censoring the more gruesome footage showing up on YouTube? It seems the latter is the case, though Nascar positions it in a more noble light. “The fan video of the wreck on the final lap of today’s Nascar Nationwide Series race was blocked on YouTube out of respect for those injured in today’s accident,” said Steve Phelps, Nascar SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, in a statement issued to AllThingsD. “Information on the status of those fans was unclear and the decision was made to err on the side of caution with this very serious incident.” Nascar wouldn’t respond to my further questions of whether the organization would pull other fan videos, referring me to the company’s original statement. So it looks as if we can view this in a couple ways: Either Nascar is indeed concerned with the well-being of the injured, or Nascar is trying to avoid a major PR headache by stifling the viral video of the brutal injuries its fans suffered. Call me a cynic, but I’m leaning toward the latter case. But whatever side you want to take, there’s another problem here: Nascar may not have the standing to request takedowns of these videos in the first place. “Nascar is likely arguing that the ticket restricts recording of any event the ticket-holder attends,” Chip Stewart, associate professor at TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism, told AllThingsD. “The thing is, I don’t see how that gives Nascar automatic copyright to anything a fan records; the copyright belongs to the person creating the content — in this case, recording the video.” When YouTube receives takedown requests from outside organizations citing copyright, Google’s video arm almost always complies, Stewart said, in order to avoid liability concerns. But as Stewart asks, “How can one in good faith ask to take down a video when one doesn’t have a copyright in it in the first place?” Good question! We’ll see if that changes in the coming days, and if Nascar decides to change its tune. In the meantime, YouTube has not responded to a request for comment. Update 7:45 pm PT: Well would you look at that. Not more than a few hours later, the video in question has been unblocked, and is now viewable on YouTube user Tyler4DX’s page. Nascar hasn’t responded to my request as to why the video is now back up for viewing, but a YouTube spokesperson sent me the following statement: Our partners and users do not have the right to take down videos from YouTube unless they contain content which is copyright infringing, which is why we have reinstated the videos. Looks like Professor Stewart was right, and YouTube deemed that Nascar’s copyright argument lacked sufficient standing. Still waiting to hear what Nascar has to say about that. http://allthingsd.com/20130223/a-rac...deo-takedowns/ ![]() Beamr Can Cut Video File Size By Half – Without Losing Quality NoCamels Team We recently told you about the Beamr app, which enables high-resolution photo sharing using a special JPEGmini format that keeps the photos’ full resolution and quality. The startup has now applied its technology to video, with their new Beamr Video technology. Beamr says its new technology supports the highest standards of video quality, such as 4K UltraHD. Their compression method supports industry standard H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) streams, so they believe that their technology is invaluable for all video content providers. A full HD streaming video transfers five to six Mbps (Megabits per second) – Beamr says they can reduce it down to three or four. “Beamr Video’s ability to package the maximum quality in the minimum amount of bits has the potential to fundamentally alter the streaming video industry, allowing it to support the insatiable demand for global video delivery without sacrificing quality on TVs, PCs and ultimately, the next frontier – smartphones and tablets,” said Sharon Carmel , CEO of Beamr. Applying image reduction technology to video Beamr (formerly ICVT) first caught the industry’s attention with their popular JPEGmini format, which enables high-res images to be compressed by up to 90 percent, without reducing image quality. According to the company, the compression method mimics the human eye and removes elements that would not have been processed by the human eye in the first place. The technology behind Beamr Video applies the same principal to video. According to the company’s website: “The Beamr Video algorithm imitates the perceptual qualities of the human visual system, ensuring the video stream is compressed to the maximum extent possible by removing redundancies, without creating any visual artifacts in the process.” Beamr says it can reduce video file size by anywhere between 20 and 75 percent, depending on the format. Since the reduced output file is a standard file, playable on any media player, Beamr is convinced that their service will be suitable for any digital video content provider. http://nocamels.com/2013/02/beamr-ca...osing-quality/ ![]() Korean Operators Warn Europe of "Curse" of 4G Networks Kate Holton and Leila Abboud South Korean telecom executives have a message for European cousins who have long looked on in envy at the highly connected Asian market: Be careful what you wish for. South Korea, the world's most wired country with 30 percent of its 50 million mobile users on superfast networks, has inspired many European operators ahead of their own rollout of networks based on LTE, or fourth-generation technology. But SK Telecom Co Ltd (017670.KS), the country's largest operator with more than half of the market, and second player KT Corp (030200.KS), told Reuters that although the rollout of faster networks had been good for consumers, they were still struggling to make money on the technology 18 months after launch. "Our European colleagues complain that the explosion in data has not fully happened for them, that it did not come to reality," Suk-Chae Lee, the head of KT Corp, told Reuters at the Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. "In Korea, they are data crazy. We have unprecedented demand. We cannot handle it. But the issue we have is that they are not willing to pay enough. So, the fundamental problem is, can we make any money out of it?" South Korea is often held up by European governments as the model they would most like to replicate, with superfast networks enabling millions of people to shop online, communicate and become more productive. The country has three operators who have been forced to fight for every consumer, spending heavily on marketing and handset subsidies and continually offering more for less to lure in and keep their subscribers. "The traffic increases but the revenue does not necessarily follow," SK's chief technology officer Jae W Byun said in an interview. "We have seen about a $13 increase in average revenue per user compared with 3G. So, it is good money, but it may not be enough to justify the huge investment needed in LTE." Byun added that the profitability of LTE would improve as SK expects the number of subscribers on the technology to grow to 60 percent by the end of the year, from 30 percent currently. MORE SUBSCRIBERS European operators such as Telefonica SA (TEF.MC) and France Telecom SA (FTE.PA), weighed down by regulation, competition and economic woes, are betting that the billions of dollars of investment needed for 4G networks will eventually be offset by an increase in customer prices. Their optimism will be tested when 4G services reach more subscribers in Germany, France, Scandinavia and Britain this year. In contrast, in the United States AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) are surfing the 4G wave to grow sales and profits, but that has much to do with the fact that they have a combined 70 percent share of their home market. The lessons from Korea are not all harsh, though. SK's Byun said rolling out faster networks could enable a mobile operator ranked number two or three to become market leader because the improvement to the consumer is so significant. But he also noted that once one operator launched 4G, others had to follow quickly or face being left behind. "If you want to change the game, then take a risk and invest," said Byun. Customers of both firms on average consume 1.8 to 1.9 gigabytes of data per month, with users spending hours watching video on YouTube, browsing the web and social networking on smartphones and tablets. According to research from Cisco, an average smartphone user on slower 3G networks consumes around 342 megabytes. South Korea's leap to 1.8 gigabytes followed an 80 percent jump in mobile data traffic on 2G, 3G and 4G networks in 2012. "LTE is very beneficial to the people but still the big question remains, can we go on?" KT's Suk-Chae Lee said. "It is a blessing to customers but it is a curse on the operators." The problem will likely get worse, with analysts at Citi predicting 70 percent of the country's mobile users would be on 4G networks by 2014. SK says it cannot predict when the network will break even because it depends on marketing costs. Its rival noted that with technology developing so quickly, companies have to continually develop new infrastructure, giving less time to recoup the cost. "The question remains, how do you build out a network while ensuring that the builder gets a minimum return for their investment?" KT's Suk-Chae Lee said. "It is a dilemma." (Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Editing by Dan Lalor and David Holmes) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91Q09Q20130227 ![]() Time Warner Cable Says There's No Consumer Demand for Gigabit Internet Chris Welch Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference moments ago, Time Warner Cable's Chief Financial Officer Irene Esteves seemed dismissive of the impact Google Fiber is having on consumers. "We're in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want," she said when asked about the breakneck internet speeds delivered by Google's young Kansas City network. "We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers." Esteves seems to think business customers are more likely to need that level of throughput, and notes that Time Warner Cable is already competitive . "We're already delivering 1 gigabit, 10 gigabit-per-second to our business customers, so we certainly have the capability of doing it." The executive claims that residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options, she said. ""We're in the business of delivering what consumers want."" That's not to say the cable operator is totally blind to Google Fiber's potential. "If Google finds the magic pill and finds applications that require that and develops a need for it, well terrific" she said. "We would build our product base in order to deliver that." But for now the company's stance is clear: there's not enough demand. Clearly the industry giant isn't as optimistic as Google's Eric Schmidt, who not long ago classified Fiber as "a real business" rather than a mere experiment. Google Fiber could reinvent the way we use the internet, but until Time Warner Cable sees clear evidence of that happening, the provider is perfectly content with its current offerings. http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/40...gabit-internet ![]() Fast Fibre: A Community Shows the Way Lancashire leads way on fast fibre connection Rory Cellan-Jones How fast is your home broadband? Seventy to 80 Mbps if you're one of the few with the very fastest fibre broadband services? Perhaps 10Mbps if you've got an average connection, maybe under 2Mbps if you live some miles from your nearest exchange. So how would you fancy a 500Mbps download scheme? That is what I've seen on Harry Ball's quite ancient computer - not in the heart of London but in a village in rural Lancashire. Arkholme is hardly a teeming metropolis but Harry is one of the first local residents to be hooked up to the B4RN community broadband network. After deciding that they were never likely to get a fast broadband connection from one of the major suppliers, a group of local people across this sparsely populated area decided that sitting around moaning about it was not an option. Instead they began a DIY effort, digging channels across the fields and laying fibre optic cables. They have exploited all sorts of local expertise - from the Lancaster University professor who is an expert in computer networks to the farmer's wife who has just retired from a career in IT support. The cooperation of local landowners has been vital - free access to fields has made it much cheaper to roll out the network. BT and other companies which have to dig up the country roads to lay fibre networks reckon it can cost as much as £10,000 to hook up one rural home - the people at B4RN reckon they can bring that down to around £1,000. And people like Harry and Susan Ball are now entering the superfast broadband era. The retired couple told me they knew little about computers and had got used to the fact that it was almost impossible on their slow connection to watch video or use Skype. Now Harry is able to watch the iPlayer streaming in HD, and Susan has become a B4RN volunteer, helping to dig trenches for the fibre. But, after raising half a million pounds from locals who bought shares on the promise of a fast connection, the project now needs to move to the next stage. In the Arkholme village hall this afternoon, B4RN is holding an open day, inviting anyone to drop in and test the broadband connection on their phones or computers. The hope is that many will sign up to the £30 per month service, but that some will also buy shares in B4RN. Another £1.5m is needed if the full 265KM network is to be rolled out. That sounds ambitious - but having spent 24 hours watching the volunteers digging trenches, blowing fibre and learning a process called fusion splicing I can see they are a very determined bunch. As Barry Forde, the networking expert who is the chief executive of B4RN explained to me, fast broadband is not a luxury now, whether in the town or the country. "Farmers are being told they have to fill in forms online," he says. "If you haven't got broadband you are severely disadvantaged." And despite the £530m government money to bring fast broadband to rural Britain, many communities face a long wait to get connected. In the meantime, others may learn the lesson from B4RN - if you want it in a hurry, just get out and start digging. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21442348 ![]() Watch Out for Google Glasses Anton Wahlman By the end of this year, our society will undergo a most peculiar form of societal change -- and it will involve a lot of strife and conflict. The cause? Google (GOOG) Glasses. Google Glasses will impact societal behavior from the moment they arrive. As soon as you see them, you're aware that you might be filmed. People don't like being filmed. Yes, every smartphone can record you and take pictures. But you know when this is happening. It isn't a constant feeling that everyone around you is filming you from every angle. You see them when they do it. Google Glasses are different. More than just photos and filming, what happens to this data? Let's say that I'm standing behind the counter at a business establishment -- bank, fast-food restaurant, airline check-in counter, whatever. My Google Glasses might display the social security number, the general rap sheet, social media appearances, and so on, of the person in front of me. Perhaps that's a good thing. Some people will think it's creepy, though. Can you imagine the bar scene when people start wearing Google Glasses? Within a second or two, you will have all available information about the person in front of you. Some of that information may not be so flattering. Public places will have to come up with new policies. Hotels, airports, restaurants, gyms and schools will want some say in whether you are allowed to wear these Google Glasses on their premises. You can just hear the panic buttons after the first pictures from people cheating in school or filming in the locker room are released on YouTube. Conflicts about are certain to get very ugly. Other dimensions immediately appear. What if future versions of Google Glasses are very difficult to detect in terms of looking different from regular glasses? What happens when you walk into an establishment today wielding a video camera in the faces of the staff? In a restaurant, a bank lobby, or a gym? You will be asked to turn that thing off, and if you don't obey quickly, you will be escorted from the premises. Google Glasses will make all social/public interaction highly awkward. You're on YouTube everywhere you go. A few short months after their introduction, Google Glasses could already be so widespread that you will be on camera once you stick your nose out your front door. Privacy lawyers, saddle up! The Google Glasses data captured in the form of pictures and videos will not only be used by the person wearing the glasses. The person capturing the images may want to "auto-tag" these media with the identities of the people in the picture/video. Some people prefer to stay off the grid. They pay cash, they drive a car without GPS, they don't have a cell phone, and they're not members of online social networks. They have been able to stay out of most publicly available databases. Once a meaningful percentage of people start walking down the street wearing Google Glasses, not so much. There will be no place to hide -- unless the government legislates Google Glasses, or private establishments decide to ban them. What about Google itself? Google Glasses will be the critical ingredient in the personal information arms race of the (soon to arrive) future. If other people wear them, why shouldn't I? I predict that everyone with means will rush to obtain them, especially as the price falls from $1,500 to $1,000 to $500 and eventually below, over the first two years. If Google succeeds in bringing these kinds of glasses to market before key competitors, most notably Apple (AAPL), but also Microsoft (MSFT), the advantage could prove to be decisive. Google already has a 70% smartphone market share with Android, so it's pretty much already there, but don't forget the Microsoft's market share in the PC business was close to 95% until only a few short years ago. Seeing as Google is likely to engineer some sort of tie-in between the Glasses and Android smartphones, the Glasses should be a tremendous boon for Android. Anyone looking at their iPhone would have to seriously consider switching. Google Glasses may cause societal chaos, but they will be great for Google's finances. http://www.thestreet.com/story/11850...e-glasses.html ![]() For 1st Time Since the Dawn of File-Sharing Age, World Music Revenue Inches Upward More than a decade after online file swapping tipped the music industry into turmoil, record executives may finally be getting a sliver of good news. Industry revenue is up. A measly 0.3 percent, but it’s still up. “For the global music business, it is hard to remember a year that has begun with such a palpable buzz in the air,” said Frances Moore, whose International Federation of the Phonographic Industry put together the figures released Tuesday. “These are hard-won successes for an industry that has innovated, battled and transformed itself over a decade,” she said in a statement. “They show the music industry has adapted to the Internet world.” That adaptation has been a long time coming. Online song sharing popularized by services such as Napster at the turn of the millennium seriously destabilized the industry, which reacted with a barrage of lawsuits and lobbying. But the war on piracy failed to stem the tide of free music, and by the time executives finally began making legal music available through download services such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes, the industry was in a free fall. Since its 1999 peak, the global music industry’s revenues have crashed more than 40 percent. Tuesday’s figures, which show a rise in global revenue from $16.4 billion in 2011 to $16.5 billion in 2012, are the first hint of growth in more than a decade. Mark Mulligan, of U.K.-based MIDiA consulting, warned that Tuesday’s figures did not mean the industry had put its misery years behind it. “We’re probably near the bottom,” he said, “but it’s so marginal we could easily have another year or two where it could get worse.” The physical music market continues to contract, losing another $500 million in revenue between 2011 and 2012, according to Tuesday’s IFPI figures. The industry group has placed its bets on downloads, streaming, and subscription services to make up for lost ground, but there’s still a long way to go. Downloads and streaming audio now account for most of the music sold in the United States and Scandinavia, but physical music — everything from vinyl records to DVDs — still accounts for the majority of industry revenue worldwide. Mulligan said he believed some of the lost revenue may never be recovered, with many casual users who used to buy the odd CD turning to free services such as YouTube, television music channels, or Internet radio instead. “This is a case of managed decline,” he said, predicting “a sustainable but smaller market built around more engaged music fans.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...8de_story.html ![]() Napster: the Day the Music was Set Free The digital music revolution started with Napster – the file-sharing service dreamt up by two teenagers in 1999. As a new film tells Napster's story, Tom Lamont recalls the incredible sense of liberation he felt as a young music fan, one of millions happily plundering the world's record collections… Tom Lamont Shawn Fanning, one of the two teenage founders of Napster, in 2000. He worked on a borrowed PC in his uncle's office in Massachusetts and slept in a nearby utility cupboard during days-long programming sessions. Photograph: Mark Richards/Contact Press/Colorific In the first weeks of 2000 the founders of Napster were in their office above a bank in San Mateo, California, considering dizzying numbers. Figures scrawled on a whiteboard told how many people around the world had installed their file-sharing application and were using it to download music from each other's computers. As recounted in Downloaded – a documentary soon to premiere at the SXSW film festival, telling the story of a piece of software that came and went and whipped up a new digital music industry in its slip – Napster had 20 million users at the time. Some way from San Mateo, in suburban London I had just become one myself. I was 17, and the owner of an irregular music collection that numbered about 20 albums, most of them a real shame (OMC's How Bizarre, the Grease 2 soundtrack). One day I had unsupervised access to the family PC and, for reasons forgotten, an urge to hear the campy orchestral number from the film Austin Powers. I was a model Napster user: internet-equipped, impatient and mostly ignorant of the ethical and legal particulars of peer-to-peer file-sharing. I installed the software, searched Napster's vast list of MP3 files, and soon had Soul Bossa Nova plinking kilobyte by kilobyte on to my hard drive. "It's difficult to describe to people... how much material was suddenly available," the technology guru John Perry Barlow tells Alex Winter, the director of Downloaded, in his new documentary. Speaking to me on the phone from the US, Winter added: "There was no ramp up. There was no transition. It was like that famous shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the prehistoric monkey throws a bone in the air and it turns into a spaceship. Napster was a ridiculous leap forward." They're right, it was seismic. I was part of the web-straddling generation. The internet, when it came in our teens, was welcome, exciting and fathomable, but it changed things briskly and sometimes bewilderingly. Music was something you bought after protracted debate with friends in the aisles of Our Price, and then, suddenly, songs were accessible from home. They didn't cost anything. We were wilfully blinkered, probably, on the exact details of this last point. I asked colleagues of a similar age what they remembered of Napster's arrival. "The thrill," said one, whose first download was by Smashing Pumpkins, "even when I listened to the music through my mum's tinny computer speakers." Another quickly sought to mine Marlena Shaw's backlist and "couldn't believe it worked". For my part – plundering singles by Artful Dodger, by Semisonic – I have a memory of actually looking over my shoulder. How was this possible? It was as if the door to a bank vault had been left open, no guards in sight. Getting music off the internet before Napster was tricky, unreliable – as someone remarks in Downloaded, "a colossal pain in the ass". Winter says he had "friends who would spend 14 hours trying to pull a Butthole Surfers song offline. And it would fail. And they would try again. And it would fail." In about 1998, someone with the username "napster" revealed to those present in an internet chatroom that he'd been working on a piece of software to fix the problem. It would allow people to dip into each other's hard drives, and share their MP3 music files. (The MP3, devised in the mid 1990s, had become the dominant format for digital audio in the emerging internet age, and has pretty much remained so.) In the chatroom, people scoffed. Share? Why would anyone do that? But Sean Parker, an aspiring entrepreneur, liked the idea. He was 18, skinny, with gelled-up red hair and a tendency to look at the floor when he spoke. Parker suggested they collaborate and he met "napster", or Shawn Fanning, for the first time in person. Fanning was a year younger, an unsmiling boy from Massachusetts who shaved his head against the curled, or "nappy", hair that had earned him his nickname. The term Napster passed, of course, to the piece of software Fanning was coding. Working on a borrowed PC in his uncle's Massachusetts office, sleeping in a nearby utility cupboard in order to conduct days-long programming sessions, Fanning had a finished product by the spring of 1999. Parker, meanwhile, had wheedled $50,000 from investors, and the pair moved to California. Friends from the chatroom were hired as staff, and Napster was launched in May 1999. By October it had 4m songs in circulation. By March 2000 – when, for my part, I'd already siphoned off a few hundred of those 4m – the Napster community numbered more than 20 million. By now the heads of the major record labels had gathered for a summit. In the Washington offices of the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), execs were encouraged to play a game that was informally called Stump the Napster – in other words, try to find at least one of their new singles that wasn't being shared online. All were appropriately horrified and an action was launched against Napster for breach of copyright. The first year of the new millennium was the first to register a dip in global record sales. That scared the labels, and before long individual Napster users were being sued too, some 18,000 all told. Alex Winter told me he met a woman, in the course of making his documentary, who over a decade later was still embroiled in a multi-million-dollar action. She'd once used Napster to download 26 songs. "The world had changed [because of the internet] and it was never going back," Winter says. "Well, I have a problem with black-and-white thinking when it comes to big cultural changes. People at the time were saying: 'It's fine for me to take whatever I want. Get over it, grandpa!' And on the other side they were saying: 'This is piracy and you're a criminal.' I don't think either was right. With Napster there was an enormous amount of grey." Opponents saw no grey. Litigation against Napster came from all angles. The RIAA sued, so did Metallica and Dr Dre. The court battles dragged on and on – long after Parker, millions of users and even Fanning himself had left Napster behind. Quick! Get to a computer! There was a weekend in February 2001 that felt like the last days of Rome. In the US courts a judge had found for the RIAA in the breach-of-copyright case, and Napster had been ordered to start charging or else close entirely. There were 48 hours of free music left and I remember the panic, trying to think of tracks I vaguely wanted (Pure Shores, Bound 4 Da Reload) but hadn't yet downloaded (Wild Wild West, Mi Chico Latino). Would there ever be such an opportunity again? By now the individual songs on my hard drive vastly outnumbered those on the CDs I owned. I had not been using the service cannily, to complete an exhaustive music collection – as Winter had, for instance. He was in his mid-30s that manic February, and remembers booting up multiple PCs to leach off any Coltrane rarities he was still missing. My approach had always been more of a woozy supermarket sweep, and it meant I'd built up a curious one-track miscellany. At an age by which I should have had a cataclysmic encounter with an album such as Blood on the Tracks, I'd sought out just one Dylan song, The Man in Me, because I'd heard it used to good effect in a film. Very occasionally I was helped to discover an alien band or artist (I remember accidentally getting a cover of Creep by the Cure, hoping for Radiohead, and thinking: hey, this Robert Smith sounds OK...), but by and large my appreciation of music was stunted. When you could download work on a millisecond's whim, there was no bond established. Being free meant no investment. My experience was not typical. That Marlena Shaw-pilfering colleague told me: "Napster hugely expanded my musical horizons. I felt like one of those mantis shrimps with trinocular vision." Others used Napster to try before buying, something a company spokesman pointed out when the issue of file-sharing was brought before an exploratory US Senate committee in 2000: "A chorus of studies show that Napster users buy more records as a result of using [the software]." The question was batted about in courtrooms. Were file-sharers really in the wrong? Was Napster? Not a single MP3 was stored on its servers; the software simply enabled users to download from each other. Anyway, might it not be it a good thing that so many people, 57 million users at Napster's peak, were excitedly seeking out music online? Certain musicians thought so. Wyclef Jean wanted his music to be heard, however it was heard. Chuck D thought of file-sharing as "the new radio". Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins was resigned: "There's no stopping it," he said. "This revolution has already taken place." Peter Gabriel even backed file-sharing software of his own, though the service, unromantically titled WebAudioNet, did not have much impact. By the summer of 2000, Napster had dramatically expanded and about 14,000 songs were being downloaded every minute. Fanning was a star, sought out at a tech conference by two little-known developers, Larry and Sergey, who told him how much they envied what he'd built. When Time magazine put Fanning on its cover in October 2000, an accompanying article gushed: "[His] programme ranks among the greatest internet applications ever, up there with email and instant messaging." But the truth was that, for Napster, terminal rot had set in. Sean Parker had been quietly, hurtfully ousted from the company after an email was unearthed in which he referred to file-sharers as pirates, something Napster's lawyers were always careful to deny. Shown the door, Parker asked Fanning for help, but his friend was so weary and disillusioned that he only said: "You're lucky. You can go and do something else." Before long, Fanning left too. Napster had lost its zest. Rudderless and haemorrhaging relevance, it began a series of doomed manoeuvres. After the court-ordered shutdown, bosses flirted with the idea of reinstating free sharing, but with music that had the lo-fi quality of radio. They gave away free MP3 players. A UK collaboration was announced with Dixons, never the sexiest brand, and by the time Apple was ready to launch its slick iTunes Store in Britain, Napster had a new tie-up – with the Post Office. As iTunes grew in stature, there was some hope, says Winter, that Napster might hang around as "Pepsi to iTunes' Coke". To that end, the brand was bought up by a succession of different corporations, each hoping to recapture some of its original cachet. Too late – by 2006 the digital music market, spurred into life by Fanning and Parker, was worth £560m but Napster had fewer than 1 million users left. By 2008 the numbers were no longer made public. An intriguing hint is floated in Downloaded that Napster was not only a sinkhole for investors' cash; it only ever generated proper revenue by selling T-shirts. Fanning and Parker don't seem to have made any money from it, and were left with big legal debts to go with long-lasting frustrations. "They both spent a lot of time just free-falling after Napster's demise," Winter tells me. "I think it's taken a long time for them to reconcile what was actually good about what they did." Latterly they have thrived. Fanning founded a gaming company, Rupture, which he sold for $30m. Parker partnered with Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook and then invested in the music-streaming service Spotify. He is now a billionaire, and in 2010 was portrayed as a quick-witted lady's man by Justin Timberlake in David Fincher's Facebook movie The Social Network. Not so bad. "They were like a hydra, two heads," says Winter who has had some experience as part of a double act himself. As an actor in his youth, he played Bill alongside Keanu Reeves' Ted in the Bill & Ted films. "I can identify with having fame really early in a creative partnership, with the stress it puts on a friendship. But both Fanning and Parker were incredibly smart. What they created at 17, 18 – they were visionaries." Selfishly, I'm glad Napster faded when it did. Though copycat software rose up afterwards, downloading music never again felt cloudless. By the time Napster turned off the tap, I'd left home for university, and had got to know a record shop in my new area. The staff there were mercilessly good at convincing wide-eyes like me that the new Belle & Sebastian was worth paying for, and I belatedly started to consider albums as complete packages, to be listened to from start to finish, to invest in. Just how pervasive Napster was, for a particular generational slice, became clear to me a few years later. On a long drive through California, I put on a homemade CD of mostly legitimately bought MP3s plus a few old Napster downloads. There were three Americans in the car, and when Steppenwolf's grand road-trip anthem, Magic Carpet Ride, came on we all sang along – sang along, too, when a mechanical blip interrupted the chorus. Nobody could believe it. Years before, on computers thousands of miles apart, we'd all downloaded the same corrupted MP3 and got to know Steppenwolf with blip included. Napster had weightier legacies. Facebook, iTunes and other towering digital giants have flourished using elements first teased or pioneered by Fanning's software. And Winter's documentary makes clear an authentic regret, these days, from inside the music industry that Napster was not embraced. Even while one executive remembers it as "an ambush… Pearl Harbour", others are damning of the hurry to crush such a thriving online community. Island Records' founder, Chris Blackwell, laments the fact that there wasn't a formal move to reach out to its 50 million users at a time when CD sales were tumbling. The industry might be belatedly wrestling a business model into shape in the online age, but an opportunity to do so a decade ago was probably missed. Napster, I was surprised to find, lingers on in 2013. If you visit its website, you'll learn that it was acquired two years ago by the music subscription service Rhapsody. Prospective users are sunnily advised that file-sharing is fun, easy and possible on a variety of payment plans. Parker and Fanning, meanwhile, have reunited. They're now at work on a fresh venture, a video-conferencing application called Airtime, which seeks to pair up strangers who have similar interests. An online advert imagines two models, brought together because they're both fans of Skrillex and the film Inception, becoming great friends. Other new acquaintances are shown solving Rubik's cubes together, and duetting on the violin. Well would it really be stranger than two teenagers, across a few hectic months, teaching the internet to share? http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013...e-file-sharing Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - February 23rd, February 16th, February 9th, February 2nd 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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