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Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology! |
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,023
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![]() ![]() ![]() "[Louisiana State University’s] new advertising line shows Tad behind bars after downloading music. It stresses the penalties one may incur for committing music piracy." – Keith Lorio "Either you believe in the user-generated revolution or you believe ISPs rule the world. I believe ISPs don't rule the world. If I am paying for my broadband, I have the right to share it with other people." – Ferran Moreno "You are a member of a country, a part of a system capable of wasting two hundred million dollars on an hour and a half of garbage." – David Mamet "Future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista Upgrade Layer' when they go through our landfill sites." – Siân Berry "Who would have thought you could use a laptop as a diagnostic tool? Now it’s the first thing we whip out." – Donny Seyfer "In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected." – Linden Lab "To be honest I'm afraid of the music industry falling apart." – will.i.am "We’ve been thinking about getting together and starting a band called Black People." – Damon Locks "I am going to keep downloading music simply because I got to have my Grand Funk Railroad and not pay for it." – Kayne Gorney "1-31-07 Never Forget." – Aqua Teen fan Easy Like Sunday Morning Alliance has been running now for exactly one week and one thing is clear: it is much easier to connect to than WASTE, the famous privatenet predecessor. That's not all. It extends security beyond WASTE by disallowing mass invitations. Handing out invite codes is safer when they can be used only once. I believe it also separates users on the same mesh from those one may not wish to trade with, making for a more comfortable social experience, although I haven't fully explored this provision due to members’ limited login time over the last seven days. As for its primary reason for being, I can confirm transfers are very fast when the upload speed is there. The application falls down in some areas however. Chat is basic and there is no information about shares beyond title and type. No file sizes, nor bitrates, nor pixel widths, nor creation dates nor any of the other useful details traders require beyond those mentioned, although this will probably change in future releases. Alliance is fine then for Sunday swapping but advanced users won’t be taking this app too seriously until it grows up a bit. For now though that may be enough. It’s the perfect application for beginners interested in exploring the world of privatenets, and that's a very big deal since this increasingly important space has been off-limits to everyone but geeks. Ease of use tops Alliances list and for many that will be the most important aspect of this client, and here it leads the pack. If you have a few friends or co-workers or family members you want to casually share with but you're looking for something more private than Rapidshare and far less complicated than the BitTorrent upload process simply swap Alliance codes and you'll be on your way. Quickly, safely and securely. Enjoy, Jack ![]() February 3rd, 2007 ![]() Awaiting the Day When Everyone Writes Software Jason Pontin BJARNE STROUSTRUP, the designer of C++, the most influential programming language of the last 25 years, has said that “our technological civilization depends on software.” True, but most software isn’t much good. Too many programs are ugly: inelegant, unreliable and not very useful. Software that satisfies and delights is as rare as a phoenix. All this does more than frustrate computer users. Bad software is terrible for business and the economy. Software failures cost $59.5 billion a year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded in a 2002 study, and fully 25 percent of commercial software projects are abandoned before completion. Of projects that are finished, 75 percent ship late or over budget. The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Programmers don’t know what a computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring over illustrated manuscripts. Worse, programs today contain millions of lines of code, and programmers are fallible like all other humans: there are, on average, 100 to 150 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, according to a 1994 study by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. No wonder so much software is so bad: programmers are drowning in ignorance, complexity and error. Charles Simonyi, the chief executive of Intentional Software, a start-up in Bellevue, Wash., believes that there is another way. He wants to overthrow conventional coding for something he calls “intentional programming,” in which programmers would talk to machines as little as possible. Instead, they would concentrate on capturing the intentions of computer users. Mr. Simonyi, the former chief architect of Microsoft, is arguably the most successful pure programmer in the world, with a personal fortune that Forbes magazine estimates at $1 billion. There may be richer programmer-billionaires — Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry Page of Google come to mind — but they became rich by founding and managing technology ventures; Mr. Simonyi rose mainly by writing code. He designed Microsoft’s most successful applications, Word and Excel, and he devised the programming method that the company’s software developers have used for the last quarter-century. Mr. Simonyi, 58, was important before he joined Microsoft in 1981, too. He belongs to the fabled generation of supergeeks who invented personal computing at Xerox PARC in the 1970s: there, he wrote the first modern application, a word processor called Bravo that displayed text on a computer screen as it would appear when printed on page. Even at leisure, Mr. Simonyi, who was born in Hungary and taught himself programming by punching machine code on Russian mainframes, is a restless, expansive personality. In April, he will become the fifth space tourist, paying $20 million to board a Russian Soyuz rocket and visit the International Space Station. Mr. Simonyi says he is not disgusted with big, bloated, buggy programs like Word and Excel. But he acknowledges that he is disappointed that we have been unable to use “our incredible computational ability” to address efficiently “our practical computational problems.” “Software is truly the bottleneck in the high-tech horn of plenty,” he said. Mr. Simonyi began thinking about a new method for creating software in the mid-1990s, while he was still at Microsoft. But his ideas were so at odds with .Net, the software environment that Microsoft was building then, that he left the company in 2002 to found Intentional Software. “It was impractical, when Microsoft was making tremendous strides with .Net, to send somebody out from the same organization who says, ‘What if you did things in this other, more disruptive way?’ ” he said in the January issue of Technology Review. For once, that overfavored word — “disruptive” — is apt; intentional programming is disruptive. It would automate much of software development. The method begins with the intentions of the people inside an organization who know what a program should do. Mr. Simonyi calls these people “domain experts,” and he expects them to work with programmers to list all the concepts the software must possess. The concepts are then translated into a higher-level representation of the software’s functions called the domain code, using a tool called the domain workbench. At two conferences last fall, Intentional Software amazed software developers by demonstrating how the workbench could project the intentions of domain experts into a wonderful variety of forms. Using the workbench, domain experts and programmers can imagine the program however they want: as something akin to a PowerPoint presentation, as a flow chart, as a sketch of what they want the actual user screen to look like, or in the formal logic that computer scientists love. Thus, programmers and domain experts can fiddle with whatever projections they prefer, editing and re-editing until both parties are happy. Only then is the resulting domain code fed to another program called a generator that manufactures the actual target code that a computer can compile and run. If the software still doesn’t do what its users want, the programmers can blithely discard the target code and resume working on the domain workbench with the domain experts. As an idea, intentional programming is similar to the word processor that Mr. Simonyi developed at PARC. In the jargon of programming, Bravo was Wysiwyg — an acronym, pronounced WIZ-e-wig, for “what you see is what you get.” Intentional programming also allows computer users to see and change what they are getting. “Programming is very complicated,” Mr. Simonyi said. “Computer languages are really computer-oriented. But we can make it possible for domain experts to provide domain information in their own terms which then directly contributes to the production of the software.” Intentional programming has three great advantages: The people who design a program are the ones who understand the task that needs to be automated; that design can be manipulated simply and directly, rather than by rewriting arcane computer code; and human programmers do not generate the final software code, thus reducing bugs and other errors. NOT everyone believes in the promise of intentional programming. There are three common objections. The first is theoretical: it is based on the belief that human intention cannot, in principle, be captured (or, less metaphysically, that computer users don’t know what people want). The second is practical: to programmers, the intentional method constitutes an “abstraction” of the underlying target code. But most programmers believe that abstractions “leak” — that is, they fail to perfectly represent the thing they are meant to be abstracting, which means software developers must sink their hands into the code anyway. The final objection is cynical: Mr. Simonyi has been working on intentional programming for many years; only two companies, bound to silence by nondisclosure agreements, acknowledge experimenting with the domain workbench and generator. Thus, no one knows if intentional programming works. Sheltered by Mr. Simonyi’s wealth, Intentional Software seems in no hurry to release an imperfect product. But it is addressing real and pressing problems, and Mr. Simonyi’s approach is thrillingly innovative. If intentional programming does what its inventor says, we may have something we have seldom enjoyed as computer users: software that makes us glad. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/bu...ey/28slip.html ![]() Piracy Worked for us, Romania President Tells Gates Pirated Microsoft Corp software helped Romania to build a vibrant technology industry, Romanian President Traian Basescu told the company's co-founder Bill Gates on Thursday. Basescu was meeting the software giant's chairman in Bucharest to celebrate the opening of a Microsoft global technical centre in the Romanian capital. "Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania," Basescu said during a joint news conference with Gates. "It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world ... Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates." Gates made no comment. Former communist Romania, which has just joined the European Union, introduced anti-piracy legislation 10 years ago but copyright infringements are still rampant. Experts say some 70 percent of software used in Romania is pirated, and salesmen still visit office buildings in central Bucharest to sell pirated CDs and DVDs. Foreign investors say Romania's IT sector is one of most promising industries in the fast-growing economy thanks to high level of technical education in Romania, low wages and the country's thriving underworld of computers hackers. http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...-Feb-2007+RTRS ![]() Vista's Fine Print Raises Red Flags Michael Geist Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, makes its long awaited consumer debut tomorrow. The first major upgrade in five years, Vista incorporates a new, sleek look and features a wide array of new functionality, such as better search tools and stronger security. The early reviews have tended to damn the upgrade with faint praise, however, characterizing it as the best, most secure version of Windows, yet one that contains few, if any, revolutionary features. While those reviews have focused chiefly on Vista's new functionality, for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print." Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry. The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user. Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge. During the installation process, users "activate" Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft. Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users. Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated "high" or "severe," even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted. For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software." Those technical limitations have proven to be even more controversial than the legal ones. Last December, Peter Guttman, a computer scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand released a paper called "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection." The paper pieced together the technical fine print behind Vista, unraveling numerous limitations in the new software seemingly installed at the direct request of Hollywood interests. Guttman focused primarily on the restrictions associated with the ability to play back high-definition content from the next-generation DVDs such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (referred to as "premium content"). He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors. Guttman's research suggests that consumers will pay more for less with poorer picture quality yet higher costs since Microsoft needed to obtain licences from third parties in order to access the technology that protects premium content (those licence fees were presumably incorporated into Vista's price). Moreover, he calculated that the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content. Microsoft responded to Guttman's paper earlier this month, maintaining that content owners demanded the premium content restrictions. According to Microsoft, "if the policies [associated with the premium content] required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs." While that may be true, left unsaid is Microsoft's ability to demand a better deal on behalf of its enormous user base or the prospect that users could opt-out of the technical controls. When Microsoft introduced Windows 95 more than a decade ago, it adopted the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" as its theme song. As millions of consumers contemplate the company's latest upgrade, the legal and technological restrictions may leave them singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want." http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1640/159/ ![]() Cracking Vista DRM Update on Driver Signing Bypass Alex Ionescu I apologize for the lack of news, but after attending CUSEC, I had to spend my time on catching up the two weeks of school and work that I had missed, and exploiting Vista ended up going on the backburner, especially as I had to re-install VMWare 6.0 (which wasn’t being helpful with me) and a new Vista 64-bit image. That being said, it turns out the code I’ve written does not work out of the box on a Vista RTM system. Although it can be effective when combined with a reboot, this doesn’t provide any advantage of any of the myriad other ways that this could be done (including booting with the disable integrity checks BCD option or the /TESTSIGN flag). However, it does bypass DRM. As part of the Protected Media Path, (PMP), Windows Vista sets up a number of requirements for A/V software and drivers in order to ensure it complies with the demandes of the media companies. One of these features, which has been heavily criticized as being the actual reason behind driver signing, is that “some premium content may be unavailable” if test signing mode is used. Originally, I assumed that this meant that the kernel would set some sort of variable, but this didn’t make sense: once your unsigned driver could load, it could disable this check. After reading the PMP documentation however, it seems to me that the “feature” explained is more likely the cause of this warning on premium content. This feature is the ability of the PMP to notify A/V applications that there are unsigned drivers on the system, as well as provide a list of unsigned drivers. The idea is that the application can either outright refuse to play content, or that it can scan for known anti-DRM drivers which might be attempting to hook onto the unencrypted stream. This leads me to believe that it’s up to applications, not the OS, to enforce this DRM check. The great thing about the code I’ve written is that it does NOT use test signing mode and it does NOT load an unsigned driver into the system. Therefore, to any A/V application running, the system seems totally safe — when in fact, it’s not. Now, because I’m still booting with a special flag, it’s possible for Microsoft to patch the PMP and have it report that this flag is set, thereby disabling premium content. However, beause I already have kernel-mode code running at this point, I can disable this flag in memory, and PMP will never know that it was enabled. Again, Microsoft could fight this by caching the value, or obfuscating it somewhere inside PMP’s kernel-mode code, but as long as it’s in kernel-mode, and I’ve got code in kernel-mode, I can patch it. To continue this game, Microsoft could then use Patchguard on the obfuscated value…but that would only mean that I can simply disable Patchguard using the numerous methods that Skywing documented in his latest paper. In the end, the only way that PMP is going to work is with a Hypervisor, and even that will probably fail. Unfortunately, with almost 0% use for the open source community (which can use test signing mode for their drivers), documenting my method and/or releasing a sample might be viewed as an anti-DRM tool, and defintely a DMCA violation. Although used on its own, this POC doesn’t do anything or go anywhere near the PMP (I don’t even have Protected Media, HDMI, HD-DVD, nor do I know where PMP lives or how someone can intercept decrypted steams), a particularly nasty group of lawyers could still somehow associate the DMCA to it, so I’m not going to take any chances. It’s quite ironic — Microsoft claims driver signing is to fight malware and increase system stability, so if I get sued under DMCA, wouldn’t that be an admission that driver signing is a “anti-copyright infringment tool”?. I’d really love to release this tool to the public though, so I will look into my options — perhaps emphasizing the research aspect of it and crippling the binary would be a safe way. http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=24 ![]() Apple: iTunes Users Should Wait on Vista May Wong Apple Inc. is urging some iPod and iTunes users to hold off on upgrading computers to Windows Vista, warning that the iTunes music software may not work well with the new operating system from rival Microsoft Corp. Apple said iTunes may work with many Vista computers, but the company knows of some compatibility problems and recommends that users wait until it resolves the issues with an iTunes update in the next few weeks, the company said in a statement provided Friday by spokesman Derick Mains. The iTunes software is key to synching music on computers with iPod portable players. Microsoft launched Vista, its first major overhaul of Windows in five years, on Tuesday. Though Microsoft and Apple are partners in some cases — iTunes works with Windows PCs and Microsoft Office has a version for Macs — the two are also entrenched rivals. With Vista's launch, Apple ramped up its ad campaign attacks against Windows. According to a notice posted on Apple's Web site, compatibility problems include the inability to play music or video purchased from the online iTunes store, difficulties synchronizing contacts and calendars and possible failures of iPods plugged into a Vista computer. Apple also outlined precautionary steps users could take to try to minimize any problems should they upgrade to Vista now. Adam Anderson, a spokesman for Microsoft's Windows division, said the company did not believe iTunes users "should stop using Vista for these reasons." The company said it is working with a long list of partners, including Apple, to make sure their software is compatible with Vista. When the new operating system launched, Microsoft claimed more than 5,000 hardware and software products were already Vista-compatible. The company has a dedicated team working with Apple on getting iTunes running smoothly on Vista, and it will keep at it "until they have the program running to the quality level they're shooting for," Anderson said. Apple has sold more than 90 million iPods since the product was launched in October 2001. Article ![]() Green Party Asks: Who Has The Key To Your Vista PC? Green party slams Vista Landfill nightmare Microsoft's latest operating system, due for release tomorrow, is defective by design, putting Microsoft and the corporate media in control of your computer. (1) Beneath the gloss they have hidden traps that take away important consumer rights, force expensive and environmentally damaging hardware upgrades. All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content, such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD disks. Although it is unlikely to prevent copying, it will make Vista more attractive to Hollywood film distributors, while also locking them into a Vista content distribution system. Derek Wall, Green Party Male Principal Speaker, said: "So-called 'digital rights management' technology in Vista gives Microsoft the ability to lock you out of your computer. Technology should increase our opportunities to consume media, create our own and share it with others. "But Vista helps the corporate media take away our consumer rights. Silence in government betrays a shocking complacency in the face of this latest attack on our rights." Vista will also be power hungry, as it requires more processing time to encrypt and decrypt 'premium' content, and looks around the computer every few milliseconds to check that nothing is trying to distribute de-coded 'premium' video or sound. He continued, "Vista requires more expensive and energy-hungry hardware, passing the cost on to consumers and the environment. This will also further exclude the poor from the latest technology, and impose burdensome costs on small and medium businesses who will be forced to enter another expensive upgrade cycle." Consumers, businesses and government bodies should protect their interests by migrating to free software, rather than upgrading to Vista, says Wall. "Free software can run on existing hardware, reduces licensing costs for small businesses and affords important freedoms to consumers. The UK Government should capitalise on this opportunity to promote the use of free software in public bodies." Greens predict that an enormous amount of hardware will be junked by consumers and companies as Vista will refuse to play Blu-Ray and HD DVD content with current monitors and sound cards. Siân Berry, Green Party Female Principal Speaker added: "There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards and whole computers that are perfectly capable of running Vista - except for the fact they lack the paranoid lock down mechanisms Vista forces you to use. That's an offensive cost to the environment. "Future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista Upgrade Layer' when they go through our landfill sites." By controlling the technology that delivers video content on computers, and owning the licenses that make the hardware and software work, Microsoft will be in a very strong position to dictate terms to consumers and content producers. Apple's itunes store works in a similar way already, selling songs that can only be played on Apple ipods and iTunes software. "We should remember that this is about Microsoft trying to dictate the way that video content gets delivered - much as Apple are trying to do with iTunes - in order to corner the market. "Now is the time to act, if we want to see the Microsoft monopoly kept out of the video market." She added that Green Party also supported complaints by computer manufacturers that XAML, a Vista-only internet mark-up standard, would be another attempt to extend Microsoft's virtual monopoly.(2) "Microsoft are determined not to play fair and we hope the EU stand up to them. The best way of course is to insist that we purchase products that work with open rather than closed standards." http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2851 ![]() Gates: With Vista, Seeing is Believing Not sure what Vista means for you? Bill Gates would be happy to show you. While some reviewers have given lukewarm opinions on the new operating system, the Microsoft chairman says that a three- or four-minute demo should convince most people that Vista has much to offer over Windows XP. Gates sat down with CNET News.com on the eve of Vista's consumer launch, along with the release of Office 2007. In part one of a two-part interview, he responds to the critics, outlines his Vista sales pitch and talks about the potential of a comeback for peer-to-peer computing. In the second part of the interview, to be published later this week, Gates talks Xbox, Windows Live and whether TV as we know it is outmoded. Q: You've been waiting for this day for a long time. How important is the launch of these two products (Vista and Office) for Microsoft? Gates: Windows Vista is the platform that almost the entire industry builds on, whether it is innovative hardware or software applications. Having it out in the marketplace and letting them use that as the foundation for their work, it's very exciting. We've had 5 million people help guide us in this, tell us that it is ready to go. This is our chance to thank them and let everyone else get the benefits of all the work. Given that people spend more time on Windows PCs than watching TV now, having that be the best experience possible is worth a lot. Q: I took a look at all the advertising circulars over the weekend as all the PC retailers started trying to advertise Vista. It seemed like there was still a bit of a challenge for them to figure out what to sell. How big a challenge is it to try and explain what Vista is to consumers. Gates: Well, with software the best thing is always if you can let people have about a three- or four-minute demo. Then they'll really understand why we think this is a big "wow." We talk about how it's easier--that's things like search, and the setup and the user interface. We talk about safer--that's parental control, antiphishing. We talk about better-connected, the simple Wi-Fi capability. More entertaining--that's HD Movie Maker, DirectX 10 games. I don't think after you've seen it for three or four minutes, you'll say, "Wow, that's the same as XP." You'll see it's quite different. Given that people spend more time on Windows PCs than watching TV now, having that be the best experience possible is worth a lot. Q: If you were talking to a friend and you were trying to convince them to upgrade to Vista and they were skeptical, what would you tell them? What things about Vista are the most compelling? Gates: It would be easiest if I could take them over to my machine and show them how Photo Gallery lets you find and organize things in a better way. I could show them the great graphics capabilities that Windows Vista has unlocked. I'd show them on parental control how I can set the time for my son's work with the PC. Or, for my daughter, how I can look at an activity report and see what kind of Web sites she's going to. Pretty quickly they'd get a concrete view. For some people, just the fact that it turns on faster, the way we've made that a lot better. Different things will appeal to different people. Q: Some of the changes with Vista are things that aren't necessarily visible the first time you turn it on. It's things under the hood for developers. What changes in computing do you think Vista will help bring about? Gates: Things like peer-to-peer. We've got an infrastructure in there. Advanced use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) so all the applications don't have to go and rebuild those things. I was really impressed seeing how HP had taken their touch screen and made photo-type scenarios really simple. You don't even think you are using software when you select and organize and do a little bit of editing. It's so natural. Q: You mention peer-to-peer. We haven't heard a lot about peer-to-peer lately. It got kind of a bad rap from the music-sharing days. Is that technology ready for a comeback, and what sorts of things does it allow? Gates: We have rich APIs (application programming interfaces) and we actually use those ourselves to let you set up a meeting with somebody who is nearby and share a screen with them. We haven't seen it as something that all software people can build on. Most people have had to build their own infrastructure and that's meant that it has really limited the usage. Now we are seeing that (software makers) in general can write peer-to-peer applications. It's up to them to show us where it can go. Q: One of the things that Microsoft tried to introduce with Vista is the idea that megahertz isn't necessarily the best way to measure a PC. The Windows Experience Index was an attempt to give you an overall sense of how powerful a PC is. We've seen it go from something that was really prominent in the early test versions to something that is maybe not as prominent. Is it still something that's important? Gates: Our team has done a great job on this, where you can look at the score in each individual area, like the graphics or CPU. You can also have an overall rating. It had gotten so confusing for people to try and understand these things, that we decided just having a linear scale in a few of the key areas and a way of bringing that together, it would help you in terms of picking games out or knowing what the right hardware is. (We've done) a lot of work with the industry to try and take what has been very complex and bring it down to a numeric scale. Some of the early reviews of Vista haven't exactly been glowing. I'm curious what you make of that? Gates: Actually, most of the reviews have been very positive. In some ways, people covered the schedule, but they forgot all of the cool stuff that was going on. So they are kind of amazed now that they look and (see) hey, this is what this has been all about. You laid out the vision for where you guys were going with Vista at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles back in 2003. From your perspective, how much of that vision is reflected in the product that is shipping this week? Gates: We were able to achieve virtually everything we set out to do. We did not change the file system into a database-like approach. That turned out to be a little ahead of its time. With the exception of that, the presentation richness, the security, the organization-type things that we have here. It's very dramatic. Obviously, we will do more in the future, but this is the foundation that will make Windows computing far simpler. Office and Vista are just now becoming available for consumers, but they have been available to large businesses since November. Do you have any sense yet of how quickly businesses might be moving to the new product? Gates: We've got some huge customers like Citicorp, with 350,000 desktops, who have decided to make that move fully this year. A lot more software distribution is being done over the network, so you are not having to visit the machines. It is easier for corporations to do the upgrade than it would have been in the past. A lot of people with their corporate licenses have these upgrades available to them. We expect to see a faster uptake than ever before on a new version. Obviously consumers have been faster to move to the new thing than businesses in general, but here we've made the ease of migration the best it's ever been. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9590-6154480.html ![]() Bill Gates on Vista and Apple's 'Lying' Ads Bill Gates explains why you should buy his new operating system, what he’s doing next and why John Hodgeman bugs him. Steven Levy On the morning of the launch of the Vista operating system earlier this week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates talked with NEWSWEEK’s Steven Levy about the new version of Windows—and the one after that. He also shared his views on those Apple television commercials in which the Mac is represented by a hip guy and the PC by, well, a dweeb. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, “Bill, why upgrade to Vista?” what would be your elevator pitch? Bill Gates: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, “Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?” Vista has been a very long time in coming, and parts of it were jettisoned along the way. Do you feel satisfied at the outcome now that it’s finally shipped? Well, we released Windows XP about five years ago. During that time, we’ve had, I think, three releases of Media Center, four releases of [Windows Media], Tablet releases, Windows XP SP2, which was really a very major release. So in no sense has Windows been standing still. Actually, if you look at Windows strength versus Linux, or versus anything, it’s done very well, because we have this big ecosystem. Next time around we’re going to have a lot more agility. A lot of what we put into this version was layering work that will let us take the upper parts of the system, like the browser, and let us do more regular releases. So there [will be further releases] at least every couple of years, and in some parts maybe even yearly. And we learned a lot during the Vista [process]. People can see how we’ve mixed together our Office talent and Windows talent to get the best of both worlds, and how we’re going to do things going forward. You also talk about improved security in Vista. Yes, although security is a [complicated concept]. You’re [referring to] the fact that there have been some security updates already for Windows Vista. This is exactly the way it should work. When somebody comes to us [after discovering a vulnerability] we’ve got [a fix] before there is any exploit. So it’s totally according to plan, and that’s why we have the whole Windows Update thing. We made it way harder for guys to do exploits. The number [of violations] will be way less because we’ve done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn’t done any of those things. Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista? I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are. How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade? Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it. Does the entire tenor of that campaign bother you, that Mac is the cool guy and PC— That’s for my customers to decide. In many of the Vista reviews, even the positive ones, people note that some Vista features are already in the Mac operating system. You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts. If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with [the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from? Is this Vista launch the last hurrah of the big operating system? Well, people have said that at every major Windows release. Java was going to eliminate Windows programming, or thin clients were going to eliminate people buying PCs. Operating systems keep getting better and richer, and they allow developers then to take advantage of that. We're doing more innovation now at the operating-system level than we've ever done. As we sit down and think, what are the things we're going to do in the next release, there's no shortage of radical things that will be happening in the operating system. You mentioned that Microsoft can now be more agile in updating. Are you thinking of rolling upgrades as opposed to big major releases? No, you'll have big releases. When you go in and enable a new kind of application, you want to get your partners behind it, you want to get them building the hardware that's related to that. It really simplifies things for people to think, OK, here's what I got in Windows Vista, here's what I'm going to get in this next major release. The more avid users download the upgrades in between, but of XP users how many downloaded a browser that was more advanced than the one they had? Maybe you and the people you know all did, but most people don’t. How many actually do? I would say it's less than 30 percent. We’ve had this incredible desktop search [available for download] that won every review, and I’ll bet that less than 10 percent of Windows users went and got that. Now with Windows Vista, you get something better. For most users, it’s the first time they’ve seen it at all. So you feel in 2010-2011 Microsoft will be back with the next big one? Absolutely. We'll tell you how Vista just wasn't good enough, and we'll know why, too. We need to wait and hear what consumers have to tell us. We don't know that, otherwise, of course, we would have done it this time. You’re leaving your full time role at Microsoft in July 2008. What involvement are you going to have in the next operating system? First of all, there's tons of people who help make those decisions, so I wouldn't overstate my role in the past. But I'll have full involvement, the [same] involvement I've ever had in the key decisions for those products. So can you give us an indication of what the next Windows will be like? Well, it will be more user-centric. What does that mean? That means that right now when you move from one PC to another, you've got to install apps on each one, do upgrades on each one. Moving information between them is very painful. We can use Live Services [a way to connect to Microsoft via the Internet] to know what you're interested in. So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things. So that's kind of the user-centric thing that Live Services can enable. [Also,] in Vista things got a lot better with [digital] ink and speech but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet. Students won't need textbooks, they can just use these tablet devices. Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We'll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we've got a pretty good outline. With Xbox and Zune, Microsoft has adopted an end-to-end approach, where you write the software, design the hardware and run the services. Will Microsoft now change its mobile-phone strategy and adopt an end-to-end approach, the way Apple has with the iPhone? No, I don't think so. People like different styling, media storage, capability [in phones]. The benefit we get from having lots of great hardware partners is pretty phenomenal. And our software can run on any one of those things. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16934083/site/newsweek/ ![]() French Students to Get Open-Source Software on USB Key Peter Sayer French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high-school students at the start of the next school year. The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet café -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday. It's a way to reduce the digital divide, said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Roger. The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant messaging, he said. The exact mix of software will be defined by the company that wins the contract to supply the sticks, but will be open source, he said. At the European arm of the foundation behind the Firefox browser, Mozilla Europe president Tristan Nitot hailed the news as "an excellent surprise." It could even be a way to fight software piracy, he said, since the open-source software that the sticks will contain may be freely and legally copied. "It's better to copy that than Microsoft Office: it's cheaper, and it's legal," he said. School heads will distribute the USB (Universal Serial Bus) sticks to 130,000 students at the start of the next academic year, as they arrive for their first of three years at high school. There are 476,000 students in the 468 public high schools operated by the council and the 213 privately run schools it funds. Apprentices at the 173 professional training centers funded by the council will receive the other 45,000 sticks. If the project goes well, there's no reason why funding shouldn't be renewed next year, said Roger. The council plans to spend €2.6 million (US$3.4 million) on the USB sticks this year, a small fraction of its overall educational budget. School funding in France comes from many sources. Teachers are paid by the national government, while the provision of teaching facilities including the construction and maintenance of schools is paid for by local governments: city authorities, in the case of primary and middle schools, and regional councils in the case of high schools. In 2006, the Greater Paris Regional Council's budget for maintaining high school facilities, including buildings, libraries and its 120,000 computers, totalled €728 million. It also spent €195 million on facilities for apprentices in professional training centers. http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20...nfoworld/85707 ![]() US Teen in Music Piracy Lawsuit Accuses Record Companies of Collusion AP A 16-year-old boy being sued for online music piracy accused the recording industry of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats. In papers responding to a lawsuit filed by five record companies, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it is impossible to prove that he did. Santangelo is the son of Patti Santangelo, the 42-year-old suburban mother of five who was sued by the record companies in 2005. She refused to settle, took her case public and became a heroine to supporters of Internet freedom. The industry dropped its case against her in December but sued Robert and his sister Michelle, now 20, in federal court in White Plains, a New York City suburb. Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 (€23,700) in a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit. Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, responded at length on Tuesday, raising 32 defenses, demanding a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the companies for allegedly damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees. His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he never sent copyrighted music to others; that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it; that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal; that the statute of limitations has passed; and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs. Santangelo also claims that the record companies, which have filed more than 18,000 piracy lawsuits in federal courts, "have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States." The papers allege that the companies, "ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy" by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay." The Recording Industry Association of America, which has coordinated most of the lawsuits, issued a statement saying, "The record industry has suffered enormously due to piracy. That includes thousands of layoffs. We must protect our rights. Nothing in a filing full of recycled charges that have gone nowhere in the past changes that fact." http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/...nload-Suit.php ![]() Bang! Pow! Zap! TV Battles Peer-To-Peer Pirates Marc Cieslak Movie and music piracy has been common place for years, but now the pirates of the net have set their sights on completely new targets - hit US TV shows. In the old days when you wanted to watch a TV show you needed a television - what a quaint, 20th Century notion. With the advent of broadband, viewers are increasingly turning to the web and peer-to-peer downloading software to get their fix of the latest TV shows. There is just one small problem with this P2P trend - a large proportion of this downloading is illegal. US TV programmes like Lost, Prison Break and Heroes have become some of the most illegally downloaded content on the web. Shows broadcast on the east coast of the US are routinely pirated and appear online hours before they are broadcast on the west coast of America. The rise of P2P file sharing sites is one of the driving factors behind this growth. P2P sites connect users to one another rather than to a central server, so data can then be shared amongst those users. "P2P file sharing is a huge issue online at the moment. We are seeing millions of people engaging in the practice on a daily basis," said David Price, Head of Piracy Intelligence at Envisional. "Over one month you might see 10 million downloads just of the clients that are being used to file share. You could easily see a million downloads of a single TV episode." One anonymous file sharer explained how he did it: "The software I use to download TV shows at the moment is BitTorrent. There are several pieces of software that all do the same thing, Azureus is quite good, but BitTorrent is the most user friendly and basic. "It's very, very easy to find the shows you're after. There are several websites that my friends have told me about. "I do a Google search within that website and can find anything I want." Once you have downloaded a piece of software like BitTorrent a quick visit to any number of P2P sites reveals the extent of the problem. If I perform a quick search for Kiefer Sutherland's action show 24, pages and pages of files appear. Some entries are individual episodes, but lots of them are entire seasons of the show. While many illegal file sharers may feel they are safe due to the enormous scale of the problem, it is still possible to track their activities, and in some cases introduce legal sanctions. Legal action But downloading illegal content is hardly an anonymous activity, as Mr Price explained. "When you download a piece of content your IP address, which is like the address of your computer on the internet, can be relatively easily tracked. "When you find that information it is quite easy to track that IP address back to a particular service provider. "Then the internet service provider can or will, if you take legal action, supply the names of the people who are responsible for that particular IP address." The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) tracks down pirates and brings them before the courts. "We look to sites that we hear about, that we've got intelligence on, and we examine what's happening on those sites, and we continue to investigate and eventually we will be taking enforcement action," said Fact's director general Kieron Sharp. "We've already done so in some cases, one particularly high profile case in the past, and we will continue to do that." Mr Price, however, is not convinced it is that easy. "There are a couple of problems with this," he said. "The main one is that the ISPs are very unwilling to supply subscriber details. They see it as being a matter of privacy and they are not prepared to reveal those kinds of details unless they are given a court order." We asked a file sharer if he was concerned about prosecution. "I don't really consider the legal consequences because there are so many people downloading these things it's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. It's not really a worry," he said. 'Fight back' But broadcasters are using the web as weapon to fight back against the tide of illegal torrents. TV networks across the globe have started to stream shows on their own websites, often at reduced quality to their broadcast counterparts, but free to view nonetheless. Mr Price thinks this is only going to increase. "In the US people have already followed that sort of line. We have seen broadcasters streaming their top shows through their own website, with adverts. "You can go to the ABC website and watch Lost, you can go to the NBC website and watch Heroes. "In the US networks are selling episodes of Lost and episodes of other shows on iTunes for about $1.99 a go." In addition to broadcasters, internet start ups like Babelgum have adopted P2P technology as a solution to legally distributing TV shows over the web. Skype and Kazaa founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis claim their P2P TV offering Joost will provide full screen broadcast quality pictures. Joost is still in beta testing and lacks any really compelling content, but with rumours of deals with big broadcasters in the offing, this kind of legal P2P sharing could help the TV networks force the web pirates to walk the plank. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...ne/6301355.stm ![]() BBC's Download Plans Get Backing TV shows like Doctor Who are expected to be available for download later this year after the BBC Trust gave initial approval to the BBC's on-demand plans. Under the proposals, viewers will be able to watch popular programmes online or download them to a home computer up to a week after they are broadcast. But the trust imposed tough conditions on classical music, which could stop a repeat of the BBC's Beethoven podcasts. Full approval of the on-demand plans will follow a two-month consultation. After that, the BBC will be able to launch its long-awaited iPlayer, a computer application which allows audiences to watch or download any programme from the last seven days. A programme will remain playable for 30 days after being downloaded or seven days after being watched. The BBC Trust, an independent body that replaced the corporation's governors at the beginning of 2007, said the on-demand plans - which also cover cable TV - were "likely to deliver significant public value". But it agreed with broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which said earlier this month that the iPlayer could have a "negative effect" on commercial rivals. As a result, the trust has imposed several conditions on the BBC. It wants the corporation to scale back plans to let downloaded "catch-up" episodes remain on users' hard drives for 13 weeks, suggesting that 30 days is enough. Role Of The BBC Trust: · Replaced BBC Governors · Twelve trustees appointed by the Queen on ministers' advice · Trustees earn about £35,000 a year · Independent of BBC management · Work on behalf of licence fee payers · Ensure value for money · Set limits for BBC services · Handle appeals from BBC complaints process Chris Woolard, head of finance, economics and strategy at the Trust, defended the decision to cut the storage time. When people record a programme at home "if they don't look at it within 48 hours, they don't look at it at all", he said. But some shows will be able to remain on a viewer's computer beyond the standard seven-day window using a feature called series stacking. Every episode of a "stacked" series would be made available until a week after transmission of the final instalment. Trustees said the BBC needed to be clearer about which programmes would be offered on this service - but suggested "landmark" series "with a beginning and end", like Planet Earth or Doctor Who, should be eligible. The trust also asked the BBC to explore ways of introducing parental controls to its on-demand services, as it is worried at the "heightened risk of children being exposed to post-watershed material". Podcasts also came under scrutiny, with the Trust recommending that audio books and classical music be excluded from the BBC's download services. "There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs," it said. The news will be a disappointment to the one million people who downloaded Beethoven's symphonies in a Radio 3 trial in 2005. But trustee Diane Coyle admitted the board "could still change its mind if there was a public outcry and it was backed up by evidence". Licence-fee payers can now have their say on the BBC's plans, and the trust's conditions, in a two-month public consultation. The trust said it expects to publish its final approval by 2 May. The BBC Trust replaced the BBC's governors at the beginning of the year, and this is one of its first major decisions. BBC media correspondent Torin Douglas said it was seen as the first test of the Trust's independence from the corporation's management, and that many would think it had passed it by imposing tougher conditions than Ofcom did in its own report on the issue. Many of the BBC's commercial rivals had wanted Ofcom to take on the role of regulating the corporation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...nt/6316857.stm ![]() Disney's iTunes Sales Reach 1.3 Million Jacqui Cheng Disney has sold 1.3 million movies in its first three months on iTunes, Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an interview with the Financial Times this week. The movie studio, which saw solid sales in the first eight weeks since its iTunes introduction, had downloads skyrocket through the holiday season, pushing them well past the 1-million mark. The two movies responsible for taking Disney past 1 million sales were Pirates of the Caribbean and Cars, said Iger. However, he said that DVD and mass retail sales of those same movies also sold well—in fact, they actually exceeded Disney's expectations on both counts. "We believe the pie is getting bigger," Iger said, emphasizing that Disney's online movie sales did not cannibalize the traditional media sales as some studios and retailers have feared. If iTunes is doing so well for Disney, how come more studios haven't hopped on board? At the Macworld Expo this January, Steve Jobs announced that one more studio was joining Disney in offering movie downloads via iTunes: Paramount. This brought the total number of movies on iTunes from 100 to about 250—a respectable increase, but still a fairly small number in comparison to some of the competition. Apple continues to hope that Disney's success on iTunes will pull other studios out of their shells, but seems to still be having trouble sweet-talking them to an agreement. Part of the reason other studios are afraid to join iTunes—aside from retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart making veiled threats of lowering DVD order volume—is because they don't feel comfortable with Apple's DRM terms. As we wrote in January about Hollywood's views on DRM, an unnamed studio exec said outright that Apple's DRM rules were too lax, with the ability for users to authorize up to five separate computers (unlimited iPod authorizations) and unlimited playthroughs. "[Apple's] user rules just scare the heck out of us," the exec told BusinessWeek. Perhaps once Paramount shows some of its numbers in addition to Disney's, other studios will warm up a bit more and be willing to join in. Until then, it looks like Disney and Paramount will be alone in sharing the iTunes glory for a while. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070202-8758.html ![]() Video Game Tests the Limits. The Limits Win. Heather Chaplin AS director of the 13-year-old Slamdance film festival, the indier-than-thou alternative to the Sundance Film Festival that concludes here Sunday, Peter Baxter has dedicated a good portion of his career to showcasing the work of artists toiling outside the mainstream. Three years ago, in that same anti-establishment spirit, he broadened the festival’s boundaries to include the Guerrilla Gamemaking Competition, a forum for independent video-game makers to do what their counterparts in film get to do every winter up the street: show their work, make deals and rub elbows. Considering how few places independent game makers have for this sort of interaction, perhaps it’s not surprising that the mood the previous two years approached euphoria. “We felt proud just to be associated with Slamdance,” said Andrew Stern, who, along with his partner, Michael Mateas, took home the grand jury prize last year for their game Façade, an interactive drama about a marital crisis inspired by Ingmar’s Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage” and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ ” Tracy Fullerton, a professor of game design at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, was so impressed by what she encountered last year that she persuaded U.S.C.’s Interactive Media Division to sponsor the 2007 competition by offering two six-week student fellowships at the school’s Interactive Media Lab. But this year that euphoria was nowhere in sight. An entrant called Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game! made it to the finals, and in the process attracted complaints about its provocative content. So Mr. Baxter reluctantly opted to withdraw it from the competition. But the anger over his decision has dwarfed the original objections, and many entrants have chosen to leave the festival altogether. The game in question combines real video images of the 1999 Columbine High School killers and snippets of their conversation with intentionally low-resolution 2-D graphics meant to replicate the look of an early-1990s Nintendo-style role-playing game. To its champions the game is a landmark example of how video games can explore deeply disturbing material, and a powerful condemnation of the culture that produced the Columbine tragedy. To its detractors it’s a study in appallingly bad taste, a horrid trivialization of a tragic event. The controversy highlights the questions that experimental game makers face as they seek to evolve from a loose conglomeration of people with similar interests into a full-fledged movement. What will it take for their medium to be considered a legitimate art form? And should games even try to address painful or distasteful subject matter? The game room at the Treasure Mountain Inn here this month was filled with the same red beanbags chairs as last year, but the crowd of 20 or so game designers had withered to half that number, and what had been a ring of more than a dozen humming computer terminals was now a handful of monitors. The rows of folding chairs set up for presentations were half empty, and where last year there was excited chatter on all sides, this year an uncomfortable quiet permeated the room. The story of how this once-electric gathering lost its luster began with a phone call earlier this month by Mr. Baxter to Danny Ledonne, a 25-year-old Colorado filmmaker and the creator of Super Columbine. Overriding the panel of the judges who had included the game among the 14 finalists, Mr. Baxter told Mr. Ledonne that he had decided to withdraw his game because of outraged phone calls and e-mail messages he’d been receiving from Utah residents and family members associated with the Columbine shooting. He was also acting on the advice of lawyers who warned him of the threat of civil suits if he showed the game. “I personally don’t find the game immoral, because an artist has a right to create whatever he wants, whether a filmmaker or a game maker,” Mr. Baxter said. “But when you’re responsible for presenting that work to the public, it becomes more complicated.” Mr. Ledonne, who lives with his parents and had never made a video game before Super Columbine, said he could sympathize with Mr. Baxter’s predicament. “I knew right away what he was going to say,” Mr. Ledonne explained, “so I was just thinking, are they going to reimburse me for my air fare?“ He said he had received multiple death threats since he posted Super Columbine on his Web site in April 2005. “I’ve learned that games are expected to be for children, and when you create a game that’s not, people get very upset,” he said. “I’m not really a provocateur in person,” he continued. “I inherited this society, which I truly feel is moribund and completely unsustainable. To me the Columbine shootings was like the canary in a coal mine.” When word of Mr. Baxter’s decision found its way to the Internet, it set off a hailstorm of pent-up anger and indignation among independent game designers. The decision also prompted a flurry of open letters to Slamdance asking for Super Columbine Massacre to be reinstated. One by one over a period of about a week, 7 out of the remaining 13 finalists withdrew their games in protest, an act of solidarity almost unheard of among a group of people known more for working long hours in isolation than participating in group action. (One game, Toblo, made by a group of students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash., was reinstated by the college, which owns the rights.) A few days later Mr. Baxter heard from Ms. Fullerton at U.S.C. “We became sponsors because we wanted to be part of a contest that stood for certain values having to do with freedom of expression and creativity,” she said. “And when it didn’t anymore, we had to pull our support.” Kellee Santiago, part of the U.S.C. team that made flOw, a sort of New Age Pac-Man that was among those pulled from the competition, said: “It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that games still are not considered a valid creative medium. It’s like saying that games aren’t allowed to cover serious subjects, and if you do, you must be doing something tasteless.” To Mr. Baxter, though, it’s not that simple. “Games really are potentially a far more powerful medium that film, aren’t they?” he said while sitting at the Morning Ray Cafe just a few feet from the underpopulated gaming room. “In films you play a more passive role. You’re sitting back looking at something. Because of the role-playing aspect, games literally take the level of our participation to a whole other level. You are actively engaged in the outcome of your actions. Games are going to affect us in different ways, in ways we don’t fully understand yet.” As he sipped his coffee, Mr. Baxter then said exactly what he had studiously avoided saying for two weeks: “Absolutely, games should be judged by a different criteria than film. I just don’t accept a direct comparison.” To many of today’s independent game designers, the commercial video-game industry has become stagnant and intolerably risk-averse as game budgets reach tens of millions of dollars and design teams swell into the hundreds. But the advent of digital distribution and affordable game-building tools from companies like GarageGames has allowed them to create a broad spectrum of unconventional games. Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-founder of the game-development company Persuasive Games (whose slogan is: “Think games are just for fun? Think again”), was a finalist at the past two Slamdance competitions. One of his recent games is Bacteria Salad, in which the player’s goal is to harvest cheap produce and sell it for as much profit as possible. Another is Oil God, where the goal is to double consumer prices in five years: “Wreak havoc on the world’s oil supplies by unleashing war and disaster!” In another recent game, Darkgame, designed by Eddo Stern, a Los Angeles artist, players wear a device on their heads that translates the game’s visuals into physical pulses. At different points in the game the senses of sight, sound and touch are stimulated, which Mr. Stern hopes will create feelings of claustrophobia and anxiety as well as the usual feelings of wonder and excitement players expect from games. Sam Roberts, the game director of Slamdance, was visibly pained by the withdrawal of so many intriguing entries this year. “The game competition is here to pay attention to new young artists who have great ideas,” he said. “My biggest disappointment is that six fantastic games weren’t here to take advantage of that.” Acknowledging that the event was seriously compromised, Mr. Roberts let the attendees vote on whether to award any prizes at all at this year’s competition. On Monday evening they decided not to. Nonetheless Mr. Roberts said he was optimistic about the future of the event. “These are issues that we can’t avoid as we push the boundaries of what games can be,” he said. “In the end all this debate ended up sparking a lot of discussion and opening a lot of people’s eyes to that fact that there are artistically inclined games out there. And that’s a good thing.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/arts/28chap.html ![]() Games That Sell While Others Languish Matt Richtel Some of the video game industry’s smartest minds thought that couch potatoes wanted richer graphics and more challenging virtual worlds. It turns out that a lot of potatoes simply wanted to get off the couch. That may be the best explanation for the growing popularity of the Nintendo Wii, the new video game system that has players jumping, punching and swinging, giving them an aerobic workout right in front of their television sets. The Wii, which uses an innovative wireless controller to translate the players’ motions onto the screen, has upset the order of the video game world. In electronics stores and elsewhere, there are growing signs that the Wii has taken the lead in buzz and sales over another new console, the Sony PlayStation 3, which offers new superlatives in processing power and graphics. The competitive picture became clearer on Tuesday, when Sony reported disappointing profits that industry analysts attributed largely to the expensive and shaky rollout of the PlayStation 3 and lukewarm demand for the complex machines. By contrast, Nintendo said last week that its own third-quarter sales were up 40 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by Wii sales. Both consoles were hard to come by during the holiday shopping season. This week, visits to stores in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Austin, Tex., turned up several with PlayStation 3’s in stock, while the Wii was sold out. The PlayStation, reflecting Sony’s longstanding dominance, seemed destined to be the one that gamers would snap up. But the Wii is winning many converts who are playing games by moving not just their thumbs but the whole complement of limbs. “You’re up and you’re moving, and it makes you feel more involved,” said Tracy Ciardiello, 28, a stay-at-home mother in Berkeley Springs, W. Va., who bought one of the last Wiis available at a Wal-Mart nearby on Sunday morning. “After an hour, a thing pops on the screen that says, ‘Why not take a rest?’ That just made me laugh.” The Wii and the PlayStation 3 were both released in November and are competing with the Microsoft Xbox 360, also a more powerful game machine. It is a battle with immense stakes, given that the video game industry generated more than $12 billion in sales last year. It is too early to declare a winner. Video game industry analysts said one question hanging over the Wii was whether it was a fad, or whether it would end up creating a new generation of more casual game players — or even become a viable alternative to more powerful machines. But it appears that Nintendo has already created an unexpected three-way contest, while calling into question conventional wisdom that video games are the domain of testosterone-driven gadget freaks who can zone out for hours while conquering computer-generated foes. “Nintendo came at things sideways — they made stuff that’s silly and fun,” said Jeff Gerstmann, senior editor of GameSpot, a Web site with video game news and reviews. “It has created a new style of gaming.” Nintendo recently announced that during the holiday quarter, it shipped 3.2 million Wii consoles and sold 17.5 million games. Sony said it shipped 1.84 million PlayStation 3’s in the quarter, and sold 5.2 million copies of game software for the console. Nintendo might sell more Wiis if it could make and ship more of them. Company officials said they are shipping around a million worldwide every month, half of those to the United States, but retailers say they cannot keep them in stock. “The last time they were here, we had 40 and they sold out in 15 minutes,” said John Weeks, who works in the electronics department of the Target store at South Bay Center in Boston. The Wii was last in stock there on Sunday and sold out quickly, making the console physically demanding for shoppers as well. “I heard there were people here at 5 a.m. waiting,” Mr. Weeks said. Target shoppers in search of a PlayStation 3, however, were in luck. In addition to the handful out on the floor on Tuesday, there were at least 15 PlayStations in back waiting to be sold. Retailers around the country said that while the PlayStations had been selling well, they were generally remaining on the shelves for a few days or a week. Helping the Wii is its $249 price, compared with $499 or $599 for the PlayStation 3, depending on the model, and $299 or $399 for the Xbox. The competition seems to be benefiting all three companies by getting consumers interested in a medium that has languished a bit. Dave Karraker, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said the Wii did not belong in the same category as the more powerful PlayStation 3. “Wii could be considered an impulse buy more than anything else,” he declared. Mr. Karraker said Sony was selling out the 100,000 PlayStation 3 units it was shipping into the United States each week, albeit somewhat more slowly than before Christmas. “The frenzy we saw at the holidays has subsided a bit,” he said. Besides, Mr. Karraker added, Sony thinks the Wii is attracting newcomers, while the PlayStation will be the console of choice for hard-core and committed gamers. So is the Wii expanding the video game market, or is it stealing customers from Sony and Microsoft? For Will Brazelton, 23, a student at San Francisco State University, the answer is both. An avid gamer, he said he planned to buy a PlayStation 3 eventually, but he was in a local EB Games store on Monday seeking a Wii. He said the system seemed especially fun. Also, his sister, even though she is not an avid gamer, had agreed to pay half. Alas, the store had no Wiis, and the manager, Joe Conforti, told Mr. Brazelton that there was not any sure path to getting one. It is “basically luck,” Mr. Conforti advised. He said the calls were coming in hourly from people interested in a Wii, and that when stock does come in, it lasts only an hour or two. For some serious gamers, it is not a question of choosing among systems. Robert Davis, 29, a martial-arts instructor who lives in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and owns a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360 and a Wii, said the Nintendo console was an enjoyable alternative but not a replacement for the more advanced machines. “It’s fun mainly because it’s different, but once that wears off, some people are just couch potatoes,” he said. Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America, said the Wii was changing the perception of what kinds of games adults like to play. The console, she said, “has turned it all upside down.” Ms. Kaplan bristled at Sony’s suggestion that the Wii only appeared to be in higher demand because there had been fewer shipments of it. “That’s absolutely inaccurate,” she said, adding that Nintendo was at least equaling Sony’s shipments. Still, analysts said the challenges for the Wii included whether Nintendo and third-party developers would produce enough games to keep console owners and prospective buyers happy. GameSpot said developers planned to release some 76 games for the Wii in 2007, compared with 127 for PlayStation 3. “At the end of the day, Wii is a terrific secondary system for hard-core gamers,” Mr. Gerstmann of Game-Spot said. But he added that many such gamers had not yet embraced PlayStation 3. “They’re waiting for the good games to come out,” he said. Some gamers echoed that sentiment. “If I get the PlayStation 3, it would be after the price drops and I see what new games come out,” said Alex Chan, 23, a graduate student from Sacramento, who was with some friends at an EB Games store in the CambridgeSide Galleria Mall in Cambridge, Mass. He said he already had a PlayStation 2 and was interested in getting a Wii. The Ciardiello family, in West Virginia, are converts to Nintendo, having made a transition from the PlayStation 2. Ms. Ciardiello, who has three young children, said her husband did some research about which console to buy. She said he liked the idea of getting started without spending a lot of time reading a manual — and, more fundamentally, being a bit active while they played. That part, she said, has been borne out. “My husband broke a sweat playing golf on there,” she said. Katie Zezima contributed reporting from Boston, Cassi Feldman from New York and Bill Kidd from Austin, Tex. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/te... tner=homepage ![]() Hobbled by Disappointing Sales and a Loss at the Game Unit, Sony’s Profit Drops 5% Martin Fackler TOKYO, Jan. 30 — The dip in Sony’s quarterly earnings released early Tuesday underscores what many analysts call the biggest single challenge now facing the recovering Japanese electronics conglomerate: the shaky start of its long-awaited PlayStation 3 game console. On Tuesday, Sony said net profit slipped 5.3 percent, to 159.9 billion yen ($1.31 billion), in the quarter ended Dec. 31. The company, based in Tokyo, blamed a large loss in its games division, despite rebounding sales in its bread-and-butter consumer electronics. The games division posted a quarterly operating loss of 54.2 billion yen ($446 million), in contrast to a profit of 67.8 billion yen in the quarter a year earlier. Sony said the decline was a result of a decision to set the price of the PlayStation 3 below the cost of production as a way to bolster market share. It also pointed to one-time start-up costs for PlayStation 3, which was released in Japan and the United States in November. Analysts, however, said the weak results reflected more fundamental problems with the new console — a high price tag and a complexity that is scaring away all but die-hard game fans. They added that Sony still had plenty of time to turn PlayStation 3’s fortunes around, but only if it cut prices further and made the console more appealing by adding games. “PlayStation 3’s performance so far? In a word, bad,” said Yuta Sakurai, an analyst at Nomura Securities. “It is clearly not good for Sony that a strategic product is off to a weak start. But it’s still early. This race is a marathon, not a sprint.” Sony and its chief executive, Howard Stringer, had hoped that PlayStation 3 would become the company’s latest “champion product,” much like its predecessor, the PlayStation 2, which became a worldwide blockbuster with more than 106 million units sold since 2000. Faced with rising Chinese and other Asian competition, Sony badly needs PlayStation 3 to be a hit of the same magnitude, analysts say. This need is compounded, analysts said, by the reality that Sony has no other potential megahits now visible in its product pipeline. But as Tuesday’s earnings showed, consumer response has so far been disappointing at best, the analysts continued. This has added to recent woes of Sony that include an embarrassing recall late last year of laptop batteries, some of which caught fire. The poor performance of the games division stood in contrast to other parts of the company’s sprawling lineup of products. Sony said Tuesday that it was increasing its profit forecast for the year after strong sales of core consumer products like television sets and digital cameras and movies like the newest James Bond film, “Casino Royale.” Consumer electronics, the biggest division, posted an operating profit of 177.4 billion yen ($1.46 billion), up 102.8 percent, helped by the popularity of Bravia flat-panel TVs, Vaio computers and Cyber-shot digital cameras. Analysts agree that the strong sales in the once-ailing electronics division, the world’s second largest behind the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, the parent of Panasonic, have been a success story for Sony and Mr. Stringer. Another has been improving sales by Sony’s movie studio, which has produced a string of hits including the Bond film and “The Da Vinci Code” — one of Mr. Stringer’s pet projects. Sony is also hoping to continue mining the success of its Spider-Man films with the release of “Spider-Man 3” in May. The movie division had an operating profit of 26.2 billion yen ($215.4 million), reversing a loss of 400 million yen a year earlier. The improved results helped Sony do better than analysts’ predictions that its net profit would fall by half in the most recent quarter. They also helped Sony raise its projected net profit for the fiscal year ending March 31 to 110 billion yen, from an October forecast of 80 billion yen. But analysts said that before Sony could pull out of its long slump once and for all, it has to deal with the problems in its game division. One reason, they said, is that so many other new products are riding on PlayStation 3’s success. Sony hopes that the console will showcase two of the most recent technologies, the Blu-ray next-generation DVD drive and the high-speed Cell microprocessor. “Sony needs to raise demand for its semiconductors to recoup its huge capital investments in chip factories,” said Yoshiharu Izumi, an analyst at JPMorgan Securities, who said those investments run in the billions of dollars. “Fixing its chip business goes together with improving the games division.” Tuesday’s results provided the latest glimpse at the weaker-than-expected demand for PlayStation 3, analysts said. Sony said it shipped 1.84 million PlayStation 3s in the quarter, and sold 5.2 million copies of game software for the console. Nintendo, by contrast, recently announced that it shipped 3.2 million units of its new game console, Wii, and sold 17.5 million copies of software in the period. As recently as the Las Vegas electronics show early this month, Sony proclaimed that it had met its targets of shipping a million PlayStation 3s in the United States and Japan. But independent research groups say that Wii has outsold PlayStation 3 by 2 to 1 in Japan and by a smaller margin in America. The Microsoft Xbox 360 has also outsold PlayStation 3 in the United States, as has the Sony PlayStation 2. Some of PlayStation 3’s problems can be attributed to manufacturing delays that pushed back its release by months, and then slowed production. The delays pushed PlayStation 3’s release in Europe back to March. But analysts and consumers also point to a more basic problem: appealing to consumers. While PlayStation 3 surpasses both Wii and Xbox 360 in performance and graphics, the critics say it suffers from the same problem as many other Sony products: it is overengineered, scaring away average shoppers. Many consumers have also favored the Wii and Xbox 360 because of their lower prices. At $249 in the United States, Wii is half the price of the cheapest PlayStation 3, while Xbox starts at $299. “For many consumers, it’s still just too much,” Mr. Sakurai of Nomura said, “too much machine for too much money.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/te...gy/31sony.html ![]() The DRM Root Kit fiasco Sony BMG Settles FTC Charges U.S. regulators said Tuesday Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed to reimburse consumers up to $150 for damage to their computers for selling CDs with hidden anti-piracy software. According to the Federal Trade Commission, which announced the settlement with the big media company, its anti-piracy software limited the devices on which music could be played to those made by Sony Corp. or Microsoft Corp. It also restricted the number of copies that could be made and monitored consumers' listening habits to send them marketing messages. The FTC said the software also "exposed consumers to significant security risks and was unreasonably difficult to uninstall." The settlement requires the company to allow consumers to exchange through the end of June the affected CDs purchased before Dec. 31, 2006, and reimburse them up to $150 to repair damage done when they tried to remove the software. It also requires Sony BMG to clearly disclose limitations on consumers' use of music CDs, bars it from using collected information for marketing and prohibits it from installing software without consumer consent. For two years, Sony BMG also must provide an uninstall tool and patches to repair the security vulnerabilities on consumers' computers and must advertise them on its Web site. The company also is required to publish notices describing the exchange and repair reimbursement programs on its Web site. Sony BMG did not admit a law violation and the settlement is subject to public comment for 30 days, after which the FTC will decide whether to make it final. Representatives from New York-based Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann AG, did not immediately return a call for comment Tuesday morning. In 2005, the company shipped more than 12 million compact discs on 52 Sony BMG titles, each loaded with one of two content protection programs, and about 7 million of those CDs were sold. The Digital Rights Management software installed itself on consumers' computers without their knowledge or consent. Last month, the company settled similar cases with more than 40 states, agreeing to pay more than $4 million and to reimburse customers. Shares of Sony slid 10 cents to $46.90 in pre-market activity after closing at $47 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, where they have traded between $37.24 and $52.29 in the past year. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D8MVLL3O1.htm ![]() Finally: VideoScan Releases High-Def Disc Sales Numbers After over six months of head-to-head combat, we finally have an all-inclusive independent yardstick against which to compare Blu-ray and HD DVD disc sales, thanks to the first public release of sales numbers from Neilsen VideoScan. Nielsen VideoScan is home entertainment industry's leading source for competitive sales info, tracking point-of-sale data from all channels of video distribution including mass merchants, audio/video retailers, electronics outlets, grocery stores, drug stores, and internet sites. And while the numbers are still not quite as crispy as we'd like (you won't find any hard sales figures here -- only an index of how each format is faring against the other), they do suggest some trending that's likely to be music to the ears of Blu-ray supporters. According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. It should be noted that the two weeks in question saw only two new high-def disc releases -- both from Blu-ray ('The Covenant' on Jan 2, and 'Crank' on Jan 9). More interestingly, VideoScan's numbers indicate that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Blu-ray managed to close the gap of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD by over seven percentage points, suggesting that if the current trend continues, the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks. The release of this VideoScan data follows months of speculation and conjecture on both sides of the fence. While format boosters have released sales figures for hardware, the studios have held high-def disc sales numbers close to their vests, leaving fans to parse Amazon sales charts and analyst reports in search of some sense of who's "winning" the format war. With the anticipated continued weekly release of these numbers, supporters of both formats should have a somewhat more definitive yardstick against which to measure their format's disc sales prowess. As always, stay tuned... (Thanks to Brian for sending in this tip!) http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/456 ![]() Blockbuster Shuts Down in Peru, Piracy Blamed The last movie rental outlet under the brandname of U.S. home entertainment giant Blockbuster has closed its doors in Peru, where it is often cheaper to buy a pirated DVD, than it is to legally rent one. Randy Hargrove, U.S.-based spokesman for Blockbuster Inc, told on Wednesday the closure was linked to competition problems, but did not elaborate any further. "I can confirm the last shop shut down a few days ago... For now there are no plans to reenter the Peruvian market," he said. Illegal copies of DVDs with Hollywood blockbusters can be bought for around $1 from street vendors in downtown Lima, while it often costs twice as much to rent a licensed copy. There were a dozen Blockbuster franchise rental outlets, operated by Video International Peru, in the country two years ago. Local daily newspaper El Comercio said Video International Peru officials last year blamed piracy for slumping revenues of the franchise. Article ![]() Net Neutrality Act Once Again on the Agenda Michael Talbert On January 9th, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and Democrat Byron Dorgan reintroduced the Internet Freedom Preservation act to the Senate. Better known as the Net Neutrality Act, the bill was killed by the Senate last year in a vote split down party lines (Democrats yea, Republicans nay), with the exception of Senator Snowe. With the Democrats having a slight majority in the Senate, the bill certainly has a better chance this time around, but it still needs 60 votes to prevent a Republican filibuster. The impetus for the bill started back in 2005, when broadband network executives began discussing the possibility of charging companies that use a high percentage of bandwidth. Most notably, in an interview with a Business Week, SBC chairman Ed Whitacre Jr (now AT&T CEO) stated: "How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" Whitacre went on to say, "The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts!" Whats nuts is that he actually said that. What followed was a grass roots uprising from Internet companies, consumer groups, and bloggers, concerned about broadband service providers having the ability to determine what applications and services are provided to the Internet consumer. Conceivably, even searches performed on the Internet could lead directly to a site owned by the provider. Broadband service providers already charge consumers up to $60 a month for Internet service, and now want to turn around and charge companies like Google, Yahoo, YouTube and Vonage for their bandwidth usage. What you see on the Internet would be totally under the influence of your broadband service provider the so called Gatekeeper, and a once free and unfettered Internet would evolve into a scripted and censored interactive television network. And what about up and coming technologies such as Voice over IP telephony? If you dont pay, you dont play! The pure play VoIP providers like Vonage, Packet8 and Skype offer some of the lowest rates in the history of the Telecommunications industry. Wouldnt AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast just love to tax these companies right out of business! These big boys also offer VoIP phone service, but prefer to start at $40 calling plans rather than the pure plays $10-$20 plans. At 3 million and growing, consumers are realizing the value of Internet Telephony. Let the Gatekeepers charge for the pipe, and the little guys are sure to suffer, as will the consumer in the form of higher prices. The Gatekeepers complain that they built the network, and they should be able to recoup their investment. Fine, but does that mean they should be able to shape the face of the Internet? Companies like AT&T need to find another way. The Internet was and is a place where the little guy has as good a chance as any to make it big. Google, YouTube, Skype and Vonage all started small, and are now leaders in their Internet industry. The Net Neutrality act would prohibit service providers from blocking or degrading access to Internet content and services. They also could not prevent consumers from connecting external devices to their network, with the exception of devices posing a threat to security. The prioritization of types of content, applications, or services would be allowed under the condition that it is done free of charge, and that it is done for all types of that particular content. For example, the prioritization of packets to insure Quality of Service for Voice over IP must be done for all VoIP providers free of charge to them. Another interesting proposal in the bill would require that broadband companies offer standalone broadband service, to be enforced by the FCC. A recent ruling by the FCC in Atlanta decried that Bell South (now AT&T), was not obliged to unbundle its DSL broadband service from a traditional telephone line. This would open up the opportunity for consumers to acquire a DSL broadband connection without having to pay for traditional phone service. Whitacre and company (AT&T) recently agreed to adopt the spirit of net neutrality for a period of 2 years so that they could get approval from the FCC to merge with Bell South. It worked! Bell South and Cingular Wireless will soon be known, once again, as AT&T. Senator Dorgan maintains that the Internet was a place where anyone with a good idea could create a business. "The marketplace picked winners and losers, not some central gatekeeper," said the Senator. "That freedom--the very core of what makes the Internet what it is today--must be preserved." With a new sheriff in town, maybe, just maybe it will be. http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/A...e-Agenda/31886 ![]() Does Network Neutrality Mean an End to BitTorrent Throttling? Nate Anderson Now that BitTorrent is all grown up and has been given the keys to its parents' car, ISPs are faced with the difficult decision about how to handle the protocol. Companies from around the world have been throttling the service, which can sometimes eat up three-quarters of a provider's total bandwidth. Throttling could be seen as a legitimate response to this bandwidth crunch if all BitTorrent content were illegal, but of course, it's not. So what's an ISP to do—especially if they have agreed to run a neutral network? BitTorrent has always had its legal uses—one popular application is distributing Linux ISOs—but legal uses of the software have become increasingly common over the last year. BitTorrent (the company) has announced its own plans to go legit, offering DRMed Hollywood movies from major studios. The company has already raised almost $9 million in venture capital and has signed deals with several of the major studios. Its service should launch sometime in February. Or consider Zudeo, the BitTorrent-based service from Azureus, which is trying to do much the same thing, but in high-definition. It is also poised to send massive amounts of traffic through the 'Net, but ISPs won't be able to tell simply by looking at a packet whether it's legitimate or not. The protocol has become popular enough that Opera has built-in support for BitTorrent downloads, and Blizzard's own World of Warcraft update program is built on open-source BitTorrent technology. While this litany of legal services can lead to cries for ISPs to stop shaping BitTorrent traffic, the reality remains that a large percentage of this traffic is still illicit file-swapping. And whether it's legal or not, no ISP is thrilled to have 80 percent of their network capacity given over to serving BitTorrent downloads. What's an ISP to do? That question is made even more difficult for companies that have agreed to abide by network neutrality provisions. So far, the only US company to do so in a binding way has been AT&T, which agreed to provide a neutral network for several years as part of its merger agreement with BellSouth. Such agreements could prevent companies from shaping BitTorrent traffic on their networks, which would be great for World of Warcraft players, Linux users, and fans of Lost, but could have a negative effect on the speeds of those just out to surf the web for business or pleasure. ISPs that have made no such agreements may not need to worry about BitTorrent taking over their networks, but they do need to wrestle with the issue of how to handle it now that so many legal uses of the protocol are available. Do they want to irritate their BitTorrent-using contingent, or let BitTorrent flow unhindered at the risk degrading the experience of those who don't download torrents? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070201-8750.html ![]() Surveys: Internet Traffic Touched by YouTube For the first time in years, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing isn't eating as much network bandwidth as video sharing and other types of Internet traffic, say two equipment vendors whose products help carriers manage and monitor bandwidth usage. Ellacoya Networks Inc. , which sampled about 2 million broadband customer connections, reports that Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) traffic now uses 39 percent of network bandwidth in the networks it monitors, while P2P traffic uses only 37 percent. Sandvine Inc., which sampled some 2.7 million broadband hookups, came back with results similar to Ellacoya's. Sandvine reports HTTP traffic now uses 38 percent of network bandwidth in North American networks, while P2P usage has fallen to 36 percent. The rise in HTTP traffic is attributable to the popularity of video sharing services like Google Video, YouTube Inc. , and others. As people watch streaming video over the Internet, those videos are typically coming "live" from a central, managed server, as opposed to a network peer. In fact, YouTube's packets make up 4 percent of the HTTP traffic, Ellacoya says, or 2 percent of total network bandwidth use. "We saw an obvious rise in overall Web traffic and a rise in HTTP video streaming as a second aspect," says Fred Sammartino, Ellacoya's VP of marketing. "Video trumps everything because it is ten times or a hundred times bigger than images." Ellacoya's survey found that BitTorrent remains the most popular P2P file type used in most North American networks, followed by file types used by services such as Gnutella (Limewire) and eMule. http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=115816 ![]() Viacom Demands YouTube Pull its Videos Down Eric Bangeman Viacom, which owns popular cable networks Comedy Central and MTV, has demanded that YouTube remove all Viacom content from the popular video-sharing site. If you're having a feeling of déjà vu reading this, it is because late in October, YouTube was also forced to take down all of the Comedy Central clips at Viacom's behest. A couple of days later, many of the clips began reappearing on YouTube and subsequently-added clips have yet to be removed. At the time that the clips were first removed, Viacom publicly expressed its desire to find a workable business model for making its TV content available on the Internet. Over the past several months the two companies have been engaged in negotiations over revenue sharing. Those negotiations broke down over the last couple of days as the two companies failed to bridge the gap between them. Viacom and other media companies have been exploring the possibility of creating their own video site, one where they would have absolute control over the content and get to keep the lion's share of the revenues generated. The demand may just be a negotiating ploy by Viacom, an attempt to force YouTube to sweeten the pot, or the media company may be about to launch its own Internet video venture. While YouTube has a vast amount of user-created content up on its site, one of its chief draws is the copyrighted content captured from TV—music videos, clips from TV shows, and sports highlights—and posted by its users. Google, which purchased YouTube last fall, knew that pleasing all the rights holders would be difficult at best, but has remained determined to "legitimize" all of the content available on the site. YouTube, and later Google, were able to sign on a few rights-holders, most notably Universal and Sony BMG. Other content creators took an equity stake in YouTube in exchange for allowing their content to remain on the video sharing site. During its earnings call earlier this week, Google said that it was hard at work on audio and video fingerprinting technology that would make addressing copyright infringement issues easier. The content identification system under development would go a long way towards appeasing copyright holders, but is that really in Google and YouTube's best interests? Much of what makes YouTube great is the fact that its the users who decide what goes up and what becomes popular. The content creation industry has proven itself to be notoriously short-sighted in the past, especially when it comes to relinquishing any degree of control over how its music and programming is used. As a result, rights-holders like Viacom may simply end up taking their ball and going home. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070202-8756.html ![]() BoxCloud: Dead Simple File Sharing David Chartier Billing themselves as "dead simple file sharing for design and media professionals," BoxCloud seems to have a good thing going here. If you deal with a lot of clients and customers who simply aren't hip to FTP or other ways of transferring large files, BoxCloud offers a pretty simple, nay - dead simple - alternative. Featuring software clients for both Windows and Mac OS X (though when Download Squad found them last year they apparently offered a Linux client too), all you need is someone's email address to share a file of any size with them. Your lucky recipient, be they a client, friend, family member or co-worker, will receive an email with a link to download the file from your BoxCloud page. But herein lies the twist: BoxCloud doesn't host the file, so you aren't charged for space - your computer must be running BoxCloud's client, be on, and connected to the internet in order to share the file (i.e. - you host it). Their service plan then simply charges you for monthly bandwidth, not storage space, and plans start at 1GB/month for free, moving on up to 20GB for $9/month. Sure, anyone who's domain + hosting savvy will scoff at this service, but anyone looking for brainless and painless file sharing might appreciate BoxCloud's simplicity. If you're interested, take their tour for more info on how simple sharing can be. http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/29/boxcl...-file-sharing/ ![]() Skinkers Secures £2m in Funding for P2P Service Greg Brooks Skinkers, the desktop communication company, has secured £2m in funding to roll out the Skinkers Live Delivery Network, a peer-to-peer communication service. The company, which signed a technology spin-out deal from Microsoft Research Cambridge Lab last year that also saw the tech giant take a stake in the company, raised £1.75m from existing investor New Media Spark, with the remainder from other existing investors. The investment in the new peer-to-peer delivery system will allow the company to ensure that any services are delivered in real-time by taking the burden of delivery from their servers and distributing it across a peer-to-peer network, allowing businesses and consumers to receive high quality, digital feeds including text, audio and video in real time on their desktops. http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/31485/...P+service.html ![]() New Version of Orbit Downloader Now Available Press Release New version of powerful software in an all-in-one downloader makes it easy for users to download files, including flash-based video clips. The program is fast, light and can handle all kinds of files. Over one million users around the world have adopted Orbit Downloader in three short months. The program was also named top 10 software in 2006 from Baixaki. Beijing, China, January 30, 2007 -- Orbit Downloader recently announced version 1.3.2, the latest release of the popular all-in-one downloading software, perfect for video clip downloads and downloading files from file sharing services. The easy to use, small program is fast and helps even internet novices easily save the streaming media and flash video clips so popular on the Internet. With this new release of the program, developers have made the program a top choice among All in One Downloaders. The first version, Orbit Downloader 1.0.0.1, was released in Oct.2006 with some basic functions. Now the current version, 1.3.2, released in Jan. 2007, makes Orbit Downloader a speedy downloaders, helping users get files from file sharing programs. Internet users the world over agree -- the number of Orbit's users has exceeded one million in three months since release. In 2006, Orbit Downloader was named a top 10 program by Baixaki, a popular dowloads database. Orbit Downloader features include: *Super fast and super light Orbit Downloader is based on p2p and multi-source downloading technology, which let users download files up to 500% faster than before. Orbit Downloader is written with efficiency in mind, it typically uses less than 3MB of memory and 3% of CPU when downloading. Additionally, the installation package is less than 1.6MB. *All-in-one downloader for online video and other files Orbit Downloader can download Flash video and other video clips, including stuff from sites like Youtube, Google, MySpace, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, etc. It can also help file sharing easier, making downloads from RapidShare.com much faster, safer and more stable. Additionally, Orbit Downloader supports most file-sharing service websites, including Megaupload.com, Badongo.com, Sendspace.com, YourFileHost.com, Uploading.com, FileFront.com, 4shared.com, TurboUpload.com, Depositfiles.com, FileFactory.com, and many more. *Capture flash/streaming Media When users hover on a flash video clip or streaming media file in a webpage, Orbit Downloader displays a small button. Users can easily download the file with a single click. In future releases, the Orbit team will add some new functions, such as Download schedule / Zip preview / Add-on, all in response to user feedback. The enhancements will help make Orbit Downloader the top choice for file sharing programs and video clip downloads. "We're driven to constantly make improvements to Orbit Downloader," said Mei Ai, spokesperson for the Orbit Team. "We hope users will find Orbit Downloader a powerful program that meets all their downloading needs." For more information on how Orbit Downloader can help make file sharing and video clip downloads easier, visit www.orbitdownloader.com Contact: Mei Ai 86-10-85252585 Orbit Team http://www.orbitdownloader.com/ http://press.xtvworld.com/article16621.html ![]() P2P Media Summit NY to Highlight P2PTV Early Registration Rates End January 30th for DCIA’s First NY Conference & Exposition Press Release The Distributed Computing Industry Association (www.DCIA.info), a trade organization with nearly one-hundred Member companies representing peer-to-peer (P2P) and social networking software providers, content rights holders, and service-and-support companies, today announced speakers and sponsors for its upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY. This first-ever DCIA New York Conference & Exposition is scheduled for February 6th-8th in New York, NY, and will focus on P2PTV, the industry’s newest high-growth phenomenon. P2PTV refers to video distribution on the Internet using P2P technologies. Many DCIA Members now offer solutions to help content rights holders, ISPs, client applications, and other participants in this rapidly emerging distribution channel, accomplish this at astonishingly low costs and with astoundingly high quality of service (QoS). “We are very pleased to announce that Next New Networks’ Fred Seibert and FTI Consulting's Bruce Benson will be our luncheon speakers, and our keynotes now include Altnet’s Kevin Bermeister, damaka’s Siva Ravikumar, iMesh’s Robert Summer, INTENT MediaWorks’ Les Ottolenghi, Raketu’s Greg Parker, QTRAX’s Allan Klepfisz, and VeriSign’s Todd Johnson,” said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty in making the announcement. P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY sponsors now include FTI Consulting, INTENT MediaWorks, Digital Containers, Javien Digital Payment Solutions, and BUYDRM. For more information, please visit www.dcia.info/P2PMSNY2007. Early registration rates, which save attendees up to $200, end January 30th. A special highlight of the summit will be its live P2PTV workshop. Digital Containers’ CEO Chip Venters will conduct a demonstration of a P2P super-distribution ecosystem, and Pando Networks’ CEO Robert Levitan and CTO Laird Popkin will conduct a live demonstration of its latest BitTorrent-based offerings. The Tuesday February 6th Conference features keynotes from top P2P software distributors, panels of industry leaders, and valuable workshops. There will be a continental breakfast, luncheon, and networking cocktail reception with live entertainment. All attendees will receive a copy of the new P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG) white paper, now being completed with the participation of the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The February 7th-8th Exposition is being held in conjunction with Digital Hollywood’s Media Summit New York (MSNY), and registration for the full DCIA Conference & Exposition includes that event as well. The Policy Track features Alston & Bird’s Aydin Caginalp, Dreier's Joshua Wattles, MasurLaw’s Steve Masur, the MPAA’s Fritz Attaway, and Oversi’s Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, and will address the post MGM v. Grokster world – new rules for P2P. The Technology Track features Abacast’s Michael King, CacheLogic’s Andrew Parker, Digimarc’s Tony Rodriguez, and Javien’s Leslie Poole, and will address P2P file sharing – the evolving distribution chain. The Marketing Track features KlikVU’s Lowell Feuer, Polytechnic University’s Keith Ross, SafeNet’s John Desmond, and Ultramercial’s Dana Jones, and will address P2P business models – what’s working and what’s not. The Content Distribution panel features Babel Networks’ Erik Lumer, Blacksmith’s Al Smith, Jun Group’s Mitchell Reichgut, and MediaPass Network’s Daniel Harris, and will address the perspective of artists and rights holders – P2P for content creators. The Solutions Development panel features Cinea’s Rob Schumann, Media Global Intertainment’s Steve Rimland, PeerApp’s Frank Childs, and RawFlow’s Ian Franklyn, and will address advancement – creating the commercial P2P ecosystem. The Support Services panel features BUYDRM's Christopher Levy, Friend Media Technology Systems’ (FMTS) Jonathan Friend, Keystone Tech Group’s Limor Schafman, and P2P Cash’s Tom Meredith, and will address accountability – tracking transactions and paying the players. Live showcase entertainers for the post-conference networking cocktail reception include Kirsten DeHaan, the “Internet’s First Rock Star” Scooter Scudieri, and Al Smith. Registration can be done online at www.dcia.info/P2PMSNY2007/register.html or by calling 410-476-7965. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz, DCIA Member Services, at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. About the DCIA The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) is a non-profit trade organization focused on commercial development of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and related distributed computing technologies. DCIA Membership is organized into three Groups: Content, Operations, and Platform. The DCIA conducts working groups and special projects, such as the Consumer Disclosures Working Group (CDWG), P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG), P2P PATROL, and the P2P Revenue Engine (P2PRE). It also publishes the weekly online newsletter DCINFO. DCIA Editorial Contact: Kelly Larabee 410-476-7965 kelly@dcia.info http://www.streamingmedia.com/press/view.asp?id=6128 ![]() Music Industry Hesitates Over Ad-Funded Downloads Laurence Frost There's still no such thing as a free lunch — just yet. But consumers now expect an increasing array of online media and services, from phone calls and maps to videos and even games, to be delivered without charge. So when SpiralFrog, an obscure startup, announced a deal with Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group last August to offer free, advertising-supported music downloads, it made headlines as a bold but natural step — giving the record company a share of the fast-growing Internet advertising pie, while squeezing out pirates. EMI Group PLC signed up the following month. But the arrival of ad-supported downloads from mainstream music catalogs appeared this week to have suffered a major setback. SpiralFrog sent its attorney to the Midem music industry gathering in Cannes to replace former CEO Robin Kent, who was ousted late last month — when the service had been due to go live. "There's been a management shake-up," Marc Jacobson of law firm Greenberg Traurig told a conference at which Kent had been due to speak. SpiralFrog still plans to launch, Jacobson said, but has no firm date. He declined to elaborate and made no comment on speculation that the company had been unable to sell enough advertising to meet royalty fees. Despite a boom in download sales over the Internet and mobile phones, the music market as a whole is shrinking as digital revenue growth fails to offset a decline in CD sales. Total music revenues fell between 3 percent and 4 percent globally in 2006, according to estimates by IFPI, the industry's leading global body. Illegal file-sharing accounts for up to 100 times as many song downloads as Apple Inc.'s iTunes, the market leader in legal online music sales, according to Intent MediaWorks, a U.S.-based consulting firm that specializes in digital distribution. SpiralFrog and other embryonic ad-supported services promise a new approach to tackling piracy. Proponents see massive demand from peer-to-peer users who, they believe, would gladly put up with commercial messages in return for the peace of mind legality brings. If you can't beat them, the theory goes, then at least make some money out of them. "It's such a significant stream that, if you can monetize it and take it over, you can get paid a lot of money," said Les Ottolenghi, Intent's founding chief executive. The attention generated by SpiralFrog "proves there is an interest level to find a solution to ad-based media and entertainment for the consumer," he said. The market may be there, but doubts remain over whether the terms on offer can persuade enough established recording companies to enter it seriously. Although SpiralFrog had signed up EMI and Universal before its launch plans were canceled, it had failed to win deals with the other two majors, Warner Music Group Inc. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment — a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. Thomas Gewecke, Sony BMG's executive vice president for digital sales, rejected suggestions that hardened file-sharers could be tempted only by free offerings. "They don't expect their Xbox to be free," he said. "They don't expect the ringtone on their cell phone to be free." Although signed up to SpiralFrog, EMI still harbors reservations about ad-supported download and subscription sites. Roger Faxon, who heads the publishing division, said the company was ready to experiment with such services — but only "if we can understand the economic model and how our songwriters will be appropriately compensated." EMI is negotiating to sell its music on video-sharing site YouTube.com and popular online hangout MySpace.com, Faxon said, declining to elaborate. "I tend to believe it's these models that will capture the public's imagination, rather than the straight download models." Free music has always had a place in the industry, other observers point out, and recording companies should not try to deny it a new role in the digital age. "Radio sells music for free," French economist Jacques Attali said during a Midem meeting. "But radio is doing very well with advertising and other kinds of revenues." Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am — in Cannes with the band's female vocalist, Fergie, for a joint appearance at France's NRJ Music Awards — gave his own take on the industry's troubles. "To be honest I'm afraid of the music industry falling apart," said will.i.am, whose real name is William Adams. "The thing that makes me nervous is the hesitation that record companies have about the new technologies." http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/new...ews_Technology ![]() A Flat Fee for Tunes? Victoria Shannon CANNES A year ago, the music industry was in near hysteria over the French government's proposal to impose a global license fee that would stand in for royalty payments on the purchases of digital music over the Internet. This year, with music sales still sinking like a rock, the record labels are no longer apoplectic about the possibility of such a fee, which could be collected by Internet service providers through their customers' monthly subscription charges. "It's a model worth looking at," John Kennedy, head of the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, said at a press briefing last weekend in Cannes at Midem, the annual global music market. "If the ISPs want to come to us and look for a blanket license for an amount per month, let's engage in that discussion..." But Mitch Bainwol, head of the Recording Industry Association of America, who was the co-host of the briefing, quickly interjected: "...on a voluntary, commercial basis." What's going on here? Is it really possible that we could get the right to copy the music we own digitally and move it among our various music players in return for something as simple as a monthly fee? One group a year ago proposed the fee at €6.66, or $8.66, a month, which would then be distributed by the traditional collecting societies to musicians and other copyright holders. Three key changes have taken place in the past year that make the environment a bit friendlier to such a proposal, at least from the point of view of the major recording companies, which the phonographic industry group represents. One is the steady erosion in music industry sales. Revenue from digital downloads did double in 2006, but revenue from retail CDs fell even more. This leaves Kennedy, at his most optimistic, hoping for overall music sales this year to be flat. The second change is that such a fee is precisely the way that Microsoft structured a deal with Universal Music Group over its Zune player. This fall, the two companies agreed to a plan that gives Universal a fixed amount of money for each digital music player Microsoft sells. While no one is calling it a piracy fee, an "interoperability" license or even anything similar, the deal is nonetheless a precedent. Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, said Microsoft was in talks with all of the other major labels over a comparable arrangement. And thirdly, the global discussions about "interoperability" - whether or not you can play your purchased digital music on whatever device you want - are heating up again, at least in Europe. On Monday, consumer groups in Germany and France allied with their counterparts in Norway, Denmark and Sweden to push Apple to make songs sold from its iTunes online store compatible with music players other than iPods. Norway has set a September deadline for Apple to change its approach, while in France, a government commission is being established to take up complaints over interoperability on a case-by-case basis. On Tuesday, Apple acknowledged the heat by releasing a statement. "We've heard from several agencies in Europe, and we're looking forward to resolving these issues as quickly as possible," the company said. "We shouldn't kid ourselves," Kennedy said. "Steve Jobs holds the biggest key to interoperability. He faces advice from us and pressure from various governments around the world." As far as Jobs giving in, he added, "it's going to be at the stage where he thinks it is commercially advantageous to him." With each passing day - and some insiders are saying that CD sales in 2007 are already markedly below a year ago - it is becoming clear that someone will have to pay to make the digital music business easier for consumers. Whether it is the device makers like Microsoft and Apple, Internet access companies or the music industry itself, I don't think it matters much to consumers: The cost will get passed down to us in the end, anyway. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/...ss/ptend25.php ![]() Napster Chief Expects Boost From Cell Phones Most consumers haven't accepted the subscription model of renting rather than buying music, but Napster's chief says this is likely to change over the next year. Once synonymous with piracy in online music, Napster now offers music via a subscription service. But it is hindered by the dominance of Apple Computer's iPod which, due to a rights management issue, cannot play music purchased via Napster. Napster Chief Executive Chris Gorog says Apple's approach is "anti-consumer" and had held back the subscription model. But Gorog expects the picture to change as consumers turn to mobile phones that also operate as MP3 players. He believes this access to a wider market will introduce more music fans to the concept of unlimited subscription services. "The key obstacle to date to moving into mass adoption for the subscription model has been the iPod which has had the very large majority of market share with MP3 players," he said. "But the dynamic that will be happening…in this calendar year is the phenomenon of music-enabled cell phones…Napster will be going from an available market place…of basically zero to ubiquity." In its earliest days, Napster almost single-handedly launched Internet song swapping but was forced to close in July 2001 after a series of legal battles over copyright infringement. It relaunched as a legal download site in 2003. Earlier this month, Napster announced that it had signed a deal to become the exclusive online music subscription service to AOL, giving it access to an additional 350,000 subscribers on top of its current 566,000 paid subscribers. Gorog said he expects the majority of AOL customers to join Napster, making it the No. 1 subscription service worldwide. eMusic, the independent subscription service, announced this month that it had 250,000 subscribers. Rhapsody, another service, does not publish its subscriber numbers. Digital rights management, or DRM, was introduced by copyright holders to stop unauthorized duplication. Napster uses the Microsoft's Windows PlayForSure system which was dealt a blow recently when Microsoft launched its own music device, the Zune player, with a different DRM. But Gorog said he is not concerned by Zune as he did not think it was a "player" in the market and said Microsoft is still supporting the PlayForSure system, with mobile phone makers Nokia and Motorola signing up. Napster said in September that it had hired investment bank UBS to look into several possibilities after it received "interest by third parties." Gorog would not give any further details on the issue and said simply that all options were on the table. http://news.com.com/Napster+chief+ex...3-6154971.html ![]() ‘Dreamgirls’ Banked on Best Picture, and Lost Laura M. Holson Oscar theorists all have their notions about the failure of “Dreamgirls” to get a best picture nomination last week, despite eight other nominations for Academy Awards and an all-out drive by its backers for top honors. Too few voters saw the musical at industry screenings, one argument goes. Performances by the newcomer Jennifer Hudson and by Eddie Murphy, each of whom received nominations, overshadowed the film, others say. Marketers were seduced by the movie’s admiring press. Or, perhaps as Bill Condon, the “Dreamgirls” director who wrote the script for the 2003 Oscar-winner “Chicago,” said on Friday, “I think academy members just liked the other movies better.” Whatever its cause, the snub left Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG, Viacom units that financed the film, scrambling to capitalize on prospects that were suddenly less dazzling. As well as prestige, a best picture nomination is a valuable asset and can give a film like this one — a musical seeking mainstream credibility — an added boost in theaters and on DVDs. In the background too were two of Hollywood’s must substantial figures. Brad Grey, Paramount’s chairman, had been through a rough year and could have used the good news of a best picture — something he may still get with “Babel.” David Geffen, though not credited as the producer of “Dreamgirls,” was nonetheless responsible for its birth, having waited 25 years to see a reinvention of the original play onscreen. Nowhere is the line between selling and overselling more delicate than in an Oscar campaign. And “Dreamgirls,” having stumbled in a dance of managed expectations, may well be remembered as the picture that showed how far a studio cannot go in seeking a prize. “I don’t see a reason to vote for, or not vote for, a movie simply because it is a front-runner,” said Tom Pollock, a producer and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives the Oscars. Mr. Pollock, who declined to say what movies received his support, described the “Dreamgirls”’ stumble as just another bad break in a tough game. “There are 6,000 people in the academy,” he said, “and they all have different opinions.” But executives behind the film were left to wonder what exactly had gone awry. “What is a ‘best picture?’ ” asked Rob Moore, Paramount’s president for worldwide marketing, distribution and operations. Mr. Moore noted that “Dreamgirls” found itself competing with nominees of a more typical bent toward serious drama, including “Babel,” another Paramount film; “Letters From Iwo Jima,” released by Warner Brothers Pictures, and “The Queen.” “The category isn’t ‘most entertaining movie,’ ” Mr. Moore noted. In the weeks to come, the discussion will surely turn to the effect of last week’s nominations on the film’s box-office prospects. Paramount executives are encouraged. In an unexpected twist, they said, interest in it appears to have increased, as curious moviegoers want to see what the controversy is all about. The studio said it is on track to make more than $100 million at the box office in the United States — still short of the $171 million in ticket sales for the popular musical “Chicago,” but enough to ensure profit on a film that cost about $74 million to make, after marketing costs, foreign sales and revenue from all sources are factored in. But those who argue that the “Dreamgirls” team would have done better with a softer sell can point to much. A year before its debut in theaters, studio marketers had decided to sell the film with its bold musical numbers, a fictional treatment loosely based on the rise of the Supremes, as a “must see” event. In 2005, “Dreamgirls” teaser trailers were attached to movies like “The Producers,” another musical of a much different flavor, even before filming began. And last February, Paramount was already inviting reporters to a cocktail party at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where scenes for the movie were shot. At the time, a few hundred reporters and others gathered under a rain-soaked tent to watch scenes from the film on flat-screen television. Later, they were given a tour of the set. Terry Press, then a DreamWorks executive who headed “Dreamgirls” marketing, said on Friday that much of the early exposure was meant to counter any sense that the picture, with its all-black cast, would be a tough sell for mainstream audiences. Also, the studio did not want the movie to be tainted by the showings of “The Producers” and “Rent,” musicals that bombed at the box office in 2005. The early hype reached a zenith in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where, according to Mr. Moore, the studio was fighting to get foreign exhibitors on board early. On May 19, Paramount threw a lavish party at the grand Hotel Martinez, flying in the film’s stars, Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx and Ms. Hudson for the celebration. There, the director introduced four songs from the film and the cast to a wildly enthusiastic crowd. “I think the one thing that really caught people by surprise were the performances by Jennifer and Eddie Murphy,” Mr. Moore said. (Ms. Hudson played Effie, the role made famous by Jennifer Holliday on Broadway, and Mr. Murphy played a James Brown-style performer.) “People were saying, ‘Wow, it feels like a big hit movie.’ ” Indeed, the party caused a stir at Cannes and in Hollywood. Photographs of the handsome cast circulated widely on the Internet. Bloggers and columnists gave the movie early raves. A Foxnews.com columnist, Roger Friedman, predicted that “Dreamgirls” would “be a monster of a movie.” Lavish praise by a Hollywood blogger, David Poland, set off a debate among readers when he wrote, among other things, that Mr. Murphy’s performance “stinks of Oscar.” “Later on, people accused us of the big hype thing,” Mr. Condon said. “But people would see it and love it. I know the perception was we were coming on like a Mack truck.” Mr. Moore said the goal of the campaign was commercial success for “Dreamgirls.” But Ms. Press, asked when the “Dreamgirls” marketing campaign ended and its Oscar promotion began, replied, “That’s a good question.” Neither she nor Mr. Moore, who said they hired two Oscar consultants for the film, offered an answer or would discuss the marketing budget, which experienced marketers in Hollywood have put near $40 million. By November, the “Dreamgirls’” publicity machine was in overdrive ahead of a limited release on Dec. 15. Oprah Winfrey played host to the cast on her show. (Beyoncé, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Foxx also appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair) and hailed the film as Oscar-worthy. Paramount covered the usual bases in the awards campaign, for instance by seeking to get as many guild members as it could to early screenings. The movie’s celebrity-packed premieres in New York and Los Angeles were popular events. But things stretched toward the extraordinary when Ms. Hudson embarked on a 10-city publicity tour, with screenings for patrons who paid $25 to attend. The campaign clearly made an impression on the media crowd: More than a month before the Oscar nominations were to be announced, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as Oscar bloggers, called “Dreamgirls” an early front-runner for the academy’s best picture award. Studio executives and others began to believe it, especially after “Dreamgirls” was nominated for five Golden Globe awards in December (winning three) and received critical praise from industry guilds. “It’s not like we ran trade ads and we got calls from people who said, ‘You’re crazy. What are you doing?’ ” Ms. Press remarked. But even then, the filmmakers say, they were conscious that early Oscar confidence could be misplaced. “The advisory here, as always, is don’t start believing your own publicity,” said Laurence Mark, who produced “Dreamgirls.” The notion that the movie was not seen by enough academy members — though discounted by Mr. Condon — stemmed from its relatively late wide release on Dec. 25, and the fact that screener DVDs were sent out after many executives had left for the holidays. Another unforeseen hitch involved what some in Hollywood are calling “the Clint plot twist.” The Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood is an academy favorite who directed “Flags of Our Fathers,” the World War II drama about the battle for Iwo Jima, which was an early Oscar favorite but fared poorly when released in October. So in November, Mr. Eastwood asked Warner to move up the release of “Letters From Iwo Jima,” a Japanese-language companion movie to “Flags,” once planned for 2007, thus qualifying it for Oscar consideration. Despite its late entry, “Letters” was nominated for best picture, leaving many in Hollywood to wonder if “Dreamgirls” had been edged aside. “You are not entitled,” Mr. Condon said of the Oscar, an honor he won in 1999 for writing “Gods and Monsters,” and for which his “Chicago” script was nominated. “It’s a gift. That sense that you deserve it is wacky.” Besides, avoiding added weeks of best picture campaigning brought a perverse benefit: reduced costs. “We were never going to win even if we were nominated,” Mr. Condon said, laughing. “The money we would have spent on the campaign, the insane amount of money we saved. People spend like drunken sailors, you know.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/bu...rtner=homepage ![]() Directors Who Go Together, Like Blood and Guts Whitney Joiner STUCK in traffic here some months ago, the director Robert Rodriguez — many of whose films had already dabbled in cannibalism, torture and murders of every degree and then some — began wondering how to get attention for his next effort. The answer, he decided, was a machine-gun leg. As Mr. Rodriguez’s notion evolved, the leg became a stump on the body of the 33-year-old actress Rose McGowan. Ms. McGowan’s character, a go-go dancer, has lost her limb to zombies. Her ex-boyfriend, played by Freddy Rodriguez (no relation to the director), helps her fight back, attaching an automatic weapon to what’s left. The result is spattered throughout “Planet Terror,” a movie within the forthcoming meta-movie “Grindhouse,” from Mr. Rodriguez and his collaborator Quentin Tarantino, both of whom have been laboring for months to shock and amaze an audience that thinks it has seen it all. “I thought, ‘Nobody’s ever thought of that before,’ ” Mr. Rodriguez said of his high-caliber epiphany during an interview at his Troublemaker Studios here last month. “Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.” For Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Tarantino, the central problem of “Grindhouse,” due from the Weinstein Company on April 6, is a nettlesome one: how to top yourself when you’ve built a career on going over the top. Mr. Rodriguez had already tried killing as fast as he could — most recently in “Sin City” — as had Mr. Tarantino with a guest-directing spot in that film and his own “Kill Bill.” Lethal stump notwithstanding (and, yes, the director Sam Raimi played with a similar idea in “Darkman”), the solution, they perceived, would lie not simply in violence but also in breaking through the walls of the medium. “Grindhouse” is being billed not as one movie, but two for the price of a single ticket. “Planet Terror,” from Mr. Rodriguez, is 80 minutes long, and tells a story of, well, biochemical terror. Mr. Tarantino’s “Death Proof,” clocking in at 90 minutes, has to do with a murderous stuntman and his car. The films are connected by trailers for four movies that do not exist, by four directors who do — Eli Roth (whose most recent real film was “Hostel”), Rob Zombie (“House of 1,000 Corpses”), Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) and Mr. Rodriguez himself. The experiment, if it works, will be a triumph both for the filmmakers and for Weinstein, which is readying the largest promotional push since its founders, the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, established the studio on their exit from the Walt Disney Company’s Miramax unit in 2005. To hear Bob Weinstein tell it, the industry itself has something riding on the exercise. “The whole theatrical business is looking for something new, a little showmanship,” he said recently. “These guys took something old and are making it new.” Even in the era of all-knowing fandom, the reinvention to which Mr. Weinstein refers may take some explaining, a process that will get help from a partnership with Yahoo and “as big a TV and marketing campaign as possible,” Mr. Weinstein said. The film also stands to benefit from a series of grindhouse movies currently appearing every Friday on IFC. By the filmmakers’ lights “Grindhouse” is a gift to moviegoers who miss, or missed, the experience of watching B-grade genre pictures of the sort that in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s sold what the big studios wouldn’t: usually sex and gore. The films, often shown back to back, were plugged with garish posters that promised more than their pathetically low budgets could deliver. (In that spirit “Planet Terror” isn’t about another planet at all, but our own, at a particularly bad moment.) The theaters too were sometimes a fright. “Grindhouses were usually in the ghetto,” Mr. Tarantino said in a phone interview. “Or they were the big old downtown movie theaters that sometimes stayed open all night long, for all the bums. At the grindhouse that I went to, every week there was the new kung fu movie, or new car-chase movie, or new sexploitation movie, or blaxploitation movie.” Audiences aren’t supposed to be comfortable with this new film. As part of the game, the two directors have “aged” their movies, adding scratches, dust and dirt to the prints. “That’s part of the lurid quality,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “It feels like it’s a popular film that’s been screened a bunch of times. The texture, all the scratches, makes it look really creepy, like you’re watching something you’re not supposed to, where anything could happen at any moment.” And since the old grindhouse films were often missing reels, both filmmakers have purposefully cut out a segment of their movies. “My whole thing is to play with the audience,” said Mr. Tarantino. “I guarantee you, when it pops up ‘Missing Reel,’ the entire theater is going to scream. They might very well be screaming my name: ‘Quentin, you bastard! We hate you!’ “And then the next reel starts, and all of the sudden, people who don’t like each other suddenly like each other now. ‘What happened to that guy?’ The only way to do a missing reel is, it’s got to be something you can’t wait to see.” On visiting Troublemaker Studios, it became apparent that such self-conscious cinematic slumming takes a lot of work. Remains of the shoot were scattered about: supply trucks in military garb were huddled in one corner; across the lot a collection of smashed-up automobiles were piled on top of one another, defeated, while two menacing black muscle cars lurked nearby, white skulls painted on their hoods. In a darkened office Mr. Rodriguez tinkered with one of his computers, deciding which sequences of “Planet Terror” to show. “This section is so creepy,” he said, cueing up a hospital scene in which Josh Brolin takes revenge on his wife, an anesthesiologist played by Marley Shelton, by slowly and deliberately pricking her hands with her own needles. In the film a biochemical weapon is released from an abandoned military base — thus the Army trucks — in a small Texas town outside Austin. Residents quickly become infected and crowd the local hospital. The virus has a gruesome effect of course: Not only do the victims’ bodies start to disintegrate (lots of bubbly skin, pus-filled sores and tumors), but they become murderous zombies. Mr. Rodriguez said “Planet Terror” was inspired by the early-’80s movies of John Carpenter, who directed seminal horror films (“Halloween,” “The Thing”) as well as action movies (“Escape From New York”). And like Mr. Carpenter’s movies, “Planet Terror” is “very brooding.” Mr. Rodriguez added: “It takes place at night, and weird things happen, yet everything is played very seriously, so you buy into it. Even though she’s got a machine-gun leg, it’s not jokey in any way.” Mr. Tarantino, when thinking about his contribution, was fresh from having viewed a run of slasher films. “I thought, ‘Wow, I want to do a slasher film,’ ” he recalled. “But what’s good about the slasher-film genre is that it’s so specific. This has to happen, then this has to happen. They’re all very similar, and that’s kind of what you like about them.” Knowing he couldn’t just copy the classic format — a killer on the loose with a knife, the “final girl” left at the end (“That would just be too self-reflective”) — Mr. Tarantino devised his own version. “Part of my fun in doing genre cinema, since everyone knows the rules well, whether unconsciously or not, is leading you down a road and giving you all the information that you’ve gotten in other movies, and then using your own information against you,” he said. In “Death Proof” a sociopathic stuntman played by Kurt Russell stalks and kills women with his car, the black one with the white skull. “This was something I’d had in the back of my mind from making movies: that stuntmen can reinforce a car and pretty much make it death-proof,” said Mr. Tarantino. “You could drive it 100 miles an hour into a brick wall just for the experience.” Citing the fast and furious 1971 car-chase film “Vanishing Point” as inspiration, Mr. Tarantino said he hoped that “Death Proof” would include “one of the greatest car chases, if not the greatest car chase ever made. I’ll take Top Three.” But most of “Death Proof” isn’t action or dismemberment. It lies in the interplay between women who, in the course of evening bar hopping in Austin or joy riding in rural Tennessee, meet the stuntman, Mike. “I always loved it in horror films when you actually got to care about the characters so much that you almost resented that the horror was going to come in,” Mr. Tarantino said. “You don’t want these people to die.” His “girls,” as he lovingly refers to them, include the actresses Rosario Dawson, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jordan Ladd and Ms. McGowan, and the New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman’s double in “Kill Bill”), who plays herself. Mr. Tarantino called his female characters’ dialogue, which simultaneously evokes both “Sex and the City” and teenage girls’ MySpace profiles, “some of the best dialogue I’ve ever written in my life.” After finishing the script he sent it to Bob Dylan, because he thought Mr. Dylan “would appreciate the wordplay.” He has not yet heard back. The filmmakers are counting on younger viewers to be considerably more responsive to what Mr. Tarantino calls their “subversion from within.” They expect to direct or produce a series of such double features for the Weinsteins. “We’ve thrown around so many ideas, it’s just a huge concept to wrap our brains around,” said Mr. Rodriguez. Mr. Tarantino was a bit more cautious about the likelihood of future installments. “Who knows if we’ll do it?” he said. “We say we’re going to do all this stuff. I was going to do a bunch of Japanese animation sequels and prequels to ‘Kill Bill.’ Haven’t seen them lately, have you?” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/movies/28join.html ![]() Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights Are Noir in Fog City Wendell Jamieson The orange and blue neon lights of the Castro Theater shone blurrily on the damp asphalt beneath the crisscrossing catenary wires of the streetcars. The words on the marquee in the Friday night gloom, read: “Marsha Hunt: In Person.” Ms. Hunt made more than 50 movies before her career was wrecked in 1950 by the Hollywood blacklist. One of them, a 1948 crime melodrama called “Raw Deal,” has gone on to an unlikely second life as a favorite of the cultish devotees of film noir. On Friday it opened the fifth annual Noir City film festival here, and Ms. Hunt, 89, was on hand to watch its dreamlike silvery hues make a rare appearance on a big — very big — screen. Lithe and glowing, Ms. Hunt took the stage after the film and said she was surprised not only that this dark little B movie had found fans nearly 60 years after its release, but that so many of them were here, nearly filling the Castro’s more than 1,400 seats. The crowd was a mix of young and old, polished and scruffy, with only a few fedoras in sight. “I can’t get over this,” Ms. Hunt said as the film festival’s founder and organizer, Eddie Muller, genially interviewed her at the foot of the stage. “It was a strange sort of film,” she added, “about as negative as you can get. They hadn’t coined the term ‘noir’ yet.” She’s right. It’s hard to imagine a darker film, literally or figuratively, than “Raw Deal.” Consisting almost entirely of luminescent day-for-night photography, it’s the story of an escaped con (played by Dennis O’Keefe) and the two women who love him (Ms. Hunt was one; Claire Trevor was the other), and features, among other pitch-black set pieces, a villain (Raymond Burr) who disfigures his girlfriend with a flaming dessert, and a furious midnight brawl in a seaside taxidermy shop. At the end everyone is either ruined, dead or under arrest. And that darkness was just fine with the moviegoers here, which applauded vigorously as the closing titles rolled, just as they had at the beginning when the credit for the film’s director of photography, John Alton, the master of all that darkness, appeared on screen. Mr. Muller, an author and film noir aficionado, dreamed up the film festival five years ago as a way to increase visibility for the Film Noir Foundation he runs, which works to restore the movies, and to promote his own books. (He most recently helped write Tab Hunter’s autobiography.) The Castro, built in 1922 and recently refurbished, had some dead time in January, and the festival (which runs this year through Feb. 4) was born — with a bang. The first double bill in 2003, “The Maltese Falcon” and “Dark Passage” — two seminal San Francisco noirs — sold out. “It was huge right out of the gate,” he said. ”It totally threw me.” In the years since, he’s sold an average of 880 seats a night. Of course subject matter and city are well matched. San Francisco has a noir pedigree rivaling that of New York or Los Angeles, its fog, slanting streets, circa-1940’s office buildings and dank narrow streets creating untold scores of blind alleys for characters unlucky enough to be trapped in them. Several noirs, including “Raw Deal,” have been set here. On Friday the weather didn’t disappoint, with a steady rain falling much of the day. The sun made a half-hearted attempt to appear around noon, then gave up and went back to bed. The Noir City festival may not be Sundance, but it too has its celebrities and scenes. Before “Raw Deal” on Friday the Castro’s balcony was crammed for a reception, with an open bar, a jazz band and Ms. Hunt signing copies of her book, “The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and ’40s and Our World Since Then” (Fallbrook, 1993). Among those on hand was Richard Erdman, 81, a character actor whose face is as recognizable — his credits include “Stalag 17” and “Tora! Tora! Tora!” — as his name is unknown. He had a supporting role in “Cry Danger,” the first film on Saturday night’s double bill, and looked so familiar standing there at the reception that it was almost impossible not to run up to him and say, “Haven’t we met before?” Like Ms. Hunt, Mr. Erdman seemed a little puzzled as to why exactly, so many years later, these movies are finding a new following. Asked for a theory, he thought for a moment and said: “I really have no idea. I’m not putting it down, I just don’t understand it.” He heaped praise on Mr. Muller and his crew of volunteers for running a high-class operation. “They’re not chintzy,” he said, sipping a glass of white wine. Film noir is enjoying something of a second golden age at the moment. In addition to the San Francisco festival, the Film Forum in New York City offered a major noir series last year, and studios like Warner Brothers and Fox have ratcheted up their noir reissues to such an extent that many films that never made it out on VHS are appearing on DVD. Just last week Warner Home Video released 1952’s “Angel Face,” starring Robert Mitchum, which had only been available on foreign or pirated VHS tapes. Mr. Muller provides the commentary track. “With film noir, if you show it to a group of 20-year-olds, they’ll find something to get hooked on,” said George Feltenstein, Warner Home Video’s voluble senior vice president for marketing for its classic catalog. “There is a sexiness to it, there is a mystery took it. These are very seductive movies, they are not cookie-cutter.” Warner Brothers has released three noir box sets. The first, which came out in 2004 and featured titles like “Out of the Past” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” hit No. 1 on Amazon.com’s DVD list. This year Warner’s fourth noir set will include 10 rather than 5 movies. Here’s a scoop for noir fans: Two will star Mr. Mitchum. Whatever the machinations of the DVD business, here at the Noir City festival, everyone was in a pretty good mood by the time the second title of opening night, “Kid Glove Killer,” a super-rarity from 1942, rolled to its conclusion. This one had a happier ending, with Ms. Hunt getting a marriage proposal, delivered beneath a microscope, from a skinny and surprisingly big-haired Van Heflin. Coats and fedoras went back on, and the crowd headed for the exits. Ms. Hunt stood by the door, shaking hands and signing autographs, as her new legions of fans emerged onto the shiny street and headed off into the night. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/movies/29noir.html ![]() Any Little Gems? Who Cares? Sundance Is a Hot Brand Now Manohla Dargis Before it was a brand, a media circus and an adjunct of Hollywood, the Sundance Film Festival was exhilarating, a blast. It was also small. In 1993, the first year I attended the festival, it showed 71 new features culled from more than 350 submissions and attracted some 5,000 attendees. That year Robert Redford told Variety that the festival, then in its ninth year, was putting the brakes on growth because “when you start expanding on something, you run the risk of losing quality.” That was then, this is now: This year, the festival presented 125 features (from 3,287 submissions) for an estimated audience of 52,000, including some 1,000 accredited journalists from around the world and 900 registered film industry types. Although this year’s edition, which ended yesterday, was widely perceived as a critical disappointment, good and great work is still shown at Sundance, even if these days it’s often the festival itself that makes bigger news than the films. This works to the festival’s advantage, since the Sundance brand helps obscure the reality that there simply isn’t enough quality American independent work, particularly of a saleable kind, to justify an event of this size. That probably helps explain why Sundance has dramatically increased the number of foreign-language selections and also why it gives pride of place to studio specialty division films, as it did this year with the premiere of Mike White and Paramount Vantage’s touching comedy, “Year of the Dog.” As it happens, “Year of the Dog” was one of the best films I saw at this year’s festival. I thought about skipping the screening because the film is slated to open in a few months, but I like Mr. White’s screenplays — he wrote the 2002 Sundance favorite “The Good Girl” — and I wanted to see what he would do for his first stint as a director. That “Year of the Dog” is actually a studio film, not an independent, probably won’t matter to most moviegoers, even those who like their evening’s entertainment stamped with the indie label. The film is a bit offbeat, stars Molly Shannon and looks as if it was made on the cheap. It’s independent-like. I was happy to see “Year of the Dog,” but I don’t know what it was doing at Sundance. Certainly the film didn’t need a boost from the festival, though the festival did seem to need it, just as it seems to need all those movie and television stars who now show up year after year, both onscreen and off. Stars bring the media, which helps bring the crowds and helps keep Sundance, and the boom town of Park City, Utah, on the map, no matter how disappointing the offerings. The ever-expanding indie-film apparatus — which encompasses the specialty divisions and independent companies, print and online reporters as well as other festival personnel — is now big enough that it doesn’t really matter if the festival has an off year. It doesn’t even matter to Sundance. Founded in 1981, the Sundance Institute, which owns the festival, was dedicated to (as its Web site explains) “the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work.” The early 1980s were a growth period for American independent film, with titles like “Return of the Secaucus 7” and “My Dinner with Andre,” but there wasn’t much infrastructure or anything especially sexy about the scene. When Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee hit in the mid-1980s, bringing a young, punk-style D.I.Y. ethos with them, the independent landscape began to shift; it cracked wide open in 1989, the year Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” played first at Sundance, then Cannes. The success of Mr. Soderbergh’s film raised the temperature and the noise — including at Sundance — though it would take a few years for the full effect to be felt. In 1993 Hollywood was in attendance at the festival, but Miramax Films wasn’t yet part of Disney; the stakes were lower than they are now, the deals were smaller. Independent distributors like Miramax and October Films were rooting around for work that would provide an alternative to Hollywood. Now Miramax and the other specialty divisions look for material that can add some diversity — a pinch of quirky here, a dash of edgy there — to the studio slate while their big studio brethren tap Sundance veterans like Christopher Nolan to guide some of the priciest projects on the lot. In some respects Sundance’s stated mission to nurture independent filmmakers and give them a platform has been a roaring success, so much so that one studio executive and long-time festival attendee I know would like to see it shut down because, well, as he put it, “mission accomplished.” I’m not so sure. What I do know is that Sundance has become a very big machine in which it has become increasingly difficult for modestly scaled films without stars, without powerful brokers and backing and manufactured buzz to attract attention. I also know that most of the films that are picked up for distribution will quickly disappear when they are released. They will play in theaters for a few weeks, a couple months, then fade. Not that it matters in the heat of the festival, when the temperature rises so high it’s a wonder that the ice covering the sidewalks doesn’t melt. The movies may not be terribly good, the art of the deal may matter more than the art of cinema to most attendees and worthy work may go unnoticed and unloved, but Sundance is hot. And it will continue being hot as long as it serves the interests of the film industry, as long as its corporate sponsors stay onboard and as long as the indie-film apparatus keeps ballooning. Independence is a boom market. It’s a lifestyle choice, a state of mind, a backward baseball cap, a magazine feature, an Oscar hopeful, a mirage, a nostalgia trip. Each January it is a collective fantasy that even a doubter like me finds hard to resist because every so often a film cuts through the noise to hit you smack in the solar plexus. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/movies/29next.html ![]() Hollywood Monster Rampage: Art vs. Egos Janet Maslin BAMBI VS. GODZILLA On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business By David Mamet 250 pages. Pantheon. $22. David Mamet’s “Bambi vs. Godzilla” takes its title from a two-minute animated short (actually “Bambi Meets Godzilla”) in which the monster crushes the innocent little fawn. This would make a fine metaphor for the way the film business treats artists if it didn’t mean miscasting Mr. Mamet in Bambi’s role. As the lacerating essays in this uneven but icily hilarious collection make clear, he is far better suited to stomping on Tokyo. “Bambi vs. Godzilla” is devoted to pet peeves, some of them standard. No surprises here: Mr. Mamet abhors crass producers, meaningless spectacles, focus groups, ambitious studio drones and specious screenwriting. About one particularly bad sequel, he says: “Jewish law states that there are certain crimes that cannot be forgiven, as they cannot be undone. It lists murder and adultery. I add this film.” That Jewish law is invoked more than once here. And the book repeats itself on certain points, like Mr. Mamet’s boundless admiration of “The Godfather.” Perhaps the repackaging of redundant journalism in book form (much of this material comes from his column for The Guardian of London, though some originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine) belongs on the same list of transgressions, but no matter. Mr. Mamet writes with insight, idiosyncrasy and a Godzillian imperviousness to opposition. Like Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies” and William Goldman’s books of advice on filmmaking, Mr. Mamet describes the process from the ground up, with a keen eye for evidence of the absurd. He claims to have seen a sign on a movie set reading, “Gum is for principal cast members only,” since this is a business that never forgets about pecking order. And after promising to offend several groups with one thesis, he suggests that the hallmarks of Asperger’s syndrome (“early precocity, a great ability to maintain masses of information, a lack of ability to mix with groups in age-appropriate ways”) add up to the job description of a movie director. Mr. Mamet, who has nothing but disgust for the emphasis on backstory and characterization that can turn a movie into mush, also notices how much the idiom of the modern screenplay overlaps with that of the personals column, so that a character may be described as “beautiful, smart, funny, likes long walks and dogs, affectionate, kind, honest, sexy.” This filler, he says, winds up “replacing dialogue and camera angles, the only two aspects of a screenplay actually of use.” Much of “Bambi vs. Godzilla” is devoted to separating useful and useless aspects of the filmmaking process. “It is enough to drive one to the fainting couch,” he says about Hollywood’s paralyzing practice of making films of increasing expense and diminishing worth. When he sees a poster that lists the names of 18 producers, he wonders whether “the film, perhaps, is being made no longer to attract the audience but to buttress or advance the position of the executive.” If this kind of bureaucrat has replaced the old-fashioned intuitive mogul, “it is not that the fox has taken over the henhouse but, if I may, that the doorman has taken over the bordello.” With entertaining bitterness Mr. Mamet skewers the kind of person destined to succeed in this corporate culture. And a figure skewered by him winds up sounding as tough and treacherous as someone from a Mamet play. “The young bureaucrat-in-training” is apt to learn “that success comes not from pleasing the audience but from placating his superiors until that time it is reasoned effective to betray them.” As for the screenwriter-in-training at film school, “one can study marching, the entry-level skill of the military, until one shines at it as has none other,” he writes. “This will not, however, make it more likely that one will be tapped to be the Secretary of the Army.” If such opinions are apt to disappoint anyone looking to Mr. Mamet for career advice, they will delight those who share his cynicism. Is there a worthwhile message to be found within the big, vacuous blockbuster? Yes: “You are a member of a country, a part of a system capable of wasting two hundred million dollars on an hour and a half of garbage. You must be somebody.” He finds this brand of wastefulness equally conspicuous in current moviemaking and military strategy. If Hollywood’s idea of entertainment is actually “tincture of art,” and if studio executives “want, in effect, to find the script for the hit of last year,” how can a serious filmmaker stay afloat? By recognizing the vital difference between stimulation and drama, for one thing. (“One may sit in front of the television for five hours, but after ‘King Lear’ one goes home.”) By resisting demands for arbitrary alterations in one’s work, the kinds of changes that raise doubts about the work’s seriousness. What would happen, he asks, to an architect who was similarly accommodating? (“Would you mind moving the staircase? Thank you. Now would you mind moving the skylight?”) And by understanding the etiquette of betrayal, Hollywood style. “Should the project go awry,” he writes, “you will be notified by a complete lack of contact with those in whose hands its administration has rested.” Some of “Bambi vs. Godzilla” is painfully contorted. (“What shibboleth, you wonder, will I list to augment your umbrage?”) Some of it goes nowhere. But most of this sharp, savvy book is amusing and reassuring. Somebody with a keen knowledge of gamesmanship knows exactly how Hollywood’s games are played. And refuses to play by the rules. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/books/29masl.html ![]() Radio Days Dave Marsh SOMETHING IN THE AIR Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation. By Marc Fisher. Illustrated. 374 pp. Random House. $27.95. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, broadcasting experts predicted that the advent of television would kill off radio. Many of them didn’t especially want it to survive, since it could only hold back the acceptance of TV. In fact, the radio those experts knew didn’t survive. By the mid-1950s, the national networks that had dominated since the ’20s had all but evaporated, replaced by more than twice as many local stations. Television took over presenting broadcast drama and comedy, variety shows and in-depth news. Yet radio itself survived. Radio outstrips television as a means of conveying intimacy and, precisely because it doesn’t show but can only tell, may stir the active imagination more deeply. It’s cheaper to operate a radio station, and in those years broadcasting equipment was much more mobile, making it perfect for local presentations. With recorded music (before the advent of TV, most radio programming consisted of live performance), stations found a cheap programming source that attracted enough listeners to generate its lifeblood — advertising revenue — even after TV took hold. In “Something in the Air,” Marc Fisher takes the story from there, arguing that radio — those who programmed and performed on it, and the music they played — inspired his entire generation to come together: “We grew up dancing and dreaming to the same soundtrack, and we were therefore somehow united,” he writes. “Until the Great Unraveling of the late 1960s and early ’70s, this shared pop culture was a meeting ground for our nation, a commons that we only years later realized we had lost.” But Fisher can’t deliver on this premise, because it simply isn’t true. Different groups of people experienced that period differently, and they listened to radio differently too. The kids in Fisher’s neighborhood, and mine, spent 1963 listening to the Chiffons and Motown and were led to dream of a better world. The black kids in Birmingham, Ala., spent part of that year listening to local radio not only for those hit records but for coded messages about where to gather for illegal demonstrations that concretely changed their world for the better. Those are not equivalent experiences. But most of “Something in the Air” isn’t concerned with its broad premise, and therein lies the book’s value. It provides a history of the development of radio in the postwar era, but it works best when it backs away from the general and settles upon particular broadcasters who fascinate Fisher. He writes engagingly about the late-night giants Jean Shepherd and Bob Fass, the shock jock Tom Leykis, the National Public Radio co-founder Bill Siemering, the Long Island radio rebel Paul Sidney and the white R & B disc jockey Hunter Hancock. There are reasons to quarrel with the history. Fisher likes to settle on a single source for each section, which would be fine if he’d written a collection of profiles rather than a book billed as a comprehensive historical survey. Giving a history of Top 40 radio with only a single paragraph about the programmer Bill Drake (inventor of the hyperkinetic “Boss Radio”) is like writing a history of hit singles with only a single paragraph about Phil Spector. Writing about New York City radio’s response to the arrival of the Beatles through the eyes of WABC’s Bruce Morrow, without even mentioning “the Fifth Beatle,” WMCA’s Murray the K, is just bizarre. In his chapter on satellite radio, Fisher grows so fixed on the programmer Lee Abrams of XM that the rival Sirius network all but vanishes. (Disclosure: I am the host of a show on Sirius.) The chapter on shock jocks focuses so completely on Leykis that the portions on the much more important Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern (who gets only three pages) feel like intrusion. Fisher has little to say about anything that happened outside the East Coast. B. Mitchell Reed, the great Los Angeles disc jockey who inspired Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” is mentioned only briefly, for his work in San Francisco. There’s nothing about CKLW, in Windsor, Ontario, which was the No. 1 station in both Detroit and Cleveland for more than a decade. Wolfman Jack is mentioned for his role in “American Graffiti” and his brief dalliance with WNBC in New York, but there is only a passing acknowledgment of his long career in Mexican border radio, which could be heard from San Antonio to Buffalo. Fisher adores late-night radio, but he says nothing about the legendary John R. and Hoss Allen of WLAC Nashville, who also had an audience across broad swaths of the nation. Fisher describes how disco divided the rock radio audience and galvanized black and Latin listeners, who had been written off by FM rock radio, though he writes about such matters superficially. He claims that black disc jockeys simply “mimicked Top 40’s style,” which I presume means he never heard Martha Jean the Queen, Butterball, Georgie Woods, the Magnificent Montague or, for that matter, the young Sly Stone. If anything, the mimicry ran in the other direction. Readers will finish “Something in the Air” with no insight into how Spanish-language disc jockeys played the key role in delivering hundreds of thousands of immigration-rights supporters into the streets of Los Angeles and other cities last year, because Fisher says absolutely nothing about Latin radio in general and its crucial role in the Chicano community in particular. Turning out those demonstrators was a much greater accomplishment than the “Rush Rooms” that sprang up in restaurants across the nation in Limbaugh’s heyday, which Fisher does mention. Fisher provides a good deal of useful information about satellite and Internet broadcasting, and there are solid discussions of the consequences of the Federal Communications Commission’s laissez-faire policy toward fairness and community service and on the Clinton administration’s successful efforts to change the rules that prevented large corporations from owning large blocks of stations. He writes a devastating account of one of the focus groups that many big-city stations use to pick their playlists, arguing that such questionable research (each recording is judged by a seven-second sample) leads to unimaginative programming. He also has the courage to defend payola: “Despite the ugly underside of the promotion business,” he writes, “the old payola had a desirable result: a wider variety of music got on the air.” The problem, in the end, is the vastness and mutability of the radio culture that developed in the half-century since TV took over as the family hearth. Fisher’s book is at its best when he lets himself speak about passions that are almost but not quite private: the importance of his first transistor radio; the way that radio and its successors blew musical winds of change into his life; the near magical effect of listening to someone who is committed not to playing good music or making political points but simply making good radio, whatever form it may take. In such moments, readers will find that they and Fisher have much to share — not as a generation, but simply as lovers of a medium that, however scorned and abused, retains its fascination. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/bo...w/Marsh.t.html ![]() Open Source Radio is A Sound Salvation Bess Kargman Radio is a sound salvation Radio is cleaning up the nation They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don’t give you any choice ‘cause they think that it’s treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio. -Elvis Costello, “Radio Radio” ——- If you’ve never seen Elvis Costello’s legendary SNL performance of “Radio Radio” from 1977, you can watch it here. The song sharply criticizes the commercialization of mainstream radio (“They’re saying things that I can hardly believe”) and one can only imagine the shock NBC executives experienced that night considering their radio station was the very sort Costello condemned. Performing “Radio Radio” without warning at SNL got Costello banned from the show for 12 years. Not all that much has changed in the world of terrestrial radio since then. Just look at the long list of radio stations Clear Channel owns. But new media and technology is finally reversing the trend of putting “the radio in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin’ to anaesthetize the way that you feel,” as Costello would put it. “I don’t see a single future for radio, as things seem to be splitting and recombining in interesting ways. When mobile operators are offering access to services like Rhapsody over 3G, satellite services like XM and Sirius are offering recording functions for their receivers, discovery services like Last.fm and Pandora are making it easier to find and listen to new music, and when community broadcasters are starting to regularly broadcast via the Web, I’m not sure there is a capital-R Radio any more, said Douglas Arellanes, Head of Research and Development at Campcaster. (See Full Intreview Here). Campcaster is new open source software, launched by the Media Development Loan Fund, that essentially allows you to run your own station. It’s a bit like Pandora.com, where you can architect your own musical program and share it with others, but it comes with additional tools for audio broadcasting. Last month NewAssignment.Net wrote about Chicago Public Radio’s Secret Radio Project, which plans to air mostly user-generated content via a new format at a different frequency. Well, Campcaster essentially allows you to run your own station. Best of all, Campcasting is free and on an open source platform, which means that anyone who knows code can make any changes to the software. This means the media is being democratized on two levels. Everyone has a chance to get their voice heard “and the unsung heroes in broadcasting - the engineers - get something with its workings transparent and open for improvement; as opposed to commercial products, Campcaster is not a “black box” and has been specifically designed to encourage technical innovation,” said Arellanes. (See Full Intreview Here). http://www.newassignment.net/blog/be...en_source_radi ![]() Bridge Projects Continued Growth For Digital Media FMQB Bridge Ratings has released a new study, projecting the future of various forms of digital media, including satellite radio and HD Radio. Bridge predicts a continued, steady growth for both XM and Sirius (presuming the two companies don't merge) over the next 13 years. The company expects both companies to have well over 17 million subscribers each by 2020, with XM keeping its slight lead over the competition. Internet radio is predicted to explode, with Bridge expecting just under 200 million listeners to be tuned in by 2020. HD Radio may have a slower growth curve, but 4.68 million HD Radio units could be sold by 2009 and over 35 million HD Radio receivers bought by 2020. As for terrestrial radio, Bridge sees an overall up-and-down trend of cume listenership, with erosion of the audience starting to take hold by 2015. Podcasting is also expected to steadily grow and really take off down the road. MP3 player sales are also expected to continue increasing over time, breaking 400 million sold by 2010, however not even 300 million of them will be in use at the time. Bridge notes that "because our predictive polling cannot foresee changes in technological and sociological change,, the figures shown cannot take these into consideration. Traditional analog radio, even with advances such as HD technology, may sustain popular use - especially among older listeners." The entire study can be found here. http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=340394 ![]() Truly Indie Fans Jessica Pressler WHEN Douglas Martin first saw the video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a teenager in High Point, N.C., “it blew my mind,” he said. Like many young people who soothe their angst with the balm of alternative rock, Mr. Martin was happy to discover music he enjoyed and a subculture where he belonged. Except, as it turned out, he didn’t really belong, because he is black. “For a long time I was laughed at by both black and white people about being the only black person in my school that liked Nirvana and bands like that,” said Mr. Martin, now 23, who lives in Seattle, where he is recording a folk-rock album. But 40 years after black musicians laid down the foundations of rock, then largely left the genre to white artists and fans, some blacks are again looking to reconnect with the rock music scene. The Internet has made it easier for black fans to find one another, some are adopting rock clothing styles, and a handful of bands with black members have growing followings in colleges and on the alternative or indie radio station circuit. It is not the first time there has been a black presence in modern rock. But some fans and musicians say they feel that a multiethnic rock scene is gathering momentum. “There’s a level of progress in New York in particular,” said Daphne Brooks, an associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton. She was heartened last summer by the number of children of color in a class she taught at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, where kids learn to play punk-rock standards. There is even a new word for black fans of indie rock: “blipster,” which was added to UrbanDictionary .com last summer, defined as “a person who is black and also can be stereotyped by appearance, musical taste, and/or social scene as a hipster.” Bahr Brown, an East Harlem resident whose Converse sneakers could be considered blipster attire, opened a skateboard and clothing boutique, Everything Must Go, in the neighborhood in October, to cater to consumers who, like himself, want to dress with the accouterments of indie rock: “young people who wear tight jeans and Vans and skateboard through the projects,” he said. “And all the kids listen to indie rock,” he said. “If you ask them what’s on their iPod, its Death Cab for Cutie, the Killers.” A 2003 documentary, “Afropunk,” featured black punk fans and musicians talking about music, race and identity issues, and it has since turned into a movement, said James Spooner, its director. Thousands of black rock fans use Afropunk.com’s message boards to discuss bands, commiserate about their outsider status and share tips on how to maintain their frohawk hairstyles. “They walk outside and they’re different,” Mr. Spooner said of the Web site’s regulars. “But they know they can connect with someone who’s feeling the same way on the Internet.” On MySpace, the trailer for Mr. Spooner’s new film, “White Lies, Black Sheep,” about a young black man in the predominantly white indie-rock scene, has been played upward of 40,000 times. Rock was created by black artists like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and Elvis Presley and other white artists eventually picked up the sound. In the ’60s, teenagers were just as likely to stack their turntables with records from both white and black artists — with perhaps a little bit of Motown, another musical thread of the time, thrown in, said Larry Starr, who wrote “American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV,” with Christopher Waterman. But that began changing in the late ’60s. By the time Jimi Hendrix became the ultimate symbol of counterculture cool, with his wild wardrobe and wilder guitar playing, the racial divisions were evident. Paul Friedlander, the author of “Rock and Roll: A Social History,” noted that Hendrix became popular just as the black power movement emerged. Yet his trio included two white musicians and his audience was largely white. That made him anathema to many blacks. “To the black community he was not playing wholly African-American music,” Mr. Friedlander said, even when Hendrix formed a new all-black band. By the early ’70s, “you began to have this very strict color line,” Mr. Starr said. Music splintered into many different directions and, for the most part, blacks and whites went separate ways. Black musicians gravitated toward genres in which they were more likely to find acceptance and lucre, such as disco, R & B and hip-hop, which have also been popular among whites. The next few decades saw several successful and influential black musicians who crossed genres or were distinctly rock, such as Prince, Living Colour and Lenny Kravitz, and rock melodies and lyrics have been liberally sampled by hip-hop artists. But rock is still largely a genre played by white rockers and celebrated by white audiences. THE recent attention given several bands with black members — like Bloc Party, Lightspeed Champion, and the Dears — could signify change. “Return to Cookie Mountain,” the second album by the group TV on the Radio, a band in which four of the five members are black, was on the best-album lists of many critics in 2006. Around the country, other rock bands with black members are emerging. On an evening in December, at Gooski’s, a crowded dive bar in Pittsburgh, Lamont Thomas, sweating through a red T-shirt that read “Black Rock,” played the drums behind the lead singer Chris Kulcsar, who was flinging his skinny frame around the stage, and the guitarist Buddy Akita. The bass player, Lawrence Caswell, dreadlocked and gregarious, introduced the band, a punk quartet from Cleveland with the name This Moment in Black History. “The funny thing is, a lot of people assume from the name that we’re just white kids being ironic,” Mr. Thomas said. This may be because their fans, like the ones who attended the show at Gooski’s, tend to be white, although there are usually one or two people of color, Mr. Caswell said. Nev Brown, a photographer and writer from Brooklyn, said that at the indie rock shows that he has covered for his music blog, FiddleWhileYouBurn.com, he is almost always the only black person in the room. Some fans are curious about why he is at the show and try to talk to him about it. “And then you get idiots, like people who think you’re a security guard,” he said. Damon Locks, a Chicago-based publicist and singer in a hardcore band called the Eternals, said he is frequently mistaken for “one of the other three black guys” in the city’s rock-music scene. “We joke about it,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about getting together and starting a band called Black People.” That kind of isolation is one of the reasons Mr. Spooner, the documentary director, regularly showcases black and mixed-race rock bands at clubs. For a band to participate, the lead singer must be black. This caused some friction early on, he said. “A lot of white people were offended that I was saying, ‘This is for us,’ ” Mr. Spooner said on a recent evening at the Canal Room, a club in downtown Manhattan, where he was the D.J. between sets for multiethnic bands like Graykid, Martin Luther and Earl Greyhound. But, he added: “Almost every black artist I know wants to play in front of their people. This is bigger than just rocking out or whatever.” Mr. Thomas, of This Moment in Black History, said that white fans sometimes want to know why he is not rapping. “It’s the stupidest question,” he said. Just as often, it is African-Americans who are judgmental. “There’s an unfortunate tendency for some black people to think if you listen to rock music or want to play rock music, you’re an Uncle Tom,” Mr. Thomas said. LaRonda Davis, president of the Black Rock Coalition, an organization co-founded by Vernon Reid of Living Colour in the mid-80s to advocate for black rock bands, said the resistance is rooted in group-think. “Black people were forced to create a community,” she said. “We’re so protective and proud of it, like, ‘We have to protect our own,’ and why should we embrace something that has always excluded us?” Nelson George, author of “Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Boho’s: Notes on Post-Soul Culture,” suggested that the rock ’n’ roll aesthetic had been a major deterrent. “Black kids do not want to go out with bummy clothes and dirty sneakers,” Mr. George said. “There is a psychological subtext to that, about being in a culture where you are not valued and so you have to value yourself.” But lately, rock music, and its accouterments, are being considered more stylish. Mainstream hip-hop artists like Kelis wear Mohawks, Lil Jon and Lupe Fiasco rap about skateboarding, and “all of the Southern rap stars are into the ’80s punk look, wearing big studded belts and shredded jeans,” said Anoma Whittaker, the fashion director of Complex magazine. At the same time, the hip-hop industry’s demand for new samples has increased the number of rock songs appearing on hip-hop tracks: Jay-Z’s latest album features contributions from Chris Martin of Coldplay and R & B artist Rihanna’s current single samples the New Wave band Soft Cell. “Hip-hop has lost a lot of its originality,” said Mr. Brown of Everything Must Go, the East Harlem skateboard shop. “This is the new thing.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/fa...Blipsters.html ![]() Rolling Stones Top Forbes List Of 06's Richest FMQB The rich get richer, as The Rolling Stones have topped Forbes magazine's list of the biggest moneymakers in the music biz for the second straight year. Mick, Keith and the boys raked in $150.6 million in 2006, with $138.5 million of it coming from their extensive Bigger Bang tour. Coming in second was the husband-and-wife Country couple of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, collectively collecting $132 million. Country act Rascal Flatts finished third with $110.5 million, with Madonna bringing in $96.8 million for fourth place and Barbara Streisand rounding out the top five with $95.8 million. The rest of Forbes' top ten is as follows: Kenny Chesney ($90.1 million), Celine Dion ($85.2 million), Bon Jovi ($77.5 million), Nickelback ($74.1 million) and Dave Matthews Band ($60.4 million). http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=339774 ![]() Why the FCC Will Get Media Ownership Wrong Again And What They Should Do to Get it Right Mark Lloyd In the summer of 2006, Zogby International conducted a poll demonstrating that Americans know more about the Three Stooges than the fundamental structure of our democracy. Seventy-three percent of Americans could name all three Stooges, just 42 percent could name the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The poll also showed that while 77 percent of the people can name two of the Seven Dwarfs, just 24 percent can name two Supreme Court justices. Even though the Zogby poll was commissioned by television reality show producers, they are asking the right sort of questions. The same cannot be said of the Federal Communications Commission, which once again is failing to exercise its congressional mandate over media ownership rules in our country. The Federal Communications Commission will complete its review of FCC media ownership policies this spring. All those concerned about the state of our democracy should be very worried, which is why the Center for American Progress early next week will unveil a new set of formulas that the FCC could use to measure the diversity available to all communities in local media markets across the country. But first, let’s outline the problem. The last time the FCC engaged in an ownership review the Republicans in charge of the regulatory agency rammed through a set of rules designed to loosen restrictions on media concentration so that the big mainstream media conglomerates could further tighten their grip on public discourse in America. Once the public got wind of this, there were widespread howls of protest, causing both Congress and the courts to step in to undo some of the damage. As the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said last year in the case that overturned the FCC’s first set of media ownership rules: “The FCC’s delegated responsibility to foster a robust forum for national debate is unique in administrative law and essential to the vibrancy of our deliberative democracy.” Yet the FCC, obliged by the court to review what it had originally proposed, continues to listen almost exclusively to the big broadcasters as they lobby to raise the ownership cap. Case in point: Mark Mays, the president of Clear Channel Communications, which controls more than 1,200 radio stations across the country, argues that “free radio is at risk.” He insists “There’s room,for free radio companies to own more than eight stations” in a single market. Mays argues that the new kid on the block, satellite radio, is creating competition for broadcast radio and therefore the federal government needs to step in to protect “free radio” by allowing the giants to get even bigger. That Clear Channel, which generated nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2005, is crying for government relief to allow it to acquire even more broadcast licenses should be laughable. But the FCC, particularly when dominated by Republicans, is peculiarly susceptible to these “market” arguments. Make no mistake, the FCC is listening. Whatever happened to the FCC’s obligation to consider the public interest? Well, that depends on what the meaning of the public interest is. As long as the FCC defines the public interest as some sort of competition in media markets, then the FCC can assure Congress that letting Clear Channel get bigger is in the public interest. After all, they are just positioning themselves to compete with satellite radio. Even though the FCC will occasionally acknowledge that the fundamental purpose of broadcast regulation is to further the informed discussion so necessary to a democracy, this is almost always immediately ignored. The world is so topsy-turvy at the FCC that the measure the agency used to justify loosening the media ownership rules in 2003, its so called Diversity Index, is actually based on something used to measure market concentration, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. The HHI was developed as a tool to identify and curb antitrust violations; the latest approval of the merger between telecommunications giants SBC and AT&T shows how effective the HHI is at limiting monopolies. Still, the FCC deserves some credit for attempting to use modern tools to rationalize and explain why Big Media should get what it wants. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the Diversity Index in principle but rejected the way the FCC calculated it. Unfortunately, the FCC has learned the wrong lesson and seems to want to avoid developing any sort of measurement tool the public or the courts could critique. Instead, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, with little input from his colleagues at the agency, has commissioned a small set of vaguely described studies that seem to focus on changes in the media market. The FCC gives no hint that it is even considering the impact local media will have on local democratic engagement in its second review of media ownership concentration rules. Index or no, the FCC cannot think outside the box of market considerations. But what if the FCC did something that was really new? What if it defined the public interest in a way that actually seemed to coincide with what most of us think that means? What if the FCC defined the public interest to mean the best interests of a democratic public? What if the FCC created an index that could really show the relationship between media ownership and what local citizens know about government? As a new Congress controlled by Democrats begins oversight of an FCC controlled by Republicans, it is crucial to begin asking why the agency repeatedly fails to ask the right questions before it tries to loosen media concentration rules. Congressional oversight, however, is not sufficient. An entirely new way of discerning media diversity in local American broadcast markets is clearly needed. That’s why the Center for American Progress in partnership with Fordham University’s Donald McGannon Communication Research Center and a small group of media scholars developed a way to measure local media diversity and its impact on local civic knowledge. Our Local Media Diversity Metrics is really a fairly straightforward count of all the independent local media (from newspapers to the Internet) that actually produce local news and public affairs programs in a given community. This new index is complemented by our new Civics Index, which is a measure of local civic literacy from sample communities. In the development and testing of these metrics we identified a variety of problems about the way the FCC determines whether broadcasters are operating in the public interest. Most notably we found an over reliance on private data companies such as The Nielsen Co. and Arbitron Inc. for information about the activities of federally licensed broadcasters, and a failure to capture media owned and operated by women and minorities. On Tuesday, Jan. 30, the Center will host an event in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill to unveil our new Local Media Diversity Metrics and Civic Metrics. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) will deliver the opening address, after which the authors of the Center’s report will discuss their new methodology for the FCC to set local media ownership rules. The work of determining whether our present or future media ownership policies promote democratic engagement and civic knowledge should not be left to private industry. We believe that the proposed measurement tools will help clarify the true impact of the FCC’s media ownership rules on our democracy. http://www.fmqb.com/goout.asp?u=http...ia_myopia.html ![]() FCC to Feel Unfamiliar Heat From Democrats Charles Babington As congressional Democrats prepare to give the Federal Communications Commission its toughest scrutiny in years, a rivalry between the powerful agency's two most prominent Republicans is raising questions about its readiness to handle barbed questions and stiff challenges. The Republican-controlled FCC -- which makes far-reaching decisions on telephone, television, radio, Internet and other services that people use daily -- has sparred infrequently with Republican-controlled congresses. But the Democratic-run 110th Congress is about to heat up the grill, starting with a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on Thursday. Senators vow to press the chairman and four commissioners on matters such as media-ownership diversity, Internet access, broadcast decency standards and delays in resolving various issues. The hearing may cover the waterfront, Democratic staff members say, but there's little doubt that the agency will face a tone of questioning unseen in recent years. "They've effectively emasculated any public-interest standards that existed" for radio and TV stations, said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a committee member who plans sharp questions on decency, media consolidation and other topics. "The entire Congress for years now has been devoid of any kind of oversight," he said, and the new Democratic majority is launching a process that will force the FCC to "beat a path to Capitol Hill to respond." Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a senior House Commerce Committee member, said he plans "comprehensive hearings on net neutrality" later this year. The term refers to measures barring telephone and cable service providers from charging Web-based companies for priority access to the Internet. Markey supports such proposals, while the FCC's Republican members generally oppose them. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, a Republican with close ties to the Bush administration, will be the focus of Democrats' criticisms. But some industry analysts think those lawmakers may try to find an ally in Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, another young Republican loyalist with a reputation for intelligence and political ambition. The two have clashed on at least three significant issues in the past several months, creating what some see as a rift that could be ripe for exploitation. "McDowell has been critical of Kevin Martin on a number of occasions," said industry analyst Blair Levin. Although both men are conservative Republicans, Levin said, their independence is partly explained by their different political bases -- Martin's in the Bush administration, McDowell's in Congress. In the legal, lobbying and industrial circles that monitor the FCC, opinions vary on the severity of the Martin-McDowell rivalry. Publicly, the two men have played down their differences and said they have a good working relationship. "The chairman and I have been friends for more than a decade," McDowell, 43, said in an interview. "We have a strong and durable relationship. . . . We will still have some differences, but we work together." A spokeswoman for Martin, Tamara Lipper, said the two men "have a very good relationship." The FCC's commissioners -- currently three Republicans and two Democrats -- are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and allowed to operate largely independently of each other. Intra-agency and intra-party feuds are not uncommon, and many analysts noted that Martin clashed with former chairman and fellow Republican Michael K. Powell. "When Michael Powell was FCC chairman, Kevin Martin was viewed as the maverick Republican," said Philip J. Weiser, a law professor at the University of Colorado who specializes in telecommunications. "And now he has to deal with his own maverick Republican." Martin, 40, and McDowell clashed even before McDowell arrived at the FCC in June. McDowell handed Martin a stinging setback by saying the FCC had no authority to require cable companies to carry additional digital broadcast channels, a key industry issue that Martin hoped to bring to a vote. The two subsequently tangled on other issues, most notably the $85 billion merger between AT&T and BellSouth approved by the FCC last month. Martin needed McDowell's vote to break a deadlock. But McDowell effectively held the process up, insisting that he could not take part in a vote because he previously worked as a lobbyist for an association representing companies that competed against AT&T and BellSouth. McDowell's sharp criticism of arguments in favor of a full commission vote were widely regarded as a rebuke of Martin. Ultimately, the merger was approved, but only after the companies made concessions sought by the two Democratic commissioners. Martin, McDowell and their colleagues may need all the camaraderie and cohesion they can muster at next week's hearing. With Democrats now in control of Congress, Dorgan said, "the running room of the FCC is going to be limited." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012501736.html ![]() Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years: Gates Ben Hirschler The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday. "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set. In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed program slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said. "Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it," he said. "Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior." At the moment, watching video clips on a computer is a separate experience from watching sitcoms or documentaries on television. But convergence is coming, posing new challenges for TV companies and advertisers. "Because TV is moving into being delivered over the Internet -- and some of the big phone companies are building up the infrastructure for that -- you're going to have that experience all together," Gates said. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said the impact on advertising would be profound, with the future promising far more targeted ads tailored to each viewer's profile. "In the coming months we're going to do experiments to see how people interact with these ads to build an effective model that works for advertisers and works for users," he said. Advertisers are already racing to adapt their strategies to the growing power of the Web, and more and more promotional cash is tipped to migrate from television to Web sites in future. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070127/...internet_tv_dc ![]() Subscription Television, The Wave Of The Future Rust It’s been a number of years since I’ve subscribed to cable TV at home. Among other reasons, most of the shows are crap, what isn’t crap is interrupted constantly by commercials that are twice the volume of the show I’m attempting to enjoy, and I don’t really want to pay $100 a month to get the few channels I feel are actually worth watching on occasion. The current model of subscription television works as follows. You pay a service provider (a cable or satellite company) a monthly fee for the right to view entertainment, news, and educational programming at their convenience. Your service provider will, at no extra cost, insert highly energetic and distracting untargeted advertisements at regular intervals. These ads will interrupt the broadcast so you don’t miss anything. As a special bonus, if the service is ever interrupted, you will need to wait for a period of time (potentially anywhere from a week to a decade) before you can watch a rerun of the show(s) you missed. Oh, that is so worth the money! This model of subscription television does have it’s good sides. There are, thanks to those advertisements that companies pay such large amounts of money for, literally hundreds of channels and thousands of shows you can watch. With that many simultaneous programs, chances are that you can turn your TV on and find something to watch any time you like. Of course, if you don’t subscribe to every channel your provider carries, you might not find the things you want. Even if you do, chances are pretty good that you didn’t really want to watch it right now. Enter the PVR, or Personal Video Recorder. Since the 1970’s, and much against the content industry’s wishes, you have been able to record a television show during it’s broadcast, and then watch it at your convenience. By the early 80’s, content and service providers had realized that the battle against time-shifting was lost, and control was once again with the viewer (to some extent, at least). More recently, you have been able to record those shows digitally to a DVD or hard drive or some other form of electronic memory. This is fundamentally no different than recording to analog tape (a la VHS or Beta), yet the content industry is once again up in arms to save it’s archaic and profitable business model. Even more recently, content providers have been pushing service providers (and indeed, even governments) to abandon the analog airwaves and start broadcasting solely digital signals. Why? Is it because digital looks better? No. Anyone with a good television set can see that most DVD videos show compression artifacting during certain types of scenes, while analog (VHS) recordings do not. Is it because digital broadcasts are more convenient for the viewer? Again, no. You have to buy a digital cable box or satellite receiver, and buy a television with digital or high-definition inputs. Is it so you can finally make use of all the neat features your new digital PVR has? Nope. In fact, that’s just about the last thing the content providers want, and by extension, the service providers. In reality, the main reason that digital TV is being touted as the next big thing by the content providers is because it is easier for them to control - once the right laws are in place. They can force service providers to bend to their will simply by threatening to withdraw their content from that providers offerings. So you end up with pretty decent looking television shows, broadcast in high-definition to that shiny new digital receiver, that you’re not allowed to time-shift, record, or otherwise enjoy on your schedule. So what are you paying them for? Ah right, there is little other choice right now. So here’s what I would like to see happen. Currently, I watch about four different television shows on a regular basis - Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and typically a current reality show (which is Grease: You’re The One That I Want right now). If it was convenient for me to sample more shows, I would probably find a few more that I like enough to want to watch. I would like to pay a nominal subscription fee (say, $10 per month) and receive only those four shows (though I’d be allowed at least a channel’s worth at that price - say 20 shows). I want them without commercials, I want them to be high-definition, I want to time-shift them, and I want to be able to watch them at least twice each. If I can simply subscribe to a video RSS feed and download the shows as they’re being broadcast, great. If I have to receive them over the normal cable connection, I want advertisements to run the rest of the time so I’m not forced to watch them (and turn my television down) every 9 or 12 minutes during the best parts of my show. You’re maybe thinking “Dude, no way they’ll do that for $10 a month! At 20 weekly shows (presumably), that’s only about $0.12 per episode (80 episodes per month!” I say that’s about right, but you’re currently paying, say, $50 a month and you can watch thousands of episodes per month. That works out to way, way less than $0.12 per episode! In fact, if you’re paying $50 per month for cable and receive 50 channels, and we assume that each channel will have an average of 24 shows per day, that works out to 36000 episodes per month at a mere $0.0014 each! If they take my suggestion, I’ll be paying nearly 100 times more than that! How can they possibly go wrong! The maths don’t lie! The sad fact is that many people are paying $1.99 per episode at online stores like iTunes, an amount that is, to say the least, astronomically high compared to cable and satellite (over 1400 times higher). Clearly, the content providers and producers do not want my business. Their business actions are the equivalent of selling bottled water at $100 per bottle during a flood. This is why people pirate television shows. Didn’t anyone in charge do the math? http://digitalrights.ca/2007/01/subs...of-the-future/ ![]() The First P2P PVR from NDS Plus Innovative "Distributed DVR" Chris Tew NDS LogoNDS is the company that is majority owned by NewsCorp and previously replaced TiVo to create the DirecTV PVRs. While these PVRs have not had the best of times, NDS has today announced some very innovative IPTV products. The first is what NDS call the "Distributed DVR" which allows users to use hard drives from anywhere on a home network instead of being restricted to a hard drive on a single PVR. This itself is brilliant and will give users a lot more freedom when it comes to storing content. The second is ShareTV where users can share content stored on their PVRS with other subscribers over a P2P network making the world's first Peer to Peer PVR (from what I'm aware of). It sounds like the recordings will be protected by DRM and only available to other subscribers to the IPTV service, but it does sound like you will be able to download TV shows that you haven't even recorded. This effectively allows you to get huge libraries of videos and TV shows, which you can then store anywhere on your home network. I very much like the sound of this. I wonder if this will end up being rolled out as a DirecTV service given the close ties NDS has with DirecTV already. http://www.pvrwire.com/2007/01/29/an...ents-from-nds/ ![]() At Last, Television Ratings Go to College Louise Story For decades, Nielsen Media Research has affixed the same value to every college student watching television while away at school: zero. As a result, industry executives have complained for years that shows appealing to a younger audience have been underrated. But, starting today, college students count. Shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “Family Guy” are expected to see their ratings surge this week as Nielsen Media Research, a unit of the Nielsen Company, includes the viewing of students living away from home in its count for the first time. In the TV world, a boost in Nielsen ratings often means a boost in advertiser dollars, so the adjusted ratings are good news for networks with high college viewership, like ESPN, Fox and CW. Adult Swim, a block of adult programming on the Cartoon Network that expects its 18- to 24-year-old audience to jump by 35 percent with the new ratings, is so excited about the change that it ran an ad telling viewers about it in mid-October. “It’s going to validate what advertisers have always assumed, which is that college students are watching our programming,” said Jeff Lucas, a senior vice president at Comedy Central. Mr. Lucas said that the network’s own research shows that “South Park,” “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” and “The Colbert Report” have a large college audience. It’s too early to know how much more advertisers will pay for shows with larger audiences because of the college ratings. Network executives, of course, said they expect to be paid for the higher ratings. If advertisers decide to spend more on shows that demonstrate high college viewership, TV networks may decide to dedicate more of their schedule programming to college tastes. The college ratings are the first of two major changes in the way viewing habits are rated. In May, Nielsen will start releasing figures on the number of people who actually watch commercials, separating them from viewers who walk away or switch channels when the ads come on. The potential impact of ad ratings on network revenue has not been calculated. Nielsen’s move into colleges is its first step in an ambitious plan to track TV viewing wherever and whenever it takes place. Long focused only on viewing of home television sets, Nielsen is building portable meters to track when people see TV in bars, restaurants, gyms, stores and other places outside the home. And, within two to three years, Nielsen plans to merge data from its online unit with its TV unit to calculate total viewing on all media. “The holy grail here is how to measure consumers as they go from TV to iPod to cellphone and back,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research for NBC Universal. But the first step — measuring students’ viewing of television — comes with its own pitfalls. College students still watch a significant amount of television, spending three and a half hours a day tuned in on average, about an hour less than all people on average, according to Nielsen. But college students are not watching only TV. They are also among the most likely consumers to be browsing the Internet, watching streaming video, text messaging on their cellphones and playing video games — sometimes all at once. “College students have the television on in the background at the same time they undoubtedly have their computers on,” said Matt Britton, chief of brand development for Mr. Youth, a marketing firm based in New York. “They’re online — searching Facebook, doing research, shopping.” Their media habits make them targets of marketers, but just how attentive college students are while they are watching TV may give advertisers pause about how much they can trust their viewing. “The people meter just measures if the set is on and what they’re watching. But are they doing their homework, are they talking to friends; what else are they doing while the ad is showing?” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, an ad-buying agency. Still, Mr. Adgate said, advertisers may increase their payments to networks with large college audiences because of the perceived lifetime value of the college market. “If you can get them using your product at age 20, they could be using it for the next 60 years,” he said. Until now, the 18- to 24-year-olds counted by Nielsen were mainly those who did not attend college, attended part-time or still lived at home. During holiday and summer breaks, of course, many college students are home and were counted by Nielsen at those times on their parents’ set-top boxes. (There are 10,000 households with Nielsen boxes tracking their viewing, and from those households, Nielsen extrapolates national viewing estimates.) Over the last decade, several TV networks with shows aimed at young people grew increasingly frustrated that college students were not counted. About five years ago, Turner Broadcasting, which owns Cartoon Network and TBS, approached Nielsen about the issue. Over the next year, Nielsen held discussions with its clients who pay for the ratings — the networks and the advertising agencies. As with most tests of new offerings, Nielsen wanted a group of clients to pay the costs of evaluating the college market. By 2003, Turner, WB, CBS, MTV Networks, Fox and ESPN agreed to pay, and Nielsen started pilot tests. To add college students to the ratings, Nielsen contacted the roughly 450 families in its sample who had children in college. About 30 percent of those families agreed to let Nielsen put a meter in the college student’s dorm room or off-campus apartment. Some families did not agree simply because their child did not have a TV set at school. The change will affect the perception of viewing behavior, particularly for viewers 18 to 24. College students, for example, watch more television during the day, when young people not in college are more likely to be at work. The prime-time shows the college and noncollege population picks to watch are also not always the same. While “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Simpsons” were popular in November on and off campus among 18- to 24-year-olds, shows like “Ugly Betty” and “America’s Next Top Model” were far more popular among college students than among other people that age. In fact, the No. 1 one show for college males in November was Comedy Central’s cartoon show, “Drawn Together.” According to a Nielsen analysis, “Drawn Together” would have had an average audience of about 435,000 18-to 24-year-olds in November. But, since college students were not counted, the Nielsen rating in that age group totaled only 272,000 people that month. Some TV networks are planning to spend more money marketing their shows on college campuses this spring since they will now see results in the ratings. Mr. Britton of Mr. Youth said two broadcast networks had contacted his firm about increased marketing on college campuses. MTV already operates a network, called mtvU, that is seen exclusively on college campuses. MTV has found advertisers like Ford interested in specifically focusing on college students on the 750 campuses where mtvU is seen in places like dormitories, fitness centers and dining halls. Now that Nielsen is tracking college viewing, more college-focused networks or programming could be developed and sold to advertisers.Amy Adams, a freshman at Muskingum College in Ohio, said she and her roommate watch movies together on ABC Family and TNT on weekends. Other people in her dorm watch far more TV than she does, Ms. Adams said. “As I walk down the halls, I always hear the TV on in someone’s bedroom,” she said. “Even in the mornings, too.” Aviva Halperin, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said watching TV is a social event for her and her housemates. They watch “24” every week, and they like to watch it when broadcast, using commercial breaks as a time to chat. “I know this sound really silly, but ‘24’ feels real because it’s close to our own fears, and it feels more real when I watch it in real time,” Ms. Halperin said. “When I watch it on TiVo, it’s not as gripping.” The lack of TiVo and other digital video recorders is another advantage of student viewers. Young people are more likely to channel surf and fast-forward to skip commercials, Nielsen’s research shows. But perhaps because of their cost, DVRs are owned by only about 3 to 4 percent of college students, according to Student Monitor, a college student research firm based in Ridgewood, N.J. (About 13 percent of American households have DVRs.) On the downside for broadcasters, college students, like many people their age, also spend a fair share of their day playing video games — nearly two hours a day, not including online games, according to Nielsen. Still, college students last week said they thought it was about time they were counted by Nielsen. “It’s kind of silly that we weren’t,” said Beth Lovisa, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s so not true that we don’t watch any.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/bu...29nielsen.html ![]() Inside the Lucasfilm Data Center Daniel Terdiman Given the cult-film status of 1971's THX 1138 in the George Lucas universe, it should come as little surprise that the total capacity of Lucasfilm's giant data center is 11.38 petabits per second. Granted, that number--which represents the value one would get by adding up the bandwidth capacity of all the company's 1 gigabit per second desktop machines and its 10-gbps backbone--is purely theoretical. But in an environment like Lucasfilm, which is celebrating four Oscar nominations this week, and where self-referential history is a big parlor game, numbers like that are nothing to be messed with. The 10-gbps backbone is the core of the data center's network. That rate is faster than the prevailing industry standard of around 1 gbps for most servers. "They're hesitant to change that capacity," Kevin Clark, Lucasfilm's director of IT operations, said of the total theoretical bandwidth number. For IT professionals, Clark must have one of the most enviable jobs in the world. After all, after spending several years at enterprise software maker Autodesk, he now oversees a 10,000-square-foot data center--Clark said that might equate to the size of a Google data center, or one run by a financial institution, though those types of organizations would operate more of them--that houses the computing guts of the Lucasfilm empire, the corporate umbrella for Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasarts, Lucasfilm itself and StarWars.com. The data center, which is housed on a lower level of the Letterman Digital Arts Center where Lucasfilm is headquartered, opened its doors in 2005 as Lucas was moving much of that empire to San Francisco's Presidio, a former army base in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, from its previous home across the bay in San Rafael. And while a major data center move for any company would be disruptive, Clark and his team had to find a way to minimize the impact on the many major motion pictures, video game projects and other initiatives it was involved in at the time. "If the systems go down here in corporate, you might not have your e-mail for a couple hours," said Greg Grusby, ILM's technical publicist. "If the systems go down in this data center, you lose $50 million." In fact, Clark said, the data center "far exceeds" the computing power of any other production house in the world. From Web sites to e-mail to graphic rendering, all the bytes pass through here at this high-tech movie production company. All told, the data center currently has more than 2,000 servers. At its core are 198 Verari servers, in three matching front-and-back racks of three rows of 11 servers each, all dual-core/dual-processor Operton server with 16GB of memory. Clark said that he expects that number to double within the next month. And with a host of projects in the pipeline, including Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Evan Almighty, the next Harry Potter film, Transformers and more, it's important that Clark and his team keep up with the company's computing needs. "There's a large R&D effort that drives much of the this," he said, "based on the goals of the projects." Beyond the 198 Verari servers, the center also sports row after row of "legacy" servers, including racks of 65 Angstrom Microsystems servers. "It doesn't take long to turn legacy," Clark said. "Sometimes it's only six to seven months before we're moving on to the next technology." And when considering which servers to buy next, Clark explained that he pays close attention to the performance per watt of potential purchases. "Power utilization is a big thing for us," Clark said. "We do have a keen eye on performance on that front." Given the company's business, it's no wonder that Lucasfilm also has a substantial storage system. It is using a Network Appliance SpinOS network-attached storage system, and will soon be moving to GX cluster. And that's crucial, since films like Pirate of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, for which ILM received a best visual effects Oscar nomination Tuesday, can require 60 terabytes of storage, Clark said. And the next release in that franchise's series, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, will likely require at least 50 percent more storage, he said. In total, he added, the storage farm has more than 300 terabytes of capacity. http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-6153647.html ![]() Harry Potter’s Final Act Is Set for July 21 Motoko Rich and Julie Bosman J. K. Rowling, the author of the record-setting Harry Potter series, announced today that the seventh — and last — book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will be published on July 21. That will be just eight days after the release of the film version of the fifth volume in the series, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” portending a huge summer for fans of the young wizard. Millions of fans around the world are fiercely anticipating this latest installment. But the end of the series, in which Ms. Rowling has hinted she may kill off one of the main characters, comes as a bittersweet finale not only for readers but also for the publishing companies, booksellers and licensees that have cashed in on the international phenomenon since it began more than nine years ago with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It is hard to imagine how the publishing industry will ever replace the sensation that spawned midnight parties and all-night lines to get the books the moment they went on sale. When “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth in the series, was published in July 2005, it sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours. For this final installment, the cover price will rise to $34.99, compared to $29.99 for the previous volume, although many retailers are offering substantial discounts, often as high as 40 percent. Scholastic, Ms. Rowling’s American publisher, which represents about 37 percent of Harry’s global books in print, is clearly on the hot seat as it prepares for life after the boy magician. “It’s the question that everybody asks about,” said Frederick Searby at J. P. Morgan, an equity analyst who follows Scholastic’s stock. “What happens to Scholastic after Harry Potter?” On its own, a new Harry Potter title has the power to juice up sales significantly, not just at Scholastic, but throughout the industry. On the London Stock Exchange, the announcement of the new book’s publication date by Bloomsbury, Ms. Rowling’s British publisher, sent its shares up 2.2 percent. In New York trading, the shares of Scholastic rose about 1 percent in the morning but fell back by afternoon. In a year without Harry, his absence becomes an excuse for falling sales. In the fiscal year ending May 31, 2005, one in which Scholastic did not publish a new hardcover Harry title, for example, sales in its children’s book publishing division dropped 15 percent to $1.15 billion from $1.36 billion. Last year, several bookstore chains, including Barnes & Noble and Borders, mentioned the lack of a Harry Potter hardcover as a reason for declining sales in the second quarter. Scholastic officials readily admit that there is no one book or series waiting in the wings to succeed the Harry Potter series, which has 120 million copies in print in the U.S. and 325 million worldwide. “If I suggested that I had in the pipeline the one thing that is going to replace what Harry has been to the company, that would be arrogant and ill-informed,” said Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic’s trade and book fairs division. Instead, she said, the company had a number of projects that it believed could generate a sizable chunk of revenue. Richard Robinson, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is quick to emphasize that despite the outsize attention that Ms. Rowling and her series attracts, it is not the pillar upholding the company. He said that even in a record year like 2005, when sales of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” generated about $175 million in revenues, that was about 13 percent of the company’s book sales and only 8 percent of Scholastic’s total revenues, which include income from educational publishing, children’s television programming, DVD’s, computer software and its international division. He pointed out that pundits had questioned Scholastic’s survival after the decline of other wildly successful series from the publisher, like Goosebumps and The Babysitters Club. Each of those series have more books in print than all of the Harry Potter books combined. Coming projects include a new series by Ann Martin, author of “The Babysitters Club” titles, more books from Cornelia Funke, the best-selling German fantasy writer and a new sort of junior chick-lit series for 9 and 10-year old girls called “Candy Apple.” When the company announced first quarter results in September, analysts noted that while sales in the book unit were down by half because of the absence of a new Harry Potter title this year, sales of other books were up 19 percent. Ms. Holton added that the publication of the last Harry book does not signal the death of the series. “I don’t think there is an end to the Harry Potter franchise,” she said, because new generations of readers will continue to discover the books. Currently, she said, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” sells about 500,000 copies a year. Scholastic has signed a multi-book contract with Meg Cabot, the author of "The Princess Diaries" and "All-American Girl," Ms. Holton said on Thursday. Ms. Cabot is writing a series for younger girls that will be introduced in spring of 2008. “Scholastic has dodged the big bullet twice,” said Al Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University and an analyst for the Book Industry Study Group, which produces “Book Industry Trends,” an annual study of book sales. “I think the company is essentially sound and will continue to be successful,” he added. “But they’re just not going to have that big cash flow and may have to go out into the marketplace and pay a lot of money to replace” Ms. Rowling. In the years following the publication of the last Harry Potter title, Mr. Greco predicts that growth in revenues in children’s books will decline from double-digits in Harry years to the low single digits. Stephen Riggio, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said that while Harry had provided a strong boost to sales, he was not concerned about the end of the franchise. Like Ms. Holton, he said, “it will be with us for our entire lifetime and beyond.” What’s more, he said, even though sales of a new Harry title were significant in the month they came out, over all, they represented less than 1 per cent of total annual sales. And it may be that some booksellers never made that much profit from Harry Potter anyway. “If we sell the book at 40 percent off, I don’t think we’re making that much money,” Mr. Riggio said. Indeed, said Constance Sayre, principal of Market Partners International, a consultant to the publishing industry in New York, “The competing amongst the chain stores and the warehouse clubs for discount probably limited their profits enormously.” And the end of the Harry Potter series is not the most pressing problem facing publishers of books for children and young adults; competition from other forms of entertainment is the real threat. “When you look now at an 8- or 10-year-old, they are truly online, they are IMing their friends, they are text-messaging, they have an iPod where they are watching and listening to music,” said Susan Miller, president of Mixed Media Group, which develops books, television shows and movies for children. “They have a lot of other ways to spend their time, media wise and, if you like to consume stories you can be watching something on the television. There are a lot of places for them to be entertained.” Still, there’s always this possibility: Ms. Rowling could just write another series. “At some point she’ll come out of retirement and pull a Michael Jordan,” said Mr. Searby of J. P. Morgan. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/bo...aae&ei=5087%0A ![]() Final Harry Potter Book Gets Record Amazon Orders Amazon.com Inc. said on Friday first-day advance orders for " Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and last installment of J.K. Rowling's successful book series, were 547 percent higher than for its predecessor. Thursday's pre-orders for "Deathly Hallows" exceeded the first two weeks of pre-orders for its predecessor, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," Seattle-based Amazon said. "Half-Blood Prince," released in July 2005, generated more than 1.5 million pre-orders on Amazon, the online retailer said. The final Harry Potter book is slated for release on July 21. Scholastic Corp. (Nasdaq:SCHL - news) publishes the book in the United States, while Bloomsbury Publishing handles the book in Great Britain. Article ![]() The (Super Bowl) Party's Over Robert King Churches in Indiana and across the country are scrapping traditional Super Bowl viewing parties in wake of the NFL’s stance that mass viewings of the game on big screen TV’s would violate copyright law. The issue came to light Thursday when the Star reported that the NFL had told Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis that its plans for a Super Bowl watch party in front a big screen TV would be illegal. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Thursday the league stands by its interpretation of copyright law and would look into any violators that comes to the league’s attention. The main concern for the league, Aiello said, is groups that charge admission to watch games and those that use a TV screen larger than 55 inches to show the game. A story about Fall Creek’s plan to cancel its game viewing plans prompted dozens of calls and more than 500 email comments to the Star’s website Thursday. Aiello said media from around the country have been inquiring with the league as well. In Indianapolis, home of the AFC Champion Colts, Indian Creek Christian Church and Castleton United Methodist Church are among those who have cancelled plans to watch the game in their churches. The issue came to light after the NFL confronted Fall Creek about its promotion of a “Super Bowl Bash” at the church that would bring together congregation members to watch the game with a projection TV. Aiello said the league has a longstanding policy against “mass out-of-home viewings” of the Super Bowl, even if the hosts don’t charge admission. The NFL makes an exception to that, however, for sports bars that show televised sports on a regular basis. And that point has been a point of considerable anger among people who have contacted the newspaper in response to the story. http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl...RTS03/70201036 ![]() Multiplying the Payoffs From a Super Bowl Spot Stuart Elliott HERE is a lesson in new math, Madison Avenue style: The most expensive advertising buy of the year may turn out to be something of a bargain. That buy is, of course, a television commercial during the Super Bowl, typically the most-watched program of any year. And while the cost this year sets a record, at an estimated average of $2.6 million for each 30-second spot, more than two dozen marketers believe it makes sense to spend that much money despite the many cheaper alternatives. This counterintuitive belief is predicated on a big if — if the Super Bowl is not the end of a marketing game plan but the beginning, the premium cost is economical. The spot needs to be buttressed by a panoply of complementary extensions into new media like Web sites, video clips, cellphone text messaging, blogs and short films. In other words, one of the most traditional ways to peddle products, the 3o-second TV spot, is being made relevant again by the explosion in nontraditional media choices. For instance, Anheuser-Busch, which typically buys the most commercial time of any Super Bowl advertiser, will for the first time use e-mail messages to invite consumers to vote for their favorite Super Bowl spots by sending text messages or visiting a Web site. Also, all the company’s Super Bowl commercials will be posted the next day on a new Web site, bud.tv. “What you have to recognize is where the consumer’s going,” said Robert Lachky, executive vice president for global industry development and chief creative officer at the Anheuser-Busch division of Anheuser-Busch. • That is particularly true, he added, for the drinkers ages 21 to 27 who are the target audience for much of the marketing for his beer brands like Bud Light. Nationwide Insurance plans to preview its Super Bowl spot, a humorous look at the marital and career woes of the rapper Kevin Federline, by posting it Monday on its Web site (nationwide.com). “Half the people in the United States watch the Super Bowl, but half don’t,” said Steven R. Schreibman, vice president for advertising and brand management at Nationwide Financial. “How do you reach them?” “The Super Bowl is the only media property where the advertising is as big a story as the content of the show,” he added, “so you want to see how much you can leverage it.” Mr. Schreibman is still agog at the response to the Nationwide spot during the Super Bowl last year, featuring the hunk Fabio demonstrating that “life comes at you fast,” to quote the campaign theme. For months afterward, computer users were still visiting Web sites like ifilm.com to watch the commercials, Mr. Schreibman said, adding: “We got 1.8 million downloads on that one site. Fabio himself keeps me apprised of that.” Garmin, a maker of G.P.S. navigation devices that will be a first-time Super Bowl sponsor, is posting video clips about its commercial on the company blog (garmin.blogs.com). The entries will be updated periodically until the game, which will be broadcast Feb. 4 by CBS. “To look at the Super Bowl as ‘30 seconds and gone’ was never a part of the plan,” said Jon Cassat, director for marketing communications at Garmin. “We think a great audience out there responds to traditional media like television,” he added, “and we think there is a great audience out there we will reach through viral means.” • To be sure, opening the wallet so wide for ads does not have universal appeal. For instance, a survey of board members of the National Sports Marketing Network, an organization with chapters in 11 cities, found that only 31 percent would recommend a Super Bowl spot to their chief executive or chief marketing officer. And 41 percent said they believed Super Bowl spots were not worth the investment. “It’s not right for everyone,” said Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “Some of them, you scratch your head,” he added. “In the hype of the Super Bowl, they get carried away.” But for “the right marketer, the Super Bowl makes wonderful sense if you think of it as a springboard to other things,” Professor Calkins said, adding: “Put the ads on the Internet. Get all the P.R. you can. Make the most of your media investment.” Even the executive at CBS in charge of selling the estimated 30 minutes of commercial time during the game acknowledges that the spots in and of themselves are no longer, to mix sports references, slam-dunks. “It’s changed as the media have changed,” said JoAnn Ross, president for network sales at CBS. The focus now among the advertisers, she added, is on “what they can do to further the message.” Indeed, Ms. Ross said, CBS is arranging for all the spots shown during the game to go up on one of its Web sites (cbssportsline.com) as soon as the game ends. And the network is talking to Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless, she added, so subscribers can watch the commercials on their cellphones. Here is information about efforts by other Super Bowl advertisers to extend their commercial buys. CAREERBUILDER The job search service is teasing consumers about its Super Bowl commercials with a humorous online promotion, the “Age-O-Matic” (at ageomatic.com and careerbuilder.com), which purports to show the toll taken over time by a “soul-sucking job.” There are also teaser spots on TV to tell viewers that CareerBuilder is saying goodbye to the comic chimpanzees that appeared in its Super Bowl commercials in 2005 and 2006. “If a campaign doesn’t have a whole bunch of legs, it shouldn’t get launched,” said Peter Krivkovich, chief executive at the CareerBuilder agency, Cramer-Krasselt. “If you add the legs, you can put your campaign on turbocharge.” CareerBuilder is owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune. FRITO-LAY The Frito-Lay unit of PepsiCo is sponsoring a contest for consumers to create a Super Bowl commercial for Doritos snack chips. The work of the five finalists, selected from 1,100 entries, can be watched on a Web site (crashthesuperbowl.com). The winning spot, chosen through an online vote, will run exactly as the consumer made it, the company promises. “It was worth the risk we took,” said Ann Mukherjee, vice president for marketing at Frito-Lay. “It has far exceeded any online promotion Frito-Lay has ever done.” Frito-Lay will throw a Super Bowl party on Feb. 4 for the finalists to “watch the game and find out in the moment” who won, Ms. Mukherjee said, and the results will be taped for future use online. GENERAL MOTORS The Chevrolet division of General Motors is sponsoring a contest for teams of college students to create an idea for a Super Bowl spot, which a Chevy agency, Campbell-Ewald, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, will produce for the game. The contest is chronicled at chevycollegead.com and the five finalist teams are the stars of “Webisodes,” video clips styled like TV shows. They can be watched online at cbs.com/specials/superbowls_greatest_commercials/chevy/. The winning team will be revealed on a special, “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials,” on CBS on Feb. 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/bu...7ac2a7&ei=5070 ![]() Boston Officials Livid Over Ad Stunt AP Livid about a publicity campaign that disrupted the city by stirring fears of terrorism, Boston officials vowed to prosecute those responsible and seek restitution, while others mocked authorities on Thursday for what they called an overreaction. Officials found a slew of blinking electronic signs adorning bridges and other high-profile spots across the city Wednesday, prompting the closing of a highway and part of the Charles River and the deployment of bomb squads. The 38 signs were part of a promotion for the Cartoon Network TV show ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force,'' a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. The network's parent is Turner Broadcasting Systems Inc. ''It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme,'' Mayor Thomas Menino said. ''I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred.'' The 1-foot tall signs, which were lit up at night, resembled a circuit board, with protruding wires and batteries. Most depicted a boxy, cartoon character giving passersby the finger -- a more obvious sight when darkness fell. Two men who put up the promotions were to be arraigned Thursday on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Authorities say Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, were hired to place the devices. Berdovsky, an artist, told The Boston Globe he was hired by a marketing company and said he was ''kind of freaked out'' by the furor. ''I find it kind of ridiculous that they're making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation,'' he said. Fans of the show mocked what they called an overreaction as about a dozen gathered outside Charlestown District Court on Thursday morning with signs saying ''1-31-07 Never Forget'' and ''Free Peter.'' ''We're the laughing stock,'' said Tracy O'Connor, 34. ''It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days,'' said Jennifer Mason, 26. ''You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city.'' O'Connor said there's nothing wrong with being vigilant, but said she said it was ridiculous to shut down a city ''when anyone under the age of 35 knew this was a joke the second they saw it.'' Authorities vowed to hold Turner accountable for what Menino said was ''corporate greed,'' that led to at least $750,000 in police costs. As soon as Turner realized the Boston problem around 5 p.m., it said, law enforcement officials were told of their locations in 10 cities where it said the devices had been placed for two to three weeks: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia. ''We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger,'' said Phil Kent, chairman of Turner, a division of Time Warner Inc. Kent said the marketing company that placed the signs, Interference Inc., was ordered to remove them immediately. Interference had no comment. A woman who answered the phone at the New York-based firm's offices Wednesday afternoon said the firm's CEO was out of town and would not be able to comment until Thursday. Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists. A voice mail box for Berdovsky was full Wednesday night. The Associated Press was unable to find whether Stevens had a lawyer. Authorities are investigating whether Turner or other companies should be criminally charged, Attorney General Martha Coakley said. ''We're not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city,'' Coakley said. In Seattle and several suburbs, the removal of the signs was low-key. ''We haven't had any calls to 911 regarding this,'' Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb said Wednesday. Police in Philadelphia said they believed their city had 56 devices. The New York Police Department removed 41 of the devices -- 38 in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn, according to spokesman Paul Browne. The NYPD had not received any complaints. But when it became aware of the situation, it contacted Cartoon Network, which provided the locations so the devices could be removed. ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force'' is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of a block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network. A feature length film based on the show is slated for release March 23. http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/ne...7-1292551.html Hair-Raising Press Conference ![]() Turner to Pay Cost of Boston Security Scare: Report Turner Broadcasting has agreed to pay the full cost -- around $1 million -- of a security alert in Boston triggered by battery-powered cartoon advertising signs for one of its shows, The Boston Globe reported on Friday. Authorities are investigating the role of U.S. media group, which took out an advertisement in the newspaper on Friday to apologize for Wednesday's daylong security scare triggered by a "guerrilla" marketing campaign. "We did not intend to perpetrate a hoax," the ad said. The Globe, quoting Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, said the company would pay costs expected to top $500,000 in Boston and another $500,000 for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and two nearby cities. Menino was not immediately available to comment. The 12-inch (30-cm) signs -- a total of 38 across the city under bridges, on storefronts and near busy train stations -- were meant to promote an animated character for an adult-themed show on Turner's Cartoon Network called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." A movie version is also being produced. Authorities have charged Sean Stevens, 28, and Peter Berdovsky, 27, in the security alert, Boston's biggest since the September 11 attacks. They pleaded not guilty to charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Prosecutors said the two were paid by a New York marketing company hired by Turner Broadcasting System Inc., and Menino has said the city may sue the company, a unit of Time Warner Inc. The signs were encased in dark plastic with wires protruding and lights wired to an electronic circuit board, and included a character making an obscene gesture. After the first one was found on Wednesday morning, police responded to calls of similar devices in at least eight other areas. At the peak of the alert, authorities mobilized emergency crews, federal agents, bomb squads, hundreds of police and the U.S. Coast Guard as traffic came to a halt in busy areas on Wednesday. Roads, bridges and even part of the Charles River were closed. Article ![]() Did Boston Ad Stunt Really Backfire on Turner? Paul Thomasch A promotional stunt by Turner Broadcasting may have set off a security scare in Boston and put the network under fire, but it also achieved just what such campaigns set out to do: Stir up big buzz for little money. As part of what is known as a "guerrilla" campaign, Turner Broadcasting placed small, animated billboards to promote a cartoon for adults around Boston, New York, Los Angeles and other cities several weeks ago. The ad campaign took an unintentional turn on Wednesday, when Boston authorities mistook the devices for possible bombs and shut down parts of the city. It was Boston's biggest security scare since the September11 attacks and investigators are looking into Turner's role, but some experts say the promotion still may be chalked up a success. "They achieved far more than they probably ever set out to with this group of, say, 21- to 35-year-olds that they were trying to reach," said Tracy Ryan, an advertising professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ryan, like other experts, criticized the decision to place the electronic devices around cities given the current political environment. But industry watchers also said that the audience for the cartoon, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," is often hard to reach through more conventional methods. "They respond well to things that are nontraditional and rebellious," Ryan said. "This target market probably thinks it's fantastic that they were able to cause an uproar." A unit of Time Warner Inc., Turner Broadcasting worked on the campaign with Interference Inc., an agency known for the sort of low-cost guerrilla or viral campaigns that promote brands with unconventional marketing. In a statement, Turner Broadcasting said it regretted the devices "were mistakenly thought to pose any danger." Interference Inc. could not be reached for comment. Butterflies, Popsicles And Spray-Paint Other such campaigns, in which advertisements crop up in unusual places or unexpected ways, have stumbled in the past. Snapple, for instance, tried to erect an immense, 25-foot popsicle in 2005 to promote a line of frozen treats, only to have it melt and swamp New York's Union Square. IBM also ran into trouble with officials in several major U.S. cities when it spray-painted advertisements for its Linux operating systems on sidewalks and street corners. Microsoft Corp. came under criticism when it littered New York streets with MSN Butterfly decals. But Andrew Benett, chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide, called the Turner stunt "kind of the apex" of guerrilla campaigns that went awry. "But it's very safe to say, while not done on purpose, it may have been far more successful than planned," he said. Still, while Turner Broadcasting may have successfully reached the audience of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," it likely faces a broader public relations headache, said Drew Neisser, the chief executive of Renegade Marketing Group. "They got a lot of P.R.-- but they are probably not happy on the corporate level," said Neisser, who has overseen viral campaigns such as using an old checkered cab with HSBC's logo to give free rides to the bank's customers in New York. "The question becomes in all this does the marketer have any responsibility to the world at large? Obviously my perspective is they do," said Neisser. "You should be able to sell your products without making the world any worse." Jamie Tedford, senior vice president for marketing and media innovation at Arnold Worldwide, an advertising agency, echoed concerns about corporate responsibility in marketing. "Unfortunately, it might end up as a short term gain in viewership because of this stunt," he said. "This is a perfect example of crass, old-school saying that all publicity is good publicity." Article ![]() It’s Taking on a Life of it’s Own Jack Save Boston - The Flash Game ![]() Levi’s Turns to Suing Its Rivals Michael Barbaro and Julie Creswell United States Patent and Trademark No. 1,139,254 is not much to look at: a pentagon surrounding a childlike drawing of a seagull in flight. But the design for a Levi’s pocket, first used 133 years ago, has become the biggest legal battleground in American fashion. Levi Strauss claims that legions of competitors have stolen its signature denim stitches — two intersecting arcs and a cloth label — for their own pockets, slapping them on the seats of high-priced, hip-hugging jeans that have soared in popularity. So Levi’s is becoming a leader in a new arena: lawsuits. The company, once the undisputed king of denim and now a case study in missed opportunities, has emerged as the most litigious in the apparel industry when it comes to trademark infringement lawsuits, firing off nearly 100 against its competitors since 2001. That’s far more than General Motors, Walt Disney or Nike, according to an analysis by research firm Thomson West. The legal scuffles offer a rare glimpse into the sharp-elbowed world of fashion, where the line between inspiration and imitation is razor thin. After all, clothing makers’ trade secrets are hung on store racks for all to see, and designs can be quickly copied with small changes to exploit a hot trend. The lawsuits, which Levi’s says it is compelled to file to safeguard the defining features on its jeans, are not about the money — one settled for just $5,000 in damages. Instead, the company says, they are about removing copycats from stores. Nearly all the cases have settled out of court, with Levi’s smaller rivals agreeing to stop making the offending pants and to destroy unsold pairs. But those competitors say the lawsuits are the last resort of a poor loser, a company that has lost billions in sales, laid off thousands of workers and flirted with bankruptcy as the denim industry exploded. “They missed the boat,” said Tonny Sorensen, chief executive of Von Dutch Originals, a six-year-old denim and clothing manufacturer sued by Levi’s six months ago for allegedly borrowing the company’s double arcs for a back-pocket design. “Now they want to make a lot of noise and scare people away.” Mr. Sorensen said his pocket design “did not look like Levi’s at all” because of subtle differences like placing the arcs “one inch to the left” and stitching a line to resemble “a pirate’s hook.” Nevertheless, Von Dutch agreed to remove the jeans from dozens of boutiques and destroy hundreds of unsold pairs. “It was one style and it was not that successful anyway, so we made the decision not to fight it,” Mr. Sorensen said. In the majority of cases, Levi’s accuses competitors of copying its design of two arcs that meet in the center of the pocket or its famous Levi’s tab, a folded piece of cloth sewn into the vertical seam of the garment. Robert Hanson, Levi’s president for North America, said the company manufactured “a product that a lot of people are copying and copying with a lot of success.” Instead of relying on Levi’s designs for what he called a “running start,” competitors should “look for other devices that don’t come remotely close to the Levi’s trademarks,” Mr. Hanson said. “Be more innovative.” But the privately held Levi’s, whose founder sewed together the first pair of jeans in 1873, has been unable to exploit the latest $200-a-pair denim craze — and now claims scores of smaller competitors are riding high because of what it created. When consumers’ tastes shifted toward designer jeans that were bejeweled, torn and frayed, Levi’s was still selling basic $30 pairs at K-Mart. In this dispute, back-pocket stitching has become the fashion equivalent of ink blots, with plaintiffs and defendants seeing in the new designs what they want, or need, to see. So far, Levi’s view is prevailing. The company’s team of denim detectives — there are 40 across the world, scouring boutiques and department stores — has spotted what they considered offending stitches on jeans from the biggest names in the clothing business: Guess, Zegna, Esprit, Lucky Brand and Zumiez, to name a few. Even companies that have painstakingly worked to avoid infringing on Levi’s trademarks have found themselves in the company’s crosshairs. At Rock & Republic, one of the country’s fastest-growing jeans makers, designers intentionally placed a cloth label on the right hand side of a back pocket, not the left, which would violate a Levi’s trademark. Levi’s sued anyway, arguing its trademarks forbid placing such a label on a vertical seam of a back-pocket. During a tense, five-hour settlement discussion in San Francisco several weeks ago, the chief executive of Rock and Republic, Michael Ball, upbraided Levi’s lawyers for their aggressive tactics. “I take it personally that you try to dictate how I design my jeans,” he recalled saying. Still, Mr. Ball said he agreed to stop placing the label on the vertical seam of a right-hand pocket for two years to avoid a drawn-out legal battle. In an interview, Mr. Ball said his back-pocket stitching “was not remotely close to Levi’s” and that he agreed to a settlement, in part, because “I will get bored with that design soon anyway.” Executives at Levi’s concede they missed important fashion trends as the denim industry ballooned over the last several years, but they deny the lawsuits are connected to any downturn in their business. Instead, they say they are simply trying to preserve their intellectual property. Like pharmaceutical companies that sue generic drug makers over their patents or technology companies that duke it out over who owns the right to microchip designs, Levi’s says it is trying to protect its most valuable asset, its trademarks. Clothing companies have battled counterfeiters and each other for decades over design trademarks. Lacoste has defended its alligator, Polo Ralph Lauren fights for its polo player and Nike fiercely protects its famous swoosh. In that respect, Levi’s is no different. As far back as the 1970s, it sued the firm that made Wrangler jeans over the use of identifying tabs on clothing. “We protected our trademarks when business has been terrific and when it’s been difficult,” said Mr. Hanson. Yet difficult only begins to describe Levi’s business today, after it failed to exploit the designer denim boom in what is widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles in the American clothing business. Levi’s sales have plummeted more than 40 percent since 1996 to $4.1 billion, forcing it to close dozens of factories and lay off nearly half of its workforce, or 7,600 employees, in the last five years. The clothing company faced two major problems over the last decade. Its image and brand — button fly, rugged, and all-around bad-boy cool — was largely built for men, its jeans cut boxy and loose- fitting. At the same time, the company, which once distributed its jeans largely through department stores catering to the rich, had shifted into lower-priced retailers like J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart. In the mid-1990s, though, the denim industry underwent a seismic shift as small upstarts began designing tight-fitting, feature-flattering women’s jeans and distributing them through luxury boutiques and department stores. Women suddenly began snapping up jeans from manufacturers like 7 for All Mankind and True Religion that cost more than six times what Levi’s charged. Levi’s did not produce a premium denim line, Capital E, until just last year. “The emergence of all this denim sold at astronomical prices simply passed them by,” said David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a fashion consulting firm in Manhattan. “They should have jumped on the bandwagon but they did not even seem to see the bandwagon rolling, which amazed everyone in the fashion industry.” The denim manufacturers who recognized the trend openly concede that Levi’s has served as an inspiration, if not template, for their products. “Everyone is borrowing from them, it’s inevitable,” said Michael Silver, the founder of Silver Jeans, who has had several legal run-ins with Levi’s. “They should be happy that people are copying them,” he said. But Levi’s is not flattered. “The value of the brand will become diluted if the marketplace becomes crowded with products with similar tabs or stitching to ours,” said Thomas M. Onda, a global intellectual property lawyer for Levi’s. So employees at Levi’s keep walking into stores and scanning the racks for rivals who dare to stray to close its trademarks, as Steven Shaul, the founder and chief executive of Jelessy Jeans, learned when he slapped several intersecting arcs on a back pocket. At the time, Mr. Shaul, who loves Levi’s and wears its jeans all the time, was confident his design bore no resemblance to the Levi’s trademark. “It was not even close,” said Mr. Shaul, whose jeans sell for between $200 and $400 a pair. “It was an original design,” he said. “Why would I use Levi’s stitching? If my jeans sell for $200, I would not knock off $40 jeans from Levi’s.” Nevertheless, Levi’s sued in 2005. “The first night after I was sued by them I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “The second night, no sleep again. Then I started talking to people in the industry and I realized, hey, everyone’s been sued by Levi.” Relieved, he quickly settled the case, agreeing not to sell jeans with the offending stitches. “I did not even hire a lawyer,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/bu...rtner=homepage ![]() Apple Ordered To Pay Legal Fees For Bloggers Jason Lee Miller A California court made it clear to Apple that if the company wanted to find out who leaked details of an in-development product to bloggers, they'd actually have to do it legally. That lesson cost the company almost $700,000 in legal fee reimbursement. This drama begins in 2004, when Mac fan sites AppleInsider and PowerPage reported the technological details about a product codenamed "Asteroid." Apple sought the identity of the sources who leaked the information by filing suit against the bloggers, and subpoenaed their email records from email service provider Nfox.com. The company claimed that the reports violated California's trade secret laws. A Santa Clara County court ordered Apple to pay the legal fees of their opponent this month, a development considered "a large moral victory for bloggers," according to Macnn.com. The case brought up several important questions related to the status of the blogosphere: Do bloggers qualify as journalists? Can blogs be considered news sites? Does a private company have the right to suspend the protection of journalistic sources guaranteed by the First Amendment? Though the court didn't actually qualify the bloggers as journalists, it was assumed that they were journalists for purposes of opinion, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who headed up the defense. The EFF also convincingly maintained, based on the expert opinion of Professor Thomas Goldstein, former Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, that AppleInsider and PowerPage qualified as legitimate online news sites: The publishers, editors and authors connected with Power Page and Apple Insider are engaged in trade journalism, bringing news to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. Further, Apple was prevented from accessing the email records of the defendants under the federal Stored Communications Act, which forbids ESPs from disclosing the contents of customers' emails and other electronic communications to private parties. Though Apple claimed it had a right to protect its trade secrets, the EFF responded that the case wasn't about business rights, but about the means by which Apple can seek evidence. Subpoenaing journalist sources is not an acceptable means of discovery. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/to...rBloggers.html ![]() Feeding Frenzy for a Big Story, Even if It’s False David D. Kirkpatrick Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters. But their anonymity has not stopped them from making an impact. In the last two weeks, Mr. Kuhner’s Web site, Insight, the last remnant of a defunct conservative print magazine owned by the Unification Church led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was able to set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting. The controversy started with a quickly discredited Jan. 17 article on the Insight Web site asserting that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was preparing an accusation that her rival, Senator Barack Obama, had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was 6. (Other news organizations have confirmed Mr. Obama’s descriptions of the school as a secular public school. Both senators have denounced the report, and there is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign planned to spread those accusations.) In an interview Sunday, Mr. Kuhner, 37, said he still considered the article, which he said was meant to focus on the thinking of the Clinton campaign, to be “solid as solid can be.” But he declined to say whether he had learned the identity of his reporter’s sources, and so perhaps only that reporter knows the origin of the article’s anonymous quotes and assertions. Its assertions about Mr. Obama resemble rumors passed on without evidence in e-mail messages that have been widely circulated over the last several weeks. The Clinton-Obama article followed a series of inaccurate or hard-to-verify articles on Insight and its predecessor magazine about politics, the Iraq war or the Bush administration, including a widely discussed report on the Insight Web site that President Bush’s relationship with his father was so strained that they were no longer speaking to each other about politics. The Washington Times, which is also owned by the Unification Church, but operates separately from the Web site, quickly disavowed the article. Its national editor sent an e-mail message to staff members under the heading “Insight Strikes Again” telling them to “make sure that no mention of any Insight story” appeared in the paper, and another e-mail message to its Congressional correspondent instructing him to clarify to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama that The Washington Times had nothing to do with the article on the Web site. “Some of the editors here get annoyed when Insight is identified as a publication of The Washington Times,” said Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times. And in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. “The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about,” Mr. Moody said. “They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know.” Mr. Kuhner’s ability to ignite a news media brush fire nonetheless illustrates how easily dubious and politically charged information can spread through the constant chatter of cable news commentary, talk radio programs and political Web sites. And at the start of a campaign with perhaps a dozen candidates hiring “research directors” to examine one another, the Insight episode may be a sign of what is to come. To most journalists, the notion of anonymous reporters relying on anonymous sources is a red flag. “If you want to talk about a business model that is designed to manufacture mischief in large volume, that would be it,” said Ralph Whitehead Jr., a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts. With so much anonymity, “How do we know that Insight magazine actually exists?” Professor Whitehead added. “It could be performance art.” But hosts of morning television programs and an evening commentator on the Fox News Network nevertheless devoted extensive discussion to Insight’s Clinton-Obama article, as did Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts. And the Fox News rival MSNBC has picked up several of Insight’s other recent anonymous “scoops.” Among them: that Mr. Bush was afraid to fire his adviser Karl Rove because “he knows too much”; that there is a rift between President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the president’s support for Israel; and that Mr. Bush spent the months before the midterm elections in a bunker-mentality focused on the Iraq war and the elections to the exclusion of all else. Mr. Kuhner has appeared as a guest on both networks. A spokesman for MSNBC declined to comment. Representatives of News World Communications, the arm of the Unification Church that owns Insight, could not be reached for comment on Sunday night. Mr. Kuhner said, “Our report on this opposition research activity is completely accurate,” and he argued that all major news organizations relied on anonymous sources. Mr. Kuhner, in an editor’s note on Insight, said the Web site could not afford to “send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story.” The Web site pays up to $800 for an article. Mr. Kuhner said he was not yet convinced by reports from officials of the elementary school that Mr. Obama attended in Indonesia about its secular history. “To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting,” he wrote. Insight was founded two decades ago as a conservative print magazine called Insight on the News. It started the career of the journalist David Brock, who became famous for writing sensational magazine articles and books about Anita Hill and later Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Brock later recanted much of what he had written, and now runs a liberal media group dedicated to countering what it considers be conservative bias in the news media. Insight had thousands of subscribers, but its reputation was checkered by its false reports, which included an assertion that President Bill Clinton was selling plots at Arlington National Cemetery to Democratic campaign donors, and, during the Bush administration, that Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction might have been found. Officials of the Unification Church closed the print magazine about a year and a half ago, and tapped Mr. Kuhner to run it as a stand-alone Web site. He worked for three years, from 2000 through 2003, as an assistant national editor at The Washington Times. Before that, he was a history professor, but did not finish his dissertation. After leaving The Washington Times, he worked for a Republican policy group. Mr. Kuhner said he insisted on editorial independence, reporting only to the board of New World Communications. Under his tenure, Insight’s Web site has claimed a series of anonymous scoops, many centered on the White House. In addition to the article about Mr. Bush’s feud with his father, there was also a January 2006 report that the United States was preparing for a covert attack on Iran and a February 2006 report that Vice President Dick Cheney would step down after the midterm elections. Mr. Kuhner said Insight stopped using bylines to encourage contributions from reporters for major news organizations. He said such contributors could not write what they knew under their own names for their main employers, either for fear of alienating powerful sources or because of editors’ biases. “Reporters in Washington know a whole lot of what is going on and feel themselves shackled and prevented from reporting what they know is going on,” Mr. Kuhner said. Insight, he said, “is almost like an outlet, an escape valve where they can come out with this information.” “The team I have has some of the most seasoned, experienced reporters in this town, so I know the material I am getting is rock-solid.” he said. “The reporter has to give his or her word that, ‘It is solid, Jeff,’ ” Mr. Kuhner said. During an interview, he invited this reporter to moonlight for Insight. “I will take a look at your work,” he said. “I will do a background check. You may get a call from me.” He declined to say where the contributor who offered the Clinton-Obama story worked. “I said, ‘That is a sexy story, if you can confirm it,’ ” Mr. Kuhner recalled. After Insight posted the article on Jan. 17, Mr. Kuhner said, he was disappointed to see that the Drudge Report did not link to it on its Web site as it has done with other Insight articles. So, as usual, he e-mailed the article to producers at Fox News and MSNBC. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/us...rtner=homepage ![]() Newspapers Search for Web Headline Magic Elinor Mills On January 2, The Wall Street Journal Online posted a story with the headline: "Green Beans Comes Marching Home." It happened to be an article about the Green Beans Coffee Co., which serves overseas U.S. military bases, opening its first cafe in the United States. Let's say you were interested in the subject but didn't know the Journal had written an article on it. You might type into a search engine some combination of keywords like "Green Beans," "coffee," "U.S. military," "bases" and "soldiers." Various combinations failed to return a link to the article in the first page of results on Google. Using all of the keywords and terms separated like that did find the article, but not on The Wall Street Journal site. Instead, it was on a blog site that had reposted the article word for word. The example points to the dilemma many newspapers and other print media find themselves in when posting articles online. Pithy, witty and provocative headlines--the pride of many an editor--are often useless and even counterproductive in getting the Web page ranked high in search engines. A low ranking means limited exposure and fewer readers. News organizations that generate revenue from advertising are keenly aware of the problem and are using coding techniques and training journalists to rewrite the print headlines, thinking about what the story is about and being as clear as possible. The science behind it is called SEO, or search engine optimization, and it has spawned a whole industry of companies dedicated to helping Web sites get noticed by Google's search engine. It's clearly having an impact. In November, Nielsen/NetRatings ranked Boston.com, the sister Web site of The Boston Globe, as the fourth-most trafficked newspaper Web site in the country, even though its print circulation is ranked 15th by one audit bureau. "We're regularly beating the bigger boys, like the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal...and part of the reason is SEO," said David Beard, editor of Boston.com and former assistant managing editor of its print sibling, The Boston Globe. "We have Web 'heds.' We go into the newspaper (production) system to create a more literal Web headline," said Beard. "We've had training sessions with copy editors and the night desk for the newspaper. It's been a big education initiative." The Times Online, which is based in the United Kingdom and is a division of News Corp., gets anywhere from 30 percent to 60 percent of its traffic from search engines, said Times Online Publisher Zach Leonard. The site modifies headlines it imports onto the Web site from its print affiliates, The Times and The Sunday Times. The company also started training its editorial staff on SEO last summer and is investing in a new content management system that will launch with a new "Nine to 12 months ago, if you said 'SEO' to most of the (news) team they would scratch their head. Now it's a part of their job," Leonard said. "We have to recognize that search is driving much of the behavior on the Web. Newspapers that don't understand that at the highest level, all the way up to the editors, simply won't exist." The Wall Street Journal is a unique case. Most of its content is walled off from the public Internet and accessible only through subscription. This particular article was among the free content and visible to search engines. To rank high in the search engines, the Journal headline should have included the term "coffee," "cafes," or even "Starbucks," said Stephan Spencer, founder and president of SEO firm Netconcepts. "For one thing, 'green beans' isn't a terribly popular search term," he said. "Secondly, a fraction of those searchers will be looking for the coffee supplier; most will be looking for recipes." His suggested headline: "U.S. Military Coffee Supplier to take on Starbucks with Cafes Stateside." That might seem a bit unwieldy to many journalists, but Spencer assures that a balance can be reached between being straightforward and fun. Newspapers are increasingly jumping on the SEO bandwagon to stay alive. Spencer recommends that Web sites not only use keywords in the headline, but also include a more descriptive, keyword-rich version of the headline in the title tag, which appears in the blue bar at the very top of the browser window when looking at a Web page. He also suggests that Web sites use keywords in the anchor text, which is the underlined text in a hyperlink. A keyword carries more weight in search engines if it is located at the beginning of a headline, he said. Other SEO tricks include frequently and consistently interlinking between related stories and items on a Web site and tagging the content accurately across the Web page, including changing headers and tabs on pages to mundane, rather than cleverly named, terms. "The headline itself doesn't necessarily have to be modified if you know how SEO works," said Spencer. Journalists can see how popular specific keywords are and get suggested alternatives by using Google's AdWords Keyword Tool or paid services like WordTracker.com or Keyword Discovery.com. Inventive but direct But consulting software and statistics to rewrite a headline may seem anathema to traditional journalistic standards of artistically stretching for the headline that will best lure readers' eyes to the article. That can be accomplished by being pithy (Ford to City: Drop Dead), poetic (Headless Body in Topless Bar), witty (Super Caley Go Ballistic. Celtic Are Atrocious), rhyming (Sticks Nix Hick Pix) or shocking (Bastards!). And no computer can help with that. "A lot of journalists spend a lot of time perfecting headlines and being clever, and now you've got to be more direct. It's going to be a different art, I think," said Sree Sreenivasan, a teacher in the new media program at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a reporter for WNBC.com. "How do you get eye-catching, interesting headlines that make people want to click, but at the same time are relevant to search engines, which are nothing but dumb robots going around looking for keywords?" said Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute, a training organization for journalists. "If the search engine is all about making information more accessible and making the online experience more pleasant, I wish they would work with the people designing the pages," Finberg said. "A lot of sites have gotten into this...content management trap." With the news sites all striving for clarity to be search engine stars there is the danger that sites covering the same news will have strikingly similar headlines. That just means headline writers have to work a little harder to make their headline stand out, experts said. But at least on the Web there are no real space limitations like on a print page, said Neil Chase, editor of continuous news for The New York Times. "The flip side is if you look at a one-column lead story on page one of The New York Times it's really hard to find a headline to fit that space. It's a real art," Chase said. "You expand that to the space available on the Web site and you may come up with something more compelling with more words." In a newspaper, the pictures and accompanying features, or sidebars, around the article can help give context to the story. For example, the infamous "Bastards!" headline the San Francisco Examiner ran on September 12, 2001, was accompanied by a large photo of the World Trade Center towers engulfed in flames. With the Web, there may not be photos or other indicators of what is being referenced in an obscure headline like that. But that's part of the evolution of mass communications in a digital age. "There's nothing doom and gloom about it," Chase of The New York Times said. "It's just one of the many changes in the industry." http://news.com.com/Newspapers+searc...3-6155739.html ![]() China Censorship Damaged Us, Google Founders Admit Jane Martinson Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday. Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets. Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative." The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe. Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying "perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense". From what was said yesterday a policy change seemed unlikely in the near future. Co-founder Larry Page said: "We always consider what to do. But I don't think we as a company should be making decisions based on too much perception." Much of the harm had come from newspaper headlines, he said, which affected perception for most people, who then did not read the actual articles. Since moving into China, Google has been compared to Microsoft because of its dominant position and power. "We are very sensitive to people talking about us in that way," said Mr Brin. Mr Page described the differences between the two technology companies by saying "we have very open partnerships, we are very clear about being fair with revenues." Speaking about one of the hot topics of this year's meeting in Davos, Mr Brin said he had decided to offset his carbon emissions after growing concerned about his own use of private jets, despite not really being sure about the efficacy of such programmes. "I was concerned about my private jet travel and whatnot ... I wanted to offset it so I did." Mr Brin said yesterday that he would feel a "bit better about it" by doing something "more specific" but declined to outline what that might be. The company's charitable arm, Google.org, takes an interest in the environment, they said. Both men are known to have driven fuel-efficient Toyota cars. Exactly what is inside the two men's private jet, however, has become the stuff of dotcom legend after a legal spat between the holding company that owns the Boeing 767 and a designer hired to re-fit it, went public last summer. Documents published in US newspapers included plans for a lounge for Eric Schmidt, the chief executive, and two state rooms for the co-founders. There were also calls from the founders for hammocks to be hung from the ceiling of the plane. Both founders yesterday offered some solace to the newspaper industry, which has been most threatened by the growth of online news providers. Larry Page said: "I believe in the future of newspapers," before admitting that he reads all his news online. His colleague said he read a Sunday newspaper "and it's nice". Rather than suggest paid-for content was doomed, they called for a new model to collect revenues. "I should probably pay for the Wall Street Journal but I don't because it's a hassle," said Mr Page, who is worth billions. "I'm not worried about the money thing, it's just a hassle." http://business.guardian.co.uk/davos...999994,00.html ![]() Spanish Start-Up Whisher Promises Free Wi-Fi For All Marguerite Reardon A small Spanish start-up called Whisher is thumbing its nose at U.S. broadband providers as it prepares to launch a new service that lets people share their broadband connections via Wi-Fi. Whisher, based in Barcelona and backed by Switzerland's leading phone company, Swisscom, and the venture firm Benchmark Capital, is one of several emerging start-ups that is taking broadband to the people by providing access through existing residential Wi-Fi networks. Starting Tuesday, users can download the beta version of the company's software from its Web site. The service and software are free. Users aren't required to offer up their own Wi-Fi access to use other Wi-Fi networks around the world. Wi-Fi, which uses unlicensed radio frequency technology for accessing the Internet, is a relatively cheap and ubiquitous technology. Not only is it embedded in almost every laptop shipped today, but mobile devices such as cell phones are also coming equipped with the technology. While companies such as EarthLink are building new networks to blanket cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans with Wi-Fi signals, Whisher and Fon Wireless, another Spanish start-up, are banking on the willingness of large numbers of people to share their excess broadband with others. And just as Skype, another European start-up, challenged the established telephone companies by providing free Internet calling, Whisher also hopes to shake up the establishment by offering an easy way to share and access Wi-Fi for free. "Either you believe in the user-generated revolution or you believe ISPs rule the world," said Ferran Moreno, co-founder and CEO of Whisher. "I believe ISPs don't rule the world and how the Internet works. If I am paying for my broadband, I have the right to share it with other people, as long as I am not reselling the service. And we are not reselling access." Of course, there is one small snag in Moreno's utopian view of free Wi-Fi for everyone. In the U.S., it's illegal. "Sharing broadband access outside of your dwelling is a violation of our subscriber agreement," said Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable operator in the U.S. "We've taken steps as a company to inform our customers that passive or active theft of our services is illegal, and people who violate these agreements can be prosecuted on a criminal and civil basis." Time Warner and other broadband providers such as Verizon Communications said it's rare that they have to take action against subscribers sharing their broadband service outside their home. When they become aware of such a situation, the broadband providers typically contact subscribers and remind them of the companies' policies. In 90 percent of the cases, users stop sharing their broadband, Huff said. But representatives from each company said that if illegal sharing persists, the company takes action, which could result in users getting their service cut off or even facing prosecution. "We don't actively police this," said Bobbi Henson, a spokeswoman for Verizon Communications. "But if we become aware of a situation, we will do something, especially if we see a degradation of service. We have a duty to our customers to keep an optimum level of service." So far, broadband providers have not come down hard on other companies proposing to build free Wi-Fi networks that cobble together networks using existing Wi-Fi hot spots. But this could be because these networks are still relatively new, and their service models require additional equipment. For example, Fon, based in Madrid, launched its service last year. Initially, the service required users to download software onto their existing Wi-Fi routers. The software on the routers then splits the Wi-Fi signals to provide a private network indoors and a public one outdoors. But downloading software onto a router proved too difficult for most users. In the fall, the company introduced the La Fonera router. The company has been giving away devices to spur adoption. As of October, the company only had about 112,000 La Fonera and Fon-enabled routers registered as part of its network. Henson of Verizon said the company has seen little to no impact from Fon on its network so far. Moreno believes Whisher's approach could be more successful, much faster than Fon's model. The main reason is that Whisher's solution is completely software-based. The company has developed peer-to-peer software that runs on any Linux, Mac or Windows machine and works over any Wi-Fi network. The software works by providing the necessary authentication registered users need to gain access to a particular Wi-Fi network. The company keeps a database of registered users and hot spots. When a user wants to connect to a Wi-Fi network, the software finds the best access point and automatically provides secure access to that network. Whisher's solution is much more than providing free Internet access, Moreno said. The software also creates a wireless social network that allows users to send instant messages, share files and establish private and public micro-community networks using Wi-Fi hot spots. Members of the community are encouraged to tag, rate or leave comments about any wireless hot spot. The interactive and social nature of the software also provides a lot of control to people sharing their Wi-Fi connection. Because all users are registered with Whisher, the person who owns the residential network can see which users are on his network at any given time. Users on the network can communicate with each other through IM. And if the network owner doesn't want someone using his connection, he has the option to block people trying to access his connection. Like any other social network, Whisher's success is completely dependent on getting people to download the software and also to share their connections. Like Skype, which also uses peer-to-peer client software, Moreno believes that an easily downloadable client that provides free Internet access will have wide appeal. But Henson of Verizon is skeptical that American broadband consumers will actually be willing to use other people's connections, even if it's free. "Most people don't want to share their connection," she said. "They want to be able to call customer care when something goes wrong, and they don't want to have to rely on their neighbor as their Internet service provider." http://news.com.com/Spanish+start-up...3-6154438.html ![]() Hotels Must Mend Their Ways "Wake up, it's the 21st century," says one supporter of silicon.com campaign... Will Sturgeon In its Fair Wi-fi campaign, silicon.com is urging hotels to stop ripping off customers with extortionate fees for wi-fi and internet access, and we have a huge weight of support behind us (sign our petition. Influential figures from a broad spectrum of professions are all united behind silicon.com and our claim that rip-off prices for wireless internet access are not only unjustifiable but will stifle and restrict business. Grant Shapps MP, vice chairman of the Conservative Party, told silicon.com it is worrying that the UK is the most notable offender with these rip-off charges, adding it could damage UK business. Shapps said: "To keep the UK competitive it's vital business services are available at competitive rates. I congratulate silicon.com for taking the initiative of raising this important issue." Big businesses certainly agree. Josh Claman, UK head of Dell, told silicon.com: "For business travellers, the ability and convenience of accessing the internet at every hotel they stay should be a given. Affordable, high-speed internet access is something business travellers rely on and it should be a basic service for guests. It should come as standard." Even within the extended family of the hotel industry there is an awareness rip-off prices will come back to haunt it in the long run. Tony Walsh, development director at bookings agent LateRooms.com, cited research that suggests wi-fi access is now more important to business travellers than leisure facilities such as a gym - the use of which is often covered by the room rate. Walsh said: "Customers are currently held to ransom by expensive third-party wireless and broadband providers, and hotels could use free internet access as a major selling tool to business travellers. It is a fact that hotels offering this free service are more popular." And end users, the ones most affected by rip-off charges which are proving a major obstacle to seamless connectivity, also say it is time for a change. Arun Aggarwal, head of consulting practice (EMEA) at Tata Consultancy Services, added: "Hotels have to stop using this ridiculous 'minibar' approach to a service as essential as internet access. "While I understand that hotels have overheads it seems the costs for making use of these facilities are at best disproportionate and at worst daylight robbery. "Business travellers account for a significant proportion of many hotels' revenue-streams and, as such, should be treated as valued customers to be supported rather than 'cash cows' to be exploited at every opportunity." Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, offshoring director at The National Outsourcing Association, told silicon.com: "My work is seriously compromised if I am away on business or working during a conference in London and I can't get online - or to get online I have to pay an extortionate fee. "It's about time the hotel industry realised almost all business travellers need wi-fi access as a basic utility that is factored into the room cost - just as the water and electricity use is. "Wake up, it's the 21st century." http://www.silicon.com/research/spec...9165300,00.htm ![]() At Davos, the Squabble Resumes on How to Wire the Third World John Markoff Here in the Swiss mountains at the World Economic Forum, the annual conclave of world leaders, concerns over a growing digital divide this year have taken a back seat to the challenge of climate change. Being out of the limelight, however, has not dimmed passions over what the best way is to deploy computers in the developing world. The controversy boiled over on Saturday at a breakfast meeting here where Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel, squared off with Nicholas P. Negroponte, the former director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, whose nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child is trying to develop a low-cost computer for the 1.2 billion children in the developing world. His prototype XO computer is designed to sell for $100 by the end of 2008. Intel has also contributed significant resources to the cause, including its own design for an inexpensive laptop computer, albeit one that is currently more expensive than Mr. Negroponte’s. On Saturday, Mr. Barrett, speaking about Intel’s efforts to train teachers to use personal computers, said that it is impressive to see what students “are able to accomplish with some help from a teacher,” adding, “You can literally change people’s lives.” But Mr. Negroponte suggested that Intel executives had engaged in a campaign to discourage world leaders from committing to purchasing his laptop systems. Mr. Negroponte also accused Intel of marketing its strategy to the developing world. “Craig and I sometimes argue, and he called our thing a ‘gadget,’ ” Mr. Negroponte said, referring to the XO. “I’m glad to see he’s got his own gadget now. Craig has to look at this as a market, and I look at this as a mission.” Other executives suggested the dispute was doing little to forge a common strategy to use computing to advance economic and educational development. “I do hear marketing going back and forth between you,” said Michael J. Long, a senior vice president at Arrow Electronics, an industry components supplier. “We ought to concentrate on how we can help. The question is what can I do when I leave this room.” The dispute between Mr. Negroponte and Mr. Barrett, who was formerly Intel’s chief executive and who is now chairman of the United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technologies and Development, covered both substance and philosophy at the annual digital divide meeting, which has been presented for three years by David Kirkpatrick, a columnist for Fortune magazine. Also present at the meeting was Michael S. Dell, chairman of Dell Inc., as well as top executives from Sun Microsystems and Advanced Micro Devices. Mr. Negroponte, who has quarreled publicly with both Microsoft and Intel executives in his quest to give simple portable machines to hundreds of millions of children, has long been known for his iconoclastic positions on economic development and education. Recently at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich, he introduced himself as the “good bin Laden” — a reference to the notion that his low-cost laptop is terrorizing some companies in the computer industry because of the possibility that it will transform markets for personal computers in the developing world. At the Davos session, Mr. Barrett sketched out a four-point program for getting involvement from emerging economies including affordable hardware, low-cost data communications, local curriculum and educators. In contrast, Mr. Negroponte offered a vision based on working through children. He attacked projects that instruct teachers and students how to use programs like Microsoft Office. “I think they should be making music and playing and communicating,” he said. “It has to be a seamless part of their lives.” Despite initially trying to persuade Intel to back his project, Mr. Negroponte has chosen to use a low-power processor from Advanced Micro in his laptop, which was being exhibited here at a hotel near the conference center where the annual World Economic Forum is held. It is still not certain whether Mr. Negroponte will succeed in his crusade. At the meeting, he said he now has eight handshake agreements with heads of state, including the recent additions of Rwanda and Uruguay. However, he has also said that he will not begin manufacturing the laptop in volume unless he has firm commitments from one country each in Asia, South America and Africa. Other countries that have expressed interest include Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Nigeria, Thailand, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Mexico. During an interview here, he said he now expects firm commitments by March and for manufacturing to begin in April. Despite his publicly combative stance with respect to Intel, Mr. Negroponte has apparently moved to patch up his disagreements with Microsoft, and a version of Windows may be available from governments that chose that software instead of the Linux that the One Laptop Per Child organization is developing. One Laptop officials said that the computer might cost $10 to $20 more to run Windows, because of hardware support. Separately at the meeting on Saturday, John Gage, the chief researcher at Sun Microsystems, proposed an industry plan to deploy advanced data networks in developing economies with contributions of engineering staff time of 1 percent. Mr. Gage, who headed the NetDay project for connecting American schools to the Internet, said that rural areas in the developing world would cost as little as a $1,000 a kilometer, compared with $1 million to deploy a network over the same distance in New York City http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/bu...s/29cheap.html ![]() In Politics, the Camera Never Blinks (or Nods) Tom Zeller Jr. BEYOND its fulfillment of a constitutional requirement, the president’s annual State of the Union address has come to provide much pomp. It’s a prime-time gala where Washington’s best and brightest gather for an evening in the media spotlight, and where the nation tunes in with varying degrees of interest, cynicism or boredom at the bloated spectacle of it all. Oh, sure, there’s the actual speech itself. But generally speaking, the odds for climactic elements — for truly earth-moving, unexpected locutions — are so low as to be negligible. Copies of the speech are customarily distributed to members of the news media ahead of time — on the condition, of course, that they not be published until after the president begins his delivery. But in the age of the Internet, even that handshake agreement between the press and president has broken down: Copies of the speech could be found at sites like the Drudge Report and ThinkProgress.org well before President Bush began his address shortly after 9 p.m. last Tuesday. “We’ll start respecting White House embargoes when they start telling the truth,” wrote the editors at Think Progress. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Web gremlins would chuckle as the cameras panned the chamber Oscar-style last week and alighted on what appeared to be Senator John S. McCain of Arizona, a presumed candidate for the Republican nomination for president, in an unguarded moment of slumber. It is, perhaps, also no surprise in the age of YouTube — where unscripted video clips have become political Molotov cocktails — that a “McCain sleeping” snippet was uploaded to the Internet and was being discussed and linked in short order. Whether the original intent was political sabotage or simple humor is hard to say, but either way the clip went straight for Mr. McCain’s Achilles’ heel: his age. He is now 70 years old. By 2008, if elected, he would be the oldest president to move into the White House. So a video of the elderly statesman appearing to doze during the president’s speech — and particularly during a portion of the speech where terrorism was being discussed — seemed to put questions of his fitness for office in stark relief. And in that sense, the video brouhaha — a short-lived and misguided brouhaha, considering that he wasn’t sleeping after all — constitutes one of the first “macaca moments” of the 2008 campaign. It is also a sign that Mr. McCain — and every candidate who has, or will, throw a hat into the ring — will have a very, very long road ahead. Now, for those who have been living under a rock, it was former Senator George Allen of Virginia who was caught on video last August referring to an opposition aide — who was of Indian descent — as “macaca,” a racial slur obscure to many Americans, but potent enough to have caused a media frenzy when the video hit the Internet. Mr. Allen was not re-elected. Reasonable people can disagree on the extent to which that single incident was to blame for Mr. Allen’s defeat, but there was no question in anyone’s mind that the YouTube culture — in which every public moment can be clipped, cropped and distributed instantly across the globe by anyone at any time — had changed the rules of the game. As with the broken embargo on the State of the Union speech, there is no longer the default expectation that exposure can be managed. All bets are off. The theory of Mr. McCain’s supposed nap got an early boost from Tucker Carlson of MSNBC, who was blogging the speech live at hardblogger.msnbc.msn.com. “If you’re McCain, who will be over 70 by 2008, you’ll want to make doubly sure to demonstrate your alertness and vigor,” Mr. Carlson wrote just after 10 p.m. Tuesday. “You definitely won’t want to slump in your seat, out cold, when Bush starts talking about Iraq. And yet that’s exactly what McCain did tonight, napping on camera for 10 agonizing seconds.” On Wednesday morning, the Drudge Report carried the headline “McCain Eyes Wide Shut During Bush Speech,” along with a link to a “Sleepy Senator John McCain” video clip that had been uploaded to YouTube (and is still available of this writing: snipurl.com/McCain). It shows Mr. McCain in a straight-on shot, sitting in the crowded chamber, chin to chest, with eyes that appear to be closed. David All, who runs the David All Group, a Washington firm focusing on developing new-media strategies for Republican campaigns, theorized at his Web site, davidallgroup.com, that the original uploader — a user going by the sobriquet monzsca — was not likely a political operative himself, but rather someone who simply thought the clip was funny. Mr. All suggests, however, that others seeking to damage Mr. McCain saw an opportunity. “Though the clip was not created by an opposing campaign, it was probably identified by at least one of those campaigns as a tool to swipe at McCain to help make the argument that McCain is ‘too old’ to be president, and passed it along to Drudge,” Mr. All wrote on Thursday, in a deconstruction of the “Sleepy John” affair. “Whether he meant to or not, the YouTube user created a video that went viral, amplified by a coveted Drudge link,” he wrote, “and is now getting a lot of front page treatment on a popular Web community, YouTube.” From Drudge, the clip and the discussion bounced around the blog circuit (including the Screens blog here at The Times as well as my own Times blog, The Lede), as did a swell of countervailing evidence, which ultimately won the day: it seems that Mr. McCain was, like just about everyone else in attendance that night, simply glancing down at his copy of the speech and reading along. Mr. All gives high praise to swift action by McCain operatives, who uploaded a separate YouTube video showing a perky Senator McCain applauding heartily during the speech (snipurl.com/Hearty). They also pointed bloggers to links of a video montage — prepared by the folks at The Hotline’s On Call blog — demonstrating that others who were gathered in the House chamber that night, while clearly reading something in their laps, also appeared to be napping if shot at some angles (snipurl.com/ReadClips). It was good political gamesmanship, and the thrust and parry provide an object lesson in the power of Internet video, particularly in the political arena. A candidate, an elected official, even a journalist who remains ignorant of this weapon — how to handle it, how to know when it has been unleashed and from what direction — proceeds at a certain peril. Of course, even one’s best efforts at damage control may go unappreciated. Said one commenter at Mr. All’s site: “Asleep or not, McCain et al. forgot one of the maxims of modern politics: When cameras are in the room, keep your head up and smile.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/te...gy/29link.html |
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
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![]() Is That Your Cellphone in Your Pocket...?
Adult content from Telus Siri Agrell The telecommunications company Telus Corp. began offering adult content to its Canadian cellphone customers this month. Available on a "pay-per-download" basis, the service introduced on Jan. 8 will allow cellphone users to download pornographic photographs and videos, charging them an average of $3 to $4 for each item. Jim Johannsson, a Telus spokesman, said yesterday that pornographic material was already widely available on mobile phones equipped with Internet browsers. "So we've introduced -- in a very responsible way -- adult content that's in behind proper age verification and that's compliant with provincial standards and regulations," he said. Mr. Johannsson said the company can track what its customers are searching for via Internet connections on their cellphones and noticed a definite interest in some of the Web's more provocative sites. "We can't see at an individual level, but we can tell on an aggregate level if they're going to Google or Canoe, and we could see they were heading to adult-oriented Web sites," he said. "There is a segment of the population that is interested in that content." Telus is not the first company to make this observation. In 2005, Reuters reported that North American mobile phone users spent US$400-million on adult photos and video during the previous year. Last month, the magazine Charged featured an article about the quiet promotion of adult content on cellphones, saying that Playboy TV has been marketing itself to telecommunications companies and that content specifically geared to the technology is already being produced. Taanta Gubta, a spokeswoman for Rogers Communications, said it does not currently offer a similar service, but that it would not "comment about anything ahead of time." Paolo Pasquini, a spokesman for Bell Canada, also said its cellphones do not offer adult content services. "Obviously, we continually review a range of potential services," he added. "You can rest assured that we'll always remain competitive in our markets." Mr. Johannsson said he does not know what other companies are contemplating adult content, because it's "not the kind of thing people advertise. "But we're fairly certain that if our competitors in Canada haven't launched it, they will soon. Same in the U.S.," he said. Mark Goldberg, a Toronto telecommunications consultant, said the move is not unlike Pay- Per-View TV, and will be subject to the same protections. "A huge amount of that is adult programming, and we don't seem to have concerns about our ability to block children from accessing that," he said. "Frankly, their mobile screen is probably more private than aTV or computer screen. They can keep it in their pocket." http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/s...274215&k=60979 ![]() Ted Stevens Returns, Wants to Ban Kids from MySpace Remember Senator Ted Stevens, who famously described the Internet as a “series of tubes”? And how about the Deleting Online Predators Act, which would have banned access to interactive websites like MySpace, Facebook and Digg in US schools and libraries? Well, it seems that both have returned - Stevens is replacing the failed DOPA bill with the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act, which is even more extensive. As explained by Andy Carvin on Friday, Senator Stevens recently introduced Senate Bill 49, which has just become publicly known as the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. This act is far more extensive than the DOPA, and breaks into three sections: Protecting Children, Deleting Online Predators and Children’s Listbroker Privacy. The first part of the bill would force video service providers to prevent the distribution of child pornography over their services - sites most at risk would be Pornotube and its ilk, which have no real way of establishing whether a person in a clip is a child or not. It also means that sites wouldn’t be allowed to post adult material on their homepages, and that internal pages containing adult material must contain a special mark. Site owners who fail to comply would face a 5 year jail sentence, but this only applies to sites based in the US. Section 2, meanwhile, is DOPA: The Sequel. DOPA, you’ll remember, would ban access to social networks and chat rooms in US schools and libraries. Banning MySpace, Bebo, Xanga, YouTube or Friendster in school sounds like no bad thing, you might think. But the DOPA bill was so extensive that it could have meant Wikipedia and many news sites were also banned - any site, really, that allowed users to sign up. The terms of this new bill are the same - schools would have to filter sites that are offered by a commercial entity; allow the creation of profiles; allow blogging or journals; allow users to enter personal information or enable communication between users. In short: almost all interactive websites would be blocked. The new bill adds another requirement, too: “monitoring the online activities of minors”, which sounds like schools would have to track the sites kids visit. There’s one exception, however: the sites can be unblocked if a teacher is supervising the child (however, many teachers don’t have the ability to disable filters). Part 3, meanwhile, sounds reasonable at first look: it makes it illegal for anyone to sell or purchase private data about a child. However, it’s worth reading the whole bill and making your own interpretations of this section and the overall document. In summary: Ted Stevens, who knows nothing about the web, is trying to push a bill that was already killed and widely criticized for being full of flaws. The DOPA terminology has hardly changed, and it’s so wide reaching that it would block a wide array of sites in libraries and schools. But hey, who would dare to oppose a bill that wants to prevent child porn? Great way to block those tubes, Ted! http://mashable.com/2007/01/28/ted-stevens-ban-myspace/ ![]() Hillary: The Privacy Candidate? Sarah Lai Stirland The issue of digital-era privacy did not make it to the top of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's legislative to-do list at the Saturday launch of her presidential campaign. But for those who look, the New York Democrat has clearly staked out her positions on the esoteric subject, and they're sending electronic civil libertarians' hearts a twitter. Clinton, the presidential front-runner among Democrats in way-early polling, addressed electronic privacy issues at a constitutional law conference in Washington, D.C. last June. There she unveiled a proposed "Privacy Bill of Rights" that would, among other things, give Americans the right to know what's being done with their personal information, and offer consumers an unprecedented level of control over how that data is used. "At all levels, the privacy protections for ordinary citizens are broken, inadequate and out of date," Clinton said. These ideas have long been championed by consumer groups and civil liberties advocates, but are largely strangers to presidential campaigns. Other Democrats who have announced presidential exploratory committees for the 2008 election -- including Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards -- have worked on privacy issues through their careers as government officials. But Clinton's approach is notable for its range and detail, say privacy advocates. "Sen. Clinton's plan is well-informed and the most sophisticated statement in recent years by a presidential candidate on privacy issues," said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at UC Berkeley's School of Law. "She grasps consumers' frustrations with the annoyance of direct marketing, but also the more important point that a lack of privacy can lead to lost opportunities and oppressive social control." Clinton's stance on consumer privacy hearkens back to the debates of the '90s when Congress and the public began agonizing over the question of who should wield the most control over consumers' transactional data. Her general policy position is that companies should cede more control to consumers, and that new legislation should be enacted to make it easier for consumers to recover monetary damages from companies that violate their privacy policies. For example, Clinton said that financial companies as a rule should not be allowed to share consumers' transactional information without first obtaining their permission. Under current law, financial institutions freely share certain kinds of customer information unless consumers specifically opt-out. But some observers are doubtful of Clinton's ability -- whether as senator, or commander-in-chief -- to garner widespread support for what would amount to a complete reversal of a decade of privacy-hostile laws and policies spewing from Washington. "The reality (of her proposals) is that they would almost turn the information economy inside out -- it's like saying, 'OK, now the water in the stream is going to flow in the other direction,'" said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute. "It's easy to imagine, but changing the way information moves in the economy is very, very hard to do." "I think that over time that these ideas will reemerge (and gain momentum)," said Marc Rotenberg, the Electronic Privacy Information Center's executive director, who adds that the second half of this congressional session will provide the senator with many opportunities to support privacy-related legislation.1 Legal and technical checks on government snooping and well-managed data collection policies would also get a boost under Clinton's regime. Among other things, her plan calls for the restoration of a White House privacy czar -- a position that was last held by current Ohio State University law professor Peter Swire under Clinton's husband's tenure as president. Swire noted in an interview that privacy issues are inextricably tied to health care and its efficient management and delivery -- a No. 1 topic on the Clinton agenda. "Hillary is an expert in health care -- she even did joint sessions with Newt Gingrich on building electronic health records," he says. "One of the trickiest problems is building a safe and secure system." http://www.wired.com/news/technology...l?tw=rss.index ![]() DRM in the BitTorrent and Broadband Age Alan Summary: DRM can be a good thing. Unfortunately, the way DRM has been handled by the industry has not been so good. Digital Rights Management is a good thing. The problem is that the way digital rights management has been handled by the industry has not been so good. We have copy protection software that act just like malicious viruses and rootkits. Defining the Problem The industry needs to recognize that it'll be impossible to stop piracy. The more complex, innovative, or intricate the content protection system, the more interest and zeal crackers will have in subverting such protection. If the US was unable to keep nuclear weapons technology secret after WW2, there is no way the MPAA can ask consumer electronics companies to keep movies and music 100% secure, especially when the whole intent of music/movies is to be seen and heard. The industry needs to recognize that most people are reasonable. The US gaming industry is over $10 billion dollars. The home video market is over $24 billion dollars. If everyone was a pirate, shouldn't that be zero? Flawed logic, I know, but these are still thriving industries despite the fact that "most games" and "most movies" really just aren't special to begin with. What's changed is how we choose to experience our media. We want movies that can be enjoyed in our home theater, airplane, or portable music player. We want security where a hard drive crash or malicious virus doesn’t mean that we’ve lost the digital content we've purchased with our hard-earned money. If our hardware is capable of enhancing the original content such as upsampling beyond 1080p, then let the consumer do so. The industry needs to recognize that most people are... human. We may tell a store clerk they've given us to much change back, but our hunter-gathering DNA makes us look for bargains. Who among us hasn't jumped at a chance to stack multiple coupons or shopped at a clearance or special limited quantities sale? The promise of "free" movies and music is one that is hard to give up. When the CEO of Time Warner admits that his kids illegally downloaded music off the Internet too, it should show the industry that software piracy isn't something limited to l33t hax0rs. That doesn't mean everyone jumps at the opportunity of a five-finger discount at your local Best Buy though. People are reasonable. The difference is that intuitively, stealing a physical item from a store is fundamentally different from copying bits in which the opportunity cost to the manufacturer is zero. The Fundamental Issue The general public just doesn't appreciate the true value of intellectual property. You can list off a ton of famous actors and directors, but how many famous screenwriters (who aren't directors or actors) can you name? The problem with DRM is that it hasn't been done correctly to date. Every implementation of DRM has only hurt honest users. More frustrating is that HDCP should have been the first to prove that DRM could be done in a reasonable manner. The original idea of HDCP was to stop casual copying of high-definition uncompressed digital video. Since the decryption/encryption had to be done in real-time, the goal was to make the algorithm simple. The fact that HDCP has been demonstrated by computer science researchers to be easily compromised provided that a handful of keys are leaked isn’t an issue. However, HDCP itself remains secure because its security is tied into licensing. You can't buy the HDCP keys unless you agree not to use it in a recording device. The keys themselves are located in hardware, making it more difficult for casual users to crack. Movie studios were saying "we won't release digital HD content unless you electronics manufacturers guarantee that you won't build digital recording devices." The crypto ROMs, etc. were just ways to make this gentlemen's agreement formal. In exchange for this gentlemen's agreement, enforced by relatively low-cost crypto ROMs, consumers should have been able to transparently enjoy HD content. Yes, early adopters of televisions would have to buy new TVs, but with HDCP, "advance warning" was available. Figuring out how to transcode content to portable players or other formats (i.e. a desktop PC or media server) would have been something to be addressed in the future (ultimately resulting in AACS and BD+). Remember, HDCP was simply intended to limit the creation of a high-definition VCR capable of recording “protected” content. What ended up happening was that the graphics board manufacturers betrayed our trust, HDCP handshake protocols have been poorly implemented, and HDCP ended up being far from that “seamless” integration. "Perfect DRM" already exists today. Perfect from both the perspective of consumers and the industry. It's called the printed book. As big as the video game industry is, the book industry is bigger. Last year, Barnes & Nobles, Borders, and Amazon pulled in $11.5 billion in terms of book sales (this isn't including sales of coffee or non-book items in these stores). Add in the sales of Wal-Mart, Target, and local independent retailers and you'll have to agree that it's still a big market even in today’s age. Go to any Barnes and Nobles and you'll see a ton of people reading for free. Someone might walk into a B&N, pick up a magazine and read it cover to cover, or even pick up a self-help book, and read it while taking notes on a separate sheet of paper. Sometimes, you might actually buy a book when you want to enjoy re-reading the material at home, or if you want it as part of your collection. Books are cheap. Hardcover books are more expensive than paperbacks; and art books may be the most expensive of them all but the print quality and binding makes it all worth it. Casual copying is possible but not easy. There's nothing stopping me from photocopying a whole book cover-to-cover, but very few of us have stacks upon stacks of copied books. It's too inconvenient to copy something when it's cheap enough to buy. Likewise, everyone has taken a class or two where the professor hands out a photocopied textbook chapter, recognizing that students are unlikely to find value from the rest of the textbook or beyond the term. If a book publisher thought like the movie industry and wanted to prevent casual copying of a book, they would have made every page black text on a red background. It'd be so hard to read and intrusive that no one would ever buy a book again. Finally, all of us can name plenty of famous authors. We recognize the effort and time an author has put into his work and may purchase a book in order to support an author in the hopes of seeing a sequel, even if only in theme. The Difference Between Books and Movies That's the predicament of digital music and digital video right now. Unprotected content over large BitTorrent networks is akin to having a Star Trek replicator. In order to have a DRM model that parallels the book model, you have to make copying music and movies as tough as photocopying a book. Hollywood studios shouldn't panic about sites like YouTube or even the torrent sites. I can see the problems with leaked prerelease copies of shows like 24, but after a show has been broadcast, it’s hard to make a reasonable common-man standard against sharing of the recording. You can already get the full book experience for free, and it doesn't stop people from buying books to support their favorite authors. The next step is appropriate pricing. There's something wrong when a soundtrack CD costs almost as much as the entire movie on DVD. In countries like China, where pirated CDs can be bought by the pound, Hollywood has tried releasing lower-priced DVD movies with good success. Again, most people are reasonable. Just look at iTunes when it comes to music. DVD movies and DVD television shows continue to have good sales thanks to bonus features like behind the scenes footage, or commentaries. Many people without a HDTV prefer DVDs for the 16:9 widescreen experience. As long as there is added value (think hardcover book) or convenience, physical media will continue to thrive. The biggest hurdle will be promoting authorship. In books it's easy. In the movies, it's hard to get people excited about buying a DVD or Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to support the actor who already makes $20M a movie, or the director who's first in line for that latest supercar. People never hear about the screenwriters who may only get $100K for the first draft of their screenplay and another $30K for their second draft. Since a screenplay can take several years of work, many writers are making less than minimum wage. I challenge you to name ten successful screenwriters. Do you know who Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot are? What about Felix Chong and Siu Fai Mak? David Koepp? Promoting the screenwriter also serves an additional purpose. Right now, it's easy to see the actor's work and even the director's work. It's tangible and direct. What's often lost is the contribution of the screenwriter. I'm not talking about the dialogue (ultimately only a minor element in the grand scheme of things) but in terms of the story, character, and theme. These are purely concepts of intellectual property. Until Hollywood can turn screenwriters into celebrities too, they'll never be able to convince the public to buy movies even if they can enjoy it for free in the same way the public buys books even after reading it for free. The solution to movie piracy isn't fancier and more complex copy protection, it is bringing screenwriters, the creators of Hollywood's most conceptually-pure intellectual property, to the center stage. Only when Hollywood recognizes the value of pure intellectual property will consumers also recognize the true value of intellectual property and support their favorite screenwriter. In some ways, the HD ecosystem is going to buy time to help DRM reach that magic steady state that we enjoy with books. With HD movies requiring huge amounts of space, there's already a barrier to casual copying if only for HDD space issues. The HD-DVD rips that have been unleashed onto the Internet still represents gigabytes and gigabytes of storage. As bandwidth and HDD space increases, technologies such as BD+ potentially will maintain sufficient copy protection to prevent casual copying while still ensuring that the optical disc is a) not counterfeit and b) can be used for managed copy (allowing you to transcode the content to portable players). Potentially being the key phrase – the industry has had rough enough start with HDCP. People buy more DVDs than music CDs because they see it as a better value. Fortunately, HD content remains aggressively priced. Although Blu-Ray and HD-DVD products are more expensive than DVD products, prices will see more parity as production ramps up and more consumers transition to HD. DVD players launched at $1000 (FiringSquad’s retired Editor-in-Chief Kenn Hwang spent that much on his Sony DVP-S7000) and by 2009 there will be no more analog TV in the United States. I'm even hopeful about Hollywood increasing the visibility of screenwriters in the industry. As movies like Fight Club and TV shows like 24 and Heroes continue to push the envelope of storytelling and captivate an increasingly sophisticated audience, writers are increasingly forced to write more sophisticated movies. A screenplay from a 1990's Van Damme movie wouldn't fly today. Would any movie which uses "it was just a dream" as a plot device work today? Only if it's told like A Beautiful Mind. The elite group of screenwriters who are capable of writing such movies is relatively small, and that is good news because it means Hollywood only needs to spend a lot of money on a few number of people. So if anyone you know is a creative executive at a studio, debate with them why stories like Thank You For Smoking, Good Will Hunting, Napoleon Dynamite, Pirates of the Caribbean, Finding Nemo or God forbid, Titanic were more successful than Stealth, Lady in the Water, Basic Instinct 2, Poseidon, and Flushed Away... http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/drm_editorial/ ![]() DRM, Vista and Your Rights In the US, France and a few other countries it is already forbidden to play legally purchased music or videos using GNU/Linux media players. Sounds like sci-fi? Unfortunately not. And it won’t end up on multimedia only. Welcome to the the new era of DRM! Borys Musielak In this article I would like to explain the problem of Digital Rights (or restrictions) Management, especially in the version promoted by Microsoft with the new Windows Vista release. Not everyone is familiar with the dangers of the new “standard” for the whole computer industry. Yes, the whole industry — because it goes way beyond the software produced by the giant from Redmond and its affiliates. DRM, Trusted Computing — what kind of animal is that? Quoting Wikipedia: Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to any of several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. The term is often confused with copy protection and technical protection measures; these two terms refer to technologies that control or restrict the use and access of digital content on electronic devices with such technologies installed, acting as components of a DRM design. A similar (but a bit more specialized) term to DRM is Trusted Computing. The term is intentionally misleading. It does not try to improve the security of the user, but rather wants to ensure that the user can be “trusted”. Obviously it’s not about the trust, it’s about the money. The companies that deliver content (specially multimedia, but it’s not restricted to media only) to the client want to be able to control the way it is used. For example, they want the content to be displayed on approved media only, banning all the “illegal” applications (illegal does not mean that it violates the law, but rather the agreement between the client and the company that sells the media). More on Trusted Computing can be found (as always) in Wikipedia. So, what’s wrong with the practice? Why shouldn’t the companies be able to control their content? The idea of DRM has two aspects that are important (and may be dangerous) for computer users. First aspect is technological, the second is ethical. We are going to cover both. In a nutshell, the technological aspect is that DRM implies that the software, or even worse — hardware — should be manufactured not for the highest stability and performance, but rather for the best copyright protection possible. This means, that we — the users — are supposed to pay more money for a product that is defective (does not allow certain functionality for non-technical reasons) and provides an inferior performance. Ethical aspect is even more dangerous. In the world of DRM, it turns that we cannot do whatever we want with the legally purchased products (like software, music, videos or text documents). What we can and what we cannot do is decided the provider, not by ourselves. For example, a DRM-protected product can be disabled at any time by the producer if he believes that we violate the terms of the agreement. This means that your collection of “protected” music can be rendered useless (e.g. by decreasing the quality or even deleting the content) in a matter of seconds, without your approval. It that some horrible vision of a sick and evil overlord? Nope. This is an upcoming, terrifying era of DRM. DRM by example So, what does DRM look like? Can we see it or is it hidden? Actually, quite a lot of famous companies have already decided that DRM is the way to go. Below we present only a short list of the most popular formats that are affected (tainted) by the “rights protection”: · DVD — the disk itself does not contain any hardware DRM, but a lot of providers decided to use the restrictions recommended by the DVD CCA organization, such as CSS (content scrambling by using encryption mechanisms) or RPC (region codes). · HD DVD — the new standard that will probably replace DVDs has been unfortunately tainted by DRM since its creation. The main restriction used is AACS, a modern version of CSS. · AAC — audio file format invented and promoted by Apple and its iTunes Music Store. In the version with FairPlay (sic!) protection system, it contains DRM-type restrictions (encrypting) aimed at making it impossible for competitive portable players to support this format (encrypted AAC works flawlessly only on Apple products like iTunes player or iPod and a few other players approved by Apple) · Windows Media — each of the media formats of the Windows Media pack (WMV, WMA, WMP or ASF) has been tainted by some kind of DRM, usually meaning that the content is symmetrically encrypted and if the keys are not accessible, the user can watch/listen to only the scrambled version of the content (very low quality). What is interesting and not widely known, DRM is not restricted to media only. It can be used to secure any other “digital goods”, especially the software. The idea to restrict access to proprietary software using hardware DRM technology is getting more and more popular around major software vendors, like Microsoft and Apple. If this gets implemented, the software producer will be able to, for example, block the use certain programs if they recognize it harmful or illegal. This could mean blocking programs of competitors if they violate the company’s internal rules (e.g. enable the user to play encrypted DVDs or AAC files, even though it is not illegal to do it in the user’s country). Blocking Peer2Peer clients, like eMule or Gnutella (nevermind if used legally or not) could be another option. And there are many more options available, provided that DRM is publicly accepted… The price of DRM, or… what says Gutmann Peter Gutmann in his recent publication analyzed the cost of Windows Vista Content Protection with emphasis on the actual cash to be spent for the computer user if these recommendations are implemented by the hardware vendors. The article is interesting, but long and very technical, so I decided to summarize the main points here. If you prefer to read the original article, we strongly recommend you doing so (WiR – Dec 23rd ’06). Otherwise, you can read our short summary, so that you know what we are talking about. So, what will happen if the Microsoft vision comes true? · If you have recently bought a high-end sound card you may be surprised, since in Windows Vista you won’t be able to play any “protected content” due to the incompatibility of interfaces (S/PDIF). · Significant loss of quality of the audio may be common due to the need to test every bit of streaming media for the use of “protected content” · The idea of open-source drivers will be abandoned since the whole DRM thing is based on the fact that the content decrypting takes place in a “black box” and only a few selected corporations may have a look at it. Security through obscurity, that’s what it’s called. Open source stands in complete opposition to this concept. · Removing any standards from the hardware world is one of the Microsoft goals. According to the Microsoft theory, each device will need to communicate with the operating system in a unique way in order for DRM work as required. This will enforce the incompatibility of the devices, killing the existing interface standards. · Denial of Service attacks will be a common place. The new era of DoS attacks will be more harmful than ever before. This is connected with the tilt bits introduced in Windows Vista. The malicious code will be able to use the DRM restrictions in any suitable way and the detection of this activity will be almost impossible if not illegal (sic!) thanks to the infamous DMCA act that prohibits the use of any reverse engineering techniques used to either understand or break DRM. · The stability of the devices will be decreased due to the fact that the devices will not only have to do their job but also “protect” (who? obviously not the user…) against the illegal use of the audio and video streams. This “protection” requires a lot of additional processing power and of course a lot of programmers man days. Who’s gonna pay for that? Of course us — the customers. · Issuing the specification by Microsoft seems to be the first case in the history when the software producer dictates the hardware producers how their hardware should be designed and work. Seems dangerous, especially when we all realize the intentions of Microsoft. The conclusions are rather sad. If the major hardware vendors like Intel, NVidia and ATI take these recommendations seriously and implement them in their products, it may occur that the client will not only get an inferior product (defective by design), but will also have to pay the extra cost of implementing DRM restrictions (the vendors won’t be probably willing to spend the extra costs for something that does not give them any profits). Update: there has already been a Microsoft response to the Gutmann’s paper: Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers). The advocacy is however very poor. The Lead Program Manager for Video (Dave Marsh) confirmed most of the Gutmann’s conclusions, but presented them as “inevitable” and “providing additional functionality”. The OSNews readers seem to agree that Marsh’s response was basically the act of admitting the guilt What we have covered so far are only the technical costs of DRM/Trusted Computing in the form proposed by the Redmond giant. The ethical costs of the “innovation” are even more interesting… or rather depressing. Read on. DRM and freedom, or what says Richard Stallman and FSF According to Stallman, DRM is an example of a malicious feature - a feature designed to hurt the user of the software, and therefore, it’s something for which there can never be toleration. Stallman is not the only person respected in the IT world who believes that DRM is pure evil. Another known DRM-fighter is John Walker, the author of the famous article “Digital imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle”. Walker compares the Digital imprimatur with DRM in the Internet and computing in general. In Windows Vista it has been decided that the most restrictive version of DRM ever known will be implemented. If the Redmond dreams come true and the large hardware producers also decide to implement the DRM bits in their chipsets, it may lead to the situation in which we — the users, practically won’t be able to decide about our own software of legally purchased media. And this is actually only the beginning of what we can expect if a massive consumer protest against DRM does not begin. In the near future it may turn out that we will not be able to run any programs that violates one of the absurd software patents in the US or any kind of so-called intellectual property (just as if the ideas could have an owner!). And almost everything will be patented or “owner” in some way by that time. I have a science-fiction vision of the IT underground, where the only hardware not tainted with DRM is made in China and using it is illegal in most of the “civilized” countries. And the only software that allows users to do anything they want with it is (also illegal) the GNU software, developed in basements by so-called “IT terrorists” — Linux kernel hackers, former Novell and Red Hat employees and sponsored by the Bin Laden of the IT — Mark Shuttleworth. Sounds ridiculous? Well, hopefully so. But I don’t think Microsoft and Apple would be protesting when this ridiculous and insane vision comes true… What is it all about and how can you protect yourself? So, where is this all heading to? It seems that, for Microsoft, controlling the desktop software market is not enough anymore. Now they try take control of the hardware market as well. Currently only by “recommending” their solutions to external hardware companies. But in the future, if the current pro-DRM lobbying proves successful, it may happen that Microsoft and other big software companies will be dictating how the hardware is designed. And all this — of course in their argumentation — only for securing the end user and protecting the intellectual property of the artists and programmers. This situation is rather paranoid. The hypothetical pact between the software vendors, hardware vendors and the content providers (RIAA, MPAA) could slow down the innovation in the entire IT industry for many years. This would be also one of the first times in the history where certain new technology is introduced not based on the customers’ demands, but rather on the need of large and influential companies. The customers (those aware of their rights) cannot be satisfied by this kind of agreement by no means. So, how can you protect yourself from this “pact of evil”? First of all — ignore the hardware and software using DRM techniques to restrict the rights of the user. Do not purchase music, movies and other content secured by DRM mechanisms. Instead, use alternative services recommended by the Defective By Design campaign — these are the tools and services DRM-free. Secondly — talk, talk and once again, talk — make your family, friends, co-workers aware of the dangers connected with the use of DRM in the products. This is the best way to educate people what DRM really is and why they should care. Nobody wants to be restricted. When people become aware of the restrictions, they will not buy the products that restrict them. Simple enough Breaking the DRM — it’s… easy OK, and what if we have already legally purchased some content (like multimedia or text document) secured by some kind of DRM? Do not worry. Most of them has been broken a long time ago. For example, in order to play an CSS-encrypted DVD under GNU/Linux, you can use almost any player like VLC, MPlayer or Xine with libdvdcss2 enabled (this is a non-licenced library used to decrypt DVDs encrypted with CSS). If you posses music in AAC format (e.g. purchased at iTunes), you can easily convert them to a friendly format using JHymn without losing quality. The story repeats with each and every new introduced DRM technology, like encrypted PDFs, Windows Media, or recently HD-DVD (see the muslix64 post on BackupDVD) and BluRay. Breaking the DRM restrictions is hard but always possible, due to the fact that all DRM mechanisms need to use symmetric encryption in order to work. This kind of encryption requires the keys to be hidden either in the hardware or software — in both ways it’s possible to access them by the hacker, analyze and find the way to decrypt the data streams. If you are interested in the details of DRM hacking, read the lecture of Cory Doctorow for Microsoft Research about the nonsense of DRM. OK, but is it legal? We know that we can break almost any DRM restriction using easily available open source software. But what about the legal part? Is it legal to do this at home? Well, this depends… Depends on where you live actually. For instance, if you have the misfortune of being located in the United States or France, you are prohibited by law to play your legally purchased music or films (sic!) that are secured by DRM if you don’t buy an approved operating system (like MS Windows or MacOS) with an approved media player (like PowerDVD or iTunes). In the US this has been enforced by the DMCA act. In France, a similar act called DADVSI. Fortunately, in most other countries, it is still completely legal to use free software to break any DRM restrictions, like DeCSS to play your DVDs. What we, as the free software supporters, need to do is to constantly watch the law-makers in our own countries so that they do not try to introduce similar restrictions as in France or US. In Poland, for instance, a protest led by one of the big pro-Linux portals and thousands of computer users made the leading party to abandon the project to introduce a DMCA-like law in Poland. Free-software supporters in other countries, like the United Kingdom go even further and try to completely ban the use of DRM in the British law system. Of course, breaking the restrictions is fighting the results, not the causes. The real problem is the pure fact that DRM exists and is widely accepted by the (unaware) majority. If the computer users do not unite and protest against including DRM in more and more products, nobody will, and the DRM will become our every-day experience which we will need to fight just like viruses or malware. This year may be the one in which the major decision will be made both by the industry (whether or not to apply DRM in the products) and by the customers (whether or not accept DRM as is). If we miss this fight, we may have to accept what we get. I don’t think we can afford missing it. Do you? http://polishlinux.org/gnu/drm-vista-and-your-rights/ ![]() Vista "Upgrade" Drops Compliance Checking, Requires Old OS to Install Ken Fisher Microsoft's quest to closely control the way Windows Vista can be used on PCs has taken a turn for the worse as new information indicates that the company is breaking tradition when it comes to Windows Vista upgrades. With Windows Vista, users will not be able to use upgrade keys to initiate completely new installations. It is a change that will affect few users, but enthusiasts will certainly be amongst those pinched. Upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition will not install on any PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already on the machine in question. In years previous, upgrade versions of Windows could be installed on any PC. If a PC did not have an older version of Windows installed, users could provide an older installation CD of Windows for verification. After dropping a qualifying CD in the CD-ROM drive, the installation routine would verify the disc and you'd be on your way. With this approach, one could use an "upgrade" copy of Windows to lay a new Windows install on a computer. One again, Microsoft appears to have made licensing decisions without considering how people actually use their products. Last fall the company trotted out changes to its retail licensing that would have punished users who frequently upgrade their PC hardware had the company not relented. Now Microsoft seeks to complicate our ability to start a crisp, new install with an upgrade version. Why? A 'per device' obsession Microsoft has been adamant in recent years that Windows is licensed per device and not per person. One practical ramification of this viewpoint is that the company typically does not allow users to install one copy of Windows across multiple machines, even if only one machine is in use at a time. According to Microsoft, only the full retail license of Windows Vista can be transferred to new devices (retail pricing here). OEM versions are ostensibly tied to motherboards, and upgrade versions are now technically tied to previous installations. What does all of this mean on a practical level? Users who purchase upgrade copies of the aforementioned versions of Vista will find that they can only upgrade PCs that already have Windows installed. KB930985 clearly states: "you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista." According to Microsoft, this happens because Windows Vista does not check for upgrade compliance. If you do not have a previous installation of Windows available, Microsoft recommends that you "purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista." For its part, Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems with the OS, since otherwise the only option for disaster recovery in the absence of backups would be to wipe a machine, install XP, and then upgrade to Vista. This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience. Fortunately, the change will not mean that users cannot install Windows Vista to a new directory. Windows Vista's upgrade process includes the option of backing up previous installations, and in fact, in some scenarios a "clean" upgrade is required. "Clean" or not, the requirement that the previous OS be installed puts a bit of a damper on those of us that like the do periodic system refreshes. What does Microsoft hope to gain out of all of this? I can only speculate. First, the change prevents a dual-license situation with all of the free Vista upgrade coupons out there. If things worked according to the old scheme, people with upgrade coupons would essentially get a "free" OS because they could install the Vista upgrade anywhere, and continue to use the version of Windows XP that came with their computer. Did Microsoft fear that this would happen quite a bit? It seems like an unlikely scenario. Second, and likely more important to Microsoft, this should make it difficult for users to use a single upgrade copy of Vista throughout the years. I'm quite sure many of you in readerland have done exactly that in years past: build a computer, use your Windows upgrade disc. Build a new box three years later, use that same upgrade disc. Microsoft's preference would be for users in such situations to either purchase OEM copies for each new machine, or pay for a full version of the retail product. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070128-8717.html ![]() Workaround Discovered For "Clean Install" With Vista Upgrade DVDs Brandon Hill When you first encounter this prompt for your product key, just hit next and proceed with setup. Choose which version of Windows you have purchased, check the box and click Next. Once the first install of Vista is completed and you start the second install from within Vista, you'll need to enter your product key. Choose "Custom (advanced)" to perform a clean install. Once the second install of Vista has been completed, you can activtate your installation through Microsoft. Microsoft internal documentation reveals workaround for Vista Upgrade DVDs with no need for a previous version of Windows Just when everyone thought that all hope was lost when it comes to performing a clean install with a Windows Vista Upgrade DVD, a gleam of light can now be seen at the end of the tunnel. A new workaround proposed by Paul Thurrott (via Microsoft internal documents) has been confirmed to work by DailyTech. We reported on Monday that Microsoft doesn't perform disc checking anymore during an operating system install. In the past, when performing a clean install, a user could boot from an install CD and insert a disc from a previous version of Windows for upgrade compliance. Per Microsoft's new licensing requirements for Vista, users are required to install a Windows Vista Upgrade from within Windows XP. When this occurs, the Windows XP license is forfeited and the Windows Vista installation process can take place. Now, however, this workaround allows users to perform a “clean install.” The process is a bit tedious, but is not hard at all to complete. Users have to perform these simple steps to perform a clean install of Vista without a previous version of Windows installed with an upgrade DVD: 1. Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD and start the setup program. 2. When prompted to enter your product key, DO NOT enter it. Click "Next" and proceed with setup. This will install Windows Vista as a 30-day trial. 3. When prompted, select the edition of Vista which you have purchased and continue with setup. 4. Once setup has been completed and you have been brought to the desktop for the first time, run the install program from within Windows Vista. 5. This time, type in your product key when prompted. 6. When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) install, choose Custom (advanced) to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, this means that you will have to install Vista for a second time. 7. Once setup has completed for the second time, you should be able to activate Windows Vista normally. You can also delete the Windows.old directory which contains information from the first Vista install. There's no telling why Microsoft left this loophole wide open with Windows Vista Upgrade DVDs, but this means that any retail upgrade DVD can be used as a fully functioning full retail copy of Vista. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5932 ![]() Say what? Vista Hole Opens Door to 'Shout Hacking' Paul F. Roberts The honeymoon ended early for Microsoft's Vista operating system, after word spread Wednesday about a flaw that could allow remote attackers to take advantage of the new operating system's speech recognition feature. Microsoft researchers are investigating the reports of a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to use the speech recognition feature to run malicious programs on Vista systems using prerecorded verbal commands, the company said in an e-mail statement. The potential security hole was discovered after an online discussion prompted blogger George Ou to try out a speech-based hack. Ou reported on ZD Net on Tuesday that he was able to access the Vista Start menu and, conceivably, run programs using voice commands played over the system's speakers. The speech recognition flaw is novel and notable for being the first publicized hole in the new operating system since the public launch of Vista on Tuesday. The impact of the flaw, however, is expected to be small. Vista users would need to have the speech recognition feature enabled and have a microphone and speakers connected to their system. Successful attackers would need to be physically present at the machine, or figure out a way to trick the computer's owner to download and play an audio recording of the malicious commands. Even then, the commands would somehow have to be issued without attracting the attention of the computer's owner. Finally, attackers’ commands are limited to the access rights of the logged on user, which may prevent access to any administrative commands, Microsoft said in a statement. Microsoft recommends that users who are concerned about having their computer shout-hacked disable the speaker or microphone, turn off the speech recognition feature, or shut down Windows Media Player if they encounter a file that tries to execute voice commands on their system. Customers who believe they have been shout-hacked can contact Microsoft Product Support Services, the company said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20...Ymh vBHNlYwM- ![]() Gates Contends Microsoft's New Windows System Has 'Wows All Over The Product' AP "Wow" hasn't tended to be a big part of Bill Gates' vocabulary, but to hear him speak in the hours before Microsoft Corp.'s planned launch of the long-awaited Vista operating system, you'd never know it. "This 'Wow' thing is a great way of describing what we've got here," Microsoft's chairman told The Associated Press on Monday as the software maker scheduled a slate of splashy events in New York. "There are chances for wows all over the product." More than five years in the making, Vista was released for business customers Nov. 30, but the new Windows operating system's unveiling for consumer buyers was scheduled for Tuesday around the world. In Tokyo, about 80 people lined up at the Bic Camera Department Store to become among the world's first consumers to own Vista. Celebrities and executives were on hand as a large-screen television set displayed a countdown to the midnight launch (10 a.m. EST). The second person on line, Fumihiko Koyama, 33, waited three hours and was hoping the new operating system will make his work in Web design easier. "My expectations are very high for Vista," he said. "I want to try it out because it's new." He said he felt compelled to be among the first Vista owners because of the parties Bic and other major retailers were holding. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker contends that Vista is such a huge improvement over previous computing platforms that users inevitably say "Wow" when they see it _ and so the word plays a big role in the company's marketing campaign. When users boot up Vista for the first time, they'll be wowed by the slick 3-D graphical user interface and document icons that give at-a-glance previews, Gates said. The next wow comes when they start using a system-wide search program that Microsoft's engineers built into both the operating system and new versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and other Office 2007 elements, which also hit store shelves at midnight. Then, Gates said, there are layers of wows for all the different types of PC users: the gamers, the students, the business users, the moms. But will this talk of "wow" translate into crowds at the CompUSA and Best Buy stores that are staying open until past midnight to sell the very first Vista machines? Gates said Microsoft actually wasn't pushing midnight sales events _ after all, the software will be available as a download over the Web for the first time. And while the software is prettier and more secure, "the biggest impact is always what partners do with it," Gates said in an interview. Still, Gates didn't play down Vista's importance. He argued that as the PC has morphed from a souped-up typewriter to a networked entertainment center, personal media library and gateway to the Internet, the operating system itself has earned a higher profile. "When people think about their PC, they think about Windows even more than who the manufacturer is. That determines how it looks, how you navigate, what the applications are that are available," Gates said. And in this case, Vista has folded in programs that users once bought separately _ including automated back-up systems and some spyware protections. Microsoft shares dropped 20 cents to $30.40 in late morning trading Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1029799 ![]() A Bonus from Microsoft Vista: Leonardo's Notebooks Thomas Crampton Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, marked the consumer release of his company's latest personal computer engine, Vista, with a low-key event Tuesday in a small auditorium at the British Library in London. Gates, whose appearance here began a four-day European tour that was to include stops in Scotland, Hungary and France, announced a joint project with the British Library to make the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci available on the Internet for those using Vista. Improvements in this version of the world's dominant PC operating system, which arrives at retailers two years later than Microsoft first planned, focus on managing digital media and protecting users from the dangers of the Internet. For all of the bells and whistles, however, analysts expect most consumers to buy Vista only when it comes on new PCs that they purchase. Those sales could total 100 million worldwide within 12 months, according to some estimates. British retailers are selling Vista Home Basic separately at around £99, or $194, while retailers in France are offering it for about €270, or $350. In Europe, which supports an active open-source software community, Microsoft is grappling with particular challenges that it did not face for the debut of its previous big system introduction, Windows XP in 2001. Here and elsewhere, it must battle a host of rivals from a reinvigorated Apple and its desktop to Web-based challengers like Google, which is delivering services and software online. Yet even with the relative success of the Linux system, the free software that was created by a Finn and is the main rival to Windows, Vista will help Microsoft maintain its dominant market position, said Brian Gammage, an analyst at Gartner, the consulting firm. Vista was made available to large corporate customers in November. "There is a large investment that companies or governments need to make if they want to change to open source," Gammage said. "Microsoft is basically competing against a 'good enough' technology." While open-source operating systems are run on about 2 percent of the 189 million personal computers in western Europe, Vista likely will carve out a market share of 7.1 percent by the end of this year and 64 percent by the end of 2010, Gammage predicted. A separate critique of Vista that featured recently in Internet discussions is the integration of digital copying protections. Microsoft says that the system is intended to prevent illegal piracy, but critics say that the system is crippled for some legitimate uses. A widely circulated posting by Peter Gutmann, a computer science professor at the University of Auckland, declared that Microsoft's extensive programming of content protection into Vista "could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." Consumers could react negatively to restrictions, said Tristan Nitot, president of Europe for the Mozilla Foundation, which produces the open-source Internet browsing software, Firefox. "The default condition of Vista is to presume that when you copy, it is an act of piracy," Nitot said. "It was crazy for Microsoft to choose the interests of music companies and Hollywood over their own consumers." The appearance by Gates before 100 journalists at the British Library complex was a sharp contrast with the British launch of Windows XP six years ago at the Royal Festival Hall in London and a guest list that topped 1,000. The event Tuesday also was more subdued than the marketing blitz Microsoft put on in Times Square in New York on Monday. By holding the event at the British Library, Microsoft officials said they hoped to highlight the Leonardo project. Vista users visiting the British Library Web site can page through a three-dimensional set of notes assembled from two of the notebooks kept by Leonardo. The selection is a combination of two books, the 535-page Codex Arundel owned by the British Library, and the 35-page Codex Leicester, which is owned by Gates. The pages include notes, diagrams and sketches Leonardo made while investigating subjects ranging from mechanics and engineering to optics and the properties of the moon. The manuscripts are kept under secure and controlled conditions in Britain and the United States, but will be viewable together online for this project. "Using Vista allowed us to put together the pages of these two notebooks as they were 500 years ago," said Clive Izard, head of creative services at the British Library. "We plan to make it a platform for scholars to share knowledge." While Gates and Microsoft emphasized the project as opening knowledge and education to the world, only users of Vista will be able to access the 35 pages owned by Gates, who is making the digital version available to British Library for six months. Gates paid $30 million for the manuscript in 1994. Izard said British Library policy calls for making all of its digitized books available regardless of the brand of software. "Sometimes you have to go with a single system to begin with to make something innovative," Izard said. "Our underlying objective is to make our whole collection available to as many people as possible." Over the course of the codex project, the British Library has received software development assistance worth about $200,000 from Microsoft in addition to technical assistance for more than year, Lawrence Christensen, a library spokesman, said. Microsoft recommends using Vista on machines with a minimum of 512 megabytes of memory, an 800-megahertz processor and 15 gigabytes of hard disk space. In London, Gates described features including television recording directly onto computers, built-in safeguards to prevent damage from software viruses spread from the Internet, and parental controls on Internet use — which did not receive a great review from his own family. "When I told my son about the new feature to limit his amount of Internet time, he asked, 'Jeez, is it going to be this way for the rest of my life?'" Gates said. "I told him, it probably will be as long as you live at home." http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/...money/msft.php ![]() Where's The Software To Catch Up To Multicore Computing? IBM's chief architect for next-generation systems software wonders how far we'll be able to push the software required to take advantage of supercomputer-class machines. Catherine Crawford In terms of available floating-point operations per second on processors and systems, Moore's Law hasn't yet reached its limits. But in terms of usable performance by most software--even advanced technical computing software--perhaps it already has. A look at the Top500 Supercomputer Sites List (www.top500.org) shows that a large portion of the technical computing workload has moved to commodity Linux clusters: commodity servers, commodity networks and commodity storage. At the same time, novel multicore processor architectures, such as the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE), show the potential for substantial computing power (hundreds of gigaflops) to reside in entry-level servers, with, say, two to four processors. With so much computing power so readily accessible--whether in systems-on-chip or commodity clusters--companies and industries of all sizes anywhere in the world, and perhaps even individuals, may be able to tap this power to solve more problems than ever before. There's only one problem: Where's the software to take advantage of all these processors, cores and threads? For the most part, it's not there yet--even in areas historically focused on leading-edge technology enablement, such as technical computing. In fact, IDC's Earl Joseph concluded in a study on technical computing software that "many ISV codes today scale only to 32 processors, and some of the most important ones for industry don't scale beyond four processors" (www. hpcwire. com/ hpc/ 43036§0. html). His study also found that even when a vendor has a strategy to parallelize or scale its code, the cost of rearchitecting and recoding is too high relative to the perceived market benefits. Enter Roadrunner. Roadrunner will be the world's first supercomputer based on the Cell BE. When it is up and running at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008, it will be capable of peak performance of more than 1.6 petaflops, or 1.6 thousand trillion calculations/s. Roadrunner is the first rendering of a hybrid computing architecture: multiple heterogeneous cores with a multitier memory hierarchy. It's also built entirely out of commodity parts: AMD Opteron-based servers, Cell BE-based accelerators and Infiniband interconnect. Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) will be handled by Opteron processors, while more mathematically and CPU-intensive elements will be directed to the Cell BE processors. To make this complex architecture useful to even the most advanced scientific simulation application developers, much of the work on the system development is in the programming methodology enablement and corresponding application framework and tooling. The application enablement application programming interfaces are simple but extensible, designed to take advantage of various types of memory and I/O subsystems while keeping changes in the underlying implementation hidden from the developer. The focus is also on enabling a set of core, efficient scatter/ gather memory operations of different topologies and to hide such things as computation and communication overlay from the developer. The philosophy is a "division of labor" approach. There will continue to be a set of computational kernel developers maximizing performance out of the microprocessor ISA; in fact, many such kernels already exist (matrix multiply is a good example). Library developers will use frameworks such as the one developed for Roadrunner to synthesize the kernels into multicore, memory hierarchy libraries. Application developers will then link in those libraries using standard compiler and linker technology. Consistent APIs and methodology across a number of mutlicore architectures without the introduction of new languages will limit the cost of code maintenance. Thus, library developers get improved ease of use not just for accelerator systems but also for general-purpose multicore approaches and clusters. Roadrunner is not just a single custom project for a national lab supercomputer; it represents a new architecture. We are inviting industry partners to define the components (APIs, tools, etc.) of the programming methodology so that the multicore systems are accessible to those partners as well. In this way, major scientific developments need no longer be limited to big universities or major research labs. The benefits of such focused industry enablement can "trickle down" to almost every aspect of our daily lives. Potential uses include: • Financial services. By calculating cause and effect in capital markets in real-time, supercomputers can instantly predict the ripple effect of a stock market change throughout the markets. • Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies. • Information-based medicine. Complex 3-D renderings of tissues and bone structures will happen in real-time, with in-line analytics used for tumor detection as well as comparison with historical data and real-time patient data. Synthesis of real-time patient data can be used to generate predictive alerts. • Oil and gas production. Supercomputers are used to map out underground geographies, simulate reservoirs and analyze the data acquired visually by scientists in the field. • Nanotechnology. Supercomputing is expected to advance the science of building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms and molecules. • Protein folding. Supercomputers can be used to provide an understanding of how diseases come about, how to test for them and how therapies and cures might be developed. As architectures become more complex, from the multicore microprocessor to hybrid systems like Roadrunner; as supercomputing power becomes a commodity; and as developers still seek to get more performance out of their software without having to rely on the rate of "frequency bumps" that prevailed in the past, we are focused on keeping application development simple--forcing the art of the engineering into the framework enablement, not the application development. And by returning to a simpler way of doing things, we allow the software to catch up with advances in silicon, making teraflops on the desktop not just a feasible technical accomplishment, but a useful one as well. http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=197001130 ![]() TomTom Admits Satnav Device is Infected With Virus Davey Winder It started with an email from a worried satnav user, Lloyd Reid of Trichromic LLP an IT consultant who knows his way around a computer and knows a virus when his AV software flags one up. The cause for his concern being a newly purchased TomTom GO 910 satnav unit that, once connected to his PC, immediately caused an anti-virus software alert. Not one, but two alerts in fact. The win32.Perlovga.A Trojan and TR/Drop.Small.qp were identified as being resident on the satnav hard drive, within the copy.exe and host.exe files. That’s worth repeating, two Trojans resident on the hard drive of a brand new, straight from the shop, satnav unit. Worth repeating, perhaps, that this was a unit connected to a PC already protected by AV software, a clean PC, a PC belonging to an experienced IT consultant. It was for this reason that I believed him, that I did not simply assume it was a case of mistaken identity as is so often the case with such reports where the infection was already there, or came via a route unconnected to the accused party. Also worth repeating is the response that this particular chap got from the TomTom support line, which was simply to let his AV software delete the virus and move on as these ‘are not dangerous’ Trojans. Upon pressing his point that the tech support guy was missing the point, he was told to submit a report to the TomTom website. Being the pushy type, my informer called a TomTom number in the Netherlands but only got the run around and an email address which he complained to, copying me in on the message. Naturally, having more than a passing interest in the field of IT security, I started investigating immediately. It didn’t take long to find a few scant mentions of one or two other users asking about the same infections, on the same device, in a couple of satnav user forums. It also didn’t take long to discover that there was no real response from TomTom being reported anywhere, no mention on the TomTom website that there was a potential problem (a search for the infected files, virus or even a warning on the TomTom support site flagged no hits at all) and no warnings being given to the public at large. I made sure that my friendly contact at the PR agency that handles TomTom in the UK was aware of my interest and he promised to pass my questions on to TomTom for a detailed, official, technical comment ASAP. That response was delivered by the end of play the next day. I note, however, that as I write this there is still no official warning on the TomTom site regarding the fact that a number of satnav devices are known to be infected with a virus… Here is that response in full: “It has come to our attention that a small, isolated number of TomTom GO 910’s, produced between September and November 2006, may be infected with a virus. The virus is qualified as low risk and can be removed safely with virus scanning software. Appropriate actions have been taken to make sure this is prevented from happening again in the future. Affected devices It has been confirmed that a small number of TomTom GO 910 devices, produced between September and November 2006, and shipped with software version 6.51, may be infected with a virus. Known risks The viruses that were detected present an extremely low risk to customers’ computers or the TomTom GO 910. To date, no cases of problems caused by the viruses are known. How to detect the virus In the isolated cases that a virus was detected, it was found when the TomTom GO 910 was connected to the computer and for example a back-up of the content on the device was being made. What to do when a virus is found TomTom highly recommends that all TomTom GO 910 customers update their virus scanning software, and if a virus is detected, allow the virus scanning software to remove the ‘host.exe’ file, ‘copy.exe’ file or any other variants. The above identified files or any variants can safely be removed from the device with virus scanning software, and are NOT to be removed manually, as they are not part of the standard installed software on a TomTom GO 910. They present no danger whilst driving with the TomTom GO 910. Customers that do not have virus scanning software are advised to install virus scanning software. The internet offers many free online virus scanners like Symantec and Kaspersky (www.symantec.com or www.kaspersky.com) that will remove the virus safely from the TomTom GO 910 as soon as it is detected. Any customers who experience problems or have further questions are welcome to contact our Customer Support department. =========================================== UPDATE Following the publication of this news story, and the interest it has sparked amongst many online and print publications, TomTom has now posted the same statement as above on its website. Sadly, there is no sign of an apology alongside it... http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1276.html ![]() Blockbuster Down on Netflix Earnings AP Blockbuster Inc. shares fell Thursday after competitor Netflix Inc. beat analysts' quarterly profit and revenue expectations. Blockbuster's Total Access plan, which allows customers to rent DVDs online and return them to a Blockbuster store in exchange for a new movie, helped the company add 700,000 new online customers in the fourth quarter, for a total of 2.2 million. But Netflix said late Wednesday it signed 654,000 new subscribers in the quarter, and predicts it will match Blockbuster's gains next year. Netflix shares had fallen sharply in recent weeks as investors anticipated the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company would miss its forecast for the quarter. But the company instead posted profit of $14.9 million, or 21 cents per share, for the fourth quarter, easily topping the average earnings estimate of 15 cents per share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Blockbuster shares hit a new 52-week high of $6.92 Thursday, but then dropped 24 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $6.55 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Netflix stock gained 46 cents, or 2 percent, to $23.21 on the Nasdaq. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4499612.html ![]() Don't Go Back Jack, Do It Again Mark Brown Although David Byrne was more than willing to play two songs with the Talking Heads when the band was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame, he always has been adamant that a "real" reunion would never happen. Years ago he said he simply wasn't interested. "It's very common for people to think that you can go back in time and have the same impulses and create more of the same thing," he told me in a 1994 interview. "That's like saying, 'Why don't you go marry your first wife again and be just as happy and loving and exciting as you were then?' There's just no way in a million years it's going to happen, unless you're Elizabeth Taylor. And even then I'm sure it isn't quite the same.' " Fans and critics do stubbornly cling to beliefs that if band members would only get back together, they could replicate something. And that too often is just impossible. The drive, the influences, the shared vision and the need to succeed that fuels a band's early days are elements that can't be repeated after members are older, richer, successful and driven by different motives. The Beatles knew that. Despite huge offers, they never came close to even considering it. For some acts it works. The Eagles picked up where they left off in 1994 and continue to pack arenas. Fleetwood Mac pulled it off successfully in 1997, but took it a step too far in later years when they continued to tour without Christine McVie. Lindsey Buckingham promises another Mac outing in '08. The Pixies reunion brought them the riches and acclaim they should have been given the first time around. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are still far more interesting than just Crosby, Stills & Nash. Fans of the Replacements would love to see Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg get back together for some shows, but realize that magic was dicey night-to-night even at the band's peak. The Clash was perennially rumored to reunite, and Mick Jones even joined Joe Strummer onstage - a month before Strummer died. Led Zeppelin turned down $100 million to tour, with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant doing a more tasteful, low-key tour together. Despite a reported $5 million one-off offer to play a festival, The Smiths have never gotten together. "There has never been a financial offer for a reunion," Morrissey told the Rocky a few years back. "It's interesting that you think there would be. There has never been an approach from any sort of established promoter or agent. Just goes to show that people's preconceptions about these things are miles away from the truth." Besides, he added: "We don't like each other at all. We couldn't bear to be in a room for five minutes with each other. And money doesn't come into that at all." But money, of course, is what comes into it completely for most other acts. So we're looking at the most reunion tours in years for the summer of '07. By the time you read this, Van Halen should have made their announcement, and others are already out there or imminent. A quick review of what's coming up: Van Halen with David Lee Roth: You thought the reunion with Sammy Hagar was Spinal Tap-ish and tense? It's a walk in the park compared to the always-fractious relationship between Roth and Eddie Van Halen. The Roth era was definitely VH's high point, so let's celebrate that with releasing DVDs of those classic performances, not by tarnishing the legacy. Genesis: No, not the Peter Gabriel (i.e., "good") era, but the latter day Phil Collins era. Granted, there were far bigger hits from this lineup, but far less challenging, too. It'll be huge. The Police: This could work. They went out at their peak after selling out stadiums worldwide with their biggest album, Synchronicity. All three principals are healthy and have kept up their chops. Fans will turn out in droves no matter where they play. Crowded House: After finally releasing Farewell to the World, the DVD of their final concert in 1996, Neil Finn announced a Crowded House reunion for later this year. Despite the death of drummer Paul Hester, fans have been waiting for this. Rage Against the Machine: Reuniting for the Coachella Festival and a likely tour, it remains to be seen if volatile frontman Zack de la Rocha can keep it together after a seven-year split and translate his political lyrics into the 21st Century. Reunions that worked Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Back with passion and a renewed appreciation of what they had together. Pink Floyd: The one-off at Live 8 was a splendid performance. A full-scale reunion tour needs to happen, but may never. The Who: Joke all you want, but they still are a force to be reckoned with onstage. Simon & Garfunkel: One wondered if both egos could possibly fit in one arena, but they pulled it off without bloodshed. Reunions that wrecked Van Halen with Sammy Hagar: We would have told Eddie to put his shirt back on, but honestly, maybe he didn't know it was off. Cream: Nice try, but upon further review, it was a touch underwhelming musically. Duran Duran: Why? Why? The New Cars: Fans preferred the earlier model with Ric Ocasek at the wheel. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...308014,00.html ![]() How to Make a Record. Literally. Part 1 Part 2 ![]() If anyone does any exploiting it’ll be Paris Paris Hilton Sues Web Site That Displayed Personal Items AP Paris Hilton filed a federal lawsuit Monday, seeking to shut down a Web site that displays personal photos, videos, diaries, and other belongings once kept at a storage facility. The Web site was launched last week claiming the items were auctioned off after Hilton neglected to pay the Los Angeles-area storage facility. It also promises visitors who pay a fee of $39.97 access to Hilton's passport, medical records and other legal documents. In her lawsuit, Hilton said she put her possessions in storage two years ago when she and her sister, Nicky, moved out of a house that had been burglarized. The 25-year-old heiress said a moving company was supposed to pay the storage fees and was "shocked and surprised" to learn her belongings were sold at a public auction. "I was appalled to learn that people are exploiting my and my sisters' private personal belongings for commercial gain," Hilton said in a declaration supporting the lawsuit, adding she was concerned the information could be used for identity theft or harassment. The lawsuit alleges defendants Nabil and Nabila Haniss paid $2,775 for the contents of the storage unit and later sold the items for $10 million to entrepreneur Bardia Persa, who created the site ParisExposed.com. Phone numbers for Nabil and Nabila Haniss of Culver City could not be located. Persa did not immediately respond to an e-mail Monday seeking comment. Hilton's publicist Elliot Mintz said that she would like the site shut down and "would like all of these items returned to her." http://www.newstimeslive.com/storyprint.php?id=1029863 ![]() Toilet Bomber Freed From Federal Custody for Medical Testing AP A federal judge has granted a Weston man accused of setting off several explosions, including blowing up portable toilets, two weeks of freedom. Bruce Forest, 50, was granted a two-week release from a federal prison Monday to receive medical advice for a heart condition and a possible cancer diagnosis. Forest posted a $1 million bond and agreed to put up his Weston home and his mother's Westport home as collateral. He is to return to federal custody in two weeks to honor an agreement worked out with federal prosecutors in November to plead guilty to blowing up a portable toilet in Weston on Feb. 21, 2006. Forest will be prohibited from leaving his Weston house except when escorted by off-duty police officers to at least three scheduled medical appointments in the next 14 days. Once Forest returns to court Feb. 12 and pleads guilty to blowing up the portable toilet, prosecutors will drop 13 charges contained in a 14-count federal grand jury indictment, Forest's attorney, Richard Kascak said Monday. After the next court appearance, Forest will return to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island to await sentencing. Prosecutors said Forest began a string of bombings in Weston where he blew up three portable toilets in 2005 and 2006. The indictment also charges Forest with blowing up another toilet along Route 53 in Redding and destroying a road sign there. He is also charged in explosions at the former Fitch School on Strawberry Hill Avenue in Norwalk and at an abandoned gas station in Weston. Before his arrest in March, Forest worked as a consultant for a major media company on illegal online distribution of movies. Forest was once known as one of the Internet's most notorious pirates of music and movies. http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1029886 ![]() How to Find Fake Torrents Uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA Ernesto The MPAA, RIAA and several anti-piracy organizations are constantly trying to trap people into downloading fake torrents. These torrents are hosted on trackers that are setup to collect IP addresses of all the ‘pirates’ who try to download these files. To make these traps more visible, Fenopy just introduced the FakeFinder. The FakeFinder lists the most popular fake torrents and the latest fake trackers. It also allows you to search for fake torrents by keyword or infohash. The actual .torrent links for these fake files are blocked, and FakeFinder serves an informational purpose only. It is actually quite amusing to browse through these fake files and trackers. The companies that host these anti-piracy trackers came up with some interesting hostnames like “dirtydevils.cyberbox.com.br” and “bittorrent.isthebe.st“. Although most of the IPs of these fake trackers are already blocked by blocklist software like PeerGuardian, they still manage to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who do fall for this trap. Most torrent site admins are aware of these fakes, and remove them as soon as they are uploaded. It is kind of a paradox. On the one hand anti-piracy organizations send thousands of takedown requests to torrent sites, while they upload fake files with similar titles themselves. Some might argue that downloading a fake file is not really a criminal offense. And yes, it is doubtful if this evidence will hold up in court. However, the job of organizations like the MPAA is to scare people, and that is often enough for them. The first thing they will probably do is send a letter to your ISP saying that you tried to download so-and-so file. And even if they take it a step further, they try to settle before these things are played out in court. FakeFinder shows that BitTorrent site admins are trying to track down these fake torrents, and it’s a nice way to expose the darker side of anti-piracy organizations like the MPAA. http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-find-...mpaa-and-riaa/ ![]() A Mechanic’s Laptop Makes Manuals All but Obsolete Scott Sturgis WHEN Donny Seyfer started fixing cars a couple of decades ago, a mechanic could still count on his internal database — a well-developed blend of observation, experience and instinct — to diagnose most breakdowns. The worn-out brushes in a dead starter or a short circuit in a sparkless ignition distributor would eventually be revealed to a mechanic who carefully dug through the clues. But as carburetors became extinct and electrical systems evolved from bundles of color-coded wires to inscrutable digital networks, the ability to determine where faults lay demanded new skills and savvy. No longer would basic tools like a test light and a compression gauge be enough. To make a living fixing the new generation of computer-controlled cars, a general practitioner like Mr. Seyfer, 43, had to become something of a technical wizard, reaching for a laptop — not a wrench — when a customer drove in with problems. He has also become a booster of technology, as a teacher of shop technicians and as education director of the Automotive Service Association. An early adopter who dug into the changes sweeping auto technology in the ’80s and never looked back, Mr. Seyfer (pronounced SIGH-fer) manages the computer systems at his family’s repair shop in Wheat Ridge, Colo., a western suburb of Denver. He also spreads the word as the co-host of a local radio show, taking questions from owners baffled by misbehaving vehicles. That does not mean he has all the answers. In a recent struggle, Mr. Seyfer matched wits with the onboard computer of a 2006 Lincoln Zephyr. When the car was parked with its doors locked, the sunroof would start opening and closing. Beyond solving the obvious problem, Mr. Seyfer wanted to complete the repair by clearing the fault message, or trouble code, recorded in the car’s computer and turning off the check-engine light. He researched a repair Web site operated by the Ford Motor Company. He checked independent information services used by mechanics like Alldata, Identifix and the International Automotive Technician’s Network; none answered the question. As it turned out, the solution was tucked away in his memory. “I remembered a similar model that you had to tell the computer whether it was front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive,” Mr. Seyfer said. “I punched in that information, and it cleared the codes.” The sources of repair information that today’s mechanics must be familiar with — diagnostic codes, Web-based data-sharing, online forums — raise the question of how an independent shop, working on many brands of vehicles, can possibly keep up with the technology. As information goes from printed repair manuals to the Web, are manufacturers sharing the information the way they should? More important, who is going to fix that sophisticated new Mercedes-Benz 10 years from now, when the factory warranty has expired? Patricia Serratore, group vice president for industry relations for the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, said that the future should be bright for independent shops. She said there had always been a gap between the introduction of new technology and getting repair information to mechanics. “Years ago, when disc brakes came out, when fuel injection came out, there was the same kind of lag,” Ms. Serratore said. Mr. Seyfer told a similar story. He started his career in 1983, just as devices like computer-controlled carburetors arrived. “It was doom and gloom. ‘Independent shops aren’t going to be able to fix anything.’ ” Although he said he found the new technology “kind of fun,” he also discovered that getting the information to fix a car could be a problem because it was no longer covered by a comprehensive factory shop manual. It is now on a manufacturer’s Web site, so access becomes more critical and more dependent on the manufacturer. Manufacturers charge independent shops for access to their Web sites. Charles Territo, director of communications for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade group, said that most automakers made access for a 24-hour period available for about $25. Subscriptions are also available for longer use. While the information is not free, Mr. Seyfer does not begrudge the automakers the money. He said he would rather have thorough and accurate information available on the automaker sites, rather than encounter a reluctance on the part of the manufacturers to provide repair information because they are losing money. Mr. Territo said manufacturers wanted independent shops to have access to the information as well. “Seventy to 80 percent of post-warranty repairs are performed by independent repairers,” Mr. Territo said. It does add to the mechanics’ overhead. Mike Brewster, owner of Gil’s Garage in Burnt Hills, N.Y., pays subscription fees for independent services like Alldata, Mitchell’s and Identifix; such services typically cost $150 a month. Mr. Brewster will buy 24-hour access to a manufacturer’s site only as needed. “It’s just a part of the cost of doing business,” Mr. Brewster said. “But having current information available is such a pleasure.” Mr. Seyfer said he barely spent $100 a month for the few times he buys access to automakers’ sites. He also subscribes to Alldata and Identifix. In New Jersey, a right-to-repair act began working its way through the state Legislature last year. The bill would set up a state agency and require manufacturers to provide diagnostic, service and repair information free to vehicle owners and repair facilities. The Automotive Service Association opposes passage of this bill, which the organization said would jeopardize relations between the association and automakers and limit the information available to what the government requires. The bill remains in the Legislature. One free service is from the National Automotive Service Task Force, a clearinghouse that provides help on specific repair issues to independent mechanics. Starting in 2000 and modeled on a pilot program in Arizona, the task force’s members include independent mechanics, information providers and virtually every automobile manufacturer producing cars for the North American market. While Mr. Seyfer was not able to resolve the problem he had with the Lincoln sunroof when he posted an inquiry on the task force site, he said information was easy to get most of the time. “A tech gets in trouble, gets angry because he can’t fix the car and submits a complaint,” Mr. Seyfer said, adding that the manufacturer usually calls the next day and tells the technician where to find the solution. Mr. Brewster knows all about keeping up with technology. He entered Chrysler’s training program after high school in the late 1970s. Within four years, onboard computers made much of what he knew obsolete. But after almost 30 years in the business, he said getting information from manufacturers had actually gotten easier. “We struggled a lot more in the early ’80s trying to get current information than I believe we do today,” Mr. Brewster said. Mr. Seyfer said that as the technology evolved, so had the skills of aspiring repair technicians. “The trend toward students who are adept at computers, math and reading has been going on for a number of years,” he said. His technicians attend traning and online classes, too. And the printed shop manual? Ancient history. “Manuals? I think they’re still available,” Mr. Brewster said. ”But I don’t know any shop that actually utilizes them.” Mr. Seyfer said his shop of eight employees had nine computers around the repair area for the technicians to use. Mr. Seyfer and Mr. Brewster keep libraries of manuals for repairing older cars. “Who would have thought you could use a laptop as a diagnostic tool?” he said. “Now it’s the first thing we whip out.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/au...s/28SHOPS.html ![]() 'Dumb Terminals' can be a smart move Computing Devices Lack Extras but Offer Security, Cost Savings Christopher Lawton Since the early 1980s, corporate computing power has shifted away from the big central computers that were hooked to "dumb terminals" on employees' desks and toward increasingly powerful desktop and laptop computers. Now, there are signs the tide is turning back. A new generation of simplified devices -- most often called "thin clients" or "simple terminals" -- is gaining popularity with an increasing number of companies and other computer users in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The stripped-down machines from Wyse Technology Inc., Neoware Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and others let users perform such tasks as word processing or accessing the Internet at their desks just as they did with their personal computers.• What's News: So-called dumb terminals hooked to central computers, now often called thin clients, are making a comeback with companies attracted by cost savings and security benefits. • The Background: Thin clients can't run most software or store data on their own, offering both pluses and minuses that can vary by company. • The Outlook: World-wide shipments of such simple terminals are expected to rise 21.5% annually through 2010, according to research firm IDC. These simple terminals generally lack features such as hard drives or DVD players, so they can't run most software or store data on their own. Instead, the software applications used on a thin terminal's screen are actually running on a server, often in a separate room. One company that recently moved away from PCs to these new bare-bones terminals is Amerisure Mutual Insurance Co. Last year, the Farmington Hills, Mich., insurer shelled out around $1.2 million for simple terminals to replace 750 aging desktop personal computers in eight offices. Jack Wilson, Amerisure's enterprise architect who led the project, says the reasons behind the switch were simple. The company was able to connect all of the employees to the network through the terminals and manage them more easily from 10 servers in a central location, instead of a couple servers at each of the eight offices previously. While the company spent around the same total as it would cost to buy new PCs, Mr. Wilson says, the switch will save money in the long run because he won't have to replace -- or "refresh" -- the machines as often. "I did a PC refresh every three years, but with these thin clients, I should be able to bypass two or maybe three refreshes," Mr. Wilson says. Because it costs around $1 million each time Amerisure buys upgraded PCs for its staff, he adds, "That's a significant savings just there." While these terminals remain a small fraction of the market, thin-client shipments world-wide in 2006 rose to 2.8 million units valued at $873.4 million, up 20.8% from the previous year, according to projections from technology-research firm IDC. The category is expected to increase 21.5% annually through 2010. Like Amerisure's Mr. Wilson, other companies and institutions cite lower costs in spurring their interest in simple terminals. Because the terminals have no moving parts such as fans or hard drives that can break, the machines typically require less maintenance and last longer than PCs. Mark Margevicius, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc., estimates companies can save 10% to 40% in computer-management costs when switching to terminals from desktops. In addition, the basic terminals appear to offer improved security. Because the systems are designed to keep data on a server, sensitive information isn't lost if a terminal gets lost, stolen or damaged. And if security programs or other applications need to be updated, the new software is installed on only the central servers, rather than on all the individual PCs scattered throughout a network. "People have recognized if you start to centralize this stuff and more tightly manage it, you can reduce your cost and reduce the security-related issues, because you have fewer things to monitor," says Bob O'Donnell, an IDC analyst. Thin clients can also have what some computer buyers think are significant drawbacks. Because data and commands must travel between the terminal and a central server, thin clients can sometimes be slower to react than PCs. Simplified terminals can translate to less freedom for individual users and less flexibility in how they use their computers. Without a hard drive in their desktop machines, users may place greater demands on computer technicians for support and access to additional software such as instant messaging, instead of downloading permitted applications themselves. Analysts say it takes time for employees to get used to not controlling their own PCs. "It's a paradox. People want their cake and eat it, too. They want the security, they want the consistency...but they want the functionality of a PC," says Gartner's Mr. Margevicius. At some companies, the math works in favor of simple terminals. Morrison Mahoney LLP deployed terminals last year to connect the New England law firm's 375 employees to the network and manage them from a central data center. By making the switch, Frank Norton, director of information technology for the firm, projects that over the next six years, Morrison Mahoney will save around $750,000 in hardware and labor costs. Simple terminal setups, such as the H-P Compaq t5135, are showing signs of a comeback. Mr. Norton says going to thin clients from personal computers was a change for employees, but the firm has always had strict policies against downloading, which made it easier to adjust. "It's definitely a culture shock, saying how can my same PC go to this little box with no moving parts," Mr. Norton says. Meanwhile, Jeffery Shiflett, assistant director of information technology for the County of York, Pa., deployed such terminals throughout the county starting in 2002. What started as a setup of 45 terminals in a small county-run nursing home four years ago has expanded to 925 terminals. Mr. Shiflett says that using the terminals has helped the county stay current with regulations such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act enacted in 1996, which requires the medical industry to do a better job of securing private medical information. "The need to secure the desktop and provide that sort of compliance...was a key factor that moved us toward implementation of thin clients and a separation from the traditional PC," Mr. Shiflett says. Simplified computing terminals are starting to go international. H-P, of Palo Alto, Calif., last week announced that a line of its slimmed-down PCs, which reside in the data center and enable users to connect through a thin client or other devices, was being made available in Europe, Canada and China for the first time. Meanwhile, other companies are updating their dumb-terminal technology. Neoware, of King of Prussia, Pa., in October introduced a thin-client notebook computer that uses a wireless network to connect to a central server. Today, Wyse released a set of software tools aimed at delivering a better experience on a thin client. Amerisure's Mr. Wilson says he is testing a thin-client laptop computer. If deployed, he says, the notebooks wouldn't store data and would connect wirelessly to the network. Mr. Wilson wants to make sure the wireless connections for the notebooks would be adequate in some remote areas that Amerisure covers in the Southeast and Texas. "Security is very important to us. You have to find a level of security that allows you to function as a business," he says. http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs ![]() Wi-Fi Phone Buyer's Guide VoIP service providers Skype and Vonage have each partnered with hardware manufacturers to release cell-like phones that can use their services via Wi-Fi networks. Here's how to get started. Peter Jacobson The days of trying to make an important call from the bowels of a data center, only to find that your cell phone doesn't have a signal, may soon be coming to an end. New services and devices designed to extend the reach and reduce the cost of traditional cell phone service are beginning to reach the market, and are certain to change the industry's landscape. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers Skype and Vonage have each recently partnered with hardware manufacturers to release cell-like phones that can use their services via Wi-Fi networks. Not to be left behind, traditional cell carriers are launching dual-mode phones and services that run over the cellular networks, but switch to cheaper (for carriers), faster (for customers) Wi-Fi networks when one is available. T-Mobile launched a trial of this type of service, dubbed HotSpot@Home, in October 2006. Although the service is currently only available in Washington state, it's likely to be extended to other cities in 2007. But before we get in too deep, let's get familiar with the technology and some terminology. Wi-Fi phone services can be divided broadly into two categories: mobile phones that use a wireless network to connect to a VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage, and dual-mode phones that have the capability to run over both wireless networks and a cellular network. The goal of both of these approaches is the Holy Grail of fixed mobile convergence, which brings mobile and landline services together into a single device. By the end of the second quarter of 2006, more than 9 million homes in the United States were using some sort of VoIP service, according to a December 2006 report from In-Stat. That number includes facilities-based providers, such as Vonage and the cable companies, as well as software-based providers such as Skype. Although the rate of growth for VoIP services is brisk, the next logical step is to offer alternatives to using the services only through a traditional handset or a headset tethered a PC. Enter Wi-Fi phones. While dozens of telecom and networking companies have launched facilities-based VoIP services, the majority of these services are intended for use only within the confines of a home or business. They run over the customer's Internet connection and terminate in a traditional digital or analog handset. Several software-based VoIP services, such as Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Gizmo, and Skype, take this one step further by running on subscribers' PCs, allowing them to make free "calls" over their Internet connections to other users running the same software. A few of these services, most notably Skype, also offer an option to make and receive calls from landlines for an additional monthly or per-minute fee. As for dual-mode phones that hop between wireless and cellular networks, the current leading approach uses Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology to handle the wireless side, with a seamless handoff to and from a traditional GSM/GPRS cellular network when a high-quality wireless signal isn't available. If the phone has an active voice or data session and an available wireless signal is detected, the phone will hop to the cheaper, faster wireless network. In theory, the handoffs back and forth between the two types of networks should be transparent to the subscriber. UMA, which also is referred to as a Generic Access Network (GAN), uses the same slice of the broadcast spectrum -- 2.4 GHz -- used by many wireless networks, cordless phones, and Bluetooth devices. While there's also some question about whether or not UMA/GAN will remain the long-term solution for fixed mobile convergence, once dual-mode phones gain wider acceptance, it's certainly possible that changes to the network infrastructure will be made. Service And Device Options A handful of VoIP providers, Skype and Vonage among them, have partnered with device manufacturers to offer "single-mode" Wi-Fi phones that connect to their services. Devices touted as "Skype certified" are being offered by Netgear, SMC, Belkin, Sony, and others, while Vonage offers only one, manufactured by UTStarcom. A fairly significant issue faced by single-mode Wi-Fi phones is that the current crop can only connect to open access points or those secured by WEP or WPA-PSK (the security code can be entered into the phone). Hotspots that require a user name and password, or even free hotspots that require a Web page to load prior to granting access, aren't supported. While dual mode cellular/Wi-Fi service is more broadly established in the U.K. (BT Fusion is the most prominent service), T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home is still the only publicly available dual-mode option in the U.S. While about two dozen handsets from various manufacturers are available worldwide, only two devices -- one from Samsung and one from Nokia -- are compatible with the HotSpot@Home trial. Below is a quick summary of services and devices available: Skype As of September 2006, eBay-owned Skype reported that it had a jaw-dropping 113 million registered users worldwide. With a base that large, it's fair to assume that offering a Wi-Fi phone compatible with the service could find a substantial audience. Skype also recently announced an unlimited outgoing Skype-to-landline calling plan for $30 a year, with incoming landline-to-Skype calls available at an additional fee. Dirt cheap, by almost any measure. Skype has about a half dozen certified options for phones, and also is compatible with any Pocket PC device with Wi-Fi support that can run the Skype software. Three of the most interesting phones are the Netgear Skype Wi-Fi Phone (model SPH101, list price: $230); the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype (model F1PP000GN-SK, list price: $180); and the Sony Mylo (list price: $350). Netgear was the first to market, launching the SPH101 in early 2006, and since then the phone has gotten generally positive reviews. The Skype software is embedded in the device and the user can sign up for a new Skype account or use an existing one. The Netgear phone supports connecting to 802.11b/g wireless networks, but doesn't yet have support of the emerging 802.11a standard, which is still in draft form. Belkin's Wi-Fi phone also is designed to work with Skype. One interesting and useful function is the integrated hotspot manager from wireless provider Boingo, which allows the phone to connect to one of Boingo's 60,000 hotspots in 60 different counties worldwide for an $8 monthly fee. Boingo has denser coverage in the U.K. and Europe, but its presence in the U.S. is growing. The Sony Mylo is the priciest, but also the most feature-rich. It's essentially a media player with a mini keyboard, with 802.11b wireless connectivity. It comes with Skype as well as Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger pre-installed, and unlike most other Wi-Fi phones, includes a Web browser. In addition to its current crop of Wi-Fi-only phones, Skype also has reportedly been in discussions with several cell phone manufacturers about launching dual-mode handsets, presumably in some sort of partnership with a cellular carrier. Vonage Like Skype, Vonage also offers a Wi-Fi phone, but just one model: the UTStarcom F1000 (list price: $130). But the company says it expects to certify and release a number of additional devices in 2007. The F1000 works in very much the same way as other devices; the Vonage software is embedded into the device itself, and it connects to the service via an available Wi-Fi network. Vonage currently offers unlimited local and long distance calling for $25 a month. T-Mobile The only dual mode Wi-Fi/cellular service in the bunch, T-Mobile HotSpot@Home requires that the subscriber use a Nokia 6136 or Samsung SGH-T709. Both phones are steeply discounted when signing up for the plan, and end up costing less than $100 before additional rebates. The plans themselves cost a minimum of $60 per month -- a cellular plan for $40 or more and an additional $20 month for the Wi-Fi service. The Wi-Fi aspect of the service is delivered by having customers install a T-Mobile-provided wireless router at their home or business. This router is currently free after rebate, but does require that the customer have high-speed Internet service. The phones will also work on any T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, of which there are some 7,000 locations across the U.S. Additional details on the plan can be found at theonlyphoneyouneed.com, T-Mobile's site for marketing the service. EarthLink EarthLink officially launched its first city-wide municipal Wi-Fi network in Anaheim, Calif. in mid-2006, and added Philadelphia shortly thereafter. Although a Wi-Fi-only phone plan for these municipalities was rumored to be announced by the end of 2006, it looks as if these will be available at some point in 2007. EarthLink also has indicated that it plans to offer a dual-mode service through its Helio cellular joint venture with SK Telecom. Other Players Cingular and Sprint Nextel have discussed testing consumer-oriented dual-mode services, and it's possible that their trials may be opened up in 2007. Nothing is official yet, and most carriers aren't yet willing to discuss their plans publicly. As more cities roll out municipal Wi-Fi networks, many of which are ambitious projects intended to blanket entire areas with free or cheap Wi-Fi access, the opportunity for Wi-Fi phone providers comes into focus. Once Wi-Fi access is ubiquitous and affordable, the phone services begin to reach the critical mass where the benefits to consumers and businesses become more apparent. Although EarthLink and Google have driven some of the most high-profile municipal Wi-Fi efforts, Microsoft also has recently announced sponsorship of a municipal Wi-Fi project run by MetroFi in Portland, Ore. And many cities and towns simply choose to do it on their own, albeit often on a smaller scale. Even with the fast pace of cities rolling out these services, there are likely to be a number of challenges. Imagine a busy public space with a Wi-Fi network being bombarded by dozens of people trying to use their Wi-Fi phones simultaneously. The quality of service could drop precipitously, rendering it all but useless for anyone but the most patient. Nevertheless, emerging technology, such as the faster, longer-range 802.11n wireless networking standard, could be a boon for municipal wireless plans and Wi-Fi phone service providers. Challenges Remain While the promise of Wi-Fi phones is enticing, many challenges lie ahead before customers and businesses fully accept the products. For single-mode phones, finding a wireless network to log into could be a headache. Wi-Fi coverage in virtually any metropolitan area is a mishmash of open and closed networks running different standards, and connecting reliably to this could be a major challenge. This is less of an issue for the dual-mode services which can use cellular service as a safety net. While the service providers potentially save a lot of money on cellular backhaul fees by running traffic over cheap wireless networks, these cost savings may not trickle down to the consumer, other than in the form of saved cellular minutes. Also, Wi-Fi phones themselves are fairly expensive, with the most basic devices -- no camera, MP3 player, or Web browser -- starting at well over $100. And if the T-Mobile trial is any indication, service providers can be expected to charge a premium for offering service via wireless hotspots. None of the VoIP services running on Wi-Fi phones currently support emergency calling such as E911, which makes having a Wi-Fi phone as your only phone service a risky proposition. Vonage provides a valuable service, though; if 911 is dialed from one of the Wi-Fi phones using its service, the call will be answered by a Vonage emergency call center, which will help contact the appropriate local emergency resources. Because of the power requirements of including a Wi-Fi radio in phones, these first-generation Wi-Fi phones can drain a battery in standby mode in just a day, and offer only a couple of hours of talk time. Some power-saving advancements are being made, such as technology that allows certain devices to lower their power consumption when not actively making calls, but things will need to come a long way before Wi-Fi phones can deliver the days of standby and hours of talk time taken for granted with traditional cell phones. None of these factors may matter much in the long haul if customers and businesses deem the convenience and flexibility of Wi-Fi phones to be worth more than any potential headaches. Add that to the constant improvements in technology and the rapid pace of new phones being released and you may find your next phone is a Wi-Fi phone. http://www.ddj.com/197002806;jsessio...e stid=170993 ![]() FBI Turns to Broad New Wiretap Method Declan McCullagh The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed. Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible. Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.) That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing--or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point of a router or network switch. The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University's law school on Friday. Ohm, who is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during the symposium. In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents' default method for Internet surveillance. "You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment," he said. "If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don't throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact." "You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you're trying to monitor," he added. On Monday, a Justice Department representative would not immediately answer questions about this kind of surveillance technique. "What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets." When the FBI announced two years ago it had abandoned Carnivore, news reports said that the bureau would increasingly rely on Internet providers to conduct the surveillance and reimburse them for costs. While Carnivore was the subject of congressional scrutiny and outside audits, the FBI's current Internet eavesdropping techniques have received little attention. Carnivore apparently did not perform full-pipe recording. A technical report (PDF: "Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System") from December 2000 prepared for the Justice Department said that Carnivore "accumulates no data other than that which passes its filters" and that it saves packets "for later analysis only after they are positively linked by the filter settings to a target." One reason why the full-pipe technique raises novel legal questions is that under federal law, the FBI must perform what's called "minimization." Federal law says that agents must "minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception" and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations. Prosecutors routinely hold presurveillance "minimization meetings" with investigators to discuss ground rules. Common investigatory rules permit agents to listen in on a phone call for two minutes at a time, with at least one minute elapsing between the spot-monitoring sessions. That section of federal law mentions only real-time interception--and does not explicitly authorize the creation of a database with information on thousands of innocent targets. But a nearby sentence adds: "In the event the intercepted communication is in a code or foreign language, and an expert in that foreign language or code is not reasonably available during the interception period, minimization may be accomplished as soon as practicable after such interception." Downing, the assistant deputy chief at the Justice Department's computer crime section, pointed to that language on Friday. Because digital communications amount to a foreign language or code, he said, federal agents are legally permitted to record everything and sort through it later. (Downing stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of the Justice Department.) "Take a look at the legislative history from the mid '90s," Downing said. "It's pretty clear from that that Congress very much intended it to apply to electronic types of wiretapping." EFF's Bankston disagrees. He said that the FBI is "collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution." Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said a reasonable approach would be to require that federal agents only receive information that's explicitly permitted by the court order. "The obligation should be on both the (Internet provider) and the government to make sure that only the information responsive to the warrant is disclosed to the government," he said. Courts have been wrestling with minimization requirements for over a generation. In a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Scott v. United States, the justices upheld police wiretaps of people suspected of selling illegal drugs. But in his majority opinion, Justice William Rehnquist said that broad monitoring to nab one suspect might go too far. "If the agents are permitted to tap a public telephone because one individual is thought to be placing bets over the phone, substantial doubts as to minimization may arise if the agents listen to every call which goes out over that phone regardless of who places the call," he wrote. Another unanswered question is whether a database of recorded Internet communications can legally be mined for information about unrelated criminal offenses such as drug use, copyright infringement or tax crimes. One 1978 case, U.S. v. Pine, said that investigators could continue to listen in on a telephone line when other illegal activities--not specified in the original wiretap order--were being discussed. Those discussions could then be used against a defendant in a criminal prosecution. Ohm, the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment, said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording. "The question that's interesting, although I don't know whether it's so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it's constitutional," he said. "Is Congress even aware they're doing this? I don't know the answers." http://news.com.com/FBI+turns+to+bro...3-6154457.html ![]() Spam Made Up 94% Of All E-Mail In December The Postini report says the rise of botnets and image spam is causing e-mail systems at some companies to melt down. Thomas Claburn Legitimate e-mail now constitutes a rounding error when compared with spam, thanks to a standing army of more than a million zombie PCs waging war on in-boxes worldwide on any given day. Some 94% of all e-mail last December was spam, according to Postini's annual communications intelligence report, which the managed e-mail security company released today. In 2006, the volume of spam rose 147% by Postini's measure. The company attributes the surge in spam to PCs that have been commandeered by cybercriminals without the knowledge of their owners. In and of itself, this sounds like the same mixture of marketing and reporting that messaging security firms have engaged in for years. And it is that. But that doesn't diminish the real difficulties businesses face in coping with spam. "There were two fundamental changes in the world of business communications in 2006 that are going to get even bigger in 2007," says Daniel Druker, executive VP of worldwide marketing for Postini. "The major event in communications security is the emergence of botnets. This has changed the game, the dynamics, and economics of the Internet security marketplace. When the bad guys can now harness more than a million computers around the world and use them to push an increasing amount of attacks, that's a major change." It's not just the rising volume of spam that's a problem, but the size of the spam messages. Because botnets use stolen bandwidth, spammers can send files of any size at no cost. And that's just what they're doing. In order to defeat content filters that might block their messages, spammers are increasingly using images. The result is that unsolicited bulk e-mail is getting bulkier. The 147% increase in spam that Postini observed in 2006 resulted in a 334% increase in e-mail processing requirement for companies. "This is causing the e-mail infrastructure of many businesses to melt down," says Druker. "Nobody budgeted for four-and-a-half times more infrastructure capacity in one year." Image spam does represent a growing problem, says Howard Schmidt, president and CEO of R&H Security Consulting and former White House cybersecurity czar, noting that in some ways, image spam is easier to filter. "Probably the biggest issue is the use of botnets." The second major change, says Druker, "is there is a tremendously heightened concern about the regulatory environment and the increased litigation risk related to business communications." Now that 90% of business communications are electronic, says Druker, "attorneys have figured out this stuff is gold." And thanks to the new Federal Rules for Civil Procedure that went into effect on Dec. 1, businesses now have to comply with legal discovery requests quickly. That's something the majority of companies aren't prepared for, says Druker. Implicit in Postini's findings is a pitch for managed e-mail services such as those the company provides. And while there may be compelling reasons to turn the dirty job of e-mail cleaning over to an e-mail security company, Schmidt isn't convinced that's the only way to survive the bot assault. "I'm not sure I agree with that whole concept of 'you can't do it, somebody else has got to do it for you,'" he says. "I use a desktop tool which is basically a toolbar and it's been almost two years now since I've had a spam, phishing e-mail, malware, any of that hit my in-box." http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=197001430 ![]() PC World Says Farewell to Floppy The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk. Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out. New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise. Only a tiny percentage of PCs currently sold still have floppy disk drives. "The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete," said Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World. Iconic status It is not the first time the death-knell for the floppy has been sounded. The first nail in the coffin came in 1998, when the iMac was revealed without a floppy disk drive. Then in 2003, Dell banished disk drives from its higher spec machines. FLOPPY FACTS The original floppy disk held 100KB of data The standard disk held 1.44 megabytes of data - equivalent to a three-minute song In South Africa, floppy disks are commonly known as stiffies Best-selling 12 inch Blue Monday was sold in a sleeve designed to look like a floppy disk In 1998, an estimated 2 billion floppy disks were sold, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan. Since then global demand has fallen by around two-thirds to an estimated 700 million by 2006. Only 2% of PCs and laptops currently sold by PC World still have built-in floppy disk drives and by the summer it will phase even these out. It is with mixed feelings that the computer store has decided call time on the floppy. "The sound of a computer's floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th Century computing as the sound of a computer dialling into the internet," said Mr Magrath. But with computer users increasingly using the internet or USB memory sticks - some of which store 2,000 times the capacity of the floppy disk - to transfer data, it is becoming redundant. It is a far cry from its halcyon days in the 1980s and 1990s, when floppies provided essential back-up as well as playing a crucial role in transferring data and distributing software. Shrinking disk The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and heralded as a revolutionary device. The brainchild of a group of Californian engineers led by Alan Shugart, it replaced old-fashioned punch-cards. An eight-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide, the nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility. In 1976 the disk shrank to five-and-a-quarter inches - developed again by Alan Shugart, this time for Wang Laboratories. By 1981, Sony shrank it some more - this time to three-and-a-half inches - the standard used to this day. By the early 1990s, the growing complexity of software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of floppies. But the end of the decade saw software distribution swap to CD-ROM. Vista icon Alternative backup formats, new storage such as the CD-RW and the arrival of mass internet access, consigned the floppy disk to the dusty corner of peoples' desks and, eventually, the bin. For those in the industry, there is little to mourn in the loss of floppy disks. "You can get so much more information on other forms of storage. Technology moves on," said Bryan Glick, editor of Computing.co.uk. But, he said, its demise, could prove problematic for those who have stored precious data on disk. "There will be shops where they can get the data transferred but it they still have the original data they would be advised to invest in a portable hard drive or put it online," he said. Interestingly, software giant Microsoft seems to be keeping the flame alight for the floppy. Its newly-released operating system Vista still pays homage to it by continuing to use a floppy disk as the icon for saving a document in Microsoft Word 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6314251.stm ![]() Silicon Valley’s High-Tech Hunt for Colleague Katie Hafner When James Gray failed to return home from a sailing trip on Sunday night, Silicon Valley’s best and brightest went out to help find him. After all, Dr. Gray, 63, a Microsoft researcher, is one of their own. The United States Coast Guard, which started a search Sunday night, suspended it on Thursday, after sending aircraft and boats to scour 132,000 square miles of ocean, stretching from the Channel Islands in Southern California to the Oregon border. Teams turned up nothing, not so much as a shard of aluminum hull or a swatch of sail from Dr. Gray’s 40-foot sailboat, Tenacious. In the meantime, as word swept through the high-technology community, dozens of Dr. Gray’s colleagues, friends and former students began banding together on Monday to supplement the Coast Guard’s efforts with the tool they know best: computer technology. The flurry of activity, which began in earnest on Tuesday, escalated as the days and nights passed. A veritable Who’s Who of computer scientists from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA and universities across the country spent sleepless nights writing ad hoc software, creating a blog and reconfiguring satellite images so that dozens of volunteers could pore over them, searching for a speck of red hull and white deck among a sea of gray pixels. Coast Guard officials said they had never before seen such a concerted, technically creative effort carried out by friends and family of a missing sailor. “This is the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort I have ever seen,” said Capt. David Swatland, deputy commander of the Coast Guard sector in San Francisco, who has spent most of his 23-year career in search and rescue. On Tuesday evening, as the Coast Guard’s search continued, Joseph M. Hellerstein, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, sent out an e-mail message with the subject: “Urgent ... Jim Gray.” One recipient, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, wrote back within an hour, and offered to enlist Google Earth’s satellite imaging expertise. By Wednesday, Professor Hellerstein had started a blog and earth sciences experts at the Ames Research Center of NASA in Moffett Field, Calif., had sprung into action. They secured the promise of help from a high-altitude aircraft equipped with a high-resolution digital camera that was already scheduled for a flight Friday from Dryden Research Center in Southern California but whose pilot could make sure his path included the search area. By Thursday morning, in response to calls from Google, NASA and the Coast Guard, DigitalGlobe, an imaging company in Longmont, Colo., had commanded its satellite to capture images of strips of the coastline based on the most likely areas where Dr. Gray’s boat might have drifted. Throughout the day, Dr. Gray’s friends sent out low-flying private planes to search the ocean and hidden coves along the coastline that the Coast Guard planes might not have been able to reach. By Friday morning, more planes were sent out. Dr. Gray, a renowned computer scientist and skilled amateur sailor, set out on a calm, clear morning last Sunday for a daylong trip to the Farallon Islands west of the Golden Gate, to scatter his mother’s ashes. His wife, Donna Carnes, reported him missing at 8:35 Sunday night. As of Friday there was still no trace of him. Professor Hellerstein said it was unusual for him and his circle of colleagues to feel so helpless. “It’s a group of people who are used to getting stuff done,” he said of the highly accomplished group of dozens of computer scientists who have stepped in to help. “We build stuff. We build companies. We write software. And when there are bugs we fix them.” The intense search is also a testament to the reverence with which Dr. Gray is regarded among computer scientists. And it speaks volumes about the unusually strong glue that binds the technical community. “The number of people who feel they owe him in so many ways, personally and professionally, as a role model and friend is incredible,” Professor Hellerstein said. Dr. Gray is a leader in the field of database systems and transaction processing and has received several computer science awards, including the prestigious Turing Award in 1998. And there is an infinitesimal degree of separation between Dr. Gray and nearly everyone involved in the search for him. “Nearly every major research project he worked on has been hugely influential on later research and products,” said Phil Bernstein, a principal researcher at Microsoft who is a colleague of Dr. Gray. Mike Olson, vice president for embedded technology at the Oracle Corporation, who has worked with Dr. Gray on research projects, said Dr. Gray also happened to be a pioneer in applying computer science to data collected from buoys to gauge wind direction and sea surface conditions, as well as satellite imagery. Thursday’s weather posed a problem for the satellite effort, as a layer cake of clouds hovered over the search area. “There definitely was a significant cloud cover,” said Chuck Herring, a spokesman for DigitalGlobe. But because of the high and urgent demand for that particular strip, he said, the shot was taken. Once the satellite’s images were received by imaging experts on Thursday, Digital Globe engineers worked on making them accessible to engineers at Amazon, who divided them into manageable sizes and posted them to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site, which allows the general public to scrutinize images in search of various objects. “This is a first sift through these images,” said Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon, who had Dr. Gray on his Ph.D. committee at Vrije University in Amsterdam. “If the volunteers see something, we ask them to please mark the image, and we’ll take all the images that have been marked and review them.” Similarly, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth division, is having satellites capture high-resolution imagery in an area along the coastline and will post the images for volunteers to scrutinize. Microsoft is also collecting radar satellite images which penetrate clouds and is using them together with its Oceanview software, which can automatically detect vessels. Lt. Amy Marrs, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said that should a volunteer find something in one of the satellite images that appeared to be a “convincing and tangible” lead, the Coast Guard would follow up. Lieutenant Marrs said it was highly unusual for there to be no trace whatsoever of a missing vessel, not even an oil slick. As the mystery deepened, speculation among the public increased: grief-induced suicide, perhaps, or a heart attack; a run-in with a band of pirates or a pod of orca whales; a collision with a partly sunken cargo container. But most of the computer scientists preferred to remain scientifically sound. As of Friday, the blog dedicated to the search had started filling up with ideas and educated guesses about Dr. Gray’s cellphone, which had transmitted a signal as late as 7:30 Sunday evening, an hour before he was reported missing. And more private planes went up, with a run down the California coastline. Prof. James Frew, an associate professor of environmental information management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has worked with Dr. Gray and is helping to coordinate the search, said he was uncertain at first about how the Coast Guard would react to the scientists’ involvement. “It wouldn’t have surprised me to get a brush off,” Professor Frew said. “They’re professionals, and they know what they’re doing, and here comes this army of nerds, bashing down the doors. But they’ve dealt with us very nicely.” Several of the scientists said they preferred not to speculate on when they might cease their efforts to find Dr. Gray. “I prefer to stay concrete and positive for now,” Professor Hellerstein said. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/te...BGWUK5+XWD0iUg ![]() More power to you Water from Wind Phillip Adams FOR all sorts of personal and political reasons, Max Whisson is one of my most valued friends. We first made contact at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when this most ethical of men was a principal guardian of our Red Cross blood supply. More recently he's been applying his considerable scientific skills to the flow of another precious fluid. Water. Does this country face a more urgent issue? Will the world have a greater problem? While we watch our dams dry, our rivers die, our lakes and groundwater disappear, while we worry about the financial and environmental costs of desalination and the melting of the glaciers and the icecaps, Max has come up with a brilliant and very simple idea. It involves getting water out of the air. And he’s not talking about cloud-seeding for rain. Indeed, he just might have come up with a way of ending our ancient dependence on rain, that increasingly unreliable source. And that’s not all. As well as the apparently empty air providing us with limitless supplies of water, Max has devised a way of making the same “empty” air provide the power for the process. I’ve been to his lab in Western Australia. I’ve seen how it works. There’s a lot of water in the air. It rises from the surface of the oceans to a height of almost 100 kilometres. You feel it in high humidity, but there’s almost as much invisible moisture in the air above the Sahara or the Nullarbor as there is in the steamy tropics. The water that pools beneath an air-conditioned car, or in the tray under an old fridge, demonstrates the principle: cool the air and you get water. And no matter how much water we might take from the air, we’d never run out. Because the oceans would immediately replace it. Trouble is, refrigerating air is a very costly business. Except when you do it Max’s way, with the Whisson windmill. Until his inventions are protected by international patents, I’m not going to give details. Max isn’t interested in profits – he just wants to save the world – but the technology remains “commercial in confidence” to protect his small band of investors and to encourage others. In essence, windmills haven’t changed in many centuries. The great propellers producing electricity on modern wind farms are direct descendants of the rusty galvo blades that creak on our farm’s windmills – and the vanes that lifted Don Quixote from his saddle. Usually a windmill has three blades facing into the wind. But Whisson’s design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing “lift” to get the device spinning. I’ve watched them whirr into action in Whisson’s wind tunnel at the most minimal settings. They start spinning long, long before a conventional windmill would begin to respond. I saw them come alive when a colleague opened an internal door. And I forgot something. They don’t face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they’re arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction. The secret of Max’s design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by. Like many a great idea, it couldn’t be simpler – or more obvious. But nobody thought of it before. With three or four of Max’s magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city’s water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land – specifically to water tree-lots – and you could start to improve local rainfall. This is just one of Whisson’s ways to give the world clean water. Another, described in this column a few years back, would channel seawater to inland communities; a brilliant system of solar distillation and desalination would produce fresh water en route. All the way from the sea to the ultimate destination, fresh water would be produced by the sun. The large-scale investment for this hasn’t been forthcoming – but the “water from air” technology already exists. And works. If you’re interested, email me at PhillipAdams1@bigpond.com. After some filtering I’ll pass the messages on to Max, particularly if you have a few million to invest. Better still, you may be the Premier of Western Australia or the Prime Minister of a drought-afflicted country suddenly expressing concerns about climate change. In that case, I’ll give you Max’s phone number. Australia needs a few Whissons at the moment – and the Whissons need some initial government funding to get their ideas off the ground. For the price of one of John Howard’s crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems. Ours and the world’s. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-12272,00.html ![]() New York Lawmaker Wants to Ensure Healthy Fashion Models Mark Johnson Fearing that young models strutting down the runways in New York City are too skinny, a lawmaker says there should be weight standards. Bronx state Assemblyman Jose Rivera wants to create a state advisory board to recommend standards and guidelines for the employment of child performers and models under the age of 18 to prevent eating disorders. Aides to Rivera knew of no other similar bill nationwide aimed at the fashion and entertainment industries. "New York City is one of the world's leaders in fashion and entertainment and we don't want to do anything to harm those industries," Rivera said. "At the same time we need responsible protections in place, especially for younger workers." The world of high fashion and modeling has long been targeted by critics who say it encourages women and girls to emulate waif-like models. The November death of a 21-year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, who weighed 88 pounds when she died, heightened criticism. Rivera pointed to a 2000 British Medical Association study that found a link between the images of the "abnormally thin" models found in fashion magazines and an increase in disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. "Eating disorders come from a combination of environment and genetic makeup," said Dr. Sharon Alger-Mayer, an associate professor of medicine at Albany Medical Center. "Being exposed to an environment with a lot of emphasis on thinness can put someone with a predisposition to eating disorders in a very high-risk situation." The proposed board would include health experts, industry representatives, models and entertainers. It would report to the state Labor Department on the need for employment restrictions, weight or body mass index requirements, medical screenings, protocols to refer people for treatment and educational programs on eating disorders. Earlier this month, the Council of Fashion Designers of America released a list of recommendations as part of a new health initiative to prevent anorexia, bulimia and smoking. The guidelines, which are not binding for the industry, include keeping models under 16 off the runway, educating those in the industry about eating disorders and prohibiting smoking and alcohol during fashion shows. The voluntary guidelines, however, were criticized by some because they were voluntary and did not include any mention of using body mass index, a tool used to determine if people are carrying a healthy amount of weight for their height. "This is long overdue," said Lynn Grefe, chief executive of the National Eating Disorders Association. "I consider this a workplace issue. You have this industry that has really not been looking out for the health and welfare for those that are in it." In September, Madrid Fashion Week banned models with a body mass index of less than 18. The standard accepted by the World Health Organization is that anyone with an index under 18.5 is underweight. In a December deal with the Italian fashion industry, designers there agreed not to hire models younger than 16, and to require all models to submit medical proof that they do not suffer from eating disorders. While Rivera's bill does not yet have a sponsor in the Republican-controlled state Senate, the chamber's majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has supported numerous eating disorder related measures in the past. Bruno last year divulged that his granddaughter suffers from anorexia. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE= ![]() Where Are They Now? Interview with “Switcher Girl” Ellen Feiss Dr. Macenstein “I’m Ellen Feiss and I’m a student”. Back in the Spring of 2002, those words launched one of Apple’s more memorable, if not effective, ad campaigns. Known as the “Switcher” ads, the spots featured real people telling real stories of being fed up with the hassles of PC ownership, and their subsequent relief upon switching to the Mac. By far the most popular of the ads from this series starred Ellen Feiss, a 14-year-old girl who ended up in the commercial totally by chance. While other “switchers” quickly fell into obscurity, Ellen grew into an overnight internet cult hero of sorts, her fame spurred largely by the rumor she was high during the filming of her spot. Sites selling merchandise with her image sprung up on CafePress shops across the web, and fan sites declared their undying love for her. Ellen recently started college, but not before taking a year off to star in an independent foreign film entitled Bed and Breakfast. We caught up with Ellen to see what she thinks of those Switcher Ads five years later, how she feels about acting, internet fame, and what she thinks about her image being on a Frisbee. Macenstein: Hi Ellen. Thanks for taking the time to meet with us. The last time most of us saw you, you were what, 14? What have you been up to? Ellen: Well. I finished high school, got accepted to college and then got a call from the Bed and Breakfast director. I decided to go to France in August and put college off. Two free tickets to Europe later I would say it was worth it for me, I’m not sure how they feel about it. Macenstein: Why’s that? Do you think the movie didn’t turn out well? Ellen: I think it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t really make sense. But it was really fun to make and the other actors are, in reality, very talented. The crew was also incredibly impressive and on to better things. I think it was just a fun silly project and perhaps somewhat of a joke for everyone. Macenstein: Where can someone see it? There’s very little info on IMDB.com other than a 2006 release date. Ellen: Contact Screenrunner, the production office if you want to buy a copy. Macenstein: Take us back to that Switcher ad shoot. I understand you were not actually supposed to even be in the ads, you were actually just a friend of the Director’s (Errol Morris) son and just happened to stop by the set? Ellen: That’s true. I was friends with his son Hamilton in high school and a few friends and I went with him to watch him make his ad. The two other girls I was with that day also made ads. We were asked to when we got there. What I was wearing in the ad was what I had worn to school that day. Macenstein: So, were you really a Mac user at the time? Ellen: Yes. I still have the same powerbook G4 at school with me. Macenstein: Really? Apple never offered you any free gear? Ellen: I got a free iPod. Macenstein: So, that “beep, beep, beep” story was 100% true? How soon after your dad’s PC “ate” your paper did you force him to get you a Mac? Ellen: The story is true, the 15-page paper was about the history of Chinatowns in America and I wrote it for my 8th grade history class. My parents bought my sister and I the G4 to share the next year. Macenstein: So how did that shoot work? Was it all just stream-of-consciousness, or did they give you a script or direction of some kind? Multiple takes, etc.? Ellen: The camera Errol used you could see his face in. So while he interviewed me, I was looking at him, and into the camera the whole time. The commercial was engineered for non-actors. It was literally an interview about my computer. He asked me questions to get me to tell him stories. Macenstein: You achieved a sort of “instant internet celebrity” based on your Switcher ads that didn’t seem to fall upon any of the other “Switchers”. What do you think it was about your ads that made you a stand out? Ellen: I don’t know? Because people thought I was stoned, because there aren’t that many young girls in computer commercials. Macenstein: So back in 2002, you were just a regular kid, no agent, no manager etc. How soon after your ad aired did Hollywood call? Ellen: Quickly. I got all the calls within a month or two. The “movie” I was ultimately in called 3 years after I shot the commercial. Everything else was all at the same time and fizzled out within the first year after the ad had finished airing. The online stuff has, obviously since we’re doing this, surprisingly held out. Macenstein: What was the best thing to come out of appearing in the Apple ads? Ellen: Making the movie, Bed and Breakfast, was really fun. The film itself is really not a reflection of all the great people that worked on it. I enjoyed the shooting immensely. It’s something I would do again even though I don’t consider myself an actress. Plus I then lived in France for free for most of the next year. A lot of astounding things have come out of that 30 second spot. Macenstein: And the worst (aside from this interview)? Ellen: Being “famous” in high school isn’t fun. I got bitter pretty quickly. For some reason people lose their sense of what’s appropriate social conduct when you have any kind of celebrity persona. People would come up to me and say really rude things that they either thought or they had read someone else had said. People for some reason have an urge to tell you what they think about you and your fame. You feel relatively powerless. Macenstein: You seem to have a large male following, even to this day. Does it creep you out that they are, in effect, into a 14-year-old Ellen Feiss? Ellen: It was creepy from the beginning. It was always one of the worst aspects about the whole thing. I was famous but not that famous. It’s not like I had to get a body guard, but my parents stopped letting me go out alone for a while. It was an annoying balance and the constant commentary I was constantly reminded of pissed me off. Plus a lot of my fame seemed to me to be based on the fact that I seemed to be a vulnerable (stoned) young girl. That is never who I was or am. I don’t want that kind of gendered fame and I was never proud of the fact that a bunch of dudes on the internet thought I was hot, or ugly or stoned or stupid or any of the other things people talked about. That being said, a lot of my fans have turned out to be nice, intelligent Mac using people. Mostly men but a few women too. Macenstein: So aside from the positive experience of making the movie, do you wish you had not made the ads? Ellen: No. I think ultimately the benefits have outweighed the negatives. Plus it has been so long I don’t know what my life would have been like had none of it ever happened. Macenstein: You were actually offered guest spots on both Letterman and Leno following the success of those ads, yet you turned them both down. Why? Ellen: Because it seemed like I would be the guy with the talking cat on the show. I would be the side guest the host would make fun of and then move on to the real celebrity guest. Mostly I didn’t do it because I was told my fame would escalate. My then agent told me there would probubly be people outside my house if i did the talk shows. I didn’t see any real acting jobs or cool things/opportunities coming out of that, especially because going on the talk shows would be categorizing myself as a stoner computer chick. It didn’t seem worth it to me. Macenstein: Now, you actually made 2 ads, but the 2nd one (”I love my G4“) was never officially released. Were both shot the same day, or did they ask you to come back and shoot a second based on the success of the first? Ellen: Both were taken from the 20 minute interview / stream-of-consciousness I did initially. Macenstein: Do you still get recognized today? Ellen: I got recognized last year in NYC. But not frequently. Macenstein: Has any one ever asked you to sign their laptop or iPod or anything? Ellen: I signed a printed still of the ad once. Macenstein: You recently started college. Did word of your “celebrity” follow you there? Ellen: Actually no. I don’t mention it unless someone specifically asks me about it. No one figured it out until a month into school someone Googled me for another reason. Macenstein: So, in that short film, Bed And Breakfast, you star as one-half of an American couple searching for a friend across France. How did you land that job? Were you actively seeking acting roles? Ellen: I was in my last year of high school and the director called me after having Googled me, found the name of my school somehow, called the school and got my home phone number. This disgusted me at first. It took him 2 and 1/2 months to convince me to do the unpaid role. My flight, ticket and housing were paid for though. He had seen the commercial and wanted me for this particular part-mostly because there is a scene where I trip on mushrooms in it. Plus it’s a short movie, he thought the internet star power would help. I never officially began looking for roles. Right after the commercial aired, I had an agent, but I would have had to move to LA to really attempt any kind of career. Acting was never something I was actively interested in. But i do like it. Macenstein: Did you have a problem taking the role at first because of the drug theme? Ellen: I didn’t read the script-so I didn’t know about the scene beforehand, but furthermore I don’t care about being depicted taking drugs.It took them 2 months to convince me because I didn’t want to put off college for two weeks of shooting. Plus, they got my number in an illegitimate way so that took a while to convince me they weren’t illegitmate as well. Macenstein:That’s a pretty brave thing to do, going to Europe at 18 to do a film with a stranger who found you on the internet. Without any real acting experience, and no script, what convinced you you could handle the part? Ellen: I got nervous once I was there and on set, but when I decided to do it, my performance in it wasn’t really a concern for me. I thought about it as: they chose me, so if they don’t like how it turns out, that’s not my problem. They know I have no acting experience, it’s their risk. I think ultimately I did ok. Macenstein: I read that after the Apple ads aired, Apple sort of advised you to not try to capitalize on your celebrity, and sort of fade away. Why do you think that was? Ellen: A multinational company obviously doesn’t want to be associated with weed. Their instructions made me want to capitalize on it though. Macenstein: So as far as you know, your friends who did the ads with you did not get those same instructions from Apple? You were singled out because of the “stoner” moniker? Ellen: Hamilton’s ad was the only ad besides mine that was picked up. The other two girls I was with, their ads never aired. Apple was advising me not to take acting roles, not to go on the talk shows, so they were talking specifically to me. Macenstein: Soon after your Switch Ad aired, there were T-Shirts, coffee mugs, etc. with your image for sale all over the internet on sites put up by your fans, as well as folks out to make a quick buck. Those sites seem to be largely gone now. Did you (or your agent) have to go after them, or did Apple do that for you? Ellen: Apple did that for itself. My image in that commercial belongs to them. The money from Ellen Frisbees and alarm clocks would have to partially go to Apple. Macenstein: Do you have a MySpace site? There is one called “http://myspace.com/ellenfeiss” Ellen: i don’t have a MySpace. Macenstein: There are 131,000 returns on a Google search for you. What’s it like to still have fan sites and folks pretending to be you on MySpace? Do you ever miss your anonymity? Ellen: It’s not present in my day-to-day life, so I don’t think about it unless someone asks. Plus I rarely meet fans. Macenstein: A large part of your mythology seems to stem from the internet’s obsession with the idea that you were “high” during the filming of your Switch ad. We’ve read past interviews where you attribute your slightly dazed look and red eyes to a late night shooting and your allergy medicine. That all seems perfectly plausible. However, you are now in college… Ever tried marijuana? Ellen: I was not high during the ad. But I have smoked weed. Is that really surprising? You just had to ask. Macenstein: So what are you majoring in at college? Ellen: Photography/video or women’s studies. Macenstein: Are you contemplating a show-biz career of any sort? Ellen: Not really. Macenstein: You met Steve Jobs after the debut of your spot at the 2002 MacWorld. What was your impression? Ellen: I don’t really remember, it was very brief. Macenstein: What do you think of the newly announced Apple iPhone? Ellen: Sounds expensive. Macenstein: Ok, we’ve taken up far too much of your time already. Let’s wrap this up with a quick lighting round to get to know Ellen Feiss: What’s on your iPod right now? Ellen: Nelly Furtado, Sleater Kinney, The Organ, Patti Smith, Sassie. What’s your favorite movie? Ellen:Bed and Breakfast. psych! anything with Diane Keaton. What’s your favorite book? Ellen:The Happening by Annie Ernaux What’s your favorite TV show? Ellen:Next, The L Word. Currently single or taken? Ellen: No comment Do you currently own a Mac now? Ellen:Same computer I had when I made the ad. G4 Macenstein: Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions and update our readers on what you’ve been up to. It really is an honor to speak to a Mac-icon. Ellen: Oh stop. No big deal. The Ad http://macenstein.com/default/archives/509 ![]() Proceed and Continue This notice is provided on behalf of Linden Research, Inc. (“Linden Lab”), the owner of trademark, copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the “Second Life” product and service offering, including the “eye-in-hand” logo for Second Life and the website maintained at http://secondlife.com/. It has come to our attention that the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ purports to appropriate certain trade dress and marks associated with Second Life and owned by Linden Lab. That website currently includes a link in the bottom right-hand corner for “Comments or cease and desist letters.” As you must be aware, the Copyright Act (Title 17, U.S. Code) contains provisions regarding the doctrine of “fair use” of copyrighted materials (Section 107 of the Act). Although lesser known and lesser recognized by trademark owners, the Lanham Act (Title 15, Chapter 22, U.S. Code) protecting trademarks is also limited by a judicial doctrine of fair use of trademarks. Determining whether or not a particular use constitutes fair use typically involves a multi-factor analysis that is often highly complex and frustratingly indeterminate; however a use constituting parody can be a somewhat simpler analysis, even where such parody involves a fairly extensive use of the original work. We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody – it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it. Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception. In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected. Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is possible that your use of the modified eye-in-hand logo for Second Life, even as parody, requires license from Linden Lab, especially with respect to your sale of goods with the parody mark at http://www.cafepress.com/getafirstlife/. Linden Lab hereby grants you a nonexclusive, nontransferable, nonsublicenseable, revocable, limited license to use the modified eye-in-hand logo (as displayed on http://www.getafirstlife.com/ as of January 21, 2007) to identify only your goods and/or services that are sold at http://www.cafepress.com/getafirstlife/. This license may be modified, addended, or revoked at any time by Linden Lab in its sole discretion. Best regards, Linden Lab http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archiv...#comment-75509 ![]() Expats Find on TV all the Comforts of Home Shelley Emling For Chip Lowry, an American in London, keeping up with U.S. television shows is nearly a full- time job. Fortunately, he loves his job. "Being a geek at heart, I hacked together a solution when I moved to London two years ago," said Lowry, who works in the e-commerce department of a large bank. "I have a summer home on Cape Cod complete with Internet access and cable TV. I used a ReplayTV device, similar to TiVo, to record the shows I wanted and then connected to a PC on the Cape and copied over the shows to that PC. I scrunched it down and copied it over to the Internet to my place in London where I watched shows on a PC that I hooked up to a TV here." If any of that sounds like a foreign language to you, you clearly have not been keeping up with advances in broadcast and broadband technology that, among other things, are helping television-loving expatriates survive on a diet of much more than dubbed episodes of "The Simpsons." Like Lowry, there are many expatriates who crave TV shows from home as much, if not more, than their favorite comfort foods, and they will go to great lengths to see them — even if the shows turn up on local television eventually. New technology now allows impatient expatriates to view their favorite shows when they air, instead of having to wait a year or longer for their local station to show it. Eexpatriates of all nationalities crave the familiar when far from home. French expatriates who love satire, try to find shows like "Les guignols de l'info," a puppet show that lampoons politicians. Latin American expatriates seek out Spanish-language soap operas, or telenovelas. Indian viewers want Bollywood films and all expats want programming in their native tongues. Karin Möller, a German living in London, said the one TV show she really likes is "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" — not the original version, in English, but the German version, called "Millionar," which she cannot see in Britain. "I just like the German quizmaster a lot, so watching it here is not quite the same," she said. "I try to watch it when I am back in Hamburg, but since it is a weekly show it is difficult to keep up." Robin Pascoe, a Canadian author who has written several books on the challenges faced by expatriates, places a person's favorite TV shows in the same category of home comfort as a favorite breakfast cereal or brand of peanut butter. "There's nothing like watching a favorite show to feel distracted, even for an hour or two, from the culture shock after a relocation," she said. But she warned parents to keep an eye out for children who stay too connected to "back home" by watching a lot of TV and by not immersing themselves in the local culture. Lee Harrison, a Uruguay-based contributing editor to International Living Magazine, a publication for expatriates, said that when it came to small-screen viewing, generally expatriates in Latin America fell into three categories. About 20 percent, he said, do not watch TV at all; another 20 percent watch local TV, and perhaps cable channels like CNN or BBC for news. The remaining 60 percent could be called the hard core: They find TV very important, especially in their new home away from home, and will go to lengths to obtain it. "These folks will install DirectTV if they can't get satisfactory cable," Harrison said, referring to the satellite television service available to more than 15 million subscribers in the Americas. "I've been told that CNN International isn't good enough for some people and that they have to have the U.S. version," he said. "These people also keep up with their favorite sports teams. As an aside, this group often does not speak the local language." Fortunately for this group, technology that includes file-sharing networks like BitTorrent allows you to download your favorite TV programs directly from the networks. ReplayTV is a device that allows viewers to record TV programming on an internal hard disk for later viewing — sort of a souped-up VCR with better playback and more capacity. But for experienced techo-geeks like Lowry, there are simpler, more elegant solutions. Network Web sites, like bbc.co.uk, carry live broadcasts of network shows. Obscure channels such as the Asia Movie Channel are part of the budding Internet Protocol TV industry and can be seen with a broadband- connected computer. The viral-video site YouTube.com is well known for the ability of users to post snippets from TV shows. Although watching "24" in 18-minute bites may not be everyone's cup of tea, the site gets 50 million video views each day. The iTunes Store, run by Apple, carries current episodes of hit television shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," which have also built audiences outside the United States and the expat community. The already vast iTunes library is expected to expand so that programming from Canada and other countries besides the United States might be available soon. Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, a technology research firm in California, said that, in addition to iTunes, an Internet-to-TV video-on-demand service called Akimbo also did a good job of providing overseas shows for expatriates. Akimbo offers more than 8,000 titles including foreign-language content. Its TV offerings include programming from Britain, such as "Fawlty Towers" and other comedies. The monthly subscription fee of $9.99 covers most of the shows in the Akimbo library, although some videos cost extra. The Slingbox device from Sling Media, a California company, has become popular with expatriates. The technology allows users to stream the content they want to watch from a set-top box or digital video recorder directly over the Internet to a computer or other Web-connected device. Slingbox costs between $180 and $250, depending on the model; there is no service fee. It is available in the United States and Britain and is scheduled to be introduced in Europe this year. Similar to Slingbox, in features and in price, is LocationFree, a device from Sony that also delivers programming to a computer. Though conceived as a way of extending TV throughout a house, LocationFree also works across borders. It is available in Europe and North America. Claiming to take "the home out of home entertainment," the French- American company Orb Networks offers a similar service to Slingbox, but with additional features for accessing content stored on a home PC. Orb relies on software rather than hardware and has been available globally for more than a year. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/26/news/atv.php ![]() Cap and gown Captain Copyright, meet Tad. Tad Campaign to Encompass File Sharing, Piracy Keith Lorio Students walking on campus might have encountered Tad Ramey, not in person, but in handouts, flyers, advertisements and e-mails, reminding them to log off their PAWS account and to avoid phishing attempts from fraudulent Web sites and servers. Tad Ramey is a character created by the University's Information Technology Services and paid for with student technology fees to educate and remind students and faculty of computer and technology misuses, mistakes and cyber-crimes. Tad advocated the dangers of identity theft, credit monitoring and cyber security awareness month. ITS said they will be releasing a new line of Tad advertisements soon with the goal of reinforcing the public that peer-to-peer music sharing is illegal. The new advertising line shows Tad behind bars after downloading music. It stresses the penalties one may incur for committing music piracy. Sheri Thompson, IT communications and planning officer, said ITS has plans to boost his popularity in the near future. "Though he's a made-up creation based off a government PDF, he has a driver's license, both a MySpace.com and Facebook.com profile, and we hope to eventually get a life-size cut-out poster of Tad so that people passing can take their picture with him," Thompson said. Many students said they were familiar with Tad but didn't always heed his advice. The new angle on Tad's file sharing habits had some students wondering about music piracy and if its worth the penalties. Kayne Gorney, English freshman, said he uses file sharing to get his music and doesn't care if people have been charged before. He said the number of people using peer-to-peer music sharing are too numerous for the law to be enforced. "I am going to keep downloading music simply because I got to have my Grand Funk Railroad and not pay for it," Gorney said. Amanda Kasson, psychology freshman, said she buys her music from iTunes but only because she doesn't trust the security of free peer-to-peer trading sites. "If there was a site that was safe and contained no adware that was free for its users, I would use it in a heartbeat," Kasson said. http://www.lsureveille.com/news/2007...-2679938.shtml ![]() File Sharing Violations Increase Students receive e-mail notifications reprimanding illegal downloading Tabitha Earp Although 99 cents may seem like a high price to pay for the song you've been humming all week, it might be a better option than facing the consequences of illegal file sharing. However, those who choose to acquire tunes from friends or free internet sites may find not-so-friendly notices concerning the legality and serious nature of avoiding music costs in their email in-boxes. "[File-sharing is] exactly what it sounds like -- sharing files with someone else," Carrie Levow, ResNet Coordinator said. According to Levow, larger companies such as Universal Studios and Paramount track students through file sharing sites. Once a company finds copyright material on a student's computer, it notifies ResNet which in turn forwards the complaint to the students in question via a "Webform." Levow said as long as the student abstains from continuing the illegal downloading then the issue is dropped. However, she said if the student repeats the offense after the initial e-mail notification, then the case is directed to the Office of Student Conduct. Levow said ResNet received 585 complaints last semester. According to a ResNet bar graph categorizing its copyright infringement data over the past four years, the amount of complaints has increased by 399 since last spring. Levow said ResNet works to promote students to utilize legal methods such as paying downloading sites like iTunes and Napster. "[We are] encouraging legal methods," she said. According to Levow, the number of complaints has increased recently. She said this is most likely because of improved methods of tracking illegal downloads -- not necessarily due to increased student file sharing. Levow said a surprising fact concerning complaints is that the majority of them fall into the category of television shows and movies as opposed to music. According to ResNet, 45 percent of complaints submitted between Aug. 15, 2002 and Dec. 12, 2006, were due to movies and television. Jessica Putney, a freshman in First Year College, said she experienced ResNet's process of dealing with illegal downloaders recently. According to Putney, she did not know that her Internet service was being monitored. "I was downloading off of LimeWire and I got a message one day from this lady, Carrie Levow or something, and she was like 'you have placed an infringement,'" Putney said. Putney said following that message she stopped. However, she said she received an additional e-mail notification regarding illegal file sharing about a month after the initial e-mail. According to Putney, the misunderstanding was eventually cleared up through voicemail and e-mail correspondences. "I haven't done anything," Putney said. "I stopped downloading music immediately [after the first notification]." Cyndi Lawler, a freshman in English, echoed Putney's experience with ResNet. "I got an e-mail and it was all technical. It kind of freaked me out," Lawler said. "It was like 'you can be kicked out of school; this is federal law.'" The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. According to Lawler, ResNet required her to submit an explanation of the downloading incident so her Internet would not be disconnected. "I just basically told her that I didn't know that I couldn't use it for personal use and I would stop," she said. According to Putney, she was not aware of the enormity of the situation in the eyes of the University. "I thought that it was like every college kid did it, and that it wasn't something that you would get in trouble for," she said. Lawler reverberated Putney's statement. "I knew it was illegal to burn CDs and sell them," she said. "But I didn't know downloading music was illegal just for your own personal use. Article ![]() Online File Sharing is Inevitable OUR OPINION: While we acknowledge sharing music and video files online is stealing, the University should not delegate its own punishment and expel students who get caught by production companies. Ever since the Napster craze, while most of us were in high school, "free" online file sharing has gained so much momentum that it will never be stopped. The moment a solution is put forth, programmers will find a new loophole and the cycle will continue. Users of programs such as BitTorrent are nearly impossible to track because files are broken down into small pieces and downloaded from various locations. Every once in a while, we hear about a student on campus getting fined or even worse, threatened with expulsion, and we don't see any logical reason for that. People get punished much less for doing things that are much worse. When people are caught "stealing" music or videos, they are subject to hefty fines from major production companies. In that situation, the last thing a student needs is to be kicked out of college. Unfortunately, in many cases, the fines are so astronomical that even they are too extreme to be considered a fair punishment. Not to mention, there are upsides to downloading media for free. All of us have heard a song by an unknown band and gone out and purchased its music. This is very helpful to small, new or independent bands who are trying to give more people access to their music. File sharing certainly hurts major production companies and artists, but if anyone has ever watched MTV Cribs, we know they aren't suffering -- including the producers themselves. Besides, if you really like a band -- especially one that is relatively unknown -- you should go out and support it by buying its CD and going to its shows. Programs such as iTunes, which allows you to download songs digitally for 99 cents, are revolutionizing the way people get their music. Many bands encourage people to share their music by providing free downloads on their Web sites or other domains such as MySpace. It is time for production companies to emerge from the Stone Age and start finding a reasonable solution -- a compromise between all three entities: the consumer, the artist and the producer. File sharing is going to happen, students will participate, and the thorn in production companies' sides won't disappear until they find some other way to make money. Threatening to punish students so severely for something so trivial on a University scale is beyond any logical solution to illegal file sharing. http://www.technicianonline.com/medi...82.shtml&cid=0 ![]() Peer-to-Peer File Downloads Stop Juana Summers Stealing music will no longer be as simple as a click-and-drag for MU students and could be more costly. Information and Access Technology Services banned peer-to-peer and Internet based file-sharing programs in cooperation with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. File-sharing programs were blocked as of Jan. 12. Students and staff members were notified through a mass e-mail before the winter semester began. Internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, such as BitTorrent and LimeWire, are blocked by these changes. “I always thought music was about the artists getting their music to the fans,” freshman Cori Dover said. “I guarantee that they’re still making plenty of money and people can still hear their music.” Dover said she plans to continue to download music through peer-to-peer programs but not while on campus. Downloading copyrighted material through peer-to-peer programs is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law passed in 1998. The act defines sharing multimedia files with other users over the Internet as stealing. IATS, as well as colleges and universities across the country, receives complaints from organizations or record labels when users download material illegally while using their Internet service. After IATS receives a complaint, the computer or device under suspicion is temporarily removed from the network, and the owner is informed of the complaint, IATS spokesman Terry Robb said. First-time offenders will be required to complete the Safe and Legal Computing on the Internet course and to sign an agreement to cease file-sharing activities. Computers and other devices used for sharing could also be blocked from the network for a minimum of two weeks, according to the IATS Web site. “It reminds them of the legal status of copyrights,” Robb said. “Music and movie companies want to be paid for artistic and intellectual works.” If IATS, as an Internet service provider to the students, faculty and staff at MU, were to refuse to follow up DMCA and other complaints, the university could be the victim of a lawsuit. Robb said the university receives a number of DMCA violations because peer-to-peer software is used to share copyrighted material often. The campus had 122 DMCA violations in 2006. This year, there has already been one reported DMCA violation. Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, testified before the subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce in Sept. 2006. Sherman discussed file sharing on college campuses. He said university students are some of the largest consumers of digital music. Sherman said frequent comments made by academic officials when presented with the problem of illegal file sharing are connected with academic freedom. “Allowing illegal file sharing is antithetical to any educational institution’s objective to instill in its students moral and legal clarity,” Sherman said. “No academic institution would teach its students that stealing is OK.” According to its Web site, the RIAA is representative of the recording industry in the United States and promotes legal sale of creative and intellectual property. The organization’s members are responsible for the manufacturing of 90 percent of recordings produced and sold in the U.S. “Songwriters, studio producers and countless other less celebrated people who earn a living in the music industry are the ones who are hurt most by piracy,” RIAA communications staff member Amanda Hunter said. “Unauthorized downloading is just as illegal as shoplifting and it is every bit as wrong.” Sophomore Aaron Channon said he had downloaded files through peer-to-peer software in the past but stopped after a file he downloaded corrupted his computer’s hard drive. Channon no longer downloads illegally from file sharing applications but still gets most music for free from compact discs. “Mostly I just think if illegal downloads continue that it would cause a rapid and constant overturn of artists,” Channon said. In late 2004, the RIAA filed copyright infringement lawsuits against more than 500 individuals suspected of sharing copyrighted material over the Internet. The users were only identified by their IP addresses and were referred to as John Does. The RIAA does not make its interactions with universities public, but one UM-Rolla student could be among those included in the litigation, according to an article published by the UMR department of public relations. Brian Buege, the university’s interim director of Information Technology, said he was unable to comment officially on litigation involving students. Compared to numbers of DMCA violation complaints at MU, Buege said it is likely there are more at UMR due to a different philosophy on the use of technology. He said they encourage students to comply with copyright law, but do not limit their technological access. “Part of attending school at the University of Missouri-Rolla is to learn how to behave ethically or morally within a technological society and to understand the ethical implications of their action,” Buege said. http://www.themaneater.com/article.php?id=25694 ![]() TechnoFile: File Sharing is Not a Crime Peter Hurley takes McGill to school on the ins-and-outs of file sharing programs Shortly before going home for break, I got an email from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of McGill regarding file sharing. It said, “Some members of our community may not know that file or internet share systems, such as Bear Share [sic] or Bit Torrent [sic], automatically distribute such material when outbound functions are on and your computer is hooked up to the Internet. As a consequence, even if you have legally purchased a copy of material, for example on CD or DVD, if that material is loaded on your computer and you run one of these systems, you may be in violation of law for distributing it over the internet.” At the time, I restrained myself from writing a vitriolic reply. What is said above about file sharing is not true. BearShare (one word), in its free version, was a spyware-laden load of crap that used the Gnutella protocol to perform transfers between its users and legitimate Gnutella clients such as Morpheus, Limewire, and Gtk-Gnutella. BitTorrent (also one word) is a protocol that many applications use to distribute data. Before I explain why a program wouldn’t search for legal media on your computer to upload, we should know a bit about file sharing. Since BitTorrent is the most legitimate protocol our CIO attacked, let’s take a closer look at it. BitTorrent is a protocol that breaks a big file, such as an installation CD for Linux, into small chunks that are then shared among peers connected to a tracker. To get fast downloads, you also have to upload, so the load of sharing the data is spread out among many sources. This system takes the load off of the original data source because once it has sent out at least one copy of each chunk, it can, in theory, step out of the picture and users will just re-share the chunks between each other. The beauty of data is that you can make an infinite number of perfect copies like that. That’s all great, but is it legal? Well, yes. BitTorrent and other transfer protocols are used for many legal and legitimate purposes. Anyone who plays World of Warcraft, for example, uses BitTorrent to download patches. Blizzard, the developer of World of Warcraft, uses an implementation that is boringly called Blizzard Downloader. My personal choice for file sharing is Azureus (it’s a bit bulky but highly customizable and works on just about any system). Also, most Linux distributions encourage those interested in getting a CD to download it using BitTorrent, as it is one of the most efficient ways to distribute large files like 700 megabyte CD images. Can people use file sharing programs like BitTorrent to download illegal files? Yes, but people can also use streets to transport illicit goods. People will choose the most efficient way of getting what they want, legal or not. Blame the letter, not the post office. Now, back to that email I got. Although I adamantly refuse to install BearShare on my computer to check if it in fact searches for files tagged as music or video and then uploads them, I doubt that it does. BitTorrent would need to know what the file is and make sure that it is bit-by-bit identical to other copies out there for it to be useful. While some bad applications might search your computer for uploadable files, the trick is not to use these applications (and in doing this without your consent, the author of the application is committing the crime, not you). Good file sharing applications only upload files that you downloaded using them when they are running. So if you didn’t download illegally, you won’t be uploading illegally. Also, you can simply choose to not run the application all the time. If it tries to turn on at startup, turn it off, and use Start > Run > msconfig to keep it from starting again when you don’t want it to. http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5829 ![]() The Cost of a CD Should be Exponentially Higher, According to the RIAA Ben Woods The Recording Industry Association of America hasn't been making too many friends these days. I guess I should say that the organization does have many friends inside the music industry, because that's who makes up the the RIAA. I'm not here to argue whether it's right or wrong to download free music where it's available, or whether it's OK to listen to your friend's "Beach Boys Greatest Hits Album." I'm just here to point out what the RIAA wants you to believe about the cost of music and CDs. If you visit the Key Stats/Facts page on the RIAA website, you'll notice a justification for pricing CDs. The biggest argument appears to be the fact that the Consumer Price Index rose nearly 60 percent between 1983 and 1996, even though the price of a CD actually went down. While this might be a true statement, this is virtually worthless in determining how much a CD should cost. Let's examine this statement, directly from the website:If CD prices had risen at the same rate as consumer prices over this period, the average retail price of a CD in 1996 would have been $33.86 instead of $12.75. I know that the CPI has risen, but these numbers don't seem to translate properly. So I visited the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data site u>, which contains a CPI Inflation Calculator. Unfortunately, I needed the initial value (of a CD in 1983), instead of the theoretical value in 1996. Since I didn't have that, I just guessed until I came up with $33.86 in 1996. I finally found that value: $21.50. This means that the RIAA is claiming that the average cost of a CD in 1983 was $21.50. How many CDs have you purchased for more than $20? True, the CD was new technology at the time, and it's quite possible that the price, in some places, was more than $20. Where the RIAA deviates from basic technology knowledge, however, is that more often than not, the cost of producing something like a CD almost always goes down over time. What better example of electronics getting cheaper than taking a look at the history of the calculator. From the website listed above, Texas Instruments came out with a calculator in 1972 (TI-2500) that cost $119.95 (actually, the suggested retail price was $149.99). If we take a look at the CPI inflation calculator, using the calculator cost and a 13-year span, from 1972 to 1985 (the same time length the RIAA used), we see that the calculator should have cost about $308.77 in 1985. Maybe this isn't fair, considering the time periods are different. So I'll try $119.95 in 1983, and the value in 1996 is $188.96. How much do you think a calculator that could do only basic math functions (add, subtract, divide, multiply) was worth in 1996? By 1981, Texas Instruments had already developed a model that included more functionality for $19.99. Granted, the technology involving calculators and CDs are vastly different. My point is that when you are in the technology world, most of your products, with the same level of functionality, do not get more expensive. The CPI is useful for looking at the prices of raw material, grocery items, etc. Sorry RIAA, but buying a CD isn't like buying a bushel of Korn. http://www.whas11.com/news/woods/sto...44a095ba.html# ![]() SlySoft Working on an HD-DVD Ripper TankGirl SlySoft, an Antigua-based software company behind popular DVD backup programs AnyDVD and CloneDVD, is working on AnyDVD HD, a product that will make it easy for the consumer to rip and decrypt high definition DVDs for backup and sharing purposes. A hacker known by nickname Muslix64 has recently gained a lot of publicity with his work on circumventing the protections for HD-DVD and Bluray DVD disks but Muslix64's method requires digging up protection keys from computer's memory left there by insecure software DVD players - which is beyond common consumer's capabilities. SlySoft's developers are obviously far ahead in the process of cracking the HD-DVD protections and packing their technology into a consumer-friendly product. A forum post by a SlySoft team member reveals that an alpha version of the software is already being tested, and the poster told he has been able to decrypt with it all HD-DVD disks he has tried so far. The product will allow users not only to decrypt their disks but also to skip annoying FBI warnings and obligatory trailers for better viewing convenience. http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=12078 ![]() Shrinkwrap Licenses: An Epidemic Of Lawsuits Waiting To Happen We mostly ignore the terms of shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses, but pretty soon the lawyers are going to come sniffing around, says columnist Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow Anybody who bothered to read a clickwrap or shrinkwrap agreement would never install any software, click on any link on the Web, open an account with anyone, or even shop at many retail stores. The terms of these agreements are onerous and ridiculous. We go along with the gag because we think nobody's paying any attention. But somebody's going to start paying attention soon, and when they do, the results will be disastrous for the electronic economy. Clickwrap and shrinkwrap agreements start with the phrase READ CAREFULLY, all in caps. The phrase means, "IGNORE THIS." That's because the small print is unchangeable and outrageous. Why read the "agreement" if you know that: 1) No sane person would agree to its text, and 2) Even if you disagree, no one will negotiate a better agreement with you? We seem to have sunk to a kind of playground system of forming contracts. Tag, you agree! Lawyers will tell you that you can form a binding agreement just by following a link, stepping into a store, buying a product, or receiving an email. By standing there, shaking your head, and shouting "NO NO NO I DO NOT AGREE," you agree to let the other guy come over to your house, clean out your fridge, wear your underwear and make some long-distance calls. For example, if you buy a downloadable movie from Amazon Unbox, you agree to let them install spyware on your computer, delete any file they don't like on your hard-drive, and cancel your viewing privileges for any reason. Of course, it goes without saying that Amazon reserves the right to modify the agreement at any time. The worst offenders are people who sell you movies and music. They're closely seconded by people who sell you software, or provide services over the Internet. There's supposed to be a trade-off to this -- you're getting a discount in exchange for signing onto an abusive agreement. But just try and find the software -- discounted or full-price -- that doesn't come with one of these "agreements." For example, Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, comes in a rainbow of flavors varying in price from $99 to $399, but all of them come with the same crummy terms of service, which state that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software," and that Windows Defender, the bundled anti-malware program, can delete any program from your hard drive that Microsoft doesn't like, even if it breaks your computer. It's bad enough when this stuff comes to us through deliberate malice, but it seems that bogus agreements can spread almost without human intervention. Google any obnoxious term or phrase from a EULA, and you'll find that the same phrase appears in a dozens -- perhaps thousands -- of EULAs around the Internet. Like snippets of DNA being passed from one virus to another as they infect the world's corporations in a pandemic of idiocy, terms of service are semi-autonomous entities. Indeed, when rocker Billy Bragg read the fine print on the MySpace user agreement, he discovered that it appeared that site owner Rupert Murdoch was laying claim to copyrights to every song uploaded to the site, in a silent, sinister land-grab that turned the media baron into the world's most prolific and indiscriminate hoarder of garage-band tunes. However, the EULA that got Bragg upset wasn't a Murdoch innovation -- it dates back to the earliest days of the service. It seems to have been posted at a time when the garage entrepreneurs who built MySpace were in no position to hire pricey counsel -- something borne out by the fact that the old MySpace EULA appears nearly verbatim on many other services around the Internet. It's not going very far out on a limb to speculate that MySpace's founders merely copied a EULA they found somewhere else, without even reading it, and that when Murdoch's due diligence attorneys were preparing to buy MySpace for $600,000,000, Murdoch's attorneys couldn't be bothered to read the terms of service. In the attorneys' defense, EULAese is so mind-numbingly boring that you can hardly blame them. If you wanted to really be careful about this stuff, you'd prohibit every employee at your office from clicking on any link, installing any program, creating accounts, or signing for parcels. You wouldn't even let employees make a run to Best Buy for some CD blanks -- have you seen the fine print on their credit-card slips? After all, these people are entering into "agreements" on behalf of their employer -- agreements to allow spyware onto your network, to not "work around any technical limitations in their software," and they're agreeing to let malicious software delete arbitrary files from their systems. Which raises the question -- why are we playing host to these infectious agents? If they're not read by customers or companies, why bother with them? So far, very few of us have been really bitten by EULAs, but that's because EULAs are generally associated with companies who have products or services they're hoping you'll use, and enforcing their EULAs could cost them business. But that was the theory with patents, too. So long as everyone with a huge portfolio of unexamined, overlapping, generous patents was competing with similarly situated manufacturers, there was a mutually assured destruction -- a kind of detente represented by cross-licensing deals for patent portfolios. But the rise of the patent troll changed all that. Patent trolls don't make products. They make lawsuits. They buy up the ridiculous patents of failed companies and sue the everloving hell out of everyone they can find, building up a war-chest from easy victories against little guys that can be used to fund more serious campaigns against larger organizations. Since there are no products to disrupt with a countersuit, there's no mutually assured destruction. If a shakedown artist can buy up some bogus patents and use them to put the screws to you, then it's only a matter of time until the same grifters latch onto the innumerable "agreements" that your company has formed with a desperate dot-bomb looking for an exit strategy. More importantly, these "agreements" make a mockery of the law and of the very idea of forming agreements. Civilization starts with the idea of a real agreement -- for example, "We crap here and we sleep there, OK?" -- and if we reduce the noble agreement to a schoolyard game of no-takebacks, we erode the bedrock of civilization itself. http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=197003052 ![]() Fighting to Protect Copyright 'Orphans' Daniel Terdiman An effort among Internet activists to halt the extension of copyright protections for orphan works--out-of-print books and media--was dealt a setback last week by a U.S. appeals court decision. The case, Kahle v. Gonzales, was filed in 2004 by, among others, Internet Archive co-founder and director Brewster Kahle. Plaintiffs argued that extending such copyrights harmed the public's ability to access orphan works. The Internet Archive has been joined by companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in attempting to gain public domain status for these works. But a U.S. district court had already rejected the lawsuit, and last week, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's decision, saying that plaintiffs' arguments were essentially the same as those rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which affirmed the constitutionality of new copyright laws expanding the protections for orphaned works. For Kahle, the ruling was a blow to his goal of preserving as many forms of media as possible for posterity. But he hardly views the result as a final defeat. Still, Kahle and the Internet Archive are also gaining momentum, and recently received a $1 million grant from the Sloan Foundation for the scanning of public domain works. Recently, Kahle visited CNET's Second Life auditorum for a discussion in front of an eager audience about the case, as well as about the Internet Archive, Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop project and other issues. Q: Please explain the mission of the Internet Archive. Kahle: We're out to help build the Library of Alexandria version 2, starting with humankind's published works, books, music, video, Web pages, software, and make it available to everyone anywhere at anytime, and forever. We started archiving the Web in 1996 with snapshots every two months of all publicly accessible Web pages. The "Wayback Machine" is now about 85 billion pages and 1.5 petabytes. Then we moved on to books, music and video. We work with great lawyers, the U.S. Copyright office, the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. We have 30,000 movies, 100,000 audio recordings and now we're digitizing books. How do you deal with the copyright issues? Kahle: For the Web, we followed the structure of the search engines and the opt-out system for doing the first-level archiving. If folks write to us not wanting to be archived, then we take them out. For music, we offered free unlimited storage and bandwidth, forever, for the recording of "trader friendly" bands in the tradition of the Grateful Dead. We now have over 2,000 bands and 36,000 concerts. With packaged software, our lawyers told us that digital rights management (DRM) would pose a problem under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), so we got an exemption from the copyright office allowing us to rip software and break the copy protection for archival purposes. With books, we are starting with out-of-copyright (works) and wanting to move to orphan works, then out-of-print works, then finally in-print (works). We digitize 12,000 books a month and have 100,000 on the site now for free use and download. But we just had a setback. Larry Lessig brought a suit on our behalf, Kahle v. Gonzales, to allow orphan works to be on digital library shelves. But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals just rejected it. We digitize 12,000 books a month and have 100,000 on the site now for free use and download. Can you talk more about Kahle v. Gonzalez? Kahle: Fundamentally, this is an issue for the Supreme Court and the Congress. What kind of world do we want in the digital era? Do we want to have libraries like we grew up with, ones with old and new books available to those that go to the library? Or do we only want what corporations are currently peddling? Of course people want the library, but how do we do that in such a way it does not sink an industry? Libraries worked because they were a pain to go to. So instead of frequently going to a library for new books, people went to book stores. Also, libraries spend $3 to $4 billion each year on publishers' products. So how do we build a digital environment and ecology that allows new works to get created and paid for, preserve them long-term, provide access to the underprivileged, provide a different kind of access for scholarship and journalism and all in the new world. It is not simple. But it is important. Talk about book-scanning projects currently going on. Kahle: There are a couple of major scanning projects in this country: Google is leading one, and a large group of libraries and archives are working together on another. Also, there's the Open Content Alliance, which is attempting to keep the public domain public domain, so if a book passes into the public domain, the digital version is not locked up again as a copyrighted work. There are other projects that are putting perpetual restrictions on what can be done with digitized public domain works. That's a bit scary from my point of view. We need help keeping the libraries open and unencumbered by new restrictions on public domain works. We have been able to scan books for a total cost of 10 cents a page, so about $30 a book. And what we really need is more folks to want this done or want to scan themselves. Who are the natural "enemies" of the Internet Archive? Kahle: Everyone seems to like the idea of preservation of cultural materials. But folks are nervous about disruptions in commercial practices that are just now getting formed. Libraries and publishing, however, have always existed in parallel. What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage. Instead of keeping just Mickey Mouse or just the profitable works under copyright for longer, they fundamentally changed the structure of copyright. So the problem we find mostly is not that we are stepping on toes, it's that we run the risk of stepping on a legal landmine from a previous war. You have one of the first $100 laptops. What is your take on that project? When I got to hold the $100 laptop in my hand, I had one of those experiences that does not happen very often: This is important. The organization is nonprofit, the goal is great, and it has to be open to succeed. It is bottom-up, built for Linux and openness. We are a library for the machine, so we hope to have millions of new users in the coming year. I am very interested in the rise of the technical nonprofits. There are very interesting things happening there, where the new products out of big companies are getting more locked down and closed all the time. How is the Wayback Machine distributed around the world? Kahle: We have our servers in San Francisco. What happens to libraries is they are burned, and they are usually burned by governments. So we are working to build an "international library system" of a few great libraries that have exchange agreements. Our first was the library of Alexandria in Egypt, and they got a full copy of what we have and vice versa. They are scanning Arabic books. We are just starting to work with the European Archive in Amsterdam. They have a partial mirror and are looking for funding and help. It is an exciting time and scary time. Hard drives fail all the time, people screw up and governments make bad calls. What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage. Rik Riel (from the audience) asks: What's your opinion on the potential threats of ISPs throttling certain content (i.e. violating Net neutrality)? Kahle: It is a huge and important issue. A way to frame it is that in the '80s, the battle was over the "transport layer." Basically ArpaNet/Internet vs. the phone companies. We, in the open world, made huge wins, companies prospered and all sorts of things went great. The battle in the '90s was at the software level: browsers, protocols, etc. Basically it was the open world of the Web vs. the closed worlds of AOL and Lexis/Nexis. Again, we made huge wins there. Yes, the dominant browser was closed source, but it talked the open protocols. And the great progress of Firefox, Linux and Ubuntu give reason for hope at that layer. The 2000s is the battle at the content layer: open or closed. iTunes is a loser in this view. DRM, central control, etc. Google's restrictions on the books they are scanning is a loss on this front. So we need real help to build an open content layer that is not centrally controlled. Wikipedia is a great example of a win. But now we are seeing new attacks on fronts we thought we won--most particularly the transport layer. The phone companies have all gotten back together again to make their monopoly. In the ultimate thumbing of the nose they are calling it AT&T. And they are at their old tactics again. So we have to fight like nuts to keep the transport open, the software open and the content open. It is good for the public and it is good for businesses. It is just not good for monopolies, and that is a good thing in most people's views. AlexisJ Onmura (from the audience) asks: Which new technology--if the Internet Archive had the opportunity to try--do you think can do what stone has done for ancient civilizations in terms of longtime storage? Kahle: You can make a durable printout on something like stone and the like, but I would like to argue for something else. If you look at the world as a whole since writing started in Sumeria, there has been an up-and-running civilization somewhere. So I believe we can have long term storage and access--which is key--by building a set of International Libraries in different jurisdictions that have active trade agreements. When one melts down, then when they come back up, the others can and are motivated to rebuild it. If this were in place, I could sleep. http://news.com.com/Fighting+to+prot...3-6154860.html ![]() Wanted: One Tropical Paradise for File-Sharing, Freedom Nate Anderson The dream refuses to die. After The Pirate Bay failed in its quest to buy Sealand, some supporters of the idea believed that the idea of a libertarian paradise was too precious to drop, and they entertained hopes of hoisting the "live free or die" flag over another island, possibly Ile de Caille, a small and uninhabited island off the South American coast. Thus began the Free Nation Foundation, a group that hopes to form its own country governed by a "philosophy of freedom" where "people could actually live" (as opposed to all those other countries, where living has been outlawed by tyrants). The failure of the Sealand deal, it turns out, was a good thing. The rusting naval platform "was too small and aesthetically displeasing to support such a goal," according to the group, and the weather in the middle of the English Channel is not the stuff of which vacation fantasies are made. The Free Nation Foundation is a bit like the Free State Project on steroids. The Free Staters hope to convince 20,000 committed libertarians to pull up stakes and relocate to New Hampshire, a state chosen for its long history of independence, its low tax rate, and its unrestrictive gun laws that allow people to pack heat anywhere except in a courtroom, without even picking up a permit. The Free Nation Foundation hopes for something similar, but their focus is more global. The idea is that libertarians from around the world will converge on an island paradise where they can live truly free lives, a place where "the only valid restrictions are those upon actions that disallow the freedom of others." Suggested principles for the place include absolute democracy and the free flow of information—as a group that sprung from The Pirate Bay, we imagine that information will flow very freely. The idea is still in the incubation period, though if it ever comes to fruition, it would be a fascinating sociological experiment (documentary filmmakers, are you listening?). Would it end up like utopia, or Lord of the Flies? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070202-8762.html ![]() Democracy Rules, and Pop Culture Depends on It Jeff Leeds No one will vote to declare the winner of the Super Bowl on Sunday. But you might be excused for thinking it possible. Before the game, three amateur singers selected by voters online will be named as finalists in a contest to perform with Justin Timberlake at the Grammy Awards. During the game, aspiring advertising writers — also anointed in voter contests — will see the broadcasts of the ads they created for Chevrolet, Doritos and the National Football League itself. Once it’s all over, fans on YouTube.com can vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercials. Inspired by the success of Fox’s “American Idol” and the open culture of the Internet, voter-based competitions are proliferating in every corner of the entertainment world. Fans are asked to vote on who should earn a record contract with a major label, win the chance to produce a soap opera, create a music video for a Hollywood movie studio, and star in a restaging of “Grease” on Broadway. The trend goes beyond mere “Idol” mimicry. The impulse for self-expression and the new outlets for it — from YouTube’s user-generated content to video chats on Stickam.com — are reshaping how consumers interact with television programs, music, film, video games and other entertainment media. “They’re less willing to be spoon-fed,” said Simon Fuller, the entertainment impresario behind “American Idol.” There is, he added, “this need for a modern person to do more than just watch. We want to get involved. We want to post blogs. We’re more vibrant in opinion.” Yet even as entertainment democracy proliferates, some question how well it works. While “Idol” continues to draw huge audiences, ABC’s singing competition, “The One,” last year drew record low ratings. A CBS show, “Rock Star,” raised modest interest in two seasons but is seen as a long shot to return. Winners of another recent contest, YouTube’s “Underground” music video competition, landed an appearance on “Good Morning America” but remain a long way from stardom. And some skeptics ask whether the spread of such contests is a reflection less of rising populism than of new marketing tricks. “What it really represents is an ever more cleverly manipulated pop culture,” said Dave Marsh, a longtime rock critic and host of a Sirius satellite radio show. “Empowerment becomes a commodity.” Indeed, if the contests so far are any indication, entertainment executives and network officials are not prepared to turn over decisions just yet. Usually a panel of judges made up of established industry figures winnow down the candidates either before or after voters have their say. In criticizing the contests, Mr. Marsh said the mass market spots talent well enough: “The mob chose Elvis Presley, the mob chose James Brown, the mob chose the Beatles.” With executives filtering the process, he said, the result is “disposable” performers “who are selected because they stay away from anything that’s personal or controversial.” The voting processes themselves vary. In “Idol,” viewers vote as often as they want. Other contests, though, are trying to restrict the number of votes a single fan can cast. In the Grammy contest, organizers have accepted only one vote per e-mail address, and say they have received more than 150,000. A similar process is in place at the Web site Music Nation, where fans this week began voting online for musicians from three genres who submit videos. The winner will receive a record contract and a chance to perform in studio for broadcast by Clear Channel, the radio giant. And so the onslaught continues. The NBC series “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” is scouting new talent for a Broadway revival, and is even asking fans to vote on how they will vote. “When voting, what is the most important thing you are going to look for in all the performers competing?” an online poll asks. Inviting people to offer their views “has become an expectation, and it’s a way of life,” said Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which runs the Grammy Awards. The academy learned that firsthand last year when “Idol” pummeled the Grammy telecast in the ratings. Mr. Portnow said that the academy had been looking for new ways to connect with young people. So it ran a contest in which unsigned performers sent in videos of themselves singing a cappella. It received more than 3,000 submissions. An academy panel picked 12, and voters online are to determine who will sing with Mr. Timberlake. Mr. Fuller, the creator of “Idol,” said that the crush of contests — whether as part of talent searches or simply of promotions — suggests that the trend “will just burn out, because people will be sick of it. I think it’s got to go to another level.” Of the current crop of vote-driven ventures, he predicted, “80 percent of those will fail because the motivation for doing them is flawed.” Most, he said, “just think, ‘It’s people like contests and they like to vote, so let’s give them something to do.’ It’s not that simple.” Key to the success of “Idol,” Mr. Fuller and other entertainment executives agree, is stimulating viewer interest in the narratives of contestants pursuing the spotlight — not just giving fans the power to vote. “Voting is actually incredibly easy and therefore not that meaningful,” said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president for original programming and production at VH-1, which plans a voting-based show of its own, “Acceptable.tv,” this spring. “I don’t think there’s a desperate hunger in the public to grab the reins of artist development.” He added: “But I do think there’s a desire for a deeper emotional connection to artists.” It is far from clear, though, that the connections voters make with their favorite new talents are the sort that are built to last. “Idol” winners like Ruben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino have generally fared poorly with their later albums. Even the debut album of the most recent winner, Taylor Hicks, has tumbled down the charts after selling 298,000 copies in its first week on sale in December, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. Chris Daughtry, a fourth-place finisher on “Idol” last year, does have a best-selling CD. Unlike Mr. Hicks, though, he has benefited from a hit song, “It’s Not Over,” that radio stations put in heavy rotation. That, analysts say, suggests that aspiring stars — even those backed by a bloc of voters — still need support from old-line media gatekeepers like radio and TV stations. Daniel Klaus, Music Nation’s chief executive, said that the future of fan voting was most likely the creation not of superstars but of “microstars” who draw small but avid audiences. Gaining popularity through contests like his, he said, might help a new act sell only 10,000 to 20,000 copies of a song online, for example, but “there will be a few that will go on to bigger and better things.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/bu... tner=homepage ![]() No Smoking in the Theater, Especially Onstage Zachary Pincus-Roth HAND me a cigarette ..., lover,” Martha says to her conquest Nick in the second act of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The stage directions then read: “He lights it for her. As he does, she slips her hand between his legs.” This scene cannot take place as written in Lincoln, Neb.; Colorado; Scotland; or, starting April 2, in Wales. Smoking bans are so strict in these places that actors cannot legally light even herbal cigarettes onstage. In Colorado three theater companies — the Curious Theater Company and Paragon Theater, both in Denver, and Theater13 in Boulder— have gone so far as to sue the state, arguing that smoking in the course of a play is a form of free expression. The claim echoes the arguments once made to defend the nudity in the musical “Hair” against indecency laws. “It will deny residents in Colorado access to great prior works, and cutting-edge new plays as well,” said Bruce Jones, the lawyer representing the theaters. In October a judge ruled against the theaters. The companies are now awaiting an appeal, although they have not decided what they will do if it fails. Paragon is committed to staging “Virginia Woolf” in July, though it has not decided whether to follow the antismoking law or not. A spokesman in the Colorado attorney general’s office said he could not comment on an active case. Not all smoking bans are quite as rigid. In Ireland herbal cigarettes, which do not contain tobacco and which actors frequently use as an alternative, are permitted. England’s ban, which begins July 1, allows actors to smoke only “if the artistic integrity of the performance makes it appropriate for them to smoke.” In New York City theaters, which fall under a statewide smoking ban in place since 2003, actors may smoke herbal cigarettes. If they want to use the real deal, the production has to apply for a waiver from the city. Many productions, like “Chicago” on Broadway, use herbal cigarettes instead of bothering to get a waiver. Abbie M. Strassler, the general manager of the 2005 Broadway revival of “The Odd Couple,” in which Oscar Madison is constantly chomping his cigar, did decide to apply for a waiver. The entire process, starting from when she first inquired, took four months, she said, calling the procedure “absurd.” But she admitted that she did not get approval for a three-week Broadway run of Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight!” in June 2005. “I figured I’d take my chances,” she said. No legal action was taken. Actors aren’t technically allowed to smoke onstage under the ban in Chicago, but when they do, the law is simply not enforced. Tim Hadac, a spokesman for the Chicago Public Health Department, said that the enforcement was complaint-driven, and that he had not heard of any complaints about actors puffing away onstage. In Colorado, where no version of a lighted cigarette is permitted onstage, aggrieved producers argue that tobacco is an integral part of the work of playwrights like Mr. Albee, Henrik Ibsen and Noël Coward. The company Next Stage canceled planned productions of the musical “A Man of No Importance,” by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, which takes place partly in a smoky Dublin pub in the 1960s, and Stephen Belber’s play “Match,” in which a pivotal scene involves characters smoking hashish, causing the revelation of crucial information. Theater13 — which has a bigger budget and can risk a fine — defied the law by staging “Match” with herbal cigarettes in September. “We put up signage, it’s written in the programs, and then we make an announcement before the show,” said Judson Webb, one of the company’s founding members. “We give people four or five chances every step of the way to make their own decision. If they walk out of the room, we’ll give them a full refund.” In 10 performances no one did, and no charges were brought. When the touring production of the Broadway revival of “Sweet Charity” visited the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in December, Molly Ringwald, playing the title character, used a special cigarette that doesn’t light but emits a cloud of powder. But Randy Weeks, the president and chief executive of the center, has had to cancel “Mark Twain Tonight!” “Samuel Clemens had a cigar in his mouth 99 percent of his waking hours,” Mr. Weeks said. “It is part of our history that people smoked.” In Scotland, Keith Richards famously flouted the law in August by lighting up at a Rolling Stones concert in Glasgow. Since the local authorities are in charge of enforcing the ban, the city council simply declared the hall exempt. That same month in Edinburgh, where the fringe festival presented more than 1,800 shows, all performances had to be smoke-free. The festival had lobbied the Scottish Executive, Scotland’s governing body, for an exemption, but to no avail. “If you start to make exceptions, you start to have loopholes and so on and you start to have a debate over what is or isn’t covered,” a spokesman for the Scottish Executive said. Regarding herbal cigarettes, he said, “We wanted to ensure that the law was as comprehensive and enforceable as possible, even if new products come onto the market.” The actor Mel Smith got some attention for defiantly smoking a cigar during one of his performances as Winston Churchill in “Allegiance: Winston Churchill and Michael Collins.” But Paul Gudgin, the director of the festival, said that to his knowledge no other performer knowingly disobeyed the law, and the ban didn’t prevent any shows from being performed. “Opinion was very divided amongst performers,” he added. Some were unfazed, arguing that “it’s acting, and you work around it,” he said. “They feel there’s very few plays, really, where it’s absolutely fundamental to the plot.” Molly Ringwald, a nonsmoker, said of her Broadway role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” “At that time every woman who’s cutting edge, a little bit fashionable, unconventional, is going to smoke, and that’s Sally Bowles.” Of her one smoking scene in “Sweet Charity,” she said, “This whole thing that I do lasts all of 10 seconds, and the theaters that we’re playing are so huge that it’s not realy affecting anyone so much except for me.” As for Theater13, it is planning to produce “My Life Is My Sundance,” based on a memoir by the Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who comes from a culture in which tobacco plays a large spiritual role. It is unclear if smoking will be involved. Still Mr. Webb points out that his company is not blindly pro-smoking. “We’re a bunch of non- or ex-smokers,” he said. Other than his one complaint, “I think the smoking ban is fantastic.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/theater/28pinc.html Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - January 27th, January 20th, January 13th, January 6th, December 30th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. Questions or comments? Call 213-814-0165, country code U.S.. "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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