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![]() ![]() "[Mar Needs Moms is] on track to become one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history." – Brooks Barnes "I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said ‘is there a school in this area.’ She said ‘not now, but just wait.’" – Gilbert Gottfried March 19th, 2011 ![]() Man Acquited of Running Illegal File Sharing Website A TAUNTON man who fought an 18 month battle against accusations that he was illegally distributing films through his file sharing website has been cleared of all charges against him. Stephen Lanning, 51, of Greenway Road, was arrested along with another man from Glasgow in July 2009 after the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) accused the pair of using their website FileSoup to help people find and download American films free of charge. Mr Lanning was held on suspicion of breaching the Copyright and Patents Act and his computer equipment seized in a joint operation between Fact and Avon and Somerset Constabulary. But the case was thrown out of Bristol Crown Court when lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) failed to present sufficient evidence, stating before a judge that it was "neither necessary nor appropriate to continue to pursue the matter in a criminal court." Mr Lanning, who started the website in 2003, expressed his relief at the CPS' decision but felt that he had been treated “like a terrorist” by Avon and Somerset Police. He said: “The way they barged into my home and just seized all my things was despicable. No one should be treated that way. “The accusations have put me through absolute hell and I'm glad it's all over.” Mr Lanning described FileSoup as “an online community” where people can meet and discuss various topics “like you would in a community hall.” A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Constabulary said the police had simply “followed procedures”. Fact was unavailable for comment. http://www.thisisthewestcountry.co.u...aring_website/ ![]() IsoHunt to Court: Google is the Largest Torrent Search Engine Emil Protalinski IsoHunt is still fighting its legal battle with the MPAA. In the latest episode, the torrent website filed a reply brief (PDF, via TorrentFreak) to the US Court of Appeals in which it suggests that Google, and not IsoHunt, is the largest BitTorrent search engine on the Internet. IsoHunt is essentially arguing that if it is going to be targeted by movie studios, so should Google. Last month, Google got involved took interest in the ongoing court case between IsoHunt and the MPAA, fearing that the standing injunction could damage it. Although the search giant did not dispute IsoHunt's liability, the company is clearly concerned. Here's the crux of IsoHunt's argument: Quote:
While Google is not a torrent search engine, it does index and cache hundreds of millions of pages with directs links to torrent files. There's even a filetype command that allows users to search only for torrent files (by specifying the .torrent extension). http://www.techspot.com/news/42839-i...ch-engine.html ![]() ACS:Law Faces County Court Charge Over File-Sharing Case Legal firm criticised by judge after it tried to halt trial before presenting evidence Charles Arthur A judge is determining how much to charge the legal firm ACS:Law after officially closing a piracy case that it brought alleging file-sharing, during which it sent people letters threatening court action if they did not make "settlement" payments of up to £500 for copyright infringement. ACS:Law, created by solicitor Andrew Crossley, and its client Media CAT, which licensed a number of pornographic films, apparently collected hundreds of thousands of pounds from people using its "speculative invoicing" procedure before it brought 27 cases before the Patents County Court in London. But it then tried to halt the trial before it had to bring any evidence. Judge Birss, who presided over the trial, officially ended it on Thursday following a request from Guy Tritton, a barrister acting for the alleged file-sharers. The judge is now considering how much to bill Crossley's company and Media CAT – and warned that "if ever there was a case of conduct out of the norm, it is this one". Tritton said that the two companies wasted court time because they had no intention of following through with the trial and had merely used the threat of legal action as a means to squeeze money from those targeted in the letter-writing campaign. A previous attempt by ACS:Law to end the trial was rejected by the judge on the basis that it had not clarified whether the ultimate copyright owner might have grounds to pursue the alleged infringers. Judge Birss insisted that the process should be carried through so that the defendants in the civil suit could have their legal status clarified. ACS:Law and Media CAT could now be liable for payments running to more than £100,000: one solicitor representing five of the defendants says its bill is £90,000. But ACS:Law closed down suddenly earlier this year The bizarre saga in which ACS:Law's site has been hacked, spilling thousands of emails and client details over the web, has run on for months. Details that leaked in November revealed that ACS:Law kept about 40% of payments; it was unclear how much, if any, of the payments reached the original copyright holders. In January Crossley said his company would cease to pursue alleged infringers while trying to abandon the cases. Judge Birss said then: "I am not happy about this. I get the distinct impression that at every twist and turn there is a desire to avoid judicial scrutiny. "It seems to be first instinct to avoid judicial scrutiny. There's been thousands of letters, and only 27 cases have had to be dropped – I doubt that. Copyright infringement is a serious matter, but this is just mindboggling." In February, ACS:Law appeared to shutdown – which may complicate the recovery of costs. Crossley is still being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the letter campaign. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...w-file-sharing ![]() Suing Hundreds of Anonymous People Will Not Make You Popular Christopher Danzig It’s not everyday you get porn, file sharing lawsuits, amateur motions to quash subpoenas, and a federal judge quoting Shakespeare’s King John, all wrapped up in a nice legal bundle of joy. Here we go, from the beginning: Chicago attorney John Steele, whose firm website is located at www.WeFightPiracy.com, represents CP Productions, the filmmakers behind — wait for it — Cowgirl Creampie. The movie was part of their website, www.chicaspace.com (obviously NSFW; I can’t believe I just looked that up in Starbucks). On behalf of his client, Steele sued 300 people who allegedly downloaded and shared the movie via BitTorrent. No one actually knew, however, who these supposed downloaders were. The plaintiffs only had IP addresses — not names, phone numbers or mailing addresses. Steele subpoenaed various Internet service providers to get the personal data. He spent months unsuccessfully trying to contact all of the defendants, who lived conveniently in a single Chicago apartment building all over the damn country…. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has been following the saga: Quote:
“Among other things, the newest motion demonstrates that there is no justification for dragging into an Illinois federal court, on a wholesale basis, a host of unnamed defendants over whom personal jurisdiction clearly does not exist and — more importantly — as to whom CP’s counsel could readily have ascertained that fact.” Shadur quoted Shakespeare and said CP Productions needed to contact all the would-be defendants and tell them they were “free to ignore the matter.” Last week, Steele had to return to court to figure out the best way to do that, but he wasn’t finished fighting. He wanted to charge the downloaders with conspiracy too. And the article says, “Steele even said one anonymous defendant had committed ‘fraud’ on the court by listing ‘Possible John Doe’ as his name.” The no-nonsense judge threw the book at Steele. Shadur said the “ill-considered lawsuit… abused the litigation system in more than one way.” Ars Technica’s Anderson had fun describing the scene: [Steele] identified himself and then had to stand in silence as the judge dropped his previously genial manner and proceeded to read the riot act to Steele and steamroll his case. “I accepted you at your word,” said the judge, pointing to Steele’s assertion that the case was connected to Illinois. But, after allowing Steel to take discovery and issue subpoenas to Internet providers, “I start getting motions to quash” from places like Tennessee, Texas, New Jersey, from “people that had nothing at all to do with the state of Illinois.” But our courageous litigator refused to give up. The CP Productions case went down in Illinois’ Northern District. But Steele also filed nearly identical suits in the state’s Central and Southern Districts. In the Southern District, he represents adult entertainment producer VPR Internationale (based in Montreal, Canada, weirdly) and wants to sue 1,017 horny teenage boys Internet pirates. Judge Harold Baker also had stern words for Steele last week, as he denied a motion for expedited discovery: “Plainly stated, the court is concerned that the expedited ex parte discovery is a fishing expedition by means of a perversion of the purpose and intent of Fed. R. Civ. P. 23.” Is there a point to this? Yes, actually. If you download or share music illegally, you still might have to pay the piper. The thing is, usually entertainment companies just go after individuals, not masses of anonymous cyberfolk. But recently, some “copyright trolls” (as Internet advocates like to call the plaintiffs in these cases), like John Steele, have attempted so-called “reverse class-action suits.” For a while, it seemed to work. A firm representing the producers of Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker and a movie based on the video game Far Cry sued thousands of alleged downloaders with some success. But judges in several states (including West Virginia and Texas) are sick of dealing with the jurisdictional issues and the difficulty of simply procuring the defendants’ personal info from their ISPs. It looks like downloaders might not have to worry about getting hit with this type of suit much longer. But just in case, they might want to keep this guy’s DIY illegal download defense documents within reach. http://abovethelaw.com/2011/03/suing...e-you-popular/ ![]() LG Achieved Seizure of 300,000 PlayStations, Wants $150-180 Million for Sony's Past Infringement of Blu-ray Patents, but ORDER IS LIFTED! Florian Mueller Today's court session in The Hague, Netherlands over the PlayStation 3 dispute between LG and Sony has revealed some mind-boggling facts and figures and produced a major surprise. [Update] According to InsideGamer.nl as well as Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and an independent source I have talked to, Sony has won this round and the court has lifted the prejudgment seizure order. InsideGamer.nl reports that all seized PlayStations will have to be released, no more seizures will take place, and LG has to pay legal fees amounting to €130,000 (approximately US$180,000). For each day that LG fails to comply, it will be fined at a rate of €200,000 (approximately US$275,000). I have learned that the key reason for the court to lift the seizure order was that this kind of measure didn't seem fair given the history of negotiations between the parties. The ruling didn't only overturn the prejudgment seizure order but also told LG to inform the Dutch customs authority and ensure that no further confiscations would happen. This is only related to the prejudgment seizure order: Sony can resume the distribution of PlayStations across Europe for now, but there will still be a full-fledged legal proceeding to determine whether there is an infringement (and if so, how much money Sony owes LG). But Sony's most pressing problem has been solved. Knowing that the dispute will continue, some numbers are interesting to look at. They were previously reported by Dutch websites gamer.nl and insidegamer.nl, and I have double-checked on everything with an independent source who is in telephone contact with people attending the court hearing. These are the key data points: • Approximately 300,000 PlayStation 3s were seized in the Netherlands. The estimated value (for customs purposes) is €43 million (approximately US$60 million at today's exchange rate). • Nine more shipments of 15,000 to 20,000 units each -- a total of up to 180,000 more units -- are on their way to the Netherlands. Those shipments would also have been seized if the court hadn't lifted the seizure order. • LG wants to receive a patent royalty between $2.50 and $2.55 for each Blu-ray device sold by Sony. Sony has already sold more than 47 million PS3s, and there are other Sony products implementing the Blu-ray Disc standard. In the total of PS3 and other Blu-ray product sales, LG estimated that Sony already owes it patent royalties amounting to $150-180 million for past infringement, plus more money for future sales. Reportedly, LG wants a bank guarantee over a total of $350 million to cover the aforementioned amount as well as estimated payments to be made in the future. • As I reported in my previous post, it seems that LG's focus is on getting paid for its Blu-ray patents while Sony wants a comprehensive settlement of all disputes between the parties. In addition to lawsuits between Sony and LG there is also a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas that was brought by Zenith, an LG subsidiary, against Sony over eight digital TV patents. Apparently Sony wants all disputes with LG, including the Zenith case, settled at the same time. This includes Sony's own claims against LG. In particular, it claims many LG smartphones infringe some of Sony's patents. • Gamer.nl also says that Sony's lawyer said they are willing to negotiate "but not with a knife at the throat", apparently a reference to the situation in which Sony found itself after the prejudgment seizure order. • Today's court session was just an emergency hearing following Sony's appeal against the prejudgment seizure order obtained by LG. After this there will be lengthier full-fledged proceeding to determine whether Sony infringes valid patents held by LG. The first court session in that proceeding has apparently been scheduled for November 18. Sony's winning lawyer was Mr. Bart van den Broek of the Hoyng Monegier firm. http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011...of-300000.html ![]() Judge Lets Sony Access GeoHot's PayPal Account in PS3 Hacking Lawsuit Emil Protalinski Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero has awarded Sony a subpoena that grants the company access to the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 jailbreaker George Hotz, also known as GeoHot, for the last two years. Spero ruled that the Japanese console maker may acquire "documents sufficient to identify the source of funds (PDF via Wired) in California that went into any PayPal account associated with geohot@gmail.com for the period of January 1, 2009, to February 1, 2011." The information sought is part of a jurisdictional argument over whether Sony must sue GeoHot in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, where Sony would prefer. Sony argues that if GeoHot accepted monetary donations for the PS3 hack from people residing in Northern California, San Francisco would be a proper venue for the litigation. GeoHot denies he accepted donations, though he did ask for them. Spero's decision follows sidings with Sony from earlier this month. The judge allowed Sony to obtain the IP addresses of everyone who visited GeoHot's personal website for the past 26 months (since January 2009) as well as the account names of anyone who has accessed a PS3 jailbreak video on the 21-year-old's YouTube account, his tweets relating to the hacking on Twitter, information on people who posted comments to his blog on Blogspot, and information about his account on the PSX-Scene website. Last month, Sony demanded that Google hand over the identities of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video posted on YouTube. GeoHot posted the video on January 7, later made it private, and then pulled it on a judge's orders. Sony's legal attacks against the hackers that released the PS3 root key and custom firmware began two months ago. The group known as fail0verflow is accused of posting a rudimentary hack in December 2010 after finding security codes for the PS3. It was refined by GeoHot weeks later when he independently found and published the PS3 root key. The resulting hacks allow homebrew apps and pirated software to run on unmodified consoles. Sony is still threatening to sue anybody posting or distributing PS3 jailbreak code, despite the fact that the company accidentally tweeted the PlayStation 3 security key. Sony's official stance is if you crack your PS3, you'll get banned. GeoHot meanwhile says "beating them in court is just a start." http://www.techspot.com/news/42878-j...g-lawsuit.html ![]() Charlie Sheen Merchandise Clampdown Has Begun Eriq Gardner Now that Charlie Sheen is going on tour and selling merchandise bearing his famous slogans, his reps are clamping down on vendors selling goods that trade off the much-followed Sheen saga. FEA Merchandising, a subsidiary of Live Nation, has been busy in the past 48 hours, sending takedown notices and cease-and-desist letters in an attempt to own the exclusive market on Charlie Sheen merchandise. In the process, the company has stepped on the toes of a woman's rights group protesting the Sheen saga with a charitable endeavor. As we reported Thursday, a number of companies and individuals have already beaten Sheen to the trademark office, registering such catch-phrases as "winning," "tiger blood," and "Adonis DNA." Without a firm trademark stake over these marks, FEA has been exploiting a different protection maneuver -- claiming that products that bear Sheen's words violate his publicity rights. For example, Kate Durkin says she was horrified by the reception that Charlie Sheen has been receiving in the media and among people on Twitter. So she, along with several others, set up an organization called Unfollow Charlie, intending to sell the t-shirt design bearing that slogan and donating the proceeds to the charity RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network). After setting up shop at Zazzle.com, an online retailer that allows users to upload images and create their own merchandise, Durkin was notified that the design would be taken down as the result of infringement. She got an e-mail that stated: "Unfortunately, your product was removed because it featured a design that does not meet Zazzle Acceptable Content Guidelines. Specifically, your product contained content that violates Charlie Sheen's rights of celebrity/publicity. Charlie Sheen's name and likeness are protected by rights of celebrity/publicity and may not be used on Zazzle products without permission." Durkin followed up, questioning whether her product was removed because her group was critical of Sheen's following. FEA doesn't seem overly concerned with Sheen's image, however, as much as attempting to lock down the market. Another Zazzle retailer who was attempting to sell a t-shirt with "#winning" emblazoned on the front reports also being subject to a takedown notice over Sheen's publicity rights. The use of publicity rights to protect slogans is extremely rare but not unprecedented. Nearly thirty years ago, for instance, Johnny Carson sued a toilet manufacturer who attempted to sell portable toilets bearing the phrase, "Here's Johnny," supposedly inspired by the late night talk show host's introduction each night on his program. Carson was successful in the lawsuit. More recently, in a lawsuit that involved publicity rights in merchandise, FEA and Live Nation sued Rolling Stone magazine for slapping its famous cover images of musicians on t-shirts, tote bags and other items. The publication asserted in a summary judgment motion that it had a First Amendment right to the merchandise, which a judge declined to grant without seeing more evidence. Before the case got to trial, however, the dispute was settled. The big issue in FEA's claims is whether it is overstepping its authority. Is a term like "Unfollow Charlie" evocative of Sheen's "personality" to the extent a judge would see it as unfair commercial exploitation of the actor? Does a charity organization attempting to express a viewpoint deserve free speech protections? FEA hasn't responded yet to our inquiries. http://www.courant.com/features/sns-...,6944520.story ![]() China Closes 130,000 Internet Cafes as it Seeks More Control The closures are part of a Chinese government crackdown on illegal Internet cafes in the country Michael Kan China shut down more than 130,000 illegal Internet cafes in the country over a six year period, as part of crackdown to control the market, according to a new Chinese government report. Internet cafes in China are highly regulated by the government, which can issue and revoke their licenses. Authorities have made it illegal for Internet cafes to serve minors under the age of 18, stating that the Web's content could endanger their well-being. Last April, the Ministry of Culture issued new rules declaring that Internet cafes would be closed down if they were found admitting minors. The Ministry of Culture said it will make the report public in a month's time. But in statements made to China's official Xinhua News Agency, the ministry said it is continuing to promote Internet cafe chains, while enforcing rules to stop the establishment of independently run Internet cafes. The ministry also plans on instituting harsher penalties for Internet cafes found admitting minors. "Promoting Internet cafe chains allows the government to have more control," said Yu Yi, an analyst with Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. "The Internet cafe chains all adhere to the same standards on service and security." Around a third of China's Internet population surfs the Web from Internet cafes. The Ministry of Culture said the number of Internet cafe users in China reached 163 million in 2010. The country's total Internet population stands at 457 million users. There are currently 144,000 Internet cafes in China, according to the ministry, and close to 30 percent of them are operated by chain businesses. China has invested heavily in systems to control how users access information on the Web. Sites or content deemed too politically sensitive are blocked or taken down by government censors. This has included topics relating to the "Jasmine Revolution", a term an anonymous group of activists has been using in the last several weeks to urge the Chinese people to protest the government. Authorities have responded by preventing microblog searches on the term, as well as by arresting Chinese activists and deploying police patrols in cities across the country. Despite efforts aimed at closing down Internet cafes, the number of people using Internet cafes to access the Web increased by 28 million people in 2010, according to the ministry. The rising total appears to be at odds with the closures, but over the past six years more legal Internet cafes have entered the market, Yu said. The ministry's report also does not say if some of the illegal cafes that were closed later reopened. About half of the people who use Internet cafes in China are 18 to 25 years old, according to Analysys International. Nine percent of the users are under the age of 18. At the same time, 60 percent of the users have monthly incomes at 3000 yuan (US$456) and under. China has the world's largest Internet cafe market, said Yu. "The leadership has been trying to regulate it for some time now," he said. China is actively closing down Internet cafes that don't meet regulations in an effort to standardize the way they operate, he added. http://www.cio.com.au/article/380268..._more_control/ ![]() Bypassing the Big Guys to Get Broadband Michael S. Rosenwald Paul Conlin, the proprietor of Blaze Broadband, is not a typical telecom executive. He drives a red pickup and climbs roofs. When customers call tech support, he is the one who answers. Conlin delivers broadband to Fauquier County homes bypassed by Comcast and Verizon, bouncing wireless signals from antennas on barns, silos, water towers and cellphone poles. By some measures, he is a local hero. "I don't know how Paul does it," said John Chierichella, a District lawyer, who struggled for years without reliable broadband. "I don't really care. All I know is I get service now." County officials estimate that 60 percent of Fauquier's residents have been bypassed by big telecoms because they don't live in populous clusters that make building broadband infrastructure cost-effective. Though the Obama administration has plans to close the digital divide for the 10 percent of the U.S. population without broadband access, many living within that gap in Fauquier think the problem will be theirs to solve. "The big guys are just not going to come out here and serve all of us," said Peter Schwartz, a county supervisor who places one hand on his refrigerator to get a stable cellphone signal in his home. "We are going to have to solve this problem creatively ourselves." Fauquier might be 45 miles from the White House, but many residents can't look at WhiteHouse.gov in their homes. So officials, fearful the county won't qualify for broadband infrastructure grants because of its high median income, are pushing to expand homegrown services such as Conlin's. "This is one of the ways that a small entrepreneur can do what the big boys are unwilling to do," said Paul McCulla, the county administrator. "That's the reality of the situation we face here." A former automotive engineer, Conlin became interested in so-called canopy wireless Internet service out of frustration that he couldn't get broadband at home. The costs to bring the bandwidth to his house were expensive, so he connected his neighbors' homes and had them share the costs. Conlin tried to keep the setup quiet, knowing others would be jealous. But the Internet is hard to keep locked in a box. Soon, people across the county heard he had broadband, and they began to whisper in his ear when they saw him, "Can you get me the Internet?" Sensing an opportunity, Conlin started Blaze Broadband in 2006, becoming one of nearly 3,000 wireless Internet providers, or WISPs, across the country. WISPs provide broadband Internet service to more than 2 million homes, often in rural towns or counties. The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association lists eight operators in Virginia and four in Maryland. A neighborhood network Using equipment made by Motorola and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, WISPs buy broadband capacity from providers in nearby jurisdictions with widespread high-speed infrastructures. They connect the signal to microwave antennas placed in high spots and then beam to small antennas on home rooftops. Conlin's job is part geographer, part roof climber, part engineer, part tech support and part community organizer. If a house is blocked from his signal, he reaches out to neighbors to become conduits for his signal, offers them discounts for their own service and gets everyone hooked up. He is rarely turned down. "People want to help each other out," Conlin said. "We are all a part of this community and we want the Internet." Take the experience of Ellie Spencer. She had no idea her house, high up on a ridge in Fauquier County, was digitally advantageous until a neighbor phoned one afternoon with a peculiar request. Would she take a call, the neighbor wondered, from her friend Conlin, a local fellow who needed her roof. Needing reliable broadband Internet service herself, Spencer took the call. What Conlin wanted: to beam an Internet signal to her roof, then redirect it to a house below hers in the gorgeous, rolling hills just outside Warrenton. And so, that's how the Chierichella family got the Internet. "I should send her a Christmas card," Shannon Chierichella said in her back yard, looking up at Spencer's home. "This really has changed our lives." The family went through several unreliable satellite services before Spencer, high up the ridge, came to the rescue. Back in their satellite provider days, John Chierichella often would try to work at home, but the service would crash, so he'd get in his car and head east. Having reliable high-speed Internet service has allowed him to work from home a couple days a week instead of sitting in I-66 traffic for hours that seem like days. "I don't have that anxiety anymore of waking up and wondering if the Internet is going to work," John Chierichella said. Few alternatives Conlin, 42, rides around Fauquier in his big red pickup, and he has made it his business to know the location of most of its towering trees; they can block his signal. "They are beautiful and I love them, but they cause me a lot of headaches," he said the other day, winding along the county's bumpy roads. Blaze Broadband download speeds can hit 10 megabits per second, which is on par with or slower than traditional telecoms, depending on signal strength and plan. Monthly service is about $89 and there is a one-time $329 installation fee. Conlin has pre-qualified homes for real estate agents who worry houses won't sell when buyers check to see whether Comcast or Verizon service is available. "The Internet I get from him is the fastest I have had anywhere," said Suzanne Corbett. "I would have been miserable had I not found his service. And if there's a problem, you leave a message and he actually calls you back." Conlin has closely studied where every house in Fauquier is located and what broadband services are available. Out of the 25,000 structures in the county, Conlin calculates that about half are without DSL or cable Internet service. Conlin currently serves about 300 of them and is working with county officials to expand faster. For those who aren't yet served by Conlin's service or can't afford the fees, there are other options, some more palatable than others. Those who have good cellphone signals - a rarity - buy wireless broadband cards, an option Verizon often offers in lieu of expanding DSL service, but there are expensive overage charges. (The Obama administration is also pushing the high-speed cellular route.) Many residents camp out in downtown Warrenton at Panera Bread or Borders Books to surf the Internet, post Facebook updates or order presents on Amazon. Library officials, discovering in a recent survey of 692 people that roughly half don't have traditional broadband access, have reported a surge in people using computers at their facilities. "Some people go out for ice cream," said Margaret Seaman, who was recently filing her taxes using Panera's wi-fi. 'We go out to use the Internet." The other day, Ed Randolph, with only dial-up access at home, was using Mapquest on one of the six computers at the Warrenton library. He needed to find a courthouse in Fairfax to pay a traffic ticket. "Usually you have to wait in line to use one of these computers," said Randolph, 65. "They are in high demand." Nearby, 27-year-old Sarah Hunt updated her Facebook page. Asked what she would do without high-speed access at the library, she said, "I would go crazy." She did not seem to be joking. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031402127.html ![]() Exclusive: AT&T To Impose Caps, Overages Notices to go out this week, capping begins May 2 Karl Bode Broadband Reports was the first to learn, and has confirmed with AT&T, that the company will be implementing a new 150GB monthly usage cap for all DSL customers and a new 250 GB cap on all U-Verse users starting on May 2. From March 18 to March 31, AT&T users are going to be receiving notices informing them of the change in the company's terms of service. AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom confirmed the news to Broadband Reports after we initially contacted him last Friday concerning a leaked copy of the upcoming user notification. According to Bloom, the cap will involve overage charges. However, only users who consistently exceed the new caps will have to deal with these charges. This is how it will work: only users who exceed the new usage cap three times -- across the life of your account, not per month -- will be forced to pay these new per byte overages. Overages will be $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit they travel. AT&T claims their average DSL customer uses around 18GB a month, and these changes will only impact about 2% of all DSL customers -- who the company states consume "a disproportionate amount of bandwidth." "Using a notification structure similar to our new wireless data plans, we'll proactively notify customers when they exceed 65%, 90% and 100% of the monthly usage allowance," AT&T tells us. The company also says they'll provide users with a number of different usage tools, including a usage monitor that tracks historical usage over time, and a number of different usage tools aimed at identifying bandwidth-hungry services. Regular readers will recall that this isn't AT&T's first experimentation with usage-based-billing. The company conducted trials of capped services and overages in Reno, Nevada and Beaumont, Texas in 2008. Those trials involved users facing caps ranging from 20GB to 150GB -- and per gigabyte overages up to $1 per gigabyte. The efforts were discontinued in early 2010. In contrast to those trials, which involved capturing nearly all users in an overage net -- this effort is aimed squarely at what AT&T considers consistently heavy users. "We are committed to providing a great experience for all of our Internet customers," AT&T tells Broadband Reports. "We will communicate early and often with these customers so they are well aware of their options before they incur any additional usage charges," the company says. "Importantly, we are not reducing the speeds, terminating service or limiting available data like some others in the industry." Keep in mind that AT&T is an investor in bandwidth-intensive services like OnLive's HD game streaming platform, and that the heavy user of today is inevitably the standard user of tomorrow. There's several questions reporters and consumers should now ask, such as whether such overages would be possible in truly competitive markets, or if AT&T has any raw congestion data proving this kind of action is truly necessary. The predominant question however should be: does AT&T scale these caps and overages to accommodate for the dropping cost of bandwidth and hardware moving forward, or will they bend to inevitable investor pressure and continually tighten the metered billing noose? http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/E...verages-113149 ![]() As AT&T Introduces Caps, BT Removes Them; Says Investing In Network Is Smarter Mike Masnick A few years ago, we noted that BT's CTO had admitted that there weren't any congestion issues that required traffic shaping or other limitations on the network, just so long as they continued to do basic investments in network infrastructure. And, indeed, just as AT&T is introducing broadband caps, BT has announced that it's removing them, because there's no need thanks to infrastructure investments. BT will remove the FUP controls currently applied to customers with ‘atypical’ usage. Today atypical users are restricted at 300GB usage and account for less than 0.5% of the BT customer base. BT will not target any individuals with restrictions based on usage levels. However, we still have traffic management policies that will restrict certain applications / protocols, such as P2P, when the network is busy. As BT continues to invest in the network and network bandwidth we can now remove these restrictions and ensure the experience of the wider customer base. Of course, it's worth noting that following our original post, a commenter pointed out that there was plenty of competition in the UK market, but there still were caps. Perhaps that's going away. Competition drives investment and innovation... and that gets you away from unnecessary limits. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...-smarter.shtml ![]() British ISPs Could "Charge Per Device" Stewart Mitchell British ISPs could start charging customers depending on which device or which type of data they're using, according to a networks expert. The warning comes as UK ISPs are set to meet with politicians and regulators today to discuss net neutrality and traffic management issues, after agreeing to publish a voluntary code of conduct. If you're using time sensitive traffic you might be charged a premium for that and unless somebody has some level of control over his it could get out of hand However, experts have warned fixed-line ISPs could soon introduce variable charging, such as the way mobile operators changed their pricing models after the introduction of the traffic-hungry iPad. “The iPad created a very interesting situation for the operators, where the devices themselves generated additional loads for the networks,” said Owen Cole, technical director at F5 Networks. “The operators said 'If we have devices that are generating work for us, this gives us the ability to introduce a different billing model'". “The operators launched special billing packages for it, which is in direct contravention to net neutrality,” said Owen. “If things are left to just be driven by market economics, we could end up with people paying for the amount of data that they consume to every device and that would not be a fair way to approach the market.” Variable rate billing F5, which makes equipment that can control traffic on networks, said that ISPs might also choose to charge differently for data, depending on how time-critical the bits were. Owen foresees a billing system that charges less for non-urgent data, with an email costing less per bit than either Skype or video packets that need immediate delivery. “Potentially you would get a bill at the end of every month for the amount and type of data that you consumed,” he said. “If there was no control at all, you might be charged as with electricity, where you are billed at different tariffs. “If you're using time-sensitive traffic, you might be charged a premium for that and unless somebody has some level of control over his it could get out of hand.” Independent body Cole claims an independent net neutrality regulator may be necessary. “The systems are clogging up and unless someone does something you'll get to a point where market economics is going to drive how data is consumed – so the people who pay the most will have access to the data,” said Cole. “I would not be surprised if in the long term, a UK body – in the same way as we have Nominet to administrate web domain names – is appointed to oversee speeds and prioritisation. "A neutral eye and a neutral hand on net neutrality could go a long way to support the future and development of how information moves across the internet.” http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadban...rge-per-device ![]() Is AT&T Capping Upload Speeds? Alex Colon It recently came to PCMag's attention that AT&T may be capping upload speeds on many devices—to speeds far lower than its network can support. This may be the case for many devices on AT&T other than the iPhone 4. We saw evidence of this recently when testing AT&T's latest round of USB modems, the USBConnect Shockwave 4G and the USBConnect Adrenaline. In many parts of NYC, both devices showed upload speeds far below their capabilities. It seems that AT&T devices that should support HSUPA (which should enable uploads up to 1Mbps, according to our past modem tests) are being limited to UMTS (maxing out at 384kbps), which is less than half that speed. Originally alerted by reader Zack Nebbaki, we ran some head-to-head tests in the PCMag Labs to see just how the numbers stacked up. We tested an HTC Inspire 4G, a Motorola Atrix, and an Apple iPhone 4. The Inspire and the Atrix are supposed to be faster than the iPhone overall, as both devices use HSPA+ 14.4 modems while the iPhone has an HSPA 7.2 modem. We used Ookla's SpeedTest app and connected each phone to the same server, then ran the test six times. As you can see in the chart below, we got UMTS (not HSUPA) upload speeds on the Inspire 4G and the Atrix each time. Tests done with the iPhone 4 at the same time, in the same location, showed dramatically higher upload speeds. This correlates with our results for the two USB modems we tested recently. AT&T Upload Speeds These results suggest that AT&T is, in fact, capping upload speeds for at least several different non-iPhone 4 devices. Now, we haven't worked out the variables here. This could be a problem specifically with the four devices we've tested (the two phones plus the Adrenaline and Shockwave USB modems), or a problem that specifically only affects certain parts of New York City. We contacted AT&T and asked if it is capping upload speeds to UMTS levels, and if so, where this is being done and for how long. We also asked why the iPhone is getting faster speeds than the other devices. AT&T was evasive, saying, "As you noticed, we have a number of HSUPA devices today and we will have more HSUPA-enabled devices in the future—new devices and updates to existing models." Please note that AT&T's comment does not appear to be a denial of anything in this article. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381578,00.asp ![]() AT&T Will Charge You for Uncompleted Calls Christina Bonnington AT&T's billing policies may be clearly stated in the company's contracts, but they can still be infuriating. Photo: Jason Morrison/Flickr One Wired reader got an unpleasant surprise upon testing his new AT&T GoPhone last week: Even if a call hasn’t been connected, you are charged for the call after 30 seconds. Lon McQuillin, a San Mateo, California, writer, decided to test his new pre-paid phone by calling his main cellphone, and it took a little while for it to start ringing. Once the other phone did ring, he ended the call without completing the connection. Thinking he would be charged only if the call were completed, McQuillin was shocked to find that he’d been billed $0.10 for the call. It was only subsequently that he discovered AT&T’s wireless customer agreement, which clearly states that: Airtime and other measured usage (“chargeable time”) is billed in full minute increments…. Chargeable Time begins for outgoing calls when you press SEND (or similar key) and for incoming calls when a signal connection from the caller is established with our facilities. AT&T representative Seth Bloom confirmed that this is true for all phone models: The caller will be charged — even for unanswered calls — unless you hang up within 30 seconds of hitting the Send button. This policy gotcha may not be a big deal for those on a data plan (you’re already overpaying), but for GoPhone users who are charged 10 cents a minute, those minutes can add up. There are numerous past instances of carriers billing customers in questionable situations. Verizon was fined $77 million for unfairly charging 15 million customers for accidentally going online without a data plan in October 2010. And remember all those crazy roaming charges when people began traveling abroad with the original iPhone? Are such charges legal? Certainly. Ethical? Doubtful. They certainly seem like cheap shots. In the case of AT&T’s “30 seconds and you’re charged” policy, $0.10 may not be much, but across millions of subscribers over the course of a month, AT&T could be raking in quite a bit of money on short and failed GoPhone calls and overage fees for data-plan subscribers who exceed their monthly minutes. Unfortunately, exact numbers for that data aren’t readily available in any of AT&T’s recent sales reports or annual reports (.pdf). http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/...-billing-term/ ![]() How AT&T Totally Flubbed 4G Sascha Segan AT&T is lying about 4G. Shamelessly. The company's two "4G" phones and its "4G" modem don't deliver 4G even by AT&T's own wishy-washy standards. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as the 4G police, and AT&T is going to get away with debasing the term and confusing consumers to everyone's disadvantage. First of all, 4G is close to meaningless anyway. Initially the International Telecommunications Union defined 4G as a bunch of super-fast technologies nobody has yet, but the ITU crumbled under pressure from various cell phone companies and now defines 4G as, basically, any cellular Internet network that's faster than what was considered the fastest technology in 2009. So we're seeing a wide variety in 4Gs here in the USA. Verizon has the closest to what most people would think of as real 4G. Verizon's LTE is a brand-new technology that's faster than most home Internet connections. But just to confuse you, MetroPCS has LTE too - but MetroPCS's 4G LTE can be slower than AT&T's 3G, because MetroPCS designed its network for low monthly plan costs rather than high speeds. And you could argue that almost everyone has lied a little here. T-Mobile has two "4G" phones, the myTouch 4G and T-Mobile G2, which (while excellent) use a technology (HSPA 14.4) that T-Mobile later said isn't 4G. MetroPCS's Samsung Craft phone, while it uses LTE, gets lower apparent speeds than many other carriers' 3G smartphones because it has a slow processor and a relatively primitive Web browser. AT&T has reached a new low, though, by delivering "4G" devices that are actually slower than the carrier's own 3G devices. Yes, you read it correctly: for AT&T, 4G is a step backwards. In the past few weeks we've compared two AT&T "4G" phones and an AT&T "4G" modem against a few 3G devices. AT&T recently confirmed it is crippling the upload speeds on its two 4G phones, the Motorola Atrix and HTC Inspire. We also found slow upload speeds on the Shockwave 4G USB modem, although that may be a network rather than a device-based issue. Meanwhile, we got considerably faster speeds than the Atrix and Inspire on the Apple iPhone 4 and Dell Venue, both of which are supposedly "3G." We aren't seeing much faster download speeds on the 4G devices, either. Why is AT&T doing this? I'm not sure. It could be that the network can't handle the strain. It could be that all of the devices have some horrible bug in the upload firmware. AT&T isn't saying. Supposedly, the 4G phones will be upgraded to actually support 4G speeds in the future. That's great, but they shouldn't have been advertised as 4G until they did. The carrier puts all sorts of stupid little fine print in its ads, trying to legally indemnify itself against the fact that its current 4G claim is totally worthless. But that doesn't balance out the fact that these phones are being advertised with 4G in the name, and if you stand in the same place with a "4G" phone and a "3G" phone on the same network, the 3G phone will be faster. This is especially a pity because AT&T was doing a good job repairing the rips the iPhone caused in its 3G network. AT&T admitted it had a problem, faced up to it, and worked hard to fix it. Yes, the work came too late - AT&T should have prepared properly for the iPhone rather than fixing things after the fact - but for a while, there had been some clear honesty coming out of the carrier about what it needed to do to make things right. AT&T's lies debase the concept of 4G in general, but maybe that's the point. AT&T has the fastest 3G network, as we showed in our 18-city tests last year. But Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all significantly ahead of AT&T on delivering 4G or 4G-ish devices. Since it's behind, AT&T's tactic seems to ruin the entire idea of 4G so as to cloud the picture. It'll be interesting to see whether the company has to backpedal, or repair customers' confused perceptions when it actually gets a network that's up to speed. I'm pretty hopeless about there being a remedy for this. Sure, there are Internet petitions and potential class action lawsuits going around, but 4G at this point is such a meaningless term that I can't see them having much success. The HTC Inspire and Motorola Atrix are still two of the best phones on AT&T, and I still recommend them. But are they 4G? Not for now. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381915,00.asp ![]() Verizon iPhones Fell Back an Hour Instead of Springing Ahead Brenna Ehrlich If you need to wake up at any specific time tomorrow, beware: It appears that some Verizon iPhones fell back an hour at midnight tonight instead of springing forward. Daylight saving time hits tonight/tomorrow morning, which means we all lose an hour of sleep — unless you have a Verizon iPhone, in which case you’ll wake up utterly confused, as phones are currently falling back an hour. This isn’t the first time the iPhone has been foiled by time — an alarm glitch kept many Apple users from getting to work on time back in January as well. Apparently, however, this issue is only affecting those with Verizon iPhones. If you have such a phone, restart your device to fix the issue and get the clock back to normal. Update: It looks like some AT&T phones were affected by the glitch as well. http://mashable.com/2011/03/13/verizon-iphone-tim/ ![]() Apple Handcuffs 'Open' Web Apps on iPhone Home Screen Three bugs? Or three-headed App Store conspiracy? Cade Metz Exclusive Apple's iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they're launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways, according to tests from multiple developers and The Register. It's unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple. But the end result is that, at least in some ways, the iOS platform makes it harder for web apps to replace native applications distributed through the Apple App Store, where the company takes a 30 per cent cut of all applications sold. Whereas native apps can only run on Apple's operating system, web apps – built with standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – can potentially run on any device. "Apple is basically using subtle defects to make web apps appear to be low quality – even when they claim HTML5 is a fully supported platform," says one mobile web app developer, who asked that his name not be used. Apple did not respond to multiple requests for comment. If a web app is run from the iOS 4.3 home screen – in other words, if it is saved to the screen alongside local apps downloaded from the Apple App Store – it runs roughly two to two and a half times slower than it does in the browser, according to various tests. It appears that whereas Apple has updated the iOS 4.3 Safari browser with its high-speed Nitro JavaScript engine [1], Nitro is not used when web apps are launched from the home screen. "Essentially, there are two different JavaScript engines," says Alex Kessinger, a mobile application developer and blogger [2] who has focused on building web-standards-based apps for the iPhone [3]. "They're not using the new JavaScript engine with applications that launch from the home screen." What's more, such "home screen web apps" can't use various web caching systems, including the HTML5 Application Cache, which means they can't be cached to run offline. And they aren't rendered using Apple's newer "asynchronous mode". They're saddled with the old "synchronous mode", which means means they don't quite look as good. Though the company did not respond to our inquiries, Apple is apparently aware of all three issues involving home-screen web apps. According to Apple developers posting to the web [4], the speed issue has been discussed in the company's developer support forums, and one developer – the same unnamed developer quoted above – confirms with The Reg that multiple bugs have been filed on the issue. He also says that bugs have been filed on the cache and asynchronous mode issues – and that he's actually discussed the problems with Apple. "I've talked to people on the Mobile Safari team who said they knew about the [caching] issue," he tells us. The caching issue is discussed on the popular developer site stackoverflow [5]. All three issues also affect native iOS web applications that uses Apple's UIWebView API – i.e., native applications that tap the web in a big way. "[UIWebView] is a controller that you can include in your app to offer web content," says Alex Kessinger. "Some people write their entire app in HTML and then just bundle it for inclusion in the App Store." Last year, as Apple boss Steve Jobs defended the company's decision to ban Adobe Flash from the iPad and the iPhone, he told the world that Apple believed in "open" web standards. "We strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript," Jobs said in his famous "Thoughts on Flash [6]" open letter. "Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member." But at the same time, the company has a vested interest in its App Store, where it takes a 30 per cent cut of all applications sold, and pure web applications are ultimately a threat to the store, particularly when they're loaded to the iOS home screen as if they were local apps. "Some people like to think of it as a conspiracy theory, but it could be a bug," Kessinger says, referring to the speed issue. "If it is conspiracy, it makes a lot of sense for Apple. If you 'disallow' home screen web apps, you prevent people, in a way, from bypassing the App Store." Down to the test According to tests from developer Maximiliano Firtman [7], author the O'Reilly tome, Programming with the Mobile Web [8], Apple iOS 4.3 runs web applications in the browser about two times faster than when they're launched from the home screen. And like the three other developers we spoke to, he's sure this is because home screen apps can't take advantage of Nitro. "I'm not 100% sure, but 99.9999% sure that the timing difference is because of lack of Nitro," Fitman tells us. Nitro was introduced with iOS 4.3. Fitman offers a version of the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark [9] that lets you easily see the speed difference for yourself. We confirmed his results with tests of our own. Running in Safari on an iPhone 4 loaded with iOS 4.3, Sunspider took about 4047ms: Running from the home screen, it took about 10747ms: Apple isn't degrading the speed of home screen web apps. It's boosting the speed of web apps in the browser. But in the long run, the effect is the same. And if this is a bug, Apple has yet to fix it. On top of this, apps are hampered by the cache and asynchronous mode issues. According to one anonymous developer, access to certain web caches was cut off in iOS 4.2. And the issue is confirmed by a second developer. You can try it yourself with HTML5 apps such as Pie Guy [10]. With earlier versions of the OS, if you move the game to the home screen and run it once, you can then play it offline. But if you try to do so on the latest version of the operating system, you can't. The first developer also says that WebView native apps and home screen web apps are rendered in synchronous mode, whereas on iOS 4.3, they're rendered in asynchronous mode. "[With synchronous mode], you will sometimes see this weird grid of dark squares," he tells us. "Basically, when repainting the screen, synchronous mode can sometimes show your UI partially repainted." This developer reiterates that if Apple didn't specifically introduce these problems in iOS, it's aware of them now. And he says that the Mobile Safari team has indicated the issues will not be fixed. If Apple won't fix them, he says, Google should. "The Android team needs to pick this up and compete on it." http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...n_home_screen/ ![]() ISP Proposes Piracy Mitigation, Detection and Punishment Framework enigmax Following its recent court victory over Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group AFACT, Internet service provider iiNet has been hard at work thinking of ways the issue of illicit file-sharing can be dealt with. Today it has presented a framework which includes the creation of an independent body to overlook a system of detection, warnings and punishments. The ongoing dispute over how best to handle the illegal file-sharing of music, movies and TV shows prompted the now famous AFACT v iiNet legal battle. In late February the Full Bench of the Federal Court in Australia dismissed the movie industry’s appeal against last year’s judgment which found that ISP iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringements of its customers. However, once the detail of the ruling had been absorbed it became apparent that had the movie and TV industries done more to improve the quality of their infringement notices, the decision in the case could have tipped in their favor. Neither iiNet nor the studios want their opponent’s choice of system to be imposed on them – their prolonged legal battle showed that – but it’s fairly clear that at some point a compromise of sorts will have to be reached. Today, iiNet was the first to produce a report containing what it says are the steps forward. Titled ‘Encouraging Legitimate use of Online Content’ the report begins with the ISP’s earlier stance that in order to tackle piracy the studios have got to meet demand. Having created a product and generated desire in the market place, the report argues, the studios then limit supply with their ‘windowing’ strategy, causing frustration in the market. The message is clear – once the product is available, get it out there to the customers. The report goes on to note that despite making the product available in a timely and convenient fashion, some people will continue to pirate media. iiNet proposes a system to deal with these individuals to be overlooked by an independent body. iiNet Framework “iiNet has developed a model which addresses ISP concerns but one we think remains attractive to all participants, including the sustainable strategy of an impartial referee for the resolution of disputes and the issue of penalties for offenders,” said iiNet chief Michael Malone, as quoted by Delimiter. While offering subscribers a level of protection and outright rejecting disconnecting them from the Internet, iiNet proposes that infringers are punished within a drivers’ licence-style penalty points system. “As with speeding fines, a low level infringement might attract a limited penalty, but then can ramp up to more serious penalties, depending on the level of infringement. The seriousness of the penalty is determined by a margin over a regulated limit,” says the report. Continuing with the traffic/infringement analogy, iiNet says that offenses could attract “demerit points and/or fines”, the former set to expire after a set time and for single infringers, back to a clean slate. The report suggests that infringements could be classified as ‘minor’ for a single instance, ‘major’ for multiple instances on different files, ‘serious’ for those on a ‘commercial level’ and all with their own level of penalties. But of course, proposals like this can be easily distorted by the entertainment industries. For example, if a subscriber seeds a single torrent containing an album with multiple tracks on and off over the course of a month, is this ‘major’, i.e multiple instances on different files? If a subscriber seeds a single track in a swarm of 1,000 peers, is this ‘commercial level’ infringement? These all-important details and the disagreements they generate are what lead to prolonged legal battles. Furthermore, iiNet suggests the establishment of a “scale of fines” could be linked to “the economic loss represented” which, in the light of some of the ridiculous and sometimes strangely mysterious reports coming out of the industry lately, is likely to make subscribers shudder with fear. Fines could also be supported by demerit points imposed against the subscriber’s account and “when a defined limit is reached, other sanctions might be deemed appropriate.” “These could involve charges being laid for treatment by the courts or possibly shaping of peer to peer traffic,” iiNet suggests. To overcome the problem of subscribers being punished for the actions of others within a household, iiNet implies that the bill payer – as with individuals whose cars have been identified by cameras as committing speeding offences where they weren’t the driver – could have the option of accepting a fine or identifying the infringer so that they may be punished instead. It will be very interesting to see what counter proposals are made by AFACT who are yet to comment on this report. The full iiNet proposal can be downloaded here. http://torrentfreak.com/isp-proposes...mework-110315/ ![]() Book em Danno: streaming White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown Declan McCullagh The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers. In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws. The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. Some of the highlights: • The White House is concerned that "illegal streaming of content" may not be covered by criminal law, saying "questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works." To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to "clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances." • Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move "would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses." • Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's generally illegal to distribute hardware or software--such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France--that can "circumvent" copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to "inform rightholders," "provide samples of such devices," and assist "them in bringing civil actions." The term "fair use" does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that "foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts." (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.) The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010. Rob Calia, a senior director at the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center, said we "strongly support the white paper's call for Congress to clarify that criminal copyright infringement through unauthorized streaming, is a felony. We know both the House and Senate are looking at this issue and encourage them to work closely with the administration and other stakeholders to combat this growing threat." In October 2008, President Bush signed into law the so-called Pro IP ACT, which created Espinel's position and increased penalties for infringement, after expressing its opposition to an earlier version. Unless legislative proposals--like one nearly a decade ago implanting strict copy controls in digital devices--go too far, digital copyright tends not to be a particularly partisan topic. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, near-universally disliked by programmers and engineers for its anti-circumvention section, was approved unanimously in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, Democratic politicians tend to be a bit more enthusiastic about the topic. Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden warned that "piracy is theft." No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, which is broadly consistent with the trend for the last two decades, according to OpenSecrets.org. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html ![]() CCIA: Copyright Wiretaps are Hollywood's "PATRIOT Act" Nate Anderson Yesterday's White House wish list of new intellectual property laws focused on things like counterfeit medicines, but it also included proposals to extend wiretaps into copyright cases and to ensure that illegal streaming video is a felony. A DC trade group representing companies like AMD, Facebook, Oracle, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft today objected loudly to the plan, saying that legitimate concerns about counterfeiting have been "hijacked to create draconian proposals to alleviate the content industry of the burden of protecting its own interest using its own extensive resources." And that was just the beginning. Computer & Communications Industry Association chief Ed Black tapped his inner prophet to roll out a barnburner of a response to the White House. Over the top? Decide for yourself: Quote:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...atriot-act.ars ![]() 5 Best Bit Torrent Search Engines Now Nancy Messieh The bit torrent search engine world is constantly changing. Search engines come and go, for every service that disappears, a handful more appear. We’ve decided to put together a list of some of the search engines that stand out for one reason or another. Whether they are specialized sites searching for films, music or TV shows, or torrent results are accompanied by invaluable information including verification, each of these sites have something unique to offer. These sites don’t just make it easy to search for and find torrents, they’re a great resource for finding interesting files, movies and TV shows if you’re looking for something to keep you entertained. TorrentButler TorrentButler is a great torrent search engine if you’re looking for a film to watch, but don’t have a specific movie in mind. You can browse the latest, most popular, or the newest torrents from the homepage, and can limit the results to HD videos only. You can also browse films by a specific genre. Each entry is accompanied by a plot summary, cast list, and a YouTube Trailer. Clicking on the green Torrents button reveals the torrents available for download, accompanied by the number of seeds and file size, with two separate lists for High and Standard Definition. If you want to see more info on each torrent, click the information button to the left and you will be taken to the torrent’s original page on The Pirate Bay. EZTV No list of bit torrent search engines would be complete without EZTV. If you’re looking for the latest TV shows on both British and American TV, EZTV is the go-to site to get your fix. The home page is updated on a daily basis, with links to the latest torrents from the previous night’s TV lineup. Searching for specific TV shows will take you to the show’s main page, where you can find the latest torrents, available from 6 mirrors including The Pirate Bay, BT-Chat and Torrage. With shows that have been on the air for several years, only the last 5 or 6 seasons are available on EZTV. Each show is additionally accompanied by a plot summary and the latest mentions in entertainment news. If EZTV is down, as tends to happen every now and then, you can always keep up with them through their Twitter account. Fenopy Fenopy is a torrent search engine with eight categories of files. You can search for movies, music, TV shows, books, games, applications or anime. Each torrent is accompanied by standard details such as file list, ratio of seeders to leechers, and file size. Fenopy sets itself apart from other similar torrent search engines with a few special features. Where available, files are accompanied by previews, meaning you can hear a snippet of an MP3, listen to the audio from a video file or even preview a PDF before downloading the torrent. In addition to previews, a large majority of the files are marked either as verified torrents, or alternatively as fake. With Fenopy you don’t have to waste your time downloading a file that turns out to be a dud. With Fenopy you can also choose to browse verified torrents only. Coda.fm For music buffs, Coda.fm is a great choice for searching for torrents. Browse the latest releases, popular artists, genres or search for the music you want to download. Like TorrentButler, Coda.fm is a good source for music if you don’t have any specific music in mind that you’re searching for. Coda.fm makes it easy to discover new music. When searching for any given artist, it will list other similar artists that you might like. While the site does feature the latest albums, some of the artist pages do need updating to include them on the same page. Albus are accompanied by a review, as well as torrent details such as the seeder/leecher ratio. In addition, the entry is accompanied by a complete track list, artist bio and their other albums. Cinema Torrents Cinema Torrents is another solid choice for searching for films. Whether you know which film you want to download, or are looking for something interesting to watch, Cinema Torrents has you covered. The site has its own weekly picks, as well as a list of the hottest movies available for download. The site isn’t just limited to the latest movies available, featuring films from the seventies and eighties as well. Each film is accompanied by its IMDB rating, Cinema Torrents rating, as well as other information just as rating and length, and a short plot summary. Each film is accompanied by a list of available torrents, and at a quick glance you can also see the quality of each torrent, including DVD and cam, whether or not the torrent is verified and the seeders to leechers ratio. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-bit-t...earch-engines/ ![]() Paramount Releases Film on BitTorrent Lara O'Reilly Paramount is set to debut its latest horror film for free on file sharing service BitTorrent, the popular application often linked to internet piracy. The Tunnel will be launched simultaneously on BitTorrent and a physical DVD that will include extra special features. Paramount hopes the BitTorrent distribution will build enough interest for fans to buy the extended DVD version. The film’s producer and editor Enzo Tedeschi says he is impressed with how “forward-thinking” Paramount has been on the project. He adds: “From day one we’ve maintained that The Tunnel is not supporting or condoning piracy, but instead trying to incorporate a legitimate use of peer-to-peer in our distribution strategy internationally.” The film industry has been involved in several high-profile lawsuits, suing file-sharers using sites such as BitTorrent for copyright violation. Offenders can be ordered pay fines of tens of thousands of pounds if found guilty. The Tunnel’s website says that the producers believe that if the film industry stops fighting peer to peer networks, they could become the “biggest revolution” in terms of the way entertainment and information is shared. The film was originally funded by selling individual still frames for $1 (£0.61p) each. The Tunnel has 135,000 frames in total and so far the film makers have sold 30,000. The Tunnel is due for global release on 19 May but will not be shown in cinemas. Ofcom is currently reviewing the UK’s Digital Economy Act, the Government’s measures to restrict copyright infringement. Ofcom will soon introduce a mass notification system to tackle the most illegal file sharing. http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disci...024604.article ![]() Report: Piracy a "Global Pricing Problem" with Only One Solution Nate Anderson A major new report from a consortium of academic researchers concludes that media piracy can't be stopped through “three strikes” Internet disconnections, Web censorship, more police powers, higher statutory damages, or tougher criminal penalties. That's because the piracy of movies, music, video games, and software is “better described as a global pricing problem.” And the only way to solve it is by changing the price. Over the last three years, 35 researchers contributed to the Media Piracy Project, released last week by the Social Science Research Council. Their mission was to examine media piracy in emerging economies, which account for most of the world's population, and to find out just how and why piracy operates in places like Russia, Mexico, and India. Their conclusion is not that citizens of such piratical societies are somehow morally deficient or opposed to paying for content. Instead, they write that “high prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media piracy. If piracy is ubiquitous in most parts of the world, it is because these conditions are ubiquitous.” When legitimate CDs, DVDs, and computer software are five to ten times higher (relative to local incomes) than they are in the US and Europe, simply ratcheting up copyright enforcement won't do enough to fix the problem. In the view of the report's authors, the only real solution is the creation of local companies that “actively compete on price and services for local customers” as they sell movies, music, and more. Some markets have local firms that compete on price to offer legitimate content (think the US, which has companies like Hulu, Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft that compete to offer legal video content). But the authors conclude that, in most of the world, legitimate copyrighted goods are only distributed by huge multinational corporations whose dominant goals are not to service a large part of local markets but to “protect the pricing structure in the high-income countries that generate most of their profits.” This might increase profits globally, but it has led to disaster in many developing economies, where piracy may run north of 90 percent. Given access to cheap digital tools, but charged terrific amounts of money for legitimate versions of content, users choose piracy. In Russia, for instance, researchers noted that legal versions of the film The Dark Knight went for $15. That price, akin to what a US buyer would pay, might sound reasonable until you realize that Russians make less money in a year than US workers. As a percentage of their wages, that $15 price is actually equivalent to a US consumer dropping $75 on the film. Pirate versions can be had for one-third the price. Simple crackdowns on pirate behavior won't work in the absence of pricing and other reforms, say the report's authors (who also note that even "developed" economies routinely pirate TV shows and movies that are not made legally available to them for days, weeks, or months after they originally appear elsewhere). Indeed, the authors have seen "little evidence—and indeed few claims—that enforcement efforts to date have had any effect whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods. Our work suggests, rather, that piracy has grown dramatically by most measures in the past decade.” The "strong moralization of the debate” makes it difficult to discuss issues beyond enforcement, however, and the authors slam the content companies for lacking any credible "endgame" to their constant requests for more civil and police powers in the War on Piracy. Joe Karaganis, who writes the report's opening chapter, "Rethinking Piracy," concludes his section with an endorsement of the idea that piracy is a “signal of unmet consumer demand.” Many content companies and trade organizations have started to embrace this view, but turning a ship this large takes years. In the meantime, says Karaganis: “Our studies raise concerns that it may be a long time before such accommodations to reality reach the international policy arena. Hardline enforcement positions may be futile at stemming the tide of piracy, but the United States bears few of the costs of such efforts, and US companies reap most of the modest benefits. This is a recipe for continued US pressure on developing countries, very possibly long after media business models in the United States and other high-income countries have changed.” Footnote: The study itself uses an interesting "Consumer’s Dilemma" license, which charges $8 for the report to residents of high-income countries and offers it free for noncommercial use to everyone else (including Canada, which is not "high income." Who knew?) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...e-solution.ars ![]() Author Of Ridiculous 'Piracy' Report Defends Conclusions, Ignores Questions About Methodology Mike Masnick We recently looked at the mysterious report coming out of Australia that suggested unauthorized file sharing was costing the economy $900 million per year. But after digging into the details, it became clear that this number was a complete fabrication, as it applied the same totally debunked methodology that was used in last year's TERA report in Europe. However, reader Ivan lets us know that the author of the Australian report, Emilio Ferrer is now defending the report and its results. Except, his defense seems to suggest he doesn't realize what everyone is complaining about. He focuses on the $900 million number, and notes that of course that's not the actual loss number, but says that it's okay, because he also offered other "ballpark" figures and the actual number must be somewhere in there: "I've applied the methodology to countries that yield the highest and lowest level of impact," Ferrer said. "There are variables that are difficult to measure but whether you apply to the lowest country or the highest country the impact is between $500 million and $2 billion." But Ferrer said such "technical" analysis was indicative only of a "ballpark" figure. "When you apply business modeling and the average and end up concluding the impact was $900 million, of course the answer is not $900 million but we try to deal with that by looking at the range. "The conclusion is there is a significant loss to economic activity and therefore jobs as a consequence of internet piracy." But all of this ignores the main point: that the basic methodology he used for any of those calculations wasn't sound. People aren't complaining about the results. They're complaining about the methodology itself. And he doesn't seem to get that at all because he doesn't defend it at all. I mean, look, I could use some bizarre fantasy methodology to claim that every time someone falsely claims that file sharing is theft, it means that a puppy gets kicked. And then, if people challenge me on that methodology, I could just say I didn't mean a puppy got kicked every time, but the methodology suggests that somewhere between 0.5 and 2 times it happens, a puppy gets kicked. But, of course, that's stupid. If the underlying methodology makes no sense, then the results make no sense. Just because they give you a range, doesn't make it any more justified that you used a bogus and debunked methodology. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...hodology.shtml ![]() An Open Letter to Jon Bon Jovi On What’s Really “Killing The Music Business” By Jeremy Horwitz Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Monday, March 14, 2011 Category: Backstage Hi Jon, When my wife—a huge and long-time Bon Jovi fan—asked me to spend over $300 for two floor seat tickets to your Valentine’s Day show in Toronto, there were two reasons that I said yes. First, I really love my wife, and would do almost anything for her. Second, I looked through my iTunes collection and realized that there were more good Bon Jovi songs inside than there were for most of the musicians I “love.” Once my wife assured me that your concerts focus mostly on the songs I liked, I plunked down the cash for the seats, and spent the next four months watching my wife smile every time we discussed Valentine’s Day. To be totally honest with you, the concert was great. We both had a lot of fun, snapped pictures and video clips from the floor, and told our friends and family how much we enjoyed it. But now you’re putting our happy memories in jeopardy. For whatever reason, you told The Sunday Times Magazine during an interview that “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.” I’m not going to try and tell you all of the ways that you’re deeply, profoundly wrong. Instead, I’m just going to focus on a few of them. (1) My wife has carried around all of your albums (and many more) on Steve Jobs’ Apple devices since she bought her first iPod years ago. I know from personal experience that she taps into your collection at home, in the car, and on vacations—literally at the drop of a hat, whenever she wants. If she hadn’t, I would have forgotten about your band back in the 1980’s. No CD player or radio station would have changed that, I can guarantee you. (2) When we got married, her music collection became mine and vice-versa. It’s because of her collection of Bon Jovi music—and her constant access to it on Apple’s devices—that I could look at my iTunes library and realize how many of your songs I liked. (3) We attended your concert in Toronto a month ago. Photos from that concert were uploaded to Facebook using our iPhones, and from my digital camera using a Mac. And when I was testing the iPad 2, guess what I used as examples to show off how the new version of iMovie can edit videos from digital cameras? Sample concert footage. And it looked pretty great, too. Jon, you lead the world’s top-earning touring band, which made $146.5 million on its last tour alone. If the music business is being killed, you’re still doing exceptionally well, so it’s hard to understand why you’d be complaining about anything right now. But let me take a guess or two. In the interview, you seem to be upset that kids no longer buy an entire album based on the cover, and suggest that people would be better off not knowing what it sounds like before they make a purchase. I’m sorry, but that’s just crazy. Yes, Apple lets people buy singles rather than entire albums. It also lets people preview tracks before buying albums, and recently extended those previews to 90 seconds per song. This way, potential customers can be sure they’re getting what they want before hitting the buy button—a good idea because those of us who aren’t making tens of millions of dollars a year don’t want to buy bad songs, or worse yet, entire albums full of junk. Singles and previewing let us pick out the tracks we like, rather than having to pay for filler. And there’s a lot of filler in the music business these days. During the concert in Toronto, and presumably many others you’ve performed over the years, the audience clearly wanted to hear your hits. Crowd noise dimmed significantly every time you said you were going to play “new stuff,” but the energy level went through the roof whenever a classic track started to play. As an aging rock star—granted, one who puts on a hell of a show—you must hate that each stadium full of people just wants to hear the songs you put out 20 years ago. You surely want to point fingers at the system that distributes your music, the way people consume music these days, other performers, and anything other than the music itself for not catching on. At one point in the concert, you knocked Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and seemingly Madonna and Justin Timberlake for not being real musicians. As talented as you may be, it’s obvious that you’re angry about popular music for some reason. You shouldn’t be. If you don’t realize it already, iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Mac have given you a platform that would have been inconceivable when you were a kid. You constantly live in your fans’ pockets, on their computers, and inside their cameras. That attachment leads them, and in some cases their spouses, to keep listening to you, watching you, and paying you for more. The more good music you make, the more Apple has empowered you to make money on it in some way, and to spread the word to others. Like me. Like the friends we reached on Facebook. And so on. Steve Jobs isn’t the problem here. The music industry is the problem—too many bad songs are the problem. It’s the reason the audience doesn’t roar when you talk about playing a new track or two that were added for a re-release of your greatest hits. If your greatest hits were from the last three years, imagine how much money you’d be making on album sales even beyond your touring. Speaking just for myself, the next Bon Jovi concert I’ll consider attending now will be one with a completely different set list of tracks that I like as much as the ones you released 20 years ago. All you have to do is start recording them, and I promise that my wife or I will purchase them. So will the rest of your fans. Until that happens, and other musicians start churning out great music by the album rather than the song, the industry’s going to be in trouble. And if it keeps blaming the system rather than itself, it will deserve its fate. Best, Jeremy http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/bac...usic-business/ ![]() Industry Not Showing a Lot of Love for Songwriters' New Levy Proposal Stefan Dubowski The Songwriters Association of Canada’s (SAC) latest proposal for a levy on Internet service to legalize music file sharing isn’t getting a lot of love from record labels, Internet service providers (ISPs) and screenwriters. In the latest version of its policy proposal, updated in January, the SAC calls for a new “right of remuneration,” or new monthly fee on Internet service bills that would license customers to upload, download and exchange music via file sharing web tools such as BitTorrent. The feel, which is being pitched as optional for Internet customers, would be administered by ISPs, which would take a portion of the funds. http://www.thewirereport.ca/reports/...evy_ proposal ![]() Why You Should Buy (and Sell) Music in FLAC JLD Years ago some companies realized they can sell music online. They started selling music in lower quality formats and never made enough effort to offer full CD quality audio, which is pretty much a standard we agreed on about 30 years ago. When some stores do offer CD quality, they often want more money for it, treating it as premium. I personally believe that CD quality should remain the standard for music even for online distribution and that a lower quality copy should only be there for convenience, for people who'd rather download smaller files. In my opinion the best format for delivering CD (or better) quality audio is FLAC. But let's start with some technical basics. You should know that digital audio can be compressed in a lossy or lossless way. What's the difference? With lossy compression (like MP3) you take the original audio (like a CD) and you use the bits of audio data that are most essential to still retain a good sound, while you throw away those bits that don't seem necessary. When you do this, you can determine how much audio data is kept and how much gets thrown away. The more that you keep, the higher the bitrate and the bigger file size of the MP3s. If you use a high enough bitrate you'll end up with a MP3 that sounds more or less like the original CD. If you use a low bitrate during compression, you'll end up with a worse sound quality, but also with smaller files. With lossless compression (like FLAC) you take the original audio and you use _all_ of the musical data, without throwing anything away. WAV files are also lossless, with the difference being that FLAC uses non-destructive compression (like ZIP) and has better tagging options (showing artist, title and other information for songs). So the end result is that the FLAC files will sound exactly and precisely as good as the source, while being smaller in size compared to WAV files and better suited for music distribution. Now that we know the basic theory behind those formats, let's discuss some practical aspects in use. Here are 4 examples that show how using MP3 instead of lossless can be less than optimal (the first two come into play even with direct listening, while the second two are related to further processing): 1. Lossy compression is designed in an intelligent manner, making compression artifacts mostly inaudible. But there are certain sounds, which don't "translate" well. You can find some threads with examples on hydrogenaudio forums (search for abx killer samples). 2. MP3s can in some rare cases have clearly audible artifacts on the transition from one song to the next, even with the highest bitrates. (some examples here). This is not a problem with albums which have pauses of silence between songs, but there are many albums with no pauses, such as for example "The Dark Side of The Moon" by Pink Floyd. 3. Let's say you bought high quality MP3s (larger files) and now you want to fit them onto a portable media player with limited space. Converting them to a lower bitrate format seems like the best approach. But the problem is that since you're converting them from an already lossy source, you'll lose more quality than if you converted them from lossless and that is more likely to result in audible degradation. Converting to different formats is something that we'll always have to deal with in the future, when new formats emerge. 4. The same applies to the usage of your music for your own creative purposes. Let's say you're making a video that you'll upload online and want to add music to it. At the end of the process, you're most likely going to compress the audio track with lossy compression to achieve a smaller file size. If the source of your music is already lossy you'll run the risk of making it sound worse after additional audio processing and lossy compression. Another good example would be music making and sampling, where you also want to have the cleanest sound source to work with. Let me make one thing clear, though: the artifacts I mentioned are mostly very subtle (the exception being the transition pops). In fact, most of the time you probably won't hear any difference between a good MP3 and a lossless version of the same song. Still, the other points are valid in all cases and I believe that at least when you're buying music you should be offered something that's 100% flawless and future proof at no additional price. Then you can decide whether you want to use it or not - if not, you can just download the MP3 version and be done with it. Besides the technical advantages a good thing about FLAC is that it’s not encumbered with any patents. It’s therefore free to use it for everybody, always. You're free to implement FLAC support in your device or distribute and sell music in FLAC without paying anything. MP3 (like some other formats) is actually patented and in principle you have to negotiate for a fee when you want to use it. Most of the time the fees are not applied, but still, it's better to avoid any possible complications. Where to buy (or sell) music in FLAC? It's a good idea to look for the artists' websites to see if you can buy music directly from them. But since not many artists have the means or technical knowledge to put up a good website, there are quite a few online stores that sell music in FLAC, in exchange for a certain percentage of the profits. For now, I'll recommend two websites I actually used myself: Indietorrent.org and Bandcamp.com. When you buy music there you can choose between FLAC or MP3 (and some other formats) and you don't need to use any additional software to make the purchase. The album comes in the form of a simple download, which works in any browser. Musicians will also make more money using those stores instead of something like iTunes or Amazon. When you pay for an album or song on Indietorrent, the store takes 10% of the money for themselves while Bandcamp takes 15%. By comparison, iTunes and Amazon take 30% of the money. So if you want to support a musician (or get support as a musician) it's not a bad idea to keep this in mind. Just for your convenience, I'll add links to some other stores that sell music in FLAC, although I haven't tried them yet: Zunior, Bleep, Additech, Boomkat, Mindawn, Linnrecords, Mergerecords. Some of these charge more for FLAC, which is in general against my principles. But I think that if it's a small price difference it's tolerable. Two potential problems of using FLAC 1. Size - While being about twice smaller than uncompressed CDs or WAV files, FLAC files are still significantly bigger than, for example, MP3s. This is not much of an issue on PCs, since the prices of hard drive storage are so low nowadays, but it's still a relevant issue for portable players, if one wants to fit a lot of music. In that case the solution is to simply convert it to a lossy format for portable use. Since you have a lossless source you won't lose much quality. 2. Compatibility - Most music players on computers support FLAC natively, but some big exceptions (iTunes, WMP) still don't. They can be upgraded with plugins so that they do play FLAC and you can also look at many of the alternative music players. The situation is similar for portable devices and media players, where Apple and Microsoft (as of now) don't offer native FLAC support, although there are applications which can add such functionality to their devices. Why do these two companies refuse to support it? Well, I think the simplest answer lies in the fact that they sell music in their own stores (iTunes, Zune) and want to keep users locked into their own (eco)system. FLAC is a widespread format for CD backups, for p2p exchange and on some competing online stores, but if you're getting your music that way you're not making any money for Apple or Microsoft. They'd rather see you using their own stores and buy music there in their own formats, which work on the devices they sell. Still, many other media players, phones and other devices support it. The latest Android phones support it by default and for other smartphones there are free applications which allow you to play FLAC, if you wish to do so. Lastly, why do I support FLAC and not some other good and free format, like WavPack? The main advantage of FLAC is that it's already much more widespread than WavPack and other free lossless codecs and I believe it would be better to standardize on something, rather than have a fragmented lossless market, which could fall pray to some proprietary format that's not as accessible to everyone or is encumbered with DRM. I also mention CD quality a lot, while there are some people who are try to promote higher resolution audio (24 bit and whatnot). I generally don't think higher resolution audio is necessary, but I'll write more on that another time. To wrap it up: Supporting FLAC and lossless distribution in general is not just about being a silly audiophile. It's after all about demanding the same CD quality audio we've been using for so long already, without ever compromising in terms of quality and with the same archiving and converting capabilities. Of course the industry will try to sell you the worst quality they can get away with, while possibly locking you into their own closed systems. Remember 128kbps songs with DRM? Know better and vote with your wallet. Demand lossless audio in a free format as the standard and lossy only as a convenience download format. http://musicmadebetter.blogspot.com/...-music-in.html ![]() Microsoft Is Said to Stop Releasing New Models of the Zune Dina Bass Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will stop introducing new versions of the Zune music and video player because of tepid demand, letting the company shift its focus to other devices, according to a person familiar with the decision. Microsoft will concentrate on putting Zune software onto mobile phones, such as those running its Windows operating system, said the person, who declined to be identified because the decision hasn’t been announced. Zune software lets customers buy songs and movies, as well as pay a monthly fee to stream unlimited music. Zune, introduced in 2006, never managed to break the iPod’s grip on the music-player industry and became the brunt of late- night talk-show jokes. Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPod led the market with 77 percent of unit sales last year, while the Zune failed to crack the top five, according to NPD Group Inc. By adding the Zune features to the Windows Phone software, Microsoft aims to gain ground in another challenging area -- mobile phones -- where it’s lost market share to Google Inc. (GOOG) and Apple. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, declined to comment on plans for the Zune. “We have nothing to announce about another Zune device -- but most recently have introduced Zune HD to Canada via the Zune Originals store and remain committed to supporting our devices in North America,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “We are thrilled by the consumer excitement for Zune across many new platforms, including Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360. Our long-term strategy focuses on the strength of the entire Zune ecosystem across Microsoft platforms.” Beating the iPod? When Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer released the Zune more than four years ago, he predicted that Microsoft could one day overtake Apple. “We can beat them, but it’s not going to be easy,” Ballmer said in a November 2006 interview. At the time, Microsoft executive Robbie Bach, then president of the entertainment and devices business, said the company planned to invest “hundreds of millions” of dollars over the following three to five years to compete with the iPod. The company doesn’t detail spending on individual products. In 2009, Microsoft split the Zune team into software and hardware groups, letting the software people focus more on other platforms, such as phones, the Xbox video-game console and personal computers. The company touted the Zune software as a key feature in its redesigned Windows mobile-phone operating system when it went on sale in October. Zune HD The Zune’s last completely new hardware model, the Zune HD, was released in 2009. A version that featured more storage went on sale a year later. Microsoft will continue to sell existing versions of the Zune, the person familiar with the matter said. Microsoft shares rose 1 cent to $25.69 as of 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has fallen 8 percent this year. Talk-show hosts such as Craig Ferguson and Conan O’Brien ribbed the Zune for being an also-ran. Ferguson said the device was Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’s bid to “loosen iPod’s stranglehold on the iPod market.” “The Zune has all the features of the iPod except it’s not as good,” he said in 2006. “Plus it can only download recordings of Bill Gates singing.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...mand-ebbs.html ![]() Jack Hardy, Folk Singer and Keeper of the Tradition, Dies at 63 Bruce Weber Jack Hardy, a folk singer and folk music promoter whose Greenwich Village recordings and songwriting workshops kept alive the neighborhood tradition of counterculture troubadours, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 63. The cause was complications of lung cancer, his son, Malcolm, said. Mr. Hardy wrote hundreds of songs — protest songs, political talking songs and romantic ballads — his lyrics often consciously literary, his music tinged with a Celtic sound. With a singing voice raspy and yearning, he performed in clubs and coffeehouses in New York and elsewhere and recorded more than a dozen albums, many of them self-produced, though two boxed sets of his work were released by a small, independent label in 2000. “I’m undoubtedly the least famous person with a boxed set,” he boasted in an interview that year. Perhaps he wasn’t famous, but he was, in his way, influential. In the early 1980s, after Bob Dylan had gone electric and folk music had been shunted aside by disco and punk, Mr. Hardy helped found a musical cooperative for like-minded folkies. It established a performance space and made more than 1,000 low-budget recordings of local performers and distributed them to subscribers and radio stations, along with a newsletter, under the rubric the Fast Folk Musical Magazine. Lyle Lovett, Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman and Shawn Colvin all recorded first for Fast Folk, according to the Smithsonian Institution, which holds tapes of the original recordings and the magazine archives. (A two-CD set is available from the institution’s nonprofit record label, Smithsonian Folkways.) Mr. Hardy’s song “St. Clare” was covered by Ms. Vega and appears on her 2001 album “Songs in Red and Gray.” Since the late 1970s and up until recently, when he entered the hospital, Mr. Hardy was the host of Monday night workshops at his railroad flat on West Houston Street. Songwriters from as far away as Boston and Philadelphia would come to share a pasta dinner and their brand-new songs. Critiques were expected; the rule was that no song was supposed to be more than a week old, a dictum, Mr. Hardy said, that forced writers to write. Ms. Colvin, Ms. Vega and Mr. Lovett are all alumni. John Studebaker Hardy was born in South Bend, Ind., on Nov. 23, 1947. His mother, Lillian, is a painter; his father, Gordon, is a musician and the past dean of students at the Juilliard School and a past president of the Aspen Music Festival. Young Jack grew up in New York City, Aspen, and Durham, Conn.. He graduated from the University of Hartford, where he edited a student newspaper and in 1969 was convicted of libeling President Nixon for publishing a vulgar cartoon depiction of him. (The conviction, and a $50 fine, were overturned on appeal.) He moved to the Village in 1973. Mr. Hardy was married and divorced twice. In addition to his son, who lives in St. Louis, and his parents, who live in Manhattan, he is survived by a brother, Christopher, of Coeur d’Alene, Ida.; a sister, Susan Suechting, of Elk Mound, Wis., three daughters, Morgan, of Manhattan, Miranda, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Eva Peck of South Lake Tahoe, Nev., and two grandchildren. Mr. Hardy said the “fast folk” idea was born out of a need to keep the music alive. “The whole idea was to do it fast,” he said of the music that he and others recorded and distributed in the 1980s and 1990s. “You could hear a song at an open mike or songwriters’ meeting and two weeks later it was being played on the radio in Philadelphia or Chicago. It was urgent, exciting. It was in your face.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/a...ies-at-63.html ![]() Every A-frame had his number on the wall Kid Charlemange, 76, Crashes for Last Time Margalit Fox ![]() Owsley Stanley, left, with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead in a 1969 publicity photograph. Mr. Stanley was a financial backer of the Dead and also provided the band with a supply of LSD. Owsley Stanley, the prodigiously gifted applied chemist to the stars, who made LSD in quantity for the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and other avatars of the psychedelic ’60s, died on Sunday in a car accident in Australia. He was 76 and lived in the bush near Cairns, in the Australian state of Queensland. His car swerved off a highway and down an embankment before hitting trees near Mareeba, a town in Queensland, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Stanley’s wife, Sheilah, was injured in the accident. Mr. Stanley, the Dead’s former financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer, was in recent decades a reclusive, almost mythically enigmatic figure. He moved to Australia in the 1980s, as he explained in his rare interviews, so he might survive what he believed to be a coming Ice Age that would annihilate the Northern Hemisphere. Once renowned as an artisan of acid, Mr. Stanley turned out LSD said to be purer and finer than any other. He was also among the first individuals (in many accounts, the very first) to mass-produce the drug; its resulting wide availability provided the chemical underpinnings of an era of love, music, grooviness and much else. Conservatively tallied, Mr. Stanley’s career output was more than a million doses, in some estimates more than five million. His was the acid behind the Acid Tests conducted by the novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, the group of psychedelic adherents whose exploits were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in his 1968 book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” The music world immortalized Mr. Stanley in a host of songs, including the Dead’s “Alice D. Millionaire” (a play on a newspaper headline, describing one of his several arrests, that called him an “LSD Millionaire”) and Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne.” So widely known was Mr. Stanley that he appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on LSD under the apparently unironic index term “Augustus Owsley Stanley III (American chemist).” The Oxford English Dictionary contains an entry for the noun “Owsley” as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” In 2007, Mr. Stanley was the subject of a long profile in an issue of Rolling Stone magazine commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. In short, Mr. Stanley lent the ’60s a great deal of its color — like White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer, the varieties of his LSD that were among the most popular. (He did not, contrary to popular lore, release a product called Purple Haze; in interviews, he sounded quite miffed that anything emerging from his laboratory could be thought to cause haziness rather than the crystalline clarity for which he personally vouched.) He also lent the era much of its sound, developing early, widely praised high-fidelity sound systems for live rock concerts, including the Dead’s towering “wall of sound.” Mr. Stanley was previously a ballet dancer and a member of the United States Air Force. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was born on Jan. 19, 1935, to a patrician Kentucky family. His paternal grandfather, for whom he was named, was a congressman, governor of Kentucky and United States senator. (Somewhat prophetically, given his grandson’s future pursuits, the elder Mr. Stanley was a vigorous public foe of Prohibition.) Young Owsley, whose adolescent hirsuteness caused him to be known ever after as Bear, was sent to a military preparatory school in Maryland. He was expelled in the ninth grade for furnishing the alcohol that, as he told Rolling Stone in 2007, had nearly all his classmates “blasted out of their minds” on homecoming weekend. He briefly attended the University of Virginia before enlisting in the Air Force, where he learned electronics. He later worked in Los Angeles as a broadcast engineer for radio and television stations. He also studied ballet and for a time was a professional dancer. In 1963, Mr. Stanley enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. The next year, he encountered LSD, a transformative experience. “I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside,” he said in the Rolling Stone interview. “The cars were kissing the parking meters.” Mr. Stanley had found his calling, and at the time it was at least quasi-legitimate: LSD was not outlawed in California until 1966. What he needed to do was learn his craft, which he accomplished, as Rolling Stone reported, in three weeks in the university library, poring over chemistry journals. Soon afterward, he left college and a going concern, the Bear Research Group, was born. In 1965, he met Mr. Kesey, and through him the Dead. Enraptured, he became their sound man, early underwriter, principal acolyte, sometime housemate and frequent touring companion. With Bob Thomas, he designed the band’s highly recognizable skull-and-lightning-bolt logo. Mr. Stanley also made many recordings of the Dead in performance, now considered valuable documentary records of the band’s early years. Many have been released commercially. Mr. Stanley remained with the band off and on through the early ’70s, when, according to Rolling Stone, his habits became too much even for the Grateful Dead and they parted company. (He had insisted, among other things, that the band eat meat — nothing but meat — a dietary regimen he followed until the end of his life.) His other clients included John Lennon, who, according to “The Beatles,” a 2005 biography by Bob Spitz, contracted to pay Mr. Stanley for a lifetime supply of his wares. In 1970, after a judge revoked Mr. Stanley’s bail from a 1967 drug arrest, he served two years in federal prison. There, he learned metalwork and jewelry making, trades he plied in recent years. Mr. Stanley, who became an Australian citizen in the 1990s, was treated for throat cancer in 2004. In the Rolling Stone interview, he attributed his survival to his carnivorous diet. (A heart attack he had suffered some years earlier he ascribed to eating broccoli as a child, forced on him by his mother.) Besides his wife, Sheilah, Mr. Stanley’s survivors include two sons, Pete and Starfinder; two daughters, Nina and Redbird; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Though he helped transform the culture, Mr. Stanley asserted that he had never meant to do so. As he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2007, he had set out only to make a product he knew he could take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to know what they were taking, too,” Mr. Stanley said. “Of course,” he added “my ‘friends’ expanded very rapidly.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/us/15stanley.html ![]() Many Culprits in Fall of a Family Film Brooks Barnes In the movie business, sometimes a flop is just a flop. Then there are misses so disastrous that they send signals to broad swaths of Hollywood. “Mars Needs Moms” is shaping up as the second type. Walt Disney Studios spent an estimated $175 million to make and market “Mars Needs Moms,” which sold $6.9 million in tickets at North American theaters in its opening weekend. That grim result puts the 3-D animated adventure on track to become one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history, on par with such washouts as “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” “Cutthroat Island” and “The Alamo.” “Scary” is how Chuck Viane, president of distribution for Walt Disney Studios, described the audience rejection of the film. “Was it the idea? The execution? The timing? There are a lot of excuses being floated.” The financial impact on Disney’s studio will be severe. The company has already taken a write-down of about $100 million related to the film and the closing of ImageMovers Digital, a motion-capture animation division run by Robert Zemeckis, who helped produce “Mars Needs Moms.” Tens of millions more in losses are expected, pending worldwide box-office results. The film opened in 14 overseas territories, representing 25 percent of the international market, and attracted $2.1 million. Mr. Zemeckis, whose directing credits include seminal hits like “Back to the Future” and “Forrest Gump,” was unavailable to comment on Monday, a spokeswoman said. “Mars Needs Moms” also signals broader movie business problems. Computer animation has been Hollywood’s most reliable moneymaker over the last decade — so much so that nearly every studio, including Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures, has ramped up production of such films. As the first big-budget computer animated movie to flop, “Mars Needs Moms” tells some film executives that the market is becoming saturated. “Mars Needs Moms,” about a 9-year-old boy whose mother is abducted by Martians, followed quickly on the heels of “Gnomeo & Juliet” and “Rango.” “Hop” will arrive on April 1; “Rio” arrives two weeks later. Close behind are “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Cars 2.” “There’s only so much room in the market for family films,” said Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com. Movie executives also suggest that “Mars Needs Moms” can be seen as a consumer referendum on 3-D ticket pricing for children. While child tickets to traditional screenings run about $8.75 in large cities like New York and Los Angeles, child admission for 3-D screenings is $13. Imax charges $15.50 for children. Box-office analysts have been increasingly concerned that consumers in general and parents in particular are starting to rebel. “We believe exhibitors’ core strategy of raising ticket prices through 3-D premiums” is a “dangerous strategy,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote last Tuesday. It is quite rare for a Disney release to flop as badly as “Mars Needs Moms,” which is based on an illustrated book by Berkeley Breathed, best known for the comic strip “Bloom County.” Part of the problem may have been the story. What child wants to see a movie about his mom being taken away from him? But studio executives also pointed to the style of animation as a culprit. “Mars Needs Moms” may lead to the end for the Zemeckis style of motion-capture filmmaking, which has proven increasingly unpopular with audiences. Unlike the digital animation used by Pixar, in which movies are created entirely by computer, the Zemeckis technique requires actors to perform on bare sets while wearing uniforms outfitted with sensors to record their movements. Those movements are then transferred into a digital model that computer animators use to create a movie. Critics and audiences alike, with audiences voicing their opinions on Twitter, blogs and other social media, complained that the Zemeckis technique can result in character facial expressions that look unnatural. Another common criticism is that Mr. Zemeckis focuses so much on technological wizardry that he neglects storytelling. Despite his pioneering work with the technology, Mr. Zemeckis was leapfrogged by James Cameron and his megahit “Avatar.” Mr. Zemeckis’s previous motion-capture film, “A Christmas Carol,” released in December 2009, was a commercial disappointment and contributed to the ouster of Dick Cook, the Disney executive responsible for putting “Mars Needs Moms” into production and bringing Mr. Zemeckis into the Disney tent. Disney closed ImageMovers Digital last March after Mr. Cook’s successor, Rich Ross, viewed footage of “Mars Needs Moms.” About two months ago, Disney quietly pulled the plug on what was to be Mr. Zemeckis’s next directing project there: : “Yellow Submarine,” a 3-D adaptation of the 1968 Beatles cartoon. The company decided to proceed with “Mars Needs Moms” in part because it had already spent so much on it and in part because some executives, notably ones left from the Cook era, acted as cheerleaders for the project. The next big test for motion-capture filmmaking will come in December, when Steven Spielberg uses the technology in his big-budget “Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” Meanwhile, Mr. Cameron is working on two “Avatar” sequels. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/b...ia/15mars.html ![]() Now Playing: The Usual Chaos Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott A. O. SCOTT The movie world now finds itself in limbo between the Academy Awards and the summer movie season, which starts on the first Friday in May. These are the months of an annual mood swing from euphoria (or at least mild satisfaction) to despair (or at least mild dyspepsia). The Oscar broadcast may have been dreary and barren of surprise, but it did provide one last reminder that 2010 was, all in all, a good year for American movies. In the rearview mirror we have “Black Swan,” “The Social Network,” “True Grit,” “The Fighter” and “The King’s Speech”: all embraced by critics and popular with audiences. Up ahead we have more sequels than ever — “The Hangover ad Nauseam,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Back for More of Your Money,” “X-Men Tiny Toons Adventure” — and thus a fresh set of reasons for critics and their readers to grouse about the horrible state of movies. But I wonder: Are things as bad as they will seem in two months, or as rosy as they looked two weeks ago? It seems like a good time to ask. Are the movies getting better or worse? Or are things, on balance, the same as always? What do you think? MANOHLA DARGIS I think that the movies are rotten when they’re not brilliant or blah, and that Hollywood is in crisis, a recurrent state for its affairs. To that end, one of my favorite industry anecdotes comes from the screenwriter Ben Hecht (“The Front Page”), who recalled walking with the producer David O. Selznick (“Gone With the Wind”) one day in 1951. It was three years after the government ordered the studios to get out of the exhibition business, the first year there was live coast-to-coast television, and the year the House Un-American Activities Committee resumed its Hollywood witch hunt. That was the climate in which Hecht and Selznick talked and walked as the great producer insisted the movies were over, and that Hollywood was nothing but a ghost town. “Hollywood’s like Egypt,” Hecht quoted Selznick as saying. “Full of crumbled pyramids. It’ll never come back. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands.” For Selznick only 10 out of a 10,000 movies were good. “There might have been good movies if there had been no movie industry,” he added. “Hollywood might have become the center of a new human expression if it hadn’t been grabbed by a little group of bookkeepers and turned into a junk industry.” More than a half-century later the industry baddies that Selznick pinpointed are now usually called marketers, and junk continues to be made, along with some great films. One difference is that now the most popular are often the junkiest. SCOTT You remind me that the decline of movies started long before most of the current movie audience was born. It was first reported, as far as I can tell, around the time of the introduction of sound. The latest obituary comes from Mark Harris, in a much-discussed article in the current GQ called “The Day the Movies Died.” Mr. Harris regards original, moderately ambitious nonfranchise-based films that adults might see without embarrassment as an endangered species, and recent examples (he cites “Inception,” but a half-dozen of the other best picture nominees would serves as well) as exceptions to the rule. The studios, in their eagerness to pander to teenagers and the global market and to eliminate risk, have in this account squeezed creative storytelling into the margins. I think at the systemic level that might be true. But it’s also true that interesting movies of all kinds still manage to fight through the dreck — to be produced, seen and appreciated. The tension between art and commerce is pretty constant: no filmmaker sets out to make a bad movie, and no producer or studio executive sets out to lose money. Sometimes this means artists and their backers come together to embrace risk. Much more often, it seems, risk is exactly what movies try to avoid. And I can’t help think caution is the current watchword in Hollywood. DARGIS Oh, I don’t know. Hollywood has never been in the risk business; it’s in the same-but-different business. Every so often a visionary shakes up the screen, like Orson Welles did with “Citizen Kane” — and look what happened to him. What made the old studio system astonishing were both the individual film artists and “the genius of the system,” as André Bazin beautifully put it. Golden-age studios like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer made movies (and money). Now the studios are part of multinationals, behemoths that are, in turn, in the diversification business, as illustrated by the Walt Disney Company’s description of itself as “a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with four business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment and consumer products.” It’s axiomatic to blame the decline in American movies, specifically Hollywood, on those 1970s thrill rides, “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” and the blockbuster imperative they putatively ushered in. In truth, videocassettes did more damage to cinema (American and otherwise), because home video changed how generations — including those who grew up to be studio executives — see movies as discrete works and as social and cultural experiences. (Earlier generations watched movies on home projectors and television, but this was different from home video or our new streaming reality.) In “A New Pot of Gold,” a history of Hollywood in the 1980s, Stephen Price argues that as home video and other ancillaries were introduced film as film vanished everywhere except in theaters. That’s because as film became video it became “the engine driving the interlinked global entertainment markets” — little more, depressingly, than “the launching pad for a new array of electronic formats.” SCOTT It’s interesting — and apt, I think — that discussions of the health of cinema as an art form so frequently turn into discussions about technologies of distribution and the habits of consumption they create. Judging the overall quality of movies is a pretty fruitless exercise, since the viewers of the future will inevitably don the same kind of rose-colored glasses that we do even as they invoke different aesthetic standards to winnow the masterpieces from the surrounding chaff. But as you suggest, the way people experience movies continues to evolve, with enormous consequences for the identity of the medium itself. I am as prone to nostalgia as any other middle-aged person, but I’m not convinced that the destruction of film as we once knew it — a process roughly coterminous with the history of film as we know it — is any great disaster. Going to a theater for a few hours to sit in the dark and watch a story unfold in the company of friends and strangers remains a distinctive cultural activity, but it is no longer the only or even the primary way those stories are encountered. The world of streaming and video on demand is just starting to open up, and none of us can quite foresee where it is going. Meanwhile television is in a period of creative ferment, as is film production in corners of the globe very far from Hollywood. If I may indulge in a bit of free-marketeering, I think competition might actually improve some of the commercial products on the big screens. In fact, I think that’s already started to happen, as the studios try to win back some of the cachet they have lost over the past decade, first to their own specialty divisions and then to their corporate siblings and rivals in the cable business. The just-concluded Oscar race may be a sign of that development. Or maybe just evidence that while the movies are dead, they have left behind an exquisite corpse. DARGIS In his book “The Virtual Life of Film,” D. N. Rodowick, taking a cue from Jean-Luc Godard, describes the new cinephile as “simultaneously nostalgic and future-seeking, backward and forward looking, as befits contemplation of an art form undergoing a stark historical mutation.” It isn’t (simply) nostalgic to talk about the end of film; it’s about opening our eyes to our new world of moving-image entertainment. We grasp that the meaning of “going to the movies” has changed because moving images now also come to us whenever we want, however we want. But the object of our affection (obsession!) has changed too. Great films are still shot on film (and most are made with digital technologies) and great movies are made digitally. But these two things — the 24-frames-per-second film and the zeroes-and-ones digital movie — are different in fact, theory and experience, even if the end results look increasingly similar. Mind you, I don’t want to address the end of film in each review, and I doubt that our readers (and editors) want that either. Yet it is more urgent (and interesting) than whether this year’s crop of movies was qualitatively worse than last year’s, and whether James Franco should stick to his day job. That said, quality is an issue as is the juvenility of so many big-studio movies, which is why, when July swings around, I plan to skip “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” Because while Michael Bay is better at industrial action than most, this third “Transformers” will be almost exactly like the previous two, with the same-but-different explosions and the same-but-different ornamental woman running alongside Shia LaBeouf as the heroic and villainous robots fight to the scrap-metal finish and the movie crushes the competition. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/m...ds-crisis.html ![]() Netflix Is Said to Be Close to Acquiring a Television Show Brian Stelter Netflix may be on the verge of acquiring its first original television series, “House of Cards,” a drama to be directed by David Fincher. The negotiations were first reported Tuesday afternoon by Deadline.com, which said that the two-season, 26-episode commitment would be valued at more than $100 million. An executive close to the negotiations confirmed the report that Netflix had entered the bidding for the show. There was still considerable uncertainty Tuesday about the terms of the potential deal, and a Netflix spokesman declined to comment. A second executive close to the negotiations dismissed the $100 million estimate, noting that there was no deal between the parties yet, and that in the event a deal is struck, it would cost Netflix significantly less. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their bosses to speak about the negotiations. Picking up the exclusive rights to a television show would effectively make Netflix a network similar to ABC or HBO and would underscore just how disruptive the company has become to the media business. The size and scope of the potential deal astonished television industry executives, who noted that it was highly unusual to order an entire season of a show — never mind two — without first producing a pilot episode. “House of Cards” is based on a novel of the same name about a British politician who wants to succeed Margaret Thatcher as the prime minister of Britain. The show, which is being produced by Media Rights Capital, has Mr. Fincher aboard as a director and executive producer, and Kevin Spacey as an executive producer and star. It is set in the United States. Deadline.com said HBO and AMC were among the other networks that bid for the show. Picking up “House of Cards” would be a major move by Netflix, which is gradually changing from a DVD-by-mail service to an online library of films and TV programs. The company has been seeking new sources of content to promote to the customers who pay every month for access to that library. Netflix already has access to episodes of some network TV shows, but never on an exclusive basis. Last month Netflix signed a contract with the CBS Corporation for the rights to stream TV shows like “Medium,” which was canceled. It already has a raft of old shows like “Frasier” and “Family Ties.” CBS is likely to earn about $200 million over the next two years under the deal. But the deal excluded all of that network’s biggest shows, illustrating the television industry’s conventional wisdom that TV comes first and the Web comes second. The Netflix-Media Rights Capital deal, if completed, would challenge that calculus. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/b...16netflix.html ![]() Time Warner Cable Cuts iPad Live TV Access 50% Erik Gruenwedel Time Warner Cable March 16 slashed the number of channels available for live streaming on the Apple iPad — less than 24 hours after launching the TV Everywhere app. The No. 2 cable operator reduced to 15 channels from the original 32 offered up as the first-ever live TV broadcasts available for streaming on a portable media device. The concept allows participating media providers to grant unlimited on-demand access across multiple devices to monthly subscribers at no additional charge. TWC said the reduction in channels was due to problems authenticating the surge in users attempting to access the content. BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield questioned whether content owners, networks groups and others had suddenly become alarmed about the possible compromise of incremental revenue streams and data tracking (ratings). Greenfield said TWC removed Disney (Disney Channel, ABC Family, Lifetime Movie Network), Discovery (Animal Planet), Viacom (MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, Spike, VH1, CMT), Fox (F/X, National Geographic), Rainbow/Cablevision (AMC), Univision (Galavision), Scripps (Travel Channel) and Hallmark. Remaining channels included Time Warner Networks (such as CNN and HLN), Discovery, TLC, A&E, History, Fox News, Food Channel and HGTV, and all NBC Universal networks such as Bravo, CNBC, E!, MSNBC, USA and Syfy. NBC Universal is owned by Comcast, which is planning to launch its own portable media device access through the cable operator's Xfinity TV platform. “We believe several cable network groups are seriously considering filing lawsuits against Time Warner Cable and sending cease and desist letters to TWC to stop them from in-home live streaming to iPads without a new contract (meaning ‘more’ money),” Greenfield wrote in a post. The analyst is a firm believer that the rush to embrace emerging low-margin distribution channels such as subscription video-on-demand (Netflix and Amazon), kiosks (Redbox) and TV Everywhere pose risks to higher-margin revenue streams, including physical and electronic sellthrough. In addition to adequate content firewalls, Greenfield believes license fees should reflect the rapidly changing consumption of entertainment by the consumer while also safeguarding media companies that produce the content. Yet, CBS, beginning March 17, will stream the entire NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament (“March Madness”) to broadband-enabled portable devices without authentication. “[Multichannel cable operators] should not be happy that a major sporting event is available for free online without the need for authentication,” Greenfield wrote. “While it was one thing a few years ago when TV Everywhere was just an idea, it is surprising that nothing has changed in 2011, especially in the face of rapidly growing retransmission consent fees and every-increasing cable network license fees.” http://www.homemediamagazine.com/ele...ccess-50-23348 ![]() All the Web’s TV & Movies in One Sweet Spot: Moki.tv Jolie O'Dell If you’re a digitally aware couch potato like me, you risk burning a significant number of calories surfing between Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and iTunes to get your fix of movies and television shows. If you’re interested in mitigating that risk, you’ll want to take a look at Moki.tv, an all-in-one guide to the Internet’s entertainment offerings. From Moki, you can browse a broad and deep catalog of almost all the silver-screen and small-screen content available on the web. You can watch free content from Hulu; subscription stuff from Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Comcast’s xfinity tv; and on-demand TV and movies from iTunes and Amazon Video On Demand. You can sign up with Facebook Connect, then simply select the content services you already use; Moki makes it easy to connect service with third-party authentication, so you won’t need to remember any logins. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to rate movies and get recommendations — you can even pull your rating from Netflix to Moki and vice versa — and create a queue of shows and movies to watch. The site uses your ratings as well as ratings from IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes to make recommendations for you; and the recommendations I got were spot-on, especially after I had imported my Netflix ratings. Not only can you find and watch what you love without visiting a half-dozen websites; you can also find new shows and films to watch that are similar to ones you’ve already watched. You can sort content by genre, rating, popularity and release date; or you can browse award-winning films and TV shows. The site also has fascinating curated collections of content, like Shakespeare adaptations or Clint Eastwood flicks hand-picked by Eastwood himself. In addition to getting boatloads of online video, you can explore trending lists of actors and directors, read synopses, write reviews, leave comments, and more. And perhaps best of all, if you signed up with Facebook Connect, you have an instant social connection and can see your friends’ ratings and reviews on content, too. The site, though new, is remarkably full-featured; many of these cool features are made possible by clever integrations with existing sites and apps. You can expect to see streaming media sources on Moki.tv soon. Currently, the site’s founders are polling users to find out which streaming sources are the most requested. Moki’s also working on an API. We like the premise of the site — one-stop shopping for watching TV and movies online — and we like the UI, which is sleekly designed with lots of nice touches. Check it out for yourself, and let us know what you think. Moki, Inc. is an San Francisco-based Y Combinator startup founded by Matt Huang, a recent MIT math grad, and Sandy Spicer, a fellow dev from MIT. The company is currently hiring looking for local engineering talent. http://mashable.com/2011/03/18/moki-tv/ ![]() Children Still Play the Old Schoolyard Favorites Michelle Martin Children still enjoy playing traditional games like skipping and clapping in the playground despite the lure of mobile phones, computer games, and television, a study published on Tuesday found. Playground games are "alive and well ... they happily co-exist with media-based play, the two informing each other," it said. Contrary to popular beliefs, schoolyard games are "not overwhelmed, marginalized or threatened by the quantity and plurality of available media," researchers found. Their study showed that children still spend their school breaktimes singing the songs that have been circulating for decades, although they sometimes update them by inserting references to the latest pop stars and soap characters. Dancing also remains a favorite playground pastime, but children now like to base their routines on acts like Michael Jackson or Disney's hit film "High School Musical," they said. Other classic activities still drawing in the crowds at playtime include tig, skipping, clapping, rhymes and make-believe games, while the hula-hoop is making a come-back. "Media is an undeniably important aspect of children's lives, but part of a wider repertoire of playground culture that also includes older games, songs and rhymes," researchers said. The study found that while children do make use of the multitude of media resources surrounding them, they "creatively manipulate them to their own ends" and that new media enriches children's folklore by providing topical themes for them to include in their make-believe games. While children incorporate characters from reality television shows and the pop music scene into their play, they apply their imagination by changing, recombining and subverting what they had garner from the media rather than simply copying it. "Some people play 'Dr Who' by choosing characters from the show and then improvising," said one child interviewed for the study, describing his favorite game based on the popular British science fiction television series. Andrew Burn, who led the project, said pretend play was still flourishing. "Children have always enjoyed enacting scenarios from their home or school lives, as well as fantasy stories," he said. Researchers said computer games inspired many playground games but added that children do not merely imitate the action on their screens -- they adapt generic elements like stealth moves and weapons. They had seen children using tree stumps as magic consoles and waving pretend game weapons like light sabres, which showed that "though computer games are sometimes blamed for a perceived decline in children's outdoor play ... imaginative games in the playground can build on them." The findings showed that computer games provide children with rules for their breaktime activities, while films and television shows supply narrative and character elements which the children could adapt. "The playground provides an important space for children to engage with how their culture is changing in a digital age," said Professor Jackie Marsh from the University of Sheffield. Researchers at the Universities of East London, Sheffield and the Institute of Education spent two years looking at what children played during their breaktimes at schools in London and Sheffield for the study entitled "Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age." As part of the project, the British Library has created a website which documents the games children have played from the early 20th century to the present day (www.bl.uk/playtimes) and is encouraging people to help expand the archive by sending in short films or letters detailing their own favorite games, songs and rhymes. (Editing by Steve Addison) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...72E4W420110315 ![]() Judge Won’t Stop WikiLeaks Twitter-Records Request Kim Zetter The U.S. government is getting closer to getting data from Twitter about various associates of WikiLeaks. The people whose Twitter records were being requested had moved to throw out the government’s request for data, but a judge denied that motion Friday, ruling that the associates don’t have standing to challenge it. The judge also denied a request to unseal the government’s application for the Twitter order. Judge Theresa Buchanan, in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled that because the government was not seeking the content of the Twitter accounts in question, the subjects did not have standing to challenge the government’s request for the records. Content, under the Stored Communications Act, is “any information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.” The government is looking for data about the Twitter users’ accounts and how they are used, not the content of tweets or direct messages. It’s the Twitter equivalent of a list of incoming and outgoing phone numbers. “The Twitter Order does not demand the contents of any communication,” Judge Buchanan wrote in her opinion, “and thus constitutes only a request for records under [the law].” The Justice Department served Twitter last December with an order seeking information on several people associated with the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks: Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament; Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks; Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks; WikiLeaks’ U.S. representative Jacob Appelbaum; and Dutch businessman and activist Rop Gonggrijp. Jonsdottir and Gonggrijp helped WikiLeaks prepare a classified U.S. Army video that the site published last April. While the application for the Twitter order is still sealed, the court unsealed the order itself, at Twitter’s request. According to the order, the government seeks full contact details for the accounts (including phone numbers and addresses), IP addresses used to access the accounts, connection records (“records of session times and durations”) and data-transfer information, such as the size of data file sent to someone else and the destination IP. Since Twitter is used for sending 140-character updates, not data files, the wording of the request suggests that it’s likely a boilerplate form that could also have been submitted to ISPs, e-mail providers and social networking sites like Facebook. The Justice Department’s demand for the records is part of a grand jury investigation that appears to be probing WikiLeaks for its high-profile leaks of classified U.S. material. It is seeking the records under 18 USC 2703(d), a provision of the 1994 Stored Communications Act that governs law enforcement access to non-content internet records, such as transaction information. More powerful than a subpoena, but not as strong as a search warrant, a 2703(d) order is supposed to be issued when prosecutors provide a judge with “specific and articulable facts” that show the information they seek is relevant and material to a criminal investigation. But the people targeted in the records demand don’t have to themselves be suspected of criminal wrongdoing. After Twitter notified Jonsdottir in January that the government had sought information about her account, the EFF and the ACLU filed a motion challenging the government’s attempt to obtain the records, asking the court to vacate the order. In their motion, the two groups said the government’s demand for the records violated First Amendment speech rights and Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the Twitter-account holders, among other things. The groups also filed motions to unseal records in the case, hoping to gain information about the government’s grounds for seeking the records, as well as any information that might indicate if the government had sought similar records from Facebook, ISPs or other service providers. A hearing to discuss the motion to vacate the Twitter order was held in mid-February. In her ruling Friday, Buchanan discussed whether the government provided sufficient justification in its application to obtain the records. She acknowledged that the complainants were facing an uphill battle in arguing against the legitimacy of the government’s request, because the government’s application is still sealed and therefore unavailable to them. Nonetheless, she concluded that the government’s application stated “specific and articulable” facts that were sufficient for issuing the Twitter order: The disclosures sought are “relevant and material” to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. Also, the scope of the Twitter Order is appropriate even if it compels disclosure of some unhelpful information. Indeed, §2703(d) is routinely used to compel disclosure of records, only some of which are later determined to be essential to the government’s case. Thus, the Twitter Order was properly issued pursuant to §2703(d). Buchanan further ruled that the request did not violate the account holder’s First Amendment rights, because the order did not seek to control their speech or their associations. Nor did it violate the Fourth Amendment, because the account holders did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy over subscriber information they freely provided to Twitter. “Similarly, the Fourth Amendment permits the government to warrantlessly install a pen register to record numbers dialed from a telephone, because a person voluntarily conveys the numbers without a legitimate expectation of privacy,” Judge Buchanan wriote. Attorneys with the EFF and ACLU told Threat Level they plan to appeal the decision. “Case law from the Supreme Court makes it clear that individuals have a right to challenge government requests for information about them,” said ACLU attorney Aden Fine. “This decision permits the government to obtain court orders requiring the disclosure of private information in secret. That’s not how our system works.” He also disputed Judge Buchanan’s assertion that users have no expectation of privacy over data they willingly give Twitter and other third parties. “She’s essentially saying there are no constitutional interests at stake here, because this is all public information,” he said. “But just because a third party has some information, does not mean you have no Fourth Amendment right in that information. Everything that’s at issue here is private information. Most people reasonably believe that that information will be kept private. That’s why in our view the court got it wrong.” Twitter said in a statement that its policy is “designed to allow users to defend their own rights. As such, Twitter will continue to let the judicial process run its course.” http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-twitter-case/ ![]() Assange Told of ASIO Snooping Philip Dorling WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange is believed to have been tipped off more than seven months ago about Australian intelligence scrutiny of his whistleblowing activities. Senior government ministers yesterday claimed to have no knowledge of co-operation between Australian intelligence agencies and the United States government concerning Assange after WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of secret documents leaked from the US Defence Department. But sources within Wikileaks have told The Age that an Australian intelligence official privately warned Wikileaks on August 11 last year that Assange was the subject of inquiries by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and that information relating to him and others associated with Wikileaks had been provided to the US in response to requests through intelligence liaison channels. The Australian intelligence official is also claimed to have specifically warned that Assange could be at risk of ''dirty tricks'' from the US intelligence community, including the possibility of sexual entrapment. The information is said to have been provided to WikiLeaks by means of a submission through the website's electronic ''drop box'' on the day Assange flew from London to Stockholm to speak on freedom of the press. Nine days later, on August 20, a Swedish newspaper reported that Assange was wanted by Swedish police for questioning in relation to sexual assault allegations involving two women in Stockholm. Assange immediately tweeted on the WikiLeaks Twitter page: "We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one.'' Subsequently, on August 23, Assange said in a telephone interview with Arab news channel Al Jazeera: ''We were warned on the 11th [of August] by Australian intelligence that we should expect this sort of thing.'' Assange is appealing a British court decision to uphold an arrest warrant for him to be extradited to Sweden for questioning about the sexual assault allegations. He and his lawyers have retreated from earlier claims that the allegations are the product of a conspiracy involving foreign intelligence agencies. WikiLeaks also learnt its Australian intelligence source was aware of the group's intention to seek legal advice from a prominent Melbourne lawyer - information not public at the time and known only to people within WikiLeaks. Prime Minister Julia Gillard was confronted with a video message from Assange when she appeared on ABC TV's Q&A program on Monday. Assange asked the Prime Minister whether her government had exchanged information about Australian citizens, specifically people linked to WikiLeaks, with foreign powers. He asked that if she could not give a straight answer to the question, whether the Australian people should consider her to have engaged in treason. Ms Gillard replied ''I honestly don't know what he's talking about,'' adding that no one had asked her about Assange during her recent visit to Washington. ''So I'm afraid I can't help him with a full and frank exchange about people who work with WikiLeaks.'' Mr Gillard did acknowledge Australia regularly exchanges information about Australian citizens with other countries in relation to law enforcement matters, but she said in regard to WikiLeaks, ''to my knowledge, it hasn't happened''. A spokesman for the Prime Minister yesterday declined to say whether Ms Gillard had initiated any inquiries to determine whether Assange's claim was correct. A spokesperson for Attorney-General Robert McClelland said that the Attorney-General was unaware of information sharing concerning Assange, but said it was ''entirely appropriate'' for the US to investigate the leakage of classified information. http://www.theage.com.au/national/as...315-1bvyb.html ![]() As Library E-Books Live Long, Publisher Sets Expiration Date Julie Bosman Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost. The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times. Last week, that agreement was upended by HarperCollins Publishers when it began enforcing new restrictions on its e-books, requiring that books be checked out only 26 times before they expire. Assuming a two-week checkout period, that is long enough for a book to last at least one year. What could have been a simple, barely noticed change in policy has galvanized librarians across the country, many of whom called the new rule unfair and vowed to boycott e-books from HarperCollins, the publisher of Doris Lessing, Sarah Palin and Joyce Carol Oates. “People just felt gobsmacked,” said Anne Silvers Lee, the chief of the materials management division of the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has temporarily stopped buying HarperCollins e-books. “We want e-books in our collections, our customers are telling us they want e-books, so I want to be able to get e-books from all the publishers. I also need to do it in a way that is not going to be exorbitantly expensive.” But some librarians said the change, however unwelcome, had ignited a public conversation about e-books in libraries that was long overdue. While librarians are pushing for more e-books to satisfy demand from patrons, publishers, with an eye to their bottom lines, are reconsidering how much the access to their e-books should be worth. “People are agitated for very good reasons,” said Roberta Stevens, the president of the American Library Association. “Library budgets are, at best, stagnant. E-book usage has been surging. And the other part of it is that there is grave concern that this model would be used by other publishers.” Even in the retail marketplace, the question of how much an e-book can cost is far from settled. Publishers resisted the standard $9.99 price that Amazon once set on many e-books, and last spring, several major publishers moved to a model that allows them set their own prices. This month, Random House, the lone holdout among the six biggest trade publishers, finally joined in switching to the agency model. Now many newly released books are priced from $12.99 to $14.99, while discounted titles are regularly as low as $2.99. HarperCollins, in its defense, pointed out that its policy for libraries was a decade old, made long before e-books were as popular as they are today. The new policy applies to newly acquired books. “We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book ecosystem, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” the company said in a statement. It is still a surprise to many consumers that e-books are available in libraries at all. Particularly in the last several years, libraries have been expanding their e-book collections, often through OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries and schools. Nationwide, some 66 percent of public libraries offer free e-books to their patrons, according to the American Library Association. For many libraries, interest from patrons who want to check out e-books has been skyrocketing. At the New York Public Library, e-book use is 36 percent higher than it was only one year ago. Demand has been especially strong since December, several librarians said, because e-readers were popular holiday gifts. “As our readership goes online, our materials dollars are going online,” said Christopher Platt, the director of collections and circulating operations for the New York Public Library. In borrowing terms, e-books have been treated much like print books. They are typically available to one user at a time, often for a seven- or 14-day period. But unlike print books, library users don’t have to show up at the library to pick them up — e-books can be downloaded from home, onto mobile devices, personal computers and e-readers, including Nooks, Sony Readers, laptops and smartphones. (Library e-books cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.) After the designated checkout period, the e-book automatically expires from the borrower’s account. The ease with which e-books can be borrowed from libraries — potentially turning e-book buyers into e-book borrowers — makes some publishers uncomfortable. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, two of the largest trade publishers in the United States, do not make their e-books available to libraries at all. “We are working diligently to try to find terms that satisfy the needs of the libraries and protect the value of our intellectual property,” John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, said in an e-mail. “When we determine those terms, we will sell e-books to libraries. At present we do not.” And those publishers that do make their e-books available in libraries said that the current pricing agreements might need to be updated. Random House, for example, has no immediate plans to change the terms of its agreements with libraries, said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for the publisher, but has not ruled it out in the future. “Anything we institute ahead we’d really want to talk through with the community and together understand what makes sense for us both,” Mr. Applebaum said. “We’re open to changes in the future which are in reasonable step with the expectations and realities of the overall library communities.” Publishers are nervous that e-book borrowing in libraries will cannibalize e-book retail sales. They also lose out on revenue realized as libraries replace tattered print books or supplement hardcover editions with paperbacks, a common practice. Sales to libraries can account for 7 to 9 percent of a publisher’s overall revenue, two major publishers said. But e-books have downsides for libraries, too. Many libraries dispose of their unread books through used-book sales, a source of revenue that unread e-books can’t provide. The American Library Association has assembled two task forces to study the issue. Even among the librarians who have stopped buying HarperCollins e-books, many said that there might have to be a compromise. “I can see their side of it,” said Lisa Sampley, the collection services manager in the Springfield-Greene County Library District in Springfield, Mo. “I’m hoping that if other publishers try to change the model, they think about the libraries and how it will affect us. But I’m sure there is some kind of model that could work for us both.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/b...libraries.html ![]() Kindle, Nook Ebook Fling Spreading the Word Wallace Manfrin Kindle, Nook Ebook Fling Spreading the WordIn the age of unrestricted file-sharing and other methods of worldwide data-transfer, it is refreshing to see the phenomenon recognised by the retailer and taken advantage of. Quite simply, it is almost impossible to monitor file-sharing practices of every media user the world over, with music, video, images and most recently ebooks uploaded and downloaded from literally millions of sources. With this in mind, one or two websites have popped up over recent months which use the wonderfully simple method of file sharing to their full advantage, offering something of an online library of ebooks which can legally be borrowed or purchased. The popularity of the Kindle, Nook and other e-readers has simply skyrocketed over recent months, leading to the inevitability of data sharing across the board. Therefore, the implementation of a system which allows such sharing for a fractional monetary cost has been welcomed as a wonderfully common-sense approach to what is generally regarded as a significant problem. Sites such as Lendle and BookLending already offer the rental and purchase of ebooks, but Ebook Fling has taken this one step further to allow temporary sharing between users. For a small additional fee, ebooks can be loaned out to other users legally for up to 14 days, in a move which is hoped to encourage legal file-sharing and further the ebook business in general. Critics have welcomed the initiative though remain unsure as to whether illegal file-sharing practices will be influenced at all. The possibility of saving money, even just a dollar or two, may still offer more appeal to many users. http://personalfinancebulletin.com/k...the-word/8050/ ![]() How To Keep Reading the NY Times For Free Brian Barrett The NY Times will flip the switch on its digital paywall next Monday, and the Grey Lady don't come cheap: $15/month for the website and the phone app, $20/month for the website and the iPad app, or a wallet-singeing $35 for web, phone, and iPad. But there are loopholes! And they are generous. Here's your game plan. Read For Free As much as a paywall might get your hackles up, the folks running the Times understand that no amount of digital subscription revenue would make up for the sting an page view exodus. That's why—in addition to 20 free articles a month, which is pretty generous for your average casual reader—they built in this little clause: • Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles. That's similar to the model that's been employed by the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, and means that if there's ever an NYT article you're blocked from? You can just copy and paste the headline into Google for free and easy access. Even if you hit your unspecified daily limit on Google, you can head on over to Bing or, if you're feeling 2002 about it, Alta Vista. If that's too labor intensive (all that clicking!), then it's time to make Twitter your new best friend. Between individual journos, print sections, and blogs, there are a whopping 252 Twitter accounts associated with the NYT—none of them shy about pushing out their content. Pick and choose your favorites, or for the full firehose of every single NYT article just follow @freenyt. Read For Cheap If you're dead set on getting yourself a digital subscription, that's fine. Getting around the firewall is doable, but not seamless, and you may rather just avoid the hassle. Remember, though, that only suckers pay retail. The trick here is that any home delivery package includes a full digital subscription. And—conveniently enough—a Monday-Friday home delivery costs you just $3.70/week for the first 84 days, or $14.80/month. That's less than the cheapest digital plan, and gives you unlimited web, phone, and iPad access. And when the full price kicks in, iPad and phone users are still saving a significant amount, and anyone else can just cancel home delivery switch back to pure digital. Don't need the dead tree version? I bet you know someone who does. Just sign up your parents or your technophobic neighbor for home delivery as a gift—after they've promised to sign away their digital rights, of course. And remember that these loopholes are actually in place to help the Times. More home delivery subscribers, higher social media attach rates, more app downloads; these are all things that advertisers drool over. And it's their money—not yours—that keeps newspapers afloat. http://gizmodo.com/?_escaped_fragmen...times-for-free ![]() Get Around the New York Times Quota with this NYT Firehose Twitter List Adam Pash Get Around the New York Times Quota with this NYT Firehose Twitter ListOne of the simplest loopholes in the New York Times' upcoming 20-story paywall restriction is that "readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit." To take advantage of the "from Twitter" aspect, Twitter user @FreeNYT has created this NYT firehose list. It aggregates official NYT Twitter accounts into one list, and all the links therein become freebies under the new system. Simply follow that list and use it for your New York Times fix. It's not a perfect workaround, but it's also not bad. Frankly, you'll likely see even better solutions by the time the Times rolls out the switch in the US on March 28. http://lifehacker.com/?_escaped_frag...e-twitter-list ![]() Threats to Traveling Data Tanya Mohn With small and fast laptops, powerful smartphones, tablets and readily available Wi-Fi, working on the road — on planes, in airports and hotel rooms — has never been easier. But security experts say these conveniences also make the offices away from home more vulnerable to serious security threats. “It’s a huge, huge issue for companies and employees and growing more each day,” said Bruce McIndoe, president of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, a travel risk management company. “It’s a ripe environment for hackers and criminals.” A report released last week by the Symantec Corporation, a security software provider, and the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and information management research firm, found that data breaches showed no sign of leveling off and were increasingly costly. “As business travelers, we’re on the road so much, we psychologically forget that we’re in public,” said Ben Knieff, head of product marketing for fraud at NICE Actimize, a company that focuses on financial crimes in the financial services industry. Mr. Knieff recalled how he was recently boarding a plane and overheard an executive speaking loudly on a cellphone as he booked a hotel, revealing all of his credit card information, including the security code. Laptops and mobile devices have numerous vulnerabilities, starting with loss and theft. McAfee, a security technology company, also noted, in a report last month, a 46 percent increase in the amount of malware created for mobile devices from 2009 to 2010. To limit exposure of particularly sensitive information, some companies switch mobile devices when employees travel, Mr. McIndoe said. “Older versions could be more vulnerable,” he said, as criminals have had time to learn how to hack them. And criminal access to mobile networks may be easier in certain foreign countries, because of lax security and corruption. Michael Malin, executive vice president of Mandiant, an information security company, suggested hiding mobile devices when they are unattended. “We’ve all seen maids leave hotel room doors open with service carts,” he said. Someone could easily enter the room and “infect a computer or extract sensitive data,” he said. “We’re seeing the use of social networks to gather publicly available information on targets,” he added. Posting photographs and travel plans can jeopardize personal safety and sensitive business negotiations, experts said. Publicly shared computers at hotels and Internet cafes “are probably the riskiest,” Mr. Knieff said. “Anyone can walk in and sit down,” he said. Even printing boarding passes can be dangerous. “Don’t leave them in public trash cans either. Anytime you leave data about yourself in a public place, it creates opportunities,” Mr. Knieff said. Debit card data skimming has also been rising sharply, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia, Mr. Knieff said. He recommended that travelers report their plans to their banks. When using A.T.M.’s, travelers should look for signs of tampering, and use machines only at banks, preferably in protected areas. “I travel to Southeast Asia frequently, and you hear about how it is a hotbed for credit card fraud,” said Bryndon Bay, president of Mel Bay Publications, a music publishing company, in Pacific, Mo., who relies on his iPad and iPhone on the road. Both are locked and protected with secure passwords. “I never go to places where I have to enter frequent-flier numbers, credit card information, or any personal data,” he said, “and I always clear off history after I finish because I don’t trust who may go on after me.” “I just feel I use common sense and it works for me,” Mr. Bay said. Robert Hamilton, senior product marketing manager for Symantec, recommended avoiding free public Wi-Fi. “Some look like legitimate hot spots, but they are set up by criminals,” frequently at airport terminals. If using a wireless connection, he suggested entering it through a smartphone connection, which is much harder to hack. And at hotels, obtain an access key before using the wireless connection, he said, to ensure it is not “sponsored by the person in the room next door.” Betsy Page Sigman, a professor of operations and information management at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, said travelers attending conventions should also be aware of the risks. “You want to be overly cautious, especially if you are around a lot of competitors,” she said. Bob Austin, president of KoreLogic, an information security consultancy, said, “If I had a single piece of advice for a business traveler’s peace of mind, it is whole disk encryption,” he said. Used with a robust pass phrase, similar to a password, “everything on the hard drive is protected from disclosure.” Many organizations also require their employees to use virtual private networks, which lower the risk of interception when accessing public wireless sites. The V.P.N. sends data through an encrypted tunnel. Tracy Armer, systems manager for the Madison Park Group, a stationery and gift company in Seattle, said sales staff members used both whole disk encryption and V.P.N.’s when traveling, but he discouraged taking laptops unless critical. “You could be on a business trip, innocently looking up a good place to eat on the Internet, but there is a financial folder open on the desktop,” he said. “Someone could potentially browse the contents of your laptop.” He suggested reading company material on paper while traveling. Unfortunately, he added, “even with strong precautions, nothing is ever 100 percent secure.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/b...5security.html ![]() US Citizen Alan Gross Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison The Court of Crimes against the State Security of the People’s Provincial Tribunal in Havana sentenced US citizen Alan Gross to 15 years in prison for the crime of “Acts against the Independence or the Territorial Integrity of the State” on Friday last. The Court’s ruling was based on the numerous testimonial, expert and documentary evidence considered during the hearing, particularly those presented by the prosecution, which proved the direct participation of the US contractor in a subversive project of the US government to attempt to destroy the Cuban Revolution through the use of information and communication systems that operated out of the control of local authorities, aimed at the promotion of destabilizing plans against several social sectors. During the hearing, the defendant admitted that he was used and manipulated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is subordinated to the State Department and is financed by the DAI contracting firm, on whose name Gross came to Cuba. Alan Phillip Gross will be entitled to file an appeal, at the appropriate time, before the Court of Crimes against the State Security of the People’s Supreme Court. http://www.cadenagramonte.cu/english...otes&Itemid=17 ![]() Secure key exchange for peer-to-peer communication and VoIP GNU Free Call Announced “Free as in freedom, and free as in no cost, too!” GNU Free Call is a new project to develop and deploy secure self-organized communication services worldwide for private use and for public administration. We use the open standard SIP protocol and GNU SIP Witch to create secured peer-to-peer mesh calling networks, and we welcome all participation in our effort. Who Haakon Eriksen – Project Coordinator - haakon.eriksen@far.no David Sugar – Project Architect - dyfet@gnu.org What Our goal is to make GNU Free Call ubiquitous in a manner and level of usability similar to Skype, that is, usable on all platforms, and directly by the general public for all manner of secure communication between known and anonymous parties, but without requiring a central service provider to register with, without using insecure source secret binary protocols that may have back-doors, and without having network control points of any kind that can be exploited or abused by external parties. By doing so as a self organizing meshed calling network, we further eliminate potential service control points such as through explicit routing peers even if networks are isolated in civil emergencies. We do recognize this project has significant long term social and political implications. It also offers potentially essential utility in public service by enabling the continuation of emergency services without requiring existing communication infrastructure. There are many ordinary public service uses, such as the delivery of eHealth services, as well as medical, and legal communication, where it is essential to treat all with equal human dignity by maintaining privacy regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. Equally important is the continuation of emergency medical services even when existing infrastructure is no longer available or has been deliberately disabled. How Initially we will extend sipwitch to become aware of peer nodes by supporting host caches, and then support publishing of routes to connected peers. This work builds upon the already existing routing foundation in sipwitch itself. The use of host caches is a mechanism used in older p2p networks, it is generally well understood, it would meet the initial goals of establishing a self organized mesh network, and it is rather easy to initially implement to fully demonstrate the potential of sipwitch as a mesh calling system. More advanced methodologies can then be added later on. Related to this goal is having sipwitch operate as a SIP mediation service for desktops users and IP enabled cell phones such as Android. This introduces the needs for users to be able to “pilot” their local sipwitch instance through a desktop and cell phone gui, whether to see what calls are being placed through it, or to see the verification status of secure key exchange. There are today IPC interfaces in sipwitch to allow for desktop integration, but a specific GUI to use these interfaces and present server and call states in a manner for people to understand still needs to also be constructed, and hence this too is part of the plan of work for this project. In addition we will be extending GNU SIP Witch to offer secure VoIP proxy. Much like what was done initially by Phil Zimmerman to develop ZRTP using zfone, this mode of operation will enable development of key elements of a secure infrastructure without having to also initially create new SIP user agent applications. By offering secure proxy through a SIP Witch instance running at the endpoint, any existing SIP standard compliant softphone or device will be able to establish a secure connection to another standard compliant SIP device or SIP peer that is using GNU SIP Witch at the destination. This project’s definition of secure media is similar to Zimmermann’s work on ZRTP, in that we assure there is no forwarding knowledge by using uniquely generated keys for each communication session. Furthermore, we will use GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) to fully automate session validation. This will be done by extending the SIP protocol to exchange public keys for establishing secure media sessions that will be created by each instance of SIP Witch operating at the end points on behalf of local SIP user agents, and then verifying there is no man-in-the-middle by exchanging GPG signed hashes of the session keys that were visible at each end. Why 1. Why GNU SIP Witch? GNU SIP Witch is a destination router for the SIP protocol. This means it is primarily concern is not in making things interconnect “with” the SIP Witch Server, like say something like Asterisk does very well, but rather instead is designed to enable two (or more) endpoints to find and then directly connect with each other. By handing off media operations directly to communicating endpoints, GNU SIP Witch requires a minimum of system resources, making it very suitable even for low end embedded routers, as well as for freedom boxes, shared virtual server instances, desktop systems, and IP connected cell phones such as Android, rather than requiring a dedicated server. 2. Why on the desktop and cell phone? Ultimately we want to be close to the user so that no third party or external service must be connected to before establishing secure sessions since we are using unmodified SIP clients. If an external party is required, the connection between the SIP client and that external service would of course be completely insecure. A user with their own local infrastructure can of course also run a single sipwitch server, such as on a freedom box or a virtual machine, to meet all their local connectivity needs rather than doing so on each machine or device. An organization can also run a sip witch server on a completely remote site, such as a public portal, when interconnecting existing security enabled SIP clients, such as SIP Communicator and Twinkle, which support the ZRTP protocol stack. Another side benefit of having SIP Witch on the desktop and cell phone is that as we develop SIPWitch NAT services, it can act as a single point of contact for mediating all SIP protocol services for a user, as well as offering a single place where NAT support and mobile re-connection will only need to be configured and implemented once, rather than in each SIP client separately. 3. How to get GNU SIP Witch? GNU SIP Witch is formally distributed as a package that is part of the GNU Project. It is also packaged in a number of popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Fedora, GNU SIP Witch can also be built on most BSD systems from source, including OS/X, and supports compilation on Microsoft Windows as well. 4. How to configure GNU SIP Witch? In the past GNU SIP Witch has been difficult to configure, even for ordinary uses. To address this issue we are hoping to finally introduce a model public portal that anyone will also be able to download and use to construct and configure a SIP Witch site or private service. To address the needs of peer-to-peer calling, we are introducing a desktop and cell phone GUI interface. 5. Why do I need a local SIP account to use it? Since GNU SIP Witch is a SIP service one needs a SIP identity to authenticate yourself to your own local SIP server. However, we wish to eliminate manually creating local SIP users by offering to automatically detect and generate a local user account with a matching SIP user agent configuration for you as a single click operation from the new GUI. Initial clients proposed for this include Android CSipSimple, which is also being extended with GNU ZRTP, the Twinkle Softphone, and perhaps SIP Communicator, which uses the GNU ZRTP4J stack. Other clients, like GNOME Empathy and Linphone, may also be supported in this way as well. 6. How can I participate? We have a wiki site used for GNU Telephony as a whole (http://www.gnutelephony.org/), as well as a mailing list for sipwitch itself (sipwitch-devel@gnu.org). In addition, to discuss core architecture, privacy issues, and social consequences, we have another mailing list gnucomm-privacy@gnu.org. http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=14 ![]() Cell Phones Are 'Stalin's Dream,' Says Free Software Movement Founder Richard Stallman: iPhones and Androids are 'Big Brother' tracking devices By Jon Brodkin Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones. "I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop." Stallman firmly believes that only free software can save us from our technology, whether it be in cell phones, PCs, tablets or any other device. And when he talks about "free," he's not talking about the price of the software -- he's talking about the ability to use, modify and distribute software however you wish. Stallman founded the free software movement in the early- to mid-1980s with the creation of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, of which he is still president. When I asked Stallman to list some of the successes of the free software movement, the first thing that came up was Android -- not Google's version of Android, but rather a third-party version of the mobile OS in which all proprietary software has been stripped out. "It just recently became possible to run some very widely used phones with free software," Stallman said. "There's a version of Android called Replicant that can run on the HTC Dream phone without proprietary software, except in the U.S. In the U.S., as of a few weeks ago there was still a problem in some dialing library, although it worked in Europe. By now, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know." Although Android is distributed with free software licenses, Stallman notes that manufacturers can ship the devices with non-free executables, which users cannot replace "because there is a device in the phone that checks if the software is changed and won't let the modified executables run." Stallman calls it "tivoization," because TiVo uses free software but lays down hardware restrictions to prevent it from being altered. "If the manufacturer can replace the executable but you can't, then the product is a jail," he says. Theoretically, Stallman says, phones that use only free software can protect themselves from the danger of electronic eavesdropping. "If it's all free software, you can probably protect yourself from that, because that's caused by the software in the phone," he says. Ironically enough, Stallman was speaking to me on a cell phone. Not his own, of course, but one he borrowed from a friend in Spain while on a European speaking tour. Over the course of 38 minutes, our connection was lost five times, including just after Stallman's comments about electronic eavesdropping and free software for phones. We tried to connect again several hours later but were unable to complete the interview via phone. Stallman answered the rest of my questions over e-mail. Sacrificing convenience is something Stallman is used to. He won't use Windows or Mac, obviously, and even software such as Ubuntu, perhaps the most popular operating system based on GNU and the Linux kernel, does not meet his free software requirements. Few people are willing to make the sacrifices he will for the goal of software freedom, Stallman acknowledges. "The decisions anyone makes depend on values," he says. "And most people are taught to think about software purely as a matter of price and performance, not whether it respects your freedom. People who make decisions on those values will not make any sacrifice of convenience to get free software, whereas I am willing to work for years and years and years to have no proprietary software in my computer." Stallman does his computing on a Lemote Yeeloong laptop running gNewSense, a GNU/Linux distribution composed only of free software. "There are some things I can't do. I'm using a rather slow computer because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS," Stallman says. gNewSense is the only totally free distribution that will run on the Lemote, which has a MIPS-like processor, he says. The Lemote had come with another GNU/Linux distribution that included non-free software, and Stallman replaced it with gNewSense. Stallman, 57, experienced software sharing for the first time when he began working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971. The sharing community broke down in the early 1980s around the same time that Digital Equipment Corp. discontinued a mainframe hardware platform the community relied upon. Stallman could have joined the proprietary software world if he had been willing to "sign nondisclosure agreements and promise not to help my fellow hacker," he says. Instead, he pioneered the free software movement. Stallman is a fascinating figure in the world of computing, admired by many individuals and reviled by companies such as Microsoft which see a threat from software they can't make a profit from. Stallman has failed to break the Microsoft/Apple dominance of the desktop computer market, not to mention Apple's dominance of tablets. But the free software movement he created did lead to the proliferation of Linux-based servers which are prevalent in data centers and power much of the Internet. This is perhaps ironic because Stallman expresses resentment about the credit given to the Linux kernel at the expense of his own GNU operating system. Stallman says he is "somewhat" proud of the proliferation of free server software, "but I'm more concerned with the size of the problem that needs to be corrected than with how far we have already come." Free software in data centers is nice, but "with the goal of giving users freedom, their own desktops, laptops and phones are the computers that affect their freedom most." The focus is mainly on software rather than hardware, but the movement insists on "hardware that comes with specs so that we can write free software to support it fully," he says. "It is unconscionable to offer hardware for sale and refuse to tell the purchaser how to use it. This ought to be illegal." Before agreeing to an interview with Network World, Stallman demanded that this article use his preferred terminology -- e.g. "free software" instead of "open source" and "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux." He also requested that the interview be recorded and that, if the recording were distributed online, that it be done so in a format that works with free software. There are four essential software freedoms, Stallman explained. "Freedom Zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code, and change it so the program does your computing as you wish. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help others; that's the freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. And Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions when you wish." Stallman came up with the term "copyleft" to indicate licenses that ensure free software code cannot be redistributed in proprietary products. The key to Stallman's philosophy is this: "Without those four freedoms, the owner controls the program and the programs control the users," he says. "So the program is simply an instrument of unjust power. The users deserve freedom to control their computing. A non-free program is a system of unjust power and shouldn't exist. The existence and use of non-free software is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem." "That problem" wasn't caused by one company in particular, but Microsoft is usually the most frequently criticized by people like Stallman. "They continue regarding us as their enemy," Stallman says. Ten years ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously called Linux a "cancer." Microsoft has softened its public tone since then, but Stallman is not impressed: "They have in some ways learned to be a bit more subtle but their goal is that people should use Windows and not a free operating system." After that thought, our phone connection was lost again. Other than Microsoft, Stallman calls out "Apple and Adobe, and Oracle and lots of others that make proprietary software and pressure people to use it." Google "does some good things and some bad," Stallman says. "It has released useful free software such as the WebM codec, and is moving YouTube to distribute that way. However, the new Google Art Project can only be used through proprietary software." Stallman is also at odds with some people in what is known as the open source community. Open source advocates clearly sprung out of the free software movement, and most open source software also counts as free software. But Stallman says that people who identify as open source advocates tend to view the access to source code as a practical convenience and ignore the ethical principles of software freedom. Various vendors have jumped on the open source bandwagon without embracing the principles that Stallman believes should be at the heart of free software. "I don't want to make this seem too one-sided," Stallman says. "Certainly a lot of people who hold open source views have worked on useful programs that are free and also some of those companies have funded work on useful programs that are free. So that work is good. But at the same time, at a deeper level, the focus on open source leads people's attention away from the idea that they deserve freedom." One of Stallman's targets is Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel and one of the most famous figures in the world of free software. Stallman and his crew worked on the GNU operating system for most of the 1980s, but there was one missing piece: a kernel, which provides resources from the hardware to programs that run on the computer. This gap was filled by Torvalds in 1991 when he developed Linux, a Unix-like kernel. Systems using the Linux kernel are usually called just "Linux," but Stallman has fought for years to get people to use his preferred term, "GNU/Linux." Stallman "wanted to make sure GNU got proper credit," says Miguel de Icaza of Novell, who created the free software program GNOME but has been criticized by Stallman for partnering with Microsoft and selling proprietary software. "When Linux came out, Richard didn't take it very seriously for a while, and he kept working on his own kernel. It was only when Linux took the spotlight that he felt, to some extent, his project had not been given enough credit. The problem is, what happened at the time was there was a new community that was created out of the blue that wasn't necessarily aligned with GNU." The GNU kernel, called Hurd, is still "under active development," according to the project's Web site. Torvalds' contribution to free software will be widely celebrated this year during the 20th anniversary of the Linux kernel. But Stallman won't be one of his cheerleaders, and it's not just because of the naming dispute. "I don't admire a person who says freedom is not important," Stallman says. "Torvalds set a bad example for the community by publicly using a non-free program for the maintenance of Linux (his kernel, which is his main contribution to the GNU/Linux system). I criticized him for this, and so did others. When he stopped, it was not by choice. More recently, he rejected [the] GPL version 3 for Linux because it protects the users' freedom from tivoization. His rejection of GPLv3 is why most Android phones are jails." Even Red Hat and Novell, known widely as open source supporters, don't get a ringing endorsement. "Red Hat partly supports free software. Novell much less," he says, noting that Novell has a patent agreement with Microsoft. Despite outward pessimism, Stallman does see a few positives spurred by his quest for software freedom. When he's not at his Cambridge, Mass., home, which is most of the time, Stallman is roaming the world giving speeches and holding discussions about free software. Before traveling to Spain, Stallman stopped off in London to give a speech in which he called Windows "malware," and met with a couple members of Parliament to explain free software issues. He often gets a better reception in Europe than at home. "In the U.S., awareness of free software has been almost completely pushed under the rug by open source. As a result, you'd never find people in any government position who'd want to talk to me," he says. Outside of North America, some governments are embracing free software. "I found out yesterday that in France, the state agencies are continuing to move to free software," he says. "There's no systematic policy requiring them to but they're doing so more and more. And in some countries, for instance in Ecuador, there is an explicit policy for state agencies to move to free software and any agency that wants to continue using non-free software has to apply for a temporary exception, permission to do so." Although Stallman didn't mention it, the Russian government is requiring agencies to replace proprietary software with free alternatives by 2015 in a bid to improve both economics and security, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to free software, Stallman is devoted to political issues, and writes a blog for The Huffington Post. In fact, he sees little distinction between the corporations threatening software freedom and "the scoundrels in Washington" who are beholden to corporate donations. In the recent Wisconsin union protests, Stallman sees something of his own spirit. "Sometimes freedom requires a sacrifice and most Americans are not willing to make any sacrifices for their freedom," he says. "But maybe the protesters in Wisconsin are starting to change that." Corporations and mass media "have to a large extent convinced Americans ... that they're not entitled to refuse businesses whatever businesses want. Well, we need a spirit of resistance in America. We need to recover the spirit of freedom with which we created the United States." http://www.networkworld.com/news/201...-stallman.html ![]() DHS Chief Napolitano: Algorithms a Big Key in Solving Security, Big Data Puzzle Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talks science and technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Layer 8 Better algorithms to spot patterns and trends in the serious mass of information the Department of Homeland Security sees everyday is key to national security. That was but one of the talking points DHS chief Janet Napolitano focused on in a lecture on the role of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today. "As threats continually evolve, we need to get smarter about what anomalies to look for, and therefore, better algorithms to spot them. Simply spotting, say explosives or radiological material, is not enough, however. We then need to be able to use that detection capability out in the field, for example, to identify a small, fast-moving boat carrying illicit cargo in a crowded port. DHS is part of the nation's Intelligence Community, which receives more terabytes of data each day than the entire text holdings of the Library of Congress. The National Counterterrorism Center's 24-hour Operations Center receives 8,000 to 10,000 pieces of counterterrorist information every day," Napolitano said. Napolitano said such "Big Data" problems need to be solved in an effort to secure everything from the country's networks to infrastructure. Intelligence is not just a matter of having information - it is also about what one does with that information, and how one figures out what it really means, she said. It is about discerning meaning and information from millions - billions - of data points. And when it comes to our security, this is one of our nation's most pressing science and engineering challenges, she said. "We therefore cannot overstate the need for software engineers and information systems designers. We need communications and data security experts. And we need this kind of talent working together to find new and faster ways to identify and separate relevant data. Then we need to organize the data in ways that analysts, agents, screeners, and guards can use, and we need to get it to them securely, and in real time," she said. http://www.networkworld.com/communit...-big-key-secur ![]() Physicists Develop Quantum Version of Public Key Encryption A Public Key Encryption system that can withstand quantum attack has been put forward by Japanese researchers kfc The fundamental problem of private communication is ensuring its security. That's always been a tricky task but in recent years, cryptographers have added a powerful new weapon to their armoury: quantum key distribution. With this tool, it is possible to use the bizarre properties of the quantum world to send a message in such a way that guarantees its security. The security of this system is a fact of nature. In the language of cryptography, quantum key distribution it is information-theoretically secure. Although this sounds perfect, it does have some drawbacks. One of them is that while it is useful for one to one communication, it's not so good for universal communication over a network. That's because everybody on the network has to swap a secret key with everybody else to ensure they can chat securely. And that introduces a significant communications overhead. In the 1970s, cryptographers came up with a way around this problem: so-called public key encryption. This is a form of encryption in which anybody can encrypt a message using a public key but only those with another private key can decrypt the message. This kind of asymmetry is possible because of certain mathematical functions that are easy to perform in one direction but hard to do in reverse. The most famous example is multiplication. It's easy to multiply two numbers together to get a third but hard to start with the third number and work out its factors. This type of encryption is not information-theoretically secure since it is always possible to work out the factors of any number. The security comes from making the number so big that it is impractical to factorise it in a reasonable time frame, such as the life time of the universe. This kind of encryption is called computationally secure. The problem with public key encryption schemes is that although classical computers cannot factorise big numbers quickly, quantum computers can. So as soon as the first decent-sized quantum computer is switched on, these kinds of systems will become insecure. Today, Akinori Kawachi at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and a few buddies suggest that all is not lost for public key encryption. These guys have discovered a quantum problem that is hard to solve in one direction but easy to do in reverse. And they say this asymmetry could form the basis of a new kind of quantum public key encryption system. Their system is based on the problem of distinguishing between two ensembles of quantum states. This is similar to the problem of determining whether two graphs are identical, ie whether they correspond vertex-for-vertex and edge-for-edge. A related problem, called the graph automorphism problem, is known to be hard even for a quantum computer and it is this that Kawachi and co base their system.. The thinking is that increasing the complexity of the graph can always make this problem practically impossible for a quantum computer to solve in a reasonable time. However, if the structure of some subset of the graph is known, the problem can be solved easily. So the trick is to keep this structure secret. This then serves as the private key for decoding messages, while the graph itself is made public for encoding the message. Kawachi and co say the quantum ensemble version of this problem could be used as the basis of public key cryptography which is computationally secure, even against attack from a quantum computer. But don't expect to see this any time soon. We'll need a quantum internet first. But also quantum cryptographers will need to convince themselves that it really is secure, that there isn't some overlooked mathematical trick that could suddenly make the problem tractable. That could take years, perhaps decades. In the meantime, it'll be a nail-biting wait for Kawachi and co. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog...531/?p1=Blogsl ![]() EMC Division RSA Warns of Security Breach RSA, the security division of Hopkinton-based EMC Corp., issued an “urgent message” to customers that its systems were hit by “an extremely sophisticated cyber attack.” The message from RSA Executive Chairman Arthur Coviello was posted this afternoon on the company’s Web site and disclosed by EMC in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “We took a variety of aggressive measures against the threat to protect our business and our customers, including further hardening of our IT infrastructure,” Coviello wrote. “We also immediately began an extensive investigation of the attack and are working closely with the appropriate authorities.” He added that the hack “resulted in certain information being extracted” from RSA’s systems, relating to the company’s SecurID “two-factor authentication” products, which businesses and governments use to protect sensitive data on their computer networks. “While at this time we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers, this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack,” Coviello said. “We are very actively communicating this situation to RSA customers and providing immediate steps for them to take to strengthen their SecurID implementations.” The company’s SecurID tokens display an ever-changing six-digit code that computer users must type to gain access to networks. EMC purchased Bedford-based RSA for $2.1 billion in 2006. EMC said in its regulatory filing that, based on what it “currently knows,” the situation is not expected to have a material impact on its financial results. http://www.bostonherald.com/business...curity_breach/ ![]() Obama Administration Calls for New Privacy Law Data privacy bill of rights needed to fend off online data collection Jaikumar Vijayan The Obama Administration is backing a new data privacy bill of rights aimed at protecting consumers against indiscriminate online tracking and data collection by advertisers. In testimony prepared for the Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation, the Commerce Department's assistant secretary, Lawrence Strickling, said that the White House wants Congress to enact legislation offering "baseline consumer data privacy protections." Such a bill is needed to protect personal data in situations not covered under current law, Strickling said, adding that any legislation should be based on a set of fair information practice principles and give the U.S. Federal Trade Commission enforcement authority. He also called for incentives to encourage the development of codes of conduct on privacy matters. Strickling said the administration's call for new online privacy protections stems from recommendations made by the Commerce Department in a paper released in December. Many of those in the industry who weighed in on the idea at the time backed the creation of a new online consumer privacy law, he said. The document was based on a comprehensive review of existing privacy protections and of ongoing data collection, consumer tracking and profiling practices online. The administration's support for privacy protections is very significant, said Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in privacy issues. "This is the first time since 1974 that the U.S. government has supported mandatory general privacy rules," Reidenberg said. The U.S. Data Privacy Act, passed in 1974, is a broad privacy rule originally meant to cover both the private sector and federal agencies. But it was tweaked at the last moment to apply only to government agencies, Reidenberg said. The administration's support is being driven by heightened concerns about rampant and uncontrolled online data collection practices now prevalent, he said. The fears "have finally coalesced into a significant enough concern among the public that the administration is responding. I think there is recognition that data has been such a fuel for economic activity but in a one-side way." All too often in recent years consumers have been unaware of how their information was being collected and used, he said. Some high-profile examples include Facebook's personal data collection practices and Google's problems over its Street View Wi-Fi snooping issue. "If Congress acts, I believe it will be a major advance for Americans' privacy," he said. Erica Newland, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, today said that the White House's support for a new privacy bill will help its passage in Congress. "This is incredibly significant that the White House has backed comprehensive privacy legislation," Newland said. The support signals the importance of the issue, she said. The fact that the Commerce Department is solidly behind the bill is also noteworthy because it highlights the broad industry support that appears to exist for a privacy bill. Any privacy law would need to be based on broadly accepted fair information practice principles, she said. The focus needs to be on data minimization, as well as notice and choice for consumers, with any new law remaining flexible enough to accommodate change, she added. http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...ew_privacy_law ![]() Foggy Thinking About the Right to Oblivion Peter Fleischer I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Switzerland working on Street View. And I treated myself to a weekend of skiing too. The weather wasn't great, we had a lot of mountain fog, but then, the entire privacy world seems to be sort of foggy these days. In privacy circles, everybody's talking about the Right to be Forgotten. The European Commission has even proposed that the "right to be forgotten" should be written into the up-coming revision of the Privacy Directive. Originally, a rather curious French "universal right" that doesn't even have a proper English-translation (right to be forgotten? right to oblivion? right to delete?), le Doit a l'Oubli, is going mainstream. But, what on earth is it? For most people, I think it's an attempt to give people the right to wash away digital muck, or delete the embarrassing stuff, or just start fresh. But unfortunately, it's more complicated than that. More and more, privacy is being used to justify censorship. In a sense, privacy depends on keeping some things private, in other words, hidden, restricted, or deleted. And in a world where ever more content is coming online, and where ever more content is find-able and share-able, it's also natural that the privacy counter-movement is gathering strength. Privacy is the new black in censorship fashions. It used to be that people would invoke libel or defamation to justify censorship about things that hurt their reputations. But invoking libel or defamation requires that the speech not be true. Privacy is far more elastic, because privacy claims can be made on speech that is true. Privacy as a justification for censorship now crops up in several different, but related, debates: le droit a l'oubli, the idea that content (especially user-generated content on social networking services) should auto-expire, the idea that data collection by companies should not be retained for longer than necessary, the idea that computers should be programmed to "forget" just like the human brain. All these are movements to censor content in the name of privacy. If there weren't serious issues on both sides of the debate, we wouldn't even be talking about this. Most conversations about the right to oblivion mix all this stuff up. I can't imagine how to have a meaningful conversation (much less write a law) about the Right to be Oblivion without some framework to dis-entangle completely unrelated concepts, with completely unrelated implications. Here's my simple attempt to remember the different concepts some people want to forget. 1) If I post something online, should I have the right to delete it again? I think most of us agree with this, as the simplest, least controversial case. If I post a photo to my album, I should then later be able to delete it, if I have second-thoughts about it. Virtually all online services already offer this, so it's unproblematic, and this is the crux of what the French government sponsored in its recent Charter on the Droit a l'Oubli. But there's a big disconnect between a user's deleting content from his/her own site, and whether the user can in fact delete it from the Internet (which is what users usually want to do), more below. 2) If I post something, and someone else copies it and re-posts it on their own site, do I have the right to delete it? This is the classic real-world case. For example, let's say I regret having posted that picture of myself covered in mud, and after posting it on my own site, and then later deleting it, I discover someone else has copied it and re-posted it on their own site. Clearly, I should be able to ask the person who re-posted my picture to take it down. But if they refuse, or just don't respond, or are not find-able, what can do I do? I can pursue judicial procedures, but those are expensive and time-consuming. I can go directly to the platform hosting the content, and if the content violates their terms of service or obviously violates the law, I can ask them to take it down. But practically, if I ask a platform to delete a picture of me from someone else's album, without the album owner's consent, and only based on my request, it puts the platform in the very difficult or impossible position of arbitrating between my privacy claim and the album owner's freedom of expression. It's also debatable whether, as a public policy matter, we want to have platforms arbitrate such dilemmas. Perhaps this is best resolved by allowing each platform to define its own policies on this, since they could legitimately go either way. 3) If someone else posts something about me, should I have a right to delete it? Virtually all of us would agree that this raises difficult issues of conflict between freedom of expression and privacy. Traditional law has mechanisms, like defamation and libel law, to allow a person to seek redress against someone who publishes untrue information about him. Granted, the mechanisms are time-consuming and expensive, but the legal standards are long-standing and fairly clear. But a privacy claim is not based on untruth. I cannot see how such a right could be introduced without severely infringing on freedom of speech. This is why I think privacy is the new black in censorship fashion. 4) The Internet platforms that are used to host and transmit information all collect traces, some of which are PII, or partially PII. Should such platforms be under an obligation to delete or anonymize those traces after a certain period of time? and if so, after how long? and for what reasons can such traces be retained and processed? This is a much-debated topic, e.g., the cookies debate, or the logs debate, the data retention debate, all of which are also part of the Droit a l'Oubli debate, but they completely different than the categories above, since they focus on the platform's traffic data, rather than the user's content. I think existing law deals with this well, if ambiguously, by permitting such retention "as long as necessary" for "legitimate purposes". Hyper-specific regulation just doesn't work, since the cases are simply too varied. 5) Should the Internet just learn to "forget"? Quite apart from the topics above, should content on the Internet just auto-expire? e.g., should all user posts to social networking be programmed to auto-expire? Or alternatively, to give users the right to use auto-expire settings? Philosophically, I'm in favor of giving users power over their own data, but not over someone else's data. I'd love to see a credible technical framework for auto-delete tools, but I've heard a lot of technical problems with realizing them. Engineers describe most auto-delete functionalities as 80% solutions, meaning that they never work completely. Just for the sake of debate, on one extreme, government-mandated auto-expire laws would be as sensible as burning down a library every 5 years. Even if auto-expire tools existed, they would do nothing to prevent the usual privacy problems when someone copies content from one site (with the auto-expire tool) and moves it to another (without the auto-expire function). So, in the real world, I suspect that an auto-expire functionality (regardless of whether it was optional or mandatory) would provide little real-world practical privacy protections for users, but it would result in the lose of vast amounts of data and all the benefits that data can hold. 6) Should the Internet be re-wired to be more like the human brain? This seems to be a popular theme on the privacy talk circuit. I guess this means the Internet should have gradations between memory, and sort of hazy memories, and forgetting. Well, computers don't work that way. This part of the debate is sociological and psychological, but I don't see a place for it in the world of computers. Human brains also adapt to new realities, rather well, in fact, and human brains can forget or ignore content, if the content itself continues to exist in cyberspace. 7) Who should decide what should be remembered or forgotten? For example, if German courts decide German murderers should be able to delete all references to their convictions after a certain period of time, would this German standard apply to the Web? Would it apply only to content that was new on the Web, or also to historical archives? and if it only applied to Germany, or say the .de domain, would it have any practical impact at all, since the same content would continue to exist and be findable by anyone from anywhere? Or to make it more personal, the web is littered with references to my criminal conviction in Italy, but I respect the right of journalists and others to write about it, with no illusion that I should I have a "right" to delete all references to it at some point in the future. But all of my empathy for wanting to let people edit-out some of the bad things of their past doesn't change my conviction that history should be remembered, not forgotten, even if it's painful. Culture is memory. 8) Sometimes people aren't trying to delete content, they're just trying to make it harder to find. This motivates various initiatives against search engines, for example, to delete links to legitmate web content, like newspaper articles. This isn't strictly speaking "droit a l'oubli", but it's a sort of end-run around it, by trying to make some content un-findable rather than deleted. This will surely generate legal challenges and counter-challenges before this debate is resolved. Next time you hear someone talk about the Right to be Oblivion, ask them what exactly they mean. Foggy thinking won't get us anywhere. http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2...-oblivion.html ![]() We May Not Have a 'Right to Be Forgotten' Online Ron Miller As the amount of information we share online grows along with the data that gets collected -- with or without our permission -- there is a growing call for more online privacy protection, both in the US and Europe. But the European movement is going far beyond the notion of "Do Not Follow" and is pursuing the "right to be forgotten." What this boils down to is that you can erase your Internet tracks forever. While such a notion might sound attractive on some level, the implications of erasing the historical record could have serious unintended consequences. It's a complex idea that you might either accept or reject immediately, depending on your take. Peter Fleischer, who happens to be Google's Privacy Counsel in Europe, wrote a fascinating post about this the other day (making it clear he was not representing Google in this instance). For Fleischer, anyone who has considered codifying such a right into law hasn't thought through the implications. He writes: "Privacy is far more elastic [than defamation claims, which require proof that statements are not true], because privacy claims can be made on speech that is true." To be honest, as a journalist, that's a notion I find chilling. Imagine that Richard Nixon’s heirs decided he had a right to remove all references to his role in Watergate from the Internet because Nixon had a right to be forgotten. Imagine that people who had committed war crimes decided this. Where do you draw the line -- at pedophiles? Murderers? In fact, France has introduced legislation called "un chartier sur le droit a l'oubli" (a charter on the right to be forgotten -- note this post is in French). What's more, in a case in Spain last year, a Spanish court asked Google to remove specific data on a person, effectively altering the record on this individual's actions. Yet there are instances where you wonder if a person should have certain information be forgotten. How many of us want our youthful indiscretions held against us for all time? Consider a teen arrested for a petty crime like shoplifting. Should that appear in Google forever, long after the individual paid whatever debt was required by law? Should every drunken college party come back to haunt every one of us forever? Let's say for the sake of argument, however, that you agree that some data should be erased. It's not that simple to remove data on the Internet once it's out there. If you've ever tried to remove something, you know what I'm talking about. Last year, a friend wrote a post on her blog criticizing actress Angelina Jolie. It seemed innocuous enough, but she was soon under attack from rabid Jolie fans who felt the need to defend Jolie by verbally assaulting the writer. My friend grew so upset by the tone of the comments that she made the decision to remove the post from her blog. She soon discovered that it was next to impossible to delete all traces of it, however, because it showed up in Google's cache in spite of not appearing anymore on her blog. It's also entirely possible that people copied the contents and emailed it to one another, or that a Jolie fan posted large chunks of the post (or even the entire thing) on a fan blog. Eventually, my friend relented and put the post back up and just ignored the comments. But it's an object lesson in just how difficult it is to really delete anything on the Internet. People with or without permission copy your content to other sites. There's really no way to remove every trace of anyone on the Internet, even if there were a law in place requiring it. But whether you can delete the content is not really the point. The real question is: Should you? And if you do, does this amount to censorship? I tend to come down on the side of letting the record stand (unless that record is actually wrong). There are no easy answers, but simply saying that a person has a right to be removed from databases strikes me as a naïve notion at best, and given the implications for historical accuracy and free speech in general, I'm inclined to let the Internet be, warts and all. http://www.internetevolution.com/aut...doc_id=204757& ![]() SXSW 2011: The Internet is Over Oliver Burkeman went to Texas to the South by Southwest festival of film, music and technology, in search of the next big idea. After three days he found it: the boundary between 'real life' and 'online' has disappeared The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas A smartphone scan code at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Elliot Smith for the Guardian If my grandchildren ever ask me where I was when I realised the internet was over – they won't, of course, because they'll be too busy playing with the teleportation console – I'll be able to be quite specific: I was in a Mexican restaurant opposite a cemetery in Austin, Texas, halfway through eating a taco. It was the end of day two of South by Southwest Interactive, the world's highest-profile gathering of geeks and the venture capitalists who love them, and I'd been pursuing a policy of asking those I met, perhaps a little too aggressively, what it was exactly that they did. What is "user experience", really? What the hell is "the gamification of healthcare"? Or "geofencing"? Or "design thinking"? Or "open source government"? What is "content strategy"? No, I mean, like, specifically? The content strategist across the table took a sip of his orange-coloured cocktail. He looked slightly exasperated. "Well, from one perspective, I guess," he said, "it's kind of everything." This, for outsiders, is the fundamental obstacle to understanding where technology culture is heading: increasingly, it's about everything. The vaguely intimidating twentysomethings who prowl the corridors of the Austin Convention Centre, juggling coffee cups, iPad 2s and the festival's 330-page schedule of events, are no longer content with transforming that part of your life you spend at your computer, or even on your smartphone. This is not just grandiosity on their part. Rather – and this is a technological point, but also a philosophical one – they herald the final disappearance of the boundary between "life online" and "real life", between the physical and the virtual. It thus requires only a small (and hopefully permissible) amount of journalistic hyperbole to suggest that the days of "the internet" as an identifiably separate thing may be behind us. After a few hours at South by Southwest (SXSW), the 330-page programme in my bag started triggering shoulder aches, but to be honest it was a marvel of brevity: after all, the festival was pretty much about everything. We've been hearing about this moment in digital history since at least 1988, when the Xerox technologist Mark Weiser coined the term "ubiquitous computing", referring to the point at which devices and systems would become so numerous and pervasive that "technology recedes into the background of our lives". (To be fair, Weiser also called this "the age of calm technology", implying a serenity that the caffeinated, Twitter-distracted masses in Austin this week didn't seem yet to have attained.) And it's almost a decade since annoying tech-marketing types started using "mobile" as an abstract noun, referring to the end of computing as a desktop-only affair. But the arrival of the truly ubiquitous internet is something new, with implications both thrilling and sinister – and it has a way of rendering many of the questions we've been asking about technology in recent years almost meaningless. Did social media cause the recent Arab uprisings? Is the web distracting us from living? Are online friendships as rich as those offline? When the lines between reality and virtuality dissolve, both sides of such debates are left looking oddly anachronistic. Here, then, is a short tour of where we might be headed instead: Web 3.0 "Big ideas are like locomotives," says Tim O'Reilly, a computer book publisher legendary among geeks, embarking on one of the grand metaphors to which the headline speakers at SXSW seem invariably prone. "They pull a train, and the train's gotta be going somewhere lots of people want to go." The big idea O'Reilly is touting is "sensor-driven collective intelligence", but since he coined the term "Web 2.0", he seems resigned to people labelling this new phase "Web 3.0". If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realised – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they're doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like, when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed. You're still creating the web, but without the conscious need to do so. "Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications," O'Reilly has written. "Motion and location sensors tell where we are, what we're looking at, and how fast we're moving . . . Increasingly, the web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an 'information shadow', an aura of data, which when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mindbending implications." Alarming ones, too, of course, if you don't know exactly what's being shared with whom. Walking past a bank of plasma screens in Austin that were sputtering out tweets from the festival, I saw the claim from Marissa Mayer, a Google vice-president, that credit card companies can predict with 98% accuracy, two years in advance, when a couple is going to divorce, based on spending patterns alone. She meant this to be reassuring: Google, she explained, didn't engage in such covert data-mining. (Deep inside, I admit, I wasn't reassured. But then Mayer probably already knew that.) The game layer Depending on your degree of immersion in the digital world, it's possible that you've never heard the term "gamification" or that you're already profoundly sick of it. From a linguistic point of view, the word should probably be outlawed – perhaps we could ban "webinar" at the same time? – but as a concept it was everywhere in Austin. Videogame designers, the logic goes, have become the modern world's leading experts on how to keep users excited, engaged and committed: the success of the games industry proves that, whatever your personal opinion of Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft. So why not apply that expertise to all those areas of life where we could use more engagement, commitment and fun: in education, say, or in civic life, or in hospitals? Three billion person-hours a week are spent gaming. Couldn't some of that energy be productively harnessed? This sounds plausible until you start to demand details, whereupon it becomes extraordinarily hard to grasp what this might actually mean. The current public face of gamification is Jane McGonigal, author of the new book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change The World, but many of her prescriptions are cringe-inducing: they seem to involve redefining aid projects in Africa as "superhero missions", or telling hospital patients to think of their recovery from illness as a "multiplayer game". Hearing how McGonigal speeded her recovery from a serious head injury by inventing a "superhero-themed game" called SuperBetter, based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which her family and friends were players helping her back to health, I'm apparently supposed to feel inspired. Instead I feel embarrassed and a little sad: if I'm ever in that situation, I hope I won't need to invent a game to persuade my family to care. A different reaction results from watching a manic presentation by Seth Priebatsch, the 22-year-old Princeton dropout who is this year's leading victim of what the New York Times has labelled "Next Zuckerberg Syndrome", the quest to identify and invest in tomorrow's equivalent of the billionaire Facebook founder. Priebatsch's declared aim is to "build a game layer on top of the world" – which at first seems simply to mean that we should all use SCVNGR, his location-based gaming platform that allows users to compete to win rewards at restaurants, bars and cinemas on their smartphones. (You can practically hear the marketers in the room start to salivate when he mentions this.) But Priebatsch's ideas run deeper than that, whatever the impression conveyed by his bright orange polo shirt, his bright orange-framed sunglasses, and his tendency to bounce around the stage like a wind-up children's toy. His take on the education system, for example, is that it is a badly designed game: students compete for good grades, but lose motivation when they fail. A good game, by contrast, never makes you feel like you've failed: you just progress more slowly. Instead of giving bad students an F, why not start all pupils with zero points and have them strive for the high score? This kind of insight isn't unique to the world of videogames: these are basic insights into human psychology and the role of incentives, recently repopularised in books such as Freakonomics and Nudge. But that fact, in itself, may be a symptom of the vanishing distinction between online and off – and it certainly doesn't make it wrong. The dictator's dilemma Not long ago, according to the new-media guru Clay Shirky, the Sudanese government set up a Facebook page calling for a protest against the Sudanese government, naming a specific time and place – then simply arrested those who showed up. It was proof, Shirky argues, that social media can't be revolutionary on its own. "The reason that worked is that nobody knew anybody else," he says. "They thought Facebook itself was trustworthy." This is one of many counterintuitive impacts that the internet has wrought on the politics of protest. But perhaps the most powerful is the one that Shirky – himself a prominent evangelist for the democratic power of services such as Twitter and Facebook – labels "the dictator's dilemma". Authoritarian leaders and protesters alike can exploit the power of the internet, Shirky concedes. (At least he notes the risks: in another session at the conference, I watch dumbstruck as a consultant on cyber-crimefighting speaks with undisguised joy about how much information the police could glean from Facebook, in order to infiltrate communities where criminals might lurk. Asked about privacy concerns, she replies: "Yeah – we'll have to keep an eye on that.") But there's a crucial asymmetry, Shirky goes on. The internet is now such a pervasive part of so many people's lives that blocking certain sites, or simply turning the whole thing off – as leaders in Bahrain, Egypt and elsewhere have recently tried to do – can backfire completely, angering protesters further and, from a dictator's point of view, making matters worse. "The end state of connectivity," he argues, "is that it provides citizens with increased power." The road to that end state won't be smooth. But the compensatory efforts of the authorities to harness the internet for their own ends will never fully compensate. Either they must allow dissenters to organise online, or – by cutting off a resource that's crucial to their daily lives – provoke them to greater fury. Biomimicry comes of age The search engine AskNature describes itself as "the world's first digital library of Nature's solutions", and to visit it is to experience the curious, rather disorienting sensation of Googling the physical universe. Ask it some basic question – how to keep warm, say, or float in water, or walk on unstable ground – and it will search its library for solutions to the problem that nature has already found. The idea of "biomimicry" is certainly not new: for much of the past decade, the notion of borrowing engineering solutions from the natural world has inspired architects, industrial designers and others. Austin is abuzz with examples. "Nissan, right now, is developing swarming cars based on the movements of schooling fish," says Chris Allen of the Biomimicry Institute. Fish follow ultra-simple mathematical rules, he explains, to ensure that they never collide with each other when swimming in groups. Borrow that algorithm for navigating cars and a new solution to congestion and road accidents presents itself: what if, in heavy traffic, auto-navigated cars could be programmed to avoid each other while continuing forwards as efficiently as possible? The Bank of England, he adds, is currently consulting biologists to explore ways in which organic immune systems might inspire reforms to the financial system to render it immune to devastating crises. "And what we're looking for now," Allen says cryptically, "is an interactive technology inspired by snakes." 'We are meant to pulse' Until recently, the debate over "digital distraction" has been one of vested interests: authors nostalgic for the days of quiet book-reading have bemoaned it, while technology zealots have dismissed it. But the fusion of the virtual world with the real one exposes both sides of this argument as insufficient, and suggests a simpler answer: the internet is distracting if it stops you from doing what you really want to be doing; if it doesn't, it isn't. Similarly, warnings about "internet addiction" used to sound like grandparental cautions against the evils of rock music; scoffing at the very notion was a point of pride for those who identified themselves with the future. But you can develop a problematic addiction to anything: there's no reason to exclude the internet, and many real geeks in Austin (as opposed to the new-media gurus who claim to speak for them) readily concede they know sufferers. One of the most popular talks at the conference, touching on these subjects, bore the title Why Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy. A related danger of the merging of online and offline life, says business thinker Tony Schwartz, is that we come to treat ourselves, in subtle ways, like computers. We drive ourselves to cope with ever-increasing workloads by working longer hours, sucking down coffee and spurning recuperation. But "we were not meant to operate as computers do," Schwartz says. "We are meant to pulse." When it comes to managing our own energy, he insists, we must replace a linear perspective with a cyclical one: "We live by the myth that the best way to get more work done is to work longer hours." Schwartz cites research suggesting that we should work in periods of no greater than 90 minutes before seeking rest. Whatever you might have been led to imagine by the seeping of digital culture into every aspect of daily life – and at times this week in Austin it was easy to forget this – you are not, ultimately, a computer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...nternet-online ![]() Jury: Blogger Johnny Northside Must Pay $60,000 to Fired Community Leader Jurors said "Johnny Northside" intentionally interfered with man's job at U of M. Abby Simons Though blogger John (Johnny Northside) Hoff told the truth when he linked ex-community leader Jerry Moore to a high-profile mortgage fraud, the scathing blog post that got Moore fired justifies $60,000 in damages, a Hennepin County jury decided Friday. The jury awarded Moore $35,000 for lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress. The civil verdict culminated a nearly two-year legal scuffle between John Hoff, whose blog, The Adventures of Johnny Northside, has 300 to 500 readers daily, and Moore, former director of the Jordan Area Community Council. Moore was fired by the University of Minnesota in June 2009, the day after Hoff's post. North Minneapolis politicians and personalities, many of whom took the stand, watched the trial closely. So did First Amendment scholars and free-speech advocates who were concerned about the suit's effect on "citizen journalism." Jane Kirtley, a U of M professor of media law and ethics, called the lawsuit an example of "trash torts," in which someone unable to sue for libel, which by definition involves falsity, reaches for another legal claim. She predicted the verdict will be overturned. "This is based on expression, and expression enjoys First Amendment protection," Kirtley said. Just last week, she said, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected the Westboro Baptist Church's antigay protests at military funerals. "I find it really hard to believe that there was a degree of emotional distress caused by this reporting that outstrips that suffered by [a Marine's] family," Kirtley said. The verdict also surprised U of M law professor William McGeveran, but he wasn't so certain that it will be easily overturned. Appeals courts tend to give a lot of credence to jury verdicts, he said. Hoff, Moore and their attorneys weren't present when the seven-member jury presented its verdict. Jurors declined to comment afterward. Hoff's girlfriend, Megan Goodmundson, said he very likely will appeal. Hoff did not respond to requests for comment. His attorney, Paul Godfread, said he could not comment until he spoke with his client. Moore could not be reached, and his attorney, Jill Clark, did not respond to requests for an interview. Moore sued Hoff in June 2009 for at least $50,000. The suit focused on five allegedly biased and defamatory statements on Hoff's blog. Moore's attorney argued that Hoff should be responsible for comments others made on his website because Hoff had created a "defamation zone." Moore, after being fired by the Jordan Area Community Council in January 2009, was hired at the U of M's Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center to study mortgage foreclosures. When Hoff found out, he wrote a post accusing Moore of being involved in a "high-profile fraudulent mortgage," one of several that resulted in a 16-year prison sentence for former real estate agent Larry Maxwell. Moore was not charged in the Maxwell case. Hoff said he told the truth and had documentation. District Judge Denise Reilly threw out four of the five statements, saying they were either opinion or the comments of others on the blog. With respect to the remaining statement, the jury agreed with Clark's claim that Hoff had committed "tortious interference" by meddling with Moore's employment. Clark pointed out to the jury that Hoff, in a later blog post, took partial credit for Moore's firing. Don Allen was originally named as a co-defendant because he sent a letter to the U of M urging Moore's termination, then copied the letter to Hoff's blog. Before the case went to trial, he settled with Moore and testified against Hoff. Allen, who operates his own blog, "The Independent Business News Network," applauded the verdict. "It's unfortunate for all bloggers, but you have to have some sense of responsibility," he said. "You have to attack the issues, not the individuals." Fifth Ward City Council Member Don Samuels said he was surprised by the verdict and disappointed. Hoff was accused of being Samuels' mouthpiece, and the council member testified during the trial. Samuels said he hoped the verdict wouldn't discourage Hoff or others from trying, through blogging, to improve life on the North Side. "People have these pent-up frustrations, and they want the world to know what they're experiencing," Samuels said. "There's a sense that if everyone knew what was happening, things would change." http://www.startribune.com/local/117805398.html ![]() U.C.L.A. Student’s Video Rant Against Asians Fuels Firestorm Ian Lovett When Alexandra Wallace recorded her rant about Asian students using cellphones in the library at the University of California, Los Angeles, she was alone, speaking to her computer. But since she posted the three-minute video to YouTube, Ms. Wallace, a third-year political science student at U.C.L.A., has achieved a sudden, unwelcome celebrity: her video has been viewed by millions of people, and she has become the subject of nationwide condemnation and the catalyst of a debate about racial intolerance and free speech. “Please expel this ignorant woman immediately,” Kiki Gyrle wrote on Facebook, where there are many posts about Ms. Wallace, some too profane to print. “Tolerating such discourse of hate and racism is now being construed as policy to condone such tirades.” In the video, Ms. Wallace complains about Asian students in the school library using their cellphones to call family members after the tsunami in Japan. At one point, she mimics people speaking an Asian language. “The problem is these hordes of Asian people that U.C.L.A. accepts into our school every single year, which is fine,” Ms. Wallace said in the video. “But if you’re going to come to U.C.L.A., then use American manners.” Robert Hernandez, a professor of Internet journalism at the University of Southern California, said Ms. Wallace’s story served as a reminder of the need to be aware of your “digital footprint” in the Internet age. “People feel a false sense of privacy on the Internet that isn’t there,” he said. Ms. Wallace has removed her video from YouTube, and issued an apology to the U.C.L.A. student newspaper. She could not be reached for comment. Still, others have reposted the video online, along with parodies, remixes and responses, and diatribes against Ms. Wallace have continued. She has also received threats by phone and e-mail. On Monday, U.C.L.A.’s chancellor, Gene Block, released a statement that deemed the video “thoughtless and hurtful” and called for a more civil discourse. Officials said the university was looking into possible disciplinary action against Ms. Wallace. Mr. Block’s Facebook page has become a hotbed of comments about the video, some attacking Ms. Wallace and Mr. Block. “While in front of the computer, it’s easier to make comments or threats anonymously,” Professor Hernandez said. “And people fall into the same kind of behavior they’re condemning.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/us/16ucla.html ![]() When the Marketing Reach of Social Media Backfires Stuart Elliott SOCIAL media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been embraced by Madison Avenue as effective new ways to reach consumers. But what happens when behavior on social media is deemed antisocial? Two large marketers, Aflac and the Chrysler Group, are struggling to answer that uncomfortable question in the wake of incidents that took place within days of each other. The incidents, involving remarks on Twitter that were judged to be tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive, point out some inherent risks of social media. One challenge is the “amplified effect” of social media, said Ian Schafer, chief executive at Deep Focus, a digital agency in New York, citing how, on Twitter, “you put something out and it can be retweeted thousands of times.” “It’s an age when anybody can communicate to an audience,” he added. “It didn’t used to be that way.” The relative newness of that phenomenon, said George E. Belch, a marketing professor at San Diego State University, means “there are people in your company who forget when they post on a blog, on Twitter, on a Facebook page, that it’s out there — and it’s out there at warp speed.” Another risk with social media is how many users vie to be first with what they consider clever comments on news stories and other subjects their friends and families care about. “I’m concerned,” said Daniel Khabie, chief executive at Digitaria in San Diego, an agency that is part of the JWT division of WPP. “I think you should think before you speak, and you should think before you tweet.” “We, as people, have a social responsibility,” he added. “What you say in social media shouldn’t be just a chain of thoughts.” Brands need to “establish a social media policy,” Mr. Khabie said, because without such precautions, “we’re giving people loaded guns to do incredible harm.” The first incident began last Wednesday, when an employee of New Media Strategies, an agency handling the Twitter account for the Chrysler brand that is aimed at consumers (@ChryslerAutos), posted a comment there that read, “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to drive.” Between “to” and “drive” was a vulgarity. • The comment was deleted, the agency dismissed the employee and Pete Snyder, chief executive at New Media Strategies, wrote in a post on the company’s blog that the agency “regrets this unfortunate incident.” On Thursday, Chrysler said it would not renew the agency’s contract. In a post on a corporate blog, Ed Garsten, a spokesman for Chrysler, cited a new advertising campaign for the Chrysler brand, which carries the theme “Imported from Detroit,” as a reason. “This company is committed to promoting Detroit and its hard-working people,” Mr. Garsten wrote, adding: “Inside Detroit, citizens are becoming even more proud of their town, and outside the region, perception of Detroit is rapidly improving. With so much good will built up over a very short time, we can’t afford to backslide now and jeopardize this progress.” Professor Belch said he believed that “we’re going to see more of this” because “I don’t think people can always turn off their personal lives and say, ‘I’m crossing over to corporate brand communications now.’ ” The Aflac incident began on Saturday, when Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian who supplies the voice for the squawking duck character in most Aflac commercials, started to post at least 10 jokes to his personal Twitter feed (@RealGilbert) about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan — a market that accounts for 75 percent of Aflac’s revenue. By Monday, Mr. Gottfried had been dismissed, effective immediately. “Gilbert’s recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac,” Michael Zuna, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Aflac, said in a statement. “Aflac Japan — and, by extension, Japan itself — is part of the Aflac family,” he added, “and there is no place for anything but compassion and concern during these difficult times.” The Kaplan Thaler Group in New York, an agency owned by the Publicis Groupe that creates ads for Aflac, and also created the duck character, referred inquiries about Mr. Gottfried to Aflac. Laura Kane, a vice president at Aflac, said on Tuesday the company had stopped running television commercials using the voice of Mr. Gottfried, including one that had been introduced only last week. “We are re-voicing them temporarily,” she added, as the company makes plans for “a nationwide casting call to find a new voice for the duck.” Aflac invoked a morals clause in Mr. Gottfried’s contract in dismissing him, Ms. Kane said. The jokes can no longer be found on Mr. Gottfried’s Twitter account. He posted two comments there on Tuesday. In the first, he wrote, “I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy in Japan.” The second comment read: “I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families.” • In considering the Aflac and Chrysler incidents, John Diefenbach, chairman at MBLM in New York, an agency that specializes in tasks like brand strategy, said: “I come down in favor of the company. They took the action they needed to take.” “The liberties that have been created by the Internet, by social media” must be balanced against “the idea that there’s an accountability and a responsibility if you’re being paid by someone to do a job,” Mr. Diefenbach said. Craig Macdonald, chief marketing officer at Covario in San Diego, an agency for search advertising and social media advertising, said he would recommend that marketers pursue a strategy of “controlled chaos” in social media. “Offer employees some sort of certification course and tell them, ‘We’ll tolerate some negativity and dumb stuff, and we’ll course-correct as we go along,’ ” Mr. Macdonald said. “Then monitor what they say, course correct — and do better next time.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/b...ia/16adco.html ![]() Gilbert Gottfried Fired Over Japan Jokes on Twitter Jolie O'Dell Comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been sacked by employer Aflac, for whom he was a spokesperson, for making at least two jokes about the recent tragic events in Japan. Gottfried, whose voice served as that of the Aflac duck, isn’t known for either tact or good timing; he famously made a 9/11 joke just three weeks after 9/11 happened. And the comedian’s Twitter stream is replete with jokes that some might describe as tasteless or insensitive. In fact, this type of humor is so much a part of Gottfried’s persona that we wonder exactly what Aflac expected might happen in a situation like this. The offending tweets have been deleted from Gottfried’s Twitter account, but they included the following one-liners: • “Japan called me. They said ‘maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they’re all sinking.’” • “I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said ‘is there a school in this area.’ She said ‘not now, but just wait.’” Although the jokes were deleted, Gottfried followed them up with the statement, “I was born without a censor button. My mouth and now e-mail will continue to get me into trouble.” We’ve been covering the situation in Japan since the tsunami began destroying both lives and property, and we are strongly interested in promoting the safety and recovery of the Japanese people and state. There is no question that Gilbert Gottfried’s statements on Twitter were deeply insensitive — but then again, Gottfried’s humor has never centered around the delicate treatment of controversial subjects. If Aflac, which is the top foreign insurance company in Japan and which gets 75% of its revenue from that market, was concerned about courtesy in public communication, it probably should not have hired Gottfried as a spokesperson in the first place. http://mashable.com/2011/03/15/gilbe...japan-twitter/ ![]() U.S. Military Blocks Websites to Help Japan Recovery Efforts Mark Preston and Adam Levine * YouTube, ESPN, eBay among popular websites blocked on military computers * Effort is intended to free up bandwidth for use in helping Japan * Blockage is temporary and subject to change, Strategic Command says The U.S. military has blocked access to a range of popular commercial websites in order to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command. The sites -- including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV -- were chosen not because of the content but because their popularity among users of military computers account for significant bandwidth, according to Strategic Command spokesman Rodney Ellison. The block, instituted Monday, is intended "to make sure bandwidth was available in Japan for military operations" as the United States helps in the aftermath of last week's deadly earthquake and tsunami, Ellison explained. U.S. Pacific Command made the request to free up the bandwidth. The sites, 13 in all, are blocked across the Department of Defense's .mil computer system. "This is a response to a time of extreme demand for networks," Ellison said. Ellison emphasized that it was a temporary measure. "This blockage will be of a temporary nature and may increase or decrease in the size and scope as necessary," according to the message distributed to military announcing the move. "We are doing this to facilitate the recovery efforts under way in Japan," Ellison explained. "We are trying to make sure we are giving them as many avenues and as much support as we can." The blocked websites are: * Youtube.com * Googlevideo.com * Amazon.com * ESPN.go.com * eBay.com * Doubleclick.com * Eyewonder.com * Pandora.com * streamtheworld.com * Mtv.com * Ifilm.com * Myspace.com * Metacafe.com http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/15/us....tes/index.html ![]() Japan Quake James Cowie Today's 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan has had surprisingly limited impacts on the structure and routing dynamics of the regional Internet. Of roughly 6,000 Japanese network prefixes in the global routing table, only about 100 were temporarily withdrawn from service — and that number has actually decreased in the hours since the event. Other carriers around the region have reported congestion and drops in traffic due to follow-on effects of the quake, but most websites are up and operational, and the Internet is available to support critical communications. Those who have been following our blogs on Libya will be familiar with the excellent Google Transparency Report, which summarizes the rate of queries coming from each country over time. Despite terrible fires, floods, and power outages, traffic from Japanese clients just keeps going. It's quite a remarkable plot. Why have we not seen more impact on international Internet traffic from this incredibly devastating quake? We don't know yet, but we'll keep studying the situation. Compared to the 2006 Taiwan earthquake, which resulted in a larger number of major cable breaks, it appears that the majority of the region's submarine cables have escaped the worst damage, and diverse capacity remains to carry traffic around the points of damage. The primary effects seen during the hours after the quake seem to have been related to breaks in 2 segments of Pacnet's EAC cable system. The plot at right shows prompt increases in unreachable networks in Japan and the Philippines, with follow-on events several hours later in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Various Philippine companies (BellTel, Eastern Telecoms, and Bayan) experienced outages that correlated in time with the initial Japan and subsequent Hong Kong events, suggesting common routing on the affected cable. But again, it's important to note that these are very small numbers of affected networks, relative to the total Internet presence of these countries. Since the initial event, the Pacific Crossing system has also gone down. Based on experience from the Taiwan quake, it's possible that lingering damage to fibers, repeaters, and landing station equipment may continue to generate new problems over the coming days and weeks, even in cable systems that survived the initial event. Still, it's clear that Internet connectivity has survived this event better than anyone would have expected. The engineers who built Japan's Internet created a dense web of domestic and international connectivity that is among the richest and most diverse on earth, as befits a critical gateway for global connectivity in and out of East Asia. At this point, it looks like their work may have allowed the Internet to do what it does best: route around catastrophic damage and keep the packets flowing, despite terrible chaos and uncertainty. http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/03/japan-quake.shtml ![]() In Japan, Many Undersea Cables Are Damaged Om Malik The horrific earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Japan have caused widespread damage to undersea communications, according to data collected by telecom industry sources. Initially, it was thought that the damage to the cables that connect Japan and Asia to each other and other parts of the world was limited, but new data shows the extent of the problems. According to research firm, Telegeography, the following cables have been damaged: * APCN-2, which is an intra-Asian cable, forms a ring linking China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. * Pacific Crossing West and Pacific Crossing North, which are out of service. * PacNet has reported outages on segments of its East Asia Crossing network. * Korea Telecom reports that a segment of the Japan-U.S. Cable Network is damaged * NTT has reported damage to some segments of the PC-1 submarine cable system. Most of the damaged network routers land in the Ajigaura or Kitabaraki landing stations, which are between Tokyo and Sendai (see map.) The tsunami and earthquake have not damaged Japan’s cable landing stations that are in the South of Tokyo, or on other side of the sheltered inlet that becomes Tokyo Bay, Telegeography said. “We’re not aware of disruptions to any of the many cables that land here,” Stephan Beckart of Telegeography wrote in an email. “All of the cable systems that have reported outages also operate cables that land to the South of Tokyo, so no system appears to have suffered a complete outage. A report from Dow Jones Newswires suggests most companies are working hard to fix the network problems. The Dow Jones report has the following additional details: * KDDI says its cable between the U.S. and Japan is broken and it cannot transmit signals. * NTT is using back-up cable systems. * PCCW says the Internet traffic to the U.S. is slow. In a story on Friday, Stacey Higginbotham pointed out that Chunghwa of Taiwan had reported an outage on the APCN-2 system, while China Unicom had reported some unspecified damage to “two or three cables.” There is clear decline in Japan’s Internet performance, according to the data from JPNAP. http://gigaom.com/broadband/in-japan...s-are-damaged/ ![]() Savvy Techies are Finding Ways to Circumvent Politically Motivated Shutdowns of the Internet WITH a tin can, some copper wire and a few dollars’ worth of nuts, bolts and other hardware, a do-it-yourselfer can build a makeshift directional antenna. A mobile phone, souped-up with such an antenna, can talk to a network tower that is dozens of kilometres beyond its normal range (about 5km, or 3 miles). As Gregory Rehm, the author of an online assembly guide for such things, puts it, homemade antennae are “as cool as the other side of the pillow on a hot night”. Of late, however, such antennae have proved much more than simply cool. According to Jeff Moss, a communications adviser to America’s Department of Homeland Security, their existence has recently been valuable to the operation of several groups of revolutionaries in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. To get round government shutdowns of internet and mobile-phone networks, resourceful dissidents have used such makeshift antennae to link their computers and handsets to more orthodox transmission equipment in neighbouring countries. Technologies that transmit data under the noses of repressive authorities in this way are spreading like wildfire among pro-democracy groups, says Mr Moss. For example, after Egypt switched off its internet in January some activists brought laptops to places like Tahrir Square in Cairo to collect, via short-range wireless links, demonstrators’ video recordings and other electronic messages. These activists then broadcast the material to the outside world using range-extending antennae. According to Bobby Soriano, an instructor at the Philippine branch of Tactical Tech, a British organisation that teaches communication techniques to dissidents in five countries, such antennae can even foil government eavesdropping and jamming efforts. Directional antennae, unlike the omnidirectional sort, transmit on a narrow beam. This makes it hard for eavesdroppers to notice a signal is there. Citizens banned? Another way of confounding the authorities is to build portable FM radio stations. One broadcasting expert, who prefers not to be named but is currently based in Europe, is helping to develop a dozen such “backpack” radio stations for anti-government protesters in his native land in the Arabian peninsula. Though these stations have a range of only a few kilometres, that is enough for the leaders of a protest to use them to co-ordinate their followers. The stations’ operators act as clearing houses for text messages, reading important ones over the air for everyone to hear. Conventional radio of this sort cannot, unfortunately, transmit video or web pages. But a group called Access, based in New York, is trying to overcome that. To help democracy movements in the Middle East and North Africa get online, it is equipping a network of ham-radio operators with special modems that convert digital computer data into analogue radio signals that their equipment can cope with. These signals are then broadcast from operator to operator until they reach a network member in an area where the internet functions. This operator reconverts the signal into computer-readable data and then e-mails or posts the information online. Satellites provide yet another way of getting online, though they are expensive to connect to. It is, however, beyond the authorities in most places to shut down a satellite operated by a foreign company or country. The best they can do is try to locate live satellite links using radiation-detection kit similar to that supposedly employed in Britain to seek out unlicensed televisions. The result is a game of cat and mouse between the authorities and satellite-using dissidents. Tactical Tech, for example, has trained dissidents in five countries to rig satellite dishes to computers in order to get online. It advises some users to log on only for short sessions, and to do so from a moving vehicle. Such dishes can also be repurposed for long-range internet connections that do not involve satellites. Yahel Ben-David, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, who has designed secret cross-border links to the internet for people in several countries, does so by adding standard USB dongles designed for home Wi-Fi networks. Thus equipped, two properly aligned dishes as much as 100km apart can transmit enough data to carry high quality video. Moreover, the beam is so tightly focused that equipment a mere dozen metres away from its line would struggle to detect it. Creative ideas for circumventing cyber-attacks even extend to the redesign of apparently innocent domestic equipment. Kenneth Geers, an American naval-intelligence analyst at a NATO cyberwar unit in Tallinn, Estonia, describes a curious microwave oven. Though still able to cook food, its microwaves (essentially, short radiowaves) are modulated to encode information as though it were a normal radio transmitter. Thus, things turn full circle, for the original microwave oven was based on the magnetron from a military radar. From conflict to domesticity to conflict, then, in a mere six decades. http://www.economist.com/node/18386151 ![]() On the Pop Charts, Singing the Unspeakable Jon Pareles It’s some kind of milestone: Three of the Top 10 hits on last week’s pop music chart have choruses that can’t be played uncensored on the radio and won’t have their original lyrics quoted in this family newspaper. All three use variations on a familiar, emphatic, percussive four-letter word. The offending syllable is right in the titles of two of the songs, deployed as an imperative by Cee Lo Green and as an adverbial participle by Pink. Mr. Green’s song was nominated for a Grammy Award, where its televised listing was coyly phrased, “The Song Also Known as ‘Forget You.’ ” Pink’s song, a self-help power ballad assuring insecure people that they don’t have to be (emphatically) perfect, also has a cuss-free version. There’s an airplay-ready variant of Enrique Iglesias’s hardcore hit discreetly titled “Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You).” But it’s the bluntness of his original chorus — which is prefaced by Mr. Iglesias singing, “I don’t mean to be rude” — that got the song noticed in the first place. Of course he means to be rude! Pop songs fight to be noticed in an arms race of sentiments, gimmicks, sonic manipulation and promotional strategies. For Mr. Iglesias, trading pop’s usual affectionate euphemism for the bluntly physical verb couldn’t be more calculated; as a pop lover-boy, Mr. Iglesias decided that the crudity would turn on more fans than it would drive away. It’s a cheap shot that worked. (He has also released a video clip set in a strip club, complete with topless women in a cage.) Even if the original lyrics are off-limits to old media, it’s clear to everyone that the profane versions of the songs are going to be heard. The enforced innocence of broadcasting is no longer a cultural firewall; it’s barely an inconvenience. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” the Internet-freedom activist John Gilmore famously said in 1996 — and hits with choruses that revolve around a four-letter word can count on Internet accessibility. Shock value is viral, and probably a selling point. Forbidden by the Federal Communications Commission as broadcast indecency, the original songs gain a tiny frisson of rebellion for those who click through to the grown-up versions on YouTube or iTunes. The songs lead a double life: the broadcast version for the uninitiated or oblivious, the raunchy one for anyone paying attention. Listening to a pop star singing a bawdy word, consumers of mass culture can feel like insiders. When Mr. Green played Madison Square Garden recently, opening for Prince, he didn’t even sing his blunt chorus. He just beamed, pointed his microphone at the crowd, and let thousands of fans shout it for him. Mr. Green had deniability, while the audience got to shout the forbidden word. Of course, it’s not exactly forbidden. It’s all over books, movies, comedy, cable TV shows, Twitter feeds and schoolchildren’s conversations. Chalk it up to post-World War II realism, demographic changes, bravado, freedom, permissiveness, the Beats, the 1960s, hip-hop, the Internet, the decline of Western civilization or all of them at once. Cussing in public has become more the rule than the exception, sometimes even on formal occasions. Bono has done it at the Grammys and the Golden Globes; Melissa Leo did it at the Academy Awards. But Top 10 pop is a kind of last frontier. Its pleasures multiply with the size of its audience; it’s meant to spill out of car radios, to stimulate the urge to sing along, to be recognized as something shared by its growing audience. It needs to grab attention — first from tastemakers and gatekeepers, later from casual listeners — and then to reward it, to make fans feel like participants in a groundswell. The enjoyment increases the more it’s shared, until saturation sets in. Visibility brings vulnerability. Parents and other moral guardians have long worried about pop’s effects on children, about the use of insidiously catchy tunes to lodge nasty phrases in youthful minds that can’t defend themselves from an exposure to radio play. Regulatory agencies have backed them up. The F.B.I. investigated (the Kingsmen song “Louie, Louie” for obscenity in the 1960’s (finally declaring it “unintelligible at any speed”). In 1967 the Rolling Stones had to change “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” on the Ed Sullivan show. In the late- 1990s, an Arizona radio station was fined for playing Prince’s “Erotic City”: perhaps, like many listeners, the D.J. thought a repeated lyric was “funk.” It wasn’t. Most would-be pop hits, which for decades have counted on radio airplay to build their audiences, play by the rules, or pretend to. The restrictions have generated some creative workarounds, like Roger Daltrey’s stuttered “f-f-f-ade away” in the Who’s “My Generation,” or the wordless ecstatic interludes of disco songs. The hip-hop decades have multiplied the phenomenon of the edited version, which may have alternate lyrics substituted for profanities or just chop out some offending phonemes. (Full-length albums are also edited before stores like Wal-Mart will sell them.) But there’s a lot of gamesmanship involved. Listening to hip-hop radio stations — as is true with some reality-TV series — it’s easy to hear opening consonants that make perfectly clear which word has been partly removed. The Top 10’s current favorite word turns up beyond three songs. The folky English band Mumford & Sons gained its crucial commercial boost with the song “Little Lion Man,” a very direct apology for messing things up. Vampire Weekend’s “Oxford Comma,” about grammatical and other nitpicking, used the word almost nonchalantly. For teenypop contenders like Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne, a little potty mouth is apparently supposed to confer rock credibility, like the verbal equivalent of a tattoo. But to make its impact, swearing needs scarcity. There was still some shock value when Mr. Green sang his song in the kind of well-groomed 1960s soul production that would not, 40 years ago, have welcomed such language. But 10 minutes into an episode of “The Sopranos” or an Eminem album, the incessant profanity becomes little more than punctuation. Mr. Green, Mr. Iglesias and Pink got their competitive advantage by making a relatively early breach of pop’s (thinly maintained, mostly illusory) decorum. But any kind of bandwagon effect is going to get boring fast, even if radio stations never play that scary word. Deploying the f-bomb also defuses it; give or take a few copycats in the months to come, it’s going to sound about as potent as a popgun. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/a...speakable.html ![]() AOL Asks Us If We Can Tone It Down Alexia Tsotsis Earlier this week I interviewed Duncan Jones and Jake Gyllenhaal at SXSW, at the press junket for their movie The Source Code. While the film doesn’t have a huge tech angle other than the title, I thought it might be good video content for TCTV—the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley is fascinating, and the movie industry is one of the last to get disrupted. It’s always interesting to see how old school media players are aware of the monumental shifts going on in their own industry. In any case I thought that the way The Source Code and Summit Entertainment were trying to target the tech press and, through us, our more social media savvy readers was an intriguing marketing strategy—and an angle! I wrote my “Jake Gyllenhaal Movie ‘The Source Code’ Markets Itself To Techies“ post about that instead of turning it into a free ad for the film. Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit, and they let it be known to the AOL person at Moviefone who hooked us up with them in the first place. This morning I received this email from that Moviefone/AOL Television representative: Quote:
a) We’ve made a loose promise that if AOL ever asked us if we could change our coverage in any way, that we’d immediately publish it. Moviefone is part of AOL, so here you go. b) It highlights a key difference between the Hollywood and Silicon Valley media ecosystem. Granted, it’s common for the press to trade access for positive coverage across all industries (eh hem, Apple), but nowhere is it more prevalent than in the stratified environs of the movie and television industry. It’s almost like a petri dish for media manipulation. c) What I didn’t understand when writing my candid opinion about the movie and its marketing strategy was that Summit thought that by inviting me to their party they were basically buying a puff piece. The thought never crossed my mind, mainly because I cover startups, and startups, unlike Hollywood stars, want to talk to the press. The most ridiculous part about this whole episode is that the post in question wasn’t even that “snarky,” whatever the hell that means. I mean it’s not like I wrote “Movie Studio Creates ‘Game’ In Order To Get People To Spam Their Friends On Facebook” in the headline. The issue is simply that Summit thinks it can pressure us, through an AOL sister site, into making a balanced report more glowing. And while it’s inappropriate, it’s not surprising. What is surprising, and sad, is that Moviefone/AOL actually tried to comply with their request and asked us to change our post. It’s not just sad, it’s wrong. So no AOL, and Moviefone, and Summit, I will absolutely not tone down my snark. This is Silicon Valley, not Hollywood. http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/15/snarketing/ ![]() 40th Anniversary of the Computer Virus Guillaume Lovet This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world’s first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance. 1971: Creeper: catch me if you can While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released “in lab” in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the Internet’s ancestor. Intriguing feature: Creeper looks for a machine on the network, transfers to it, displays the message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” and starts over, thereby hoping from system to system. It was a pure proof of concept that ties the roots of computer viruses to those of the Internet. 1982: Elk Cloner Written by a 15-year old as a way to booby trap his friends’ Apple II computer systems without physical access to them, Elk Cloner spread via floppy disks. Infected machines displayed a harmless poem, dedicated to the virus’ glory. Intriguing feature: Elk Cloner was the first virus ever to spread outside of the lab it was created in. Its global impact was negligible and its intent plainly geeky. 1987: Jerusalem First detected in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the aptly-named Jerusalem is somewhat deleterious. Each year on Friday the 13th, this virus deleted every single program that’s run on the infected system. Intriguing feature: Jerusalem is the first example of a destructive virus to have a global impact. Of course, the sheer number of computers back then was infinitesimal, compared to today. 1992: Michelangelo: The sleeper must awaken The dormant Michelangelo virus was designed to awaken on March 6th (Michelangelo’s birthday – as in the Renaissance artist, not the Ninja Turtle) and erase critical parts of infected computers’ hard drives. Intriguing feature: The promises of destruction it carried spawned a media frenzy. In the weeks preceding March 6th, media relayed (and some may say amplified) experts’ predictions forecasting 5 million computers going definitively down. Yet, on March 6th, only a few thousand data losses were reported – and public trust in AV companies’ ethics was tainted for a while. 1999: Melissa Melissa propagated via infected Microsoft Word documents and mailed itself to Outlook contacts of the contaminated user. It was virulent enough to paralyze some important mailing systems on the Internet. Its author created the bug to honor Melissa, a stripper he’d met in Florida. Whether he conquered her heart this way is somewhat unlikely, but one thing is sure: the malicious code earned him 20 months in jail and a $5,000 fine. Intriguing feature: Someone created a variant of Melissa that encrypted the infected files and demanded a ransom of $100 to be wired to an offshore account for decryption. The author was traced to the said account. While it remained an isolated case, it is worth noting that 6 years before the malware scene became fully monetized, someone had already started figuring out how to make bucks out of viruses. 2000: I LOVE YOU At the dawn of the XXIst century, I LOVE YOU worm infected tens of millions of computers. As a fairly simple worm, I LOVE YOU presented itself as an incoming email with “I love you” in its subject line and infected the machine of users who opened the attachment. It then mailed itself to all of the contacts found on the infected user’s system. Intriguing feature: While the author’s motivation clearly wasn’t about money, the damages were: When the dust settled, I LOVE YOU had cost companies around the world between $5 and $10 billion. Much of that cost can be attributed to the time spent “cleaning” infected machines. 2001: Code Red While I LOVE YOU targeted end users, Code Red infected Web servers, where it automatically spread by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft IIS servers. In less than one week, nearly 400,000 servers were infected, and the homepage of their hosted Websites was replaced with “Hacked By Chinese!” Intriguing feature: Code Red had a distinguishing feature designed to flood the White House Website with traffic (from the infected servers), probably making it the first case of documented ‘hacktivism’ on a large scale. 2004: Sasser Like Code Red, Sasser spread without anyone’s help; but this time, the virus exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows to propagate, which made it particularly virulent. What’s more, due to a bug in the worm’s code, infected systems turned off every couple of minutes. Intriguing feature: For the first time, systems whose function isn’t normally related to the Internet (and that mostly existed before the Internet) were severely impacted. More than one million systems were infected, AFP’s communications satellites were interrupted for hours, Delta Airlines was forced to cancel flights, the British coast guard had to go back to print maps, and a hospital had to redirect its emergency room because its radiology department was completely paralyzed by the virus. The damage amount was estimated to be more than $18 billion. Microsoft placed a $250,000 bounty on the author’s head, who turned out to be an 18-year old German student. When caught, the student admitted that he created the malicious code as a creative way to help his mother to find a job in the computer security industry. 2005: MyTob, the turning point MyTob appeared in 2005 and was one of first worms to combine the features of a Bot (the infamous “Zombies,” controlled by a remote Botmaster) and a mass-mailer. Intriguing feature: MyTob marks the entry in the era of Botnets and of cybercrime. Business models designed to “monetize” the many botnets appeared (some of which will count more than 20 million machines): installation of spyware, diffusion of spam, illegal content hosting, interception of banking credentials, blackmail, etc. The revenue generated from these new botnets quickly reached several billion dollars per year; a figure that is growing today. 2007: Storm botnet By 2007, cybercriminals already had lucrative business models in place. They’re thinking about protecting their money spinners (infected computers). Before 2007, botnets showed a cruel lack of robustness: in neutralizing its unique Control Center, a botnet could be completely neutralized, because Zombies didn’t have anyone to report to (and take commands from) anymore. Intriguing feature: By implementing a peer-to-peer architecture, Storm became the first Botnet with decentralized command… It is much more robust. At the peak of the epidemic, Storm had infected between 1 and 50 million systems and accounted for 8% of all malware running in the world. 2008: Koobface Koobface (an anagram for Facebook) spreads by pretending to be the infected user on social networks, prompting friends to download an update to their Flash player in order to view a video. The update is a copy of the virus. Intriguing feature: Koobface is the first botnet to recruit its Zombie computers across multiple social networks (Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo, Friendster, etc). Today, it is estimated that at any time, over 500,000 Koobface zombies are online at the same time. 2009: Conficker Conficker is a particularly sophisticated virus, as it’s both a worm, much like Sasser, and an ultra-resilient botnet, which implements bleeding-edge defensive techniques. Curiously, it seems that its propagation algorithm is poorly calibrated, causing it to be discovered more frequently. Some networks were so saturated by Conficker, that it caused planes to be grounded, including a number of French Fighter planes. In addition, hospitals and military bases were impacted. In total approximately 7 million systems were infected worldwide. Intriguing feature: Conficker did not infect Ukrainian IPs, nor machines configured with a Ukrainian keyboard. This suggests the authors were playing by the cybercriminal gold rule, which implicitly states, “Don’t target anything in your own country, and the arm of justice won’t be long enough to reach you.” 2010: Stuxnet, welcome to the cyber war According to most threat researchers today, only governments have the necessary resources to design and implement a virus of such complexity. To spread, Stuxnet exploited several critical vulnerabilities in Windows, which, until then, were unknown, including one guaranteeing its execution when inserting an infected USB key into the target system, even if a systems autorun capabilities were disabled. From the infected system, Stuxnet was then able to spread into an internal network, until it reached its target: a management system of an industrial process edited by Siemens. In this particular instance, Stuxnet knew the weak point with a specific controller – perhaps a cooling system – and most likely intended to destroy or neutralize the industrial system. Intriguing feature: For the first time, the target of a virus is the destruction of an industrial system (very probably a nuclear power plant in Iran). What’s next? According to the trends we’re seeing, the next target for cybercriminals could be smart phones. Their widespread use and the fact that they incorporate a payment system (premium rate phone numbers) make them easy money-generating targets. Furthermore, they have a localization system, a microphone, embedded GPS and one (or several) cameras, which potentially allow a particularly invasive spying of their owners. http://www.net-security.org/malware_news.php?id=1668 ![]() Spam Network Shut Down Nick Wingfield Microsoft Corp. and federal law enforcement agents seized computer equipment from Internet hosting facilities across the U.S. in a sweeping legal attack designed to cripple the leading source of junk email on the Internet. Microsoft launched the raids as part of a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle in early February against unnamed operators of the Rustock "botnet," a vast network of computers around the globe infected with malicious software that allows its masterminds to distribute enormous volumes of spam, peddling everything from counterfeit software to pharmaceuticals. In recent years, Microsoft has stepped up legal actions against a variety of Internet nuisances like spam that it believes inflict harm on its product and reputation. Spam taxes the servers of its Hotmail email service, and impacts the Internet experience of users of Microsoft software like Windows and Office. The malicious code used to form spam botnets often exploits security vulnerabilities in products like Windows. That lawsuit was unsealed late Thursday by a federal judge, at Microsoft's request, after company executives said they dealt a seemingly lethal blow to the botnet in their raids on Wednesday. As part of that dragnet, U.S. marshals accompanied employees of Microsoft's digital crimes unit into Internet hosting facilities in Kansas City, Mo.; Scranton, Pa; Denver; Dallas; Chicago; Seattle and Columbus, Ohio. The Microsoft officials brought with them a federal court order granting them permission to seize computers within the facilities alleged to be "command-and-control" machines, through which the operators of the Rustock botnet broadcast instructions to their army of infected computers, estimated by Microsoft at more than one million machines world-wide. Microsoft doesn't allege in its lawsuit that the Internet hosting companies knew that machines within their facilities were being used as part of Rustock. Company executives likened the action to a "decapitation" of the botnet aimed at severing the command-and-control computers from sending orders to their network of infected computers, which are typically owned by people who have no idea their machines are being harnessed by outsiders for spam. The Rustock botnet is the largest source of spam in the world at the end of last year, accounting for nearly half of all spam, security firm Symantec Corp. said in a blog post on Thursday. "We think this has been 100% effective," said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in Microsoft's digital crimes unit. The defendants in Microsoft's lawsuit are referred to simply as "John Does 1-11," since the identities of the operators of the botnet aren't yet known. The move seemed to be largely effective at disabling its target, a prodigious source of spam that at times delivered billions of spam messages a day, many of them offering steep discounts on drugs like Viagra and Cialis, according to Microsoft. Symantec said in a blog post that Rustock ceased sending spam at around 11:30 am eastern time on Wednesday, according to its junk email measurements. That time is shortly after Microsoft's action on the botnet commenced, according to Microsoft executives. Microsoft says it confiscated dozens of hard drives and a handful of computers from the hosting providers as part of the raid. Most of the equipment was leased from afar by customers, some of whom listed addresses in Azerbaijan, according to Mr. Boscovich The move by Microsoft is the second time the company has employed novel legal tactics to target a botnet, the services of which are often rented out by their operators to purveyors of spam and malware. In February 2010, a federal judge okayed a request by Microsoft to seize control of hundreds of Internet addresses that were allegedly being used to transmit commands to a botnet known as Waledac. That move was effective in knocking Waledac out of commission, according to Microsoft. In its action against Rustock, Microsoft officials say they had to seize actual computer equipment connected to the botnet, rather than simply taking possession of Internet addresses. That's because the masterminds behind Rustock designed their infected computers to receive instructions from Internet protocol addresses tied to specific command-and-control machines. As a precaution, Microsoft also worked with the companies that provide Internet access to the hosting facilities where the machines were stored to prevent any communications with the Internet protocol addresses allegedly linked to the botnet. In its complaint, Microsoft alleges that the operators of Rustock are allegedly violating Microsoft trademarks with spam that fraudulently claims Microsoft sponsorships of lotteries and other come-ons. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...861008758.html ![]() UK PC Users Hit by Huge Fake Antivirus Attack 'Blackhole' exploit kit pushes fake AV John E Dunn UK Internet users were on the receiving end of a large drive-by web attack at the end of February, which attempted to push fake antivirus at least 750,000 times on a single day alone, security company AVG has said. According to a company analysis, on Sunday 27 February, detection levels for the previously obscure Russian ‘Blackhole’ exploit kit suddenly spiked to 900,000 globally from a few tens of thousands that would be typical for such kits, before dropping back again. Unusually, almost 750,000 of these detections were for UK PCs, which offers a baseline for what must have been a sustained attack several times that size against mainstream web servers frequented by users in the country. Why relatively well-protected UK Internet users was chosen is not clear, but the campaign does appear to have been successful, compromising 600 servers, and serving nine different Java, Adobe and Microsoft exploits, including the MS-MDAC flaw from 2006. The exploit servers were based overwhelmingly in Estonia with some in the US. AVG managed to compromise one of the servers used to control the Blackhole attack, which reported a ‘load’ (execution) rate for bogus antivirus software of nearly eight percent. This only shows the number of machines that ran the Fake AV alerts based on successfully serving any one of the exploits, and not how many of these users fell for the scam and paid up in the end. However, the criminals running the exploit campaign only care about loads because this is the statistic used to calculate what they are paid – the actual scam AV revenues go to a different set of criminals. “It is exceptional compared to anything we have seen for some time,” said AVG CTO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak on the attack’s impressive size. The UK focus might have had something to do with the criminals’ ability to compromise web servers in the country or simply down to their paymaster’s preference for being paid in British currency, he said. The attack hints that Britons might still be falling for fake antivirus scams, still a common attack type despite having been around for several years. One odd statistic is that the fake AV was loaded on Mac OS systems on 14 occasions, a miniscule number when set against the tens of thousands reported for Windows users, but which might indicate that some success was gained using a cross-platform Java exploit. http://news.techworld.com/security/3...ivirus-attack/ ![]() Dutch Court Rules WiFi Hacking Is Now Legal Loek Essers Breaking in to an encrypted router and using the WiFi connection is not an criminal offence, a Dutch court ruled. WiFi hackers can not be prosecuted for breaching router security. A court in The Hague ruled earlier this month that it is legal to break WiFi security to use the internet connection. The court also decided that piggybacking on open WiFi networks in bars and hotels can not be prosecuted. In many countries both actions are illegal and often can be fined. The ruling is linked to a case of a student who threatened to shoot down everyone at the Maerlant College in The Hague, a high school. He posted a threat on the internet message board 4chan.org using a WiFi connection that he broke into. The student was convicted for posting the message and sentenced to 20 hours of community service, but he was acquitted of the WiFi hacking charges. The Judge reasoned that the student didn't gain access to the computer connected to the router, but only used the routers internet connection. Under Dutch law breaking in to a computer is forbidden. A computer in The Netherlands is defined as a machine that is used for three things: the storage, processing and transmission of data. A router can therefore not be described as a computer because it is only used to transfer or process data and not for storing bits and bytes. Hacking a device that is no computer by law is not illegal, and can not be prosecuted, the court concluded. If a secure WiFi connection is hacked or an open network is used for WiFi leeching, the action could be tried under civil law, said criminal lawyer Mathieu van Linde of Blokzijl Advocaten . The ruling led to some controversy in The Netherlands. Van Linde found the verdict "remarkable". He reckoned that most people from The Netherlands assume hacking a WiFi network is illegal. He also added that the law used by the court in this case was formed in the early nineties, and could be outdated, since it was not intended to cover WiFi networks. The Dutch attorney general decided to appeal the verdict. Within two years the case will be reviewed by the High Court of The Netherlands that will decide if a router can be defined as a computer under Dutch law. Hacking or even 'piggybacking' on an open WiFi connection is illegal in a wide variety of nations. In some states in the US unauthorized access of a network is an criminal offense, in other states piggybacking can be fined. WiFi leechers in the UK can be fined or arrested, depending on the intentions of the leecher. http://www.pcworld.com/article/22258...now_legal.html ![]() A Seedy New Neighborhood For The Web: XXX Domain Approved Matt Rosoff The Internet is about to get a seedy new neighborhood: the body governing top-level Internet domains has approved a new .xxx domain for porn, despite objections from the adult entertainment industry. ICANN concluded its annual meeting in San Francisco today, and voted 9-3 to approve the .xxx domain. The idea for the domain has been kicking around for almost a decade, and was approved briefly in 2005, but ICANN reversed itself a couple of years later. Adult sites wouldn't be forced to use the new domain. But the Free Speech Coalition, which represents some businesses in the adult industry, opposed the adult domain because it would raise costs for porn providers, who will now have to register additional .xxx domain names at $60 a pop to avoid having their brands hijacked on the new domain. Many adult entertainment companies own hundreds or thousands of addresses, so this is a significant cost. The FSC also claimed that the new domain will make it easier for filters to block adult sites. Yesterday, the organization sponsored a rally in San Francisco outside the hotel where ICANN was having its meeting, but the demonstration apparently didn't work. Today, the FSC said it would appeal the decision to an advisory board consisting of government representatives. http://www.businessinsider.com/porn-...ed-2011-3?op=1 ![]() Backtrace Threatens Anonymous Operatives Trent Nouveau A hacker startup staffed by (alleged) former members of Anonymous is threatening to publish "identifying information" on key personnel within the cyber activist organization. "[Anonymous] has truly become moralfags. Anonymous has never been about revolutions," Hubris, BackTrace's so-called director of psychological operations, proclaimed to Forbes. Backtrace Security threatens Anonymous operatives"It's not about the betterment of mankind. It's the Internet hate machine, or that's what it's supposed to be." As such, Hubris said the group would post the names and IM logs of several Anonymous activists who purportedly participated in campaigns against PayPal, Mastercard, HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church and the U.S. Marine Corp. According to Hubris, the company has saved a triple-encrypted torrent file labeled "insurance" on its website, along with "hundreds" of links to copies on filesharing sites. The keys will supposedly be released sometime early next week, allowing downloaders to unlock the file and view its contents, which reportedly includes names, pseudonyms, chat logs and methods of Anonymous hackers. "If you do enough damage to someone, you don't have to fear retaliation. Once the world sees who these kids are and what they stand for, no one will follow them. They say they fight for free speech, but then they use fear and intimidation, like Scientology or Fox News. That's not freedom of speech, and we won't put up with that crap. "[They should] be making fun of stupid people on the Internet. Laughing at natural disasters. Like back to the good old days. Not trying to overthrow governments. [In the old days], we didn't break any laws. All we did was hack peoples' minds, because they're fuc**** retarded." My take on all of this? Yes, it all sounds terribly melodramatic and could theoretically reveal the identities of several prominent Anonymous members, along with their preferred methods of operations. Then again, even Hubris admits he hasn't been involved in Anonymous activities since 2009 - well over two years ago. It is therefore questionable as to what data BackTrace actually possesses and how relevant it is to current members of the cyber activist group. BackTrace's agenda should also be carefully analyzed, as the little known "security" website will undoubtedly gain prestige (and perhaps even a client or two) if its "insurance" file turns out to be even remotely genuine. http://www.tgdaily.com/security-feat...ous-operatives ![]() Inside Anonymous’ Secret War Room John Cook Dissident members of the internet hacktivist group Anonymous, tired of what they call the mob's "unpatriotic" ways, have provided law enforcement with chat logs of the group's leadership planning crimes, as well as what they say are key members' identities. They also gave them to us. The chat logs, which cover several days in February immediately after the group hacked into internet security firm HBGary's e-mail accounts, offer a fascinating look inside the hivemind's organization and culture. They demonstrate that, contrary to the repeated claims of Anonymous members, the group does have ad hoc leaders, with certain members doling out tasks, selecting targets, and even dressing down members who get out of line. They prove that, contrary to their claims, at least one of the hackers responsible for releasing the publishing the e-mail addresses of thousands of Gawker users last December is in fact a key member of Anonymous. They show a collective of ecstatic and arrogant activists driven to a frenzy by a sense of their own power—they congratulated one another when Hosni Mubarak resigned, as though Anonymous was responsible—and contain bald admissions of criminal behavior that could serve as powerful evidence in criminal proceedings if the internet handles are ever linked to actual people. The logs are from an invite-only IRC chat channel called #HQ, populated by people calling themselves Sabu, Kayla, Laurelai, Avunit, Entropy, Topiary, Tflow, and Marduk. They were supplied by two individuals who go by the names Metric and A5h3r4 and describe themselves as former Anonymous supporters who became increasingly disenchanted with the movement's tactics, particularly the extent to which the group's more sophisticated members tolerate children and teens participating in risky operations (British authorities arrested a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old in January, and Dutch police arrested a 16-year-old in December). They recently launched a firm they call Backtrace Security. "The bastards are becoming arrogant sociopaths," said A5h3r4 via chat. "Acting first, not thinking of the consequences. They're recruiting children. I am a pretty far left person—I believe in privacy and free expression, but Anonymous is a vigilante group now. A mob without conscience. And I worry they will radicalize even more. In short, I believe they're on their way to becoming a genuine threat." While Anonymous describes itself as a leaderless collective, the #HQ channel had a clear head honcho, a hacker who goes by the name of Sabu who claims credit for conducting the HBary hack. In plotting his next attack, on Hunton and Williams, a law firm that discussed hiring HBGary to conduct dirty tricks campaigns against Wikileaks supporters on behalf of its client Bank of America, Sabu threatens to "rape these niggers": 17:46 <&Sabu> hunton.com will be a nice fucking hit 17:46 <&marduk> hm see potential vulns [vulnerabilities]? 17:48 <&Sabu> yeah 17:48 <&Sabu> I see some potential openings 17:48 <&marduk> :] 17:49 <&Sabu> we could rape these niggers Here is Sabu directing the other channel members to come up with a target list for their next hack, including potential media outlets and so-called "whitehat" internet security firms, and ordering Kayla to get working: 17:52 <&Sabu> can you guys put together a private pad containing a list of whitehat targets, lawyers, reporters, any media that requires counter-intelligence attack [snip] 18:31 <&Sabu> guys im going offline I will be back online toorrow 18:31 <&Sabu> tomorrow I should have a new laptop 18:31 <&Sabu> muah 18:31 <&Sabu> and kayla 18:31 <&Sabu> please work on whitehat targets 18:34 <&marduk> will request 18:34 <@kayla> Sabu ofc <3 ![]() And here he is excoriating Laurelai, an HQ member who had created a set of instructions for how to carry out an Anonymous attack. Sabu derided it as a stupid move that would help federal investigators make a conspiracy case if leaked and generally make Anonymous look as devious as HBGary. In the same breath that he insists Anonymous is disorganized and leaderless, Sabu plays the role of a leader, enforcing unit discipline while the other members stand by. Laurelei fights back by criticizing Sabu for quickly going public with the HBGary hack, rather than secretly listening in on their e-mails for weeks, and Sabu responds by openly admitting to his involvement: "I'm the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours." 04:44 <&Sabu> who the fuck wrote that doc 04:45 <&Sabu> remove that shit from existence 04:45 <&Sabu> first off there is no hierachy or leadership, and thus an operations manual is not needed [snip] 04:46 <&Sabu> shit like this is where the feds will get american anons on rico act abuse and other organized crime laws 04:47 <@Laurelai> yeah well you could have done 100 times more effective shit with HBgary 04:47 <@Laurelai> gratted what we got was good 04:47 <&Sabu> if you're so fucking talented why didn't you root them yourselves? 04:47 <@Laurelai> but it could have been done alot better 04:47 <&Sabu> also we had a time restraint 04:48 <&Sabu> and as far as I know, considering I'm the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours 04:48 <&Sabu> your manual is irrelevent. [snip] 04:51 <&Sabu> ok who authored this ridiculous "OPERATIONS" doc? 04:51 <@Laurelai> look the guideline isnt for you 04:51 <&Sabu> because I'm about to start owning nigg3rs 04:51 <&marduk> authorized??? 04:52 <@Laurelai> its just an idea to kick around 04:52 <@Laurelai> start talking 04:52 <&Sabu> for who? the feds? 04:52 <&marduk> its not any official doc, it is something that Laurelai wrote up.. and it is for.. others 04:52 <&marduk> on anonops 04:52 <&Sabu> rofl 04:52 <@Laurelai> just idea 04:52 <@Laurelai> ideas 04:52 <&Sabu> man 04:52 <&marduk> at least that is how i understand it 04:52 <@Laurelai> to talk over 04:53 <&Sabu> le sigh 04:53 <&marduk> mmmm why are we so in a bad mood? 04:53 <&Sabu> my nigga look at that doc 04:53 <&Sabu> and how ridiculous it is [snip] 04:54 <&marduk> look, i think it was made with good intentions. and it is nothing you need to follow, if you dont like it, it is your good right 04:55 <&Sabu> no fuck that. its docs like this that WHEN LEAKED makes us look like an ORGANIZED CRIME ORGANIZATION Members of the HQ chat were, understandably, obsessed with security. But they seemed to believe that they were safe in that chat room, candidly discussing their own efforts to distance themselves from any illegal activity. Here is Topiary, who has given a number of media interviews, discussing plans to stop speaking for Anonymous in the first person in order to "avoid being raped by Feds": 15:13 <@Topiary> also I'm going to start saying, with future press, that I'm an observer/associate of Anon that agrees with Anonymous actions, rather than say I'm Anon 15:13 <@Topiary> kind of like Barrett/Housh [Anonymous spokesmen Barrett Brown and Gregg Housh] 15:13 <@Topiary> to avoid being raped by Feds 15:14 <@tflow> aw 15:14 <@tflow> why [snip] 15:15 <@Topiary> all I have to do is stop saying "we" and start saying "they" when referring to Anon 15:15 <@tflow> it will decrease the lulz in interviews 15:15 <@Topiary> hm, valid point And here, in the same vein, they discuss how to interact with the press without being seen as an actual member of the group, including references to Sabu, Kayla, and Tflow's efforts to maintain plausible deniability about their roles in the HBGary hack. 23:12 <&marduk> i would refrein from using "rep" ever 23:12 <&marduk> simply because.. that makes you/us directly tiable/responsible for what happens 23:12 <&marduk> no need to 23:12 <&marduk> example: the penny lock 23:12 <&marduk> yeah sabu/kayla/tflow obviously were involved in the hack. but they never admitted to 23:13 <&marduk> from the logs, you can only deduct that they knew about the operation Sabu didn't feel the need to be as discreet in the HQ chat. Here he is taking responsibility for the HBGary hack, which involved tricking a Nokia network security specialist named Jussi into handing over passwords: 02:39 <&Sabu> "Greatest social hack of all time: http://is.gd/duaZcG - Anonymous vs. hbgary.com." 02:39 <&Sabu> rofl 02:39 <&Sabu> people are really enjoying the socialing of jussi 02:39 <&Sabu> man I was talking to my little brother who witnessed the whole shit 02:39 <&Sabu> I think he and I were as excited as people are about it now 02:39 <&Sabu> we were fitdgeting and giggling and shit 02:40 <&Sabu> as jussi dropped firewall 02:40 <&Sabu> then reset the pw 02:40 <&Sabu> then gave us the username The logs also seem to prove that members of Anonymous were involved in hacking into Gawker's servers last December. Gnosis, the group that claimed credit for the hack, claimed in interviews to have no affiliation with Anonymous. But Kayla, a member of the HQ chat who was intimately involved with the HBGary attack, implicitly takes credit at one point for the Gawker attacks after someone mentions a Gawker article: 18:26 * kayla h8's gawker ![]() 18:26 <@kayla> Nick Denton especially h8's me ![]() Kayla claims to be a 16-year-old girl, and has publicly admitted involvement with the HBGary infiltration (some, including Metric and A5h3r4, doubt Kayla's claims and suspect her to be in reality Corey Barnhill, a New Jersey hacker in his late 20s who also goes by the name Xyrix). Whoever Kayla is, she was definitely involved in the attack on Gawker. The HQ chats show that Anonymous made use of a the domain internetfeds.mil.nf in preparing HBGary e-mails for release. According to Matt Keys, a journalist who infiltrated the group, the Internet Feds (and not Gnosis), were the real Gawker attackers. And Kayla was one of them. "Kayla was one of two hackers who broke into the Gawker database," Keys told Gawker. "It was her idea. She coordinated the attack. She carried it out with another hacker. A third was involved in the distribution of the torrent, but the brainchild of the Gawker hack attack was Kayla." Keys provided Gawker with screengrabs from the Internet Feds IRC chat as evidence. Ever since Anonymous began taking down the websites of PayPal, Mastercard, and other firms that refused to do business with Julian Assange, Wikileaks has insisted that it has no connection with Anonymous. But the logs seem to show that Laurelai, one of the HQ chat members, is a Wikileaks volunteer. When Sabu asks fellow chat members who she is, they respond that she's affiliated with the group: 04:51 <&Sabu> who the fuck is laurelai and why is he/she/it questioning our owning of hbgary 04:51 <&marduk> uhm.. she is with wl 04:51 <&Sabu> and? 04:51 <&marduk> and kayla knows her. 04:51 <&Sabu> bleh Laurelai is also involved in Crowdleaks, a site devoted to translating and disseminating Wikleaks' material. According to Metric and A5h3r4, Laurelei has claimed in chats to be affiliated with the group. They caution that it could be puffery, though, as not everything she's claimed has been reliable. Speaking of puffery, the HQ chat's reaction to Mubarak stepping down in Egypt serves as a handy indicator of just how seriously Anonymous takes itself, and it's power: 18:13 <~Avunit> and mubarak is gone 18:13 <~Avunit> for if you dont watch the news 18:15 <&Sabu> oh wow i didnt know fuck yes 18:15 <&Sabu> congrats all 18:15 * Avunit bows to sabu. The logs show an obsession with media coverage, and HQ members take delight in interacting with reporters, whether it's a genuine attempt to get the word out or a chance to fuck with gullible reporters. Here they are doing the latter to a Guardian reporter: 11:59 <@Topiary> Goddamnit this Guardian bitch is requesting access to "secret" inner-circle channels so she can tell everyone about how hard Anon works and to have first-hand experience at our inner workings 11:59 <@Topiary> I say we fake a secret channel and discuss in BATSHIT CODE 11:59 <@Topiary> and then invite her 11:59 <@tflow> lol [snip] 12:01 <@Topiary> fuck niggahs, do you wanna make one on anonops called #over9000 or something? 12:01 <@Topiary> then we invite her and just, I don't know 12:01 <@Topiary> we just go to town in hackers on steroids talk 12:02 <&marduk> mhh not sure but i could utter some cryptic stuff 12:02 <~Avunit> bitch: create it [snip] 12:03 <@tflow> Topiary: so she's not actually believing that anonymous isn't secretive? 12:03 <@tflow> if so, epic troll the guardian and teach them a lesson 12:03 <@Topiary> epic troll time 12:03 <~Avunit> speak like cryptic, only to eachother and be blunt to her 12:03 <~Avunit> god yeah 12:03 <~Avunit> lets roll 12:03 <@Topiary> she wants to delve into the secret underbelly, we'll give her a trolling hellstorm The obsession with secrecy and security in HQ led naturally to paranoia, as seen in this account from Entropy, who became convinced when his boss called him into the office unexpectedly—earlier in the logs he referred to talking the "CCIE security written test," suggesting he's an internet security specialist—that it was some sort of sting. 14:50 <@entropy> my boss called me 14:50 <@entropy> ans asked me if i can come into work 14:50 <@entropy> they couldnt have got anythign this fast right 14:51 <@entropy> my hands are fuckign shaking 14:51 <@entropy> should i go there 14:51 <@tflow> gahh.. 14:51 <@entropy> its way to fats right 14:52 <@entropy> fast 14:52 <@kayla> for what? 14:53 <@entropy> for the police to do anything? 14:53 <@kayla> i'd say so 14:53 <@entropy> thats what i think 14:53 <@kayla> why would they go to your work and not your house? 14:53 <@entropy> i have no idea 14:53 <@kayla> i think you're being paranoid ![]() 14:53 <&marduk> yah that makes no sense, rly 14:53 <@entropy> ok fuck 14:54 <@entropy> too many wierd things now im fuckign paranoid as shit 14:54 <@entropy> i need to calm the fuck down 15:10 <@entropy> theres two people with my boss in my conf room 15:10 <@entropy> two guys 15:10 <@entropy> i have no fucking idea whats goign on 15:10 <@entropy> should i call a layer before i go in there or ? 15:10 <@entropy> just to be safe? 15:16 <~Avunit> djklgadklgjdlgjak 15:16 <~Avunit> sdgmldgjklal 15:17 <~Avunit> dgjdklagjldgjkladjgkladg 15:18 <~Avunit> we're getting bullshitted badly rite? 15:18 <~Avunit> entropy 15:18 <@entropy> i fucking wish i was bullshitting 15:18 <@entropy> im goign to fucking throw up 15:19 <~Avunit> jesus shitting fuck Turns out it was nothing! Metric and A5h3r4 also provided us with what they say are the actual identities of Sabu, Kayla, Laurelai, Avunit, Topiary, and other members of the chat. We couldn't connect the handles to the names provided with any certainty, so we're not publishing them. But they say they provided the same information to the FBI. When we called the special agent they gave it to, he replied, "as an agent on that case, I'm not going to discuss ongoing investigative matters" and referred us to a spokesman, who had no immediate comment. Metric and A5h3r4 also say they've handed the material to the Department of Defense, but declined to identify to whom. Barrett Brown, who is generally regarded by Anonymous members as a spokesman for the group, said he has known about the "security breach" for some time: "We're aware of the security breach as other logs from 'HQ' have been posted before (and I should note that HQ is not really HQ anyway — you will note that the actual coordination of performed hacks will not appear in those logs). I can tell you that those who were responsible for pulling off HBGary ... no longer use that room due not only to this security breach, but other factors as well." When we repeated Metric and A5h3r4's claims that Anonymous had become megalomaniacal and vindictive, Brown replied: "I can also confirm that we have become vindicative megalomaniacs." http://gawker.com/?_escaped_fragment_=5783173#!5783173 ![]() Police Return Seized Hardware to Victorious BitTorrent Admin, Trashed Ernesto Last month the second case against a UK-based BitTorrent site came to an end. Two administrators of FileSoup – the longest standing BitTorrent community – had their case dropped by the authorities and were free men once again. This week, personal belongings that were seized during the house raids were released and returned, but what should have been a celebration turned out to be a great disappointment. When FileSoup administrator Geeker had his home raided in the summer of 2009, police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) literally trashed his place. In a previous interview Geeker vividly recalled the events. “I got back home just before 8pm to find my belongings had been turned upside down, the dining room was a like a whirlwind had gone through..[]..they’d turfed out all the drawers of the desk, chucked back what was of no interest to them, left a pile of paperwork scattered across my desk and table with wires everywhere, talk about a nightmare!” The police officers and ‘agents’ of the MPAA-funded FACT tagged everything with a chip in it, and bagged them as evidence. In the following weeks some items were returned, including a mobile phone, sat nav and video camera, but most of the hardware was kept under lock and key. As Geeker and fellow FileSoup administrator Snookered were released from all charges by the Crown Prosecution Service last month, their belongings were finally returned this week. This final step in the dreadful legal proceedings should have been a day to celebrate, but the police once again trashed the party. From the looks of it the police and FACT did not return all of the seized property, and the hardware that was given back appears to be completely trashed. “Initially it looks like only a couple of things such as power supply units might be missing, but, as you will no doubt appreciate, there is a heck of a lot of stuff to check, it’s going to take me some time to go through it all,” Geeker explains. “What concerns me the most about my property, is the condition it is now in… the way it was seized and bagged and how it was probably handled and transported to goodness knows where, the thought just horrifies me,” he adds. The pictures below document the disaster. A 40 minute audio clip of the agents returning Geeker’s property is available here. Properly bagged? To say that the evidence was not properly stored and shipped would be a huge understatement. It looks like the computers have been taken apart, dragged through the mud, with no real attempt to reassemble them or clean things up. According to Geeker none of his systems will boot up, which may not come as a big surprise considering the photos. The big question is why? It almost appears as if a frustrated FACT employee trashed the hardware on purpose before it was sent back. How else could it turn into such a mess, and why take the computers apart piece by piece in the first place? What were they looking for? Warez? Geeker is clearly not happy with how his property was handled, and he encourages everyone to help him get the story out. “Please do me a favour everyone… tell everybody you know about this, blog about it, tweet about it, facebook and myspace or wherever else you feel it might do some good, let the whole bloody world know exactly what these evil gits have done …and will probably keep on doing if something isn’t done to stop this kind of crap from happening and people and their property being treated like this!,” he said. Geeker has contacted his lawyer to see what the best response to this mess is. http://torrentfreak.com/police-retur...rashed-110313/ Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - March 12th, March 5th, February 26th, February 19th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black |
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#2 |
fish tacos ftw
Join Date: May 2000
Posts: 2,809
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![]() Jack... you are about the coolest motherfucker i know. You are hardcore.... unless you're just a bot lol. I recall you as a real person in the distant past!
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#3 |
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,024
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![]() thank you squidly.
will query mom re bot thing. |
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