Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 15th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Update





Quotes Of The Week


"There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist." – Comrade Bill Gates


"A wonderful thing will happen in Europe that won't occur again in the US until 2019: Copyrights on music and television recordings will expire." – Lawrence Lessig


"The first known copyright violation involved not a printing press or copy machine but a rogue monk, copying by hand, 1448 years ago." – Helene Newberg


"In general there has been very little reduction in the levels of BitTorrent traffic across the globe. As many of the (BitTorrent) sites...were being shut down, new ones sprung up." – Andrew Parker


"It's pretty ingenious, to take an anti-piracy feature and use it to feed spyware is extremely ironic." – Patrick Hinojasa


"To use an analogy, it's a little bit as if Ford was selling cars with defective brakes. If I realised that there was a problem, opened the hood and took a few pictures to prove it, and published everything on my Web site then Ford could file a complaint against me." – Guillaume Tena


"A better, more intense experience is a good thing for porn." – Studio Exec











IBM Offers 500 Patents To Open Source
AP

International Business Machines Corp. says it is providing free access to the information in 500 company patents to individuals and groups working on open source software.

The company said it believes this is the largest pledge of patents of any kind and represents a major shift in how it manages and deploys its intellectual property.

Open source software is a spectrum of programs, the best known of them the Linux operating system, that are not under the lock and key of a single company but are developed by the communal efforts of volunteers who often start with little more than a common interest.

The philosophy behind open source: Grant a free license to users, include the software blueprints and let anyone make improvements with as few restrictions as possible.

IBM is trying to sell its business clients on using open source software instead of software from Microsoft Corp., with the understanding that a business using open source will require outside professional help, perhaps from IBM, to manage its systems.

Open source software has made big strides in the past few years, with government agencies promoting it in nations including China, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea.

IBM said its pledge applies to any individual, community or company working on or using software that meets the standards of the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit. IBM has already been making selected patents available, without charging royalties, for use in open standards software protocols, file formats and interfaces.

The company said it had collected royalties on the patents previously and that they would be worth more than $10 million if they were sold.

"This is not a one-time event," John E. Kelly, IBM's senior vice president for technology and intellectual property, said in a statement. "(T)hrough measures such as today's pledge, we will increasingly use patents to encourage and protect global innovation and interoperability through open standards, and we urge others to do so as well."

IBM was awarded 3,248 patents last year, gaining more patents than any other company for the twelfth consecutive year.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/10617858.htm


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EU Vote Will Decide Whether To Scrap Patent Directive

Motion put down to restart controversial legislation
Laura Rohde

The controversial EU software patent directive has been thrown into confusion with a motion signed by 61 MEPs recommending it be thrown out and the legislative process begun again.

The directive is currently awaiting a vote in the EU Council after a dramatic intervention by Poland at its final meeting of 2004 caused its rubber-stamping to be delayed.

Sixty-one MEPs from 13 countries and four political groups have introduced a motion to ask the European Commission, to resubmit the "Patentability of Computer-implemented Inventions" directive. The entire Parliament must vote on the request. If a majority of MEPs approve the motion, the Commission will be forced to restart the process for the directive.

Should the motion be effective, it would have to happen quickly, said Florian Mueller, manager of the NoSoftwarePatents (NSP) campaign. "Realistically, it would take place during the next major plenary session of the Parliament beginning the week of 21 February," he said.

NSP contends that copyright laws are enough to protect business innovations and would like patents for software to be outlawed in Europe. The group is supported by US-based Linux operating system company Red Hat, Swedish open-source database software company MySQL and German software and Internet services provider 1&1 Internet.

The existing directive is currently awaiting a final vote by the Council of Ministers, before the proposed legislation goes back to the European Parliament for a second reading. The Council and the Parliament have been wrangling over differing versions of the directive since it was submitted by the Commission in February 2002.

Politicians are at odds over an outline agreement of the directive approved by the Council of Ministers last May. That agreement reversed amendments to the directive, added by Parliament, that bar the patenting of software.

In December, Polish deputy minister for Science and IT Wlodzimierz Marcinski formally requested a delay on the final Council vote, saying that his government needed more time to draw up an appropriate statement on the legislation. Representatives from the Council had contended that the final vote was being held up due to the work required for putting the text into all of the various languages of the EU member states.

The Commission declined comment on the motion to restart the legislative process or to specify when the Council vote is now expected to take place.

While the motion has a real chance of derailing the progress of the Council of Ministers' version of the "Patentability of Computer-implemented Inventions" directive, Leo Baumann of the European IT and communications industry association (EICTA), said he doesn't expect the group will be successful in its request. "It's possible to do that but you need a majority of the European Parliament and the approval of the conference of presidents (leaders of the political groups). I don't expect it to happen," Baumann said.

The EICTA believes that some software needs patent protection. Its members include software firms like Microsoft, SAP and Sun, hardware makers like HP and Intel and telecom companies like Ericsson and Nokia.

The EICTA has warned that restarting the legislative process would only succeed in continuing the current uncertainty over patenting computer-implemented inventions, possibly for years. Thus far, the EU has been unable to bring into line the myriad interpretations given to patent law by different European national courts.

Recently, the EU has increased its ranks from 15 countries to 25, bringing major changes to the political landscape, which in itself warrants a new approach to the directive, argues Florian Mueller. "Of the 732 MEPs serving, more than 400 are new. There is now a lot more sensitivity to the concerns over patenting software," he said.
http://www.techworld.com/application...fm?NewsID=2907


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Japanese Company to Pay Ex-Employee $8.1 Million for Invention
Todd Zaun

The inventor of a revolutionary lighting technology has reluctantly agreed to a record settlement from his former employer in a dispute that challenged the idea that the fruits of the labor of Japanese workers belong only to companies.

Shuji Nakamura, now a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will receive 840 million yen ($8.1 million) from his former employer, the Nichia Corporation, for inventing blue-light-emitting diodes. Nichia secured lucrative patents for Mr. Nakamura's invention, which allowed the creation of more vibrant video billboards and traffic signal lights and helped lead to the development of blue lasers, which are used in the latest DVD players. His invention was also useful in creating white-light-emitting diodes, which may someday replace incandescent bulbs as a source of indoor lighting.

The case has been closely watched in Japan as a test of long-held notions that employees should sacrifice everything for their companies and the idea that there is something unseemly about individual workers, even the most productive ones, seeking a bigger cut of profits than their co-workers.

Traditionally, in Japan, corporate engineers and scientists are treated just like less-skilled employees. It is unusual for Japanese companies to sign contracts with their researchers that specify how profits from their inventions will be shared, as is often the practice in American companies.

The amount of the settlement was significantly smaller than the 20 billion yen, nearly $200 million, that a lower court ordered Nichia to pay Mr. Nakamura last year. The lower court said that would be a fair amount, given that his invention was worth about 60 billion yen, or roughly $580 million, to Nichia. Tuesday's settlement came after the company appealed that ruling.

Mr. Nakamura sued his former employer four years ago, seeking a share of the royalties from his invention after the company gave him an award of 20,000 yen, or less than $200, for his work.

The payment to Mr. Nakamura under the settlement, which was coordinated by the Tokyo High Court, would be the largest ever made to the employee of a company for an invention, Kyoto News and Nihon Keizai Shinbun said. A court representative said it did not maintain records on such matters.

"This kind of money didn't exist four years ago, so this is a great incentive for Japanese corporate engineers," said Mr. Nakamura's lawyer, Hidetoshi Masunaga. "Japanese society is starting to dramatically change."

Mr. Nakamura said he was not satisfied with the amount but accepted it on advice from his lawyer, according to Nikkei News. Mr. Nakamura did not respond to calls or e-mail messages seeking comment on the agreement. A Nichia spokeswoman declined to comment on the settlement.

Mr. Nakamura's case is one of the first of a recent string of lawsuits by Japanese researchers against their companies. Last year, the electronics giant Hitachi was ordered to pay more than $1 million to an engineer who developed crucial technologies for DVD players. Also last year, Ajinomoto, a large maker of instant foods and spices, was ordered to pay more than $1 million to an employee who invented an artificial sweetener.

The litigation is part of a broader change in Japan, as both individuals and companies focus increasingly on the value of intellectual property. Japanese companies, including Toshiba and the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, are dropping their traditional reluctance to sue and are using the courts to protect their patents.

"The focus in Japan on intellectual property is changing, not just on the inventor level, but companies, too, are focusing on the value of their intellectual property in ways they have not done in the past," said A. C. Johnston of the Tokyo office of the law firm Morrison & Foerster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/bu...s/12light.html


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Fujitsu-Siemens To Pay Per-Machine Fee For Piracy
Jo Best

Fujitsu-Siemens has been ordered by a German court to pay a levy every time one of its computers is sold in the country, as part of a "tax on piracy."

The judge ruled in December that because the company's PCs could be used for copying material--and denying rights holders their due royalties-- Fujitsu-Siemens should make it up by way of a contribution of about $16 (12 euros) per machine.

Similar levies are already in place on other media that can be used for copying, including blank videos and audio tapes, in other European countries.

The case was brought by VG Wort, a German copyright holders association, in 2001. The organization had been demanding a levy of about $40, although it agreed to the court's revised penalty.

VG Wort is expected to bring similar suits against other computer manufacturers in the country.

Fujitsu-Siemens did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
http://news.com.com/Fujitsu-Siemens+...3-5511810.html


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Napster Targeted By Infringement Suit
John Borland

Napster is once again the target of an intellectual-property lawsuit, this time on the receiving end of a patent infringement claim from a small company called SightSound Technologies.

SightSound, which holds several patents related to selling and downloading music and video online, on Monday asked a court to block Napster from selling music online while the trial unfolds. Licensing discussions had broken down, leading to the suit, SightSound executives said.

"This lawsuit is the regrettable outcome of a long process that could have been resolved amicably," Scott Sander, chief executive officer of SightSound, said in a statement. "It is surprising that Napster has taken this road given that it seems to have been working to restore its brand value."

SightSound is one of a handful of companies that are pursuing patent royalties for what many critics say are basic Internet functions such as e- commerce or streaming video. The spate of lawsuits and royalty demands has added an extra twist of financial uncertainty to many Web businesses, leading to calls for reform of the patent process.

Despite their basic nature, several of the patent drives have been successful, however. SightSound itself won early court rulings in a long-running lawsuit against Bertlesmann subsidiary CDNow, and ultimately settled with the conglomerate for $3.3 million.

Because the case did not go to a full trial, and CDNow did not admit it had infringed on the patents, the claims could still be overturned by a court.

The lawsuit also has given a possible glimpse at Napster's future business plans. SightSound said the two companies were close to a licensing deal, but Napster also sought licenses for selling video online.

Napster CEO Chris Gorog has said in previous interviews that the company would likely expand into distributing other forms of media aside from music over time. But the company has announced no such plans as of yet.

A Napster representative could not immediately be reached for comment. Until recently, Napster was the CD management company Roxio, but it sold its previous business and changed its name to focus on the music download market.
http://news.com.com/Napster+targeted...3-5533985.html


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Gates' Commie Quote Inspires The Masses
Michael Kanellos



Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your screensaver.

Last week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates likened some of the more vocal anti-intellectual property advocates to latter- day communists. "There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist," he said.

Since then, individuals have created propaganda-style desktop art in the Soviet style in sarcastic homage. In one, a backwards copyright symbol, in yellow, floats upon a red flag, similar to the old Soviet flag. In another, Soviet deco giants lock arms in front of a map of the globe.

We'd tell you who the artists are, but, frankly, they might use the notoriety to further their careers, which would allow them to indirectly profit from intellectual property, which in turn would undermine their arguments. And they certainly wouldn't want to do that.
http://news.com.com/2061-1003-5519680.html?tag=xtra.ml


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Toxic Microsoft Digital Rights Management

Hackers Tune In to Windows Media Player
Ryan Naraine

Hackers are using the newest DRM technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player to install spyware, adware, dialers and computer viruses on unsuspecting PC users.

Security researchers have detected the appearance of two new Trojans, Trj/WmvDownloader.A and Trj/WmvDownloader.B, in video files circulating on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks.

According to Panda Software, both Trojans take advantage of the new Windows anti-piracy technology to trick users into downloading spyware and adware applications.

"When a user tries to play a protected Windows media file, this technology demands a valid license. If the license is not stored on the computer, the application will look for it on the Internet, so that the user can acquire it directly or buy it," Panda Software explained.

An unsuspecting user attempting to download the DRM (digital rights management) license will instead be redirected to a Web site that loads a large quantity of adware, spyware, modem dialers and other viruses, the company said in an advisory.

"It's pretty ingenious," said Patrick Hinojasa, chief technical officer at Panda Software. "To take an anti-piracy feature and use it to feed spyware is extremely ironic."

Hinojasa told eWEEK.com that the use of Windows Media files as a spyware vehicle is another sign that virus writers and companies supporting spyware are looking for new entry points to infect computers.

"In this case, they're using technology meant to secure content. It just shows that the more bells and whistles you add to the technology, the more you open doors for the bad guys," he said.

Even though these Trojans have been detected in video files on P2P networks such as Kazaa or eMule, Hinojasa warned that these files can be distributed via e-mail, FTP or other Internet download avenues.

Ben Edelman, a Harvard University student who tracks and comments on the spyware scourge, also spotted the spyware-laden media files. In a research note, Edelman posted a demonstration of the exploits and warned that users with older versions of Windows will receive "confusing and misleading messages" regarding the DRM licenses.

After attempting to download the DRM, Edelman said: "On a fresh test computer, I pressed Yes once to allow the installation. My computer quickly became contaminated with the most spyware programs I have ever received in a single sitting."

"All told, the infection added 58 folders, 786 files and an incredible 11,915 registry entries to my test computer. Not one of these programs had showed me any license agreement, nor had I consented to their installation on my computer," he added.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1749948,00.asp


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Microsoft Issues 2 New 'Critical' Security Patches

Microsoft Corp. warned Windows users on Tuesday of two new "critical"-rated security flaws in its software that could allow attackers to take control of a computer and delete or copy information.

The world's largest software maker issued patches to fix the problems as part of its monthly security bulletin, which affects the Windows operating system and the Internet Explorer Web browser.

Computer security experts urged users to download and install the patches, available at www.microsoft.com/security.

"It's very critical that users patch machines for these vulnerabilities," said Jimmy Kuo, a researcher at McAfee Inc.'s virus detection center.

A hacker could exploit one of the security flaws if a user directed the Web browser to a specially designed Web page, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said.

Microsoft also issued one other security warning, rated at the second-highest level of "important."

Microsoft has been working for the last three years to improve the security and reliability of its software under its Trustworthy Computing initiative, as more and more malicious software targets weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software.

Also on Tuesday, Microsoft began offering downloads of a software tool to remove viruses and other malicious software from computers.

Microsoft last week began offering anti-spyware program downloads for Windows users to block programs that generate unwanted pop-up ads and secretly record a computer user's activities.

Both programs are part of an effort by the company to offer its own computer and Internet security software as it prepares a security subscription service code-named "A1" to provide regular updates for security software and services.

Shares in McAfee and Symantec Corp., the two largest computer security software vendors, fell sharply after Microsoft announced it would release its own anti-spyware software. Since then, McAfee is down 7.5 percent and Symantec is off more than 6 percent.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7296553


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The Internet's Future? It Depends on Whom You Ask
Tom Zeller Jr.

Few topics inspire trips to the crystal ball like technology, although hasty predictions have often only provided future generations with quotes for cocktail party chat.

Ken Olson, founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, remarked in 1977, for instance, that there was no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. And Harry M. Warner, a co-founder of Warner Brothers Studios, is well known for wondering, near the end of the silent-picture era, who would want to hear actors talk.

Still, as industries, courts, legislatures and other social institutions struggle to keep pace with each new technological innovation, the desire to peer around the corner is a natural one.

Last September, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a research organization in Washington, sent out a survey asking 24 questions about the future of the Internet to a wide range of technology specialists, scholars and industry leaders. Some 1,200 responded and, as you might expect, widespread agreement is hard to find.

Some of the more cherished notions of the Internet age - that it isolates people from real-world interaction, for instance, or that people use the Web to find reinforcement for their political views and filter out opposing ones - generate deeply divided views among the specialists. Some 42 percent of respondents agreed with the assertion that civic involvement will increase in the next 10 years as people seek and find organizations to join online; nearly 30 percent disagreed. Roughly 40 percent viewed the proliferation of online medical resources as a potential boon to health care management and access; 30 percent of the specialists thought that unlikely.

One assertion on which there was widespread agreement was that the infrastructure of the Internet will be the target of "at least one devastating attack" in the next 10 years. Sixty-six percent of respondents agreed.

But even here, there was dissent. "If you mean very costly, yes," wrote one respondent in the survey. "If you mean a failure that cascades to other segments of society, with widespread suffering or loss of life, then no."

Still, for investors, policy makers and others interested in getting a glimpse of what might be just over the horizon, there are hints to be had.

The survey results solidly confirm what media watchers may already know (and perhaps fear): that the Internet and the rise of the blogger are expected to drive greater change in the news media and publishing industries than in any other sector of society. Internet specialists also expect broad changes in education and working life, and 50 percent of respondents say they believe - despite all of the lawsuits filed by the recording and movie industries against online pirates - that the vast majority of Internet users will still be freely trading digital materials via anonymous networks by 2014.

The predictions are being added to a growing online database called Imagining the Internet, developed jointly by the Pew Project and Elon University in North Carolina.

The database, at www.elon.edu/predictions, includes more than 4,000 predictive statements made by hundreds of technology specialists during the dawn of the Internet era - roughly 1990-95.

"Every one of us, we know it's not going to pan out exactly the way we think," said Barry Wellman, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who participated in the survey and a co-editor of the 2002 book, "The Internet in Everyday Life."

"But it gets us focusing on what some of the alternatives could be."

The specialists might one day eat their words. But so too might those who dare to dismiss them.

"He only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools," The New York Times wrote in a withering 1920 editorial dismissing the physics behind Robert Goddard's assertion that rocket travel - and perhaps even a visit to the moon - might one day be possible. A retraction was printed in 1969, as Apollo 11 set off for the moon.

"The Times," the editorial said, "regrets the error."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/technology/10pew.html


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U.K. Bookseller Fires Employee Over Blog
Jo Best

An employee of U.K. book chain Waterstone's has been fired for material he included in his blog.

Joe Gordon, who has been running his Woolamaloo Gazette satirical newsletter since 1992, was dismissed last week after working for the bookseller for 11 years, following a disciplinary hearing.

Gordon's blog, which covers everything from the city of Edinburgh to UN scientists in Iraq, also mentions his work in one of the chain's Edinburgh branches. As well as discussing visits from authors to the store and which cartoon characters his work colleagues would be, Gordon occasionally used his online diary to vent steam about his working life.

And terms like "Bastardstone's" and "Evil Boss" have drawn Waterstone's ire.

Although Waterstone's has no employee policy that deals with blogging, according to Gordon, the chain said that Gordon's site had brought it into disrepute.

Gordon, however, maintains that such descriptions should have been taken light-heartedly and were meant to be reminiscent of a Dilbert cartoon. "I didn't set out with intent to harm," he said.

Gordon, who ran a book group for the shop and has appeared on television and radio as a Waterstone's employee, said: "I've done so much promotion for this company; it's not true."

If his manager had asked him to stop talking about his job at Waterstone's in his blog, Gordon said he would have done so. "I could lived with not talking about that...They've been so heavy-handed," he said.

Gordon is talking to his union about his dismissal and may take further action. Waterstone's did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Gordon is not the first blogger to have found himself out of a job after writing about an employer.

Ellen Simonetti, formerly a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines, was fired after management saw pictures of her posing in her uniform on her Web site. Jessica Cutler, the now infamous "Washingtonienne," was terminated from her job in a Senator's office for the content of her blog.

The blogging phenomenon is growing rapidly. A report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found readership of blogs increased by 58 percent last year and that 7 percent of adults have their own blogs.
http://news.com.com/U.K.+bookseller+...3-5519477.html


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Email Activist Can Remain Anonymous, Judge Rules
NewStandard Staff

A Texas judge ruled Friday that an anonymous internet user who sent emails to the press and potential voters about Texas politicians' wasteful spending has the right to remain anonymous, even in the face of a defamation lawsuit.

Former Jefferson County Commissioner Jimmy Cokinos, who lost his re-election bid last March, had claimed that emails sent from a Yahoo! email user known only as "recall_carl01" were defamatory and asked the court to force the disclosure of the critic's identity.

But District Court Judge Gary Sanderson ruled that the internet activist could remain anonymous.

Responding to the decision, Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy, who represents "Recall Carl," said: "The e-mails at issue here contained standard criticism of the use of taxpayer money -- not defamatory statements -- and it was well within recall_carl01's right to make the comments. We are very gratified that the judge agreed that this Internet critic has a First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet."
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?...em&itemid=1371


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A Case Of The Torrents
Wendy M. Grossman:

A COUPLE of years ago, when the first online movie services came out, I remember reading that the movie industry was being – and going to be – smarter about the online world than its sibling, the music biz. Then in the last month we've seen the suits go out against some of the leading file-sharing sites for TV shows and movies, and the truth is clearly visible: they're not smarter, they're just on a different schedule.

If you've heard of Bittorrent, the latest target, you're probably one of those evil file-sharers. For those who haven't, it's sophisticated peer-to-peer software that speeds up the process of distributing very large files and it is probably the currently most popular method for swapping video files. Torrent sites host links to trackers – computers that manage connections for a particular file. These also do not necessarily host illegal copies of copyrighted material but they point to "seeds" – computers with whole copies of the file being distributed. The would-be downloader clicks on a tracker link, and downloads a tiny file that communicates with the tracker, kicking off the process of connecting you to peers you can download from.

Bittorrent is not particularly protective of privacy: it's easy enough to view (and log) all the IP addresses of the multiple folks you're downloading from at any one time. But it can be mercilessly efficient. Using it, I picked up Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 in an hour or two (until Microsoft sent in its attack dogs to stop the site from offering the file), and you can download last night's half-hour episode of Scrubs in as little as half an hour if you have a good connection. The popularity of a file has a lot to do with its download speed; the opposite of traditional downloading systems like FTP, with Bittorrent the more people who are downloading a particular file the faster you get it – because they are also uploading it. Something that's not in as hot immediate demand, say an 8.5Gb entire season of Angel, can take as long as a week to download – but if you have broadband, what do you care?

You can see why Bittorrent quickly became popular among people wanting to swap digital copies of TV shows, movies, and games. These types of files are huge compared to those itty-bitty (3-4Mb) MP3s music- lovers bat around. Long-term, the demonstration of what it can do for mass distribution of popular material (as in the XPSP2 demonstration) is the more significant thing about it – the technology unquestionably does have substantial non-infringing uses.

In the last few weeks, some of the most significant TV/film Torrent sites have disappeared, notably Suprnova. These sites were not, of course, hosting copyrighted material, as noted above, though it's not clear how far that argument will get them in the current legal climate. Only one Bittorrent site so far, Lokitorrent, seems to be fighting back, raising funds to mount a defense. This follows last summer's jihad against eDonkey, which significantly slowed down that P2P network.

The obvious comparisons aside, TV and film swapping is really not the same as music-swapping. Music file-sharing really took off among US college students who had hot and cold running ethernet in their dorm rooms. Video-swapping, in my experience, skews more heavily towards Europeans. The key is time-shifting. Do you want to wait six months to see the latest episode of your favorite American show on British television with the commercial breaks in all the wrong places? Or do you want to see it the day after broadcast? Neatly edited, without commercials?

It's that last bit, at least for TV, that's the real kicker, and it's the reason why file-sharing is not the most important thing the MPAA should be hysterical about. There's still a lot of debate about how much or if music- sharing has hit CD sales; I've always maintained that music-sharing is more akin to radio listening than to buying music. But the most significant thing about TV viewing these days is that people are sick of commercials, particularly but not only in the US, where ads now take up as much as a third of a TV show's scheduled slot. The increasing popularity of TiVos and ad-skipping VCRs reflect this. TV producers and networks should be most concerned about how to fix those economics of their industry. Forcing people to watch ads is not going to be the answer for long, even after July, when the US adopts the broadcast flag.

The movie industry, on the other hand, seems to have long forgotten that what they are selling is an emotional experience. Instead of wrecking the theater-going experience by carving up movie theaters into uncomfortably angled spaces or building screens (as in Leicester Square's Warner West End complex) that make it permanently impossible to show a fully in-focus picture, theaters need better sound and vision than viewers can achieve at home. Instead, increasingly they seem to rely on the human desire to see something when it's new – the very point on which file-sharing is the biggest threat. They seem far more casual about DVD sales. Chinese bootleg DVDs have unusably overrun eBay's DVD section. The MPAA should be squelching commercial pirates, not suing private individuals sharing files for no commercial gain.

Either way, you know what will happen next. Court cases. Media coverage. And then new file-sharing technology that's a little less easy to attack.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20580


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Musicians Embrace Free Downloads

While the big players try to fight download technologies like Bit Torrent and P2P, independent musicians encourage fans to share.

According to a recent study from Pew, "Two-thirds of artists say peer-to-peer file sharing poses a minor threat or no threat at all to them." While the big players try to fight download technologies like Bit Torrent and P2P, independent musicians encourage fans to share.

Dilvie is an electronic music producer in Salt Lake City, Utah. He recently announced that he has supplied over 100,000 free music downloads, and now he's reaching out to help other musicians do the same. He's launching a blog, titled simply, "Free Music Downloads". "The goal," he says, "is to share the phenomenal talents of many lesser-known musicians in the electronic music scene with as many people as possible."

Dilvie will be promoting his blog next month on the new radio talk-show, "Think About It." The show is about indie music promotion, and, according to the show's producer (Kenny Love), boasts a certified listenership of 790,000.

While many other artists try to sell CD's online, Dilvie is convinced that people don't want to buy something you could give away for free. "When MP3.com was going strong, it was clear that the free downloads were much more popular than CD sales." He advocates merchandise sales, concerts, and online donations to supplement slow CD sales. "It's easy to set up a paypal donation form," he says. "Donations haven't been frequent, by any means, but I received one donation of $1,000, and I didn't have to ship out 200 CDs."
http://i-newswire.com/pr2398.html

http://download-electronica.blogspot.com/
http://www.dilvie.com/


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Stalking the Wild Wi-Fi Network
Daniel Terdiman

With San Francisco's world-famous Lombard Street -- the so-called curviest street in the world -- a block away and Alcatraz resplendent in the glow of a late afternoon sun, it was only natural that one of the nearest available Wi-Fi networks was named "Rice-a-Roni."

Until recently, intrepid wireless internet hunters would never have known the name of any of the myriad 802.11 signals pouring from these tony apartment buildings without opening their laptops. That's because none of the handheld devices on the market that indicate the presence and strength of available Wi-Fi signals could detect network names.

But with the release of Digital Hotspotter from Canary Wireless, all that has changed. Wardrivers can now palm a detector that not only spots Wi-Fi networks and details their signal strength, but reveals the name of each available network. Even better, the Digital Hotspotter is the first detector to reveal the most important piece of information of all: whether a network is encrypted.

Because of that feature, which saves you from turning on a computer only to find that all nearby signals are inaccessible without a password, the $50 Digital Hotspotter has jumped instantly to the head of the line of the roster of Wi-Fi detectors on the market.

The device also differentiates, names and indicates the channel number of each available signal. But it has some drawbacks.

First and foremost, the Digital Hotspotter costs twice as much as any in the rest of the pack. And, while some of its competitors are designed to fit on a keychain, the inch-thick Digital Hotspotter measures roughly 2 by 2.5 inches and is too big to be carried haphazardly in a pants pocket.

Those willing to spend only around $25 on a Wi-Fi detector have several choices. Wired News tested three of them, all of which (like the Digital Hotspotter) filter out non-Wi-Fi 2.4-GHz signals like those from microwave ovens and cordless phones: Chrysalis' WiFi Seeker, Hawking Technology's WiFi Locator and Kensington's WiFi Finder Plus.

In Wired News' tests of these detectors, the WiFi Seeker performed with the most consistency. It seemed to most often report a signal -- an LED scale of four lights -- that corresponded to that received by a laptop, and did so at what seemed like the farthest distance. Furthermore, it has the advantage of being the smallest and lightest detector on the market and one that, at 2.25 by 1.25 by 0.5 inches, could easily fit on a keychain. Holding down the detection button and moving the device around causes it to instantly update its report of the signal strength depending on the direction and distance of the signal.

Kensington's WiFi Finder Plus is the company's second foray into the detector market. By all accounts, though Kensington was a pioneer in the market, its original WiFi Finder didn't perform very well. The WiFi Finder Plus has some nice features, such as a built-in LED flashlight and a thin, compact form factor -- 2.5 by 1.75 by 0.5 inches -- that fits fairly easily onto a keychain. It also is the only detector on the market that can detect the presence of a nearby Bluetooth device.

But the WiFi Finder Plus suffered in Wired News' tests by frequently being at odds with the results reported by its competitors. Sometimes, it needed to be much closer to an access point than any of the other detectors, and occasionally it didn't pick up a signal when others did. However, that may have been useful -- the other detectors sometimes reported signals to which neither a PC nor a Mac laptop could connect.

More frustrating was Hawking Technology's WiFi Locator. Designed with the clamshell look and feel of a mobile phone, the WiFi Locator seemed almost schizophrenic. When a user held down its Locate button and stayed still, it often offered up a constantly changing report of signal strength and tended to report signals of a higher strength that could not be connected to by a laptop. Combined with its large form factor -- 2.5 by 3.5 inches and an inch thick -- the largest of the $25 group, the WiFi Locator comes in last in Wired News' test.

Regardless of which detector you choose, you'll always be able to tell when a Wi-Fi signal is close at hand. And with the push provided by the Digital Hotspot's reporting of networks' encryption status, it seems evident the next generation of its competitors will incorporate such a feature as well. For now though, the choice boils down to both a cost issue and one of size.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,66120,00.html


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How to hack the Wireless Fantastic

Having fun with Linksys-G
Doug Mohney

HERE IN the States, you can buy a stock Linksys Wireless-G router (WRT54G) for around $50 to $60 when the smoke clears with holiday rebates. You cna maybe even get one for free if you manage to get it thrown in with a broadband service bundle. It's a nice reliable piece of hardware out of the box and even better if you remember to change the default factory settings so the neighbours can't snoop on your LAN traffic.

Underneath the hood of the WRT54G is a 200MHz MIPS processor running Linux and anywhere from 16 to 32MB of RAM and 4 or 8MB of Flash RAM. Linksys, bless their Cisco-owned hearts, has quietly published the source code for its Linux-based devices for anyone to download and modify to their heart's content. There was a bit of a stink about Linksys violating the Linux GPL, but it seems to have been cleared up. As a result, there's a nice little percolating international open source community constantly improving the WRT54G's firmware, with a lot of discussion going on at this web site.

The de facto "God" of WRT54G hacking is a group calling themselves Sveasoft. For a $20 yearly subscription, you can get unlimited "aftermarket upgrades" (better firmware) from SveaSoft to turn a vanilla WRT54G or GS, the so-called "Speed Enhanced" version capable of up to 125 Mbps, into a full-blown firewall, bandwidth manager, VPN server, VLAN manager, and all kinds of other things. Called Alchemy, the custom firmware adds about three dozen new functions to the stock Wireless-G router.

One of the more interesting features of Alchemy is the ability to crank up the power of the radio through the web interface. Linksys fixes the power output in the factory firmware at 28 mw and there's no way to tinker with it. Alchemy allows adjustment from 0 to 251 mw – an increase by nearly a factor of 10 in power. If you're hacking a WRT54G for an outdoor/ distance application (or just trying to blow out the neighbors), this tweak could come in quite handy.

Other features in the Alchemy toolbox include routines for a hotspot portal and quality of service (QoS) bandwidth management so you give priority to VoIP and IM traffic. Security enhancements are impressive and include a SSH client and server and WPA/TKIP with AES encryption. There's an extensive firewall to both track and block services on a protocol basis and support for IPTables. LAN managers love Alchemy for adding remote syslog, Ntop statistics, SNMP hooks, and statistical collection for system uptime and load averaging. There's also some tricks in the package to make the WRT act as a repeater.

Now, SveaSoft and Linksys aren't the only game(s) in town for Wi-Fi hacking. From the software end of things, there's also a Linux flavor called OpenWrt available for compilation. OpenWrt has a selection of package drop-ins to do many of the same things Alchemy does; if you like to play with source code, then OpenWrt is your cuppa. On the hardware side of things, since many consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers are based around Broadcom's chipsets and reference design, it may be possible to load up SveaSoft or OpenWrt on certain, but not all, G devices from Apple, Belkin, Dell, and Microsoft.

Finally, you can even go to class to learn how to hack a WRT54G. ShmooCon (here) in February will have a session dedicated to all the fun (and some not-so-fun) things you can do by reprogramming the WRT54G, including what to do when firmware fails. Can you trust information given by two guys calling themselves Sysmin and QuiGon? Only the Force knows.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20200


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US Slaps On The Wardriver-Busting Paint
Lester Haines

Security-minded US decorators' supply outfit Force Field Wireless claims to have developed a DIY solution to the international menace of marauding geek wardrivers - DefendAir paint "laced with copper and aluminum fibers that form an electromagnetic shield, blocking most radio waves and protecting wireless networks".

According to a South Florida Sun Sentinel report, one coat of the water-based paint "shields Wi-Fi, WiMax and Bluetooth networks operating at frequencies from 100 megahertz to 2.4 gigahertz", while two or three applications are "good for networks operating at up to five gigahertz".

Simple as that. Of course, there are a few downsides to this miracle product. First up, you must be careful how you slap it on. Force Field Wireless rep Harold Wray admits that "radio waves find leaks", while the company asks users to be aware that the product "must be applied selectively" otherwise it "might hinder the performance of radios, televisions and cell phones".

Reg readers can make of this apparent contradiction what they will, and are asked to direct any technically-based sceptisicm to Force Field Wireless, and not to Vulture Central. Thankyou.

Another snagette is that DefendAir is available only in grey - a fact sufficient to provoke what is known in the UK as "interior designers' wobbly". Mercifully, it can be used as a primer, so those who require wireless peace of mind plus bold fashion statement can rest assured that coat of "Wardriver Crimson" will cover it up quite nicely.

It only remains for us to say that DefendAir costs a cool $69 per gallon (US gallon, presumably). Still, that's a small price to pay for the absolute certainty that High School students are not right now sitting across the street recording your credit card details for later deployment in the online purchase of pornography, drugs and semi-automatic weapons.
http://www.theregister.com/2005/01/13/wi_fi_paint/


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Has TiVo Forsaken Us?
Lucas Graves

Buy a TiVo lately? Sometime in the next few months, your machine will quietly download a patch that makes it respond to a new copy protection scheme from software maker Macrovision. The app puts restrictions on how long your DVR can save certain kinds of shows - so far, just pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. It's the first time your TiVo won't let you watch whatever you want, whenever you want. We asked TiVo general counsel Matthew Zinn why he thinks Hollywood will settle for an inch when it can take a mile.

WIRED: TiVo has always been about empowering the viewer. Why change now?

ZINN: Macrovision changed its policy. So the question was, Do we want to have a Macrovision license with certain restrictions, or none at all? We decided that as long as the restrictions were limited to pay-per-view and video-on-demand, consumers would still have the choice. If they don't like a narrower window in which to view programming, they won't purchase it. That'll send a message to the content owners.

You're not legally required to have copy protection. Why not tell Macrovision to stuff it?
That was an option. But if there was no Macrovision license, we would run into a lot of copyright problems with things like remote access and "TiVo to Go" functionality. To innovate and give people more flexibility with broadcast content, we decided it was acceptable to allow content owners to apply protections to higher-value content.

What if the higher-value content is just the beginning? This could be a Trojan horse.
That would be a violent blow to consumer flexibility. You could end up in a situation where different products by different manufacturers would have different rules. I don't think we would go along with it.

With the cable companies in bed with the studios, TiVo could be the last line of defense for the DVR as we know it.
Sometimes I feel that way. We're aware of the danger, and the slippery slope. The danger is that DRM can tilt the balance of copyright so that ultimately there's no concept of fair use, because the content owners dictate what the rules are. But I think content owners are beginning to recognize that if you make things too restrictive, then consumers will find nonlegal ways to achieve what they want.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...w=wn_tophead_6


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Waiting for eXeem.

A Fleeting Victory For Hollywood
As anti-piracy war shuts down top Web sites, others quickly fill the void.

Krysten Crawford

Shortly after Hollywood launched a major offensive against Internet pirates last month, two popular Web sites for stealing movies shut down.

But no sooner had Suprnova.org and Bittorrent.org pulled the plug then copycat sites appeared in their place. What's more, BitTorrent, the technology targeted in the movie industry crackdown, appears to be as popular as ever.

BitTorrent remains the most common "peer-to-peer" technology used by Internet users looking to swap files, both legal and illegal, according to CacheLogic, a British company that monitors peer-to-peer traffic. CacheLogic estimates that just over half of all Internet file-sharing uses BitTorrent software.

"In general there has been very little reduction in the levels of BitTorrent traffic across the globe," said Andrew Parker, the company's founder and chief technology officer. "As many of the (BitTorrent) sites...were being shut down, new ones sprung up."

Parker said he was surprised that BitTorrent usage has not noticeably declined. He noted that when the music industry launched its counteroffensive against Internet pirates by suing users of Kazaa, then the No. 1 peer-to-peer service, file-swappers quickly shifted to newer technologies, including BitTorrent and another one called eDonkey.

The massive shift away from Kazaa took about two months, said Parker.

But with BitTorrent, a similar exodus isn't happening -- at least not yet. And that speaks both to the wiliness of the BitTorrent technology and the big obstacles that Hollywood faces as it tries to avoid a crisis similar to the one that struck the music industry when Napster set off what amounted to a massive online looting of songs.

BitTorrent, a different kind of threat

"I'm not in any way surprised" that BitTorrent continues to thrive, said Eric Garland, the CEO of BigChampagne, a peer-to-peer research firm. He notes that BitTorrent is a different technology than traditional peer- to-peer software like Kazaa and Morpheus.

Instead of acting as a central repository that connects users who want to share music or other files, BitTorrent is essentially homeless.

It's simply a technology that makes downloading easier and faster. While BitTorrent is good at swapping data between computers, explains Parker, users have to find the files they want themselves. That's what led to Suprnova.org and other sites set up specifically to tell users what BitTorrent files are available and where to find them.

The sites, which essentially act as conduits between downloaders and BitTorrent files, were the primary target of last month's campaign, in which the Motion Picture Association of America filed 100 lawsuits against BitTorrent and other index sites around the world.

"The reason BitTorrent will be persistent and will continue to be disruptive or troubling is that the MPAA went after some of the most- trafficked Web sites that essentially point users to these files, but that doesn't impact the technology at all," said Garland. "What happen is mirror sites pop up, in some cases within minutes."

So how does a BitTorrent user know where to find a replacement site? Simple, said Garland: "Google."

There's another threat looming: Peer-to- peer sites are all abuzz these days about a new computer program set to be released this month. Details are scant, but eXeem is being described as a cross between BitTorrent and traditional peer-to-peer software that helps users find the files they want.

To Garland, the rise of eXeem and copycat Suprnova.org sites shows that the entertainment industry is wrong to think it can turn Internet piracy "off like a switch."

A spokesman for the MPAA did not immediately have a response to a written request for comment.

The iTunes solution

Working in Hollywood's favor is user apathy: Consumers aren't all that interested yet in watching movies on computer screens, said Yankee Group senior analyst Michael Goodman.

But that's bound to change in coming years. And when it does, analysts said, movie studios need to be ready or else risk being blind- sided.

Some analysts and Internet users think the only answer is for Hollywood to stop trying to fight piracy and to focus on finding a solution similar to iTunes. The Apple Computer service, which lets consumers download songs for 99 cents a pop, has been a spectacular success.

The answer, said Garland, is to take piracy mainstream. "You marginalize it. You take what's great about the experience and you sell it to people."

Paul Ford, a New York writer and avid peer-to-peer user, thinks that's a great idea. He readily admits to regularly downloading Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" because he doesn't have or want cable service.

But he said he would happily buy a subscription, if only one were available.

"'The Daily Show' is worth $50 or $60 bucks a year for me," said Ford. "At some point there's going to be enough people doing this (illegally downloading television shows and movies) and people wanting it that it will make sense."
http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/07/tech...movie_piracy/#


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Students Publish Their Work Online
John Darling


Kyle Stitch, right, is editor of the online “e- zine” SPEWS,
a Web- based publishing outlet for Southern Oregon
University writing students. Sara Simon, left, is associate editor.
Mail Tribune / Jim Craven

For young writers, getting into print has always been a steep mountain to climb, something attained only by the best wordsmiths after crossing the hurdles of agents, publishers and critics. No more.

Now, thanks to the digital age, writers, at least those in the English and Writing Department at Southern Oregon University, can proceed directly to "go," posting their fiction, poetry, essays and columns on an electronic magazine ("e-zine") not only for classmates and faculty to peruse, but for the whole world.

Self-deprecatingly called SPEWS — Southern’s Publishing English Writing Students — the attractively-illustrated site at www.englishnewsletter.org is posting just about anything written by an E&W student — even those in freshman composition, said Editor Kyle Stitch, an E&W senior.

The Web site, filled with "peer-to-peer writing," has proven a ready and welcome outlet for budding writers like senior Linda Olson, who posted her poem, "My Hands," the poetry winner in this year’s Ed Versluis writer’s contest, which comes with a prize of $50 (she framed it). Versluis was an English professor who worked at SOU for 24 years.

"It has such immediacy and is a great catharsis," said Olson. "Writing is how I express myself and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It’s really kind of exciting to pull it up (on the Internet) and see it there. It’s a great beginning. Now I’m starting to send things out to publishers."

The e-zine idea came up last March among students in Professor Mada Morgan’s writing class as an English newsletter within the department and, said Stitch, "we all thought, why not put it online for the whole world to see and save the paper?"

Said Morgan, "It’s been an absolutely marvelous opportunity for students to show themselves and their work. It’s been the genius of the students that made it happen."

Until now, writing students have had virtually no outlets for their work, said senior Prairie Smallwood, who has posted several poems on SPEWS.

"SPEWS is really accessible to us poor students," said Smallwood. "No one has to pay. And you see the writing of people you know personally, people you may not normally have talked to, but now you do. It’s cool, maybe a little embarrassing, because poems are pretty personal."

Graduate Mirleen Arnold, winner of the Versluis prize for non-fiction, has, with the press of a button, sent her online story, "Life on the Farm," to scads of friends and family, who with another press of the button, have forwarded it to other friends, some of whom she doesn’t even know.

"I wasn’t sure what would happen once my writing got on the ’Net," said Arnold. "I was surprised at the response and how people responded with e-mails."

What did she do with her $50 prize? "It was gone the next day. I made sure I spent it on something frivolous, so I bought perfume, which I never get."

SPEWS is proving to be a facile resource for writers, linking them to thousands of magazine and book editors, publishers and contests with an array of on- site links and a column titled "Submit Yourself to Writing," written regularly by senior Sara Simon.

"It opens a lot of resources right at your fingertips," said Simon, who is angling for a career as an associate editor with a publishing company. "I love the Web site because of the writing, pictures and the interactivity, which is a huge benefit to writers."

SOU students Ross Risher and Delanie Lawrence maintain the site. It’s illustrated with random, compelling visuals by the school’s Multimedia Department, which "creates a buzz" in other areas of the campus, said Stitch. Planned are short online videos of writers reading their material.

Under discussion now is whether the Web site — which has counted up to 1,000 hits a month, some from as far as Japan and Africa — should be opened to postings from all students. Stitch said they realize that not all aspiring writers have site access that requires being enrolled in the writing program.
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2...es/05local.htm


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Iomega Corporation announces investment in FolderShare Software enabling anytime, anywhere secure access via IP to Iomega customers
Press Release

Iomega Corporation , a global leader in data storage, today announced a strategic partnership with ByteTaxi Inc., the developer of FolderShare software. Pursuant to the agreement signed between the companies, Iomega plans to embed FolderShare software on its data storage products, beginning with the Iomega Network Hard Drive. Iomega has made an undisclosed investment in ByteTaxi, and the two companies plan to introduce several enhancements to FolderShare over the next few years.

"People are accumulating large collections of digital files -- their photos, music and documents, for instance. There is an obvious need for a simple and convenient way to store and organize these files, access them from anywhere, and safely share them with family and coworkers," said Sean Burke, executive vice president of consumer solutions, Iomega Corporation. "The Iomega Hard Drive solutions with FolderShare will address all these needs and give you secure access to your PC's files from anywhere in the world."

FolderShare Technology Overview

FolderShare software is a breakthrough in file management that lets Windows(R) users set up secure peer-to-peer networks for file- sharing tasks with invited users -- in effect, a personal and highly customizable VPN (virtual private network). Users can set up as many as 250 FolderShare libraries, assign up to 50,000 files and folders to each library, and grant connection rights to other individuals as needed.

When a file in a FolderShare library is created, changed, or deleted, FolderShare automatically updates all computers with rights to that library. File transfers are immediate, transparent, and secure, which means that shared files are always up to date, even on computers that are physically separated by thousands of miles and a dozen time zones. With FolderShare running in the background, home users and businesses can access, share content and collaborate easily and securely.

"The Internet has transformed our workplaces and our entertainment options, but it has been a mixed experience in terms of enhancing file portability and security for the ordinary user," said Michael Merhej, CEO, ByteTaxi Inc. "People need tools that can give them better access to the files they want regardless of location, and better control over how to share those files as needed. We developed FolderShare to give people back that sense of control, leveraging the Internet into a secure VPN that is incredibly easy to use. We're pleased to be working with Iomega to make our vision a reality for its customers."

Availability

The first Iomega products incorporating FolderShare technology enhanced with extra features proposed by Iomega are expected to ship in the second quarter of 2005.
http://press.arrivenet.com/bus/article.php/554389.html


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Small External Hard Drive Offers Backup Options Plus Room to Move
J. D. Biersdorfer

It can be quite a conundrum: How do you easily and effectively back up all the digital pictures, music, video and documents jam-packed on, say, a 60-gigabyte hard drive when even the largest recordable DVD can hold only about 8.5 gigabytes of data?

Tape drives and external hard drives are the usual answer, but a new series of small external hard drives from Iogear also offers a range of backup options.

The Iogear 3.5-inch Tri-Select Combo ION drive takes up minimal desk space and works with FireWire 400 and U.S.B. 2.0 connections on most modern Windows and Macintosh systems.

With its customizable backup features, files and folders can be copied to the drive with the push of a button.

The package also includes a copy of Dantz Retrospect Express software for creating automatic backup sessions.

The Tri-Select Combo ION drive is available in five capacities (80, 120, 160, 200 and 250 gigabytes), with suggested prices ranging from about $150 for the 80-gigabyte model to $290 for the 250-gigabyte version, although it can be found for less online.

The company's Web site, iogear.com, lists details as well as links to stores that sell the drives.

For computers that are becoming cramped for space, the extra gigabytes provided by the ION may help in another way, by giving the old hard drive a little breathing room for regular file storage after the backup chores are done
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...ts/13driv.html


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Software Makers Lobby For Copyright Changes

Want ISPs to reveal names of P2P users

Software makers Thursday asked Congress to make it easier to track down people who copy their products over the Internet, joining the entertainment industry in an effort to stiffen copyright protections.

The Business Software Alliance, a lobbying group whose members include Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Inc., said Internet service providers like America Online should be required to reveal the names of customers who may be distributing copyright software through "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa.

Internet service providers have argued that investigators should be required to file a lawsuit to get customer names, an extra legal step that they say protects customer privacy and cuts down on frivolous requests.

Several U.S. appeals courts have agreed with this view, and the Supreme Court has declined to review the matter.

The recording industry has filed more than 7,000 such suits over the past year in an attempt to discourage Internet song swapping, and movie studios have launched a legal campaign of their own.

Software companies, by contrast, have not yet aggressively pursued individuals who copy programs online.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/interne...eut/index.html


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Your Software Rights Or The Best Tools: Often A Sad Choice
Jem Matzan

Commentary: What do we do when we have a substandard free software product that we could use, but would be more productive with a proprietary competitor? What sacrifices should we make in order to use a free software program? Originally the GNU Project was intended to provide a free (as in rights) replacement for proprietary Unix -- the dominant industrial operating system at the time. This project was initiated with the understanding that proprietary software would have to be used until free alternatives were made available. Today we have many free replacements for proprietary programs, but are they truly equivalents? Because GNU Project and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman's computing needs are met with BASH, GCC, GDB, and Emacs does not mean that the rest of us can safely cast off rights-restrictive software. Suggesting that we all switch to free software-only systems seems a bit pretentious and narrow-minded, considering the average user's desktop computing needs.

The GIMP is a good graphics program, but many users feel that the interface is horrible, and the operation and adjustment of some of the more advanced functions (such as color correction and print layout) are not adequate.

No matter how you feel about The GIMP, it can't be unilaterally proclaimed an equivalent to Photoshop for the above-mentioned reasons. It may be a free replacement, but it does not offer identical or superior functionality in the eyes of the users linked to above. It can of course be made to work in place of Photoshop, depending on your needs and budget. But if you have paying work to do, how much of a hassle are you willing to go through to use free software?

The sacrifices we make

Giving up a degree of convenience for heightened security and greater reliability is a proposition reasonable people generally accept, assuming the threat of insecurity and poor reliability is real to them. For that reason it seems likely that GNU/Linux will continue to creep into the desktop computing market, considering the alternative.

Giving up function or convenience in trade for other more important benefits is a reasonable sacrifice, but what of the user's rights? Should we give up everything for freedom?

The freedom that the Free Software Foundation speaks of is not the traditional freedom ideal established by the U.S. constitution, but the freedom to modify, use, share, and study software -- the "four freedoms" as outlined by the FSF. If these freedoms are not important to the user, there is no disadvantage to using proprietary software and no clear advantage to using free software. In other words, we're talking about how we use software, not the freedom of the press or the right to bear arms, and convincing people that software rights and basic constitutional rights are on the same level is an exercise in futility.

Richard Stallman's essay on the matter makes an excellent case for using free software, but it depends on the bold and idealistic assumption that people are inherently honest when it comes to obeying license terms. It also assumes that people care how the software works and are willing and able to modify it.

The majority of proprietary software licenses restrict the user's ability to use, share, modify, and study the software, but there is virtually no enforcement of these terms in the non-business portion of the software world. If I give my (fictional) copy of Microsoft Office to my friend, the FBI will not show up at my door to arrest me -- or at least I can find no evidence to suggest that this has happened to anyone. In fact, I would put forth a guess that the FBI would not bother with me even if I confessed and turned myself in for this criminal act. If I gave this software to five friends, I'm still reasonably assured that I won't be apprehended. If I put it up for free download or offer copies for sale, then I know I can expect the BSA and/or the FBI to do their best to destroy my life. Sharing among small groups is one thing; sharing with the whole world is entirely different. So despite the license agreement's prohibitions on use and sharing, there is no real threat to someone's freedom by ignoring proprietary restrictions on sharing with family and friends.

Most software users are not programmers, or at least do not have the skills, knowledge, or connections to modify the software they are using at the source code level. A motivated user could find a programmer or company that would accept payment to modify the software, but that would probably cost a lot of money. Similarly, users generally do not wonder or care how a program operates and have no desire to study its source code. These freedoms matter only to users who need significant modifications that cannot be found in other, similar software. Commercial desktop software is diverse and mature enough in this day and age that there are few or no missing features that are critically important, or at least important enough that a non-programming desktop user would pay money to have them added. This is evidenced by the fact that, over the past few years, proprietary software publishers have offered meager additions and enhancements to their products. Microsoft, for instance, added virtually nothing of substance to Office System 2003 compared to Office XP, and you have to dig deep to find any functional difference between Macromedia's Studio MX and Studio MX 2004. Sagging upgrade sales support these assertions.

The caveat here is, if all proprietary software users are totally honest, they wouldn't agree to a license that forced them to promise not to share the software with friends and family, and programmers would not agree to give up the right to study and modify the software. Somehow, though, disregarding a proprietary license's restrictive terms, while technically dishonest, doesn't seem on the same level as cheating on a test or lying to a spouse. It's hard to think of disobeying licensing terms as being dishonest or dishonorable, and the moral need to help your friends and family is a far more powerful force than the least degree of honesty toward a proprietary software corporation. How do you convince someone that they are giving up freedom when in reality they take those freedoms anyway, whether they are granted or not?

Excuses, excuses

Previously we said that sacrificing a small degree of convenience or functionality can reasonably be justified if more valuable qualities (reliability and security) are gained. But what happens when you have to give up more than that, with the only reward being the four freedoms we've been discussing? For instance, Web designers who depend on Macromedia's suite of Web creation tools will find themselves lost and alone in the GNU/Linux world because, aside from Nvu in place of Dreamweaver (and if you're using Dreamweaver for anything beyond HTML and CSS development, Nvu is not truly a replacement), there are no reasonably competent replacements for their tools of choice. Fireworks users won't be able to automatically generate rats-nest HTML files to control giant graphical pages; Flash users will have to switch to Java to achieve a similar (yet equally garish and annoying) rich media Web experience; Freehand users will have to do drawing with The GIMP and coding by hand or with Nvu. Without a drastic change in design philosophy and practice, it would be impossible to switch someone who depends on Macromedia tools to free software replacements. If you're making money as a Web designer, it would make more sense to sacrifice freedom for function and continue using Macromedia's proprietary tools. If your friends and family wanted to copy your software, you could always just direct them to GNU/Linux, The GIMP, and Nvu if you feared violating the Macromedia license agreement.

I did not ask him specifically, but from a previous response to a similar issue, I would guess that Stallman's answer to this would involve encouraging people not to develop with Flash. That's a good suggestion for many reasons, but when someone is paying you to develop in Flash, explaining to them that you will not do it because of RMS's suggestion will only merit a lost contract or job.

The in-betweens

It is this author's observation that most users fall in between these honest and dishonest extremes. Most of us would like to use free software where we are able, but we're not willing to make sacrifices that add up to a net loss of value in our software. Many believe in the cause and ideals of the free software movement, but few are willing to sacrifice the tools that they need to achieve optimal productivity. This is not because we do not value our freedoms; it is because we unabashedly take those freedoms whether they are granted or not, and if it means disregarding license restrictions in order to help our friends and family while getting the job done efficiently, then so be it.

The free software movement does not appear to be losing ground despite the flaw in its reasoning. Arguably, however, it may be gaining in popularity and use not because of the freedom it offers, but because free software is starting to achieve true replacement status -- it's becoming competitive with proprietary software. It is now possible for people to use only free software and be productive in some fields, but there are times when proprietary software is necessary and no free replacement can even come close to doing the job.

As a case in point, recently I needed to get tire specifications for my motorcycle from the Suzuki Web site. Since the site is all done in Flash, and since I did not have the Flash plug-in installed because it is proprietary, I could not get the information I needed. While some sites offer non-Flash versions in an introductory page, the Suzuki site didn't display anything in my browser but blank white space. Yes, I could find and order the service manual from a parts Web site or simply call up a local dealership and ask, but I have a computer to help me find this sort of information. My computer's functionality and its ability to find information that I need has been hindered because I refused to install proprietary software. That's when I cast off the notion that I had to use only free software. Why should I reduce the functionality of my computer and inconvenience myself, when in actuality I sacrifice nothing by using necessary proprietary software?

Perhaps it is time to let go of some of the high-moral ideals and remember why we started using computers in the first place. This is not to discredit or minimalize the work of the Free Software Foundation or deny the genius of Richard Stallman, but none of us should ever be asked to make unfavorable sacrifices when it comes to turning our computer time into work or money. I prefer to use as much free software as possible, but I still need the Flash and Java browser plug-ins, a proprietary word processor that I find superior to the free replacements, and I thoroughly enjoy a certain proprietary game. I am not willing to give these things up, and I do not feel dishonorable in using them. Specifically, the word processor is an absolute must -- I cannot sacrifice the tools that help me maximize my creativity and productivity. From my frame of reference, the only thing that matters is the story, and I am not willing to give up the tool that is most effective for me. What sacrifices are you willing to make?

The future

There may indeed come a time when proprietary license enforcement extends to the individual desktop user, complete with BSA or FBI raids in private homes. As proprietary software companies continue to lose customers to free alternatives of increasing quality, this scenario may come to pass. As suggested in Stallman's short story, The Right to Read, we could someday face prison time for sharing things like books and computers.

The sad reality of free software is that it may take drastic measures such as these to make the four freedoms important enough to value.

Links


"proprietary software would have to be used" - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/catego...ietarySoftware
"the interface is horrible" - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
"color correction and print layout" - http://ask.slashdot.org/ comments.pl?sid=44997&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=109&tid= 4&mode=thread&pid=4680802#4680949
"the alternative" - http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
"freedom" - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
"outlined" - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
"essay" - http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
"free download" - http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pb...312/1079/RSS01
"offer copies for sale" - http://www.scholarware.com/piracynews01.htm
"BSA" - http://www.bsa.org/
"nothing of substance" - http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/...9117254,00.htm
"find any functional difference" - http://www.itreviews.co.uk/s232-macr...004-review.htm
"Sagging upgrade sales" - http://news.com.com/2100-1001-249972.html?legacy=cnet
"Nvu" - http://www.nvu.com/
"from a previous response to a similar issue" - http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=...rticle&sid=260
"proprietary word processor" - http://www.softmaker.de/tml_en.htm
"a certain proprietary game" - http://www.unrealtournament.com/ut2004/
"The Right to Read" - http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

http://trends.newsforge.com/article..../01/05/1842204


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In brief

Now That’s What I Call A Petition

Angry Ashlee Simpson haters are circulating an online petition to Geffen Records, asking that the lip-synching star cease her career. “We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson’s horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop,” reads the petition. “Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.”

Jeannette Walls
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6809907/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Media Movement Matures
Aaron Sarver

In 2003, an unprecedented 750,000 Americans wrote the Federal Communications Commission, urging them not to relax media ownership rules. Since then, the movement to reshape national media policy has gained momentum, and the media reform organization Free Press (http://www.freepress.net) has been instrumental every step of the way.

Free Press is building on bipartisan concerns about media concentration by helping to organize a series of hearings that allow citizens to speak directly to FCC commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps. They eventually hope to hold similar hearings in all 50 states.

In These Times spoke with Free Press founder and In These Times contributing editor Robert McChesney about current media reform battles and the challenges of getting the word out about crucial but highly technical communications policy issues.

What are the next steps in the media reform movement?

One of our biggest campaigns is to establish community broadband wireless around the country. This is an extraordinary new technology that allows towns, communities and neighborhoods to set up their own non- commercial, non-profit, public utility wireless system. The big concern we have is that the telecom and cable companies are trying to get laws passed that don’t let city governments set up their own systems and allow these cable, DSL and phone companies to reserve the rights to broadband.

These are the sort of tangible, winnable fights we’re having in every state now. We only lose when we don’t organize and the powerful corporate lobbies get their way behind closed doors.

We’re also fighting to get low-power FM radio stations on the dial across the country. I think we’ll win that fight if enough people organize.

Every progressive organization struggles to get its message out beyond its core group of supporters. How do we get the media reform message out to people in rural areas of this country?

Media reform activists are not going to get much coverage in the news media itself because the media clearly has a vested interest in the way these stories are covered.

The Internet has become a crucial tool for us. One of the lessons of the media ownership fight of 2003 was how we could use the new technologies to really build up a strong mass movement without relying on much conventional news media coverage. I don’t think the Internet by itself is satisfactory, but it has allowed us to do some relatively inexpensive organizing that would have probably been very difficult 10, 15, 20 years ago. We also do hard, on-the-ground organizing on issues that matter in the community. For example, we’ve organized hearings in Texas and South Dakota that were overwhelmingly attended by Latinos and Native Americans who very concerned about local media. Campaigns to get malt liquor advertising out of a working-class neighborhood’s billboard advertising, or advertising out of the schools, are the sorts of things that you can organize in communities that are sympathetic to your cause but largely oblivious to you.

In the media reform movement we’re fortunate because the greatest weaknesses of the corporate media system is that it’s increasingly unprofitable to do local coverage, especially in poor areas and rural areas. So, rural media has really collapsed in the last 20 years of corporate media concentration. There’s an understanding across the political spectrum that there is a problem here. We have to find tangible issues to work around and then work through farmers’ organizations and other agricultural groups. They’re already organized in those areas and we need to draw them into our struggle.

The Internet has vastly changed how people consume media in this country. Are some of the media ownership rules going to be irrelevant in a few years?

That remains to be seen. So far it hasn’t happened, and this claim has been made for 10 years now.

The problem is that if we let companies dominate conventional media, all evidence indicates they will then come to dominate what comes later too. It will give them market leverage on whatever the new technologies bring. So the more competitive and the more egalitarian we make our existing conventional media system, the more likely our technologies will evolve in that manner as well.

For a longer audio version of this interview, visit In These Times' radio program, Fire on the Prairie.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/mai...ement_matures/

[JackSpratts]

The Media

Your Daily Paper, Courtesy of a Sponsor
Jacques Steinberg and Tom Torok

Marie Kurth does not subscribe to The Denver Post, but that did not stop the paper from being tossed haphazardly in front of her century-old red-brick home each Sunday beginning in October.

"It was everywhere. It was on the walk, it was on the public walk, in the yard, and that I don't care for," said Ms. Kurth, who is 81 and lives in northwest Denver.

After six weeks of unwelcome deliveries, Ms. Kurth said, she called the Denver Newspaper Agency, which manages The Post and The Rocky Mountain News, to put a stop to the papers.

Ms. Kurth's experience is hardly unique. On an average Sunday, more than 100,000 copies of The Post - more than 1 of every 8 printed - are delivered to homes in Colorado that did not request or pay for them.

Across the country each week, more than 1.6 million people who are not on newspaper subscriber rolls are being delivered copies that did not cost them a cent - but they are still being classified as paying customers, an analysis by The New York Times has found. The papers, which are typically paid for by advertisers, are delivered by small and large dailies across the country, including The Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal, The San Jose Mercury News and The Boston Globe.

The unsolicited deliveries were made possible by rule changes the newspaper industry approved three years ago. The new rules allowed so-called third-party sales - which the industry once shunned - to be counted as part of a newspaper's total circulation. Without them, many newspapers would be losing circulation at a far higher rate. In the industry as a whole, circulation has been falling for a decade or more.

Maintaining the appearance of healthy circulation has been critical to newspapers at a time when the industry is losing advertisers to other media, like the Web and television. Because paid circulation determines in large part what publishers can charge for advertising - the lifeblood of an estimated $58 billion industry - any deep sustained losses threaten to erode the already shaken confidence of marketers and investors.

To determine just how much third-party sales contribute to newspaper circulation, The Times analyzed circulation data that 669 newspapers provided to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, a nonprofit oversight body operated by publishers and advertisers. To gauge circulation on the day when it is typically highest, The Times analyzed figures for Sundays, but also included weekday figures for two major papers that do not publish on the weekends - USA Today, which is owned by The Gannett Company, and The Wall Street Journal, owned by Dow Jones & Company.

The Times's analysis found that the combined average paid circulation for all those papers for the six- month period that ended March 2004 fell by fewer than 125,000 copies a day, or 0.2 percent, compared with the six-month reporting period that ended March 2002. But had third-party sales been excluded from those figures, as they were before 2001, the average paid circulation of those papers would have fallen 986,000, nearly 2 percent, over the two-year period, to 55,443,650. (The drop would have been even steeper had The Times's tally also excluded "newspaper in education" programs. Those programs seek to build readership among the young and are often paid for by third parties; for the most part, results in that category have long been counted under audit bureau rules.)

In recent months, advertisers and some newspaper analysts have been critical of the industry's increasing reliance on papers paid for by others - regardless of whether the practice is blessed by audit bureau rules.

"When we know there is someone reaching in their pocket and paying for a newspaper, we feel there is a greater likelihood they're going to read that newspaper and thus be exposed to our advertising," said Matthew Spahn, director for media planning at Sears, which spends more than $200 million a year on newspaper advertising. "When they haven't reached in their pocket, the concern is, 'Are they going to read it?' "

"Suddenly, we start to lose the visibility to who we're talking to," he said. "That's what worries me."

The increased scrutiny of circulation practices has come after the acknowledgment by four daily papers - Newsday and the Spanish-language daily Hoy, which are properties of The Tribune Company; The Chicago Sun-Times, a unit of Hollinger International; and The Dallas Morning News, which is owned by the Belo Corporation - that they violated audit bureau rules by routinely overstating their circulation figures by tens of thousands of copies a day. (The four papers were not included in The Times's analysis.)

The overstatements of the four papers did not for the most part involve third-party programs. Instead, those papers have acknowledged attempts to deceive advertisers. In the case of The Sun-Times, for example, the efforts included paying some distributors not to return some unsold copies and creating a charitable foundation to buy papers to distribute to schools. Nonetheless, some other newspapers have taken aggressive steps to ensure that their circulation figures, while allowed by the rules, can withstand a higher level of scrutiny.

Papers including The Los Angeles Times, which is also owned by Tribune, have recently pledged to limit third-party circulation. And publishers and advertisers agreed at the annual audit bureau conference in November to explore tightening one aspect of the rules on sponsored copies. Yet as a whole, the industry is committed to finding ways to expand the distribution of such papers.

"Publishers are accepting free publications as credible because of the demand they see from the public," said John P. Murray, vice president for circulation marketing at the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group.

The uninvited papers are not just landing in driveways from Chico, Calif., to Providence, R.I. Many are being distributed in unlikely venues like the cardiac care ward at a hospital outside Roanoke, Va.

Early on a recent morning at the Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem, Va., for example, a newsboy's cry of "Get your newspaper!" - in this case, uttered by a 65-year-old hospital volunteer - echoed down the corridors, as Ben McCoy delivered free copies of The Roanoke Times to patients. The papers contained $5 coupons redeemable at the pharmacy at a Kroger grocery store, which had paid cash for them, according to the newspaper's executives.

While some papers were left at the foots of beds of people too ill to respond, others were snapped up by patients like Thomas DeBusk Jr., 80, whose bright white hair and deep tan belied the fact that he had been in the hospital three times over the last few months for heart problems.

"I check the obituaries each morning to see if I'm in there," Mr. DeBusk said.

The morning treat for these patients came about because of a compromise struck in 2001 between newspaper publishers and advertisers on the audit bureau board. The newspaper companies won the right to expand the definition of what constitutes a "paid" paper. In exchange, they agreed to a demand by advertisers that circulation statements provide a breakdown of circulation in the third-party category.

William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of MediaNews Group, which owns more than four dozen daily papers and a 50 percent stake in the agency that helps manage The Denver Post, said he had only reluctantly supported the compromise, but he has since emerged as one of the most aggressive practitioners.

"Once this became the rule," Mr. Singleton said, "we took the position, 'Hey, it's the rule and we're going to use it.' "

According to figures submitted to the audit bureau by the Denver Newspaper Agency (Mr. Singleton is chairman of the agency), the Sunday circulation of The Post would have fallen about 12 percent, or more than 90,500 copies, from 2002 to 2004, had the publisher not been able to include free papers delivered to homes. When those copies were included, the paper's circulation fell by fewer than 12,000 copies, or less than 2 percent, to 783,274.

To advertisers like Mr. Spahn who worry whether such sales may be overused, Mr. Singleton has a ready retort: any advertiser can learn of the paper's use of third-party sales by reading the first page of a publisher's statement filed to the audit bureau.

MediaNews is hardly alone in its use of such programs.

Among the biggest gains in third-party paid circulation were those recorded over the last two years at The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company.

The number of papers delivered on an average Sunday by The Globe in that category rose to 30,220, or 4.4 percent of its circulation in 2004, from 916, or 0.1 percent, in 2002, according to The Times's analysis. Nearly all were delivered to people's homes. Even with the inclusion of those copies, the paper's overall Sunday circulation still fell, to 687,000 earlier this year from 705,000 in 2002.

Alfred S. Larkin Jr., a senior vice president of The Globe, said in a statement that while such sales represented "a small percentage of our total distribution," they nonetheless constituted "an effective way for advertisers to reach new customers and for us to build future readers."

(At The Times, sponsored copies represented less than 1 percent of paid circulation on Sundays earlier last year. During the week, copies distributed to elementary and secondary schools, many of them paid by the institutions or by foundations and allowed under the old rules, represented 4.6 percent of the paper's circulation.)

At Knight Ridder, three major papers that posted modest gains in circulation in the spring of 2004 as compared with the spring of 2002 - The San Jose Mercury News, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer - would have registered sizable losses without the use of third-party sponsorship.

Polk Laffoon IV, the chain's vice president for corporate relations, said the rule change coincided with an internal push to increase overall circulation of its biggest papers, no matter the category.

"Even if we could only grow it a little, or at least hold it steady, at least by making the effort to grow circulation we would not experience the glacial loss that had been occurring in prior years," he said. Some financial analysts, however, have begun to question the value of such growth.

"If you just look at circulation as being flat to down slightly, I think that understates the struggle newspapers are having with circulation," said Paul Ginocchio, senior publishing analyst at Deutsche Bank, who has issued two reports last year under the heading "Circulation Uncensored."

At best, advertisers and newspaper companies say, such programs enable an advertiser to sponsor and promote the distribution of copies to tens of thousands of people who might not otherwise get a paper.

For example, American Furniture Warehouse, which has nine stores in the Denver area, sponsored the delivery last year of 30,000 papers - in eight-week subscriptions - to homes concentrated near a new store.

"Even if 10 percent of the people who get that paper look at the paper, it benefits you," said Andrew Zuppa, marketing director for the chain.

But Mr. Zuppa said the company had agreed to pay for those papers only after the newspaper had raised the subject. Under audit bureau rules, advertisers who sponsor such copies must pay at least 25 percent of the regular price, or provide goods and services of an equivalent value.

But how the costs are allocated can be difficult to retrace, in part because ad rates can vary depending in part on how much an individual company spends. While the Denver Newspaper Agency described this particular sale as "a cash transaction," Mr. Zuppa said that description was "not exactly accurate."

Regardless, Mr. Zuppa said the cost of the papers represented a "very small component" of the more than $1 million the company spent in The Post and The News this past year. "You spend a large amount of money, you ask for things, you get them," he said. "They want to do some things, it's in the mix, it's fine."

Increasingly, media buyers have been demanding they be given the option to withhold inserts from free papers to lower their spending.

"Third-party distribution is not targeted at the most attractive advertising prospect," said Bob Shamberg, chief executive of Newspaper Services of America, which placed $1.7 billion in ads in newspapers over the last year on behalf of Home Depot, Sears and BMW, among others. "It is in effect targeted at where the newspaper can generate distribution." But some advertisers, like small businesses, have neither the power to set their own terms nor the savvy to know how many papers are distributed on a given Sunday.

Mike Wuestner, manager of White Fence Farm, a restaurant and gift shop west of Denver that placed full-color ads in The Denver Post in recent months, said he was surprised to learn how much of the paper's circulation was paid for by others.

"You think you're reaching 800,000 people requesting the paper," he said. "Actually, 100,000 are not requesting it.

"How many of those people are even looking at it?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/bu...aper.html?8dpc

For additional information and an in-depth look at present circulation issues at the Washington Post, please visit the December 11th issue of this magazine. – Jack.


Report: Craigslist Costing Newspapers Millions
Steven Musil

Free community Web site Craigslist has cost San Francisco Bay Area newspapers up to $65 million in employment advertising revenue, according to a report released Monday.

Craigslist, which generates more than 1 billion page-views each month, also has cost the newspapers millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising, and has damaged other traditional classified advertising businesses, according to a report published by Classified Intelligence.

"Craigslist has created an extremely important and valuable marketplace, and perfectly illustrates the changing nature of the classified advertising industry," Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of Classified Intelligence, said in a statement.

Craigslist, launched in 1995, is a bare-bones classifieds site for people looking for almost anything, such as apartments, dates or baseball tickets, in 45 cities. The site has since created a flourishing network of online buyers and sellers while maintaining a simple look and feel free from banner ads.

Local search advertising revenue is expected to reach $502 million in 2004, up from $408 million last year, according to market researcher Jupiter Research. That number is expected to hit $824 million by 2008.

Classified advertising represents a $28 billion to $30 billion business in the United States, including $16 billion in daily newspapers, and an estimated $100 billion business internationally.

Online auction giant eBay took a 25 percent stake in Craigslist in August. eBay also announced recently that it would buy online apartment rental service Rent.com for $415 million.
http://news.com.com/Report+Craigslis...3-5505076.html


Conservative TV Host Says U.S. Paid Him to Back Policy On Air
David D. Kirkpatrick

Armstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator who was a protégé of Senator Strom Thurmond and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, acknowledged yesterday that he was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives on his syndicated television program and to other African-Americans in the news media.

The disclosure of the payment set off a storm of criticism from Democrats over the Bush administration's spending to promote its policies to the public. According to a copy of the contract provided by the department yesterday, Mr. Williams, who also runs a small public relations firm and until yesterday wrote a syndicated newspaper column, was required to broadcast two one-minute advertisements in which Education Secretary Rod Paige extolled the merits of its national standards program, No Child Left Behind.

But the arrangement, which started in late 2003 and was first reported yesterday by USA Today, also stipulated that a public relations firm hired by the department would "arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment on N.C.L.B. during the course of his broadcasts," that "Secretary Paige and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to time as studio guests," and that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his long-term working relationships with 'America's Black Forum' " - an African-American news program - "to encourage the producers to periodically address the No Child Left Behind Act."

Mr. Williams, 45, apologized yesterday for blurring his roles as an independent commentator and a paid promoter. "This is a great lesson to me," he told Paul Begala of CNN, who himself has an off-air job as a paid Democratic political consultant but discloses both roles.

Mr. Williams declined to blame the department for his woes. "I can easily sit here and criticize the administration," he said. "But I got my own problems today, and that is what I am trying to deal with."

The disclosure about the arrangement coincides with a decision by the Government Accountability Office that the administration had violated a law against unauthorized federal propaganda by distributing television news segments that promoted drug enforcement policies without identifying their origin. More than 300 news programs reaching more than 22 million households broadcast the segments. The accountability office made a similar ruling in May about news segments promoting Medicare policies, and the Drug Enforcement Agency stopped distributing the segments then.

In a statement, the Department of Education said yesterday that the deal was an appropriate part of its efforts to explain its policy to "minority parents." The statement said: "The contract paid to provide the straightforward distribution of information about the department's mission and N.C.L.B. - a permissible use of taxpayer funds."

John Gibbons, a spokesman for the department, said Mr. Williams was the only broadcaster or journalist paid to promote the policy. Mr. Williams and department officials said the department's payments to its public relations contractor, Ketchum, ran to $1 million.

House Democrats including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and Representative George Miller, senior minority member of the Education and Workforce Committee, both of California, released a letter to the president suggesting "a deliberate pattern of behavior by your administration to deceive the public and the media in an effort to further your policy objectives" and urging disclosure of "all past and ongoing efforts to engage in covert propaganda."

Questioned about the arrangement, Scott McClellan, a spokesman for the president, referred reporters to the Department of Education.

In an interview, Mr. Miller called the release of the news segments and the payments to Mr. Williams part of "a very dangerous practice that deceives the public" by concealing the role of taxpayer dollars in promoting partisan policies. "Are they funding propaganda?" he asked. "Are they funding money to their friends?"

But public relations executives said that the government distribution of prepared news segments without on-air disclosures of their origin was a bipartisan practice that predated the Bush administration.

"The Clinton administration was probably even more active than the Bush administration" in distributing news segments promoting its policies, said Laurence Moskowitz, chairman and chief executive of Medialink, a major producer of promotional news segments. After the Government Accountability Office decision last spring, he said, his firm began advising government clients to disclose each tape's nature in its script.

The arrangement with Mr. Williams "is stupid, it is unseemly, and it is tacky," said Jonah Goldberg, a contributing editor at the conservative National Review.

The National Association of Black Journalists criticized the administration and Mr. Williams alike yesterday, calling on newspapers that use his column and television stations that use his commentary to "drop him immediately."

"I thought we in the media were supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs," Bryan Monroe, an official of the black journalists' group and an assistant vice president at Knight Ridder, said in the statement.

In an interview, Mr. Williams said his mistake was thinking like a businessman, without worrying enough about journalistic ethics. He began his career in politics as an aide to Mr. Thurmond of South Carolina. He entered the media business, he said, only after he became known for publicly defending Justice Thomas, his former boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, during his stormy confirmation hearings.

After that, he said, he continued to operate a small public relations firm, Graham Williams, with his business partner Stedman Graham, who eventually became known as the partner of Oprah Winfrey and left the business. Aside from the Department of Education, Mr. Williams said, his clients were all private businesses. With about five employees, he said, his company's revenue runs to about $300,000 a year at most, and last year ended in a loss.

But then he also began writing his newspaper column, syndicated by Tribune Media Services, which dropped him yesterday. He said about 50 papers ran the column. He also began broadcasting a syndicated conservative talk radio show that eventually faded away. And more recently he began a syndicated conservative television show, "The Right Side," and another series for a fledgling African-American cable channel, TV One.

Mr. Armstrong said his news show ran on cable channels including Dr. Jerry Falwell's Liberty Television, Sky Angel television, the Christian Television Network and a handful of local stations. Yesterday, Mr. Williams was counting the lessons learned. "I have realized, you know what? I am part of this media elite club, and I have to be more responsible."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/na...education.html


Porn Business Driving DVD Technology
Ben Berkowitz

As goes pornography, so goes technology. The concept may seem odd, but history has proven the adult entertainment industry to be one of the key drivers of any new technology in home entertainment. Pornography customers have been some of the first to buy home video machines, DVD players and subscribe to high-speed Internet.

One of the next big issues in which pornographers could play a deciding role is the future of high-definition DVDs.

The multi-billion-dollar industry releases about 11,000 titles on DVD each year, giving it tremendous power to sway the battle between two groups of studios and technology companies competing to set standards for the next generation.

"It's sort of like the buzz around the campfire," said Peter Warren, DVD editor at industry bible Adult Video News.

One side of the divide is a standard called Blu-ray backed by consumer electronics heavyweights like Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , Philips Electronics (PHG.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Thomson (TMS.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) and movie studios Fox and Disney. Blu-ray offers storage up to 50 gigabytes, enough for nine hours of high-definition content.

On the other side of the fight is HD-DVD, which has much the same structure as current DVDs and, backers say, is cheaper and easier to manufacture as a result. Supporters of the disc format and its 30 gigabyte capacity include companies like NEC (6701.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Warner Home Video.

Adult film producers want the higher quality picture as well as extra space for creative expression -- like giving viewers choice of camera angles.

Pornographers weighed in on the coming battle last week at the industry's Adult Entertainment Expo, which ran parallel with the largest U.S. technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, and had many of the same technologies -- sometimes a generation ahead.

Sentiment about the format rivalry varies, depending largely on the size of porn producer.

Smaller outfits seem to prefer HD-DVD for its lower cost, while larger outfits tend toward Blu-ray for the capacity.

"We're kind of riding it out a little further to see where the trend goes," said Jackie Ramos, an executive in the DVD division at leading porn producer Wicked Pictures. But if he had to choose, Ramos said, "Blu-ray technology sounds pretty attractive."

Paul Hesky, chief operating officer of Multimedia Pictures Inc., one of the smaller groups, disagreed.

"Most of the DVD manufacturers in my business do not want the Blu-ray format because it requires new capital investment," he said, adding, "I know for sure one format or the other will be out (on the market) by this time next year."

Others say they want to see what consumers prefer.

Adult Video News's Warren said HD-DVD production would be a "fraction of a fraction of the price" of Blu-ray, but that the latter format could not be dismissed.

"Blu-ray is going to be very expensive for anyone to do but it is going to be a player," he said.

Blu-ray supporters, however, argue that the increased costs of its processes are negligible.

Hollywood has begun lining up on both sides of the battle as they have watched the growth of DVDs slow. They will want a new standard in place soon, to accelerate again.

Many are watching the porn industry to see what happens.

"That whole business has driven technology adoption of several platforms," said one major studio executive. "A better, more intense experience is a good thing for porn."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7280938


Murdoch Buys Rest of Fox Shares in $6 Billion Deal
Andrew Ross Sorkin and Geraldine Fabrikant

Rupert Murdoch, consolidating his global media empire in the United States, will buy out the shareholders of his Fox properties for about $6 billion, executives of his company, the News Corporation, announced this morning.

The deal would solidify Mr. Murdoch's control over some of the nation's most valuable media assets like the Fox broadcast network and the DirecTV satellite service and help simplify the complicated structure of the News Corporation, whose far-flung operations include newspapers, television, film and satellite assets around the globe.

It also puts Mr. Murdoch in a better position to leverage his full ownership of the Fox Entertainment Group for future deals.

News Corporation executives announced that holders of Fox Class A stock will receive 1.9 News Corporation shares for every share exchanged. The company's chief financial officer, David DeVoe, valued the offer at $33.54 - a 7.4 percent premium over Friday's closing price of Fox shares, which was $31.22.

Fox stock traded higher this morning, opening at $34.18.

The transaction, which the board of News Corporation approvedSunday night, would also make Mr. Murdoch's company an even more formidable media power in the United States. Mr. Murdoch, who gave up his Australian citizenship 19 years ago to become a United States citizen, recently reincorporated News Corporation in the United States and shifted its primary stock listing to the New York Stock Exchange from the Australian exchange.

"The move underscores the simplification process: Mr. Murdoch's drive to make News Corporation a simpler and more shareholder-friendly U.S. company," said Mario Gabelli, chief investment officer of Gabelli Asset Management, whose fund owns shares of both News Corporation and Fox Entertainment.

In a conference call with stock analysts this morning, Mr. DeVoe cited that desire for consolidation as the prime motive behind the announcement, which he called "a milestone in the simplification of the News Corporation's capital structure."

He said the decision to spin Fox Entertainment off as a separate stock had been a way to tap into the United States investment market while News Corporation was incorporated overseas. Now that the News Corporation itself was listed here, that logic no longer applied, he said.

Mr. DeVoe said the consolidation would also allow for about $3 million to $7 million in savings from reducing expenses associated with the filings required for public companies.

The move to bring Fox Entertainment back inside the fold of News Corporation also gives Mr. Murdoch more flexibility to wield his deal-making muscle in the United States, where he used to have to rely on the often faltering stock price of his Fox subsidiary as leverage for deals.

"This makes it easier for News Corp. to do deals. It simplifies the structure and gives it full control over the deal making process," said Harold L. Vogel, an entertainment analyst.

The timing of the transaction raises questions about the status of Mr. Murdoch's feud with John C. Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, who raised his company's investment in the News Corporation to 17 percent in November behind the back of Mr. Murdoch, who owns a 30 percent voting stake.

Only a week later, News Corporation introduced a plan to thwart would-be hostile bidders and keep Mr. Murdoch in control of the company, which he plans to turn over to his sons: Lachlan, now deputy chief operating officer, and James, chief executive of British Sky Broadcasting, Mr. Murdoch's satellite TV company in Britain.

"The timing is confusing because we had expected Mr. Murdoch to complete a transaction with Mr. Malone before buying in Fox," said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners.

Mr. DeVoe denied today that the move was related to any possible deal with Liberty.

Several analysts today questioned the price offered to Fox shareholders, which they said appeared low. Mr. DeVoe defended the price, saying that the closing price on Friday represented the stock's 52-week high. The News Corporation offer represents a 16.9 percent premium in comparison to Fox's six-month average, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/bu...n er=homepage


Case Accepts Blame For AOL-Time Warner Debacle
Jim Hu

Steve Case is not ashamed of taking the fall for the merger of America Online and Time Warner, perhaps one of the greatest failed deals in corporate history.

Two days after the fifth anniversary of the deal, a visibly graying Case, former chairman of what was then AOL Time Warner, provided a candid perspective into the factors that prompted the merger and some of the general reasons it failed. You can blame it on the billions of dollars in market value evaporating during the bust, or management's stubbornness in promising more than it could deliver, or doing all the wrong things at the wrong time.

From Case's view, the blame starts with him.

"In retrospect, I probably wasn't the right guy to be the chairman of a company with 90,000 employees," Case said during an event at the Computer History Museum. "In retrospect, none of us were the right guys."

Indeed, for Case and Gerald Levin, then-CEO of Time Warner, the architects of the deal, grand visions of an Internet- charged media behemoth faded into the bland realities of turf wars and cutthroat politics. Case learned Time Warner's notorious culture of fiefdoms the hard way, as multibillion-dollar businesses bristled at the idea of working with their new AOL masters.

Case added that much of the merger's failed vision stemmed from a failure in "timing and execution." When the stock market began to collapse in 2000, the ripple effect did not reach AOL Time Warner (the company has since dropped the "AOL") until late 2001. After an embarrassing retraction of its financial forecast and a toppling stock price, Levin was shown the door, Chief Operating Officer Bob Pittman was ousted, and Case resigned as chairman in January 2003.

"For some reason--some was cultural, some was the stock going down--people got mad," he said. "The merger was my idea. If you wanted to be mad at somebody, I was the one to be mad at."

Still, Case's reasoning for the deal made sense: AOL needed Time Warner for its cable division.

While AOL was the undisputed champion of dial-up Internet access when the deal was inked in 2000, the greater threat posed by broadband loomed in the distance. Cable companies and local phone giants were the main purveyors of high-speed Internet access, leaving outside players such as AOL unable to upgrade its customers while keeping its access business profitable.

Now in 2005, AOL has watched its dial-up subscriber base plummet by nearly 4 million since 2002. Most of these customers left for broadband services provided by their cable or phone company, and Time Warner Cable decided to stick with its own Road Runner ISP rather than market AOL.

Time Warner "provided an unparalleled array of assets for AOL to transition to broadband," he said.

Out of the spotlight for two years and counting, Case has set his sights in other pastures. While still a member of Time Warner's board of directors, Case said he's turning his back on tech and the Internet for now, and focusing on new ventures. He's interested in health care, especially preventative medicine and wellness, and is dabbling in real estate. He's working on philanthropic issues and spending a lot of time in Hawaii where he grew up.

Case wants to continue investing his time and money in "disruptive" businesses, but he remained mum on his plans.

"I don't particularly miss it," he said about the technology business. "I feel live I've been there, done that and I'm interested in new things."
http://news.com.com/Case+accepts+bla...3-5534519.html

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For Wireless, the Beginnings of a Breakout
Seth Schiesel

EVER since cellphones rang their way into the American mainstream in the late 1990's, consumers have heard snippets about a technology called 3G, so-called third- generation wireless systems that are supposed to do everything short of mix the perfect martini.

As with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, the intermittent sightings of 3G have made it difficult to cull the reality from the hype. Since at least 1997, wireless carriers and manufacturers have generally delivered the same song and dance: a test demonstration here, perhaps a disappointing service there, and promises always capped by the same refrain: "Next year."

Finally, next year is now.

The services are far from perfect and some of the coverage is spotty, but the nation's major wireless carriers are beginning to offer practical high-speed data services that may redefine just what a phone is capable of.

For consumers, that means video clips on demand, television, streaming music, satellite navigation and high-quality games, as well as the ability to record and send short movies. For business users, that means high-speed Internet access from a phone or a laptop without looking around for a Wi-Fi hot spot.

For now, the leader in offering true 3G services is Verizon Wireless. The company has been building its new network for years, and announced last week that it would begin selling consumer services on that network on Feb. 1 in more than 30 metropolitan areas covering more than 70 million people. But other major carriers are building 3G networks as well, or enhancing second-generation networks in innovative ways. And new handsets are being introduced that can handle the new services.

"After years of hype and promises, the wireless industry is finally getting to the point where using these advanced services is a pleasurable experience rather than a horror show," said Roger Entner, director for wireless services at the Yankee Group, a technology research firm in Boston. "They are putting together the right networks and the right devices with the right services to make these applications attractive to consumers."

So what does 3G really mean? In one sense it is merely another bit of technospeak. In the late 1990's and the early part of this decade an inferiority complex swept the American wireless industry, which felt that European and Japanese carriers were far ahead of them in deploying advanced networks, which came to be called 3G.

As Michael K. Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said while touring the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas: "I'm tired of calling it 3G. To me, 3G stood for a particular European iteration. We should be focusing instead on the actual services available to consumers, not labels."

The fears of inferiority were largely unfounded. Those new, advanced services overseas largely turned out to be text messaging and downloadable ring tones, services that United States carriers have been able to offer over their second-generation networks for a few years now. (Some people in the industry refer to those networks as 2.5G, further clouding the hazy terminology that began with cellular's first generation in the 1980's.)

As many consumers now understand, there are two major competing cellphone technologies: the global system for mobile, or GSM, and code division multiple access, or CDMA. Cingular (which recently acquired AT&T Wireless) and T-Mobile use GSM. Verizon Wireless and Sprint use CDMA. (Nextel uses what amounts to its own proprietary system, developed with Motorola.)

Each of the major standards, GSM and CDMA, has its own set of technical tiers that allows the network to transmit larger amounts of data. For GSM carriers, the current second-generation data service is known as Edge. The CDMA counterpart is known as 1xRTT.

Cingular, Sprint and Verizon cover most of the country with their second-generation networks, and T-Mobile is working to expand its own Edge system. These technologies, whether GSM- or CDMA-based, can deliver data roughly two or three times as fast as a standard 56-kilobit dial-up modem, and are what have allowed the carriers to offer the new services of the past few years, like downloadable ring tones, text and rudimentary picture messaging and downloadable games of middling quality.

Now, carriers are beginning to squeeze more and better services out of their second-generation networks while also beginning to deploy the vaunted third-generation systems.

While second-generation networks might deliver about 150 kilobits of data per second, Verizon's new system, which uses a third-generation CDMA add-on called EV- DO, delivers 300 kilobits or more of digital information. Users will have to purchase a new handset that is EV-DO compatible, but then they will be able to pay $15 a month for a new service called VCAST, which will include more than 300 daily video clips from channels and shows like CNN, NBC, ESPN and "Sesame Street." The new network also supports other services, like high-resolution games, that will be priced individually.

For business customers who may not be interested in Bert and Ernie's latest shenanigans, the attraction is in "smart" phones that include a personal digital assistant and in laptop cards that function like Wi-Fi cards but without the need for a hot spot; instead, the card communicates with the cellular network just like a phone. When the user travels beyond the area where 3G service is available, the card kicks down to a lower speed supported by the second-generation system.

By the end of this year, Verizon hopes to offer its 3G services in areas that include about half of the country's population.

"The introduction of broadband to the wireless consumer is no less important than the arrival of broadband in the wired Internet world; we will have hundreds of video updates available every single day," John Stratton, Verizon Wireless's chief marketing officer, said.

"For the business customer, especially the laptop guy, it's all about speed and ubiquity," Mr. Stratton added. "I think this really puts a hurt on the entire Wi-Fi concept for the business user."

But while Verizon has the glitziest new system, other carriers are squeezing interesting services out of their existing second-generation networks. Nextel, for instance, is focusing on helping business customers tie their wireless handsets into their corporate applications and is also offering innovative Global Positioning System satellite navigation services from within a standard-size Motorola handset.

Cingular, meanwhile, is building out its third-generation system, called UMTS, for universal mobile telecommunications system, and seems to be keeping many of its major new services under wraps until that network becomes available in most big cities next year. Like Verizon, Cingular is also marketing wireless data cards to business users that circumvent traditional Wi-Fi hot spots.

Some of the most impressive achievements are coming from Sprint. The company is not expected to unveil details about its EV-DO network until later this year, but it is managing to deliver nonstop streaming music (think of the cellphone as commercial-free radio) and good-quality video clips over its second-generation system. Since August, Sprint has allowed users to tune in to a variety of television channels, including the Discovery Channel and CNBC. The video frame rates on the TV channels are slow, but the audio is generally smooth.

"What Sprint has done is technically perhaps even more difficult than what Verizon is doing," said Mr. Entner of the Yankee Group. "It's like a Nascar race where one of the cars is actually a Volkswagen Beetle under the hood; it's an amazing accomplishment. That said, they are being run down by a real muscle car in Verizon."

John C. Burris, Sprint's director for wireless data services, pointed out that in years past carriers and manufacturers focused on trying to shoehorn a PC into a phone, rather than developing applications that respect the hand-held device on its own merits. It is that shift in emphasis, Mr. Burris predicted, that will continue to drive the emergence of advanced wireless services.

"One of the things everyone was talking about a few years ago was, 'Ooh, you'll be able to browse the Web on your phone,' " he said. "But that scenario didn't really work for a lot of people because you had to click and wait, and on the small screen it wasn't really ideal.

"Instead of clicking and waiting and then reading a story about, say, the tsunami, now you can just click and you're running a video clip from CNN with full-motion video. That's the kind of approach that we think will really appeal to people and that will continue to evolve."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...ts/13cell.html


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Comcast To Offer Web-Based Phone Service
AP

Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable television company, plans to challenge local phone companies by offering Internet-based phone service in 20 markets this year, company officials said.

The Philadelphia-based company plans to offer its Digital Voice technology to all of its markets by 2006. Company officials said they expect to be serving about 20 percent of phone customers in those markets within five years.

"Our initial focus is on getting it right and successfully introducing the service," Comcast chief executive officer Brian Roberts said. "We've already worked out the kinks, and are going to take a very patient approach."

The service costs $39.95 a month for existing Comcast broadband customers for unlimited local and domestic calls. It also includes caller ID, voice mail and call waiting.

Rian J. Wren, the general manager of Comcast Voice Services, said he expects Digital Voice to make a profit within two years.

Some competitors are offering similar services at cheaper prices. For example, Edison, N.J.-based Vonage Holdings Co. is offering unlimited local and domestic long-distance calls for $24.99 a month, or $14.95 for 500 minutes of calls per month.

And traditional phone company Verizon Communications Inc. offered a service called Voice Wing in the Philadelphia area for $34.95 a month, with a discount of $10 a month for one year to customers who currently use its DSL service for high-speed Internet connections via phone lines.

Wren acknowledged that his company will have significant competition, but noted that Comcast is offering some features that its competitors aren't. For example, Verizon and Vonage don't promise that the phone service will work during a power failure, but Comcast provides a 16-hour battery backup.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...0608188.htm?1c


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Speed Traps
Wendy M. Grossman

A FRIEND of mine was complaining recently about the speed traps in her US state and their essential unfairness.

"But," I said eventually, "couldn't people avoid getting the tickets by, you know, not speeding?"

Yes, she agreed, they could. But – and she went into a catalogue of unfair practices. Sudden drops in the speed limit in unexpected and illogical locations, with the signs barely visible. Irrational speed limits. Towns that derived most of their revenues from speeding tickets and the court costs her state requires convicted motorists to pay. Unethical stuff that goes way beyond the usual understanding of a speed trap as a police car lying in hiding behind a big, ol' flyover bridge.

So I guess it's harder not to speed than I thought.

I was reminded of this conversation when I read the stories about the Trojans hidden in Windows Media Player files, along with a few alleging that the Trojans might be the work of anti-piracy company Overpeer. Why Overpeer? Articles like this one claim that the company is responsible for seeding the P2P networks with spoofed files to frustrate would-be downloaders in search of copyrighted content. The company's own Web site is, to say the least, uncommunicative about any details of what its products do.

One of the madder legislative proposals of the last few years was to allow righstholders (hey! that's all of us!) to hack into networks looking for unauthorized copies. Well, OK, this is why people call them "Congresscritters": money talks and legislation wanders down a horn behind it. (Mondegreen: "God moves in mysterious ways/He wanders down a horn"). We all knew it was wrong.

Just as we all know there's something damn well wrong with putting Trojans in DRM-wrapped video or music files, whoever does it, so that when they go online, ostensibly to check their licenses are valid, they instead surreptitiously download and install spyware, adware, or some other kind of nastyware. Though I'm grateful this vulnerability has emerged while DRM is still young, before too many people have gotten into the habit of using it. So among the more emotionally charged objections to DRM – it interferes with fair use rights, it hands over way too much control to rightsowners and software developers at the expense of the public – there is a serious, important practical objection. It can be dangerous in terms of security. Just the way the fake danger trumpeted in text-only hoax virus messages became a real one when email software began decoding attachments automatically, today's DRM design vulnerability has allowed what have been safe files to be turned into potentially dangerous ones.

"But," I hear you cry, "couldn't you avoid all this by just not downloading files from peer-to-peer networks?" Not really. P2P networks generally don't specialize in distributed DRM-wrapped files but open ones. Some P2P networks make available hashes so you can check the integrity of the file you're downloading. There are, as they say, ways. In a world where P2P networks are awash in fake files, for-pay services can use the claim that they provide better safety and reliability as a selling point, like driving on a toll road.

There is a legitimate public interest in ensuring that drivers proceed safely, and most people support speed limits and some level of enforcement thereof, even though probably every driver out there has gone above the limit sometime. There is similarly some acceptable level of police effort to catch speeders: few would oppose arresting someone going 200 miles an hour in a school zone. The line between the questionable behavior described above, or, many people feel, UK speed cameras and the reasonable stuff, such as watching danger spots and stopping , isn't always easy to draw. But it probably goes somewhere around the the point where someone starts lying about what's a safe speed (by posting obviously unreasonable limits) solely to create the conditions for entrapping motorists.

Similarly, there is a legitimate public interest in allowing creators and artists – who these days are often *not* the rightsholders – a temporary monopoly on controlling and profiting from their work so they can afford to go on creating. There is, in my view, also a legitimate public interest in allowing access to those works; many net.wars columns have defended file-sharing. There are certainly behaviors few would argue should be legal: I have no hesitation in describing a commercial bootleg DVD operation as piracy, and would do the same for a commercial file-sharing network that charged consumers and refused to pay artists. I would not buy such a service.

If we grant, as the present system does, that third parties may buy or lease the artists' rights, then it follows that there must be some level of enforcement of those rights that's reasonable. We know today's lawsuits and harassment aren't it, and we know, with a reaction much like the "yuck factor" they talk about in setting public policy on such scientific advances as human cloning, that actions that would be unacceptable if they were performed by hackers instead of rightsholders also aren't it. If DRM adds a whole new level of vulnerability to today's computers and networks it will have to be scrapped as an enforcement method, just as you wouldn't put speed bumps in the middle of the interstate.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20718


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Samsung Develops Eight-Die Multi-Chip Tech

Samsung's new multi-chip (MCP) offers a combined capacity of 3.2 gigabits in a package only 1.4mm thick, the company says, promising a new generation of cell phones and mobile devices that can offer more services and faster Internet surfing.

Samsung said the new MCP solution offered a combined capacity of 3.2 gigabits in a package only 1.4mm thick, promising a new generation of cell phones and mobile devices offering more services and faster Internet surfing.

"The new eight-chip MCP is an extremely compact, high-capacity solution that is likely to trigger development of new next-generation mobile applications," Samsung said in a statement.

"It will provide much greater functionality in cell phones and other smart mobile devices, from movie videos to games as well as faster Internet access."

Samsung said the new MCP offered all the memory chips available for mobile products in a single 11mm x 14mm x 1.4mm package.

Earlier today, Samsung said it will invest 603.8 bln won in a 13th memory chip production line to encourage broader use of 90-nano chip technology and support the development of next-generation 80-nano technology.
http://www.newsfactor.com/hardware/s...egory=hardware


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DVRs Forcing Ad Agencies Into Changing Their Messages
Judy Artunian

Now that digital video recorders are letting TV viewers zip past commercials, many in the advertising community can't help but wonder what will become of the traditional 30-second advertisements that long have been the cornerstone of TV ad campaigns.

The digital video recorders, or DVRs, operate much like VCRs sans the tape, with hard drives that store broadcasts and cable TV programs. The ability to record programs and easily find them to watch later has significantly changed the viewing habits of DVR owners, who spend only 41 percent of their TV time watching live broadcasts, according to a report release in September by Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

DVRs can be found in about 7 percent of U.S. households, but that number could jump to more than 10 percent in the next year, said Zain Raj, chief marketing officer for advertising agency Euro RSCG Worldwide in Chicago.

"When the penetration gets beyond 10 [percent] to 11 percent, that's when we'll start getting enough critical mass where there will be a change in behavior. That's when we'll stop watching TV in a traditional manner," he said.

Forrester Research estimates that 41 percent of U.S. households will have a DVR by 2009. Nine out of 10 DVR owners report that they always or usually skip commercials when they watch programs recorded on their DVR, according to the results of recent survey by MPG, a New York.-based media-planning and buying group affiliated with Euro RSCG.

Meanwhile, TiVo, the Alviso, Calif.-based DVR service provider that popularized DVRs, reports that its subscribers tend to skip about 75 percent of commercials in programs they have recorded.

Despite these numbers and the prospect of services like digital video-on-demand and broadband video also diverting viewers' attention, TV is expected to remain a powerful medium for advertisers. But if large chunks of the TV audience ignore the 30-second commercial, many are beginning to worry that its days are numbered.

Some ad executives say that the 30-second ad will endure but will become just one element of a varied ad campaign.

"For TV in the future, ad campaigns will need to consist of 30s and a bunch of shorter and maybe longer-form ads," said Tim Hanlon, senior vice president/director for emerging contacts at Chicago-based Starcom MediaVest Group, a media services agency.

Advertising spots as brief as 15 seconds will run with short snippets of video that are offered by Comedy Central and other cable channels via video-on-demand services. Video-on-demand lets consumers view movies and TV programs stored on network servers at their own convenience.
Interactive ads under review

Ads as long as 3 minutes also could become more common. Raj describes them as similar to infomercials but with production values comparable to a high-quality short film. Although these ads won't necessarily be more costly to produce than their 30-second counterpart, they could cost more to air, especially if an advertiser wants to run them during prime time.

Such advertisers as BMW and Disney are producing longer-form ads specifically for DVR users who subscribe to TiVo. These productions, known as showcases, often are interactive. A recent 7-minute commercial for DisneyWorld, for example, included an invitation to consumers to request a free travel planner by clicking on their TiVo remote-control device.

"With interactivity, every ad essentially becomes a direct-response ad," said Kimber Sterling, TiVo's director of advertising and research sales

Sterling said the ads are purely opt-in, meaning that viewers can choose whether they want to view the commercial. Sterling said that 5 percent to 20 percent of the TiVo audience typically opts-in during a one-week campaign.

Viewers on a learning curve

And that could increase as TV viewers get more comfortable with interactive TV.

"Consumers are not used to using the remote for some of these actions on the TV," said Ann M. Mack, interactive editor at Adweek, an industry trade journal in New York.

Whether or not TV commercials are interactive, some advertising executives wonder if TV ads will need to dial back their entertainment quotient once DVRs become more commonplace.

"Right now, over half of the advertising run in this country is basically entertainment without any sales messages. When DVRs come in, that kind of advertising is going to die," said Raj. "Consumers zap things that have no value to them. They're not looking for entertainment in 30-second increments."

While advertisers tweak the form and content of their TV spots, they are also re-evaluating their media choices. Cable networks such as the Golf Channel and the Food Network may draw smaller ratings than broadcast TV networks, but marketers say they can be a better media buy for advertisers looking to reach niche markets.

"People are personalizing how they watch TV. That gives us a gigantic opportunity. Instead of generic messages across 100 different channels, we can create messages that are more relevant to a particular channel," said Hanlon.

The trend toward personalization ultimately could change the way TV advertising time is bought and sold.

As more people watch TV according to their own schedule rather than the schedule set by the TV networks, it could force the networks to alter their practice of selling advertising time within predetermined program schedules.

Changes happening fast

And some say that the biggest challenge facing the TV and advertising communities is accepting that today's audiences are embracing technologies that threaten to drastically alter the way they watch.

"A lot of the traditional TV stakeholders get tied up in knots when we talk about technology changing TV," said Hanlon. "They aren't in a rush to change the way things are. But they can't ignore the fact that the consumer has far more say in the matter than they do."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/techno...ck=1&cset=true


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The Trek Report: Beam Me Up, Beam Me Down

Is Paramount Trying to Silence Early Enterprise Reviews?
KJB

It hasn't been much of a secret that Enterprise feeds a day early to networks that run the series in Canada and that a number of fans who own satellite dishes have been able to view that feed. Until fairly recently, most television series that were produced by US studios and were also purchased for broadcast in Canada had early feeds like this. That was before the entertainment industry's latest scapegoat for everything from bad box office returns for bad movies to sliding ratings for mediocre television series: Internet peer-to-peer file sharing.

As a direct result of these "clean feeds" (the episodes fed to Canada have no commercials or network logos on them, hence the "clean" designation) showing up before broadcast on peer-to-peer services, most studios have taken steps to secure their signals. Most have just changed their transmission method to digital formats that require special and very expensive receivers. Warner Bros. Television was so annoyed at episodes of Smallville showing up early that they even took the extra step of encrypting the digital feed. The studio that has resisted the trend has been Paramount and its parent company, Viacom. Most feeds from Viacom are still analog and can be freely viewed by anyone with a large satellite dish.

Viacom's attitudes may be changing. Word from inside the facility that uplinks Viacom's programming have hinted at some displeasure from executives over some feeds that have been noticed by the general public. While Enterprise hasn't been mentioned specifically, it is Viacom's highest profile feed with many sites, including this one, providing reviews or even detailed plot information before the episode has been broadcast. Other sites have even offered the episodes for download in advance of UPN's Friday night broadcast which may account for Enterprise's strange disappearance from the satellite feeds this week. While many of Viacom's other programs seem to be feeding normally, Enterprise is nowhere to be found. A call to Viacom requesting a comment for this story wasn't returned by our publish time.

If Paramount / Viacom is choosing now to try and limit Enterprise's coverage, they picked a strange time to do it. Reaction to the episodes this season have been generally good with a number of television critics that had been critical of the series in the past finding themselves interested in the new stories and overall tone of the series since Manny Coto took over most of the production. A campaign to save the series and secure a fifth season renewal has been underway for some time and has been gaining momentum on the strength of the two 3-part story arcs so far this season. Even the ratings have shown a little sign of improvement and while the numbers are still low for a Star Trek series, Enterprise is still the best thing UPN has ever put on the Friday night schedule.

If the reasoning by Viacom is that encrypting the feed will somehow translate to a ratings jump on UPN, they would be well advised to not hold their breath. There has never been a successful link made to low ratings and file sharing and some of the most popular series on television are also the most traded files, effectively torpedoing that little bit of faulty logic.

Just in case anyone has the idea that I'm whining because I might not get to see Enterprise sans commercials, consider this: since I've moved to HD and our local UPN affiliate has finally begun broadcasting Trek in high definition, I'd much prefer to see the UPN broadcast, even if I have to sit through ads. Why would that be, you ask? Let's see, 16:9 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 audio vs. letterboxed standard video with regular stereo. Not even a close call on that one, gang. Anyone who has had the chance to see any of this season in HD will know what I'm talking about. And for those of you who haven't made the switch yet, let me slip in a plug for my new column, The Bleeding Edge, where we'll be examining inexpensive ways to make the jump to HD without mortgaging the family farm next week. As for the ads, there are some ads that are more clever than the programs they appear during and are worth the time to watch, provided you can stop yourself from reacting to the subtle brainwashing that's taking place during the 30- to 120-second time span they occupy.

So here's hoping that this week was just a glitch and that we'll be able to review next week's episode in advance. If not, Enterprise reviews will still appear in this column, just not until after the episode has aired or until UPN starts parting with screeners again.
http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/57...html?fromint=1


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What's Wrong With A Little File Sharing Among Friends?
Helene Newberg

Piracy is not what it used to be. No longer do pirates linger in the South Seas. Now, they work from their home computers.

Perhaps a son or daughter does it on the home or college computer. Perhaps it's a coworker after hours. What are they up to when no one is looking?

Engaging in criminal activity, according to some; taking advantage of the apparent natural resource that is the Internet, with all the privileges and easy digital pickings that come through a connection, say others. Electronic piracy headlines can be found nearly every week, from the software, music, or movie industry perspective.

Curtailing digital piracy will take an understanding of the technical, legal, and social aspects of the problem. "Is human nature going to change on either side? It is human nature to be greedy and want every nickel that's coming to them. The music industry executive thinks every downloader belongs in jail. On the other hand, the downloaders are using the Internet, which has always been a free means of information flow," said Jack Rochester, who in his new book, written with John Gantz, explores the intersection of intellectual property, copyright history and law, digital content, and the free-flow of information the Internet enables.

But who is piracy hurting? "Pirates of the Digital Millennium" gives some hard numbers, along with a little copyright history, law review, technology overview, and ethical landscaping. The book offers some suggestions for the entertainment and software industries, but more importantly simply raises questions that put the economic and ethical issues in high definition.

Are downloads harmless giveaways that prime a market? Are downloads copyright-violating losses in the billions of dollars? What about pirated first-run movies? What about compact disks selling for a fraction of the street price of the full-blown business applications contained thereon? Who is getting hurt?

After his collaborator and friend Gantz finished a project for Microsoft researching worldwide piracy, Rochester went to Taiwan for a few weeks to research the issue.

"It really was a big and interesting problem. I actually bought a CD with seven Adobe programs on it from a couple of kids working from a card table on a street corner. That convinced me that there's a whole lot of stuff going on," he said.

"I've always been interested in ethics," he said. In writing for high school and college students, his work has included thought about behaving ethically in front of the computer. "I introduced the idea of the Computer Hacker Hall of Fame: instead of punishing kids who are so savvy about technology, give them scholarships," he suggested.

The first known copyright violation involved not a printing press or copy machine but a rogue monk, copying by hand, 1448 years ago. Since then, government, the publishing industry, content generators, lawyers, hardware manufacturers, and consumers have all had a stake in the ultimate balance of fair use, copyright, cost, and profit.

With hardware (and software) making it easier to make digital copies, and the Internet making it easier to spread files far and wide, it's clear that business-as-usual better quickly adjust to a new usual. Among proposals offered in the book, the entertainment industry can come up with value-adds that would make purchasing legitimate copies of electronic work worthwhile.

"The software industry could buy up the entertainment industry and set up better distribution. They could set up a database where you could buy files like the iTunes store model, or, alternately, add a fee of anywhere between $1-5 to everyone's Internet provider bill. Let everyone download for free. The additional revenue would be dispersed to the copyright holders, it's easy enough to track who is downloading what," he said.

IDC estimates say that reducing software piracy worldwide by 10 percent over four years would put $400 billion back into economic growth. Hidden in the cost of piracy are lost jobs, tax revenues, GDP growth and local economy productivity when unauthorized, and unsupported, software fails; competition with unauthorized software drives the price of legitimate software down, compromising the ability of smaller, or newer, tech companies to stay afloat. And that's not factoring in the lost entertainment revenues.

"We did not end up at the same place as where we started when writing this book. Neither one of us was as adamant in our positions at the end. John was a downloader, I was 'Don't do it, don't do it.' We both came to have an intense dislike for the way the entertainment industry is handling the issue - so much is about greed, it's really disgusting. Basically on the other hand, the genie is out of the bottle on the Internet downloading - there's no way it's going to stop," he said.

"Our whole position is a nonjudgmental one. We just want people to think about it, to make a conscious decision. To get the issue on each reader's radar screen, we want them to think about the consequences. I want them to think, Wait a minute, before I wasn't really thinking about that,'" he said.

"Pirates of the Digital Millennium" is available from the publisher, www.ft-ph.com and from other online booksellers.
http://www2.townonline.com/lexington...ticleid=162851

[JackSpratts]

Asia

First Peer-To-Peer Infringer Arrested

A 38-year-old jobless man has been arrested for illegally distributing copyright movies on the Internet through Bit Torrent, which is the first successful enforcement action against P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing.

Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology John Tsang said if convicted, it would deal a heavy blow to copyright infringement activities. He appealed to people to respect intellectual property rights and to not commit piracy-related offences. Parents should warn their children of the serious consequence of the offence.

Customs & Excise Assistant Commissioner (Intelligence & Investigation) William Chow said the arrest signifies the department's resolve in tracking down copyright infringing activities over P2P networks by using their expertise and the latest technology to employ round-the-clock monitoring.

On January 10 and 11, Customs officers located the suspect who had uploaded three movies onto a local Bit Torrent discussion forum for sharing with other network users. About 8am yesterday officers searched a Tuen Mun flat and seized two computers, equipment and a batch of VCDs, and arrested the suspect.

Under the Copyright Ordinance, it is an offence to distribute infringing copies of copyright works other than for the purpose of, in the course of, any trade or business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright, without the licence of the copyright owner.

The maximum penalty is a $50,000 fine per infringing copy and four years jail.
http://news.gov.hk/en/category/lawan...113en08002.htm


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Security Researcher To Be Jailed For Finding Bugs In Software?
Munir Kotadia

A French security researcher who published exploit codes that could take advantage of bugs in an anti-virus application, could be imprisoned for violation of copyright laws.

In 2001, French security researcher Guillaume Tena found a number of vulnerabilities in the Viguard antivirus software published by Tegam. Tena, who at the time was known by his pseudonym Guillermito, published his research online in March 2002.

However, Tena's actions were not viewed kindly by Tegam, who initiated legal action against the researcher. That action resulted in a case being brought to trial at a Court in Paris, France. The trial kicked off on January 4 after being deferred from its initially scheduled start date of October 5, 2004. The prosecution claims that Tena violated article 335.2 of the code of the intellectual property and is asking for a four month jail term and a 6,000 euro fine. Additionally, Tegam is proceeding with a civil case against Tena and asking for 900,000 euros in damages.

Accoridng to Tena's Web site, his research "showed how the program worked, demonstrated a few security flaws and carried out some tests with real viruses. Unlike the advertising claimed, this software didn't detect and stop ‘100 percent of viruses’."

Tena, who is currently a researcher for Harvard University in Massachusetts, said that Tegam responded in a "weird way" by first branding him a terrorist and then filing a formal complaint in Paris. During the resulting tribunal, Tena said the judge decided that because the published exploits included some re- engineered source code from Viguard’s software, he had violated French copyright laws.

According to French security Web site K-OTik, Tena had technically broken copyright laws because his exploits were "not for personal use, but were communicated to a third party".

However, K-OTik, which regularly publishes exploit codes, claims that the ruling could create a precedent so vulnerabilities in software, however critical, could not be declared publicly without prior agreement from the software publisher.

K-OTik’s editors say the ruling is "unimaginable and unacceptable in any other field of scientific research".

On Tena's Web site, he claims that If independent researchers are not allowed to freely publish their findings about security software then users will be only have "marketing press releases" to assess the quality of the software. "Unfortunately, it seems that we are heading this way in France and maybe in Europe," Tena said.

"To use an analogy, it's a little bit as if Ford was selling cars with defective brakes. If I realised that there was a problem, opened the hood and took a few pictures to prove it, and published everything on my Web site. Then Ford could file a complaint against me," added Tena.

Philip N Argy, senior partner of the intellectual property and technology group at Australian law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques, said that if a similar case was put to trial in Australia the prosecution would be unlikely to get a conviction because of our "fair comment provisions".

"We have strong copyright protection as well as strong anti-hacking laws, but from what I can glean from the translations, all that Guillermito did was to publish the details of the parts of the code which contained serious bugs that made the software erroneously treat as a virus some legitimate software. I'd have thought that would be at least within the fair comment provisions of Australian copyright law," said Argy.

The final ruling will be made in Paris on March 8, 2005.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9176657,00.htm


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Steam heat

Plagued By Pirates, Gaming Industry Unveils Its Own Legal P2P Software
Peter Wilson

Last fall, Vancouver art director Tavis Dunn recently used a new program called Steam to download PC gaming's most anticipated title of the 2004, Half-Life 2 to his computer's hard drive.

It was a week before the game's official release date, which, ironically, had been delayed for a year because the first version of its code had been pirated and posted to the Internet.

So is Dunn, who works for Greedy Productions, producers of such popular gamer-oriented TV shows as Electric Playground, just another over-eager downloader of pirated games?

Well, no. Steam, unlike Kazaa, Limewire, eDonkey 2000, BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer programs, is a creation of the game's own developer, Seattle-based Valve Corp.

And Steam, which allows for complete game downloads and seamless invisible updates, could just be the first sign that an industry that loses some $3 billion U.S. each year to piracy is considering operating its own legal download sites, just like the music industry.

Greedy Productions' executive producer Victor Lucas, who noted that two hugely popular games, Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, were pirated to the Net, sees the arrival of Steam as the beginning of a change brought about by peer-to-peer networks.

"People in any kind of content development are looking at the success of iTunes and Apple's dominance of the music-playing sector and questioning what the implications are for future media delivery," said Lucas.

He said that just as movie makers are looking at an iTunes-style delivery system, he "wouldn't doubt that somewhere down the road an iteration of a game service will be out there."

Because distributors of the physical version of Half-Life 2 objected to any Net-based pre-release of the game, Dunn had to wait a full week after his download completed, to play it.

Dunn likes the convenience of it all. "I don't have the hassle of going to the store and picking up the box," he said. "It saves on all the packaging and that kind of thing."

No wonder games producers might be thinking about their own download systems.

According to a U.S. Justice Department report, the music and movie industries lose $250 billion U.S. annually and the software industry has put its losses for 2003 at $29 billion.

Whatever the real numbers are, there's no doubt that there's a ton of downloading of pirated content going on out there.

The most recent figures for Canada, released by Ipsos-Reid back in May before a controversial court ruling that peer-to-peer music downloading is legal in Canada, showed that 32 per cent of Canadians adults had downloaded at least one song from the Net.

And just 15 per cent of those were from fee-paying sites, which means by far the vast majority of music downloads are of pirated content. And the survey didn't cover teens, who are the most likely to use peer-to-peer systems to download.

The arrival of pay sites and systems has changed the outlook somewhat, at least in the United States, where some 20 million have paid for songs in the past six months, a rise of 120 per cent.

However, the survey shows that, again, teens are not among them, possibly because they lack money and have no credit cards.

So far, most surveys have concentrated on music, but if you look at most peer-to-peer programs, they carry a wide variety of software and games and, increasingly, full-length movies.

A quick search of Limewire, for example, showed that more than a dozen alleged copies of Christmas film The Polar Express were said to be available for download. However, without downloading, it would be impossible to know whether these are, in fact, full-length versions and what their quality is.

Another search, for the software favourite Photoshop CS, turned up more than 250 listings of everything from the full program to serial numbers to activation work-arounds.

In other words, if you build a peer-to-peer system, the pirates will come, bearing software, music and movies.

The legal situation on this is somewhat confused. In Canada, The Copyright Review Board has said that downloading music and movies from peer-to-peer networks is legal. And that's because this country tacks on an up to $25 levy on such devices as MP3 players, with the money to go to content creators to make up for their losses.

As well, there is a levy on blank tapes, CDs and DVDs.

In the U.S., the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles has ruled that peer-to-peer software developers aren't liable for any copyright infringement by downloaders if they have no way to stop them from doing it.

This means that peer-to-peer software developers and distributors are free to continue selling their products. However, file sharing itself has been ruled in lower courts as being against U.S. copyright laws.
http://www.canada.com/technology/sto...c-98dfe4cc632f


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Japanese institute signs software development contract
Press Release

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT) of Japan has signed a $200,000 contract with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop new educational uses for Croquet, an innovative open-source operating system that the UW made available to developers in October.

Croquet is a new open-source software technology and peer-to-peer network architecture that supports online interaction and resource sharing among large numbers of users.

"Private developers and now government agencies are beginning to take note of Croquet's possibilities," says Julian Lombardi, one of the principle architects of Croquet and director of the project at the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW-Madison. "Our Japanese colleagues are interested in working with us to develop new ways for all of us to interact with network-deliverable information."

The agreement with NiCT follows an announcement that 3Dsolve, a North Carolina-based technology company, has begun developing commercial educational software using Croquet. Like 3Dsolve, NICT sees Croquet as a communications platform and service, available anytime, anywhere, from any device. Croquet is designed to run on everything, from a PDA through a set-top box. Observers say it will change the way people think about software and computation, from today's device-oriented perspective to a perspective of computation as a persistent, pervasive service.

The Croquet Project is a joint software-development effort involving DoIT, the University of Minnesota, Hewlett Packard Inc. and Viewpoints Research Institute Inc.

Early adopters of the Croquet software-development environment include more than 20 higher-education institutions both in the United States and abroad.

For more information, visit the Croquet Project Web site.
http://www.news.wisc.edu/10588.html


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Apple Changes Course With Low-Priced Mac
John Markoff and Saul Hansell


The Mac Mini is 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall and starts at $499.

Apple Computer introduced its first low-priced Macintosh on Tuesday, signaling its bet that most consumers now see computers as simply another appliance in the modern house.

While computers have long been sold as machines that can turn a home into an office, most Americans now use them in their bedrooms and kitchens as e-mail terminals; as hubs for playing music, storing and editing photos; and as stations for navigating the Web.

The new Mac Mini, priced as low as $499 without a keyboard, monitor or mouse, is aimed squarely at the needs of this new digital household.

The new Apple strategy, which moves the company deeply into the consumer electronics market, positions the new Macintosh as an entertainment and communication device. It also promises to intensify Apple's battle with Microsoft in the personal computer market dominated by machines using Windows software.

The move is in part propelled by Apple's success with its iPod digital music players; with 10 million sold in the last three years, the iPod has pulled Apple into the mass market. The popularity of iPod, analysts say, may persuade consumers who have not been Apple computer users to consider the Mac Mini.

"I wish I had a nickel for every time people have suggested that we do this," said Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, at a conference on Tuesday. "We want to price this Mac so that people who are thinking of switching will have no excuse."

But Apple's introduction of a low-priced machine is not likely to cut significantly into Microsoft's dominance in personal computing; more than 90 percent of PC's are Windows machines.

More important, Microsoft is also moving to turn PC's into entertainment centers with its Windows Media Center Edition software, which lets a computer double as a television and video recorder.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said that Apple's consumers were probably not going to give up their Windows PC's but might buy a Macintosh as an additional computer for entertainment.

"It's not about switching but adding," he said. "People may still need a PC because of work activities, but this is for doing multimedia activities and searching the Internet."

For the last few years, Apple has deflected criticism of its roughly 3 percent share of the computer market by comparing itself to prestige brands like BMW. It tried to make sophisticated and attractive products that appealed to a small segment of consumers willing to pay a premium for superior design.

Mr. Jobs played down suggestions that Apple had any grand strategy to transform itself, saying instead that the new pricing strategy came in response to things that Apple customers have been requesting.

In addition to the Mac Mini, which goes on sale Jan. 22, Mr. Jobs introduced a tiny digital music player, the iPod Shuffle, which is priced as low as $99. The less-expensive player has no screen and can hold about 120 songs, compared with 5,000 songs on a standard iPod.

"Today we saw the unveiling of a business strategy that people will be talking about for years to come," said John M. Gallaugher, a business professor at Boston College.

Even with the low price of the new iPod, Mr. Gallaugher said that Apple would probably make up the low profit margins from the music player by selling a series of accessories with higher margins.

Even loyal iPod users have resisted Apple computers because they are perceived to be expensive and not compatible with the so-called industry standard of personal computers based on Windows and Intel microprocessors.

But the advantages for consumers of using a Windows PC are less significant if they are performing common Internet and entertainment functions. Moreover, the computer viruses, worms and spyware that plague Windows machines have been far less of a problem for Macintosh machines.

The question still remains, however, whether PC users will try Macintosh machines in large numbers.

"This is not going to return Apple to a high level of profitability," said David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. "The margins on these new machines will be trivial. And I think they will add no more than one or two points of market share."

He said, however, that even a small growth in market share could be enough to attract software developers willing to write programs for the Macintosh.

Apple has struggled to break out of its niche position in the computer business since the Macintosh was introduced in 1984. Early on, Mr. Jobs defined the Macintosh as an all-in-one appliance, but he was forced to leave Apple just a year later after losing a management battle with the chief executive then, John Sculley.

During the 1990's, while Mr. Jobs was in exile from the company, Apple flirted with broadening its market by licensing the Macintosh operating system to companies that made systems that were Macintosh compatible.

The strategy backfired when those companies began stealing Apple's profits and Microsoft successfully imitated the Macintosh user interface with Windows version 3.1.

Mr. Jobs canceled the Macintosh operating systems licenses when he returned to Apple in 1997, focusing Apple instead on attractive industrial designs and a new operating system, Macintosh OS X, which he brought with him from Next, the company he founded in 1985.

Most of the decisions Mr. Jobs has made since returning to Apple have been well received, but the company's market share has continued to erode in the face of fierce price competition.

Some analysts said that the cheaper Mac Mini, which could cost a few hundred dollars more than $499 with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, could help stop the erosion. Inexpensive PC's sell for about $700 or even lower. The low-end Macintosh, called the eMac, sells for about $800.

"The product is sensational for the market it's designed for," said Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company. He said the new machine was designed to appeal to iPod users with Windows systems who have stayed away from the Macintosh in the past. "I think it's going to stem any further loss of market share, and I foresee the day late in the decade when they will double their market share because of a product like this."

Shares of Apple fell $4.40 Tuesday, to close at $64.56.

Mr. Munster said that investors had been guessing that Apple would sell more iPods in the fourth quarter than the 4.5 million the company reported. Apple will report its first-quarter results Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Jobs made the announcements in front of an audience of more than 4,000 Macintosh enthusiasts. The announcements cap a year of both success and personal challenge for Mr. Jobs, who has seen Apple's stock more than triple.

Last summer Mr. Jobs was found to have a rare form of pancreatic cancer. After emergency surgery, he quickly returned to work at both Apple Computer and at Pixar Animation Studios, where he is also chairman and chief executive.

He has resisted speaking publicly about his personal crisis. Yet some at the conference thought the marketing slogan for the iPod Shuffle, "Life Is Random," was a reference to the fortunes of Mr. Jobs.

"It jumped out at me," said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. "It's existential marketing with maybe even a touch of nihilism."

Mr. Jobs said he had not created the slogan, which came from the company's advertising agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, but he acknowledged that it had struck him as well. "I thought about it," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/te...y/12apple.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apple's Profit Quadruples, Thanks to iPod
Laurie Flynn

Apple Computer said yesterday that profit in its first quarter more than quadrupled - the biggest increase ever - on strong holiday sales of its iPod music player.

The results came a day after the company embarked on a strategy to capitalize on the success of the iPod by selling a line of low-cost computers.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., reported net profit of $295 million, or 70 cents a share, for the quarter, which ended Dec. 25. That compares with $63 million, or 17 cents, for the quarter a year earlier. The results beat the consensus forecast of analysts, which was 49 cents a share.

"We're pretty thrilled," said Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, in an interview yesterday. "This was Apple's biggest revenue increase in its history," along with the record rise in profit.

Mr. Jobs attributed the strong results to rising sales of personal computers and iPods, and said about 40 percent of the quarter's sales came from music-related products.

Revenue for the quarter was $3.49 billion, up 74 percent from $2 billion a year earlier. Analysts had forecast revenue of about $3.18 billion. The company also projected that revenue for the current quarter would be $2.9 billion, and estimated that earnings per share would be 40 cents, also surpassing analysts' expectations.

Shares of Apple rose 90 cents yesterday, to close at $65.46. Shares continued to rise in after-hours trading, gaining as much as $7.22.

The company shipped more than a million Macintosh computers in the quarter, a 26 percent increase over last year. Of those, the greatest demand was for the iMac, with its sales nearly tripling.

"This is the first proof positive that the halo effect is real," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, referring to the notion that customers interested in buying an iPod sometimes buy a Macintosh as well.

The iMac is Apple's best-selling personal computer, with an average price of $1,400.

But the iPod remained the big story, with Apple selling 4.6 million of them in the quarter, five times the number sold in the period a year earlier. That brought the total number of iPods sold in three years to about 10 million.

Apple's iTunes music store made a small profit during the quarter and has sold 230 million songs to date, Apple's chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, said.

Gross margin for the quarter, a crucial indicator of profitability, was 28.5 percent, up from 26.7 percent in the quarter a year earlier.

At the annual Macworld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Apple introduced new versions of its Macintosh that are aimed at consumers who have traditionally opted for lower-priced Windows systems.

The Mac Mini - a stripped-down Macintosh that is priced as low as $499 without a keyboard, monitor or mouse - is the least-expensive computer that Apple has ever shipped and is competitively priced with machines sold by Dell Computer and other low-cost manufacturers.

"The Mac Mini is a game changer for Apple," Mr. Munster said. "They're standing in front of the best opportunity yet for Apple to gain market share."

The new Apple strategy moves the company deeply into the consumer electronics market and positions the new Macintosh as an entertainment and communication device. It also promises to intensify Apple's fight with Microsoft in a computer market that is dominated by machines using Windows software.

The strategy is in part propelled by Apple's success with the iPod, which has pulled Apple into the mass market.

Now, with a low-priced computer, Apple hopes to persuade more users to switch to the Macintosh from PC's operating on Microsoft Windows, and in turn raise its share of the overall market from its current 3 percent.

"The one question left is just what the switch rate will be," said Charles R. Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, which raised its rating on Apple from hold to buy. "Apple has set the table to grow their market share, finally."

Apple is also hoping to capture an even greater share of the market for portable music players, with the introduction of the iPod Shuffle, a device based on flash memory. It is priced at $99, which is $150 less than the current iPod Mini.

In the last year, the company has faced new competition from Sony and other companies, whose flash-based products are priced below the least expensive iPod.

On Tuesday, Mr. Jobs said that while Apple has 65 percent of the market for hard-drive portable music players, it has only a third of the total market for both hard-drive and flash-memory-based units.

The holiday season also led to a surge in traffic to Apple's retail stores. "The very positive news during the quarter has been the Apple stores," Mr. Wolf said. "Apple has become its own channel."

Apple's chain of retail stores had revenue of $561 million in the quarter, an average of $5.9 million a store. That compares with $4 million a store in the year-earlier period.

"Opening the Apple stores has been a phenomenal success," Mr. Wolf said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...y/13apple.html


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A Satellite Connection for IPod Reaches Out to Download Radio
Marc Weingarten

Time Trax Technologies, the Washington company that created a stir late last year when it introduced products that allow satellite radio subscribers to record programming to PC's, has followed up with a product that turns iPods into MP3 repositories for hundreds of channels of music and talk from XM and Sirius, the two satellite radio broadcasters.

DockTrax is an iPod docking station that connects to a U.S.B. port on any PC. When an iPod is inserted into the cradle, TimeTrax software can schedule recordings of XM or Sirius programs and download them to the iPod as MP3 files. Time Trax says it has taken measures to prevent peer-to-peer file sharing, embedding the serial number of the user's satellite radio receiver onto each MP3 file created.

DockTrax, which is available at the company's Web site (www.timetraxtech.com), has a list price of $200 and comes bundled with TimeTrax software, an XM or Sirius receiver and the iPod cradle. It will be at retail stores later this year. Marc Weingarten
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...ts/13trax.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Memory Prices Seen Slumping Below Production Cost
Michael Kramer and Jean Yoon

Memory chip prices are expected to slide 30 percent or more by mid-year to below the manufacturing cost as chip makers plough generous 2004 profits into new production lines, exacerbating a surplus of supplies.

But analysts expect prices to stabilize in the second half as production switches over to the next generation of dynamic random access memory (DRAM).

DRAM supply will outpace demand by 2 percent to 3 percent in 2005, said Jae H. Lee, analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Seoul.

"We project DRAM prices to weaken further and possibly hit bottom in the second quarter, before experiencing a short price rally in the third quarter," he said.

Lee forecast benchmark prices would hit $2.60 in the second quarter, below the $3 price that typically marks break-even for chip makers.

That would leave chip makers such as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Micron Technology Inc., Infineon Technologies AG and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. facing losses, though bigger, more efficient companies will suffer less.

The boom-and-bust DRAM business enjoyed a strong 2004, with the price of benchmark 256 megabit DDR (double data rate) DRAM hitting highs above $6 per unit in April before easing to an average of $4.52 in the fourth quarter and around $3.70 in recent days.

Lee said the industry was funelling remarkably strong cashflow generated in 2004 into new capacity.

FLUSH WITH CASH

In one example of the sector's change in fortunes, top Taiwan DRAM maker Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. is expected to post T$22.13 billion ($69 million) in 2004 net profit, according to analyst forecasts compiled by Reuters Estimates, after a mere T$169 million profit in 2003.

Flush with cash, the company filled a plant making chips from advanced 12-inch, or 300 mm, silicon wafers with equipment last year and began construction on another.

Electronics giant Samsung, the world's largest DRAM maker, also said this week it would spend some $940 million to boost memory chip output this year.

And Japan's Elpida Memory Inc. is putting $1 billion it raised from its November stock market listing toward an aggressive capacity expansion plan. A new chip line typically costs about $2 billion.

With growing capacity outstripping lacklustre demand due to stagnant PC sales, ABN-AMRO analyst Crystal Lee said she saw DRAM prices falling to an average of $3 in the first quarter.

"It will drop about 30 percent compared to the fourth quarter (average) and then another 20 percent in the second quarter," Lee said.

However, she expected a switch to a new DRAM chip called DDR2 to brake the price side in the second half.

DDR2 offers faster speeds for data transfer and lower power consumption, but personal computer firms have shunned the technology because of a lack of compatible chipsets to link the new memory to a computer's microprocessor brain.

Supply has anyway been limited as chip firms work out production kinks, but analysts and industry insiders expect the technology to become mainstream this year as chipsets arrive and start-up problems ease.

"Falling DRAM prices will force DRAM makers to more aggressively convert capacity from DDR to DDR2," said Yu Chang-eyun, analyst at BNP Paribas Peregrine.

"Samsung will be the largest beneficiary of the trend as the company has DDR2 products ready and currently controls about half of the market," he added.

However, a semiconductor trader at the Korean electronics giant estimated Samsung's share of the DDR2 market would fall to about 33-35 percent by the end of the year as other microchip makers get into the game.

"We estimate DDR2 to account for about 55-60 percent of total DRAM shipments by the fourth quarter of 2005 versus 15 percent a year ago," the trader said, referring to shipments by all DRAM makers.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7315039


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Disk Drives To Stop Shrinking
Michael Kanellos

For hard-drive makers, getting small is becoming a passing fad.

While consumers have gone bonkers for music players and other sleek devices sporting tiny hard drives, disk drive companies say there's little room, and even less desire, for further reducing the size of the drive platters--the silver disks that spin around and hold data.

Since the platters constitute a substantial portion of the overall volume of the drive, this means a ceiling looms for shrinking drive sizes and potential increased competition from flash memory.

"The disk drive is not going to get much smaller," said Jim Porter, an analyst at Disk/Trend.

The problem goes back to Archimedes and some basic science. Reducing the diameter of a drive platter greatly reduces the surface area for storing data. And less available storage space makes it more difficult for drives to distinguish themselves against flash memory. Typically, flash memory accesses data faster, but drives can provide far greater storage capacity for the same amount of money.

"The trade-off in size is not as important as the trade-off in capacity," said Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Hitachi, which makes the drive found in the iPod Mini, has no plans to further shrink the 1-inch-diameter platter found in those drives. The company will, however, shrink the overall size of its mini drives by developing smaller motors and reducing packaging, Healy said.

Similarly, Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing for the storage division of Toshiba, says the Japanese giant is not interested in shrinking the 0.85-inch-diameter platters in its mini drive, which is featured in a video camera coming soon.

This doesn't mean that mini drives won't continue to improve. Design innovations such as perpendicular recording will allow drive makers to increase current capacities on small drives from the 4GB and 5GB range to 8GB to 10GB within a year. Brzeski, Healy and several analysts predict that drive makers will be able to maintain an advantage over flash when it comes to large-capacity devices. When 10GB mini drives hit the market next year, 10GB of flash memory might cost 10 times as much, Porter speculated.

Better packaging will also enable drive makers to reduce their size and volume. "Mikey," the code name for a Hitachi drive that comes out in devices next holiday season, will be 20 percent smaller than current mini drives.

Increased storage capacity and packaging reductions will enable hard-drive makers to insert their products into cell phones, which now almost exclusively rely on flash memory.

"People are even talking about building in projector capacity," he said, so that pictures taken on cell phones can be beamed onto flat surfaces for easier viewing, Healy said.

Still, because the platters occupy a significant portion of the overall space in a drive, size reductions are limited. A visual examination of an opened mini drive from Cornice with a 1-inch platter shows that the platter occupies more than half of the surface area. Another substantial portion is taken up by the hard-drive arm.

Reducing platter size is also constrained by the fact that a motor sits in the middle of the platter.

"Any time you shrink the disk, you halve the capacity," said Dave Reinsel, an analyst at IDC. Toshiba's 0.85-inch drive maxes out at 4GB. Consequently, 0.5-inch drive would be limited to 2GB of capacity, which would be hard-pressed to compete against flash chips on price.

This is potentially troubling for the disk drive industry because flash memory chips will relentlessly continue to economize on real estate and cost per memory bit. Moore's Law will reduce the cost of chips and enable manufacturers to increase memory capacity at the same time. Novel packages will let manufacturers stack four chips in a space that traditionally held one. Advanced Micro Devices will also come out with flash chips that hold four bits per cell rather than two bits.

Ultimately, if flash improves at a slightly faster rate than mini drives do, it could enable flash to scrape away market share in some areas. Flash might not be competitive at the high end of the market, where 10GBs or 20GBs are needed, but it might get more competitive for midrange devices.

"You've got flash on the other side that is growing," Reinsel said.

The notion that platters will stop shrinking is somewhat ironic, considering that they are just beginning to sell after a 10-year coming-out party. IBM invented the mini drive back in the early 1990s but couldn't commercially exploit it. IBM then sold its hard-drive division to Hitachi in 2002.

Hitachi then landed its drive in the iPod Mini, a popular portable music player that Apple Computer debuted a year ago.
http://news.com.com/Disk+drives+to+s...=st.rc.targ_mb


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Copyright Watchdogs Are Breeding A Bigger Enemy
Vincent Maher

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have recently drawn more blood with a massive drive against server administrators running Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing services like eMule and BitTorrent.

SuperNova.org, a widely used directory service for files available on the BitTorrent network, recently shut itself down voluntarily, coinciding with the dates of the MPAA action.

Since the early days of Napster the technology behind P2P file sharing has developed at a rapid rate, partially in response to the legal actions taken to shut down networks like Napster and AudioGalaxy.

Both Napster and AudioGalaxy relied on a centralised listing service for the location of files on each user’s computer, making it easy for the RIAA to take action against the organisations running them.

The reason the MPAA and RIAA dislike BitTorrent so much is that it does not rely on the presence of a centralised listing service. Individuals can post links to their files on websites, via e-mail or chat applications, and so it becomes significantly harder to track who is sharing what. However, the contents of the file can still be seen and many sites have sprung up listing massive numbers of BitTorrent links to make the process of finding a file easier for users looking for something specific.

With attacks on websites like SuperNova, N4P.com and pheonix- torrents.com, the P2P community has started to step up the levels of encryption and anti-detection mechanisms, and the near future will probably see a breed of P2P file sharing tools that make it virtually impossible for the RIAA and MPAA to identify which files are which.

As things stand today, there is no reliable option available for South Africans who would like to buy movies and music online that takes into account the lower production costs of shipping a single digital song via the internet as opposed to packaging it on a CD.

The Apple iTunes store, currently the most popular online store for digital music, charges approximately R6,60 per song and the service is not available in South Africa. This represents almost a 50% reduction in the cost of a single CD so let’s hope they figure out how to make the e- commerce side of things work here soon.

The problem, of course, is that many people would still not want to pay for music or videos if they could get them for free. This means that, as the RIAA and MPAA push file sharing software to new levels of sophistication, their opportunity to do something positive and take hold of a massive new market becomes slimmer and slimmer.

In the end I predict that movie and music piracy will continue until the prices drop significantly enough for it not to be worthwhile anymore. Old industries like physical distribution agencies face a tough challenge by this new market, but it is a battle they will win by creative thinking and innovation rather than bullying via litigation.
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?c...=195028&sa=106


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Altnet Tries TrueNames On P2P Ops
Ron Lachman

p2pnet.net News:- You have to give it to Kazaa owner Sharman Networks and associates Brilliant Digital Entertainment and Altnet: they’ll try anything to turn their TrueNames DRM app into hard cash.

Their latest move is revealed in a circular they’ve sent to various p2p firms including BearShare, Limewire, MashBoxx and Shareaza, that we know of at the moment.

It says, among other things:

I write on behalf of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. (“BDE”) and Altnet, Inc. (“Altnet”), the exclusive licensees for use in peer-to-peer computing of U.S. Patent No. 5,978,791, entitled “Data Processing System Using Substantially Unique Identifiers to Identify Data Items, Whereby Identical Data Items Have the Same Identifiers” (“the ’791 Patent”) and U.S. Patent No. 6,415,280 B1 entitled “Identifying and Requesting Data In Network Using Identifiers Which Are Based On Contents of Data” (“the ’280 Patent”) (collectively the “Data Distribution Patents”).

It goes on:

Based upon our investigation, we believe that other peer-to-peer applications, including applications offered by your company, use the technology claimed in the Data Distribution Patents for identifying, accessing, and distributing data items between computers. Accordingly, we believe that your company requires a license from BDE and Altnet to continue practicing the ‘791 and ‘280 Patents with your company’s peer-to-peer application.

It also says:

On December 2, 2004, BDE and Altnet filed a patent infringement lawsuit against MediaSentry, Loudeye, Overpeer, and the RIAA (case number CV-04-9823 SJO (RNBx) filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California). According to the complaint, these entities infringe one or more claims of the ‘791 and ‘280 Patents by engaging in spoofing and monitoring activities on the networks formed by users of peer-to-peer applications.

We invite you to discuss licensing opportunities with BDE and Altnet. BDE and Altnet are willing to license your company on negotiated terms acceptable to BDE and Altnet, just as they have done with Sharman, so it can continue practicing the ‘791 and ‘280 Patents.

“We’re gathering information to find out what the goal of all this is,” a Shareaza spokesman says. “We’ll formulate where we’re going to go from there.”

MashBoxx boss Wayne Russo told p2pnet, “Well, when I stopped laughing …..” .

MashBoxx is the upcoming Big Music-approved application that identifies copyrighted music files on a p2p network

and allows copyright owners to control how they’re traded, and for how much. It's about to go into beta.

“What’s interesting is they said their investigation shows we’re utilizing their patent,” Russo states scornfully. “Their investigators must not be very thorough because MashBoxx hasn’t launched yet so I don’t see how it’s possible for us to have infringed on their patent.

”Not only that, but if I’m not mistaken, I made a deal with Snocap to do my content identification, and then if I’m not mistaken, Snocap made a deal with Philips and is utilizing Philips’ identification technology so Hey! – they’re barking up the wrong tree.

“Frankly, I think it’s some kind of bullshit move to try to bolster their case against the RIAA. And I’m starting to think the RIAA isn’t taking it seriously at all. They’re certainly not afraid of it, and neither is Loudeye or anybody else.”

“They’re going to get serious blow-back on this,” adds Russo.

BearShare’s Louis Tatta thinks p2p vendors should pool their resources and have an IP attorney evaluate Altnet's patent claims.

Altnet's "lame duck" patent
In 2002, Altnet ceo Kevin Bermeister bragged that TrueNames Ron Lachman had been appointed Altnet's chief scientist.

TrueNames, “claims invention of the old and trivial technique of using strong hashes as hashtable keys,” said InfoAnarchy. “A second patent spun out of the first … claims invention of the idea of requesting documents from network servers by unique identifier.”

"[...] the bottom line is that someone managed to persuade Altnet that the Truenames Patent was worth something (one imagines that this was right after Altnet's successful purchase of London's Tower Bridge and a large selection of invisible clothing)," said Freenet's Ian Clarke.

"Assuming that those Altnet threatens with their lame duck patent put up even the slightest bit of resistence, the patent won't stand, and Altnet will be left looking like the enemies of consumers, innovation, and competition, once again a pariah within a P2P community that should be working together against its common foes."

As well as granting Altnet an exclusive license to the TrueNames patent, "Lachman will also provide strategic and technical guidance on Altnet's distributed computing initiatives,” stated Bermeister in a puff release on Lachman’s appointment.

Lachman co-developed and patented TrueNames in 1994 and licensed it to Digital Island.

In 2002, a US federal judge granted Akamai Technologies its motion for a permanent injunction against Digital

Island to stop it from running its Footprint content delivery service, “the latest twist in a legal battle that began nearly two years ago,” said NetworkWorldFusion at the time.

“Digital Island, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cable & Wireless says the ruling issued late last week has no impact on the company or its customers since it is aimed at a defunct technology,” says the report, going on:

“ ‘The injunction is a legal technicality about a legacy part of the CDN that was abandoned some time ago,’ says Chris Albinson, chief strategy officer for Exodus, a Cable & Wireless Service, which is the name of the business unit formed by the integration of C&W acquisitions Exodus and Digital Island.”

LimeWire’s Greg Bildson told p2pnet, “One interesting thing about LimeWire code is that we explicitly don't do searches by hash. We only do searches by keyword.

"We've been a proponent of not searching by hash in the Gnutella network due to efficiency issues. Further, we actually drop all searches by hash that try to go through our hosts.

"SHA1 searches (hash searches) are too specific for the Gnutella architecture. They're a very bad mix with the dynamic querying algorithms that are responsible for the dramatic improvements in Gnutella over the past two years.”

In the meanwhile, could it be that, following the Sharman/Kazaa trial in Australia, in which BDE and Alnet are named, the unhappy trio's financial resources have been seriously sapped by lawyerly fees and other expenses and they hope this will at least partially replenish their coffers?

Stay tuned.
http://p2pnet.net/story/3512


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Skype Living Up To Hype

European telcos are beginning to feel the bite as callers turn to Skype for long distance and even local calls, according to The Register.

High long distance and per-minute billing for even local calls make VoIP (voice over internet protocol) provider Skype extremely attractive in the market, business intelligence company Evalueserve told the Register.

Skype, invented by the same Dutch duo that generated KaZaA, now boasts 13 million users worldwide and is growing by 80,000 a day.

Unlike other VoIP products, Skype runs on a peer-to- peer protocol, much like KaZaA, and the more users it gets, the better it works.

Evalueserve told the Register that Skype could have between 140-245 million subscribers by 2008 -- something that could cut telco revenue by 10 per cent and profits by 22-26 per cent.

Perhaps the most famous of the Skype evangelists is also one of the most unlikely: Michael Powell, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission.

After he tried Skype last year, he told Fortune magazine that he knew the carrier ball game had changed forever.

"I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," he said. "When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it’s free – it’s over. The world will change now inevitably."

Others have called it "disruptive technology" -- that most dangerous of all things in any carefully ordered commercial universe.

So far, though, it has been seen as a hobby tool, rather than a telco alternative, because calls originally had to pass between Skype users.

But as Skype extends agreements with carriers for bringing the VoIP P2P signals down into the POTS, calls from Skype users to regular landline telephones become increasingly possible -- and decreasingly expensive.

Evaluserve opined to the Register that Skype-like services could transform telcos into carriers that derived revenue from value add services.

Skype recently added a stack that allows it to run on the Pocket PC system, adding to a lineup of versions designed for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_art...ame=Technology


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All The Ocean Is Vibrating
Jack



A new more accurate, nuanced and ultimately sobering tsunami simulation has been released by Vasily Titov, the same researcher who did the first one a few hours after the event. Global in scope, the 18 meg avi runs longer than the 32 meg mpg and thus fully shows in staggering detail the wave encircling the planet then hitting itself as it comes back around the pacific (also available as a local event from Cornel University). There wasn't a continent it didn't touch.


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Firefox Flaw Raises Phishing Fears
Ingrid Marson

A vulnerability in Firefox could expose users of the open-source browser to the risk of phishing scams, security experts have warned.

The flaw in Mozilla Firefox 1.0, details of which were published by security company Secunia on Tuesday, could allow hackers to spoof the URL in the download dialog box that pops up when a Firefox user tries to download an item from a Web site. This flaw is caused by the dialog box incorrectly displaying long sub-domains and paths, which can be exploited to conceal the actual source of the download.

Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research at software maker F-Secure, said this bug could make Firefox users vulnerable to cybercriminals. "The most likely way we could see this exploited would be in phishing scams," he said.

To fall victim to such a scam, a Firefox user would have to click on a link in an e-mail that pointed to a spoofed Web site and then download malicious software from the site, which would appear to be downloaded from a legitimate site.

This flaw was given a severity rating of two out of a possible five by Secunia.

David Emm, a senior technology consultant at antivirus company Kaspersky Labs, said that phishers aren't likely to take advantage of this flaw in Firefox, because Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the browser market.

"I think it's unlikely that we'll see hackers rush to exploit this vulnerability," Emm said. "After all, Firefox has a much, much smaller install base than IE, and it's likely that hackers will continue to pay more attention to (IE) instead."

This may change in the future as Firefox has attracted a lot of interest in the past few months. A survey at the end of November found that Mozilla-based software, including Firefox, accounted for 7.4 percent of browsers in November 2004, up 5 percent from May.

The download vulnerability has been confirmed in Mozilla 1.7.3 for Linux, Mozilla 1.7.5 for Windows, and Mozilla Firefox 1.0. No solution is available at present, but Mozilla developers are expected to fix this bug in an upcoming version of the product.
http://news.com.com/Firefox+flaw+rai...3-5517149.html


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They're Not Worthy

Why extend the copyright on works that no longer have commercial value?
Lawrence Lessig

This New Year's Day, a wonderful thing will happen in Europe that won't occur again in the US until 2019: Copyrights on music and television recordings will expire. After a half century of monopoly protection granted artists in exchange for their creative work, the public will get its justly earned free access to an extraordinary range of both famous and forgotten creativity. Libraries, archives, and even other creators can spread and build upon this creativity without asking permission first. Songs from 1953 that seniors across Europe wooed their first loves to can be streamed across the Net for free.

Such a yearly event doesn't happen in the US anymore because Congress repeatedly extends the term of existing copyrights. The last extension in 1998 - the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act - was the 11th for existing works in 40 years, delaying any copyrighted song from entering the public domain for another 20 years. This practice is now inspiring copycats in Europe to similar plunder. Sir Cliff Richard - the most successful singles artist in British history - has launched a campaign in the EU to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings from 50 years to 95. Billions will be wiped from the books of European record companies, Richard warns, if governments don't act immediately.

If you know anything about this debate, you might wonder why this question has come up again. (And, for that matter, if you know anything about accounting, you might be puzzled why EU record labels get to book value for assets set by law to expire.) When Congress passed the Sonny Bono Act, we were told its purpose was to "harmonize" US law with European law. Turns out - surprise! - that in the most important categories of copyright, the act made US terms longer than those of the EU. Thus the pirates of the public domain are back, arguing that the EU must lengthen its copyrights to harmonize with those of the US. And as Mexico is about to extend its terms beyond those in Europe and the US, no doubt soon we'll be hearing calls to extend our terms to match those of Mexico.

This spiral will not end until governments recall a simple lesson: Monopolies are evil, even if they are a necessary evil. We rightfully grant the monopoly called copyright to inspire new creative work. But once that work has been created, there is no public justification for extending its term. The public has already paid. Term extension is just double billing. Any wealth it creates for copyright holders is swamped by the wealth the public loses in lower costs and wider access.

The urge to extend terms for commercially valuable work is understandable, albeit from the public's perspective, senseless. But the way that governments extend these terms is even more senseless. Rather than limiting this corporate welfare to those works that are commercially exploited (leaving the forgotten to pass into the public domain so libraries and archives can make them available cheaply), governments uniformly extend the duration of copyrights indiscriminately. The Sonny Bono Act, for example, extended terms for works from as far back as 1923, even though, as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer estimated in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 98 percent of the oldest works are no longer commercially available.

It would be easy for governments to narrow term extension to those who want it by requiring copyright holders to pay a small fee. Even a very small fee would filter out the vast majority of works from automatic term extension. Most would enter the public domain immediately. Yet even this idea is ignored. Who can hear reason when billions are about to be wiped from the books?

Governments should end this game by tinkering with copyright terms for future works only. But if they're not strong enough to stick to this simple principle, they should at least limit their damage by restricting extensions to those works from which someone might actually benefit. That someone, no doubt, won't be the public. But there's no reason to extend terms when no one - not even record companies - could possibly benefit. Filter the forgotten from term extension, and we might forgive the senselessness that inspires Sir Cliff to sing again.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/view.html?pg=5


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Bill Aims To Filter Internet Content At State Libraries
Kristen Gelineau

Two Virginia lawmakers are pushing bills that would require any public library that receives state funds to install filtering software on its computers.

The legislation is necessary to protect children from unwittingly stumbling across pornography while using the Internet at their local libraries, said the House bill's sponsor, Del. Samuel Nixon, Jr., R-Chesterfield.

Nixon said his bill would be identical to one already filed by Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg.

Nixon introduced his plans for the bill at a Monday press conference for the Family Foundation, which unveiled its legislative agenda for the upcoming General Assembly session that also backs a state constitutional ban on same-sex civil unions.

The bill would simply put Virginia in line with federal law, said Nixon, who filed a similar bill last session that was killed in committee.

A 2000 federal law mandated that public libraries put blocking technology on computers as a condition for receiving federal money. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 upheld the use of anti-pornography Internet filters in public libraries.

Opponents of such legislation argue that it amounts to censorship, and relies on imperfect technology that can block legitimate sites on such topics as abortion or gay rights.

Librarians would be able to temporarily disable filters for legitimate research purposes, said the Family Foundation's executive director, Victoria Cobb, who added that 40 percent of the state's libraries already have filters in place.

Last month, Cobb said her office received a call from a parent whose child had been exposed to "obscene material" at a Henrico County library. The librarian denied a request from the child's parent to force a man viewing the material to take it off his screen, Cobb said.

"This is not a novel concept," Cobb said. "This is a very real problem that has a simple and cost-effective solution."

The bill does not specify which filters should be used, nor does it define exactly what constitutes "pornography," Nixon said.

"These filters are inexpensive, they're easy to use, they're constitutional," Nixon said.

The American Library Association has opposed the federal law for various reasons.

"The whole technology approach requires computers to make subjective judgments that they're incapable of," said Carolyn Caywood, intellectual freedom round-table counselor for the association and branch manager of the Bayside Area Library and the Special Services Library for the Blind in Virginia Beach.

Another problem with blanket filtering is that most companies who produce the filters keep their lists of blocked terms secret, Caywood said. While that is understandable, it is also troublesome, because companies could potentially allow their political, social or religious views to affect what words they consider inappropriate, she said.

Caywood said her library system gives visitors a choice of whether to use computers with or without Internet filters. It also offers young children the option of using a special, kid-friendly system that only allows access to 50 pre-approved sites, such as Disney, Caywood said.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local...,1438622.story


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Return to sender eh what

Verizon's E-Mail Embargo Enrages
John Gartner

Verizon Communications customers expecting e-mail from across the pond may be in for a long wait. The internet service provider has been blocking e-mail originating from Great Britain and other parts of Europe for weeks, and customers are upset about having their communications disrupted without notice.

Verizon began blocking ranges of IP addresses belonging to British and European ISPs on Dec. 22, according to the company. The blacklisting of e-mail from abroad was in response to spam coming from the region, according to a customer service representative at Verizon who identified himself only as "Gary." He said company policy prevents him from giving out his last name.

Since Dec. 28, dozens of Verizon customers have been posting their frustrations on Verizon.adsl and verizon.email.discussion-general newsgroups about being unable to receive e-mail from Britain, Germany, France and Russia. Verizon customers describe the frustrations of not knowing how many e-mails have been blocked and receiving contradictory information from Verizon's customer service, and anger at switching to free e-mail accounts until the problem is resolved.

"What essentially this policy has done is to make it clear to me that unless they change their policy, Verizon's e-mails are not reliable enough even for non-critical home usage," said Verizon user Robert Jacobson of Brooklyn, New York, in an e-mail to Wired News.

Ashley Friedlein, CEO of consulting firm E-consultancy.com in London, said several of his e-mails to Verizon customers bounced back but he assumed that the recipient's inboxes were full.

Friedlein sees irony in an American ISP blocking e-mail from Europe. "I feel a bit affronted because most of the spam we get is from the U.S.," Friedlein said. He said that some of his bounced messages were replies to e-mails, "which is about as un-spammy as you can get."

Mike Teixeira, a blacklist investigator for Mail Abuse Prevention Systems, or MAPS, which provides ISPs with lists of known spammers, said his company is always updating its blocking list, adding and removing IP addresses that indicate the country of origin.

Wired News checked several e-mail accounts from Britain and Germany that were being blocked by Verizon, and none of them were on MAPS' list of known spammers. Teixeira said it was unusual to block e-mail coming from a geographic region. "We would never block a whole country and say, 'England is bad.'"

"Telephony companies are not so experienced in managing e-mail," said Dave Ferris, president of Ferris Research. "It's easy to set the filters too strong" and block valid addresses, he said, adding that companies need to be able to dynamically filter spammers instead of maintaining lists that can quickly become obsolete.

Ferris said ISPs such as AOL and MSN were making similar mistakes a year ago during their spam-fighting efforts. "It sounds like (Verizon is) going through a learning curve," he said.

Verizon media relations manager Ells Edwards said he did not know when Verizon would discontinue its blocking of the European e-mail. "Normally these things abate in a matter of days," Edwards said.

Verizon has more than 3 million DSL customers, according to Edwards.

Edwards suggested that Verizon customers who are waiting for an e-mail response from Europe should use alternative forms of communication. "If it's really important you might want to make a phone call," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,66226,00.html


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Round up the usual suspects

Reports Of Child Pornography Continue To Climb

Reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's hot line grew for the seventh consecutive year.
John Foley

Reports of suspected child pornography climbed 39% in 2004, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which collects tips about the problem over the Web and by telephone.

The child-protection organization's CyberTipline logged more than 106,000 reports of child-pornography possession, creation, or distribution in 2004, the seventh consecutive year such incidents trended upward since the 24-hour hot line was established in 1998. "The totals have gone up remarkably each year," says Staca Urie, a supervisor with the National Center's Exploited Child Unit.

Urie attributes the increase, in part, to technologies such as digital cameras, peer-to-peer networking, and the Internet that have made it easier to create, distribute, hide, and access illicit images and videos. Yet, the growth in child- porn reports also is a reflection that Internet service providers are complying with federal law that requires them to take action against the problem, Urie says.

The National Center's CyberTipline also tracks child prostitution, online enticement, sexual molestation, and child sex "tourism," where under the Protect Act, made law in 2003, U.S. residents who sexually exploit children while traveling abroad can be prosecuted, as can child-sex tour operators and their co- conspirators. The tipline also tracks child pornography, which is by far the most frequently reported problem. Of all the incidents recorded, about 25% are forwarded to law-enforcement agencies such as the FBI, Justice Department, and Postal Inspection Service. Those reports and the remaining 75% of others are stored in a database that's available to law-enforcement officials.

Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division announced Tuesday that two executives of an Internet billing company in Belarus have been extradited from France to face child-pornography, money laundering, and other charges in U.S. federal court. Yahor Zalatarou and Alexei Buchnev are the president and marketing director of Regpay Co. Ltd., which is accused of providing billing services for 50 child-porn Web sites and operating its own such sites. The company's technical administrator, Aliaksandr Boika, was extradited from Spain in June to face similar charges.

The extraditions are part of an ongoing investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigations division, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The three Regpay employees were arrested in July 2003. So far, 190 people have been arrested in the United States and hundreds more in other countries as part of the investigation, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Yet, there's no way to track how many of the tips collected by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children lead to arrests or convictions. Some experts believe law-enforcement agencies can't keep up with the scope of the problem. "The number of prosecutions is very small," says Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit organization devoted to online safety. A lawyer, Aftab writes a column on privacy issues for InformationWeek.

Industry groups representing peer-to-peer companies, which are under pressure to curb the use of their products for illegal file sharing, which can include child pornography, have undertaken public-awareness campaigns. "We can and are playing a role in the education process and even in facilitating law enforcement," says Adam Eisgrau, executive director of Peer-to-Peer United. The trade association's Web site, P2PUnited.org, provides a link to the National Center's CyberTipline.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...00595&tid=5978


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TV Room's PC Wants to Be the Center of All Media
Seán Captain

MANY air travelers have slipped DVD's into their laptops as an alternative to the in-flight movie. And for years, enthusiasts have installed tuners and software in their PC's to watch and record TV programs.

In 2002, Microsoft sought to take these activities into the mainstream with a new version of its Windows XP operating system, the Media Center Edition. Designed to turn a PC into an entertainment hub, it provided a single interface for watching TV, showing DVD's, displaying digital photos and playing music.

But PC's are still far from being fixtures in the TV room. For some people, the problem is one of logistics. PC's may not blend with the décor, or they may not fit into the racks that hold DVD players, cable decoder boxes and stereo receivers.

More important, the video from a PC set up to serve as a media center doesn't look very good, especially on a large screen, according to Joel Silver. His company, Imaging Science Foundation, tests video equipment and gives it a seal of approval for use in home theaters, which can be anything from a den with a large TV to a screening room with acoustic treatments and a $50,000 digital projector. (The company, commonly known as I.S.F. and based in Boca Raton, Fla., also consults with electronics industry companies and trains technicians who maintain home theaters.)

With DVD's, for example, Mr. Silver notes that PC output can look fuzzy. "It was nothing that would be noticed on a 17-inch screen," he said. "On a 12-foot screen, it was impossible not to notice." DVD players that cost under $100 typically outshine PC's that cost several thousand, he says.

A year and a half ago, Microsoft asked Mr. Silver's company to develop a certification program to improve the quality of media center computers. At the Consumer Electronics Show here last week, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, announced that Alienware, Hewlett-Packard, Niveus Media, Stack9 Systems and RicaVision International would offer PC's that carried a Microsoft-I.S.F. joint certification for home theater use.

These new media center PC's resemble the audio-visual receivers they aim to replace; they're wider and lower than standard PC's, and have an assortment of audio and video jacks. One of the machines, the K2 from Niveus Media, has a black metal case, top vents and side fins, all designed to shed heat from a Pentium 4 PC silently, without cooling fans.

Reducing noise was one of the biggest challenges, Mr. Silver said. Even the systems with fans are engineered to run so quietly that they won't compete with soft dialogue in movies or with conversations when the TV is off.

Another challenge was rethinking PC video. In the computer realm, a program or a game specifies a level of brightness to display on the screen. In the video world, a signal also includes so-called blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white values that a technician uses to determine the optimal brightness and contrast cutoff levels when calibrating a TV.

As part of the Microsoft-I.S.F. program, ATI Technologies, a maker of graphics cards, created downloadable software updates, or drivers, that provide video output that meets I.S.F. quality requirements on their highest-end cards. (An ATI competitor, nVidia, is also developing I.S.F.-certified graphics.)

The Imaging Science Foundation seal of approval carries considerable weight among home theater enthusiasts and consumer electronics companies, and no one interviewed at the Consumer Electronics Show questioned the video quality of the new media centers. "I'm behind it all the way," said Sam Runco, chief executive of Runco International, which makes TV's and projectors for the upper end of the market.

But companies with competing visions pointed to the expense of a PC and its reputation for crashing or falling prey to viruses. Samsung, for instance, was demonstrating a technology concept called the Intelligent AV Home Network, in which separate devices like TV's, DVD players and stereos run basic software that allows them to be networked and to share digital content, with control through a common on-screen interface similar to Media Center's.

"You don't have to buy a $2,000 computer," said Mithun Sheshagiri, a developer of the technology. But Samsung's system won't appear in products until at least 2006, the project's leader, Alan Messer, said. Also, it will require that products from Samsung and other companies acquire networking capabilities, and that at least one of the products (likely the TV) can run the Samsung software.

Media Center supporters reject the common criticisms. The current certified products are quite expensive, about $2,000 to more than $6,000. But the price of the new technologies "is going to come down over time," said Muffaddal Ghadiali, who manages H.P.'s entertainment PC program. And Tim Cutting, the chief executive of Niveus Media, says PC's are stable and secure if used only for entertainment. "We're not going in there and doing Microsoft Word on it," he said.

In fact, PC technologies are already in home entertainment devices. "All of these products that we're making today essentially are computers," Jeffrey Cove of Panasonic said.

LG Technologies, for example, showed plasma televisions with built-in hard drives for recording programs, like a TiVo (which is itself a stripped-down computer).

Many of the objections may not be about bringing PC technology into the TV room, but rather about putting Microsoft in the center of it. As a counterpoint to a system built around Media Center, Mr. Messer of Samsung promotes the Digital Network Living Alliance, a consortium of consumer electronics and PC companies (including Microsoft) developing open standards that allow home entertainment devices to work together over a network.

But Mr. Silver sees greater influence from companies like Microsoft as inevitable, and potentially beneficial for customers. For instance, he admires the PC industry's ability to fix bugs quickly and to add capabilities to products through software updates, something that is just beginning to occur in other consumer electronic equipment.

And he feels it may take a heavyweight like Microsoft to push for standards that allow products to work better together. He cites Microsoft's advocacy years ago for plug- and-play capability, which allows any computer to recognize the properties of any monitor and automatically send it the right video signal. "They don't get any credit for it, because it works," Mr. Silver said.

In theory, devices like digital televisions, DVD players and set-top boxes should already have such capabilities, but they often don't. So, Mr. Silver said, a feature taken for granted on a $300 monitor very possibly won't function on a $39,000 television.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...ts/13vide.html


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Videos Quick, Easy and Automatic
Katie Dean

Locating video content on the web can be cumbersome and time-consuming, especially for the not-too-tech- savvy tinkerer. But a new application combining BitTorrent and RSS could make it easy for video fans to automatically locate files and download them to their computers.

Sajeeth Cherian, a 20-year-old communications engineering student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, got the idea for Videora after watching the trouble his roommate went through to find and download anime off the internet. He thought there ought to be an easier way.

While the idea to combine BitTorrent and RSS isn't new, Cherian said his program is less complicated than others and doesn't "demand computer enthusiasts' knowledge."

"I thought I could make an easier version," Cherian said. "Something that anyone off the street could use. You don't need to know anything about BitTorrent or RSS."

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file-sharing application that enables fast downloads of large data files. When a person downloads a video, for instance, the data arrives in chunks from different users, resulting in a faster download. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a mechanism used by sites to automatically distribute their content -- like headlines, links or video -- to subscribers' computers. RSS subscribers choose what kind of information they would like to receive.

Videora puts together an easy-to-use interface so users don't have to worry about such details. Once a person downloads the application, the program automatically installs BitTorrent and downloads the RSS feeds, Cherian said. Then, users simply type in the title or keyword for a "series" they want to record, like amateur tsunami videos, for instance. The request can be added to a "want list," and the user can download any tsunami videos located by double-clicking the file. Or, a person can add the tsunami request to "season tickets" and the program will automatically download any tsunami video.

"We extract the BitTorrent link from the RSS feed, and if the title matches what you are looking for, we start downloading the BitTorrent file from the RSS link," Cherian said.

When the search is submitted, the request goes to the open-source Videora server, which includes an index of "tracker" websites -- which point users to locations where digital music and movie files can be found -- with RSS feeds. Anyone can contribute to the database, Cherian said. Cherian developed the source code and then set it free; he has no control over the content.

The site launched at the end of December. Users can download a free trial of the Videora application or pay $23 for a version with more features.

The Motion Picture Association of America recently sued several tracker sites, like LokiTorrent and SuprNova.org. The MPAA alleges that the sites are violating copyright.

The MPAA did not return calls for comment on Videora.

"There (are) a lot of programs out there that can be used for good and bad," Cherian said. "I think it's the responsibility of the copyright provider to make sure people aren't misusing their content.... I definitely don't condone piracy."

So far, Cherian hasn't heard from the MPAA. However, he did run into trouble when TiVo objected to the use of the phrases "season passes," which was originally used to describe Videora's automatic download feature, and "wish lists." Cherian renamed the features "season tickets" and "want lists." He's also heard from a few people interested in investing in the technology, he said.

One digital rights attorney said the program appears to be on the right side of the law, according to the description on its website.

"It looks like they don't control any of the sites that offer the RSS feeds or the BitTorrent tracker sites," said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "They are not suggesting any particular content and they aren't supervising what people are doing on the network."

That supervision was a key part of the downfall of the original Napster. The court ruled that Napster could supervise what its users were doing, he said.

Schultz compared Videora to another file-sharing service: "Grokster doesn't tell you where to go looking for the content and it doesn't have prepackaged content for you," he said. "It's just a tool you can use to find things. It's that lack of suggestion and lack of control over what you do that keeps it on the right side of the law."

"As long as he's not operating those trackers, it shouldn't be a legal problem," said Andrew Grumet, a programmer who also developed software that combines BitTorrent and RSS. "Although it could be a problem of finding content, ultimately, if these trackers get shut down."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66231,00.html


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Clutter Disappears as DVR Merges With Plasma TV
Michel Marriott

Like peanut butter and jelly or cellphones and cameras, some things seem made for convergence.

LG Electronics, a Korean consumer electronics maker, has a new pair in mind: large-screen plasma televisions and digital video recorders.

The sleek flat-screen LG 60PY2DR, which has a 60-inch display and will cost $15,000, and the 50PY2DR (a 50-inch version; $8,000) eliminate the need for set-top boxes, like a TiVo, to record a favorite show or pause live television.The televisions, to be released in the second quarter of 2005, incorporate an integrated 160-gigabyte DVR. It can record up to 14 hours of high-definition programming or 62 hours of digital standard-definition programs, said Michael Ahn, president of LG Electronics USA.

The DVR-equipped televisions will use TV Guide On Screen, Gemstar-TV Guide's interactive program guide, Mr. Ahn said, allowing consumers to browse channels or record programs with one touch.

The new televisions will also eliminate the need for a cable box. All PY2DR's will ship with CableCard capability, making them digital cable ready. LG incorporated several new imaging technologies in the PY2DR series, Mr. Ahn said.

One, called DoubleLife, extends a plasma television's longevity to 60,000 hours. That, Mr. Ahn and other LG Electronics executives said, is about 24 years of average viewing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...gXdA7QNDFjJyCA


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Snooping By Satellite
Declan McCullagh

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police.

Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal activities. So investigators stuck a GPS, or Global Positioning System, bug on Moran's car, watched his movements, and arrested him on drug charges a month later.

A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from afar. "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the public highways," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote. "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway."

Last week's court decision is the latest to grapple with the slippery subject of how to reconcile traditional notions of privacy and autonomy with increasingly powerful surveillance technology. Once relegated, because of their cost, to the realm of what spy agencies could afford, GPS tracking devices now are readily available to jealous spouses, private investigators and local police departments for just a few hundred dollars.

Not all uses are controversial. Trucking outfits use GPS boxes to keep track of their drivers' locations, and companies sell software to dispatchers that instantly calculates which taxi is closest to a customer. OnStar uses GPS tracking to provide roadside assistance to owners of many General Motors vehicles.

What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police abuses.

"I think they should get court orders," said Lee Tien, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We're in a world where more and more of our activities can be viewed in public and, perhaps more importantly, be correlated and linked together."

GPS devices work by listening for radio signals from satellites and calculating how long the signals take to arrive.

The result of that calculation provides a highly accurate estimation of latitude and longitude. Depending on the type of GPS tracker, that information is beamed back to an eavesdropper's computer through the cellular network or quietly recorded and divulged when the device is retrieved a few days or weeks later.

Voluntarily agreeing to automotive GPS tracking can be a bargain for some consumers. Progressive Casualty Insurance began a pilot projectin Minnesota last year that embeds GPS devices in a customers' vehicles and offers insurance discounts based on where and when cars are driven.

Norwich Union, the United Kingdom's largest auto insurer, has experimented with a similar "pay as you drive" program involving 5,000 customers. Hertz has implanted GPS trackers in all of its rental cars, and trucking companies have used similar systems for years.

GPS tracking systems are becoming cheap enough--the prices have dropped by about 50 percent in the last few years--that they've become attractive methods for tracing the whereabouts of teenagers and spouses. In 2003, South Carolina police thought they had discovered a bomb under a vehicle, but it turned out to be a GPS bug planted by a man's wife. In another case, a man in Colorado was convicted of tracking his wife with a GPS bug after she began divorce proceedings against him.

Solving crimes
GPS devices have been used to solve crimes from the petty to the heinous. Massachusetts police recently nabbed the driver of a snow removal truck who exposed himself at a Dunkin' Donuts, thanks to the Massachusetts Highway Department's requirement that state contractors outfit their trucks with GPS locators.

In 2000, when William Bradley Jackson called Spokane County, Wash., police to report that his daughter had vanished from the front yard that morning, detectives were immediately suspicious. Jackson seemed unusually nervous, and blood stains were discovered on his daughter's sheets.

Eight days later, after desperate searches failed to locate 9-year-old Valiree, detectives won court approval to secretly attach GPS tracking devices to Jackson's two vehicles.

The tactic worked; the GPS bugs led police to Valiree shallow grave in a remote, dense forest about 50 miles from Spokane. The case ended in a murder conviction and 56-year prison sentence.

Complicating the privacy risks of tattletale cars is a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases decided two decades ago. Those cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, established that police don't need court approval to track suspects through a crude radio beeper.

In 1999, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invoked that logic when deciding that federal agents did not need a court order to slap a GPS tracker on a truck owned by a man suspected of growing marijuana. "In placing the electronic devices on the undercarriage of the Toyota 4Runner, the officers did not pry into a hidden or enclosed area,"the court ruled, saying the bug did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Privacy intrusion?
A handful of courts have veered in the other direction, saying GPS technology is so powerful and can reveal so much about a person's life that it requires strict judicial oversight.

The "use of GPS tracking devices is a particularly intrusive method of surveillance, making it possible to acquire an enormous amount of personal information about the citizen under circumstances where the individual is unaware that every single vehicle trip taken and the duration of every single stop may be recorded by the government," the Washington Supreme Court said in the Jackson murder case in September 2003. "Citizens of this state have a right to be free from the type of governmental intrusion that occurs when a GPS device is attached to a citizen's vehicle...A warrant is required for installation of these devices."

Some legal scholars fear that when the U.S. Supreme Court eventually weighs in on GPS tracking, it will side with police over privacy. "Unless it changes its view, it's unlikely that the court will think the same way as the Washington Supreme Court," said Dan Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. "The court has a very narrow and crabbed understanding of privacy. If something's not totally secret, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

GPS tracking--even when bugs are installed by police armed with a court order--can be imperfect. One bug used by police to track convicted murderer Scott Peterson sometimes developed glitches that showed him driving at about 30,000 miles per hour. Judge Alfred Delucchi ruled the data could be admitted during Peterson's trial, which appears to have been the first such decision in California.

Even with the occasional glitches, police see great potential in GPS tracking systems, like OnStar, that are built into more expensive cars--and that most people believe will be activated only in emergencies. In one North Carolina case, police used the built-in OnStar system in a 2000 Chevrolet Suburban truck to locate it and arrest the driver, who had bought it with a fake certified check.

An even more creative method of vehicle tracking arose when the FBI used such a system for audio eavesdropping. OnStar and other remote assistance products permit passengers to call an operator for help in an emergency. The FBI realized the feature could be useful for bugging a vehicle and remotely activated it to eavesdrop on what passengers were saying. (The 9th Circuit shot down that scheme in 2003, on the grounds that it rendered the system useless in emergencies.)
http://news.com.com/Snooping+by+sate...3-5533560.html


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An Aerial Crime-Fighting Tool Banks on Portability
Cyrus Farivar

If all goes well, this year a remote-controlled portable airplane will be taking to the air over Southern California, providing a low-cost eye in the sky for law enforcement.

Chang Industry of La Verne, Calif., is one of dozens of companies working on portable unmanned aerial vehicles, or U.A.V.'s, that can be equipped with cameras to transmit live video feeds to law enforcement officers on the ground, miles away. While larger and more sophisticated unmanned aircraft have been in use by the military for several years, this new breed of U.A.V.'s is small enough to be transported in the trunk of a patrol car, for example, assembled and flown by officers near a developing crime scene.

Dr. Yu-Wen Chang, the company's president, said that he expects to sell his Kite Plane, which has a wingspan of about 4 feet and weighs less than 5 pounds, for $5,000 apiece. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will be the first law enforcement agency to test the plane, probably in April, Dr. Chang said.

A big attraction of a small remote-controlled plane is the cost. Law enforcement agencies spend millions of dollars to purchase, maintain and fly helicopters and planes for surveillance and other crime-fighting tasks. U.A.V.'s could substitute for piloted aircraft in certain circumstances.

Safety is another consideration, Dr. Chang said.

"The big helicopter would get shot at, so they can just launch this and take a quick look," he said.

The Kite Plane has an exoskeleton made of foldable graphite composite poles, similar to tent poles, and a skin of parachute cloth, creating the wings of the airplane, Dr. Chang said. Its frame makes it durable and flexible, allowing for both a soft landing sliding onto dirt, or even into the arms of someone waiting to catch it. (The plane's 6-inch propeller shuts off before landing.)

The plane carries a video surveillance camera that is aimed toward the ground. Video is transmitted wirelessly at 30 frames per second.

The camera and electric motor are mounted in the center, below the wing, creating a miniature fuselage. It is piloted very much in the same way a toy remote-controlled car or airplane would be, with a hand-held joystick. While the Kite Plane can fly up to 1,000 feet and has a top speed of 30 miles per hour, its rechargeable battery can only last for 20 minutes.

The plane comes in pieces small enough to fit inside a sports duffel bag, and it can be put together and launched by hand in under a minute, Dr. Chang said.

The Kite Plane's light weight and low cruising altitude make it vulnerable to gunshots or even, in some cases, thrown rocks. However, Cmdr. Sid Heal, who is in charge of evaluating technology for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, said the plane's low cost makes it highly desirable, particularly when compared with the current alternative of a helicopter.

"That helicopter costs $450 an hour - for every 10 hours of use, I've bought a new one of these that I own," he said.

If a Kite Plane were shot down, he said, it would validate the purchase of the aircraft.

"We didn't put our pilot in harm's way," he said. "They shoot one of those down, and I guarantee I'll have funds for 100 of them the next day."

The miniaturization of these aircraft is also driven by a concern for public safety, said Prof. Ilan Kroo, director of the Aircraft Aerodynamics and Design Group at Stanford University.

"If something catastrophic happens with the airplane and it crashes in a populated region, you want this thing to weigh a few ounces, not a few thousand pounds," Professor Kroo said.

Chang Industry is also working on a larger and more sophisticated version of the plane. These eight-foot wide planes would have a rigid wing, and a camera with the ability to pan, tilt and zoom and to provide night vision capabilities.

More important, these advanced planes would have autonomous flight capability, meaning they would not have to be guided constantly by someone with a remote control. Using a Global Positioning System receiver and programmed maps, Dr. Chang said, the plane could be programmed to fly to a target and circle it before returning. This larger plane would cost approximately three times the Kite Plane, about $15,000.

Chang Industry will have to compete with autonomous U.A.V.'s already on the market. L-3 BAI Aerosystems, based in Easton, Md., makes a 44-inch-wide plane called the Evolution, which sells for $25,000 and flies on its own with live video feeds that can be transmitted up to 12.5 kilometers. The Evolution, which can be transported in pieces in a backpack, is designed to collapse into its component pieces upon impact, leaving open the chance for reassembly.

Jay Willmott, the company's executive vice president, said that the United States Marshals Service uses the Evolution plane, and that the Maryland Port Authority is also interested in acquiring a small fleet.

One obstacle to more widespread use of U.A.V.'s is the lack of Federal Aviation Administration regulations for their use.

Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said that U.A.V.'s must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and that using them in an urban area required F.A.A. approval through a one-year "certificate of authorization" for a particular plane in a specific area. A rural or remote area, such as a testing zone, would not have the same restrictions, Mr. Takemoto said.

However, the F.A.A. is currently drafting sweeping regulations on the use of U.A.V.'s. The agency hopes to have the regulations completed by September.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/te...ts/13next.html


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P2P Site Operators 'Did Not Violate Copyright': Appellate Court
Choi Gyeong-woon

A Seoul appellate court on Wednesday acquitted the two brothers behind peer-to-peer music swapping website Soribada of copyright violation charges.

The bench said in its ruling that although the activities of site users constituted copyright violation, Yang Jeong-hwan and Yang Il-hwan did not themselves commit copyright infringement. The site allowed users to exchange music files and download them to their computer.

But in a separate ruling on the same day, the Seoul High Court said Soribada helped site users infringe on copyright and ordered it to shut down its file-sharing software and its three computer servers, upholding a lower court’s decision. Eleven record companies had filed charges against the P2P music exchange website.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...501120032.html


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All the President's Newsmen
Frank Rich

ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.

This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.

But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."

"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."

Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.

That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self- proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.

Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of- interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.

He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).

But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."

This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.

Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.

But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.

Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.

If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/arts/16rich.html















Until next week,

- js.














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Current Week In Review.





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January 8th, January 1st, December 25th, December 18th

Jack Spratt's Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.


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