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Old 10-01-07, 12:50 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 13th, '07


































"It made me feel so good. I’m definitely going to do it again." – Blanca Leticia Pineda de Juarez


"40 percent of college students admitted to copying from the Internet in 2001. We talk to them about plagiarism in absolute terms, as if we were all agreed on what it was, and yet the literature suggests that once you’re out of school, it proves to be a crime like any other, with the punishment partly depending on whom you know and on how well you pull it off." – Charles McGrath


"We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming." – Alex St. John


"I believe I have a right to travel in my own country without presenting what amounts to an internal passport." – John Gilmore


"Buccanerds." – The Sunday Times















QnA

FLAC files are huge - almost the size of a WAV. Is FLAC the new OGG?

Huge is right.

Like OGG, FLAC is open source but unlike OGG it’s exploding in popularity in ways OGG never could or will. So perhaps a better question might be Is FLAC the new MP3? Time will tell but it's looking more like it. I see 2007 as the breakout year for FLACs, especially on private trackers.

When I up an MP3 - even the good ones like 320s or V0s - I get requests for FLACs and that’s something new. There are now FLAC-only trackers whose members are so serious about quality the cover scans alone can be 15 or 20 megs but don’t think you have to be an audiophile to appreciate them. If you have the space and bandwidth they’re a cinch.

Since they’re lossless they are flexible and future-proof. They transcode to any format with no additional loss of quality so for instance MP3 rips for your portable players come out exactly like your original CD rip did, and with cheaper storage arriving daily space is becoming less of an issue too. Though only some 35% smaller than a WAV, the brand-new terabyte drives now coming to market will still hold 3-4000 full albums of FLACs, or some 35-50,000 songs. Expect to see 2 TB drives within 18 mos., and 6-8000 albums (or 100,000 pristine songs) on a single 3½ inch drive is phenomenal, even in today's environment of tightly packed MP3s. Meanwhile the hard drive storage costs for FLACs are now 10 cents an album and falling.

Having said that, unless you absolutely must have the exact transients and transparency of the source CD, you won't go wrong with the new LAME MP3-V0. I never really warmed to MP3s, preferring instead the more natural OGGs, but these I like. They’re finally getting them right - and of course they’re much, much smaller.

If you’d like to try them yourself you can find an excellent guide for making FLACs, OGGs and those great new MP3-V0s here. It’s what I use.
















Enjoy,

Jack

















January 13th, '07





Yo Ho Ho – Buccanerds Give Studios a Broadside

A website that tells you where to get the latest films for nothing has enraged movie moguls. Simon Kurs meets the swashbucklers fighting claims of piracy

First came the pirate radio ships of the 1960s offering new musical thrills to the pop-starved young. The law closed them down yet they changed the sound of music for ever.

In the 1990s came Napster, offering computer file-sharers an illicit new means to download free tunes. The law forced it to go legitimate and charge, but not before it introduced surfers to peer-to-peer networks, which have come to define one of the internet’s most important roles in the digital era.

Now, a couple of rebellious Swedes have perfected a way to find online music, television, video, audio books, games — in fact, all the entertainment or computer software you want — in the manner of a Google for digital booty.

The moguls of Hollywood and Silicon Valley want the law to close down these pirates, too, but Fredrik Neij, 28, and Gottfrid Svartholm, 22, have managed to evade all attempts to shut down their site. This geeky Ben and Jerry pair are self-proclaimed digital freedom fighters at the helm of the Pirate Bay site. Appropriately, their emblem is a galleon emblazoned with an audio-tape skull above crossbones.

“The bottom line is that file sharing should be legal, and that is proved by the support we receive,” says Neij. “People love what we are doing.”

Not the 50 cops who raided three addresses in Stockholm last May and confiscated several truckloads of computer equipment they believed belonged to Neij and Svartholm. The website was back up and running within three days and, although the pair were also taken in for questioning, they have yet to be booked for any illicit activity.

Meanwhile, the content of their confiscated computers continues to be investigated, so they do not know for certain whether or not the handcuffs will click.

The allegation is that their website is involved in copyright infringement. The Swedish press has claimed the raids were prompted by pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a trade group representing the world’s biggest film studios including Warner Brothers, Sony and Universal.

What has really annoyed the studio bosses, it is said, is that the Pirate Bay is aiding and abetting those who want to view copyrighted work without paying for it. Through the Pirate Bay, surfers can find the latest movie blockbusters, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, or new episodes of television shows such as Lost, even if they have been screened only in the United States. In addition, surfers can find the latest news footage such as the execution of Saddam Hussein.

For a period last year, the BBC’s Top Gear programme was the most downloaded item on the web, thanks to the Pirate Bay and YouTube.

“The operators of the Pirate Bay are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works protected under the law,” claims John Malcolm, MPAA executive vice-president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations.

Malcolm says that in 2005 internet piracy cost the movie studios alone $2.3 billion, and although the MPAA may overstate the damage, it levels much of the blame at the two Swedes.

The studios have a point. The purpose of copyright is to protect not only cigar-chomping bosses: it secures the rights of artists from Bruce Springsteen to the humblest scriptwriter and session musician. Without it, arguably there would be little creative material on the web.

“By downloading illegally not only are you committing a criminal act, but you are also depriving artists of the right to earn a living for something they’ve created,” said a spokesman for the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact).

So who exactly are the men who have become America’s most wanted rogue programmers? The pair are only part-time buccanerds; by day Neij works as an IT consultant, while Svartholm runs a small internet service provider.

The two teamed up in 2001 at the hackers’ equivalent of Glastonbury, a three-day festival regularly held in Holland known as Hackers at Large or Hal — no prizes for spotting the geek sci-fi reference there. Soon afterwards they hatched plans to create their search site.

Originally intended for Swedish file-sharers, who today make up a third of its audience, the Pirate Bay quickly went global — its servers now span three countries, and visitors can select from 30 languages.

File sharing accounts for nearly two-thirds of all internet traffic and every day about 1.5m surfers visit the Pirate Bay in search of a digital fix, making it currently the 384th most popular site on the web, according to the monitoring service Alexa — as big as sites such as USA Today and Last.fm, the web’s largest online radio station.

Svartholm claims the site’s popularity is justification in itself. “I see the Pirate Bay as a form of organised civil disobedience against the current copyright legislation, on a huge scale,” he says.

“Some publishers are afraid — out of ignorance — but even though they are wrong I can respect that. Some, however, like the MPAA can most accurately be described as rabid, obsessed lunatics.”

One reason why the site has not yet been closed is that it doesn’t store illicit material. The issue is whether it can legally act as a search engine for sites that do. Tap what you want into the Pirate Bay and it will tell you where to find, say, the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, and how to download it using a file-sharing technology called BitTorrent (see panel).

Envisional, a British company that tracks illegal downloading for Hollywood studios, estimates that 4m surfers in North America and Europe use BitTorrent on a daily basis.

“The world’s appetite for up-to-the-minute entertainment is virtually insatiable,” says David Price, the head of Envisional’s anti-piracy team. The numbers sharing media files continue to grow as broadband becomes increasingly widespread.

You might think this is a simple matter of right and wrong, but the issues are more complex. The war being fought between corporate victims and file-hungry thieves could well decide how we enjoy our favourite media in a future beyond CDs or DVDs.

Many media content owners believe web surfers should pay to watch their material, just like other audiences, and protect their files with digital rights management (DRM) constraints that prevent people making copies. A recent Treasury report on intellectual property concluded that this kind of protection actually encourages innovation and creates the next big thing that consumers seek.

File-sharing evangelists such as the Pirate Bay buccanerds believe all media should be free at the click of a button. For them, all notions of ownership rights are a rotten throwback to the pre-digital age.

They argue that the selection of movies you can download legitimately from authorised sites such as Wippet.com is patchy at best, and even after you have paid for the film, you are allowed to play it on only two devices — a PC and a portable player, perhaps — and can’t burn it to your own DVD. No studio is currently willing to compete on the same terms as the Pirate Bay, they claim.

The experts agree, even though they don’t condone the illegal downloading and copying of files. “Right or wrong, there is no legitimate file-sharing service that offers anything like the convenience and choice available through pirate downloads,” Price says.

As ever, the consumer is caught in the middle. You might disagree with the tactics of the buccanerds, but — just as with the 1960s pop pirates — the digital pirates may finally force big business to respond radically to the market demand that leads to lasting change.

Until that day, the Pirate Bay pair will continue to sail the high seas — close to the wind.

Sailing into the Pirate Bay – how the system works

What is BitTorrent?

BitTorrent is an innovative means of distributing large digital files. Most file-sharing services work on a one-to-one basis. File sharers find the file they want — usually on someone else’s computer — decide to download it, and the file is slowly transferred.

Not so with BitTorrent, which takes data from many computers simultaneously. As a result, pieces of a chosen media file are brought to the home computer from many sources, then reassembled. This technology is so fast and efficient that the BBC has adopted it for distributing its programme archive.

How downloading works

1. First, the movie/video fan downloads BitTorrent software such as Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net), and this sits on the PC desktop to manage downloads.

2. Then the fan heads to the Pirate Bay (www.piratebay.org) and searches for the item wanted.

3. The search results are listed as a “torrent” — a digital signpost telling the PC where to go online to access a chosen film or song.

4. This torrent file is saved to the computer. The BitTorrent software then takes over, at which point downloading begins.

Are you breaking the law?

UK law has yet to test the legitimacy of a search service such as the Pirate Bay. It claims merely to play a neutral role even though in Sweden it may yet be charged with “contributory copyright infringement”. An analogy is Google, which sidesteps copyright law by claiming it doesn’t publish anything.

In the US and UK the offence of “making available” copyright material exists. But in the digital age, when material can be copied and transmitted at the click of a mouse, the law is in danger of becoming an ass.

The use of BitTorrent lies on neutral ground. It is the person who uploads (and to a lesser degree, downloads) copyright material who risks offending against existing British law, which the British Phonographic Industry has been keen to enforce in the music sector. Services such as the Pirate Bay are keen to emphasise that among their search results you will find plenty of licensed material or free user-generated content.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...532534,00.html





Senators Introduce Bill to Restrict Internet, Cable, and Satellite Radio Recording
Eric Bangeman

A new bill introduced in the US Senate this week would force satellite, digital, and Internet radio providers (but not over-the-air radio) to implement measures designed to restrict the ability of listeners to record audio from the services. Called the "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act" (PERFORM), the bill is sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

If the name of the bill sounds familiar, it should. The bill was originally introduced in April 2006 with the support of the RIAA. It died in committee, but the senators are hopeful that the bill will pass this time around.

Like its predecessor, the new legislation would require content protection on all satellite radio broadcasts along with cable and Internet broadcasts. Broadcasters would be required to "use reasonably available and economically reasonable technology to prevent music theft." But that's not bad for consumers, says Sen. Feinstein, who tells us that "consumers' current recording habits" will not be inhibited as they will still be allowed to record by time period or station. However, they would be prevented from automatically cherry-picking all the Shakira songs from the services.

The bill would also get the government into the business of price controls, with content providers required to pay a predetermined "fair market value" for the use of the music libraries. If another company decides to enter the unprofitable satellite radio market in the future, it too, would be forced to pay the same rates as XM Radio and Sirius.

The music industry's overexaggerated fears of piracy are driving the legislation, just as they did last year. "New radio services are allowing users to do more than simply listen to music. What was once a passive listening experience has turned into a forum where users can record, manipulate, collect and create personalized music libraries," said Sen. Feinstein. "As the modes of distribution change and the technologies change, so must our laws change."

Yesterday, Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) announced legislation that would prevent the FCC from creating exactly the same kind of technology mandates that the PERFORM Act would require. At the time, Sen. Sununu said that "misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop."

The Consumer Electronics Association was quick to voice opposition to the PERFORM Act. "We are disappointed that this legislation, which faced vocal bipartisan opposition last year, has been reintroduced just as consumers are about to enjoy incredible innovation from new content devices launched at the 2007 International CES this week," Michael Pettricone, the CEA's senior vice president of government affairs, told Ars in a statement. "This bill has absolutely nothing to do with piracy, the Internet, or peer to peer redistribution. Instead, it would assault the freedom of consumers to use content they have lawfully acquired for private and noncommercial purposes in the privacy of their homes and vehicles. We will continue our effort to inform lawmakers of the dangers of this legislation to our digital economy and to long established principles of fair use."

Under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, consumers have the right to make noncommercial analog and digital copies of broadcasts. That would change if the PERFORM Act passes this time around, as the ability to record music for one's own personal use would be restricted, marking another erosion of consumers' fair use rights. Be sure to let your senators know how you feel about this legislation.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8609.html





Senator to FCC: Don't Even Think About a Broadcast Flag
Nate Anderson

Senator John Sununu (R-NH) has just announced that his office is working on legislation that would prevent the FCC from creating specific technology mandates that have to be followed by consumer electronics manufacturers. What's his target? The broadcast flag.

Television and movie studios have wanted a broadcast flag for years. The flag is a short analog or digital signal embedded into broadcasts that specifies what users can do with the content. It would most often be used to prevent any copying of broadcast material, but there's an obvious problem with the plan: it requires recording devices to pay attention to the flag. Because no consumers wander the aisles at Best Buy thinking, "You know, I would definitely buy this DVD recorder, but only if it supported broadcast flag technology," the industry has asked the federal government to step in and simply require manufacturers to respect the flag.

At first they approached the FCC, and the FCC complied by dutifully trotting out some new broadcast flag regulations. Unfortunately for the content industry, the FCC doesn't generally have the right to tell manufacturers how to build their products. The rules were thrown out by an appeals court in 2005.

Undaunted, the industry tried again in Congress. Last year, when a rewrite to the 1996 Telecommunications Act was being considered, broadcast flag legislation was in fact attached to the bill and even made it through committee before bogging down.

Sununu's bill will attempt to rein in the FCC and prevent it from reviving the broadcast flag without Congressional authorization to do so. "The FCC seems to be under the belief that it should occasionally impose technology mandates," Sununu said in a statement. "These misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop. We have seen this happen with the proposed video flag, and interest groups are pushing for an audio flag mandate as well. Whether well-intentioned or not, the FCC has no business interfering in private industry to satisfy select special interests or to impose its own views."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070111-8596.html





Congress to Take Up Net’s Future
Stephen LaBaton

Senior lawmakers, emboldened by the recent restrictions on AT&T and the change in control of Congress, have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access.

The first significant so-called net neutrality legislation of the new Congressional session was introduced Tuesday by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of South Dakota, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, one of the few Republicans in Congress to support such a measure.

“The success of the Internet has been its openness and the ability of anyone anywhere in this country to go on the Internet and reach the world,” Mr. Dorgan said. “If the big interests who control the pipes become gatekeepers who erect tolls, it will have a significant impact on the Internet as we know it.”

In the House, Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, said recently that he would introduce legislation soon and planned to hold hearings.

Despite the flurry of activity, the proposals face significant political impediments and no one expects that they will be adopted quickly. But the fight promises to be a bonanza for lobbyists and a fund-raising tool for lawmakers. It pits Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon, which support the legislation, against telecommunication titans like Verizon, AT&T and large cable companies like Comcast.

The debate may also affect the plans of the companies to develop new services and to consider certain mergers or acquisitions.

Consumer groups have allied themselves with content providers. The groups maintain that without the legislation, some content providers would be discouraged from offering services while others would impose costs on providers that would either discourage them from offering new services or pass them on to consumers. They also feel that small companies would be unable to compete.

But the telephone and cable companies say that efforts to limit their ability to charge for faster service would discourage the pipeline companies from making billions of dollars in investments to upgrade their networks, and would, as a practical matter, be even more harmful to consumers.

Beyond the debate, the fight over net neutrality is, like most regulatory political battles, a fight over money and competing business models. Companies like Google, Yahoo and many content providers do not want to pay for the kinds of faster Internet service that will enable consumers to more quickly download videos and play games.

In their thirst to continue to grow rapidly, content providers are looking to expand, but they consider any attempt by the telephone and cable companies to charge them for priority services as restricting their ability to move into new areas.

On the other hand, the telephone and cable companies — the so-called Internet pipes — want to be able to charge for access, particularly as they begin competing with content providers by offering their video services and programming.

The phone companies have also been studying a business model not unlike that of the cable TV industry: charging premiums to certain content providers for greater access to their pipes.

They say that existing rules, as well as sound business judgment, would preclude them from trying to degrade or slow their broadband service and that what they oppose is regulation that would prevent them from charging for offering a faster service. They also point out that many content providers are already charging customers for priority services, so that what they are proposing is not unduly restrictive.

While the debate has broken largely along partisan lines — with Democrats among the staunchest supporters and Republicans the biggest foes — there remains considerable Democratic opposition. Last June, a vote on an amendment by Mr. Markey similar to what he plans to introduce failed by 269 to 152, with 58 Democrats voting against the measure.

Many of those Democrats have been allied with unions, which have sided with the phone companies because they believe that the lack of restrictions will encourage the companies to invest and expand their networks.

In the Senate, where the party in the minority has considerably more power than in the House, the measure suffers from similar political problems. Last year the Republicans blocked the measure from reaching the Senate floor.

But several developments have given some momentum to the supporters of the measures. The House is now under the control of the Democrats, and the new speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, has been a vigorous supporter of the legislation. Ms. Pelosi’s district in San Francisco is near Silicon Valley, the home of many companies that have sought the legislation.

Moreover, the conditions that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on AT&T as a condition of its acquisition of SBC Communications represented an important political victory for proponents of the legislation. After one of the five members of the commission removed himself from the proceeding, the commission’s two Democrats forced the companies to agree to a two-year moratorium on offering any service that “privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet” transmitted over its broadband service.

The conditions imposed no significant immediate costs on AT&T. The company does not yet have the equipment in place on its network to offer a priority service on a large scale. But the conditions imposed by the F.C.C. showed that, contrary to assertions of the phone companies, it was possible to draft language that would preclude the companies from discriminating against providers.

The conditions also set a political benchmark of sorts, and gave the supporters of the legislation two years to try to gain more momentum just as all of the companies are trying to figure out their next major sources of revenue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10net.html





Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll Goes to Congress
Kate Stone Lombardi

AT the peak of their popularity, the 1970s band Orleans was touring 10 months a year, performing their big hits “Still the One” and “Dance With Me.” But John Hall, the band’s guitarist, wasn’t content to stick to the bouncy tunes and lyrics about sweet romance. He also used the stage to lecture audiences about the dangers of plutonium production.

“He would take the liberty of getting on the soapbox at a lot of concerts and go on a bit about nuclear power,” said Larry Hoppen, the bass guitarist for Orleans. “But you have to understand it in the context of the ’70s, with the Nixon thing and the nuke thing.

“In retrospect, it was uncomfortable sometimes, but it was never so bad that a manager said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to cut this stuff out.’ ”

Mr. Hall’s rock friends became used to the policy wonk within. Jackson Browne remembers him talking politics backstage while packing up his guitar.

Mr. Hall was one of many political activists from that era. But when he was sworn in as a congressman on Thursday, he became the first bona fide rock ’n’ roll musician in the House of Representatives. (Sonny Bono did not play an instrument.)

The ratty T-shirts and the long hair are gone, and the bare-chested album covers have given way to dark suits, conservative ties and wingtip shoes. When Mr. Hall, 58, unfolds his lanky frame out of his Subaru Outback, he looks corporate, and when he speaks, the words spew in paragraphs on topics like the importance of renewable energy and raising the minimum wage.

But then there is that moment he plays air guitar to illustrate how facile he is with his left hand. And there are the first name references to Bonnie, Jackson and Pete (Raitt, Browne and Seeger).

“John somehow managed to keep the idealism that so many people had in the ’60s and ’70s, while at the same time mastering a kind of pragmatism,” said Mr. Browne, who collaborated with Mr. Hall in the studio and in an antinuclear movement in the 1970s.

Mr. Hall, a Democrat, defeated Sue W. Kelly, the Republican who had held the seat for six terms, to represent the 19th Congressional District of New York, which stretches from the Connecticut line, through the Hudson Valley, across the Catskills and to the Pennsylvania border.

His inauguration ceremony was attended by his daughter, parents, brother and other supporters; afterward his New York delegation colleagues Nita Lowey and Elliot Engel stopped by. That day, he also helped elect Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker of the House and tackled ethics rules and legislation.

Other entertainers have been elected to office — Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger — but most have been Republicans. Mr. Hall is as liberal as the “Bring Them Home” ribbon decal on his car suggests, campaigning not only for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq but also for universal health care and reduced dependence on foreign oil.

Even in a Congress elected to bring change, his positions are a step to the left of many representatives, and he is a relative novice to politics, his previous electoral experience limited to winning a seat on a local school board and in the Ulster County Legislature. There, he helped defeat a proposal for a trash-burning facility in Saugerties, near Woodstock — a victory that some say hardly merits election to Congress.

“John was in a band and helped fight a dump, but there’s a big difference between stopping a landfill and fighting issues like terrorism,” said Robert T. Aiello, a Republican Ulster County legislator. “I wish him the best, but he absolutely has his work cut out for him.”

Ms. Raitt, who organized Musicians for Safe Energy (MUSE) with Mr. Hall in the 1970s, said that early on, the group relied on his ability to think and speak on his feet.

“John was the brains in the outfit,” she said. “While we were all educated and informed and motivated, in terms of explaining the nuts and bolts, John was always very intellectually astute and articulate, as well as being incredibly facile on the guitar and very plugged into that creative muse.”

And even as he was writing tunes with stick-in-the-head melodies and sappy lyrics, Mr. Hall was turning out songs about the environment — “Power” — and the economy — “Plastic Money.”

“His big hits are very sweet, but he’s also really written songs about what he believes in,” Mr. Browne said. “It will be interesting to see what creative power he’ll be able to bring to the political business.”

Mr. Hall was advised to play down his past in the campaign. He rarely appeared in anything less formal than a suit. His statements were deliberate and careful.

Which makes it hard to explain how he ended up singing a duet of “Dance With Me” with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. In the segment, which ran a few weeks before the election, Mr. Colbert teased Mr. Hall about how pleased he must have been that President George W. Bush had used “Still the One” as a theme song for his 2004 reelection campaign. Mr. Hall said that he had a lawyer draft a formal complaint.

Mr. Colbert persisted, saying what a fitting song it was for the president because, “we’re still having fun and he’s still the one.” A few minutes later, Mr. Colbert asked his guest to harmonize. Mr. Hall demurred, saying that his advisers had told him to stick to political issues. But when Mr. Colbert chided him, “I say go with what you know,” Mr. Hall was soon singing. The clip, widely circulated on YouTube, helped make the long-shot race competitive.

Mr. Hall, who won a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination, began with a campaign fund of $57,000 to Mrs. Kelly’s $900,000. But having famous friends didn’t hurt.

“I didn’t have Exxon or Mobil, but I had Jackson and Bonnie and Pete,” Mr. Hall said. Their concerts in the Hudson Valley area not only raised money — Mr. Browne’s netted $100,000 in two days — but also generated publicity.

Mr. Hall, who is usually serious and low-key, became emotional when talking about the relationship between music and politics.

“Jackson sang a song, ‘Waiting Here for Every Man,’ ” Mr. Hall said, his voice catching as he referred to Mr. Browne’s “For Everyman,” “which I remember from his first album, a song that struck me as being about the lethargy and apathy and fatalism of most Americans while they wait for someone to please sort out this mess.”

The campaign was intense. At one point, an unsigned flier circulated with the message: “John Hall, wrong for America.” It featured Mr. Hall from his rock days, long-haired and bare-chested.

The day before the election, voters were swamped with automated calls featuring President Bush, who urged them to re-elect Mrs. Kelly.

“I was going to say thank you,” Mr. Hall said of the phone campaign. “Of all the campaign blunders, it was the most significant.”

Mrs. Kelly did not reply to messages seeking a response.

Now Mr. Hall has gone to Washington. A few days after his election, he attended new-member orientation, with lectures on everything from staffing district offices to finding housing. The new members picked up tips like: If you find a pair of comfortable shoes, buy one pair for Washington and one for home.

On a bus ride to one event, Mr. Hall compared notes about being well known with his fellow freshman Heath Shuler, a former professional football player.

A few representatives asked him to sing with them, including Paul W. Hodes of New Hampshire, a fellow guitar player. He joked that the two could form a duo, Hall & Hodes — sounds like Hall & Oates, another popular ’70s singing group with whom Mr. Hall is often confused.

Mr. Hall also spent a week at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, attending sessions that he described as “sobering.”

In Washington, he has been assigned to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

In some ways, the transition will be easier for him than for other new members. Mr. Hall is used to being a public figure and to traveling. He also has family in the Washington area, including his daughter, Sofi, who is studying for a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Maryland, and a brother, Jerry, a Jesuit priest who teaches at Catholic University. His parents live outside of Baltimore.

Mr. Hall lives in Dover Plains with his wife, Pamela, a lawyer who, according to Mr. Browne, also plays a mean guitar.

Between orientation sessions and apartment shopping, he has been back in his district, on “listening tours.” At a recent holiday fair in Putnam County, he segued from discussing post-traumatic stress syndrome with a police officer who had been at the World Trade Center to wetlands management with a woman from a conservation group, and stopped to buy a T-shirt with the message “The One with the Most Guitars Wins ” for his wife.

Mr. Hoppen said that people might underestimate his former partner.

“People may figure he’s just a rock star and he lucked out because of the general tide, and they’re wrong,” Mr. Hoppen said.

Ms. Raitt said she sees him in the mold of Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey senator. “Of all the musicians I know that have been activists,” she said, “the best suited for the job of actually going to Congress is John.”

Mr. Browne’s take: “A guitar player for Congress, it makes all the sense in the world to me. Musicians organize the world in certain ways. John’s idealism comes from the same place his music does. It comes from joy.”

Still, the night before his election, Mr. Hall said, he and his wife rented the movie “The Candidate,” starring Robert Redford. “When he wins, he says, ‘What do we do now?’ ” Mr. Hall said.

“You get the feeling, the look, the personality, the few catchphrases, the buzzwords, the talking points. But then you have to get down to the complexity of actually having to govern.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/fa...ml?ref=fashion





Canada Considering Tough New Copyright Law?
Nate Anderson

The Canadian Press is reporting that Canadian politicians are set to introduce a tough new copyright bill that will outlaw the circumvention of DRM schemes but might not contain any "fair use" provisions for Canadian consumers.

The text of the legislation has not yet been released, but that has not stopped a wave of speculation as to its contents. The Canadian Press quotes experts who say that "all signs point to a new regime that will improve safeguards for major music, film and media companies and artists for unpaid use of their material, but neglect to make exemptions for personal use of copyrighted content." The article speculates that CD ripping and even the recording of television content could become illegal under the new legislation.

The legislation is being spearheaded by two government ministers, Maxime Bernier (Industry) and Bev Oda (Heritage), who are ranked numbers two and three on a recent list of underperforming politicians.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, noted last year that much of Oda's fundraising, in particular, could be traced to copyright lobby groups, record labels, broadcasters, and cable companies. Canada's version of the RIAA, the CRIA, is on the list, as are all the major music labels and the Writer's Guild.

Regarding the current controversy, Geist doesn't think a bill can pass without strong fair use provisions. "Unless the government addresses the fair use issue, expect Canadians (and the media) to be very vocal about the failure to address a fundamental issue in need of reform," he wrote.

Graham Henderson, who heads the CRIA, didn't want to talk about fair use as much as he wanted to get the word out about piracy and the culture of "free music" that he claims has developed within Canada. Legal music download services have not flourished in Canada, he tells the Canadian Press, because "it's a big black market effect and so instead of 25 percent [of the total music market], it's 8 percent here. People are simply abandoning the marketplace altogether, and they've made the decision they'll just download the music and worry about how the artist gets paid later."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8607.html





The Future of 'Telcos' May Be 'Comminfotainment'
Victoria Shannon

When Olivier Baujard looks into his digital crystal ball, he sees us all being customers of "comminfotainment" providers.

Within five years or so, the familiar land-line "telco" and even the mobile operator will disappear, in his view. Instead, broadband service providers will replace them, selling packages, bundles or channels of communications, information and entertainment.

As the new year draws near, it is worth stopping for a moment to look forward, and Baujaurd's view of the future is worth taking under advisement since, as chief technology officer of Alcatel-Lucent, the telecommunications equipment giant, part of his job is to peer a few years downstream.

"Deutsche Telekom is already an infotainment company," Baujard said during a recent interview. "Telecom Italia — they woke up one day and decided they were going to be a media company. Asian phone companies are already content providers. I just don't believe there will be phone companies anymore."

Another critical difference will be that these companies will focus on marketing a package of products, not a technology, he said.

"Even today, you don't know whether it's UMTS, FTTH, GPON," Baujard said, tossing out a few obscure telecommunications acronyms. "Instead, it's 'X number of channels' for Internet TV, or 'X megabits per second' for browsing, or 'free calls from home.' This will be the core of their marketing campaigns for years to come."

Even better, we will be able to balance and customize our package ourselves, he said. In other words, we can tell the provider that getting smooth video on demand is more important to us than fast Web surfing, or that crystal-clear phone calls over our broadband connections should get the highest priority.

"You can use your bandwidth however you want," he said.

The third big change Baujard sees will be a greater emphasis on how much and how fast we can upload, not just download. This is because we are progressively spending more time and effort on our own content — sending photos or videos to friends via e-mail, or multimedia blogging on our personal Web sites.

"The peer-to-peer debate was focused on illegal sharing, but that is only the thin skin on something larger: you and me creating our own content for the communities that we belong to," he said.

"And not just from home or the office, but from wherever you are. We will still be massively focused on the downstream speed for years, but upstream will be more and more important as we broadcast and multicast."

The challenge of this "comminfotainment" world of the future, he said, will be for policy makers to decide two critical issues: how to balance the interests of the consumers in getting access to content for a reasonable price against the interests of businesses in getting a reasonable return on their infrastructure investments — and how to guarantee a minimum quality of service.

"Who will guarantee what actually happens at the end of the pipeline into your home?" he asked. "Who do you go to? Providing the pipeline is not enough. Somebody has to explain to you what you're getting, how it will work, what your combination of megabits will deliver. And then they have to warranty it."

The loser in Baujard's scenario is not the traditional media and entertainment company, but the traditional distributors: broadcasters and physical retailers. "They are middlemen," he said, "and their value will be drastically challenged."

Media companies, by contrast, will continue being creators and producers. The "comminfotainment" providers will not take that away from them. Baujard said the service companies might well acquire some rights to content, or become partners in joint ventures in order to get access to rights, but they would not be content creators, by and large. "The economics of content are much different than what they are used to," he said.

What will be unfolding until then is that today's phone companies will be fighting to avoid being left behind as mere utilities, he said.

I hope they invest in some branding advice, too, and see if they can improve on the name "comminfotainment."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/...ss/ptend21.php





No High Def For You!

High-Quality DVDs Will Not Operate on Some Vista PCs
Jonathan Richards

Microsoft has been forced to acknowledge that a substantial number of PCs running the new version of its Windows operating system will not be able to play high-quality DVDs.

The Vista system will be available to consumers at the end of the month. However, in an interview with The Times, one of its chief architects said that because of anti-piracy protection granted to the Hollywood studios, Vista would not play HD-DVD and Blu-ray Discs on certain PCs.

Dave Marsh, the lead program manager for video at Microsoft, said that if the PC used a digital connection to link with the monitor or television, then it would require the highest level of content protection, known as HDCP, to play the discs. If it did not have such protection, Vista would shut down the signal, he said.

The admission will be a blow to Microsoft, which is hoping that more users will turn to their PCs for watching films and other content.

According to DSG International, which owns PC World, about 15 per cent of PCs sold at present in Britain use digital connections, but that number is expected to grow.

Virtually none of the PCs that use a digital connection have HDCP. “It’s up to the content providers to set the level of protection that Vista applies, but they’re likely to be pretty firm on the need to use high-definition content protection [HDCP] when using a digital connection,” Mr Marsh said. “At the moment HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs certainly require such protection.”

Mr Marsh added that computers with built-in HDCP protection — which could play such discs — were being phased in, but that, in the meantime, Microsoft was obliged to ensure that the studios’ content was being used securely.

Computers using an analog connection will not be affected and the requirement does not apply to regular DVDs.

Peter Gutman, a researcher in computer security at the University of Auckland, who produced a report on the compatability of Vista with various hardware, said: “When this aired at a couple of Windows conferences last year, I thought: ‘This is so bad it’s going to die.’ But it didn’t.

“To downgrade the signal so that the HD-DVD will play, you need a constrictor, but that doesn’t seem to be present in many of the computers that are shipping. Given that it downgrades signal quality, most manufacturers aren’t rushing to include it.

“Any computer which has an LCD monitor is potentially at risk of not being able to play this content.”

A DSG International official said that the number of PCs with digital connections would grow as the computer came to be used more as an entertainment device.

“The PC is moving out of the study and into the living room as users begin to connect up their computers with their TV,” the official said. “The majority of HD-TVs sold now have a digital input on the back.”

Protection still full of holes

A recent study by the Motion Picture Association estimated that illegal copying cost the industry $6.1 billion in 2005

Microsoft has built a component into the studios’ new operating system, Vista, that recognises high-quality DVDs, called HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, and checks whether the system on which the film is being played provides a sufficient level of protection

This protection, known as high definition content protection (HDCP), must be present throughout the entire system — usually the computer, or a television. If it is not, Vista will disable the connection

The requirement only affects digital connections

About 15 per cent of all computers sold in the UK now have digital connections

Almost no computers using digital connections have HDCP, according to computer experts, although those that do are being phased in.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/ar...536050,00.html





Music Fans: Dismantle DRM

New lawsuits are using antitrust law to challenge media giants' music download policies, claiming they unfairly restrict users' purchases
Catherine Holahan

When it comes to legal action over downloaded music, the defendants are often individuals: The lone user downloads one too many copyrighted files and Big Media goes on the offensive. But now, the little guy is turning the tables.

A fresh crop of lawsuits filed on behalf of individuals argue that it's the big companies that are ripping off the consumer.

Melanie Tucker, a San Diego resident, says Apple Computer (AAPL) unfairly restricts how its iTunes Store customers can use legally purchased music. Apple uses its so-called Digital Rights Management, or DRM, software to prevent iTunes songs from easily running on media players that compete with its iPods. (The files can be converted but the process is time-consuming and can be confusing.) Apple's brand of DRM software, called FairPlay, also prevents music purchased through services other than iTunes from playing on the iPod.

Tucker maintains that the company, which controls between 70% to more than 85% of the legal music download market and perhaps a 90% share of the digital music player market, is behaving like an overly aggressive monopoly, stifling competition in violation of antitrust legislation. "Apple has monopoly power in both markets through iTunes and iPod and they have made a conscious decision to disable people from freely using other formats on their iPod and vice versa," says Andrew S. Friedman, one of Tucker's attorneys. Friedman is seeking class-action status for the suit.
My Tunes vs. iTunes

Tucker's suit comes on the heels of a March, 2006 class action filed by Scott Ruth against music industry players including Sony BMG Music Entertainment (owned by Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann Media), Universal Music Group, Time Warner Music Group (TWX), and EMI (EMI). Ruth, an Arizona resident, argues that the labels are violating antitrust agreements by using DRM to prevent music from being sold by a variety of retailers, thereby stifling competition that could keep prices down. Both Ruth and Tucker's suits seek compensation for music download customers as well as a change in the restrictions.

The arguments in Ruth and Tucker's suits are not particularly new. Consumers have long complained that legally purchased songs cannot be played on all their devices in part because of restrictions on the number of devices that can hold a license for a song at any one time. Traditionally, the record labels and download services have argued that the restrictions are necessary to combat piracy and ensure artists are compensated. Seeing few alternatives, many music lovers have begrudgingly accepted this answer—or opted for illegal downloading.

But the lawsuits show customers are no longer willing to accept the status quo. Some DRM opponents have begun arguing that DRM restrictions are actually fueling piracy by forcing users to choose between buying music that they will only be able to play on a limited number of compatible devices or stealing music that they can play anywhere. "Right now the fact is that pirated music and pirated movies are actually worth more than the movies and music you buy," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. "I can't think of another product that is actually worth more stolen than if you purchased it."
Music Biz Ready to Play

The music industry is showing signs of softening. While record labels aren't changing their tune on the need for DRM to prohibit piracy, the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major labels, wants changes that would let users play downloaded music across a variety of devices. "We are focused on interoperability," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.

Over time, the recording industry has gradually shown other signs of flexibility. It has allowed music subscription sites to license music and has enabled services that give songs away for free in exchange for exposing customers to advertisements. It has even enabled users to put rented songs, obtained through subscription services, on portable devices—long a sticking point between the industry, the services, and the users who did not want to get subscriptions without the ability to take their music with them (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/06, "Meet the iTunes Wannabes").
Interoperability Is Key

Much of the change in attitude has resulted from consumer backlash and the music industry's growing frustration with Apple, which has refused to give the industry more control over pricing (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/19/05, "Apple May Be Holding back the Music Biz"). The trouble is, Apple is opposed to interoperability and labels don't have a choice but to do what the Web stores want. "How powerful is a company when they are negotiating with Wal-Mart (WMT)?" asks Sherman. "Want Wal-Mart to carry your stuff, your prices are going to come down. Record companies have to negotiate with Apple because they are the dominant player."

Both Apple and Microsoft (MSFT), maker of the Zune music player, have said they have not made their products interoperable because people want a seamless experience between download store and device. The more media player manufacturers and download services are involved, the more difficult seamless interoperability becomes. Microsoft experienced this with its "PlaysForSure" technology, which was used by Samsung, Creative Labs (CREAF), and others with only varying degrees of success. That's one of the reasons why, in releasing Zune, Microsoft opted for a system that didn't have to work with products it didn't control (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/12/06, "A Method to Microsoft's Zune Madness"). Calls to Apple and Microsoft representatives were not returned.

However, such interoperability issues would likely not exist if the companies just did away with DRM altogether, allowing users to download music and then copy it to as many devices as they want. Several download services such as eMusic and Amie Street have developed businesses around nonrestricted music files and flexible price models. And eMusic, which focuses on independent label artists similar to Amie Street, has been particularly successful. In the three years it has been in business, it has sold more than 100 million songs. "Paying customers will stay paying customers and people looking for free music will continue to look for free music," says eMusic president and chief executive officer David Pakman. "We challenge the notion that [DRM] is a requirement in order for the industry to grow."
New Business Model

What's more, eMusic has seen steady growth. It is now the No. 2 music service after iTunes, based on volume of songs sold (Apple sells about 1.8 million songs a day). On average, eMusic customers buy 20 songs a month, spending about $168 a year on songs, says Pakman. The average iPod owner buys fewer than 15 songs a year per owned iPod (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/21/06, "Online Music's Elusive Bottom Line").

Pakman sees the number of songs his customers buy as evidence that songs can be progressively priced in a way that reflects demand for particular songs and discourages piracy. Elliott Breece, co-founder and CEO of Amie Street, concurs. Songs at Amie Street start free and then become gradually more expensive as they start to sell. Prices are capped at 98 cents, a penny less than the price for each iTunes song. Amie Street has sold more than 70,000 songs since its October launch. Breece says that Amie Street wouldn't be able to compete if users couldn't download songs and play them wherever they wanted. "People want to buy and own stuff," says Breece. "In a lot of ways DRM isn't really natural."

The protections, however, are a way to secure loyalty among customers. After all, why would a longtime iPod user want to buy another, comparably priced music device if doing so would require spending hours to convert files into the appropriate format? Thus, barring an anti-Apple court decision (which even Friedman concedes would be a couple years off at the earliest), there's no real reason for Apple to change. Unless, of course, consumers start voting with their pocketbooks by purchasing music through non-DRM services and listening to it on non-iPod players.
An Open-Format Future?

Michael Bebel is CEO of Ruckus Network, an advertising and subscription-supported music download service that is focused on college students and uses Microsoft's PlaysForSure technology. Bebel says he can see a future with no DRM—if consumers stand up in big enough numbers. "I think that at least the calls for change are going to reach a critical point this year," says Bebel. "But change never occurs as rapidly as one might hope or like."

The labels could help speed the change by refusing to license certain songs to iTunes in order to bolster less restrictive forms of DRM. But they would risk losing sales from frustrated fans who might not want to purchase an actual CD to get an individual song on their iPods. If in the unlikely event labels drop DRM altogether, Apple would still be able to affix its own restrictions when selling through iTunes. That's why music sold through iTunes from labels such as Nettwerk Music Group, which does not use DRM, still cannot be easily played on non-Apple media devices. "Our whole motivation in the digital world is to not try to control the consumer experience," says Brent Muhle, Nettwerk's general manager. "So if a consumer is a rabid iTunes user and they want to buy from iTunes we want them to have a media file to buy. If they want to buy directly from us, we are going to give it to them in as open a format as possible."

Still, no one tech service remains dominant forever. Remember when Microsoft ruled the world? It still has the most dominant operating system, but it is facing accelerating competition and has been forced by courts to play nicer with rivals. And the lawsuits certainly hurt Microsoft's public profile and emboldened the competition.

Apple could suffer a similar fate, eventually relaxing its stance on interoperability. After all, France is suing the company because of its reluctance to open up the iPod to other music services (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/21/06, "Apple vs. France"). That suit, coupled with Tucker's potential class action and others, could make Steve Jobs think harder about making the iTunes Store or the iPod more compatible with competing devices or stores. But, short of a court order, don't expect a change of heart any time soon.
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...7s+top+stories





Who's Killing MP3 and iTunes?
Eliot Van Buskirk

Everyone knows the MP3 format is used by more devices and people than any other file-based digital-audio format. Most also know that record labels prefer DRMed alternatives such as the ones sold by Apple's iTunes, because they make it harder for people to share music.

But wait -- was that a pig flying past my window just now? Evidence is mounting that major labels may start to prefer the MP3 format, as impossible as that used to seem.

Here are seven reasons why MP3 is the future of the music industry:

1. The labels don't have a choice

When CD sales finally tank completely, record labels will be faced with a tough decision: distributing music nearly exclusively through Apple's iTunes store or rethinking their approach to digital-rights management, or DRM, from the ground up.

Already feeling hamstrung by Apple, there's no way they're going to let Steve Jobs completely monopolize the distribution of their music. Labels that survive the CD-sales nosedive to come could decide it's time to treat music fans like paying customers, rather than like high-level pirates. Instead of launching another PressPlay or MusicNet, partnering with multiple MP3 stores would make more sense.

EMusic is the number two digital music retailer behind Apple -- even without access to the massive and popular major label catalogs -- because it sells digital music rather than digital rights. The labels want Apple's dominance to end, and MP3 looks like the only way to make that happen.

2. Apple might be forced into interoperability

A class-action lawsuit accuses Apple of antitrust behavior due to the fact that songs bought from iTunes can only be played by iPods or iTunes (as well as cell phones made in partnership with Apple). Apple tried to have the suit dismissed, claiming that forced interoperability would inhibit innovation, but the judge wouldn't dismiss the case, which is now headed to a "case management conference" on Jan. 22nd.

Apple's recent SEC filing shows (bottom of page 26) Apple admitting the possibility of being forced to react to legislation demanding that iTunes-purchased music play on other MP3 players. If this happens, perhaps Apple would go with Sun Microsystem's open-source DRM plan.

But that would involve new devices, as well as a third party exercising influence over the iPod. Steve Jobs would hate that for sure. A switch to the MP3 format would work with existing devices and let Apple keep control. Sure, a lack of DRM would upset the labels, but then again, they don't have a choice (see above).

3. Thomson has endorsed selling watermarked MP3s

The labels' switch to the MP3 format wouldn't necessarily mean losing the ability to track unprotected files sold by online music stores. The Digital Watermarking Alliance (including Thomson Multimedia, which owns the right to license the MP3 codec), recently made a statement in support of the idea of major labels selling watermarked MP3s. This would let labels sell non-DRMed music without losing the ability to track the files.

Ideally, these serial, unique watermarks would be used not to sue people who release a purchased MP3 into file sharing networks (sophisticated users would probably figure out a way to strip the watermark before doing this anyway). Instead, the watermarks could be used to monitor playback in order to determine how to pay artists out of a shared revenue pool, tracking not only what was bought, but how much it was played.

Such a shift would automate accounting in the recording industry to an unprecedented degree -- another bitter pill it may have to swallow. They're suspected of using dodgy accounting to rip off artists (many of whom can't pay for prohibitively expensive accounting audits) for a long time.

4. Amazon is rumored to start selling MP3s by April

One of the more intriguing rumors emerging in the digital music area originated with an agent for Taylor Dane, Led Zeppelin and John Sebastien: He claims that by April 1 of next year (granted, the date makes this seem less-than-trustworthy), Amazon will launch an online music store that deals only in MP3s, although it's unknown how much major label content will be a part of that. To that end, Amazon's most powerful negotiating tool is allowing the majors to price their songs at different points -- something they have been long denied by Steve Jobs.

Licensing their music to Amazon's MP3 store would serve two purposes for the labels (aside from increasing sales volume tenfold or more): It would enable their variable pricing structure, while driving a stake into the heart of the iTunes store (knowledgeable users generally prefer MP3s to Apple's DRMed AAC files, and more users become knowledgeable each day).

5. Sony: "DRMs are going to become less important"

In New York last month, Sony Electronics' head Stan Glasgow told a room full of reporters that while Sony was considering launching a store/device combo like the iTunes/iPod or Zune ecosystems, he also sees DRM schemes becoming "less important" in the future.

One way to interpret this would be that Sony thinks a device that handles DRMed music from multiple sources is the way to go. But he nixed that idea, calling the implementation of multiple DRMs on the same portable device "a nightmare." Other than a computer-based program capable of translating DRM from one format to the other (which would also be a nightmare), using the MP3 format is the only way to make DRM less important.

6. People love AllofMP3.com

There's already a case study of what an MP3 store could look like: the Russian site AllofMP3.com, which people are still reporting access to, despite attempts to starve it of U.S. credit cards. Its popularity also indicates that digital music pricing should drop (a 10-cent to 25-cent per unprotected MP3 sounds about right to me).

Since increased sales of a digital good can't affect inventory, the labels would more than make up for the price drop by selling far more songs -- especially considering the endless targeting capabilities online music stores could eventually offer. (For instance, what if something like Pandora were used as a front end to an AllofMP3-type service?)

7. MP3 has future options

Although it's an aging technology, the MP3 format has been made over a couple of times. Coding Technologies has been working hard to give the MP3 format a future in terms of sound quality (MP3PRO) and surround sound (MP3 Surround).

Although they haven't taken off yet, these formats are reverse-compatible with MP3, unlike other advanced formats. This allows them to play on devices that support MP3s but not MP3PRO or MP3 Surround. And from what I understand, existing devices could add support for those with a simple firmware upgrade.

But the labels could also differentiate their MP3s from the versions available on file-sharing sites by offering a 320-Kbps bit rate and completely maxed-out, accurate ID3v2 tags.

I know I'd pay a quarter for better sound, lyrics that are synced to the music, BPM-based play lists and other things that such deep, accurate tagging would enable.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,72412-0.html





EMI Abandons CD DRM
Cory Doctorow

EMI has announced that it will no longer infect its CDs with DRM. I remember just a few years ago when an EMI customer-service rep sent an email to an irate customer promising that every CD in Europe would have DRM within a decade.

William sends us this rough translation of a Dutch article from NVPI:
"EMI Music Group has ceased the implementation of copy protection on new cd-releases. This means that at the moment, not a single record company releases CDs that are protected against making digital copies, says the international industry-magazine 'Billboard'. At the same time, Macrovision has stopped the development and sales of her TotalPlay-system (previously CDS).

Record companies use copy protection to counteract the illegal distribution of the recordings - in particular on the internet. According to 'Billboard', it has now become clear that the cost of using this technology does not add up against the results. Aditionally there seems to be, says 'Billboard', a fear for compatibilty/playback problems with new computer-software.

Copy protection on CDs should not be confused with the protection-systems applied to music-files which are distributed via the internet. Those 'Technological Protection Measures' are for counteracting unlicenced use and form with the licence and payment-system the Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

Nice of NVPI to adopt EMI's volcabulary -- "protected against making copies!" Since when do you protect data by NOT backing it up?! Link (Thanks, William!)
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/08...ns_cd_drm.html





Why DRM's Best Friend Might Just Be Apple Inc.
Nate Anderson

DRM is dying. It's a statement being echoed with increasing frequency around the Web over the last few weeks, and is perhaps best articulated in this Billboard article. Antony Bruno lays out his case for why 2007 will be the year that the major labels "get it" and stop alienating their customers with restrictive DRM schemes. But before music lovers start dancing on the ashes of the digital locks they hate so much, let's all set down the New Year's champagne and indulge in a spot of pessimism. DRM is dying?

Yes, there are plenty of signs that DRM as we know it is changing, perhaps even withering on the warm California grapevine where it's been growing for so long. Yahoo has conducted several experiments in the last year, selling MP3-encoded versions of selected popular songs. The Sony rootkit debacle showed the general public what a bad idea some of these schemes could be. Every P2P company still in existence seems to be moving towards some kind of paid-downloads model, and some hope to do this without adding DRM. And Amazon is rumored to be eyeing the online music store market, but only if it can offer MP3s (though recall that Amazon's last attempt at whipping iTunes, its Unbox music service has hardly managed to unseat the leader). Et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

And while it's certainly possible that the music labels will collectively find salvation like a late-70's Dylan, we're (reluctantly) going on record with the opposite prediction: it ain't going to happen in 2007. Sure, there will be plenty of experimenting. Labels have certainly realized that DRM isn't the answer to their many woes, and with declining overall album sales, they'll be more willing to take chances. Great! But there's a powerful force standing in the way of this DRM-free panacea, and it might not be the one you expect: Apple, Inc.
The gatekeeper

As the online music and movie store with the biggest sales numbers and mindshare (no one else even comes close in the US), Apple is a clear trailblazer. It sets the trends; it owns the market. Labels and studios think long and hard before crossing Apple if they want their content to be available on iTunes. In fact, Apple's power is so strong that when the iTunes Store gained video, the studios were hesitant to join, and so far only Paramount and Disney have jumped on board.

Why? Apple is a stalwart on its pricing scheme, and the video guys are afraid because they saw the public battle between Apple and the music companies. When labels demanded pricing flexibility, Steve Jobs called them greedy. And Steve won the argument.

Apple stands to benefit greatly by keeping the FairPlay DRM system up and running. The lock-in afforded by FairPlay creates an Apple ecosystem that essentially ties the iPod to iTunes and to Apple, at least for commercial transactions. Someone has even launched an antitrust suit against Apple over this, though the suit's specific claims are rather broad.

The symbiotic relationship between iTunes and the iPod has been so profitable for Apple that Microsoft has blatantly ripped it off for its new Zune music player. Apple has managed to create an ecosystem populated with high-margin devices; the company's overall gross margins are nearly 30 percent, and so even if iTunes were used solely to drive sales of iPods, it would be worth it for Apple to run the store.

Apple has, in an important sense, become a digital gatekeeper for media companies; iTunes is the best way to reach consumers with music, movies, podcasts, and television. Content companies have paid close attention to the success of iTunes; they've seen how it saved The Office, pushed billions of dollars in revenue to Disney, and established itself as such a de facto standard on college campuses that students would rather use iTunes than free alternatives. The content companies now need Jobs & Co. as much as Apple needs them.
Control

Content owners may not like this, but it's the situation that they are faced with in 2007. With iPods commanding such a large part of the player market, and iTunes integration so complete that it's the easiest option for new iPod owners in search of more music, Apple can present the best case for DRM to the industry: the success of the iTunes Store. Given that iTunes is now the #5 music retailer in the US and rising, the Apple mantra isn't pro-DRM or anti-DRM, but that "the experience is king." If Apple opens its DRM, that walled-garden experience could be degraded as customers migrate to other stores with lower prices but more technical problems. This creates a scenario in which we think Apple can work its influence to keep DRM alive and well in the face of labels showing doubts—and we're not at all sure that the labels' doubts are that strong.

Apart from independent labels, no serious, sustained experiment in offering unprotected files has been made by any of the major players in the film, television, or movie businesses. In fact, Hollywood has spent the last several years drawing up two new draconian forms of DRM (AACS and BD+) to protect next-generation video content. They have also been lobbying like mad for Congressional action on broadcast flags, and they've gone paranoid about putting CableCARDs in home-built Vista PCs (it won't be possible). The content owners want to be in control.

No, what the content idustry and the consumer electronics industry alike want is not the end of DRM, but a truly interoperable, robust DRM that puts them in control of their content without ceding too much power to one player (Apple). But now that PlaysForSure has gone bust in all but name and Apple steadfastly refuses to license Fairplay, that's not going to happen in the music industry. And Apple's toehold in the movie and TV business is rapidly becoming a beachhead. The only way to bypass Apple and still reach the massive iPod demographic is to throw open the digital gates and begin offering content in open MP3 and MPEG-4 formats that can still be played on Apple's devices—but losing control this way is just as scary to content owners as losing control to Apple.

DRM is dying? Not while Apple lives.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070111-8595.html





Mininova Reaches 1 Billion Downloads

Mininova, one of the most popular BitTorrent search engines just passed the 1 billion torrent downloads mark. We had the chance to do an exclusive interview with Niek, one of the founders of mininova.

TorrentFreak: When did you first learn about BitTorrent?

Niek: I guess that was somewhere back in 2003. Rob, one of the other Mininova staff members, pointed me to a new kind of P2P protocol, named BitTorrent, and soon thereafter I became a regular visitor of websites like Torrentse.cx, Lokitorrents.com, Bytemonsoon.com and of course Suprnova.org. Those websites are all dead now (the first two disappeared suddenly after running a successful donation round…), but they have to be credited for setting the first steps in building a torrent search engine.

TorrentFreak: When and why did you decide to start mininova?

Niek: That was back in December 2004. Andrej decided to take Suprnova down, which was a very popular torrent website at that time (although not as popular as the top-3 BitTorrent sites individually nowadays). As one of the regular visitors of Suprnova (and a programmer myself), I decided to code a new torrent search engine. Erik, Jos, Matthijs and Rob joined me, and we released the first public version of Mininova on January 15, 2005. My poor DSL line couldn’t handle the bandwidth the site was generating, but luckily Gottfrid of ThePirateBay offered us a hosting account. Well, the site got way too popular, so we had to look for a new hosting place. We temporarily moved to Gary of isoHunt, but it didn’t took long before we got our own set of servers. Since that time, Mininova have seen continuous growth in both popularity and content.

TorrentFreak: Did you ever expected that the site would be such a great success?

Niek: No, definitely not. Of course we hoped that Mininova would become a success, but not of this magnitude. Who would have thought that Mininova would become more than two times as popular as Suprnova was on its peak days?

TorrentFreak: What do you think the future will bring for BitTorrent, and BitTorrent sites?

Niek: In the previous years we’ve seen additions like DHT, encryption and other enhancements to the BitTorrent protocol. I think we’ll see some other nice enhancements in the future (maybe TCP/UDP hole punching?). Also, BitTorrent sites keep innovating new features, and I’m happy to see we’re (one of) the leader(s) in this area.

TorrentFreak: Are there any future plans or developments you want to share with our readers?

Niek: We just released our new site with many new features, but we’re already planning and prototyping new features for the next version. Of course we’re always open for feature requests, so in case anybody got a great idea: please mail us

TorrentFreak: What keeps mininova in the air?

Niek: This is our current server setup:
9 servers at XS Networks for the main site (100mbit/s traffic)
3 servers at Leaseweb for the blog/advertisements (20mbit/s traffic)
1 server in the USA for the forum (10mbit/s traffic)

Our staff consists of 5 administrators: Erik, Jos, Matthijs, Rob and I. And of course we couldn’t be anywhere without our dedicated group of moderators!

TorrentFreak: Do you get a lot of DMCA takedown notices? And how do you handle these?

Niek: I think we get on average 2 or 3 removal requests per day. We handle these with care according to our copyright policy. I’m happy to say we’ve never had any problems in this area.

TorrentFreak: What makes mininova stand out compared to other BitTorrent sites?

Niek: The simplicity, the speed, the no-nonsense design and functionality. And of course the new features, which we keep inventing, to improve usability. I guess we also have quite a few users due to our family safe policy, we don’t allow any pornographic torrents on our site.

TorrentFreak: What are you doing when you’re not working on mininova?

Niek: Keeping a website of this size running requires quite some time. But in my spare time I’m socializing with friends, studying, hanging out in the pub, and all the other kind of things guys of my age tend to do

TorrentFreak: Anything to add?

Niek: Thanks for the interview; I really appreciate the time you take to run TorrentFreak. I think it’s a good addition to the (not always very objective) journalism on torrent sites.

TorrentFreak: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.
http://torrentfreak.com/mininova-rea...ion-downloads/





BitTorrent Accelerator Chip to Power Home Media Devices
Jon Stokes

Star Semiconductor and the Taiwan-based IAdea Corporation have announced the world's first BitTorrent accelerator chips, the STR9810/20. The two new processors share an ARM-based design that works sort of like a TCP/IP offload engine, but it's specifically intended for accelerating BitTorrent traffic on embedded devices like media centers, NAS products, and mobile hardware.

The design also includes a network interface and two USB 2.0 ports for easier integration with storage and media devices.

I've yet to find a block diagram or whitepaper on the new products, so I'm not 100% sure which bottlenecks, if any, they actually fix. My understanding of BitTorrent clients is that they're memory-intensive, which is why they don't perform as well on embedded devices with small amounts of RAM. But a dedicated BT chip that accelerates the protocol and intelligently manages swap traffic might be just what the doctor ordered. (If you know more than I do about the nuts and bolts of BitTorrent, and that's not hard to do, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the discussion thread.)

Note that these products are not intended for full-blown PCs, since they definitely wouldn't do any good there.

At any rate, the new chips are due out sometime this quarter, so I'll be watching closely for products that take advantage of them. Star and IAdea haven't yet announced any design wins (that I know if), but with the number of BT-aware home media products on the immediate horizon they're bound to find some takers.
Why do I care about BT support in embedded devices?

Count me in the camp that was mightily disappointed by MWSF keynote's lack of attention to the Mac line, and specifically (in my case) the Mac Mini. I've had my eye on the Mini as a media center PC plus always-on BitTorrent client ever since I got to try out a G4-based Mini in that capacity last year. (I don't care about PVR functionality since I don't do cable.) With DVI, support for any format you can throw at it, and the ability to run Azureus, the Mini upstages the newly announced AppleTV in every way. But boy, am I glad that Jobs didn't give me what I wanted: a Core 2 Duo-based Mac Mini.

Jobs' failure to announce a Mini update poked a small hole in the RDF for me, and through that hole, I was able to get a glimpse of the rush of relatively inexpensive, BitTorrent-enabled, media-savvy, networked consumer devices that's coming our way this year. Some of the devices, like the Asus WL-700gE "BitTorrent router," are already in stores, and others are just around the bend.

At this point, BitTorrent, especially when coupled with a secure RSS subscription that pushes down new content when it becomes available, is a fantastic cable TV replacement—ad-free HD content whenever, wherever and however you want it. That's why it's such a shame that the AppleTV lacks DivX support. Truly, Wes Felter was spot-on the other day when he said, "A much bigger complaint against AppleTV is that it isn't compatible with the market-leading video download service: the darknet."

As I said above, there are any number of media centers, NAS, and router products coming this quarter that are fully and aggressively darknet-compatible, all from companies that aren't in bed with Big Content and so have nothing to lose by supporting every format and protocol under the sun. For my part, I'll be skipping both the AppleTV and the updated Mac Mini in favor of a solution that's cheaper and more flexible.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8605.html





MediaZone Launches P2P Online TV
Liz Gannes

MediaZone, an enabler of subscription online television services for companies such as NBC Sports, is set to announce Tuesday it is beta-launching an ad-supported P2P streaming online television network. The idea is essentially cable-style television offered for free online.

As opposed to on-demand efforts such as Brightcove and the Venice Project, MediaZone will offer linear, streamed programming. It is Windows-only, with a peer-to-peer client available either via ActiveX or desktop app. You won’t get any of the fancy premium content all the VOD players are fighting for, but you will get free instant content.

“As we’re broadening into broadband offering, particularly one that’s free and advertising supported, P2P allows it to be financially viable,” said MediaZone CEO Michelle Wu in an interview last week.

The launch of MediaZone’s “Social TV” includes channels for local programming from places such as China and Trinidad and Tobago, and extreme sports. MediaZone will enable larger sites to play channels as well as provide advertising and hosting on its own destination site for smaller programmers.

Though “Social TV” doesn’t pack much punch as a moniker, MediaZone is following through on the name by including chat, ratings, comments, and blogging features alongside channels.

For now everything will be free, though future versions of Social TV promise to have subscription and pay-per-view options, according to the company.

San Carlos, Calif.-based MediaZone is a subsidiary of South African media company Naspers. Wu, an entrepreneur with experience at Xerox PARC and the China Internet Group, says she runs the two-and-a-half-year-old company as if it were a startup and Naspers an investor. She leads 80 employees in the United States and an additional 250 in China.
http://newteevee.com/2007/01/08/mediazone/





Copyrights and Congress
Dan Mitchell

ADVOCATES for looser restrictions on copyrights had high hopes for the new Democratic Congress. Those hopes faded somewhat last month when Representative Howard L. Berman was named chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Internet and intellectual property.

Putting Mr. Berman in charge of the panel, diminishes the chances for “real reform” of copyright policy, Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the best-known authority on the legal issues surrounding intellectual property and the Internet, wrote last week on his blog (lessig.org). Change is needed, he wrote, “to fit the legitimate objectives of copyright — to assure that artists have the incentives they need to create great new work — into the contours of digital technology.”

Mr. Berman, though widely regarded as a smart and savvy politician, is a favorite boogeyman of advocates for copyright reform, many of whom say he is in the pocket of his Hollywood constituents (he actually represents the San Fernando Valley, but many media industry figures live there).

In 2002, he introduced a bill that would have allowed media companies to hack into peer-to-peer networks to “disrupt” or “impair” illicit file trading. The proposed law would have limited the liability of copyright owners to $50 “per impairment to the property of the affected file trader.”

Critics said the measure, which never got out of committee, would have essentially allowed copyright holders to destroy people’s computers with near impunity. Mr. Berman labeled the loudest criticism as “hysteria,” and insisted his bill included adequate limitations and consumer protections.

Putting Mr. Berman in charge of the copyright committee “is like making a congressman from Detroit head of an automobile safety subcommittee, or a senator from Texas head of a global warming subcommittee,” Mr. Lessig wrote.

NO. 1 WITH A BULLET Hitwise, which tracks online traffic trends, reported this week that use of iTunes was up 413 percent on Christmas Day compared with the previous year, beating Microsoft’s new Zune service by 30 to 1 (informationweek.com).

Traffic was brisk at Zune, too, though, up 1,030 percent over the previous Monday. Traffic on iTunes was up 1,222 percent during the same period. The increase, of course, came mostly from people who received iPods as gifts. The Apple Store section of iTunes showed an increase in traffic of 110 percent over the previous Christmas. Traffic was so heavy, that customers were complaining about slowdowns and error messages.

Electric Junk What should be done with those old iPods and other electronics once they’ve outlived their usefulness? That’s not an easy question, thanks to all the toxic chemicals they contain, notes the Web site of Technology Review magazine (technologyreview.com).

Many companies (including Apple) will take back products, and some states force them to, but it’s not always easy to tell which companies accept returns for recycling, or how well they’ll handle the task if they do.

Enter the Computer Takeback Campaign, which offers a company-by-company guide (www.computertakeback.com).

While some companies do a good job, “the majority of recyclers are not responsible recyclers,” Robin Schneider, a member of the group, told Technology Review. In many countries “recycled” electronics end up polluting the land, air and water with mercury, cadmium and other nasty stuff.

The electronics industry offers its own online guide at ecyclingcentral.com.

LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP According to AppleInsider, more than two million Macs were sold this holiday season (appleinsider.com). Converts from Windows will spend much of January getting used to their new machines — and it’s not always as easy as Apple would have you believe. Cameron Banga offers a list of “Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Switched to a Mac” on his blog “Confessions of a Teenage Fanboy.” No. 1: “When you install an application, you might not have actually installed an application” (teenagefanboy.blogspot.com).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/bu...ref=technology





Preloaded

Not an iPod, but It’s Child-Friendly and Uses One AAA Battery
Warren Buckleitner

Playaway is known for its Ready-to-Go line of audio book players, which are about the size of an iPod and play one book each. It is a concept that seems easy to apply to music, and that’s the idea behind the company’s $30 Kidz Bop to Go players, each featuring 20 songs aimed at children.

The players are most notable for the features they don’t have. There are no U.S.B. cables, CDs to rip or burn, downloads, online stores or batteries to recharge. Just turn them on, put in the headphones and you’re ready to go.

There is a tiny LCD screen that displays the track number and time remaining. The device is powered by one AAA battery that lasts 12 hours.

Volumes 1 and 2 of Kidz Bop to Go (www.playawaydigital.com) feature songs from the Kidz Bop team, who perform highly engineered versions of Top 40 songs. The sound quality is good, although the volume can get uncomfortably loud.

When looking for music to keep the children entertained, consider that for the price of 30 songs from the iTunes store you can get 20 preloaded Kidz Bop selections, with the player and earbuds to boot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/te...ref=technology





Apple Unveils All-In-One iPhone

Cell phone will have music, Internet capabilities, camera and more
Ellen Lee

Apple CEO Steve Jobs ushered in a new era at the Cupertino technology company he co-founded more than 30 years ago, jumping into the cell phone market Tuesday with the highly-anticipated iPhone and cementing the company's part in the rapidly changing digital media landscape.

Jobs, speaking at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, unveiled the iPhone, which marries the iPod, cell phone and Internet handheld into one slim, portable device. He also announced the Apple TV, formerly known as the iTV, moving music, photos, television shows and movies from the computer to the living room.

Both products signal the broad shift the company has made in recent years from computers to consumer electronics, as it aims to become the core element in the digital life of the future.

To commemorate the move, Jobs announced that the company was dropping "Computer" from its corporate moniker.

"From this day forward we're going to be known as Apple Inc.," Jobs said before a roaring crowd.

With the iPhone, some 2½ years in the making, Apple dives fully into the cut-throat, mobile phone market.

"It's the best iPod we've ever made," said Jobs. "No matter what you like, it looks pretty doggone gorgeous."

Weighing in at 135 grams with a 3.5-inch touch screen, the iPhone looks like an iPod without its well-known scroll wheel. It has no conventional buttons, instead using a finger for navigation.

It will be available in June through an exclusive, multi-year partnership AT&T's Cingular Wireless and cost between $499 and $599 each.

Consumers will need to purchase a two-year plan with the iPhone, said Glenn Lurie, Cingular's president of national distribution. They may also want to purchase a monthly data plan to take advantage of the iPhone's Internet tools, although the Internet features are also available wherever there is wireless Internet access. Current Cingular data plans cost between $9.99 and $39.99 per month.

Cingular CEO Stan Stigman, appearing alongside Jobs at the keynote, said the cell phone carrier entered into an agreement without even seeing a design for the iPhone. The two have been partners in the past, introducing a Motorola cell phone last year that incorporated Apple's iTunes software. But the phone, like other cell phone and digital music player combinations so far, was not popular because it proved difficult to use and held a small number of songs.

Jobs also brought both Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Google CEO Eric Schmidt onto the stage, though not at the same time. The Internet companies will supply e-mail, mapping, search and other Internet services on the iPhone.

Yahoo will supply a special e-mail service that acts like a Blackberry and "pushes" the emails to the iPhone, so that the user receives the latest message instantly. With Google, whose CEO sits on Apple's board, the iPhone will have Internet search functions and mapping - including satellite images - on the iPod phone.

Jobs called the iPhone a revolutionary device that will leapfrog current technology. He said the company expects to sell about 10 million of them next year, which would account for just 1 percent of the 1 billion cell phones sold each year.

"Even if they get an itty bitty share of the market, it translates into" a large number of cell phone sales and opens a new, large market opportunity for the company, said Van Baker, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "It's not just a computer company anymore."

But unlike the MP3 player market, which the iPod has dominated even with the entrance of rivals such as Microsoft Corp.'s Zune, the cell phone market is much more fragmented. "There is not one device that everyone buys," said telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan.

In an Alexander Graham Bell moment of sorts, Jobs made the "first" call on his iPhone from the Macworld stage, saying he was calling Apple's famed designer, Jonathan Ive.

"I can't tell you how thrilled I am to make the first public phone call with iPhone," Jobs said to Ive.

Jobs also used the iPhone's Google mapping feature to find Starbucks coffee shops near the Moscone Center, where Macworld is being held. He prank called one of them, ordering "4,000 lattes to go" and then hanging up.

Shares of Apple rose more than 8.3 percent Tuesday to $92.57 per share on news of the iPhone. Meanwhile, competitors Palm, the Sunnyvale maker of the Treo smart phone, fell nearly 5.7 percent to $13.92 per share and Research in Motion dropped 7.85 percent to $131 per share.

Before it is released, the iPhone still must go through a few hurdles. It must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which reviews all wireless phones sold in the United States.

Apple will also settle a name dispute with Cisco Systems, which last month introduced a family of Internet phones it called the iPhone, a name it trademarked.

In a statement, Cisco said it had been negotiating with Apple for several years over the iPhone and that it expects Apple to sign an agreement to use the name.

An Apple executive said that the company felt it could use the iPhone name because Apple's product applies to a cell phone while Cisco's product refers to its Internet phones.

Everything -- from typing e-mail to making phone calls -- is done via the touch screen. People use fingers, not a stylus, to type or touch the screen. The phone's features include the ability to "pinch" the screen to zoom in and out, as well as switch to a widescreen picture.

The iPhone will also incorporate Apple's Web browser, Safari, and operating system, Mac OS X.

The phone announcement was the crowning moment to a relatively long speech by Jobs at Macworld, an annual event at which he kicks off his company's biggest trade show and also uses the podium to launch new products.

Joined by the likes of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and musician John Mayer onstage during his speech, Jobs had plenty to more to talk about.

Most significantly, Jobs unveiled Apple TV, a set-top device that allows users to port media between computers and televisions. Previously code-named iTV, Jobs said it will be in stores some time in February.

By beaming content from the computer to the television, consumers can download movies and music via the Internet, but enjoy them on their home entertainment system. It will cost $299.

Users will be able to stream content from five computers, and program it to download material automatically onto the Apple TV's 40 GB hard drive from one computer.

In other news, Jobs said Apple has reached 2 billion music downloads since introducing its popular iTunes music service, selling 58 songs a second. It has also had 1.3 million movie downloads since launching the movie download service last fall. To keep those numbers rising, Jobs announced a new partnership with Paramount to include the studio's movies on iTunes.

Chronicle Staff Writer Dan Fost contributed to this report. E-mail Chronicle Staff Writer Ellen Lee at elee@sfchronicle.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AGIBNFK493.DTL





In Cingular-Apple Deal, Only Phone Was Missing
Matt Richtel

When Cingular executives went to the company’s board last year to get approval for a deal with Apple, they did so without so much as a prototype of an Apple phone to show the directors. The board signed off anyway.

“We got this deal approved without them ever seeing the device,” said Glenn Lurie, president for national distribution at Cingular Wireless, who was responsible for the project on the Cingular side.

The approval was a leap of faith on Cingular’s part that Apple Computer could produce a phone as groundbreaking as its iPod music players.

Apple came up with the iPhone. The phone was unveiled Tuesday and will not be released until June, but it is already shaking up the market for high-end cellphones. Shares of the companies that make Treo and BlackBerry devices, the iPhone’s most obvious competitors, began to slide while Steven P. Jobs was still on stage in San Francisco, demonstrating the phone’s features.

Cingular and Apple may be fast-moving technology companies, but they took their sweet time putting the iPhone deal together. Officials of the two companies began discussions nearly two years ago, in February 2005. They quickly agreed that they should work together on a phone project, but there were far-reaching conversations and brainstorms about what the product should be.

They considered an Apple-branded mobile phone service that would piggyback on the Cingular network, but rejected the idea. Then, a year ago, they settled on the final concept, an Apple-made phone for subscribers of Cingular, which is owned by AT&T.

Details of the negotiations and partnership were provided in interviews with Mr. Lurie and Eddy Cue, a vice president of Apple who is in charge of its iTunes service and oversaw the relationship on Apple’s end. They said they had spoken nearly every workday over the last two years and had, above all, one mandate: to maintain secrecy.

In keeping with Apple’s tradition of keeping silent about product development, they were fiercely protective of the iPhone, and colleagues and co-workers knew to say nothing about it outside their circle.

Mr. Lurie, in particular, said Cingular wanted to prove to Apple it could be trusted to keep the project secret so that it could be disclosed on the companies’ terms. “We were going to try to be like Apple and keep things quiet,” Mr. Lurie said. “A big part of the partnership is trust.”

The deal marries two companies with considerable heft, though with somewhat different goals. Cingular, the nation’s largest wireless carrier, hopes the iPhone will help it attract new subscribers and keep disgruntled ones from fleeing to competitors, like Verizon Wireless.

Apple, a major innovator in consumer electronics, hopes to break into the market for a product “everyone wants to use and uses every day,” Mr. Cue said.

But the potentially powerful combination of Cingular and Apple may not be as attractive to consumers as they hope, said Roger Entner, a wireless industry analyst with Ovum Research. Mr. Entner said the device would doubtless be state of the art, but that is not the whole battle. He noted that some laptop computers are cheaper than the $499 iPhone.

“Is it futuristic? Yes,” Mr. Entner said. “Is it affordable? No.”

Mr. Entner said phones costing $500 or more represent less than 1 percent of those sold in the United States. As a result, he said, Apple could initially be competing for the attention of a few million consumers who rely on advanced devices like the Treo from Palm Inc. and the BlackBerry from Research In Motion. “This sets a high bar for the high-end device, but on the low end it has no impact,” Mr. Entner said.

Mr. Jobs’s announcement had perhaps its most immediate effect in the stock market, where Palm’s shares fell 5.7 percent and R.I.M.’s dived 7.9 percent. Shares of Motorola, which makes a broader array of phones, fell 1.8 percent. Apple’s stock surged more than 8 percent.

Executives of R.I.M., based in Waterloo, Ontario, did not answer phone messages seeking comment on the iPhone. Nick Agostino, a technology analyst with Research Capital in Toronto, said the decline in the stock most likely reflected investors’ concerns about the fate of R.I.M.’s BlackBerry Pearl consumer model.

But that concern appears to center more on lost potential for R.I.M. in the broad consumer market than on any threat to the company’s core market of business users. The e-mail system the iPhone will use lacks the security features and other properties of the BlackBerry e-mail service, making it unlikely that business users will switch to Apple’s offering, Mr. Agostino said.

As part of its pitch to consumers, however, the Pearl is the first BlackBerry to include multimedia entertainment abilities and a digital camera. Mr. Agostino said that R.I.M. might have trouble attracting customers who are interested in those additional features. “A guy who has e-mail at the top of his list is likely to want a Pearl,” he said. “A guy who has e-mail fifth or sixth on his list is going to look at the iPhone.”

The relatively high price of the iPhone may also swing some buyers to the BlackBerry offering. T-Mobile, for example, is now offering the Pearl for $200 with some of its plans.

Marlene Somsak, a spokeswoman for Palm, said the iPhone did not appear to be aimed at the business market, “where e-mail and quick and easy text entry for messaging and Web navigation are a requirement.”

The iPhone has a touch screen that can display a kind of virtual keyboard. Ms. Somsak said Palm believed that full keyboards like those on its devices were essential.

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a Silicon Valley consulting firm, said the iPhone would make current so-called smartphones obsolete. “It’s certainly going to cause them to go back to the drawing board,” Mr. Bajarin said, referring to phone manufacturers.

Laurie J. Flynn contributed reporting from San Francisco and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/bu...rtner=homepage





Cisco, Claiming Ownership of ‘iPhone,’ Sues Apple
John Markoff

And now, iSue?

Maybe Steven P. Jobs should have named his new gadget the Apple Phone instead of the iPhone. Or maybe the real winners will be the intellectual property lawyers.

In any case, just a day after acknowledging that they had been discussing rights to the iPhone trademark with Apple “extensively” in recent weeks, Apple’s Silicon Valley neighbor, the computer networking giant Cisco Systems, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in United States District Court against Apple, claiming rights to the iPhone brand.

On Tuesday, after Mr. Jobs had unveiled the iPhone to much fanfare, Cisco issued a statement saying that Apple had been in negotiations to obtain the trademark for several weeks and had been asking for “permission” to use it since 2001. Cisco recently introduced a WiFi-based phone with the same name.

On Wednesday, however, Cisco went to court to stop Apple, and its lawyer said the two companies had been unable to reach an agreement over several “principles” that Cisco had been demanding to permit Apple to use the trademark.

“The action we’ve taken is about protecting our brand,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel.

Cisco would have been willing to share the trademark, he said, if Apple had agreed to its terms, which involved a commitment to interoperability on Apple’s part and an agreement to differentiate the two products in the market.

On Wednesday evening, Apple fired back by noting that several companies besides Cisco were currently using the iPhone brand name. A quick Web search reveals that Comwave, Nuvio and Teledex are all using the brand in different ways.

“We believe that Cisco’s U.S. trademark is tenuous at best,” said Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice president for worldwide communications. “We are the first company to use the iPhone name for a cellphone and we’re confident we will prevail.”

In its lawsuit, Cisco said that the company had obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 when it acquired InfoGear, a company in Redwood City, Calif., that developed consumer-oriented Internet appliances. Mr. Chandler said Cisco began selling an iPhone product last spring and introduced the product publicly at the end of 2006.

InfoGear began selling iPhone products as early as 1997. According to the lawsuit, the original iPhone was a device that combined a telephone and a dial-up Internet portal.

The lawsuit describes a “surreptitious” Apple attempt to obtain the rights to the iPhone name. In September 2006, a corporation calling itself Ocean Telecom Services filed an application for the trademark based on an earlier filing in Trinidad and Tobago. That same month, Apple separately filed an application to use the trademark in Australia.

In the lawsuit, Cisco states that it believes that Ocean Telecom Services is a front corporation for Apple. Ms. Cotton declined to comment on whether Apple is related to the company.

Apple decided to use the iPhone brand despite its earlier decision to switch the name of its digital video system from iTV to Apple TV. When asked during an interview if Apple Phone would have been a better brand choice for the new wireless phone, Mr. Jobs said he liked the iPhone brand.

Apple has prevailed in other sticky trademark disputes. Last May a British court ruled in Apple’s favor against Apple Records, the Beatles’ Apple Corps recording label.

On Tuesday, Mr. Jobs appeared to take a step toward consolidating his hold over the Apple brand when he shortened Apple’s name by dropping the word “computer.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/te...y/11apple.html





Nice Phone, Mr. Jobs, But ...
Joe Nocera

IS there anyone who introduces products with more panache than Steven P. Jobs? Let me rephrase that: has there ever been anybody in the history of marketing to introduce products with the sheer, dazzling showmanship of the legendary Apple chief executive?

Take, for instance, last Tuesday. Apple is holding its annual Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, and Mr. Jobs is onstage, looking at an adoring crowd. For months, rumors have been swirling that the company may be unveiling an Apple cellphone — which will surely be the coolest, sleekest, smartest cellphone ever. The anticipation is almost unbearable.

Mr. Jobs is wearing his trademark jeans and mock turtleneck. From time to time, he breaks into a sly smile as he walks around the stage and whips the crowd into a frenzy. “Today,” he says, “we’re introducing three revolutionary products,” and then he names them: a “widescreen iPod with touch controls,” a “revolutionary mobile phone” and a “breakthrough Internet communication device.” He repeats this mantra several times until it is clear to everyone that the three products are one device: the iPhone.

“Even before it was over,” said Charles Wolf, who covers Apple for Needham & Company, “everybody stood up and applauded Steve. I’ve never seen that at a Macworld.” The stock quickly jumped. Tech bloggers began salivating, even though the iPhone won’t be on the market for months. The next day, Mr. Jobs and his iPhone made the front page of The New York Times.

And Mr. Jobs cemented his reputation as not only a great marketer and a brilliant innovator, but perhaps the single most valuable chief executive in the land. Mr. Jobs is his company’s touchstone, its savior, its tyrant, its guiding light. “The guy is a genius,” Mr. Wolf said. “Without Steve, the stock would fall 25 percent.”

Of course, the fact that Mr. Wolf could even be raising the possibility of an Apple without Mr. Jobs speaks to a somewhat more sobering question surrounding Mr. Jobs these days. Has he broken the law?

UNLESS you’ve been living in the proverbial cave, you know about the other, less pleasant Apple storyline that has been hovering since the summer. The company and its leader are embroiled in the options backdating scandal, which has now ensnared upwards of 200 companies, many of them in Silicon Valley, where the practice was commonplace during the late 1990s tech boom. Mr. Jobs is by far the most prominent executive to be caught up in it. Which also means, inevitably, he is the most prominent subject of interest for federal investigators.

It looks as if federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are serious about getting to the bottom of one particular backdated option grant that Mr. Jobs received in 2001. A few weeks ago, an investigation conducted by a committee of Apple board members, led by Al Gore, cleared Mr. Jobs of any misconduct. But the committee report — at least as it has been recounted in Apple’s recent financial documents — has its own set of problems, about which more in a minute.

Before going into the particulars of Mr. Jobs’s situation, it is worth taking a quick detour into why options backdating is a scandal in the first place. Almost every article on the subject points out that backdating — that is, picking a date retrospectively to grant options that are already “in the money” when they are issued — is not necessarily illegal. But the practice has to be disclosed, and if it’s not, that’s a violation of securities law. Backdated options also have a different accounting treatment, and thus, they violate accounting rules when they are not disclosed. And there are tax consequences as well.

Dozens of companies at this point have had to go back and restate earnings because they backdated options and, in truth, the restatements have generally not been huge numbers. Apple is typical: it took an $84 million charge, which is akin to petty cash for a company its size.

But as the Lehman Brothers tax and accounting expert Robert Willens points out, the problem really isn’t one of size — it’s the ethics of the thing. “It is pretty hard to defend by any standard,” he said. The technology consultant Rob Enderle said: “Executives should never have a significant advantage over every other shareholder. It is like insider trading with 100 percent hindsight.”

Folks in Silicon Valley like to say that options backdating was a way to retain employees during the boom. And there is no question that was a lot of the motivation at a lot places, including Apple. But how, then, to explain the fact that Mr. Jobs himself got two enormous options grants that are problematic? That’s where things really start to smell.

The first grant, of 10 million shares (at the time, the largest option grant ever), was “memorialized” (to use the language Apple now uses) on Jan. 18, 2000, even though it had been “finalized” on Jan. 12. Before Jan. 12, Apple’s stock had been sinking; by the time Jan. 18 rolled around, it had jumped more than $15 a share. “It is highly awkward that the six days would go by and it turns out the price is the trough,” said the executive compensation consultant Brian Foley. “There is no logical explanation for taking six days.”

As for the second grant, of 7.5 million shares — this is the one that is being “actively investigated” — the facts are even more squirrelly. In that case, the grant was “finalized” in December 2001, but it carried an October 2001 date, when it was supposedly approved during a board meeting. But the board meeting never took place. The committee report said that no member of current management — including Mr. Jobs, who is on the board, of course — knew about the “irregularity.”

In addition, the special Apple committee acknowledged that Mr. Jobs “recommended the selection of some favorable grant dates.” And yet the committee not only cleared Mr. Jobs of any wrongdoing but announced that the board “has complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team.” An Apple spokesman told me that the special committee, after an “exhaustive” review, had found no misconduct by Mr. Jobs.

For one thing, the committee says that Mr. Jobs didn’t understand the accounting implications of backdating. But it also says that “he did not receive or financially benefit from these grants.” Instead, in 2003, the grants were dissolved, and replaced by five million shares of restricted stock, which today (with a stock split thrown in) are worth more than $900 million. The shares closed yesterday at $94.62. Why did the Apple board make the switch? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that the stock had declined and the options were worthless, backdating or no?

Besides, what difference does it make whether he reaped the reward or not? He got the grants, they weren’t disclosed properly and the second one was a part of the Apple restatement. You could just as easily argue that he did get a benefit, since they were replaced with the restricted stock grant.

What is striking is the difference between the way Apple has dealt with Mr. Jobs’s backdating problems and the way many other companies have dealt with their scandal-tainted chief executives. At plenty of companies chief executives have been forced to step down. In a number of those cases, it is unclear whether their involvement was any deeper than Mr. Jobs’s at Apple.

Thus the committee report has the feel of an exercise in circling the wagons around the one man Apple can’t do without. There are so many questions the report doesn’t answer — what are the circumstances of the board meeting that never happened? what does it mean that Mr. Jobs “recommended” some option dates? — that it is difficult to accept it at face value.

And because the stock market also accepts the notion that Mr. Jobs is indispensable, it is also circling the wagons. “The only issue that really matters in the end is whether Steve will have to give up the C.E.O. of Apple,” said Mr. Wolf, the analyst. He added, “If I had to assign a probability to his staying, I would put it at 99.9 percent.”

Others made the case that Mr. Jobs was so important to Apple — and Apple was such an important company — that it would be wrong-headed to push him out. “Steve Jobs is one of the few certifiable geniuses in corporate America, and it would clearly hurt Apple’s shareholders if Steve were unable to continue,” said Joseph A. Grundfest, a Stanford law professor. Clearly, if the federal government decides to go after Mr. Jobs, there will be an outcry not unlike the outcry that surrounded the Martha Stewart prosecution.

But of course the federal government never stopped pursuing Martha Stewart until it put her in prison. And it is highly unlikely that the government is going to back off just because Mr. Jobs is indispensable at Apple. On the contrary, prosecutors and S.E.C. lawyers can make their reputations bringing down as big a target as Steve Jobs —that’s just how the world works. If he is truly in the clear, then great. And to be sure, these kinds of cases are difficult to bring because they require proof that someone knowingly did something wrong. But if he’s done something wrong, he’s unlikely to walk away simply because he’s the great Steve Jobs.

Which is also why Apple’s whole approach to the options backdating scandal has been so misguided. “If you fool around with regulators, if they think you are manipulating them, you are going to pay a price,” said Harvey Goldschmidt, a former S.E.C. commissioner, who now teaches law at Columbia. The Apple spokesman assured me that the company was cooperating fully with the government — he described Apple’s cooperation as “proactive and voluntary.” But the disclosures made to the investing public, including the special committee report, have been too cute by half, a series of grudging admissions that don’t give anything close to the whole picture. If the company is taking the same approach with the government, it is pretty much guaranteed to inflame the regulators. As a result, I think Mr. Jobs is in for a far rougher ride than the market now seems to think.

Steve Jobs may have a golden gut when it comes to cool tech products. But when it comes to dealing with regulators and prosecutors, it sure looks as if he and his company have a tin ear.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/13.../13nocera.html





Verizon to Announce Plan for TV Shows on Cellphones
Laura M. Holson

Verizon Wireless is expected to announce on Sunday that it will offer full-length programming to its cellular subscribers from several major television networks, according to people apprised of the deal.

The service, which should be in operation by the end of March, will consist of eight channels and will include popular shows from NBC, CBS, Fox and MTV, they said. ESPN is reportedly also in negotiations to offer programs, which will be offered for the cellphone screen soon after they appear on television.

What is significant is that the programs will be among the first full-length television shows to be offered to cellular subscribers in the United States. In Europe, where mobile phone technology is more advanced, such programming is more widely available.

It will also make the mobile phone more competitive with devices like the iPod from Apple Computer. In 2005, Apple announced that it would offer shows from the Walt Disney Company’s ABC network for sale through its iTunes Store. Other entertainment companies quickly followed suit.

Media companies will receive a fee based on consumer subscriptions. A spokesman for Verizon Wireless could not be reached for comment on Friday evening.

In the deal, Verizon is joining with MediaFLO U.S.A., a subsidiary of Qualcomm, which has created technology to transmit high-resolution video through its own dedicated network. MediaFLO’s quality rivals European and Asian standards, media executives say.


Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm have been partners for some time; they first announced an agreement to work together in 2005. MediaFLO was reported by those apprised of the Verizon deal to be in talks to offer television shows through other wireless phone companies as well.

Samsung and LG are two phone makers whose equipment is compatible with the MediaFLO network.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/te...y/06phone.html





Apple Reveals Plans for Joining PC to TV
Tom Krazit

Apple thinks it's come up with the missing link between the PC and the television.

CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple TV product, formerly known by its iTV code name, during his keynote address at Macworld on Tuesday. Apple TV, as discussed in September, is a small white box that plugs into a flat-panel TV and wirelessly connects to a Mac or PC over an 802.11n network, allowing content stored on the computer to play on the television.

Jobs revealed a few more details about the $299 device on Tuesday. Apple started taking orders for the device Tuesday, though it won't start shipping until February.

It supports 720p high-definition TV, rather than the 1080p standard used by many HDTVs unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It comes with a 40GB hard drive, so movies, TV shows and music can be stored directly on the device. But the Apple TV box can also access files stored on a Mac or PC over the 802.11n wireless standard, a newly emerging standard that's much faster than 802.11g and has better range.

When connected to a Mac or PC, the Apple TV will show up in iTunes just like an iPod, allowing users to sync television shows to its hard drive just like transferring songs to an iPod, Jobs said. Apple TV can only sync with one computer, but can play content streamed from up to five other computers. For example, if a friend comes over with a notebook, the friend could stream the latest episode of Lost to the Apple TV, but it doesn't appear that he could transfer the file to the Apple TV's hard drive.

The PC industry has been searching for something that connects the PC to the television for years. Early attempts based around Microsoft's Windows Media Center Extender program have received tepid support, due in part to how complicated it can be to set up.

However, Apple has a chance to change that with a more friendly user interface, said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

"It has to be ridiculously simple, and this is the simplest design I've seen," he said. The Apple TV interface is controlled by a small white remote control with few buttons and resembles the iPod navigation tree.
http://news.com.com/Apple+reveals+pl...3-6148790.html





By addicts for addicts

Satellite Television in a Portable Box
Lorne Manly

Rick Rosner is a self-described television junkie.

Not only he is the creator and producer of many television series, most notably “CHiPs” and “The New Hollywood Squares,” he feels an overpowering need to surround himself with television everywhere he may be. Fourteen television sets jostle for space in Mr. Rosner’s penthouse condominium in Marina Del Rey.

When more than a decade ago he moved into his previous home, in Coldwater Canyon, only to learn he could not pick up a cable signal, he dispatched a production assistant to Phoenix to get something not yet available on the West Coast: DirecTV. On location shoots he would lug one of his DirecTV set-top boxes along and then rent or buy a satellite dish and attach it to his balcony railing with duct tape.

That hassle got him thinking: What if there were a portable satellite dish, which folds up like a piece of luggage, and could be used for camping and tailgate parties or in dorm rooms? And that’s how a longtime television producer turned into an inventor.

The result of his obsessive handiwork will be on display today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, when DirecTV will unveil the Sat-Go, a mobile satellite and television system weighing about 25 pounds that will sell for $1,000 to $1,300. DirecTV hopes that the Sat-Go will help differentiate the company from its cable-television competition and attract a different type of customer when the product goes on sale this spring.

“I love to try different things,” the 65-year-old Mr. Rosner said when asked to explain the moonlighting. “That’s sort of the story of my life.”

Mr. Rosner’s affection for all things television began as a child, when shows like “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and “The Howdy Doody Show” captivated him, and working as a page at NBC during college cemented that connection. When he dropped out of veterinary school at Cornell University after six weeks, he moved to New York and reclaimed his post at NBC before getting a job at “Candid Camera” and becoming a television producer.

The walls of his condominium are crammed with pictures of people he’s worked with and for over the years, like Mike Douglas, Regis Philbin, John Davidson and Joan Rivers. But even while involved in the television business, his enthusiasms took him in different directions.

When on one episode of “The Steve Allen Show” the host was made to scuba dive, an emergency rescue unit came in to school Mr. Allen, and Mr. Rosner struck up a friendship with the visitors. That led him to taking a course at the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department. One night, he and his partner were parked at a Winchell’s doughnut shop in Los Angeles when two California highway patrolmen, complete with darkened helmet visor and shiny boots, pulled up behind them. But that intimidating sight melted when the two took off their helmets and sunglasses.

“Right there, it hit me,” said Mr. Rosner over a lunch of shrimp cocktail and Caesar salad at a dockside restaurant near his condominium. “That’s a TV series. Two guys racing around the L.A. freeway system. Two good guys doing a job.”

“He incorporates parts of his life into his business,” said Michael Gelman, executive producer of “Live With Regis and Kelly,” who became friends with Mr. Rosner when he worked on “The New Hollywood Squares” more than 20 years ago.

A similar connection explains the genesis of Sat-Go. After getting his inspiration for Sat-Go during an early morning walk in Vancouver, he hooked up with David Kuether, a friend who was an engineer at DirecTV, and the two set out to build a mobile satellite TV.

Mr. Rosner then called in a favor from another friend, his former art director on “The New Hollywood Squares” who is now the head of “The Tonight Show’s” prop shop. They built a prototype — “it looked like a big sewing machine,” he said — and then tried to persuade DirecTV to build and sell it.

At first, they were greeted with a decided lack of interest. But the head of the set-top box division sent Mr. Rosner and his contraption to see Eric Shanks, executive vice president of DirecTV Entertainment. Luckily for Mr. Rosner, Mr. Shanks was a “CHiPs” fanatic and jumped at the chance to meet its creator. “It’s my second-favorite show,” he said. (“The A-Team” is No. 1.)

DirecTV will be selling Sat-Go in places it has never been before, like Cabela’s, the hunting, fishing and camping store, and advertising in unfamiliar publications, like RV magazine. Although the modest first-run of production (about 10,000) makes Sat-Go an expensive toy, that price should come down, and the monthly subscription fee of $4.99 is the same as adding a box, according to Mr. Shanks.

Mr. Rosner has continued to be involved in every aspect of the Sat-Go’s development, particularly its design. Mr. Rosner and DirecTV executives both knew they wanted it to look like a high-end piece of luggage, one that could come from the likes of Louis Vuitton. But the color never satisfied. After the fifth or six try with the manufacturer, Mr. Rosner arrived one day with a carton full of Hershey dark chocolate bars — the hue reminded him of an early Bentley from Rolls-Royce — and announced this was the color the SAT-Go casing should be.

“It just looked so rich,” said Mr. Rosner, who this late December day in a chilly Southern California was wearing a chocolate brown slacks with a chocolate brown Sat-Go sweater. “It said money.”

Mr. Rosner’s nearly constant presence — in the past year and half he estimated that he dropped by DirecTV’s headquarters in El Segundo two or three times a week — could be unnerving to SatGo’s development team, so much so that the head of engineering called Mr. Shanks to complain that Mr. Rosner was distracting him. But Mr. Rosner has a history of barreling through obstacles and getting what he desires.

“Rick has always been a champion of the what-if scenario of television,” said Harry Friedman, executive producer of “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” and a friend of Mr. Rosner’s since they worked together on “The New Hollywood Squares.” Mr. Rosner was the first to take game shows out on the road, plopping “The New Hollywood Squares” down in New York’s Radio City Music Hall and on the beach in the Bahamas. Now that the Sat-Go is a reality, Mr. Rosner can turn his attention to his next big entertainment project, a feature film based on “CHiPs.” Wilmer Valderrama (“That 70s Show,” “Fast Food Nation”) will play Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncherello, the Erik Estrada role, and Warner Brothers expects to shoot the picture this year.

But Mr. Rosner is not done with DirecTV; he is helping the company develop different Sat-Go offshoots. The Sat-Go Pro will come in a hardened plastic case and be marketed to users like FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Sat-Go Light will be about half the weight. And Mr. Rosner wants DirecTV to build a version with a digital video-recorder, too.

“I am the biggest DirecTV fan in the world,” he said. “No one appreciates that company more than me.” And Mr. Rosner wants to make sure no one will ever have to go without television again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/te...satellite.html





Westinghouse Shows Off the Quad HDTV
Mark Raby

1080p is really what you should be looking for in a new high-definition HDTV, but the next generation is just around the corner: Westinghouse showcases a 2160p - commonly referred to as a Quad HDTV.

Westinghouse has a fairly modest booth at this year's CES, but there were some things that really stood out, most notably the Quad HDTV that was announced a few days before the show. That, along with a handful of new 1080p TVs and high-definition computer monitors are headlining the first batch of new 2007 releases, underscoring the future trend for the digital division of Westinghouse.

Of course, the Quad HDTV was our first target at the Westinghouse booth. The 52" TV runs a super high-resolution of 2160p (3840 x 2160 pixels). In absolute numbers, the device is running a stunning 8.3 megapixels - four times more than 1080p TVs (1920x1080p) and more than twice the resolution of Dell's, HP's and Apple's 30" desktop LCDs. So, what do you get from this resolution, especially if HD DVD and Blu-ray are running only 1080p anyway?

According to Westinghouse, the TV does not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications. What we saw was a demo of an oil company viewing a digital version of a mining site. And even at this very specialized application, the difference to the best 1080p we saw at CES appeared to be marginal, at least to our eyes. However, of course you do see a much clearer picture when compared to some lower-priced 1080p TVs. Westinghouse said that it has begun taking orders for the 2160p. However, the TV will not come to the consumer market anytime soon. Company officials decline dto comment on pricing, but the highest resolution on the market combined with limited availability are a good indication for one pricey TV.

Otherwise, all of the displays at the booth were LCDs, showing off Westinghouse as one of the very few companies that has always been devoted to only one of the two formats of HD displays. The most impressive consumer model they were showing off is the TX-52F480S, a 1080p TV with a whopping four HDMI inputs, and two sets of composite/component inputs. It is scheduled for a May 2007 release. Pricing was been available.

Rounding out the first set of new 1080p models will be the TX-42F430S, a 42" model with 4 HDMI and 2 component/composite with a $2000 MSRP, and the TX-47F430S, a 47" display with the same inputs and a $2500 retail price. Both will be available in April.

Noteworthy is also a Westinghouse 24" widescreen PC monitor with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. When hooked up to a PS3, the image clarity was just as clear as when it is viewed on a large-screen 1080p TV. The model number is L2410NM and it will be available later this month for about $700.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/...quad_hdtv_com/





License: EXPIRED

Vista Testers Get Unexpected Holiday Gift: No TV
Ina Fried

Some people testing Microsoft's Windows Vista got an unexpected holiday surprise: their TVs stopped working.

Media Center, which is included in the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of the Vista operating system, allows remote-control access to a variety of entertainment options, including television, for machines that have a TV tuner.

However, for those running the "release candidate 1" version of the software--the most broadly distributed of the Vista test versions--the TV feature stopped working on December 31.

Microsoft blamed the issue on the fact that it has a paid license for the video decoder and Dolby sound technology, and it only licensed those through December 31. The overall RC1 software is not scheduled to expire until June.

"As of December 31, 2006, users running Windows Vista RC1 beta code will no longer have access to the Media Center functionality, due to the expiration of the MPEG 2 decoder and Dolby Digital components built into Windows Vista and used by the Media Center experience," Microsoft said in a statement in response to inquiries by CNET News.com. "Because these technologies are licensed and royalty bearing, they will expire within a certain time period, according to our license agreements."

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on whether the company could have extended its license, saying it doesn't comment on the terms of such licensing deals.

Windows wait
Some enthusiasts have installed their own third-party video decoders. But that won't solve the TV issue, as many have discovered.

"There is not a solution Microsoft can provide around this in RC1, as it is not within our rights to extend the trial period for these licensed technologies," the company said in its statement.

The representative noted that Microsoft did recommend that users not try Vista on their main machines. The software maker said that testers who are members of its MSDN developer network have access to the final version of Vista. That version, along with a revamped Office suite and new Exchange e-mail server, went on sale to business customers in November.

However, many consumers who installed RC1 won't have access to the final version of Vista until it is made broadly available. Microsoft has said that it will release Vista and Office 2007 to consumers worldwide on January 30.

The first release candidate version of Vista arrived in September, and it was eventually made available to more than 5 million people, including technical beta testers, developers, corporate customers and tech enthusiasts. A second release candidate was issued in October, but only about 100,000 consumers were able to upgrade to that version.

Microsoft has high hopes for Vista adoption in the coming months. CEO Steve Ballmer said this will be the most widely marketed launch of any set of products that the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker has ever done. It will spend "hundreds of millions of dollars, a very big number," on Vista and Office 2007 marketing, he said in November. "It's more than we spent of Windows 95 and Office 95."

Both Vista and Office had originally been slated to arrive on store shelves and new PCs in time for last year's holiday season. However, last March, Microsoft said it would delay the mainstream launch of the products and instead make the software available to businesses only in November 2006.
http://news.com.com/Vista+testers+ge...3-6147259.html





Wii Outsells PlayStation 3 in Japan
Martin Fackler

Japan is offering some of the first glimpses into the hotly contested market for new video game consoles, and the view so far doesn’t look good for struggling Sony and its much-touted PlayStation 3.

Enterbrain, a Tokyo-based video game magazine publisher, released sales estimates in Japan today that showed Sony fell far short of its goal of selling one million PlayStation 3 consoles here last year. Sony sold 534,336 units between their debut in Japan on Nov. 11 and Jan. 7, Enterbrain said.

By contrast, Enterbrain reported that rival Nintendo sold 1.14 million units of its less expensive new game console, Wii, by the same date, despite going on sale three weeks after PlayStation. Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has had limited success breaking into the Japanese market, has sold 311,053 units since arriving in December 2005, Enterbrain said.

Analysts said these figures offer some of the first hard data on how PlayStation 3, which debuted here a week before the United States, was faring in a major marketplace. Analysts said the figures also added a note of caution to Sony’s announcement over the weekend that it was on track to ship six million PlayStation 3s worldwide this year.

Slow sales could spell trouble for Sony, which badly needs PlayStation 3 to be a hit to overcome years of lackluster profits and polish its brand image. Sony’s Welsh-born chief executive, Sir Howard Stringer, has repeatedly said the company’s future depends on turning out “champion products,” and analysts say PlayStation 3 is the only potential mega-hit now visible in the company’s pipelines.

Analysts said the Japanese sales figures could offer an advanced look at how PlayStation 3 and Wii could fare in the United States, though they cautioned there were differences between the countries. They said consumers in the United States, for instance, may be more willing to embrace PlayStation 3 because its sharper graphics could be better suited to the larger television screens in America’s more spacious homes.

Analysts also said they had expected a slow start by PlayStation 3 in all major global markets, as production delays limited the number of machines available. But they and retailers said they have been surprised by just how tepid Japanese demand has been so far. They said the main reason consumers were shunning PlayStation 3 was its high price, twice as expensive as Wii.

“We are getting our first real peek into the marketplace,” said Masayuki Otani, a video games industry analyst at Maruwa Securities in Tokyo, “and it’s obvious already that Wii is bolting ahead.”

Mr. Otani also cautioned that it was too early to write off PlayStation 3, saying that Sony still had ample opportunity to catch up as more games and other software became available. He said there was also a concern that Wii’s popularity may prove a flash in the pan, though it will likely take Sony at least two or three years to catch Wii’s sales figures.

The Japanese sales estimates came just days after Sony announced that it had met its goal of shipping one million PlayStation 3s to the United States by the end of last year. That announcement was made on the opening day of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Sony is showcasing PlayStation 3.

However, analysts point out that the American figure only reflects shipments to retailers, not actual purchases by consumers. They also noted that Sony did not mention whether it had met its goal of shipping two million units combined in America and Japan by year-end. Production problems forced Sony to delay the rollout in Europe until March.

In a statement, Sony said it had put PlayStation 3s onto weekly flights to the United States to ensure there were enough machines for the Christmas shopping season. Analysts said Sony was apparently focused on winning American consumers, even to the point of diverting machines there from Japan.

Retailers across Japan, reached by phone, indicated that those diverted machines were not being missed. They said that while demand for Wii was booming, PlayStation 3s were sitting on store shelves. Most blamed price; the cheapest model of the new PlayStation 3 sells here for 49,980 yen, or $425, versus Wii’s price of 25,000 yen, or $210. In the United States, the same machines cost $499 and $250 respectively.

At a Yodobashi Camera store in the northern city of Sendai, deputy manager Satoshi Hino said Wii machines were selling out as fast as they arrived. He said shoppers had bought up last week’s shipments of 3,000 Wii consoles within an hour, but the store had yet to sell many of the 3,000 PlayStation 3s received at the same time.

“Shoppers still line up for Wii, but not for PlayStation 3 anymore,” Mr. Hino said, referring to the long lines that initially greeted PlayStation 3’s November rollout.

Sony has said PlayStation 3’s high prices are justified by top end features, including the high-speed Cell processing chip, co-developed with IBM and Toshiba, and the next-generation Blu-ray DVD disk drive. Analysts said that PlayStation 3’s powerful processing and graphics made it a machine that would remain competitive for years.

“The new PlayStation could take a while to catch on with consumers,” said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Enterbrain. “But this is a machine with enormous potential.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/te...n er=homepage





Brazilian Court Reverses Ban on YouTube

A Brazilian court said Tuesday that Internet service providers could allow Web surfers access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube, a day after they started blocking it because of a celebrity sex video.

Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex with her boyfriend in shallow water on a beach in Spain was posted to the site.

Judge Enio Santarelli Zulianio last week ordered YouTube, a unit of search engine Google, to be shut down until the video was removed.

But on Tuesday he revised his ruling to say that Internet providers could reestablish access to the site if YouTube permanently removed the video.

He also said the Internet providers must block access to the steamy footage, which was the most viewed video in Brazil for several days last year.

YouTube said it is being cooperative.

"We trust that Brazilian authorities have recognized our efforts to remove all copies of the video, and we will continue to do so as we become aware that it has been reposted," said Jaime Schopflin, a YouTube representative.

Technology experts say getting rid of the video entirely is difficult because users can repost it under different titles.

YouTube fans who could not access the site on Monday sent 20,000 e-mails to Cicarelli's employer, MTV Brazil, complaining about the ban, local media reported.

Cicarelli and boyfriend Renato Malzoni, who works for Merrill Lynch, filed last year to force YouTube to take the video down and demanded $116,000 in damages for each day the video remained.

The case dragged on for several months before Malzoni filed a third suit in December requesting that YouTube be shut down as long as the video is available.
http://news.com.com/Brazilian+court+...3-6148913.html





Abroad at Home
Kate Murphy

Like many illegal immigrants, Javier Huete did not dare plan a trip home for the holidays for fear he would not be able to re-enter the United States. But he was able to see his mother, in-laws and cousins in Honduras anyway thanks to videoconferencing services provided at an Order Express storefront in Houston.

A check-cashing and money-transfer company based in Michoacán, Mexico, Order Express has been offering videoconferencing at a dozen of its 300 locations throughout the United States and Latin America.

Mr. Huete, a delivery truck driver, said in Spanish, “I talk to my family on the phone all the time, but with this they can see the children.”

During the 40-minute videoconference with a dozen of his relatives assembled at an Order Express in Honduras, Mr. Huete’s infant daughter squirmed in his lap and his 4-year-old daughter stood with her nose nearly touching a 60-inch flat-screen TV on which the image of her teary-eyed grandmother cooed “Qué bonita!” or “How beautiful!” Normally, a half-hour visit costs $40, but he got an extra 10 minutes because there was trouble hooking him up initially.

Because of stricter border enforcement since 9/11, increased broadband access and reduced cost of video equipment, more businesses are offering videoconferencing services to reunite immigrants with their families back home. Typically found in or near places immigrants frequent like money-transfer operations or consular offices, these kinds of services are often reserved for weeks in advance. “I’m booked Dec. 20 through Jan. 1,” said Ivan Fernando Rojas, owner of a small videoconferencing business in Bay Shore, N.Y., called A Tu Alcance, which means Reach Out.

Such businesses are often run by immigrants like Mr. Rojas who is from Colombia: “I know how it feels being in a country without your family.” He started A Tu Alcance in 2004 with money he saved from cleaning office buildings: “I got the idea 12 years ago when I was dusting videoconference equipment in an office.” But back then, the technology cost $10,000 to $20,000. Today, a complete videoconference setup costs as little as $2,000, according to Laura Shay, director for marketing at Polycom, a leading brand.

While no one keeps track of the number of videoconferencing businesses marketing their services to immigrants, sales representatives at companies like Polycom report increased inquiries and purchases for the applications. “This was not a successful business model until recently because now you have both the affordability of the equipment as well as the wider availability of Internet cable connections which you need to have on both sides, here and there,” said Charlie Macli, senior vice president for sales and marketing at IVCi, a provider of video communications and network services in Hauppauge, N.Y.

Though most videoconferencing businesses tend to be small single-shop operations, a company called AmigoLatino has locations in eight cities with large Hispanic immigrant communities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. It also has affiliate offices in eight Latin American countries as well as in Spain. Moreover, AmigoLatino oversees videoconferencing operations at Order Express shops like the one in Houston where Mr. Huete linked up with his family in Honduras.

Founded in 2002 by Gabriel Biguria and a small group of private investors, AmigoLatino caters mostly to Spanish-speaking immigrants. “It would work equally well for immigrants from Asia or Africa but the time difference would be a challenge,” said Mr. Biguria, who is from Guatemala but holds an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He formerly worked in marketing and sales for Hewlett-Packard and several Silicon Valley start-ups.

“There’s incredibly high demand for this kind of service,” particularly given Hispanic culture’s traditional emphasis on family togetherness, said Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, professor for international development and Chicano and Chicana studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His mobile banking services company, No Borders, offered videoconferencing between sites in the United States and Latin America for two years before it spun off that part of the business in 2005 to a concern in Pueblo, Mexico, called Creative Networks.

Creative Networks links personal computers at a dozen affiliates in the United States to a Latin American network of Internet cafes with broadband access, Mr. Hinojosa-Ojeda said. The owner of Creative Networks, Sergio Garnelo, could not be reached for comment.

Hispanic immigrants typically do not have computers at home much less have the kind of high-end computers and broadband access necessary for clear live video transmission and reception.

“The way most PCs allocate power to images is less than what you need to get really good quality,” said Elliot Gold, president of Telespan, a company that provides market analysis of the teleconferencing and videoconferencing industry. “The image gets really grainy when you blow it up on a large screen.” Specialized videoconferencing equipment, he said, is usually best to get an experience that “the other person is in the room with you.”

And that is what homesick immigrants like Mr. Huete in Houston want. “It’s good to feel as if the family is in the same place,” he said. Many times, immigrants set up a videoconference to mark a special occasion. For example, Mr. Rojas in Bay Shore said families in two countries assemble before video screens to celebrate birthdays, engagements and 50th wedding anniversaries. They sit around, talk, eat cake and drink wine. One customer recently scheduled a videoconference to show her mother in El Salvador the gown she was going wear at her wedding. “I cry 9 times out of 10,” Mr. Rojas said.

The cost of these kinds of virtual reunions ranges from $80 to $120 an hour depending on the Latin American country. This is far less than at places like FedEx Kinkos, which charges $265 to $350 and requires the party in Latin America to provide its own equipment since the chain, which offers business services, does not have locations there.

While still expensive for many immigrants, most say the service is worth it. “I was able to see my auntie and uncle,” said Blanca Leticia Pineda de Juarez, a nanny in Los Angeles who left Guatemala 15 years ago. She had not seen them since then and she was able to introduce them to her infant daughter recently during a videoconference at AmigoLatino’s Los Angeles office.

“It made me feel so good,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m definitely going to do it again.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/te...y/06video.html





EU to Criminalize Non-commercial Sharing?
Jackson West

Across the pond, two members of the European Parliament have moved to amend the second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) in order to criminalize even small-scale, non-commercial use of protected intellectual property. French MEPs Nicole Fontaine and Janelly Fourtou simply want to strike the language specifying that criminal penalties only apply for infringement of IP rights “on a commercial scale.”

In a summary on the P2P Blog, heise.de goes on to report that the proposed amendments would also double potential minimum penalties up to EU600,000 in one case, and would make it criminal to even bring home a pirated DVD from a vacation outside the EU. Currently, citizens in EU member states face only civil penalties for small-scale, non-commercial infringement.

Fourtou, spouse of a former Vivendi CEO, is a controversial figure online owing to her advocacy on behalf of software patents. A vote on tabling the amendments is due on January 19th or 20th in Brussels.
http://newteevee.com/2007/01/04/eu-t...rcial-sharing/





BitTorrent Bullies: BitTyrant and BitThief
Michael Calore

Impatience doesn't get you anywhere. It causes stress and frustration and it usually gives everyone around you the impression that you're a total jerk. And as these two new P2P clients demonstrate, impatience also has the potential to ruin BitTorrent.

Yesterday, TorrentFreak alerted us to a new BitTorrent client with a "selfish" anti-social streak. BitTyrant, a project of the University of Washington's computer science department, is based on the code for Azureus 2.5. So, it's a cross-platform Java application -- that's good. What makes BitTyrant bad is that prioritizes your upload connections, favoring the peers that provide the best download speeds. You end up sharing more of the torrent with only the peers that give you the biggest chunks. The slower peers that aren't giving you as much data are choked and relegated to the bottom of the list.

This velvet rope approach improves the client's download performance, and it probably doesn't do a lot to harm the distribution of a fileset within a massive swarm. But BitTyrant still rotten bananas, especially if people start to use it in large numbers.

Now there's BitThief, which is straight-up nefarious and wrong -- the client downloads torrents without uploading. TorrentFreak tells us how it works:

[BitThief] constantly pretends to be a newly arrived peer that doesn't have anything to offer itself. Additionally, the client re-announces itself many times during the start of the download, and it ignores the 30 minute announce interval.

According to TorrentFreak's Ernesto, who tells me he has tested the client first-hand, BitThief (a Swiss project, go figure) does what it promises by clocking higher download speeds on large swarms. On regular swarms, it performs about the same as any other client. But it also opens 500 simultaneous connections (compared to the Mainline client's default 80) so it hoses your router almost instantly.

These clients go against the fundamental purpose of BitTorrent: efficiently distributing files to a large number of peers at once.

But BitThief is total jerkware. Downloading without uploading? Seriously, what's the point? So you have to wait 20 minutes to download a file instead of 15 -- big deal. What's the rush? Is the world going to end if you don't get that Lost episode before everyone else?

I'm with Ernesto -- I hope these clients get banned on every tracker in the universe.
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/20...rent_bull.html





Digital Sales Boost Music Industry

Album sales drop yet again
Phil Gallo

The music biz can't stem the bleeding, but for now, digital tracks are proving to be a secure Band-aid.

Album sales dropped for a seventh consecutive year, but a dramatic increase in the sale of digital tracks helped keep the music industry afloat in 2006.

Some 588.2 million album units sold last year, down 4.9%, while consumers purchased 581.9 million digital tracks -- a 65% increase from 2005's 352.7 million sold. Nielsen SoundScan, which released the figures Thursday, counts a block of 10 tracks sold as an album.

However, while hits were created -- Daniel Powter's "Bad Day," Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" -- no top-selling artists generated follow-ups that did significant business.

Disney's "High School Musical" soundtrack was 2006's top seller at 3.7 million units -- the lowest total for the year's chart-topper in the 15 years SoundScan has been keeping sales figures.

Good news: Sales were spread around many different artists. Bad news: The bar for a "hit" is reduced and in many cases the return on investment for a label is smaller.

"High School Musical" is the first soundtrack to become the No. 1 album since "Titanic" sold 9.3 million copies in 2002, a feat that should have Disney -- an indie in the recorded music field -- smiling. But it should concern the rest of the business that no major label act could beat a TV soundtrack aimed at tweens.

As artists go, it was Rascal Flatts' year. Disc "Me and My Gang" (Lyric Street) was the top-selling album by a single artist at 3.5 million. The country trio also registered the year's biggest sales week, moving 722,000 copies of "My Gang" in the first week of its release. Band was tops in digital sales, and the biggest seller overall, edging Johnny Cash 4.97 million to 4.83 million. (Figure counts every album, video and track sold by the artist).

Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" topped the digital tracks list, selling 1.9 million copies. Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" was No. 2 at 1.6 million. Every title in the top 10 sold at least 1.28 million copies.

The Fray's "How to Save a Life" posted the year's biggest digital album sales tally: 198,000. And Akon's "Smack That" was the No. 1 ringtone, selling 1.6 million.

In market share, Universal Music Group remained No. 1 with 31.6%; Sony BMG Music Entertainment came in at 27.4%; Warner Music Group had 18.1%; and EMI held onto 10.2%.

Digital continues to make inroads as the number of albums sold as downloads doubled from 2005. Current albums represented 18.6 million units sold, a rise of 93.7%; 14 million catalog albums were scanned, a 108.9% spike; and 9.8 million deep catalog albums were downloaded, a 104.2% rise.

Digital albums represent 5.5% of all albums sold. Warner Music continued to build on its digital market share, rising 1.72% to 23.29% of the digital album universe. UMG is at 27.4% of all digital album sales, Sony BMG 24% and EMI 10%.

Sales of current physical albums came in at 363.9 million, a 6.5% drop from '05. Catalog was down 8.1% -- 210.2 million sold -- and deep catalog was at 148.4 million, a 2.8% dip.

As for genres, classical and soundtracks saw considerable bumps, rising 22.5% and 18.9%, respectively. Country was flat, and Christian/gospel rose 1.3%. The biggest-selling genre is rock at 170.1 million albums sold, but the genre was not tracked in 2005. R&B, at 117 million units sold, took a big hit, dropping 18.4% from the previous year. Rap sold 59.5 million units in 2006, falling 21%.

Year's data from Nielsen SoundScan revealed that customers are not going to record stores like they used to. Chain stores saw just 41% of all sales, down from 48% two years ago. Indie music stores account for 6% of all sales, down from 7% last year and 9% in '04.

On the other hand, nontraditional merchants -- online services, TV, kiosks at concert venues -- saw their sales grow 44% to 69.3 million. Mass merchant outlets like Wal-Mart and Target accounted for 40% of all sales, up 1% from '05 but 7% from 2002.

As has been the case for the last two years, 20% of all sales occurred during the last six weeks of the year.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956655.html





16-year-old Norwegian Filesharer Charged
Jan Libbenga

A 16-year-old from Stavanger in Norway who shared thousands of movies and songs through the P2P program Direct Connect, has been charged with illegal file-sharing, Norwegian Aftenposten reports.

The boy allegedly ran the Stavanger Dragon Hub, from where at least 7,000 movies, 150,000 songs and 20,000 video clips were shared illegaly.
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The server was tracked down last year by Norwegian law firm Simonsen, which is acting as regional representatives for the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The hub was closed immediately.

The 16-year-old now faces 60 days in jail and a fine of NOK4,000 ($644) if convicted. His parents could also be hit with "a six figure fine to compensate for lost revenues by the music and film industry". Lawyer Espen Tøndel still has to determine the exact amount.

Marte Thorsby of the recording industry organization IFPI told Dagbladet that the boy "was fully aware of his actions" and the case will be "a powerful signal to parents, who must pay more attention to what their children are doing,"

In 2005 a 36-year-old man from Oppland County was sentenced for sharing film and music files. The Sandefjord man placed material on his employer's server to facilitate the illegal transfers. A police raid revealed more than 60,000 pirated film and music files.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01...ged/print.html





Unsigned Band Set to Crash Charts
Ian Youngs

Essex rock band Koopa could become the first unsigned group to land a UK top 40 hit thanks to new chart rules.

Their download-only single Blag, Steal & Borrow is on course to enter Sunday's top 40, early sales figures suggest.

Chart rules were changed at the start of January to count all digital single sales, even if there is no CD version.

"It's fantastic that a band like us can have an opportunity to put ourselves into the top 30 with Razorlight and U2," manager Gary Raymond told the BBC.

Until 1 January, an artist needed to release singles on CD or another physical format - and therefore have a record deal - to qualify for the chart.

But bands who sell songs themselves through approved download services are now eligible.

Koopa were at number 17 in the unofficial midweek chart - based on Monday's sales - and are expected to end up in the lower half of this week's top 40.

"With the new rules, it does give hope for genuine talent," singer and bassist Joe Murphy said.

"You don't need to be dictated to by the big boys, by the record labels.

"You can release a song and if you've got the fanbase and people buy it, you'll get into the charts - it's great."

Other unsigned bands with healthy followings were likely to follow suit, he said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few more but it would be great if we could be the first."

Gig veterans

Koopa, from Colchester, have been together for seven years in various forms and have built up a fanbase on the internet and on the live circuit.

They have played almost 500 gigs in the past three years, including a headline show at the Mean Fiddler in London last summer.

Record labels have already contacted them on the strength of this week's chart showing.

"It's absolutely out of this world and fingers crossed it could be the start of a good career for us," Murphy said.

"If someone comes along and gives us an offer, we'll talk to them.

"But it depends whether we need it. If we can get enough exposure and get in the top 40 by the end of the week, do we necessarily need a large label?

"Probably nowadays, no you don't. We'll get the exposure ourselves just from being in the charts."

Their success is a result of years of hard work, he said.

"It's not easy to get people buying, and we've done quite well because we're quite big on things like MySpace so we've been able to advertise ourselves via the internet.

"But it's not as easy as people think, even with the new rules. They need to be genuine bona fide sales."

Mobile downloads

The live experience is just as important as sites like MySpace, according to Mr Raymond.

"There's no point being an internet band. You've got to be a live band and you've got to be able to hack it."

The bulk of Koopa's followers are teenagers who are buying the single using a mobile phone rather than an online store, Mr Raymond believes.

It costs £1.50 to send a text message and receive a code to download the song on a computer.

"The average 16-year-old doesn't have a credit card but they've got a mobile phone," the manager explains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/6248535.stm





AOL, Now Focused on Free, Sells Its Paid Music Service
Saul Hansell

After six years of trying to build an online music service, AOL agreed yesterday to sell its AOL Music Now to Napster. Napster will pay $15 million to add AOL’s 350,000 subscribers to its own 566,000.

The price amounts to about $43 a subscriber, which appears low considering that Napster — which only sells a music service — is valued at $186 million, or $328 a subscriber.

One reason may be that AOL’s music business has been shrinking quickly. It had 450,000 subscribers in the middle of 2006, when the company stopped marketing the service as part of a shift away from fee-based businesses.

“AOL is treating this like a nonessential business,” said Fred Moran, an analyst with the Stanford Group. He said the deal was positive for Napster, which disclosed in September that it had hired investment bankers to evaluate potential acquisition offers. The bankers are still working, said a Napster spokeswoman, Dana M. Harris, who would offer no details.

Napster’s shares rose by 30 cents, to $4.12.

AOL is now focused on free sites supported by advertising, and it continues to operate AOL Music, the second-most-popular music destination on the Internet.

AOL first helped found MusicNet, a consortium that included several record labels and the digital media company RealNetworks. It introduced a music service based on MusicNet in 2003. In October 2005, AOL bought Music Now, a similar service that had been owned by the electronics retailer Circuit City. The price was reported at the time to be $10 million to $15 million, although AOL would not confirm it.

AOL’s services, much like Napster and Rhapsody, which is now owned by RealNetworks, mainly offer subscriptions for unlimited song downloads, but the songs stop playing if the customer does not pay the monthly bill.

This model has not proved to be as popular as the à la carte model used by Apple’s iTunes Store. One reason is that music from the subscription services cannot be played on Apple’s popular iPod players. AOL, Rhapsody and Napster all use software from Microsoft that lets their songs play on a variety of players from Samsung, Creative, iRiver and other manufacturers. But none of these devices have come close to challenging the iPod. Microsoft further confused the market last year when it introduced its Zune player, which was not compatible with any subscription services other than its own.

This month, the Virgin Group said that it would close its Virgin Digital music service.

AOL and Napster both charge new customers $9.95 a month if they want to listen to music only on a computer and $14.95 a month if they want to use a portable player as well. Some AOL subscribers have been paying $8.95 a month, and Napster will continue to honor that price for them. AOL customers will be converted to Napster unless they choose to cancel their subscriptions.

As part of the arrangement, Napster, based in Los Angeles, will promote its service on AOL’s music pages, and it will make additional payments to AOL if it reaches certain new subscriber targets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/te...13napster.html





Interpreting the Beatles Without Copying
Allan Kozinn

Lately I’ve been wondering why, as a more than casual Beatles fan, I’m not interested in note-perfect covers by Beatles tribute bands, even though, as a classical music critic, I happily spend my nights listening to re-creations — covers, in a way — of Beethoven symphonies and Haydn string quartets. What, when it comes down to it, is the difference?

Obviously, this is something of a comparison between apples and oranges: we first heard the Beatles’ music on their own recordings, whose sounds are imprinted on our memories and are definitive. Our first encounters with, say, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were through performances that, however spectacular, have no direct link to Beethoven himself. Yet Beethoven’s score of the work is a detailed blueprint of how he expected it to sound, and any performance will be governed by that, allowing for interpretive leeway that may be subtle or dramatic. A cover band, hoping to reproduce the original recording, has less flexibility.

But a new album by the Smithereens shows how much interpretive leeway a rock band can have, even when it intends to perform faithful covers. The disc, “Meet the Smithereens!” (Koch), which comes out next week, reproduces the track lineup and, to a great degree, the original arrangements (at the original tempos and in the original keys) of the Beatles’ 1964 American breakthrough album, “Meet the Beatles!” But it does more: the 12 songs are filtered through the Smithereens’ own crunchy New Jersey bar-band sound, a quality likely to come through even more strongly when the band plays the album live at the B. B. King Blues Club and Grill tonight.

The Smithereens made their name playing their own material, but they have recorded Beatles songs before, and they have always had a soft spot for the concision and zest of British Invasion bands. So they approach this music as fans who know it intimately, but also as composers who know what makes a great song durable.

They are hardly the first to cover a complete Beatles album. Big Daddy recorded a doo-wop version of the full “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the early 1990s. Phish released a live performance of the complete “White Album” in 1994. In the late ’80s, the Slovenian art-rock band Laibach released “Let It Be,” a ponderous, reordered version of the Beatles’ album of the same name, albeit without the title track.

What makes “Meet the Smithereens” unusual is the degree to which, like a good classical performance, it balances fidelity to the original with a projection of the interpreter’s style. Typically, Beatles covers and pop covers in general are an interpreter’s art and emphasize the performer’s vision. After all, if you don’t have a distinctive perspective, even one as off the wall as Laibach’s, why should someone listen to your version instead of just playing the original?

Tribute acts, by contrast, are purely recreative. Their goal is to reproduce a band’s music rather than to make their own mark on it. The Smithereens acknowledge this world without quite joining it. These days, everyone from the Grateful Dead to R.E.M. has its own shadow specialists. But Beatles tribute bands have long been a global industry.

Many, though by no means all, borrow a page from the Elvis impersonators’ playbook and turn their performances into theater pieces. They dress up in period costumes, changing from short to long wigs, moving from collarless jackets to psychedelic outfits and affixing paste-on beards and mustaches as the show progresses. And they imitate the Beatles’ accents and jokey patter. (A band that takes this approach, 1964 the Tribute, is playing at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 27.)

I’ve never understood the appeal. When I saw “Beatlemania” on Broadway, in the late 1970s, I admired the stage band’s skill, but left the theater feeling I’d have been better off listening to the records and paging through old Life magazines. And watching other faux mop-tops trading on Beatles nostalgia over the years, I’ve always felt a little embarrassed for the musicians, who had clearly devoted significant effort to learning arrangements that in some cases were too complex for even the Beatles themselves to perform live, yet who were sublimating their personalities (and musicianship) to the business of role-playing.

Which is not to say that what they do is without merit; quite the opposite. For anyone who has listened closely to how the Beatles’ vocal and instrumental arrangements work, it’s hard not to admire the musicianship of bands that reproduce it accurately. Still, you could argue that at least some of the Beatles’ music — recorded layer by layer, carefully polished in the studio, and using tape loops, backward sounds and other innovations — is actually electronic music: the recordings are the score and the performance, self-contained, just as much as a tape work by Stockhausen is.

Even so, those recordings can be transcribed fairly precisely, as Tetsuya Fujita, Yuji Hagino, Hajime Kubo and Goro Sato demonstrated in “The Beatles Scores” (published by Hal Leonard in 1993), and those transcriptions can be learned and recreated live with startling exactitude, just as the score of a Shostakovich symphony can. And Glenn Gould’s manifestos about the death of the concert notwithstanding, there will always be something electrifying in a live performance that cannot be captured on a recording.

That live experience is something tribute bands offer that can no longer be had from the Beatles themselves (although Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr still perform their old hits on tour). For that matter, tribute bands offer something — quite a lot, actually — that the Beatles never did. Between late 1962 and the summer of 1966, the Beatles recorded 118 songs. But during their international touring years (starting in late 1963), they played a mere 33 songs in concert. The last album from which they played any material live was the 1965 LP “Rubber Soul”; thereafter, they recorded another 100 songs on six albums. With technology far beyond what the Beatles had (sampling keyboards, in particular), tribute bands can play them all.

That said, when a string quartet plays Haydn, it doesn’t set out to produce an unvaried copy of what’s in the score. The players make interpretive decisions about tempos, balances and tone color; ideally, a quartet’s reading will breathe differently from night to night, and will be distinct from a competing ensemble’s account. And except for the occasional misconceived children’s concert, quartets don’t don Haydn-era wigs and costumes, or adopt Austrian accents.

This is what I like about “Meet the Smithereens!”: it bridges the extremes of note-for-note fidelity and pure interpretation, offering the best of both worlds. The band has treated “Meet the Beatles!” as a symphony, a complete cultural artifact, to be heard intact. It barely matters that “Meet the Beatles!” was not quite the album the Beatles intended, but rather a compilation made by Capitol Records, using 9 of the 14 songs from the group’s British album “With the Beatles,” as well as three songs released as singles. For American listeners who discovered the Beatles at the time, as the Smithereens did, “Meet” has an emotional resonance that “With” does not.

The arrangements on “Meet the Smithereens!” have all the vibrant energy and directness of the originals, and even minor details like the keyboard glissandos in “Little Child” and the overdubbed handclaps on “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” are faithfully preserved.

Yet you wouldn’t mistake it for the Beatles, as you might with a tribute band. Pat DiNizio’s vocals have the dark, slightly flattened quality you hear on signature Smithereens songs like “Blood and Roses” or “A Girl Like You,” and if his guitar solos follow the contours of George Harrison’s, they aren’t slavishly identical.

Where the Beatles moved to acoustic guitars for “Till There Was You” — the only cover on “Meet the Beatles!” — the Smithereens opted to keep it electric, with a touch of distortion, and to abandon the saccharine quality that Paul McCartney brought to the vocal.

The guitar tone and effects, and the way the vocal harmonies are balanced on, for example, “This Boy” and “Hold Me Tight,” are the Smithereens’ own. And so are their accents. The album manages to scream Beatles 1964 and Smithereens 2007 all at once.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/ar...ic/13beat.html





Microsoft Pulls Four Planned Patches
Joris Evers

Microsoft has pulled four bulletins from its announced list of Patch Tuesday fixes, but did not specify why it was backpedaling on the security releases.

It now plans to issue four security bulletins on Tuesday, rather than the eight originally announced, the software giant said Friday in an updated notice on its Web site.

Three bulletins will contain fixes for Office, at least one of which will be rated "critical," Microsoft said. Critical vulnerabilities typically can allow a worm to spread or allow a Windows system to be fully compromised with minor or no interaction from the person using it. The fourth bulletin, for Windows, is also tagged critical.

On Thursday, Microsoft listed eight bulletins it intended to issue next week in its monthly patch cycle. It appears to have pulled two bulletins for Windows, one for Windows and Visual Studio and one for Windows and Office. These patches will now likely be released on a future Patch Tuesday.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant did not provide any explanation for pulling the bulletins only a few days before their scheduled release. "There are many factors that impact the release of a security update, and every vulnerability presents its own unique challenges," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mailed statement.

The company does not specify ahead of time which security vulnerabilities are addressed by its patches. As a result, it's unknown what security holes will now be left without a fix. eEye Digital Security, on its Zero-Day Tracker Web site, lists eight zero-day vulnerabilities that Microsoft still has to address, with four each in Office and Windows.

Zero-day vulnerabilities are security holes that have been publicly disclosed without a fix being available. In some cases, exploit code may be available for such a flaw, and there may be cyberattacks that take advantage of it. However, Microsoft's patches often address vulnerabilities that have not been publicly disclosed.

The company sometimes deviates from the Patch Tuesday advance notification. Last month, for example, it issued one more security bulletin than it had said it would. It has also dropped bulletins, citing quality issues. However, it has never before pulled four bulletins.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+pulls+...3-6147705.html





Threatened by the Internet, Time Magazine Slims Down
David Carr

Richard Stengel, the managing editor of Time, took his wife and kids out to dinner Friday night.

As historic moments go, it was not such a big deal, but it reflects a seismic change. Time, the magazine that has been coming out every Monday for over 36 years, hit the streets on Friday instead.

Stengel said in his editor's note christening the issue that the switch had been made because, "I believe that getting the magazine on newsstands on Friday helps us set the news agenda."

It is hard to see how that will happen, except by feeding the Sunday morning talk shows some fresh grist. But unlike revolutions that have been announced at Time before, only to fizzle, this change is coming from above.

Time Inc. management, on the advice of consultants from McKinsey, is trying to cut costs, reflecting the brutal realities of the mass magazine business. At the end of the month, there will be significant layoffs at the magazine division, and it will not be limited to cuts among Time's 280 editorial employees. Other magazines in the Time Warner division will re-engineer and cut as well.

At Time, Stengel has moved swiftly. In the past six months, the huge rate base of Time magazine has been cut by almost 20 percent, the street date has been moved, and at the end of the month, the standard editorial model — a centralized, well-paid cadre processing every bit of copy that appears in print — will be kaput, replaced by a leaner enterprise built on star voices who will presumably get less editing.

And a tremendous amount of effort has been expended on Time's new Web site, which makes its debut Monday. It is thought by many at the magazine that the highly regarded editor there, Josh Tyrangiel, will one day take over whatever Time magazine/Time.com becomes.

Of course, there are those who would argue that in a society that seems to have no general interest (other than, say, Paris Hilton and the Super Bowl) there is no room or need for a general interest magazine. But Stengel said he would not be imprisoned by the tyranny of big numbers in making changes at Time.

"I think it is a false choice to say that something that is mass has to be dumbed down," he said. "We want to be accessible, but we want our readers to know that we understand they are smart."

To do this, he is prepared to eschew Time's historically Olympian editorial voice, and its penchant for cover articles that track trends in lifestyle, and instead present point-of-view journalism, booking "revered economist Jeffrey Sachs" and "great modern historian and Harvard University professor Niall Ferguson" as contributors.

In the current issue of Time, the new order seems long on convention, if not consistency. Two somewhat battered hawks — William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Peter Beinhart, former editor of The New Republic — are given space to argue that American Greatness is still a pretty great idea.

Kristol is stumping for a plan by Frederick Kagan, a military analyst and neocon favorite, while a few pages away the veteran Time writer Michael Duffy (who describes The Weekly Standard as "the neocons' house organ") names Kagan as one of the authors of the so-called surge plan that will commit still more American troops to the war in Iraq.

Stengel sees no problem with what seems like a U-turn in the middle of the magazine. "I am giving the reader two interesting takes," he said, "and saying to them: 'You are smart enough to figure it out, and I will help you do that.'"

Print publishing is becoming a business built on rich people who read. Information that can be digitized and commoditized, like the kind of data that weeklies historically traded in, ends up being consumed on the Web.

Magazines that are prospering now offer an environment that cannot be replicated online. You cannot open your browser and have an experience akin to the September issue of Vogue, with its hundreds of pages of trendy ads mixed in with chatty, breathless articles. The physical properties of a magazine have become increasingly important.

In its current state, a meager weekly printed on increasingly thin paper, Time magazine is not much of a thing to behold. But Stengel said that more will be revealed over the next few months when the redesign of the magazine and the Web site are complete.

"We want our magazine to be much more, to be seen as a premium product, a special and beautiful thing," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/...iness/carr.php





Layoffs Imminent at The Philadelphia Inquirer
Katharine Q. Seelye

The Philadelphia Inquirer was expected to announce Wednesday that it would lay off 68 to 71 employees, or about 17 percent of the newsroom staff, just seven months after a group of local business executives took over the newspaper and its sister publication, The Daily News.

The Daily News is exempt from this round of cuts.

The announcements began Tuesday night as editors called employees at home. With The Inquirer's advertising revenue and circulation down, employees have known for months that layoffs were coming and have been finding their place on the seniority list so that they could try to make plans.

"The guillotine has finally fallen," said Dawn Fallik, a medical reporter for who has been at The Inquirer for four years and will be laid off. "In a way, it's kind of a relief."

The Newspaper Guild, which represents newsroom employees at the two papers, recently concluded bitter contract negotiations that nearly led to a strike. Editors and reporters had been told that if they did not compromise on economic issues, as many as 150 people could be laid off.

"This number is significantly less than the numbers that had been discussed earlier," said Jay Devine, a spokesman for Brian Tierney, the publisher of the papers and one of the new owners.

Still, the layoffs will continue a contraction of The Inquirer, which in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s had a staff of more than 500, with 15 foreign bureaus. Today, the staff numbers about 400, with one foreign bureau. It lost more than 75 people in buyouts a year ago.

The Daily News cut 25, leaving its newsroom with about 109.

Among those who received calls Tuesday night and was told he was losing his job was Jeff Shields, a reporter who covers gambling, a young and growing industry in Pennsylvania.

"These last two weeks, knowing this was coming, have really been Kafkaesque," said Shields, who has two children and has been at the paper for almost four years. He said he hoped to parlay his knowledge of the gambling industry into a job at a paying Web site or doing research.

A subject he would like to write about is the effect of casinos on their hometowns — "the kind of story you might pitch to an editor but in this day and age would never get approved," he said, alluding to declining ambitions at many daily newspapers.

His editor, Eugene Kiely, is also leaving The Inquirer, although voluntarily, and will take a job at USA Today. He said he wanted to continue his newspaper career at a place he thought would have stability.

The Philadelphia papers were sold in March by the Knight Ridder chain to McClatchy, another newspaper group. McClatchy, in turn, sold them to a group of local business owners, led by Tierney, an advertising and public relations executive.

Tierney hailed his entry into the newspaper business as a turning point, both for the Philadelphia papers and the industry, as he took the reins from a distant corporate owner and began a much-watched experiment in local, private ownership without having to answer to Wall Street investors.

But things changed over the summer as advertising revenue for papers across the country plummeted and circulation continued its years-long decline. At The Inquirer, the consolidation of local department stores and telecommunications companies has meant fewer ads, with revenue falling 10 percent in September 2006, from September 2005.

Daily circulation fell 7.6 percent, to 330,000, in the last year. Sunday circulation was down 4.5 percent, to 682,000, in the same period.

The newsroom was initially cautious but hopeful when Tierney took over, but since the contract settlement, the mood has shifted to resignation.

"If it's a new day for local journalism, it's a sour day," said Stu Bykofsky, a columnist at The Daily News. At least with Knight Ridder, he said, there were buyouts, not layoffs.

A few years ago, The Inquirer hired more than 40 young reporters as part of a major expansion into the suburbs. Now many of those jobs are being eliminated.

In the recent contract negotiations, however, the company won the right to exempt certain reporting beats from seniority rules so it could keep some of the younger reporters, depending on how much time they had spent on a beat.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/...ness/paper.php





Copyright Suit in China Called Opening Salvo in Media War
Howard W. French

A lawsuit that has been filed by one of China's largest newspapers against one of the country's leading Internet portals over the issue of massive copyright violations is being described here as the opening salvo in a media war.

In the suit, which was filed in October and is expected to go to court soon, The Beijing News is seeking $400,000 in damages from a popular Internet site called Tom.com for having copied and republished more than 25,000 articles and photographs without authorization since 2003.

In recent years, China has acquired a reputation as a sort of no-man's land for intellectual property rights, with companies in virtually every industry freely copying designs and other content both from foreign companies and from domestic rivals with little fear of punishment.

The Beijing News lawsuit, however, comes at a time of accelerating legal reform efforts and signs of increased attempts by law enforcement agencies to protect copyrights and other forms of intellectual property. The suit also comes at a critical time for China's newspaper industry, which has experienced explosive growth in the past decade or so only to find itself confronted with an even faster growing rival in the form of new Internet-based media.

Now, as has happened in the United States and many other countries, with computer usage and broadband access both booming here, newspapers are losing readers — especially among young, prosperous city dwellers — to large corporate-owned Web sites. What set China apart from much of the rest of the world, until recently, was that these Web sites faced no legal obstacles in copying material from newspapers, often wholesale.

"There is a very brutal competition between newspapers, with seven or eight big ones just in Beijing, and now a big new player, the Internet, wants to wipe them all out, to change the landscape," said Yu Guofu, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property matters.

"The press is leading a hard life and facing an unpleasant future, but it has decided it is better to protect its rights than just sit and wait to die," Yu said.

According to one recent academic study, newspaper readership in China has declined sharply in the past three years, with the proportion of people who say they read a newspaper at least once a week falling to 22 percent from 26 percent since 2003.

A major presumed cause for the decline is that big Internet content providers, or portals, have become one- stop sources for all manner of information, from news and entertainment to blogs. Until recently, for most portals the general practice involved lifting news and other information directly from other sources, sometimes crediting the original source and sometimes not, but rarely paying for it.

In Europe, Google is awaiting a ruling, likely this month, in a copyright dispute with Belgian newspaper publishers after the introduction of Google News Belgium. In November, Google settled with two Belgian groups representing photographers and journalists for undisclosed terms.

Google News, which made its debut in 2002, scans thousands of news outlets and highlights articles in various categories. Google asserts that its service benefits publishers by bringing readers to their Web. But the French news agency Agence France-Presse has sued Google in U.S. District Court in Washington, arguing that the Google service adds little value because its news site looks much like those of AFP subscribers. Meanwhile Google has agreed to pay The Associated Press for articles and photographs. But neither Google nor the AP has disclosed financial terms.

The Beijing News lawsuit comes a little more than a year after a meeting of major newspaper publishers in Nanjing at which strategies were discussed to shore up the industry's base and combat the loss of content — and readers — to China's large Internet companies.

Representatives of The Beijing News declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for Tom.com, Tu Jianglu, denied the alleged violations.

"As a big company, we respect copyright and property rights," he said. "I can only say that there are other facts that make this more complicated."

Until recently, China's laws have generally been anything but clear on intellectual property issues. Moreover, they made it difficult to successfully sue over an alleged infringement.

Such an environment may have served the country's needs well earlier in China's industrial takeoff, amid a huge push to master new technologies.

The battle in the news media reflects part of a broader shift in the intellectual property landscape as China's growing place in world trade has brought strong new pressures to rein in wholesale piracy.

Many of the country's largest Internet companies, for example, are listed on foreign stock exchanges, making them liable for lawsuits filed abroad.

"We've signed agreements with over 1,000 traditional news organizations in China, which means that if we use their articles or reports, we definitely have reached prior agreement with them," said Zhang Xin, a spokeswoman for Sina.com, one of China's largest portals.

Very gradually, an awareness also seems to be taking hold that China's companies must build strong brands of their own to be successful, and that this cannot be accomplished in an environment where copying goes unpunished.

"To enhance the country's development we are trying to encourage innovation," said Xu Chao, vice director of the National Copyright Bureau.

"We are placing more emphasis on intellectual property and have made improvements in the law. It used to be possible for traditional media or Internet media to simply copy each other's work, but now this has been forbidden."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/.../copyright.php





Deleting Online Predators Act: R.I.P.
Steve O'Hear

It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety and sites like MySpace. The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding — therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space.

A "commercial social networking website" was defined by the act as any web service that:

"…allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users; and offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger."

Despite opposition from teachers, librarians, internet activists (and a few politicians), DOPA was passed in the House of Representatives and moved up to the Senate. Then what happened?


As Andy Carvin blogs:

…something quite unexpected happened: nothing. With all the criticism being lobbed by the blogosphere and the media, DOPA found itself among a group of skeptical senators who were in no rush to pass the legislation.

To make matters worse (for supporters of the act) the Mark Foley scandal took place. Followed by a number of the act's main sponsors losing their seats.

But the final nail in DOPA’s coffin came with the switch of Congress from Republican to Democrat. Legislation that doesn’t get signed into law by the end of a congressional term has to start from scratch during the next term. In January, the Democrats will be in charge of both houses of Congress, and there’s no sign that they’re going to rush and re-introduce DOPA.

It's very unlikely that we will ever see DOPA return in its current form, and hopefully, if the issue arises again in the future (which is may well do) any new legislation will be better written and more sensibly debated than DOPA ever was. Having said that, much of the damage that would have been caused by DOPA has already happened, as many school districts routinely block access to much of the social web.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=55





Proposal

San Francisco's Wireless Broadband Internet Access (WiFi) Network

Process

San Francisco has undertaken a thorough, innovative, and transparent process to reach an audacious goal: free WiFi for our residents. By undertaking two competitive processes, we asked the citizens of San Francisco what theythought we should do and we asked the best and brightest technical minds what they thought we should do.

Call for Action: In his 2004 State of the City Address, Mayor Gavin Newsom outlined a vision of the future -- a future where no San Franciscan was to be without basic building blocks to personal economic freedom. Those building blocks include access to the internet and a computer.

RFI/C -- The City conducted a Request for Information/Comment, which solicited extensive public input including over 300 public comments and 26 proposals from the private and non-profit sectors for how best to provide affordable, universal WiFi. The City incorporated many of the ideas and practices that were presented in the RFI/C process into the RFP.

RFP -- A review panel of city employees and an internationally known outside consulting firm undertook a detailed analysis of the proposals, each ranking them according to a methodology outlined in the RFP. The scores were combined and a final rating created for each proposer. EarthLink was the highest scorer.

Negotiations -- For the past seven (7) months, a team of City employees and consultants have been negotiating an agreement between the City and EarthLink to provide at little or no cost to the City, affordable and ubiquitous wireless Internet Broadband service.

Public/Private Partnership

San Francisco is pursuing a cooperative model that leverages the collective strengths of the public and private sector as well as the community itself. This model is consistent with many other large cities.

The City is providing access to certain rights of way and assets.

Earthlink installs, manages, and operate wireless broadband Internet access networks in municipalities throughout the United States in order to provide wireless broadband products and services to governments, businesses and consumers.

Google contributes to our model by being the provider of the free service tier, and bringing innovative new applications and services to the network.

Agreement

San Francisco has negotiated an agreement that reflects a balanced approach to the provision of wireless broadband Internet services, taking into account a broad range of input, often contradictory. San Francisco has been able to negotiate an agreement that delivers more community benefit than any other City in the United States.

Consumer Choice: This agreement fundamentally reflects the resident's rights as a consumer -- to choose to use or not use the system.

Cost to the City: With no financial commitment, taxpayer burden or risk for the design, deployment, operation, maintenance or support of the network.

Term: A short, 4-year initial term, providing flexibility should market and/or technology changes occur. This is the shortest initial term of any U.S. city. The initial term of the agreement is four (4) years, with three (3) optional 4 year extensions.

Fees paid to the City:

$600,000 in guaranteed payments for access to the City's right of way.

An estimated $40,000 per year for the use of City facilities (street light poles);

A 5% share of all gross access revenues, estimated to generate $300,000 per year, depending on paying subscriber uptake. These funds may be used to fund computer and other equipment, training and self-help programs and community relevant content development.

Network Speed:

A 300 Kbps free tier of service for use by all residents, businesses and visitors. This 300 Kbps tier is adequate for most basic Internet tasks such as web, email and even VoIP. Assuming 30% uptake of the free tier of service, this generates more than $4 million in value per year for the community.

A 1 Mbps symmetric services at a price of $21.95 per month for all residents and businesses. With identical upload and download speeds, this service is faster than existing ADSL services, plus it brings the added benefit of nomadic and mobile use.

A 1 Mbps service at the discounted rate of $12.95 per month for up to 3,200 qualifying low-income residents. This service delivers an estimated $350,000 one year in community value.

More





Whoosh! Goes the Internet: International Research Team Blazes the Optical Trail with Record-Setting Molecules
Press Release

The internet could soon shift into overdrive thanks to a new generation of optical molecules developed and tested by a team of researchers from Washington State University, the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Chinese Academy of Science in China.

The new materials, organic molecules known as chromophores, interact more strongly with light than any molecules ever tested. That makes them, or other molecules designed along the same principles, prime candidates for use in optical technologies such as optical switches, internet connections, optical memory systems and holograms. The molecules were synthesized by chemists in China, evaluated according to theoretical calculations by a physicist at WSU and tested for their actual optical properties by chemists in Belgium.

“To our great excitement, the molecules performed better than any other molecules ever measured,” said WSU physicist Mark Kuzyk.

The team’s findings are published in the January 1 issue of the journal Optics Letters, available online at www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?msid=74078.

Ever since optical technologies became prominent in the 1970s, researchers have tried to improve the materials used to handle light. In 1999, Kuzyk discovered a fundamental limit to how strongly light can interact with matter. He went on to show that all molecules examined at that time fell far short of the limit. Even the best molecules had 30 times less “optical brawn,” as he calls it, than was theoretically possible. The molecules described in the new report break through this long-standing ceiling and are intrinsically 50 percent better than any previously tested, which means they are far more efficient at converting light energy to a useable form.

Earlier this year Kuzyk and two WSU colleagues published theoretical guidelines describing molecular structures that should excel at interacting with light. Koen Clays, a chemist at the University of Leuven in Belgium, had pioneered the use of a test called hyper-Rayleigh scattering to measure the strength of a molecule’s interaction with light. He was in the process of measuring molecules that had been sent to him by chemists from around the world, when he realized that some of his test molecules met the design criteria set forth in Kuzyk’s paper. One series of seven molecules, which had been supplied by chemist Yuxia Zhao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, looked especially promising. When lead author Xavier Perez-Moreno studied the molecules, he found that two of them showed a more powerful interaction with light than had ever been observed before.

"We found an excellent agreement with Kuzyk's theoretical results,” said Perez-Moreno. “We use the quantum limits to try to get a clearer view of the nonlinear optical interaction and we wish to unveil the unifying principles behind the interaction of light and matter—a very ambitious goal. This summer we set some of the foundations of the quantum limits framework."

Perez-Moreno, a native of Spain, is pursuing a joint Ph.D. degree through Washington State University’s Department of Physics and the University of Leuven’s Department of Chemistry. He will be the first WSU student to receive a doctoral degree in conjunction with a non-U.S. institution.

The new design parameters call for a molecular structure that increases a property known as the “intrinsic hyperpolarizability,” which reflects how readily electrons in the molecule deform when the molecule mediates the merger of two photons into one, an action which is the basis of an optical switch.

Other researchers in the field hailed the breakthrough.

“This is a great lead,” said Geoff Lindsay of the U.S. Navy Research Department. “I would say this is the greatest advance in organic dye hyperpolarizability theory since the field began.”

According to physicist Ivan Biaggio of Lehigh University, the work “is a very important contribution that may help the community to finally deliver the all-optical switching performances that are needed for tomorrow’s all-optical data-processing networks, an aim that has eluded researchers for 20 years.”

In the new designs, each molecule has a component at one end that donates an electron and a component at the other end that accepts an electron. In between is the “bridge” portion of the molecule. Previous efforts to boost the interaction with light focused on “smoothing out” the bridge to allow electrons to flow more easily from donor to acceptor end. Kuzyk’s calculations showed that a more “bumpy” structure actually enhanced the interaction with light; and Clays recognized that Zhao’s structures filled the bill – which was confirmed by measurements made by his group. Quantum mechanics explains the behavior of electrons in this situation, Kuzyk said.

“When you’re looking at something like an electron, you can’t really think of it as a classical little ball that’s moving around,” Kuzyk said. “In reality what ends up happening is that the electron is in a lot of places at the same time. When the electron is all spread out, it can be interfering with itself. By inserting these speed bumps, you’re causing it to bunch up in certain places, and preventing it from interfering with itself.”

The molecules described in the current report have just one “speed bump;’ now that researchers have confirmed that the theoretical designs work, they are synthesizing molecules with more bumps.

“The calculations show that the more bumps, the better,” said Kuzyk.

He said that for use in optical switches or other products, the molecules would probably be embedded in a clear polymer that would provide structural assets such as the ability to be formed into a thin film or into fibers, molded into other shapes or used to coat circuits or chips.

Kuzyk is Boeing Distinguished Professor and associate chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University. Clays is professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leuven and an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at WSU. Perez-Moreno is a graduate student jointly enrolled at WSU and the University of Leuven. Zhao is associate professor at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Their research was supported by the University of Leuven, the Belgian government, the Fund for Scientific Research in Flanders, the National Science Foundation and Wright-Paterson Air Force Base.

For more information, go to http://washington-state-magazine.wsu...May/kuzyk.html
http://www.wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=6216





Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Read This Column: Bob's Predictions for 2007.
Robert Cringely

This is my 2007 predictions column, where I first examine my predictions from 2006 to see how well or poorly I did (my multiyear average is around 75 percent) then provide a list of predictions for the current year that are sufficiently vague that I may be able to squint and claim that they were correct, too, a year from now.

I have to admit up front that it doesn't look good. I still think I am on track, but many things are taking longer to happen than I expected, especially from Apple.

1) I predicted that Apple would announce iPhone and iTV products as well as content deals. The content deals happened and some of the iTV technology was demonstrated, but I think we'll have to wait another week or so for the rest, so I guess I was wrong.

2) I said OS X would run on generic Intel hardware, though Apple wouldn't support it. This is true in the sense that people have made OS X run on generic Intel hardware, but APPLE hasn't, so the item is wrong.

3) More products, services, and a stock split for Google. I was right about the first bits but that's like predicting sunset will come. The split didn't happen because I never realized how much cash Google was going to generate -- far more than they can even spend. So the item is wrong.

4) More bad news for Sun. That's true.

5) IBM customers revolt. It is happening slower than makes sense, but yes, they are revolting. True.

6) More Vista delay. I'm going to claim this one because the Vista that's just appearing was delayed twice in 2006 alone and is a shadow of what it was intended to be. True.

7) PS3 is in trouble as is Howard Stringer. This is all true. The PS3 was late to market, the blue laser diode shortage has hurt the company, developers aren't amused, and the word inside Sony is that Sir Howard is toast. True.

8) WiMax will suffer under Sprint Nextel. My feeling here was that merging the two cell companies would be too distracting for them to do very much with their top asset (in my view) -- all those WiMax licenses. Since they didn't roll out much of anything in 2006, I'd say this one is true.

9) Media Center PCs still won't take off as they try to compete with cheaper embedded devices. True.

10) TiVo will be bought. Obviously wrong, though I still don't see the company surviving as an independent. Wrong.

11) Intel will rebrand itself and nobody will notice. Intel did, we didn't -- true.

12) No desktop OS or PC from Google. People (not me) were absolutely convinced this time last year that Google was going head-to- head against Windows. Nope. It didn't happen, and won't. I was correct.

13) Skype won't make much, if any, money for eBay in 2006 (or 2007). Skype got a lot of press and moved a long way toward building a better service that makes more business sense, but the company is still at least a year away from making money. True.

14) Yahoo will surprise us. Wrong. Yahoo is in a crisis from which the company may not recover with current management. Sigh.

15) Apple will license technology from Burst. They should have by now but the companies are still fighting in court. For those following the fight, a hearing on February 8th will lead to a decision less than a month later that will tightly define this patent battle in a way that will make one party or the other very happy. Nothing will happen until after that so-called Markman Claims Construction ruling, but then events should move forward quickly. Still, I was WRONG.

That is my worst performance EVER. I got nine of 15 predictions correct for a 60 percent average. In my defense I'll point out that just because I am wrong now doesn't mean I'll still be wrong in another week. Three years ago I predicted Intel would support AMD's 64-bit instruction extensions, but they took 53 weeks to do so, making me off by seven days. I think that by the end of February, 2-3 of these predictions could still swing the other direction.

But enough weaseling -- on to 2007! These are in no particular order:

1) Apple releases iTV, a bunch of flat-panel MacTV's that contain Mac Minis, etc. This is broken record and exactly what I predicted last year, but I still mean it.

2) Apple settles with Burst.com, takes a license, etc. Same broken record, same reason.

3) Apple (this is the last one, I promise) drops Akamai in favor of a different edge-serving CDN (content delivery network) -- possibly Apple's own or one Apple-labeled but Google-owned. I keep looking for a reason why Eric Schmidt is on the Apple board.

4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing.

5) AMD and Intel continue to beat the crap out of each other with customers gaining but wondering why there is no software that supports those new 8-way processors, as both compilers and third-party developers fail to keep up.

6) Sony solves Blu-ray laser diode problem just in time for IBM to suffer production difficulties with the Cell processor. More bad news for Sony.

7) The Sony news is SO bad that it deserves two predictions. I would predict the fall of CEO Howard Stringer again if there were clearly somebody at Sony who wants his job. The business is in such difficulty that Microsoft is discussing internally how to help Sony from going under, since that would create a raft of antitrust problems for Redmond. I am not making this up.

8) Speaking of Microsoft, Windows Vista SP1 ships in June despite the fact that Vista structurally shouldn't require service packs. Except it will.

9) Zune 2.0 appears, isn't brown, but still nobody buys it.

10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can't really deliver.

11) This one is subtle, you may have to read it twice. The year will see two kinds of large cap tech and media companies: those that destroy shareholder value quickly by acquiring companies and those that destroy shareholder value slowly by not acquiring them.

12) Some smart or lucky company will buy FeedBurner, which ought to be the YouTube or Skype equivalent for 2007. Yahoo really needs it and ought to buy, but being without a brain or a required sense of urgency Yahoo may miss the opportunity. Google ought to buy it but may not because Google has a similar service in beta that probably won't succeed. But SOME company will buy FeedBurner and start printing money as a result.

13) Sand Hill Road goes into a panic when it becomes clear that there is more money available than good opportunities for investing it, shades of 1999. No bubble this time, though, because the reasons behind the effect are different -- there is a decided lack of IPO activity -- but VCs will still be excessively crashing their MacLaren F1s as they see their era fading.

14) Remember outsourcing and offshoring? That tide turns for a bunch of reasons but mainly because a new class of CEOs will say the old class of CEOs was filled with idiots.

15) Google's Grand Plan is finally revealed, explaining all. Hey, wait, that's next week's column!
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2...05_001440.html





EBay Pressured to Move on Skype

Analysts worry that the online auctioneer is moving too slowly on its multibillion-dollar investment. Will more content allay their concerns?
Olga Kharif

When eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman acquired Skype in fall 2005, she said, "by combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with [Skype], we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net." The deal, valued at $2.6 billion in cash and stock, plus an extra $1.5 billion in additional payments through 2009 if certain performance targets are met, set Wall Street tongues wagging.

Among the hoped-for gains: added business lines, new buyers and sellers to the auction site, and a jump-start for growth. But more than a year after the deal was struck, many analysts question whether eBay (EBAY) has done all it can to harness Skype and its technology. Some investors concur, as evidenced by the 20% decline in eBay's share price since September, 2005.

Some of the slump is due to concerns that eBay's core auctions business, accounting for 66% of sales, is slowing as e-commerce and online search competitors muscle their way onto eBay turf. Still, "strategic questions remain about Skype," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil—Media Metrics. "It's still unclear how it benefits the core eBay platform. And monetization [on eBay's investment] has been slower to occur than we had hoped."
Slow Mover

Analysts including Paul Keung, who covers eBay for CIBC World Markets, speculate that Skype didn't reach its first set of performance-based goals, resulting in missed payments, or so-called earn-outs. A recent management shuffle sent Skype President Alex Kazim back to an executive post at eBay after only six months. Skype declined to comment on earn-outs and claims Kazim left because his new responsibilities made for a long commute.

Sure, there's been movement in the right direction. The Web-calling outfit is expected to book $195 million in sales in 2006, three times the 2005 figure; in December, Skype introduced a subscription-based calling plan, and it's expected to announce other service fees and more paid service plans later this month.

The problem, say many on Wall Street, is the lack of a broader vision for Skype. "This is probably enough to offset regulation fees," Michael Arden, an analyst with consultancy ABI Research, says of the new fees. What's lacking is greater and speedier integration with other eBay properties and a grand, sweeping plan hinted at by Whitman and others at eBay back in 2005.
Skype's Potential

The company says big changes are on the way and that more of that vision will come to the fore. "We are working on developing new e-commerce- and content-oriented, and advertising-related revenue streams," says Don Albert, vice-president and general manager of Skype North America. For now, most of the company's sales derive from telecom services like SkypeOut, which allows for calls from PCs to phones. "Over time, we see these [other revenue streams] accounting for the larger share of Skype's revenues," Albert says.

Consider the potential in online search ad revenues. Since last August, Skype has been working with search heavyweight Google (GOOG) to enable so-called click-to-call ads, which let the user place a call to a desired number directly from a list of ads that appear next to search results. The new feature, due to be in place in late 2007, could let eBay offer a completely new category of listings—and maybe even to share in online advertising dollars collected by Google.

The company is also toying with the idea of offering contextual advertising as part of its new text chat and Skypecast feature, allowing dozens of users to join regular live conversations on various topics, or even virtual concerts, where members sing and play music instruments for each other. It's easy to imagine how a weekly chat on gadgets might feature ads for the latest phones from the likes of Motorola (MOT) or Nokia (NOK), which announced on Jan. 8 that it will integrate Skype into its new tablet PC. For now, Skypecast use is still limited.
eBay's Offerings

More promising are the possibilities of integrating Skype with other eBay properties. The auction site is expanding use of Skype Me! buttons in various auction categories. Limited data seems to show the feature helps clinch sales. Yet, sellers using Skype Me! buttons are "few and far between," because many sellers aren't interested in fielding phone calls, says Keung, who doesn't expect that attitude to change any time soon.

There's also wide latitude for integrating Skype with eBay's online payment service, PayPal. This year, PayPal will become the preferred payment method used on Skype worldwide. And, some time in 2007, Skype will enable users to send money to each other via PayPal, Albert says. That could increase eBay's share of the personal remittances business. Considering the size of Skype's user base (136 million users at the end of the third quarter), this move could hit money-transfer agents and banks hard and result in extra business for eBay.

All in all, though, telecommunications remains Skype's main focus. "We think there's a tremendous opportunity of capturing our consumers' telecom spending," Albert says. Indeed, while small today, the Web-calling business is expected to grow: Worldwide revenues from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)—a fancy name for Web calling—will rise from $1.65 billion in 2006 to $19.1 billion in 2012, according to ABI Research. If Skype keeps its current 12% share of that money, its sales will reach nearly $2.3 billion by 2012. That would certainly be material for eBay, which booked $1.45 billion in the third quarter of 2006.
New Leader Needed?

All of which leaves some analysts wondering: What is taking you so long? "They need to do something soon," says Arden. "If [some big move] is not announced, Skype is going to be seen as a bad investment." Some wonder why eBay hasn't moved to combine its properties, including Skype, to, say, start an online brokerage firm, a social-networking site competing with News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, or a video-sharing site like YouTube. Others say eBay could have begun selling its Skype application to more large companies.

Some query whether Skype might do better under a visionary like News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, or under Virgin's Richard Branson, says Web-calling expert Jeff Pulver. "If they are not getting all they can out of it, the property is still valuable, they've grown it a lot," says David Prokupek, the founder of Geronimo Financial, which invested in eBay stock as the auction powerhouse's valuation slid. "We suspect Skype is more valuable today than when they purchased it. In this [mergers and acquisitions] market, maybe someone else could do more with it." A spokesperson says eBay has no plans to sell or spin off Skype.

Whatever it does, eBay needs to move soon. A slew of competitors are pushing into its market. Take, for instance, an outfit called Jajah, backed by powerful venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The company allows for free calling between cell phones—a service that Skype users need to download additional software and to pay SkypeOut charges for (see BusinessWeek.com, 09/26/06, "Jajah's Mobile Ambitions"). It's just the kind of service eBay could make work. "They are pretty creative people," says Donald Yacktman, portfolio manager for the Yacktman Funds, which purchased eBay shares on price weakness last summer. It may just be a matter of putting that creative energy to work.
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...7s+top+stories





Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat
John Markoff

In their persistent quest to breach the Internet’s defenses, the bad guys are honing their weapons and increasing their firepower.

With growing sophistication, they are taking advantage of programs that secretly install themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, band these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and use the collective power of the dragooned network to commit Internet crimes.

These systems, called botnets, are being blamed for the huge spike in spam that bedeviled the Internet in recent months, as well as fraud and data theft.

Security researchers have been concerned about botnets for some time because they automate and amplify the effects of viruses and other malicious programs.

What is new is the vastly escalating scale of the problem — and the precision with which some of the programs can scan computers for specific information, like corporate and personal data, to drain money from online bank accounts and stock brokerages.

“It’s the perfect crime, both low-risk and high-profit,” said Gadi Evron, a computer security researcher for an Israeli-based firm, Beyond Security, who coordinates an international volunteer effort to fight botnets. “The war to make the Internet safe was lost long ago, and we need to figure out what to do now.”

Last spring, a program was discovered at a foreign coast guard agency that systematically searched for documents that had shipping schedules, then forwarded them to an e-mail address in China, according to David Rand, chief technology officer of Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based computer security firm. He declined to identify the agency because it is a customer.

Although there is a wide range of estimates of the overall infection rate, the scale and the power of the botnet programs have clearly become immense. David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher who is a co-founder of Damballa, a start-up company focusing on controlling botnets, said the consensus among scientists is that botnet programs are present on about 11 percent of the more than 650 million computers attached to the Internet.

Plagues of viruses and other malicious programs have periodically swept through the Internet since 1988, when there were only 60,000 computers online. Each time, computer security managers and users have cleaned up the damage and patched holes in systems.

In recent years, however, such attacks have increasingly become endemic, forcing increasingly stringent security responses. And the emergence of botnets has alarmed not just computer security experts, but also specialists who created the early Internet infrastructure.

“It represents a threat but it’s one that is hard to explain,” said David J. Farber, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist who was an Internet pioneer. “It’s an insidious threat, and what worries me is that the scope of the problem is still not clear to most people.” Referring to Windows computers, he added, “The popular machines are so easy to penetrate, and that’s scary.”

So far botnets have predominantly infected Windows-based computers, although there have been scattered reports of botnet-related attacks on computers running the Linux and Macintosh operating systems. The programs are often created by small groups of code writers in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and distributed in a variety of ways, including e-mail attachments and downloads by users who do not know they are getting something malicious. They can even be present in pirated software sold on online auction sites. Once installed on Internet-connected PCs, they can be controlled using a widely available communications system called Internet Relay Chat, or I.R.C.

ShadowServer, a voluntary organization of computer security experts that monitors botnet activity, is now tracking more than 400,000 infected machines and about 1,450 separate I.R.C. control systems, which are called Command & Control servers.

The financial danger can be seen in a technical report presented last summer by a security researcher who analyzed the information contained in a 200-megabyte file that he had intercepted. The file had been generated by a botnet that was systematically harvesting stolen information and then hiding it in a secret location where the data could be retrieved by the botnet master.

The data in the file had been collected during a 30-day period, according to Rick Wesson, chief executive of Support Intelligence, a San Francisco-based company that sells information on computer security threats to corporations and federal agencies. The data came from 793 infected computers and it generated 54,926 log-in credentials and 281 credit-card numbers. The stolen information affected 1,239 companies, he said, including 35 stock brokerages, 86 bank accounts, 174 e-commerce accounts and 245 e-mail accounts.

Sensor information collected by his company is now able to identify more than 250,000 new botnet infections daily, Mr. Wesson said.

“We are losing this war badly,” he said. “Even the vendors understand that we are losing the war.”

According to the annual intelligence report of MessageLabs, a New York-based computer security firm, more than 80 percent of all spam now originates from botnets. Last month, for the first time ever, a single Internet service provider generated more than one billion spam e-mail messages in a 24-hour period, according to a ranking system maintained by Trend Micro, the computer security firm. That indicated that machines of the service providers’ customers had been woven into a giant network, with a single control point using them to pump out spam.

The extent of the botnet threat was underscored in recent months by the emergence of a version of the stealthy program that adds computers to the botnet. The recent version of the program, which security researchers are calling “rustock,” infected several hundred thousand Internet-connected computers and then began generating vast quantities of spam e-mail messages as part of a “pump and dump” stock scheme.

The author of the program, who is active on Internet technical discussion groups and claims to live in Zimbabwe, has found a way to hide the infecting agent in such a way that it leaves none of the traditional digital fingerprints that have been used to detect such programs.

Moreover, although rustock is currently being used for distributing spam, it is a more general tool that can be used with many other forms of illegal Internet activity.

“It could be used for other types of malware as well,” said Joe Stewart, a researcher at SecureWorks, an Atlanta-based computer security firm. “It’s just a payload delivery system with extra stealth.”

Last month Mr. Stewart tracked trading around a penny stock being touted in a spam campaign. The Diamant Art Corporation was trading for 8 cents on Dec. 15 when a series of small transactions involving 11,532,726 shares raised the price of the stock to 11 cents. After the close of business that day, a Friday, a botnet began spewing out millions of spam messages, he said.

On the following Monday, the stock went first to 19 cents per share and then ultimately to 25 cents a share. He estimated that if the spammer then sold the shares purchased at the peak on Monday he would realize a $20,000 profit. (By Dec. 20, it was down to 12 cents.)

Computer security experts warn that botnet programs are evolving faster than security firms can respond and have now come to represent a fundamental threat to the viability of the commercial Internet. The problem is being compounded, they say, because many Internet service providers are either ignoring or minimizing the problem.

“It’s a huge scientific, policy, and ultimately social crisis, and no one is taking any responsibility for addressing it,” said K. C. Claffy , a veteran Internet researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

The $6 billion computer security industry offers a growing array of products and services that are targeted at network operators, corporations and individual computer users. Yet the industry has a poor track record so far in combating the plague, according to computer security researchers.

“This is a little bit like airlines advertising how infrequently they crash into mountains,” said Mr. Dagon, the Georgia Tech researcher.

The malicious software is continually being refined by “black hat” programmers to defeat software that detects the malicious programs by tracking digital fingerprints.

Some botnet-installed programs have been identified that exploit features of the Windows operating system, like the ability to recognize recently viewed documents. Botnet authors assume that any personal document that a computer owner has used recently will also be of interest to a data thief, Mr. Dagon said.

Serry Winkler, a sales representative in Denver, said that she had turned off the network-security software provided by her Internet service provider because it slowed performance to a crawl on her PC, which was running Windows 98. A few months ago four sheriff’s deputies pounded on her apartment door to confiscate the PC, which they said was being used to order goods from Sears with a stolen credit card. The computer, it turned out, had been commandeered by an intruder who was using it remotely.

“I’m a middle-aged single woman living here for six years,” she said. “Do I sound like a terrorist?”

She is now planning to buy a more up-to-date PC, she said.
http://news.com.com/Attack+of+the+zo...l?tag=nefd.top





CES: Like Woodstock for Marketing Execs
Michael Kanellos

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is more than a nearly week-long peek into the future of home electronics. It's also a panicky mob of people from all over the world trying to figure out who will be the winners and losers in a multibillion-dollar global business.

Here are some expected highlights of the massive event, which kicks off at 6:30 p.m. PST Sunday with a preshow keynote address by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and then runs through Thursday.

• IPTV. Cellular carriers, TV networks and Microsoft are expected to announce initiatives (or flesh out previously announced plans) to deliver television programming over the Internet. An IPTV dream world will take time to create: program guides will need to be tweaked and it will need to be determined how consumers will pay for content. (Subscriptions? Pay per show?) Still, the concept has become inevitable, and it's moving forward fast. Two years ago at CES, high-ranking Microsoft execs talked about IPTV, and the idea seemed more like a distant vision.

This week, CBS Research released the results of a poll that said 56 percent of Americans knew they could watch programs by streaming them.

Samsung will even show off an RV rigged up with broadband to show the benefits of IPTV (South Koreans already get TV over the Net). So not so many years from now, you'll be able to say, "I've scoured the Internet and nothing's on."

Likely to discuss IPTV in their respective keynotes are Gates, not only chairman at Microsoft but also the company's CVS (chief V-neck sweater wearer); Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger, speaking Monday; and CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves, speaking Tuesday. Expect cable companies to chime in on the debate too.

• Home networks. Companies such as Cisco Systems, Intel and Gateway for years have tried to get consumers to link their TVs, PCs and stereos into home networks. So far, consumers haven't bitten to any large extent. But the sudden rise of Internet video, technologies like powerline networking and breakthroughs in wireless technology are giving the concept momentum.

Many companies at CES will announce wireless speakers and hubs. Cisco CEO John Chambers will likely tout the idea in his speech on Tuesday. Also that day, but on the other side of the Sierra Nevadas, Apple Computer will likely do the same at Macworld in San Francisco.

• Next-generation DVDs. Blu-ray and HD DVD kiss and make up. Earlier this week, I predicted that the two factions would settle their differences in a parking lot. LG Electronics beat the rush. On Wednesday, the South Korean manufacturer said it will offer a combo player in the first quarter. Many component manufacturers are producing parts for this as well. Questions remain. A combo player will likely be expensive, and it's unclear how many other manufacturers will follow LG's lead.

Still, the slow sales of these devices could prompt other companies to roll out plans for combo players. Pioneer was going to do it earlier, but scrapped its plans.

LG will provide details on its player on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. PST.

• The return of Sony. Sony historically has been synonymous with cutting-edge electronics and sterling design. Lately, though, it's also been linked with recalls, product shortages and delays. The Japanese giant will aim to use the show to rebound from the past two years. Although not on the keynote roster, executives such as CEO Howard Stringer will likely use the show as a stage to talk about what the future holds for Sony. Look for a number of products at the Sony booth.

• Dell comes back too. Dell's another company that didn't exactly have a stellar 2006. On the gadget front, market share figures also show that Dell has not done as well as smaller companies like Vizio or Westinghouse in digital TV. Michael Dell delivers a keynote on Tuesday, where he will launch an environmental initiative and likely trot out some Dell products. Other Dell execs will be on hand too.

• Car tech. The automotive pavilion at CES has been growing steadily. Although a lot of car manufacturers are revving up to make their big announcements at the Detroit Auto Show, which starts Sunday, expect to see a lot of gear for watching DVDs or storing MP3s in cars.

• Set-top boxes in stores. Remember back in the '90s, when visionaries talked up intelligent set-top boxes that could retrieve information from the Internet, bring movies on demand, and provide other information? The concept fizzled, but it's now making a comeback. By the middle of 2007, cable companies will be required to let consumers buy their own set-tops rather than rent them. Digeo, which years ago bought Moxi, and others will make announcements at the show.

• Bigger, brighter TVs. Manufacturers will come out with 1080p TVs, which offer the highest level of performance today. But expect to see Pioneer, Westinghouse and others show off TVs that provide even better performance. At Ceatec in Tokyo last October, Sharp showed off a TV that provides four times the resolution of the sharpest TVs today and the company will likely show off some novel technology at its press conference on Sunday and at its booth. Some Japanese companies have even sharper TVs.

Philips, which last year revealed a 3D TV initiative and later showed off its screen, will likely bring some of the sets along. Samsung is expected to dip a 3D toe in the water.

One TV you won't see, however, is Toshiba's SED TV. Legal issues prevent Toshiba from showing it in the states, sources say.

• Home defense technology. There's always a great collection of night scopes, Taser guns and personal-defense items at CES. I'm not sure why, but this stuff is always great to see.

• Hard drives vs. flash memory. Before CES formally begins, there will be Storage Visions, where hard-drive makers will tout terabyte drives and hybrid drives, while flash makers show how they plan to get into notebooks. Ideally, the conference would conclude with a pushup contest to decide a winner, but that's another decision that will be left to the marketplace.

• WiMax. It's coming for notebooks, but expect more later in the quarter when Intel formally introduces its new line of notebook chips.
http://news.com.com/CES+Like+Woodsto...3-6147618.html





A Cool Gadget Here, an A-List Chieftain There
Richard Siklos

WITH the end of the holidays comes a fresh start and new resolve to lead a loftier, healthier, simpler life. Maybe it’s time to tend the garden, take up the harpsichord or read Proust. Then, before you know it, everyone in the media business hops on planes to Las Vegas and swarms the Consumer Electronics Show, which starts today.

More than the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys or the endless investment bank conferences and guru gatherings where media honchos strut, C.E.S., as the event is known, has quickly emerged in the last few years as the Super Bowl of cluster-huddles. Over the next few days, 150,000 people will jam convention center floors in the Nevada desert.

Sure, most of the people darting around the endless rows of display booths are either representatives of electronics, computer or software companies that are showing off their wares, or are buyers from retail chains trying to figure out what the must-have gizmo will be next Christmas.

But for the first time this year, the Consumer Electronics Association, host for the palaver, has tallied the number of media industry — or “content,” as they put it — attendees: about 10,000. The media chieftains Leslie Moonves of CBS and Robert A. Iger of the Walt Disney Company will occupy two of five slots for industry keynote speeches, which are increasingly seen as symbolically important for showing everyone how brilliant and tech-savvy one’s company is and how glorious its future is shaping up to be.

Last year, the keynote speakers included Sir Howard Stringer of Sony, Terry S. Semel of Yahoo and Larry Page of Google, accompanied on stage by the likes of Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, Robin Williams and Dan Brown, author of “The Da Vinci Code.” Peter A. Chernin of the News Corporation was the featured speaker at a big dinner the electronics association held for dignitaries.

In other words, this is the chance for media biggies to show that they know their Bluetooth from their Blu-Ray, their OutKast from their Comcast.

But there are deeper tensions in the hospitality suites as the corporate titans combine and recombine themselves in various consortiums and partnerships with gadget makers and Web giants with hopes of getting a jump on the next guy.

Every time I’ve been to Las Vegas, at C.E.S. or otherwise, I have marveled at the incongruity amid the theme park architecture, pulsing lights and thumping music — and at how many glum faces there are in the crowds and at the casino tables. There’s a lot more losing going on than winning.

The question this year is: Which technologies can Hollywood throw its resources behind to generate the next wave of profits? After all, DVD growth has slowed, radio is struggling to find new revenues, the music industry continues to grasp for footing and the television business is on the brink of reinvention.

Last year, Americans spent $150 billion on all manner of devices needed to play, watch, communicate and learn. And so it is no accident that the technology and engineering branch of the Emmy Awards will hand out its awards at C.E.S. for the first time, and the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is host for a Grammy party on Monday night.

Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, points out that the trade floor will include a “legal downloading area” and tells me that Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, will be there as his “special guest.”

It was not ever thus. The first C.E.S., held in the summer of 1967 in New York City, attracted a crowd roughly one-tenth the size of this year’s and featured various symposiums and seminars and, according to the C.E.S. Web site, an “all industry” banquet with an “all-inclusive price” of $10 per person.

The first solid-state TV was introduced at that debut show, while the 110 exhibitors — compared with more than 2,500 today — showcased the latest in transistor radios, stereos and small-screen black-and-white TVs.

C.E.S. didn’t fully begin to draw the media crowd — the movie and television producers and the music executives — until the DVD was introduced a decade ago and digital technology took hold. Then, of course, the Internet ushered in a whole new category of products and Web applications like file-sharing that at first blush posed more of an immediate threat than a benefit to existing business models.

Another boost for C.E.S.’s profile came when its main rival in the realm of what Mr. Shapiro calls “converging industries,” the computer trade show Comdex, sputtered out in 2003.

Even five years ago, the media industry was largely at odds with the consumer electronics folks, who in turn were dueling with the computer and software people whose products were increasingly competing for household dominance. Hollywood executives sent emissaries to poke around C.E.S. and to report on the latest things to worry about.

Mr. Shapiro, who spends the rest of his year lobbying for the electronics association, noted that Mr. Iger’s keynote performance would be a milestone because his legendary predecessor, Michael D. Eisner, was a staunch opponent of the electronics industry on a number of lobbying fronts.

“I started my career fighting Disney on new technologies including the VCR in the 1970s and 1980s,” Mr. Shapiro recalled. “When Robert Iger came on, it was like a 180-degree switch and I can’t tell you how happy I am. Instead of fighting them in Washington, we’re working with them.”

Mr. Iger’s speech is noteworthy in another respect: given the arrival a year ago of Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Computer founder, on the board of Disney — where he is also the largest individual shareholder — closer alliances between Disney’s content and Apple’s iPods and other gadgets have been forged.

Yet Apple is the one company that pointedly sits out C.E.S. in favor of its own clambake, Macworld, which this year is even running at the same time as C.E.S., but up in San Francisco. It’s not exactly Nixon coming to China, but Mr. Iger’s appearance in Las Vegas shows that he is taking the temperature of the times and shrewdly keeping his options open.

AND so this week his company, Viacom and Time Warner are just a few of the media businesses expected to announce new ventures during the convention, including the new Total HD videodisc from Warner Brothers. That product is meant to bring détente between warring manufacturers of high-definition DVD players by creating a disc that will work in both machines.

The general rule may still be that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But what happens at C.E.S. will shape the media battleground for the year ahead. Maybe tending the garden can wait until next year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/bu.../07frenzy.html





Companies Pay Dearly for Tech Trade Show
Brad Stone and Damon Darlin

For a small technology company called Digeo, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is one of the biggest opportunities of the year. For the next few days, the city will be jampacked with potential customers, partners and press — but the price of participation is daunting.

It starts with $24,500 for reserving 700 square feet of booth space on the sprawling convention center floor, tens of thousands more to furnish and operate the booth, plus $300 a night for hotel rooms for each of the 29 Digeo employees who are attending the convention.

Then there is the cost of rental vans, thousands of dollars to advertise at the show and meals for employees. The eight-year-old company, which makes gear and software for home entertainment, estimates that it will spend $500,000 to $1 million on the show this year.

Is it worth it? “Ask me afterward,” said Allison Cornia, vice president for marketing at Digeo.

Financial anxieties aside, Digeo, like almost every other technology company, hardly thinks twice about attending the event, North America’s largest trade show and the industry’s flashiest stage, which turns 40 years old this year.

Luminaries like Bill Gates, Michael S. Dell and Robert A. Iger, the Disney chief executive, will deliver keynote speeches. Starting Monday, powerhouses like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic will light up the showroom floor for four days with their largest high-definition TVs, smallest digital music players and latest high-tech gadgets, many of them months away from going on sale.

The event, known in the industry as C.E.S., provides more than $80 million in revenue for the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry trade group and lobbyist. It has thrived even as Comdex, the computer industry show that once held sway here, went bust. And it is a windfall for a booming city.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimates that 140,000 attendees and 2,700 exhibiting companies will pump about $230 million into the city economy this year, 40 percent more than the show generated in 2001.

But for many of the exhibiting companies, C.E.S. is something else entirely: a huge and ever-growing bill and a challenge to be heard by the industry elite over a deafening cacophony.

“I don’t think you can buy the value you are getting from exposure to that many people,” said Sterling Pratz, chief executive of Autonet Mobile, a month-old company trying to bring Internet access into cars.

Mr. Pratz is bringing all six of his employees to the show and asking them to share hotel rooms to save money. “We are putting the people who snore together,” he said.

Headaches for companies at C.E.S. go far beyond simply opening the corporate pocketbook. Hotels triple their rates for the event, and most of the city’s 133,000 rooms are sold out for months in advance.

A regular suite at Caesars Palace that runs $99 a night any other weekday will go for $350 during C.E.S. On the other end of the spectrum, Verizon Wireless is renting the Hardwood suite at the Palms Casino Resort — which features a half basketball court and 10,000-square-foot room. The room goes for $25,000 a night.

Hewlett-Packard, a major exhibitor that has paid $40,000 to brand big plastic tote bags with its Connecting Your World slogan, has to find accommodations for 500 employees for the week. It does get a discount because it buys in bulk, a marketing executive said, but he said total show expenses easily run to several million dollars.

On the convention floor, booth space costs $35 a square foot for association members and $40 for anyone else. That means the electronics giant Samsung, this year’s largest exhibitor, with a 25,000-square-foot booth, will pay the Consumer Electronics Association $875,000 for real estate alone.

C.E.S. is so vast that GES Exhibition Services, the show’s main contractor, lays 350,000 feet of extension cord, enough to run up and down the Empire State Building 140 times, and 1.2 million square feet of aisle carpet, enough to cover 600 average homes.

Other charges include union labor to bring the booth materials into the hall ($70 an hour), separate union workers to actually build the booth (up to $1 million for the larger setups), Internet access ($1,195), booth “spokesmodels” ($300 a day plus agency fees) and water ($49 for a case of 24 bottles) to keep everyone properly hydrated.

The toll on the expense accounts, and sanity, of technology executives does not stop there.

Limousines are used to chauffeur many executives from the convention center to the hotels on the Strip, where companies set up hospitality suites or showrooms. But the streets are so clogged with traffic that it can take 30 minutes to travel from the convention center to a nearby hotel.

The city’s entire fleet of limousines has been booked, often for 30 percent over the regular rate, and one of the few available minibuses would cost a company’s marketing department $4,656 over four days, according to one firm, Las Vegas Transportation.

Restaurants are sold out months in advance. Craftsteak, the star chef Tom Colicchio’s steakhouse at the MGM Grand, is booked solid for the first three days and says it will do 40 percent more business than usual. The “surf and turf” tasting menu (Kobe beef, lobster and salmon) costs $135 a plate, but the restaurant asks for a minimum bill of $3,000 to $4,000 from large groups.

Putting on parties is not cheap either. On Tuesday night, Dell is renting out Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. Such a party, including music, food, premium liquor and photos of guests with Lucille Ball and George Washington, can cost $60,000.

On many nights during C.E.S. there are miniconventions in hotel ballrooms, like tomorrow’s Digital Experience at Caesars Palace. Exhibition tables at the event go for up to $12,000 to companies like Sony and Microsoft, which seek to court the attending journalists.

Chris O’Malley, a partner at Pepcom, the company that runs Digital Experience, says the cost of operating his event at C.E.S. goes up 20 percent each year. As attendance grows, he said, prices for food, drinks, labor and ballroom rentals rise, too.

“Las Vegas is the ultimate supply-and-demand city,” he said. “The cost to host 1,500 hungry, thirsty people during the most expensive week in the city is now a little staggering.”

Yet pretty much every company in the intermingling fields of consumer electronics, entertainment, automotive gadgets and video games arrives for C.E.S. and takes part in some way, even if it is not directly on the showroom floor. I.B.M., which says its computer business is growing indistinguishable from consumer electronics, is returning to the convention center after a 10-year hiatus and renting 3,600 square feet.

On the other hand, DirecTV, after renting a booth for the last decade, is leaving the show floor amid concerns about rising costs and what its co-president, John Suranyi, calls “the hype and clutter of the experience.” Instead, it is renting a ballroom at Caesars Palace and holding its own events during the show.

Some companies clearly do not mind the chaos. Monster Cable, a company in Brisbane, Calif., that makes home entertainment products that in any other context would appear numbingly dull — like cables connecting audio and video equipment — leaps at the annual opportunity to catch a bit of Las Vegas glamour.

This year it will put 140 employees up at the Venetian Hotel, operate two separate booths and six private demo rooms at the convention center, and put on a Monday night concert at the Venetian Palace that will unite the jazz greats George Benson and Al Jarreau.

The company would not specify its overall C.E.S. expenditure but said that it devoted 10 to 15 percent of its annual marketing budget to the show.

Monster’s chief executive, Noel Lee, said the investment was worthwhile because the show gave his employees a singular goal and deadline. “If it weren’t for C.E.S., we could not have grown the company the way we have,” he said.

Many companies say the show actually saves them money by allowing sales representatives to meet all their prospective customers in one place, instead of taking multiple business trips later in the year.

“There is an amazing ability for a small company like us to go in and be able to meet with senior executives all at once,” said Singu Srinivas, co-founder of HiWired, a three-year-old company from Needham, Mass., offering technical support to consumers and small companies.

Last year at C.E.S., HiWired scored a promising partnership with the retailer OfficeMax after Mr. Srinivas met its executives at a cocktail party and went out with them the next night for an informal dinner. “The nature of meetings is very different in Las Vegas,” Mr. Srinivas said.

This year, HiWired will bring six of its employees and will pay $20,000 to attend C.E.S. and rent a table at a press event, ShowStoppers, on Monday night.

For some attendees, C.E.S. is not just expensive and essential — it is also a tad bittersweet. Jason Chudnofsky, who will attend this year on behalf of the trade show and publishing firm Pulvermedia, ran the Comdex conference for 16 years before it imploded in 2003 after the technology bust. Many of the companies, speakers and attendees have since migrated to C.E.S.

Mr. Chudnofsky thinks that even though the same growing pains that afflicted his show also plague C.E.S. — overcrowding, draconian room rates and grueling convention floor walks — the annual Consumer Electronics Show is not going away anytime soon.

“The reason is simple,” he said. “There is no other event that can take its place and bring the entire industry together like C.E.S.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/te...ref=technology





A Wireless Boost for Video at Home
Marguerite Reardon

Everyone from Apple Computer to Microsoft is promising products this year that will stream photos, movies, and music from PCs to TVs and other screens around the house. How is all that content going to make it from your living room to other devices around the house?

The answer is likely to be: through a wireless connection. Some technology groups are promoting the use of existing cable TV infrastructure or electrical wiring throughout the home to distribute media. Many pundits, however, say wireless could be the cheapest and most convenient option for distributing media throughout the home.

"The cable or satellite TV hook up is never where you want it," said Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group. "And running new wires throughout the house is expensive and a mess. Wireless lets you move the TV or use another device to watch something anywhere in your house."

Truth be told, wireless media streaming has had its problems. Companies such as Linksys, Dell, and Sony have released products, and sales have stunk. Still, experts say new wireless technologies could make in-home wireless distribution more compelling.

These technologies are likely to be hot topics of discussion this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where several companies will be touting multiroom DVRs, media centers and adapters, and at MacWorld in San Francisco, where Apple will likely give more details about which wireless technology it plans to use with its iTV product.

Technologies likely to get the most buzz will be Wi-Fi and maybe even Wimax along with shorter range wireless technologies, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) and the new Wireless HD technology.

Most of the chatter around Wi-Fi will come from companies showing off products based on the emerging standard 802.11n. While the IEEE hasn't yet ratified the standard, the Wi-Fi Alliance is expected to certify equipment as pre-standard 802.11n later this year. Experts don't expect the standard, which has been batted around by different companies in the industry for more than a year, to change much from what the Wi-Fi Alliance certifies and what the IEEE ratifies in late 2007 or early 2008.

Many vendors have been shipping routers that comply with the first draft of the 802.11n standard for more than a year. Some of these players will be showing off their equipment at CES. The new Wi-Fi standard is being groomed for video delivery because it delivers higher data rates than previous versions of Wi-Fi did, boosting throughput to as much as 540 megabits per second at its peak. This is 10 times the peak data rate of 802.11g technology. Realistic sustained speeds are likely to be much less than this, but 802.11n still transmits much faster and farther than the current generation of Wi-Fi.

And because 802.11n uses MIMO (multiple-in, multiple-out) technology, it can reach greater distances--up to 150 feet indoors. When implemented correctly, it can also penetrate through several walls, providing coverage throughout an entire home, said Greg Raleigh, vice president of wireless connectivity for Qualcomm and formerly the president of MIMO chipmaker Airgo, which was recently acquired by Qualcomm.

"When 802.11n is deployed well, it is a no-brainer for delivery of video," he said. "You don't have to worry about any old cable plant or circuit breakers that may impact transmission."

Companies, such as the start-up Ruckus, have developed technologies that work with Wi-Fi to improve reliability. Because Wi-Fi uses an unlicensed spectrum, it can suffer from interference from other household wireless devices, such as wireless phones and garage door openers. Ruckus has already developed a "smart Wi-Fi subsystem" for 802.11g signals, and it will likely introduce one for 802.11n as well.

Other companies have also tinkered with Wi-Fi to improve performance and reliability. Neosonik, a start-up from Northern California, has come up with a proprietary spin on 802.11a for a wireless home stereo system. Quartics also has devised a Wi-Fi chip for this task.

Some companies, such as Radiospire Networks, have suggested using Wimax to transmit video throughout the home. Intel and Motorola have been working to develop Wimax chipsets for PCs and other consumer electronics. But for the most part, the technology has been seen as a wide-area broadband technology that could replace or augment cellular or citywide Wi-Fi services. Nationwide cell-phone carrier Sprint Nextel has already said it plans to use Wimax to deliver its next generation wireless service over 2.5GHz spectrum.

While 802.11n Wi-Fi greatly improves throughput for Wi-Fi signals, the technology is not fast enough to support high-definition streams without compressing the video signals. By contrast, other wireless technologies are emerging that provide very high bandwidth, but those transmissions are over much shorter distances.

For the last couple of years, chipmakers have touted UWB technology as the high-speed, short-range, low-power wireless technology that would do away with cables. But for over a year, it has languished without a firm standard. Even so, the technology seems to be getting a bit of a revival as the WiMedia Alliance starts certifying some products. Belkin has announced a wireless USB Hub that offers transfer speeds up to 480Mbps at more than 30 feet. The European Union has given the technology the green light, and SK Telecom in Korea has stated plans to work with chip vendors to embed UWB in cell phones.

In general, the UWB technology is capable of offering data transmission speeds ranging from 100 megabits per second to more than 2 gigabits per second. But unlike Wi-Fi, it is limited in distance, only transmitting between 10 feet and 30 feet. For this reason, Wi-Fi supporters say the UWB technology will never catch on for distributing video throughout the home.

"Ultrawideband has no hope in distributing video in the home because 10 feet is just too short a distance to be worthwhile," said Qualcomm's Raleigh. "That barely gets you out of one room, and it doesn't allow you to transmit through walls. If you want to transmit video from a central DVR to another DVR in another room, it just won't work."

But some experts like Farpoint's Mathias believe the distance limitations may not be such a problem as repeaters could be used to boost the signal over greater distances. He said it could be much more important to transmit signals uncompressed so that users don't have to sacrifice picture quality.

Other emerging short-range wireless technologies could prove ideal for transmitting uncompressed HD video. Late last year, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba, NEC, and LG Electronics announced they were working on a technology called WirelessHD , which could transmit high-definition video and audio between a consumer's entertainment devices by using the unlicensed 60GHz spectrum. The final specification is expected by spring 2007, and products could ship in 2008, the companies said.

Each of these technologies is evolving, and each has positive and negative attributes, which makes Mathias hesitant to pick a single winner. By next year's CES, the picture should be much clearer.

"None of these technologies is perfect," he said. "But eventually the market will settle on one or two."
http://news.com.com/A+wireless+boost...3-6107938.html





Sony Dips Its Toes Into Internet TV
Eric Taub

The day when consumers can download content from the Internet directly to their TV may not be that far off. Last night, Sony announced a plan to sell a module that, when connected to their next generation of flat panel TVs, will allow customers to watch music, short videos, and other high-def content that’s streaming off the Internet.

Sony is certainly not the only company that’s testing the Internet waters. Netflix has long talked about its interest in having customers download movies rather than sending out physical DVDs.

Sony’s free programming will be streamed, available to viewers soon after it’s requested. Sony has struck deals with AOL, Grouper and Yahoo for the material. To insure program integrity, the data will be buffered, which means that long-form programming like movies won’t be available in this first version of the rollout.

The module, which company officials said privately would cost in the $300 range, may eventually be superceded by a model that includes a hard drive. At that point, downloading feature films from the Internet could become a reality–assuming that the Hollywood studios agree.

Keeping Our Eyes on the Road
Brad Stone

Few companies at CES can claim their products save lives. In fact, all the firms trying to fill our cars with distracting GPS devices and flat-panel screens are, arguably, endangering them.

VoiceBox, a Seattle-based speech recognition company, has a promising answer. Today it announced it is targeting the automotive market. It is working with car makers like Toyota, car-gadget makers like Tom and XM Radio, and speech recognition developers like IBM, Microsoft and Nuance to bring voice commands to automobiles. With VoiceBox, you can speak to your gadgets, instead of taking your hand from the wheel and your eyes from the road.

I just rode in a VoiceBox-equipped car. We changed channels on its XM Radio, made a few phone calls on the car phone and asked for GPS directions—all with spoken commands. It worked well. Unfortunately, VoiceBox marketing vice president Tom Freeman doesn’t think the majority of after-market auto gadgets will listen to voices until 2008; the technology won’t truly saturate cars until 2010.

BitTorrent Comes to the Television
Brad Stone

Yesterday we discussed the three ways tech companies are fighting to bring Internet content to TV screens. This week we are going to hear a lot from the class I called The Extenders, who want to send Web video from the PC, where it currently resides, to the TV, where it really belongs.

Case in point: today’s partnership between tiny San Francisco-based BitTorrent, and Silicon Valley network-equipment maker Netgear. BitTorrent fancies itself a major player in the emerging video download market, right alongside Apple. Though its software is known more for Napster-style illegal-file swapping, the company has scored major deals with movie studios like Paramount and Warner Bros. and plans to launch a legal movie download store on its Web site in February. This new Netgear product, developed with BitTorrent, will find any media that is sitting on your PC (high-def movies, music, photos, etc) and send it over to your TV, over a speedy wireless standard that the techies call 802.11G.

There will be two different reactions to this product. Geeks will love it; they can now watch all their Web goodies (illegally acquired and otherwise) on their sparkling new high-def TVs. On the other hand, say the word “802.11G” to the typical football-loving, beer-guzzling, couch-indenting American, and he will put you in a headlock. Capturing the normal folks - that will be challenge for all “extenders” like BitTorrent, Netgear – and soon, Apple.

LG’s Show Stealer
Damon Darlin

LG’s announcement of a dual-DVD player that will play HD-DVD movie discs as well as Blu-ray movie discs has sucked the air out of every other announcement about HD-DVD and Blu-ray players.

The price is not going to compel many people to run out and buy one. It’s $1,200. But the fact that it can play both kinds of discs would give some peace of mind to consumers who aren’t sure which new DVD standard will eventually prevail. (At this point, no analyst has a good handle on which will win out.)

Other makers announced Blu-ray players in the $1,000 to $1,200 range. Sharp’s first Blu-ray is $1,200, for example.

Toshiba, the main force behind HD-DVD, is still fighting. It announced a new player Sunday that will cost $600. It will display 1080p content, a feature that previously was available only on its $1,000 model.

The LCD Juggernaut
Damon Darlin

Last year, 13.2 million liquid-crystal diplay TVs were sold in the United States. This year, 21.2 million L.C.D. TVs are expected to sell, according to DisplaySearch, a market research firm.

A 60 percent increase in sales means that more than half of American households will have an HDTV this year. (The penetration rate is about 32 percent right now.) It also means that sales of rear projection TVs using digital light processors or D.L.P., have peaked and are now in decline.

The other implication: plasma is not the ultimate TV. Sales of plasma TVs, a rival technology that used to come in larger sizes and provide better pictutres than L.C.D., have been eclipsed by L.C.D. Plasma sales are expected to grow about 20 percent this year, analysts said. LCD makers have matched plasma in screen contrast (which makes blacks blacker) and have bested plasma in screen resolution.

Meanwhile, prices on L.C.D. TVs will continue to fall at rates similar to last year.

Sharp Has the Biggest
Damon Darlin

The bragging rights for making the biggest TV were won Sunday by Sharp Electronics. The company displayed a 108-inch liquid-crystal display TV that it said would be in production this summer.

No price on the TV yet, but the company said it is bigger than any other LCD and bigger than any plasma TV too. At least as of Sunday afternoon. Companies use the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Monday, to show their latest and greatest products.

At that size, the company figures the 108-incher will first be used in commercial applications as a billboard or in conference rooms. “It will influence the influencers and it will trickle down to consumers,” said Robert Scaglione, the senior vice president of marketing for Sharp’s American operations.

A New Sweet Spot
Damon Darlin

Hitachi won the bragging rights for making the first 3.5-inch hard drive that can hold a terabyte of data.

Seagate quickly rushed out a statement that its terabyte drive is coming soon.

But the really stunning part of the announcement was the price of the new drive: $400. It will be a little cheaper than that when it hits store shelves in 90 days.

That’s 40 cents a gigabyte. Just last week I was marvelling to someone in the office that the price of storage was dropping below 50 cents a gigabyte. This is getting so cheap that home storage will certainly be an even hotter category for retailers this year.

Garmin Gets Gas
Damon Darlin

Garmin, the maker of what it now calls PNDs or personal navigation devices, introduced a bunch of them at CES.

The highlight is a deal it has worked out with MSN to supply traffic information, movie times and gas prices to the new devices. The nuvi 680, with a bigger and flatter screen, is $1,000 and the StreetPilot c580 will be $800. You’ll see both in stores next month.

It also developed a PND–this term will never catch on–a GPS device for motorcycles. All the buttons are on the left side, so the rider doesn’t take his or her hand off the throttle, and the tabs on the touchscreen are extra big becuase the rider is probably wearing gloves. The zumo 450 will be $800 and availaible in March.

Finally, it has two GPS devices that link to a cellphone or Treo to give directions and maps on screen with voice commands. It turns your PDA into a PND.

The Garmin Mobile 20 will be $300 and the smaller Mobile 10, about the size of two flashdrives, will be $150.

Garmin Goes to the Dogs
Damon Darlin

Among the host of GPS navigational devices that Garmin just announced at CES is one specialized for hunting dogs.

The device is attached to harness on the dog. The hunter carries a GPS unit about the size of a walkie-talkie. The screen shows where the dog is relative to the hunter so the dogs don’t get lost or the hunter doesn’t wing his animals.

It is also being shown at Shot, the hunting industry’s show in Orlando this week.

The company said that the device, called the Astro, can also tell the hunter where the dog is running or has stopped and is pointing (or maybe sniffing another dog’s rear).

A spokeswoman said that a friend of hers wanted to drop one in her child’s trick-or-treat bag to track the child on Halloween. I think it would be great for wandering cats. It might cut down on those sad “Missing: Fluffy” posters on telephone poles.

Ride and Pitch
Damon Darlin

Two big problems at the Consumer Electronics Show looking for a solution:

No. 1. With 150,000 visitors in Las Vegas for the CES, it is very difficult to get from the airport to the hotel or from the hotel to the convention center. There are long waits for shuttle buses, cabs, even the monorail that runs alongside the Strip.

No. 2. With 2,700 exhibitors, it is very hard for the startup to get much attention from buyers or journalists. People are too busy to stop by to see their products.

Here’s a solution: The little companies ought to hire cars or vans and offer to ferry the people to and from their hotels. They’ll have a captive audience. The prospects will get to the show or the hotel with less aggravation.

A few smart companies are already doing this.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/





HD DVD Versus Blu-ray - The Porn Industry Says HD DVD
Aaron McKenna

Knowing their audience quite well, the adult entertainment industry holds their annual get together in Las Vegas to coincide with the CES. There is also a very pertinent crossover between the adult and tech industries - porn has a tendency to drive, and be driven, by technology. Which means HD DVD when it comes to high-def.

Quite famously in the war between Betamax and VHS the latter won especially because the adult industry preferred it. If you've been around long enough, you probably remember that the very early home video rental stores were primarily responsible for driving Betamax out of the market. And those stores carried almost exclusively pornographic content.

Although the market environments from then do not really compare to today's home video market, parallels are drawn between the Betamax-VHS battle to the ongoing and escalating fight between Blu-ray and HD DVD. One of the key questions at this year's CES actually is "Which high-def format will win the current format war - Blu-ray or HD DVD?" Surprisingly, it seems that there is no such question in the minds of the adult industry luminaries.

Putting myself through the arduous trek through the floor of the adult expo I did a quick straw poll on, the virtues of HD DVD versus Blu-ray, and the answer from a dozen companies, big and small, including Pink Visual and Bangbros editor-in-chief, is going into a single direction: HD DVD is the preferred format. Period.

One of the big problems they have with Blu-ray is its expense, followed by its market share. "Blu-ray has superior quality, yes," said a spokesperson for porn studio Bangbros, "but HD DVD is easier to produce, cheaper to produce and there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360."

Pink Visual heavily complained about the fact that Blu-ray discs cannot be replicated and a range of other studios, who did not want to be mentioned by name indicated that the cost of going with Blu-ray cancels the technology as a possible HD solution for this industry. "Only bigger studios can afford Blu-ray, and even then it's not economical," we were told.

It would seem that either Blu-ray has to do some catching up very quickly. But we got the strange feeling that HD DVD has won the format war already, at least in the porn industry.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/11/ce...hddvd_blu_ray/





Three HD Layers Today, Ten Tomorrow
Marcus Yam

To add more capacity to optical formats, stack on more layers

HD DVD’s dual-layer 30GB and Blu-ray’s dual-layer 50GB media is enough space to store crystal-clear 1080p video and uncompressed audio for today's movies, but media manufacturers are continuously looking for ways to increase capacity. Toshiba Corporation quietly announced on the first day of CES that the company has developed a triple-layer HD DVD-ROM (read only) disc with a capacity of 51 gigabytes.

HD DVD discs hold 15GB per layer. In order to reach a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc-besting capacity, an extra 2GB per layer was squeezed in, for a total of 51GB. Toshiba states that continued improvement in disc mastering technology has achieved further minimization in the recording pit, allowing for the boost in capacity to 17GB in single layer and a full 51GB on a single-sided triple-layer disc.

The new disc shares the same disc structure as standard DVD and previously announced HD DVD formats: two 0.6-mm thick discs bonded back-to-back. According to Toshiba, the added cost to produce discs with the third layer is minimal, thanks to the use of the same physical disc structure as DVD. Toshiba aims to secure approval of the new disc by the DVD Forum within this year.

While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement, Ritek is disclosing behind closed doors at CES its own achievements in multi-layer HD optical media. Ritek claims to not only have been able to produce a three-layer and four-layer HD optical discs, but to have successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers. The company says that its multi-layer process can be applied to both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.

At base specifications, 10 layers on an HD DVD would yield 150GB, assuming 15GB per layer. For Blu-ray, the total over 10 layers jumps to 250GB, assuming the base 25GB per layer.

While those numbers do sound impressive, Ritek officials point out that the real barrier to this advancement is the lack of reader and writer laser diode technology to support the additional eight layers above the current standard.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5656





Book reviews

Capitalist Punishment
Allan Sloan

ON “THE WEALTH OF NATIONS”

By P. J. O’Rourke.

242 pp. Atlantic Monthly Press. $21.95.

Before we had radio, telephones, television, the Internet and iPods, we had books. Long books. Complicated books. Books that got read, their length and complexity notwithstanding, because before talk shows and chat rooms, what else was there to do?

Back then, people like Adam Smith wrote long, long, long volumes like “The Wealth of Nations,” which revolutionized economic thought and theory when it was published in 1776. Smith’s treatise, as transformational in its own way as the American Revolution, established the intellectual foundation of capitalism, free markets and individual choice, which are taken as givens in American life the same way that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are.

Today, however, almost no one other than the obsessed (or the assigned) is likely to read Smith’s book, which runs more than 900 pages; the author’s convoluted prose makes it seem even longer than that.

So the free market in books has produced Smith-lite: P. J. O’Rourke channeling Adam Smith in a work titled “On ‘The Wealth of Nations.’ ” Think of it as a hardcover blog, in which O’Rourke cites Smith’s essential points, and riffs while preaching Smithian doctrine.

For instance, when O’Rourke discusses one of Smith’s passions, free trade, he notes that “at my house I see a ‘Made in China’ label on everything but the kids and the dogs. And I’m not sure about the kids. They have brown eyes and small noses.” This opus is part of a series its publisher calls Books That Changed the World, a description to which we should append, as O’Rourke says, the further title “Works Which Let’s Admit You’ll Never Read the Whole Of.” Due soon are two other oft-cited but rarely-read-in-full classics: The Koran and Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” It’s a very clever, very market-driven thought: getting to know the classics without having to read them.

The 1937 Modern Library edition of Smith’s work, which O’Rourke cites as his text and I borrowed from my local public library, runs 903 pages, not counting introductions and indexes. Those pages are in small type. Make that very small type.

O’Rourke’s book, by contrast, runs to fewer than 200 pages before appendixes and notes, and has a typeface and layout suitable for modern eyes. And unlike Smith, O’Rourke is a wonderful stylist. Even if you disagree with his conservative political and economic views, as I sometimes do, you’ve got to admire his facility with words.

Consider the following passage, in which O’Rourke parodies Smith’s style while explaining why readers aren’t storming bookstores to buy “The Wealth of Nations”: “Pretty soon Smith gets enmeshed in clarifications, intellectually caught out, Dagwood-like, carrying his shoes up the stairs of exegesis at 3 a.m., expounding his head off, while that vexed and querulous spouse, the reader, stands with arms crossed and slipper tapping on the second-floor landing of comprehension.” Add one more phrase, and that sentence would snap in two of its own weight. Which is, of course, the point.

Before we proceed, a confession. I’ve been a business writer since 1969, I specialize in unearthing journalistic nuggets buried in lengthy financial documents that even lawyers find dull — and I’ve never been able to get more than 50 pages into Adam Smith. For several years, I took “The Wealth of Nations” with me on summer vacation, vowing that this time I’d finish it. Alas, I never came close.

But over the years, I’ve read introductions to the book and commentaries about it, listened to discussions of its principles and have even cited some of its points in my own articles. As with the Bible or “Moby-Dick,” you don’t have to be familiar with the entire work in order to grasp its essence.

Smith’s thesis, which still resonates today, is that setting people free to pursue their own self-interest produces a collective result far superior to what you get if you try to impose political or religious diktats. Free people allowed to make free choices in free markets will satisfy their needs (and society’s) far better than any government can. Finally, Smith believed passionately in free trade, both within countries and between them. He felt that allowing people and countries to specialize and to trade freely would produce enormous wealth, because freeing people and nations to do what they do best will produce vastly more wealth than if everyone strives for self-sufficiency.

Now, let’s reduce this theory to microeconomic reality. I can go to my local hardware store, and for $1.79 (plus sales tax), I can purchase a pound of eight-penny nails manufactured in China, thousands of miles from my home. It would take me forever and a day to manufacture my own nails. Instead, I get paid to write articles, which is my specialty, and I can buy a pound of nails for the economic equivalent of a small amount of my time. The store owner, who specializes in helping people like me who’d rather get cheerfulness and good service than go to Home Depot, can use her profit to buy a copy of The New York Times, which helps give the paper the money to pay me for writing about O’Rourke writing about Smith writing about what makes nations wealthy. See? Isn’t that simple?

This all works out fine for O’Rourke and me and whoever is running the nail-making machine in China; he or she is presumably better off doing that than being a peasant farmer or an unemployed urbanite. However, my ability to purchase cheap China-made nails is unlikely to have worked out well for the people who once made nails in the United States. This is Adam Smith’s famous hand of the market at work: it pats specialists like O’Rourke and me on the head, while it gives unemployed blue-collar workers in the Midwest the middle finger. Maybe as a society, the United States saves money by exporting manufacturing jobs and importing so many manufactured goods — but I still have trouble believing that it’s good for us in the long run.

Unlike many free-market devotees, O’Rourke and Smith don’t confuse self-interest with greed: “A recurring lesson in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ is that we shouldn’t get greedy,” O’Rourke writes. Good for them, because while it may seem a subtle point, self-interest and greed are antithetical to each other.

Consider Enron, where cooking the corporate books inflated the stock price, making some book-cookers hugely wealthy. For a while. Ultimately, the scheme came undone, the greedy book-cookers suffered jail sentences, capitalism got a well-deserved black eye. Greed wasn’t good — and it sure wasn’t smart.

I could do without some of O’Rourke’s gratuitous insults of various people, almost all of whom seem to be liberals. Despite this peccadillo — some people might say because of it — this book is well worth reading. You’ll pick up a few good lines, you’ll see a primo stylist at work. And you’ll see why Adam Smith is so often quoted but so rarely read.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/bo...w/Sloan.t.html





Plagiarism: Everybody Into the Pool
Charles McGrath

The Little Book of Plagiarism
By Richard A. Posner
Pantheon Books; hardcover

Historians in Trouble
By Jon Wiener
The New Press; hardcover

Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period
By Tilar J. Mazzeo
University of Pennsylvania Press; hardcover

THE club of people accused of plagiarism gets ever larger. High-profile members include Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Kaavya Viswanathan — of chick-lit notoriety — and now even Ian McEwan, whose best-selling novel “Atonement” has recently been discovered to harbor passages from a World War II memoir by Lucilla Andrews. Plagiarism is apparently so rife these days that it would be extremely satisfying to discover that “The Little Book of Plagiarism,” by Richard A. Posner, has itself been plagiarized.

The watchdogs have been caught before. The section of the University of Oregon handbook that deals with plagiarism, for example, was copied from the Stanford handbook.

Mr. Posner, moreover, is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a law professor at the University of Chicago who turns out books and articles with annoying frequency and facility. Surely, under deadline pressure, he is tempted every now and then to resort to a little clipping and pasting, especially since he cuts members of his own profession a good deal of slack on the plagiarism issue. In the book he readily acknowledges that judges publish opinions all the time that are in fact written by their clerks, but he excuses the practice on the ground that everyone knows about it and therefore no one is harmed. What he doesn’t consider much is whether a judge who gains a reputation for particularly well-written opinions or for seldom being reversed — or, for that matter, who is freed from his legal chores to do freelance writing — doesn’t benefit in much the same way as a student who persuades one of the smart kids to do his homework for him.

Sadly, however, “The Little Book of Plagiarism” appears to be original. It’s a useful and remarkably concise overview of the subject, and is in almost every respect a typically Posnerian production: smart, lucid, a little self-satisfied and tilting noticeably toward the economic-analysis end of legal theory. In defining exactly what plagiarism is, for example, Mr. Posner insists on two main criteria: not just deceit but fraudulence, in the sense that the reader is tricked into behaving differently — into buying a book, say, that he would have ignored had he known it was copied. For plagiarism to be wrong in the Posner sense it has to be materially harmful, in other words, and yet bookbuyers seldom act as if originality matters much to them. Mr. Ambrose’s and Ms. Goodwin’s sales didn’t slip much when they were accused of plagiarism, and it’s hard to imagine that, in the long run, Mr. McEwan’s borrowings, which amount to only a couple of hundred words in a long and brilliant novel, will do much to change the esteem in which “Atonement” is generally held.

Most of the time, if we readers care about plagiarism, it’s because it seems cheesy and a little embarrassing. We’d rather not think that Doris Kearns Goodwin, of all people, was guilty of scholarly shoplifting. Of course, there is sometimes a moral component to plagiarism — as when a student cheats by turning in a term paper not his own — but in the public sphere it more often seems like an aesthetic offense, a crime against taste.

This is how the Romantics, supposedly the first generation to conceive of literary ownership in the modern sense, really thought about the issue, according to Tilar J. Mazzeo’s “Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period.” In style and methodology, Ms. Mazzeo’s new book is an academic wheezer, a retooled dissertation perhaps, but it’s also smart and insightful, and points out that 18th-century writers took a certain amount of borrowing for granted. What mattered was whether you were sneaky about it and, even more important, whether you improved upon what you took, by weaving it seamlessly into your own text and adding some new context or insight.

Interestingly, the Australian novelist Thomas Keneally recently defended Mr. McEwan in just this way, writing, “Fiction depends on a certain value-added quality created on top of the raw material, and that McEwan has added value beyond the original will, I believe, be richly demonstrated.” In the case of “Atonement,” the principle seems inarguable, but it’s also a slippery slope. You could argue that Kaavya Viswanathan improved upon the raw material of the Megan McCafferty novel she relied on so liberally, and yet no one is rushing to her defense.

Perhaps Ms. Viswanathan’s other great failing, besides cluelessness and the belief, surprisingly common among plagiarists, that you can get away with copying something that practically everyone has read, is that she doesn’t have tenure and friends in high places.

At the same time that he is letting judges off the hook, Mr. Posner acknowledges that in academic circles there is a double standard for plagiarism, with professors often getting off far more lightly than their students. The reason, he says, is that the left, which dominates the professoriate these days, is soft on plagiarism because the left is uncomfortable with ideas of individual creativity and ownership. (Surprisingly, he fails to take a whack at French theorists like Barthes and Foucault, who argued that in the strictest sense there is no such thing as an “author,” because all writing is collaborative and produced by a kind of cultural collective.)

In “Historians in Trouble” (published in 2005 but due out in paperback this coming spring), Jon Wiener argues the same thing in reverse, claiming that though underrepresented in academe, the right nevertheless has more power to make public fuss about academic misconduct. He points out that it was The Weekly Standard that flung the most mud in the direction of Stephen Ambrose, even though Mr. Ambrose, no lefty, was a celebrant of patriotism and the military.

No wonder young people are confused, and no wonder they continue to plagiarize in record numbers, with more than 40 percent of college students admitting to copying from the Internet in 2001. We talk to them about plagiarism in absolute terms, as if we were all agreed on what it was, and yet the literature suggests that once you’re out of school, it proves to be a crime like any other, with the punishment partly depending on whom you know and on how well you pull it off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/ed...e/07books.html





Mr. Ford Gets the Last Laugh
Chevy Chase

IN recent days, I’ve been bombarded by requests to comment on my relationship with President Gerald Ford. Until now, I’ve tried to say nothing — any remarks from me during the Ford family’s private time of grief would have been inappropriate.

The requests were understandable, I guess. You see, I made a reputation for myself 30 years ago on “Saturday Night Live” in part because of a number of sketches and “Weekend Updates” that I wrote or appeared in ridiculing Mr. Ford for his apparent “stumble-bumbling” (though he was perhaps the best athlete to have been president) and making fun of his presidency.

Luckily for me, Mr. Ford had a sense of humor.

I’ve often thought how odd it was that we became linked together. It’s not like we had a lot in common. After all, Mr. Ford had never been helped for any problems with “self-medication” in a facility that has helped so many throughout these past decades. And he had never been castigated by the press for such atrocities as “Oh! Heavenly Dog” or “Cops and Robbersons,” among other slightly awful films I had made in Hollywood.

But linked together we were. And not just in the obvious ways. If it hadn’t been for the courage of Mr. Ford’s wife, Betty, for admitting to an alcohol problem, I would never have received the help I needed in the early 1980s at the Betty Ford clinic, located not far from the Ford residence near Palm Springs. During my short stay there, I often saw Mrs. Ford personally surveying the clinic and generously offering a helping hand to those who were lucky enough to face their problems and, with the learned help of the clinic staff, appraise their behavior and their lifestyles.

One day when my wife, Jayni, came to visit me at the clinic, the Fords invited us to lunch. As it happened, Mrs. Ford had become so beloved and respected by many for her earlier openness about breast cancer and her alcoholism that a television network was in preproduction on a special bio-pic about her. Mr. Ford suggested that while we ate lunch, the four of us could view the videotape of various performances by actors being considered to play the part of the president.

Seated at a small table set for four in a simple dining room also containing a somewhat complicated videotape recorder and TV set were the former commander in chief and I making friendly small talk before lunch was brought in. And on all fours, literally on their hands and knees in front of the bulky and confusing tape machine, were Mrs. Ford and Jayni trying their best to figure out the wiring of the playback machine and the way the whole system worked, so we could watch the screen tests. Noting the effort the ladies were putting into getting the VCR to work, I suggested to Mr. Ford that perhaps we might help them out.

As I began to stand up from my chair, he took gentle hold of my arm, sat me back down and said: “No, no, Chevy. Don’t even think about it. I’ll probably get electrocuted, and you’ll be picked up and arrested for murder.”

We both laughed.

I’ll never forget that moment. My laughter was hearty and genuine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/op...4ba&ei=5087%0A





AT&T: Will the Big Bell Keep Ringing?

It might be tough to repeat a 50% gain this year, but the union with BellSouth should help drive free cash flow and wireless growth
Isabelle Sender

From Standard & Poor's Equity ResearchIt's nice to be big Ma Bell, again. With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blessing of the union between AT&T (T; ranked 3 STARS, hold) and BellSouth, Standard & Poor's thinks the honeymoon between investors and the largest U.S. telecom company could last through 2007.

But as with all love affairs, there are likely to be challenges. Because AT&T's shares ignited portfolios with their outperformance in 2006, we at S&P think AT&T investors will expect the company to maintain this pace and to continue making money for them. On a total return basis, the stock appreciated 53.2% in 2006 (it hit a 52-week high of $36.21 on Dec. 29). Shareholders will expect the new Ma Bell to preserve her fundamental attractions in terms of value, dividends, and profit growth.

S&P revised its 2007 earnings estimate to $2.50 a share from $2.45, but reiterated its hold opinion on the shares on Jan. 3. Wall Street expects AT&T to earn $2.57 on average, according to Bloomberg, and 21 out of 30 analysts think the stock is worth buying.
A Dominating Force

S&P equity analyst Todd Rosenbluth expects the company's 2007 revenues to be $124 billion, with earnings improvements driven by cost savings from merger benefits. AT&T will continue to support its stock price with share buybacks, he says, adding that his opinion is supported by the stock's 4% dividend yield.

With the help of the nation's leading wireless provider, Cingular, which AT&T now fully controls as a result of the merger with BellSouth, AT&T dominates the telecommunications sector and the wireless industry in the U.S.

"We believe Cingular will be the primary revenue driver for AT&T in 2007 and—due to improved customer retention through its exclusive wireless handsets from suppliers such as Motorola (MOT; ranked 4 STARS, buy) and Samsung, and a denser network—the wireless segment should help to expand the company's operating margins," Rosenbluth says.
Win Some, Lose Some

He also expects AT&T's ownership of Cingular (which should generate 33% of its 2007 revenue) will result in greater wireline/wireless product integration. "In about a decade, the U.S. wireline industry has shrunk to just two dominant players, AT&T and Verizon Communications (VZ; ranked 3 STARS, hold), from 10 major entities," Rosenbluth says.

That alone may not be enough to keep AT&T on top. Household spending on communications services—wireless, wireline, Internet, and video services—keeps climbing as new subscribers join the network (the monthly bill for services was $175 as of March, 2006). However, increased consumer spending and regulatory changes have resulted in greater competition, and Ma Bell is likely to lose in some areas and gain in others, Rosenbluth believes.

AT&T is winning its share of Internet connection customers through its broadband offerings, but its traditional wireline customer base is eroding, as consumers substitute wireless for regular phones or choose a voice and video package from the local cable provider. Another challenge is keeping Cingular wireless customers loyal, according to Rosenbluth.

Ed Whitacre—who almost single-handedly orchestrated the consolidation of the telecom sector—and his leadership team have not managed to get this far without facing challenges. Under Whitacre, SBC had lost more than half of its value from 1999 to 2005 before merging with, and changing its name to, AT&T in 2005. During that time, the company piled up about $30 billion in additional debt, according to news reports.
Rewarding the Patient

As of Sept. 30, the new AT&T, including Cingular, had about $63 billion of debt reported, according to S&P Credit Ratings Services (which operates separately from S&P Equity Research Services), which rates the combined entity "A." S&P Ratings Services removed the debt from CreditWatch after the FCC approved the merger because it meant one fewer risk to the repayment of the long-term debt.

AT&T's chief financial officer Rick Lindner said in a conference call that AT&T's acquisitions and patience have finally paid off. Profits are expected to have improved more than 30% in 2006, while cost savings from the integrations and share buyback programs are rewarding holders of AT&T shares, he said.

While Rosenbluth believes that AT&T paid a premium for BellSouth to gain control of Cingular, the company should generate strong free cash flow, after capital investments, in 2007, through wireline cost reductions, wireless revenue growth, and an overall improving business landscape.

Rosenbluth has a target price of $36 on AT&T's stock (which closed at $34.50 on Jan. 4), based on a premium relative multiple to its peers. Among the risks to Rosenbluth's recommendation and target price are increased competition from cable carriers, regulatory changes, and weaker-than-projected wireless-services execution and rollout of its fiber-based video services. Although AT&T may not repeat the success of 2006, investors should find the shares to be a worthwhile holding.
http://www.businessweek.com/investor...pStories_ssi_5





EU Study Says OSS Has Better Economics Than Proprietary Software
Eric Bangeman

The debate over the costs associated with using closed-source and open-source software has been raging for years now, and a new study from the European Union is certain to add fuel to the fire. Titled the "Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU," the study looks at the role of OSS in the economy, its direct economic impact, indirect economic impact, and concludes with trends, scenarios, and policy strategies.

The headline-grabbing data is found about a third of the way through the 287-page report. In a section titled "User benefits: interoperability, productivity, and cost savings," the study's authors (researchers from five European universities) make the claim that OSS is a less-expensive alternative to proprietary software.

Six public and private organizations that have transitioned to OSS were studied, and the authors found that while OSS migration costs were high, initial purchasing costs were higher for proprietary solutions. Maintenance costs are comparable—with the OSS solution being more expensive in some cases—but the overall annual total cost of ownership was lower for OSS in five of the six cases studied.

"Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports savings on the long-term costs of ownership of the software products," says the study's authors.

The organizations studied made the move from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org as part of their transition to OSS, and the study looks at the overall productivity of workers before and after. Overall, the report found "no particular delays or lost [sic] of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org." Researchers also surveyed workers, with 20 percent reporting that they could be just as productive using the open-source office suite, 70 percent saying that they experienced some problems but could still be just as productive, with the remaining 10 percent reporting that they were less productive with OpenOffice.org.

Researchers also looked at overall OSS penetration in Europe. The continent's investment in OSS software amounts to €22 billion (compared with €36 billion in the US), which represents 20.5 percent of total software investment.

The report concludes with some recommendations for EU policymakers. First, and foremost, policies that favor proprietary software over OSS should be changed. Researchers suggest supporting OSS in research, avoiding vendor lock-in in educational settings, providing equitable tax treatment for OSS creators, supporting OSS in "precompetitive research and standardization," and encouraging partnerships between the enterprise and the OSS community.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8606.html





Hack This Application!

Vendors can build a buzz around products by embracing the hacker community, according to technology company executives speaking at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Vendors often offer development tools to allow professional users and third-party developers to customize business-productivity products. In the consumer electronics market, however, vendors tend to resist the idea of allowing customers to tamper with their products, noted vendors speaking at the show, which ended Thursday in Las Vegas.

But there are benefits to opening up consumer products to hackers and hobbyists.

One example is TiVo Inc., founded in 1997 to develop digital video technology that allows users to record TV shows.

TiVo, based on Linux, is an extensible platform, and from its early days the company welcomed hackers and professional developers.

"When we first came out no one knew what DVR was," said Richard Bullwinkle, vice president of products at entertainment networking company Mediabolic Inc., and formerly a senior member of TiVo's product marketing team. "So we made it hacker friendly."

Hackers formed an early adopter community that helped promote the product, he said.

"We had forums where you could go in and see what was happening," Bullwinkle said.

Microsoft Corp., which entered the game market late with the Xbox and faced formidable competition from companies including Sony Corp., came out with a gaming software architecture that is extensible.

XNA is a set of tools designed to allow people to create their own games, said Jim Baldwin, product unit manager for the IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) program within the Microsoft TV Division. Though some tools are meant for professionals, XNA Game Studio Express is also targeted at students and hobbyists.

"The idea was to embrace the gaming community and give them the ability to make their own games; it's a good way to bring people into the business of building games," Baldwin said.

There are legitimate business reasons, however, for companies to resist having users alter products, the panelists acknowledged.

"If you make some thing too easy to hack, people will call you when they break things," Baldwin said. Then, the vendor loses money when the help desk aids users sort though problems, he noted.

"You have to achieve a balance, it's hard to know where to set the dial," Bullwinkle said.

Sony Corp. has been too strict about preventing users from playing around with hacks into products like the PlayStation Portable, Bullwinkle and other panelists agreed. While Sony had a huge hit in the 80s with the Sony Walkman portable CD player, it is behind in the music player arena now, and Microsoft has caught up to the company in the game market, they noted.

The music industry also has been too strict about DRM (digital rights management) copy controls, the vendors said. Consumers are confused and angry about not being able to play songs acquired from one vendor on other vendors' devices, they said.

"If they made things easy to use they might make a lot more money on it," Bullwinkle said.
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/5051/070...p/pfindex.html





Local news

Teacher Guilty in Norwich Porn Case
Greg Smith

State Prosecutor David Smith said he wondered why Julie Amero didn't just pull the plug on her classroom computer.

The six-person jury Friday may have been wondering the same thing when they convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.

"The pop-ups never went away," Amero testified. "They were continuous."

The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.

Computer expert W. Herbert Horner, testifying in Amero's defense, said he found spyware on the computer and an innocent hair styling Web site "that led to this pornographic loop that was out of control."

"If you try to get out of it, you're trapped," Horner said.

But Smith countered Horner's testimony with that of Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, a computer crimes investigator. On a projected image of the list of Web sites visited while Amero was working, Lounsbury pointed out several highlighted links.

"You have to physically click on it to get to those sites," Smith said. "I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites."

Among the sites Amero visited were meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com, along with others with more graphic names.

Defense attorney John Cocheo moved for a mistrial shortly before closing arguments Friday, based on reports jurors had discussed the case while eating lunch at the Harp and Dragon. Each of the jurors denied the allegation under questioning by Judge Hillary Strackbein and the motion was denied.

Cocheo, who said he was surprised by the verdict, especially with the "contradictory evidence," said he planned to appeal. Amero had no visible reaction to the verdict, though her family was obviously upset.

Amero, because the charges are felonies, faces 40 years in prison at her March 2 sentencing. Her family, present in court for entire trial, declined comment about the verdict.
http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/...12/1002/NEWS17





Advertising in Video Games

Product placement possible by exploiting secret codes
Rachel Konrad

Crouched in military fatigues, you peer through night-vision goggles and brandish a semiautomatic gun as you hunt down terrorists who've overtaken Las Vegas.

Incongruously, while patrolling a neon-decorated side street in the video game "Rainbow Six Vegas," you spot a jar of body wash. You spray the container with bullets, and voila! A 60-second video of whimsical bloopers pops up, and billboard advertisements of scantily clad women hawk Unilever Corp.'s Axe shower gel: "Score with Axe."

Welcome to the new world of video gaming, where software companies are becoming more imaginative in wringing money from gamers.

In-game advertising has been going on for years as marketers try to reach people who've largely stopped watching television.

But beyond running crass advertisements on billboards written into the gaming landscape, many game developers now accept product placements for milk, DVDs and other wares, embedding them deep into the game's software codes. You'd need the type of secret tips and tricks long circulated for unlocking special powers and other bonuses.

Other companies are charging real-world dollars for the privilege of gaining magical powers and better equipment for virtual characters, leading to complaints the companies are exploiting gamers who already pay $60 or more for the most popular titles.

Veterans of the $7 billion U.S. video game market defend the corporate co-option of the techniques once solely the realm of techies: If Hollywood has been employing product placement and other unconventional marketing tricks for years, why not the game industry?

The standard advertisements aren't waning. But gaming executives say the newer, unusual pitches are more effective: They can be funny and tap into many gamers' desire to explore the darkest nooks and crannies of a game and discover tricks they can boast to friends.

"Purist gamers see this development as negative, and it can ruin the game for someone," said Peer Schneider, vice president of content publishing at IGN Entertainment. "But our kids don't see it as negative. They see it as an unexpected thing in the game."

For more than two decades, programmers have tucked silly surprises into the recesses of computer games -- from the 1980 Atari 2600 game "Adventure" to the current hit "Scarface: The World Is Yours."

In many games, players who enter the top-secret "cheat code" could become invisible, get unlimited ammunition or play in an all-powerful God mode. Or they'd play for hours until discovering brightly decorated circles or balls -- known as Easter eggs -- that unlocked bonus points, monster-slaying swords, extra lives or infinite health.

Only recently have game companies found ways to profit from these quirks. Software developers are now coordinating with marketing executives -- and with Madison Avenue advertising gurus -- almost from the game's conception.

"Developer teams have always said, 'We have these codes if you want to use them,' but only in the last two years did the marketing teams significantly incorporate them into our strategy," said Jill Steinberg, director of promotions for San Francisco-based Ubisoft. "The goal of the promotions is to get buzz."

But the buzz isn't entirely positive.

Although many gamers viewed the Ubisoft-Axe promotion as quirky and unobtrusive, they criticized Redwood City-based Electronic Arts Inc. in October, when the world's largest video game publisher began to sell downloadable tricks for the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007.

Gamers could redeem points worth $3.75 to buy a software "add-on" that unlocks pro shop gear to drive the ball farther. Another $3 gets Wood's lucky red shirt (In real life, Woods wears a red shirt during a game's final round because he says it intimidates competitors and symbolizes power).

Offended gamers wrote scathing online entries about EA. Other companies that try to sell add-ons would likely encounter similar hostility, said Greg Off, founder of Off Base Productions, a San Francisco-based consulting company specializing in video game advertising and marketing.

"They're seen as looking for yet another revenue stream," Off said. "Did they push it too far? Possibly."

Although few companies sell cheats and other tricks outright, almost all are trying to exploit them subtly.

Some give away cheats when players register, subscribe to newsletters or pre-order titles. Others use cheats to revive sales weeks or months after their debut.

EA shipped "Superman Returns: The Videogame" to retailers on Nov. 20, and eight days later Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Home Video Inc. released the movie sequel on DVD, complete with a special cheat code for the game.

The DVD told players to enter a command sequence on their game consoles -- Up, Right, Down, Right, Up, Left, Down, Right, Up -- then fly to the top of a building to morph into Superman's destructive clone, Bizarro. Playing as Bizarro lengthens a game that, without special content, is a relatively short six hours.

Steve Jenkins, who calls himself "cheat executive officer" of Maple Valley, Wash.-based CheatCodes.com, said few players realize how scripted and marketed cheat codes and other insider tricks have become.

"Sometimes my secret source fires off this stuff to me, but it's usually the public relations person, publisher or developer who gives us the stuff," said Jenkins, whose site publishes thousands of cheats. "They might give us five cheats and say, 'Release this one now, this one a month later.'"
http://www.newstimeslive.com/enter/story.php?id=1027834





Jazz Is Alive and Well. In the Classroom, Anyway.
Nate Chinen

IF you happen to stop by the Hilton New York or Sheraton New York during the latter half of this week, you’ll be about as close as possible to the global epicenter of jazz. That’s because both hotels are playing host to the 34th annual conference of the International Association for Jazz Education, which is expected to attract more than 8,000 registered attendees from 45 countries: students and teachers, promoters and producers, and musicians of every tier of accomplishment.

Wandering the overcrowded ballroom levels of either hotel, or through a 75,000-square-foot expo hall, you might draw a simple conclusion: Jazz is booming. And you would be right, in one sense. “I don’t have empirical data,” said Bill McFarlin, the executive director of the association, “but I would have to guess that the jazz education industry has quadrupled in the last 20 years.”

Yet the conference also offers workshops like “Jazz Radio in Crisis: Why That’s a Good Thing.” The panic in that title, and the strained attempt at reassurance, are emblematic: while jazz education is thriving, the business of jazz itself, as measured by things like market share and album sales, has been in a tailspin.

Fifty years ago those fortunes were reversed. Jazz, like any folk music, was imparted from mentor to pupil, or forged through trial and error. For many of those making it, the most valuable lessons came not in the classroom but on the bandstand. That was true even of artists who received some higher education, like Miles Davis, who matriculated (but did not linger) at Juilliard. The music’s instructional methods were rigorous but not yet codified.

Today’s aspiring player has a choice of school programs, method and theory books, videos and transcriptions. “I can recall back in the early ’60s, when it was sort of taboo for jazz to be presented in the classroom,” said Greg Carroll, the jazz education association’s director of education. “Now it’s unusual if a music program does not have a jazz program embedded within it.” This profusion of information may be a mixed blessing. “You can learn every Coltrane solo there is without ever listening to a record,” the saxophonist Bill Pierce said recently in his office at the Berklee College of Music, where he is the chairman of the woodwind department. “I’m not saying that’s a good thing. But it’s there. The musicianship, on a purely technical level, is accessible to anyone who wants to pursue it.”

With its clinics, performances, ceremonies and panels, the conference is where the disconnect between jazz education and the performance and business of jazz comes into starkest relief. Still, the event illuminates how profoundly jazz education has come to influence the aesthetics and mechanics of the music. Though separate, the two worlds are symbiotic, and the big question is this: How can one be so anemic when the other is so robust?

If the mass commercialization of jazz instruction has a decisive moment, it would probably be the arrival in 1967 of a play-along album and guidebook called “How to Play Jazz and Improvise.” The recording featured a rhythm section only, leaving room for anyone to fill in the blanks. Though not the first effort of its kind — a company called Music Minus One was already in business — it was quickly the most successful, and influential.

Jamey Aebersold, the man behind “How to Play Jazz,” was no stranger to formal study, having received a master’s degree in saxophone from Indiana University, one of the few colleges in the country with a jazz department at the time. He originally conceived of his target audience as hobbyists playing at home.

“Until I got up to about Volume 25 or so, I wasn’t thinking this was going to be a foundation for jazz education,” Mr. Aebersold said recently from his home in Indiana. But he acknowledged that the Aebersolds, as his play-along kits are now widely known, have become a regular part of jazz’s training arc. “If they haven’t heard of me, they’re probably not doing jazz,” he said, sounding not boastful but matter-of-fact. The series is now up to Volume 118.

High school students especially take advantage of play-along materials; for most young players it’s the best option they have. That’s partly because improvisation is not the focus of their training, even among the increasing number of secondary schools with serious jazz programs. For hands-on solo training, many students turn instead to extracurricular experiences like the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop or the Stanford Jazz Workshop, which have both been around for more than 30 years.

Big bands, relatively rare on the performance circuit, are still the focus of high school jazz education. This explains the continuing success of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition. And it explains the unusual prominence of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, whose leader makes his original charts available to band directors.

“We’re like rock stars to these kids,” said Mr. Goodwin, who in the grown-up jazz world is known mainly as an accomplished studio professional. “It’s kind of a crackup.” At the jazz education conference, he will be promoting the first Big Phat Summer Camp, which won’t have enough openings to meet the demand.

So far the legions of high school band students haven’t produced armies of jazz consumers. That’s partly a standard retention problem; consider how many drama club members actually go on to become avid theatergoers. And not every member of a high school jazz ensemble is a true jazz fan to begin with. “When you look at the choices high school students have in general music education today,” Mr. Carroll said, “the menu doesn’t read, ‘Classical, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rock.’ You mainly see classical music and jazz. I think one reason jazz is so popular in schools today is that it’s the closest style of music to what they listen to outside the school arena.”

On the other hand record sales may be a flawed measure of jazz’s popularity. More and more jazz albums these days are self-produced or released on independent or European labels. Those albums — many sold in person, at concerts and clinics — can slip under the radar of Nielsen SoundScan or the Recording Industry Association of America, which have reported a downward turn in jazz sales even worse than the general decline. There are almost certainly more jazz consumers than the data indicate.

Stroll through the closed environment of the conference, and the statistics come to seem irrelevant. The students in attendance make it almost impossible to get inside the door of some major ballroom performances. They pack many instrumental clinics as well, hanging on to every word. One gets a strong sense that jazz is something they’ll find a way to support, if not pursue.

At the higher levels the infrastructure for training professional jazz musicians is clearly working. Every year there are more supremely skilled players with university degrees and strong, sophisticated ideas. For almost every prominent under-40 artist, you could name an affiliated program, from the pianist Brad Mehldau (the New School) to the saxophonist Miguel Zenón (Berklee). For musicians now in their 20s the ratio is even more extreme. By most measures the age of the autodidact is over.

When that trend started in the 1970s and ’80s, a common complaint arose: too many musicians sounded as if they were hatched in a practice room. The problem with institutionalized jazz education, the argument went, was that it fostered bland homogenization and oblivious self-absorption. And the idea held at least a kernel of truth.

“It was the Me Generation,” said the trombonist and Berklee educator Hal Crook, characterizing a succession of students obsessed with running harmonic gantlets and indulging in empty feats of technique. “Now it’s more of an Us thing, where the focus is on more interaction, communication on the bandstand, continuity in the solos. Audiences have fallen away from jazz in the past because it’s gotten away from that.”

At Berklee, in Boston, one recent Friday Mr. Crook led a student ensemble in a classroom session that felt a lot like a rehearsal. The students got a piece of music and a conceptual objective, and Mr. Crook guided them through it, stopping now and then to issue a pithy critique. For the most part his comments had more to do with the collective concentration of the ensemble than the particulars of any single player.

Mr. Crook was basically behaving more like a mentor than a professor, filling a niche of jazz instruction once upheld by bandleaders like Art Blakey and Betty Carter. And in that regard, he is not alone. “The apprenticeship model doesn’t exist in the way that it once did,” said Mr. Pierce of Berklee, a Blakey alumnus. “So it’s being incubated in institutions.”

The august New England Conservatory is part of that movement, and so is the five-year-old Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, which benefits from a partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center. At the University of Southern California, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance admits only enough students to populate a small combo, which is advised by that program’s artistic director, the trumpeter Terence Blanchard. And the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, which has a network of hundreds of private lesson instructors, consciously upholds what its executive director, Martin Mueller, recently described as a “tradition of the practitioner as educator.”

It’s no wonder that the most serious high school musicians pay close attention to the faculty at college music programs. “That’s my highest priority, who’s the faculty there,” the pianist Zachary Clarke, a senior at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, said in the school library on a recent afternoon.

Because of their talent and their training, students at that school rank among the nation’s elite young players. “I’d like to be signed to Blue Note,” said the guitarist William Donovan, another senior, when prompted for a blue-sky aspiration. “I know I have more of a chance of getting electrocuted by lightning,” he quickly added. One week earlier Mr. Donovan had seen a clinic by the pianist Robert Glasper, a graduate of the school and a recent addition to the Blue Note roster. Another alumnus, the pianist Jason Moran, has recorded seven albums for the label.

Mr. Donovan was not far off the mark, but an increasing number of bright young musicians are preparing to defy the odds.

“There’s an interesting phenomenon happening,” said Roger H. Brown, the president of Berklee, “which is that some of our hottest players are majoring in music business, or production and engineering. They believe they are going to have good careers, though they’re entering a world where there’s no superstructure to take care of your needs.”

The place where musicians find increasing opportunities, not surprisingly, is within educational institutions, which often means a better quality of instruction. Accomplished musicians like the pianist Kenny Barron and the saxophonist David Liebman (both faculty members at the Manhattan School of Music) have gracefully balanced education and performance. At Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis is a teacher as well as a player, sometimes even in the context of his own band.

And the instructional efforts of working jazz musicians, through the model established by Mr. Aebersold, can have a positive impact well beyond the academy. “I’ve got about eight books out on jazz education, and they’re all doing great,” Mr. Crook said. “They’re doing better than I’m doing,” he added, laughing.

What remains to be seen is whether the rise of jazz education can cultivate new audiences for the music. Some institutions, notably Jazz at Lincoln Center, are not taking any chances; the organization’s education department encompasses an ambitious array of jazz-appreciation initiatives, starting at the preschool level.

N.E.A. Jazz in the Schools, an outreach administered by the National Endowment for the Arts and produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center, reached an estimated four million students last year. “This could be an enormously powerful force in terms of audience development,” the endowment’s chairman, Dana Gioia, said of the program, a Web-based high school curriculum designed to run as a weeklong lesson during Black History Month. “The training of musicians is only one half of the necessary support for a thriving jazz culture.”

Of course, exposure to jazz doesn’t ensure an embrace of it; the biggest onus is on the artists who maintain the state of the art. “We have incredibly talented young folks out here now, but they have to create a market for themselves,” said the saxophonist Jimmy Heath, who retired from full-time teaching at Queens College not quite a decade ago and was named an N.E.A. Jazz Master in 2003.

However counterintuitive it sounds, local action may be the best hope for the revitalization of the music’s audience. Thanks to these educational programs, jazz now exists in college towns and isolated high schools where no club scene has ever thrived. The implosion of the monolithic music industry has little effect on that network. In that sense, jazz has a shot at becoming a folk music again.

“What I’m hoping for the future of the music,” Mr. Pierce said, “is that the students who come to these schools go back to their communities, create their own scenes and develop their own audiences so the music can come back to some level, as it maybe once was. When you multiply all these individuals and all these institutions, maybe that can happen.”

It may already have started. “These kids coming out of high school are more advanced than they ever were before,” said Mr. Crook, “and it’s because of the people teaching them, graduates of programs like this one. They’re bringing it back to the culture.”

In that sense, the International Association for Jazz Education conference might be understood not as a collision of worlds but as a gathering of the tribes. And the most important thing that happens there isn’t a clinic or show or ceremony, or a negotiation on the expo floor. It’s what happens after, when the various jazz constituencies pack up their stuff and head home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/ar...aee&ei=5087%0A





Spocko Rocks ABC! Micky Mouse Blinks!
Mike Stark

When I started CallingAllWingnuts, one of the hundreds of bloggers that came by to introduce themselves was Spocko of Spockosbrain (now defunct, for reasons soon to become revealed). Spocko was doing some work related to my own in his own market in California's Bay Area. His target? KSFO, home of Melanie Morgan, Lee Rogers, Brian Sussman and other poisonous 2nd rate talk show wingers.

Since this is Spocko's gig, I'm gonna pretty much use his words to explain what's gone down. Before the flip, to give you something to chew on as you click to the full story, I can tell you this much: you're gonna love what you read. Spocko has actually cost Disney money - he chased away advertisers and forced them to pay a law firm to intimidate his ISP. The story isn't all good though - Spocko's broke and can't afford to wage the legal battle, so he's shut down. That said, maybe we can use this space to buck up his spirits a little bit and see if there are any lawyers that want to file a Rule 11 motion against Disney's unscrupulous lawyers...

anyway, flip for the complete story.
Mike Stark's diary :: ::

First, here's what Spocko did to piss them off:

To: Wendy Clark, VP-advertising, AT&T

Dear Ms. Clark:

Thanks to radio hosts from KSFO your brand is being associated with torturing and killing people. Would your marketing people be happy to hear your commercial ran after Lee Rogers said this about a black man in Lincoln, Nebraska?

"Now you start with the Sear's Diehard the battery cables connected to his testi*les and you entertain him with that for awhile and then you blow his bleeping head off. " (Audio link)

You should know the person calling for the execution and torture of the black man in that clip READS THE AT&T commercials on the air. Right now on KSFO Lee Rogers is THE VOICE of AT&T to the SF Bay area. (Audio Link)

Sadly, calling for the death and torture of individuals and groups of people is a regular occurrence on KSFO 560 AM, owned by ABC Radio Disney.

Another example: immediately after the 6 am ABC Radio news on October 27th:

Lee Rogers: I say they catch the person, tie 'em to a post and burn 'em. Set 'em on fire.

Officer Vic: Yeah.

Lee Rogers: Let 'em know what it feels like.

Melanie Morgan: Hog tie 'em first. That would be good.

Next, Lee Rogers talks about a protester at a Cindy Sheehan event:

"Whoever did that should have been stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out." (Audio link).

Within three minutes they called for someone to be burned alive and a protester to be stomped to death. If you dismissed the first clip as a "joke", note that in this clip they were clearly not joking:

Melanie Morgan famously called for Bill Keller of the New York Times (and nine editors from other papers) to be hanged. (Audio link)

On Nov. 14th Melanie Morgan said this about Nancy Pelosi:

"We've got a bulls-eye painted on her big laughing eyes."

(Audio link)

Also note that Morgan reads the Cingular Wireless commercials on KSFO.

Of course political speech is protected, but I believe the FBI and the FCC frown on targeting elected officials for death or inciting violence toward leaders of any political party.

Because of how ads are purchased, your ad placement agency probably didn't know that Tom Brenner (the "comic relief" called Officer Vic) regularly mocks advertiser's products. Listen as he:
calls Chevrolet's product "shi**y"
(audio link)
suggests an anti-virus product is part of a protection racket (audio link)
pretends a cold pill is really a suppository (audio link)


The odds are your product will be mocked. If they don't respect a big client like Chevrolet, will they respect your brand?

And it's not simply calls for killing specific people or mocking products, the radio hosts at KSFO proudly talk about their anti-Muslim views. Based on my research, your business has rules about discrimination against people of other religions, so what message are you sending when your employees or customers hear your advertisements right after Brian Sussman demands of a caller:

"Say Allah is a Wh*re!" (audio link)

Or when Lee Rogers says,

"Indonesia is really just another enemy Muslim nation. ... You keep screwing around with stuff like this we are going to kill a bunch of you. Millions of you. " (audio link)

Maybe you haven't heard any complaints. Would KSFO management let you know about complaints? Doubtful. Morgan's husband, Jack Swanson, is KSFO's operations manager. The president of KSFO, Mickey Luckoff, started the station format and has a history of defending hosts like Michael Savage until he was forced to fire him.

I understand you can't listen to all the shows you advertise on - no one can. You rely on the accurate representation of the sales reps and the show description. But you don't need to take my word, listen to the programs. You probably won't have to listen long to hear something that offends or disgusts you. If you wish to hear the complete context on any clip or the audio during a date your ad ran contact me I have an educational archive of audio clips, I've listed a few below.

I want to emphasize that if you withdrawal your ads you aren't limiting their free speech, just removing your paid support of it. Some other company without the values you describe on the AT&T website can support them. You can choose to advertise elsewhere. This is really about YOU. Do YOU want to be associated with these comments? Do you want your company and brand to be associated with these comments?
I urge you to discontinue advertising on KSFO during the shows hosted by Melanie Morgan, Lee Rogers, Tom Brenner and Brian Sussman.

If you want to contact KSFO here is a link to their website. If you wish to express your displeasure to their parent company contact Zenia Mucha, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, The Walt Disney Company PHONE: (818) 560-5300 CA, (212) 456-7255 NY or email Heather Rim, Vice President, Communications, ABC, Inc. heather.rim@abc.com.
Sincerely,

P.S. I would appreciate hearing your final determination in this matter.

Heh. Heh. This has got to be one of the best constructed letter to any advertiser I've ever read. He hits every point of weakness.

So what happened?

Again, here's Spocko:

ABC Radio Lawyer tells Spocko to Shut Up
Two days before Christmas I got a Cease and Desist letter from ABC regarding my use of audio clips from KSFO radio hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers on my blog, Spocko's Brain (see attached PDF).

KSFO is a Disney affiliate whose radio hosts broadcast violent rhetoric directed toward journalists, liberals, Democrats, Arabs and Muslims all over the SF Bay Area and to the world via the Internet. I commented about the content of these host's broadcasts on my blog and informed KSFO's advertisers about what they were supporting by letting them listen to the exact audio quotes from the hosts.

Why the C&L Letter Now?
In mid-December I got confirmation that a major national advertiser, VISA, pulled their ads from the Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers show, based on listening to audio clips I provided them. I also think that FedEx, AT&T and Kaiser are considering pulling their ads. Visa isn't the first advertiser who has left KSFO, multiple advertisers have left the station, especially from the Brian Sussman show. In July of this year when KSFO lost MasterCard as an advertiser someone from KSFO "outed" me on a counter-blog (which I won't link to). This same person has also threatened me with local and federal criminal action for using the audio (which I clearly used under the fair use portion of copyright law). And because they have suggested violence toward me (in addition to talking about suing me "for everything I have") I have chosen to remain anonymous.

As Thers has said, 95 percent of blog fights don't mean anything, but I think this one does since KSFO is using the full weight and force of an ABC/Disney lawyer and copyright law against a private citizen blogger. I dared to use the audio content in question for nonprofit educational purposes (I don't even have ads on my blog!), and thus under the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.§107.

It's about Money not Ideology
Talk Radio is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is also a regulated industry because the public gave the broadcast airwaves to radio stations. There are rules. First there are FCC rules with fines of $325,000 for obscene and indecent speech, thanks to the Christian Right. Interestingly, the radio union, (which KSFO hosts hate so much) worked very hard to stop those fines from being directed to individual radio hosts. So the corporation will bear the burden of any fines. Next, there are guidelines at the local station level, the network level and the parent company level. So even if the inciting of violence and hate speech is ignored by the FCC, the continued violent rhetoric has been, and continues to be, approved at the station level (KSFO) the group level (KGO-KSFO) the company level (ABC Radio) and the parent company level (Disney). They are ALL aware of this speech, and because they have not acted in a meaningful way, they all are giving approval for it to continue.

No Management Action
When Keith Olbermann and Media Matters ran Melanie Morgan's comments about "putting the bull's-eye on" Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, management did nothing. Morgan did a jokey non-apology where she never even mentioned she used the term bull's-eye.

I'm guessing Lee Rogers may have gotten a memo telling him to stop talking about burning people alive, torturing them and blowing their brains out, because on November 30th, he defiantly said to management and advertisers, "Nobody is gonna tell me what to talk about or not talk about or in what fashion on this radio program. It ain't gonna happen!"
ABC/Disney acted only when they lost revenue. Then they went after ME with a cease and desist letter.

Why me? I'm not the one saying journalists should be hanged, thieves should be tortured and killed, people should be burned alive, stomped to death or have their testicles cut off. I'm not the one saying that millions of Muslims should be killed on the presumption that they are extremists or just because they live in Indonesia. I'm not the one who says that lying is as natural as breathing to Egyptians and Arabs or demanding that a caller "Say Allah is a Whore" to prove he is not an Islamist. I'm simply documenting this speech and providing it to the people who are paying KSFO hosts on commercially supported broadcast radio.

They have Lawyers, Guns and Money. I've got a 5th tier blog and no money
Because I and some other listeners hit right-wing talk radio in the pocket book, they are acting like wounded animals and brought out the big guns, Corporate Lawyers. Am I scared? Hell yes. They can easily squish me like a bug and tie me up in legal battles for the rest of my natural life (and Vulcans live a long time), not to mention that unlike KSFO radio hosts, I'm not getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and generating millions of revenue for a multibillion-dollar parent company. If I pursue this further I expect the next step is a "CyberSLAPP" suit.

I don't want to consider the possibility of Morgan's good friend Michelle Malkin deciding to publish my address and real name so that her minions can send me death threats or "white powder" in the mail. Chad Castagana, was charged with mailing more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to liberals. He got the idea from someone that journalists, liberals and democrats were the enemy and deserved to die.

Brian Sussman proudly poses with his handgun in KSFO publicity shots and says that he thinks that everyone should have the right to have a machine gun. Maybe I'm over reacting, why would they attack me? I'm not famous, I'm not an elected official, I tried very hard to be accurate about what THEY said BY USING THEIR OWN WORDS.

I tried to help companies protect their brands from being tainted with the violent rhetoric and anti-any-religion-but-right-wing-christianism speech. I wanted to help the VPs of marketing avoid being associated with Lee Roger's "testicle talk" or Sussman talking about cutting off a finger and a penis of an Iraqi in his imaginary torture sessions.

It's about Brands: All the Blessings, None of the Taint
I have found out that KSFO is sold to advertisers as "a Disney affiliate" with all the associated family-friendly connotations. So KSFO is getting all the benefit of the Disney name as well as the massive infrastructure of ad sales at the national level. Clearly ABC Radio doesn't want KSFO hosts' horrific comments to actually reach advertisers. Advertisers are kept in the dark so KSFO can benefit from the Disney brand glow (ABC Radio News creditability glow?).
Advertisers should be able to decide if they want to keep supporting this show based on complete information. We already know that management at ABC and Disney support these hosts, which means that the ABC/Disney Radio brand now apparently includes support for violent hate speech toward Muslims, democrats and liberals.

But instead of directing the hosts to refrain from violent rhetoric and hate speech, they go after the weakest person with the fewest resources. It's cheaper and easier.
Bottom line: ABC/Disney is supporting and profiting from this violent speech, they should at least also accept any negative connotations or financial impact it might have to their image.

What can you do?
As El Gato Negro suggested, let's distribute the audio clips of violent rhetoric and hate speech to multiple locations on the internet so that the ABC/Disney lawyers will have to find and send cease and desist letters to ISPs with stronger policies than the nice people at 1&1.
Crank this up around the blogosphere, if you have a blog link and post about this.
Let's see if anyone in the mainstream media cares. Sadly they have a hard time writing about people who want them dead. I would think that at least the PUBLISHERS and MANAGEMENT at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associate Press would want to at least defend their own journalists and photojournalists. To date only the LA Times has called Morgan out for accusing them of photojournalist misconduct...

Some members of the press HAVE covered this. When Joe Conason at Salon did a story about Morgan and KSFO he got called a hack by Morgan. When Todd Milbourn of the Sacramento Bee did a story about Move America Forward he got called a liar by Morgan.

Donate to groups who would defend bloggers, journalists and others that Morgan, Rogers and Sussman attack. Specifically I'm recommending you donate money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists , and Media Matters.

You can also support the journalists who are doing their jobs and are threatened with death from talk radio hosts.
Write the advertisers of KSFO. I have a list of SOME of the advertisers who advertise on KSFO. Drop me a line at spockosemail @ gmail.com and I'll send you a link to an updated list.


As always, be polite, let them know what they are supporting and how it is impacting their brand in your eyes. They often times have their own stated values that they want to maintain, you may want to ask if their corporate values align with what is being said on KSFO (often times the hosts are the VOICE of their brand in the Bay Area, so it's not just the fact that their ad is run right after some violent hate speech, but that the person who is reading their copy is the person who is spewing the violent rhetoric.)

I'm open to other ideas too.

I'd like to thank everyone who has written letters to advertisers, especially PTcruiser and BP. Thanks Blog-Integrity folks for the forum, and special thanks to El Gato Negro.
LLAP,
Spocko

I've got visions of Micky Mouse with his snapped neck caught in a mousetrap of Spocko's making. Spocko took on a giant and so far, is winning.

How'd he do it? He did it the way it's always done - by working within the law, identifying points of weakness, exploiting them and being absolutely tenacious.

At this point I'm not sure what Spocko's next steps will be. I can tell you what I think though.

I'm hoping somebody more trained in the law than I can reach out to him and offer him some representation. It appears to me as if Disney is attempting to bully a little guy in an unethical manner. Any media lawyer worth the air she breathes knows that Spocko's use was well protected. What I'd like to see is somebody step up and file a counter-claim against Disney on Spocko's behalf. Don't rest until Disney is ofrced to publicly apologize and either stand behind the work of Melanie Morgan (who also wrote the book that called Cindy Sheehan an internet sex-addict) and Brian Sussman, or condemn it. This has the potential to be an enormous black eye for Disney. The most wonderful thing about this? They brough it on themselves. The corporatist wingers stepped in thier own shit again.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/3/202110/2838

Thanks Roadblock!




Talking Tapes



A long thin plastic strip, about 60cm long. It doesn't look like much, but it talks! Along the length of the strip is a pattern of fine ridges or lines. Run your thumb nail along the ridges, and the tape speaks. However the sound needs to be magnified, so that you can hear it. One method is to hold one end of the strip between your teeth. Then, when you run your nail along the strip you hear it talk, but no-one else does. Or you can stick one end of the strip to an inflated balloon or a paper cup using sticky tape. The balloon or cup acts as an amplifier, and you can then demonstrate it to anyone nearby. Never heard a balloon talk? You have now!

What do the tapes say? One says 'Happy Birthday' others say 'Congratulations' or 'Have a Nice Day'. We have 5 different messages, and we supply 4 tapes of each message, making a pack of 20 Talking Tapes.
http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/info_14.html
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Old 10-01-07, 12:51 PM   #2
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Van Halen, R.E.M. Make Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
AP

Van Halen made a "jump" into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday along with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, R.E.M., the Ronettes and Patti Smith.

A panel of 600 industry experts selected the five artists to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 12 in New York.

Van Halen was the 1980s hard rock quartet led by guitarist Eddie Van Halen, outrageous lead vocalist David Lee Roth, and later rocker Sammy Hagar, that put out hits such as "Jump" and "Dreams."

R.E.M. was the quintessential indie rock band until breaking through to mass success in the early 1990s with songs like "Losing My Religion."

Grandmaster Flash led the most innovative act in early hip-hop, and the song "The Message" was like a letter from urban America.

Punk rock poet Patti Smith and Phil Spector favorites the Ronettes round out the 2007 class.

To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years before nomination.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/storyprint.php?id=1027890





Computers Join Actors in Hybrids On Screen
Sharon Waxman

James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said on Monday.

The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Earlier movies like “The Lord of the Rings” series did this on a limited scale, as in the digitally designed character Gollum, whose performance came from the actor Andy Serkis, while others like “The Polar Express” have used live actors to drive animated images — so-called motion capture technology.

But none has gone as far as “Avatar” to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters, on the expected scale of the new film, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.

“This film is a true hybrid — a full live-action shoot, with CG characters in CG and live environments,” said Mr. Cameron, referring to computer-generated imagery. “Ideally, at the end of the of day, the audience has no idea which they’re looking at.”

Jim Gianopulos, a co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said that he expected theaters to update their facilities to accommodate the 3D demands of the film. “This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies,” he said.

“Jim’s not just a filmmaker,” Mr. Gianopulos added, referring to Mr. Cameron. “Every one of his films have pushed the envelope in its aesthetic and in its technology.”

The making of “Titanic,” Mr. Cameron’s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. Released in 1997, the film went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made, creating stunning visual effects with a combination of live action and computer graphics. But it also went on to become a historic success, taking in a record- breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office and winning 11 Oscars, including the award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on that, his last gargantuan production, and was already four months into shooting some scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project on Monday. The shoot has been largely secret, in a building in the Playa Vista section of Los Angeles.

“I’ve looked long and hard at ‘Titanic,’ and other effects-related things I’ve done, where they’ve drifted budgetwise,” he said. “This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably.”

Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely photo-realistic alien world.

For its aliens, “Avatar” will present characters designed on the computer, but played by human actors. Their bodies will be filmed using the latest evolution of motion-capture technology — markers placed on the actor and tracked by a camera — while the facial expressions will be tracked by tiny cameras on headsets that will record their performances to insert them into a virtual world.

The most important innovation thus far has been a camera, designed by Mr. Cameron and his computer experts, that allows the director to observe the performances of the actors-as-aliens, in the film’s virtual environment, as it happens.

“It’s like a big, powerful game engine,” he explained. “If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale. It’s pretty exciting.”

Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, a paralyzed former marine 150 years in the future, who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien: 10 feet tall, and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.

“We could do it with make-up, in a ‘Star Trek’ manner — we could put rubber on his face — but I wasn’t interested in doing it that way,” Mr. Cameron said. “With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be — beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful , evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection.”

Mr. Cameron is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s foremost innovators, and he has been waiting to make the film, which he wrote more than a decade ago, while technology catches up to his vision. He began experimenting with these new filming techniques about 18 months ago, he said.

But he disputed the notion that the galloping pace of filmmaking technology has threatened the traditional role of actors or the emotional grip of a good story.

“There’s this sense of bifurcation, that really true artistic, cutting-edge filmmakers make these indie pictures, and that CG films are these clanking machines,” he observed. “I’ve tried to fight to inhabit both spaces. There’s a way to take all these technical tools and have them come from a place where the artist is still running the film. It’s not easy.”

While recognizing that it is was an expensive project, Mr. Gianopulos said that something like “Avatar” was precisely what the theatrical movie business needed in a time of stiff competition from video games and lavish home entertainment systems.

“What audiences are looking for, especially in the theater, is a unique experience,” said Mr. Gianopulos, whose studio also distributed the “Star Wars” series by George Lucas, though it does not own those films. It will fully own “Avatar.”

He added: “There is nothing as unique as what this film will be, as spectacle, as a presentation of a completely original world, in its presentation and its technology.” He said he expected the movie to become a series, and the actors were signed up to accommodate sequels.

The live-action shoot with actors will begin in April, with major effects being done by Weta, the filmmaker Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based effects company, which created the effects for his “Lord of the Rings.” The film is scheduled for release in summer 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/movies/09came.html





Digital Tech Sharpens Technicolor Films
The Hollywood Reporter

When watching the DVD re-release of Gone With the Wind, what once appeared as simply a green cloth shawl worn by Vivien Leigh is revealed as a garment of dark emerald velvet so rich it beckons touching.

Similarly, in the 1939 film's opening scene, while Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara rambles on about the tedium of war, the white bodice of her dress now displays precise lace patterns and threads.

Likewise, when Errol Flynn rides horseback into Sherwood Forest in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, the detailed pattern embedded on his and other soldiers' armor is so vivid that the number of small metal rings can be counted.

These elements have been made clearly visible through a patented technology created by Warner Bros. in collaboration with AOL. The process involves digitally realigning and sharpening the older film negatives of these classic movies shot on Technicolor three-strip film.

Known as Ultra-Resolution, the technique is in the running this year for a Scientific and Technical Academy Award and has restored films in the studio's vast library including Singin' in the Rain, The Searchers and The Wizard of Oz--prints that over time have suffered blurring or "color fringing," as well as shrinkage, stretching and other damage.

It was while observing a projected picture of Wind during some digital scanning that Chris Cookson, president of Warner Bros. Technical Operations and chief technology officer of Warner Bros. Entertainment, says he was inspired. He noticed a frame 5 pixels out of alignment and knew the resolution could be improved if somehow all the sharp edges could just be better matched.

"The purpose of Technicolor was to make color, not precise images," said Cookson, explaining that the Technicolor process used in the 1930s and '40s involved stacking together each frame of a negative to produce a full-color print. "In a sense, we're mining the film and audio elements that have been sitting on these prints all these years."

The restoration process got a helping hand from the otherwise disastrous 2001 takeover of the studio's Time Warner parent by AOL. Two sisters who serve as heads of research and development at AOL, Keren and Sharon Perlmutter, devised an algorithm to analyze each square block of a frame, detecting the edges of each original color record and adjusting the color alignment accordingly.

Although Warner Bros. holds four patents on the technology, with additional ones pending, the studio has shared the technique with other studios, recently being used to create a new negative for damaged scenes in Paramount's Chinatown.

Cookson, who points to the fact that the technology can also be used to build a new negative rather than just restoring one, recounted the reaction of Singing director Stanley Donen when he was shown the digitally restored version of his 1952 film.

"It looks like it did that day on the stage," Cookson recalled Donen saying.

For Cookson and those who worked tirelessly on the restoration of some of history's most classic films, the ultimate beneficiary is the film consumer.

"It not only benefits Warner Bros. and the industry at large, it benefits the movies themselves and the people who love them."
http://news.com.com/Digital+tech+sha...3-6146834.html





The World Has Nearly Ended, but Movies Manage to Survive
Jeannette Catsoulis

A faux documentary with a twist, “Ever Since the World Ended” unfolds in and around an eerily depopulated San Francisco 10 years after a mysterious plague has decimated humanity. But instead of making a movie about the aftermath of a disaster, the filmmakers, Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Litle, have tried something a little more clever and a lot cheaper: to envision what the first movie made after that disaster might look like.

The result is a rudimentary yet fascinating record of remembrance and reconstruction, accessed through survivor interviews and carefully chosen landscapes. Effects are all the more special for being minimal: a decaying Golden Gate bridge, a decomposing ship listing in the harbor.

The mood is gently melancholic, spiced with unexpected humor — like the self-described “last North American Indian” who resents being everyone’s spiritual backbone — and the free-floating tension of a world without laws. At a cozy commune, bees are raised and children receive piano lessons while the adults wonder whether to kill a violent man recently returned to the city. The remnants of civilization are being preserved, albeit with a certain moral primitivism.

Thought-provoking rather than deeply philosophical, “Ever Since the World Ended” features many engaging performances and several outstanding ones, including Mark Routhier as a damaged former emergency worker and David Driver as a self-justifying scavenger.

What remains in the mind, however, is the film’s atmospheric blend of hope and trepidation: the challenge and terror of a world with too much space and too few boundaries.

EVER SINCE THE WORLD ENDED

Opens today in Manhattan.

Produced and directed by Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Litle; written by Mr. Grant; director of photography, Mr. Litle; edited by David Driver and Mr. Litle; released by Cyan Pictures. At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, at Avenue A, East Village. Running time: 78 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: James Curry (James), Linda Noveroske (Linda), Brad Olsen (Santosh) and Ronald Chase (Teacher).
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/01/1...es/10worl.html





Wagner Loses Fight for "Angels" Profits
Leslie Simmons

A California appellate panel has ruled that actor Robert Wagner may be the owner of rights in the "Charlie's Angels" television series, but he is not entitled to profits from the big-screen versions of the popular '70s TV show.

In an opinion issued Monday, the 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected Wagner's claims that he and his children are contractually entitled to net profits earned by 2000's "Charlie's Angels" and 2003's "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," which starred Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu.

Wagner and his former wife Natalie Wood developed the TV series with producers Aaron Spelling, Leonard Goldberg and their Spelling-Goldberg Prods. Under an agreement with the production company, Wagner and Wood were entitled to 50% of the net profits Spelling-Goldberg received "for the right to exhibit photoplays of the series and from the exploitation of all ancillary, music and subsidiary rights in connection therewith."

Years after Spelling-Goldberg sold both its rights and obligations relating to "Charlie's Angels" to Sony Pictures Television, corporate sibling Columbia Pictures purchased theatrical motion picture rights from heirs of the show's writers, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, to whom film rights had reverted under Writers Guild of America "separated rights" rules.

Wagner argued that under his contract with Spelling-Goldberg, the "subsidiary rights" provision meant he and his children with Wood, who died in 1981, were entitled to share in 50% of the income "from all sources," including the films.

Columbia, however, claimed that while "subsidiary rights" may sometimes include movie rights, Wagner's contract with Spelling-Goldberg did not cover film revenue because Columbia acquired film rights not from Spelling-Goldberg but on the open market just as any studio could have done.

The unanimous three-judge panel agreed.

"For a right to be 'subsidiary' or 'ancillary,' meaning supplementary or subordinate, there must be a primary right to which it relates," Justice Earl Johnson Jr. wrote on behalf of the panel. "The only primary right mentioned in the contract is 'the right to exhibit photoplays of the series.'

"Thus, the Wagners were entitled to share in the profits from the exploitation of the movie rights to Charlie's Angels if those rights were exploited by Columbia as ancillary or subsidiary rights of its primary 'right to exhibit photoplays of the series' but not if those rights were acquired by Columbia independently from its right to exhibit photoplays," Johnson concluded, with justices Norvell Woods Jr. and Laurie Zelon joining.

Wagner's attorney, Samuel Pryor, said the ruling is "unfortunate and we think it's a mistaken decision."

"We think their opinion really came down to one narrow interpretation of the contract that might have been a reasonable interpretation, but that they erred in dismissing ours as unreasonable as a matter of law, given the evidence we had as to the intention of the parties and the lack of any evidence submitted by the other side as to what the contract meant," he added.

Pryor said he and his client are deciding whether to file a petition for review with the California Supreme Court.

Columbia's attorney, Martin Katz, said he did not see any basis for the state's high court to take the case.

"The court discussed both the words of the contract and the extrinsic evidence that was submitted by the parties, and after considering all the evidence, the court of appeal correctly concluded, as did the trial court, that Wagner's interpretation was not one to which the language was reasonably susceptible," Katz said. "So now there are four judges, the trial court judge and a unanimous panel on appeal that all agree with Columbia's position and have found Mr. Wagner's interpretation of the agreement unreasonable."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1_%5bFeed%5d-8





Hitchcock, Thrilling the Ears as Well as the Eyes
Edward Rothstein

“I must get that damned tune out of my head!” exclaims the beleaguered Richard Hannay as he is chased across the Scottish Highlands in “The 39 Steps.”

“I can’t get that tune out of my head!” complains Charlie, the unsuspecting niece of the Merry Widow Murderer, as she keeps imagining that waltz in “Shadow of a Doubt.”

“I can’t tell you what this music has meant to me!” exclaims the once-suicidal Miss Lonelyheart in “Rear Window,” with effusive gratitude to the song’s composer.

Innocents all, twisted round by suspicion, doubt, danger and confusion. And all haunted by music that, Alfred Hitchcock kept hoping in his lifelong quest, would haunt audiences as well.

It is that “damned tune,” after all, that leads Hannay to the heart of an international espionage plot and allows him to upend its nefarious goals. It is that “Merry Widow Waltz” that leads Charlie to guess that her admired doppelgänger, Uncle Charlie, may not be everything he seems. And it is that composer’s song (which prevents a suicide) that provides the sole salvational counterpoint to another plot, in which a neighbor murders and dismembers his wife, which Jimmy Stewart discerns from his rear window. Hitchcock’s characters are haunted by tunes for good reason. And while the achievements of his films and their scores have not lacked elaborate celebration (he worked with the best film composers of the 20th century and left his mark on their development), Hitchcock had something else in mind that may not be fully appreciated.

Bernard Herrmann, for example, who created the scores for “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and some of Hitchcock’s other masterpieces, said there were only “a handful of directors like Hitchcock who really know the score and fully realize the importance of its relationship to a film.”

But it was more than that. For Hitchcock music was not merely an accompaniment. It was a focus. And it didn’t just reveal something about the characters who sang the score’s songs or moved under its canopy of sound; music could seem to be a character itself.

This might sound a bit grandiose, but take a look at Jack Sullivan’s fascinating new book, “Hitchcock’s Music” (Yale University Press). In his book “New World Symphonies,” Mr. Sullivan, who is director of American studies at Rider University in New Jersey, inverted the usual suggestion that American concert-hall music evolved under the domineering shadow of European influence. He showed instead how American music powerfully shaped the evolution of Europe’s art form. Now he shows that it isn’t just that Hitchcock believed that sound should serve image; he believed that image should serve sound.

“Hitchcock’s career,” Mr. Sullivan writes, “was an unending search for the right song.” “Rear Window,” he argues, discussing some of the songs, boogies, ballads and street sounds that make up the film’s score, “is Hitchcock’s most daring experiment in popular music.” And Hitchcock remade “The Man Who Knew Too Much” in 1956 so that the “movie would be about music.”

Mr. Sullivan might have made his case more systematically; he is also hampered by hewing to a dutiful and sometimes awkward chronological trek through Hitchcock’s 50-some feature films. And he doesn’t do enough to remind readers of the films’ plots (even when discussing Hitchcock’s little-known 1934 biopic about the Strauss family, “Waltzes From Vienna”). But he examines Hitchcock’s meticulous notes about film scores, pays attention to every casual calliope tune and chronicles the director’s arguments with studios and fallings out with composers (Hitchcock eventually fired even Herrmann from his privileged perch) while revealing new ways of thinking about Hitchcock’s music.

Part of Hitchcock’s musical style is just a matter of sheer attentiveness and sly humor. When a carnival organ plays “Baby Face” in the background of “Strangers on a Train,” in which the murders of a wife and a father are plotted, or when Cary Grant, before the maelstrom, innocently walks through a hotel lobby in “North by Northwest” as Muzak plays “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” we can see the portly master winking over his characters’ heads.

“Mozart is the boy for you,” an ailing Scottie is told futilely by a friend visiting him in a mental institution in “Vertigo,” though Mozart doesn’t stand a chance against Herrmann’s vertiginous score.

Yet Hitchcock could also be wrong in his judgments, as Herrmann proved when he showed that, despite the director’s assertion, music should accompany the shower murder in “Psycho.”

But in Hitchcock’s most powerful films it is impossible to separate music from the visual fabric or plot. In “The Lady Vanishes” the leading man is an ethnomusicologist studying the endangered folk musics of Europe on the eve of World War II. The film’s elderly Miss Froy, though, has the real musical ears, listening closely to a guitarist’s serenade that has encoded within it a melodic message that must be brought to Britain before it is too late; she hears and recalls what the hero does not.

The 1956 remake of “The Man Who Knew Too Much” uses Arthur Benjamin’s “Storm Clouds” cantata, which was commissioned for the 1934 version of the film. In the remake an assassination is to take place at a climactic cymbal crash. The bad guys, here as elsewhere in Hitchcock’s works, are surprisingly musically literate. They play recordings for the assassin. They supply a score reader who follows along as Herrmann conducts the London Symphony Orchestra. And in the remake, Mr. Sullivan points out, the musical emphasis is heightened from the beginning.

The heroine’s musical past becomes crucial. Doris Day’s professionally trained voice thwarts the assassination with her anticipatory scream. Music’s powers even help her find her kidnapped child as she sings his favorite song, “Que Sera, Sera.”

Music has as much a role to play in these films as any of the characters. It might charm them or be used by them. But it also can reveal more than they know, offering secrets or promising salvation. Hitchcock’s music has such an independent life, it also seeps through film’s strict boundaries: Something that seems to be a score turns out to be a radio playing off screen (“Rear Window”); music that starts as part of a film score is heard again in the humming of a hero (in “Foreign Correspondent”).

“I have the feeling I am an orchestra conductor,” Hitchcock once told François Truffaut. He also compared film to opera.

Hitchcock, without ever drawing a line between the popular and high arts, explored his chosen genre with a firm belief about the powers of music. Music can provide an archetype for Hitchcockian suspense. Music can hint at more than it says; it can unfold with both rigorous logic and heightened drama; and despite all expectations it can shock with its revelations.

Mr. Sullivan’s book suggests that Hitchcock’s musical faith was more profound than any he could have had about people. And this faith was shared by a generation of film composers who worked with him and were also émigrés to the United States in the 1930s and ’40s, including Erich Korngold, Miklos Rosza and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Despite the events they lived through (which provided their own form of menace and resolution), they shared a conviction that the culture of music had such power that it could match the increasing dominance of film. It could stand in confidence alongside it, knowingly alluding to ambiguities, complexities and multiplicities that not even Hitchcock’s heroes could entirely figure out before the films end.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/movies/08conn.html?





Lawyer Gave Information to Kerkorian
David M. Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner

When Kirk Kerkorian’s longtime lawyer was indicted on wiretapping and conspiracy charges last February in the federal investigation of the Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano, the billionaire investor was mentioned almost as an afterthought.

There were no accusations that Mr. Kerkorian knew or approved of any wiretapping, and no indications that he had even been interviewed by the F.B.I. about Mr. Pellicano’s work on his behalf.

But in recordings that Mr. Pellicano secretly made of his own telephone conversations, Mr. Kerkorian’s lawyer, Terry N. Christensen, repeatedly said he told the billionaire — then 84, and locked in a legal dispute with his ex-wife, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian — what the private detective was learning from what prosecutors say were his wiretaps.

Mr. Christensen stops short of saying he has told Mr. Kerkorian that Mr. Pellicano was using wiretaps, but says he is providing Mr. Kerkorian with details of Ms. Kerkorian’s private conversations.

Mr. Kerkorian has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and it is unlikely that someone could be held criminally liable for the actions of an investigator hired by his lawyer without showing that the client knew of the investigator’s illegal acts.

Yet the recordings show how Mr. Pellicano’s information could affect a high-stakes lawsuit, and make clear that Mr. Kerkorian, according to Mr. Christensen’s assurances, was grateful for intimate information that helped his case.

“Tell me that the old man has a smile on his face,” Mr. Pellicano said on May 14, 2002.

“He does, O.K.? He’s happy,” Mr. Christensen said. “Our jaw is still hanging down.”

Mr. Kerkorian was then embroiled with his ex-wife in a nasty child-support and paternity battle. Mr. Pellicano heard Ms. Kerkorian talking to her lawyers, relatives and friends even as she and Mr. Kerkorian were wrangling over her demand for a $270,000 increase in monthly child-support payments. Ms. Kerkorian’s effort ultimately failed; a judge increased the payments by just $316.

The secret recordings also show how Mr. Kerkorian and his lawyer pushed the private detective to investigate another multimillionaire, the movie producer Stephen L. Bing, whom Mr. Kerkorian suspected of being the biological father of his ex-wife’s daughter.

A spokesman for Mr. Kerkorian, Dick Sobelle, declined to answer questions for this article. “We’re not at liberty to comment on any of this,” he said. Federal prosecutors declined to comment, as did Mr. Pellicano, who is in jail awaiting trial.

Mr. Christensen’s lawyer, Terree A. Bowers, declined to answer questions, but when told the thrust of this article, called it “irresponsible, unwarranted and a pack of lies.” He added: “In fact, there are absolutely no tapes or reliable evidence of any wiretaps involving the Kerkorian-Bonder litigation. The charges are and remain totally unfounded.”

The recordings are among hundreds that prosecutors have turned over to defense lawyers, along with tens of thousands of documents. That evidence was subject to a court protective order, and prosecutors are investigating The New York Times’s access to some of it.

Mr. Christensen and Mr. Pellicano, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to felony wiretapping and conspiracy charges, were among seven people indicted last February as part of an F.B.I. inquiry. Two have pleaded guilty, and the trial of the other five, after several delays, is set for August.

Mr. Kerkorian, through his holding company, the Tracinda Corporation, controls MGM Mirage, with its extensive hotel and casino properties. He bought and sold the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio three times from 1969 to 2004. Last year, he bought 9.9 percent of General Motors, trying to pressure it into a deal with Nissan and Renault, then retreated, selling his shares for a profit of $100 million. Forbes put his net worth at $8.7 billion last year.

Mr. Kerkorian will turn 90 in June. The recordings in which he is discussed by his lawyer and the private detective suggest he could be called to testify at their trial about what he knew and when.

The wiretapping on Mr. Kerkorian’s behalf began after his ex-wife sued to increase his child-support payments from $50,000 to $320,000 a month. Mr. Kerkorian had learned much earlier that her daughter, who was born before he married Ms. Kerkorian, was not his biological child. But now Mr. Kerkorian pressed his lawyer to find out who the father was.

On March 18, 2002, Mr. Christensen told Mr. Pellicano that “proof of exactly how she got pregnant” would be worth $100,000 to Mr. Kerkorian.

Over the next two months, Mr. Pellicano recorded at least 33 more conversations with Mr. Christensen. While they did not use the word “wiretap,” they freely talked about what Mr. Pellicano heard while monitoring Ms. Kerkorian’s phones.

On April 27, 2002, Mr. Pellicano reported hearing her discuss trying to leverage Mr. Kerkorian’s desire to spend time with her daughter into a bigger settlement. “This is her exact words, by the way,” he said. “ ‘How much money is he willing to pay me to get that?’ That’s her exact words.”

He also said Ms. Kerkorian had confided in her father about her case. “There’s no way except with my unique techniques that you would know this,” he said.

A few excerpts show the kinds of information Mr. Kerkorian’s side gained from learning of Ms. Kerkorian’s telephone conversations:

On April 22, 2002, Mr. Pellicano reported to Mr. Christensen that Ms. Kerkorian was furious at her lawyers and ready to fire one of them, Stephen Kolodny, but Mr. Kolodny talked her out of it. “I’ll tell you something, if we continue to get this kind of information with their strategy, we’ll really kill ’em,” he said.

Mr. Kolodny said he had no recollection of Ms. Kerkorian threatening to fire him in this time period.

On Saturday, April 27, two days before a settlement conference, Mr. Pellicano told Mr. Christensen he had picked up “massive detail” about Ms. Kerkorian’s settlement demands.

“She wants all her legal fees paid. You understand?” Mr. Pellicano said. “She wants retroactive support back to August of last year. She wants $125,000 a month. She wants a joint press statement saying that neither one of them was at fault, and they just both made mistakes.”

Repeatedly, Mr. Christensen said he intended to, or already had, told Mr. Kerkorian what Mr. Pellicano had learned from Ms. Kerkorian’s phone calls:

On April 27, Mr. Pellicano said Mr. Christensen might want to warn Mr. Kerkorian about something.

“She talks about killing him,” Mr. Pellicano said. “She says, ‘You know, I gotta kill him.’ She says those things. Now, whether she really means it or not, probably not. But does she say it? Absolutely.”

Two days later, Mr. Christensen returned to the subject. “Those comments and that discussion was pretty disgusting, and I’m thinking that I should probably, you know, give Kirk a heads-up,” he said.

Mr. Christensen’s lawyers later claimed that Mr. Pellicano’s information about such statements by Ms. Kerkorian was what led Mr. Christensen to become involved with the private detective in the first place.

Steve Sitkoff, a lawyer for Ms. Kerkorian, scoffed at the notion that she was ever a threat to anyone. “It’s ludicrous to think that she would ever mean any harm to Kirk or anyone else,” he said.

On May 10, Mr. Pellicano argued for telling Mr. Kerkorian not to trust the mediator in the case, Deborah Simon. After Mr. Kerkorian had left Ms. Simon a lengthy message, Ms. Simon told Ms. Kerkorian all about it, Mr. Pellicano said, and Ms. Kerkorian was thrilled.

“The elation was overwhelming,” Mr. Pellicano said.

“Well, I will let Kirk know the emotional high that Lisa got out of Deborah’s call,” Mr. Christensen said. Ms. Simon did not respond to messages at her home and office.

On May 14, Mr. Pellicano asked if Mr. Kerkorian had been briefed about another exchange he had overheard. “Did you tell him about that?” he said.

“Yeah, oh sure,” Mr. Christensen said. “He just couldn’t believe it.”

Ms. Kerkorian, who had a long relationship with the billionaire, married and quickly divorced him when her baby was a year old, and the two agreed at the time that the child was his.

By the time Mr. Pellicano was hired, the investor already had been told by his ex-wife’s friends that she had had an affair with Mr. Bing, the film producer, around the time when her daughter was conceived. So, after Mr. Pellicano tried to but could not confirm that Ms. Kerkorian had been artificially inseminated, Mr. Christensen pressed him to focus on Mr. Bing — who was already embroiled in a contentious and public paternity fight with the actress Elizabeth Hurley.

At one point, on April 28, 2002, Mr. Christensen told Mr. Pellicano that he took no pleasure in pursuing Mr. Bing. “But Kirk is going through this, and he’s been [expletive] defrauded, O.K.? And I am not resting until this is put to bed, and it’s not going to be put to bed until we find out who the father is.”

Ultimately, Mr. Bing, who declined to comment, was identified as the father of Ms. Kerkorian’s child, with the help of a DNA sample lifted from his trash.

As word broke of that finding, on May 15, 2002, Mr. Christensen told Mr. Pellicano to shut down the wiretap of Ms. Kerkorian after one final night of listening. The private eye said he hoped to work for Mr. Kerkorian again.

“Maybe the old man will give me something in the future,” he said.

“Well, that you can count on,” Mr. Christensen said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/bu...ia/11kirk.html





Carlo Ponti, Italian Producer, Dies at 94
AP

Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who discovered a teenage Sophia Loren, launched her film career and later married her despite threats of bigamy charges and excommunication, has died in Geneva. He was 94.

Ponti died overnight at a Geneva hospital, his family said Wednesday. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier for pulmonary complications, it said.

He produced more than 100 films, including ''Doctor Zhivago,'' ''The Firemen's Ball,'' and ''The Great Day,'' which were nominated for Oscars. Other major films included ''Blow-Up,'' ''The Cassandra Crossing,'' ''The Verdict'' and ''The Squeeze.''

In 1956, ''La Strada,'' which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for best foreign film, as did ''Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow'' in 1964.

But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public, rather than his work with top filmmakers such as Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Ustinov, David Lean and Roman Polanski.

''I have done everything for love of Sophia,'' he said in a newspaper interview shortly before his 90th birthday in 2002. ''I have always believed in her.''

Born near Milan in the small town of Magenta on Dec. 11, 1912, Ponti studied law and worked as a lawyer before moving into film production in the late 1930s.

He was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren -- then Sofia Lazzaro -- about 1950. At the time she was only 15 -- a quarter-century younger than Ponti.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret despite huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 -- two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.

But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Ponti was charged with bigamy.

''I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before,'' Loren has said.

''I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners,'' she said. ''We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours.''

The couple first lived in exile and then, after the annulment of their Mexican marriage, in secret in Italy.

During this period, Ponti produced the film ''La Ciociara'' -- known in English as ''Two Women'' -- for which Loren won a best actress Oscar in 1962, and contributed significantly to the development of French New Wave cinema in his collaboration with Godard.

Ponti and Loren finally beat Italian law by becoming French citizens -- the approval was signed personally by French President Georges Pompidou -- and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.

Despite many predictions that the marriage would founder over Ponti's affairs and the many dashing leading men who reportedly fell in love with Loren, the couple stayed together.

Ponti had several other brushes with the law.

He was briefly imprisoned in by the Fascist government in Italy during World War II for producing ''Piccolo Mondo Antico,'' which was considered anti-German. An Italian court later gave Ponti a six-month suspended sentence for his 1973 film ''Massacre in Rome,'' which claimed Pope Pius XII did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal.

Though Loren was better-known, Ponti amassed a fortune considerably greater than that of his wife -- and again fell foul of the Italian authorities.

In 1979, a court in Rome convicted him in absentia of the illegal transfer of capital abroad and sentenced him to four years in prison and a $24 million fine.

Loren, along with film stars Ava Gardner and Richard Harris, were acquitted of conspiracy.

It took Ponti until the late 1980s to settle his legal problems and finally obtain the return of his art collection, which had been seized by authorities and given to Italian museums.

He also survived two kidnapping attempts in 1975.

Ponti discovered many of the great Italian leading ladies, including Gina Lollobrigida, and had affairs with several. ''I don't like actors. I prefer women,'' he said at the time.

In recent years, the couple lived mostly in Switzerland, where they had several homes. Despite reports that he was seriously ill, Ponti attended the 1998 Venice Film Festival to accept a lifetime achievement award for his wife, who was kept away by illness.

Ponti had two sons with Loren -- Carlo Jr., a celebrated conductor, and Edoardo, a film producer. He also had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.

No date was given for a funeral, but the family said it would be ''strictly private.''

------

Sanminiatelli reported from Rome and Jordans reported from Geneva. Associated Press Writer Naomi Koppel in London contributed to this report.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Ponti.html





Yvonne De Carlo, Who Played Lily on 'The Munsters,' Dies at 84
Wolfgang Saxon

Yvonne De Carlo, a dark-haired Hollywood beauty who advanced from the chorus line to play Moses’ wife in a movie epic but who achieved her greatest popularity as Lily in the CBS television sitcom “The Munsters,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. She was 84.

The cause was heart failure, said Kevin Burns, a friend and television producer. She had been living at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, he said.

Miss De Carlo had had a prolific film career in the 1940s and ’50s when she was cast as Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), a bumbling Frankenstein’s monster with a soft heart who led a Charles Addams-flavored household peopled by the likes of an aging Count Dracula, the cigar-chomping Grandpa (Al Lewis).

The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs.

In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family’s oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors. It was Miss De Carlo, for example, who delivered one of the show’s signature lines: “Do you have a feeling we’re being stared at?”

She was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. Ambition on both their parts led Peggy to study dance and dramatics and her mother to seek fame and fortune with her in California.

Peggy turned into Yvonne and took her mother’s maiden name, De Carlo, as her own. She started dancing in clubs at night and scouring the film studios for work by day. There were years of uncredited walk-ons and bit parts, like Bathing Beauty in “Harvard, Here I Come!” (1941) and Princess Wah-Tah in “The Deerslayer” (1943).

Her breakthrough came with a starring role in “Salome, Where She Danced” (1945), a Western with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak, in which she played a European seductress. While the movie may have been forgettable, she became known as one of Hollywood’s most desirable young stars and advanced to pictures playing opposite some of the era’s most popular leading men.

Among them were Brian Donlevy and Jean Pierre Aumont in “Song of Scheherazade” (1947); Tony Martin in “Casbah” (1948); Burt Lancaster in “Criss Cross” (1949); Howard Duff in “Calamity Jane and Sam Bass” (1949) and “Flame of the Islands” (1956); Van Heflin in “Tomahawk” (1951); Joel McCrea in “The San Francisco Story” (1952); Ricardo Montalban in “Sombrero” (1953); and Rock Hudson in “Sea Devils” (1953).

One of her outstanding parts in those busy years came in the British comedy “The Captain’s Paradise” (1953). As Nita, the hotblooded other wife in Tangier, she taught a blithely bigamous English ferry captain (Alec Guinness) the flamenco, among other things.

After that, she made “Tonight’s the Night,” with David Niven and Barry Fitzgerald, and “Passion,” with Cornel Wilde, both in 1954. Three years later she starred with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in “Band of Angels,” after the novel by Robert Penn Warren. In 1956 it was “Raw Edge,” with Rory Calhoun, then, the same year, “Death of a Scoundrel,” with George Sanders playing the cad in question and Miss De Carlo doing, in the words of a reviewer for The New York Times, “a solid and professional job as the adoring petty thief who rises to eminence with him.”

One of her most prominent roles was as Sephora, wife to Charlton Heston’s Moses in the Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza “The Ten Commandments” (1956). “Yvonne De Carlo as the Midianite shepherdess to whom Moses is wed,” wrote Bosley Crowther in The Times, “is notably good in a severe role.”

She also appeared on Broadway in 1971 in “Follies,” the long-running musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman. She assumed the part of a fading movie star and took in audiences with her matter-of-fact presentation of Mr. Sondheim’s wistful “I’m Still Here.”

Altogether, Miss De Carlo appeared in nearly 100 films well into the 1990s, starting with uncredited roles and tapering into thrillers and sci-fi potboilers like “Silent Scream” (1980) and “American Gothic” (1988). There were also many cameo appearances, as in “Here Come the Munsters,” a 1995 television-movie reincarnation in which the Munsters invade America in search of Herman’s brother-in-law, Norman Hyde.

Miss De Carlo’s marriage to Robert Morgan, an actor and stuntman, ended in divorce. She is survived by their son Bruce Morgan and a stepdaughter, Bari Morgan. Another son, Michael, died earlier.

Many years ago Miss De Carlo’s name was linked in an off-screen romance with Howard Hughes, before he turned into a legendary recluse. Asked to reminisce about that chapter in her life by Ladies’ Home Journal in 1972, she said: “Howard taught me how to land a plane and how to take off. But he never taught me anything about flying in between. He thought that I had learned the difficult parts, and that was enough.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/ar...11decarlo.html





No Ceasefire in DVD Format Battle
Darren Waters

The high definition DVD format war will continue until a winner is declared, technology watchers have heard.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD are battling to become the pre-eminent hi-def format to replace the slowing DVD market.

The two formats are incompatible with each other and so consumers are being asked to choose both the player and the system when moving to high definition.

There is also no sign of the two camps working on a unified format, the Consumer Electronics Show was told.

'Wasted opportunity'

Some believe the industry at large is being damaged by the war due to consumer confusion.

Ben Keen, chief analyst with Screen Digest, said: "There is an awful lot of people in the US and Europe who have HD displays and no hi-def content.

"That's a wasted opportunity at this point. The industry is not exploiting that opportunity."

"The growth of the industry is much slower than it could be," agreed Dr H G Lee, chief technology officer of LG Electronics, which has announced the first player to accept both formats.

"We recognise that the two formats are here to stay."

But the backers of Blu-ray are much more bullish and are predicting victory.

Blu-ray has more backing from film studios and more makers of the players, but HD-DVD has sold equally well in the first year of release.

But the Blu-ray camp believes a library of exclusive titles and the power of PlayStation 3 - which has an in-built Blu-ray player - will see the format pull ahead in the next 12 months.

Mike Dunn, president of worldwide home entertainment for 20th Century Fox, said: "I really believe the format war is in its final phase."

Supporters of Blu-ray believe that the late arrival to the market in 2006 of new next generation Blu-ray DVD players has given a more even picture than is true.

Studio backing

Currently there is an even number of titles available for both formats but most analysts predict there will be more content available for Blu-ray than HD-DVD next year.

Seven of the eight major US film studios back Blu-ray and five of them are exclusive to the format.

Andy Parsons, chairman of the US Blu-ray Disc Association, said: "It comes down to content and selection of content. No-one is going to buy any player without good array of content.

"As title population grows consumers will quickly see which platform has the titles."

In an ominous sign for HD-DVD, the backers of Blu-ray revealed that of the 20 biggest selling DVDs of 2006 the vast majority were from film studios supporting Blu-ray.

Toshiba and Microsoft, the principal backers of HD-DVD, see the future very differently.

They believe that the cheaper cost of HD-DVD - both in terms of hardware and the ability of firms to produce content on HD-DVD disks gives them the advantage.

Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of consumer technology at Microsoft, said the dual format player by LG - originally a Blu-ray only backer - was proof of the vitality of HD-DVD.

"LG are recognising there is a thriving market for HD-DVD. That's the most positive thing for me.

"It's going to show the way to other Blu-ray exclusive companies. LG is saying that HD-DVD is not dying.

"You can wish it goes away but I'm here to ensure that it doesn't."

Microsoft has sold more than 175,000 and says that they sold out as quickly as they were made.

Toshiba has said that it plans to sell more than 1.8m HD-DVD players in 2007.

Mr Majidimehr predicted that the lifespan of both formats would also be less than the current DVD format.

It has lasted 10 years with great success but Mr Majidimehr said the technology would be superseded by developments in online delivery of hi-def content.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6243383.stm





Yahoo Introduces Mobile Service Software
Miguel Helft

After falling behind Google in Internet search and advertising, Yahoo is trying to remain No. 1 in the battle to deliver information and online services to mobile phones.

Yahoo’s latest weapon is software that will let users find information like weather, news, stock quotes and sports scores more quickly on their cellphones. The software, called Go for Mobile 2.0, was unveiled Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, just as Google announced a partnership to put its own mobile software on Samsung cellphones.

Internet services on mobile phones remain a tiny market today, especially in the United States. But industry analysts and Internet companies believe they will eventually outgrow the market for computer-based Internet services as the capabilities of cellphones and the bandwidth of wireless networks improve rapidly.

“We view the mobile Internet today as entering an era where the PC-based Internet was in ’96 or ’97,” said Steve Boom, Yahoo’s senior vice president for broadband and mobile. “It is just on the cusp of taking off.”

For Yahoo, securing a leading position in that market is especially important. The company has struggled over the last year, as Google solidified its lead in search and leaped ahead in online video by acquiring YouTube. Yahoo has also been criticized as lacking initiative and being slow to capitalize on Internet trends like social networking, now dominated by MySpace and Facebook.

Yahoo’s introduction of mobile software was reported Monday in The Wall Street Journal. The software, a revamped version of technology that the company introduced last year, makes it easy to move among various online services providing news, sports scores, maps, weather, movies, photos and e-mail. The free ad-supported services will be tailored to match a user’s settings, like ZIP code and stock preferences, on Yahoo’s existing online services.

The software will also be equipped with a search service, oneSearch, that will interpret a user’s intent and deliver results accordingly. For instance, when a user searches for a sports team, the service will make a bet that the user is interested in the latest scores, a team profile and news related to the team, and return those first. More general Web links, like those returned in typical Internet searches, will be de-emphasized.

“It’s the kind of thing that Yahoo very much needs to extend further onto the mobile platform,” said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, a research firm based in Bethesda, Md.

The service is already available on about 70 handset models and is expected to be on some 400 devices by the end of the year, Mr. Boom said. Yahoo has signed agreements with handset makers to preload or distribute the software. Yahoo is also encouraging users to download the software directly onto their devices.

Yahoo’s mobile services were used by 6.8 percent of cellphone users in the United States in October, according to Telephia, a research firm. That made Yahoo, whose most popular wireless service is e-mail, the No. 1 mobile Internet company. But in mobile search, Google already tops Yahoo, according to Telephia.

Google said its cellphone search, e-mail and map products would be preloaded on Samsung phones. Deep Nishar, Google’s director of wireless products and strategy, said the company’s mobile search service already emphasized results that users typically want, like sports scores and movie times and locations.

To succeed, both companies will need to secure cooperation from wireless carriers, which could prove a challenge for some time as several offer competing services, said Julie Ask, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

Yahoo said some overseas carriers had agreed to support its services. Mr. Boom said it was “a matter of time” before American carriers followed suit. As an incentive, Yahoo is offering to share revenue from any advertising on the system, he said.

Ms. Ask noted that, for now, most cellphone advertising consists of text messages sent directly to users, and that ad revenues from mobile search and Web browsing are minuscule.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/te...y/09yahoo.html





Surveillance

Court Challenge of ID Requirement Fails
Joan Biskupic

The Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed a challenge to the federal government's policy of requiring airline passengers to show identification before they board flights, spurning arguments that the well-known but unpublished policy would lead to more secret laws.

John Gilmore, a founder of Sun Microsystems and an advocate of libertarian causes, sued the government because it has long refused to disclose the text of the regulation that forces air travelers to present an ID.

The question before the justices was whether travelers have sufficient notice of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ID policy to satisfy constitutional due process of law, which typically requires a law to be published so people know how to comply with it.

On July 4, 2002, Gilmore tried to board two flights from California to the Washington, D.C., area without showing identification. Airline workers told him that if he would not show an ID, he would have to undergo more extensive screening. He refused.

"I believe I have a right to travel in my own country without presenting what amounts to an internal passport," Gilmore told USA TODAY in 2004. "I have a right to be anonymous."

Gilmore's lawsuit drew support at the high court from several media groups, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Association of Law Libraries and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

In court briefs, the groups stressed the importance of the public knowing what the law says and the need to hold officials accountable as they impose anti-terrorism measures.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement told the justices in a brief that telling passengers about the ID requirement at airports is sufficient, and he emphasized that the TSA directive is part of "sensitive security information." He said the directive is part of a broad policy aimed at preventing hijackings and other potential threats to passenger jets.

In denying Gilmore's appeal, the high court gave no explanation and had no public vote, as is its usual practice in declining to hear cases. The justices let stand a lower court's ruling that said Gilmore had enough notice of the policy because airline workers had told him about it.

Gilmore's attorney, Thomas Goldstein, said the federal government's refusal to disclose the TSA directive has the effect of misinforming people. "Passengers are consistently advised that federal law requires them to show identification," Goldstein wrote in the appeal. "Passengers in reality can generally travel even without showing proper identification … (if) they undergo a more extensive security screening."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...hallenge_x.htm





Supreme Court Lets Stand Secretive Security

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear a challenge to the secrecy surrounding the Transportation Security Agency's rules requiring that U.S. citizens provide identification to board domestic airline flights or submit to additional security screening.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the plaintiff, civil-rights activist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Gilmore, nearly a year ago. In November, a coalition of eight groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), filed a court brief supporting Gilmore's request for information about the secretive rules.

"'Security' shouldn't be a magic password allowing the government to escape accountability," Marcia Hofmann, staff attorney for the EFF, said in a statement published at the time. "The Supreme Court should hear this case and review why the TSA insists on keeping this basic information secret."

After 9-11, the Bush Administration has increasingly used secrecy to guard non-classified but sensitive information from potentially being used by terrorists to plan an attack while increasingly exercising surveillance powers. Government agencies have pulled information from the Web, while previously unclassified documents have been resealed. Meanwhile, the EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed lawsuits over the National Security Agency's use of wiretaps to spy on American citizens who are suspected of ties to terrorism.

The TSA maintained in court documents that secrecy was necessary to ensure the security of passengers, while the EFF argued that the rules amounted to unconstitutionally secretive laws. The Supreme Court justices made no comment in denying (PDF) the appeal.
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/402





Senator Asks Bush to Explain Signing Statement That Gives President Authority to Open Mail Without Warrant

The following letter, acquired by RAW STORY, was delivered to President Bush Monday, in response to an article published in the NY Daily News which revealed that Bush had written into a "signing statement" that the President could open Americans' mail.

January 8, 2007

The Honorable George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am deeply concerned about the signing statement that you issued on December 20, 2006, regarding H.R. 6407, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. It raises serious questions about whether the government is reading Americans’ first class mail without obtaining a search warrant or other court order as required by statute.

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act recodified in a different location an existing provision of federal law, without change, that states as follows:

No letter of such a class of domestic origin shall be opened except under authority of a search warrant authorized by law, or by an officer or employee of the Postal Service for the sole purpose of determining an address at which the letter can be delivered, or pursuant to the authorization of the addressee.[1]

In your signing statement, you stated that the executive branch would construe this provision “in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.”

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in February 2006 on the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program, Senator Leahy asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether the executive branch was relying in other contexts on the theory that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force gave it the authority to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other statutes. Specifically, Senator Leahy asked: “Did it authorize the opening of first-class mail of U.S. citizens?” The Attorney General attempted to avoid answering the question, but ultimately stated: “Senator, I think that, again, that is not what is going on here. We are only focused on communications, international communications, where one party to the communication is al Qaeda. That is what this program is all about.”

You have already confirmed that you have authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance of communications without obtaining the court orders required by FISA. Your December 20, 2006, signing statement now suggests that you believe you have the authority to violate the law with regard to opening regular mail. The American people and Congress are entitled to know whether you have acted on that theory. Please answer the following question: has your administration authorized any government agency to read Americans’ first-class mail without obtaining a search warrant, complying with the applicable court order requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or satisfying Postal Service regulations?

I look forward to your expeditious reply.

Sincerely,

Russell D. Feingold

United States Senator

1: A separate regulation, promulgated in 1996, states that the Postal Service can open a piece of mail when there is a credible threat that it contains a bomb or other explosive device. 39 C.F.R. § 233.11
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Se...ning_0108.html





YouTube Exposes Torture in Egypt
Kevin Anderson

American politicians quickly realised that no moment was private in the age of YouTube, and now Egyptian authorities are learning the same thing, even when the private moments are chilling scenes of police brutality. (Note: The videos contains scenes of graphic violence. Direct links to the videos are clearly identified.)

Camera phone images of Egyptian police "beating and sexually assaulting" a Cairo man were being circulated via mobile phone, according to Human Rights Watch, before they made their way onto the popular video sharing site. Police have been arrested and will face trial on charges of torture in the case, but the man in the video, Imad Kabir, has been jailed for three months on the charge of "resisting authority" in the incident.

Bloggers and Kabir's lawyer, Nasser Amin, are now putting pressure on authorities to guarantee his safety in prison. Mr Amin calls the disturbing incident a case of 'routine torture'. The El-Adly Video-Gate case, as bloggers are calling it, appear to be one of a number of cases of brutality. Bloggers have uploaded other footage to YouTube including this video of the interrogation of a woman accused of murder. (Note: The video contains scenes of violence that some readers will find offensive.)

Amnesty International, Human Rights watch and Egyptian bloggers including Wael Abbas and Demagh MAK are working to maintain pressure on authorities there to make torture less routine. But according to blogger and journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy, bloggers could now face a backlash. Mr Amin:
warned of increased police interest in the blogosphere, and expected, if not a crackdown, a state grand campaign to discredit the bloggers.

Blogging has been adopted by political technically savvy activists such as Alaa Abd El Fattah in Egypt, who was the focus of an international campaign to secure his release after he was detained with 10 other activists last year during a protest to support reformist judges. If you want to get a taste of the blogs there, Alaa recently relaunched his popular Egyptian blog aggregator.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/arc..._in_egypt.html





The Snoop Next Door

Bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online. Our reporter on new Web sites for outing fellow citizens.
Jennifer Saranow

Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date.

Almost immediately, she started receiving "weird and creepy" calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting "Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!" her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor's office were posted, along with the admonition, "next time, you might take your business outside." The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe.
The dawn patrol: Tim Halberg filmed a newspaper-stealing neighbor, then put the video online.

It used to be the worst you could get for a petty wrong in public was a rude look. Now, it's not just brutal police officers, panty-free celebrities and wayward politicians who are being outed online. The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure as well. There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking (Caughtya.org) and leering (HollaBackNYC.com) to littering (LitterButt.com) and general bad behavior (RudePeople.com). One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs. Capturing newspaper-stealing neighbors on video is also an emerging genre.

Helping drive the exposés are a crop of entrepreneurs who hope to sell advertising and subscriptions. One site that lets people identify bad drivers is about to offer a $5 monthly service, for people to register several of their own plate numbers and receive notices if they are cited by other drivers. But the traffic and commercial prospects for many of the sites are so limited that clearly there is something else at work.

The embrace of the Web to expose trivial transgressions in part represents a return to shame as a check on social behavior, says Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some academics believe shame became less powerful as a control over everyday interactions with strangers in all but very small neighborhoods or social groups, as people moved to big cities or impersonal suburbs where they existed more anonymously.

The sites documenting minor wrongs are the flip side of an online vigilantism movement that tackles meatier social issues. Community organization Cop Watch Los Angeles encourages users to send in stories and pictures of people being brutalized or harassed by police, for posting on the Web. The governor of Texas plans to launch a site this year that will air live video of the border, in hopes that people will watch and report illegal crossings. In a trial run in November, the site received more than 14,000 emails. Tips included spottings of individuals swimming in the Rio Grande, a person wearing a large white hat and a "wild" boy at the border. In China, Web postings have become a powerful social weapon, used to rally thousands of people to hound a man who allegedly had an affair with a married woman.

An Anonymous Tip

For people singled out, the sites can represent an unsettling form of street justice, with no due process. Chris Roth's driving skills have been roundly criticized online by self-anointed traffic monitors. "This man needs his license revoked," wrote one poster, who accused Mr. Roth of cutting in and out. Another charged him with driving on a shoulder and having the audacity to "flip off" an old lady who wouldn't let him cut in.

Mr. Roth found the critiques when an anonymous writer added a comment to his MySpace profile in late November directing him to PlateWire, one of the handful of new sites devoted to bad driving. There, a user had posted Mr. Roth's license-plate information -- his vanity plate reads "IDRVFAST" -- and complained about his reckless driving style. Subsequent posters found and listed his full name, cellphone number and link to his MySpace page, as well as comments like "big jerk" and "meathead." (He has no idea how they found his information.)
Chris Roth was criticized by anonymous posters on one site for his driving skills.

"There is no accountability. You can just go online and say whatever you want whether it's factual or not," says the 37-year-old Mr. Roth, of Raleigh, N.C., who works in technology sales. He admits he is an impatient driver and speeds, but he has no plans to change his driving style based on posts by anonymous commentators. "Who are they to decide what is safe or not?" he says.

If you type "ycantpark" into photo-sharing site Flickr, there are about 200 photos of bad parking jobs at Yahoo Inc.'s Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters. The company says the posts were started anonymously around 2005 by employees disgruntled with the parking situation. During that year, Yahoo hired more than 2,100 new employees, and finding a parking space become difficult. "I don't want to have my car posted up there so I definitely think twice about how I park," says Yahoo spokeswoman Heidi Burgett.

The digital age allows critics to quickly find a fair amount of information about their targets. One day last November, at about 11:30 a.m., a blog focused on making New York streets more bike-friendly posted the license plate number of an SUV driver who allegedly accelerated from a dead stop to hit a bicycle blocking his way.

At 1:16 p.m., someone posted the registration information for the license plate, including the SUV owner's name and address. (The editor of the blog thinks the poster got the information from someone who had access to a license-plate look-up service, available to lawyers, private investigators and police.) At 1:31 p.m., another person added the owner's occupation, his business's name and his title. Ten minutes later, a user posted a link to an aerial photo of the owner's house. Within another hour, the posting also included the accused's picture and email address.

The SUV's owner, Ian Goldman, the chief executive of Celerant Technology Corp. in the New York City borough of Staten Island, declined to comment for this article. According to an email exchange posted on the blog, Mr. Goldman said that he had lent the vehicle in question to a relative with "an urgent medical situation" and that he was not aware of any incident. The alleged victim has decided to drop the matter since the damage to the bicycle, which he was standing next to at the time, was under $20. Last month, Aaron Naparstek, editor of the blog, says he removed Mr. Goldman's home and email addresses from the site after receiving a "lawyerly cease and desist" email asking that the whole posting be deleted.

Other sites have also received complaints asking that posts be removed. Most say they will remove identifying information like phone numbers or full names when it comes to their attention or if asked. Yet lawyers say alleged wrongdoers shamed online typically have little legal recourse under libel and privacy laws if the accusations in postings are true, if they are posters' opinions about behavior witnessed in a public place and if the personal information listed is available to the public. "It becomes very difficult when it comes to the shaming sites in terms of what you can do in creating a case," says Daniel Solove, an associate professor of law at George Washington University Law School, who is working on a book about gossiping, shaming and privacy on the Internet.

Caughtya.org hosts pictures of cars illegally parked in handicapped spaces. (Other objects qualify, too; one photo from Plano, Texas, is called "Big Rubber Chicken parked in accessible parking spaces.") Playground snoops can log onto the five-month-old Isaw-yournanny.blogspot.com, where users have posted details about nannies committing misdeeds, like feeding children Ho Hos.

Few Postings

Some of the sites are attracting little attention. Caughtya.org lists fewer than 10 U.S. infractions, RudePeople.com has about six stories of rudeness and Irate-Driver.com has none.

Many ask for donations to cover costs, but some owners are hoping to make money. Mark Buckman launched PlateWire in May after almost getting run off the road a few months earlier by several drivers, including one who was looking in his backseat and steering with his leg. The site now lists nearly 25,000 license-plate numbers, chastised for moves like tailgating with brights on and driving too slowly in the left lane. To drum up revenue, Mr. Buckman recently added advertising and an online store with branded merchandise. Users in about 15 states can also pay $2 to have a postcard sent to an offending driver, directing the accused to the site. He plans to launch another site this year that will allow people to rate and complain about local businesses and individuals. "If I can create jobs and create an empire that would be awesome, but my main goal is to make a Web site that can actually make real world changes," Mr. Buckman says.

Yahoo photo site Flickr has an "I hate stupid people" group that focuses on shots of regular people parking or dressing badly, among other misdeeds. It has nearly 60 members, as does the similar "Jerks" group, for pictures of "neighbor cats pooping on your lawn" or SUVs parked in compact spots. On Google Inc.'s YouTube, users have contributed videos of minor wrongs, like people cutting in line. On the blogs, one poster refers to this new form of revenge as "blogslapping," a word that previously just referred to when one blogger criticizes another's blog.

Caught on Tape

After Tim Halberg's Santa Barbara [Calif.] News-Press didn't show up on his doorstep for six days straight last March, he grabbed his camera and launched a stakeout. He stayed up all night waiting for the newspaper to arrive. When it did, he attached a note declaring, "I'm watching you! Don't ever steal my paper again," and left it on the driveway. Then he waited with his front door open a crack to catch the thief. The robed culprit: His neighbor at the time, a man who looks to be in his 50s. Mr. Halberg captured him on video walking up to the paper, reading the note and walking away.

Mr. Halberg never approached the neighbor about the issue directly, but he found four of the older newspapers in front of his house the next day. The 26-year-old wedding photographer posted the video on YouTube, where it's been viewed more than 850 times.

Online shaming is happening across the world, with several well-publicized cases in China. Last fall, one blogger posted photos and the license plate number of a Beijing driver who got out of his car and threw aside the bicycle of a woman blocking his way. The driver was quickly identified by Internet vigilantes and soon apologized on television for his behavior. And on a popular Web site last year, after one husband accused a student of having an affair with his wife, other users posted the student's phone number and other personal details. After that, groups of people showed up at his university and parents' home, according to some reports. The student denied the affair.

Some suggest that public shaming could be used here as a tool for social betterment. In a paper in the November issue of the New York University Law Review, Lior Strahilevitz, a law professor at the University of Chicago, suggested that roads would be safer if every car had a "How's My Driving?" placard on the bumper asking other drivers to report bad behavior.

The neighbor-as-Big-Brother approach is already being deployed offline. Since August, spectators at Cincinnati Bengals home games have been able to call 513-381-JERK to complain about rowdy fans. When a call comes in, security zooms in on the area with stadium cameras, confirms there's a problem and dispatches security. Initially, the hotline was receiving more than 100 calls a game, about 75% of which were crank calls. Reports were recently down to about 40 a game, with less than 25% being crank calls.

Posting a snarky message online is often safer than confronting bad behavior face to face. "You never know how people are going to react in person," says Scott Terry, 32, who works in advertising in Chicago. Last spring, he posted a photo on Flickr of a "cell phone bus yapper" who disrupted his morning commute. The caption: "Can't you use your inside voice?"

For others, posting can be revenge enough. In April, Grace Davis, 51, a stay-at-home mom in Santa Cruz, Calif., captured a "pushy customer" wearing a Hermès-like scarf and black sunglasses while ordering around sales people at Molinari Delicatessen in San Francisco with words like "gimme." Ms. Davis posted the photo online and wrote "Not nice! No fresh Molinari raviolis for you, madam" over the woman's face. "I can just happily walk away," says Ms. Davis, "because as we say in New Age Santa Cruz, 'It's out in the universe now.'"
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs





Lucky Year For RFID Privacy?
Erin Joyce

With the start of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas and the world of gadgetry and fun sloshing into the gadget-obsessed marketplace, it's pure tech catnip these days. If all that media overload isn't enough, the Mac faithful will be gathering in San Francisco to hear the oracle of cool, Steve Jobs, talk about the next Big iSomething – music, digital media, TVs, phones or all of the above coming to you from Apple.

At CES, we'll be seeing digital media distribution systems, VoIP, mobile phones, and digital media piped from one device to another to be viewed on the clearest, flattest screens ever. We'll be seeing more phones with GPS systems embedded that can help you track your kids' whereabouts -– or just track you. It's also expected to showcase RFID and its systems and illustrate how to use it to keep track of traffic, gadgets and security.

It's all so cool and so very busy, and it leaves a digital trail for a digital database called You.

What? You didn't know you'd be tracked with RFID? If you're a member of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, the privacy group founded by privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht, you would be expecting some notification that RFID systems are in use.

If privacy issues and data protection in the digital age were pushed to the forefront last year with all the notification of lost or stolen customer data, then this could be the year that RFID gets pushed into wider discussion, as well.

Why? Well for one thing, vendors are expecting 2007 to be a breakout year for RFID. Symbol Technologies, one of the biggest providers of RFID scanners and software systems for scanning products, said it is expecting to see a big jump in the use of item-level tagging, especially on apparel and consumer electronics on store shelves, as well as the use of more hybrid tags (a mix of active and passive tags on some products), tags with longer frequency ranges (more devices can scan from a farther distance), growth in pharmaceuticals, security, government and access control.

IBM is also moving aggressively to take advantage of the growth, but also to take a leadership role in helping to shape industry best practices about notification and use of RFID systems. It's a smart move for a company that's been awarded a bunch of RFID patents. The most recent one reads like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel: "Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environments" (Patent #7,076,441).

It pretty much does what the patent title says it does: tracks you and your products throughout the store and can also be used to identify you against other databases. It's got Albrecht's consumer privacy group lobbying for companies to disclose when this technology is in use.

Congress has yet to take up the issue, but plenty of states are considering legislation that would at least notify consumers when they're being tracked by the RFID devices. It's just one among many reasons that I think RFID will be one technology that helps push tech companies into taking part in drafting RFID privacy policies and best practices.

A crazy quilt of legislation?

There are plenty of positive and good uses for RFID, but it's what consumers don't know and aren't clear about that raises suspicions between them and the companies or governments that use the technology. That's why the industry has to be more active about best practices and notification policies. Otherwise, a crazy quilt of state legislation about this awaits.

Harriet P. Pearson, IBM's vice president and chief privacy officer, heads up IBM's efforts to embed privacy thinking into the company's design efforts across all its technology divisions. RFID is just one of them, which is evident in the titles of some patents it's been awarded: "Method to address security and privacy issue of the use of RFID systems to track consumer products" (Patent 7000834); "Anti-tracking system to ensure consumer privacy" (Patent 7086587); "System and architecture for privacy-preserving data mining" (Patent 6931403).

Among Pearson's priorities is to make sure that IBM's policies, once set, are being managed. To speak with her is to get a glimpse of the rapidly expanding use of technology and how that data can impact our livelihoods -- for better and for not so good.

About a year ago, IBM adjusted its human resources policies to ensure its employees that it would not use genetic information, or any kind of genetic data, to make hiring decisions. Sure, if you want to disclose information voluntarily in order to get different coverage for health care, so be it.

But the point is, our genetic data is in the mix, too, not just our buying habits, monthly expenditures, food preferences and the like.

There was a time when Web sites didn't post anything on their sites about how they would use the information you left there when you registered, or purchased something or typed in your credit card info, for example. Now, we wouldn't even dream of doing business with a site that doesn't have a clear privacy policy posted.

Only after a few bankruptcies of early dot-com flameouts, which landed many customers' information in a bankruptcy court, did the industry start to get religion about best practices regarding privacy policies.

This could be a similar breakout year for RFID and how companies use it with consumers -- it's a great opportunity to be aggressive in shaping policies about disclosure of that RFID use and how information is used.

For example, the RFID tagging system on a person could help keep track of workers who toil in dangerous environments, such as coal mines or oil refineries. They could opt-in for a system that could locate them should they become trapped in a mine.

On the other hand, IBM's Pearson adds, there should be strong policies in place for item-level tagging for which IBM has helped a diverse group of citizen and companies devise policy. "IBM strongly supports notification that these are in use. We actively promote these best practices and a role for these innovations to enable privacy as well," she told internetnews.com. "The issue about privacy is how we think and act on the issue. Trust is the name of the game. Privacy is absolutely part of that trust equation."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3652506





RFID Coming to Scooters, Diapers
Stefanie Olsen

Italian scooters and baby diapers could have a common link soon: embedded RFID tags tracking their whereabouts.

IBM plans to announce Wednesday that it has won two new customers for its radio frequency identification tracking software--an Italian subsidiary of Honda Motor and packaging maker Pliant.

Honda Italia Industriale, which sold 12.7 million scooters last year, plans to use RFID chips and IBM software to track motorcycle parts and tools circulating within its manufacturing plant in Atessa, Italy.

Pliant, based in Schaumburg, Ill., will sell a new RFID-embedded plastic wrap to consumer-goods companies that want to detect any tampering of their products in transit from manufacturer to distributor. Pliant is using IBM's software to keep track of RFID-marked cargo--everything from cereal boxes to diapers--in the warehouse.

"The goal of this program is to commercialize practical and cost-effective bulk packaging solutions that incorporate RFID technology," said Doug Lilac, Pliant's Technical Director for Innovation.

The news is a boon to IBM and an industry still in its early stages. While RFID tags are gaining ground in certain sectors--aircraft maker Boeing is tracking parts with the chips--many manufacturers and retail giants are reluctant to adopt the technology based on still-steep costs associated with the tags and potential consumer-privacy concerns.

RFID tags are computer chips placed on products, whether individually or in containers, to track the movement of those products. Sensors read the tags to monitor shipments and send alerts on conditions, like temperature and exposure to light, as well as on GPS (Global Positioning System) latitude and longitude.

The news comes a month after IBM introduced new software called WebSphere RFID Information Center, which helps manufacturers and distributors share data from the tracking tags.
http://news.com.com/RFID+coming+to+s...3-6148862.html





Canadian Coins Bugged, U.S. Security Agency Says

They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.

Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.

Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology.

"You might want to know where the individual is going, what meetings the individual might be having and, above all, with whom," said David Harris, a former CSIS officer who consults on security matters.

"The more covert or clandestine the activity in which somebody might be involved, the more significant this kind of information could be."

The counter-intelligence office of the U.S. Defence Security Service cites the currency caper as an example of the methods international spies have recently tried to illicitly acquire military technology.

Nearly 1,000 'suspicious' contacts

The service's report, Technology Collection Trends in the U.S. Defence Industry, says foreign-hosted conventions, seminars and exhibits are popular venues for pilfering secrets.

The report is based on an analysis of 971 "suspicious contact reports" submitted in fiscal 2005 by security-cleared defence contractors and various official personnel.

"On at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006, cleared defence contractors' employees travelling through Canada have discovered radio frequency transmitters embedded in Canadian coins placed on their persons," the report says.

The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved. A service spokeswoman said details of the incidents were classified.

As a result, the type of transmitter in play — and its ultimate purpose — remain a mystery.

However, tiny tracking tags, known as RFIDs, are commonly placed in everything from clothing to key chains to help retailers track inventory.

Each tag contains a miniature antenna that beams a unique ID code to an electronic reader. The information can then be transferred by the reader into a computerized database.

Makes no sense

The likely need for such a reading device means the doctored coins could be used to track people only in a controlled setting, not over long distances, said Chris Mathers, a security consultant and former undercover RCMP officer.

"From a technology perspective, it makes no sense," he said. "To me it's very strange."

Then there's the obvious problem: what if the coin holder plunks the device into a pop machine?

"You give the guy something with a transmitter that he's going to spend — I mean, he might have it for an hour," Mathers said with a chuckle.

Harris speculates recent leaps in miniaturization could allow for a sophisticated transmitter capable of monitoring a target's extensive travels.

"I think we can be pretty darn confident that the technology is there for the sorts of micro-units that would be required to embed these things in a coin," he said.

"It's a brave new world, and greatly concerning on so many levels."

Passing the coin to an unwitting contractor, particularly in strife-torn countries, could mark the person for kidnapping or assassination, Harris said.

"You could almost, by handing a coin to somebody, achieve the equivalent of the Mafiosi's last kiss on the cheek."

The Defence Security Service report says employees of U.S. contractors reported suspicious contacts from individuals, firms or governments of more than 100 countries during the year.

Technologies that generated the most interest were information systems, lasers and optics, aeronautics and sensors.

A foreign approach often meant a simple request for information from the contractor.

Can contain built-in scanners

But the report also underscores clandestine means of acquiring secrets from U.S. employees, particularly those travelling abroad.

"It is important to recognize copiers and shredders can contain built-in scanners to copy the data."

Other common methods include placing listening devices in rooms, searching hotel rooms, inspecting electronic equipment and eavesdropping on conversations.

The report, which first came to light in a U.S. newspaper, has since been posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that tracks the intelligence world and promotes government openness.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...d-defence.html





Testing the Testers

There is by now no doubt that there are serious problems with electronic voting machines: they fail to record votes, and even flip votes from one candidate to another. Election officials like to defend the machines by noting that they have been certified by independent testing labs. But the certification process has long been deeply flawed, and last week there was even more disturbing news — that the leading testing lab has been unable to meet the federal government’s standards.

Since last summer, Ciber Inc., the largest tester of voting machine software, has been unable to meet federal quality standards that will take effect later this year.

It is disturbing that if Christopher Drew had not reported this in The Times, the public still would not know. The Election Assistance Commission, the agency that evaluates the labs, did not reveal that Ciber fell short, and is still not saying what is wrong. Ciber, which is still working on meeting the standards, did not return our phone call.

Many Americans are using electronic voting machines that were certified by Ciber. Were those certifications done properly? Did whatever deficiencies Ciber has now exist then? No one is saying.

Since many jurisdictions, and some whole states, now use electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper record, certification is extremely important. It is one of the few ways of determining whether a machine wrongly records votes, either by accident or by design.

Even before the news about Ciber, certification was a troubled process. The biggest problem is that the voting machine manufacturers pay the labs to do the examination and certification. This is a conflict of interest. If a lab raises too many concerns, it risks losing a client to a more compliant competitor.

There is also too little transparency. The labs, which see themselves as working for the voting machine companies, do not tell the public when they find problems or what those problems are.

Congress should pass legislation fixing the system. The vendors should continue to pay the costs, but the government should choose and pay the labs. That would make the labs responsive to the correct customer — the public.

It should also enact strong transparency rules. Voters should know how testing is done, and have full and timely access to the results. Congress should also require the Election Assistance Commission to be more open about how it evaluates the labs. If a lab falls short, the public — which may currently be using machines certified by that lab — should be told right away what the deficiencies are.

The veil of secrecy that hangs over certification is good for the companies that make voting machines and for the ones that test them. The government should not be protecting those private interests.

It should be protecting the voting public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08mon1.html





Front door to Redmond, Backdoor to You?

For Windows Vista Security, Microsoft Called in Pros
Alec Klein and Ellen Nakashima

When Microsoft introduces its long-awaited Windows Vista operating system this month, it will have an unlikely partner to thank for making its flagship product safe and secure for millions of computer users across the world: the National Security Agency.

For the first time, the giant software maker is acknowledging the help of the secretive agency, better known for eavesdropping on foreign officials and, more recently, U.S. citizens as part of the Bush administration's effort to combat terrorism. The agency said it has helped in the development of the security of Microsoft's new operating system -- the brains of a computer -- to protect it from worms, Trojan horses and other insidious computer attackers.

"Our intention is to help everyone with security," Tony W. Sager, the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis and operations group, said yesterday.

The NSA's impact may be felt widely. Windows commands more than 90 percent of the worldwide market share in desktop operating systems, and Vista, which is set to be released to consumers Jan. 30, is expected to be used by more than 600 million computer users by 2010, according to Al Gillen, an analyst at market research firm International Data.

Microsoft has not promoted the NSA's contributions, mentioning on its Web site the agency's role only at the end of its "Windows Vista Security Guide," which states that the "guide is not intended for home users" but for information and security specialists.

The Redmond, Wash., software maker declined to be specific about the contributions the NSA made to secure the Windows operating system.

The NSA also declined to be specific but said it used two groups -- a "red team" and a "blue team" -- to test Vista's security. The red team, for instance, posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. "They pretend to be bad guys," Sager said. The blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration .

Microsoft said this is not the first time it has sought help from the NSA. For about four years, Microsoft has tapped the spy agency for security expertise in reviewing its operating systems, including the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.

With hundreds of thousands of Defense Department employees using Microsoft's software, the NSA realizes that it's in its own interest to make the product as secure as possible. "It's partly a recognition that this is a commercial world," Sager said. "Our customers have spoken."

Microsoft also has sought the security expertise of other U.S. government and international entities, including NATO. "I cannot mention any of the other international agencies," said Donald R. Armstrong, senior program manager of Microsoft's government security program, citing the wishes of those agencies to remain anonymous.

Microsoft's concerns extend beyond the welfare of its software when it seeks the security expertise of government agencies. "When you get into an environment where a Microsoft product is used in a battlefield situation or a government situation where if a system is compromised, identities could be found out," and it could be a matter of life and death, Armstrong said.

Other software makers have turned to government agencies for security advice, including Apple, which makes the Mac OS X operating system. "We work with a number of U.S. government agencies on Mac OS X security and collaborated with the NSA on the Mac OS X security configuration guide," said Apple spokesman Anuj Nayar in an e-mail.

Novell, which sells a Linux-based operating system, also works with government agencies on software security issues, spokesman Bruce Lowry said in an e-mail, "but we're not in a position to go into specifics of the who, what, when types of questions."

The NSA declined to comment on its security work with other software firms, but Sager said Microsoft is the only one "with this kind of relationship at this point where there's an acknowledgment publicly."

The NSA, which provided its service free, said it was Microsoft's idea to acknowledge the spy agency's role.

The NSA's primary mission is signals intelligence -- monitoring the communications of foreign powers, terrorists and others. But its secondary objection is "information assurance," under which the security of Microsoft's operating system falls.

Industry observers suggest that both the NSA and Microsoft have good reason to disclose their relationship. For Microsoft, the NSA's imprimatur may be viewed as a vote of confidence in the operating system's security.

"I kind of call it a Good Housekeeping seal" of approval, said Michael Cherry, a former Windows program manager who now analyzes the product for Directions on Microsoft, a firm that tracks the software maker.

Cherry says the NSA's involvement can help counter the perception that Windows is not entirely secure and help create a perception that Microsoft has solved the security problems that have plagued it in the past. "Microsoft also wants to make the case that [the new Windows] more secure than its earlier versions," he said.

Armstrong, the Microsoft manager, said: "The entire crux of Vista was security. . . . Security is at the forefront of our thoughts and our methods in developments and is critically important to our customers."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010801352.html





Opinion: 'Vista Casts A Pall On PC Gaming'

Will new features in Windows Vista have a chilling effect on indie PC game development? In this exclusive Gamasutra opinion piece, WildTangent founder and CEO Alex St. John highlights obstructive security controls embedded in Vista that threaten to do just that.

"I run a business called WildTangent, publishing online games from all the top casual game developers including Atari, Nickelodeon, PlayFirst, iWin, Popcap and many others with all the leading PC OEM’s including Dell, HP, Gateway and Toshiba. Collectively, we had to get a catalog of over 300 downloadable games compatible with dozens of Vista PC configurations shipping to 25 million consumers this year.

Our Vista saga began almost two years ago when Microsoft communicated to OEM’s that Vista would be shipping “imminently,” and that Windows XP would no longer be available as an OS option once Vista was released. So while the rest of the Internet and game development community went about their business safe in the knowledge that Vista was far away and many years from achieving sufficient consumer market share to merit special attention, my business was plunged into the heart of Vista migration in order to be ready to ship our game service and hundreds of games with all new Vista PC’s.

We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming, especially for online distributed games. The central change that impacts all downloadable applications in Vista is the introduction of Limited User Accounts. LUA’s can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability. In Vista, LUA’s are mandatory and inescapable. Although Microsoft made some effort to soften the obstructions LUA’s place in the path of installing software in Vista, they still present a tremendous obstacle to downloadable game distribution and game compatibility with Vista in general.

The principal user experience problem with LUA’s is that when a consumer wants to download and install a game demo off the Internet, they must first click past the IE warning dialogs, and then respond to the security elevation dialog Vista pops up requiring an admin account name and password to enable the software installation.

For boxed games, this may not be super intrusive because consumers purchase relatively few boxed titles annually, and have already paid for the game at the point that they experience the elevation dialog. For downloadable games that come with a free trial, this presents a major obstacle to sales and distribution because it means that consumers surfing to find a game they like will be faced with an elevation dialog per game demo they want to download and try. The same will be true for core gamers surfing free downloadable demos. The frustration value of this experience is akin to what it would be like if you had to enter a username and password per song you wanted to try in Apple iTunes.

The intrusive dialogs are also oddly pointless, because Vista's frequent warning dialogs do nothing to differentiate legitimate commercial software from known hazardous products, so consumers will still mistakenly install malware. Kids will either have to ask their parents to respond to elevation dialogs per download they want to try, or have their own elevation account and password and continue to download whatever they want.

Vista’s obstructive security architecture extends into the new Vista Game Explorer and parental control system. The Vista Game Explorer is a top level Start Menu link to a new specialized folder in Vista specifically designed for managing games. It is intended to be the analog to the My Pictures and My Music folders found in Windows XP. Instead of being a link to a standard folder that happens to contain games, Microsoft “added some value” to the Game Explorer by binding it to a new parental control system in Vista.

The problem starts with installing your game and Vista and registering it with the Game Explorer. Unlike the parental control system, the Game Explorer is extremely prominent to consumers who are likely to expect to find the games they install in Vista listed there after installation. Microsoft has supplied compatibility listings for legacy games which will automatically recognize and register them with the Game Explorer when they are installed.

One of the pieces of information a game has to supply to register with Game Explorer is a ESRB rating. Games that do not supply a rating will be subject to the “Not Rated” parental control setting. Since games are “trusted” to supply accurate ratings information, one might expect that they are also trusted to handle parental messaging themselves. Not so, any game that registers with Game Explorer becomes “subject” to Vista parental controls which will proceed to block the game from running and offer to delete the link to the game if you try to run it from anywhere on the system other than within the Game Explorer.

The heavy handed implementation of parental controls presents several problems for PC game developers. First, most free family and casual games are “unrated” because the ESRB rating service, designed for multimillion dollar boxed titles, is too expensive for most small casual game developers. Any parent concerned enough about the games their kids are downloading online to use Vista’s parental control system are likely to block “unrated” content and break most family appropriate content that can be found online. Note that Vista’s parental control system does not apply to web games and is not accessible from the browser so parents who expect them to protect their kids from “all” online game content may be in for a shock.

Interestingly, the obscure warning dialog that Vista presents offering to delete your game icon when you try to launch it is not the same warning Microsoft makes for the games they supply to the Game Explorer. So although we filed this problem as a bug during the Vista Beta, the only games Microsoft “fixed” it for were their own.

One can only speculate as to what Microsoft was thinking when they made the Game Explorer, because the only useful context where parental controls work is when a consumer installs a game from a CD where presumably, in the case of young children, the parents checked the ESRB rating before buying it. The need for a highly specialized search folder for games is strange, since most consumers only own a few games. The greatest need for managing a long list of games and parental controls is for online content search and discovery, which the Game Explorer doesn’t support.

Since the Game Explorer is also inexplicably hard coded into Vista and “secured” from any modification, nobody can presumably fix its problems or otherwise augment it other than Microsoft. Considering the effort Microsoft must have invested in making the Game Explorer this onerous and immutable, it seems plausible that it was intended as a place holder for a subsequent game service offering from Microsoft.

In the interest of full disclosure I should make it clear that in a previous life time I was responsible for all of Microsoft’s OS strategy for games and media, from writing the original DirectX development plan, to managing Microsoft’s relationships with the industries leading game developers. 10 years after launching DirectX 1.0, I still have strong opinions and feelings about how to make Windows a great game platform, and probably feel a stronger sense of pique than most when I see Microsoft making careless or callous mistakes that impact game developers.

It’s perhaps ironic that I run my own online game publishing company now and have become a dependent customer of the platform and technologies I once worked to create. Some of you might call it “justice” -- if it is, I wish it for my successors working on Vista."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=12314





Wireless Hot Spot Protection

Tips to secure yourself against the perils of connecting to a hot spot
Preston Gralla

Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, restaurants, cafes and even downtown locations have turned Internet access into an always-on, ubiquitous experience. Unfortunately, that also means always-on, ubiquitous security risks.

Connecting to a hot spot can be an open invitation to danger. Hot spots are public, open networks that practically invite hacking and snooping. They use unencrypted, insecure connections, but most people treat them as if they are secure private networks.

This could allow anyone nearby to capture your packets and snoop on everything you do when online, including stealing passwords and private information. In addition, it could also allow an intruder to break into your PC without your knowledge.

But there's plenty you can do to keep yourself safe -- and I'll show you how to do that in this article. If you follow these tips, you'll be able to make secure connections at any hot spot.

Disable ad hoc mode

Little-known fact: You don't need a hot spot or wireless router in order to create or connect to a wireless network. You can also create one using ad hoc mode, in which you directly connect wirelessly to another nearby PC. If your PC is set to run in ad hoc mode, someone nearby could establish an ad hoc connection to your PC without you knowing about it. They could then possibly wreak havoc on your system and steal files and personal information.

The fix is simple: Turn off ad hoc mode. Normally it's not enabled, but it's possible that it's turned on without your knowledge. To turn it off in Windows XP:
Right-click the wireless icon in the System Tray.

1. Choose Status.
2. Click Properties
3. Select the Wireless Networks tab.
4. Select your current network connection.
5. Click Properties, then click the Association tab.
6. Uncheck the box next to "This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network."
7. Click OK, and keep clicking OK until the dialog boxes disappear.

In Windows Vista, there's no need to do this, because you have to take manual steps in order to connect to an ad hoc network; there's no setting to leave it turned on by default.

Turn off file sharing

Depending on the network you use at work or at home, you may use file sharing to make it easier to share files, folders and resources. That's great for when you're on a secure network. But when you're at a hot spot, it's like hanging out a sign saying, "Come on in; take whatever you want."

So make sure that you turn off file sharing before you connect to a hot spot. To turn it off in Windows XP, run Windows Explorer, right-click on the drives or folders you share, choose the Sharing and Security tab, and uncheck the box next to "Share this folder on the network."

If you're a Windows Vista user, it's even easier to turn off file sharing. When you connect to a hot spot, designate it as Public. When you do that, Windows Vista automatically turns off file sharing. You can also turn off file sharing manually. Choose Control Panel-->Set up file sharing, click "File sharing," select "Turn off file sharing," and click Apply. Then click "Password protected sharing," select "Turn off password protected file sharing," and click Apply.

Turn off network discovery

If you're a Vista user, a feature called Network Discovery makes your PC visible on a network so that other users can see it and try to connect to it. On a private network, this is useful; at a public hot spot, it's a security risk. When you connect to a hot spot and designate the network as Public, Network Discovery is turned off, so again, make sure to designate any hot spot as Public.

However, you can also make sure that Network Discovery is turned off for your hot spot connection. When you're connected, choose ControlPanel-->View network status and tasks. Then in the Sharing and Discover section, click the Network Discovery button, choose "Turn off network discovery," and click Apply.

Encrypt your e-mail

When you send an e-mail at a hot spot, it goes out "in the clear" -- in other words, unencrypted -- so that anyone can read it. A lot of e-mail software allows you to encrypt outgoing messages and attachments. Check how to use yours, and then use it at a hot spot. In Outlook 2003, select Options from the Tools menu, click the Security tab, and then check the box next to "Encrypt contents and attachments for outgoing messages." Then click OK.

Carry an encrypted USB flash drive

USB flash drives are cheap, and getting cheaper by the day. For about $50, you can buy a 2GB flash drive, which is more than enough space to carry Windows, the applications you use and the data you need. Make sure to get a drive that can use encryption. Then install Windows, your applications and your data on it.

On your laptop, keep no private data on your hard drive. When you connect at a hot spot, boot from your USB drive. That way, even if someone somehow gets into your PC, they won't be able to read or alter any of your data, because the data is encrypted on the USB drive.

Protect yourself with a virtual private network

Most hot spots are not secure and don't use encryption. That means anyone with a software sniffer can see all of the packets you send and receive.

But you don't need to rely on the hot spot for encryption. For a fee, you can use a virtual private wireless network that encrypts your connection. There are several available, but the one I've been using for years is hotspotVPN, and it hasn't failed me yet.

No special VPN software is needed; you can use XP's or Vista's built-in VPN capabilities. The service costs US$8.88 per month, or is available in one-, three- and seven-day increments for US$3.88, US$5.88 and US$6.88. You can also get more secure VPN encryption from the service for between US$10.88 and US$13.88 per month.

Once you subscribe, you'll get a username, password and IP address of a wireless VPN server. At that point, you run a Windows network connection wizard, fill in the username, password and IP address information, and you'll be ready to go. In Windows XP, choose Control Panel-->Network and Internet Connections-->Create a connection to the network at your workplace. From the screen that appears, choose the virtual private network connection, and follow the wizard.

In Windows Vista, choose ControlPanel-->View network status and tasks. Then click "Set up a connection or network," and then choose "Connect to a workplace" and then "Use my Internet connection (VPN)." Follow the wizard after that.

Disable your wireless adapter

There may be times when you're at a hot spot when you actually don't want to connect to the Internet. In that case, you can guarantee absolute safety -- disable your wireless adapter so you can't connect.

If you have a wireless PC card, you can simply remove it, of course. If you have a wireless adapter built in to your PC, you can disable it. In XP, right-click the wireless icon, and choose Disable. If you're using the adapter's software to manage your connection, check the documentation to find out how to disable it.

If you're using Windows Vista, choose ControlPanel-->Network and Sharing Center. Then in the Connection area, click "View status," and from the screen that appears, click Disable.

Watch out for shoulder surfers

Think all hacking is high-tech programming? Think again. "Shoulder surfers" don't need to know how to write a line of code to steal your password -- all they need to do is peer over your shoulder as you type. So make sure no one seems to be paying too close attention when they're directly behind you.

In addition, if nature calls because you've had too many double lattes, don't leave your laptop unattended when you go to the restroom. Laptop theft has become common in some places, most notably San Francisco, which was subject to a laptop crime wave. Consider bringing along a laptop lock and locking your laptop to a table. Some cafes even include ports to which you can lock your laptop.

Beware phony hot spots

Watch out for this latest hot spot scam -- someone surreptitiously sets up a hot spot near a cafe, created for the sole purpose of stealing personal information. You're asked to type in sensitive information in order to log in, and the thief makes off with your passwords and financial information. Ask a staffer at the cafe if there is, in fact, a hot spot available, and what its name is. Only connect to that network. And if you see two hot spots with the same name, don't connect to either --- one might be a so-called "evil twin" set up by a snooper to trick you into connecting to the phony hot spot.

Turn on your firewall

Windows XP and Windows Vista both have personal firewalls built in, so turn them on. In Windows XP, choose ControlPanel-->Security Center, then click the Windows Firewall icon at the bottom of the screen. From the page that appears, select On, and click OK.

In Windows Vista, choose ControlPanel-->Security-->Windows Firewall. The screen that appears will tell you if the firewall is turned on. If it's not, click Change Settings, select On, and click OK.

Windows XP's personal firewall is underprotected because it doesn't include outbound protection. (Windows Vista's firewall includes two-way protection.) If you're a Windows XP user, consider getting the free version of ZoneAlarm, which has both inbound and outbound protection.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...4194304;fpid;1





2 Deny Hacking Into L.A.'s Traffic Light System

Two accused of hacking into L.A.'s traffic light system plead not guilty. They allegedly chose intersections they knew would cause major jams.
Sharon Bernstein and Andrew Blankstein

Back in August, the union representing the city's traffic engineers vowed that on the day of their work action, "Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive."

City officials took the threat seriously.

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, they temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair — one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, the other a computer whiz who helped build the system — allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days.

Both men pleaded not guilty Monday morning to felony charges stemming from the case, and Murillo's lawyer said his client meant no harm when he signed on to the system that day.

But authorities say the pair picked their targets with care — intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations.

They didn't shut the lights off, city transportation sources said. Rather, the engineers allegedly programmed them so that red lights would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock for several days starting Aug. 21, they said.

Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center.

The engineers' arrests last Friday point up the vulnerability of L.A.'s complex traffic control system.

City leaders said Monday they also underscore the delicate balance that employers must strike in a highly technical environment in which workers must be trusted enough to have access to important systems.

Some officials Monday called for an immediate review of ways to tighten security of the computer system, which manages 3,200 of the city's 4,300 traffic signals.

"The issue here was public safety," Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said. "What if there had been a major accident and we were not able to control the lights while the officers were on their way?"

Details of the case emerged Monday in interviews and court documents.

After access to the system was cut off for all but top managers, Murillo signed in as one of them, according to the criminal complaint. Murillo had helped design the nationally recognized system. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts.

By signing in, the engineers allegedly obtained the codes needed to unblock the computers that control traffic lights throughout the city. Soon, the lights at those four intersections were reprogrammed with a code that prevented city officials from fixing them.

"The red signal would be on too long for the critical approach and the green signal would be on too long for the noncritical approach, thus resulting in long backups into the airport and other key intersections around the city," said one source in the traffic department, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Murillo was charged with two felonies: one count of identity theft and one of unauthorized access to a city computer. Patel was charged with five felonies: one count of unauthorized access to a city computer and four of unauthorized disruption or denial of computer services.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Commissioner Catherine J. Pratt released the men on their own recognizance on the condition that they do not access city computers or set foot on Department of Transportation property without their attorneys.

If convicted on all charges, the pair could face several years in state prison, although authorities said that is unlikely because they have no criminal records.

Murillo's lawyer, James Blatt, said that his client was on paternity leave when the incident took place and did not receive an e-mail indicating that access to the traffic signal control center would be blocked during the strike.

He said Murillo didn't mean to do anything wrong.

"The issue in the case is Mr. Murillo's intent when he logged into the system," Blatt said. "Mr. Murillo has been an engineer there [at the Department of Transportation] for 17 years. He's highly regarded and respected by management and employees. It was not his intent to jeopardize the system or the citizens of Los Angeles."

Alan Eisner, who is representing Patel, said his client "unequivocally denies the charges against him and specifically denies illegally accessing or disrupting the [computerized traffic light] system. Mr. Patel has been an employee of the Department of Transportation for more than 12 years and has an outstanding work history. He and his family are traumatized by the allegations, and he looks forward to responding to the allegations in court."

After the arraignment Monday, city employees filled the hallway outside the courtroom, creating an impromptu receiving line as they filed past the defendants and their families. Officials from their union were not in court and did not return calls seeking comment.

In deciding how to handle security in the future, the city faces a difficult choice: set up systems that could impede the smooth functioning of its crucial traffic control efforts, or do nothing and risk another hacking incident.

Clifford Neuman, a computer security expert and the director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security, said there are two primary ways to design computers to guard against malicious activity by insiders, but each can interfere with employees' ability to do their tasks and would probably be prohibitively expensive for the city.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...=la-home-local





Firms Fret as Office E-Mail Jumps Security Walls
Brad Stone

Companies spend millions on systems to keep corporate e-mail safe. If only their employees were as paranoid.

A growing number of Internet-literate workers are forwarding their office e-mail to free Web-accessible personal accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other companies. Their employers, who envision corporate secrets leaking through the back door of otherwise well-protected computer networks, are not pleased.

“It’s a hole you can drive an 18-wheeler through,” said Paul D. Myer, president of the security firm 8E6 Technologies in Orange, Calif.

It is a battle of best intentions: productivity and convenience pitted against security and more than a little anxiety.

Corporate techies — who, after all, are paid to worry — want strict control over internal company communications and fear that forwarding e-mail might expose proprietary secrets to prying eyes. Employees just want to get to their mail quickly, wherever they are, without leaping through too many security hoops.

Corporate networks, which typically have several layers of defenses against hackers, can require special software and multiple passwords for access. Some companies use systems that give employees a security code that changes every 60 seconds; this must be read from the display screen of a small card and typed quickly.

That is too much for some employees, especially when their computers can store the passwords for their Web-based mail, allowing them to get right down to business.

So far, no major corporate disasters caused by this kind of e-mail forwarding have come to light. But security experts say the risks are real. For example, the flimsier security defenses of Web mail systems could allow viruses or spyware to get through, and employees could unwittingly download them at the office and infect the corporate network.

Also, because messages sent from Web-based accounts do not pass through the corporate mail system, companies could run afoul of federal laws that require them to archive corporate mail and turn it over during litigation.

Lawyers in particular wring their hands over employees using outside e-mail services. They encourage companies to keep messages for as long as necessary and then erase them to keep them out of the reach of legal foes. Companies have no control over the life span of e-mail messages in employees’ Web accounts.

“If employees are just forwarding to their Web e-mail, we have no way to know what they are doing on the other end,” said Joe Fantuzzi, chief executive of the information security firm Workshare. “They could do anything they want. They could be giving secrets to the K.G.B.”

Hospitals have an added legal obligation to protect patient records. But when DeKalb Medical Center in Atlanta started monitoring its staff use of Web-based e-mail, it found that doctors and nurses routinely forwarded confidential medical records to their personal Web mail accounts — not for nefarious purposes, but so they could continue to work from home.

In the months after the hospital began monitoring traffic to Web e-mail services, it identified “a couple hundred incidents,” said Sharon Finney, DeKalb’s information security administrator. “I was surprised about the lack of literacy about the technology we depend on every day,” she said.

DeKalb now forbids the practice, and uses several software systems that monitor the hospital’s outbound e-mail and Web traffic. Ms Finney said she still catches four to five perpetrators a month trying to forward hospital e-mail.

The Web mail services may also be prone to glitches. Last month, Google fixed a bug that caused the disappearance of “some or all” of the stored mail of around 60 users. A week later, it acknowledged a security hole that could have exposed its users’ address books to Internet attackers.

Even the security experts most knowledgeable about the risks of e-mail forwarding to personal accounts acknowledge doing so themselves.

“Of course I do it; who doesn’t?” said Kimberly Getgen Bargero, vice president for marketing at Sendmail, an e-mail software company in Emeryville, Calif. Ms. Bargero said she often used her Yahoo Mail account on business trips so she does not have to access her corporate network remotely.

It is difficult to quantify exactly how many otherwise model employees are opting to use services like Yahoo Mail or Google’s Gmail over their company’s authorized e-mail programs. Sophisticated users at the companies most lax about e-mail security can automatically forward all of their work e-mail to their personal accounts, hopscotching over the various requests for passwords meant to ward off intruders.

The more casual e-mail scofflaws send only the occasional message to their personal accounts — or just “cc” messages to their Web in-boxes to preserve them for later use — even when the messages contain sensitive company information.

Some companies frown on office use of any Web-based accounts, even for personal messages. At the business software maker BEA Systems, Anthony Bisulca, a senior security analyst, estimated that around 30 percent of his employees were using private e-mail accounts in the office, even though the company’s Internet policy clearly prohibits it.

But it is not easy to wean people off of their online mailboxes. “Of course they scream,” said Todd Wilson, an operations manager at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. “They look at me like I have three heads.”

Mr. Wilson said that the use of the Web services had become a “huge concern,” partly because copies of the forwarded messages sit untouched on the school’s servers, taking up space.

Many corporate technology professionals express the fear that Google and its rivals may actually own the intellectual property in the e-mail that resides on their systems. Gmail’s terms of service, however, state that e-mail belongs to the user, not to Google. The company’s automated software does scan messages in Gmail, looking for keywords that might generate related text advertisements on the page. A Google spokeswoman said the company has an extensive privacy policy to ensure no humans at Google read user e-mail.

Paul Kocher, president of the security firm Cryptography Research, said the real issue for companies was trust. “If you can’t trust employees enough to use services like Gmail, they probably shouldn’t be working for you,” he said.

Many companies apparently do not have that level of trust. In a survey conducted last year, the e-mail security firm Proofpoint found that 37 percent of companies in the United States used software to monitor office use of Web mail.

The Internet companies themselves are looking to take advantage of consumer preferences for Web based e-mail services. This year, Google plans to introduce a more secure version of Gmail for use in large companies.

But Microsoft and other providers of traditional internal e-mail systems, which the research firm Radicati says generated $2.5 billion in sales last year, are helping companies combat employee use of the Web services.

The new version of Microsoft’s corporate e-mail service, Exchange Server, offers administrators improved tools to monitor the content of employee mail and block forwarded messages.

At the same time, upgrades to Exchange and Microsoft’s e-mail program Outlook have made it easier for traveling employees to access e-mail on the corporate network from a Web browser. Microsoft also recently began urging corporate technology departments to give employees more storage space in their e-mail accounts.

But the Web services are improving as well, and employees will no doubt continue to find them tempting.

“We have as high a security standard as any company,” said Ms. Bargero of Sendmail, “and sometimes it is just too difficult to access our e-mail.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/te...rtner=homepage





Superclick is Evil?
Michael Herf

I'm on my honeymoon in a hotel in Maui.

In theory the internet costs $15/day here, but due to a deal with Fairmont's "President's Club" I'm getting it for free. Guess I should be more thankful, but I'm not.

A company called "Superclick" provides internet connectivity for the Fairmont Kea Lani (and I just read Marriott and a bunch more have signed on). When you try to use your connection, you'll notice:

1. a lot of redirecting and other weirdness (sometimes with an IP and sometimes with "superclick" in the URL)
2. that every new URL you type ends in "?",
3. and if you look closer, you'll find secret frames around your webpages.

It turns out that Lorna and I both noticed and both got upset about it, so I'm spending a (small) amount of time figuring out how this thing works and what it's after. After all, I'm still on my honeymoon.

If you're running an older browser, I understand you'll get pop-under ads too, but Firefox seems to be mostly taking care of that for me.

I've spent a few minutes sniffing traffic, and Superclick's system appears to work like this:

1. They run a transparent Squid proxy on port 80. (A transparent proxy is one that is implemented for every connection on port 80.) You can verify this by connecting to a host that doesn't respond and getting an error page. Mine is a genuine squid error: "Generated Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:13:36 GMT by localhost (squid/2.5.STABLE14)"

2. This squid creates a page that hosts a frame with (a) their page, and (b) the page you requested. Their page looks like this:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<body>
<a href='http://mds.superclick.com/mds/adclick.php?hotelid=1330&bannerid=263
&zoneid=62&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.superclick.com' target='_bl
ank'><img src='http://mds.superclick.com/mds/adimage.php?filename=1pixel_trans_2
.gif&contenttype=gif' width='1' height='1' alt='' title='' border='0'></a><d
iv id="beacon_263" style="position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; visibility: h
idden;"><img src='http://mds.superclick.com/mds/adlog.php?hotelid=1330&banne
rid=263&clientid=115&zoneid=62&source=&amp;block=0&capping=0 &
;cb=a6e9a1a491ae0a580b3a1e58db523195' width='0' height='0' alt='' style='width:
0px; height: 0px;'></div></body>
</html>

i.e. their page does some tracking of each new page you visit in your browser, outside what a normal proxy (which would have access to all your cookies and other information it shouldn't have, anyway) would do. This "adlog" hit appears to also track a "hotel ID" and some other data that identifies you more directly.

Notably, I've observed these guys tracking HTTPS URLs, and of course you can't track those through a proxy.

While it is possible for the tech-savvy to establish a VPN to one's home network to avoid all this nastiness, but it suggests a bad trend - a lack of privacy when browsing, even through connections you're paying for?

Superclick advertises that it "allows hoteliers and conference center managers to leverage the investment they have made in their IP infrastructure to create advertising revenue, deliver targeted marketing and brand messages to guests and users on their network. ``Perhaps the most powerful aspect of MDS is that it can be integrated onto any third-party managed network, not just our own proprietary SIMS network,'' Natale added, ``In addition, we have developed MDS Analytics which provides marketers with real-time network performance and usage analysis, thereby enabling them to evaluate the ROI of their marketing efforts.''

Nice stuff. Now back to the honeymoon.
http://www.nerdblog.com/2007/01/superclick-is-evil.html





How the RIAA Litigation Process Works
Ray Beckerman
Last updated: January 5, 2007

Introduction
Ex parte discovery cases
The procedure
Legal challenges to ex parte discovery procedure
Settlement phase
Litigations against named defendants
Commencement of action
Default
Pro Se representation
Challenges to sufficiency of complaint
Counterclaims
Pretrial discovery
Damages
Voluntary discontinuance
Suits against children
Suits against the disabled
Death of defendant
Summary judgment
Settlement during litigation
Expert testimony.
Trial

INTRODUCTION

The RIAA lawsuits pit a small number of very large recording companies against individuals who have paid for an internet access account.

On the plaintiff's end, the owners of the underlying copyrights in the musical compositions are not involved in the case; neither are many smaller record companies.

As to the defendants, since no investigation is made to ascertain that the defendant is actually someone who engaged in peer to peer file sharing of copyrighted music without authorization, there are many defendants who have no idea why they are being sued and who did nothing even arguably violative of anyone's copyright. Defendants have included people who have never even used a computer, and many people who although they have used a computer, have never engaged in any peer to peer file sharing.

Sometimes the cases are misleadingly referred to as cases against 'downloaders'; in fact the RIAA knows nothing of any downloading when it commences suit, and in many instances no downloading ever took place.

It is more accurate to refer to the cases as cases against persons who paid for internet access which the RIAA has reason to believe was used by some person -- possibly the defendant, possibly someone else -- to engage in peer to peer file sharing.

EX PARTE DISCOVERY -- THE "JOHN DOE" PHASE.

Procedure.

At the core of the RIAA lawsuit process, is its initial lawsuit against a group of "John Does".

Here is how it works:

A lawsuit is brought against a group of "John Does". The location of the lawsuit is where the corporate headquarters of the internet service provider (ISP) is located.

All the RIAA knows about the people it is suing is that they are the people who paid for an internet access acount for a particular dynamic IP address.

The "John Does" may live -- and usually do live -- hundreds or thousands of miles away from the City where the lawsuit is pending, and are not even aware that they have been sued.

The RIAA is aware that most of the defendants do not live in the state, and are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court, but bring the case anyway.

They are also aware that under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure there is no basis for joining all these defendants in a single lawsuit, but do indeed join them in one case, sometimes as many as several hundred in a single "litigation".

The only "notice" the "John Does" get is a vague letter from their ISP, along with copies of an ex parte discovery order and a subpoena, indicating that an order has already been granted against them: i.e., instead of receiving notice that the RIAA is applying for an order, they instead are notified that they have already lost the motion, without ever even having known of its existence.

They are not given copies of (i) the summons and complaint, (ii) the papers upon which the Court granted the ex parte discovery order, or (iii) the court rules needed to defend themselves. Most recipients of this "notice" do not even realize that it means that there is a lawsuit against them. None of the recipients of the "notice" have any idea what they are being sued for, or what basis the Court had for granting the ex parte discovery order and for allowing the RIAA to obtain a subpoena.

They are told they have a few days, or maybe a week or two, to make a motion to quash the subpoena. But if they were to talk to a lawyer they could not give the lawyer an iota of information as to what the case is about, what the basis for the subpoena is, or any other details that would permit a lawyer to make an informed decision as to whether a motion to quash the subpoena could, or could not, be made. What is more, the lawyer would have to be admitted to practice in the jurisdiction in which the ex parte case is pending, in order to do anything at all.

In other words, except for lawyers who are knowledgeable about the RIAA tactics, no lawyer could possibly have any suggestions that would enable "John Doe" to fight back.

So "John Doe" of course defaults. Then the John Doe "case" may drag on for months or even years, with the RIAA being the only party that has lawyers in court to talk to the judges and other judicial personnel.

The RIAA -- without notice to the defendants -- makes a motion for an "ex parte" order permitting immediate discovery. ("Ex parte" means that one side has communicated to the Court without the knowledge of the other parties to the suit. It is very rarely permitted, since the American system of justice is premised upon an open system in which, whenever one side wants to communicate with the Court, it has to give prior notice to the other side, so that they too will have an opportunity to be heard.).

The "ex parte" order would give the RIAA permission to take "immediate discovery" -- before the defendants have been served or given notice -- which authorizes the issuance of subpoenas to the ISP's asking for the names and addresses and other information about their subscribers, which is information that would otherwise be confidential.

In the United States the courts have been routinely granting these "ex parte" orders, it appears. (Not so in other countries. Both Canada and the Netherlands have found the RIAA's investigation too flimsy to warrant the invasion of subscriber privacy. Indeed the Netherlands court questioned the investigation's legality.).

Once the ex parte order is granted, the RIAA issues a subpoena to the ISP, and gets the subscriber's name and address.

The RIAA then discontinues its "John Doe" "ex parte" case, and sues the defendant in his own name in the district where he or she lives.

Thus, at the core of the whole process are:
(1) the mass lawsuit against a large number of "John Does";
(2) the "ex parte" order of discovery; and
(3) the subpoenas demanding the names and addresses of the "John Does".

Legal challenges to ex parte discovery procedure.

This process was challenged in 3 cases in Manhattan federal court: Atlantic v. Does 1-25 before Judge Swain, Motown v. Does 1-99 before Judge Buchwald, and Warner v. Does 1-149, before Judge Owen, in which "John Doe" defendants represented by Ray Beckerman and Ty Rogers brought motions to (a) vacate the ex parte discovery order on the ground that it had not been supported by competent evidence of a prima facie copyright infringment case, (b) quash the subpoena on that ground plus the additional ground that the complaint fails to state a claim for relief, and (c) sever and dismiss as to all defendants other than John Doe #1.

The moving parties were from Iowa, Texas, Long Island, and North Carolina -- i.e. not one of the John Does was someone who could properly be sued in Manhattan federal court.

All 3 motions were denied.

The decisions are not appealable, since they are, theoretically, "interlocutory". However, it is the RIAA's usual practice to discontinue the "John Doe" cases, which means that there will never be a final judgment in the case, so the orders will never be brought to appellate scrutiny.

PRE-LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT PHASE

After getting the name and address of the person who paid for the internet access account, they then send him or her a letter demanding a "settlement".

Their settlement is usually for $3750, non-negotiable, and contains numerous one-sided and unusual provisions, such as a representation that peer to peer file sharing of copyrighted music is a copyright infringement (a representation that is far too broad, undoubtedly there are 'sharing' behaviors with digital files, as there are with cd's, that are not copyright infringements). Even certain innocuous provisions, worded in a way to make them obligations of the defendant but not the RIAA, are deemed 'non-negotiable'. At bottom, the settlement is cold comfort to the defendant, because it does not speak for the other potential plaintiffs -- the owners of the copyrighted work, or the other record companies not represented by the RIAA litigation fund. That this omission is significant is illustrated by the new wave of copyright enforcement actions by music publishers against guitar tablature sites. There is nothing to prevent them from suing the individuals who have settled with the RIAA over the sound recording rights.

LITIGATIONS AGAINST NAMED DEFENDANTS

Commencement of action.

If there is no settlement, the RIAA then commences suit against the named defendant in the district in which he or she resides. A boilerplate complaint is used which accuses the defendant of "downloading, distributing, and/or making available for distribution" a list of songs. There are actually 2 lists, a long list (exhibit B) and a short list (exhibit A). The long list is a 'screen shot' of a list of file names which were allegedly in a shared files folder. The short list is allegedly a list of song which the RIAA's investigators were able to download.

No details as to how, when, or where the alleged "infringement" took place.

Default.

If the defendant defaults, plaintiffs apply for, and apparently usually obtain, a default judgement for $750 per Exhibit A song -- a number which is over 1000 times the 70-cent amount for which the license to the song could have been purchased. This measure of damages has been challenged. (See Damages below.)

Pro Se representation.

While it is of course preferable for a defendant to have legal representation in these matters, the economics often makes it impossible. We note that a pro se litigant in the Middle District of Alabama succeeded in staving off a summary judgment motion by the RIAA's legal team,which included the RIAA's top lawyer Richard Gabriel, in Motown v. Liggins (see Summary judgment below).

The most important things a pro se litigant should know about are as follows: (1) there is a pro se clerk in every federal court house; you should go in and see the pro se clerk for assistance in putting in your answer; (2) from the very outset you must make it clear that you are demanding a jury trial, and do not let anyone talk you out of demanding a jury trial; you must put a jury demand in your initial answer; (3) the RIAA's attempt to get your hard drive is invasive and improper, and you should not let it happen without safeguards; you should make a copy of the protecive order in SONY v. Arellanes and show it to the judge; (4) the RIAA does not necessarily have the right to take depositions of your family members, and you should ask the judge for protection from that; and (5) if there are any children 18 or younger involved, you should ask the judge to appoint a guardian ad litem to protect them, as was done in Priority Records v. Brittany Chan, and the order should provide that the RIAA has to pay for the guardian ad litem fees.

Challenges to sufficiency of complaint.

There have been several challenges to the sufficiency of the boilerplate complaint, in the form of a motion to dismiss complaint, 3 in Texas, 1 in Minnesota, 1 in Arizona, and 3 in New York; my firm has been involved in the 3 New York motions.

In Elektra v. Santangelo, in Westchester, the motion was denied.

An unusal result occurred in Interscope v. Duty, in Arizona. The judge denied the defendant's dismissal motion, not because he agreed with the RIAA, but because he didn't feel he understood the technology well enough to rule on the case.

Then, in Waco, Texas, in Warner v. Payne, in Fonovisa v. Alvarez in Abilene, Texas, and in Maverick v. Goldshteyn in Brooklyn, New York, the judges followed the Interscope decision, declining to decide whether 'making available' is a copyright infringement, and upheld the complaint. The motion was also denied in Arista v. Greubel, in Dallas, Texas.

In Elektra v. Barker in Manhattan, the motion is pending, and the RIAA has cited to the judge their victories in the other six (6) cases.

In Elektra v. Barker, amicus curiae briefs have been submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and the Internet Industry Association, in support of Ms. Barker's motion, and by the MPAA in opposition to it. Additionally the American Association of Publishers requested permission to file such a brief, and the United States Department of Justice submitted a "Statement of Interest" taking issue with an argument made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Briefing has now been completed, and Judge Kenneth M. Karas has scheduled oral argument for January 26, 2007, at 2:15 P.M., in Manhattan federal court.

The Department of Justice also submitted a "Statement of Interest" in Fonovisa, also on the side of the RIAA, relating to the same limited issue.

A new dismissal motion motion is being made in Westchester, in Warner v. Cassin.

In Elektra v. Perez, 2006 WL 3063493, in Oregon, a case which wasn't on our radar until we tripped across the October, 2006, decision on Westlaw, the judge denied a motion to dismiss, and appears to have resolved the "making available" argument in the RIAA's favor.

Counterclaims.

The RIAA has a practice of making motions to strike counterclaims; if it cannot find a substantive basis for much a motion, it will seek to strike it on technical grounds, such as redundancy. Since motions to strike for redundancy are disfavored in modern federal practice, these motions have met with mixed success.

COUNTERCLAIMS FOR ATTORNEYS FEES

If a defendant counterclaims for attorneys fees, the RIAA will frequently move to dismiss such a counterclaim, arguing that it is redundant since a successful defendant does not need to have interposed a counterclaim in order to collect attorneys fees. It plans to make a motion to strike the counterclaim in Elektra v. Schwartz. A similar motion by the RIAA in Oregon in 2005, in Elektra v. Perez, was denied. The RIAA has not been able to cite any legal authority for its argument.

COUNTERCLAIMS FOR DECLARATORY JUDGMENT OF NON-INFRINGEMENT

The RIAA also moves to strike counterclaims for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, arguing that they are redundant because a judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' case would imply non-infringement. It has no legal authority for this argument. The only such motion of which we are aware was denied, in Capitol v. Foster in Oklahoma, where the judge rejected the RIAA's argument. However, in Arista v. Tschirhart in Texas, a defendant's motion to amend her answer to add a counterclaim for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement was denied.

The issue has now arisen again in SONY v. Crain in Texas, where the defendant -- an elderly Hurricane Rita survivor who never engaged in any file sharing, and who is defended by Legal Aid -- interposed a counterclaim for a declaratory judgment, and the RIAA moved to strike it. Ms. Crain's attorneys have pointed out to the judge that (a) the RIAA's only similar motion, made in Capitol v. Foster, has been denied, (b) the RIAA has no legal authority for its position, and (c) it is necessary to have the counterclaim because of the RIAA's practice of discontinuing the cases before trial, thereby depriving a defendant of the right to be vindicated on the merits.

Pretrial Discovery.

In cases where the sufficiency of the complaint is not being challenged, or has been accepted by the court, the RIAA serves a number of pretrial discovery requests, calling for examination of the hard drive and numerous other items, and discovery is being litigated. In some cases defendants' practitioners have fought back, demanding (1) protective orders against the RIAA's invasive and humiliating demands, and (2) discovery of their own. (See, e.g. UMG . Heard, SONY v. Arellanes, and UMG v. Lindor.)

There have been interesting discovery rulings in Elektra v. Santangelo in White Plains, Atlantic v. Andersen in Oregon, Motown v. Nelson in Michigan, and in UMG v. Lindor.

SELECTIVE PRETRIAL DISCOVERY RULINGS OR MOTIONS WHICH MAY BE HELPFUL TO DEFENDANTS' ATTORNEYS:

HARD DRIVE
*Plaintiffs may not have access to the defendant's hard drive; the hard drive must be turned over to a mutually acceptable neutral computer forensics expert; and his report must be done at the RIAA's expense. (SONY v. Arellanes)

DEPOSITIONS-CONFIDENTIALITY OF TRANSCRIPTS
*Record companies can't have a blanket advance confidentiality order for their deposition transcripts, but will have to move for a protective order as to sections they want to keep confidential. (UMG v. Lindor).

DEPOSITIONS-CONDUCT OF DEPOSITIONS
*If plaintiff being deposed by video conference, plaintiff's lawyer can't be in room with witness but must also appear by video conference; or in alternative RIAA must reimburse defendant's lawyer's travel expenses up to $500. (UMG v. Lindor).

RECORD COMPANY USE OF P2P
*Record companies ordered to produce evidence, if any, relating to their employees' use of p2p file sharing to send music files to radio stations. (UMG v. Lindor)

CONFIDENTIALITY OF MEDIASENTRY AGREEMENTS
*RIAA argued attorney client privilege, work product privilege, and confidentiality. Motion briefed and argued, awaiting decision (UMG v. Lindor).

WHOLESALE PRICES OF DOWNLOADS
*Defendant is entitled to "all relevant documents" and a deposition relating to the record companies' pricing of legal downloads, in connection with her affirmative defense challenging the constitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory. (UMG v. Lindor).

COPYRIGHT DOCUMENTS.
*RIAA ordered to produce 'chain of title' documents for any copyrights as to which the name of the plaintiff is not the name on the copyright registration, or as to which there has ever been any dispute of copyright ownership. (UMG v. Lindor).

SUBPOENA OF COMPUTER OF DEFENDANT'S SON
*Motion to compel in process of being briefed (UMG v. Lindor).

DEFENDANT'S DISCOVERY INTO HARD DRIVE ANALYSIS.
*Defendant can take pretrial discovery into the plaintiffs' analysis of the hard drive, including contention interrogatories and depositions. (UMG v. Lindor).

PRECLUSION AS TO SONG FILES
*RIAA precluded from using any song files not produced in response to document request (UMG v. Lindor).

PRECLUSION AS TO DAMAGES
*In view of failure to set forth actual damages in response to interrogatory, plaintiffs precluded from introducing evidence of damages. (UMG v. Lindor).

DISCOVERY CUTOFF
*Discovery cutoff extended to 60 days after RIAA turns over hard drive expert's report to defendant. (UMG v. Lindor).

EXPERT WITNESSES
*In UMG v. Lindor, in an attempt to stave off discovery into its communications and agreements with MediaSentry, the RIAA argued that MediaSentry's investigator Tom Mizzone is not an expert but merely a paid fact witness, and that what he did to "investigate" did not require any expertise, but was what any other Kazaa user could have done. They said that at trial he would not testify to any conclusions about infringement, but would merely recite what he did, and that Dr. Doug Jacobson would be the only expert, and the one to connect the dots. Thereafter, defendant served a notice to take the deposition of Dr. Jacobson, and a request for production of related documents.

Damages

The RIAA has not tried to prove its actual damages, and has been seeking $750 per song in statutory damages.

This damages theory is being challenged on constitutional grounds in UMG v. Lindor, Maverick v. Goldshteyn, and Elektra v. Schwartz, all in Brooklyn federal court, as well as in Arista v. Greubel and SONY v. Crain in Texas, Virgin v. Morgan in Pensacola, Florida, Interscope v. Korb in Charleston, South Carolina, and others. In Lindor, in the context of a motion for leave to amend the answer, Judge Trager ruled that Marie Lindor's assertion of the defense of unconstitutionality was not frivolous, and noted that while the RIAA could point to no legal authority contrary to its validity, Ms. Lindor had cited both caselaw and law review articles supporting its viability. For an excellent 2004 law review article on the subject, see "Grossly Excessive Penalties in the Battle Against Illegal File-Sharing: The Troubling Effects of Aggregating Minimum Statutory Damages for Copyright Infringement" By J. Cam Barker, 83 Texas L. Rev. 525 (2004)[Copyright Texas Law Review Association 2004][Reprinted with permission]*

In Virgin v. Morgan the defendant is also challenging the RIAA's damages theory on statutory grounds, based on Section 504(c)(2) of the Copyright Act, which permits the statutory damages to be reduced from $750 to $200 in certain instances of innocent infringement. But see BMG v. Gonzalez, where the Seventh Circuit held that defendant could not avail herself of the 504(c)(2) defense because of the copyright notices on plaintiffs' CD's, even though she hadn't seen the CD's, since she "readily could have learned, had she inquired, that the music was under copyright". (Ed. note: The illogic of Gonzalez cries out for a comment here. I feel that Gonzalez contradicts the plain language of the Copyright Act, as well as the obvious intent of the statute, and is inconsistent with the whole principle of copyright notice which permeates the Copyright Act. Obviously anyone could "readily" learn, by inquiring, as to the copyright of anything, since copyright registrations are publicly filed in Washington, DC, but the law imposes no such duty. However, the decision is from a court of appeals, and therefore has to be taken seriously by practitioners, even those outside of the Seventh Circuit. Hopefully the Seventh Circuit will come to realize its error, and/or other circuit courts will conclude otherwise, and/or the Supreme Court will catch up to this issue some day.)

Voluntary discontinuance.

In Priority Records v. Candy Chan, a Michigan case, the RIAA initially refused to withdraw the case against a mother who clearly had not herself engaged in file sharing, but then changed its mind and did discontinue the case when faced with the mother's motion for summary judgment and attorneys fees.

A scenario similar to that in Priority v. Candy Chan occurred in Capitol v. Foster, in Oklahoma, where the RIAA withdrew only when faced with the mother's motion for summary judgment and attorneys fees. The judge let the RIAA drop its case, but held that the 'voluntary' withdrawal did not make the RIAA immune from legal fees, and indicated that he may award the mother her attorneys fees. Ms. Foster has made a motion for attorneys fees, and was supported in her motion by an amicus curiae brief submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Association of Law Libraries, Public Citizen, and the ACLU Foundation of Oklahoma. In their brief the 'friends of the court' told the judge that "the RIAA has wrought havoc in the lives of many innocent Americans" and that an award of attorneys fees is necessary to deter such conduct in the future. Meanwhile the RIAA has asked the judge not to accept the amicus brief.

In another Oklahoma City case, Warner v. Stubbs, the defendant -- represented by the same lawyer who represented Debbie Foster -- filed an answer and counterclaim saying that the RIAA's tactics amounted to extortion. The very next day the RIAA moved to withdraw its case.

In Virgin Records v. Tammie Marson, the RIAA voluntarily dismissed its case when confronted with the impossibility of determining who used defendant's computer, and in Warner v. Maravilla it voluntarily dismissed -- after defendant had made a dismissal motion -- upon learning that the ISP had given them the wrong name. Both Marson and Maravilla were in the Central District of California.

A Georgia case, Atlantic v. Zuleta, in which defendant had a wireless router, the IP address was connected to a wireless router, and the defendant's roommate's first name was the same as the screen name, the case was discontinued "without prejudice".

Elektra v. Wilke, in Chicago, was withdrawn after Mr. Wilke made a summary judgment motion. See Summary Judgment below.

The most highly publicized of the RIAA v. Consumer cases, Elektra v. Santangelo, is being withdrawn, after over a year and a half of litigation, as the RIAA moves on to pursue two of Ms. Santangelo's children. The RIAA would like the dismissal to be "without prejudice", so that it would not be liable for attorneys fees. (See Capitol v. Foster July 13, 2006, Order). Ms. Santangelo is unlikely to agree with that approach, and would be expected to demand that the dismissal be "with prejudice", that she be ruled the "prevailing party", and that attorneys fees be awarded to her.

Voluntary discontinuances have taken place in Michigan in Warner v. Pidgeon, in California in Warner v. Maravilla, and in Washington in Interscope v. Leadbetter. In Maravilla it occurrred only after the defendant had moved to dismiss. In Leadbetter the RIAA tried to discontinue against the defendant but add her fiance as a defendant; the Court denied permission to add the fiance as a defendant, dismissed the case in its entirety, and indicated that it would consider the imposition of attorneys fees against the RIAA in a separate motion.

Suits against children.

In Priority Records v. Brittany Chan, the litigation against Candy Chan's 14 year old daughter (See Voluntary discontinuance above), who allegedly engaged in file sharing when she was 13, the judge had held that the RIAA could not sue a child without getting a guardian ad litem appointed. The RIAA made a motion to have a guardian ad litem appointed so that its case might proceed against the minor, but the Judge rejected the motion because it did not ensure payment of the guardian ad litem's fees. The judge thereafter dismissed the case when the RIAA ignored his instruction to submit a plan that would ensure payment of the guardian ad litem's fees.

Continuing its policy of bringing lawsuits against children, on November 1, 2006, the RIAA commenced suit against two of Patti Santangelo's children, one of whom is only 16 years old. Elektra v. Santangelo II.

Suits against the disabled.

In Atlantic v. Andersen, Elektra v. Schwartz, and other cases, the RIAA has brought suit against disabled people, even knowing that they are disabled. In both Schwartz and Andersen the disabled defendants are people who have never downloaded songs or engaged in file sharing at all. In Elektra v. Schwartz, the defendant has severe Multiple Sclerosis, and gets around in an electric wheelchair. Her lawyer specifically asked the RIAA to drop the case; it declined. At this point the proceedings are stayed while Ms. Schwartz's attorney is attempting to collect medical affidavits in support of the appointment of a guardian ad litem.

Death of defendant.

In a Michigan case, Warner v. Scantlebury, after learning that the defendant died, the RIAA asked the Court for a 60-day stay to allow the family to "grieve", after which it said it intends to take depositions of the decedent's children. We have received unconfirmed reports that after a firestorm of controversy erupted over the internet, the RIAA now intends to withdraw the case against the deceased.

Summary judgment.

In an Illinois case where the defendant admitted to downloading 30 songs without authorization, the plaintiffs' summary judgment motion was granted. BMG v. Gonzalez. In an Alabama case where the defendant did not admit to personally having copied or distributed plaintiffs' song files, the RIAA's summary judgment motion was denied. Motown v. Liggins. (Interestingly, Mr. Liggins appeared pro se.)

As to defendant's summary judgment motions, we do not yet know how they will fare in the courts.

In August, 2006, a motion for summary judgment was made by the defendant, in Chicago, in Warner v. Wilke. The plaintiffs' initial response was to make a motion for expedited pretrial discovery, indicating to the Judge that, without it, they do not have enough evidence with which to oppose Mr. Wilke's motion. Thereafter, however, they dropped the case altogether, "with prejudice" (meaning they cannot sue again).

In Brooklyn, where all RIAA v. Consumer cases are assumed to be "related" and assigned to Judge Trager, the judge appears to have a policy of discouraging defendants' summary judgment motions until after the close of discovery. In February, 2006, Marie Lindor wrote a letter to Judge Trager asking for a premotion conference in connection with her planned summary judgment motion in UMG v. Lindor; the judge, however, referred the case to the Magistrate for pretrial discovery prior to summary judgment motion practice. After submitting to a deposition, and to an inspection of the hard drive of the computer in her apartment, after answering all of the RIAA's written discovery demands, and after arranging for her adult son and daughter to testify voluntarily at their depositions, she again wrote to the Judge renewing her request for a summary judgment pre-motion conference and for a stay of discovery during the pendency of the motion. Judge Trager again said she couldn't make the motion, and wanted her to wait until after the completion of discovery. Judge Trager reacted similarly to Rae J Schwartz's request for summary judgment in Elektra v. Schwartz, issuing a formal order indicating that he thought such a motion to be premature.

We are anxious to hear the results of defendant's summary judgments in other districts, where summary judgments are permitted to be made in the ordinary course.

Settlement during litigation.

Settlements during the course of a litigation are not dissimilar to those prior to litigation. The RIAA seeks a larger amount, typically $4500 plus $375 court costs, nonnegotiable, and submits a form of settlement which is likewise nonnegotiable. It is difficult to obtain information on this process since most settlement discussions are confidential. In Capitol v. Foster, due to a waiver of confidentiality, there is some insight available into the process. There the RIAA was willing to make a payment of attorneys fees to Ms. Foster, but in an amount that was far less than she had incurred. The parties never reached agreement on the amount, and the matter of attorneys fees is being considered by the judge. One might speculate that there may have been settlements in which the RIAA withdrew its case and paid the defendant attorneys fees, but the RIAA would no doubt have insisted upon confidentiality of such a settlement, and so we would never know about it.

We are aware of the RIAA's claim that it accepts reduced amounts in "hardship" cases, however we have not confirmed the existence of any instance of them actually accepting a reduced amount.

Cases which are in litigation are under the aegis of a Magistrate Judge or District Court Judge, so it is always possible that the Court will become involved in the settlement process. In Maverick v. Goldshteyn, after the Court denied Ms. Goldshteyn's motion to dismiss the complaint, the Magistrate Judge, at the request of Ms. Goldshteyn, scheduled a settlement conference, at which the principals were required to attend, in person, and with settlement authority.

Expert testimony.

The RIAA has taken the position, in UMG v. Lindor, that MediaSentry's investigator is not an expert witness. Whether the Magistrate Judge will accept that contention remains to be seen. See USA v. Ganier, 468 F.3d 920, 925-926 (6th Cir. Nov. 15, 2006).

According to the RIAA, its only expert witness is a Dr. Doug Jacobson, an associate professor at Iowa State University, who is also the founder and a co-owner of Palisade Systems, a company that sells antipiracy software. The RIAA indicated, at oral argument on November 30, 2006, that MediaSentry will not testify to any opinions or conclusions about copyright infringement, but will only testify as to the steps it took, and that it will fall upon Dr. Jacobson to testify as to what MediaSentry's investigation actually meant.

Ms. Lindor has noticed Dr. Jacobson's deposition for February, 2007. We are not aware of any instance of Dr. Jacobson having testified at a deposition or trial. If any reader is aware of any live testimony by Dr. Jacobson, please let us know. Dr. Jacobson appears to be a dual-purpose expert, claiming to be qualified in both forensic and in internet issues.

Trial.

We do not have information on any trials, although it would seem that there must have been some, especially in cases where the defendants are representing themselves, without legal counsel. If anyone has information on any trials, and the results, please let us know. If the RIAA has had any trials, and lost, they're not going to tell me about it.

A bit of guidance as to the standards for trial has come down in UMG v. Lindor, in connection with a preclusion motion, where the Court held that "[a]t trial, plaintiffs will have the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant did indeed infringe plaintiff’s copyrights by convincing the fact-finder, based on the evidence plaintiffs have gathered, that defendant actually shared sound files belonging to plaintiffs."

Likewise, the denial of summary judgment in the abovementioned Motown v. Liggins suggests that the plaintiff would have to prove actual copying or actual "distribution".

In both cases, it is not clear whether the judges have at this point considered that (a) there are certain types of file "sharing" which would not constitute copyright infringement, or (b) "distribution" is a defined term under the Copyright Act, one which requires a sale, transfer of ownership, lending, lease, or rental, of a phonorecord or other copy, to "the public".

(All litigation documents referenced above are available online and may be accessed through http://info.riaalawsuits.us or through "Index of Litigation Documents" at Recording Industry vs. The People (http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com))
http://info.riaalawsuits.us/howriaa.htm





Escape Media Group Introduces Grooveshark - the First Legal Peer-to-Peer Online Music Brokerage

New Music Community Compensates Members for Sharing DRM-free MP3 Files and Pays Royalties to Copyright Holders
Press Release

Escape Media Group, LLC today announced Grooveshark, a new peer-to-peer (P2P) music-sharing community that will compensate both copyright holders and members who participate in the community.

Grooveshark combines the best of P2P file sharing and online music purchase sites into one service at www.grooveshark.com. Visitors can browse songs uploaded by other members and pay to download MP3 files with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. Songs vary in price, but cost no more than 99 cents. Grooveshark will pay appropriate royalties to copyright holders by taking commissions from users' transactions and also compensate users with free music for community participation such as uploading songs, fixing song tags, flagging unwanted files or reviewing music. Members will be rewarded based on their level of contribution to the community.

"Our bottom line is value. By bringing the convenience and selection of a peer-to-peer network together with the recommendation power of a community of friends -- all the while removing DRM -- we can generate revenue to compensate both copyright holders and users," said Sam Tarantino, 20-year-old founder and CEO of Escape Media Group, the parent company of Grooveshark.

Because all Grooveshark files are DRM-free MP3s, they can be played on any computer or digital music player, so users no longer risk losing the ability to play songs in their collection if they change their computer or player.

Grooveshark will function much like popular P2P file exchanges. Members can offer their media library for sale through Grooveshark and discover and share new music with other members (only MP3 or OGG files without DRM). The difference: Grooveshark will broker music transactions by charging up to 99 cents for each song downloaded and use those proceeds to pay royalties to the copyright holders and reward members for community participation.

"Much of the success of P2P networks can be amplified by a community aspect -- allowing users to find someone with similar musical tastes and sample songs from their collection to find new artists or rare and unique songs and genres," said Tarantino. "By harnessing the power of user-generated content, Grooveshark can bring together online community elements, compensate artists and users and provide customers with control over their music by eliminating unfair DRM schemes," he added.

Grooveshark expects to begin beta testing during the first quarter of 2007. For more information, or to be notified when the beta version is available, visit www.grooveshark.com.

About Grooveshark

Grooveshark, a peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing community that brokers music transactions between members, is a service of Escape Media Group, LLC. By charging for the songs exchanged between members on their site, Grooveshark will compensate copyright holders and users while providing the convenience and selection of P2P file sharing in an online music community. All Grooveshark files are free of digital rights management (DRM) technology, allowing users to play the songs they purchase on any type of computer or digital music player. For more information, visit www.escapemg.com.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070109/latu030.html?.v=84





Review: Onshare Beta File-Sharing Software
Nigel Whitfield

Peer to peer file sharing is, potentially, a great way to let friends and colleagues access information on your system, but the popular networks are really geared up for an ‘all or nothing’ approach, and don’t give you much control over who accesses files on your system – hardly a recipe for security.

Microsoft’s Foldershare is one alternative, but its interface is a bit clunky, and you have to share whole folders with people.

Onshare, from the people behind the Onspeed internet accelerator, is designed to let you share files easily, with security in mind. Connections between peers are encrypted, it works fine behind firewalls, and the only people who can access your files are friends to whom you’ve given permission.

Those are granular; you can share some files in a folder with one user, and others with someone else, so there’s much less chance of accidentally sharing private material. You can also chat, instant messenger style, and include files in your messages.

It works, but we found it a little quirky; to be fair, it is beta software, but the interface takes some getting used to. The search box under Friends can’t be used to find new contacts, for example, only to search your existing list. If you click on someone to browse their files an Explorer window opens, but to search you get an Onshare window, which displays nothing until you click Find, unlike the search in your Friends list.

More annoyingly, sometimes the service didn’t work. Dragging and dropping a remote file produced a message that there was insufficient bandwidth top copy it, but double clicking to open it was fine. You can also only open or copy files, meaning you can’t drop a file in someone else’s folder; you have to share it from your computer instead.

If these quirks are ironed out when it comes out of beta testing, Onshare certainly has the potential to succeed, without the security issues of other peer-to-peer software.
www.vnunet.com/2172102





Connected Entertainment Group Demonstrates 'Media at the Speed of Life'
Press Release

Zoran Corporation (Nasdaq: ZRAN) announced that it will be showing its digital content delivery technology moving live content directly into the living room television and onto all types of consumer electronic devices, both console and handheld, at CES 2007 in Las Vegas.

The new technology will be shown running on Zoran's digital Connected Media Device and its Zplayer Ultra Portable Media Player reference design. The new technology enables the direct retrieval and sharing of audio, video, and digital images, via broadband, over connected consumer devices that can be used either inside or outside the home. Personal content archives will be accessible from anywhere in the home and anywhere in the world, and purchased content can be accessed through a multitude of devices within the same personal network.

"Zoran is pleased to be able to introduce the world's first 'Media at the Speed of Life' technology to create, capture, publish and distribute live content directly to the living room and to mobile devices. We've been working on the connected initiative for over a year, and with the help of our technology and networking partners we are able to demonstrate a complete system solution," said Brian Hofstetter, director Zoran's Connected Products Group.

Zoran partners contributing to the new technology and value added applications for Zoran's connected products include the following: -- Vidiva's software and user interface technology -- PassAlong Networks' content monetization and delivery infrastructure -- CinemaNow's feature motion picture delivery system -- AViga Systems' digital Touch Talk Type media retrieval -- Rotani's network management and performance enhancement software -- Solid State Networks' peer-to-peer file sharing -- Tzero's wireless high-definition content delivery -- Kestrelink's wireless networking solutions

For "Media at the Speed of Life" demonstration appointments, please contact your local Zoran representative.

About Zoran Corporation

Zoran Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, is a leading provider of digital solutions in the growing digital entertainment and digital imaging markets. With two decades of expertise developing and delivering digital signal processing technologies, Zoran has pioneered high-performance digital audio and video, imaging applications, and Connect Share Entertain(TM) technologies for the digital home. Zoran's proficiency in integration delivers major benefits for OEM customers, including greater capabilities within each product generation, reduced system costs, and shorter time to market. Zoran-based DVD, digital camera, DTV, multimedia mobile phone, and multifunction printer products have received recognition for excellence and are now in hundreds of millions of homes and offices worldwide. With headquarters in the U.S. and operations in Canada, China, England, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, Zoran may be contacted on the World Wide Web at http://www.zoran.com or at 408-523-6500.
NOTE: Zoran and the Zoran logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Zoran Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other names and brands may be claimed as property of others.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4501622&EDATE=





British Watchdog Agency Bans Dolce & Gabbana Ads
Mary K. Brunskill

Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, a watchdog agency, has banned ads for the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana that have been criticized as condoning and glorifying violence. In one of the ads, two men are threatening a man in a chair while another man lies injured on the floor. In another, two men are supporting a wounded woman who is holding a knife.

Dolce & Gabbana argued the ads were "highly stylized and intended to be an iconic representation of the Napoleonic period of art," and while the ASA admitted they clearly mimicked the "theatrical effects of the genre," they said they could still cause "serious of widespread offense."

As an example of a potentially offensive instance, the ASA pointed out that one was published in The Times opposite a story about a crime involving a knife.

Dolce & Gabbana said no one had complained about the ads when they were published in other parts of Europe, Japan, China and the U.S., but the ASA upheld its ruling.

"The ads could be seen as condoning and glorifying knife-related violence," it said. "We reminded D&G of its duty to prepare ads with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society."
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006099020





Digital Billboard Up Ahead: New-Wave Sign or Hazard?
Louise Story

Their very name once told it all: a board to post notices or advertisements. But billboards are getting a makeover.

Billboard companies are adopting digital technology that rotates advertiser images every six or eight seconds — the better to catch the eye. The new billboards look like television screens, although the images do not move.

The problem, safety experts say, is that the new billboards may work too well, adding yet another distraction for drivers.

There are currently about 400 digital signs across the country. But within 10 years, as many as a fifth of all billboards — or about 90,000 — may be converted, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

The technology has excited both billboard companies, which can generate three to five times more money from the digital signs, and advertisers. Clear Channel Outdoor and Lamar Advertising, which has installed the majority of such billboards, promote the digital signs as more effective at getting consumers to pay attention.

“There’s a perception in the advertising industry that you have to up the ante,” said David Zald, assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. “We see so much information coming at us that for it to actually leap out and capture our attention, one has to go at a more salient level than you used to.”

But, he added, “there’s a trade-off between the advertiser’s need to grab our attention and the actual safety implications of that attention capture.”

The digital signs have also revived a debate in towns and cities that dates to 1965, when the Highway Beautification Act was passed, limiting the number of new billboards that could be erected. Billboard critics have long said the roughly 450,000 billboards in the United States scar the landscape along highways and local roads. Billboard companies counter that they have a right to sell the space.

In fact, billboards are not just for roadsides anymore. Advertisements have been popping up more frequently inside subways and buses, shopping malls, office buildings and airports.

Over the last two years, the category, which the industry refers to as out-of-home advertising, has been second only to the Internet in its growth rates. But it is still dwarfed by television and print. Marketers spent about $6.7 billion on out-of-home ads in 2006, of total ad market spending of $285 billion in the United States, according to estimates by Universal McCann, part of the Interpublic Group.

While the billboard industry says the digital signs are not dangerous, driving safety researchers say there has not been enough research to know for sure. Most driving studies have focused on cellphone use. Still, researchers said the digital signs may tax drivers’ awareness more than old-fashioned static signs.

“In my opinion, they’re definitely distracting,” said Deanna Singhal, research associate at the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, a driving safety group in Ottawa. “It’s going to not only keep their eyes away from the road more, but it’s also more cognitively demanding.”

A study commissioned by the Federal Highway Administration is recommending further research into whether the signs present risks to drivers, said Dale Keyes, who oversaw the research. The study, by the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, a federal agency in Tucson, will be released in a few weeks. The federal government has also allotted $150,000 for a future study of digital signs.

Meanwhile, the signs are flying up. Lamar Advertising is converting about 28 traditional billboards to digital signs each month, and company executives consider new locations in weekly meetings, said Tommy Teepell, Lamar’s chief marketing officer. The company does not plan to convert all of its roughly 158,000 signs to digital, focusing instead on the ones in the most heavily trafficked areas, he said.

Lamar has so far heard mainly positive reaction, Mr. Teepell said.

“Typically, the response we get is people love it because they’re very attractive,” Mr. Teepell said. “The colors are attractive and the creative looks good. You don’t ever have colors faded in the sun.”

Eileen Furukawa, broadcasting analyst for Citigroup, said profit margins on digital signs can run as high as 70 percent, while static signs have closer to 45 percent profit margins. She is recommending that investors buy Lamar and Clear Channel Outdoor stock.

Digital signs are sold more like TV commercials than traditional billboard signs, ad executives said. Advertisers can buy spots for a single day or for a few hours, rather than weeks at a time as on normal billboards.

“Changeable signage is very much a part of the outdoor landscape as we move forward,” said Jodi Senese, executive vice president of marketing for CBS Outdoor, a division of CBS, which has not yet posted digital signs along highways.

Digital signs, Ms. Senese said, offer “immense creativity, flexibility and targetability for different demographics, which was really never an option for out-of-home advertising.”

Clear Channel Outdoor has created digital billboard networks in six cities, including Milwaukee, Tampa and Albuquerque. The networks can be cued to show the same ads all over the cities at once, mimicking how people usually see the same TV commercials while watching the same shows. Clear Channel Outdoor is also placing TV screens in mall food courts.

Digital billboards are one of the main growth areas for outdoor companies, and what is more, advertisers are eager to sign up, said Paul Meyer, president and chief operating officer of Clear Channel Outdoor. “You can’t avoid it,” Mr. Meyer said. “There’s no mute button. There’s no on-off switch.”

Billboard companies generally have to obtain permits from local governments to convert their signs to digital boards.

Some towns have turned them down; others are negotiating everything from a quota for conventional signs to the brightness of the digital images.

In Syracuse, for example, after passers-by began complaining that a digital sign installed last year was too bright, Lamar was quick to turn it down, said Charles Ladd, the city’s zoning administrator.

Omaha has not allowed digital signs, and does not plan to unless the billboard companies offer to remove multiple conventional signs for each digital sign.

“All they have to do is push a button,” Tom Blair, the city’s planner said, “and they can flash and disturb the motorists.”

Bill Brooks, mayor of Belle Isle, Fla., a town of 6,000 people near Walt Disney World, said he negotiated with Clear Channel Outdoor in December to allow the town’s first digital sign, in part because he does not want to risk entering a protracted legal battle.

As an active member of the National League of Cities, Mr. Brooks said he was well aware of the lawsuits other towns have faced over their billboard regulations. The American Planning Association and the National League of Cities have publicly accused the billboard industry of aggressively suing cities and towns over their billboard regulations.

Indeed, in the last seven years, there have been about 100 cases in federal courts, about three times the amount from 1993 to 2000, said Eric Damian Kelly, professor of urban planning at Ball State University. While almost all the lawsuits have involved traditional signs, the American Planning Association said digital billboards would probably be the next battleground.

Some consumers said the digital billboards provided entertainment on the road.

“I always read them when I drive by,” said Caitlin Neary, 22, who passes a digital sign in Connecticut when she drives to her parents’ house in Fairfield. “I always watch to see it change. It catches your eye more.”

But others said the signs are more distracting than cellphone calls. Lisa Christopher said she nearly had an accident when she first saw a digital billboard in Vestavia Hills, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham. Within days, Ms. Christopher, the former PTA president at a local high school, said she was getting calls from other worried parents.

“It was so bright, it almost jumped out at you,” Ms. Christopher said.

The sign was not up for long. Last month, the Vestavia Hills zoning board told Lamar Advertising to turn it off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/bu...11outdoor.html





Thanks for the Mac Memories
Daniel Terdiman

For fans of Macintosh computers, Tuesday brought a chance to hear some of the inside stories behind the history of the iconic machines.

At Macworld here, Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the team that built the original Mac, spoke to a crowd of about 50 people about the early days of the project.

Hertzfeld was on hand to promote his book, Revolution in the Valley: The insanely great story of how the Mac was made, at publisher O'Reilly's booth.

The book first came out in 2004, but that didn't keep a standing-room-only crowd from gathering to hear Hertzfeld tell the tales behind the famous project.

Looking a little bit stouter than he did in 1984, he began his talk by paying his respects to fellow Mac pioneer Jef Raskin, who died in February 2005.

"I'll begin with a tribute to Jef and tell you how Jef hated my book," Hertzfeld began. "The hardest part of all (was that) he really objected to a few of" the book's stories.

He recalled that Raskin had not been particularly pleased by an anecdote in the book about how fellow Mac team member Burrell Smith, whom Hertzfeld said had a talent for imitations, used to mimic Raskin.

"'Why, I, I, I, I invented the Macintosh,'" Hertzfeld said, quoting Smith imitating Raskin.

He also said Smith would then mimic a reporter responding to Raskin: "'Why, no, I thought Burrell invented the Macintosh.'"

And Smith would end the joke with one final Raskin imitation: "'Why, I, I, I, I invented Burrell.'"

Clearly fond of Raskin, Hertzfeld nevertheless poked a little bit of fun at him during his talk. Hertzfeld remembered his first week at Apple Computer and how Raskin sat next to him at one point and introduced himself.

"'I'm not only a mathematical genius, but a musical genius, as well,'" Hertzfeld said Raskin told him by way of greeting. "I thought, 'What do I say to that?' So I said, 'Good for you.'"

Hertzfeld also said Raskin had been critical of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs' "unique management style." So Raskin put together a written critique of Jobs' perceived managerial shortcomings and sent them to Apple investor Mike Markkula. But Jobs found out about the memo.

"Steve saw it and responded by asking Jef to take a three-month mandatory" suspension, Hertzfeld said.

He also recalled how prior to joining the Mac team, Hertzfeld had been working on a new operating system for the Apple II. But Jobs demanded that he stop working on the project.

"'That'll be obsolete even before it comes out,'" Hertzfeld quoted Jobs as saying at the time. "'What's more important than the Mac?'"

So Jobs yanked the power cord for the Apple II Hertzfeld was working on out of the wall and walked away with the computer, Hertzfeld said.

And while Hertzfeld is clearly fond of Jobs, he didn't hesitate to point out that Smith, whom he said "had a great knack for nicknames," used to call Jobs "the devil."

He also related that in the early days of the Mac team, anyone who wanted to quit Apple but who Jobs valued had to weave their way through Jobs' famous "reality distortion field" sessions.

"If Steve didn't want you to quit," Hertzfeld said, "you'd have to go through a reality distortion session with Steve."

Tales of Jobs and Woz
He said that Smith began talking about how, if he ever decided to quit, he would "'just pull down my pants and urinate on (Jobs') desk.'"

Apparently, though, Jobs found out that Smith was saying that. So later, when Smith finally did decide to leave the company, Jobs was ready.

"Are you going to do it?" Jobs asked of the urinating threat.

Later, Hertzfeld said, he got a phone call one day from the Cupertino, Calif., police. It turned out that Jobs had been parking his car in the handicapped parking spaces and that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had reported it to the police, but had done so claiming he was Andy Hertzfeld.

"Steve (Jobs) thought the rules were for everybody else," Hertzfeld said. "So he parked in the handicapped spot. Maybe he thought the blue wheelchair symbol meant it was for the chairman of the board."

Still, despite some knocks on Jobs, Hertzfeld said that it's quite possible that the Macintosh wouldn't even exist today if someone hadn't "hit the undo button" and brought Jobs back to Apple years after his forced departure from the company.

Hertzfeld also had more Wozniak stories to relate to the gathered crowd. He remembered that Smith and Wozniak had both been big fans of the video game Defender.

After awhile, he said, Wozniak got so good at the game that he would come home from work and end up playing single games that would go on forever.

"Woz's wife would have to spoon-feed him his dinner," Hertzfeld said, "because the games would last three or four hours and he'd get hungry."

These days, Hertzfeld is a software engineer at Google, which he called "the greatest company ever."

Asked why Mac fans are so into talks like his and other historical recollections of the early days of the computer, Hertzfeld said it is because the fans are "passionate" about the machines.

"It's a spiritual touchstone...It's the love and care that Apple puts into it," he said. "It's not just a product. The key word is 'just.' It is a product, but I don't know about the 'just.'"
http://news.com.com/Thanks+for+the+M...3-6148831.html





In Gadgets, Excitement Is in the Price
Damon Darlin

Slumped on a bench at the end of the third day of the Consumer Electronics Show here, Ben Leet stared at a Sharp 108-inch flat-panel TV, the biggest television ever made, as he pondered what was remarkable about the thousands of products he saw.

“Well, this thing is wow,” said Mr. Leet, a senior consultant at DTC Worldwide, a British market research firm. “Each year the TVs get better.”

Still, the size was really just an incremental expansion over last year. And Mr. Leet was hard pressed to come up with anything along the miles of displays of TVs, set-top boxes, DVD machines, appliances, and the like, that could be called startling or life changing. Indeed, no new feature-rich product stole the Consumer Electronics Show — it seemed not to be aimed at “first adopters,” the guys down the street with the latest gadgets, but at the soccer moms with an eye for a bargain. “It is going mainstream,” Mr. Leet said.

For consumer electronics makers, the faster pace of price-cutting seemed to be even more of an obsession than a revolutionary new device.

Certainly, Apple sucked the life out of the annual electronics party this week with an announcement at its own show in San Francisco of a sleek multidimensional cellphone that first adopters are sure to drool over. But, at least by one measure, the electronics industry has a lot to celebrate.

Last year, manufacturers sold a record $146 billion worth of goods at wholesale in the United States. Sales in 2006 increased 13 percent from 2005, twice the average rate of growth.

“That has not happened in the past 20 years,” said Sean Wargo, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Association.

The industry sold 160 percent more liquid-crystal-display TVs and 154 percent more global positioning satellite navigation systems.

At the same time, however, prices for many products fell faster last year than the typical pace of decline. Big-screen plasma TVs dropped 32 percent, according to the association’s economists. Competition pushed the average notebook computer price down 35 percent. The price of video players for cars fell 65 percent.

Even as executives of the big manufacturers here insisted that the big drops would not happen again this year, consumers can expect to see more of the same. Demand remains strong, and the relentless competition is creating a paradise for shoppers, who have packed their homes with an average of 25 consumer electronic devices, twice as many as just a decade ago.

In big-screen TVs, for example, “As much as I say they won’t fall as much,” said Robert Scaglione, the senior vice president for marketing at Sharp’s North American operations, “I can only hope they won’t.”

Sharp Electronics is one of several TV makers adding capacity this year. Its new factories are more efficient. Sharp can produce six 52-inch flat-panels for L.C.D. televisions with the same amount of effort it took to produce just two of them in its older plant. Sharp said production of all sizes of flat-panels would double this year and then triple in 2008.

Manufacturers, especially the smaller contract companies in Taiwan and China that make the panels for the lesser-known brands like Polaroid or Maxent, need to keep those factories running at full capacity and will cut prices to do so.

Vincent F. Sollitto Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Syntax- Brillian, takes advantage of that trend. In a luxury suite at the Las Vegas Hilton next to the convention center where the annual show was held, he explained how sales of the Olevia brand TVs doubled in 2006.

“A year ago, we were nobody,” Mr. Sollitto said. But the company priced the TV sets 20 percent below those of the major manufacturers and, for a few days after Thanksgiving, outsold Sony three to one in Circuit City Stores. “That’s what we can do,” he said.

“We will be prepared for what is coming and that is very aggressive price reductions throughout the year,” he said.

It is a similar story for computers, a category that only 18 months ago many industry analysts considered to be a sleeper. But sales of notebook computers grew 64 percent last year. Craig Marking, a product manager for Toshiba, said Microsoft’s release of a new operating system, Vista, will continue to stimulate demand. “It creates the opportunity for higher average selling prices,” he added.

He reasons that because Vista turns the PC into a multimedia entertainment device, the computer needs more memory and more sophisticated disk drives.

Once a putty-colored box for an office desk, the personal computer has been redesigned and is more often a sleek notebook, sometimes enrobed in shiny embossed carbon fiber. All those frills are supposed to entice consumers to pay more.

But executives at a scrappy PC maker, Acer of Taiwan, do not think that will happen. They took market share away from Toshiba and Dell in 2006 and they want to get more this year. “We sold 1.6 million last year; We will sell 3.2 million this year,” said Rudi Schmidleithner, president of Acer’s American operations.

Acer’s strategy is to put the latest technology in a PC, for example, installing devices that enable the highest speeds over a wireless network. But instead of considering the computer a niche product for the top of the market and getting fat profit margins, it then prices the products for the mainstream and makes money on volume. “We do not need the highest margins to run our business model,” Mr. Schmidleithner said.

That strategy ruins it for everyone else because the others have to lower prices if they do not want to lose market share. “Part of Dell’s problem is Acer,” Mr. Schmidleithner suggested. Those discounts, of course, put a smile on the faces of consumers.

Navigation systems, meanwhile, that use information from global positioning satellites were another fast-selling product category last year. That came as a bit of a surprise as well because most of the direction-giving devices intended for cars sell for $600 to $1,200.

Change is a afoot here, too. The barriers to entry are low. A G.P.S. device is a few generic semiconductors, a small L.C.D. screen and software. Garmin, an industry leader, has a gross profit margin of 50 percent.

Not surprisingly, more companies at the show were displaying navigation systems. Samsung Electronics, which claims just bested Sony as the No. 1 HDTV maker, has set its sights on this market. Increased competition can mean only one thing: prices are coming down.

The show was not about prices, of course, no matter how much they were discussed in meetings between retailers and manufacturers. The Consumer Electronics Show was supposed to be a showcase for retailers looking for the latest high-tech products that will lure consumers to the store. Watch for Powerline plugs that will use a home’s existing wires to move digital content, including HDTV programs or movies, around the house. Loads of hand-held video players are coming, along with new digital cameras that offer even more automated functions to improve pictures. ( Kodak hinted at a mode to remove the glow-eye from pet pictures.)

Some of those technologies will never catch on. At the show, the big debate continued to be about whether HD-DVD or Blu-ray would triumph as the standard for high-definition DVD players. LG Electronics offered a solution to reassure the hesitant consumer: a device that would play both kinds of discs.

But at $1,200, the Super Multi Blue is only for that first adopter. (The first adopters would be better off buying a Toshiba HD-DVD player for $600 and a Sony PlayStation 3, which contains a Blu-ray drive, for $670 because then they get two players and a game machine.) Jun Dong-soo, the senior vice president for digital devices at Samsung, scoffed at LG’s effort: “Without an affordable price, I don’t want to launch a dual format player.”

The fear of making the wrong bet on technology, by the consumer and the manufacturer, led Whirlpool to come up with an innovative alternative to another LG product: the TV in the refrigerator door. What happens when the TV breaks or becomes obsolete? From a tiny meeting room tucked far in the back of one of the exhibition halls, the company showed consumer electronics makers a socket built into the top of a refrigerator’s door from which any kind of device — a TV, a tablet PC, a battery charger, a DVD player — could be hung.

Whirlpool doesn’t plan on charging consumers any more for a refrigerator with the special socket, which it calls Central Park. That way more consumers will buy it and the larger installed base will entice electronics makers, which will further increase demand for Central Park.

Matthew Newton, an innovation consultant at Whirlpool, said, “We’d like to move as quickly as possible to get it into the mainstream market.” It was a sentiment heard a lot at the show.



The follow-up: As the holiday shopping season began, Your Money outlined some online tools that can be used to find the best deals when retailers drop prices suddenly.

As you well know, the prices continue to drop after the holidays. Take advantage of price-protection guarantees of the companies. They typically last for 30 days during which time the retailer will pay you the difference. But only if you notice the lower price and contact them.

The Web site Refundplease.com helps you automatically track price changes at Amazon.com. There is the problem of making direct contact with Amazon’s customer service. With a bit of sleuthing, Tim Noah, a writer for the online magazine Slate, found Amazon’s customer service phone number. It is (800) 201-7575.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/te...y/13money.html





The Problem With Made in China

AS A vote of confidence in Vietnam, the decision by Intel early in 2006 to spend $350m building a new factory in the emerging South-East Asian economy was hard to beat. And yet, before the year was out, the American chipmaker went further and raised its investment to $1 billion. In eight months Intel had committed as much money to Vietnam as it had to China in the previous ten years.

In the Johor region of Malaysia, another global firm, Flextronics, has fired up the production lines of a new M$400m ($110m) factory to make computer printers for another American firm, Hewlett-Packard. One of the largest contract electronics manufacturers, Flextronics already has vast facilities in China. But it chose Malaysia as the site for its latest investment.

Further east, in Indonesia, Yue Yuen, a Hong Kong-based shoemaker, has been ramping up its output of trainers and casual footwear for brands like Nike and Adidas. Production is increasing at the firm's factories in China and Vietnam too, but output in Indonesia is growing the fastest.

Although all three companies had different reasons for their decisions, the outcome was the same: they chose to avoid China's thundering economy in order to put their factories elsewhere in Asia. These companies are not alone. In the calculus of costs, risks, customers and logistics that goes into building global operations, an increasing number of firms are coming to the conclusion that China is not necessarily the best place to make things.

With its seemingly limitless supply of cheap labour and the rapid acquisition of technological prowess, China appears to be unstoppable. Indeed, the perception is that every factory closing in America or Europe is destined to reopen in China. Many have, helping China's share of the world's exported goods to triple to 7.3% between 1993 and 2005. In comparison, every member of the G8 group of rich nations, with the exception of Russia, saw its share fall. It is a similar story with manufacturing output. Whereas China doubled its share of global production to almost 7% in the decade to 2003, most of the G8 saw their shares fall. Interestingly, only the United States and Canada saw their shares rise—with just over a quarter between them. Most things nowadays might seem to be made in China, but North America remains the true workshop of the world.

Yet it is not only China that is booming as a base for low-cost production. Manufacturing and exports are growing rapidly in other parts of Asia (see chart 1). Taken together, South Korea, Taiwan, India and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) increased their share of global manufacturing from less than 7% to more than 9% in the decade to 2003. Exports also rose across the board. China is the emerging giant, but the investments that are being diverted away from the Middle Kingdom present the rest of Asia with a huge opportunity to become manufacturing hubs in their own right. The question is whether they can seize it.
Too far, too expensive

Scott Brixen, an analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a Hong Kong-based investment bank, gives two big reasons why China has not found itself at the top of the list for some new factories: “Rising costs and a natural desire by companies for diversification.”

So far, most industrial development in China has taken place in the country's eastern coastal regions, particularly around Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong. But costs in these centres are now rising sharply. Office rents are soaring, industrial land is in short supply and utility costs are climbing. Most significant of all are rocketing wages. In spite of the mass migration of workers from China's vast interior to the coast, pay for factory workers has been rising at double-digit rates for several years. For managers, the situation is worse still.

“China has become a victim of its own success,” sighs Peter Tan, president and managing director of Flextronics in Asia. He finds it especially hard to hire and retain technical staff, ranging from finance directors to managers versed in international production techniques such as “six sigma” and “lean manufacturing”. There are not enough qualified workers to go around, causing rampant poaching and extremely fast wage inflation. “China is definitely not the cheapest place to produce any more,” he says.

An analysis of labour rates across Asia by CLSA's Mr Brixen supports that view. Average wages for a factory worker, combined with social security costs, came to almost $350 a month in Shanghai in 2005 and almost $250 a month in Shenzhen. By comparison, monthly wages were less than $200 in Manila, around $150 in Bangkok and just over $100 in Batam in Indonesia. Although the productivity of Chinese workers is rising, in many industries it is not keeping pace with wages.

One solution is for companies to move inland where many costs are much lower than on China's heavily developed coastline. Indeed, the government has been promoting such a policy since 2000, to spread the benefits of development to China's poor interior. Domestic Chinese companies have led the charge into the hinterland and a small, but growing, number of foreign firms have followed them.

Intel is one. In 2004 it decided to invest $525m in a new plant in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to complement its existing factories on the coast in Shanghai, 1,600km (994 miles) away. Brian Krzanich, general manager of Intel's test and assembly business, says the company's decision was based on cost. The government was keen to promote its “go west” policy, so it offered Intel generous incentives. Needless to say, being so far inland raises transport costs for exporters. But Mr Krzanich reckons there are compensations, because labour and utilities are much cheaper than on the coast.

But not everyone is convinced. At Flextronics, Mr Tan's China factories are all located in eastern coastal provinces. “We have no interest in going west,” he says, because it is too expensive to get products to America and Europe from there. Other observers add that the shortage of management talent inland is even greater than on the coast. And it is not easy persuading expatriate workers to take their families to places like Chongqing and Chengdu, where foreign companions and international schools are thin on the ground. So many firms decide they would rather invest elsewhere in Asia.

Costs are only part of the equation. Just as important is diversification. Having already moved a big chunk of their production to China, many firms are reluctant to put any more of their eggs in the same basket. A research report written last year by the Japan External Trade Organisation concluded: “Due to the country's increasing business risks and rising labour costs...Japanese firms employing a ‘China-plus-one’ strategy—in which they invest in China and another country, namely in ASEAN—should consider placing more emphasis on the ‘plus one’ country.”

Japanese companies may be particularly wary, but such nervousness is now shared by managers from other countries. Some of their firms are concerned about growing unrest in China as swathes of the country's rural population, particularly in the west, fall behind the thriving east. Official figures record 87,000 incidences of rioting and social disturbance in 2005, much of it following the forced appropriation of farmers' land in the name of development. The actual number of cases of civil unrest could be far larger.

Equally important are concerns about growing protectionism. The United States and the European Union are becoming more assertive in holding China to account over its World Trade Organisation obligations. Companies worry that this could lead to sudden interruptions to trade.

Ask Yue Yuen, the world's largest contract shoe manufacturer. The company produces more than 180m shoes a year from factories in China, Vietnam and Indonesia, most of them bound for America and Europe. So when the European Union imposed anti-dumping duties in October 2006 on leather shoes imported from China and Vietnam, the firm was quick to raise its production in Indonesia. “Trade relations with other nations and the tariff and quota situation are vital considerations for where we invest,” says Terry Ip, a spokesman for the company.

So too are wage rates. With each shoe passing through up to 200 pairs of hands on the production line, Yue Yuen's operations are highly labour-intensive. In China the firm is experiencing rapid wage inflation. Although this is partly offset by productivity improvements which mean that overall unit labour costs are rising by 8% a year. Pay for factory workers is rising in Vietnam and Indonesia too, notes Mr Ip, but labour costs there are as much as 35% lower than in coastal China.

Another company with a China-plus-one strategy is Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing retailer. Last year it decided to reduce the share of clothes it sources in China from 90% to 60% as a hedging strategy against future trade disputes. New factories in Cambodia and Vietnam will make up the shortfall. Intel, with facilities in Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and China, is creating a diversified portfolio also.
Keeping secrets

China also has other risks, notably a lack of protection for intellectual property rights. Stories abound of foreign investors finding local companies churning out identical goods to their own, but under a different brand. For that reason a number of companies in industries such as medical devices have instead set up shop in Singapore. Often these products are capital-intensive, so labour costs are less important than strong intellectual property laws. Several chemical companies have even built facilities in Singapore with the intention of shipping most of their products to China. Feedstock is more easily available in Singapore, but just as important is confidence that valuable industrial processes will not be stolen.

Managers also worry about the rising value of the Chinese currency. Although nobody expects sudden leaps, the yuan does appear to be on a steadily upward trajectory, having risen by a further 4% against the dollar since the government first revalued the currency by 2.1% in July 2005. Pundits expect it will continue to rise by around 5% in the year ahead, which will do little to bolster China's attractiveness for export-based manufacturing.

Of course, cost and risk are not the only considerations in choosing where to put a factory. The quality of a country's infrastructure, the presence of suppliers and the size of the local market all count. For such reasons, China will remain an attractive place to invest.

Kumar Bhattacharyya, a professor of manufacturing at Britain's University of Warwick, believes the lure of China's burgeoning domestic market will outweigh the various concerns over cost. “Why do people go to India and China? The standard answer is for cheap labour, but most big technology companies go there for the market,” he says.

Naturally, industries such as textiles and clothing will always seek places with cheap labour, hopping from country to country as wages rise and equalise. However, for more complex and capital-intensive manufacturing, it is clear that foreign direct-investment flows are aimed at accessing local markets rather than low costs.

In emerging Asia markets simply do not come any bigger than China, with its 1.3 billion people. Individual wealth is still extremely low compared with figures for the United States and Europe, but a vibrant middle class is emerging in the big cities. With growth rates of more than 10% a year, China offers huge potential. Transport and other infrastructure in China is also in better shape than many other Asian countries and the quality and availability of suppliers is improving all the time, enabling highly integrated supply chains to develop within the country.

Yet other parts of Asia also offer sizeable markets. India has 1.1 billion people, an emerging middle class of its own and will grow at around 8% this year, although the country is a good deal poorer than China. To date, foreign investment in manufacturing has been limited—total investment inflows in 2005 amounted to a meagre $7 billion, compared with more than $70 billion for China (see chart 2). Hugely inadequate infrastructure is one of the chief obstacles in India, as is a business climate famous for its bureaucracy. Yet even there, more foreign companies are starting to open factories.
Manufacturing graduates

The car-parts industry is a good example, with both Toyota and Hyundai investing recently to take advantage of the almost 700,000 engineering and science graduates that India produces every year. It has even been suggested that Indian technicians could re-engineer some of the West's highly automated car-production lines to make them more labour-intensive for the Indian market. Firms making specialty chemicals are keen to combine technical expertise with low costs and a growing market. Even low-technology industries are interested: Yue Yuen is close to building its first shoe factory in India, attracted not only by the country's vast pool of cheap workers but also by efforts to set up special economic zones that offer tax breaks.

Most observers reckon India's manufacturing evolution is ten years behind China's, but progress is unlikely to be as swift or as smooth. A country that puts a higher value than China does on democracy and the rights of the individual will inevitably find it harder to push through infrastructure projects and reform to sensitive areas such as the rigid labour market.

With 560m people, the ASEAN trade bloc also offers a big population. South-East Asia has been the chief beneficiary of companies' decisions to diversify out of China. The problem is that the ten ASEAN nations have yet to form a single market. Although the region offers plenty of opportunity for export-based manufacturing, as a single market it remains highly fragmented. Companies want to be able to set up one factory to serve the whole region, but numerous barriers prevent them from doing so.

Governments in the region have announced bold plans to create the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015, with a free flow of goods, services and investment. Following a free-trade agreement in 1992, tariffs on the majority of goods traded in the region have fallen below 5%. Much harder to achieve will be the removal of non-tariff barriers, which would call for harmonising thousands of industry standards and customs regulations, and setting up independent bodies to govern regional trade and mediate in disputes.

Few believe that the ASEAN Economic Community will come about as its architects hope. Less developed nations, such as Myanmar and Laos, will integrate at a slower pace than countries like Singapore and Malaysia—if they integrate at all. Nonetheless, progress is being made and the rapid rise of China and India has added urgency to the process. Twelve areas, including electronics, health care, textiles and logistics, have been singled out as the first to be worked on.
AFP

Trainers to peddle harder

In the meantime, governments must also think how to get their industries into higher-value manufacturing. Although ASEAN received record levels of foreign direct investment in 2005, at $37 billion, much of the manufacturing coming into the region is basic, labour-intensive assembly work that adds only a little value.

“I get worried about ASEAN,” says Roland Villinger, a Bangkok-based partner at McKinsey, a consulting firm. He thinks the region urgently needs to add to the sophistication of its manufacturing—partly because India and China are improving so fast. He agrees that a lot of factories in ASEAN are part of a “China-plus-one or plus-two” strategy. However, he believes South-East Asia needs to be more than just a hedge against risk in China. And ASEAN has its own share of risks. Thailand's new military government seems to be doing its utmost to deter investment, including tighter curbs on foreign ownership and botched currency controls.
Smart but tiny

Bright spots do stand out. Singapore has a highly educated workforce, although its population is only about 4m. The country has a solid history of attracting sophisticated manufacturing that calls for strong technical skills and often involves extensive research and development. Malaysia too has had some success in moving into higher-value manufacturing. In May last year, for example, Intel opened a new research centre in Kulim employing 900 people to design microprocessors, chipsets and motherboards for use in its products worldwide. And in Thailand efforts to make the country the “Detroit of the East” are starting to pay dividends—at least they were until the present troubles. Thailand was set to overtake the United States last year as the world's largest maker of one-tonne pick-up trucks. Toyota recently set up a new research-and-development centre in Thailand for its light truck business.

Elsewhere in the region, though, governments talk a good game, but have yet to make enough progress. For the moment, as foreign investors choke on their China investments and look elsewhere, that does not matter too much. But as India sorts out its problems and as China grows into an ever bigger market, South-East Asia needs to integrate its own markets or see its newly found popularity among manufacturers slowly fade.
http://www.economist.com/business/di...ory_id=8515811





The Pirate Bay Plans to Buy Island
James Savage

Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to circumvent international copyright laws.

The group has set up a campaign to raise money to buy Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation', and claims to be outside the jurisdiction of the UK or any other country.

The Pirate Bay says it is the world's largest 'bit torrent tracker', and is a popular way of sharing music, films, software and other copyrighted material online. It has been under the scrutiny of authorities in Sweden and around the world for some time.

The site was briefly closed down after raids by the Swedish police last May. After initially moving to the Netherlands, the site returned to Sweden in June. Swedish authorities have been put under pressure to do more to stop the site. The Motion Picture Association of America, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and the US government have all lobbied for The Pirate Bay's closure.

According to a website set up to secure the purchase of Sealand, The Pirate Bay plans to give citizenship of the micronation to anyone willing to put money towards the purchase.

"It should be a great place for everybody, with high-speed Internet access, no copyright laws and VIP accounts to The Pirate Bay," the organisation claims on its website www.buysealand.com.

The "island" of Sealand, seven miles off the coast of southern England, was settled in 1967 by an English major, Paddy Roy Bates. Bates proclaimed Sealand a state, issuing passports and gold and silver Sealand dollars and declaring himself Prince Roy.

When the British Royal Navy tried to evict Prince Roy in 1968, a judge ruled that the platform was outside British territorial waters and therefore beyond government control.

The British government subsequently extended its territorial waters from three to twelve nautical miles from the coast, which would include Sealand, but Prince Roy simultaneously extended Sealand's waters, claimed that this guaranteed Sealand's sovereignty.

The island is now being put up for sale by Prince Roy's son, Prince Michael, who styles himself head of state. A firm of Spanish estate agents has valued the island at £504 million (about 7 billion kronor), although Prince Michael told The Times of London that it is hard to gauge how much it will fetch in reality.

The Pirate Bay says it is looking at alternatives to buying the former naval platform.

"If we do not get enough money required to buy the micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somwhere and claim it as our own country," the organization says on its website.
http://www.thelocal.se/6076/20070112/





Milestones

Mr. Noodle

The news last Friday of the death of the ramen noodle guy surprised those of us who had never suspected that there was such an individual. It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan.

But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product — fried, dried and sold in little plastic-wrapped bricks or foam cups — turned the company he founded, Nissin Foods, into a global giant. According to the company’s Web site, instant ramen satisfies more than 100 million people a day. Aggregate servings of the company’s signature brand, Cup Noodles, reached 25 billion worldwide in 2006.

There are other versions of fast noodles. There is spaghetti in a can. It is sweetish and gloppy and a first cousin of dog food. Macaroni and cheese in a box is a convenience product requiring several inconvenient steps. You have to boil the macaroni, stir it to prevent sticking and determine through some previously obtained expertise when it is “done.” You must separate water from noodles using a specialized tool, a colander, and to complete the dish — such an insult — you have to measure and add the fatty deliciousness yourself, in the form of butter and milk that Kraft assumes you already have on hand. All that effort, plus the cleanup, is hardly worth it.

Ramen noodles, by contrast, are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving.

There are some imperfections. The fragile cellophane around the ramen brick tends to open in a rush, spilling broken noodle bits around. The silver seasoning packet does not always tear open evenly, and bits of sodium essence can be trapped in the foil hollows, leaving you always to wonder whether the broth, rich and salty as it is, is as rich and salty as it could have been. The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.

But those are minor quibbles. Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything.

Lawrence Downes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/op...5b6&ei=5087%0A


















Until next week,

- js.



















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