Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 3rd, '07 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 28-02-07, 11:43 AM

"Felony charges are becoming an Oscar tradition right up there with Botox injections and borrowed Harry Winston jewels." – Stefanie Olsen

"The $20,000 for a commercial [satellite] link was just money we didn't have, so we bought several woks instead." – Ken Jones

"If they told me it was 100,000 hours, I'd still protect it the same way. If they told me if was 5 million hours I'd still protect it the same way. I have to assume every drive could fail." – Tom Dugan

"If you're 13 and you can't put a number on the times (you've used porn), that's a little frightening." – Sonya Thompson

"2 fast for the feds to cocky for the cops." – Jordan Danski

"I have found a device key." – ATARI Vampire

March 3rd, 2007

Save Internet Radio

If the RIAA and SoundExchange get their way, independent webcasting / Internet radio will soon cease to exist.

Why? Earlier today, the Copyright Royalty Board, the group overseeing statutory licensing for US-based internet radio stations, announced the new royalty rates for streaming radio performance rights. The board rejected the arguments made by webcasters and instead chose to adopt the proposal put forth by industry-backed SoundExchange, a royalty fee collection agency created by the RIAA.

The new rates are based on “performances” of songs. A “performance” is defined as one song being streamed to a single listener. In other words, a station with 1000 listeners is charged for 1000 performances of each song it broadcasts.

Further, the new rates, just announced today, are retroactive to 2006, and increase rapidly each year. The rates per performance are as follows:

$0.0008 in 2006
$0.0011 in 2007
$0.0014 in 2008
$0.0018 in 2009

At first glance, those seem like fairly small numbers: eight ten-thousandths of a dollar, eleven ten-thousandths of a dollar, and so on. When you actually do the math, however, you see the truth revealed. The average radio station plays 16 songs in an hour. Under this system, that would be equivalent to 16 performances.

0.0011 x 16 = 0.0176

Still a fairly small number - under two cents. But now assume this station has 1000 listeners. That means that, in one hour, the station would be billed for 16,000 performances.

0.0011 x 16000 = 17.60

That’s $17.60 an hour. Now we’re starting to see how expensive this truly is. Multiply that by 24 hours a day.

17.60 * 24 = 422.40

$422.40 a day. But there’s 365 days in a year.

422.40 * 365 = 154176

$154,176 for the year in performance royalties alone for a station with 1000 listeners. And that’s just for 2007: it gets even worse. In 2008, the cost rises to $193,536 for the year. In 2009, it goes up to $248,832. Even for a much smaller station, the royalties owed are huge.

Of course, these figures don’t include the mechanical rights, which must be licensed separately from an agency like SESAC or ASCAP, or the cost of bandwidth and server capacity. When you add all these costs together, you can easily see why nobody, save perhaps a megacorporation like AOL or Yahoo, could afford to pay these rates.

But wait - what’s this? The new rates apply retroactively to the beginning of 2006. In other words, someone who has been happily (and legally) running their small internet radio station for the past few years is suddenly going to be hit with possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional royalties owed. These bills could easily cause a small, independent broadcaster (and his family) to go bankrupt.

Meanwhile, over-the-air radio stations are still not required to pay one dime to the record industry for public performance rights. This reads like another tactic by the recording industry and corporate powers to exert control over anyone involved with music and an attempt to destroy independent broadcasting.

Whether you don’t want to see your favorite internet radio station go off the air, whether you just hate the RIAA, whatever the reason: please, help us get this senseless, greedy policy designed to do nothing but line the pockets of the record industry overturned. Write to, or better yet call, your representative, your senators, and the Copyright Royalty Board. Tell your friends and family, write on your blog, digg this - help get the word out and help to Save Internet Radio!

If you are a webcaster, we want to hear from you! How will this affect your station? What do you plan on doing? Drop us a line at feedback@save-internet-radio.com. If you’re someone involved with setting these rates, you’re also welcome to contact us and explain why you think these rates are fair.

We’ll be updating this site with more information as this progresses, so please check back and get involved!
http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2...nternet-radio/

WinDVD 8 Device Key Found!
ATARI Vampire

Although this is my first post, I have been actively sitting in the shadows for the last 6-8 weeks reading every Doom9 thread that I could find on HD DVD and Blu-Ray decryption. I have followed the postings of muslix64, Janvitos, and Arnezami, trying my best to recreate their steps to learn even more about the under workings of AACS. I even printed out all 70 pages of the AACS Introduction and Common Cryptographic Elements document, painfully reading through this material.

A few nights ago, something that Arnezami had written about slowing WinDVD 8 down though intensive memory dumps had started me thinking. So, I brought up my favorite Java IDE and begun writing code. Using a combination of VUK Finder (by Jokin), pmdump, psuspened (Sys Internals) and WinHex I was able to get enough data to find the VID, Media Key, and Processing Key by using the "bottom up" approach that Arnezami spoke about.

As soon as I had the processing key in a memory dump I knew that I was close to a Device Key. I then quickly implemented a version of AES-128G(k, d), where k = key and d = the data to be decrypted, however in this case I seeded d with the constant 0x7B103C5DCB08C4E51A27B01799053BD9 + 1, or 0x7B103C5DCB08C4E51A27B01799053BDA (per page 13 of the AACS Common Crypto doc), and ran the entire contents of my memory dump through decryption at 1 byte incremental offsets.

About 35,000 bytes into the file I extracted a 16 byte value that was able, using the constant as the d value, to create the processing key. If my interpretation of the AACS specification is correct, I have found a device key. Here is the device key, along with the memory offset where it can be re-discovered assuming that you dump memory in WinDVD 8 early enough in the runtime process. By the way, psuspened helps tremendously with slowing processes down so that pmdump can accurately dump memory!

[WinDVD 8]

Device Key: AA856A1BA814AB99FFDEBA6AEFBE1C04
Found at memory location: 0x000089EC

Device Key: AA856A1BA814AB99FFDEBA6AEFBE1C04
Found at memory location: 0x00008A20

An interesting thing to note is that the device key is found only a few bytes before the location where Arnezami found the processing key, and in contiguous memory! It is also interesting to note that WinDVD8 keeps the device key in 2 difference memory locations, very close by each other. My guess is that this would be the result of some sort of deep copy, maybe even the result of a function call.

Anyway, this is what information I have been able to pull together with 3-4 hours of free time this week. I'd like the Doom9 decryption forum to validate my findings since I have not had the time to step through any MKB's with this device key yet. Be that as it may, I am pretty sure that I have found a device key. Enjoy!

:-E

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122664

MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility

RulerOf writes "The AACS Decryption utility released this past December known as BackupHDDVD originally authored by Muslix64 of the Doom9 forums has received its first official DMCA Takedown Notice. It has been widely speculated that the utility itself was not an infringing piece of software due to the fact that it is merely "a textbook implementation of AACS," written with the help of documents publicly available at the AACS LA's website, and that the AACS Volume Unique Keys that the end user isn't supposed to have access to are in fact the infringing content, but it appears that such is not the case."
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/02/28/2338242.shtml

And every other month of the year

Putting Our Money Where Our Mouths Are: Boycott the RIAA in March
Adam Frucci

Alright, we've been following the RIAA's increasingly frequent affronts to privacy and free speech lately, and it's about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it's totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don't like the way they're behaving, we can let them know with our wallets.

With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways.

Firstly, I encourage everyone to purchase music from unsigned bands and bands on independent record labels. There are tons of great artists out there, many of which you're probably already a fan of, that have nothing to do with the RIAA. Buy their records at eMusic, an online store that sells independent tunes in beautiful, DRM-free MP3 format.

Secondly, you can still support RIAA-signed bands without buying their music. Go see them live and buy their merchandise; they get a hell of a lot more money from that then they do from album sales. And hey, you could benefit from getting out more, couldn't you?

If you are unsure whether or not an album is put out by an RIAA label, the handy RIAA Radar will clear everything up for you. They have both a search engine and a great bookmarklet, so be sure to get yourself hooked up.

Let me just reiterate that we are not saying you should stop buying music and start pirating everything. We need to send a message with our wallets to the RIAA, and that message will only be stronger if we show support for musicians without your money making its way to the lawyer fund.

So come on, make next month one to remember. Let's stand together and let the RIAA know that yes, we are paying attention and no, we aren't going to put up with their unethical practices any longer.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-ente...rch-239281.php

MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain
Eliot Van Buskirk

Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format.

Backers of alternative formats have sought for years to replace MP3, which offers relatively lower quality sound than next-generation technologies -- including the nominal successor to MP3 itself, MP3Pro. Apple uses the MPEG industry standard, AAC; Microsoft uses its proprietary Windows Media format; and Sony has developed its own, largely ignored flavor. Open-source, royalty-free options, such as Ogg Vorbis, remain dark horse competitors. But none have displaced MP3, the first and most widely adopted format of all.

Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win.

It's not immediately clear what the implications of Thursday's judgment are for other MP3 licensees, which include hundreds of companies who already pay royalties to Fraunhofer/Thomson -- previously accepted as the only licensor of MP3 technology.

Microsoft has 1.52 billion reasons to paint this as a disaster, not only for itself but for the entire industry. So says Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel.

"If this verdict is allowed to stand, companies will have to make hard choices about whether to continue to offer MP3 technology," he said in a statement sent to Wired News late Thursday. Licensees would have to "pay twice for the same technology -- one standard charge to the industry-recognized licensee of MP3 (Fraunhofer/Thomson), and again, an unprecedented amount to Alcatel-Lucent."

In truth, nothing has yet been decided. Microsoft plans to ask the judge to reduce the damage award and will appeal, according to a source close to the matter, so the ruling could yet be overturned or limited. On Thursday, an attorney for Alcatel-Lucent would not rule out the possibility of an all-out licensing campaign should the verdict stand; but he also acknowledged that the long-term result is very much up in the air.

"It wouldn't make sense to start suing everyone else until this case is resolved on the merits," said John Desmarais of Kirkland & Ellis.

Although Thomson is widely accepted as the licensor of Fraunhofer's MP3 codec, Alcatel-Lucent holds two MP3-related patents upheld by a jury yesterday: 5341457 and RE39080. (Neither patent is included in Fraunhofer/Thomson's suite.)

This confusing state of affairs started in the 1980s, when AT&T's Bell Labs and Fraunhofer started developing the codec under an agreement that both companies would be able to license aspects of MP3 developed during the collaboration. AT&T spun off Bell Labs as Lucent in 1996; about two years later, Fraunhofer began licensing MP3 technology through Thomson.1

A source close to the matter said when Lucent hit a rough patch financially after the dot-com bubble exploded, the company started looking to its patents as a means of pulling itself back into the black. Microsoft actually commenced the lawsuit that led to Thursday's verdict when it asked a judge to block Lucent's patent claims in order to protect its partners Dell and Gateway. After Alcatel bought Lucent last year, some onlookers thought the matter might end there. But Alcatel, sensing that there might be gold in those patents, decided to keep pursuing the suits. Audio is just the beginning; Alcatel-Lucent's patents for video, speech and user interface are still being contested.

In an e-mail to Wired News, IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian said she believes Alcatel-Lucent may have a legitimate claim to some of the MP3 royalties, but the proper target should be Frauenhofer and not its licensees.

"It looks like there's a flaw in the way that MP3 technology is being licensed, and that Alcatel-Lucent should have been cut into the licensing revenue from the beginning," she said. "If this is the case, then the dispute is between Alcatel-Lucent and Fraunhofer (and other contributors to the MP3 patent), and not between Alcatel-Lucent and MP3 licensees, including Microsoft."

It's hard to say which companies will be affected by Thursday's award. Those wishing to use MP3 have traditionally been subject to two sets of rules for using the codec: one for encoding, and another for playback. If the two patents upheld by the jury today apply only to products that encode audio into MP3s, the ruling would affect only companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and others offering software that lets consumers make their own MP3 files.

If they cover playback too, every company involved even tangentially with MP3 stands to lose big. Microsoft's licensing bill for Thomson/Fraunhofer was only $16 million -- about 1 percent of what it now owes Alcatel-Lucent. A significant number of the companies who offer MP3 encoders and/or players could face a similar judgment, with many being driven out of business.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, it's clear that a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over the MP3 format, and that alone could drive developers and manufacturers to less litigious pastures.

AAC is one potential alternative. The format achieves greater fidelity at higher compression rates than MP3 and has been licensed by Apple for its iTunes music store. Apple wraps AAC is a proprietary digital rights management scheme known as Fairplay that renders it unusable outside Apple's ecosystem. But AAC itself is an open format based on industry standard MPEG-4 technology. It's not royalty free, but with standards backing it's likely the strongest contender for a universal digital audio format.

Microsoft's Windows Media format similarly offers better performance than MP3 and could also see a boost, though it too includes a digital rights management component that has hampered its acceptance in the market.

One of the most interesting contenders is Ogg Vorbis, an open-source, royalty-free rival to MP3 that also represents a generational improvement in sound quality.

Microsoft has already used it for XBox games (Halo for PC was the first game with 100 percent Ogg Vorbis audio), and considering the way the MP3 licensing structure appears to be crumbling, switching to an open-source codec could start looking like a better idea with each passing day.

Vorbis is not a slam-dunk, however. Notably, its royalty-free claims have not been sanctioned by MP3 patent-holders and companies that adopt it could wind up with exactly the same legal headaches that Microsoft suffered this week over MP3. In fact, despite its longstanding regard among digital music aficionados, Ogg Vorbis has been unable to make serious commercial in-roads.

Some well-known devices and services support Ogg, notably some flash-based and hard-disk portable players from iRiver, but other devices are hampered by the amount of memory available on their DSP chips, and so cannot be upgraded to Ogg, according to Chris Montgomery, the creator of Ogg Vorbis.

Apple's iPod doesn't support Ogg now, but according to Montgomery, "ARM-based players like the iPod are ideal for decoding Vorbis." Apple could add Ogg Vorbis support to the iPod with a simple firmware update. Montgomery also told Wired News that Apple has had "several chances" to add Ogg support, but "passed each time."

Considering Steve Jobs' tough talk about getting rid of DRM, perhaps he'd be willing to go one better and switch from AAC to an open-source codec.

Added to the technical and political hurdles are non-technical obstacles to Apple and other manufacturers embracing Ogg Vorbis. Montgomery, who has had a lot of experience trying to convince manufacturers to adopt the codec, said the first problem with Ogg adoption is that "lawyers are paid to say 'no.'"

The second is that the same patents now being squabbled over by licensors of the MP3 codec could eventually threaten Ogg Vorbis. "To this day, we still have lawyers tell us they won't support Ogg because Thomson would come after them," Montgomery said.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/music/0,72785-0.html

Tolkien Estate Subpoenas Content Sharing Site

ESnips told to divulge names or we release the orcs.

The estate of late writer J R R Tolkien has obtained a subpoena against content-sharing site eSnips to reveal the identities of members who posted illegal copies of Tolkien's works.

Members of the site, which is based in Sunnyvale and Tel Aviv, had posted several copies of the author's works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Although eSnips removed the material, the site was unwilling to provide its members' contact details without a court advertisement

Steven Maier, of Manches LLP, the estate's UK solicitor, said: "The Tolkien estate has a duty to protect the copyright in Tolkien's much-loved works and cannot allow the posting of illegal downloads on file-sharing sites."

Maier added that further legal action against individuals was unlikely, except in the case of persistent offenders.

"We are sensitive to the fact that many of the eSnips members are Tolkien fans who were not seeking any commercial gain," he said.

"However, we need to make it clear to these individuals that the estate will not tolerate the posting of illegal copies of Tolkien's works by anyone."

This type of action is nothing new to the Tolkien estate. Last month it obtained agreed damages of US$4,000 from an IT professional in Milwaukee who repeatedly offered Tolkien's works for download
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.a...&src=site-marq

Peer-to-Peer: No Longer Renegade Territory for Advertisers

As Copyright-Infringement Worries Die Down, Upstarts Help Get Marketers Into the Space
Abbey Klaassen

While Joost may be the latest media darling when it comes to peer-to-peer, it's not the only company looking to carve out a legitimate space for advertisers in what was formerly renegade territory.

File-seeding service Intent Media was responsible for the best-known recent example of marketing in P-to-P, an 8-minute Coca-Cola-sponsored clip from a Jay-Z concert at Radio City Music Hall

Several upstarts are hoping to open up P-to-P traffic to advertising. P-to-P networks represent an attractive -- albeit relatively ad-untested -- market: 12- to 24-year-olds and heavily male. By some estimation more than half of all internet traffic is due to P-to-P file sharing, although that can be misleading as the large file sizes moving through such networks artificially inflates traffic rates.

Time is right
The timing is no coincidence. Vendors have been trying for years to create ad models for P-to-P markets, but many of the potential advertisers in the space -- for example, the entertainment industry -- were wary of adding any credence to the networks.

"They would have hated to do something on the marketing side that compromised their legal position that there was no real infringing use," said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne Online Media Measurement, which tracks online content distribution. But, he pointed out, that sentiment has changed since the entertainment industry's Supreme Court victory against Grokster in November 2005.

Mr. Garland also points out that many pundits predicted the entertainment companies would do business with the former bad guys, the Kazaas and Limewires of the world, after the Grokster verdict came down. That has not been the case. Instead, the bad blood has created what he calls a "little intermediary business" -- entertainment companies working through third-party vendors to try to create retail or non-copyright-infringing experiences.

To get a sense of that bad blood, consider the first page of the presentation deck that file-seeding service Intent Media is taking around to agencies. It quotes Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in the Grokster case: "Intent MediaWorks, for example, protects licensed content sent across P2P networks."

Intent President Les Ottolenghi said there are 2.7 to 3 billion P-to-P downloads a month (in comparison, Apple's iTunes has sold only about 2 billion songs since its inception), and he predicts "we won't be talking about P-to-P in 12 to 16 months; it will be a content-delivery network."

Behind Coke's Jay-Z video
Intent attaches an ad to a piece of content and lets users pass that content around the internet, through P-to-P networks and other file-sharing tactics. It wraps what Mr. Ottolenghi calls digital-rights-management business rules around the content that allows it to be tracked among IP addresses. That means a marketer using Intent to spread content across the web will know exactly how many times its clip was viewed. Intent was responsible for the best-known recent example of marketing in P-to-P, an 8-minute Coca-Cola-sponsored clip from a Jay-Z concert at Radio City Music Hall.

"The question is, how do you step into that [P-to-P] search stream ... and meet that consumer at a point of download and monetize it?" Mr. Ottolenghi said. He said studies have shown more than three-quarters of those consumers would be willing to take free, legitimate content with advertising. "The big question for consumers is: 'How can I get a lot of content very easily and use it how I want?' They're not saying 'I wish I could rip off a music artist.'"

Jeff Malmad, director of digital media at Mediacom, said advertising to consumers on P-to-P networks is really a compromise. "If consumers are looking for content in P-to-P and you can't persuade them not to, you can meet them in the middle and provide them with additional info about content or brands," he said.

'Hooked' on file sharing
Mitchell Reichgut used to head up interactive at Bates Worldwide Advertising, New York, and launched Jun Group four years ago as a traditional ad-services company. But in the midst of launching Jun he "got hooked" on file sharing. It reminded him of when he first got into web design.

"It's much harder to distribute to a large P-to-P audience than you think," he said. "P-to-P connects users to each other so even if you have something really hot or valuable, putting it on one or 10 or even 50 Limewire clients isn't going to necessarily get it out there broadly." His company has worked with Cadbury Schweppes' Yoo-Hoo brand as well as with Coca-Cola and MTV.

Former antipiracy venture
Also trying to forge a business model in the space is a former antipiracy venture, Skyrider, which is making the transition to an ad technologist. Skyrider allows advertisers to buy contextual ads around searches in the network, and a few weeks ago the company introduced the ability to serve video ads dynamically into P-to-P transferred files.

In such a scenario, a content owner could choose to upload a file to a P-to-P network and then sell ads against it, using Skyrider's technology to switch ads in and out depending on where in the country the file was going and when the file was being downloaded.

The company doesn't yet have any customers for its video-ad-insertion product but is talking to several advertisers, said Chris Redlitz, VP-sales for Skyrider. Most of those discussions so far have been educational. "The market started out a little bit on the wrong foot but there's a long path for it to grow into a legitimate market that has a large audience," he said. "We have to get through short-term perceptions for long-term viability."
http://adage.com/article?article_id=115210

Telecom to Refund $8m to Broadband Customers

Telecom has admitted it made an error with its Go Large broadband plan and is to credit customers of the service.

An internal technical review of the service, launched in October, identified an issue with how internet traffic was being managed on the plan, Telecom said today.

With around 60,000 customers on the Go Large service, the refunds were expected to total $7.5 million to $8.5 million.

Telecom has also decided to temporarily stop signing up new customers on to the Go Large plan until it has completed further reviews into the service.

Existing Go Large customers will have the option to stay on the plan with a revised traffic management policy.

The Commerce Commission is also investigating after receiving complaints the service was not delivering what was promised.

Telecom said today it would credit all Go Large customers for monthly plan charges incurred since 8 December 2006, when the issue arose, through to the end of February 2007.

For a customer who had been using the plan since December 8 and was still on it, the credit was expected to be between $130 and $160.

General manager consumer marketing Kevin Bowler said that following customer feedback, Telecom's review showed that the process involved in managing Go Large internet traffic since early December was not what was originally intended or communicated to customers.

The issue is specific to the Go Large plan which accounted for less than 10 per cent of the total number of customers using broadband services.

Go Large was promoted as having traffic management applied to certain applications, but since December the traffic management process had affected all forms of activity.

"Clearly it is not an ideal situation and therefore we are crediting Go Large customers for plan charges incurred during this period," Mr Bowler said.

Go Large customers would be contacted directly by Telecom in the next two weeks and would automatically receive the credit on their Telecom bill during March or April.

When contacted by Telecom, existing Go Large customers would have the option to stay on the plan with a revised traffic management policy, to change to other broadband plans provided by Telecom if they wished, or cancel their service, Mr Bowler said.

"In this instance with the Go Large plan our internal technical review showed we had made an error and we believe that we are doing the right thing by crediting customers."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/3970782a13.html

Ericsson Bids for Tandberg TV
AP

Ericsson, the world's largest maker of equipment for wireless networks, said Monday that it was making an offer worth $1.6 billion for Tandberg Television, a Norwegian company that specializes in technology for sending video over Internet and mobile networks.

Tandberg is a market leader in the specialty and is especially strong in the top method of video compression, MPEG-4, which is a major technology for delivering high-definition television.

Ericsson's chief executive, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said Internet protocol television, or IPTV, would be "the biggest networked multimedia opportunity going forward." The acquisition would "create a leading player in networked media solutions for telecom, cable and satellite operators as well as media companies," Svanberg said. He said it also would bring Ericsson new customers like cable and satellite operators, the company said.

Ericsson, based in Stockholm, offered 9.8 billion kroner, or $1.6 billion, 106 kroner per share for Tandberg, which is based in Lysaker, Norway. The Ericsson bid tops a Jan. 15 offer for Tandberg from Arris Group, a company in Atlanta. Shares of Tandberg Television jumped 11.75 kroner, or 11.72 percent, to close at 112 kroner in Stockholm on Monday.

Tandberg controls more than a quarter of the market for video-processing equipment that is used for Internet broadcasting. Ericsson said it already owned 11.7 percent of Tandberg, and investors holding a further 13 percent have committed to sell their stock.

"Tandberg TV will likely end up with Ericsson because it has more fire power and because Tandberg's existing clients will likely prefer Ericsson," said Michiel Plakman of the Dutch bank Robeco.

Tandberg said that Ericsson's approach was "unsolicited" and that it would review the offer before commenting. On Jan. 15, Tandberg's management backed Arris's bid. Ericsson said it needed more than 90 percent approval from Tandberg shareholders to succeed.

In December, Ericsson agreed to buy Redback Networks for $2.1 billion to add Web routers and expand its broadband networks as clients bundle phones, Internet and television into a single service, referred to as triple play. The purchase let Ericsson take on Cisco Systems in the market for routers.

Cisco, the world's largest maker of computer-networking equipment, last year completed its $5.2 billion purchase of Scientific-Atlanta, a U.S. maker of set-top boxes for cable television.

"Television over the Internet and triple play are the future," said Niklas Lund of Alandsbanken Asset Management in Helsinki. "Acquiring Tandberg TV would strengthen Ericsson's position in these areas."

Ericsson has remodeled along business lines of multimedia, services and networks and has relied on purchases to strengthen those units. The company built up its fixed-network division with the purchase of Marconi in 2005 and in December agreed to buy Redback. This month, Ericsson bought Entrisphere, whose technology helps transmit digital videos.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...iness/eric.php

Bad news for nervous typists

Mac Display Eater Kills Home Files

PR disaster waiting to happen
Nick Farrell

A MAKER of Mac software has uncovered a “scary” anti-piracy measure in a bit of code called Display Eater.

Display Eater records motion video on your screen which you can then convert to a quicktime movie.

However writing in his bog here, Karsten Kusche, who works for another Apple software maker Briksoftware, says that if you try to use a pirated serial number with Display Eater, the software will delete your home file, which in Mac land is the same as killing your computer.

Kusche said that while it is not right to pirate software it is a bit drastic to kill a mac user's home file.

He said that the would be pirates might even buy a licence one day if they like the software or at least talk kindly about it. However if it is the same software that killed their computer they are less likely to say nice things about it. We would have thought they would have sued.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37824

Browser Vulnerabilities and Attacks Will Continue to Mount

Even as software makers add more sophisticated security features to their browsers and rush to patch documented flaws more quickly, experts maintain that holes in the programs will continue to allow for widespread malware attacks
Matt Hines

Window Snyder, chief security officer at open source browser maker Mozilla, is caught in the crosshairs of the raging browser vulnerability battle.

On one hand, her company launched an upgrade to its Firefox browser on Feb. 23 that specifically aims to fix a number of flaws that have been discovered in the program.

On the other hand, she's dealing with almost daily reports of newly identified vulnerabilities in Firefox disclosed by a researcher who makes his work public before informing Mozilla of the problems.

As trying as the situation may sound, Snyder admits that the day's conflicts come with the territory of her job and those of security experts at every other browser maker.

With the high-profile nature of the browser in today's Internet-based economy, working to eliminate vulnerabilities, respond to researchers, and ward-off malware attacks will remain a large part of the daily routine for the foreseeable future, according to the CSO.

Snyder said that Mozilla is receiving a lot more customer feedback of late from people concerned about browser security.

"The browser is one of most critical pieces of software on the computer in terms of something attackers are going after," Snyder said. "Attacks are constantly changing and every software developer needs to recognize new threats as they emerge, but that's nothing new, we've always considered security to be a top priority."

Despite Mozilla's ongoing security efforts, Firefox has come under intense scrutiny from Michal Zalewski, a well-known independent security researcher who has published a collection of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in the browser during the month of February.

The Firefox security update was already delayed several days so that Mozilla could address an issue published by the researcher earlier this month dubbed the location.hostname vulnerability.

And on the eve of Mozilla's release of the revamped browser, dubbed Firefox 2.0.0.2, Zalewski published information about yet another flaw in the product involving a memory corruption issue that could allow attackers to take control of computers running the software. Phishing and spoofing threats are among the attacks likely to be aimed at the latest issue, according to Zalewski.

Although Snyder said she would prefer it if Zalewski and other researchers would disclose vulnerabilities to Mozilla before taking them public, she said the company relies on such experts to help it keep customers protected from attacks, as painful as the reports may be.

"We would prefer that he would notify us first, but more importantly we are glad researchers are looking at Firefox and helping us fix problems," the Mozilla CSO said. "We also see where the researchers are coming from, in terms of their frustration with the amount of time vendors are taking to fix vulnerabilities."

Snyder hopes that as Mozilla improves its ability to patch flaws faster, researchers will work more closely with the nonprofit company. The software maker is also developing a range of new security features for use in the Firefox 3 iteration of the browser, code-named "Gran Paradiso," that is slated to arrive sometime in the second half of 2007.

Much of the work is focused on improving users' capability to understand and manage their online credentials, the CSO said.

Security researchers maintain that attacks on browser vulnerabilities are only going to increase in volume and frequency, in particular during 2007.

According to experts at IBM's newly acquired ISS business unit, which is based in Atlanta, the continued emergence of the "exploits as a service" business, through which malware code writers market their attacks to cyber-criminals via underground channels, will only add fuel to the fire.

In another daunting development, roughly 50 percent of the browser attacks observed by ISS' X-Force research team during 2006 used encryption to hide themselves and the data they attempted to steal, with the group expecting use of such tactics only to grow during 2007.

"Attackers have honed into Web browser vulnerabilities because the amount of protection people have to defend against these types of threats is not as advanced for many end users," said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategy at IBM ISS. "In addition to the underground communities where exploits are being bought and sold, it's also become much easier for attackers to build engines that sit on Web servers and generate personalized browser attacks."

Ollmann said that such threat engines are being armed with increasingly sophisticated levels of programming logic, giving them the capability to look at the specific version of a browser someone is using and launch attacks specifically aimed at the programs. Malware code writers are also sharing libraries of IP addresses known to be used by security researchers to help avoid detection of their latest work, Ollmann said.

Another breed of emerging attack attempts to insert itself between end-users' keyboards and browsing programs to steal data and circumvent the security tools being added to the programs.

The so-called "man-in-the-browser" threats have already been found lurking in high-value online transactional systems operated by financial services companies, where they seek to intercept valuable information as it entered by customers, said Dr. Chenxi Wang, analyst with Forrester Research.

The spiraling complexity of such threats serves as strong evidence that the battle between malware writers and browser makers is only beginning to heat up, and will continue for some time, the analyst said.

Wang believes that one answer to the security problem will be for browser makers to adopt more rigorous software development efforts to minimize vulnerabilities, but even those improved processes won't catch every flaw.

Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) program, for instance, appears to have lowered the number of vulnerabilities in its newest Internet Explorer 7 browser compared to earlier versions of the product, but the company has already been forced to patch at least one critical flaw in the software, which was released in Oct. 2006.

"This is going to be an arms race that is ongoing for the foreseeable future," Wang said. "There is no excuse for people on the defense side not to be more proactive with security and use better mechanisms during software development to protect against future attacks, but the attackers will always have some new approach as well."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/...servuln_1.html

Surviving in a digital world

Despite Soaring Internet Music Sales, Record Stores Aren't Extinct ... Yet
Robert Gold

Selling CDs isn't what it used to be for Dennis Esposito.

Gone are the peak years in the 1990s, when people were snapping them up.

Now many people head for the Web to buy albums. Or they download music and play tunes on their MP3 players.

"I'm not very optimistic for the future being rosy and bright for me," said Esposito, who runs the music shop Disc & Dat in Bethel with his brother, John.

But despite his concerns, the shop is still up and running. Since starting in Stamford in 1988, Esposito has seen countless independent CD stores close.

How do you survive when so many other music shops don't? A few local stores share their secrets.

The Espositos moved from Stamford to Bethel to save rent money. "We moved to lower our expenses," he said. "That's probably the only reason we're still open."

At the time, the brothers felt Bethel would offer walk-in customers. But Esposito said he sees more out-of-town shoppers. With fewer and fewer music stores, those remaining are more sought after.

"Now that we (record stores) are getting extinct, it is better for us," he said, referring to his store.

Some record stores are selling online to boost sales. Not Disc & Dat. Esposito said he wants people to see the store as a destination. Consumers can have fun hunting the racks for their favorite music.

"It's like we're becoming a library, except you have to pay for the stuff to take it," he said.

The Bethel shop has also increased its vinyl records in the last few years. Esposito said the 1990s were glory years because many people were getting their first CDs and getting rid of vinyl.

Kathy Kelley, who owns Trash American Style in Danbury with her husband, Malcolm Tent, said vinyl records grow in popularity every year.

Kelley said about 60 percent of the music they sell is vinyl records, not CDs.

For many people, vinyl has a whole lot of soul. Customers connect emotionally with the product.

"CDs -- well, they have a little bit of soul," she said.

Trash American Style will close its doors on Mill Plain Road, where they've rented for 18 years, at the end of April. But Kelley said it wasn't their decision and it wasn't because of slow business.

She declined to explain the need to move, but said they plan to find a new storefront. "We'll be somewhere in the area."

Brian Gerosa and his brother Bob opened Gerosa Records 20 years ago in Brookfield. Vinyl records have grown in popularity there, too.

"We stock more because we sell more," he said. Could it be an iPod backlash? Brian Gerosa thinks so; records sound better. "Maybe kids are starting to realize that," he said.

Still, the Brookfield business is not turning away from technology.

Gerosa says he sells discs on eBay and starting March 1 customers will be able to buy music on the Web site gerosarecords.com.

"You can't stay away from the Internet," he said.
http://news.newstimes.com/news/story.php?id=1032338

The End User: Royalty "Collecting Societies" Want You to Know They're Not the Bad Guys
Victoria Shannon

The group that represents those obscure "collecting societies" that manage the royalty payments for composers, scriptwriters and other creative authors around the world wants consumers to know that it is not the bad guy.

After 10 years of staying in the shadows while digital piracy helped the music business self-destruct, the global organization known by its French acronym Cisac is taking its case to the public.

The group is arguing that collecting societies have a legitimate place and important role in the digital future — namely, ensuring that creative artists get their due at the end of the monetary food chain.

Cisac's feel-good campaign will be a challenge, since the arcane and complex structure of the world's collecting societies, particularly in Europe, is blamed in part for the mess that digital music has become — and that digital film is becoming.

But Eric Baptiste, director general of Cisac, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers based near Paris, points out that collecting societies have never been a party to the music industry's legal witch hunt against consumer piracy. That should earn some points with the public at large.

Instead, Cisac's first big move onto the world stage will be to lead a high-level, two-day conference on the issue of copyrights in the digital age at the end of May in Brussels, with the goal of stimulating discussion and showing the value of the current royalty system that its 217 members in 114 countries administer.

"We want to make this a debate, not a propaganda machine," Baptiste said. "But obviously we also hope that the wisdom of some of our positions will emerge," including Cisac's own proposal to promote interoperability of the digital- rights mechanisms that limit copying."

The conference has already drawn some luminous speakers, among them Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor who also chairs the Creative Commons anti-copyright project, and Charles Aznavour, the French singer, songwriter and actor.

Executives of companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and BT Group will speak on behalf of their positions, as will a member of the European Commission and others who would address the relevance of copyrights to economic growth.

Baptiste does not expect to conclude his copyright summit session with the solution to what ails music, or even songwriters, today. But he does expect the various sides of the debate to find that "they don't hate each other as much as they thought."

Negotiations and compromise are inevitable.

More than anywhere else, it is Europe where digital copyright issues are coming to a head — a point that Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, made in his "Thoughts on Music" essay last month after coming under attack by several European governments for the closed iTunes-iPod music universe.

In addition, the European Commission has taken action against Cisac for what it says is anticompetitive behavior in forcing 25 different royalty systems on companies that want to license authors' works.

"It is a rather complex system — incredibly complex," Baptiste conceded, adding that the umbrella group was working on ways to streamline rights management.

But others with vested interests in the outcome have been "hiding behind copyrights, implying that societies were the ones creating the obstacles to a wider dissemination of works on a digital network," he maintained.

Baptiste believes that the record labels are not nearly so closed-minded as they were even a few years ago.

"They are coming to realize that what they own is mostly intellectual property rights, not a lock on the distribution network," he said.

As for the artists, "It doesn't matter to them what business model is used.

"What is important to them is to reach as many people as possible," Baptiste said. And to get paid for it.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...ss/ptend01.php

Software Exploited by Pirates Goes to Work for Hollywood
Brad Stone

Hollywood studios are going into business with one of their biggest tormentors: the peer-to-peer pioneer BitTorrent.

On Monday, the company, whose technology unleashed a wave of illegal file-sharing on the Internet, plans to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on its Web site, BitTorrent.com. The digital media store will offer around 3,000 new and classic movies and thousands more television shows, as well as a thousand PC games and music videos each, all legally available for purchase.

The programming comes from studios, including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers, that previously announced their intention to work with BitTorrent. There is also a new partner: the 83-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which will take part by making 100 films available on the site from its 4,000-movie library. "Somebody once said you have to embrace your enemy,” said Doug Lee, executive vice president of MGM’s new-media division. “We like the idea that they have millions of users worldwide. That is potentially fertile, legitimate ground for us.”

The BitTorrent store will work slightly differently than rival digital media offerings like the iTunes Store of Apple and the Xbox Live service of Microsoft. BitTorrent will commingle free downloads of users’ own video uploads with sales of professional fare. And while it will sell digital copies of shows like “24” and “Bones” for $1.99 an episode, it will only rent movies. Once the films are on the PC, they expire within 30 days of their purchase or 24 hours after the buyer begins to watch them.

New releases like “Superman Returns” cost $3.99, while classics like “Reservoir Dogs” cost $2.99. The studio’s content plays in Microsoft’s Windows Media Player 11. It is secured by Microsoft’s antipiracy software, which blocks users from watching rented movies on more than one PC or sending them to others over the Internet.

Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said the company had secured the right to permit users to buy outright digital copies of films, but the studios wanted to charge prices that would be too high for most consumers. “We don’t think the current prices are a smart thing to show any user,” he said. “We want to allocate services with very digestible price points.”

BitTorrent, which is based in San Francisco and has 45 employees, will face significant challenges as it tries to carve out some space in the emerging digital downloading landscape. Apple is the largest presence among the legitimate Internet media stores. ITunes, which has sold more than a billion dollars worth of digital music, sells movies from Walt Disney and Paramount and programs from all the major TV networks.

Other entrants in the nascent field include Walmart.com, MovieLink.com (owned by four of the studios) and Amazon Unbox, which recently announced a way for TiVo users to download movies to their television instead of watching them on smaller PC screens.

Michael McGuire, a vice president at the research firm Gartner, said BitTorrent and its rivals all face the same challenge: “They must get consumers to look at this as a better and more reliable way to watch a movie than renting a DVD.”

There is also the illegal economy in pirated video content, whose size dwarfs that of the legal online media stores. The Motion Picture Association of America has said that a million movies are illegally acquired every day using BitTorrent technology. The software is open source, so versions of it, as well as Web sites offering pirated movies, are maintained by companies not affiliated with BitTorrent.

Bram Cohen, BitTorrent’s co-founder and chief executive and the inventor of the technology, said the new store would offer a compelling alternative to the illegal ecosystem. “I think what consumers want is a good experience,” he said, “and the first part of that is making the content they want available legitimately.”

But he added that the antipiracy software that will protect files in the new store, which the studios insist on including, will make the experience more cumbersome for users. “We are not happy with the user interface implications” of digital rights management, or D.R.M., Mr. Cohen said. “It’s an unfortunate thing. We would really like to strip it all away.”

BitTorrent’s store will have some advantages over legal rivals’. Its peer-to-peer technology introduced by Mr. Cohen in 2001 works by taking pieces of large files from nearby computer users who have that file, permitting speedy downloads.

In a test of the new BitTorrent store, downloading the film “X-Men 3” took two hours with a broadband Internet connection. Downloading the same movie from Walmart.com took three hours. And BitTorrent downloads should theoretically become faster as more people sign up, since digital copies will originate from nearby computers whose owners have bought the movie, instead of from a central server.

The company, which has received close to $30 million in venture capital, ultimately wants to use its media store to demonstrate how the underlying technology is effective at moving large files around the Internet. The it wants to sell the technology to other media stores and to the studios themselves.

The studios hope the new BitTorrent will put a dent in the illegal trading of their content. Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, said he hoped the store would win over young people accustomed to free fare. “We look at this as a first step in the peer-to-peer world, to try to steer people toward legitimate content,” he said.

BitTorrent executives say they are not able to prevent illegal downloads in the larger file-sharing world. But they cite internal studies that say 34 percent of BitTorrent users would pay for content if a comprehensive, legal service was available.

That group clearly does not include Aaron, a 36-year-old San Francisco programmer who does not want his full name used because he and his wife regularly use BitTorrent to download songs, movies and TV shows illegally.

After testing a prelaunch version of the legal BitTorrent store, he said it would not persuade him to abandon the limitless selection of content and freedom he enjoys on free BitTorrent sites.

“The sad thing is, it’s not about the money,” he said. “I’m not interested in renting a movie. I want to own it. I want total portability. I want to give a copy to my brother. Digital convergence is supposed to make things like this easier, but D.R.M. is making them harder.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...ess/studio.php

Millions of Videos, and Now a Way to Search Inside Them
Jason Pontin

THE World Wide Web is awash in digital video, but too often we can’t find the videos we want or browse for what we might like.

That’s a loss, because if we could search for Internet videos, they might become the content of a global television station, just as the Web’s hypertext, once it was organized and tamed by search, became the stuff of a universal library.

What we need, says Suranga Chandratillake, a co-founder of Blinkx, a start-up in San Francisco, is a remote control for the Web’s videos, a kind of electronic TV Guide. He’s got just the thing.

Videos have multiplied on social networks like YouTube and MySpace as well as on news and entertainment sites because of the emergence of video-sharing, user-generated video, free digital storage and broadband and Wi-Fi networks.

Today, owing to the proliferation of large video files, video accounts for more than 60 percent of the traffic on the Internet, according to CacheLogic, a company in Cambridge, England, that sells “media delivery systems” to Internet service providers. “I imagine that within two years it will be 98 percent,” says Hui Zhang, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

But search engines — like Google — that were developed during the first, text-based era of the Web do a poor job of searching through this rising sea of video. That’s because they don’t search the videos themselves, but rather things associated with them, including the text of a Web page, the “metadata” that computers use to display or understand pages (like keywords or the semantic tags that describe different content), video-file suffixes (like .mpeg or .avi), or captions or subtitles.

None of these methods are very satisfactory. Many Internet videos have little or obscure text, and clips often have no or misleading metadata. Modern video players do not reveal video-file suffixes, and captions and subtitles imperfectly capture the spoken words in a video.

The difficulties of knowing which videos are where challenge the growth of Internet video. “If there are going to be hundreds of millions of hours of video content online,” Mr. Chandratillake said, “we need to have an efficient, scalable way to search through it.”

Mr. Chandratillake’s history is unusual for Silicon Valley. He was born in Sri Lanka in 1977 and divided his childhood among England and various countries in South Asia where his father, a professor of nuclear chemistry, worked. Then he studied distributed processing at Kings College, Cambridge, before becoming the chief technology officer of Autonomy, a company that specializes in something called “meaning-based computing.” This background possibly suggested an original approach to search when he founded Blinkx in 2004.

Mr. Chandratillake’s solution does not reject any existing video search methods, but supplements them by transcribing the words uttered in a video, and searching them. This is an achievement: effective speech recognition is a “nontrivial problem,” in the language of computer scientists.

Blinkx’s speech-recognition technology employs neural networks and machine learning using “hidden Markov models,” a method of statistical analysis in which the hidden characteristics of a thing are guessed from what is known.

Mr. Chandratillake calls this method “contextual search,” and he says it works so well because the meanings of the sounds of speech are unclear when considered by themselves. “Consider the phrase ‘recognize speech,’ ” he wrote in an e-mail message. “Its phonemes (‘rek-un-nise-peach’) are incredibly similar to those contained in the phrase ‘wreck a nice beach.’ Our systems use our knowledge of which words typically appear in which contexts and everything we know about a given clip to improve our ability to guess what each phoneme actually means.”

While neural networks and machine learning are not new, their application to video search is unique to Blinkx, and very clever.

How good is blinkx search? When you visit blinkx.com, the first thing you see is the “video wall,” 25 small, shimmering tiles, each displaying a popular video clip, indexed that hour. (The wall provides a powerful sense of the collective mind of our popular culture.)

To experiment, I typed in the phrase “Chronic — WHAT — cles of Narnia,” the shout-out in the “Saturday Night Live” digital short called “Lazy Sunday,” a rap parody of two New York slackers. I wanted a phrase that a Web surfer would know more readily than the real title of a video. I also knew that “Lazy Sunday,” for all its cultish fame, would be hard to find: NBC Universal had freely released the rap parody on the Internet after broadcasting it in December 2005, but last month the company insisted that YouTube pull it.

Nonetheless, Blinkx found eight instances of “Lazy Sunday” when I tried it last week. By contrast, Google Video found none. Typing “Lazy Sunday” into the keyword search box on Google’s home page produced hundreds of results — but many were commentaries about the video, and many had nothing to do with “Saturday Night Live.”

Blinkx, which has raised more than $12.5 million from angel investors, earns money by licensing its technology to other sites. Although Blinkx has more than 80 such partners, including Microsoft, Playboy, Reuters and MTV, it rarely discloses the terms of its deals. Mr. Chandratillake said some licensees pay Blilnkx directly while others share revenue and some do both. Blinkx has revealed the details of one deal: ITN, a British news broadcaster, will share the revenue generated by advertising inserted in its videos.

For all of Blinkx’s level coolness, there are at least three obvious obstacles to the company’s success.

First, because Google Video is not much good now doesn’t mean it won’t get better: after all, when Blinkx was founded, it first applied machine learning to searching the desktops of personal computers, a project that was abandoned when Google and Microsoft released their own desktop search bars.

Second, even if Google improbably fails to develop effective video search, the field will still be crowded: TruVeo, Flurl, ClipBlast and other start-ups are all at work on different subsets of the market.

Finally, Blinkx might not go far enough in searching the content of videos: the company searches their sounds, but not their images.

THIS last objection is the most serious.

“Because Blinkx emphasizes speech recognition, there is a great amount of multimedia content that they cannot address, like photographs,” said John R. Smith, a senior manager in the intelligent information management department of I.B.M.’s T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, N.Y. “But what’s worse, speech is not a very good indicator of what’s being shown in a video.”

Mr. Smith says he has been working on an experimental video search engine called Marvel, which also uses machine learning but organizes visual information as well as speech.

Still, at least for now, Blinkx leads video search: it searches more than seven million hours of video and is the largest repository of digital video on the Web.

“Search is our navigation, our interface to the Internet,” said John Battelle, chief of Federated Media Publishing and author of “The Search,” an account of the rise of Google. With Blinkx, we may have such an interface for digital video, and be a little closer to Mr. Chandratillake’s vision of a universal remote control.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/bu...ey/25slip.html

When Unequals Try to Merge as Equals
Andrew Ross Sorkin

HERE’S a tip about deal-making: When companies start talking about a “merger of equals,” someone is usually getting the better deal. It is especially true in the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.

It is being billed as a merger of equals, with each company getting exactly half of the new entity.

But here’s the unequal part: The stock market thinks that Sirius is worth almost $1 billion more than XM. To get the numbers to work, Sirius offered to pay a handsome 22 percent premium to shareholders of XM. (The premium is actually almost a whopping 30 percent if you account for the run-up in XM’s shares the Friday before the deal was announced, as word began to leak.)

So why did Mel Karmazin, the chief executive of Sirius, dress up the deal as if both companies were on the same footing?

I called Mr. Karmazin soon after the deal was announced to ask just that.

“If you give me a lie detector test,” he said, “I’ll tell you that I believe we’re worth more than them.”

In most mergers of equals these days, the buyer — and there is always a buyer — pays little or no premium. Both companies simply participate in a stock swap on the assumption that the shares will rise because of the cost savings and “synergies” — to bring back a dirty word from the 1990s.

The enormous premium for XM appears, at first glance, very curious.

It’s not as if there was another buyer for XM that Sirius needed to outbid.

Sirius and XM had always been natural partners — assuming that regulators are willing to let them combine.

Things become clearer, though, when you look beyond the numbers and consider the psychology behind the deal. Because of the possibility that Washington could block the transaction, Mr. Karmazin said that nobody wants to look like the loser if things go bad. “You want to make sure if it doesn’t happen, no harm, no foul,” he said.

Of course, others have been down this road before. Remember Daimler-Benz’s takeover of Chrysler? Several years after the deal, Daimler’s chief executive, Jürgen E. Schrempp, explained that they called it a merger of equals “for psychological reasons.” (As it happens, Daimler is now considering selling off Chrysler.)

If Mr. Karmazin was willing to pay a premium, why didn’t he just buy the company outright?

All the questions in my head apparently went through Mr. Karmazin’s head, too.

When he first approached XM’s chairman, Gary M. Parsons, he was prepared either to buy the company at a premium or pursue a no-premium “merger of equals.”

A sale was no-go. “They said they were not for sale,” Mr. Karmazin explained.

So, Mr. Karmazin then pushed for a no-premium merger. This was perhaps an even harder sell because Mr. Parsons said he believed that XM was worth more than Sirius, even though neither the stock market nor Mr. Karmazin agreed with him.

Mr. Karmazin said: “I told them that all of their reasons were bogus.”

Mr. Parsons argued that his company had more subscribers and more revenue, but that its investors, mostly institutions like Axa and Legg Mason, didn’t value the company highly enough. Empirically, Mr. Parsons’ argument is right, despite the wisdom of crowds: “It never made any sense analytically that XM was worth less than Sirius,” said Craig E. Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “If anything, I was surprised that the premium was as small as it was.”

Shares of Sirius, meanwhile, which just a year and a half ago were worth less than XM’s, had leaped, partly on the back of high-profile deals like the one it signed with Howard Stern. Those deals attracted thousands of retail investors, not considered the smart money, like moths to a flame into Sirius stock.

And then Mr. Parsons played his ace: If Mr. Karmazin wanted to create the enormous savings they both projected would result from a deal — worth more than $5 billion, more than the value of either company — they needed each other. And Mr. Parsons would not play unless his shareholders could capture half of those savings.

As Mr. Karmazin explained, if the deal had been done simply, with no premium, Sirius would own about 55 percent of the company and XM would own about 45 percent. If they had tried to split the cost savings 50-50 — which Mr. Karmazin conceded was “the only fair thing to do,” Sirius would own a little more than 52 percent of the company and XM would own a bit more than 47 percent.

So why didn’t it stop there? Well, Mr. Parsons is a pushy negotiator. And Mr. Karmazin said he was willing to give in.

“I can’t do the deal without them,’ he said. “I thought it was more important for our shareholders that we do the deal.”

Even by giving the 22 percent premium, Sirius stands to save billions of dollars a year if the deal goes through.

In a statement, XM, which has hosts like Bob Dylan and Oprah Winfrey, said, “Each company believed the value of coming together was more important than one party or the other having a majority of the new combined company.”

Still, it seems as if Mr. Karmazin may be paying a premium to do the deal now so that it can be rushed through the regulatory maze while the Bush administration is still in power. Many partners in mergers of equals wait around — often for years — until their stocks align.

Mr. Karmazin disputes that view, contending that he wants a deal as soon as possible so that the savings can start. His view is that there “is no regulatory window.”

In fact, he believes that the longer the companies, both now money losers, wait to merge, the better their chances would be in Washington. That’s because new technologies will continue to emerge that may prove to be competitive with satellite radio.

But if anyone is a master of timing, it’s Mr. Karmazin. He took Infinity Broadcasting public for $17.50 a share; four years later, he sold it to CBS for $170 a share. Now his willingness to make this deal at such a curious price may be an acknowledgment of the fairy dust in Sirius stock.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/bu...ey/25deal.html

Michael & Them: Filmmakers Chase Moore
John Anderson

MICHAEL MOORE, who carries around controversy the way Paul Bunyan toted an ax, has won legions of fans for being a ball-cap-wearing fly in the ointment of Republican politics. For tweaking the documentary form. Even for making millions of dollars in the traditionally poverty-stricken genre of nonfiction film.

Many despise him for the same reasons.

The Toronto-based documentary filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk started out in the first camp. But during the course of making an unauthorized film about Mr. Moore they wound up somewhere in between. In the process, their experience has added a twist to the long-running story of an abrasive social critic who has frequently been criticized from the right, but far less often, as is the case with Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine, from his own end of the political spectrum.

“What he’s done for documentaries is amazing,” said Ms. Melnyk, 48, a native of Toronto and a freelance TV producer, who even now expounds on the good he says Mr. Moore has done. “People go to see documentaries now and, as documentary makers, we’re grateful.”

But according to Mr. Caine, 46, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman, the freewheeling persona cultivated by Mr. Moore, and the free-thinking rhetoric expounded by his friends and associates were not quite what they encountered when they decided to examine his work. “As investigative documentarists we always thought we could look at anything we wanted,” Mr. Caine said. “But when we turned the cameras on one of the leading figures in our own industry, the people we wanted to talk to were like: ‘What are you doing? Why are you throwing stones at the parade leader?’ ”

Ms. Melnyk added, “We were very lonely.”

Their film “Manufacturing Dissent” will have its premiere on March 10 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tex. To say it sheds an unflattering light on Mr. Moore — whose work includes the hit “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” — would be an understatement.

Mr. Moore, who was reportedly in London finishing “Sicko,” a planned exposé of the American health care system, did not respond to voice mail, e-mail messages or third-party requests for an interview; a spokeswoman for the Weinstein Company, the distributor of “Sicko,” said Mr. Moore had no comment on “Manufacturing Dissent,” and referred inquiries to a Web address, http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-fi...ex.php?id=16as.

That link contains a refutation of a number of complaints taken up by conservatives regarding “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but the Melnyk-Caine movie isn’t really about that. “We didn’t want to refute anything,” Ms. Melnyk said. “We just wanted to take a look at Michael Moore and his films. It was only by talking to people that we found out this other stuff.”

In part the “stuff” amounts to a catalog of alleged errors — both of omission and commission — in Mr. Moore’s films, beginning with his 1989 debut, “Roger & Me.” That film largely revolved around Mr. Moore’s fruitless attempts to interview Roger Smith, then the chairman of General Motors, after his company closed plants in Mr. Moore’s birthplace, Flint, Mich.: an interview that occurred, Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine said, although Mr. Moore left it on the cutting-room floor.

“I’m still a big proponent of ‘Roger & Me,’ especially for its importance in American documentary making,” said John Pierson, the longtime producers’ representative who helped sell the film to Warner Brothers and now teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. “But it was disheartening to see some of the material in Debbie and Rick’s film. I wouldn’t say I was crushed. I’m too old to be crushed. But my students were.”

Calling the Melnyk-Caine film “unbelievably fair,” Mr. Pierson said it asks what really matters in nonfiction filmmaking: Should all documentary-making be considered subjective and ultimately manipulative, or should the viewer be able to believe what he or she sees? “I found it encouraging,” he said, “that my students were dumbstruck.”

Mr. Pierson and students in his advanced producing class have even made a project out of promoting “Manufacturing Dissent” (a title that echoes “Manufacturing Consent,” the 1992 Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick film about Noam Chomsky). They have helped to publicize the Austin premiere with slogans that include: “Michael Moore doesn’t like documentaries. That’s why he doesn’t make them.” And “It’s never been so hard to get Michael Moore in front of a camera.”

In “Manufacturing Dissent” Mr. Caine and Ms. Melnyk — whose previous films include “Junket Whore,” about movie journalists, and “Citizen Black,” about Conrad Black — note that the scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11” in which President Bush greets “the haves, and the have-mores” took place at the annual Al Smith Dinner, where politicians traditionally make sport of themselves. Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine received a video of the speeches from the dinner’s sponsor, the Archdiocese of New York. “Al Gore later answers a question by saying, ‘I invented the Internet,’ ” Mr. Caine said. “It’s all about them making jokes at their own expense.”

Still, support for Mr. Moore can be found in the film, from the likes of friends like Ben Hamper, from the actress Janeane Garofalo, and even from Mr. Pierson, a self-proclaimed “flag-waver” for “Roger & Me.” Others, including the writer Christopher Hitchens, and filmmakers Albert Maysles and Errol Morris, take exception to Mr. Moore’s methods, which have involved questionable lapses in chronology and what some would call a convenient neglect of pertinent material.

There have been attacks on Mr. Moore: “Michael Moore Hates America,” a rebuttal of “Bowling for Columbine” was produced in 2004 by Mike Wilson, who says he was inspired by “righteous indignation,” but came to a more temperate conclusion. “I understood what the guy struggles with,” Mr. Wilson said. “I interviewed John Stossel of ABC and asked him how he managed to keep out of trouble with what are essentially op-ed pieces, and he said ‘Because I could get fired.’ Michael Moore doesn’t have that.”

Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine, who are married, admit to one fabrication of their own: They printed their own business cards before an appearance by Mr. Moore at Kent State University, identifying themselves with Toronto’s City TV and its owner, CHUM Ltd., their chief financial backer and owner of Bravo! in Canada, where the film will eventually be broadcast. (The network is no relation to the American Bravo! network.) “We weren’t employees, so we didn’t have cards,” Ms. Melnyk said. Despite their ruse, the Kent State sequence ends with them being banished from the event by Mr. Moore’s sister, Anne, who also knocks away Mr. Caine’s camera.

The incident represents in microcosm the obstacles Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine said they faced while trying to make their portrait of Mr. Moore. Among other incidents, they said, they were prevented from plugging into the sound board at Wayne State University during a stop on Mr. Moore’s “Slacker Uprising” tour and were kicked out of his film festival in Traverse City, Mich., while other press members were admitted.

“I don’t think he expected us to follow him around,” Ms. Melnyk said.

Mr. Caine added: “We’re bit more persistent than your average film crew that way.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/23/news/moore.php

Iggy played guitar

Same Stooges. Different World. Finer Wine.
Ben Ratliff

THERE are the Stooges, from Ann Arbor, Mich., accidental inventors of punk, in the summer of 1970, on nationwide television. And there’s Iggy Pop, their singer: bare torso and sausage-casing jeans, silver gloves, dog collar, chipped front tooth.

The song is “TV Eye,” and they have gotten wickedly good at their primitive groove — as good as they will ever get. Iggy weaves in and out of the beat: one second borne by the music, one second abstracted from it. Suddenly he does a violent knock-kneed dance and slips into the audience, gone except for his wounded-animal noises.

“There goes Iggy, right into the crowd,” says the host of the special NBC program “Midsummer Rock.” It’s Jack Lescoulie, an announcer on the “Today” show, the Al Roker of his day. In his late 50s he looks like the anti-Stooge: professional, good-natured, well fed, well insured.

After a commercial break we see Iggy crawling on the stage. “Since we broke away for our message, Iggy has been in the crowd and out again three different times,” Mr. Lescoulie says. “They seem to be enjoying it, and so does he.” The camera centers on a scrum of teenagers looking downward. Iggy surfaces, hoists himself up so he’s standing on shoulders, and remains aloft, pointing forward like the prow of a ship. Next he’s scooping something out of a jar, wiping it on himself, flinging it around. “That’s peanut butter,” Mr. Lescoulie says, incredulous.

I’M going to be straight,” Iggy Pop said recently, talking about that film, which circulated for years in certain circles and is now of course available on YouTube. “I was more than a little high.”

He was often more than a little high. But these days Iggy Pop, a k a Jim Osterberg, is ferociously grounded. He swims and practices a form of tai chi, and his only vice, he says, is a few glasses of Bordeaux. Coming up on his 60th birthday, he bears signs of age: creased and ropy, he limps from cartilage lost in his right hip, and can’t hear well over ambient noise.

For the first time in 34 years, however, he and the members of his onetime band are putting out a new record: “The Weirdness,” which will be released by Virgin on March 6. (Careful historians will say 37 years: this is the version of the Stooges that made “Fun House,” around the time of the peanut butter concert — the brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums and Steve Mackay on tenor saxophone.)

In the intervening years they too have changed. As has the world around them.

Once upon a time Iggy and the Stooges defined themselves against the Lescoulies of the world: they were outrageous, truculent, elemental. But these days it seems there are more Iggys than Lescoulies. Everyone’s subversive, everyone’s perverse. What can the Stooges be, if not a band that defines itself against the rest of the world? What happens when they’re old and experienced, and punk attitudes, already in their third generation, have infiltrated so many corners of the culture? How do they climb back into that frame of mind?

“BREAKING up” doesn’t exist anymore. A band only has extended periods of downtime.

The Stooges’ downtime was a little more down than others. Ron Asheton used to say that Iggy had become too self-involved for the Stooges to play together again. Scott Asheton pursued Iggy at various points over the last 10 years, and the answer was always no. “I wasn’t going to go backwards,” Iggy explains now. “And I wasn’t going to do anything to what I thought was a great band.”

At some point, however, the incentives just became too powerful: prime gigs at the best rock festivals in the world, both the best-paid and the most creatively run.

Plus, what else was there to do? Scott Asheton, who lives in Florida, had been working in construction. His brother, Ron, had been in a series of bands that hadn’t made a stir, still living in his boyhood home on the west side of Ann Arbor, where the band had its first rehearsals. (All three went to Ann Arbor High together.)

Iggy needed the Ashetons just as much. “We managed to stay in a band together during a protracted period of failure,” he said of those early days, gigging and making records and living in a filthy house. “No rewards. No approval. No money. These are really the only guys I know. That doesn’t mean, ‘Oh, shucks, I like them so much.’ I mean, we lived together.”

Besides, “I’d hit a wall playing alone, in my solo music,” he said. “I was just at wit’s end about what to do — bands, songwriting, everything.”

He invited the Ashetons to work on a few songs with him for his album “Skull Ring” in 2003. A week after they convened, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival floated the idea of a Stooges reunion show. (They did the show; Iggy wouldn’t say how much they were offered, though he does say that the Stooges now get paid much better than he did for concerts during his solo career.) And the bassist Mike Watt came on board, once of the Minutemen, to take the place of Dave Alexander, who died in 1975.

Before they all headed into the studio, Mr. Watt flew to Florida to go over the new songs, and Iggy gave him a lesson about finding his “inner stupidity.”

They were practicing “She Took My Money.” (“She took my money/And didn’t say thank you/She took my money/And immediately banked it.”) Mr. Watt has a strong melodic style on the bass, but Iggy leaned on him to play with a pick instead of his fingers, and to stay with the backbone of the song, even if it meant sounding as dumb, he explained, as the guy singing the bass notes in a doo-wop group. “Play the content,” Iggy urged. “As soon as one of us isn’t playing that, we don’t have a song.”

It might have seemed like square advice, but Mr. Watt took it in stride. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said the other day. “There wouldn’t be punk without the Stooges. But after punk, things changed. And they come from the ’60s, so there’s a different sensibility there. Iggy just said: ‘Let go, Watt. Let go of ego. Learn from the source.’ ”

Over the 70 or so shows the group has played since 2003, it has developed a routine, including a repertory of 14 songs from the earlier albums “The Stooges” and “Fun House.” At least once Iggy writhes on top of the bass amp; artfully he keeps his pants in danger of falling down; he chants “I am you” during the free-jazz portion of the song “Fun House.”

You can’t be prepared for the power of a Stooges show; it still baffles you, makes you a Lescoulie. Iggy juts his hip out like a bumper, skips and punches the air, dives into the audience. On the final night of the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival, which the Stooges headlined in Minehead, England, in December, Iggy encouraged about 60 people to dance onstage, endangering the backline of amplifiers. And he practices his extraordinary physical vocabulary, tilting his shoulders and extending his arms above and behind his head. (Not insignificantly, he was a backstroker on the Ann Arbor High swim team.)

Afterward, backstage, Iggy let two glasses of wine last him 40 minutes. He was in a fine mood. “I sang about twice as hard as I usually do,” he marveled. “And I was worrying. A little voice was saying to me, ‘Do you sound too demented?’ You know, you don’t want to overdo it. It happens to any musician. If you want to do really well, sometimes you take it all on yourself. And that ain’t it. You’ve got to tone down to fit into the beauty of the percolation. This is all part of finding the stupidity, you know.”

IN October at Electrical Audio studios in Chicago the overall picture was of scheduled productivity. After the basic tracks for “The Weirdness” had been recorded, each band member was given his own day to make suggestions and additions. I came during Ron Asheton’s day, when he was tracking some extra guitar solos. The day before had been Steve Mackay’s day; Iggy thanked him with a bottle of very nice wine.

Around one another the three original Stooges communicate in shorthand. Iggy Pop, famous as a wildman and credible as a sage, is less well known as an organized type: a note taker, a list maker. He led the discussion on the fine points of each playback. Scott Asheton, a brooding figure who rarely left his chair, voiced a few reservations — “Too much solos sounds too amateurish,” he said at one point — and little else. (He was right, and more solos made it on to the record than probably should have.) Ron Asheton just confidently got his job done. After recording one screaming guitar overdub, he re-entered the control room. “Was I too obtuse?” he asked, feigning an epicene British accent. Nobody answered.

While recording, Iggy swam laps in the hotel pool every day before going to work at noon. During the recording of “Fun House” in 1970, by comparison, he dropped acid before each day’s session.

Still, Ron Asheton says the Iggy Pop of today is not altogether unfamiliar. “He’s more like the Jim I knew in the beginning,” Mr. Asheton said. (To old friends, Iggy is Jim.) “It’s like the better Jim times. When we first started hanging out, he didn’t smoke cigarettes. Jim and I were always more conservative, hesitant to drink, the last ones to smoke marijuana. When we got to Chicago, he had a piece of paper, and it said exactly what’s going to happen on every given day. He asks our opinion; we have a mutual pact that we all have to agree. I love that he deals with the schedules. I know that he needs to do that. He’s clear about what he wants to do.”

The resulting album takes pains to remind you that the Stooges are authentic, that their simplicity and roughness isn’t just a casual disposition, or a consequence of being messed up, but a dogma. But “The Weirdness” sounds nothing like “Fun House.” Gone are the medium and slow tempos, the glorious cosmic drone of old songs like “Dirt” and “Ann”; the band “wants less uncertainties,” in Iggy’s words, and in the process has shed half its old sound. It’s almost all fast and rough — almost a punk album, with the hard riffs and commitment to bashing that one wishes the Rolling Stones still had. The spirit is there, even when, in some cases, the songwriting is not.

Its engineer is Steve Albini, who has become known for his own dogma of simplicity: analog equipment, full-band live takes, no filters and reverb. The Ashetons’ drums and guitars are big, and Iggy, relatively speaking, is small. He pushes his voice, yelping the lyrics, which are typically zen-mundane. Stooges songs used to be about boredom, sex and hanging out. Now they are about boredom, aging, money, sex, greed and hanging out.

The best example is “ATM.” Most of its words have one syllable; it is a smart-stupid rendering of a cash machine as a symbol for money, efficiency, and aging. And it has a provocative aside. “The leaders of rock don’t rock,” he sings at one point. “This bothers me quite a lot.”

He wouldn’t tell me who he was talking about specifically, he said, but he believes that the rock business is too big, run by people who know nothing about it.

Wasn’t that always the case?

“No,” he said, decisively. “The people I met at the top in 1972 tended to be crackpots from the fringes of the lowest parts of the entertainment industry. And they tended to know their stuff. Jac Holzman” — the president of Elektra, the Stooges’ old label — “was a former record-store owner in the Village. The guy who ran the very biggest talent agency in New York had ties to the pinball industry, I guess you could say. They could really screw an artist up, but they weren’t just someone from Legal.”

He started warming to the subject: the real subject of the song, he said, was “a fairly loosely aggregated industry-slash-palace guard that has coalesced around the corpus of something called rock, and that something has grown to have something to do with units of digital information, and filling a parking lot.” He paused. “It’s impressive. It’s brutally compelling, sometimes. But it’s not enjoyable.”

He says he can hear moments of wildness in the old Stooges record that he knows he can’t reach anymore. “But some of that’s youth.”

“And the time period,” said Scott Asheton. “What was goin’ on.”

“So, you know,” Iggy responded. “I don’t worry about it too much. Other people are going to do plenty of yakety-yak on that subject for me. Who needs another comment from me?”

How is it to make a new Stooges record without drugs?

“You know, I don’t feel the difference,” he said, thoughtfully. “You?” he asked Scott Asheton.

“Ah, no,” he replied, turned 180 degrees away, smoking a cigarette.

“I feel just like I did when I was stoned,” Iggy continued. “I feel the same. The thing is, it’s wonderful to know we can’t take them,” he said, and smiled crisply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/ar...25ratliff.html

Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos
Allen Salkin

THERE are some surprising secrets behind “The Secret.”

For one, most of the millions of people who have seen “The Secret,” a documentary that is the biggest thing to hit the New Age movement since the Harmonic Convergence, may not know that there are two versions of the film.

In both, “The Secret” intersperses interviews with authors and inspirational speakers who specialize in personal transformation with short dramatized episodes to deliver a message about how positive thinking will improve one’s health, wealth and love life.

The secret that the movie purports to reveal after millenniums of obscurity is “the law of attraction.” This principle, said to be known by an elite few, including Beethoven and 19th-century robber barons, holds that the universe will make your wishes come true if only you really, truly believe in them.

“Ask, believe, receive,” the movie instructs.

There is no better example of the magic than the staggering success of “The Secret” itself and of its creator, Rhonda Byrne, an Australian documentary producer turned spiritual entrepreneur. With no paid advertising or theatrical release, the movie has sold 1.5 million copies of a DVD at $34.95, according to the producers. More than half the copies have sold in the last month, as word-of-mouth appeal crossed over from New Age circles to the mainstream.

A book based on the movie, also called “The Secret,” which Ms. Byrne wrote in less than a month, jumps to No. 1 this week on the New York Times best-seller list of hardcover advice, how-to and miscellaneous books. “Secret” support groups have formed around the country. In Southern California, real estate brokers show the 92-minute movie to motivate sales representatives. Oprah Winfrey, in the first of two shows dedicated to “The Secret,” said its positive philosophy is the way she has long lived her own life.

In the film a woman says the law of attraction cured her cancer, but many followers settle for more prosaic victories. Victoria Moore, a saleswoman in Silicon Valley, said the principles of “The Secret” help her snag coveted parking spots. “But if I let in the slightest bit of doubt, it doesn’t happen,” she added. Elizabeth Cogan, a self-described shaman from Sparks, Nev., said the principle works at restaurants, where she envisions herself not having to wait for a table.

But behind the success of “The Secret” is a seamier story about the origins of the film. It involves big money and what some participants say are the broken promises of Ms. Byrne. The star of the first version of the movie, released in March last year, demanded to be cut out of the current version, which has been on the market since Oct. 1.

That star, Esther Hicks, 58, has been promoting her own version of the law of attraction with her husband, Jerry Hicks, in books and seminars for two decades. “We teach that you keep saying it the way you want it to be, and if you keep saying it the way you want it to be, the universe will line up and give you exactly what you’ve said you wanted,” Ms. Hicks said.

Ms. Byrne had promised Ms. Hicks 10 percent of DVD revenues to appear in “The Secret,” both parties said. But they had a falling out, and Ms. Hicks could not even bring herself to watch Ms. Byrne this month on “Oprah,” the movement’s moment of triumph.

In a backhanded compliment Ms. Hicks said, “I’ve got to give Rhonda credit,” adding that her former collaborator has shown a monomaniacal dedication to the law of attraction. “I’ve never seen anybody do that like she’s doing it,” Ms. Hicks said. “And never mind honesty, and never mind doing what you said you were going to do, and never mind anything. Just stay in alignment.”

Although “The Secret” is an overnight phenomenon, its message of think-and-grow-rich is but the latest version of a self-help formula dating back more than a century, with roots both secular and religious, and branches that have included Napoleon Hill’s best-selling “Think and Grow Rich” in 1937 and Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking” in 1952.

J. Gordon Melton, the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., traces the origins of “prosperity consciousness” to 19th-century Christian Science. “It’s always waiting for slightly different forms of expression, the same old message,” he said.

Last Sunday evening the Hickses relaxed in their $1.4 million luxury bus parked outside the Rancho Cordova Marriott near Sacramento, where they had just finished a six-hour workshop on the law of attraction in the hotel ballroom. Three hundred people had paid $195 each to hear Ms. Hicks, a former secretary, summon otherworldly spirits she says speak through her. The spirits, who collectively use the name Abraham, answered participants’ questions.

“I don’t have a lover yet,” one woman said.

Abraham, whose speaking voice is rounder, quicker and more computerlike than Ms. Hicks’s natural voice, replied by repeating the woman’s phrase roughly 20 times and then explained it contained its own negativity, which was leaving the woman paddling upstream on the river of life.

The audience applauded.

The Hickses spend most of the year traveling the country, leading workshops based on the teachings they say Abraham has given them. They record the workshops and have 10,000 subscribers, who pay up to $50 a month for CDs and DVDs of Abraham’s wisdom.

When Ms. Byrne asked Ms. Hicks to appear in “The Secret,” as the most prominent interpreter of the law of attraction, she agreed to give the Hickses approval over much of the movie, according to a contract. But when the couple saw the first cut, they were livid. Ms. Hicks’s voice, chaneling Abraham, was used as narration throughout the film, but her face was never shown.

After negotiation, Ms. Hicks’s image was edited into the film and it was released, ultimately netting the Hickses $500,000 from sales, Ms. Hicks said. But the couple were unhappy with the distribution. They said they understood it would be shown first on Australian television, but instead it was being sold as an Internet download and later as a DVD.

Cynthia Black, the president of Beyond Words Publishing, a New Age imprint, who is both a longtime friend of the Hickses and the publisher of Ms. Byrne’s book version of “The Secret,” tried to broker a peace. She enlisted the help of Jack Canfield, the author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” one of the “transformational experts” who appears in “The Secret” (and whose nephew Zach Canfield says he used the law of attraction to score a date with the hip-hop singer Lady Sovereign). But Mr. Canfield was also unable to bring the parties together.

The Hickses consulted their lawyer, and Ms. Byrne in turn demanded changes to the contract, both sides said. No agreement could be reached. Ms. Byrne moved forward with a second version of “The Secret” without the Hickses. Advised by their lawyer to sue, the Hickses said they declined because litigation would take energy from their own pursuit of the law of attraction. “We don’t sue,” said Mr. Hicks, a former circus acrobat and Amway distributor.

Ms. Byrne does not seem overly troubled by the rupture. “I’m grateful to have had the journey with them for the time that we had,” she said, sitting on a plush chair next to a honeysuckle candle in her apartment in Santa Monica, Calif. With a glittering silver circle affixed with false-eyelash glue to the center of her forehead, she related how she had mortgaged her home in Melbourne, where she worked as a television producer, to finance “The Secret” and also received an investment from a former Internet executive in Chicago, Bob Rainone. The cost of the films was about $3 million, Ms. Byrne said.

Ms. Byrne, 55, seems possessed by the energy of her success, jumping from side to side as she speaks. Her gray eyes shine with the fervor of the true believer as she talks about setting the goal of taking her vision to the world and watching it come true. “It’s incredible to actually experience an intention that is so big, to experience it is ... ” She paused as her voice crested and swooped as if on the edge of breaking. “It’s like I can feel the lives, every life changing, the joy,” she said.

Without the Hickses’ 10 percent cut, Ms. Byrne and her Chicago investor will reap millions in additional profits. None of the film’s other self-help gurus were paid. But “even though money was involved,” Ms. Byrne insisted, “it was never about that.”

And the Hickses agreed. “We earn millions of dollars a year” already, Mr. Hicks said.

No, the clash seems mainly over who deserves credit, and the wave of mainstream publicity, for this latest version of prosperity consciousness. The Hickses have preached the law of attraction while traveling with Abraham for 21 years. Ms. Byrne’s exposure to the notion is more recent: she was going through a rough patch in her life in 2004, when her daughter gave her a copy of “The Science of Getting Rich,” first published in 1910.

The book discussed how focusing on gratitude can help a person take control of life. Ms. Byrne delved into the works of other self-help gurus, like Charles Haanel’s “Master Key System” from 1912; Prentice Mulford’s 19th-century “Thoughts Are Things”; and Robert Collier’s “Secret of the Ages” from 1926.

By contrast, Ms. Hicks reads no self-help or spiritual material, she said, wanting to keep her mind clear for Abraham’s messages. Without knowing what others have written, friends of the Hickses said, it is easy to understand why they believe they did the most to popularize the law of attraction before “The Secret.”

“Some of the people who are in the movie, I agree, have clearly listened to Abraham tapes, said Ms. Black, the publisher. “But Abraham has never said ‘This is just mine, don’t share it with everyone.’ ”

For the second version of “The Secret,” Ms. Byrne used Lisa Nichols, an author of “Chicken Soup for the African-American Soul,” and Marci Shimoff, an author of “Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul,” to fill gaps left by Ms. Hicks’s removal. (The DVD of the Hicks version of “The Secret” is going for $104 on Amazon.com.)

Walking along the Pacific Ocean at surf’s edge on a sunny day last week, Ms. Byrne said no one owns the law of attraction because it is universal, like another famous law. “I can’t go ‘law of gravity, that’s mine,’ ” she said.

What the Hickses say bothers them most about the second version of “The Secret” is that those who watch it are not receiving enough explanation of the law or being told that its discovery was made by “vibrationally accessing broader intelligence,” Ms. Hicks said.

Bringing forth the voice of Abraham as she sat on a buttery leather seat in her motor home, speaking of herself in the third person, she said, “Esther’s concern is that they will destroy this information because they do not really know it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/fa...0&ei=50 87%0A

A Comeback in 3-D, but Without Those Flimsy Glasses
Jeff Leeds

A little past the two-minute mark, the music video for Gwen Stefani’s recent single, “Wind It Up,” finds her chained to a fence while a flurry of bubbles and snowflakes float by. Viewed from a certain perspective — that is, through 3-D glasses — it is a dreamlike moment in which the flurry seems close enough to touch.

The video begins with Ms. Stefani yodeling, a homage to “The Sound of Music,” one of the her favorite films. But the idea of adding the bubbles and snow came from an unlikely source: James Cameron, the director behind effects-laden hits like “The Terminator” and “Titanic,” who visited Ms. Stefani’s set last October and shot a separate version of the video with 3-D equipment.

“I had mentioned to the director that any kind of atmospheric effects like snow or rain usually play in 3-D,” Mr. Cameron recalled.

While “Wind It Up” was not initially planned as a 3-D video, Ms. Stefani probably won’t be the last recording artist to follow Mr. Cameron’s lead.

As part of a newly created venture, Mr. Cameron is working with Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M record label, to produce music films, concerts and other content in 3-D to show in specially equipped theaters. Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron hope to deliver their first production by summer.

The two acknowledge that they have yet to work out many details: they say they don’t know how many productions will be created or which artists will be featured, but the idea has been discussed with Interscope artists including Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Many music fans may be too young to recall the last time 3-D was in vogue: the 1980s, when hordes donned flimsy multihued glasses to watch “Jaws 3” and other attractions.

But the latest version of the technology has Hollywood buzzing again, particularly since 3-D showings of animated fare like “Chicken Little” have racked up impressive sales. Mr. Cameron is at work on a $200 million 3-D feature titled “Avatar.”

Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron are aware of the odds of changing consumer behavior. They are wagering that fans will be willing to trek to a movie theater and pay perhaps a few dollars more than the price of a regular ticket to see their favorite stars on the big screen and in 3-D. The glasses now resemble standard sunglasses, and musicians may be able to make their own designs.

The venture, led by the film producer Gene Kirkwood, also represents a distinctive take on what both the music-video and the concert can be. If it works, the partners said, fans could experience a concert as if they were on stage next to U2’s guitarist, the Edge, or see the members of Kiss in full makeup perform a pyrotechnic show seemingly right in front of them, all for a fraction of the price of seeing a headline act on tour.

“What it does is put you, the audience, right there with the performer onstage, in their creative reality,” Mr. Cameron said recently during a break in production from “Avatar.” “The whole idea of a concert may change.”

Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron have discussed with executives at Harrah’s Entertainment setting up a night club in Las Vegas where visitors would be surrounded by 3-D images and watch 3-D performances, though no deal has been struck.

Mr. Iovine also said that 3-D performances could become a new way for artists to build ties to their fans and generate much-needed revenue for the ailing music business.

“The record industry has to have lots of different revenue streams, and this just looks like one that’s creatively cool,” Mr. Iovine said. “And you can’t download it. You can’t get it anyplace else.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/ar...ic/01came.html

Think Your Social Security Number Is Secure? Think Again
Damon Darlin

It should come as little surprise that Social Security numbers are posted on the Internet. But, says Betty Ostergren, a former insurance claims supervisor in suburban Richmond, Va., who has spent years trolling for them, “people are always astounded” to learn that theirs is one of them.

Mrs. Ostergren, 57, has made a name for herself as a gadfly as she took on a lonely and sometimes frustrating mission to draw attention to the situation. With addresses, dates of birth and maiden names often associated with Social Security numbers, she said, they are a gift to data thieves.

But in the last few weeks, Mrs. Ostergren’s Web site, The Virginia Watchdog — with the help of lobbying from an unexpected ally, America’s farm bureaus — is having an effect.

One by one, states and counties have started removing images of documents that contain Social Security numbers, or they are blocking out the numbers. Four states, including New York, have removed links to images of public documents containing Social Security numbers.

Snohomish County, Wash., for example, said Wednesday that 61 types of documents, including tax liens and marriage certificates, would be blocked. (The documents are supposed to remain public at courthouses or state offices.)

On Wednesday, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, issued a legal opinion that county clerks could be committing a crime by revealing Social Security numbers on the Internet.

“I am almost in a celebratory mode,” said David Bloys, a retired private investigator in Shallowater, Tex., who also highlights the public records issue on his Web site, NewsforPublicOfficials.com.

For people wondering if they should be worried about the security of their own numbers, there is a new tool to help them.

TrustedID, a company that sells services to consumers to give them more control over who sees their credit reports, has compiled a database of compromised numbers that could already be traded or sold on the Internet.

It has created an online search tool, StolenIDSearch.com, where people can check at no cost to see if their number is one that is in a too-public domain.

TrustedID said that about 220,000 people had tested their numbers in the three weeks the site has been open to the public.

The Social Security number remains the personal identifier not only for government documents, but for credit applications and medical records, as well as video and cellphone stores.

“In the commercial world, it is ubiquitous when credit is offered,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, a privacy advocate and senior fellow of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley. “It all flows from the credit system and it flows very far.”

Even though Americans are told to protect their Social Security number to prevent identity theft, that is a tall order. The Social Security Administration says its card “was never intended and does not serve as a personal identification document.”

But that has not been true about the number almost from outset. The Social Security numbers that were first handed out in November 1936 as a means for the federal government to track payments to the retirement system were soon used for other purposes. They help track payrolls, loan payments, financial transactions and income taxes.

They are necessary for anyone seeking public assistance, like food stamps, or registering for the draft. Congress decreed that the numbers be put on records including professional licenses, marriages licenses and divorce decrees to better track scofflaws of child support orders.

The Social Security number took on a second role. It allowed collectors of data to link pieces of information together, like a driver’s license record, credit report data and the information on the warranty card for a toaster. That is a useful tool for marketers and just as useful for criminals.

It was only in 2004 that Congress prohibited states from using the Social Security number on drivers’ licenses. Yet the databases with those numbers still exist. Until 2001, states could sell lists with those numbers, which means that for virtually anyone 22 years or older, the name, address, phone number and Social Security number are in private databases.

The nine-digit string took on a third role — as a password that was supposed to protect all that private information from snoops and criminals. But its ubiquity defeats that purpose, Mr. Hoofnagle said. “It will pass when the business community no longer needs a Social Security number,” he said.

The Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General said that 16 percent of the 99,000 fraud cases it investigated in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30 involved the misuse of Social Security numbers. One involved an identify theft ring in Central Florida. Twelve people were convicted, sentenced to prison and ordered to repay more than $2 million.

About 16,000 incidents are not a lot considering that 240 million numbers are currently in use, and certainly theft and fraud involving credit card numbers are much more pervasive.

But credit card numbers are rarely exposed on documents in public view. And if a credit card is stolen or misused, obtaining a new one is a fairly simple process. A new Social Security number is rarely granted. (Indeed, one is limited to 3 replacements of the green paper Social Security card in a year and 10 over a lifetime.)

Social Security numbers are routinely traded and sold by thieves over the Internet like credit card numbers, says Panos Anastassiadis, chief executive of Cyveillance, a company in Arlington, Va., that monitors online fraud attempts for major financial institutions. His company has found caches of them in Web chat rooms where they are offered as samples by criminals selling even larger lists.

They are sometimes obtained by “key logging” software surreptitiously installed on home computers to record what is typed. Some come from so-called phishing attacks in which people are misled into entering the data on fake Web sites of banks or utilities.

The numbers are also out in the open. “People think it is the banks, but banks are very secure,” Mr. Anastassiadis said. “The problem is every dentist’s office has Social Security numbers. Every doctor’s office has them. How secure are these?”

It has been Mrs. Ostergren’s near obsession to answer that question.

Few things delight her more than finding a number belonging to a celebrity because it draws attention to her cause.

“Oh, my Lord!” she exclaimed recently as she stumbled upon the Social Security number of a member of the boldfaced set as she demonstrated how New York State Web sites display documents containing names, addresses and Social Security numbers. “Let me download this one. This is Donald Trump’s number. I can’t wait to tell him.”

Mrs. Ostergren never got through to Mr. Trump to confirm whether the nine-digit identifier was indeed his, but she has found and tried to notify others, including Kelly Ripa, the actress and talk-show host; Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida; Porter Goss, the former C.I.A. director; and scores of state legislators. She posted links to some of those documents on her site. (New York later made the documents unavailable, so the links no longer work.)

She has found Social Security numbers on tax liens on the official site of Maricopa County in Arizona. In Florida, as in many states, they appear on documents consumers sign when they buy furniture or other merchandise on credit.

Mrs. Ostergren wants the documents taken off the Web, and she applies pressure by using the people whose numbers she finds. “I’ve been calling people and telling them that they are exposed,” Mrs. Ostergren said. “It is not very hard to find the numbers. They are exposed everywhere.”

Her Web site may be cluttered with so many typefaces that it resembles a ransom note, but she seems to be having an impact. In the last month she found a pressure point: farmers.

Their numbers show up on Uniform Commercial Code filings when they buy machinery or supplies on credit. She showed state farm bureau leaders their numbers; they contacted their state legislators. She has also found common cause with other gadflies like Mr. Bloys.

She has had her share of setbacks as well. Several state legislators tried to ban her from posting information about their personal data that appeared in public records. She wins no fans among legitimate companies who sell databases. Removing the data from the Internet slows their ability to collect public information, but does not stop them.

“There are a lot of people in the data brokerage business who don’t like what I do,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/bu...877&ei=5087%0A

Pants on fire

Steve Jobs' iTunes Dance

Now the Apple CEO says he would gladly sell songs without digital restrictions, if the record companies let him. That's hardly a brave defiance, and besides, I don't believe him.
Cory Doctorow

In early February, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an extraordinary memo about the music industry, iTunes and DRM (digital rights management), the technology used to lock iTunes Store music to Apple's iPod and iTunes Player. In the memo, Jobs said that "DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy," and offered to embrace a DRM-free music-sales environment "in a heartbeat," if only the big four music companies would let him.

I doubt Jobs' sincerity. I suspect he likes DRM because it creates an anti-competitive lock-in to Apple. I think he's trying to shift blame for the much-criticized DRM to the music industry, whose executives are twirling their mustaches and declaring DRM to be the only way forward for their industry.

The context for this is complex and global.

DRM technology is used to lock music -- and movies, books and video games -- to a specific vendor's products. It's intended to ensure that copyright holders earn royalties from their music or movies, control how they are distributed, and prevent them from being copied without permission.

Yet the dream of a copy-proof song or movie is a logical absurdity. DRM systems -- built over a span of years at a cost of millions -- are routinely cracked in an afternoon by bored teenagers. BigChampagne, the P2P (peer-to-peer) monitoring service, reports that it takes a mere 180 seconds for a DRM'ed song released on the iTunes Store to show up as a free P2P download. Anyone who thinks that companies are going to make bits get harder to copy in the future is either not paying attention or kidding himself.

DRM's principal effect is legal, not technical. Since the passage of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's been illegal to break DRMs in this country. It doesn't matter if DRM restricts access to something you have every right to use (for example, a DRM that region-locks a movie you've bought so that it won't play in the U.S.). You're not allowed to break DRM, and corporations certainly can't field products that break it. The results are ugly: Companies like 321 Studios (whose DVD X-Copy software lets you make otherwise legal backups of your DVDs) were sued into oblivion by the motion picture companies for trying such a thing.

So if you shellac a one-atom-thick layer of DRM over a product, you get the full power of the American legal system as a weapon to use against competitors. Apple may have created a successful "Switch" campaign by reverse-engineering Microsoft products like PowerPoint to make Keynote, an Apple program that lets you run old PowerPoint decks on your Mac, but Microsoft can't create a "Switch to the Zune" campaign that offers you the ability to play your iTunes Store songs on a Zune, Microsoft's latest abortive iPod-killer.

Although Apple's DRM is wholly ineffective at preventing copying, it does manage to raise the cost of switching from an iPod to a competing device. Every iTunes song you buy for 99 cents amounts to a 99 cent tax on switching from an iPod to a Zune. That's because your iTunes songs won't play on your Zune -- or on any other player, save those made or licensed by Apple. Jobs tries to skate around this in his memo, suggesting that only a tiny fraction of the music on iPods comes from his music store, and so the anti-switching effects are minimal.

While it's true that most of us haven't loaded our 10,000-song iPods with $9,900 worth of iTunes songs, it doesn't follow that the switching cost for even casual iTunes customers is negligible. If you'd bought just one iTunes track every month since the launch in 2003, you'd have rung up $82 in lock-in music. Throw in a couple of $9.99 albums and maybe an audiobook or two and you can easily find yourself in $150 down the lock-in hole.

That's $150 you kiss goodbye if you buy a sexy little Creative Labs Zen or a weird little no-name from the wildly imaginative entrepreneurs of Malaysia. Not only won't your iTunes Store music play on those devices, it's illegal to try to get it to play on those devices.

Jobs is right. If you had 10 grand worth of proprietary music on your iPod, his company's iTunes would be anti-competitive. But that's not to say that $150 worth of lock-in (enough to double the cost of many portable players) isn't a powerful disincentive against switching from the iPod. I'm a lifelong Apple fan boy -- I have an actual Mac tattoo -- but even I remember the dark time of the Performa, when Apple's hardware trailed so far behind the market leaders that buying it was like wearing a hair shirt. I think that it's reasonable to assume that Apple won't always make the world's best music player. I'd like to keep my options open. But the longer you own an iPod, the more likely it is you'll buy more iTunes music, and the fewer options you'll have.

Jobs' DRM stance has historically been all over the map. He's defended and decried DRM and consumer rights depending on which way the wind blows, and the spirit moves him. There was the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign, when Apple celebrated the idea that you could take DRM-free music off of CDs and load it onto your iPod (if you want to do the same thing with a DRM'ed DVD, you're an outlaw). Back in 2002, he went on the record with this gem: "If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own."

But later, an Apple attorney told a tech conference that Apple would keep its DRM even if the labels asked to have it removed. And when Real announced that it had put a Real DRM player on Apple's iPod so that you could listen to its DRM music on Apple's player, Apple responded with legal threats.

Actions speak louder than words. Artists have asked -- begged -- Apple to sell their music without DRM for years. From individual bestselling acts like Barenaked Ladies to entire labels of copy-friendly music like Magnatune, innumerable copyright holders have asked Apple to sell their work as open MP3s instead of DRM-locked AACs. Apple has always maintained that it's DRM or nothing. These artists believe that the answer to selling more music is cooperating with fans, not treating them as presumptive pirates and locking down their music.

If you rip your own CDs and load them onto your iPod, you'll notice something curious. The iPod is a roach motel: Songs check in, but they don't check out. Once you put music on your iPod, you can't get it off again with Apple's software. No recovering your music collection off your iPod if your hard drive crashes. What's more, Apple prevents copying indiscriminately. You can't copy any music off your iPod. Apple even applies the no-copying measure to audio released under a Creative Commons license (for example, my own podcasts), which prohibits adding DRM. The Creative Commons situation is inexcusable; because Creative Commons licenses are machine-readable, iTunes could automatically find the C.C.-licensed works and make them available for copying back to your computer.

Then there's the matter of the movies and TV shows sold through the iTunes Store. The first adopter of this marketplace was Disney/Pixar. Jobs is the single largest shareholder in Disney/Pixar. Apparently, he forced himself to add DRM to his Pixar movies, turning a deaf ear to his own impassioned arguments to leave the DRM off. Videos you buy from the iTunes Store can only be watched on Apple's products. So every movie you buy from Apple is a tax down the line of switching from Apple to a competing product.

Some have argued that Apple's famous fetish for consistency in user experience stops it from putting only some tracks into the iTunes Store without DRM. The reasoning goes that users will be confused by a store that sells both DRM and non-DRM music. But if this is so, how is it that Apple currently offers DRM-free podcasts alongside DRM'ed, pay-for-use podcasts in the selfsame store?

If DRM is designed to prevent copying, why is it that vendors always end up building "security" systems with all the integrity of a wet paper bag? Jobs explains it himself. All cryptography relies on keeping a set of keys that are secret against attackers. If Jobs sells you a download of "The Incredibles," he has to give you the keys, otherwise all you have is a bunch of noisy, encrypted junk, not a movie.

"The problem, of course," Jobs writes, "is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music."

But Apple -- and DRM -- tries to resolve this problem by hiding the keys from you even as it delivers them to you. DRM relies on hardware and software that treat you, the guy who owns the device, as an untrusted party. DRM hides its keys on your own bought-and-paid-for equipment, locking you out of seeing what your own machine is doing.

Like all secrets, DRM can corrupt its host. Just look at Sony's last foray into DRM, which included a "rootkit," malicious software used by virus-writers to hide their programs' existence from anti-spyware apps. Conceptually, spyware and DRM have the same goals: to do something to your computer that you don't want to happen. Sony's rootkit infected 500,000 American computer networks, including military and government systems. Apple's DRM is even more widespread.

In Europe, Apple's DRM has attracted unwelcome attention from regulators in Scandinavia, France and Germany. Europe is slowly adopting the same treaty that gave birth to the DMCA, the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996. Europe's version, the EUCD, has to be incorporated into each member-state's national law, and each law is a fresh opportunity for consumer rights activists to point out the anti-competitive effects of the ban on breaking DRM, with Apple's iTunes front and center.

European regulators seem powerless to overturn the EUCD, so instead they're turning to regulatory answers to iTunes' lock-in. Norway's ombudsman has been on the forefront of this, ordering Apple to open its DRM to interoperability. This demand makes strange allies out of DRM fighters and the entertainment giants they do battle with.

Activists like the idea of regulators bringing DRM to heel. Music companies like the idea of being able to negotiate pricing and delivery of their songs. In their utopia, you'd be able to buy music at prices they set (not just 99 cents a song) from a variety of stores and play them on a variety of devices from a variety of vendors. The incredible market dominance of iTunes/iPod has made Apple into a veritable Wal-Mart of digital downloads. And that has the music companies in a major snit.

Recently, Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. tried to get Apple to give him control over pricing of Warner's tracks, so that he could charge more for top-40 music and less for back-catalog. Bronfman was handed his hat and laughed out of Cupertino. After all, what was he going to do, pull Warner's music out of the iTunes Store and only offer it through stores whose products can't play on iPods? It's no surprise that Bronfman responded to Jobs' music memo with an infantile tantrum: "completely without merit ... completely without logic." Bronfman doesn't want no DRM, he wants a DRM that benefits the music companies without leaving any value on the table for the tech companies.

This weird alliance of copy fighters and music giants has Apple caught in a squeeze. The real meat in Jobs' memo is in his excuses for not opening up Apple's DRM to competitors. He explains that interoperability is a technical impossibility, since DRM requires that users be locked out of its secrets, and once you have multiple vendors, one of them is certain to leak the secrets.

DRM-cracker supreme Jon Johansen points out that Microsoft's "interoperable" DRM, PlaysForSure, is no less secure than iTunes, despite a wide range of licensers. Of course, iTunes isn't secure: Otherwise, it would take more than three minutes for iTunes music to migrate to P2P. Since PlaysForSure is also insecure, they can be called equivalent. Jobs' argument is that his sieve will leak faster if regulators make him go interoperable.

Of course, it's easy for Jobs to aver that he will drop DRM if the labels let him. As Princeton's Ed Felten points out, Jobs says the labels call the shots on DRM and forced him to add DRM to iTunes Music. So it's hardly brave defiance to swear to take it off when the labels tell him to. As Felten puts it, "Apple is like the kid who says he is willing to go to the dentist, because he knows that no matter what he says he's going to see the dentist whenever his parents want him to."

At the end of the day, DRM is the biggest impediment to a legitimate music market. Apple doesn't sell music because of DRM -- it sells music in spite of DRM. The iTunes Store proves that you can compete with free. People have bought billions of dollars worth of music from Apple because it offered a better user experience. But no one bought for the DRM. Some people bought in spite of it, some bought in ignorance of it, but there's no customer for whom DRM is a selling point. No one woke up this morning wishing for a way to do less with her music.

When honest people are suckered into buying DRM, they often discover that the music they bought doesn't work as well as the music their friends get free on P2P. In fact, there's no better incentive to venture into the P2P waters than getting access to the music you may have already bought. Far from protecting music from illicit copying, DRM practically demands illicit copying. With DRM, the only way to get music that plays on all your devices, past and present, is to rip it off. If you buy DRM, you end up being part of someone's business model, and a slave to the lock-in.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2007/02/23/itunes/

Metalinks Tries to Simplify Downloads
ant_tmwx

"Metalinks collect information about files in an XML format used by programs that download. The information includes mirror lists, ways to retrieve the file on P2P networks, checksums for verifying and correcting downloads, operating system, language, and other details. Using Metalinks details the Free Software programs you can use to download them with. There are also clients on Mac and Windows. With a list of multiple ways to download a file, programs can switch to another method if one goes down. Or a file can be downloaded from multiple mirrors at once, usually making the download go much faster. Downloads can be repaired during transfer to guarantee no errors. All this makes things automatic which are usually not possible or at least difficult, and increases efficiency, availability, and reliability over regular download links. OpenOffice.org, openSUSE, and other Linux/BSD distributions use them for large downloads."
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/02/25/144209.shtml

Open Letter to Steven Ballmer

It's come to many in the Linux community’s attention you have claimed again and again, that Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. Not only that, but it's been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can't provide.

Therefore, this website will serve as a response to this accusation, and within it, a request. The request is simple, since you, Microsoft, claim to be so sure of yourself: Show Us the Code.

If Linux developers are made aware of the code, then the code can be omitted and Linux can re-write necessary aspects of the kernel or operating system. This is a fairly simple request and common courtesy. Why wave around lawsuit threats, threats that will cost Microsoft in a court room as well as the defendants? It lacks logic, especially when you consider that there are developers around the world who would be more than happy to work with Microsoft to resolve this issue. Don't you owe it to your shareholders to work with others to ensure their intellectual property isn't being violated?

Also, we were under the impression you wanted to work with the open source community. That's what Port 25 is all about isn't it? That's what the Novell deal is about, correct? Here's your chance. If you're right you'll make thousands upon thousands of open-source advocates hush up and make your competitors scramble for ways to not violate your IP.

Linux community members do not want your code. We don't want lawsuits. We don't want non-free code. And much to your dismay, we don't want Microsoft's code specifically.

So this is what we're requesting. We are requesting the support of the Linux community. We are calling out to Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Dr. Eric Schmidt, Mark Shuttleworth, Kevin Carmony, and Matthew Szulik, as well as any and all developers for any Linux distribution or any company that feels threatened by your non-existent lawsuits:

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

How many corporations, how many organizations, how many community members will it take to call your bluff, Steven?

We are not the first (1, 2) to request this of you, but we are willing to take it to the next level. If you or Microsoft cannot comply with a response by the date outlined, everyone who endorses this will consider your threats and claims to be empty and libelous. Anyone paying attention to the marketplace should as well.

Happy code hunting. Google Patent Search may help you out.

Note: If you work for or own a company, or partake in maintaining, selling, or providing Linux services or services and products via Linux, then you are encouraged to contact me privately. I will be building a page that will display each person's professional request for Steven to provide the code.
http://showusthecode.com/

SA Government to Switch to Open Source

The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software.

At a Cabinet media briefing government said that it had "approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of free and open source software (FOSS) in government.

In a statement the cabinet said "all new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS. This strategy will, among other things, lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills."

"All the major IT vendors in the country have both supported the initiative and made contributions to the development of FOSS. Government departments will incorporate FOSS in their planning henceforth."

Government plans to set up a FOSS project office by April this year. The office will be established by the department of ccience and technology, the CSIR and the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).

Reuters writes that Themba Maseko told reporters the cabinet would use the open source Linux operating system in a bid to lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills.

"This is going to be a long process... What this (open source) initiative is basically trying to streamline (is) our use and development of software in the country," Maseko said.

Maseko said it was too early to provide timeframes for implementing Linux.

South Africa joins governments in other emerging markets like Brazil, China, Spain, India and Malaysia in adopting open source software, with proponents of Linux arguing that the free software could help slash the cost of getting computers into schools, homes and community centres.
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1377

Push for Open Access to Research

Internet law professor Michael Geist takes a look at a fundamental shift in the way research journals become available to the public

Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication.

That requirement - called an open access principle - would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.

Despite scant media attention, word of the petition spread quickly throughout the scientific and research communities.

Within weeks, it garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world.

In response, the European Commission committed more than $100m (£51m) towards facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year.

The European developments demonstrate the growing global demand for open access, a trend that is forcing researchers, publishers, universities, and funding agencies to reconsider their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Access denied

For years, the research model has remained relatively static.

In many countries, government funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences dole out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at national universities.

University researchers typically published their findings in expensive, peer-reviewed publications, which were purchased by those same publicly-funded universities.

The model certainly proved lucrative for large publishers, yet resulted in the public paying twice for research that it was frequently unable to access.

Cancer patients seeking information on new treatments or parents searching for the latest on childhood development issues were often denied access to the research they indirectly fund through their taxes.

The emergence of the internet dramatically changes the equation.

Researchers are increasingly choosing to publish in freely available, open access journals posted on the internet, rather than in conventional, subscription-based publications.

Electronic copies

The Directory of Open Access Journals, a Swedish project that links to open access journals in all disciplines, currently lists more than 2,500 open access journals worldwide featuring a library in excess of 127,000 articles.

Moreover, the cost of establishing an open access journal has dropped significantly.

Aided by the Open Journal System, a Canadian open source software project based at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, more than 800 journals, many in the developing world, currently use the freely available OJS to bring their publications to the internet.

For those researchers committed to traditional publication, open access principles mandate that they self-archive their work by depositing an electronic copy in freely available institutional repositories shortly after publication.

This approach grants the public full access to the work, while retaining the current peer-reviewed conventional publication model.

While today this self-archiving approach is typically optional, a growing number of funding agencies are moving toward a mandatory requirement.

These include the National Institutes of Health in the US, the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, and the Australian Research Council.

Moreover, some countries are considering legislatively mandating open access.

For example, last year the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced in the US Congress.

If enacted, the bill would require federal agencies that fund over $100m in annual external research to make manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from that research publicly available on the internet.

Countering open access

Notwithstanding the momentum toward open access, some barriers remain.

First, many conventional publishers actively oppose open access, fearful that it will cut into their profitability.

Indeed, soon after the launch of the European petition, Nature reported that publishers were preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to counter open access support with a message that equates public access to government censorship.

Second, many universities and individual researchers have been slow to adopt open access with only a limited number of universities worldwide having established institutional repositories to facilitate deposit of research by their faculty.

The University of Southampton and Brunel University School of Information Systems are the only two UK universities to establish both a repository and a policy requesting that faculty submit electronic copies of all publications.

Third, many government funding agencies around the world are uncertain about adopting open access mandates.

The failure to lead on this issue could have long-term negative consequences for global research.

Given the connection between research and economic prosperity, the time has come for governments, their funding agencies, and the international research community to maximise the public's investment in research by prioritising open access.

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6404429.stm

There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Eric Flint

This is a preview of the full story. It contains 1/3 to 1/2 of the story available to you free. To read the rest, and see the illustrations, you'll need to subscribe to the magazine.

I ended my last essays as follows:

Is it true that modern electronic devices have made copyright infringement "so effortless" that it has become—or threatens to become—a serious menace to legitimate copyright owners?

The answer is "no." In the next issue, I'll explain why.

****

The reason the answer is "no," in a nutshell, is encapsulated in the sub-title of this essay: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

That colloquial expression captures a fundamental economic truth. Nothing that requires labor to be performed is really "free." You're going to pay for it, one way or other. Either by performing unpaid labor yourself, or by paying someone else for it. If not directly, then indirectly.

The real difference between a toll road and a "freeway" is not that a toll road costs you money and a freeway is "free." It most certainly is not "free." That freeway was built and is maintained by the taxpayers' money. The only difference, from the standpoint of cost, is how the money is collected. In the case of toll roads, it's collected directly from the users in the form of tolls. In the case of a freeway, it's collected from the entire population in the form of taxes.

Let's now apply that economic principle to crime. Whatever else it is, crime is also labor. In some cases—what are often called "crimes of passion"—that fact is simply irrelevant. But it is not irrelevant at all when the crime involved is one that is either motivated by a desire for profit, or simply profit's poor second cousin, the desire to eliminate a cost to yourself.

To give an example, most shoplifters do not steal in order to resell at a profit. They steal for their own use—but it's worth the risk to them because they eliminate the cost of paying for the stolen item. The thief's equivalent of the old saw, "a penny saved is a penny earned."

And that's what drives most—not all—electronic copyright infringement. People do not generally "pirate" an electronic text in order to sell it for a profit. They do it in order to get the text itself, for their own use.

There is one major exception to this rule. But that involves people who can operate openly on a mass production scale in countries which do not enforce international intellectual property rights. And the only thing I'll say about that here is that all the arguments advanced by DRM advocates are silly when you're dealing with this one (and only) instance of mass-scale piracy. For the obvious reason that the only conceivable way to enforce the law is to somehow cajole or coerce the authorities in a foreign country to do it. You might or might not be able to do that, but if you can it certainly won't be due to DRM laws which are such a burden to the population in countries which do respect intellectual property rights.

I said "not all" electronic copyright infringement is due to the motive named above, because there is a peculiar variety of a "crime of passion" that you do encounter in this area. There are some people out there, possessed by the firm delusion that "information wants to be free"—as if bits of data had legs and went walking about on their own—who see the deliberate violation of copyright as striking a blow for freedom.

But there aren't many of them, and, taken by themselves, their actions don't amount to more than a social nuisance. Yes, it's irritating to authors to see their work posted up on the internet without their permission, especially when the deed is accompanied by a virtual raspberry from a super-annuated juvenile delinquent bragging about it. But the fact remains that the material damage done to authors by such activity is so minimal that it can barely be distinguished from zero—if there's any material damage at all, which I doubt.

I am not guessing about this. The reason I initially put up my first novel for free online was because I got fed up reading the hysterical howls of some authors in online discussion groups, shrieking that their livelihood was being mortally threatened.

To prove that was nonsense, as graphically as I could, I put up one of my own novels for free. "Pirated myself," if you'll allow me the absurd expression. That novel, Mother of Demons, has been available online for free for almost seven years now. And . . .

It's still in print, and still keeps selling.

Soon thereafter, with Jim Baen's cooperation, we set up the Baen Free Library on Baen Books' web site, which now has dozens of titles from many authors made available for free to anyone who wants them. (If you're not familiar with the Library, you can find it by going to Baen Books web site—www.baen.com—and selecting "Free Library" from the left side of the menu across the top.

The titles are not only made available for free, they are completely unencrypted—in fact, we'll provide you free of charge with whatever software you'd prefer to download the texts. We make them available in five different formats.

And . . .

The sky did not fall. To the contrary, many of those books have remained in print and continued to be profitable for the publishers and paying royalties to the authors. For years, now, in some cases. Included among them is my own most popular title, 1632. I put that novel up in the Baen Library back in 2001—six years ago. At the time, the novel had sold about 30,000 copies in paperback.

Today, six years after I "pirated" myself, the novel has sold over 100,000 copies.

In the face of examples like this—and this is but one example—all arguments that "online piracy" guts legitimate sales are exposed as pure and simple blather. In point of fact, the exact opposite is true. The real effect of making books available for free in electronic format is that it keeps stimulating sales of the paper editions—which is where 95% of the money is, anyway, from an author or a publisher's standpoint.

I'll deal in a later essay with the issue of what would happen if electronic reading became the dominant or even exclusive form of book reading. But we're a long way from that point today. Despite the continually rosy projections regarding electronic books, the crude fact is that the reading public has stubbornly resisted them and, year after year, continues to demonstrate its great preference for "obsolete" paper books. That's because book-buyers are not morons, as I'll discuss below.

The reason that Baen's policy regarding electronic publishing works goes back to the economic principle in the subtitle: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. We start off by recognizing that—and recognizing it from sides of the equation.

Here's one side of the economic equation. Our Captain Morgan wannabe "pirate," when he sets out to swipe an electronic book by downloading an illegal edition rather than paying for a legal one, has to do the same thing any criminal does, except people engaged in crimes of passion. He has to consider whether the amount of labor involved for him is worth the end gain.

One of the things I find genuinely bizarre about this debate is the constant assumption of my opponents that people will do anything just in order to get something for free. It's incredible—since that proposition is tested every single day in America by millions of people, and proven wrong over and over again.

Don't believe me? What do you think sustains toll roads, to name just one example? If people were willing to do anything—expend any effort, for any length of time—just in order to avoid paying a few dollars for something, then why does anyone ever use a toll road in the first place? With the exception of a few places—an island, for instance, that can only be driven to across a toll bridge—it is perfectly possible to drive anywhere in the United States without ever paying a thin dime in the form of road tolls.

But, generally, doing so takes more time—and time is money. On some instinctual level, if nothing else, most people understand that. Every extra hour you spend behind the wheel of a car going from Point A to Point B is an hour you've lost either from paying labor or simply from your lifespan. Unless you have another motive for spending that time—sight-seeing, for instance—you're generally quite willing to pay a modest toll in order to get where you're going a little faster.

Now apply that toll road principle to the problem of electronic copy infringement. Is it absolute nonsense to claim that "pirating" an electronic text means that you got it for "free." Uh, no, you didn't. You may have saved some money—but you did it at the expense of spending time and labor to circumvent the legal process. Your time and labor—not the victim's.

In the real world, criminals do not do everything in a criminal manner. Whatever you or I think of their morals, they are just as capable as anyone else of gauging an enterprise from the standpoint of its cost-effectiveness.

Bank robbers do indeed rob banks. But here's what they don't do, or do very, very rarely:

They don't illegally siphon gas from a neighbor's car to fuel the getaway vehicle. Instead, they buy the gasoline.

They might steal the gun they're planning to use to rob the banks, because guns are expensive. But they're not likely to steal the ammunition—much less try to make the ammunition themselves. Why bother? They're not planning to fight a war, they simply need enough ammunition to load a gun. So they buy the ammunition.

I would think the point is obvious. Pirates rob bullion ships, they don't rob grain ships. Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an "economic epidemic" under certain conditions. Any one of the following:

1) The product they want—electronic texts—are hard to find, and thus valuable.

2) The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them.

3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with.

Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they're the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises.

And . . .

Guess what? It's precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called "online piracy," it's DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward.

Let's start with the third point. A DRM-crippled text is a royal pain in the ass for legitimate customers. First of all, because you have to have the right software (and often hardware) to use Product A as opposed to Product B—since the publishing and software industries can't agree on a common standard. And, secondly, because you have absolutely no guarantee that next year those same industries won't make the software you purchased from them obsolete and thereby make the books you bought unreadable.

Can we say "eight-track tape?" "Beta-Max?" "Vinyl LPs?"

The buying public, by now, has long and bitter memories of the way the entertainment industries have shafted them over and over again, by introducing one technology, forcing everyone to adopt it—and then scrapping that technology in favor of yet another.

It's no wonder the reading public had so stubbornly resisted electronic reading. As I said above, they are not morons. Contrast the ridiculous demands that the publishing industry tries to place on their electronic text customers to the joys and splendors of buying a paper book:

You do not need an "end user license." Nope. Just buy the book with legal currency and you own it outright.

You do not need to buy separate software or hardware to read it. Nope. The only "software" you need is a pair of functioning eyes and a knowledge of the language the book is written in. Thazzit.

You now own a product that you can do any damn thing you want with. You can lend it to a friend, donate it to a library, use it for a doorstop or to swat a fly.

And, finally, you are in possession of a product whose technological durability and reliability has been tested and proven billions of times, and for centuries. Even a cheap paperback, with any degree of reasonable care, will still be readable half a century after you bought it—whereas not one piece of software has yet demonstrated that it can last much more than a few years.

Now let's move to the second point. Precisely because DRM has made electronic reading such a distasteful idea for most of the reading public—even a loathsome one, for many—it has strangled the market in its crib. Despite all the rosy projections and predictions, year after year after year, the electronic reading industry has remained miniscule compared to the paper book industry. Is it any wonder?

But certain things go along with that. If you can only sell a few units of a product, you will have to charge more per unit to cover your operating costs and hope to make a profit. So . . .

We now have the grotesque phenomenon where publishers typically charge more for an electronic book than they do for a paper book—even though everyone knows perfectly well that electronic texts are far cheaper to produce and distribute. That's mostly because the distribution costs that typically swallow about half of all income generated by paper books sales—and a higher percentage for paper magazines—is relatively tiny for an electronic publication.

And, so, dragged by the inexorable logic of this DRM lunacy, we arrive back at point one. Because electronic books are disliked by most of the public, and are then further constricted in terms of the market by being over-priced, they also become relatively rare. And it's probably rarity more than anything that fuels most book-stealing, whether of paper or electronic editions.

The truth is this. Books simply aren't that valuable—in any format—that they'll ever serve as a major target for criminal enterprises. That's especially so because, with a very few exceptions, books don't have the advantage of being sellable in large numbers. There's a logic to criminals hijacking a truck loaded with cartons of cigarettes, even though any single carton isn't worth much more than a book. But the sheer volume of the cigarettes involved makes up the difference—because they're just aren't that many brands of cigarettes to begin with, so they're easy to sell. Whereas books . . .

There are literally hundreds of thousands—no, millions—of "brands" of books. No gangster with the brains of a squirrel is going to hijack a truck full of books. To whom and how would he sell them? Two books over here, one book over there, week after week. . . .

The main reason people swipe books—or do the equivalent, like buying a paperback with a stripped cover that they probably know is not a legitimate copy—is simply because they can't find a legal copy. Not, at least, for anything they consider a reasonable price or in a format they find acceptable. But if they could, they would, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

On a cold-blooded economic level, it is the understanding I've laid out above that always guided Jim Baen from the beginning of the electronic publishing era. Jim always understood all this. (In fact, I learned a lot of myself from watching him and talking to him.)

From the beginning, Baen Books has always consistently followed a course of action that is diametrically opposed to the one advocated by DRM enthusiasts.

Baen's policy can be summed up using the same three points I enumerated above:

1) Electronic editions of Baen's titles are not rare. In fact, they're almost ubiquitous. With less than a handful of exceptions—those usually involve contractual restrictions on electronic publication insisted on by a few estates—all Baen titles will be produced in an electronic edition as well as a paper edition.

2) The books are priced cheaply. Where most publishers insist on selling ebooks at a higher price than paperbacks, Baen sells them at a lower price—and a much lower price if you take advantage of their monthly Webscription service. You can buy a Baen title in electronic format for as little as $2.50—and almost no title is priced higher than $5.

3) Finally, the books are designed to be as user-friendly as possible. Baen will provide the text in any one of five popular formats, some of which are completely unencrypted. No restrictions are placed on the customer's use of the book thereafter. They can do whatever they want with it, just as they can with a paper book.

Given all that, who is going to bother to steal a Baen title? How many people with enough intelligence to read a book in the first place are going to go through the time and effort to find a pirated edition of something that they could have obtained legally—very easily and quickly, at a stable and well-known web site—for five dollars or less? An edition, furthermore, which has been professionally prepared and doesn't carry the same sort of frequent OCR-scanning errors that most pirated editions do?

Some, sure. There are always a few fruitcakes here and there. But not enough to ever be anything more than a minor nuisance, at worst.

The kind of thing you run across—very occasionally—is exemplified by a case that happened about four years ago. A well-meaning person sent me and Jim Baen a somewhat breathless email warning us that some rascal had taken one of the free CDs containing many electronic texts that Baen often distributes in hardcover editions and had put it up for sale on eBay for $100.

I called Jim on the phone to see if he wanted to do anything about it. Not to my surprise, however, his reaction was the same as mine. "Why the hell should I waste my valuable time trying to prevent someone from earning the Darwin award? If somebody out there is stupid enough to pay $100 to get an illegal copy of something they could have gotten perfectly legally by buying a $25 hardcover, let 'em and be damned."

My attitude toward so-called "electronic pirates"—these virtual Bluebeard wannabes—is one of cheerful contempt. Contempt, because they're jerks. Cheerful, because their periodic vainglorious boasts about "destroying copyright" are the equivalent of so many mice chittering at an elephant.

Don't bother pirating my books, you pipsqueaks. I automatically put all of them up for free online about three months after the paperback edition comes out anyway. Because I know perfectly well that I'm generating far more sales from the wonderful—and dirt cheap—promotional value than I'm losing to so-called "pirates."

That's the key to the whole thing—as we will see, again and again, in the essays which follow. The way you deal with the problem of electronic copyright infringement is not by a futile—and political dangerous—attempt to place greater and greater legal restrictions on the access of the public to reading material. The way you do it is by recognizing, cold-bloodedly, certain fundamental economic principles and guiding yourself accordingly. By doing so, you cut the ground right out from under the problem.

Two other things will happen if you do so. The first is that, in purely and immediately financial terms, you will generate a lot more income than you will by following the Pied Pipers of DRM. It is a fact that Baen's way of selling e-books generates more income per unit sold for the publisher—and royalties for the authors—than the DRM methods used by other publishers. Those profits and royalties are still small, of course, compared to the profits and royalties earned by paper editions. But that's inevitable, so long as the electronic market as a whole remains stunted and tiny.

The second thing is that you will generate a lot of goodwill among your customers, where DRM policies infuriate those same customers. And while it's not easy to assign a precise value to "goodwill" in a balance sheet, no one with any sense doubts that it's a very real—and major—asset for any business.

We couldn't have launched this magazine without that asset. We knew from the beginning that we'd have an uphill struggle, trying to create a successful online science fiction magazine that paid better rates to authors than any other magazine, given the small size of the electronic market. But we also gauged that Baen Books had, over the years, generated enough goodwill and trust among its core customers that we could get the support we needed for the Universe Club—given that we'd be publishing the magazine along the same well-established anti-DRM principles that Baen has always done.

And so it proved. About half the income the magazine receives comes from the Club, with the other half being provided by subscriptions. That's what has so far enabled us to weather this very hard initial period in the magazine's existence—and the reason we're confident we're going to be successful in the long run.

Everyone should understand one thing, if nothing else. The only reason this debate over DRM as it applies to electronic text is still going on is simply because our opponents have what amounts to a quasi-religious and sometimes downright hysterical blind faith in the magic powers of DRM. As a test of competing business strategies in the real world of economic intercourse, the debate is over.

Finished. Done.

We won, they lost—and it was a rout.
http://preview.baens-universe.com/articles/salvos6

An Economic Explanation For Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Model Opportunities
Mike

Continuing my increasingly lengthy series of posts on the economics of non-scarce goods, I wanted to take a look at an issue that I mentioned in passing earlier this week concerning the ongoing insistence among the entertainment industry (and the DRM industry) that DRM somehow will open up new business models. I'd like to explain why, economically, that doesn't make sense.

First, to clarify, I should point out that, technically, I mean that it doesn't make sense that DRM could ever open up feasible or successful business models. Anyone can create a new unsuccessful business model. For example, I'm now selling $1 bills for $1,000. It's a new business model (well, perhaps not to the dot coms of the original dot com boom), but it's unlikely to be a successful one (if you disagree, and would like to pay me $1,000 for $1, please use the feedback form above to make arrangements). However, for a new business model to make sense, it needs to provide more value. Providing more value than people can get elsewhere is the reason why a business model succeeds. So, any new business model must be based on adding additional value.

The good news is that value is not a scarce concept. Unfortunately, there are too many in this world who view value and growth as a zero-sum game. They believe that there's some fundamental limit on the possibility of adding value, and therefore, business models are about moving around a limited amount of value, rather than expanding it. It's the same fallacy facing those who have trouble understanding zero and infinity in economics. The economist Paul Romer's discussion on Economic Growth offers a concise explanation for this:

Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. Human history teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.
Note that it's the non-scarce products, the recipes and the ideas, that helps expand the value of the limited resources, the ingredients. You expand value by creating new non-scarce goods that make scarce goods more valuable -- and you can keep on doing so, indefinitely. Successful new business models are about creating those non-scarce goods and helping them increase value. Any new business model must be based around increasing the overall pie. It's about recognizing that creating value isn't about shifting around pieces of a limited economic pie -- but making the overall pie bigger.

DRM is fundamentally opposed to this concept. It is not increasing value for the consumer in any way, but about limiting it. It takes the non-scarce goods, the very thing that helps increase value, and constrains them. Those non-scarce goods are what increase the pie and open up new opportunities for those who know where to capture the monetary rewards of that value (within other limited resources). DRM, on the other hand, holds back that value and prevents it from being realized. It shrinks the pie -- and no successful business models come out of providing less value and shrinking the overall pie. Fundamentally, DRM cannot create a successful new business model. It can only contain one.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070301/005837.shtml

New Hot Properties: YouTube Celebrities
Bob Tedeschi

No one would mistake the Ask a Jew guy for Lonelygirl15, but these days YouTube contributor Shmuel Tennenhaus is feeling like a hot commodity.

Mr. Tennenhaus, an aspiring comedy writer who gained a modest following on YouTube for his droll question-and-answer clips and other spots featuring his grandmother “Bubby,” is being wooed by the site’s competitors, including Metacafe, ManiaTV and others, with promises of guaranteed exposure, a share of advertising money, or both.

“It’s all very odd,” said Mr. Tennenhaus, speaking from Hallandale, Fla. His YouTube channel, Oneparkave, has logged roughly 32,000 visits and a few hundred subscribers since last fall. “My parents say I’m special, but I can’t imagine I’m the only guy they’re contacting.”

He has that right. The most popular YouTubers, who have generated millions of visits and tens of thousands of subscribers, say they have received overtures from multiple sites. And YouTube, meanwhile, appears ready to respond to the challenge.

“I think everybody that has a site has contacted me,” said Paul Robinett, whose YouTube persona Renetto has attracted 1.19 million views and more than 23,000 subscribers. Mr. Robinett, who is based in Columbus, Ohio, and frequently posts commentaries on YouTube-related issues, said: “They’re not throwing a ton of money around. It’s kind of chump change. And I haven’t responded because I know revenue-sharing is coming to YouTube.”

Few performers will divulge what kind of money is being thrown around. But Metacafe pays $5 for every 1,000 views, with their most popular acts netting tens of thousands of dollars, figures that the site will mention when trying to persuade YouTube stars to defect.

In January, YouTube’s co-founder, Chad Hurley, said the company would in the coming months begin sharing advertising revenue with contributors. The company last week said it would not elaborate on that plan, or on the efforts of competitors to lure its contributors away.

But Mr. Robinett said he was contacted by a talent agency claiming YouTube plans to share about 20 percent of the advertising money gleaned from each video clip with the clip’s producer. Mr. Robinett said he could not confirm that claim with a YouTube executive.

YouTube is by far the most popular video site on the Web, with about 26 million visitors in December, according to comScore Media Metrix, an Internet statistics firm. Yahoo Video had 22 million, while the closest independent site, Heavy.com, had about 6.5 million visitors.

But YouTube has been stung by the departure of its most popular acts. Last fall, Lonelygirl15, an online show about the exploits of a fictitious teenager, left YouTube for Revver, which pays producers half of all advertising revenue. The comedy duo Smosh, another of YouTube’s biggest stars, moved to LiveVideo.com, where its videos begin and end with that site’s branding messages.

The Smosh stars did not return e-mail messages seeking comment, but David Peck, LiveVideo’s vice president of operations based in El Segundo, Calif., said: “Just as every TV network, film studio and record label in America has done for decades, we are proactively signing talent to bring their work to new audiences.”

Mr. Peck would not disclose the terms of its deals with contributors, but other popular YouTube contributors say LiveVideo has recruited them with promises of money in exchange for the right to show their videos exclusively for an introductory period.

James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, an Internet consultancy in Cambridge, Mass., said YouTube’s executives can expect hardball tactics from competitors, given the stakes.

“It’s not at all bad form to try to poach other users,” Mr. McQuivey said. “The people providing the best content are obviously valuable. The only problem is, no YouTube competitor can say, ‘We’ll get you millions of eyeballs in a week.’ ”

As a result, Mr. McQuivey said, YouTube’s competitors must offer cash. “And who’s going to pay them? Advertisers. But advertisers also want to see millions of eyeballs.”

Revver, with a monthly audience estimated by comScore at about 400,000, is big enough to attract advertisers, said Steven Starr, the company’s chief, speaking from Hollywood. But in luring Lonelygirl15’s producers to his site, he said he had offered nothing more than Revver offers any other contributor, nor did it demand exclusivity.

Other sites “are making noise around advancing guarantees to their talent, but we don’t do that,” Mr. Starr said. Because Revver earns ad revenue based on the number of clip views, he encourages producers to distribute their videos on as many sites as possible.

Allyson Campa, the vice president of marketing for Metacafe in Palo Alto, Calif., said the site, which shares advertising revenue with its producers, routinely recruits contributors from other video sites.

“We don’t have a specific strategy to poach specific creators, but we’ve certainly increased our emphasis on getting the word out and letting creators know we have a great system,” she said.

Ms. Campa added that Metacafe has not offered incentives to contributors to join the site, but that she “would not rule out” such an approach.

Drew Massey, the chief executive of ManiaTV, a video site based in Denver on which users create channels with homemade clips and professionally produced content, acknowledged that the site has recruited YouTube contributors with pledges to feature them on ManiaTV’s home page.

“I’m sure every site does it,” Mr. Massey said. “We’re not saying ‘Here’s a ton of money.’ It’s more like, ‘Check us out and get exposure if you’re really good.’ For producers, two things are important: fame and fortune. In that order.”

Indeed, some of YouTube’s stars say they don’t necessarily want money. Mr. Tennenhaus, who recently received an e-mail overture from ManiaTV, said: “It’s a no-brainer, especially since the e-mail didn’t talk about me doing exclusive content.”

“This is not about the money,” Mr. Tennenhaus said. “Right now, it’s an unbelievable opportunity to showcase my stuff and get feedback from real people. For me it’s like going to college, and getting hands-on experience.”

Ben Going, creator of Boh3m3, another of YouTube’s most popular channels, started his YouTube series in part because he aspired to work with the “Jackass” team. Mr. Going, a waiter in Huntsville, Ala., who shoots videos from his bedroom, now says he hopes “video blogging might become some kind of career.”

“I’ve seen people mentioning that now that Google has given YouTube $1.6 billion, they’re going to share it with users,” Mr. Going said. “That’s not going to happen, but if the site keeps escalating, maybe in six months it’ll grow into something very profitable for everybody.”

That is what Mr. Robinett, a k a Renetto, is hoping. Mr. Robinett recently posted a video chastising YouTube stars who have bolted to other sites. He said the video was tongue in cheek, though many in the YouTube community missed the joke.

Loyalty does count for something, Mr. Robinett said. “If YouTube stays on top, would you like to be the loyal guy who stuck it out, or the one who ran from here to there to be popular?” he said.

Then again, Mr. Robinett added, no one has tested his loyalty with a truly lucrative offer.

“These companies don’t quite understand,” he said. “If they understood the power and influence that some of the bigger people bring to the table, they wouldn’t think twice about paying me and 10 other people $100,000 apiece to blog for three months. If they thought twice about doing that, they’d be nuts.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/te...26ecom.html?hp

Assault Spurs School YouTube Ban
AP

An Australian state has banned the online video Web site YouTube from government schools in a crackdown on cyber-bullying, a minister said Thursday.

Victoria, Australia's second most populous state, banned the popular video-sharing site from its 1,600 government schools after a gang of male school students videotaped their assault on a 17-year-old girl on the outskirts of Melbourne.

The assault, which is being investigated by police, was uploaded on YouTube late last year.

Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said the schools and their Internet service providers already filtered the Web sites that were available to students, and YouTube had been added to a list of blocked sites.

The state government "has never tolerated bullying in schools and this zero tolerance approach extends to the online world," Allan said.

"All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment -- this includes making students' experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible," she said.

YouTube is a free video-sharing site that lets users upload, view, and share video clips.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapc...?eref=rss_tech

Teen Who Posted `Catch ME' on MySpace Caught, Official Says
AP

A 16-year-old fugitive believed to have posted a "Catch me if you can" message on his MySpace Web page was recaptured Friday, three days after his escape, an official says.

On Tuesday, Jordan Danski of Clinton Township was being held at the Macomb County Juvenile Justice Center on a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon when he and two other teenagers escaped. The others were quickly caught, but for several days, Danski was not.

Authorities say they believe Danski posted the words, "Catch me if you can" as the heading of his MySpace page Wednesday. Another message said "2 fast for the feds to cocky for the cops."

MySpace is a popular, social networking Web site.

"What a smart aleck," Danski's grandmother and guardian, Betty Danski, told the Detroit Free Press. "At least I know he's probably safe."

Danski's page also drew comments from supporters.

The messages included "run jordan run" and "haha keep runnin man, dont let them ... catch you," The Detroit News reported.

On Friday, Macomb County authorities had recaptured Danski, said county spokesman Phil Frame.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...03-01-16-42-45

The Bob Woodruff Report

On injured war vets and the VA hospital system (by the ABC anchor nearly killed on assignment last year in Iraq).
Jack

I missed it when broadcast earlier this week. I heard it was good. It’s even better than that. ABC has the entire show in short, commercial-free segments. It’s a powerfull and timely program.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...ad.php?t=23731

Adding to Security but Multiplying the Fears
Adam Liptak

Foreigners arriving at the American border must present both index fingers for fingerprinting, but that will soon change. The Department of Homeland Security now wants 10 fingers.

The two-print system was largely a biometric backup, an added level of security to supplement and verify a passport or a visa. The 10-print system adds a powerful investigative tool.

“When we have a fingerprint of a terrorist who has left behind a bomb or an I.E.D. in Iraq or has left his fingerprint in a safe house somewhere, we don’t always have the two index fingers,” Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official, said at a briefing in December. “It could be the pinkie or the thumb. And thus by moving to a 10-print system, we will enhance our ability to use biometrics to enable us to identify threats before they occur in the United States.”

Call it biometric mission creep.

People concerned about privacy and civil liberties say they fear the creation of gigantic biometric databases ripe for data-mining abuse. They note that Mr. Rosenzweig was a supporter of the Total Information Awareness program at the Defense Department, which had planned, as the Pentagon put it, to create “ultralarge all-source information repositories.” The program was shut down in 2003 because it scared people.

The administration’s last-ditch defense of that effort was telling, too. It changed the name to the Terrorism Information Awareness program.

There is a pattern here, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “These techniques that are sold to us as necessary to identify terrorists inevitably become systems of mass surveillance directed at the American people,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

In an interview, Robert A. Mocny, the acting director of U.S.-Visit, the unit in the Department of Homeland Security that is in charge of the fingerprint program, said all the right things. “We cannot,” Mr. Mocny said, “have a reaction to 9/11 such that we’re sacrificing privacy and civil liberties on the altar of security.”

But the privacy folks have a point. Once information is captured, it must be tempting to use it. With little discussion, for instance, driver’s license photographs have been dumped into enormous digital databases, ripe for searches with facial recognition technology. Police departments have started to use the databases to find people and identify suspects. That may be a fine idea, but it is one that has been pursued without real debate or disclosure.

Mr. Mocny made a persuasive case that the move to 10 prints enhanced the legitimate goals of identification and investigation.

“We’ve identified 1,800 people who’ve tried to lie their way into the United States, and their fingerprints tripped them up,” he said.

The 10-print program will, he said, make identifications even more reliable. “We’re now at 80 million-plus individuals in the system,” he said. “With that many fingerprints, they start to look alike.” More fingers, he said, means more differentiation.

On the investigative side, more fingerprints give the authorities more opportunities to check them against a watch list of 2.5 million prints that includes, he said, “known and suspected terrorists,” sexual predators and people wanted on criminal and immigration charges.

But there are real questions about the reliability of the technologies employed. Though fingerprint evidence is widely assumed to be close to infallible, recall the $2 million the federal government paid in November in the settlement of a lawsuit filed by Brandon Mayfield.

Mr. Mayfield, a lawyer in Oregon, was arrested in 2004 after the F.B.I. definitively and mistakenly concluded that his fingerprints matched one taken from a plastic bag containing detonator caps found at the scene of the bombings in Madrid that year.

“Fingerprints work fine when you have a bank robbery in Chicago,” said Michael Cherry, vice chairman of the digital technology committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. But matching a partial fingerprint of poor quality and uncertain vintage collected in Afghanistan or Iraq to a database of global scope is a different matter.

The 10-print strategy, Mr. Cherry said, is a “technical nightmare that will produce many Brandon Mayfields.”

At an American Bar Association conference in November, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, said the 10-print program “creates a powerful deterrent for anybody who has ever spent time sitting in a training camp and training or building a bomb in a safe house or carrying out a terrorist mission on a battlefield.”

Those terrorists, presumably, will be deterred by not wanting to test the nation’s border security. Or the deterrent may be a different one: encouraging a generation of young jihadists to wear gloves.

“Unless you believe there’s a constitutional right or a civil liberties right to have phony documents or to pretend to be someone you’re not, I don’t really see the cost in civil liberties,” Mr. Chertoff told the assembled lawyers.

“By the way,” he added, “we’ll be collecting all of your glasses after dinner.”
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/us/26bar.html

Google in Content Deal With Media Companies
Louise Story

Google built an empire delivering advertisements across the Internet, and now it plans to distribute content from media companies just as aggressively.

Google is working with Dow Jones & Company, Condé Nast, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other large content companies to syndicate their video content on other Web sites. The videos appear inside Google ad boxes on sites that are relevant to the content of the videos, and advertisements run during or after the content. Google shared the ad revenue with the video provider and with the sites that show the videos.

There are already video ad networks that make similar deals, and NBC Universal is attempting something similar. But the Google experiment could be more widespread since the company already has a vast reach on the Internet.

“Once upon a time, if you had some video content that you wanted to distribute, you could do it on three television stations in the days of the networks, then 100 in the days of cable,” said Kim Malone, director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense. “Now, thanks to this program, you can do it on literally millions of channels on the Internet.”

On the financial news site StreetInsider.com, for example, videos from The Wall Street Journal, a Dow Jones property, are running within ads on the site. In one, Emily Friedlander, a Wall Street Journal reporter, narrates a video feature on the TKTS booth in Times Square; Sam Schechner of The Journal speaks about marriage in TV shows; and Jonathan Welsh visits a motorcycle show.

After the three videos, a commercial from Pantene Pro-V, a hair conditioner, appears. In that case, Google shares the ad revenue with StreetInsider.com and Dow Jones.

The videos and the accompanying ads can also be found on articles on YoungMoney.com, AdVersus.com and SeatGuru.com, among other sites. A ski resort show created by LX.TV, a broadband network, is being shown with ads on skiing blogs.

The ads are part of Google’s larger initiative to gain traction with consumer goods companies who spend billions on brand advertising. Founded as a text-based search company, Google’s early advertisers were smaller companies and advertisers who bought ads to generate direct sales rather than to build brand recognition.

Large brand advertisers still spend the bulk of their money on television advertising, but Google sees potential for them to spend more online through the use of video ads.

But Google’s broad plan to bundle media content with ads depends on participation from media companies. On the one hand, Google’s network will bring more visibility of their content across the Internet, where attention is fragmented online between thousands of sites. On the other hand, media companies like to be a destination in their own right, so that they can sell ads on their sites.

“We want people to come directly to our site, but that’s part of why we’re doing this,” said Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the digital arm of Condé Nast. “To see if we can find people that we haven’t found in other ways.”

Media companies also want to keep control over their relationships with advertisers. Google sells ads in its network for Condé Nast videos, but in a similar content-ad test with MTV Networks last fall, MTV sold the ads (sharing the revenue with Google).

Adam Cahan, executive vice president of strategy and business development for MTV Networks, said that his networks want to make sure that when their content is distributed on the Web, that it links to their sites.

“In the same way that Harry Potter book sales grow from a Harry Potter movie, you would not give the movie away to support the book sales,” Mr. Cahan said. “There is a balance between promotion and consumption that is up to the original content producer to manage.”
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6162158.html

An Ad Upstart Forces Google to Open Up a Little
Louise Story

Google and Yahoo have been fighting it out over which company will dominate the online advertising business, with Google maintaining the upper hand so far.

But in the competition for contextual text ads — those small sponsored links that run adjacent to related articles online — both companies are facing a challenge from a tiny but growing adversary named Quigo Technologies, a New York-based ad service that bills itself as an alternative to the giants.

In the last year and a half, a trickle of large media sites like ESPN.com, FoxNews.com and Cox Newspapers’ 17 sites have stopped using Google and Yahoo and instead signed up with Quigo.

What Quigo offers is transparency and control in what can often be an opaque business: advertisers pay Yahoo and Google for contextual ad placement on a wide variety of Web pages, but get little say over where those ads run or even a list of sites where they do appear.

Quigo, by contrast, gives advertisers not only the list of specific sites where their ads have appeared but also the opportunity to buy only on specific Web sites or particular pages on those sites. It also allows media company sites like ESPN.com and FoxNews.com a chance to manage their own relationships with advertisers.

Although Quigo remains a small competitor, with less than 10 percent of the contextual ad business, its growing success has apparently persuaded Google, which is accustomed to calling the shots in all aspects of its business, that it has to change the way it sells the sponsored link ads in the future.

At stake is a growing portion of the online ad business, as traditional media companies try to monetize every corner of their Web sites. Contextual ads generated about $2 billion in revenue last year, or 13 percent of online ad spending, according to eMarketer, an Internet advertising research firm. About 60 percent of that money went to Google, David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer, said.

A central point in Quigo’s pitch to publishers is that it will let them keep control of their relationships with advertisers.

“We are gaining a lot of share,” said Michael Yavonditte, the chief executive of Quigo. “This has become a multibillion-dollar industry with no clear second-place company. There’s a lot of opportunity for other companies to put their own stamp on it.”

Here is how this contextual advertising has traditionally worked: Google and Yahoo post ads on hundreds of thousands of Web sites, but both operate as blind networks — they do not tell advertisers which sites their contextual ads run on. Instead, the advertisers buy keywords for ads across Google and Yahoo’s vast networks of Web sites, including the home pages of big media companies and the smallest of bloggers.

It would be akin to an advertiser buying space on 100 national television programs, but not being told when the ads ran. Google and Yahoo argue that because advertisers only pay when the ads are clicked on, that more specific information is irrelevant.

Nor has Google allowed advertisers to bid for keyword ads on specific Web sites — say, ESPN.com. Quigo says blind network buying lowers the prices that premier Web publishers receive because advertisers bid expecting an average site rather than a well-known, desirable one.

“Google, Yahoo and most other blind networks sit in the middle and own the advertiser relationships,” said Henry Vogel, the chief revenue officer of Quigo, which was founded in Israel in 2001. “By outsourcing their performance marketing programs to them, publishers get a check but little else. They don’t really build any longer-lasting strategic assets.”

Both Yahoo and Google play down Quigo’s inroads into the business. Emily Fox, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, said her company was not aware of losing any contextual text ad clients to Quigo other than ESPN. Kim Malone, director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense, said Google did not worry about Quigo.

“The David-and-Goliath story is always a great account,” Ms. Malone said, “but I think in this case, it’s just not accurate . We have a number of large publishers who have tried out other solutions, and they always come back.”

In response to further questions about Quigo, though, Google said it was prepared to make changes to its AdSense service that mimicked Quigo’s approach, an unusual step for a company accustomed to mapping the terrain in every aspect of its business.

In the next few months, Google’s advertiser reports will begin listing the sites where each ad runs, Ms. Malone said. She added that advertisers on the Google networks would soon be able to bid on contextual ads on particular Web sites rather than simply buying keywords that appeared across Google’s entire network.

Still, Ms. Malone said she did not see much of consequence coming from the changes. “We don’t expect a lot of demand for that placement targeting,” she said. “It’s the brand, the display advertisers who care where they run.”

But ad executives have another view.

Jason Clement, associate director of search engine management at Carat Fusion, an agency in the Aegis Group that buys online ads for large advertisers, says the lack of transparency has kept some large advertisers from spending heavily on contextual ads.

In a contextual advertising test on Yahoo and Google, some clients report bad experiences with their ads’ showing up in odd places. For example, Mr. Clement said a large client of his saw an ad run late last year alongside an article that said soy milk might be linked to homosexuality.

Mr. Clement said he frequently received calls from clients about odd placements, and, he said, they worried about click fraud — a practice in which people click on ads solely to make money for the sites that carry them.

“Last year was really the year of testing these contextual networks,” Mr. Clement said. “We had essentially pulled all of those big advertisers off of the ad networks by the end of the year.”

ESPN switched to Quigo from Yahoo last fall, in part, because of Quigo’s transparency, said Ed Erhardt, the network’s president of customer marketing and sales.

“When it’s blind advertising, you know, it’s just a different kind of buy,” Mr. Erhardt said.

Advertisers will often pay more for ads on sites like ESPN.com than they will for ads on little-known blogs, executives said. Quigo’s transparency about where ads run encourages advertisers to spend more for each click than they would on Google or Yahoo, said Jason Klein, co-chief executive of Special Ops Media, an interactive ad agency.

“Because traditional networks are blind, I’ve always assumed that many of the places where your ads come up are on B- and C-level sites,” Mr. Klein said. “With Quigo, you know it’s on ESPN.com, not Joe Schmo’s sports blog. It’s a premium site, and you’re willing to spend more money.”

For the big media companies, Quigo offers another advantage: it allows them to sell their own contextual ads and run the ads under their own brands rather than Quigo’s. In many cases, ads placed by Google run under a header that says “Ads By Google.” More important than the label, though, is that media companies can sell their advertisers Quigo contextual ads, whereas Google handles all of the sales for its publishers. That lets media companies, where advertiser relationships have long been important, keep control over those ties.

Cox Newspapers used Google AdSense for about two years, but in July, all Cox sites were shifted to Quigo for the text ads.

Cox wanted to sell its own contextual ads and have its brand, rather than Google’s, be the one advertisers see, said Tonya Echols, director of business intelligence at COXnet, the Internet division of Cox Newspapers, a part of Cox Enterprises.

“We’re already talking to advertisers,” Ms. Echols said. “We already have those relationships. We’ve been in our markets for decades.”

While Quigo sells the ads for some media companies, like the Martha Stewart Weddings site, others are selling their own ads. Newsday.com, which began working exclusively with Quigo in 2004, has brought more than 600 advertisers into the Quigo system, Mr. Vogel said.

The contextual ad business is still a small part of large publishers’ revenue from their Web sites. Display and video ads tend to be more lucrative, but this does not mean that media companies ignore the contextual business.

Mr. Vogel said he was not worried about Google’s coming changes to make its system more transparent. He said Quigo would remain distinct because of the priority it placed on giving publishers control and information about advertiser budgets, and its proprietary formulas that select the best ad placement and designs.

Forbes.com, which is Quigo’s most recent convert, was an early participant in Google’s AdSense program, and then switched to another third-party provider called IndustryBrains before coming to Quigo this month. Jim Spanfeller, chief executive of Forbes.com, said switching from Google was “a dollar-and-cent thing.”

“We could make more money with somebody else,” he said.

At the newspaper chain McClatchy, contextual ads are just shy of 2 percent of the company’s online sales, said Christian Hendricks, the vice president for interactive media.

McClatchy is currently testing Quigo’s ads at four of its papers, including The Fresno Bee, to compare it with Yahoo and Google. Mr. Hendricks said McClatchy was attracted to Quigo because it sells ads specifically for the individual newspapers, rather than using a blind network.

“What we’re trying to do is maximize revenues,” Mr. Hendricks said. “At this point, it looks like Quigo is performing better, but it doesn’t mean it will stay that way. All the other networks have to do is start selling our brands.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/bu...ia/26adco.html

The New Video Arcade in Spain Might Be the Movie Theater
Doreen Carvajal

For the last three years, Enrique Martínez has been toiling like a 3-D warrior to let the games begin.

The result is a hybrid movie theater with all the digital fire and fury of a video game: fog, black light, flashing green lasers, high-definition digital projectors, vibrating seats, game pads and dozens of 17-inch screens attached to individual chairs. And naturally, there’s buttered popcorn.

Called Cinegames, this small theater in a huge suburban multiplex stands at the front lines where video games are invading movie territory, transforming isolated computer play into community entertainment.

“Forget the pathetic speakers of a PC or television!” screams an ad for the theater, which opened in December and is offering cut-rate tickets at 3 euros, or about $3.95. “Come feel the sound that puts you at the center of the action.”

“We’re trying this concept because there are many theaters in Spain, and admissions are down,” Mr. Martínez said. “So we have to offer new products.”

Mr. Martínez developed the idea as part of an executive M.B.A. program at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid.

“We see the future with multiplexes with five screens, one for the traditional Hollywood spectaculars and the others for screens for video halls and 3-D. That’s the next step.”

Cinegames is a testing ground for the Yelmo Cineplex, a movie theater company in Spain, which spent more than $390,000 to modify one of its small individual theaters into a high-tech video gaming hall seating about 50 people.

Yelmo aims to expand the concept throughout Spain and into the rest of Europe and North America by allowing other theater companies to buy the system.

Other companies are also experimenting with different approaches to mix movie magic with video games.

CinemaxX, a chain in Germany, carried out a four-month trial last year with video games on one of its screens in Essen. And TimePlay Entertainment, based in Toronto, is developing theater technology that will allow moviegoers to play 15 minutes to 20 minutes of ad-sponsored interactive games before the movie starts.

Ultimately, the company wants to develop a system that opens up screens for a wide variety of uses, from popular games as basic as bingo to online computer role-playing games in a virtual world.

Not every experiment has been an instant success. The CinemaxX video theater in Germany failed to draw enough games, and the chain eventually decided to drop it.

Game manufacturers are monitoring the reaction to video theaters where games like Battlefield 1942 by Electronic Arts are being showcased.

“What the theater is offering is a new form to play with your friends and a new way to enjoy the games,” said Gonzalo San Juan, commercial director for Electronic Arts in Spain. “Now you can play with all your friends or your ‘clan,’ and there are many in Spain.”

But he added that he viewed the video theaters as complementary to online play.

Since Cinegames opened in Spain in December, weekends have proved to be the most popular with game players, according to Mr. Martínez. In the short time that it has been open, the video game theater has been drawing about 30 customers on weekday afternoons and more than 120 on weekend nights.

Yelmo is trying to develop an educational division that would rent out the hall to schools that could use the system for learning and testing. And it also has plans to market the theater to corporations and senior citizen groups in an attempt to attract a broader audience.

The theater is also busy organizing game tournaments with competitions this month for Manga video games and Pro Evolution Soccer, a popular soccer game produced by Electronic Arts.

On one Saturday morning, the soccer competitors streamed quietly into the darkened theater, while rock music blared around them and the giant screen filled with the computer-generated face of a deranged woman aiming a gun toward the audience.

Most people taking the seats were young men in their late teens and 20s — the typical demographic for the new game theater — although a few brought female supporters who paid 1 euro each to watch the action.

The most intense activity took place on the little silver screens where players battled against one another. The giant screen formed an edgy backdrop with game highlights and changing scores posted by a person tracking the play.

During a break, Javier Fernández Riballo paused to take stock of the surroundings.

“We’re still learning because this is so new, but it’s better to play this way in a tournament because there are plenty of screens,” said Mr. Fernández, 21, a Madrid university student who plays video soccer under the name of Vaquizza with a clan of other players. “Next Saturday, I’ll be back with a friend.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...y/movies26.php

Stolen Rockwell Painting Found With Spielberg
AP

A Norman Rockwell work stolen from suburban St. Louis more than three decades ago was found in Steven Spielberg's art collection, the FBI announced Friday.

The painting, Rockwell's "Russian Schoolroom," was snatched during a late-night burglary at a gallery in Clayton, Mo., on June 25, 1973. The Oscar-winning filmmaker purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and didn't know it was stolen until last week, the FBI said in a statement.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...berg-art_N.htm

Old-Line Hollywood Takes Back the Night
David Carr

The victory of “The Departed” at the Oscars on Sunday night represented many things: fair tribute to Martin Scorsese, recognition of the movie’s brute force at the box office, and an acknowledgment that stars not only make movies, they make the movie.

But something else could be read between the spaces of the field-leading four statues that this Warner Brothers movie won. Old-line Hollywood studios, confronted over the last few years by indifferent audiences and an insurgent collection of independent film makers, declared dominion over the industry’s crowning event.

Last year the industry was a bystander at its own party and was probably left to wonder how an event conceived for studio self-congratulation had been kidnapped by a bunch of people who couldn’t get a good table at Ivy if their lives depended on it. The first part of this year’s Academy Awards seemed to following the same script: a polyglot of languages, cobbled-together indie efforts and little movies that accomplished big things.

But as the evening progressed, you could see old-line Hollywood bolting down the Big Win. Beginning with the editing award given to Thelma Schoonmaker, a longtime Scorsese collaborator, it became clear that while the wistful charms of “Little Miss Sunshine” found an audience, and while the Academy sure appreciated the sweeping global themes of “Babel,” a brawling, big-budget popcorn movie was going to finish in the money.

And in case anyone missed the point, when it came time to give out best director, three of the directors who more or less invented the modern studio picture — George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola — stepped up to the stage. A riff about who had all the Oscars among the bunch followed, ending with an Oscar-less Mr. Lucas saying, “It is better to give than receive.”

Big belly laugh there, because everyone in the room knew better, a point Messrs. Spielberg and Coppola made jokingly clear. (Mr. Lucas was given the Thalberg Award in 1991.)

It was less poignant than telling that these four men, Mr. Scorsese included, were onstage together, having become what they once assailed. They are the establishment, and they are not ready to cede the field to a moshed-up world of indies and global filmmakers. “The Departed” was put together by Brad Grey, who now runs a studio (Paramount), was pushed through by Graham King, a master of the nexus between talent and studio, and included many of the marquee names in the business: Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon chief among them.

So, in a way, the fix was in. The absence of “Dreamgirls,” a strong studio film that went to the wall early on Oscar ambitions and got clobbered, left “The Departed” as the only film that was conceived, executed and marketed out of a big corner office, in this case, the one belonging to Alan F. Horn of Warner Brothers.

It was up against an indie charmer, “Little Miss Sunshine”; a British-inspired biography, “The Queen”; a globally ambitious film from a studio specialty division, “Babel”; and a gorgeous afterthought of a film, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” which was rendered in Japanese.

From the start Warner Brothers, never known as an Oscar powerhouse in terms of marketing or results, played rope-a-dope, keeping the film’s prospects in relative stealth mode (unlike “Dreamgirls”) and allowing voters to come to it instead of the other way around. It ended nicely for the studio, including another big victory in the form of “Happy Feet” lapping Pixar and Disney’s “Cars” for the animation victory.

“It’s a wonderful affirmation of what we set out to do, which is to support great filmmakers in their quest to make movies that deliver for audiences,” Mr. Horn said.

“Welcome to the Club” said The Los Angeles Times in its headline for the Oscars news on Monday, a headline that could be diced another way and suggest that the club, while theoretically open to all, remains an artifact of the studio culture.

“Last night proved that the Academy Awards is a major international event, as evidenced by the nominees from all over the world,” said Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, a specialty division of Sony (which won best foreign-language film for “The Lives of Others”). “There were indies and foreign efforts that received a lot of recognition. But best picture, best director and best screenplay all went to a big studio film, which suggests that American films are still at the center of the culture.”

Wags may note that “The Departed,” with its themes of betrayal, power lust and shifting alliances, mirrors life on the studio lot. They would not be far off. Mr. King had said before and after the awards that Mr. Grey deserved to be credited as a producer of the film, but when he got his moment on the stage, he ticked off over a dozen names. Even Idi Amin got a shout out, but Mr. Grey did not, and at the end of the night it was Mr. Graham standing in the middle of the Vanity Fair party holding Oscar in his big, meaty paw.

That is not how the game, at least in modern Hollywood, is played. It was sort of fitting that a movie about rats and double-agents marked the repossession of the Oscars. What’s mine is mine, the thinking goes, and what’s yours might be mine too.

In the press room Mr. Scorsese acknowledged that it was a reunion of sorts that was underway. “We go back, Steven and I go back to ’68, ’69. Francis Coppola, 1970. George, 1970,” said Mr. Scorsese.

And we go back with them. The studios have made efforts to adopt the tools of the insurgency by developing specialty divisions and buying indie creations that emerged far from the studio lot: “An Inconvenient Truth” made a lot of money for Paramount in addition to creating awareness about global warming.

But in the end the studios still want to be able to set up a tent as they see fit and invite people in. This year that worked fine.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/.../hollywood.php

Bringing a Touch of Daytime to Hollywood’s Biggest Night
Alessandra Stanley

“Aim lower,” Ellen DeGeneres joked about her unexalted childhood ambitions, and last night the Oscars did. She was dressed semiformally in an open collar and red velvet suit on a night that usually commands black tie or white. As she sometimes does on her daytime talk show, Ms. DeGeneres cruised the aisle with a microphone, chatting idly with Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood — bringing a casual Friday mood to Fancy Sunday.

Ms. DeGeneres quipped that Judi Dench couldn’t be there because she was having her breasts done. But mostly she was cheeky but good- natured, far less barbed and sardonic than Jon Stewart last year or Chris Rock in 2005. And for all the red carpet gowns and glitter, inside the Kodak Theater the evening was molded to Ms. DeGeneres’s low-key comic style, starting with the opening short by Errol Morris, a montage of the nominees talking off the cuff against a stark white backdrop. The film was supposed to look pared down and avant-garde, but mostly it looked like a dot-com ad.

The Academy Awards are the one night when Hollywood struts and preens as if nothing is bigger or more powerful than the movie business. Yet the selection of Ms. DeGeneres, the first daytime talk-show host to serve as the master of ceremonies, was a reaffirmation of television as the dominant water-cooler medium — for the moment. The Internet is breathing down its neck, with red-carpet blogger coverage and sites that whittled down the evening into 30-second nuggets. (Though David Spade’s live blog on the Web site of “The Showbiz Show” was proof that professional comedy writers need not panic. “This song is funny,” he blogged about Will Ferrell’s number with Jack Black. “I’m jealous.” )

The advertising industry was also flexing its muscle last night. TiVo and DVDs are endangering the survival of conventional commercials; advertisers are fighting back, and not just through product placement or sponsoring official Internet sites like Oscar.com.

People used to complain that the networks blurred news and entertainment. Last night the entertainment and the ads were almost impossible to distinguish. The category of best adapted screenplay was introduced by a charming montage of movie scenes that featured writers as characters, from Jimmy Stewart in “The Philadelphia Story” to Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” J. C. Penney and Apple followed with ads that also showcased famous movie scenes. To plug the new iPhone, Apple put together clips of actors in famous movies saying, “Hello.”

It took quite a while to get to the meatier categories, and Ms. DeGeneres’s aisle routine got a little old. Martin Scorsese received a standing ovation for winning his Oscar, but there were few surprises among the winners. Helen Mirren predictably showed sang-froid; Jennifer Hudson managed to look surprised and tearful, naming her grandmother as her inspiration.

Al Gore, whose star turn in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” won the film an Oscar, took the stage early in the evening to announce that, for the first time, the Oscars were “green,” and pretended to announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, only to be cut off by the wrap-it-up music that rings out when acceptance speeches go long. (When Melissa Etheridge’s acceptance speech thanking Mr. Gore went long, she was cut off for real.)

And like the Democratic Party the night was notable for its diversity: not just race or gender or sexual preference, but nationality. Ms. DeGeneres noted how many foreigners were nominated. “I see a few Americans,” she said. “Of course I’m talking about the seat fillers.”

Perhaps in the spirit of populism, technical awards were dutifully given plenty of time — too much time — early in the broadcast. All that democracy was belied by the transparent seating hierarchy, however. When the camera panned to the winners for best animated short, “The Danish Poet,” they were seated all the way back in Reseda; their journey to the stage took three times as long as their acceptance speech.

The letdown began long before the evening wrapped up, but that was to be expected. Oscar night is the new Christmas, a commercialized tinsel-and-treacle holiday for adults. The ceremony is wrapped in the same extravagance, hype and 12 days of buildup, but viewers are spared the stress of holiday shopping, cooking and entertaining relatives. The closest thing to viewer participation is the office Oscar pool, the bettor’s Advent calendar.

The ritual is so universal that even rival networks festoon the event with lavish coverage. But by the time the event finally begins, viewers and even participants seem a little jaded and tired. On ABC’s preview show, which followed Barbara Walters’s special in the East and preceded the actual awards ceremony, Andre Leon Talley of Vogue chatted up the arriving stars.

He wished Ms. Hudson well and godspeed, but mostly speed. “Make sure your speech isn’t too long and too boring, “ he instructed. “And we love you.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/ar...on/26watc.html

Viewer Numbers Increase a Bit for Oscars Show
Bill Carter

Sunday night’s telecast of the 79th annual Academy Awards on ABC posted some modest gains in ratings and audience totals over last year’s numbers, though the special continued to lag well behind the highest-rated editions of the ceremony.

This year’s show, which featured Ellen DeGeneres as its host and “The Departed” as the year’s best movie, attracted an average audience of 39.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen, up one million from the 38.9 million who watched last year’s show. This year’s edition started a half-hour later, however, eliminating the lowest-rated 30 minutes of last year’s telecast.

The viewer numbers were still well below the totals for two years ago, when the show drew 42.1 million viewers. A decade ago the Oscar broadcast of 1998, when “Titanic” swept the awards, attracted 55.3 million viewers, the biggest since Nielsen went to its “people meter” measuring system in 1983.

ABC noted that this year’s show proved to be stronger among certain audience groups, including all female viewers and especially younger viewers between the ages of 18 and 34, with whom the show had its best numbers since 2002.

The Oscar special remained the dominant show for Sunday evening and towered over the results for the year’s other big awards shows as well. The Grammys on CBS attracted 20.1 million viewers earlier this month; the Golden Globes on NBC took in 20 million viewers in January; and the Emmy Awards had only an average of 16.2 million viewers for NBC last August.

The Oscar show also became the most-watched entertainment show of the current television season, surpassing this year’s premiere of “American Idol,” which had a viewer total of 37.4 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/ar...on/27rati.html

Local Dance Troupe Wows Oscar Crowd
Nanci G. Hutson

Molly Gawler, center; Adam Battlestein, left, and Karen Fuhrman, with the Pilobolus dance group of Washington, Conn., walk outside the Kodak Theatre on Saturday, one day before the troupe performed during the 79th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

In front of the most famous faces in Hollywood, the 12-member Pilobolus dance troupe from Washington, Conn. twisted, rolled and stretched their sinewy bodies to become penguins, a Volkswagen bus, a stiletto heel shoe and a gun.

"I thought it was amazing," said Danbury's Bill Dempster of the dancers who performed Sunday at the Academy Awards in background silhouettes that invoked this year's five Oscar-nominated films and more.

A longtime Academy Awards viewer, Dempster said they added spice to an otherwise "dry" performance.

Accolades come as sweet applause to Renee Jaworski, a Pilobolus dancer and artistic assistant since 2000.

"It was definitely otherworldly," Jaworski said of performing at the Academy Awards, a gala Hollywood event viewed by 1 billion worldwide. "In a way, it was like a classy circus."

At one point in the troupe's performance, Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres stepped behind the screen where it appeared she meshed into the dancers when they portrayed the movie "Snakes on a Plane." DeGeneres quipped, "They're naked," when she reappeared from behind the screen.

"We're always naked," Jaworski laughed of the scantily-clad troupe clearly not afraid to show their fine-sculpted flesh. "We're Pilobolus."

Pilobolus -- the name derived from a word that means a sun-loving fungus found in pastures -- was started 36 years ago by a group of Dartmouth dance students that created and choreographed a non-traditional modern dance where members intertwine and pose their bodies around one another. In a style that appears to be a mix of yoga, gymnastics and ballet, the rhythmic movements are mesmerizing to watch.

The troupe, which normally numbers seven dancers but added five others for the Oscars performance, is based in Washington Depot.

Throughout the year, Pilobolus performs in venues all over the world. The dancers are now in Aspen, Colo.

For any performance, Jaworski said her "nerves are crazy," yet this one had an added element of drama and expectation because it was such a major media spectacle.

"The ethos around the Oscars is so huge," Jaworski said. "You walk into the Kodak Theater, which is gorgeous, and your eyes are wider. There is so much going on "¦ so it does have this larger-than-life feel, just like the movies. It takes you to a different world. That's the whole point of Hollywood -- to put you in this mythic, larger-than-life place."

Robby Barnett is one of Pilobolus' artistic directors and a founder. He did not attend the Oscars but was an integral force in creating the silhouette images the dancers portrayed through their unusual body movements. He said his only disappointment was that the show did not use the image they created to illustrate the Oscar-nominated film, "The Queen."

"We had a killer crown, but they didn't use it in the show," Barnett said.

Still, Barnett said it was quite an experience.

"It was fun to be involved in such an enormous enterprise," Barnett said. "It was fun to see our gig at the Academy Awards. Now maybe people will buy a ticket to see one of our other shows."

Barnett would not say if the performance was live or filmed ahead of time.

"Magicians never reveal their magic," Barnett said.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1032720

The Pirate Bay Takes Over Oscar
Marc

The PirateBay.org, one of the top Bit Torrent web sites, takes aim at the major Hollywood studios with the Oscar Torrents web site. OscarTorrents.com demonstrates that file sharers are indeed among the entertainment industry's best fans. The site offers descriptions, ratings, and torrent files for movies nominated for the Academy Awards. The torrents can be opened by any Bit Torrent-supporting software to download the associated movies. Downloading and sharing such movies is considered illegal in the U.S. and many countries.

The site provides the following disclaimer with spelling errors preserved:

OSCARTORRENTS®, and the OSCAR THE PIRATE® statuette design mark are the unregistered marks of no one in particular. No ©2007. Nothing to do with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences & ABC, Inc. All Rights Reversed. The Official Oscars is a sham produced by villiains in partnership with the cult of celebrity. By accessing this site you're probably comitting a felony somewhere -- but let your own idea of what is right and wrong be your guide.
http://www.p2p-weblog.com/50226711/t...over_oscar.php

Shaken, not stirred

Mosts Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent
Ernesto

As of February 25, 2007…

Ranking (last week) Movie

1 (1) Casino Royale
2 (new) The Pursuit of Happyness
3 (2) Babel
3 (4) The Departed
4 (3) Alpha Dog
5 (8) Stranger Than Fiction
6 (new) Children Of Men
7 (new) Borat
8 (5) Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny
9 (new) Hollywoodland
10 (new) The Holiday

http://torrentfreak.com/mosts-popula...ttorrent-wk08/

Wolfgang Puck Catering Employee May Have Exposed Hollywood Guests to Hepatitis
AP

An employee of Wolfgang Puck Catering diagnosed with the hepatitis A virus may have exposed guests at several events, including Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue party, health officials said.

The risk of illness was "quite low," but anyone who ate raw food at the magazine's Feb. 14 party was urged to receive a preventive shot by Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said Tuesday.

The virus is found in the feces of infected people and can be spread through contaminated food and water. It attacks the liver and can cause fever, diarrhea and jaundice. It is rarely fatal.

The affected employee was placed on medical leave, said Carl Schuster, president of Wolfgang Puck Catering.

"We immediately worked to take every precaution to further safeguard our patrons and other employees," Schuster said in a statement.

Sports Illustrated said in a statement that it was taking the situation very seriously and was working directly with county health authorities.

"We are alerting our guests and staff as quickly as possible to ensure they receive the relevant health warnings," the statement said.

Puck's restaurants and prepackaged foods were not affected, nor were any parties after Feb. 20, including Sunday's post-Oscars Governors Ball.
http://news.newstimes.com/news/updates.php?id=1032785

Man Nabbed for Uploading Oscar 'Screener'
Stefanie Olsen

Felony charges are becoming an Oscar tradition right up there with Botox injections and borrowed Harry Winston jewels.

The Department of Justice said Thursday that it has charged Salvador Nunez Jr., a 27-year-old from Los Angeles, with allegedly uploading an Oscar-nominated film to the Web and making it widely available online. Nunez, who is charged with copyright infringement and faces a maximum of three years in prison if convicted, got ahold of the Paramount Pictures' animated film Flushed Away through his sister, who had received a review copy, known as a "screener," according to the DOJ.

(Nunez's sister received the film, among others, because she is a member of the International Animated Film Society.)

The charge comes just days before the broadcast of the 79th annual Academy Awards Sunday and follows a similar episode last year. In 2006, a 25-year-old California man was charged with uploading a copy of the Oscar-nominated Walk the Line.

According to the complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Nunez posted Flushed Away online on December 23, and another film, Warner Brothers' Happy Feet, roughly two weeks later. Investigators from the Motion Picture Association of America found the copies online and ran forensic tests on the digital watermarks to find that they were originally sent in DVD format to Nunez's sister, according to the DOJ.

Maybe next year these "screener" dragnets will fade back into a more long-held Oscar tradition: screamers on the red carpet.
http://news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6161586.html

Seed YouTube with spam: Mark Cuban

Oscars.com vs Youtube.com and the Value of Hosting on Gootube
Mark Cuban

Comscore released data saying that 139k people visited Oscar.com on Oscar Sunday. Seperately, Mashable reported that the Oscars asked Youtube to remove videos from the show that had been uploaded. In the same report, Mashable had a screen capture that showed that an Oscar Comedy Musical video had been viewed more than 200k times. Lets say that those 200k views translate into about 100k actual people viewing the video.

The question is: Do the Oscars benefit or are they harmed by their video being seen on Youtube.com rather than Oscars.com ?

Its a simple question with a very important answer. Youtube proponents want everyone to believe that every impression is a new found impression that can only benefit the brand. Others, myself included believe the opposite. That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.

So the question is this. If a content owner, like the Oscars, wants to control their content and their brand, what can they do ? If the Oscars wanted to capture 100pct of Youtube viewers of Oscar Videos on their site, what would it cost them ?

Its actually a cheap and easy operation to do so. Just overwhelm them

To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said " Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com"

IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.

And i would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.

The reality is that Youtube viewers will grow tired of scanning through every video and just click over to Oscars.com where they will see all the unique video that isn't anywhere on Youtube along with the Oscars.com paying advertisers.

The cost of hiring 10 people to slice and dice videos and post them on Youtube while the Oscars is going on, ? Lets say $20 dollars per hour and 10 hours of work during and after the show is over. Thats $ 2k dollars.

Thats the value of the Oscars videos being on Youtube.

Old Media of course hasn't figured this out. The old media way is to try to pre empt new and better ways of enabling entertainment. They just don't get it. Rather than sending take down notices, they should be leveraging the technology and medium and making it their own.

Youtube and Google Video, by adopting the DMCA Safe Harbors has defined themself as a hosting provider. They have made the choice to provide these services, along with links back to a destination of the uploaders choice for free. Content owners shouldn't fight this. They should celebrate this and fully take advantage of Google's generosity.

As a hosting provider, Google and Youtube don't know or care what videos are being hosted. They don't see them (other than reviewing them for porn of course), they just host them. So let them do their job. Let them spend their money on bandwidth hosting your promotions and videos. Let them provide free links back to your sites next to every video.

What about the Youtube Community ? Won't they be upset ? No. They don't care. Sure a couple people will bitch and post videos, just like they have when Viacom and others took down videos. Just like they do when they get takedown notices around their uploads. Who cares ? Youtube and Google Video are a hosting service. Nothing more or less. Let them do their job.

So my message to every and any content owner is this: DO NOT send take down notices. Look at how much money you spend on lawyers on the notices. How much you spend searching the site looking for your content. Instead, hire a bunch of interns to continuously upload videos that suit your purposes.

Make the math work in your favor. For example, if you have a movie called Ghost Rider, do a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail. Call it - Ghost Rider the Full Movie and post it 100 times. Every day.

The net result is that you are using the tools that Gootube makes available to you while minimizing the chances of anyone finding infringing content. Its not a new idea, but it sure is effective.

Of course, none of this changes whether or not the final product, whether a movie, tv show or website delivers on user expectations. If they dont, none of this is matters.

If they do. Then promote it. Use the resources our friends at Google make available. Its what new media is all about !
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/02/...ng-on-gootube/

Music industry still fighting

Suretone Records Releases Teaser Videos to Entice Downloaders
Elena Chin

In the past, music-sharing programs like Napster made it easy for people to download files. It was simple - anybody could start the program and double click on each song they wanted. The latest Backstreet Boys song was available in seconds. Then, the controversy over file-sharing networks made the act of downloading a sly, behind-the-doors activity, and people around the country began to be reprimanded for their downloading habits, with college students making up a substantial amount of offenders. However, even through countless strikes from the university and thousands of dollars worth of lawsuits, downloading remains a staple in the music-lover's diet.

Now, record companies have made it even harder for downloaders to illegally share files.

Last week, Suretone Records, under the Universal Music Group label, began to distribute incomplete music videos to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing programs in order to tease downloaders into viewing entire videos on their Web site. This is a desperate effort by Suretone to combat illegal file sharing.

Artist Direct, an online digital media entertainment company, teamed with Suretone to distribute the videos.

Greg Cargill, director of new media for Universal, says the music videos will direct viewers to Artist Direct's Web site, where the entire video can be watched on a Suretone video channel.

"If people are going to steal files, then we need to make them realize where the music comes from," Cargill says.

Cargill, the creator behind Suretone's cut videos, says these spoof files have been distributed on P2P music sharing services since the Napster controversy, when music artists began to complain about copyright infringements. He says he expanded on this idea for Suretone in order to direct downloaders to a site where they can view videos legally.

Only three artists currently have videos being distributed on P2P services - Weezer, Eastern Conference Champions and Drop Dead Gorgeous, Cargill says. Weezer's clip is the only commercial music video that is being distributed at this time.

Eastern Conference Champions and Drop Dead Gorgeous are up-and-coming bands, and have made uncut videos that are being distributed to increase their exposure, he says.

Karl Hassler, associate director of the university's IT-User Services, states in an e-mail message the biggest problem is when people install P2P applications, such as LimeWire or BitTorrent. He says many students don't even know they are still illegally sharing copyrighted materials when they come to campus.

"The best advice is to never use these programs because they typically also load a lot of spyware onto your system," Hassler says. "Plus, filesharing on these networks exposes your system to become infected with evil programs. If you have installed a P2P application, my advice is to delete it and make sure it's not running anymore."

Freshman Jolie Gray says she does not download music because of this very reason.

"I don't like stuff that messes up my computer," Gray says. "Those programs always give me spyware."

Only a certain amount of files may be distributed per month by Suretone, through the help of a music sharing device, Cargill says. At this time, only video clips are being distributed. In the future, Suretone hopes to also circulate audio files.

Even though Cargill was the innovator of distributing half-completed videos and hopes other labels will copy Suretone's lead, he says file sharing has brought the music industry back to the role of a business.

"Personally, I feel the late '90s was decadent," he says. "It was a time when the music industry was at its greatest. I think file sharing is bringing the music back down to a level where it's like a business and can work for the consumer."

Michael Fernbacher, Judicial Affairs coordinator, states in an e-mail message there were approximately 150 cases of copyright violations of the responsible computing policy during the 2005-06 academic year at the university, which is approximately the same number of cases from past years.

"We are consistently notified of copyright violations by the IT department," Fernbacher says. "Those cases that are referred to us are, I think, just a small fraction of the actual number of copyright violations that take place on our campus."

Students found guilty of violating copyrighted items, at the very least, lose use of the university's network for 30 days. Other sanctions include the student having his or her computer inspected by an IT technician at the cost of $70 before the Internet connection is re-established or the student could receive a judicial sanction, which is one strike if the violation is a first-time offense.

Judicial Affairs is proceeding with copyright violations in the same manner as in the past, Fernbacher says. The university, however, has taken a number of steps to deter students from file sharing. The Code of the Web, No Excuses campaign and partnering with Ruckus Music Player have been ways in which the university has attempted to curb illegal file sharing.

Senior Melissa Catan says she would rather not be made a poster-child of bad computing by the university and buys her music at www.gomusic.ru, a Russian site, instead of downloading.

"I used to download music off of Limewire, but now I buy music for 15 cents," Catan says. "That's really manageable."

Fernbacher says he isn't sure if distributing cut songs and videos will help stop students from downloading illegally.

"If the entire song is available on the same site as the partial song and it's not too expensive or difficult to download, I think students are likely to get the full song that way," he says. "If not, then they may resort to getting the entire song through channels that violate copyright laws."

Sophomore Lauren Popyack says she doesn't think the cut videos directing downloaders to the Suretone Records' video channel will work.

"If people already have their minds set, then they'll still download it," Popyack says. "I don't think it would dissuade people from downloading."
http://media.www.udreview.com/media/...-2752599.shtml

Google Courts Small YouTube Deals, and Very Soon, a Larger One
Miguel Helft

Google has been frustrated in its efforts to reach comprehensive deals with major studios and networks to put their video on YouTube. But in the meantime, it is forming partnerships with hundreds of smaller media companies that see value — or at least a valuable experiment — in contributing to the site.

Some of the partnerships have been announced publicly. On Monday, for instance, YouTube, which was purchased by Google in October, said it had teamed up with the National Basketball Association to create a channel where the league would show authorized clips and where fans could upload short videos showcasing their best moves.

A day later, YouTube said it had reached a deal with an independent label, Wind-up Records, to stream music videos and allow YouTube users to incorporate music tracks into their own videos.

And on Friday, YouTube is to announce a partnership with a larger company, the BBC, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations. Under the multiyear deal, the BBC will create two entertainment channels and one news channel on YouTube. Two of the channels will include ads placed by Google’s advertising system, known as AdSense.

But most of YouTube’s licensing deals have been done quietly. It says it has firmed up more than 1,000 partnerships with content owners ranging from the Sundance Channel to small independent video producers.

Without specifying how many of those deals have been signed since their site was acquired by Google last fall, YouTube officials say they are adding more than 200 media partners a quarter.

“We are creating channels on YouTube for each of these content owners,” said Jordan Hoffner, the head of premium and information content partnerships. “Those who do deals with us will have an opportunity for monetization.”

The executives say the deals are a sign that a growing number of companies are becoming comfortable with displaying their content on the site.

Those with channels on it now include Hollywood Records, Hilary Duff’s label; the YES Network, a New York-based sports television network; AskTheBuilder.com, a home-improvement site; and the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Hoffner said a small team at YouTube had been busy courting partners. He would not describe the specific financial terms of the deals — nor would the partners — other than to say they typically involved splitting advertising revenue between the content owner and YouTube. For now, that sort of revenue is small.

In an e-mail response to questions, Chad Hurley, YouTube’s co-founder and chief executive, said its success with smaller media companies “validates the business model that we offer them and all partners,” which he said included “a platform for distribution, promotion and monetization of their content, and an opportunity to reach a whole new audience.”

Industry analysts say it is far easier for YouTube to persuade small media companies to license their content than it is to get NBC or Viacom, two of Google’s vocal critics, to give up control of their most-prized content and the advertising revenue associated with it.

“Smaller guys want mass distribution and are willing to face the risk of copyright infringement for access to this huge audience,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. “It is a relatively low-risk deal for them.”

Still, there are signs that courting small media players may be paying off for YouTube. In the two weeks after YouTube acceded to Viacom’s demand that it take down more than 100,000 clips from Viacom properties like MTV and Comedy Central, traffic on the site nonetheless increased by 14 percent, according to Hitwise, an Internet research firm.

Bill Tancer, general manager for global research at Hitwise, said an analysis of the search terms generating visits to YouTube indicated that clips created by users were the main drivers of growth. But he said premium content from professional producers could be a factor, too.

“To the extent that it is short and has high entertainment value, it can only help YouTube grow,” he said.

And as the audience grows, YouTube becomes an increasingly attractive outlet for media companies craving distribution.

“You fish where the fish are,” said John Caplan, president of the Ford Models agency, one of YouTube’s content partners. “YouTube has an outstanding reach. It is one of many great places for us to be.”

Ford Models is not a media company in the traditional sense. But as Internet video has become increasingly popular, it has begun to produce a growing amount of programming. Its channel on YouTube includes clips of models sharing “beauty secrets” or tips on fitness, video blogs created by models taking part in a beauty contest and a feature called “changing-room confessions,” where models go into dressing rooms and make videos of themselves trying on clothes.

YouTube’s deal with the BBC is to include specially created clips, blogs from celebrities, behind-the-scenes video, and popular shows like “Fawlty Towers,” “Doctor Who” and “Life on Earth” by David Attenborough.

Still, many of the agreements that YouTube highlighted suggest that the relationships are tentative and that media owners are treating online video as an experiment.

YouTube’s agreement with the N.B.A., for instance, does not include the league’s most-prized content, the recaps of the games, which will continue to be shown on NBA.com. And the agreement lasts only through the end of the current season.

“We want to see how this works out, and we will adjust and see whether it makes sense for us both,” said Steve Grimes, vice president for interactive efforts at the N.B.A.

Similarly, YouTube’s partnership with the Sundance Channel lasts through this year. “The digital media landscape is constantly evolving, so we want to make sure we have the ability to re-evaluate,” said Christopher Barry, vice president for digital media and business strategy at Sundance.

What’s more, most of YouTube’s deals are not exclusive. Ford Models, for instance, is making its content available on YouTube competitors like Revver and Veoh, and some of the Sundance Channel content is also on Yahoo Video.

And YouTube’s success in courting smaller media companies may not be unique. Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Brightcove, a YouTube competitor that licenses and distributes content on behalf of media companies, said his company had signed up about 3,000 commercial video publishers. “We are having success with small, medium and large companies,” Mr. Allaire said.

Still, some of those who have become partners with YouTube say they are pleased with early results.

Mr. Barry of the Sundance Channel said there had been more than two million views of its content on YouTube in a little more than a month. “We have had significant growth on our Web site as well, and some portion of that growth we attribute to our YouTube partnership,” he said.

Whether that kind of success persuades large media companies to collaborate more broadly with YouTube remains to be seen. In November, a month after starting a limited trial of its own channel on YouTube, CBS hailed the effort, saying that its more than 300 clips were among the most viewed on YouTube. Yet a broader deal between the companies has proved elusive.
http://news.com.com/Google+courts+sm...l?tag=nefd.top

A CBS Take on the YouTube Madness
Stuart Elliott

WITH March coming in tomorrow, the March Madness days of college basketball are not far away. A division of CBS is hoping to intensify the mania by offering students and other fans a chance to create exuberant, exhortatory video clips and share them with friends, family and strangers — and use them, not incidentally, to taunt anyone who roots for opposing teams.

The CSTV Networks division of the CBS Corporation is starting a campaign today with the theme “Are you fan enough?,” inviting viewers to upload the do-it-yourself video clips to a community section of the CSTV Web site (cstv.com/postup). The campaign will appear on CSTV and cstv.com all during March Madness — officially, the men’s basketball tournament of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which begins on March 15 — and will end after the championship game is played in Atlanta on April 2.

The campaign represents the largest effort to date by CSTV to take part in a popular trend known as user-generated content, which seeks to capitalize on the eagerness of younger consumers to produce and share video clips on Web sites like MySpace and YouTube.

“This campaign is about the voice of the fans,” said Brian T. Bedol, president and chief executive at CSTV Networks in New York. “It says CSTV is a brand that connects college sports fans to their passion.”

America is experiencing the rise of “a video filmmaker culture,” Mr. Bedol said, now that “video cameras are in the hands of millions of everyday citizens in the form of digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones.”

As a result, “we’ve watched the quality of user-generated content increase pretty dramatically over the last year or so,” he added.

In addition to media companies like CBS and Time Warner, many marketers have begun exploring the realms of user-generated content and video sharing. For example, during the Academy Awards show on Sunday on ABC, Unilever ran a commercial created by a consumer that promoted a new product, Dove Cream Oil Body Wash. The spot can now be seen on a special Web site (dovecreamoil.com).

Also, during Super Bowl XLI, on CBS on Feb. 4, three advertisers ran four spots that were created by consumers or based on consumer ideas. They were the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo, General Motors and the National Football League.

•

The growing interest in creating and sharing video clips “is where consumers are going,” said Tom Shipley, director for global industry development at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, part of the Anheuser-Busch Companies. “It’s something they expect.”

Anheuser-Busch is teaming up with Blue Lithium, an online marketing company in San Jose, Calif., to introduce a promotional program called Clink as part of its “Here’s to beer” campaign. The program, to be housed on MingleNow, a social networking Web site (minglenow.com), will let members upload and share photographs as well as video clips.

Anheuser-Busch also plans to add a video-sharing feature to bud.tv, the entertainment Web site the company introduced this month.

Sports is considered a fertile field for user-generated content because of the intensity of fan interest. Two professional leagues — the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League — have made deals to start branded channels on youtube.com.

“What makes YouTube and MySpace successful is the passion of people who are trying to post on those sites,” said Greg Weitekamp, broadcasting director for the N.C.A.A. in Indianapolis. “We’re excited to see what CSTV will be doing.”

To encourage college basketball fans to create and share March Madness video clips, CSTV asked Planet 3, an agency in Santa Monica, Calif., to produce examples of the kinds of material it hopes to receive. Planet 3 created six energetic, humorous commercials featuring actors who portray ardent fans of hoops powerhouses as well as lesser-known teams.

“I’m the Ba-baller,” an actor proclaims in one spot, “here to represent San Diego State.” Another spot replies to that one: a different actor taunts the “Ba-baller” by declaring, “You can’t get past the Running Rebels” of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Perhaps the best commercial features a pair of actors trying to channel comedy skits like “Wayne’s World” or Bob and Doug McKenzie of “The Great White North” as they support tiny Winona State University, which is the defending champion of Division II.

“Win, Winona,” the two young men chant. “Win, win, Winona.” When one asks, “So why do you think we never lose?,” the other replies deadpan, “Probably because nobody can beat us.”

•

The sample commercials are scheduled to run on CBS, CSTV, CW, MySpace and YouTube. They can also be watched on the cstv.com/postup section of the network’s Web site.

“We tried to be as close to authentic as we could,” said Dylan Gerber, president at Planet 3, in reflecting “the intense feeling the fans have for their teams and the fierce rivalries between schools.”

Casey Moulton, creative director at Planet 3, likened the desire of fans to become videographers to the loyal way “they go to the games and cheer.”

“The hope is the fans take over and tell the story of the tournament,” he said.

The CSTV campaign is indicative of the growing importance of March Madness to CBS, which paid $6 billion for rights to the tournament from 2003 through 2014. The company covers the games on its CBS broadcast network and began last year to present free, ad-supported Webcasts of games from the first three rounds on sites like cbssportsline.com.

The Webcasts were a big hit, drawing five million visitors. CBS Sports estimated this week that it would sell $9 million to $10 million worth of ads for the Webcasts next month, compared with $4 million to $5 million in ad revenue last year.

If the fan campaign is deemed successful, Mr. Bedol said, it may return later this year, for the college football season.

The basketball video clips will be screened for language and appropriateness before going online, he added, but the goal will be to preserve their reality and spontaneity.

Awaiting the video clips is “like white-water rafting,” Mr. Bedol said, laughing. “I can’t wait to see the direction this goes.”

“Part of it,” he added, “is, ‘Hold on tight.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/bu...ia/28adco.html

Kazaa’s Creators Do Latest Venture by the Book
Jeremy W. Peters

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis made names for themselves as renegade Internet entrepreneurs by taking conventional tasks like talking on the phone or listening to music and giving consumers an unconventional — and free — way to do it.

Sometimes that meant pushing legal boundaries.

But with their latest creation, a Web video venture called Joost, Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom, who were behind the file-sharing service Kazaa and the Internet telephone service Skype, are doing everything by the book. Revenue-sharing agreements have been signed. Licenses have been granted.

“The reason we’re doing this is because of our history,” Mr. Friis said in a telephone interview last week. “We know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don’t want to be in a long, multiyear litigation battle.”

The two men met in the late 1990s at Tele2, a European telecommunications company then emerging as a serious competitor to Sweden’s telephone monopoly. They left in 1999 to start their own Internet company.

Soon after, they developed the technology behind Kazaa. The music industry fought Kazaa with the same fury that it fought Napster, another file-sharing service that was forced to become a legitimate pay service after lengthy court battles.

Mr. Friis, a Dane, and Mr. Zennstrom, a Swede, sold Kazaa in 2002, but their legal worries did not end there. Movie studios and recording companies pressed ahead with their lawsuits, and for years neither man set foot in the United States.

In November, Kazaa’s new owners settled the last of the lawsuits. In all, they have agreed to pay at least $125 million to the record industry and movie studios.

Today Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom work out of Skype’s offices in the Soho neighborhood of London. Though they sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, they remain active in the company. Mr. Zennstrom is Skype’s chief executive. Mr. Friis is the executive vice president for innovation, a job that has allowed him more time to spend developing Joost.

With the Kazaa lawsuits behind him, Mr. Friis’s feet are back on American soil. He was in Los Angeles on Friday promoting his latest endeavor.

Joost (pronounced “juiced”) said last week it had reached what amounts to the mother lode of television programming: agreements to broadcast programs from Viacom networks like MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal’s terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue.

“We are very happy with the Viacom deal because it spans all their big properties,” Mr. Friis said. “It has content from their biggest properties — MTV, Comedy Central — that are very good for our demographic.” (Mr. Zennstrom was on vacation and unavailable to comment, a Joost spokeswoman said.)

The Joost-Viacom partnership gives Viacom a degree of control over its programming that it has been unable to obtain so far from the video-sharing Web site YouTube. Joost must have Viacom’s approval to put a program online. In addition, Joost addressed Viacom’s concerns about piracy and copyright infringement by designing a platform that Joost says is piracy-proof.

This month, Viacom demanded that YouTube, now owned by Google, remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming because the two companies could not reach an agreement on licensing and revenue sharing. That deprived YouTube of popular Viacom content like clips of “The Daily Show.” YouTube responded by replacing some Viacom content with the message “removed at the request of Viacom International.”

Just because YouTube does not have Viacom programming, however, does not mean it is at a disadvantage, analysts said. Joost “is not a competitor to YouTube in most ways,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner, a market research company in Stamford, Conn. “It’s a competitor to cable television.”

Joost is meant to replicate the way viewers watch television at home. It streams full-length programs in full-screen format. Users can flip through channels that offer everything from documentary news programs to videos on surfing. Programs can last a few minutes or more than an hour. (Viacom programming is not available now for the test phase, but Joost said it would be online by the time its software is introduced publicly, sometime before this summer.)

The Joost format differs greatly from YouTube’s, which allows users to upload to the site snippets of television programs or self-produced content. “It’s not Web video; it’s TV,” Mr. Friis said.

But some analysts said Joost had the potential to change how consumers watch television on the Web. It will have content that is, for now, unavailable elsewhere on the Web.

“Should YouTube worry?” said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a consulting firm. “I think YouTube is a legitimate channel in its own right. At the same time, I think any company that comes out there and lands big distribution deals with large content partners like Viacom is a serious competitor.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...ness/joost.php

F.C.C. Rules That Rural Carriers Must Connect Internet Calls
Dow Jones

Rural telephone carriers must connect calls made by voice-over-Internet Protocol customers, the Federal Communications Commission ruled Thursday in a decision that marks the breaking down of one of the last barriers to allowing VoIP to fully compete with traditional phone carriers.

The F.C.C. said that rural service providers in two states, Nebraska and South Carolina, must connect telephone calls made by customers of Time Warner’s VoIP service.

Regulators in the two states argued that because the FCC had not deemed VoIP providers as telecom services, the local telephone companies did not have to honor their phone calls.

“This decision will enable Time Warner Cable to deploy its digital phone service in areas that until now have been denied the benefits of competition because of state decisions,” said Mark Harrad, a spokesman for the company.

“By increasing competition in the telephone sector, this action encourages the deployment of broadband facilities and ensures that consumers in all areas of the country reap the benefits of competition in the form of lower prices, innovative services and more choice,” the F.C.C. chairman, Kevin J. Martin, said in a statement.

The move by Mr. Martin to rule in favor of the cable industry in a dispute with telecom providers is a rare one. In a recent series of high-profile decisions, Mr. Martin sided with the telecom industry, provoking the ire of the cable industry.

The decision is limited in its scope because in most parts of the country, incumbent telephone companies already voluntarily connect VoIP customers’ calls.

As a result of the decision, VoIP providers such as Time Warner will be able to offer truly national service.

Some VoIP companies, like Time Warner, contract their phone service to a third party provider. In Time Warner’s case, Sprint Nextel is the actual phone provider. Others, like Vonage, offer phone service without the assistance of a traditional phone carrier.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/technology/02fcc.html

Comcast Fights Ownership Limits
AP

With phone companies entering cable markets and consumers surfeited with video from iPods and Internet sites like YouTube, Comcast is advocating that federal cable-ownership limits are both unnecessary and judicially unsustainable.

As the largest U.S. cable company, Comcast is the only cable operator that has to worry that a transaction involving a few million cable subscribers could bump into cable ownership caps enforced by the Federal Communications Commission.

On an informal basis, the FCC won't allow a cable company to serve more than 30% of pay TV subscribers. With 26.2 million subscribers, Comcast has 27% of the 96.8 million subscribers to pay television, the multiple-system operator said last Thursday, citing Kagan Research data.

Implementing a 1992 law, the FCC has designed cable-ownership rules based on concerns that a few giant cable companies would hold too much power over programmers seeking distribution. But in a Feb. 14 filing, Comcast insisted that because of "revolutionary changes in the marketplace," market forces rather than anticompetitive motives dictate the programming decisions of cable operators.

"It is clear that no cable operator has either the incentive or the ability to effectuate the harm at which the statute was aimed: obstructing the flow of video programming to the consumer," Comcast explained to the FCC in a filing prepared by lawyers expert in regulatory and constitutional law.

More than a decade ago, the FCC said that no cable operator could own systems that pass more than 30% of cable homes.

In the late 1990s, the FCC abandoned the homes-passed test. Reflecting the success of satellite-television providers, the FCC adopted a new limit that stopped a cable operator from growing above 30% of pay-TV subscribers.

But a federal appeals court in March 2001 tossed out the 30% subscriber cap and returned the matter to the FCC for further review. Since then, the FCC hasn't issued any new rules. Instead, it has enforced the 30% cap in cable mergers. Comcast, for example, had to divest a minority stake in Time Warner Entertainment, which reduced its cable subscriber count from 41% to 28.9%, in order to merge with AT&T Broadband.

"The commission has often used the merger process to impose conditions on one company," noted telecommunications analyst Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a free-market think tank based in Potomac, Md.

In recent weeks, FCC chairman Kevin Martin has expressed interest in reviving the cable-ownership issue, either as a standalone matter or as part of the broader media-ownership debate.

Andrew Schwartzman, president of the public-interest law firm Media Access Project, said that the FCC should keep cable ownership on a separate track.

MAP played an important role in scuttling in court the relaxed TV-station, radio-station and newspaper ownership rules adopted by the FCC in 2003.

"Mucking them up together is just going to delay both of them," Schwartzman said. "At this stage of the game, I'm against it just on the grounds of delay."

In its filing, Comcast told the commission that the revival of a cable subscriber cap would violate the First Amendment because it would limit cable speech based on the faulty premise that cable operators are positioned to inflict economic harm on programmers.

May said that cable faced sufficient competition to justify a cap-free system supported by Comcast.

"My view is that in today's environment, there should not be a limit and the commission should eliminate the cap," May said.
http://ibc.broadcastnewsroom.com/art....jsp?id=108698

Gathering Once a Month for a Voyage to Narnia
Lily Koppel

On a recent Friday night, 30 fans of the writer C. S. Lewis sat in folding chairs under a vaulted ceiling surrounded by gilt-framed oil paintings of Episcopal priests. Like Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the four children in Lewis’s book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” who opens a wardrobe to discover the icy land of Narnia, the members of the New York C. S. Lewis Society immerse themselves in the writer’s fantastical realm.

Members of the group, which calls itself the oldest society in the world for the appreciation of Lewis’s works, gather on the second Friday of every month in the parish hall of the Church of the Ascension at 12 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village.

Among those at the latest meeting were Margaret Goodman, 70, an opera singer and actress who wore a small golden lion pin, and Christopher Mitchell, the director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has the world’s largest holding of papers and books by Lewis.

The society’s secretary, Clara Sarrocco, 60, traces her obsession to when she was 16, attending a Catholic high school in Queens, where she lives. “One of my teachers came in and mentioned a book written from one demon to another demon,” she said of Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters.” “Real diabolical-sounding.”

When she was in her 20s, Ms. Sarrocco clipped an advertisement for the society from a magazine. “I stuck it in my mirror,” she said. “Every time I looked in the mirror, I kept on saying, ‘I have to go there.’ I was a little intimidated.”

But her curiosity won out. Since the early 1970s, Ms. Sarrocco has been part of the society, which has about 500 subscribers to its twice-a-month bulletin from across the country and abroad, including Japan, Germany, Russia and England.

Lewis, who was born in Ireland in 1898, was a leading figure on the English faculty at Oxford University and was part of a literary group there known as the Inklings, which included J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the “Lord of the Rings” books.

The Lewis society’s longest active members are a married couple, Alexandra and James Como. He is a Lewis scholar and the chairman of the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at York College in Jamaica, Queens, part of the City University of New York.

The Comos were at the first meeting of the society, held on Nov. 4, 1969, at the Staten Island home of Jack Boies, a professor of English literature at Wagner College on Staten Island, and his wife, Elaine. At the second meeting, as recorded in the minutes, “a very handsome watercolor map of Narnia and adjacent places, done by Professor Boies, was handed around and admired.”

“I remember the ride over,” Ms. Como said of the first meeting. “It was winter, going over the Verrazano Bridge, which the fog had completely covered up. We felt suspended.”

Mr. Como, referring to the somewhat Narnia-like atmosphere surrounding the first meeting, added, “Staten Island is very purgatorial.”

Ms. Como reached into her purse and pulled out a pocket pack of tissues decorated with the logo of the 2005 film “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” “I was in Lima, Peru, where I’m from,” she said, “and saw this and thought, ‘Oh my God, Narnia.’ ”

Her husband added: “Lewis said there is no such thing as coincidence. I call it the Holy Spirit.”

At the Church of the Ascension, among the gray-haired members in turtlenecks and cardigans, one could see the occasional teenager, a poet or someone from what Ms. Como called the “Lord of the Rings” crowd. In almost 40 years, the only times meetings have been canceled were because of a snowstorm or after 9/11.

In addition to his fantasy writings, Lewis’s work also included apologetics. And that element was present at the meeting. One man in an orange sweater wore a dark wooden crucifix dangling from a leather cord. Another man, Lewis Macala, 56, a medical researcher at Yale who was new to the group, introduced himself as “an atheist until I read Lewis.”

William McClaine, a portly man wearing red suspenders and thick glasses, opened the meeting. Peter Depaula, 54, a magician from Brooklyn, followed with a traditional excerpt from Lewis’s writings. Next was a lecture by a guest speaker, Edwin Woodruff Tait, 32, an assistant professor of Bible and religion at Huntington University in Indiana.

Dr. Woodruff Tait focused on a revolution described in “Prince Caspian,” another of the seven books in the Narnia series, in which the evil King Miraz cut down the land’s talking trees, and its enchanted creatures — centaurs, dryads, fauns, naiads, unicorns and talking animals — were killed or went into hiding.

In Narnia, creativity was promoted over technology, explained Dr. Woodruff Tait, and there was an implied distrust of modern life. “Lewis’s vision was not that we all are equal, but that we are all different in our natural attitudes and natural creativity,” he said. “Narnia is not about a hierarchy of power, but each kind of creature joyfully living out their natural attitudes.”

He pointed out that the only legislation in Narnia was to prevent people’s lives from being interfered with. “Moles dig because that’s what they love to do; dwarfs smith metal because that’s what they love to do,” he said. “In Lewis there is a love of the ordinary processes of life, a love of eating. The children are always having tea and biscuits.”

Dr. Woodruff Tait concluded with a reference to Aslan, the Jesus figure depicted as a lion in the Narnia books. “Long live the true king,” he said. Tea and cake were waiting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/nyregion/21lewis.html

Film’s View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses
Karen W. Arenson

When “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” a documentary that shows Muslims urging attacks on the United States and Europe, was screened recently at the University of California, Los Angeles, it drew an audience of more than 300 — and also dozens of protesters.

At Pace University in New York, administrators pressured the Jewish student organization Hillel to cancel a showing in November, arguing it could spur hate crimes against Muslim students. A Jewish group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook also canceled the film last semester.

The documentary has become the latest flashpoint in the bitter campus debate over the Middle East, not just because of its clips from Arab television rarely shown in the West, including scenes of suicide bombers being recruited and inducted, but also because of its pro-Israel distribution network.

When a Middle East discussion group organized a showing at New York University recently, it found that the distributors of “Obsession” were requiring those in attendance to register at IsraelActivism.com, and that digital pictures of the events be sent to Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up to counter anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.

“If people have to give their names over to Hasbara Fellowships at the door, that doesn’t have the effect of stimulating open dialogue,” said Jordan J. Dunn, president of the Middle East Dialogue Group of New York University, which mixes Jews and Muslims. “Rather, it intimidates people and stifles dissent.”

The documentary’s proponents say it provides an unvarnished look at Islamic militancy. “It’s an urgent issue that is widely avoided by academia,” argued Michael Abdurakhmanov, the Hillel president at Pace.

Its critics call it incendiary. Norah Sarsour, a Palestinian-American student at U.C.L.A., said it was disheartening to see “a film like this that takes the people who have hijacked the religion and focuses on them.”

Certainly it is a new element in the bitter campus battles over the Middle East that have encompassed everything from the content and teaching of Middle East studies to disputes over art exhibitions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to debates over free speech.

“The situation in the Middle East has been a major issue on campus for decades, but the heat has noticeably turned up lately,” said Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

At San Francisco State University, for example, College Republicans stomped on copies of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags last October at an “antiterrorism” rally. At the University of California, Irvine, the Muslim Student Union drew criticism last year for a “Holocaust in the Holy Land” program about Israel.

Brandeis University officials pulled an exhibition of Palestinian children’s drawings, including some of bloodied Palestinian children, designed to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to the campus, half of whose students are Jewish.

Three years ago a video produced by a pro-Israeli group featuring Jewish students’ complaints of intimidation by Middle East studies professors at Columbia set off a campus-wide debate over freedom of speech and academic freedom, prompting an investigation that found some fault by one professor but “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.”

Into this milieu stepped the producer of “Obsession,” Raphael Shore, a 45-year-old Canadian who lives in Israel, with the documentary. It features scenes like the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers, interspersed with those of Nazi rallies.

The film was directed by Wayne Kopping of South Africa, who had worked with Mr. Shore previously on a documentary about the failure of the Oslo peace efforts in the Middle East. Mr. Shore said in a recent interview that they had not set out to make a film for college students but to spur action against Islamic terrorism. “We want to spread this message to all people that will stand up and make a difference in combating this threat,” he said.

When no traditional film distributors picked it up, he said, colleges were an obvious outlet — it was screened on 30 campuses last semester — along with DVD sales on the Internet (ObsessionTheMovie.com), and showings at synagogues and other locales, including conservative ones like the Heritage Foundation in Washington. There were also repeated broadcasts of abbreviated versions or excerpts on Fox News in November and again this month, and on other media outlets like CNN Headline News.

“College students have the power with their energy, resources, time and interest to make a difference, often more than other individuals,” Mr. Shore said.

He hired a campus coordinator, Karyn Leffel, who works out of the New York City office of the Hasbara Fellowships program, which aims to train students “to be effective pro-Israel activists on their campuses.” “ ‘Obsession’ is so important because it shows what’s happening in Israel is not happening in a vacuum,” said Elliot Mathias, director of the Hasbara Fellowships program, “and that it affects all American students on campuses, not just Jewish students.”

Mr. Shore said that despite the collaboration with Hasbara, the goal was to draw a wide audience.

“The evangelical Christians and the Jews tend to be the softest market, the most receptive to the message of the film, so we have done lots with those groups,” he said. “But we are trying very hard to expand beyond those groups, because we specifically don’t want it to be seen as a film that has that connection.”

Mr. Shore describes his film as nonpartisan and balanced, and many viewers agree with him. Traci Ciepiela, who teaches criminal justice at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs and has a screening scheduled this week, says she learned from the film and did not think that it was unfair or inflammatory.

But others see it as biased. Arnold Leder, a political scientist at Texas State University, San Marcos, decided not to use it for his course “The Politics of Extremism” because of what he called “serious flaws,” including that it did not address Islam in general, the history of Islam and the schisms within the faith.

“If it were used in a class,” he said, “it would have to be treated as a polemic and placed in that context.”

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of U.C.L.A. Hillel, called the documentary propaganda and said it was “a way to transfer the Middle East conflict to the campus, to promote hostility.”

While the film carries cautions at the beginning and end that it is only about Islamist extremists — and that most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror — Muslim students who have protested say they believe the documentary will still fuel prejudice.

“The movie was so well crafted and emotion manipulating that I felt myself thinking poorly of some aspects of Islam,” said Adam Osman, president of Stony Brook’s Muslim Students’ Association, who asked that it not be shown.

While screenings were canceled under pressure at Pace and Stony Brook, Ms. Leffel said that most campus screening, like a recent one at Providence College in Rhode Island, had taken place without incident. Students at New York University decided they wanted to present it, despite misgivings by some Muslim students.

At the screening there late last month, the viewers — many of them Muslims — ganged up on Robert Friedman, a discussion leader who had been sent by the “Obsession” filmmakers. (The event was sponsored by the Middle East Dialogue Group at N.Y.U., the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, Arab Students United and the Pakistani Students Association.)

Mr. Friedman told the audience, “You have to understand a problem before you can solve it.”

But most of the viewers, including both a rabbi and a Muslim chaplain on a discussion panel put together by the students, said the film did not foster understanding.

“The question about radical Islam and how do we fight it is unproductive,” said Yehuda Sarna, the New York University rabbi on the panel. “The question is how to break down the stereotypes facing the two religions.”

Steven I. Weiss, editor and publisher of CampusJ.com, an Internet site that covers Jewish news on campuses, said he was surprised by the Jewish skepticism to the film at N.Y.U. “Were a Jewish leader from virtually any significant organization to walk in on that discussion,” he said, “they’d be very surprised and displeased. This is the opposite of the change they’ve been looking for in campus rhetoric.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/movies/26docu.html

Documentary Examines Supposed Remains of Jesus
Laurie Goodstein

A documentary by the Discovery Channel claims to provide evidence that a crypt unearthed 27 years ago in Jerusalem contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth.

Moreover, it asserts that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that the couple had a son, named Judah, and that all three were buried together.

The claims were met with skepticism by several archaeologists and New Testament scholars, as well as outrage from some Christian leaders.

The contention that Jesus was married, had a child and left behind his bones — suggesting he was not bodily resurrected — contradicts core Christian doctrine.

Two limestone boxes said to contain residue from the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were unveiled with a flourish at a news conference on Monday at the New York Public Library by the documentary's producer, James Cameron, who made "Titanic" and "The Terminator."

Cameron's collaborators onstage included a journalist, a self-taught antiquities investigator, New Testament scholars, a statistician and an archaeologist. Several of them said that they were excited by the findings but uncertain.

"I would like more information. I remain skeptical," said the archaeologist, Shimon Gibson, a senior fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, in an interview after the news conference. In recent years, audiences have demonstrated a voracious appetite for books, movies and magazines that reassess the life and times of Jesus, and there is already a book timed to coincide with this documentary, which will be on the air next Sunday.

"This is exploiting the whole trend that caught on with 'The Da Vinci Code,'" said Lawrence Stager, the Dorot professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, in a telephone interview. "One of the problems is there are so many biblically illiterate people around the world that they don't know what is real judicious assessment and what is what some of us in the field call 'fantastic archaeology.'"

Stager said he had not seen the film but was skeptical.

Cameron said he had been "trepidatious" about becoming involved in the project but got engaged out of "great passion for a good detective story," not to offend and not to cash in.

"I think this is the biggest archaeological story of the century," he said. "It's absolutely not a publicity stunt. It's part of a very well-considered plan to reveal this information to the world in a way that makes sense, with proper documentation."

The documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," revisits a site discovered by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority in the East Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980, when the area was being excavated for a building.

Ten burial boxes, or ossuaries, were found in the tomb, and six of them had inscriptions. The Discovery Channel filmmakers say, and archaeologists interviewed concur, there is no possibility the inscriptions were forged, because they were catalogued at the time by archaeologists and kept in storage in the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The documentary's case rests in large part on the interpretation of the inscriptions, which they say are Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Joseph and Judah.

In the first century, these names were as common as Tom, Dick and Harry. But the filmmakers commissioned a statistician, Andrey Feuerverger, a professor at the University of Toronto, who calculated that the odds that all six names would appear together in one tomb are one in 600, calculated conservatively — or as much as one in a million.

One box is said to be inscribed "Yeshua bar Yosef," in Aramaic, an ancient language closely related to Hebrew that is translated as "Jesus son of Joseph." The second box is inscribed "Maria," in Hebrew. Maria is the Latin version of "Miriam" — a name so common in first- century Israel that it was given to about 25 percent of all Jewish women.

But the mother of Jesus has always been known as "Maria" (which in English is "Mary"). The documentary says that while thousands of ossuaries have been discovered, only eight have had the inscription "Maria" spelled phonetically in Hebrew letters.

The third box is labeled "Matia," Hebrew for Matthew, and the filmmakers cite a reference in the New Testament to buttress their claim that Mary had many Matthews in her family and it would make sense to find one in the family tomb.

The fourth box is inscribed "Yose," a nickname for the Hebrew "Yosef," or "Joseph" in English. Again, the filmmakers turn to the New Testament Gospels, which refer to four "brothers" of Jesus: James, Judah, Simon and Joseph. Scholars disagree on whether these were actual brothers, companions or cousins, but the filmmakers infer that the inscription refers to a brother of Jesus.

Perhaps the most shaky claims revolve around the inscription on the fifth box, which the filmmakers assert is that of Mary Magdalene. It is the only inscription of the six in Greek, and says "Mariamene e Mara," which the filmmakers say can be translated as "Mary, known as the master."

The filmmakers cite the interpretation of a Harvard professor, François Bovon, of the "Acts of Phillip," a text from the fourth or fifth century and recently recovered from a monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. The filmmakers say that Bovon has determined from the "Acts of Phillip" that Mariamene is Mary Magdalene's real name.

The filmmakers commissioned DNA testing on the residue in the boxes said to have held Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There are no bones left, because the religious custom in Israel is to bury archaeological remains in a cemetery.

However, the documentary's director and its driving force, Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian born in Israel, said that there was enough mitochondrial DNA for a laboratory in Ontario to conclude that the bodies in the "Jesus" and "Mary Magdalene" ossuaries were not related on their mothers' side.

From this, Jacobovici deduced that they were a couple, because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb.

Among the most influential scholars to dispute the documentary was Amos Kloner, a former Jerusalem district archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who examined the tomb in 1980.

Kloner said in a telephone interview that the inscription on what is thought to be the "Jesus" ossuary is not clear enough to ascertain.

'The new evidence is not serious, and I do not accept that it is connected to the family of Jesus," said Kloner, who appears in the documentary as a skeptic.

New Testament scholars also criticized the documentary as theologically dangerous, historically inaccurate and irresponsible.

"Of course, we want to know more about Jesus, but please don't insult our intelligence by giving us this sort of stuff," said Ben Witherington 3rd, a Bible scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, in Wilmore, Kentucky. "It's going to get a lot of Christians with their knickers in a knot unnecessarily."

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/27/news/jesus.php

JackSpratts · 28-02-07, 11:45 AM

Christian Group Preps To Attack Wii
Brian Crecente

A tipster sends word that The Porn Talk, a site backed by a secretive faith-based ministry in California, is prepping to attack Nintendo's Wii and other gaming devices, calling them "portals to porno" in a press release.

In the press release, leaked to Kotaku today, The Porn Talk founder Mike Foster does his best to stoke up some fear about the Wii saying that even though the device has parental controls, "parents don't see a need for them because they are unaware of the porn capabilities."

With a headline that reads "The Wii's Dirty Little Secret," the story's caustic tone is more off-putting than what little facts are presented. The full press release is on the jump.

I find it funny that a site that seems to go to so much effort to hide its ties to religion and ministry work is using the phrase dirty little secret.

The Wii's Dirty Little Secret

The Wiittle Porn Problem For Nintendo's Best Selling Game Console

CORONA, CA - The Nintendo Wii gaming console has a wiittle porn problem. That's right; this seemingly innocent family game console has a dirty little secret. It has the dubious ability to access pornography via the internet and most parents are not aware of this fact according to www.ThePornTalk.com

Like many new gaming technologies, the Wii's wireless internet capabilities make it a portal to porno. "Parents think the computer is the only way for their kids to get porn on the internet. Unfortunately, they are dead wrong," says Mike Foster, founder of ThePornTalk.com. "Gaming devices like the Wii and the PSP aren't just for fun games anymore. You're able to surf the net, chat with friends, email, and view porn because of its internet access. Kids know this but parents don't!"

Wireless internet (Wi-Fi) technology allows electronic devices like Nintendo's Wii to wirelessly connect to the internet. Airports, Starbucks, schools, and even entire cities give people the opportunity to log on the internet with a Wi-Fi device like the Wii or even Sony's PSP. "This makes it very difficult to monitor as a parent. You can easily put safeguards in your house but it's impossible to monitor in a Wi-Fi world," says Foster. "Even though the Nintendo Wii has parental controls, parents don't see a need for them because they are unaware of the porn capabilities."

The Nintendo Wii has become the best-selling video game console in the United States, outselling Microsoft and Sony competitors in the month of January, 2007. Because of its success many websites have taken advantage of its online capability. Several companies have changed the look and functionality of their web sites to accommodate the Wii. The porn industry is also implementing these changes to their sites. Porn websites are taking the look of the Wii's home page and menus and modeling their own sites after them. Porn sites are even converting their video clips so that they can run on the Wii.

So the solution lies in parents getting the facts and then talking to their children about expectations for online activity. Foster believes that, "Whether it is the home computer or these new gaming consoles, porn is easily accessible. The Wii is an amazing console and tons of fun but parents need good info on how to keep kids safe."

About ThePornTalk.com
ThePornTalk.com is an innovative web resource that helps parents talk to their kids about porn and internet dangers. The site features conversation starters, videos, a weekly podcast, parent's stories and other resources. Contributors to the site include child advocates, pastors, therapists, and kids themselves.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/wii/christi...wii-239994.php

Home schooling

Teens Heavy Porn Users: Study
Michelle Mark

A groundbreaking study on porn use by 13- and 14-year-old teens shows an alarming number are watching "more times than they can count" and their parents are unaware.

"If you're 13 and you can't put a number on the times (you've used porn), that's a little frightening," University of Alberta researcher Sonya Thompson said, adding 35% of boys fell into that category along with 8% of girls.

"It's a concern in terms of kids' sexual health and role modelling. It seems this is a very big influence on their socialization."

Thompson said she hopes the survey results act as a wakeup call to parents about what their kids are up to.

She also said sexually curious teens who are watching porn are getting the wrong messages about healthy sexuality and don't distinguish between actors getting paid to perform and real-world sexuality.

"Parents need to be talking to their kids about porn in a non-judgmental way and to keep the conversation happening," said Thompson, who is also a sexual health educator.

In spring of 2003, Thompson analyzed responses to an hour-long questionnaire from 429 rural and urban Grade 8 students aged 13 to 14. She asked about their exposure to and use of sexually explicit material on TV, DVDs, movies and the Internet, as well as about their interaction with their parents about such material.

Thompson said she got the idea for the study after she noticed more and more students asking questions about explicit and hardcore sexual activity.

"I knew they had to be getting that from seeing it somewhere, but it's not something anyone talks about - especially in school," she said, adding she would like to see the topic addressed in the sexual health curriculum.

The Internet was the most common way for kids to get access to porn, with about three-quarters of students reporting such contact.

Thompson found almost one-quarter of the boys watched pornographic DVDs or videos "too many times to count" and 35% said the same about Internet smut. The corresponding figures for girls were 4% and 8%.

Thompson also found that boys tend to prefer privacy while viewing porn, but will sometimes invite other boys to watch with them. Girls, on the other hand, more often watch in same-sex pairs or in mixed-gender groups.

A spokesman for Alberta Education said while there is nothing in school curriculums specifically addressing pornography use, high school kids are taught about healthy and unhealthy behaviour in relationships.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features...f-3658873.html

DA: NYC Man Sold Kids' Cartoon Costumes `for Porn Film'
AP

A man has been charged with selling knockoff costumes of popular children's cartoon characters -- including Barney and Dora, Superman and Scooby Doo -- to a person he believed to be a porn film producer, according to the Queens district attorney.

Julio Quevedo, 43, of Queens, was charged with trademark counterfeiting, District Attorney Robert Brown said Tuesday.

An investigation into Quevedo's alleged operation began last year after the DA's office was contacted by Hit Entertainment, the licensed trademark holder of many of the animated children's characters that suspected Quevedo was illegally selling bogus adult-size versions of its children's costumes.

"A one-man counterfeiting operation like the one discovered here is capable each year of fleecing legitimate owners of trademark products out of tens of thousands of dollars, substantial sums in lost royalties," Brown said in a statement.

During a sting operation an undercover private investigator purchased a fake Bob the Builder from Quevedo for $250, Brown said. Then an undercover agent from the DA's office, posing as the investigator's wife, told Quevedo she needed costumes for roles in erotic movies. Quevedo took her to a storage facility on Saturday that contained an assortment of costumes, including Thomas the Tank Engine and Tasmanian Devil, Brown said.

Hit Entertainment and Warner Brothers were brought to the scene and verified that the costumes were counterfeit, he said.

Brown said Quevedo told investigators that his family had been selling the bogus costumes for four years, and that his father-in-law manufactured them at a factory in Lima, Peru.

Quevedo was arraigned Saturday in Queens Criminal Court on the counterfeiting charge, and faces up to four years in jail if convicted. He was released without bail and told to return to court on March 13.

Neither he nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1032709

Berners-Lee Pushes Congress on 'Nondiscriminatory' Web
Anne Broache

World Wide Web father Tim Berners-Lee told politicians on Thursday that it's critical to shield his seminal innovation from control by a single company or country.

A top priority for policymakers going forward must be "making sure the Web itself is the blank sheet, the blank canvas, something that does not constrain the innovation that's around the corner," the knighted engineer told a U.S. House of Representatives panel that writes Internet and telecommunications laws.

That means ensuring anyone can use the Web regardless of what software or hardware they're running, which Internet service provider supplies their connection, which language they speak, and what disabilities they have, Berners-Lee said. He was the sole witness invited to speak at a hearing here titled "The Future of the World Wide Web," the first of a series of events designed to keep politicians up to speed on communications issues.

Although he has previously voiced support for Net neutrality, Berners-Lee on Thursday stopped short of taking a position on the various bills on that topic proposed in Congress in the past year.

"I can say I feel that a nondiscriminatory Internet is very important for a society based on the World Wide Web," he said. "I think that the communications medium is so important to society that we have to give it a special treatment."

Proponents of Net neutrality define the concept as prohibiting network operators, such as Verizon and Comcast, from being allowed to charge content companies like Google and Amazon.com extra fees for prioritization. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who arranged the hearing, was among the chief sponsors of a legislative proposal last year that would put that mandate into law.

Perhaps in a nod to the issue's divisiveness, with Republicans tending to reject the idea of new laws, Markey on Thursday issued a disclaimer to his colleagues. "Before end of year, we're going to hear from all sides on that issue so that everyone's perspective is heard," he said.

Berners-Lee was largely greeted with awe and accolades from the politicians who showed up for the day's hearing. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said he considered the World Wide Web consortium director one of the rare individuals who has "truly made the world a different and better place" and proclaimed it an honor to be in the same room with him.

Berners-Lee's views on digital rights management (DRM) technology drew questioning, however, from Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), who was once married to singer-turned-Congressman Sonny Bono. Berners-Lee, who emphasized a belief in offering standardized technology on a royalty-free basis, referred in his written statement to Apple's "closed, non-standard technology for its copy protection" as an example of a factor that has inhibited the company's online music sales growth. Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself recently suggested abandoning the approach.

"How would creators be compensated in a world free of DRM?" Bono asked him.

Berners-Lee said a better approach would be to devise software capable of tracking whether a person owns a particular file. "It won't stop you, but it will let you know if you're playing music you shouldn't listen to because you backed up someone else's machine and you got access to it," he said.

"Is that not the equivalent of having the speed limit but no enforcement of the speed limit?" Bono replied.

Berners-Lee suggested closed DRM regimes were akin to enforcing a speed limit by requiring the offending car to "grind to a halt" and added, "I am inclined to try to make software that allows you to do the right thing first."
http://news.com.com/Berners-Lee+push...3-6163616.html

A Domain Just Right for Mobile Web Surfing
Eric Sylvers

Help is on the way for Internet surfers who have steered clear of the wireless Web because text, photographs and icons seem to find their way to the most random of spots on their phone's small screen.

DotMobi, a venture backed by 12 companies and an industry association, has created the ".mobi" domain name, which identifies an Internet address just like .com, .net, .edu and .org, except that it guarantees that a Web site has been tailored for the small screen of a mobile phone. The dot- mobi sites have fewer graphics, photos and overall content than their sister sites that are accessed from a computer. More than 375,000 dot-mobi domain names have been registered, and about 25,000 are operational, the company said in Barcelona at an industry conference this month. The first site went online in September.

Wei Wei, a Chinese pop star who has sold more than 200 million discs, announced at the conference that she would make her new album available first exclusively on her new dot-mobi site, www.weiwei.mobi. On the same site, her fans can download ring tones, video clips, wallpaper and pictures.

Though still relatively unknown, dotMobi, which is based in Dublin, is backed by a powerful group of investors including Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefónica, Telecom Italia Mobile, Google, Microsoft and the GSM Association, which represents 700 cellphone operators around the world.

"Consumers are not happy with the mobile Internet because it just doesn't function well," Neil Edwards, chief executive of dotMobi, said during an interview this month at the conference in Barcelona. "The dot-mobi domain was established to offer mobile Internet users a domain they can trust, somewhere they can go and be sure that the site will function on their mobile phone."

Numerous studies have shown that cellphone users are reluctant to surf the Web from their cellphones for various reasons including the difficulty, time and cost of downloading standard Internet pages to a mobile phone.

According to the GSM Association, more people have an Internet-ready mobile device than have a computer with Internet access. Yet just 14 percent of cellphone users in Britain accessed the Web for news and information in the fourth quarter, 10 percent in the United States, 7.6 percent in France and 3.2 percent in Germany, according to research by M:Metrics, a cellphone market research group based in Seattle. But while mobile surfing is struggling in Europe and America, it has caught on in Japan, where, according to the government, 69 million people were accessing Internet content from phones at the end of 2005, about 75 percent of all cellphone users.

An internal study done by dotMobi found that 88 percent of GSMA members had Web sites that were not suited for viewing on a phone.

DotMobi, officially know as a TLD, for top level domain, sells the dot-mobi names to resellers who then market them to companies and individuals, typically at about $10 an address, according to Edwards.

"Everybody down to local shops has an Internet presence on computers, but that's just one channel," Edwards said. "They should realize the potential of the mobile Web to reach people. The success of the mobile Internet hinges on there being quality content that is easy to access."

Some companies have versions of their regular Web site that have been optimized for mobile phones, but in most cases the sites have long addresses. Instead, with a dot-mobi address, users need only substitute ".com" with ".mobi."

Despite the list of industry heavyweights supporting the project, critics say that dot-mobi interferes with what they refer to as "device neutrality." Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, has said the Web must function independently of the hardware, software or network used to access it.

The World Wide Web Consortium, know as W3C, an organization that defines standards for the Web, and other proponents of "device neutrality" have argued that the technology already exists to send tailored content from existing Internet sites to specific devices with different screen sizes. The situation is further muddled, W3C argues, by the question of whether dot-mobi Web pages will link only to other dot-mobi pages.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...wireless26.php

T-Mobile Disses Opera, Says "Get Less!"

Testing some T-Mobile phones recently, I once again ran into T-Mobile's annoying policy of banning third-party applications from accessing the Internet on their phones. Like so many infringements on our liberties, this started stealthily with a few devices but now covers their entire product line.

This means T-Mobile feature phone users are prohibited from surfing the Web with Opera Mini, checking maps on Google Local for Mobile, listening to podcasts with Mobilcast, and using any other form of software not pre-approved by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile cites meaningless "security" concerns as reasons for attempting to severely cripple the mobile software development industry, but their hypocrisy is painfully clear when you remember that these apps work fine on T-Mobile's network, using T-Mobile SIM cards, if you buy your phone directly from a manufacturer like NokiaUSA.com.

This idiotic policy doesn't even work in T-Mobile's interests. Third party software encourages people to use data services, which encourages them to sign up for data plans, which makes T-Mobile money. A more liberal policy on mobile apps also might help the nation's #4 carrier win customers away from control freaks like Verizon, with their strictly limited set of applications.

T-Mobile's motto is "get more." So it's painfully ironic that nowadays, they let you "get less" -- locking out much of what their phones can do in a pointless, incomprehensible attempt at control. My solution: instead of buying phones through T-Mobile, go direct to manufacturers or through independent retailers that offer non-T-Mobile-branded GSM phones, then drop your T-Mobile SIM card in. (It'll work fine.) That way you'll get your T-Mobile service, and much, much "more."
http://www.gearlog.com/2007/01/tmobi...a_says_get.php

In Pursuit of a Faster Chip
John Markoff

Imagine how useful it would be to stand on a street corner and then walk diagonally through a block to get to your destination more quickly.

That is essentially the new approach taken by Cadence Design Systems, a maker of software tools for chip designers, in laying out microchip wires.

Until now the semiconductor industry has made "Manhattan Rules" the standard for routing the wires used to connect switches in microprocessors and memory chips. As a result, for almost all semiconductor chips today, wires are run only along horizontal and vertical axes, not diagonally.

Modern integrated circuits are actually three-dimensional. In the Cadence system, several layers route lines diagonally while others run horizontally and vertically. As in conventional chips, the multiple levels of wires are separated by layers of insulating material and interconnected through holes referred to as vias.

Computer chips are among today's most complex machines. The complexity is handled by software tools that allow chip engineers to use specialized programming languages that directly instruct chip-making equipment.

The transistor count of the most complex chips has surpassed the human population of the planet, and the average chip has a mile of wires, the thinnest of which are only a few hundred atoms across.

Cadence says its alternative design approach, called X Architecture, will help cope with the growing complexity while adding significantly to the speed, efficiency and performance of a generation of smaller chips that are just starting to appear.

It recently gained two major converts to its design: Agere Systems, a maker of next-generation cellphones, and Teranetics, which makes high-speed networking gear for corporate data centers. The companies report big savings, particularly in power consumption, deriving directly from the fact that diagonal routing cuts the total wire length necessary to run over the surface of a silicon chip.

Advocates of the technology say that as the chip industry moves to the next manufacturing generation, known as 65 nanometers, techniques that help reduce complexity are becoming crucial.

"The risks associated with getting designs out are going up dramatically," said Handel Jones, president of IBS, an industry consulting firm based in Los Gatos, California. Anything that reduces risk, he argues, will be welcomed.

But there are also skeptics. Cadence and its competitor Synopsys are the Hertz and Avis of the chip design world, and Synopsys engineers say they have examined the Cadence technology and found its performance and power efficiency to be less than Cadence has claimed.

"It's not a new concept — it's been around since designers used litho paper and cut it by hand," said Steve Meir, vice president for engineering at Synopsys, based in Sunnyvale, California.

The Cadence designers say they are confident that the benefits are there.

"The math is clear — if you can go diagonally, the wires will be 30 percent shorter," said Aki Fujimura, a Cadence senior vice president, who helped develop the technology at Simplex Solutions, which Cadence acquired in 2002.

Still, he acknowledges that it has been a struggle to persuade the industry to use the technology.

Intel, the largest maker of chips, has also turned its back on Cadence, choosing instead to invest in a smaller firm, Magma Design Automation.

Although Cadence is now run by a former top-ranking Intel executive, Mike Fister, Intel executives argue that the Magma tools offer a time-to-market advantage that trumps all other considerations.

Cadence's biggest challenge may ultimately be more cultural than technical, said Daniel Hutcheson, president of VLSI Technology, a semiconductor market research firm in Santa Clara, California.

Although the industry has a reputation for innovation, the ruthless pace of chip-making advances, requiring new systems at 18-month intervals, makes engineers leery of trying alternative approaches, he said.

"They're like penguins with the ice melting around them," Hutcheson said. "They keep doing the same thing."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...iness/chip.php

Shoot the Piano Player
Denis Dutton

IT seemed almost too good to be true, and in the end it was. A conscientious pianist who had enjoyed an active if undistinguished career in London falls ill and retreats to a small town. Here she undertakes a project to record virtually the entire standard classical repertoire. Her recordings, CDs made when she was in her late 60s and 70s, are staggering, showing a masterful technique, a preternatural ability to adapt to different styles and a depth of musical insight hardly seen elsewhere.

Born in 1928, the pianist, Joyce Hatto, was the daughter of a music-loving London antiques dealer. As a teenager, she said, she kept practicing during the Blitz, hiding under the piano when the bombs were falling. She claimed later to have known the composers Ralph Vaughn Williams, Benjamin Britten and Carl Orff, to have studied Chopin with the French virtuoso Alfred Cortot and taken advice from the pianist Clara Haskil. She was Arnold Bax’s favored interpreter for his “Symphonic Variations.”

Ms. Hatto made recordings from the 1950s until 1970 — some Mozart and Rachmaninoff — but tending toward light-music potboilers: Hubert Bath’s “Cornish Rhapsody” and Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto.” Her career was already in decline when she was given a cancer diagnosis in the early 1970s. She retired to a village near Cambridge with her husband, a recording engineer named William Barrington-Coupe, and a fine old Steinway that Rachmaninoff himself had used for prewar recitals in Britain.

Then came one of the strangest turns in the history of classical music. Starting in 1989, Joyce Hatto began recording CDs for a small record label run by her husband. She began with Liszt, went back to cover Bach and all of the Mozart sonatas and continued with a complete Beethoven sonata set. Then on to Schubert and Schumann, Chopin and more Liszt. She played Messiaen. Her Prokofiev sonatas (all nine) were tossed off with incredible virtuosity. In total she recorded more than 120 CDs — including many of the most difficult piano pieces ever written, played with breathtaking speed and accuracy.

Intriguingly, she gave to the music a developed although oddly malleable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano — an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability.

We normally think of prodigies as children who exhibit some kind of miraculous ability in music. Joyce Hatto became something unheard of in the annals of classical music: a prodigy of old age — the very latest of late bloomers, “the greatest living pianist that almost no one has heard of,” as the critic Richard Dyer put it for himself and many other piano aficionados in The Boston Globe.

Little wonder that when she at last succumbed to her cancer last year at age 77 — recording Beethoven’s Sonata No. 26, “Les Adieux,” from a wheelchair in her last days — The Guardian called her “one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.” Nice touch, that, playing Beethoven’s farewell sonata from a wheelchair. It went along with her image in the press as an indomitable spirit with a charming personality — always ready with a quote from Shakespeare, Arthur Rubinstein or Muhammad Ali. She also had a clear vision of the mission of musical interpreters, telling The Boston Globe: “Our job is to communicate the spiritual content of life as it is presented in the music. Nothing belongs to us; all you can do is pass it along.”

Now it has become brutally clear that “passing along” is exactly what she was up to. Earlier this month, a reader of the British music magazine Gramophone told one of its critics, Jed Distler, that something odd happened when he slid Ms. Hatto’s CD of Liszt’s “Transcendental Études” into his computer. His iTunes library, linked to a catalogue of about four million CDs, immediately identified it as a recording by the Hungarian pianist Laszlo Simon. Mr. Distler then listened to both recordings, and found them identical.

Since then, analysis by professional sound engineers and piano enthusiasts across the globe has pushed toward the same conclusion: the entire Joyce Hatto oeuvre recorded after 1989 appears to be stolen from the CDs of other pianists. It is a scandal unparalleled in the annals of classical music.

Ms. Hatto usually stole from younger artists who were not household names, although on the basis of the reviews she received, they richly deserved to be. Her recording of Chopin mazurkas seems to be by Eugen Indjic; the fiendishly difficult transcription of Chopin studies by Leopold Godowsky are actually recordings by Carlo Grante and Marc-André Hamelin; her Messiaen recordings were by Paul S. Kim; her version of the “Goldberg” Variations of Bach at least in part by Pi-Hsien Chen; the complete Ravel piano music by Roger Muraro. As reports come in, the rip-off list grows daily.

Her concerto recordings are even more brazen. The CD labels say they were made with the National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, always conducted by one René Köhler. Mr. Barrington-Coupe told a reporter that this was his name for a pick-up orchestra of Polish émigrés whom, he said, came out from London to record at a venue he now refuses to reveal. He declined to further discuss the orchestra on the grounds that they were employed “below union rates.” No one has yet been able to find a single reference to this René Köhler outside of the Joyce Hatto recordings, nor have any members of the orchestra come forward to confirm Mr. Barrington-Coupe’s story.

In a rapturous review of Ms. Hatto’s playing of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, one critic said of the orchestra musicians: “It doesn’t matter who they are, their playing is tight and hot.” Actually, it did matter, since they have turned out to be the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, performing with the formidable Yefim Bronfman. Her version of the Brahms Second Concerto is Vladimir Ashkenazy’s, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink laboring in the name of René Köhler and his non-union Poles.

Since the news broke, some have likened the exploits of Joyce Hatto to the notorious 20th-century Vermeer forger Han van Meegeren. But the differences are significant. Van Meegeren’s success was based as much on presentation — stories of old Italian families impoverished before World War II and needing quick cash — as on artistic plausibility. After he confessed, it was not hard for anyone to see that his dreadful fakes had more in common with each other than with any original Vermeers.

Joyce Hatto, however, was not a pianistic forger. In order to forge a piano performance, she would have had to record Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” herself and sell it to the world as a lost recording by, say, William Kapell. She was instead a plagiarist: she stole other pianists’ work and, with only a few electronic alterations, sold it as her own.

Although the critics who praised Van Meegerens’s “Vermeers” as masterpieces were in the end rightly humiliated, the same should not be true of those who praised Ms. Hatto’s recordings. They may have been fooled, but their opinions were not foolish, because the artists she ripped off played beautifully.

Yet the Joyce Hatto episode is a stern reminder of the importance of framing and background in criticism. Music isn’t just about sound; it is about achievement in a larger human sense. If you think an interpretation is by a 74-year-old pianist at the end of her life, it won’t sound quite the same to you as if you think it’s by a 24-year-old piano-competition winner who is just starting out. Beyond all the pretty notes, we want creative engagement and communication from music, we want music to be a bridge to another personality. Otherwise, we might as well feed Chopin scores into a computer.

This makes instrumental criticism a tricky business. I’m personally convinced that there is an authentic, objective maturity that I can hear in the later recordings of Rubinstein. This special quality of his is actually in the music, and is not just subjectively derived from seeing the wrinkles in the old man’s face. But the Joyce Hatto episode shows that our expectations, our knowledge of a back story, can subtly, or perhaps even crudely, affect our aesthetic response.

The greatest lesson for us all ought to be, however, that there are more fine young pianists out there than most of us realize. If it wasn’t Joyce Hatto, then who did perform those dazzlingly powerful Prokofiev sonatas? Having been so moved by hearing “her” Schubert on the radio, I’ve vowed to honor the real pianist by ordering the proper CD, as soon as I find out who it is. Backhanded credit to Joyce Hatto for having introduced us to some fine new talent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/op...5&ei=5087%0 A

EMI to Apple, Microsoft: Ditching DRM is Going to Cost You
Ken Fisher

Earlier this month it was widely reported that EMI was indeed ready to cast DRM into the dark abyss and earn the company the honorable status of being the first major music label to realize that DRM alienates honest customers. As it turns out, the company is indeed open to the possibility of ditching DRM, but they expect to be paid well for it, and the online music retailers aren't ready to meet their demands.

EMI is the only major record label to seriously consider abandoning the disaster that is DRM, but earlier reports that focused on the company's reformist attitude apparently missed the mark: EMI is willing to lose the DRM, but they demand a considerable advance payment to make it happen. According to Bloomberg, EMI has backed out of talks for now because no one will pay what they're asking. No dollar amounts are known at this time.

Online music giants Apple and Microsoft, along with smaller players including RealNetworks and Yahoo! Music, sought to indulge EMI's demands by waving leafy-green dollar bills at the company, but it wasn't what EMI asked for, and the company subsequently put the talks on hold. Warner's renewed interest in EMI is likely another contributing factor to EMI's own cold feet: Warner's leadership is devoted to DRM, making the DRM-free discussions all the more circumspect.
Down with DRM, up with prices?

While it has become a truism in tech enthusiast circles that 'no DRM equals more sales,' EMI and other record companies are pleased enough with the status quo that they expect any "risk" to be shouldered by retailers. If a "non-DRM tax" of sorts were applied to music, online retailers would have no choice but to increase the cost of downloadable music.

Some readers have indicated to us that they'd happily pay more for DRM-free downloadable music from an online retailer, yet it is unclear as to why DRM-free music should cost more. To return to a point made famous by Steve Jobs, the overwhelming majority of CDs sold today already come without DRM on the discs. Furthermore, pirated copies of music are readily available online. As a result, it's not very clear to us why online music that is sold without DRM would need to cost more, but given the razor-thin margins in that market, a "no DRM tax" is quite likely to be passed on directly to consumers.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070225-8916.html

Music Executives Judge Jobs, Lament Losses
Greg Sandoval

The discussions at a music conference here Tuesday started with an all-around bashing of Apple CEO Steve Jobs before moving to the plethora of issues plaguing the music industry.

Apple, digital rights management (DRM) and the public's willingness to pirate music were discussed, debated and lamented once more by attendees of the Digital Music Forum East conference.

"We're running out of time," Ted Cohen, managing director of music consulting firm TAG Strategic, told the roughly 200 attendees. "We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again."

The call to arms by Cohen, who was moderating a panel discussion titled "The State of the Digital Union," comes as the music industry suffers through one of the worst slumps in its history.

CD sales fell 23 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2006. Legal sales of digital songs aren't making up the difference either. Last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue.

That has the industry pointing fingers at a number of things they believe caused the decline.

At the opening of the conference, some of the panel members lashed out at Jobs. Members said Jobs' call three weeks ago for DRM-free music was "insincere" and a "red herring."

"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats," Jobs wrote in a letter that rocked the music industry. "In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

Jobs' position was perceived by many in the music industry as a 180-degree shift in direction. The view expressed at the conference is that Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM.

Cohen told the audience that if Jobs was really sincere about doing away with DRM, he would soon release movies from Disney--the studio Jobs holds a major stake in--without any software protection. An Apple representative declined to comment on Tuesday on remarks made by the panel.

Panel member Mike Bebel, CEO of Ruckus music service, said: "Look, I don't think anybody is necessarily down on Apple. The problem is the proprietary implementation of technology...and it's causing everybody else who is participating in the marketplace--the other service providers, the labels, the users--a lot of pain. If they could simply open it up, everybody would love them."

The role of DRM
Panel members--who included Thomas Gewecke, Sony BMG senior vice president, and Gabriel Levy, general manager of RealNetworks Europe--were divided about what the music industry should do about DRM in general.

Most of the panel members, save for Greg Scholl, CEO of independent music label The Orchard, believe that some form of DRM is necessary.

Scholl said flatly that DRM doesn't work. "The idea that DRM gives us choice isn't right," he said.

"The economics of the business are over for good and aren't ever going to be the way they were before," Scholl said. This is a position that some in the music industry are starting to warm up to.

In January, EMI said it was reviewing a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to allow reverse engineering of its digital rights management software. That EMI would even consider the proposal was seen in many circles as a step forward by the anti-DRM camp.

Gewecke also defended record labels against the criticism that the music industry has its head in the sand and just doesn't understand the Digital Age. He said that Sony BMG is working with technologists and retailers, and is constantly is looking for technological solutions to some of the industry's problems.

He also said that despite all the bad news, there's plenty for the sector to be encouraged about.

"We routinely talk to companies about what's different," Gewecke said. "We're constantly looking for where value is being created in a business model. We are being flexible. There's still an evolution that has to happen. I say it's an optimistic time considering there's more music being listened to now than ever before. There's more opportunities to monetize the music. We want to be out there looking for new ideas and companies."
http://news.com.com/Music+executives...3-6162729.html

How FairPlay Works: Apple's iTunes DRM Dilemma
Dan

Understanding how Apple’s FairPlay DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions: why it hasn’t been replaced with an open, interoperable DRM that anyone can use, why Apple isn’t broadly licensing FairPlay, and why the company hasn’t jumped to add DRM-free content from indie artists to iTunes.

The Quandary of Interoperable DRM
Why can't the music industry just adopt an open standard for DRM? The simple answer is that the basic concept of interoperable DRM makes no sense.

Since the point of DRM is to limit interoperability by using secrets, there is no open way to deliver a DRM system that does what it's supposed to do. If it were open, then it wouldn't be secret. When the secrets get out, it's now open, but it no longer works as DRM.

If that logic isn’t too difficult to fathom, here's another wrinkle to complicate things: the industry has already adopted interoperable frameworks for DRM. One is the MPEG-4 AAC standard, which is used by Apple in iTunes.

The earlier MP3 file format had no provision for DRM. However, the newer AAC format was designed with an open mechanism for companies to extend the format using their own DRM implementation. That's as open as DRM can possibly get: an agreed upon system for putting secrets in a specific place.

It's still a secret, but it's at least a known unknown. While anyone can access and play a standard AAC file, to use a DRM-protected AAC file they need to know the secret to decoding that particular file.

Advanced Audio Coding
AAC was developed by some of the same audio experts that created the original MP3 standard: the Fraunhofer Institute, Dolby, Sony, and AT&T. It was adopted as an open standard a decade ago this year, although it has been updated and expanded since.

Royalty payments are required for using the MP3 format for distributed content, but no licenses or fees are required to stream or distribute content in AAC, making it a more attractive format for streaming content, such as Internet radio. AAC also offers better compression, support for more channels of audio, and requires less processing power to decode than MP3.

By default, iTunes rips songs from CD using AAC. Most modern devices, from media players to mobile phones, can now play AAC sound files. In addition to iTunes, AAC has also been adopted by Sony for use on the PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation 3, and many other music players beyond the iPod.

It's also the format used by XM satellite radio and most digital satellite TV, part of the MPEG 4 standard and adopted by the 3GPP, the partnership creating media standards for 3G mobile GSM networks.

An Enigma, Wrapped in a Riddle, Shrouded in Mystery
The AAC songs purchased from the iTunes music store are protected with Apple’s FairPlay DRM. Without knowing the FairPlay secrets, other parties can't play them.

In order to create a system that could manage access to billions of songs sold to millions of users, yet keep things simple and flexible, FairPlay uses sets of keys that work together to make sure that the system, even if it is cracked, still maintains Apple's commitment to music labels by limiting any damages.

A look at how FairPlay works helps to understand why Apple doesn't want to share the system with third party download stores and player manufacturers, and what would be involved in mixing DRM-free content into the iTunes Store.

iTunes Accounts and Authorizations
Prior to buying content from the iTunes Store, a user has to create an account with Apple's servers and then authorize a PC or Mac running iTunes.

During authorization, iTunes creates a globally unique ID number for the computer it is running on, then sends it to Apple's servers, where it is assigned to the user's iTunes account. Five different machines can be authorized.

When a user buys a song from the iTunes Store, a user key is created for the purchased file. The AAC song itself is scrambled using a separate master key, which is then included into the protected AAC song file. The master key is locked using the user key, which is both held by iTunes and also sent to Apple’s servers.

Protected, purchased content is locked within iTunes; songs are not scrambled on Apple's server. This speeds and simplifies the transaction by delegating that work to iTunes on the local computer.

The result is an authorization system that does not require iTunes to verify each song with Apple as it plays. Instead, iTunes maintains a collection of user keys for all the purchased tracks in its library.

To play a protected AAC song, iTunes uses the matching user key to unlock the master key stored within the song file, when is then used to unscramble the song data.

Every time a new track is purchased, a new user key may be created; those keys are all encrypted and stored on the authorized iTunes computer, as well as being copied to Apple's servers.

When a new computer is authorized, it also generates a globally unique ID number for itself and sends it to Apple, which stores it as one of the five authorizations in the user account.

Apple's server sends the newly authorized machine the entire set of user keys for all the tracks purchased under the account, so all authorized systems will be able to play all purchased songs.

An iTunes computer can be authorized by multiple iTunes user accounts; for each account, iTunes maintains a set of user keys.

Exploiting Authorizations in FairPlay
When a computer is deauthorized, it deletes its local set of user keys and requests Apple to remove the authorization from its records.

If the keys are backed up, users can deauthorize their systems, then restore the keys and authorize a new set of computers, resulting in more than five machines that can all play the existing purchased music.

However, any new music purchased on the newly authorized systems will create new keys, and the previously de-authorized machines will not be able to play the new purchases because they can't obtain the new keys.

iTunes Keys on the iPod
Any number of iPods can be used with an authorized computer running iTunes. Once an iPod is connected, it downloads all the user keys from iTunes so it can unlock and play any protected tracks. If that copy of iTunes is authorized to play songs from multiple accounts, all of the accounts' user keys are uploaded.

The iPod makes no decisions about which tracks it can play, it simply is given user keys for all the songs it contains by iTunes.

If iTunes has songs in its library, but lacks the keys to play them--from another account, or on a deauthorized computer that has dumped its keys--it will simply not copy the protected songs to the iPod.

There is no way unplayable protected songs can be copied to the iPod without the user keys to play them, because iTunes will not let this happen. This again delegates the burden of DRM to iTunes, making the iPod simpler.

That also explains why users can't dock a single iPod with different users’ iTunes and suck up all their music; the only option available is to replace the music on the iPod with the music from the new iTunes library.

Since iTunes manages all the music on an iPod, there is no way to sync an iPod with multiple iTunes libraries; the iPod simply wasn’t given the intelligence to mange multiple libraries.

With iTunes 7 however, Apple added the ability for an iPod registered with an iTunes account to sync purchased songs with any of the five machines authorized by that account. Each copy of iTunes can update the user keys on the iPod and add new purchased tracks, ensuring that the iPod can play all the music copied to it.

Cracking FairPlay in iTunes
Because protected AAC songs are scrambled with an encrypted master key, it is practically impossible to unscramble protected song files.

Instead, crackers typically attempt to steal the user keys so they can simply decrypt songs in the same matter as iTunes does. This is like breaking into a bank vault by stealing the combination rather than trying to smash through the vault walls.

The user keys themselves are stored encrypted by iTunes, on the iPod, and on Apple's server. However, as the keys are used there are opportunities to either steal them or hijack the song data after it is unlocked. In either case, the unlocked song can be recovered and dumped into an unlocked file.

Jon Johansen, known as DVDJon for his involvement in cracking the Content Scrambling System DRM used on DVDs, discovered multiple methods for stripping the encryption from FairPlay protected files while working to build an iTunes client for Linux:

•The first, distributed as QTFairUse, grabbed song data after it was unlocked and uncompressed by iTunes, and then dumped the raw stream into a large container file, requiring further processing afterward.

•The second, written by Johansen for the open source VLC media player--and reused in PlayFair, Hymn, JHymn and other derivatives--intercepts unlocked but not yet uncompressed song files, creating a small, ready to play, unencrypted AAC file.

•The third, originally used in PyMusique, a Linux client for the iTunes Store, pretends to be iTunes. It requested songs from Apple's servers and then downloaded the purchased songs without locking them, as iTunes would.

•The fourth, used in FairKeys, also pretends to be iTunes; it requests a user's keys from Apple's servers and then uses these keys to unlock existing purchased songs.

All of these exploits only work on song of a specific, known user account. They will not work against protected tracks obtained from an unknown user. FairPlay encryption has never been cracked to the point where anyone can open up any encrypted content, in the way that the CSS DRM on DVDs has.

Because iTunes happily converts protected AAC songs into standard, unprotected AAIF CD files when burning a CD, there isn't much point for a user trying to attack the system or steal its keys. The main reason for trying to defeat FairPlay is to exploit the system for the benefit of third parties.

RealNetworks and the Rhapsody Attack
The most obvious example is Real's attempt to sell its own DRM music that could play on the iPod. Since Real's own Helix DRM does not work on the iPod, Real created software that decrypts its own DRM music, then encodes it in a FairPlay-like package that could play on the iPod with DRM intact.

Apple responded by issuing a bizarre statement saying it was "stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod," and then threatened to drop the DMCA bomb.

After that excessive posturing, Apple did what it should have done silently: it simply disabled Real tracks from playing. Since then, Apple and Real have squabbled back and forth, but since Apple controls the whole FairPlay system, it has had little problem in preventing Real's DRM from working on the iPod.

Jon Johansen, DRM Profiteer
After releasing a number of open source utilities to strip the DRM from FairPlay protected songs, Johansen decided that it would be more advantageous to get paid for his work.

He now works for DoubleTwist Ventures, selling third parties the ability to sell DRM music that can play on the iPod, just like Real had been trying to do itself.

Apple has worked tirelessly to stop attempts by Real, DoubleTwist, and Johansen's open source software to defeat its FairPlay system. Is the company worried about losing revenue to Real and other store competitors? Well, since Apple makes very little direct revenue from iTunes Store purchases, that's not likely.

After all, the company provides free podcast content in iTunes; if Apple were desperately trying to get revenue out of the iTunes Store, it would be foolish to promote free alternative content. Microsoft has made no effort to foster any support for podcasts on the Zune for example.

Why Apple Cares About DRM
The real impetus behind blocking FairPlay cracks is that Apple has to answer to the labels it licenses its music from; if Apple allows crackers to break the system and recover songs, it has to pay damages to the RIAA.

Apple obviously doesn't want to pay for damages, nor does it really want to continue developing an increasingly sophisticated DRM system under constant attack from smart crackers armed with financial incentives to exploit it.
The only reason Apple maintains FairPlay is to preserve access to licensed content from the music labels for the iPod and the Mac, QuickTime, and iTunes platforms.

Why Apple Doesn't Care About DRM
Foes of DRM have joined with foes of Apple to beat the company up over its efforts to keep FairPlay secure.

That's why Steve Jobs announced that the company would be happy to drop its DRM efforts, if only the labels would agree to license their music for sale in iTunes without DRM.

After years of negotiating with the RIAA, Jobs' probably knows that the labels are unlikely to give up their DRM demands. His comments really serve to point out that Apple benefits little from DRM, a rebuttal of the attacks from EU regulators that claim Apple’s FairPlay gives it a monopoly and restricts free trade.

As Jobs pointed out, the majority of music is being sold on CDs, and lacks any sort of DRM protection. As long as CDs are sold, it makes little sense for the labels to demand that iTunes sells music with unbreakable DRM, while EU regulators also chime in to demand that Apple share its DRM system with rivals. Two birds, one stone.

Jobs basically told the EU to bark up the record labels’ tree, which happens to be rooted in their own backyard.

If the labels allowed Apple to sell music without DRM, the iPod and iTunes Store could only become more popular. Even if download sales crashed because of rampant piracy, the only real loss would be the labels’, who take the vast majority of revenues from download sales. If sales went up, Apple would do even better.

There is really no way Apple would lose from abandoning DRM, unless doing so would cause the labels to pull out of the iTunes Store and try to resurrect Real's Helix or Microsoft's Janus as an alternative DRM system instead.

That’s the threat posed by allowing competitors to sell DRM that works on the iPod. As long as the playing field is level, Apple can compete. If Real were allowed to sell iPod-playable DRM, or if the iPod supported Microsoft’s Janus DRM, suddenly Apple would be competing against label-friendly DRM and lose any leverage.

Apple isn’t a fan of DRM because as long as it is accepted, the potential exists for the Mac, iPod, iTunes, and QuickTime to be shut out of the market by an industry ready to drink Bill Gates’ Palladium FlavorAid.

At the same time, Apple obviously can't just turn off its DRM and sell the labels’ songs unencumbered without their blessing. Is there any middle ground?

Apple’s Problem With DRM
A number of analysts have frothed all over themselves to call Jobs a lying hypocrite, saying that if Jobs didn't secretly love DRM, he'd offer songs in iTunes without DRM right now. There are labels and independents willing to sell their music without DRM.

Anti-DRM frothers have praised Yahoo! for making a spectacle of offering a few tracks from select artists as MP3s. Indeed, why can’t Apple be like Yahoo! and offer a handful of unprotected songs with limited appeal?

The reason Yahoo! is talking about MP3s is because its PlaysForSure business doesn’t get much attention. Apple doesn’t have the same problem, so it doesn’t need to make a meaningless show about offering a dozen MP3s.

The reason that Jobs isn't interested in DRM is not because of a desperate need for attention, nor a religious fervor for open sharing and caring, but rather because DRM only poses a risk and expense to Apple, with negligible benefit. Adding some DRM-free content to iTunes fails to solve the problem.

FairPlay’s Negligible Benefit to Apple
FairPlay may make PlaysForSure-based products from Creative and other Microsoft aligned rivals slightly less appealing because they "won't work with iTunes," but since those players work fine with CDs and have stores of their own, the real reason nobody's buying them is not because of the DRM in the iTunes Store.

PC enthusiasts like to complain that iTunes for Windows doesn’t even work very well, so when they complain that the majority of the market is hopelessly and inextricably tied to iTunes, well, it makes a for a good laugh.

Any slight competitive edge afforded to the iPod by Apple's FairPlay DRM is vastly overshadowed by the development expense and risk Apple incurs supporting a DRM system that only really benefits the RIAA.

So why isn't Apple jumping to adopt DRM-free indie content, to prove to its partner music labels that DRM is unnecessary to support sales?

John Gruber of the Daring Fireball seems to feel that the problem is one of labeling and consumer confusion.

As he points out, Apple already marks content in the iTunes Store as "clean" or "explicit," so why not sell music as "unencumbered" or "FairPlay," and let users decide?

Why iTunes Can't Mix DRM and non-DRM Content
The real answer seems to be simpler: the iTunes Store is designed to manage purchases along with their keys.

Offering DRM-free tracks next to protected songs in the iTunes Store would require significant changes to how iTunes works, and could inadvertently open up new exploits to the remaining DRM system, complicating the system further. The real rub is that it would do nothing to solve Apple’s real problem.

Apple wants things to be simpler and more efficient, not to offer DRM-free indie tracks next to DRM songs. Duh.

Apple isn't professing a lack of interest in DRM as a ruse to court the favor of DRM-haters, nor is it an ideological exercise in being free-content hippies. The company just doesn’t want to be burdened with maintaining a system that is complex, expensive to maintain and police, and which threatens to expose Apple to risk.

As long as the majority of music is being sold on wide-open, unprotected CDs, FairPlay DRM really serves little purpose beyond giving the RIAA members a false sense of security. If CDs were copy protected, DRM would make more sense as a tool in managing loss.

Making Things Worse
Mixing non-DRM music into iTunes does nothing to solve Apple's problem, it only complicates matters. Apple would have to update the iTunes software so it could download songs and skip encryption and key storage for non-DRM tracks.

Apple would also have to rework its servers to manage purchased tracks without dealing with keys. It would also have to update the iPod to manage purchased track syncing without trying to use keys. It would then need to spend time making sure all those changes didn’t introduce bugs or exploitable vulnerabilities in FairPlay.

That's a lot of engineering work to create a system that duplicates the effort of existing stores that already offer the minority of tracks available as MP3s. There simply isn't a large enough demand for the indie music available on MP3; that’s also why it is not popular enough to be carried by the big pop labels.

Whose Idea Was This?
If Apple were making huge profits from selling music, it might make sense. However, Apple sells music in the iTunes Store to make sure content is available for the iPod. Apple knows there’s no big profits in reselling music.

If online music stores were making money, the world’s number two store wouldn't be an outfit selling MP3s of artists that the big five labels won't even carry. Besides the iTunes Store, which is only earning a small profit, there are no significant, profitable online stores selling popular music.

That's simply a fact: selling other people's music is a low profit business for everyone apart from the big labels. Until they choose to sell their music without DRM, it makes no sense for Apple to outdo itself creating an even more complex system to sell unpopular music that is already available elsewhere.

The same logic also applies to the small number of pop bands ready to sell their music without DRM: compared to the volume of music sold through the big labels, they simply don’t matter.

What About Licensing FairPlay?
The record labels don't want to give up DRM. They also don't share Apple's problems with FairPlay--that it’s a big job to maintain and constantly under siege--because they are protected by their licensing contracts with Apple, which demand damages if FairPlay is ever cracked and not immediately repaired.

The labels’ only problem with DRM is that Apple's FairPlay is the only commercially successful version for downloads. For the labels, that's a liability, because it gives Apple a huge amount of leverage in its negotiations.

What’s involved in Apple licensing FairPlay? The next article takes a look.

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http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...610E66A46.html

Forget DRM. It's the Music
Charles Cooper

Pushing my vacuum cleaner around the living room last week, I suddenly did a double take. Chockablock with records, cassettes and CDs, the wall unit across from me contained my 35-year-old history as a music consumer.

Truth be told, I did download a few digital-music files here and there during Napster's heyday in the late 1990s. (Personal note to the RIAA: They've all since been deleted. I swear on my pet rock.) But I paid for most of the rest of my collection, down to the last penny. I bet you can say the same for the majority of the music-listening public.

So it was with a mix of amusement and disappointment that I read about the recent get-together for music industry executives earlier in the week, where the folks invited as talking heads took turns bashing Apple CEO Steve Jobs and offering pale prescriptions about how to fix what ails their business.
Blaming peer-to-peer technology has become the convenient undertaking of our times.

I don't want to get into an argument about which generation created the best music. Personally, I'm partial to jazz and classical, though I can't deny that I dig a lot of hip-hop. But is it possible--or even likely--that the falloff in music sales has more to do more with the quality of contemporary music than with digital piracy? We obviously have an enormous appetite for schlock, but there are limits.

With all due respect to the high-quality bands working for a living, the studios have always chosen the easy out by shoving numbingly formulaic, bad music down the public's throat. For most of the post-war era, that was the way things worked. Then came the Internet, which ushered in the revenge of the music buyer.

The studios shouldn't be surprised at what happened. Throughout their history, they routinely targeted Top 40 titles at teenagers and early twentysomethings. The irony is that these folks make up the demographic most likely to pirate music.
The studios have always chosen the easy out by shoving numbingly formulaic, bad music down the public's throat.

Instead of threatening to sue their own (potential) customers, why don't they do more to monetize the growing demand for oldies and indie music? Fans clearly are willing to pay it. What's so hard about finding a way to make that work? With a little creativity, the studios could find ways to better promote musicians who cater to these--and other--demographic categories, in which digital piracy isn't the fashion. All the consumer wants in return is a fair value.

Instead, the industry's best and brightest continue to look elsewhere.

For instance, they insist on clinging to digital right management as if it were a lifeboat. Pardon the cliche, but that ship has sailed. The endless wrangling over Jobs' call to get rid of DRM is so irrelevant. Same goes for their tired refrains, blaming the likes of you and me for their plight.

To wit: Ted Cohen, who directs music consulting for Tag Strategic, says the solution is "to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again."

Really? It's not as if we haven't been paying all along. With all the high-powered MBAs in their employ, it's hard to fathom why the music industry can't move beyond finger-pointing and develop a more creative approach. I can understand the angst expressed by Cohen and his music industry cohorts about the future, but squeezing music fans for a few more shekels isn't the answer.

These folks are still shell-shocked from the Napsterization of their business, which has suffered a 23 percent decline in worldwide sales the last six years. Blaming peer-to-peer technology has become the convenient undertaking of our times. But it's useful to recall that people didn't stop buying books or maps when the Xerox machine hit. Customers will pay for worthwhile products, even if they can get free lower-quality copies.

There's a better reason to explain what's gone wrong. It's the product, stupid.

Then again, maybe I'm simply showing my age.
http://news.com.com/Forget+DRM.+Its+...3-6163766.html

New "Watermark" System Scours the Net for Infringement, Notifies Owners
Ken Fisher

Watermarks date back at least to the 13th century, when paper manufacturers found a way to "mark" sheets with an unremovable, barely-visible signature to denote either the paper's origin, ownership, or both. Watermarks have come a long way, and companies such as Macrovision and Digimarc have made a king's ransom offering "digital watermarking technology" to today's purveyors of content.

These days, digital watermarking is now being tasked to make money on unauthorized file distribution. The proposition is simple: what if video and audio content flowed freely online, sans DRM, but owners were somehow compensated when files were played or accessed? That's the basic idea behind Digimarc's latest patent.

According a patent filing at the US Patent and Trademark Office, Digimarc's "Method for monitoring internet dissemination of image, video and/or audio files" is a monitoring service that scans the Internet, consuming content as it goes. The system downloads audio, video and images, and then scans them for watermarks. If it finds a watermark it recognizes, the system then contacts that mark's registered owner and informs them of the discovery.

Digimark announced their successful patent application this month, but the patent has been a long time coming. It was first filed in November of 1998, long before the YouTubes and MySpaces of the world existed. Now Digimarc is promoting the monitoring system as the cure to what ails these social networking sites. According to Bruce Davis, Digimarc chairman and CEO, the system could help build "viable business models" in an arena rife with "disruptive changes in entertainment distribution and consumption."

"Much of the repurposed content on YouTube, for example, contains copyrighted entertainment," Davis said in a statement. "If social networking sites implemented software to check each stream, they could identify copyrighted subject matter, create a report, negotiate compensation for the value chain and sell targeted advertising for related goods and services. There is no need to impede consumers. In fact, the specific identification of the content could guide provision of related goods, services and community designed to maximize the consumer’s enjoyment of the entertainment experience."

For the system to work, players at multiple levels would need to get involved. Broadcasters would need to add identifying watermarks to their broadcast, in cooperation with copyright holders, and both parties would need to register their watermarks with the system. Then, in the event that a user capped a broadcast and uploaded it online, the scanner system would eventually find it and report its location online. Yet the system is not designed to hop on P2P networks or private file sharing hubs, but instead crawls public web sites in search of watermarked material. As such, this "solution" is more geared towards sites like YouTube and less towards casual piracy, which rarely involves posting things to a web site.

Generally we've laughed off most watermarking solutions because they seemed like solutions in search of a problem. Now that Google has learned the hard way that content owners want to be paid when their content shows up on YouTube, we may see more of these "solutions" in the future.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070227-8937.html

'Harry Potter' Author Fights e-Book Fraud on eBay
Candace Lombardi

Children's author J.K. Rowling may or may not have garnered the equivalent of a temporary injunction against eBay over the sale of fraudulent Harry Potter e-books, depending on how you interpret court documents.

Rowling and Warner Bros., which produces the Harry Potter movies, filed a lawsuit in India in 2004 against several eBay sellers and eBay itself over unauthorized copies of e-books that appeared on Baazee.com (the former name and domain name for what is now eBay India).

On November 16, 2004, an initial request for an injunction was denied by Justice Mukul Mudgal of the High Court of Delhi after A.S. Chandhiok, eBay's senior counsel for the case, petitioned the court. Chandhiok argued that there was no need for an injunction because eBay was willing to remove the sellers in question, their advertisements for the e-books and the listings for the unauthorized e-books from its Baazee.com site.

On January 24, 2007, Judge A.K. Sikri from the High Court of Delhi signed an order that, depending on how his language is interpreted, would make the voluntary action on the part of eBay "absolute till the disposal of the suit." The next hearing, cross-examinations of the plaintiffs' witnesses in the case, is scheduled for May 28.

eBay confirmed that it is the "defendant No. 5" referred to in the documents. But eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe said in an e-mail that the wording of the January order is not a direct injunction against eBay, but a confirmation that one is not needed because it willingly removed the fraudulent sellers, sellers' listings and sellers' advertisement from its India site.

Akash Chittranshi, the local plaintiffs' attorney for the case in India, as well Neil Blair, Rowling's agent at Christopher Little, say otherwise. They assert that upon further hearings on the details of the case, the court changed its mind as to whether an injunction was needed and that on January 24, 2007, issued an injunction against eBay, as well as the sellers.

"In 2004 the Judge only wanted to consider eBay's reply to the claims made before granting the Order...after which the matter was taken up by the Court in January 2007 when the injunction was made absolute against all the defendants in the matter till conclusion of the proceedings and was served upon them all," said Chittranshi in an e-mail.

"My clients expect eBay to take whatever steps it needs to take to comply with the court's order," he said.

Whether an injunction was served on eBay or just the sellers on eBay could have greater implications with regard to eBay's legal obligations to police counterfeiters.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton filed suit in France against eBay in September for not doing enough to stop the sale of counterfeit versions of products such as handbags over its site, according to a report by Business Week. Tiffany & Co. also filed suit in federal district court in New York in 2004. Both cases are still ongoing.

Rowling announced in early February that her final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is scheduled for release on July 21 in the U.K. and U.S.

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.
http://news.com.com/Harry+Potter+aut...3-6163620.html

Surveillance Cameras Get Smarter
Stephen Manning

The next time you walk by a shop window, take a glance at your reflection. How much do you swing your arms? Is the weight of your bag causing you to hunch over? Do you still have a bit of that 1970s disco strut left?

Look around - You might not be the only one watching. The never-blinking surveillance cameras, rapidly becoming a part of daily life in public and even private places, may be sizing you up as well. And they may soon get a lot smarter.

Researchers and security companies are developing cameras that not only watch the world but also interpret what they see. Soon, some cameras may be able to find unattended bags at airports, guess your height or analyze the way you walk to see if you are hiding something.

Most of the cameras widely used today are used as forensic tools to identify crooks after-the-fact. (Think grainy video on local TV news of convenience store robberies gone wrong.) But the latest breed, known as "intelligent video," could transform cameras from passive observers to eyes with brains, able to detect suspicious behavior and potentially prevent crime before it occurs.

Surveillance cameras are common in many cities, monitoring tough street corners to deter crime, watching over sensitive government buildings and even catching speeders. Cameras are on public buses and in train stations, building lobbies, schools and stores. Most feed video to central control rooms, where they are monitored by security staff.

The innovations could mean fewer people would be needed to watch what they record, and make it easier to install more in public places and private homes.

"Law enforcement people in this country are realizing they can use video surveillance to be in a lot of places at one time," said Roy Bordes, who runs an Orlando, Fla.-based security consulting company. He also is a council vice president with ASIS International, a Washington-based organization for security officials.

The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers.

In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before.

In London, one of the largest users of surveillance, cameras provided key photos of the men who bombed the underground system in July 2005 and four more who failed in a second attempt just days later. But the cameras were only able to help with the investigation, not prevent the attacks.

Companies that make the latest cameras say the systems, if used broadly, could make video surveillance much more powerful. Cameras could monitor airports and ports, help secure homes and watch over vast borders to catch people crossing illegally.

Intelligent surveillance uses computer algorithms to interpret what a camera records. The system can be programmed to look for particular things, like an unattended bag or people walking somewhere they don't belong.

"If you think of the camera as your eye, we are using computer programs as your brain," said Patty Gillespie, branch chief for image processing at the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md. Today, the military funds much of the smart-surveillance research.

At the University of Maryland, engineering professor Rama Chellappa and a team of graduate students have worked on systems that can identify a person's unique gait or analyze the way someone walks to determine if they are a threat.

A camera trained to look for people on a watch list, for example, could combine their unique walk with facial-recognition tools to make an identification. A person carrying a heavy load under a jacket would walk differently than someone unencumbered - which could help identify a person hiding a weapon. The system could even estimate someone's height.

With two cameras and a laptop computer set up in a conference room, Chellappa and a team of graduate students recently demonstrated how intelligent surveillance works.

A student walked into the middle of the room, dropped a laptop case, then walked away. On the laptop screen, a green box popped up around him as he moved into view, then a second focused on the case when it was dropped. After a few seconds, the box around the case went red, signaling an alert.

In another video, a car pulled into a parking lot and the driver got out, a box springing up around him. It moved with the driver as he went from car to car, looking in the windows instead of heading into the building.

In both cases, the camera knew what was normal - the layout of the room with the suspicious bag and the location of the office door and parking spots in the parking lot. Alerts were triggered when the unknown bag was added and when the driver didn't go directly into the building after parking his car.

Similar technology is currently in use by Marines in Iraq and by the subway system in Barcelona, according to ObjectVideo, a Reston, Va., firm that makes surveillance software.

ObjectVideo uses a "tripwire system" that allows users to set up virtual perimeters that are monitored by the cameras. If someone crosses that perimeter, the system picks it up, sends out an alert, and security staff can determine if there is a threat.

Company spokesman Edward Troha predicts the technology, currently designed primarily to protect borders, ports and other infrastructure, could be adapted to help prevent retail theft or guard private homes.

The Jacksonville Port Authority uses ObjectVideo software as part of its security measures to watch the perimeter of the Florida port that handles 8.7 million tons of cargo and thousands of cruise ship passengers each year. The surveillance system sends real-time video from anywhere at the port of possible intruders to patrol cars.

Still, industry officials say the technology needs to improve before it can be widely used. There are liability issues, such as if someone is wrongly tagged as a threat at an airport and misses a flight, said Bordes. Troha warns humans are still essential to intelligent video, to tell, for example, if a person in a restricted area is a danger or just lost.

And the cameras can only see so much - they can't stop some threats, like a bomber with explosives in a backpack. They can't see what you are wearing under your jacket - yet.

"That is an eventual goal, but we're not there yet," said Chellappa.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/2007...ce-cameras.htm

Justice Department Takes Aim at Image-Sharing Sites
Declan McCullagh

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.

That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.

A second purpose of the meeting in Washington, D.C., according to the sources, was to ask Internet service providers how much it would cost to record details on their subscribers for two years. At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address.

Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. "There's a PR concern with including the libraries, so we're not going to include them," the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. "We know we're going to get a pushback, so we're not going to do that."

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been lobbying Congress for mandatory data retention, calling it a "national problem that requires federal legislation." Gonzales has convened earlier private meetings to pressure industry representatives. And last month, Republicans introduced a mandatory data retention bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would let the attorney general dictate what must be stored and for how long.

Supporters of the data retention proposal say it's necessary to help track criminals if police don't immediately discover illegal activity, such as child abuse. Industry representatives respond by saying major Internet providers have a strong track record of responding to subpoenas from law enforcement.

Wednesday's meeting represents the latest effort by the Bush administration to increase the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor Internet users. Since 2001, the administration has repeatedly pushed for more surveillance capabilities in the form of the Patriot Act and a follow-up proposal that--if it had been enacted--would have given the FBI online eavesdropping powers without a court order for up to 48 hours.

Often invoking terrorism and child pornography as justifications, the administration has argued that Internet providers must install backdoors for surveillance and has called for routers to be redesigned for easier eavesdropping. President Bush's electronic surveillance program, which was recently modified, has drawn an avalanche of lawsuits.

ISP snooping timeline

In events first reported by CNET News.com, Bush administration officials have said Internet providers should keep track of what Americans are doing online. Here's the timeline:

June 2005: Justice Department officials quietly propose data retention rules.

December 2005: European Parliament votes for data retention of up to two years.

April 14, 2006: Data retention proposals surface in Colorado and the U.S. Congress.

April 20, 2006: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says data retention "must be addressed."

April 28, 2006: Democrat proposes data retention amendment, followed by a Republican.

May 26, 2006: Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller pressure Internet and telecom companies.

September 26, 2006: Politicians suggest that Web hosts and registrars might have to comply. Search engines are also mentioned.

January 18, 2007: Gonzales says administration will ask Congress for new laws.

February 6, 2007: Republicans introduce mandatory data retention "Safety Act."

The Justice Department's request for information about compliance costs echoes a decade-ago debate over wiretapping digital telephones, which led to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. To reduce opposition by telephone companies, Congress set aside $500 million for reimbursement and the legislation easily cleared both chambers by voice votes.

Once Internet providers come up with specific figures, privacy advocates worry, Congress will offer to write a generous check to cover all compliance costs and the process will repeat itself.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, which has been critical of data retention proposals before, declined to comment.

Because the Justice Department did not circulate a written proposal at the private meeting, it's difficult to gauge the effects on Web sites that would be forced to record information on image uploads for two years. Meeting participants said that Justice officials (including Brand, the assistant attorney general for legal policy and a former White House attorney) did not answer questions about anonymously posted content and whether text comments on a blog would qualify for retention.

In practice, some Web businesses already make it a practice to store personal information forever. Google stores search terms indefinitely, for instance, while AOL says it deletes them after 30 days.

David Weekly, a San Francisco-area entrepreneur who founded popular Wiki-creation site PBWiki.com, said the Justice Department's proposal would be routinely evaded by people who use overseas sites to upload images. (PBWiki, which recently raised $2 million from Mohr Davidow Ventures, lets people embed photographs on pages they create with a point-and-click editor.)

If the proposal were to become law, PBWiki would already be in compliance, Weekly said. "We already keep all that data pretty much indefinitely because it's invaluable for us to mine and figure out how people use services," he said. "How do they use services now versus a year ago? Was February a bad month for traffic?...We already have the data there. It's already searchable. It's already indexed."
http://news.com.com/Justice+Departme...3-6163679.html

Homeland Security Offers Details on Real ID
Declan McCullagh

Hundreds of millions of Americans will have until 2013 to be outfitted with new digital ID cards, the Bush administration said on Thursday in a long-awaited announcement that reveals details of how the new identification plan will work.

The announcement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security offers a five-year extension to the deadline for states to issue the ID cards, and proposes creating the equivalent of a national database that would include details on all 240 million licensed drivers.

According to the draft regulations (PDF), which were required by Congress in the 2005 Real ID Act and are unlikely to assuage privacy and cost concerns raised by state legislatures:

• The Real ID cards must include all drivers' home addresses and other personal information printed on the front and in a two-dimensional barcode on the back. The barcode will not be encrypted because of "operational complexity," which means that businesses like bars and banks that require ID would be capable of scanning and recording customers' home addresses.

• A radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is under consideration. Homeland Security is asking for input on how the licenses could incorporate "RFID-enabled vicinity chip technology, in addition to" the two-dimensional barcode requirement.

• States must submit a plan of how they'll comply with the Real ID Act by October 7, 2007. If they don't, their residents will not be able to use IDs to board planes or enter federal buildings starting on May 11, 2008.

• Homeland Security is considering standardizing a "unique design or color for Real ID licenses," which would effectively create a uniform national ID card.

Thursday's draft regulations arrive amid a groundswell of opposition to the Real ID Act from privacy groups, libertarians and state officials. On Wednesday, the National Governors Association endorsed a bill by Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, that would reduce Homeland Security's power to order states to comply with the law.

The draft rules, which are not final and will be subject to a public comment period, also include a more detailed estimate of how much it will cost to comply. The National Conference of State Legislatures and other state groups estimated last year that states will have to spend more than $11 billion. But Homeland Security says the total cost--including the cost to individuals--will be $23.1 billion over a 10-year period.

Another section of the 162-page regulations says that states have until December 31, 2009 to certify that they're on the path toward fully complying with the Real ID Act.

Push for repeal continues

Opponents of the Real ID Act, who have been advising states to publicly oppose the system, said that the draft rules are insufficiently privacy-protective and reiterated their call for a repeal of the entire law.

"We still need dramatic legislative action from Congress," said Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the ACLU, which runs the RealNightmare.org site. "We've got to wipe out the underlying act."

Sparapani and his allies of more than 50 groups, including the National Organization for Women and United Automobile Workers, sent a letter on Monday endorsing a bill to repeal the Real ID Act. The letter says it was a "poorly-conceived law that can never be made to work in any fair or reasonable manner."

The ACLU believes Collins' bill is only a half-hearted step that doesn't go as far as it should. Other proposals include one from Rep. Thomas Allen, a Maine Democrat, that would rewrite the Real ID Act, insert privacy safeguards, and hand $2.4 billion to states over an eight-year period. On Wednesday, Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, and Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat, reintroduced a broader bill to repeal portions of the existing law.

Some state governments, such as Maine, already have come out against the Real ID Act--a move that effectively dares the federal government to continue even when some states refuse to participate. At least eight states (including Arizona, Georgia, and Vermont) have had anti-Real ID bills approved by one or both chambers of the legislature.

For their part, proponents of the Real ID Act say it's designed to implement proposals suggested by the 9/11 Commission, which noted that some of the hijackers on September 11, 2001 had fraudulently obtained state driver's licenses. But not all did: at least one hijacker simply showed his foreign passport and walked onto the airplane that day.

The Bush administration and many congressional Republicans have defended the Real ID Act as a way to stop future terrorist attacks and deter illegal immigrants. "Raising the security standards on driver's licenses establishes another layer of protection to prevent terrorists from obtaining and using fake documents to plan or carry out an attack," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a statement. "These standards correct glaring vulnerabilities exploited by some of the 9/11 hijackers who used fraudulently obtained drivers licenses to board the airplanes in their attack against America."

A 23-page report released this week by Janice Kephart, a former lawyer with the 9/11 Commission, defended the Real ID Act by calling it a "significant step in enhancing our national and economic security and our public safety." Kephart is now president of 9/11 Security Solutions.

States bowing out of Real ID requirements is "not the way to secure America," the report says. "Embedding identity security into state-issued (ID card) systems will take significant planning to fulfill the requirements of Real ID and significant financial resources for the 'brick and mortar' start-up costs. Congress must step up to the plate and make securing of identity documents the national priority that our citizens deserve."

The Real ID Act passed Congress as part of an $82 billion military spending bill that also included funds for tsunami relief. No up-or-down vote on solely the Real ID Act took place in the entire Congress, though the House of Representatives did approve the rules by a 261-161 vote.
http://news.com.com/Homeland+Securit...3-6163509.html

News Not Fit to Print?
Katrina vanden Heuvel

Last weekend, I wrote here about the history of US government attempts to suppress information. My case study was the Kennedy Administration's successful effort to delay publication of the New York Times' story about CIA planning for the Bay of Pigs disaster. (Since then, several generations of Times editors have publicly regretted that decision. "Our biggest failures," Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote last year, "have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After the Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco.")

Yet in these last two days, the Times has acceded to Bush Administration requests to withhold information from the American public.

In yesterday's edition, the paper of record reports that it was "asked to withhold any mention of [Cheney's] trip until he had left Pakistan." What conceivable national security purpose was served by swearing the press pool to secrecy about this trip? And doesn't accepting these ground rules play into the hands of a hyper-secretive Vice-President whose signature contribution to our security has been misleading us into a disastrous war and carpet bombing our constitutional system? The secrecy does expose a national security problem: the "war" on terror is a rank failure and Pakistan is not the stable country that White House talking points try to sell us.

Here's another instance of White House pressure. A front page article in Monday's New York Times --providing conditional evidence of Iranian weapons in Iraq--acknowledges that the paper acceded to Bush Administration requests that it withhold specific details about the weapons. As the Times reported: "In the course of the detailed briefing on the Hilla discovery, Maj. Marty Weber, an explosives expert, said that most of the E.F.P.s in Iraq use C-4 plastic explosive manufactured in Iran. At the request of the Bush Administration, The Times is withholding some specific details about the weapons to protect intelligence sources and methods."

Hours after the story appeared, Congressman Dennis Kucinich issued a statement -- "The New York Times Plays into Bush Administration's Hand." "The White House," Kucinich says, "is up to its old scams again: Providing information by anonymous sources ..... This time, however, they added another trick to their bag: providing the information and prohibiting the Times from publishing it.....The New York Times should not print unsourced, unattributed assertions and then voluntarily hide the details from the American public..." The paper, he went on to argue, "is playing into the Administration's hand and providing further justification for an attack on Iran."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=170263

Police Blotter: Wife e-Surveilled in Divorce Case
Declan McCullagh

"Police blotter" is a weekly News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Husband uses keystroke logger to spy on wife's suspected relationship with another woman, who sues to prevent the records from being used in the divorce case.

When: U.S. District Judge Thomas Rose in the southern district of Ohio rules on February 14.

Outcome: Rose denies request for injunction preventing the electronic documents from being introduced as evidence in the divorce case.

What happened, according to court documents:
Once upon a time, tempestuous divorces might have included one spouse snooping through the other's private correspondence or eavesdropping on private conversations taking place in another room.

That kind of snooping was, for the most part, entirely legal. But when the same kind of snooping happens in electronic form, it can be a federal crime. (Last year, Police Blotter covered the case of the Garfinkel divorce. Another case involving spyware arose a year earlier.)

That may or may not be the case here. Jeffery Havlicek filed for a divorce from his wife Amy Havlicek in Ohio's Greene County Common Pleas Court. Amy had been chatting through e-mail and instant messages with a woman named Christina Potter. Jeffery suspected that Potter and his wife, Amy, were romantically involved in a lesbian "relationship of some sort," his attorney would later say in a legal brief.

Around that time, Jeffery installed some sort of monitoring software on the family computer--a Dell Precision 220 that was located in the guest room, was used by multiple family members including teenage children, and did not have a password on it most of the time. (There is disagreement about why the software was installed; Jeffery says it was in part because of his daughter's increased use of the Internet.)

Jeffery has admitted this much. In a sworn affidavit (PDF), he said that he installed an unnamed monitoring utility in September 2005, three months before his wife moved out of their home. The affidavit said the utility "collects keyboard typing, screen shots, and requested access to Web sites...The keyboard typing utility logs the time and sequence of keystrokes...The screen shot logging feature is similar to hitting the 'print screen' button on most keyboards. It saves an image of what appears on the monitor."

He also admitted to downloading e-mail from his wife Amy's Web-based e-mail account, but claimed it was authorized because she had chosen to save her username and password through the browser's "remember me" feature.

In total, Jeffery has acknowledged compiling 80 keyboard and Web site log files in HTML format, more than 2,000 individual screen snapshots in JPEG format, six video tapes, six audio tapes, and numerous other files including "24 electronic documents from diaries, love letters, etc."

He planned to use that vast array of electronic evidence as ammunition to win his divorce case. Eventually his lawyer showed some of the correspondence between Amy Havlicek and Christina Potter to Amy's own attorney. In an affidavit (PDF), Potter claims that the correspondence was also shown to neighbors and a court-appointed custody evaluator "to harass, annoy, and inflict emotional injury on me."

Potter, his wife's alleged paramour, responded by filing a federal lawsuit designed to shut Jeffery up. She asked for an injunction barring any "disclosure" or "dissemination" of the electronic documents, including preventing them from being used in the divorce case taking place in state court.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a federal law, was violated during the recording, Potter claimed. ECPA (18 USC Section 2511) bans anyone from disclosing "to any other person the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication" that was obtained illegally.

Potter lost. U.S. District Judge Thomas Rose said that ECPA does not permit courts to disallow such evidence, saying that appeals courts "have concluded that Congress intentionally omitted illegally intercepted electronic communications from the category of cases in which the remedy of suppression is available." He also rejected her request for a broader injunction, saying it would violate Jeffery's freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment.

Rose did say, however, that "disclosure of the information in state court by Jeffery Havlicek or his attorney" might be "actionable civilly or criminally." He suggested that the "remember me" option probably didn't give Jeffery an implied right to view his wife's e-mail messages. And he ordered Jeffery to provide Potter, his wife's alleged paramour, with the complete set of electronic evidence that he had planned to use in the divorce case.

Excerpt from Rose's opinion:
Because the suppression provision excludes illegally intercepted wire and oral communications from the courtroom, but does not mention electronic communications, several courts, including the Sixth Circuit, have concluded that Congress intentionally omitted illegally intercepted electronic communications from the category of cases in which the remedy of suppression is available.

With this distinction in mind, the court finds that it does not have the authority to forbid the disclosure of the allegedly intercepted communications to the state official determining custody of the Havliceks' children or any other state court proceeding. This is not to imply, however, that disclosure of the information in state court by Jeffery Havlicek or his attorney might not be actionable civilly or criminally under 18 USC (Section) 2511. In any event, the court's inability to enjoin the presentation of this evidence in state court does not resolve the question of whether the injunction on disclosing this information in other context should issue. Therefore, the court will proceed to consider the appropriateness of relief in this case, beginning with plaintiff's chances of succeeding on the merits.

Defendant's response to the motion for preliminary injunction claims that the keystroke recording and screen shot recording software do not record communications contemporaneously with the transmission of the communications. Contemporaneousness was an element originally introduced to 18 USC (Section) 2511 when the law applied only to wire and oral communications...

We conclude that the term "electronic communication" includes transient electronic storage that is intrinsic to the communication process for such communications. That conclusion is consistent with our precedent...

Moreover, the court views the screen shot software as distinct from the keystroke software in regards to the interstate commerce requirement. In contrast to the keystrokes, which, when recorded, have not traveled in interstate commerce, the incoming emails subjected to the screen shot software have traveled in interstate commerce. Additionally, there is no evidence before the court to allow any conclusion that the technical aspects of the instant case result in Potter's claim being defeated by a lack of contemporaneousness, even if the court were to find this element necessary...

Defendant raises another hurdle to success on the merits, however, by referring to the case of United States v. Ropp, which focuses on the requirement in 18 USC (Section) 2510(12) that the interception be of an interstate or foreign communication or be of a communication affecting interstate commerce. Ropp notes that keystroke software records the entirely internal transmission from the keyboard to the CPU, and records all keystrokes, whether they initiate signals destined to travel in interstate commerce or not. The decision, however, seems to read the statute as requiring the communication to be traveling in interstate commerce, rather than merely "affecting" interstate commerce. It seems to this court that the keystrokes that send a message off into interstate commerce "affect" interstate commerce...

Because the ECPA does not provide for the relief of suppression of illegally intercepted electronic communications sought to be used as evidence in a court case, and because a balancing of plaintiff's impending irreparable harms and the public interest in the requested injunction against plaintiff's likelihood of success on the merits of her claims weighs in favor of not granting the requested injunction, plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction, Doc. 16, is denied.
http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+W...3-6163368.html

People With WiFi Spend More Time Online
Nate Anderson

Internet users with a home wireless connection check news and e-mail more than users with just a wired broadband connection, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A survey of 798 Internet users found that 72 percent of wireless users check e-mail at least once a day, while only 63 percent of wired broadband users do so. The same pattern held true for reading news online, suggesting that wireless access offers "relentless connectivity" that might change a person's online behavior.

Even among Internet users, though, wireless use remains fairly low. The survey found that 34 percent of current Internet users have made a WiFi connection at some point in the past, and only 19 percent of Internet users have WiFi at home.

Who are these people? They tend to be younger than the general Internet-using population. Wireless users are currently concentrated between 18 and 49 years of age, while the general Internet population is concentrated between 30 and 64. Wireless users also tend to be male; men accounted for 56 percent of all wireless users, but only 46 percent of all Internet users.

The survey also found, to no one's surprise, that cellphones and laptops are the preferred ways of connecting wirelessly to the Internet among young people. While 40 percent of Internet users under 30 have laptops (the vast majority of which have WiFi) and 40 percent have Internet-ready cell phones, only 17 percent own a PDA with wireless capabilities.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070225-8918.html

Your Wi-Fi Can Tell People a Lot About You
Joris Evers

Simply booting up a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop can tell people sniffing wireless network traffic a lot about your computer--and about you.

Soon after a computer powers up, it starts looking for wireless networks and network services. Even if the wireless hardware is then shut-off, a snoop may already have caught interesting data. Much more information can be plucked out of the air if the computer is connected to an access point, in particular an access point without security.

"You're leaking all kinds of information that an attacker can use," David Maynor, chief technology officer at Errata Security, said Thursday in a presentation at the Black Hat DC event here. "If the government was taking this information from you, people would be up in arms. Yet you're leaking this voluntarily using your laptop at the airport."

There are many tools that let anyone listen in on wireless network traffic. These tools can capture information such as usernames and passwords for e-mail accounts and instant message tools as well as data entered into unsecured Web sites. At the annual Defcon hacker gathering, a "wall of sheep" always lists captured login credentials.

Errata Security has developed another network sniffer that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SMNP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more.

"You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you," said Robert Graham, Errata Security's chief executive. The tool will soon be released publicly on the Black Hat Web site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said. Errata Security also plans to release the source code on its Web site.

The Errata Security sniffer, dubbed Ferret, packs more punch than other network sniffers already available, such as Ethereal and Kismet, because it looks at so many different protocols, Graham said. Some at Black Hat called it "a network sniffer on steroids."

Snoops can use the sniffer tools to see all kinds of data from wireless-equipped computers, regardless of the operating system.

For example, as a Windows computer starts up it, it will emit the list of wireless networks the PC has connected to in the past, unless the user manually removed those entries from the preferred networks list in Windows. "The list can be used to determine where the laptop has been used," Graham said.

Apple Mac OS X computers will share information such as the version of the operating system through the Bonjour feature, Graham said. Bonjour is designed to let users create networks of nearby computers and devices.

Additionally, computers shortly after startup typically broadcasts the previous Internet Protocol address and details on networked drives or devices such as printers that it tries to connect to, Graham said.

"These are all bits of otherwise friendly information," Graham said. But in the hands of the wrong person, they could help attack the computer owner or network. Furthermore, the information could be useful for intelligence organizations, he said.

And that's just the data snoops can sniff out of the air when a laptop is starting up. If the computer is then connected to a wireless network, particularly the unsecured type at hotels, airports and coffee shops, much more can be gleaned. Hackers have also cracked basic Wi-Fi security, so secured networks can't provide a security guarantee.

In general, experts advise against using wireless networks to connect to sensitive Web sites such as online banking. However, it is risky to use any online service that requires a password. The Errata Security team sniffed one reporter's e-mail username and password at Black Hat and displayed it during a presentation.

People who have the option of using a Virtual Private Network when connected to a wireless network should use it to establish a more secure connection, experts suggest. Also, on home routers WPA, or Wi-Fi Protected Access, offers improved security over the cracked WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy.

"The best solution is to be aware of the danger," Graham said. "Everyone doesn't need to work from a coffee shop."
http://news.com.com/Your+Wi-Fi+can+t...3-6163666.html

Sony Chops Price on Blu-Ray Player
Nate Anderson

Sony has announced its plans to slash the price of high definition, according the Associated Press. At a New York press conference, Sony talked up its forthcoming BDP-S300 Blu-ray player. The big selling point? Its $599 price.

The move is clearly a reaction to the lower cost of HD DVD players, which are already available for less than the new Blu-ray machine. Still, $599 is far more palatable than the $1,000 price tag of Sony's current flagship player, the BDP-S1.

In addition to the lower price, the unit comes in a smaller form factor, and it can play CDs. It's also the same price as Sony's PS3, which includes a Blu-ray drive and can be had for $499 or $599. For customers who have no interest in shooting aliens, though, Blu-ray just got far more affordable.

Perhaps the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war will have one positive result after all—more quickly driving down the cost of next-generation players in general. The HD DVD consortium has been stressing the format's lower manufacturing costs for some time, and there's a good chance that a manufacturer will attempt to undercut Sony even further before the BDP-S300 launches this summer.

Whatever format wins the battle for your wallet, this is good news for next-gen movie buffs.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8925.html

The Puzzling Story of Why Microsoft Prevents Some Vista Upgrades
AP

After years of delays and billions in development and marketing efforts, it would seem that Microsoft Corp. would want anyone who possibly can to buy its new Windows Vista operating system. Yet Microsoft is making it hard for Mac owners and other potentially influential customers to adopt the software.

Microsoft says the blockade is necessary for security reasons. But that is disputed. The circumstances might simply reflect a business decision Microsoft doesn't want to explain.

The situation involves a technology known as virtualization.

Essentially, it lets one computer mimic multiple machines, even ones with different operating systems. It does this by running multiple applications at the same time, but in separate realms of the computer.

Virtualization has long been used in corporate data centers as a way to increase server efficiency or to test programs in a walled-off portion of a machine.

The technology also has been available for home users, but often at the expense of the computer's performance.

But now that Macintosh computers from Apple Inc. use Intel Corp. chips, just like Windows-based PCs, virtualization programs let Mac users easily switch back and forth between Apple's Mac OS X operating system and Windows. That could appeal to Mac enthusiasts who want access to programs that only work on Windows, including some games.

Consequently, the launch of Vista seemed to be a good opportunity for Parallels Inc., a subsidiary of SWsoft Inc. that sells virtualization products.

Unlike Apple's free Boot Camp programme that lets Windows run on a Mac, Parallels' $80 virtualization product for Macs does not require users to have just one operating system running at a time. Parallels runs Windows in a, well, window on the Mac desktop.

Parallels also sells a $50 version for Windows PCs - which would let people run both Vista and its predecessor, Windows XP, so they can keep programme that aren't yet Vista-compatible.

The price of the virtualization software does not include a copy of Windows. And to get that copy, buyers have to agree to Vista's licensing rules - a legally binding document. Lurking in that 14-page agreement is a ban on using the least expensive versions of Vista - the $199 Home Basic edition and the $239 Home Premium edition - in virtualization engines.

Instead, people wanting to put Vista in a virtualized programme have to buy the $299 Business version or the $399 Ultimate package.

Macs account for less than 5 percent of personal computers in the U.S., but Ben Rudolph, Parallels' marketing manager, says they nonetheless represent a market he's surprised to see Microsoft present with roadblocks.

``Vista is undeniably cool and undeniably important,'' Rudolph said. ``This is really an opportunity to reach people who normally wouldn't be using Windows, whether it would be Mac users or Linux users.''

The least-expensive versions of Vista actually would work in virtualization programme. But Microsoft wants to restrict it because of new security holes spawned by the technology, according to Scott Woodgate, a director in Microsoft's Vista team.

Lately Intel and rival chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. have built virtualization-friendly hooks directly into microprocessors. The goal was to make virtualization work better, but Woodgate argues that the move created a security flaw _ essentially that malicious programme can run undetected alongside an operating system.

Indeed, last year a security analyst showed how AMD chips with virtualization support made computers vulnerable to such an attack. (That researcher, Joanna Rutkowska, said she presumed it would work on Intel-based systems as well, but she didn't have time to try).

AMD challenged the feasibility of such an attack and said virtualization did not decrease computer security. Intel concurred; spokesman Bill Calder called Rutkowska's claims ``overstated.''

But Microsoft took notice. Woodgate said Microsoft considered banning virtualizing Vista entirely, on all versions. But ultimately, he said, his team decided that the most technically savvy users, or people in companies with tech support, probably could handle Vista in virtualization programme, while home users should be steered away.

The prohibition applies not only to third-party virtualization products like Parallels, but also to Microsoft's own Virtual PC software, which is available as a free download. (It does not apply to Apple's Boot Camp product, which is not virtualization software.)

``We're balancing security and customer choice,'' Woodgate said.

However, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that technically savvy people wouldn't want the less expensive versions of Vista. Rudolph at Parallels said virtualization customers often just need the most basic version of Windows possible to let some favored application run.

Plus, even though Microsoft will let virtualization products run the higher-priced versions of Vista, some powerful features in those editions are also forbidden in virtualization. The license agreement prohibits virtualization programme from using Vista's BitLocker data-encryption service or from playing music, video or other content wrapped in Microsoft's copyright-protection technology. Microsoft says virtualization's security holes make those features dangerous as well.

Rudolph believes many users will be so confused that they avoid Vista altogether.

Of course, that's Microsoft's decision to make, and it seems logical if you buy the security argument.

But not everyone agrees a virtualization lockdown is justified. In fact, virtualization has been considered a security enhancement. If applications run within their own walls, malicious code can be confined to that zone and not infect the rest of the computer.

``Nobody's complained to us that there's security issues with our products,'' said Srinivas Krishnamurti, director of product management at EMC Corp. unit VMWare, which plans to release a product for Macs this summer.

In a statement e-mailed after the interview, Krishnamurti added: ``The Vista licensing limitation is akin to the industry saying, `Hey, consumer, when you connect your PC to the Internet, there is a chance you can download adware, spyware or malware so we don't think you should connect to the Internet using a browser.' The world would be a very different place if the industry made that decision in the '90s.''

Rudolph acknowledged that ``there's always going to be a security risk in any piece of software.'' But he added that if Parallels ``was really not that secure, we would have heard about it substantially.''

And even Rutkowska, who argued that her virtualization attack last year _ which she called ``Blue Pill'' _ proved a glaring weakness in the technology, said Microsoft's decision regarding Vista would make no difference. ``I really don't see how Microsoft could use this mechanism to prevent Blue Pill from loading,'' she said.

Apple would not take a position: Spokeswoman Lynn Fox said Mac users who want to run Windows in virtualized programme should ask the virtualization vendors about security.

Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said virtualization may indeed introduce new complexities and security challenges. ``But they're not greater than the technical issues surrounding some of the other features (Microsoft) decided to include,'' he said. ``I don't buy that virtualization is dangerous.''

Cherry believes what's really going on is that Microsoft wanted to create more differences between the multiple editions of Vista, presumably giving people more reason to buy the most expensive versions.

But Microsoft's Woodgate insisted that this was not a marketing decision.

``We are absolutely working with our partners to resolve this security issue,'' he said.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus...0702270940.htm

U.S. DOT Bans Windows Vista, Explorer 7, and Office 2007

Tens of thousands of federal workers are prohibited from upgrading to the latest versions, according to memos seen by InformationWeek.
Paul McDougall

Citing concerns over cost and compatibility, the top technology official at the federal Department of Transportation has placed a moratorium on all in-house computer upgrades to Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, as well as Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007, according to a memo obtained Friday by InformationWeek.

In a memo to his staff, the DOT's CIO Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."

Among the concerns cited by Mintz are compatibility with software applications currently in use at the department, the cost of an upgrade, and DOT's move to a new headquarters in Washington later this year. "Microsoft Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer [7] may be acquired for testing purposes only, though only on approval by the DOT chief information officer," Mintz writes.

The memo is dated Jan. 19. In an interview Friday, DOT chief technology officer Tim Schmidt confirmed that the ban is still in effect. "We're analyzing different client software options and also integration issues," says Schmidt. Among the options the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says.

Schmidt says the Transportation Department hasn't ruled out upgrading its computers to Windows Vista if all of its concerns about the new operating system -- the business version of which was launched late last year -- can be resolved. "We have more confidence in Microsoft than we would have 10 years ago," says Schmidt. "But it always makes sense to look at the security implications, the value back to the customer, and those kind of issues."

The DOT's ban on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 applies to 15,000 computer users at DOT proper who are currently running the Windows XP Professional operating system. The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users.

Compatibility with existing applications appears to be the Transportation Department's major concern. According to a separate memo, a number of key software applications and utilities in use in various branches of the department aren't Vista compatible. Among them are Aspen 2.8.1, ISS 2.11, ProVu 3.1.1, and Capri 6.5, according to a memo issued by staffers at the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Any prolonged ban on new Microsoft technologies by the federal government could have a significant impact on the software maker's bottom line, as Microsoft sells millions of dollars in software to the feds annually.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=197700789

Windows Genuine Advantage's Newest Setting: "You Might Be a Pirate"
Ken Fisher

Windows Genuine Advantage is an anti-piracy tool loathed by many, tolerated by some, and even appreciated by others. How you feel about it may depend in part on whether or not you've been caught in its snares: the "authentic software" validation tool is known to have falsely identified thousands of "pirated" Vista installs.

As Microsoft steps up its war against piracy, the company has decided to slightly nuance Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Rather than identify users as either in the clear or not, the company has added a third classification for users who set off some, but not all of WGA's undisclosed piracy-detection functionality. Users will now find that Windows XP installs are labeled as genuine, non-genuine or "not sure."

While Microsoft has not responded to requests for comment, it's quite obvious what is going on here: Microsoft has added "not sure" as a way of cutting down on the number of false positives associated with WGA. As many as one in five PCs were failing WGA checks, but this new setting should both reduce this and give Microsoft the chance to investigate further the kinds of things that are landing folks in the "not sure" category.

Although the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool is "optional," Microsoft is in the process of pushing out the tool as a "critical" and thus automatic update (affectionately dubbed WGA Notifications 1.7 KB905474). The update has been known about for over a month, but users are just now seeing it show up as a critical update to Windows XP.

WGA has stirred controversy in recent months as the software was revealed to phone home to Microsoft, raising no shortage of privacy concerns. As I have argued, the move from a one-time authenticity check to constant monitoring (which is what WGA represents) is driven by Microsoft's modular OS plans, exemplified by Anytime Upgrade on Windows Vista. Post-installation exploits will become increasingly common as Microsoft and other companies turn to selling modular add-ons online, and Microsoft apparently feels as though WGA is one of the best ways to secure that business. Last week Steve Ballmer made it quite clear that Microsoft expects WGA to generate more sales for Microsoft, especially in developing nations.

WGA isn't likely to ever make many friends, but the company knows that it will earn fewer enemies if the tool doesn't accuse the wrong people of piracy. In the meantime, if you received a "not sure" rating from WGA, I'd love to hear from you.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8922.html

Sledgehammered

Vista Activation Cracked by Brute Force
Charlie Demerjian

IT LOOKS LIKE Microsoft's unhackable OS activation malware has been hacked.

There is an active thread at the Keznews forums (account needed), and a summary on its main page about the crack.

It is a simple brute force attack, dumb as a rock that just tries keys. If it gets one, you manually have to check it and try activation. Is is ugly, takes hours, is far from point and click, but it is said to work. I don't have any Vista installs because of the anti-user licensing so I have not tested it personally.

The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people

It won't take long for boxes bought at retail to be activated before they are bought, and the people who plunk down money for the mal^h^h^hsoftware for real get 'you are a filthy pirate' messages. Won't that be a laugh riot at the MS phone banks in Bangalore.

So, what do you do? There is really no differentiating between a legit copy with a manually typed in wrong key and a hack attempt. Sure MS can throttle this by limiting key attempts to one a minute or so on new software, but the older variants are already burnt to disk. The cat is out of the bag.

The code is floating, the method is known, and there is nothing MS can do at this point other than suck it down and prepare for the problems this causes. To make matters worse, MS will have to decide if it is worth it to allow people to take back legit keys that have been hijacked, or tell customers to go away, we have your money already, read your license agreement and get bent, we owe you nothing.

This is ugly for MS, and if it allows you to take back your legit keys, how long do you think it will take before people catch on to the fact that you can call in and hijack already purchased keys once you generate one that someone else activated?

No, this is a mess, and the problem is the very malware activation and anti-consumer licensing that MS built into Vista. Then again, it is kind of hard to feel sorry for them the way they screw their paying customers. We'll give it three days before there is a slick GUI version with all the bells and whistles.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37941

Maybe not

Brute Force Keygen a Phoney

fact is the brute force keygen is a joke, i never intended for it to work. I have never gotten it to work, everyone should stop using it!

everyone who said they got a key a probably lying or mistaken!

i suggest everyone uses the 120 day 3x rearm method.
http://keznews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2782

Falling Into the Vista Trap
Tim Weber

Microsoft promises to wow people who are upgrading from Windows XP to its new operating system, but with the joys of Windows Vista comes plenty of pain.

I know, I know, I'm a sucker for technology.

The shiny new Vista disk was sitting on my desk, and I just couldn't resist giving it a try.

Even though I fell for Vista's promise - more security and certainly much more fun than tired old Windows XP - I tried not to be stupid.

I knew my four-year-old PC might have trouble coping with Vista, not least because of its wheezing graphics card.

When I bought it, my Dell Dimension 8200 was fairly state-of-the-art (a few stats for the experts: Pentium 4 processor running at 2GHz, 384MB of RAM, a 64MB graphics card, and a Creative SB Live audio card).

Since then I had added memory (to 768MB), a second hard disk, extra USB ports and a Wifi card.

A blunt message

But this was probably not enough, so I downloaded Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor.

Microsoft's message was blunt but useful: Yes, my computer could happily run Vista, but it would need a few crutches and new body parts. Step-by-step instructions told me how to avoid problems:

· Get a new graphics card with at least 128MB memory;
· download new software for the Linksys Wifi network card, to sync my PDA with Outlook and to make good use of my multimedia keyboard;
· download the latest version of my Kaspersky Antivirus software.
· With a few minor exceptions, the rest of my set-up was given a clean bill of health, including my webcam and printer.

It turned out to be tricky to find the right graphics card. Most shopping websites were useless in providing information on Vista compatibility.

At least a dozen times, I discovered in the small print on manufacturers' websites that there were no Vista drivers for that particular piece of hardware. I finally settled on a Nvidia GeForce 6200 with 256MB memory.

Now here is the dirty little secret of all the expensive PC helpers out there. Upgrading hardware is really easy.

As long as you make sure the new hardware fits into the slots that come with your computer and does not overburden its power supply, it's usually just a case of carefully lifting out the old and slotting in the new piece of kit.

Do check the manual, though, to see whether you need to install the driver software for your new equipment before or after putting it in.

If you are still worried, go online. You can find plenty of videos and manuals providing step-by-step guides on how to do it.

Then I followed the task list drawn up by Microsoft. The Upgrade Advisor even provided direct links for downloading new drivers and other software.

Taking one more precaution, I made a full back-up of all my documents to an external hard drive.

A good start

Finally I was ready to go.

I had read somewhere that a Vista installation would take 20 minutes. Not if you upgrade from XP.

After three-and-a-half hours of churning, at long last the Vista logo filled my screen.

It was the beginning of a day of anguish.

At first sight, everything had worked fine: All user accounts, complete with documents and software, were present and accounted for.

Vista looked slick. Its user interface was clear and set-up seemingly easy. The XP gobbledegook had disappeared from dialogue boxes.

Installing the new wifi driver and anti-virus software was a cinch.

Software worked straight away - whether it was Microsoft Office, Firefox or my very old copy of Photoshop Elements.

Feel the pain

But soon the problems began to mount:

· Where was the internet? I could see my router, but nothing beyond - even after a full day of tinkering with various network wizards. My BBC laptop proved that this was not a problem with my router or ISP.
· Why did my Philips webcam refuse to work? The Upgrade Advisor had explicitly said it would.
· What hardware was responsible for the three driver errors flagged up by Vista? One seemed to be the sound card - oh yes, why did I have no sound? But which mysterious "PCI input device" was lacking a driver? And what was the "unknown device" flagged up by Vista?
· Why did I get a "disk is full" error message every time I tried to install my keyboard's new Intellitype software? Why did Vista refuse to uninstall the XP-version of Intellitype?
· I knew that Apple had failed to make iTunes Vista-ready, so I didn't even try.
· But why did Microsoft's successor of Activesync, called Windows Mobile Device Center, refuse to hook up Outlook to my trusty old Pocket PC?

Fiddling around with Vista's settings, I soon found myself deep below its slick interface.

And the deeper I got, the more the look and jargon of dialogue boxes took me back into the world of XP.

It took me one day to get online. The detail is tedious and highly technical: reinstalling drivers and router firmware didn't work, but after many trial and error tweaks to Vista's TCP/IP settings, I had internet access.

Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.

Grudgingly I ordered a new one. After installing it, the hardware error messages disappeared; the three different errors flagged up by Vista were all triggered by my old sound card.

I also realised that my computer really needed more memory. Annoyingly, my Dell uses an unusual flavour of memory, called RDRAM, which is rare nowadays.

Two lost and one successful eBay auctions later, I installed one extra gigabyte of memory.

So far the upgrade to Vista had cost me about £130.

Not cheap, but probably fair value, as it will have extended the life-cycle of my PC by about two years.

Bearing a grudge against Philips, Dell and Microsoft

But a few problems refuse to go away and are both expensive and aggravating.

My Philips ToUCam still doesn't work, and plenty of angry forum debates are testament to the distinct lack of Vista support provided by Philips.

Even worse, Vista still refuses to talk to my Dell Axim X5 Pocket PC, which is a mere three-and-a-half years old.

I like my PDA. It saved my bacon when my laptop died on a reporting trip. Over five days, I filed 14 stories using the Axim and its foldable keyboard.

I don't want to buy a new one - at least, not until I find an affordable smart phone that is both slim and has a slide-out keyboard (what's on the market right now is too bulky for my taste).

But my Axim uses the Pocket PC 2002 operating system, and Microsoft has decided that Vista will work only with Pocket PC 2003 and higher.

A top Microsoft executive, who does not want to be quoted by name, tells me that "the refresh rate on [mobile] devices is typically 18 months, from our research - hence the view that most Pocket PC 2002 devices would no longer be in use.

"Our view (which may be incorrect) is that those people using the latest Desktop [operating system] would potentially also be using later devices as well."

Well, I have a surprise for Microsoft: They are wrong, not least judging from the discussions on various forums I've been to while hunting for a solution.

While Microsoft leaves me out in the cold, Dell is no help either.

Delving into a Dell support forum, I realise the company practises tough love. Very briefly, a couple of years ago, Dell offered X5 customers an upgrade to Pocket PC 2003. Not anymore.

So I can either throw away my Axim and invest another £200 or £300 (for a PDA and webcam), or roll back to XP and wave Vista goodbye.

To Vista or not to Vista

I find myself caught in the Vista trap. Quite apart from the pain of having to reinstall XP, I do like Vista.

It's slick, it's fast, it is very user-friendly. I like its applications - for example, Windows Picture Gallery, which could become a serious competitor to my favourite image browser, Faststone.

However, there are still plenty of wrinkles. The Windows "sidebar" may look nicer than Google desktop, but it crashes regularly and infuriates me because its "gadgets" can not be customised.

I've had two Vista crashes so far - not a blue but a black screen - and that really shouldn't happen. I can't even remember my last XP crash.

And everywhere I look, there are blogs and forums full of people who have problems with software drivers and suffer the poor customer support of the hundreds of hardware and software vendors that make up the Windows ecosystem.

So would I do it again?

The answer is no. Do what I originally had planned to do. Wait for half a year until the driver issues are settled and then buy a new PC.

Once that's in place, you can upgrade and tinker with your old machine, to give to your parents or children.

You will probably enjoy Vista, but there's little reason to do it the hard way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...ss/6407419.stm

Bill Gates Makes the (Bogus) Case for More (Cheap) Foreign Labor
Jon Stokes

In an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates argues yet again in favor of raising the cap on H1-B foreign worker visas from its present number of 65,000. Gates' basic argument boils down to this: fewer students at American universities are opting for computer science degrees, which means that we need to raise the H1-B cap so that the software industry can import more foreign labor to fill those jobs that Americans—for whatever reason—don't seem to be equipped for.

Of course, the fact that the importation of cheap foreign labor into the software industry job market hampers American programmers' ability to compete and leads to depressed wages overall is never mentioned by Gates as a major reason why a computer science degree just isn't that attractive any more to Americans. Who wants to spend four or five years getting a CS degree, only to be priced out of the job market by foreign programmers who are willing to work for less in exchange for a green card?

But Bill Gates would vigorously dispute my assertion that Microsoft pays its H1-B workers any less than they pay American workers to do the same programming job, and indeed a big part of Gates' case for raising the cap is built on his claim that H1-B workers are paid the same salaries as American workers. Unfortunately for Gates, that particular claim, which he himself has made in the Washington Post before, is falsifiable.
Gates' H1-B flap

In March of last year, Washington Post columnist David Broder interviewed Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Microsoft's efforts to persuade Congress to raise the cap on the number of H1-B visas that the government grants to foreign workers. Like many large companies in the tech industry, Microsoft would like to be able to hire more workers through the H1-B program, ostensibly because of a grave shortage of technical talent here at home.

In the interview, Broder reports that Gates made the following claim about the salaries of Microsoft's H1-B hires: "As Gates said, these [H1-B workers] are highly paid, highly qualified individuals. Salaries for these jobs at Microsoft start at about $100,000 a year."

This indirect quote, and the column from which it's drawn, went largely unnoticed until earlier this month, when a cross-post about the column appeared at the popular progressive blogs MyDD and DailyKos before being picked up in this blog entry at Networkworld. The post, written by Robert Oak, the anti-outsourcing activist behind NoSlaves.com, attempted to refute Gates' apparent claim that H1-B salaries at Microsoft really do start at "about $100,000 a year." The argument that Oak went on to make is that Gates flat-out lied to Broder about the salaries that Microsoft pays H1-B workers in an attempt to cover up the alleged fact that Microsoft is backing higher H1-B caps solely so that the company can import more cheap foreign labor. There is no shortage of American computer talent, argue Oak and other outsourcing and H1-B opponents—American companies like Intel and Microsoft just want to hire foreigners because they can pay them less.

Let's take a closer look at what Oak argued, and at Microsoft's response to Ars regarding questions about Gates' comments.
A closer look at Microsoft's H1-B salaries

Oak began his refutation of Gates' claim with the assumption that Microsoft's foreign worker hiring practices are just like those in the rest of the software industry, i.e., a tech company makes a non-citizen a job offer under the H1-B program, and the company also promises to sponsor the new hire for a green card if he or she takes the job. The H1-B program, then, is pitched to foreign workers as a path to a much-coveted green card, and to the permanent-resident status that a green card confers.

Whenever Microsoft submits a green card application on behalf of a worker, the company is required by law to publish that worker's salary. So a colleague of Oak's, Dr. Ron Hira, did an analysis of Microsoft's published green card data in Excel. Hira found that only 3.3 percent of the company's green card applicants were being paid $100,000/year or higher at the time their applications were submitted to the program. The rest earned below $100,000/year, with a substantial number of them earning significantly below that number.

Oaks contends that this analysis of Microsoft's green card data proves that Gates lied to Broder about the company's H1-B salaries, in order to perpetuate the myth of an American tech talent shortage and to mask the real reason why Microsoft wants to be able to hire more H1-Bs.

So did Gates lie to Broder?

For Gates to be a liar, then two conditions would have to be met.
Broder's indirect quote would have to faithfully reflect a claim made by Gates. In other words, we have to believe that David Broder didn't somehow make up this salary claim and then attribute it to Gates.

Oaks' initial assumption that most or all of Microsoft's green card applicants are currently working for the company through the H1-B program would have to be correct.

Regarding condition #1 above, I asked Microsoft if the company would vouch for the accuracy of Broder's characterization of Gates' comments. A Microsoft spokesperson replied with the following statement:

The need to attract and retain talent is vital. The positions we seek to fill are for those with the highest levels of skill available and for which there are no U.S. candidates. Competition for that talent is global and intense. As we highlighted in a letter to Congress last year, "The H-1B program has strong wage requirements and other protections for U.S. workers. Moreover, Microsoft compensates its H-1B workers at the same high levels as U.S. workers, and at levels substantially above the government set "prevailing wages" for each occupation (although some critics have confused the 'prevailing wage' level for what Microsoft actually pays its employees), for example:

Software Development Engineers averaged over $109,000 in total direct compensation in 2005.
Program Managers averaged over $110,000 in total direct compensation in 2005."

This isn't exactly an iron-clad statement from Microsoft that the company pays its H1-B hires $100,000/year or more, but it does reiterate the company's standard claim that it pays its H1-B workers more than the prevailing wage for each position. I'll take it as a de facto confirmation of the substance of Gates' reported remarks, even if it doesn't explicitly affirm their specifics.

I also asked Microsoft about point #2. Specifically, I asked what percentage of Microsoft's green card applicants were enrolled in the H1-B program at the time that they applied for a green card. The company got back to me with the following response:

We hire H1-Bs with a view to making them permanent U.S. residents (i.e., getting them green cards) but Federal Government processing delays and the overall lack of green card availability for high skilled workers means that we're only able to turn-over about 20% of our H1B hires into green card holders annually—this backlog has created opportunities for foreign competition to lure talent away from Microsoft and other U.S. companies because our immigration system makes it impossible for these high skilled individuals and their families to stay in the U.S..

This statement makes it pretty clear that Microsoft has a typical view of the H1-B as a path to a green card, which means the vast majority (if not all) of Microsoft's green card applicants—only 3.3 percent of whom make more than $100,000/year—are working for the company on an H1-B visa. So it looks like Gates "misspoke himself," to use a favorite Beltway euphemism, when he told Broder that Microsoft's H1-B workers start at $100,000 a year.

Postscript: Criticisms of the H1-B program

One major criticism of the H1-B program has been that it's a source of cheap labor for the tech industry. Some companies would rather hire an H1-B worker who'll work for a lower salary in exchange for the promise of a green card than hire an American worker at the prevailing wage. My own past reporting on the impact of the H1-B program put the problem as follows:

Importing foreign labor via the H1B visa program is a fantastic way to boost American competitiveness if there's a real shortage of expertise in the American labor market. If there isn't a real shortage, then it's strictly a way for American companies to bring in cheap labor at lower wages by dangling the promise of a green card in front of potential hires. This kind of activity exerts a downward pressure on wages across the entire field and ultimately prices American labor out of the market.

In the rest of that post, I develop the above argument in more detail, and provide an example of what I'm talking about. So if you want to learn more, then that post is a good place to start.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8924.html

Ripping MP3s from Last.fm with Linux, Streamripper and LastFMProxy

The tools

- Linux (I'm using Ubuntu)
- Streamripper (I'm using version 1.61.27)
- LastFMProxy
- Last.fm account

Installing LastFMProxy..

wget http://vidar.gimp.org/wp-content/upl...oxy-1.1.tar.gz

tar -xzf lastfmproxy-1.1.tar.gz

cd lastfmproxy-1.1/

vi config.py

# Stick your last.fm username and password between the quotes below.
username = "yourusername"
password = "yourpassword"

Now save the file and exit the editor (vi/nano/mcedit/etc)

Installing Streamripper

Download it.

tar -xzvf streamripper-1.61.27.tar.gz
cd streamripper-1.61.27
./configure
make
sudo make install
In Ubuntu or Debian just do apt-get install streamripper

Running LastFMProxy

First make sure you read the README
cd lastfmproxy-1.1
./main.py &
Note: if you have just created a username on Last.fm you need to "tell" it what kind of music you like, so after running LastFMProxy point your browser to one of these addresses:
http://localhost:1881/lastfm://globaltags/rock
http://localhost:1881/lastfm://globaltags/dance
http://localhost:1881/lastfm://artis...similarartists
http://localhost:1881/lastfm://artis...similarartists
There is more information about this in the README

Running Streamripper and ripping MP3s

streamripper http://localhost:1881/lastfm.mp3
Connecting...
stream: last.fm
server name: last.fm Streaming Server
bitrate: 0
meta interval: 16000

[buffering - | ] - Wait...
[ripping... ] The Rapture - Infatuation [ 4.59M]
[ripping... ] Scissor Sisters - Take Your Mama Out [ 4.15M]

The end!

Posted by Alex

http://linuxmonitor.blogspot.com/200...ith-linux.html

Fair Use Amendment Introduced to the DMCA
Thomas Mennecke

There's been a big chill in the United States when it comes to technological progress that skirts the boundaries of copyright law. P2P and file-sharing developers know this all too well, as such development with the exception of BitTorrent, has come to a virtual standstill. Thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), the right of consumers to make backups of rightfully owned entertainment has become stifled.

For example, if a consumer wishes to make a backup copy of a legally purchased DVD, such a venture would not be possible (well, legally) because the DMCA prohibits individuals from circumventing copyright protection devices. 321 Studios, the company that created DVD X Copy, learned this lesson the hard way, and was sued into oblivion. Their software utilized a decrypting engine called DeCSS to make perfect backup copies, which is a classic example of breeching the DMCA.

More recently, there's been a steaming fair rights debate with the arrival of high definition video. Currently, there's virtually no way to make backup copies of one's high definition video collection, unless a - gasp - VCR is used. This lack of fair use support was one of the motivating factors behind the circumvention of AACS, the device used to "protect" high definition movies. In reaction to this stringent copy protection, Muslix64, the individual who pioneered the defeat of high definition protection, told Slyck.com, "I'm just an upset customer. My efforts can be called "fair use enforcement!"

There are also a few pioneers in the United States House of Representatives attempting to amend the DMCA in favor of the consumer. The Bill, named Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (H.R. 1201), or Fair Use Act for short, was introduced today by U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA.)

"The fair use doctrine is threatened today as never before. Historically, the nation's copyright laws have reflected a carefully calibrated balanced between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of the users of copyrighted material. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use," Boucher said. "The FAIR USE Act will assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work," Boucher explained.

The Bill details several rights it hopes to give back to consumers, educators, and software/hardware designers. In an effort to pacify concerns of the entertainment industry (and to give the Bill a snowball's chance), the Bill does not contain "fair use defense to the act of circumvention." In other words, it doesn't establish a blanket safe harbor provision to all acts of circumvention.

Instead, the fair use provisions are narrow. The Bill seeks to amend the DMCA's circumvention provision by adding the following paragraph:

"(F) The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A)shall not apply to a person by reason of that person’s engaging in a non-infringing use of any of the 6 classes of copyrighted works set forth in the determination of the 2 Librarian of Congress in Docket No. RM 2005-11, as published as a final rule by the Copyright Office, Library of 4 Congress, effective November 27, 2006..."

If you read paragraph "A" of section 12-01 of the DMCA, it's fairly clear that no circumvention means no circumvention. "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

This Bill would effectively negate the burden of paragraph "A" if the circumvention is within the scope of the six classes of copyrighted works referenced above. No mention of DVD or optical disc circumvention and very narrow – and antiquated – in scope. The only circumvention provisions related to DVDs allow for “…consumers to circumvent a lock on a DVD or other audiovisual work in order to skip past commercials at the beginning of it or to bypass personally objectionable content…”, but not backup the work.

The reason for the such narrow provisions stem from previous attempts by Representatives Boucher and Doolittle to introduce much more aggressive fair use amendments. However because these previous attempts had a much wider circumvention scope, they were swiftly curtailed by the entertainment industry.

More relevantly the Bill will also empower librarians to 'ensure that they can circumvent a digital lock to preserve or secure a copy of a work or replace a copy that is damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen."

Perhaps most welcome to software and hardware designers is the provision to codify the Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. ruling, otherwise known as the Betamax decision. “Subsection (b) would immunize these and other hardware companies, as well as entrepreneurs, from copyright infringement liability based on the design, manufacture or distribution of hardware devices (or components of those devices ) that are capable of a substantial, commercially significant non-infringing use.”

Additionally, the Bill seeks to limit "availability of statutory damages against individuals and firms who may be found to have engaged in contributory infringement, inducement of infringement, vicarious liability or other indirect infringement." In other words, the next time someone considers the creation of a new P2P network, they won’t have to worry so much about a potential $30 million judgment.

The Bill is a positive step forward, yet even if it were passed, it would not help those looking to make backup copies of their DVD collection. Like the DRM issue currently facing the authorized online music stores, this attempt is a small step forward in the effort to unlock the grip of the entertainment industry. Also read the section by section breakdown of this Bill here.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1420

RIAA Slams FAIR USE Act
Eric Bangeman

Although the FAIR USE Act introduced yesterday by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) will have little more than a symbolic effect on the DMCA, that isn't stopping the Recording Industry Association of America from unloading on the bill with both barrels. In a statement released earlier today by the RIAA, the group said that Rep. Boucher's bill would have the effect of kneecapping the DMCA.

"The DMCA has enabled consumers to enjoy creative works through popular new technologies," the RIAA said in a statement. "The DVD, iPod and the iTunes Music Store can all be traced to the DMCA. Online games, on-demand movies, e-books, online libraries, and many other services are coming to market because of a secure environment rooted in the DMCA's protections."

Well, the DVD precedes the DMCA by a couple of years, but the "secure environment" bit is accurate. The DMCA limits the availability of tools that can be used to circumvent DRM, so content creators are free to impose draconian limitations on how their customers can view and listen to content. Without the protection of the DMCA, Big Content would be forced to make its offerings more palatable to consumers.

Once again, the RIAA finds itself at odds with the Consumer Electronics Association. CEA President and Gary Shapiro is welcoming the FAIR USE Act, saying that it "will reinforce the historical fair use protections of constitutionally-mandated copyright law that are reflected in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)."

Shapiro and the CEA would get a significant boost from the bill, should it pass, due to provisions that would significantly shield electronics manufacturers from liability for infringement. The Act would make it difficult for rights-holders to receive statutory damages in most cases of infringement.

That sets off alarm bells for the RIAA. The FAIR USE Act "would repeal the DMCA and legalize hacking," says the RIAA. "It would reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Grokster and allow electronics companies to induce others to break the law for their own profit."

The RIAA also takes issue with the bill's narrow exemptions to the DMCA. "Proponents of H.R. 1201 claim it legalizes hacking only for 'noninfringing' uses," reads the RIAA's statement. "But as Congress recognized when it enacted the DMCA, the difference between hacking done for noninfringing purposes and hacking done to steal is impossible to determine and enforce. That's why Congress created a review process that takes place every three years to determine whether fair uses of copyrighted works are in peril—and why Congress gave the power to the Librarian of Congress to take away DMCA protections in cases where fair use is in danger."

Earlier today, we wondered if the copyright industry would "decide that Boucher's legislation is a way to buy off one of their most powerful adversaries on copyright issues, helping to undermine support for broader copyright reform efforts." It looks like we have our answer. Even though the FAIR USE Act doesn't do nearly enough to fix the very real problems with the DMCA or to shore up fair use, the content creation industry looks set to fight the legislation tooth and nail.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070228-8948.html

Japanese Trojan Attacks P2P File-Sharing Pirates
Stan Beer

In a case of a malware purveyor attacking pirate file-sharers, security vendor Sophos has warned of a bizarre Trojan horse which has been distributed on Japanese peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

The Troj/Pirlames-A Trojan horse has been distributed on the controversial Winny file-sharing network in Japan, posing as a screensaver. However, if P2P users download and run the program their files are overwritten by pictures of a popular comic book star who abuses them for using Winny and threatens to expose them to the police if they don't stop using the system.

Programs, music files and email mailboxes are amongst the files targeted by the Trojan horse. EXE, BAT, CMD, INI, ASP, HTM, HTML, PHP, CLASS, JAVA, DBX, EML, MBX, TBB, WAB, HLP, TXT, MP3, XLS, LOG, BMP files are all overwritten by images contained inside the malicious code of comic book character Ayu Tsukimiya.

"This is one of the most bizarre pieces of malware we have seen in our labs for quite some time, but its data-destroying payload is no laughing matter," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "It acts as a timely reminder to companies that they may want to control users' access to P2P file-sharing software not just because they can eat up bandwidth, but also because they can present a security risk to your corporate data."

Isamu Kaneko, the author of the Winny file-sharing program, was convicted by a Japanese court in December 2006 for assisting in copyright violation. The rights and wrongs of the case have been widely debated on the internet.

The Pirlames Trojan horse is not the first piece of malware to take advantage of the Winny file-sharing network:

* In May 2006, Sophos reported that a virus had leaked power plant secrets via Winny for the second time in four months.

* The previous month, a Japanese anti-virus company admitted that internal documents and customer information had been leaked after one of its employees failed to install anti-virus software.

* Earlier in 2006, Sophos described how information about Japanese sex victims was leaked by a virus after a police investigator's computer had been infected.

* In June 2005, Sophos reported that nuclear power plant secrets had been leaked from a computer belonging to an employee of Mitsubishi Electric Plant Engineering.

* The police force in Kyoto, Japan, were left with red faces after a virus spread information about their "most wanted" suspect list in April 2004.

A survey conducted last year by Sophos reflects the serious concern that uncontrolled applications are causing system administrators. For example, 86.5% of respondents said they want the opportunity to block P2P applications, with 79% indicating that blocking is essential.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10056/53/

Trojan.Peacomm: Building a Peer-to-Peer Botnet

Symantec Security Response has seen some moderate spamming of a new Trojan horse. The threat arrived in an email with an empty body and a variety of subjects such as:

A killer at 11, he's free at 21 and kill again!
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel
British Muslims Genocide
Naked teens attack home director.
230 dead as storm batters Europe.
Re: Your text

The attachments may have any of the following filenames:
FullVideo.exe
Full Story.exe
Video.exe
Read More.exe
FullClip.exe

The attachment is not a video clip, but a Trojan horse program, which Symantec heuristic technology already detected as Trojan.Packed.8. Today's LiveUpdate definitions detect it as Trojan.Peacomm. Users of Symantec’s Brightmail Anti-Spam are also protected from this spam email.

The executable drops a system driver (wincom32.sys, also detected as Trojan.Peacomm), which injects some payload and hidden threads directly into the services.exe process, using a sophisticated technique similar to Rustock (see Mimi Hoang’s blog and Elia Florio’s blog). However, in spite of its name, wincom32.sys driver is not a "real" rootkit as it does not hide its presence or its registry keys in the system.

Once the computer is infected, Trojan.Peacomm attempts to establish peer-to-peer communication on UDP port 4000 with a small list of IP addresses, in order to download and execute more malicious files. If you use a personal firewall with egress filtering, you will be notified that the services.exe process is attempting to connect to a remote address on this port. Symantec’s Threat Management System shows a spike in traffic for UDP port 4000:

When it manages to connect to any of these initial IP addresses, it receives a list of additional IP addresses of infected machines and adds them to its list of available peers, building up a distributed network to aid in the download of more malware. The Trojan also keeps a "blacklist" of unsuitable peers. Part of this encrypted P2P configuration is stored in a file peers.ini stored in the %System% folder.

Currently the malware being downloaded is as follows:

game0.exe: A downloader + rootkit component – detected as Trojan.Abwiz.F
game1.exe: Proxy Mail Relay for spam which opens port TCP 25 on the infected machine – detected as W32.Mixor.Q@mm
game2.exe: Mail Harvester which gathers mail addresses on the machine and post them as 1.JPG to a remote server – detected as W32.Mixor.Q@mm
game3.exe: W32.Mixor.Q@mm
game4.exe: It contacts a C&C server to download some configuration file – detected as W32.Mixor.Q@mm

From a malware writer’s point of view, this strategy of using peer-to-peer communication presents clear advantages over the traditional botnet method of one (or a few) Command & Control server(s). First and foremost, it minimizes the chances of losing the botnet if you "cut the head" by bringing down the C&C server or redirecting the traffic. It also helps spread the load that such downloads would impose on a single server.

You are advised to update your products to the latest available security updates from Symantec. We also recommend following the safe computing practices and exercising caution when opening emails.
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/s...g_a_peert.html

Is 'Making Available' Copyright Infringement?
Ray Beckerman

In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America began a massive litigation campaign on behalf of the four major record companies against end users of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, alleging widespread infringement of their sound recording copyrights. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000-25,000 suits have been brought to date, with hundreds of new complaints filed monthly.

While at first blush this battle might appear to be a simple fight between record companies and some alleged music file-sharers, it is actually much more significant because the litigation campaign rests upon a legal argument about the Copyright Act that, if accepted, would represent a major expansion of the present boundaries of U.S. copyright law. This theory could have an enormous impact on the Internet as we know it.

The argument is that even if a defendant has never copied or distributed a file illegally, the fact that he or she possesses a computer with a shared-files folder on it that contains copyrighted files "made available" over an Internet connection, this in and of itself constitutes infringement of the "distribution" rights of the sound recording copyright holder under Section 106(3) of the Copyright Act.

A motion to dismiss in the case, Elektra v. Barker, 05 CV 7340, scheduled to be argued Jan. 26 in the Southern District of New York, might represent either the death knell of this theory or the enthronement of it as a binding rule of law.

RIAA Research Behind Claims
The roots of the "making available" issue lie not in the RIAA lawyers' draftsmanship skills but in the limited investigation upon which the lawsuits are predicated. The RIAA's research begins and ends with its investigator, Tom Mizzone, who works for "antipiracy" company MediaSentry. Armed with proprietary software, Mizzone uses a pretextual P2P file-sharing account on Kazaa, Gnutella, iMesh, LimeWire and other P2P software providers to locate shared-file folders that contain recordings whose copyrights are owned by the Big Four.

Mizzone takes a screenshot, downloads a few of the songs and, through another proprietary process, determines the dynamic IP address assigned to the screenshot. Then the RIAA, armed with a court order, goes to the Internet service provider to get the name and address of the owner of the Internet-access account to which the dynamic IP address had been assigned at the time the screenshot was taken.

The RIAA then closes its investigation and simply sues the owner of the account identified by the ISP.

In its complaints, which are virtually identical in all 20,000-plus cases, it alleges, in conclusory terms, that the defendant is using an "online digital distribution system" to "download, distribute and/or make available for distribution" plaintiffs' recordings.

Since it does not know of any downloads or distributions, the RIAA can allege none except in conclusory terms. The one thing plaintiffs can allege with specificity is, in essence, "Here is a list of songs that someone with your Internet account was making available at a certain time and date."

The Players, the Arguments
The defendant in Barker is a Bronx nursing student. She moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing chiefly that the complaint failed with respect to "downloading" and "distributing" because it does not allege any specific acts of downloading or distributing. (The motion cites Marvullo v. Gruner & Jahr, 105 F.Supp.2d 225, 230 (S.D.N.Y. 2000); DiMaggio v. International Sports Ltd., 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13468 (S.D.N.Y. 1998); Brought to Life Music, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1967 (S.D.N.Y. 2003); Lindsay v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel R.M.S. Titanic, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15837(S.D.N.Y. 1999); and Stampone v. Stahl, 2005 WL 1694073 (D.N.J. 2005).)

In addition, the motion argues that merely "making available," without actual dissemination, is not a copyright infringement. (Barker cites Arista Records, Inc. v. MP3Board, Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16165 (S.D.N.Y. 2002); National Car Rental System, Inc. v. Computer Associates International, Inc., 991 F.2d 426, 434 (8th Cir. 1993) (citing 2 Nimmer on Copyright § 8.11[A], at 8-124); and In re Napster, Inc., 377 F.Supp.2d 796, 802 (N.D.Cal. 2005).)

The RIAA, in opposition, argues that "making available" would indeed constitute a violation of plaintiffs' right to "distribute" granted by 17 USC 106(3), relying chiefly upon the decision of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Hotaling v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 118 F.3d 199 (1997), in which a chain of libraries had distributed a number of concededly unauthorized copies of the subject work to its various branches and included them in card catalogs, but kept no circulation records, thus making it impossible for plaintiff to prove actual dissemination.

In reply, Barker distinguished Hotaling as being limited to its unusual set of facts.

Upon learning of the RIAA's argument that merely "making available" is in and of itself a copyright infringement, several organizations sought, and were granted, leave to file amicus curiae briefs in support of Barker's motion.

The Computer & Communications Industry Assn. and U.S. Internet Industry Assn. filed a joint amicus brief arguing that the "distribution" right set forth in the Copyright Act is a specific, defined term and that the RIAA's proposed expansion would, if adopted by the court, "sweep into the reach of copyright law many activities not now covered by copyright law," making the boundaries of the distribution right "indeterminate and unpredictable, creating chilling effects on members of amici and virtually every other participant on the Internet."

As an example, they argued: "Companies routinely include in their Web pages hyperlinks that enable persons to navigate easily to other sites throughout the Web by use of browser software. Indeed, the Web is a collection of hyperlinks. Even though the use of hyperlinks makes content located elsewhere available to a Web user, it does not constitute a distribution of that content under section 106(3)."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also submitted an amicus brief in support of Barker's motion, emphasizing an entirely different argument. EFF essentially assumed, for purposes of argument, that the complaint had adequately alleged Internet transmissions, and it argued that the "distribution right," as opposed to other rights under the Copyright Act, can never be implicated by mere ephemeral transmissions but relates solely to the dissemination of physical, tangible, material "copies" and "phonorecords." Picking up on the question raised by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Agee v. Paramount, 59 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 1995) -- whether "disseminations must always be in physical form to constitute 'distributions' " -- EFF argued in the affirmative based primarily on the language of 17 U.S.C. 106(3), its legislative history and the reasoning of Agee.

The MPAA came into the picture with an amicus brief supporting the RIAA.

And the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in, submitting a "Statement of Interest," in which it confined itself to rebutting EFF's argument. DOJ specifically disclaimed having any "interest" in the RIAA's "making available" argument, pointing out that it had never prosecuted anyone under the copyright laws for "making available."

Barker filed additional papers, one responding to the EFF's amicus brief, one responding to the DOJ's statement of interest, each pointing out that it was not necessary to reach the "ephemeral transmission vs. tangible physical object" issue because the RIAA had not pleaded any instances even of "ephemeral transmissions" with sufficient specificity to satisfy normal copyright infringement pleading standards.

Ready for Argument
The motion is fully briefed and is scheduled for oral argument this week before Judge Kenneth Karas.

I am not aware of any other cases attacking the sufficiency of the RIAA's complaint in which all of the principally affected industries and interests have weighed in as amicus curiae. It is indeed unusual for a case at the district court level to receive this level of attention, thus accentuating the importance of the issues at stake.

While Elektra v. Barker would appear to be just a procedural pleading standards case, it is more than that because the RIAA does not actually possess more information to allege, so there is no possibility of curing the problem by repleading. Nor has it asked for leave to replead if defendant's motion is granted.

Since the RIAA uses a single, standard complaint in all of its litigations, the decision could affect huge numbers of litigants. As the CCIA and USIIA persuasively argue, there is almost no scenario under which the court's holding would not have far-reaching consequence to the technology and Internet world, regardless of which way the motion is decided.

And if the RIAA loses and the case is dismissed, it will no doubt appeal. The issues -- including possibly a revisiting of Agee in the context of Internet transmissions -- would then come before the 2nd Circuit, or possibly up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://www.hollywoodreporteresq.com/..._id=1003535810

The Corporate Enemies of Filesharers
Enigmax

If they aren't shutting down your favourite torrent site and sending you infringement notices they're filling your network with fakes, sueing you and invading your privacy. So who are the enemies of P2P and what are they doing to ruin your file-sharing experience? If you share files, it's time to meet your nemesis.

The idea here is to give an overview of anti-p2p activity. This is by no means an exhaustive report but the aim is to give a summary of some of the companies developing a new industry - one dedicated to disrupting the activities of file-sharers.

Founded in 2001, Antipiratbyrån (APB) is a Swedish non-governmental anti-piracy group, its members consisting of representatives from dozens of Swedish media companies. APB rose to infamy in March 2005 when the police conducted an anti-piracy raid against Swedish ISP Bahnhof, only to be presented with evidence that APB themselves had hired someone to plant copyright material. APB are well known (and most hated) for their activities in working to put ThePirateBay BitTorrent tracker offline.

Audible Magic tout themselves as a leading provider of content protection and management solutions. Of interest to file-sharers is their 'Copysense' identification technology, which identifies media by matching an electronic 'fingerprint' unique of the particular content, to that of a 'fingerprint' stored in their claimed 5 million-strong registered database. It is being widely reported that Google will be employing Audible Magic's technology to screen videos submitted to YouTube.

Silicon Valley based BayTSP trumpets its ability to identify and track infringing content on the internet and take it down. They do a lot of tracking of content distributed via the BitTorrent protocol and regularly send out copyright infringement notices (link PDF) to users via their ISP, ordering the content to be taken down. BayTSP also claim to be able to track first uploaders of copyright works on the BitTorrent and eDonkey networks via their 'First Source' technology. It is unclear how this system operates but it is believed to be relatively primitive - BayTSP searches for filenames (in torrents or ed2k links) which imply infringing content and then download the content to confirm that is indeed the case. The user's ISP would then be contacted with a takedown demand in the usual way . The quality of the methods used by BayTSP appear suspect in certain situations.

The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has claimed the scalps of many small torrent sites in the Netherlands. They can be quite aggressive in their war on Piracy. One of the most used tactics is to track down the owner of the site, and send a letter stating that they face several years in prison if they don't stop serving torrents, and expose the users. Up until now, BREIN has not yet taken action to the bigger torrent sites in The Netherlands. Last January, BREIN won a lawsuit, and the Dutch ISP 'KPN' was forced to hand over the name and address of the dutchtorrent.org admin.

The British Phonographic Industry or BPI claims to have pursued hundreds, if not thousands of UK file-sharers accused of uploading copyright material. Previously, BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said that the BPI had no desire to drag people through the courts. The number of people who have actually settled with the BPI (i.e paid a 'fine') is unclear. What is clear is that not everyone who receives a complaint from the BPI actually settles and so far, no-one has ever appeared in a UK court to answer such a complaint. It appears that threats from the BPI to P2P’ers have a somewhat empty quality about them.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry or IFPI throws its net wide, targeting users of many networks including BitTorrent, eDonkey, DirectConnect, Gnutella, Limewire and SoulSeek. After carrying out what was claimed to be the largest ever worldwide legal action against filesharers in 2005 - effectively doubling the number of people being sued to over 4,000 - 2006 saw its biggest assault yet, with the IFPI targetting a further 8000 with enforcement actions.

Macrovision, as far as p2p is concerned, is a company trying to keep DVDRips off file-sharing networks. It claims that its anti-piracy solution called Ripguard can recover 97% of all revenue lost due to DVD ripping piracy. In reality Ripguard is easily defeated.

While Macrovision is failing to keep DVDRips off P2P networks, the Dolby subsidiary Cinea is using watermarks to track the source of DVD Screeners uploaded to the internet. The CineFence system from Philips does something similar, except it tracks the source of a camcorded movie back to the theater it was filmed in.

If filling file-sharing networks with unwanted junk is your thing then Media Defender Inc takes some beating. Purchased by ArtistDirect in 2005, they are currently working with labels such as Suretone Records to spam file-sharing networks with partial videos and music in an attempt to generate traffic to their website. Additionally, they were embarrassed recently when their involvement in operating fake MPAA torrents was revealed.

MediaSentry is a company offering similar services to BayTSP. Where BayTSP is used a lot by the likes of the MPAA, MediaSentry is popular with the RIAA. Monitoring file-sharing networks for infringements of their clients media, they identify and trace IP addresses they claim are engaged in such activity. MediaSentry's effectiveness has been called into question, notably in Foundation v. UPC Nederland link.

The MPAA is a well known anti-piracy lobbying organization, that protects the rights of its members, the 'big six' movie studios. February 2006, the MPAA announced lawsuits (PDF) against Torrentspy, Torrentbox and Isohunt, three of the most popular BitTorrent search engines. The MPAA was also involved in the raid on The Pirate Bay this May. They even sent a letter (PDF) to Sweden's State Secretary this March in which they kindly requested that The Pirate Bay be taken down. In 2005 the MPAA successfully shut down Lokitorrent, Btefnet, and Elitetorrents. But the MPAA does not have a clean slate either. They violated the linkware license of the 'Forest Blog' blogging engine.

File-sharers tend to have long memories and even if an anti-piracy company decides to change strategy, it can be difficult to shake off a tarnished image. French anti-piracy group Retspan and its subsidiary PeerFactor became known in 2004 after reports it was giving file-sharers financial incentives to spread fake files, a claim it later denied. Even though Peerfactor tried to 'go straight' in 2006 with a uTorrent deal, it's the original connection with Retspan which prevails in the mind of many sharers. For in 2004 it was Retspan who dared to take on the now-legendary Suprnova, trying to get it shut down by reporting it to the FBI and by sending threats to sites hosting Suprnova mirrors.

The RIAA protects the rights of a large group of record labels and distributors. The RIAA seems to use law suits merely as threats, a way to 'bully' people (dead or alive) into paying their exorbitant fines. Most of their victims do not have the money to fight back. They often offer people a chance to settle for $3000 or $4000, leaving them broke, but avoiding a real case. This trick seems to work well for the RIAA, they easily collect money without having to prove (they have no clue) that the defendant is actually someone who engaged in peer to peer file sharing of copyrighted music without authorization.

Finnish Venture Cup winner ViralG burst onto the scene in 2005 with a claim that it could end 99% of all file-sharing. It uses technology that enables it to exploit poor hashing technology employed by the likes of the moribund Kazaa but appears unable to do a thing about files found on other networks, including the mighty BitTorrent.

ViralG - like many anti-p2p companies - seem to make wild claims about the effectiveness of their systems. Ask anyone who visits a search engine such as mininova and they will tell you: to a greater or lesser extent, the anti-p2p companies have failed. Miserably.

And finally, I wanted to end this article on a lighter note and happily I can do so with the inclusion of the one, the only - Web Sheriff!!, the company that shot to fame via the publication of its copyright complaints made to ThePirateBay, or more accurately, the comedy value of the responses. Well worth a read. White Stripes/Web Sheriff.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-corporat...f-filesharers/

Top 20 Less Known BitTorrent Sites
Ernesto

We all know about mininova, The Pirate Bay and Torrentz, but what few know is that there are a host of less known torrent sites that also have some great, and sometimes rare, content. Here are 20 of these less known torrent sites.

So what is “Less Known”? Well, we used the Alexa ranking as our criteria, all the sites in this list are not in the top 5000 (5000 most visited sites on the Internet). The order of the sites is random, and the list includes some meta search engines as well.

Do you know a relatively unknown public BitTorrent site that should be in this list? Put it in the comments.

01. torrentvalley.com

02. yotoshi.com

03. extratorrent.com

04. bitenova.nl

05. torrentscan.com

06. fenopy.com

07. smaragdtorrent.org

08. torrentat.org

09. fulldls.com

10. worldnova.org

11. spynova.org

12. nova9.org

13. 2torrents.com

14. scrapetorrent.com

15. litebay.org

16. monova.org

17. torrents.to

18. torrentradar.org

19. bitdig.com

20. bittorrentshare.com

http://torrentfreak.com/top-20-less-...torrent-sites/

Music Industry Group Targets Students
Alex Veiga

The recording industry said Wednesday it was amplifying its legal offensive against online piracy on college campuses by sending hundreds of letters warning students they will be sued if they don't accept settlement offers.

The Recording Industry Association of America said it intended to sue more students and others on campuses in the next three months than it has in the past three years.

The trade group said it would send 400 letters a month to computer users suspected of copyright infringement.

"The theft of music remains unacceptably high and undermines the industry's ability to invest in new music," said Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.

"This is especially the case on college campuses," he said.

The letters targeted students at Arizona State University; Marshall University; North Carolina State University; North Dakota State University; Northern Illinois University; Ohio University; Syracuse University; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; University of Nebraska, Lincoln; University of South Florida; University of Southern California; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and University of Texas, Austin.

The schools were to receive between 20 and 37 letters each, with Ohio University accounting for the most with 50. The association said it would sue individuals who fail to settle or don't respond within a few weeks.

As part of its ongoing copyright crackdown, the association has already sued about 18,000 computer users nationwide since September 2003. The figure includes 1,062 computer users at 130 universities.

The lawsuits are initially filed against "John Doe" defendants, based on their Internet addresses. Many are accused of downloading music over university Internet services.

The recording industry lawyers then work through the courts to learn the name of the defendant. The process can take weeks and result in expensive legal fees for the record labels.

Under the industry's new practice, letters will be sent to university officials, who are being asked to forward them to the person whose Internet address has been tied to unauthorized file-sharing.

Avoiding the cost and time involved in litigation will give those receiving the letters a chance to negotiate a settlement for "substantially less" than previous defendants, association President Cary Sherman said. He declined to provide specifics.

The average settlement in past cases has ranged between $4,000 and $4,500, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who asked to remain anonymous, citing the confidential nature of the agreements.

The association also said it has sent three times more copyright complaints to universities this academic year than it did last year. The complaints ask the schools to take down unauthorized content being shared on their network.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D8NJ003G0.htm

Stop me before I share again

Solution to Stop File Sharing is Simple
Daily Kent Stater editorial board

Last Thursday, the Akron Beacon Journal ran a story that concerned Kent State with the headline "KSU rises to top 20 of music industry." We got excited, too. Our school hit number 17 in the nation.

But the story and the headline weren't referring to positive accomplishments made by the university. No, we were ranked as the 17th biggest college offender of illegally downloading music.

In a recent report by the Recording Industry Association of America, this trade group of the largest music labels compiled 15,000 complaints from the top 25 colleges and universities with student offenders so far this school year, as reported by the Beacon. That's triple the complaints of illegal downloads from last school year.

Kent State received the second highest number of complaints in Ohio with 424, being trumped only by the No. 1 ranked Ohio University, which received 1,287 complaints. A single complaint was an accusation that a student was sharing a single song over the campus Internet network.

At this university, as a means of punishment for illegally downloading a song, students get their Internet blocked, must watch a video on music piracy and take a quiz on the video. The students with large file-sharing offenses often face a lawsuit.

"This is one of the biggest thorns in our sides," Paul Albert, executive director of information services, told the Beacon. "We knew our number was going up quite a bit, but we didn't know we'd broken the top 20."

Ah, yes. Who would have thought a video and quiz wouldn't stop such a heinous crime? What shock that we are one of the biggest offenders!

It's unfair that Kent State does not have an educational system in place that would deter illegal file-sharing in the residence halls before such acts even happen and then expects its students not to download illegally. Albert and his buddies can easily pull the "thorn" out of their sides with the simple solution of education.

The problem is that a lot of students are unaware of what constitutes as piracy or an illegal download or a file share. A slap on the wrist after the crime has happened isn't going to prevent it. Kent State can't expect us to not put that thorn there if we don't know what we are doing.

Maybe Kent State wouldn't have such a big headache if it educated its students about such dangers. Come on, how hard would it be to cram 20 minutes of information into those sometimes worthless orientation classes about the file-sharing problem and how students can recognize if they are breaking the law. Those kinds of steps to remove Kent State from this top 20 list would also give the university more right to punish those who violate the policies. There also should be more information available in the residence halls where most of the violations are taking place.

Not addressing the problem until our school makes an embarrassing top 20 list is unfair to students, not to mention unfair to the recording industry, which is depending on the universities to help stop the problem - especially when a step toward a solution is so simple.

The above editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.
http://media.www.stateronline.com/me...-2741752.shtml

Peer to Peer Information During Disasters
Tim O'Reilly

Clearing out tabs in the browser, I came across an interesting article on lessons that should have been learned from the recent blizzard that left motorists stranded for 20 hours on I-78 in Pennsylvania.

The good news is that the state, with a common-sense plan to capitalize on the communication devices most of us had with us Feb. 14 -- including cell phones, laptop computers and GPS devices -- can either avoid similar problems in the future, or at least minimize them.

...Now it's time for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Pennsylvania State Police to capitalize on ways you and I can play a constructive role in fighting terror -- and blizzards -- through communication devices and applications we use daily. To cite only a few examples:

· New York City residents will soon be able to attach a camera-phone picture or video when filing a 911 complaint. Explaining Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision, an aide referred to YouTube's popularity, saying, "This is the way the world is now working, so it's just time to bring 911 into cyberspace."

· Believe me, lots of us could have provided PennDOT with the "situational awareness" they would have needed via phone pictures. Because the phones now include GPS, officials could have pieced together detailed mile-by mile photo maps -- "mashed up" with Google maps of precisely where the worst conditions were.

· Contra Costa County in California is implementing a technology called GeoCast developed by MITRE, a spin-off of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and commercialized by Square Loop, as part of its best-in-the-nation multi-mode, all-hazard public alerting system. With it, the state police could have sent SMS text messages that only drivers caught in the tie-up would have received, telling what the situation was and asking them to send the aforementioned camera-phone pictures to PennDOT.

· Dash Express, a new GPS system for sale this summer, would have warned authorities automatically. Each unit is Web-enabled, and if several subscribers had all had the same experience of grinding to a halt, the units would have automatically relayed that back to the company's computers. Under ordinary conditions, an algorithm would merge data from the cars with historical information about I-78, and recommend an alternative route. In this case, it could also have let officials know much earlier that traffic was at a standstill.

Believe it or not, we could have formed our own wireless network to share information during the jam! An Illinois activist group, CUWiN, created free, downloadable software allowing instantaneous creation of a self-forming, self-healing community wireless network. That "community" could even be a 50-mile long, four-lane wide one formed involuntarily by thousands of people stuck on I-78.

The point of the article is a really good one. User self service and collective intelligence shouldn't just be limited to consumer applications! This stuff has real utility for government disaster response. Unfortunately, governments tend to be late adopters of new technologies.

Do you have any great stories of the new world of networked data collection and real-time user data in dealing with traffic, weather, or other disasters? Or links to technologies that can be used in "situational awareness"? If so, please let us know.

(We're of course covering this kind of thing in our Where 2.0 Conference.)
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/20...o_peer_in.html

Disk Drive Failures 15 Times What Vendors Say, Study Says
Robert L. Scheier

Customers are replacing disk drives at rates far higher than those suggested by the estimated mean time to failure (MTTF) supplied by drive vendors, according to a study of about 100,000 drives conducted by Carnegie Mellon University.

The study, presented last month at the 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies in San Jose, also shows no evidence that Fibre Channel (FC) drives are any more reliable than less expensive but slower performing Serial ATA (SATA) drives.

That surprising comparison of FC and SATA reliability could speed the trend away from FC to SATA drives for applications such as near-line storage and backup, where storage capacity and cost are more important than sheer performance, analysts said.

At the same conference, another study of more than 100,000 drives in data centers run by Google Inc. indicated that temperature seems to have little effect on drive reliability, even as vendors and customers struggle to keep temperature down in their tightly packed data centers. Together, the results show how little information customers have to predict the reliability of disk drives in actual operating conditions and how to choose among various drive types (see also "Hard data ").

Real world vs. data sheets

The Carnegie Mellon study examined large production systems, including high-performance computing sites and Internet services sites running SCSI, FC and SATA drives. The data sheets for those drives listed MTTF between 1 million to 1.5 million hours, which the study said should mean annual failure rates "of at most 0.88%." However, the study showed typical annual replacement rates of between 2% and 4%, "and up to 13% observed on some systems."

Garth Gibson, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon and co-author of the study, was careful to point out that the study didn't necessarily track actual drive failures, but cases in which a customer decided a drive had failed and needed replacement. He also said he has no vendor-specific failure information, and that his goal is not "choosing the best and the worst vendors" but to help them to improve drive design and testing.

He echoed storage vendors and analysts in pointing out that as many as half of the drives returned to vendors actually work fine and may have failed for any reason, such as a harsh environment at the customer site and intensive, random read/write operations that cause premature wear to the mechanical components in the drive.

Several drive vendors declined to be interviewed. "The conditions that surround true drive failures are complicated and require a detailed failure analysis to determine what the failure mechanisms were," said a spokesperson for Seagate Technology in Scotts Valley, Calif., in an e-mail. "It is important to not only understand the kind of drive being used, but the system or environment in which it was placed and its workload."

"Regarding various reliability rate questions, it's difficult to provide generalities," said a spokesperson for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in San Jose, in an e-mail. "We work with each of our customers on an individual basis within their specific environments, and the resulting data is confidential."

Ashish Nadkarni, a principal consultant at GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a storage services provider in Framingham, Mass., said he isn't surprised by the comparatively high replacement rates because of the difference between the "clean room" environment in which vendors test and the heat, dust, noise or vibrations in an actual data center.

He also said he has seen overall drive quality falling over time as the result of price competition in the industry. He urged customers to begin tracking disk drive records "and to make a big noise with the vendor" to force them to review their testing processes.

FC vs. SATA

While a general reputation for increased reliability (as well as higher performance) is one of the reasons FC drives cost as much as four times more per gigabyte than SATA, "We had no evidence that SATA drives are less reliable than the SCSI or Fibre Channel drives," said Gibson. "I am not suggesting the drive vendors misrepresented anything," he said, adding that other variables such as workloads or environmental conditions might account for the similar reliability finding.

Analyst Brian Garrett at the Enterprise Storage Group in Milford, Mass., said he's not surprised because "the things that can go wrong with a drive are mechanical -- moving parts, motors, spindles, read-write heads," and these components are usually the same whether they are used in a SCSI or SATA drive. The electronic circuits around the drive and the physical interface are different, but are much less prone to failure.

Vendors do perform higher levels of testing on FC than on SATA drives, he said, but according to the study that extra testing hasn't produced "a measurable difference" in reliability.

Such findings might spur some customers to, for example, buy more SATA drives to provide more backup or more parity drives in a RAID configuration to get the same level of data protection for a lower price. However, Garrett cautioned, SATA continues to be best suited for applications such as backup and archiving of fixed content (such as e-mail or medical imaging) that must be stored for long periods of time but accessed quickly when it is needed. FC will remain the "gold standard" for online applications such as transaction processing, he predicts.

Don't sweat the heat?

The Google study examined replacement rates of more than 100,000 serial and parallel ATA drives deployed in Google's own data centers. Similar to the CMU methodology, a drive was considered to have failed if it was replaced as part of a repair procedure (rather than as being upgraded to a larger drive).

Perhaps the most surprising finding was no strong correlation between higher operating temperatures and higher failure rates. "That doesn't mean there isn't one," said Luiz Barroso, an engineer at Google and co-author of the paper, but it does suggest "that temperature is only one of many factors affecting the disk lifetime."

Garrett said that rapid changes in temperature -- such as when a malfunctioning air conditioner is fixed after a hot weekend and rapidly cools the data center -- can also cause drive failures.

The Google study also found that no single parameter, or combination of parameters, produced by the SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) built into disk drives is actually a good predictor of drive failure.

The bottom line

For customers running anything smaller than the massive data centers operated by Google or a university data center, though, the results might make little difference in their day-to-day operations. For many customers, the price of replacement drives is built into their maintenance contracts, so their expected service life only becomes an issue when the equipment goes off warranty and the customer must decide whether to "try to eke out another year or two" before the drive fails, said Garrett.

The studies won't change how Tom Dugan, director of technical services at Recovery Networks, a Philadelphia-based business continuity services provider, protects his data. "If they told me it was 100,000 hours, I'd still protect it the same way. If they told me if was 5 million hours I'd still protect it the same way. I have to assume every drive could fail."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9012066

RAID Recovery: The Data Knight Kroll Ontrack To The Rescue!
Patrick Schmid, Achim Roos

RAID Data Recovery Is Possible!

What if your hard drive decides to enter the Elysian Fields in this very moment? Sure, you could simply get a new hard drive to substitute for the defective one with a quick run to your favorite hardware store. And with last night's backup you might even reconstruct your installation quickly. But what if you don't have a backup? We have experienced the truth to be more like this: many users don't even have a backup, or it simply is too old and thus useless for recovering any useful files at all. In case of real hard drive damage, only a professional data recovery specialist can help you - say bye-bye to your vacation savings!

Hard drive failure is especially disastrous for smaller companies working with a single server and a single disk, if they do not have a complete and working data backup at hand. The whole situation is even more complicated if the broken hard drive is a member of a RAID array. Neither hard drive failure in RAID 1 nor RAID 5 will result in data loss, since this scenario has been taken care of by the choice of these RAID levels in advance. But the risk of human error increases: self-made data loss occurs if you accidentally substitute the wrong drive in a degraded RAID 5 array (one with a failed hard drive).

But not all hard drives that show failure symptoms are defective. Sometimes, so called "soft errors" can be fixed using data recovery software. But even in this case, you should weigh the risks to see if it makes sense to take care of the problem yourself or get help from professionals. You might not be able to detect a controller failure right away, for example; usually, users assume a problem with the hard drive. Here is our rule of thumb: if you hear clacking sounds in the potentially defective hard drive, or if the computer's S.M.A.R.T. function indicates an error during the boot process, something is wrong for sure.

What can you do once you know that an important hard drive is definitely broken? Or what happens if you pulled the wrong drive out of the slot while you were desperately trying to save your data? First of all: don't panic! You need to act systematically and thoughtfully to be successful, as well as to ensure that you spend as little as possible on recovery - costs can hits four digits easily.

To this end, we met with data recovery specialist Kroll Ontrack to take a look at possible data recovery methods, including RAID recovery.

Precautionary Methods And The Appropriate Reaction To A Data Loss

This first rule is to remain calm - acting rashly might be the greatest danger to your data. The fact that you are unable to access data via Windows Explorer as usual does not necessarily mean that your data is lost for good. Only overwriting bits, physical damage to the drive surface or destruction of the magnetization will cause irreversible loss of data. In most cases, we are dealing with a malfunctioning circuit board or failure of a mechanical component, two cases that still offer a variety of rescue methods.

You can avoid a lot of headache if you setup your system properly, schedule backups and monitor them on a regular basis. The best backup is useless if the user does not notice the error message giving the reason for a failure. Also remember that sometimes disaster recovery simply will not work, so please test run your backups. If necessary, restore them to another hard drive and see if it works as expected.

Here are a few precautions you should take with regard to hardware. If you use multiple drives, you should number the drives as well as the cables and removable frames. Do not rely on the existing numbering of removable fames and their front panels: they might start at 1, while your controller most likely starts at 0. Since assembly of such hardware as well as drive LEDs is always manual work, the whole process is yet another potential source of trouble. A little piece of tape bearing a drive number will help you avoid accidentally removing the wrong drive.

We assume that all hard drives will be handled with care, so they should be installed in suitable drive bays. If you use multiple drives, we recommend removable drive frame solutions, which help reduce vibration transfer onto the computer chassis and even back to individual hard drives. Make sure that your system has sufficient ventilation, so high speed hard drives won't overheat. Also avoid any kind of shock: you should make sure to position your system, so it won't get bumped by your knee, your dog, or your cleaning personnel. Servers belong in separate rooms, far away from any kind of everyday interference.

Make sure to defragment your data on a regular basis as well. Defragmentation will take file fragments that are distributed all over the hard drive and write them sequentially in one piece. This offers two advantages: better performance and easier file recovery in the case of an emergency. If data fragments are scattered all across a defect medium, recovery companies will have a hard time putting them back together. The same applies for RAID setups.

In case of error, verify if the malfunction might be caused by the hard drive controller. Ideally, you can connect all drives to another controller in the same order. If the error keeps showing up, it might not be the controller. Be careful with using more options: if you start a RAID initialization instead of a rebuild, parity data will be created, which most likely leads to overwriting healthy data!

Also be careful with software such as Partition Magic or Drive Magic. These are powerful utilities - powerful enough, in fact, to move data out of your reach. If you rampaged partitioning partition you might be able to help yourself through the use of data recovery software. Data is usually unharmed and can be found and recovered from your drive. Kroll Ontrack offers EasyRecovery, and Norton SystemWorks (System Utilities) provides another possibility. But be careful with those tools if a hardware malfunction seems to be the most likely case: In a worst case scenario they do more harm than good.

Types Of Hard Drive Damage

Damage to a drive's circuit board or defects of the drive heads occur fairly often. In both cases, to access hard drive data, a data recovery specialist will substitute the defective component with a working one. In the best case scenario you regain 100% of your data.

A so called head crash - where a write/read head physically hits the magnetic platter - is much more severe. Simply hitting your drive might cause contact, since the distance between the head and surface of drives is minimal nowadays. It is almost always safe to say that a damaged magnetized surface causes the loss of saved bits. The head might even repeatedly get caught at the area of defect, carrying off more material with each additional contact. This material will be distributed inside the drive, causing scratches or other damage. There is nothing a customer can do in case of an intense head crash, because the head is simply unable to move across the defective area any more.

Overvoltage on write/read heads causing the permanent destruction of data areas or magnetization will also result in irreversible data loss. This means the physical destruction of memory sectors, not the simple deletion of saved bits. Depending on the drive, the data recovery specialist might be able to recover some data. Recovering data from defect Hitachi drives is usually impossible, since the manufacturer does not provide any kind of firmware information. Various other products allow at least reading data from other platters.

Strange but true: even internal imbalances can cause trouble. Irregular data platter rotation due to broken bearings will result in unwanted track changes of which the drive is not aware; the result is sometimes total data hodgepodge. Bearing failure is usually the result of improper handling during transportation of the drive. The data recovery specialist will often be able to recover saved data by balancing the drive (slightly shifting and centrally rearranging the platters).

Logical mistakes make up 40% of Kroll Ontrack's assignments; luckily, they do not require processing in the clean room. Usually, those mistakes are accidental misuse or deletion of files, where the drive itself has no malfunctions. Even if the problem lies within the drive, it might be a simple defective sector and nothing more severe. Every drive has defective sectors: a primary list will carry a list of bad sectors from the factory; the secondary, so called growing list, will be updated in the course of operation if more sectors become useless. This occurs rather often and is normal, but if your hard drive S.M.A.R.T. feature tells you that you better save some data fast, you're in trouble. This often means that the growing list is full and an above-average number of sectors are dying.

Now let's talk about an irreversible defect. Your hard drive will die if fire or another heat source heats it up beyond the Curie temperature of the magnetic material of your drive; this cases the magnetization to be neutralized completely. The Curie temperature depends on the material used in a hard drive; magneto-optical devices use with Curie point principle on purpose (heating via laser), but hard drives do not.

A user who tries to solve issues by himself can make things worse - according to Kroll Ontrack, this is the biggest problem with data recovery. According to statistics, Europeans are worse than Americans in trying to solve problems on their own. Situations also turn bad if, for example, administrators are afraid of their bosses' reactions. Once, someone even sent a floppy drive instead of the defective hard drive - this is a clear indication of pressure placed on the person involved.

Troubleshooting

First, the drive has to be extracted from the computer to let the technician find the problem. There is, of course, no need to do so if you send your drive to Ontrack directly, but it is necessary if you send your computer or laptop to the data recovery specialist. Usually, you will call Ontrack to initiate contact. Ontrack has numerous branch offices worldwide and provides multilingual hotline personnel. Make sure, however, to give detailed information about what exactly happened so they know what they will be dealing with.

A remote recovery might be the most convenient option for customers. In this case, you don't even have to remove the defective drive; Ontrack provides the necessary software for you to install. Then you initiate a connection with Ontrack, enabling them to access your system. Since an "intrusion" of your computer by the data recovery people is unwanted, Kroll Ontrack chose this connection method deliberately. After connection build-up, the data recovery specialist will be able to run a remote diagnostic analysis of your drive and recover data via the Internet, if possible. Since a simple undelete might already work for you, it is worth the shot. On-site data recovery is also an option for Ontrack customers; removing a drive from large memory arrays in SANs or other memory structures is sometimes not an option.

If this doesn't work or your drive can be analyzed as defective acoustically - an experienced data recovery specialist knows what's wrong simply by listening to the sound it makes - you need to send in the drive or the complete RAID array by mail, or personally deliver it to an Ontrack branch office. In a first attempt to recover software, Ontrack connects the patient to a host computer and runs its software "Easy Recovery". This most likely helps with user-made mistakes such as accidentally deleted partitions or formatting. The primary goal is always to read existing data and copy it off the drive completely. Thereafter, the specialist works with data copied to a server.

If this doesn't work either, the circuit board can be exchanged as well. To do so, you need a compatible combination of hardware revision of your electronic board and the installed firmware. Oftentimes, you simply have to proceed by a systematic "trial-and-error" of all possible combinations. It is obvious that the data specialist needs a huge range of parts at hand. Kroll Ontrack tries to store common hard drives of all capacities and interfaces in-house, but essential hardware can also be sent between offices on short notice, since the data recovery specialist also has a list of each and every component needed for a swap.

Priority Of Processing: A Matter Of Good Will And Hard Dollars

At the reception desk, the customer can choose between the following service options. Standard (delivered between 8 am and 11 am) costs approximately $120. Express may be delivered between 8 am and 6:30 pm, but will be charged around $250. Emergency allows you to drop off your drive 24 hours a day, but you will have to pay about $500.

These prices are for diagnostic analysis only, whereupon the customer can decide whether to accept or decline the suggested data recovery. In contrast to the smaller data recovery specialist CBL, Kroll Ontrack generally charges for its analysis. In an after-hours matter of life and death, Ontrack will refer the issue for further processing to another office (e.g. from London to Los Angeles). Ontrack has 29 offices worldwide.

In 2005, Kroll Ontrack processed 50,000 recovery cases. Ontrack was able to complete 40% of incoming orders successfully right away. The remaining 60% had to be taken to the clean room, where 75% of data recoveries were successful.

Initial Step: The Imaging Station

The first thing the specialists try is to save an image of the affected drive onto the local server at the Ontrack office. At the site we visited, Ontrack provides 60 TB of storage capacity. Ideally, specialists will work with the image only, and not with the drive itself. Kroll Ontrack extends its own storage capacities to correspond to increasing capacity drives on the hard drive market. In case of urgency, a hard drive's content will simply be copied to another hard drive instead of the server, which is a bit faster.

Second Step: Emergency Surgery

A hard drive that refuses to cooperate will be sent to the clean room right away. These are Kroll Ontrack workstations set up according to clean room class 100, where a maximum of 100 dust particles are allowed per cubic meter of air. Components will be swapped here: drive electronics or internal components, read/write arms including writing/reading heads; or the spindle motor. In most cases, the specialist is able to access the drive's data again.

Third Step: Data Recovery

Ontrack sends a list of saved data to the customer if it was able to access hard drive data successfully. The customer then can decide which files are important and which are not - the cost for data recovery is estimated according to your selection. Be prepared to invest at least $1,000. RAID systems can reach the five-digit zone rather quickly, since the effort is measured according to the amount of data and grade of destruction. Working on numerous hard drives simply takes a long time.

The Ontrack program Verifile offers an overview of data that can be restored (Use Ontrack® VeriFile Online Data Reports). Since this program works with an Active X control element, you have to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The tool issues an ODR-file (Online Data Report), color-coding data as follows: green - good, yellow - restorable, red - only partly recoverable or not recoverable at all.

Today, the customer usually receives the desired data on a memory stick or DVDs.

Increasing The Level Of Difficulty: RAID Recovery

More and more enthusiast users approach Kroll Ontrack with destroyed RAID arrays. Generally, data recovery from such a RAID array is possible, but keep in mind that the effort increases disproportionately. First of all, data has to be copied from a RAID drive onto a server, and the data set has to be put back together. The distribution of data into smaller blocks across one or more drives makes RAID 0 the worst possible type to recover. Increasing performance doesn't necessarily do your data any good here! If a drive is completely defective, only small files, which ended up on only one of the RAID drives (despite the RAID stripe set), can be recovered (at 64 kB stripe size or smaller). RAID 5 offers parity data, which can be used for recovery as well.

RAID data configuration is almost always proprietary, since all RAID manufacturers set up the internals of their arrays in different ways. However, they do not disclose this information, so recovering from a RAID array failure requires years of experience. Where does one find parity bits of a RAID 5, before or after the payload? Will the arrangement of data and parity stay the same or will it cycle? This knowledge is what you are paying for.

Instead of accessing drives on a controller level, the file system level (most likely NTFS) is used, as logical drives will provide the basis for working on a RAID image. This allows the recovery specialist to put together bits and bytes after a successful recovery using special software. Kroll Ontrack can illustrate data structure visually. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. The recovery of known data formats is an important approach in order to reach towards a complete data recovery. Take a JPEG file for example - will you be able to recognize a picture after recovery? Or will you be able to open Word.exe, which is found on almost every office system? The selected file should be as large as possible, so it was distributed across all drives and you can know for sure that its recovery was successful.

If two drives of a RAID 5 are flawed, but enough data can be saved from the malfunctioning data mediums, Kroll Ontrack is usually able to recover this data. Two dead hard drives in a RAID 5 are more likely to be restored than two single platters, since RAID still provides parity data.

Follow-Up Analysis: Microscopic Approach On How To Find The Actual Problem

After data recovery, there is no reason to use the defective drive anymore, right? So most of the time it makes sense to perform an analysis to determine the cause of the faulty drive. Kroll Ontrack conducts its analysis under the microscope. The drive will be opened in the clean room, where a technician can apply a contrast liquid drop by drop onto the platter so magnetism can be seen under the microscope.

Conclusion: Save Time And Money - Back Up Your Files

If you want to save a lot of time, money and trouble, perform regular backups. Data and malfunction analysis starts at $120 and can go up to $500; the actual data recovery will easily eat up $ 1,000 or more. Knocking on Kroll Ontrack's door with a broken RAID array might cost you as much as several thousand dollars. If you are willing to pay enough, data recovery is even possible on a RAID 5 array with two defective drives.

Even if you take good care of your hardware and do have a master strategy on how to secure it, there is always the chance that something goes wrong. If this happens, remember to remain calm! Overreacting might do more harm to your data than the malfunction itself. Keep your composure and don't start looking for a solution on your own, just because your boss might have a fit. Staying calm and discussing further action with competent people will give you the best results.

If you rely on data that might be lost and are not sure what to do, simply contact a data recovery specialist. Trying to saving a few bucks with a do-it-yourself rescue that goes wrong might cost you more nerves in the long run.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/...ery/index.html

Local news

Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website
George Gombossy

Under pressure from state investigators, Best Buy is now confirming my reporting that its stores have a secret intranet site that has been used to block some consumers from getting cheaper prices advertised on BestBuy.com.

Company spokesman Justin Barber, who in early February denied the existence of the internal website that could be accessed only by employees, says his company is "cooperating fully" with the state attorney general's investigation.

Barber insists that the company never intended to mislead customers.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after my column disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com.

Blumenthal said Wednesday that Best Buy has also confirmed to his office the existence of the intranet site, but has so far failed to give clear answers about its purpose and use.

"Their responses seem to raise as many questions as they answer," Blumenthal said in an interview. "Their answers are less than crystal clear."

Based on what his office has learned, Blumenthal said, it appears the consumer has the burden of informing Best Buy sales people of the cheaper price listed on its Internet site, which he said "is troubling."

What is more troubling to me, and to some Best Buy customers, is that even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price.

Blumenthal said that because of the fuzzy responses from Best Buy, he has yet to figure out the real motivation behind the intranet site and whether sales people are encouraged to use it to cheat customers.

Although Best Buy also refused to talk with me on specifics of the intranet site or its use, it insisted that its policy is to give customers the best price.

"Our intention is to provide the best price to our customers which is why we have a price-match policy in place," the company said in a written statement to me. "As prices and offers may vary between retail and online, our stores will certainly match BestBuy.com pricing as long as it qualifies under the terms and conditions of the price match policy."

"As a company, everything we do revolves around our customers' needs and desires. It is never our intent to mislead them as their loyalty is incredibly important to us," the statement said.

Then they threw in this interesting line: "Although we have an intra-store web site in place to support store operations (including products and pricing), we are reminding our employees how to access the external BestBuy.com web site to ensure customers are receiving the best possible product price."

That last sentence seems to indicate that Best Buy, which is supposed to be staffed by tech-savvy employees, is putting the blame on memory lapses: that employees have somehow forgotten how to access BestBuy.com from the store.

Having been to many Best Buy stores where some helpful employees showed me how they access the intranet and Internet, I can assure Best Buy officials that the re-education process will probably not be lengthy.

After making sure the computer is turned on, employees should click twice on the Yahoo Internet icon and then type in BestBuy.com.

This is not the first time the giant electronic retailer has gotten into trouble misleading customers. The firm, based in Minneapolis, operates more than 1,100 electronic retail stores in the U.S., Canada and China. It has more than 125,000 full-time employees.

Attorneys general in New Jersey and Ohio have accused Best Buy of deceptive sales practices, repackaging used merchandise and selling it as new, and failing to pay rebates and refunds. It paid $135,000 in New Jersey three years ago to settle that state's suit, which was based on hundreds of consumer complaints. The Ohio case is ongoing.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc...-utility-local

CompUSA Closing More Than 50% of Stores

CompUSA, the computer and gadget retailer owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, said on Tuesday it would close more than half of its U.S. retail locations over the next two to three months to focus on top performing locations.

CompUSA said in a statement it would close 126 of its stores and would receive a $440 million cash capital infusion, but it was not specific as to the source of the cash. The company also said it would cut costs and restructure.

The company operates 225 stores, which its Web site says are located in the United States and Puerto Rico.

"Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics markets, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or nonstrategic, old store layouts and locations faced with market saturation," Roman Ross, chief executive officer of CompUSA, said in the statement.

"The process began last week with the closing of four CompUSA stores and over the next 60-90 days, the company will close a total of 126 stores in the United States to focus on initiative that enhance its top performing locations ."

On Monday, CompUSA said it would close two stores in California, one in Texas and one in Illinois. CompUSA said it was trying to streamline operations and bolster margins at top-performing stores.

Last September, an official from Slim's conglomerate Grupo Carso told Reuters that Slim, the third-richest man in the world, was considering selling the loss-making business.

Intense gross margin pressure, especially in the flat panel television category, has plagued others in this sector, contributing to Circuit City Stores Inc.'s announcement earlier this month that it was closing 70 stores.

CompUSA competes with Best Buy and Circuit City.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2099058,00.asp

Wal-Mart Buys 35% of China Retail Chain
David Barboza

Wal-Mart Stores said Tuesday that it had acquired a 35 percent stake in one of China's biggest retailers in a bid to expand its presence in this country's fast-growing retail market.

After months of speculation about a deal, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said it had agreed to buy the stake in Bounteous, a Taiwan-owned group that operates more than 100 retail outlets in 34 cities in China under the name Trust-Mart.

The two retail giants will operate separately here, but eventually, Wal- Mart is expected to take full control of the company that operates all of Trust- Mart's stores.

The move is consistent with Wal- Mart's push into international markets. With growth slowing at its U.S. outlets and its stock price slumping, Wal-Mart is moving aggressively to capture market share in developing countries like Brazil, India and China.

China has the world's fastest-growing major economy and no dominant national retail chain, even though the country has a growing middle class that may now number close to 50 million.

Wal-Mart declined to say how much it paid, but people close to the deal said Wal-Mart had agreed to pay about $1 billion to assume managerial control of the Chinese retailer.

Wal-Mart already operates 73 stores with more than 37,000 employees in China. But it faces stiff competition here from large Chinese retailers as well as European retail giants like Carrefour, Metro and Tesco.

Trust-Mart, which will continue to operate under its own name, has more than 31,000 employees in China working in large hypermarket stores that sell everything from groceries and clothing to home appliances.

Should Wal-Mart succeed in obtaining full control of Trust-Mart, it would be in striking distance to become the China's No.1 foreign retailer, a title currently held by its French rival Carrefour, which operates about 90 super stores here.

"This is an important step in bringing additional scale to our China retail business," Michael Duke, the vice chairman of Wal-Mart, said in a statement.

Nonetheless, Wal-Mart's China profits are unlikely to have a significant impact on the company's earnings over the next few years.

Despite the company's massive sourcing operation in China, Wal- Mart's retail operations in the country accounted for only a tiny fraction of its global sales, which were more than $344 billion last year.

In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, Wal-Mart posted sales of about $1.3 billion in China, trailing Trust-Mart, which had revenues of $1.7 billion, according to the China Chain Store & Franchise Association.

Wal-Mart officials declined to confirm that figure, saying the company does not break out China sales numbers.

Trust-Mart's network of outlets gives Wal-Mart a national presence that can compete head-to-head with Carrefour, which had China sales of $2.3 billion in 2005.

Wal-Mart officials said the deal allows them to appoint one of its executives as the chief operating officer of Trust-Mart.

"The two teams from each company will work together starting today to find ways to cooperate," said Jonathan Dong, a spokesman for Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China.

Analysts say that Wal-Mart, which first entered the Chinese market in 1996, is trying to create a broader platform as part of its expansion in China, which could mean many more acquisitions.

"From Wal-Mart's perspective it's a foot in the door," says George Svinos, head of Asia Pacific retail at KPMG's office in Australia. "You can clearly see why Wal-Mart is looking to invest in a country that by 2015 could have the largest economy in the world."

China also offers Wal-Mart a chance to get its international strategy back on track, after the company stumbled in South Korea and Germany before selling its operations in those countries last year.

But China's size and enormous growth potential does not guarantee success. The market is fragmented and highly competitive. Shelf prices are extremely low, and poor infrastructure outside the major cities make transport logistics a nightmare.

Wal-Mart will need to face down increasingly sophisticated Chinese retail conglomerates such as China Resources, Shanghai Brilliance Group and Lianhua supermarkets on their home turf. Home Depot and Best Buy are opening branches in China, and dozens of other American and European retailers are also planning to move in.

Wal-Mart said that the deal to acquire the Bounteous stake had already been approved by the Chinese government, which has recently made it easier for foreign retailers to set up operations here.

But Wal-Mart and its foreign rivals will still need to cope with a fast- evolving and sometimes unpredictable marketplace. One factor they will contend with is the presence of China's state-controlled unions, which are pushing their way into foreign-owned companies and retail operations.

Last year, Wal-Mart agreed to allow unions to be set up in nearly all of its stores in China. And while unions in China are controlled by the state-run union federation and often lack bite, some believe they are gradually gaining clout and may soon begin bargaining for higher wages and better compensation packages — especially at foreign companies.

The imbalance between Wal-Mart's relatively fledgling retail operations and its huge procurement operation is striking. The company sourced more than $9 billion worth of goods here for stores operating outside of China. Building a retailing platform of comparable strength will require huge additional investments.

"This is just one percent of what they need to do," Svinos at KPMG said of their stake in Trust-Mart. "They need to create a critical mass and build a credible presence in the Chinese market."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...ss/walmart.php

Thai Government Paves Way for Seizure of the Broadcaster ITV
Thomas Fuller and Wayne Arnold

Thailand is poised to take over a television station once controlled by Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in a coup in September, ending a long-running dispute between the broadcaster and the government appointed by the military but leaving an uncertain future for the only private station in the country.

The government said Tuesday that it would terminate the license of iTV if the broadcaster did not pay a $2.8 billion fine by next Tuesday — a sum that iTV, which has a market value of $34 million, said would be "impossible" to pay. ITV is not related to the British broadcaster of the same name.

The decision is a setback for Temasek Holdings of Singapore, which last year led a group of investors in a takeover of Shin Corp., the company that controls iTV, from Thaksin's family. The government's effective nationalization of the station, which represents about 1 percent of the market value of Shin's assets, should have little financial impact on Temasek. Temasek is not liable for the fine and does not face the prospect of paying severance for iTV's employees, who will not be laid off.

The Thai government is investigating several aspects of the January 2006 deal between Thaksin and Temasek — most significantly the alleged use of illegal nominees in the sale — but analysts said that the iTV case was distinct from the other investigations.

"This is a separate issue," said Korn Chatikavanij, a former banker and deputy secretary general of the Democrat Party, which has been vocal in criticizing Thaksin's deal with Temasek.

"They owe the government," Korn said referring to iTV. "The courts have all ruled in favor of the fact that the penalty has to be paid."

The government's case against iTV dates to 2002, well before Temasek's deal with Thaksin. Set up in the 1990s, iTV was given a 30-year broadcast concession on the condition that it mainly broadcast news. With Thaksin as prime minister, iTV was offered a lower annual concession fee and was allowed to increase its entertainment content at the expense of news.

But last May, a Thai court rescinded these benefits and ordered iTV to return to its mostly news format and pay 2.2 billion baht, or $67.4 million, in back fees, 15 percent interest, and a 97.8 billion baht fine.

Richard Moe, a telecommunications analyst at Macquarie Securities in Bangkok, said the government was taking over the company because it wanted to preserve jobs at the station.

In making the announcement Tuesday, Pridiyathorn Devakula, the Thai finance minister, said that "no employee will lose his job, and all the programs will be continued."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/...nology/itv.php

Roo Buys Wurld Media for $10M
Liz Gannes

Roo Group announced today it will acquire Wurld Media, maker of various content distribution platforms including Peer Impact, for up to $10 million in cash and stock.

Peer Impact had gained fame when it snared NBC Universal in November 2005, the first major studio to make its content available from a legitimate peer-to-peer provider. Despite what appears to be minimal traffic, the company has since signed 20th Century Fox, WB, Univeral, Sony, Warner, EMI, Fox Musix, Fox for Movies, Atari, and Activision, among others.

Peer Impact, which is Windows and Internet Explorer-only, uses a referral revenue share to pay users and peers, analogous to Revver, but in most cases with studio content rather than user-generated. The company splits 10 percent of a file’s purchase price between peers who share it and members who recommend it.

I wrote about Peer Impact and other rev-share efforts about a year ago in a story for Red Herring (reg req). Some of you with a long memory may recall Saratoga Springs, NY-based Wurld Media had previously been involved in adware before it launched Peer Impact.

The acquisition price is not hefty, but it’s an exit for eight-year-old Wurld, with $1.5 million up front, $6.5 million upon completion of the deal, and $2 million based on performance. The company is said to have some significant IP in the P2P space.

Roo customer News Corp recently took a 10 percent stake in the company. Roo had also bought MyVideoDaily for $350,000 plus stock about a month ago.

Roo shares are trading down $0.20 at $4.20.
http://newteevee.com/2007/02/27/roo-...media-for-10m/

DreamWorks Posts Fourth-Quarter Loss on Box Office Flop
AP

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the studio behind animated movies such as "Shrek" and "Madagascar," said Tuesday that it swung to a fourth-quarter loss on costs to write off "Flushed Away," which performed poorly at the box office.

The company posted a loss of $21.3 million, or 20 cents per share, compared with year-ago earnings of $63.2 million, or 61 cents per share, which included a tax benefit and strong performance from the studio's "Madagascar" DVD, which was initially released into the home video market in the 2005 quarter.

DreamWorks said the recent quarter was strapped with a charge of 80 cents per share related to the partial write-off of film costs for "Flushed Away." Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said the film failed to meet financial expectations.

Revenue grew 18 percent to $204.3 million from $172.9 million in the prior-year period, with about half of sales driven by the release of "Over the Hedge" into the home video market. However, costs associated with sales — including the write-off — more than doubled at the same time to $219.9 million, offsetting revenue growth.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial forecast a loss of 42 cents per share on sales of $159 million.
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs...382831,00.html

Viacom Reports Higher 4Q Profits as Addition of DreamWorks Boosts Movie Business
AP

MTV owner Viacom Inc. reported a sharply higher fourth-quarter profit Thursday compared with a year ago as its movie business swung to a profit.

Viacom, which also owns BET, VH1 and several other cable channels, earned $480.8 million, or 69 cents per share, in the October-December period versus $129.5 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

The results were boosted by the addition of the DreamWorks movie studio, and the year-ago figures were also affected by an accounting adjustment following Viacom's split-off from CBS Corp.

On a comparable basis, Viacom's operating income increased 28 percent to $855.6 million from $669.6 million a year earlier, driven largely by improved results at its movie business, which earned $86.3 million in the quarter versus a loss in the year-ago period of $39.6 million.

Viacom's cable networks business, which makes up the lion's share of its operations, reported a 6 percent gain in profits to $809.9 million from $761.7 million a year ago.

Overall company revenues rose 32 percent to $3.59 billion from $2.72 billion as it added the DreamWorks studio to its movie operations, which include the Paramount film studio.

Viacom also said it would take about $70 million in charges in 2007 as it restructures its MTV division, largely in severance charges, with about $50 million being recorded in the first quarter of this year.

Viacom split up from CBS Corp. at the beginning of 2006 and became a separate company.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/mark...tent=D8NJCTV84

EchoStar Communications 4Q Profit Rises
AP

EchoStar Communications Corp. said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit rose 15 percent on new subscriber additions.

Earnings climbed to $152.6 million, or 35 cents per basic share, from $132.6 million, or 30 cents per basic share, during the same period a year ago.

Quarterly revenue increased 17 percent to $2.58 billion from $2.20 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were looking for a profit of 32 cents per share on sales of $2.54 billion.

DISH Network added about 350,000 new subscribers during the quarter, giving the company 13.1 million subscribers as of Dec. 31. The total is an increase of about 1.1 million subscribers when compared with the prior-year period.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070301/earns...ions.html?.v=3

Dell Profit, Revenue Fall Short of Reduced Estimates
Connie Guglielmo

Dell Inc., the world's second-largest personal-computer maker, posted fourth-quarter profit and sales that trailed analysts' reduced estimates after the company lost customers to rivals over the holidays.

Net income was $673 million, or 30 cents a share, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said today in a statement. Sales totaled $14.4 billion, falling short of a $14.9 billion average projection in a Bloomberg survey.

The results underscore why founder Michael Dell returned as chief executive officer in January. His company, which counts on PCs for more than half of revenue, lost the market lead after Hewlett-Packard Co. cut prices. To shore up profit, Dell held back on holiday promotions, enabling Hewlett-Packard to lure buyers with low-cost notebook computers.

``HP's become a lot more aggressive on price,'' said Bill Fearnley Jr., an analyst with FTN Midwest Securities Corp. in Boston. Fearnley, who spoke before the results, rates the shares ``neutral'' and doesn't own them. ``The good news is that Michael's back. He's making bold moves.''

Results released today are preliminary because of an ongoing accounting investigation. Dell reported profit of $1.01 billion on sales of $15.2 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. The company has said it may need to restate previous results.

Dell, which stopped providing financial forecasts in May 2006, had already announced in January that profit and sales for the quarter missed analysts' estimates. The warning led analysts to reduce their profit estimates to 30 cents from 33 cents for the three months ended Feb. 2, according to a Bloomberg survey.

`Grow Into It'

Dell's shares, down 21 percent in the past 12 months, dropped 41 cents to $22.60 in extended trading after the report. They had risen 16 cents to $23.01 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.

Price cuts aimed at winning back market share have weighed on profit margins, and Dell's sales growth has fallen to its lowest level in more than four years.

Two days after ousting Kevin Rollins as CEO on Jan. 31, Dell told employees they needed to cut costs to help regain the price advantage that allowed the company to win the PC market lead more than three years ago.

``We need to grow into what we have, hold cost and eliminate marginal activities,'' wrote Dell, who turned 42 last week. ``There is no luxury of time. The competitors are fierce.''

As part of a shakeup of operations and management called Dell 2.0, at least five top executives have left since December. In February, Dell hired Motorola Inc. phone chief Ron Garriques to oversee a newly created consumer unit and tapped former Solectron Corp. CEO Michael Cannon to run operations including manufacturing, in a bid to reduce product costs.

PC Woes

Dell is also cooperating with probes into its accounting by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. The company said in September the investigations indicate possible errors in its accounting for so-called accruals or reserves, or estimates of future obligations.

Lackluster products and poor customer service at Dell alienated the U.S. consumers whose purchases of notebook computers have fueled PC market growth for the past two years. The company spent $150 million in the last year to improve service, and said in November it cut the time U.S. customers waited on support hotlines to three minutes from nine minutes.

That hasn't been enough to counter gains made by Hewlett- Packard CEO Mark Hurd. Hewlett-Packard led the PC market for the second straight quarter during the 2006 holiday shopping season for a 24 percent jump in shipments, according to researcher IDC.

Dell's shipments fell 8.4 percent in the calendar fourth quarter, according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. Orders in the U.S., which accounts for more than 50 percent of Dell's sales, fell almost 17 percent.

``When the problems become so bad and so public, like they've become at Dell, we think that time is certainly going to be one of the key components here,'' Fearnley said. ``It's not going to snap back in a quarter.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...kmQ&refer=home

Authors Find Their Voice, and Audience, in Podcasts
Andrew Adam Newman

Scott Sigler writes science-fiction horror novels, the kind one fan called “steel-tipped boot on your throat, speed-metal fiction.” Mr. Sigler has written four such books, though not many people have actually read them.

How many have listened to them, though, is a different story.

Several times a week Mr. Sigler, 37, steps into a walk-in closet in his San Francisco home. He reads into a microphone that connects to his computer via a sound mixer. Hanging shirts envelop him, masking ambient sound.

After being snubbed by publishers for years, Mr. Sigler began recording his first book, “EarthCore,” in 2005. He offered it as a podcast in 22 episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) that he posted online and sent free to subscribers for downloading. Before long, Mr. Sigler had 5,000 listeners; by the time he finished releasing his second novel, “Ancestor,” last January, he had 30,000, as he does for “The Rookie,” which is playing now.

With initial printings of novelists’ first books running as low as 2,000 copies, Mr. Sigler has a substantial audience, enough finally to attract a small Canadian publisher, Dragon Moon Press, which published “EarthCore” in 2005 and will release “Ancestor” on April 1.

Mr. Sigler also recently signed with a New York agent, Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Agency, who expects to park his latest, “Infection,” with a major publisher.

Others have turned to the Internet to build their audience, including Cory Doctorow, who offered the text of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” as a free download in 2003. But Mr. Sigler is among the vanguard of authors stapling their literary aspirations to the iPod.

“A lot of no-name authors like me are getting massive grass-roots exposure, and some of us are going to percolate to the top and get on the best-seller list,” Mr. Sigler said.

The business is brewing at Podiobooks.com, the Web site founded in late 2005 with just 15 titles, including books by Tee Morris and Mark Jeffrey, who began offering podcasts about the same time as Mr. Sigler.

The site was founded by Evo Terra, who wrote the book on podcasting, literally; he was co-author of “Podcasting for Dummies.” Today the Web site has about 100 titles, many science fiction and fantasy.

“Most of the science-fiction authors are more tech savvy than romance authors,” Mr. Terra said. Podiobooks features primarily unpublished writers, and has rejected books only because of “hate speech,” Mr. Terra said. The site also includes guidelines on recording a book.

“Compared to audiobooks these authors break every rule in the business, including using sound effects,” Mr. Terra said. The podcast books also use music and a full cast more liberally than traditional audiobooks. Still, what Podiobooks’ offerings might lack in polish, they tend to make up for in brash enthusiasm.

Mr. Terra plans to add some fee books by more established authors, and for now covers costs through suggested donations of $9.99 per title (some give more, as much as $50), with Podiobooks taking 25 percent and passing the rest to its authors.

“There was one that I really enjoyed, and I think I gave them 20 bucks,” said Martha Cox, a subscriber who listens during her 45-minute commute to Austin, Tex. Most titles are “very entertaining, and it doesn’t put me off that publishing companies have decided not to publish them,” she said. “There’s certainly substandard work available, but there is in bookstores too.”

Mr. Jeffrey founded three Internet companies, selling the latest one in 2004, the same year he completed his Harry Potter-esque fantasy novel, “The Pocket and the Pendant.” In early 2005 he released it as a podcast.

“I’m just completely impatient with the publishing world,” he said. “Even if a publisher said yes tomorrow, it would be a full year before the book was in the marketplace. Coming from the Internet, that was just insane to me.”

Along with drawing about 20,000 listeners, Mr. Jeffrey self-published it through the print-on-demand company Lulu.com. (Unlike traditional vanity presses, Lulu doesn’t require writers to pay for a large printing up front, but prints copies as they sell.)

Did Mr. Jeffrey think there was a taint to giving away an audio version of his book?

“I come from the Internet,” he said. “Doing it yourself is the culture. And I thought, ‘I’ll do the first book this way and build an audience and hopefully make money on the back end.’ ”

Mr. Jeffrey said that he is evaluating three Hollywood offers for “The Pocket and the Pendant,” the big screen, and that his suitors include companies with publishing arms offering book deals.

“It’s a much more attractive package to the publisher if you have a built-in audience,” said Mr. Leavell, the agent, who along with Mr. Sigler represents others who have built Internet followings, including Tucker Max, who detailed his drunken exploits on his Web site before publishing the best seller “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.”

Gwen Gedes, publisher of Dragon Moon Press, which published Mr. Sigler’s first and forthcoming book, said that about half of her roughly 70 authors are available on podcasts. The possibility that listeners might not buy books after hearing them free does not faze Ms. Gedes, who said the exposure alone is invaluable.

She has been approaching unsigned podcasters with book deals. “It’s kind of a role reversal to knock on an author’s door, to write a query letter asking, ‘Can I be your publisher?’ ” she said.

One author she courted was J. C. Hutchins, a 32-year-old former newspaper reporter from Deerfield Beach, Fla. When Mr. Hutchins completed his first novel in a planned trilogy, “7th Son,” in 2005, he sent the book to agents, since major publishing houses will not consider unrepresented writers. “I got about 35 rejections from agents,” Mr. Hutchins said. “Most hard-core writers would probably scoff at the mere 35 rejections and say: ‘Wait till you get a hundred. It builds character.’ ”

Instead of waiting Mr. Hutchins plunked down $50 for a microphone and $50 for a mixer and started producing podcasts on GarageBand, the sound-mixing software. He put the book’s first episode, the prologue, on Podiobooks in early 2005.

And he waited.

“You can see the statistic of how many listeners are downloading the book, and for the prologue there were literally three people, and two of them were my girlfriend and myself.” But Mr. Hutchins’s audience grew steadily, and there are now 20,000 people listening to his current feed, the trilogy’s second book “7th Son: Deceit.”

While Mr. Hutchins said that he appreciated Ms. Gedes’s interest in the book, he is looking for an agent anew in the hope of attracting a bigger publisher.

Attracting an Internet audience has been validating, but it all comes down to “the dad test,” Mr. Hutchins said. “My Dad isn’t technically savvy, and he isn’t online. When he hears Amazon, he thinks of the jungle. It would be nice for my Dad to be able to be able to walk into a Barnes & Noble and see at least one copy of my book.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/books/01podb.html

Egyptian Blogger Appeals Prison Sentence
Nadia Abou El-Magd

Lawyers filed an appeal Monday on behalf of a blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egypt's president.

Abdel Kareem Nabil, a former law student at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, used his blog to advocate secularism and criticize conservative Muslims.

He accused Al-Azhar, Egypt's foremost Islamic institute, of encouraging extremism, calling it "the university of terrorism."

One of Nabil's lawyers, Rawda Ahmed, said an appeal was filed Monday and a court hearing was set for March 12.

Thursday's conviction has brought a flood of condemnations from international and Egyptian human rights groups, as well as from fellow bloggers. Washington also has said it was concerned about the verdict and sentence.

But the Egyptian government has defended the court's decision.

"No one, no matter who he might be, has the right to interfere with Egyptian legal matters or comments on Egypt's decisions," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement on Friday.

Judge Ayman al-Akazi sentenced Nabil, 22, to three years in prison for insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife and gave him a fourth year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil, who describes himself as a secular Muslim, did not react as the verdict was read. His family, devout Muslims, did not attend any of the trial sessions.

Egypt, a top U.S. ally in the Mideast, arrested a number of bloggers last year, most for connections to a political movement whose goal is democratic reform. All but Nabil were released, a sign of how sensitive this country is to religious criticism.

Nabil's frequent attacks on Al-Azhar led the university to expel him in March, then push prosecutors to bring him to trial.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022700065.html

Federal Court Reaffirms Immunity of Bloggers from Suits Brought Against Commenters

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that "[no] provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," and that "[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section." A recent decision of the First Circuit has reaffirmed the broad protection this statute provides to bloggers and message board administrators.

In Universal Communication Systems v. Lycos, a company who had allegedly been victimized by defamatory statements on a message board regarding the value of its stock sued Lycos, which operated the board. The message board allowed users to post comments with minimal moderation, and no one from Lycos was responsible for the allegedly defamatory statements.

Examining the impact of Sec. 230 on this case, the court noted that "Congress intended that, within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board," adding that allowing bloggers and message board operators to be sued for the statements of commenters on their sites would have an "obvious chilling effect" on speech. Accordingly, the court dismissed the complaint against Lycos.
http://www.acsblog.org/economic-regu...ommenters.html

AP: We Ignored Paris Hilton

• Associated Press tried blackout on Paris Hilton news
• Not much "news," but no AP clients asked what was up, either
• Reaction was mostly positive

So you may have heard: Paris Hilton was ticketed the other day for driving with a suspended license.

Not huge news, even by celebrity-gossip standards. Here at The Associated Press, we put out an initial item of some 300 words. But it actually meant more to us than that.

It meant the end of our experimental blackout on news about Paris Hilton.

It was only meant to be a weeklong ban -- not the boldest of journalistic initiatives, and one, we realized, that might seem hypocritical once it ended. And it wasn't based on a view of what the public should be focusing on -- the war in Iraq, for example, or the upcoming election of the next leader of the free world, as opposed to the doings of a partygoing celebrity heiress/reality TV star most famous for a grainy sex video.

No, editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn't cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. After that, we'd take it day by day. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? And would that tell us something interesting?

It turned out that people noticed plenty -- but not in the way that might have been expected. None of the thousands of media outlets that depend on AP called in asking for a Paris Hilton story. No one felt a newsworthy event had been ignored. (To be fair, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happened in the Hilton universe.)

The reaction was to the idea of the ban, not the effects of it. There was some internal hand-wringing. Some felt we were tinkering dangerously with the news. Whom, they asked, would we ban next? Others loved the idea. "I vote we do the same for North Korea," one AP writer said facetiously.

The experiment began on February 19. A few days before, the AP had written from Austria about Hilton's appearance at the Vienna Opera ball, just ahead of her 26th birthday. We didn't cover her weekend birthday bash in Las Vegas.

During "blackout week," the AP didn't mention Hilton's second birthday party at a Beverly Hills restaurant, at which a drunken friend reportedly was ejected by security after insulting Paula Abdul and Courtney Love. And editors asked our Puerto Rico bureau not to write about her visit there to hawk her fragrance. However, her name did slip into copy unintentionally three times, as background: in stories about Britney Spears, Nicole Richie, and even in the lead of a story about Democrats in Las Vegas.

Then Hilton was arrested on February 27 for driving with a suspended license -- an offense that could conceivably lead to jail time because she may have violated conditions of a previous sentence. By that time, our blackout was over anyway, so reporting the development was an easy call. (On the flip side, we never got to see what repercussions there would have been if we hadn't.)

Also by then, an internal AP memo about the ban had found its way to the outside world. The New York Observer quoted it on Wednesday, and the Gawker.com gossip site linked to it. Howard Stern was heard mentioning the ban on his radio show, and calls came in from various news outlets asking us about it. On Editor and Publisher magazine's Web site, a reader wrote: "This is INCREDIBLE, finally a news organization that can see through this evil woman." And another: "You guys are my heroes!"

We felt a little sheepish that the ban was over, and braced ourselves for the comments that would come when people realized it wasn't permanent.

We also learned that Lloyd Grove, former columnist for the New York Daily News, had attempted a much longer Paris Hilton blackout. He began it a year into his "Lowdown" column and stuck to it, he says, for two years until the column was discontinued last October -- except for a blind item (no names) about Hilton crashing a pre-Oscar party.

So was Grove attempting to raise the level of discourse in our society by focusing on truly newsworthy subjects?

Well, not really. "The blackout was a really heartfelt attempt on my part," he says, "to get publicity for myself."

A trait that Hilton, it must be said, has turned into an art. Grove thinks the so-called "celebutante" achieved her unique brand of fame because she boasts an irresistible set of traits: wealth, a big name, beauty with a "downmarket" appeal, and a tendency to seem ... oversexed. "This is what mainstream society celebrates," he says. "She is, in the worst sense, the best expression of the maxim that no bad deed goes unrewarded in our pop culture."

One measure of Hilton's fame: She was No. 5 last year on the Yahoo Buzz Index, a list of overall top searches on the Web site (her ever-so-brief buddy Spears is a perennial No. 1).

Another is that US Weekly has at least a mention or a photo in just about every issue. "People now come to expect to see pictures of her," says Caroline Schaefer, deputy editor of the celebrity magazine. "They're intrigued by her unshakable self-esteem. People are fascinated by that."

Jeff Jarvis, who teaches journalism at the City University of New York, decries the "one-size-fits-all disease" afflicting media outlets, who feel that "everybody's covering it, so we must, too." Even The New York Times, he noted, had substantial coverage of a hearing concerning where Anna Nicole Smith -- perhaps the one person who rivaled Hilton in terms of fame for fame's sake -- would be buried.

"That disease leads to the Paris Hilton virus spreading through the news industry," says Jarvis, who puts out the BuzzMachine blog.

So what have we learned from the ban? "It's hard to tell what this really changes, since we didn't have to make any hard decisions," says Jesse Washington, AP's entertainment editor. "So we'll continue to use our news judgment on each item, individually."

Which means that for the immediate future, if not always, we'll still have Paris.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/0....ap/index.html

Harry Potter Passes a Test
Lawrence Van Gelder

Harry Potter did the full monty in the West End, and the critics liked what they saw.

In other words, Daniel Radcliffe, best known for his film portrayals of the boy wizard Harry Potter, received enthusiastic reviews when he opened at the Gielgud Theater in London on Tuesday in a revival of the 1973 Peter Shaffer psychological thriller, "Equus," in which he plays a tortured teenager, a role that requires him to appear in the nude, Reuters reported.

Excitement surrounding the West End stage debut of Mr. Radcliffe, 17, helped sell $3.9 million worth of tickets before the opening and attracted a galaxy of stars to the first night, including Bob Geldof, Helena Bonham Carter and Christian Slater.

The play's co-star is Richard Griffiths (Harry's nasty uncle in the films), as the psychiatrist who plumbs the teenager's obsession with horses. "No flash in the magic pan," was The Guardian's assessment of Mr. Radcliffe's performance.

The Daily Telegraph said, "Brilliant Radcliffe throws off Harry Potter's cloak."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/theater/01equus.html

That Tune in Your Head Could Be Your Toothbrush
Warren Buckleitner

Put a rock band in your mouth, along with a dab of toothpaste, with Tooth Tunes, a $10 musical toothbrush from Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro. The theory is that two minutes of brushing is needed to give teeth a proper cleaning. So the brush is really a kind of timer.

The feeling is a bit eerie. The sound is transferred through the brush tip, into the teeth, and right into the inner ear, so you feel the music. Because volume is related to pressure, you can turn up the volume by applying steady pressure to your teeth. Unfortunately, you can also hear better when not brushing, which children can soon learn.

The brushes, first released last fall, are being sold nationwide this month in stores or at www.toothtunes.com. They feature 17 artists, including the Black Eyed Peas, Hilary Duff, Kiss and others. There is even one that plays “Y.M.C.A.,” so theoretically you can have the Village People in your head.

The switch is slime-proof, and batteries are included, providing power for up to six months. When they run out, you throw the brush away — and, Hasbro hopes, buy a new tune. Now you can tell your child to “keep brushing until Queen has finished, honey.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/te...ref=technology

Spicy programs

$10 Wok Keeps TV Station on Air
Oamaru Mail

Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective?

This is exactly how North Otago's newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down.

45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed the wok transmitter in his spare time last year when he wanted to provide wireless broadband to his Ardgowan home.

"A group of us wanted to connect our computers to each other and then we worked out a way to get of getting the signal between two points," he said.

He discovered satellite dishes were between $100 to $400 retail and that smaller dishes, the same size as a wok, were $80.

Mr Jones thought he could do better.

Along with friend Murray Bobbette they worked out mathematical equations to prove the curved metal face of a wok would have the same effect as a small satellite dish.

"We have spent a lot of time getting it right -- the first time we installed one we had it up a pole with the handle still on the end of the wok," he said.

"We had it connected to the woolshed and initially you couldn't get a signal the width of the paddock and now it can reach up to 20km."

When the television station 45 South (UHF channel 41) started up in September last year, Mr Jones thought the same technique could be applied.

"The $20,000 for a commercial link was just money we didn't have, so we bought several woks from The Warehouse instead which was convenient and cheap," he said.

Pre-recorded clips at the studio are fed through a computer and beamed to Cape Wanbrow where they are relayed off to television sets around North Otago.

The classic case of Kiwi ingenuity has made its way onto the internet and the technique has been posted by an American website, Mr Jones said.

"People wanted to know all the details about how to make their own, so it is now all publicly documented," he said.

One of the issues they had to deal with was making the pole that the wok sits on high enough to clear the Kingsgate Brydone Hotel.

They needed a clear path from the station to the hill, so the only way was up, building the pole more than eight metres high.

Mr Jones said one wok was providing Oamaru with the signal at present and there was no need to provide another wok for some time.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/sto...5E83027AF10110

Until next week,

- js.

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