Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 14th, '07

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Everything's bigger in Texas, including the imagination of professors who claim that radio airplay of music does NOT boost record sales. There are certain alleged 'studies' that can be rejected out of hand as nonsense, and this one belongs at the top of the charts." – Dennis Wharton


"[Radio] is clearly the number one way that we're getting our music exposed. Nothing else affects retail sales the way terrestrial radio does." – Tom Biery


"Radio has proven itself time and time again to be the biggest vehicle to expose new music." – Ken Lane


"This is as bad as it gets." – Chris Gatford



































July 14th, 2007








Verizon's Copper Cutoff Traps Customers, Hampers Rivals
Deborah Yao

When Henry Powderly II ordered Verizon Communications Inc.'s FiOS fiber-optic service, he knew he was about to be connected to the future of telecommunications.

He also got unplugged from its past. Which meant that while Powderly was gaining features, he was losing some telecommunications options.

Verizon's installer — without warning, Powderly says — removed the copper wires that used to carry his phone calls. For most of the world, copper still links homes and businesses, as it has for a century.

Verizon's new high-bandwidth fiber lines are fully capable of carrying not only calls but also Internet data and television with room to grow. But once the copper is pulled, it's difficult to switch back to the traditional phone system or less expensive Digital Subscriber Line service. And Verizon is not required, in most instances, to lease fiber to rival phone companies, as it is with the copper infrastructure.

What's more, anyone who owns Powderly's house in the future will face higher bills with FiOS than another home with copper. Right now, for instance, Verizon's DSL plans cost as little as $15 (€11) a month. FiOS Internet starts at $30 (€22) a month.

"I was not given an option," said Powderly, a 30-year-old resident Long Island, just east of New York City.

Besides limiting options down the road, the switch to FiOS can have other implications. Unlike copper-connected phone service, FiOS does not work during power outages once a backup battery goes out — not even for emergency calls. Home-alarms and certain other devices work best with copper.

As it hooks up homes and businesses to its fiber network, Verizon has been routinely disconnecting the copper and, many subscribers say, not telling them upfront or giving them a choice. More than 1 million customers have signed up for a FiOS service, which is offered mainly in the suburban areas of 16 states.

Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said customers should have been notified at least three times — once by the sales representative when FiOS is ordered, by the technician before copper is cut and through paperwork given to the customer. Some customers say that has not happened.

The New York phone company has made it clear its entire network is going to fiber-optics. Verizon has decided to spend $23 billion (€17 billion) to make fiber available to 18 million homes by 2010. Network maintenance savings could top $1 billion (€740 million) a year, Verizon said.

"It's a huge expense to maintain those copper networks," said Scott Randolph, federal regulatory director at Verizon. "At some point in time, it would not make sense to operate two networks."

Mark Cooper, research director at the Consumer Federation of America, says there are other reasons for snipping the wires.

"They don't want to maintain it — they don't want the expense and they don't want the competition," he said.

Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, incumbent phone companies like Verizon must lease to rivals their copper network. That is generally not the case for next-generation fiber systems. And so far, Verizon has filed more than 100 notices with the Federal Communications Commission to retire portions of copper throughout its network.

The FCC allows the retirement of copper as long as public notice is given so the phone companies can work together to ensure the smaller companies' access. But rivals say access at reasonable prices is not guaranteed and it is just a matter of time before they are cut off.

"It's a horrendous situation ... We don't let General Motors build a highway and decide what size cars to let on the road," said Joe Plotkin, marketing director for Bway.net, a New York Internet provider. "The small guys have tried to fight this re-monopolization of the network infrastructure."

He and other smaller rivals contend the communications market is fast becoming a two-player game between giant phone and cable companies — diminishing consumer choice.

While AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. are also retiring their copper networks, they are not touching the so-called "last mile" of copper wiring that runs from each customer's dwelling to the central office where other lines aggregate. Laying fiber, a robust pipeline, through the last mile is much more expensive because each line goes to a particular home or business.

Verizon is taking the pricey route because it believes fiber offers a superior service that will lure customers away from cable operators, who now offer telephone service in addition to television and high-speed Internet.

Rabe, the Verizon spokesman, said the company will restore copper to homes if the customer insists, but Verizon would rather not reconnect the copper and will try to convince the customer to agree. At any rate, the phone giant provides ample warning, he said.

An example of what Rabe describes as adequate notice is the fine print on Verizon's FiOS policy, which is printed on its Web site. It says "current Verizon Online DSL customers who move to FiOS Internet service will have their Verizon Online DSL permanently disabled after their FiOS conversion."

Bill Kelm, a FiOS customer in suburban Dallas, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission last year because of Verizon's "inconspicuous" policy rules.

"It's buried within these long terms of service that people never take the time to read," he said. "It needs to be more conspicuous."

While Kelm has no quarrel with FiOS itself — he pays $145 (€105) a month for TV, Internet and phone — he would like to have been told before he signed up that Verizon would cut the copper. He was counting on Verizon's clearly advertised 30-day money back guarantee in case he did not like the service and wanted to switch back.

"I blew a gasket," Kelm said. "The 30-day money back guarantee was worthless in my opinion."

He's also concerned that Verizon initially priced its current FiOS service lower only to jack rates up once the subscriber is reeled in.

"Then, you're stuck," Kelm said.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/...ap3892179.html





‘Leader’ of Fiber-Optic Cable Thieves Arrested

Police arrested two more people Saturday for stealing undersea fiber-optic cables off the southern coast of Vietnam, including the group’s suspected leader. Ten have been apprehended in the case so far.

Police in the southern Ba Ria Vung Tau Province arrested and asked prosecutors to indict Nguyen Thi Bich Phuong, the owner of three vessels found carrying tons of pillaged fiber-optic cable last month.

Phan Minh Tiep, a boatman under Phuong’s payroll, was also arrested. Phuong and Tiep could be charged with “destroying major public national security projects” and possibly face the death sentence.

The three ships’ captains have too been arrested and will face prosecution. Confessions obtained from the three have implicated Phuong as the ringleader of the thefts. The confessions also indicated they began stealing the cables in March this year.

In all, 43 km of cable have gone missing from two lines in Vietnamese waters this year.

Eleven kilometers of the TVH (Thailand-Vietnam-Hong Kong) line and 32 km of the APCN (Asia Pacific Cable Network), linking nine Asian countries, have been stolen.

The theft may be partly attributed to the Ba Ria Vung Tau government’s decree last year permitting soldiers and fishermen to haul up unused cables laid before 1975 to sell as scrap.

Amidst the scramble, several fishermen reportedly ‘mistook’ cables in use for unused ones, but Ministry of Post and Telematics officials said the acts were most likely thefts, not mistakes.
http://www.thanhniennews.com/society...3&newsid=29347





ISPs Stand Firm after P2P Ruling

Internet service providers maintain they should not be liable for illegal P2P file-sharing over their networks

The Internet Service Providers' Association has repeated its assertion that ISPs should not be responsible for any illegal file-sharing that takes place over their networks.

Speaking on Wednesday in the wake of a controversial ruling in a Belgian court and comments made by the Conservative leader David Cameron, a spokesperson for ISPA maintained that ISPs should not be "set up to play judge and jury" over alleged copyright infringement.

Last week a Belgian court ruled that the ISP Scarlet — formerly Tiscali — had the technology available to it to block or filter copyright-infringing material being sent over its network via peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic, and had six months to start doing so.

The judgement drew praise from John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), who claimed that it proved that "the internet's gatekeepers, the ISPs, have a responsibility to help control copyright-infringing traffic on their networks".

The court's decision — which sets a precedent in European law but seems likely to be challenged — will not be repeated in the UK anytime soon, according to telecoms lawyer Danny Preiskel of Preiskel & Co. "I think we are a way away from reaching a similar decision in the UK in imposing such liability," he told ZDNet.co.uk, adding that such a case here would be "fiercely resisted" by ISPs.

But ISPs in the UK are opening themselves up to some degree of liability by moving away from being providers of "pure conduits", as they might be responsible for anything defamatory contained within the value-added content many ISPs are now trying to sell to their customers, added Preiskel. However, he confirmed that P2P steered clear of this pitfall by virtue of the fact that no content is hosted.

An ISPA spokesperson agreed, telling ZDNet.co.uk that "ISPs are recognised in the eCommerce Directive (2002) as mere conduits of information".

The spokesperson also responded to David Cameron's recent claims that, if ISPs could remove child pornography from their servers, they should also be willing to shut down the transmission of copyright-infringing material. "We are talking about different things here — child pornography is criminal and copyright infringement can be a civil case."

"ISPs shouldn't be set up to play judge and jury," the spokesperson continued. "What we wouldn't want is corporate censorship. Any kind of censorship of the internet has to be at the government level — ISPs are not law enforcement. We understand that ISPs play a part in combating instances of illegal activity on the internet, which is why we engage with rights holders and work with government authorities on that basis, but we wouldn't say we're the gatekeepers of the internet. The people responsible for unlawful content going up on the internet are the people who put it there."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communicatio...9287968,00.htm





AT&T Slams Google Over Open-Access Wireless Proposal
Rhonda Ascierto

AT&T has asked Capitol Hill not to enable an open nationwide wireless spectrum, claiming that Google's lobbying of such a network is a bid by the search giant to obtain broadband airwaves at bargain-basement prices.

The Federal Communications Commission this week is deliberating an auction, slated for January, of newly available airwaves. The regulator is expected, later this summer, to decide how to allocate great chunks of the 700 MHz spectrum, which TV broadcasters are vacating as they convert to digital signals.

Some companies, notably Google, have asked the FCC impose open-access requirements on the spectrum, which means any device could be used over the airwaves. Skype and satellite companies DirecTV and EchoStar are among the various proponents of an open-access network.

FCC chair Kevin Martin has reportedly written a proposal, which has not yet been made public, to make most of the 700MHz spectrum open access. On Tuesday, US carrier Verizon Wireless, which is second only to AT&T in terms of market share, on Tuesday asked Martin to reconsider.

"The one-size-fits-all mentality that characterizes open access regimes for the wireless industry would begin the process of stifling innovation and creativity in our industry," Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein said to the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Zipperstein said that while congress and the FCC had been "barraged" with requests to regulate the spectrum with open-access requirements, there is no evidence of how the current closed wireless market has failed consumers.

Yesterday, AT&T weighed in. In a letter to the FCC, AT&T said Google's "eleventh hour request" was self-serving because it would encumber licenses in the forthcoming auction "with a laundry list of intrusive 'open access' requirements that would, perhaps, entice Google to participate in the auction. By its own admission, Google's request is intended to diminish the value of those licenses, thus preventing wireless service providers such as AT&T from bidding on them and clearing the path for Google to obtain them at below-market rates."

AT&T also said an open-access network would deprive taxpayers of billions of dollars, and inhibit the growth of wireless broadband in the country.

Google, which on Monday acknowledged it was considering bidding in the auction in January, said in its letter to the FCC earlier this week that if the big wireless carriers win the spectrum "they would probably use it to protect their existing business models and thwart the entry of new competitors -- both understandable actions from a rational business perspective. Beyond the loss of a valuable public resource, however, that outcome would not bring us any closer to fostering much-needed competition in the broadband market, or providing innovative new web applications and service offerings."

Similar arguments were made to a House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet on Tuesday by the Open Internet Coalition. Its basic argument is that an open-access national network would enable the US to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of wireless innovation. Until now, the four major wireless carriers in the US have limited which networks certain phones can be used and blocked some third-party applications.

Our View

Whether or not Google is readying to build a nationwide wireless network may be a moot argument. Martin's proposal reportedly contains provisions that would divide up the spectrum into six large geographic regions, rather than a single nationwide block. That would mean an incumbent operator could buy just one region to prevent such a network.

There also, reportedly, is no language in the proposal that requires an auction winner to build a network at all. This means an incumbent could buy a regional spectrum merely as a way to block any such nationwide network.

This is all speculative, however, until the report is made public.
http://www.cbronline.com/article_new...1-3A5A3392024A





Bandwidth Hungry Application Drive Fibre-to-Home Demand
Vidura Panditaratne

Bandwidth-hungry applications and services are driving the demand for fibre-to-home infrastructure across Europe, market analyst Frost & Sullivan revealed today.

The report Fibre in the Last Mile in Europe, found that fibre-to-the-home deployments reached over 2.5 million homes in 2006 and estimates this to reach over 14.0 million in 2012.

“Video content, high bandwidth applications and convergence are driving broadband bandwidth requirements in Europe,” Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Fernando Elizalde said. “Several technologies are available to meet the delivery of bandwidth demand, of which fibre in the local loop, and in particular fibre-to-the-home, is future-proof.”

Several service providers across Europe have made commitments to deploy fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-home networks in the next three to five years as the availability of the gigabit passive optical networks technology has made such deployments more economically viable.

One limiting factor has been that digital subscriber technology (DSL), which uses existing copper access networks to deliver broadband, is well entrenched in Europe and lengthens the useful life of existing copper infrastructures.

High capital investment and local network characteristics pose restraints to a full fibre-to-the-home deployment across all countries, the analyst noted.

“DSL is the preferred technology to deliver broadband and other related services in Europe,” Elizalde added. “Local network conditions have been favourable to the deployment of this technology to deliver sufficient bandwidth to cope with user and application demands.”

The advent of high-definition video and other entertainment applications over broadband will easily outgrow the bandwidth capacity of DSL-based networks, and service providers will need to start looking at deploying fibre deeper into the network, even to the home or building, in order to be ready to meet future bandwidth requirements, the the analyst forecast.
http://pressesc.com/01184074187_fibre_to_home





Sigbritt, 75, Has World's Fastest Broadband
CET

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books - with the world's fastest internet connection.

Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.

But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council's network arm, has arranged the connection.

"This is more than just a demonstration," said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.

"As a network owner we're trying to persuade internet operators to invest in faster connections. And Peter Löthberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances," he told The Local.

Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.

The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.

According to Karlstad Stadsnät the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.

"I want to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities that fibre has," said Peter Löthberg, who now works at Cisco.

Cisco contributed to the project but the point, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, is that fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and commercially viable.

"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," said Jonsson.
http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712/





The Pirate Bay Interview (Video)
Ernesto

The BitLord show released a special episode in which they interview with Brokep from The Pirate Bay. Brokep talks about TPB’s contribution to the BitTorrent scene, their secret upcoming project, the new anonymous P2P protocol they are working on and much more.

We’ve seen quite a lot of interviews with the guys behind The Pirate Bay, even in in prestigious outlets such as the Sunday Times and Vanity Fair, but this is one of the rare video interviews.

Several topics are discussed including the new “anonymous P2P protocol”, which is not their secret project, that they are currently working on.

Making all transfers anonymous will be the future of filesharing according to Brokep. No more lawsuits and privacy for everyone.

Among other things, Brokep talks about censorship, copyright, lawsuits, Sealand and why we need more BitTorrent trackers to keep the community alive.

I could of course embed the video here, but I think The BitLord show deserves some credit. Check out the interview with Brokep over here.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-interview-video/





Leaseweb Reveals Owner of Demonoid.com
Thomas Mennecke

In a bitter battle of wills between Leaseweb and the Dutch copyright authority BREIN, it appears that BREIN has won. BREIN announced today that Leaseweb has agreed to divulge the identity of the registered owner of Demonoild.com, as well as sign the cease and desist demand which would take the site offline.

Demonoid.com is a highly popular BitTorrent tracker, which operates by invitation only. It's one of the more "exclusive" BitTorrent sites, which only allows outside membership on rare occasions - as opposed to the free-for-all philosophy of The Pirate Bay. According to Alexa.com, Demonoid.com is the 403rd most popularly ranked Internet site.

According to BREIN, it appears the Leaseweb waited to the bitter end before divulging Demonoid.com's owner. Leaseweb had until tomorrow to comply with the demand, or face a fine of 50,000 Euros a day. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, Leaseweb also divulged the banking information of Demonoid.com's owner.

"Hosting provider Leaseweb today complied with the demands of Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN regarding the illegal website Demonoid.com," BREIN's press statement reads. "BREIN had summoned Leaseweb in a legal procedure demanding that Demonoid.com would be made inaccessible and the identity details of the owner would be provided to BREIN. The hearing was to take place in the District Court of Amsterdam tomorrow."

"Leaseweb signed a cease-and-desist undertaking which stipulates that it will keep Demonoid offline under penalty of 50.000 Euro per day. In addition Leaseweb supplied the name, address and bank details of their client to BREIN. These actions comply with the demands of BREIN which therefor does not continue with the hearing."

Interestingly enough, Leaseweb fought to protect the identity of their other client, Everlasting.nu, but not Demoinoid. In a similar action, BREIN also demanded the owner's identity of Everlasting.nu, and to block access. While Leaseweb appealed the cease and desist demand for Everlating.nu, a similar courtesy was not granted to Demonoid.com for reasons unknown.

It's likely that Demonoid.com has been preparing for this event, as last week the domain transferred from their Dutch webhost to Canada - thereby negating the threat of going offline. At time of publication, Leaseweb did not responded to our request for comment.

The administration of Demonoid.com, now outside the jurisdiction of BREIN, appeared unaware of the concession from Leaseweb, stating to Slyck.com, "...we know the same as you about the matter, so there is not much we can add."

Although Leaseweb signed the cease and desist demand which would serve to take Demonoid offline, this portion of BREIN's victory serves little effect as Demonoid.com's webhost is now in Canada. However, the revelation of Demonoid.com's personal identity and bank information may prove more damaging.
http://www.slyck.com/story1533_Lease...noidcoms_Owner





No soup for you

Hollywood Executives Call for End to Residual Payments
Michael Cieply

In an unusually blunt session here today, several of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry’s decades-old system of paying what are called residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings.

The executives stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and shows are released on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, they want to pool such revenue and recover their costs before sharing any of the profit with the talent.

“There are no ancillary markets any more; it’s all one market,” said Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers. “This is the time to do it.”

The briefing at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group, was conducted by Mr. Meyer, Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, and Anne Sweeney, president of the Walt Disney-ABC Television Group, along with the alliance’s president, J. Nicholas Counter. It was intended to set the stage for Monday’s opening of contract talks with the Writers Guild of America unions on both coasts.

A spokesman for the Writers Guild of America West had no immediate response. But representatives of that guild and other unions said they expect to extend their compensation arrangements to new media rather than retreating from existing formulas.

The industry’s contract with the writers expires on Oct. 31, while contracts with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America the following June 30. With these deadlines looming, networks and studios have been scrambling to lock up additional episodes of shows that could be aired in the event of a strike, and movies that could be finished before the actors’ deadline. The industry executives declined to discuss specific contract proposals. But they said they would adamantly oppose any move to extend residual-like payments to the sale of movies and shows on the Web or in other new media. They repeated an earlier call for a study that would, in effect, defer decisions about such distribution channels for as long as three years.

“We need complete flexibility,” said Ms. Sweeney, who described broadcasters as being in a desperate scramble for revenue as consumers increasingly turn to online sources for programs that are often stripped of advertising. “Guild restraints limit our ability to do what we need to do,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/bu...cnd-guild.html





Music Licensing Companies Come Calling for Royalties

Local venues, artists miffed
John A. Torres

Six months after raising the curtain on their gourmet coffee shop in the beachside Indian Harbour Place shopping center, Laurie and Jim Hall decided to offer live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

The performers, normally duos, mainly covered songs written and made famous by other musicians. There was no cover charge, no pay for the musicians, no limit to how long patrons could sit on a couch with their coffee, playing chess and enjoying the music.
No problem.

Then a few months later, music industry giant ASCAP started calling and sending letters saying East Coast Coffee & Tea was in violation of copyright laws. The fee to continue the music was $400 a year.

"At the time, the shop was losing money, so we had to break it up into payments," said Laurie Hall. But the Halls paid, and the music continued.

Six months later, other music copyright companies began calling the Halls and demanding money. Most days there would be three or four phone calls from each company, Hall said. Finally, unable to afford the fees, she had to call most of her musicians -- those who did not play original music -- and tell them they would not be allowed to continue performing.

This aggressive -- but legal -- posture being taken by music licensing companies has the potential to unplug live music in many restaurants, bars and coffee shops in Brevard County.

It comes on the heels of a massive music industry crackdown during the past several years on illegal downloads from the Internet. Whether it's a professional recording taken from a Web site or an accordion player singing a Jimmy Buffet tune in a small venue, the industry is working to collect royalties for whoever wrote the songs.

"They have threatened to shut down my place," said Lou Andrus, owner of the popular beachside nightclub Lou's Blues.

Copyright laws

When a songwriter signs with one of the licensing companies -- the country's three biggest are BMI, SESAC and ASCAP -- his or her music is copyrighted.

Unless Hall pays the three major companies, and even some of the smaller ones, she would be breaking the law by having musicians perform songs written by others.

"It makes me so angry," Hall said. "People like playing here because it's not a bar, there's no smoke and it's a clean environment. I feel like the greedy music industry is extorting money from us and hurting these musicians just starting out."

In addition to the $400 she has already paid ASCAP, she routinely receives annual bills from BMI for $305 and from SESAC for between $250 and $300.

She doesn't understand why a little coffee shop is in the same "eating/drinking establishment" category as places where music is more front and center, such as Lou's Blues or Meg O'Malley's in downtown Melbourne. Hall said she likely will start offering music just one night a week.

SESAC spokesman Shawn Williams said in e-mail responses to questions that it is his company's responsibility to enforce copyright laws, many of which were enacted nearly a century ago.

"The copyright law requires each business that publicly performs music to obtain permission prior to performing any copyrighted music," Williams said, adding that the owners of East Coast Coffee need to decide whether music "is important to their operations and overall profitability. We have many license agreements with small establishments."

Williams defends the money collected.

"This provides the majority of income to songwriters," he said.

Run-ins

Andrus, the owner of Lou's Blues, said he has had many run-ins with the copyright companies over the years.

"It started 15 years ago when I had a guy come out to our other place, Cantina dos Amigos, and play Mexican music on his guitar on the patio," Andrus said. "They came after me for money. Are they really sending royalty checks to the songwriter in Mexico?"
Andrus said he pays BMI and ASCAP about $3,000 a year but is ignoring the smaller companies that seek royalties from him.

"There are so many damned companies you don't know who to pay," he said. "One guy called and said I had to pay him if I played any gospel music at all. It's really a mess."

Hall insists that her coffee shop makes no extra money when the musicians play. Unlike a bar where patrons may imbibe several cocktails during the course of the night, her customers normally order one cup of coffee per performance.

But Andrus and others who refuse to pay could find themselves paying anyway -- in the form of fines.

"The law provides damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 for each song performed without proper authorization," Williams said.

And in no way do the songs have to be performed live, or even on the radio, to elicit calls for royalties.

Andrus said a friend of his who owned a restaurant that did not feature music was contacted by a company looking to charge him because it owned the rights to a Hank Williams Jr. song, "Are You Ready for Some Football?" The song preceded every "Monday Night Football" telecast, which the restaurant carried on its televisions.

He said his friend simply chose to turn the volume down when the song came on.

The licensing companies use a variety of methods to find out whether copyrighted music is being used.

"ASCAP representatives may visit establishments and find that they advertise live entertainment," explained Richard Reimer, senior vice president of ASCAP, in an e-mail. "Local newspapers carry advertisements for venues that present live entertainment and, of course, the Internet is a valuable resource as well."

Fewer gigs

Singer/songwriter Al Urezzio, who played at East Coast Coffee, said he recently lost his steady gig at the Getaway Lounge in Suntree because the owners were being asked to pay copyright fees as well.

Now Urezzio, who performs as "Grumpy Al," is relegated to performing only his original compositions. That means his options on where to perform are limited.

"This is really bull," said Urezzio, who owns the Burger Inn on U.S. 1 in Melbourne. "East Coast called and told me to only play originals from now on."

Chad Fagg, one half of the pop-rock duo "Just Blue," also is without a steady place to perform. Like Urezzio, the group was told recently that they could no longer play at the East Coast Coffee -- where they've performed for four months -- unless they played only original music.

"It's very disappointing, and it's frustrating," Fagg said. "They gave us a shot before anyone else would. I understand it's about royalties, but it's such a small place."

Other crackdowns

Nightclubs and coffee shops are not the only places affected by the industry crackdown.

Neil Butler, owner of Hawk's Gym in Melbourne, said he has had to pay a few hundred dollars a year to licensing companies in order to pipe in satellite music to his fitness center. Commercial radio is free to play because the radio stations have already paid the necessary fees.

Professional guitarist and singer Eddy Fischer, who performs in the group "Robin and Eddy," has been a member of ASCAP since he was 17. Having performed with members of The Monkees and The Mammas and Pappas, Fischer figured it was a good idea to protect himself. But even he thinks the industry might be going a bit too far.

"I think this is a little out of line," he said a day before playing his new age-style folk music at the Halls' coffee shop. "It seems kind of rough that little coffee houses with no stage or no lights that were not built for live music have to come up with that kind of money."

But ASCAP's Reimer said the licensing fees are "affordable for any small nightclub, restaurant, tavern or coffee house." He said there was little option available other than seeking permissions directly from the songwriters.

Andrus agreed business owners really don't have a choice.

"It's extortion, it's intimidating. It's such a scam."
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbc...707080343/1006





RIAA to Feds: Make XM-Sirius Pay More, Restrict Listeners' Recording
Anne Broache

The Recording Industry Association of America has already mounted a court challenge against XM Satellite Radio over gadgets like the Pioneer Inno that allow consumers to trap individual songs originally played on air in alleged violation of copyright.

Now the industry group is urging that issue to be one of the deciding factors for federal regulators weighing the proposed multibillion-dollar union of XM and its sole competitor, Sirius Satellite radio.

In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, the RIAA urged the agency to "make clear that its approval of a merger is conditioned upon the continued protection of sound recordings from unlawful infringement."

Under copyright law, separate licenses exist for the "performance" of a song and for the recording or "distribution" of it. Satellite and Internet radio broadcasters (unlike traditional radio) are already required to pay performance-based royalties.

But the RIAA said it's concerned that both satellite radio companies have invested in technologies that allow them to shortchange artists on the distribution side "by giving users the ability to download copyrighted sound recordings to portable devices, effectively transforming a radio-like service into a digital distribution subscription service like Rhapsody or Napster."

A merger could bolster those investments and "seriously threaten the viability of the music industry as a whole," the RIAA wrote. The group also called on the FCC to require the merged companies to pay higher royalty rates in general to the record industry, arguing the firms are "no longer new, struggling companies" that can get away with paying what it called "below-market rates."

The RIAA has already earned some U.S. senators' blessings this year for a bill that would impose new limits on the broadcasters, including a requirement that they cloak their streams with copy-protection technology, but the proposal hasn't gone anywhere yet.

XM and consumer advocacy groups that have come to its defense insist that the devices in question don't violate copyright law because they operate within a listener's home recording and fair use rights.

The RIAA's comments came on the final day for submitting comments about the public-interest implications of the XM-Sirius deal in general. As of this blog post, more than 5,000 comments had been posted to the FCC's online database. According to a press release distributed Monday afternoon by a firm representing the radio companies, more than 3,500 of those comments came from individuals supporting the deal.

The FCC is still accepting comments for at least another month on a more specific question: whether, if it finds the XM-Sirius deal is hunky-dory for the public, it should waive a decade-old rule prohibiting a single operator from controlling all of the satellite radio spectrum.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-974...47-1040_3-0-10





U.S. Court Denies Webcasters' Stay Petition

A federal appeals court has denied a petition by U.S. Internet radio stations seeking to delay a royalty rate hike due July 15 they say could kill the fledgling industry.

While the July 11 ruling by the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was a setback, the SaveNetRadio coalition of Webcasters vowed it would continue fighting the hikes in Congress.

Late last month, thousands of U.S. Internet radio stations, organized by SaveNetRadio, held a "Day of Silence" to protest the hikes in performance royalties paid to musicians and record companies.

Under a Copyright Royalty Board ruling in March, Webcasters will pay a performance royalty of $0.0008 for each listener of each song in 2006, rising to $0.0019 in 2010. The first payment, backdated to Jan. 1, 2006, is due on July 15.

The new ruling means the six biggest Internet radio stations -- Pandora, Yahoo, Live365, RealNetworks Inc., Time Warner Inc's AOL and Viacom Inc's MTV Online -- will pay 47 percent of their anticipated 2006 combined revenue of $37.5 million in performance royalties, said SaveNetRadio.

"We are disappointed that the Court failed to acknowledge the irreparable and quite frankly, devastating effect these new royalties will have on the Internet radio industry," said Jake Ward, a spokesperson for the SaveNetRadio coalition of Webcasters, net radio listeners and artists.

SoundExchange -- a non-profit group representing more than 20,000 artists, 2,500 independent record labels and four major record companies -- collects the royalties from Internet and satellite radio, as well as digital cable.

Ward said the ruling by the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington puts the ball squarely in the hands of Congress, which has already received more than half million messages urging members to pass legislation to cut the royalty rate to 7.5 percent of a company's annual revenue, bringing Internet radio in line with the rate by satellite radio.
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/...yID=nN12340366





Reprieve on Royalty Increase Being Pursued for Internet Radio
Jeff Leeds

Internet radio programmers who warned that a dispute over royalties could cause the death of their medium have received a stay.

A substantial increase in the royalties that online stations must pay for playing music was set to take effect tomorrow. But amid an outcry from online listeners and Congressional pressure, representatives for the recording industry indicated this week that they might not demand all the payments called for under the new royalty program, which was established in March by the federal Copyright Royalty Board.

Previously, Internet radio stations paid 0.0762 cent per play of each song, and small Webcasters, who generate little or no advertising, were charged based on a percentage of their revenue to relieve them of onerous royalty bills. But the new rate system eliminated that protection and called for the rate per play to more than double by 2010. It also required a separate fee of $500 a station, a potentially hefty charge for big Webcasters that offer thousands of customized stations.

In a new proposal disclosed yesterday, SoundExchange, an industry-backed organization that collects royalties for record labels and artists, said that it would agree to cap the minimum fee at $50,000 a year — if Webcasters provided more data about which songs they play and take steps to prevent listeners from using their computers to copy or store the radio streams.

But the two sides still disagree on other aspects of the new rates. Big Internet companies that offer online radio, including Yahoo and RealNetworks, had been battling the planned increase. National Public Radio, which streams music and other programming online, had also rallied listeners to protest the rates.

The reprieve came as federal lawmakers had begun discussing legislation that would enact reduced fees. But there had been no indication of when the legislation would come up for a vote.

The stations also lost a separate bid to delay or stop the new rates in court. A federal appeals panel this week declined to put off the rates — a decision that had appeared to seal the fate of Webcasters who worried that the royalty charges would put them out of business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/business/14music.html





All Shook Up, Right Down to the Musical Core
Richard Siklos

SO omnipotent is the Apple digital music machine that just the possibility of one of its main suppliers holding back some of its music from Apple’s iTunes music store is enough to make headlines and send shock waves.

That is what happened last week when the Universal Music Group let Apple know that it would no longer grant the company guaranteed access to its coming releases. Officially, Universal had no comment, but an executive briefed on the negotiations said the music company was merely interested in keeping its options open as it does with most other retailers in the brick-and-mortar world.

The upshot is that Universal will provide music to iTunes on an “at will” basis. Thus, if someone offers Universal a boatload of cash for the right to sell the latest Bon Jovi or Rihanna singles exclusively on a rival download service, Universal is saying that it is open for business.

This bit of news could shake up the digital music business because Universal, owned by Vivendi, is the world’s largest music conglomerate, representing one of every three albums sold in the United States. And it underscores the longstanding and increasing tension between Apple and the entertainment industry, not to mention the scores of rivals who spend days and nights plotting for ways to chip away at the primacy of the Apple iPod. (That primacy has already bolstered sales of Macintosh computers and, if all goes as Steve Jobs plans, will soon spread to mobile phones and home video.)

Theoretically, Apple may be concerned because of Universal’s market clout; an Apple spokesman did not return calls seeking comment. On the other hand, Universal is not about to turn its back on Apple, given that 15 percent of its global sales come from digital downloads.

“It looks like a little bit of saber-rattling,” said Susan Kevorkian, an analyst who covers the consumer audio business for IDC. “We’re not seeing ultimatums being dished out here. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.”

But there is little question who is benefiting the most from the symbiosis so far. Mr. Jobs’s “iSpawn” holds more than 70 percent of the market for portable music players and more than 80 percent of the online music sales business — a fairly unassailable lead, as contenders like Samsung, Sony and Microsoft have found. You can almost imagine Mr. Jobs shrugging at Universal’s new terms: “Go right ahead.”

But as more music sales move online, the volume is turning up not just among hardware players but also among digital music service rivals that include Amazon, Yahoo Music, Napster and Rhapsody. According to figures released last week by Nielsen SoundScan, physical album sales decreased by 15 percent from Jan. 1 to July 1 this year, while sales of digital tracks, though still a much smaller business, rose 49 percent.

In this environment, the music industry has a tempestuous relationship with Mr. Jobs, more respect-resent than love-hate. Label chiefs respect that he has revolutionized the online and portable music businesses at a time when so many others have flopped, and file-sharers and sites like Russia’s AllofMP3.com — a site that labels have accused of piracy — have wreaked havoc on the industry’s business models. (AllofMP3 was conveniently shuttered last week as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia prepared to visit President Bush.) But the chiefs resent Mr. Jobs’s rigidity in areas like pricing — 99 cents a track, take it or leave it — and iTunes’ proprietary digital-rights management software, which has made songs sold there impossible to play on rival devices.

Most of all, they envy that Mr. Jobs is in a much higher-margin business of selling gadgets. Ms. Kevorkian of IDC said the label chiefs might still hold out hope that Apple will share someday the spoils of each iPod sold — along the lines of how Microsoft agreed to pay $1 for each of its Zune players, introduced last year. But only a million Zunes have been sold, while iPod sales have topped 100 million.

Mr. Jobs ruffled some industry feathers in February by suggesting in an open letter that music labels ought to drop their requirement for digital-rights management protection because only a small percentage of the music on his customers’ iPods was bought through the music store — the rest was from uploads of people’s own collections. So far, only one of the four big music companies, EMI, has sided with Mr. Jobs and lifted the digital-rights management protection on its online catalog, selling those singles for $1.29 each. (Keep in mind that the protection does not exist on physical CDs, which is how the industry got into its file-sharing pickle in the first place.)

Although his anti-protection measure stance is somewhat self-serving — European antitrust regulators had been circling the closed iTunes system — there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Mr. Jobs may be on to something. And, if so, the other big label groups — Universal, Warner Music and Sony/BMG — could follow suit and offer protection-free tunes, although perhaps not with their entire catalogs, as EMI has done.

What is astonishing about the music industry, versus other forms of media, is the amount of entrepreneurial fervor it attracts at every level — from indie labels to Web and satellite radio to fan sites and consumer electronics giants and mobile phone operators. This partly explains why Universal has at least raised the possibility that iTunes and the iPod might not forever be the only game in town.

Certainly there is no shortage of pretenders to the throne. Although they have struggled to gain traction, the digital music outlets of retail giants like Wal-Mart Stores or Best Buy compete aggressively and can’t be counted out.

A few new ventures are starting free download services supported by advertising. And one start-up gizmo that James L. McQuivey of Forrester Research is eyeing is Slacker, which will combine a portable MP3 player with a wide range of Internet radio stations from which consumers can sample music. A key difference, Mr. McQuivey said, is that the Slacker could be much friendlier to music merchandising than the current iTunes/iPod setup.

AMAZON, meanwhile, has announced plans to enter the online music store fray by introducing a service next year that will sell only songs that are free of digital-rights management protection. That could give it a leg up if, as expected, the other big music labels start to offer some of their music on that basis.

Although Amazon has had its digital media stumbles, it has the dual advantage of knowing its customers’ cultural habits and being a popular online destination where people go to buy electronics and CDs. Indeed, you could imagine Amazon cutting an exclusive deal to offer a hot Universal track for a week or two when combined with the purchase of an MP3 player.

That might not be great for iTunes, but it would probably be good for sales of iPods, which stand as a triumph of Mr. Jobs’s trademark design and simplicity. Having spent years trying to keep the computer operating system of his Macintosh computers separate from the much bigger Microsoft Windows, Mr. Jobs has learned that interoperability can work to his benefit.

Oddly, Universal or anyone else doing exclusive deals with iTunes’ rivals could end up reducing the clout of iTunes but spurring more sales of iPods — and that means more music to Mr. Jobs’s ears.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/bu.../08frenzy.html





NAB Refutes University of Texas Airplay Study
FMQB

Earlier this year, University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Stan Liebowitz published a study arguing that radio airplay actually derails music sales because if Americans weren't listening to the radio in their cars, they might be buying more CDs or digital recordings. "I am not disputing that radio is very good in picking which songs are going to become very popular," Liebowitz explained, according to Business Week. "But if radio didn't exist, we could see a 50 percent to 60 percent increase in record sales."

Now, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has released a response to the study, which they call "bogus." NAB EVP Dennis Wharton stated, "Everything's bigger in Texas, including the imagination of professors who claim that radio airplay of music does NOT boost record sales. There are certain alleged 'studies' that can be rejected out of hand as nonsense, and this one belongs at the top of the charts."

In responding to Liebowitz's study, the NAB cited statements made by record label executives recognizing the promotional value of radio airplay:

"I have yet to see the big reaction you want to see to a hit until it goes on the radio. I'm a big, big fan of radio." - Richard Palmese, Executive Vice President of Promotion, RCA, 2007.

"Radio has proven itself time and time again to be the biggest vehicle to expose new music." - Ken Lane, Senior Vice President for Promotion, Island Def Jam Music Group, 2005.

"It is clearly the number one way that we're getting our music exposed. Nothing else affects retail sales the way terrestrial radio does." - Tom Biery, Senior Vice President for Promotion, Warner Bros. Records, 2005.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=435728





Microholography Milks 500GB Out of DVD-Sized Discs
Todd Haselton

A group of scientists working together with the Institute of Optics and Optical Technologies at the Technical University of Berlin claim to have discovered a way to store 500GB worth of data on DVD-sized discs. The scientists are members of the Microholas Project, coordinated by Dr. Susanna Orlic, which plans to double the storage capacity to 1TB by 2010.

The Project aims to implement a microholographic recording techniques which record data to nanostructures in the recording process. By combining multilayer storage and holographic multiplexing, "microholography" allows data to be stored in three dimensions. The technology works by replacing the two-dimensional pit-land structures currently found on CDs and DVDs with microgratings, which are "holographically induced" using two laser beams. In other words, instead of recording to a series of bumps and pits like standard CDs, the new technology creates three-dimensional holographic grids that can be used for reading and writing data throughout the physical structure of the disc.

In order to store data in multi-layer form, the beam is "focused to different depths inside the photopolymer layer," which means that the beam can actually be raised and lowered to write to different altitudes of the three-dimensional holograohic grid.

As you might expect, the project is bullish on its prospects. The discs are predicted to be inexpensive to produce, which the project hopes will translate into manufacturer interest. Of course, there's no word on what the recording devices would cost, and that's a major part of the equation.

Blu-ray discs currently store 50GB of data on a dual-layer disc, whereas HD-DVD can store 30GB on its dual-layer offering. Both formats have greater storage potential thanks to the possibility of adding additional layers. By 2010, we expect to see 100GB and 60GB Blu-ray and HD DVD discs (respectively) available for recording use on PCs.

Microholographic discs (MHD) are transparent and are the same physical size as CDs and DVDs, but the discs being created by the Microholas Project effectively have ten layers with five different wavelengths. The "prototype" discs are recordable and sport a 50Mb/s data rate, but the group expects an "Advanced Device" with 1TB of storage and data transfer speeds in excess of 200Mb/s by 2010.

1TB optical discs sure would beat the old sneakernet!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...zed-discs.html





Sony BMG Sues CD Software Firm
AP

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is suing a company that developed antipiracy software for CDs, claiming the technology was defective and cost the record company millions of dollars to settle consumer complaints and government investigations.

Sony BMG filed a summons in a New York state court against The Amergence Group Inc., formerly SunnComm International, which developed the MediaMax CD copy-protection technology.

Sony BMG is seeking to recover some $12 million in damages from the Phoenix-based technology company, according to court papers filed July 3.

The music company accuses Amergence of negligence, unfair business practices and breaching the terms of its license agreement by delivering software that "did not perform as warranted."

In a statement, The Amergence Group vowed to fight what it described as unwarranted allegations by Sony BMG.

The company also suggested that lawsuits against Sony BMG over CD copy-protection primarily stemmed from Sony's use of another technology.

New York-based Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG, declined to elaborate on the suit. Sony BMG is home to names such as Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood and Modest Mouse.

It began including MediaMax on some of its compact discs in August 2003 and shipped about 4 million CDs equipped with the technology in 2005.

The program restricted the number of copies of a CD that a user could make. Some users reported problems when the CDs were played on their computers.

The record company also drew complaints over another type of copy-protection software that restricted CD duplication.

The fallout over the copy-protected CDs sparked lawsuits and investigations.

Last fall, the company agreed to pay a total of $5.75 million to settle the litigation and resolve investigations by officials in several states.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...ninav-business





Dangerous Java Flaw Threatens Virtually Everything
Liam Tung

Google's Security team has discovered vulnerabilities in the Sun Java Runtime Environment that threatens the security of all platforms, browsers and even mobile devices.

"This is as bad as it gets," said Chris Gatford, a security expert from penetration testing firm Pure Hacking.

"It’s a pretty significant weakness, which will have a considerable impact if the exploit codes come to fruition quickly. It could affect a lot of organizations and users," Gatford told ZDNet Australia.

Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) analyst, Robert Lowe, warned that anyone using the Java Runtime Environment or Java Development Kit is at risk.

"Delivery of exploits in this manner is attractive to attackers because even though the browser may be fully patched, some people neglect to also patch programs invoked by browsers to render specific types of content," said Lowe.

According to Gatford, the bugs threaten pretty much every modern device.

"Java runs on everything: cell phones, PDAs, and PCs. This is the problem when you have a vulnerability in something so modular--it affects so many different devices.

"Also, this exploit is browser independent, as long as it invokes a vulnerable Java Runtime Environment," said Gatford.

Pure Hacking’s Gatford said the problem is compounded by the slim chance of an enterprise patching Java Runtime vulnerabilities.

"It would be an extremely difficult and laborious process for an organization trying to patch Java Runtime across the enterprise," he said.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/securi...2028389,00.htm





All-Nighter PCs Cost U.S. Businesses $1.7 Billion
Jasmin Malik Chua

Forcing your PC to pull another pointless all-nighter isn't just polluting, it's also a waste of money. Make that a lot of money. Nearly half of all corporate computers in the United States don't get turned off at night, costing U.S. businesses $1.72 billion in annual energy costs and spewing 14.4 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year, according to a new report.

Let's give those numbers some context: A midsize company with around 10,000 PCs wastes more than $165,000 per year in electricity costs for computers left on overnight, while contributing 1,381 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Giving those same computers a breather every night would have roughly the same effect as taking 2.58 million cars off the road, which is more than the number of autos zipping around the entire state of Maryland.

"Few problems match an impact so large with a solution so simple," says Sumir Karayi, chief executive officer 1E, a provider of power management software that, along with the Alliance to Save Energy, commissioned the study. "A computer uses energy even when it appears to be idle. Reducing that waste can help US businesses reduce costs and prevent tons of damaging greenhouse gases from being emitted into our atmosphere.

Part of the problem: worker apathy and insufficient business systems. "Ideally, everyone would shut down their PCs at the end of the working day, but the research released shows that this just doesn't happen," Karayi says.

According to the report, some employees assume—usually erroneously—that their PCs need to be left on overnight so that their IT departments can deploy security patches and software updates. Others hold the misconception that their PCs will automatically go to sleep. (Unless you tweak your energy-savings profile to do so, it's not going to happen.)

Worse, an alarming number of respondents admitted that they just didn't care.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007...ighter_pcs.php





How Gore got his solar panels

An Inconvenient Turbine: Conservation vs. Preservation

Homeowners who go green face neighbors' objections
Sara Schaefer Muñoz

In neighborhoods across the country, there's a battle brewing: the environmentalists vs. the aesthetes.

As "green"-minded homeowners move to put in new energy-efficient windows, solar panels and light-reflecting roofs, they are bumping up against neighbors and local boards that object, saying the additions defy historic-district regulations, will look ugly or damage property values.

In Arizona, a man was recently ordered by his homeowners' association to take down a solar water-heating device from his roof or face a daily fine. In upstate New York, neighbors fought the installation of a wind turbine tower on a resident's 11-acre property, delaying the project by nearly a year. Even former vice president and outspoken environmental advocate Al Gore had trouble getting solar panels and a geothermal unit approved for his Nashville home. A local zoning board initially wouldn't consider the application for the solar panels. It then took an appeal, several redesigns and a property inspection before they were approved eight months later. (The community recently revised its ordinance to allow the devices.)

David Bannatyne was tired of the drafty, stubborn windows in his early 19th-century home in Concord, Mass., and was especially fed up with paying his $5,000 heating bill each winter.

But when he applied for permission to put in 17 new, energy-efficient windows last fall, the town's Historic Districts Commission denied his request, concerned that the windows wouldn't blend in with the home's historic character. After some debate, Mr. Bannatyne agreed to restore the windows instead. While he says they're now easier to open, he says his heating bills haven't changed. "I'm not doing the global warming issue any favors by keeping these windows," he says.

Environmental groups say that the often burdensome and contentious process for those who live in regulated developments or historic districts prevents more people from making energy-saving changes to their homes. "It's a hurdle. If people know there's such a delay, they say, 'Forget about it,' " says Nils Petermann, a research associate with the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

The clashes come as states and utilities are increasingly offering incentives for energy-efficient improvements. At the same time, the number of designated historic districts and homeowners associations continues to grow, and with them the number and scope of local governing bodies that can restrict the changes people make to home exteriors.

There were 412,900 locally designated historic properties reported in 2006, up from 304,000 five years earlier, according to the office in the National Park Service that encourages local preservation. And the number of condominium, co-op and homeowners associations -- which are usually governed by an elected board of residents and can control everything from pets to exterior paint color -- has grown to about 300,000 from 240,000 five years ago, according to the Community Associations Institute, an education and advocacy group based in Alexandria, Va.

Because the issue of green improvements versus aesthetics is cropping up in communities around the country, the institute earlier this year put together a committee to review its policy guidelines on energy-efficient improvements. "Renewable energy and aesthetics don't have to be mutually exclusive," says institute spokesman Frank Rathbun. "But agreeing to projects without regard to the architectural guidelines of the community can create divisiveness and can affect property values."

In the case of Mr. Bannatyne's windows, local officials point out that restored windows can be just as energy-efficient as new ones if done properly. And they say windows, especially, preserve a building's historic value, says Carol Kowalski, the town's staff planner at the time of Mr. Bannatyne's application.

"The worst things you can do to a historic building, besides arson, is take out historic windows," she says.

Some states are trying to make energy-efficient improvements easier. California has long restricted homeowners' associations from blocking solar-panel installations, and New Jersey and Arizona passed similar legislation this year. A bill in Connecticut would override zoning restrictions and make it easier for people to put in wind turbines on their property. It wasn't passed, but lawmakers hope to revive it next session.

Matt Burdick, a 33-year-old communications director in Chandler, Ariz., pushed for the Arizona measure after his community association pressured him to remove a solar water heater he installed last September. Mr. Burdick had splurged on a swimming pool for his children, ages 7 and 10, and because he wanted to get the maximum use of it year-round, he put in the solar heater to keep the water warm and avoid an estimated $200 a month in pool heating costs.

Soon after, he started receiving notices from his homeowners association. Finally faced with a $50 daily fine, he says, he took down the seven panels in April, and is waiting for the new law to go into effect in September. Meanwhile, the panels are sitting in his tool shed. "This is a great way to make use of solar energy -- it avoids using a fossil fuel," he says. "People are losing sight of the big picture."

The property manager of Mr. Burdick's association did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Responding to concerns about aesthetics, some companies have been introducing products designed to be unobtrusive. Atlantis Energy Systems Inc. in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is expanding its line of solar roof tiles -- which generate solar energy but are cut to look like standard roof tiles, instead of the traditional single solar panel.

Energy-efficient window-makers, too, are pitching products that blend in with older homes: Jeld-Wen Inc. this year introduced a new double-hung window that can fit into existing older frames but still provide better insulation. Houston-based Standard Renewable Energy uses a racking system that positions solar panels to look flush against the roof. The company provides homeowners with a complete "green" service -- from consultation to installation of items like solar panels -- and will also go before an association or zoning board to help sell the project.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118420050252864047.html





Can China Reform Itself?
Joseph Kahn

PHONY fertilizer destroys crops. Stores shelves are filled with deodorized rotten eggs, and chemical glucose is passed off as honey. Exports slump when European regulators find dangerous bacteria in packaged meat.

More product safety scandals in China? Not this time. These quality problems prompted a sluggish United States government to tighten food and drug regulation 101 years ago, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the act that created the Food and Drug Administration.

Like America’s industrializing economy a century ago, China’s is powered by zealous entrepreneurs who sometimes act like pirates. Both countries suffered epidemics of fatal fakes, and both have had regulators who were too inept, corrupt or hamstrung to do much about it.

The question now is whether Chinese factories, caught exporting poisonous pharmaceutical ingredients, filthy shellfish, bogus pet food and faulty tires, can react in time to head off more damage to their reputation.

Or, to put it another way, are the latest incidents enough to push China toward its own Progressive Era?

The answer, say people who have studied the country’s regulatory system, is a cautious yes. But first, they say, Beijing must take a fresh approach to inspecting and policing its often unruly economy.

Chinese exporters sold nearly $1 trillion worth of goods overseas last year. Fakes and shoddy goods, by most measures, made up no more than a tiny fraction of that total. Yet the string of product safety scandals reflects a persistent roguish undercurrent in the Chinese economy that extensive media coverage, new laws and tougher enforcement have not eliminated.

Teddy Roosevelt’s government had to overcome ideological opposition to regulating private-sector commerce.

China has a different political challenge: Its authoritarian government, though under the control of one party, has struggled to develop a modern, unified regulatory system that can supervise a dynamic market economy.

“Competition inside our bureaucracy has led to a diffusion of power and a tendency to shirk responsibility,” says Mao Shoulong, a public policy expert at People’s University in Beijing. “Cracking down on individual criminals doesn’t solve the problem. We need to fix the whole system.”

Safety lapses are a serious side effect of China’s gradual and still incomplete efforts to separate politics and business. To spur economic growth in the 1980s, top leaders gave local-level officials more power. The goal was to undercut socialist conservatives in the central government who exercised tight controls. Regulatory power was also scattered.

Growth surged. Entrepreneurs, foreign investors and peasant farmers assumed a dominant role in production. But safety, as well as labor and environmental standards, fell by the wayside.

Scores of people died after ingesting bathtub baijiu, or rice wine, that substituted cheap industrial-grade alcohol for the real stuff. Condiments used as spices for hot-pot cooking contained paraffin wax. Vermicelli noodles carried a cancer-causing agent, as did a popular red dye, called Sudan Red, that was used by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Heinz, among other companies.

Hundreds of parents in Liaoning Province were so frustrated by the local government’s response to a spate of food poisonings at a school cafeteria in 2003 that they blockaded the local railroad.

Perhaps the most sensational case occurred in 2004, when small factories in central China produced cheap infant milk formula that lacked protein. Some 50 infants in Anhui Province died from malnutrition after their parents and some doctors mistook their symptoms — bloated faces and hands — as a sign of overfeeding.

Since then, regulatory efforts have been strengthened, but often with limited results. As many as 17 bureaucracies have overlapping responsibilities in just the food and drug sphere, and they jealously guard their power. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine have all vied for monitoring roles.

The reason: They wanted to collect license fees and fines to supplement their measly budgets. No less significantly, inspectors and their bosses could collect bribes in exchange for favors.

“It came down to turf warfare between departments,” said Roger Skinner, a retired British regulator who advised the Chinese government on improving food safety on behalf of the World Health Organization. “If they can’t enforce, they will lose revenue.”

Realizing they had created a muddle of competing bureaucracies, top leaders in 2003 formed the State Food and Drug Administration, named after its American counterpart, that on paper had “super-ministerial authority” to coordinate all the others that monitored the politically sensitive food and drug sphere.

The agency quickly fell victim to infighting, however, and lost clout in 2005, when its first director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was forced out. He was later convicted of taking bribes for speeding approval of new drugs. After the latest string of safety scandals erupted, Mr. Zheng was sentenced to death.

Blurred lines of responsibility and weak investigative powers partly explain why Chinese regulators gave little help to their American counterparts in the most fatal example of China’s safety problems reaching foreign shores.

In 1997 and again last year, the Americans sought information about why Chinese chemical companies had exported counterfeit glycerin, containing poisonous diethylene glycol, that ended up in medical products in Haiti and Panama. Scores of people who consumed the products in both countries died.

The diethylene glycol was made in Chinese chemical factories, but ended up in pharmaceutical products. That meant it fell into a regulatory void. No agency wanted to take control.

“You get buck-passing, frankly, between ministries,” said Mr. Skinner, the British regulator. “One ministry says, ‘It wasn’t my job to do that, it was this other ministry.’ ”

Even so, many experts argue that the capitalist excesses that have thrived during China’s economic transition have already sparked corrective action, not totally unlike the Progressive Era changes in the United States.

President Hu Jintao has pushed through a series of measures under the slogan of “scientific development” that aim to strengthen central regulators and economic planners, reduce abuses of low-wage workers, and protect the degraded environment.

He has met plenty of resistance, and it remains unclear how much he will pull back from China’s fast-growth development model.

Though some political and corporate forces argue that China needs to grow richer before it can address labor and environmental problems, there are few vested interests that defend the rights of fly-by-night factories to inject poison into medicine or leave the protein out of infant formula. With China’s reputation having taken a hit in the United States, resistance to tightening standards seems likely to fade.

“I think Chinese leaders are deeply alarmed,” said Dali Yang, a Chinese governance expert at the East Asian Institute in Singapore. “They will not let a tiny percentage of bad exports damage their reputation.”

Mr. Yang said that big Chinese cities have already demonstrated that they can do a better job monitoring food and drug safety than less developed counties and rural areas. Retail and restaurant chains and brand-name manufacturers have also gained market share versus small-scale operations, partly because Chinese consumers want to avoid fake or dangerous goods.

The state-run media has been given unusual latitude to expose shoddy goods. One of the most popular shows on China Central Television, “Weekly Quality Report,” investigates accidents, poisonings and cheap fakes. Recent topics include defective motorcycle helmets, a faux rabies vaccine, faulty tires and toxic food additives.

Even the United States F.D.A., which China considers a model of regulatory might, has issues that might sound familiar in Beijing. Its bureaucrats have complained that tight budgets and competition with 11 other federal regulatory agencies have made it harder to police the food supply.

And while that agency was created in the regulatory rush of 1906, it took more than 55 years, until the Kennedy administration, for the F.D.A. to acquire the powers it sought to ensure a safe drug supply.

“I’d be surprised,” Mr. Yang said, “if it takes China that long.”

Jake Hooker contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/we...08kahn.html?hp





In Fear and Scandal, Some Find a New Drum to Beat
Andrew Martin

THERE was a time the words “Made in China” immediately evoked “shoddy.” Lately, many Americans are thinking “danger.”

After reports of toothpaste laced with poison, tires that fall apart on the highway, contaminated fish and pet food, who wouldn’t be scared?

But for some people, those fears are a dream come true. Politicians, catfish farmers, consumer activists, to name a few.

For years, these groups have been trying to raise alarms about the wholesomeness of products from China as they pursue their own causes. Now, they revel in the chance to give China a few choice shots.

Southern catfish and shrimp farmers, for example, have invoked images of Asian ponds bubbling with antibiotics and pollutants but have gotten little notice from government regulators.

“We’ve been seeing prohibited chemicals and other additives in fish for quite a long time,” said Dick Stevens, chief executive of Consolidated Catfish in Mississippi. “We’ve just kind of gotten a blank look when we’ve said that to the agencies.”

Ranchers in the Great Plains, and the politicians who represent them, have been campaigning to require country-of-origin labeling on agricultural products, on the theory that “U.S.A.” gives them an edge. In 2002, a law was passed that required such labeling on most agricultural products, but the meat and grocery industries successfully campaigned to keep it from going into effect, except for seafood. Now China has unwittingly given their cause a boost.

“I think you see in this Chinese scandal that there are real risks to people, to pets, from problems in the food supply,” said Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota. “People believe they have a right to know where their food is from.”

William Marler, a Seattle lawyer, says the reports of contaminated food from China have opened all sorts of opportunities. He specializes in representing clients who have gotten sick from eating tainted food. His most recent case was filed against the manufacturer of a product called “Veggie Booty,” a snack popular with children. In some bags, the “veggie” seasoning — made in China — was contaminated with salmonella, which sickened at least 57 people.

“My guess is that with increased globalization, and the billions of dollars at play, and with the denial of the Chinese that there even is a problem, I had better brush up on my Chinese,” Mr. Marler wrote on his blog.

On Capitol Hill, China’s problems have also prompted I-told-you-so’s from consumer advocates and members of Congress who objected to China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization in the late 1990s. Most of the objections at the time concerned human rights, labor and the environment. Now the question is safety.

“We have very strict food and drug standards that we enforce,” said Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, who opposed China’s admission to the World Trade Organization. “Importers are always trying to chip away at the edges of that safety net.”

The long-term impact of the scandals, of course, will depend on how many more defective products surface and, as grim as it sounds, whether any more people or pets are hurt, sickened or killed. Still, here’s a reasonable guess: a request by the Chinese to ship cooked chicken into the United States, which the Department of Agriculture is considering, will be shelved.

Meanwhile, other groups also stand to benefit. Members of Congress who have been calling for stricter standards for the nation’s food-safety system now have another example of what can go wrong when oversight fails. And protectionists have another argument against free-trade agreements.

But the underlying reality is that Chinese imports are going to continue growing in this country. They are simply too cheap and ubiquitous to resist.

Sara Bongiorni knows this now. She decided that her family would try to live an entire year without using products that were made in China, and her findings are detailed in a new book, “A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy.”

“There’s no way you can live anywhere near a normal life without buying things from China,” Ms. Bongiorni says. She notes, for example, that nearly all telephones and cellular phones are made there.

A bit sheepishly, she admits that she, too, has benefited from the recent scandals. Her book was released a week and a half ago, as the reports were piling up.

“I feel weird when people say, ‘Great timing!’ ” she said. “I think, ‘These are all kind of bad things.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/we.../08martin.html





China Executes Safety Chief After Health Scandal
AP

China executed a former Food and Drug Administration safety chief for taking bribes following its investigation into safety scandals involving poisoned Chinese products.

The Supreme People’s Court approved the death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, who was convicted of taking bribes worth some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) from eight companies and dereliction of duty, Xinhua news agency said.

His execution marked the first time China has imposed a death sentence on an official of his rank since 2000.

"Zheng Xiaoyu’s grave irresponsibility in pharmaceutical safety inspection and failure to conscientiously carry out his duties seriously damaged the interests of the state and people," Xinhua cited the high court as stating.

"The social impact has been utterly malign," the court said, adding that Zheng’s confession and handing over of bribes were not enough to justify mercy.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1058775





An Escape From the Slush Pile: A Web Site Tries Out New Comics
George Gene Gustines

DC Comics, the venerable publisher of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, will introduce today an online imprint that amounts to a virtual slush pile, accepting submissions from the public and paying for the best comics that come in.

The imprint, called Zudacomics.com, will permit aspiring cartoonists to register at its Web site and submit an eight-panel sample of their work. Starting in October and each month thereafter, editors at DC Comics will select 10 entries, post them for public view and invite people to vote for their favorite. Editors may also declare as many as six submissions to be instant winners during the calendar year.

“We’ve always found interesting stuff in submissions,” said Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics. “One of the problems that comics have today, I think, is that open door is much more closed. This creates a more open door.”

Most people who produce online comics do so as labors of love. Some post their work online free, hoping to catch a publisher’s eye or gain a following, but Zuda will offer a rare chance to become a paid professional.

Each winner will be awarded a one-year contract to produce their online series, DC Comics executives said. The company, a division of the Warner Brothers Entertainment, part of Time Warner, views the initiative as a chance to increase its library of intellectual properties, which can be lucrative as films, television shows and toys. DC Comics will also have the right to print the comics in collected editions.

“We’re not looking for a specific type of material — we’re actively looking for everything,” said Ron Perazza, the director of creative services for DC and one of Zuda’s chief architects. “We’re going into this with no ego. We can’t possibly know what an entire community will want to read,” he said.

The only standardized part of a submission will be its presentation, which will consist of eight screen shots. “Everyone has the same size page and the same number of pages,” Mr. Perazza said. Beyond that, “the community vets what they want and that’s what we decide to publish,” he said.

Having the marketing muscle of a major publisher and paying producers for their work sets Zuda apart from most online comics. A site like www.act-i-vate.com, a collective of by-invitation-only comics creators, is a place for the artists to hone their craft and one-up each other.

Closer to the Zuda model is DrunkDuck.com. The site, which was acquired last year by Platinum Studios, allows creators under contract to share in deals for things like downloadable content, comics-related ring tones or toys.

Then there are those creators who go it alone, like the husband-and-wife team of Phil and Kaja Foglio, who publish “Girl Genius,” about a teenage girl who is heir to a family of mad scientists. The comic, in the traditional printed format, sold 7,500 to 9,000 copies an issue. Now that the Foglios have stopped printing and instead post the comic online, they say they have 100,000 readers.

“We lost some readers who said, ‘I enjoy having the comic books,’ but that’s more than made up by people who never would’ve seen it all,” Mr. Foglio said.

Like book publishing, the comic book industry has a history of authors who vaulted to prominence after their work was plucked from a heap of unsolicited manuscripts. “One of my proudest moments as an editor was buying a Marc DeMatteis story out of a slush pile,” said Mr. Levitz of DC. Mr. DeMatteis has gone on to write countless titles for DC, Marvel and other publishers.

Mr. Levitz said the Internet presents an easy place for spotting fresh talent. “We’ve seen a real wellspring of creativity” by people posting their online comics, he said. “And it’s been a different kind of material than publishers have been putting out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/bu.../09comics.html





Fans Get to Talk About ‘Transformers,’ and the Knives Are Unsheathed
Laura M. Holson

Hollywood is a town of talkers, not listeners. That’s why studios handsomely pay consultants to parse the results of focus groups and audience exit polls or eavesdrop on online chat rooms.

Only rarely do the filmmakers themselves talk directly to fans but Don Murphy, one of the producers of the summer blockbuster “Transformers,” decided to do just that.

Four years ago, Mr. Murphy, a comic-book lover since growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, turned a forum on his personal Web site (donmurphy.net) into a rolling conversation about the movie, which was released on July 2. And much to the delight of some of the fans who posted on the site and engaged with Mr. Murphy, they actually had some influence over changes in the script and casting.

The site would seem to be a perfect example of a modern media company reaching out to potential audience members in a new, interactive conversation. But in an unorthodox twist — one that might give media companies some pause — Mr. Murphy’s site quickly became a home not only for fans to debate whether Megatron’s form should be a tank or a gun (he ended up as an alien jet) but a place to vent frustration with the movie’s production as well as with the executives who worked on the film.

The site also helped expose the internal politics of making movies, where credit is hard fought and studios seek to distance themselves from things or people they can’t control.

“With ‘Transformers’ we had this really rabid following,” said Mr. Murphy, whose films include “Natural Born Killers” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” “To be frank, I wanted to have some way where we could at least hear what people think.”

Other filmmakers, like Peter Jackson and Kevin Smith, have fostered close relationships with their fans, And Michael Bay, who directed “Transformers,” has said he spent a lot of time early on looking at online postings to understand what fans might like.

But Mr. Murphy, who started the forum in June 2003 and can be alternatively deferential and combative, took a more confrontational approach.

Mr. Murphy would answer questions about studio meetings, who was being hired or what characters would be included in the film and solicited complaints from fans so he could share them with Mr. Bay. And once he almost banned a poster who used all capital letters.

“I had my own persona, the angry sheriff,” said Mr. Murphy of his Web site. “I will mock fans if that is what I have to do.”

With a decades-old property as beloved as “Transformers,” fans were bound to want to have their say. Jarek Zabczynski, a 26-year-old self-described struggling filmmaker who lives in upstate New York, first went on DonMurphy.net after hearing Mr. Murphy was interested in feedback.

“He would start replying to people and I thought, ‘This guy is really reading this stuff,” said Mr. Zabczynski. “I checked that board more than my e-mail. We formed a tight community.”

For some, Mr. Murphy’s directness had its appeal. One poster from England, Stanley Joel, wrote in an e-mail that the site was “refreshing in that you could pretty much say what you liked within reason, and ‘within reason’ was usually determined on the fly.”

Mr. Murphy and a fellow producer, Tom DeSanto, had initially shopped a “Transformers” treatment around Hollywood in 2003 but got no takers. Instead Paramount Pictures wanted to develop a “Transformers” idea of its own.

Upon hearing those plans, Steven Spielberg of DreamWorks bought the “Transformer” treatment from Mr. Murphy and Mr. DeSanto and then partnered with Paramount to co-finance the film. The two were named producers along with Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a former Warner Brothers executive, and Ian Bryce, who both handled day-to-day producing.

Mr. Murphy said the studios were worried from the start about how his site might be perceived.

“There was concern that it was going to be an official site,” he said. “All three of the partners — Paramount, DreamWorks and Hasbro — said I needed to make it clear it was the Don Murphy board. I was never intending for it to be an official Web site or that I was a spokesman for the film.”

To put some distance between “Transformers” and Mr. Murphy’s personal and sometimes caustic musings, he said he called the message board, “The Movies,” although the majority of the postings were about “Transformers.” Mr. Murphy included a disclaimer too, saying the site was not approved by the studio. And last year he almost shut it altogether as vitriolic fans criticized every aspect of the production.

Mr. Murphy’s site and its nearly 950,000 posts caused a rift between Mr. Murphy, the studios and his fellow producers because some of the angry attacks were lobbed at them, particularly Mr. di Bonaventura, who had a tense relationship with Mr. Murphy, according to people involved with the film who asked not to be named because they still work with both producers..

Studio executives wanted Mr. Murphy to stop talking altogether because, they felt, his status as a producer would result in the criticism in his forum reflecting poorly on “Transformers.” Indeed, some fans there referred to Mr. di Bonaventura as Scorponok, a vicious, Scorpion-like killer robot from the film.

Mr. di Bonaventura was on vacation and declined to be interviewed. But in a statement, he said he frequented domestic and international Web sites, which allowed him to communicate with fans without having his job “prejudice their reactions.”

For his part, Mr. Murphy, declined to discuss his relationship with Mr. di Bonaventura but handed over administration of the site to a colleague last year.

“The whole thing was to make it clear that it was not anything other than one guy shooting his mouth off,” said Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Bay, the director, also had a forum on his personal site (www.shootfortheedit.com). But posting came with general rules: do not ask for a job or post a script, no personal insults or gossip, and take it easy on the swearing.

According to Mr. Bay’s site, he posted 21 messages under his own name. By contrast Mr. Murphy was credited with 3,039 posts on DonMurphy.net, or just over two posts per day. About 80 percent of those were related to “Transformers,” Mr. Murphy said.

Mr. Bay used his site to quell inaccuracies about “Transformers,” some of them posted by users on DonMurphy.net. In one 2006 posting in response to script leaks, Mr. Bay told fans that the names of the characters rumored on the Internet were aliases. Mr. Joel wrote that he specifically liked to comment on leaked “Transformer” information “in the vain hope that it’d be changed or taken into account for potential sequels.”

With the movie bringing in $152 million at the domestic box office since July 2 — one of the most successful openings ever — it would seem past transgressions would be forgotten.

But despite a successful debut (or perhaps because of it) a war broke out on the Paramount lot last week over which producers deserved the most credit. Mr. Bay posted a message on his site chiding Mr. DeSanto and Mr. Murphy for trying to grab creative credit. (The posting was quickly taken down, but it showed up on fan sites and on news blogs.)

On Thursday a publicist for Mr. di Bonaventura questioned why the two producers were being written about. And on Friday, Paramount sent a statement to The New York Times marked “urgent,” crediting only Mr. di Bonaventura and Mr. Bryce as the two producers who did the work on the film.

In his interview Mr. Murphy did not take creative credit, but instead said he saw his role as a liaison to the legions of “Transformers” fans. Still, in the past, he used his site to promote his role in making the movie On May 23, he posted quotes from a story published on the fan site, IESB.net, commending him and Mr. DeSanto. Further, the story mentioned that there were “certain people trying to take sole credit for bringing ‘Transformers’ to the big screen.” Users on Mr. Murphy’s site surmised that meant Mr. di Bonaventura.

Whatever the conflict behind the scenes, fans still seemed to have had an impact onscreen. Most notable, they pressed for and got Peter Cullen to be the voice of Optimus Prime, the heroic robot in the film. (Mr. Cullen was the voice in the popular television show.) Mr. Murphy said too that there was a general consensus among fans that Arcee, a female autobot, should not be featured in the movie. She was not.

That inspired a loyalty that can’t be bought with a 30-second television spot. Already Mr. Zabczynski has seen “Transformers” twice and is recommending it to his pals.

“Friends say, ‘Why were you wasting your time on a message board?’ ” said Mr. Zabczynski. “But it’s a humbling experience because in a small way, you can be a part of something.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/bu...ia/09fans.html





Transformers Dominate Culinary Rats at Box Office
Brooks Barnes

The robot aliens of “Transformers” are burning rubber at the box office, selling a hefty $152.5 million in tickets at American theaters since that film’s debut last Monday.

The receipts over the holiday week were strong enough to break a handful of records and establish “Transformers” as a potential franchise for its co-producers, DreamWorks and Paramount. With international ticket sales included, “Transformers” drew $246.1 million, easily recouping its production and marketing costs.

“Transformers,” about a war on Earth between two robotic forces, notched the biggest Fourth of July gross in history with $29.1 million in tickets sold on that day, beating “Spider-Man 2,” in 2004, according to Paramount and box-office analysts. The studio also said the movie scored the biggest nonsequel-opening ever, passing “Spider-Man” and “The Passion of the Christ.”

Ticket sales are sharply higher than some analysts predicted for the picture, which is based on Hasbro’s somewhat faded line of vehicles that transform into robots. Some studio executives worried that “Transformers,” from the director Michael Bay and the producer Steven Spielberg, would be deemed too violent by parents and not violent enough by core fans of the robot mythology.

“Between the action and the sense of humor and fun, it has amazing playability with all types of audiences,” said Rob Moore, Paramount’s president for worldwide marketing and distribution. “One of the surprises is that the response from moms coming out of the theater has been great.”

The Fourth of July is one of the most important dates on Hollywood’s calendar, and strong ticket sales then should provide momentum in the coming weeks, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers, a box-office-tracking company. This summer is backloaded with a cluster of big-budget movies, including “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” from Warner Brothers and “The Bourne Ultimatum” from Universal.

The animated “Ratatouille,” from Walt Disney’s Pixar, held up well in its second week, selling an estimated $29 million in tickets over the weekend for the No. 2 spot. “Live Free or Die Hard,” the revival of the Bruce Willis action franchise, dropped 48 percent from its opening weekend, but still captured third place with $17 million. “License to Wed” ($10.4 million) and “Evan Almighty” ($8.1 million) rounded out the Top 5.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/movies/09box.html





'Harry Potter' Film Takes In $44.8 Million, Breaking Record
Russ Britt

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" set a new record for a Wednesday debut at the box office, as the fifth installment in Warner Bros. Studios' hugely successful franchise racked up $44 million in ticket receipts.

Box-office tracker Media By Numbers said the figure includes roughly $12 million in midnight screenings from early Wednesday morning. The film's debut in 4,181 theaters beat the previous Wednesday opening record set by "Spider-Man 2," which made $40.4 million in 2004.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118425796644464804.html





D’ough!

The Simpsons' Big Screen Test
Nick Curtis

First conceived 18 years ago, it took 15 people four years to write and cost a rumoured $100 million to make. On 27 July, The Simpsons Movie finally opens simultaneously in the UK and America, following a premiere in Springfield, Vermont (population 9,300), which won a competition of 13 other Springfields to host the event.

This is the most significant change in the lives of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the other animated citizens of Springfield since they first made the jump from scratchy, one-minute animations filling in between sketches on the Tracey Ullman Show, to a regular halfhour slot on the Fox network in 1989.

Al Jean was one of the first writers that the Simpsons' original creator, Matt Groening, hired to develop his dysfunctional cartoon family, and he is both executive producer and chief writer of the new movie. He is also phenomenally tight-lipped.

Nobody outside the Simpsons' inner sanctum has seen more than the opening 10 minutes of the film. Here we see the rock band Green Day pelted with stones and then drowned after hectoring their audience about pollution during a free concert. Homer and Bart dare each other to wilder and more stupid acts which culminate in a flash of Bart's penis as he skateboards naked to Krusty Burger.

Grandpa Abe Simpson, meanwhile, suffers a disturbing visionary paroxysm in church, while Lisa meets the ideal Irish boy of her dreams. The internet is raging with rumours that, beyond this point, the film surges into a story about global warming (with Homer setting off a nuclear accident in Monty Burns's power plant) and religious fundamentalism.

"Both of those are a little wide of the mark," says Jean, 45. "But there is an environmental and a religious theme. There are also storylines in which Bart realises Homer may not be the ideal father, and in which Lisa meets her perfect man, except that complications naturally ensue. I will say that the main theme of the movie is that Homer should listen more to his wife." Which is pretty much the theme of every Simpson's episode, let's face it. But some further details can be revealed.

Groening let slip recently that Homer falls in love with a pig, and Jean tells me that the film sees Arnold Schwarzenegger become president ("We didn't want to make Bush the president, because in two years that'd mean the film was out of date") and that there is a cameo from a "very special, very popular guest star". Who? "I'm not gonna say." Is it Madonna? "Well I will say it's not Madonna, but I won't say any more." Since the Simpsons TV show has already bagged Michael Jackson, Tony Blair and Stephen Hawking, the mind boggles.

There will also be some two-dimensional cameos in the film as well. Jean tells me that, when a mob prepares to lynch Homer, the camera pans across the face of almost every small character or bit player to have appeared in the TV series. That's more than 320. It's an animated tracking shot to rival the recordbreaking live-action ones of Welles and Altman.

Which is one of the fun things about making a film rather than a TV series. "We knew we could do fuller stories, go deeper into characters, and we were adamant that it had to be entertaining for someone who had never, or only rarely seen the show," says Jean. "But also, y'know, I think we just all really liked the idea of making a movie."

Not that it was easy. Groening says that a joke has to amuse the creators around 350 times before it makes it into the TV show, and that for the film it was three times that. "It's TEN times that," insists Jean. "We started in November 2003, talked about the story for six months, then wrote a first draft, and that has been rewritten at least 100 times, right up to about a week ago."

The rewrites took account of test readings and screenings, and also time: to keep the film to a trim 87 minutes some celebrity cameos (probably those of Minnie Driver and Erin Brockovich) have hit the cutting room floor. But each rewrite also had to conform to the essential lore of The Simpsons: "That Homer does inconsiderate things but he would never consciously hurt Marge, while Marge thinks Homer is the handsomest man who ever lived." And the final script had to appeal to adults and children in equal measure.

Although rooted in slapstick, The Simpsons has always been extremely sophisticated: I can't think of another show enjoyed by children that also has openly gay characters (Monty Burns' assistant, Smithers), deals with death (Ned Flanders's wife, Maude), or satirises religion almost as often as it pokes fun at its parent company, Fox.

"We have always assumed that kids will watch it because of the form, but after that we just wrote it for ourselves," says Jean. "We've never said, this is too smart for a kid to get, don't put it in. I'm sure that's one of the keys to the show's success."

The Simpsons is now America's longest-running sitcom, and the world's longest-running and most widely syndicated animated show. Not so long ago Homer Simpson was voted by Channel 4 viewers as the greatest television character ever. I'm relieved to reveal that if the 10 minutes I saw are anything to go by, it may also be the first TV show to spawn a movie that equals the small-screen original. And it's not finished yet. Jean confirms the 19th season will begin recording in September, and hopes to make at least one more Simpsons film, if the core voice cast (Dan Castellanata, Harry Shearer, Nancy Cartwright, et al, who get a reported six-figure sum per episode) can be kept on board. Groening has talked about 20-plus years of TV, and a cinematic trilogy.

Groening famously modelled Bart on himself and named Homer and Marge after his own mother and father, then issued an apology to all parents when he had his own two sons, saying he hadn't realised how hard it was. Jean also has two children, aged 16 and two; has fatherhood changed his view of his second, yellow TV family?

"When we started out, we did a lot of Bart-based stories," he concedes. "Then we started doing more Homer stories, which people thought was deliberate, but which was probably down to the fact that we found them easier to think up and relate to. These days ..." - and he makes an all-enveloping gesture that takes in 18 years of producing cutting-edge, hilarious television, and four years and 100 rewrites trying to translate it onto film - "I sympathise more with Grandpa."
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/review-23403996-details/The+Simpsons'+big+screen+test/review.do?reviewId=23403996





Nintendo Wii May be Scarce for Holidays

Nintendo's hit Wii video game consoles will still be scarce this holiday season, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

Nintendo promised that some 100 new games for the Wii, known for its motion-sensitive controller which can be swung like a bat or brandished like a sword, will debut by the end of the year. It also showed off a pistol-style controller and motion-sensitive pad for dancing and walking.

But not everyone may be able to get even the basic console in time for the year's main buying season.

"There is no guarantee that we are not going to have 'out-of-stocks' this holiday season," George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications for Nintendo of America, said in an interview. "If you see one, buy it. Don't assume that you can come back later and find one."

Harrison added that the company was ramping up production, but that parts manufacturers were still trying to gauge how much they need to produce to keep up with demand.

"We're trying to figure out what's the reasonable monthly level, and as we've seen every time we ship product to the market, whether it's in Japan or here in the U.S. or in Europe, it sells out in a matter of days," Harrison said.

The Wii's quirky remote and a relatively low price tag have made the Wii stand out compared with the powerful Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. and PlayStation 3 from Sony Corp.

At the kick-off to E3, the industry's most important event of the year, Nintendo rolled out a number of new controllers.

The Wii Zapper, which forms a gun from Nintendo's standard controllers, will debut this year and offer better play for shooting and war game fans, a hard core audience that has been secondary to Nintendo's focus on casual games.

A new pressure-sensing mat, dubbed the Balance Board, will come out next year—after this year's holiday buying season. The mat can sense when a person moves and leans, letting players head virtual soccer balls "thrown" at them, for instance.

A steering wheel for racing games is due out in the first half of next year.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2157431,00.asp





In the Blink of a Byte, Future Becomes Past
Noam Cohen

The Internet can seem an all-knowing, mysterious oracle. Type in a question, hit a button and an answer magically appears.

Yet oracles earn their robes not for providing trivia (“Caesar, did you know that “ides” is a Latin term denoting half a month?”), but for predicting the future, however Delphically. And for a brief period recently, the Internet seemed to have crossed that threshold.

The backdrop was the bizarre tale of the professional wrestler Christopher Benoit who during one weekend last month killed his wife, Nancy, and later his son and himself. The police didn’t find the bodies until Monday afternoon, June 25, but a Wikipedia entry on Mr. Benoit had reported his wife’s death matter-of-factly 13 hours earlier.

Was there some error with the time stamped on the article? Was a witness choosing to speak under cover of anonymity? Or was the killer posting a final warning? Intriguingly, the IP address used to write the prophetic posting was traced to Stamford, Conn., which happens to be the home of World Wrestling Entertainment, the employer of Mr. Benoit.

As a furor grew, the anonymous user of Wikipedia who posted the Nancy Benoit information (known by the IP address 69.120.111.23) came forward to say, “I did the wrong thing by posting it on Wikipedia,” adding, “I was just as shocked as everyone when I heard that this actually would happen in real life.”

The police nonetheless questioned that person. Investigators “checked it out very thoroughly” and concluded “it was pure coincidence,” said Lt. Belinda McCastle of the Sheriff’s Department of Fayetteville, Ga., where the killings occurred. She declined to release the name of the owner of the IP address 69.120.111.23.

The Benoit case, minus that part about predicting the future, isn’t unique. There was the case of the film director and actress Adrienne Shelley, who was murdered in Greenwich Village last year. Editors at The New York Times were given a tip, and in the course of reading about her on Wikipedia (yes, newspaper editors read Wikipedia), saw that her death had already been listed. In fact, it was a full day later before the news became public knowledge, as we usually think of it.

The British newspaper The Guardian reported a similar experience in 2005, when editors there found the only confirmation of the death of the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin on Wikipedia.

Robin Hanson of George Mason University, an expert on using future markets to track public sentiment, said an e-mail exchange that these examples are hardly evidence of predicting the future. Rather, he suggested, it was “a bit newspaper-centric to say that news has not broke ‘publicly’ if it is being discussed online in rumors but has not appeared in a newspaper.” He added that “with more and more kinds of media, there are more and more intermediate levels of info availability.”

This is the crucial dividing line: between reporting on events in as close to real time as possible — which can prove jarring to society, and journalists in particular, but hardly supernatural — and predicting things around the bend.

As the Benoit case and others show, it may be human nature to confuse the two. The classic grifter swindle portrayed in the 1973 movie “The Sting” fools its target by holding out the possibility of using the telegraph to “predict” horse-race results.

But there are businesses that see the odds in getting information as close to real time as possible using Internet searches. At the core of this research is the hope of tapping into something intuitive about people — the way some people believe animals sense an earthquake coming and scatter.

Bill Tancer, the general manager of Hitwise, a company that analyzes search results, calls the field “searchonomics.” Thus far, he has tested his theories in a manner that resembles so-called future markets — which trade bets on future events like elections and sporting events — by treating search requests as the equivalent of votes, or “buys,” and then adjusting for other factors. (The reality TV show “Dancing With the Stars” has been his unwitting laboratory — to mixed results, he concedes.)

But these tools can be used for weightier matters. Tracking searches of the word “unemployment” can provide clues to trends in the nation’s unemployment rate, Mr. Tancer said. Likewise, Altos Research, a Silicon Valley start-up, collects and tracks millions of real estate listings to assess the housing market before the government releases its figures.

This information serves a Wall Street function as “closer to real time” data for investors, said Michael Simonsen, Altos’s president and chief executive.

“We are really early in the predictive power of the Internet; financial markets are getting a hang of it,” he says. “We have miles to go in all the nuances in capturing information.”

A more nuanced analysis was made by Mr. Tancer, who tracked searches in 2005 concerning avian flu. By comparing different terms, from the technical name “H5N1” to “avian flu” to the more basic “bird flu” he tried to show how a spike in interest first appeared among what he presumes was the scientific community (H5N1 searchers) and then quickly spread to the general public.

Armed with this insight, it may be easier to see when concern over a potential epidemic is going to “go big.” But these insights will be culled from millions of data points, not from single Wikipedia entries like the one for Mr. Benoit.

It is eerie to note, however, that the anonymous poster about Ms. Shelley’s death had earlier in the year edited the Wikipedia entry about the so-called Butterfly Effect, the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can influence the weather in Florida. It’s as if that user — 216.165.95.5 — knew that someone typing something into a computer can influence an editor in a newsroom far away.

Or it may have been a coincidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/bu...ia/09link.html





N.H. Gov. Signs Bill That Rejects Federal Real ID Law

Says financial, personal costs too high for state's residents
Marc L. Songini

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch last week signed into law a bill that forbids New Hampshire government agencies from complying with the controversial federal national identification act, or Real ID bill.

The New Hampshire Legislature had overwhelming passed the bill this past spring and handed it off to Lynch, who signed it on June 27.

"Real ID is intended to make us all safer, which I think we can all agree is a laudable goal," said Lynch in a statement. "However, I strongly believe Real ID's proposed haphazard implementation and onerous provisions would have the exact opposite effect. The federal government obviously did not think this burdensome system through and that is why we in New Hampshire are right to reject it."

Among the reasons for opposing the legislation, Lynch said, were its implementation costs, the likelihood that it would compromise the privacy of citizens and the burden likely to be imposed on state employees who must comply with its guidelines.

The ever-evolving Real ID law, first passed by Congress in 2005, currently requires that all state driver's licenses and other identification cards include a digital photograph and a bar code that can be scanned by electronic readers. Such a federally approved ID card or document would be required for people entering a federal building, nuclear power plant and commercial airplane.

The law currently would bar access to such facilities without a Real ID card. However, New Hampshire legislators are hoping widespread opposition to the federal law will cause it to collapse.

"Today, we are sending a strong message to the federal government -- we are not about to be coerced into another unfunded federal mandate, especially not one that we will pay for with our privacy," stated Lynch.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9026324





Armed Autonomous Robots Cause Concern

A MOVE to arm police robots with stun guns has been condemned by weapons researchers.

On 28 June, Taser International of Arizona announced plans to equip robots with stun guns. The US military already uses PackBot, made by iRobot of Massachusetts, to carry lethal weapons, but the new stun-capable robots could be used against civilians.

"The victim would have to receive shocks for longer, or repeatedly, to give police time to reach the scene and restrain them, which carries greater risk to their health," warns non-lethal weapons researcher Neil Davison, of the University of Bradford, UK.
"If someone is severely punished by an autonomous robot, who are you going to take to a tribunal?" asks Steve Wright, a security expert at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
http://www.newscientisttech.com/arti...e-concern.html





Data on Americans Mined for Terror Risk
Lara Jakes Jordan

The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.

Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices.

In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.

The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Justice Department said the database was "ripe for abuse." The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror threat.
The report, sent to Congress this week, marked the department's first public detailing of six of its data-mining tools, which look for patterns to catch criminals. The disclosure was required by lawmakers when they renewed the USA Patriot Act in 2005. It comes as the Justice Department faces sharp criticism from Congress and civil liberties advocates for violating peoples' privacy rights in terror and spy investigations.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases are strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties.

"Each of these initiatives is extremely valuable for investigators, allowing them to analyze and process lawfully acquired information more effectively in order to detect potential criminal activity and focus resources appropriately," Boyd said in a statement.

All but one of the databases — the one to track terrorists — have been up and running for several years, the report showed. The lone exception is the System to Assess Risk, or STAR, program to rate the threat posed by people already identified as suspected terrorists or named on terror watch lists.

The system, still under construction, is designed to help counterterror investigators save time by narrowing the field of people who pose the greatest potential threat and will not label anyone a terrorist, Boyd said.

But it could be based, in part at least, on commercial or public information that might not be accurate — potentially ranking an innocent person as a terror threat. Watch lists, for example, have mistakenly identified people as suspects based on their similar names or birthdates to terrorists.

The Justice report also leaves open the possibility that the STAR program might draw up lists of terror suspects based on information from other sources, including from Data Mart. The report described Data Mart as a collector of government information, but also travel data from the Airlines Reporting Corp. and other information from private data-aggregators like Choicepoint. Private data aggregators often sell commercial credit records as well as other databases, like voter and vehicle registration.

"When you put bad information into a system and you don't have any mechanism of ensuring the information is of high quality, you're certain to get bad information spit out on the back end," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "And that has profoundly negative consequences for the individuals who are wrongly identified as potential terrorists."

The five other databases detailed in the report include:

_An identity theft intelligence program, used since 2003, to examine and analyze consumer complaints to identify major identity theft rings in a given geographic area.

_A health care fraud system that looks at billing records in government and private insurance claims databases to identify fraud or over-billing by health care providers. It also has been running since 2003.

_A database created in 2005 that looks at consumer complaints to the Food and Drug Administration to identify larger trends about fraud by Internet pharmacies.

_A housing fraud program that analyzes public data on real estate transactions to identify fraudulent housing purchases, including so-called property flipping. The database was built in 1999.

_A system that compares National Insurance Crime Bureau information against other data to crack down on fake car accident insurance claims and identify major offenders.

The 38-page report was four months late in being sent to Congress for required oversight. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said it "raises more questions than it answers."

"Unfortunately, the Congress and the American public know very little about these and other data mining programs, making them ripe for abuse," said Leahy, D-Vt.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl...451/-1/LOCAL17





Judges OK Warrantless Monitoring of Web Use

Privacy rules don't apply to Internet messages, court says
Bob Egelko

Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen registers in 1979, saying callers have no right to conceal from the government the numbers they communicate electronically to the phone companies that carry their calls.

Federal law requires court approval for a pen register. But because it is not considered a search, authorities do not need a search warrant, which would require them to show that the surveillance is likely to produce evidence of a crime.

They also do not need a wiretap order, which would require them to show that less intrusive methods of surveillance have failed or would be futile.

In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

Likewise, the court said, although the government learns what computer sites someone visited, "it does not find out the contents of the messages or the particular pages on the Web sites the person viewed."

The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling.

Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of operating a laboratory in Escondido that manufactured the drug ecstasy.

Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents' tracking of his computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence.

Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said.

The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The great political marketplace of ideas is the Internet, and the government has unbridled access to it."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AGMNQSJDA1.DTL





New York Plans Surveillance Veil for Downtown
Cara Buckley

By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.

If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.

“This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation,” New York City’s police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said in an interview last week. “We want to make it less vulnerable.”

But critics question the plan’s efficacy and cost, as well as the implications of having such heavy surveillance over such a broad swath of the city.

For a while, it appeared that New York could not even afford such a system. Last summer, Mr. Kelly said that the program was in peril after the city’s share of Homeland Security urban grant money was cut by nearly 40 percent.

But Mr. Kelly said last week that the department had since obtained $25 million toward the estimated $90 million cost of the plan. Fifteen million dollars came from Homeland Security grants, he said, while another $10 million came from the city, more than enough to install 116 license plate readers in fixed and mobile locations, including cars and helicopters, in the coming months.

The readers have been ordered, and Mr. Kelly said he hoped the rest of the money would come from additional federal grants.

The license plate readers would check the plates’ numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan is approved, the police will most likely collect information from those readers too, Mr. Kelly said.

But the downtown security plan involves much more than keeping track of license plates. Three thousand surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of 2008, about two-thirds of them owned by downtown companies. Some of those are already in place. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.

Unlike the 250 or so cameras the police have already placed in high-crime areas throughout the city, which capture moving images that have to be downloaded, the security initiative cameras would transmit live information instantly.

The operation will cost an estimated $8 million to run the first year, Mr. Kelly said. Its headquarters will be in Lower Manhattan, he said, though the police were still negotiating where exactly it will be. The police and corporate security agents will work together in the center, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the police. The plan does not need City Council approval, he said.

The Police Department is still considering whether to use face-recognition technology, an inexact science that matches images against those in an electronic database, or biohazard detectors in its Lower Manhattan network, Mr. Browne said.

The entire operation is forecast to be in place and running by 2010, in time for the projected completion of several new buildings in the financial district, including the new Goldman Sachs world headquarters.

Civil liberties advocates said they were worried about misuse of technology that tracks the movement of thousands of cars and people,

Would this mean that every Wall Street broker, every tourist munching a hot dog near the United States Court House and every sightseer at ground zero would constantly be under surveillance?

“This program marks a whole new level of police monitoring of New Yorkers and is being done without any public input, outside oversight, or privacy protections for the hundreds of thousands of people who will end up in N.Y.P.D. computers," Christopher Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an e-mail message.

He said he worried about what would happen to the images once they were archived, how they would be used by the police and who else would have access to them.

Already, according to a report last year by the civil liberties group, there are nearly 4,200 public and private surveillance cameras below 14th Street, a fivefold increase since 1998, with virtually no oversight over what becomes of the recordings.

Mr. Browne said that the Police Department would have control over how the material is used. He said that the cameras would be recording in “areas where there’s no expectation of privacy” and that law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear.

“It would be used to intercept a threat coming our way, but not to collect data indiscriminately on individuals,” he said.

Mr. Browne said software tracking the cameras’ images would be designed to pick up suspicious behavior. If, for example, a bag is left unattended for a certain length of time, or a suspicious car is detected repeatedly circling the same block, the system will send out an alert, he said.

Still, there are questions about whether such surveillance devices indeed serve their purpose.

There is little evidence to suggest that security cameras deter crime or terrorists, said James J. Carafano, a senior fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington.

For all its comprehensiveness, London’s Ring of Steel, which was built in the early 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks, did not prevent the July 7, 2005, subway bombings or the attempted car bombings in London last month. But the British authorities said the cameras did prove useful in retracing the paths of the suspects’ cars last month, leading to several arrests.

While having 3,000 cameras whirring at the same time means loads of information will be captured, it also means there will be a lot of useless data to sift through.

“The more hay you have, the harder it is to find the needle,” said Mr. Carafano.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/ny...09ring.html?hp





FBI Employees Face Criminal Probe Over Patriot Act Abuse
Ryan Singel

FBI personnel who used misleading emergency letters to acquire thousands of Americans' phone records are the subject of a criminal investigation, top bureau officials told civil liberties groups Monday.

The unprecedented criminal probe, revealed at an outreach meeting led by FBI director Robert Mueller and general counsel Valerie Caproni at FBI headquarters, is looking at the actions of an antiterrorism team known as the Communications Analysis Unit, according to two people who attended the meeting independently and who informed Wired News, requesting anonymity.

The privately disclosed investigation would mark the first time government officials have faced possible prosecution for misuse of Patriot Act investigative tools, and highlights the seriousness of recent reports about the FBI's misuse of a powerful self-issued subpoena known as a National Security Letter.

Unit employees, who are not authorized to request records in investigations, sent form letters to telephone companies to acquire detailed billing information on specific phone numbers by falsely promising that subpoenas were already in the works.

According to a third source, FBI officials also said at the meeting that some bureau employees have already been granted immunity from prosecution in the investigation. The third source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, did not recall, however, that FBI officials described the investigation as "criminal."

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko confirmed that the meeting took place but declined to comment on the content of the conversation, saying only, "The FBI does not confirm or deny investigations."

Neither the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General nor the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility returned calls for comment.

While the scope of the alleged investigation is unknown, investigators could be examining whether the unit violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or committed fraud by falsely swearing that subpoenas were being prepared.

National Security Letters are self-issued subpoenas that allow investigators in terrorism and espionage cases to require phone companies, banks, credit reporting agencies and internet service providers to turn over records on Americans considered "relevant" to an investigation. Those records are then fed into three computer systems, including a shared data-mining tool known as the Investigative Data Warehouse.

Though warned in 2001 to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47,000 National Security Letters in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans.

Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have downplayed the gravity of the reported errors while attempting to mollify critics by promising to strengthen internal oversight.

The Communications Analysis Unit, part of the FBI's Communications Exploitation Section based in the agency's headquarters building, is tasked with analyzing terrorist communications and providing intelligence to the FBI's Counterterrorism Division. However, because it only supports investigators, unit employees cannot issue subpoenas and instead need to have counterterrorism investigators do so.

However, the Justice Department's Inspector General reported (.pdf) in March that the office issued 739 "exigent letters" to AT&T, Verizon and MCI seeking information on more than 3,000 phone numbers. The letters stated: "Due to exigent circumstances, it is requested that records for the attached list of telephone numbers be provided. Subpoenas requesting this information have been submitted to the U.S. Attorney's Office who will process and serve them formally to (Phone Company Name) as expeditiously as possible."

However, no such subpoenas had been filed with U.S. Attorneys and only later were some of the requests followed up with proper legal process, according to the Inspector General's report.

Several of the letters included requests for records for more than 100 phone numbers.

Bassem Youssef, the current head of the Communications Analysis Unit, told Congress in March that key FBI lawyers knew about the problem in 2005, when he notified them and put an end to the false letters.

Youssef first noticed the problem with the letters in 2005 when he took over the unit and quickly brought the matter to the attention of his supervisor and the FBI's Office of the General Counsel, according to a March letter (.pdf) sent by his lawyer, Stephen Kohn, to Sen. Chuck Grassley.

"At all times, the (National Security Law Branch) and the FBI (Office of the General Counsel) knew that the field offices and operational units were non-compliant in obtaining the legal documentation," Kohn wrote.

Youssef is currently suing the FBI for retaliating against him for complaining that the bureau was wasting his Arabic-language skills and antiterrorism experience. He attempted to get proper National Security Letters filed to provide post-facto legal backing for the exigent letters but was hampered by uncooperative field offices, according to the Senate letter.

Kohn did not respond to requests for comment.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/ne...tinvestigation





Stasi

Debate on Terror Threat Stirs Germany
Mark Landler

While the British public reacted to the latest terrorist strike there with stoicism and a practiced determination to get on with their lives, Germany has erupted in a rancorous dispute over how to deal with a terrorist threat that has yet to materialize here.

The debate, which has simmered for months, flared up again in the wake of the botched car bombings in London, after Germany’s top security official, Wolfgang Schäuble, said Germany should consider detaining potential terrorists and sanctioning the killing of terrorist leaders abroad.

Mr. Schäuble, a conservative politician who is the country’s interior minister, also said that the police should be allowed to conduct clandestine searches of private computers by way of the Internet, a practice now forbidden.

“The old categories no longer apply,” Mr. Schäuble said in an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel. “We have to clarify whether our constitutional state is sufficient for confronting the new threats.”

Mr. Schäuble’s remarks, which were confirmed by his spokesman, have set off a storm of protest from opposition leaders, and even from Social Democratic members of his own “grand coalition” government.

They say his proposals would erode personal rights and jeopardize the rule of law in Germany. Some critics accuse him of playing up the threat of an attack on German soil to push through draconian measures.

“He would lead the country down a very dangerous path,” said the co-chairman of the opposition Green Party, Reinhard Bütikofer. “He is advising the exact opposite of what Prime Minister Gordon Brown has demonstrated so admirably: a combination of determination and equanimity.”

No other major European country has publicly debated its anti-terrorism laws in the wake of the failed British attacks. Among the few notable responses of any kind came from France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who restated his support for installing 1,000 video surveillance cameras in Paris — a longstanding proposal that has languished for lack of financing.

Both the timing, and the nature, of the debate in Germany trouble some counter-terrorism experts in Europe.

“One of the time-honored tactics of terrorists is to draw governments into over-reacting,” said Gijs de Vries, a Dutchman and a former counter-terrorism coordinator for the European Union. “Governments should resist public pressure to pile on new measures after each incident.”

To be sure, Mr. Schäuble, 64, has been calling for more muscular policies to combat terrorism since he joined the current government in 2005. A seasoned official who has been in a wheelchair since surviving an assassination attempt in 1990, Mr. Schäuble is regarded as one of the political heavyweights in the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He also seems to enjoy the backing of Ms. Merkel, though she has not addressed his specific proposals.

“We have threats that we didn’t even know 10 years ago,” Ms. Merkel said in an interview on German television on Tuesday. “I want an interior minister who will grapple with these new threats.”

Speaking in Der Spiegel, Mr. Schäuble likened the recent British plot to a failed attempt to bomb two regional trains in Cologne last summer. In both cases, he said, the threat came from an unexpected source, and was carried out by a terrorist cell that may have formed “spontaneously,” though he cautioned that the British investigation was in its early stages.

The suspects in the Cologne plot — two Lebanese men — met only a few months before mounting their attack, which failed when the explosives they had hidden in suitcases failed to detonate. Authorities said the men were angered by satirical cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed that were published in Denmark.

For Mr. Schäuble, the conclusion from the two cases is inescapable: “The fight against international terrorism cannot be mastered by the classic methods of the police, in any event,” he said.

Among the methods that he believes Germans should at least debate are preventative detention of people suspected of terrorist activities — a practice he says Germany now uses with hooligans before soccer games — and assassinations of the leaders of terrorist organizations.

In the interview, Mr. Schäuble said Germany was cooperating more closely than ever with the United States. He said he had invited the American secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, to his home, though he did not say if the Bush administration had influenced his views.

Mr. Schäuble’s aides said he was not surprised by the sharp reaction to his remarks, and even welcomed it.

“He’s trying to force our society to face up to these really difficult questions — for example, killing a terrorist,” said Christian Sachs, a spokesman for the interior ministry. “The German public has tried to stick its head in the sand, ignoring this dimension of this unorthodox war.”

Germany has been debating the balance between liberty and security ever since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which were the product of a plot hatched in Hamburg by a circle of militant Muslims under the noses of the German security services.

For reasons having to do with its dark history, though, since the end of World War II Germany has placed a particular emphasis on the rights of individuals.

Already, Mr. Schäuble’s campaign is drawing unflattering historical parallels, though less to the Nazi era than to Communist East Germany.

On the Internet, T-shirts are sold that are emblazoned with Mr. Schäuble’s image and the slogan, “Stasi 2.0” — a reference to the nickname of the feared State Security Ministry of the former East Germany.

The Cologne case is the closest Germany is known to have come to a large-scale terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001, and Mr. Schäuble said the country escaped that one only through luck.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/wo...curity.html?hp





Queasy

Chertoff Explains 'Gut Feeling' About Terror Attack

No 'Specific Intelligence,' but 'Threat Is Very Alive'
Pierre Thomas and Theresa Cook

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has downplayed comments he made Tuesday on the U.S. terror situation. "We don't have specific intelligence about an attack, that is, a particular attack against the homeland, that is imminent or scheduled for the summer," he told ABC News.

Chertoff noted, "It's important as we go into the summer season, which is typically a time people like to relax, to remind people that this threat is very alive, and the enemy is continuing to try to improve itself and carry out its attacks."

In a Tuesday meeting with the Chicago Tribune's editorial board, Chertoff said he believes "we are entering a period this summer of increased risk."

But his explanation for that assessment - "a gut feeling" based on past terrorist patterns - prompted a flurry of questions about what the secretary might know.

Chertoff indicated to the Tribune that the assessment is "not of a specific threat, but of increased vulnerability," but the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee sent Chertoff a letter today, asking him to "clarify your comments by providing concrete direction" to Congress and law enforcement agencies.

"What color code in the Homeland Security advisory system is associated with a 'gut feeling?'" asked Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

"What sectors should be on alert as a result of your 'gut feeling'? What cities should be asking their law enforcement to work double shifts because of your 'gut feeling,'" Thompson asked.

"Are the American people supposed to purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting because of your 'gut feeling?'"

After authorities in the U.K. thwarted terror plots in London and Glasgow last week, Chertoff said he had seen "no specific, credible information suggesting that this incident is connected to a threat to the homeland." He also said there were no plans to change the U.S. terror threat level, which currently stands at yellow, or elevated.

But ABC News has reported that an increased number of law enforcement and intelligence officials are concerned that al Qaeda or other extremist groups are ramping up efforts to carry out attacks on targets in Europe, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Intelligence officials say some of those groups have been at training camps in remote tribal area locations of Pakistan the same regions that might be home to senior al Qaeda leaders in hiding.

Sources have also told ABC News that recent intelligence points to a pattern of large groups of Islamic radicals flowing into terrorist camps in Pakistan for training, then leaving for unknown destination countries.

That training push, government officials believe, is hard evidence that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on targets around the globe. The problem, they say, is that details on the when, where and how of the attacks are sketchy.

But Chertoff said his department is maintaining focus.

"We respond promptly to any information, any intelligence," Chertoff told ABC News. "If we have something specific to tell the public or to communicate to local officials, we do it promptly and immediately."

"But as it stands now, we're looking at a general situation, and we don't have specific threat information," Chertoff added. "But that doesn't mean that we're not going to watch it and that tomorrow, or next week, or in two weeks, something new might not arise."
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/LegalCenter...3367404&page=1





British Press Assails Curbs on Reporting
Eric Pfanner

With his picture splashed across the front pages of British newspapers, Mohammed Asha, a doctor in the National Health Service, over the last few days became the human face of a suspected plot to bomb a London nightclub and an attack at Glasgow Airport.

According to the British police, the photos should never have appeared.

Britain has some of the tightest restrictions on reporting in the Western world, limiting news organizations’ ability to publish pictures or articles about the subjects of criminal investigations. The rules are intended to ensure fair trials by keeping potentially prejudicial information from would-be jurors.

But critics say the restrictions seem increasingly out of step in an era when Britons can turn to the Internet or other sources for unfiltered information on prominent subjects like terrorism. And, based on their coverage of the recent events, news organizations seem unclear about how to apply the rules.

“I’m a bit bemused by the coverage,” said Richard Parkes, a lawyer specializing in media matters in London. “There seem to be conflicting signals given out by the press.”

Last Monday, Scotland Yard asked media organizations not to publish pictures or artists’ impressions of people involved in the case, saying that identification of the suspects could be an issue in any trial, according to editors who received the e-mail request.

A glance at the front pages and at television screens a day later showed that British news organizations were divided in their response.

Several tabloid newspapers, including The Sun and The Mirror, prominently featured pictures of Mr. Asha, one of the suspects named in news reports, on Page 1.

The Telegraph, a broadsheet, also published a picture of Mr. Asha on the front page. The Times used a photo inside the paper, but pixilated it to make the image unrecognizable. The Guardian, on Page 1, had a picture of Mr. Asha’s father, interviewed in Jordan, where he held a photo of his son. The picture-within-a-picture, however, was pixilated.

British television reports in general were also blurring the faces of the terrorism suspects.

Several newspapers, contacted last week, declined to discuss their decisions, saying it was an internal matter. The Telegraph said in a statement that the photographs it used had “been published legitimately and in the public interest.”

The stakes in publishing can be high. According to media lawyers, editors can be jailed for violating the Contempt of Court Act, which says that news organizations should not publish anything other than basic information like an accused person’s name and age, as well as the charge against him or her. In criminal cases, including terrorism investigations, the restrictions take effect as soon as a suspect is arrested.

A spokesman for Britain’s attorney general, who is ultimately responsible for enforcing the law, said in a statement that the coverage was “under review.”

In these cases, the police did not even release the suspects’ names, leaving reporters to dig them up on their own. By midweek, most of the eight suspects who had been detained, including Mr. Asha, had been named in news reports.

On Thursday, the police repeated their request, sending out another message to editors and adding that they were worried that continued speculation about the case could damage any prosecutions.

British newspaper editors have spoken out recently against the restrictions. Especially in terror cases, where the authorities have the right to hold suspects as long as 28 days without charges, journalists chafe at the restrictions.

“It is crucial that the media strive to discover the detail of any alleged plots, and do not simply adhere to bland official statements as if publishing in some kind of police state,” Steve Dyson, editor of The Birmingham Mail, wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian last winter after news organizations reported a suspected plot to kidnap a British soldier.

Media lawyers say there may be other reasons, in addition to the desire to guarantee fair trials, why the authorities might not want news organizations to print photos of terrorism suspects. The police, for example, might be concerned that repeated lineups of photos of young men of Middle East origin could fuel racist sentiment against British Muslims.

Last week, a spokesman for the British Transport Police asked a reporter not to write about a controlled explosion that had been carried out on a suspicious package near a London Underground station, saying the authorities wanted to avoid alarming the public in the wake of the foiled bombings in London and Glasgow.

Roderick Dadak, a partner in the law firm of Lewis Silkin in London, which works with clients in the media industry, said, “What’s worrying is that the police and the attorney general seem to be trying to make it even more difficult” for news organizations to report on terror cases.

The scramble for details about terror investigations, in the absence of updates from the authorities, holds another danger for media companies, lawyers say.

Several British news organizations had to make libel payouts when they wrongly identified people as suspects in a plot to blow up airliners last summer. In one case, newspapers had used a photo of the wrong person.

Another challenge to Britain’s rules is the rise of “citizen journalism.” Photos taken on mobile phones or digital cameras have figured prominently in recent coverage of terrorist incidents, including the Glasgow Airport attack. Because many bystanders have sent images on to other people, lawyers said, it is harder to argue that a media organization should not be allowed to publish them.

The lawyers say that British journalists may feel increasing pressure to keep up with reporting on the Internet, where foreign journalists do not necessarily feel bound by the same restrictions.

Lawyers also said that the pervasiveness of the Internet made it increasingly difficult to insulate jurors from reports on a case or background information on a suspect.

“What does the judge do: Say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may not Google the suspect’? ” Mr. Parkes asked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/bu...9coverage.html





The Computer Virus Turns 25

The computer virus turns 25 years old this year. It's been a rocky quarter-century, but according to Richard Ford and Eugene Spafford, two computer scientists writing in this week's issue of the journal Science, viruses can look forward to a long, fruitful life. The researchers say that in today's hyper-connected world, when everything's got a chip in it and is running software, stopping malware is basically an impossible task. (Their article is not online.)

The computer virus conception story begins in 1981, when a tech-savvy 9th grader named Richard Skrenta got an Apple II for Christmas. Over the following few months he began cooking up ways to trick his friends using the machine. "I had been playing jokes on schoolmates by altering copies of pirated games to self-destruct after a number of plays," Skrenta once told the tech news site Security Focus. "I'd give out a new game, they'd get hooked, but then the game would stop working with a snickering comment from me on the screen."

When his friends realized his tricky ways, they banned Skrenta from their machines. And that's when he had an epiphany: He could put his code on the school's computer, and rig it to copy itself onto floppy disks that students used on the system. Thus was born Elk Cloner, the world's first computer virus to spread in the wild. The virus didn't do much damage; it infected the Apple II's OS and copied itself to other floppies, and every so often would display a tittering message on the screen:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it's Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!

Ford and Spafford note that in the years since, as viruses spread to other computer platforms and throughout the world, wreaking billions in damages, there has been little progress in fighting them. There is a scientific reason for this: "Building a computer program that can tell with absolute certainty whether any other program contains a virus is equivalent to a famous computer science conundrum called the 'halting problem,'" they write. The halting problem concerns the difficulty of spotting whether a program will terminate or continue to run forever. "It has no solution in the general case and has no approximate solution for our current computing environments without also generating too many false results," they write.

Ford and Spafford also take on the idea that Microsoft is to blame for our current virus ills. Certainly MS has neglected to secure Windows, but any platform that obtains ubiquity will become a target for attack, they note. Some say the solution is to have a diverse computing environment -- if the world ran all kinds of different platforms, rather than a Windows monoculture, viruses would spread much less slowly. But diversity, Ford and Spafford point out, creates its own problems -- if the Mac, Linux and Windows all had roughly equal share, you'd need anti-virus teams working to protect all three platforms, any one of which could serve as a weak point for wider network destruction. Platform diversity, that is, increases the "attack surface," they write.

Worse still is the potential for completely computer-free computer viruses. They point to a chain e-mail message that counseled people to delete a particular file from their computer to keep it secure. "The file they deleted was critical to the system," it turned out. The "virus" that caused its deletion was "executing" only in people's minds. And you can't get a virus checker for the brain.

So right: Happy birthday, computer virus. Many happy returns!
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007...day/index.html





Spammers Overcome Hotmail and Yahoo CAPTCHA Systems
John Pospisil

It appears that spammers have found a way of automatically creating Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts, having already created more than 15,000 bogus Hotmail accounts, according to security company BitDefender.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo use "captcha" systems to stop email accounts from being automatically generated; accounts aren't created until a new user correctly identifies letters depicted in an image. Captcha systems are designed to ensure that the letters are not easily recognized by machines.

BitDefender says that a new threat, dubbed Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A, is using automatically generated Yahoo and Hotmail accounts to send out spam email, which suggests that spammers have found a way to overcome Microsoft's and Yahoo's CAPTCHA systems.

According to BitDefender, every active copy of the Trojan accesses an email account, then pulls encrypted spam e-mails from a website, decrypts them and sends them to presumably valid addresses taken from yet another website.

The spam e-mail currently being distributed is trying to lead users to a site that advertises pharmacy products. Common spammer techniques are used in the e-mail body, such as bayesian poisoning and a random e-mail subject.

"There are only about 500 or so new accounts being created every hour," said Viorel Canja, the head of the BitDefender Antivirus Lab.

"But still, we've seen 15,000+ Hotmail accounts being used so far. It's hard to estimate how many spam e-mails have already been sent."

BitDefender claims to be the first security company to detect Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A and add a signature.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...ptcha-systems/





Media Defender to Spam P2P Networks With 16,000,000 Tracks from One Artist
enigmax

Spam comes in many shapes and forms and today we have news that anti-piracy company Media Defender has hooked up with telecoms company Sprint and Atlantic Records to give away 16 million free tracks on P2P networks. However, don’t get too excited, its 16 million tracks from one artist.

It’s being reported that Telecoms company Sprint has signed on the dotted line to form a partnership between themselves, Atlantic Records and Media Defender’s ArtistDirect.

The partnership is all about advertising. Sprint has bought the rights to have their name and logo embedded into tracks from the Atlantic Records hip-hop artist Plies.

It appears that Atlantic will supply Media Defender with a small number of Plies tracks, which will then be embedded with the Sprint logo which will appear on PC screens and digital devices playing the tracks. In return for a reported six-figure investment shared between the anti-piracy outfit, Atlantic Records and Plies, Media Defender will then flood P2P networks with the tracks over a 3 month period. Previously, Media Defender worked with Suretone Records to spam P2P networks with partial songs and videos in an attempt to generate traffic to their client’s website.

ArtistDirect’s CEO Jon Diamond said the project has a three-pronged approach of generating advertising revenue for record labels, linking brands to a particular artist to reach a certain demographic and in the process, limiting piracy.

However, most file-sharers want a plain MP3 track with nothing added and are unlikely to want tracks which cause advertising pop-ups or similar on their PC. As ‘vanilla’ MP3’s of tracks from the same artist will be widely available on the same P2P networks, it’s likely that file-sharers will be drawn towards those downloads instead of the ‘infected’ versions offered by Media Defender. So, this strategy will most likely NOT limit piracy.

Besides setting up fake BitTorrent trackers and fake video download sites, Media Defender is currently in talks with other artists and is likely to announce similar partnerships shortly.
http://torrentfreak.com/media-defend...om-one-artist/





Wow. Maybe they’ll make us an offer

Media Defender Buys P2P.net: Preparing for Their Next Scam?
Ernesto

The infamous anti-piracy organization Media Defender recently bought the P2P.net domain. Currently P2P.net redirects to Google and at this point it is still unclear what their plans are for the domain. However, it is likely that they will use it for one of their pirate traps such a the fake video download service Miivi or the fake BitTorrent trackers they run.

P2P.net (not P2Pnet.net) was up for auction at eBay earlier this year. Initially it wasn’t sold because the original owner wanted a higher price for the domain. It turns out that Media Defender was one of the interested parties, and they probably paid thousands of dollars to get the domain in their possession. Because of the huge amount of money that’s involved it is not likely that the domain will stay unused for a long time.

Last week we discovered that Media Defender actively tried to lure people into downloading blockbuster movies from their fake download site, Miivi.com. As expected, only a few hours after we made the news public the site was taken offline.

Media Defender later told Ars Technica that Miivi was an internal project to test out an online video project, but we know better. We’re convinced that they will try this, or a similar trick again in the near future.

Media Defender is hired by companies like the MPAA, BSA and RIAA to track down people who try to download copyrighted content. They record IP-addresses from BitTorrent trackers and other P2P networks. But they also utilize more proactive methods such as uploading fake .torrent files and setting up fake video download sites.

Luckily most BitTorrent site admins are aware of their shady practices and remove these fake files from their sites before they can do any harm. Pirate Bay admin Brokep offered his help to other BitTorrent admins to help them identifying and removing these fake files, he told TorrentFreak:

“Since the Miivi-incident we can’t keep quiet about them anymore. We want their employers to stop using them so they go bankrupt”

To our friends at Media Defender from all of us here at TorrentFreak… We’re watching you…

Update: Media Defender decided to redirect P2P.net to this article, thanks guys.
http://torrentfreak.com/media-defend...heir-next-scam





Moody's Questions Private-Equity Rationale

LBO firms don't always invest for the long haul, rating agency says
Alistair Barr

Private-equity firms may not always invest for the long term, and the strong performance of the buyout business could be fueled by the benign credit environment rather than management expertise, rating agency Moody's Investors Service said in a report released on Monday.

In theory, leveraged buyouts impose discipline on companies because they have to make higher interest payments. Going private is also supposed to help companies invest over a longer time horizon, free from the pressure of quarterly earnings targets and the costs of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Buyout firms' ability to attract and retain top executives is also often cited as a reason for higher returns, Moody's noted.

But the rating agency questioned some of those assumptions in its report, arguing that sometimes buyout firms have less incentive to inject capital into a business than strategic owners such as public companies.

"While Moody's would agree that leverage is likely to impose discipline and provide higher equity returns, the current environment does not suggest that private equity firms are investing over a longer term horizon than do public companies, despite not being driven by the pressure to publicly report quarterly earnings," Christina Padgett of Moody's wrote in the report.

"We also question whether there is sufficient evidence to prove that the higher returns provided to private equity are driven by stronger management teams or because, in a benign and liquid credit environment, leverage by itself can provide substantial returns to shareholders," she added. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...437E0A 4D7%7D





Can Linux Adoption Ever be Accurately Gauged?
Roy Schestowitz

Determining usage and growth of Free software has always been a challenge. For over a decade, arguments have been held – sometimes flamewars – whose central point was the usage level of software that is freely distributed. While market share can be estimated based on sales numbers, Free software usually replaces existing software that is proprietary, i.e. its ownership lies with a vendor and it is usually treated as an integral part of another product.

When discussing Free software, the term "installed base" seems rather popular. It is installation, not embedment or preinstallation, that tailors a product to the owner's personal needs. Unfortunately, installed base, as opposed to market share, proves to be a tricky thing to gauge.

At the center of this debate, one typically finds the GNU/Linux operating system. Many perceive Linux the greatest contender with the capability to bring Free software to the mainstream. Linux is commonly obtained through exchange of CDs, which can then be modified, pass from user to user, and be used to deploy the same software on multiple computers. The content of these CDs is usually (albeit not always) downloaded from the Internet. Lesser-known Linux distributions are sometimes obtained through peers or via BitTorrent, which cannot be properly tracked. These channels of communication are decentralized by nature.

Endless attempts have been made to count Linux users. User base vanity harbors confidence and leads to better support from the industry. Attempts to quantify growth have included Web sites whose sole purpose is to have Linux users register and provide details about their computers. Even the most prominent among these Web sites met very limited success. They were not able to keep up with change, let alone attract and grab the attention of all Linux users. Most Linux users were simply apathetic toward this cause.

In more recent years, the ubiquity of interconnected devices and computers has played an important role in statistics. Computing units that offer Web access have generated large piles of data. Statistical analysis of this data was thought to be another opportunity to study presence and geography of Linux users around the planet. It has, however, been a very deficient analysis. For a variety of reasons, too many assumptions were made, which led to flawed conclusions. To this date, no proper and valid analysis has been carried out.

Looking more closely at some difficulties in interpreting Web statistics, there are numerous factors to consider. There are obvious problems. The sample of selectively chosen Web sites often contains particular audiences which, on average, do not represent the entire population. Additionally, due to diversity in the identity of Linux, as it comes in as just one among a large number of distributions, identification strings are hard to understand. As such, many Linux users are simply being treated as though they use an “unknown” operating system. This “unknown” component is statistically significant, yet it tends to be ignored and discarded.

There are more problems that need to be taken into consideration. For example, data gathered by Web sites neglects to identify computers that are operated behind proxies, or even Squid. This data also assumes that everyone identifies himself or herself in a truly honest fashion. In fact, that certain Web sites were designed to reject access from every Web browser other than Internet Explorer. As a result, many Linux users are forced to pretend (by altering HTTP headers) that they use a typical Windows setup. This is known as spoofing or forging and it is a matter of convenience.

The last factor to consider here are the botnets (zombie PCs) that travel the World Wide Web. It's a relentless Web journey and this happens without the awareness of the rightful owner of the computer. This troublesome phenomenon means that large levels of Web traffic is devoured in a very wasteful fashion. It does not accurately reflect human consumption of information. Botnets act to 'pollute' log data and therefore tweak statistics. It rarely (if ever) works in favor of secure operating systems and Web browsers.

Web statistics and the research that revolves around them suffer from yet another false assumption. One must not simply accept the contention that all computers are connected to the Internet nowadays. If they are, their users do not necessarily visit an identical number of Web sites or consume an equal number of pages. Different operating systems are used in different settings. They serve a particular purpose and facilitate working tasks that might not require the Internet at all.

To use an example, Hollywood is considered a place where production studios adopt Linux, even on the desktop. In a recent interview with the press, CinePaint's Project Manager said that "Linux is the default operating [system] on desktops and servers at major animation and visual effects studios, with maybe 98 percent [or more] penetration." These computers, which include user-facing workstations, get used heavily for design and rendering work, but probably not for Web surfing.

There have been other projects that are intended to keep track of the number of Linux users by setting up a communication channel that connects a computer to the Linux distributor's servers. These projects are neither mature nor widely adopted.

On the other hand, the increasing adoption of online software repositories has made this process more feasible without it being considered "spying." And yet, the lack of a registration process leaves room for dynamic addressing, so a single unique user is still hard to identify. The user will remain a moving target on the network as long as system registration is an absent component. Free software is adverse to such privacy-compromising steps, so they are unlikely to ever become mandatory.

Last year, in an interview with Red Herring, Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth commented about the activity on his company's repositories. At the time, at least 8 million distinct users or addresses with a particular version of his Linux distribution could be identified. That was only months after the release of this distribution, which many of us had already known as "Ubuntu."

Regardless of the adoption rate of Linux on the desktop, Linux enjoys double-figure inter-quarter growth on the server side. This trend has sustained itself for several years. There are, however, great difficulties to overcome when it comes to tracking how widespread – not just profitable – Linux has become on in the datacenter. Market figures regularly come from analysts, but these figures are based purely on sales. They only gauge revenue. They fail to account for the fact that Linux is free and is becoming easier to set up each year. Many companies take the do-it-yourself route and build their own server farms. They do not require much assistance, so deployment can be completed without a Linux purchase – per se – ever being made. The true growth of Linux will therefore stay an enigma for quite some time to come.

At the end of the day, let’s remember that Free software was not created to thrive in profits. There is no marketing department to boast of growth, either. Yet whether we use a search engine, or connect to a mail server, or acquire some snazzy gadget, Linux is likely to be there. The desktop, however, is perceived as an ultimate destination. It has the most visibility. Laptops and desktops can demonstrate that Linux has come and that it is here to stay and thrive. The back room usually escapes people's attention, despite a gradual shift in paradigm, which encourages adoption of remote services and thinner clients.

Counting the number of Linux users might always remain an impossibility. Should you mind?
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osr...le.php/3687616





Open-Source Journalism: It's a Lot Tougher Than You Think
Anna Haynes

Assignment Zero

Editor's Note: This story is reprinted from Assignment Zero, an experiment in open-source, pro-am journalism produced in collaboration with Wired News. This week, we'll be republishing a selection of Assignment Zero stories on the topic of "crowdsourcing." All in all, Assignment Zero produced about 80 stories, essays and interviews about crowdsourcing; we'll reprint 12 of the best. The stories appear here exactly as Assignment Zero produced them. They have not been edited for facts or style.

- - -

With additional reporting by Maurice Cardinal, Melissa Metzger, Robert William King, Francine Hardaway, and Neal G. Moore
Edited by Vivian Martin

In which a member of crowdsourced journalism's "working class" shares a ground-level view of the motivations, the frustrations, and the potential of this movement

It's true that crowdsourcing can bring new life to journalism: through replacement, with pro-am collaborations replacing coverage lost to newsroom cuts; through exploitation, with newspaper execs "harvesting" the wisdom of their community; or through bypass, with the "people formerly known as the audience" banding together to tackle investigations that -- for varied reasons -- the mainstream press is less eager to address.

But fundamentally, crowdsourced journalism's promise must be realized by the crowd; if a project doesn't suit the "users," it won't fly. So hearing from -- and listening to -- these users is key.

The most-heard voices on crowdsourced journalism come from those at the top: for Assignment Zero we've interviewed such leaders as NOLA.com's Jon Donley, the NorthWest Voice's Mary Lou Fulton* and NOWPUBLIC's Michael Tippett; evangelists Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis; CPA-wielding TPM Cafe warrior Mrs. Panstreppon and Daily Kos leader-rallier SusanG.

As a common worker bee from within the "crowd," I offer a user's perspective -- on how it's been to forage for information on these projects; on why and where we want to contribute; and on where crowdsourced journalism needs to go next.

Before Assignment Zero, I worked, or tried to work, on six crowdsourced journalism projects. They were of widely varying scope, and aren't composed of the usual suspects; in a sense, I've been laboring in crowdsourced journalism's "long tail." (These six projects are covered in a companion article.)

The results of my efforts were mixed. Some parts were rewarding: I enjoyed digging to uncover lobbyist connections to earmarked appropriations in the Earmarks Project, plus there's a certain satisfaction in publicly exposing stonewalling, and a different satisfaction in finally getting an answer.

But I contribute to crowdsourced journalism because I want my work to yield a high "social good" return, and by that metric, overall, the experience has been frustrating. With some of these projects I ended up with nothing to show for the time I put in -- either from being unable to get or enter the data, or from not following through where I probably would have, had there been support. (Support is crucial: if not for my editor's encouragement at a bleak moment, you wouldn't be reading this now.) And in the projects where I did contribute, my work had no visible effect -- because of no follow-up or no publicity, or because what I provided just wasn't very significant. All in all, I likely could have spent the time more productively at home on my own weblog.

In short: There was plenty of room for improvement.

So, why bother?

Answer: Because there is plenty of room for improvement. I did it, and will continue doing it, for the same reason that you keep going out on dates even though the first six guys didn't measure up -- you know there's potential to the form, you want that potential to be realized, and you're pretty sure that, if you keep plugging away and you put the word out, in time that potential will blossom.

What does this blooming potential look like, from the contributors' perspective?

For some people -- for most people -- it'll take the form of the political activist crowdsourced journalism that goes on at sites like TPM Muckraker and Daily Kos; as SusanG noted, sometimes it'll be as "many eyes," poring over documents; other times as "many ears and voices," reaching out to our representatives, asking them questions, and bringing this information back to the hive; and still other times as "swarm journalism," attacking the varied pieces of a story in a ravening piranha horde.

This form of crowdsourced journalism has been wildly successful in attracting motivated contributors, and for good reason: it's easy to feel that what you're doing has value, when what you're doing is defending your country.

Others will gravitate toward a group endeavor with individual appeal, such as taking part in a project to question some of the web's most interesting people, as Assignment Zero's 80 interviews now show.

And for those of us who wish to shine the light more locally, I'd like to believe a third crowdsourcing model has yet to emerge: it would employ crowdsourcing's group strengths to help citizens tackle the watchdog journalism that cries to be done in their own communities. A support organization for geographically distributed local watchdogging, it would offer editorial services, reporting advice, training in analyzing budgets and the like, discussion with peers, access to tools, and a "home away from home" to showcase and critique the work. The projects could be coordinated, with each participant running the same analysis on their own city or town.

There's clearly a need for the reportorial product; as the NYC Indypendent's Chris Anderson said:
"I would like to see crowdsourcing reach deep down into the bowels of local city governments....[The suburbs] need good investigative journalism as much as anywhere else. More probably. There's a lot of corruption in those places, and the mainstream press is dropping the ball."

Citizen journalist nonpareil Mrs. Panstreppon agrees:
"I think local crowdsourcing is an excellent idea.... We are suffering from a lack of news about local and state government because [the local paper] has been undergoing severe budget cuts...."

And ordinary citizens agree too. Said the Arizona Star's Debbie Kornmiller:
"the people I hear from think the government is corrupt -- local, national.... And where the criticism is, is that we don't do enough to uncover that corruption."

To tackle this reporting, we'll need support services: without this support, citizen journalists up against entrenched power structures will likely end up at best nowhere, at worst toast. We'll need purely practical support, too; for example, those who don't share Mrs. P.'s accounting background could sorely use help interpreting financial documents.

This support doesn't yet exist. Current citizen journalism training sites like New Voices, NewsU, and the community news self-help portal Knight Citizen News Network don't cover watchdogging; they're designed for a different job. They give lessons in basic journalism -- offering helpful tips on writing for a community web site, where a friendly community holds sway. Where citizen muckrakers need a one-on-one with Machiavelli, they offer Scouting merit badges.

"Real journalism consists of what someone doesn't want published, all the rest is public relations." -- George Orwell

"Never, never, never let them intimidate you." -- David Halberstam

"There ain't nothin' for testicular enhancement like having [a group] behind you." -- anonymous friend

I want to report news, not PR. I want the powers that be to quiver at my approach, not the other way around. I want to cover the stories that won't be covered by a tame local press, but I know I'll get nowhere by going it alone; I need a network to teach me what I need, to support me in these efforts, to look at what I'm doing and tell me where I'm going wrong, to suggest angles worth pursuing.

Chris Anderson questioned whether citizen journalism that's not overtly political yields enough psychic reward to thrive:
"politics are a passion of the bloodstream, and the gut. These other things [good journalism, objective knowledge] are a little more...abstract maybe?"

But truth can be a passion of the bloodstream and gut as well. A journalist once told me "[Investigative] reporting is like crack." He's right; I've tried it.

I want more.

But to go there, I need backup.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/n...ew_from_crowds





A Handwritten Daily Paper in India Faces the Digital Future
Scott Carney

The fax machine on 76-year-old Editor-in-Chief Syed Fazlulla's crowded desk is by far the most sophisticated technology in the room. It whizzes and burps forth a stream of scribbled notes from a correspondent in New Delhi.

Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin.

Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs -- writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.

"I write because I love the language," says Rehaman Hussein, a mustached katib who has written the paper's front page for more than 20 years. "Urdu is a clean language. It is the language of our Koran."

But the Musalman's future is uncertain because the art of Urdu calligraphy is a fast-fading tradition. The newspaper has no clear successor who would produce it in its handwritten form when Fazlulla can no longer do the job. The issue is a source of tension between him and his son Syed Nasarulla, who runs a greeting-card business out of a loft directly above his father's office. He would only reluctantly take the paper's reins.

"I understand Urdu, but have no interest in calligraphy," Nasarulla said. "There is no practical reason we have not gone to computers. If my father asks me to take over I will take over, but there will be changes."

In the meantime, the office is a center for the South Indian Muslim community and hosts a stream of renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty who contribute to the pages, or just hang out, drink chai and recite their most recent works to the staff. The Musalman publishes Urdu poetry and messages on devotion to God and communal harmony daily.

The newspaper's content is not exactly hard-hitting. It covers the basics of local politics and the writers translate stories from English papers into Urdu. Still, the paper is widely read and appreciated by Muslims in Tripplicane and Chennai where the paper has a circulation of 20,000.

While the Musalman is a Muslim newspaper, it is a hub of South Asian liberalism, employing both women and non-Muslims. Half the katibs are women and the chief reporter is Hindu. Staff members say that Indira Gandhi, former prime minister of India, once called the business the epitome of what modern India should be.

Fazlulla believes the handwritten pages are crucial to the paper and to the tradition of handwritten Urdu.

For centuries, handwriting was the definitive mark of social status, education and liberal values in India. Calligraphers mastered the swooping Urdu script in ivory-tower institutions and penned copies of the Koran for wealthy patrons. The pinnacle of a katib's achievement meant a seat at court and a chance to earn the sultan's ear.

Similar to spoken Hindi, Urdu is a mixture of Arabic, Persian and local Indian languages. It originated in the army camps of Muslim rulers in Delhi and has been the language of poets and artists because its rich roots draw on so many traditions across various cultures.

But when British colonizers swept across India importing printing presses and English, Urdu ceased to be the official court language. It was spoken primarily by the Muslim community, but katibs could still make a living because no Urdu typeface existed.

That changed in 1997 with the first widely circulated Urdu computer font. Nowadays, people learn to read and write Urdu mostly as a hobby.

"The real masters are all dead, or they are so old that they are blind and their hands won't work anymore," Fazlulla said.

But the Musalman has survived and operates much as it has since it was founded in 1927. The biggest change came in the 1950s when Fazlulla unloaded a massive offset printer from a cargo ship. He salvaged the machine from a defunct American newspaper, and the paper has used it ever since.

Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts -- there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page.

The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai.

The paper's popularity may not be enough to save the handwritten calligraphy tradition when the last of the katibs retires. Fazlulla worries what the digital revolution might mean for the future of his paper and his brand of calligraphy.

"Urdu is sweeter when written by hand," he said.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty..._calligraphers





Write Articles, Not Blog Postings
Jakob Nielsen

Summary:
To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.

I recently served as a "consultant's consultant," advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. In particular, this expert asked me whether he should start a weblog. I said no.

You probably already know my own Internet strategy, so it might not surprise you that I recommended that he should instead invest his time in writing thorough articles that he published on a regular schedule. Given limited time, this means not spending the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.

Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.

Avoid Commodity Status
For many B2B sites with long sales cycles, quick hits to commodity-level content are insufficient. Instead, these sites need to build up long-term customer relationships based on respect.

Take my own business, for example. When I talk with people at my usability conferences, they often say that they've wanted to attend for ages, and only recently secured their boss's approval to come. To address this issue, we added a "convince your boss" section to our conference sites, explaining the benefits of spending money on usability training. Still, realistically, I expect to wait 3-5 years before meeting new readers of my site in person.

Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant.

Demonstrate Leadership
For the sake of argument, let's say that you're the world leader in your field. We'll quantify that as being the #1 expert among the 1,000 people with websites in your field. In other words, you are in the 99.9th percentile.

(Although you might think you have many more than 1,000 competitors, the Web thrives on specialized content, so it's better to conceptualize yourself as leading a smaller subdiscipline, unless you're so good that you're #1 out of millions of people.)

We can measure expertise as some combination of intelligence, education, experience, correct methodology, professionalism (say, avoiding profanities and politics), and willingness to be frank. The exact metric doesn't matter here; let's just assume there's a way to quantify how good people are within their field.

Assuming that you're this good, you have to show it to gain customers. And blogs aren't the way, as we'll see once we plot the distribution of postings as opposed to writers.

Variability of Blog Posting Quality
Assume that the 1,000 people each write 10 blog postings. The resulting 10,000 postings will follow a much broader distribution, because the quality of postings is extremely variable.

Let's assume that a given writer's posting quality is normally distributed, with a mean representing that person's level of expertise and a standard deviation 3 times as large as the SD for expertise among people. I don't know what the actual number is, so this is just a rough estimate. But it's reasonable to assume that posting quality is more variable than expertise for several reasons:

• Sometimes people toss off a posting in a minute. Other times they spend hours.
• Sometimes a writer happens to know a lot about the topic at hand, possibly because they've just spent several months working on that exact problem. Other times people know nothing--which doesn't keep them from voicing their opinions :-)
• Sometimes people are lucky and get a blinding insight. Other times they post more out of duty than anything else.

Even if you're the world's top expert, your worst posting will be below average, which will negatively impact on your brand equity. If you do start a blog despite my advice, at least screen your postings: wait an hour or two, then reread your comments and avoid uploading any that are average or poor. (Even average content undermines your brand. Don't contribute to information pollution by posting material that isn't above the average of other people's writings.)

In my simulation, our expert's best posting happens to be #25 from the top. The expert's second-best posting was ranked #300 from the top. It might seem fine to be the author of postings #9,700 and #9,975 out of a group of 10,000 blog postings. But in fact, it's nowhere near good enough.

The beauty of the blogosphere is that it's a self-organizing system. Whenever something good appears, other blogs link to it and it gets promoted in the system and gains higher visibility. Thus, the 24 postings that are better than our expert's very best attempt will gain higher prominence, even though they're written by people with lower overall expertise.

Prospective new customers don't even have time to read 24 postings, so they'll never make it down the list of rank-ordered blog postings to reach our expert's best.

Beating the Internet
It's almost impossible to fight the Internet: you're up against millions of people who are willing to work for free. But you have to do so, because if you work within the prevailing Web paradigm you're letting the search engines take 98% of your content's value. That's okay if you're not in the content business. Our pistachio site doesn't mind that it's not making money off its recipe for delicious pistachio ice cream. Just as long as it sells nuts.

If you're an expert who wants to live from adding to the world's knowledge, you must go beyond the mainstream Web model of single page visits driven by search traffic. It's easy enough to build a website that freeloaders will use, but that shouldn't be your approach. You must change the game and create content that's so valuable that business users are willing to pay for it.

You should also focus on material that lower-ranked content contributors can't easily create in their spare time.

Both of these needs are met when you produce in-depth content.

In-Depth Content Is Value-Add Content
It might take you only an hour to write a blog posting on some current controversy, but a thousand other people can do that as well (in fact, they'll sometimes do it better, as shown above). And customers don't want to pay for such a tiny increment of knowledge. Sure, sometimes a single paragraph holds the idea that can increase a site's conversion rate so much that a reader should have paid a million dollars to read it. But they don't know that in advance, so they won't pay.

In contrast, in-depth content that takes much longer to create is beyond the abilities of the lesser experts. A thousand monkeys writing for 1,000 hours doesn't add up to Shakespeare. They'll actually create a thousand low-to-medium-quality postings that aren't integrated and that don't give readers a comprehensive understanding of the topic -- even if those readers suffer through all 1,000 blogs.

Thorough content's added value can rise above the threshold where customers become willing to be separated from their money. This is the true measure of a sustainable business.

You have to identify opportunities with a non-linear utility function: where paying customers assign more than 10 times higher value to something that costs 10 times as much to produce. The old open-source manifesto "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" holds much truth: when you're the duke, you can't trade in coffee beans, because the bazaar dealers will always undercut your price. You should build a cathedral, because a thousand tents can't compete with the Notre Dame.

The fatter the report became, the more it has sold. Of course, page count (the blue line) is only a rough indication of the amount of insight, which is what customers are really paying for. The new edition has a large number of eyetracking heatmaps, showing how users read various newsletters, and these many illustrations eat up pages ferociously. Still, there's no doubt that each report edition contains significantly more information than previous editions.

The report's price has increased less than its page count: as we keep doing this research, we become more efficient. You could argue that customers are getting more for their money, and that's why they're buying more. But this argument works only if customers in fact assign extra value to more comprehensive reports. So either way, I conclude that in-depth content sells.

Why are paying customers (the people who matter) attracted by detailed information? Because systematic and comprehensive coverage is more actionable. It also protects them against the risk of losses caused when something important is overlooked.

In my report example, consider an Internet marketing manager who's in charge of the company's email newsletter. The report's price is trivial compared to millions of dollars many companies would gain from increased subscription rates, increased open rates, increased clickthrough rates, and enhanced customer loyalty from content that's both better appreciated and read more often. To improve these key performance metrics for her newsletter, the manager could spend a week surfing the Web and reading a thousand short pieces about newsletter design. The result? A scattered set of imprecise advice that neglects many important issues. Instead, that manager could spend a day gaining much deeper insights from reading a single, well-structured report with all-inclusive coverage of the topic. Saving 4 days is worth a lot in business, which is another reason to target business customers with value-added information.

In-depth content provides more value in less time than numerous superficial postings. That's why business customers have empirically been willing to pay, and that's why you should emphasize fewer, better pieces as your content strategy.

Expertise vs. Content Usability
This has been a very long article, stuffed with charts and statistical concepts -- like standard deviations and utility functions -- that I know most readers find difficult. Recommending in-depth content flies in the face of all guidelines for Web writing, which call for fewer words and scannable information.

The content usability guidelines are correct: they are indeed the way to make a site easier for most people. Thus, you should follow the guidelines -- rather than emulate this article -- for normal business websites and intranets. (When I say "business sites," I include government sites and non-profits. as well as e-commerce and corporate marketing sites.)

For most sites, the content is not the point. Instead, you want to answer customers' questions as rapidly as possible so that they'll advance in the sales cycle and start buying (or donate, or sign up for your newsletter, or whatever else you want them to do).

Elite, expertise-driven sites are the exception to the rule. For these sites, you don't care about 90% of users, because they want a lower level of quality than you provide and they'll never pay for your services. People looking for the quick hit and free advice are not your customers. Let them eat cake; let them read Wikipedia.

Still, even if you run an expertise-driven site, you should follow the bulk of content usability guidelines: be as brief as you can; use bulleted lists and highlighted keywords; chunk the material; and use descriptive headings, subheads, and hyperlinks. The small percentage of users who are qualified prospects still read in an F-pattern, so a headline's first words are more important than its last words, just as they are for normal sites.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html





Is The Page View Dead?
Louis Hau

Pity the poor page view.

Nielsen/NetRatings dealt the aging Internet-audience metric its latest blow when the company said Tuesday that it would no longer provide page-view rankings for Web sites.

Instead, NetRatings said it will be adding new measurements, including total time spent on a site and total visits, to provide what it believes will be a more comprehensive snapshot of how much visitors are using a given Web site.

Why the switch? NetRatings cited the broadening use of online video players and so-called "Ajax" (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications that deliver photos, online maps, e-mail and other services and content without having to go to another Web page. As a result, counting page views can significantly underestimate how much a Web surfer is using a site, particularly at Ajax-heavy portal sites like Yahoo!, Google and Time Warner's AOL.

That, in turn, has profound implications for marketers as they determine how much they should spend to advertise on a particular Web property.

In a statement, Scott Ross, director of product development for NetRatings' NetView service, said that total minutes spent on a site per month "is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using [Ajax] and streaming media, but also of Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming.''

But the move drew a mixed response from online advertising experts, who note that many Web sites make no use of Ajax technologies.

James Kiernan, vice president and group director of digital media and innovation at MediaVest USA in New York, said the time is right to evaluate better ways of measuring online audience engagement, but added that he felt it was premature to drop page-viewing rankings.

"Just to take away that metric, which media buyers have been relying on, is surprising,'' Kiernan said.

Sheryl Draizen, general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, said that "obviously it's great that Nielsen is innovating" and agreed that time spent on a site is a crucial metric.

But she added that the industry needs to be cautious because "I don't think we've done enough work yet to come up with what is the replacement for the page view ... It may be that time spent is the right one, but I don't know if we know that yet." (Forbes.com Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller is IAB's chairman.)

Rival online audience-measurement firm comScore most frequently uses monthly unique visitors to compile its Web site traffic rankings. But it also uses other metrics, including total time spent, and last year began collecting data on video streams initiated by users at sites such as Google's YouTube, which it said provided a more accurate picture of the online video audience than unique visitors did.

In a December statement discussing new Web traffic data, comScore President and Chief Executive Magid Abraham acknowledged that the "Internet experience today is much more dynamic thanks to Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax," adding that while page views "will not altogether cease to be a relevant measure of a site's value, it's clear that there is an increasing need to consider page views alongside newer, more relevant measures."

Draizen said that regardless of how NetRatings and comScore measure the online audience, "it's not the methodology, it's about the transparency behind the methodology." Unlike Nielsen's TV ratings and Arbitron's measurement of the radio audience, NetRatings and rival online measurement firm comScore haven't submitted to third-party audits of their methodologies.

But following a meeting in May with officials from the IAB and the Media Rating Council, both firms indicated that they are willing to at least consider cooperating with third-party audits.

All of these efforts highlight the fact that the Internet provides marketers with far more data about consumer behavior than any other medium. The trick is making sense of it all. The stakes couldn't be higher: Research firm eMarketer projects U.S. online advertising to total $21.7 billion in 2007, up 28% from last year.

But the total online ad market still accounts for only a small percentage of overall ad expenditures. Draizen estimates the Internet's share of total ad spending hovers around 6%, which she said reflects just a fraction of its reach among consumers.

"We are still a relatively new medium,'' Draizen said. "We need to make sure the foundation of the new medium is on very solid footing for long-term growth."
http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/10/int...pageviews.html





Sites Let Preteens Network Online
AP

This past spring, 10-year-old Adam Young joined other tweens on Club Penguin, playing games, throwing virtual snowballs and chatting with fellow kids who appear onscreen as plump cartoon penguins. A few weeks later, Adam asked Mom to pay $5 a month for extra features, such as decorating his online persona's igloo.

Karen Young demanded to learn more about what some have billed as ''training wheels'' for the next MySpace generation. She spent time on the site with Adam and consulted with her sister, the mother of another daily visitor.

''I said, `Well, what is it? What does it involve?''' Young recalled. ''I wanted him to show me what he wanted and what it was about.''

Drawing preteens as young as 6 or 7, sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz are forcing parents to decide at what age they are willing to let their children roam about and interact with friends online. They, along with schools, are having to teach earlier lessons on safety, etiquette and balance with offline activities.

''It's kind of like what happened in the real world with Cabbage Patch dolls and Beanie Babies,'' said Monique Nelson, executive vice president of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit focused on Internet safety for children. ''Their friends are doing it, so like kids who follow like sheep, they go online and go on these sites.''

According to comScore Media Metrix, U.S. visitors to Club Penguin nearly tripled over the past year, while Webkinz' grew 13 times.

Peggy Meszaros, a professor of human development at Virginia Tech, said kids' identities begin to blossom by 8 and they start wanting to meet other children, so these sites may become their introduction to social networking. But she said kids that age would get much more ''going to the swimming pool and meeting friends face to face,'' making parental oversight of online usage ever-important.

Young, a first-grade teacher in Louisville, Ky., ultimately deemed the environment relatively safe and agreed to pay for a membership. Unlike News Corp.'s MySpace, the anything-goes site frequented by Young's older son, Club Penguin limits what kids can say to one another, reducing the risks of predators and online bullying.

That sentiment was echoed by Tony Bayliss, father of 7-year-old Maisie in England. Club Penguin is the only site Bayliss lets Maisie visit unsupervised; Bayliss also has a cartoon penguin of his own and visits his daughter online while traveling.

''It's what the future is,'' Bayliss said of the online environment. ''It's what she's going to be using for the rest of her life.''

Club Penguin was started more than a year ago as ''an online playground for kids,'' said Lane Merrifield, the site's co-founder and chief executive. ''How can we take the fun pieces of these more grown-up and adult (social-networking) sites and surround them in a safe environment?''

Kids win gold coins by playing games such as sled racing and, with a paid membership, buy virtual items like furniture and clothing. Kids can attend parties and make friends by adding other penguins to their buddy lists.

The site, from Canada's New Horizon Interactive Ltd., does not try to keep out older users -- after all, anyone can lie about age. Rather, it builds in controls meant to curb outside contact and harassment. The company says it has never had a problem with predators.

Parents can choose an ''ultimate safe'' mode, meaning chat messages sent and received are limited to prewritten phrases, such as ''How are you today?''

In the standard mode, kids can type messages like any other chat program, but only the sender sees messages containing foul language and even innocent-sounding words such as ''mom'' -- to prevent someone from asking, ''Is your mom home?'' Senders would think they are being ignored and not try tricks to bypass filters.

The filters also catch numbers that might form a phone number a kid is trying to share, even if someone tries to replace ''1'' with ''one.''

Veterans can apply to become ''secret agents,'' responsible for patrolling the site and reporting bad behavior, and violations can get a kid banned for a day or longer.

Likewise, Webkinz limits chats by permitting only prewritten phrases, and e-cards go only to those already on friends lists.

Kids take quizzes or perform chores to earn ''KinzCash'' to buy furniture for their virtual room and food for their virtual pet. They must return to the site regularly to keep their pets fed and healthy; otherwise, it's a trip to Dr. Quack for medical care, though the pets themselves never die.

Unlike Club Penguin, though, access to the Canadian-based site from Ganz is restricted to those who buy a Webkinz plush toy at a retail store for about $15, many of which have been selling out because of high demand. Think Beanie Babies with an online component. A code on each toy unlocks the site for a year.

Both sites do require some reading skills, though younger kids can participate with older siblings or parents.

Other popular tween online hangouts include Millsberry, a General Mills Inc. site that promotes good eating but features product placements for its cereals, and Numedeon Inc.'s Whyville, where tweens play games and earn clams.

Although these social-networking precursors for tweens tend to incorporate more safety measures than MySpace, Facebook and other sites geared toward teenagers and adults, experts warn that parents can't simply sign their kids on and leave them there, especially during the summer months when kids have more time to spend online.

''We want them to develop and grow physically, spiritually and emotionally,'' Meszaros said. ''If they are on the computer three or four hours a day, that's time they could be doing other things. Parents need to be monitoring.''

Step one is to decide whether kids should be there at all.

Jane Healy, author of ''Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- for Better and Worse,'' said kids may feel they are ''going to be a hopeless social failure'' if they can't participate.

Advocates say the controlled environment can teach kids important lessons about typing, communicating, caring for pets and budgeting -- they must learn to work and save for the trampoline they want for their virtual room.

But Healy said these sites also teach kids to be ''a good consuming member of the consuming culture (and) to need stuff to be considered successful or good.''

She urges caution in opening the door to ''powerful forces out there trying to intrude into your family life and personal relations with your child.'' Not only do these sites introduce commercialism, she said, but they also can take kids away from offline environments where they can learn to pick up body language and facial expressions.

Software tools are available to help parents control Internet activities, including use of these sites. Monitoring software can record a kid's chat conversations and whereabouts -- secretly if the parent wishes. Other tools, some available for free, aim to block porn or limit when or how long a child can be online.

Parents should at least keep computers in an open room and surf the Web side-by-side with their kids now and then. A discussion on time limits is important because rules are far easier to impose from the beginning, and Club Penguin will soon introduce a feature for parents to set such limits on the site.

''As soon as the egg timer comes up, we're going to have a list of activities they can do outside,'' Merrifield said.

Parents should also start addressing safety and online etiquette.

''They can't be there every time they go online .... so it's even more important to spend more time up front teaching them how to be safe and smart,'' said Susan Sachs, chief operating officer with the nonprofit Common Sense Media.

It helps that many parents are now using the Internet not just for work but also for recreation, information sharing and other social interaction.

''When kids start to use technology, (parents) can be much more part of the process, as opposed to, `Gee, this is all new and strange to me. I don't want you using it,''' said Peter Grunwald, a researcher who specializes in kids and technology.

Nonetheless, Grunwald said, ''kids are using online services at an earlier age, and that means parents do have to exercise their role as parents and be mindful of it at an earlier age than, say, seven, eight or nine years ago.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...ng-Tweens.html





35 Perspectives on Online Social Networking
Malene Charlotte Larsen

There are many different perspectives to put on online social networking and it is important to know where one is coming from when talking about social networking and youth. The perspective(s) one has will be very different whether one is a parent with a teenage daughter on MySpace, a marketing executive interested in the target group “14 to 20,” a journalist looking for the next big news story on young people and new media, a youngster using a social networking site as part of everyday life or a researcher investigating how young people are using social networking sites.

In this article I try to list the different perspectives I can think of. Mostly, the list is based on my own experiences with Danish social networking sites for youngsters between the age of 12 and 18.

The following 35 perspectives on online social networking sites can be sorted into different overall categories (or different actors or discourses). As a researcher I certainly do not agree with all of the mentioned perspectives, but some of them do represent the opinions (or prejudices) I hear when I am out giving lectures on social networking to adults. After my list, I propose six overarching categories.

But first, here are thirty-five perspectives on online social networking:

The consumer perspective
Social networking sites are money-making machines creating a need for added value among young people causing them to spend all their pocket money on extra features such as VIP profiles, widgets, gifts for friends and so on.

The youth perspective
Social networking sites are places that help young people be young and let them “practice” youth. Therefore, the sites are mainly a reflection of youth culture.

The friendship perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people can maintain and nurse their existing (offline) friendships and create new (online) friendships.

The identity perspective
Social networking sites are spaces for identity construction. Here, young people are continuously constructing, re-constructing and displaying their self-image and identity. Also, the network sites make them co-constructors of each other’s identities.

The body and sex perspective
Social networking sites are sexual playgrounds for young people where they portray themselves in a provocative or soft porn-style manner. It is all about appearance and body making the youngsters superficial and shallow.

The paedophile and predator perspective
Social networking sites are an El Dorado for paedophiles and predators who want to harm young people. The people behind the sites are not in control of safety and do not put enough effort into keeping predators out of the sites.

The bullying perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people bully and threaten each other and the sites are reinforcing and urging bullying between young people.

The reassurance perspective
Social networking sites are forums for reassurance and confirmatory messages between young people constantly reminding them that they are all right and someone likes them.

The genre perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people imitate and copy different genres, e.g. fashion magazines, music videos, song lyrics, commercials etc. which can be found in their profile texts.

The branding perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people learn the mechanism of branding and learn to sell and brand themselves in a positive manner.

The network perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people learn the crucial importance of being able to network which they can benefit from in their future professional life.

The love perspective
Social networking sites allow young people to express themselves in a loving manner, thus creating a space for a love discourse that do not exist outside cyberspace.

The source critique perspective
Social networking sites force young people to be sceptical of what they see and read online. They know that people can create faker profiles which make them extra aware of the identity of the people they communicate with.

The sincerity perspective
Social networking sites make young people present themselves in a sincere manner in order to avoid being mistaken for a faker. This also creates a sincerity discourse among the users and people who do not follow this are disciplined.

The democratic perspective
Social networking sites are places that allow young people to have a voice in society. Here, they can be heard and express their opinions.

The materialistic perspective
Social networking sites are all about materialism and about having the right brands. Youngsters need to be successful with the right clothes and things in order to be accepted on social networking sites.

The language perspective
Social networking sites aggravate the written language of young people. They develop bad habits of misspelling on purpose, which makes them unable to write correctly. On the other hand, their online language is really creative and they do know how to tell right from wrong.

The public perspective
Social networking sites are “open diaries” of young people, but they do not think about the fact that the whole world can read their text and see their pictures online.

The surveillance perspective
Social networking sites are surveillance. Everything young people write online are saved and can be used (against them) by marketing people, future employers and so on.

The group work perspective
Social networking sites reinforce group work mechanism and young people often work together on profiles and are often willing to help each other.

The time consuming perspectives
Social networking sites are places where young people spend way to much time preventing them from performing healthy spare time activities such as sports and outdoor time.

The anti-social perspective
Social networking sites make young people anti-social and incapable of communication with others face to face. They lose important social competences.

The social perspective
Social networking sites make young people more social and help them communicate with others. Especially, the sites help youngsters cope with shyness or loneliness.

The generation-gap perspective
Social networking sites are creating a greater gap between young people and adults such as their parents and teachers who do not understand the youngsters’ need to be online all the time.

The learning perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people gain important IT competences such as HTML design, layout and graphics.

The entertainment perspective
Social networking sites are places young people use for entertainment just like any other medium. Here they watch videos, play games, upload pictures, listen to music etc. Thus, for many youngsters social networking sites have replaced the function that the tv set had for previous generations.

The communication tool perspective
Social networking sites are merely a communication tool for young people and they use the sites similar to how they use their mobile phones. In this connection I can mention that the most frequent message I have seen displayed in young people’s guest books is “Hi, what are you doing?”

The creative perspective
Social networking sites allow youngsters to be really creative and mix and play with different types of content. My colleague Thomas Ryberg refers to this as ‘patchwork’ or ‘remix’ culture in his upcoming PhD thesis on young people, ICT and learning.

The space and place perspective
Social networking sites are spaces that allow young people to create their own place(s). And those places are as real and important as the offline places where they meet. Also, young people talk about social networking sites as places referring to them as e.g.. “in here”.

The Nexus of Practice perspective
A social networking site could be seen as a ‘Nexus of Practice’. This concept comes from Ron Scollon and it “simultaneously signifies a genre of activity and the group of people who engage in that activity.” (Scollon, 2001). People are rather loosely connected in a ‘nexus of practice’ and I think it is a good metaphor for social networking. (I used the term defining Arto in my thesis.)

The Community of Practice perspective
Social networking sites are therefore not communities in the original sense of the word. However, they do provide the possibility that young people can join in more closely connected interest groups which in Etienne Wenger’s terms could be labelled Communities of Practice (CoP’s). Thus, a social networking site could be viewed as a ‘Nexus of Practice’ with numerous ‘CoP’s’ incorporated.

The collection perspective
Social networking sites are places for young people’s collection mania. Here they collect friends, guest book messages, picture comments etc. (Thanks to Jette Agerbo for pointing out this perspective on her blog.)

The fun perspective
Social networking sites are “just for fun”. Jette Agerbo also mentions this perspective calling it the ‘play perspective’. However, I must say that I do not include the more game or play oriented websites (like Habbo Hotel or Netstationen) in my definition of social networking sites. But of course some youngsters could be using a social networking site as a way of playing or just having fun.

The technological perspective
Social networking sites are part of the Web 2.0 and social software technology generation in which case focus on the technological possibilities is predominant.

The hardcore business perspective
Social networking sites are hardcore business for the big corporations behind the sites (like Fox). I don’t think I quite covered that perspective in my last list mentioning the consumer perspective.

I have touched upon many of these perspectives during my research, but some of the views are still to be explored. However, I must say that I certainly do not agree with all of the mentioned perspectives, but some of them do represent the opinions (or prejudices) I hear when I am out giving lectures to adults.

Different Categories

It is important to know that all of these different perspectives belong to different overall categories (or different actors or discourses). Based on my - currently 35 - different perspectives I propose the following six overarching categories:

Research perspectives

It this category we find e.g. the identity perspective, the youth perspective, the language perspective, the genre perspective, the materialistic perspective, the learning perspective, the creative perspective, the Community of Practice perspective and so on. All of those perspectives could (and should) be a way of researching online social networking and youth. (I am on it )

User perspectives

In this category we find the point-of-view from the users of social networking, e.g. the social perspective, the friendship perspective, the democratic perspective, the love perspective, the reassurance perspective, the sincerity perspective, the public perspective etc. Those perspectives could also be viewed as different motives that the users have for using social networking sites.

Professional or learning perspectives

To this category belongs the perspectives that consider the learning possibilities of social networking or see how it can be used in a (future) professional life. We have here the network perspective, the group work perspective, the source critique perspective, the technological perspective, the creative perspective, the Community of Practice perspective and more.

Adult or parents perspectives

In this category we have the voices from the worried parents or other adults who have a hard time understanding why the youngsters spend so much time in front of the screen. This is for example the time-consuming perspective, the anti-social perspective, the generation gap perspective, the language perspective, the consumer perspective, the public perspective etc.

Moral panic or news media perspectives

Some perspectives emerge out of a public concern or a news media discourse where creating selling headlines comes into play. Thus, we have in this category the paedophile and predator perspective, the bullying perspective, the sex perspective, the network perspective, the youth perspective, the public perspective and so on.

Marketing perspectives

In this category we find the marketing or business perspectives such as the consumer perspective, the materialistic perspective, the branding perspective, the surveillance perspective and the hardcore business perspective.

Conclusion
As can be seen from the above, some of the perspectives will fit into more than one category and could be taken up by several actors. But I do think it is important to know where one is coming from when talking about online social networking and youth. In any case, mapping out the different perspectives has been a good exercise for me as a researcher.
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.c....cfm?colid=432





AOL to Pay $3 Million Settlement Over Cancellation Policy
Michael Liedtke

Averting a looming court battle over how it has handled the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states and the District of Columbia.

The resolution announced Wednesday was driven by a deluge of complaints from AOL customers who said they tried to close their accounts, only to be thwarted in their attempts or discover they were still being billed for services that they thought had been canceled.

The outcry triggered a multistate investigation that would have culminated in a lawsuit if AOL hadn't agreed to ante up and change its ways, said David Tiede, a deputy attorney general in California.

California was among the states that played a leading role in the settlement. New York and Florida were the only states that didn't participate in the inquiry.

AOL, the Internet division of Time Warner Inc., didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Company spokeswoman Amy Call downplayed the impact of the settlement, saying AOL had already voluntarily improved the way it handled cancellations during 2005 and 2006. ''This just codifies those safeguards,'' she said.

As part of the settlement, AOL agreed to maintain an online channel for processing cancellations. Although it has long been one of the Internet's best-known companies, AOL didn't set up an online cancellation system until last August. Previously, all cancellation requests had to be made by fax, mail or telephone.

Subscribers who phoned AOL to cancel their service sometimes were greeted by aggressive customer service representatives who were paid bonuses of up to $3,000 if they found a way to retain the business, according to the multistate settlement. Customers complained that AOL's incentive system created an obstructive culture that made service cancellations difficult.

''Consumers who called were put on hold or transferred repeatedly until they hung up in disgust,'' said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who described AOL's practices as ''outlandish and underhanded.''

The settlement requires AOL to issue refunds to consumers who can show they were still charged monthly fees after trying to cancel their services. AOL's fees currently range from $9.95 to $25.90 per month. Tiede said the multistate investigation didn't estimate how much money AOL might have to refund.

The $3 million settlement will be divided among the 48 states and the District of Columbia to cover the costs of their inquiry into AOL's practices and finance other consumer protection efforts.

AOL ended March with 12 million U.S. subscribers, down from 21 million less than two years ago.

Customers have been defecting with greater frequency since last August, when AOL began giving away e-mail accounts and software that was previously available only to subscribers. The decision, prompted by free services from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., removed one of the main reasons many customers had been clinging to their AOL accounts, even if they lived in households with high-speed Internet access.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown predicted Wednesday's multistate agreement ''will minimize the potential for consumer confusion during the transition to free e-mail accounts.''

This isn't the first time AOL has run into legal trouble for frustrating customers who wanted to dump the Internet access service.

In 2005, AOL paid $1.25 million in penalties and costs to resolve a similar complaint in New York. In 2003, the company agreed to improve the way it dealt with customer cancellation requests as part of a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into allegations about unfair billing practices.

In a separate development, investors hurt by accounting shenanigans that inflated AOL's advertising revenue from 1998 to 2002 will begin to receive payments from a $2.65 billion class action settlement later this month.

The initial distribution of the money was held up last month after a technology company, BizProLink LLC, filed an appeal seeking a share of the proceeds.
http://www.onelocalnews.com/howellti...news&id=132289





Halfway Through '07, Album Sales Down By 15%
FMQB

Nielsen SoundScan has released record sales figures for the first half of 2007 and they don't paint a pretty picture for the CD business. Album sales fell by 15.1 percent in the first six months of the year, when compared to the first half of 2006. The gap between years keeps growing, as the first half of 2006 saw a four percent drop and the first half of 2005 saw a 10 percent drop, compared to each previous year.

However, the bright spot is that digital music sales continue to increase. Downloads are up by almost 49 percent compared to the first six months of '06, and an incredible 659 percent since 2004.

In addition to downloads, another major factor affecting the decline of CD sales was the closing of over a thousand retail stores thanks to Tower Records and Musicland closing up shop.

The top selling albums in the first half of the year were: Daughtry's self-titled debut, Norah Jones - Not Too Late, Akon's Konvicted, Minutes To Midnight from Linkin Park and Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts. Universal Music Group held the largest share of the market with 31.6 percent.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=434784





Prince Points the Way to a Brighter Future for Music
Eliot Van Buskirk

In his autobiography, Miles Davis wrote that Prince was the only musician in the world capable of moving music forward. Davis was referring to musical prowess, but he may as well have been talking about Prince's business acumen, as evidenced by his recent album giveaway -- the latest in a long series of innovative maneuvers, including his escape from a Warner Music Group contract in 1994, early support for P2P trading and status as one of the first major artists to sell music from his website.

Davis' last, best hope for the future of music most recently outraged the music establishment by giving away CDs of his Planet Earth album to British fans who purchased last week's Mail on Sunday newspaper. In light of the giveaway, Sony/BMG refused to distribute the album in Great Britain, provoking outbursts from music retailers who had been cut out of the action.

Paul Quirk, co-chairman of Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association, threatened: "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores."

Part of the problem, according to retailers, is that Prince's move helped solidify a growing perception on the part of consumers that music is free.

Jack Horner, creative and joint managing director for Frukt, a music-marketing agency, said that while "people like (Prince) play a key part in helping figure out what the models may be in the music business of tomorrow, by giving away a whole album on the front of a newspaper, there is a very clear devaluing of music, which is not a positive message to send out right now."

Neither the Mail on Sunday or Prince's camp would divulge how much the newspaper paid Prince for the right to give his album away, but it's clear Prince was paid upfront, and that nearly 3 million Mail on Sunday readers -- plus everyone who bought tickets to one of his shows -- received the CD for free. The giveaway almost certainly contributed to Prince selling out 15 of his 21 shows at London's O2 Arena within the first hour of ticket sales. The venue (formerly the Millennium Dome) holds around 20,000 people. If the remaining six shows sell out, the series will gross over $26 million.

Combined with the undisclosed fee paid by the Mail on Sunday, it's not a bad take for someone who's involved in a "very clear devaluing of music."

Prince's latest gambit also succeeded by acknowledging that copies, not songs, are just about worthless in the digital age. The longer an album is on sale, the more likely it is that people can find somewhere to make a copy from a friend's CD or a stranger's shared-files folder. When copies approach worthlessness, only the original has value, and that's what Prince sold to the Mail on Sunday: the right to be Patient Zero in the copying game.

As with blogging and so many other things digital, music distribution could become a competition to see who posts things first. In a sense, music distribution would no longer be about space -- it would be about time.

More bands and labels are likely to explore the idea of squeezing extra value out of their music by selling off the right to be first, as traditional sources of revenue continue to dry up. Universal's recent insistence on an "at will" contract with Apple music store, for instance, is thought to be part of a plan for the world's largest record label to start selling the exclusive rights to debut certain albums. And nowhere is it written in stone that music stores are the only candidates for buying those rights.

Artists have licensed music to advertisers for decades, of course, but this goes a step further: allowing the licensee to function as the music's distributor (at least initially). If this idea catches on, artists and labels looking to duplicate Prince's success will have to proceed with caution if they want to avoid accusations of selling out.

In the '90s, a popular slogan for posters and graffiti in and around my college radio station was "Corporate Rock Sucks," and although that attitude no longer seems prevalent, fans still routinely revolt when they hear one of their favorite songs used in a car ad.

Prince ensured that the Mail on Sunday version of his album looks identical to the one sold in stores, giving it the clear appearance of coming with the paper, rather than being of the paper. Companies that want to make a business out of music sponsorships, like RCRD LBL (an upcoming collaboration between Engadget's Pete Rojas and Downtown Records), will have to negotiate sponsorships with similar care. If they do, brands, fans and bands large and small stand to benefit.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m...eningpost_0709





Pirated Music Helps Radio Develop Playlists
Sarah McBride

The music industry has long blamed illegal file sharing for the slump in music sales. But now, a key part of the industry is trying to harness file sharing to boost its own bottom line.

Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.'s Premiere Radio Networks unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists. The theory is that the songs attracting the most downloads online will also win the most listeners on the radio, helping stations sell more advertising. In turn, the service may even help the record labels, because radio airplay is still the biggest factor influencing record sales.

Premiere's Mediabase market-research unit is working on the venture with the file-sharing research service BigChampagne LLC. BigChampagne collects the data while a Premiere sales force of about 10 people pitches the information to radio companies and stations. Premiere declined to disclose how much it charges.

The service has already had an impact. The Huey song "Pop, Lock and Drop It" was in light rotation in April at Power 106, a big Emmis Communications Corp.-owned hip-hop station in Los Angeles, and listeners weren't requesting it much. The station's own research on the best music mix to play indicated the song wasn't catching on with listeners. But data from BigChampagne showed the song was hot on file-sharing networks, including in Los Angeles. Emmanuel "E-man" Coquia, the station's music director, decided to stick with it. Now, three months later, "Pop, Lock and Drop It" is prominent on the station's playlist.

Using data on stolen music to help mold playlists may strike some as ironic. File sharing has likely contributed to the continuing decline in the music business. U.S. music sales were down 7% last year after a 3% drop the year before, according to the London-based music trade group IFPI. But BigChampagne's clients say ignoring file sharing wouldn't make sense. "It's a fact of life at this time," says Rich Meyer, Mediabase's president and executive vice president at Premiere.

Joe Fleischer, BigChampagne's vice president for sales and marketing, adds that the legality of grabbing music is a separate issue from the insight into peoples' taste the downloads offer. He also notes that the company incorporates legal, paid downloads from sites like iTunes into its data, though they represent a tiny fraction of all downloads.

Currently, says Emmis radio head Rick Cummings, the downloading information is one more tool to figure out what to play. It's not yet as helpful as the phone calls known in the business as "call-out" research, in which people listen to clips of songs and rate them, he says. But at some point, the download data are "going to be the primary method of research."

It's getting harder and harder to do passive call-out research, Mr. Cummings says, because "people don't have time, they have their phone blocked." He notes that it also "takes a while to play 20, 30 hooks," a reference to researchers' practice of playing the catchiest part of a song for survey participants.

But Emmis perseveres with the calls, in part because it reaches a slightly different listener that way -- people who don't necessarily buy or download music regularly but who like to listen to the radio and who make up a large part of the station's audience. Filesharers tend to be bigger music fans than radio listeners and generally warm to new songs faster. But basing a playlist exclusively on downloaders' tastes could end up alienating more passive listeners, Mr. Cummings says.

It also isn't easy to tell which medium influences the other more. "When a radio station adds a song, you oftentimes see an immediate bump in downloading activity" in that city, says Rich Meyer, president of Mediabase.

That was the case with "Party Like a Rockstar" by Shop Boyz. Like "Pop, Lock and Drop It," the song wasn't requested much by listeners or popping up in the call-out research, even though it was doing well on BigChampagne. In April, "we were wondering, if this record is supposedly the next big record, why is it taking longer than usual" to catch on, recalls Mr. Coquia. But just about then, requests started swinging up, especially those texted in by cellphone. Power 106 increased airplay somewhat, and downloads in the Los Angeles area kicked up a bit. By May, the song was in heavy rotation on Power 106 -- 18 spins a day -- and downloading continued to increase. "It's still strong, it's still requesting, it's still very big buzz," says Mr. Coquia.

Universal Music Group, the record company that distributes Shop Boyz, also looks at file-sharing data, largely for help figuring out which songs are working best or what to pitch to radio. But executives have mixed feelings about the information. "It's troubling that there is so much activity [that] it's useful" for research, says Larry Kenswil, executive vice president for business strategy.

In "Like This," a follow-up to his hit track "This Is Why I'm Hot," Shawn Mims alludes to scoring music online. Describing a woman who tells him she liked his last song, he sings, "She got it on her phone, Top 10 download, No. 1 ringtone." The new song's history also demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between file sharing and airplay. "When we stayed steady on it, downloads increased," Mr. Coquia says. The station played it occasionally starting in April but now plays it about eight to nine times a day.

Since the business was launched, Mediabase has cut deals with stations at sister company Clear Channel Radio, as well as group-wide deals with Radio One Inc. and Emmis. According to BigChampagne's Mr. Fleischer, the partnership has already surpassed its target of signing up 100 radio stations this year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118420443945664247.html





Mininova Enters List of 100 Most Popular Sites on the Internet
Ernesto

Mininova is the fist BitTorrent site to enter the list of 100 most visited sites on the Internet, joining sites like Google, Yahoo! and Digg. A great accomplishment proving that BitTorrent’s popularity and Mininova in particular continues to grow.

Mininova went head to head with Torrentspy for over a year but over the past few months Mininova clearly took the lead. This week they reached the same level as the popular social bookmarking website Digg.com, and their growth doesn’t seem to stop here.

The Alexa 100 is a list of the domains that generate the most traffic on the Internet. The fact that Mininova managed the top 100 is even more impressive if you take into account that over 25 local Google domains are among these 100 domains. Other popular sites in the Alexa 100 are Yahoo!, YouTube, Myspace, Wikipedia and EBay.

A the moment Mininova has 2,000,000 daily visitors who generate nearly 20,000,000 pageviews. Mininova continues to grow and served over a billion .torrent downloads in less than six months.

Most other BitTorrent sites aren’t doing too bad either. The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and Demonoid are all listed among the top 500 most visited sites, and more sites will probably join them in the months to come. Even Isohunt and Torrentspy continued to grow last month, despite the negative publicity. Here’s a combined graph of the traffic rank of the five most popular BitTorrent sites at the moment.

Compared to last year, all these sites continued to grow and attracted more visitors. Will it ever stop?

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.
http://torrentfreak.com/mininova-ent...-the-internet/





Lightning Strikes Reported by iPod Users
Linda A. Johnson

Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player's wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site, http://www.struckbylightning.org.

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don't attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

"It's going to hit where it's going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity," said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

When lightning jumps from a nearby object to a person, it often flashes over the skin. But metal in electronic devices — or metal jewelry or coins in a pocket — can cause contact burns and exacerbate the damage.

A spokeswoman for Apple Inc., the maker of iPods, declined to comment. Packaging for iPods and some other music players do include warnings against using them in the rain.

Lightning strikes can occur even if a storm is many miles away, so lightning safety experts have been pushing the slogan "When thunder roars, go indoors," said Cooper.

Jason Bunch, 18, says it wasn't even raining last July, but there was a storm off in the distance. Lightning struck a nearby tree, shot off and hit him.

Bunch, who was listening to Metallica while mowing the grass at his home in Castle Rock, Colo., still has mild hearing damage in both ears, despite two reconstructive surgeries to repair ruptured eardrums. He had burns from the earphone wires on the sides of his face, a nasty burn on his hip where the iPod had been in a pocket and "a bad line up the side of my body," even though the iPod cord was outside his shirt.

"It was a real miracle" he survived, said his mother, Kelly Risheill.

The Canadian jogger suffered worse injuries, according to a report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The man, a 39-year-old dentist from the Vancouver area, was listening to an iPod while jogging in a thunderstorm when, according to witnesses, lightning hit a tree a couple of feet away and jumped to his body. The strike threw the man about eight feet and caused second-degree burns on his chest and left leg.

The electric current left red burn lines running from where the iPod had been strapped to his chest up the sides of his neck. It ruptured both ear drums, dislocated tiny ear bones that transmit sound waves, and broke the man's jaw in four places, said Dr. Eric Heffernan, an imaging specialist at Vancouver General Hospital.

The injury happened two summers ago and despite treatment, the man still has less than 50 percent of normal hearing on each side, must wear hearing aids and can't hear high-pitched sounds.

"He's a part-time musician, so that's kind of messed up his hobby as well," Heffernan said.

Like the Colorado teen, the Canadian patient, who declined to be interviewed or identified, has no memory of the lightning strike.

In another case a few years ago, electric current from a lightning strike ran through a man's pager, burning both him and his girlfriend who was leaning against him, said Dr. Vince Mosesso, an emergency doctor at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Eardrum ruptures are considered the most common ear injury in lightning-strike victims, occurring in 5 percent to 50 percent of patients, according to various estimates — whether or not an electronic device is involved. A broken jaw is rare, doctors say.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/...hEkbjwbSlk24cA

[JackSpratts]

LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?
Ann Harrison

From last year

When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool -- LSD-25.

"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.

"When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems.

Herbert, who lives in Santa Cruz, California, joined 2,000 researchers, scientists, artists and historians gathered here over the weekend to celebrate the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD here in 1938. The centenarian received a congratulatory birthday letter from the Swiss president, roses and a spontaneous kiss from a young woman in the crowd.

In many ways, the conference, LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug, an International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann, was a scientific coming-out party for the drug Hofmann fathered.

"LSD wanted to tell me something," Hofmann told the gathering Friday. "It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation."

Bent with age but still eloquent, Hofmann said he hoped the symposium would encourage the renewed therapeutic and spiritual use of LSD in supervised settings.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, a derivative of lysergic acid found in the alkaloids of the ergot grain fungus, has been illegal worldwide since the mid-1960s and still generates controversy. The conference was picketed Saturday by a splinter group from Scientology opposed to drug use.

The storied history of LSD as a mind-expanding tool began five years after Hofmann discovered LSD-25, and had what he described as a "peculiar presentiment" compelling him to resynthesize the drug. Without ingesting the substance, Hofmann managed to accidentally absorb enough of the chemical to experience its effects. In a second intentional trip, Hoffman said he had a frightening experience that gave way to feelings of rebirth.

During the 1950s and 1960s, LSD was found to be a promising tool for psychiatry and psychotherapy and was studied by the CIA as a potential interrogation weapon. It was criminalized after it escaped from the lab to be widely embraced by the youth culture.

Hofmannn said millions of people have taken LSD, but some had bad reactions when they took counterfeit drugs. He would like to see a modern Eleusis, the ancient Greek site that held the rituals of Eleusinian Mysteries which took place for two millennia beginning in 1500 BC. During the LSD symposium, mythologist Carl P. Ruck and chemist Peter Webster presented their research suggesting that an ergot preparation was the active ingredient for the Kykeon beverage used during the ritual.

"When Hofmann synthesized the chemical in LSD, he stumbled upon a 4,000-year-old secret," said Ruck, author of Road to Eleusis.

In 1958, Hofmann was the first to isolate the psychoactive substances of psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms (psilocybe mexicana) which were among a variety of sacred plants used around the world to invite ecstatic and spiritual experiences.

The United States Supreme Court is now considering an appeal brought by the New Mexican chapter of the Uniao do Vegetal, or UDV, which uses the outlawed ayahauska brew in its ceremonies and cites the Eleusinian Mysteries as a precedent for a psychoactive Eucharist.

At the symposium, presentations of electronic trance music and psychedelic art by painter Alex Grey encouraged meditative and spiritual reflection for participants -- especially those in altered states of consciousness.

Participants eager to describe their modern-day spiritual LSD experiences were encouraged to contribute to a library of drug experiences on the Erowid website. Earth and Fire Erowid, who operate the site, presented a sampling of comments at the symposium and documented the two to five known deaths that have been associated with LSD.

Geri Beil of Cologne, Germany, who attended the symposium, recalled his own ecstatic LSD experience on an Indian beach on New Year's day, 2000. "I was crying from happiness, so thankful to my parents that they created me," said Beil. "This experience has not disappeared; it has had a lasting effect."

Like Herbert, many scientists and engineers also report heightened states of creativity while using LSD. During a press conference on Friday, Hofmann revealed that he was told by Nobel-prize-winning chemist Kary Mullis that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences.

"When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist," said Hofmann.

In his presentation, artist Alex Grey noted that Nobel-prize-winner Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, also told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD, according to news reports.

The gathering included a discussion of how early computer pioneers used LSD for inspiration. Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, Myron Stolaroff, a former Ampex engineer and LSD researcher who was attending the symposium, and Apple-cofounder Steve Jobs were among them. In the 2005 book What the Dormouse Said, New York Times reporter John Markoff quotes Jobs describing his LSD experience as "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life."

But the symposium wasn't just a census of LSD-using notables. Attendees included psychotherapists and psychiatrists who discussed research into the therapeutic usefulness of psychedelic drugs.

Dr. Michael Mithoefer presented the preliminary findings of his study in Charleston, South Carolina, which is investigating whether MDMA is effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder in people traumatized by crime or war.

Harvard University professor, Dr. John Halpern, discussed his proposed study -- now awaiting DEA approval -- using MDMA to treat anxiety in cancer patients.

The Florida-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is supporting studies and research in Canada investigating the use of ibogain to treat drug addiction.

And a study at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, supported by the Heffter Research Institute, is investigating whether psilocybin effectively eases the anxiety of terminal cancer patients. Psychiatrist Charles Grob says his research group has located six of the needed 12 subjects and is looking for more participants.

While the data has yet to be analyzed, Grob told seminar participants that all the participants in the study have shown promising reactions, and he applauded the opportunity to share the data in an international gathering.

"It's very encouraging to see such a large number of people, including very knowledgeable people, getting together and sharing a common vision that these compounds have tremendous potential to facilitate healing, especially in areas that do not respond well to conventional treatments," said Grob. "There is global healing in these compounds which have been used for millennia by indigenous people that have much to teach modern man and modern woman."

MAPS founder Rick Doblin says his goal is to make psychedelic medicines into prescription drugs, lamenting that LSD is not yet being studied for therapeutic purposes. "We have been deeply touched by our experiences with psychedelics and it is hard that there is not a single legal study with LSD given to humans anywhere in the world," said Doblin. "We need to bring what is underground and illegal back into a legal context."

But Doblin notes that a group of people who say LSD provides relief from their cluster headaches have organized online and are pushing for a study at Harvard to explore a possible therapy using the drug. If Harvard accepts the MDMA study, Doblin says it could pave the way for the symbolically important return of psychedelic research at Harvard that halted during the tenure of Timothy Leary. His goal, says Doblin, is to secure an LSD study in time for Hofmann's 101st birthday.

Dr. Andrew Sewell, a psychiatrist and neurologist from the Harvard Medical School who studies alcohol and drug abuse, says most problems with LSD occur when users take an unknown dose they don't feel comfortable with, in an uncontrolled setting, without supervision to shield them from dangerous situations.

"LSD flashbacks are well-confirmed phenomenon but they are relatively rare and don't seem to cause as much trouble as the media would have you believe," said Dr. Sewell at the LSD symposium.

Dr. Sewell says people who have underlying mental disorders should not take LSD because it could make their symptoms worse. "Like any powerful drug, if LSD is used incorrectly it can cause more harm than good," said Dr. Sewell. "LSD is a potentially dangerous drug and should be taken under medical supervision."

"There is no evidence that LSD causes permanent brain damage -- and quite a lot of evidence that it doesn't," said Sewell. "We are lucky that we have over 1,000 papers written in the '50s and '60s when LSD was given to thousands and thousands of research subjects so we have a pretty good idea at this point what it does and does not do."

Asked if the world needs his invention, Hofmann said he hoped that the Basel LSD symposium would help create an appropriate place for LSD in society.

"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD," said Hofmann. "It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be."
http://www.wired.com/science/discove.../2006/01/70015





Food as Addictive as Drugs, Yale Scientists Wonder

Yale University nutrition experts are worried food can be as addicting as cigarettes, drugs or alcohol.

Yale University obesity experts held a meeting with several dozen scientists Tuesday to discuss the intriguing question of whether food can create as powerful an addiction as drugs or alcohol.

The consensus? Maybe.

The evidence is that people who are obese tend to use the same language to describe their need for food as people do who crave drugs or alcohol.

“Some report food withdrawals or even developing tolerance for some foods,” said Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Brownell organized the conference.

Brownell said the implication of this could be significant on public policy.

Brownell asked would food companies have the same right to market food to children if science decides some foods are addictive? Brownell wants to eliminate unhealthy food from U.S. schools.

At the same time, Brownell admits science can’t link food and addiction just yet, but the idea captured the curious among the scientists at Tuesday’s conference.

Dr. Mark Gold, chief of addiction medicine at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute, said as people become obese, they tend to stop abusing drugs, alcohol or both. Gold said that information implies that both food and drugs respond to the same reward system in a person’s brain.
http://news.newstimes.com/news/updat...e=news_updates





Intel, `$100 Laptop' Project Make Peace
Brian Bergstein

The nonprofit that aims to seed the developing world with inexpensive laptop computers for schoolchildren has made peace with Intel Corp., the project's most powerful rival.

The One Laptop Per Child program and Intel said Friday that the chip maker would join the board of the nonprofit and contribute funding.

The nonprofit effort - known as the "$100 laptop" because of the low price it hopes to reach with mass production - has been trying to line up governments in several countries to buy the machines, which for now cost $175.

But Intel has been an obstacle. Its chairman, Craig Barrett, derided the "XO" machine from One Laptop Per Child as a mere "gadget." And Intel recently began selling its own child-focused Classmate PC, which is a more conventional machine than the radically rethought XO computers.

The Classmate costs around $225, and Intel expects that to fall near $200 this year. Intel has deals in Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria, spokeswoman Agnes Kwan said.

Under their new partnership, Intel and One Laptop Per Child might seek ways to package their computers together for overseas governments. For example, Intel's Classmate, which has to be plugged in, might be an option for urban settings, while the XO laptops, which use very little power and can be mechanically recharged by hand, could go into rural districts.

"There are an awful lot of educational scenarios between K and 12," said William Swope, Intel's director of corporate affairs. "We don't think all those are going to be served by any one form factor, by any one technology, by any one product."

Walter Bender, who oversees software and content for One Laptop Per Child, said the biggest benefit for his group would be Intel's work with the project on future technical developments. That will deepen the pool of software and hardware designers available to perfect the XO machines.

"It's a big problem, more than 15 people at OLPC can do all by themselves," Bender said. "Getting more talent lined up to help us is only a plus."

At least the initial wave of XO computers, expected to reach developing countries this autumn, will continue to use processors from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD has been a major partner in One Laptop Per Child, along with such other big names as Google Inc., News Corp. and Red Hat Inc.

AMD said in a statement that "Intel's apparent change of heart is welcome, and we're sure they can make a positive contribution to this very worthy project for the benefit of children all over the world."

But without a doubt, Intel would love to oust AMD as the chip supplier. Although Swope said "philanthropy is the reason" for the partnership announced Friday with One Laptop Per Child, he also said: "We're going to go compete for the XO business, because we think we build first-class silicon."

Although several countries have expressed interest in the $175 laptop, One Laptop Per Child's leaders have backed away from predicting which governments will be first to officially sign contracts to buy the machines. The project needs orders for 3 million laptops so its low-cost supply chain can get cranked up.

"We're definitely going to be doing stuff in South America, Africa and Asia right from the very beginning," Bender said Friday.
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/storie...LATE= DEFAULT





A Brief Hands-On with the Intel Classmate PC (with Linux)
Troy Unrau

Ars Technica recently got its hands on the new Intel Classmate laptop computer, one of the new projects competing for a share of school-aged computer users in developing countries. I was able to survey this machine thanks to Helio Chissini de Castro of Mandriva.

The unit I looked at was powered by a specialized version of Mandriva 2007, with customizations aimed at school-aged children. It was packed with several free, open-source productivity programs such as OpenOffice.org, and included a number of customizations to make the KDE-powered interface easier to use for those with limited computer experience. Support for open-source software for these systems will reduce the price, but there are other advantages as well. Schools and governments will be able to modify the Classmate PC software to meet their needs.

The hardware consisted of a number of Intel-powered chips, ranging from the Intel Celeron 900 processor to the Intel Mobile graphics and wireless chipsets. It was loaded up with 256MB of RAM, which in my usage was more than enough for powering Mandriva. The internal NAND flash drive for storage is only 1GB in size, but that was more than enough for the machine. In fact, Mandriva was also handing out Linux installations on USB flash drives, and it seemed to me that the Mandriva installation on the Classmate PC was more or less the same thing. With the exception of the battery monitor applet reporting the charge incorrectly, every element of this system was fully supported by open source Linux drivers.

The machine booted fairly quickly, or at least as quickly as a computer using a Celeron 900 chip can boot. It may have actually been faster than a typical laptop of this speed on account of the fact that there were no hard-disk seeking delays from the flash disk.

The form factor of the computer is indeed small. It's like a small text book with a handle attached to the back side of the computer. There were no ports at the back of the computer, only on the sides. It was not particularly heavy and would be comparable to carrying around two or three paperback novels. The fact that it comes with a soft handle makes it much more comfortable to carry.

The Classmate PC also contained two USB ports, one on each side, as well as an RJ45 Ethernet port and two audio jacks. These ports are not covered in any way, and considering its proposed usage scenarios, manufacturers should consider adding covers to keep the internals nice and clean.

The highly compact keyboard was difficult to type on for an adult since the keys are smaller than normal, presumably optimized for a child's hands. Using the circular touch pad was not a hindrance and felt fairly smooth. The screen had a resolution of 800 by 480 pixels, low by the standards of a modern computer, but the screen was usable for word processing. Since most web pages are no longer optimized for only 800 pixels of width, web browsing might be more challenging. However, the color and quality of the screen was good, and higher resolution may not even be desirable, given that the screen size is only about 7 inches across.

The screen seemed durable. The only changes made to Mandriva to accommodate the screen size were to default to smaller icons and use a style that reduced the width or height of certain interface elements such as the window titles and scroll bars to provide a little extra real estate. The company also provided a set of program launchers for the desktop to make launching the most common applications straightforward for the target audience.

Overall, I was very impressed with this effort. The computer was fast enough to run even the more power-hungry applications, and the speed at which programs launched from the flash drive was quite good. OpenOffice loaded in a reasonable time, but for impatient children who don't need Microsoft Word compatibility, perhaps KOffice would be a better solution.

Lastly, I was reviewing this system in a Glasgow pub, and the patrons of the pub were very interested in seeing the Classmate PC in operation. This system has the potential to succeed and is already being tested for classroom use in Brazil and other places. Whether or not this same system could run Windows well or not remains to be seen, but the Mandriva install fits the bill rather well.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ith-linux.html





OpenMoko.com Goes Live
WebBlurb

Today marks the launch of openmoko.com the corporate site for the openmoko project. If you didn't know already the openmoko is a new cell phone designed from the ground up in an open manner. All the hardware is designed in an open manner and the software on the phone itself is gnu/linux.

Previously only the community oriented openmoko.org site was live but this did not allow actual purchase of the Neo1973 phone. (The first phone openmoko will run on) Today anyone can go to the openmoko.com store and purchase a Neo1973 phone running openmoko. The phone is initially aimed at developers and is not quite ready for mass consumption.

The Neo Base model retails for $300 US, and the Neo Advanced is $450 US. They are not tied to any network and will function on any GSM provider.

This hopefully will provide some competition to Apple's latest creation, the iPhone.
http://linuxupdate.blogspot.com/2007...goes-live.html





The Formula for Failure
Rob Weir

It has been a boast for around around 6 months now. Microsoft's OOXML fully defines spreadsheet formulas, and ODF doesn't. The Microsoft boosters have been parroting the party line for quite some time.

Miguel de Icaza gleefully noted back in January:

OOXML devotes 324 pages of the standard to document the formulas and functions.

The original submission to the ECMA TC45 working group did not have any of this information. Jody Goldberg and Michael Meeks that represented Novell at the TC45 requested the information and it eventually made it into the standards. I consider this a win, and I consider those 324 extra pages a win for everyone (almost half the size of the ODF standard).

And Microsoft's Jean Paoli quoted in May in InfoWorld:

As far as those 6,000 pages of specs is concerned, there are 350 pages in the OpenXML spec alone -- half of the entire ODF spec -- just to describe spreadsheet capabilities, which ODF doesn't have, Paoli says. For example, ODF can't describe or calculate a formula in a spreadsheet.

"It may sound amazing. They are working on it now. But the current standard doesn't have it," Paoli tells me.

There are many other examples, if you care to seek them out. But what you will not find is an examination of what OOXML actually specifies for spreadsheet formulas, or confirmation that it was done sufficiently. Maybe the assumption is that this would be a trivial task, documenting Excel's behavior? What could possibly go wrong?

Let's find out.

First, let's take the trigonometric functions, SIN (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.287), COS (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.50) and TAN (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.313). Hard to mess these up right? Well, what if you fail to state whether their arguments are angle expressed as radians or degrees? Whoops. Same problem for the return value of the inverse functions, ASIN (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.12), ACOS (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.4), ATAN (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.14), and ATAN2 (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.15). It is hard to have interoperable versions of these functions if the units are not specified. What kind of review in Ecma would miss something so simple?

The AVEDEV function (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.17) should return the average deviation of a list of values. However, the formula given for this function is actually for calculating the number of combinations of n things taken k at a time. Nice formula, though. Jakob Bernoulli would be proud. But anyone using an OOXML spreadsheet application that follows this standard will be perplexed at the values returned by their AVEDEV function. Did these formulas get any expert review in Ecma?

It is hard to have confidence in the CONFIDENCE function (Part 4,Section 3.17.7.47). It is said to return the confidence interval around a sample mean given an alpha value, a standard deviation and a sample size. The problem is that this problem is under-defined. One must make an assumption, not stated here, as to the shape of the data distribution. Is it normally distributed data? Exponentially distributed? Weibull distribution? The standard does not define the meaning of this function sufficiently for one to implement it.

The CONVERT function (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.48) converts from one unit to another. Some conversions explicitly allowed include liquid measure conversions such as from liters to cups or tablespoons. But whose cup and whose tablespoon? Traditional liquid measures vary from country to country. In the US, a cup is 8oz, except for FDA labeling purposes when a cup is 240ml. But in Australia a cup is 250ml and in the UK it is 285ml. Similarly a tablespoon has various definitions. OOXML is silent on what assumptions an application should make. I guess I won't be using OOXML to store my recipes, and certainly not to calculate medical doses!

Almost every one of the financial functions in OOXML depends on a "day count basis" flag, such as US (NASD) 30/360, Actual/Actual, Actual/360, Actual/365, European 30/360. These represent various conventions for how days and months are counted. The problem is that the OOXML standard does not define these conventions, nor does it point to an authority for their definition. There are subtle behaviors here, especially when dealing with leap years and Excel's deviant treatment of dates in the year 1900. So lack of detailed definitions in this area make it impossible for anyone to rely on identical financial calculations from different OOXML implementations. This, in a field where being off by a penny can cause problems. Almost 30 spreadsheet functions are broken in this way.

(What do you call a scientist whose calculations are off by 50%? A cosmologist. What do you call an accountant whose calculations are off by 1%? A crook.)

The NETWORKDAYS function (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.344) seems simple enough. It returns the number of workdays (non weekend days) between two dates. Simple enough. Unless you live in the Middle East. The problem is that this function doesn't provide a facility for distinguishing the different weekend conventions. I may have a weekend on Saturday & Sunday, but a colleague in Tel-Aviv might have off Friday and Saturday, while in Cairo it might be Thursday and Friday. This function lacks the adaptability to deal with this important cultural difference. Saying that the definition of the weekend is implementation- or locale-dependent won't work either. I may be a French company in Paris dealing with contractors in Algeria. I need to have a French spreadsheet calculate schedules for workers at various locations and be able to exchange it with others offices using other OOXML applications and expect that they will get the same answer. Lacking cultural adaptability, OOXML fails approximately a billion people here.

Another example. Several of the statistical functions in OOXML are defined incorrectly. Take for example, the ZTEST function (Part 4, Section 3.17.7.352). The key error is following the formula where it says, "where x is the sample mean." The problem is that x-bar is the sample mean, not x. Someone who implements according to the text will give their users the wrong answer. A similar error is repeated in 8 other statistical functions. Certainly this is a typographical error, but this error changes the answer. Remember, this is an approved Ecma Standard and a proposed ISO Standard, not a 4th grade school essay. Denmark and Massachusetts have already said they will adopt OOXML for official business. Spelling counts. Providing the right formula and the right description counts. Copy and paste errors should have been taken care of back during the Ecma review.

I've submitted these spreadsheet formula issues, and many others, to INCITS V1, for consideration in determining the US position on the OOXML ISO ballot, but we never got to them during our two-day meeting in DC a couple of weeks ago, and may not get to them at all. There are simply too many other issues to read through and discuss. But I thought it was important to bring up these formula issues in particular, since Microsoft seems especially proud of their work in this area, delusions of adequacy which on reflection must now seem unwarranted. I'm especially concerned with the financial functions, since they are outside my area of expertise and may have additional errors that I missed.

So what is ODF doing about formulas? We're continuing to work on them. Rather than rush, we're doing careful, methodical work. We're documenting the functions in great detail. Where we have the choice between the common naive formula for a function and one that is numerically stable, we're documenting the stable function. For the NETWORKDAYS function, we created an optional extra parameter, so a user can pass in a flag that tells what their weekend conventions are. We have a professor of statistics reviewing our statistics functions for completeness and accuracy. We're verifying our assumptions about financial functions by referring to core specifications from groups like the ISDA and the NASD. We're creating a huge number of test cases and checking them with Excel and other applications.

Under Sarbanes-Oxley, a CEO or CFO puts himself at personal risk if he signs off on financial numbers derived from processes and tools that he knows to give erroneous results. So we utterly reject a rushed process that has lead to an Ecma Standard which incompletely and incorrectly defines spreadsheet functions. Some things are worth taking the time to do right.

As I've shown, in the rush to write a 6,000 page standard in less than a year, Ecma dropped the ball. OOXML's spreadsheet formula is worse than missing. It has incorrect formulas that, if implemented according to this standard, would raise important health, safety and environmental concerns, aside from the obvious financial risks of a spreadsheet that calculates incorrect results. This standard is seriously messed up. Shame on all those who praised and continue to praise the OOXML formula specification without actually reading it.
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/...r-failure.html





Getting Your Shows on the Road
Susan Stellin

One of the perks of travel used to be enjoying amenities you did not have at home: watching HBO in your hotel room, for instance, or catching an in-flight movie before there was such a thing as VCRs.

But sometime during the digital revolution, consumers’ home entertainment technology began making the travel industry look as if it were stuck in an analog era, with most airlines showing bland films on tough-to-view overhead screens and hotels’ television lineups disappointing guests accustomed to TiVo.

While it is too early to say that the offerings have significantly changed, some companies are starting to compete with — or at least cater to — the average consumer’s entertainment arsenal. In the hotel business, the race is on to upgrade guest rooms with high-definition flat-screen TVs, iPod docking stations and a wider selection of programming (preferably, available on demand). And some carriers are introducing personal entertainment systems that feature more movies, music and games, although these devices are offered mainly to business and first-class customers.

Analysts and executives say these improvements are part of a larger industry trend of making life on the road seem less alienated from life at home, particularly for business travelers.

“All of this goes back to recognizing that customers want more control,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a vice president and travel analyst with Forrester Research, citing the expectations fostered by gadgets like iPods. “At home, I have all this stuff created just the way I like it. Why should I have to sacrifice that when I’m on the road?”

In the hotel industry, Mr. Harteveldt said, the competition to appeal to guest preferences has moved from bedding to technology, a necessary upgrade in an era of rising rates.

“These days, I’m surprised when I walk into four- or five-star hotels and see traditional types of TVs,” he said. “If you’re paying several hundred dollars a night, the expectation is that there should be a flat-screen TV in the room.”

To some degree, various hotel chains have created that expectation by announcing plans to install newer televisions or better programming. But these upgrades can take years to introduce.

For instance, Marriott International announced in February that it planned to offer 32-inch high-definition L.C.D. televisions in all guest rooms in the United States and Canada at three of its brands: Marriott, JW Marriott and Renaissance. So far, the new sets are available at 56 hotels and the installation will not be complete until the end of 2009.

The new televisions come with at least 45 channels (up from 28 on current sets) and a connectivity panel so guests can plug in a music player, laptop or other device and work or play on the larger screen — recognizing that that most everyone relies on technology to unwind.

“Twenty years ago, business travel was all about ‘get there, get the work done and get out,’ ” said John Wolf, a Marriott spokesman. “What we’re seeing is a paradigm shift more toward the ‘lifestyle traveler.’ ”

According to industry research, the new breed of traveler is more likely to enjoy the benefits of business travel, like trying out new restaurants, but also more inclined to desire the comforts of home — like 450-thread-count sheets or the ability to catch a favorite TV show at any time.

Toward that end, Hilton recently opened a limited number of “Sight and Sound” rooms at two of its hotels, the Hilton Chicago O’Hare and the Hilton San Francisco. The rooms, which cost $20 more than regular rates, feature 42-inch high-definition TVs, a digital surround-sound system and a connectivity panel for other devices, as well as on-demand programming that includes sports packages and popular television shows.

“Say you get back to your room at 10:05 and you missed ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ” said Kendra Walker, a Hilton spokeswoman. “You can view that programming on demand literally a minute or two after it ends.”

Hilton is also in the process of installing flat-screen TVs in all of its North American guest rooms, and it introduced a new clock in 2005 featuring an easy-to-set alarm and a connection cable for a portable music player.

Often at the forefront of technology trends, W Hotels promises all of its rooms will have iPod docking stations by September and flat-screen TVs by the end of the year (80 percent of W’s rooms currently have the newer televisions).

Scott Petersen, chief executive of LodgeNet, which provides technology services to hotels, said the industry was moving toward offering guests a broader lineup of programming, movies sooner after their release and more on-demand options like the company’s Hotel SportsNet service.

“If you’re a Yankees fan and you’re in Florida, you can watch the Yankees games as they’re being broadcast,” Mr. Petersen said. The sports service costs guests about $10 to $20 a day; pay-per-view movies are typically $11.

While cash-short American airlines are generally not investing as much in entertainment technology, a few carriers are introducing in-flight systems, partly to keep up with their foreign competitors.

For instance, Delta is introducing a new seatback system, Delta on Demand, that features 24 channels of live television, up to 28 films, 12 video games, more than 1,600 songs and 45 hours of HBO programming, including episodes of popular television shows. The system is now on 100 aircraft, including economy class on some planes. The live TV and games are free throughout the aircraft, although there are charges for some programs in coach.

“Our goal is that by the summer of 2008, anytime you get on a Delta airplane where the flight is more than four hours long you’ll have this programming,” said Joan Vincenz, Delta’s managing director for global product development.

Singapore Airlines, which operates some of the longest commercial flights, is introducing a free entertainment system featuring 1,004 on-demand music and video options, as well a suite of office applications that enable passengers to plug in a portable flash drive and work on their documents. James Boyd, a spokesman for the airline, said the goal was to give passengers the control they were used to on the ground.

“The more opportunity you have to start, stop or rewind the entertainment at your seat, the more of a sense of control you have over your experience, and our surveys show that creates a more satisfied passenger over all,” he said.

Rob Brookler, spokesman for the World Airline Entertainment Association, said more carriers are installing these types of on-demand systems, either at the seatback or as a stand-alone device, like the portable player American Airlines offers on some flights (albeit, primarily in first and business class).

“What passengers seem to want is choice, a wide selection and control over the system,” he said.

The other thing passengers want — connectivity — may be on the horizon, although sooner on foreign carriers. “What we’re seeing is that data, meaning using your cellphone or P.D.A. for messaging, is moving along fairly quickly,” Mr. Brookler said. “The voice option is where there are regulatory issues — and social ones.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/te...10gadgets.html





Accuser Says Web Site Has X-Rated Link
Brad Stone

Parents and child safety experts concerned about the online activities of teenagers have been particularly nervous about a Web site called Stickam, which allows its 600,000 registered users, age 14 and older, to participate in unfiltered live video chats using their Web cameras.

But those Internet safety advocates might be even more anxious if they knew of Stickam’s close ties to a large online pornography business.

On its Web site and in press reports, Stickam says that it is owned by Advanced Video Communications, or AVC, a three-year-old Los Angeles company that sells video conferencing and e-commerce services to businesses in Japan and other Asian countries.

But according to Alex Becker, a former vice president at Stickam, and internal company documents, Advanced Video Communications is managed and owned by Wataru Takahashi, a Japanese businessman who also owns and operates DTI Services, a vast network of Web sites offering live sex shows over Web cameras. Mr. Becker alleges that Stickam shares office space, employees and computer systems with the pornographic Web sites.

The sites, with names like DxLive, EXshot and JgirlParadise, use the same video technology as Stickam to link paying users with performers in one-on-one video chat sessions.

Mr. Becker recently left Stickam after four months there and said he was speaking out because the company was not doing enough to protect young users of its service. Mr. Becker also alleges that he witnessed Stickam employees deleting thousands of e-mail messages sent to the company’s addresses set up for customer service and abuse complaints, without reading or responding to them.

Mr. Becker criticized what he said was the practice of sharing employees among Stickam and the pornographic sites.

The workers at Mr. Takahashi’s companies “only know how to conduct an adult Web site,” Mr. Becker said. “They don’t get it that there are predators on the Internet.”

When asked about Mr. Becker’s allegations, Scott Flacks, Stickam’s vice president for marketing, denied that the site was negligent about protecting its users, or that unread e-mail messages from users had been deleted. “We take security issues very seriously and have a dedicated team to monitor and eliminate improper material,” he said. “Security and Stickam go hand in hand.”

Mr. Flacks also said that Mr. Becker had plans to create a site that would compete with Stickam and was being “retaliatory” because he had been unable to reach agreement on a contract with the company. (Mr. Becker acknowledged that he had never signed a contract because of a dispute over intellectual property.)

Mr. Flacks said AVC was one of four “separate divisions” managed and owned by Mr. Takahashi, one of which includes DTI Services and the pornography companies. But Mr. Flacks said AVC operated independently of the pornography sites, and compared it with Disney’s ownership of Touchstone Pictures, which produces R-rated films.

“I expect some Touchstone executives have been on the Disney lot, but that doesn’t mean Disney is a content producer of adult entertainment,” he said.

Though Stickam remains relatively small compared to Web giants like MySpace and YouTube, several thousand of its mostly teenage members log onto the site each night to broadcast their own lives, often from their bedrooms. They put on makeshift talk shows, flirt with other members in video chat rooms, and often, if they are female, field repeated requests to take off their clothes.

Anyone can tune into a user’s video feed, unless the user restricts it to friends only. Members must be 14 or older to sign up, but the site does not attempt to verify ages.

Stickam has attracted a few big-name partners. Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Records and the Los Angeles Film Festival have all used Stickam for promotional purposes. Representative Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas and a candidate for president, answered questions from Stickam users last month.

But none of them appear to know Stickam’s true parentage. At first, neither did Mr. Becker, 40, who joined the company in March after a friend introduced him to Mr. Flacks, a former executive at Fox Interactive. Mr. Becker said he had been enthralled by the potential to bring live video to mobile phones, and had been impressed by the company’s offices atop the tallest building in Los Angeles, the U.S. Bank Tower.

Mr. Becker said he soon learned that Mr. Takahashi’s companies leased premium office space in several downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers, including Macy’s Plaza, Sanwa Bank Plaza and One Wilshire, which houses the largest telecommunications hub in the Pacific Rim.

In the U.S. Bank Tower the companies occupy the 72nd floor, its highest, as well as the 61st and 68th floors. Last week Mr. Becker, using his company access badges, brought a reporter to the offices, which have impressive 360-degree views that stretch to the Pacific Ocean. The top floor in particular seemed curiously empty, with a dozen employees at most working there.

The floors are leased for about $35 to $37 a square foot, according to the building’s leasing agent, which makes it some of the most expensive office space in Southern California.

Yet Stickam, a free site, does not have advertising, and does not appear to have earned any recurring revenue in its two-year existence. It has courted media companies to use its site for promotions.

Mr. Becker said Stickam shares the 68th floor with DxLive, one of the sex sites. He said a running tally on a whiteboard there indicated that DxLive was bringing in around $220,000 a day.

Mr. Becker alleges that he saw DxLive on-camera performers being trained on the building’s 61st floor in matters like how to respond to special customer requests. Mr. Flacks of Stickam flatly disputed this, but he acknowledged that DxLive does have “some” office space in the U.S. Bank Tower.

Mr. Becker said he first learned of the extent of the pornography business last April, when Mr. Takahashi, who employees refer to as Mr. T, took him to dinner at a downtown sushi restaurant. Through translators he described some of his companies’ assets, which include at least 49 pornography sites, a pornographic film production company, nine restaurants in Japan and private planes, Mr. Becker said.

“I don’t think I discovered everything, but I learned more than enough to be able to say with certainty that they are not leaders in the video-conferencing business,” Mr. Becker said. “They are leaders in pushing porn via a Flash player and streaming porn from the United States to Japan.”

Mr. Becker said Mr. Takahashi told him that he had based his sites in the United States because of Japan’s restrictions on explicit nudity.

Public information about Mr. Takahashi, who declined interview requests, is hard to come by. A March issue of a local newspaper had a page with photos from a “Birthday Celebration in Honor of Billionaire Businessman Wataru Takahashi.”

Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough, an Internet safety organization, said that considering Stickam’s ties to pornography, children and their parents should exercise caution when using the site.

“This is just another adult operator looking for a back door to the youth market,” she said. “For youth without parental understanding and controls in place, this can be dangerous.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/te...y/11video.html





Police Take Credit Wrongfully

Hej! Jag har sökt dig på din mobil utan framgång. Listan som distribueras till operatörerna senare i veckan innehåller inte Pirate Bay. Presstjänsten vid RPS kommer att distribuera ett pressmeddelande i saken. Med vänliga hälsningar Stefan Kronqvist

(Short translation to english: The child porn filter list distributed this week will NOT contain the pirate bay)

They claim that their work has been successful when trying to rid the Internet of child porn. I want to point out that still to this day, the police has not given us one single hint on what content on the site has been containing child porn - and the things we have filtered out has been proven not to be child porn either. So wtf? What is this content their talking about?

We are currently thinking about filing charges against the responsible police officer for slander or official misconduct, and we will continue to investigate the actions they have taken.

More information will follow as soon as we have any.
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/78





BD+ Unbreakable for 10 Years says Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group

In the latest issue of HMM Richard Doherty a Media analyist with Envisioneering Group says " BD +, Unlike AACS, Which suffered a partial Hack Last Year, Won't likely be breached for 10 years." Doherty said "and if so The damage would effect one film and one player."

He also said BD + Offers 4 time the safeguards on top of aacs against piracy. All Blu-Ray Players are equipped with BD +.

Doherty cited Sony theoretically releasing Spiderman 3 on Blu-Ray and allowing consumers to download the film to an Ipod or streaming copy on a home network. Should a breach occur in digital or physical form, Dohert said BD+ would let Sony circumvent the damage more quickly compared to AACS because the hacked movie could only be played on a particular Sony Player.

My question to you is do you think BD+ will be Unbreakable?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=871371





The Future of the Web as Seen by its Creator
Peter Moon

According to Webster's Online Dictionary semantic means "the relationships between symbols and what they represent." Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, has used the term to christen the Internet of the future.

The Semantic Web is a set of technologies he's developing right now as director of the World Wide Web Consortium, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Born in London in 1955, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004. In this exclusive interview, he explains his vision of the future Semantic Web, which he says will be much more powerful than anything we have seen before.

IDG: My first question is the most obvious one: Can you explain in simple terms what the Semantic Web is?

Berners-Lee: I have often been asked about that. And the simple thing to point out is: in your computer you have your files, your documents that you can read, and there are data files which are used in applications, data files like calendars, bank systems, spreadsheets. These contain data which is used in documents that are out of the Web. They can't be put on the Web.

So, for example, if you are looking at a Web page, you find a talk that you want to take, an event that you want to go to. The event has a place and has a time and it has some people associated with it. But you have to read the Web page and separately open your calendar to put the information on it. And if you want to find the page on the Web you have to type the address again until the page turns back. If you want the corporate details about people, you have to cut and paste the information from a Web page into your address book, because your address book file and your original data files are not integrated together. And they are not integrated with the data on the Web. So the Semantic Web is about data integration.

When you use an application, you should be able to put data there so that you could configure that data. I should be able to inform my computer: "I'm going to that event." And when I say that, the machine will understand the data. The Semantic Web is about putting data files on the Web. It's not just a Web of documents but also of data. The Semantic Web of data would have many applications to connect together. For the first time there is a common data format for all applications, for databases and Web pages.

IDG: Did you come up with the term "Semantic Web?" Is this the so-called Web 3.0? What's the difference between the Webs 2.0 and 3.0?

Berners-Lee: Yes, I did. It was in 1999, in my book "Weaving the Web." Web 2.0 is a name to describe how the files using the Web work. You have user-generated content, and you have people logging on Web sites and tagging things, uploading a photograph, making community sites. So Web 2.0 is about the community-based Web sites. That is not a term that I invented. Tim O'Reilly invented that term in 2003.

About Web 3.0, some people had used that term to mean a coming architecture. Some people use it to think about the regulation of Web technology. But think about the future of Web technology. A well-known problem which is typical to a 2.0 file is that the data which appears is not on the site, it's in the database. It's not on the Web. So people can't reuse that data. You might take a professional Web site with information about some of your colleagues and the people you work with, and another Web site with information about your friends, and other Web sites about different communities. With Web 2.0 you can't see the whole picture; nobody could see the whole picture. So some people said, well, Web 3.0 will happen when your site provides data that you can navigate. For example, if one of several sites which use Web technology finds useful data about my friends on my journal, then I can set up an icon to inform the computer "Get back data out and look at it and add it to the data which I got from other sites and then look at them all together."

IDG: So what's the difference between a Web of documents and a Web of data?

Berners-Lee: There are many differences between documents and data. Take, for example, your bank data. There's two ways you could look at it. If you just look at a plain Web page, then it looks like a sheet of paper. All you could really do is read it. Now if you look at it on a Web 3.0 site, you could maybe use a Java search to change the order of the data, and you could reach much better access to data.

Today, before you prepare to do something like paying your taxes, you need to use software like Quicken or Microsoft Money or your favorite financial program. When you do that, you don't load it as a Web page, you load it as a data file. That's the difference between data and documents. When you look at your bank data for documents, you can just read it. When you look at data, you can find how much tax you owe, you can see how much your bills are, there are all kinds of things you can do with data.

We don't have the ability to do this with data on the Web. If you could do that with data, the characters you gather with bank data would become a standard that would only work with banks. It's a financial standard for bank data. There will be completely separate standards for calendars, for example. What you can't do today is, say, to ask the computer: "When did I write that check? When did I have that meeting?" You can't connect items in different data files, unless you use the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is much more powerful, because you can connect the people, connect data, which is about the same person, which is about the same place, which is about the same time.

IDG: But with this full connection between personal data, companies' data and government data, don't you think the first concern people will have is around the issue of privacy?

Berners-Lee: Yes. And I have that concern, too! An important aspect of Semantic Web technology is called provenance -- where the data comes from and what it can be used for. Our research group at MIT is developing systems to show what allowed uses the information is for, so you can keep check on where it comes from, what it stands for, and make sure that it won't be used in any different way. We call this capability "information accountability."

IDG: In order to define preferences on how personal data can be used, an individual has to have some technology skills; but that's not the case of the largest part of the world's population, is it?

Berners-Lee: First of all, when you use the Semantic Web for personal data, you're not putting it out on the Web. You have a personal Web for your data about your life on your computer, and you use it to navigate locally. You are not putting it on the open Internet. There are a lot of tools like Quicken or Microsoft Money where the bank systems come down the Net in a secure channel and they are supposed to work locally. You're not using Web technology; you're not going over the Internet. You don't put your personal data files on the Internet. We're talking about allowing you to combine -- on your desktop - personal information to which you have rights -- enterprise information to which you also have rights, and public information in a very rich view of the world.

Well, you said that for people to be able to handle data they need a lot of skill. Sometimes this is true but, for example, to use a calendar, you are creating data, right? When you create an address book, you are creating data. So these things have user interfaces which allow you to make things and never have a data problem, unless you are using an incompatible program. We are working at the moment to make this technology available to those who want it to do enterprise documents. We do not yet have Semantic Web technology available which is that easily usable by grandparents and children. That is true. That is something which we are developing at MIT. We have a team working exactly on that, making programs to allow people, normal people, to read and write and process their data.

IDG: When the Semantic Web achieves its full potential, will it start a second Internet boom?

Berners-Lee: Well, in a way it's already starting, but I don't think the Web has reached its full potential yet, and it's been around for almost sixteen years now. The Semantic Web is going to take off particularly when we see people using it for data processing, when we see people using it in more and more things, adding personal data, adding files to government data. But I think it will take many years, because so much will be done on top of it.

IDG: What is Net neutrality? What's your position on it?

Berners-Lee: Net neutrality is the fact that when I pay money to connect to the Internet and you pay money to connect to the Internet, then we can communicate, no matter who we are. What's very exciting at the moment is that video is happening on the Web. YouTube gets a lot of attention, because they are delivering video over the Web.

Now suppose I'm in Massachusetts and I want to find a Brazilian movie. I go to the Internet to find my favorite independent movie and filmmaker. But then the cable company in Massachusetts blocks the transmission and says, "No, we won't let you do this, because we sell movies. So, yes, we do the Internet but on the other hand we will stop you from seeing Internet movies. We want to be able to control which movies you buy."

We've seen cable companies trying to prevent using the Internet for Internet phones. I am concerned about this, and am working, with many other committed people, to keep it from happening. I think it's very important to keep an open Internet for whoever you are. This is called Net neutrality. It's very important to preserve Net neutrality for the future.

IDG: In 2003, several governments proposed an international administration of the Internet, mirroring the set-up of the likes of the United Nations or the European Union. Do you think that Washington will ever allow that to happen?

Berners-Lee: I think that slowly the Internet will get more bureaucracy. I think it's inevitable. It's important to allow people in different countries, developing countries, to develop their use of the Internet as quickly as possible. But the administration of something so big will never be controlled by a unique bureaucracy. I don't know what form that bureaucracy will take, since there is a lot of politics involved. But I would say it's very important that it should be government free and without censoring the people who use it.

IDG: You once said the Web was created to solve a frustration you had at CERN. What was that and how did it happen?

Berners-Lee: CERN is a wonderful diversity of cultures, because people come there from all over the world to do physics. In 1989, at the time before the Web, I wrote a memo explaining what it would be like to have the Web. I mentioned the hypertext system, the World Wide Web if you like, as a method to add and edit data. My perception was that I wanted all the information in CERN's network to be available easily. I wanted to develop the tools to allow people to collaboratively build and use information. I wanted people to be able to design software and specific experiments, by using something together in different aspects.

So the Web originally was supposed to be for collaboratively designing things. The first tool was a Web browser and editor as well, allowing people at CERN to use a document, edit it, change it and then send it, making links between Web pages and scientific documents.

The frustration was that I wanted to be able to work with people very easily in different countries, where they were using different machines, working with different database systems and sorting data in different formats.

IDG: Lots of researchers made millions on the Web, but you preferred to keep developing standards. Don't you feel you missed the chance of a lifetime by not creating a proprietary Web?

Berners-Lee: No, I don't, because if it was proprietary, people would not have used it, they would not have contributed to it. It would not have taken off and we would not be talking about it right now.

IDG: Some people like Nova Spivak and Microsoft's cofounder Paul Allen work with a timeline that envisions the arriving of Web 3.0 by 2010 and a future Web 4.0 by 2020. Can you imagine what this Web 4.0 is supposed to be?

Berners-Lee: (Laughs) No, I don't do that. I think about real technology. I didn't invent the term "Web 3.0." The Web is constantly developing. If you want to see what's happening that I am interested in now, there are several technologies laced together. In Web 2.0 there are some technologies like JavaScript and others that are all standards that came out of allowing people to do things. Most standards are coming out now that will have a good push towards the mobile Web initiative, which is the use of the Web on lots of different devices.

In the future we will have the Semantic Web that will allow a whole lot of other things. One of the powerful things about networking technology like the Internet or the Web or the Semantic Web, one of the characteristics of such a technology is that the things we've just done with it far surpass the imagination of the people who invented them. Take for example the inventors of TCP/IP, the original protocols for communication between computers over the Internet, created by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in 1974.

When I invented the Web, I thought of it as an infrastructure; I designed the Web as a foundation for many things. With Web 2.0, social networks and all kinds of things happen on top of it. When the Semantic Web arrives in the next few years, things will be using it in a way we cannot know yet. So, in a way, it's foolish to try to imagine what Web 4.0 will be like when we still don't know what will be done with 3.0.

For Web 3.0 to succeed, the people who are studying it at this moment will have ideas which will enable the new technology. They will design fantastic things just like people with Web 2.0 are designing fantastic things right now. People working with the Semantic Web will make much more powerful things. We can't imagine what they will do. But we have to build the Web to be an infrastructure. It shall never be used for particularized purposes but just to be a foundation for future developments.
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/4535/070...ure/index.html





A Neutral 'Net Needs up to Twice the Bandwidth of a Tiered Network
Nate Anderson

Recent research suggests the obvious: that building an undifferentiated network requires far more capacity than one in which traffic is prioritized, throttled, and controlled. But when AT&T researchers are involved in writing the paper in question, the results seem a bit more sinister. Is the research just another attempt by a major backbone Internet operator to justify a non-neutral Internet?

Some observers think so. A recent piece in The Register on the paper was titled "AT&T rigs net neutrality study"—tell us how you really feel, gents.

But corporate sponsorship of research doesn't automatically invalidate that research; what's needed is a close look at the actual results to determine if they were done correctly. According to David Isenberg, a long-time industry insider and proponent of "dumb" (neutral) networks, the research itself is fine. In his view, it's simply obvious that a dumb network will require more peak capacity than a managed one.

But extending that banal observation to make the claim that running a managed network is cheaper is, to Isenberg, not at all intuitive. For one thing, doubling the peak volume of a network does not mean spending twice as much money as it cost to build the original network. "The failure of the authors to extend the conclusions from capacity to raw costs of capacity is deliberately misleading," Isenberg says, "especially when the researchers invoked 'economic viability' and 'cost of capacity' in their introduction to the work."

He presents other arguments, but the gist of his criticism is that the paper is fine (Isenberg used to work at AT&T and knows of the some people involved in the research) but simply leaves out important considerations. It cannot, then, be used to make the claim that a non-neutral Net is a cheaper Net.

According to Isenberg, the cheapest and best alternative is simply to build out dumb capacity: to "overprovision" by as much as 100 percent. The "bandwidth is scarce" argument plays right into the hands of the major ISPs, which can use it to start charging a premium for crucial services that run across their networks. If they simply built out the networks to the point of abundance, they couldn't make all this extra money.

Vendors who sell quality of service and deep packet inspection gear have been arguing that bandwidth is constrained for some time now; in talks with Ars, several of these companies have stressed that management is the only way to head off a bandwidth crisis. Throw more capacity at the problem, they claim, and P2P and YouTube will simply suck it up.

While this debate over network capacity can sound arcane, it's crucial to the entire network neutrality argument. If Isenberg is right, then there's no compelling reason for a non-neutral Net. ISPs should simply invest in more capacity; it will be cheaper for them and it will allow customers to use any services they want at full speed. If Isenberg's wrong, then get ready for the wonders of a tiered Internet.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...d-network.html





10 Alternatives to iTunes for Managing Your iPod

This overview details the features (with screenshots) of 10 different programs other than iTunes to manage your iPod. Tutorials are included for every program, and they’re all either free or Open Source.

If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been writing so many “How to use XYZ to manage your iPod” tutorials lately, now you know why.

Amarok
Banshee
Floola
gtkpod
MediaMonkey
Rhythmbox
SharePod
Songbird
Winamp
YamiPod

Amarok
Homepage: http://amarok.kde.org/
about: Amarok includes the following features: Album cover detection and downloads, lyrics support, wikipedia integration, contextual information (a quick view on your currently played music, and suggest similar track which you might like), statistics, Last.fm integration, multiple media devices support (Apple iPod, iRiver iFP and T players, Creative Zen and Nomad players, Generic USB players, Generic MTP players). Amarok is available as a pre-compiled binary for many Linux distributions, and its source is available for those of you who prefer compile your own programs.

Banshee
Homepage: http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page
about: Banshee includes the following features: Rips music, burn CDs, share your music, displays cover art, tons of plugins, controllable via keyboard shortcuts, smart playlists and the ability to rate your music. Banshee is available as a pre-compiled binary for many Linux distributions, and its source is available for those of you who prefer compile your own programs.

Floola
Homepage: http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/
about: Floola includes the following features: Cross platform (works on any Windows (98 and above), any Mac and any linux distribution with GTK installed), Portable (put the application on iPod and launch it on any PC), add and extract songs to and from your iPod, integrated with Last.fm, add artwork to your songs easily, lyric support even on older iPods (3G and above), Videos can be added to iPod, Growl support (Mac only),

Notes: Floola was the only of the 10 iTunes alternatives that I couldn’t personally test. Floola (at this time) requires that iTunes 7.3 has never touched your iPod (works with iTunes 7.2 and lower), and sadly 7.3 is the version of iTunes that’s on all of my computers.

gtkpod
Homepage: http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html
about: gtkpod is a platform independent Graphical User Interface for Apple’s iPod using GTK2. It supports the first to fifth Generation including the iPod mini, iPod Photo, iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod Video. gtkpod includes the following features: Read your existing iTunesDB, add MP3, WAV, M4A (non-protected AAC), M4B (audio book), podcasts, and various video files, view, add and modify cover art, sync directories, detect duplicates when adding songs, and much more.

MediaMonkey
Homepage: http://www.mediamonkey.com
about: MediaMonkey (free version) includes the following features: Party Mode/Auto-DJ, CD Ripper, audio converter, auto-renamer, album-art lookup, reports and statistics, iPod and MP3 Player support.

Rhythmbox
Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/
about: Rhythmbox is an integrated music management application, originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes. It is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop, and based on the powerful GStreamer media framework. Rhythmbox includes the following features: an easy to use music browser, searching and sorting, comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer, Internet Radio support and Playlists.

SharePod
Homepage: http://www.sturm.net.nz/
about: SharePod includes the following features: loads directly on to your iPod - no software to install, automatically finds an iPod attached to a PC, read/write track properties, remove tracks from an iPod, add/remove playlists on an iPod, copy tracks from an iPod to PC with customized output filename formats, integrated iPod backup & restore - tell SharePodLib where to store backups and how many to store, eject iPod from PC. Requires the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework.

Songbird
Homepage: http://www.songbirdnest.com/
about: Songbird is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers. Like Firefox, it is built from Mozilla, cross-platform and open source. Songbird includes the following features: Plays MP3/AAC/OGG/FLAC/WMA and more, Multi-Language Support, Integrated Web Search, Smart Mixes, Play In Place (Songbird plays MP3s without leaving the page) and Add-ons (plugins).

Winamp
Homepage: http://www.winamp.com
about: Winamp includes the following features: frankly there are too many to list, so visit their features page. It does pretty much anything you can think of. But I don’t think Winamp supports cover-art - unless there’s a plugin for it, which there probably is. Winamp has been my default media player in Windows since 1997 (it finally replaced Winplay3). As a completely unrelated but ‘fun’ side note, the very first version of ICY for Linux (now known as SHOUTcast, the streaming audio software) was compiled on my computer because Justin didn’t have a Linux machine at the time.

YamiPod
Homepage: http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
about: YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. YamiPod includes the following features: works with iTunes 7.3 (if you use the beta version of YamiPod), it’s stand alone program - no installation is required, your iPod is automatically recognized, mp3 and AAC files can be copied to/from iPod, playlist support, auto-download new versions, built in music player, News RSS and podcasts to iPod upload, multiple iPods support
and Last.fm support.
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08...ing-your-ipod/





On EU Tube (LOL!), Sex Sells (Duh!)
Alan Riding

The European Union feels unloved. Too many Europeans consider its governing bureaucracy, the European Commission, to be meddlesome, stuffy and generally out of touch. It has, you might say, an image problem: even when it does something useful, no one seems willing to give it credit.

Just imagine, then, how the carpets of power in Brussels must have buzzed with excitement when some hip marketeer — perhaps a well-paid consultant — came up with the idea of reaching out to the public through a newly created Web site linked to YouTube. Surely young Europeans would now pay attention.

Well, they did, at least to one of the 49 clips currently available on youtube.com/eutube. In less than three weeks, “Film Lovers Will Love This!,” as the video is teasingly called, has had close to 3.3 million hits. And, yes, it shows Europeans enjoying themselves being European — in bed.

In just 44 seconds, it presents flashes of 18 heterosexual and homosexual couples having steamy sex, accompanied by breathless groans and climactic screams.

European union, indeed.

In fairness, the clips are all taken from European movies. And, as with four other hugging, weeping and kissing videos, called “European Films — Tapping Into the Talent,” “Singing the Blues on the Silver Screen,” “Romanticism Still Alive in Europe’s Films” and “Joy,” the commission’s declared purpose is to promote European cinema.

“The European Union is not the Bible belt,” Martin Selmayr, a commission spokesman, said. “These clips come from award-winning films and they show the E.U.’s rich cinematic heritage, which we can all be proud of.”

But you can’t help noticing that the less raunchy the video, the fewer the hits: only some 96,000 so far, for instance, for “Singing the Blues.” That’s not bad, though, compared with most of the other — more worthy — clips. One eight-minute look at the European Union’s “partnership” with the United States has yet to reach 1,300 hits.

Still, the range of topics explored at least confirms the commission’s eagerness to use new media to spread the good news of its activities, whether in environmental protection, anti-smoking campaigns and foreign aid or in areas of less obvious public interest, like nanotechnology and the sugar trade.

Announcing EU Tube on June 29, Margot Wallstrom, the commission’s vice president in charge of communication strategy, explained: “This initiative reflects the commission’s commitment to better explain its policies and actions on issues which concern citizens across the E.U., such as climate change, energy or immigration.”

Understandably, then, Brussels officials have been a bit frustrated to see their great communications project hijacked by sex. Efforts by some British tabloids to stir up protests about officially blessed “pornography” have come to little, but officials can hardly feel that “Film Lovers Will Love This!” is conveying their full message.

The commission’s representative in London, Reijo Kemppinen, was prompted to issue a statement poking fun at the “sudden outbreak of prudery” in some of the British media, itself not averse to publishing photographs of topless women.

He went on: “The compilations were meant to convey emotion and they certainly seem to have got a reaction. In spite of attempts to whip up a scandal because of the sexy nature of one of the clips, hundreds of thousands of British people are learning more about the E.U.’s Media program and almost all are reacting maturely and positively.”

Was it confidence in Britons’ maturity about sex that led the commission to begin the initiative in English? A German-language Web site has been added, but puzzlingly “Film Lovers Will Love This!” is not among the 13 clips on offer to date. Too hot? (There’s now a French version, too, but the French are already presumed to know about sex.)

More to the point, is EU Tube — or indeed YouTube — an effective tool for winning over Europeans to the merits of the European Union?

Any student of YouTube knows that almost weekly some oddball, violent or sexy clip notches up millions of hits. But there is less evidence that it is a site sought out by people interested in serious research.

In that sense, at least, the idea of using EU Tube to celebrate European cinema seems rational. Avid film buffs may even get a kick out of trying to identify the movies that provide the two- or three-second excerpts. (“Amélie,” “Bad Education” and “Dogville” are among the 30 films used in the five cinema videos.)

Whether this makes Europeans warm to the European Union is a different matter. As the union has expanded to 27 countries since the end of the cold war, more and more Europeans feel European. Yet the benefits of membership have not translated into affection for the union and its executive branch, the commission.

Would the commission be better served by forgetting about being loved and concentrating instead on promoting Europeanness through art, music and literature — through the Rembrandts, Beethovens and Shakespeares who have traditionally united Europe?

A fine thought, no doubt, but such a menu may not exactly stop young Web surfers in their tracks.

So EU Tube it will have to be. And, in truth, it has already left its mark. Millions of people have discovered the site thanks to “Film Lovers Will Love This!” And, who knows, maybe the suits in Brussels who cooked up the scheme are now feeling a little bit sexier.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/ar...ridi.html?8dpc


Catch “Film Lovers Will Love This!”, Jack.





Saving a Favorite Web Video

Updated RealPlayer copies, organizes clips using a PC
Katherine Boehret

Thanks to faster computers and higher bandwidths, many Web sites now contain video of one kind or another. Slow, stuttering footage is a thing of the past, and video-sharing Web sites are hot commodities, demonstrated last year when Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion.

You can browse the Web watching videos until your eyes glaze over, but you can't easily save any of that video footage to your computer in an organized library. So while your photos, music and email can be neatly categorized and revisited on your computer's hard drive, videos that you see online may never come your way again.

This week, I tested the newest version of RealNetworks Inc.'s RealPlayer, which offers a distinctly useful feature: the ability to copy any video from the Internet onto your PC, as long as it isn't protected by a copyright. This player, which was just released in its beta (or testing) version last month, is available as a free download from www.realplayer.com.

Once downloaded, RealPlayer 11 smartly runs on Microsoft's Windows XP or Vista machines in the background, only making its video-copying capability known when a video appears on a Web page in your browser. A tiny message labeled "Download This Video" pops up from the video viewing screen, and when selected, this initiates a download of the entire video. You don't need to be at the start of the video to copy the whole clip. In fact, you can copy an entire video without watching it (I used RealPlayer 11 to copy videos for watching later when I didn't have a column to write). Saved videos can be shared with friends, organized into playlists or burned onto CDs.

I tried RealPlayer 11 on my Windows XP desktop and on my Vista laptop, using both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 without problems. Being able to copy videos made me realize how many clips I watch online, footage that might otherwise have been forgotten had I not saved it on my computer. Granted, not all the videos that one watches online are worth capturing, but it's nice to have the ability to save them with just a mouse click.

I missed being able to use RealPlayer 11's video downloading on my Apple computers, but RealNetworks says it will make its player usable on Macs before the end of the year. The company also says it is working on plans to make these saved videos transferable to portable players, including Apple's iPod, so that after downloading numerous videos, you need not be tied to your computer to watch them. In the case of longer videos, downloading took more time, and I wished this RealPlayer made it possible to watch videos shortly after they started downloading, like Apple does with movies downloaded from its iTunes Store.

Downloading this new RealPlayer was surprisingly painless -- a welcome change compared with my experiences downloading the company's previous players. In three quick steps, I downloaded RealPlayer 11, accepted a license agreement and adjusted a few settings such as whether or not I wanted to use RealPlayer 11 by default for playing all videos on my PC. I was never prompted to enter my date of birth or email, like RealNetworks downloads in the past.

I visited various sites to retrieve video footage, including YouTube, AOL videos, Google videos, sports Web sites, television network sites and news sites like WSJ.com and AllThingsD.com. Every popular video file format is supported. To save time, RealPlayer 11 lets you download multiple videos at the same time; a small window shows the status of each download, including how much time remains for each download and an option to cancel the download. There are no limits to the number of videos you can download simultaneously, as long as your Internet bandwidth can manage.

I copied numerous videos, including the first episode of my new favorite TV show, ABC's "Traveler," a music video from country singer Keith Urban and a National Geographic video on bowhead whales. After gathering a bunch of clips, I organized some of them into playlists and sent others to friends by selecting "Share Video Link" from the top of the screen, entering emails and a personal message about each clip. These emails are sent with embedded links to other sites, like YouTube, and the recipient doesn't need RealPlayer 11 to see the videos, though a link for this free download appears at the bottom of the emails.

If a video is copyright protected, the "Download This Video" message that enables copying is replaced by a message that says "Video Cannot Be Downloaded" with a one-line explainer on digital rights.

(To the chagrin of content owners, this isn't as much of an impediment as they hoped, because a large amount of video content is illegally posted online. Even if a video was originally posted in a protected format, someone may have copied it and re-posted it illegally with the protection stripped off. RealPlayer will copy these clips, as it can't tell whether they were originally meant to be protected.)

In a couple instances, videos didn't display messages about downloading or not downloading, in which case I wasn't able to copy the video. RealNetworks says this is a rare occurrence.

RealPlayer 11 can also be used to record live streaming video in real time, like the constantly recording panda camera that was set up to document every move made by Tai Shan, the giant panda born in Washington's National Zoo two years ago. I tested live recording by capturing a live stream of video from CNN.com for 35 minutes. But RealPlayer 11 can't be set to record certain programs or at certain times like TiVo does with television.

Though I focused on its video-copying capability, RealPlayer 11 is still a media player in its own right. It is divided into six categories at the top of the screen: Now Playing, My Library, Real Guide, Games, SuperPass and Burn/Transfer. If you pay an extra $30 for RealPlayer you'll be able to burn your videos onto DVDs rather than just CDs. Real Guide serves as a link to RealNetworks' suggestions of videos and also lets you search for more videos. If you visit the My Library section while a video is playing, a miniature view of that video appears in the lower right corner of the screen.

Many sites offer to help you email videos or obtain a video's URL for embedding into your own Web site. But these options often appear only after you've watched an entire video, and they don't help you save videos onto your PC. RealPlayer 11 strikes a healthy balance: It's useful without intruding on your browser. If you stopped downloading videos from the Web to your PC, you wouldn't be bothered by its subtle downloading prompts.

RealNetworks will release a second version of this beta before the end of the year, including options for transferring videos to portable players and Mac compatibility. For now, the free download of this first version is smart, simple and fun to use.

Corrections & Amplifications:

Any video can be copied as long as it isn't protected by digital rights management. This article erroneously states that RealNetworks Inc.'s RealPlayer 11 can copy any video from the Web, as long as it isn't protected by a copyright.

--Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118410628207262543.html





BBC Trust to Hear Open Sourcers' iPlayer Gripes
Chris Williams

Exclusive The BBC Trust has asked to meet open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on demand broadband TV service, iPlayer.

The development came less than 48 hours after a meeting between the Open Source Consortium (OSC) and regulators at Ofcom on Tuesday. Officials agreed to press the trust, the BBC's governing body, to meet the OSC. The consortium received an invitation on Wednesday afternoon.

Ofcom is also liaising with the Office of Fair Trading, which is responsible for maintaining competitiveness in UK markets.

Sources at the regulator told The Register that although its formal role in the process was completed when it delivered its market impact assessment in January, it felt the OSC's concerns that Mac and Linux users will not have access to iPlayer demanded a hearing.

Before the trust got in touch on Wednesday, OSC CEO Rick Timmis said: "Everything we've done in the trust's direction has fallen on deaf ears. They've completely ignored us."

Ofcom's intervention could help avoid an embarrassing clash in Europe. As we reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06..._osc_eu_ofcom/) last month, the OSC has threatened to take its anti-trust concerns to the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, which adjudicates on competition.

The group has taken legal advice and drafted a letter which would initiate proceedings, but has not yet sent it.

The trust included Ofcom's evidence in its public value test, which gave the project the green light at the end of April. The trust's current position on interoperability is "monitoring progress on a six monthly basis".

The OSC hopes to present the trust with an alternative future which would answer all the DRM requirements of the BBC's content partners while making the service available across platforms. It has held meetings with development partners who have pledged engineering time.

The Windows XP-only, Internet Explorer-only iPlayer enters public beta testing (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/27/iplayer_launch/) on 27 July.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07...c_osc_meeting/





A Sigh of Relief for Blockbuster: Few People Copy DVDs
Saul Hansell

It turns out that not every new bit of technology is a nightmare for Hollywood. There are more than 50 programs available that people can use to defeat the copy protection on DVDs. So some fear that Blockbuster and Netflix are turning into giant free-movie banks as film fanatics rent once and burn for all their friends.

Not so, says the NPD Group, a research group that has monitored the behavior of 12,000 Americans with software on their computers. Only about 1.5 percent of those even have DVD ripping software. And 2/3 of them used it in the first quarter of this year.

By contrast, 12 percent of the people monitored burned their own music CDs. Since NPD doesn’t ask questions of its research panel, it doesn’t have direct evidence of why people don’t copy many DVDs.

Russ Crupnick, NPD’s senior entertainment industry analyst, speculates that making music CDs is much more engaging.

“With music, part of the appeal is sharing your own playlists and compilations with your friends,” he said.

And of course the value of video is different. Burning a DVD may save you a $4 rental, assuming you only want to watch a movie once, compared to $15 for a CD.

And there may be the speed-bump effect. The simple act of needing special software to copy DVDs may be enough to give some people second thoughts. It’s so easy to copy CDs it doesn’t feel like doing anything wrong. (The doctrine of fair use, of course, means that some copying probably isn’t illegal, but fine legal distinctions do not seem to influence most people’s behavior.)

Interestingly, downloading video from file-sharing networks is much more popular than burning DVDs, with 6 percent of the users downloading large video files in the NPD sample. By contrast, 11 percent of the users downloaded music files from file-sharing networks, slightly less than the number of CD burners.

Downloading from file sharing networks has a different dynamic than burning disks. You download to get something yourself, while you often burn to share something you already have (legally or otherwise) with others. Moreover, Mr. Crupnick pointed out that about half of the downloaded movies are pornography.

“I’m not sure people share their porn the way they share their music,” he said.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...ple-copy-dvds/





Microsoft Patents Method for Bringing "Pirated" Music Back onto the Reservation
Eliot Van Buskirk

A patent filed by Microsoft last December (a month after the Zune was released) shows that Microsoft and Apple are thinking along the same lines when it comes to enabling users to copy music between their wireless devices.

Certain cellphones already allow you to do this via Bluetooth file transfer, but Microsoft's patented idea (click image to expand) would take the concept further, by allowing users to trade MP3s that may have come from file sharing networks to one another, expiring the song on the recipient's device after three plays, unless the user pays Microsoft a fee in order to continue to listen to the track, with a percentage going to the person who provided the song. As the abstract puts it, "even [the] resale of pirated media content [can] benefit... the copyright holder."

This mechanism for timing out traded music without payment is the sort of constraint the RIAA probably wishes had been built into the personal computer. It remains to be seen how much control users will have over their portable devices, which are currently far more restrictive.

I hear Motorola -- having been somewhat burned by Apple releasing its own phone rather than continuing to license iTunes for Motorola's handsets -- is switching their phones over to a Linux operating system. And the Linux-powered OpenMoko Neo 1973 phone has already been released. It's possible that users will gravitate towards phones that give them as much freedom as their computers do, but on the other hands, Hollywood and the labels are likely to pounce on technology that would bring offline P2P trading to portables.

From the abstract of the patent:

"Systems and methods are described for an off-line economy for digital media. In one implementation, exemplary media devices of buyer and seller participate in the off-line economy by performing secure off-line transfers of digital media content between themselves. The media devices store proof of the off-line sales transactions, so that a percentage of the sale price can be applied to a copyright owner and a percentage of the sale price can be applied to the seller as an incentive. Even resale of pirated media content benefits the copyright holder. The off-line economy opens an effective and inexpensive distribution channel for copyright holders and allows buyers to obtain media content anywhere, at any time, from any participant in the off-line economy without connecting to the Internet. The off-line economy allows copyright holders and media sellers to optimize pricing by market probing.
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/07/...oft-paten.html





Geek Squad Hatched Plot To Harvest Porn From Pornstar Jasmine Grey's HardDrive, Days Before She Died In Car Crash

I worked for Best Buy 285 several years ago (2003-2005) and was both a Blackshirt and an Agent once the Geek Squad rolled out.

At my store, searching and copying files was not a common practice at all. We were the good guys of the district. One day, however, a gorgeous woman walked in with her computer complaining of her PC locking up when she went to use her webcam. She refused to give us her website so we knew something was up. She authorized us to do a tune-up to remove unneeded files and update her to SP2. During the cleanup process, we saw that her Norton Protected Recycle Bin was consuming 12gigs of files. It was password protected...but she used the same password as her windows login (which users provide on one of the thousand forms they fill out when they drop the PC off).

Once we got into the recycle bin, we realized it was entirely filled with naked pictures and movies. It turns out that this young woman was a pornstar named Jasmine Grey.

I left for the day and came back the next day to find that one of our fellow employees had copied all of the files to a few dvd's and shared them with management, as well as most of the other techs.

Her webcam was still locking up her machine when she took her computer home that night, so she returned again in the morning. She still wouldn't provide us with her site (not that we needed it anyway at that point), but she did want to look into purchasing a new machine. At this point I handed her off to a PCHO rep who proceeded to convince her that instead of buying a new machine...she should just have an Agent come out to fix it at her house (that way she "could rest easy that her privacy would be assured"). The manager on duty at the time was involved in the scam, so he offered to send an Agent out for free to "go the extra mile and insure she only shop at Best Buy in the future" Of course, the Agent that came out to her house was none other than the same person who copied all her files to DVD. He fixed the webcam in a few minutes then spent the entire remainder of the appointment scouring her network for more porn, which he saved to a portable hard drive. Those files were then shared across the store.

The sad part is that she passed away in a car crash only days later which quickly formed rainclouds over everyone's perverted parade.

So how about that? Not only did the techs steal porn from a customer...they forfeited the revenue from a new computer AND from an on-site visit for the sole purpose of getting more porn.

I left the company 3 weeks later.
http://consumerist.com/consumer/conf...ash-277561.php





Hey, Mr. D.J., Follow Those Rock Star Dreams
Melena Ryzik

On Sunday afternoon at McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mark Ronson did his usual thing: he brought his laptop and some records and D.J.ed a party.

But he was nervous. “I don’t know if I’m a big draw around these parts,” he said from the V.I.P. area before the show, surveying the 1980s-fashion-loving hipsters. “My crowd doesn’t wear the funny-colored sunglasses.”

At first audience members — indie rock fans who turn up in droves for weekly concerts at the pool — were more interested in taking photos of him than dancing. (This was especially true of the row of young women who seem to hug the stage at his every show.)

But about halfway into his 30-minute set, as Mr. Ronson, in his standard garb — spotless white shirt, skinny jeans, scuffed Fred Perry sneakers, bedhead — spun old-school hip-hop and new hits, people began to move. By the time he played “Stop Me,” a song from his new album, the crowd was singing along.

Tomorrow night, at the Highline Ballroom in Chelsea, he will try to repeat that effect, with a twist: a real, live band.

Having to win over a crowd is new for Mr. Ronson, 31. For nearly a decade he has been an It D.J. of the fashion and media world, spinning a dance-floor-friendly mix of hip-hop and rock for Tommy Hilfiger parties, movie premieres and boutique openings.

Once a Hilfiger model himself, he lived the glitz, too, hanging with Diddy and Jay-Z and dating models and society types. Last year he might have reached the apotheosis of celebrity D.J.-dom when he spun at the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, held in an Italian castle.

But lately Mr. Ronson has been reaching for new heights, as a producer and solo artist. He worked with Lily Allen on “Littlest Things” from her popular debut, “Alright, Still,” and helmed six of the songs on Amy Winehouse’s hit album “Back to Black.” They feature what could be described as the emerging Ronson sound: old-school black music (Motown or reggae or funk) meets new-school black music (hip-hop beats and rhymes) meets retro Brit-pop.

“Version,” his second album, is out today on RCA/Allido. In Britain, where the CD was released in April, “Stop Me,” a cover of the Smiths’ “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” rose to No. 2 on the singles Top 40 chart. A few weeks ago 8,000 fans danced and sang along as Mr. Ronson played with his 12-piece band at the Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, England. Could this rock star D.J. actually become a rock star?

He certainly hopes so. “I don’t want to be D.J.ing when I’m 40,” he said in an interview at the SoHo office of his record company, Allido. “It’s always been more important to make my own music.”

And now he is, sort of: “Version” is an album of covers, with songs by the likes of Britney Spears, Radiohead and Coldplay refashioned with the Ronson sound and sung by guest vocalists including Robbie Williams, Ms. Allen and Ms. Winehouse. Mr. Ronson doesn’t sing (much), but he plays some of the instruments: keyboards, bass, guitar and drums, a few of which he tackles onstage.

“I always joke that I would be fired if it wasn’t my band, because I’m the least virtuosic member,” he said in his chummy trans-Atlantic accent. His demeanor is equal parts urban private school entitlement and Woody Allen self-deprecation; he was born in London and moved to the Upper West Side when he was 8. He now lives downtown with his girlfriend, Cosi Theodoli-Braschi, an artist, and a pampered mutt, Maude.

He retains some party-boy traits — “I don’t do anything of any value until after, like, 4:30, 5 o’clock” in the afternoon, he said, stirring a cup of tea with a pen — but he is a fastidious, hard worker. At 13, he invented a post as a rock critic for a school paper so he could troll downtown clubs with the approval of his mother, the party page fixture Ann Dexter-Jones. Four years ago he started Allido with a partner, Rich Kleiman.

Despite occasionally collaborating with pop stars like Christina Aguilera (“Hurt”), his ambition is to develop new artists. “They’re so excited about discovering their sound for the first time,” he said. “That’s quite intoxicating.”

His finds for Allido include Daniel Merriweather, an Australian singer who does the soul-like vocals on “Stop Me,” and Wale, a Washington rapper; both are touring with him. “He’s always had this sort of art-first approach to everything he does,” Mr. Merriweather said. “You never feel like you’re making music for any other reason.”

Despite his well-connected musical provenance — he’s the son of Laurence Ronson, a Mick Jagger buddy and real-estate entrepreneur, and a stepson of Mick Jones, the Foreigner guitarist — Mr. Ronson struggled to break out on his own artistically. His first album, “Here Comes the Fuzz” (2003), full of star-studded hip-hop remixes, tanked in the United States; his first producing effort, the funk singer Nikka Costa’s “Everybody Got Their Something” (2001), had disappointing sales. And transitioning from buzzy D.J. to unknown label-founder proved difficult.

He said that for four years he was “basically self-funding the label,” playing uncool gigs — “like for Martha Stewart’s Christmas party.” At the studio, “I thought I could be like Russell Simmons from 10 to 5, and then Rick Rubin from 6 to 11,” Mr. Ronson said. “I was actually miserable and I wasn’t making any music that I thought was any good.”

“It is possible to squander any sort of buzz,” he added.

And good will. “Blue Collar,” a 2006 album he helped produce for the Chicago rapper Rhymefest, sold poorly. In a recent interview with Sohh.com, a hip-hop Web site, Rhymefest complained that Mr. Ronson “kind of bailed on me.”

A year-and-a-half ago Mr. Ronson began to worry that he would never have a hit. So he decided to stop D.J.ing — “it pollutes your ear,” he said — and reluctantly ceded Allido’s business end to Mr. Kleiman, vowing to just make the music he liked. Voilà: Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen and “Version.” Mr. Ronson was pleased, sort of.

“I’m not the type of person to get really excited and stop to smell the roses,” he said. When “Stop Me” hit No. 2 in the Britain, “everyone’s going, oh, da-da-da, how exciting, isn’t that great?,” he said. “And I was just thinking, like, what number it’s going to drop to next week.”

It’s a savvy choice to protect himself from his own expectations by making a covers album. “Version” is “more of a producer-arranger type record, not that far from what I would do if I was working on somebody else’s record,” he said. Given that it’s prestocked with radio-friendly alt-rock staples and British hits (he’s always had more traction there), it’s also a canny advertisement for his skills behind a mixing board. If he can’t be a rock star, he can at least be a rock star producer.

“I think he’s proved that he’s got the chops,” said Ocean MacAdams, vice president of MTV News. The Ronson sound “does feel very right now.” Whether that will last is hard to say, but he’s a “Version” fan: “It’s a really fun summer record.”

And Mr. Ronson is touring all summer to promote it. But “I’m not expecting wild adoring fans,” he said of his American concert debut tomorrow. He tried to keep a recent New York D.J. gig, at the small West Village club Love in May, “quiet.” The actor Danny Masterson was there, Ms. Allen danced on the stage, and a pair of Japanese tourists had him pose for countless photos. This is as quiet as Mr. Ronson gets.

But the Highline show is very much a Mark Ronson party, complete with famous special guests. “I texted everyone madly, saying I’ll send you my private jet,” he said. Cue self-deprecation: “Everyone knows full well I don’t have a private jet.” Still, Robbie Williams said he might fly in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/ar...ic/10rons.html





Magician Uri Geller Accused of Bending Copyright Law

Uri Geller became a 1970s superstar and made millions with an act that included bending spoons, seemingly through the power of his own mind.

Now the online video generation is so bent out of shape over the self-proclaimed psychic's behavior that he's fast reaching the same Internet pariah status as the recording and movie industries.

Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube , landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online.

Geller's critics say he and others are abusing a federal law meant to protect against online copyright infringement, and that YouTube and other Web sites are not doing enough to combat frivolous claims.

At issue is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which makes it easy for Geller and others to persuade Internet companies to remove videos and music simply by sending so-called takedown notices that claim copyright ownership. Most companies, including YouTube do almost nothing to investigate the claims.

"All it takes is a single e-mail to completely censor someone on the Internet," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer for the online civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing Geller over an unflattering clip posted on YouTube for which he claimed a copyright ownership.

For nearly as long as Geller has been bending spoons and moving compass needles with the wave of a hand, professional magicians have been loudly debunking his claims of psychic ability.

A new generation of critics led by 30-year-old Brian Sapient of an organization called the Rational Response Squad have taken their crusade online.

Sapient and others recently posted several video clips to YouTube demonstrating how Geller allegedly uses simple sleight of hand in his act.

One slow-motion clip shows Geller quickly placing a small magnet on his left thumb before purporting to move the needle of a compass in front of a live television studio audience in Israel , where Geller was born.

Another includes Geller's infamous "Tonight Show" flop, in which Johnny Carson exposed Geller by providing his own spoons and other props.

In March, San Bruno-based YouTube Inc. took down many of the clips and suspended Sapient's account when Geller sent takedown notices claiming he owned the copyrights to the unflattering clips.

That touched off an online tempest that has made Geller the subject of widespread derision and ridicule on several popular blogs like Boingboing.net.

"Uri Geller — the man who got rich 'bending spoons with his mind' — isn't just a con-artist, he's also a copyright abuser," wrote one of the tamer bloggers linked by Boingboing.

The video and Sapient's YouTube account were restored two weeks later after Sapient complained.

It also turned out that Geller owned no more than eight seconds of the 13 minutes of video, according to Geller's own court filings.

But Geller is still suing Sapient in Philadelphia's federal court, accusing him of copyright infringement.

Sapient says the clips are protected by the First Amendment laws, which allow "fair use" of copyrighted material.

"Put in its simplest terms, this case is about theft, not speech," read court documents filed last week on Geller's behalf.

Geller, who has become nearly as famous for his prolific litigation as for his alleged psychic abilities, knows his way around the court system.

He unsuccessfully sued longtime nemesis James "Amazing" Randi at least three times for defamation, stemming from Randi's own efforts to unmask Geller as a fraud, and lost several other cases lodged against his critics throughout the years.

Geller, who lives in London, referred calls to his Philadelphia lawyer, Richard Winelander, who conceded that Geller probably didn't foresee the firestorm his lawsuit would inspire.

"This thing has spun out of control," he said.

Winelander said the takedown notices and lawsuit were motivated by Geller's brother-in-law, business associate and filmmaker Shipi Shtrang, who got upset when he saw that the eight-second video he made appeared among Sapient's 13 minute of video.

Winelander said Sapient also aims to profit from the clip by driving traffic to his own Web site.

Sapient uses a pseudonym because he says he receives numerous death threats from those opposed to the anti-religious beliefs touted on his Web site.

Sapient and EFF have countersued, accusing Geller of misrepresenting to YouTube that he owned the disputed clips, and abusing the DMCA, which shields Internet service providers from lawsuit so long as they immediately honor those takedown notices.

It's the fifth such federal lawsuit EFF has filed against people who sent bogus takedown notices to YouTube and other online video forums. EFF has not lost.

Legal scholars and Internet watchdogs say the explosion of freely available online video and music has been accompanied by a surge of abusive copyright claims such as Geller's.

Most recently, EFF successfully sued choreographer Richard Silver to stop sending takedown notices to YouTube claiming videos of people performing the "Electric Slide" — sometimes at weddings — were violating his copyright on the dance.

There's also a growing frustration that resolving copyright disputes is being left largely to YouTube and other Internet service providers that are taking down material with scant investigation.

"There is a clear trend toward more pressure on Internet Service Providers to play a bigger role in policing the Internet," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

For instance, YouTube removed some 150,000 clips from its site after Viacom Inc. complained.

Viacom is also suing YouTube and its parent company Google Inc. for $1 billion in damages because it says the site is illegally allowing copyrighted material like television sitcoms to be posted.

YouTube and Google have denied any wrongdoing, citing their practice of removing videos as soon as a copyright owner sends a notice of unauthorized usage.

Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman for Google, which purchased YouTube for $1.76 billion late last year, defended the DMCA and the takedown notices.

"The trick is that you are breaking the law when you knowingly send notices for videos that you don't hold the copyrights," Reyes said. "It's a good solution."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288665,00.html





Researcher: Optimal Copyright Term is 14 Years
Nate Anderson

It's easy enough to find out how long copyrights last, but much harder to decide how long they should last—but that didn't stop Cambridge University PhD candidate Rufus Pollock from using economics formulas to answer the question. In a newly-released paper, Pollock pegs the "optimal level for copyright" at only 14 years.

Pollock's work is based on the promise that the optimal level of copyright drops as the costs of producing creative work go down. As it has grown simpler to print books, record music, and edit films using new digital tools, the production and reproduction costs for creative work in have dropped substantially, but actual copyright law has only increased.

According to Pollock's calculations (and his paper [PDF] is full of calculations), this is exactly the opposite result that one would expect from a rational copyright system. Of course, there's no guarantee that copyright law has anything to do with rationality; as Pollock puts it, "the level of protection is not usually determined by a benevolent and rational policy-maker but rather by lobbying." The predictable result has been a steady increase in the period of copyright protection during the twentieth century.

Because Pollock's "optimal level for copyright" falls over time (as production and reproduction costs fall), policy makers need to be especially careful when contemplating increased copyright terms. It's difficult to scale back rights that have once been granted, so "it is prudent for policy-makers to err on the low side rather than the high side when setting the strength of copyright."

Neither the US nor the UK are in any danger of rethinking copyright law from scratch, but if they were looking for guidance in how to set up their systems, Pollock has it. He develops a set of equations focused specifically on the length of copyright and uses as much empirical data as possible to crunch the numbers. The result? An optimal copyright term of 14 years, which is designed to encourage the best balance of incentive to create new work and social welfare that comes from having work enter the public domain (where it often inspires new creative acts).

Pollock has been an advocate for restricted copyright terms and stronger public domain for years; we earlier spotlighted a brief essay of his on the "Value of the Public Domain" that is well worth a read. His new work is getting some publicity too: it has already been highlighted by Boing Boing and will be presented at a conference in Berlin this week.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-14-years.html





Hold On... ¿is This Legal?

Ever since the launch of Lancebot.com, we get the occasional inquiry questioning the legality of the services offered by this site. Lancebot is a tool that aggregates freelance job openings from multiple sources and provides a searchable interface to them. There was a decent amount of controversy a while back surrounding the case of Oodle, an online job aggregator, that got ousted from CraigsList, the popular community of classified ads.

Do the same principles put forth by CraigsList apply here, and is Lancebot infringing on the copyright of the sites it scrapes? We don't think so, as we will try to explain below. Nonetheless, given the confusion that abounds, we are pushed to write this disclaimer to clarify.
Introduction

First of all, what is exactly copyright? The laws of the United States, along with those of the countries that support the international treaty on intellectual property, grant the authors of "original works of authorship" a layer of legal protection in order to allow them to profit from their work. The copyright owner holds the exclusive rights to reproduce copies, to prepare derivative works, and to distribute, perform or display the work in public. Any other party willing to do so must engage in an agreement with the copyright owner to have some or all of these rights trasferred before reproduction, or it exposes itself to a probable litigation.

There is however an important limitation in scope of the rights granted by copyright law, and that is the doctrine of fair use. Under certain circumstances, a party may reproduce the original work without the need to ask for permission provided it meets the following criteria:

• the purpose and character of the use, whether its usage is commercial or non-commercial in nature. Productive uses of the work where value is added in the process may also be seen as favorable. The ability to search multiple sources from one site fits this description. On top of that, no advertisements of any kind are displayed at this point, so the usage is non commercial up to now.

• the nature of the copyrighted work. Works that are factual in nature, such as news or scientific papers, weigh favorably towards fair use under this criterion versus works that involve a substantial amount of creativity in their inception (a novel, a painting, etc). It can hardly be argued that a job description is the result of creative expression as it describes a need in the marketplace and an objective profile that a worker must meet to qualify for the job.

• the amount and substantiability of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. In short, the smaller the portion used, the more likely it will be viewed as fair use. Lancebot quotes an excerpt from each job description and does not try to misrepresent the source passing it as its own. In addition, a hyperlink is provided to display the original job description, hence it can be viewed as fair use under this factor.

• the effect of the use on the market or value of the copyrighted work. For the case of CraigsList vs Oodle, both sites derive their revenue from advertising. If Oodle attracts a significant portion of CraigsList's visitors to their classifieds search engine, it may actually be competing unfairly as CraigsList's content is used to detract eyeballs from itself. Furthermore, Oodle was using CraigsList's name to promote their business with that intention in mind. Conversely, most if not all of the freelance marketplaces crawled by Lancebot earn their revenue through commissions on the project bids. By giving ampler audience to the projects, Lancebot's activity may result in higher revenue for these sites. Many of them are not that well known, so this may be a significant factor depending on the site considered.

Who owns the copyright?

Finally, we have assumed that the copyright holder is the site hosting the job advertisements, but this is simply not true. The author of each individual job posting holds the copyright from that job description, and it is he who can claim copyright infringement if deemed appropriate. Some sites such as Guru.com state in their terms of service that a non-exclusive transfer of the intellectual property rights is given to them to reproduce the job description, and only these sites would have a ground on which to base a claim of infringement. A full transfer of copyright would require a signed contract from both parties, hence in any case the copyright holder is still the job description author.

Another item that must be considered is that while the web site owner may not claim copyright on individual postings, the collection of advertisements and the presentation itself may be subject to copyright: "Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such. Such protection, which shall not extend to the data or material itself, shall be without prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or material itself."

The problem here is that the users are creating the collection themselves, in their interaction with a computer system. Advertisements are not arranged and selected by editorial staff, but they are posted automatically as soon as the author writes them. In this sense, the collection does not respond to an act of creation. According to the Feist Publications vs Rural Telephone Service ruling, the arrangement of information in a compilation has to imply more than just the exercise of a minimal degree of skill, judgment or labour to be subject to copyright. It is questionable whether the selection and arrangement made by a system, acting through procedural steps based on a deterministic algorithm, constitutes a work of original authorship. Oodle could have based their defense on this premise, instead they decided to back off fearing damage to their brand reputation.

Anyhow, based on the four points explained above, we believe that Lancebot's usage of job postings falls under the fair use exemption and is well within legal boundaries. We hope that you find the service useful and we will keep working to improve the user experience, serving relevant results from a broader spectrum of freelance marketplaces. It is up to you to visit us and we hope that you will keep coming back. Don't worry, we'll stick around.

Disclaimer: we did ask for permission to Guru.com to crawl their site and they politely declined, which is why you won't see Guru.com listings in our results, as we honored their petition.
http://www.lancebot.com/disclaimer.jsp





What Happens If You Don't Pay for Goodmail?
Bennett Haselton

Goodmail has announced partnerships with four new ISPs who will charge for "reliable" delivery of your e-mail messages if you want to bypass their spam filters. The news will probably generate another round of editorials like the ones written a year ago about AOL's plan to use Goodmail.

If I could ask one serious question of anyone who was defending pay-per-email, or sitting on the fence about it, this would be it: Suppose you sent an extremely urgent e-mail to your doctor or your lawyer, who for the sake of argument you're not able to reach by phone. The recipient's ISP owner happens to see the message before the user retrieves it, and realizes how urgently you need to get it through. So he moves it to the recipient's "spam" folder, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to move it to the recipient's inbox, or they'll never see it.

Does the ISP have the right to do that? If not, why not?

Perhaps you'd say that Goodmail's 1/4-penny-per-message is reasonable, but $1,000 for one message is too much. But then who decides what is "too much"? The marketplace? Then isn't the ISP admin just another player in the market, and $1,000 is what they want to charge? If you don't like it, you can go somewh... oh, wait, you can't, because there's no other way to get through to the recipient. If you ever get through to your doctor or lawyer, they might switch ISPs after they hear what happened, but should that be your only recourse?

The problem with the ISP charging $1,000 to deliver your message is not that $1,000 is "too much", but that they're charging for a service that has already been paid for. If your doctor or lawyer pays for an e-mail address, they're doing so with the understanding that their ISP will make a reasonable effort to deliver the non-spam e-mails that people try to send them. If their ISP then turns around and asks you for $1,000 to deliver the e-mail, then they're trying to double-bill for the same service, and if they block the message because you don't pay the $1,000, then the ISP is cheating the recipient out of a service that they've already purchased. And it's not just the recipient being cheated; if the recipient has an arrangement with you, as your doctor or lawyer would, then the ISP is interfering in their business relationship with you.

Now, if an ISP using Goodmail offers to let you bypass their filters by paying 1/4 penny per message, how is that different from the doctor example? Well, on the face of it, it's different in at least two ways: first, because the ISP is charging "only" 1/4 penny per message instead of $1,000, and second, they're not saying that your mail will be blocked if you don't pay, only that it might be. But are these qualitative differences, or just differences in degree?

Take the cost-per-message. I have a (verified opt-in) mailing list of about 50,000 people that I send mail to twice a week. In the aggregate, it is just important for me to get mail out to those subscribers, as it is for some people to get a single mail through to their doctor or lawyer. Also, in the aggregate, it would cost me about $1,000 per month if the ISPs collectively asked for 1/4 penny per message and threatened to block them otherwise. So is there any real difference between requesting $1,000 to unblock 50,000 e-mails, and requesting $1,000 to unblock a single e-mail, if you're just doing it because you know the sender urgently needs to get them through? (It's not a reflection of the ISP's costs -- downloading and storing 50,000 messages at 3 K each, costs almost nothing, certainly not anything close to $1,000. And again, I would argue it's a moot point anyway, because those services have already been paid for.)

And how much difference is there, really, between saying that a message (or a group of messages) might be blocked, and saying that a message definitely will be blocked? If it's bad for your doctor's ISP to call you up and say, "Give me $1,000 or there's a 100% chance that your message doesn't get through," what if they say, "Give me $1,000 or there's a 50% chance that your message doesn't get through," isn't that at least 50% as bad? You could say that in my doctor example, the blocking was deliberate, but in the case of the spam filter, it's accidental. But if an ISP chooses not to fix problems with its spam filter, then in a way it's still deliberately creating a certain percentage of cases where the spam filter will block legitimate mail, even if those cases occur at random.

There is one more difference between Goodmail and the scenarios I've described, which is that Goodmail not only lets you bypass an ISP's spam filters, it also certifies that you are trusted and not a phisher. If an ISP like AOL controls the user-interface that a user uses to check their mail, it can display the blue-ribbon "CertifiedEmail" icon next to a Goodmail-certified message. In this case, an ISP can plausibly claim that they're letting all legitimate e-mail get through, but they're still offering a benefit to Goodmail senders. The problem with this is that since phishing only works on users who are gullible to begin with, a phish could just as easily display the CertifiedEmail icon in the body of the message to try and gain a user's trust. It's all very well to say that a user should know that the CertifiedEmail icon only "counts" when it's displayed in the inbox, not in the message itself. But a user who knows that, would probably also know that their bank's Web page is not 209.211.253.169. And besides, most users of Comcast, Cox, RoadRunner and Verizon will be using their own mail clients like Eudora which won't display the "CertifiedEmail" icon anyway.

So it seems pretty clear that the main benefit of using Goodmail will be deliverability. And that's the basic Catch-22: If an ISP gives the same deliverability to non-Goodmail-certified messages, then who's going to use it? On the other hand, if an ISP gives better deliverability to Goodmail-certified messages than to other messages (much more likely), then they are to some extent misrepresenting the services they sell to their users, since users expect an ISP to make the best effort to deliver all legitimate e-mails, not just the ones from paying senders.

Goodmail likens their service to FedEx or UPS for "enhanced delivery" of paper mail as a way of getting the recipient's attention. But the difference is that if you're trying to reach your lawyer, then the office complex where he works (or the city that maintains the streets to his house) is providing the service that he expects and has paid for, namely, allowing different companies to deliver stuff to him there -- and because you have different choices, that means FedEx, UPS and the USPS have to compete with each other, and that keeps the delivery prices down. On the other hand, if an ISP blocks you from mailing their customer unless you pay their fee, then the ISP is going against what the customer expects them to do, and it is precisely that betrayal of trust that gives the ISP a monopoly on your ability to reach the customer -- which leads to them charging monopoly-style prices, like $1,000 to receive and store a few tens of thousands of messages.

There is a lot of debate about whether "the market" would fix problems of legitimate e-mail being lost. Esther Dyson's editorial was a classic libertarian defense of the free market as the arbiter of systems like Goodmail: "If it's a good model, it will succeed and improve over time. If it's a bad model, it will fail. Why not let the customers decide?" Actually I don't think the free market does fix most e-mail deliverability problems -- I've been involved in a few business that sent bulk e-mail (to subscribers who requested it and confirmed their subscriptions), and have had conversations with dozens of others, and we've all had problems sending to Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo, and I've never, ever heard anyone say that their deliverability problems were solved by "the market". (Usually the problems just come and go, and nobody knows why.) But in a way this is all beside the point. Even if the market would stop more egregious abuses, what gives ISPs the right to charge senders for e-mail services that their customers have already paid for?

I actually met Richard Gingras, the CEO of Goodmail, and Charles Stiles, the postmaster of AOL, at a conference in Seattle last year where they were on a panel defending against the Goodmail controversy. They seemed like nice guys who were genuinely blindsided by the criticism that Goodmail had been receiving. It's easy to see the point of view of Goodmail's defenders -- if Bob wants to pay Alice to "certify" Bob, why would it be anybody else's business? It isn't, until it leads ISPs to steer people towards a system where if you want to be treated like a non-spammer, you have to pay -- even if, strictly speaking, the recipient is already paying to receive your mail.

As for the much-vaunted free whitelisting privileges that non-Goodmail senders will continue to enjoy, in the pre-Goodmail era I once found that AOL was blocking some of my mail to their users, so I called their postmaster department and learned the following facts:

• The first person I talked to, said that he checked the logs and our mail was being blocked because we didn't have reverse DNS set up. I thought this was odd because we did have it configured, but I thanked him and hung up.
• Then, I called back and got someone different. I asked them the same question and they said that according to his logs, our mail was being blocked because someone else at our ISP was sending spam. I asked him why they were blocking our IP address, if it was different from the IP of the alleged spammer; he paused and said, "Is there anything else I can help you with?", and this repeated several times as I thought my phone or his headset wasn't working, before I realized he was just being a dork.
• Then, I called back and got yet another person, and this person said that he could see our mail was being blocked because it contained banned content. I was pretty sure that was wrong, because you get a different-looking bounce if you're sending mail that contains a banned string, but I took a note of that anyway.
• Then, I called back and got a fourth person, who said that our mail was being blocked because some of their users had flagged mail from our IP address as spam. He paused for a brief conversation in the background, then came back and added, "This has already been explained to you, sir." I said that since I had gotten four different explanations in four different phone calls, I figured I could just keep calling and tallying the votes that I got for each explanation, until one of them emerged as the winner.

Much later I found out from someone else about the AOL whitelisting program, which I'm currently trying to see if it prevents us from getting blocked. But if none of the people answering the phone at the postmaster department knew or told me about it (and I confirmed that it did exist at the time), how many other organizations or businesses don't know?

ISPs adopting Goodmail say that while Goodmail senders can bypass their spam filters, non-Goodmail senders will continue to enjoy the same deliverability rates that they have in the past. That's what I'm afraid of.
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/06/1....shtml?tid=215





iPhone Field Test Mode Lets You Spy On The AT&T Network

Richard Baguley, chief cellular ninja over at WirelessInfo.com, just published a number that, when called, turns your iPhone into a mobile field testing station. Suddenly, up pops a new menu that provides detailed reporting on strengths and characteristics of the cell towers in your area, plus a load of other nerdy networky factoids. In other words, you can see things that AT&T might not want you to see.

What's cool is that you can even enter field test mode during a call just by tapping the iPhone's "Add Call" icon, then the field test number. But before I give you this magic number, it is my duty to share Richard's warning.

NOTE: Although it seems that most of the information is read-only (so you can't change anything), field modes like this have the potential to damage your phone and possibly interfere with the phone network. We are providing this information as-is; we cannot be held responsible if anything you do in this field mode damages your phone or the phone network.

There, now that the warning is out of the way, here you go:
*3001#12345#*
Dial that, and have fun fiddling. If you do discover anything freaky, please report back to us, and, of course, to Richard. If you whack out your iPhone in the process, don't come crying to me.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/iphone/ip...ork-277797.php





New Rules Could Rock Wireless World
Leslie Cauley

Coming soon could be a wireless broadband world in which consumers get to pick any smartphone or other device and load any software on it - not have to take what the wireless carrier wants to sell.

That's the goal of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, who will propose sweeping new rules for wireless airwaves the government is auctioning early next year. The 700 MHz spectrum, being vacated by TV stations as they go digital, is coveted for its ability to penetrate walls and other obstacles.

Under Martin's proposal, to be circulated in the agency as early as Tuesday, mobile services in these airwaves would have to allow consumer choice.

"Whoever wins this spectrum has to provide … truly open broadband network - one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services for consumers," Martin said in an interview Monday.

What this would mean in practice: "You can use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions," Martin explained. The only exceptions would be software that is illegal or could harm a network.

The proposed rules would apply only to the spectrum being auctioned, not the rest of the wireless business, which still makes most of its revenue from voice calls. But Martin's proposal, if adopted by the FCC, could reverberate through a U.S. wireless industry that has tightly controlled access to devices and services. The Apple iPhone is a prime example: Like most devices sold in the USA, the iPhone is, in industry parlance, "locked." It allows only features and applications that Apple and AT&T provide and works only with an AT&T contract.

The FCC chairman said he has grown increasingly concerned that the current practices "hamper innovations" dreamed up by outside developers. One example: Mobile devices that also can use Wi-Fi, such as a home network or airport "hot spot," for Internet access. "Internationally, Wi-Fi handsets have been available for some time," Martin noted. "But they are just beginning to roll out here."

Some handset makers actually strip out Wi-Fi features at the request of U.S.-based carriers loath to allow any feature that could let users sidestep their fee-based services and applications. "I am concerned that we are seeing some innovations being rolled out more slowly here than we are in other parts of the world," Martin said.

In Europe, for example, consumers for years have had access to an array of "unlocked" devices they can pack with applications from a variety of developers.

Because the devices aren't tethered to any one carrier, wireless consumers in other countries can take devices with them when they switch carriers. In the USA, with cellphones typically "locked," customers who switch have to throw their old phones away.

Martin said he has no plans, for now, to try to extend his proposal to other parts of the wireless business. But he believes it would, if adopted, pressure carriers to change. "I think it sends an important message."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...HpGF7dLM WM0F





Lawmaker Upset by IPhone Termination Fee
John Dunbar

The Apple iPhone has enjoyed favorable reviews since its recent debut, but it came in for some rare criticism on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The phones, which cost between $500 and $600—are usable only on AT&T Inc.'s wireless network and will remain that way until 2012.

Even though the phones become expensive paperweights if customers quit AT&T's wireless plan, the company will still charge a $175 early termination fee, said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of a House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.

Markey described the phone as a "Hotel California service. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave—you're stuck with your iPhone and you can't take it anywhere."

The issue arose at a hearing on whether Congress should grant the cell phone industry's wish and pre-empt states from regulating wireless phone companies. State public utility commissions have no authority over pricing on wireless plans, but do have the authority to regulate the terms and conditions of wireless service agreements.

The wireless industry opposes what Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein called "patchwork, utility-style regulation" as "unnecessary and harmful."

Verizon wants a national framework for wireless oversight that would take authority away from state utility commissions while still allowing state attorneys general to protect against unfair and deceptive industry practices.

Tony Clark, a North Dakota public utility commissioner and chairman of the telecommunications committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said the states should be allowed to maintain their enforcement authority.

"The bottom line is that state regulators are seeking a middle ground that relies on each level of government doing what it does best: the federal government setting standards that apply to all and the states enforcing those rules and tailoring them to specific emerging issues," he said.

Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia University and commentator on technology issues, described the cell phone industry as "spectrum- based oligopoly" where customers have given up their property rights.

"Imagine buying a television that stopped working if you decided to switch to satellite," Wu said. "Or a toaster that died if you switched from Potomac Power to ConEd."

The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering rules that will dictate how a valuable swath of spectrum to be auctioned in the next six months will be used. Among the proposals is a requirement that one block of airwaves being auctioned be accessible to all wireless devices—which would include the iPhone.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...rticle=1&cat=0





Microsoft Service Contracts Questioned

Study shows some companies won't renew deals
Todd Bishop

A new study says past delays in Microsoft Corp.'s products are causing some businesses to think twice about renewing the long-term service agreements that include rights to upgrade to future versions of its programs.

Twenty-six percent of the 61 information technology professionals surveyed by Forrester Research said they had decided not to renew their Microsoft Software Assurance agreements when they expire, opting instead to buy the software as needed.

Microsoft questioned Forrester's findings. The report "only looks at a subset of our customers and is not consistent with the feedback we have received," said Stacie Sloane, marketing and communications director for Microsoft's Worldwide Licensing and Pricing group, in a statement released by the company.

Software Assurance is important to Microsoft in part because it provides a predictable revenue stream for the contract term, generally three years.

Sloane said Microsoft's renewal rates "are on target and in line with our expectations."

But Julie Giera, the Forrester Research vice president who wrote the report, said she speaks with hundreds of Microsoft Software Assurance customers each year, and the findings from the formal study are consistent with what she has been hearing from many of them.

Starting last fall, Giera said, she began to hear "many more companies" express frustration about Software Assurance and ask about the consequences of dropping out of the program.

The report, issued Monday, cited factors including gaps of more than five years between the last two releases of Windows and SQL Server. Windows Vista, released for businesses in November, was delayed as Microsoft diverted development teams to deal with security problems in Windows XP, its predecessor.

The Forrester report says the annual cost of Microsoft's Software Assurance is 25 percent to 29 percent of what customers would pay in licensing fees for a new version of the software.

In some cases, the product delays meant that companies paid more in annual Software Assurance fees than if they had purchased the programs.

In addition, the report cited uncertainty about release schedules for future Microsoft products, including the next versions of Windows and Office.

Microsoft points out that Software Assurance goes beyond upgrade rights to include training, support and other services.

But many Microsoft customers don't see it that way, Forrester's Giera said. "Most customers see Software Assurance as upgrade protection," she said.

Microsoft recognizes revenue from long-term software contracts over time, as it delivers the related services or products. In the meantime, payments by customers accumulate as "unearned revenue" on Microsoft's balance sheet. As of March 31, the company's balance of unearned revenue from its volume-licensing agreements was slightly less than $7 billion.

"It's fair to say that a large portion of their customer base does subscribe to Software Assurance packages," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle.

At the same time, Parakh said the relatively small sample size of the Forrester study makes it difficult to know if the findings would hold true when applied to the rest of Microsoft's Software Assurance customer base.

The question of renewals is significant now because of a large number of Software Assurance contracts set to expire this year. About 86 percent of the companies surveyed by Forrester said their licensing agreements are scheduled to expire in 2007.

"The bottom line is many more customers are questioning whether buying Software Assurance makes sense, especially if they believe they'd pay more in SA fees than if they just held onto their money and bought new releases when they were ready to install them," the report said.

In the statement, Microsoft's Sloane countered Forrester's findings by pointing out that about 75 percent of the company's Enterprise Agreement customers are renewing those pacts. Those service agreements for large companies include Software Assurance benefits.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...ntracts10.html





Anti-DRM T-Shirt Design Contest: The Winners are…
Ernesto

DRM is doomed to fail. Unfortunately, the majority of the movie companies and record labels still think it’s the best way to “protect” their media. By wearing these shirts you can show them it’s not and that it only hinders honest customers.

See the winning entries





Privacy Isn't Dead, or At Least It Shouldn't Be: A Q&A with Latanya Sweeney

In a post-9/11 world, where security demands are high, personal privacy does not have to be sacrificed, says computer scientist Latanya Sweeney, who discusses a few ways to save it.
Chip Walter

As security concerns mount, networks proliferate and ever more data move online, personal privacy and anonymity are often the first casualties. For the Insights story, "A Little Privacy, Please," appearing in the August 2007 issue of Scientific American, Chip Walter sat down with Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Latanya Sweeney, who discusses the new threats to privacy and ways to fight identity theft and other misuse of information.

Why is privacy versus security becoming such a problem? Why should we even care?

(Laughs) Well, one issue is we need privacy. I don't mean political issues. We literally can't live in a society without it. Even in nature animals have to have some kind of secrecy to operate. For example, imagine a lion that sees a deer down at a lake and it can't let the deer know he's there or [the deer] might get a head start on him. And he doesn't want to announce to the other lions [what he has found] because that creates competition. There's a primal need for secrecy so we can achieve our goals.

Privacy also allows an individual the opportunity to grow and make mistakes and really develop in a way you can't do in the absence of privacy, where there's no forgiving and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. There was a time when you could mess up on the east coast and go to the west coast and start over again. That kind of philosophy was revealed in a lot of things we did. In bankruptcy, for example. The idea was, you screwed up, but you got to start over again. With today's technology, though, you basically get a record from birth to grave and there's no forgiveness. And so as a result we need technology that will preserve our privacy.

How did you get into this line of work? What drew you to mathematics and computer science?

When I was a kid [in about third or fourth grade], one of my earliest memories, was wanting to build a black box that could learn as fast as I could. We could learn together, or it could teach me. I wanted the sort of teaching-learning experience that could go as fast and as deep as I could go.

What triggered this black box fantasy?

In hindsight, I think I was bored in school, because I would finish the assignments and would have to wait for the rest of the class. I think it was an outlet and I began spending hours fantasizing about this box. It [eventually] became a real passion & so when I went on to high school and took my first computer course that childhood vision and this sort of natural interest with computer programming just melded together .

After high school, you went to M.I.T. How did it feel being one of the few girls in a predominantly male college?

I first went to M.I.T. in 1977. But it was a tough adjustment. I came from a top-notch prep school for girls and going from that environment to M.I.T.--well, it's almost impossible to be more opposite, in every possible way. It was huge, it was in the city, I couldn't sleep it was [so] loud. Oh man.

But the thing that really made it hard for me was the faculty; I had a lot of incidents with the faculty that were really obnoxious.

What kind of obnoxious incidents are you talking about?

The way M.I.T. is structured is that in your freshman year the lectures are in huge halls with over 100 students, and then you go into smaller groups on the same subject that had only 10 to 12 students. Every week there were 10 problems in a problem set. So the guys [in our group] came to me and said "look we're going to start a study group' and I said, "what's a study group?" And they said, "well, every week we're going to get 10 problems, and every week one of us will get assigned a problem and the day before the homework is due, we'll all meet and your job is to tell the rest of the group your solution and then they don't copy it down, you explain it to them and they go write it up themselves, or if we don't think that's the right solution, we'll discuss it." And I said, "Oh okay. That sounds good to me."

Basically you had 10 people turning in the same assignment. So everyone gets the assignments back and they got 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10, seven out of 10. So I go to the instructor and I ask him, "Why would you give me seven out of 10?" And he says, "Well you didn't show enough of the work to show the process." So [I try again and] scores are 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10, seven out of 10. I ask the instructor again, "Why did I get seven out of 10?" And he says, "Well you showed so much detail that it seems you didn't really understand the concepts." So then I go through this thing where I'm trying to get the right amount of detail.

Did you ever figure out the real reason behind those seven out of 10s?

One day we had these resistance cubes -- this is an engineering class -- and they have colors on them and the colors tell how much resistance is inside the canister. We had to memorize these color codes. So in one class the instructor says, "The way I remembered the resistor [color codes] when I was a lad at M.I.T. was the following: 'Black boys rape only young girls but Violet gives willingly." When he said that I think I understood the [reason behind the] seven out of 10.

Later I left M.I.T. and started my own computer company for 10 years. Then I went to Harvard, and then went from Harvard to back M.I.T. as a graduate student.

What was it like to go back to the same department?

When I returned, that teacher was the head of the department. And it was really funny, but you know what, when I got back my attitude was "I'm not taking any crap." And I had absolutely no problems in my graduate career. But in my undergraduate years I was definitely not prepared for what I had to deal with there.

And now you are head of the Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Why did you create it?

One day I was in grad school and [in my research] I came across this letter that roughly said: at the age of two the patient was sexually molested, at the age of three she stabbed her sister with scissors, at the age of four, her parents got divorced, at the age of five she set fire to her home. And then I realized there was nothing in that description that [would be changed by] scrubbing out identifiable information. I'll bet you there's only one person with that experience. And that made me realize that identifiability is really fascinating, and it made me realize that I didn't understand a thing about privacy. Removing the explicit identifiers wasn't what it was about. I realized there's a lot more to this than a notion of what makes me identifiable.

And it was then that I started realizing that privacy in the data space is a little bit different. It requires tracking people where they go. And when all this technology began exploding, you begin to realize that it's huge.

So what makes your lab different from others that look into these issues?

I started the lab to do what I call "research by fire." We don't operate like a think tank or tackle abstract problems. If you have a real world crisis, you can come to our lab, give us a little money, and we will solve your problem. But because these are real world problems, it really is research by fire. We don't have the luxury of sitting back and speculating and thinking. The judge needs a decision and an answer now, otherwise so-and-so is going to sue. So companies and government agencies give us grants as partners in the lab and they give us problems that need solutions within a given time period and the goal is to solve those problems.

What kinds of problems do you tackle?

All kinds, from DNA privacy, video piracy to problems with losing revenue streams, being sued or filing suit. A lot of the technologies [we have developed] came from that sort of work.

We roll up our sleeves and ask "How do I learn really sensitive information? How do I exploit the heck out of the data that seems so innocent out there?" And if we're really good at doing that then we can create strategies for controlling privacy abuse.

When a problem comes to us, whether it's bioterrorism or something else, we find ourselves doing a deep dive into that policy setting or regulatory environment, usability issues and even the business issues. We have to take on all of these constraints and come up with a solution, and often that's a new technology, sometimes it's just a patch, very rarely is it just a recommendation. And that's what we do.

Your Identity Angel software is able to gather up disconnected pieces of information about people from data available all over the Internet. How does it work?

It is very easy to do scans for individuals from information that is publicly available or freely given away or sold for a cost. That means you don't have to break into a system to get data you're not supposed to have; it means you can gather the information from what is already out there.

[Earlier in my career] I had learned that if I had the date of birth, gender and a five-digit zip code of a person, I could identify 87 percent of the people in the United States. So even if you don't give me your social security number, I can find out who you are nearly nine out of 10 times.

That led to Identity Angel?

One of the things we suspected at the lab was that people in their early 20s with credit cards were especially vulnerable to identity theft. Our lab began looking at this, and we found that that is a time in people's lives when they're not very stable. Their addresses are changing continuously, and so if you were to [steal an identity and] get a credit card in their name, the fact that an address had changed was not something that would trigger a red flag.

What else makes 20-somethings especially vulnerable to identity theft?

The other thing is that they don't have a lot of prior credit records, and credit card companies are really anxious to give them credit cards. At the same time there is a lot of information about them on the internet since they're in that age group where they are used to creating web pages on Facebook and MySpace. A lot of the information also came from students routinely releasing their information by putting it in their résumés. Why would anybody put a social security number on his or her résumé? But they did.

All of this simplified creating a fraudulent student credit card -- a name and address & a social security number, and date of birth. The challenge of Identity Angel was to find and combine this information from the internet . It mines information including resumes off the Internet and looks for ones that have the information, social security number, date of birth, etc. -- enough information to get a credit card in the person's name.

What does Identity Angel do with that mined information?

If it succeeds, the software then tries to find an email address and send [the victim] an email letting them know we found this information.

You also developed a program called k-anonymity. What would be an example of its use?

We have a project with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They want to know where people have been without knowing who they are. And in this case, they never want to know who they are. So I built this system that allows them to do this. It is actually tracking the homeless. Congress appropriated a large amount of money in 2004 to create the Homeless Management Information System. And the idea of the system is to track the service utilizations of the homeless, and that's because there are a whole lot of questions about homelessness and they want a system that gathers that information.

Congress says this is about money. The cost of homelessness is exploding. Is this because there are too many homeless, because they are eating too much food, or because there is fraud in the system? What's actually happening?

Why do homeless people need privacy protection?

There is one special class of homelessness for which privacy became critical, and that's domestic violence victims, and it turns out they account for a huge percentage of the dollars spent in the system. They are afraid that the person stalking them,So they wanted to be able to track people, but do it in a way that even if you knew all of the intimate details about that person, even if you got access to the data, you still couldn't identify that person.

This required a deep dive into cryptography. The earlier "scrub system" I had developed [ such as Identity Angel] was all about text. That's just text mining. But this led us into different areas - video, face identification, etc. which is a deep dive into computer graphics and computer vision.

So how do we solve the privacy problem? What are the best and worst-case scenarios?

My answer is that the privacy problems that I've seen are probably best solved by the person who first created the technology. What we really have to do is train engineers and computer scientists to design and build technologies in the right kind of way from the beginning.

Normally, engineers and computers scientists get ideas for technologies on their own and engage in a kind of circular thinking and develop a prototype of their solution and then do some kind of testing. But we are saying we will give them tools that help them see who are the stakeholders and do a risk assessment, and then see what barriers will come up and deal with the riskiest problems and work to solve them in the technology design.

I think if we are successful in producing a new breed of engineers and computer scientists, society will really benefit. The whole technology-dialectics thing is really aiming at how you should go about teaching engineers and computer scientists to think about user acceptance and social adoption [and also that they] have to think about barriers to technology [from the beginning].

So the best scenario is that this kind of training takes hold and as new technologies emerge they are less likely to be constantly clashing with accept-or-reject options.

Is it hard to break down those cultural barriers and change the way people work?

There should be privacy technology departments, because there are no technologies for handling privacy problems [proactively]. The best solutions lie in the technology design. So we are targeting the creation of tools for the engineers and computer scientists, to give them software tools that help them work in a way they are already used to working and give them a way to gather all of the right information and then infuse it in their designs.

And a lot of the time, the financial model isn't there to do it. Sometimes society gets so annoyed at what happens, and it ends up on the front page of the New York Times. The reaction isn't always rational. Policy doesn't have the nuances of the technology.

If we build the right designs in up front, then society can decide how to turn those controls on and off. But if the technology is built without controls, it forces us to either accept the benefits of the technology without controls, or cripple it by adding them later.

Several years ago, Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously quipped, "Privacy is dead. Get over it."

Oh privacy is definitely not dead. When people say you have to choose, it means they haven't actually thought the problem through or they aren't willing to accept the answer.

Remember, it's in [McNealy's] interest to say that, because he very much shares that attitude of the computer scientist who built the technology that's invasive; who says, "Well, you want the benefits of my technology, you'll get over privacy". It's exactly the kind of computer scientist we don't want to be graduating in the future. We want the computer scientist who will resolve these kinds of barriers in conflict, identify them and resolve them in their technology design.

So where do you see the big problems?

It really is pretty much everywhere. Identity management is a critical problem that we just keep ignoring. Social security numbers are a whole discussion unto themselves -- how they've outplayed themselves, do they need to be replaced? Now in law enforcement and the department of justice, they're saying it should be fingerprints. So now we'll see little devices in computers and cars and even refrigerators with very expensive fingerprint readers on them. But that's a problem because fingerprints could become the next social security number. They could give us all the ills of the social security number and worse. I can't get rid of my fingerprint, it goes with me wherever I go. I don't wear my social security number on my head.

How would it be stolen, though? What specifically would you see as the problem with fingerprints?

Well, we leave them everywhere, which is really good for law enforcement because they know where to find us at all times, but that means that anyone could pick them up. The point is you can see the progression. Fingerprint databases will proliferate all over and that will create problems. Someone could access the database and replicate your fingerprint and make a card, which wouldn't really be their card, it'd be yours.

So this leaves more and more bits of data about all of us out there on the Internet, including email?

Yes, and you can tell a lot about a person that way, you can even impersonate them. That's another thing I expect to see over the next five years. Thieves will do a little research on you, impersonate you and maybe send an email to someone you know to elicit funds because now they have more information about you.

Medical privacy is a sensitive area, too.

The big vulnerabilities there come from the insurance companies and employers, people who ultimately pay the medical bills. Those parties have an interest in knowing what you have been diagnosed with and making decisions that impact your employment or income. There was an article written about a banker in Maryland who used to cross a cancer registry with people who had loans and mortgages with his bank, and would then call in those loans. Now the story was retracted, because it was being debated whether it was true or not. But the person who was responsible for the story showed me lots of documentation that showed it was true. But the point I am making is that true or false, it is certainly easy to do. And you can see the financial incentives. So the problem with Scott McNealy's approach, the trusted agent approach, is that to the extent that they are the only party to see the data, maybe society can trust them. But the truth is & you aren't the only party [who can get your hands on the information], and what you are advocating is not just for you but a lot of parties that you simply can't be accountable for.

DNA data is becomng more widely available now. If you only have the DNA of a person and nothing else, could you find out who that person is?

In one project, we chose to look at patients with Huntington's disease, because it's easy to spot in the DNA. One part of the DNA will repeat, and that's normal, but if you have Huntington's it repeats a huge amount of times. Also the longer the repeat, the earlier the age of onset of the disease. So we could make a prediction about the person's age at the time they were diagnosed with it. These were all Huntington's patients in the state of Illinois. We then used hospital discharge information that was publicly available and looked for diagnoses of [discharged] Huntington's patients and began to match them to the DNA to identify those people. We successfully matched 20 out of 22 people. That was shocking.

Are we postponing the privacy problem, or are we confronting it?

A lot of the surveillance can be done with privacy protections. But under the current administration, those in Homeland Security call it the 'P word'. Their statement is that as long as you don't say the P word you don't have a P problem, whether you do or you don't. So the FBI gets slapped in the wrist for gathering all of this additional data, but a lot of that could have been anonymized. But right now, there is no funding or interest in using these technologies at all.
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?article...23DA6BA4346B0B





Your First Girlfriend -- and the other Things Search Engines Store About You
Mary Brandel

What if there were a giant database that contained your hidden insecurities, embarrassing medical questions and the fact that you still think from time to time about your high school girlfriend? Well, such a data store does exist -- if you've ever plugged such private topics into a search engine.

The fact is, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search all record and retain in their vast data banks any term that you query, in addition to the date and time your query was processed, the IP address of your computer and a cookie-based unique ID that -- unless you delete it -- enables the search engine to continue to know if requests are coming from that particular computer, even if the connection changes.

Microsoft Live Search also records the type of search you conducted (image, Web, local, etc.), while Google additionally stores your browser type and language. And when you click on a link displayed on Google, that may also be recorded and associated with your computer's IP address.

While Google Inc. recently announced that it would make its search logs anonymous after 18 months' time by deleting part of the IP address and obfuscating cookies associated with search queries, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. haven't yet made their retention policies public. AOL LLC stores this data for just one month.

The upshot: If someone were to ask one of these search engine companies to produce a list of IP addresses or cookie values that searched on a particular search term, they conceivably could. Or, conversely, given an IP address or cookie value, the search engine firm could produce a list of terms searched by the user of that address or cookie value.

Don't worry; be happy

Some people say there's not much to worry about, since the server logs don't associate these search terms with personally identifiable information, such as your name or e-mail address. However, if you have an account with or have registered for any of the additional services on a search engine site -- e-mail, social networks, calendars, shopping lists -- it's feasible that that connection could be made, says Brad Templeton, chairman of the board at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that protects liberties and privacy in cyberspace. In the case of Microsoft and Yahoo, that information can be extensive because of how much personal information these search engine firms ask for on their account registration forms, including your occupation, job title and marital status and the number of children in your household.

According to Whitney Burk, public relations manager at Microsoft, "there is no systematic way of identifying, isolating or cross-referencing search data with personally identifiable information." Google also says it stores the two types of information separately. However, according to Templeton, "it would be very difficult to make it impossible for someone to make that correlation."

Templeton emphasizes that he doesn't know exactly how any of the search engine systems are designed, but -- given typical designs -- there are many different ways that someone with the right access and knowledge could make a retroactive correlation between search terms and personally identifiable information. Considering that search terms can reveal personal information that ranges from medical prescriptions to religious beliefs and political preferences, that's not an association many of us would be happy to see.

Even if you didn't provide any personal information, an IP address alone could be traced back through a reverse DNS lookup to the Internet service provider and city of the IP address, according to Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a blog dedicated to search news. Contacting the ISP could result in a positive identification of the account holder by finding out which account accessed the search engine at the time recorded in the search log.

Last year, reporters at The New York Times didn't even need an IP address to track down the identity of an AOL user when AOL published anonymous search logs of 500,000 users over a three-month period. The identification was made possible simply based on the specificity of the search terms the user queried, such as real estate searches in the small town where she lived. (If you have any question as to what collected search terms reveal about an individual -- accurate or not -- check out those AOL search logs.)

Hello, George Orwell?

If all this sounds Big Brother-ish to you, you're not alone. Individual users, consumer interest groups, government regulatory committees around the world and privacy groups are growing increasingly worried about how much personal data search engine firms retain and what they could do -- or be forced to do -- with this information. In recent months, Google seemingly hasn't been able to make a move without drawing speculation and suspicion about its ability to construct personal portraits of user behavior.

Several consumer interest groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding Google's acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. The groups claim it would give Google unprecedented insight into consumer behavior, because it could track both people's Internet searches and their Web site visits. And when Google released its History feature, which associates individuals' search and page visitation histories with their account information, some observers, such as veteran blogger Anil Dash, called it both "brilliant" and "scary."

"With the release of Web History, especially in the context of its recent acquisitions and announcements, Google may have crossed the line where regular users start to react with skepticism and caution instead of unabashed enthusiasm," Dash says in his blog (see "Google hostile to privacy, group says").

The creepiness factor surrounding online search data was also upped by the revelation in early 2006 that the U.S. Justice Department had subpoenaed Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL to turn over a random list of Web queries conducted over the course of a week, divorced from the names of those submitting them. AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo turned over some of the requested information, but Google resisted. Although Google set a good precedent by doing so, "governments can and will do things that companies have to comply with," says Chris Sherman, executive editor of Search Engine Land, referring to the Chinese government pressuring Yahoo to turn over the name of a user who posted to an online forum.

"The [U.S.] government is a growing concern, because over the last several, years it's been expanding its power to ask for such information, especially as the political climate has changed," Templeton says. For instance, he points out, warrants have been easier to get since the USA Patriot Act was enacted. "It's something we should worry about more than in the past," he says.

Of course, some in the government are trying for more, not less, protection for online data. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a bill in early 2006 (H.R. 4731) to require owners of Internet Web sites -- not just search engine firms --- to destroy obsolete data containing personal consumer information.

Putting aside the government, there are other ways for private data to be revealed, Templeton says, in the form of internal employees. "Everyone knows the history of most large database [breaches] comes down to a story of corrupt employees who sell access to private records," he says. "In the private investigation world, they can use bribes to get people's tax returns."

Brass tacks

All of this begs the question: Why do search firms store all this data? Google offers three reasons: It can help the company improve its services, maintain security and prevent abuse by looking for patterns indicating fraudulent activity, and comply with legal obligations to retain data. The company asserts that it can use this information to determine how often users are satisfied with the first result of a query and how often they proceed to later results. Or it can determine how many times an advertisement is clicked, in order to calculate how much the advertiser should be charged.

In his blog, Sullivan is more direct. "Google is big on personalization," he writes. "Big, big, big. For Google, getting up close and personal with individuals is seen as a big leap forward on many fronts -- and 2007 is the year Google is going all out after it."

The more Google can know about you, Sullivan explains, the more it believes it can deliver you a better experience, not to mention more targeted ads. "But in particular," he says, "personalization is seen as the next generational step in delivering better search results."

But Templeton questions whether the search firms need to store as much information as they do, and for as long as they do. "We regularly advise [Google] that they're keeping too much information," he says. While some people, such as Sullivan, applaud Google's move to limit the amount of time it retains search logs, saying that will make it nearly impossible to trace any query back to a particular computer, Templeton thinks total destruction of the data would be far better.

"History is full of [incidents] where people thought they could anonymize or destroy data, but people find a way to recover it," he says. "You have to be more thorough in their destruction -- you have to eventually destroy the connection between the IP address and the searches."

Plus, Google's move may or may not address backup data, which Sullivan notes is not as easily accessible or altered. And the 18-month window also doesn't address data stored via its Web History feature. That information, Sullivan says, is not being destroyed or anonymized over time. "If you want it wiped out," he says on his blog, "Google says you have to do that separately." On the positive side, Web History lets users know exactly what data pertaining to them is stored, and they can take it into their own hands to delete those histories at any time. The same is true of Yahoo's MyWeb feature, which stores user searches if it's been switched on.

With all the focus on user privacy, the search engine firms say they are taking measures to increase the anonymity of users. Google has said it will build privacy protections into its nonsearch products, including Google Talk's "off the record" feature, as well as Google Desktop's "pause" and "lock search" controls. It has also said it will provide easy-to-understand privacy policies for users on its Web site.

For its part, Microsoft says it's actively engaged with data protection authorities around the world on what user information is collected and for what purposes, as well as policies around notice and consent. "There is no universal consensus on the 'right' policies," Burk says. "However, we will continue to be active with privacy advocates and authorities as these decisions are made."

In the end, Sherman says, it's up to individual users to decide whether they trust search engine firms with their personal information. "It's something everyone has to decide -- at what level am I comfortable with the reality of improving my search results vs. my identity being connected with the types of queries I do?" he says. And he's careful to note that the question extends way beyond Google, which in his eyes takes strong measures to secure user data. "When you go to Google, you can't get anywhere near their data centers," he says. "There are levels of security in the company where few people are cleared to get into areas where people can see personally identifiable information."

But to Templeton, that's not enough. "Even when people try to do a good job, things happen, and data still gets out," he says. "If it's collected and in a place that can be accessed, it can get out."

Furthermore, Sherman points out, it's not just search engines that store personal data. "Your ISP knows more about you than any search engine -- not just what you're searching on but every Web site you've visited," he says. On his blog Sullivan adds, "Google may be anonymizing its records, but your ISP might not be."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...e =rss_news50





A Lot of Room in Its View

Microsoft's Vista stores much more data—and may affect the discovery process
Jason Krause

Vista—Microsoft’s latest operating system—may prove to be most appropriately named, especially for those seeking evidence of how a computer was used.

Available since late January, Vista offers a host of new security and built-in backup features. But from a litigator’s perspective, the interesting point is that it keeps a lot more information—and more detailed information—about what a person does with a PC. This means lawyers can potentially discover more forensic evidence about what is on a computer and construct more detailed time lines about what was done with that information.

R. Lee Barrett, an associate attorney with Forshey & Prostok in Fort Worth, Texas, has worked bankruptcy cases for both banks and debtors. He believes Vista will be a useful tool for attorneys, but will also pose new challenges in litigation.

“From a defense perspective, it scares me to death,” says Barrett. “One of the things I have a hard time educating my clients on is the volume of data that’s now discoverable.”

For example, a new feature called Transactional NTFS, or TxF in
Windows-speak, keeps much more detailed user records. These records allow attorneys to construct a more accurate time line of events.

“Right now you can ... say information was accessed on a certain day, but that might not prove anything,” says John Simek, co-founder of Sensei Enterprises, a legal technology and computer forensics firm in Fairfax, Va.

But with Vista “you can look in there and see something was accessed on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday at such-and-such a time going back months.”

Vista keeps something called a shadow copy that backs up your work in the unused space on the hard drive. It’s designed to prevent data loss; but with it that data will stay on the computer—perhaps forever. Windows systems have been replicating data similarly in recent releases, but Vista makes it easier for forensic examiners to find deleted data.

In addition, the new Instant Search technology allows users to find documents faster by keeping an index of things they have worked on.

However, the index becomes a new source of discoverable information that details almost everything one uses a computer for. “It’s Google Desktop on steroids,” says Simek. “It’s an indexed database of more evidence stored right there on a computer.”

High-End Encryption

Simek had a test computer set up to better understand how Vista will affect his forensics work. He says the most interesting new feature might be the bitlocker encryption, though it is currently available only for very high-end versions of Vista.

Bitlocker encryption lets users lock up data so that only people with a decryption key can access it. “From a forensics perspective, it probably won’t be a major problem because a court would order a party to decrypt the computer,” Simek says. “It could be a rare problem in civil litigation, like a divorce suit, if one side happens to have a high-end version of Vista and doesn’t want the other party to see the computer.”

Barrett says the new features may make life easier for small law firms and solo attorneys. Assuming they can look at a computer’s data without corrupting or altering it, lawyers doing a quick scan can determine whether relevant information might be stored on a PC.

“If you can’t afford a forensics expert for every case, at least you can take a look to see if ... some potentially discoverable documents have been on a computer,” he says. “Once you determine [that], ... then you can talk about hiring experts.”

But whether it helps or hurts them, users will likely have to deal with the vagaries of Vista someday. Microsoft’s hold on the market for business PCs is so complete, almost everyone will migrate to it eventually. Better that lawyers discover now how Vista will affect the discovery process.
http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/jy13tkjasn.html





Military Files Left Unprotected Online
Mike Baker

Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq. Geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad. Plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

The military calls it "need-to-know" information that would pose a direct threat to U.S. troops if it were to fall into the hands of terrorists. It's material so sensitive that officials refused to release the documents when asked.

But it's already out there, posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and contractors, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

In a survey of servers run by agencies or companies involved with the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Associated Press found dozens of documents that officials refused to release when asked directly, citing troop security.

Such material goes online all the time, posted most often by mistake. It's not in plain sight, unlike the plans for the new American embassy in Baghdad that appeared recently on the Web site of an architectural firm. But it is almost as easy to find.

And experts said foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists working with al-Qaida likely know where to look.

In one case, the Army Corps of Engineers asked the AP to promptly dispose of several documents found on a contractor's server that detailed a project to expand the fuel infrastructure at Bagram — including a map of the entry point to be used by fuel trucks and the location of pump houses and fuel tanks. The Corps of Engineers then changed its policies for storing material online following the AP's inquiry.

But a week later, the AP downloaded a new document directly from the agency's own server. The 61 pages of photos, graphics and charts map out the security features at Tallil Air Base, a compound outside of Nasiriyah in southeastern Iraq, and depict proposed upgrades to the facility's perimeter fencing.

"That security fence guards our lives," said Lisa Coghlan, a spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers in Iraq, who is based at Tallil. "Those drawings should not have been released. I hope to God this is the last document that will be released from us."

The Corps of Engineers and its contractor weren't alone:

• The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency — which provides the military with maps and charts — said it plans to review its policies after the AP found several sensitive documents, including aerial surveys of military airfields near Balad and Al Asad, Iraq, on its server.

• Benham Companies LLC is securing its site after learning it had inadvertently posted detailed maps of buildings and infrastructure at Fort Sill, Okla. "Now, everything will be protected," said Steve Tompkins, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Benham.

• Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, two of the nation's leading nuclear laboratories, closed public access to their file transfer protocol servers after the AP contacted them about material posted there. Both said the change was unrelated to the AP's inquiry.

The AP has destroyed the documents it downloaded, and all the material cited in this story is no longer available online on the sites surveyed.

The posting of private material on publicly available FTP servers is a familiar problem to security experts hired by companies to secure sites and police the actions of employees who aren't always tech-savvy. They said files that never should appear online are often left unprotected by inexperienced or careless users who don't know better.

A spokeswoman for contractor SRA International Inc., where the AP found a document the Defense Department said could let hackers access military computer networks, said the company wasn't concerned because the unclassified file was on an FTP site that's not indexed by Internet search engines.

"The only way you could find it is by an awful lot of investigation," said SRA spokeswoman Laura Luke.

But on Tuesday, SRA had effectively shut down its FTP server. The only file online was a short statement: "In order to mitigate the risk of SRA or client proprietary information being inadvertently made available to the public, the SRA anonymous ftp server has been shutdown indefinitely. In the coming months, a new secure ftp site will be introduced that will replace the functionality of this site."

Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of BT Counterpane, a Mountain View, Calif.-based technology security company, said the attitude that material posted on FTP sites is hard to find reflects a misunderstanding of how the Internet works.

"For some, there's sort of this myth that 'if I put something on the Net and don't tell anybody,' that it's hidden," Schneier said. "It's a sloppy user mistake. This is yet another human error that creates a major problem."

File transfer protocol is a relatively old technology that makes files available on the Internet. It remains popular for its simplicity, efficiency and low cost. In fact, several agencies and contractors said the documents found by the AP were posted online so they could be easily shared among colleagues.

Internet users can't scour the sites with a typical search engine, but FTP servers routinely share a similar address as public Web sites. To log on, users often only need to replace "http" and "http://www" in a Web address with "ftp."

Some are secured by password or a firewall, but others are occasionally left open to anyone with an Internet connection to browse and download anonymously. Experts said that when unsophisticated users post sensitive information to the servers, they would not necessarily know it could be downloaded by people outside of their business or agency.

"What they don't realize is that every time you set up any type of server, you have that possibility," said Danny Allan, director of security research for Watchfire, a Waltham, Mass.-based Web security company. "Any files that you are putting on the server you want to monitor on a continuous basis."

Allan said he and others in the security industry have watched for more than a decade as files — including credit card information, sensitive blueprints of government buildings and military intelligence reports — spread through the public domain via unsecured FTP servers.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Iraq, declined to say if material accidentally left on the Internet had led to a physical breach of security.

But among the documents the AP found were aerial photographs and detailed schematics of Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run facility for detainees in Iraq. One of the documents was password-protected, but the password was printed in an unsecure document stored on the same server. They showed where U.S. forces keep prisoners and fuel tanks, as well as the locations of security fences, guard towers and other security measures.

"It gets down to a level of detail that would assist insurgents in trying to free their members from the camp or overpower guards," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Virginia-based Lexington Institute. "When you post ... the map of a high-security facility that houses insurgents, you're basically giving their allies on the outside information useful in freeing them."

The Corps of Engineers expressed a similar concern when it learned that the AP had downloaded the details about the fuel infrastructure upgrade at Bagram from a contractor's FTP site. Spokeswoman Joan Kibler said that kind of information "could put our troops in harm's way."

The AP's discovery led the agency to ask all its contractors to immediately put such material under password protection. In fact, all the agencies and contractors contacted by the AP have either shut down their FTP sites, secured them with a password or pledged to install other safeguards to ensure the documents are no longer accessible.

"We saw that there have been instances where some documents have been placed on FTP sites, and they haven't had any safeguarding mechanisms for them," Kibler said. "We've determined that those documents need to be safeguarded, so we've amended our practices here to require that any of those types of documents have restricted access when they're placed on FTP sites."

Documents found by the AP about Contingency Operating Base Speicher near Tikrit, Iraq, describe potential security vulnerabilities at the facility and paraphrase an Army major expressing concerns about a "great separation between personnel and equipment" as the base prepared for the military's current counterinsurgency push.

"For force-protection reasons and operational security, that's sensitive stuff," said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a military spokesman based at Speicher. "That's for a need-to-know basis. The enemy regularly takes that stuff and pieces it together for their advantage."

The information about Camp Bucca, Bagram Air Base and Contingency Operating Base Speicher was found on the FTP server of CH2M Hill Companies Ltd., an engineering, consulting and construction company based in Englewood, Colo.

"None of the drawings are classified and we believe they were all handled appropriately per the government's direction," said CH2M Hill spokesman John Corsi. But the company added a password protection to its FTP site after the AP's inquiry and referred the direct request for the documents to the government.

Military officials said they could jeopardize troop security and refused to release them.

Other files found by the AP didn't appear to pose an immediate threat to troop security, but illustrated advanced military technologies. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency posted PowerPoint presentations outlining military GPS systems, including plans to combat GPS jammers. Files from Los Alamos give an early look at a developing technology to combat enemy snipers in urban environments, including one file describing the levels of security behind the new program.

Dean Carver, a counterintelligence officer with the federal Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said at a recent security conference that such trade secrets — even those dealing with a basic technology — are often a common target for foreign espionage because they can be used to advance a country's own military technology.

"Every military-critical technology is sought by many foreign governments," said Carver, mentioning China and Russia as the leading culprits of snooping on the Internet.

Christopher Freeman believes he may have witnessed such hunting for secrets. While working on an internal security review at his job with the city of Greensboro, N.C.., Freeman watched as a computer with an electronic address from Tehran, Iran, accessed the city's FTP server and downloaded a file that contained design drawings for the area's water infrastructure.

He said that while there's no way to know if there was malicious intent behind the download, "when you think of Iran, you think of all the bad stuff first."

"It could have been anyone," Freeman said. "It opened our eyes to show that we're not just little old Greensboro. We're a part of the global community."

That was years ago, and it led Freeman to start looking for FTP sites he thought should be secure. He found a manual describing how to operate a Navy encryption device on the server of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. He also found photographs and graphics detailing the inner workings of missiles designed at Sandia.

"It's not something that had any business being on a FTP site," said Sandia spokeswoman Stephanie Holinka of the material Freeman found. The agency has shut down its FTP site while a security upgrade is put in place, she said.

Many sites housed raw data, presentations and documents that didn't have security classifications, while other documents were clearly marked to prevent public release. The manual of the encryption device tells users to "destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of this document." A warning says exporting the document could result in "severe criminal penalties."

"The military is often criticized for making too many things secret, but when you're enabling an enemy to find out how you use encryption devices, you easily could be helping them to defeat America," said Thompson, the military analyst.

Freeman, who showed the AP the documents from Sandia and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, said he made a conscious effort to avoid information labeled classified but still managed to accidentally download files from Sandia with "top secret" classifications, forcing him to wipe his computer hard drive clean and notify authorities.

Freeman passed along his findings to the FBI and the Department of Defense and later aided investigators in securing the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command site. After getting calls from a contractor and the Army Materiel Command asking about what he found online, Freeman has sought legal representation from Denner Pellegrino, a Boston-based firm that specializes in cyber crime.

"This is a treasure trove for terrorists," Freeman said. "They can just waltz in and browse. I'm by no means a high-tech person. I'm not a programmer. I don't know hacking. I'm just a slightly above-average computer user."

FBI officials declined to specifically discuss Freeman and what he told the agency. But Mark Moss, a Charlotte-based FBI agent who focuses on online security, said foreign intelligence agencies spend a lot of time on the Internet because online intelligence-gathering is cheap, quick and anonymous.

"If they steal your technology through the Internet, it's overseas in an instant," Moss said. "It's the perfect conduit."
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/1581704/





FTP is Simple but Open to Leaks
Anick Jesdanun

The Internet was a mere 19 months old when engineers first developed a file-sharing system still in wide use today.

Although many of the technologies from those early days eventually faded away, replaced by newer developments such as the World Wide Web and search engines, file transfer protocol remains a common way for distributing larger files and updating Web sites, thanks to its simplicity and versatility.

"It says remarkably good things about the guys who designed the Internet," said John Levine, an FTP user for a quarter-century and co-author of "The Internet for Dummies." "FTP was designed well enough that there's never been a pressing need to come up with something better."

Its simplicity, though, also leads to security challenges that simply weren't imagined back in the Internet's early days.

FTP was first described in a 1971 paper, "A File Transfer Protocol," and became canonized as a standard in 1985.

For years, FTP was the primary way to transfer files. Two networked computers can send files back and forth, regardless of the file type or the computer's filing and storage system. Each computer would only need to know this common way of transferring files.

After the Web's development in the early 1990s, its hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP, became the standard way to retrieve text and smaller images over browsers. But FTP has remained the go-to technology for downloading larger files such as documents, databases and songs; FTP download capabilities are built into standard browsers.

Standalone FTP software also can let Web developers upload Web pages onto servers for viewing, something difficult or impossible with browsers.

FTP comes with password-protection options, though usernames and passwords to access files are sent over the Internet unencrypted as regular text, allowing spies along the way to capture the information.

A bigger problem, though, is FTP's ability to let people log on anonymously, a capability purposely included to promote file sharing, but one that can accidentally expose private, sensitive documents.

The username is typically "anonymous" and the password can be anything, meaning everyone on the Internet has access to your files and servers that aren't configured correctly. Though anonymous FTP can be turned off, many older systems come with it automatically on — and inexperienced or careless users may forget to make the change.

"You're most likely to find an open anonymous server on some workstation on somebody's desk at a university that's been sitting there for 10 years," Levine said. "You have to be careful."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4960249.html





A New Studio Will Market Short Videos for the Web
Michael Cieply

Expanding a hunt for commerce in the burgeoning art of Web video, Hollywood’s United Talent Agency and the Internet-based advertising agency Spot Runner have started a ministudio for digital entertainment from established actors, directors and others, the agencies said on Tuesday.

The new company, 60Frames Entertainment, is the latest effort by those versed in old media to tap the power of short videos that have attracted millions to portals like MySpace, YouTube and elsewhere.

As one of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies, United Talent represents stars and filmmakers as prominent as Vince Vaughn, Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller. Spot Runner, which is partly owned by the WPP Group advertising conglomerate, has helped smaller advertisers make and place television ads with a Web-based system. It expects initially to sell ads for 60Frames through a sales force rather than through its site, a spokesman said.

“We can solve problems advertisers are facing, and we can solve problems artists are facing,” said Brent Weinstein, chief executive of 60Frames.

Mr. Weinstein, 32, was previously head of United Talent’s eight-month-old online division. 60Frames, he said, was organized over the last several weeks with $3.5 million in initial backing from the Tudor Investment Corporation and the Pilot Group. United Talent and Spot Runner, Mr. Weinstein said, will each own a minority stake in the new company.

60Frames, said Mr. Weinstein, will operate independently of United Talent, and expected to do business with clients of other agencies and management companies. According to the executive, the company, which will be based in Beverly Hills, was born of a growing frustration among artists and their representatives at the complexities of doing any online business without an established model for financing and organizing projects.

“We were finding it could be as difficult to make deals for a Web production as for a TV series,” said Mr. Weinstein. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

To clear the path, 60Frames expects to provide capital for Web productions that typically run for a few minutes and cost “in the thousands, not hundreds of thousands” of dollars to produce, said the executive. It will then try to distribute the videos on a variety of Web sites and cellphone services, while placing ads wherever possible, and leaving a major stake in ownership to the creators.

The filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers behind movies like “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski,” have agreed to produce programming for the venture and will serve on an advisory board.

A Web site called funnyordie.com, started this year by the comic actor Will Ferrell and his production partner, Adam McKay, with support from their representatives at the Creative Artists Agency, follows a more narrowly focused approach to the same business. Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm, provided financing for the site.

In yet another effort, Michael D. Eisner, formerly chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, provided financing through his Vuguru production firm for a Web series called “Prom Queen,” whose makers were helped along by Mr. Weinstein’s online unit at United Talent.

“The market is quite large,” Nick Grouf, chief executive of Spot Runner, said of a growing pool of Web video advertising dollars that is expected to reach about $775 million this year, up nearly 90 percent from 2006, according to figures compiled by the research company eMarketer.

Mr. Grouf said organizers of the new company, had become convinced that advertisers would spend even more as they became assured of the ownership and legal status of Web postings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/bu...ia/11spot.html





Producer Versus Studio in a Case of Money and Ego
David M. Halbfinger

As a studio boss in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s, Alan Ladd Jr. was admired for his taste, his relationships with top directors like George Lucas and Ridley Scott, and his laid-back management style.

Not to mention his reserve: he once responded to a long-winded movie pitch by merely saying “No.”

Mr. Ladd — now 69, but still known to a large swath of Hollywood as Laddie — remains as laconic as ever in normal conversation. But he is raising his voice in a courthouse cri de coeur over a series of perceived slights by Warner Brothers, the studio with which he was a partner on films like the Oscar-winning “Chariots of Fire,” the science fiction classic “Blade Runner” and the lowbrow but hugely profitable “Police Academy” series.

It’s quite a turnabout for Mr. Ladd, who says his production and distribution deal at Warner Brothers from 1979 to 1985 was so sweet that he could greenlight his own movies, choose the dates and theaters they would play, and even make the studio bump one of its movies for one of his.

All these years later, he is going to trial in state court here this week in a case against Warner Brothers that could focus attention on a variant of that old Hollywood bugaboo, studio accounting.

For an aging producer, and a faded movie star’s son at that, this particular lawsuit — with its overtones of credit, legacy and the deference due a lion of the industry who famously took a risk on “Star Wars” when no other studio would — seems as much an existential battle as a legal one.

The crux of the dispute is how studios account for revenues from the licensing of their movies to cable and television networks here and overseas. Typically, studios negotiate package deals for scores of films, then allocate a portion of the total to each movie.

Profit participants — usually stars, directors, producers and writers — stand to gain or lose depending on those allocations. Mr. Ladd, for one, was entitled to a hefty 5 percent of the gross profits on a dozen movies he had made with Warner Brothers. So every penny of the bottom line credited to other movies reduced the amount available for his.

Fairness, he argues, would require a formula based on box-office results or other objective factors. Yet in one deal, he said, worthless old Tarzan movies were accounted for at $40,000 apiece. And in several packages, court filings show, Warner Brothers took the total license fee and divided it evenly among all the movies in the package, no matter how successful.

Sounding much like his late father, star of the gunfighter classic “Shane,” he said that he felt there was no choice but to take the studio to court. “It just seemed wrong,” he said. “Either you have to sue, or you put your tail between your legs and run for the hills.”

Mr. Ladd said he believed his films had been deliberately shortchanged by Warner Brothers executives, in whose eyes he became a liability once he left the studio’s fold in 1985. (He later served two stints as chairman of MGM, and produced the Oscar-winning “Braveheart” as well as the costly flop “The Phantom” in six years on the Paramount lot before becoming an independent producer in 1999.)

Lawyers for Warner Brothers declined to comment, citing the studio’s policy of not discussing pending litigation. But in court the studio has indicated that Mr. Ladd was treated more than fairly. Its lawyers are expected to use television ratings, for example, to make the case that Mr. Ladd’s decades-old films simply aren’t as valuable these days as he might think. And Warner Brothers will argue that allocations are the result of negotiations with buyers, not unilaterally decided on by the studio.

That the two sides are actually going to trial is something of a shocker. Disputes over license-fee allocation aren’t unheard of; the director William Friedkin sued Warner Brothers over revenue from “The Exorcist” and the producer Saul Zaentz sued MGM over “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” to name two. But both disputes, like most such cases, were settled.

And with good reason. A loss at trial could invite other plaintiffs to come forward. For Mr. Ladd, meanwhile, the case has become all-consuming and somewhat energy- sapping at a time when his attention is needed elsewhere. His next film is “Gone, Baby, Gone,” the first feature directed by Ben Affleck, which Miramax is distributing this fall.

Still, Mr. Ladd — who constantly bridled at his corporate overlords when he was studio chief — makes clear that this is an intensely personal fight.

It began, he said, when he learned that Warner Brothers had been sending another profit participant on “Blade Runner” royalty checks for some time. “But they’d stopped even sending me statements,” Mr. Ladd said. “They said, ‘The movie’s so far in the red, we don’t want to bother.’ ”

So Mr. Ladd paid for an audit, and Warner Brothers later paid him more than $400,000 in what it called a conciliatory gesture, but Mr. Ladd only grew more incensed.

The audit also turned up millions in disputed allocations, which rang another bell with Mr. Ladd: in the early 1990s he had settled a dispute with the studio for $500,000. At the time, Mr. Ladd said, he was flush with millions from the settlement of a contract dispute with MGM, and didn’t want the headache.

The last straw, Mr. Ladd said, came when he was speaking in Boston and someone asked whether he had had anything to do with “Chariots of Fire.” A recent DVD release of the movie, he learned, had omitted his credit from the package. The same thing happened, he said, with “Night Shift” and “The Right Stuff.” The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. And on “Once Upon a Time in America,” he found, the movie itself had been altered to remove his credit. (Warner Brothers says the packages were misprints, and that omission of the credit from “Once Upon a Time” was corrected as soon as possible.)

“Taking someone’s name off the picture — that’s very personal,” said Mr. Ladd, whose lawyer, John Gatti, is also his son-in-law. “My dad was No. 1 at the box office for five or six years, but he didn’t work with good directors, most of his films were black and white, and he faded into the woodwork. Except for ‘Shane,’ it was like he was never here.”

“When they took my name off the pictures, it was like I was never here,” he added. “You can’t take away somebody’s life. That’s what they’re doing. It’s like I never lived.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/movies/11ladd.html





Warner Bros. Picks Up "Heap" of Books
Borys Kit

With "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" breaking boxoffice records, Warner Bros. Pictures -- on the lookout for its next franchise -- has picked up the rights to another seven-book children's fantasy series, "Septimus Heap."

Written by U.K. author Angie Sage, the series revolves around two babies who are switched at birth: one a boy who discovers his birthright as the seventh son of a seventh son, and who is destined to become a powerful wizard; the other a girl who is fated to become a princess.

So far, three books have been published -- "Magyk," "Flyte" and "Physik" -- which have become known for their clever use of charms and potions as well as for their sense of humor.

Published in March 2005 by HarperCollins Children's Books, "Magyk" debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times best-seller list and moved to No. 1 in its second week of sales. The subsequent books have been published yearly since, with more than 1 million copies sold in the U.S. so far. The series also is a huge international success, having been translated into 28 languages.

"Septimus Heap: Magyk" will be produced by Karen Rosenfelt ("The Devil Wears Prada") with author Sage as executive producer.
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmN...41068620070713





Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits
Motoko Rich

Of all the magical powers wielded by Harry Potter, perhaps none has cast a stronger spell than his supposed ability to transform the reading habits of young people. In what has become near mythology about the wildly popular series by J. K. Rowling, many parents, teachers, librarians and booksellers have credited it with inspiring a generation of kids to read for pleasure in a world dominated by instant messaging and music downloads.

And so it has, for many children. But in keeping with the intricately plotted novels themselves, the truth about Harry Potter and reading is not quite so straightforward a success story. Indeed, as the series draws to a much-lamented close, federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along.

There is no doubt that the books have been a publishing sensation. In the 10 years since the first one, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” was published, the series has sold 325 million copies worldwide, with 121.5 million in print in the United States alone. Before Harry Potter, it was virtually unheard of for kids to queue up for a mere book. Children who had previously read short chapter books were suddenly plowing through more than 700 pages in a matter of days. Scholastic, the series’s United States publisher, plans a record-setting print run of 12 million copies for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the eagerly awaited seventh and final installment due out at 12:01 a.m. on July 21.

But some researchers and educators say that the series, in the end, has not permanently tempted children to put down their Game Boys and curl up with a book instead. Some kids have found themselves daunted by the growing size of the books (“Sorcerer’s Stone” was 309 pages; “Deathly Hallows,” will be 784). Others say that Harry Potter does not have as much resonance as titles that more realistically reflect their daily lives. “The Harry Potter craze was a very positive thing for kids,” said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who has reviewed statistics from federal and private sources that consistently show that children read less as they age. “It got millions of kids to read a long and reasonably complex series of books. The trouble is that one Harry Potter novel every few years is not enough to reverse the decline in reading.”

Educators agree that the series can’t get the job done alone.

“Unless there are scaffolds in place for kids — an enthusiastic adult saying, ‘Here’s the next one’ — it’s not going to happen,” said Nancie Atwell, the author of “The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers” and a teacher in Edgecomb, Me. “And in way too many American classrooms it’s not happening.”

Young people are less inclined to read for pleasure as they move into their teenage years for a variety of reasons, educators say. Some of these are trends of long standing (older children inevitably become more socially active, spend more time on reading-for-school or simply find other sources of entertainment other than books), and some are of more recent vintage (the multiplying menagerie of high-tech gizmos that compete for their attention, from iPods to Wii consoles). What parents and others hoped was that the phenomenal success of the Potter books would blunt these trends, perhaps even creating a generation of lifelong readers in their wake.

“Anyone who has children or grandchildren sees the competition for children’s time increasing as they enter adolescence, and the difficulty that reading seems to have to compete effectively,” Mr. Gioia said.

Many thousands of children have, indeed, gone from the Potter books to other pleasure reading. But others have dropped away.

Starting when Avram Leierwood was 7, he would read the books aloud with his mother, Mina. “We’d sit in the treehouse in our backyard and take turns,” recalled Ms. Leierwood, of South Minneapolis.

But while Ms. Leierwood has remained an avid fan, Avram, now 15, is indifferent. When “Deathly Hallows” comes out, he will be on a canoe trip. As for reading, he said: “I don’t really have much time anymore. I like to hang out with my friends, talk, go watch movies and stuff, go to the park and play ultimate Frisbee.”

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of federal tests administered every few years to a sample of students in grades 4, 8 and 12, the percentage of kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year “Sorcerer’s Stone” was published in the United States. In 2005, when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth book, was published, the results were identical.

Many parents, educators and librarians say that despite such statistics, they have seen enough evidence to convince them that Harry Potter is a bona fide hero.

“Parents will say, ‘You know, my son never spent time reading, and now my son is staying up late reading, keeping the light on because he can’t put that book down,’ ” said Linda B. Gambrell, president of the International Reading Association, a professional organization for teachers.

In a study commissioned last year by Scholastic, Yankelovich, a market research firm, reported that 51 percent of the 500 kids aged 5 to 17 polled said they did not read books for fun before they started reading the series. A little over three-quarters of them said Harry Potter had made them interested in reading other books.

Before she discovered Harry Potter, Kara Havranek, 13, spent most of her time romping outside in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland, or playing video games like Crash Bandicoot.

But four years after struggling through “Sorcerer’s Stone,” Kara has read and reread all six books, decorated her bedroom with Potter memorabilia and said she could hardly wait for “Deathly Hallows.”

But although Kara said she has enjoyed other books, she was not sure what lasting influence the series would have. “I probably won’t read as much when Harry Potter is over,” she said.

In a way that was previously rare for books, Harry Potter entered the pop-culture consciousness. The movies (the film version of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the fifth in the series, just opened) heightened the fervor, spawning video games and collectible figurines. That made it easier for kids who thought reading was for geeks to pick up a book.

Until Harry Potter, “I don’t think kids were reading proudly,” said Connie Williams, the school librarian at Kenilworth Junior High School in Petaluma, Calif. “Now it’s more normalized. It’s like, ‘Gosh we can read now, it’s O.K.’ ”

But creating a habit of reading is a continuous battle with kids who are saturated with other options. During a recent sixth-grade English class at the John W. McCormack Middle School in the Dorchester section of Boston, Aaron Forde, a cherubic 12-year-old, said he loved playing soccer, basketball and football. On top of that, he spends four hours a day chatting with friends on MySpace.com, the social networking site.

He had read the first three Harry Potter books, but said he had no particular interest in reading more. “I don’t like to read that much,” he said. “I think there are better things to do.”

Neema Avashia, Aaron’s English teacher, said it was rare for the Harry Potter series to draw reluctant readers to books. “I try to have a lot of books in my library that reflect where kids are coming from,” Ms. Avashia said. “And Harry Potter isn’t really where my kids are coming from.” She noted that her class is 85 percent nonwhite, and Harry Potter has few characters that belong to a racial minority group.

Some reading experts say that urging kids to read fiction in general might be a misplaced goal. “If you look at what most people need to read for their occupation, it’s zero narrative,” said Michael L. Kamil, a professor of education at Stanford University. “I don’t want to deny that you should be reading stories and literature. But we’ve overemphasized it,” he said. Instead, children need to learn to read for information, Mr. Kamil said, something they can practice while reading on the Internet, for example.

Still, there is something about seeing the passion that a novel can inspire that excites those who want to perpetuate a culture of reading. Even as the Harry Potter series draws to a close, there are signs that other books are coming up to take its place.
On a recent afternoon at at Public School 54 on Staten Island, a group of fifth grade boys shouted with enthusiasm for the “Cirque du Freak” series by Darren Shan, about a boy who becomes entangled with a vampire.

“I like the books so much that even when the teacher is teaching a lesson, I still want to read the books,” said Vincent Eng, a wiry 11-year-old. His classmate Thejas Alex said he had stopped reading a Harry Potter book to jump into “Cirque du Freak.”

“While I was reading them,” Thejas said, referring to the “Cirque” books, “I was like, addicted.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/books/11potter.html





Summer Reading Title Prompts Resistance From Parents, Not Students
Robin Finn

IN the era of the reluctant reader — these days, if the text doesn’t bombard an iPhone screen, it’s too often classified as yawn material — Commack High School thought it was doing incoming sophomores a favor by adding “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a slender and popular $14 paperback, to its summer reading list.

Using teen-lit terminology, slender is a euphemism for speed-read, much as reluctant reader is a euphemism for teenage boys. Especially during summer vacation: too many recreational options. But popular is an accurate tag for any book that sells upward of 700,000 copies and is passed from adolescent to adolescent like a hot potato. Or, put in digital terms, like a hot download. The book’s target audience, a tough sell in the literary marketplace, has declared it a legit page-turner ever since it was published in 1999.

No wonder it seemed like a can’t-miss pick. After all, the point of the summer list is to encourage kids to develop a lifelong reading habit. So Commack thought it had gotten it right; the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the head of the English department — all pertinent parties involved in setting the curriculum — read “Perks” and gave it a thumbs up.

They aren’t blanket permissives: “Running With Scissors” and “A Million Little Pieces” were rejected as “over the top,” says David H. Weiss, an assistant superintendent, who describes “Perks” as “the most-read book by high school kids in this country, as far as I know.”

“It’s the book that was recommended to us the most often,” he said.

So what if “Perks” doesn’t speak as directly to adult readers who have long since outgrown the awkward age. That’s not the point, right?

Think again. Though the book is a summer option for ninth graders in Rockville Centre (“My daughter read it two summers ago and loved it,” says Delia Garrity, the assistant superintendent for curriculum there, “and after all, the whole object is to get them to read”), Massapequa removed it from a sociology classroom a few years ago.

Suffolk County’s public library system has more than 100 copies of “Perks” in circulation, but it also appears on the American Library Association’s 2006 list of the 10 most frequently challenged books. Now “Perks” has been attacked as overly graphic — make that pornographic — by the parents of some Commack 10th graders.

No sooner had the revised summer reading list been spiced up with several contemporary titles — students condemned the previous list as uninspiring and unreadable — than complaints about “Perks” cropped up.

One parent contacted the Board of Education and accused Commack High School of dispensing and endorsing pornography. Another not only called the school to demand that it remove “Perks” from the list, but also alerted Newsday to the date-rape scene described by the book’s introverted 16-year-old narrator, Charlie, on Pages 30 and 31.

Charlie is sickened by the rape and later berates himself for not trying to stop it, though. And students are not assigned “Perks” — they have eight other options, including Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea,” which also has speed-read appeal. Still, the opponents want “Perks,” a coming-of-age-in-an-age-of-dysfunction tale by Stephen Chbosky, who also writes for the television series “Jericho,” gone yesterday.

Not going to happen.

“I read it a while ago, and my daughter read it when she was a sophomore, and my wife read it, and I reread it when people started yelling about it,” says Mr. Weiss, who turned down an invitation to chatter about the brouhaha on “Good Morning America.” He says “Perks” will be re-evaluated next fall, as will all the books on the list.

He invited the parents who condemned “Perks” to join the committee that compiles the list. The only caveat is that arbiters of the list read the entire book, not just Pages 30 and 31. “People need to read things in context,” Mr. Weiss says. “I mean, we can pull out passages from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that reduce it to the suicide of two 14-year-olds who engage in premarital sex.”

The dust-up has, predictably, enhanced the sales and circulation of “Perks,” not that it needed help. Mimi Scarpulla, manager of the Borders bookstore in Commack, says: “It is reminiscent of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ It’s not junk. My 17-year-old daughter read it last year because all her friends were reading it.”

Borders has stocked “Perks” since its release, with no complaints. Nor has the Smithtown Public Library, which has a Commack branch, had complaints. It has seven copies and is adding an eighth, because of demand.

“This absolutely is the proverbial tempest in a teapot,” says Richard Klein, an owner of the Book Revue in Huntington, which sells 60 to 70 copies of “Perks” a year.

Mr. Weiss notes that Commack’s reading list contains “Fahrenheit 451,” a science fiction work depicting a world where people are glued to wall-size televisions and books are banned and burned. There have been complaints about “Fahrenheit 451” as well: too boring.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/ny...2/08colli.html





Universities to RIAA: Take a Hike
Charles Nesson & John Palfrey

Recently, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, wrote to Harvard to challenge the university administration to stop acting as a "passive conduit" for students downloading music. We agree. Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent "pre-litigation notices" ought to take strong, direct action...and tell the RIAA to take a hike.

This Spring, 1,200 pre-litigation letters arrived unannounced at universities across the country. The RIAA promises more will follow. These letters tell the university which students the RIAA plans on suing, identifying the students only by their IP addresses, the "license plates" of Internet connections. Because the RIAA does not know the names behind the IP addresses, the letters ask the universities to deliver the notices to the proper students, rather than relying upon the ordinary legal mechanisms.

Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process. The RIAA's charter is to promote the financial interests of its corporate members – even if that means preserving an obsolete business model for its members. The university's charter is quite different. Harvard's charter reflects the purposes for which it was founded in 1636: "The advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences; the advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences; and all other necessary provisions that may conduce to the education of the ... youth of this country...."

The university strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA's messages. It should do so only if it believes that's consonant with the university's mission.

We believe it is not.

Universities are special places, set off in time and space for students to have an opportunity most will not again have: to learn together in a community that cherishes openness above all else. If the university is perceived as doing the bidding of any particular industry, the message we’re sending to students is that the university is willing to let commercial interests intrude.

Of course there are times when that intrusion is warranted. The horror of Virginia Tech is on all our minds and in our hearts. There are far lesser justifications for allowing the arms of government and commerce to interrupt the secular sanctity of the university's educational space. But protecting claims of copyright – whether or not legitimate claims – by passing along messages requiring students to pay lump sums to record companies just doesn't warrant the betrayal of student's trust and privacy.

The university does have an obligation to teach our students to be good citizens. Good citizens should be accountable for their actions. If our students are breaking the law, they should pay the price. That’s not the issue here. The RIAA has already sued well over 10,000 people, including many students, directly. They seem to be engaging in a classic tactic of the bully facing someone much weaker: threatening such dire consequences that the students settle without the issue going to court. The issue is that the university should not be carrying the industry’s water in bringing lawsuits.

The subtitle of the RIAA's own press release puts a far more pleasant gloss on this: "New Program Invigorates Campus Conversations About Consequences For Illegal Downloading."

If the RIAA wants to stimulate conversation, then it should engage in genuine dialogue. Come join us on campus. Come talk to the digital natives who are our students, to the faculty who care about fair intellectual property protections, and to the university counsel and technical teams who manage our strategies and operations in cyberspace. The RIAA should be asking, along with the rest of us, if we can come up with models that reward artists for their work while allowing the maximum circulation and use of their creations, as our Founding Fathers intended.

We should also be discussing the most important issue of all. Universities provide an open space in which every idea can be heard and discussed. Every limitation on the circulation of ideas works directly against the university's mission. How can we open up more ideas, more works, more conversations, while, of course, preserving the legitimate rights of creators? How can we make the university far more open than it is now? How can universities – just like the RIAA – embrace a digital future and make the most of its opportunities?

Being the unpaid enforcement arm of the provincial interests of the RIAA is no part of the answer to these questions.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/fi...ssion&sid=2802





Virginia Judge Denies RIAA Ex Parte Motion Against College of William and Mary Students in Interscope v. Does 1-7
Ray Beckerman

In Interscope v. Does 1-7, an ex parte proceeding in the Eastern District of Virginia, in Newport News, Virginia, in a 5-page decision by Judge Walter D. Kelley, Jr., the Court denied the RIAA's ex parte motion for an order granting discovery into the identities of students at the College of William & Mary.

This is the second such ex parte motion of which we are aware that has been denied recently, the first being Capitol v. Does 1-16, in which the RIAA sought information about University of New Mexico students.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...-ex-parte.html





23-Year-Old Mark Zuckerberg Has Google Sweating

Idealist Entrepreneur's Facebook Offers Something Search Doesn't--Distribution
Abbey Klaassen

What's the only company that scares Google? Facebook.

Just as Google has become what some people call the operating system for search, Facebook is turning itself into the operating system for social networking. While Google knows what millions of people are searching for, Facebook has something the search giant hasn't been able to grow: a network of connections between people that creates a viral distribution platform unrivaled by any portal or search engine.

Don't think this point hasn't made its way to Mountain View. It has certainly made it into the New York offices of News Corp., parent of Facebook's chief competition. When asked recently by the Wall Street Journal whether newspaper readers were going to MySpace, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who shelled out in 2005 what now appears to be a bargain sum of $580 million for MySpace, didn't mince words: "I wish they were. They're all going to Facebook at the moment." (Actually, although Facebook's audience growth is outpacing that of MySpace, its total audience numbers are still less than half the 69 million unique visitors scored by Mr. Murdoch's social network in May.)

"Today we're going to start a revolution," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted in late May to a crowd of 800 developers at the San Francisco Design Center. The 23-year-old was announcing that Facebook would open up its platform to allow them to create -- and monetize -- applications on the site. It was an ambitious announcement that ran counter to the direction MySpace appeared to be heading after spending millions to buy its own application-development companies.

Independence
Mr. Zuckerberg has shunned acquisition approaches (including a $1 billion bid from Yahoo) and counts Microsoft's Ray Ozzie and the Washington Post's Don Graham as friends and mentors. Many believe the future of Facebook could include an IPO and that remaining independent was key to Mr. Zuckerberg's ability to execute his vision.

At the core of Mr. Zuckerberg's message is what he calls the "social graph," or the connections people create on the site. Those connections can be used to improve typical web services such as shopping or searching for product recommendations.

Owen Van Natta, Facebook's chief operating officer, said a visit to Amazon.com will uncover all the product recommendations one might want but the value can be limited in the anonymity of the people posting the reviews. On the other hand, if you take your online activities and put them through the filter of the people you know well, those actions take on greater meaning.

Life meets web
All of this works, Mr. Van Natta said, because Facebook inhabits the intersection of the web and real life, and its connections are between real people who know each other.

"There's not a lot of utility for it outside of using it to connect with real friends," he said, an obvious dig at MySpace.com, where users can collect friends such as Pokeman cards. "If you put up a fake profile on Facebook, people won't connect to it."
Of course, few above the age of 25 can truly get just how compelling that social graph is because, well, they lack one. While a Facebook user can pimp out his own profile and perhaps find value in that itself, Facebook doesn't truly become powerful until all of one's friends are on it, connecting.

Which isn't as hard as it sounds. One recent college grad living in the Midwest (full disclosure: the source is this reporter's sister) estimated that 99.5% of her classmates were on Facebook. When pressed to name friends who weren't on the platform, she could name only one.

High growth
May web-traffic numbers from ComScore back that up. There are now 4 million 12- to 17-year-old unique visitors and 3.1 million in the 25-to-34 demo. The over-35 crowd has grown by 98% to 10.4 million monthly uniques. The 38% growth in the 18- to 24-year-old demo (which boasts 7.8 million unique visitors) is the slowest growth of all the demos on Facebook over the past year. Facebook has a total of 29 million users.

Mr. Zuckerberg understood Facebook had these connections, but what it didn't have were unlimited resources of developers to create applications using them.

"It became quickly obvious we weren't going to be able to build all these things ourselves," Mr. Van Natta said. The approach was a market-based one: no developer, including Facebook's own, would have any advantage. That meant no pre-installed applications; the popularity of each application would be determined democratically by users. And to encourage developers to devote time to Facebook's platform, the site is allowing them to monetize their applications through advertising, subscription or e-commerce.
When asked about the internal debates that must have occurred before this announcement and the potential for channel conflict -- why should a marketer buy directly from Facebook when it can sneak in through the backdoor by sponsoring an application? -- the executives admit they are perhaps forgoing some near-term monetization but say that's necessary to execute the long-term vision.

"You have to decide, what kind of company are we? The strong statement is we're a technology company, not a media company," said Mr. Van Natta.

Plenty of inventory
Adds Mike Murphy, senior VP-sales: "In order to get great applications built, we needed to make sure developers could be rewarded and have a business model around it." He said with 29 million users, there's plenty of inventory for him to sell and that he envisions the better the applications are, the more time people will spend on the site and the more he can sell to marketers.

Few marketers have launched applications within Facebook, mostly because Facebook isn't encouraging that -- "unless they really understand how to build something useful for users, not just put up a brand," said a spokesman.

In the 30 days since Facebook opened up its platform to developers on May 24, more than 10 applications had at least 1 million users and more than 400 had 1,000 users.

To be sure, it's early -- five weeks in. And for all the blustering, there are doubters. Some developers have questioned Facebook's commitment to keeping its APIs free and open and others suggest the instant success can be enough to topple all but the most well-funded developers since Facebook places the burden of serving traffic on the developers. The music application iLike, for example, was almost done in by its success when it logged more than 50,000 users within hours of launch.

"There's always a little tension and arbitrage between the platform owner and application developers," said Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal and CEO at Slide, a major widget company that is devoting part of its team of developers exclusively to making applications for Facebook. But like many other longtime web watchers, he doesn't underplay Facebook's influence, even when stacked up with the reigning king of the Valley, Google.

"There's no network effect [on Google]. The fact that I use Google and you use Google doesn't make us any closer to each other," he said.

Your guide to the Facebook lingo
Ad Age's Facebook addict Andrew Hampp decodes the native tongue.

Poke: The most nonsensical of all FaceBook functions, the "poke" feature allows you to essentially do just what it implies: "poke" your friend's profile, giving him or her the option to poke back. It's the social-networking equivalent to passing someone a note in algebra class.

The Wall: Think of it as a yearbook you can sign 24/7. Friends can use it to recap the previous night's events ("OMG! I still have your keys from Amanda's party! LOL!"), schedule get-togethers ("Lunch with the crew on Saturday? Hit me up!") or carry on entire conversations that would normally be conducted through phones, e-mail or, at the very least, text messages.

Tag: A feature that allows you to identify friends in photos. Can become a college grad's worst nightmare when it comes time for the ever-crucial job search. "You totally detagged that picture of me bonging that box of Franzia last summer, right? I don't want my future boss to think I'm a total wino!"

Minifeed: It's like any other RSS feed, only instead of breaking updates on the war in Iraq, it's streaming bulletins about your friends' latest likes and dislikes. Sample minifeed: "8:41 p.m. -- Ashley added Fall Out Boy to her Favorite Music. 10:01 p.m. -- Dave removed 'Old School' from his Favorite Movies." It can also serve as a passive-aggressive kiss-off to an ex-flame. "2:41 a.m. -- John and Sarah are no longer in a relationship."
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=119070





Facebook in Litigation 2.0
Sam Gustin

A long-simmering dispute over the origins of Facebook is set to erupt later this month at a federal court hearing about whether Mark Zuckerberg, the young web mogul now being feted by media honchos, stole the original code for his booming social network from three Harvard classmates.

The lawsuit, filed by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accuses Zuckerberg, Facebook's 23-year-old C.E.O, of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he briefly worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own fledgling social-networking site, now known as ConnectU.

The plaintiffs have demanded that Facebook be shut down and that full control of the site - and its profits - be turned over to them.

The hearing comes just as Facebook is exploding into the social networking stratosphere and Zuckerberg is the toast - in absentia - of this week's elite media ball at the annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

"This lawsuit goes to the core of the assets that Facebook claims to own," said Eric Goldman, Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. "The ConnectU guys are clearly ticked off, and they seem willing to spend a lot of money to pursue this."

Indeed, there is vastly more money at stake now than when the dispute began in 2004. Facebook, which spurned Yahoo's $1 billion buyout offer last fall, is now thought to be worth at least double that. (The latest rumor is that Microsoft is eyeing the site for $6 billion.)

Since Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, expanded its network beyond college students last September, it has nearly doubled in size, from 14 million visitors per month to 26 million, according to comScore. Facebook expects to earn $30 million this year on revenue of $150 million, mostly derived from advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal. Not surprisingly, web ad king Google, which handles search for MySpace, the social networking leader, is keen to work with Facebook, as Google's co-founder Larry page suggested to reporters in Sun Valley this week.

Might there be another YouTube-like deal hatched at a Silicon Valley Denny's in the offing?

Zuckerberg, like YouTube co-founder and last year's belle at the Sun Valley ball, Chad Hurley, has insisted that Facebook is not for sale. An eventual initial public offering is said to be planned for Facebook. But potential suitors - not to mention the investing public - may have to wait for the lawsuit to be decided before they can get their hands on the company.

If the lawsuit drags on, a settlement deal with ConnectU could look increasingly attractive to Facebook, Goldman of Santa Clara University said.

For the last three years, lawyers for the two sides have waged an increasingly contentious - though largely unnoticed - court battle. On March 28, a resolution seemed at hand when a Massachusetts judge threw out the original lawsuit on a technicality. But because the court did not rule on the legal merits of the case, ConnectU promptly filed a new lawsuit, with a newly honed legal presentation and additional charges. Facebook then filed a terse countersuit in California federal court, accusing ConnectU of tort violations and unfair business practices.

Armed with a phalanx of lawyers from the powerhouse Bay Area firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliff, Zuckerberg hopes to quash ConnectU once and for all at a hearing before Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock on July 25. In their motion to dismiss, Zuckerberg's lawyers noted archly, "Only one of [the students] had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That one person was Mark Zuckerberg."

With the case revving up, the focus is on Facebook's origins in the dorms of Harvard. In the spring of 2003, the Winklevoss brothers, two Harvard juniors, asked Zuckerberg to help program their fledgling online student directory, then known as Harvard Connection. Zuckerberg does not deny working for the brothers and has admitted having access to the source code of their website "in late 2003," according to court filings.

The Winklevoss brothers say Zurckerberg was integral to the development of ConnectU - before he ripped them off to launch Facebook. They say Zuckerberg not only stole "the basic idea" for Facebook, but also their business plan as well as the site's specific code, layout and database which were "proprietary and confidential."

After beginning to work on the brothers' site, Zuckerberg "then went MIA for a few months and suddenly came out with Facebook," according to one Harvard grad familiar with the dispute. On January 11, 2004 Zuckerberg registered thefacebook.com, three days after sending the Winklevoss brothers an email promising to deliver a "functioning website" for Harvard Connection. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg officially launched Facebook, a move the brothers say "usurped" their "valuable business opportunity."

The rest is history. For his part, Zuckerberg has said he was "intrigued" by ConnectU, but found that he was "subjected to demands on my time without truly being made a part of the development team."

To a mini-mogul like Zuckerberg - who rubs elbows with the likes of Murdoch and Moonves - the lawsuit may seem a long way down the mountain. After all, Zuckerberg has been living the dream of the young tech superstar - traipsing around such high-powered media conferences in Birkenstocks, etc. - and fashioning himself as the next young tech messiah. Last year Zuckerberg famously dispatched then-Yahoo boss and old-media icon Terry Semel by spurning his $1 billion offer, only to see Semel crash and burn, in part for failing to close that deal.

But as he crests on a billion dollar wave, Zuckerberg is clearly taking the ConnectU lawsuit seriously. He's brought out the big guns, led by Silicon Valley intellectual property law ace Hopkins Guy, in addition to his already high-powered lawyers from the Boston office of Proskauer Rose. Lawyers for both sides declined to comment on the case, and a spokesperson for Facebook said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs...-litigation-20





Googling "How to Crack a Safe" Nets Robbers $12,000
Jacqui Cheng

Google has become so ubiquitous in many people's daily lives that it serves as the all-encompassing information source on how to do nearly anything: jump a car, tie a tie, fold a pocket square, remove ketchup stains. Oh, and crack open a safe to steal $12,000. That's what a couple of burglars did last month in Colorado, when they broke into an indoor amusement center called Bigg City armed with the knowledge they thought they needed in order to get into a couple of safes. The burglars knew the passcodes to the safes in question but were still unable to open them after several tries, so they eventually resorted to their good friend Google to tell them how.

These burglars may not have been the sharpest tacks in the box to begin with; they attempted to cover a security camera lens not with spray paint or some other opaque agent, but the clear, cleaning properties of WD-40, and attempted to do the same to a fire alarm that they thought was a camera. But at least they were resourceful; after spending an hour and 15 minutes attempting to unsuccessfully crack the safe using their handy passcodes, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette, they used the computer in the next room to search Google for "how to crack a safe."

The Google search proved fruitful for the two burglars, as they were able to get the information they needed and walk away with $12,000 in cash as well as a PlayStation and a laptop. And despite their inept attempts to outwit the security cameras, they have not yet been arrested.

It's not the first time criminals have turned to the Internet for inspiration, and it certainly won't be the last. It's also a problem that law enforcement officials are keenly aware of.

Last year, US Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff characterized the Internet as containing a plethora of terrorist resources, ranging from training to networking to fundraising. And according to the Times Online, European officials are currently considering passing legislation that would outlaw the publication of bomb-making information on the Internet. Under the current proposal, ISPs could face charges for not blocking web sites with bomb-making instructions on them. "It should simply not be possible to leave people free to instruct other people on the internet on how to make a bomb—that has nothing to do with freedom of expression," EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini told the Times.

Safe-cracking is a far cry from bomb making, and the Colorado burglary is comical as it involves only $12,000 and a couple of dim-witted robbers. At the same time, it serves as a reminder of the mixed blessing the Internet has proven to be for law enforcement.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...he-rescue.html





The Day the Music Died
Stephanie Rosenbloom



MICHAEL BELLUSCI’S quotation in his high school yearbook was, “It ain’t rock if it ain’t loud.” Growing up in Flushing, Queens, he played guitar and drums, idolized Jimi Hendrix and performed in cover bands. Later, he went on the road as Ringo in the musical “Beatlemania.”

These days, if his left ear happens to be covered by a pillow, Mr. Bellusci, 47, hears the alarm clock as a faint tick, tick, tick, not a blaring BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. In cacophonous restaurants, he watches people’s mouths so he can follow the conversation.

Years of high decibel noise and trauma from speaker feedback damaged his right ear. Mr. Bellusci, who plays ukulele, recorder, guitar and bass in an acoustic duo, now says, “If I could do it over again ...”

How many boomers are thinking the same thing.

As more members of the generation born after World War II enter their 60s, and the effects of age conspire with years of hearing abuse, a number find themselves jacking up the volume on their televisions, cringing at boisterous parties and shouting “What?” into their cellphones.

About one in six boomers have hearing loss, according to the Better Hearing Institute, a nonprofit educational group. The AARP has reported that there are more people age 45 to 64 with hearing loss (10 million) than there are people over 65 with hearing loss (9 million). And more people are losing their hearing earlier in life, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Hearing loss from age (presbycusis) can begin before the Social Security years, but boomers are also likely candidates for noise-induced hearing loss, particularly the kind that results from continuous loud noise over an extended period of time (like a 115-decibel rock concert).

“They’re the first of that rock ’n’ roll generation,” said Sharon Beamer, the associate director of audiology professional practices for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, “the first to really grow up with loud music, personal stereo systems.”

But factory noise, construction din or the roar of subways may also be to blame.

“None of us protected our ears at all,” said Pat Benatar, the rock singer and guitarist, who is on tour. Nowadays, Ms. Benatar, 54, also lends her celebrity to Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers (HEAR), one of several public service groups with campaigns to prevent hearing loss.

“I’m still a junkie,” she said. “I still want it so loud.” Yet noisy restaurants bother her. When her dishwasher is running, she said, “I can’t hear any conversation at all.”

In the grand scheme of things (sending the children to college, paying off the mortgage, menopause), the inability to hear the dialogue on a reasonably adjusted television is a minor nuisance. Nonetheless, boomers said the realization that their hearing is no longer sharp provokes anxiety about age, frailty, dependency and obsolescence.

“When my father didn’t hear well, I remember being annoyed at him,” said Don Henke, 57, who spent 33 years as a meat wholesaler around thunderous machinery.

“I regret that now,” Mr. Henke said. “I remember he would say ‘What did you say?’ and we would repeat it again. And he would say ‘What was that again?’ ” Eventually, Mr. Henke would tell him to forget it.

“That was such a terrible thing to do,” said Mr. Henke, who has difficulty hearing conversation in crowded places and who compensates by saying very little. “And now I understand what he was going through and I hope that people don’t do that to me. I’ve already warned my daughter not to do that to me.”

Still, many of Mr. Henke’s generation will not go gently into that beige abyss of no-frills gadgetry known as the hearing aid. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders data from 2001 shows that just 149.6 of every 1,000 adults who have diminished hearing, whether from aging, disease or injury, use a hearing aid.

Yet that reluctance by boomers, who at about 78 million are a potential windfall market, has motivated sound technologists. Companies have not only developed devices to attract age-phobic, style-conscious boomers, but that also address hearing and language issues for everyone else.

But first they had to reinvent the hearing aid so it no longer looked like a chewed Circus Peanut or made wearers feel like they were hearing through a tin can. Rather, today’s newest devices look like the progeny of iPods and Bluetooth.

One company, Oticon, learned about boomer anxiety when it conducted studies to determine why the people who needed hearing aids were not wearing them.

“The stigma was a lot more deeply felt and strongly felt than we had allowed ourselves to believe,” said Gordon Wilson, vice president for marketing at Oticon. “People really saw them as devices that would make them look old, that would make them look ugly, that would make them look decrepit.”

“People would rather go around asking everybody to repeat themselves,” he said.

Amy Arra, 49, of Naperville, Ill., was one such person. For years she ignored her hearing loss because she knew she would need a hearing aid. But when Ms. Arra returned to the work force after 14 years as a stay-at-home mother, she could no longer ignore her loss. “In meetings I wasn’t catching everything,” she said. “It was very tiring.” Finally, she visited an audiologist and was pleasantly surprised when she was not shown the chewed Circus Peanut, but a device called Audéo.

Audéo’s manufacturer, Phonak, does not call it a hearing aid. In a nod to PDAs like BlackBerrys, it calls Audéo a PCA (Personal Communication Assistant). Shaped like a moth’s wing and smaller than a guitar pick, it perches behind the ear and comes in 15 color combinations, like Pure Passion or Green With Envy.

Ms. Arra could have also considered the Bernafon SwissEar hearing aid, red with the white cross insignia of the Swiss flag. Or a Delta by Oticon in Shy Violet. “It was like shopping for sunglasses,” said Ms. Arra, who bought two Audéos in Crème Brûlée (brownish blond) to match her hair. The device has a thin tube coiling toward the ear canal.

Even so, Ms. Arra was worried people would notice her Audéo. At a gathering, she said, “I was so self conscious and I thought everyone was staring.” Turns out, no one spied it.

Such devices are akin to sexy underwear. “No one knows you’re wearing it unless you want them to,” said Mr. Wilson of Oticon.

The ads for these inventions play up the sexy angle, using models who could just as easily be selling Match.com subscriptions.

Hearing aids are not inexpensive, and the cost is rarely covered by insurance or Medicare for adults. Audéo is about $3,000 to $4,000 an ear, though as with all hearing aids, prices vary because they are determined by doctors, not manufacturers.

But some, like Oticon’s Epoq, come with other benefits, and not just for those who strain to hear the waiter recite the specials. The Epoq, which was introduced in May, is the first hearing aid to have integrated wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, so it can stream a cellphone call or music and audio from a radio, computer or MP3 into the ears through a remote control-like device worn on the body. It is, in other words, a wireless hands-free headset.

And that may be just the beginning of sound enhancement breakthroughs. Sergei Kochkin, the executive director of the Better Hearing Institute, predicts that buildings will install wireless transmitters so a voice from many feet away can be streamed into the ears of listeners wearing such devices.

Lectures with enhanced sound and extraneous noise elimination can be piped in that way, and the device could also be equipped with language translation software, he said.

Outside of the hearing aid industry, there is also some progress toward making the soundscape more boomer-friendly.

Research conducted by IDC for Dolby Laboratories found that television volume issues (like extremely loud commercials) are a more significant concern for boomers than other age groups. Dolby Volume control technology, however, monitors and adjusts the perceived volume level played through a television’s speakers and will eventually be incorporated into televisions.

Restaurant ambiance is also a peeve. The National Restaurant Association has not conducted research about noise levels, though a spokeswoman said there are so many more food establishments that diners have the opportunity to choose one that is gentler on the ears.

Good thing, as hearing loss has also been linked to short-term memory loss, fatigue, anxiety, depression, even lower income — on average, up to $12,000 a year less than for their counterparts who use hearing aids, Dr. Kochkin said.

To protect hearing, professionals advise wearing ear plugs or muffs when exposed to noise louder than 85 decibels (a power mower is about 90 decibels) for an extended time. And, yes, if your iPod is loud enough for everyone in the elevator to know you own Jock Jams, turn it down.

Among boomers, though, there are those who have no anxiety about hearing loss. Jeff Davies, 62, a tennis photographer in Orlando, Fla., said that losing his hearing may not be all that bad.

“I think I’d quite enjoy it if I didn’t have to listen to ice cream trucks roaming the neighborhood and people screaming at their kids,” he said.

Then, Mr. Davies, who is from Yorkshire, England, reiterated the maxim about growing old gracefully.

“I certainly don’t want to die,” he added. “But anything short of that I can live with.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/fa...12hearing.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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