Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 19th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France." – Didier Grumbach


"Australians are notorious in their disrespect of academics, scholars and professionals - so called elites. Yet as I say to my students, 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?" – Sharman Lichtenstein


"When a sleek luxury goods company unleashes its lawyers on a [blogging] suburban mom for not liking their new fragrance, we know the world is changing." – Tania Sanchez


"The [RIAA] people running this lawsuit are not exactly human. They understand nothing. They are like the bad robots in RoboCop." – Ray Beckerman


"I fly a G4. How far do you think my G4 will go on stock options? I need cash." – Movie producer


"Nerdic." – PIXmania.com


































April 19th, 2008




Europe 'Should Not Criminalise File-Sharers'
David Meyer

People should not be criminalised for the file-sharing of copyrighted material if they are not profiting from doing so, the European Parliament has recommended.

On Thursday the parliament voted through two reports on the cultural industries. Both contained amendments that were directly related to the ongoing argument between the content industry and Internet service provider (ISPs). In this conflict, the ISPs are claiming that they should not have to disconnect those users who are persistent filesharers, but the content industry is calling for a "three strikes and you're out" rule in order to protect intellectual property.

The argument encompasses not only the prospect of users being "banned" from Internet use, but also the deep packet inspection techniques that would have to be employed in order to catch them.

One of the reports urged the European Commission and member states to avoid allowing measures that are in conflict with civil liberties, human rights and the principle of proportionality. The other, which passed with a much thinner majority, specifically called for the Commission to "rethink the issue of intellectual property in order to assure solutions that are equitable for both big and small actors and strike a balance between the respect of intellectual property and the access to cultural events and content".

"[The European Parliament] underlines that on the battle against digital piracy, the solution should not be to criminalise consumers who do not intend to make profit out of their actions," a parliamentary statement read.

A spokesperson for the parliament told ZDNet.com.au's sister site ZDNet.co.uk on Friday that, while the reports were recommendations and not legally binding, they summed up "what the mood is now" in Europe. "People downloading from sites -- often they don't know that it's not legal, so they shouldn't [be criminalised] if they're not trying to make a profit out of it," the spokesperson said, adding that people or companies who were trying to make a profit from the filesharing of copyrighted material should be criminalised.

However, another recommendation in the report called on the Commission to "do what is necessary to enforce and protect literary and artistic property rights, especially in the digital environment".

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) was quick to react on Thursday, saying that the European Parliament's recommendations on filesharing were "badly drafted [and] rushed through".

"If the aim of the report is to protect creative content, including in the online environment, we should be looking at all options available in the fight against copyright theft," said IFPI executive vice president Frances Moore. "Instead, this amendment suggested discarding certain options before there is even a proper debate."

However, IFPI has welcomed the news from France that filesharers of copyrighted material there may soon be thrown off the internet. The organisation called the French move "the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far".

A spokesperson for the UK ISP Association was not available for comment at the time of writing.
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa...0.htm?feed=rss





No Harm, No Foul, No Attorneys' Fees for RIAA Victim
Eric Bangeman

A hotly contested file-sharing case involving a man whose adult daughter admitted to sharing files over LimeWire has been dismissed, much to the dismay of the defendant. We've covered Lava v. Amurao previously because of the allegations raised about the conduct of MediaSentry, which was accused by defendant Roland Amurao of conducting private investigations without a required New York state license.

According to Recording Industry vs The People, the judge presiding over the case dismissed the case with prejudice at the RIAA's request during a hearing on Friday. The judge also dismissed Amurao's counterclaims, and told each party that it was responsible for its own fees.

Amurao was sued in 2007 after MediaSentry detected activity on LimeWire from an IP address that was assigned to his Internet account. After the usual Doe lawsuit was filed, Amurao was sued after refusing to take advantage of the settlement letter. During discovery, the RIAA learned that Amurao's adult daughter, Audrey Amurao, was responsible for the infringement. Amurao refused to negotiate a "global resolution" of the case that would involve both him and his daughter, according to an RIAA filing, so the labels decided to dismiss the case against him with each party to bear its own costs and fees.

Amurao felt that the labels shouldn't be able to walk away and leave him stuck with a mess of legal bills after suing the wrong person. In a recent filing, his attorney Richard Altman argued that if the judge was going to dismiss the lawsuit, he should do so only if Amurao was awarded attorneys' fees. "When the dismissal is with prejudice, the order granting the motion is tantamount to a final judgment in favor of defendant," according to the filing. " Thus, once this Court dismisses the plaintiffs' claims with prejudice, Mr. Amurao will become the prevailing party. He is then entitled to costs."

In an amicus brief (PDF), the EFF argued that the case raised important issues regarding the RIAA's conduct in its 25,000+ file-sharing lawsuits, and that dismissing the case at this point would legitimize the RIAA's attempts to "expand the scope of its copyright protections beyond with the statues provide." Furthermore, allowing the RIAA to walk away from its case against Amurao "could have disastrous consequences for innocent targets of careless copyright claims," the EFF wrote in its brief.

The judge was apparently unswayed by the argument and, with the dismissal of the case with prejudice at the RIAA's request, has put Amurao in the position of being a prevailing party in a copyright infringement lawsuit, but with nothing to show for his efforts in fighting the record labels' accusations that he infringed on their copyrights. The RIAA has also filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Audrey Amurao.

So far, courts have gone both ways on the question of whether the RIAA should be forced to pay attorneys' fees for those whom it has mistakenly targeted. In the case of Capitol v. Foster and Atlantic v. Andersen, the exonerated defendants were awarded attorneys' fees; in others such as Virgin Records v. Cliff Thompson (note the different surnames), the judges have said that each party is responsible for its own costs.

The disagreement on whether a prevailing party in a copyright case should get attorneys' fees has even extended to the appeals court level. Recently the Seventh Circuit ruled that a simple "material alteration" of the legal relationship between two parties was sufficient for an attorneys' fees awards. In contrast, the Fifth Circuit says that a number of factors need to be considered first before an award can be made. The Supreme Court has been asked by Cliff Thompson to settle the matter (and award him attorneys' fees). Until the highest court in the land decides to follow the Seventh Circuit's reasoning, the RIAA will be free to walk away from lawsuits, leaving their victims with thousands of dollars in legal bills.

Altman tells Ars Technica that he is now considering appealing the judge's decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...aa-victim.html





RIAA Sues Homeless Man
Ray Beckerman

In Warner v. Berry, where the RIAA was suing a man who lives in a homeless shelter, the Magistrate Judge -- Hon. Kevin Nathaniel Fox -- recommended that the plaintiffs' application for a default judgment be denied, and that the plaintiffs be ordered to show cause why they should not be sanctioned under Rule 11. The Judge agreed that the default judgment should be denied, but chose not to sanction plaintiffs' attorneys.

The facts were as follows:

On April 9, 2007, the RIAA's process server had posted a copy of the summons and complaint on the door of the defendant's apartment, which the RIAA knew was not a good address.

On April 17, 2007, the plaintiffs requested a 60-day adjournment of a scheduled conference because their "attempts at service at Defendant's last-known address were unsuccessful."Plaintiffs stated they were "now conducting a thorough address investigation to locate a current address at which to serve Defendant before the
June 13, 2007 service deadline."

On April 25, 2007, Plaintiffs' process server executed an affidavit of service, declaring that on April 9, 2007, at 3:50 p.m., she posted the summons by affixing one copy "in a conspicuous place on the property known as: 1713 Adee Ave Apt. 1 Bronx, N.Y. 10469", which was the address they knew was a bad address.

Meanwhile, Magistrate Judge Fox observed that at the time of Plaintiffs' April 17, 2007, letter to this Court, which sought an adjournment of the pretrial conference so that Plaintiffs could locate Defendant's current address, Plaintiffs "had already resorted to the 'affix and mail' method of service because they affixed the summons to the defendant's last known residence on April 9, 2007."

The Magistrate Judge found that "[b]y affixing the summons on April 9, 2007, the plaintiffs demonstrated they never intended to conduct 'a thorough address investigation ...' because they employed the 'affix and mail' method of service without exercising due diligence to effect personal service pursuant to CPLR s 308(1) and (2)." Magistrate Judge Fox concluded that Plaintiffs' representation to this Court to the effect that they intended to conduct an investigation to locate Defendant's current address implicated Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b) because it was made for the improper purpose of unnecessary delay.

District Judge Harold Baer, Jr., agreed with the Magistrate in most respects, but declined to issue Rule 11 sanctions, because he felt the lawyers' misrepresentation was the result of sloppiness rather than an intention to mislead, "giving them as officers of the Court the benefit of the doubt": While Plaintiffs' lawyers should be faulted for failing to keep closer tabs on their process server and for failing to better supervise their paralegal, their actions do not rise to the level of a Rule 11(b) violation. Plaintiffs' lawyers might have been sloppy in their attempts to serve Defendant, but giving them as officers of the Court the benefit of the doubt, all their representations to this Court were, to the best of their knowledge, information and belief, not for the improper purpose of unnecessary delay.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...kes-sewer.html





An Interview With Ray Beckerman About The RIAA
Simon Barrett

If you are an internet music listener, the name Ray Beckerman will not be an unknown one. Ray has become the one shining star in the dark world that the music industry would prefer we live in. The Recording Industry of America Association (RIAA) supposedly is a loose industry group that assists the music giants to co-exist. In practice they have become the most hated organization in recent history. Their mandate being to seek out and destroy anyone that downloads illegal copies of music. To date they have threatened more than 20,000 people with law suits. What is truly insidious, is the tactic of ‘pay us $3,000 and promise not to do it again, or else we will take you to court, and go for megabucks’ letters that they send out to people who they deem as music pirates. They have targeted dead people, young kids, the chronically ill, and the chronically computer inept. It matters not to the RIAA, or more importantly the lawyers paid by the RIAA.

Ray has been at the forefront of defending people from the onslaught of the RIAA. He also runs the very informative website Recording Industry Vs The People.

Ray was gracious enough to spend some time talking with me. He is the master of not saying much, yet saying a huge amount.

Ray, I did a Google search on you, and there are over 34,000 references. You are without doubt the biggest pain in the butt to the RIAA. How did you get involved in this debacle?

In late 2004 or early 2005 I learned of these lawsuits from the EFF. I thought to myself “I’m a litigator, I’m a copyright lawyer, and I hate bullies. So maybe I can help some of these folks.”

Then in Summer or Spring 2005 I got my first client who wanted to fight back. It occurred to me that one of the RIAA’s strategic advantages was information. It had one law firm controlling all 25,000 cases, and knew what was going on in each one. A defendant’s lawyer, on the other hand, had no information at all except what the RIAA wanted us to know. I didn’t know what was going on in other cases, or, indeed, if there were any other cases where defendants were fighting back. So decided to set up the blog as a place to collect information.

The RIAA seems to think that suing their own customers is a good idea. I can not think of another industry that has played this game and won. Are they just a school yard bully?

Yes. The ugliest and cruelest school yard bully I have ever encountered, and I have seen some bad ones.

Does the RIAA understand the concept of freedom of choice?

The people running this lawsuit are not exactly human. They understand nothing. They are like the bad robots in RoboCop.

Some might say that the bully-boy tactics actually encourage people to “rebel” and go for illegal downloads? I guess the analogy here would be being told by your mom not to touch something, and of course you, as the 5 year old are now galvanized into action!

I don’t agree with that, but the bully-boy tactics have created a whole new class of consumer — people who seek out independent music not tainted by the ghouls and freaks running the Big 4.

The RIAA make the argument that music piracy is killing the music industry, and they can back that claim up with statistics. My view is somewhat different. If you like something, you will buy it. Is music piracy the reason that sales are flat?

I think their sales are declining because the companies are being run by morons who have been hypnotized by some unscrupulous lawyers, who have never had any imagination as to how to sell music on the internet, and who are bringing lawsuits — and trying to blame others — strictly to cover up their failure to capitalize on one of the greatest money making opportunities ever.

Why do they actively attempt to blur the line before legal downloads approved by bands/put up by bands and those that are merely thieving?

I’m sorry, don’t understand the question. Their goal is to try to monopolize digital music. They will say and do anything to try to make that happen.

Why do they do it? Because these robots don’t understand competition. They do everything as a collusive pack of 4.

What do you see the RIAA doing in future as they become even more desperate?

Chapter 11.

I realize that you can not discuss cases that you are involved in, but maybe you could share some general thoughts about the way you see this issue moving. There are noises about taxing internet access, as a way of recompensing the music industry. This idea, at least in my mind, is about as sensible as invading Iceland. What are your thoughts?

The courts are starting to reject the RIAA’s stupid theories and starting to get irked at its lawyers’ frivolous behavior, and more lawyers and defendants are choosing to fight back, and are doing so in a better informed way. So the cost of pushing this madness forward is increasing.

Meanwhile, the shareholders can’t be happy to see the value of their stock declining so drastically, so I would imagine they’ll eventually wake up and stop the madness, even before the Courts — which move slowly — get around to it.

There are not many lawyers that can talk the talk, and walk the walk, when it comes to the computer world. Yet you talk happily about IP addresses, wireless routers, DHCP, and even the basic structure of the Internet. Was this a huge learning curve?

Yes of course I have had to learn a lot about the technology to keep up with the RIAA’s lies. If the RIAA’s lawyers weren’t professional liars, I might not have had to learn so much.

Recording Industry v The People has been a very successful and useful site. But it must take an enormous amount of time and effort to keep it up to date. How many folks work on it?

One.

Thanks for taking time to talk with us here at Blogger News, and good luck with your quest.
http://www.bloggernews.net/114968





Music Industry Dealt Pirate Bay Blow
David Landes

The recording industry’s branch organization has apologized to a pro-file sharing Swedish rap artist for including him as a party to their indictment against Pirate Bay without his permission.

The move is a major setback for the record companies, who have long pointed to artists as the ultimate losers from illegal file sharing.

“File sharing for private use without a profit motive is totally OK in my eyes. It’s not theft, it’s simply taking a copy of a product and spreading it around,” said Swedish rapper Max Peezay to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).

“I don’t want to be a part of putting anyone in prison.”

As an independent artist, Max Peezay, whose given name is Tom Piha, explained that he derives most of his revenues come from concerts, rather than album sales. By his account, the money he loses because his records are downloaded rather than purchased is more than covered by income generated from additional live shows driven by new fans discovering his music for free on the internet.

Piha found himself drawn into the file sharing controversy against his will on account of shoddy research by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (Ifpi), which coordinates recording industry efforts to combat piracy.

Ifpi included Piha’s album Discokommittén among the 25 albums selected at random by prosecutors for their indictment against the founders of The Pirate Bay.

The suit demands that the four individuals who founded the file sharing site pay record companies 15 million kronor ($2.5 million) in compensatory damages.

Ifpi incorrectly assumed that the rights to the album were owned by music distributor Bonnier Amigo, and thus never bothered to ask Piha personally if he wanted to be a party in the suit.

In fact, Piha himself owns the rights.

“It should have been checked out much more carefully,” said the head of Ifpi’s branch in Sweden, Lars Gustafsson, to Svenska Dagbladet.

Gustafsson downplayed the impact that the artist’s decision to remove himself would have on the case, other than reducing the level of compensation sought in the case by 120,000 kronor, the sum in the indictment associated with the Discokommittén album.

But the incident continues to have repercussions for Piha, whose credibility has been questioned by fellow artists and fans alike.

“I wish I hadn’t landed in this situation. I can see now how easy it is to become a pawn in this game,” he told the paper.

Piha disagrees with the record companies’ approach to the file sharing issue and doesn’t think that prison sentences and fines will have an impact on file sharing in the long run.

“I don’t care what happens to Pirate Bay. But if they disappear, someone else will take their place and I don’t want to see the war escalate. I want to see a dialogue.”

A trial date for the case has yet to be set.
http://www.thelocal.se/11144/20080416/





Chief Police Investigator in Pirate Bay Trial Employed by the Copyright Industry
Press release

Jim Keyzer has had a leading role in the prosecution against The Pirate Bay as head of the preliminary investigation. In the upcoming trial he is expected to be a key witness and due to being a police investigator to have high credibility.

Keyzer was also heading an investigation where The Pirate Bay sued some of the mayor media corporations for data trespassing. That case was recently cancelled by him.

But....

New information reveals that the 39-year old investigator isn't the objective professional a police investigator should be. Since March 16 this year, he is employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the prosecution against The Pirate Bay. Keyzer himself confirmed the information but refused to reveal what his position within the company is.

- It was yesterday that the blog, kopit.se, discovered that Jim had changed employer on his Facebook profile. The new employer was Warner Bros and we decided to call him up and ask about it. He confirmed that he is an employee there and we can't see it in any other way than this being the reward for a work well done from the new employer of the police - the entertainment industry, says Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay.

According to Peter Athlin, Sunde's laywer, the consequence of the information could be that the investigation has to be remade.

- If the trial wasn't already just a political theatre, this clearly shows that this is not a fair and balanced trial. The copyright industry stands no chance in an objective legal judgement and therefor have to cheat their way forward. Their legitimacy has hit rock bottom, says Magnus Eriksson of copyright critics Piratbyrån (Bureau for Piracy).

- This is a legal outrage. Talk about biased, Sunde continues. Keyzer is in charge of the investigation. No matter the reasons to switch employer, this investigation has not been fair. We have felt that the investigation has concentrated on trying to locate something to point out as wrong with The Pirate Bay instead of determining if the activities of the site are unlawful or not.

Monique Wadsted, laywer at MAQS law firm, representing Hollywood in the case, comments on the story this way:

- I suppose this is Warner Bros way of expressing how they feel about the good work Jim Keyzer has done. But nothing inappropriate has been going on during the preliminary investigation.

How nice of Hollywood to come up with yet another unbiased voice to tell us the truth...About time to investigate the investigators!
http://static.thepiratebay.org/pm/20080418_eng.txt





The Pirate Bay Demands Compensation for IFPI Block
Ernesto

The Pirate Bay has announced that it will file a complaint to ask for compensation from the IFPI for the traffic which was destined for its site, but blocked by the Danish ISP Tele2. If they win, the money will be spent on funding independent artists who share their music for free on filesharing sites.

In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The decision, which is currently under appeal, once again heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering.

The court case was initiated by the IFPI - the infamous anti-piracy organization that represents the recording industry. The IFPI later tried to use the “landmark decision” to force Swedish ISPs to do the same, but failed. In fact, it seems that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law.

Pirate Bay’s Brokep told TorrentFreak that they will file a complaint, and ask for compensation for the time they were blocked in Denmark. The Pirate Bay already fought back by launching The Jesper Bay, giving affected customers detailed instructions on how to regain access to The Pirate Bay. However, they think that it is only fair to ask compensation for the inconvenience the IFPI block has cost .

The money, which will be managed by the Danish Piratgruppen, could be used to fund Danish artists who want to share their music, according to Brokep, who assured us that they will only ask for a reasonable amount of money, unlike the IFPI. “The grant will give out money to Danish aspiring artists for making music and releasing it for free. And all will be sponsored by IFPI since they tried to fuck those people over. Poetic justice.”

Strangely enough, The Pirate Bay was never heard in the IFPI vs. Tele2 case. “Nobody ever asked us what we think about the block, although it does affect only us and we’re the reason for the lawsuit,” brokep said.

This is not the first time The Pirate Bay has fought fire with fire, last year they took legal action against 10 major media companies, including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group, for using MediaDefender to sabotage their BitTorrent tracker.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-i...sation-080415/





Comcast Proposes File-Sharing 'Bill of Rights'

Largest American ISP moves to avoid government regulation of internet, but Canada still far behind
Peter Nowak

Comcast Corp., under investigation by U.S. authorities for interfering with the traffic of its internet subscribers, is proposing a "bill of rights and responsibilities" for users of file-sharing technology in an attempt to stave off government regulation.

The company — the largest internet service provider in the United States — promised in February to cease discriminating against certain types of traffic by the end of this year after the Federal Communications Commission held hearings into the company's decision to block file-sharing applications.

File-sharing, which uses peer-to-peer (P2P) technology such as BitTorrent, is popular among internet users for swapping copyrighted works such as movies or music, but it is also emerging as an efficient distribution method for legitimate businesses. The CBC, for example, released an episode of its show Canada's Next Great Prime Minister last month for free over BitTorrent.

The company is now looking to codify "best practices" for ISPs to deal with file-sharing traffic and to clarify what controls users have over the peer-to-peer applications running on their computers. Some of these operate in the background and give users little obvious information on what they're doing or how much bandwidth they're using.

A bill of rights would help all parties — ISPs, content providers and users — agree on acceptable uses of file-sharing and peer-to-peer technology, the company says. It hopes to get various stakeholders together to ratify the bill later this year.

"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content," Tony Werner, Comcast's chief technology officer, said in a statement.

Comcast made the announcement in conjunction with Pando Networks, which makes software that lets users transfer large files such as home videos using P2P technology.

Government intervention feared

The company said it was making the move in order to avoid government intervention in the internet. In February, the U.S. Congress introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which would ban discriminatory practices by ISPs.

It's "another example of how we can work with the industry to solve these issues rather than getting the government involved," a Comcast spokesman told The Associated Press.

The announcement garnered immediate support from other industry players.

The Distributed Computing Industry Association — a trade organization that says it has more than 100 members representing P2P and social networking software providers, content rights holders, ISPs and service-and-support companies — backed Comcast's move.

"The DCIA and our member companies and participants in our working groups believe that private-sector initiatives are generally preferable to regulatory measures in such areas that are as technologically complex and fast-moving as this in terms of ongoing innovation," CEO Marty Lafferty said in a statement.

Some consumer groups, however, objected to the move by Comcast. Media watchdog Free Press said there was still a need for government oversight of the internet because Comcast and other service providers could not be trusted to act in the interest of consumers.

"Consumers cannot trust Comcast or any other phone and cable company with the future of the internet. Comcast has thumbed its nose at the existing consumer bill of rights," said Free Press general counsel Marvin Ammori in a statement. "Comcast's announcement is little more than the fox telling the farmer, 'I'll guard the henhouse, you can go home.' And that's all the attention it deserves."

Canada slow to act

In Canada, ISPs including Bell Canada Inc. have admitted to shaping traffic and slowing P2P traffic, but have thus far escaped regulatory scrutiny. However, several groups — including the government's standing committee on Canadian Heritage, the New Democratic Party, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and the National Union of Public and General Employees — have called on the nation's regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to curb such interference.

Critics have said Comcast's recent about-face on traffic shaping is the direct result of threatened regulatory intervention by the FCC, and Canadian authorities are well behind in addressing the problem.

"It's textbook," University of Ottawa internet law professor Michael Geist said last month. "Once there's regulatory writing on the wall, there's often a move from some companies to take matters into their own hands and address some of the concern."

The CRTC has said it is reviewing whether it should have jurisdiction over the internet, and expects to make a report in May. Industry Minister Jim Prentice, on the other hand, has indicated that he is against regulating the internet.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...h-comcast.html





More Bell Canada Misinformation and Misdirection in Attempt to Justify Questionably Lawful Throttling

In a Network World article by Dave Webb, Bell Canada’s chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic attempts to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing peoples confusion between issues around the last mile natural monopoly and Net Neutrality. I increasingly believe that if people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate.

I strongly agree with Network Neutrality. I am, however, one of those who believe that market forces within a competitive marketplace will be better able to ensure this neutrality than government regulation of TCP/IP based services. In order for this to be possible we need to have a competitive marketplace where those of us that recognize the need to hire ISPs that provide us services based on the End-to-end design principle are able to do so. We will then continue to educate other people about this need as well.

There are times when congestion exists on the Internet (sometimes legitimate, and sometimes not), and customers should be able to hire an ISP that best matches their own beliefs in how to handle this congestion. While I believe that the government should mandate disclosure of routing policies by ISPs, I believe that regulating “Net Neutrality” directly may backfire.

This is an entirely different question than the fact that existing regulation of the “last mile” monopoly must be enforced and strengthened. There will always be a “last mile” monopoly for telecommunications for the same reason there is for roads: it makes no more sense for every telecommunications provider to run separate wires into our homes than for every retailer to run separate roads to our homes.

Solving the Net Neutrality ISP issues through competition requires that a competitive marketplace exist, and that requires that those managing that “last mile” are not able to leverage that monopoly to wipe out competition.

Bell Canada as a company operates in many different markets, and offers a number of different services. In each of these markets they are regulated (or not) in different ways. With Bell ExpressVu they are a cable company, regulated as a “broadcast undertaking” just like StarChoice, and very similar to Rogers when acting as a cable company. They are also a wireless cell carrier, and a ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) offering a variety of telecommunications services. They own Telesat Canada, and an interest in CTVglobemedia.

Bell Canada also offers Internet Service Provider (ISP), including through the Sympatico brand. In this case they are using the same “last mile” infrastructure as any other competing ISP, allowing customers to connect point-to-point to their routers. After that point it is an “Internet” service where they offer transit (connections between their Internet routers and those of other ISPs locally and beyond) and other competing Internet-related services (email storage/delivery, Website hosting, DNS, etc).

In most of these marketplaces they operate as a regular private sector company, regulated just like any other competitor in that same marketplace.

There is one of their services where they are different and that is in the provision of physical wiring to our homes. This is a service where Bell was given privileged “right of way” access by various levels of government to place cabling (copper, fiber, etc) below and above public and private land. Bell could never offer this service without government intervention, and the superior property right is the public and private property that the cables run below and above — not the cabling.

Bell was given a number of requirements in exchange for this privileged government intervention. Historically the most often discussed was rural access, where Bell was mandated to offer phone services to rural locations — even at what might otherwise have been a loss, except for the fact that they were given practically guaranteed profits in other markets by the government, as well as massive government subsidies over the years. More recently the condition discusses more often is competitive access to the facilities which the public sector made possible (through right of way and subsidies) to allow services built upon this last mile to be provided by a competitive private sector.

I will state what seems to be the core of the confusion: when it comes to this last mile wiring below and above our property, the service that Bell Canada manages can no more be considered privately “owned” by Bell than Canada Post can be considered private. While the ideal would have been if this specific service had been separated by Bell Canada and operated as a proper crown corporation, we can’t go back in time and fix this problem.

We do have a number of ways to move forward from here. Some suggest that adequate enforcement of competitive access is sufficient. While I might have been convinced in the past, the claims by Bell Canada that their throttling of competitive access circuits is somehow related to P2P Internet traffic suggests that this alone is not going to work.

The type of management that Bell is trying to justify is not legitimately considered Internet traffic at all. In fact they may be violating both the terms of the regulated service as well as federal privacy legislation to inspect the packets within these point-to-point communications to the level to even detect if they contain TCP/IP packets. There is also no legitimacy to their being congestion on these circuits, unless it is temporary due to damage within the network. The speed of the connection between the customer and the ISP (and Bell is *NOT* an ISP in this transaction) is part of the regulation.

Given Bell can’t be trusted to live up to their end of the bargain with governments, it may be time to take back these services from Bell and allow the remaining company to operate the way Bell seems to want to operate. The louder Bell tries to justify their questionably legal activity, the more we need to push to take from the table the option of bell violating their end of the bargain and getting away with it.

We can give Bell a simple choice.

One option would be for this last mile infrastructure to be spun off into a separate company that would then become a crown corporation. Bell can even be given a contract to manage the services of this company for a 10 year period, after which it would be open to competition or to employees of this new crown corporation. With a separate corporate structure, Bell Canada would clearly no longer be able to allege that they “own” this infrastructure, or claim they can manage it any way they see fit.

Another option would be to allow Bell to retain ownership of this infrastructure, as long as they paid a rental fee at a fair price for the right of way, as well as returning any government subsidies — including interest over the last 50 years. We would be fair and only backdate this for 50 years, even though they have received privileges for far longer. It would be clarified that the Crown Corporation would still be created, and while historical right-of-way would be grandfathered, it would be this new Crown Corporation that would own any new last-mile infrastructure.

Given these options I believe Bell will choose the first, given I doubt even Bell with their guaranteed profits over the years could afford to pay back the various handouts from the public purse they have received. At that point we would have a competitive marketplace between competing phone and Internet access companies able to operate on equal footing, each able to build out their own networks using the (mandatory disclosed) policies of their choice. Customers can then read the public reports of these management choices, and hire the phone and Internet access company of their choosing.

Note: As part of the other work I do I look for electronic versions of older government documents (Bills and summaries, statutes, etc). While the 1987 version of the Bell Canada Act is online, earlier versions are not. It would be interesting to have adequate online references for the history of Canadian telecommunications, given how quickly people forget and then believe the “we own it, and we can do what we want with it” rhetoric from the phone and cable companies.

P.S. I participated in IT360 last week, and will BLOG about that later in the week. It just seems like questions around throttling and Net Neutrality are extremely hot at the moment (See ITWorldCanada’s Net Neutrality Resource Centre).
http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/insig...ul-throttling/





Virgin Media CEO: Net Neutrality is "Bollocks," Promises to Breach Agreement with Customers
Cory Doctorow

Neil Berkett, the new CEO of Virgin Media (my ISP at home in London, along with BT) has announced that he considers Net Neutrality to be "a load of bollocks" and he's promised to put any website or service that won't pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the "Internet bus lane."

As a Virgin customer, I'm not paying to see those services that bribe Virgin to reach me, I'm paying to reach the entire web, whichever bits I think are useful, as quickly as Virgin can deliver them.

Theoretically, I'm locked into a Virgin plan for another six months, but as far as I'm concerned, they've just announced that they're violating the agreement by announcing that the services I can reach will be systematically slowed down unless they pay Virgin extra. That means that we're now null and void. I'll be calling to cancel today.

Who's with me?

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett - who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago - has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.

Link

Update: Charlie Stross is pissed -- and he's convinced that Virgin drops packets if they detect a router on your network. This jibes with my experience too.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/13...a-ceo-net.html





FCC Gets an Earful From Open-Net Defenders at Stanford
Ryan Singel

Stanford professor Larry Lessig brought down the house at a net neutrality hearing Thursday, calling for the Federal Communications Commission to finally move to make sure that the internet's architecture remain open and neutral, with the goal of having the internet become as uncomplicated as the electrical grid.

With his standard flair for stunning PowerPoint presentations, Lessig made the case that an open internet made possible the massive economic gains of the 1990s and that network operators who want to change the internet in order to create fast and slow lanes need to prove that such a 'smart' network would actually be better than an internet where the intelligence lies at the edges.

"We are facing these problems because of a failure of FCC policy," Lessig said, as the FCC's five commissioners sat behind him in a Stanford auditorium. "The FCC failed to make it clear to the network owners that if they are building the internet they need to build it neutrally."

"The burden should be on those who would change its architecture," Lessig continued.

Lessig hypothesized an electricity grid that would query whether a device plugged in was made by Sony or Toshiba, or was approved, saying that such a network could be built, but one would need very strong arguments to convince the world to change. That should be the same with the internet, he argued.

Lessig derided carriers' arguments that they need new business models in order to justify the costs of laying out new networks, referring to "coin-operated experts that populate Washington these days."

"We should have a Missouri attitude, a show-me attitude, that competition will continue," Lessig said.

Lessig's message was oddly echoed by the Christian Coalition of America's Michele Combs, who correctly pointed out that Comcast's ongoing interruption of BitTorrent programs uses one of the same techniques the Chinese government uses to censor the internet in China --- fake reset packets.

"We have seen network operators block political speech and block the most popular application on the internet -- Comcast blocked people downloading the King James bible," Combs said, referring presumably in the first case to Verizon blocking pro-choice SMS messages and in the second case to an AP story that tested out whether Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent by attempting to download a public-domain translation of the Bible.

FCC Chairman Martin noted at the opening of the scheduled seven-hour public hearing that Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner were all invited to speak, but declined to participate.

Their sole defender on the first panel was George Ou, a former network engineer and until recently, a ZDNet writer.

Ou cited traffic figures from Japan that showed that a small minority of users in Japan sucked up nearly half of the available bandwidth and argued that network traffic management has long been integral to intranets and the internet.

FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate warned against federal rules that would limit ISPs' efforts to identify downloaded child pornography.

"Child pornography is a multi-billion dollar segment of our economy," Tate said, without referencing her source for the statistic. "I want to make sure that as we discuss these issues we don't end up with unintended consequences of regulatory actions."

She noted that ISPs spent $15 billion in 2007 adding capacity.

"We must remain vigilant against intrusive government action that could disrupt the process of this broadband deployment," Tate said, though the crowd rewarded her remarks with boos when she finished.

The entertainment industry weighed in as well, with a representative of the Songwriter's Guild calling for technology to prevent unauthorized music sharing on the internet. Jean Prewitt, the president of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, called for non-discrimination policies as a way to let artists not aligned with major studios to find an audience and innovate.

"We need to take proactive measures so that internet does not become the closed bastion that television has become," Prewitt said to cheers.

But perhaps the hero of the day for the audience was software engineer Robb Topolski, who first posted forensic proof of Comcast's use of fake packets to throttle BitTorrent usage.

Topolski said he was trying to use file sharing software to distribute old recordings of barbershop quartet music he's gotten off of old wax cylinders -- material that would clearly no longer be copyrighted.

He reported his findings to the popular DSLreports.com site, and then it quickly became news in the blogs and mainstream press sites. He also disputes Comcast's defense that it only messes with BitTorrent when the network is congested, saying he recently suffered from insomnia and noticed that Comcast was blocking P2P protocols at 1:45 a.m. in the morning.

"I see this pretty simply as an example of jamming of authorized communications," Topolski said, comparing the FCC's failure to force Comcast to stop the practice to the speed with which it moves when a ham radio operator reports radio interference.

"The situation continues today," Topolski said. "It is happening right now."

The hearing is continuing, and is likely to get heated when members of the public take to the microphone later this afternoon.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ts-an-ear.html





Better start that download…

AT&T: Internet to Hit Full Capacity by 2010
Andrew Donoghue

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."

Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with U.K. government officials, said that at least $55 billion worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide. "We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010," he said.

He claimed that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" would increase 50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network.

Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing strain on the Internet infrastructure. "Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today," he said.

The AT&T executive pointed out that the Internet exists, thanks to the infrastructure provided by a group of mostly private companies. "There is nothing magic or ethereal about the Internet--it is no more ethereal than the highway system. It is not created by an act of God, but upgraded and maintained by private investors," he said.

Although Cicconi's speech did not explicitly refer to the term "Net neutrality," some audience members tackled him on the issue in a question-and-answer session, asking whether the subtext of his speech was really around prioritizing some kinds of traffic. Cicconi responded by saying he believed government intervention in the Internet was fundamentally wrong.

"I think people agree why the Internet is successful. My personal view is that government has widely chosen to...keep a light touch and let innovators develop it," he said. "The reason I resist using the term 'Net neutrality' is that I don't think government intervention is the right way to do this kind of thing. I don't think government can anticipate these kinds of technical problems. Right now, I think Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem."

Net neutrality refers to an ongoing campaign calling for governments to legislate to prevent Internet service providers from charging content providers for prioritization of their traffic. The debate is more heated in the United States than in the United Kingdom because there is less competition between ISPs in the States.

Content creators argue that Net neutrality should be legislated in order to protect consumers and keep all Internet traffic equal. Network operators and service providers argue that the Internet is already unequal, and certain types of traffic--VoIP, for example--require prioritization by default.

"However well-intentioned, regulatory restraints can inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality' would do just that, with respect to the Internet," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement last year.

The BBC has come under fire from service providers such as Tiscali, which claim that its iPlayer online-TV service is becoming a major drain on network bandwidth.

In a recent posting on his BBC blog, Ashley Highfield, the corporation's director of future media and technology, defended the iPlayer: "I would not suggest that ISPs start to try and charge content providers. They are already charging their customers for broadband to receive any content they want."
http://www.news.com/ATT-Internet-to-...3-6237715.html





Keeping Pace? Torrents of Traffic and the Internet Backbone
Nate Anderson

Video killed the ISP?

There's nothing worse than showing up to class only to be confronted by a pop quiz for which you haven't studied, but don't worry; this one will be pretty painless. It's only two questions long. Here's the first one.

Which of the following statements are true of US Internet traffic growth since 2000:
Internet traffic growth has increased exponentially year-over-year
Internet traffic growth has held steady year-over-year
Internet traffic growth is falling year-over-year

Question number two also concerns Internet traffic growth, but with a special focus on P2P. Hands on your buzzers? Here we go.

Which of the following statements is true of P2P growth over the last several years:
It is growing at 1,553 percent per year
It is growing at 690 percent each year
It is growing at 100 percent each year

Before we get to the answers, let's consider why the questions matter. A prominent strain of recent argument has claimed that the Internet is headed for an "exaflood" of traffic (which will soon be measured in exabytes), largely coming from the rise of online video, and that the ISPs and backbone providers are in danger of having their levees knocked down. The first question gets to the heart of the issue: are Internet growth rates surging in such a way that Internet providers need to start popping Xanax like it's candy?

The second question is like the first, though with a focus on P2P, which is of course largely made up of video traffic. Comcast and others have asserted to the FCC in the last few weeks that P2P apps are designed to consume all available network bandwidth, that they are an essentially voracious and unstoppable force of carpenter ants that will chew through even the most generous of network upgrades. There is, therefore, no legitimate way to handle the P2P onslaught except through limits, filters, or "delays." The question is whether actual P2P growth rates bear out that assertion.

As traffic increases on the Internet, ISPs and content owners have shown increased interest in blocking, throttling, or limiting it for different reasons. When judging these questions, which bear on network neutrality, Comcast's BitTorrent blocking, and other Internet traffic issues, it's important to start with a solid factual basis. With that in mind, let's turn to the answers.

Surprised to learn that the answer to both questions is number 3? (If not, go make yourself a cup of tea and dig into the cookie jar; you deserve it.) Let's take a look at what the answers mean for the Internet as we come up against the end of the first worldwide Internet decade.

Hurricanes and gales

When Ars last looked at the concept of the exaflood, we concluded that the fear-mongering imagery of a "flood" was overblown and unhelpful to rational debate. It also hid the fact that these sorts of "we're all going to drown in traffic!" stories have been cropping up for years. At the time, I concluded, "Fear of future traffic is an old story on the Internet. It didn't start with 'gigalapses' and it won't stop with the 'exaflood.'"

To get more context on the issue, I sat down with Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota, one of the top US experts on Internet traffic patterns. Odlyzko runs the Digital Technology Center on campus and also heads up the Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINTS) project, and we met recently at his Minneapolis office to talk traffic trends.

The main point that Odlyzko wants to hammer home from his body of research is that Internet traffic growth is slowing (overall traffic itself is increasing, of course). On the MINTS site, he points out that this can be counterintuitive, even for those in the industry.

"As one striking example," he writes, "at the end of 2005, John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, claimed that Internet traffic was growing at about 100 percent per year, and similar claims are common. Chambers also predicted both in 2005 and in a keynote at the NXTcomm conference in June 2007 that growth might accelerate towards 300 to 500 percent per year, and that the internal Cisco corporate network traffic load is currently growing at such rates."

But Odlyzko tells me that over the last five years, "traffic growth has been slowing down." In 1995 and 1996, there were periods in which Internet traffic could double in as little as a hundred days, a rate of growth that looked almost terrifying. But it wasn't long before it began to slacken. By the late 1990s, traffic was doubling each year; that is, it was growing at 100 percent a year. But from 2002-2007, the growth rate has dropped, and it now hovers at 50 to 60 percent a year.

That's substantial growth, yes, but it's hardly a flood. Odlyzko tells me that traffic growth is more akin to a gale than a hurricane, and he says that "with a gale, you shorten your sails and you can still steer to some extent." The whole problem with a loaded term like "exaflood" is that "it implies that we're getting overwhelmed, which I don't see happening."

In fact, the Internet backbone has plenty of capacity. If the tubes are going to get clogged, then it's the last mile that will need a good plumber... especially as user-generated content and P2P alter the download-centric model that has undergirded most last-mile network architecture to date.

Into the core

Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst with Telegeography, agrees with Odlyzko that the Internet backbone has yet to suffer any serious osteoporosis; in fact, it's hale and hearty.

There's "no major hockey stick graph going on" when it comes to backbone traffic, he says. Telegeography has good insight into these traffic levels, too, after signing deals with major ISPs to monitor actual traffic flows between major routers. While this approach gives the company less information on the throughput of last-mile connections, it does give it backbone data that goes beyond mere extrapolation and estimate.

Schoonover says that despite the rise of P2P, YouTube, and stores like iTunes and eMusic, backbone capacity faces no real problems unless usage suddenly starts an exponential spike upwards. Even peak usage is growing within manageable limits, and backbone operators are upgrading equipment "fast."

As an example, consider Telegeography's international Internet traffic growth numbers from the last three years. From 2004 to 2006, total international bandwidth grew at a rate below that of traffic. This is clearly not a sustainable situation in the long term, but Schoonover explains that the graph looks this way because most major bandwidth upgrades are "lumpy." Such upgrades tend to boost capacity so much (and cost so much to roll out) that carriers wait until peak traffic crosses an internal threshold, then upgrade their equipment, often by adding more 10Gbps wavelength circuits to their fiber backbones.

This upgrade pattern means that bandwidth upgrades don't track demand in a linear fashion, something you can see in the chart below. For several years, traffic growth was exceeding bandwidth growth, but the trend suddenly turned around in 2007 as many carriers upgraded to deal with the need for more capacity.

This growth pattern means that, when looking at Internet traffic and bandwidth, longer trends are more important than single-year snapshots. Just looking at the data from 2004, for instance, you might conclude that backbone operators were about to be "flooded." (The providers themselves didn't seem to think this was true, judging by their next two years of moderate investment.)

But a longer analysis shows that ISPs have no trouble increasing bandwidth more quickly than traffic when they need to do so. According to a recent Telegeography report, "While some predicted that surging Internet traffic could overwhelm the available infrastructure, the expansion of Internet backbones has stayed well ahead of the curve."

That expansion should get even simpler in future. At a recent conference, Doug van Houweling, the head of Internet2, talked about just how easy these sorts of upgrades could be once the fiber is in place. The core is fine, he argued, pointing to Internet2's dynamic provisioning system that can add new wavelengths to particular fiber connections on the fly when the bandwidth is required. Such technology should become more common on the consumer Internet as well.

Out at the edges

But last-mile connections, like cable and DSL lines, haven't been increasing their bandwidth at the same rate as the backbone. This is simple enough to see in the recent Comcast case, where the company finally admitted to "delaying" P2P uploads during periods of congestion. Comcast's cable network, a hybrid fiber/coax system, shares its total bandwidth with all the users in a single neighborhood (up to 450 homes per node), and as few as 15 concurrent BitTorrent upload sessions can cripple applications like VoIP for the entire neighborhood. Such limitations have been around for years, and won't vanish anytime soon (though Comcast's current DOCSIS 3.0 rollout should greatly increase the shared bandwidth).

DSL suffers from its own speed issues, despite the fact that each home has a line all the way back to the central office. While speeds of 25Mbps are theoretically possible, AT&T currently offers a maximum of 6Mbps on its DSL lines and 10Mbps for some U-verse customers. Most DSL is actually "ADSL," as well; that is, it's asymmetric. Maximum upload speed for AT&T's top-tier 6Mbps is a paltry 768kbps.

It's these last-mile issues that cause congestion; the backbone operators have no real trouble upgrading their core routers, switching on more wavelengths over fiber, etc. But Comcast, AT&T, and other last-mile operators generally need more than a quick fix at the central office; they need an (expensive) infrastructure improvement.

Comcast is making good efforts with DOCSIS 3.0 and new modems, hoping to reach 100Mbps in the next several years. AT&T is in a tougher position, as long copper loop lengths in the US make bumping DSL's speed more difficult. The company is trying a hybrid fiber/copper system with its U-verse upgrades, but this is still not expected to top out at anything more than 25Mbps, and most of this will be used to carry several HD TV channels.

Only Verizon is pumping the cash into a comprehensive network architecture upgrade (something like $18 billion has been committed so far), ditching copper altogether and running fiber directly to the home. An additional advantage of this approach (apart from sheer bandwidth) is that fiber is fully symmetric; Verizon therefore appears best poised to serve the Web 2.0 generation.

The exaflood: not drowning Asia

The "exaflood" is usually dragged out when a set of specific points are made about how to handle Internet traffic. Bret Swanson's original article coining the term argued that we need major investment in US broadband infrastructure to keep innovation from stalling, to which we say: amen, brother!

But Swanson goes further. After spinning out rosy scenarios about Our Great Broadband Future, he makes the case that necessary investment in network will only happen if network neutrality rules are defeated. "Net neutrality's rules, price controls and litigation would prevent broadband networks from being built, limit the amount of available bandwidth and thus encourage the zero-sum discrimination supposedly deplored," he says.

What price controls is he talking about?

"Google, for example, has guaranteed $900 million in advertising revenue to MySpace and paid Dell $1 billion to install Google search boxes on its computers; YouTube partnered with Verizon Wireless; MySpace signed its own content deal with Cingular," notes Swanson. "But these kinds of preferential partnerships, where content and conduit are integrated to varying degrees—and which are ubiquitous in almost every industry—could be outlawed under net neutrality."

It's hard to see how any of this would be banned by net neutrality rules that allow paying Internet customers to access any destination on the Internet without added delay (and the first two examples don't even concern network operators at all).

But the reality is that we aren't facing a "flood" that can only be averted by having ISPs sign preferential access deals with web sites. As the traffic numbers above show, total Internet traffic growth has been slowing and backbone providers aren't yet having any trouble keeping up with the load.

We need only look to some of our international friends to see that it's not a crisis we're facing, just an opportunity to catch up with what others are already experiencing.

Odlyzko, who finds all this flooding talk to be "convenient politically" when it comes to jacking up prices or bashing net neutrality, points out that places like Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong all have far higher traffic rates than are seen in the US. South Korea, in fact, has nearly as much traffic as the entire US, and each user's traffic runs six to seven times higher than the US per capita average. In Japan, 100Mbps fiber connections are common, and can be had for less than the cost of many 6Mbps connections here.

The fascinating thing about these places is that they've managed to cope with high traffic loads without resorting to super-secret wasabi-powered routers; traffic is handled using off-the-shelf hardware from companies like Cisco and Juniper. If these countries can deal with much higher per-capita traffic loads than currently exist in the US, then we probably don't have much to worry about, and it's certainly not clear that giving priority to the websites with the fattest wallets is the only way to pay for upgrades. As Schoonover puts it, there's "no evidence" that networks are actually becoming more congested, since upgrades can easily keep pace with bandwidth needs.

It's the last-mile problem, discussed above, that keeps US per-capita traffic levels below those of places like South Korea. With speeds limited, certain high-bandwidth applications like HD video transmission simply take too long to be feasible, and people don't use them. Countries like South Korea, Japan, and several European countries like France have all made broadband deployment a national priority. Each has responded with a different mix of government incentives, subsidies, and regulations, but one thing that they tend to share is mandatory line-sharing rules.

In Europe, where cable infrastructure is less developed, the main access point into each home is the telephone network (though mobile use has been surging in recent years). Governments have generally mandated that the incumbent telecom firms provide wholesale access to their networks, often at regulated rates. Odlyzko and Schoonover both point out that line-sharing was an important stimulus to the development of ISP competition.

The US used to follow this model for telephone companies, but the telcos argued that this put them at a huge disadvantage with cable, which had no such requirement. We all know the eventual result: the FCC decided that neither group would be forced to share its lines, a move that has left most Americans with a duopoly that seems far less interested in competing with each other than do companies in places like the UK, which aggressively offer services like free broadband when phone service is purchased.

Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea all have other advantages, of course, including the prevalence of high-density apartment living (it's cheaper to run one fiber line to an apartment building than it is to run one to 50 homes). But Odlyzko doesn't think this explains the broadband advantage such countries have. Even in the US, with its large rural population and an abundance of aging copper wire infrastructure, more could be done. With DSLAM prices plummeting over the last few years, Odlyzko says that prices could certainly be lower and speeds could be higher in a truly competitive market.

So what do we do about P2P?

One of the key pieces in any good "exaflood" argument is P2P, which is generally portrayed as a ravenous monster that eats up all available bandwidth, making a mockery of network upgrades that attempt to keep up. Odlyzko isn't so sure that's true, certainly not when made as an "absolute statement."

What he sees is P2P growth that isn't skyrocketing but instead growing at fast—but measurable—rates. The highest P2P growth rate numbers he could find anywhere showed 100 percent a year growth; fast, yes, but not something that poses any real danger to the Internet backbone or to DSL and fiber last-mile connections.

Worldwide, P2P traffic levels vary from 20 to 70 percent of total network traffic, and it's common to see claims along the lines of "5 percent of all users are taking up 80 percent of the bandwidth." This can be a very real problem for ISPs, and few Internet surfers would be excited to find that some user in their neighborhood downloading Battlestar Galactica episodes was causing Skype issues and slow browsing. The current solution for some ISPs is to talk about how unfair this is and to crack down on that small minority that uses the most traffic. As a business practice, this may be fine, but Odlyzko says that issue gets more interesting when you look more closely at the numbers.

While it's true that five percent of users consume more than half the bandwidth on many networks in a country like Japan, recent studies there have found that it's not always the same five percent. That is, a much larger percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, but not all the time.

P2P poses the biggest threat to upload links, especially on cable networks, which can quickly become saturated. One of the technology's biggest effects on ISPs is that it is pushing most of them more in the direction of symmetric networks. Schoonover notes that legitimate P2P apps will force companies to adjust the way they do business as ISPs "certainly" will move in the direction of symmetry (though most won't get there for some time).

Phil Asmundson, a Deloitte vice chairman who runs the company's Technology, Media, and Telecommunications practice, tells Ars that high-quality broadcast video will be significant driver of traffic as it migrates onto the Internet (see FOX/NBC's joint venture Hulu for a prime example). As video quality gets higher and the shows become longer-form, media companies will get killed on bandwidth costs and will be forced to move to a P2P model (see NBC's moves in this direction with Pando). That, in turn, will create tremendous pressure on last-mile ISPs to reconfigure their networks to be more symmetrical.

Odlyzko sees the same shift happening and chalks it up to a deeper change; the era of "content is king" may be winding down. The asymmetric nature of most networks was due to the fact that people were seen largely as consumers of professional content, not as creators or distributors. The rise of podcasts, video chats, YouTube, and other services has shown that "consumers" are in fact much more than that label suggests. The download-centric model was essentially total when it came to things like television, but with the Internet, it's no longer quite so important.

We're already there

The takeaway is pretty simple: the Internet core is humming along just fine, but last-mile networks are the bottlenecks. While increasing download speeds will continue to make new Internet applications feasible, it's increasingly important to boost upload speeds and move in the direction of a symmetric network. Can this be done only by signing preferential deals with web sites so that Google's bits are served up faster than Yahoo's? Can traffic only be handled if we specifically target certain P2P traffic for throttling regardless of its legal uses?

To answer both questions, we have only to look at a case here in the US that's just winding up: the FCC investigation into Comcast's P2P "delaying" tactics. Though the FCC phase of the inquiry isn't over, Comcast has already signed a deal with BitTorrent and has agreed that it can manage its network without discriminatory throttling (throttling will be continue to be used as necessary). That transition should be complete by the end of 2008, and the company is already rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 in places like the Twin Cities and providing subscribers with up to 5Mbps of upload capacity. And Comcast has found the investment capital without resorting to sticking up web site operators.

The thing about the "exaflood"? We're already experiencing it. According to Odlyzko, the total monthly US Internet bandwidth was somewhere between 750 and 1,250 petabytes at the end of 2007 (an exabyte is 1,000 petabytes). It's clear that the Internet can already handle exabytes of data; worldwide, we're already seeing 3 to 5 exabytes of traffic each month.

I mentioned at the top that Cisco boss John Chambers was not long ago predicting the possibility of 300 to 500 percent growth. That's still a possibility, of course, especially given the interest in high-quality video, but it's not a current reality. Cisco's own Robert Pepper, a senior policy exec, said at a recent conference that traffic growth isn't really a problem; the core is fine, and new compression technology will help with congestion at the edges.

The Internet core is so far from being overwhelmed that Odlyzko suggests ISPs should attempt to stimulate more usage rather than limit it. We're still early in the Internet experiment and new, good things are likely to spring into being so long as users and ISPs continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with their networks. Thanks to Moore's Law, equipment grows ever cheaper, and Odlyzko writes on the MINTS site that even the current "growth rates of 50 percent per year can be sustained without substantial increases in spending."

While we may choose to let ISPs charge more for certain priority traffic delivery or quality of service, the data suggests that we don't need to do so to ward off a catastrophic flood. Net neutrality is a complicated-enough issue to debate all on its own; it doesn't need an injection of hyperbolic disaster rhetoric.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...-happening.ars





He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)
Noam Cohen

It’s not easy to write a book. First you have to pick a title. And then there is the table of contents. If you want the book to be categorized, either by a bookseller or a library, it has to be assigned a unique numerical code, like an ISBN, for International Standard Book Number. There have to be proper margins. Finally, there’s the back cover.

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.

Philip M. Parker seems to have licked that problem. Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.

While nothing announces that Mr. Parker’s books are computer generated, one reader, David Pascoe, seemed close to figuring it out himself, based on his comments to Amazon in 2004. Reviewing a guide to rosacea, a skin disorder, Mr. Pascoe, who is from Perth, Australia, complained: “The book is more of a template for ‘generic health researching’ than anything specific to rosacea. The information is of such a generic level that a sourcebook on the next medical topic is just a search and replace away.”

When told via e-mail that his suspicion was correct, Mr. Pascoe wrote back, “I guess it makes sense now as to why the book was so awful and frustrating.”Mr. Parker was willing to concede much of what Mr. Pascoe argued. “If you are good at the Internet, this book is useless,” he said, adding that Mr. Pascoe simply should not have bought it. But, Mr. Parker said, there are people who aren’t Internet savvy who have found these guides useful.

It is the idea of automating difficult or boring work that led Mr. Parker to become involved. Comparing himself to a distant disciple of Henry Ford, he said he was “deconstructing the process of getting books into people’s hands; every single step we could think of, we automated.”

He added: “My goal isn’t to have the computer write sentences, but to do the repetitive tasks that are too costly to do otherwise.”

In an interview from his home in San Diego and his offices nearby, Mr. Parker described his motivation as providing content that the marketplace has otherwise neglected for lack of an audience. That can mean a relatively obscure language is involved, or a relatively obscure disease or a relatively obscure product.

Take, for example, the study of bathmats in India.

“Only one person in the world may be interested in that,” he conceded, “probably a strategic planner for a multinational that makes those.” But he points out that once he has trained the computer to take data about past sales and make complex calculations to project future sales, each new book costs him about 12 cents in electricity. Since these books are print-on-demand or delivered electronically, he is ahead after the first sale, he said.

His company, the Icon Group International, is the long tail of the bell curve come to life — generating significant total sales by adding up tens of thousands of what might be called worst sellers. For example, a search at the Galter Health Sciences Library of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University found half a dozen Icon books, mainly in the library for patients and their families.

Icon is “a very innovative and interesting example of print on demand,” said Kurt Beidler, a senior manager at Amazon.com who runs the publishers’ services for BookSurge, Amazon’s print-on-demand company. “A lot of examples of print on demand take older books and bring them back — really acting as a supply-chain tool. In this kind of business, it’s a new business, using this capability to introduce new material to customers.”

Mr. Parker compares his methods to those of a traditional publisher, but with the computer simply performing some of the scut work. In an explanatory YouTube video, Mr. Parker shows a book being created. The computer is given an assignment — project the latent demand for antipsychotic drugs around the world, based on the sales figures in the United States.

“Using a little bit of artificial intelligence, a computer program has been created that mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for doing such a study,” Mr. Parker says. “But rather than taking many months to do the study. the computer accomplishes this in about 13 minutes.”

An editor picks the years to be covered, but the computer picks the optimum model for extrapolating sales in various countries, and in alphabetical order produces a chart for each country. “It will then open a Word document and export the information into Word just like a real author would out of their minds, so to speak, or spreadsheets,” he says.

Artificial intelligence researchers say computers are far from being what the general public would consider authors.

“There is a continuous spectrum, also known as a slippery slope, between a program that automatically typesets a telephone directory and a program that generates English texts at the level of variety you would expect from a typical human English speaker,” said Chung-chieh Shan, an assistant professor in the computer science department of Rutgers. “The former program is easy to write, the latter program is very difficult; in fact, the holy grail of linguistics. Like Mad-Libs, Parker’s programs probably lie somewhere between the two ends of this spectrum.”

Mr. Parker has lately taken to lighter fare intended to educate. He said he had invested “up to seven figures into the animation business” for word-based video games and animated game shows that will teach English to non-English speakers. YouTube has many examples of these games, which have computer- generated scripts.

A low-tech version of those games are the thousands of crossword puzzle books Mr. Parker has made in about 20 languages. The clues are in a foreign language and the answers are in English. The computer designs the puzzles and ensures that the words become harder as one progresses.

As part of his love of words, and dictionaries in all languages, Mr. Parker said he has taken to having his computers create acrostic poems — where the first letter of a series of words spells a synonym of those words, often to ironic effect.

Of course, one of the difficulties of generating a hundred thousand poems is stepping back and assessing their quality.

“Do you think one of them is Shakespeare?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “Only because I haven’t done sonnets yet.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/bu...ia/14link.html





Publishers Sue Georgia State on Digital Reading Matter
Katie Hafner

Three prominent academic publishers are suing Georgia State University, contending that the school is violating copyright laws by providing course reading material to students in digital format without seeking permission from the publishers or paying licensing fees.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Atlanta, the publishers — Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications — sued four university officials, asserting “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” by Georgia State, which the university distributes through its Web site.

The lawsuit, which may be the first of its kind, raises questions about digital rights, which are confronting many media companies, but also about core issues like the future of the business model for academic publishers.

Indeed, as the printed word is put in digital form, holding onto rights seems to many like climbing up the slippery sides of a glass. The case centers on so-called course packs, compilations of reading materials from various books and journals. The lawsuit contends that in many cases, professors are providing students with multiple chapters of a given work, in violation of the "fair use" provision of copyright law. The publishers are seeking an order that the defendants secure permissions and pay licensing fees to the copyright owners.

Officials at Georgia State, in Atlanta, declined to comment on the lawsuit. “We have been informed that a lawsuit is being filed,” a spokeswoman, DeAnna Hines, said. “However, we have not received it, and therefore we won’t be able to comment, pending potential litigation.”

Over the years, electronic course packs have become increasingly common, supplanting their physical counterparts. They consist of reading material taken from a variety of printed sources, which is then scanned, compiled and posted on a university’s Web site. By some estimates, electronic course packs now constitute half of all syllabus reading at American colleges and universities.

“Digitally delivered course content is probably more widespread than we’d like to think,” said Patricia S. Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, which supports the lawsuit.

R. Bruce Rich, a partner in the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which is representing the plaintiffs, said that in spite of repeated attempts to work with Georgia State, “they indicated that they had no interest in having a discussion.”

Mr. Rich said that in a letter his firm received last summer, Georgia State officials “indicated their view that all of their practices are covered under the fair use doctrine.”

He said that over the last year or so, half a dozen or so other universities had been contacted about copyright violations. Those institutions, he said, showed more willingness to work with the copyright holders and establish stricter university policies around licensing the material.

Legal precedents exist for cases involving course packs from photocopied material, but experts say the lawsuit against Georgia State is the first to be filed over electronic course packs.

In 1991, Basic Books and others won a suit again Kinko’s, which was selling course packs it had photocopied.

And in 1992, Princeton University Press and others sued Michigan Document Services, a photocopying service, which was producing course packs for University of Michigan students without permission from the copyright holders. The business was eventually found to be in copyright infringement.

“Georgia State’s activity seems identical with Michigan Document Services’ activity,” said Susan P. Crawford, a visiting professor at Yale Law School.

But she pointed out that unlike Kinko’s and Michigan Document Services, Georgia State was not making money from the electronic course packs.

Yet, she added: “It’s difficult to argue that this is a truly noncommercial use. Georgia State may be a nonprofit institution, but its students pay a lot of money for course materials, and would presumably pay money for the materials being provided to them by the university.”

Frank Smith, editorial director for academic books at Cambridge University Press, said that for electronic use in a course, Cambridge typically charges 17 cents a page for each student, and generally grants permission for use of as much as 20 percent of a book.

“Publishers have created a market for course materials that is very similar to the market for luxury goods,” Professor Crawford said. “There is only one version available, and at a very high price.”

The dispute recalls problems the music industry had in protecting the format of an album on a CD. “What publishers don’t understand is they could disaggregate,” Professor Crawford said. “They could electronically rip apart their books and sell them chapter by chapter, and everyone would be happier.”

The publishing industry’s reluctance to do so , she said, stemmed from “a fear that they would cannibalize the market for the printed object, and they’re reluctant to let go of that model.”

Other experts wonder if such a lawsuit might be premature, emphasizing that in many ways it is too early to settle on a business model for the distribution of digital materials.

“In academic publishing, we need to find the digital services people really want,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library based in San Francisco. “I wonder if this will turn out to be an ‘attack the innovator’ suit like the peer-to-peer suits for the music industry. Sometimes a bit of slack can help us all discover a winning formula."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/te.../16school.html





Rowling to Testify in Trial Over Potter Lexicon
Motoko Rich

J. K. Rowling’s public appearances usually take place in bookstores and theaters, before thousands of her fans. But on Monday, Ms. Rowling, the author of the wildly popular Harry Potter series, is expected to turn up in a much different place: on the witness stand in a Lower Manhattan federal courtroom, testifying against a small publisher looking to bring out an encyclopedia based on her work.

Ms. Rowling’s books about the boy wizard have spawned countless fan Web sites and chat rooms, as well as dozens of companion books that seek to analyze every minute detail of the seven titles in the series, which ended in July with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

Ms. Rowling has supported much of the fan output, doling out awards to Internet sites and granting interviews to Web masters. But when RDR Books, a small publisher in Muskegon, Mich., announced it was planning to publish a print version last fall of a popular fan Web site called “The Harry Potter Lexicon” (hp-lexicon.org), Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers, the movie studio that has adapted her books into films, balked. Their objection is that the book merely repackages Ms. Rowling’s work and, unlike the free fan sites, is intended to make money for its publisher.

In October Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers sued RDR for copyright infringement, and in November the company suspended publication so that Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr., of the Southern District of New York, could assess the merits of the suit.

The case is scheduled to go to trial on Monday, with Ms. Rowling flying over from Scotland to testify. At stake is whether authors other than Ms. Rowling have the right to publish books that rely substantially on her work as source material, and whether the “Harry Potter Lexicon” in particular sufficiently adds to and transforms the content of her books to be protected by copyright law.

The case also explores the line between free Web content created by fans and a commercially published book. Ms. Rowling has openly praised the Web site on which the Lexicon is based, giving it a “fan site award” in 2004 and commenting in interviews that she even relied on the site — which provides an annotated catalog of characters, spells, magic potions, locations and events in her books — while writing. It was only when RDR decided to transform the site into a book that she objected.

In court papers Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers have argued that the Lexicon, which is being written by the Web site’s founder, Steven Vander Ark, and three other writers, “merely compiles and repackages Ms. Rowling’s fictional facts derived wholesale from the Harry Potter works without adding any new creativity, commentary, insight or criticism.” (Mr. Vander Ark is not a party to the suit.)

What’s more, Ms. Rowling said the proposed Lexicon book flouted her plans to write her own encyclopedia and donate the proceeds to charity. She argues that Mr. Vander Ark’s book could deter fans from buying hers.

Roger Rapoport, publisher of RDR Books, said he believed that Mr. Vander Ark’s work and Ms. Rowling’s encyclopedia could both exist. “We don’t think we’re a threat to J. K. Rowling,” Mr. Rapoport said in an interview. He said he paid Mr. Vander Ark a “tiny advance” for the book last August and was planning to print about 10,000 copies.

In court filings RDR argues that Mr. Vander Ark’s book “provides a significant amount of original analysis and commentary concerning everything from insights into the personality of key characters, relationships among them, the meaning of various historical and literary allusions, as well as internal inconsistencies and mistakes in the novels.”

The publisher said the Lexicon follows a long tradition of literary commentary. “For hundreds of years everybody has agreed that folks are free to write companion guides,” said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School and one of RDR’s lawyers. “This is the first time that anybody has argued seriously that folks don’t have the right to do that.”

Mr. Vander Ark said he had initially worried that a book might constitute copyright infringement. “I honestly can’t tell you the origin of that belief,” he said. But when RDR assured him it wasn’t a problem, he said he assumed that because the material was available online and had never been challenged by Ms. Rowling, the book wouldn’t be either.

On her Web site (jkrowling.com) Ms. Rowling says she does not object to authors publishing literary criticism or reviews of the Potter books. That, she wrote, “would be entirely legitimate — neither I nor anybody connected with Harry Potter has ever tried to prevent such works from being published.”

Neil Blair, a lawyer for the Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents Ms. Rowling, said he was aware of only two similar lawsuits filed by her and Warner Brothers against other publishers, including a plagiarism case in the Netherlands and a suit against a book in Germany that simply summarized the plots of the Harry Potter books. He said he believed that they had also brought an administrative proceeding against a Chinese encyclopedia.

A call to Ms. Rowling’s press agent in Scotland was not returned. Mr. Blair referred any inquiries to a publicist in Los Angeles who is coordinating media contacts for Warner Brothers and Ms. Rowling.

In a number of cases Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers have pushed publishers of other planned Harry Potter reference books in the United States to withdraw them from the market, though without filing suit. Ben Schoen, manager of operations at mugglenet.com, one of the most popular Potter fan Web sites, said that when a publisher asked editors of the site to write an encyclopedia, Ms. Rowling objected, and the publisher did not proceed. “If she asks us to do anything, we basically comply with it,” Mr. Schoen said.

Though the case pits a billionaire author against a tiny publishing house, the Potter fan base seems to have little sympathy for RDR. Melissa Anelli, Web mistress of the Leaky Cauldron (the-leaky-cauldron.org), another popular fan site, said her board had voted to sever ties with the Harry Potter Lexicon site because of the lawsuit and comments Mr. Vander Ark has made about it.

“You’re put in the position of having loved the site all these years,” Ms. Anelli said, “and then having to understand why J. K. Rowling had to take an action.”

David Hammer, another lawyer representing RDR Books, said he believed that Ms. Rowling was acting out of vanity. “She wants to be the only one to write this encyclopedia about Harry Potter,” he said. “She’s determined to write it, and she doesn’t want competitors.”

Mr. Vander Ark, who is now living in England, is finishing up another companion book, “In Search of Harry Potter,” a travel memoir about places in Britain that served as the basis for some of the fictional locales in the novels. It is being published by Methuen in July, though neither the company Web site nor amazon.co.uk currently mention the book. A spokesman for Methuen said it was keeping a low profile because of the pending trial but did not expect any problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/books/14potter.html





Rowling Says Lexicon Theft of Her Work
Larry Neumeister

J.K. Rowling testified before a packed courtroom in a lawsuit to block publication of a Harry Potter lexicon, telling a judge that the book amounts to a "wholesale theft" of nearly 20 years of her hard work. "We all know I've made enough money. That's absolutely not why I'm here," Rowling told the judge in U.S. District Court.

The British author sued Michigan-based RDR Books last year to stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon," claiming copyright infringement. Vander Ark runs the popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, and RDR wants to publish a print version of the site and charge $24.95.

Rowling claims the book is nothing more than a rearrangement of her own material and told the judge it copied so much of her work that it amounted to plagiarism.

"I think it's atrocious. I think it's sloppy. I think there's very little research," she testified Monday. "This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."

She also said she has recently started work on her own encyclopedia and plans to donate the resulting profits to charity _ adding that she does not expect to complete it for two to three years because she wants to do it right. If Vander Ark's lexicon is published, "I'm not at all convinced that I would have the will or the heart to continue with my encyclopedia," she said.

RDR's lawyer, Anthony Falzone, in an opening statement defended the lexicon as a reference guide, calling it a legitimate effort "to organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter." The small publisher is not contesting that the lexicon infringes upon Rowling's copyright but argues that it is a fair use allowable by law for reference books.

Rowling said she believed that a victory by Vander Ark could damage the Harry Potter name and embolden imitators.

"Should it be published, I firmly believe that carte blanche will be given to anyone who wants to make a quick bit of money, to divert some Harry Potter profits into their own pockets. ... I'm not delighted to have work I consider to be this shoddy associated with Harry Potter," she said.

The non-jury trial will be decided by U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr., who must determine whether the use of the material is legal because Vander Ark added his own interpretation, creativity and analysis. The testimony and arguments could last most of the week. Rowling will spend her breaks in the seclusion of a jury room, away from fans of her wildly popular series.

The trial comes eight months after Rowling published her seventh and final book in the series. The books have been published in 64 languages, sold more than 400 million copies and produced a film franchise that has pulled in $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office.

In sometimes emotional testimony, Rowling recalled starting work on the first book in 1991 when she was 25 and so destitute that she sometimes had to choose between purchasing typewriter ribbon and food. She said the Harry Potter characters were a fantasy world to which she could escape from the hard work of raising a child on welfare as a single mother.

Rowling choked up when her lawyer, Dale Cendali, asked what Harry Potter meant to her.

"I really don't want to cry because I'm British you know," the mother of three said. Then she added, "These characters continue to mean so much to me over a long period of time. It's very difficult for someone who is not a writer to understand what it means to the creator. The closest you could come is to say, 'How do you feel about your children?' These books, they saved me."

Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband and children, also testified she had stopped work on a new novel because the lawsuit has "decimated my creative work over the last month."

She said Vander Ark sometimes simply translated a Latin word. "Any 7-year-old with a pocket Latin dictionary could do that."

"There are incorrect translations, there are incorrect etymologies and there are places where Mr. Vander Ark quite literally has not understood the books," she said.

Outside court, she read a statement saying she was fine with lots of books in many languages that comment on or criticize Harry Potter.

"But the book in this case is different. It provided no analysis and virtually no commentary. It takes far too much and it offers precious little in return," she said.

Vander Ark, 50, has said he joined an adult online discussion group devoted to the "Harry Potter" books in 1999 before launching his own Web site as a hobby a year later. The Web site attracts about 1.5 million page views per month and contributions from people all over the world.

He said he initially declined proposals to convert the Web site into an encyclopedia, in part because he believed until last August that in book form, it would represent a copyright violation.

After Rowling released the final chapter in the "Harry Potter" series last July, Vander Ark was contacted by an RDR Books employee, who told him that publication of the lexicon would not violate copyright law, he said. Still, to protect himself, Vander Ark said he insisted that RDR Books include a clause in his contract that the publisher would defend and pay any damages that might result from claims against him.

He said it was decided that the lexicon would include sections from the Lexicon Web site that give descriptions and commentary on individual names, places, spells and creatures from Harry Potter stories.

Rowling acknowledged she once bestowed an award on Vander Ark's Web site because, she said, she wanted to encourage a very enthusiastic fan.

But she said she "almost choked on my coffee" one morning when she realized Vander Ark had warned others not to copy portions of his Web site. She said she now has second thoughts about all the encouragement she has given to online discussions and Web sites devoted to her books.

"I never censored it or wanted to censor it," she said, adding that if she loses the lawsuit, she will conclude she essentially gave away her copyrights by encouraging the Web sites.

"Other authors will say, 'I need to exercise more control. She was an idiot. She let it all go,'" Rowling said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041400646.html





This Isn't a Parody - This is a F***in' Outrage!
Jack

Fake Murdoch gets bent over fake Wall Street Journal:"You're f***ing ass is on a plate!" Real Murdoch's minions try to buy up all the copies.







Ex-Classmate Challenges Claim to Facebook Name
Michael Liedtke

The hard feelings between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a former college classmate have boiled over into another legal dispute, this time over the popular online hangout's trademark.

In a petition filed Tuesday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Aaron Greenspan is seeking to cancel Facebook's legal claim to its name.

Greenspan, 25, argues Zuckerberg, 23, had no right to trademark the Facebook name in 2005 because the term had been used generically for decades at Harvard University, where they first met. What's more, Greenspan maintains he used the term "Face Book" as part of an online service called houseSYSTEM a few months before Zuckerberg unveiled his now-famous Web site in 2004.

The former Harvard classmates are now both building companies in Palo Alto with differing degrees of success. Greenspan's software venture, Think Computer, hasn't caught on quite like Zuckerberg's Facebook, which boasts 70 million users worldwide.

This isn't the first time legal questions have been raised about whether Zuckerberg came up with the idea that blossomed into one of the Internet's hottest companies and made him a billionaire in the process.

A trio of former Harvard students have been fighting over Facebook's origin since 2004, alleging in a federal lawsuit that Zuckerberg stole the social networking concept after they hired him to work on a Web site that eventually became ConnectU.

Facebook reportedly is nearing a settlement with ConnectU's founders: twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their partner, Divya Narendra. The New York Times reported the confidential settlement talks earlier this month.

Long before Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley in 2004, the Facebook term was widely used at Harvard to describe any paper or electronic book that displayed the faces of students and faculty "in a structured manner," Greenspan wrote in his petition.

Picking up on that theme, Greenspan said houseSYSTEM introduced a student locator called "the Face Book" in September 2003 - at least four months before Zuckerberg unveiled "thefacebook.com."

A Facebook representative declined to comment on Greenspan's petition.

Greenspan acknowledged he might be willing to drop his petition for the right amount of money. But he said what he really wants is the legal right to use the term Facebook in the title of a 335-page "memoir" that he plans to self-publish later this month.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8942118?dlbk





Top Hard-Drive Maker Files Suit Against Rival
Laurie J. Flynn

Seagate Technology, the largest maker of computer hard drives, made a pre-emptive strike against an emerging competitor on Monday when it filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing STEC Inc. of patent infringement.

In the suit, Seagate contends that STEC’s solid-state drive products violate four Seagate patents covering how such drives interface with computers.

STEC, based in Santa Ana, Calif., makes solid-state drives for corporations and other large enterprises, a market that Seagate executives have said the company plans to enter this year. The suit was filed in Federal District Court in the Northern District of California.

Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, said Seagate was clearly feeling threatened by the growing demand for solid-state drives and that it was “defending its turf.” He added that Seagate executives did not contact STEC about infringement before filing the complaint.

Solid-state drives are beginning to challenge traditional hard drives for storage use in both home and office computers. The technology is just starting to show up in commercially available systems, like Apple’s MacBook Air, introduced in January, and more recently in the HP Mini from Hewlett-Packard.

“It’s not a big financial issue yet because the market is just taking off,” said William D. Watkins, chief executive of Seagate, which is based in Scotts Valley, Calif. “But that’s why we want to set things straight now.”

Mr. Watkins said the goal of the suit was to promote the kind of cross-licensing and partnerships that have always been part of the hard-drive market.

Unlike hard drives, which are mechanical, solid-state drives are made of chips and have no moving parts; so-called flash drives are an example. They use less power and are quieter and faster than hard drives, but that performance comes at a hefty price.

The hard-drive version of Apple’s new MacBook Air, for example, costs $1,799 for an 80-gigabyte version; the solid-state version of the Air costs $3,098 and stores only 64 gigabytes.

“Right now there’s a lot of excitement about the solid-state market, but not a lot of business,” said James Handy, an analyst with Objective Analysis, a market research company.

Mr. Watkins said that Seagate had spent $7 billion over the last year in research and development of the technology at issue in its suit. At the center of the suit is how solid-state drive technology interacts with computers, for purposes like error correction.

Shares of Seagate declined 57 cents a share on Monday to close at $19.97, just after the suit was disclosed, then rose slightly in after-hours trading. STEC shares closed up 13 cents, to $6.94, then declined in late trading.

Seagate has fought to remain the largest producer of computer hard drives, swallowing up its nearest competitor, Maxtor, just two years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/te...15seagate.html





China: We're Fighting Piracy, Honest!
Jacqui Cheng

If there's one thing China is known for aside from its Internet censorship practices, it's piracy. China insists, though, that it is making an effort to crack down on piracy, especially in anticipation of the Olympic Games this summer. Chinese officials said at a news conference this morning that the state had convicted 4,322 people for piracy in 2007, and that it would make a special effort to ensure that the Olympic trademark would be protected.

"The Chinese government has taken concrete steps and its success is there for all to see," State Intellectual Property Office spokesperson Yi Xintian told the press, according to the AP. "We are extending comprehensive and strict protection to Olympic intellectual property. The Chinese government has the resolve and capability to make sure that during the Olympic Games we create a favorable climate for intellectual property."

It's no secret that China is rife with intellectual property rip-offs—not just of music, movies, and software, but of everything you can possibly think of. Handbags, Beanie Babies (yes, still), shoes, cell phones, other gadgets, home appliances, clothing—anything that has a well-known brand name can be found in knockoff form. This fact is amplified significantly if you actually visit some cities in China; it's near impossible to turn your head and not be greeted with blocks upon blocks of street vendors trying to hawk their ripped-off wares for cheaper than it costs to buy a bottle of pop in the US.

It's no surprise, then, that the International Olympic Committee could be a little concerned over its trademarks being abused when the Olympics touch down in Beijing. For an organization that undoubtedly makes lots of money on official merchandise sales, China can be a very scary place.

China's statements come at a time when the country is still widely criticized for not doing enough to combat piracy. A year ago, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over China's "inadequate protection of intellectual property rights," and later that month the WTO named China again at the top of its piracy watch list. Although some organizations—such as the Business Software Alliance—say that the piracy situation in China is improving, China has continued to butt heads with government officials and even Hollywood.

Some companies, though, are trying to compete with pirates instead. Twentieth Century Fox, Warner China, and Paramount have all begun selling DVDs in China at a severe discount in hopes of attracting would-be buyers away from illicit copies being sold on the street. These studios have priced their movies at between 10 and 25 yuan (roughly $1.40 to $3.50)—the lower end being roughly the same price at which pirated movies are commonly found.

The studios have apparently found that selling their DVDs for so cheap is still better than not selling any at all. If the IOC is smart, perhaps it should plan to sell official merchandise on the cheap during the Games, too.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...cy-honest.html





France's TF1 Files YouTube Lawsuit
Charles Masters

France's leading commercial network TF1 has filed a lawsuit claiming 100 million euros ($155 million) in damages, alleging illicit use of its programming content from YouTube, it was reported here Thursday.

A YouTube spokesperson told newspaper Les Echos that the legal challenge had been received a few days ago by the company in California but that the case would be heard by a Paris court. TF1 declined comment on the report.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...53053f88589e9e





Chef’s Lawsuit Against a Former Assistant Is Settled Out of Court
Pete Wells

The owner and chef of a Greenwich Village seafood restaurant has settled the lawsuit she brought against her former sous-chef after he opened a restaurant that she said was a “total plagiarism” of her own.

The chef, Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar, had accused her former assistant, Edward McFarland, of copying “each and every element” of her restaurant, including the white marble bar, the color scheme and the Caesar salad recipe when he and his partners opened Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo.

Both sides in the case agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential.

The case, brought last June (WiR - June 30th, '07), was avidly followed in the hospitality business because it cited principles of intellectual property law, including trade secrets and trade dress — the kind of tactic more commonly used by large corporations than by restaurants like Pearl, a tiny storefront on Cornelia Street known for urbane takes on lobster rolls, chowder and other New England clam-shack standbys.

The suit had demanded that Ed’s Lobster Bar, at 222 Lafayette Street, stop using visual elements that Ms. Charles claimed were copied from Pearl. On a visit Friday afternoon, though, Ed’s Lobster Bar looked much the same as it had last June, except for several small details of décor that were singled out in the complaint as being virtually identical to those at Pearl. The wainscoting on the walls, once gray, and the stained-wood backs on the chairs and bar stools are now painted white.

According to Mr. McFarland, the place had been spruced up while he was on his honeymoon in February. A partner, Andrew Rasiej, said, “We wanted to make it a little more bright, a little more inviting.”

A few weeks after the repainting, Ed’s Lobster Bar had new menus printed, introducing several new dishes and changing the names of others. The lawsuit had charged that Ed’s menu consisted “almost entirely of dishes created by Charles.”

Now the Lobster Bar’s bouillabaisse, an item long offered at Pearl, is called “New York Shellfish Stew.”

But “Ed’s Caesar” is still there. Ms. Charles had been particularly indignant about it, claiming that Mr. McFarland had stolen a recipe passed down to her by her mother. Distinctively, it is made with English-muffin croutons and a coddled egg.

“When I taught him, I said, ‘You will never make this anywhere else,’ ” Ms. Charles said last summer.

The croutons on Ed’s Caesar are, to all appearances, still made from English muffins, although Mr. McFarland and Mr. Rasiej would not say whether that was so.

Mr. McFarland said he felt “fantastic” about the settlement and was looking forward to opening new branches of Ed’s in other New York neighborhoods.

Ms. Charles said she had been living in Maine since March, taking care of her mother, who was ill. As a result, she welcomed the chance to settle the lawsuit, although she was sorry she had not been able to set a legal precedent.

“I still feel strongly that I did the right thing,” she said in a telephone interview. “I think it’s important to our industry to find some way to help chefs protect what they create.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/nyregion/19suit.html





Everyone’s a Critic
Ruth La Ferla

IN the realm of perfume, one man’s pudding is the next man’s tar. That the reaction to a fragrance can be visceral, and personal, is not news to Luca Turin, who over the years has inhaled and critiqued hundreds of scents. In assessing them, Mr. Turin, a scientist and fragrance expert, makes no attempt to hide his partisanship.

He describes Attrape-Coeurs, an amber violet perfume from Guerlain, as “an intense radiant Wurlitzer organ blast of rose violet and iris notes,” but paints a bleaker picture of Creed’s Love in White: “If this were a shampoo offered with your first shower after sleeping rough for two months in Nouakchott, you’d opt to keep the lice.”

Readers react to such colorful snippets from his new book, “Perfumes: The Guide” (Viking), written with his wife, Tania Sanchez, with varying degrees of admiration and respect. Mr. Turin is, after all, a dominant voice in a chorus of critics airing their views in books and magazines and, increasingly, on the Web.

In the last half-dozen years, their opinionated chatter has become catnip to consumers, some of whom stay up until the wee hours, reading about new scents on sites like makeupalley.com, which Mr. Turin characterized as “a 24-hour pajama party.”

That chatter, however, is also the bane of the fragrance industry, which, when it comes to romancing products, has traditionally claimed the last word.

“Perfume is the only art in which there’s never been a true word spoken,” Mr. Turin said in an interview, with a directness that has made him a thorn in the side of the industry. In his book, he recalled that as little as a year ago, Le Labo, a small New York perfumer, refused to send him samples, its makers sneering that “writing about perfume is like dancing about architecture.”

Today reviewers on Web sites and blogs like aromascope.com, scentzilla.com, boisdejasmin.com and perfumeposse.com have rendered that argument moot. Increasingly, critics like Robin Krug of Now Smell This, who said she has around 10,000 hits a day, and Chandler Burr, who reviews fragrance for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, cultivate a following by speaking directly to consumers, many of whom are aspiring connoisseurs themselves.

Often those shoppers collect, amassing as many as 200 bottles and vials in their homes. And many have learned to distinguish among olfactory families like fougère (fern) and gourmand (edible smells), and even to pronounce chypre (SHEE-pr, roughly), a classification based on citrus and woody notes.

As critics, they are fierce, responding to certain fragrances with rapture or, as often, with venomous contempt. A perfume like Poison, from Dior, is especially polarizing to bloggers, many of whom are stay-at-home moms or professionals in other fields. An enthusiast on Now Smell This described Poison as “a warm, luxurious velvet blanket draped across a satin settee. On the same site, the perfume was assailed as “a railroad spike through the brain.”

Black Orchid from Tom Ford was praised as “melting cupcakes on hot skin.” But a detractor called it “aged Romano in a carnivorous orchid hothouse.”

When they wish to be especially withering, bloggers designate a scent as a “scrubber,” the kind of smell you can’t wash off fast enough.

Their enthusiasm, though, can be infectious. Online scent aficionados have become a force to be reckoned with in the $2.9 billion high-end fragrance industry, which has had a slight decline in sales since 2007. Their interest in mostly unadvertised, limited-distribution brands has helped drive niche sales in 2007 to $253 million, a rise of 19 percent, said Karen Grant, the senior beauty analyst of the market research firm NPD. Niche brands have doubled in volume since 2005, accounting for 9 percent of sales, Ms. Grant said.

Not surprisingly, these critics’ uncensored comments have been anathema to the Estée Lauders and Cotys of the world, industry giants that have relied almost exclusively on advertising and glowing magazine commentary to spread their message and spur sales.

“No question, the industry people are unnerved,” said Rochelle R. Bloom, the president of the Fragrance Foundation, a trade group. “I often get calls from executives pleading, ‘Can’t you do something about all this chatter.’ ”

Yet traditional marketing does not address consumer desire to learn about the dizzying number of annual fragrance introductions — up from 300 ten years ago to more than 1,000 last year, according to NPD.

“In their marketing, mainstream perfumers have lost control, and that puts a lot of pressure on them,” said Allan Mottus, the editor of The Informationist, a cosmetics and fragrance trade magazine. He added that mass and high-end brands, as well as fragrance producers and suppliers like Givaudan and Symrise, are “just waking up to the news that they can’t own the customer.”

The explicit advertising for Tom Ford’s new men’s fragrance, which shows an amber-colored bottle wedged between a woman’s naked thighs, will likely have no impact on Richard Saja, an artist and embroiderer who stood inhaling fragrances at Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday morning. “I don’t care about perfume advertising or the bottle it comes in,” Mr. Saja said. “For me perfume is a visceral experience,” one that is deepened, he added, by scanning sites like sniffapalooza.com, an organizer, with several New York retailers, of a weekend of sniffing and sampling.

“Three years ago, this was a world I hadn’t explored,” he said. “But now the Web has demystified so much of the world of fragrances for me.”

Mr. Saja was among some 200 customers swarming the Bergdorf fragrance floor that day. Shoppers from London, Berlin and Piscataway, N.J., poked their noses into bottles, sniffed scent strips and inhaled deep draughts from decanters. Some parted with as much as $200 for a flacon of Sycomore, a new offering from Chanel.

Enthusiasts included Christine Jelley, the chief executive of a surge-protection gear maker. Swayed by blogs, she was intent on exploring new violet-scented offerings from Serge Lutens and Annick Goutal. “When someone becomes rhapsodic about a scent,” she said, “I want to see what they’re seeing in it.”

Kevin Saunders, an art therapist circling the Lutens and Jo Malone counter, is an occasional reader of basenotes.net and Now Smell This. Mr. Saunders carries with him on an iPod a list of scents he has read about, some to be sampled, others to buy. “At the least,” he said, “those blogs may prompt me into trying something.”

And there are signs that the industry is responding to Mr. Saunders and his online cohort. “Today you see more bloggers being invited to traditional press events, and a greater awareness among executives of emerging forms of media,” Jenny B. Fine, the editor of the trade journal WWD Beauty Biz, noted.

Marianne Diorio, a spokeswoman for Estée Lauder, acknowledged as much: “In the beginning we were nervous about the blogs. As with any new media, there were mixed emotions.” Pointedly, she added, “Now we could never think of launching a fragrance without contacting the bloggers.” The company engages in dialogues with critics, she said, and advertises some of its fragrances on sites like Now Smell This.

Firmenich, a producer and supplier of fragrances, operates osMoz.com, which made its debut in 2001 and claims 300,000 members. In recent months, the company has encouraged readers to share information and to rate fragrances, its own and others, Julien Levy, the site’s marketing director, said.

Commentators on coty.com prompted Coty, which makes fragrances by David Beckham and Jennifer Lopez, among others, to think of reissuing its greatest hits, scents like Emeraude and L’Origan, said Stephen C. Mormoris, a senior vice president of global marketing.

Such developments cannot come soon enough for Tania Sanchez. In “Perfumes: The Guide,” she chided that the perfume industry “hasn’t yet figured out the benefits or relaxing control.” She told of a prominent blogger threatened with a lawsuit by a perfume company because she had deemed its product only “O.K.,” and “a little disappointing.”

“When a sleek luxury goods company unleashes its lawyers on a suburban mom for not liking their new fragrance,” Ms. Sanchez wrote, “we know the world is changing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/fashion/17SNIFF.html

[JackSpratts]

Save the children

France Takes up Body Image Law
Devorah Lauter



The French parliament's lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone—including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites—to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards.

The bill was the latest and strongest of measures proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts throughout the international fashion industry to address the repercussions of using ultra-thin models.

Conservative lawmaker Valery Boyer, author of the law, argued that encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court.

Doctors and psychologists treating patients with anorexia nervosa—a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming overweight—welcomed the government's efforts to fight self-inflicted starvation, but warned that its link with media images remains hazy.

French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. Spain in 2007 banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

But Boyer said such measures did not go far enough.

Her bill has mainly brought focus to pro-anorexic Web sites that give advice on how to eat an apple a day—and nothing else.

But Boyer insisted in her speech to lawmakers Tuesday that the legislation was much broader and could, in theory, be used against many facets of the fashion industry.

It would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 if found guilty of "inciting others to deprive themselves of food" to an "excessive" degree, Boyer said in a telephone interview before the parliamentary session.

Judges could also sanction those responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose "excessive thinness ... altered her health," she said.

Boyer said she was focusing on women's health, though the bill applies to models of both sexes. The French Health Ministry says most of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.

Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said he was not aware how broad the proposed legislation was, and made no secret of his strong disapproval of such a sweeping measure.

"Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny," he said. "That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France."

Marleen S. Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media's effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders.

Williams said studies show fewer eating disorders in "cultures that value full-bodied women." Yet with the new French legal initiative, she fears, "you're putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it's much more complex than that."

———

Associated Press writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot in Paris contributed to this report.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/nati...rld/ci_8930488





When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission
John Markoff

STEVE WOZNIAK built the original Apple I to share with his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, but it was his business partner Steve Jobs who had the insight that there might be a market for such a contraption. Indeed, for decades, Silicon Valley has been defined by the tension between the technologist’s urge to share information and the industrialist’s incentive to profit.

Now a new style of “hybrid” technology organization is emerging that is trying to define a path between the nonprofit world and traditional for-profit ventures.

They’re often referred to as “social enterprises” because they pursue social missions instead of profits. But unlike most nonprofit groups, these organizations generate a sustainable source of revenue and do not rely on philanthropy. Earnings are retained and reinvested rather than being distributed to shareholders.

The new companies, like thousands of Silicon Valley start-ups before them, typically begin as small groups of intensely motivated people dedicated to the goal of building a product or service.

The best-known examples are efforts like the Mozilla Corporation, which maintains and develops the Firefox Web browser, and TechSoup, an organization that was started two decades ago to connect technology experts with nonprofit groups. It now distributes commercial software to nonprofit groups in 14 countries. (Mozilla’s mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet, which it considers a social good.)

By most measures both companies, with hundreds of employees, qualify as vibrant businesses. Each has revenue in excess of $50 million annually.

Moreover, there is also a range of smaller organizations, like the Internet Archive in San Francisco, with smaller but sustainable revenue streams. Significantly, an ecosystem is emerging that involves support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provides legal services, and the Internet Systems Consortium, which plays the role of an independent Internet service provider for the community.

“There is a lot of discussion taking place right now about a whole new organization form around social enterprise,” said James Fruchterman, president of Benetech, a social enterprise incubator based in Palo Alto. “Many of these efforts can make money; they will just never make enough to provide venture capital rates of return.”

Brewster Kahle, who has founded a number of successful Internet companies, as well as the nonprofit Internet Archive, said: “If we do this right, I think there is momentum here. The next major operating systems company might be a nonprofit.”

The Internet Archive, which runs Web crawlers — programs that index information stored on the Internet — and offers the popular Wayback Machine, which allows surfers to find previous versions of Web sites, now has two self-sustaining projects. The first is digitizing books and the second is creating and maintaining Web repositories for national libraries.

Mr. Kahle says he is developing a set of principles that he hopes will help formalize his idea that there is a middle ground between the technologists and the capitalists. He ticks off operating guidelines like transparency, staying out of debt, giving away information and refusing to hoard.

TechSoup stumbled upon its business eight years ago after it began sending a truck around San Francisco to pick up donated commercial software to distribute to nonprofit groups. Today, the organization distributes products from 32 commercial companies, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Symantec, to roughly 50,000 organizations annually, for a small administrative fee.

“We were just trying to meet the needs of nonprofits,” said Rebecca Masisak, co-chief executive of TechSoup.

Nonprofits with revenue are not new or restricted to Silicon Valley, and there is a great deal of debate over whether they offer a sustainable approach.

The new stream of technology-centric and successful nonprofits, however, appears to be driven in part by a set of microelectronics technology trends that have sent shock waves through many industries, from publishing to music and movies.

“Computer technology and the Internet are lowering the cost of doing business,” said John Lilly, the chief executive of Mozilla, the Web browser developer that is being subsidized by advertising revenue from the search engine business.

That blends with the strong sense of social purpose held by a number of the best and brightest in Silicon Valley.

“We went through all these decades where we had nonprofits that thought business was evil and sustainability was irrelevant,” said Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford who advises social entrepreneurs. “Now there has been an influx of business thought. People are saying, ‘I have enough money and I care.’”

STILL, most technology-oriented social entrepreneurs acknowledge that the hybrid model is by no means a one-size-fits-all approach, and there is significant debate about how far it can reach. Moreover, the approach hasn’t always worked.

For example, beginning in 2002, the Lotus Development founder Mitchell Kapor invested more than $5 million in the Open Source Applications Foundation, with the intent of finding a sustainable business. The group had a number of strategies for obtaining revenue from the distribution of free software, but it was unable to get far enough along to begin the experiment. The project never got to the point where the calendar program Chandler could be widely distributed, and Mr. Kapor has since scaled back the project.

The experience, however, has not dulled his optimism.

“You can use a lot of the methods of business, specifically entrepreneurial start-ups, in ways that are directed at having a positive social impact,” Mr. Kapor said. “Mozilla and the Archive are cases where we are harnessing powerful techniques of value creation that were originally forged in the Valley and putting them to use.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/te.../13stream.html





The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service
Ernesto

In their ever continuing battle to free the Internet, The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want, without being afraid to get shut down by their blog host.

The Pirate Bay is known for defending people’s right to freedom of speech on the Internet, and this is exactly what motivated them to start this new blogging service.

Brokep, one of the co-founders of the site, told TorrentFreak that the idea to start a blogging service came up when the weblog of one of his friends was taken down from Wordpress recently, for linking to copyrighted material.

This, of course, goes against the “uncensored web” philosophy of The Pirate Bay team, and they didn’t hesitate to start their own blogging service, Baywords, using Wordpress as their blogging engine.

On the frontpage of the newly launched service Brokep writes: “Many blogs are being shut down for uncomfortable thoughts and ideas. We will not do that. Our goal is to protect freedom of speech and your thoughts. As long as you don’t break any Swedish laws in your blog, we will defend it”.

In a response, Matt Mullenweg from WordPress told TorrentFreak that he supports Pirate Bay’s Baywords, but he assured us that Wordpress.com would never take down a blog for posting deviating thoughts or ideas.

“WordPress.com supports free speech and doesn’t shut people down for “uncomfortable thoughts and ideas”, in fact we’re blocked in several countries because of that. However as a US-based companies we must comply with US laws, which means if the primary purpose of a blog is distributing illegal material it’s not a good fit for WordPress.com,” Matt said.

Baywords is currently working on expanding the feature list to include support for domain redirects and improved stats. The service is ad-free for now, but Brokep told TorrentFreak that there will be ads blended into the blog design later, to cover the expenses.

This is not the first time The Pirate Bay has started a service where people can publish whatever they want, without being censored. They already created an image hosting service for this reason, and a YouTube competitor is about to follow soon.

For people who are considering moving their Wordpress or Blogger account over to Baywords, importing is pretty straightforward and compatible with all the popular blog platforms. Don’t forget to add TorrentFreak to your blogroll!

Update: Matt Mullenweg’s response was added to the article after publication
http://torrentfreak.com/baywords-pir...y-blog-080416/





U.C. Berkeley Student's Twitter Messages Alerted World to His Arrest in Egypt
Bill Brand

When Egyptian police scooped up UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck, who was photographing a noisy demonstration, and dumped him in a jail cell last week, they didn't count on Twitter.

Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED. The message went out to the cell phones and computers of a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project.

The next day, he walked out a free man with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkeley at his side and the U.S. Embassy on the phone.

Twitter, the micro-blogging service for cell phone users, allows messages up to 140 characters long. Twitter users can allow anyone they wish to join their network and receive all their messages. Buck has a large network, so Twitter gave him an instant link to the outside world.

He recalls advice from his Twitter friends came in mounds of terse messages, "It was a combination of things, my Egyptian friends told me to play the "American bitch" and try to force my way out. " They also told him that it was no big deal and to just stay calm.

"They use Twitter sort of like an instant wire service," he said. "It's the way they keep in touch with each other. They go to an event and Twitter what's happening.

Meanwhile, U.S. friends on his Twitter net called the university and the American Embassy.

They also alerted the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and other media, which helped put the heat on the Egyptian authorities. He was released on Friday and returned home on Sunday.

Back home in Berkeley last night he said he's still worried about his interpreter and friend, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, who was arrested with him and is still being held incommunicado by Egyptian authorities. Unlike Buck, he didn't have the muscle of the U.S. Embassy and UC Berkeley.

Buck said that in the middle of the night, hours after his arrest, authorities told him he was free to go.

"I said, 'No' and I stayed for 12 more hours and we started a hunger strike at some point. But they grabbed him (Maree) and put him in a different holding area. Finally, they said they had transferred him to another prison," Buck said.

Then, the Egyptian lawyer hired by UC Berkeley arrived. "I just caved," he said. "I left and he's still in jail. At this point, I've formally called on the Egyptian government for his release. I believe he's totally innocent."

He said Maree, who is 23 and a veterinary medicine student, is from Mahalla El-Kobra, the industrial city in the Nile Delta where they were arrested. "A lot of other Egyptian journalists are being detained, a lot of Egyptian bloggers are in jail, many being held without charges," Buck said.

"I'm very angry and I'm frustrated. I'm an American and I got released and he didn't. It makes me feel guilty and upset and I'm not going to stop until he gets out," Buck said.

There's an online petition, http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-mohammed-maree. At 10 a.m. Friday, Buck and others plan a demonstration supporting Maree outside the Egyptian consulate, 3101 Pacific Ave. in San Francisco.

Hossam El-Hamalawy, an Egyptian blogger who is now a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, said the most important thing is to publicize the situation so Egypt will furnish information about where Maree and others arrested are being kept. "Egypt has a huge population of prisoners because of these security crackdowns and any information will also help their families and lawyers, who are trying to find them," he said.

Buck says he'll definitely go back to Egypt. It's a story that's far from over.

He became interested in the Middle East living in Saudi Arabia with his parents, who were teachers there when he was a child. He's from Hanover, NH and after graduation from Colgate, he took a summer job at The Dartmouth, the student newspaper at Yale, which is in Hanover.

Buck convinced the paper to send him to Iraq, where he reported on rebuilding in Kurdish Northern Iraq. His recent trip to Egypt was his third. His first was in 2006 on a U.S. State Department grant to study Arabic. "Egypt reminded me of my childhood in Saudi Arabia," he said.

When he was admitted to the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, he chose Egyptian bloggers as his project. "There's no free press there," he said. "The only freedom is on the Internet."

He went with Egyptian blogger-journalists to Mahalla where factory workers were supposed to strike about lack of wages and skyrocketing food prices. But the police had cracked down and there was no strike, he said. He left with everyone else, but returned two days later after police made many arrests.

He was taking photos at a protest, when the police grabbed him. Before he was released they also grabbed his camera memory chip. But they forgot about Twitter.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_893441...ercurynews.com





Espionage Against Pro-Tibet Groups, Others, Spurred Microsoft Patches
Ryan Singel

Computer intruders targeting pro-Tibetan groups, U.S. defense contractors and government agencies slipped in through previously unknown security holes in Microsoft Office, prompting Microsoft to issue a flurry of patches to the popular software suite in 2006 and 2007, according to computer security experts.

These attacks, which appeared to have originated in China, began in early 2006 when the attackers started sending e-mails to victims with booby-trapped Word documents and Excel spreadsheets attached.

"We are seeing more and more spying done with Trojans, a shift that has happened in the last two years," Mikko Hyppönen, the chief research officer for software security vendor F-Secure, told RSA conference attendees Thursday morning.

The Pentagon and pro-Tibet groups have previously acknowledged the intrusions, but Hyppönen is the first to link the cyber espionage to a series of patches that Microsoft pushed out without explanation. Microsoft did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Hyppönen's colleague Patrik Runald notes that from 2005 through early 2006, Microsoft issued few patches for its Office suite. But soon after there was an explosion of patches for critical bugs that could be used to infect a computer, including a record 26 patches in October, 2006, that fixed four critical bugs in Microsoft Office applications.

Those fixes, Runald says, appeared contemporaneously with the rise of targeted attacks on defense companies, nonprofits and government agencies. "They now have an incentive to begin looking for bugs and exploiting them," Runald said. "Bad guys are finding these things fast."

The attackers relied on e-mails tempting the victim to open the attachments, in some cases by presenting them as résumés from job seekers.

But when the target opened the attachment, the application would usually crash, while the embedded code covertly installed a keylogger and data-stealing software that scooped up documents anywhere on the organization's network to which the user had access.

The malware then forwards the stolen information to services called DNS bouncers in China, such as 8800.org, that attackers can use to obfuscate and rapidly change where stolen documents or passwords are sent. Finally, the code opens up what looks to be a legitimate document, in the hopes that the target won't know his or her computer was just infected.

The espionage was highly successful, according to Hyppönen. One multi-billion-dollar defense contractor who went to F-Secure for help found that a single compromised Windows box had been secretly siphoning information to a server in mainland China for 18 months.

"Most attacks go unnoticed and targets don't know they are hit," Hyppönen said.

Hyppönen won't declare that the espionage is the work of the Chinese government or hackers loyal to it, though all the evidence points that way.

"Is it the Chinese?," Hyppönen asked. "It sure looks like it but it could be a smokescreen. We don't know."

Warnings about targeted attacks are not new, but the increase in espionage against government and nonprofit groups is alarming to experts. In the past, security researchers more often dealt with financially motivated hackers who are after insider trading information, trade secrets or even early copies of movies that could be turned into pirate DVDs before its theatrical release.

"We now have to deal with the criminal doing it for money, and the spies doing it for information," Hyppönen said.

Though Microsoft's patches have shored up security in the Office suite, the attacks continue. A more recent spate of intrusions at government agencies and pro-Tibet and Taiwanese groups have resorted to older, known vulnerabilities. The attackers are using the classic hacking technique of reverse-engineering Microsoft security updates to discover the holes they patch.

Since large organizations can take weeks or months to update all of their machines, the updates provide intruders with a window of opportunity, Runald said.

Such attacks against pro-Tibet groups spiked in recent weeks following the riots in Tibet. On March 17, attackers sent a file purporting to be a statement from the United Nations to a pro-Tibet mailing list. Once opened, the document attempted to install malware that steals PGP encryption keys, as part of an attempt to compromise tools used to keep communications secure, according to Hyppönen.

Like the 2006 and 2007 attacks, the newer intrusions appear to be the work of a single group of hackers: The attack files used on one target are sometimes used within weeks on another. "The files have the same hash," Hyppönen said. It almost a given it is the same attacker."

The cyberspies also do a lot more homework than your run-of-the-mill online criminal, who tries to steal PayPal accounts by sending out millions of e-mails, with no idea whether the recipients actually use the online payment service.

By contrast, the stealthy attackers will try to test their exploits ahead of time by calling the company to quiz a secretary on what kind of anti-virus software the organization uses, claiming, for example, that an e-mail he sent to the company keeps bouncing.

The spies also forge e-mail headers to fool a recipient into thinking a file comes from a co-worker or trusted source. They may even go so far to figure out who a C-level executive plans to meet with, in order to send a very convincing e-mail.

For protection, Hyppönen suggested that companies use F-Secure's free root-kit detection tool, called BlackLight, install security patches rapidly, employ layers of security from different vendors, and monitor internet traffic headed to "funky hosts."

Adobe's Acrobat has also been targeted, and Hyppönen recommended that people use an alternative PDF reader. He also noted that OpenOffice, an open source alternative to Microsoft Office, has not been targeted.

It is also possible for users to notice when they get infected, since exploits usually crash Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Reader before relaunching the application with a real file. That leads to a quick screen flash, and sometimes ends up putting the name of the exploit file in Word's recovered document's pane.

While one might expect banks to be targeted with these kinds of exploits, Hyppönen says he hasn't seen a single one, calling that a clue to the motivations of these attackers.

Runald says the message is clear.

"The enemy is changing," he said. "Now we are also fighting spies."
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...hinese_hackers





CNN Web Site Targeted

CNN was targeted Thursday by attempts to interrupt its news Web site, resulting in countermeasures that caused the service to be slow or unavailable to some users in limited areas of Asia.

CNN took preventative measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt its Web site.

"CNN took preventative measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our Web site. A small percentage of CNN.com users in Asia are impacted," the network said in a statement.

"We do not know who is responsible, nor can we confirm where it came from," the statement continued.

A CNN spokesman said the Web site began to notice problems around midday Thursday and took measures to isolate the trouble by limiting the number of users who could access it from specific geographic areas.

As a result, he said, some users in those areas experienced temporary slowdowns or problems accessing the site.

The spokesman could not offer an estimate of how many users were affected. However, he said that the impact on daily usage was "imperceptible" and that the site "at no time" went down.

Service had returned to normal by mid-morning Friday, he said.

The attempt came as tech-oriented Web sites in Asia were reporting calls from hacker groups in China for denial-of-service attacks to be launched against the CNN Web site on Saturday over the network's coverage of unrest in Tibet.

Angry Chinese bloggers have accused CNN and several other Western news organizations of being unfair in covering recent pro-independence protests in Tibet, which is controlled by China.

In response, the network released a statement noting that "CNN's reputation is based on reporting global news accurately and impartially, while our coverage through the use of words, images or video always reflects a wide range of opinions and points of view on every story."

In a denial-of-service attack, hackers use automated programs to try to jam a site with bogus requests for service to the point that service is slowed or interrupted for legitimate users.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/...tes/index.html





Larger Prey Are Targets of Phishing
John Markoff

An e-mail scam aimed squarely at the nation’s top executives is raising new alarms about the ease with which people and companies can be deceived by online criminals.

Thousands of high-ranking executives across the country have been receiving e-mail messages this week that appear to be official subpoenas from the United States District Court in San Diego. Each message includes the executive’s name, company and phone number, and commands the recipient to appear before a grand jury in a civil case.

A link embedded in the message purports to offer a copy of the entire subpoena. But a recipient who tries to view the document unwittingly downloads and installs software that secretly records keystrokes and sends the data to a remote computer over the Internet. This lets the criminals capture passwords and other personal or corporate information.

Another piece of the software allows the computer to be controlled remotely. According to researchers who have analyzed the downloaded file, less than 40 percent of commercial antivirus programs were able to recognize and intercept the attack.

The tactic of aiming at the rich and powerful with an online scam is referred to by computer security experts as whaling. The term is a play on phishing, an approach that usually involves tricking e-mail users — in this case the big fish — into divulging personal information like credit card numbers. Phishing attacks that are directed at a particular person, rather than blasted out to millions, are also known as spear phishing.

The latest campaign has been widespread enough that two California federal courts and the administrative office of the United States Courts posted warnings about the fake messages on their Web sites. Federal officials said they stopped counting after getting hundreds of phone calls from corporations about the messages. At midday on Tuesday, one antispam company, MX Logic, said in a Web posting that its service was still seeing at least 30 of the messages an hour.

Security researchers at several firms indicated they believed there had been at least several thousand victims of the attack whose computers had been compromised.

“We have seen about 2,000 victims, more or less,” said John Bambenek, a security researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a volunteer at the Internet Storm Center, a network security organization.

Researchers were studying a list of the Internet addresses of infected computers that iDefense Labs, a research unit of VeriSign, had assembled by monitoring network traffic.

Personalized scam messages have been on the radar of security researchers and law enforcement officials for several years, but the latest variant is a fresh indication of the threat posed by such digital ruses.

“I think that it was well done in terms of something people would feel compelled to respond to,” said Steve Kirsch, the chief executive of Abaca, an antispam company based in San Jose, Calif.

Mr. Kirsch himself received a copy of the message and forwarded it to the company lawyer. “It had my name, phone number, company and correct e-mail address on it and looked pretty legitimate,” Mr. Kirsch said. “Even the U.R.L. to find out more looked legitimate at first glance.”

When the lawyer tried to download a copy of the subpoena and the computer restarted itself, they quickly realized that the file contained malicious software.

Several computer security researchers said that the attack was the work of a group that tried a similar assault in November 2007. In that case, the e-mail message appeared to come from the Justice Department and stated that a complaint had been filed against the recipient’s company.

The software used in the latest attack tries to communicate with a computer in Singapore. That system was still functioning on Tuesday evening, but security researchers said many Internet service providers had blocked access to it.

A number of clues, like misspellings, in the fake subpoena led several researchers to believe that the attackers were not familiar with the United States court system and that the group might be based in a place that used a British variant of English, such as Hong Kong.

“This is probably Chinese-based,” said Mr. Bambenek. “If all the key players are in China there is not much the F.B.I. can do.”

Several security researchers said that the real danger of the attack lay in a second level of deception, after the hidden software provided the attackers with digital credentials like passwords and electronic certificates.

“There are very subtle nuances to their attacks that are well known in the financial industry but are not well publicized,” said Matt Richard, director of the Rapid Response Team at iDefense.

Mr. Richard said the criminals were going after a particular area of the financial industry, but he would not elaborate. He said that law enforcement officials were investigating the fraudulent documents.

Calls to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for comment were not returned.

Although the software package used to deliver the eavesdropping program is well known, it was hidden in such a way that it avoided detection by commercial programs in many cases, researchers said.

“This is pretty well-known code,” said Don Jackson, a researcher at SecureWorks, a computer security firm. “The issue has to do with repacking it.”

Recipients of the e-mail messages are directed to a fraudulent Web site with a copy of the graphics from the real federal court site. They are then asked to download and install what is said to be a piece of software from Adobe that is used to view electronic documents.

“There are several layers of social engineering involved here,” said Mike Haro, a spokesman for Sophos, a company that sells software to protect against malicious software and spam.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/te...y/16whale.html





Enterprise 2.0: A Computer Security Nightmare?
Steve Lohr

In the Internet age, the corporate firewall is a leaky sieve.

That is the sobering conclusion, spelled out in technical detail, in a new report on what is actually happening on corporate computer networks.

The research was done by Palo Alto Networks, a startup in Silicon Valley, and some of the findings were presented by Nir Zuk, the company’s chief technology officer, at a panel last week at the RSA computer security conference in San Francisco.

It should be noted that Palo Alto Networks is marketing what it calls next-generation firewalls to address the problems described in the report. But the research itself looks quite solid. It is based not on surveys of people but on a study of network traffic at 20 large companies and government agencies over the last six months. Using its software, Palo Alto Networks monitored the computer behavior of more than 350,000 users. The company has pledged to update and publish the results every six months.

Many companies try to block access to peer-to-peer file-sharing services, but programs used to access these services were found at 90 percent of the companies studied. The most popular were eMule and BitTorrent, which are used to share music, movies and software.

Unauthorized proxies, or software agents that disguise applications, were found on 80 percent of the corporate networks. These can be used for corporate espionage or pilfering trade secrets.

Google applications like Google Docs and Google Desktop were used in 60 percent of the corporations studied. And, no surprise, Internet video services like YouTube were consuming large portions of network bandwidth at all the companies.

One conclusion, the report notes, is that users are routinely, and fairly easily, circumventing corporate security controls. And that is because traditional firewall technology was not meant to grapple with the diversity of Internet applications of recent years.

“We see every enterprise leaking from the inside out,” said Dave Stevens, chief executive of Palo Alto Networks.

But the answer, it seems, is not a draconian crackdown on all Internet applications, but a more fine-grained monitoring and sorting of what applications can play in corporate networks and under what ground rules. After all, many Internet applications are seen as vital tools of productivity, collaboration and innovation — the stuff of Enterprise 2.0 companies.

Take Google Desktop, Mr. Stevens noted. It is a great productivity tool for users to quickly search by topic for the nuggets of information buried in their computer files and information. But companies, he said, are deeply uneasy about the indexing feature that links desktop searches back to Google’s computer servers, and the prospect of their corporate data being indexed by Google.

“But companies don’t want to block Google Desktop, they want to use it securely,” Mr. Stevens said. In this case, he explained, the solution is to be able to turn off the link back to Google’s servers. And in general, he added, the answer is for corporations to have that sort of granular control over the new wave of Internet applications.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...ity-nightmare/





Bosses' Power to Check Email
Tom Allard

COMPANIES will be able to intercept the emails and internet communications of their employees without their consent under new laws being considered by the Federal Government to protect the nation's critical infrastructure from a cyber attack.

The proposed powers, which the Government wants in place by the middle of next year and which could affect millions of workers, have been slammed as an unprecedented and unjustifiable intrusion on civil liberties.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, acknowledges concerns but said the powers were a necessary bulwark against a growing threat to national security.

Mr McClelland told the Herald he had been advised that an attack to disable computer networks that sustained the financial system, stock exchange, electricity grid and transport system "would reap far greater economic damage than would be the case of a physical [terrorist] attack".

The Government is developing counter-measures, including amending the Telecommunications (Interceptions) Act to allow companies and others operating critical infrastructure to monitor emails and other internet communications without their workers' consent.

The act allows only security agencies to monitor their employees' communications without consent. That power expires at the end of June next year and Mr McClelland said he wanted the new legislation to include companies providing services critical to the economy.

"At least 90 per cent of networks exist outside government but there's no powers for corporate network supervisors to intercept such communications unless they have specific authority from the employee," he told the Herald.

"It's unquestionable that it's necessary from time to time for network supervisors to open emails addressed to people to identify viruses and the like …

"There needs to be protocols and guidelines developed so companies can protect their own networks.

"It will need new legislation."

Mr McClelland said there had already been instances of hackers infiltrating sensitive systems in Australia.

"There's no question that breaches of both government and private sector computer networks have occurred already - in some instances as a result of mischief, in some instances to obtain security-sensitive information and in some cases to obtain commercial information."

He said it was difficult to track electronic attackers.

He cited an attack by hackers in Estonia last year that, in effect, shut down its Government for almost two weeks.

They used thousands of computers controlled through viruses - known as botnets - to simultaneously access an Estonian Government website, overwhelming the server and crashing its entire network.

Mr McClelland said he would consult unions, privacy experts and civil libertarians before introducing the laws.

Dale Clapperton, the chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, a non-profit group concerned with the rights of individual internet users, was unimpressed.

"These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' emails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure," Mr Clapperton said.

"I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts … If an employer wanted to bone [sack] someone, they could use these powers."

Mr McClelland said Australia would send people to the US to help with a project to tackle electronic attacks. Hackers have infiltrated networks of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

The Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said the problem needed an approach similar in scale to the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of atomic weapons.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technolog...e#contentSwap1





Court Rules Employees Have Right to Electronic Privacy

An employer may not look in an employee's recycle bin either.
Noam Sharvit

The Nazareth District Labor Court has determined, in a landmark ruling, that an employer may not access his employees' e-mail boxes without their explicit consent. Overturning a previous ruling by the Tel Aviv District Labor Court, Judge Chaim Armon said that an employer could not take such action on the basis of "implied consent" by the employee. The judge also ruled that an employer did not have the right to go through his employees' recycle bins.

The right of employers to monitor their staff's email correspondence is an issue which has not been addressed directly by the Israeli legislature so far. Under the present situation, an employer wishing to access his employees' email must ensure he is not violating two laws - the Protection of Privacy Law (5741-1981), and the Wire Tapping Law (1979-5739). In a ruling in a case brought last summer, Tel Aviv district Labor Court Judge Sigal Davidow Motola Tel Aviv ruled that "the issue under consideration is whether the employee expected to be entitled to privacy in his e-mail correspondence, or whether he knew, either explicitly or by inference, that his correspondence could be viewed by management or other employees." This ruling is now being appealed in the National Labor Court.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/glob...333413&fid=942





FBI Caused Delay in Terror Case Ahead of Senate Testimony
Ryan Singel

Counterterrorism officials in FBI headquarters slowed an investigation into a possible conspirator in the 2005 London bombings by forcing a field agent to return documents acquired from a U.S. university. Why? Because the agent received the documents through a lawful subpoena, while headquarters wanted him to demand the records under the USA Patriot Act, using a power the FBI did not have, but desperately wanted.

When a North Carolina State University lawyer correctly rejected the second records demand, the FBI obtained another subpoena. Two weeks later, the delay was cited by FBI director Robert Mueller in congressional testimony as proof that the USA Patriot Act needed to be expanded.

The strange episode is recounted in newly declassified documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents shed new light on how senior FBI officials' determination to gain independence from judicial oversight slowed its own investigation, and led the bureau's director to offer inaccurate testimony to Congress. The revelations are likely to play a key role in Capitol Hill hearings Tuesday and Wednesday on the FBI's use of so-called national security letters, or NSLs

At issue is the FBI's probe of a former chemistry graduate student at North Carolina State University who was then suspected aiding the deadly attack. The student has since been cleared of any involvement.

The agent investigating the student in the Charlotte, North Carolina field office obtained a grand jury subpoena demanding some university records on the student. But he was then advised by superiors in Washington DC to return the papers and draft an NSL demanding the documents instead.

Under the USA Patriot Act, FBI counterterrorism investigators can self-issue such letters to get phone records, portions of credit reports and bank records, simply by certifying that the records are relevant to an investigation. Unlike subpoenas, NSLs do not require probable cause, and at the time obliged the recipient to not discuss the demand with anyone, ever. In contrast, gag orders attached to grand jury subpoenas have expiration dates.

FBI agents have relied heavily on the power, issuing more than 100,000 NSLs in 2004 and 2005 combined. The first audit of the FBI's use of the power found the agents became sloppy in their use of the power and one HQ office went rogue and issued hundreds of fake emergency requests for phone records.

The problem in the bombing case: the NSL demanded the university's health records on the student. Even under the USA Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the NSL's reach, university records and health records are exempt, making the order from headquarters a sure-fire path to delay.

The FBI even has sample letters for each of the 11 kinds of records NSL can be used to obtain. To comply with the demand from Washington, the Charlotte agent had to modify a sample letter intended for internet records.

The university, which had readily turned over the records in response to a subpoena, rejected the illegal NSL. Two weeks later, Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, portrayed the university as intransigent and said the incident showed the FBI needed the power to force the turnover of all sorts of records without having to involve the court system.

"Now in my mind, we should not, in that circumstance have to show somebody that this was an emergency," Mueller testified on July 27, 2005. "We should've been able to have a document, an administrative subpoena that we took to the university and got those records immediately."

Some of the declassified documents suggest that Mueller was himself misled by underlings, and wasn't told that the records had already been turned over in response to a subpoena.

Additionally, no one reported the overreaching subpoena to the Intelligence Oversight Board until 2007, when the Inspector General started asking questions. Oversight rules require officials to report any possible violations within 14 days.

This week, the House and Senate Judiciary committees are holding new hearings on NSLs. Over the past two years, the Justice Department's Inspector General has issued two damning reports on the agency's sloppiness in using the letters. Additionally, several courts have struck down some aspects of the NSLs as unconstitutional, and reports have surfaced that intelligence and military units are using them for domestic investigations.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler(D-New York) has introduced legislation to rein in the use of national security letters, and provide penalties for abuses.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...rector-ci.html





Feds to Collect DNA from Every Person They Arrest
Eileen Sullivan

The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.

Using authority granted by Congress, the government also plans to collect DNA samples from foreigners who are detained, whether they have been charged or not. The DNA would be collected through a cheek swab, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Wednesday. That would be a departure from current practice, which limits DNA collection to convicted felons.

Expanding the DNA database, known as CODIS, raises civil liberties questions about the potential for misuse of such personal information, such as family ties and genetic conditions.

Ablin said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders.

Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to expand DNA collection in two different laws passed in 2005 and 2006.

There are dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, ranging from the FBI to the Library of Congress Police. The federal government estimates it makes about 140,000 arrests each year.

Justice officials estimate the new collecting requirements would add DNA from an additional 1.2 million people to the database each year.

Those who support the expanded collection believe that DNA sampling could get violent criminals off the streets and prevent them from committing more crimes.

A Chicago study in 2005 found that 53 murders and rapes could have been prevented if a DNA sample had been collected upon arrest.

"Many innocent lives could have been saved had the government began this kind of DNA sampling in the 1990s when the technology to do so first became available," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said. Kyl sponsored the 2005 law that gave the Justice Department this authority.

Thirteen states have similar laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

The new regulation would mean that the federal government could store DNA samples of people who are not guilty of any crime, said Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Now innocent people's DNA will be put into this huge CODIS database, and it will be very difficult for them to get it out if they are not charged or convicted of a crime," McCurdy said.

If a person is arrested but not convicted, he or she can ask the Justice Department to destroy the sample.

The Homeland Security Department — the federal agency charged with policing immigration — supports the new rule.

"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.

The rule would not allow for DNA samples to be collected from immigrants who are legally in the United States or those being processed for admission, unless the person was arrested.

The proposed rule is being published in the Federal Register. That will be followed by a 30-day comment period.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/...dna_collection





DoJ Wants More Money to Scour P2P Networks for Child Porn
Jon Stokes

At a hearing yesterday before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, anti-child porn activists urged the Senators to increase the FBI's budget for combating child porn online and to move forward with plans to create a next-generation network monitoring and database system that can ferret out child porn trafficking on P2P networks, web sites, and chat rooms. The new system would be hosted on the FBI's Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) network and would give more law enforcement agents across the country access to an existing system, based in Wyoming, that's currently being used to find and catch online child porn traffickers. Congress would also expand and better fund the current Wyoming system, called Operation FairPlay, consolidating it in a newly-created National Internet Crimes Against Children Data Network Center.

In arguing for the funding and the upgrade, Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children, briefly recapped for the senators the history of the Canadian Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), a suite of network monitoring, database, information management, and collaboration tools that Microsoft developed and funded to the tune of $7 million. In 2003, Microsoft deployed the system in Canada and offered it to the US Department of Justice, which turned it down because it was then locked in a bitter anti-trust dispute with the software maker.

US law enforcement was left to roll its own answer to CETS, and Wyoming's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force stepped up with Operation FairPlay, a system developed by task force chief Flint Waters and housed in Wyoming's ICAC headquarters. FairPlay can monitor and map illicit file sharing activity on popular P2P networks, web sites, and chat rooms, and has become a key tool for law enforcement in the two years that it has been in use.

The FBI's six RISS divisions

Special Agent Flint Waters described parts of the system to the subcommittee, and CNet's Anne Broache was there to capture some of the details. The system appears to rely heavily on filenames for targeting users for additional levels of scrutiny, but Waters declined to give too many details of how it positively identifies specific users who are engaged in illicit activity. Waters' comments, which refer to 624,932 "unique serial numbers" that are tied to specific suspects' computers for long-term tracking, make it difficult to discern just how accurate and invasive the system is. The agent wouldn't disclose much of anything about these "serial numbers," either how they're obtained or what they represent.

Recent revelations about the FBI's honeypot scheme for catching possible child porn traders do give some cause for concern over the lack of detail on how the system works, a concern that's only likely to grow as the system itself grows. There's no doubt that child exploitation ruins lives, but so could the high number of false positives associated with computer-automated surveillance and tracking systems, especially when combined with aggressive prosecution and the overall technical ignorance of CSI-watching juries.

Weeks urged the subcommittee to pass the Combating Child Exploitation Act, which is the Senate version of the bill that would provide the new funding and other resources for combating online child porn. The bill would also consolidate control of the ICAC at the federal level with the creation of an ICAC task force within the DoJ itself, and it would call on the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction—a sort of national child exploitation czar.

The bill's main sponsor is Senator Joe Biden (D) of Delaware. Biden praised Operation FairPlay to the subcommittee and urged the bill's passage.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...hild-porn.html





Lawmakers Want FBI Access to Data Curbed
Carrie Johnson

Bipartisan groups in Congress are pressing to place new controls on the FBI's ability to demand troves of sensitive personal information from telephone providers and credit card companies, over the opposition of agency officials who say they deserve more time to clean up past abuses.

Proposals to rein in the use of secret "national security letters" will be discussed over the next week at hearings in both chambers. The hearings stem from disclosures that the FBI had clandestinely gathered telephone, e-mail and financial records "sought for" or "relevant to" terrorism or intelligence activities without following appropriate procedures.

The Justice Department's inspector general issued reports in 2007 and earlier this year citing repeated breaches. They included shoddy FBI paperwork, improper claims about nonexistent emergencies and an insufficient link between the data requests and ongoing national security probes.

"It is clear that the NSL authority is too overbroad and operates unchecked," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a co-sponsor of the House bill. "We must give our law enforcement the tools they need to protect us, but any such powers must be consistent with the rule of law."

The House bill, sponsored by Nadler, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), would tighten the language governing when national security letters could be used, by requiring that they clearly pertain to investigations of a foreign power or an agent instead of just being considered "relevant" to such investigations.

The House bill would also force the FBI to destroy information that had been illegally obtained -- something that existing rules do not require -- and it would allow the recipient of a letter to file a civil lawsuit if the missive is found to be illegal or without sufficient factual justification.

A Senate bill, sponsored by Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John E. Sununu (R-N.H.), would require the FBI to track its use of the letters more carefully and would narrow the types of records that can be obtained with a letter, and therefore without judicial approval, to those that are least sensitive.

Three supporters of the legislation are slated to appear at Nadler's hearing this afternoon: David Kris, an expert in national security law who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations; Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan era; and Jameel Jaffer, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

"It's a bipartisan issue," Fein said in an interview. "It's not trusting the goodwill or the angelic disposition of the government to preserve our rights. . . . We ought to learn from our experience since 9/11 and restore checks and balances. Congress can't just rely on the FBI to fix the problem."

Officials at the Justice Department's National Security Division and the FBI have acknowledged problems with the past use of national security letters. But they say they have stepped up training programs, instituted internal reviews, and developed new databases to improve the accuracy of internal tracking and accounting.

Valerie E. Caproni, the FBI's top lawyer, is expected to testify today that the bureau needs more time to overhaul its internal systems, according to a government source familiar with her position who was not authorized to speak in advance of the hearing.

"We are committed to using [the letters] in ways that maximize their national security value while providing the highest level of privacy and protection," FBI Assistant Director John Miller said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041402664.html





Wikipedia Breeds 'Unwitting Trust' Says IT Professor

Students banned from citing Wikipedia in coursework.
Rodney Gedda

If you are faced with the prospect of having brain surgery who would you rather it be performed by - a surgeon trained at medical school or someone who has read Wikipedia?

That's the view of Deakin University associate professor of information systems Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes the popular free encyclopedia that anyone can edit is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information.

Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired.

"People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates."

Lichtenstein and her associate, Dr Craig Parker, are leading a team of researchers to determine how Wikipedia operates, and is not shy in expressing her lack of confidence in the population's appreciation of intellectuals.

"Australians are notorious in their disrespect of academics, scholars and professionals - so called elites," she said. "Yet as I say to my students, 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?"

As a result, Lichtenstein's students are not allowed to cite Wikipedia in their coursework.

"My students say Wikipedia is a good place to get a general understanding of a topic," she said. "They get a good understanding of a topic and get more specific information elsewhere. There is a need for easy-to-use information that is correct and has been produced by a rigorous process."

When asked if people should be more comfortable believing in a "web of trust" network like Wikipedia over an individual, Lichtenstein said experts have never been 100 percent correct, but are making a comeback in terms of public perception as a group of untrained people can be more misleading.

And if experts are part of Wikipedia's editing pool? Lichtenstein said the problem with that is experts expect to be paid for their work.

"If someone asked me if I would dedicate a day a week to Wikipedia I would expect to be paid," she said. "People have invested a lot in becoming an expert and they are trying to earn a living and you can't expect experts to contribute without pay."

Information in a traditional encyclopedia was built up by experts with "recognized credentials and expertise in the field", according to Lichtenstein, but Wikipedia, in contrast, "prides itself on being built by groups of lay citizens rather than traditional experts".

"While research shows there is an advantage to this it also shows they are not experts in their field and lack the experience to make judgments about what knowledge should be included and what should not."

Lichtenstein also expressed concern about the anonymity of Wikipedia's many "editors and administrators", which may also mean consumers are unable to establish the credibility, or otherwise, of an author.

According to Lichtenstein, Wikipedia topics are selected for inclusion on the basis of their notability, which is subjective and fosters discrimination and elitism, "the very things the Wikipedia is against".

"Unlike academic journals and other legitimate reference sources, the Wikipedia has created new and anonymous elite 'editors' and administrators," she said.

"An expert is held accountable if they make a mistake but no one is held accountable for the information available on Wikipedia. People miss the statistical likelihood that a doctor will give you a wrong diagnosis compared with Wikipedia. And people may never be able to tie back false information they use to Wikipedia."

Lichtenstein warns that if teachers, employers and academics continue to accept Wikipedia as a legitimate reference, the valuable knowledge of experts will become increasingly disputed and marginalized, and inferior knowledge will be learned and applied in the workplace.

"There have been many incidents when a version of a Wikipedia article can be very inaccurate, which could be innocent or the result of deliberate changing of an article," she said, adding there are certain political views, particularly conservative, that are not tolerated on Wikipedia.

Lichtenstein said as a result of growing dissatisfaction with Wikipedia's editorial process people are starting to develop niche online encyclopedias, including Google which plans to release "Knol" for user-generated content.

"Google Knol is supposed to be a competitor to Wikipedia that will involve experts, and because it's Google, search results will appear above Wikipedia entries which are quite often the first result," she said.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1828979092





Craigslist Bites Back, Answers Connecticut AG

Blumenthal has his facts wrong, craigslist argues
Truman Lewis

Craigslist is defending itself against charges by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal that solicitations for prostitution are "rampant" on its Web site and demanding that Blumenthal retract statements it says are defamatory.

"While misuse of craigslist for illegal activity is rare, it is absolutely not tolerated in any measure, and eliminating misuse of its site is craigslist's top priority," said Edward Wes, a Craigslist attorney.

Wes said that Blumenthal had not participated in calls between attorneys on his staff and Craigslist executives, in which he said Craigslist outlined the "numerous measures" the non-profit company has taken to enforce its terms of use.

"These terms absolutely prohibit the use of craigslist for any criminal activity. These tools include not only moderation by the craigslist community (through the 'flagging' tool), but also blocking and screening advertisements for illegal activity to prevent them from being posted, as well as broad and effective cooperation with law enforcement," Wes said.

Blumenthal's demand followed the arrest of a Connecticut woman on prostitution charges. She had allegedly used craigslist to troll for clients.

In spite of rules banning such content, Craigslist's "erotic services" section is rife with ads containing explicit language and images bordering on pornographic, as well as hourly rates and descriptions of services clearly sexual in nature, Blumenthal's office claimed.

Blumenthal said he sent the letter after several months of discussions with craigslist in which he claimed the site refused to take aggressive steps to curb apparent prostitution ads, a charge Wes strenuously denied.

Not true, says craigslist

"Far from 'stonewalling' your staff's requests, we assured them that further improvements to enable craigslist to enforce its terms of use were being developed and implemented constantly," he said.

In a letter to Blumenthal, Wes said Craigslist has implemented a new telephone verification procedure, which (by tying advertisements in craigslist's "erotic services" category to live telephone numbers that are verified when an account is opened) enables craigslist to effectively block new advertisements from accounts that are brought to craigslist's attention as violating its terms of use.

"This was a very major improvement, yet your staff dismissed it as inconsequential," Wes said. After telephone verification was implemented, the volume of person-to-person erotic ads dropped from almost 400 per day to about 50 per day, he said.

Many of the remaining ads were further blocked by craigslist's filters before reaching the site or were removed by the flagging system, he added.
Law-abiding

Wes said it is important not to confuse the criminals who occasionally misuse craigslist with craigslist itself.

"Craigslist is a law-abiding company that is trying very hard to do the right thing, while also providing a very valuable free public service for the people of Connecticut, and the world at large," he said. "Craigslist does not have tens of thousands of employees, as do other large internet sites. The lack of this overhead is the reason that craigslist can provide its valuable public services at such low cost and without paid advertising."

"Unlike the "online" versions of weekly newspapers and numerous paid "erotic services" sites that make a profitable business out of erotic services ads, craigslist earns no revenue from that portion of its site whatsoever. In fact, craigslist incurs substantial expense in operating this section, including the costs of telephone verification and other compliance efforts that are discussed above," Wes added.

"Under the circumstances, we strongly believe that you owe craigslist a public retraction of a defamatory statement that you made to the New Haven Register to the effect that '[craigslist] continues to profit from prostitution.' This statement is patently false, and I trust that you understand the importance of accuracy in matters such as this - particularly when the statements come from a respected public servant," he said.
'Freedom trumps prudence'

"Craigslist is on absolutely solid ground and should be given an award instead of being threatened by political officeholders who are paid to know better," said ConsumerAffairs.com President James R. Hood. "Craigslist provides an invaluable public service at no cost to the vast majority of its users, which is a lot more than the State of Connecticut can say."

"Throughout the land, corporate interests and reckless politicians are trying to subvert the First Amendment rights of American citizens by stifling free expression on the Internet while the large media companies who should manning the barricades sit idly by," he said.

"Internet sites provide a means for citizens to speak freely, providing an important and Constitutionally-protected balance to the constant barrage of corporate propaganda and government hogwash," Hood said. "Those paid by the public to uphold the Constitution should do their jobs instead of putting the iron boot of the state where it doesn't belong."

"Freedom trumps prudence anyday," Hood said. "Major media companies should stop worrying about next year's Gridiron Dinner and join the struggle to preserve the First Amendment rights they are so quick to cite when their own interests are at stake."
Discrimination decision

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court held that Craigslist could not be held liable for discriminatory real-estate postings.

Civil rights attorneys in Chicago had argued that the site should be held responsible for apartment rental and home sale listings that specify racial or ethnic preferences.

But the court said the Communications Decency Act protects Web sites from liability for third-party postings. It's the latest in a series of similar rulings.

A staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Kurt Opsahl, said the ruling was "good news."

The protection provided by the law is essential to the Internet's free operation, he said.

Craigslist allows users to flag inappropriate language or material and removes postings that are identified as violating its terms of service.

The appeals court noted that while Craigslist does not actively ban discriminatory postings, it does not encourage them either.

"Nothing in the service craigslist offers induces anyone to post any particular listing or express a preference for discrimination," the court held.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...aigslist2.html





"Web Tripwires" Reveal 1.3% of Web Pages Altered in Transit
Nate Anderson

When you visit a web page, you might expect that the code and images from the page will make their journey through the tubes unmolested and unaltered, but according to security researchers, you would also be wrong 1.3 percent of the time.

Researchers from the University of Washington and the International Computer Science Institute wanted to see whether ISPs, enterprise firewalls, or proxy servers commonly made changes to requested HTML while it was "in-flight." Testing 50,171 unique IP addresses around the world, the researchers found that content requested by 657 IP addresses was modified during transit, but the modifications weren't always nefarious.

We've reported before on companies that sell products to ISPs to do exactly this. ISPs can use the devices to insert or replace their own advertisements into web pages (MetroFi does this to offer its free WiFi service in the US), or they can simply add notification messages to websites (Rogers in Canada began doing this late last year).

But such interventions, though worrisome, are rare. Only 1.3 percent of pages tested were modified in any way, and 70 percent of those modifications were caused by client proxies installed to deal with pop-ups or to block advertising. The researchers also note that not every alteration is problematic; some cellular operators, for example, will strip extra whitespace from pages or will provide extra compression for images to keep bandwidth usage low and browsing quick.

One caveat, however: the research tells us little about the prevalence of ad blocking in general. Browser extensions (which do much of the ad blocking) that may modify page layouts were not included in the tests, so only separate proxies that blocked ads generated positive results.

Because altering the pages in transit might not be in the publisher's interest (ad-blocking) or the user's interest (some of the alterations caused security problems), the researchers devised a method of "web tripwires" to detect any changes. The tripwire is some additional JavaScript code that is executed on the client and can check the received HTML for possible alterations.

For example, the tripwire could count the number of script tags on a page, a method that would have turned out 90 percent of the modifications found during testing. If the number of tags differs from the number hardwired into the script, it can pop a message into the browser notifying the user that the page has been modified.

The tripwire at work

For publishers who care about the integrity of their pages, the tripwire method offers a simpler and lower-overhead solution when compared to more extreme measures, such as only allowing access over an encrypted HTTPS connection.

If you want to check whether your browser is receiving web pages as they were created, the researchers have left their validation tool online for public use. A paper based on the research (PDF) will be presented at the NSDI '08 conference on network systems design this week.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...n-transit.html





Consumer Groups Urge "Do Not Track" Registry
Diane Bartz

Two consumer groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to create a "do not track list" that would allow computer users to bar advertisers from collecting information about them.

The Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Union also urged the FTC to bar collection of health information and other sensitive data by companies that do business on the Internet unless a consumer consents.

The call echoed those of other privacy advocates who filed statements with the FTC on Internet companies' use of "behavioral advertising." That is the practice of tracking a computer user's activities online, including Web searches and sites visited, to target advertisements to the individual consumer.

In December, the FTC approved Google's purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick over the objections of some privacy groups.

At the same time, the agency urged advertisers to let computer users bar advertisers from collecting information on them, to provide "reasonable security" for any data and to collect data on health conditions or other sensitive issues only with the consumer's express consent.

In comments to the FTC on online behavioral advertising, advertisers made clear a strong preference for self-regulation rather than government dictates on how personal data are collected, what disclosures are made to computer users and how long the information is stored.

Consumer groups said on Tuesday they were skeptical of self-regulation.

"Self-policing schemes are not enough to protect consumers' privacy and offer no enforcement against improper behavior," said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, in a statement.

"While companies like Google are trying to put pretty good practices in place, we don't want to rely on the good graces of the companies because they might change their minds," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Several child advocacy groups, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and American Academy of Pediatrics, urged the FTC to bar advertisers from collecting information on or advertising to anyone under the age of 18.

Several advertisers also questioned whether the FTC and privacy groups had established that any harm had been done by the data collected and pointed out that the advertisers subsidized the free information often sought on the Internet.

"The associations (of businesses and advertisers) strongly believe that self-regulation and leading business practices comprise the most effective framework to protect consumers and further innovation in the area of privacy and behavioral advertising," the American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers and other organizations said in a statement.

"We believe that any additional principles or guidelines should be issued only after the commission specifically identifies harms and concerns so that business is in a position to consider and address them," the group said in its comments to the FTC.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...080416?sp=true





Newspapers Argue for First Amendment Right to Snoop on Readers
Saul Hansell

Usually, when people talk about the trade offs between privacy and freedom of the press, the argument is about whether the public has the right to know some fact about an individual’s personal life.

The newspaper industry is now arguing that the First Amendment protects its right to follow users around the Internet so it can charge higher prices on advertising.

This argument was made in a filing by Newspaper Association of America commenting on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposal that the companies involved in advertising that uses what is called behavioral targeting create a self-regulatory code that limits their use of sensitive information.

Many newspaper sites, including nytimes.com, participate in behavioral targeting networks such as those run by AOL’s Tacoda or Revenue Science. These sites hope that by finding out which of their readers are shopping for cars or other products, they can raise rates for sections that don’t have natural advertisers, like international news.

The association argued that this sort of advertising technology is needed to pay for the local information and other content that newspapers provide free online. That is similar to many of the other comments that challenged the commission’s ideas. But the newspaper group went further and suggested that restrictions on advertising technology are tantamount to unconstitutional censorship.

Efforts to restrict or limit what newspaper websites publish, and the basis by which editors and advertisers make decisions regarding what to publish, run directly counter to core First Amendment rights, and can amount to a form of prior restraint.

The filing did acknowledge that government can regulate the content of deceptive advertising, but it argued that behavioral targeting is hardly misleading.

While it is possible that an advertiser message accompanying the publisher’s fully protected speech might be deemed false or misleading, no connection between behavioral targeting and falsity or misleadingness has been demonstrated. Quite the reverse: the purported concern is that users may receive not only truthful advertising speech, but advertising speech that meets their interest. That is not fraud or deception — that is customer service.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...op-on-readers/





New York Times Company Posts Loss
Richard Pérez-Peña

The New York Times Company, the parent of The New York Times, posted a $335,000 loss in the first quarter — one of the worst periods the company and the newspaper industry have seen — falling far short of both analysts’ expectations and its $23.9 million profit in the quarter a year earlier.

The company did break even on a per-share basis, compared with the average analyst forecast of earnings of 14 cents, down from 17 cents in the first quarter of 2007.

The company’s main source of revenue, newspaper advertising in print and online, fell 10.6 percent, the sharpest drop in memory, as the industry suffers the twin blows of an economic downturn and the continuing long-term shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

In a conference call with analysts, Janet L. Robinson, president and chief executive, said it was “a challenging quarter, one that showed the effects of a weaker economy,” compounded by “a marketplace that has been reconfigured technologically, economically and geographically.”

Looking ahead, she said, “We see continued challenges for print advertising in a faltering economy.”

The company recorded an operating profit of $6.2 million on revenue of $748 million, down from $54.5 million in operating income on revenue of $786 million a year earlier. That included a noncash charge of $18.3 million for an asset write-down and one-time costs for changes that will lower costs in the long run, like closing a printing plant and employee buyouts. The company lowered operating costs by 1.1 percent, and it predicts sharper declines later in the year.Excluding the write-down, depreciation and amortization, operating profit for the company was $66.4 million for the quarter, down from $98.9 million a year earlier.

The poor showing stemmed from The Times Company’s core news media group, which includes The Times, The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune, as well as several regional newspapers.

Excluding the $18.3 million charge, depreciation and amortization, the unit reported an operating profit of $68.5 million for the quarter, down from $99.4 million in the period a year earlier.

The group’s revenue dropped 5.7 percent, driven by the 10.6 percent decline in advertising revenue. But it also recorded a 1.9 percent increase in circulation revenue, after the company raised the prices of newspapers like The Times and The Globe.

The About Group, which includes About.com, reported an operating profit of $12.6 million, a 9.5 percent rise from a year ago. Revenue at the group increased 25 percent, to $28.2 million as the unit benefited from increased ad sales and acquisitions.

The Times Company’s declining fortunes have sowed shareholder discontent, and the weak first-quarter results could intensify calls for a shift in strategy. A pair of hedge funds, Harbinger Capital Partners and Firebrand Partners, acquired a large stake in the company early this year, demanding that it sell assets and invest aggressively in Internet operations.Rather than endure a proxy fight, the hedge funds and the Times Company struck a deal, agreeing to expand the board to 15 seats from 13, with the two extra seats going to the funds. That agreement is expected to win approval at a shareholders’ meeting on April 22.

“I think there is a great deal of common ground that we already have,” Ms. Robinson said. The company will move judiciously, she said, but it is already open to the kind of buying and selling the funds advocate, “constantly evaluating the portfolio, not only for performance but also for strategic fit.”

Across the industry, newspaper ad revenue — print and online, combined — fell almost 8 percent last year, the second-worst decline in more than half a century, according to the Newspaper Association of America. The Times Company’s ad revenue dropped 4.7 percent last year, when adjusted for a change in the length of its fiscal year.

Over the last year, classified ads continued a decadelong flight to the Web, and display ads for real estate and cars fell sharply as those industries contracted.

As it wore on, 2007 grew steadily worse, meaning that as 2008 passes, some of the year-earlier comparisons will become a little easier.

Ms. Robinson said that April should be somewhat better than the first quarter, but that is partly due to timing of Easter and of one of the Times newspaper’s magazines, Key.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/bu...l?ref=business





Hollywood and Silicon Valley Try Again to Bridge Their Divide
Laura M. Holson

A story that Dan Scheinman, a senior vice president at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., likes to tell illustrates the cultural divide between Hollywood and his Silicon Valley.

Last year he met with an affluent film producer who marveled at the extraordinary riches afforded Google executives. Mr. Scheinman told him that most got wealthy accepting stock options instead of million-dollar salaries. When Mr. Scheinman asked if the producer would ever accept equity instead of cash if they worked together, the moviemaker sniffed.

“I fly a G4,” he told Mr. Scheinman, referring to the Gulfstream jet he owned. “How far do you think my G4 will go on stock options? I need cash.”

Only 350 miles separate the two California business cultures, and executives are once more trying to bridge the gap between technology and entertainment. But media moguls and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working together again has all the familiarity of a late-night rerun.

In the 1990s, venture capitalists saw a parade of celebrities make their way to Sand Hill Road seeking backing for their online ventures. Many VCs eagerly had their photographs taken with a starlet or two. But as deals cratered or never got off the ground, the relationship between the camps ended up less a marriage, than friends with benefits.

Now, with everyone clamoring to distribute short videos and other programming via the Internet or cellphone, Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives are circling each other once again, trying to figure how best to combine forces as their worlds inevitably collide. Veterans from both camps say the cultures are so different, though, that barriers remain. They are approaching each other with a new soberness — amid the hype, of course — as those who were burned in the past hope not to repeat the same mistakes.
“One of the misconceptions is there was a pot of gold out there,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Home Entertainment who, among other things, negotiates digital rights issues with technology companies on behalf of the Time Warner unit. “For every big deal you read about, there are a million guys who tried to get a deal done who couldn’t,” he said. These days, he said, “it’s about resetting the bar on expectations.”

Even with the benefit of perspective, the gulf is stark. Mark D. Kvamme, a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, financed the comedian Will Ferrell’s funnyordie.com last year, which has had only one runaway hit, “The Landlord” video. When Mr. Kvamme approached Mr. Ferrell and his agents at Creative Artists Agency about creating the site, he said he was struck by what he perceived as the short-term view then taken by his new Hollywood partners.

“They talked about the transaction — ‘What am I getting paid today?’ ” he said of Mr. Ferrell and his agents. “The big thing with Funny or Die was we said, ‘Let’s build a company. We are not just going to write you a check.’ ”

Those perceptions can largely be attributed to the nature of their conflicting interests. Adam McKay, who started the Web site with Mr. Ferrell, said they had to get used to the notion that they were owners, not just talent for hire. “There the security guard can make $100 million because everyone is given stock," said Mr. McKay. "but here it is a no-no. The deal is a cherished ritual."

Suggesting that talent agents do more than negotiate is something of a misguided mission; that is what they do all day. And film actors, writers, directors and crew members are hired for short bursts, then leave and work for someone else. Besides, Hollywood executives are not the only ones worrying about their paydays.

“People in Silicon Valley too want their pound of flesh,” said Sean Bailey, a Hollywood producer who joined with the actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and the producer Chris Moore in 2000 to create LivePlanet, a Silicon Valley-backed multimedia company which has had its ambitions scaled back. “The difference is they will wait five years instead of five minutes.”

Unlike the last go-round, though, content is only part of the conversation with studios, said Michael Lynton, chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment who previously served as former chief executive of AOL Europe. He said Silicon Valley venture capitalists who have talked to him lately are grappling with new ways to distribute Sony’s movies and television shows that compete with iTunes from Apple.

“I don’t know if they feel they don’t need us or are going directly to the talent,” he said. “There are always going to be huge cultural differences between us because the interests are different. On their side they are fundamentally interested in technology and, on our side, we are interested in the content.”

He makes a good point. It is with rare exception that the two camps have harmoniously co-existed. In 2004, Yahoo made a splash when it hired Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of the ABC Entertainment Group, to help make it a powerhouse in media and entertainment. The relationship soured, and Mr. Braun was chided for Hollywood extravagances like having his own parking space. Two years later, Mr. Braun left the company and much of what he created has since been dismantled.

Even Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple and a board member at the Walt Disney Company, has had a wary reception from Hollywood. While studio executives acknowledge his cleverness, they, too, dragged their feet on allowing Apple to offer movies and television shows on iTunes unless they were afforded proper copyright protection for their content. And that did little to burnish the relationship with Silicon Valley.

"We realize there is a problem, but there’s not an easy solution,” said David Siminoff, a venture capitalist at Venrock, who has an interest in both media and technology. “If there was one, we would’ve found that already."

A particularly salient difference, of course, is how each culture approaches failure. Silicon Valley, to a point, celebrates it, while entertainment creators in Southern California cannot distance themselves fast enough from anything that might be a bomb. And Hollywood talent likes a success story; but only if it is their own.

“If a successful director has a flop, his peers and colleagues question whether he has lost his touch,” Mr. Kvamme said. “By contrast, in the Valley, if you have a failure, that usually means that you have learned something. There are very few successful serial entrepreneurs. Failure is almost a rite of passage."

Which, of course, leads to the ultimate measure of might in any corporate culture and one easiest to calculate: who has the fatter wallet. The highest-ranking media chief can earn $20 million in salaries and stock options, too. But that looks like lunch money compared with what a 22-year-old Stanford graduate can earn if the right idea strikes.

Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, each have a net worth estimated at around $13 billion. The two are ferried around on a private 50-passenger Boeing 767-200 jet, which they pay $1.3 million a year to park at a military base near Google’s office.

With numbers like that, perhaps the producer who met with Mr. Scheinman should reconsider the cash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/te...hollywood.html





Building a 5-Ton Mechanical Calculator... from 19th-Century Plans

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 automated repetitive calculations
John Cox

Starting in May, many will have the opportunity to see for themselves how they did computing the old-fashioned way: with lots of gears, a big crank and some muscle.

The Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, Calif., will unveil a new construction, the first in the United States, of the 19th century British mathematician Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2, an improved version of his earlier mechanical digital calculator.

Babbage finalized the design in the late 1840’s but it was not built during his lifetime, or for a long time afterward. Finally, in the late 1980’s, London’s Science Museum launched the first and until now only full-blown construction project, based on Babbage’s original detailed drawings, and in 1991 unveiled the completed calculator, 11 feet long, 7 feet high, with 8,000 parts in bronze, cast iron and steel, weighing about 3 tons.

In operation, it looks rather like an industrial version of a street organ.

In 2000, the museum added the calculator’s complex printer, almost as big and at 2.5 tons nearly as heavy.

The American model is the second built from Babbage’s plans. This one was commissioned and paid for by Microsoft millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, and built by the Science Museum.

Myrhvold and Guest Curator Doron Swade, an authority on Babbage and the man who led the Science Museum’s first construction effort, will speak on Babbage’s creation Thursday, May 1 at the Computer History Museum (the event is sold out). The exhibit itself opens Saturday, May 10, with demonstrations of the Difference Engine.

The Difference Engine is not the only geared calculation marvel in the world. In late 2006, an international team of scientists revealed new details of a 2,100-year-old astronomical calculator, the Antikythera Device, which used a complex system of 37 finely cut bronze gears to accurately show the changing positions of the sun and moon, with its phases, and possibly predict solar and lunar eclipses.

So what is a “difference engine?” Not being a math wizard, I’ll give this my best shot, drawing in part on the online expertise of Andrew Carol, an Apple software engineer who built a simpler difference engine, entirely of plastic LEGO pieces. You can find more details at Carol’s Web site.

Carol points out that calculating the trigonometric and logarithmic tables used for an array of navigation, engineering and scientific purposes was all done by hand, with a skilled mathematician directing the efforts of a room filled with less-skilled people, called “computers,” who could be trusted to do reliable arithmetic. Babbage was one of a number of people trying to automate this process with mechanical devices in the 19th Century.

In effect, the difference engine is a kind of shortcut to determine a series of successive mathematical values. It’s based on something called the method of differences, developed by Sir Isaac Newton. Carol gives the example of multiplying 5 by successive numbers, such as 6, 7, 8. “In simple terms, the method of differences is based on the observation that if the work has already been done to multiply 5 by 5, [then] that work can be reused to multiple 5 by 7 with the addition of another 5 into the previous total,” he writes.

Like this:
5 x 6 = 30
5 x 7 = 35 by adding 5 to the previous total
5 x 8 = 40 by adding 5 yet again to the previous total

As Carol puts it: “Successive multiplications have been reduced to an identical number of successive additions. As long as we are willing to calculate the table entries [remember this is all about tables of values] in order we can save an enormous amount of work.”

Babbage’s difference engine applies this same idea to solving polynomial equations, which are widely used in math and science. Polynomials are built from a combination of variables and constants; use only addition, subtraction and multiplication; and only exponents that are constant positive whole numbers.

Babbage later designed a more general Analytical Engine, but only part of it was completed when he died in 1871. This device was intended to evaluate any mathematical formula, but it was never successfully created. A Swedish printer, George Scheutz, in 1854 built a machine based on Babbage’s Difference Engine design, and versions were used by the British and American governments.

The Difference Engine is powered by a hand-turned crank and a complex system of gears.

The California museum will be missing a few of the more eccentric elements in the British museum’s permanent Babbage exhibit, notably one-half of the brain that created the Difference Engine. The Science Museum holds about 800 human remains, in varying quantities, including a lock of Napoleon’s hair, cut off by Dr. Barry O’Meara at St. Helena where the emperor died, “human skin from one half of a male body, probably French, 19th century” and a rather numerous collection of shrunken heads, from Ecuador’s Jivaro tribe.

The Victorian aesthetic exemplified in Babbage’s creations has fueled a literary genre called “steampunk.” It blends the hallmarks of a world running on steam power with elements of fantasy, science fiction or speculative fiction. Babbage’s work was the inspiration for “The Difference Engine,” a 1990 novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, one of the first steampunk hits. The novel creates an alternative Victorian world where a steam-powered version of Babbage’s difference engine is created, launching the “information age” in the 19th century.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...ce-engine.html





New Battery Prototype May Mean the End of Exploding Laptops
Jacqui Cheng

The Great Laptop Battery Recall of 2006 had everyone paranoid that their MacBooks or ThinkPads could catch fire and cause havoc at any moment. Although that string of incidents appears to be over, the most commonly-found batteries can still catch fire under the right conditions. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Germany hope to eliminate that concern, though, by developing lithium-ion batteries with no flammable materials.

"We have succeeded in replacing the inflammable organic electrolytes with a non-flammable polymer that retains its shape," ISC team leader Dr. Kai-Christian Möller said in a statement. "This considerably enhances the safety of lithium-ion batteries. What’s more, because it is a solid substance, the electrolyte cannot leak out of the battery."

According to ISC, the polymer is derived from an inorganic compound that allows organic side chains to attach to it, called Ormocer. The challenge, however, is to create a non-flammable polymer that retains its shape, but doesn't suffer when it comes to actually transmitting the energy. "Normally, the more solid a polymer is, the less conductive it becomes," said Möller. "But we had numerous parameters that we could adjust—for example, we can use coupling elements with two, three or four arms. As a result, we have more possibilities with Ormocer than with a single type of plastic."

Battery fires: soon to be a thing of the past?

The researchers already have a prototype of the new battery, but don't expect it to enter the hands of consumers for another three to five years. This is because they believe the battery could use some improvements to its storage capacity and efficiency in delivering power before introducing it to the masses. ISC says that once these improvements are made, the battery could even compete with lead batteries for cars.

The technology could make battery fires one of those things that people of the future will look back on as if it were stone age history. In 2006, big companies like Dell, Toshiba, and Apple all issued recalls over their Sony-made batteries within a few months of each other after reports began to spread about battery fires and explosions all over the world. Sony itself finally issued a global Li-ion battery recall in September of 2006 to address "recent overheating incidents." Ultimately, Sony and other computer manufacturers recalled close to 10 million units.

In addition to the fire-resistant batteries, Fraunhofer also recently announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in order to further research "green" energy technologies. The two will focus on developing green energy systems for buildings and devices at the MIT-Fraunhofer Institute for Sustainable Energy Systems near MIT's campus in Massachusetts.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...g-laptops.html





Apple, Sony Agree to Pay Out Over Battery Fire Lawsuit
Jacqui Cheng

Does anybody remember the Great Laptop Battery Recall of 2006? We sure do. Big companies like Dell, Toshiba, and Apple all issued recalls over their Sony-made batteries within a few months of each other after reports began to spread about random battery fires and explosions all over the world. Sony itself finally issued a global li-ion battery recall in September of 2006. The reason was to address "recent overheating incidents" that had caused computer manufacturers to recall close to 10 million units.

Of course, the recalls didn't stop anyone from getting sued, but Apple and Sony have finally settled one suit that has been dragged out for a year. The two companies have agreed to pay out Y1.3 million to a Japanese couple over damages to their home and personal injuries, according to Japan-based Kyodo News Agency (reported by Dow Jones).

Let's back up a little bit. The couple sued Apple and Sony last year over a battery fire incident that occurred in their home in April of 2006, months before the recall mess got sorted out. The couple, who was seeking damages of about Y2 million at the time, argued that the husband suffered burns while trying to remove the flaming machine from the house. They also said that the computer fire had caused damages to parts of their home.

In a surprising twist (at least for Apple followers), the report says that Apple Japan accepted liability for the incident. Still, it wanted to settle out of court because the company felt the couple was asking for too much. However, current conversion rates put Y2 million at just under US$20,000—seemingly a paltry sum for two multinational corporations. Still, if the couple was willing to accept Y1.3 million (about US$12,900) for their medical expenses and home repairs, then more power to them. Sony, of course, still claims that a link between the battery and the fire "has not been determined."
http://arstechnica.com/journals/appl...y-fire-lawsuit





Point

Monster Cable Sues Blue Jeans Cable
Clint DeBoer

Monster Cable has issued a Cease-and-Desist order to Blue Jeans Cable (Tartan Cable) over analogue cable connectors. In particular, the design of the Tartan component, composite, coax digital and stereo audio cables supposedly violates Monster Cable's design patents. From the letter:

It appears that the design of the connector portion of the Tartan Cable component video, composite video, stereo audio cable, and coaxial digital cable infringes a variety of our client's design patents, including patent nos. D456,363, D366,863, D367,036, D376,580, and D366,862 (see Exhibits A-E enclosed herewith), along with our client's related trademark registration nos. 2,060,139 and 3,075,541, (see enclosed Exhibits F and G) and trade dress rights. Furthermore, the connector housing design of the Tartan Cable S-Video cable appears that it too may infringe the aforementioned '363 design patent.

Monster Cable is insisting that Blue Jeans Cable immediately cease and desist all sales, offerings, advertising, distribution, manufacture use and importing of the aforementioned cables. In addition, Monster is insisting a RECALL of such products and a full accounting of all units sold including profits made form the sales.

Monster is expecting an answer by the 11th of April.

While we don't speak for Blue Jeans Cable, we'd like to supply an answer on their behalf: "Mwuhahahahaha, haha, haha.. ahem. *cough...."

We thought there had been a lull in the numerous Monster Cable lawsuits which had percolated throughout the industry in the last few years. Apparently the lawyers needed more to do.

Design patents represent nothing more that that: design. There is no technological content within design patents. The net effect is that Monster cable suing Blue Jeans is like you suing someone who copied the custom paint job on your car.

What makes this even more comical is that the owner of Blue Jeans Cable is a lawyer by trade. We hope he takes this as far as it needs to go to shut down the lawsuit and end this nonsense.

For a long time, we've actually stated a general dislike for Monster Cable's connections that are mentioned in this letter and associated exhibits. They frequently tear off RCA connections as they attach themselves too tightly to the receiving end and require massive amounts of twisting in order to release them safely - something not always possible in cramped quarters and closely spaced connection blocks. If anything, Blue Jeans has improved the connector and perhaps should license the improvement to Monster Cable - of course that has more to do with a real patent than a simple design patent.
http://www.audioholics.com/news/indu...ue-jeans-cable





Counterpoint

Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable
Tom Andry

Not long ago we reported that Monster Cable had issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable about their Tartan cables. Little did the lawyer drones over at Monster know that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans was, in a former life, a lawyer by trade. Oops! Someone pushed around the wrong "small" company! While we are no legal experts, we recognize humor when we see it. And this is funny. With Blue Jeans Cable's permission, we've included their full response to Monster's letter below. Kurt wants to keep this entire process completely open to the public and we're more than happy to oblige. Enjoy

__________

RE: Your letter, received April Fools' Day

Dear Monster Lawyers,

Let me begin by stating, without equivocation, that I have no interest whatsoever in infringing upon any intellectual property belonging to Monster Cable. Indeed, the less my customers think my products resemble Monster's, in form or in function, the better.

I am evaluating your claim that the connectors on certain Tartan brand products infringe Monster's design patents and trademarks. However, the information supplied with your letter is plainly inadequate to support a claim of infringement and so I am writing to you to ask for further information and clarification regarding your claims.

I will begin by addressing your trademark/trade dress claim. You have referred to two trademark registrations, and have attached some printouts from the USPTO system but the depiction of the marks on the drawings provided is small and indistinct, making it difficult to determine exactly what the alleged resemblance is, and I need further information from you.

First, I need legible, scale drawings of the marks, preferably with dimensions shown on the drawing. To the extent that drawings are inadequate to show the nature of materials, finishes, print legends, colors and the like, I will also need examples of each of Monster Cable's actual uses of these marks in commerce; actual physical examples would be best, but photographic reproductions might do. As you will understand, these considerations are essential to any claim arising out of trade dress, as you are alleging in essence that there is a resemblance sufficient to cause confusion over the identity or origin of the goods, and no mere line-drawing can suffice.

Second, I will need copies of the trademark applications and any correspondence between the applicant and the USPTO in support of the applications.

Third, you have not identified the Monster Cable products in question, in actual use and distribution in commerce, whose trade dress you allege has been appropriated. I have reviewed Monster Cable's online materials and have examined connectors on various Monster Cable assemblies in local retail outlets and am unable to determine which, if any, of these are thought by Monster to represent use of these particular marks. I am also unable to determine from this review whether Monster Cable actually offers any product for sale to which the Tartan connectors are alleged to be particularly similar. My own sense of it, in looking at the connectors, has been that there is no similarity between the Tartan connectors and any of the many Monster Cable connectors beyond the general functional and conventional characteristics which all or nearly all solder-cup, mechanical-assembly, barrel-style RCA-type connectors share. It may be that there is some line of products to which you have intended to refer but which I have not found in Monster Cable's marketing materials or displays; but if so, you will need to show me specifically what product it is, and you will need to call to my attention the specific aspects of the connector design which you contend constitute unique Monster Cable trade dress, what the associated secondary meaning of those aspects of the trade dress is, and in what manner and by what characteristics you allege that this trade dress has been appropriated.

Fourth, if the dimensional characteristics of the connector as used in commerce vary from the dimensions of the scale drawing of your mark, I will need a proper scale drawing, with dimensions, of each version of the actual connector as used in commerce, as well as photographs of the connectors showing actual in-use finishes. If there is more than one such connector design in actual use by Monster Cable as to which appropriation of trade dress is alleged, of course, I will require this information for each and every such design.

On the basis of what I have seen, both in the USPTO documents you have sent and the actual appearance of Monster Cable connectors which I have observed in use in commerce, it does not appear to me that Monster Cable is in a position to advance a nonfrivolous claim for infringement of these marks. There simply is not sufficient resemblance between the Tartan connectors and any mark or any example of the marks' actual use that I can find to support such a claim. But if you have further information for me on that point, you are welcome to submit it.

You have also supplied me with partial documentation on five design patents which you claim these connectors infringe. I will begin by observing, first, that the five design patents are so very much unlike one another that it is very hard to imagine that any product could actually infringe more than one of them at a time; anything close enough to one of them to be deemed an infringement would, by that fact alone, be too dissimilar from the other four. The dissimilarity of the Tartan connector from each of them is readily evident.

I should add that, for the purpose of this letter, I am assuming that these patents are valid. This is in no way a concession of the point. In fact, this is a very significant and likely inaccurate assumption, and you should expect the patentability of these designs to be under attack if you commence an action for infringement.

The fact that you have presented me with five completely distinct design patents, I have to say, gives me pause. I would go over them and detail the differences between the Tartan connectors and those shown in the patents, but if you are taking the position that it appears you are taking, there might be very little point in discussing it with you. Take, for example, the patent you mark as Exhibit B. The connector shown there is substantially different from the Tartan connectors in every respect, unless one ignores design specifics and focuses on the core attributes of the connector which are dictated by function. If your view of Exhibit B is that it is to be construed broadly enough as to encompass the Tartan connector, it is very hard to imagine that there is such a thing as a solder-assembly style RCA plug which is not similarly, in your view, encompassed by this patent. And, needless to say, it is very hard to imagine that any court would ever adopt such a view of the patent's scope; if you file on this sort of basis, you are in Rule 11 frivolous-claim territory.

I will point out, though you are no doubt already well aware, that the gross morphology of the RCA plug is pretty well dictated by function. RCA plugs intended for soldering and assembly have certain attributes in common; their diameter is constrained by the need for the shell to fit over an internal set of solder points and cable clamp, and their length by the need to provide some room for cable end prep and attachment; they are generally radially symmetrical along the anterior/posterior axis owing to the need to accommodate both a round-profile cable and the round-profile RCA socket; the connector end is constrained by the standard dimensions of the RCA socket, and by the need, as the socket provides for no bayonet or screw attachment, to provide sufficient tension on insertion to maintain good mechanical and electrical contact; the barrel, grasped by the user for the purpose of insertion and removal, requires traction which is typically provided by raised or recessed rings, plastic inserts, knurling, or the like; and transition between the connector and the cable to which it is attached requires, in one form or another, a reduction in barrel size at the connector rear. It is my assumption, since you cite design patents only and no utility patents, that Monster Cable makes no claim here for any functional aspect of any of these designs; if I am wrong, please let me know what utility patents Monster Cable does hold, and what claims, if any, Monster asserts on the basis of those utility patents.
Further, on that point: one of the design patents you attached is closely related to a utility patent applicable to the same design, and you failed to point that fact out. I need to be able to rely upon the completeness and accuracy of the information you send to me and I find this sort of omission deeply disturbing because it is clear that the effect of this nondisclosure is to obscure the real significance of the patent features. Similarly, as I note further below, you omit reference to another patent Monster has held which appears, frankly, to be fatal to your position. If you expect to persuade me, you had better start making full, open and honest disclosures; I will find out the facts sooner or later in any event, but the impact upon your credibility will not be repaired. It looks like when you sent this letter, you were operating on the premise that I am not smart enough to see through your deceptions or sophisticated enough to intelligently evaluate your claims; shame on you. You are required, as a matter of legal ethics, to display good faith and professional candor in your dealings with adverse parties, and you have fallen miserably short of your ethical responsibilities.

My sense, in looking at these five patents, is that either you are attempting to present some argument that I simply do not understand or you are arguing for untenably broad coverage of these patents which would sweep every functional aspect of the typical solder-assembly RCA connector within the scope of a handful of mere design patents. You need to clarify this, and frankly, I think you need to indicate to me which, if any, of these patents you actually contend are relevant to the present discussion. It cannot possibly be that you believe that more than one of these patents is pertinent, and if you insist that they are, we cannot have an intelligent dialogue on this subject. Once you have identified the patent which you contend is relevant, I need to see the file history and the references to prior art; I need copies of the applicant's correspondence with the USPTO; and I need a clear and cogent explanation from you as to exactly what aspects of the Tartan connector design are alleged to constitute the infringement, and how.

Additionally, if you are able to identify any of these patents as applicable, please let me know whether Monster Cable presently sells, or has at any time sold, any products bearing connectors which are in conformity with the patent drawings or which are otherwise contended to be within the coverage of the patents, and identify those products for me. Please also provide photographs and/or physical examples of these connectors as manufactured and sold.

Also, please provide me all of the information referenced above as it relates to your expired patent D323643, a copy of which I am attaching. I will need to know what products Monster now offers or at any time has offered for sale which were believed to fall within the scope of D323643, and what claims, if any, of infringement of D323643 were made against others by Monster, whether those claims of infringement took the form of correspondence only, litigation, or otherwise. Please let me know which, if any, products Monster has ever sold or offered for sale which were marked with the patent number, or other reference, to D323643. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Please also advise me whether, in your view, the Tartan connector does or does not fall within the scope of D323643, and if it is your view that it does not, please identify each and every difference between the Tartan connector and the connector represented by D323643 upon which your view is based. (On that note, let me point out to you that the "turbine cut" feature is irrelevant here as your client makes only functional, not design, claims for that feature in its marketing materials for the product.) I would assume that you would agree with me that if the Tartan connector is less dissimilar from the D323643 patent than from any of the five patents you cite in your letter, then the Tartan connector is within the coverage of the prior art and cannot, as a matter of law, infringe any of your client's current patents.

I must also point out that unless there is a good deal of background information you have not provided me which makes the case otherwise, Monster Cable cannot possibly square its patent infringement claim(s) with its own patent history. Two views of the matter might be taken; the first, which is my view, is that none of the design patents, including D323643, encompass the Tartan connector. If that is so, of course, the claim for infringement fails. But if one grants the sort of breadth to these patents that you appear to wish to do, a problem arises for Monster. D323643 is the least dissimilar to the Tartan connector of any of the patents, and stands as an obstacle to any claim of infringement of the others because it establishes prior art; if its scope, like the others, is granted the breadth you argue for, then the Tartan connector falls plainly under the prior art and cannot constitute an infringement of the later, and more dissimilar, patents. Read the patents narrowly, and Monster loses; read them broadly, and Monster loses. You are welcome to point out any error in my reasoning; but I have to say that I will be unreservedly surprised if you are successful in doing so.

Please also let me know whether Monster Cable or any related entity has brought actions to enforce any of the patents and trademarks referenced in your letter or above, and provide me with the jurisdiction, court and docket information pertaining thereto, along with copies of any decisions or judgments resulting therefrom. If any such litigation proceeded through discovery, I will need all discovery responses, including document production, issued by Monster, as well as copies of any and all depositions taken and the exhibits thereto.

Further, if any of these patents or trademarks has been licensed to any entity, please provide me with copies of the licensing agreements. I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable's principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income; my request for these licensing agreements is specifically intended to include any licensing agreements, including those with closely related or sham entities, within or without the Monster Cable "family," and without regard to whether those licensing agreements are sham transactions for tax shelter purposes only or whether they are bona fide arm's-length transactions.

Once I have received the above materials and explanations from you, I will undertake to analyze this information and let you know whether we are willing to accede to any of the demands made in your letter. If my analysis shows that there is any reasonable likelihood that we have infringed in any way any of Monster Cable's intellectual property rights, we will of course take any and all action necessary to resolve the situation. If I do not hear from you within the next fourteen days, or if I do hear from you but do not receive all of the information requested above, I will assume that you have abandoned these claims and closed your file.

As for your requests for information, or for action, directed to me: I would remind you that it is you, not I, who are making claims; and it is you, not I, who must substantiate those claims. You have not done so.

I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable's modus operandi in these matters. I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs' practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

I say this because my observation has been that Monster Cable typically operates in a hit-and-run fashion. Your client threatens litigation, expecting the victim to panic and plead for mercy; and what follows is a quickie negotiation session that ends with payment and a licensing agreement. Your client then uses this collection of licensing agreements to convince others under similar threat to accede to its demands. Let me be clear about this: there are only two ways for you to get anything out of me. You will either need to (1) convince me that I have infringed, or (2) obtain a final judgment to that effect from a court of competent jurisdiction. It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind. If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

I will also point out to you that if you do choose to undertake litigation, your "upside" is tremendously limited. If you somehow managed, despite the formidable obstacles in your way, to obtain a finding of infringement, and if you were successful at recovering a large licensing fee--say, ten cents per connector--as the measure of damages, your recovery to date would not reach four figures. On the downside, I will advance defenses which, if successful, will substantially undermine your future efforts to use these patents and marks to threaten others with these types of actions; as you are of course aware, it is easier today for your competitors to use collateral estoppel offensively than it ever has been before. Also, there is little doubt that making baseless claims of trade dress infringement and design patent infringement is an improper business tactic, which can give rise to unfair competition claims, and for a company of Monster's size, potential antitrust violations with treble damages and attorneys' fees.

I look forward to receiving the information requested and will review it promptly as soon as it is received.

Sincerely,

Kurt Denke


http://www.audioholics.com/news/indu...s-strikes-back





EVE Online Source Code Stolen, Leaked
Earnest Cavalli

A Pirate Bay user under the handle "Zakiderex" recently uploaded a stolen copy of the full EVE Online source code to the popular peer-to-peer file sharing site.

Additionally, the user posted an IM conversation between the supposed code thief and a representative from EVE Online developer CCP, in which he taunts the company with his acquisition and derides the firm's security measures.

CCP has responded to the code leak, and reassures EVE players that the leak is not indicative of the sort of security issues that would lead to stolen credit card numbers of other personal info.

"Access to the source code for the EVE client exposes no security vulnerabilities, has no privacy protection issues, and poses no threat to our customers' billing information," said CCP.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/...line-sour.html





Brazil Judge Bans Sale, Promotion of Video Game 'Bully'
AP

"Bully" has taken a beating in Brazil, where a judge suspended sales of the video game on the grounds it is too violent for young children and teenagers, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Judge Flavio Rabello prohibited the game from being imported, distributed, sold or promoted on Web sites or in stores in Latin America's largest nation, said Rio Grande do Sul state prosecutor Alcindo Bastos. Companies have 30 days to comply with the judge's order.

Bastos said the judge found the game was inappropriate for children.

"The aggravating factor is that everything in the game takes place inside a school," Bastos said. "That is not acceptable."

Made by Rockstar Games and mainly distributed in Brazil by JPF Maggazine, the game lets players act out the life of a 15-year-old student and decide how to deal with teachers and cliques at a boarding school.

A local youth support center had requested the ban.

"We have not been notified of the judge's decision," JPF Maggazine's attorney Diogo Dias Teixeira said. "When we are, we will decide if we will appeal."

He said the company advised retailers not to sell the game to anyone under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Rockstar was unaware of the ban and could not immediately comment Thursday.

Rockstar, a unit of New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., is known for "Manhunt 2," in which players fight violently to escape from a psychiatric institution, and for the popular "Grand Theft Auto" game series, in which players can hijack cars and run down pedestrians.

Bully is rated "T" for teenagers age 13 and older in the U.S., not of "M" for mature players 17 and older. It launched in October 2006 in the U.S. for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 gaming console. In March, it became available for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Nintendo Co.'s Wii, according to the Rockstar Web site for the game.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8880466





Experts Say YouTube, Media Companies Not to Blame for Notorious Florida Beating Video
AP

Eight Florida teenagers charged with beating another teen so they could post the "animalistic" attack on YouTube got exactly what they had wanted - worldwide exposure.

But that doesn't mean YouTube or any other media company should get the blame, legally or ethically, for the attack, media experts said Friday.

In fact, they have a duty to share the video, said Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"The fact that the video was shot because they were seeking publicity was secondary," McBride said. "A crime was committed in our community, and if there's a videotape of it, I want some information. That video was incredibly revealing. It told more truth about what happened than any other form of reporting could have told."

The teenagers have been arrested on charges that they beat the teen so they could make a video of the attack to post online. One of the girls struck the 16-year-old victim on the head several times and then slammed her head into a wall, knocking her unconscious, according to an arrest report.

"It's absolutely an animalistic attack," Sheriff Grady Judd said earlier this week. "They lured her into the home for the express purpose of filming the attack and posting it on the Internet."

On Friday, a judge set bail for each of the defendants at $30,000 during the teens' first court appearance. Prosecutors said seven of the girls will be tried as adults in the March 30 attack in Lakeland, Fla. They face charges of kidnapping, battery and witness tampering.

It's not clear who posted the video on the Internet. But the Polk County sheriff's office released a clip that has been widely circulating online and on television, including The Associated Press' video network.

Those who blame YouTube or news organizations should blame themselves first, said Steve Jones, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"The public is culpable as well because they are paying attention," he said. "There is no medium that forces them to pay attention."

CNN spokeswoman Barbara Levin said the cable news network has tried to place the video in the proper context.

"In reporting the story, we have gone to great lengths to explain that these young women face severe consequences for their actions, and in fact may be facing harsher sentencing because the videotape provides evidence of the nature of the attacks," she said in a statement.

YouTube, owned by Google Inc., declined to comment on the video, but said its general policies call for the removal of clips that show someone getting "hurt, attacked or humiliated."

From a legal standpoint, YouTube and other online service providers are largely exempt from liability because of a 1996 anti-pornography law. One provision says Internet service providers are not considered publishers simply because they retransmit information provided by their users or other sources.

Federal courts have applied that broadly to cover not just Internet access providers, but also video-sharing sites, message boards and other online services.

Even without that provision, there doesn't appear to be anything illegal about the video, said John Morris, senior counsel with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil-liberties group in Washington, D.C.

"There is no legal reason this video cannot be shown. It is obviously distasteful, abhorrent what the teenagers did to the victim, but it doesn't really make sense (to ask), 'Should YouTube have taken it down?"' Morris said.

Even if there were a claim of illegality, he said, the courts should be the ones deciding, not YouTube.

"Many of those assertions are really very difficult, legal determinations that YouTube has no ability to make," Morris said. "Really, YouTube is not in a position to be a traffic cop."

---

Associated Press Business Writer Seth Sutel contributed to this story.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





50 Cent, Universal Sued for Pushing "Gangsta" Life
Edith Honan

Hip hop mogul 50 Cent, Universal Music Group and several of its record labels were sued on Wednesday for promoting a "gangsta lifestyle" by a 14-year-old boy who says friends of the rapper assaulted him.

The lawsuit filed by James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, says Universal Music Group -- owned by Vivendi SA -- and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records, bear responsibility for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.

The lawsuit also names 50 Cent -- whose real name is Curtis Jackson -- Violator Management, Violator CEO Chris Lighty, Tony Yayo, a rapper and a member of 50 Cent's G-Unit hip hop group, and Lowell Fletcher, an employee of Yayo.

All defendants declined to comment.

Rosemond says he was assaulted on a Manhattan sidewalk in March 2007 by four men including Yayo and Fletcher.

The lawsuit claims Rosemond was targeted because he was wearing a T-shirt by Czar Entertainment, a management company that represents The Game. The Game is a former G-Unit rapper who fell out with the group and had become a rival rapper.

In February, Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, pleaded guilty to harassment and was sentenced to ten days of community service. Fletcher pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to 9 months in jail.

"The members of G-Unit, including defendants Yayo and 50 Cent, encouraged, sanctioned, approved and condoned its members threatening violence, and or engaging in violent acts in furtherance of its business," the lawsuit said.

The attack on Rosemond was intended to "promote and maintain Yayo and 50 Cent's 'gangsta' image," which was "promoted, marketed and advertised" by record labels.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Todd Eastham)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/entert...0080409?rpc=64





Most Adults Favor Profanity Regulations For Internet Radio
FMQB

According to the American Media Services Radio Index survey, more than three out of five American adults say the government should regulate the use of obscenities on Internet radio, just as they do with regular radio and television broadcasts. The national poll was posed to a sample of 1,004 respondents, asking, "The federal government regulates the use of obscenities and profanity on radio and television stations. Would you say you believe the government should also regulate the use of obscenities or profanity on Internet radio stations?"

While 61 percent of respondents 18 and older said the U.S. government should regulate Internet radio, the answers on this question varied greatly by age and gender. Specifically, 51 percent of men favor regulation, while 70 percent of women said they favor it. Also, 78 percent of those over the age of 65 favor regulation, while only 34 percent of those 18-24 are in favor. Neither household income nor geographic region seemed to play a role in the issue.

As for some of the other findings in the study, 43 percent of people surveyed said they listen to radio "several times a day." Half said they are listening to radio the same amount as they did five years ago, and 73 percent usually turn on the radio when they get in their cars. When asked, "How familiar, if at all, would you say that you are with something called HD radio?," 65 percent said they are "not at all familiar," while only five percent said they are very familiar.

Finally, when asked, "What would you say is your favorite way to listen to radio?," 77 percent said "regular radio." Satellite radio got 15 percent of the vote, with Internet radio at 2 percent and HD Radio at 1 percent.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=658361





Radio on Bus Fosters Quiet, but Not Peace
Winnie Hu



As Bus No. 3 rolled away from Harborside Middle School last week, “No Air,” a song by the most recent American Idol, Jordin Sparks, blared from the speakers, lulling the 15 students on board into near silence.

“It’s cool because a lot of my favorite songs come on,” said Abby Amann, a sixth grader who used to stare out the window in boredom before radios were installed on nearly all of Milford’s 60 school buses in late February. “The only thing I don’t like is when the commercials come on and there’s just talking.”

Some parents and school officials do not like the commercials, either, which is why school buses have become a battleground echoing the fight of nearly two decades ago, when Channel One began showing advertisement-laden news programs in classrooms. Milford is one of a growing number of districts that have recently added the radios in hopes of calming children on their daily bus trips, but outrage over the commercials has led some places to reject them.

BusRadio, a Massachusetts company that since 2006 has wired buses for sound in 175 school districts — including Denver, Dallas and Palm Beach, Fla., as well as Milford — is barred from New York City because of a 1990 state regulation, prompted largely by the Channel One dispute, that bans advertising on school property. At least two states, Vermont and Massachusetts, are considering similar restrictions on advertising on school grounds (but not on buses), and South Carolina, which does allow advertising on school property, is considering a ban aimed specifically at school buses.

The National Parent Teacher Association has opposed BusRadio, and 40 nonprofit consumer, religious and education groups have signed a letter urging PepsiCo, Verizon, Time Warner and other companies not to advertise on the company’s airwaves, or on Channel One’s.

“It’s an advertising scheme designed to exploit children,” said Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert, a Washington-based group founded in part by Ralph Nader, which organized the letter campaign. “It’s exactly the opposite of what schools and educational systems should be doing.”

BusRadio, based in Needham, Mass., installs radios at no cost to the districts, and then downloads hourlong musical programs every night that include an average of four minutes of paid advertising and another four minutes of public service announcements.
The districts are offered about 5 percent of the advertising revenue — or in Milford’s case, a high-tech global positioning system — and the company plans to add a service next month that alerts riders via e-mail or text message when the bus is 10 minutes from their stop.

Steven Shulman, who founded BusRadio with Michael Yanoff, said the company provided an “age-appropriate” alternative to local FM radio stations, with songs and advertising screened by an advisory committee of school administrators and psychiatrists.

In contrast, he said, his son once came home asking what Viagra was after hearing a commercial on the bus coming home from summer camp in Mashpee, Mass. BusRadio develops playlists from a library of 1,000 pop songs and will either edit out questionable content and lyrics or refrain from playing a song altogether. “It’s tough to find clean rap music, but we do,” Mr. Shulman said.

Recent advertisers on BusRadio include Answers.com, the Cartoon Network, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. The company does not accept advertising for candy or soda, or for toys that Mr. Shulman considers inappropriate, like video games with violent content, and it prefers advertisements that have a message. “We don’t want them to say, ‘Go out and buy $200 sneakers,’ ” Mr. Shulman said. “We want them to say, ‘Go and exercise, and use this gear if you want.’ ”

BusRadio spends an average of $2,000 to equip each school bus, installing a compact black box over the driver’s seat that also serves as a public address system, computer, wireless modem or global positioning system. The sophisticated technology allows districts to track buses, and in case of an emergency, it enables the driver to summon help by pushing a red panic button.

But the main draw for students remains the music programs, which are automatically downloaded to the radios every night. There are three versions of a program — tailored to elementary, middle and high school students — each featuring about 15 songs, along with the commercials and public-service messages.

The hosts for the programs are Mat and Lucia, disc jockeys who dispense advice on girl-boy relationships and bullying and pass along bus safety tips (no standing in the aisles, check both mirrors when backing up, etc.).

For many districts, the radios are a salvation from the tedium and peer pressure that can lead to fights aboard buses, especially as budget cuts and consolidation have left students with long rides and little more to listen to than the roar of diesel engines.

Here in Milford, which spends $3 million a year to transport 4,500 students daily, school officials contacted BusRadio last year after hearing from other districts that the music had a calming effect. School officials have estimated that about 200 disciplinary referrals a year stem from disputes on buses.

Harvey B. Polansky, the Milford schools superintendent, said that bus safety had improved because the radios kept students in their seats, and that the global positioning system allowed the district to monitor the vehicles closely.

“I think it’s all about resources,” he said. “We have so many limited revenue strands that you want to maximize any commercial enterprise to assist the education program.”

Dr. Polansky pointed out that the district already placed advertising from local restaurants and sponsors on its high school football and baseball fields to subsidize athletic programs. District officials said they had received three complaints from parents and a student objecting to the bus advertising, as well as a few requests for different music (no more country).

Several Milford parents said that their children were already exposed to far too much commercialism without having to hear commercials on the ride to school. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate,” said Claudia Berg, whose son Sean, a fifth grader, will ride the bus to middle school next fall.

Tracy D’Anna, a computer software trainer, said she enjoyed listening to music on her own trip to work and could understand the appeal for students. But she is concerned about the overall message being heard by riders like her daughter, Olivia, a fifth grader. “If it’s music to calm the savage beast, then yes, I’m for it, but if it’s just to sell products to kids, then no,” she said, suggesting that the district should send home a list of the radio advertisers.

During a half-hour run on Tuesday afternoon, Bus No. 3 played two paid advertisements, both for Dick Blick Art Materials, as well as a public service announcement urging students to stay in school.

If there was a complaint among the riders, it was that they had no control over the dial. Rebecca Sherrick, a seventh grader, said she found the mainstream music selection — say, anything by Hannah Montana — annoying and wanted to hear more heavy metal and rock. “If they had more variety, I think more people would enjoy it,” she said.

The bus driver, Sue Riebling, kept her hand near the radio controls, ready to click off the music if the students became too loud or disorderly. “They want to hear the music, so they’ll sit and be quiet,” she said. “As soon as they do that, they know the radio goes on and we’re in business.”

After dropping off the last student, Ms. Riebling kept the radio on because she liked the music, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/nyregion/17bus.html





A Grand (i.e., Cool) Piano
David Pogue

What do you think: In times of unemployment, rampant foreclosures and imminent recession, would it be tasteless for me to review a home entertainment component that costs $42,000?

Good. I didn’t think so, either.

It’s a piano, actually. A Yamaha grand, 5 feet, 3 inches long. (It comes in longer versions, actually, costing up to $150,000. But one step at a time.)

This instrument, the Disklavier Mark IV, is the first piano in the world with an Internet connection. And since it’s also a digital player piano, all kinds of eyebrow-raising possibilities open up.

Like previous generations of Yamaha’s self-playing pianos, the Mark IV looks like any other grand: a gleaming, polished, stately presence in the living room. The only indications you have that something unusual is going on are the power and Ethernet cords sneaking out from underneath and a two-inch-tall control panel peeking out from beneath the lower-left skirt of the instrument.

Maybe you’ve seen digital player pianos in a hotel lobby or shopping mall, playing holiday tunes all by themselves, keys and pedals madly going up and down. This is not an audio recording, mind you; the hammers strike real strings, making live acoustic music. It’s a re-creation of a real pianist’s performance, faithful to the tiniest grace note.

It’s also very freaky to watch.

In the past, the well-heeled owners of these Disklavier pianos bought floppy disks or CDs containing recorded performances by famous pianists. At $30 to $35 an album, they’re not cheap; then again, who’s going to complain after buying a piano that costs as much as a Lexus?

The Internet connection adds a twist, however: it lets you subscribe to live-piano “radio stations.” For $20 a month (or $200 a year), you can tune into channels like Classical, Broadway or Rock. Your grand piano can now play itself all day in that musical style. It seems like a natural fit for what must be the Disklavier’s core market: hotels, malls and McMansions.

You can also buy songs à la carte. The Yamaha store is something like the iTunes store, complete with a 30-second preview of each song. The difference is that in this case, the previews (and the songs) are played live by a friendly ghost on the piano right next to you.

Songs are pricey, still $30 to $35 an album. They’re tiny files; most download to the piano’s 80-gigabyte hard drive in about two seconds. (The piano can also play standard, free MIDI files, which are available by the thousands online.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “$42K? C’mon — even with all those features, this thing can’t be worth more than, like, 35 grand.”

But wait, there’s more. When a piano comes with a hard drive, Ethernet jack, video output, stereo speakers, audio/microphone input, CD and floppy drives, U.S.B. jacks and an open-source Linux operating system, all kinds of new tricks are possible:

Alarm clock. You can schedule particular songs to play automatically at up to 99 different times and dates.

Piano teacher. Some of Yamaha’s song files come with sheet music that appears on a computer screen or TV, if you connect one. At this point, the Disklavier helps you find the next note by physically half-pressing the key a couple of times. It’s not for the easily startled, but it works.

Accompanist. Some of those teaching songs come with a built-in orchestral accompaniment that follows you as you speed up or slow down. (The Disklavier has a built-in library of sampled instrument sounds.)

Karaoke. Lyrics appear on the screen as the piano (and its synthesized orchestra) accompanies you, and you can add plenty of reverb.

Commercial audio CD piano highlights. This one is almost impossible to describe, and almost as difficult to justify, but here goes: You can buy live piano parts that are designed to play along with existing CD albums. For example, as your own Elton John CD plays through the Disklavier’s speakers (or your stereo system), the keys come to life, playing the piano part along with the recording.

Quiet mode. At any point, you can turn the piano into a completely digital piano. (Inside, a bar actually blocks the hammers so that they don’t strike the strings.) At this point, you can put on headphones and practice in silence. Or you can make the piano sound like a trumpet, bass, drum kit, or whatever. Of course, any cheapo kiddie keyboard can do that trick — but on this piano, you get the satisfaction of playing actual, wooden, weighted keys.

Sing backup with yourself. The piano can multiply your voice as you sing into a microphone, creating virtual backup singers. How does the piano know what notes they should “sing”? It analyzes what keys you’re playing at the moment. Clever.

Record music. You can easily record your own piano performance — and then, on playback, speed it up, slow it down or change the key. A metronome is available, and you can re-record only the parts that you muffed.

I tested the free 3.0 software update, now in beta testing (and due in July), which lets you record live audio along with your piano performance. That is, you can record yourself singing as you play, or record a friend playing flute or violin while you tickle the ivories. You can then transfer the resulting mix to a PC, using a flash drive or network connection, for burning to a CD or sending by e-mail.

You manage all these stunts using a Wi-Fi wireless color touch screen remote that looks like a particularly beefy PalmPilot. The software isn’t always a masterpiece of polished perfection, but navigation isn’t difficult, thanks to the prominent Back button. The halves of the remote slide apart to reveal a thumb keyboard that you can use for naming your recordings and searching the store. (The 3.0 software will also include software that duplicates the remote’s functions on a Mac or PC.)

There is a two-second lag when you press the physical playback buttons on the remote (like Play or Stop), and Internet operations sometimes present the Wait screen for several seconds at a time. It would be nice if the remote’s battery lasted longer than an hour or so once it’s out of the charging dock. And the Wi-Fi should have been built into the remote; right now, it’s an ugly, protruding card in a slot.

For such a niche product, though, the Mark IV over all is surprisingly polished. Its biggest potential drawbacks have nothing to do with the technology, but with the concept itself.

First of all, the various playback features described above require a dizzying array of song file formats, and they go by a dizzying array of names. The karaoke, music CD playalong, piano-teaching and other files have names like PianoSoft Plus, PianoSoft Plus Audio, Smart PianoSoft and so on.

Worse, there are precious few songs available in each format. Yamaha offers only 167 albums of songs that the piano can play by itself, piano-part playalong files for only 575 songs on music CDs, and so on.

You’d have to be concerned that the novelty will wear off, too. Suppose you actually have the $42,000 to spend. After six months, are you still going to be loading up those Chopin files to show your friends when they come for dinner?

If the answer is yes, then you, the affluent owner of this amazing machine, have a lot to look forward to. Grafting the very new (Linux, Wi-Fi, Internet connection) onto the very old (classic grand, hammers hitting strings) might seem like a recipe for a Frankenstein monstrosity — but they mesh surprisingly well. The result is one of the most imaginative, unusual and expensive home-entertainment modules to come along in years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/te...h/17pogue.html





Celebrity Music Throwdown, Part 1: Peter Gabriel and the Filter
Brad Stone

A preview of The Filter, a Web site that recommends music and movies.

Today, a look at two celebrity-influenced startups trying to ride revolutionary changes in the media business. And you get to vote: Do these Internet companies have a chance of being successful?

First up: The Filter, backed and advised by the British singer and technology evangelist Peter Gabriel, who was in San Francisco last week promoting the company in advance of its relaunch today.

The year-old startup, based in Bath, England, started life as yet another music recommendation service. About 200,000 users have downloaded the software, which tracks what music they listen to and purchase online, then recommends new songs or bands they might like.

The new system, which is being reintroduced today in a private test, takes a more comprehensive approach. The service will now filter all online media habits – the music and movies people like, the Web videos they watch, and soon, the books they buy – and offer advice about all their entertainment and information options.

“In this age, where the curator is becoming just as important as the creator, the disc jockey becomes the life jockey,” Mr. Gabriel said. “You carry this around with you as a tool that is available 24 hours a day to help you make choices.”

Users must still download the Filter software to their desktop, where it spies on… er, digests various streams of Internet behavior (the music and videos they keep in iTunes, their streaming and browsing history, etc.). Users can also connect with their friends on the service and track their media-consuming behavior. UPDATE: The company says the download is optional but provides richer recommendations.

The company then threads that information through its algorithms to generate highly targeted and personalized recommendations – not only the songs, movies and Web videos users might like, but also what they might be in the mood for at a particular time. Each user will get a home page on the site where they will see their recommendations.

The Filter has lots of competition, of course. Amazon and Apple’s iTunes make similar recommendations very close to the potential point of sale. The Filter must also jockey for position with music-only recommendation services like the CBS-owned Last.fm.

But the company, say its founders, has the advantage of being more comprehensive and more open. Users can feed in their activities on other Web sites, like Netflix, Last.fm and the music site Imeem. And other companies can license the Filter’s recommendation engine and integrate it into their own sites.

Mr. Gabriel, who also backed We7.com, a British streaming music site, and Od2, one of the first music download services, now owned by Nokia, says he’s excited about the ways that the Web is taking a sledgehammer to the music business.

“All sorts of new life forms are emerging out of the corpse of the music industry,” he said. “Anything the old music business was looking at, they had to feel like there was going to be $100,000 in sales before they put their hand in their pocket. This should allow a lot of experimental projects.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...nd-the-filter/

Celebrity Music Throwdown Part 2: Will Smith and PluggedIn

A new Internet music company is looking to displace YouTube, MySpace and MTV.com as the hub for music videos on the Internet.

PluggedIn, a Santa Monica-based startup launching tomorrow, is backed by Overbrook Entertainment, the production and management company co-founded a decade ago by Will Smith.

PluggedIn wants to be the preeminent online repository for high-definition music videos on the Web and a new place for artists to plant their online flag. The site will launch with 10,000 free, high-quality music videos licensed from Universal, Sony BMG and EMI. The videos played quickly and looked sharp on a test version of the site earlier this week.

The site also offers more than a million comprehensive artist pages, using what you might call a little Internet sleight of hand. Videos, photos, biographies and blog items that are posted elsewhere on the Web are vacuumed up by PluggedIn and displayed on the artist’s page as if the material was freshly baked on site.

Users can do the usual stuff on PluggedIn: make video playlists, follow the activities of bands or friends, meet other aficionados with similar tastes and feast on targeted advertising and shopping opportunities.

The competition is everywhere, of course. Most prominently, MySpace recently announced a joint venture with three of the four major music labels to spin out MySpace Music, an effort that is sure to feature music videos and exclusive content from bands.

So where does Pluggedin fit in?

“We look at the all the changes shaping online entertainment and see massive opportunity for lots of companies to appreciate and forge really viable consumer connections,” said Jeff Somers, chief executive of PluggedIn. “We think what will separate us from what is out there today is an unbelievable high-quality viewing experience, matched with in-depth content and community tools.”

In an increasingly crowded online music environment, is that enough? Time for the readers to weigh in.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...din/index.html





Judicial Watch Calls on FEC to Investigate Elton John’s Fundraising Concert on Behalf of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign
Press release

“Sir Elton John is not a citizen of the United States and is therefore prohibited from making any contribution to Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) related to a fundraising concert by musician Sir Elton John on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Elton John, a foreign national, is prohibited by federal law from making any contribution to a federal, state or local election campaign.

“Recent news reports suggest that Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton for President have accepted an in-kind contribution from a foreign national, Sir Elton John, in contravention of federal electon laws,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated in an April 14 letter to the Office of the General Counsel for the FEC. “On behalf of Judicial Watch and its supporters, I hereby request that the FEC investigate this matter.”

According to a press release issued by the Clinton campaign, the expressed intent of the concert was to raise funds for Hillary’s campaign for president. In the release, Elton John is quoted as saying, “I'm excited to support Hillary by performing at what will be a truly memorable night.”

Press reports also show that Sir Elton John, on March 17, 2008, through the Clinton campaign, sent out a mass email announcing the concert and soliciting support. The Elton John concert took place on April 9, 2008 and raised more than $2.5 million (from the sale of 5,000 tickets) for Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton for President.

However, according to 2 U.S.C. § 441e, “Contributions and donations by foreign nationals,” it is illegal for any foreign national to “make a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value…in connection with a Federal, State or local election.” The Washington Times reported March 27, 2008, that a “1981 FEC decision prohibited a foreign national artist from donating his services in connection with fundraising for a U.S. Senate campaign.”

“It looks as if Elton John, a foreign national, gave a valuable, in-kind contribution to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which is prohibited by law. The FEC and other authorities need to take appropriate action and investigate Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and Elton John,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

To read Judicial Watch’s FEC complaint in its entirety, please click here.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/judicia...linton-s-presi





R.E.M. Accelerate To Highest Chart Debut In 12 Years
FMQB

On the heels of great reviews and a huge media push, R.E.M.'s new album Accelerate debuts at #2 this week on the Soundscan sales chart. It is the veteran band's best chart debut since 1996's New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Accelerate moved over 115,000 copies in its first week and also debuts at #1 on the Alternative, Rock, Digital and Internet sales charts as well. The album also debuted at #1 around the world, topping the sales figures in Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and the U.K., with #2 debuts in Austria, Germany, Holland and Italy.

However, R.E.M. could not overtake Country great George Strait in America, as his new album, Troubadour, debuted at #1. Rapper Trina debuted at #6 with Still Da Baddest, while Van Morrison made it into the top 10 with his new album, Keep It Simple. Other notable debuts for the week included the soundtrack to the Rolling Stones' new film, Shine A Light, at #11, Blues rockers The Black Keys at #14 with Attack & Release, veteran Rockers Sevendust at #19 with Chapter 7: Hope & Sorrow, and George Michael's new best-of set, Twenty-Five, debuting at #23.

Some other chart debuts of note include Theory Of A Deadman (#26), Moby (#27), In Flames (#28) and the live CD/DVD set HAARP from Muse (#46).

The top 10 is rounded out by NOW Vol. 27 at #3, Day 26 at #4, the Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack at #5, Danity Kane at #7, Counting Crows at #8 and rapper Rick Ross at #9.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=650851





Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing
Ben Sisario

NOW added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store.

The hole-in-the-wall specialty shops that have long made Lower Manhattan a destination for a particular kind of shopper have never made a great deal of money. But in recent years they have been hit hard by the usual music-industry woes — piracy, downloading — as well as rising real estate prices, leading to the sad but familiar scene of the emptied store with a note taped to the door.

Some 3,100 record stores around the country have closed since 2003, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a market research firm. And that’s not just the big boxes like the 89 Tower Records outlets that closed at the end of 2006; nearly half were independent shops. In Manhattan and Brooklyn at least 80 stores have shut down in the last five years.

But the survivors aren’t giving up just yet. Saturday is Record Store Day, presented by a consortium of independent stores and trade groups, with hundreds of retailers in the United States and some overseas cranking up the volume a bit to draw back customers and to celebrate the culture of buying, selling and debating CDs and vinyl.

Among the highlights: Metallica will be greeting fans at Rasputin Music in Mountain View, Calif., and Regina Spektor is to perform at Sound Fix, a four-year-old shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that like many has learned to get creative, regularly offering free performances. At Other Music, a capital of underground music on East Fourth Street in Manhattan that faces a shuttered Tower Records, a roster of indie-rock stars will be playing D.J. all afternoon, including members of Tapes ’n Tapes, Grizzly Bear and Deerhunter.

One-day-only record releases will also be part of the event. Vinyl singles by R.E.M., Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend, Stephen Malkmus and others are being sold on Saturday, and labels big and small are contributing sampler discs and other goodies. (Schedule and information: recordstoreday.com.)

“Record stores as we know them are dying,” said Josh Madell of Other Music. “On the other hand, there is still a space in the culture for what a record store does, being a hub of the music community and a place to find out about new music.”

Some retailers are hoping that the effort is not too late. Jammyland and the Downtown Music Gallery, two East Village institutions — Jammyland, on Third Street, specializes in rare reggae, and Downtown, on the Bowery, in avant-garde jazz and new music — are facing untenable rent increases and are looking for new homes.

Jammyland is “the model of what a great record store can be,” said Vivien Goldman, the author of “The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century” and other books. “D.J.’s congregate there from all over and exchange ideas. It’s a crucible of music knowledge.”

For a local music shopper with a memory of even just a few years, the East Village and the Lower East Side are quickly becoming a record-store graveyard. Across from Jammyland is the former home of Dance Tracks, a premier dance and electronic outlet, which closed late last year, as did Finyl Vinyl, on Sixth Street. Stooz on Seventh Street, Sonic Groove on Avenue B, Accidental on Avenue A, Wowsville on Second Avenue and Bate, an essential Latin store on Delancey Street — all gone, to say nothing of stores in other neighborhoods, like Midnight Records in Chelsea and NYCD on the Upper West Side.

“Rent is up, and sales are down,” Malcolm Allen of Jammyland said as he sold a few Jamaican-made 45s to a customer last weekend. “Not a good combination.”

Like many longtime clerks, Mr. Allen is frighteningly knowledgeable. Testing out a random single on the store turntable, he discerned in a few seconds that it had the wrong label: it wasn’t “Good Morning Dub,” he said, but rather U-Roy’s “Music Addict,” from around 1987, itself a response to Horace Ferguson’s “Sensi Addict.” That earned him a quick sale, and later research confirmed that he was right on the money.

Casually dispensed expert knowledge like that is exactly what Record Store Day is looking to celebrate. Ms. Spektor, who started off selling homemade CDs and is now signed to a major label, Sire, said that independent stores had been the first to carry her music, and that their support helped her career take off. And though she said she now feels contrite that for years her music collection was made up mainly of items copied from friends — “I just had no money” — she is supporting the stores out of gratitude.

“I’m the record label-slash-store nightmare,” Ms. Spektor said. “Everything I had was a mixtape or a burned CD. But I don’t like the idea of all the record stores where people actually know what they’re talking about going out of business. They have their own art form.”

Every year consumers buy less of their music in stores. According to Nielsen SoundScan, retail outlets accounted for 42 percent of album sales last year, down from 68 percent in 2001.

To adapt, many stores are devoting more space to DVDs, clothes and electronics. That’s the case even with the biggest retailers, including Virgin Megastore, which has 10 outlets in the United States. (It has closed 17 since 1999.) The company reported that last year its sales were up 11.5 percent. But nonmusic purchases accounted for the jump; music sales were flat. Simon Wright, chief executive of the Virgin Entertainment Group North America, said that over the last four or five years music sales had gone from being 70 percent of the stores’ total to less than 40 percent.

“The sheer drop-off in the physical music market is going to inevitably cause the space allotted to music to come down,” Mr. Wright said. “That will obviously contribute to further decline.” He added that the future of Virgin’s Union Square location was up in the air; though profitable, he said, the store is just too big for the current market.

Whatever people buy there, the store is doing a brisk business. It buzzed with shoppers on Sunday afternoon. Some of them, like Kim Zeller, a 37-year-old clothing designer pushing a baby carriage, said that buying music on the Internet just can’t compare to the experience of browsing in a store — and getting out of the house.

“It kind of gets boring when you’re trapped inside listening to music from your computer,” said Ms. Zeller, who had bought new CDs by Erykah Badu and the Black Keys. “I still like coming to the store.”

Although many have been shuttered, more than 2,400 independent shops still exist around the country. And even in the most gentrified parts of Manhattan, some are carrying on the same as ever. A-1 Records, on East Sixth Street, which has Polaroids out front of the D.J.’s who shop there, is still a popular trove of rare vinyl, as are the Academy outlet on East 12th Street, Record Runner and Strider on Jones Street, and the venerable House of Oldies on Carmine Street. The Academy store on West 18th Street has one of the most picked-over CD inventories in the city.

Products that aren’t fundamentally made up of ones and zeros — vinyl records, for instance, which have a habit of turning casual fans into collectors — have proved a salvation for many retailers. Eric Levin, the owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta and one of the organizers of Record Store Day, said vinyl accounted for a quarter of his music sales.

“That may only be a niche as we go forward,” Mr. Levin said, “but it’ll be a giant niche you can make a lot of money on.”

For many New York shops, however, the real estate crunch is making survival difficult. The Downtown Music Gallery, which sells about $60,000 in CDs, DVDs and other items every month, has been searching for a new home for six months, said Bruce Lee Gallanter, its founder. So far it hasn’t been able to find anything affordable in its namesake area in Lower Manhattan and is considering moving to Queens, Brooklyn or Washington Heights.

“We would love to stay downtown,” Mr. Gallanter said. “That’s what we’re all about. But we have to be realistic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/ar...ic/18reco.html





Amazon Gains Share of Shrinking Paid Music Market
Saul Hansell

If you pan back and look at how people are getting their music these days you see that the companies fighting for the people who pay for music are battling over an ever-smaller piece of the pie.

NPD’s annual survey of Internet users, which is some 80 percent of the population these days, found that 10 percent of the music they acquired last year came from paid downloads. That is a big increase from 7 percent in 2006. But since the number of physical CDs they bought plummeted, the overall share of music they paid for fell to 42 percent from 48 percent.


How people acquire music from of an annual survey of Internet users by the NPD Group

NPD’s data about how well Amazon.com’s five month old digital music store is doing made me wonder about the bigger picture of how Amazon and Apple fit into that overall music market.

The music industry has high hopes for Amazon. All four major labels are allowing it to sell their songs as MP3 files, without any protection against illegal copying. Their goal is to win over some people who may have been stealing music and also to create a counterbalance against Apple, which some in the music industry believe has too much power.

The NPD data for February show that so far Amazon has had a strong start, although it is still tiny. It now has one tenth the market share of Apple. Since Apple has largely dominated the per-track download sales, that makes Amazon the distant No.2 in the market, said Russ Crupnick, who runs NPD’s music service. That would give Amazon’s digital store an overall share of the music market of about 2 percent.

Meanwhile, the biggest source of music for people is their friends—either burning CDs or ripping files for listening on computers or iPods. And despite the record industry’s crack down, there is no reduction in the number of people of peer-to-peer file sharing service.

“The number of people who do peer to peer in 2007 versus 2006 has been stable,” he said. “The number of files taken per users has increased significantly.” This is because of the shift of many users from Limewire to BitTorrent, which makes it easier to download whole albums.

Mr. Crupnick also sent a second slide that puts into perspective how people are listening to music these days. The graph, below looks both at how many people use a given method and how often those people use it.


How people listen to music from a survey of Internet users by the NPD Group

For penetration, listening to AM/FM radio and to CDs on a CD player are still the most popular activities. People also listen to music on the radio more times per week than any other method.

But digital music is coming on strong. Listening to music on a computer has the third largest number of people, followed by listening on a portable device like an iPod. And people using portable players listen to it rather frequently. That is mixed news for the music industry because digital files on players are the easiest way to use borrowed and stolen music.

All the newer forms of digital music, many of which are less resistance to piracy, have yet to reach mass adoption. These include music on mobile phones, Internet radio and other forms of music streamed over the Internet. More worrisome for the music industry and the promoters of these new formats is that none—other than listening to music on phones—have really engaged the people who have tried them.

The music labels will look at this data and say, “If we just stick with the CD and the Apple model we are in deeper trouble,” Mr. Crupnick said.

As for Amazon, NPD found a different audience profile than iTunes users. Amazon doesn’t yet have the huge teenage audience of iTunes. Nor does it have a large female audience. But Amazon customers are more likely than those on iTunes to buy albums rather than single tracks.

That is borne out by the results of a recent promotion. February should have been an especially good month for Amazon because it is linked to a promotion that Pepsi introduced on the Super Bowl. But Mr. Crupnick said the NPD data does not show much of an impact from the Pepsi giveaway. When Apple was involved in a similar SuperBowl promotion a few years ago, Mr. Crupnick added, there was a surge in traffic.

One of the distinctive features of Amazon’s stores is that it sells tracks in MP3 format. Many tracks Apple sells still have copying restrictions known as digital rights management. But Mr. Crupnick suggested that that with Apple dominating the music market, most users simply don’t care. People who buy songs from Apple can listen to them on their computers and iPods without a problem. The restrictions only keep them from sending the songs to others or using non-Apple devices.

“DRM doesn’t make a difference for someone who lives their iPod and loves their iTunes, he said. “It’s a lot harder to get someone who isn’t interested in digital music to try it.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0.../index.html?hp





Top P2P Applications: 1.6 Million PCs Rank Them
Richard Menta

"We have a powder keg of data here" I told Digital Music News publisher Paul Resnikoff as I completed this quarter's Digital Media Desktop Report. The report, a coordinated effort between Big Champagne, PC Pitstop and Digital Music News, tracks the global installation base for leading digital music applications including P2P clients, ecommerce clients, and jukebox applications. More than 100,000 unique PCs are polled for this data each month and more than 1.5 million unique PCs are polled over a given year. Over the past 12 months we analyzed data from 1,661,688 machines





For the entities that created these applications this data is a potent tool; one that can draw needed VC money or boost the stock price of those that are publicly traded. Of course, this is a report for purchase by digital music insiders and investment analysts so the general public is mostly unaware of these figures or the dramatic trends they imply for the near future.

That's when I convinced Paul it is only good business to share with the public a piece of a past report and demonstrate a sample of what we have uncovered. Figures that offer a baseline perspective to what was occurring in the P2P space last year ending September 2007 and what it all may mean for 2008. There is a lot of change occurring, change that not only makes clear how badly once popular names have faded, but identifies the up-and-comers among a myriad of budding entrants.

Some Numbers

Before we go into a few numbers I strongly recommend that those interested read the Methodology for Data Collection and Analysis at the end of this article. I attached the same text that is found in the original reports so that it is clear to the reader the limitations and virtues offered by this data.

In our research we found that LimeWire is far and away the single most popular P2P application. In September of 2007 LimeWire was found on 17.8% of all the PCs polled that month (also referred to as the attachment rate). With regards to market share - counting only those users with at least one P2P application on their systems - LimeWire held a 36.4% share, meaning one out of three P2P users has LimeWire on their system. These numbers are up slightly from September 2006 when LimeWire held a market share of 34.1%.

µTorrent adoption boomed during this period. In September of 2006 µTorrent was found on 1.5% of all PCs polled, good for a 3.0% market share. By September 2007, µTorrent held an attachment rate of 5.6%, which gave it an 11.3% market share. In less than a year µTorrent became the king of the BitTorrent clients, surpassing former top BitTorrent client Azureus by May of 2007.

Two new applications to look out for are FrostWire and Pando. Both have made significant gains over a nine month period and so far their growth is similar to the early rise of µTorrent. It will be interesting to see if they can sustain this growth in the coming months.

The latest report was released today and extends the research to December of 2007. Those who are interested can purchase it from the Digital Music News site here. The Press can contact Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News headquarters at 310- 928-1498 if they desire more information on this new report.

Methodology for Data Collection and Analysis

PC Pitstop performs diagnostic tests on hundreds of thousands of unique PCs each month, worldwide. The primary purpose of these tests is to eliminate viruses, adware and spyware and to identify opportunities to improve PC performance. These tests are voluntary, and aggregated data captured during these tests provide the basis for the analysis in this report.

Over a twelve-month period, 1,661,688 PCs were polled for this analysis. In September of 2006 alone, data from 174,777 systems was collected. These numbers include only the information of first-time users of PC Pitstop, so each data point is unique. The end result of such a large cross-section is a clear month-over-month history of the applications favored by PC users.

The massive survey number reveals deeper trends. For example, a smaller survey would not detect the bubbling adoption of Frostwire and Pando. PC Pitstop captured 152 unique P2P clients in its analysis, including fringe participants. Only a data set this large could accomplish this and then follow the rise and fall of each and every client.

The data has its limitations. Although the survey can detect the presence of an application on a hard drive, it cannot tell if that application is being actively used or not. We can read through the month-to-month analysis to determine the flow of adoption and rejection of a particular application. For example, the sharp and quick rise of µTorrent is unambiguous. Likewise, the dramatic collapse of Kazaa as a presence on systems is also clear, particularly since not all users actively purge old unused applications. Change is what we seek in these numbers, change that is consistent over the given period of time. It is this change that tells the story.

Another limitation comes from convergence, or situations in which applications handle multiple activities. For example, the iTunes application is required to access Apple's iTunes music store, but it is also used as a music jukebox and as a necessary file transfer application for the iPod. Can we honestly assume that all consumers use iTunes for all three? Probably not, but it is reasonable to assume that a healthy percentage do. In our analyses, we make levelheaded assumptions about an application's popularity for a specific use.

We are also witnessing some shift in the market from client-based media access tools like RealPlayer to clientless web-based applications that only require a common browser plug-in. More operations are adopting Flash and Java technologies to deliver music and video - Slacker and YouTube are two notable examples - and that trend adds to the complexity of market share measurement. The fact that Slacker takes a multifaceted approach by also offering its users a client for improved media transfers adds to the complexity.

One more issue is the rise of Mac penetration into double digit territory in the consumer market. PC Pitstop only measures Windows machines and only a subset of the applications detected operate on a Mac - Windows Media Player being the most notable application that does not. Therefore, it is likely that Apple consumer use patterns are somewhat different. This was less of an issue when Apple held only a tiny portion of the consumer PC market, but as that company's fortunes continue to blossom, its presence must be recognized.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/8002/p2p.html





BitTorrent Use Soars as MPAA Fights on Against P2P Sites
Eric Bangeman

Both the music and movie industries see file-sharing as a very real threat to their livelihood. Their approaches to the problem have differed, however, as the RIAA has targeted individual P2P users with lawsuits while the IFPI and MPAA have chosen to go after BitTorrent sites. The MPAA has scored some high-profile victories against P2P site operators and the men behind The Pirate Bay have been indicted by Swedish prosecutors, but many observers have questioned whether the motion picture industry's efforts are in fact backfiring, as traffic to popular BitTorrent sites and participation in swarms appears to be on the upswing.
Researcher maps out plan to target BitTorrent uploaders

MPAA worldwide director of antipiracy operations John Malcolm told Ars that he believes the situation is getting better. "In some ways, the situation is improving in that we've gotten the attention of law enforcement and Swedish prosecutors have taken action [against The Pirate Bay admins]," Malcolm argues. "The Scandinavian countries are considering legislation and other countries that used to be piracy havens like the Netherlands have taken steps to make them less of haven."

The downside to high-profile actions against P2P sites is that they act as free publicity. The Pirate Bay bragged that after a Danish ISP was forced to block its subscribers from accessing the Swedish site, traffic spiked. TPB attributes the increase from the publicity surrounding the ISP's action. Malcolm concedes that there may be a cause-and-effect situation at play, but says that it's unavoidable. "Look, I don't think there's any question that some of the public may not be aware of these sites and there's going to be curiosity. Some people end up staying there" he said. "The alternative is to do nothing and hope that they don't discover The Pirate Bays of the world, and that's not realistic."

24% increase in BitTorrent traffic since November

Unfortunately, people are discovering The Pirate Bay and a whole host of other sites. Even as the MPA, MPAA, IFPI, and other groups have scored legal victories over torrent sites, BitTorrent use is growing. In fact, average BitTorrent traffic for the two-month period from mid-January to mid-March was up almost 25 percent compared with the month before Christmas, according to online media measurement firm BigChampagne.


Data source: BigChampagne

"All of the P2P growth we've seen over the past several months is in the torrent community," BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland told Ars. "There's a lot of adoption and interest in the torrent clients." Some of the growth in BitTorrent may be coming from from those growing tired of LimeWire and other traditional P2P networks, but those new to P2P seem to be jumping on the BitTorrent bandwagon. "All of the growth is in the torrent community, which maybe suggests that the audience for traditional P2P is mature."

As you can see from the chart above, BitTorrent traffic spiked over the December holidays. After a peaking at almost 12.5 million downloaders on the 200 most popular files, traffic dropped at the beginning of January—about the time that school started up again. But one figure that will prove alarming to the content creation industry is that the numbers are higher now than they used to be. "The baseline has been elevated," notes Garland. "Not only did the spike happen, but the bar was raised."

Garland draws a comparison between BitTorrent and the increased activity on the iTunes Store that pushed Apple into the top US music retailer spot. "It was like that for iTunes sales. People get gift cards, and then the volume of sales would be significantly increase," Garland said. "It looks like people haven't burned through their torrent gift cards," he chuckled.

Torrented content is also evolving as more people start using the protocol. Previously, BigChampagne used to see a lot of feature films and individual TV shows. Feature films are still popular, but TV shows are increasingly being bundled into multi-episode packs. "People are migrating towards three packs, six packs, and even whole seasons," Garland said. "Click once to get 13 hours of programming instead of clicking 13 times."

Ultimately, it's impossible to say if and how the attention the media has given to The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites has impacted traffic to those sites and BitTorrent activity. One thing is for sure: the MPAA isn't about to back down. "Content providers can't afford to sit by and do nothing," Malcolm tells Ars. "We need to highlight that [copyright infringement] is not a victimless crime and take appropriate actions."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...p2p-sites.html





Secure File Sharing Available for Free Online
Press release

KeepandShare.com announces free secure file sharing with private file sharing software and secure, private online file sharing sharing

San Francisco, California - April 15, 2008 -- KeepandShare.com ( http://www.keepandshare.com ) today announced its free online secure file sharing resource center. Available immediately, KeepandShare's new secure file sharing resource center combines file sharing program and extensive web-based file sharing to make it easier than ever for users to share online file sharing securely on the web. Accounts are free, and users can be in their private file sharing software account within 30 seconds of signing up.

KeepandShare's free secure file sharing online web center is available now at:

http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/free_file_sharing.php

"Most file sharing systems are too hard to use. That's why I like KeepandShare's online file sharing - it's just so simple" said Christina Smithson of Twin Cities, Minnesota. Christina continued, "KeepandShare's online file sharing is unique in that I can upload any kind of file from my Mac or PC, and I can control sharing on a file-by-file or folder basis. So that makes the KeepandShare private file sharing software ideal for sharing my files online".

Rebekah Winograd of Los Angeles, California, a power file sharing user, said "The way KeepandShare's online file sharing combines simple file sharing with with the ability to upload any type of PC file makes it a unique solution on the web. Add the secure, private group sharing in this groundbreaking private file sharing software, and you have an ideal solution for both personal and group file sharing needs. KeepandShare should be commended on their secure file sharing.

Rebekah continued "web-based file sharing can be marked public and then published to a group's website, appearing as a seamless part of the group's native website. Anyone who needs online file sharing should take a close look at KeepandShare."

KeepandShare.com is the free website that makes group sharing easy. KeepandShare's free secure file and calendar sharing accounts can be accessed securely from any Internet connected computer. The new free secure file sharing resource center joins several other popular file sharing centers at:

http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/free...g_programs.php

http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/file...hare_files.php

http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/file...le_hosting.php

About KeepandShare.com

KeepandShare.com (www.keepandshare.com) is the free website that makes group file & calendar sharing easy. With a few clicks, anyone can create a secure group file or calendar sharing center in 30 seconds. Keepandshare.com is a private 'sharing space' where families, friends, clients, businesses, and groups of any kind can keep and share calendars, files, documents, lists, journals and photos safely and privately. With over 270,000 registered members KeepandShare.com is among the web's fastest growing sites.
http://www.emailwire.com/release/127...ee-Online.html





A Tech Lover's Call to Arms
Don Reisinger

For years, I've wanted to write this piece, but for one reason or another, I didn't think it was the right time to do it. But now, as I look at technology zealots like myself who have been forced to submit to the will of the vocal minority that has no idea what this industry is all about, I think it's time.

Whether it's lawmakers, the RIAA, MPAA, "family groups" or other misguided individuals, these people are taking the technology industry to task for everything it stands for and anything it does. Gone are the days of appreciation for what technology provides and here are the days of contempt.

Years ago, technology lovers were not-so-affectionately called geeks who had no idea what the real world looks like. These people were ostensibly scared of the opposite sex in high school, enjoyed tinkering with electronics on weekends and hardly ever played sports. But as those geeks created technologies that transcended industries, they suddenly gained respect and the pejorative has become a term of endearment in appreciation for the creature comforts those people created.

But now, a new group of people has emerged to confront the tech lovers all over the world and stop them from being able to do what they want with the technology they own. And while many have tried to confront them on an individual basis, it has not worked. And it's for that reason that we must all come together and fight the ridiculous impositions brought upon us.

How many times must we hear that video games cause violence before we stand up together and stop the spewing of inaccurate ideas? How many times must we listen to the RIAA tell us that college students are the root of all evil as it pertains to piracy before we tell the organization that it's wrong? How many times must we listen to public interest groups allow families to get off the hook instead of blaming them when "security concerns" are revealed to the public before we tell them the truth? How many times must we listen to people who have no knowledge of the technology industry restate the misguided ramblings of lawmakers before we vote for change?

These questions have yet to be answered. Sure, some of us have ensured that we continue to inform tech lovers from all across the globe about what's really going on in the industry, but none of us -- journalists and readers -- have stood together to confront the beast that continues to grow each day.

Everyday when I wake up, I'm constantly reminded by how limited we are in our rights with technology. Why are women forced to pay ridiculous sums of cash for stealing 20 songs? Why are ten-year old children forced into a deposition that the plaintiff hopes will yield even more cash for a misguided cause? Why are college students blamed for piracy when huge cartels overseas are allowed to run amok? Why can companies charge too much for too little and get away with it? Why am I paying for 10mbps service when I only get 2mbps?

According to GamePolitics.com, an Arizona bill that was passed in the state's House of Representatives last month "would make content producers, publishers and distributors liable for monetary damages if any written, audio, visual or digital material from which they profited was judged to have been "dangerous" or obscene and motivated someone to commit a felony or an act of terrorism."

The ambiguity of that bill is indicative of many of the laws enacted by lawmakers all over the country. Instead of forcing people to be responsible for their own actions, lawmakers have seen it fit to embrace a policy that makes those who provide technology to individuals the lawbreakers. Ironically (or maybe not), that doesn't happen in any other industry. In other, more political, industries, the companies win out, but in the technology business, we're expected to suffer.

Of course, the plight of the technology industry goes far beyond video games. Each day, we're told that what we really want to do is wrong. You want to download music? Nope, you should be paying a ridiculous premium on CDs. You plan on ripping a DVD you own onto your computer? Don't even think about it. You're paying for faster speeds than you really get? Oh well. You're forced to pay $175 to get out a cell phone contract? Tough luck.

Some have said that it'll eventually get better when the younger generation assumes positions of power and I agree with that. But who really wants to wait that long? Why has the entire technology industry rolled over in the face of lawmakers and misguided organizations for no good reason?

Enough is enough.

I think it's time that every person who truly cares about the future of the technology industry and their own well-being stands up and rights the injustices being forced upon each and every one of us. We shouldn't be forced into specific arrangements that promise more than they provide and we surely shouldn't wait in anxious anticipation of what could be.

For what it's worth, I call on all journalists, readers and companies to forego their apathy and do what they can to stand together and fight the ridiculous notion that technology should be throttled back for fear of its inability to adapt to the expectations of the Old Guard.

If nothing else, technology is the beacon of hope in these times of economic and socio-political tumult and we should do what we can to ensure that misguided individuals and lawmakers alike understand and fully appreciate the value and importance of technology.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13506_1-9922350-17.html





A Creator of Captain America, Fighting On
George Gene Gustines

“Living legend” is how Joe Simon is categorized on the list of special guests appearing at the New York Comic Con at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this weekend. Mr. Simon, 94, has a different take on it. “I call it the old-geezer table,” he said during a recent interview at his Midtown Manhattan apartment.

Mr. Simon will take part in the “Legends Behind the Comic Books” panel at 3 p.m. on Friday, one of numerous events planned at the convention, a three-day celebration of all things comics.

Mr. Simon earned the “legend” title with his partner Jack Kirby by creating Captain America, the superhero who arrived in December 1940, just in time to play a patriotic foil to the Axis powers. The cover of the first issue even has the good captain socking Hitler in the jaw.

For Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby, though, the biggest blow came when they were dismissed from the series, which had been selling a million copies a month, in a dispute over royalties. The team moved to Detective Comics (today DC Comics), but Captain America stayed with Timely, the forerunner of Marvel Comics.

It’s a tale worthy of its own comic (and one of many inspirations for Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”): On the frontier of a new industry, writers and artists creating scores of characters, but publishers profiting from them.

These days creators have learned from the past by self-publishing or otherwise securing the rights to their progeny. But some of the founding fathers of American superheroes are still seeking justice. Just last month a federal judge ruled that the heirs of Jerry Siegel, a creator of Superman, were entitled to claim a share of the United States copyright of the character. Time Warner, which owns DC Comics, would retain the international rights.

“That’s great,” the bespectacled Mr. Simon said. “Jerry Siegel started it,” he added, referring to the effort by Mr. Siegel’s wife and daughter in 1997 to secure the copyright to Superman. (Under a 1976 law, heirs can recover the rights to their relatives’ creations under certain circumstances. Mr. Siegel died in 1996 without major compensation for his character.) That family’s stand inspired Mr. Simon’s own claim to Captain America in 1999.

“We always felt ‘we wuz robbed,’ as Joe Jacobs, the boxing promoter, used to say,” Mr. Simon said of his dispute over the ownership of Captain America, which he settled out of court with Marvel in 2003. He said his royalties for merchandising and licensing use of the hero now help pay his legal bills from the case.

But copyright was not on Mr. Simon’s mind when he was conceiving Captain America. He didn’t even begin with the hero. “Villains were the whole thing,” he said. And there was no better foil than Hitler. Who better to take him on than a supersoldier draped in the American flag?

The art for the series also broke the mold. “Kirby started this idea of elastic art, action and double-page spreads,” Mr. Simon said. “It was a whole new package.” But it was not to last. The pair felt that they were being cheated on royalties by their publisher, Martin Goodman. Frustrated, the team began negotiations to move to Detective Comics. When Mr. Goodman found out, Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby were fired, but only after they had finished issue No. 10 of Captain America Comics.

At Detective, the two would create the Sandman, the Guardian, Manhunter and more. For other companies they would create the Fly and Fighting American. Of his ideas, Mr. Simon said, “One of them would fail, another would fail, and eventually you got one that was successful.”

Mr. Simon is surprised by the interest in him (including recent book offers from Rizzoli and Abrams) and the continued vitality of comic-book characters. But, he said, he has always been concerned about getting more money for the talent.

“People in comic books have a very sad history in dealing with their creative people,” he said.

Todd McFarlane, 47, who in 1992 helped found Image Comics, agreed. “I read the stories of Joe Simon,” he said. “I read the stories of Jack Kirby. I read the stories of all those guys in the ’40s, ’50s and even the ’60s. I kept coming across this repetitive story: the creative guy got the short end of the stick.”

Mr. McFarlane’s artwork on Spider-Man made him a superstar. His interpretation of the character — lankier physique; larger eyes on the mask; and a kinetic, three-dimensional feel to his webs — returned the comic to top-selling status. But Spider-Man’s newfound appeal brought editorial control and notes.

“I was sitting at the top of the charts, and all of a sudden I wasn’t good enough,” Mr. McFarlane said of the requests that he redraw panels or rethink layouts.

“If it was about money, I would’ve stayed there,” he said. “But I had to move on.”

Mr. McFarlane and six other artists formed Image Comics to take control of their own and their characters’ destinies. “All we ever wanted was a small voice in the conversations with editorial,” he said. Spawn, a hero who makes a pact with the Devil, was created when Mr. McFarlane was in high school. The character was an immediate success and went on to be featured in toys, a film and an animated series on HBO. Today Mr. McFarlane has companies that deal with toy design and manufacturing, video games, film and video productions and more.

With so much on his plate, he has not spent much time drawing comics. That’s soon to change. Haunt, a new series about a priest possessed by the ghost of his brother, a secret agent, will be introduced this summer. It is written by Robert Kirkman, owner and creator of the two series Invincible and The Walking Dead. Mr. McFarlane will illustrate the covers, oversee layouts and ink pages.

Mr. Simon may not be involved in monthly comics, but he’s still drawing. In September 2001 he recreated the cover of Captain America Comics No. 1, but substituted Osama bin Laden for Hitler. “I did it out of anger,” he said. “Adolf got his. Osama will too.”

When he heard from friends at Marvel that Captain America might be murdered in 2007, Mr. Simon grabbed his brush. The result was a “Last Supper” painting of the captain and 12 fellow champions at a table surrounded by junk food.

Mr. Simon said he was worried about the direction the hero — well, his replacement — has taken. “The new costume, with the pistol and knife, and the old shield design going down to his privates, that’s not Captain America,” he said. Mr. Simon said he feared that someone would “shoot up a campus with pistols,” claiming he was inspired by the character.

Comics may still cause Mr. Simon agitation, but they also introduced him to his wife, Harriet, who was a secretary at Harvey Comics. (She died in 1972.) “I met her when I came from the war in my military outfit,” he said. She asked him to pull up his pant legs. He dutifully agreed. “What did you want to see?” he asked.

“ ‘I won’t go out with a guy with pasty white legs,’ ” he recalled as her response. “I didn’t ask her if I passed the test, but we went out.” They were married for 25 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/books/16gust.html?hp





"Nerdic" Geek Speak is Fastest Growing Language

Tech dialect adds more words than English language
Amy-Mae Elliott

The explosion of technology has created the fastest growing language in Europe, according to research published today.

Dubbed "Nerdic", this new way of communicating via technological terminology has developed separately to English and become the shared language of Europe, allowing people to communicate without geographical boundary.

According to the research by PIXmania.com, Nerdic may be more widely spoken than any other European dialect, with everyone from tech-toddlers to Wii-playing grannies embracing the geek speak of IT enthusiasts.

The researchers analysed the terminology associated with modern gadgetry and discovered that the three core elements required to define a new language: words, phrases and pronunciation are all present in Nerdic. So much so, that Nerdic is evolving faster than the English language, at a rate of more than 100 new words per year.

From "dongle" to "Wi-Fi" 100 new words were added to the Nerdic vocabulary in the past 12 months- over three times more than the Oxford English Dictionary added to the official English language, with experts predicting that this figure will more than double in 2008.

Our very own Stuart Miles explains the importance of Nerdic: "Technology has revolutionised the way we speak. With so many words and phrases being invented all the time it's created a whole new way of communicating, especially compared with traditional languages like Welsh & Gaelic that're dying out. Everyone knows what it means "to google" something, but a foreigner turning to an English dictionary for an explanation would be baffled.

"It's incredible that I can describe an N96 with HSDPA, Wi-Fi with a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss and GPS and be understood across Europe, although Brits may still be confused when they hear the French talking about their "wee-fee"!"

Pixmania.com has applied to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to recognise Nerdic as an official language spoken by Europe's population of over 700 million people (the same status was recently awarded to the 2,000 speakers
Cornish).

To help Brits improve their Nerdic, Stuart Miles and his team have identified the top ten Nerdic words and phrases Brits need to look out for in the next year and the ten they can forget; a full glossary of which can be found online at Pixmania.com.

PIXMANIA.COM'S TOP TEN NERDIC WORDS & PHRASES TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2008:

1. Wimax - Supersized Wi-Fi will give whole cities internet coverage, Milton Keynes already has it.
2. RickRoll - To intentionally misdirect internet users to a video of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by 80s one-hit-wonder Rick Astley
3. UGC (user generated content) - The buzz word in the internet right now. Flickr, facebook, reader reviews, YouTube all rely on the reader generating content on the sites.
4. Mashup - Take two or more really interesting elements from different websites or applications and make them into one - think Google Maps with an overlay of where you can buy clown outfits from
5. RFID - Radio-frequency identification (RFID) will allow you to track your packages around the world or let you know how your bananas have travelled to you
6. Android - Think iPhone but with a slightly different interface on phones from Samsung to HTC and with the ability for anyone to make applications for it
7. HDMI - The new Scart lead allows you to connect High-Def devices together, like your TV to your new Blu-ray player
8. Fuel-cell - Green water powered battery for everything from cars to laptops that will boost your gadget's life considerably over standard batteries
9. HSDPA - The next step up from 3G on mobile phones. Makes accessing the internet on your mobile just as fast if not faster than your broadband connection at home
10. DVB-H - Newly announced Mobile TV standard for Europe that allows you to watch TV on your mobile on the go.

PIXMANIA.COM'S TEN NERDIC WORDS TO FORGET IN 2008:

1. HD DVD - Just like Betamax, HD DVD is now the dead format against Sony's Blu-ray in the HD disc battle when it comes to High-Def movies
2. Dial-up - Broadband is the way to go if you are looking to surf the internet so throw that 56k modem out with the rubbish (or recycle them where facilities exist)
3. VHS - DVD players are so cheap and PVRs are so easy to use that the movie format that would take you 10 minutes to rewind after watching a film is dead
4. Tri-band -Replaced by Quad-band, 3G, or HSDPA to allow much better phone coverage abroad, much better for the traveller in you
5. Hits - How website popularity used to be measured before people realise that unique visitors is what's important
6. CRT - Fat TVs to you and me. Flat is the new thin so get with the times and relegate your Fat TV to the tip. You'll save extra space in the living room too
7. KB - Standing for Kilobytes and important when computer memory was a measly 64k. Look out for the new super-size Terabyte
8. Floppy disk - Replaced by USB thumb drives and CDs the idea of only being able to get 1.4MB on a disk would now seem mad to the average 10 year old
9. MiniDisc - Sony's now defunct music format that was like the CD only smaller. Overtaken by MP3 before it even got going. It didn't stand a chance
10. Super Audio CD - A higher quality CD format that never really took off. Why? Because you needed state of the art expensive kit to run it on and there aren't enough audiophiles out there that care! http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/ne...language.phtml




Exploring Fantasy Life and Finding a $4 Billion Franchise
Seth Schiesel

In the winter of 1860 Milton Bradley, a lithographer in Springfield, Mass., released a new game he had developed called the Checkered Game of Life. Its players began on a checkerboard square called Infancy and tried to make their way through various trials to the destination of Happy Old Age.

Before radio, before phonographs, at a time when cards and dice were tainted in the popular imagination by their association with gambling, that first version of Life in some ways opened the modern age of in-home games. Almost 150 years later, it still isn’t often that a new game breaks into the canon of family entertainment. The classics — the likes of Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk — are many decades old. In board games there hasn’t been a new mass phenomenon since Trivial Pursuit’s debut 26 years ago.

But over the last eight years the Sims — Life’s modern, digital descendant — has found a place in millions of homes and hearts beside all those creations of cardboard and laminate. On Wednesday Electronic Arts, the Sims’s publisher, plans to announce that the series has sold more than 100 million copies (including expansion packs) in 22 languages and 60 countries since its introduction in 2000.

All told, the franchise has generated about $4 billion in sales or an average of $500 million every year for the last eight years, placing the Sims in the rarefied financial company of other giants of popular culture like “American Idol,” “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter.”

But beyond the facts and figures, the Sims has become one of the most famous game franchises (behind perhaps only Mario) because it has heralded the evolution of video games into mainstream entertainment. Years before the Wii, before Nintendogs, before Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft and the other recent hits credited with rescuing games from the clutches of geekdom, the Sims was entrancing girls in a medium most often aimed at men. In a video game universe dominated by living room consoles, the Sims has remained a more intimate experience on office and bedroom PCs. In a world reshaped by the Internet, the Sims has remained almost entirely an offline, single-player experience.

So how did a game in which the action is as mundane as scrubbing a toilet, having a kid or flirting with a neighbor come to captivate so broadly?

If the Sims were a TV show, there would hardly be a question. Since the early 1970s, many of the most popular television shows have been set in locations no more exotic than a living room, from “All in the Family” through “The Cosby Show” and “Seinfeld,” not to mention telenovelas and daytime soap operas. As a noninteractive medium, television has often proved most powerful when it provides a clear reflection of the lives of its viewers. Because they are at once immediately recognizable but at a safe distance outside one’s self, classic television characters like Archie Bunker can provide an insightful lens on the vagaries of modern life.

Most games are different. Rather than peer in from outside, their players in some way become the protagonists and must take responsibility for their actions. That act of inhabiting another character, rather than merely watching it, creates a moral and dramatic responsibility for both the designer and the consumer.

The easy way to handle that responsibility has usually been to place video games in environments that at least appear to have little to do with reality. In a game with no human characters, that’s easy; think of Pac-Man, Tetris, Minesweeper. When human characters are introduced, that flight into the fantastic usually means a science-fiction universe, a war zone, a realm of orcs and elves or a land of cheerleaders and quarterbacks. Lately, new games have allowed people to channel their inner rock stars.

All those sorts of games are about allowing people to explore external expressions of their fantasy lives, precisely because the settings are so outlandish. After all, how many of us are really going to win the Super Bowl, pilot a spaceship or slay a dragon?

The Sims has stood out because it is perhaps the only game series that is fundamentally about exploring the inner expressions of a person’s fantasy life. There is no way to avoid it. Just as a novelist’s every character in some way reflects the writer, every Sim in some way reflects its creator. Even if that “ ‘Desperate Housewives’ meets ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ ” household you made doesn’t appear to reflect your real life, it does reflect some aspect of you.

In that way the Sims is a very different experience from the SimCity line that began in 1989. SimCity is a traditional strategy game in that it is presented at a level of abstraction where individual people are nothing more than antlike dots; there is little emotional, as opposed to merely proprietary, connection. The Sims, by contrast, is all about managing idiosyncratically individual lives of your own concoction.

If this all sounds a lot like playing with dolls, you’re right. The core, most passionate audience for the Sims has become school-age girls. Across many years and many cultures, girls have long been the demographic group that most gravitates toward playing at “real life.” (Boys, meanwhile, with their footballs and toy soldiers, as with their video games, have usually played at inhabiting some external, aspirational identity.)

As we age, we sometimes become more reluctant to explore publicly the what-if of our lives, to admit to wondering what else we could have become. Last weekend I sat an adult friend down at the Sims and suggested she start her own virtual household. “This feels like a psychological test,” she said warily, looking up at me with suspicion.

Of course it is. And it will come as no surprise in the coming years to hear that some therapists are incorporating the Sims into their practices. Why ask, “Tell me about your family?” when you could ask, “Why don’t you create your family?”

In that vein, one of the most telling elements of the Sims’ popularity is that it has never really succeeded online. Electronic Arts once thought that people would flock to manage their digital families together in cyberspace neighborhoods, but that has not been the case. While little girls have no shame or self-consciousness about opening their virtual homes, it turns out that adults are more circumspect. For adults, playing the Sims can be like writing a diary. And that is the big difference between the Sims’ cycles of death and birth and the simulated aging in a social board game like Life.

“What we’ve discovered is that the Sims is a very private experience for a lot of people,” Rod Humble, head of the Sims studio, said in a telephone interview last week. “It’s private because it’s set in real life. Rather than on a console in the living room where everyone can see, you generally play on a handheld or on a PC in the study, where no one can look over your shoulder. You get to tap into this wonderful childhood imaginary game, which is ‘What if I could create my own little world and all the people in it and watch them go through their business and jump in and change things when I want?’ That is a pretty personal fantasy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/ar...on/16sims.html





'Simpsons' Stirs Uproar in Argentina

Upcoming episode causes controversy
Charles Newbery

An episode of "The Simpsons" is stirring a political uproar in Argentina -- even though it hasn't yet aired.

In the 10th episode of season 19, which has already screened in the U.S, Carl Carlson tells Homer that former Argentine President Juan Peron was a dictator, adding "When he disappeared you, you stayed disappeared."

"Of course, his wife was Madonna," Lenny Leonard says in reference to the singer-actress' role as Eva Peron in "Evita."

However, it wasn't the Peron regime but the 1976-83 military dictatorship that followed his rule that has been blamed for the disappearance of 30,000 citizens.

The episode isn't skedded to air until June or July on Telefe and Canal Fox in Argentina.

But the segment on YouTube had an estimated 12,000 viewings in Argentina over the weekend.

Lorenzo Pepe, a former congressman and now secretary general of the National Institute of Juan Peron, called on national broadcasting regulator Comfer to intervene.

It isn't clear what action Comfer could take. A spokesman for the regulator said censorship wasn't an option for "The Simpsons," which for years has been a top-rated import in Argentina.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...goryId=14&cs=1

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

April 12th, April 5th, March 29th, March 22nd, March 15th, March 8th

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[Maze]

Lawd have mercy ...cool off Jack! Pull it together boy! Get centered! Yer doin' it to it...but it need's more focus. ...(jk...keep on truckin' Mr. Spratts!

[JackSpratts]

thank you tom. welcome back.

- js.