Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 26th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"A lot of the money not spent on music in the twenty-first century is being used to pay off credit-card debt that was incurred during the nineties. In other words, not paying for In Rainbows today is helping people eliminate the balance they still owe for buying Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when they were broke in 1995." – Chuck Klosterman


"I just sat on my horse and I looked down. Gosh, I was right in the middle of God’s flower garden. The wildflowers were just everywhere. The smell was so great. And I couldn’t help but say: ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for just lettin’ me be out there.’" – Merlin Rupp


"I think in the future, capitalization will disappear." – Richard Sterling



































April 26th, 2008




Oops! MPAA Lawsuit Gives Free Publicity to Torrent Site
Jacqui Cheng

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has hit yet another web site over copyright infringement with a new lawsuit. The organization says that Pullmylink.com facilitates copyright infringement by indexing and posting links to what the MPAA believes is pirated content. Pullmylink.com ultimately profits from piracy, argues the MPAA, and should be shut down.

We've heard these arguments before. The lawsuit follows a string of previous suits filed against similar services recently in an attempt to crack down on piracy, including peekvid.com, youtvpc.com, showstash.com, cinematube.net, ssupload.com, and videohybrid.com. That's not all: two years ago, the MPAA sued BitTorrent, eDonkey, USENET, and TorrentSpy (among others) for making it easy to find and download copyrighted content, too. In TorrentSpy's case, the court eventually ruled in the MPAA's favor after finding that those behind TorrentSpy attempted to destroy evidence and lied under oath.

The reason the MPAA believes that pullmylink.com is "profiting" from providing these links is because it serves ads on its page. The organization says that pullmylink.com has 12,000 unique daily visitors generating some 39,000 pageviews on those ads, although it doesn't specify where it pulled that data from. 12,000 unique daily visitors is a drop in the bucket, definitely putting it on the smaller side of things. But that hasn't stopped the MPAA from breaking out its big legal guns.

"Pullmylink.com and sites like it are a one-stop shop for copyright infringement," said MPAA VP John Malcolm in a statement. "We have filed several other similar suits and will continue to do so in order to hold operators accountable for their illegal activities. Profiting from the theft of other people’s creative works is illegal and we have every intention of shutting this, and sites like it, down for good."

This latest lawsuit comes as BitTorrent use is on the rise, but the MPAA still believes that things are getting better on copyright infringement front. The folks behind the Pirate Bay were recently indicted by Swedish prosecutors, which the MPAA says is evidence that its efforts are paying off. "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 told Ars recently. "Content providers can't afford to sit by and do nothing. We need to highlight that [copyright infringement] is not a victimless crime and take appropriate actions."

Of course, the MPAA's lawsuit against Pullmylink.com has another effect that the MPAA is fully aware of. People who had no idea Pullmylink.com existed (including me) are now aware of it and what it offers. We wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are going to head over to check it out—perhaps downloading a few movies in the process. More than one reader hinted as much to us, and let's be honest here: shouldn't the MPAA have bigger fish to fry?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...rent-site.html





The Pirate Bay Smashes 12,000,000 BitTorrent Users
enigmax

The notorious Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker has reached yet another milestone as it serves more than 12 million peers. The site is also throwing down a challenge: They want every Pirate Bay peer to tell a friend - and get 20 million on the tracker soon.

It gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger - and more notorious. And more popular.

Today, The Pirate Bay announced that they have achieved an amazing 12,000,000 peers on the tracker, surpassing the previously-amazing 10,000,000 announcement just a short while ago.

Interestingly, and particularly so for fans of private trackers, brokep announced that since 2004, there has been a massive increase in the number of users actually seeding files, rather than just being regular peers. In 2004, around 20% of the tracker population were seeds and by 2005 this had increased to 25-30%. By 2006, the seeders had increased to an impressive 35% and 2007 saw further gains to 40%.

In 2008, the seeders amount to an impressive 50% of total tracker peers, further indication if it was needed that the desire to share clearly trumps the efforts of anti-piracy agencies.

Brokep of The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak: “We have more seeders than leechers now. It was like 25% seeders 75% leechers [in 2004/2005], since then it’s gradually shifted over to 50/50″

But a measly 12,000,000 peers isn’t enough for the Pirate Bay crew. They want more - and more. And we end with a call out to the community from Brokep: “What we want you to do is to spread the word to your friends and make more people share files! Let’s break 15 million - and 20!”

It won’t be long in coming.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...-users-080424/





IFPI Expert Witness in Pirate Bay Case Worked for IFPI
enigmax

The only expert witness used in the case where the IFPI campaigned for The Pirate Bay to be blocked in Denmark, was previously employed by the IFPI. Now working for an anti-piracy company, Kristian Løkkegaard used to work for a law firm serving the IFPI but the court didn’t know this.

When a conflict of interest rears its head, it can cast a long shadow over someone’s objectivity, or in the case of legal proceedings, jeopardize a whole case. Yesterday we reported that a key player in The Pirate Bay case - a policeman - has been working at Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Shocking, yes. But what if there were two similar events, on subsequent days?

Today it has been revealed by Computerworld that the expert witness - the ONLY expert witness - in the Danish Pirate Bay blocking case, was previously employed by the IFPI, a fact revealed through his LinkedIn social networking page.

Kristian Løkkegaard is now working for DtecNet Software, an anti-piracy company. DtecNet Software originally stems from Antipiratgruppen (Danish Anti-Piracy outfit) and Johan Schlüter Law Firm, where several of the partners are co-owners of the internationally successful firm.

Kristian Løkkegaard had also been employed for two years at Johan Schlüter Law Firm, which has the IFPI as a client, something which many find shocking, like Morten Agervig Helles who represented Tele2, the ISP ordered to block The Pirate Bay in Denmark. “I couldn’t in my wildest dreams believe that they would use a witness that had previously been employed by them” he said.

The court in Frederiksberg probably had no knowledge of that fact when it ordered Tele2 to block The Pirate Bay in February this year, however that doesn’t change the fact that Løkkegaard had a conflict of interests. Right now, the court doesn’t wish to comment on this situation.

According to Lars Bo Langsted who is a lawyer and faculty-leader at Aalborg University, witnesses must be objective. He says that there is a difference between a representative for one of the sides in a trial and an objective witness. “If you give testimony as an objective profesional and not as a representative of one of the parts in the trial, then you give testimony as an independent expert. In relation to that, it is of course very important that it is clear weather the person in question is capable of that or not.”

In the interests of transparency, this information about previous employment should have been known to the court but it is nowhere to be found in the court documents. Morten Agervig Helles, who represented Tele2 says this is also news to him: “I didn’t know that. No one told me. Neither that he had interests in the case nor that he had been employed.”

Kristian Løkkegaard said that he only appeared in the courtroom for very limited time: “I do not remember how exactly it went, but normally the judge or a clerk asks who I am, what my background is, my employment and so on. And then I answer those questions.”

He says that because of his expertise he has been called as an witness in similar cases by Johan Schlüter Lawfirm. “I wasn’t in the courtroom during the whole hearing,” he said “and I cant remember exactly which questions they asked. But this is not something I want to try to hide or have tried to hide.”

Thanks to Peter_Pan
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-expert-...r-ifpi-080424/





RIAA Spent $2 Million Lobbying for Tougher IP Laws in 2007
Eric Bangeman

These days, the Recording Industry Association of America is arguably best known for its legal campaign against P2P users—filing over 25,000 copyright infringement lawsuits in a few short years will do that, I guess. But as a music industry trade group, the group has several other responsibilities. One of those is lobbying Congress for tougher copyright laws, an endeavor that the group spent nearly $2.1 million on in 2007.

Each year, groups that lobby Congress are required to report on how much they spent convincing lawmakers to pass legislation. During 2007, the RIAA spent $2.08 million lobbing Congress on three pieces of legislation near and dear to its heart: The PRO-IP Act, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act, college funding bill The College Opportunity and Affordability Act, and legislation relating to royalties paid by terrestrial and Internet broadcasters.

The far-reaching PRO-IP Act was introduced to the House in December 2007. The bill would create a new executive office, the Office of the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, which would be charged with coordinating IP enforcement at the national and international levels. IP agents would be sent to other countries to assist in investigation and crackdowns in much the same way as they do drug-trafficking investigations.

The PRO-IP Act would also increase penalties for copyright and trademark infringement, allowing for the seizure of equipment used for copyright infringement. Originally, the bill included penalties of up to $1.5 million for illegally copying 10-song compilation CDs, but that provision was later pulled by a House subcommittee. The legislation has yet to emerge from committee, and the last action was a December 2007 subcommittee hearing.

Over in the Senate, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act is the latest incarnation of the PIRATE Act. The RIAA loves this bill because it would outsource the thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits filed each year to the Department of Justice, saving the group millions of dollars in legal fees. The IPEA would also increase funding for the FBI's investigations of crimes "related to the theft of intellectual property." The IPEA has also yet to emerge from committee.

The RIAA's interest in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act comes from a very controversial provision that requires schools to make plans to implement copyright filters on their networks and offer legal alternatives to file-sharing. Colleges and universities across the country opposed the IP enforcement provision of the financial aid funding bill out of fears that it would ultimately lead to financial aid being cut off. House staffers have told Ars that is not the case, saying that failure to plan for filters and legal music services would have no consequences.

The RIAA's lobbying efforts aren't just limited to Congress. The group is part of the Copyright Alliance, which also counts the MPAA as a member. The Copyright Alliance claims to speak "on behalf of the 11 million Americans employed in the creative industries," and has lobbied the current presidential candidates for tougher copyright laws.

CEO Mitch Bainwol, president Cary Sherman, and director of strategic communications Paige Ralston Fromer were among those working the halls of the Capitol on behalf of the RIAA during 2007.

As a private trade group funded by the record labels, the RIAA's budget is an unknown quantity, and it's impossible to say what percentage of its budget the RIAA spends on lobbying (or P2P litigation, for that matter). The group's $2.08 million expenditure is a mere fraction of the $2.8 billion spent lobbying Congress and the executive branch last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. $2.08 million isn't even enough to crack the top 20 list, which was headed up by the US Chamber of Commerce with $52.75 million. Lockheed Martin brought up the rear of that list with $10.41 million spent.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-in-2007.html





Fight Against Illegal Downloading Heats Up
Park Si-soo

Prosecutors are investigating domestic file-sharing portal sites for alleged copyright violation practices, including unauthorized content reproduction and distribution.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said Monday that it had begun probing eight peer-to-peer sites at the request of the Coalition of Anti-Piracy in the Korean Movie Industry. The coalition was established in July last year in association with 128 Korean film productions.

The anti-piracy organization blamed the Web sites in question for infringing upon film producers' rights by unlawfully distributing movie content in cyberspace.

The eight accused firms are Nowcom (running PDBOX and CLUBBOX), KTH (running I-Disk), SOFTLINE (running TOTOROSA), Media Networks (running M-File), KUTECH (running Endisk), UZ Interactive (running WawaDisk), iSERVE (running FOLDERPLUS), and EZWON (running WeDISK).

Prosecutors, now compiling information to probe, will soon summon officials of the P2P companies to question them over alleged wrongdoings.

``Internet users' illegally downloading movies and recklessly reproducing them is rampant here,'' Kim Ji-hoo, spokeswoman for the filmmakers' rights group, told The Korea Times. ``We have constantly alerted them to suspend their controversial services but couldn't see any changes. So we took legal action against them.''

The rights group has already filed civilian and criminal lawsuits against them on behalf of 35 local film makers for ignoring copyright violation activities in their services.

According to the Copyright Protection Center, it detected more than 2 million cases of visual content being circulated without copyright holders' permission during the first quarter of this year, much higher than 170,000 music file cases and publication content with 945,000 cases.

The center said this damage to the media industry, including the movie industry, was estimated at more than 2 trillion won as of 2006, adding actual damages could be much worse given the vastness of the Internet in Korea.

Kim said Internet users still consider illegally downloading copyright-covered content a minor violation.

According to the Korea Culture & Content Agency's survey in 2006, of 1,000 respondents, about 21 percent had downloaded cultural content through Internet Web sites such as P2P services without permission. But 70 percent of them considered the practice not illegal.

``We should correct public ideas of copyright violation before making any legal counteractions,'' the spokeswoman said. ``We produced short anti-piracy campaign films to raise awareness. They are now being shown at hundreds of movie theaters nationwide. Also, we plan to organize a variety of campaigns in a bid to raise public awareness of copyright violation on the Internet.''

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism last Tuesday announced comprehensive measures against these illegal acts. The ministry, which is teaming up with the National Police Agency and interests groups in the media industry, will act together to clampdown on the burgeoning crime.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news...117_22868.html





Quashed!

From the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Case No. 1:08-mc-00013-JM:

ENDORSED ORDER granting MOTION to Quash Subpoena.

Text of Order: “Granted. Attorney Clifford Shoemaker is ordered to show cause within 10 days why he should not be sanctioned under Fed R Civ P 11 – see Fed R Civ P 45(a)(2)(B) which requires that a deposition subpoena be issued from the court in which the deposition is to occur and Fed R Civ P 45 (c)(1) commanding counsel to avoid burdensome subpoenas. A failure to appear will result in notification of Mr Shoemaker’s conduct to the Presiding Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.”

So Ordered by Magistrate Judge James R. Muirhead.
(Entered: 04/21/2008)

Order (.pdf format)

Many thanks again to everyone who has offered their support.
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/152/





A Letter from Mp3Tunes
AngryGnome

I have always wanted to start a blog that I would actually stick with and continue to post to. Perhaps this is the one. We shall see. In any case... I have found a cause worth starting the blog at least, and it is this email I received from mp3tunes.com:

Dear MP3tunes Customer,

Let me start by saying that as the CEO of MP3tunes I appreciate your support over the last few years. Your suggestions and patience have helped us build the Locker system we have today. We just launched AutoSync that makes managing your music collection easier than ever.

As you may be aware, the major record label EMI has sued MP3tunes, claiming our service is illegal. You can read about the case here. Much is at stake -- if you don't have the right to store your own music online then you won't have the right to store ebooks, videos and other digital products as well. The notion of ownership in the 21st century will evaporate. The idea of ownership is important to me and I want to make sure I have that right and my kids do too.

I would like to ask for your assistance in our battle for personal music ownership. We need your help because we are a small, 15-person company battling an international giant. They would like to make us spend all of our money paying legal bills. Here's what you can do to help:

1) Please upgrade to a Premium account. This week MP3tunes is launching 3 service levels. I hope you will consider signing up for one of the paid levels. This will not only help us pay for the costs of our service (machines, storage and bandwidth) but a portion will go to cover our legal costs in our case with EMI.

2) If you have a chance to talk publicly about our cause on your blog, with friends, reporters or even EMI personnel please do so. MP3tunes is working hard to design a secure personal music service. We don't promote sharing of music in any manner. We want people to legally acquire their music. But once they do, we think it's important that you be able to use it how you want for your personal use. The AmazonMP3 store says: "You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use." and this is what MP3tunes allows you to do.

You have my commitment that I'll continually battle for your right to store your music online and listen to it anywhere on any device. I hope you'll consider helping MP3tunes in our battle. Thanks.

-- Michael Robertson
CEO
MP3tunes.com

I have been a long term user of mp3tunes and, in case you have never heard of it or haven't figured out for yourself by now, I will explain what it is. Mp3tunes.com is a website that allows you to store an unlimited amount of music online. Not only that, but it also allows you to stream said music and "sideload" music from websites online. I won't go too far in explaining the features the website offers, you can go find out for yourself. There is a free service and a paid service that gives you more features. Now, keep in mind... none of the features involve sharing music (illegally or otherwise). This is why I find it so outrageous that they are being sued for promoting illegal file sharing. Again, I won't go into the gritty details of the suit, you can read them for yourself.

I encourage everyone who hasn't already done so to check out mp3tunes.com. I have always used the free service; however, I am planning on signing up for a premium account in order to help them fight this ludicrous case.

More to come.
http://alifeofpiracy.blogspot.com/20...-mp3tunes.html





DRM Sucks Redux: Microsoft to Nuke MSN Music DRM Keys
Jacqui Cheng

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. "As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," reads the e-mail seen by Ars. "You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play."

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running.

The news will likely upset a number of Microsoft's customers, who bought music from MSN Music before the company launched the Zune Marketplace and decided to ditch the old store. Microsoft's decision to turn off the MSN Music authorization servers serves as a painful reminder that DRM ultimately severely limits your rights. Companies that control various DRM schemes, as well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any moment—no matter what your expectation was when you bought it. Some Major League Baseball fans learned this the hard way last fall.

Bennett insists that MSN Music keys are, in fact, not yet expiring. Technically speaking, that's true—if I authorize one of my PCs, never get rid of it for the rest of my life, and never upgrade its OS, I will be able to play my tracks forever. But as some of our readers note, this technicality is not rooted in reality—the authorizations will now expire when the computer does, for whatever reason. DRM-free music may be the new hotness these days, but people who bought music before the record industry began to see the light are still stuck with their DRMed music.

Of course, MSN Music customers do have one other option: burning all of their music to audio CD and then re-ripping them back to the computer as MP3s, sans DRM. But that's a lossy, lousy solution.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-drm-keys.html





Winehouse's Back To Black Goes Double-Platinum In March
FMQB

The RIAA has released its Gold and Platinum certifications for the month of March, with Amy Winehouse's hit album Back To Black certified as double Platinum. Jack Johnson's Sleep Through The Static was certified both Gold and Platinum within a month of its release. Rapper Flo Rida saw his "Low" EP certified triple-Platinum, with one million ringtones of "Low" also sold.

James Blunt and Gnarls Barkley saw their respective signature hits ("You're Beautiful" and "Crazy") both certified double Platinum for digital downloads. Paramore's "Misery Business" was certified Gold for digital sales, as was Rapper Plies' "Hypnotized."
Sir Paul McCartney's latest album, Memory Almost Full, was certified Gold as well.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=668121





Dough Re Mi

Boom in Live Music and Video Clips Gives PRS Licence to Print Money
Katie Allen

A ground-breaking deal with YouTube and a booming live music scene has seen composers and songwriters receive record royalty payouts from their songs being used online, in pubs and on stage.

The Performing Right Society, which collects and pays royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers, distributed £110m for the first quarter of 2008, up by more than a third on a year earlier.

PRS collects royalties from TV companies, radio stations, shops, bars, hotels and any other commercial venue playing music. Following licensing deals last year with the video-sharing phenomenon YouTube and other social networking websites, PRS now also collects money when songs - either original versions or covers by amateur video uploaders - are played. Live music performances also contribute and, thanks to a buoyant live music scene, those revenues almost doubled from a year ago.

To collect the money and then send out cheques - starting from £1 - to 17,600 members whose works were used, PRS analysed the use of 650,000 songs played a total of 16.5m times during the quarter.

Royalty recipients range from writers of jingles to long-time members whose recent success will bring a bigger cheque than usual - such as the soul singer Duffy who joined in 2003 - to those getting their first cheque, such as new singer Adele.

Steve Porter, chief executive of the MCPS-PRS Alliance of collecting societies, predicts payouts for the year will rise by 6-7% from £370m in 2007.

There remain vast amounts of potential royalties online. "There's still an awful lot to do. For PRS, online and mobile phones, in terms of the total money we collect, represent less than 5%," said Porter.

Finding more revenue sources, however, should not be seen as a crusade against piracy, he suggests. "Our job is to license the use of music wherever we possibly can and there is an exciting opportunity because there are a whole load of usages of music out there that are so far not licensed. I prefer to look at it through that lens rather than say 'there's a whole load of people stealing music'."

The MCPS-PRS Alliance already has deals with all the big mobile phone firms, which means royalties are passed on to writers and composers when their songs are used in ringtones or downloads.

Online, it was the first collecting society outside the US to close a deal with YouTube and has agreements with other networks, including the youth site Bebo. Given that YouTube hosts more than 10m videos potentially containing music, royalty processing is tricky. Some YouTube content is provided by record labels or broadcasters, which "watermark" songs, making them easy to track. Most videos, however, are uploaded by the public.

YouTube, and not the public, pays PRS based on total usage of works by PRS members. The headache for PRS is dividing that money fairly among members. PRS analysts sift through YouTube's most-viewed clips and work out who is owed what based on the music used and number of clicks. PRS has already analysed more than 1.5bn separate views of YouTube videos. For less-viewed videos, where it is impractical to monitor exactly what has been played, statisticians at Cambridge University provide PRS with an "analogy" that estimates what is played and how often, based on what is popular.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...s.digitalmedia





FTC Probes Copyright Monopoly
The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Fair Trade Commission on Wednesday searched the offices of the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) on suspicion it had unfairly monopolized music licensing deals with TV broadcasters, according to sources.

The FTC suspects that JASRAC hampered the entry of other organizations into the music licensing market by concluding exclusive agreements with TV broadcasters in violation of the Antimonopoly Law.

Among its other activities, the organization collects copyright royalties from TV stations on behalf of songwriters and music publishers, receiving a commission from them in return.

The 2001 enforcement of a law on copyright administration business enabled new organizations to enter the music licensing service market. But JASRAC still dominates the market, and controls the majority of musical copyright in this country.

According to sources close to the industry, JASRAC has concluded blanket licensing contracts with NHK and private TV companies. The contract enables TV broadcasters to air or record for airing every piece of music whose copyright is administered by the organization.

Under the contract, the organization collects from individual TV stations 1.5 percent of overall sales from their broadcasting business in the previous fiscal year, irrespective of how often individual pieces of music have been used.

In fiscal 2006, the organization collected about 26 billion yen in royalties from TV companies.

Although 10 organizations have registered themselves as music copyright administrators with the Cultural Affairs Agency since the new law came into effect in 2001, JASRAC maintains its dominant status in the market because of the massive quantity of music under its control. Therefore, TV broadcasters see little advantage in concluding blanket contracts with other organizations.

Although TV stations are able to conclude a different contract under which royalties are paid on a pay-per-use basis, few have adopted the system due to the high costs and large amount of labor associated with keeping tabs on all the music.

If a TV station wishes to use a piece of music whose copyright is not managed by JASRAC, it has to make an extra payment to another administrator. The FTC therefore pointed out that the current system functions to solidify TV broadcasters' dependence on JASRAC and hamper fair competitions in the market.

JASRAC completely monopolized the music licensing business for 62 years--under a 1939 law that approved the organization as the sole entity for conducting such business--until the introduction of the new law in 2001.

Currently, about 14,500 lyricists and composers commission the management of their copyright to the organization. In fiscal 2006, the organization collected about 111.1 billion yen in royalties, of which about 110.7 billion yen were distributed to its members, according to JASRAC.

"We'll fully cooperate with the commission," a JASRAC spokesman said. "We'll treat the results of the FTC inspections seriously and take necessary steps."
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national...24TDY01304.htm





Rant and roll

Biohazard Bassist Blasts BitTorrent
enigmax

The bassist and vocalist of the band Biohazard says that people who ’steal’ media by downloading it are “scumbags” and you better know that if he catches you doing it, he will happily “kick the shit out of you”. But the real problem, he says, are BitTorrent sites.

You get the impression that Biohazard frontman-turned-pornstar Evan Seinfeld isn’t going to be releasing any music for free on file-sharing networks in the near future.

In an interview with Metal Edge, the heavily tattooed self-confessed “sexual deviant pervert” doesn’t pull any punches with his views on file-sharing and doesn’t mind threatening file-sharers with physical violence. All in a day’s work for a rock star.

When it was put to Evan that part of his disillusionment with the music industry might be down to downloading, he said:

Downloading free music is stealing. There’s no other way about it. The same people who don’t have the balls to walk into a record store, take things off the shelf, and put it in their pocket because they are afraid that that are going to get busted think nothing about going on line and downloading a band’s music. That’s the way the band makes a living. If you like that band, you shouldn’t download their music for free because it can make the band go out of business. I know it’s not very rock and roll to say that; all the kids are going ‘fuck Metallica, we are going to steal their music.’ OK, how about if the guys from Metallica will go into your father’s hardware store and steal a hammer off the shelf.

Well Evan, file-sharing is generally a civil issue but stealing a hammer is criminal so, ask any file-sharer, Metallica should go to jail, obviously.

So how does the availability of free porn on the Internet affect Evan’s adult movie business?

Well, it cuts into our revenues. We spend a lot of time and money on attorneys and policing the Internet. We employ special technology to make it harder. You will never get rid of theft completely, but we have to do everything we can to prevent it. There should be some honor amongst people. Do people wake up in the morning, look into the mirror, and say, “I steal other people shit all day”? If so, you should know that you are a scumbag, and if I catch you I will kick the shit out of you.

I think most people are aware that porn stars “employ special technology to make it harder” but Evan, please be advised that “kicking the shit” out of people is a criminal offense (even more serious than Metallica’s blatant hammer theft), and punishable by imprisonment. Much more serious than file-sharing.

While actively trying to combat P2P, Evan notes that due to the way it operates, BitTorrent is more legally challenging.

We send out a lot of legal notices and have sued people. But usually by the time we send the letter they have already taken the stuff down. The real problem is these P2P bit torrent sites because the host of the site says they aren’t legally responsible, even though they really are.

Finally, Evan gives us an insight into why he believes people file-share, and suggests that it’s actually ok to “steal” stuff - as long as you do it to someone who can afford it……said the 4 million record selling musician with a $30m porn empire.

….I think the nature of people is that they want to get something over on someone, see what they can get for free. Personally, as a creative guy, [I feel that] it’s wrong. If you are going to steal from someone, steal programs from Microsoft ‘cause they can afford it, but don’t steal from creative artists who make movies and music and TV programs for your enjoyment because you become part of the problem. You’re a shoplifter. I know it’s very heavy metal to get shit for free. That’s why there are no more hardcore bands out there anymore. They are all out of business. Are you happy you killed it?

To be fair, it’s not quite dead. Biohazard will have a reunion tour this summer and everyone will be heartened to know that according to Evan, they will only be taking on the “highest paying” work.
http://torrentfreak.com/biohazard-ba...orrent-080420/





BitTorrent Throttling ISPs Exposed by Azureus
Ernesto

Data collected by the BitTorrent client Azureus shows that Comcast might only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BitTorrent throttling ISPs. Early findings show that customers from quite a few other Internet service providers experience an unusually high amount of TCP-resets.

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for quite a while, but only since the Comcast debacle has this been picked up by mainstream media.

A few months ago Azureus petitioned the FCC, which led to a FCC hearing in February. One of the complaints from the commission was that there is little data available on the scope of BitTorrent throttling, a gap Azureus now tries to fill by collecting data on the prevalence of TCP-resets among ISPs worldwide.

Last month Azureus published a plugin through which users can help distinguishing the good from the bad ISPs, and today we have a preview of some early findings. A massive 1,000,000 hours of data from over 8000 users has been collected over the past few weeks. The preliminary results again confirm that Comcast continues to use TCP-resets to manage BitTorrent traffic on their network, but they are not alone.

The rest of the Vuze/Azureus report (pdf) includes the median reset rates for hundreds of other ISPs

ISP Country Reset %

Comcast USA 23.72%
Cogeco Canada 19.13%
Emirates Internet UAE 17.86%
Cablevision USA 17.58%
Brasil Telecom Santa Catarina, Brazil 17.43%
TM Net Malaysia 16.80%
BellSouth USA 15.88%
Tedata Egypt 15.33%
Tiscali UK 14.89%
AOL USA 14.88%

TCP resets seem to be more common for American ISPs, and Comcast leads the bunch. The Azureus team has sent a letter to Cablevision, Cogeco, BellSouth and AOL, where they request that the companies are open about their BitTorrent throttling practices. Thus far, the ISPs have not responded to the letters.

At the bottom of the list we see the good ISPs, mostly from Europe. There are other ways to throttle BitTorrent traffic, besides using TCP-resets, a list of ISPs who are known to limit BitTorrent traffic is available on the Azureus Wiki.

ISP Country Reset %

Telecom Italia France France 2.53%
Orange Nederland The Netherlands 2.57%
WiLine USA 2.78%
Telefonica Germany 3.60%
Freenet Germany 4.21%

It has to be noted that the data gathering techniques Vuze uses are far from optimal. The plugin detects all TCP resets on a connection and doesn’t make a distinction between BitTorrent and other traffic, and there is no control group.

The Azureus/Vuze team will continue to collect data, and stated:

“We believe that there is sufficient data to suggest that network management practices that ‘throttle’ Internet traffic are widespread. At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they represent the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols, harming the consumer experience and stifling innovation.”

The preliminary results presented here do indeed indicate that Comcast is not the only ISP that uses TCP resets to slow down BitTorrent traffic. People are encouraged to continue using the plugin so more robust data can be presented in the near future.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-t...xposed-080421/





Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P

Video distributor finds comcast isn't alone in 'artificially interrupting' P2P traffic
Todd Spangler

The eight biggest Internet service providers in the U.S.—which collectively serve more than 54 million broadband users—all “artificially interrupt” peer-to-peer traffic to some extent, according to a study by P2P video distributor Vuze.

The study, released April 18, found that AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, Qwest Communications International and Verizon Communications regularly send false commands, designed to slow down file transfers, to BitTorrent-based peer-to-peer software.

Comcast has borne the brunt of attention on this issue, with the Federal Communications Commission currently investigating the operator for its practice of selectively blocking P2P transmissions that traverse its network.

But according to Vuze, the practice is used by every major provider. “We believe that there is sufficient data to suggest that network management practices that ‘throttle’ Internet traffic are widespread,” the company said in its report.

Vuze’s software uses the BitTorrent-developed peer-to-peer protocol to distribute promotional and ad-supported video files over the Internet from more than 100 content partners. Formerly known as Azureus, the company claims its application has been downloaded at least 20 million times.

Vuze said it collected the data—representing more than 1 million hours of Internet connectivity—between Jan. 1 and April 13 from 8,000 users worldwide who voluntarily agreed to share the data for the purposes of analysis.

Between 10% and 24% of all P2P connection attempts on networks operated by the eight largest U.S. broadband providers were “reset,” causing the software to wait before attempting to reinitiate another connection, according to Vuze’s analysis of data generated from ISP network segments with at least 20 unique users.

“At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they are the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols” to the detriment of P2P users, Vuze said.

In addition to the eight biggest U.S. providers, Vuze found that Canadian service providers Bell Canada, Rogers Cable Communications, Shaw Communications and Cogeco also disrupted P2P traffic, along with ISPs in Europe and elsewhere.

In November Vuze filed a petition with the FCC, urging the agency to implement rules that would prevent Comcast and other Internet service providers from "interfering" with P2P traffic.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Vuze has raised $34 million in funding, from investors including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital and CNET chairman Jarl Mohn.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/...?desc=topstory





FCC Tells Comcast to Unblock P2P

Ignores delay tactics
Cade Metz

US Federal Communications Committee chairman Kevin Martin realises that Comcast has its very own definition for the word "delay."

America's second largest ISP continues to say that it's delaying peer-to-peer traffic on its network, not blocking it. But Martin isn't that gullible.

Speaking before the Senate Commerce Committee this morning, Reuters reports, Martin told lawmakers that Comcast is using a "blunt" technique to crack down on peer-to-peer filesharing.

"Contrary to some claims, it does not appear that this technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that time," he said in a prepared statement.

And he reiterated that the FCC has all the power it needs to take action against Comcast. "I do not believe any additional regulations are needed at this time. But I also believe that the commission has a responsibility to enforce the (open internet) principles that it has already adopted," he said.

Independent tests have shown that Comcast is preventing users from "seeding" peer-to-peer uploads. In certain cases, when one machine attempts to upload that file to another machine, the ISP uses a forged "reset flag" to breaks this P2P connection. And these tests have shown this sort of "network management" is used round the clock.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04...comcast_again/





Pile on

Comcast: Worst. Company. Ever.
Craig Aaron

Inspired by March Madness, the folks at The Consumerist set up brackets to determine America's worst company. The tournament is still going on, but I'm not afraid to predict the winner.

It will be Comcast -- in a rout.

Sure, you skeptics are thinking, "What about Wal-Mart? Exxon? Halliburton?"

I'll admit that we can't (yet) connect Comcast to child labor, environmental destruction or Dick Cheney (although clearly you've never sat for seven hours on a Saturday waiting for a new DVR). But I'm not alone in my seething rage for the nation's largest cable company.

The Internet is filled with sites -- like ComcastMustDie.com, ComCraptic.com and ComcastSucks.org -- dedicated to the company. Comcast customer Brian Finkelstein's video of one of its technicians sleeping on his couch has been watched more than a million times on YouTube.

Then there's Mona Shaw. This once mild-mannered retired nurse from northern Virginia (a square-dancing Unitarian, no less) got so fed up with Comcast's lousy customer service that she went down to the local office armed with a claw hammer. Here's the play-by-by from a Washington Post profile of Shaw:
Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!

Shaw was arrested and earned a $345 fine, along with the admiration of millions.

Awful customer service is one thing. But what's truly frightening are Comcast's plans to turn the freewheeling, open Internet into something that looks like, well, cable TV.

Comcast is one of the leading opponents of Net Neutrality -- the fundamental principle that prevents service providers from discriminating against Web sites or services based on their source, ownership or destination.

Along with AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, Comcast has claimed that Net Neutrality is just "a solution in search of a problem." Well, here's the problem: Last fall, the Associated Press caught Comcast secretly blocking popular -- and legal -- peer-to-peer file-sharing. First, Comcast denied it. Then it claimed it was just "reasonable network management."

There's nothing reasonable about it. The Associated Press couldn't even upload a copy of the King James Bible. And the "bandwidth hogs" that Comcast targeted just so happened to be using a service that directly competes with Comcast's video business.

In response to a complaint filed by my colleagues at Free Press, the Federal Communications Commission launched an official investigation. Comcast kept denying, stonewalling and questioning the agency's authority.

As part of its inquiry, the FCC held a hearing at Harvard University on Feb. 25. But Comcast was so afraid of scrutiny that it hired seat-fillers to crowd out the public and applaud on cue. But activists photographed the pawns sleeping through the testimony, and Comcast's ploy backfired in a big way. Net Neutrality might be complicated, but everyone knows a dirty trick when they see it.

With a second hearing announced for April 17 at Stanford University, Comcast issued a press release on March 27, touting an agreement with BitTorrent, one of the firms it had been blocking. Comcast claimed the pact as evidence that the blocking could be "worked out through private business discussions without the need for government intervention." But of course the unenforceable deal doesn't apply to any other firms or future innovators.

This fishy-sounding agreement didn't fool FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. "While it may take time to implement its preferred new traffic management technique," he said in a statement, "it is not at all obvious why Comcast couldn't stop its current practice of arbitrarily blocking its broadband customers from using certain applications."

That's FCC-ese for "I'm not buying it." Comcast's response? They sat out the Stanford hearing.

To be clear, Martin hasn't always been a friend of the public interest. He has tried to gut media ownership limits and has rubber-stamped mega-mergers. He even voted for the ruling that put Net Neutrality in jeopardy in the first place. But let's give the guy a break. After all, he's human, which means he must hate Comcast, too.

Of course, if the FCC and Congress don't act quickly to stop Comcast and restore Net Neutrality, we may have to take matters into our own hands.

Two words: Hammer time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-...e_b_97568.html





When Monetizing ISP Traffic Goes Horribly Wrong
Brian Krebs

In seeking to further monetize Web site traffic on their networks, a number of major Internet service providers may be inadvertently exposing their customers to a greater risk of online attack from identity thieves, according to research released today.

Many ISPs have already adopted the controversial practice of serving advertisements when a customer tries to browse to a Web site that does not exist. But a growing number of providers also are serving ad-filled pages when customers request a subdomain of a Web site that does not exist, such as something.example.com. This practice, which experts say potentially introduces new copyright violation claims, also potentially introduces security threats when ISPs outsource the ad-serving process to third parties.

The findings come from Dan Kaminksy and Jason Larsen, security researchers from IOActive, a security company based in Seattle, the site of the Toorcon hacker conference where the two are expected to unveil their research today. The slides from their talk can be found here.

According to the duo, ISPs like Earthlink, Qwest and Verizon have outsourced at least portions of their ad-serving technology to BareFruit, a London-based company that specializes in helping ISPs monetize wayward Web searches. The trouble is that until late this week, BareFruit's ad servers were vulnerable to what Kaminsky called a "trivial to find and exploit" vulnerability that would make it simple for fraudsters to trick users of those ISPs into visiting malicious Web sites that appear to be located at trusted sites.

So, for example, the customer clicks on a link like http://something.example.com, and while that link would indeed load the "example.com" site in the user's browser, the vulnerability would allow fraudsters to load hostile content from another site into the user's browser, such as a fake login page.

Kaminsky and Larsen also found they could use the vulnerability to steal cookies on the user's machine. Cookies are simple text files that many sites store on visitors' machines to record information that identifies the user when they return. By swiping someone else's cookies, it is often possible to log in as that victim at the Web site that issued the cookie.

The researchers said the vulnerability that allowed this kind of access to ISP users resulted from a simple cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in the Barefruit service. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities occur when Web sites accept input from the user -- usually from something like a search box or an e-mail form -- but do not properly filter that input to strip out or disallow potentially malicious code. The danger is that phishers and online scammers can exploit these types of flaws to make their scams appear more legitimate, because XSS vulnerabilities allow the attacker to force the target site to load content from somewhere else.

Kaminsky, widely considered one of the foremost experts on the security of the domain name system (DNS, as it's more commonly called, is the method by which Web site names are mapped to numeric Internet addresses), said he discovered ISPs were using Barefruit by mapping DNS requests from BareFruit's servers back to residential customers at various providers. He said the discovery disturbed him because it means many ISPs are placing the security and privacy of their customers squarely in the hands of a third-party ad company.

"This kind of practice means the security of the Web is being limited to the security of this ad server," Kaminsky told Security Fix on Friday. "My work is to secure the Web and other computer infrastructure, but this becomes near impossible when other people are injecting content into domains that I am professionally trying to secure. I can audit every single line of code in the browser and in the Web site, and I still have no idea what the Web site is going to send the browser because who knows what's going to make it through all those devices?"

BareFruit spokesman Dave Roberts said the company fixed the vulnerability this week after receiving word from the IOActive researchers. But the ISPs alleged to be engaging in this process were a bit more cagey about acknowledging their use of BareFruit to monetize traffic to nonexistent domains and subdomains.

Earthlink declined to make someone available to discuss the company's practices on this front, but it did acknowledge that it uses BareFruit's DNS error functionality "to enhance our users' experience," the company said in a statement e-mailed to Security Fix. "We believe that the service provides a positive experience for our Internet users. We continue to watch our system closely, quickly resolve any issues that occur, and listen to what our customers tell us about their online experience."

Cox Communications spokesman David Grubert said the company uses BareFruit through its partnership with search engine giant Yahoo. Grubert said the company currently does not use BareFruit to inject ads when customers request nonexistent subdomains, but that the company was considering implementing that feature in the future.

Kaminsky presented Security Fix pages of records showing numerous Verizon DSL customers being redirected through BareFruit's Web servers. Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said that while the company does use Yahoo to monetize traffic for nonexistent and subdomain errors, he was emphatic that Verizon does not use BareFruit's service.

Registrar and hosting provider Network Solutions also has acknowledged that it also serves ads on nonexistent subdomains that its customers own. Qwest officials did not return calls seeking comment.

John R. Levine, author of The Internet for Dummies, said Internet users -- at least here in the United States -- can expect to be exposed to more vulnerabilities such as those highlighted by Kaminsky and Larsen, as long as ISPs continue to be given so much leeway with the privacy and security of their customers.

"Large ISPs tend to have terms of service that say whatever we give you is what you bought," Levine said. "The ISPs will say they're doing wonderful favors for users who might have to otherwise go back and type in the real name of the site they're seeking. But the reality is that anytime ISPs add yet another level of complexity to their networks, they necessarily introduce more security bugs."

Kaminsky said the practice of subdomain DNS error hijacking is partly illustrative of what he calls the "Times Square effect:" The ads shown in movie and TV depictions of all the blinking digital billboards in Times Square often are paid for and arranged in advance by advertisers, and don't necessarily reflect the same ads that an average visitor to the physical Times Square might see at any given day or time.

"There's no contractual obligation between, say Earthlink and washingtonpost.com to deliver content in a certain way, and theoretically trademark and copyright law is the only force that prevents [ISPs] from putting in whatever material they want, from adding or removing content to rejecting or replacing ads that were already on the site," Kaminsky said. "What we're seeing here is this first instance, trivially, of the Times Square effect coming into play, where there's no obligation to display content of various trademarked sites in a particular way. And as a side effect, it makes it more difficult to secure the Web when this kind of behavior takes place."

Bret A. Fausett, an intellectual property attorney and blogger at Cathcart, Collins & Kneafsey LLP in Los Angeles, said it's tough to say ISPs are breaking the law when they place their own ads on sites that are for all intents and purposes otherwise owned by companies with a trademark claim to those domains. But that doesn't mean ISPs are legally invulnerable to potential trademark infringement claims for this practice.

"If someone wants to go to Amazon.com and [the ISP serves] something for which there is no [DNS] record configured and the ISP captures that and throws up an ad for a competitor while the browser says I am at Amazon.com, I could make a trademark argument on that, sure," Fausett said.

Most ISPs that use BareFruit's service - either for domain or subdomain DNS errors - redirect the customer to a site that clearly explains that the requested domain was not found. But as long as these types of vulnerabilities are around, ISPs can not effectively control what their customers see in the address field of their browser, Kaminsky said.

"Indeed, it is our sense that the HTTP web becomes insecurable if man-in-the-middle attacks are monetized by providers -- if we don't know what bits are going to reach the client, how can we control for flaws in those bits?" Kaminsky said.

Most Internet providers that hijack errant DNS queries from customers say the service is "opt-out," in that customers can disable the service if they like. Web site owners can create what's known as a "wildcard" DNS 'A' record for their domains, which can be assigned so that any unrecognized subdomains requested by the visitor result in the user being routed to the main Web site. The DNS redirection services being employed by ISPs and hosting providers only work on sites that have not included these "A records."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...raffic_go.html





Testifying @ FCC @ Stanford
Lawrence Lessig

I was asked to give some overview testimony at the FCC's "Network Neutrality" hearing at Stanford yesterday. Here's the testimony.

One panelist, George Ou, was particularly exercised about what he perceived to be a policy by Free Press and EFF to push for "metered access." I don't speak for the Free Press or EFF, but my view is simply that tiered access for consumers does not violate "network neutrality" principles. Obviously I'd prefer a world of flat rate, fast service. And if we actually had any meaningful ISP competition, we might get to that. But the narrow question I've addressed here is whether it would violate neutrality principles for ISPs to offer different bandwidth commitments for different prices. I don't believe it does.
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/04/testi..._stanford.html





Analysis: Net Neutrality's Atlantic Divide
Dave West

Last week the US telecoms regulator signalled it was prepared to enforce, or at least try to enforce, the principle of net neutrality - the idea that service providers should not interfere with content being delivered over their networks. The prospect of meddling ISPs has also caused a stir in the UK of late - but Ofcom chief Ed Richards has insisted that British surfers should not fret. Digital Spy looks at the two sides of the net neutrality pond.

"That wonderful open and dynamic internet, perhaps the most expansive and liberating technology since the printing press, is in fact under threat," declared Michael Copps, one of five members of the US Federal Communications Commission, at a hearing on net neutrality last Thursday. "Now is the time to add an enforceable principle of non-discrimination to our internet policy statement - a clear, strong declaration that we will not tolerate unreasonable discrimination by network operators and we have in place important polices to make sure that anyone with other ideas isn't going to get away with it."

Copps is not in charge of the regulator - that's Republican chairman Kevin Martin, who has been pretty bullish with service providers too: "The commission will be vigilant in monitoring the broadband marketplace and protecting consumers' access to the internet content of their choice... It is critically important for the commission to take seriously anyone who files a complaint that accuses broadband providers of violating these principles."

The FCC's interest in net neutrality was pricked when users, supported by The Associated Press, found cable giant Comcast was interfering with peer-to-peer file sharing traffic. Early this year the regulator decided to investigate and, though it is unclear whether Comcast will be punished, strong messages have been sent out. Martin made clear that providers would at least have to reveal exactly what traffic management techniques they were using.

Debate over net neutrality has bubbled up in the UK, too, in recent months - notably when BBC technology chief Ashley Highfield warned ISPs off throttling, squeezing, shaping or capping content; and when Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett labelled the principle "a load of b****cks".

Berkett's assertion irritated many but, while regretting the expletive, he has largely stuck by it. "We recognise that as more customers turn to the web for content, different providers will have different needs and priorities and, in the long term, it's legitimate to question how this demand will be managed," said a Virgin spokesman, attempting to add measure to the outburst.

The response is a far cry from the situation in the US, where the under-fire Comcast announced plans to co-operate with BitTorrent, the very platform it had been trying to limit. Now the telco is taking a more softly-softly approach by carrying out open tests and planning a "peer-to-peer bill of rights".

In the UK, Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards even lent support - to some extent - to Berkett's cause. In a speech on future prospects for broadband last Wednesday, he drew a line between the UK regulatory situation and that in the US: "The shibboleth of net neutrality should not be allowed to become an obstacle or a distraction to investment in next generation networks in the UK."

Though UK lawmakers may be taking a step back on net neutrality, Richards puts it down to Ofcom's tighter regulation in another area. In the UK, BT is compelled to allow any provider use of its network to provide broadband. Ofcom is laying the groundwork for a similar situation with next-generation networks, though differing technology could make things more complicated.

"(In the US) the focus has been on removing perceived regulatory barriers to investment," said Richards. "This represents a second big strategic choice for the UK – should we insist on competition everywhere or should we follow the Americans and forbear from regulation completely, at least in say areas where cable is present?

"The US forbearance policy essentially removes access rules requiring incumbents to open up their next generation access networks to other service providers."

Richards said a stronger market - always talked up by Ofcom - was the reason we did not have to worry. "The question of paying more for better services, whether traffic prioritisation, higher speeds or higher usage limits, has also been caught up in the net neutrality debate in the US. In part this reflects a slightly atavistic sense that the internet ought to be free and egalitarian in all respects. But it is also in part a response of genuine competitive concern about the emerging vertically integrated duopoly in access networks.

"In Europe we do not have the same limitations on competition. In a more competitive environment, there is less inherent problem with traffic management and prioritisation or with the principle of expecting customers who receive greater benefits to pay more. If network operators get these calculations wrong, consumers will switch to another provider."

In the future, as seen by Edwards, the UK will be waving goodbye to net neutrality soon - if it has not already. The cost of expensive improvements to networks will largely be paid by those who want super-fast internet, he predicted. "My mother only needs 1Mbps, why should she pay for you to have 100Mbps?" he wondered. "Actually, why should I pay for you to have 100Mbps?"
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcas...ic-divide.html





Not in Kansas anymore

Oz Broadband Gets Faster
Andrew Colley

INTERNET connections in Australia are getting faster, new figures released by the country's chief statistician have revealed.

The number of broadband connections capable of speeds in excess of 1.5Mbps more than doubled in the 15 months to December 2007 to 2.51 million services, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said in its latest internet activity report released today.

In September 2006 there were around 1.13 million Australian broadband services capable of speeds of more than 1.5Mbps.

The ABS has also started reporting on the number of broadband connections capable of speeds over 8Mbps.

It found that by the end of last year, there were 1.2 million broadband services capable of speeds of between 8Mbps and 24Mbps.

The number of dial-up connections in operation has also declined rapidly from 2.75 million subscribers in September 2006 to around 1.9 million at the end of last December.

The ABS also revealed evidence of consolidation in the internet provider industry. Since March 2005 the number of ISPs has fallen 38 per cent from 689 to 421.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html





Eircom Rejects Record Firms' Claims

Eircom has rejected claims by four major record companies that it, as the largest broadband internet service provider in the State, must bear some liability for the illegal free downloading of music by computer users.

The companies have claimed Eircom's networks are being used 'on a grand scale' for illegal downloading.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly said today he expected to fix a July date for the hearing of the unique action brought by the record companies against Eircom. The action is the first here aimed at internet service providers, rather than individual illegal downloaders, and reflects growing concern within the music industry about the scale and cost of illegal downloading.

The latest figures, for 2006, indicate that 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded worldwide in that year alone, while the industry estimates that, for every single legal download, there are 20 illegal ones.

The case was initiated last March and Eircom has filed a defence rejecting the claims and contending that the record companies have established no cause of action against it. Discovery issues are being finalised and the sides expected the case to be ready for hearing within weeks.

Mr Justice Kelly was told by Mr Paul Coughlan, for Eircom, there would be considerable technical evidence in the case relating to the claims that his side was failing to remove copyright infringing material from its systems. Eircom claims the companies have failed to identify such 'infringing material' and, if they have identified such material, then Eircom claims such material cannot be removed without damaging Eircom's systems/equipment or internet services.

Eircom also believes that direct evidence, as well as affidavit evidence, was necessary for the fair disposal of the issues involved, counsel said.

The action has been brought by EMI Records (Ireland) Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Ireland) Ltd, Universal Music (Ireland) Ltd and Warner Music (Ireland) Ltd against Eircom Ltd.

They are seeking orders - under the Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000 - restraining Eircom from infringing copyright in the sound recordings owned by, or exclusively licensed to them, by making available (through Eircom's internet service facilities) copies of those recordings to the public without the companies' consent.

Mr Willie Kavanagh, managing director of EMI Ireland and chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), has said that, because of illegal downloading and other factors, the Irish music industry is experiencing 'a dramatic and accelerating decline' in income.

The Irish market for sound recordings suffered a decline in total sales form €146m in 2001 to €102m last year, a fall of 30%, and a substantial portion of that decline was due to illegal peer-to-peer downloading services and the increasing availability of broadband internet access here, he said.

The record companies believed greater availability of broadband will lead to a further escalation in the volume of unlawful distribution of recordings, he added. While the record companies had taken various measures to discourage record piracy, including public
awareness campaigns and legal actions against individuals engaged in piracy, these had proven very costly and time consuming and were not enough to stop people using illegal services on a broad scale.

Mr Kavanagh said illegal downloaders come from all walks of life and the reality for many young people was that they have never known a position where they actually have - as a practical matter, rather than as a matter of law - to pay for sound recordings.

The record companies are challenging Eircom's refusal to use filtering technology or other appropriate measures to voluntary block, or filter, material from its network which is being used to download music. The companies say certain specialised software, such as that provided by the US-based Audible Magic Corporation - can filter peer to peer traffic and block specified recordings from being shared.

Eircom told the companies last October it was not in a position to run the Audible Magic software on its servers. It also said it was not on notice of specific illegal activity which infringed the rights of the companies and had no legal obligation to monitor traffic on its network.

Mr Kavanagh said that, 'with the greatest of respect' to Eircom, it was 'well aware' its facilities were being used to violate the property rights of record companies 'on a grand scale'.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0421/eircom.html





I Will Make Love with Every Virgin Who Defends the Internet.

Certain ISP’s are planning to limit internet access in a way that infringes upon internet freedom or ‘net neutrality’.

I'm using sex in a positive way to spread awareness. The reason why only virgins can apply is because I don’t want to make this promise to such a large amount of people that I’ll have to turn some down.

Net neutrality is paramount to safeguard free speech and innovation on the Internet. With only one arguably negative side-effect: an unusual amount of today's Internet users are virgin. That's a problem I intend to solve. In history, man has always waged war for freedom. Now it's time to obtain our freedom with love.

Sex is all over the net and yet it’s still a big taboo for many. Using sex to spread awareness will be yet another big step to sexual freedom. This is just another great example of what’s possible thanks to net neutrality.

Click 'get laid' below to contact me so I can arrange a private intimate meeting.
http://dontstayvirgin.movielol.org/main2.php





Lawmaker Calls for No-Cost, Porn-Free, Wireless 'Net Access
Ryan Paul

The Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act, proposed by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), would instruct the FCC to auction off the 2155-2175MHz band of spectrum. The winner would have to use the spectrum to create a nationwide wireless Internet service that is available to the public at no cost, automatically blocks access to pornographic content, and is fully open to third-party device manufacturers.

The proposal was a response to the recent spectrum auction, which saw AT&T and Verizon, the two biggest mobile carriers, walk away with big chunks of the newly-opened airwaves. The aim of the new proposal is to encourage another player to enter the market so that consumers can have a viable third choice to cable and DSL.

"The cost of broadband service is a barrier for too many families who want broadband, with more than 100 million Americans without broadband at home," Eshoo said in a statement. "The results of the 700MHz auction disappointed many of us who hoped that a new entrant would emerge. 70 percent of the spectrum auctioned went to only two carriers. While the auction required under this legislation is open to anyone, it is my hope that the bold conditions of requiring free, family friendly service will encourage the entry of a new kind of national broadband service provider."

During the 700MHz auction, bidders failed to meet the reserve price for the D Block, partly because the FCC stipulated that the D Block owner would have to develop a public safety network. If the public safety network requirement was considered too onerous by prospective bidders, it seems unlikely that the requirements described by the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act would be much more palatable to most mobile carriers.

But there is one company that has been calling for an auction on precisely these terms. California-based M2Z networks says that it wants to roll out a free, family-friendly wireless Internet offering supported by geographically-sensitive advertising, and it claims that it has the financial backing to get the job done.

M2Z approached the FCC with its plan in 2006 (the initial proposal was later turned down), which prompted the FCC to begin evaluating potential rules for auctioning off the relevant chunk of spectrum. In a fact sheet which provides some additional details about the proposal, M2Z claims that two independent economic studies have found that the availability of such a service would save consumers between $18 billion and $32.4 billion and make Internet access available to millions of Americans who currently can't afford it.

The narrow terms of Eshoo's bill makes it a clear endorsement of M2Z's proposal. Although the bidding would be open to anyone, it is unlikely that others besides M2Z would participate in the auction. This has rattled the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), which opposes M2Z's plan and argues that the public is best served by an open auction with less stringent conditions.

M2Z is optimistic that it can build out the infrastructure that it envisions and profit from offering faster service (up to 3Mbps) on the network for a price while offering free access at a base speed of 384Kbps. Free service and more competition would definitely improve conditions for mobile Internet consumers, but the entire plan seems vaguely quixotic, especially in light of the FCC's interest in auctioning the D Block again.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...et-access.html





Campaign Tackles Online Child Porn
AFP

THE number of websites hosting child pornography has fallen for the first time and a co-ordinated international response could eradicate them for good, a charity said.

According to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the number of English-language domains displaying child porn fell from 3052 in 2006 to 2755 last year, most based in Russia and the United States.

"We hope that this revelation and the analysis and intelligence behind the numbers will lead to a better understanding of the issue and justify the need for more international partnerships to pool resources and thinking in order to find solutions," IWF chief executive Peter Robbins said.

"A co-ordinated global attack on these websites could get these horrific images removed from the web and those responsible investigated."

According to the IWF's analysis, about 10 per cent of the victims photographed were less than two years old, with a third between three and six years old.

Some 37 per cent were aged between seven and 10 years old, 18 per cent were between 11 and 15 years old, with two per cent between 16 and 17 years old.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...013044,00.html





Google Enlists Video ID Tools to Combat Child Porn

Google Inc is enlisting the same image-recognition technology the company uses to trace copyright violations on its YouTube video site to fight online child pornography, the company said on Monday.

Google said it is working the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) of Alexandria, Virginia to help automate and streamline how child protection workers troll through millions of pornographic images to identify victims of abuse.

The project is applying so-called video fingerprinting technology, which Google has been urging media copyright holders to adopt as a means for policing widespread piracy of professionally created video programming on the Web.

A small team of Google engineers have worked for more than a year with federal agencies and NCMEC's analysts in its Child Victim Identification Program to create software to automate the review of some 13 million pornographic images and videos that analysts at the center previously had to review manually.

The Google technology promises to let analysts more quickly search the center's video and image databases to identify files that contain images of child pornography victims. Other tools from Google also help analysts quickly review video snippets.

Shumeet Baluja, a research scientist at Google said in a company statement he had recruited a handful of fellow engineers to create the video detection tools as a side project to their day jobs during the course of 2007. He describes the work in a company blog post at tinyurl.com/63n64m/.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Tim Dobbyn) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...19979320080414





Google Hands Over Data on Suspected Pedophiles to Brazil

Google on Wednesday handed over data stored by suspected pedophiles on its Orkut social networking site to Brazilian authorities, ceding to pressure to lift its confidentiality duty to its users, officials said.

The US Internet giant delivered 3,261 files to a Brazilian senate commission looking into allegations that illegal images of minors were posted in restricted-access photo albums on the site.

Orkut is the most popular web destination for Brazilians, far outstripping rivals Facebook and MySpace in the country in terms of popularity and activity. Brazil accounts for 27 million of the 60 million members worldwide of the site, which serves to virtually connect like-minded people.

A member of the senate commission, Demostenes Torres, told Globo television that it was "the first time" Google had accepted to divulge the contents or Orkut users.

He stressed that Brazilian officials had received 50,000 allegations of pedophilia in recent years, and that Orkut was suspected of being an online gathering point for sexual predators of children.

Torres said he believed Google's data would incriminate around 200 pedophiles.

"They are exchanging telephone numbers, names of possible victims, the situations in which they live" as well as photos, the senator said.

The state prosecutor for Sao Paulo, Sergio Suiama, last month said 90 percent of the 56,000 pedophilia allegations received in the past few years related to Orkut.

Google representatives met with police, prosecutors and other officials late Wednesday in Sao Paulo to negotiate a wide-ranging deal that would see the US company systematically providing data on suspect Orkut users to Brazilian authorities.

A public relations executive working for Google, Eduardo Vieira, told AFP he believed the deal would be sealed "this week."

He explained that divulging users' information across international boundaries was "not simple" for Internet companies such as Google, but stressed that the company had "no problem cooperating with Brazilian justice" on the issue.

Authorities had threatened Google with criminal and civil lawsuits if it did not comply with opening the restricted online photo albums of users under suspicion.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080423...a_080423210841





Court Says Search Of Laptop With Porn Is Legal

A U.S. Customs inspection of a laptop computer that found child pornography does not constitute an unreasonable search and seizure, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Monday.

Michael Arnold argued the U.S. Constitution's protections against searches without reasonable suspicion should have barred a 2005 search of his laptop at Los Angeles International Airport upon returning from the Philippines. He was later charged with child pornography and related crimes.

A lower court agreed with Arnold, but on Monday the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, saying reasonable suspicion is not necessary to check laptops or other electronic devices coming over border checkpoints.

"Arnold has failed to distinguish how the search of his laptop and its electronic contents is logically any different from the suspicion-less border searches of travelers' luggage that the Supreme Court and we have allowed," Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for a three-judge panel.

(Reporting by Adam Tanner; editing by Philip Barbara)
http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...45612420080421





N.J. Justices Call e-Privacy Surfers' Right

Ruling on warrant trumps top U.S. court's decisions
Tom Hester

The Supreme Court of New Jersey became the first court in the nation yesterday to rule that people have an expectation of privacy when they are online, and law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information.

In state proceedings, the ruling will take precedence over what attorneys describe as weaker U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hold there is no right to privacy on the internet.

"The New Jersey Supreme Court is the first in the nation to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy when using the internet anonymously," said Trenton-based attorney Grayson Barber, who represented six privacy rights organizations as a friend of the court. "'I think this reflects the reality that most people do expect a measure of privacy when they are using the internet anonymously."

The unanimous seven-member court held that police do have the right to seek a user's private information when investigating a crime involving a computer, but must follow legal procedures. The court said authorities do not have to warn a suspect that they have a grand jury subpoena to obtain the information.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said: "We now hold that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy protected by Article I ... of the New Jersey Constitution, in the subscriber information they provide to Internet service providers -- just as New Jersey citizens have a privacy interest in their bank records stored by banks and telephone billing records kept by phone companies."

Barber said most people use the internet like a phone, making personal -- sometimes sensitive -- transactions that they don't believe the police will be able to access.

"This decision reflects the reality of how ordinary people normally use the internet," he said. "'It's very nice to have the court recognize that expectation is reasonable."

The court ruled in the case of Shirley Reid of Lower Township, Cape May County, who was charged with second-degree computer theft for hacking into her employer's computer system from her home computer. Township police obtained her identity from Comcast by using a municipal court subpoena. The Supreme Court held that law enforcement had the right to investigate her but should have used a grand jury subpoena.

A state Superior Court in Cape May Court House suppressed the evidence based on the use of the wrong subpoena, and a state appeals court upheld the action when the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office appealed.

Reid was investigated after her employer, Jersey Diesel of Lower Township, was notified by a business supplier in 2004 that someone had accessed and changed both the multi-digit numbers that make up the company's IP address and password and had created a non-existent shipping address. When the owner, Timothy Wilson, asked Comcast for the IP address of the person who made the changes, the internet provider declined to comply without a subpoena.

Wilson suspected that Reid, an employee who had been on disability leave, could have made the changes. On the day the changes were made, Reid had returned to work, argued with Wilson and left.

When the police obtained a municipal court subpoena and served it on Comcast, the internet provider identified Reid, her address and telephone number, type of service provided, e-mail address, IP numbers, account number and method of payment. In 2005, a Cape May grand jury returned an indictment charging Reid with computer theft.

Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the decision is an important ruling on the state constitution.

"Obviously, the federal law is terribly weak in this area because of bad decisions in recent years," Tien said. "The federal Fourth Amendment is inadequate for modern privacy issues. New Jersey interprets its constitution to be along the line that ordinary people have a fundamental expectation of privacy."

Writing for the court, Rabner said: "Law enforcement officials can satisfy that constitutional protection and obtain subscriber information by serving a grand jury subpoena on an ISP without notice to the subscriber." Cape May Prosecutor Robert Taylor said he expects to take the case to a new grand jury and seek a new indictment against Reid.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....980.xml&coll=1





Wireless Unit Helps Lift AT&T’s Profit by 22%
Saul Hansell

Profit at AT&T, the telecommunications company, jumped 22 percent in the first quarter, meeting expectations, as its wireless business continued to grow fast enough to make up for its shrinking traditional service.

The company earned $3.5 billion, or 57 cents a share, compared with $2.85 billion, or 45 cents a share, a year ago. The results matched the expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

AT&T’s earnings were reduced by $1.2 billion in noncash charges related to its various mergers and $374 million in costs related to its recent layoffs. On Friday, AT&T said it would eliminate 4,650 jobs, representing 1.5 percent of its work force.

After deducting these nonrecurring charges, AT&T earned 74 cents a share, exactly what analysts estimated.

AT&T’s revenue grew 6 percent from a year ago to $30.7 billion, but that growth masked quite a shift among the company’s business lines. Revenue from wireline voice service fell 7.1 percent to $9.7 billion, while wireless revenue increased 17.1 percent to $10.6 billion. Data revenue grew more slowly, rising 6 percent to $6.2 billion.

Shares rose as high as $37.84 in pre-market trading Tuesday. The stock closed up 8 cents, to $37.59, on Monday.

In a statement, the chief executive, Randall L. Stephenson, expressed optimism about his efforts to cut costs and shift business further to wireless and data service.

“Revenue growth continues to ramp, we have good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we have in our outlook,” Mr. Stephenson said.

AT&T continues to generate a significant amount of cash, although its capital expenses are growing even faster. In the first quarter, cash flow from operations was $5 billion, up 7 percent. But it invested $4.3 billion in facilities and equipment, up 27 percent.

The company, which is the exclusive carrier for Apple’s iPhone, added a net of 1.3 million wireless customers, giving it a total wireless customer base of 71.4 million subscribers. That is an increased pace of growth compared with a year ago. The average monthly revenue a subscriber, a closely watched measure, increased 2 percent, to $50.18.

Wireless data was particularly strong, the company said, with revenue increasing 57 percent to $2.3 billion. That now represents 22 percent of the total wireless revenue, up from 16 percent a year ago.

In the first quarter, AT&T customers sent 44 billion text messages, twice the number a year ago.

The company also added a net of 148,000 customers for its U-verse television service, giving it 379,000 total subscribers. It said it hopes to have 1 million subscribers by year end.

After its results were announced, AT&T’s shares rose by 1.3 percent to $37.59 before-market trading.

AT&T, which merged with BellSouth in 2006 provides local telephone service in 22 states and nationwide wireless service.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/te...cnd-phone.html





$9.95

Skype Offers Unlimited International Calling Plan
Peter Svensson

Skype, the Internet calling subsidiary of eBay Inc., is introducing its first plan for unlimited calls to overseas phones on Monday.

The plan will allow unlimited calls to land-line phones in 34 countries for $9.95 per month, said Don Albert, vice president and general manager for Skype North America.

The countries encompassed include most of Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.

Calls to domestic land lines and cell phones are included as well, as are calls to cell phones in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, but not cell phones in other countries.

Skype has already been selling unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada for $3 a month. It is expanding that offering with another plan, for $5.95 per month, that gives free calls to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, and a discount on calls to other places in Mexico.

Skype is generally used as a software application running on a computer equipped with a microphone and speakers or a headset. But subscribers will also have the option to call a local number from their phones and be connected to international numbers that fall under their plan, paying only local access charges or using their cell-phone airtime.

Unlimited international calling plans have been popping up in recent years from hardware-based phone services like Vonage International Holdings Corp. and cable companies, but the prices are generally higher, and the plans are add-ons to basic calling plans that cost even more.

Skype said its subscribers called phones for 1.7 billion minutes in the first three months of the year, compared with 14.2 billion minutes used in computer-to-computer sessions, which are free.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...cM6OwD906BMF83





Nokia Unveils Two New Music Phones

The world's top cellphone maker Nokia unveiled on Tuesday two new music phones to add to its XpressMusic range, the Nokia 5320 and the Nokia 5220.

"Both music devices are expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008, with an expected retail price range of 160 euros ($254) to 220 euros ($349), before taxes and subsidies," Nokia said in a statement. http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...00633320080422

Signs Sony BMG for Free Music Offering

Nokia will offer free 12-month access to music from artists of Sony BMG, the world's second-biggest label, to buyers of its particular music phones, the world's top cellphone maker said on Tuesday.

Last December, Nokia unveiled a similar deal for its "Comes With Music" phones with the top record label Universal.

"Comes With Music is expected to launch in the second half of 2008 on a range of Nokia devices in selected markets," Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia gave no financial details.

Sony BMG, home to artists including Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and Celine Dion, is jointly owned by Sony Corp and German media group Bertelsmann AG.

The new music offering from Nokia -- the first cellphone maker to push heavily into content -- would differ from any other package on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded during the 12 months.

Such unlimited download models could offer a shot in the arm to the music industry, which is struggling to find ways to make up for falling CD sales.

Nokia said it expects all top labels to sign up for "Comes With Music" offering.

"We are quite confident that we will have all the labels at the table for Comes With Music. We are progressing in those negotiations," said Liz Schimel, head of Nokia's music business.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Paul Bolding)
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...56860420080422





Sony to Give Online Video Distribution Another Try

Service to run on PlayStation
Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham

Will the third time be the charm for Sony?

The entertainment and electronics giant is preparing to launch an online video service through its PlayStation 3 game console as early as this summer, studio executives familiar with the plan say.

The company has been in licensing talks with studios in recent weeks, according to these people, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations.

The initial version of the service would include movies and television shows flowing from the Internet to Sony's PlayStation 3 game console.

It would follow two other disappointing online ventures backed by Sony in recent years: Movielink, which attempted to become the online equivalent of the video store for mainstream Hollywood movies before being sold last year to Blockbuster; and Sony Connect, the company's response to Apple's iTunes download service, which shut down in March.

The latest service, provided through the online PlayStation Network, is Sony's attempt to stage a comeback in digital entertainment distribution. The maker of the once-dominant Walkman portable music player is still smarting from its defeat by Apple in the online music revolution.

"They've got to get a win in the digital, and I'd say on the electronic delivery side of the business," said Kurt Scherf, an analyst with Parks Associates who studies technology in the home. "That's where the future is. They've got to establish a toehold in that space."

The latest initiative seeks to harness Sony's strengths as a maker of high-definition televisions and consumer products as well as a creator of films and TV shows.

Sony is trying to capitalize on its "Trojan horse" in the living room, the PlayStation 3. The game console is already connected to the TV and the Internet, and has sold more than 4 million units in the United States and 9 million worldwide, according to Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. The console gave Sony the decisive edge in the battle to establish its Blu-ray discs as the standard for high-definition video in the home, trumping the rival HD DVD format backed by Toshiba, Microsoft and others.

The new service would position the company to compete with the growing number of Internet-connected devices and services that deliver video to the TV, including AppleTV, Vudu and Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.

Its biggest competitor would be Microsoft's Xbox Live service, which boasts 10 million subscribers who can sample online more than 4,800 hours of video, a quarter of them in high-definition. That includes 350 movies and more than 5,000 episodes of TV shows such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," most of which go on sale on Xbox Live the day after their initial broadcast airing. Unlike closed networks such as Apple's, however, Sony plans to embrace open standards that would make its offering compatible with a range of computers and hand-held devices, including Sony's Play-Station Portable.

Patrick Seybold, a spokesman for Sony's PlayStation unit, declined to comment.

However, a PlayStation marketing chief acknowledged the initiative and promised more details soon in an April 15 post on the Inside PlayStation Network blog.

"Many of you have been hearing rumblings about a video service that will allow you to download full-length TV shows and movies via PlayStation Network for North America," wrote Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America. "While I don't have any new announcements . . . it's already been confirmed that we'll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you've seen or used."

One of the service's greatest obstacles may be Sony's own culture. Sony Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Stringer has been battling a corporate silo mentality in which divisions within his company work in isolation, undermining new initiatives. The PlayStation group, based in Foster City, has been notoriously aloof.

What is more, the company, looking to safeguard its film, television and music holdings, has been an aggressive champion of copyright protection, often, critics suggest, at the cost of technological innovation.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





Sony to Buy Gracenote Music Data Company
Stephen Lawson

Sony Corp. of America will buy Gracenote, which made its name with software that identifies digital music files, for about US$260 million.

Sony will keep Gracenote as a wholly owned subsidiary and use its technology in its own digital content, service and device offerings. But Gracenote's current business will keep operating separately and developing new technologies, and its management will remain, Sony said. It will pay $260 million plus "other contingent consideration," the company said.

Although it pioneered portable music players with the Walkman cassette player and jointly developed the CD, Sony's digital and online music efforts have fallen short of competitors such as Apple. The company shut down its Connect music store last August after trying to compete against Apple's iTunes for three years.

Gracenote, formerly CDDB, maintains a database of information about music and uses it in a variety of applications, including identifying tracks, finding similar songs and presenting lyrics and other relevant content. Its customers include iTunes, Yahoo Music Jukebox, and companies in the mobile music business, such as Sony Ericsson, Japanese carrier KDDI and Europe's Musiwave. Consumer electronics suppliers, including Sony, also use Gracenote technology in their products. The company is based in Emeryville, California.

The companies expect the deal to close in late May.
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008...c-data-company





Apple Wins Dismissal of Ramones Suit Over Downloads
Bloomberg News

Apple and Wal-Mart Stores won dismissal of a lawsuit by a member of the punk band the Ramones who claimed a 24-year-old recording contract prevented retail sales of digital downloads of six songs he wrote. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in New York rejected former drummer Richard Reinhardt's claim that a 1984 accord with Ramones Productions limited sales to phonographic records and other tangible technology. Apple, Wal-Mart and software company RealNetworks said the copyright suit, filed in September, should be dismissed because music downloads were covered in the contract by a reference to technology "now or hereafter known." The judge agreed. The ruling clears the way for Apple to continue selling downloads through iTunes of "Smash You," "Human Kind," "I'm Not Jesus" and three other Ramones tunes written by Reinhardt.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_9023900





Apple Buys Itself a Little Chip Company Known for Super Efficient Processors

Apple's bought itself a chip company, P.A. Semi that could make chips for future iPods and iPhones. The company was founded by Dan Dobberpuhl, lead designer of Alpha chips, who last year announced a 64-bit dual core processor that is said to be about 300% more efficient than the nearest competition, using only 5 to 13 watts at 2GHz.

Products using the chips won't arrive for a year, at least, but we can assume that Apple wouldn't spend $278 million without some plans to use em soon as it made sense, and I'm sure Intel and ARM aren't stoked. The negotiations, which finished recently, took place in The Steve's home. Owning its own chip design is an interesting move. While the iPhone's had a lot of off the shelf componentry, it makes sense that working on its own internal hardware could yield better devices. Or a PowerPC repeat..which is the architecture I believe that the above processor is built on.

More research on that chip shows how it achieves such power efficiency. From Ars: "For instance, the chip sports over 25,000 clock gates so that clock pulses to different regions of the processor can be shut off dynamically to save power...All of the PA6T's major on-die components have their own separate clock and voltage domains, so that the L1, L2, DRAM controller, I/O subsystem, and each of the two cores can all be placed in different low-power states independently of one another."

Of course, the chips in portable such as an iPhone and iPod (as Forbes speculates) wouldn't be running so fast as the chip above. While it's unlikely they'd use that dual core 64 chip in Macs, given the Intel switch was so recent, it's my guess that P.A. Semi has a unannounced mobile chip that Jobs lusts after. Stands to reason, although Owen at Valleywag believes that the lack of economic scale for Semi make it more likely that the buy is for IP to be implemented by others, as a bargaining chip. Regardless of tactics the unnamed chip would have to be very efficient to best other offerings.

Intel's mobile platform, Atom, by comparison, can do 0.8 watts of usage at 800MHz, and VIA has a 0.1 watt solution that runs at 500MHz. ARM, designer of the current iPhone chip, is boasting that they can do a 0.25 watt A9 chip with multicores at 1GHz.

Historically, P.A. Semi was trying to be the chip provider for Macs around the time they chose to go for Intel and it is reported that Dobberpuhl was furious when they went x86, thinking the Intel talks were just a bargaining chip. Some think that P.A. Semi lost its chance to be a brand name like AMD or Intel, but clearly, being under the brand name of Apple isn't half bad.
http://gizmodo.com/382929/apple-buys...ent-processors





Music Has Its Own Geometry, Researchers Find

The connection between music and mathematics has fascinated scholars for centuries. More than 2000 years ago Pythagoras reportedly discovered that pleasing musical intervals could be described using simple ratios.

And the so-called musica universalis or "music of the spheres" emerged in the Middle Ages as the philosophical idea that the proportions in the movements of the celestial bodies -- the sun, moon and planets -- could be viewed as a form of music, inaudible but perfectly harmonious.

Now, three music professors -- Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University -- have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex mathematics they see enmeshed in its very fabric.

Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, the trio has outlined a method called "geometrical music theory" that translates the language of musical theory into that of contemporary geometry. They take sequences of notes, like chords, rhythms and scales, and categorize them so they can be grouped into "families." They have found a way to assign mathematical structure to these families, so they can then be represented by points in complex geometrical spaces, much the way "x" and "y" coordinates, in the simpler system of high school algebra, correspond to points on a two-dimensional plane.

Different types of categorization produce different geometrical spaces, and reflect the different ways in which musicians over the centuries have understood music. This achievement, they expect, will allow researchers to analyze and understand music in much deeper and more satisfying ways.

The work represents a significant departure from other attempts to quantify music, according to Rachel Wells Hall of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. In an accompanying essay, she writes that their effort, "stands out both for the breadth of its musical implications and the depth of its mathematical content."

The method, according to its authors, allows them to analyze and compare many kinds of Western (and perhaps some non-Western) music. (The method focuses on Western-style music because concepts like "chord" are not universal in all styles.) It also incorporates many past schemes by music theorists to render music into mathematical form.

"The music of the spheres isn't really a metaphor -- some musical spaces really are spheres," said Tymoczko, an assistant professor of music at Princeton. "The whole point of making these geometric spaces is that, at the end of the day, it helps you understand music better. Having a powerful set of tools for conceptualizing music allows you to do all sorts of things you hadn't done before."

Like what?

"You could create new kinds of musical instruments or new kinds of toys," he said. "You could create new kinds of visualization tools -- imagine going to a classical music concert where the music was being translated visually. We could change the way we educate musicians. There are lots of practical consequences that could follow from these ideas."

"But to me," Tymoczko added, "the most satisfying aspect of this research is that we can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts. To some extent, we can represent the history of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different geometries."

Understanding music, the authors write, is a process of discarding information. For instance, suppose a musician plays middle "C" on a piano, followed by the note "E" above that and the note "G" above that. Musicians have many different terms to describe this sequence of events, such as "an ascending C major arpeggio," "a C major chord," or "a major chord." The authors provide a unified mathematical framework for relating these different descriptions of the same musical event.

The trio describes five different ways of categorizing collections of notes that are similar, but not identical. They refer to these musical resemblances as the "OPTIC symmetries," with each letter of the word "OPTIC" representing a different way of ignoring musical information -- for instance, what octave the notes are in, their order, or how many times each note is repeated. The authors show that five symmetries can be combined with each other to produce a cornucopia of different musical concepts, some of which are familiar and some of which are novel.

In this way, the musicians are able to reduce musical works to their mathematical essence.

Once notes are translated into numbers and then translated again into the language of geometry the result is a rich menagerie of geometrical spaces, each inhabited by a different species of geometrical object. After all the mathematics is done, three-note chords end up on a triangular donut while chord types perch on the surface of a cone.

The broad effort follows upon earlier work by Tymoczko in which he developed geometric models for selected musical objects.

The method could help answer whether there are new scales and chords that exist but have yet to be discovered.

"Have Western composers already discovered the essential and most important musical objects?" Tymoczko asked. "If so, then Western music is more than just an arbitrary set of conventions. It may be that the basic objects of Western music are fantastically special, in which case it would be quite difficult to find alternatives to broadly traditional methods of musical organization."

The tools for analysis also offer the exciting possibility of investigating the differences between musical styles.

"Our methods are not so great at distinguishing Aerosmith from the Rolling Stones," Tymoczko said. "But they might allow you to visualize some of the differences between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And they certainly help you understand more deeply how classical music relates to rock or is different from atonal music."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0417142454.htm





No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down
Sarah Lyall

They had rehearsed the piece only once, but already the musicians at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were suffering. Their ears were ringing. Heads throbbed.

Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, “State of Siege,” by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable.

So instead of having its world premiere on April 4, the piece was dropped. “I had no choice,” said Trygve Nordwall, the orchestra’s manager. “The decision was not made artistically; it was made for the protection of the players.”

The cancellation is, so far, probably the most extreme consequence of the new law, which requires employers in Europe to limit workers’ exposure to potentially damaging noise and which took effect for the entertainment industry this month.

But across Europe, musicians are being asked to wear decibel-measuring devices and to sit behind see-through antinoise screens. Companies are altering their repertories. And conductors are reconsidering the definition of “fortissimo.”

Alan Garner, an oboist and English horn player who is the chairman of the players’ committee at the Royal Opera House, said that he and his colleagues had been told that they would have to wear earplugs during entire three-hour rehearsals and performances.

“It’s like saying to a racing-car driver that they have to wear a blindfold,” he said.

Already there are signs that the law is altering not only the relationship between classical musicians and their employers, but also between musicians and the works they produce.

“The noise regulations were written for factory workers or construction workers, where the noise comes from an external source, and to limit the exposure is relatively straightforward,” said Mark Pemberton, the director of the Association of British Orchestras. “But the problem is that musicians create the noise themselves.”

Rock musicians have talked openly about loud music and ear protection for years. The issue is more delicate for classical musicians, who have been reluctant to accept that their profession can lead to hearing loss, even though studies have shown that to be the case. At the same time, complying with the law — which concerns musicians’, not audiences’, noise exposure — is complicated.

One problem is that different musicians are exposed to different levels of noise depending on their instruments, the concert hall, where they sit in an orchestra and the fluctuations of the piece they are playing. In Britain, big orchestras now routinely measure the decibel levels of various areas to see which musicians are subject to the most noise, and when.

Orchestras are also installing noise-absorbing panels and placing antinoise screens at strategic places, like in front of the brass section, to force the noise over the heads of other players.

“You have to tilt them in such a way so that the noise doesn’t come back and hit the person straight in the face, because that can cause just as much damage,” said Philip Turbett, the orchestra manager for the English National Opera.

They are also trying to put more space between musicians, and rotating them in and out of the noisiest seats.

At the Royal Opera House, the management has devised a computer program that calculates individual weekly noise exposure by cross-referencing such factors as the member’s schedule and the pieces being played.

Musicians are spacing out rehearsals and playing more softly when they can. As the Welsh National Opera prepared for the premiere of James MacMillan’s loud opera, “The Sacrifice,” last year, the brass and percussion sections were told to take it easy at times in rehearsal to protect the ears of themselves and their colleagues, said Peter Harrap, the orchestra and chorus director.

Conductors are also being asked to reconsider their habit of “going for a big loud orchestration,” said Chris Clark, the orchestra operations manager at the Royal Opera House. Composers, too, are being asked to keep the noise issue in mind.

“Composers should bear in mind that they are dealing with people who are alive, and not machines,” said Mr. Nordwall of the Bavarian orchestra.

And companies are examining their repertories with the aim of interspersing loud pieces — Mahler’s symphonies, for instance — with quieter ones. They are also buying a lot of high-tech earplugs, which are molded to players’ ears and cost about $300 a pair. Many orchestras now ask their musicians to put the earplugs in during the loud parts of a performance.

“I have a computer program that gives me a minute-by-minute timeline chart through the whole piece,” said Mr. Turbett of the English National Opera. “I can go back to the musicians and say, ‘Between bar 100 and bar 200, there’s a very loud passage, so please put in hearing protection.’ ”

But these remedies can bring problems. Some musicians in the brass and percussion sections resent being screened off from their colleagues, as if they were being ostracized. Musicians, even if they accept the need to use earplugs occasionally, tend to hate wearing them.

Mr. Garner, the Royal Opera House oboist, said: “I’ve spent nearly 30 years in music and I know all about noise, and occasionally, if I’m not playing and there’s a loud bit next to me, I might shove my fingers in my ears for a few bars. But I have yet to find a musician who says they can wear earplugs and still play at the same level of quality.”

The modern noise-level-conscious orchestra is also dependent, of course, on the indulgence of the conductor. Arriving at an orchestra to find that decisions have been based solely on musicians’ noise exposure can be galling to the sort of conductor who likes to be in control, which is most of them.

Although Switzerland is outside the European Union, an extraordinary noise-related argument between the conductor and the Bern Symphony Orchestra disrupted the opening night of Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” in March.

The piece called for 30 string players and 30 wind and percussion players, all crammed into a too-small pit. When the stage director complained in rehearsals that the music was too loud, the conductor didn’t order the orchestra to play more softly, but instead asked for a cover over the orchestral pit to contain the noise, said Marianne Käch, the orchestra’s executive director.

That meant the noise bounced back at the musicians, bringing the level to 120 decibels in the brass section, similar to the levels in front of a speaker in a rock concert. The musicians complained. The conductor held firm. But when the piece began, “the orchestra decided to play softer anyway in order to protect themselves,” Ms. Käch said.

That made the conductor so angry that he walked off after 10 minutes or so, Ms. Käch said. Told that there had been “musical differences” between the conductor and the orchestra, the perplexed audience had to wait for the two sides to hash it out.

In the end, the orchestra agreed to return and finish the performance at the loud levels. For subsequent performances, a foam cover that absorbed instead of reflecting the sound was placed above the pit, and the conductor agreed to tone things down.

“This is the problem you find in many places, that the conductors are conducting more and more loudly,” Ms. Käch said. “I know conductors who have hundreds of shades of fortissimo, but not many in the lower levels. Maybe the whole world is just becoming louder.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/ar...0noise.html?hp





Sen. Dorgan Asks FCC To Reject Satellite Merger
FMQB

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) of the Senate Commerce Committee is the latest politician urging the FCC to reject the merger of XM and Sirius. In a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Dorgan called the DoJ's approval of the merger "illogical" and said the FCC should not follow in their footsteps.

"This merger is contrary to the public interest. I hope that the FCC will stand up for competition in the public interest and deny this merger," Dorgan wrote, according to Reuters.

"The Department of Justice did not believe that the merger would allow for an increase in prices," Dorgan added. "Yet when the satellite companies no longer compete with one another, there will be no direct competition with the ability to regulate the cost of the satellite radio service. The iPod will not affect the price of satellite subscriptions. Terrestrial broadcast radio will not affect these prices." He notes that broadcast TV has not kept cable TV prices from going ever higher."

The Senator also said diversity will be hurt by the merger, if it is approved. "Satellite service offers a great deal more than terrestrial broadcast radio. Consolidation in that sector by companies like Clear Channel has managed to homogenize and decay free over-the-air radio. The same could happen to satellite service when they are no longer forced to compete with one another."

Last week, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) also asked the FCC not to approve the merger.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=666074





On the Internet, It’s All About ‘My’
David Browne

IT’S not you, it’s me. Actually, on the Internet, it’s “my.”

The Web is awash in sites that begin with that most personal of pronouns, and not simply MySpace. A few quick clicks will connect you to MyCoke, My IBM, My Subaru, MyAOL — even MyClick, a mobile-phone marketing company. Collectively, they amount to a new world of Web sites designed to imply a one-on-one connection with a corporation or large business.

Last month, as part of a nationwide effort to reinvent itself, Starbucks started My Starbucks Idea to solicit consumer feedback on its stores, products and image problems. If the ’70s were dubbed the Me Decade, this era could well be the My Decade.

The rise of sites with the “my” prefix is an outgrowth of an increasingly customized world of technology, such as the iPod and TiVo. “Marketing says, ‘We all want to be individuals and this brand will help you express your individuality,’ ” said Nick Bartle, a director of behavioral planning at the advertising agency BBDO. “These ‘my’ Web sites are the logical extension of that strategy.”

But they illustrate how corporations are striving to show that they can be as intimately connected to their customers as in-vogue social networking sites. They’re not just impersonal businesses; they are your close, intimate friends.

“Companies are trying to connect with consumers in more meaningful ways,” said Pete Blackshaw, a vice president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services, which monitors Web activity. “They’re trying to emulate consumer behavior. Everyone’s trying to be more authentic and connect with consumers on their terms. They can look more real, sincere and authentic.”

The “my” trend is even a factor in the presidential election, particularly the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania on April 22. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Web site now includes a section called “My Pennsylvania,” where supporters are asked to contribute ideas on how she should campaign in that state. The site contrasts with Senator Barack Obama’s repeated use of the word “you” in speeches.

“He’s a ‘you’ guy, empowering the people,” said Jay Jurisich, the creative director of Igor, a naming and branding company in San Francisco. “With Hillary, it’s ‘I’m entitled to this. It’s all about me.’ It really is the ‘you’ candidate vs. the ‘my’ candidate.”

In one way or another, many “my” sites aim to emulate homegrown Web sites or trends. The My Starbucks Idea site is devoted to chat rooms that have the unfussy look of homemade blogs; there, Starbucks loyalists can grouse about the chairs in stores or the lack of free Wi-Fi connections. The www.MyCoke.com site links to a Second Life-style virtual environment, where customers can roam and create avatars — a “subtly branded experience,” in the words of Doug Rollins, group director of digital platforms at Coca-Cola.

The “my” prefix has become an easy and increasingly popular shorthand for suggesting that bond between consumers and corporations. Matthew Zook of ZookNIC, a business that analyzes domain names, said domains that start with “my” more than tripled between 2005 and 2008, to 712,000 from 217,000. According to the government’s Patent and Trademark Office, the number of trademark applications to register marks that include the word “my” increased to 1,943 last year from 382 in 1998. Through March of this year, the number of applications has soared to 530.

“My” is the latest in a line of prefixes that have ebbed and flowed on the Web. A decade ago, everything was “e” — from eTrade to eBay — and “i,” as in iPod or iPhone, has become synonymous with all things Apple.

Among the earliest known “my” entries is the comparison-shopping site www.MySimon.com, which filed for trademark in 1998. Mr. Jurisich said that Microsoft may have inadvertently played a role in this trend. “In the ’90s, all these people were trying to find domain names and staring at their Windows computers, which had ‘my documents’ and ‘my music,’ ” he said. “Everyone thought, ‘Let’s try “my.” ’ It was very natural.” (Of course, the success of MySpace, taking off in 2004, may have increased the barrage.)
For all its ubiquity, the concept of corporations trying to get up close with consumers is sometimes greeted warily by even those in the marketing community. “It’s a cold, calculated and impersonal attempt to be personal,” said Mr. Jurisich, who says his firm shuns “my” URLs. “It’s about making Big Brother into little brother. No one in their right mind should think, oh, the corporate entity really cares about me personally. But I can only assume that enough people fall for it that companies don’t ditch it.” (In a recent survey conducted by OTX, a consumer market research firm, one-third of respondents agreed that a Web site with a “my” function meant “the company cares about me.”)

Another major benefit for companies behind those Web pages is the personal data, including e-mail addresses and preferences, that customers provide when registering at one of the sites. “It’s all about the database and getting that personal information,” said Shelley Zalis, the founder of OTX. “That’s what everyone wants.”

At www.MyCokeRewards.com, Mr. Rollins of Coca-Cola said, the company seeks to “collect data through survey questions and through categories and passions.” Then, he said, the company creates new content and offers new rewards (redeemed through the purchase of Coca-Cola products) based “on what was created by you.” Although Mr. Rollins declined to cite numbers for the site, he said MyCokeRewards is one of the company’s “most robust return-investment models.”

According to Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategies for Starbucks, the 150,000 customers who have posted responses at My Starbucks Idea since March have led to tangible results at stores, like the introduction of a “splash stick” to prevent spillage from coffee cups.

Yet people in marketing and business also agree that the “my” prefix could have a limited shelf life if it is overused. Already, the phenomenon is spreading beyond the Web: Two years ago, when Fox Broadcasting began a new television network from stations left over from the WB-UPN merger, it named this creation MyNetworkTV. “People have been very quick to grab it,” said Dean Crutchfield, an executive at Wolff Olins, a branding agency. “I’m concerned it will get bastardized, and the uniqueness and sense of purpose it has will be lost in a sea of copycats.”

“It’s the word today,” said Ms. Zalis of OTX. “But I don’t know how long today will last.”

Few in the industry are sure what the next word or prefix will be. Mr. Jurisich said he had toyed with “exo,” as in “outside,” but said no client went for it. Said Ms. Zalis, “In the very near future, it’s not going to be about ‘my.’ It’ll be ‘we.’ It’ll be the collective ‘me,’ whatever that is.”

“In our research, values like participation now vastly outrank self-interest,” said Mr. Bartle of BBDO. “People want to be connected and part of a community.”

Mr. Crutchfield agreed, but said that coming up with the appropriate prefix to convey those values will be tricky. “I see a trend back to the ‘we’ state,” he said. “But it can’t be ‘We Business.’ ”

For now, Mr. Crutchfield said, he hopes the “my” prefix will hang on a bit longer. His next Web project, intended for 2012 and being created in tandem with the International Olympics Committee, is My Olympics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/fa...ml?ref=fashion





Primary Lures Those Too Young to Vote
Jacques Steinberg

The primary race between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama could be decided in places like this bedroom community in southeastern Pennsylvania, where polls show the two Democratic presidential candidates running tight.

So it was with obvious gravity that 74 fourth graders at Erdenheim Elementary School assembled this week behind the glass and tan brick walls of their classrooms to debate the campaign’s central issues. The children, most 9 or 10, then signaled their preferences for the Democratic nomination in a gradewide straw poll.

“It’s a battle between man and the environment, and the environment’s losing right now,” Michael Kassabian announced to his fellow voters in Renea Boles’s room, before explaining that he was endorsing Mr. Obama at least partly because of the candidate’s enthusiasm for renewable energy sources.

Henry Centeno said that the candidates’ stances on health care should take precedence, and that his support depended on which candidate would guarantee health insurance for anyone age 25 or younger. Why 25? “If it’s 25,” he said, “Miss Boles would still have free health care.” (His teacher, he knew, is 24.)

Just as their parents and grandparents are paying close attention to the drawn-out fight for the Democratic nomination, so too are those who will not cast an official vote for president for another decade or so. While no polling outfit has systematically canvassed those Americans who are more attuned to the nuances of Hannah Montana than Hannah Arendt, the enthusiasm generated by similar straw polls in places like Austin, Tex.; Scotch Plains, N.J.; and Broward County, Fla., suggests that young children are more engaged in this year’s presidential race than any other in recent memory.

That is at least partly because even the youngest school-age children are aware that either Democratic nominee would make history. So, for that matter, would the presumed Republican candidate. “McCain would be the oldest elected president,” said Anthony Bosca, another student in Miss Boles’s class.

The war in Iraq and the calls by the Democratic candidates to withdraw American troops also loom large. When the children in Miss Boles’s class were asked if they knew anyone who had served in Iraq, Elizabeth Reynolds shot up her hand. “Dana’s uncle,” she said, pointing toward Dana Jones, who related how her uncle had recently returned from a tour in the Army, but would soon be going back to Iraq.

The children here have been bombarded with television commercials for the candidates in recent weeks — with those in Miss Boles’s class saying they had seen campaign advertisements during “American Idol,” “Jeopardy,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” CBS’s coverage of the Masters golf tournament and even on Nickelodeon.

“It’s just a frenzy,” said Barbara Stefano, whose fourth-grade classroom is down a blue-and-cream cinder block corridor from Miss Boles’s, and who has been teaching for 44 years. “They know a lot more than they ever have. They know there’s a primary. I don’t ever remember talking about the primary in class before.”

The students are also talking about the presidential race with their parents, and even doing some independent research.

“I remember something I learned about Hillary,” Elizabeth told her classmates. “It’s not like a marriage between Hillary and Bill. It’s more like an agreement. She helps him. He helps her.”

Asked where she had gleaned this information about Mrs. Clinton, from New York, and her husband, the former president, she said, “I saw it on AOL.com.”

Sitting nearby, Ethan Steinberg sought to summarize the Democratic candidates’ Senate votes on an early measure to authorize the war. “At first Hillary wanted the war to go on,” he said, recounting a newspaper article he had read. “Then a little later she changed her mind and wanted the troops to come home. Obama voted that the troops shouldn’t go to war. He thought it would cause too many problems.”

Soon after, Colin Criniti, the classroom’s resident expert on Senator John McCain of Arizona — he had dutifully reported to his teacher when Mr. McCain’s opponent Mitt Romney dropped out of the race — raised a hand.

“If Hillary or Obama win, they will pull the troops out of the war,” Colin said. “I think it’s a stupid idea. We’ll lose everything we’ve worked for.”

Colin said he was supporting Mr. McCain, who, he said, offered the promise of a more measured approach to the war.

After the children spent time discussing short position papers that the teachers had prepared on subjects like health care and education, it was time to vote.

Each child received a thin strip of white paper with open boxes next to the names of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, of Illinois. (Since there is no contested Republican primary in Pennsylvania, the teachers had focused on the Democratic race.)

“Fold it once,” Miss Boles instructed. “No origami.”

The children then stuffed their ballots into a cardboard box that had been wrapped in bright yellow paper.

Later, the teachers announced the gradewide results: 52 votes for Mr. Obama and 21 for Mrs. Clinton (with one ballot, marked for both, disqualified). In Miss Boles’s class, the vote was more lopsided: Mrs. Clinton garnered just 2 of the 20 votes cast.

But to their teachers, the children’s preferences were less important than their embrace of politics.

“I feel better about our future,” said Mrs. Stefano, 62. “I’m getting to the point where I’m going to need these kids to take care of me. This gives me hope.”

Sandra Jamison, Marjorie Connelly and Megan Thee contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/us...s/19class.html





Hack into Obama Campaign Site Exploited a Coding Flaw
Jordan Robertson

A simple flaw in the coding of Sen. Barack Obama's Web site led to a hacking switcheroo of presidential proportions just days before the important Pennsylvania primary.

Some supporters who tried to visit the community blogs section of Obama's site started noticing late last week they were being redirected to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's official campaign site.

Security researchers said a hacker exploited a so-called "cross-site scripting" vulnerability in Obama's Web site to engineer the ruse.

Netcraft Ltd. said the hacker injected code into certain pages in the section _ code that was then executed when subsequent visitors tried to view the community blogs section. The vulnerability has since been fixed.

While the hack appears to have been a prank, researchers said the breach underscored that candidates risk exposing their supporters to computer viruses and identity theft if they don't secure their Web sites. For instance, a similar mechanism could be employed to redirect campaign site users to a site that steals personal information from visitors.

"With people closely watching the heated contest to determine the next U.S. president, you can bet that this won't be the last time such attacks happen," Symantec Corp. researcher Zulfikar Ramzan wrote on the company's official blog.

Neither campaign responded to e-mail messages seeking comment.

The community blogs feature is working normally again this week. The link that took visitors to Clinton's site now directs visitors to the appropriate page, which is populated with blog postings from Obama supporters around the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042302976.html





NJ Judge Allows Electronic Voting Machines to be Examined
Jeffrey Gold

A state judge on Friday ruled that voting rights activists will have a chance to have an expert examine the programming of touch-screen voting machines they claim are unreliable and vulnerable to hackers, officials said.

The advocates said the decision is believed to be the first of its kind.

Superior Court Judge Linda R. Feinberg, sitting in Trenton, also dropped a May trial date on the reliability of the machines but said the trial should start by September.

The delay nearly assures that the outcome will be too late to change how millions of New Jerseyans vote in November's presidential election.

The judge is to decide if the state's 10,000 electronic voting machines should be scrapped, as the voting rights advocates contend. The state of New Jersey maintains the machines should continue to be used.

Friday's ruling pleased Irene Etkin Goldman, chair of the Coalition for Peace Action, one of the groups that have sued the state over the machines.

"The judge gave us the machines to have tested by our independent expert, and that's extraordinary and unique," Goldman said.

Her lawyer, Penny M. Venetis, said the ruling was an "important victory for the citizens of new Jersey who have a constitutional right to an accurate count of their vote."

Testing will be performed on software and firmware of two machines that were used in the Feb. 5 presidential primary in New Jersey, including a machine that malfunctioned, said Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and co-director of its constitutional litigation clinic.

The manufacturer of the machines, Sequoia Voting Systems, resisted efforts to have the machines tested independently.

A spokeswoman for Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia, Michelle M. Shafer, said the company will cooperate, noting that the judge will later devise an order to protect its proprietary information.

"We believe this result protects both the public's interest and Sequoia's legitimate rights in its intellectual property and trade secrets," she said in an e-mail.

Sequoia routinely furnishes its source code and firmware to federally accredited test labs and state governments for testing, under protective agreements.

Feinberg said that inspection of the source code and firmware of the Sequoia machines is "clearly critical" to analyzing the "security and accuracy" of the machines, according to a summary of her ruling prepared by the New Jersey Department of State.

The protective order, still to be crafted, will keep information about the machines from being publicly disclosed, the judge said, according to the summary.

Some states have scrapped electronic voting machines. Among them are Florida and New Mexico, which switched to paper ballots that are counted by optical scanners.

New Jersey has tried for at least three years to address the concerns of voting rights advocates by retrofitting the machines with printers that provide paper receipts. Voters could check their choices against what the machine recorded.

The Attorney General's Office, which oversees elections in New Jersey, is about to miss the second deadline set by the Legislature to have the paper balloting safeguard in place.

The Assembly and Senate last month approved a measure extending the deadline, to January 2009. Gov. Jon S. Corzine is expected to sign the bill, said a spokesman, Jim Gardner.
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/a...xamine d.html





Debate Backlash: ABC Feels It In The Ratings
Rachel Sklar

The ratings for last week's evening newscasts are in — and it appears that the angry viewers claiming that they would no longer watch ABC after last week's poorly-received debate made good on their promise: NBC beat ABC by over 600,000 viewers last week — an unusually wide margin for the dueling newscasts.

One reason for that wider-than-usual gap — averaging out Friday's numbers: On Friday, NBC beat ABC by 1.1 million viewers — a practically unheard of margin for an otherwise random Friday night. But it wasn't so random — by Friday, the post-debate backlash was in full swing, with reviews castigating moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulous for their performance, and viewer complaints racking up over 17,600 and counting on ABC.com alone.

What will this bode for this week? The ABC comments are now at 19,425, suggesting a drop-off after the initial outcry, so who knows if this was a flash rejection out of momentary anger or a larger-scale defection. ABC must be feeling it — why else was their lead story last night on gas prices, followed by food prices, on the eve of the first primary in over six weeks? (Politics finally showed up on the broadcast 6:55 minutes in). Update: As it turns out, according to a source with access to preliminary Nielson data, ABC actually beat NBC last night. See above re: the "who knows" factor.

To that end, let's put this in context: Last year at this time, the gap between the two broadcasts was actually larger — in ABC's favor (see here, here and here). You will recall that the NBC ratings jumped over the Virginia Tech story (see here), and then slid in relation to ABC in the weeks following. Many things can go into ratings — lead-in numbers, sporting events, daylight saving time, who was on Oprah — so a number of factors could have contributed to the overall numbers, and will going forward. Still, 1.1 million viewers is a pretty significant block, and worth noting.

A note on CBS' viewers: The total viewer number of 5.39 million is even lower than the 5.4 million figure for Labor Day week which I cited recently as the ratings low for CBS. It is, in fact, a record low. This means that in the week before the much-ballyhooed Pennsylvania primary, with viewers leaving ABC in anger over the debate, CBS actually lost, not gained, viewers. What this says: The recent reports and/or rumors about Katie Couric 's impending departure from CBS have had an effect on viewers, old and potentially new: They don't want to spend their time with a lame duck anchor.

All of which means that this was a particularly good week for NBC.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0...s_n_97938.html

[JackSpratts]

U.K. to Set Up Massive National Drivers' Surveillance Scheme

Hundreds of monitoring stations would be used to track cars every five seconds -- with daily itemized accounts of all trips made by Britain's thirty million drivers; move is part of a national pay-as-you-drive road pricing plan; government says plan will reduce congestion and pollution

The United Kingdom is often called the Surveillance Society, what with the hundreds of thousands of CCTVs on street corners and along highways. The Labor Party government wants to take a step further as plans were revealed for a pay-as-you-drive tax using the ability of cameras to monitor motorists' every move. The Sunday Express's Kirsty Buchana writes that hundreds of monitoring stations would be used to track cars every five seconds -- with daily itemized accounts of all trips made by Britain's thirty million drivers. The monitoring equipment needed to target road users round-the-clock is revealed in Labor's tender document for controversial road pricing. Tories branded it as "sinister," and accused the government of being "at war with the motorist." The document will also fuel fears of a mass expansion of Big Brother state and raise concerns about the security of detailed information being collected on millions of drivers.

In a surprise U-turn, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced during last month's Budget that the government was pushing ahead with national road pricing -- just one month after Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly appeared to shelve the idea. He announced that pilot projects would be launched next year and funding would be available to research the technology needed "to underpin national road pricing." Labor's Invitation to Tender Document reveals the extent to which it wants motorists monitored and recorded. Companies are being told to draw up plans for "time, distance, place" charging -- known as TDP. This satellite system uses technology to track motorists every minute of the day. It communicates with "contact points" that push up the driver's bill as they motor pass them. Trial schemes would see up to 500 spy stations installed in each pricing pilot area. Hundreds more "assurance objects" would be set up -- contact points to track a car without increasing the charge. Scheme operators would then be able to produce itemized accounts of where each motorist has driven in twenty-four hours. The detailed bills could be submitted if a driver disputes the charges, but the tender document suggests the information may also be used for "analysis" of motorists' movements.

The government has put no bar on how many departments or agencies would have access to this information, while data collection would be outsourced to third-party companies, called Road User Service Providers. Tory transport spokesman Theresa Villiers warned that despite Labor's "appalling" record on data security, it was forging ahead with a scheme which would see personal information passed daily between multiple organizations. She said: "From ID cards, to microchips in wheelie bins, to clipboard-wielding council tax inspectors with the right to come into your home, Big Brother schemes have dominated this Government from day one. Having lost half the country's personal data already, what makes ministers think that people will trust this Government to monitor the movements of every driver to within five seconds of accuracy? This sinister plan is proof that the Government is still at war with the motorist."

National road pricing could see drivers paying up to £1.34 a mile during peak times. They would be charged on the distance and time of a journey as well as the size of car. Drivers themselves would also be put into one of thirty categories. The government has not revealed details, but charges may vary depending on whether you use the car to commute or go shopping. A record 1.8 million people last year signed a Downing Street petition in protest over national road pricing as motorists feel the squeeze of rising taxes and fuel costs. The government insists higher taxes will cut congestion and combat climate change, but the Tories believe that Labor's eco-argument is a cover for a blatant tax grab on drivers. The Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has warned that Britain is sleepwalking into a "surveillance state" -- fears highlighted last week when it emerged that a local council used anti-terror laws to track a family in a dispute over school catchment areas.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5958





FBI, Politicos Renew Push for ISP Data Retention Laws
Declan McCullagh

The FBI and multiple members of Congress said on Wednesday that Internet service providers must be legally required to keep records of their users' activities for later review by police.

Their suggestions for mandatory data retention revive a push for potentially sweeping federal laws--which civil libertarians oppose--that flagged last year after the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the idea's most prominent proponent.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House of Representatives committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep records of users' activities for two years.

"From the perspective of an investigator, having that backlog of records would be tremendously important if someone comes up on your screen now," Mueller said. "If those records are only kept 15 days or 30 days, you may lose the information you may need to bring that person to justice."

Also lending their support for data retention were Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who said that Internet chat rooms were crammed with sexual predators, and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary committee and a previous data retention enthusiast. Rep. John Conyers, the senior Democrat and chairman, added that any proposed data retention legislation submitted by the FBI "would be most welcome."

"Records retention by ISPs would be tremendously helpful in giving us a historic basis to make a case on a number of child pornographers who use the Internet to push their pornography" or lure children, Mueller said.

Replied Smith: "I think a number of us may well follow up on that suggestion."

An aide to Rep. Smith said in response to questions from News.com that the congressman was offering no details and would not be commenting at this point.

Based on the statements at Wednesday's hearing and previous calls for new laws in this area, the scope of a mandatory data retention law remains fuzzy. It could mean forcing companies to store data for two years about what Internet addresses are assigned to which customers (Comcast said in 2006 that it would be retaining those records for six months).

Or it could be far more intrusive. It could mean keeping track of e-mail and instant-messaging correspondence and what Web pages users visit. Some Democratic politicians have called for data retention laws to extend to domain name registries and Web hosting companies and even social-networking sites. During private meetings with industry officials, FBI and Justice Department representatives have said it would be desirable to force search engines to keep logs--a proposal that could gain additional law enforcement support, but raise additional privacy concerns and potentially conflict with European laws.

ISP snooping time line

In a series of events first reported by CNET News.com, Bush administration officials have lobbied to force Internet providers to keep track of what Americans are doing online:

June 2005: Justice Department officials quietly propose data retention rules.

December 2005: European Parliament votes for data retention of up to two years.

April 14, 2006: Data retention proposals surface in Colorado and the U.S. Congress.

April 20, 2006: Attorney General Gonzales says data retention "must be addressed."

April 28, 2006: Rep. DeGette proposes data retention amendment.

May 16, 2006: Rep. Sensenbrenner drafts data retention legislation, but backs away from it two days later.

May 26, 2006: Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller meet with Internet and telecommunications companies.

February 6, 2007: Rep. Smith introduces bill that would give the Justice Department broad authority to write data retention rules.

Kate Dean, director of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, which counts as members AT&T, AOL, Comcast, and Verizon, said in an e-mail message:

Without specifics, it's hard to know what Director Mueller is looking for from industry. The idea of data retention is complex, and Congress will need to examine many issues including which providers would be covered by a retention regime, for what period of time would those organizations be required to keep the data, does the policy idea fit with the today's and tomorrow's technologies, and what are the effects on the consumer--what are the potential risks to subscriber privacy and security? US ISPA members have been at the forefront of child protection initiatives with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and law enforcement, so we welcome a continued dialogue.

As attorney general until last summer, Gonzales rarely passed up an opportunity to call for data retention. In April 2006, he said Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time" and the issue "must be addressed." In September 2006, he added: "This is a national problem that requires federal legislation."

After Gonzales' departure, the Bush administration has been less vocal on lobbying for data retention legislation. During Wednesday's hearing, however, Mueller called for new laws at least three times.

Multiple proposals to mandate data retention have surfaced in the U.S. Congress. One, backed by Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, said that any Internet service that "enables users to access content" must indefinitely retain records that would permit police to identify each user. Another came from Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a close ally of President Bush, and a third was written by Rep. Smith, who endorsed the idea again on Wednesday.

At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.

A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."

Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)

In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.

News.com's Anne Broache reported from Washington, D.C.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9926803-38.html





Millimeter Wave Scanners to be Deployed at JFK, LAX

At JFK, passengers sent to secondary screening will be given the option of a pat-down or a trip through the body imager; at LAX, the millimeter wave machine will be located just beyond the checkpoint magnetometers

Some travelers at key airports in New York and Los Angeles may be put through machines that see through clothing and provide a detailed image of a person's body beginning later this week. It is the first expansion of the program since the machines were first put to the test in Phoenix, Arizona. The "whole body imaging" machines have sparked complaints from privacy advocates, but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says that it has taken steps to protect individuals' privacy and that 90 percent of the travelers in Phoenix preferred the imaging machine to a pat-down. The millimeter wave machines will be rolled out at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Los Angeles International Airport in California later this week, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley told Congress on Tuesday. The TSA will be purchasing at least thirty more machines for use at other U.S. airports this year, he added. The TSA will use two different methods at JFK and LAX as they study the most effective way to use the machines (for more om millimeter wave technology, see HSDW story on Brijot Imaging Systems).

At JFK, passengers sent to secondary screening will be given the option of a pat-down or a trip through the body imager. To protect the traveler's privacy, the screener who reviews the image is in a booth, unable to see the traveler, according to the TSA. The traveler's face is pixilated and the image is not stored, the TSA said. At LAX, the millimeter wave machine will be located just beyond the checkpoint magnetometers. Travelers will continuously and randomly be selected to go through the machine. While signs will inform them of the pat-down option, screeners will not announce that choice, but passengers electing not to go through the millimeter wave machine will be given the option of the pat-down. A TSA spokesman said the agency is still exploring backscatter, another imaging technology in use at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport. Millimeter wave machines are already in use at airports in Britain, Spain, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Thailand, and the Netherlands, as well as at some court and corrections facilities in Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California and Illinois. Sky Harbor began using the machines last October.

Hawley also announced Tuesday the TSA is purchasing another 580 multi-view X-ray machines that are used to screen passengers' carry-on bags, bringing the total to 830 machines. The machines give screeners a clearer, more detailed view. Some 600 machines will be deployed by year's end, he said. The technology is a "powerful platform" that can be adjusted to include software capable of detecting liquid explosives, he said.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5945





Face Scans for Air Passengers to Begin in UK this Summer

Officials say automatic screening more accurate than checks by humans
Owen Bowcott

A face recognition system will scan faces and match them to biometric chips on passports. Photograph: Image Source/Getty

Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.

From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks.

Ministers are eager to set up trials in time for the summer holiday rush, but have yet to decide how many airports will take part. If successful, the technology will be extended to all UK airports.

The automated clearance gates introduce the new technology to the UK mass market for the first time and may transform the public's experience of airports.

Existing biometric, fast-track travel schemes - iris and miSense - operate at several UK airports, but are aimed at business travellers who enroll in advance.

The rejection rate in trials of iris recognition, by means of the unique images of each traveller's eye, is 3% to 5%, although some were passengers who were not enrolled but jumped into the queue.

The trials emerged at a conference in London this week of the international biometrics industry, top civil servants in border control, and police technology experts. Gary Murphy, head of operational design and development for the UK Border Agency, told one session: "We think a machine can do a better job [than manned passport inspections]. What will the public reaction be? Will they use it? We need to test and see how people react and how they deal with rejection. We hope to get the trial up and running by the summer.

Some conference participants feared passengers would only be fast-tracked to the next bottleneck in overcrowded airports. Automated gates are intended to help the government's progress to establishing a comprehensive advance passenger information (API) security system that will eventually enable flight details and identities of all passengers to be checked against a security watch list.

Phil Booth of the No2Id Campaign said: "Someone is extremely optimistic. The technology is just not there. The last time I spoke to anyone in the facial recognition field they said the best systems were only operating at about a 40% success rate in a real time situation. I am flabbergasted they consider doing this at a time when there are so many measures making it difficult for passengers."

Gus Hosein, a specialist at the London School of Economics in the interplay between technology and society, said: "It's a laughable technology. US police at the SuperBowl had to turn it off within three days because it was throwing up so many false positives. The computer couldn't even recognise gender. It's not that it could wrongly match someone as a terrorist, but that it won't match them with their image. A human can make assumptions, a computer can't."

Project Semaphore, the first stage in the government's e-borders programme, monitors 30m passenger movements a year through the UK. By December 2009, API will track 60% of all passengers and crew movements. The Home Office aim is that by December 2010 the system will be monitoring 95%. Total coverage is not expected to be achieved until 2014 after similar checks have been introduced for travel on "small yachts and private flights".

So far around 8m to 10m UK biometric passports, containing a computer chip holding the carrier's facial details, have been issued since they were introduced in 2006. The last non-biometric passports will cease to be valid after 2016.

Home Office minister Liam Byrne said: "Britain's border security is now among the toughest in the world and tougher checks do take time, but we don't want long waits. So the UK Border Agency will soon be testing new automatic gates for British and European Economic Area [EEA] citizens. We will test them this year and if they work put them at all key ports [and airports]."

The EEA includes all EU states as well as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...stry.transport





Kinder, Gentler Security Checkpoints

TSA wants to try a new approach to airport security checkpoints: Mauve lights glowing softly, soothing music hums, smiling employees offer quiet greetings and assistance

Serenity adds to security. No, this is not a Buddhist mantra, but a new Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) approach to airport checkpoints. The agency hopes to create a kinder, gentler screening process and will test it soon at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport. Other U.S. airports could see the new approach later this year. The checkpoint to be tested in May at one terminal in Baltimore is based on a simple premise: Serenity adds security. Mauve lights glow softly, soothing music hums, and smiling employees offer quiet greetings and assistance. “A chaotic, noisy, congested checkpoint is a security nightmare. Chaos gives camouflage,” TSA director Kip Hawley said. “A chaotic environment puts subtle pressure on [screeners] to rush the job.”
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5917





Companies May Be Held Liable for Deals With Terrorists, ID Thieves

New and little-known regulations could mean fines, or even jail time, for companies that do business with bad guys
Tim Wilson

OK, pop quiz. A local car dealership sells a car to a new customer. A week later, that same automobile is used in a terrorist car bombing. The business can't be held liable for what the customer did, right?

Wrong, according to several U.S. law enforcement agencies. In fact, if your company provides products or services to a terrorist or identity thief, it may face six-figure fines -- or even jail time for its officers.

"With all of the focus put on compliance and security breaches, it's easy to overlook these requirements around identity and law enforcement," notes Brian Bradley, executive vice president of strategy and emerging markets at MicroBilt, which vets customers and trading partners on behalf of its small-business clients. "It's another level of compliance that a lot of companies don't even know about."

If you're a security pro, you might be familiar with the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) requirements, which basically require companies to check their customers' identities against a list of known terrorists to prevent them from unwittingly providing products or services to an enemy. Most major credit bureaus check customers and applicants against these lists, so if you're vetting your partners and customers that way, you're probably covered.

However, you may not have heard yet about the Federal Trade Commission's "Red Flag" program, which is designed to warn companies when they are about to do business with identity thieves or money-laundering operations. The Red Flag program, which takes effect Nov. 1, requires enterprises to check their customers and suppliers against databases of known online criminals -- much like what OFAC does with terrorists -- and also carries potential fines and penalties for businesses that don't do their due diligence before making a major transaction.

"The final rules require each financial institution and creditor that holds any consumer account, or other account for which there is a reasonably foreseeable risk of identity theft, to develop and implement an Identity Theft Prevention Program for combating identity theft in connection with new and existing accounts," the FTC says in the rules, which were passed last year.

"The Red Flag rules are basically there to help protect consumers from identity fraud, and to help prevent businesses from making bad loans or extending credit to criminals," Bradley says. "But a lot of security people don't know much about them yet, and most small businesses -- the ones that are too small to work with the big credit bureaus -- don't know anything."

However, many organized terrorists and criminals know that small businesses can't afford to work with the big credit bureaus, which makes these mom-and-pop shops prime targets for illegal purchases and money-laundering scams, Bradley observes.

"And the worst part is that the small business can be held liable if it does do business with the bad guys, even if it isn't aware of the regulations. I haven't seen any cases yet, but the Red Flag rules won't be enforced until November, so we're just beginning to deal with those."

MicroBilt is out spreading the word on these emerging regulations because next week it will unveil a new service offering that helps small businesses vet their customers, suppliers, and even employees to comply with the OFAC and FTC Red Flag rules.

As part of its regular "risk management" service, which provides screening, tracing, and identity and background checks on potential clients or trading partners, MicroBilt will now offer a "watch list" service that checks these individuals against 63 different lists from 35 sources, including OFAC, the FBI, and Interpol, Bradley says.

"It's an easy way to be sure you're not dealing with someone you'll regret later," he says. "And it's also a way to be sure you're in compliance with the emerging regulations and databases, which are too complicated for most small businesses to deal with."

The watch list service is free with the MicroBilt service, which is sold on a per-transaction basis and includes vetting of any individual -- customers, potential employees, or even principals at prospective suppliers or trading partners. Microbilt will even guarantee the transactions of individuals vetted through its service, Bradley says.

"Any business that's in the chain of private consumer data should be thinking about these [regulations]," he says. "You need to be able to detect if you're dealing with a suspicious character, both from a business standpoint and, increasingly, from a legal standpoint."
http://www.darkreading.com/document....WT.svl=news1_1





Taser Reaffirmed at Site of ‘Don’t Tase Me, Bro’
Mike Nizza

Despite the flood of negative attention brought to the University of Florida by the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” affair, the school is sticking to its Tasers.

J. Bernard Machen, the university’s president, has decided against banning Tasers on campus after a committee concluded that police rules had been satisfactorily restricted before their report. The Associated Press summarized the changes:

The new policy states Taser use “is not a justified response to passive physical resistance.” That would apply to a person who goes limp in the hands of officers, a technique often used during sit-in style protests.

It also states that a Taser should not be used “as a response to verbal dialogue.” The revised policy also said a Taser should not be used against a person who is fleeing, unless that person is physically resisting, has harmed someone or presents an imminent physical threat.

The officer also must be able to explain the reason for using a Taser under the guidelines.

Those limits, however, would have allowed the police to tase Andrew Meyer, the student who ranted against a visiting Senator John Kerry and then resisted police efforts to remove him from the September event. In October, Mr. Meyer issued an apology as part of a deal to avoid prosecution for resisting arrest.

“The committee believes that employment of Tasers as one of the University’s less-than-lethal weapons is justified,” a 52-page report [pdf] said. “Overall, credible studies of Tasers indicate that they are relatively safe, with serious injuries or death only extremely rarely resulting from their use.”

They also found that other uses of Tasers by university police had been “appropriately restrained.” Out of 20 incidents since 2001, “only seven uses were on students, two of which were to prevent a suicide and three of which involved physical resistance to officers by students using alcohol.”

In the end, the same incident that put the Taser on display as a brutal weapon ended up vindicating it in the end. Recognizing a victory, the press office of TASER International, the company that makes the weapon, unleashed a “NEWS ALERT” titled “University of Florida Police Will Continue to Use TASER Devices.”

And so will many other customers around the world, apparently. Earlier this week, the company reported that profits surged 146% so far this year.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...t-tase-me-bro/





Indignant Chinese Urge Anti-West Boycott Over Pro-Tibet Stance
Andrew Jacobs and Jimmy Wang

Armed with her laptop and her indignation, Zhu Xiaomeng sits in her dorm room here, stoking a popular backlash against Western support for Tibet that has unnerved foreign investors and Western diplomats and, increasingly, the ruling Communist Party.

Over the last week, Ms. Zhu and her classmates have been channeling anger over anti-China protests during the tumultuous Olympic torch relay into a boycott campaign against French companies, blamed for their country’s support of pro-Tibetan agitators. Some have also called for a boycott against American chains like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

On Friday and Saturday, protesters gathered in front of a half-dozen outlets of the French retailer Carrefour, including a demonstration in the central city of Wuhan that reportedly drew several thousand people, according to Agence France-Presse. On Saturday, about 50 demonstrators carrying banners held a brief rally at the French Embassy here before the police shooed them away.

For the moment, however, most of the outrage is confined to the Internet. More than 20 million people have signed online petitions saying they plan to stop shopping at the Carrefour chain, Louis Vuitton and other stores linked to France because of what they see as the country’s failure to protect the torch during its visit to Paris last week. In a survey released on Friday, China’s state news agency, known as Xinhua, said 66 percent of those who responded said they would stay away from Carrefour during a monthlong boycott planned for May.

Public indignation has also been directed at Western news outlets, which are blamed for one-sided coverage of the torch relay and for anti-Chinese bias in their reporting on the disturbances in Tibet. In recent days, foreign news outlets here have been swamped by angry phone calls; two music videos circulating on the Internet blast CNN with expletives and lyrics like, “Don’t think that repeating something over and over again means that lies become truth.”

Like many young people, Ms. Zhu, a student at Beijing’s prestigious Foreign Studies University, said she had been infuriated by what she described as unfair attacks on the country’s image. “China used to be known as the sick man of Asia,” said Ms. Zhu, 19, who has been sending out tens of thousands of pro-boycott messages through a popular online chat service called QQ. “We were separated like sand. But this worldwide show of support by Chinese all over the globe illustrates we have solidarity on this issue. After 5,000 years, we’re not so soft anymore.”

The boycott call, spread through millions of text messages and postings on the country’s most heavily trafficked Web sites, provides a window into the technology’s growing power to mobilize a country whose political passions are usually kept in check by tight government control.

Although Communist Party officials have the ability to block text messages and Internet traffic they find objectionable, the censors have until now given boycott organizers free reign. In many ways, they have been feeding the outrage by publicizing the threat by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to skip the opening ceremonies and by repeatedly calling on CNN to apologize for remarks made by Jack Cafferty, a commentator who called the Chinese government “goons and thugs.” The network has expressed regret for offending the Chinese people but officials here have dismissed the response as insincere.

But in a sign that the government may now be worried about the intensity of popular passion, Xinhua said on Friday that it was time to curb nationalist zeal. While it lauded the boycott crusade, it advised people not to complicate the government’s aim of encouraging foreign investment in China.

“Patriotic fervor should be channeled into a rational track and must be transformed into real action toward doing our work well,” the agency said.

On Saturday, it issued a stronger warning, highlighting government concern that anti-Western sentiment could affect public attitudes during the Olympics, when 1.5 million people are expected to arrive here. “Every son and daughter of China has the responsibility to show to the world in real action that China welcomes friends from all countries with open arms and will deliver an outstanding Olympics,” it said in an editorial.

In the past, the government has encouraged nationalistic outbursts and then quashed them when passions grew too inflamed — or when the protests had achieved the political purpose officials envisioned. In 1999, the authorities gave free rein to a brief spasm of anti-American protest after the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; in 2005, they allowed even larger anti-Japanese demonstrations, which were fueled by anger over textbooks glossing over Japan’s wartime atrocities in China.

During marches in several Chinese cities that year, the police stood by as eggs and rocks were thrown at Japanese consulates. A few weeks later, officials pulled the plug by shutting down the organizers’ Web sites and filtering out anti-Japanese messages.

Mindful of how a public grief following the death of a party official morphed into the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government recognizes that vitriolic campaigns against outsiders could easily pivot toward the Communist Party.
Fang Xingdong, who runs blogchina.com, a hub for Chinese bloggers, said that he thought the government would not stand in the way of the boycott but that it would intervene if the anti-Western campaign became too disruptive. “If the irrational mood and behaviors among netizens are getting more and more intense, it will be very dangerous,” he said, using the term for the community of bloggers and message-board users. “But I think this will not be beyond government’s control.”

If the protests on Saturday are any indication, official tolerance for unsanctioned demonstrations is wearing thin. According to witnesses and news reports, most of the Carrefour protests were quickly dispersed by the police. In Beijing, a rally that drew about 50 people to the French Embassy and a nearby French school lasted an hour before riot police shooed them away. By 3 p.m., dozens of uniformed officers had sealed off access to the streets surrounding the embassy.

In a country where the press is tightly controlled, the growing popularity of high-tech communication has made such protests possible. Some 229 million people have Internet access in the country, compared with 217 million in the United States, and usage in China is growing by 30 percent a year, according to BDA China, a research firm. Cellphone text messaging is ubiquitous here, with more than 98 percent of the country’s 400 million cellphone owners regularly using text messages. Another 300 million people are registered on instant messaging networks like MSN and QQ. Ms. Zhu, for one, says that instant messaging is an effective way to reach thousands of people with a few keyboard strokes. “I don’t send e-mails to individuals,” she said. “It’s inefficient — you can reach a lot more people by e-mailing groups on QQ.”

In a demonstration of the Internet’s viral prowess, some 2.3 million MSN users have attached “I Love China” icons to their online profiles as an expression of solidarity against “Tibetan separatists.” A Google search for “Carrefour Boycott” in Chinese yielded over 2.4 million Web pages, most of them created in the last week.

Many of the messages accuse Carrefour executives of providing financial support to pro-Tibetan advocates, a charge the company denies. Others say American fast-food chains should be boycotted as a punishment for the recent meeting by the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, with the Dalai Lama.

In the past, boycott campaigns in China have largely come to naught.

On Wednesday afternoon, as she sat in a cafe sipping a can of Coke, Ms. Zhu said she thought the boycott would be a success. “Tibet is our country’s territory. You have no right to interfere in our interior affairs,” she said, adding, “A boycott may not be the right long-term solution but we have to give the French people a lesson.”

Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wo...0china.html?hp





Captain Kidd, Human-Rights Victim
John S. Burnett

London

ON April 11, French commandos went in with guns blazing and captured a gang of pirates who days earlier had hijacked a luxury cruise ship, the Ponant, and held the crew for ransom. This was the French solution to a crime wave that has threatened international shipping off Somalia; those of us who have been on the business end of a pirate’s gun can only applaud their action.

The British government on the other hand, to the incredulity of many in the maritime industry, has taken a curiously pathetic approach to piracy. While the French were flying six of the captured pirates to Paris to face trial, the British Foreign Office issued a directive to the once vaunted Royal Navy not to detain any pirates, because doing so could violate their human rights. British warships patrolling the pirate-infested waters off Somalia were advised that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain and that those who were returned to Somalia faced beheading for murder or a hand chopped off for theft under Islamic law.

A violation of human rights? In 2007, 433 crew members were either taken hostage, assaulted, injured or killed by pirates. Three seafarers are still missing and presumed dead. According to the International Maritime Bureau, the anti-piracy watchdog of the International Chamber of Commerce, over the past 10 years 3,200 seafarers have been kidnapped, 500 injured and 160 killed.

Modern-day pirates are not like Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp swinging through the rigging, but well-armed militiamen equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles, global positioning systems and high-speed motorboats who have long terrorized the shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and literally gotten away with murder. During the week before the French raid, half the pirate attacks in the world occurred in the gulf, a strategic waterway that leads into the Red Sea and thus to the Suez Canal and Europe. Two weeks before the attack on the Ponant, a huge crude-oil carrier — a monster of a ship as long as the Chrysler Building is tall — en route to the Middle East was attacked by pirates firing automatic weapons. The vessel managed to flee.

The Ponant was not the first cruise ship attacked off Somalia. In November 2005, the American ship Seabourn Spirit was attacked. The quick action of the master and the use of a Long-Range Acoustic Device, a sonic weapon that can blow out eardrums, drove off the pirates (an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade, however, did embed itself in the stateroom of a passenger). The Ponant will not be the last cruise ship to be attacked; undefended passenger vessels are among the ships that are most vulnerable to pirates (the Ponant, for example, has a water-hugging swim platform that made it easy to board).

Hijacking a ship and kidnapping the crew for ransom is a lucrative business in Somalia. It is less risky than robbing a bank and more profitable than pulling up half-empty fishing nets. Two weeks before the Ponant was captured, Somali pirates released the British-Irish-Russian crew of an ice-breaking tug traveling from Russia to Singapore who had spent 47 days in captivity. The captain had surrendered his vessel after the wheelhouse windows were blown out by gunshots. The ship owner paid a ransom of about $700,000. The French were reported to have paid $2 million for release of the 30 crew members of the Ponant before their military took action.

This is not a problem without a solution. Just a few years ago, piracy was out of control in the Malacca Strait, the waterway through which 80 percent of crude oil to Japan and China is shipped. But the recent combined efforts of the region’s littoral states — Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore — have nearly eliminated piracy in the strait. The French are hoping that a concerted international effort off Somalia will have similar success.

France is also lobbying the United Nations Security Council to adopt an international anti-piracy law. Jean-David Levitte, the top diplomatic adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, said his government hoped that the organization would consider the creation of an international military force “to deal with this plague.” Once we could have expected the British to lead such an effort; now we don’t even know if they will join it.

The British fear of breaching the human rights of pirates has not gone down well in the maritime community. Andrew Linington, the spokesman for Nautilus, a British-Dutch seafarers trade union, has called the Foreign Office’s policy “a get out of jail card” for pirates.

“We despair,” Mr. Linington told me. “We are meant to be a major maritime country. The U.K. is heavily dependent on maritime trade — 95 percent of trade comes and goes by sea. Yet the Foreign Office has its head in the sand. It is just wishing the problem would go away.”

The British attitude has come a long way since the days when pirates were chained to pilings at Wapping and left there until the tidal water of the Thames ebbed and flowed over the bodies three times. So much for Britannia ruling the waves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/op...20burnett.html





Patent Boss Admits that the Patent Office Keeps Getting Flooded by More and More Bad Patents
Mike Masnick

The head of the US Patent Office, Jon Dudas, the same guy who was just hyping up a educational curriculum for children falsely claiming that any inventor "needs" to get a patent, is now complaining that the Patent Office is being overwhelmed with really crappy patent applications. You think? Lerner and Jaffe pointed this out years ago and it's not difficult to see why. With the USPTO approving tons of bad patents, and the courts all too often siding with the patent holder and expanding what's patentable, combined with people who have done nothing getting hundreds of millions just for holding a piece of paper, is it really any surprise that the incentive structure would push people to file for as many bogus patents as possible, in hopes of getting them through the obviously questionable process?

When you set up a system that rewards people for not actually innovating in the market (but just speculating on paper), then of course, you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that rewards those people to massive levels, well out of proportion with their contribution to any product, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that gives people a full monopoly right that can be used to set up a toll booth on the natural path of innovation, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When the cost of getting a patent is so much smaller than the potential payoff of suing others with it, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. The fact that Dudas is just noticing this now, while still pushing for changes that will make the problem worse is a real problem. Patents were only supposed to be used in special cases. The fact that they've become the norm, rather than the exception is a problem, and it doesn't seem like anyone is seriously looking into fixing that.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080418/131942889.shtml





District Court Invalidates Portion of Copyright Act as Unconstitutional

Holds state university and employee immune from claim for copyright infringement
Mary Minow

Quick conversation with Jonathan Pink, partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith

Minow: Could you tell us about the new decision about the state university professor who was sued for copyright infringement?

Pink: The case is Marketing Information Masters v. The Trustees of the California State University. For several years prior to the suit, the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl had hired Marketing Information to calculate the fiscal impact the Holiday Bowl (college football game) had on the City of San Diego. When Marketing Information tripled its fee, the Holiday Bowl hired San Diego State University to conduct the 2004 survey, but instructed the school to follow the format of earlier years.

When San Diego State delivered its 2004 report to Pacific Life, Marketing Information obtained a copy and cried foul. Marketing Information alleged that in creating the 2004 report, the school and one of its professors had copied large portions of Marketing Information's 2003 report.

The Trustees and the professor filed a motion to dismiss, claiming that the Eleventh Amendment provided them with immunity to a claim for copyright infringement. While Marketing Information argued that the Eleventh Amendment did not apply because Congress passed the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act which expressly provided that "[a]ny State, instrumentality of a state... or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State... shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment" to a suit for copyright infringement. 17 U.S.C. section 511(a), the defendants argued that the Clarification Act was an invalid exercise of Congress's power.

The District Court agreed with the defendants, finding that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act "was not passed pursuant to a valid exercise of [Congress's] Fourteenth Amendment enforcement powers," and "does not constitute a valid abrogation of state sovereign immunity."

In short, the Court invalidated the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act as unconstitutional, thus ruling that a State, employee of a State (acting within his or her official capacity) or instrumentality of a State cannot be held liable for copyright infringement.

Minow: Do all state employees have immunity for copyright infringement?

Pink: No. The Court's ruling only applies to state employees acting within their "official capcity." This gets a little tricky because a state official who has acted in violation of federal law will be stripped of his or her "official" character and will not be immune to suit under the 11th Amendment. Thus, for example, in the Marketing case, plaintiff may not seek damages against the professor in his official capacity as that it would violate the state’s sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment, but the professor likely would be "stripped of his official or representative character" and would be "subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct" if plaintiff can show that the professor violated plaintiff’s federally protected copyright. In other words, a state employee will be subjected to suit in his or her individual capacity even though he or she had been acting as an agent of the State if it is shown that the employee's conduct was ultra vires his or her delegated authority, e.g. by violating a federal law.
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/blog/200...dates-por.html





New Orphaned Works Act Would Limit Copyright Liability
Nate Anderson

Here's the problem that Congress is trying to solve: imagine that you are a well-known graphic artist who gains huge popularity from the funny videos you routinely post to YouTube. One day, you come across a vintage graphic from the 1960s at a yard sale; it would be perfect for your next video, you know exactly how you want to use it, but it contains no copyright information. You do what you can to find out if the image is still copyrighted and who it might belong to, but to no avail (the Copyright Office has no visual registry of works), so you go ahead and throw it into your video, which becomes a raging success, goes on to sell millions of copies on DVD, and is shown relentlessly on the vapid morning talk shows. And then, out of the blue, comes the lawsuit.

Such a picture might be an "orphan work," one without an active copyright holder. Artists die, publishers go out of business, some people never registered their work in the first place. Even if some entity still exists who values the copyright on the object in question, it can be impossible to locate this person.

Congress is now taking a stab at solving the problem with two new bills just introduced by Howard Berman (D-CA) in the House and by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in the Senate. The "Orphan Works Act of 2008" (HR 5889 and S 2913) attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted.

If the provisions in the bill are followed and a copyright holder does emerge later, the bill prevents the copyright owner from seeking the normal penalties for infringement. These can include massive statutory damages that need have no relation to any actual losses, and even the threat of such a lawsuit often leads creators to avoid using archival material in documentaries and other such works. Under the Orphan Works Act, a copyright holder can only claim "reasonable compensation," which is defined as "the amount on which a willing buyer and willing seller in the positions of the infringer and the owner of the infringed copyright would have agreed with respect to the infringing use of the work immediately before the infringement began."

To qualify for this protection, creators must perform (and document) their "good faith" search for the copyright owner. They must be able to show that they could not locate any owner. They must file a "Notice of Use" with the Copyright Office before using the orphan work. They must provide attribution about the original copyright owner, if they can find this information (imagine a publisher who owned the copyright in a book but went out of business thirty years ago). They must include a special "orphan works" symbol that will be determined later by the Register of Copyrights. If all of these prerequisites are met, the creator can use the work in question with confidence, knowing that he will only have to pay a reasonable license fee if the copyright owner does emerge.

The Copyright Office also has to certify databases that can aid in the search for "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works that are subject to copyright protection." While it won't actually run such a database, it will make sure that private databases meet proper criteria and that they are able to do visual searches.

Public Knowledge, which has been advocating on this issue for years, has worked with both House and Senate staffers on the bills and is generally pleased with them. But PK's Alex Curtis doesn't like the fact that the searchable visual databases could cost money to use, money that might discourage creators from using orphan works at all.

"While we understand the desire to remain laissez-faire and not put requirements on market actors," he wrote yesterday, "these registries are essentially taking over for a failure of a government agency and resource—the Copyright Office's Registry. If it were the government doing the job, it would of course be required to make the contents of its resources available to the public. If the goal is to drag visual artists into the light to make sure they can be found, allowing independent registries to become locked-up silos cuts the other way."

While the bills seem like a good start, the text of the two versions is not identical, so work will be required in committee to hash out any differences between them (and there are some significant differences; the House version, for instance, prevents the orphan works provisions from applying to images placed "in or on a useful article" like a T-shirt).

Of course, that's assuming that both bills can pass their respective chambers before the current Congressional session ends at the end of this year. Given the turmoil that always occurs in the months leading up to a Presidential election and the other pressing issues on Congress' plate, there's a good chance that these bills are really just a warm-up for next year, when they will be introduced once more and have a full two years to wind their way through Congress.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...liability.html





Tension Over Sports Blogging
Tim Arango

Recently in Dallas, more than an hour before game time, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was in the locker room grinding on the Stairmaster, surrounded by several reporters — their microphones deployed, heads tilted away to avoid flying droplets of sweat.

A reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who writes a blog, asked Mr. Cuban about a bruised Dirk Nowitzki, referring to the star power forward as a “warrior” for his willingness to play while injured.

“We’re not trading him to the Warriors,” said Mr. Cuban. “Bloggers might make that point.”

The comment was a bit of word play, but it illustrates how Mr. Cuban, a prolific blogger himself, feels about some of the bloggers who cover his team.

Last month Mr. Cuban sought to ban bloggers from the Mavericks’ locker room, but the National Basketball Association intervened, ruling that bloggers from credentialed news organizations must be admitted.

Mr. Cuban then decided to let in any blogger — “someone on Blogspot who has been posting for a couple weeks, kids blogging for their middle school Web site or those that work for big companies.”

Tension over sports blogging is one of the strains between sports franchises, leagues and reporters to have emerged during the digital age.

The dispute has grown lately between the press and organized sports over issues like how reporters cover teams, who owns the rights to photographs, audio and video that journalists gather at sports events, and whether someone who writes only blogs should be given access to the locker room.

The explosion of new media, especially with regard to advertising income, has made competitors out of two traditional allies — news media and professional sports.

At the heart of the issue, which people on both sides alternately describe as a commercial dispute and a First Amendment fight, is a simple question: Who owns sports coverage?

The issue has seeped outside the world of sports as well. Last week ABC News limited the length of video clips from a presidential debate, telling other networks they could use no more than 30 seconds. But the question of ownership is compelling in the lucrative business of sports. One professional hockey executive said the situation was volatile, and that he thought the issue would eventually have to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Major League Baseball recently issued new rules limiting how the press can use photographs and audio and video clips on Web sites. Many organizations and publications, like Hearst, Gannett and Sports Illustrated, have refused to go along with the new rules. (The Associated Press Sports Editors, a group of newspaper editors, did agree to less restrictive rules, allowing a “reasonable” number of photographs published online rather than a limit of seven, for example.)

League officials argue that too much video and audio on a newspaper’s Web site could infringe on rights holders — the broadcasters who pay millions of dollars to carry live games. And the leagues and teams have their own Web sites, carrying news accounts and footage, that are big business. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball’s Internet arm, generates an estimated $400 million a year in revenue and is growing at a 30 percent a year. Investment bankers have estimated that the business is worth $2 billion to $3 billion.

Sports executives see the issue as pure business, and balk at any suggestion that restrictions are an affront to a free press.

Frank Hawkins, senior vice president of business affairs at the N.F.L., which restricted nongame audio and video clips to 45 seconds, said that the leagues are not controlling what is said in the press.

“There is no prior restraint,” he said. “We don’t pull credentials if we don’t like what someone writes.”

Mr. Hawkins also disputed an argument often made by media executives that the taxpayer financing of stadiums demands a broad interpretation of the First Amendment with respect to coverage of sporting events.

“The First Amendment only applies to government,” said Mr. Hawkins. “Even if it is played in a publicly financed stadium it is a private event.”

Mike Fannin, the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the managing editor for sports and features at the Kansas City Star, said the dispute was the result of traditional news organizations redefining themselves in a changing technological environment.

“Ten years ago newspapers weren’t in the world of video and audio,” he said. “We were in the world of print. The leagues don’t have a print product. Their view of this is that we entered their world.”

That is one point both sides agree on. “I’m all for selling newspapers and magazines,” said Bob DuPuy, the president of M.L.B. “What I’m not for is them branching off in to other enterprises.” Media organizations, like Sports Illustrated and The New York Times, wrote letters to Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, to protest the new rules.

“S. I. has chronicled baseball, on and off the field, in words and in pictures for more than 50 years,” wrote Terry McDonell, editor of the Sports Illustrated Group, in a letter to Mr. Selig. “S. I. does not own the sports history, but neither does Major League Baseball. That history belongs to everyone who loves the game.”

M.L.B. gave in on one key point: It originally tried to limit the number of photographs in online galleries to seven. Now the language permits a “reasonable” number of photographs, with “reasonable” left undefined.

“We’re gratified that they relented on what had been identified as the most important issue and realized that baseball photos online were not only important to our readers but also to their fans,” said George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel for The New York Times Company.

Media organizations accepted the N.F.L.’s rules under protest, and Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said the league has scheduled meetings with media representatives to discuss regulations for next season.

“From our perspective, any arbitrary restrictions on how we use our intellectual property for news coverage is not acceptable,” said Phil Bronstein, editor at large for Hearst. “I think that if we don’t agree on what the future of journalism is, we do know that video as part of our Web sites is part of that future.”

Perhaps the beginning of the end for cozy relations between ballplayers and writers can be traced to June 8, 1934, when 19 players for the Cincinnati Reds flew to Chicago to play three games against the Cubs.

It was not until 12 years later that air travel became the norm in baseball — when the Yankees chartered a DC-4, nicknamed the Yankee Mainliner, for the 1946 season. In the ensuing years, two rapidly improving technologies — air travel and television — ensured the end of the era of long bonding hours of drinking, gambling and carousing among reporters and players.

“Since we stopped riding the trains with baseball teams there has been tension between the media and sports,” said Mr. Fannin. New issues have flared intermittently over the last decade as the Internet has become more sophisticated. At the same time, the news media seem to be getting more organized on the issue.

“As the leagues have become more assertive and more aggressive, the sense on the media side is that we need to get more organized,” said Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for The Associated Press.

For example, the Media Law Resource Center, a group whose members include most major media organizations, has commissioned legal research in anticipation of the question of media restrictions going to the courts. One tactic being considered is to challenge M.L.B.’s antitrust exemption.

“My view is that this is news gathering, and I look for legal responses to any effort to clamp down on news gathering,” said Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. “What I see is a strident effort by a powerful monopoly to control information. They have a monopoly on the game. Now they want to have a monopoly on the information.”

In locker rooms and press boxes across the country, the new media are redefining relationships between the press and pro sports, including the issue of how a journalist is defined.

In larger markets like New York, restrictions seem to be more stringent. Before a recent game between the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays in New York, for example, the press assembled in various rooms in Yankee Stadium resembled the crowd of news gatherers that might cover a political convention, complete with formal organization and credentialing, along with tightly controlled access.

In contrast, a few days later it was a much different scene in Arlington, Tex., when five reporters joined the Texas Rangers manager, Ron Washington, in his office for some pregame banter.

“It’s a new world,” said Jason Zillo, the head of media relations for the Yankees, surveying the team taking batting practice. “We spend a lot of time in spring training on media training. The biggest danger now is that with some of these blog sites there is no structure. There is no one that John Smith reports to.”

The Yankees never credential independent bloggers, and have had trouble in the past when reporters posted audio clips of the former manager Joe Torre’s pregame dugout conversations, which Mr. Torre thought were off the record.

Other organizations take a different approach. SportsNet New York, the television network that broadcasts Mets games and is majority-owned by the team, has revenue-sharing partnerships with various bloggers. The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, hired a fan who had started a popular blog about the team.

The limits of coverage is a hot issue in athletics at the college level as well. The National Collegiate Athletic Association issued new guidelines this year: in women’s water polo, bloggers are allowed three posts a quarter and one at halftime; in fencing or bowling, 10 posts are allowed for each day or session.

“I think we’re hitting the ridiculous button here,” said John Cherwa, chair of the legal affairs committee for the Associated Press Sports Editors and the sports projects editor at The Orlando Sentinel. “We’re getting tired of everyone trying to tell us how to do our business.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/bu...1bloggers.html





Chinese Hackers Take Down SportsNetwork
Michael Arrington

The SportsNetwork, a privately held sports website located in Hatboro, PA, has been under attack from hackers for about 24 hours. Early Sunday the site was defaced with “Tibet was, is and will always be part of China” messages. Engineers returned the site to normal, but late Sunday evening the site was again hacked and taken offline. The message in the image second above is now all that can be viewed on the site.

The site itself is relatively small, attracting just 264,000 visitors in February 2008 (Comscore, worldwide). But it also powers parts of other large sports sites such as CNN/SI. The domain sports.si.cnn.com, for example, is also down.

I called the general phone number at the site at 3:20 am PST and someone answered right away, confirming the hack and the fact that a team of engineers is trying to get the site back online.

It’s likely that this kind of activity will increase as Chinese frustration over western Olympic protests continues. Some Chinese are simply adding a “Love China” icon to their chat messages. Others are taking much stronger measures, and speculation continues as to whether the Chinese governmet is sponsoring the attacks.

Lots of buzz on this on Twitter right now (where most news seems to be breaking these days). Thanks to Christine Lu for the tip. More here as well.

Update: It’s possible that the hackers actually thought they were taking down CNN’s sports site, based on early Twitter messages boasting about it.

Update2: Christine Lu was able to grab an image of the original hack, which links back to hackcnn.com. It’s almost certain that they thought the site was CNN’s sports property.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/21...sportsnetwork/





Hacker Testifies News Corp Unit Hired Him
Tori Richards

A computer hacker testified on Wednesday that a News Corp (NWSa.N) unit hired him to develop pirating software, but denied using it to penetrate the security system of a rival satellite television service.

Christopher Tarnovsky -- who said his first payment was $20,000 in cash hidden in electronic devices mailed from Canada -- testified in a corporate-spying lawsuit brought against News Corp's NDS Group (NNDS.O) by DISH Network Corp (DISH.O).

The trial could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage awards.

NDS, which provides security technology to a global satellite network that includes satellite TV service DirecTV, denies the claims, saying it was only engaged in reverse engineering -- looking at a technology product to determine how it works, a standard in the electronics industry.

After an introduction by plaintiff's attorney Chad Hagan as one of the "two best hackers in the world," Tarnovsky told the court that he was paid on a regular basis by Harper Collins, a publishing arm of News Corp, for 10 years.

Tarnovsky said one of his first projects was to develop a pirating program to make DirectTV more secure.

But lawyers for DISH Network claim Tarnovsky's mission was to hack into DISH's satellite network, steal the security code, then flood the market with pirated smart cards costing DISH $900 million in lost revenue and system-repair costs.

Smart cards enable satellite TV converter boxes to bring in premium channels.

The suit was brought by EchoStar Communications, which later split into two companies, DISH and EchoStar Corp, with DISH being the primary plaintiff.

"I never got money for reprogramming Echostar cards," Tarnovsky said. "Someone is trying to set me up."

DISH attorney Chad Hagan asked, "This is all a big conspiracy?"

"Yes," Tarnovsky answered. He conceded that he constructed a device called "the stinger" that could communicate with any smart card in the world.

Another hacker, Tony Dionisi, testified on Tuesday that Tarnovsky bragged about creating "the stinger" and that he knew of another hacker and NDS employee who reprogrammed 50 EchoStar smart cards with the device.

The trial is expected to last another two to three weeks. It is being heard in southern California because both Tarnovsky and NDS are located there.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Gary Hill)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080424/...ar_newscorp_dc





Murdoch Taking on F.C.C. Media Rule
Stephen LaBaton

As he nears completion of a deal to acquire Newsday from the Tribune Company, Rupert Murdoch appears likely to pose the first significant challenge to the media ownership rule that the Federal Communications Commission recently adopted.

Even without Newsday, Mr. Murdoch was in the process of seeking waivers to continue to control two newspapers (The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post) and two television stations (WNYW and WWOR) in the New York area.

With those waiver requests pending at the F.C.C., the Newsday deal means that Mr. Murdoch must now apply for a waiver to own the two television stations and three newspapers in the same market.

The new rule, approved by a deeply divided commission in December, permits a company to own just one paper and one television station in the same city in the top 20 markets so long as there are at least eight other independent sources of news and the station is not in the top four. (The stations controlled by News Corporation are the fourth- and sixth-largest in the New York market.)

The architect of the rule, Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the commission, has made clear that there is a strong presumption against granting waivers.

The Newsday deal also becomes public as Congress takes up a measure that would restore the old ownership rule, which generally restricted a company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same city, unless the F.C.C. granted a waiver.

On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee is expected to approve the bill, which is sponsored by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. Industry lobbyists say that the measure has a good chance of passing the House and the Senate this year, although President Bush has threatened to veto it.

Mr. Dorgan said in an interview on Tuesday that the measure was intended to prevent the media consolidation reflected by companies like the News Corporation and its recent acquisition of The Wall Street Journal and possibly soon Newsday.

“It’s exactly the kind of consolidation I would hope the commission finds is not in the public interest because the free flow of information in this country is not accommodated by having fewer and fewer voices determine what is out there,” Mr. Dorgan said. “They try to argue that there are all these outlets — the Internet, television, radio, newspapers and so on. It may be more outlets, but it’s the same ventriloquists. You have five or six corporate interests that determine what most Americans see, hear and read.”

Mr. Murdoch managed to control two local television stations through one permanent and one temporary waiver to the old rule. But the renewal of the licenses of both stations, under review since 2006, has been challenged by groups opposed to greater media consolidation.

“He was outside the permissible rules to begin with, and since the broadcast licenses were under review, he’s acquired The Wall Street Journal and now maybe Newsday,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, the president of the Media Access Project, an advocacy organization committed to diversity of media voices. Mr. Schwartzman has helped lead the effort against renewal of the New York broadcast licenses controlled by News Corporation.

Gary Ginsberg, a spokesman for News Corporation, declined to comment, as did Mr. Martin.

News Corporation has already joined a group of other broadcasters and newspaper companies in a lawsuit challenging the ownership restrictions as a violation of their First Amendment rights. In the meantime, the company is expected to seek a permanent waiver from the commission to permit it to own the two stations and three newspapers.

Industry lobbyists said that News Corporation would tell the commission that its ownership interests pose no problem because New York is the most diverse media market in the world. It is also expected to tell the commission that consolidation is vital to help the ailing newspaper industry — a variation of the claim made by Mr. Martin in justifying his decision to relax the old ownership rule modestly.

But critics of consolidation said that if the commission permitted the same company to control two television stations and three newspapers in the same market, it would make the rule look virtually meaningless.

“They’re playing double or nothing with these new rules by going after Newsday,” said Gene Kimmelman, a senior lobbyist in Washington for Consumers Union. “We’ll see how serious the chairman really is about applying his new rules.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Martin will still be running the commission when it decides how to proceed. The agency might not complete its review of the renewal of the broadcast licenses and waiver requests before next year, and many officials expect Mr. Martin to leave the agency after the arrival of a new president in January.

The new rule also leaves considerable discretion to the agency about how it should be applied, which could ultimately be helpful to Mr. Murdoch.

“While the F.C.C. did a decent job of trying to make the rules clear, the waiver criteria are flexible enough so that different people can interpret them in different ways,” said Blair Levin, a former top commission official, now an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/bu...ownership.html





Hollywood Veterans Build Digital-Age Studio Filmaka
Michele Gershberg

An acclaimed movie producer and the former head of Fox Television Entertainment have built a new kind of studio that taps into an aspiring community of moviemakers on the Web to cultivate the next great talents.

Deepak Nayar, behind such films as "Buena Vista Social Club" and "Bend it Like Beckham," and Sandy Grushow, the former chairman of Fox Television Entertainment Group, are launching Filmaka (http://www.filmaka.com) on Monday after more than a year of testing the site and recruiting professional filmmakers worldwide.

The site solicits short video clips for a competition judged by some of the industry's biggest names -- directors Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader -- as well as an audience of regular Web users.

Next week the site will announce a winner of its film contest, who will direct a feature film produced by Los Angeles-based Filmaka.

Finalists include a suspenseful clip from the UK about a secret agent who uses his fine sense of smell to memorize classified information, only to botch his job when he mixes up the data with nostalgic scent memories of his lover.

"We are in the business of getting behind the talent and building their careers," Chief Executive Nayar told Reuters in an interview in New York. "This is a place for anybody from anywhere in the world to have that opportunity."

For aspiring movie makers, it offers a new entryway into the ranks of Hollywood, with a deal to introduce its top talent to the William Morris Agency for possible representation. To date, Filmaka has received submissions from nearly 3,600 filmmakers spanning 95 countries.

As a business, Filmaka aims to build and represent a pool of talent as well as identifying and licensing entertainment for everything from Web series to television shows, advertising and movies.

Its executives describe a new field for opportunity as some major movie studios trim their slates to rely on blockbuster titles and smaller film houses struggle with a cycle of buyouts or restructurings.

"There was a huge need in the marketplace for high-quality, low-cost content," Grushow, Filmaka's President, said in an interview. "It was maddeningly difficult to do it from the inside, and what I felt was we may have the opportunity to do it from the outside."

The company has begun to introduce the work of some of its members to well-known names in the industry. Brewer SAB Miller and cable network FX have also reached deals with Filmaka to create content for their marketing.

Filmaka is also working on a local language site for India and considering a similar venture for Japan. It is producing some 40 Web series with filmmakers from 10 countries.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...33439320080421





Disney Looks to Nature, and Creates a Film Division to Capture It
Brooks Barnes

Bambi lives.

Betting that multiplex audiences are hungry for lavish nature documentaries, the Walt Disney Company has established a new production banner to deliver two nature films a year starting in 2009. The effort, to be called Disneynature, reflects efforts by Disney to spur growth at its film unit after a retrenchment in 2006.

Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, said the success of “March of the Penguins” — a 2005 documentary from Warner Independent that cost $3 million to make and sold $127.4 million in tickets worldwide — helped spark the company’s interest in the genre. He also said that “Planet Earth,” the recent mini-series from the Discovery Channel and the British Broadcasting Company, delivered blockbuster television ratings.

“We were blown away by that TV series and we wished the Disney name was on it,” Mr. Iger said in an interview.

As part of a corporate revamping in 2006, Disney reduced the number of movies it released each year to about 12, from as many as 20, and started marketing them almost entirely under a single brand, Walt Disney Pictures. Putting the Disney logo more front and center, the company figured, would enhance the global marketing of its movies.

Mr. Iger is betting the Disney brand will deliver the same halo effect in the nature genre. There is a degree of risk involved; a decade ago, the company approached straight-to-DVD animated sequels with much the same attitude, only to be harshly criticized when quality faltered.

Disney hopes that nature’s broad appeal will help the studio expand overseas. The company’s films have long been successful in foreign countries, but Disney faces cultural barriers in some developing markets like China and India. Nature documentaries, with film gathered from around the globe, cross borders much more easily.

The initiative holds strategic importance for the company beyond the box office. Mr. Iger said the company’s consumer products unit would probably develop a line of “beautiful books” based on Disneynature films. Nature sells well on DVD. And the theme parks unit could develop attractions built around 3-D nature films.

Richard Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, said the venture was a type of revival of True-Life Adventures, a long-dormant division dedicated to educational films like “Beaver Valley,” a documentary Oscar winner from 1950.

Disneynature will be based outside Paris and run by Jean-François Camilleri, who has recently served as general manager of Walt Disney Motion Pictures France. The logo for the new unit is an iceberg shaped like the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland.

Mr. Iger declined to specify costs. “The films will cost enough to deliver the type of quality our customers expect, but less than a typical feature,” he said.

They certainly sound expensive. Crews will spend three years in the Ivory Coast jungle to prepare “Chimpanzee,” to be released in 2012. “Oceans,” set for a 2010 release, will rely on new technology to film underwater drama with precision. The unit’s first movie, “Earth,” from the producer behind the “Planet Earth” series, will be released on April 22, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/bu.../22disney.html





You Bet Your Tintype, Buckaroo
Randy Kennedy

ONE fairly reliable way to tell if you are in a part of the country where people still herd cattle for a living is the frequent and unself-conscious use of the word cowboy as a verb.

As in: “Buck got a good scholarship to go to college, but he turned it down. All he wanted to do was cowboy.”

For more than 20 years the photographer Robb Kendrick, a longtime contributor to National Geographic, has traveled around the United States, Canada and northern Mexico visiting just such places, increasingly rare ones where development has been kept at bay and discouraging words seldom are heard, at least on cellphones, which stop working a hundred miles from the nearest tower.

Mr. Kendrick fits in well not only because he is a sixth-generation Texan, raised in ranch country in the state’s panhandle, but also because of the unusual method of photography he favors, one patented and popularized at a time when the idea of the American cowboy was itself just being created.

He doesn’t need batteries or memory cards or even film for his pictures. Mostly he just needs time, patience and lots of elbow grease. And as he labors, moving methodically from beneath the hood of his wooden box camera to a portable field darkroom, bearing wet iron plates that he has painstakingly prepared, he thinks of himself not as simply making pictures but also as taking part in the world of the cowboys who are the subjects of his otherworldly tintype portraits.

“The tendency of cowboys is to think of photographers as very demanding, high-maintenance people,” Mr. Kendrick said. “And in the end I think they really respect the fact that I have to work for these pictures. They respect any kind of honest hard work.”

Mr. Kendrick belongs to a growing group of commercial and art photographers — including gallery stars like Sally Mann and Chuck Close — who have retreated in recent years from the ease and exactitude of the digital age and taken up the difficult, ethereal techniques of early photography, including the ambrotype (in which a unique image is created on a glass plate), daguerreotype (on polished silver) and tintype (usually on tin-plated iron ).

The latest result of Mr. Kendrick’s twin obsessions — with tintypes and the bow-legged anachronisms who continue to make their living on horseback — is “Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century,” a new collection of 148 tintype portraits published by the University of Texas Press.

The pictures — made by exposing and developing the metal plates after they have been coated with a light-sensitive solution of silver nitrate — are a kind of ideal meeting of subject and style. Many of the cowboys pine to have been born in the 19th century. And the tintypes, with their sepia tones, blurred peripheries and ghostly aura, take the cowboys back to the era when such photographs were taken by traveling commercial photographers. Mr. Kendrick’s impulses may be more nostalgic and sociological than artistic, but the best of the pictures have a timeless power that evokes — oddly, given that Mr. Kendrick’s pictures are of cowboys — the portraits of North American Indians taken by Edward S. Curtis in the early 1900s.

For the new book, and an earlier one, “Revealing Character,” published in 2005, Mr. Kendrick estimates conservatively that he has covered more than 40,000 miles of often lonesome road in his pickup and visited more than 60 ranches, towing a trailer that he uses as a darkroom. (The most recent version of this mobile darkroom, specially made for him by a Mennonite company in Indiana, is as high-tech as his wooden cameras are primitive; it has an iPod docking station, climate control and stainless steel countertops.)

“When I’m doing tintypes, everything has to be driving, not flying — all the stuff for the developing is fairly flammable,” said Mr. Kendrick, who began to learn tintype techniques in 1999, after years of photographing cowboys with more conventional cameras and no toxic vats of potassium cyanide. “Fortunately for me I love driving,” he said, pausing before adding, “Thank God for satellite radio.”

Mr. Kendrick has long been drawn to cowboys as subjects, in part because he grew up around so many in Hereford, Tex., but also because he finds the endurance of their culture and mythology — more than a hundred years after the last great cattle drives — to be as fascinating as that of other groups he has photographed, like Sherpas in the Himalayas or the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico.

“Many cultures threatened by so-called progress can lose much in a matter of one or two generations,” he writes in the new book. “But cowboys — actual working cowboys, in all their manifestations — proudly and determinedly endure.”

As the era in which their livelihood was created recedes ever further and fascination with their stubborn embrace of it seems only to grow, cowboys also have to endure a lot of curiosity, from writers and filmmakers and photographers. And so Mr. Kendrick has had to work hard to overcome the impression that he is just another dilettante spectator.

“Some of us like the publicity, and some of us just get tired of it,” said Merlin Rupp, a 71-year-old lifelong range worker from Burns, Ore., who retired several years ago after a horse fell under him, badly breaking Mr. Rupp’s neck and, as he describes it with great understatement, “putting me to sleep for three weeks.”

But Mr. Rupp said he was proud of the stoical portrait Mr. Kendrick took of him, standing next to his wife, Faithe, the twirled ends of his long white mustache seeming to reach out toward her like tendrils. And Mr. Rupp said he believes that such portraits were an important record of modern-day cowboys at a time when cattle ranches are shrinking along with the number of working cowboys — or at least those he considers worthy of the name.

“There are fewer places to do this kind of work, but there are also fewer people who have the heart for it,” he said. “It’s a way of life that don’t pay a lot of money, and it’s hard on you. But it’s also stress free. You don’t have to drive 50 miles to work. You just get up out of your teepee and go to the cookhouse and then you go to work.”

Another cowboy, whom Mr. Kendrick has known for 20 years, David Ross of the Pitchfork Ranch in northwest Texas, spends winters alone in a range teepee on a wheat field, speaking to someone about once a month when his supplies are dropped off. “It’s good for a man to be alone,” Mr. Ross told Mr. Kendrick, whose photographs of him could be mistaken for those of a Rough-Rider-era Teddy Roosevelt. “It clears your mind.”

Over the years of riding, eating, bunking, branding and chewing tobacco with cowboys, Mr. Kendrick, 45, has become a fairly well-informed student of their regional idiosyncrasies and the ways in which they allow the modern world to seep into the 19th-century version that they try very hard to preserve around them.

Cowboys in northern and northwestern states like Oregon and Idaho and parts of Nevada and California tend to think of themselves not as cowboys but as buckaroos, a term that might sound as if it originated on the television show “Hee Haw” but is probably an Anglicization of the Spanish vaquero. Buckaroos are known, sometimes with a little derision, as the Beau Brummels of the saddle-office set, wearing antique-looking flat hats, leather brush cuffs, silver spurs, huge neckerchiefs they call wild rags and short chaps with long fringe, called chinks.

“These guys are very concerned with how their shadows look, whether they cut a good figure,” Mr. Kendrick said. “They don’t earn very much, but what they do earn they spend on their gear and they way they look.” (A starting cowboy salary can be less than a $1,000 a month.)

Moving further south on the cowboy map the term cowpuncher takes over, mostly in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, where the work clothes are much more utilitarian and the brims of the hats arch skyward on the sides, a style that flat-hatted buckaroos call “taco hats.” (A good example can be seen in the well-known publicity picture of James Dean from “Giant,” sitting in profile with his boots up.)

Mr. Kendrick remembers a conversation with a Texas cowpuncher whose brim edges threatened to meet somewhere over the crown of his hat. “I said: ‘Tom, doesn’t that hat defeat the purpose of keeping the sun off of you? Doesn’t it shine right on your ears?’ ” The rancher told him that whatever the hat’s failings, its aerodynamics kept it from leaving his head in a high wind and it also sluiced the rain like a clean storm gutter.

The third major category of cowboy — those who call themselves just plain cowboys — tends to be found east of the Rockies, in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Colorado and Wyoming, and its members usually find a middle ground between the fancy and the plain range looks. But Mr. Kendrick points out that it is much more common these days to see, for example, chink chaps in Texas or a taco hat far north, as cowboys migrate more and have better access to online shopping.

As the new book shows, though cowboying in the United States is still done mostly by white men, it is also more common to find cowgirls at work on ranches, not simply minding the books or cooking but on horseback, repairing fences and tracking lost calves. Jodi Miner, who runs the Snowline Ranch in Montana with her husband, Wes, told Mr. Kendrick in a series of interviews he has recorded and transcribed that she tries to live according to the dictum of working like a man but knowing when to be a lady.

“I’m proud to be a cowboy,” she said. “Or a cowgirl, however you want to word it.”

Mr. Kendrick said that though there are few creature comforts when he is making his portraits, food is sometimes one of them. Among his chuck-wagon highlights, he counts a mincemeat pie made by a cook on the ORO Ranch in Arizona with a filling of cow’s tongue mixed with wild apples and berries. “You could have been in San Francisco or New York eating that in a really expensive restaurant,” he said. He also notes that there are many modern-day cowboys who like to live a little; one in British Columbia confessed to spending his recent winters windsurfing in Mexico.

But you get the impression that Mr. Kendrick, like most cowboys, is much happier when doing things the hard way. “Making these kinds of pictures, you don’t need the mental skills that you have to have a Ph.D. for,” he said. “It’s more like learning to be a carpenter. It’s work and it’s satisfying. What you get is unique, not mass-produced. You can’t repeat the process. So it’s the antithesis of digital.”

The feeling is one that Mr. Rupp knew well. He tells a story of herding a couple hundred cows on a ranch in Nevada and taking them to the crest of a trail, below which lay a seemingly endless prairie.

“I just sat on my horse and I looked down,” he told Mr. Kendrick. “Gosh, I was right in the middle of God’s flower garden. The wildflowers were just everywhere. The smell was so great. And I couldn’t help but say: ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for just lettin’ me be out there.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/ar...gn/20kenn.html





Viva la coopération!



Andre Zucca's Photographs of Gay Paris at War Paint an Uneasy Portrait of City Collaboration
Charles Bremner

An unusual warning has been added to a Paris exhibition that has shocked some visitors and media, despite the absence of sex, violence or religion.

The photographic show has caused offence by depicting the French capital in the Second World War as a sunny place, where people enjoyed life alongside their Nazi occupiers.

Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor, ordered a notice, in French and English, to be handed out at the door of the municipal exhibition of colour photographs that have stirred ghosts that Paris preferred to forget. The 270 never-published pictures avoid the “reality of occupation and its tragic aspects”, says the warning.

In the French collective memory, early 1940s Paris was a black-and-white hell of hunger, Nazi round-ups, humiliation and resistance. Films and books have in recent decades modified the cliché. The breathtaking colour series by André Zucca, a French photographer, show as never before a gay Paris that got on with life without great hardship.

Well-dressed citizens shop on the boulevards and stroll in the parks; young people crowd nightclubs; bikini-clad women bathe in the fashionable Deligny pool. The terraces of familiar cafés are crowded and commuters with briefcases march into the Métro.

The differences are the absent traffic, the Wehrmacht uniforms and red swastikas hanging from the grandest facades. In one sinister picture – taken in the street beside the gallery – an old woman wears a yellow Star of David, the insignia that Jews were forced to display. According to critics, the organisers at the Paris Historical Library neglected to make it clear that Zucca, a respected prewar photographer, was working for the German propaganda machine.

Pierre Assouline, a writer, said in Le Monde: “In the shadows of these same streets, they were dying of hunger and cold. Raids and torture were taking place. Here we see only relaxation, joie de vivre, the nonchalance of a kind of happiness.” Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor in charge of culture, said that he found the exhibition “em-barrassing, ambiguous and poorly explained”.

Jean Derens, the director of the library, rejected the criticism, saying that everyone knew the photographer was a collaborator: “If there is a visitor who is unaware of the nature of the occupation, it’s sad, but that does not mean that everything has to be reexplained every time.” He said that the critics were not content with his leaflet, which states: “Zucca portrays a casual, even carefree Paris. He has opted for a vision that does not show . . . the queues . . . the rounding-up of Jews, posters announcing executions.” The library praises the skill of Zucca, “who played on colours like an aesthete” and chronicled the occupation privately, using rare Agfacolor film supplied by the Wehrmacht. The sunny aspect of the photos stemmed from the need to shoot the early colour film in bright light, it adds.

The exhibition reminds viewers that Paris was relatively comfortable under the Nazis because Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, decreed that the capital should be “animated and gay” to show off the “new Europe”. Theatres and cinemas were kept busy; Edith Piaf sang, and Herbert von Karajan conducted.

The collection, restored to the original colour with digital techniques, was bought by the city from Zucca’s family in 1985. The photographer was arrested after the 1944 liberation but never prosecuted. He worked until his death in 1976 under an assumed name as a wedding photographer west of Paris.

— The exhibition is open every day except Mondays, 11am to 7pm, at the Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3767951.ece





Russian Prosecutors Eye Internet Censorship
AFP

The Russian prosecutor's office wants tough anti-extremism laws to be extended to the Internet, state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported Wednesday, prompting fears of growing media censorship.

The prosecutors office has proposed a legal amendment to bring the Internet under the same rules as printed media, Vyacheslav Sizov, a top official at the prosecutor general's office told the daily.

Newspapers deemed in court to have published extremist material can be shut down under current laws.

The new proposal is for any website deemed to have hosted extremist material to be blocked by providers in Russia "within a month," Sizov said.

The Internet is the freest area of the media in Russia, where almost all television and many newspapers are under formal or unofficial government control.

The extremism law has already come under fire from human rights activists, who say its sweeping nature is open to abuse by officials wanting to outlaw legitimate criticism.

"It is a worry whenever the government tries to change any law," Oleg Panfilov, director of the Centre of Journalism in Extreme Situations, told AFP.

"It is difficult to find anyone who is not against extremism but it depends on how the law is used. The government uses (it) selectively."

News website www.gazeta.ru was warned for extremism last year after it wrote about cartoons that satirised the prophet Mohammed.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...cpowGh9oBfxUQw





Reports: Wi-Fi Users to be Monitored in Russia

Business travellers to Russia might want to keep their laptops and iPhones well-concealed
Matthew Broersma

Business travellers to Russia might want to keep their laptops and iPhones well-concealed - not from muggers, necessarily, but from the country's recently formed regulatory super-agency, Rossvyazokhrankultura (short for the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service).

In the UK, Ofcom made deregulation one of its first priorities upon coming into existence, but the Russian equivalent is doing just the reverse, including an ominous-sounding policy of requiring registration for every Wi-Fi device and hotspot, according to a report this week from news agency Fontanka.

Rossvyazokhrankultura's interpretation of current law holds that users must register any electronics that use the frequency involved in Wi-Fi communications, said Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency's communications monitoring division, according to an English commentary provided by website The Other Russia.

Aside from public hotspots, the registration requirement also applies to home networks, laptops, smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs, Karpov reportedly said. Registration only permits use by the owner.

His comments come as something of a surprise, since government decisions in 2004 and 2007 have tended to exempt Wi-Fi devices from any spectrum-related restrictions, according to the report.

On the other hand, Rossvyazokhrankultura is a new agency, formed last year by the merger of two separate agencies which formerly controlled media and telecommunications - not unlike Ofcom.

In this case, the merger appears to have created confusion and chaos, according to an anonymous IT expert cited in the report.

He noted that the head of the new body is a metallurgic engineer, and that the agency's remit now covers protecting cultural patrimony, registering mass-media outlets, control of legal compliance on personal data, monitoring communications and allocating radio frequencies, among other tasks.

"It is unlikely that he can simultaneously manage communications personnel, fine art experts, journalists and attorneys," the expert reportedly said.

Registration for personal devices is said to take 10 days, but registering a hotspot - including a home network - is more complicated, involving a set of documents and technological certifications.

Any networks in Moscow or St. Petersburg need the additional approval of two federal agencies, Karpov said.

"Setting up a home Wi-Fi network or a hotspot would require what sounds like vast amounts of paperwork, akin to putting a cell tower," commented wireless pundit Glenn Fleishman, in a blog post.

Even if Rossvyazokhrankultura fails to follow up on enforcing these rules, its comments are unlikely to improve Russia's image as a haven mainly for technology of a criminal nature.

In February, Sophos found that the country now deserves the moniker of 'spam superpower' having seen its share of total volumes rise dramatically over the last year, to put it in firmly in second place behind arch-rival, the US.

Russia is already prominent for other types of Internet criminality, such as malware and exploits, boosted by the near-mythical super-network, the Russian Business Network, which supposedly went out of business in November.

Techworld's John Dunn contributed to this report.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...1;fp;16;fpid;0





Made in China, a Security Risk?
Sander Sassen

Recent reports of counterfeit computer hardware from China have once again sparked the discussion on whether we should worry about security risks resulting from using this hardware. Obviously I am referring to counterfeit hardware such as corporate switches and routers from respectable manufacturers such as 3com and Cisco. These are commonly used by network providers, corporations and of course governments. Apparently copies of these products have shown up that are indistinguishable from the real thing, but are not manufactured by the original manufacturer.

So what kind of security risk would be involved here? If the copies are identical down to the individual parts we are looking at a change in firmware at the most. So updating the copy with authentic firmware, which is usually possible with switches and routers, could just make these identical in every way, shape or form. This would also remove any malicious code or other backdoors that are set in the copycat firmware. However, suppose that the copycat hardware is not using 100% identical parts or that the actual integrated circuits (ICs) are labeled as something which they are not? It is entirely feasible to have an IC emulate the functions of another while running a different layer of malicious code. Many of these switches and routers contain field programmable grid arrays (FPGA's) which basically are a collection of basic logical ports and functions, which can be combined in arbitrary fashion to perform a specific function. It is entirely feasible to mimic this function, and all other I/O associated with it, by using a sufficiently powerful microcontroller. So although an IC might be labeled as a common type of FPGA it could actually be something entirely different. In case the counterfeit product is not using 100% identical parts it is entirely possible that it may be performing extra functions not found in the original and who knows to what purpose?

The security risk of using this type of counterfeit hardware is difficult to determine as we have no idea what the manufacturer's agenda is in this case. Are they merely out to make better revenues by selling counterfeit products? Or is the agenda a little more devious, for example could the counterfeit products contain backdoors, i.e., can they be controlled by a third party without knowledge or influence from the system administrator that installs these products in his network? Many switches and routers are connected to the Internet, which makes them reachable by just about anyone in the world. This could mean that with a simple keystroke on a remote computer the switch/router could be disabled, or data could be channeled to an unknown recipient. From a strategic point of view this clearly is a great way to cripple the IT infrastructure of a corporation, organization or government.

Another likely scenario could be the collection of email, user account usernames and passwords or charting who is emailing to whom. All of this would be valuable information in the hands of someone that is in the business of gathering intelligence, whether governmental or corporate. Government secrets could be siphoned away, or corporate insider information may be used for financial gains on the stock market.

So is this threat real? What are the chances of corporations, organizations or the government buying counterfeit hardware? You would think it was pretty slim, as large corporations and governments have a solid and established supply line. Well, not quite, as I have been informed that many organizations gather quotes from regular suppliers that compete on pricing. This could very well mean that these suppliers get their merchandise from questionable sources, ending up with counterfeit hardware without their customers even knowing.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont...security-risk/





China Ties US for Most Web Users at 221 Million People
Joe McDonald

China's fast-growing population of Internet users has soared to 221 million, tying the United States for the largest number of people online, according to government data reported Thursday.

The figure, reported by the Xinhua News Agency, reflects China's explosive growth in Web use despite government efforts to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic. It was a 61 percent increase over the 137 million Internet users reported by the government at the start of 2007.

China lags the United States, South Korea and other markets in online commerce and other financial measures. But e-commerce, video-sharing and other businesses are growing quickly and companies have raised millions of dollars from investors.

"We'll see this growth continuing," said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing technology company.

"Even though China might overtake the United States in total (Internet) population, it still lags in the size of its Internet industries, and there will be a lot more opportunities," Clark said.

China's Internet penetration is still low, with 16 percent of people online, compared with a world average of 19 percent, Xinhua said.

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but operates extensive online censorship. Web surfers have been jailed for posting or e-mailing material that criticizes Communist rule or is deemed a violation of vague national security laws.

Most recently, Chinese Web surfers have been blocked from seeing foreign sites — including YouTube.com — with videos about protests in Tibet and the security crackdown there.

The Xinhua report cited data from the government's China Internet Network Information Center. An agency spokeswoman, who would give only her surname, Zhang, declined to give more details. She said the agency, also known as CNNIC, would release a report in July.

The United States had 221 million Internet users in March, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a leading industry measurement service. The U.S. growth rate is lower, suggesting that when March figures for China are released they may show that the country has already overtaken the United States.

Some 75 percent of American adults already are online, and the rate for teenagers is even higher, according to the U.S.-based Pew Internet and American Life Project.

By contrast, BDA's Clark said China's Web population should keep growing by 18 percent annually, reaching 490 million by 2012 — a number larger than the entire U.S. population.

The boom has produced Chinese success stories such as games site Tencent.com and search engine Baidu.com, which are competing with foreign rivals for market share.

Internet entrepreneurs have hit bumps along the way, including having to contend with censors trying to keep pace with rapid change in the industry.

A key development has been video-sharing, a newly popular area where some sites say they get 100 million visitors a day — equal to the audience for the biggest state TV channels.

In March, the government said it would shut down 25 video sites and punish 32 others for violating new rules against carrying content that is pornographic, violent or a threat to national security.

The Internet's mushrooming popularity has been driven in part by a regulatory quirk: Fixed-line phone companies are losing potential new customers to mobile phone services but are barred from getting into that market themselves. So they are trying instead to bring in new revenues by promoting low-cost broadband Internet access, which has brought high-speed service to millions of homes. Phone companies also are experimenting with Internet-based cable television.

Web businesses are looking for another boost when Beijing takes the long-anticipated step of issuing licenses for third-generation, or 3G, mobile technology to support video, Web-surfing and other services. No date has been set.

With the world's largest mobile phone market, at 520 million accounts, China has a vast potential pool of wireless Internet users.

"There will be a lot more opportunity to move online," Clark said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080424/...7OW3j9tepk24cA





Informal Style of Electronic Messages Is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds
Tamar Lewin

As e-mail messages, text messages and social network postings become nearly ubiquitous in the lives of teenagers, the informality of electronic communications is seeping into their schoolwork, a new study says.

Nearly two-thirds of 700 students surveyed said their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments, according to the study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board’s National Commission on Writing. About half said they sometimes omitted proper punctuation and capitalization in schoolwork. A quarter said they had used emoticons like smiley faces. About a third said they had used text shortcuts like “LOL” for “laugh out loud.”

“I think this is not a worrying issue at all,” said Richard Sterling, emeritus executive director of the National Writing Project, which aims to improve the teaching of writing.

When e-mail shorthand — or for that matter, slang — appears in academic assignments, Professor Sterling said, it is an opportunity for teachers to explain that while such usages are acceptable in some contexts, they do not belong in schoolwork. And as the English language evolves, he said, some e-mail conventions, like starting sentences without a capital letter, may well become accepted practice.

“I think in the future, capitalization will disappear,” said Professor Sterling, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. In fact, he said, when his teenage son asked what the presence of the capital letter added to what the period at the end of the sentence signified, he had no answer.

The study is based on eight focus groups and the survey of 700 nationally representative children, ages 12 to 17, and their parents, conducted in 2007. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Schools are grappling with the language of electronic communication. At the Bank Street School for Children in Manhattan, Stanlee Brimberg has set up an electronic message board for his class. On it he posts nightly questions, assigning students to respond to one of the questions and then to respond to another student’s response.

“After the first night, we had to talk about whether they had to write the way they do in class, or whether it could be the way they do online,” said Mr. Brimberg, who is Bank Street’s upper school coordinator. “We decided that their response to the question should be in standard English, proofread, with capital letters, but their response to the other kid could be informal. And that worked.”

Most teenagers do not think of their e-mail messages, text messages and social network postings as “real writing,” the study found.

More than half of the teenagers surveyed had a profile on a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, 27 percent had an online journal or blog and 11 percent had a personal Web site. Generally, girls dominated the teenage blogosphere and social networks.

Most teenagers write for school nearly every day, the study found, but most assignments are short. And many write outside school, on their own, although that varies significantly by race and sex. Almost half of black teenagers said they wrote a personal journal, compared with 3 in 10 whites. And nearly half of the girls keep a journal, compared with only 3 in 10 boys.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/ed...25writing.html





Top OLPC Executive Resigns After Restructuring
Agam Shah

Drastic internal restructuring at the One Laptop Per Child Project has led to the resignation of one of the nonprofit's top executives from the effort.

Walter Bender, the former president of software and content at OLPC, has left the organization to pursue "new activities," an OLPC spokesman, George Snell, said on Monday.

Bender's original position as a president was eliminated during OLPC's restructuring process, and he resigned as a director of deployment, Snell said. "There is no position remaining known as [president of] software and content, so Bender will not be replaced," Snell said.

"OLPC recently restructured into four areas -- development, technology, deployment and learning -- and Walter's responsibilities will be absorbed by those teams," Snell said.

Bender, the former executive director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, played a key role in the development and deployment of open-source software for the organization's low-cost XO laptop, aimed as a learning tool for children in developing countries.

"Walter Bender was the workhouse for OLPC. While [OLPC Founder Nicholas] Negroponte met with presidents, it was Bender's day-to-day management that built the organization," said Wayan Vota, who follows OLPC and originally reported the news on his Web site, OLPC News.

Bender promoted the use of open-source software for the XO laptop in the face of repeated efforts to load Windows XP, which has gained him a big following in the open-source community, Vota said. The loss of Bender and other key personnel over the past few months could be a sign that OLPC is focusing more on the technology than the educational aspects of its mission, Vota said.

OLPC has lost three top executives in the past few months. In January, OLPC lost Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen, who started an organization to commercialize parts of OLPC's technology, including the screen and battery. In February, Director of Security Ivan Krstić resigned from OLPC to protest the organization's restructuring and "radical" change in goals.

Bender's move from president to director of deployment was a "demotion," wrote Krstić in a March blog entry after he resigned. Krstić also wrote that he resigned because OLPC asked him to stop working with Bender, whom he highly respected.

"Following Walter's demotion from OLPC presidency, I was to report instead to a manager with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology," Krstić wrote.

The group has been dogged by problems since it launched the effort to develop a US$100 XO laptop for children in developing countries three years ago. It has struggled to realize the ambitious vision, facing delays, rising costs and reduced orders. A few days after the OLPC lost CTO Jepsen, Intel said it was quitting the initiative after the nonprofit insisted that Intel abandon its effort to develop and distribute Classmate PC, a rival low-cost laptop. OLPC later said that it would welcome Intel back to the effort.

In an interview with BusinessWeek in early March, OLPC Chairman Negroponte said OLPC was "doing almost impossible things," and that the organization needed to be managed "more like Microsoft." He said OLPC was reorganizing into four departments and looking for a CEO to lead the nonprofit.

The reorganization, which was completed last month, has helped OLPC streamline positions and focus on deployment of laptops around the world, OLPC's Snell said on Monday.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...ructuring.html





Cloud Computing Gains Steam With New I.B.M. Gear
Steve Lohr

I.B.M. is entering the market for Internet-focused data centers with computer systems designed to reduce power consumption sharply and take up less floor space.

The move by I.B.M., which the company planned to announce on Wednesday, is the most recent sign that the major computer makers are beginning to compete aggressively to supply Internet companies and others with the specialized hardware needed for so-called cloud computing. In the cloud model, data centers with vast stores of information and processing resources can be tapped from afar through a personal computer, cellphone or other device.

The pioneers in cloud computing have been Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, social networks and online game services, which have often designed their own data centers. The Internet companies’ requirements are growing, but mainstream corporations are also increasingly interested in cloud data centers, opening up a large potential market.

“It’s very important strategically for the big computer makers to get in this market,” said Susan Eustis, president of WinterGreen Research, a technology research firm. “It’s just emerging, but it’s going to be a huge multibillion-dollar business three or four years from now.”

Sun Microsystems introduced a product for this market last year, a self-contained data center housed in a 20-foot shipping container. Dell started a cloud computing effort last year. Hewlett-Packard, analysts say, is expected to announce its specialized entry soon. Smaller companies like Rackable Systems and Varari Systems have data-serving computers designed for cloud computing.

But analysts and customers who have tested the I.B.M. product, called iDataPlex, said the company had taken an original approach that seemed to place it ahead of rivals for now. I.B.M. says its systems consume 40 percent less power than standard servers, and are designed to pack more than twice as many computers into the same space.

The I.B.M. systems, analysts note, have an innovative water-cooling mechanism, so they do not heat up a data center, thus eliminating the need for most air-conditioning.

The I.B.M. systems will begin shipping next month, and are intended for high-end customers with data centers that have a thousand to tens of thousands of server computers, said James Gargan, the I.B.M. vice president for xSeries computers, which are servers powered by industry-standard microprocessors produced by Intel or A.M.D.

The I.B.M. systems will mostly be made to order for large customers. One offering involves putting 1,500 server computers into a 40-foot truck trailer, ready to plug in from a parking lot, Mr. Gargan said.

The corporate customers who have been trying out the I.B.M. systems include Yahoo and other Internet companies. But some large companies in finance and other traditional industries have been testing them as well.

Jeffrey M. Birnbaum, a managing director and chief technology architect of Merrill Lynch, said the I.B.M. systems in a trailer container would cost an estimated 50 percent less in real estate, set-up and construction costs than a similar conventional data center. The energy and operating cost savings, he said, would be an added advantage.

Merrill Lynch, Mr. Birnbaum said, has very different computing requirements from an Internet company. But the similarity is that Merrill Lynch has large computing needs, and must add capacity flexibly and efficiently. “I have my own cloud, if you will,” he said.

Cloud data centers typically require stripped-down servers, tailored for specific computing tasks. So the big computer makers cannot sell their off-the-shelf servers in this market. “It’s a completely different engineering model for I.B.M. to make these low-cost, highly scalable servers,” said Joe Clabby, an independent analyst in Yarmouth, Me.

At Dell, the cloud computing unit begun last year has dozens of customers, including the search service Ask.com, said Todd Brannon, a marketing manager. “We’re co-developing customized systems with Internet companies,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/te...gy/23blue.html





Microsoft Reveals a Web-Based Software System
John Markoff

Microsoft is preparing to take its most ambitious step yet in transforming its personal computer business into one tied more closely to software running in remote data centers.

The software giant announced on Tuesday a data storage and Web software system, called Live Mesh, that is intended to blur the distinction between software running on the Windows operating system and an elaborate array of services that will be delivered to a growing collection of electronic gadgets. Live Mesh is Microsoft’s late entry into a rapidly growing market described as cloud computing. The term refers to the movement of software applications and services from PCs to centralized data centers, where they are made available via the Internet. Companies like Amazon.com, Google, Salesforce and dozens of others are building computing centers that will effectively outsource data processing and make it a commodity that companies purchase as they would electricity.

The introduction of Live Mesh is a significant strategic shift for Microsoft, whose operating system helped popularize personal computers. Bill Gates, the company’s co-founder, chairman and chief architect, said in an interview on CNN a year ago, “We’re making the PC the place where it all comes together.”

However, a strategy document circulated to company employees on Tuesday that was written by Ray Ozzie, one of the Microsoft’s two chief technology officers, countered that view.

“The Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh,” he wrote. That statement is the first of a set of three “guiding principles” that Mr. Ozzie outlined in the five-page document entitled “Services Strategy Update.” In taking the PC off center stage, Microsoft is refocusing some of its resources to catch its cloud computing rivals.

“This is a pretty significant public statement that the battle is really a cloud battle,” said Mark Stahlman, a research vice president at Gartner, an industry consulting group. “It’s not an ad search battle or a desktop operating system battle. Those are fought and won already. This is the one that’s wide open.”

Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, a company that began by offering software that managed customer relations through a Web browser, said Microsoft’s entry “means that the Internet is the center of the world.” Salesforce has more recently begun broadening its product line to a wide range of computing services, also available through a browser. “Consumer services have shown us the way to the next generation of computing,” Mr. Benioff said.

Microsoft refers to its strategy as “software plus services.” However, the new vision is built on Web-based software that will help deliver entertainment as well as business software to devices like Microsoft’s Xbox game console, to Zune music player, to cellphones running Windows Mobile software, even to Apple’s Mac computers and other consumer devices in the home.

The company now believes that no single device will dominate the Web-oriented consumer electronic world of the future. Underscoring that belief, Live Mesh’s logo is a Tolkienesque graphical ring intended to give the user a visual sense that all the devices are interconnected.

Displayed within a Web browser, the Live Desktop page will not be so much a Web-based operating system, said Jeff Hansen, general manager of Microsoft’s Live Services group, but a control mechanism that blurs the location of documents ranging from MP3 and video files to spreadsheets and text documents.

“We’re adopting a wider and wider diversity of increasingly powerful devices,” Mr. Hansen said.

The Live Mesh system, however, is viewed by the company as a software platform in the data center for an evolving array of services, ranging from remote control of computers and electronic devices to data storage. Microsoft also hopes that software and service developers will create applications based on the service.

In the plan outlined by Mr. Ozzie, he refers to the power of choice for customers and acknowledges that software development will be based on “small pieces loosely coupled.” Both of those concepts echo industry buzzwords in the open-source Web development community that has grown outside of Microsoft during the last half decade.

In a telephone interview this week, Mr. Hansen said that the current version of Live Mesh was a “technology preview” that would be available only to a group of about 10,000 test users and software developers. “We want to engage the Web community and software developers,” he said.

On Tuesday evening Microsoft described 15 components of the new Live Mesh service, including a notification feature, a news feature and an information window displayed by the service, but only two user-oriented applications. One synchronizes files on multiple computers. The other, Live Mesh Remote Desktop, is a free software service that will permit users to control computers and other devices over the Internet.

Mr. Hansen, who has been using Live Mesh in a private Microsoft test, said he was able to surprise his wife using the Live Mesh Remote Desktop. From work, he was able to start a song playing on his Xbox at home.

Microsoft said it would begin a public test later this year. The basic service, which will be available initially on devices running Windows XP and Mobile, will later support Mac computers and other mobile devices. Five gigabytes of free data storage will be included, but the company declined to speculate about charges for additional features and services.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/te...gy/23soft.html





Seagate Ships One-Billionth Hard Drive

Seagate claims to be the first to ship 1 billion units
Stephen Lawson

Seagate announced today that it has shipped 1 billion hard drives since pioneering an industry that shows no signs of slowing down 29 years later. In 1979, the Scotts Valley, California, company was a trailblazer in hard drives that were small enough for the early PCs then emerging. Its first product, the ST506, was 5.25 inches (13.3 centimeters) wide and weighed about 5 pounds (2.27 kilos). It was compact compared with the 14-inch and 8-inch drives that had been standard up to that time.

But what most distinguishes that device from today's drives is capacity and cost: The ST506 held just 5MB of data and cost $1,500, for a cost of $300 per megabyte. Today, a typical Seagate drive may hold 1TB (or 1 million megabytes) and cost just 1/5000th of a cent ($0.0002) per megabyte, according to the company.

Seagate claims to be the first to ship 1 billion units, which IDC analyst John Rydning doesn't doubt. The company had a leading 35% market share last year, with its nearest competitor being Western Digital at about 23%, he said. And the business is growing so fast that Seagate expects to ship its next billion drives within five years.

What it's shipped already has amounted to 79 million terabytes, enough for 158 billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of MP3 songs. Neither of those existed in 1979, possibly because the ST506 would have held only about one song.

And it's that kind of content, rather than the spreadsheets and word-processing documents for which PCs were originally built, that is driving much of the growth in storage, Rydning said. The fastest-growing place for hard drives is personal video recorders, and coming up behind those are personal storage devices for collecting and backing up music, video and photo collections, he said. IDC expects this area to explode over the next five years, because only a small fraction of households with PCs have external hard drives for backing up their data, he said.

But although it's still a good idea to back up hard drives in case of failure, they both work better and last longer than they did 25 years ago, Rydning said. A major breakthrough was the introduction of error-correcting code in firmware to ensure data is properly written and read, he said.

Hard drives are here to stay despite the emergence of SSDs (solid-state drives) for iPods, other consumer electronics and now laptops, he added. It will take five years for SSDs to gain a significant foothold in laptops, just because they are so much more expensive per byte, Rydning said. Hard-drive vendors as a whole shipped 505 million units last year, totaling about 84 million terabytes, with an average capacity of 170GB. Unit sales should hit 600 million per year by 2010, IDC believes.

Seagate alone ships 111,600 terabytes every day, according to the company, which means more than 1TB of Seagate storage is produced every second.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





Storing Data for the Next 1000 Years
Wolfgang Gruener

Have you ever thought how vulnerable your data may be through the simple fact that you may be storing your entire digital life on a single hard drive? On single drive can hold tens of thousands of pictures, thousands of music files, videos, letters and countless other documents. One malfunctioning drive can wipe out your virtual life in a blink of an eye. A scary thought. On a greater scale, at least portions of the digital information describing our generation may be put at risk by current storage technologies. There are only a few decades of life in tape and disk storage these days, but a team of researchers claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data with regular hard drives for an estimated (theoretical) 1400 years.

Data storage has several huge challenges. It isn’t quite the available storage capacity anymore that represents a problem. Especially hard drives are very cheap these days and if you aren’t recording and saving lots of high-definition movies on your home network you are unlikely to be forced to upgrade your 500 GB, 640 GB or even 1 TB standard storage capacity that comes with today’s PCs. Security is a greater problem: How do you safeguard your data? How do you archive it and how do you preserve over the years in a manageable, reliable, cost-efficient and power-efficient way? Think in larger proportions - corporations, libraries, governments – and each of those individual questions turn into huge problems.

Archiving data, which means that you don’t just backup data, you also want to have fast access to it, is primarily done through simple hard drives today. Depending on the hard drive you purchase, the device will have an indicated reliability of somewhere between 300,000 and more than 1 million hours of meantime between failures (MTBF). This MTBF number is a bit misleading for customers who don’t purchase a large number of drives, as it suggests that even a 300K MTBF drive will work for more than 34 years. However, the MTBF number is only intended to be used across a large number of drives; for individual use, the service life of a hard drive is a better guideline of how reliable a drive really is: Typically, the service life of a general hard drive is somewhere between five and seven years.

Tape drives are usually used for backups, since data can’t be easily accessed through such a system, which, by the way, gives tape media a service life of somewhere between 10 and 30 years. Archiving data, of course, can only be done through optical discs, which also have an expected life of somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 years.

Researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz have come up with a new idea that could allow individuals and larger organizations to efficiently and reliably store their data over a longer time frame – and at least offer a way to preserve data for future generations. "There is a risk that an entire generation's cultural history could be lost if people aren't able to retrieve that data," Storer said. "Everyone is switching to digital cameras, but we've never demonstrated that digital data can be reliably preserved for a long time," said Mark Storer, a graduate student at UCSF.

Together with Kevin Greenan and associate professor Ethan Miller and Kaladhar Voruganti, a along with researcher at NetApp, he developed the idea of Pergamum, a new disk-based approach for archiving data.

Pergamum, named after the ancient Greek library that made the transition from fragile papyrus to more durable parchment, is designed as a distributed network of individually fully functional network storage devices. Compared to current MAIDs (Massive Arrays of Idle Disks), NAND flash memory (described as on-volatile random access memory - NVRAM) within the project has been added to each node with the purpose to store data signatures, metadata, and other small items, allowing deferred writes, metadata requests and inter-disk data verification to be performed while the disk is powered off. Since the NVRAM can run frequent searches without the need to spin up a hard drive, the disk media can remain powered down more often, effectively reducing wear as well as the power consumption of a MAID.

According to the project group, Pergamum uses both intra-disk and inter-disk redundancy to guard against data loss, relying on hash tree-like structures of algebraic signatures to efficiently verify the correctness of stored data. If failures occur, Pergamum uses a staggered rebuild to reduce peak energy usage while rebuilding large redundancy stripes. In a typical scenario, 95% of the disks would remain spun down at any given time in such a setup, the researchers claim.

According to a published research paper called “Pergamum: Replacing Tape with Energy Efficient, Reliable, Disk-Based Archival Storage”, a data archive built from this technology would be created through individual independent storage appliances or “tomes”. Each tome consists of an ARM based processor to manage the unit (and run processes such as virus scans), a SATA-class hard drive, NVRAM as well as an Ethernet controller and network port. Networking the drives would be supported by a “star-type structure of commodity switches” at the outer branches of the network and “potentially higher-performance switches in the core”.

The NVRAM plays the critical role of keeping the power consumption as well as the wear on hard drives down. But since flash memory has a limit on its life - based on the number of writes in each of its blocks – there is suddenly another variable that can impact the reliability of this system. However, the researchers claim that since NVRAM primarily holds metadata such as algebraic signatures and index information, flash writes are relatively rare – only about 1000 times during a year, while it is generally assumed that high-quality NAND flash memory supports more than 1 million rewrites.

So, how effective can Pergamum be?

At this time there are no systems in place and much of the data is based on test runs of a prototype system and estimates. And at least those estimates are promising. A 10 PB storage system could be built for about $4700 with an annual operational cost (power for running and cooling the system) of about $50. To come up with an indication of the system’s likely reliability, the researchers used a metric of the expected mean time to data loss (MTTDL) of a deployed Pergamum system. The estimate assumes that each active device transfers a constant 2 MB/s and an on-disk sector error rate is of 1/13245 hours. Each disk in the system was estimated to fail at a rate of 1/100000 hours and was subject to a full “scrub” every year or every 8640 hours. The rebuild time of a single device in this simulated system was put a 100 hours or 3 MB/s.

In a simulation that uses 1 TB hard drives in a 10 PB Pergamum system structured with three inter-disk parity segments per 16-disk reliability group and 3 intra-disk parity blocks per segment, the estimated reliability came up at a MTTDL of 1.25×107 hours, or about 1400 years. Of course, that is just an estimate. But this estimate is far beyond of what we have heard so far and certainly the first true long-term storage idea we have come across.

Performance is another aspect of this system. Using 400 MHz ARM 9 CPUs, 7200 rpm SATA drives as well as 1 GB of flash metadata storage resulted in a Pergamum tome-side throughput of 3.25 MB/s, the researchers said.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37073/113/





Simple 'Superlens' Sharpens Focusing Power
Mason Inman

A simple-to-make "superlens" can focus 10 times more sharply than a conventional lens. It could shrink the size of features on computer chips, or help power gadgets without wires.

No matter how powerful a conventional lens, it cannot focus light down to more than about half its wavelength, the "diffraction limit". This limits the amount of data that can be stored on a CD, and the size of features on computer chips.

Researchers have devised ways to beat the diffraction limit before, using bizarre "metamaterials" that are hard to make, and which are also the basis of prototype "invisibility cloaks".

But such complex mixes of material stuffed with tiny loops of metal and precisely-shaped holes are unlikely to become a mass-production technology.
Simply super

Anthony Grbic, Lei Jiang and Roberto Merlin at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, have now successfully made a much simpler design, first theorised last year.

The new lens is a 127-micrometer-thick plate of teflon and ceramic with a copper topping. "The beauty of these is that they're planar," Grbic says, "they're easy to fabricate." The lenses can be made through a single step of photolithography, the process used to etch computer chips.

By selectively etching away the copper, Grbic and colleagues created many capacitors sandwiched together. Capacitors are typically used in electronics for storing electric charge for short periods.

In the lens, the capacitors instead interact directly with electromagnetic waves like light. This sets up currents in the capacitors that focus the waves passing through the lens into a point 20 times smaller than their wavelength. That is 10 times tighter than a conventional lens can achieve, hampered by the diffraction limit.
Microwave trials

The team's current prototype works on microwaves, which are easier to focus because they have longer wavelengths than visible light. Simply making capacitors of different sizes would allow the lens to focus other frequencies, including visible and infrared light, says Grbic.

Grbic and colleagues have a variety of uses for their new lenses planned, including focusing light into smaller spots during photolithography to etch smaller features onto computer chips.

The lenses could also help refine a technique to transfer power wirelessly developed in 2006. The new lenses could create more energy-dense beams of the electromagnetic waves used to transfer power, Grbic says.
"Ingenious"

The theory behind these lenses is "ingenious," says John Pendry of Imperial College London, UK, who in 2006 proved invisibility cloaks could be possible. "This is an important step forward in sub-wavelength imaging with considerable potential applications," he adds.

Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, US, agrees, saying the new design has "exciting potential." But the more complex metamaterial lenses will likely be more applicable to more diverse applications, he adds.
http://technology.newscientist.com/c...ing-power.html





Anyone Seen My $4.2 Billion?

There's a lot of money out there in the economy that people used to spend on CDs. The question is, where, exactly, did it go?
Chuck Klosterman

Even if you know nothing about the music industry, you probably know this: People don't buy albums anymore. Everyone is aware of this, mostly because this phenomenon is reported on constantly. The soundtrack to High School Musical was considered a commercial success by selling 2.9 million units in all of 2007; seven years before, Britney Spears was able to sell 1.3 million copies of Oops! . . . I Did It Again in a single week. That disparity should be shocking, but it isn't -- by now, anyone who (even casually) follows the music industry is inundated with similarly grim statistics all the time. Interestingly, these stories tend to make music fans happy. People hate corporate record labels and love reading about how the industry is failing. As such, the media coverage of plummeting music sales almost always focuses on how labels are losing money. But this coverage usually ignores an economic element that is less tangible but more interesting: What is happening to all the money not being spent on music?

In 1999, the total revenue from all music sales (albums and singles) was $14.2 billion. By 2006, it was barely more than $10 billion, including downloads. While considering that staggering difference, assume the following suppositions are true:

• The music-buying population in 1999 wasn't that different from the music-buying population in 2006. Some people stopped buying music and some younger people started, but the overall demographic base is mostly identical in size and scope.
• The quality of the music produced in those respective years was not significantly different. In other words, no one is going to argue that sales only went down because the music got worse; the public's interest in sound is static.
• The price of music in stores stayed roughly the same.

This being the case, it would seem there are two elementary reasons why the decline in revenue happened: a) illegal file-sharing and b) heightened consumer selectivity. File-sharing has been written about extensively, so there is no need to readdress it here. The term "heightened consumer selectivity" is really just a manifestation of iTunes -- if someone is obsessed with the song "1 2 3 4" but has no interest in the Feist catalog, he can acquire the single for ninety-nine cents instead of blowing sixteen dollars on a full album he'd never play twice. But here's where the math gets less clear and more meaningful: These trends don't involve everyone. Your grandma is not using LimeWire. The 2.6 million people who love the Eagles are still going to Wal-Mart to buy the physical CD. In practice, it's only a select class of computer-savvy consumers who are making this dramatic revenue shift happen -- almost exclusively music fans under the age of forty who a) used to buy a few albums every other Tuesday but b) now buy virtually none over the course of an entire year. This specific underclass was the collective beneficiary of the aforementioned $4.2 billion difference from 2006; that number represents money they would have spent on music in 1999, but were able to save. So I wonder: Where did all that money go?

When the Associated Press did its (now annual) story about How the Music Industry Is Failing this past January, it tried to answer my question with one sentence: "The recording industry has experienced declines in CD album sales for years, in part because of the rise of online file-sharing, but also because consumers have spent more of their leisure dollars on other entertainment, like DVDs and video games." This is a rational explanation supported by the precipitous commercial rise in both idioms. (Video-game revenue has more than doubled since 2000, and DVD sales grew from $2.5 billion in 2000 to $23.4 billion last year.) The only problem is while CDs, DVDs, and video games are physically similar, and they're sold in the same outlet, the experiences they offer aren't logically connected. I don't see why not having to pay for a Band of Horses album would make a person any more likely to buy a copy of Knocked Up, as opposed to buying four gallons of gas or a pair of sunglasses or a turtle. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. I don't think young people swap out items in their "leisure" budget that explicitly. What seems more likely is that this extra $4.2 billion -- unequally distributed among all the music fans who didn't pay for music in 2006 -- entered the overall economy in lots of disparate ways. And while we'll never know exactly where all those bones disappeared, my specific theory is this: A lot of the money not spent on music in the twenty-first century is being used to pay off credit-card debt that was incurred during the nineties. In other words, not paying for In Rainbows today is helping people eliminate the balance they still owe for buying Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when they were broke in 1995.

During the early eighties, it was difficult for college kids to get credit cards; at the time, parents still needed to be cosigners. But when that policy changed in the early nineties, it instantly became effortless for any slack-jawed student to get a credit card. Subsequently, the percentage of young adults (ages eighteen to thirty-four) with credit-card debt increased 5.6 percent from 1989 through 1998. But after 1998, it started to decrease; by 2004, it was lower than it was in 1989. Now, there are myriad reasons why this happened, but here is one potential factor: Napster -- and the entire file-sharing era -- launched in 1998. It seems entirely plausible that the money college students saved by stealing MP3's played a critical role in paying down whatever they owed on Visa cards they never should have applied for in the first place. I suspect that if Shawn Fanning had pioneered a safe, socially acceptable way to electronically shoplift from Target in 1997, people would have jumped on that bandwagon instead.

Whenever writers try to explain the collapse of the music industry, they inevitably blame the labels themselves; they point out how wasteful and inefficient the corporate structure was at places like Elektra and Chrysalis, and how unfair it is to charge kids so many dollars for a disc that costs pennies to make, and that modern consumers have come to the realization that "music longs to be free." This may all be true, but I'm not sure it's a viable explanation for things like huge layoffs at Def Jam. Lots of industries succeed despite being poorly modeled. What happened is this: Young people needed more money to pay for their rising levels of self-imposed debt, so they unconsciously gravitated toward the first technology that provided a cost-saving alternative. Because four-minute digital-song files are relatively small (and thus easily compressed), ripping tracks for free became the easiest way to eliminate an extraneous cost. It wasn't political or countercultural, and it had almost nothing to do with music itself. It was fiscally practical. It was the first, best solution.

People didn't stop buying albums because they were philosophically opposed to how the rock business operated, and they didn't stop buying albums because the Internet is changing the relationship between capitalism and art. People stopped buying albums because they wanted the fucking money. It's complicated, but it's not.
http://www.esquire.com/features/chuc...losterman-0408





Grand Theft a Small Issue for Hit Video Game
Mike Nizza

What would the “biggest debut ever for an entertainment product” be without a little online piracy? As in the case of the final installment of the Harry Potter series and countless other media, Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest in a hit video game franchise, has apparently been leaked before its official release on Tuesday.

As the illegal file-sharing storm churns and churns, however, it seems clear that this particular grand theft is unlikely to steal much thunder from a blockbuster opening.

In the first week, analysts expected the game to sell six million copies. At $59.99 a pop for a standard copy and $30 more for the “special edition,” that is likely to add up to more than $400 million. As Variety points out, the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” film pried $404 million from moviegoers worldwide in its first six days, a record.

Even the online pirates themselves seemed averse to poking a hole in the pockets of Rockstar, the game’s maker. “Guys, seriously, go and buy this one!,” the file-sharer urged while offering a free copy. “[Rockstar] deserves it.”

Reacting to the news, several gamers added another thing that they deserve: a little will power. “If it’s just about playing the game early, grow some patience, people,” PC Magazine said. “There’s only a week left to wait, and it will be worth it.” Not that waiting is easy, another explained:

Six more days to go. I don’t even wanna explain how excited I am for this game, lest I come across as an even bigger dorkstick than I normally do. But I really, really am.

That gamer asserted that there was a bigger issue than illegal file-sharing: spoilers. “With the game now out in the wild,” Steve Tilley wrote, “it’s going to mean avoiding gaming forums, YouTube and the like so as not to have any surprises ruined.” His fears are already being realized in those places, although many online video clips seemed to have been taken down soon after they were published.

Another set of gamers are doing quite the opposite. Kokatu spotted a Web site already buzzing with evidence that players are charging into this new virtual world, “racking up achievements” and passing each other on a video game leader board.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...it-video-game/





For a Pinball Survivor, the Game Isn’t Over
Monica Davey

Being inside a pinball machine factory sounds exactly as you think it would. Across a 40,000-square-foot warehouse here, a cheery cacophony of flippers flip, bells ding, bumpers bump and balls click in an endless, echoing loop. The quarter never runs out.

But this place, Stern Pinball Inc., is the last of its kind in the world. A range of companies once mass produced pinball machines, especially in the Chicago area, the one-time capital of the business. Now there is only Stern. And even the dinging and flipping here has slowed: Stern, which used to crank out 27,000 pinball machines each year, is down to around 10,000.

To most, the story seems familiar — of a craze that had its moment, of computers that grew sophisticated, of a culture that started staying home for fun, of being replaced by video games. But to pinball people, this is a painful fading, and one that, some insist, might yet be turned around.

“There are a lot of things I look at and scratch my head,” said Tim Arnold, who ran an arcade during a heyday of pinball in the 1970s and recently opened The Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit museum in a Las Vegas strip mall. “Why are people playing games on their cellphones while they write e-mail? I don’t get it.”

“The thing that’s killing pinball,” Mr. Arnold added, “is not that people don’t like it. It’s that there’s nowhere to play it.”

Along the factory line in this suburb west of Chicago, scores of workers pull and twist at colored wires, drill holes in wooden frames, screw in flippers and tiny light bulbs and assorted game characters who will eventually move and spin and taunt you.

Though pinball has roots in the 1800s game of bagatelle, these are by no means simple machines. Each one contains a half-mile of wire and 3,500 tiny components, and takes 32 hours to build — as the company’s president, Gary Stern, likes to say, longer than a Ford Taurus.

Mr. Stern, the last pinball machine magnate, is a wise-cracking, fast-talking 62-year-old with a shock of white hair, matching white frame glasses and a deep tan who eats jelly beans at his desk and recently hurt a rib snowboarding in Colorado.

The manufacturing plant is a game geek’s fantasy job, a Willy Wonka factory of pinball.

Some designers sit in private glass offices seated across from their pinball machines.

Some workers are required to spend 15 minutes a day in the “game room” playing the latest models or risk the wrath of Mr. Stern. “You work at a pinball company,” he explained, grumpily, “you’re going to play a lot of pinball.” (On a clipboard here, the professionals must jot their critiques, which, on a recent day, included “flipper feels soft” and “stupid display.”)

And in a testing laboratory devoted to the physics of all of this, silver balls bounce around alone in cases for hours to record how well certain kickers and flippers and bumpers hold up.

Mr. Stern’s father, Samuel Stern, spent his life in the pinball business, starting out as a game operator in the 1930s — when a simple version of the modern mass-produced pinball machine first appeared. Dozens of companies were soon producing the machines, said Roger Sharpe, widely considered a foremost historian of the sport after the 1977 publication of his book, “Pinball!”

The creation of the flipper — popularized by the Humpty Dumpty game in 1947 — transformed the activity, which went on to surges in the 1950s, ’70s and early ’90s.

“Everybody thinks of it as retro, as nostalgia,” Mr. Sharpe said. “But it’s not. These are sophisticated games. Pinball is timeless.”

Perhaps, but even Mr. Stern acknowledges that demand is down. The hard-core players are faithful; the International Flipper Pinball Association keeps careful watch of the top-ranked players in the world. But the casual player has drifted.

“The whole coin-op industry is not what it once was,” Mr. Stern said.

Corner shops, pubs, arcades and bowling alleys stopped stocking pinball machines. A younger audience turned to video games. Men of a certain age, said Mr. Arnold, who is 52, became the reliable audience. (“Chicks,” he announced, “don’t get it.”)

And so for Mr. Stern, the pinball buyer is shifting.

In the United States, Mr. Stern said, half of his new machines, which cost about $5,000 and are bought through distributors, now go directly into people’s homes and not a corner arcade. He said nearly 40 percent of the machines — some designed to appeal to French, German, Italian and Spanish players — were exported, and he added that he had been working to make inroads in China, India, the Middle East and Russia.

Mr. Stern said the notion underlying this game was universal, lasting.

Ask him about the future and Mr. Stern offers a rare pause. In 10 years, he said, pinball will be fine. His company will be here, cranking out pinball machines. Fifty years hence? It is too far away to think about, he said. But pressed to ponder it, he said he was certain of one thing: Pinball will be around.

“Look, pinball is like tennis,” said Mr. Stern, noting that a tennis court could never, for instance, be made round and that certain elements of a pinball play field are equally unchangeable and lasting. “This is a ball game. It’s a bat and ball game, O.K.?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/us/25pinball.html





Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
Clay Shirky

(This is a lightly edited transcription of a speech I gave at the Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008.)

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan's Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

This hit me in a conversation I had about two months ago. As Jen said in the introduction, I've finished a book called Here Comes Everybody, which has recently come out, and this recognition came out of a conversation I had about the book. I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?"

I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?" And a little bit at a time they move the article--fighting offstage all the while--from, "Pluto is the ninth planet," to "Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system."

So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first--hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

The early phase for taking advantage of this cognitive surplus, the phase I think we're still in, is all special cases. The physics of participation is much more like the physics of weather than it is like the physics of gravity. We know all the forces that combine to make these kinds of things work: there's an interesting community over here, there's an interesting sharing model over there, those people are collaborating on open source software. But despite knowing the inputs, we can't predict the outputs yet because there's so much complexity.

The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you're going. That's the phase we're in now.
Just to pick one example, one I'm in love with, but it's tiny. A couple of weeks one of my students at ITP forwarded me a a project started by a professor in Brazil, in Fortaleza, named Vasco Furtado. It's a Wiki Map for crime in Brazil. If there's an assault, if there's a burglary, if there's a mugging, a robbery, a rape, a murder, you can go and put a push-pin on a Google Map, and you can characterize the assault, and you start to see a map of where these crimes are occurring.

Now, this already exists as tacit information. Anybody who knows a town has some sense of, "Don't go there. That street corner is dangerous. Don't go in this neighborhood. Be careful there after dark." But it's something society knows without society really knowing it, which is to say there's no public source where you can take advantage of it. And the cops, if they have that information, they're certainly not sharing. In fact, one of the things Furtado says in starting the Wiki crime map was, "This information may or may not exist some place in society, but it's actually easier for me to try to rebuild it from scratch than to try and get it from the authorities who might have it now."

Maybe this will succeed or maybe it will fail. The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible, and I hope that this one succeeds, obviously. But even if it doesn't, it's illustrated the point already, which is that someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus, enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago.

So that's the answer to the question, "Where do they find the time?" Or, rather, that's the numerical answer. But beneath that question was another thought, this one not a question but an observation. In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."

At least they're doing something.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some fancy sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.

This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

And what's astonished people who were committed to the structure of the previous society, prior to trying to take this surplus and do something interesting, is that they're discovering that when you offer people the opportunity to produce and to share, they'll take you up on that offer. It doesn't mean that we'll never sit around mindlessly watching Scrubs on the couch. It just means we'll do it less.

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you?

Well, the TV producer did not think this was going to be a big deal; she was not digging this line of thought. And her final question to me was essentially, "Isn't this all just a fad?" You know, sort of the flagpole-sitting of the early early 21st century? It's fun to go out and produce and share a little bit, but then people are going to eventually realize, "This isn't as good as doing what I was doing before," and settle down. And I made a spirited argument that no, this wasn't the case, that this was in fact a big one-time shift, more analogous to the industrial revolution than to flagpole-sitting.

I was arguing that this isn't the sort of thing society grows out of. It's the sort of thing that society grows into. But I'm not sure she believed me, in part because she didn't want to believe me, but also in part because I didn't have the right story yet. And now I do.

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

It's also become my motto, when people ask me what we're doing--and when I say "we" I mean the larger society trying to figure out how to deploy this cognitive surplus, but I also mean we, especially, the people in this room, the people who are working hammer and tongs at figuring out the next good idea. From now on, that's what I'm going to tell them: We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

Thank you very much.
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/20...the-mouse.html





Does She Look Like a Music Pirate?

Inside Tanya Andersen's private war with the recording industry. Hint: She's winning
Heather Green

When Tanya Andersen opens the door to her modest apartment in suburban Portland, Ore., her Maltese-terrier mix, Tazz, runs over and wags his tail in a friendly hello. The 45-year-old single mother doesn't seem like much of a fighter. She spends most of her days sitting on an overstuffed sofa with a heating pad behind her back to ease chronic pain and migraines that have kept her on disability for nearly five years. Her voice is soft and halting. Yet this woman is behind a fierce assault on the music industry and its tactics for combating music piracy on the Internet. "I've just got to keep doing what I believe is right," she says, with Tazz curled up next to her on the couch. "And that's fighting and letting people know what's happening."

After being sued by the music industry for stealing songs and winning the case's dismissal, Andersen is now taking the record industry to court. Her case is aimed at exposing investigative practices that are controversial and may be illegal, according to the lawsuit. One company hired by the record industry, she claims, snoops through people's computers, uncovering private files and photos, even though it has no legal right to do so. A different industry-backed company uses tactics similar to those of debt collectors, pressuring people to pay thousands of dollars in settlements even before any wrongdoing is proven. In Andersen's case, the industry's Settlement Support Center said that unless she paid $4,000 to $5,000 immediately, it would "ruin her financially," the suit alleges.

Andersen is going after the recording industry under conspiracy laws. She argues the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry's trade group, and its affiliates worked together on a broad campaign to intimidate people into making financial payoffs. The defendants "secretly met and conspired" to develop a "litigation enterprise" with the ultimate goal of preserving the major record companies' control over the music business. Andersen is requesting class action status for her case, seeking at least $5 million in compensation for the class.

The RIAA says Andersen's allegations are categorically false. It says it isn't violating any laws. In fact, the courts have sided with the industry a number of times when it has faced claims similar to Andersen's. The RIAA emphasizes that it doesn't want to sue music listeners. But aggressive steps are necessary, it says, to stop rampant piracy that it figures costs the U.S. record industry at least $3.7 billion annually in sales. "The magnitude of this [theft] is incalculable," says Richard L. Gabriel, lead national counsel for the RIAA and a partner at the Denver law firm Holme, Roberts, & Owen. "We don't have an illusion that we can shut it down completely, but we do think that the suits will help get the marketplace to a fair place, where the illegal doesn't control the legal."

While the recording industry has gone after thousands of people, Andersen is unusual. Of the 40,000 people the RIAA says it has targeted for legal action, at most 100 have decided to defend themselves in court, says Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. Few want to pay the legal costs of fighting the music industry, so most settle cases quickly, even if they believe they're innocent. Of the people who defend themselves, only a handful have taken the next step of suing the record industry for their lawyers' fees, and only a couple have won reimbursement. Andersen, one of the few winners on all counts, is the first to file a broad lawsuit that has put the RIAA on the defensive.

Jury Avoidance?

Lawyers around the country who defend people accused of music piracy often share information, and the evidence Andersen uncovers could have a broad impact on the legal sparring. Already, the Oregon Attorney General cited the arguments in Andersen's case when he asked a court to quash a request by the music industry for the names of 17 students at the University of Oregon who allegedly shared music online. "The RIAA is fighting very hard to make sure that [Andersen's case] never reaches a jury," says Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at Georgetown University's law school. "The minute this reaches a jury, they will have to think about settling." Gabriel says the RIAA will pursue the case as vigorously as necessary.

The woman at the center of the dispute grew up in Woodburn, Ore., outside Portland. Her father died of leukemia when she was six, leaving her mother to raise Tanya and her younger sister, Tye. Her mother, Sonja Patzer, worked double shifts as a clerk at the local grocery store, giving up time with the girls for the money to support them. Tanya started working in a nursing home cafeteria when she was 16 and moved away two years later to go to community college in nearby Salem. "The girls were raised that you need to take care of yourself in life," says Patzer, now 66.

When the RIAA first set its sights on her three years ago, Andersen was looking after her eight-year-old daughter by herself in the wake of a divorce. It was December, 2004, and she pulled an envelope out of her mailbox. Ripping it open, she found a letter from Verizon Communications (VZ), her Internet service provider, saying it was releasing information about her. With it was a copy of a page from a subpoena. Andersen had earned a two-year legal secretary degree while in community college, but she had no idea what the documents meant. "I thought to myself: "I haven't done anything wrong,'" she says.

A second, more ominous letter arrived in early February, 2005. The document, from a law firm in Los Angeles, said she was being sued by several record companies for copyright infringement because she had shared their music with others over the Net. "The evidence necessary for the record companies to prevail in this action has already been secured," the letter states. It informed her that the minimum damages for each copyrighted song shared was $750 and encouraged her to contact the Settlement Support Center to discuss a financial settlement. If she didn't resolve the issue, she would be sued.

For the first time, Andersen was scared. She tried to e-mail a contact listed in the letter and called the law firm. A few days later her phone rang. "Ms. Andersen, I am calling to discuss settlement," she recalls the person on the other end of the line saying. "Settlement of what?" she responded. The man explained he was calling from the Settlement Support Center as a representative of the RIAA. He had information that she had been caught sharing songs online. To avoid a lawsuit, she would have to pay $4,000 or $5,000, he said. "You're going to have to pay us, or this won't go away," she says he told her.

The Secret Sharer

Andersen didn't know it at the time, but she was part of a new RIAA piracy crackdown. The music industry had spent years shutting down startups that make technology for sharing music over the Internet, such as Napster (NAPS). But for every tech company shuttered, two more seemed to pop up. In the fall of 2003, in a public effort to take on piracy, the RIAA started suing individuals it suspected were giving away copyrighted music. "Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said RIAA President Cary Sherman at the time. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action. We simply cannot allow online piracy to continue destroying the livelihoods of artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers, and everyone in the music industry."

The Settlement Support Center was a less public part of the initiative. Its name may suggest a neutral organization set up to resolve disputes with evenhanded objectivity. In fact, it was financed by the record industry and operated like a cross between a call center and a debt collection firm. The SSC has since been dissolved. The RIAA's law firm, Holme Roberts & Owen, is representing the organization in court.

The SSC made its collections by hiring people such as Mark Eilers, an ex-police officer. He called Andersen repeatedly in February and March, she says, reiterating the demand that she pay thousands of dollars. Over the course of the calls. Eilers told her she had shared 1,288 songs on May 20, 2004, at 4:24 a.m. under the screen name Gotenkito. She maintained they had the wrong person and offered to let them look at her computer. She says Eilers told her Verizon had already verified that the illegal activity had come from her home, specified by what's known as an IP (for Internet Protocol) address. Andersen asked to speak with the record industry's lawyers and get a copy of the information they had about her. Eilers said no to both requests, says Andersen. Eilers, who no longer works for the industry, says he doesn't recall speaking with Andersen.

During the summer of 2005, after Eilers stopped calling, Andersen assumed the RIAA had moved on. Then on Aug. 26, while she was having dinner with her daughter, Kylee, there was a knock on the door. Kylee got up to open it, and Andersen followed. A woman standing at the door handed Andersen a piece of paper and said: "There, you have been served," Andersen recalls. In her hand were papers for a federal lawsuit filed against her. "I sat down and I read it. I'm like, "What do I do now?' I'm a single mom. I'm supporting a kid. This is going to destroy my whole life," she says.

Andersen quickly started looking for a lawyer. She searched the Net for a case like hers, although she wasn't sure how she would be able to pay someone on her $1,400 monthly disability check. One local Oregon lawyer suggested she accept a default guilty judgment and then declare bankruptcy. But Andersen had been through bankruptcy before, after her pregnancy with Kylee. She wasn't about to do it again.

Finally she called Lory R. Lybeck, a Seattle lawyer who was handling a similar case. They talked on the phone, then Lybeck sent one of his lawyers down to meet Andersen. "I said to myself, either she's a good actor and a good liar, or what they have done to her is really crummy," Lybeck says. He took the case on contingency, meaning he gets paid only if Andersen collects damages from the recording industry.

Lybeck is a compact 52-year-old with a brawler's attitude. He spent the early part of his legal career at a large litigation firm representing companies such as Chrysler, and in 1992, he set up his own two-person shop. Since then, he has gone after major corporations and government institutions for alleged wrongdoing. "I dislike arrogant bullies," Lybeck says.

What struck him about the RIAA was its negotiation tactics. The record labels accused people of downloading songs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, but they set the settlement price at a few thousand. Paying was cheaper than hiring a lawyer. "To me, that says this isn't about lawsuits, it's about an extortion campaign," says Lybeck. The RIAA's Gabriel says: "Our goal isn't to bankrupt people; our goal is to send a message that copyright infringement is wrong and get some compensation for the infringement."

As Andersen and the attorney prepared their defense in 2006, his conviction grew. Yes, Andersen had installed on her computer a software program, KaZaA, for sharing music over the Net—one reason the RIAA suspected her. But Andersen deleted the program after a few months and didn't appear ever to have used it. Plus, some of the music Andersen had supposedly shared online just didn't fit her taste. The songs included rap tunes with titles like I Stab People and Dope Nose.

Numerous Errors

Lybeck also became convinced that there are fundamental flaws in how the RIAA uses IP addresses to identify suspects. MediaSentry is the investigative firm the record industry employs to track pirates. When MediaSentry sees people swapping music on file-sharing services such as KaZaA, it records their IP addresses and user names. Then it goes to Verizon Communications or another Internet service provider to find out who was using that IP address at the time of the piracy.

But errors can arise in a number of ways. One IP address may be assigned to a device such as a Wi-Fi router that can be used by several people at the same time to access the Net wirelessly. So if a visitor or a neighbor decides to steal music over the Wi-Fi network, the homeowner would still be fingered. In addition, some people have IP addresses that change every time they log onto the Net, so the IP address you use in the morning could be assigned to your neighbor that afternoon. Verizon and other Web service providers try to track who has which IP address at what time, but their records can be faulty.

More troublesome, sophisticated computer users can "spoof" IP addresses, or use one assigned to somebody else. They use a simple piece of software to forge the IP address on packets of information sent from their computer, much like someone who puts an address on the back of an envelope that isn't theirs. The people most likely to spoof are the very tech-savvy youngsters also mostly likely to be stealing music. Even if the RIAA had an IP address it believed belonged to Andersen, Lybeck thought, that wasn't necessarily the case.

In September, 2006, the RIAA asked Andersen a curious question: Did she know anyone named Chad? She didn't. But Lybeck tracked him down. Chad was Chad Alstad, a carpet layer who lived in Everett, Wash. He had a MySpace (NWS) page on which he wrote about downloading content from the Net. And his user name? Gotenkito, the same name Eilers had said was used in the alleged piracy. Lybeck was amazed: Alstad seemed a much more likely suspect than Andersen.

Over the next few months, Lybeck and the record industry tussled over Andersen's computer. The court ordered Andersen to hand over the computer, and the RIAA took it to an expert so it could be searched for signs of music piracy. But then the industry's lawyers refused to release the expert's report. Ultimately, Donald C. Ashmanskas, the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case in Portland, ordered the RIAA to turn over the information, which it did in January, 2007. The result? No evidence of piracy.

Lybeck was convinced his defense was airtight. On May 14, he asked the Portland court for summary judgment. Ashmanskas gave the RIAA until June 1 to provide more evidence linking Andersen to the alleged infringement. In the week leading up to the deadline, the RIAA told Andersen it would drop its case if she agreed not to pursue counterclaims. She refused. Finally on the deadline, industry lawyers dropped the case without conditions and agreed not to sue Andersen again.

Lybeck still hadn't made a dime for his efforts. He asked Ashmanskas to make the RIAA pay his legal fees. In September, 2007, the judge agreed. In his ruling, Ashmanskas wrote that he was awarding the fees in part to deter prosecution tactics such as the RIAA's. After two years, "no one even remotely connected to the defendant has been alleged to be the actual infringer," he wrote. He was also shocked that the RIAA never interviewed Alstad until well after it had filed suit against Andersen, and then took Alstad at his word that he hadn't stolen music. "Inexplicably, [the RIAA's lawyers] credit his denials and discredit [Andersen's]," Ashmanskas wrote. He ordered the RIAA to pay Lybeck's fees, estimated at $300,000. "That made me feel that justice was being done," says Andersen.

Gabriel says it's not accurate to say the RIAA dropped its suit for lack of evidence. He says the user name Gotenkito may have been inspired by Kylee, since she admitted she liked Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese anime TV series that has a character with a similar name. He also says Andersen said in her deposition that she knew or listened to some of the country and rock artists whose songs were offered for download. "We took the high road," says Gabriel. "The judge inferred that we dropped the case because we didn't have enough evidence; we could have pursued the case until the end of time." Andersen says she and her daughter had nothing to do with the piracy.

An even bigger battle lies ahead. Andersen and Lybeck filed their own suit against the RIAA, the SSC, MediaSentry, Warner Music Group, EMI Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group last year and updated it with an amended complaint this month. The record labels declined to comment for this story, referring questions to the RIAA.

Lybeck figures that with all the potential errors in IP addresses collected by MediaSentry, the RIAA has gone after thousands of innocent people. He thinks the addresses could be erroneous as often as 20% of the time, which would mean 8,000 people wrongly accused. He believes that many innocent people have been coerced into paying because they can't afford to fight the RIAA in court. (Although the SSC has stopped operating, an organization called Settlement Information Line Call Center now plays a similar role for the music industry.)

"Serial Bad Faith"

MediaSentry declined to comment, deferring to the RIAA. Gabriel says there have been few instances of mistaken IP addresses. "MediaSentry's investigation isn't flawed," he says. "The proof is in the pudding. We have obtained judgments against hundreds and hundreds of people." He declined to specify the number of settlements.

The RIAA did win a partial victory this week. After a conference call on Apr. 21 with Lybeck and Gabriel, the court struck Andersen's complaint and asked Lybeck to refine the claims. As a result, Lybeck plans to drop charges of fraud and racketeering, which the judge thought would be tough to prove. "The judge understands what we believe, that there isn't any merit to these claims," Gabriel.

Still, Andersen's case is very much alive. Lybeck plans to file another amended complaint by May 1, including the charges of conspiracy, negligence, and abuse of the legal process. Shortly thereafter, he plans to start deposing officials from the RIAA and its affiliates in preparation for a jury trial. "The trick to making this case stick will depend on to what extent Andersen can show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits," says Richard C. Vasquez, a partner in Seattle at Morgan Miller Blair who is not involved in the dispute.

From her apartment outside Portland, Andersen remains involved in the broader case. She collects files on her suit and tracks other disputes with the RIAA online. One recent winter day, she sipped a Diet Pepsi and watched Tazz jump from the couch and settle on the floor. "You have to find some positive in stuff, too," she says. "For whatever reason, I have been given a unique opportunity to fight this. I feel a responsibility in a way and want to help others. That pushes me along."
http://www.businessweek.com/print/ma...2042959954.htm





Hells Angel Barger Sues HBO Over Biker Drama

Veteran Hells Angel Sonny Barger has sued cable firm HBO alleging it cut him out of a biker drama he helped to develop, Barger's attorney said on Monday.

Barger lodged the suit against HBO in federal court in Los Angeles last week, saying it sidelined him from the pilot of a drama called "1%", about a troubled Arizona motorcycle club.

The suit also named the executive producer and writer of the pilot, Michael Tolkin, and his holding company, White Mountain Co, Barger's attorney Fritz Clapp said.

"Basically, Michael Tolkin stole our show and sold it to HBO," Clapp said in a telephone interview.

"Everything that he knows about motorcycle clubs he knows from Sonny Barger," he added.

The term "1 percenter" was coined by the American Motorcycle Association decades ago to describe the 1 percent of motorcycle riders that they deemed troublemakers.

The pilot focused on a chapter of the fictional Death Rangers motorcycle club in Arizona, and centered on a veteran member who is sent from California to bring it under control.

In the complaint, Barger said he and Tolkin pitched HBO on a motorcycle club-centered series, and HBO subsequently turned to Tolkin to create it.

After Barger objected to some of the elements in the pilot, HBO "refused to acknowledge the contributions or authorship" of Barger and did not seek permission to "use or publish the name, trademark, persona or likeness of Sonny Barger for any purpose," the lawsuit suit said.

Barger, 69, is a founding member of the Hells Angels chapter in Oakland, California, and is the most famous member of the club that turned 60 last month.

He moved to Arizona from California a decade ago. He now raises horses and rides with the club's Cave Creek, Arizona, chapter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifes...44107620080421

















Until next week,

- js.



















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