Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 4th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"I don't subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all... Optical fibre basically doesn't run out of capacity, it's just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end." – Simon Hackett


"I'm very impressed with RealDVD, and hope that it's available for consumers for many years to come (and not just in the next few minutes, hours or days)." – Keith Shaw


"It’s just the ultimate hustle. It’s just selling an invisible product, and so if I can be Toto in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ pulling back the curtain, which is how I see religion, great, that’s fine, I’ll do that and get off the stage. I’m not looking to be the anti-messiah." – Bill Maher


"Thanks to the ePassports is it now possible to build Smart-IED's. A Smart-IED waits until a specific person passes by before detonating or let's say until there are more than 10 americans in the room. Boom." – John Doe


"The [U.S.] can detain you for four hours, inspect everything, and put you through the third degree for no reason. It's really a police state." – Kevin Mitnick


"Dont get me wrong. Here at THC we love technology but we dont trust it." – John Doe


































Pickin’ ana Grinnin’

I recently found myself at a weekend tag sale coveting a well used IBM ThinkPad that was clean but firmly and permanently clamped into a heavy docking station. The lappy came with lots of extras like the outboard floppy drive, cardbus, internal CD-Rom, bag etc. but the seller had no key for the dock and chilling on the couch with the clunky combo wasn’t going to cut it. Still, I lusted so I snagged it anyway dock and all, paid the man and tossed it in the car. First thing I did at my place after firing it up and checking its stuff (it worked) was to try every small key I had lying around. Went through dozens with no luck. Well I knew I could buy one on the 'net but I wasn't sure about the key code and didn't want the hassle of getting it wrong, sending it back over and over. I thought of some friends in an IT department that used 100s of ThinkPad’s and I figured they knew a trick or two so I brought it in. After we exchanged glad to see yous they poked around for a spare key and came up empty, then told me they use a hardened screwdriver for these jobs anyway. Yeah? Heads nodded all around. "Here's your key Jack!" they yucked, grabbing an old flat head Craftsman and waving it in front of me. Whoa. I sensed a Red Bull moment. Are you about to jam that in and snap out the whole lock? More nods. Won't that wreck the dock? "Yup" they grinned. Yeh well...

I passed.

I brought it safely back home, straightened out that indispensable tool known as the paper clip, bent it into a long narrow U with flared ends and got busy. In less than 10 minutes I had the lock picked, the ThinkPad freed and the docking station saved from over caffeinated geeks.

The secret was to first push back the gate on the inside lower right of the key shaft, then tickle the pins opposite, flexing both ends of the paper clip simultaneously, while pausing occasionally to gently turn the shaft with a screwdriver to check progress. Turns out it's very do-able. Just use a good light.

So glad I didn't let the boys break the dock and I saved the 20 bucks a key would cost, which happened to be what I paid for the whole ThinkPad package to begin with. Sweet deal. Made a Saturday morning tag sale even better. It pays to be flexible.

















Enjoy,

Jack
















October 4th, 2008




Net Neutrality is an 'American Problem'
Brett Winterford and Julian Hill

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISP's have declared the Net neutrality debate as solely a US problem — and further, that the nation that pioneered the internet might want to study the Australian market for clues as to how to solve the dilemma.

Net neutrality is a term coined by internet users who oppose the increasing tendency among network owners (telcos) to tier or prioritise certain content on the network.

The debate was sparked after several American and British service providers offered to charge a premium to prioritise traffic connecting with some sites over others. These service providers claim the internet is "running out of capacity" due to excessive use of rich content like video and file sharing traffic. The only model with which capacity can be expanded, they argue, is to charge large media companies to prioritise traffic to and from their sites.

However, Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, argues that it is ridiculous to suggest bandwidth is "running out".

"I don't subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all... Optical fibre basically doesn't run out of capacity, it's just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end," he said in a recent interview with ZDNet.com.au.

"The [Net neutrality] problem isn't about running out of capacity. It's a business model that's about to explode due to stress. The problem, in my opinion, is the US business model," said Hackett.

"The US have got a problem," weighed in Justin Milne, group managing director for Telstra Media and former chief of Australia's largest ISP BigPond. "Their problem is that unlike Australia, they [offer] truly unlimited plans."

The problem with an "unlimited access" plan, explains Hackett, is that it "devalues what a megabyte is worth". American customers have never been able to put much of a dollar value on traffic, as historically, US ISPs have "had it very easy" in terms of bandwidth costs. The United States invented the internet, developed the first content for it, and the rest of the world essentially subsidised the US to connect to that content.

"It was quite rational to charge [users] a fixed amount of money for access [in the US] because the actual downloads per month were trivial," comments Hackett.

Today, there is as much local traffic floating around the rest of the world as there is in the United States, and America is as much a consumer of the world's content as it is a distributor of content to the world. In addition, the traffic being carried is far richer in terms of content, so the cost of feeding capacity to the "YouTube Generation" is considerably higher.

"Now everybody file shares and sends video all around the place," says Milne, "and the problem for the telcos in the US is they are having to expand their networks as they go, but they are not getting paid any more money."

Who pays?

American ISPs are thus faced with a choice as to who to charge in order to build out their networks to accommodate the increased traffic.

The first choice is to absorb the costs themselves, the status quo to date, which is less than desirable as a business model.

The second choice is to cease to offer unlimited plans, which passes the cost of excessive bandwidth use onto those users that consume the most.

The final choice, says Michael Malone, CEO of ASX-listed ISP iiNet, is to charge content providers, the model that has stirred up controversy.

"The attempt is being made certainly in the UK but also in the US to push that cost onto the content owner by saying, you pay, and we'll prioritise your traffic," he said. "[And] if you don't pay, your traffic will be really crap."

American ISP's are hesitant to take the option of charging customers for excessive use, Milne says, because they will "probably all knick off and go to my competitors who are not charging them". Instead, they plan to "charge the guys who are putting big gobs of video traffic into my network — which would be people like Microsoft and YouTube and Google etc."

"Those guys say, you're kidding, what about Net neutrality? The Net is supposed to be free, man! You can't charge us for putting traffic in there because that's denying the natural rights of Americans! I think the argument is thin but nevertheless Congress seems to be picking it up."

Learn from Down Under

The right choice, agree all three Australian ISP leaders, is to put the onus on the user, a model that has worked well in Australia.

As an Australian ISP, around 60 to 70 per cent of traffic comes from overseas. "You've got to haul the traffic," explains Milne. "All of that traffic is volumetrically charged — the more traffic you haul from overseas, the more you pay.

So all ISPs in Australia, because of our unique geography, have got used to pay-as-you-go and have handed those pay-as-you-go principles on to their customers."

Malone says that when users are offered truly unlimited access to download as much as they want, three per cent of customers use over 50 per cent of all the downloads. Download quotas can eradicate that problem if they are set at such a level that it affects this three per cent, while having zero affect on the majority.

Quotas, Malone says, aren't designed to be punitive.

"Quotas are meant to be able to say that for 95 per cent of customers, this [much data] is enough... This is an effectively unlimited connection for most people.

"From my point of view, [Net neutrality is] an artificial problem created out of fear of modifying the business model," says Hackett. "The idea that the entire population can subsidise a minority with an extremely high download quantity actually isn't necessarily the only way to live," said Malone.

The Australian model gives ISP's predictability about income and network costs, explains Hackett.

"If a user uses much more stuff, they wind up on higher plans, so we can actually afford to bring in more [network equipment and capacity]," he said. "So it's kind of self-correcting. In the US, an ISP is visibly afraid of the idea of customers pulling video 24/7. [Whereas] if our users use more traffic it doesn't actually scare us. You get the sense that it actually does scare [US ISP] Comcast."

Milne says a number of US cable companies have taken the hint and started charging "volumetrically".

"I think that's actually where things will finish up," he says. "Be it electricity, travel, petrol, we as humans have got used to the idea that the more you use the more you pay, albeit with a discount. The Net in the US just magically decided to avoid that, and now I think they'll have to come back to reality."

"Yes, you can't just keep on building these networks forever for free. You can build them bigger and bigger and bigger, but somebody has to pay for it. There has to be a business model by which the network is paid for," added Milne.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/comm...9292161,00.htm





GigaOM White Paper: The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps
Om Malik

Beginning on Wednesday, Comcast, the largest broadband service provider in the U.S., is going to start capping the total amount of data you can transfer using their broadband connection — to 250GB per month. With this move, the cable company will become the symbol of a new Internet era, one that is both monitored and metered. It is an era that threatens to limit innovation and to a large extent, the possibilities for new startups.

I have been very vocal about the short-sightedness of this decision being made by Comcast (and some other carriers), and along with my colleague Stacey Higginbotham, have been covering the story pretty closely. It is a clear and present danger to the way we use the Internet in this country.

In order to give you a better understanding of the issues at hand, I have teamed up with my old friend Muayyad Al-Chalabi, an alumni of Bell Labs and until recently an analyst with The Monitor Group, to release this white paper, “Broadband Usage-Based Pricing and Caps Analysis.”

In this paper, we aim to highlight the possible unintended consequences of such policies, among them the stunting of growth and innovation of web-based applications. And of course, higher costs. Plus:

• The strategy ignores the high degree of dependency “interactions” between power users and the rest of the network. The power users don’t act in isolation and in fact represent the hubs in any scale-free network; sequestering them and overcharging them will result in either low usage or worse, higher costs.
• Given the growth trend due to consumers’ changes in content consumption, today’s power users are tomorrow’s average users. By 2012, the bill for data access is projected to be around $215 per month.
• Strategic pricing involves the recognition that changing prices alone cannot solve the challenges facing carriers. Carriers are taking the easy way out trying to protect the “walled garden” rather than figuring out how to innovate in service delivery and harvesting more value from the overall content and applications opportunity.

http://gigaom.com/2008/09/30/gigaom-...andwidth-caps/





Congress Finally Passes Broadband Data Collection Bill
Nate Anderson

While spending a busy weekend trying to bail out the nation's troubled financial system, Congress also found time to tell the FCC that its current method for collecting broadband usage data is unacceptable. The Senate passed S. 1942, the Broadband Data Improvement Act, after the House passed a similar bill in late 2007. The bill, which has bipartisan support, directs the FCC to get better data on broadband and to report on it more often.

Rather than release "periodic" reports, for instance, the FCC would have to report yearly on US broadband, and these reports would have to list:

• the types of technology used to provide the broadband service capability to which consumers subscribe;
• the amounts consumers pay per month for such capability;
• the actual data transmission speeds of such capability;
• the types of applications and services consumers most frequently use in conjunction with such capability;
• for consumers who have declined to subscribe to broadband service capability, the reasons given by such consumers for declining such capability

The Census Bureau would also include questions on computer ownership and Internet connection methods as part of its work.

The FCC has historically collected quite limited data on broadband. Its definition of "broadband," for example, is famously low (200Kbps) and the agency only collects data at the ZIP code level. If a single customer in a ZIP code has broadband service, the entire ZIP code is counted "served." The new bills will force the FCC to collect far more interesting data, and to generate more useful metrics for judging the success of broadband rollouts, including the average price for each megabit-per-second, and the actual speeds that broadband users get.

Free Press, the group that recently pushed the FCC complaint against Comcast's P2P blocking practices, was pleased with the bill's passage.

"Our current broadband data collection system has had serious problems for years," said Ben Scott, the group's policy director. "The absence of accurate information about the price, speed, and availability of high-speed broadband has crippled our government's ability to advance innovative technology policies. In the last year, the FCC has taken some very important steps toward solving these problems. This bill gives more momentum to that progress."
Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the Democratic chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, called the bill an important step forward. "The federal government has a responsibility to ensure the continued rollout of broadband access, as well as the successful deployment of the next generation of broadband technology," he said. "But as I have said before, we cannot manage what we do not measure. This bill will give us the baseline statistics we need in order to eventually achieve the successful deployment of broadband access and services to all Americans."

The two bills have plenty of similarities, but also some key differences; the Senate version, for instance, tacks on a "child pornography enforcement" section and an Internet safety campaign. Changes need to be hammered out this week before Congress recesses.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...tion-bill.html





Broadband Data Improvement Act Passes House and Senate

The Broadband Data Improvement Act (S.1492), a key initiative of the Communications Workers of America's Speed Matters project, has cleared two important hurdles. The Senate passed the legislation on Friday and the House of Representatives passed its version of the bill yesterday. A joint conference committee will now meet to work out the differences between the bills.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, would require the Federal Communications Commission to conduct annual studies on status of broadband deployment throughout the country, in order to better assess the levels of residential computer and high-speed Internet use. It would also encourage private and public partnership efforts that identify barriers to broadband adoption on the state level.

Sen. Inouye explained the necessity of the bill:

If the United States is to remain a world leader in technology, we need a national broadband network that is second-to-none. The federal government has a responsibility to ensure the continued rollout of broadband access, as well as the successful deployment of the next generation of broadband technology. But as I have said before, we cannot manage what we do not measure. This bill will give us the baseline statistics we need in order to eventually achieve the successful deployment of broadband access and services to all Americans.

The second annual Speed Matters State-by-State report on Internet speed found that the United States had a median download speed of 2.3 mbps. Based on this data, the Communications Workers of America have repeatedly called for the passage of this bill; advocating it as the next logical step towards a national broadband policy.
http://www.speedmatters.org/blog/bro...provement.html





Senate Calls for FCC to Consider Content-Blocking Technologies
Stephanie Condon

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of providing parents with more control over the content their children receive through various technologies.

The Child Safe Viewing Act, introduced last year by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., requires the Federal Communications Commission to issue a notice of inquiry to examine what advanced content-blocking technologies are available for various communication devices and platforms. It also calls for the FCC to consider how to develop and deploy such technologies without affecting content providers' pricing or packaging.

The bill defines "advanced blocking technologies" as technology that enables parents to protect their children from "indecent or objectionable video or audio programming, as determined by the parent, that is transmitted through the use of wire, wireless, or radio communication."

The legislation still must go through the House of Representatives before being sent to the president.

While the bill does not empower the FCC to do anything other than to produce a report on its findings for Congress, it is one of a handful of steps Congress has taken in recent weeks to address threats new technologies can expose children to.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10...ag=mncol;posts





Cox Disconnects Alleged Pirates from the Internet
Ernesto

The anti-piracy lobby has been putting pressure on ISPs to act against customers who download copyright infringing content. Thus far, most ISPs have simply forwarded the takedown requests they receive, but Cox Communications is taking it one step further, by disconnecting alleged copyright infringers.

With 3.5 million Internet subscribers, Cox Communications is one of the larger ISPs in the US. Like all the other Internet providers, Cox receives numerous copyright related takedown requests from anti-piracy organizations.

However, it’s how they handle these requests that’s quite unique, and disturbing to say the least. Instead of sending their customer an email, notifying that they have received a DMCA takedown request on their behalf, Cox disables their Internet connection. Here is a quote from the warning page customers get to see when their Internet connection is cut off (screenshot below the article).

Under the DMCA, we have the responsibility to temporarily disable your Internet access, until such time as you take the necessary steps to remove the infringing files and to prevent further distribution of copyrighted material.

There are a couple of things wrong with this notification. First of all, and most importantly, the DMCA doesn’t oblige Cox to disable a customer’s Internet access at all. They have to notify their customer of the alleged infringement, but the measures they actually take are clearly out of proportion, and definitely not in the best interest of their customers.

Indeed, it has already led to a lot of frustration with Cox customers. One of them told TorrentFreak that he has been struggling for two days to regain his Internet access. The customer in question was instructed to call a phone number in order to resolve the issue, but it was impossible to get though for most of the day. When he finally got hold of someone via the regular customer service, he was simply told that he should call the same number he was given before.

After being on hold for more than an hour he eventually got through. The Cox customer told us what happened next: “He [Cox employee] said that he is going to allow me to have the Internet enabled for 1 hour while I ‘call my router company so they can walk me through securing my wireless network.’ If I don’t call back in the next hour, he will turn the Internet off again.”

First-time offenders will eventually get their Internet access reinstated, but not without being warned that they might lose it permanently if they receive two more takedown requests. “If it happens three times, I will be referred to their headquarters in Atlanta,” the Cox customer told us.

We contacted Cox’s customer support to verify this, and we were told that there is indeed a three strikes policy in place. When a Cox subscriber receives three takedown requests, their Internet access will be cut off entirely. Interestingly, this is the same policy that the European Parliament voted against last week, because it “restricts the rights and freedoms of Internet users.”

It turns out that Cox doesn’t need legislation to implement a three-strikes policy though. “Cox does in fact have a 3 strikes policy with regards to violations of our acceptable use policy for Internet service. If a customer’s service gets suspended 3 times for the same type of violation the customer risks having their Internet service terminated,” Cox’s customer support told TorrentFreak.

It is of course up to Cox how they handle alleged violations of their acceptable use policy. However, the problem lies in the fact that they act upon accusations made by the MPAA, RIAA and other anti-piracy organizations who employ evidence gathering methods that are shoddy, to say the least. In addition, there is still no law that requires a person to secure their wireless network and there are even routers that enable people to share their connection with outsiders.

We think that Cox clearly overstepped the mark here. Customers might not make as much noise as the lawyers of the entertainment industry, but eventually, they are the ones who bring in the money. Cox Communication currently uses the slogan “Your friend in the digital age.” Some friend…
http://torrentfreak.com/cox-disconne...ternet-080930/





Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China
John Markoff

A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.

The system tracks text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay, the Web auctioneer that owns Skype, an online phone and text messaging service.

The discovery draws more attention to the Chinese government’s Internet monitoring and filtering efforts, which created controversy this summer during the Beijing Olympics. Researchers in China have estimated that 30,000 or more “Internet police” monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content in what is called the Golden Shield Project or the Great Firewall of China.

The activists, who are based at Citizen Lab, a research group that focuses on politics and the Internet at the University of Toronto, discovered the surveillance operation last month. They said a cluster of eight message-logging computers in China contained more than a million censored messages. They examined the text messages and reconstructed a list of restricted words.

The list includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party, according to the researchers. It includes not only words like democracy, but also earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are facing criticism over the handling of earthquake relief and chemicals tainting milk powder.)

The list also serves as a filter to restrict text conversations. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of those words and a copy of the message is sent to a server. The Chinese servers retained personal information about the customers who sent the messages. They also recorded chat conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users outside China. The system recorded text messages and Skype caller identification, but did not record the content of Skype voice calls.

In just two months, the servers archived more than 166,000 censored messages from 44,000 users, according to a report that was published on the Information Warfare Monitor Web site at the university.

The researchers were able to download and analyze copies of the surveillance data because the Chinese computers were improperly configured, leaving them accessible. The researchers said they did not know who was operating the surveillance system, but they said they suspected that it was the Chinese wireless firm, possibly with cooperation from Chinese police.

Independent executives from the instant message industry say the discovery is an indication of a spiraling computer war that is tracking the introduction of new communications technologies.

“I can see an arms race going on,” said Pat Peterson, vice president for technology at Cisco’s Ironport group, which provides messaging security systems. “China is one of the more wired places of the world and they are fighting a war with their populace.”
The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program, intended to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The researchers said their discovery contradicted a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 after the content filtering of the Skype conversations was reported. At the time the company said that the conversations were protected and private.

The Citizen Lab researchers issued a report on Wednesday, which details an analysis of data on the servers. “We were able to download millions of messages that identify users,” said Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true. It’s ‘X-Files’ without the aliens.”

Jennifer Caukin, an eBay spokeswoman, said, “The security and privacy of our users is very important to Skype.” But the company spoke to the accessibility of the messages, not their monitoring. “The security breach does not affect Skype’s core technology or functionality,” she said. “It exists within an administrative layer on Tom Online servers. We have expressed our concern to Tom Online about the security issue and they have informed us that a fix to the problem will be completed within 24 hours.” EBay had no comment on the monitoring.

Other American companies have been caught in controversy after cooperating with Chinese officials. In 2005, Yahoo supplied information to the Chinese authorities, who then sentenced a reporter, Shi Tao, to 10 years in prison for leaking what the government considered state secrets. The company said it was following Chinese law.

EBay created the joint venture with the Tom Group, which holds the majority stake, in September 2005. The Tom Group itself was founded in October 1999 as a joint venture among Hutchison Whampoa, Cheung Kong Holdings and other investors. In its annual report this year, the Tom Group, based in Hong Kong, said that the number of Tom-Skype registered users had reached 69 million in the first half of 2008 and revenue had increased tenfold in the last year.

The researchers stumbled upon the surveillance system when Nart Villeneuve, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, began using an analysis tool to monitor data that was generated by the Tom-Skype software, which is meant to permit voice and text conversations from a personal computer. By observing the data generated by the program, he determined that each time he typed a particular swear word into the text messaging program an encrypted message was sent to an unidentified Internet address.

To his surprise, the coded messages were being stored on Tom Online computers. When he examined the machines over the Internet, he discovered that they had been misconfigured and that the computer directories were readable with a simple Web browser.

One directory on each machine contained a series of files in which the messages, in encrypted form, were being deposited. Hunting further, Mr. Villeneuve soon found a file that contained the numerical key that permitted him to decode the encrypted log files.

What he uncovered were hundreds of files, each containing thousands of records of messages that had been captured and then stored by the filtering software. The records revealed Internet addresses and user names as well as message content. Also stored on the computers were calling records for Skype voice conversations containing names and in some cases phone numbers of the calling parties.

Mr. Villeneuve downloaded the messages, decrypted them and used machine translation software to convert the Chinese messages to English. He then used word frequency counts to identify the key words that were flagging the messages. The exact criteria used by the filtering software is still unclear, he said, because some messages on the servers contained no known key word. He said that in addition to capturing the Skype messages sent between Tom-Skype users, international conversations were recorded as well, meaning that users of standard Skype software outside China were also vulnerable to the surveillance system when they had text conversations with Chinese users.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/te...t/02skype.html





Letting Our Fingers Do the Talking
Alex Mindlin

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile, attributed the spike in messaging to the spread of QWERTY-style keypads, whose users send 54 percent more text messages than those with ordinary keypads. He also said that phone companies had encouraged users to text by offering large or unlimited text-messaging bundles.

Teenagers ages 13 to 17 are by far the most prolific texters, sending or receiving 1,742 messages a month, according to Nielsen Mobile. By contrast, 18-to-24-year-olds average 790 messages. A separate study of teenagers with cellphones by Harris Interactive found that 42 percent of them claim that they can write text messages while blindfolded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/te...y/29drill.html





AT&T in No Rush to Build Out 4G Network
Slash Lane

Apple's exclusive iPhone wireless carrier AT&T said this week it's in no hurry to begin deploying a fourth-generation wireless network, as it believes there's two to three years of "runway" left in its current and future 3G technologies.

Speaking at the 4G Executive Summit on Tuesday, AT&T's VP of Architecture Hank Kafka downplayed any perceived urgency on the part of the carrier to push out a 4G network based on LTE, or the so-called Long Term Evolution standard.

He said AT&T's existing HSPA 3G network already offers a superior mobile broadband experience to that of its primary rival Verizon, whose EV-DO technology sports a limited future.

“HSPA is more economical for carriers to deploy,” Kafka said, adding that the extendibility of the technology offers the ability for smooth transitions to new technology, such as his firm's upcoming 20Mbps HSPA+ 3G network planned for sometime next year.

The exec also cited the iPhone as a device that has only just begun to open the eyes of consumers to mobile broadband and its inherit internet capabilities.

When asked specifically about his company's 4G plans, Kafka reportedly danced around the subject, saying he couldn't provide a concrete answer because specifications for such technology aren't yet finalized.

“Future evolutions may meet 4G requirements, but for now, true 4G technologies don’t exist because the requirements haven’t been defined,” he said.

With that said, Kafka added that he’d be surprised if LTE wasn’t significantly available "within five years." In the meantime, AT&T has about two to three years of "runway left with HSPA and HSPA-plus," he told the summit.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...g_network.html





Wireless at Fiber Speeds

New millimeter-wave technology sends data at 10 gigabits per second.
Kate Greene

There's no shortage of demand for faster wireless, but today's fastest technologies--Wi-Fi, 3G cellular networks, and even the upcoming WiMax--max out at tens or hundreds of megabits per second. So far, no commercial wireless system can beat the raw speed of optical fiber, which can carry tens of gigabits per second.

One way to achieve faster speeds is to harness the millimeter-wavelength frequency of the wireless spectrum, although this usually requires expensive and very complex equipment. Now, engineers at Battelle, a research and development firm based in Columbus, OH, have come up with a simpler way to send data through the air with millimeter-wave technology. Earlier this year, in field tests of a prototype point-to-point system, the team was able to send a 10.6-gigabit-per-second signal between antennas 800 meters apart. And more recently, the researchers demonstrated a 20-gigabit-per-second signal in the lab.

Richard Ridgway, a senior researcher at Battelle, says that the technique could be used to send huge files across college campuses, to quickly set up emergency networks in a disaster, and even to stream uncompressed high-definition video from a computer or set-top box to a display.

Whereas Wi-Fi and cellular networks operate on frequencies of 2.4 to 5.0 gigahertz, millimeter-wave technology exploits a region from about 60 to 100 gigahertz. These waves can carry more data because they oscillate faster. Much of the millimeter region is unlicensed and open for use; it has only been neglected because of the difficulty and expense involved in generating a millimeter-wave signal, encoding information on it, and then decoding at the other end. Usually, data is encoded by first generating a low-frequency wave of around 10 gigahertz, then converting it into a higher-frequency signal. The drawback is that encoding data on a 10-gigahertz signal limits the data rate to about one gigabit per second.

The Battelle team was able to better this by more than a factor of 10 using off-the-shelf optical telecommunication components. The researchers modulated data on two low-frequency laser beams, then combined the two. When these two beams combine, they create a pattern of interference that acts as a 100-gigahertz signal. "It looks as though we have a laser beam that has a 100-gigahertz frequency," Ridgway says.

In the past few years, researchers at Georgia Tech, MIT, Intel, and elsewhere have made great strides in developing millimeter-wave devices. Companies such as Intel have even started pushing for standards that could help develop interoperable technologies that operate at 60 gigahertz. And one company, Gigabeam, has rolled out products that can achieve around one gigabit per second using a point-to-point link over a few hundred meters.

Ridgway explains that using telecommunication lasers has two big advantages. First, they are high power, so the resulting millimeter wave is also of relatively high power. Second, the lasers have been engineered to be stable and dependable, producing a signal that doesn't fluctuate much compared with standard millimeter-wave sources.

Alan Crouch, director of the Communications Technology Lab at Intel, says that the Battelle work is further evidence that millimeter-wave technology could become increasingly important. "There's demand for more and more wireless communication solutions in this space," he says, adding that "there is strong industry interest."

But the research may be years away from being deployed in a product. Ridgway explains that, since the system has been put together from existing components, it's much larger than it ultimately needs to be. In addition, a property of the signal called polarization, which plays a role in encoding data, tends to drift during operation, which means that the system requires attention when running. But Ridgway hopes that, with some more engineering, these problems can be ironed out. "We'd like to get it to a point where you could just turn on and go," he says.
http://www.technologyreview.com/comm...ons/21464/?a=f





Google Satellite Bandwidth Details
Russell Southwood

Low latency satellite bandwidth at USD 500 a Mbps or less by 2010

O3B Networks has been quietly preparing itself over the last 12 months for the moment last week when it announced that it was going to be offering cheap, low latency satellite bandwidth that can cover any part of Africa by 2010. It has put in place early finance with Google, Liberty Global and HSBC.

Russell Southwood talked to the entrepreneur behind the project Greg Wyler.

Q: What’s the overall technical configuration of what you’re going to do?

It’s a number of satellites flying over the equatorial area (of the earth). Because they’re approximately 5 times closer to the earth than geo-satellites, the latency is reduced by approximately five times. It’s a constellation of satellites?

Q: Why do you think you’ll succeed where others have failed with this approach?

There are two major things that are different (to previous projects). These other projects were designed to reach the developed world. It required many satellites because that had to be inclined to reach these areas. It would take 840 satellites to cover the whole of the earth in this way. We only need a minimum of five and therefore the cost is much lower.

The second thing is that this is a fully designed system with a fixed contract for 2010. As a single system designed just for trunking for telcos and ISPs, we know the costs, the delivery date and the performance. It’s a well thought out and structured process.

Q: What sort of coverage will the constellation of satellites offer Africa?

It will be the whole of the continent eventually. In the first launch, there are only 8 eight satellites which will give us 30 spots. Each spot is 500 kilometres in diameter. Each terminal can receive and transmit 1.25 gbps. The spots can be placed virtually anywhere on the continent. A spot on fibre is one physical landing station that then has to be connected to a whole city. Our spots can cover a whole city immediately or for instance, cover the whole of Nigeria.

We’re not planning to cover every square meter but we have the ability to cover any square metre you might want to specify. The unique beauty of the system is that it has the speed, latency and cost of fibre but we can take it immediately to where the customer wants it. Landlocked countries can get access to cheap international connectivity (without tackling existing transit issues).

Q: What price is the bandwidth going to sell at?

It will be in the range of US$500 per meg or below. It will be competitive with fibre but it’s not our intention to compete with fibre. Carrier class telecoms going out over the new fibre routes will require redundancy and we can complement any fibre network. Bit for bit the system is the equal of fibre: it’s better in some areas and not in others. For example, we can reach directly to the cell tower where build is needed for things like WiMax and EVDO because the spot beam of 500 kilometres can reach anything from 3 to 100 cell towers.

Q: What do you think the impact will be on the existing satellite business in Africa?

Existing satellite operators are currently very capacity constrained. In discussions we them, we see them flipping over their transmission (customers) to us to free up the geo-satellites to do WANS (multiple remote stations) and video distribution which is what they do best: one way applications like video distribution.

Q: What’s the latency going to be like on the system?

The path is five times less than for geo-satellites. It 123 milliseconds between the African port and some port in Europe connected to the global Internet. It’s comparable to fibre and in some cases will be quicker. And it’s certainly not the 600 milliseconds of geo-satellites.

Q: What markets are you aiming at?

Telcos for transmission backhaul will be the core of our market. FI2 will be our backhaul product and when the telco orders it, we will drop in a landing station at the telcos location. If they want a gigabit, we give them a gigabit. There is no CAPEX involved for the telco. This allows them to focus on their own network.

The ISP products are similar except the decision to put down a dish depends on whether the traffic is less than an STM1 or not. If not, we give a VSAT terminal for direct connectivity. For more than an STM1 we will give a 3.5 metre dish and a carrier class landing station.

The highest level product is FI2 Cell which illuminate over the whole 500 kilometres of the spot with 250-300 mbps capacity to and from cell towers. These will connect with a US$2,000 terminal at the base of a cell tower or a WiMAX base station. We will share this pool of bandwidth dynamically. This will allow the telco or WiMAX operator to place their towers without regard to line of sight. It might save the operator as much as US$1,000-1,500 a month.

Q: What’s your deal with Google? What’s their stake?

They are equity partners but they haven’t released exact figures because there are three very large global companies working together as a team: Google, Liberty Global and HSBC.

Q: How’s the overall fundraising going?

The first eight satellites will cost slightly less than US$450 million. We have about 12% of that in equity so far and we’ll be raising another 20% or more. The debt will cover the rest.

Q: What was the market reaction when you announced?

Our web site got over 380,000 hits and there were 400 newspaper articles. The company name O3B stands for the Other 3 Billion, the people who are not yet connected. Our task is to support ISPs and telcos reach directly to these people.
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/5379.html





Road Test: Does WiMax Work in the Real World?

Performance is good when you're sitting in an office or cafe, but don't count on connecting from a moving train or car
Terry Retter

Just a couple short years ago, many people were abuzz over metro Wi-Fi experiments in Philadelphia, Houston, and San Francisco, only to see those efforts largely collapse as slow speeds, expensive deployments, and economic tussles between carriers and municipalities resulted in low adoption. But waiting in the wings for several years has been the promise of WiMax technology to deliver broadband connectivity wirelessly across entire cities with less equipment to deploy than metro Wi-Fi. After nearly two years of uncertainty, Sprint and its partner Clearwire are now starting to set up WiMax networks in several cities.

WiMax promises users a wireless connection that rivals wired DSL or cable links in speed and reliability. Does it actually deliver on those claims? To find out, I tested the Clearwire Mobile High Speed Internet service for about a month in one of the first deployment areas: Reno, Nev. The results were mixed: The WiMax service provided good connectivity and performance when I was working in a fixed location, whether at my home office or at a café. But I could not get it to work when I was on the move, such as when being driven in a car. (To be completely accurate, the Clearwire service is not officially WiMax but OFDM, the underlying technology behind the WiMax standard. Clearwire deployed the Reno network before the WiMax standard was final, but it is practically the same technology.)

Setup was straightforward: Run the installation CD and pop the PC Card into your laptop. I did have an issue with my company laptop because of security measures that disabled installation of unapproved applications, but that had nothing to do with the Clearwire product. If you're considering equipping your laptop users with Sprint or Clearwire WiMax service, be sure to work out the security issues on a test system first. Although Clearwire tried to help, the issue was beyond its scope, and the corporate security staff also couldn't figure out how to authorize the service on my company-issued laptop. The service installed with no problem on a personal laptop that didn't have such security measures applied to it.

WiMax performance is decent but not always consistent

With the software and PC Card installed on that personal laptop, I was good to go. The network connection established itself right after I inserted the PC Card. I was now able to connect wirelessly pretty much everywhere in Reno. A nice touch was that when you start up the PC, the Clearwire software lets you choose between connecting via WiMax or Wi-Fi; Wi-Fi is typically faster when it's available.

To see if the WiMax service truly met broadband speeds, I took speed tests throughout the day from my home office. I got consistent performance much of the time, with download speeds between 1.5Mbps and 2.0Mbps, and upload speeds between 275Kbps and 325Kbps. Sometimes, speeds dropped to less than 1Mbps down and 125Kbps up, but not for long, so they didn't affect my use. It's not clear what caused these occasional slowdowns, and they occurred both when the laptop was stationary and when it was in motion.

Location mattered somewhat in terms of performance. At Walden's Coffee Shop, a local café in west Reno, the Clearwire service came up quickly and worked well. At a medical office complex in southwest Reno, the service also worked well. In a shopping mall in central Reno, the Clearwire service came up readily, but its performance was quite a bit slower than most other locations. This might have been due to the heavy steel construction and high volume of electronic "noise" in the area -- both of which can interfere with WiMax signals. Network performance was fine, even though transmission speeds were a bit slower. At another building with significant steel and electronic noise -- a casino where those slot machines can be a nuisance -- the Clearwire service came up quickly and performed adequately for e-mail and other typical business usage, about the same as at my home office.

At their best, the Clearwire WiMax speeds compare to the landline broadband speeds I have gotten with DSL and cable modem services. However, the DSL and cable speeds are more consistent. Plus, cable service is much faster outside of peak hours. (As more folks in an area access the cable service, such as in the evening, the bandwidth for each user is reduced.)

The WiMax speeds are slower than what I get through my home office's 802.11g wireless network, but comparable to the Wi-Fi speeds I get at public hotspots such as T-Mobile's service at Starbucks. I can't compare the Clearwire WiMax service against 3G cellular broadband offerings from carriers such as Sprint and Verizon, since I don’t have such 3G service. But usage of various 3G networks on handhelds by InfoWorld's Tom Yager show that at best -- on the most modern networks -- you get between 700Kbps and 1Mbps connections, and at worst -- on the older networks -- you get less than 300Kbps.

I took the laptop PC to several locations around the Reno/Sparks area and found only one location where the WiMax service was not available: the Caughlin Ranch area in west Reno. I could not get a connection even when I attached the Clearwire antenna (which is supposed to increase signal strength) to the PC Card.

I did test the antenna several times in numerous locations and could not discern any difference in signal strength or performance whether the antenna was attached or not.

Overall, the performance was fine for business uses such as working with e-mail, file attachments, and Web sites. The speed was not sufficient for bandwidth-hungry tasks such as downloading large video files or trying to play high-end games -- but no wireless services support those uses today.

Quirks and quibbles

While I liked the Clearwire WiMax service overall -- I could get good connections most of the time -- I did uncover a few quirks. None of them would be showstoppers, but they could be a nuisance.

The first quirk was that the Clearwire connection did not always reactivate after I woke up the laptop from sleep. This occurred both when I had moved the laptop from one location to another and when it remained in the same place. Fortunately, it only took a click on the icon in the lower toolbar to reinstate the connection. A related quirk was that the network connection sometimes took a long time to re-establish itself after waking up or restarting the laptop -- as long as 60 seconds. I didn't see a pattern as to why the time to re-establish a connection varied so much.

My second quibble was that connection times varied based on location. In some cases, the network started right up as the laptop finished its initialization processes. In other cases, the PC Card took quite a while to find the network service -- though never more than a couple of minutes or so.

Although WiMax is often thought of as a mobile broadband service, it's really a portable broadband service meant to be used while a device is stationary. The convenience is being able to take that device and use it in different locations, all with the same broadband service. The Clearwire WiMax service scored well on that count.

But it did not work in a truly mobile context: I tried to get a connection while traveling in the car in Reno and in Sacramento and could not connect to the network. That will limit WiMax's utility in trains, buses, and other commuter contexts.

Finally, I was reminded that WiMax's range -- though much, much greater than the range of Wi-Fi hotspots -- is, in fact, limited. I was in Sonoma County, Calif. -- about 240 miles from Reno -- and fired up my laptop. There's no Clearwire WiMax service there, so I had no connection. I had grown accustomed to being able to use the laptop pretty much anywhere in Reno, and suddenly being disconnected was a jolt. That issue will hobble adoption among many business travelers, who will likely consider 3G services that are more widely available or stick with Wi-Fi hotspots that are less convenient but also more predictable. Perhaps Sprint could offer 3G and WiMax as a bundle, so you're covered most broadly with one service and one PC Card.

Still, my test of the Clearwire WiMax service does demonstrate that it is a viable alternative to other broadband services -- where it's available -- for typical business usage. If your main use is for video downloads and 3D gaming, that's another story.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/...ad-test_1.html





Pro-IP Senators Concerned Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty May be Too Broad
Stephanie Condon

Two senators known for their support of stringent intellectual property enforcement expressed concern on Thursday that an anti-counterfeiting treaty currently being drafted may be too far-reaching.

Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) sent a letter on Thursday to U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab saying that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement currently under negotiation "could limit Congress's ability to make appropriate refinements to intellectual property law in the future."

The speed of the negotiations and their lack of transparency compound the risk that the treaty will unnecessarily constrain Congress, the letter says.

Leahy and Specter authored the recently passed Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act. Before the legislation was approved by Congress, it was stripped of a controversial provision opposed by the Bush administration that would have given the Justice Department authority to pursue civil copyright infringement cases.

"We are disappointed that the Administration has been resistant to this effort and has opposed additional enforcement authority, such as civil enforcement in copyright cases where the violation rises to the level of criminal activity," the letter says.

As chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the two senators also support funding to assist foreign countries in combating U.S. intellectual property infringement.

Even though they applaud the USTR's efforts to bolster intellectual property protection, the senators said, they were concerned "about the breadth of the issues" the trade agreement could cover "and the specificity with which it could be written."

The USTR tried to allay concerns over the treaty at a public forum last month that gave some indication of what would be included in the agreement. Representatives of the USTR emphasized that the treaty would focus on the enforcement of policies already in place, rather than creating new, substantive policy agreements with other countries.

However, many at the forum still expressed their misgivings over the agreement. A representative from Google said the treaty should not include any provisions regarding Internet policy, since U.S. Internet policy is still in its nascent stages. The senators' letter mirrored those sentiments.

"Regarding the potential breadth of ACTA, we strongly urge you not to permit the agreement to address issues of liability for service providers or technological protection measures," it said. "The contours of the law and liability exposure in these areas continue to be debated in the courts."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10057100-38.html





Legal Bullying Continues for Icelandic BitTorrent Tracker
Ernesto

It has been almost a year since a coalition of anti-piracy organizations forced Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent site in Iceland, to go offline. In the months that followed, the BitTorrent site has won in court more than once, but it has not returned yet, as the anti-piracy groups continue to come up with new claims.

Founded in May 2005, Torrent.is had around 26,500 active users before the site was taken offline. The site only allowed Icelandic IPs to connect to the tracker, and it was by far the largest and most famous private BitTorrent tracker in Iceland.

Its popularity didn’t go unnoticed with the local anti-piracy lobby either. During November last year, Svavar Kjarrval, the owner of the tracker, received a preliminary injunction. While the majority of BitTorrent tracker owners would throw in the towel when confronted with legal action, Svavar decided to put up a fight. “I’m going to fight this as far as I possibly can. The general public seems to be on our side,” he told TorrentFreak at the time.

It turned out that he made the right decision. In March the court ruled in favor of the BitTorrent tracker. Svavar, and all Icelandic BitTorrent users were pleased with the outcome, but the legal bullying was far from over. As expected, the preliminary injunction stayed in effect, as the Icelandic movie and music industries announced they would appeal the decision at the Icelandic Supreme Court.

This May, the case was heard by the Supreme Court, and Torrent.is won again. The case was dismissed because some of the plaintiffs were found to have no legal grounds to pursue an injunction, and Torrent.is received an additional 400,000 ISK ($5025 US or 3250 Euros) on top of the 500,000 ISK that was already awarded in March.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Torrent.is owner, Svavar Kjarrval, said he was “very happy with the decision.” He even planned to reopen the tracker on the May 16th. However, it never got that far as STEF (the Icelandic RIAA) filed a new lawsuit, demanding the shutdown of the site and some form of financial compensation.

This case was heard, and yesterday - yet again - the District Court ruled in favor of Torrent.is. The court again dismissed STEF’s demand to confirm the injunction. However, the legal bullying is still not over. Not all demands were dismissed directly, and STEF is likely to appeal at the Supreme Court for the ones that weren’t.

“I am happy about that partial victory even though I hoped for a complete dismissal,” Svavar told TorrentFreak in a response to the latest ruling. “The future is uncertain but I have confidence that the Icelandic court system will see that the case is based on a shaky foundation.”

Svavar further said that he’s not sure whether he will reopen the site once this action is over, however long that may take.
http://torrentfreak.com/legal-bullyi...racker-080927/





Court: RapidShare Must Remove Infringing Content Proactively
John Timmer

File sharing service RapidShare may find itself without a viable business model if a German court ruling stands. After getting sued by a German copyright holder, the company argued that it was doing all it could to screen out copyrighted material. The court, however, has ruled that its efforts were insufficient, raising questions about whether doing anything that was legally sufficient could be done without incurring enough costs to sink the company.

RapidShare is one of a large number of companies that will host large files for users who need to exchange them with friends and family. Like many of these companies, it offers a free service with limited features in the hopes of enticing users to spring for the cost of a premium service, which offers some significant perks, such as hosting larger files, unlimited download speeds, and permanent storage. All of this occurs through a simple web interface, and doesn't involve the P2P transfers that have attracted the ire of ISPs and the copyright industry. As a result, their popularity is growing rapidly; RapidShare accounts for five percent of all IP traffic in some regions.

Of course, the exchange of large files is what P2P was all about, so it's no surprise that copyrighted material is showing up on RapidShare, as well; attention from copyright holders was also inevitable. In this case, that attention came in the form of a lawsuit in Germany, where a copyright holding organization called GEMA has been seeking legal sanction and financial penalties. As we noted in our earlier coverage, Germany lacks the "safe harbor" provisions afforded to US companies, which are exempted from liability for infringing material that their users place on servers or make accessible through their networks if they take it offline once notified of its infringing nature.

The case has been going poorly for RapidShare so far, and it appears to have taken a turn for the worse. The P2P Blog notes that the German courts have issued a ruling (in German, naturally) in which their expectations for RapidShare's antipiracy efforts are spelled out more clearly.

RapidShare argued in court that it maintained hashes of copyrighted material that had appeared on their service in the past, and used those to prescreen material that is uploaded. In addition, it had hired six full-time staff members to go through material it was hosting and to respond to complaints about infringing material. None of this, apparently, is good enough. Simply twiddling a few bits could defeat the hash-based screening, the court ruled, and the six employees were insufficient to proactively examine everything posted to the company's servers before it was made available for download.

The blog translates part of the decision as stating, "a business model that doesn't use common methods of prevention cannot claim the protection of the law," in determining that the near impossibility of screening for all copyrighted material doesn't excuse RapidShare from the legal requirement to do so. I'm hard pressed to think of a "common method" that would suffice to enable the screening of this volume of data. As a result, it looks as though RapidShare may be forced to manually screen every bit of uploaded content. Closing its doors is likely to be a cheaper option should the ruling stand.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...d-content.html





EFF to Court: Tread Carefully when Ruling on LimeWire
David Chartier

The fate of technological innovation may once again be at stake in Arista v. LimeWire, the recording industry lawsuit that seeks to hold a technology company liable for the actions of its users. In an amicus brief submitted to the court, the EFF and a coalition of digital rights groups say that this case's outcome may be as important as the MGM v. Grokster case—perhaps even as important as the Sony Betamax ruling.

The brief, submitted to the court by a coalition of digital rights organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, the EFF, and others, is meant as a reminder that "the law requires caution in assessing whether to impose copyright liability on the makers of multi-use technologies." Previous cases similar to LimeWire's, including Sony's and Grokster's, tested whether (and when) the creator of a technology could be held liable for how it is used.

In a nutshell, Sony won its case because Betamax was found to offer "substantial noninfringing uses," but Grokster lost because it was decided that the company distributed its product "with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright." This is the line that the brief is urging the court to remember when coming to a decision, and it argues that an overly-restrictive decision could hamper innovation for years to come.
LimeWire litigation

LimeWire's adventures in the courtroom began over two years ago, when the major recording labels accused LimeWire LLC of actively facilitating illegal file sharing with its software and not doing a thing to stop it. After a federal judge tossed out LimeWire's attempt at an antitrust countersuit alleging conspiracies and unfair business practices, the focus of the case turned back to the charges originally brought against the company.

Like the Grokster case, LimeWire's "active promotion"—and not its technology—is at the heart of Arista's secondary copyright liability complaint. In the recording industry's motion for summary judgment, the labels state that:

Lime Wire has aggressively targeted the known infringing userbases of Napster, Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa [...] Lime Wire's business model depends on massive infringing use of the LimeWire client [...] Lime Wire has failed to undertake genuine efforts to filter copyrighted materials from users' downloads or otherwise reduce infringement [...] Lime Wire ensured that its technology had infringing capabilities [...] and Lime Wire assisted and did not discourage infringement by LimeWire's users.

In LimeWire's countersuit, the company had attempted to make a case for itself based on its decentralized architecture that retains no records of files or user activity. It also announced plans to "go straight" by educating users about copyrighted material and redirecting them to legitimate music services like iTunes. In August 2007, the company went so far as to announce a legit, DRM-free music store of its own, a beta of which failed to ignite much excitement earlier this year.

Despite its agnostic architecture and wholesome store intentions, the labels may still be able to send LimeWire the way of both the dodo and Grokster, largely due to the company's lack of antipiracy action. The new amicus brief doesn't take sides in the case, but it does attempt to make clear the tremendous stakes of any decision.

In a statement, the EFF said that it "urges the court to apply the law in a manner that will not chill technological innovation and to reaffirm that developers should not be held liable for copyright infringement based on misuses of their technology that they did not actively promote."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-limewire.html





Judge: EMI Can Sue MP3tunes, not Michael Robertson
Greg Sandoval

A federal judge has dismissed a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by EMI Group against Michael Robertson, founder of MP3tunes and a , MP3.com and Linspire.

The bad news for Robertson is the judge allowed EMI, one of the four largest recording companies, to continue to pursue the copyright claims against MP3tunes, court documents show.

The case, filed last November in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was brought by 14 record companies and music publishers affiliated with EMI.

MP3tunes enables users to store music in the so-called cloud. The company's 150,000 customers upload their music into "lockers." They can then access the tunes from nearly any Web-enabled device.

EMI argues that MP3tunes doesn't have authorization to exploit the company's music this way. A representative from EMI couldn't be reached for comment late Wednesday evening.

Few in Silicon Valley know their way around a courtroom as well as Robertson. After founding MP3.com, which also enabled users to upload songs into digital music lockers, the major labels and publishing company took him to court. What's unique about EMI's most recent suit is that the recording company went after him personally.

"Suing CEOs personally is a nasty tactic media companies are engaging in to intimidate individuals," Robertson said in an e-mail. The tactic forces them to "either enter into a settlement or face the possibility" of financial hardship.

District Judge William Pauley said in dismissing the case that he didn't have jurisdiction over Robertson in New York. As for the continuing fight his company faces against EMI, Robertson said "the case against MP3tunes will determine if it is permissible for consumers to store their music in online commercial services for everywhere access, directly analogous to the way they currently store documents, photos, and other personal data in cloud services."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10056282-93.html





Oregon Judge Says RIAA Made "Honest Mistake," Allows Subpoena
NewYorkCountryLawyer

In Arista v. Does 1-17, the RIAA's case targeting students at the University of Oregon, the Oregon Attorney General's motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena — pending for about a year — has reached a perplexing conclusion. The Court agreed with the University that the subpoena, as worded, imposed an undue burden on the University by requiring it to produce "sufficient information to identify alleged infringers," which would have required the University to “conduct an investigation,” but then allowed the RIAA to subpoena the identities of “persons associated by dorm room occupancy or username with the 17 IP addresses listed” even though those people may be completely innocent. In his 8-page decision (PDF), the Judge also “presumed” the RIAA lawyers’ misrepresentations were an “honest mistake,” made no reference at all to the fact, pointed out by the Attorney General, that the RIAA investigators (Safenet, formerly MediaSentry) were not licensed, rejected all of the AG's privacy arguments under both state and federal law, and rejected the AG's request for discovery into the RIAA's investigative tactics.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/03/231248





P2P Player PiCast
Ryan Lawler

Here's an interesting twist: A new company called PiCast is entering the increasingly crowded market for peer-assisted video delivery -- but it's doing it with the expertise of a firm known for helping media companies thwart distribution of video via P2P.

You probably have not heard of PiCast, which is just coming to market with a new offering for peer-assisted video streaming. But you may have heard of ArtistDirect, its parent group. And if you pay any attention to P2P filesharing news, you probably have heard of MediaDefender -- the ArtistDirect subsidiary and anti-piracy firm where much of PiCast's technology originates.

MediaDefender, which claims to have been "contracted by every major record label and every major movie studio, video game publishers, software publishers, and anime publishers," is best known for its practice of "decoying" or "spoofing" major releases of high-profile content -- essentially flooding P2P filesharing networks with fake copies of popular videos and music in an effort to frustrate downloaders into purchasing the real deal.

"There's nothing more difficult than trying to intercept a 3-gigabit file of a new movie release," says PiCast vice president of business development Jonathan Lee. The company hopes to leverage some of that expertise from sister company MediaDefender in rolling out its own P2P-based streaming solution.

PiCast's technology, which was built from the ground up, requires an end-user browser plug-in and a centralized "broker server." The broker server keeps track of which peers have which pieces of content -- and then helps to control the distribution of streams via the plug-in.
The technology is platform-agnostic, so it doesn't matter whether a user is watching a live or on-demand stream, or if the stream uses Adobe Systems Inc. Flash technology or Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Windows Media. Because the technology is plug-in based, the user stops sharing when the stream or browser is shut down. And finally, content owners can therefore deliver from their origin servers or run the PiCast technology along with an existing content delivery network.

In addition to all the experience and data collected from MediaDefender's spoofing activities, PiCast could also benefit from existing relationships with content owners in the RIAA and MPAA, says Marty Lafferty, president of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) .

"They have relationships with rights holders already, and can build on those relationships," Lafferty says.

While the company has yet to sign up any paying customers, PiCast is in testing with an indie record label and an online comedy video site to provide streaming of its on-demand content. PiCast expects to begin tests of live streaming content in the coming months.

This is not the first time that ArtistDirect has attempted to set up an affiliate firm using peer-to-peer technology gained from MediaDefender. Last year, the company launched video-sharing site at Miivi.com, which used P2P to distribute user-uploaded videos. But not long after launch, P2P activists derided the site as an MPAA "honeypot" that was being used to entrap users downloading copyrighted content. The site was taken down not long after.

Lee says Miivi was "hugely misunderstood," and that the intent was not to entrap anyone, but to provide a YouTube-like experience that benefited from the efficiencies of P2P.

In the move from Miivi to PiCast, there's a shift from a consumer-facing Website to providing technology that can be leveraged by content owners. "Fundamentally, there's a big difference in what we're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to get people to come to a Website, but be the backend infrastructure" for content distribution, Lee says.

"PiCast is not so much a repurposing of Miivi technology, but the progression of one of our ideas," Lee says. "We're taking the lessons learned from Miivi, releasing this separately from MediaDefender, and aligning with the DCIA."
http://www.contentinople.com/author....&doc_id=165206





Apple Faces iTunes Test Case in Norway
AP

Norway's top consumer advocate said Monday he is taking Apple Inc. to the government's Market Council in a test case seeking to force the American company to open its iTunes music store to digital players other than its own iPod.

Norway is leading a European campaign that began two years ago to get Apple to make its iTunes online store compatible with rivals' digital music players.

''We discussed this at a meeting two weeks ago, and decided that Norway will do the test case,'' Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon said by telephone. ''This could have international consequences.''

The council has the power under Norwegian law to order companies to change trade practices, and can also order fines if companies fail to comply. Thon said Apple has until Nov. 3 to respond to the allegations, and that the council was likely to decide on the case sometime early next year.

Apple in Norway did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Thon began pushing Apple to change its system and rules more than two years go, saying the restrictions violate Norwegian law.

Currently, songs purchased and downloaded through iTunes are designed to work with Apple's market-leading iPod players but not competitors' models, including those using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media system. Likewise, iPods generally can't play copy-protected music sold through non-Apple stores.

''It's a consumer's right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law,'' said Thon.

Thon said Apple agreed at a meeting in February that they wanted to sell music without the protection known as ''Digital Rights Management,'' or DRM, and that they shared his goal of making systems interoperable.

But ''iTunes has now had two years to meet our demands regarding interoperability. No progress has been reported by iTunes since our meeting in February,'' said Thon about the decision to file a complaint. ''This is a matter of great principal importance.''

Finland, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands all back the Norwegian drive.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi...ay-iTunes.html





Apple's Digital Music Showdown

A ruling this week could force online music sellers to pay publishers more money - as an Apple threat to close iTunes looms.
Devin Leonard

For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.

The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C. is expected to rule Thursday on a request by the National Music Publishers' Association to increase royalty rates paid to its members on songs purchased from online music stores like iTunes. The publishers association wants rates raised from 9 cents to 15 cents a track - a 66% hike.

Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) declined to discuss the board's pending decision or its previous threat to shut down iTunes. But it adamantly opposes the publishers' request. In a statement submitted to the board last year, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue said Apple might close its download store rather than raise its 99 cents a song price or absorb the higher royalty costs.

"If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the ... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all," Cue wrote. "Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably."

The Copyright Royalty Board is a three-judge panel that oversees statutory licenses granted under federal copyright law. That includes setting royalty rates for music sales. The current proceeding followed the expiration last year of a 1997 decision that had governed sales of so-called physical music products like CDs for a decade. The board's forthcoming decision, its first affecting digital sales, will set royalty rates for the next five years.

It's hard to believe that Apple will actually shut down iTunes if it doesn't get its way. Apple has shrewdly used the store to help sell iPods, its most popular product. Before the computer manufacturer opened the store in 2003, there was virtually no place for iPod owners to purchase digital music on the Internet. So iTunes helped grow the market for the device by appealing to people who didn't want to patronize illegal file-sharing services and risk a music industry lawsuit.

A fee hike nobody wants to pay

Piper Jaffray estimates that Apple will sell 2.4 billion songs this year, giving it an 85% share of the digital music market. But Apple's rhetoric illustrates the challenges that the nascent digital music industry faces.

The Recording Industry Association of America says sales of digital songs and albums rose 46% last year, to $1.2 billion. But as Cue notes in his statement, Apple's profits from iTunes remain slim. This is because Apple doesn't think the market is strong enough for it to raise its 99-cents-a-song price.

"I have no doubt that an increase in the per track price would lower total music purchases at the store," the Apple executive said in his statement.

Apple pays an estimated 70 cents of every dollar it collects per song to the record companies responsible for each track. The record companies turn over nine cents to the music publishers who control the copyrights to these tunes.

The record companies are in no mood to pay the proposed royalty increase out of their pockets. Not when CD sales, their one-time cash cow, fell last year by 20%, to $7.4 billion. They are asking the Copyright Royalty Board to abandon the fixed per-song payment in favor of 8% of wholesales revenues.

The Digital Media Association, which represents Apple and other online music services, is seeking an even lower rate of 4.8 cents a track, or 6% of "applicable revenues."

"No one disputes the impact of rampant Internet-based piracy in the marketplace," the association's lawyers said in July 2 filing. "The result is drastic reduction in the sales of recorded music in all formats and intense downward pressure on retail prices - along with a brutally difficult competitive environment."

The music publishers are unmoved. They argue that the digital music market is growing and that they should get a higher rate because all parties in this squabble will ultimately prosper. "I think we established a case for an increase in the royalties," said David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association. "More importantly, we were able to beat back the proposal that could be a [royalty] cut."

Israelite said he opposed any attempt by companies like Apple and its record label allies to do away with the fixed royalty rate. "Apple may want to sell songs cheaply to sell iPods," he said. "We don't make a penny on the sale of an iPod."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/30/tech...hreat.fortune/





First Royalty Rates Set for Digital Music
Ben Sisario

In a decision closely watched by the music industry, a panel of federal judges who determine royalty rates for recordings ruled on Thursday to renew the current royalty rate for CDs and other physical recordings, while setting rates for the first time for downloads, ring tones and other services.

The ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board — a panel of three judges appointed by the Librarian of Congress — applied strictly to mechanical royalties, which are paid to the songwriters and publishers of music, not the performers. The royalty is paid by the entity licensing the music (which varies, depending on the format of the recording).

Despite a range of proposals from music publishers, record labels and digital music sellers, the judges kept the rate for physical recordings at 9.1 cents for each track. The board set the same rate for permanent digital downloads, effectively equating the value of physical discs with downloads from retailers like Apple, through its iTunes store, and Amazon.com.

The judges also set for the first time a mechanical royalty rate for master tones, ring tones made from a snippet of music from a full recording. That rate is 24 cents. Until now, copyright holders had negotiated royalty payments with users.

The new rates will be in effect through 2012.

The new rates had been the subject of contention among publishers, record labels and retailers, each of which had lobbied the board for significant changes. Publishers, concerned about losing income as music sales decline, sought an increase of 66 percent for physical recordings and downloads, while the labels and retailers petitioned the judges to adopt a new model that would determine royalty payments as a percentage of wholesale revenue.

In one document submitted to the judges, an Apple executive threatened that a significant increase in royalty rates could force the company to shut down its iTunes music store, which has sold 5 billion songs since it opened five years ago but which operates with thin margins.

Not all of the novel proposals from music companies were rejected. Last week most of the interested lobbying groups, including the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Digital Media Association (which represents Apple, Amazon, Pandora Media and other companies), agreed to a plan to set royalty rates for streaming and other nonpermanent forms of music, like subscription services.

For those services, many of which depend on advertising, royalties would be tied to a percentage of revenue. The board has yet to ratify that plan, but the lobbying organizations expected it to pass.

Some in the industry warned that the measures might not be enough to stem the losses suffered since the rise of illegal file-sharing a decade ago. Jonathan Feinstein, a music lawyer at the Krasilovsky & Gross firm in New York, said the ruling introduced needed flexibility and certainty.

“Whether these developments will be sufficient to return the music industry to health is not clear,” Mr. Feinstein said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/bu...03royalty.html





No Unlocked iPhones in Australia: Apple
Fran Foo

OVER the weekend unlocked Apple 3G iPhones went on sale in Hong Kong, allowing consumers to purchase the mobile device without being tied to a carrier.

Apple Australia, however, has no plans to follow suit.

"We have four carrier relationships in Australia," an Apple Australia spokesman said.

Apple's Hong Kong online store is selling the 8GB model for $HK5400 ($875) and $HK6200.

Upon launch in Hong Kong the device was only available through Hutchison Telecom on a two-year contract.

The move is an interesting change of tack for Apple which has so far resisted calls to offer the iPhone outright.

In Australia iPhones can be purchased from Optus, Virgin, Telstra and Vodafone.

Apple retail stores don't sell the iPhone outright but their employees would help customers choose between the four carriers.

Consumers can, however, unlock the device under certain terms and conditions and for a fee. Virgin, for example, charges $80 for purchases within the first 12 months.

There are a variety of iPhone plans locally; one of the lowest is Vodafone's $59 per month iPhone bundle for 24 months. It includes $310 credit per month.

For data-hungry users, Virgin claims to offer 1GB of data and $520 monthly credit for $70 a month over two years.

Optus sells the iPhone 3G for $729 (8GB) or $849 (16GB) on a pre-paid basis, but stocks are extremely limited, a company spokesperson said.

Its sleek multi-touch screen and easy to use interface has seen the device sell like hot cakes. Since it was launched on July 11 in over 20 countries, more than a million 3G iPhones have been sold.

Nipping at Apple's heels is internet behemoth Google with its new Android operating system, slated for smartphones.

T-Mobile recently introduced its touchscreen, Android-powered G1 phone, manufactured by Taiwan's HTC, and set to go on sale this month in the US.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html





Nokia Takes on Apple's iTunes And iPhone

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, will launch its free music package on Thursday, issuing a challenge to Apple's dominance of the digital music market.

Nokia is expected to unveil more details of its "Comes with Music" package at an analyst and media event in London. The Finnish firm will also launch its first touch-screen phone, to rival Apple's popular iPhone, sources have told Reuters.

"Comes with Music" and similar products from other hardware vendors could help the music industry make up for falling CD sales and cut illegal downloads.

The battle for mobile music is increasingly crowded, with Sony Ericsson launching its music package this month in Sweden, while South Korea's LG Electronics plans a service similar to Nokia's.

Nokia's package will differ from others on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded during a 12- month subscription period. There are no charges for tracks downloaded, since the cost is bundled to the phone price.

"'Comes with Music' could potentially bring free music to millions of consumers, radically changing the music industry, and offering a significant threat to Apple's dominance," Strategy Analytics' David MacQueen said in a research report.

"In a market where price and selection are so much more important than brand to consumers, Apple cannot count on retaining users when competing with an offering which seems free to the end user."

Nokia stock was 1.1 percent softer at 12.97 euros ahead of the expected news versus a 0.34 percent firmer sector index. The stock has more than halved in 2008 on industry growth worries and Nokia's third-quarter market share warning in September.

Push Into Services

The music download package is Nokia's first major push into the services business. Last year the company unveiled a revamp of its whole organization, aiming to build a new business from Internet services to combat slowing handset growth.

"'Comes with Music' sees Nokia going head to head with new competitors -- most notably seizing the initiative from Apple," said CCS Insight analyst Paolo Pescatore.

Nokia has acknowledged the impact Apple has made on the industry with its iPhone over the past year, saying the Cupertino, California-based computer and consumer electronics company had done the mobile phone industry "a big favor."

"We have a new, credible competitor in this business," Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the Churchill Club on Wednesday, a speakers' forum for Silicon Valley civic leaders.

"Of course we need to be able to respond to any competitor and we will."

Michael McGuire, analyst with Gartner, said Apple and Nokia are set to fight for the same market, but with different approaches, as Apple charges per-track-downloads, while Nokia's offering is more of subscription service.

Hoping To Cut File-Sharing

Last month Nokia unveiled the first "Comes with Music" model, a new version of its successful 5310 phone, and said it will go on sale this year.

Nokia is expected to publish pricing details or a sales start date on Thursday. Carphone Warehouse last month said on its website that sales would start Oct 17, but later removed the information.

Analysts said the choice of a relatively cheap model was a clear indication Nokia was trying to win over consumers who often are not paying for music but getting it through file-sharing sites on the Internet.

"I think this is the first time the music industry can state they have a proper tool to fight file-sharing," said Mark Mulligan, analyst at Jupiter Research.

Recent survey from research firm Strategy Analytics shows there is demand for music packages -- 84 percent of consumers said they would pay for a service like "Comes with Music", with 34 percent willing to pay $10 or more per month.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki, Additional reporting by David Lawsky in San Francisco and Eric Auchard in Santa Clara; editing by John Stonestreet)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...-us-nokia.html





Wal-Mart Wins Deal on Album and Game
Robert Levine

Just as Wal-Mart solidifies its power as a music industry hitmaker with an exclusive album from the rock band AC/DC, the chain is getting its first major exclusive video game to go with it.

MTV plans to announce on Tuesday that it has made a deal with the band and its label, Columbia Records, to create an AC/DC version of the channel’s popular Rock Band video game that will be sold in the United States only at Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and the Wal-Mart Web site (walmart.com).

The release of the video game AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack will give MTV a prominent role in the partnership between the rock group and the retailer to promote AC/DC’s forthcoming album, “Black Ice.” Wal-Mart will create a special area in each of its stores to display the new album and the new game, as well as the band’s other CDs, DVDs and T-shirts and other licensed clothing. Although this is Wal-Mart’s first significant exclusive video game, the chain has emerged as a force in the music business because of the promotional muscle it has put behind recent albums from the Eagles and Journey, which were available only in its stores. Such a partnership is especially important for AC/DC, since the band does not sell its music on Apple’s iTunes store.

“If you want to be a physical band, you better make an alliance with a strong physical retailer,” said Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records. “It’s a great way to sell the new album, the catalog, the game, merchandise and DVDs.” MTV and Wal-Mart are exploring the idea of setting up temporary shops to sell the game and the album in Manhattan and Los Angeles, where the retailer has no stores.

AC/DC Live: Rock Band could help MTV’s Rock Band franchise make further headway against Activision’s more popular “Guitar Hero” titles. Both products allow gamers to play along with music on instrument-shaped controllers.

Although Activision released Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in August and plans a title based on Metallica, this is the first version of Rock Band based on a specific group. Over the last few years AC/DC has sold more CDs than any band except the Beatles, which suggests that the group appeals to teenagers as well as to older fans.

“They rock hard, and that still works for our audience,” said Van Toffler, the president of the MTV Networks’ Music and Logo Group. “It comes down to getting really great marketing, because Wal-Mart is so meaningful in terms of sales if they get behind something.”

Both Columbia and the band will make money on the game, which contains the songs from the popular DVD “AC/DC Live at Donnington.” The game, which will be available for all consoles in early November, will cost less than most new games, about $40 instead of about $60. That makes it an attractive product to Wal-Mart, which believes that lower prices drive demand.

“We think people love music as much as ever, but it translates differently at retail,” said Greg Hall, Wal-Mart’s vice president for content and services, who runs its video game sales. “Music games are a key platform for us, so as the AC/DC release got closer, we talked about how to bring it to life in games.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/ar...ic/30acdc.html





Oasis to Put New Album, Dig Out Your Soul, on MySpace

Noel Gallagher has been outspoken about free music downloads, but will now post Oasis new album on MySpace
Veronica Schmidt

Despite Noel Gallagher’s determined declaration last year that Oasis would never give away an album à la Radiohead, the band are about to embrace the growing free music culture by allowing fans to listen to their new album on MySpace.

Stopping short of giving away Dig Out Your Soul, Oasis have announced they will post their much-anticipated seventh studio album on social networking website MySpace ahead of its release date next Monday.

The album will be posted in its entirety at midday tomorrow and will remain on the site, allowing fans to listen for free, for the rest of the week.

Frontman Gallagher had previously balked at the decline of music sales and rise of reputable bands, including Coldplay, giving away tracks online.

After Radiohead’s history-making decision to make the album In Rainbows available via an ‘honesty box system’ last year, Gallagher publicly declared: "I didn't spend a year in the most expensive studio in England, with the most expensive producer in America and the most expensive graphic designer in London, to then give it away. F*** that."

But he conceded that it might have been a clever thinking by Radiohead. “To be honest, to me it looked like marketing – a great way of getting a load of marketing for free really. But good for them. That's what they do, they're rebels and outsiders.”

Oasis, themselves often considered rebels, need little publicity, having rarely strayed from the news over the past month since Gallagher was attacked on stage during a performance in Canada.

Touring to promote Dig Out Your Soul, the 41-year-old was attacked on September 8 while performing at the V Festival in Toronto. A man rushed the stage and shoved Gallagher into his monitor speakers, leaving the singer in need of hospital treatment.

The band has since cancelled a series of gigs but become a constant media presence after a man was charged with assault and Gallagher was diagnosed with broken and dislodged ribs.

Dig Out Your Soul is expected to top the music charts after the band’s previous six albums all made it to No. 1.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle4855189.ece





Net Radio Bill Passes House

Web radio stations live to fight another day.
Greg Sandoval

The House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill that Web radio stations have painted as life or death for their services.

The Webcaster Settlement Act, which would allow Internet radio stations to negotiate with the music industry for a royalty rate lower than what Congress mandated last year, passed the House by a voice vote on Saturday.

Proponents of the bill had predicted a close vote.

Tim Westergren, founder of Net music service Pandora, said he was elated about triumphing in the House, which came after traditional radio broadcasters withdrew their opposition.

Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said Saturday night that Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) had met with representatives of the group and addressed some of their concerns.

As a result, the NAB dropped its opposition in the House and will not oppose the bill when it moves to the Senate for a vote, either Sunday or Monday (I've written a story about the bill's chances in the Senate and how the NAB was persuaded to drop it's opposition).

"The bill having passed unanimously in the House certainly gives it momentum heading into the Senate," Wharton said.

Webcasters are fighting for the right to negotiate with the music industry to reduce the royalty rates they must pay to stream music over the Web. Any deal must be approved by the federal government.

Congress is expected to adjourn on Monday, and the Webcaster Settlement Act enables Internet radio stations to reach an agreement with the music industry while Congress is out of session.

Westergren, who has emerged as a de facto spokesman for the bill, said some Web radio stations can't afford a long delay in the talks. Right now, the law requires them to pay the older royalty rate, which Webcasters say will soon drive them out of business.

"It would be a killer blow," Westergren said. "If we don't get it passed now, it would mean waiting for a whole new Congress and administration and lots of uncertainty."

As for the legislation's chances in the Senate, Westergren said he's cautiously optimistic.

"I've become gun shy because I've been burned so many times before," he said. "We're waiting to see what happens and consulting with our friends (in Congress)."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10052966-93.html





New Bill Introduced To Expand HD Radio's Reach
FMQB

Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, has introduced new legislation that would give consumers access to HD Radio via "key consumer electronic devices," including receivers for satellite radio.

A bipartisan group of Energy and Commerce Committee members all cosponsored the bill, H.R. 7157: Representatives Lee Terry (R-NE), Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX), Greg Walden (R-OR), Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Dan Burton (R-IN).

Rep. Markey said, "Millions of Americans today rely on local broadcast radio for news, public safety bulletins, sports, weather, traffic and other information. As the broadcast radio industry migrates to digital broadcasting technology, this legislation will ensure that consumers are able to readily receive free service through consumer electronics systems that are otherwise receiving satellite digital audio radio and traditional AM or FM stations."

"Further, the recent merger of the only two satellite radio providers, XM and Sirius satellite radio, has underscored the importance of ensuring consumer access to a diversity of sources for digital radio content, in particular content originating in their local communities. My bill therefore simultaneously seeks to address the long-term competitive health of local radio while ensuring that their local, digital services are readily received by radio consumers."

The NAB applauds the bill, with President/CEO David Rehr saying in a statement, "NAB salutes the leadership of Chairman Markey and a bipartisan group of lawmakers for sponsoring this important bill that will boost the integration of HD Radio in satellite radio receivers, including those installed in automobiles. In addition to providing 235 million weekly listeners with entertainment and music programming, free local radio stations have a long tradition of serving as a lifeline during times of crisis. This legislation will extend and enhance these services as radio stations embrace our digital future."

The full bill can be read in PDF format here.

In related news, two new Insignia HD Radio receivers are now available at Best Buy exclusively, including the NS-HD3113 model with iTunes tagging capabilities.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=909878





Interview: Good Old Games and the "Idiocy" of DRM
Frank Caron

Don't Remind Me

The DRM debate has been around for quite some time now, and as a marketable idea, its stock has gone down dramatically in recent years. Bands, movie makers, and indie game developers are all experimenting with content distributed without DRM, and knowledgeable consumers are beginning to make a stand against the overly-restrictive nature of some copy protection solutions.

But the DRM issue has flared up again in the game community with the recent surge of discussion in the wake of EA's Spore. EA's game has suffered major criticism for its restrictive DRM solution, which resulted in an exhaustive campaign of protest on Amazon and countless other online venues. Players protested with their opinions and their wallets, and EA in turn responded with increased leniency for limited installs, a measure that some argue still isn't enough.

Not all game companies, however, are on the DRM bandwagon. Consider CD Projekt and its new web venture, an online gaming portal called Good Old Games. GOG focuses exclusively on selling old, classic games without any form of DRM at low prices, and the games offered are, for the most part, games which have been out of print or hard to find for quite a while and were procured and modified to run on new machines without any DRM or intrusive software. We recently profiled the service, which is currently in beta but is fully functional and stocked with some great software.

GOG.com's mandate reads like a checklist of PC gaming musts.

Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com, and Michal Kicinski, CEO of CD Projekt, were kind enough to talk to us following the launch of GOG and in the wake of the Spore controversy. The two had some strong things to say about the way the industry is going and about how services like GOG should be the model to follow.

Convincing the Man to stay his hand

Ars Technica: Good Old Games really caught the attention of our readers after the service's beta launched: it's clear that PC gamers are interested in what GOG is offering. What does GOG think gamers want?

Adam Oldakowski: We believe that the whole package that GOG.com has to offer is what gamers want; ultimately it was gamers' needs and desires that determined the direction of the site. We have DRM-free classic PC games which are hard, or sometimes impossible, to find at retail or online. We offer our gamers a lot more than just a cheap, easy-to-use and hassle-free digital distribution store; there's a huge community section with forums dedicated to every game from our catalog and a rating system that allows gamers to rate games, comments, and reviews. Every player can write a review of their own favorite game and post it on the game's page. Plus, with every game we're offering cool additional materials like game guides, hi-res wallpapers, artwork, avatars, soundtracks and more. GOG.com is the ultimate place for every fan of all-time PC classics, which is what makes GOG.com so special.

Ars: How has the service been received so far by publishers?

AO: The reaction so far has been great… for the most part. Publishers see GOG.com as an opportunity to revive some of their older but still well-known brands, although they have some concerns, especially concerning the lack of copy protection or DRM. Thankfully, many are coming 'round to that concept.

Ars: Who have you been talking with, aside from Codemasters and Interplay?

AO: As much as I would love to give some hints, I don't want to jinx anything. We are very close to signing a couple of deals, but we can't disclose anything right now. You can be sure we'll announce new deals very soon.

Ars: Has convincing publishers to accept the DRM policy been tough?

Michal Kicinski: Yep. Actually that was one of the toughest issues we faced during the creation of GOG.com. Just like most innovative projects, GOG.com needs to overcome some stereotypes and obstacles which exist in the gaming industry. It's very hard for us—entrepreneurs who work hard to make a profit—to understand the corporate approach. We are able to show publishers that selling DRM-free old games will bring them additional revenue without extra costs, and the best part is that we can handle the organizational stuff.

In this situation it's very hard for us to understand why we would receive a negative reply to our offer. It's just something that is outside of our business approach, and sometimes it can be very frustrating. It appears that sometimes it's not so easy to get through some mental obstacles and internal politics, and even if we're talking business, it's not always the business factors that are the most important. But we're very determined and stubborn in this matter.

It's all or nothing for GOG.com; if we manage to convince publishers to join our service, we'll succeed. If not, then we have to halt the project. But there are companies and people who stay true to their roots, and their products will be available at GOG.com. Now these companies are Interplay and Codemasters, but more are sure to join soon.

It would be fantastic if GOG.com would be the first thing to trigger the avalanche. We don't believe it would completely remove the usage of DRM schemes, but it could lead to restoring the appropriate relation between customers and publishers. Today this relation is far away from the motto of "customer always knows best," which might be old, but in my opinion, should still be the basis of the relationship between the seller and customer.

Ars: What do you think the problem with DRM is today?

MK: The problem is very simple. It's fear and panic on behalf of big companies who can't define the source of their problems, and most of all, can't find the right solutions for them. Some solutions they've come up with are so repressive that they seem absurd. I stopped buying music CDs when some record companies implemented protection that prevented me from listening to them on computers. I was listening to most of my CDs on my laptop at work, so for me they became useless. Whenever I saw the protection logo on the CD cover, I didn't buy it even if I really wanted to listen to it.

Michal Kicinski, CEO CD Projekt

I don't know what the people behind this idea were thinking when they implemented such a stupid protection scheme. For me, it just means that the decision-makers sometimes lose touch with the reality their companies find themselves in. They just seem to not understand their customers. The decisions are made by some calculations in Excel that say such protection will reduce piracy by X percent and will increase the income by Y percent. Afterward, it appears that the projections weren't quite right, and instead of solving this issue another way, they go back and add more restrictions. And after that, it all becomes so absurd that people start to boycott, protest, and make fun of it. Then the companies realize what they did, and they give up on that crazy solution.

For me, the idiocy of those protection solutions shows how far from reality and from customers a lot of executives at big companies can be. You don't have to be a genius to check the internet and see all the pros and cons of those actions. In my opinion, management spends way too much time in business discussions and not nearly enough listening to customers' comments. I think it would help a lot if people who decide to implement those draconian DRM schemes would use them themselves and see how they can be a pain in the ass. I think that would be a new experience for them, and not necessarily a pleasant one. And the money for those people's salaries comes from gamers who pay their hard-earned money. That's something they should always keep in mind.

It's a little bit easier for us at CD Projekt, as we are a young company where gamers work at every level of the company. So it's natural for us to understand and feel most of the gamers' problems, and not just those related to DRM. I also had some issues with activating games (strictly technical, but still very frustrating) or with buying games through digital download, because they weren't available in my country. For me, as a customer, such obstacles are very hard to understand and to accept.

Luckily there are more and more very reasonable initiatives that attempt to meet customers' needs. I believe that the future will bring more good things in that regard. The Internet and the dynamic changes of the market provide opportunities for new companies that bring with them new models of activity. If the "old" companies stay with their absurd solutions, sooner or later they will lose their customers to those who listen to what customers have to say, like Valve, or Stardock, and hopefully, someday, GOG.com.

Ars: If there was an old game that you absolutely had to have for GOG, would you be willing to accept one that had some sort of DRM?

AO: We would do everything to make the game available at GOG.com without DRM. The DRM-free aspect of GOG.com is one of our main features and we're really proud of it. The games we offer are probably already easy to get on torrent sites, but we believe gamers would prefer to buy their products legitimately than pirate them. They just need a good reason to buy those games and we give them those reasons by selling games at low prices, optimized to run on modern operating systems and adding great bonus materials.

Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director GOG.com

Ars: What about legacy DRM in old titles? How do you get around that?

AO: We try our best to get gold masters from the publishers, so as not to spoil any of the user experience reliving the old classics. So far we haven't had any really old legacy DRM to get around, but I'm sure we'll have an internal conflict over whether we should leave the old copy protection that required the use of the game manual to allow the user into the game. For now, it has been far more challenging to get games to run without requiring CD/DVD drives, but our programming team is the best, and I'm sure we'll manage whatever comes our way.

Ars: Do you think the issue of DRM is taking the focus away from what PC gaming is doing right? No one is talking about the gameplay of Spore, for example.

MK: It's true. DRM is a very hot topic these days. To me it means that the solutions proposed by the companies are very controversial. Of course, it would be better if they wouldn't be so controversial, and then we could simply talk about what we like the most—naturally, these are the games themselves. I believe that the subject of PC games is still worth looking at, and there are lots of things we can do in the future to retain its appeal. Although the PC platform doesn't have such strong PR and marketing support, its open nature offers huge opportunities for creative thinking, not only concerning games themselves, but also considering distribution or developing new genres like browser games. In my opinion, the rumors about the death of the PC as a gaming platform are greatly exaggerated.

Ars: Do you think that DRM makes gamers more likely to pirate software?

MK: I don't think it's quite that simple. The problem is when you're offering customers a product which has lots of limitations that make it difficult for gamers to use, and you still make them pay a lot of money. All these copy protection schemes don't have to be so unfriendly, but their presence in the product gives rise to bad emotions. They just give rise to natural opposition. I just spent $50, and I can only install it three times, and after that, I have to put in more effort to use it… let's remember that time is money in today's world.

We prefer to pay and then not have to even think about how many installations are left, and what do I have to do if I exceed that limit. It's a very discouraging perspective. I'm not surprised that people rebel. And this rebellion is surely increasing piracy. It all works on a simple rule: if I'm not respected, and you're trying to make my life more difficult, then in return I won't respect your work, and I'll make your life more difficult. Of course, we can't expect everyone to make mature judgments in this matter.

It was very interesting to observe the situation during the launch of "The Witcher: Enhanced Edition." I've read hundreds of comments from gamers all over the world. I saw lots of comments from people who wrote that they are grateful for this cool approach to a game release—giving the huge game update to existing fans for free—and that they will buy the game for that reason, to support us. Lots of them posted that to support our company they will buy the game, even though they bought the original. It really shows that it's possible to do things in a different way. If you're offering some cool additions that gamers will appreciate, it will result in sales. The Witcher offers players positive motivation to buy the original game, and that's the root of this problem—most companies offer a relatively negative buying experience.

The same reaction was triggered by GOG.com. Lots of people wrote that with the $6-$10 price points, it's just not worth searching for pirated editions of those games. You don't know if they will run properly on your system, and you'll have a lot of other problems with pirated versions. It's just easier to buy a game at GOG.com, pay a small amount for it, get lots of cool additional stuff and be a part of a great community of gamers. This is another example of positive motivation which convinced people to give up pirated games.

I really believe that more and more companies will consider positive motivation as a way to fight piracy, rather than making gamers' lives more difficult and frightening them. Maybe thanks to this and thanks to reducing the costs of distribution, game prices will get lower. I think that might reduce the problem of piracy. All those copy protection schemes, no matter how complicated they are, will always get hacked. So it's better to think about how to attract customers to buy and play the original games. And there are lots of ways to do that.

Ars: Why aren't there more DRM-free initiatives like GOG when gamers clearly don't want to deal with intrusive software and restrictions?

AO: That's hard for me to say, but I think that the DRM-free concept would generally be seen as a big risk. It's so good to see so much support for GOG at these early stages, but it could have easily been the other way around—the whole system may have gone horribly wrong, with people copying the games all over the place and never buying them. I think it's just a good time to make a change, to give gamers what they want and put more faith in them, to let them show publishers through GOG that this DRM-free model can really work. It's worked out really well so far, and we can't wait to just open the doors to the public so we can really give our publishing partners reason to smile.

***
Changing the industry one download at a time

CD Projekt's Good Old Games represents an approach that could become a trend if consumers continue to make the kind of noise that they did over Spore. The venture's founders are a rare breed of digital publishers, falling in line far more with the views of today's PC gamer than any other profit-focused company. And they're not afraid to discuss that, which is something that not a lot of big-name publishers are doing.

Whether or not DRM-free sales can be sustained on a massive level is a question yet unanswered, at least in the gaming world. If we were to believe game publishers, DRM-free is simply a disaster waiting to happen. Thus, GOG is really an experiment unto itself when it comes to game publishing. These are games that people can already pirate, just as they would regardless of whether or not they had copy protection. When it comes to games, DRM has proven itself futile.

It remains to be seen if gamers are willing to buy the software that's being pushed out in the most consumer-friendly way possible. But if the model of Amazon's music store—which sells DRM-free music en masse and has been steadily gaining steam—is any indicator of how things will go in the gaming world, then publishers could very well end up being surprised by the results of GOG's experiment. And hopefully that happens, lest the outraged cries of otherwise faithful consumers return on the pages of online store customer reviews, blogs, and news outlets worldwide.

Ars Technica would like to thank Adam Oldakowski and Michal Kicinski for their time, as well as GOG.com and CD Projekt.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...-games-drm.ars





DRM is Bad for You AND for the Planet
Hank Green

I am primarily an ecogeek, but I can't deny that I'm also just a geek. And so I, of course, love the open source, free software and creative commons movements. Without those powerful forces EcoGeek would absolutely have never existed.

So, yeah, I hate digital rights management. I believe that it's contrary to the spirit of creation and should not exist. But I don't get to talk about it here, because its all geek and no eco.

Or so I thought! When recently reading about Wal-Mart's epic DRM fail at Read Write Web, I realized that DRM is indeed very bad for the environment. So bad, that it could possibly destroy one of the great environmental benefits of technology... digitization.

First, I should point out a less substantial environmental problem with DRM. IT EATS POWER! Devices using DRM have been shown to use up to 25% more power than when they're playing non-managed media...and that's not even counting all the resources consumed by the manger's server farms that keep track of it all.

But, comparatively, that's a tiny problem. The real problem here is that the easiest way to get an MP3 that isn't crippled by some kind of DRM is still to buy the physical CD. What's worse, when DRM systems go offline (as they are at Wal-Mart) people are going to be extremely hesitant to go digital again. Basically, Wal-Mart's servers going offline is like saying "Oh, that song you bought, well, you didn't actually own it because it wasn't really real...sorry."

Wal-Mart's suggestion? Burn it to a CD, that way you'll have it even if after we take your official ownership away. BURN IT TO A CD! I thought the whole point was that we weren't using those clunky petro-disks anymore!

What I'm afraid of is that DRM will effectively remove ownership from non-physical media. Either we will rent the right to access everything for a certain monthly price (already working well for Microsoft) or rent out our eyeballs for the right to watch it (working just fine at Hulu.com.)

But if we want to actually own a song or movie or television show, we will need to buy the real-life, made-of-petroleum, shipped-across-the-world, physical disk. Either that, or we'll have to break the law...our choice. And any way you look at it, when physical media consume up to ten times more resources than non-physical media, DRM isn't just bad for consumers, it's bad for the planet.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2163/72/





RealNetworks Filing Preemptive Lawsuit to Protect its DVD-to-PC Copying Product
Paul McNamara

Apparently tired of waiting to be sued by the motion picture industry over its new DVD-to-PC copying software, RealNetworks this morning announced that it will file a preemptive legal action of its own in an attempt to establish the product's legality.

From a statement just issued by the company:

"In response to threats made by the major movie studios, RealNetworks this morning plans to file an action for a declaratory judgment against DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., NBC Universal, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., and Viacom, Inc., in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit asks the court to rule that RealNetworks Home Entertainment, Inc.'s RealDVD software, made available to consumers today at www.realdvd.com, fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association's license agreement. ...

"RealNetworks took this legal action to protect consumers' ability to exercise their fair-use rights for their purchased DVDs. The DVD CCA, which represents numerous parties including all of the major studios, previously sued another company over the same issues. The trial court ruled against the DVD CCA and allowed the distribution of a product similar to RealDVD."

In addition, RealNetworks this morning has officially released the software, which debuted in beta Sept. 8 at Network World's DEMOfall 08 to a largely mute but stern reaction from the movie industry.

"We have nothing else to say at this time," a spokeswoman from the Motion Picture Association of America told me days prior to the opening of DEMO. Since then press reports have included intimations from film industry executives that the RealNetworks product was not likely to go unchallenged. I checked in with the MPAA again the other day to see if they had anything else to say about RealDVD and was told by a spokeswoman that the answer was no. As I replied to her, their silence speaks volumes.

I would expect we'll be hearing something from them soon.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33401





RealDVD: The Software Works, But with Some Hurdles
Keith Shaw

RealNetworks launched its RealDVD software today, which lets consumers save DVDs that they own to their computer's hard drive. Announced at earlier this month, the software is now available for an introductory price of $29.99 at the company's Web site.

Interestingly, a few minutes after the launch announcement of the product, the company also announced it was filing suit against Hollywood studios, asking a judge for a declaratory judgment – basically asking a judge to say that the RealDVD software complies with the DVD Copy Control Association's license agreement. In essence, the company is asking a judge to OK the software before the studios ask for an injunction preventing the sale of the software.

I'm not a lawyer – I'll let other bloggers/columnists discuss the case and whether Real has a chance or not. With all of the legal wrangling, though, it seems better for consumers to get the software sooner than later – it might not be on the site for long if the studios are successful in blocking it.

But before you do, is it worth it? Legal issues aside, is it worth plunking down $30 (after the 30-day trial, of course) for the software?

The RealDVD software has been on my notebook for about a month now (the company gave me a "gold" version to try out), and I've transferred several of my DVDs that I own onto my notebook. The software works as advertised – it copies the content from the DVD onto the user's hard drive, and plays it through the RealDVD software (you don't have to download RealPlayer). You're also not getting just the movie content, either – you get things like closed-captioning, audio commentary tracks, extra features – if it's on the DVD, you can watch it with the RealDVD software.

The interface is easy to use – with a physical DVD in your optical drive, you have the options to Play, Save or "Play & Save" the DVD. Saving the DVD takes anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of the DVD (average space for a DVD is between 4GB and 8GB), and the speed of your optical drive and computer. The Play & Save feature lets you watch the DVD while the software saves the content in the background. The Play & Save option seemed to speed up the saving process for me, but this is probably because I was distracted watching the content while it was saving.

The system also utilizes the Gracenote database to look up cover art and other information to display the movies on the screen, and in most cases the covers are accurate (some older and less popular DVDs might not be in the database, so you might end up with a plain blue background).

There are some hurdles, that RealNetworks put into the software, apparently as protections for the inevitable lawsuit. While users are allowed to copy a DVD to an external hard drive, you cannot then transfer a copied movie onto a second hard drive. For example, during my tests, I decided to save a lot of DVDs onto a 1TB hard drive (a Seagate FreeAgent Pro), which makes for a lot of storage space but wasn't good for portability. I decided to change course and save them to a newer Seagate FreeAgent Go drive, which was smaller and still offered 320GB of space. The software won't let you transfer the movies though, so I had to re-start the copying process onto the new drive. Because copying can take between 10 and 40 minutes, making the decision about where you're storing the movies is best made before you start copying.

The external hard drive is definitely the way to go – because the software isn't doing any compression of the DVD content when it copies (again, to protect itself in the lawsuit, I'm assuming) to the hard drive, you're going to need a pretty large hard drive if you want to store a lot of movies. In testing, I realized pretty quickly that my notebook's hard drive was running out of space, and I had to delete a few movies and make the switch to start saving it to the external drive.

In addition, placing the content on an external hard drive will benefit you if you decide to add a second or additional license of the RealDVD software. Real offers up to four additional licenses of the software per user (at $19.99 per license), and the company says that once you plug the external drive into the second computer, it checks to make sure the serial number of the software is a match in order to recognize the saved files.

This can be beneficial for users that want to use the software for watching movies while on the road, but then have a second license available for watching movies on a media center PC connected to a TV.

Yes, there's the possibility that users will try to "abuse" the software and make copies of DVDs that they don't own. For example, you can get DVDs from Netflix, the library and the local Blockbuster, copy them and then return them, allowing you to watch them later several times over. But this is the same thing that users have been doing for years when borrowing music and books from friends or the library, and the last time I checked there weren't massive arrests for book copying. The software seems to address the issue of not allowing users to take the digital files and then start sharing them on file-trading sites – they're not decrypting or compressing the files. In reality, there are lots of other ways to do this, and this has been done for years anyway.

But now I'm getting into the lawyering angle – in terms of the software, I'm very impressed with RealDVD, and hope that it's available for consumers for many years to come (and not just in the next few minutes, hours or days).
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33406





Studios Sue to Bar a DVD Copying Program
Brad Stone

Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs.

As the opening warning on every DVD indicates, Hollywood has bitterly opposed such copying. The studios have argued that it threatens their emerging business of digital downloads and can motivate buyers to rent, copy and return DVDs instead of buying them.

RealNetworks, the company behind RealPlayer software and the Rhapsody music subscription service, said RealDVD gives users the freedom to do things like make backup copies of favorite discs or take movies along on a laptop while traveling. It has argued that RealDVD is now legal because of a favorable decision last year in a case against Kaleidescape, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high-end media servers.

RealNetworks also said that RealDVD conforms to Hollywood’s rules on DVD protection by encrypting the digital copies, which prevents unlawful online file sharing.

“We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases,” RealNetworks said in a statement Tuesday.

For their part, the studios argued in legal filings that the software violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it bypasses the anticopying mechanism built into DVDs.

“RealDVD should be called StealDVD,” Greg Goeckner, executive vice president and general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said. “RealNetworks knows its product violates the law, and undermines the hard-won trust that has been growing between America’s moviemakers and the technology community.”

Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, the Walt Disney Company and Sony are suing RealNetworks in United States District Court in Los Angeles, seeking an injunction that would prevent the company from selling the software.

Also on Tuesday, RealNetworks countersued the studios in federal court in San Francisco, asking a judge to find that the program does not violate Hollywood’s DVD license.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/te...gy/01film.html





Netflix Adds 2,500 Streaming Movies from Starz
Harrison Hoffman

A major complaint with Netflix's current selection of streaming movies and shows available through its "Watch Now" service is that it doesn't contain enough recent titles. Now, according to several reports online, it looks as though Netflix is looking to change that.

On Wednesday, the company plans to announce a new partnership with Starz to offer subscribers 2,500 additional movies from Starz Play. Starz Play's selection includes current hits such as No Country for Old Men, Superbad, and Ratatouille, as well as indie films, concerts, and classic movies. The first 1,000 of those movies, added to Netflix's current offering of 12,000, should, supposedly, be available immediately, but they are not available on Netflix's site yet. Expect the update to come sometime on Wednesday.

This is big news for Netflix, which has been struggling to sign studios up to make their new releases available for instant watching. In terms of new releases, this deal gets Netflix one step closer to being on the same level as the on-demand offerings from Comcast and Verizon. Netflix's overall library, however, goes deeper than Comcast's or Verizon's because it offers many classics on top of these newly added new releases. Additionally, this deal allows subscribers to stream the Starz TV network on their PCs.

The best part of this news, for Netflix subscribers, is that all of this extra content isn't going to cost them a dime. All Netflix subscribers with unlimited subscriptions (those $8.99 and up) will have access to the Starz Play selections. When you pair this news with this summer's release of Roku's killer set-top box for Netflix and this fall's Xbox 360 dashboard update, which will enable Netflix streaming, Netflix's service is looking more attractive every day.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10055367-26.html





Cameras Roll, and Faith Hasn’t a Prayer
John Leland

THE director Larry Charles was talking recently about Hollywood and taboos. His new movie, “Religulous,” which stars the HBO host Bill Maher, is a sometimes funny, sometimes cheap attack on organized religion.

“One would say it’s the most taboo subject to deal with,” said Mr. Charles, who wore a loose charcoal suit, derby hat, lavender Crocs and the flowing beard of a biblical prophet or Z Z Top fan.

But if a major film company like Lionsgate (home to “Crash” and the “Saw” series) backs the movie, he was asked, how taboo could it be?

Mr. Charles, whose credits include “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as well as “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” is not put off by a little nuance.

“If it’s profitable,” he said, “it’s not taboo. If they think it’s marketable, then maybe the tabooishness doesn’t matter so much.”

“Religulous,” which comes out on Friday in New York and Oct. 3 in the rest of the country, shows Mr. Maher on a world tour of rapid-cut interviews in Israel, Denmark, Vatican City and Monsey, N.Y., the home of Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism, whose leaders participated in a convention of Holocaust deniers in Iran.

The movie is trying to tap the same spirit that has propelled books crusading against religion, like Richard Dawkins’s “God Delusion,” Sam Harris’s “End of Faith” and Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great,” to the best-seller lists. Atheist groups now even have their own dating Web sites, glossy magazines, paid lobbyists and annual cruise outings.

Mr. Charles and Mr. Maher carry their evangelism to a broad swath of targets: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, even Cantheism, a pot-centric belief system that is often overlooked in theological debate. Buddhism and Hinduism get a pass; interviews with Muslims are intercut with footage of warring jihadis. At the end of the movie Mr. Maher calls on “anti-religionists” to “come out of the closet and assert themselves” in the face of religious extremism. “Grow up or die,” he says.

Mr. Maher said he intended the movie as a call to action, not to convince religious people to join his camp but to stir the nonreligious to unite.

“This is a very religious country,” he said, ignoring for the moment that he was in Canada, where the movie played at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. “I would at least like them” — meaning the 16 percent of Americans who in a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life described themselves as “unaffiliated” with any religion — “to stand up and say we’re not the crazy ones. Don’t we deserve at least that? There’s 535 members of Congress. How many of them would say they’re atheist or agnostic? I believe that would be zero. Pete Stark, maybe, the congressman from California, started talking about how he may not be a believer. What other minority of 16 percent has zero representation in Congress?”

Mr. Maher is not quite accurate here. Of the 16 percent who told Pew researchers they were unaffiliated, only 4 percent said they were atheistic or agnostic; the others said they were “nothing in particular.” And even among disbelievers, 21 percent of atheists and 55 percent of agnostics said they believed in God.

Go figure.

But Mr. Maher was just warming up.

“I truly believe that unless we shed this skin, mankind is playing with real fire here,” he said. “Because there’s nuclear weapons in the world and because there are suicide bombers and there are so many people who are anxious to get to that next world. They don’t look at the end of the world as a bad thing. That’s pretty scary. Until rationality is enshrined again and this magical thinking is marginalized, I’m a little nervous.”

“It’s just the ultimate hustle,” he added. “It’s just selling an invisible product, and so if I can be Toto in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ pulling back the curtain, which is how I see religion, great, that’s fine, I’ll do that and get off the stage. I’m not looking to be the anti-messiah.”

Mr. Maher said he had long felt that his criticisms of religion on television called for a bigger stage. He first considered documentary directors, but found their work “dark and depressing.” Then the producers connected him with Mr. Charles, who had just finished “Borat.” Mr. Charles said he approached the movie as a “nonfiction comedy” rather than a documentary. (The studio, however, booked theaters in Washington Heights in New York and in Claremont, Calif., for unpublicized short runs in August, so the movie could qualify for a best documentary Oscar.)

Neither man describes himself as an atheist. Mr. Charles, raised by liberal Jewish parents, said he became attracted to Judaism during preparation for his bar mitzvah, announcing to his parents that he wanted to become a rabbi. Even after this passion passed, the ontological questions raised “plague me to this day,” he said. “Judaism is deeply ingrained in me, but I’m definitely not a believer in the Bible. I can’t accept that.”

Mr. Maher was raised by a Catholic father and Jewish mother, attending mass until he was an adolescent, when his father parted with the church. Describing his beliefs now, Mr. Maher said: “I believe in ‘I don’t know.’ I’m not troubled by the giant questions I know I will never find out the answer to as long as I’m alive.” Like the “Borat” movie “Religulous” casts its protagonist as a seeker among strange peoples, and gets its laughs by showing them in a silly light. While Borat was more clueless than the people he encountered, Mr. Maher is always the smartest one on the screen.

The pickings are easy. Mr. Charles said they had hoped to interview major religious figures, including the pope, the president of the Mormon Church and the Dalai Lama. Instead they got members of the Truckers Chapel in Raleigh, N.C., the guy who plays Jesus at the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, and an Islamic rapper named Propa-Gandhi.

The filmmakers denied that they picked on easy targets.

“I get this criticism a lot,” Mr. Maher said. “It’s a pet peeve of mine, because I’m confronted with this notion that ‘Oh yes, you only go after the extremists, and by doing that you make religion look silly.’ ” He continued: “Anyone who’s religious is extremist. See, we’re just used to religion. It’s like what Matthew Arnold said about a tree. It’s not that there are no miracles. A tree is a miracle. You’re just used to it. And conversely religion is something we’re just used to. So the notion that God had a son, that he’s a single parent, and the son went on a suicide mission, and you’re drinking his blood on Sunday, that a man lived inside a whale and that the earth is 5,000 years old — all the essentials of religion that are in the Bible or the Koran — we’re used to them. But it doesn’t mean they’re not crazy, doesn’t mean they’re not ridiculous. And so to be religious at all is to be an extremist, is to be irrational.

“I interviewed Senator Mark Pryor. He’s a senator. He’s not a fringe person. And I said, ‘The way the world began, it couldn’t really be 5,000 years ago in a garden with a talking snake,’ and he said, ‘Yes, it could be.’ Now any religious person you ask that question to is going to give you an answer like that that makes him look silly.”

Mr. Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas, said he had not seen the movie, but that his interview with Mr. Maher was “very hostile but very constructive.” He added that he did not consider faith and evolution to be in conflict, and that the 5,000 years referred to in some Christian texts might not be literal years. (Mr. Pryor said he considered intelligent design a discipline of science, though courts have ruled otherwise.)

John Casorio, a lawyer for the Trinity Broadcast Network, which owns the Holy Land Experience, denied a request to interview the actor who plays Jesus, saying the company did not want to call attention to the movie.

As a provocation “Religulous” would appear to require a backlash from religious communities to be conceptually and commercially complete: it’s not a party until the sourpusses complain. But both Mr. Charles and Mr. Maher said this was not so.

So far religious groups appear to be resisting the bait. Mr. Casorio wrote, “It is our hope and prayer that the movie will vanish from theater screens quickly and will disappear into the rubble of unseen bad movies which fade into the dust of eternity.”

Nonetheless, at the premiere in Toronto this month, the dozen protesters who carried signs and desultorily chanted “Pray for Bill” outside the theater seemed like part of the show. An audience member asked the filmmakers whether they had paid for the protest.

Mr. Maher looked appalled by the blasphemy.

“They wouldn’t have been so lame if I hired them,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/movies/28lela.html





Out in Hollywood: Starring Roles Are Rare
Mireya Navarro

THERE’S a bisexual woman in “Bones” and a lesbian couple on “The Goode Family.”

“Dirty Sexy Money” features a transsexual and “Brothers & Sisters” a gay marriage.

In “Mad Men,” the Emmy-winning drama set in the early ‘60s, there’s Salvatore Romano, a self-loathing homosexual who marries a woman but pines for a male co-worker.

Never before have gay story lines been so prominent. Nor have there ever been so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters on television — 83 by a recent count from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, not counting reality shows, daytime dramas or gay-oriented cable networks.

Hollywood, with its depictions of cowboy lovers and lesbian neighbors, has done much to make gay men and women part of mainstream American life.

At the same time, gay actors like Neil Patrick Harris and T. R. Knight play heterosexual characters on TV and in film, while couples — Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi — are covered by celebrity magazines as if they were any old romance.

“We’ve gone from the revolution to the evolution,” said Howard Bragman, a longtime Hollywood publicist who is gay and has advised actors like Amanda Bearse, of “Married ... With Children” and Dick Sargent of “Bewitched” on how to handle their coming out.

Yet for most gay actors, Hollywood is not a warm and fuzzy episode of “Will & Grace.” Today, it is certainly more acceptable to be openly gay. But these actors must still answer wrenching questions: Just how candid do you want to be? Would you be happy appearing only in comedies, or being pigeonholed as a character actor? And what does the line “You’re just not right for the role” really mean?

Jasika Nicole, 28, an F.B.I. agent on “Fringe,” a new Fox drama, said that as bigger parts became available, her manager, John Essay, sat her down and asked how public she wanted to be about being a lesbian. Some roles could be lost, he told her, as would some fans.

Mr. Essay, who is gay, said he encouraged openness but warned clients of the risks.

“If it becomes exaggerated,” he said, “you just become the gay actress instead of a wonderful actress.”

Perhaps, he suggested, she didn’t want to be too vocal about it.

Ms. Nicole, who has a girlfriend, said she would just be herself. She has been open about her sexual orientation since she started dating women about 3 ½ years ago, while she was filming “Take the Lead” with Antonio Banderas in Toronto.

Now, as she becomes better known, “There’s no way I can keep quiet,” she said. “I want to be clear this is my partner. I don’t want to make that shameful in any kind of way.”

But most other actors calibrate just how out they want to be. Openly gay can still mean they would rather not talk about it. Most gay actors are mum in public or on the set, even if they don’t hide their orientation in private, actors and others in the entertainment industry said. Although most may no longer participate in charades — the “girlfriend” on the red carpet, for instance — many adopt a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

Why? For both men and women, being openly gay, at least for now, means giving up any hope of superstardom.

“The industry is persuaded that being known as gay will undermine your credibility both as romantic lead or an action star,” said Larry Gross, director of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and author of a book on media portrayals of gays and lesbians.

“They don’t test it,” he said. “We’re waiting for the Jackie Robinson moment when someone tests that assumption and discovers it’s not true.”

GAY actors don’t just lose the potential of becoming the next Brad Pitt or Reese Witherspoon, they lose the opportunities for fame that ensure plum jobs, said Jason Stuart, an actor and comedian who chairs the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender committee of the Screen Actors Guild. It is no coincidence, he said, that even the title role in “Milk,” based on the slain gay hero, Harvey Milk, went to Sean Penn, an Oscar-winning actor who is straight.

“There are not enough famous gay actors to play these roles,” he said.

Dan Jinks, a producer of “Milk,” agreed. The film’s director, writer and two producers are openly gay and so are a number of actors who play gay and straight roles, including the Tony Award-winners Denis O’Hare and Stephen Spinella.

But for the lead, Mr. Jinks said, “Our first concern was to get the best actor that we could get who was enough of a movie star to get the movie made.”

“When one is casting a film for a lead role we always have to ask that awful question: ‘Who puts bodies in seats?’ ” Mr. Jinks said. “Who has carried movies previously? Sadly, there don’t seem to be openly gay actors that could carry a movie, but I think that will change.’ ”

When they don’t land a part, some gay actors say they never know how much of a factor their homosexuality plays.

“There are definitely people who make the decisions who don’t care and there are people who do care,” said Abraham Higginbotham, creator of the Fox sitcom “Do Not Disturb.”

The actor up for the part, he said, “would hear, ‘You’re not right for the role.’ ”

But some casting directors said it was now much easier to cast gays. Mary Jo Slater, a film and television casting director, said barriers were falling because of the success of shows with openly gay actors in them.

Ms. Slater cast a transgender actress, Candis Cayne, in “Dirty Sexy Money,” and noted: “She’s, like, a big star now.”

“I look at their ability to perform the part,” she said. “I don’t really think it matters.”

But what about straight parts? Chad Allen, 34, a child actor on shows like “St. Elsewhere” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” said steady work dried up in 1996 after a tabloid ran a photograph showing him kissing another man. The “Dr. Quinn” cast was supportive and he remained in the family-oriented show, he said, but after the series ended, “It was tough.”

“I couldn’t get an audition for a pilot after that,” he said.

But Mr. Allen, who attended college and continued to do some work in film, found new roles a few years ago, with the advent of gay-oriented cable networks. In channels like Here! and Viacom’s Logo, openly gay actors have played lead roles as private detectives, vampires and superheroes. Mr. Allen stars in a mystery series on Here!, in a role he describes as “a good detective who happens to be gay.”

And in a sign of the times, the show gave him opportunities for gay and heterosexual guest roles in television shows like “C.S.I.: Miami” and “Cold Case.”

In 2006, Mr. Allen incurred the wrath of some conservative ministers after he was cast as the lead in “End of the Spear,” produced by an evangelical film company, about five American missionaries killed in 1956 by an indigenous tribe in Ecuador.

The church pastors objected to his sexual orientation and his political advocacy for gay causes, but Mr. Allen said the fear of casting someone like him is less and less an issue.

“We’ve been witnessing a slow erosion of this fear as audiences show up,” he said.

One test of how far things have progressed, some industry analysts said, will be the kind of roles Mr. Harris and Mr. Knight are offered once they end their current hit shows. Although they are openly gay, they landed the parts before they came out. And tellingly, they made statements about their sexuality only after being outed by bloggers in the case of Mr. Harris, and by a homophobic incident with a co-star in the case of Mr. Knight. For now, more gay characters and better scripts are adding up to more fulfilling work. It wasn’t too long ago that actors like Bryan Batt of “Mad Men” could find good parts only on the stage. Even in theater, he said, his agent was once told by a casting director, “I just can’t see Bryan as a baseball player.”

“I didn’t know what to make of that,” said Mr. Batt, 45, who came out publicly in the mid-90s when he landed the part of Darius in “Jeffrey,” the off-Broadway play about sex and romance in the age of AIDS.

As an actor, Mr. Batt said, he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into playing only gay roles, but it’s hard not to feel “proud and happy” with Salvatore. He begged Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, to let the character get married. “It’s a realm of reality that television had not really explored,” he said.

The character is addled by the kind of inner conflict — not able to be himself, forced to act like the sexist guys in the office — that “continues to happen,” and not just in 1960s period dramas, Mr. Batt noted.

That such a meaty part went to an openly gay actor “speaks volumes about how far we’ve come,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/fashion/28gay.html





Facebook Hires General Counsel as it Continues to Grow

Young upstart Facebook is growing up at Internet speed.
Jessica Guynn

The latest sign: Its freshly installed management team has hired a legal gun with a loaded resume that includes serving as a White House lawyer who helped coordinate the response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and serving as chief of staff to former U.S. Atty. General Alberto Gonzales.

Ted Ullyot will join Facebook as its vice president and general counsel next month. Ullyot, who also has had major private sector stints including as a top lawyer for AOL Time Warner Europe, is leaving a partnership with law firm Kirkland & Ellis and will relocate to the Bay Area, he said in an interview Friday.

"We view Ted's joining us as just another reaffirmation of the fact that we are working at the cutting edge of lots of incredible innovation," said Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy (and himself a lawyer). "He has an extraordinary combination of private legal practice and public sector experience. So many of the legal issues we face touch on both of those arenas. He is equally comfortable helping us expand internationally as he is in helping us navigate complicated legal issues we may face in Washington. Ted's arrival really demonstrates we're a little more grown-up."

Ullyot also complements the Facebook team from a political perspective. "Ted has extremely strong connections with the Republican party, and we think that's a good thing," Schrage said. And it could make for some interesting debates. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's No. 2 is Sheryl Sandberg, who was chief of staff at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration.

This is just the latest milestone in the maturing of Facebook, which, with more than 700 employees, 100-million-plus users and ambitions of becoming a public company, is filling out ...

... its management team with operational heft. In March, Facebook lured Sandberg, a longtime Google executive, to work under Zuckerberg -- who had already recruited Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu, formerly with YouTube, and Chamath Palihapitiya, who used to run AOL's instant-messaging business. At the same time, some executives have left Facebook, including Owen Van Natta, the former chief revenue officer and chief operating officer.

Zuckerberg, 24, said he realized that he needed to bring aboard seasoned executives who could help turn Facebook's soaring popularity into a revenue-making machine and expand the Facebook franchise internationally.

It's a departure for Zuckerberg, who started Facebook out of his Harvard dorm room in his sophomore year and maintained his college lifestyle after deciding to move his business to Silicon Valley. But that all began to change, particularly last year when Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, valuing the start-up at $15 billion.

With Facebook's rapidly rising profile has come intense scrutiny as well as legal headaches. Already Facebook has riled privacy watchdogs and its users with early attempts to target advertising.

"One of the things that we emphasize when we interview people is the fast-paced nature of what we do," Schrage said. "When we met Ted, we felt pretty comfortable he had a background that demonstrated that he could appreciate high stakes and fast pace."

Ullyot certainly has the breadth of legal experience as well as the regulatory and legislative chops to guide the young company. He began his legal career clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (who is now Boeing's senior vice president and general counsel) before being recruited by Kenneth Starr to Kirkland & Ellis.

At AOL Time Warner, Ullyot was a vice president and associate general counsel, reporting to Paul Cappuccio, executive vice president and general counsel of AOL Time Warner and a Kirkland & Ellis alumnus who along with Starr helped recruit Ullyot.

Ullyot later became senior vice president and general counsel for AOL Time Warner Europe, working with the legal and policy staff in Europe and European Commission officials. Schrage points to that experience as a big asset as Facebook expands internationally.

As for his stint in the Bush administration, that was something he had long sought and something for which he remains grateful, Ullyot said. Despite the politically charged high drama, he said: "I have nothing but good to say about it." It raised eyebrows in Washington when Gonzales took three White House lawyers with him to be his top aides at the Justice Department, including Ullyot.

Ullyot said that working for the Justice Department was another career goal. He stepped down in 2005 and joined ESL Investments Inc., a Connecticut investment firm run by billionaire investor Edward S. "Eddie" Lampert to gain experience in the financial markets, he said.

Ullyot took Lampert's seat on the board of AutoZone. Ullyot said he planned to remain on the AutoZone board. In May, Ullyot returned to Kirkland & Ellis as a partner, focusing on appellate litigation, administrative law and antitrust law. Kirkland & Ellis recently opened an office in Palo Alto. (Will he send Facebook business to the firm? "I think of the firm in the highest terms, and I have used the firm in previous stints as general counsel," he said. "I just look forward to getting into Facebook to see what the legal needs are.")

And the 41-year-old San Francisco native has another thing going for him, at least as far as Zuckerberg is concerned. He's a Harvard grad (although he got his law degree from the University of Chicago).

So why Facebook? "It was extremely attractive to me from the outset," Ullyot said. "It's an innovative company and a growing company in size and presence and profile. From a lawyer's perspective, the legal issues are novel and interesting." Among the draws: "Operating in a fast-moving environment where the legal framework is less-developed."

It certainly will be a far less formal environment. Washington is strictly a suit-and-tie town. At ESL, the dress code was "casual but respectable" (i.e., pressed khakis with a coat and tie on hand for meetings), Ullyot told the Wall Street Journal at the time. At Facebook, where Zuckerberg is known for his uniform of T-shirts, jeans and Adidas flip flops: "I doubt you will see me in a tie very often," Ullyot said.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/tech...ok-hire-1.html





Privacy Concerns on Speed Cameras
Karen Dearne

CRIMTRAC's planned automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system could become a mass surveillance system, taking as many as 70 million photos of cars and drivers every day across a vast network of roadside cameras.

State and federal police forces want full-frontal images of vehicles, including the driver and front passenger, that are clear enough for identification purposes and usable as evidence in court.

"All vehicles passing through a fixed or mobile ANPR camera will have the data recorded and available for interrogation," CrimTrac told the Queensland TravelSafe inquiry into the use of ANPR for road safety.

"Existing camera applications, such as Safe-T-Cam, red light and speed cameras could be upgraded where necessary to provide constant live streaming to a central database.

"National connectivity would be achieved through secure digital networks for fixed cameras. Law enforcement agencies would also use mobile units."

David Vaile, executive director of the University of NSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, warned that the ANPR "could become the next Access Card".

"As a public surveillance system that could be linked to facial recognition, this has enough technology behind it to impinge on everybody's daily life," Mr Vaile said.

"CrimTrac has told us there will be 5000 cameras around the country, overwhelmingly in populated areas, taking some 70 million photos every day.

"There'll be maybe 1000 cameras in downtown Sydney, close to that number in Melbourne, perhaps 100 or so in Brisbane.

"If you use the main roads, you're likely to be snapped several times a day, and all those photos and any related data will be held by CrimTrac for up to five years."

Mr Vaile said it was false to represent the proposal as number plate recognition: "It's a photograph-all-drivers system."

At present, there are an estimated 300 fixed ANPR cameras and 100 mobile units in Australia.

CrimTrac is due to hand a $2.2 million scoping study for an integrated ANPR to the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, and the Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management in November.

According to a privacy consultation paper issued in June, all ANPR data collected would be made available to participating agencies in real time, and retained for five years for future investigations.

The national system would consist of "sightings data from all cameras in all jurisdictions of all vehicles that pass the camera points".

CrimTrac proposes siting fixed cameras at state border crossings, on main roads, in city centres and around infrastructure such as ports.

CrimTrac ANPR program manager Darren Booy said road transport, police and national security agencies had agreed images were needed for certain vehicle sightings.

"At times, police might not know that a vehicle is stolen or wanted in connection with a crime such as armed robbery until some time after the event," he said.

"Therefore, there's a requirement to capture all vehicle sightings and make those images available for analysis and data matching either immediately or at a later time."

Mr Booy said no decision had been made on the period for which images would be kept.

Images would be retained in cases where a vehicle was on a hot list of stolen or unregistered cars, or in cases involving unlicensed drivers or people wanted by police.

"Police and road authorities are already using ANPR in Australia, albeit on a small scale," Mr Booy said.

"Its use is growing, and the technology offers wide benefits in the spheres of road safety, criminal investigation and national security.

"We do see opportunities to upgrade existing systems into a high-quality infrastructure, and provide national capabilities at a lower overall cost."

Mr Booy said CrimTrac had looked at concerns on the accuracy and reliability of ANPR technology.

"It's important to recognise that existing local systems are quite disparate, with different standards not only in relation to data accuracy, but also the management of hot lists," he said.

"Drawing on experiences in Britain (where there is blanket ANPR surveillance), we are proposing a framework that overcomes a lot of those issues."

Should the state and federal ministers agree on a nationwide system, planning and building it would take a number of years to complete, Mr Booy said.

Meanwhile, the Queensland Government's TravelSafe report into ANPR suggests there are limited road safety benefits compared with the costs involved.

A VicRoads and Victoria Police trial had encountered problems with the accuracy and timeliness of information.

"There may be missing or incomplete fields in data sets, which means the software may flag a vehicle that is legitimately registered," VicRoads chief executive Gary Liddle said.

"Delayed payments could also mean a vehicle identified as unregistered is incorrectly flagged by the system."

The TravelSafe committee recommended that data relating to vehicles not found to be committing an offence should be "cleansed nightly to minimise the possibility of security breaches".
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html





ISPs: We Swear, We Won't Watch Your Every Move
Michele Masterson

Responding to increasing Internet privacy concerns, AT&T (NYSE:T), Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), the country's largest ISPs, told a Senate committee during a hearing Thursday that they don't engage in online consumer tracking and want to self-regulate such practices in the future.

The hearing focused on whether ISPs are tracking their customers' Internet usage and selling that information to advertisers, an industry practice known as behavioral targeting.

To be sure, controversy regarding consumer privacy on the Internet and Web ad tracking has been a source of contention for years. But ISPs are pointing the finger at online advertising companies as the main culprits.

"Most companies that provide services on the Internet are presently under no obligation to disclose or obtain consent for the collection and use of consumers' online usage information," said Peter Stern, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Time Warner Cable, in his testimony. "And in the case of some of the largest ad networks and application providers, the amount of information such companies possess dwarfs that obtained by ISPs."

The most recent brouhaha surrounding the issue came earlier this year involving NebuAd, a company that monitors ISP customers for ad-targeting. The largest ISPs have denied any involvement with the company. However, Charter Communications, the fourth largest ISP in the country, came under fire after it was disclosed it was considering working with NebuAd. The deal was scrapped, but not before it came under the scrutiny of Congressmen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX) of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

At the Thursday hearing, the ISPs said they want to maintain transparency and become clearer about opt-out options.

"Verizon believes that before a company captures certain Internet-usage data for targeted or customized advertising purposes, it should obtain meaningful, affirmative consent from consumers," said Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president of public affairs, policy and communications, in his testimony. "Meaningful consent requires transparency, affirmative choice and consumer control, ensuring that consumers can at any time act to stop any company from using their Internet usage information."

To ensure such measures and head off possible government intervention, Tauke recommended that the industry band together and form a coalition centered on best practices.

"To achieve this, we plan to work with stakeholders in the Internet and advertising arenas, including other companies, industry groups and policy organizations," he said.

Dorothy Attwood, AT&T's senior vice president, public policy and chief privacy officer, agreed.

"We believe these principles offer a rational approach to protecting consumer privacy while allowing the market for Internet advertising and its related products and services to grow," she said in her testimony.

It seems that such measures come at a critical time. The Consumer Reports National Research Center released poll results Thursday that found most Web users in the country are very concerned about online privacy.

According to the poll, 82 percent of consumers are concerned about their credit card numbers being stolen online, while 72 percent are concerned that their online behaviors were being tracked and profiled by companies.

Although 68 percent of consumers have provided personal information in order to access a Web site, 53 percent are uncomfortable with Internet companies using their e-mail content or browsing history to send relevant ads and 54 percent are uncomfortable with third parties collecting information about their online behavior.

The poll revealed that 93 percent of those surveyed said that Internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information and 72 percent want the right to opt out when companies track their online behavior.

Some respondents said they take steps to limit the information that is being collected and shared about them online. For example, 35 percent said they use alternate e-mail addresses to avoid providing real information; 26 percent said they have used software that hides their identity; and 25 percent have provided fake information to access a Web site.

And while consumers are aware that information about their surfing habits are being collected online, many of those surveyed are not aware of what companies do with that information.

"Many consumers have misconceptions about the information available about them and how commonly it is sold by companies without their knowledge," said Joel Kelsey, policy analyst with Consumers Union, in a statement. "Our poll makes clear that consumers want more control over the treasure trove of information companies are collecting about their activities online."
http://www.crn.com/networking/210604191





How Loss of Privacy May Mean Loss of Security

Many issues posing as questions of privacy can turn out to be matters of security, health policy, insurance or self-presentation. It is useful to clarify those issues before focusing on privacy itself
Esther Dyson

Privacy is a public Rorschach test: say the word aloud, and you can start any number of passionate discussions. One person worries about governmental abuse of power; another blushes about his drug use and sexual history; a third vents outrage about how corporations collect private data to target their ads or how insurance companies dig through personal medical records to deny coverage to certain people. Some fear a world of pervasive commercialization, in which data are used to sort everyone into one or another “market segment”—the better to cater to people’s deepest desires or to exploit their most frivolous whims. Others fret over state intrusion and social strictures.

Such fears are typically presented as trade-offs: privacy versus effective medical care, privacy versus free (advertising-driven) content, privacy versus security. Those debates are all well worn, but they are now returning to the fore in a way they did not when specialists, insiders and die-hard privacy advocates were the only ones paying attention.

On the one hand, the erosion of privacy is unmistakable. Most Americans are online today, and most of us have probably had one or more “Now how did they know that?” experiences. The U.S. administration is breaching people’s privacy right and left, while conducting more and more of its operations in obscurity. It has become hard to act anonymously if someone—particularly the government—makes any effort to find out who you are.

On the other hand, new and compelling reasons have arisen for people to disclose private information. Personalized medicine is on the threshold of reality. Detailed and accurate health and genetic information from private medical histories, both to treat individuals and to analyze epidemiological statistics across populations, has enormous potential for enhancing the general social welfare. Many people take pleasure in sharing personal information with others on social-networking Web sites. More darkly, the heightened threat of terrorism has led many to give up private information for illusory promises of safety and security.

Much of the privacy that people took for granted in the past was a by-product of friction in finding and assembling information. That friction is mostly gone. Everyone lives like a celebrity, their movements watchable, their weight gains or bad hair days the subject of comment, questions once left unspoken now explicitly asked: Was that lunch together a “date”? Which of my friends is a top friend?

Boundary Conditions

This issue of Scientific American focuses mostly on technologies that erode privacy and technologies that preserve it. But to help frame the discussion I’d like to lay out three orthogonal points.

First, in defining some disclosure of information as a breach of privacy, it is useful to distinguish any objective harms arising from the disclosure—fraud, denial of a service, denial of freedom—from any subjective privacy harms, in which the mere knowledge by a second or third party of one’s private information is experienced as an injury. In many cases, what is called a breach of privacy is actually a breach of security or a financial harm: if your Social Security number is disclosed and misused—and I probably give mine out several times a month—that’s not an issue of privacy; it’s an issue of security. As for breaches of privacy, the “harm” a person feels is subjective and personal. Rather than attempting to define privacy for all, society should give individuals the tools to control the use and spread of their data. The balance between secrecy and disclosure is an individual preference, but the need for tools and even laws to implement that preference is general.

Second, as the borders between private and public are redrawn, people must retain the right to bear witness. When personal privacy is increasingly limited in a friction-free world of trackable data, the right of individuals to track and report on the activities of powerful organizations, whether governments or big businesses, is key to preserving freedom and to balancing the interests of individuals and institutions.

The third point elaborates on the first: in assessing the changes in the expectations people have about privacy, it is important to recognize the granularity of personal control of data. Privacy is not a one-size-fits-all condition: Different people at different times have different preferences about what happens to their personal information and who gets to see it. They may not have the right or ability to set such conditions in coercive relationships—in dealing with a government entity, for instance, or with an organization such as an employer or an insurance company from which they want something in return. But people often have a better bargaining position than they realize. Now they are gaining the tools and knowledge to exploit that position.

Objective Harms

Security is not the only public issue posing as privacy. Many issues of medical and genetic privacy, for instance, are really issues of money and insurance. Should people in poor health be compelled to pay more for their care? If you think they should not, you might feel forced to conclude that they should tacitly be allowed to lie. This conclusion is often misleadingly positioned as the protection of privacy. The real issue, however, is not privacy but rather the business model of the insurance industry in the U.S. People would not care about medical privacy so much if revealing the truth about their health did not expose them to costly medical bills and insurance premiums.

Genetic data seem to present a particularly troubling example of the potential for discrimination. One fear is that insurance companies will soon require genetic tests of applicants—and will deny insurance to any applicant with a genetic risk. A genome does indeed carry a fair amount of information; it can uniquely identify anyone except an identical twin, and it can reveal family relationships that may have been hidden. Some rare diseases can be diagnosed by the presence of certain genetic markers.

But genes are only one factor in a person’s life. Genes tell little about family dynamics, and they cannot say what a person has done with inherited abilities. Genes typically make themselves felt through complex interactions with upbringing, behavior, environment and sheer chance.

And genetic discrimination may soon be against the law anyway. This past May, President George W. Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which outlaws discrimination in insurance and employment on the basis of genetic tests.

Nevertheless, the coming flood of medical and genetic information is likely to change the very nature of health insurance. With better liquidity of health information about a broad population and with better tracking of the outcomes of treatments and diseases, accurate prediction on the basis of statistical studies becomes progressively easier. But if individuals can be assigned to so-called cost buckets with reasonable accuracy, insuring people against high medical costs is no longer a matter of community rating—that is, pooling collective assets against unknown individual risks. Rather it is a matter of mandating subsidies paid by society to provide affordable insurance to those whose high health risks would otherwise make their insurance premiums or treatment prohibitively expensive.

As a consequence, society will have to decide, clearly and openly, which kinds of discrimination are acceptable and which are not. All of us will be forced to confront ethical choices crisply rather than hiding behind the confusion of information opacity. If insurance companies are asked to administer subsidies, they will demand clear rules about which individual health costs, and what proportion of them, society wants—and will pay—to provide. (The trick, as ever, is to make sure the insurers and health care providers keep costs down by providing good care and maintaining their customers’ health rather than by limiting care. Increased information about health risks and treatment outcomes that I mentioned earlier will help measure the effectiveness of care and make that happen.)

The Right to Bear Witness

People really need rules about privacy when one party is in a position to demand data from another. The most important example is the government’s power to collect and use (or misuse) personal data. That power needs to be limited.

What is the best way to limit government power? Not so much by rules that protect the privacy of individuals, which the government may decline to observe or enforce, but by rules that limit the privacy of the government and of government officials. The public must retain the right to know and to bear witness.

A primary instrument for ensuring that right has traditionally been the media. But the Internet is giving people the tools and the platform to take things into their own hands. Every camera and video recorder can bear public witness to acts of oppression, as the Rodney King video showed dramatically back in 1991 and as the Abu Ghraib photographs showed in 2004. The Internet is the platform that gives everyone instant access to a potentially worldwide audience. Reports from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and from private citizens around the globe are distributed on the Internet via social-networking and file-sharing sites and as cell phone text messages.

Ironically, perhaps the best model for what citizens should require of government is the kind of information that government requires of business. Business disclosure rules are tightening all the time—about labor practices, financial results, everything a business does. Investors have a right to know about the company they own, and customers have a right to know about the ingredients in the products they buy and how those products were made.

By the same token, citizens have a right to know about the job-related behavior of the people we elect and pay. We have a right to know about conflicts of interest and what public servants do with their (our) time. We should have the same rights vis-à-vis government that shareholders and customers (and, for that matter, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) have vis-à-vis a publicly traded company. In fact, I would argue, citizens have extra rights with respect to government precisely because we are coerced into giving governments so much data. We should be able to monitor what the government does with our personal data and to audit (through representatives) the processes for managing the data and keeping them secure. The Sunlight Foundation (www.sunlightfoundation.com), of which I am a trustee, is encouraging people to find out and post information about their congressional representatives and, ultimately, about all public servants.

Sunshine for Businesses

As for businesses’ privacy rights, they don’t (and shouldn’t) have many. True, they have a right to record their own transactions with customers—and transactions done on credit typically require customers to prove their creditworthiness by giving up private information. But just as a company can refuse to sell on credit, a consumer can refuse to do business with a company that asks for too much data. Beyond that, everything should be negotiable. Customers can demand to know what companies are doing with their data, and if the customers don’t like the response, they can move on. What the law needs to enforce is that companies actually follow the practices they disclose.

As with disclosures by government (and especially by politicians when they run for office), disclosure about businesses is going beyond what is required by regulation. In every sphere of activity, the little guy is biting back. All kinds of Web sites are devoted to ratings, discussions and other user-generated content about services—hotels, doctors, and the like—as well as products. To be sure, many of the hotel reviews are posted by the hotels themselves or by their competitors. (To discourage such tactics, some sites require user biographies and encourage users to rate the credibility of the other users and reviewers.) Patients can check out doctors and hospitals on a variety of sites, from HealthGrades.com (a paid service) to a number of sites funded by advertising.

For user information about physical products, consider a proposed new service called Barcode Wikipedia (www.sicamp.org/?page_id=21). This service will enable users to post whatever they know or can find out about a product—its ingredients or components, where it was manufactured or assembled, the labor practices of the maker, its environmental impact or side effects, and so on. Companies are free to post on the site as well, telling their side of the story. With such open access, of course, postings are likely to include exaggerations and untruths as well as useful information. Yet with time—as Wikipedia itself has demonstrated—users will police other users, and the truth, more or less, will emerge.

Public Lives

Until recently, privacy for most people was afforded (though not guaranteed) by information friction: Information about what you did in private didn’t travel too far unless you were famous or went to extreme lengths to be public about your activities. Now the concept of privacy itself is changing. Many adults are appalled at what they find on Facebook or MySpace. Some adolescents are aware of the risks of using social-networking Web sites but don’t take them seriously—a teenage shortcoming from time immemorial. And it’s likely that some kind of statute of limitations on foolish behavior will emerge: Most employers (who can search the Web pages of job applicants as well as anybody) will simply lower their standards and keep hiring, though some may remain stricter. Just think of tattoos: 20 years ago adults warned kids against getting them. Now every second woman in my health-club locker room seems to have a tattoo, and I assume it’s the same proportion or more for the men.

Kids still have a sense of privacy, and they can still be hurt by the opinions of others. It’s just that more of them are used to living more of their lives in public than their parents are. I think that’s a real change. But the 20th century was also a change from the 19th century. In the 19th century few people slept alone: children slept together in one room, if not with their parents. Some rich people had rooms of their own, but they also had servants to take out their chamber pots, help dress them and take care of their most intimate needs. Our 20th-century notions of physical privacy are quite new.

For centuries before that, most people in most villages knew a great deal about one another. Yet little was explicit. What was different in the past is that Juan could not go online and see what Alice was saying. Juan might have guessed what Alice knew, but he didn’t have to face the fact that Alice knew it. Likewise, Juan could easily avoid Alice. Today if Juan is Alice’s ex-boyfriend, he can torment himself by watching her flirt online. Is there such a concept as privacy from one’s own desires?

My Data, Myself

A second major change in personal privacy is that people are learning to exert some control over which of their data others can see. Facebook has given millions of people the tools—and, somewhat inadvertently, practice in using them. Last year Facebook annoyed some of its users with Beacon, a service that tracked their off-site purchases and informed their friends. The practice had been disclosed, but not effectively, and as a result many users discovered the privacy settings they had previously ignored. (Facebook subsequently rejiggered things to a more sensible approach, and the fuss died down.) The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Now many members change their privacy settings, both for incoming news from their friends (do you really want to know every time Matt goes on a date?) and for outgoing news to your friends (do you really want to tell everyone about your sales trip to Redmond, Wash.?). Users can share photographs within private groups or post them for all to see.

Flickr, a Web site for sharing photographs, enables users to control who sees them, albeit in a limited way. (Full disclosure: I was an investor in Flickr.) But those controls are likely to get more precise. Now, if you want, you can define a closed group, but that’s not quite the same as being able to make selective disclosures to specific friends. For example, you might want to create two intersecting family groups: one comprising your full siblings and your mother; the other comprising all your siblings plus your father and your stepmother but not your mother. Other people might create other family subsets—a father and his children, for instance, but not his new wife—the mere existence of which may call for privacy.

The blogger and social-networking expert danah boyd (yes, all lowercase), who is a nonresident fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, recently waxed eloquent about users’ desire to control exactly who sees their posts and what ads accompany those posts. In other words, what matters is not the ads I see; it’s the ads my friends see on “my” Web page. The issue for boyd—and for many other people—is not privacy so much as presentation of self (including, in boyd’s case, her own name). People know they cannot control everything others say about them, but they will flock to online-community services that enable them to control how they present themselves online, as well as who can see which of those presentations.

That kind of control will extend, I believe, to the notion of “friending” vendors. Alice is happy for the vendor that sold her a size 42 red sweater to know her purchasing habits, but she doesn’t want her friends, her current boyfriend or other vendors to have access to that information. Of course, Alice has no control over what other people say or know about her. If Juan continues wearing the red sweater even after their breakup, some may notice. And they can combine that information in lots of ways.

Nevertheless, transparency doesn’t make things simple. These new social tools make services and things, lives and relationships, appear exactly as complicated as they are—or perhaps as complicated as anyone cares to uncover. And the reality is that no single truth—or simple list of who is allowed to know what—exists. Ambiguity is a constant of history and novels, political campaigns and contract negotiations, sales pitches, thank-you letters and compliments, to say nothing of divorces, lawsuits, employee resignations and halfhearted invitations to lunch. Adding silicon and software won’t make the ambiguity go away.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...ss-of-security





Palin Had Another Private E-Mail Account, Company Says
Karl Vick

Gov. Sarah Palin maintained a private e-mail account that she used to communicate with a small circle of staff members outside the state government's secure official e-mail system, according to the Wasilla company that established the site.

The account was separate from the Yahoo e-mail address that was abruptly abandoned by the McCain campaign on Sept. 17, the day hackers penetrated the account and posted pages from it on the Internet. Palin had routinely used her Yahoo address for state business.

Quentin Algood, the owner of ITS Alaska, said a discreet e-mail system was created from an old campaign account, with access confined to "a group of people, her closest confidants and co-workers and advisers and the person she sleeps with."

Algood said the system was maintained by Frank Bailey, a Palin aide. Bailey disputed the existence of the private circle of e-mail recipients run through PalinForGovernor.com, the Web site that Algood, a Palin supporter, established free of charge for Palin's 2006 campaign.

"No, no, completely inaccurate," Bailey said in a brief interview last week. "We haven't used that domain in a long time."

A spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign acknowledged the accounts in a statement Tuesday.

"As a champion of government accountability and transparency, Governor Palin was exercising an abundance of caution to ensure that all state and personal business matters were being kept separate," said Meghan Stapleton. "Governor Palin is committed to serving with the highest regard toward ethics."

The existence of additional private e-mail accounts may affect two state probes into whether Palin, her husband and her staff attempted to influence the job status of a state trooper who divorced Palin's sister.

It also raises more questions about Palin's record of commingling the official and personal. The Yahoo inbox posted on the Internet contained family photos, notes from well-wishers and official state correspondence on pending legislation. "She had a number of personal addresses," said John Bitney, a former close aide who was fired by Palin. "I don't know why so many."

ITS technician Ryan Gattis described working with Bailey this spring to set up e-mail addresses linked to the dormant campaign Web site. Gattis said there appeared to be 10 to 15 addresses, chiefly the small circle of aides known in Alaska political circles as "Palinistas" for their fierce loyalty to Palin, with Bailey taking system administrator authority.

"They just wanted an e-mail system that they had control over," Gattis said. He said Bailey also inquired about options for encrypting e-mails but was discouraged by the $1,000 price tag of a commercial encryption product the technician recommended.

"Here is what I will tell you, is that Frank always maintained the e-mail," Algood said. "We did not create or delete or maintain or monitor their e-mail accounts. They're all self-administered mail servers, independent post offices.

"I have registered many domains for Frank and the campaign, and then they are given access to the mail, to the post office for that domain, and they can do with it as they see fit."

Palin placed Bailey on leave in August, when she released a recording of Bailey urging a state official to take action against the trooper formerly married to the governor's sister. Algood indicated that Bailey passed on the order from the McCain campaign to shutter the Palins' accounts the day her Yahoo inbox was posted on the Internet. Gattis said the accounts' contents were backed up in case they needed to be accessed later.

Research editor Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...093002699.html





Coming to Grips with an Internet that Never Forgets
Michael Geist

Political parties and analysts have been keeping close watch on the role of the Internet throughout the current election campaign in Canada. All parties have beefed up their online presence with countless Facebook groups, YouTube videos, Twitter postings, and specialized websites. Supporters of specific issues have also been active, led by the now-infamous Culture in Peril online video on the culture funding cuts that have generated more than a half a million views.

While those initiatives have attracted some interest, the most significant Internet effect has been the resignation of eight local candidates based on embarrassing or controversial information unearthed online.

Many observers have blamed the revelations on inadequate vetting processes, yet, the reality is these incidents shine the spotlight on an important but rarely discussed aspect of the Internet. Old blog postings, chat room discussions, or difficult-to-explain videos are captured by search engine databases and lie dormant until an intrepid searcher comes across it. In other words, the Internet never forgets.

The effect of a technology that never forgets marks a dramatic change in the way that we deal with the past. Most people have older embarrassing stories or incidents that they would prefer to forget.

Before the emergence of the Internet and cheap data storage, they had little reason to fear that these might come to light.

Today's digital generation will have a much different relationship with their past. In an always-on environment, videos, photographs, blog postings, and discussion room comments live forever online with great potential for negative consequences.

Candidates for public office may be fair game given the right of voters to fully vet their elected representatives. But the Internet that never forgets does not stop with politicians.

The digital generation posts everything from party photos to their thoughts on the issues of the day. This content has a "Hotel California" quality to it — you can post it anytime you like, but it never leaves. The postings may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but there is concern future employers or academic admissions officers will adopt a different perspective.

Search engines are frequently the first place people turn to when they want to learn more about a potential applicant or interviewee. More sophisticated tools for uncovering blog postings or Facebook entries are now readily available, providing the potential to develop detailed online profiles that may or may not reflect the real person.

Given that people will likely post more rather than less in the future, there is a need to reconsider how this online story is interpreted. The conventional approach might be to take everything at face value, viewing the embarrassing content as reflecting a character fault in the person (for that reason, new services that seek to scrub online postings have begun to emerge).

Companies, schools, and other organizations should resist the temptation to judge based on a years-old blog posting or video, however. If the cameras are always on, they are bound to catch something that people would prefer be kept private. Similarly, if social interaction means posting content online, some regrettable comments are sure to follow. The Internet may never forget, but sometimes we should be willing to.
http://www.thestar.com/article/507910





Not Too Small to Appear on a Big No-Fly Watch List
Joe Sharkey

A RESPONSE to last week’s column about the chronic troubles of air travelers came from Christine Anderson, who says she was with her son Jack both times he was told that he was on the terrorist watch list.

The first time was in 2004, when Jack; his mother; his brothers Joey, then 8, and Joshua, then 5; and their grandmother, Susan, arrived at the airport in Minneapolis for a trip to Disney World.

“The woman at the ticket counter demanded, ‘Who is John Anderson?’ ” Ms. Anderson recalled. She pointed at the baby stroller and said, “He’s right here.” The suspect, then 2 years old, blinked his big blue eyes and happily gummed his pacifier.

“That baby’s on the no-fly watch list,” the agent said.

His brothers became agitated. “We’re not going to Disney World!” one of them wailed, according to Ms. Anderson.

After about an hour, the airline ascertained that the Jack in the stroller was not the Jack on the terrorist list, and the family made its flight.

Like business travelers I hear from every week, Jack was actually flagged because his name matches, or is similar to, the name of someone on the federal terrorist watch list. Like many travelers, Jack and his mother have been erroneously informed by airline clerks that their names are on the list.

In fact, their names merely turn up on lists compiled by individual airlines, which then check them against the federal data.

The Transportation Security Administration said on Monday that it planned to crack down on, and perhaps fine, airlines whose employees erroneously misinform passengers that they are on the terrorist watch list, rather than on an airline list.

“We are very concerned with airline representatives telling people they’re on a list when it’s not appropriate,” said Christopher White, a spokesman for the agency.

The confusion stems from federal procedures that prevent the agency from directly screening passengers in advance because of privacy concerns when airlines provide passenger information to the government. As a result, the airlines have to compile a database of names and variants of names to check against the federal list. Once an innocent passenger shows up and voluntarily provides identification, airlines can then clear that person, case by case and trip by trip, as not being on the watch list.

Airlines say they are unfairly stuck with the logistical and financial burdens of ensuring that any given passenger is not on the federal list. The federal list contains names and aliases, and usually detailed personal information, about suspects, from information provided by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Airlines can collect only names and variants of names.

A program called Secure Flight, which will allow the T.S.A. to screen passengers directly, has been stalled by the privacy concerns. But with public discontent growing over the current haphazard administration of the watch list at airports, it is now expected to take effect next year.

That will be none too soon for the business travelers I hear from every week whose names raise a red flag when they fly. Christine Anderson will be among those welcoming it.

Her concern, she told me, goes beyond a mere hour’s delay at the airport while Jack’s name is cleared. It’s more about the effect such a stigma has on people like Jack, she said.

Jack’s brothers, of course, made a big deal about their baby brother being a terrorist suspect — especially when it happened again two years later on another family trip when Jack, then 4, was taken aside.

“I understand a delay at the airport is a small price to pay for security,” Ms. Anderson said, adding: “But it’s more than just a delay. Jack’s a sweet, sensitive boy. What will the ramifications be for him, years later? Kids don’t rationalize like adults. His take on this is, ‘I don’t do bad things, but they say I do.’ And you can’t tell him differently.”

Since the last airport incident, the family has driven on vacations to avoid airport trouble for Jack.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30road.html





Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border

No suspicion required under DHS policies
Ellen Nakashima

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at least one case -- and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical and financial records.

When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed. Copies sent to non-federal entities must be returned to DHS. But the documents specify that there is no limitation on authorities keeping written notes or reports about the materials.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy." In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had "plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant" to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that "the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

With about 400 million travelers entering the country each year, "as a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary [for a more thorough examination] when there is some level of suspicion," Chertoff wrote. "Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed."

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco upheld the government's power to conduct searches of an international traveler's laptop without suspicion of wrongdoing. The Customs policy can be viewed at: http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/..._authority.pdf.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...nav=rss_nation





Kevin Mitnick Detained, Released after Colombia Trip
Elinor Mills

Since being released from prison eight years ago, Kevin Mitnick's brushes with the law have consisted of a few parking tickets and a citation for driving without a front license plate--that is, until he returned from a trip to Colombia two weeks ago.

After landing at the Atlanta airport for a security conference, Mitnick was detained for four hours for reasons still not fully explained. To make matters worse, while customs officials in Atlanta were busy inspecting his cell phone, laptop, and luggage, police in Bogota were ripping open a package he had mailed to his U.S. address on suspicion that it contained cocaine.

The simultaneous incidents gave Mitnick deja vu of his days as a fugitive pursued by the FBI for breaking into computer networks, only this time, he hadn't broken any laws.

"There was uncertainty, fear, and panic because I didn't know what was going on, and I didn't do anything wrong," he said in a recent telephone interview with CNET News. "In my mind, I thought I was being set up for something."

Here's a rundown of what happened:

Mitnick's Delta Airlines plane landed in Atlanta on September 16 at around 3 p.m. He had flown in from Bogota, where he had gone to give a speech to the newspaper El Tiempo and to visit his girlfriend.

The first sign of trouble was when a U.S. customs agent swiped his passport through the computer system and started staring intently at the screen and typing. "Kevin," the agent said with a big smile on his face. "Guess what? There are some people downstairs who want to have a word with you, but don't worry. Everything will be OK."

As if that wasn't bad enough, while he waited to retrieve his luggage, Mitnick's cell phone rang. It was his girlfriend in Bogota saying she'd just gotten a call from the police there. They wanted permission to open up a package of computer equipment and souvenirs he'd mailed back to the U.S. a few days earlier because they said they found traces of cocaine on the package.

He finished the call and went back to the business at hand, offering his luggage up for inspection. A customs agent asked if he had ever been arrested. "Yes." Had he ever been to jail? "Yes." For how long? "Five years." They knew the answers all too well, of course.

In his luggage, they found a MacBook Pro, a Dell XPS M1210 laptop, an Asus 900 mini-laptop, three or four hard drives, numerous USB storage devices, some Bluetooth dongles, three iPhones, and four Nokia cell phones (with different SIM cards for different countries).

They also found a lock-picking kit and an HID proximity card spoofer that can be used to snag data stored on physical access cards by swiping it in front of them. The data can then be used to enter locked doors without having to make a forged access card. Mitnick says he used the device in a demonstration about security in his speech in Bogota, but that the customs agents' eyes lit up when they saw it, thinking it was a credit card reader.

Mitnick asked if he was under arrest and was told that, no, he was just being detained. He asked if there is a warrant for his arrest and he was told, "We don't know yet." The agents let him call his lawyer and his family.

"I was really nervous because I didn't know what the hell was going on," he said.

Agents from the Immigrations Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived to question him. They asked why he was in Atlanta and he told them; he was there to moderate a panel at a security conference sponsored by the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS). Asked for proof, he fired up a laptop to show them the itinerary in his e-mail. But when he clicked "yes" to have Firefox clear his private data--an automatic response to a default setting--the agents snatched the laptop away from him, thinking he was deleting evidence.

"Then I realized I was logged in and I don't want them to have my password," Mitnick said. So, he quickly reached over and hits the power button to "off."

Fortunately for Mitnick, one of the members of the panel he was to moderate works for the FBI, and customs agents were able to reach him to verify Mitnick's story. Meanwhile, ASIS organizers, worried about Mitnick's non-arrival for his awaiting airport ride, had also called the director of security at the airport and helped clear things up. The FBI in Atlanta cleared Mitnick of any wrongdoing, so ICE let him go after apologizing several times. After some more questioning from customs officials, he was released.

But what about the package in Bogota? Police there tore open the box, took the electronic equipment apart, and destroyed the hard drive trying to open it by drilling a hole in it, but didn't find any drugs. The two incidents were, apparently, completely unrelated and coincidental.

"Can you imagine if I had said to the agents 'Does this have to do with the cocaine?'" Mitnick jokes.

He can laugh about it now, but he was willing to share the story as a cautionary tale for anyone traveling into the United States with computer equipment. He was red-flagged for obvious reasons, and someone without his background might be able to stay under the radar. However, scrutiny is at the whim of officials who have been said to target political activists, nuns, and people who just happen to have a last name on no-fly government lists.

And then there is the recently bestowed right customs officials have to seize laptops crossing into the country with no cause whatsoever--though that may change. Legislation was recently introduced that would require reasonable suspicion of illegal activity before border agents could search electronic devices of U.S. citizens.

"They can detain you for four hours, inspect everything, and put you through the third degree for no reason. It's really a police state," Mitnick said. "I travel in foreign countries that have even more stringent rules, and I never have problems."

To protect his privacy and that of his clients, Mitnick encrypts all the confidential data on his laptops, transmits it over the Internet for storage on servers in the U.S., and wipes it from the computer before returning from any international trips, just in case officials decide to search or seize his equipment. He also encrypts his hard drive. And now, he says he is going to keep a "clone" of his MacBook at home so he will have an exact duplicate of it if it is ever seized.

"I don't harbor any ill feelings toward (customs), but I was really scared because of the circumstances that were happening in Bogota at the same time," he says. "I feel lucky in a sense, and I feel violated in a sense."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-100...?tag=rtcol;pop





Airport 'X-Ray Art' Courts TSA Trouble
Paul McNamara

Techno-artist Evan Roth has a message for the Transportation Safety Administration -- several messages, actually -- about what he considers excessive airport security "theater" ... and he has chosen an intentionally provocative method of delivery: the TSA's own X-ray screening machines.



Here's Roth's idea, which he calls "TSA Communication" and tells me has already made it through three trial airport runs: Take a metal plate, stencil and cut out a message -- words or an image -- place the plate at the bottom of your carry-on bag, and watch what happens as the TSA employee operating the airport X-ray machine notices ... or doesn't notice. The cut-out images, which could be anything, currently range from the benign: an American flag; to the smart-alecky: "Nothing to see here;" to what some might find offensive and a TSA agent somewhere is bound to cause a fuss over: a silhouette of a box cutter, which Roth calls "the exact opposite of a box cutter."

(You can see more examples here.)

Best known for co-founding The Graffiti Research Lab -- "Dedicated to outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication" -- Roth and I have been swapping e-mail about his TSA project. I've also consulted an expert on airport security screening to get that point of view. Roth first, then the expert:

Are you serious about doing this?

So far I have traveled with the plates three times (I'm actually answering these questions in the Hong Kong airport having just passed security 20 minutes ago) and I plan to continue doing so.

I fly all the time, and a big part of doing this project is simply so I have something to look forward to when I go to the airport. I hate flying, I hate airports, I hate security, I hate wasting time, and most of all I hate being forced to play a role in the theater of security.

Of course having to take off my shoes and throw out my 4oz Jell-O isn't the end of the world, but by passively going along with it I feel as if I am agreeing to take part in the ruse. Taking off my belt is not going to make flying any safer. What would make flying safer is if America would stop being such an international a*****e. But since neither of these situations seems very likely to end any time soon, I would rather go through the dance of airport security as an active participant rather than a passive one.

Are you at all concerned about the obvious risks associated with joking with airport security?

Legally I don't think I'm breaking any laws by carrying the plates in my carry-on bag. I've read the TSA's list of prohibited items, and while a 4oz container of yogurt might pose some problems, "TSA Communication Plates" aren't currently on the list. I would, however, consider it my crowning achievement as an artist if they added "TSA Communication Plates" to their list of prohibited items (I'm not holding my breath).

And while there is a certain amount of humor in the project, I wouldn't be doing this if it was only intended simply as a joke.

Are you concerned about what others might do if your idea catches on?

I am excited by what others might do if this catches on. I think if we all got a little more accustomed to creatively talking back instead of following instructions, the U.S. would be in much better place.

People have been sending me lots of good ideas (for plates), for example the 4th Amendment, "(TSA Administrator) Kip Hawley is an idiot," and, "Put me in the slow lane where you hand search everything I'm carrying."

What has happened on your trial runs?

At the Amsterdam airport I went through security with the box cutter plate (which I'm calling "The Exact Opposite Of A Box Cutter"). They asked me what was in my bag and when I reached to open it up they got a little jumpy and told me not to touch it. They swiveled the monitor around to show me the item in question and I was happy to see that the resulting image showed up almost exactly like the concept images I had made up. After I told them it was an art project they relaxed and allowed me to take it out of the bag, at which point they let me go (you have to love the Netherlands).

Then today I took the American flag plate from Hong Kong to Bangkok, and they didn't notice .

We already know what happens if you try to go through TSA screening -- say at Boston's Logan Airport -- wearing a pin that looks like a bomb. As Roth's project has started to get a bit of attention on the Internet, it's been suggested by many that he is simply begging for trouble.

Coincidentally, I happen to have a reliable source -- OK, he's my brother -- who works for a company that provides screening equipment to airports, military installations and the most security-sensitive of government facilities. (He has Secret Service clearance and I could tell you the famous place where he is today, but then he'd have to kill us both.)

I sent him the link about Roth's X-ray art and asked whether he thought this would a) work as the artist intends, and b) go over very well at your typical airport security station. His reply:

It is beyond me why anyone would do anything that would increase their likelihood of being selected for more intensive screening. It's a funny concept, but a very bad idea in practice.

Yes, it's very doable -- we do similar things for testing, like cut a hand-grenade silhouette out of a thin sheet of lead. If anything obscures the imagery of the bag, the screener will certainly be more likely to perform additional screening.

And you don't have to have Secret Service clearance to know what "additional screening" can mean. Roth says he doesn't like flying now? I'm thinking he's going to be liking it a lot less before long.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33471





‘Fakeproof’ E-Passport is Cloned in Minutes
Steve Boggan

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.

Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged.

In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.

The Home Office has always argued that faked chips would be spotted at border checkpoints because they would not match key codes when checked against an international data-base. But only ten of the forty-five countries with e-passports have signed up to the Public Key Directory (PKD) code system, and only five are using it. Britain is a member but will not use the directory before next year. Even then, the system will be fully secure only if every e-passport country has joined.

Some of the 45 countries, including Britain, swap codes manually, but criminals could use fake e-passports from countries that do not share key codes, which would then go undetected at passport control.

The tests suggest that if the microchips are vulnerable to cloning then bogus biometrics could be inserted in fake or blank passports.

Tens of millions of microchipped passports have been issued by the 45 countries in the belief that they will make international travel safer. They contain a tiny radio frequency chip and antenna attached to the inside back page. A special electronic reader sends out an encrypted signal and the chip responds by sending back the holder’s ID and biometric details.

Britain introduced e-passports in March 2006. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the United States demanded that other countries adopt biometric passports. Many of the 9/11 bombers had travelled on fake passports.

The tests for The Times were conducted by Jeroen van Beek, a security researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Building on research from the UK, Germany and New Zealand, Mr van Beek has developed a method of reading, cloning and altering microchips so that they are accepted as genuine by Golden Reader, the standard software used by the International Civil Aviation Organisation to test them. It is also the software recommended for use at airports.

Using his own software, a publicly available programming code, a £40 card reader and two £10 RFID chips, Mr van Beek took less than an hour to clone and manipulate two passport chips to a level at which they were ready to be planted inside fake or stolen paper passports.

A baby boy’s passport chip was altered to contain an image of Osama bin Laden, and the passport of a 36-year-old woman was changed to feature a picture of Hiba Darghmeh, a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed three people in 2003. The unlikely identities were chosen so that there could be no suggestion that either Mr van Beek or The Times was faking viable travel documents.

“We’re not claiming that terrorists are able to do this to all passports today or that they will be able to do it tomorrow,” Mr van Beek said. “But it does raise concerns over security that need to be addressed in a more public and open way.”

The tests also raise serious questions about the Government’s £4 billion identity card scheme, which relies on the same biometric technology. ID cards are expected to contain similar microchips that will store up to 50 pieces of personal and biometric information about their holders. Last night Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, called on ministers to take urgent action to remedy the security flaws discovered by The Times. “It is of deep concern that the technology underpinning a key part of the UK’s security can be compromised so easily,” he said.

The ability to clone chips leaves travellers vulnerable to identity theft when they surrender their passports at hotels or car rental companies. Criminals in the back office could read the chips and clone them. The original passport holder’s name and date of birth could be left on the fake chip, with the picture, fingerprints and other biometric data of a criminal client added. The criminal could then travel the world using the stolen identity and the original passport holder would be none the wiser.

The Home Office said last night that it had yet to see evidence of someone being able to manipulate data in an e-passport. A spokesman said: “No one has yet been able to demonstrate that they are able to modify, change or alter data within the chip. If any data were to be changed, modified or altered it would be immediately obvious to the electronic reader.”

The International Civil Aviation Organisation said: “The PKD ensures that e-passports used at border control points . . . are genuine and unaltered. In effect it renders the passport fool-proof. However, all states issuing e-passports must join the PKD, otherwise that assurance cannot be given.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4467106.ece





Hackers Clone Elvis's Passport

Hackers have released source code that allows the "backup" of RFID-protected passports, although the tool can potentially be used to create fake or cloned documents.

The Hacker's Choice, a non-commercial group of computer security experts, has released a video showing a cloned passport being approved by a security scanner at a Dutch airport. When the reader scans the passport it is revealed to belong to one Elvis Aaron Presley, complete with picture.

A blog post on the site explains that the "attack makes it possible to copy, forge and modify the data so that it is still accepted as a genuine valid passport by the terminal."

However, the scanner is not the same type used at actual border controls, so it is unclear whether this tool could actually be used to fool passport control security checks.

Strangely, for a group of computer experts, their proposed solution to the vulnerability is to avoid computers altogether.

"We know that humans are good at border control. In the end they protected us well for the last 120 years. We also know that humans are good at pattern matching and image recognition. Humans also do an excellent job 'assessing' the person and not just the passport. Take the human part away and passport security falls apart," says the blog post, signed off from The Ministry Of Truth.

"Never let a computer do a job that can be done by a human."

This is not the first time that the security of RFID passports has been called into question. As early as 2006 researchers at the Black Hat conference demonstrated RFID chip cloning.

Last year it was revealed that RFID chips only have a two year warranty, despite being issued in documents designed to last for ten years. The Government has nevertheless said that it is "very confident" that the chips will last for five times their warranty period.

Other RFID-based systems have also come under attack, such as the Oyster card system used on the London Underground. Dutch hackers were able to alter the information stored on the card in order to gain a day's free travel.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/227754/h...-passport.html





The Risk of ePassports and RFID
Posted by John Doe

Today vonJeek/THC released his tool and a video how to duplicate (clone) and modify a Passport with RFID chip.

http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-epassport/

The weakness is in the way the system has been rolled out. The terminal accepts self-signed data.

This attack is different to the grunwald attack. VonJeek's attack makes it possible to copy, forge and modify the data so that it is still accepted as a genuine valid passport by the terminal.

Using a Certification Authority (CA) could solve the attack but at the same time introduces a new set of attack vectors:

1. The CA becomes a single point of failure. It becomes the juicy/high-value target for the attacker. Single point of failures are not good. Attractive targets are not good.

Any person with access to the CA key can undetectably fake passports. Direct attacks, virus, misplacing the key by accident (the UK government is good at this!) or bribery are just a few ways of getting the CA key.

2. The single CA would need to be trusted by all governments. This is not practical as this means that passports would no longer be a national matter.

3. Multiple CA's would not work either. Any country could use its own CA to create a valid passport of any other country. Read this sentence again: Country A can create a passport data set of Country B and sign it with Country A's CA key. The terminal will validate and display the information as data from Country B.

This option also multiplies the number of 'juicy' targets. It makes it also more likely for a CA key to leak. Revocation lists for certificates only work when a leak/loss is detected. In most cases it will not be detected.

Note: The last item received some comments. Some readers suggested that this can be fixed. Yes, of course, any system can be fixed. Indeed it would be a first good step by the terminal to check that a passport from country A is also signed with the CA key of country A and not by the CA key of country B.

The current implementation and plans make it unlikely that this will be implemented securely. In the end we are trusted those people who gave out ePassports that can be read by anyone and not just authorized terminals. We are trusting those people who say that good security practice to verify the validity of a passport is optional and not mandatory.

So what's the solution? We know that humans are good at Border Control. In the end they protected us well for the last 120 years. We also know that humans are good at pattern matching and image recognition. Humans also do an excellent job 'assessing' the person and not just the passport. Take the human part away and passport security falls apart.

Never let a computer do a job that can be done by a human.

Let's take a look at a few other things now possible with ePassports:

ePassports aid Data Theft:

The 3 meter barrier has recently been broken for reading RFID data (e.g. your ePassport data) from a distance 3 meters away. Attacks always get better. They never get worse. The next barrier is 5, 10 and 20 meters.

An attacker can read the data from your ePassport (while you walk in the street!) and can use your credentials to authenticate himself or duplicate your passport.

ePassports aid Terrorism:

Thanks to the ePassports is it now possible to build Smart-IED's. A Smart-IED waits until a specific person passes by before detonating or let's say until there are more than 10 americans in the room. Boom.

Do ePassports make you feel more safe now as the government says they would do?

Dont get me wrong. Here at THC we love technology but we dont trust it.

Interesting times,

The Ministry Of Truth
http://www.thc.org

http://blog.thc.org/index.php?/archi...-and-RFID.html





MI6 Photos "Sold on Ebay"

A camera sold on Ebay contained photos and confidential records of MI6 terror suspects, according to newspaper reports.

Photographs, fingerprints and confidential documents relating to suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists were allegedly found in the memory of the second-hand Nikon Coolpix camera, which was bought on the auction site for only £17.

The confidential files were discovered after the buyer downloaded his holiday photos. He immediately reported the files to the police, who initially treated it as a joke, according to a report in The Sun.

However, the police subsequently descended on the man's home, seizing his computer and camera equipment.

A spokesman for Hertfordshire Police told the newspaper: "We can confirm we seized a camera after a member of the public reported it. Intelligence officers are investigating."

The police have reportedly replaced the seized equipment, at a cost of £1,000.

The news is hardly likely to help MI6's recruitment drive, which it was revealed earlier this week, saw the intelligence service place adverts on Facebook.

The extraordinary leak also comes just a day after it was announced that a Cabinet Office official who left top secret documents on a train is to be charged under the Official Secrets Act.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/227376/m...d-on-ebay.html





New DOS Attack Is a Killer
Snake Bytes

Things are a-brewin’ in Sweden. Sweden is not just home of the infamous bikini team, it is also the home of Outpost 24, an equally sexy software-as-a-service network scanning service, and the employer of my friend Robert E. Lee and his colleague Jack C. Louis. These guys are the inventors of UnicornScan, a user-land TCP stack turned into a port scanner. Never heard of it? Use Nmap exclusively? Well if you run Linux, I suggest checking it out, especially if missed ports in your portscan is inexcusable. But I digress.

Robert and Jack are smart dudes. I've known them for years, and they've always been one step ahead of the game. A couple of years ago, Jack found some anomalies in which machines would stop working in some very specific circumstances while being scanned. A few experiments, tons of reading through documentation, and one mysteriously named tool called "sockstress" later, and the two are now touting a nearly universal denial-of-service (DOS) attack that can be performed on almost any normal broadband Internet connection -- in just a few seconds.

How bad is it? Well, in an interview --- fast-forward five minutes in to hear it in English), the two were asked if they could take out a data center. While they've never tried, it appears to be a totally plausible attack. Worse yet, unlike most DOS attacks, the machines often do not come back online once the attack is over. The victim system just doesn’t respond any more. Great, huh?

Robert and I talk a lot, and I asked him if he'd be willing to DOS us, and he flatly said, "Unfortunately, it may affect other devices between here and there so it's not really a good idea." Got an idea of what we're talking about now? This appears not to be a single bug, but in fact at least five, and maybe as many as 30 different potential problems. They just haven't dug far enough into it to really know how bad it can get. The results range from complete shutdown of the vulnerable machine, to dropping legitimate traffic.

The two researchers have already contacted multiple vendors since the beginning of September (I've had a small hand in getting them in contact with one of the vendors). Robert and Jack are waiting with no specific timeline to hear back from the affected TCP stack vendors. Think firewalls, OSes, Web-enabled devices, and so on. Yup, they'll all need to be hardened, if the vendors can come up with a good solution to the problem. IPv6 services appear to be more affected by the fact that they require more resources and are no more secure since they still reside on top of an unhardened TCP stack.

Jack and Robert are both trying to be as forthcoming as possible with the affected vendors without giving any specific information on how the attack works to the public at large -- openly acknowledging how dangerous the attack really is. Their hope is that the vendors appreciate the problem and come up with fixes that may not be initially obvious to them. I asked Robert when they planned to release their tool, to which he said he wasn't sure he would "ever release sockstress." The details, however, will be forthcoming once vendor patches are available. There are no mitigating short-term fixes, folks.

I feel winter slowly coming, and it would be a shame if entire power grids could be taken offline with a few keystrokes, or if supply chains could be interrupted. I hear it gets awfully cold in Scandinavia.
http://www.darkreading.com/blog.asp?...T.svl=tease2_2





P2P Sites Spreading Obama/McCain Malware
Jason Lee Miller

Beware of downloading campaign videos via peer-to-peer networks like LimeWire and FrostWire. A large percentage of them may be carrying something worse than mudslinging.

Security company Webroot is warning those keen on following this grotesque circus of an election that hackers are exploiting trusting users of Gnutella-based file sharing networks. What appear to be campaign John McCain and Barack Obama campaign videos were found to be often seeded with malware.

In one test, of 34 search results for "Obama Speech" on FrostWire, 14 of the results produced contained active malware. Of the 19 search results for "McCain Speech," five were found out.

Two lessons there: Obama speeches are more popular, and more hip to target.

"Peer-to-peer networks pose some of the greatest security risks on Internet," said Paul Piccard, director, Threat Research, Webroot. "Because P2P networks lack the security measures found in enterprise networks or trusted Web sites, users of these networks may put themselves or their companies at increased risk by downloading malicious content or leaking confidential data."

The most common malware variant found in the campaign videos was W32/Zipwire, acquired via a zip file titled with variations like "Democratic Convention 2008 -- Barack Obama Acceptance Speech.zip." Within, as one might expect is an executable file that, when run, infects the host machine with rogue antivirus applications. These phony antivirus apps detect fake security issues in order to entice users to buy fake solutions.

Webroot also found password stealers and backdoors downloadable via these campaign files.
http://www.securitypronews.com/insid...inMalware.html





Spanish Police Arrest 121 in Child Porn Raids
AP

Spanish police arrested 121 people in the country's biggest-ever crackdown on child pornography, seizing discs containing millions of video and photo files shared by a network that distributed them in 75 countries, authorities said Wednesday.

Two of the suspects produced pornographic material themselves using members of their own families, police said in a statement. Those arrested came from all kinds of backgrounds, including pilots, salespeople, porters, taxi drivers and bank employees, it said.

The arrests were made last week and four of those in custody are minors, police said.

Brazilian police helped with the operation, which began in July 2007. A further 96 people have been named as suspects in the case, which involved raids on more than 250 homes across Spain.

Some of the videos and photographs that were seized featured extremely disturbing material, police said.

Most of the suspects are Spaniards, police said without naming the other nationalities. Police said the detainees used peer-to-peer, or P2P, servers to share at least three download sites.

Spanish authorities said they have arrested more than 1,200 people in connection with child pornography on the Internet in the last five years.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...ZnbZwD93HLEG80





'It's Every Man for Himself'

Meet Vint Cerf, the 'father of the internet', and find out what he thinks about net neutrality, spam and how we deal with use and abuse of the web
Jack Schofield

Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf is a very distinguished, kindly, silver-haired gentleman in a three-piece suit, so perhaps I shouldn't expect him to ride to our rescue with six guns blazing, but I'd settle for a small pearl-handled silver pistol. I want to know who is going to clean up the internet now that it's full of scammers, spammers and criminals running zombie networks, while its connecting pipes are clogged up with porn-to-porn file swapping.

Sadly, Cerf doesn't have a silver bullet, either. "It's every man for himself," he says, grinning. "In the end, it seems every machine has to defend itself. The internet was designed that way."

Aiming high

And he should know. In the early 1970s, Cerf co-designed the TCP/IP protocol suite on which internet communications are based, and was founding president of the Internet Society.

He led the team that engineered the first email service to run over the internet; he chaired Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; and he has been working with Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Interplanetary Internet (bit.ly/vint2). It may be a case of "tomorrow, the stars", but the here-and-now can seem a bit of a mess.

Cerf points out that "like every medium, the internet can be abused. When we think about it, we can commit fraud locally and internationally using the telephone system and postal service. We can perpetrate a variety of crimes, and in every instance where we have had a technology like that, ultimately society has said: 'There are certain constraints, certain behaviours we will consider to be antisocial. We may not be able to prevent this happening, but we will choose to have consequences if we catch you.'

"This question comes up annually at the internet governance meetings. So I won't be surprised if there are national and international agreements reached about certain unacceptable behaviours on the net, and they will be enforced to one degree or another."
However, Cerf is also convinced that it's the internet's openness - in allowing people with new ideas to do their thing without getting anyone's permission - that is the main source of its power.

"So I have this almost schizoid hope that we deal with some of the abuses in the net and, at the same time, we don't lose this very open environment, so that information-sharing remains as open as it has been," he says.

One example is Google, a company that Cerf - now 65 - joined three years ago as Chief Internet Evangelist. "Google wouldn't exist if Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] hadn't just built this thing and tried it out. The same is true with Jerry [Yang, co-founder] at Yahoo," says Cerf.

The internet hardly needs an evangelist now. However, it still needs defending, and Cerf has been putting the case for "net neutrality" - a hot topic for US politicians, who are being lobbied by the phone companies.

"We're expecting new legislation," he says. "I think there should be very strong measures to prevent anti-competitive actions, so I'm actually very sanguine about the passing of legislation in the United States."

Traffic cops

He says Google's aim is to ensure open communications, which means equally open to different technologies and different types of traffic. However, limiting the amount of traffic each person uses is a different matter. "As long as you get the capacity you're paying for, that's a form of fairness," says Cerf. "It's orthogonal to net neutrality."

As the publicly recognised "father of the internet" and winner of a Turing and other awards, Cerf also opens doors for Google. Last Wednesday he spent the morning talking at the British Computer Society before visiting the Guardian for a Q&A with a couple of dozen staff over a sandwich lunch. He started out by showing us his dancing programmable Sony MP3 player, Rolly, which shows we can now put computer power wherever we need it, he says. It's really an ice-breaker to show he's not stuffy.

Suffice it to say that Cerf doesn't think the net will be brought to its knees either by botnets or spam. "Spam is a problem, but we can filter it," he says, and its demands on capacity are "small relative to the bits carrying images and video". As for the zombies, he points out that "the botnet herders don't want to destroy the internet: they need it to make a living. We may not think it's acceptable, but that's their motivation."

He also doesn't think the net is going to exhibit any form of consciousness. "I don't believe we will see grow out of the network the kind of intelligence that sounds like a Fred Hoyle science fiction novel," he says. However, "even if the internet is not intelligent and aware, it will feel more intelligent than it does today. But it's fair to say that if you want the system to do things you care about, you have to let it know what you care about. You have to give up some information voluntarily."

House of cards

Afterwards, over a coffee, I raise the spectre of the "two-tier internet" that some companies would like. There could be, for example, a trusted, controlled "overnet" for commercial and business use, and an "undernet" where anything goes.

"It's probably not wise to design systems that assume that a particular subset is trusted," says Cerf. "I don't mean to say you shouldn't try, but every machine that can be compromised is a potential hazard. A machine that was OK yesterday is certainly not OK today: it may have ingested an infected memory stick. At the very least, you have to keep validating it. My bias right now tends to be 'It's every man for himself' - you need to be suspicious whether you're inside the trusted cloud or not, and when it fails, the house of cards tends to collapse."

But the continuous validation of known sources is not something for which the internet provides much help. "The idea of a virtual private network was not part of the original design," says Cerf, with a grin. "It was actually an oversight. It didn't occur to me that it would be useful until afterwards."

Of course, no one foresaw just how big, or how pervasive, the internet was going to become. In the end, we should probably be grateful the designers opted not for control but for freedom.

Curriculum Vitae

Age 65

Education Graduated Stanford University, 1965, BS in Mathematics; MS in Computer Science, UCLA; PhD in Computer Science, UCLA

Career

Includes assistant professor, Stanford University; US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); vice-president, MCI; founding president of the Internet Society; visiting scientist, Nasa; chairman, ICANN; chief internet evangelist, Google

Family Married to Sigrid; two sons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...views.internet





Chip Maker Rambus Wins Battles, But Faces Bigger War
Laurie J. Flynn

Craig Hampel has spent the last two years trying to design the next leap in memory chip technology, one that will allow computers to display more detailed graphics even faster.

Now comes the hard part: persuading the world’s memory chip manufacturers to pay for it.

Mr. Hampel is the most senior engineer at Rambus, a Silicon Valley technology company that has spent much of the last decade suing many of the biggest names in the computer memory business over its technology patents, and getting sued in turn. As a result, Rambus has been struggling to thrive in a $30 billion industry where it finds itself with few friends, even though it claims its designs are used throughout the industry.

Rambus-designed memory chip technology is in the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 game machines, and thanks to a 1992 agreement with Intel, a vast majority of personal computers. The list of companies in litigation with Rambus is almost as long. Since its founding in 1990, Rambus has been trying to get the makers of memory chips to pay licensing fees to use its designs, starting with its early RDRAM technology. Many of the largest companies have refused from the start.

Mr. Hampel, the company’s most senior engineer, says it has not always been easy to work for a company that many people consider the bad guy. “I personally worry if we have the support of enough of the industry to take these great products to the market,” Mr. Hampel said. “I feel impacted by the lack of validation from the industry. So I try to focus on the technology as vindication.”

The disputes have taken a toll on Rambus’s bottom line. The company lost $144.7 million in the recent second quarter, compared with a net loss of $12.6 million in the first quarter and $2.7 million in the year-ago second quarter. In August, the company announced it would lay off 90 workers, a move that will save about $17 million a year and help pay its legal bill, which will probably reach about $16 million this quarter.

A wave of recent court victories was supposed to be a turning point for Rambus. In August, a federal appeals court in Washington upheld a ruling throwing out a decision by the Federal Trade Commission that Rambus was guilty of monopolistic behavior in its dealings 10 years ago with the standard-setting group Jedec Solid State Technology Association. But the F.T.C. said last week it may appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

A jury in March in San Jose, Calif., found that the company had not deliberately misled memory chip makers when it patented memory chip technologies while the industry group was deciding whether to make the technologies an industry standard.

Any day now, a federal judge in the San Jose court is expected to decide whether to grant Rambus’s request for an injunction against Hynix, a memory chip maker. And last Monday, yet another trial began in San Jose, this one involving Samsung.

But the victories have not helped much. “Every day we’re amazed at how victories in court don’t necessarily lead to settlements,” said Sharon Holt, Rambus’s senior vice president for worldwide sales, licensing and marketing. “We really need the courts to help force these parties into settlement talks. We’re not having as much momentum in signing new business as we’ve liked.”

Some analysts think the recent court victories could lead some of the bigger chip makers to settle with Rambus and become paying customers, particularly if the court issues an injunction in the Hynix case. They have estimated Rambus could collect hundreds of millions, if not several billion, dollars from chip makers over the next 10 years.

Jared Bobrow, a partner with Weil Gotshal & Manges, represents Micron, a chip maker that has tangled with Rambus. “This isn’t about the industry making payment. In my view, this is nothing short of patent troll activity.” Patent troll is a derogatory term used to describe companies or individuals who make their money suing companies for patent infringement.

That Rambus’s business model has evoked such hostility in some quarters of Silicon Valley is no longer a surprise. “It’s the industry not wanting to pay someone a fee when they didn’t make anything,” said Jeff Schreiner, an analyst with Capstone Investments who has followed the litigation closely.

Rambus has no chip production facilities of its own, but rather develops technologies, patents them and then licenses those technologies to manufacturers. The company holds 708 patents, and 512 are pending, many of them on performance enhancements critical to the future of the memory chip industry. “The model itself was not well understood,” said Ms. Holt. “That made things very difficult.”

Harold Hughes, who reclaimed the job as Rambus’s chief executive in 2005 after five years of retirement, traces the problem back to company executives in the early 1990s who failed to enforce its patent rights.

“The problem we had is that infringement got out of control,” Mr. Hughes said.

Mr. Hughes has the company’s engineers working on a number of major projects including the “Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative” to make a chip that can move an unprecedented terabyte per second of memory. The result will be blazingly fast graphics and video. It is also figuring out how to make faster memory chips while decreasing power consumption.

“Rambus has never stopped creating great technologies,” Mr. Hughes said. “We’re solving hard problems that aren’t seen as problems yet.”

For the time being, the company lawyers will be as busy as the chip designers. Rambus has settled with one of the major chip makers, Infineon, whose memory chip division is now known as Qimonda. For 9 or 10 years, the two companies were “bitter enemies” and had no interaction at all, Ms. Holt said. Once the two companies settled, it took them another 15 months to come to an agreement to work together.

“The first meeting was pretty weird,” Ms. Holt said. “It was slow going and very awkward. For years, these two companies had been trained not to trust each other.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/te.../29rambus.html





Towns Consider Shutting Web Sites After FOI Law
AP

Officials in several small Connecticut towns say they will shut down their Web sites, saying they cannot obey a new state law on posting meeting minutes and agendas.

The law, which went into effect Wednesday, requires municipalities to post agendas online 24 hours before a scheduled meeting. They also must post minutes of past meetings within seven days.

Those without Web sites are exempted, but they must follow state Freedom of Information laws on posting those documents at their town and city halls.

Some towns, including Harwinton and Salem, already have voted to shut down their Web sites.

They say they lack the resources to meet the new law's requirements, and that keeping the sites online makes them vulnerable to FOI complaints.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_10617289





Let’s Turn the Federal Government Over to Bloggers

You may be wondering what Barack Obama meant at Friday night's presidential debate when he said he wants a "Google for government."

In 2006, Obama joined with a number of U.S. senators -- including John McCain -- to pass S. 2590, the "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," a bill creating "a Google-like search engine and database to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans."

Last November, Obama visited Google to explain his vision of a Google-enabled government. He told its t-shirt wearing employees that he wants to put "government data online in universally accessible formats." This is the most important thing that Obama has said about this issue.

Many federal agencies have put data online but use different formats and complicated search methodologies that often produce frustratingly poor results. It’s nearly impossible to easily cross reference data between agencies.

The fix, according to a paper "Government Data and the Invisible Hand," by a group of Princeton University researchers that is due to be published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, is to standardize the underlying data formats across the federal government. In their paper, David Robinson, Harlan Yu, William Zeller and Edward Felten (Felten's blog is Freedom to Tinker), wrote:

Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

These authors believe the best way to enable federal data accessibility is "to rely on private parties with its vibrant marketplace of engineering ideas to discover what works."

One example of the government's online problem is Regulations.gov. It's a good effort but it's more lobbyist than citizen-friendly. The feds should hire the folks at Digg or Slashdot to reoganize it.

And RSS feeds? Forget about it. Much of what the federal government produces isn't RSS enabled. But there’s hope.

The District of Columbia is far ahead of its federal government overlord in bringing data to standard XML formats and RSS-enabling it. DC's government has what it calls a "data catalog" offering live data feeds of crime reports, construction reports, building permits and many other types of information.

One local Washington DC blogger, Jacqueline Dupree of JDLand, who writes about issues in Southeast DC, offers a stunningly good example of how to transform raw data formats into useful information. [Scroll down through her blog.] JDLand this month won a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

If the federal government standardizes data formats it will allow Google and other third parties to provide very useful aggregations. But, most importantly, it is the bloggers who will give this data wings. Bloggers, like JDLand, can customize and refine this government data for their audiences. That is open government in action.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/let_s...er_to_bloggers





Committee Adopts New Third-Party Web Site Regulations
Andrew Noyes

Members of the House will be permitted to use third-party Web sites like YouTube to communicate with constituents as long as the content is for official purposes, and not personal, commercial or campaign communication, according to rules adopted Thursday by the House Administration Committee.

The rules are seen by House Administration Chairman Robert Brady as a compromise between several proposals under consideration in recent months and are closely aligned with those circulated by the Senate Rules Committee last week.

One plan by Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., who chairs the commission charged with drafting the language for the Administration Committee, was slammed by Minority Leader Boehner in July as "an attack on free speech."

House Administration ranking member Vernon Ehlers and Reps. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Tom Price, R-Ga., drafted alternate language, which formed the basis for the changes that won committee approval. Ehlers said Brady "demonstrated outstanding leadership."

"These new guidelines are a step in the right direction for a Congress that has been behind the technological curve for too long," Boehner said. "By encouraging the use of emerging and established new media tools, Congress is sending the message that we want to speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner possible."

House Speaker Pelosi lauded the panel's effort to "modernize the antiquated franking regulations to address the realities of communications in the Internet age."

Capuano refused to comment on the committee action.

"When a link to a Web site outside the member's official site is embedded on the member's official site, the member's site must include an exit notice advising the visitor when they are leaving the House," the rules state. "This exit notice must also include a disclaimer that neither the member nor the House is responsible for the content of the linked site(s)."

The Senate regulations go further by creating a "nonexhaustive list" of approved sites that must agree to disclose when content is maintained by a Senate office.

For the Senate, third-party sites would also be banned from adding commercial or political material or links to an office-maintained page, and would be banned from using data-gathering tools on a Senate-maintained page that collect and distribute personal information on users.

The new rules "reflect a greater recognition of the need to provide flexible solutions to the opportunities and challenges presented by new and emerging technologies," and they end a longstanding restriction that has become difficult to abide by, Brady said.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20081003_9890.php





Google Wants You to Search Like it's 2001

The search giant has dusted off a seven-year-old search index to celebrate its tenth birthday. My, how the world has changed. iPod? Michael Phelps? Never heard of 'em.
Charles Arthur

Googie is offering, for one month only, your chance to spin back to those halcyon days before stock markets crashed around everyone's ears, when lawsuits against people accused of peer-to-peer filesharing were plentiful, and there was more than one bank on the high street where you could put your savings.

Yes, it's letting you spin the wheel of fortune, fame and chance back to 2001, when it had a measly 1.36bn pages to search from. (Now? Too many to count, apparently.)

Why 2001? Why not 1998? Because, says the FAQ, "for various technical reasons that are too boring to go into, earlier versions of our index aren't readily accessible. But we did still want to offer users a chance to search an older index as a way of looking back at web history, and the January 2001 index is the best we can do. We hope you enjoy it."

And so it goes... According to the Google blog,

hidden in a corner beneath Larry's and Sergey's original lab coats, we found a vintage search index in mint condition. We dusted it off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001. "iPod" did not refer to a music player, "youtube" was nonsense, and if you were looking for "Michael Phelps," chances are you meant the scientist, not the swimmer. "Wikipedia" was brand new. Remember "hanging chads"?

Or indeed, remember the hubris of this deal? Or the design horror of this page? Or this slowly sinking hulk?

You can do the searching - set up in association with the Internet Archive - at Google's 2001 search. Basically, the way to do it is to do a search and choose "View this in the 2001 archive".

We were already hard at work with the Guardian weblog, though the archive seems to think that the Onlineblog - which preceded this one - didn't start until 2002. (We beg to differ.)

But that's the thing about the past - it's never the same as the last time you looked at it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...oogle.internet





‘Are They Baby-Eating Monsters or What?’

Pirates, pioneers, or petty thieves? Majsan Boström meets Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij, two of the leading figures from file-sharing giant The Pirate Bay.

The guys behind controversial file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have been called many things. Mostly they don’t care, but when people, especially representatives of the media, want to slip them into the tights of Robin Hood, they refuse to cooperate.

“Everyone wants to label us as a modern Robin Hood: the Robin Hood of the digital age. I hate that expression,” says Peter Sunde, one of the key figures of The Pirate Bay (TPB).

Pre-conceived notions abound when it comes to the Sweden-based file-sharing site.

But contrary to popular belief, The Pirate Bay’s leading lights do not spend their days cooped up in clandestine cellars plotting the downfall of the copyright society, as was revealed over the course of half a day in Stockholm in the company of Sunde and founder Fredrik Neij.

“We’re not the recluse type; we're very social computer [nerds],” Neij says with a smile.

Polite, humorous and down-to-earth, the two guys - who each recently turned 30 - speak patiently about their hobby.

“We believe in freedom of speech and the right to free communication between private individuals,” Sunde says.

“It seems as if many people have a hard time understanding that we have created a forum for information sharing; we’re not actually posting any of the material on TPB ourselves.”

The Pirate Bay has been accused of stealing from artists, cheating big corporations of trade secrets, and they are due in court some time in 2009 to face charges of copyright infringement involving music, movies and computer games.

Clearly there is a demand for what they have to offer: The Pirate Bay’s file sharing system plays host to 12 million unique visitors at any given time and the system gets four billion hits a day, says Sunde.

People upload movies, music, games and other content that can be shared electronically. This, some say, is illegal, but Sunde, Neij and the others involved in TPB are challenging the accepted rules.

“The idea is to enable anyone and everyone to share information, no matter what type of information, to whomever they want without being censored or moralized over,” Sunde explains.

“We try to let people understand the good things ‘pirates’ can do (we use the name ‘pirates’ to reclaim the word and make it positive) and to put the power of people in their own hands instead of the traditional media industry that edits the content that is out there.”

The most recent controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay involved uploaded autopsy photos of two murdered Swedish children. Sunde and Neij fully understand the heart-wrenching nature of the material for the family but say the photos were part of a public document posted by a user and they are determined not to censor TPB.

They do remove some content from the site however, Neij says. Around a dozen computer-savvy volunteers help moderate TPB.

“They remove spam, viruses and fakes,” Neij says. “And if something comes up that breaks Swedish law, something that looks like child pornography, for example, they send it to the police so they can decide.”

Sunde, who handles most of the press relations, has tried to explain to various media that it wasn’t them, the operators of TPB, who posted the autopsy photos.

Most headlines and reports about the photos of the murdered children failed to mention that the photos were part of a 2,700 page murder investigation, says Sunde.

The torrent had been downloaded 30 times before the media noticed the photos nestled somewhere in the middle of the rather large file. About a month after the news reports, the file had been downloaded some 50,000 times, says Neij.

“We get accused of publishing information that we have nothing to do with, all the while the newspapers and TV channels get higher ratings,” Sunde says. “You wonder who’s really making out on that deal.”

The Pirate Bay is not a profit-driven enterprise, Sunde explains. Sunde and Neij both have day jobs as IT consultants (surprise, surprise) to support themselves. TPB accepts donations and gets advertising money, which is used to pay for broadband and new computers.

“We are happy as long as it doesn’t go minus,” Neij says.

TPB is not a registered business, not even an organization, Sunde explains. “It’s just a hobby that’s grown to be very, very large.”

So large, in fact, that companies and organizations around the world routinely invite The Pirate Bay operators to speak about their topic of expertise. Soon they are travelling to Malaysia to give their lecture, cheekily entitled: “How to dismantle a multi-billion dollar industry as a hobby.”

Of course, the topic does not go over well with everyone. The verbal wrath of Hollywood and various major record labels around the world is posted on The Pirate Bay web site under ‘legal’, a link that takes the curious to letters from global corporations such as DreamWorks and Apple.

The responses from Sunde, Neij and the moderators are posted under the same link. Some are pretty straight-forward, and most responses include explicit language.

Though busy juggling various projects -- including publishing a book, holding an art exhibit in Italy, consultant work and active involvement with the Piratbyrån (The Pirate Bureau) lobby group, which advocates copying and sharing information and culture freely -- Sunde and Neij still find time for other hobbies. They travel a lot, for example.

When asked about their favourite travel destination, both answer: the Sinai Desert.

“We go there a lot, we know a Bedouin,” Neij says. He shows pictures on his cell phone of a long beach, a tent-like dwelling and azure blue water.

“This is the only place I can really relax,” he adds.

Sunde and Neij agree that The Pirate Bay story is difficult to encapsulate in one sitting. This is where documentary film maker Simon Klose comes in.

“We met during a demonstration and I thought: ‘Who are these guys? Are they baby-eating monsters or what?’ They piqued my curiosity,” he says.

Klose, who has also worked on movies about homeless people in Tokyo and car thieves in Johannesburg, says he is now making a documentary about “hackers in Stockholm.”

“It’s kind of an interesting situation,” he says. “This is the first time I’m making a documentary where I’m pretty sure that Hollywood will watch it.”


Peter Sunde

Age: 30

Favorite movie: Donnie Darko

Favorite song: Bougé Bougé/Magic System

Favorite colour: Right now, yellow

Favorite food: Pasta, the way I make it (Considers himself a great cook)

Idol: I respect a lot of people, but have no particular idol

Day job: IT-consultant, builds web sites and gives lectures

First job: Summer job at a cemetery

Education: High school drop-out, finished his school exams later

Something you don’t think people know about you: I used to be a real good soccer player.


Fredrik Neij

Age: 30

Favorite movie: The Wall

Favorite song: Fear of the Dark/Iron Maiden

Favorite colour: Black

Favorite food: Chili Con Carne, very spicy (Eats out 95 percent of the time)

Idol: Quagmire in Family Guy

Day job: IT-consultant, operates a web hosting company

First job: Summer job at a factory

Education: High school drop-out

Something you don’t think people know about you: A lot, I hope.
http://www.thelocal.se/14688.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





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Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[multi]

aw.. you seemed to have missed the quote of yours I posted this week

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by multi

aw.. you seemed to have missed the quote of yours I posted this week

i saw it! if you had waited a week i could've put it up and run the intro as a story linked back to you. now that would've been interesting.

- js.

[multi]

I think I liked the story better than the choice of quotes

[JackSpratts]

thanks. and it was all true - every word.