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17-06-09, 08:39 AM
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Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 20th, '09
Since 2002
  "We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do." – Cara Duckworth, RIAA "In Sweden we don’t sue people." – Fredrik Colting "We've implemented a simple, new darknet in the browser. When you have something decentralized like this, no one can control or stop it." – Matt Wood and Billy Hoffman "The Internet is a big distraction. Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.'" – Ray Bradbury "Ahhh — muffin top." – Jesse Leavenworth "I’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music. The RIAA needs to be disbanded." – Moby "For this reason I will be leaving the SPD on June 20 after almost 40 years of membership and supporting the future 'Pirate Party.'" – German MP Jörg Tauss, SPD - Karlsruhe-Land June 20th, 2009  Woman Illegally Downloads 24 Songs, Fined to Tune of $1.9 Million Elianne Friend A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs. Illegal downloads of musical files will cost a Minnesota woman $1.9 million, a jury has decided. Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said. Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents. She plans to appeal, he said. Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said the RIIA was "pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable." "We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do," she said. Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and Sheryl Crow. This was the second trial for Thomas-Rasset. The judge ordered a retrial in 2007 after there was an error in the wording of jury instructions. The fines jumped considerably from the first trial, which granted just $220,000 to the recording companies. Thomas-Rasset is married with four children and works for an Indian tribe in Minnesota. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/...ine/index.html  The Constitutional Problems With The Award In The Jammie Thomas Case Mike Masnick Like many others, when I first heard about the $1.9 million the jury awarded the record labels from Jammie Thomas in her trial, my initial question was how that could possibly be constitutional and not excessive. However, given the immediate talk of settlements, I figured that question is unlikely to be asked in a courtroom. The EFF, however, has taken a look at the specific constitutional issues and how any appeal might be organized. There are two specific potential problems. First, the award is clearly designed to be punitive, rather than remunerative: Quote:
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http://techdirt.com/articles/20090618/1950315285.shtml Researchers Build Anonymous, Browser-Based 'Darknet' Black Hat USA presentation will demonstrate how the latest browser technology makes underground, private Internet communities simpler to form, more secretive Kelly Jackson Higgins A pair of researchers has discovered a way to use modern browsers to more easily build darknets -- those underground, private Internet communities where users can share content and ideas securely and anonymously. Billy Hoffman, manager for HP Security Labs at HP Software, and Matt Wood, senior security researcher in HP's Web Security Research Group, will demonstrate a proof-of-concept for Veiled, a new type of darknet, at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas next month. Darknets, themselves, are nothing new; networks like Tor, FreeNet, and Gnutella are well-established. The HP researchers say Veiled is the same idea, only much simpler: It doesn't require any software to participate, just an HTML 5-based browser. "We've implemented a simple, new darknet in the browser," Wood says. "There are no supporting [software] programs." Unlike its predecessors, Veiled doesn't require much technical know-how to join, either. "The coolest thing about this is it lowers the barrier to entry to a darknet," Hoffman says. "You could put some very interesting applications on top of it. It could be a way to do secure whistle-blowing, [for example]. When you have something decentralized like this, no one can control or stop it." No one can take it down, either, he adds, all of which makes it more approachable for a wider community of legitimate users. Darknets can also be abused by the bad guys as a way to cover their tracks, but Hoffman and Wood say they see this as more of an opportunity for adding legitimate and mainstream uses of darknets, such as anonymous suggestion boxes or other ways for users to express themselves anonymously without their IP addresses potentially giving them away. "Students are getting reprimanded at school because of their Facebook postings," perhaps criticizing something about school, Hoffman says. "They're being punished for free speech. Where can you freely express yourself without fear of consequences? This could be an interesting app." "The point of our research is not to give bad guys a tool for nefarious use, but to get security researchers discussing and talking about the new concept of browser-based darknets," he says. Veiled is basically a "zero footprint" network, in which groups can rapidly form and disappear without a trace. It connects the user's HTML 5-based browser to a single PHP file, which downloads some JavaScript code into the browser. Pieces of the file are spread among the members of the Veiled darknet. It's not peer-to-peer, but rather a chain of "repeaters" of the PHP file, the researchers say. "It's a file on a Web server, but I can also host one on my Website, for example, and we can join those two files together," Wood says. "It's very distributed." The researchers are building encryption into the file distribution network as a way for users to remain anonymous and communicate securely. Hoffman says he and Wood mainly want to show that building a browser-based Darknet is possible. And they don't consider Veiled a replacement for existing darknets. "We don't think this is the best solution...Our message is that the technical barriers to these secure anonymity networks are not that high," he says. "We are trying to build an infrastructure for this type of communication and file storage to occur, and allow others to decide how they should architect it." http://www.darkreading.com/security/...leID=217801293 Opera Launches New Media, File Sharing Service Tarmo Virki Norway's Opera Software opened a new, free service on Tuesday that enables simple sharing of personal computers' pictures, files or music with anyone on the Internet. The new service, which the company has said would "reinvent the Web" is part of Opera's Web browser, enables direct downloading from personal computer to personal computer and removes any need for data storage at servers in the middle. Files can be viewed with any browser. Similar technologies have been available before for tech-savvy consumers, but these have required downloading separate software, paying usage fees, or a long process of uploading content -- limiting take-up of the services. On Thursday last week, Opera posted a note on social networking website Twitter with a link to a Web page saying Opera would "reinvent the Web" on June 16. That heralding of the new service had helped Opera's share price surge in the past week, although it fell back slightly on Tuesday as the market digested the announcement. "There were some expectations ahead of the announcement, so the market is only mildly disappointed, said analyst Peder Strand at SEB Enskilda Strand added, however, that the new service looked innovative and could become an important product differentiator for Opera's browser. Shares in Opera were down 2.7 percent by 1028 GMT, underperforming the Oslo bourse's 0.8 percent rise and a 1.1 percent rise for European technology shares. In spite of the early fall, the stock is still up over 12 percent in the last week, at close to a three-year high, giving it a market capitalization of about $544 million. Opera has built some sharing services for photos and media into the browser but has also opened up the platform for any developers to build their own sharing services. "We believe it is the revolution of the Internet. We see this as a disruptive technology for Internet services in the next one to five years," Phillip Gronvold, product analyst at Opera, told Reuters. Opera is the world's third-largest browser maker with about 40 million users, but is far behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Foundation's Firefox. "We hope to increase our desktop penetration with this service," Gronvold said. "We feel there's significant time-to-market benefits in browser space." Internet Explorer is used for about 60 percent of global Internet traffic, Firefox has about 30 percent, and Opera is at 4 percent -- just ahead of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter. Microsoft has run afoul of U.S. and European antitrust regulators for bundling its desktop browser with its operating system, which Opera, Mozilla and Google say is an attempt to drive them out of the market. Microsoft said last week it plans to ship the newest version of its Windows operating system in Europe without Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft's move could be a boon for rivals, but Opera has said this was not enough to restore competition. Opera has a small share of the desktop browser market, but its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets. "Opera today makes around 4 crowns ($0.62) a year per desktop user on average," analyst Peder Strand at SEB Enskilda said. "If they double the number of users on the back of this product, it would be a huge success that will have a material financial impact for Opera," Strand said. "However, whether we can expect such a doubling of the customer base, has yet to bee seen," he added. Gronvold said Opera was working also on a mobile version of Unite, but has not decided on a launch schedule. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; additional reporting by Richard Solem in Oslo; editing by Simon Jessop) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55F1EI20090616 Opera Unite Benchmark Opera Unite can do up to impressive 800 requests per second on reasonably modern home hardware, even with dynamic content. You can't DDOS a person via Opera Unite! (Unless you can sustain exactly 13 connections per second, no more, no less, but even then it's just takes 1 core and connection piling doesn't happen. (No overload) Opera Unite uses very smart file I/O! Even if you save data to file each request (simplest, but stupidest way to do it) - it still can push out very impressive 744 requests/second! (It probably means that this data is saved to memory and dumped only sometimes, smart move!) It seems like Opera uses 13 threads (seems like a soft limit, but unchangeable). 13 concurrent connections max out @ 810req/s, 1.23ms processing time. For comparison: PHP+Apache(+MySQL) is almost 2 times faster than peak Unite performance. Compiled C++ web server (MadFish WebToolkit →) is only 6 times faster than Opera Unite, but that is compiled raw C++. nginx (one of the fastest Web Servers available) is only 5 times faster than Opera Unite (clocked at 4900 req/s in raw C++) "Welcome to nginx" cycle (no I/O or scripting). But if we were to compare simplicity of usage - those guys would seriously lose. We can't really compare these technologies since they serve different (even though seemingly similar) ideas. Opera Unite isn't just "sites". And it isn't targeted to those who know what "nginx" is. Kudos, Opera! http://unitehowto.com/Performance IP Address Alone Insufficient To Identify Pirate, Court Rules enigmax Anti-piracy groups and lawyers across Europe are unmovable - they say that since they logged a copyright infringement from a particular IP address, the bill payer is responsible. Now a court in Rome has decided that on the contrary, an IP address does not identify an infringer, only a particular connection. Right across Europe, many countries are being targeted by anti-piracy evidence gathered by outfits such as Swiss-based Logistep. After tracking alleged infringers, legal action is taken to force ISPs to hand over the identities of the person who pays the bill on the particular account linked to the allegedly infringing IP address. Lawyers operating in tandem with companies like Logistep, such as ACS:Law in the UK, insist that since they have an IP address, this automatically means that the bill payer is the copyright infringer or at least liable for the infringement. Italy, which has seen its fair share of misery inflicted by Logistep and its partners Peppermint Jam, now has reason to be optimistic that these cynical, profit-motivated operations can be dampened down. Although anyone with a basic knowledge of the Internet could come to the same conclusion given 30 seconds in a quiet room, the Tribunale Ordinario di Roma has now ruled that an IP address alone does not identify an infringer. According to a Punto Informatico report, on this basis the court kicked out a complaint against an individual accused of copyright infringement. The District Attorney and judge said that the mere ownership of a connection from where an infringement took place is not sufficient to establish the identity of an infringer or liability of a defendant, especially since other people could have committed the alleged infringement. In the UK right now, as many as 5,000 or more Internet bill payers are receiving letters through their doors from lawyers ACS:Law claiming that their Internet connection has been used to commit copyright infringement. TorrentFreak is contact with many letter recipients and we are convinced that many people are being wrongfully accused for a multitude of reasons. Interestingly ACS:Law say that they do not necessarily claim that the bill payer committed the infringement, yet they still make threats and demand settlements for around £600 from that very individual. They do this because they do not know and cannot prove who carried out the infringement, and simply hope that the bill payer feels responsible for what has happened and pays the settlement. If it wasn’t clear before to some, it should be pretty clear now. As far as evidence goes, an IP address alone does not identify an infringer, merely a connection, and in the absence of additional evidence - such as that collected following an examination of the alleged infringer’s PC - it means little on its own. Thank you Italy for your common sense. http://torrentfreak.com/court-rules-...ringer-090615/ Court Orders P2P News Site To Dishonor Convicted Pirates Ernesto Following a request from the entertainment industries, a French court has ordered the P2P news site Numerama to cover the cases of 27 convicted file-sharers. For their efforts the site receives 10,000 euros which they promise to spend wisely by supporting a pro file-sharing cause. Numerama is a French news site dedicated to file-sharing and copyright issues, much like TorrentFreak. They have openly criticized the Hadopi anti-piracy legislation and everything else spawned from the entertainment industries ‘war on piracy’. In their reporting they try to counterbalance the propaganda being spread by the various anti-piracy outlets. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major movie and music studios who have asked the court of Nanterre to order the site to publish extracts of convictions of 27 copyright infringers. The convictions are all related to copyright infringement and Numerama has published the first of three batches this Friday. The abstracts contain personal information such as the names, addresses, and birth dates of the convicted, as well as the sentence and the crime they’ve committed. (example) Even though Numerama is not involved in these cases in any way, they have been selected by the court to publish the convictions as part of the sentence of the copyright infringers. The complainants in the 27 cases are likely to have picked Numerama in an attempt to ‘educate’ their readers. It is quite shocking that a court can simply order an independent news site to publish something, but apparently that’s perfectly fine in the French legal system. Interestingly enough, the court will pay the site 10,000 euros ($14,000) for their cooperation. Since Numerama doesn’t want to take money (indirectly) from the pro-copyright lobby they have asked their readers to come up with some ideas on how to spend the money. Their plan is to invest it in projects that promote free-sharing and online privacy. Some of the suggestions include giving it to a Pirate Party, investing in privacy solutions such as a VPN service or buying servers to support a file-sharing network. Numerama are encouraging their readers to come up with more ideas and they have until June 28 to do so. Let’s hope something good comes out of it. http://torrentfreak.com/court-pays-p...irates-090614/ France's SPPF Sues YouTube Aymeric Pichevin French independent labels collecting society SPPF has filed a lawsuit against YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. In a statement, the producers' body said that more than 100 music videos of its catalog, which had been taken down by YouTube in 2008 following SPPF's request, were again available on the service in some form. SPPF is claiming €10 million [$13.9 million] in damages. Google-owned YouTube responded by pointing out that SPPF has not signed up to its Content ID technical measures to identify any infringement. In France, YouTube partners with organizations including Europacorp, AFP, and France 24 on Content ID to identify unauthorized use of content and then monetize or block it. "We can't discuss a pending case but bear in mind that YouTube offers professional content creators and producers powerful and free tools to protect, promote and monetize their content by using Content ID," said a statement. "Many indies as well as major music companies are using these tools to protect their content in France. The protection of copyrights is best achieved by joint efforts between creators and online platforms, not by lengthy and costly lawsuits." The statement added: "SPPF have not used Content ID to protect their content on the platform so far, although several independent labels do." Meanwhile, SPPF also unveiled results for 2008, with a 14.9% increase in income to €14.5 million ($20.2 million). The rise was mainly due to various exceptional items and to an increase in music video income, thanks to the growth of digital terrestrial television (DTT) channels. SPPF said it would keep focusing its efforts on neighboring rights rates. After commercial and state-owned radio channels fees were upped in 2007 and 2008, SPPF is now looking at the rate paid by public places playing recorded music. The rates are set by a dedicated body headed by a government representative. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...850a26e28a31c1 Copyright Battle Hard Fought Andrew Colley PERTH internet service provider iiNet has had limited success in the latest round of its Federal Court bid to fend off claims it breached the intellectual property rights of a group of film and entertainment heavyweights. Last week the ISP requested that the group of 34 copyright holders hand over documents on their anti-piracy activities in Australia, and other jurisdictions where most of the companies are incorporated. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) is acting on their behalf. The group includes Paramount Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Roadshow Films and Fox Film Corporation. Yesterday Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy denied iiNet access to documents in other jurisdictions, but granted limited access to documents revealing demands the group has made against rival Australian ISPs in attempts to prevent piracy. "We are very pleased with today's rulings," AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said. "AFACT members launched this action because the ISP ignored repeated notices over many months identifying thousands of illegal file transfers via iiNet's network carried out by its customers." The request was made as part of preliminary proceedings in the case. The federation has alleged that iiNet engaged in both primary and secondary copyright infringement. The primary infringement claim is based on loosely defined allegations that the ISP used some technical means to store copyrighted files. The secondary infringement claim stands on legal principles established in the 2005 Kazaa trial, which involved Sharman Networks. Those principles require AFACT to prove that iiNet failed to take "reasonable and appropriate" steps to stop its customers breaching copyright. IiNet had requested a much wider range of documents, including details of anti-piracy investigations and policies of the group of copyright holders. The ISP's legal representatives argued such documents would help it respond to claims that it had failed to take reasonable steps to stop its customers infringing copyright. Broadly, AFACT is seeking to prove that iiNet engaged in secondary infringement by failing to disconnect customers after it notified them of copyright breaches. Last week iiNet lead barrister Richard Cobden SC argued that the documents went to the heart of the question of reasonable and appropriate steps iiNet could take "if customers could simply go to another ISP" and continue to breach copyright. AFACT was granted access to iiNet customer records that it expected to corroborate its claims of acts of copyright infringement. Justice Cowdroy granted the organisation access to 20 customer records on condition that they did not contain any information that could reveal the identity of the customers. AFACT has requested access to records of the activities of more than 300 customers, but Justice Cowdroy limited the discovery and said AFACT could prove its argument at the lower threshold of examples. Justice Cowdroy also allowed iiNet to withdraw a previous admission as to whether any infringement had taken place on its network. The date for a final hearing has been delayed from July 27 to August 19 because of absences anticipated by legal teams. http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...013040,00.html Spanish ISPs Suspend Talks With Rights Holders Howell Llewellyn Spain's Internet service provider association Redtel refuses to hold any more talks on illegal P2P file-sharing with the culture content industry until the government comes up with a viable legal solution to the problems, Redtel president Miguel Canalejo said at his first public appearance as ISP cartel leader. Redtel's members are Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange and Ono. Canalejo confirmed that talks with the Coalition of Creators and Content Industries have effectively been "suspended" since April 16, when Redtel rejected the Coalition's "three-strikes" proposals to disconnect Internet users who ignored warnings not to download material protected by intellectual property legislation. The Coalition, made up by labels' body Promusicae, collecting societies including SGAE, and sections of the film industry, is to hold a press conference on Friday (June 19) to release its latest online piracy figures. It will be the first public appearance by Coalition president Aldo Olcese, who is expected to comment on Redtel's decision. "We will resume the negotiation [with the Coalition] only when the government puts on the table the measures it has planned," said Canalejo, adding that these measures must "protect [Internet] users and give legal security to [ISP] operators". The Coalition recently backed down on its "three-strikes" demand and instead proposed that Internet access speed be reduced against offenders. Canalejo said that Redtel rejected both options outright. "Reducing access speed is impossible from a technical point of view," Canalejo said. "Besides, it would be useless. Music would continue to be downloaded with a slower connection." http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...b771438140b31e Japan Strengthens Copyright Law Rob Schwartz The Japanese parliament has passed an amendment to the existing Copyright Law that extends further protections to copyright holders and, for the first time, makes it illegal for private users to download copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the rights holders' permission. The new statute will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010 but contains several caveats that raise the question of how it will be enforced. The user must be aware that the files were illegally uploaded and the new law does not stipulate any fine or jail term for contravening it. The music industry, however, welcomed the amendment, which does leave the door open for civil suits claiming damages. The Record Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) had been lobbying for a law that addressed online copyright infringement by individual users. Until now the laws were aimed at those who illegally uploaded, or distributed files in other unauthorized ways. Kei Ishizaka, the CEO of RIAJ commented, "We are thankful to those concerned who supported this statue. Our organization will continue its work to stop all copyright infringement and will make our best effort to inform the public of the changes to the law." What actions RIAJ will take in light of the new statue remains to be seen. In general, Japanese society shies away from litigation and if that is the only course open to rights holders the music industry may push the government for penalties to be attached to the new statute. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...fe0008e0afb801 Copyright Report 'Lacked Sufficient Balance': Conf. Board Sarah Schmidt The Conference Board of Canada admitted Wednesday there was "undue reliance" on feedback from a funder with ties to the entertainment industry for a copyright report that wrongly chastised Canada as the file-swapping capital of the world. The self-styled "independent" research organization recalled three reports last month after initially standing by the reports and asserting clients don't have a say in the editorial direction of papers they fund. "The evidence indicates there was undue reliance on feedback from a funder who was deemed to have important technical expertise. We failed to seek similar feedback from a broad range of stakeholders. The report relied heavily on too few sources and lacked sufficient balance," the conference board said in a statement, after completing a review of the research project. The review involved an analysis of progressive drafts of the reports and related e-mail correspondence. "Plagiarism did occur, and it wasn't detected due to insufficient oversight of this project," the conference board also reiterated Wednesday. Within two days of the release of the reports, Michael Geist, an intellectual property expert at the University of Ottawa, accused the organization of plagiarism. He found copied passages from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. The alliance is the primary U.S. copyright lobby group representing the movie, music and software industries. The Canadian Recording Industry Association, Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Copyright Collective of Canada — which represents U.S. film producers and distributors here — commissioned the conference board to produce the reports on intellectual property. The conference board declined to name the group from which it sought feedback. The groups are seeking tough copyright legislation that would impose penalties on consumers who work around digital locks to transfer or share copyrighted songs, games or other material. The federal government is expected to table a new bill in the fall. Confirmation of "undue reliance" on solicited feedback from a financial backer comes after one of the authors listed on the final report publicly complained about "push back" from one of the funding clients who had reviewed an earlier draft. In the final version, plagiarized passages from the U.S. lobby group were inserted and references drawn from the research of University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer, who holds a balanced review of copyright, were struck, according to Curtis Cook. Cook no longer works at the research organization and wasn't involved in preparing the final version. "They've acknowledged it wasn't balanced, they've acknowledged it was plagiarized and they've acknowledged external funders were unduly relied upon. And, in fact, even that they had that kind of role raises eyebrows," Geist said Wednesday about the conference board's statement. "It's a clear acknowledgment that, notwithstanding the claims of independence, there's much more active involvement and influence on the outcomes that come from those that are funding. And that raises the question about whether or not this is a policy laundering exercise, where groups fund a seemingly independent group to put forward views that they themselves hold buy carry more weight because it's seen as an independently held view." In an interview, conference board Anne Golden declined to comment on Cook's allegation that conversations of "push back" occurred. More generally, she said, the conference board sends clients draft reports seeking technical feedback, but there is "no causal link" between feedback and any edits. In this instance, the board "didn't take their feedback and put it in the report. They sent back information about what documents we didn't look at, or this or that. It was feedback at that level . . . The problem was ours. We relied on feedback where we thought there was technical expertise but we did not seek feedback from the broad range of stakeholders," said Golden. "It was an issue of balance and judgment and lack of oversight. Those are the real issues." Geist said Golden's characterization sounds as if clients have influence in editorial content. "It seems rather odd to solicit feedback if you're not planning to incorporate that, otherwise, what's the point." The conference board also announced steps to further strengthen its internal quality review process to prevent future incidents of this nature, including the use of anti-plagiarism software, additional review by external challengers and engagement of senior management earlier in the research process. The organization has also commissioned Ruth Corbin, an objective expert in the field of intellectual property and adjunct-professor at York's Osgoode Hall Law School, to produce new reports on the subject. http://www.canada.com/news/Copyright...978/story.html Harvard Study Finds Weaker Copyright Protection Has Benefited Society Michael Geist Economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf have just released a new Harvard Business School working paper called File Sharing and Copyright that raises some important points about file sharing, copyright, and the net benefits to society. The paper, which includes a helpful survey of the prior economic studies on the impact of file sharing, includes the following: 1. The data indicates that file sharing has not discouraged creativity, as the evidence shows significant increases in cultural production. The authors note that: Overall production figures for the creative industries appear to be consistent with this view that file sharing has not discouraged artists and publishers. While album sales have generally fallen since 2000, the number of albums being created has exploded. In 2000, 35,516 albums were released. Seven years later, 79,695 albums (including 25,159 digital albums) were published (Nielsen SoundScan, 2008). Even if file sharing were the reason that sales have fallen, the new technology does not appear to have exacted a toll on the quantity of music produced. Obviously, it would be nice to adjust output for differences in quality, but we are not aware of any research that has tackled this question. Similar trends can be seen in other creative industries. For example, the worldwide number of feature films produced each year has increased from 3,807 in 2003 to 4,989 in 2007 (Screen Digest, 2004 and 2008). Countries where film piracy is rampant have typically increased production. This is true in South Korea (80 to 124), India (877 to 1164), and China (140 to 402). During this period, U.S. feature film production has increased from 459 feature films in 2003 to 590 in 2007 (MPAA, 2007). Given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that "weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." This is consistent with the authors' view that weaker copyright is "uambiguously desirable if it does not lessen the incentives of artists and entertainment companies to produce new works." 2. The paper takes on several longstanding myths about the economic effects of file sharing, noting that many downloaded songs do not represent a lost sale, some mashups may increase the market for the original work, and the entertainment industry can still steer consumer attention to particular artists (which results in more sales and downloads). 3. The authors' point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for "complements" increases. They point to rising income from performances or author speaking tours as obvious examples of income that may be enhanced through file sharing. In particular, they focus on a study that concluded that demands for concerts increased due to file sharing and that concert prices have steadily risen during the file sharing era. Moreover, the authors' canvass the literature on the effects of file sharing on music sales, confirming that the "results are decidedly mixed." The authors were one of the first to challenge the early claims about the effects of file sharing. Years later, many other economists have followed suit (including the study funded by Industry Canada). This latest paper does a nice job of expanding the discussion, by using the data to examine incentives for creativity and the effects on aggregate creator and industry income. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4062/125/ Digital Britain: ISPs Will Have to Cut Filesharing by 70% Under New Proposals Persistent offenders may be fined or be cut off temporarily under powers Digital Britain report suggests may be given to Ofcom Charles Arthur British ISPs will be required to cut illegal filesharing on their networks by 70% within a year under new powers set to be given to the communications regulator Ofcom, the Digital Britain report, published today, says. The government will empower Ofcom to demand that ISPs collect data about alleged infringers of online rights – by downloading or uploading content without permission – and to notify them that their conduct is unlawful. Persistent infringers could see their details passed on to rights-holders – principally music and film companies, but also games and software companies – which could sue them in court. In extreme cases, such offenders could also see bans on access to certain sites, and throttling of their internet speed and capacity. However, it could take some time for the proposals to be implemented. There will first be a consultation before it becomes law, after which Ofcom will have responsibility for reducing piracy – working from a baseline that it will set at the moment the legislation becomes law. And ISPs have already begun to object to the proposals. In a statement, Orange said that it would be willing to maintain records of those "most frequently accused" of copyright infringement to help rights-holders take legal action – "but we would not agree to funding this process ourselves. Whilst we will assist rights holders in taking direct legal action against those accused of copyright infringement, we do not believe that Orange and the vast majority of our law-abiding customers should be required to subsidise rights-holders' actions." And UK Music, which speaks for the commercial side of the music industry, including artists, musicians and record labels, said that it thinks the proposals will not succeed in achieving such a cut, and called for immediate action. "The UK music industry fully embraces the principle of universal broadband," said the UK Music chief executive, Feargal Sharkey. "However... our members cannot continue to innovate and invest in the shadow of an illegal peer-to-peer ecosystem. To tackle this issue, we need the cooperation of all internet service providers [ISPs]." Illicit filesharing of music, film, games and commercial software is estimated to cost content owners millions of pounds every year. The government has promised repeatedly to crack down on offenders – including a warning in February 2008 that if ISPs and content creators could not come up with a code of practice by last April then it would legislate to force them. That threat was never carried out. The latest proposals are set out in chapter 4 of the 245-page report, titled "Creative Industries in the Digital World". If implemented, if Ofcom does not within a year see the 70% reduction in filesharing, the government will require it to use its "backstop" powers to introduce further measures, including the blocking of particular sites and "protocols" – methods of transferring data over the net – as well as capping the speed and capacity of offenders' connections. Ofcom is already the official regulator for ISPs. "The government considers online piracy to be a serious offence. Unlawful downloading or uploading, whether via peer-to-peer sites or other means, is effectively a civil form of theft," the report notes in chapter 4. "This is not something that we can condone, or to which we can fail to respond." The powers will not come into effect straight away, though. The report says that "The government is therefore consulting on a proposal to legislate to give Ofcom a duty to take steps aimed at reducing copyright infringement." That could mean a delay of months or even a year before Ofcom acquires the necessary powers, because completing the consultation and then finding time to enact the legislation will require significant amounts of time, after which Ofcom will have to monitor progress in reducing illicit filesharing. It is that delay which has frustrated Sharkey and others in the "content creation" businesses, who think it could take up to three years before the 70% test is applied. The communications minister, Lord Carter, denied that it was a roundabout process. "I'm saying that we have an industry regulator, and we are going to give them the power and the duty, and if that doesn't reduce this problem, they will have secondary powers," he said. Robin Fry, a copyright expert at the law firm Beachcroft LLP, commented that the government was floundering for what to do in face of determined lobbying. "There are no votes and no financial incentive to rerun a Pirate Bay trial in Britain," he said. "Users are technically savvy and, even if challenged, many will simply set up further user accounts or sign up to overseas ISPs. None of the proposals in the Digital Britain report, nor our current copyright laws, will change what users are doing," added Fry. "Requiring ISPs to send out warning letters is a hopeless distraction. It's like asking bus companies to tell passengers not to be late for work, or making airlines responsible for all drug smuggling. It's difficult to see what Ofcom can achieve above what UK rights-owners could have done but failed to do." The final report does not contain any suggestion of a statutory "rights agency" that would try to reduce copyright infringement online, as was suggested in the interim report released earlier this year – to widespread criticism. Instead, the final report says "we hope that an industry body ... will come into being to draft these codes [of practice for identifying offenders] for Ofcom to approve and we would encourage all rights holders and ISPs to play a role in this." Carter said the reaction of the industry and commentators to the interim report was that the rights agency was "a sledgehammer to crack a nut" and that "the best way was for the industry to come together and agree a code of practice." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...igital-britain In Brief This is notice that the Shareaza Sourceforge project itself has been hijacked from the developers and effectively deleted, in addition to the new website. Will Erwin, the Houston (Texas) donor who is directly responsible, may be the same William Erwin who hijacked MethLabs.org PeerGuardian in 2005. EDIT: Sourceforge has now returned control of the project back to the proper developers, and repairs are under way. Control was only lost for around 14 hours, but damage is done. http://forums.phoenixlabs.org/showthread.php?t=18547 ISP Dragged to Court for Refusing to Block The Pirate Bay Ernesto After several victories in Danish courts, the entertainment industry is now trying to get The Pirate Bay blocked in Norway. The country’s largest Internet provider ‘Telenor’ is now being dragged to court by IFPI, after it refused an earlier request to disable customer access to the world’s most prominent tracker. tpbLast year a Danish judge sided with IFPI and ordered the ISP Tele2 to block The Pirate Bay. According to the court’s decision, Tele2 was infringing copyright on a grand scale because users were transferring pirated material, copied via the ISP’s routers. The Danish case is not over yet as it’s currently under appeal at the Supreme Court. However, IFPI is already widening its territory in an attempt to score a similar victory in other countries. This March, IFPI set course for Norway and gave the country’s largest Internet provider ‘Telenor’ an ultimatum. IFPI demanded that the ISP block access to The Pirate Bay within 14 days - or get taken to court. “This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” was the response of Telenor’s Ragnar Kårhus at the time, while he stressed that they follow the law and not the demands of the music industry. Telenor thus refused to give into the demands of the music industry, and invited IFPI to file a lawsuit if they deem it necessary. True to form and together with several movie studios, IFPI has now filed a lawsuit against Telenor. Sveinung Golimo, a representative for Norwegian film makers said: “We want to highlight this problem. We do not wish to censor the Internet but we do want the possibility to make a living on what we create.” Apparently, the music and movie industries can’t make a living when Norwegians have access to The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay team has always spoken out against IFPI’s witch-hunt, and provided its users with several tutorials on how to circumvent the blockade. Going even further, earlier this year Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that they are seriously considering suing the IFPI for unfair competition. “They have had a monopoly on distribution and we’re breaking that monopoly, and in turn they sue people that allow access to our distribution method,” Sunde told us. http://torrentfreak.com/isp-dragged-...te-bay-090617/ U.K. Govt Plans $82,000 Fines For Online IP Offenses Andre Paine The U.K. Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has outlined proposals to improve copyright licensing and increase financial penalties for online infringers. The proposals, which were part of the Digital Britain report, include legislative changes to remove the infringement risk that currently prevents collecting societies licensing orphan works, as they do not have a mandate from the rights holder; new powers for government to authorize collecting societies to set up extended licensing schemes, allowing certain societies to act for a group of rights holders even if they are not all members of the society, unless a specific rights holder has opted out; and underpinning the operation of collecting societies with a statutory backed framework. The proposal for such a framework to improve the operation of collecting societies would require formal public consultation. There is also a measure being proposed to match online and physical IP infringement penalties, with a statutory maximum penalty of £50,000 [$82,000] for all IP offenses. The online penalty is currently £5,000 [$8,200]. "We must have the tools in place to tackle serious and organized IP crime," said David Lammy, minister of state for Intellectual Property in a statement. "The proposed £50,000 maximum penalty for online and physical infringement sends a clear message to IP criminals. In this online age, IP infringement warrants a serious response. It needs to be stamped out- regardless of whether the offense is online or offline." He added "In order to modernise and streamline the existing copyright system, I'm proposing a number of changes to the way collecting societies can operate. We should underpin the operation of collecting societies so that customers receive similar services and safeguards they would expect when dealing with a quality utility company." "I want to see greater development to ensure that our orphan works such as those great cultural works amassed in the BBC and the British Library are accessible to those who wish to benefit from them." Meanwhile, the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) has responded to the June 16 publication of Digital Britain. Although it welcomes parts of the report, the artists' body states that it is "wrong to criminalize ordinary music fans," and it wants to work with government and other parts of the industry to agree on a definition of a "serious, repeat infringer" as part of the proposals for technical measures to deter piracy. "We believe that this is a good indication of a willingness to establish a more level playing field between artists and the traditional structures of the music industry," said FAC board member Ed O'Brien of Radiohead in a statement. "It is refreshing to see that our extensive discussions with the Copyright Office and rights minister David Lammy have had some influence. We look forward to working with the IPO to further develop this strategic direction." http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...144d514104a4cb Banned Hyperlinks Could Cost You $11,000 a Day Asher Moses The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks. Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites. The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website. ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme. But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages. Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal. "The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban. The site has also published Thailand's internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions. Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond. Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA's subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA's own blacklist - which is secret - to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering. "We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government's own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future," EFA said. "The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment." Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its "watch list" of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information. The main issue raised was the Government's proposed internet censorship regime. "This report demolished the Communications Minister's contention that Australia is just following other comparable democracies," Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam said. "We are not. The Government is embarking on a deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the internet. "I agree with Reporters Without Borders. If you consider this kind of net censorship in the context of Australia's anti-terror laws, it paints a disturbing picture indeed." EFA said the Government's "spin is starting to wear thin" and it could no longer be denied that the ACMA blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial. The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has repeatedly claimed his proposed mandatory filters would target only "illegal" content - predominantly child pornography. "As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material," EFA said. "If the minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with, child pornography, then there's a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the ministerial suites." Already, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has said he hopes the sex industry will go broke as a result of the censorship scheme. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon previous expressed his desire to have online gambling sites added to the blacklist but has since withdrawn his support for the scheme, saying it was dangerous and could be "counter-productive". The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked. The Opposition has obtained legal advice that "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required", but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation. Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation. Despite previously saying his scheme would be expanded to block "refused classification" content that includes sites depicting drug use, sex, crime, cruelty and violence, he said opponents of his plan were spreading "conspiracy theories". The Government's internet censorship trials are due to begin shortly but critics have said they may not provide much useful data on the real-world implications because none of the major ISPs were chosen to take part. http://www.watoday.com.au/technology...0615-c9rv.html The Dawning of Internet Censorship in Germany von markus um Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture. The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government. A strong and still growing network opposing these ideas quickly formed within the German internet community. The protest has not been limited to hackers and digital activist but rather a mainstreamed effort widely supported by bloggers and twitter-users. The HashTag used by the protesters is #zensursula – a German mesh up of the Ministers name and the word censorship equivalent to #censursula. As part of the public’s protest an official e-Petition directed at the German parliament was launched. Within three days 50,000 persons signed the petition - – the number required for the petition titled „No indexing and blocking of Internet sites“ to be heard by the parliament. The running time of an e-Petition in Germany is 6 weeks – within this time over 130,000 people signed making this e-Petition the most signed and most successful ever. During the past weeks, protests became more and more creative – countless blogs and twitter-users followed and commented the discussions within governments and opposing arguments. Many mainstream media picked up on this and reported about the protest taking place on-line. A working group on censorship was founded and the protest coordinated with a wiki, mailing lists, chats and of course employing twitter and blogs. One website „Zeichnemit.de“ created a landing page explaining the complicated petitioning system and making signing the petition easier and more accessible for non net-experts. Over 500 people attended the governments official press conference on the planed internet censorship – a number of whom used this occasion to demonstrate and voice their concerns. In fact, demonstrators began attending some of the Minister von der Leyens public appearances, carrying banners and signs to raise attention to the stifling of information freedom in Germany. The net community did not only oppose the governments plans, but also made constructive suggestions how to deal with the problem of child pornography without introducing a censorship architecture and circumcising constitutional freedoms. The working group on censorship demonstrated the alternatives for instance by actually removing over 60 websites containing child pornographic content in 12 hours, simply by emailing the international providers who then removed this content from the net. The sites were identified through the black lists of other countries documented on Wikileaks. This demonstration underlines the protesters main arguments: instead of effectively investing time and efforts to have illegal content removed from the internet, the German government is choosing censorship and blocking – an easy and dangerous way out. The greatest fear of the protesters is that once in place, the infrastructure will be used to censor other forms of unwanted content, not only child pornography. German politicians already seem to be lining up with their wish-list of content to be censored in future – the suggestions ranging form gambling sites, islamist web pages, first person shooters, and the music industry cheering up with the thought of finally banning pirate bay and p2p. You can find a detailed linklist of the zensursula-debate here (in german). Thanks to Geraldine de Bastion for the translation. http://netzpolitik.org/2009/the-dawn...ip-in-germany/ Welcome! Dear Visitor, As a former member of the SPD since 1994, I represented the constituency of Karlsruhe-Land in the German Bundestag. On the following pages you will find information about my person, my work in my constituency and parliamentary work in the German Bundestag I always include the improvement of equality in education, developing a sustainable research policy and communication order, and for civil liberties on the Internet. These are unfortunately increasingly hurt - with the last of the German Parliament this week adopted the Internet Lock. For this reason I will be leaving the SPD on June 20 after almost 40 years of membership and supporting the future "Pirate Party". I am pleased if you one or the other interesting pages on my discover. Please visit again soon - because as they say on the Internet: "You read it!" Yours sincerely, Jörg Tauss your MP http://translate.google.com/translat...istory_state0= Orthodox Jews Launch "Kosher" Search Engine Religiously devout Jews barred by rabbis from surfing the Internet may now "Koogle" it on a new "kosher" search engine, the site manager said on Sunday. Yossi Altman said Koogle, a play on the names of a Jewish noodle pudding and the ubiquitous Google, appears to meet the standards of Orthodox rabbis, who restrict use of the Web to ensure followers avoid viewing sexually explicit material. The site, at www.koogle.co.il, omits religiously objectionable material, such as most photographs of women which Orthodox rabbis view as immodest, Altman said. Its links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes, such a television sets. "This is a kosher alternative for ultra-Orthodox Jews so that they may surf the Internet," Altman said by telephone. The site was developed in part at the encouragement of rabbis who sought a solution to the needs of ultra-Orthodox Jews to browse the Web particularly for vital services, he said. Nothing can be posted on the Jewish Sabbath, when religious law bans all types of work and business, Altman said. "If you try to buy something on the Sabbath, it gets stuck and won't let you." (Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Jon Boyle) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55D0UQ20090614 Those Big Bright Eyes May Soon Be Brighter Anne Eisenberg HOME videos capture treasured moments — but also many a grainy image and shaky scene, as any visit to YouTube shows. Now people who shoot impromptu videos on their cellphones and other handheld devices may find some help in stabilizing the rough spots — or in bringing their new baby’s face into focus — before posting their clips online. And it comes from specialized algorithms more common in a forensics lab than on Facebook. MotionDSP Inc., a software maker in San Mateo, Calif., is offering a $50 download for PCs that tackles pixelated and fuzzy frames in standard definition video. It analyzes the color and position of pixels in frames adjacent to ones with the poor images, said Sean Varah, the company’s chief executive, then adds information found in those nearby frames to make improvements. The enhanced videos can then be saved or uploaded to YouTube or other sites. The consumer program is adapted from the company’s more powerful product, Ikena (about $7,700), which is used by law enforcement authorities to recover details like license plate numbers in low-quality video, he said. The image-enhancement algorithms are part of a research field called super-resolution, said Sanjay J. Patel, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Super-resolution is a class of techniques one can use on ordinary video to make it look better,” he said. Those include the computationally intensive process of seeking extra, compensatory information in nearby frames “There’s a lot of interest in the technology in research labs at universities and in specialized professional software for video processing,” he said — for instance, in crime labs. “But you don’t see much of it in consumer products.” MotionDSP’s software, called vReveal, can do some editing — trimming clips or rotating sideways video, for example — but its main function is narrower: to improve appearance by increasing resolution and smoothing out the effects of a bobbing camera. The software’s job is to fix shaky, noisy home video, said Nikola Bozinovic, vice president of engineering at MotionDSP. “It’s pretty much for any standard-definition video you’ve recorded, including anything transferred from VHS,” Dr. Bozinovic said. Jon Peddie, who heads Jon Peddie Research, a consulting firm in Tiburon, Calif., said specialized software like vReveal might prove popular with consumers as more of them create and post videos. “There’s a huge potential market for products like this,” Mr. Peddie said. “If two of us are at the same soccer game, each photographing it with a cheap camera, but I do some enhancing afterward,” that video will look better and get more views. The number of people who are shooting video or watching it at home is skyrocketing, said Mary Madden, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “The medium has been percolating through the online world at a rate that far surpasses other online activities,” she said. THE market for video enhancement may also expand as video calling and conferencing become more mobile, she said. Skype, for instance, has demonstrated mobile video calling from a desktop computer to a mobile Internet device over WiFi. Dr. Bozinovic says MotionDSP has technology, now being tested, to clean up live video as it streams to the viewer. But before specialized software like vReveal catches on, consumers will have to be convinced of its value, Mr. Peddie said. “The difficulty with this kind of product is that you have to see it or use it to appreciate it,” he said. To address this problem, vReveal is offering a one-month free membership, during which people can compare their before-and-after videos, then decide whether to buy the program. While vReveal works with Windows XP or Vista (and not with Macs), it will make its enhancements much faster if the machine contains a recent graphics processing card from Nvidia, Dr. Varah said. Nvidia is an investor and a marketing partner with vReveal; a specific list of cards is at vReveal’s Web site. “If you have other graphics cards, your computer will just use its central processing unit,” Dr. Varah said, but the process will be slower. Ms. Madden of the Pew Internet project is expecting more people to take pains to improve their videos. “You can’t expect that everyone will become the next Martin Scorsese,” she said. “But we are moving into a time when video becomes much more a part of everyday communication. We are all going to have to become video producers.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/business/21novel.html YouTube / Ogg/Theora Comparison Purpose On Jun 13th 2009 Chris DiBona of Google made a remarkable claim on the WhatWG mailing list: "If [youtube] were to switch to theora and maintain even a semblance of the current youtube quality it would take up most available bandwidth across the Internet." Unfortunately, open video formats have been subjected to FUD so frequently that people are willing to believe bold claims like these without demanding substantiation. In this comparison I will demonstrate that this claim was unfair and unreasonable. Using a simple test case I show that Theora is competitive and even superior to some of the files that Google is distributing today on YouTube. Theora isn't the most efficient video codec available right now. But it is by no means bad, and it is substantially better than many other widely used options. By conventional criteria Theora is competitive. It also has the substantial advantage of being unencumbered, reasonable in computational complexity, and entirely open source. People are often confused by the correct observation that Theora doesn't provide the state of the art in bitrate vs quality, and take that to mean that Theora does poorly when in reality it does quite well. Also, the Theora encoder has improved a lot lately so some older problems no longer apply. While different files may produce different results, the allegation made on WhatWG was so expansive that I believe a simple comparison can reliably demonstrate its falsehood. I do not believe Chris intended to deceive anyone, only that he is a victim of the same outdated and/or simply inaccurate information that has fooled many others. Automotive enthusiasts may make a big deal about a 5 horsepower difference between two cars, but these kinds of raw performance differences are not relevant to most car buyers nor are they even the most important criteria to people who race. Likewise, videophiles nitpick the quality of compression formats and this nitpicking is important for the advancement of the art. But I believe that people are mistaking these kinds of small differences for something which is relevant to their own codec selection. Results A 499kbit/sec H.264+AAC output and a 327kbit/sec H.263(Sorensen Spark)+MP3 output were available via the download service. The YouTube-encoded files are available on the YouTube site. Because the files on YouTube may change and the web player does not disclose the underlying bitrate, I have made the two encoded files available. A slightly lower bitrate was used for the Theora+Vorbis test cases to avoid any question of quality improvement resulting from larger outputs. For a fair comparison you must compare the audio as well. Even without audio differences, still image comparisons are a poor proxy for video quality. I provided this random frame still image comparison only because I expect that people will not bother watching the examples without evidence that the results are interesting. Methodology In order to avoid any possible bias in the selection of H.264 encoders and encoding options, and to maximize the relevance for this particular issue, I've used YouTube itself as the H.264 encoder. This is less than ideal because YouTube does not accept lossless input, but it does accept arbitrarily high bitrate inputs. I utilized the Blender Foundation's Big Buck Bunny as my test case because of its clear licensing status, because it's a real world test case, and because I have it available in a lossless format. I am not aware of any reason why this particular clip would favor either Theora or H.264. I chose to use a test case with a soundtrack because most real usage has sound. No one implements HTML5 video without audio, and no one is implementing either of Theora or Vorbis without the other. Vorbis's state-of-the-art performance is a contributor to the overall Ogg/Theora+Vorbis solution. * Obtain the lossless 640x360 Big Buck Bunny source PNGs and FLACs from media.xiph.org. * Resample the images to 480x270 using ImageMagick's convert utility. * Use gstreamer's jpegenc, produce a quality=100 mjpeg + PCM audio stream. The result is around 1.5Gbytes with a bitrate of around 20Mbit/sec. * Truncate the file to fit under the YouTube 1Gbyte limit, resulting in input_mjpeg.avi (706MiB). * Upload the file to YouTube and wait for it to transcode. * Download the FLV and H.264 files produced by YouTube using one of the many web downloading services. (I used keepvid) * Using libtheora 1.1a2 and Vorbis aoTuv 5.7 produce a file of comparable bitrate to the youtube 499kbit/sec from the same file uploaded to YouTube (input_mjpeg.avi). * Resample the file uploaded to YouTube to 400x226. * Using libtheora 1.1a2 and Vorbis aoTuv 5.7 produce a file of comparable bitrate to the youtube 327kbit/sec from the 400x226 downsampled copy of input_mjpeg.avi. I later discovered that YouTube sometimes offers additional sizes. I tried the youtube-dl utility and it indicated that these other sizes were not available for my file. Otherwise I would have also included them in this comparison. A keyframe interval of 250 frames was used for the Theora encoding. The theora 1.1a2 encoder software used is available from theora.org. The Vorbis encoder used is available from the aoTuV website. No software modifications were performed. My conclusions It can be difficult to compare video at low bitrates, and even YouTube's higher bitrate option is not high enough to achieve good quality. The primary challenge is that all files at these rates will have problems, so the reviewer is often forced to decide which of two entirely distinct flaws is worse. Sometimes people come to different conclusions. That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion. This is unsurprising since we've been telling people that Theora is better than H.263, especially at lower bitrates, for some time now and YouTube only uses a subset of H.263. The low bitrate case is also helped by Vorbis' considerable superiority over MP3. For example, the crickets at the beginning are inaudible in the low rate YouTube clip but sound fine in the Ogg/Theora+Vorbis version. In the case of the 499kbit/sec H.264 I believe that under careful comparison many people would prefer the H.264 video. However, the difference is not especially great. I expect that most casual users would be unlikely to express a preference or complain about quality if one was substituted for another and I've had several people perform a casual comparison of the files and express indifference. Since Theora+Vorbis is providing such comparable results, I think I can confidently state that reports of the internet's impending demise are greatly exaggerated. Of course, YouTube may be using an inferior processing chain, or encoding options which trade off quality for some other desirable characteristic (like better seeking granularity, encoding speed, or a specific rate control pattern). But even if they are, we can conclude that adopting an an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate. But please— see and hear for yourself. http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/y...omparison.html "Hangover" Gives Murphy Headache at Box Office Dean Goodman The party kept rocking for "The Hangover," the first big surprise hit at the North American box office this summer, while Eddie Murphy suffered a headache with his second consecutive flop. According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "The Hangover" led the field for a second weekend with ticket sales of $33.4 million across the United States and Canada. The raunchy comedy with a little-known cast becomes the first movie to retain its crown since "Madea Goes to Jail" in February. The film also took just 10 days to hit the century mark -- $105.4 million, to be exact -- setting a new record for an R-rated comedy. The old mark of 11 days was set last year by "Sex and the City." Industry pundits expect "The Hangover" to hit $200 million -- not bad for a movie that cost a reported $31 million to make. The action revolves around three guys struggling to remember what happened at a wild bachelor party in Las Vegas the night before. It stars Justin Bartha, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms, and was directed by Todd Phillips of "Old School" fame. The film, from Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. Pictures, easily fended off a pair of new entries boasting some major star power. Columbia Pictures' remake of the 1974 subway-hijacking thriller "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, opened at No. 3 with $25 million, in line with expectations. "It's a solid opening for us," said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at the Sony Corp unit. Washington's last major release was "American Gangster," which opened to $44 million in late 2007. The last time Travolta headlined a drama was in 2004 when "Ladder 49" opened to $26 million. Comparative data are not adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Murphy, on the other hand, came in at No. 6 this weekend with the Paramount Pictures family comedy "Imagine That," which tallied just $5.7 million. "We're really disappointed," said Don Harris, executive vice-president of distribution at the Viacom Inc unit. Murphy previously starred in "Meet Dave," which opened to $5 million last July and finished with $12 million. Walt Disney Pictures' Pixar cartoon "Up" held at No. 2 with $30.5 million, taking its total to $187.2 million after three weekends. The previous Pixar release, "Wall-E," had earned $163 million in the same span last summer. Rounding out the top five were the Ben Stiller comedy hit sequel "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" (Fox) which held steady at No. 4 with $9.6 million in its fourth weekend; and the latest Will Ferrell bomb "Land of the Lost" (Universal), which fell two places to No. 5 with $5.6 million in its second weekend. Their respective totals stand at $143.4 million and $35 million. Walt Disney Pictures is a unit of Walt Disney Co. 20th Century Fox is a unit of News Corp. Universal Pictures is a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal. In limited release, the feature debut of David Bowie's 38-year-son Duncan Jones, opened strongly. "Moon," starring Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who confronts a clone of himself while mining lunar helium, earned $145,000 from just eight theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The Sony Pictures Classics release expands across the United States throughout June and July. At the foreign box office, "Terminator Salvation" was the top pick for a second weekend, earning $46.1 million; the overseas total for the Columbia-distributed apocalypse sequel rose to $165.5 million. (Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Eric Walsh) http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...55B0D120090615 ‘Transformers’ Sequel Off to Red-Hot Start in British Cinemas Michael Cieply Optimus Prime, battle commander of the good-guy robots, in “Transformers.” You can’t tell much from the box office performance of a film on a single night, in a single foreign territory. But Paramount executives were congratulating themselves on Saturday over the Friday night results of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” in the United Kingdom. Word had it that the movie had done roughly 50 percent better than its predecessor, which two years ago went on to take in $389 million in foreign markets, and $319 at the domestic box office. With the hot start in England, company executives were privately speculating that the new “Transformers” film had a shot at becoming Paramount’s second-highest grossing film, behind “Titanic,” which took in a monstrous $1.8 billion worldwide under a split deal with Fox. That would be a nice start for Adam Goodman, who was named president of the movie group on Friday, as two fellow executives, John Lesher and Brad Weston, were ushered out. Both were offered producer deals. The betting here is that Mr. Weston will accept, while Mr. Lesher strikes for greener pastures. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...ramount&st=cse G.I. Joe Looking Like a Bomb of Epic Proportions Mark Graham While many pundits have declared Land of the Lost to be the first bomb of summer 2009, rumors emanating from the set of G.I. Joe seem to indicate that it certainly won't be the last. If you've been dutifully following our coverage of Joe, you'll no doubt recall that the project has been battling bad buzz for the better part of the last seven months, which has taken the form of everything from bra-stuffing allegations to focus groups shunning the trailer. However, some message-board chatter seems to indicate that things have taken a significant turn for the worse. If the rumors are to be believed, not only is G.I. Joe the lowest-testing film in the history of Paramount, but executive Brad Weston has fired director Stephen Sommers from the project! Here's an excerpt from the message boards over at DonMurphy.net: Quote:
Update: According to Variety, Sommers was never fired and is still polishing the film. Also, it's written into his contract that he has final cut. Additionally, test screenings have supposedly yielded "mostly positive reviews." http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment...a_bomb_of.html Paramount Could Merge with Another Studio Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures could merge with Sony Pictures, Universal Studios or another movie studio amid a wave of consolidation in the industry over the next few months, veteran investor Mario Gabelli said in the latest issue of Barron's. The chief executive of Gamco Investors Inc, who owns shares of Viacom, said he expects dealmaking among movie studios as they seek to cut costs. Viacom is owned by media mogul Sumner Redstone, who also owns CBS Corp. "Today there are seven or eight motion-picture studios. A round of consolidation will occur in the next six to 12 months because of the costs of financing, prints and advertising, the benefits of globalization and such," Gabelli said. "We hear talk of something going on." Viacom, which also owns MTV, is a "terrific cash generator" and could earn $2 a share this year, going to $2.40 a share next year, Gabelli said. The company might buy back stock, he added. Sony Pictures is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corp. Universal Studios is owned by the NBC Universal media wing of General Electric Co. (Reporting by Anupreeta Das; Editing by Martin Golan) http://www.reuters.com/article/innov...55D21720090614 Mid-Term Movie Studio Report Card: Are Studios Making the Grade in 2009? CoolerKing We're nearly halfway through 2009 and, although there has yet to be a major break-out hit on the level of Iron Man or The Dark Knight, there have definitely been a few success stories. And, let's be frank, a few failures. Keeping that in mind, we asked ourselves - which movie studios should be happiest at the mid-term point of 2009? Who should give their marketing team a July bonus? And which studios have been producing with the most consistent level of quality? To determine who makes the grade, first, we took all of the major films released and averaged their Rotten Tomatoes percentage to determine the critical response to their releases. Yes, it may not be the most scientific way to decide if a studio has had a "good" or "bad" year so far, but it does give something of a quality gauge for a studio's output from a critical perspective. (Plus it's just a deliciously dorky thing to do.) Then, using the RT score and our own opinion of a studio's output, we gave each studio - well, each studio that has widely released at least three films so far in 2009 - a critical grade. Of course, critically acclaimed films are only half the battle. We also looked at all box office grosses to date and gave a grade for financial success. We then averaged the two for our 2009 Mid-Term Studio Report Card, ranked by overall grade using reviews and grosses for films released through 6/12/09. (Some of you are shaking your heads right now and others - probably fantasy sports fans - are smiling and thinking "Groovy...") So, now that you understand our criteria, here's how the major movie studios have been making the grade so far in 2009. [Note: We excluded small studios like IFC Films and Magnolia because they didn’t have any widely released films in 2009 so far. The threshold for inclusion was at least three films (so Weinstein didn’t make the cut) with at least one having been widely released. With the last standard in mind, the inclusion of Sony Pictures Classics could be considered questionable, but Rudo y Cursi has played on a few hundred screens at once, so they barely made it in.] Mid-Term Movie Studio Report Card For 2009 So Far 1. Focus Features Focus Features had a limited output in the first half of 2009 (as they usually do), but they produced the best foreign language film of the year to date in Sin Nombre, arguably the best animated film of '09 in the beautiful Coraline, and are currently marketing one of the best performances of the year from Maya Rudolph in Away We Go. The box office jury is still out on the latter (although we expect it will do reasonably well), but the company found a way to push Coraline to an astonishing $75 million domestically, making it the second highest grossing film in the history of the studio (after Brokeback Mountain), and all three films register as "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a stunning 80% average. We wish more people got out to see Sin Nombre (and wonder if the marketing push couldn't have been better there) and Away We Go is good-not-great, but Focus Features undeniably had a strong first half of '09 for what they delivered with Coraline alone. Let's hope the second half is just as good. Critics (80% average): A-. Box Office: B+. Overall: A-. 2. Sony Pictures Classics The art branch of Sony has been producing some seriously high quality films this year, but they still struggle a bit with people going to see them. Still, you have to admire the output, one that has averaged an amazing 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, in terms of what it has brought to the world of cinema. Sugar, Tyson, Rudo y Cursi, Adoration, Every Little Step, and Moon are some of the most beloved films of the year for a good reason. But the studio hasn't been able to get any of them to even $2 million at the box office with only one (Rudo) crossing the $1 million mark. We know there's a ceiling for small films that seems to be getting even shorter, and it's a depressing commentary on how few people are willing to see such well-reviewed films, but SPC needs to do something different in their marketing department. There's no reason Sugar couldn't have been a breakthrough hit if more people had the chance to see it and Tyson could easily appeal to a wider audience. Let's hope they find a way to get the great Moon to as wide an audience as possible. Critics (83% average): A. Box Office: B- Overall: B+ 3. DreamWorks Critics and audiences loved Monsters vs. Aliens and I Love You, Man with both films getting great reviews and fantastic audience response. DreamWorks promoted the crap out of both movies, propelling Monsters vs. Aliens to the #2 position on the year to date and nearly $200 million domestically. I Love You, Man didn't deliver quite as well as the studio hoped that it would at the box office, but critics adored the comedy that will clearly have a long life on DVD. The biggest problem for the studio was how to handle the long-delayed The Soloist, which didn't thrill too many critics and couldn't even make $40 million domestically. What was once one of the most anticipated films of the end of 2008 became one of the bigger bombs of 2009, but MvA and I Love You were enough for more than a passing grade on first term. Critics (60% average): B. Box office: B. Overall: B. 4. Paramount As of 6/12/09, Paramount can lay claim to the biggest movie of the year. Star Trek is in the top ten all-time for the studio already and will likely get to the #7 spot in the history of the company (and that includes DreamWorks films), right behind Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Up has a good chance of moving past Star Trek on the yearly list (and The Hangover might even do it too) but there's no denying that the roughly $250 million the film will bring in has satisfied the company and rebooted the franchise. Oh yeah, and it's great. Star Trek is a critical and financial 'A'. What about the rest of the studio's output? If you add the studio's #2 & #3 highest rated films on the Tomatometer - Hotel for Dogs and Imagine That - they barely surpass the Star Trek total of 95%. They did find a way to get the moderately received Hotel for Dogs to nearly $73 million but Eddie Murphy's latest was another bomb and the less said about Dance Flick the better. Critics (53% average): B-. Box office: B. Overall: B. 5. Disney Pixar's Up looks like it's going to beat the last two Pixar movies at the box office and is easily the most critically acclaimed film of the year with an insane 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. The wonderful flick alone earns Disney/Pixar a double-A on their report card. A more complex aspect of Disney's first term comes when you look at the other films that Disney released – Hannah Montana: The Movie, Race to Witch Mountain, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, and Earth. It's not exactly a stellar line-up (with perhaps Earth excepted). Shopaholic, in particular, was a massive critical bomb with less than one out of four (23%) recommending the Isla Fisher film which could only scratch and claw its way to $44 million (although the $101 worldwide makes that financial picture a bit rosier). The much bigger bomb was the Jonas Brothers concert film which could only muster $19 million - $12 million less than the Hannah Montana concert film made in its opening WEEKEND. And then there's Hannah. Her concert film makes $65 million and we think expectations were high that her feature film would shatter that or at least produce High School Musical 3 type numbers. Thus, the $78 million gross for Hannah Montana: The Movie has to be seen as a slight disappointment (although the budget must have been low). And then there's Race to Witch Mountain. The $66 million for that film paled next to their last Rock family movie outing with The Game Plan making $90 million. But, once again, Disney keeps costs low and makes a reasonable amount at the box office and everyone's happy. Critics (53% average): B-. Box office: B. Overall: B. 6. Universal Universal had one of the most interesting first terms of any studio in that they couldn't seem to find a way to have a film that was both critically well-received and that audiences wanted to see. Duplicity, State of Play, and Drag Me to Hell were massively well-received by critics, but their combined grosses don't equal the $150 million plus of the critically loathed Fast & Furious. Just kick-starting that franchise back to such financially successful life earns Universal a few points, but how on Earth did both Duplicity and State of Play fail to cross $50 million? Is there really that low an audience for films aimed at adults? To be honest, the critical success of those films (and the great Drag Me to Hell) would have probably placed Universal in the #3 or 4 spot after the first term but then they had to go and release arguably the biggest bomb of the summer, Land of the Lost. At least that time there was some agreement. Both critics and audiences hated it. Critics (60% average): B. Box office: C. Overall: B-. 7. Warner Brothers Thank God for some drunk guys in Vegas. Without The Hangover, Warner Brothers would have had a horrendous first half of the year. They can lay claim to two of the bigger bombs - Terminator: Salvation and Watchmen - and most of their other product failed to connect. Observe and Report couldn't cross $30 million. The $65 domestic take for Friday the 13th has to be a bit disappointing (compared to the $81 million of the Texas Chainsaw remake of a few years ago) and even the $62 million domestic take for the highly promoted 17 Again is a bit lackluster. But nothing compares to the $108 million domestic take of Watchmen, a total that we can guarantee you the studio thought would be twice as high. But fate is a funny thing. The fact that The Hangover will be the highest grossing film of first term 2009 for the studio (and possibly all studios based on its trajectory) - it has already passed Watchmen and Terminator - is remarkable and amazing. And WB deserves a ton of credit for how well the film has done - screening it for word-of-mouth well in advance, advertising the hell out of it, and releasing it at just the right time in the season. The Hangover is a critical and financial 'A' for the studio. The rest? Ouch. Critics (52% average): C+. Box office: C+. Overall: C+. 8. Lionsgate What would Lionsgate be without the Jigsaw killer and Tyler Perry? Every year, the latter gives the studio a fall boost and the former usually has a first-half film that rakes it in, no more than 2009's Madea Goes to Jail, which made an amazing $91 million domestically. As for the critics, they pretty much hate everything that comes out from the studio. Their films with the highest acclaim were My Bloody Valentine 3D and Crank 2. Wow. And the fact is that for every Valentine or Haunting in Connecticut, both of which crossed a very respectable $50 million domestically, there is a New in Town (a dismal $17 million) or a Battle for Terra ($2 million). Critics (38% average): C-. Box office: C. Overall: C. 9. Sony The fact that the mighty Sony had a worse first term than the often troubled Lionsgate is an amazing fact but they released six major films and none registered as "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes. And all but one of their films could be considered a bomb. In fact, if it wasn't for a pudgy mall security guard, Sony would be even further down this list. Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the pre-Hangover sleeper of the year and proved that Kevin James can actually be a movie star by making $146 million domestically. But the rest of Sony's slate? The International couldn't cross $30 million. The Pink Panther 2 didn't make HALF of the first film. The less said about Fired Up the better. And even The Taking of Pelham 123 was greeted with a nationwide should shrug. Angels & Demons? Critics hated it and the film is going to struggle to cross $140 million domestically or $80 million less than the last film. That's a bomb. (Although, to be fair, the worldwide gross of Angels will certainly turn a nice profit.) Critics (37% average): C-. Box office: C-. Overall: C-. 10. New Line What will happen to New Line? The studio that is essentially a part of the Warner Brother machine had one nice hit in He's Just Not That Into You ($94 million) but Inkheart ($17 million) was a total disaster and Matthew McConaughey proved that he needs Kate Hudson to find box office gold with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past performing worse than Maid of Honor or What Happens in Vegas from last summer. The fact is that the studio hasn't delivered a $100 million performer yet this year and is performing like a company on its way out more than a vibrant branch of one of the biggest studios in the world. Critics (37% average): C-. Box office: C-. Overall: C-. 11. Summit The house that Twilight built is clearly waiting for the next film in that franchise to turn around their 2009, but they threw four films into the marketplace in the first half of 2009 and critics hated 75% of them and audiences only saw 25%. Not a great term. The one that connected with audiences was Knowing, but even that could only get to $80 million after a huge opening. And The Brothers Bloom connected with a lot of critics, but audiences never found the much-delayed film. As for Push and Next Day Air, everyone except the people who made the films ignored those two. As for their second term of '09, Summit is the player to watch as far as moving up this list with The Twilight Saga: New Moon a virtually guaranteed performer at the box office and the studio releasing one of the best films of the year, The Hurt Locker, next month. Critics (34% average): D+. Box office: C-. Overall: C-. 12. Fox Fox can tout three of the top ten films of the year - X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Taken, and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - but there has rarely been a major studio to have such a critically reviled season. They released ten films and not a single one of them could cross Rotten Tomatoes's 60% "Fresh" threshold with Taken being their most critically acclaimed film of the year. The critical and financial success of Taken along with the box office take of their summer hits would have placed Fox much higher if they hadn't also released total junk like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Miss March, 12 Rounds, Bride Wars, and Dragonball: Evolution. And even their summer "hits" have fallen a little flat. Origins will make less than the last X-Men film and Museum 2 won't match the first film. Critics (28% average): D. Box Office: C-. Overall: D+. 13. Rogue Universal's "youth-skewing" mini-studio released three films under their own banner this year, so they get their own report card. The films? The Unborn, Last House on the Left, and Fighting. Ugh. We liked Last House but most critics weren't kind to it and audiences really stayed away, bringing it to only $33 million domestically. That's less than My Bloody Valentine 3D or even The Haunting in Connecticut. It bombed. So did Fighting with only $23 million. The $42 million for The Unborn is pretty respectable, especially when one considers the film was so bad that it should have gone straight to video. January horror movies to counter-program against awards season films is a financially viable market that studios like Rogue knows how to play well. Critics (31% average): D. Box Office: D+. Overall: D+. 14. Screen Gems What can you say about Screen Gems? Their three films this year? Not Easily Broken, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, and Obsessed. The latter two didn't screen for critics and the first one barely screened for paying audiences. The third Underworld film made less than the first two (although will get close to $100 million with worldwide gross, keeping the studio from an F at the box office for the first term). The $68 million for Obsessed has to be seen as a success but the critics who eventually saw it, hated it (18%). Critics (29% average): D. Box Office: D+. Overall: D+. http://www.movieretriever.com/blog/3...-grade-in-2009 Virgin Media, Universal to Offer Unlimited Music Kate Holton British cable TV operator Virgin Media is to launch an unlimited music download subscription service through a partnership with the world's largest music company, Universal. The music industry has been desperate to boost digital sales in recent years to overcome online piracy, and the agreement comes a day before a British report sets out how the creative and telecoms industries should tackle the problem. People familiar with the service said it would cost 10-15 pounds ($16.30-$24.50) per month, which could appeal to parents concerned by children accessing illegal sites. The service, which both sides described as a world first, would allow Virgin Media broadband customers to both listen by streaming and download to keep as many music tracks and albums as they want from Universal's catalog. The music will be in the MP3 format, meaning it can be played on the vast majority of music devices, including the iPod and mobile phones. The service, which would compete with Apple's iTunes, is set to launch later this year. Virgin said as part of its cooperation with the music industry it would also work to prevent piracy on its network by educating users and would, as a last resort for persistent offenders, suspend Internet access. Virgin said no customers would be permanently disconnected. Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan said the service went further than both sides of the industry could have hoped, with Virgin agreeing to disconnect offenders, and Universal providing unlimited MP3 music without unpopular anti-piracy software. "This really is high stakes, if this can't work then what will," he said. The international music trade body IFPI welcomed the deal. "This is the kind of partnership between a music company and an Internet service provider that is going to shape the future for the music business internationally," chairman and chief executive John Kennedy said. "It also marks new ground in ISPs' willingness to take steps to protect copyrighted content on their networks, and that sets a very encouraging example to the whole industry." Vivendi's Universal Music Group has often led the way in signing such deals. It has agreed an online subscription music service with Britain's largest pay-TV firm BSkyB, at a range of pricing levels, and was one of the first to sign up to mobile handset maker Nokia's Comes With Music offering. Screen Digest analyst Dan Cryan said Virgin would need to sign up other labels and noted it would be competing with other free streaming services, which could be difficult. Virgin said it was also in talks with other major and independent music labels and publishers to offer a complete catalog by the time it launches. "We see this as completely ground breaking," Universal Music chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge told reporters. "We've listened to our customers, our fans and our artists and we think that this is an opportunity to bring music to a wider audience." (Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Simon Jessop and Dan Lalor) ($1 = 0.6119 pound) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55E29220090615 Retailing Era Closes With Music Megastore Ben Sisario The sounds of the Velvet Underground echoed in the Virgin Megastore in Union Square on Sunday afternoon, as bargain-hunting passers-by and hard-core music shoppers poked through what few items remained at the last large-scale record store in New York City. It was the final day of business for the Virgin Megastore chain in North America, which at its peak had 23 locations but by Sunday was down to two: the 57,000-square-foot, two-level New York outlet, and a smaller Hollywood shop that was also set to close. In Union Square posters trumpeted 90 percent discounts and offered the sale of “all furniture and equipment.” But when the store opened, perhaps 90 percent of the merchandise had already been sold, leaving two tables of CDs and DVDs, a dozen T-shirt racks and a few other scattered displays. With the music industry stuck in a decade-long crisis, the sight of a record store closing is hardly surprising. But for many shoppers at Union Square on Sunday the loss of a big outlet in one of the most heavily trafficked areas of the city was particularly dispiriting. “Unfortunately the large retail music store is a dinosaur,” said Tony Beliech, 39, a former Virgin employee who was lugging around an armful of CDs that he said would cost him no more than $20. “It does matter because it was also a social gathering space, and that’s one thing that buying music online lacks.” Dozens of smaller record stores are still open in New York, and at least 2,000 independent shops exist around the country, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a market research company. Many of those independents have banded together to promote events like Record Store Day, which had its second anniversary in April. They are also promoting Vinyl Saturday on June 20, which will feature specially produced records by artists like Wilco and Modest Mouse to draw customers. But the record store ranks have been severely thinned in recent years, and New York, once home to at least three large-scale music chains, now has none. Last month Virgin shut down its other New York Megastore, in Times Square. (There are still Virgin Megastores in Europe and the Middle East, but under different ownership.) HMV — like Virgin, of British origin — pulled out of the American market in 2004; Tower Records closed its 89 American stores in 2006. Trans World Entertainment, which operates the FYE chain, has closed at least 280 of its locations over the last two years, leaving it with about 700, but none comparable in size to the Virgin Megastore. “It’s clear that the model of the large entertainment specialist working in a large space is not going to work in the future,” said Simon Wright, the chief executive of Virgin Entertainment Group, North America. To an extent the closings are a result of the overall drop in music sales. From the industry’s peak in 2000 — when some 785 million albums were sold — until the end of 2008, album sales fell 45 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Even with the rise of iTunes and other online outlets, however, CDs have remained consumers’ format of choice, though that advantage is slipping. As recently as 2006, CDs accounted for more than 90 percent of album sales. Last year that proportion dropped to 84 percent, and so far in 2009 it is 77 percent. As many as two-thirds of all album sales are made at large chains like FYE, Wal-Mart and Best Buy, according to industry estimates. “The Titanic that is physical media started slowly sinking in 2000,” said Michael McGuire, an analyst with Gartner, a market research firm, when asked about Virgin. “Certainly this is a traumatic event for those who worked there, but it’s an expected product of the digital transition.” But the end of Virgin is also a product of business concerns unrelated to music. Its first American store was opened in 1992 in Los Angeles, and it set itself apart from rivals by developing a clublike atmosphere with booming sound systems and by offering steep discounts. “The indies learned from them and applied that to our stores,” said Michael Kurtz, president of the Music Monitor Network, a coalition of about 100 independent retailers. As CD sales declined, the Megastores remained profitable by offering T-shirts, DVDs and other items. The Times Square outlet, for example, had annual sales in excess of $50 million, according to company reports, making it by many industry estimations the highest-volume record store in the United States. In 2007 Virgin’s North American branch was bought by two real estate firms, Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, and in a Reuters interview last year an executive from Vornado made it clear that the chain’s true value was not in its sales but in the real estate that its stores occupied. In both Times Square and Union Square, analysts say, Virgin’s rent was a fraction of the going rate. Forever 21, a fashion chain, is taking over the Times Square store; a spokeswoman for Related Companies said it was in negotiations for the Union Square site but declined to identify any potential new tenants. At Union Square on Sunday most new and popular titles had long since been gobbled up. In relative abundance, however, were Virgin-branded black T-shirts ($1), Guitar Hero action figures ($1.39) and a variety of Jonas Brothers memorabilia. Yet there were still some hidden gems. Mr. Beliech, the customer and former employee, scored CDs by, among others, the British folk-experimental group Current 93 and the hyperkinetic Japanese band Melt-Banana. Max Redinger, 14, who was walking his dog, picked up some anime books and Guitar Hero figures. He said he buys most of his music on iTunes but still likes going to record stores and mentioned that a friend had recently introduced him to an independent shop upstate. “I don’t really buy stuff from it,” Mr. Redinger said, “but it’s a really cool place.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/ar.../15virgin.html Are CDs Going The Way Of The 8-Track? The song is over at Virgin Music Megastores. The shuttering this weekend of Virgin’s last two stores - in Manhattan and Hollywood - marks the death of a once booming chain - and another nail in the coffin of the music CD, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. CD sales nationwide are down by half since 2000. So Virgin’s parent company closed its 25 Megastores and is leasing the space to other businesses. “Everything on these racks, though I don’t like to say it, is available on iTunes, is available on Amazon,” said Simon Wright, the CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group. And that’s where music sales have shifted. Apple’s iTunes is now the nation’s largest music seller - with 20 percent of the market. Amazon has about 8 percent. And some studies show most music is now downloaded for free illegally. “The only reason people are coming here is because they like the buzz of it,” Wright said. “They like the sound, they like the feeling, they like that they can hang put, pick things up and look at it.” Which leaves music lovers longing for that special browsing experience. “CDs now are catering to fans who like the object, who like high sound quality of a CD, but then they also want the pictures and the booklet, and they want to look at the liner notes and the lyrics and the photos,” said Michael Endelman, a senior editor at Rolling Stone. Two years after the lights went out at the once mighty Tower Records chain, Virgin was the last giant standing. The void affects music fans, and artists. “The death of the CD and the sort of shrinking of record labels makes it a lot harder for small acts and even for mid-level acts to get their music out,” Endelman said. And the big acts simply aren’t selling albums like they used to. Back in 2000, when ‘N Sync’s album “No Strings Attached” debuted at number one on the charts - the album sold 2.6 million CDs in its first week. This year, Green Day needed to sell only 600,000 copies of its “21st Century Breakdown” to hit number one. “There’s a huge generation gap in music,” said Russ Crupnick, a vice president of NPD Group, a marketing research firm. “If you take a look at teens, for many teens the CD is to what an 8-track might be to me - it’s an antique, it’s an artifact.” An artifact, that’s getting increasingly harder to find. http://musicindustryreport.org/?p=9008 Digital Downloads Spell End for Videogame Stores? John Gaudiosi Will digital downloads kill the videogames store? That's the multibillion dollar question facing retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp to GameStop Corp, as Internet distributors continue to grow. Retailers like Target splashed out on large booths at last week's E3 Expo in Los Angeles, showcasing games like Activision's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." But gamers -- especially on personal computers -- are increasingly turning to alternative methods to play and buy games, such as downloading or "streaming" online games, rather than trekking to a store. Take industry veteran Dave Perry, whose Gaikai online system lets PC gamers buy and stream games through their Web browsers without needing to download any content. "Our solution is not to dive into a fight with Sony (Corp), Microsoft (Corp), Nintendo Co Ltd, as it wouldn't gain any 'new audience' for publishers," Perry said. "Instead, our strategy is 100 percent focused on being an ally to publishers and first-party hardware makers, by delivering them audiences they don't reach today." Digital downloads are still a small, but fast-growing business. According to the NPD group, 17 percent of games sold in 2008 by PC gamers were digitally downloaded. Microsoft and Sony are trying to convert console gamers who have become accustomed to consuming music and movies digitally via services like Netflix and Apple Inc's iTunes. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter estimates digitally downloaded games will account for roughly 2 percent of industry sales this year, or around $400 million. He expects demand to double annually for a few years, to $800 million in 2010 and $1.6 billion by 2011. "As broadband penetration increases and the Internet connection migrates to the living room, downloads or cloud computing solutions will become much more viable," he said. "Downloads will become 20 percent of the market within five years, and probably peak at around 50 percent of the overall market in 10 years," said Pachter. This assumes an overall market growth of 5 to 10 percent annually, he added. Inertia With videogame sales growth slowing somewhat, publishers and developers are seeking new channels to reach customers. Yet some retailers resist the format, arguing that going through a third-party online distributor further saps margins for both developers and retail chains. Analysts say the big retail chains like Wal-Mart and Target have also yet to embrace and invest in digital sales. "Nothing that has been digitally distributed retains the same value as a retail version; it's always less," GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo said in September. Getting content on demand is no stranger to households accustomed to watching movies over set-top boxes, or teens streaming music over the Internet. But spontaneously ordering a game is stymied somewhat by the limits of the gamers' personal computer system. Some fledgling companies try to work around that. Over the past seven years, entrepreneur Steve Perlman has been developing a digital distribution box called OnLive. He hopes to offer high-definition PC games on low-end hardware. OnLive has struck deals with Electronic Arts Inc, Ubisoft, Take Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari and Codemasters. While the company had 16 games on display in March at the Game Developers Conference, it had no presence on the E3 show floor. OnLive this fall is slated to launch a subscription service similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live. NPD estimates 18 percent of Xbox 360 users who have a "Gold" membership to Microsoft's Xbox Live service regularly download from Xbox Live Arcade, and 10 percent of PlayStation 3 users regularly buy digitally from Sony's PlayStation Network. The largest independent games distribution network is Valve Software's Steam, which has 21 million users and 700 games. Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve Software -- known as the groundbreaking backers of the "Half-Life" shooter series -- said digital distribution has already been largely embraced by the industry. But the real forte of digital distribution may be the ability to provide automatic updates and extras, keeping things new as with the Team Fortress multiplayer-shooter series. "Now that games can be connected to their audience, they will last and grow well beyond their traditional 6-month to 1-year sales cycle," Lombardi said. (Reporting by John Gaudiosi; Editing by Edwin Chan, Richard Chang) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...5596CX20090611 Dress the Set With Tears: It’s a Wrap Brooks Barnes The rattan sofa from “The Golden Girls” awaits its next role from a shelf deep inside the 20th Century Props warehouse here. Nearby is the futuristic shower Tom Cruise used in “Minority Report” and an armchair that starred with Marilyn Monroe in multiple films. Overhead: Art Deco chandeliers from “The Aviator.” On Tuesday, Harvey Schwartz stood amid it all, in tears, wondering how his prop shop, which offers a vast inventory of items to be used in film and television productions, became the latest victim of a rapidly changing Hollywood. Mr. Schwartz, the owner of 20th Century Props, plans to go out of business next month and auction the inventory. Battered by the surge in out-of-state movie production and the demise of scripted programming on network television, the once-thriving business — one of a handful of its type remaining — is failing. “I ran out of money three months ago, and I don’t know what else to do,” he said softly. “It’s terrifying. I’ve devoted my entire life to something that is over.” Set decorators are equally upset. “The closing of 20th Century is a disaster for us,” said Melinda Ritz, who won three Emmy Awards for her work on “Will & Grace.” “Harvey is a great person, and it’s one fewer place that offers one-stop shopping.” She added, “The fabric of Hollywood is fraying so fast that it’s scary.” Not long ago all movie and television studios operated their own prop houses. A dozen independent companies did a brisk business filling in the gaps — an unusual medical device here, a 1960s-era radio there. Outside prop suppliers like 20th Century also handled commercials and period needs (Mr. Schwartz has a large inventory of Art Deco items) along with special events like lavishly decorated premiere parties. Studios started gutting their prop departments in the 1990s to free space on their lots. Mr. Schwartz’s inventory — at last count 93,752 items, ranging from teacups to a life-size submarine — includes the former holdings of 20th Century Fox, for instance. Walt Disney and Paramount have also jettisoned their props divisions. (Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers are the holdouts, and they’re open to outside clients.) Independents like Mr. Schwartz and Omega Cinema Props stayed healthy — despite runaway production and the rise of reality television — largely because of special-events divisions. Such events made up a third of the revenue at 20th Century Props just two years ago, Mr. Schwartz said. But the recession has turned off that spigot. Add in a strike last year by movie and television writers and a continued slowdown in production caused by a threatened actors’ strike, and 20th Century Props could no longer stay afloat. Mr. Schwartz said annual revenue was off by 30 percent last year; so far this year the figure is closer to 50 percent. He said he has been seeking a way to keep the collection together — via an investor or a sale to another prop company — but has so far come up short. The business had 28 employees at the beginning of the year; now it has 7. “I’m a dinosaur, I guess,” Mr. Schwartz said. Great American Group will liquidate the company’s inventory during the last week of July. The holdings are insured for about $8 million, but the value of many of the props is difficult to pin down because of the premium that memorabilia collectors will likely pay for better-known items. “He’s got a collector’s eye and has developed an inventory unlike anybody else’s,” Ms. Ritz said of Mr. Schwartz. “He’s got quirky, interesting pieces.” Mr. Schwartz is a bit quirky himself. Trained as an aerospace engineer, he decided to go into the furniture business in the early 1970s, opening a small store near Beverly Hills and CBS Television City, a cluster of studios that is now home to shows like “American Idol.” He developed a fondness for rattan (“Among other reasons, it was furniture I could lift by myself,” he said) and became an expert. He was an author of a 1999 book titled “Rattan Furniture: Tropical Comfort Throughout the House.” He favors his shirts unbuttoned to about midchest and has a habit of hanging his reading glasses there. “I’m a little bit bananas, I know,” he said. Walking through the 200,000-square-foot warehouse, which is hunkered amid a smattering of auto repair shops and porno stores in this seedy San Fernando Valley suburb, Mr. Schwartz comes off as the curator of a museum that just happens to rent out its treasures. “Beyoncé has danced in this,” he said, motioning to a giant plastic Champagne glass. “See that chair way back there? Claudette Colbert sat in that in ‘Cleopatra,’ the 1934 version.” He paused to point out curved desks used at Ewing Oil on “Dallas” — he’s not certain if J. R. sat at one of them — and led a visitor through a maze of macabre items (jars filled with pickled piglets) to the spot where the morgue from “The X-Files” awaits another adventure. Some of 20th Century’s holdings are antiques with famous provenances outside of the movies. For instance Mr. Schwartz claims to have Merv Griffin’s office chair and a giant Art Deco desk once owned by Howard Hughes (and subsequently used in “The Aviator”). What are the most frequently rented items? Certain dining room chairs have gone out more than 500 times, Mr. Schwartz said. Also popular: a heart-shaped bed, which rents about twice a month. “We don’t ask too many questions with that one,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/movies/18props.html Popular '80s West Hartford Music Hall To Be Demolished Bill Leukhardt A demolition crew will soon bring the house down at the long-closed Agora Ballroom, which drew crowds in the 1980s to hear R.E.M., The Band, the Ramones and other national and regional bands. The building, constructed in 1963 and not used for nearly 20 years, is too decrepit to be renovated and will be knocked down this summer, said Timothy Arborio, vice president of the Arborio Corp. and Charter Oak Utility Constructors Inc. Members of his family own the building. The Agora, a cavernous former bowling alley in an industrial area near the Hartford line, was once the place to play in Connecticut for bands on the way up or down. The building — home to Columbia Music Hall, Finnochio's East, Hard Rock Cafe, Stage West, Agora Ballroom and The Forum — could hold about 5,000 people and often drew crowds that large. "I cut my teeth in that place with those amazing shows," said Hank Zukowski, a Hartford native who started in the late 1970s as a $5-an-hour bouncer and became co-owner of the Agora in the mid-1980s. "Santana, The Allman Brothers, Jerry Garcia, Little Feat, Tower of Power. We had groups on the way up and groups on the way down. We had boxing matches there. Stryper, a Christian heavy metal band, played. They threw tiny Bibles into the crowd." In 1990, the last club, the Forum, closed, not long after vandals with a chain saw ruined the interior, wrecking fixtures and posts that supported an interior gallery. Police say no one was ever charged with the destruction, which rendered the building unusable. Nor did police figure out why it happened. Since then, the building has been vacant as its owners tried to decide what to do with the 5-acre parcel on Dexter Avenue. The issue was recently settled after the owners, including heirs of some original owners, agreed to lease the land to the town. The town has used it as a storage site for recycled materials and for town-owned equipment from the nearby public works complex. Crews are removing asbestos from the building now in preparation for demolition, Arborio said. Still, no matter what the fate of the old building, people have fond memories of the Agora and the other clubs, even though it's been two decades since a band played there. "The Agora was probably my favorite place to play when I was the drummer for Max Creek," said Greg DeGuglielmo, who played in the popular Connecticut rock band from 1985 to 1991. He recently began filling in as a drummer in the band again but says he's not found another place like the Agora, often a stop for Max Creek on its steady 50-weeks-a-year East Coast schedule. "Fans loved it. Lots of room to dance. A great big room with a wooden stage. The sound was tremendous. The old wood in the place really resonated," DeGuglielmo said in an interview from Boston, where he teaches and plays music. Jim Koplik, who launched his career as a concert promoter in the 1980s, ran the Agora from 1979 to 1984, but eventually quit over lack of upkeep of the place. He was surprised to hear the building is still standing. "We drew people from all over Connecticut and western Massachusetts," Koplik said last week. "It had a great bar and a lot of parking. Definitely a good stop." There were folks who used crisp twenties to buy drinks and poor college students who'd count out pennies for a short beer. Paul Zukowski, Hank's brother, who worked there when his brother was co-owner, remembered the night Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of the Plasmatics, "blew up" an old Cadillac onstage as part of the act. One night in 1986, the members of NRBQ refused to get on stage because it was Game Six of the World Series and the Boston Red Sox were playing the New York Mets, Zukowski said. The band played once the game ended, even though by then some fans were angry and vocal. "There was a certain vibe in that place," said Paul Zukowski, who lives in Hartford. There also was a certain atmosphere — the rotten-egg stink of methane. The building was built in 1963 atop an abandoned town landfill. At times, pungent whiffs of methane would waft into the club, especially into some dressing rooms, Paul Zukowski said. The landfill led to the conversion from bowling alley to concert hall. When the building began settling into the landfill, the lanes warped, making bowling challenging. So the building was renovated and turned into a concert hall in the 1970s. When the end came, it was tough to take, said Hank Zukowski, who'd sold his stake in the late 1980s because his then-wife was tired of his long days and nights at the Agora. He estimates he put on 1,000 shows during his time there. "Someone told me that police said people had spent eight hours inside, destroying it," said Zukowski, now co-owner of the 6,900-seat Carolina Entertainment Complex in Marion, S.C. "I went and looked at it. I had tears in my eyes." http://www.courant.com/community/new...,2532029.story Report: Apple CEO Steve Jobs Had Liver Transplant in Tennessee Adding a new twist to the medical mystery surrounding the world's most famous corporate executive, Apple CEO Steve Jobs received a liver transplant about two months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Friday night. The newspaper said Jobs, who is out on a six-month medical leave for an undisclosed illness, is recovering and is expected to return to work later this month as Apple has previously said, but that he may work part time for a while after his return. "Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there's nothing further to say," Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton told the Journal. The newspaper reported that some company directors knew that Jobs, 54, who was also treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004, had the surgery, which took place in Tennessee. Jobs took the leave earlier this year after saying that treatment for a hormone imbalance was more complicated than he expected. He said at the time that he expected to return to work this month. Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, has been running the company on a day-to-day basis since Jobs announced his leave in January. A source quoted by the Journal said Cook may take a "more encompassing role" and may be appointed to Apple's board of directors. The Journal also reported that board members have been updated on Jobs' condition, part of an agreement made before the CEO went on leave. While he has been out on leave, media reports have indicated, Jobs has remained intimately involved with key decisions at the company, which has introduced a wave of new products since January, including the iPhone 3G S, which went on sale Friday. He has even been to Apple's corporate headquarters in Cupertino, the Journal said. After Jobs revealed in August 2004 that he had received the treatment for pancreatic cancer, he said the cancer had been successfully addressed. More recently, though, concerns about his health have risen anew, sparked in part by his noticeable weight loss over the last year. Apple's stock seesaws at every report or rumor about his health, leading some investors to question the limited nature of the company's disclosure about his medical condition, which the company has sometimes described as a personal matter. By some accounts, Jobs accounts for a quarter of Apple's market value. The issue of Jobs' health sparked some controversy in January, when within the course of a week the company announced he had a hormone imbalance that was "simple" to treat, but later Jobs issued a letter saying he would take the leave he is currently on. According to the Journal, Jobs may have had the surgery in Tennessee because its waiting list of patients is shorter than other states. There is no residency requirement for transplants. William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Journal that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization that oversees the transplant network in the United States, the five-year rate of survival for liver-transplant patients is 73.6 percent for livers from dead donors, and 76.1 percent for organs from live donors, who provide a piece of the liver. http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12653039 Bob Bogle, Ventures’ Guitarist, Dies at 75 Ben Sisario Bob Bogle, a founding member of the Ventures, the long-running guitar band whose jaunty 1960 hit “Walk — Don’t Run” became an early standard of instrumental rock ’n’ roll and taught generations of guitarists how to make their solos sparkle, died on Sunday in Vancouver, Wash., where he lived. He was 75. The cause was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Fiona Taylor, the Ventures’ manager, said. Although not the first instrumental band of the rock era, the Ventures were the most successful and enduring, applying their twangy, high-energy sound to dozens of albums. Older than the typical teenage garage band, the members of the Ventures cut wholesome figures, their guitar gymnastics coming across as good, clean sport. Mr. Bogle and Don Wilson, two young construction workers and novice guitar enthusiasts, started the group in Tacoma, Wash., in 1958. Unable to attract a record label, they founded their own, Blue Horizon. Their first single, “Cookies and Coke,” was a flop, but for their second they chose “Walk — Don’t Run,” a tune by the jazz guitarist Johnny Smith that Mr. Bogle had discovered on a Chet Atkins album. The Ventures transformed the gentle original with a quick tempo and bright, punchy guitars. Mr. Bogle played the lead part, punctuating the melodies with springy vibrato and various noisemaking tricks. “They took a jazz song that had some swing to it, and they garaged it out,” Peter Blecha, author of “Sonic Boom: The History of Northwest Rock From ‘Louie Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ ” said in an interview on Tuesday. “They stomped their way through it, ignored the niceties of the sound and made it palatable to 15-year-old tastes.” In the summer of 1960 the single became first a regional hit and then, with distribution by the Liberty label, a national one. It eventually reached No. 2 and sold 2 million copies, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Later that year, when the group prepared to tour, it enlisted a more dexterous guitarist, Nokie Edwards, and Mr. Bogle moved permanently to bass guitar. Howie Johnson was the drummer in the original band, later to be replaced by Mel Taylor. “Walk — Don’t Run” became the Ventures’ formula, applied on hundreds of subsequent records. That same year, 1960, they had another hit with their instrumental version of “Perfidia,” a much-covered song by the Mexican songwriter Alberto Domínguez. (Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole and Linda Ronstadt, among others, have also recorded versions of it.) The band covered pop hits, television theme songs and various novelties in the signature Ventures style, including Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and the “Batman” theme. Psychedelic albums followed in the late 1960s, and in 1972 the Ventures covered “Theme From ‘Shaft,’ ” the blaxploitation classic by Isaac Hayes. The Ventures scored a total of six Top 40 hits throughout the ’60s, including a surf remake of “Walk — Don’t Run,” which reached No. 8 in 1964, and a version of the “Hawaii Five-O” television theme, which went to No. 4 in 1969. In 1965 the group released an instructional album, “Play Guitar With the Ventures,” and over the years many top rock guitarists, including George Harrison and John Fogerty, have acknowledged a debt to the band. By the 1970s, the Ventures’ popularity had begun to wane in the United States, although they remained successful in Japan, where they had toured from their earliest years to the present; confounding record collectors, the group made dozens of albums exclusively for release in Japan. Among Mr. Bogle’s survivors are his wife, Yumi; his brothers Clarence, Dennis and Curtis; a sister, Sybil; his sons Gary, Mike, Paul, Randy and Brandon; a daughter, Kathy; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The Ventures were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008; Mr. Fogerty was the presenter. Mr. Bogle was not in attendance, but Mr. Wilson and Mr. Edwards were, and Ms. Taylor, the band’s manager and widow of Mel Taylor, accepted the honor on his behalf. Mr. Taylor died in 1996, and Howie Johnson had died in 1988. At the ceremony, the band performed the “Hawaii Five-O” theme and “Walk — Don’t Run.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/ar...c/17bogle.html High School Radio Station Boycotted musicFIRST Artists FMQB Earlier this week, the musicFIRST Coalition filed a formal request with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), asking them to investigate and take action against radio stations over reports that some of them are refusing to air music from artists who support the Performance Royalty. The filing does not name call letters, but it does say that a Delaware station boycotted all artists affiliated with musicFIRST for an entire month. It looks like that station was WMPH Radio, a Broadcast Learning Center of the Brandywine School District in Delaware. The station posted a message on its website, WMPH.org, saying, "WMPH made an educational boycott for one month simply to make a statement in the music industry. The musicFIRST coalition wants radio stations to pay the artist for playing their music. From mid-June through mid-July 2007, WMPH refused to play songs by any artist affiliated with the musicFIRST coalition." The posting goes on to point out that, "Radio has always been the best friend of the music industry. Without radio playing new songs released by the record labels, there would be no ‘pop’ music. Since the early days of rock and roll, radio has helped define the culture of America and build the careers of many artists." It also links to a list of artists who belong to musicFIRST. "During the month of our boycott, few listeners even missed the boycotted artists," reads the posting. "WMPH and other stations across the country continue to unite against the musicFIRST coalition by making verbal and written statements. The boycott was lifted, at least for now, because we wish to restore harmony in the music community. We hope that the artists realize that radio stations are their friends in a mutually beneficial relationship." Speaking out for the other side of the debate is longtime WXRT/Chicago deejay Lin Brehmer. After the station sent an e-mail to its database under his name asking listeners to lobby Congress in opposition to the Performance Rights Act, Brehmer took to his Facebook page to distance himself from the e-mail. "If you have received an e-mail from my place of business concerning a political action and it is allegedly from me, rest assured I did not write the e-mail; I never read the e-mail; and I certainly never endorsed the e-mail before it was sent to over 100,000 listeners," Brehmer wrote on his page. "It's just something they do. Send out e-mails and sign my name to them without my knowledge. I will always be on the side of the musicians." Brehmer's message was removed from Facebook on Thursday, according to the Chicago Tribune. Even the Missouri March of Dimes is getting in on the debate, as the organization sent a letter to the entire Missouri congressional delegation about the importance of local radio's donated airtime. The letter notes that Missouri broadcasters donated airtime worth $650,000 last year in public service announcements supporting the March of Dimes. "For March of Dimes, free, over-the-air radio is living up to its ideal of operating in the public interest," reads the letter. "We urge you to keep in mind these contributions when deliberating legislation that may impact the radio industry." http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1367421 NAB Says musicFIRST Call For Investigation Is An "Act Of Desperation" FMQB The musicFIRST Coalition has filed a formal request with the Federal Communications Commission, asking that the FCC investigate and take action against radio stations over reports of stations refusing to air musicFIRST ads and withholding airplay from artists who support the Performance Royalty. The coalition also calls ads from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) "misleading." "For more than 80 years radio stations have been using the work of artists and musicians without compensating them, now they’re using the public airwaves unfairly for their own self interest," said musicFIRST Executive Director Jennifer Bendall. "We respect the First Amendment rights of broadcasters to air their views in this and any debate, but they’ve crossed the line. They have engaged in a concerted effort to promote their own financial interests above their legal duty to serve the public interest by providing truthful and accurate information." The coalition adds that "Radio stations must ensure that their private interests, including their private financial interests, do not interfere with their obligation to serve the public." musicFIRST says in their filing that "the use of a broadcast license to further a licensee’s personal economic interest is particularly egregious where it results in the skewing and distorting of a public debate." As one would expect, the NAB greatly disagrees with the stance of musicFIRST. NAB EVP Dennis Wharton issued the following statement: "This allegation is nothing more than an act of desperation by a record label lobby losing on Capitol Hill and in the court of public opinion. On one hand, it highlights the unparalleled promotional value of free radio airplay, which has propelled countless artists to stardom. We would also note that Will.i.am, a vocal proponent of the performance tax, and his group Black Eyed Peas are currently Number 1 on Billboard's Pop 100 Airplay Chart with the song 'Boom Boom Pow.' If there's an FCC probe involving the music business, it ought to focus on claims from numerous artists -- from The Beatles to Prince to Cher -- that they were cheated out of royalties by their record labels." "Time and time again we have been told ‘NO!’ by radio stations when it comes to airing our side of the debate," says musicFIRST's Bendall. "Many stations are rejecting our ads without even reading the script. It’s an absolute sham. Ironically, they are refusing to take our money at the same time that they cry poverty to avoid fairly compensating artists for the music upon which they have built their businesses." "Even more offensive is the effort to silence artists through threats and retribution," Bendall added. "No one should ever be penalized for working for what they think is right; for participating in the democratic process; for exercising their First Amendment right to correct a decades-old wrong. But that is just what these radio stations have done." According to the filing, a major radio group recently dropped a top selling artist’s record after he spoke in support of performance rights legislation. The filing also claims that the PD of a Florida station declined to add an artist’s music to his station because the artist in question is a member of the musicFIRST Coalition. Another programmer reportedly told "a representative of two prominent artists" that the artist’s support for the Performance Rights Act would have a "chilling effect" on their relationship. The filing also claims that a Delaware radio station boycotted all artists affiliated with musicFIRST for an entire month. "These are the cases we know about," Bendall said. "We can only imagine what may be happening under the cover of silence." musicFIRST is asking the FCC to "investigate these actions, find that the stations have violated their public interest obligations and consider the broadcasters’ malfeasance in connection with their license renewal." musicFIRST is also asking the FCC to consider this conduct as part of its overall review of the length of radio stations licenses, currently seven years. "Our message to the FCC is clear," Bendall said. "We respect a broadcaster’s right to oppose the Performance Rights Act. But we cannot tolerate broadcasters’ use of the public airwaves to stifle debate, threaten artists and musicians and undermine the public interest in pursuit of their narrow, private business interests." Bendell and musicFIRST council Sam Feder led a conference call this morning, further reiterating the coalition's points. They claim that "dozens of radio stations across the country" have refused to run their ads and that some stations are airing misleading ads and information, giving the example of a Radio One ad with incorrect information about the timing of a sale of stations in Pittsburgh coinciding with the Performance Royalty bill. Bendell said that they cannot currently identify which artists have been dropped or left off playlists, due to confidentiality reasons and "the types of intimidation and threats" against these acts. However, this information will be shared with the FCC. She also said that a radio station (which they could also not identify currently) had called for a boycott on its website of all artists affiliated with musicFIRST. The coalition said that with this filing, they are not attempting to "dictate programming choices" or bring up the Fairness Doctrine. Instead, they claim that stations' playlists are being "distorted by outside interests" and the FCC requires such a situation to be disclosed. Feder also said that the stations are violating the public interest by giving a "warped view" of this public issue. http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1363972 It's Official: Sirius XM Passing Royalty Fees On To Subscribers FMQB Earlier this month, it was reported that Sirius XM Radio would be adding new fees to its subscription prices, as a way to pass along increases in satellite radio royalty fees to the consumer. Now the satcaster has confirmed this news, in an letter to its subscribers. The letter, signed by Sirius XM Chief Service Officer Joe Zarella, reads as follows: "Thank you for being an XM subscriber. We are dedicated to providing our subscribers with the best programming and listener experience available on radio today. As part of this commitment, we have an important update regarding your XM subscription. Music royalty rights were established by the U.S. Congress as part of the Copyright Act. This Act requires payment of copyright music royalties to recording artists, musicians and recording companies who hold copyrights in sound recordings. These royalties have recently increased dramatically, principally as a result of a decision made by the Copyright Royalty Board, which is designated by the Library of Congress to set royalty rates for sound recordings. Beginning on July 29, 2009, a 'U.S. Music Royalty Fee' of $1.98/month* for primary subscriptions and $.97/month* for multi-receiver subscriptions will be effective upon your next renewal. This fee will be used directly to offset increased payments from XM to the recording industry. Unfortunately, we cannot control the Copyright Royalty Board's rate increase, but we can offer you ways to save on your subscription. The longer your subscription, the more you save!" As a reaction to the additional fees, Sirius XM is offering a free month for subscribers who sign up for one year, with five free months for a two year deal and nine free months for a three year subscription. Orbitcast reported earlier this month that Sirius XM "can no longer absorb these increased costs" in performance royalties. In 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board instituted increased performance royalty rates for satellite radio, which have gone up every year and will continue to increase into 2012. The rate increased from six percent of gross revenue in '07 and '08 to 6.5 percent this year. It will reach seven percent in 2010, 7.5 percent in 2011 and eight percent in 2012. As part of the Sirius and XM merger, the FCC allowed the combined satcaster to pass along the royalty fees, effective July 29, 2009, whereas the company was required to absorb the fees itself before this date. http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1372602 Minn. Woman Who Lost Music-Share Suit Gets Replay Steve Karnowski The Minnesota woman who became the nation's only music file-sharing defendant so far to go to trial is getting a replay two years after losing the case. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four and self-described "huge music fan," will be armed with aggressive new lawyers when her retrial begins in federal court here Monday. The lawsuit is among the last vestiges of an anti-piracy campaign that the recording industry ultimately dropped amid widespread criticism. The Recording Industry Association of America said in December it had stopped filing lawsuits like these and would work instead with Internet service providers to cut access to those it deems illegal file-sharers. But the recording industry plans to proceed with already-filed cases. Thomas-Rasset is the rare defendant who has fought back. Music companies have filed more than 30,000 similar copyright lawsuits in recent years against people they accused of illegally swapping songs through Internet file-sharing services such as Kazaa. None of the others has made it to trial yet. Faced with huge legal bills, most settled for an average of about $3,500, even if they insisted they had done nothing wrong. Thomas-Rasset's new lawyer, K.A.D. Camara, notes the settlements add up to more than $100 million; the RIAA contends its legal costs exceeded the settlement money it brought in. The lawsuits have turned into a public relations nightmare for the recording industry, putting music companies in the position of going after their most ardent fans. Blogs and media reports have highlighted heavy-handed tactics against several improbable targets. In 2006, for example, the industry dropped a lawsuit against Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother in Oregon. Andersen said she had been misidentified and never downloaded the music she was accused of stealing. Industry representatives allegedly threatened to question her 10-year-old daughter if she didn't pay up. And in 2007, the companies backed off their attempt to sue an elderly Texas grandmother, Rhonda Crain, who had been displaced by Hurricane Rita in 2005 and said she never downloaded music. They settled for no money, just her agreement not to download any music illegally. Camara said he hoped to turn Thomas-Rasset's retrial into a trial against the RIAA, both before the jury and in the court of public opinion. A win by the defense, he said, could undermine the other music-sharing cases. "What you'll see in Minneapolis will be the first battle in what we think will be a successful campaign against the recording industry," Camara said. RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth insisted the music companies will again prevail, just as they had in 2007 when a federal jury in Duluth found Thomas-Rasset violated copyrights by offering 24 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. She was ordered to pay $222,000 in damages, or $9,250 per song. "The facts in evidence have not changed in this case," Duckworth said. "We're confident that a new jury will see it no differently from the first time around." Duckworth said the group doesn't have figures on cases still pending, but the industry will press ahead with them, saying it had to pursue those "who have regularly illegally downloaded music and thumbed their nose at the law and the legal process." Nor did Duckworth have figures on how many defendants decided to settle after Thomas-Rasset lost. "Suffice to say, the first trial generated a fair amount of attention and certainly caused a number of people to think twice about downloading music illegally," she said. Thomas-Rasset, who still denies any illegal song swapping, is getting a retrial after U.S. District Judge Michael Davis decided last September he erred in telling jurors the companies didn't have to prove anyone downloaded the copyright-protected songs she allegedly made available. Davis later concluded the law requires that actual distribution be shown. The companies suing are subsidiaries of all four major recording companies, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment. The defense is now being handled by Camara and his partner, who agreed to take the case for free after the court last month relieved her previous attorney, Brian Toder, who had put in nearly $130,000 worth of unpaid time. Camara, who's about to turn 25, was just 19 when he became the youngest person ever to graduate from Harvard Law School, and he graduated with high honors. He and his partner at their Houston law firm, Joe Sibley, 34, a classmate, were already involved in a couple of similar cases. He said they agreed to defend Thomas-Rasset for free in hopes of setting precedents for other cases. On orders from Sibley, Thomas-Rasset declined to say why she's kept up the fight for so long when she could have settled for a few thousand dollars at the start. Thomas-Rasset, who pronounces her first name as JAY'-mee, lives in the central Minnesota city of Brainerd. She said her musical tastes are "very eclectic" ranging from rock to country to classical. "It all depends on my mood and what I'm doing and who I'm with," she said. She also said she doesn't buy many CDs anymore because she spends what little discretionary income she has on concerts instead. In the short time since they took over the case, Camara and Sibley have tried some new legal tricks, with mixed success. On Thursday, Davis shot down their request to suppress evidence gathered by the MediaSentry anti-piracy service. The judge didn't buy Camara's claim that MediaSentry violated a federal wiretapping law and a state law regulating private detectives when it tracked down his client. Had Camara won on that point, however, the recording companies could have been left without much of a case against her or other defendants. But the defense did manage to create at least a headache for the music labels by demanding that they produce certified copies from the U.S. Copyright Office of the copyrights on the 24 tracks in question, to prove they really do own the songs. The industry's lawyers were caught by surprise, having gotten by with uncertified copies during the first trial. Although music companies told Davis this past Monday they weren't sure they could get certified copies in time for the new trial, Davis reminded them that they had the burden of proving they owned the copyrights. Camara said he'll seek dismissal of the case if the plaintiffs fail that test. Corryne McSherry, a staff attorney with the digital-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new defense team is taking a creative approach. She said it would have been interesting to see how all the cases that settled might have turned out if those defendants had free lawyers who were willing to push as hard. "This case could end up being the tail end of a frankly shameful and certainly failed campaign to go after users," McSherry said. "Maybe this will be the coda to that long campaign." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061400734.html RIAA Lawyers Toss "a Skunk in the Jury Box," Apologize Recording industry lawyers dodged a bullet today after the judge in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset retrial threatened to throw out the complete testimony of an important expert witness. Not disclosing new information to opposing counsel makes federal judges very, very grumpy. Nate Anderson A remarkable scene unfolded Tuesday at the Jammie Thomas-Rasset retrial in Minneapolis, as Judge Michael Davis threatened to toss out the morning's entire testimony by RIAA computer science expert Doug Jacobson. The judge warned recording industry lawyers that he was "contemplating striking the doctor's testimony based on your behavior in this case." The drama unfolded just before lunch at the end of Jacobson's morning of testimony. Most of it was pedestrian—the well-credentialed Jacobson (a network security professor at Iowa State University) explained P2P networks and connected the dots between yesterday's MediaSentry and Charter evidence. All quite straightforward stuff. After a lunch recess, the parties reconvened without the jury to argue the point. Sibley complained that the recording industry had "thrown a skunk in the jury box." Straightforward, that is, until the end, when Jacobson said he had found a log file on the Jammie Thomas-Rasset hard drive image he had examined. That log file indicated that an external hard drive had been connected to the machine—a minor point, but one that the recording industry seemed to believe indicated that Thomas-Rasset had loaded her new hard drive with songs from an external drive. (She had replaced the hard drive at issue in the case when the infringement in question was detected, apparently after her 10-year old son had smacked the machine in frustration and broken it.) Defense lawyer Joe Sibley said that this log file information was news to him, and he wondered why it wasn't in Jacobson's original report. When had he learned about it? "A couple days ago," said Jacobson. "A couple days ago!" thundered Sibley. "No further questions." He stalked off to his table and threw down his pen. The jury was removed and Jacobson was questioned further. It turned out that he had recently unearthed the log file information when preparing again for his testimony, had mentioned it in passing to a recording industry lawyer, and no one had notified the defense—a massive error. Davis indicated that the RIAA's "behavior in the case" was leading him to think about tossing all of Jacobson's morning of testimony, a severe sanction that indicated the judge's displeasure with what had just happened. After a lunch recess, the parties reconvened without the jury to argue the point. Sibley complained that the recording industry had "thrown a skunk in the jury box." Tim Reynolds, lead counsel for the recording industry, apologized no less than four times, saying that the omission was not made in bad faith and that he had not realized Jacobson was talking about some recently unearthed bit of evidence. In the end, the judge ruled that only a narrow bit of Jacobson's evidence would be stricken from the record, but the rest would remain. While dramatic (and time-consuming), the issue of whether Thomas-Rasset hooked an external hard drive up to her computer at some point in March or April of 2005 isn't particularly important, and it has nothing to do with whether she infringed copyrights in February 2005. Jacobson's testimony, then, was largely an exercise in providing a scholarly, expert voice to confirm the general validity of MediaSentry's evidence and Charter's linkage of an IP address to Jammie Thomas-Rasset's Internet account. Sibley did have Jacobson confirm, however, that no investigator would be able to link this evidence to a specific person. "Even with all your credentials," Sibley asked, "the best we can do is connect the file-sharing to the computer, right?" Jacobson agreed, and Thomas-Rasset's case may rest in the end on whether the jury believes she was the likely user. Making the defense's job more difficult was this afternoon's testimony of Thomas-Rasset's ex-boyfriend Kevin Havemeier, who struggled to remember most of his dates but did note with clarity that he needed help to use Thomas-Rasset's machine back when they were dating. The machine was password protected, and when combined with the fact that Thomas-Rasset wasn't using a WiFi router and used the "tereastarr" username for all sorts of Internet activity, Havemeier's testimony will make it easier for the jury to believe that Thomas-Rasset was the woman behind the "tereastarr@KaZaA" account at the center of this case. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-apologize.ars Jammie Thomas Takes the Stand, Admits to Major Misstep Jammie Thomas-Rasset took the stand this afternoon and pleaded total innocence. She didn't even know what KaZaA was before this case began! The record industry didn't buy it, in part because of a major problem during her previous under-oath testimony. Welcome to the "Tale of Two Hard Drives." After the morning's excitement, Jammie Thomas-Rasset took the stand this afternoon during her retrial. She was clad in a black shirt and black pants, the sort of garb appropriate to a hanging. Her testimony wasn't quite a hanging, but it didn't go particularly well for her, either—recording industry lead counsel Tim Reynolds caught her in what appears to have been a fairly significant misstep just before he let her off the stand. First came the geeks But before Thomas-Rasset raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the court heard from Ryyan Chang Maki, a Best Buy Geek Squad supervisor from the Duluth area. Maki struck a somewhat comic chord as he walked up to the witness box with his skinny black tie, Geek Squad pin, Geek Squad belt badge, and Geek Squad jacket, but his testimony was no joke. Two weeks after MediaSentry noted the infringement of "tereastarr@KaZaA" (and notified the user via KaZaA instant message that he or she had been caught sharing files) back in February 2005, Thomas-Rasset hauled her Compaq Presario down to the local Best Buy. There was a problem with the hard drive, so Best Buy replaced it under warranty. That might sound like no big deal until you realize that Thomas-Rasset later provided this new hard drive—and not the one in the machine during the alleged February infringement—to investigators and to her own expert witness. It becomes an even bigger deal when you realize that she swore under oath—twice—that she had replaced the hard drive in 2004 (a full year earlier) and that it had not been changed again since. Defense lawyer Joe Sibley put the best face on the hard drive replacement, asking Maki to confirm that Best Buy would not have swapped out a hard drive under warranty without checking to see if it worked. Maki agreed that the hard drive had truly been dead when it came in; if Thomas was attempting to cover her tracks, she would have had to break the device herself. Sibley was less successful when he went over a complete record of Thomas-Rasset's Best Buy purchases for early 2005. It showed many media purchases—every few weeks, Thomas-Rasset had purchased DVDs, video games, and soft drinks (seriously, there were lots of soft drinks on the list). Sibley pointed out what a good customer she was even during the period of her alleged infringement. The subtext was clear: when someone is getting all their music for free, why would they keep going to Best Buy to purchase CDs? Unfortunately for Thomas-Rasset, the list did not in fact show this. Between December 2004 and May 2005, your humble correspondent noted only one item on the list that appeared definitively to be a CD—and it was Guitar Hits of the 80s. If anything, the list looked like a buyer's log of someone who was in fact getting music for free but was still buying plenty of DVDs and video games. An ex-expert Next up was Eric Stanley, who had been hired by Thomas-Rasset before her first trial to examine the same hard drive that was turned over to recording industry investigators. Thomas-Rasset at first told Stanley that the drive had been replaced in 2004, well before the alleged infringement, so this evidence looked like it would be great for Thomas-Rasset... until recording industry lawyers deposed Stanley and Thomas-Rasset on the same day. At some point during that day, Stanley heard something that led him to examine the physical drive once more during a break. It was then he found the sticker with a manufacturing date—of early 2005. Stanley realized he was looking at a drive that had likely not even been in the machine when the alleged infringement took place. (He was asked about but had not heard the Best Buy testimony, which would support the idea that the hard drive he examined did not find its way into Thomas-Rasset's machine until early March 2005 when the Best Buy Geek Squad did the drive replacement.) Jammie speaks Thomas-Rasset took the witness stand after this. She did not shrink before questioning, at several points telling Tim Reynolds that he was characterizing her earlier deposition remarks incorrectly. In every case, Reynolds opened up the deposition, read out the particular passage, and forced her to admit that yes, she had said those things already under oath. Most of this sparring was insignificant, but crucial details did emerge. First, we learned that Thomas-Rasset had only the Compaq Presario, that she kept it her bedroom, and that her "tereastarr" Windows account was password protected. (She had another account for guests and for her children.) As for that "tereastarr" name, it has been her only online username for 16 years. Thomas-Rasset even claimed to have never heard of KaZaA before this case began, despite the fact that the "tereastarr@KaZaA" account has clearly been linked to her cable modem and despite having written a paper on Napster in college—a paper in which she concluded that Napster's original incarnation was legal under US law. After more than an hour of this, Reynolds pressed his advantage on the hard drive issue. He referred to Thomas-Rasset's two previous depositions, both made under oath, during which she had said that the hard drive replacement had taken place in 2004 and that the drive had not been swapped again since. Reynolds finally came straight out and suggested that the hard drive that had been turned over to investigators was different from the one that had been in the machine during the alleged infringement. "That's true," said Thomas-Rasset, and with that, her testimony was over. The trial could wrap up as soon as tomorrow, said the lawyers for both sides, which means that Thomas-Rasset will likely be called by the defense and will hopefully try to fill in the gaps here. Why was her hard drive story so wrong? Why had the drive been swapped out in the first place? Was she trying to deceive the recording industry? Why was Thomas-Rasset's password-protected computer running KaZaA in February 2005, and with the "tereastarr" name, if she had not set up the software? And since no one else had the password, and since her kids were young and had a computer account of their own anyway, who might possibly have used a machine in her bedroom to share thousands of songs without her knowledge? But those are questions for tomorrow. After Thomas-Rasset makes her best case, expect the recording industry lawyers to really bore in on the inconsistencies in her testimony in a way they did not today. The case against her certainly looks strong, but Thomas-Rasset remains defiant. When asked point-blank today if the KaZaA share folder seen by MediaSentry was hers, she said clearly, "It is not mine." A matter of equity Whatever the merits of the case, it was certainly pathetic to see this young woman's life dragged out and put on display in the harsh glare of a federal court. E-mail addresses, her phone number, a floor plan of her apartment, her Match.com account, her Best Buy purchase history, screenshots of her Windows PC—all of it displayed on flat-panel screens, blown up for and scrutinized by the jury—her ex-boyfriend on the witness stand, discussions about her education, career, and CD collection, experts sifting through her hard drive... Did she do it? That's for the jury to decide. But the bigger question is whether the process itself—the threat of life-altering damage awards, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, the time and exposure of a federal trial—is truly a proportional, equitable response to online copyright infringement? Not even the judge who must preside over this case believes that the answer to that question is "yes." Writing an unusually pointed order granting Thomas-Rasset a new trial last year, Judge Michael Davis, Chief Justice of the Minnesota District Court, wrote these extraordinary words: Quote:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...or-misstep.ars Thomas Testimony Ends With Tears, Anger, Swedish Death Metal Jammie Thomas-Rasset took the stand for the final time today in a tearful piece of testimony in which she disparaged an opposing witness, attacked the record industry, claimed "extortion," and finally offered some alternative scenarios for what might really have happened. The Jammie Thomas-Rasset file-sharing retrial wrapped up today ahead of schedule after the defense called only a single witness—Jammie Thomas-Rasset—and the jury finally heard some alternative scenarios for the facts in the case. The jury was also treated to an extraordinary display as Thomas-Rasset said that a distinguished computer science professor was brought in to give "false testimony" against her (there were gasps in the courtroom and an immediate objection from the record companies at this), then broke down crying, detailed the "complete nightmare" the case has made of her life, and claimed that the labels initially "tried to extort $5,000 from me." Her testimony, which also featured such memorable phrases as "I never downloaded Morbid Angel's 'World of Shit'" and "I didn't even know there was a Swedish death metal genre," was certainly spellbinding. But did it sway the jury? What might have happened instead Thomas-Rasset was the only witness called by the defense. Her direct examination was handled by defense lawyer Joe Sibley, who opened with a set of effective questions asking her about inconsistencies in the case. Thomas-Rasset had said twice in depositions before trial that the hard drive in her computer had been replaced in 2004, long before the alleged infringement in February 2005. She had turned this hard drive over to experts, making clear that it was the drive in the machine at the time of the alleged infringement. That turned out to be false—the drive was replaced in March 2005, only weeks after MediaSentry detected sharing from tereastarr@KaZaA, and the experts therefore examined a clean drive that had little relevance to the infringement claim. The recording industry is convinced it has caught Thomas-Rasset in a major deception, and lawyer Tim Reynolds yesterday forced her to concede that the drive she turned over was different from the one in her computer in February 2005. Sibley opened by asking directly, "Are you lying about the hard drive?" Thomas-Rasset said no. Her explanation? That she had consistently been off by a year during both depositions. No reason for this was given, but the implication was that it had been a mere mistake; the depositions had taken place two years after the alleged infringement, and memories can be fuzzy. Why had she not corrected her sworn deposition testimony and interrogatories when she learned the truth? She thought deposition changes cost money, and she didn't know that interrogatory answers could later be altered, she said. Thomas-Rasset also asked the jury why she would have hired her own forensic examiner to look at the drive if she was guilty? (To which the obvious rejoinder might be that since she handed over a completely different hard drive, she therefore had little to fear from an examination of its contents.) What about the KaZaA instant message that RIAA investigators sent her in February 2005? She had never seen such a message. The fact that her hard drive broke two weeks later was mere coincidence; her oldest son, who was 10 at the time, got frustrated when a computer game locked up and he hit the tower. After that the computer wouldn't boot, and Best Buy techs verified that the drive was in fact dead before replacing it in early March 2005. What about the letter from Charter in April 2005 telling her that it had received a subpoena related to her account—a letter sent by FedEx, not through the postal service. Thomas-Rasset said she had thrown it out without reading the contents, thinking it to be some updated privacy policy or terms of service document. What about the letter received from the law firm of Shook, Hardy, and Bacon in August 2005? Thomas-Rasset did read that one, called the number, and was told that it would be $5,000 to settle. The operator helped her look for KaZaA on her machine, but Thomas-Rasset says that she couldn't find it. Of course she couldn't; the hard drive had been replaced in March 2005, but Thomas-Rasset never brought this up when speaking with the recording industry. Why not? Because she thought the letter from Shook, Hardy, and Bacon was referencing some recent event, she said, something from the last month or six weeks. Then Sibley asked a key question: did Thomas-Rasset have any alternative explanations for what had happened on that night in February 2005? She did—the sharing might have been done by her kids (10 and 8 at the time) or her ex-partner Justin. These suppositions were bolstered by Sibley's decision to walk through the long set of screenshots that MediaSentry grabbed from Thomas-Rasset's computer that night in February 2005. It contained more than 1,700 songs, but a good number of these were heavy metal and industrial tracks that Thomas-Rasset said she hates. Covenant, Morbid Angel, Wumpscut, Ministry, VNV Nation—she disliked their music, but noted that Justin had CDs from many of these bands and enjoyed the style. Sibley also pointed out that many of the songs in that KaZaA share directory were songs that Thomas had on CD. But Thomas only ripped her music to the computer in WMA format, and these were all in MP3. Her computer had a password-protected guest account that both Justin and the kids could access, however, and she knows that the kids used Yahoo Launchcast to play music. Launchcast rips by default into MP3, not WMA. So perhaps Justin did it, or maybe one of the kids. Thomas-Rasset volunteered that her oldest son, 10 at the time, had been caught looking at a porn site with a friend at that time and had been using computers since he was four. Maybe he did it? What about the damning "tereastarr@KaZaA" username; who else would have used that? Thomas-Rasset testified that "Terea Starr" was the name she had picked out when she was first pregnant, and it would have been her child's name if that child had been a girl. Though it has been her sole Internet username for 16 years, she said it was also well-known to her kids and to Justin. Also, Justin has stayed in the home for a week at a time on several occasions when Thomas-Rasset had to travel. He watched the kids—maybe he did it then? (None of these dates overlapped with alleged infringement, though, but they came close.) After offering all these alternative possibilities, Thomas-Rasset was given free rein to tell the jury how the case had affected her. That brought the tears and the accusations of false witness directed against Dr. Doug Jacobson—a shocking claim to make, given what actually happened, and one that the judge immediately ordered stricken from the record. Thomas-Rasset's continued tearful testimony was brought to an end by a second record objection that she wasn't answering any questions as she proceeded into a disquisition about how the recording business sues children and tried to extort money from her. Cross, in more ways than one Tim Reynolds, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, cross-examined her next. Though genial throughout the trial, this time around there was an undercurrent of anger. He charged repeatedly that Thomas-Rasset was saying several of these things for the first time ever here in court and had never mentioned them over the last three years of the case. He forced her back to previous deposition testimony and reminded her of her own words, though Thomas-Rasset did an effective job of sparring with him. She made it clear that plaintiffs had not in fact asked certain very narrow questions, such as whether there was a "possibility" that others had done this instead. Plaintiffs had asked her if she could accuse anyone else, but she had said no on multiple occasions since she didn't "know" if her kids or Justin had done it. Reynolds also forced her to admit that she had never seen Justin playing music on her computer and that Justin had moved out of her apartment in mid-2004 (though he returned for the occasional week-long babysitting session). And with that, the case ended. Certain questions remained—could Justin or the kids in fact have installed KaZaA using a non-administrative guest account, for instance?—but the Thomas-Rasset team has clearly decided on a simple strategy. All that stuff about challenging the copyright registrations has fallen by the wayside (the registrations were finally admitted without incident this morning). Fair use has been disqualified as a defense. Instead, Thomas-Rasset said repeatedly on the stand that even if she accepted all of the plaintiffs' evidence, and even if her computer was the one used to infringe copyrights, there remains no direct evidence that she was the one doing it. Ars spoke to the defense team briefly after the trial, and they expressed confidence that the jury will not in fact return a guilty verdict based on the facts of the case. The standard of proof in civil cases is a mere preponderance of the evidence, so the key question from today was just how much doubt Thomas-Rasset was able to sow in the jury's mind. We'll know Thursday, when closing arguments are made and the jury is packed off for deliberations. If this case proceeds like the last one, we may have a verdict by the end of the day. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...eath-metal.ars Closing Arguments in the Thomas Trial: Victim or Liar? The Jammie Thomas-Rasset retrial has concluded with a stirring set of closing arguments, and her fate is in the hands of the jury. Two portraits of Thomas-Rasset emerged, and they can't be reconciled. The jury will decide if she's a sophisticated liar or a victim of the soulless Terminator. Jammie Thomas-Rasset's file-sharing retrial has just wrapped up here in Minneapolis with a pair of powerful closing arguments. The jury was left with two stories, neither of which appears to fully explain the facts in the case, but are both compelling. As is the custom in the District, Joe Sibley went first for the defense, with Tim Reynolds for the plaintiffs. There was no opportunity for rebuttal, meaning that the RIAA got the last word in. Joe Sibley for the defense Throughout Sibley's closing arguments, the technical issues were nowhere to be seen: could someone have spoofed Thomas-Rasset's modem MAC address? Did the labels have certified copies of their copyright registrations? Was MediaSentry an accurate investigator? None of these questions were raised. Sibley instead rested on the argument that all the evidence, even if accepted as true, only linked Thomas-Rasset's computer "to the file-sharing on KaZaA." Jammie should face no penalties, for the following reasons: The boyfriend. Thomas-Rasset's ex-boyfriend Kevin Havemeier testified on the stand that during the time period in question, he had never seen Thomas-Rasset use KaZaA nor heard her talk about it. He would have known about something like this. The jury. During jury pool questioning, several people admitted to having friends who had downloaded music for them. Jammie insisted under oath that she has no proof that anyone used her computer to exchange music, but that her kids and ex-husband could have done so. Sibley said that there was "better evidence" against specific file-sharers in the jury selection process than in the trial. The CDs. Thomas-Rasset owned a pile of CDs, which included many of the songs found in the KaZaA share folder. Sibley asked why she would "steal music" when she already owned the tracks? And Thomas-Rasset said repeatedly that she only ripped CDs using Windows Media Player in WMA format; the files in the share folder were MP3. Best Buy. Thomas-Rasset's Best Buy purchase history showed that she was an avid consumer of media (though, as we noted before, the list contained almost no CDs that we could identify). But Sibley made the point that she bought plenty of material, including a Lord of the Rings DVD. Why would she have purchased media of any kind if she was such a KaZaA fiend? The username. Her family all knew about the "tereastarr" name, and in fact her ex-husband had set up the computer in question and had created the initial "tereastarr" admin account that Thomas-Rasset used. Besides, given her sophistication, why would Thomas-Rasset have used her Windows username to commit crimes? The broken hard drive. Thomas-Rasset took her computer to Best Buy two weeks after the alleged infringement, and her hard drive was replaced. Why would someone worried about being caught have waited two weeks from the MediaSentry instant message in February 2005 to destroy or conceal the key evidence? Also, the drive really was broken; did Thomas-Rasset find some way to destroy her own drive? The dates. Thomas-Rasset was off by a year on her dates in two separate depositions, telling the recording industry that the hard drive was replaced in 2004 and not since. "So what?" asked Sibley. "Having a bad memory doesn't mean she did it." The Terminator. The recording industry is a heartless machine operated by executives who just "hop on a jet back to New York or LA or wherever they're from." The real message they wanted to send is: "if we say you did it, you did it." Anyone who doesn't comply will have them "come after you like the Terminator." The grace of God. "This could happen to any of us," Sibley said to the jury. If a kid, or a friend's kid, downloads some songs on a computer at home, any juror could just as easily be on trial with the same evidence against them. "There but for the grace of God go I," he concluded; it would be "a travesty" to sentence Thomas-Rasset to "a life of financial misery." Tim Reynolds for the prosecution After Sibley's passionate defense, Reynolds spent fifteen minutes in the weeds of copyright registrations and MediaSentry evidence, none of which the defense had even mentioned. It was ice compared to Sibley's fire, but Reynolds gradually hit his stride and concluded with a stirring call to hold Thomas-Rasset responsible for her actions. Leaving aside the validity of the evidence, Reynolds' main task was to show that the evidence did in fact point to Thomas-Rasset and not just to her machine. He did so using the following arguments. Tereastarr. Sure, her family might have known the name, but Thomas-Rasset had used it exclusively as her online username for more than a decade, and for "absolutely everything." Her contention that the name was known to others and might have been used by them contradicted sworn deposition testimony, said Reynolds, that no one else used that name. The first ex. Yesterday, Thomas-Rasset identified her ex-husband, Justin Gervais, as someone who liked much of the music in the share folder and as someone who spent several week-long stints at the house in late 2004 doing babysitting while Thomas-Rasset was away for work. Reynolds asked if it was credible that after a 2004 breakup, Gervais would then use a computer he rarely accessed, in the bedroom of his ex-wife, to download more than 1,700 songs? And Thomas-Rasset testified that she had never seen him listen to music on the computer and never seen him use KaZaA. The hard drive. This issue was the "ultimate misdirection" in the case, said Reynolds. Thomas-Rasset had said many times under oath that the drive she turned over to the RIAA and to her own investigator was the one in the computer at the time of the alleged infringement. This was false (as she was forced to admit on the stand)... and Thomas-Rasset only changed her story after her own expert had some doubts, went back to the drive, and found a sticker saying it had been manufactured in 2005. The second ex. This was the most important claim. Ex-boyfriend Kevin Havemeier was dating Thomas-Rasset in early 2005, when the alleged infringement was detected. Most of his testimony on the stand was confused; he couldn't remember his dates, but one thing he remembered clearly (and had been consistent on through both trials and his deposition) involved the hard drive. When Thomas-Rasset received a notice about a potential action against her, Havemeier told her that investigators wouldn't find anything, since she had replaced the hard drive in March 2005. He told her this before she turned the drive over to investigators, before she claimed that it was the correct drive, and before she swore in depositions that it had been replaced in 2004. In other words, Thomas-Rasset knew exactly what she was doing when handing over the wrong hard drive. Thomas-Rasset simply says that Havemeier is lying or incorrect on this point. Napster. Thomas-Rasset had used Napster for a college course and had written a paper on it, arguing that it was legal. She also admitted that she followed the court case that shut Napster down and knew that it was not legal. Given her knowledge and experience with file-sharing, her claim never to have heard of KaZaA and never to have downloaded files might seem suspect. The instant message. MediaSentry did send an instant message through KaZaA in February 2005. It was received by Thomas-Rasset's machine, though there is of course no way to prove that she actually saw it. According to Reynolds, though, it's more likely than not. Surprises. Reynolds harped repeatedly on that fact that much of the information in Thomas-Rasset's testimony yesterday was new. Why had she waited more than three years, gone through one trial, two depositions, and multiple sworn questionnaires, without having raised the possibility that Justin Gervais might have been the infringing party. "For the first time" was a recurring phrase in Reynolds' closing. In the end, he concluded by saying that the labels cared about the legislation and that "the need for deterrence here is great." As for the amount of a damage award? That's up the jury, but the recording industry is not asking for the full $3.6 million that the Thomas-Rasset defense team keeps bringing up. With that, "A Tale of Two Jammies" came to its close, the jury was charged and sent off to the jury room. We'll post the verdict as soon as it's in. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...im-or-liar.ars Thomas Verdict: Willful Infringement, $1.92 Million Penalty Jammie Thomas-Rasset's federal retrial concluded today as a jury found her liable for willful copyright infringement, awarding the record labels nearly $2 million in damages. A new lawyer, a new jury, and a new trial were not enough to save Jammie Thomas-Rasset. In a repeat of the verdict from her first federal trial, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for willfully infringing all 24 copyrights controlled by the four major record labels at issue in the case. The jury awarded the labels damages totaling a whopping $1.92 million. As the dollar amount was read in court, Thomas-Rasset gasped and her eyes widened. Kiwi Camara, Thomas-Rasset's lead attorney, spoke briefly after the trial. He told reporters that when he first heard the $80,000 per song damage award, he was "angry about it" and said he had been convinced that any liability finding would have been for the minimum amount of $750 per song. As for Thomas-Rasset, she appeared shaken by the verdict but didn't blame the jury. "They did their job," she said, "I'm not going to hold it against them." She added, though, that the recording industry would never collect the money. "Good luck trying to get it from me... it's like squeezing blood from a turnip." The recording industry lawyers, though clearly pleased, had no desire to showboat this one. The massive damage award, which increased from $9,250 per song in the first trial to $80,000, might sounds like a "win," but will probably stoke grassroots anger against the industry's campaign... if the music business tries to collect. There are hints that it might not. Spokesperson Cara Duckworth of the RIAA, who attended the trial, told reporters afterwards, "Since day one we have been willing to settle this case... and we remain willing to do so." The industry appears to be doing everything it can not to appear vindictive in these cases, though Duckworth refused to discuss any details of what a proposed settlement might look like. Camara acknowledged the settlement offer and said that his side would certainly investigate it, but he made clear that he intends to file numerous motions if Thomas-Rasset wants to continue the fight. Motions on the constitutionality of such massive damages and other issues can still be filed with the judge, and then there's the entire matter of an appeal. Thomas-Rasset sounds inclined to fight on. The case was "one for the RIAA, not the end of the war," she said. As for Camara, he intends to press ahead with his class-action lawsuit against the recording industry, in which he will take up the daunting task of trying to claw back all the money that the recording industry has collected in the course of its legal campaign to date. Not good enough A vigorous defense from Kiwi Camara and Joe Sibley was not enough to sway the jury, which had only to find that a preponderance of the evidence pointed to Thomas-Rasset. The evidence clearly pointed to her machine, even correctly identifying the MAC address of both her cable modem and her computer's Ethernet port. When combined with the facts about her hard drive replacement (and her failure to disclose those facts to the investigators), her "tereastarr" username, and the new theories that she offered yesterday for the first time in more than three years, jurors clearly remained unconvinced by her protestations of innocence. Camara suspects that the jury thought Thomas-Rasset was a liar and were "angry about it," thus leading to the $80,000 per-song damages. The case is a reminder that in civil trials, simply raising some doubt about liability is not enough; lawyers need to raise lots of doubt to win the case, and Camara and Sibley were unable to do so here. The jury found Thomas-Rasset's conduct to be willful, which means that statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. In his closing statement, defense lawyer Joe Sibley made clear that even the minimum award would run $18,000 (24 songs x $750 = $18,000), an amount that he said was unfair and crippling to Thomas-Rasset. The jury decided that the per-song penalty would be $80,000, for a total damage award of $1.92 million, over $1.7 million more than the award in her first trial. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...al-verdict.ars Mich. Mermaid Sculpture Targeted as Illegal Copy AP A Little Mermaid statue that has stood in a park in a Michigan city since 1994 may be removed because of a claim it's an illegal replica of the famous original in Denmark. The city of Greenville was notified about the statue in a letter from the Artists Rights Society in New York representing the estate of Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen, The Daily News reported. The Artists Rights Society says Greenville's statue may not be an exact replica, but the pose and name are the same. It says Eriksen's estate is seeking either the statue's removal or fees for its display. Greenville officials said their 30-inch statue by a Michigan artist was intended to be an interpretation of the original. City Manager George Bosanic says the city will work to seek permission for the mermaid to stay. Copenhagen's 5-foot Little Mermaid was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...n-Mermaid.html China Orders Patches to Planned Web Filter Edward Wong A designer of Internet filtering software that is required to be preinstalled on computers sold in China has been ordered by the Chinese government to fix potential security breaches, according to a report Monday in China Daily, the official English-language newspaper. The official order is an indication that the government still supports use of the program despite heated debate over it. The proposed software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, has come under attack from many computer users in China for both political and technical reasons. Critics say that although the Chinese government insists the software will be used only to block access to pornographic Web sites, the software’s actual use will be to block sites with political content, like those that discuss the Tibet issue or the crackdown during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The government says all computers sold in China after July 1 must have the software installed. Some computer experts who have studied the software said last week that the software is so flawed that it can allow hackers to monitor a user’s Internet activity, steal data or plant viruses. One expert, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, has posted on the Internet a report on its vulnerabilities. Rather than agreeing to scrap the software altogether, the Chinese government has responded to the technical criticisms by ordering that the potential security breaches be eliminated. “The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told us to make the software safer as soon as a series of security vulnerabilities were found,” Zhang Chenmin, the general manager of Jinhui Computer System Engineering, which helped design the software, told China Daily. Mr. Zhang acknowledged that the software had systemic flaws that would allow hackers to attack computers that used the program, “just like any other software of this type.” Mr. Halderman said last week that it had taken only a few hours for him and his students to infiltrate a computer loaded with Green Dam and force it to crash. A skilled hacker could take over the computer to mine personal data or hitch it to other infected machines in a malevolent network, he added. Debate about the software exploded on the Internet last week as Chinese “netizens” learned more about the software requirement issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China Daily reported Monday that surveys done by four of China’s most popular Web portals showed that four in five netizens would not use the software or would have it uninstalled. Early reports had indicated that the government might simply require Green Dam to be included on a CD packaged with new computers. But it became apparent last week that the government was insisting that all computer makers pre-install the software by July 1. Foreign computer makers learned of the requirement three weeks ago and have been asking the Chinese government to reconsider the rules. Meanwhile, Solid Oak Software, a company based in Santa Barbara, California, has accused the designers of Green Dam of stealing programming code from a piece of software developed by Solid Oak that blocks Web sites deemed to be pornographic, violent or offensive. Solid Oak says that some of the “blacklist” files used by Green Dam had been originally developed for its program, which is called Cybersitter. “I cannot deny that the two filters’ databases of blacklisted URL addresses might share similarities,” Mr. Zhang was quoted as saying in China Daily. “After all, they are all well-known international pornographic Web sites that all porn filters are meant to block. But we didn’t steal their programming code.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/bu.../16censor.html China Disables Some Google Functions Edward Wong The Chinese government disabled some search engine functions on the Chinese-language Web site of Google on Friday, saying the site was linking too often to pornographic and vulgar content. Government officials met with managers of the Chinese operations of Google on Thursday afternoon to warn them that the company would be punished if the Web site was not purged of the offending material, according to a report on Friday by Xinhua, the state news agency. Earlier that day, a government-supported Internet watchdog group, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, had criticized the Web site for its erotic content and threatened punishment from the government. The group had said that Google had already been warned twice, in January and April, about its content. On Friday evening, it appeared that the associative-word feature of the Web site had been disabled. That is the function that displays a drop-down menu of words related to a search word that is typed into the search engine. The previous evening, reporters on China Central Television, the state television network, showed how typing in the Chinese word for son, erzi, could pull up associated terms that have lewd connotations. State news organizations also reported that the ability to use Google’s Chinese site to search overseas Web sites was supposed to be disabled, but that feature was still working on Friday evening. Google released a statement saying it was making greater efforts to clean up its Chinese Web site. “We have been continually working to deal with pornographic content, and material that is harmful to children, on the Web in China,” the statement said. Though Google dominates the search engine market in the United States, it is struggling here to unseat Baidu, which has long been the most popular Chinese search engine. Recent efforts by the Chinese government to limit access to the Internet have been met with outrage by Chinese computer users. The strongest reaction has been to the government’s plan to force computer makers to install Internet censorship software on all computers sold in China after July 1. Critics say the software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, could be used to censor Web sites with content deemed politically unacceptable, even though the government insists the main use of the software will be to block access to pornography. Computer experts also say the software can make a computer vulnerable to infiltration by hackers. This week, developers said they had found fixes to the problems. But on Friday, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, said that a patched version of Green Dam had a security problem that was just as serious as the original one. In a paper posted on the Internet, Mr. Halderman said it had taken him and his research team only one hour to find the new problem. “This suggests that the security problems in Green Dam will be harder to fix than the government has suggested,” he said in an e-mail message. “It’s probably gong to be impossible to make the software safe enough ahead of the July 1 deadline.” Andrew Jacobs contributed reporting, and Huang Yuanxi contributed research. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/wo...20beijing.html Eight Percent Admit to Downloading Video Illegally Eight percent of all consumers in Britain, France, Germany and the United States admit to downloading video illegally from the Internet, according to a survey, showing the scale of the ongoing fight against piracy. Two-thirds of those surveyed in Britain often or sometimes watched TV, movies and video on their PC or laptop computer, with U.S. consumers not far behind. Of those, 15 percent did so illegally, the Futuresource Consulting survey showed. "This widespread availability of illicit content presents a major obstacle to the development of online content services, and continues to heavily impact upon revenues, despite governments' and industry authorities' renewed attempts to tighten up the system," said the report published on Friday. Most media companies are struggling to persuade consumers to pay for video, music or news online amid the widely held assumption that content on the Web is free. But attempts to fund free content by selling advertising are mostly falling short. Governments around the world are trying to help media providers fight online piracy. The worst effects have so far been borne by the music industry, which is still struggling to compensate for an ongoing decline in CD sales. In the United States, a woman was fined almost $2 million this week for illegal music sharing. France's lower house of parliament approved a bill last month that will let authorities track illegal downloading over the Internet and disconnect repeat offenders. And Britain's government proposed a range of measures this week to punish persistent illegal downloaders, including slowing down connections and eventually blocking Internet access. But such measures are highly controversial as Internet access is increasingly perceived as something close to a human right by those who have it. The survey found that 90 percent of those who watched video content online had never paid to watch news or recently-missed TV shows. Just over half had never paid to watch new movies. But most said they would or might be willing to pay in future. Less than 1 percent said that an advertising reel placed before, during or after an old movie or TV show spoiled their online viewing, with 30 percent saying it had no impact and nearly half saying it only put them off a bit. Futuresource carried out online surveys of more than 2,500 people to put together its report. (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Victoria Bryan) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55I2XG20090619 Getting Inside a Downloader's Head Finlo Rohrer The Digital Britain report advocates the latest step in the war against illegal downloaders, requiring ISPs to write them notification letters and monitor persistent offenders. But what of the other side of the fight against piracy, the effort to win hearts and minds? If you've watched a DVD in the past five years, you may well have seen an advert that sticks in your mind. Cartoonishly raucous music plays as a girl sits in her bedroom downloading a film. "You wouldn't steal a car" a caption flashes as a leather jacketed man interferes with a black Mercedes in a side street. "You wouldn't steal a handbag" flashes another caption. Then it's "you wouldn't steal a TV". "You wouldn't steal a movie" flashes yet another message as a man slips a DVD into his suede jacket. The advert concludes with: "Downloading pirated films is stealing. Piracy. It's a crime." For the duration you may be jabbing the skip button on your remote. It isn't working. Someone really wants you to watch this. Perhaps you leave to make a cup of tea until it's finished, perhaps you stay and really soak it in. Browse on YouTube and you'll see the advert has been parodied many times over. "There have been over 100 parodies," says sociologist Dr Matthew David, co-author of The Impossibility of Technical Security: Intellectual property and the paradox of informational capitalism. Perhaps the best known comes from Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, where the message is taken to a ridiculous conclusion - "you wouldn't kill a policeman". The advert was seen as successful by many in the industry, among other things for the way it stuck in people's minds, but eventually it had to be superseded, says Eddy Leviten, head of communication at the Federation Against Copyright Theft. "If you paid for a DVD why should you have to sit through adverts that say you might be a criminal? At the time it was effective. Pretty much everyone has seen it." The issue, Dr David suggests, is that with the failure of Digital Rights Management or criminal and civil enforcement to stem the tide of illegal downloading, the intellectual property industries are engaging in a battle for hearts and minds as a last throw of the die. In some areas they may not have got it quite right in the past. One is the use of the word "piracy" itself. "There is a cachet around piracy," Dr David says. Indeed, one of the most cannibalised advertising logos of all time came in a 1980s campaign from the BPI, the trade body of the British music industry. The stark black and white image showed a stylised skull and crossbones made out of an audiotape, with the legend "HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC" accompanied by the smaller subheading "and it's illegal" has been parodied to the nth degree. The notorious Swedish website, The Pirate Bay, has as its logo a sailing ship with the home taping skull and crossbones on the mainsail. "A lot of people criticised it, but my, it had legs," says Richard Mollet, director of public affairs at the BPI. And there is similar attitude within the film industry to the advert known to many as "you wouldn't steal a handbag", made by the Motion Picture Association of America in 2004 for worldwide use in a host of languages. Now, the film and TV industry's anti-piracy drive has gone off down different avenues in different countries. In the UK, the emphasis is on achieving an "attitudinal change" using more subtle means. The PR agency Blue Rubicon specialises in this field, typically advising on health campaigns such as the clown smokefree message pictured right. Now it is helping the UK film and television industry in "attaching social stigma" to illegal downloading. "Absolutely, campaigns can change hearts and minds," says Blue Rubicon director Gordon Tempest-Hay. "If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour. Drink driving, anti-tobacco, even going back to the old clunk click [seatbelt campaign]." The result of Blue Rubicon's work is the "knock-off Nigel" campaign. The avoidance of the word "piracy" in the adverts is significant. "Knock off is grubby, you have got something a bit rubbish," says Mr Tempest-Hay. And there certainly is an attitude to change. A lot of people in the UK download illegally. A recent report by the Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property picked up on the work of US criminologists Sameer Hinduja and Jason Ingram, who have adapted the theory of "neutralisation" to explain why many young people have no problem with infringing copyright. "Much deviance by young people happens despite knowing what they are doing is wrong," says criminologist Dr Richard Jones, author of Entertaining Code: File Sharing, Digital Rights Management Regimes, and Criminological Theories of Compliance. Of course, there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect. In the US the "Think First, Copy Later" educational campaign has been criticised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for intimidating and misinforming children. But the educational material provided by the film and music industries in the UK is extremely subtle, only occasionally alluding to piracy, as it attempts to explain how the industry works. "There is no lecturing or hectoring going on at all," says Ian Wall director of Film Education. Children are supposed to gently arrive at the conclusion that if creativity is good, and content is valued, then copyright infringement may be wrong. And for all the doubts about whether campaigning can change attitudes, those in the industry are confident. Research done for the British Video Association from 2007 to 2009 suggested illegal downloading would be 5% worse if it wasn't for the industry's campaigning. Enforcement and tighter regulations are a big part of the industry's efforts, but much weight will be on educating the next generation of downloaders to behave themselves. And in the future DVD viewers can expect adverts that are a little less annoying. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ne/8106805.stm Beware Photos Online: US Family's Christmas Card Photo Used as Advertisement in Prague An American couple was shocked to discover that their family's Christmas card photo was being used without their permission to advertise a supermarket's delivery service in Prage. Jeff and Danielle Smith sent a photo of themselves with their two young children to family and friends as a Christmas card, and posted the image on her blog and a few social networking websites. Then, late last month, a friend of Mrs Smith's was driving in his neighbourhood in Prague when he spotted the Missouri family's smiling faces in the window of a local supermarket. He snapped a few pictures and sent them to a flabbergasted Mrs Smith. "It's a life-size picture in a grocery store window in Prague - my Christmas card photo!" said Mrs Smith, 36, who lives in the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon. Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, admitted that he had found the photo online. He said he thought it was computer-generated. When told it was a real photo - of a real family - he promised to remove it. "We'll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology," said Mr Bertuccio. The Smiths said they had not authorised anyone to use the pictures. Mrs Smith has received 180,000 hits to her website since she posted the story about the well- ravelled snapshot. She said the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner, it was just used to tell potential shoppers about the store's delivery service. Mrs Smith said next time she posts a family photo on the internet, she will lower the resolution or add an electronic watermark to make it hard to reproduce. "This story doesn't frighten me, but the potential frightens me," Mrs Smith said. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...in-Prague.html Administration Plans to Scale Back Real ID Law Spencer S. Hsu Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses, Homeland Security Department and congressional officials said. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID, which calls for placing more secure licenses in the hands of 245 million Americans by 2017. The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. The rebranding effort follows months of talks with the National Governors Association and poses political risk for Obama as well as Napolitano, a former NGA chairwoman who wants to soothe strained relations with the states without appearing to retreat on a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission. Commissioners called for federal standards for driver's licenses and birth certificates, noting, "For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons." Eighteen of 19 terrorist hijackers obtained state IDs, some of them fraudulently, easing their movements inside the country. But the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID. As governor of Arizona, Napolitano called Real ID "feel-good" legislation not worth the cost, and she signed a state law last year opting out of the plan. As secretary, she said a substitute would "accomplish some of the same goals." Eleven states have refused to participate in Real ID despite a Dec. 31 federal deadline. "The department's goal is to fix, not repeal" Real ID, allowing all jurisdictions to comply by year's end, said a DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before a formal announcement. "If the law cannot be implemented, it is hard to claim that it increases security," said David Quam, lobbyist for the NGA. The new plan keeps elements of Real ID, such as requiring a digital photograph, signature and machine-readable features such as a bar code. States also will still need to verify applicants' identities and legal status by checking federal immigration, Social Security and State Department databases. But it eliminates demands for new databases -- linked through a national data hub -- that would allow all states to store and cross-check such information, and a requirement that motor vehicle departments verify birth certificates with originating agencies, a bid to fight identity theft. Instead, it adds stronger privacy controls and limits such development to a pilot program in Mississippi. DHS would have nine months to write new regulations, and states would have five years to reissue all licenses, with completion expected in 2016. Supporters saw a slimmer measure as better than nothing. But critics said the changes gut the law, weakening tools to fight fraud and learn whether bad drivers, drug runners or counterfeiters have licenses in more than one state. "Real ID, not a gutted version with a tough-sounding name, is necessary to continue to keep us safe," said Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee. "Any attempt to repeal or weaken [Real ID] will harm national security." The new plan would still let people get licenses with fake documents, said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who authored the 2005 legislation. "We go right back to where we were on Sept. 10, 2001," he said, "Maybe governors should have been in the Capitol when we knew a plane was on its way to Washington wanting to kill a few thousand more people." Pass ID also penalizes states that have spent millions to digitize their records, rewards laggards with federal funds and makes new requirements unenforceable, foes said. For example, the new bill kills provisions that would have required the new IDs to board airplanes and that IDs that did not comply with the requirements feature a different color or design. Meanwhile, privacy groups also objected, saying Real ID should just be killed. "We don't want to end up with National ID Lite," said Chris Calabrese, counsel to the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the plan is "a lot softer" but will still leave more Americans' personal data subject to theft and misuse. Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), the bill's sponsors, are seeking support from Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (Maine), the chairman and ranking Republican, respectively, on the Senate homeland security committee, and other centrist lawmakers. So far, no other Republicans have signed on. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...302036_pf.html Extent of E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress James Risen and Eric Lichtblau The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said. Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency. Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has been investigating the incidents and said he had become increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communications. In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent. “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt said. Other Congressional officials raised similar concerns but would not agree to be quoted for the record. Mr. Holt added that few lawmakers could challenge the agency’s statements because so few understood the technical complexities of its surveillance operations. “The people making the policy,” he said, “don’t understand the technicalities.” The inquiries and analyst’s account underscore how e-mail messages, more so than telephone calls, have proved to be a particularly vexing problem for the agency because of technological difficulties in distinguishing between e-mail messages by foreigners and by Americans. A new law enacted by Congress last year gave the N.S.A. greater legal leeway to collect the private communications of Americans so long as it was done only as the incidental byproduct of investigating individuals “reasonably believed” to be overseas. But after closed-door hearings by three Congressional panels, some lawmakers are asking what the tolerable limits are for such incidental collection and whether the privacy of Americans is being adequately protected. “For the Hill, the issue is a sense of scale, about how much domestic e-mail collection is acceptable,” a former intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because N.S.A. operations are classified. “It’s a question of how many mistakes they can allow.” While the extent of Congressional concerns about the N.S.A. has not been shared publicly, such concerns are among national security issues that the Obama administration has inherited from the Bush administration, including the use of brutal interrogation tactics, the fate of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and whether to block the release of photographs and documents that show abuse of detainees. In each case, the administration has had to navigate the politics of continuing an aggressive intelligence operation while placating supporters who want an end to what they see as flagrant abuses of the Bush era. The N.S.A. declined to comment for this article. Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Dennis C. Blair, the national intelligence director, said that because of the complex nature of surveillance and the need to adhere to the rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret panel that oversees surveillance operation, and “other relevant laws and procedures, technical or inadvertent errors can occur.” “When such errors are identified,” Ms. Morigi said, “they are reported to the appropriate officials, and corrective measures are taken.” In April, the Obama administration said it had taken comprehensive steps to bring the security agency into compliance with the law after a periodic review turned up problems with “overcollection” of domestic communications. The Justice Department also said it had installed new safeguards. Under the surveillance program, before the N.S.A. can target and monitor the e-mail messages or telephone calls of Americans suspected of having links to international terrorism, it must get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Supporters of the agency say that in using computers to sweep up millions of electronic messages, it is unavoidable that some innocent discussions of Americans will be examined. Intelligence operators are supposed to filter those out, but critics say the agency is not rigorous enough in doing so. The N.S.A. is believed to have gone beyond legal boundaries designed to protect Americans in about 8 to 10 separate court orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to three intelligence officials who spoke anonymously because disclosing such information is illegal. Because each court order could single out hundreds or even thousands of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, the number of individual communications that were improperly collected could number in the millions, officials said. (It is not clear what portion of total court orders or communications that would represent.) “Say you get an order to monitor a block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at a big corporation, and instead of just monitoring those, the N.S.A. also monitors another block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at that corporation,” one senior intelligence official said. “That is the kind of problem they had.” Overcollection on that scale could lead to a significant number of privacy invasions of American citizens, officials acknowledge, setting off the concerns among lawmakers and on the secret FISA court. “The court was not happy” when it learned of the overcollection, said an administration official involved in the matter. Defenders of the agency say it faces daunting obstacles in trying to avoid the improper gathering or reading of Americans’ e-mail as part of counterterrorism efforts aimed at foreigners. Several former intelligence officials said that e-mail traffic from all over the world often flows through Internet service providers based in the United States. And when the N.S.A. monitors a foreign e-mail address, it has no idea when the person using that address will send messages to someone inside the United States, the officials said. The difficulty of distinguishing between e-mail messages involving foreigners from those involving Americans was “one of the main things that drove” the Bush administration to push for a more flexible law in 2008, said Kenneth L. Wainstein, the homeland security adviser under President George W. Bush. That measure, which also resolved the long controversy over N.S.A.’s program of wiretapping without warrants by offering immunity to telecommunications companies, tacitly acknowledged that some amount of Americans’ e-mail would inevitably be captured by the N.S.A. But even before that, the agency appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants, according to the former analyst, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches. The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton. Other intelligence officials confirmed the existence of the Pinwale e-mail database, but declined to provide further details. The recent concerns about N.S.A.’s domestic e-mail collection follow years of unresolved legal and operational concerns within the government over the issue. Current and former officials now say that the tracing of vast amounts of American e-mail traffic was at the heart of a crisis in 2004 at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, as top Justice Department aides staged a near revolt over what they viewed as possibly illegal aspects of the N.S.A.’s surveillance operations. James Comey, then the deputy attorney general, and his aides were concerned about the collection of “meta-data” of American e-mail messages, which show broad patterns of e-mail traffic by identifying who is e-mailing whom, current and former officials say. Lawyers at the Justice Department believed that the tracing of e-mail messages appeared to violate federal law. “The controversy was mostly about that issue,” said a former administration official involved in the dispute. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/us/17nsa.html Feds to Give Cops Internet-Snooping Powers Janice Tibbetts Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced Thursday, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during 'the era of the rotary phone.' Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced Thursday, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during 'the era of the rotary phone.' Photograph by: ., Canwest News Service OTTAWA — Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced Thursday, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during "the era of the rotary phone." The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations. Police have lobbied for a new law for almost 10 years, saying that they need to access "Internet safe havens" for gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists. "This is really not about the warrantless tracking of Canadians' Internet use," said Clayton Pecknold, of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Privacy advocates and civil libertarians, however, have vocally opposed the prospect of giving police "lawful access" to the digital conversations of Canadians by being able to access such things as their text messages, e-mails, web surfing habits and Internet phone lines. "It is an issue that has proven to be very, very controversial," said Michael Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa and public commentator on Internet legal issues. "The consistent criticism and concern that has been expressed is that there has to be some evidence that there is a real problem here and in the past we haven't seen that," he said. "Why is the status quo not good enough? What investigations have been impeded?" Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard recently warned that forcing ISPs to surrender information "is a serious step forward toward mass surveillance" that violates the rights of Canadians. Van Loan's bill has been posted on a notice paper of pending government legislation and it is expected to be tabled in the House of Commons before MPs break for their summer recess on Friday. He has scheduled a news conference for Thursday with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. Earlier this year, Van Loan publicly stated his intentions to pursue legislation, which had been promised for years but relegated to a back burner by his predecessor, Stockwell Day. When he was public safety minister, Day also promised that any federal initiative would require police to obtain a warrant to access personal information of users, such as names and addresses. Pecknold said it is "an ongoing frequent occurrence" that police want to act to stop a crime, but they are blocked at the technological door at a time when criminals have shifted increasingly to online communications. "Terrorist groups, pornographers and pedophile networks, illegal traffickers in weapons, drugs and human beings, money launderers and cyber criminals, Internet and telemarketing fraudsters all use technology to develop activities, perpetrate crimes and avoid detection," the police chiefs said in a November 2008 position paper supporting a new law. Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service already have the power to wiretap private communications, provided they have judicial authorization, but the law does not require ISPs to grant them access. Tom Copeland, chairman of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, said it will be a hardship for some of the country's smaller providers to upgrade their systems to facilitate interception. "There's a very real and significant cost," he said. Copeland said a previous bill on Internet-based interception, introduced by the former Liberal government just before it fell in November 2005, contained an exemption for small ISPs. Pecknold said it makes no sense to make exceptions because criminals will flock to the smaller providers. http://www.canada.com/Technology/Fed...191/story.html ACLU Sues DHS Over Unlawful TSA Searches and Detention Press release Treasurer Of Ron Paul's Campaign For Liberty Detained And Interrogated For Carrying Cash At St. Louis Airport The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is subjecting innocent Americans to unreasonable searches and detentions that violate the Constitution, according to a lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed the complaint on behalf of a traveler who was illegally detained and harassed by TSA agents at the airport for carrying approximately $4,700 in cash. "Airport searches are the most common encounters between Americans and law enforcement agents. That's why it is so important for TSA agents to do the job they were trained to do and not engage in fishing expeditions that do nothing to promote flight safety," said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "It is, of course, very important to ensure the safety of flights and keep illegal weapons and explosives off planes. But allowing TSA screeners to conduct general purpose law enforcement searches violates the Constitution while diverting limited resources from TSA's core mission of protecting safety. For the sake of public safety and constitutional values, these unlawful searches should stop." On March 29, 2009, Steven Bierfeldt was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by TSA officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. Bierfeldt was carrying the cash in connection with his duties as the Director of Development for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization that grew out of Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign. Bierfeldt was detained and questioned as he returned home from a Campaign for Liberty event transporting proceeds from the sale of tickets, t-shirts, stickers and campaign material. Bierfeldt repeatedly asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority to detain and interrogate him and received no explanation. Instead, the agents escalated the threatening tone of their questions and ultimately told Bierfeldt that he was being placed under arrest. Bierfeldt recorded the audio of the entire incident with his iPhone. "I do not believe I should give up my constitutional rights each time I choose to travel by plane. I was doing nothing illegal or suspicious, yet I was treated like a potential criminal and harassed for no reason," said Bierfeldt. "Most Americans would be surprised to learn that TSA considers simply carrying cash to be a basis for detention and questioning. I hope the court makes clear that my detention by TSA agents was unconstitutional and stops TSA from engaging in these unlawful searches and arrests. I do not want another innocent American to have to endure what I went through." "Mr. Bierfeldt's experience represents a troubling pattern of TSA attempting to transform its valid but limited search authority into a license to invade people's privacy in a manner that would never be accepted outside the airport context," said Larry Schwartztol, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Just as the Constitution prevents the police on the street from conducting freewheeling searches in the hopes of uncovering wrongdoing, it protects travelers from the kind of treatment Mr. Bierfeldt suffered." TSA officials have the authority to conduct safety-related searches for weapons and explosives. According to the ACLU's lawsuit, TSA agents are using heightened security measures after 9/11 as an excuse to exceed their search authority and engage in unlawful searches that violate the privacy rights of passengers. The lawsuit also charges that unconstitutional searches and detention by TSA agents have become the norm. The ACLU's lawsuit was filed against Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which has authority over TSA. It was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. Attorneys on the case are Wizner, Scott Michelman and Allen Hopper of the ACLU, Art Spitzer of the ACLU National Capital Area and cooperating attorney Alan Gura of Gura and Possessky, P.L.L.C. More information about the case, including the ACLU's complaint and an audio recording of Bierfeldt's detention and interrogation, is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general...s20090618.html http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayRe...5046676&EDATE= Slowloris HTTP DoS Welcome to Slowloris - the low bandwidth, yet greedy and poisonous HTTP client! Written by RSnake with help from John Kinsella, and a dash of inspiration from Robert E Lee. UPDATE: Amit Klein pointed me to a post written by Adrian Ilarion Ciobanu written in early 2007 that perfectly describes this denial of service attack. So although there was no tool released at that time he still technically deserves all the credit for this. I apologize for having missed this post. In considering the ramifications of a slow denial of service attack against particular services, rather than flooding networks, a concept emerged that would allow a single machine to take down another machine's web server with minimal bandwidth and side effects on unrelated services and ports. The ideal situation for many denial of service attacks is where all other services remain intact but the webserver itself is completely inaccessible. Slowloris was born from this concept, and is therefore relatively very stealthy compared to most flooding tools. Slowloris holds connections open by sending partial HTTP requests. It continues to send subsequent headers at regular intervals to keep the sockets from closing. In this way webservers can be quickly tied up. In particular, servers that have threading will tend to be vulnerable, by virtue of the fact that they attempt to limit the amount of threading they'll allow. Slowloris must wait for all the sockets to become available before it's successful at consuming them, so if it's a high traffic website, it may take a while for the site to free up it's sockets. So while you may be unable to see the website from your vantage point, others may still be able to see it until all sockets are freed by them and consumed by Slowloris. This is because other users of the system must finish their requests before the sockets become available for Slowloris to consume. If others re-initiate their connections in that brief time-period they'll still be able to see the site. So it's a bit of a race condition, but one that Slowloris will eventually always win - and sooner than later. Slowloris also has a few stealth features built into it. Firstly, it can be changed to send different host headers, if your target is a virtual host and logs are stored seperately per virtual host. But most importantly, while the attack is underway, the log file won't be written until the request is completed. So you can keep a server down for minutes at a time without a single log file entry showing up to warn someone who might watching in that instant. Of course once your attack stops or once the session gets shut down there will be several hundred 400 errors in the web server logs. That's unavoidable as Slowloris sits today, although it may be possible to turn them into 200 OK messages instead by completing a valid request, but Slowloris doesn't yet do that. HTTPReady quickly came up as a possible solution to a Slowloris attack, because it won't cause the HTTP server to launch until a full request is recieved. This is true only for GET and HEAD requests. As long as you give Slowloris the switch to modify it's method to POST, HTTPReady turns out to be a worthless defense against this type of attack. This is NOT a TCP DoS, because it is actually making a full TCP connection, not a partial one, however it is making partial HTTP requests. It's the equivalent of a SYN flood but over HTTP. One example of the difference is that if there are two web-servers running on the same machine one server can be DoSed without affecting the other webserver instance. Slowloris would also theoretically work over other protocols like UDP, if the program was modified slightly and the webserver supported it. Slowloris is also NOT a GET request flooder. Slowloris requires only a few hundred requests at long term and regular intervals, as opposed to tens of thousands on an ongoing basis. Interestingly enough, in testing this has been shown in at least one instance to lock up database connections and force other strange issues and errors to arise that can allow for fingerprinting and other odd things to become obvious once the DoS is complete and the server attempts to clean itself up. I would guess that this issue arises when the webserver is allowed to open more connections than the database is, causing the database to fail first and for longer than the webserver. Slowloris lets the webserver return to normal almost instantly (usually within 5 seconds or so). That makes it ideal for certain attacks that may just require a brief down-time. As described in this blog post, DoS is actually very useful for certain types of attacks where timing is key, or as a diversionary tactic, etc.... This affects a number of webservers that use threaded processes and ironically attempt to limit that to prevent memory exhaustion - fixing one problem created another. This includes but is not necessarily limited to the following: * Apache 1.x * Apache 2.x * dhttpd * GoAhead WebServer * Squid There are a number of webservers that this doesn't affect as well, in my testing: * IIS6.0 * IIS7.0 * lighttpd This is obviously not a complete list, and there may be a number of variations on these web-servers that are or are not vulnerable. I didn't test every configuration or variant, so your mileage may vary. This also may not work if there is an upstream device that somehow limits/buffers/proxies HTTP requests. Please note though that Slowloris only represents one variant of this attack and other variants may have different impacts on other webservers and upstream devices. This command should work on most systems, but please be sure to check the options as well: perl slowloris.pl -dns example.com Requirements: This is a PERL program requiring the PERL interpreter with the modules IO::Socket::INET, IO::Socket::SSL, and GetOpt::Long. Slowloris works MUCH better and faster if you have threading, so I highly encourage you to also install threads and threads::shared if you don't have those modules already. You can install modules using CPAN: perl -MCPAN -e 'install IO::Socket::INET' perl -MCPAN -e 'install IO::Socket::SSL' Windows users: You probably will not be able to successfuly execute a Slowloris denial of service from Windows even if you use Cygwin. I have not had any luck getting Slowloris to successfuly deny service from within Windows, because Slowloris requires more than a few hundred sockets to work (sometimes a thousand or more), and Windows limits sockets to around 130, from what I've seen. I highly suggest you use a *NIX operating system to execute Slowloris from for the best results, and not from within a virtual machine, as that could have unexpected results based on the parent operating system. Version: Slowloris is currently at version 0.7 - 06/17/2009 Download: slowloris.pl Getting started: perldoc slowloris.pl Issues: For a complete list of issues look at the Perl documentation, which explains all of the things to think about when running this denial of service attack. Thanks: Thank you to John Kinsella for the help with threading and id and greyhat for help with testing. http://ha.ckers.org/slowloris/ Liberating Lipsticks and Lattes Colin Moynihan They arrived at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in small groups on Sunday afternoon, proceeding two and three at a time to the fourth floor, where they browsed among shelves holding books by authors like Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger. By 5 o’clock a crowd of more than 100 had gathered. Their purpose: to celebrate the publication of an English translation of a book called “The Coming Insurrection,” which was written two years ago by an anonymous group of French authors who call themselves the Invisible Committee. More recently, the volume has been at the center of an unusual criminal investigation in France that has become something of a cause célèbre among leftists and civil libertarians. The book, which predicts the imminent collapse of capitalist culture, was inspired by disruptive demonstrations that took place over the last few years in France and Greece. It was influenced stylistically by Guy Debord, a French writer and filmmaker who was a leader of the Situationist International, a group of intellectuals and artists who encouraged the Paris protests of 1968. In keeping with the anarchistic spirit of the text, the bookstore event was organized without the knowledge or permission of Barnes & Noble. The gathering was intended partly as a show of solidarity with nine young people — including one suspected of writing “The Coming Insurrection” —whom in November the French police accused of forming a dangerous “ultraleftist” group and sabotaging train lines. As a bookstore employee announced to the milling crowd that there was no reading scheduled for that night, a man jumped onto a stage and began loudly reciting the opening words of the book’s recent introduction: “Everyone agrees. It’s about to explode.” A security guard tried to halt the unsanctioned reading, but the man continued for about five minutes, until the police arrived. The crowd, mostly people in their 20s and 30s, including some graduate students, then adjourned, clapping and yelling, to East 17th Street. There they formed a rebellious spectacle, crowding into shops and loudly shouting bits of political theory, to the amusement of some onlookers and store employees and the irritation of others. When the French publisher La Fabrique first issued “The Coming Insurrection” in 2007, it received comparatively little attention. But among those who did take notice were the French police, who began monitoring a group of people, mostly graduate students, living in the tiny mountain village of Tarnac in central France. Last November nine of those men and women, ages 22 to 34, were arrested and accused of “associating with a terrorist enterprise” and disabling power lines that left 40,000 passengers stranded for several hours on high-speed trains. A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutors’ office said that one of the nine, Julien Coupat, was believed to have written “The Coming Insurrection.” He has denied being the author but told interviewers in France that he admired the book. The government eventually released the group — who have come to be known as the Tarnac Nine — pending further investigation, with some opponents of the official action accusing the police of carrying out arrests without sufficient evidence. Meanwhile, the book Mr. Coupat was accused of writing has developed a small but devoted following. Dozens of anonymous translators have posted the text on Web sites. And Semiotext(e), a Los Angeles publisher that specializes in works by French theorists like Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault, published an English-language edition of the book at the end of last month with a print run of 3,000. Hedi El Kholti, an editor at Semiotext(e), said that the book’s winding up as a key part of a controversial case added to the historical value of its message. “Everyone is dancing around this notion that publishing a book can take you to jail,” he said recently by telephone. “That a book is an element that can involve you in a trial.” The slender text is part antimaterialist manifesto and part manual for revolution. The writers expound at length on what they see as a diseased and dehumanizing civilization that cannot be reformed but must, they contend, be torn apart and replaced. To that end the authors direct their readers to sabotage authority, form self-sufficient communes and learn how to “support a conspiracy against commodity society.” Like the authors of “The Coming Insurrection,” most of those observing its publication on Sunday night refused to identify themselves by name. “The book is important because it speaks to the total bankruptcy of pretty much everything,” one man said after the group left the bookstore. “We’re living in a high-end aesthetic with zero content.” Inside the Sephora cosmetics shop on East 17th Street, the crowd chanted, “All power to the communes,” as security guards wearing black T-shirts ordered them back outside. A few minutes later the cry was taken up again as the group marched into Starbucks on Union Square West. Emile Olea, 28, a customer at the coffee shop who was visiting from San Diego, closed his laptop computer and gazed at the crowd. “I have no idea what’s going on,” he said. “But I like the excitement.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/bo...situation.html Holden Caulfield, a Ripe 76, Heads to Court Again A. G. Sulzberger The author J. D. Salinger, known as much for his cloistered ways as for his skillful pen, has sued repeatedly over the years to protect his privacy and the sanctity of his work. So when a book that describes itself on its copyright page as “An Unauthorized Fictional Examination of the Relationship Between J. D. Salinger and his Most Famous Character” was published in Britain and scheduled for release in the Untied States, a detour to court was a safe bet. “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” by J. D. California, a 33-year-old humor writer from Sweden who uses that gimmicky nom de plume, might be read as an update of sorts to Mr. Salinger’s 1951 classic, “The Catcher in the Rye,” which has sold more than 35 million copies. The new work centers on a 76-year-old “Mr. C,” the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger. Although the name Holden Caulfield does not appear in the book, Mr. C is clearly Holden, one of the most enduring adolescent figures in American literature, as an old man. Both novels are set in New York, feature the same characters and use similar language. Mr. Salinger’s work opens with the 16-year-old Holden’s departure from a boarding school; the new book begins with “Mr. C” leaving a retirement home. Both end on a carousel in Central Park. In a complaint of copyright infringement filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Salinger call the new novel “a rip-off pure and simple.” Lawyers for Fredrik Colting, the new author, filed a brief this week saying that the work is more complex than just a sequel, noting that Mr. Salinger himself is a character. The new book, the brief said, “explores the famously reclusive Salinger’s efforts to control both his own persona and the persona of the character he created.” It adds: “In order to regain control over his own life, which is drawing to a close, ‘Mr. Salinger’ tries repeatedly to kill off Mr. C by various means: a runaway truck; falling construction debris; a lunatic woman with a knife; suicide by drowning and suicide by pills.” The case is one of several in recent years exploring how much license the public has to draw on a classic work. In 2001 the estate of Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind,” sued unsuccessfully to prevent the release of “The Wind Done Gone,” which told the same story from the perspective of a slave. Last year J. K. Rowling, the author of the best-selling Harry Potter books, won a lawsuit over a guidebook to the series called The Harry Potter Lexicon. “This case is really interesting because it really is where copyright runs into First Amendment rights, and it shows the jagged line between them,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School, who also was part of the legal team that defended the publisher in “The Wind Done Gone” lawsuit. In examining questions of fair use of copyrighted work, courts have looked at whether a new work transforms the original in a significant way, Ms. Jenkins said, citing a Supreme Court ruling that a legitimate work must add “something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.” Mr. Colting, who is also the writer and publisher of lowbrow humor books for Nicotext, a Swedish company he started with a friend six years ago, said in a telephone interview that he never imagined that his book, which he described as his first attempt at serious fiction, might end up in court. “In Sweden we don’t sue people,” he said. Marcia Paul, a lawyer for Mr. Salinger, declined to comment on the case, citing her client’s desire for privacy. Court documents filed in the case describe Mr. Salinger, now 90, who lives in Cornish, N.H., as totally deaf, with “several age-related health problems,” including a recently broken hip that has put him in a rehabilitation facility. Mr. Salinger has not been photographed or granted an interview for decades. Mr. Salinger will not attend the hearing, Ms. Paul said. Though he has not published any new work since 1965, he has sued several times to protect certain works, including successful efforts to stop publication of some of his personal letters in a biography and to halt a staging of “The Catcher in the Rye” by a college theater company in San Francisco. He has also turned down requests, from Steven Spielberg, among others, for movie adaptations of “The Catcher in the Rye.” “He feels strongly that he wants his fiction and his characters to remain intact as he wrote them,” according to an affidavit by his literary agent. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/books/17salinger.html JK Rowling Sued for £500m in Plagiarism Lawsuit by Family of Late Willy The Wizard Author Ryan Kisiel JK Rowling and her publisher are being sued for £500million for allegedly copying Harry Potter from an earlier children's book, also by an English writer. Adrian Jacobs's book Willy The Wizard - also about a child discovering he has magical powers - was published in 1987, ten years before the first in the Harry Potter series and three years before Miss Rowling says she came up with her idea. He allegedly sent the manuscript to Christopher Little, the literary agent at Bloomsbury Publishing who went on to represent Miss Rowling, but it was rejected. Instead his book was published by a smaller company under the title The Adventures Of Willy The Wizard No 1: Livid Land. Mr Jacobs, who lost all his money in a stock market crash in 1991, died in 1997, so did not live to see the Harry Potter books' success. But his estate - which includes his son and grandson - now claims Miss Rowling's fourth book, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, was plagiarised. In both books, the boy wizard competes in a magic contest. The estate of author Adrian Jacobs alleges Miss Rowling plagiarised material from Willy The Wizard for The Goblet Of Fire The lawsuit also notes both have the boys trying to rescue human hostages held by half-human creatures from a bathroom. Shared references to a wizard train and a wizard prison are also part of the allegations. Legal proceedings have been issued at the High Court against Bloomsbury, and the Jacobs estate also says it will file a lawsuit against Miss Rowling. The estate is also seeking an injunction to prevent further sales of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, and damages or a share in the book's profits. JK Rowling is estimated to have a personal fortune of £560million. A statement from Bloomsbury claimed the allegations of plagiarism were 'unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue'. 'JK Rowling had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy the Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004 - almost seven years after the publication of the first book in the highly publicised Harry Potter series - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and after the publication of the first five books in the Harry Potter series', the statement said. It continued: 'Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution. The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school. 'This claim was first made in 2004 by solicitors in London acting on behalf of Adrian Jacobs' son who was the representative of his father's estate and who lives in the United States. 'The claim was unable to identify any text in the Harry Potter books which was said to copy Willy the Wizard. This claim is without merit and will be defended vigorously'. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...d-author.html# A Literary Legend Fights for a Library By Jennifer Steinhauer When you are pushing 90, have written scores of famous novels, short stories and screenplays, and have fulfilled the goal of taking a simulated ride to Mars, what’s left? “Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine and I’d like to spend more time with her,” said Ray Bradbury, peering up from behind an old television tray in his living room. An unlikely answer, but Mr. Bradbury, the science fiction writer, is very specific in his eccentric list of interests, and his pursuit of them in his advancing age and state of relative immobility. This is a lucky thing for the Ventura County Public Libraries. Because among Mr. Bradbury’s passions, none burn quite as hot as his life-long passion for halls of books. His most famous novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” which concerns book burning, was written on a pay typewriter in the basement of the University of California, Los Angeles, library; his novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” contains a seminal library scene. Mr. Bradbury frequently speaks at libraries across the state, and on Saturday he will make his way here for a benefit for the H. P. Wright Library, which like many in the state’s public system is in danger of shutting its doors because of budget cuts. “Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.” Property tax dollars, which provide most of the financing for libraries in Ventura County, have fallen precipitously, putting the library system roughly $650,000 in the hole. Almost half of that amount is attributed to the H. P. Wright Library, which serves about two-thirds of this coastal city about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles. In January the branch was told that unless it came up with $280,000 it would close. The branch’s private fund-raising group, San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, has until March to reach its goal; so far it has raised $80,000. Enter Mr. Bradbury. While at a meeting concerning the library, Berta Steele, vice president of the friends group, ran into Michael Kelly, a local artist who runs the Ray Bradbury Theater and Film Foundation, a group dedicated to arts and literacy advocacy. Mr. Kelly told Ms. Steele that he could get Mr. Bradbury up to Ventura to help the library’s cause. On Saturday, the two organizations will host a $25-a-head discussion with Mr. Bradbury and present a screening of “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” a film based on Mr. Bradbury’s short story of the same name. It is not a long-term fix. That would come only if property taxes crawl back up or voters approve a proposed ½-cent increase in the local sales tax in November, some of which would go to libraries. Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read. The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is stuffed silly with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVD’s, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table. “Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’ ” “It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless, it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.” A Yahoo spokeswoman said it was impossible to verify Mr. Bradbury’s account without more details. Mr. Bradbury has long been known for his clear memory of some of life’s events, and that remains the case, he said. “I have total recall,” he said. “I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.” He also recalled watching the film “Pumping Iron,” which features Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his body-building days, and how his personal recommendation of the film for an Academy Award helped spark Mr. Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood career. He remembers lining his four daughters’ cribs with Golden Books when they were tiny. And he remembers meeting Ms. Derek on a train in France years ago. “She said, ‘Mr. Bradbury.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ she said: ‘I love you! My name is Bo Derek.’ ” Ms. Derek’s spokeswoman, Rona Menashe, said the story is true. She said her client would like to see some more of Mr. Bradbury, too. Mr. Bradbury’s wife, Maggie, to whom he was married for over five decades, died in 2003. He turns 89 in August. When he is not raising money for libraries, Mr. Bradbury still writes for a few hours every morning (“I can’t tell you,” is the answer to any questions on his latest book), reads Bernard Shaw, receives visitors including reporters, filmmakers, friends and children of friends, and watches films on his giant flat-screen television. He can still be found regularly at the Los Angeles Public Library branch in Koreatown, which he visited often as a teenager. “The children ask me, How can I live forever too?” he said. “I tell them do what you love and love what you do. That’s the story on my life.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html Verizon and AT&T Deny Collusion on Texting Prices U.S. wireless carriers Verizon Communications and AT&T took issue with assertions that they colluded in setting prices for text messages, saying on Tuesday that prices for most customers had fallen and the market was competitive. Sen. Herb Kohl, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, said he was concerned that the four largest cell phone companies doubled their text message rates from 10 cents in 2006 to 20 cents in 2008. "These sharp price increases raise concerns. Are these price increases the result of a lack of competition in a highly concentrated market?" he asked, adding that the subcommittee had urged the Justice Department to scrutinize any future mergers or allegations of anticompetitive practices in the industry. But the general counsels of both Verizon and AT&T argued that the price increases affected 1 percent of text messages sent because most consumers bought volume plans that lowered the per-message cost. "The faulty notion that prices for text messaging have risen derives from an unduly narrow interest in the trend of a single pricing option for text messaging services, the pay-per-use option, when the vast majority of AT&T's customers do not choose that option," said Wayne Watts, general counsel of AT&T. Watts and Randal Milch, general counsel of Verizon Communications, said that about 17 percent of their customers were on a plan that had them paying for each text message. They also each denied that their companies colluded on pricing. "The market evidence shows fierce competition across the wireless market," Milch said. (Reporting by Diane Bartz) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55F78220090617 AT&T Connecticut Investigated For Avoiding State Taxes Over Trademark Royalties Lynn Doan Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating AT&T for creating a Nevada corporation that he said "appears to be a device for diverting and siphoning revenue away from Connecticut" for the purpose of avoiding state taxes. State regulators learned last month that the Connecticut subsidiary of AT&T, which owns about 1.67 million telephone lines, has been paying millions of dollars to an AT&T affiliate in Nevada to use the company's trademarks on buildings and customer bills. These "intercompany royalties" totaled $144.5 million between June 2002 and December 2004, according to state regulators, and another $46.7 million last year, according to company financial statements. None of the payments was subject to the Connecticut income tax because the holding company receiving the royalties, SBC Knowledge Ventures L.P., is in Nevada, according to independent auditors hired by the state. The practice is not uncommon. Companies, especially ones with valuable intellectual property such as popular logos, have created "intellectual property holding companies" and based them in states where taxes on royalties are low. States have fought the practice in court with mixed results. In 2002, Massachusetts lost a case against Sherwin-Williams Co., which created two subsidiaries in Delaware to hold its trademarks. The state called the subsidiaries a sham to avoid paying state taxes, but the courts upheld the company's right. AT&T maintained Tuesday that its royalty practice is legal, noting that the independent auditors hired by Connecticut's Department of Public Utility Control did not find that the payments violated state regulations. The DPUC did, however, forward the audit to the state Department of Revenue Services last month, saying the agency "should be apprised of the royalty payment arrangement" so that it "might investigate to ensure that equity prevails among Connecticut taxpayers." AT&T Connecticut said Tuesday that it would cooperate with the Department of Revenue Services. "AT&T believes its treatment of these payments was appropriate and consistent with trademark law and tax requirements," company spokesman Chuck Coursey said in a statement. Blumenthal said he is also investigating whether AT&T Connecticut used customer money to pay for the royalties, which he said "adds insult to injury." "Consumers would surely rather go without the AT&T logo affixed to Connecticut buildings or bills than pay these unconscionable costs," he said. "AT&T's logo does nothing for consumers who simply want good service and jobs maintained." According to AT&T Connecticut's financial statements, the payments are not a part of its operating budget, so they may not be reflected in customer rates. http://www.courant.com/business/hc-a...,2569956.story Government Announces "Broadband Tax" The Government is planning a 50p a month levy on fixed-line connections to pay for next-generation broadband. The proposal forms part of today's Digital Britain report, authored by outgoing Communications Minister Lord Carter. Announcing the proposals in the House of Commons, Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw claimed private investment alone wouldn't be enough to secure a nationwide rollout of fibre broadband. "Left to the market, true super-fast broadband will only reach two thirds of homes and businesses in the next decade," Bradshaw claimed. The report claims the Government is "considering a number of options", including "a supplement in the region of 50p a month on fixed lines which would raise money for a 'Final Third' fund that would be used to secure roll out to the final third of the UK population" by 2017. Universal service commitment The Government has also reaffirmed its commitment to universal 2Mbits/sec broadband by 2012. The report states the commitment will be met via "several elements including simple and complex in-house wiring solutions, deploying fibre to the street for a selected number of cabinets and a wireless solution using either mobile or satellite". The Government admits that resolving in-house wiring issues could come at a cost to the consumer, while the industry will be expected to foot the bill for the deployment of fixed/wireless services to meet the 2Mbits/sec threshold. However, the report doesn't detail exactly how these costs will be shared. "It is not possible to include quantitative information on the expected costs and benefits of these proposals as they may influence the outcome of the subsequent competitive tendering process," the report claims. "These will be published in a final impact assessment which will be produced once this has taken place." http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/256492/g...dband-tax.html Digital Britain: Tories Condemn Report as 'Digital Dithering' Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt tells House of Commons report is a 'colossal disappointment' Stephen Brook The Conservative party today slammed the Digital Britain report as "digital dithering from a dated government". Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, told the House of Commons that the long-awaited report was a "colossal disappointment". Hunt questioned what real actions arose out of the report and said that it contained far too many consultations with precious little action. He called it "a report of the management consultants, by the management consultants". Hunt also attacked the proposed 50p a month fixed-line telephone tax to fund universal broadband access. "This an attempt to prop up old business models using yet more taxpayers' cash" he said. The shadow culture secretary said that people wanted local TV news, not regional bulletins, and that he lived in Surrey but had to watch Southampton news. He asked why the city of Birmingham, Alabama in the US has six local TV channels, but Birmingham in Britain, which was three times the size, had none. Hunt said the report excelled in consultations. "The interim report published in January announced eight consultations. This one announces 12 - plus one new quango. This is surely government of the management consultants for the management consultants by the management consultants." He praised the report's decision to move forward on DAB digital radio and the moves to tackle piracy. He also supported the 2MG universal broadband rollout. However, he also asked of Bradshaw: "Why then is he using the public's money to prop up a failed system where people in his own Exeter constituency have to watch news from Plymouth, or people in my Surrey constituency have to watch news from Southampton? "In America even much smaller cities have not one but a whole clutch of local news channels, greatly enhancing both a sense of community and vibrant local democracy. None have access to a licence fee. So instead of putting yet more burden on taxpayers, why is the government not embracing a digital-era version of syndicated local TV, something that could also prove to be a lifeline for our local newspaper industry? "Regrettably, Mr Speaker, this report does not feel like an agenda for a new digital economy. It reads more like a top-down attempt to protect and prop up old business models using yet more public cash. "The last Conservative government deregulated telecoms. It launched Channel Four and Five. It unleashed the cable and satellite revolution. Instead of digital dithering from a dated government we need new economy dynamism from a new Conservative government." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ital-dithering Home Broadband Internet Use on the Rise Lance Whitney The American appetite for high-speed Internet hasn't been stalled by the recession. Among U.S. consumers surveyed, 63 percent now have broadband access at home, up from 55 percent a year ago. The study, released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, found that home broadband adoption has bounced back from 2008's relative period of stagnation. High-speed access has risen among a wide spectrum of groups by age and income. Usage among people 65 years and older grew to 30 percent in April 2009, versus 19 percent in May 2008. For people aged 50 to 64 years, usage jumped to 61 percent this year from 50 percent in 2008. Among consumers with incomes of $20,000 or less, 35 percent have broadband compared with 25 percent last year. For people in rural areas, high-speed access climbed to 46 percent in April from 38 percent last year. Internet access was seen by those surveyed as a vital tool for finding information. About 68 percent said the Internet is a "very important" way to stay updated about their community. To trim expenses, more than twice as many people said they had cut back or dropped a cell phone or cable TV plan than said they had canceled their Internet access. Only 7 percent of the people surveyed said they still use a dial-up connection at home, half the level it had been two years ago. Among those people, 32 percent said the price would have to fall for them to consider moving to broadband, while 17 percent said it would have to become available in their area. The Pew Internet Project is a nonprofit group that analyzes the effect of the Internet on children, families, communities, the workplace, schools, health care and civic/political life. The survey results were based on interviews with 2,253 U.S. consumers. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10267759-94.html Weather Balloons to Serve Up Web Access in Africa Deborah Nason Weather balloons may soon provide the first affordable broadband Internet access to the one-billion-strong African mass market. Accountant Timothy Anyasi and petroleum engineer Collins Nwani, both Nigerian-born serial entrepreneurs based in the U.S., have secured exclusive rights to market a type of near-space technology -- developed by American telecommunications company Space Data -- throughout the African continent. Anyasi and Nwani decided to move ahead with their marketing plans after Space Data secured a contract with the United States military in 2007 to field-test the technology in Iraq and Afghanistan. The partners will operate through a consortium that is now in the formation stages, which they call Spaceloon. The technology raises hydrogen-filled weather balloons, serving in effect as satellite substitutes, to an altitude between 80,000 and 100,000 feet. As individual users contact the balloons via modem, the balloons bridge them to a nearby Earth-bound network operations center (NOC), which in turn connects to various Internet gateways. “Network operation centers are located close to a fiber optic cable -- say, in Lagos or Accra -- and a signal is sent back and forth to the [balloon] in near space,” Anyasi says. By tapping into countries with fiber optic technology, Spaceloon intends to buy cheap access in the oceanfront capital cities of Africa for resale wirelessly to the interior. Spaceloon will concentrate its initial efforts in four countries, which run roughly east to west on a similar latitude -- from westernmost Sierra Leone to Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria. The company is seeking subsidies from the governments to prove the concept, followed by plans for a massive rollout as soon as possible. Transmission speed will depend on the customer’s line of sight and the amount of bandwidth purchased, though Anyasi says download speeds should match or exceed those of satellite Internet solutions. Corporate customers, for example, can pay for a dedicated daily balloon that will deliver speeds up to 10 Mbit/s. Families, on the other hand, could opt for a budget-friendly plan of about 300 kbit/s. That's not super fast, but it would be the first affordable option ever available to some African residents. Anyasi says bandwidth can be extended: “In busy times, we can simply send up more balloons.” The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don’t subscribe to the service. “You’re looking at a wide geographic area -- there’s a wide jet stream at near space -- and that allows balloons to keep on floating without stop,” Anyasi explains. “It’s cheap to bring them down, as balloons cost only about $50, and since they are equipped with a GPS, it is easy to locate them and reuse them.” Spaceloon will be the first ISP option available to the African mass market (outside the largest cities) without huge up-front costs. Currently, customers wishing fixed-line Internet access must either purchase a VSAT for as much as $10,000 or procure a personal wireless tower and roof-mounted dish for about $1,000. Spaceloon customers would need only buy a locally made satellite dish for about $10, a regular modem, and connection to the service. Monthly pricing will be at least half the cost of all current options, according to Anyasi. The impact on Africa’s Internet industry could be enormous. Besides providing Internet access to previously unserved markets in city outskirts and rural regions, the technology would allow mobile phone operators to offer wireless modems to their customers. (Currently there are about 320 million mobile phone users in Africa.) To this end, Spaceloon is in discussions with large wireless providers Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) and Vodafone, which each have a large business presence in a number of African countries. The concept is simple, but the implications are massive. As Anyasi says, “Anyone, anywhere can get [wireless] Internet access. All you need is access to the sky and you have reception.” http://www.internetevolution.com/aut...doc_id=178131& Wordnik.com Aims To Be Last Word On English Lingo Jesse Leavenworth Wordnik.com, a new website that seeks to corral the vast and ever-changing English lexicon, included this snarky Twitter post with its entry on "muffin top": This girl that works @ Vanity needs 2 learn what "muffin top" means. Aside from the unfortunate target of "Miss_Binky" and her Twitter-mates, some of us also may want to learn the definition. Maybe our kids used the term, or we heard it whispered by that younger couple on the next blanket at the beach. Wordnik, launched last week, is still seeking registered users' definitions for "muffin top," but from the tone of the Twitter post, it can't be flattering. Below the Twitter entries are photographs. The first one shows a woman with her belly exposed and a roll of fat slumping over her tightly cinched skirt. Below that is a picture of an actual muffin with the characteristic mushroomed top. Ahhh — muffin top. Wordnik.com's goal is to give each word a complete floor show, with definitions, sentences and online messages that include the word, photographs, frequency-of-use charts, etymology, related words and audio pronunciations. Packaging the entire English vocabulary in such detail is a huge goal, Wordnik editorial director Grant Barrett acknowledged in an e-mail, "but we've collected 1.7 million so far, and there are still many more to come." Whoa, there! 1.7 million? The Oxford English Dictionary contains about 600,000 words. Global Language Monitor, which describes itself as an Internet media analytics company, says there are just over 1 million English words, a mark breached June 10 at 10:22 a.m, according to GLM's website, www.languagemonitor.com.The difference is in the definition of "word." The Oxford English Dictionary collects many words from readers throughout the world, who highlight new words in books, magazines and other materials and submit them to a central staff. At GLM, a word becomes official when the staff collects 25,000 citations from throughout the English-speaking world, according to the organization's website. In contrast, Wordnik.com has no such benchmark or long, deliberative process. The staff says they want to post words quickly so people can comment and add their own definitions and usage examples. "Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them," according to the website. "Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be 'enough' information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait — if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!" Registered users on the free site can submit new words, definitions, notes about a word and pronunciations. The site also uses definitions from such standard sources as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and "Roget's II: The New Thesaurus. The Wordnik team includes co-founder Erin McKean, former editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press and the author of several books about words, including "Weird and Wonderful Words." "At Wordnik," McKean wrote in an e-mail, "we consider something a word when it is used as a word, no matter how infrequently. If we can prove a word exists, it's a word!" http://www.courant.com/features/hc-w...0,323194.story  Tunnel Vision: Swiss Can't Wait to Party Josie Cox and Sam Cage Face covered with dust, a tired miner scrambles through a tiny gap linking two parts of what will be the world's longest rail tunnel, clutching a gold colored statuette of saint Barbara. He is greeted by a hard-hat wearing crowd of 600 or so -- colleagues, politicians and journalists -- gathered to watch the rubble crumble in a Swiss rail tunnel. The event was broadcast live on television earlier this week. Even though there is still one section of the tunnel to be dug through -- and that is not scheduled until early 2011 -- the media attention illustrates a particularly Swiss passion. "I've been at a lot of openings but that one really hit me in the stomach and that is a great victory for the biggest tunnel," said a beaming Moritz Leuenberger, minister for environment, traffic, energy and communication. "Here is the first world wonder of Switzerland, and the longest wonder of the world," said Leuenberger, congratulating workers including the statue-wielding miner. Barbara, the saint depicted by the statuette, is known to the Swiss as patron saint of construction workers and miners. Tunnels and the Swiss really do go deep. Some suggest the fascination comes from an existence surrounded by mountains. Many Swiss companies compete on the global tunnel market. But there are also boasting rights to dig for. The focus of this week's attention, the Gotthard is a near 18 billion Swiss franc ($16.6 billion) project to reclaim Swiss ownership of the world's longest transport tunnel, at almost 60 km (40 miles). It's a crown Japan grabbed in 1988 with the Seikan Tunnel in the Tsugaru Strait, measuring 54 km (33 miles). For the Swiss, a tunnel can even be a target for the social climber. About 50,000 people turned up for a party to celebrate 125 years of the Gotthard railway in 2007. Thousands more have flocked to open days at various work stations along the route, which links Zurich with Milan. "It could be because Switzerland is a little island in the middle of the European Union that we like to feel like we can connect to out neighbors a little bit," said Swen Klahr, spokesman of the Swiss Tunnelling Society (STS). More than 2,500 km (1,550 miles) of tunnels criss-cross Switzerland, an Alpine hub for international transit between two of Europe's most dynamic economic regions, northern Italy and southern Germany. According to its Federal Office of Transport, Switzerland's share of rail freight traffic is the highest in western Europe, with almost all its freight passing a number of tunnels. Every year, the Swiss Tunnel Congress (STC), hosted by the STS, attracts hundreds of experts to discuss construction techniques, risk reduction and new tunnelling technology. Reclaiming Top Spot Oliver Vion -- a 47-year old Frenchman who heads the Swiss-based International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) -- acknowledges a desire that Swiss prowess in hewing passage through the bellies of mountains not be upstaged by such fripperies as fine timepieces, chocolate or cheese. "There are other tunnelling nations, like Japan and Norway, but the sheer length of Swiss tunnels is exceptional," he said. In recent years the STC event has become increasingly exclusive, with non-members paying a 530 Swiss franc registration fee on top of 250 francs for each construction site excursion during the three days. "For me, the STC is always a good opportunity to meet friends from Switzerland and abroad and join them at the exhibition or at the dinner," said STS president Felix Amberg. The four-course dinner, giving participants the chance to socialize with the elite of the tunnelling world, slaps another 100 francs on the conference bill. Held in an 19th-century banqueting hall of the five-star hotel Schweizerhof on Lake Lucerne, this convention is not the only opulent celebration of Swiss tunnelling enthusiasm. In May, a carnival-like event costing more than 5 million Swiss francs ($4.42 million) marked the inauguration of the Uetliberg tunnel just west of Zurich. Despite being criticized as an extravagant waste of money, the party dubbed the "West Fest" lured 200,000 visitors underground to food stalls, acrobats, parachutists and a marathon run looping through the 4.4 km (2.8 miles) tunnel. Formula One cars raced along the newly paved road, and the tunnel hosted clubbing nights and pop concerts until the early hours of the morning. "The tunnel, which cost approximately 4 billion Swiss francs to complete, is one of the biggest constructions of the century and therefore deserves a celebration of this magnitude," said Zurich engineering department's Felix Muff. Leading Tunnellers There is cash benefit: "The economic importance of Swiss tunnels for international transit is indisputable," said Thomas Rohrbach from Leuenberger's department. Tunnelling technology for hydropower has been a factor driving Swiss expertise. With no commercial hydrocarbon production, hydro-electricity accounts for about 60 percent of Switzerland's power. Major Swiss tunnel construction groups like Implenia, Marti and Infra Tunnel are regularly commissioned for construction internationally: "Despite a more difficult operating environment ... orders have continued to increase," Implenia spokesman Claude Vollenweider told Reuters. In the United States, technology developed by St. Gallen-based Leica Geosystems has been instrumental in the construction of the Central Artery tunnel, known as the "Big Dig," through Boston. Swiss engineering group ABB created technology for Britain's Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2002. The Swiss are also studying a possible 240-km (149 mile) long fully automated supply tunnel to connect eastern and western Switzerland. The "Swiss Cargo Tube" would transport goods up to 60 meters below the ground, 24 hours a day. "At the moment the Cargo Tube is a vision, but the chances of it becoming reality look positive," said Guido Guetter, who leads the research group. "It would be reliable, fast, environmental, flexible and economic." At 149 miles, it would also be very, very long. (Editing by Sara Ledwith) http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...55I03D20090619 News Corp.’s MySpace to Lay Off 400 Workers Tim Arango The latest step in Rupert Murdoch’s effort to turn around the fortunes of his digital businesses came Tuesday in the form of hefty layoffs at MySpace. MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Mr. Murdoch, said it was laying off roughly 400 employees, or nearly 30 percent of its staff. After the layoffs, MySpace will have about 1,000 workers. The company said the layoffs were an attempt to return to a “start-up culture.” In a statement, Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive who became chief executive of MySpace in April, said: “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company. I understand these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.” MySpace, which was acquired by News Corporation in 2005 for $580 million, was once the pre-eminent social networking site. But more recently it has lost some luster to Facebook, and at the same time has come up short of News Corporation’s financial projections. Until recently, MySpace still had an advantage over Facebook in the United States, although Facebook had more users globally. But recently, according to comScore, Facebook has matched MySpace in the United States, with about 70 million members. MySpace’s identity is closely associated with entertainment and music — a place where, for example, an upstart band would go to find a following. But Facebook has become the gathering place for users who want to share photos and connect with long-lost friends. “Right now, MySpace has been attempting to compete to be the biggest social networking site,” said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research. “I don’t think that’s been successful. If MySpace is about your entertainment life, Facebook is about your whole life.” Financially, MySpace is said to be profitable but has fallen short of expectations at a time when some of News Corporation’s other business, like newspapers and local television, have been a drain on the company’s earnings. Last year, Fox Interactive Media, the unit that includes MySpace, fell about 10 percent short of a $1 billion revenue projection. In the latest quarter the company did not break out revenue for the unit, but did say that revenue at an operating division, of which Fox Interactive Media is a large component, decreased by $254 million, or 35 percent. In the previous quarter, the unit had declines in both revenue and operating income. In addition, News Corporation also cut jobs at the unit. “We are examining the operating structure of Fox Interactive Media and its role as a corporate umbrella for a number of our digital businesses,” said Dan Berger, a spokesman for the unit. “In conjunction with the MySpace staff cuts this week, we reduced our corporate F.I.M. staff and also assigned certain positions to specific business units,” he added, referring to Fox Interactive Media. To revamp MySpace, Mr. Murdoch has lately engineered a series of management changes. In April, News Corporation appointed Jon Miller, the former chief executive of America Online, as the chief digital officer of the company, overseeing MySpace and the company’s other Internet businesses — Photobucket, IGN Entertainment and the company’s interest in Hulu, the online video partnership with NBC Universal. Mr. Miller wasted little time in making changes. Just weeks later he pushed out Chris DeWolfe, one of the founders and then the chief executive of MySpace. Tom Anderson, another founder of the social networking site, has stayed on. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/te...17myspace.html Internet Still the Leading Source for News The Internet is by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new poll in the U.S. But just a small fraction of U.S. adults considered social Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace as a good source of news and even fewer would opt for Twitter. More than half of the people questioned in the Zogby Interactive survey said they would select the Internet if they had to choose only one source of news, followed by 21% for television and 10% for both newspapers and radio. Only 10% described social Web sites as an important for news, and despite the media buzz about Twitter, only 4% would go to it for information. The Internet was also selected as the most reliable source of news by nearly 40% of adults, compared with 17% who opted for television and 16% who selected newspapers and 13% for listened to the radio. "The poll reinforces the idea that efforts by established newspapers, television and radio news outlets to push their consumers to their respective websites is working," Zogby said in a statement. Almost half of 3,030 adults questioned in the online survey said national newspaper Web sites were important to them, followed by 43% who preferred television Web sites. Blogs were less of a necessity than Web sites with only 28% of those polled saying blogs that shared their political viewpoint were important. "That the Web sites of traditional news outlets are seen by a wide margin as more important than blog sites -- most of which are repositories of opinion devoid of actual reportage -- could be seen as an encouraging development for the media at large," Zogby added. When asked to peer into the future, an overwhelming 82% said the Internet would be the main source of information in five years time, compared to 13 for television and 0.5% chose newspapers. About 84% of American have access to the Internet, according to industry studies. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...e2ca0d21bae958 Social Networks Spread Defiance Online Brad Stone and Noam Cohen As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions. Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications. On Twitter, reports and links to photos from a peaceful mass march through Tehran on Monday, along with accounts of street fighting and casualties around the country, have become the most popular topic on the service worldwide, according to Twitter’s published statistics. A couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), is filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian and in English. It has more than 7,000 followers. Mr. Moussavi’s fan group on Facebook has swelled to over 50,000 members, a significant increase since election day. Labeling such seemingly spontaneous antigovernment demonstrations a “Twitter Revolution” has already become something of a cliché. That title had been given to the protests in Moldova in April. But Twitter is aware of the power of its service. Acknowledging its role on the global stage, the San Francisco-based company said Monday that it was delaying a planned shutdown for maintenance for a day, citing “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” Twitter users are posting messages, known as tweets, with the term #IranElection, which allows users to search for all tweets on the subject. On Monday evening, Twitter was registering about 30 new posts a minute with that tag. One read, “We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Moussavi’s message. One Person = One Broadcaster. #IranElection.” The Twitter feed StopAhmadi calls itself the “Dedicated Twitter account for Moussavi supporters” and has more than 6,000 followers. It links to a page on the photo-hosting site Flickr that includes dozens of pictures from the rally on Monday in Tehran. The feed Persiankiwi, which has more than 15,000 followers, sends users to a page in Persian that is hosted by Google and, in its only English text, says, “Due to widespread filters in Iran, please view this site to receive the latest news, letters and communications from Mir Hussein Moussavi.” Some Twitter users were also going on the offensive. On Monday morning, an antigovernment activist using the Twitter account “DDOSIran” asked supporters to visit a Web site to participate in an online attack to try to crash government Web sites by overwhelming them with traffic. By Monday afternoon, many of those sites were not accessible, though it was not clear if the attack was responsible — and the Twitter account behind the attack had been removed. A Twitter spokeswoman said the company had no connection to the deletion of the account. The crackdown on communications began on election day, when text-messaging services were shut down in what opposition supporters said was an attempt to block one of their most important organizing tools. Over the weekend, cellphone transmissions and access to Facebook and some other Web sites were also blocked. Iranians continued to report on Monday that they could not send text messages. But it appears they are finding ways around Big Brother. Many Twitter users have been sharing ways to evade government snooping, such as programming their Web browsers to contact a proxy — or an Internet server that relays their connection through another country. Austin Heap, a 25-year-old information technology consultant in San Francisco, is running his own private proxies to help Iranians, and is advertising them on Twitter. He said on Monday that his servers were providing the Internet connections for about 750 Iranians at any one moment. “I think that cyber activism can be a way to empower people living under less than democratic governments around the world,” he said. Global Internet Freedom Consortium, an Internet proxy service with ties to the banned Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, offers downloadable software to help evade censorship. It said its traffic from Iran had tripled in the last week. Shiyu Zhou, founder of the organization, has no idea how links to the software spread within Iran. “In China we have sent mass e-mails, but nothing like in Iran,” he said. “The Iranian people actually found out by themselves and have passed this on by word of mouth.” Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School who is an expert on the Internet, said that Twitter was particularly resilient to censorship because it had so many ways for its posts to originate — from a phone, a Web browser or specialized applications — and so many outlets for those posts to appear. As each new home for this material becomes a new target for censorship, he said, a repressive system faces a game of whack-a-mole in blocking Internet address after Internet address carrying the subversive material. “It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world,” Mr. Zittrain said. “The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/wo...t/16media.html  Defense Department Sees Protests as Terrorism Josh Richman Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as "low-level terrorism," according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy," Northern California ACLU staff attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington national security policy counsel Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. "DOD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities," they wrote. "It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism." Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course — an annual training requirement for all DOD personnel that is fulfilled through Web-based instruction — the department asks the following: "Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?" To answer correctly, the examinee must select "protests." The ACLU wants that changed immediately, and it wants corrective information sent to all Department of Defense employees who received the training. The ACLU letter notes that this is particularly disturbing in light of the long-term pattern of government treating lawful dissent as terrorism. In the Bay Area, my colleagues and I reported exactly this in 2003, as the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center fed local police agencies information on protests, with catastrophic results. Two years after that, it was the California National Guard. I guess I'm surprised not only that the government hasn't yet learned its lesson about equating the exercise of our cherished constitutional rights with terrorism, but also that it's so incredibly obvious in doing so http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics/ci_12589887 State Department to Twitter: Keep Iranian Tweets Coming Elise Labott The halls of Foggy Bottom are ringing with the Tweets coming with Iran and the State Department is working to ensure they keep coming. Senior officials say the State Department is working with Twitter and other social networking sites to ensure Iranians are able to continue to communicate to each other and the outside world. By necessity, the US is staying hands off of the election drama playing out in Iran, and officials say they are not providing messages to Iranians or “quarterbacking” the disputed election process. But they do want to make sure the technology is able to play its sorely-needed role in the crisis, which is why the State Department is advising social networking sites to make sure their networks stay up and running for Iranians to use them and helping them stay ahead of anyone who would try to shut them down. For example, senior officials say the State Department asked Twitter to refrain for going down for periodic scheduled maintenance at this critical time to ensure the site continues to operate. Bureau’s and offices across the State Department, they say, are paying very close attention to Twitter and other sites to get information on the situation in Iran. Because the US has no relations with Iran and does not have an embassy there, it is relying on media reports and the State Department’s Iran Watch Offices in embassies around the world. The largest such offices are in Dubai, Berlin and London, all home to large Iranian expat communities. But officials say the internet, and specifically social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, are providing the United States with critical information in the face of a crackdown on journalists by Iranian authorities. “There are lots of people here watching,” one senior official said. “There are some interesting messages going up.” While officials would not say whether they were communicating with Iranians directly, one senior official noted that the US is learning about certain people being picked up for questioning by authorities through posts on Twitter. “It is a very good example of where technology is helping,” the official said. The situation in Iran is a real world example of the State Department’s efforts to increase use of technology in diplomacy, including social networking sites, Web Video and text messages to reach large numbers of people who would otherwise be difficult to reach. http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/1...tweets-coming/ Twitter Bath Death A teenage girl was electrocuted after dropping her laptop into the bath as she twittered in the tub. Police said they believed Maria Barbu, 17, had tried to plug in her laptop with wet hands after the battery died during a long session on social networking site Twitter as she took a soak at her home in Brasov, central Romania. She was found dead by her parents with the laptop lying next to her. http://www.austriantimes.at/index.php?id=14023 Moby: The RIAA Needs to be Disbanded Ernesto The two million dollar fine handed out to Jammie Thomas by a Minnesota jury this week hasn’t done the music industry’s image much good. While lawyers and high level managers at the major labels cracked open the Champagne, artists such as Moby and Radiohead shook their heads in shame at what the music world has become. Earlier this week the case of Jammie Thomas versus the RIAA went up for re-trial before a new jury. She was found guilty of sharing 24 songs using Kazaa and ordered to pay $80,000 per infringement, which all mounted to a total of $1.92 million in fines. High ranking people at the record labels soon declared victory claiming that justice had been served. However, many of the artists to which the record label executives owe their well paid salaries are disgusted by the outcome of the case and the which-hunt on their fans. One of the artists that has shared his disappointment at the disproportionate fines is the American musician Moby. “Argh. what utter nonsense,” he writes on his website. “This is how the record companies want to protect themselves? Suing suburban moms for listening to music? Charging $80,000 per song?” he questions. “I don’t know, but ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ doesn’t seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. How about a new model of ‘it’s better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices’?” Moby is right that the sue and scare tactics of the RIAA are not the ideal business model in the long run. However, thus far they have made millions from all the settled cases alone. In recent years over 30,000 people have allegedly settled with the RIAA for an average of $3500 dollars. This means that the RIAA have raked in more than 10 million dollars without even having to go to court. In the UK, a coalition of top artists have spoken out against the actions of a music industry that chooses to criminalize their fans, and expressed their growing discomfort with record labels abusing copyrights for their own benefit. Radiohead, who are also part of the coalition, even showed interest in testifying against the RIAA in the case of a Boston University student also accused of sharing several music recordings. Tenenbaum’s troubles started in 2003 when he rejected an offer to settle with the RIAA for $500. After a few more settlement attempts and legal quibbles, the case eventually went to court. Moby, a proponent of Net Neutrality - another topic dear to most file-sharers - is equally dissatisfied with the RIAA’s tactics. In his view, it would be better for both artists and fans to end all the legal quibbles and focus on the art of music instead. “I’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music,” Moby writes, ending his blog post with some solid advice for the record labels that pump millions of dollars into the non-profit organization. “The RIAA needs to be disbanded,” he writes. http://torrentfreak.com/moby-the-ria...banded-090620/ Woman Wins Fight Against Music Biz David Brooks A Hudson woman won her fight with the recording industry over alleged illegal music downloads, thanks partly to a report from a Dartmouth professor that cast doubt on whether her computer was involved. Mavis Roy, of Hudson, had been sued in federal court last year by four record labels who claimed she downloaded 218 songs, although Roy said she didn't have a computer in the house at the time. Her fight drew national attention because students and faculty at the Franklin Pierce Law Center volunteered to help defend her.In a release Friday, the Law Center claimed victory in the settlement, under which the case was dismissed with no payment made by either side. This is in contrast to a high-profile decision earlier in the week in a similar case in Minnesota, where a $1.9 million settlement was handed down against a woman who downloaded just 24 songs. "The hours and hours of hard work that were done on my behalf were amazing," Roy wrote in a thank-you letter to the school. "I could barely read the paperwork without getting a headache." The Recording Industry Association of America has pursued hundreds of similar lawsuits in recent years as part of a battle against music piracy, although it recently said it would stop filing new suits against individuals, instead taking action against Internet service providers. About 15 music-downloading suits have been filed against individuals in New Hampshire, most of them college students. Roy's case was filed by the RIAA on behalf of record labels UMG, BMG, Interscope and Motown. They claim that on April 24, 2007, at 5:51 a.m., she "downloaded or distributed" 218 songs from Lionel Ritchie, Jay-Z, the Ruff Ryders and other artists. To be specific, the suit said that somebody at the Internet Protocol (IP) address 75.68.28.28, using the file-sharing program Bearshare over the peer-to-peer network Gnutella through a connection with Comcast, obtained the songs illegally, and that Roy "was identified as the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time." Key to the defense, Pierce Law School reported, was an analysis by professor Sergey Bratus of Dartmouth College that punched holes in this identification, made by a company called MediaSentry. Among other things, Bratus said that records known as traceroute logs used to connect Roy and the IP address were flawed. This, he argued, made it impossible to say whether the computer involved was Roy's or another computer pretending to be hers, a process known as "spoofing," or whether it was another computer infected by malware that was distributing songs without its owner's knowledge. "All of Plaintiffs' claims are based on the assumption that MediaSentry's software and computer configuration are trustworthy and free of errors, and this log clearly represents a failure of the MediaSentry software to perform the operation it claims to describe," he wrote in his report, dated May 30. Bratus also argued that a lack of records and electronic "fingerprints" on the songs further muddied the case. "In my opinion, these materials leave critical aspects of MediaSentry's evidence collection process undocumented. In my opinion, they express unwarranted assumptions regarding both software and network technologies involved, and attempt to create an illusion of evidence-supported certainty where it does not exist," Bratus wrote. The case began when Roy received a letter from the record companies' attorneys in July 2007 directing her to a Web site where she could settle the matter via credit card. Because Roy says she didn't have a computer in her house at the time of the downloads, she ignored the letter and follow-ups, assuming they were a scam – until a summary legal judgment was placed against her. In July 2008, she met with the Franklin Pierce Law Clinic, which agreed to take on her case as part of its interest in intellectual property law. It worked in conjunction with the Civil Practice Clinic at the school, which takes on pro bono (low-cost or free) legal work. "I am still unsettled that record companies are able to treat upstanding American citizens this way, invading people's privacy and accusing people of things that don't even make sense." Roy wrote in her thank-you letter. "It is such a sad waste of the court's time." On the net: Professor Bratus’ report, questioning the RIAA’s investigative methods, can be read at http://bit.ly/SGHJh. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/...209975/-1/news Until next week, - js. Current Week In Review  Recent WiRs - June 13th, June 6th, May 30th, May 23rd 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 |
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17-06-09, 09:31 PM
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Dawn's private genie
Join Date: May 2001
Location: the Canadian wasteland
Posts: 4,461
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Nice news roundup.
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