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Old 01-07-09, 06:58 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 4th, '09

Since 2002



















In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


Signed,


New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

































"It's through that site, without the owner of the site knowing, that the [child pornography] files were implanted. It is the first time in Switzerland that we are confronted with this kind of case." – Jean-Christophe Sauterel


"This is a very rare example for the government to suddenly push back an important decision the night before it is due to be rolled out." – Ai Weiwei


"But we can help you uninstall it if you want." – Mr. Wu



































July 4thth, 2009




Beijing Delays Rule on Software Censor
Michael Wines

China’s state-run news agency said late Tuesday that the government had postponed a requirement, set to take effect Wednesday, to equip all newly sold computers with software to filter out objectionable Internet content.

Beijing has faced fierce criticism at home and abroad after the requirement became public in early June. China’s own Internet community has attacked the move, and even some state-controlled publications have questioned its wisdom. American and European governments and businesses have almost unanimously protested the order, saying it would curb free speech and compromise the security of foreign companies’ computer operations inside China.

The Obama administration had officially warned China that the requirement could violate free-trade agreements, and sent trade officials to Beijing recently to press the government to rescind the decision. In Beijing on Tuesday, a United States Embassy spokesperson said that Washington welcomed the announcement.

The state-run Xinhua news agency, which reported the postponement, offered no background on the decision, and did not say how long the delay might last.

As a practical matter, the abrupt postponement bows to reality, because most of China’s computer retailers have large stocks of machines, manufactured months before the decree was announced, that have yet to be sold. Many global computer makers have declined to say how they would comply with the requirement, apparently hoping that the government would delay or reverse its decision under international pressure.

China’s industry and information technology ministry has cast the order as a move to shield children from obscene or violent Internet sites. But critics and technology experts here and abroad have called it an ill-concealed effort to rein in online criticism of the government and other speech that Beijing considers subversive.

The filtering software, nicknamed “Green Dam-Youth Escort,” has been the object of furious online debate since the requirement to install it was disclosed. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which licensed the technology from two Chinese developers, says that the software automatically blocks Web surfers from seeing “unhealthy Internet content.” Updated lists of banned content are automatically downloaded onto users’ computers from the developers’ servers.

But the software’s current list of banned words, posted online by Chinese hackers, is laced with political topics. Businesses have complained that the software is so poorly designed that it opens computers not just to government snooping, but also to hacker attacks by vandals and criminals. On Friday, the heads of 22 international business organizations delivered a letter to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arguing that the Green Dam project flouted China’s professed goal of building an information-based society, and that it posed a threat to security, privacy and free speech. A day earlier, the European Union also protested, saying the software was clearly designed to limit free speech.

And global computer makers have argued that they are being forced to install untested software on their products for purposes that they may regard as offensive.

In Washington, the Business Software Alliance, a group representing software makers worldwide, said Tuesday that it was encouraged by the government’s delay and hoped for “a thorough examination of the related technology issues.”

Green Dam works only on computers that use the Windows operating system. So far, no version has been released for Macintosh and Linux systems. Nor would the software be required in Hong Kong or Macao, said one expert who is familiar with the government’s requirement.

The Chinese government has said little about the requirement. Zhang Chenmin, the founder of one Green Dam developer, Jinhui, has frequently described the software order as voluntary and innocuous, but he did not respond Tuesday to telephone calls and text messages seeking comment.

Meanwhile, it appeared that computer makers had yet to comply with the directive, not only in the hope that the government would alter its plans but also because the order gave them scant time to test Green Dam with their machines.

Only Acer, a Taiwan manufacturer that assembles many of its products in China, has said that it would install Green Dam on its machines. A spokesman for Lenovo, China’s best-selling computer brand, did not respond to a question about its Green Dam policies, although some Beijing vendors said the software has been installed on some Lenovo models.

Hewlett-Packard — China’s No. 2 computer brand, according to the market-intelligence firm IDC — has been silent on its plans, as has Dell, the third-best-selling brand. According to the Web site Rconversation, which has published many leaked documents regarding Green Dam, Sony had already packaged a software CD with some of its computers, along with a statement warning that it was not responsible for any problems the program may cause.

Major Beijing computer retailers said most computers being sold lacked the software. One of China’s biggest electronics chains, Suning, insisted Tuesday that the government order applied only to computers manufactured after July 1, and not to those manufactured before that date but sold later at retail.

“Suning is an outlet, so we’re also playing the role of monitor” to ensure that the computers have the software as required, a company spokesperson, Min Juanqing, said. “If the computer doesn’t meet the requirement, we won’t purchase it.”

Several other vendors contacted Tuesday said that their existing stocks of computers were manufactured in April or May, and that computers equipped with Green Dam were unlikely to reach their shelves for several weeks.

One vendor, who identified himself only as Mr. Wu, acknowledged that some buyers see little but trouble in the government’s order. “Some of our clients are concerned about the security of the software,” he said. “I myself haven’t tried it yet, but we’ve been paying attention to it. I personally don’t want to install this software, but the government has asked us to install it for our kids’ good.

“But we can help you uninstall it if you want,” he said. “It could be easy to erase it completely from your computer.”

Huang Yuanxi and Zhang Jing contributed research. Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/te...y/01china.html





UK Policy Retreat Over Identity Cards
James Boxell

Alan Johnson, home secretary, has ruled out making ID cards compulsory for UK citizens, signalling a significant retreat by the government on its flagship £4.8bn national scheme.

In his first big policy announcement, Mr Johnson said: “Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens – just as it is now to obtain a passport.”

As a result, pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports will not have to carry the cards in a test scheme, to which unions objected strongly.

The Home Office also confirmed that a long-term contract for large-scale production of the cards was being delayed until 2011 or 2012. The Conservative party has pledged to scrap ID cards, meaning that a contract will not be signed if it wins the forthcoming general election.

Mr Johnson’s assertion that no British citizen will be forced to carry a card is a reversal of the position of previous home secretaries, who had said a law for compulsory use would be introduced once 80 per cent of the population owned one.

David Davis, former shadow home secretary, said the reversal showed that “the government has lost its belief in the ID card as a universal check on identity. One of the fundamental design flaws in the system was that it had to be compulsory for it to work as advertised. Otherwise, how could any public servant, be they police, immigration officer or welfare provider, demand to see it?”

While some in the cabinet have raised concerns about the ID card scheme, with Mr Johnson thought to share some of the worries, ministers are keen for it to survive in some form to avoid the embarrassment of abandoning a manifesto pledge. Much of the money spent so far is for technology that can also be used in biometric passports, which have cross-party support.

Mr Johnson said on Tuesday he was an “instinctive” supporter of ID cards and announced plans to extend a voluntary scheme in Manchester to the rest of the north-west. The cards would be useful for young people to provide proof of age and for tackling antisocial behaviour, he said, adding that it had been a mistake ever to allow the perception to grow that they would be a “panacea” to stop terrorism.

Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said the decision to beat a “partial retreat” was “symbolic of a government in chaos”.

He added: “They have spent millions on the scheme so far – the home secretary thinks it has been a waste and wants to scrap it, but the prime minister won’t let him. So we end up with an absurd fudge instead.”

The government will offer the cards free to people aged over 75. Nevertheless, the Home Office has so far received only 3,500 expressions of interest from around the country.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, called the decision on airport workers “a victory for union campaigning. Unions have had reservations about the pilot scheme from the very beginning.” The ID cards will remain compulsory for foreign workers.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/adecd560-6...44feabdc0.html





Utah University Lifts Ban on YouTube
AP

Brigham Young University, a Mormon Church institution where students agree to live a chaste and virtuous life, has lifted its almost three-year policy of blocking access to YouTube.

Administrators lifted the ban on Friday, citing an increasing amount of educational material on the popular video-sharing site, a university spokeswoman, Carri Jenkins, said.

YouTube has its own filters for pornography, but the university added it to the list of Web sites blocked by campus online filters in 2006 because administrators felt there was too much content that could violate the university’s strict standards.

The university’s software also blocks pornography, adult content and violence from other sites.

The university cited limited bandwidth as another factor in the decision. But some professors have complained that they could not gain access to relevant YouTube content in the classroom.

“I think there’s no other way but to provide all of it,” Ms. Jenkins said.

Students and faculty agree to follow the university’s honor code, a list of standards in line with the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The code includes provisions against alcohol, tobacco and caffeine use, among other things. It also specifically labels pornography as taboo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/ed...28brigham.html





Cable Operators Prevail on New Recording System
AP

Cable TV operators won a key legal battle against Hollywood studios and television networks on Monday as the Supreme Court declined to block a new digital video recording system that could make it easier for viewers to bypass commercials.

The justices declined to hear arguments on whether Cablevision Systems’ remote-storage DVR system would violate copyright laws. The end to the closely watched case allows Cablevision to proceed with plans to start deploying the technology this summer.

With remote storage, TV shows are kept on the cable operator’s servers instead of a machine inside the customer’s home, as systems offered by TiVo and cable operators currently do.

The distinction is important because a remote system essentially transforms every digital set-top box in the home into a DVR, allowing customers to sign up instantly, without the need to pick up a DVR from the nearest cable office or wait for a technician to visit.

Movie studios, TV networks and cable TV channels had argued that the service is more akin to video-on-demand, for which they negotiate licensing fees with cable providers.

They asserted that a remote-storage DVR service amounts to an unauthorized rebroadcast of their programs. Cablevision argued that its service was permissible because the control of the recording and playback was in the hands of the consumer.

Industry experts say the new technology could put digital recording service in nearly half of all American homes, about twice the current number.

“This is a tremendous victory,” said Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s chief operating officer, in a statement. “At the same time, we are mindful of the potential implications for ad skipping and the concerns this has raised in the programming community.”

Mr. Rutledge said the technology could benefit programmers and advertisers, besides consumers. The cable operator has launched targeted, interactive advertising in half a million households and plans to double that number by year’s end in the New York metro area that it serves. TiVo’s DVR users already see ads when they pause or fast-forward shows.

Less clear is whether there will be savings down the road for consumers. Remote-storage DVR saves cable operators money because they don’t have to invest and deploy digital set-top boxes with hard drives anymore, nor would they have broken machines inside homes to fix. A Sanford Bernstein analyst, Craig Moffett, had estimated that DVRs account for as much as 10 percent to 15 percent of major cable’s capital spending.

But whether those savings will trickle down to the consumer depends on the level of competition, expenditures by cable to deploy the new system and other factors. Cable operators also have to contend with bandwidth capacity, as shows will be transmitted to each DVR viewer from their central servers, instead of individual DVRs already in the home.

Still, it’s a win for cable even though most consumers won’t see much of a change for years, in part because there are millions of in-home DVRs already in use.

“It’s clearly an important chapter in the history of digital television,” said a Standard & Poor’s analyst, Tuna Amobi. But the new system will take “a few years to materialize. Right now the focus is on trying to get up to speed and get this technology beyond the test phase.”

Perhaps in the next decade, remote-storage DVR would make set-top boxes obsolete, he said.

At least, cable operators won’t be hampered by the limits of a DVR hard drive. They can choose to offer more storage capacity to consumers whenever they wish, as they respond to competition or try to retain subscribers.

Amobi said satellite TV operators are the losers in the high court’s decision because their systems don’t let them offer remote-storage DVR. Their subscribers still have to get DVRs with hard drives and satellite TV companies have to continue to invest in these boxes.

In siding with Cablevision, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuits overturned a lower court ruling that Cablevision, rather than its customers, would be making copies of programs, thereby violating copyright laws.

The Screen Actors Guild, songwriters, music companies, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the N.C.A.A. all sided with the networks and studios in asking for high court review, while the Obama administration urged the court not to hear the case.

The case is Cable News Network v. CSC Holdings Inc., 08-448.

Shares of Cablevision were up 58 cents, or 3.1 percent, to $19.44 in afternoon trading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/te...y/30cable.html





The Pirate Bay Sold for £4.7m

The Pirate Bay's founders are set for a multi-million windfall after selling the controversial file-sharing website for 60m Swedish crowns (£4.7m).
Rupert Neate

In April, the four Swedish men behind the website were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $3.6m (£2.2m) after they were found guilty of providing a conduit for consumers to breach copyright on hundreds of millions of songs and movies. The men - Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström - are appealing the sentence.

The buyer, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X, said it recognised that The Pirate Bay, one of the world's largest file-sharing websites, must comply with international copyright laws.

Global Gaming said the website needs a new business model which "satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary."

Hans Pandeya, chief executive, said: "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site."

The Pirate Bay's founders said the site was being sold for a "great bit underneath its value" but the sale is essential to secure the website's future.

"On the internet, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen.

"It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

"TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be the interesting part. It's not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site."

The founders said the profit form sale will fund a foundation to promote free speech and freedom of information on the internet.

The Pirate Bay has also announced plans to launch a video streaming service that is billed as a rival to YouTube. The site, dubbed The Video Bay, is still in beta, and will give web users access to thousands of clips, including music videos, many of which currently infringe copyright laws. It is not yet known how the deal with Global Gaming will affect this project. A spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said it was monitoring developments, but had no further comment to make about The Pirate Bay’s latest move.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...-for-4.7m.html





Scepticism and Outrage Follow Pirate Bay Sale

A storm of criticism has been directed at the three main personalities behind The Pirate Bay following news that the file sharing site will be sold.

On the Pirate Bay’s own blog, spokesperson Peter Sunde has tried to explain to users the reasoning behind the decision to sell the site to Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), a software and internet café networking company

GGF plans to convert The Pirate Bay into a paying site using new technology and a new business model.

While several of the posts on the Pirate Bay blog express understanding for the decision, many other posters appear to be upset by the sale, with a few displaying outright anger.

Many think that Sunde, Gottfrid Swartholm Warg, and Fredrik Neij ought to be ashamed of themselves.

“Where have your ideals gone now, my friends? Ha, I can’t understand why I supported you guys,” writes one disgruntled file sharer.

“This is a sad day for internet, pirates and freedom. Commercial control can't lead to anything good,” writes another.

Sunde isn’t unaffected by the criticism. On his Twitter account he writes he nearly cried when we saw how many people failed to understand the reasons behind the Pirates’ decision.

“People hate me now for wanting to pause the 6 year free work we've been doing. Feels unfair,” wrote Sunde.

While Svartholm Warg isn’t currently in Sweden, he has said that the head of the Swedish chapter of IFPI -- the organization representing copyright holders which was a party to the lawsuit against the men behind The Pirate Bay -- claims that the 30 million kronor ($3.9 million) damages claim which accompanied the guilty verdict delivered in the case will haunt the men for the rest of their lives.

During an internet chat, Svartholm Warg celebrated the fact that the sale of the Pirate Bay gives the pirates access to funds which can be used to fight anti-piracy advocates.

“Do you think the anti-pirate Mafia’s capacity to screw with us will increase when we have a huge fund to screw with them?” asked Svartholm Warg.

According to Patrik Fältström, an IT-expert with Cisco and member of the Swedish government’s technology council, 60 million kronor for The Pirate Bay and 100 million kronor for Peerialism, which was also purchased by GGF, is not that much money.

He’s not surprised that Global Gaming Factory's CEO says the company has venture capitalists who are ready to meet when the deal is completed.

“It’s no coincidence that someone is ready to put some money into this,” Fältström told TT.

The second-generation file sharing technology developed by Peerialism is the future of file sharing, according to Fältström.

One of the revenue sources which GGF hopes to rely on are internet service providers (ISP).

But Jon Karlung, CEO for Bahnhof – an ISP which carries about 10 percent of Sweden’s internet traffic – is sceptical of GGF’s business model, which would require ISPs to pay.

“They can forget that. No ISP is going to join up and pay. He’s gone off the deep end; the reasoning is totally backward and it’s not going to happen,” Karlung told TT.

But at the same time, Karlung is supportive of GGF’s attempts to push new thinking and test new business models that no one else has tried, emphasizing he is in no way opposed to the new service.
http://mail.lycos.com/lycos/Index.lycos





Automated Legal Threats Turn Piracy Into Profit
Ernesto

Piracy watchdog Nexicon has found the ultimate way to turn piracy into profit for the fresh copyright holders added to their clientele. They offer alleged file-sharers the chance to settle for $10 per downloaded song or an equal amount for a pirated movie. If you decide not to settle, they promise to bankrupt you in court.

Some people might remember Nexicon from the Getamnesty site we mentioned in the past, or perhaps as the Youtube copyright cops. The company has a history as a cigarette retailer but went on to hunt pirates after they were sued for selling smokes to minors and failing to report their sales to the tax office.

After its transformation into a pirate tracking outfit Nexicon launched its Getamnesty program which offers copyright holders a chance to turn piracy into profit. They cleverly circumvent privacy protection laws by using ISPs to forward settlement requests for various copyright holders to alleged infringers. One of their most successful partner programs is the Payartists website which is a misleading name to say the least.

The money collected through Payartists is not going to any artists at all. The only artist they collect ’settlements’ for on the site is Frank Zappa, and he passed away in 1993. All the settlement money collected now goes to The Zappa Family Trust which is headed by Zappa’s widow.

Most recently a new Nexicon franchise emerged, as the ‘Video Protection Alliance’ (VPA) has teamed up with several porn studios to track down and force settlements from alleged copyright infringers. The methods they use are very similar to Getamnesty and Payartists and are designed to get cash payments from illicit file-sharers without even having to first find out who they are.

The process is simple. Their software monitors BitTorrent swarms and other filesharing networks and records the IP-addresses of those people who share the work of their clients. It then automatically sends an email to the ISP linked to the IP-address with a request to forward it to the associated customer.

Thus far, this is very similar to the warning letters that the movie and music studios have been sending out for years. However, there is one big difference. The emails sent out by Nexicon to alleged infringers contain veiled threats of legal action if they don’t choose to settle within 10 days.

In their email they write that “it may be beneficial to settle this matter without the need of costly and time-consuming litigation.”

If you don’t settle they are “prepared to pursue every available remedy including damages, recovery of attorney’s fees, costs and any and all other claims that may be available to it in a lawsuit filed against you.” To make it even more scary, they point out that ISPs might cut your Internet connection if you don’t comply.

In the FAQ on the VPA website it is noted that consulting a lawyers is an option, but it would be a rather silly thing to do since it will cost more than the settlement itself. “It is likely that the cost incurred to retain a lawyer will exceed the settlement amount offered.”

Indeed, the settlements are rather cheap compared to the fine that was handed out to Jammie Thomas recently. The settlement offer for an adult movie is close to the retail price of a DVD and for a single Frank Zappa track you’ll pay $10. In comparison, Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $80,000 per song.

Settle with Zappa on Payartists, or else…settle

However, because of these low fees and the use of threatening language we cannot help mentioning the word ‘extortion’ once more. Even if they handle with the best intentions they should adjust their tracking software to be more accurate. We confirmed at least one case where they sent a settlement offer to the wrong person, and we’re pretty sure that this is not the only mistake they’ve made (here’s another one).

Still, even people wrongfully accused of sharing [insert obscene porn title here] may be inclined to pay a few bucks rather than risk being taken to court. The threats are worrying enough for some people to pay for an offense they didn’t commit. But there might be an even easier way out.

Unsurprisingly, very little happens when the threats are ignored. A Manhattan College employee dealing with DMCA notices wrote recently. “We have not passed the settlement info on to the students linked with the allegedly infringing IP address and have not had any follow up notices from them.”

This aside, we are not aware of any legal action taken by any of Nexicon’s partners to back up their threats. To the best of our knowledge they don’t even have a proper license to act as private investigators which is a felony in several US states and renders the ‘evidence’ they have in their spreadsheets useless.

Our advice, if you get a settlement offer from one of Nexicon’s partners please forward it to your spam folder - after forwarding it to us first of course.
http://torrentfreak.com/automated-le...profit-090628/





ISPs Doubt Accuracy of Anti-Piracy Evidence
enigmax

Lawyers ACS:Law and their anti-piracy partners Logistep are currently harassing around 6,000 alleged file-sharers, demanding £665 from each to make threats of legal action go away. In yet another blow to their tenuous claims, ISP association ISPA says that its members are “not confident” that the evidence accurately identifies infringers.

ACS:Law, the outfit that at least appears to have taken over from lawyers Davenport Lyons in chasing alleged uploaders of 2nd rate games on file-sharing networks, have experienced another blow to their credibility. Their ‘evidence’ has been called into doubt yet again - this time by Internet service providers.

The hypocritical law firm - who were recently shown to be copyright infringers themselves - partner with Swiss anti-piracy tracking company Logistep (and another company DigiProtect) in order to demand settlements of around £665. However, time and time again there have been allegations against individuals who have absolutely no idea why they are being accused of copyright infringement.

Last year, in the most prominent case of mistaken identity and when Davenport Lyons were working with porn companies, they incorrectly accused a retired 64 year-old man of sharing the hardcore movie ‘Euro Domination 5′ via BitTorrent. The man received an apology and the demands for money ended.

Eventually the actions of Davenport Lyons, Logistep and DigiProtect attracted the attention of consumer group Which? who made a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Although that action is still ongoing, Davenport decided - at least on the surface - to withdraw from the business.

But of course, ACS:Law were waiting in the wings and they are now conducting business with Logistep in much the same fashion. Unfortunately for them, Which? is now on their case too.

In their most recent print edition, Which? published an article which casts an even darker shadow over the issue. They say they have been contacted by 20 individuals who say they have no knowledge of the games in question - Dream Pinball 3D and Two Worlds.

Which? quoted hospital ward clerk Deborah Hughes who said: “It’s distressing to receive such a letter. I’ve never heard of this game and I’ve no idea how to share it. I’ve searched my computer but it’s not there.”

Of even greater concern and embarrassment to ACS:Law are the accusations they leveled at Colin Dixon, Technology Director at a UK software developer. “My wife and I are middle aged (51 and 49) and work from home, and the computers here are owned by our employer, and are strictly controlled for pirated software - that’s my job!”

Which? also spoke with the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) about the issue. They replied: “We’re not convinced of the efficacy of the software and not confident in its ability to identify users.”

Up to now, this hasn’t worried Logistep, DigiProtect, Davenport Lyons or ACS:Law since they say in their claims letters: “We do not claim that your computer was used to commit the infringing act (although we do not exclude this possibility), nor do we claim that you downloaded our client’s work. Our claim is that your Internet connection was used to make our client’s work available via one or more P2P networks. The file may not, therefore, be on your computer.”

So, in a nutshell, they admit that the people named in their letters may not have carried out any infringement. Absolutely priceless.

Neither ACS:Law nor Davenport Lyons have ever won a contested case against a UK file-sharer, despite all their bluster. Hundreds of people are “let off” after simply digging in their heels, denying the accusations and refusing to pay.
http://torrentfreak.com/isps-doubt-a...idence-090629/





Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Policy Laundering Strategy
Michael Geist

The Conference Board of Canada plagiarism and undue influence story - which with the Board's report and overdue apology to Curtis Cook will now go on hiatus until new reports are issued in the fall - has obviously attracted considerable interest. Looking back, while plagiarism is rare, it is the public airing of the copyright lobby policy laundering effort that is the far more important development.

This lengthy post seeks to unravel the effort further by demonstrating how there has been a clear strategy of deploying seemingly independent organizations to advance the same goals, claims, arguments, and recommendations. Over the past three years, this strategy has played out with multiple reports, each building on the next with a steady stream of self-citation. The following diagram highlights the key players:

Although there are many groups involved in copyright lobbying, at the heart of the strategy are two organizations - the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association. CRIA's board is made up the four major music labels plus its director, while the CMPDA's board is comprised of representatives of the Hollywood movie studios. Those same studios and music labels provide support for the International Intellectual Property Association, which influences Canadian copyright policy by supporting U.S. government copyright lobby efforts.

In addition to their active individual lobbying (described here), CRIA and CMPDA have provided financial support for three associations newly active on copyright lobbying - the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's IP Council, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (there are other funders including pharmaceutical companies and law firms). Those groups have issued virtually identical reports and in turn supported seemingly independent sources such as the Conference Board of Canada and paid polling efforts through Environics.

The net effect has been a steady stream of reports that all say basically the same thing, cite to the same sources, make the same recommendations, and often rely on each other to substantiate the manufactured consensus on copyright reform. The relevant reports are as follows:

• CACN - Report on Counterfeiting and Piracy in Canada: A Roadmap for Change (2007)
• Ontario Chamber of Commerce - Protection of Intellectual Copyright: A Case for Ontario (2008)
• Environics polling (2008)
• IP Council (Canadian Chamber of Commerce) - A Time For Change: Towards a New Era for Intellectual Property Rights in Canada (2009)
• Conference Board of Canada - Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy (2009 - recalled)

Just how similar are these reports? First consider some sample recommendations (note particularly the Ontario Chamber and Conference Board recommendations which include arguable plagiarism problems):

False Momentum

It is not just that these reports all receive financial support from the same organizations and say largely the same thing. It is also that the reports each build on one another, creating the false impression of growing momentum and consensus on the state of Canadian law and the need for specific reforms. Consider the IP Council's A Time for Change, which was released in early 2009. The very first chapter of the report is titled "Canada's Emerging Consensus on Intellectual Property Rights." Where does this consensus come from?

According to the IP Council, it starts with the CACN report, followed by two House of Commons committees that heard primarily from these groups and which led to the 2007 Speech from the Throne and Canada's participation in ACTA. The chapter then states that IPR policy was taken to the "next level" with the Ontario Chamber report, the founding of the IP Council, and the 2008 Conference Board of Canada conference that led to the three recalled IP reports. The chapter then notes the "growing public awareness of the need for action" which cites Environics polls (paid for by the IP Council) and a Toronto Star supplement on counterfeiting (paid for by the CACN). In all, the IP Council cites the CACN four times, the Ontario Chamber twice, the Conference Board of Canada proceedings 13 times, and the Environics research five times.

Environics

The influence over some of these independent reports is evident in other ways. For example, Environics has emerged as the survey company of choice for this effort (Pollara was a favourite until Duncan McKie left to run the Canadian Independent Record Production Association). Environics lead on these issues was once Don Hogarth, who now provides communications for CRIA. On June 4, 2008 - one week before the introduction of C-61 - Environics released a poll that it said found that Canadians are looking for leadership on IP issues. The report repeats the CACN, Ontario Chamber, and IP Council assertions, stating:

over the past several years Canada has fallen behind the international community when it comes to the protection of intellectual property and products of the mind. The gap between Canadian laws and international standards in the area of counterfeiting, piracy, and illegal downloading is growing ever wider. Canada has been maintained by the U.S. Trade Representative on a special watch list specifically because of its laxity in the realm of protecting intellectual property.

What makes the timing particularly noteworthy is that even though Environics issued a press release claiming that the data came from a new study, the data was not new. Rather, it was drawn from a 2006 survey that seemingly sat idle for two years until the opportune moment to raise it days before the introduction of new copyright legislation. Who funded the questions related to intellectual property? It will come as little surprise to find that CRIA paid for those. Moreover, Environics oddly proceeded to re-issue the identical press release six months later (June 2008 version, December 2008 version) in conjunction with an IP Council commissioned survey on counterfeiting.

What does it all mean?

At a certain level, none of this will come as a surprise. Companies lobby for their position and what made the Conference Board of Canada series of events so unusual was the way in which it was exposed. Yet the Conference Board of Canada's recalled reports were clearly just a part of a much larger strategy to influence Canadian copyright policy by creating a narrative of crisis and the false impression of Canada as a piracy haven. This week's comments from Industry Minister Tony Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore provide the strong sense that they better understand the current dynamic around copyright, but it is obvious that the lobbying on the issue is only going to intensify in the months ahead.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4079/125/





Music Copyright Lawsuit Targets Microsoft, Yahoo, Real
Matt Rosoff

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm well-acquainted with legal filings from analyzing Microsoft's legal travails for the last nine years. I've seen a lot of aggressive lawsuits, but a copyright infringement suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee is one of the boldest--and, I'd argue, short-sighted--filings I've ever seen.

The suit appears to have been initiated by Music Copyright Solutions (MCS), which claims to administer copyrights for more than 45,000 compositions. MCS is named as the lead plaintiff, along with a number of songwriters including Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad fame. These folks allege that Microsoft, Yahoo, and RealNetworks improperly licensed the rights to more than 200 compositions that they offered as on-demand streams or limited downloads via the Zune Marketplace, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody.

Surely these companies paid somebody for the rights to offer these songs. But there's a catch, which TechDirt pointed out earlier Tuesday: these companies may have licensed the rights to the recordings, but that doesn't mean they licensed the rights to the compositions (also known as publishing rights). As section 23 of the legal filing puts it:

Quote:
In order to transmit, perform, reproduce and deliver any sound recording of any musical work via 'On-Demand Streams' or 'Limited Downloads,' Defendants must first obtain not only the rights for the sound recording itself, but also the rights for the underlying musical composition that is embodied on said musical recording.
Maybe, maybe not--that's up to the court to decide. But that's not the insane part. The insane part is that the plaintiffs are alleging that each time one of the defendants made any recording of a covered song available, that's a copyright violation, and they're seeking damages of $150,000 per violation (or the amount the defendants earned from streaming those songs, whichever is more). So, for example, the lawsuit claims that Yahoo Music offered Conway Twitty's recording of "Fifteen Years Ago" on six different greatest hits albums. The plaintiffs allege that constitutes six copyright violations, which would mean damages of $900,000. Overall, the lawsuit names more than 200 songs, and a far greater number of recordings, meaning that the potential liability for each defendant would be tens of billions of dollars--that's far greater than the total amount of revenues these companies ever earned from any of these services.

These types of cases are usually settled for a relative pittance--something much closer to what the defendant would have paid to license the songs properly in the first place. But imagine for a minute that this lawsuit actually goes to trial and the plaintiffs win damages amounting to 1 percent of what they asked for. No company would ever risk building an online music service again--the legal liability would simply be too high.

When it comes to online music, big legal music services like Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody are the copyright owners' friends--unlike file-trading networks or free on-demand streaming services, these companies actually collect money from users and disburse it to copyright owners. Perhaps the plaintiffs have a legitimate complaint. But by filing such an aggressive lawsuit to recover billions in supposed damages--I mean honestly, how many Grand Funk Railroad streams have been delivered via the Zune Marketplace?--these folks risk killing their allies and driving music back to the darknet where nobody in the value chain sees a dime.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10276724-27.html





RIAA Triumphs in Usenet Copyright Case
Greg Sandoval

The Recording Industry Association of America has prevailed in its copyright fight against Usenet.com, according to court documents.

In a decision that hands the RIAA an overwhelming victory, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most important for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com can't claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision. That ruling says companies can't be held liable for contributory infringement if the device they create is "capable of significant non-infringing uses."

Baer noted that in citing the Betamax case, Usenet.com failed to see one important difference between it and Sony. Once Sony sold a Betamax, an early videotape recorder, the company's relationship with the buyer ended. Sony held no sway over what the buyer did with the device after that. Usenet.com, however, maintains an ongoing relationship with the customer and does has some say in how the customer uses the service.

Usenet.com's lawyers could not be reached Tuesday evening.

The two-decade-old Usenet network was one of the early ways to distribute conversations and binary files, long before the Web or peer-to-peer networks existed. Usenet.com is a company that enabled users to access the Usenet network.The RIAA filed suit against Usenet.com in October 2007, accusing the company of encouraging customers to pay up to $19 a month by enticing them with copyrighted music.

The case is highly unusual because of Baer's many findings of discovery misconduct by the Usenet.com side. The rules of discovery in a civil case requires both sides to exchange information. The RIAA produced evidence, however, that Usenet.com destroyed evidence or failed to produce witnesses on multiple occasions.

The RIAA accused Usenet.com of intentionally destroying the contents on seven hard drives that contained employee-generated data; providing false information; and attempting to prevent employees from giving depositions by sending them to Europe.

The judge found the evidence credible but denied the RIAA's motion to hand it a victory based solely on the misconduct. Instead, the judge sanctioned Usenet.com "from asserting (the company's) affirmative defense of protection under the DMCA's safe harbor provision."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provides refuge to Internet service providers from being held responsible for criminal acts committed by users. Without that and without the Betamax decision, Usenet.com was a sitting duck.

In a brief note posted Tuesday to RIAA.com, the trade group for the music industry said: "We're pleased that the court recognized not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies' copyrights but also took action against the defendants for their egregious litigation misconduct."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10276607-93.html





Usenet.com Ruling, a 'Whittling Down' of Betamax Defense
Greg Sandoval

Usenet.com lawyers lost their copyright infringement case to the music industry on Tuesday and are now preparing for a federal court to assess damages. The judgment could be hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the long list of copyright cases brought by the Recording Industry Association of America, this one stands out for all the drama it provided, and depending on which side you talk to, the amount of precedent-setting decisions involved. Usenet.com lawyers argue the presiding judge diluted the power of the landmark 1984 Betamax case. RIAA attorneys sigh, and say their opponents are just trying to inflame the public.

In what became a provocative sideshow during the proceedings, the RIAA alleged that Usenet.com destroyed evidence and prevented employees from being questioned by RIAA lawyers, going so far as shipping some of them off on extended trips to Europe. Presiding U.S. District Judge Harold Baer, of the Southern District of New York, was unamused and sanctioned Usenet.com.

Usenet.com is a company that enables users to access the Usenet network, an early electronic discussion forum and formerly popular way to share binary files. In October 2007, the RIAA filed suit against Usenet.com, which charges up to $19 for access "to millions of MP3 files and also enables you to post your own files the same way and share them with the whole world."

That was how Usenet.com advertised itself and while the pitch may have lured customers, it certainly didn't help in the defense against a copyright suit. Baer ruled in favor of the RIAA on Tuesday and found Usenet.com liable for direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. Sometime in the next three weeks, the judge will hear from both sides as to what they think damages should be and what steps Usenet.com must take to prevent copyright violations.

Both sides agree that there is a vast amount of infringing material that Usenet.com helps make available. Baer could assess damages anywhere from $750 per infringing work to $30,000. The total award to the RIAA theoretically could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Already, one of the three defendants in the case has filed bankruptcy. There are serious questions about whether Usenet.com can survive a significant damage award.

"The court needs to balance the fact that you can't simply shut us down," said Baker, "because the technology itself has substantial non-infringing uses. On that everyone agrees."

Erosion of Betamax

For other media services accused of copyright violations, such as YouTube and music start-up Project Playlist, nothing in the case is more important than the judge's decision to prevent Usenet.com from arguing a Betamax defense, Baker said. The Betamax case refers to the Supreme Court decision in Sony Corp. of America vs. Universal City Studios, which decided that makers of video recorders could not be held liable for copyright infringement.

That ruling has been interpreted to mean that companies can't be held liable if the devices they create are "capable of significant non-infringing uses." It is a decision that tech companies have long relied on to shield them against copyright complaints. But the RIAA now has Betamax in its crosshairs, according to Baker.

Judge Baer said, in his 38-page decision, that the chief difference between Usenet.com and Sony in the Betamax case is the latter company cut ties with customers once they purchased a VCR. After that, Sony had no part whatsoever in illegal acts committed by customers. Usenet.com, on the other hand, maintains a relationship with customers. For Usenet.com subscribers, the company is the gatekeeper to the Usenet network.

"You do see a whittling down of the (Betamax) policy unfortunately," said Baker, with the law firm of Fulbright and Jaworski. "I think because the court found that we were more actively involved in our users than they were in the Sony case itself. Yes, we maintained a relationship with our clients but we tried to point out Sony also maintained a relationship by keeping up with customers through warranties, and providing 800 numbers and by contacting their customers. In this situation, the court may have gone too far in finding that Sony Betamax was not available to us as a defense."

Another precedent set by Baer, according to Baker, is that distributing material within a closed network was a violation.

"This is something new the judge bought off on their argument," Baker said. "The way Usenet works is there is copying going on in the servers, there's multiple copies being made. When a user uploads a file it goes into a server and subsequently those binary files move from server to server as they go through the Usenet network. The court has held that was a violation of the right of distribution and no court has gone there before."

Nothing new here, move along

The RIAA's chief of litigation denied in an interview that that there is much new, if anything, in Baer's decision. "Baker is inflaming your readers by suggesting that Baer went further than he did," said Jennifer Pariser, the RIAA's senior vice president of litigation.

"You only need to look at the decisions that we have prevailed in thus far against peer-to-peer services," Pariser said. "In all of those cases, the court must have determined that Betamax didn't apply because you know for sure that every defendant always tries to say 'We're immune from liability because of Sony Betamax.'"

She noted that decisions in such cases from Aimster to Napster have all said that just because a service is capable of non-infringing uses, doesn't automatically protect it from liability. In Napster, for example, the company asserted the Betamax case in its defense but U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel ruled against the music-sharing service because the defendant had knowledge of copyright theft on the site.

"It is simply untrue that this case is unprecedented," Pariser said.

As for the way the files are distributed on Usenet, she also disagreed that Baer's findings were anything new. "It's true that this particular technology has not been observed before, but you can think of that as analogous to the transferring from one file to another on a peer-to-peer network, which the Supreme Court in Grokster said was infringement. The fact that it goes from a peer to another peer doesn't mean it's not copyright infringement.

"What Baer said," Pariser continued, "is that the transfer of the file from this defendant's server to a Usenet.com paid subscriber is unauthorized distribution."

How about the shenanigans Usenet.com was accused of committing with respect to evidence and discovery?

Baker said the RIAA's favorite tactic in these sort of cases is to "bombard defendants with discovery requests" and that his clients aren't very sophisticated. They were doing their best to comply. He added that the RIAA is trying to use this case to scare other Usenet services.

Pariser said that in all the similar cases the RIAA has pressed, when it came to Usenet.com "the discovery misconduct was unprecedented."

As for what the RIAA is going to ask for in damages, Pariser said the RIAA hasn't come to a dollar figure yet but "certainly there's no question that Usenet.com caused multimillion dollars worth of damage."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10277160-93.html





Jammie Thomas Will Appeal, Lawyer Says
Greg Sandoval

It's official: Jammie Thomas-Rasset intends to appeal her case, one of her lawyers told CNET News on Wednesday.

"She's not interested in settling," attorney Joe Sibley said in a brief phone interview. "She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. That's one of the main arguments--that the damages are disproportionate to any actual harm."

Thomas-Rasset has a brief period to file a notice of appeal, legal experts said. The actual appeal can come later.

What this means is that the Thomas-Rasset drama will have a third act. In October 2007, a jury rendered a $222,000 verdict against her but that decision was later tossed out.

Then, two weeks ago, a federal jury in Minnesota found Thomas-Rasset liable for willful copyright infringement and ordered her to pay $1.9 million. Since then, the blogosphere has churned with speculation about how she will proceed. The 32-year-old Minnesota resident said after her latest trial that she would refuse to pay. Still, with $1.9 million in damages strapped around her neck, many have wondered whether Thomas-Rasset would fight on--or cut her losses and settle.

The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that it had made a phone call to Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camara last week to ask whether Thomas-Rasset wanted to discuss a settlement. An RIAA representative said that its lawyers were told by Sibley that Thomas-Rasset wasn't interested in discussing any deal that required her to admit guilt or pay any money.

In settlement talks, there's often maneuvering, so the RIAA was unsure which way Thomas-Rasset would go--at least until Sibley made it clear.

"The defendant can, of course, exercise her legal rights," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "But what's increasingly clear, now more than ever, is that she is the one responsible for needlessly prolonging this case and refusing to accept any responsibility for the illegal activity that two juries decisively found her liable for. From day one, we've been fair and reasonable in exercising our rights and attempting to resolve this case."

Sibley told CNET News that when RIAA lawyers called a couple of days after the second trial to gauge Thomas-Rasset's interest in settling, they didn't throw out any dollar figures. He did say that following Thomas-Rasset's first trial, the trade group offered to settle for $25,000.

Thomas-Rasset's case has already helped set a series of important legal precedents, including establishing that it is sufficient to show that defendants placed files in their P2P shared folder to prove they intended to make the music available across the network. With the case going to the appeals process, there's a good chance it will continue establishing legal parameters.

"They have an uphill battle," said Ben Sheffner, a former attorney at 20th Century Fox and a rising star on the pro-copyright side. Sibley and Camara "are asking the court to do something no federal court has ever done before. However, this is a good test case. You have a non-wealthy defendant and you have a huge damages award."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10277701-93.html





Music Industry 'Missed' Napster
BBC

The music industry would be in better shape now if it had engaged with Napster rather than fought it.

So says Geoff Taylor, head of music industry body BPI, in a column written for the BBC.

In the column, Mr Taylor expressed "regret" that the music industry did not move faster to work out how to use the net to promote and sell records.

But, he said, many sites that have come in the wake of Napster pose a threat because they are populated by pirates.

Mr Taylor said it was "probably true" that the music industry would be better prepared in 2009 if it had worked with Napster instead of taking the service to the courts.

"I, for one, regret that we weren't faster in figuring out how to create a sustainable model for music on the internet," wrote Mr Taylor.

He added that the music industry in 1999, when Napster debuted, would have struggled to create that business model because of rights issues, a lack of good copyright protection software and an inability to track downloads so that royalties were properly awarded.

The music industry took on Napster, said Mr Taylor, because the file-sharing system had no interest in developing the elements needed to turn it into a business.

"In 1999 Napster developed a great digital service, but did so at the expense of music, while the music business protected music at the expense of progressing online digital services," he wrote.

Ten years on, said Mr Taylor, the music industry has got to grips with digital music, but added that file-sharing sites and technologies that have since emerged are doing damage to the music industry.

Innovation and investment, he said, was being undermined by piracy.

"There is simply no getting around the fact that billions of illegal free downloads of music every year in the UK mean that significantly less money is coming into the music ecosystem," wrote Mr Taylor.

Finally, he said, Napster's impact would be on more than just technology.

"The invention of Napster and all that has followed may soon deliver its greatest legacy - a renaissance in artistic creativity for the digital age," he said.

In response, Jim Killock, head of the Open Rights Group, said: "It's great that the BPI are willing to apologise for their past mistakes with Napster, but they are busy trying to make the same mistake again by 'clamping down' on illicit P2P.

"By trying to get the government to clamp down on users, they risk alienating music's greatest fans, and bringing copyright into disrepute," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/8120552.stm





Rock Legends Form New Band, Call it Chickenfoot
Mike Collett-White

Some of the biggest names in rock have banded together to form a new supergroup. They call it Chickenfoot, a name they readily admit is "silly."

While the name may not be to everyone's taste, Van Halen veterans Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani rose high in the U.S. charts with their eponymous debut album this month.

"We called ourselves Chickenfoot as a kind of a joke, and people started digging it, and so Chad's going, 'Let's start a real band'," Hagar said during a boisterous interview with the band in London, where they performed during a European tour.

"Joe had a band called the Squares -- all of a sudden Chickenfoot sounded like a really good name," Hagar joked.

Hagar and Anthony used to jam together at Hagar's club in Mexico, and when Smith joined them, they gelled. Smith, who still plays for the Chili Peppers, suggested forming a group, and Satriani was invited as the final piece in the jigsaw.

The four members of Chickenfoot have sold tens of millions of records and played thousands of gigs between them over the years, but the childlike enthusiasm for their latest venture comes from starting all over again.

"We're a new band, even though we've got names, we've all been in other bands," Hagar told Reuters. "So we have to kind of let the world know who Chickenfoot is, I think."

Bass player Anthony added that he took exception to the term "supergroup."

"For me, when I hear the name supergroup I think of some pre-fab type of thing ... If the chemistry is not there you can be the best musicians, best players there are, it's not going to come out the way I think this came out.

"This was born out of friendship, it was more organic in that sense."

The band has played a series of small gigs in the United States before flying to Europe for a tour, and returns to North America winding up its travels at the end of September.

"We're a new band and when you're a new band you start and play clubs and you play to your fans," said Smith. "We're not playing stuff from Van Halen, or Joe, or Chili Peppers, we're just playing Chickenfoot."

Chart Success

Chickenfoot's debut album, released earlier in June, opened at No. 4 in the U.S. pop chart and No. 1 in the independent music chart. It maintained its position in the main chart the following week before slipping to No. 7 in the latest list.

"It's the first time I've ever been up in that territory, above the clouds," said Satriani, who is embroiled in a copyright infringement suit with British band Coldplay over its hit single "Viva La Vida."

According to band manager Mick Brigden, U.S. album sales totaled around 180,000 in the first three weeks, around one quarter of which were bought digitally, suggesting a younger, technology-savvie audience.

"A lot of times, before a record comes out, there are projections about who your audience is and where you're going to see sales, so that was a great surprise because it means that we are appealing to truly a broad audience," said Smith.

The quartet confirmed that it planned to tour and record together again in the future, although Smith would have to juggle Chickenfoot and Chili Peppers commitments.

"I am in this other group called the Red Hot Chili Peppers, great band, love 'em, nice bunch of fellas', play some good music. So I'm going to go back and do that."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...55S1VV20090629





Bluetooth "Big Brother" Tracks Festival-Goers
Antonia van de Velde

Researchers are using bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices.

The team from the University of Ghent in Belgium believes the research could yield new satellite navigation applications for the retail and security sectors.

"We have installed 36 bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops," the university's Nico Van de Weghe said on Friday of the project at the Werchter festival, northeast of Brussels this weekend.

Within a radius of 30 meters, the scanners track mobile phones equipped with bluetooth, a type of short-range wireless technology which allows different devices to connect with one another, often to transfer files.

But the masses flocking to see Coldplay, Kings of Leon or Metallica need not worry about their privacy, Van de Weghe said.

The researchers will only track the devices' MAC address -- a number that identifies each device on a network -- which cannot be traced to phone numbers or personal details.

"Werchter is a very interesting case," Van de Weghe told Reuters, adding that this is the first time his team, working on a wider research project using new technology to track moving objects, will collect full data on a live situation.

The team is carrying out research on geographical information systems, such as satellite navigation systems, and is hoping to be able to track moving objects in real time.

"Tracking movements via bluetooth could become very interesting. It could help retailers keep track of the number of customers numbers at different times, " Van de Weghe said.

The technique could also be used by security services to track suspicious movements, or monitor evacuations at mass events.

Some 80,000 people from across Europe attended a sweltering first day of the festival in the small town of Werchter, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Brussels, on Thursday, with thousands more expected on Friday and over the weekend.

(Reporting by Antonia van de Velde; editing by Mark John)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...5623QM20090703





Young, Springsteen Give Hyde Park Rock Masterclass
Angus MacSwan

If Mount Rushmore featured rock 'n' rollers instead of U.S. presidents, the faces of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen would surely be carved there.

The two elder statesmen showed just why they are venerated by fans of all ages at the Hard Rock Calling festival in central London's Hyde Park this weekend in performances brimming with passion, energy and timeless songs.

To cap it all, Sir Paul McCartney joined Young on stage for his encore, literally bowing at his feet as the Canadian played a feedback-drenched version of the Beatles "A Day in the Life."

Now aged 63 and 59, neither Young nor Springsteen has let up the pace in recent years. Both have released new albums in the past several months which had their moments even if they did not reach the heights of past classics.

They each took prominent positions against former U.S. President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Springsteen campaigned hard for Barack Obama and played at his presidential inauguration.

Politics was largely absent from the Hyde Park shows though as they focused on entertaining the summer crowds in London, after headlining the Glastonbury Festival earlier in the week.

Young took to the stage on Saturday night looking like an old mountain man seeking shelter from a storm, with his bedraggled, thinning hair, craggy features and muttonchop sideburns. Not known for indulging his audiences, he played a crowd-pleasing set which drew heavily on "Harvest," his best-known album, and the guitar-heavy "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere."

He kicked off in his "Godfather of Grunge" persona with a crunching version of "Hey, Hey, My, My" and its refrain "it's better to burn out than to fade away." He then stormed though a number of hard rockers, delighting rapturous fans, before switching to a mellow mood with a run of country-flavored numbers including "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man," as night fell on the park.

Young finished with a blazing version of "Rockin' in the Free World," uncharacteristically leading the crowd in a bout of arm-waving and leaving his black guitar wailing feedback, its strings shredded.

McCartney, an old friend, bounded on stage to join Young for the encore of "A Day in the Life," hugging Young and dancing around him. The two were clearly having fun.

Among the crowd was Beth Harley, a 26-year-old archaeologist, who had just arrived from Turkey on Saturday morning to see Young. She said she had grown up listening to his music as her parents played it all the time.

"It's got a lot of edge. The songs don't seem to age. It still seems relevant to what's going on now," she said.

If Young is a willful eccentric, Springsteen is the great showman who delivers every time.

Taking the stage with the mighty, black-clad E. Street band, he launched into The Clash song "London Calling," bellowing its refrain "we live by the river" loud enough to be heard just down the road at Buckingham Palace. He then moved into more familiar territory with "Badlands" and the pace didn't let up for the next three hours.

Springsteen ran around the stage, danced, and strutted along a special platform to get close to the fans and collect signs with song requests. He sang plenty of old favorites, switching from songs on the dreams and struggles of the working man to joyful sing-alongs.

You'll probably never see a concert crowd where the fans look so deliriously happy as a Springsteen show. And no one looks like they are having more fun than the Boss himself.

"He's got so much energy, so much life. He just gets better with age. It doesn't stop him," said Karen Colsen, a 47-year-old graphic designer who had bought her partner tickets as a Valentine's Day gift.

Highlights of the show were two songs which he doesn't often play live -- an elegiac "Racing in the Street," featuring a stately piano coda, and an exuberant "Rosalita." But he also performed Stephen Foster's 1854 song "Hard Times Come Again No More," reminding the audience of the millions of unemployed in the United States and Britain.

"He's the good side of America, the bits we all like," said Nic Saunders, a 36-year-old college lecturer from Reading who has seen Springsteen 16 times previously.

"His themes are universal - girls, boys, cars, getting married, fucking up,'" Saunders said.

"It doesn't matter how old you are if you write good songs."
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...55S1UQ20090629





Allen Klein, 77, Dies; Managed Music Legends
Ben Sisario

Allen Klein, a music executive who managed the business affairs of Sam Cooke, the Rolling Stones and, for a short time, the Beatles, and who was both admired and feared for his reputation as a fierce negotiator, died on Saturday in Manhattan, where he lived. He was 77.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said Bob Merlis, a spokesman for Mr. Klein’s company, Abkco Music and Records.

Mr. Klein rose from humble origins to become a powerful figure in the music business. Born in Newark, he spent much of his childhood in an orphanage, and graduated from Upsala College in East Orange, N.J., with a degree in accounting and a keen appreciation of the value of a dollar.

At the invitation of one of his college friends, Don Kirshner — who would go on to become a successful music publisher and record executive — Mr. Klein began to work in the music business. He gained a reputation early on as an effective sleuth who could root through record companies’ books on behalf of artists and find thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties.

In the early 1960s, he performed those miracles of accounting for Bobby Darin and Cooke. He also became Cooke’s manager, negotiating an usually favorable deal with RCA Records that gave the singer a strong royalty rate and the rights to his own recordings. By the height of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, Mr. Klein was rapidly acquiring clients in England, among them Mickie Most, who was the producer of the Animals, Herman’s Hermits and many other groups.

In 1965, Mr. Klein was hired by the Rolling Stones’ young manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, to handle the band’s business affairs. With his working-class New Jersey accent and aggressive, direct negotiating style, Mr. Klein convinced the Stones, as he would many other musicians, that he would be a powerful advocate.

“Andrew sold him to us as a gangster figure, someone outside the establishment. We found that rather attractive,” Mick Jagger was quoted as saying in Stephen Davis’s 2001 book, “Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones.”

For the Stones and others, though, Mr. Klein was sometimes also an adversary. He negotiated a new deal for the band with Decca, its label at the time, but soon bought the rights to both the band’s recordings and its publishing. The band would later sue for their return, without success. (The Stones settled with Mr. Klein in 1984.) Through Abkco, Mr. Klein retained control of the band’s music before 1971, when the group formed its own record company, Rolling Stones Records.

In 1969, Mr. Klein began to work with the Beatles, as that band was beginning to splinter apart. According to some accounts, he urged John Lennon not to announce that he wanted to quit because it would jeopardize Mr. Klein’s negotiations with E.M.I. over royalties. A highly favorable royalty rate was achieved, and shortly afterward, the Beatles broke up, although Mr. Klein continued to work with Lennon and, for a time, George Harrison. He was a producer of the concerts for Bangladesh, with Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and others, at Madison Square Garden in 1971.

Mr. Klein was convicted of tax fraud in 1979 and served two months in prison for failing to report income from sales of promotional records, according to the Associated Press.

Abkco owns the rights to many recordings by the Stones, Cooke and others, and administers many more. Mr. Klein also worked as a producer on the films “The Holy Mountain” in 1973 and “The Greek Tycoon” in 1978, as well as on a number of Italian spaghetti Westerns.

Mr. Klein is survived by his sister, Naomi; his longtime companion, Iris Keitel; his wife, Betty, with whom he had not lived with for many years; two daughters, Robin and Beth; a son, Jody; and four grandchildren.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/ar...c/05klein.html





In Death as in Life, Michael Jackson Sets Music Sales Records
Ben Sisario

As soon as the news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread last Thursday afternoon, radio programmers around the country cued up his songs, and fans rushed to retail and online outlets to buy his music in quantities that broke records on Billboard’s sales charts.

The three best-selling albums in the United States last week were all by Mr. Jackson: “Number Ones” sold 108,000 copies; “The Essential Michael Jackson” sold 102,000; and “Thriller” sold 101,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In total, 422,000 copies of Mr. Jackson’s albums were sold in the week that ended on Sunday —more than 40 times the previous week’s figure — as fans snapped up everything in sight.

Many retail stores reportedly ran out of stock over the weekend, which might have contributed to Mr. Jackson’s remarkable sales tally online: 57 percent of his album sales were digital downloads, and 2.3 million downloads of single tracks were sold, separate from album sales. In the five years that SoundScan has tracked downloads, no artist has sold more than 1 million tracks in one week. Last year Mr. Jackson sold a total of 2.8 million tracks.

Because of Billboard’s chart rules, though, Mr. Jackson’s albums do not qualify for the Billboard 200, its standard albums chart, since they were all released more than 18 months ago. Instead Mr. Jackson will occupy the top nine spots on the catalog chart, as a solo artist or with the Jackson 5. (Mr. Jackson’s music is released by Epic/Legacy, a division of Sony; Jackson 5 albums are released by Motown.)

The best-selling new album last week, “The E.N.D.,” (Interscope) by the Black Eyed Peas, will be No. 1 on the Billboard 200, though it had only 88,000 sales. It is the first time since 1991, when SoundScan began to provide reliable sales data, that Billboard can confirm that a catalog album outsold a new one.

“The level of dominance by Michael Jackson on the top pop catalog albums chart is unlike anything we’ve ever seen on any Billboard chart, regardless if it occurred pre- or post-death,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s director of charts.

For days after Mr. Jackson’s death, his albums occupied most of the top slots on the running music sales charts for iTunes and Amazon.com. The most popular tracks online were “Thriller,” with 167,000 downloads in the United States; “Man in the Mirror,” with 165,000; and “Billie Jean,” with 158,000.

On the radio the hierarchy of hits was slightly different. “Billie Jean” was by far the most popular, with more than 4,500 spins through Sunday, according to Nielsen BDS, which monitors airplay. “Thriller” was next, with nearly 3,600, followed closely by “Rock With You.” Over all, radio play for his songs was 18 times what it was the week before.

Predictably, in the hours and days following the news of Mr. Jackson’s death, at 50, his music became ubiquitous on radio. But the increase in airplay was made more dramatic by the fact that in recent years Mr. Jackson’s songs have had relatively little. In the three days before his death, for example, “Billie Jean” had only 94 spins on the 1,600 stations that Nielsen BDS monitors across the country; in the ratings blocks between 3 p.m. and midnight on Thursday (he died at 5:26 p.m. Eastern time), when many stations went wall-to-wall Michael Jackson, it logged 1,011.

“I don’t think radio stations had been playing his music in the last couple of years, due to his legal issues,” said Greg Strassell, the senior vice president for programming at CBS Radio, which owns 134 stations around the country. “Then all of a sudden the audience wanted to hear his songs again. I think they had forgotten how great that music was.”

But airplay began to trail off on Monday.

Catalog sales often spike in the days and weeks after a superstar dies, but Mr. Jackson’s sales were extraordinary even in that context. Sales of Nirvana albums, for example, increased by more than 150 percent, to 77,000, the week after Kurt Cobain died in 1994. When the Notorious B.I.G. was killed in 1997, his album “Life After Death” was just about to be released. It sold 689,000 copies in its first week.

On this week’s regular Billboard 200 chart, sales were much less spectacular. The Jonas Brothers’ “Lines, Vines and Trying Times” (Hollywood) has fallen one spot to No. 2 in its second week out, with 68,000 sales, a drop of 72 percent; and Regina Spektor’s “Far” (Warner/Sire) opens at No. 3 with 50,000. The Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King” (RCA) is No. 4 with 47,000, barely 100 more than Eminem’s “Relapse” (Interscope).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/ar...c/02sales.html





How Much Did Michael Jackson Rock the Web?
Jenna Wortham

As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread last Thursday, the crush of people flocking to the Web for information overloaded several Web sites and services, causing AOL’s instant messaging service, news sites, Twitter and Wikipedia to buckle under the strain.

But just how much traffic are we talking about? Compete, a Web analytics firm based in Boston, crunched some numbers and came up with a few data points to help illustrate the surge.

It found that there were 9.98 million queries for the terms “Michael” and “Jackson” across the top 25 search engines and news and social media sites in the week ended June 27. Compete said that was more than 24 times the number of queries for information using the terms “Iran” and “election” during the week before.

Google, which said that its systems initially interpreted the spike in searches as an attack, fielded the most requests, handling 61 percent of the queries.

Yahoo Music pulled in a hefty 45 percent of Web surfers seeking the pop maestro’s albums, music videos and merchandise, according to Compete. YouTube ranked a distant second with 23 percent.

Compete said Yahoo’s dominance was probably a result of spillover from its coverage of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization. Yahoo said its coverage broke traffic records, generating 800,000 clicks in the first 10 minutes that the story was posted.

The increase in interest in Mr. Jackson’s legacy has been reflected in record-shattering sales of music, both online and at retail stores.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...-how-much/?hpw





Walkman Named Top Music Invention of Last 50 Years

The Walkman, the clunky portable cassette player, has been named the best musical invention of the last 50 years, by a leading gadget magazine.
Harry Wallop

Sony's music player has beaten Dolby sound, compact discs and the ubiquitous iPod to come top of the list of "ten most important musical innovations of the last 50 years" published by T3 magazine.

Its victory comes in the week that the Walkman celebrated its 30th birthday.

The first Walkman was the blue-and-silver model TPS-L2, which went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979 and started a musical revolution.

Never before had consumers been able to listen to music as they walked down the street, without balancing a tape player on their shoulder.

Within two years of its launch, it had become the must-have gadget around the world, confounding early critics who said it would never take off without a record button.

Kat Hanniford at T3 said: "It changed the way we access music, changed how often we could access music, and changed a generation."

She said the MP3 digital music format, which came second in the list, and the iPod music player, which came third, would be impossible without the pioneering work of Sony's Walkman.

The Compact Disc is ranked fourth, followed by Napster the ground-breaking illegal file-sharing site.

Dolby, the British company, which introduced multi-channel sound to cinema, is ranked sixth in the list.

The original Walkman was created for the co-founder of Sony, Akio Morita, who wanted to be able to listen to operas during his frequent plane trips between Japan and the United States.

In Britain the gadget was marketed as the Stowaway and America as the Soundabout but the popularity of the device – one of the world's first truly global gadgets – meant the name Walkman spread, and before long Sony made sure all were called the same name. Its appeal was helped by the the relatively low price tag of $200.

In ten years Sony sold 50 million units of the device.

It is still a leading portable music player manufacturer, with its latest digital device the X Series acclaimed as one of the best digital video and music devices on the market.

T3's list of Top Most Important Musical Innovations of the last 50 years:

1. Sony Walkman
2. MP3 format
3. Apple iPod 1st Generation
4. CD
5. Napster
6. Dolby
7. DAB radio
8. Boombox
9. Sonos Multi-Room Music System
10. Panasonic Technics DJ deck

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...-50-years.html





Giving Up My iPod for a Walkman

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade - a bland grey.

LISTEN UP TEENAGERS... THE CLASSIC WALKMAN EXPLAINED
Sony Walkman
1: Clunky buttons
2: Switch to metal (that's a type of cassette, not heavy rock music)
3: Battery light - usually found flickering in its death throes
4: Double headphone jack (not to be found on an iPod)
5: Door ejects - watch out for flying tapes and eye injuries

Walkman v iPod: Scott's verdict

So it's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player. If I was browsing in a shop maybe I would have chosen something else.

From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: "No-one uses them any more." Another said: "Groovy." Yet another one quipped: "That would be hard to lose."

My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, "Walkmans eat tapes". So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day.

Digital relief

Throughout my week using the Walkman, I came to realise that I have very little knowledge of technology from the past. I made a number of naive mistakes, but I also learned a lot about the grandfather of the MP3 Player.

You can almost imagine the excitement about the Walkman coming out 30 years ago, as it was the newest piece of technology at the time.

Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.

Personally, I'm relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day.

Having said all that, portable music is better than no music.

Now, for technically curious readers, I've directly compared the portable cassette player with its latter-day successor. Here are the main cons, and even a pro, I found with this piece of antique technology.

SOUND

This is the function that matters most. To make the music play, you push the large play button. It engages with a satisfying clunk, unlike the finger tip tap for the iPod.

When playing, it is clearly evident that the music sounds significantly different than when played on an MP3 player, mainly because of the hissy backtrack and odd warbly noises on the Walkman.

The warbling is probably because of the horrifically short battery life; it is nearly completely dead within three hours of firing it up. Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended.

CONVENIENCE

With the plethora of MP3 players available on the market nowadays, each boasting bigger and better features than its predecessor, it is hard to imagine the prospect of purchasing and using a bulky cassette player instead of a digital device.

Furthermore, there were a number of buttons protruding from the top and sides of this device to provide functions such as "rewinding" and "fast-forwarding" (remember those?), which added even more bulk.

As well as this, the need for changing tapes is bothersome in itself. The tapes which I had could only hold around 12 tracks each, a fraction of the capacity of the smallest iPod.

Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?

"I remembered it fondly as a way to enjoy what music I liked, where I liked," he said. "But when I see it now, I wonder how I carried it!"

WALKMAN 1, MP3 PLAYER 0

But it's not all a one-way street when you line up a Walkman against an iPod. The Walkman actually has two headphone sockets, labelled A and B, meaning the little music that I have, I can share with friends. To plug two pairs of headphones in to an iPod, you have to buy a special adapter.

Another useful feature is the power socket on the side, so that you can plug the Walkman into the wall when you're not on the move. But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm





Study: Radio Is Still Top Teen Source For Music
FMQB

Nielsen has released a new study, entitled "How Teens Use Media." Subtitled "A Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen media trends," the study looks at each aspect of media consumption by the average teenager. Focusing specifically on the "Music & Radio" section, the study examines the idea that radio is losing teens to MP3 players and the Internet.

Nielsen says that while the 'myth' is that teens no longer rely on radio for music, their data found that radio is still a top source of music consumption for teenagers. Globally, 16 percent of teens surveyed said radio is their #1 source of music, with another 21 percent saying it was their #2 source.

However, the study finds that MP3 players lead the pack, with 39 percent saying it was their primary source of music consumption, followed by their home computer at 33 percent. Radio was divided into two segments: car radio (ten percent) and radio at home (six percent).

Using data from a Scarborough Research study from 2008, Nielsen found that Pop/CHR was the most popular format among older teens (ages 18-20), followed by Rhythmic CHR and Country.

Also, Nielsen's study found that 75 percent of teens globally listen to "at least some" CDs every week. The typical teen purchased more than three CDs in 2008, though that average was lower in North America, where the typical teen bought an average of just over two.

The entire study can be read here in PDF format.
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1388123





Child Pornography Hidden in Swiss Hip-Hop Website

Child pornography was downloaded from a Swiss hip-hop music website to around 2,300 computers in 78 countries, Swiss police said on Monday.

Jean-Christophe Sauterel, a police spokesman in the Vaud canton of Switzerland, said videos of minors engaged in sexual acts were hidden in a Swiss site where the principal content was "perfectly legal."

Those accessing the illegal material through a portal on the hip-hop page site paid $10 to download one video and $500 for the full collection of 101, with proceeds going to operators in Russia, Sauterel told Reuters Television.

"It's through that site, without the owner of the site knowing, that the files were implanted," he said in an interview in his office in Lausanne. "It is the first time in Switzerland that we are confronted with this kind of case."

The investigation, triggered by a tip-off from Interpol, took place between May and July 2008, Sauterel said.

He said there had been arrests in the United States and in Poland. The address of the website involved was not made public.

(Reporting by Anne Richardson and Vincent Fribault, writing by Laura MacInnis; editing by Robert Woodward)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062902017.html





Judge Throws Out Conviction in Cyberbullying Case
Rebecca Cathcart

A federal judge on Thursday threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman on charges of computer fraud for her role in creating a false MySpace account to dupe a teenager, who later committed suicide.

Judge George H. Wu said that he was tentatively acquitting the woman, Lori Drew, of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization and that the ruling will be final when he issues his written decision.

In November, a federal jury here convicted Ms. Drew of three misdemeanor charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law designed to combat computer crimes. Legal experts followed the case closely, saying it was the first time the statute had been used to prosecute a patron of a social networking site for abuses of the site.

But Judge Wu said that were Ms. Drew’s conviction to stand, anyone who has ever violated MySpace’s terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Prosecutors had sought a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $300,000 fine. In May, probation officials recommended that Ms. Drew be placed on one year of probation and fined $5,000 for her misdemeanor convictions.

Prosecutors said Ms. Drew, with the help of her daughter and a family friend who worked for Ms. Drew, had created a phony identity and MySpace account for a teenage boy, “Josh Evans,” on a computer in Ms. Drew’s home in suburban St. Louis. According to evidence at the trial, Ms. Drew then used the account to conduct an online courtship with Megan Meier, an emotionally disturbed 13-year-old girl who had once been a friend of her daughter.

One afternoon in October 2006, the evidence showed, Megan received an e-mail message from “Josh” that said, ”The world would be a better place without you.” She shortly wrote back, ”You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over,” and then hanged herself in her bedroom.

Neither Ms. Drew’s daughter, Sarah, nor the family friend, Ashley Grills, were charged in the case.

Thomas P. O’Brien, the United States attorney in Los Angeles, brought the case against Ms. Drew here, where MySpace keeps its servers, after law-enforcement officials in Missouri said she had broken no local laws.

Some cyber-bullying and computer fraud experts have criticized federal prosecutors here for using the computer fraud law against Ms. Drew.

“This law was designed to criminalize computer hacking, not people going to a Web site and violating terms of service that can be obscure and frankly arbitrary,” said Matthew L. Levine, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer in New York. “This sets a very bad precedent of using this law for that purpose.”

Ms. Drew’s lawyer, Dean Steward, said that his client should never have been charged. “The government’s case is all about making Lori Drew a public symbol of cyber-bullying,” Mr. Steward said in a court filing in which he referred to the prosecution’s case as “a fiction.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/us/03bully.html





Your Next House Could Come Out of a Printer

The world's largest 3-D megaprinter to build a 10-meter-tall structure
Dan Smith

3-D printing may soon expand beyond the small scale. In 2010, the world's largest 3-D printer will build the Radiolaria Pavilion, a 10-meter-tall structure in Pontedera, Italy. Made out of sandstone, the building will be printed one 5-10mm layered sheet at a time.

The thin layers of the structure are held together by an inorganic binder, not the normal steel reinforcements that most buildings have. This allows for strength and design freedom not available before. The structure was designed using CAD/CAM software and then exported directly to the printer. Once printed, it only takes about 24 hours for the material to fully set. The process is also pretty environmentally sound, and if any of the building material remains unused, it can be recycled.

So far only a 3-by-3-by-3 meter model has been made of the Radiolaria Pavilion, but that's enough to prove the process works. Considering the ease of moving from design programs to finished building, this could transform building construction. Without the need for rigid steel reinforcement, it could also usher in an era of more free-flowing and organic architectural design. Soon we might be living in printed sandstone buildings that rival those on Tattooine.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/articl...-next-building





Pachter: Used Games Sales At 100 Million Annually In U.S., Not A Threat
Stephen Totilo

Gaming's most-quoted financial analyst shared some unconventional wisdom about used games today.

In a 210-page annual report about the state of the gaming industry that begins with him thanking Kotaku and other websites for "keeping us on our toes and always asking us to think about the industry in real-time," Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter sized up the used games industry.

And then Pachter argued why used games aren't the danger game publishers suspect them to be.

On the size of the phenomenon, he stated:

Quote:
The number of games traded annually is striking; we estimate the overall used game market to be $2 billion in the U.S., with an average ticket of around $20 per used game. This means that an estimated 100 million units of used games are traded in each year, representing around 1/3 of all games sold annually.
A third — or a quarter if the 270-million games sold annually in the U.S. also cited by Pachter doesn't include used games — of games sold annually in the U.S. are used? That is a striking figure, either way you look at it. Kotaku contacted GameStop and the game sales-tracking NPD group for corroboration, but neither replied by press time. The $2 billion figure was reported earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal, citing another analyst.

If that market is so big, why shouldn't publishers, who derive no profits from the sale of used games, be shaken by it?

His analysis:

Quote:
we think that used game sales benefit new game sales by providing currency to gamers with less disposable income, thereby enabling the purchase of additional games. The vast majority of used games are not traded in until the original new game purchaser has finished playing, typically well beyond the window for a fullretail priced new game sale. Thus, while there may be some limited substitution of used game purchases when GameStop employees "push" used merchandise upon consumers lined up to buy new games, the vast majority of used game purchases occur more than two months after a new game is released. Other than the potential impact at holiday (when new game lives are extended beyond the typical two month sell-through pattern), used game sales just don't impact new game purchases very much…. To the extent that there is a substitution effect, we estimate that fewer than 5% of new game sales are impacted
Pachter's analysis echoes what GameStop reps have told me about a view of the sale of used games furthering the purchase of new games, rather than cutting into such sales. As Pachter notes, many publishers have been acting as if the threat is real, bundling their games with map-pack codes and other add-ons that add value for the first purchasers of a given game disc.

Pachter argues that the ability for gamers to sell their newly-bought games back to GameStop and other retailers for store credit is one of the factors limiting consumer interest in downloadable games. Used games keep them coming into stores and keep the trafficking in new game purchases. Consumers, he writes, perceive less value in the purchase of a digital game that they can never sell back.
http://kotaku.com/5304089/pachter-us...s-not-a-threat





‘Transformers’ Sequel Scores Big Win
Brooks Barnes

Horrid reviews couldn’t dent “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which demonstrated once again the power of sequels by selling an estimated $201.2 million in tickets at North American theaters over its first five days.

The huge No. 1 entrance to the marketplace was on par with last summer’s Batman sequel, “The Dark Knight,” which sold $203.8 million in tickets over the same period and now ranks as one of the biggest blockbusters in movie history with over $1 billion in global sales. Overseas “Transformers” sold $186 million in tickets in its first five days.

The summer movie season has already seen some significant hits, among them a “Star Trek” reboot and “Up,” but it took a true sequel to break the bank. (“Terminator Salvation” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” while technically sequels, were more efforts to take franchises in new and unfamiliar directions in hopes of resuscitating them.)

People complain about Hollywood’s tendency to be unadventurous with its big-money titles, but the moviegoing masses clearly get the most excited when they are not being surprised. In other words, the multiplex really rocks when movies are served up the McDonalds way: predictably and comfortably.

“Transformers” is definitely that. This PG-13 picture, heavily reliant on computer-generated imagery, again centers on warring alien robots. The evil Decepticons return to Earth to hunt for an ancient power source that only a geeky college freshman (Shia LaBeouf) can locate. The good Transformers join forces with human armies to stop them. Megan Fox costars.

Few expect this “Transformers” to match the staying power of “The Dark Knight” because the new picture, directed by Michael Bay, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer, has received some of the worst reviews of the decade. Roger Ebert’s critique used the terms “horrible,” “unbearable,” “meager” and “music of hell” to describe it. (And that was just in the opening paragraph.)

Drawing particular scrutiny are two new robots, Skids and Mudflap, who talk in jive and are portrayed as illiterate; one has a gold tooth. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, two of the three credited screenwriters on the movie (the other is Ehren Kruger), have blamed Mr. Bay for the stereotyping. The director has brushed off the criticism in interviews.

Paramount Pictures, which distributed the movie and co-produced it with DreamWorks, noted that ticket sales increased day by day, something that typically demonstrates positive word of mouth.

“Audiences evaluate movies for what they are, and this one is a big, fun visual-effects spectacular,” said Rob Moore, Paramount’s vice chairman. Mr. Moore said he was pleased that the sequel attracted more women than its predecessor did.

The stratospheric results for “Transformers” validate Hollywood’s recent strategy to build more event movies around toys. Paramount will try its luck in August with the big-budget “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra;” Universal just announced “Stretch Armstrong,” based on the Hasbro action figure.

“Transformers,” which cost well over $200 million to make and market, added electricity to the summer box office, which has slowed down a bit following a robust spring. Total ticket sales for the year stand at about $5.13 billion, a 12 percent increase over the same period last year, according to Hollywood.com, which tracks box office results. Attendance is up 9.4 percent.

“The Proposal,” the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy from Disney, landed in second place for the three-day weekend with an estimated $18.5 million in sales and a two-week total of $69.1 million, according to box office tracking services. The R-rated Warner Brothers comedy “The Hangover” continued to show strength in its fourth weekend with about $17.2 million (for a new total of $183.2 million). “Transformers” had about $122 million in weekend sales.

Rounding out the top five were “Up” (Disney) with about $13 million ($250 million total) and “My Sister’s Keeper” (Warner), a drama staring Cameron Diaz that opened to a disappointing estimate of $12 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/movies/29box.html





United States Box Office

Issued Tue Jun 30, 2009

Title/Distributor Wknd. Gross Total Gross # Theaters Last Wk. Days Released
1 TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE..
PARAMOUNT $108966307 $200077255 4234 0 5
2 THE PROPOSAL
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $18578541 $69162471 3058 1 10
3 THE HANGOVER
WARNER BROS. $17022166 $183054267 3525 2 24
4 UP
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $13061737 $250234554 3487 3 31
5 MY SISTER'S KEEPER
WARNER BROS. $12442212 $12442212 2606 0 3
6 YEAR ONE
SONY PICTURES $6022444 $32529560 3024 4 10
7 THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3
SONY PICTURES $5451107 $53456827 2995 5 17
8 STAR TREK
PARAMOUNT $3711968 $246331182 1823 7 52
9 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE...
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX $3643522 $163391192 2250 6 38
10 AWAY WE GO
FOCUS FEATURES $1709313 $4088390 495 13 24
11 LAND OF THE LOST
UNIVERSAL $1195685 $46815665 1504 8 24
12 ANGELS & DEMONS
SONY PICTURES $1091953 $130277166 906 11 45
13 TERMINATOR SALVATION
WARNER BROS. $1088392 $121925747 1102 10 39
14 IMAGINE THAT
PARAMOUNT $942273 $14067015 1135 9 17
15 DRAG ME TO HELL
UNIVERSAL $583215 $40536230 659 12 31
16 NEW YORK
YASH RAJ FILMS $467693 $467693 60 0 3
17 CHERI
MIRAMAX $405701 $405701 76 0 3
18 MONSTERS VS. ALIENS
PARAMOUNT $365080 $195984055 311 26 94
19 WHATEVER WORKS
SONY CLASSICS $359805 $738969 35 20 10
20 X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX $310167 $177836819 360 14 59

http://www.reuters.com/news/entertai...R-US-BOXOFFICE





Hipster Factor Poses Challenges for Movie Marketers
Steven Zeitchik

Batten down the hatches -- the hipsters are coming.

Even as Hollywood studios increasingly aim at the broadest possible audience, a few companies are experimenting with the opposite approach in these summer months and beyond: They're making smart, quirky movies for a sophisticated young audience.

The pics are trying to be the next "Garden State," a 2004 film that, like other hipster pics, can be generally defined as trafficking in moody music, casual style and characters who are disaffected.

But to succeed, these films will need to compete in a more difficult market than "Garden State" did only five years ago -- and do even bigger business than that picture's $27 million.

Perhaps the most prominent example of the form is Fox Searchlight's upcoming breakup comedy-drama "(500) Days of Summer," Marc Webb's subtle, funny and uncharacteristically guy-centric view of modern romance. The films opens July 17 in limited release.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a reflective architect and Zooey Deschanel as his ethereal, sometimes unattainable love interest, the movie was one of the breakout hits at Sundance this year. It has all the makings of a summer counterprogramming hit, along the lines of "Little Miss Sunshine" three years ago.

But even by the standards of Searchlight -- which with films like "Garden State" and "Juno" has elevated hipster marketing to an art form -- "Summer" is a tricky enterprise.

30-Second Challenge

Its most appealing aspects are moments of quirky, contextual comedy and its mood of melancholy -- not exactly the kind of stuff that plays well as you dig into your popcorn waiting for the feature to begin.

"This movie is particularly challenging to put forward in a 30-second spot or even a two-minute trailer," says Fox Searchlight president Nancy Utley.

The specialty division has thus staged a remarkably prolific screening campaign. Since its Sundance premiere, the movie has traveled to 28 festivals and played 215 word-of-mouth screenings. Searchlight also staged a six-city June 21 giveaway of food and other merchandise at retailers, watching as Twitter and Facebook fueled the events' popularity.

Saturation isn't a concern; executives say that in a brand-driven marketplace, there's no such thing as too much attention.

But the company also wants to be precise about who it gets attention from, and has devised a campaign that's either surgical or schizophrenic, or both.

One TV spot, aired during "Family Guy" and "South Park," features a shower-sex comedy scene (which is not entirely reflective of the movie's tone) while another sticks to the quiet emotional aspects.

On the publicity side, Deschanel is booked for the older-skewing "The Tonight Show." But the studio is being equally aggressive with promos in Suck magazine, at GenArt and at other indie venues.

Executives admit the word-of-mouth buildup is important for overall awareness, but that it's not enough. "We need to take the vague buzz and turn it into a specific buzz," Utley says.

The same could be said of hipster movies in general.

Higher Stakes

Gone are the days when a small movie aimed at twenty- and thirtysomethings could simply take its time to grow into a hit, something Searchlight did when it nurtured "Napoleon Dynamite" to $44 million. The film stayed in theaters for nine months and was in release for three months before it even hit 1,000 screens.

That's in part because with media reacting faster than ever, movies don't sneak up on consumers the way they once did. And in part it's because budgets are swelling, raising the stakes.

Hipster movies are now big business. Warners' fall release "Where the Wild Things Are" -- based on a perennial children's classic but directed by the idiosyncratic Spike Jonze and with music from the Arcade Fire -- is a prototypical hipster pic. But the film's budget is conservatively estimated at $75 million -- not exactly a scrappy Sundance feature that can afford to play mostly to downtown artsy types.

Focus Features this month already has tried a hipster movie with Sam Mendes' "Away We Go," about a pregnant mid-thirties couple traveling North America in search of their new hometown.

So far it's drawing solid results. In four weeks of gradually widening release, "Go" has earned nearly $5 million.

But capturing the audience is different for this type of film because the audience is more media-savvy and less susceptible to a conventional marketing campaign.

"With movies like these you can't throw a blanket over (your marketing spots)," says Focus Features president of marketing David Brooks. "You have to be more precise. But the outlets are out there, especially in the cable world." He cites Comedy Central as one such venue for advertising and promotion.

Of course, too much hipster marketing can turn off a mainstream audience. And even those who fancy themselves as hipsters hate the term for its overused, Madison Avenue ring. In the end, no matter how they approach it, movie marketers will face the ultimate challenge with hipster pics -- marketing to the unmarketable.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...5610Y520090702





A Trend With Teeth
Ruth La Ferla

THE symptoms are unnerving: a taste for fresh meat — rare, if you please; an aversion to sunlight; and a passion for spectral-looking, fine-boned rakes. All are indications that the sufferer has been bitten by the vampire bug.

Sookie Stackhouse, the feisty young heroine of “True Blood” on HBO, risks doom whenever she visits with her otherworldly beau. And Oskar, the adolescent misfit of the Swedish art film “Let the Right One In,” a favorite in fashion circles, courts extinction each time he ventures out with Eli, the eerily ageless shape-shifter he befriends.

Sookie and Oskar are in the throes of vampire lust, a pop-culture contagion being spread via television, films and fiction. What began with the Twilight Saga, the luridly romantic young-adult series by Stephenie Meyer, followed by “Twilight,” the movie, has become a pandemic of unholy proportions.

Is it a wonder?

Rarely have monsters looked so sultry — or so camera-ready. No small part of this latest vampire mania seems to stem from the ethereal cool and youthful sexiness with which the demons are portrayed. Bela Lugosi they are not.

“The vampire is the new James Dean,” said Julie Plec, the writer and executive producer of “The Vampire Diaries,” a forthcoming series on the CW network based on the popular L. J. Smith novels about high school femmes and hommes fatales. “There is something so still and sexy about these young erotic predators,” she said.

This generation of undead prowls high school hallways and dimly lighted dance clubs as menacing — and as seductive — as they have ever been. The June premiere of the second season of “True Blood,” in which Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, is reunited with her imperious fanged suitor, drew 3.4 million viewers, making it HBO’s most-watched program since the “Sopranos” finale in 2007.

Charlaine Harris has just published “Dead and Gone,” the ninth novel in her Sookie Stackhouse series, variations on Southern Gothic fiction on which “True Blood” is based. The publishing world has been intrigued by “The Strain,” a first installment in a planned trilogy written by the film director Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, about bloodthirsty predators run amok in Manhattan.

The style world, too, has come under the vampire’s spell, in the shape of the gorgeous leather- and lace-clad night crawlers who have crept into the pages of fashion glossies.

Vampires, of course, are part of a hoary tradition that harks back to Nosferatu and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” at least. Anne Rice updated the genre, introducing the ghoulishly aristocratic vampire Lestat. But the undead are returning with a vengeance, in part because they “personify real-world anxieties,” said Michael Dylan Foster, an assistant professor in the department of folklore at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“Especially during these post-9/11 times of increased vigilance, representations like the ‘Twilight’ series reflect a kind of conspiracy-theory mentality, a fear that there is something secret and dangerous going on in our own community, right under our noses.”

Given all that baggage, what keeps vampires so alluring?

One might point to their combination of deathless good looks and decadent sexuality. Their faces, as described in “Twilight,” “were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine.”

Vampirelike glamour figures strike come-hither poses in a flurry of recent fashion publications. Portrayed as androgynous creatures in the June issue of W, they affect killer glares, their menace accentuated by their chalky pallor. In the magazine’s current issue, Bruce Willis appears about to be raked by the talons of his new wife, Emma Heming, in a series of photographs by Steven Klein.

Italian Vogue has also succumbed to the vampire’s cold charms: In the June issue, the latest to arrive on American newsstands, models pose as willfully spooky night crawlers like those who once haunted Manhattan clubs; one image captures a female stalker whose supper, the smear of scarlet on her cheek suggests, has just been interrupted.

The vampire’s attraction is “all about the titillation of imagining the monsters we could be if we just let ourselves go,” suggested Rick Owens, a fashion bellwether whose goth-tinged collections sometimes evoke the undead. “We’re all fascinated with corruption, the more glamorous the better” and, he added, with the idea of “devouring, consuming, possessing someone we desire.”

That sort of predatory glamour is personified by Catherine Deneuve in “The Hunger.” In that morbidly stylish 1983 cult classic, directed by Tony Scott, Ms. Deneuve is Miriam, a bloodsucking seductress in sharp-shouldered suits married to a pallid David Bowie and drawn to Susan Sarandon, a tomboyish specialist in sleep and longevity. (According to Mr. Scott, a sequel is in the writing stage.)

The undead of “The Hunger” were blessed — or cursed — with riches, hauteur and the kind of indestructible good looks aspiring glamazons can only dream of. Their modern counterparts come from every stratum of society and appeal to an array of psycho-sexual preferences.

Comely upper-crust demons haunt the corridors of Duchesne, the Upper East Side private school of “Blue Bloods,” a young-adult vampire series by Melissa de la Cruz. In “The Strain,” Mr. del Toro’s gory tale, which is framed like a police procedural, the vampires are lowlifes, unremittingly vile. Saya, the eternal schoolgirl of “Blood: The Last Vampire,” a supernatural action film that will open July 10, is a reluctant monster in a middy blouse, living a Spartan existence. Eli, the bloodsucking waif of “Let the Right One In,” based on a much-talked-about novel of the same name, is gorgeous but apparently destitute and needs only the occasional sanguinary fix to keep from shriveling. (Vampires, too, can be done in by their addictions.)

The most up-to-date — and least menacing — of this nocturnal breed are, well, deathless romantics who pine like their mortal companions for a love that lasts through eternity. Stefan, the handsome archfiend of “Vampire Diaries,” which will be broadcast on the CW network in September, keeps his lust for the human Elena resolutely in check.

In “New Moon,” the “Twilight” sequel that will open in November, the lead vampire Edward is a noble swain, performing feats of valor usually reserved for Superman. Seductive as he is, he, too, is a model of restraint. More than once in the original film Edward stops short of draining Bella, his mortal girlfriend. “I don’t want to be a monster,” he tells her urgently (though it seems she wouldn’t mind).

“Edward has rejected all humanity, but he is struggling to be human,” Ms. Plec said, adding: “There is always the question, ‘Does this person have it in him to be good, to make the right decision?’ It’s a theme that works like gangbusters in films and television.”

Impulse-control is an especially resonant theme in the current era of conflicts and cutbacks. “Periods of war, economic downturns and cultural turmoil all give rise to the production of vampire and fantasy fiction,” said Thomas Garza, chair of the department of Slavic and Eurasian studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and a specialist in vampire lore. “With a recession and war, the conflict has indeed seemed to turn inward, as we question our fiscal, political and moral status. ‘Have we been too excessive? Do we need to be more restrained?’ We seem once again to be questioning these very fundamental values.”

And, at the same time, renewing a flirtation with the dark side. Emily Rose, a performance poet in Chicago, is a devotee, she said, of “the wantonness, the gorgeousness that is the vampire.” She went on to catalog its exquisite charms: “eternal youth, invulnerability and, of course, the night life — staying up way past your bedtime.”

Surely there are worse things. “There are monsters so much bigger and more realistic in our day-to-day lives,” Ms. Rose said. “Having somebody clamp onto your neck and drain you — that doesn’t seem so scary anymore.”

“It wouldn’t be on my top 10 list of ways not to die,” she added, “especially if that vampire is at all attractive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/fa...IRES.html?8dpc





Deal Chatter Heats Up in Hollywood
Anupreeta Das and Jui Chakravorty Das

Dealmaking in Hollywood could get hot and heavy in coming months as movie studios explore ways to fight tumbling DVD sales and distribute entertainment in new formats.

Even as the recession squeezes financing from Wall Street banks and funds, the deal chatter has picked up because studios have already cut expenses and are looking for new growth opportunities for their movies, TV series and other content.

Viacom Inc's (VIAb.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Paramount Studios is in early talks with several studios, including News Corp's (NWSA.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Fox and Sony Corp's (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Sony Pictures, to cut costs by combining DVD manufacturing and distribution operations, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Time Warner Inc (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which owns the Warner Bros studio, is considering a bid for DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (DWA.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), according to Variety columnist Peter Bart.

And Liberty Media Corp (LINTA.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) chief John Malone told shareholders last week that Sony Pictures and privately held Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer could be up for sale soon.

"What we're hearing is everybody's talking to each other on how to get joint ventures and structure costs," said veteran investor Mario Gabelli, whose Gamco Investors owns Viacom stock. "It's driven by how do you reduce costs, how do you raise financing, how do you distribute products globally."

With little hope of DVD sales picking up -- as online and mobile technologies change the way people view entertainment -- media bankers expect consolidation, but say more studios will prefer to combine units or strike partnerships and joint ventures rather than buy each other outright.

Traditional M&A may raise the hackles of antitrust regulators since there are only six major studios and a handful of smaller players, one banker said. "Studios will tend toward creating JVs to bring them together so that there is some pricing power over content," the banker added.

Acquisitions could also present integration challenges on the theatrical side of the business because of different movie production schedules, a second banker said.

"Everyone thinks studio consolidation makes a lot of sense," said a third banker. "There is tremendous overhead that can be reduced. But it's difficult given the egos and personalities involved."

Media moguls, from movie titans Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Katzenberg to overlords Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch, have been invited to attend an annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, next week, where they may well plot deals.

Deal Potpourri

Bankers and analysts say cable companies like Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could make a play for the rich content libraries that studios own. Comcast, the No. 1 U.S. cable operator, already owns a stake in MGM, which also counts private equity firms Quadrangle and Providence Equity Partners among its owners.

A fourth media banker suggested that Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could be a good fit for Comcast because it could transform the independent studio's wealth of content into a cable network.

All four bankers requested anonymity because they do business with these studios or their parent companies.

Gamco analyst Chris Marangi said the popularity of video-on-demand could spur Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to seek more content deals but added these smaller cable operators were unlikely to want to buy a studio and get into content creation themselves,

Some said Paramount itself could be up for sale some day.

"Despite the enormous success of "Transformers," Paramount has been a drag on Viacom earnings from the perspective of Wall Street analysts," said David Molner, managing director of Screen Capital International, which has conducted more than $7 billion in media and entertainment financing.

Molner, a former Paramount executive, added that Viacom has scaled down the studio's operations "to an extent that disposing of it today would be a lot more thinkable than several years ago when it was a bigger entity."

He said News Corp, Sony or Time Warner could absorb the trimmer Paramount if it were in play, while Lions Gate and the debt-ridden MGM are unlikely suitors.

Bankers generally see the major studios as possible buyers, and smaller rivals like Lions Gate, MGM and Dreamworks Animation as potential targets.

Most of these studios trade at about 6 to 7 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the fourth banker said, adding that the value of MGM is at par or below its total debt of $3.7 billion.

Investor Carl Icahn tussled with Lions Gate earlier this year, calling its expenses extremely high and seeking board seats. Icahn was also rumored to be buying up MGM debt with the goal of forcing a merger of Lions Gate and MGM, but any such plan has not seen the light of day.

Gabelli said investor activism was tough in the movie business because studios are usually owned by huge conglomerates. "Nobody's going to pressure Murdoch to do anything or Sumner Redstone or Jeff Bewkes," he said, referring to the heads of News Corp, Viacom and Time Warner.

Rather, media companies are taking the initiative in dealmaking among movie studios as they search for new sources of profit or seek to dispose of ill-fitting assets.

(Additional reporting by Sue Zeidler and Gina Keating in Los Angeles; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Steve Orlofsky)
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv...56064I20090702





Is It Time for RealNetworks to Switch Gears?
Brad Stone

THE technology for playing songs and video on the Internet used to be synonymous with one company: RealNetworks, founded in 1994 by a former Microsoft executive, Rob Glaser.

Last week, Real released a new version of its flagship software, called RealPlayer SP. Like many Real products of late, the software offers some cool new features — but not many people are likely to notice them.

Real, based in Seattle, offers a profound example of how markedly fortunes can change in the technology business. In the field it pioneered in the 1990s, distributing and playing music and video online, the company has been largely eclipsed by rivals like Microsoft, Apple and YouTube from Google.

Though Real’s stock price rose slightly last week upon release of the new RealPlayer, it is still down by about half since the start of 2008. And the company’s market valuation of $419 million is only a little more than the $370 million in cash it has sitting in the bank.

Discussing the company’s recent fortunes, Mr. Glaser points out that 2008 was a record year of revenue for Real and that most companies are suffering in this brutal economic environment. He also said that “the human nervous system is wired to focus on new things,” like Twitter, and to dismiss the profitable stalwarts that have been around the block. With the new version of RealPlayer, he said, “we have made ourselves relevant again, or even more relevant in a new world.”

But there are some lessons to draw from the rise and, if not the fall, the stagnation of Real over the last few years. Companies can be ahead of a new technology wave but fail to catch it if they hew too closely to what made them successful in the first place.

Another lesson is that entrepreneurs who have battles with established rivals, even if they think they are correct on the underlying issues, can end up losing out in the long run. (Just ask the founders of the original Napster.)

We’ll get to Real’s storied industry battles in a bit. More significantly, the company has stuck to some of its technologies arguably for too long after the market started heading in another direction.

Most visibly, Real has continued to pitch RealPlayer, a separate downloadable piece of software, as a way to play online audio and video. The program can also be used for access to television shows and music.

But video formats that play within Web browsers, like Adobe Flash, have become much more popular, thanks largely to video sites like YouTube and Hulu. Mr. Glaser argues that having separate applications is necessary to create innovative features, like RealPlayer SP’s ability to transfer video seamlessly to many portable devices, including the iPhone, the BlackBerry and Nokia phones, along with the Xbox 360.

Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner, the research firm, wonders whether Real is actually meeting new consumer needs, particularly since devices like smartphones are increasingly able to directly display Web video. “Sticking to your guns is one thing, but it’s another to say, let’s add features because we can, and because consumers should want this. Do we really know they do? Is anyone really asking for that?” Mr. McGuire said.

In music, meanwhile, Real has also placed what seems like a losing bet — on subscription services that give people unlimited access to a broad catalog of songs for a monthly fee.

Its Rhapsody service has 800,000 paying members. But in this area, too, Real’s vision of the future appears to have grown cloudy, although the company has recently struck some interesting deals to put the service on mobile phones. But for now, the iTunes store from Apple and music downloads in general have become the dominant way to experience music online.

Then there are the very public, all-consuming fights Real has picked over the years. Real sued Microsoft on antitrust grounds in 2003, contending it was forcing PC makers to install its own media software, and won a $760 million settlement.

Two years later, Real publicly sparred with Apple over the fact that the iPod did not play music bought on other online stores. Apple shrugged off the complaint and disabled the technology, called Harmony, that Real had developed to force compatibility between its own music store and the iPod. Apple then went on to dominate the field.

Now Real is waging a new war. Last fall, it introduced software called RealDVD that lets people overcome Hollywood’s anticopying software to make backups of the DVDs they own. Six major Hollywood studios and Real are now fighting over the technology in a federal court in Northern California. A preliminary decision from a judge is expected soon, but the case, and Real’s antitrust claims against the movie studios, could drag on for years.

Real’s cause — to let people make personal copies of movies they own — would appeal to average people, just like the company’s last crusade to sell music for the iPod. But is it a cause worth fighting for, particularly when there are more important challenges in Real’s core businesses? Many shareholders and pessimistic Wall Street analysts do not think so.

“Having $370 million in cash is nice for a little software company,” said Barbara Coffey, a digital media software analyst at Kaufman Brothers. “But if you are fighting six big media companies at once, it’s not a lovely number anymore.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/bu.../28stream.html





TV Specs: Can They Be Trusted?
Eric A. Taub

While LCD TVs take the vast percentage of flat-panel sales, LCD manufacturers have been playing catchup when it comes to picture quality. The industry has been introducing technological tweaks to improve LCD’s ability to handle motion, increase contrast, and display colors more accurately.

But according to a new study by DisplayMate Technologies and supported by Insight Media (a consultancy), LCD as a technology continues to come up short when compared to its competitors.

DisplayMate tested 2008 top-of-the-line LCD sets from Samsung, Sharp, and Sony, and a top-of-the-line plasma display from Panasonic. The company’s aim was not to single out specific models but to look for issues common across the technologies.

DisplayMate’s owner , Dr. Raymond Soneira ,pulls no punches in describing the effect of picture enhancement technologies employed by all TV manufacturers. Using names like Dynamic Backlight, Dynamic Contrast, Dynamic Black, Dynamic White, and Dynamic Color, Dr. Soneira says that they are all “essentially marketing gimmicks. They all reduce picture quality and accuracy and introduce ugly image artifacts.”

Dr. Soneira was particularly critical of LCD TVs’ inability to maintain picture quality when the sets were viewed from an angle. Contrary to industry claims, his tests showed that LCD picture quality (accurate colors, brightness, and contrast) deteriorated as soon as someone sat just 10 degrees off center.

“All of the LCD units have a noticeable color shift at less than ±15 degrees, while the Panasonic Plasma is visually indistinguishable from face on viewing well beyond ±45 degrees,” the report said. “This is true for both the measurements and the viewing tests. The significance of this is enormous, because it means that the ’sweet spot’ for seeing an accurate picture on an LCD HDTV is only one person wide, even for these top-of-the-line models, so essentially everyone looking at an LCD HDTV will see a picture with noticeably different coloration.

“The differences were amazing and astonished everyone that came to see and compare the HDTVs side-by-side, including industry experts, manufacturers, engineers, reviewers, journalists, and ISF instructors.”

DisplayMate had no kinder words for other TV specs. Speaking of quoted contrast and brightness levels, the report said that the numbers given were “significantly misunderstood as well as significantly abused and exaggerated. The values published by most manufacturers are now so outrageous that they are close to absolute nonsense.” LCD TVs that include displays with “extended color gamuts” are promoting a feature that “is just a marketing gimmick.”

Yet none of this may matter to consumers. “My brother and sister-in-law buy TVs, they’re awful,” Dr. Soneira said. “Awful cable reception, awful lighting, and they’re happy as can be. Many people simply don’t care.”

And even if they do, there are times when LCD is the right choice, he said. “With high ambient lighting, watching TV in the daytime, plasma may not cut it for you. If viewing angle and picture quality is important, you need a plasma.”
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/...#comment-30737





Google Mistook MJ Searches for Net Attack
Phil Muncaster

Web giant Google has admitted it thought the sudden spike in searches for Michael Jackson on Thursday was a massive, coordinated internet attack, leading it to post an error page on Google News.

In a blog posting, the firm’s director of product management, RJ Pittman, explained that search volume began to increase around 2pm PDT on Thursday and ‘skyrocketed’ by 3pm, finally stabilising at around 8pm.

“The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack,” he wrote.

“As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a ‘We're sorry’ page before finding the articles they were looking for.”

Many will be surprised that Google mistook a simple spike in traffic, albeit a massive one, for an automated attack. According to Pittman, last week also saw one of the largest mobile search spikes ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about Jackson.

Google wasn’t the only site caught out by the extraordinary events. The Los Angeles Times web site also crashed soon after it broke the news of Jackson’s death.

Twitter’s infamous ‘Fail Whale' was also called into action as servers at the micro-blogging site crashed as 66,000 Tweets were made within a 60-minute period.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1...et-attack.aspx





Moon-Lovers Remember Apollo with Radio Chit-Chat

Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the Moon to one another in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago, organizers in Australia said Sunday.

Although they had some clear and extensive conversations, they had to be patient. It takes around 2.5 seconds for a radio signal to reach the Moon and bounce back to another part of the Earth, so it took around five seconds to get a reply.

Initiated a few months ago by science buffs in Australia and the United States, 'Moonbounce' was just winding up on Sunday Australian time after a 24-hour special event that organizers hope will become annual.

It brought together hundreds of amateur radio hams around the world, event co-founder Robert Brand told Reuters, some armed with their own radio dishes.

It was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary next month of the Apollo 11 landings on July 20, 1969. But as the Moon does not orbit directly around the Earth's equator, this was the nearest weekend organizers could arrange for practical reasons.

Among those taking part was Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, one of the first men to orbit around the Moon, who took a famous photograph of Earth from space now known as "Earthrise."

While most were amateurs, institutions lent equipment to the event, including a 26-meter dish at Mount Pleasant in Tasmania and a 45-meter dish at Stanford University in the United States.

"The signals go up from these dishes in a tight beam to the Moon. They actually hit the ground and at an atomic level 'shake' all the atoms on the surface of the Moon," said Brand.

"It is still taking place as we speak."

Around 1,000 people around the world are thought to have the kind of equipment to do this kind of messaging and Brand, who as a 17-year-old played a minor role in the Apollo missions by helping install telecommunications installations used by NASA in Australia, said the results were remarkably clear.

There was "very little difference quality-wise" to some common radios, he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...55R07120090628





Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big
Miguel Helft

Google handles roughly two-thirds of all Internet searches. It owns the largest online video site, YouTube, which is more than 10 times more popular than its nearest competitor. And last year, Google sold nearly $22 billion in advertising, more than any media company in the world.

With all those riches and more, how is Google a relatively small company, one that is vulnerable to competition and whose luck could turn any day?

Dana Wagner is happy to explain.

Mr. Wagner, who is Google’s “senior competition counsel,” faces the Sisyphean task of convincing the world that his employer is not unassailable.

“Competition is a click away,” Mr. Wagner says. It’s part of a stump speech he has given in Silicon Valley, New York and Washington for the last few months to reporters, legal scholars, Congressional staff members, industry groups and anybody else who might influence public opinion about Google.

“We are in an industry that is subject to disruption and we can’t take anything for granted,” he adds.

Google has begun this public-relations offensive because it is in the midst of a treacherous rite of passage for powerful technology companies — regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with AT&T, I.B.M., Intel and Microsoft. Some analysts say that government opposition, here or in Europe, could pose the biggest threat to Google’s continued success.

The Justice Department derailed an important partnership between Google and Yahoo in November because of concerns it would cement Google’s dominance and reduce competition. And Google now faces three new government antitrust investigations.

The Justice Department is examining the hiring practices at Google and other technology companies, and it is investigating a class-action settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into ties between the boards of Google and Apple.

None of the investigations take aim at Google’s core advertising business. And unlike other technology giants in years past, Google has not been accused of anticompetitive tactics. But the investigations and carping from competitors and critics have Google fighting to dispel the notion that it has a lock on its market, even as it increases its share of search and online advertising.

Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. “They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn’t reflect their dominance of key sectors,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.”

Microsoft declines to comment on its archrival’s efforts. But during Mr. Wagner’s presentation to journalists in San Francisco this month, Microsoft P.R. handlers, who had learned the gist of the presentation, were e-mailing reporters offering rebuttals of Google’s arguments. Mr. Wagner faced a barrage of pointed questions.

Hand-wringing over Google’s power is not new. But some experts say that the steady stream of headlines about antitrust investigations could tarnish Google’s image with consumers, who by and large still view the company, and its growing list of free and innovative online services, positively.

“No company, whether it is Google, Microsoft or anyone else, wants to be portrayed in a negative way,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. “It is absolutely right for Google to be worried, to be prepared, to be paranoid and to respond accordingly.”

Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said the company expected its success would lead to greater scrutiny of its actions.

“The goal isn’t charm so much as it is explaining our business,” he said. “We think we have a great story to tell.”

The task of telling that story has fallen, in part, to the boyish, 33-year-old Mr. Wagner, a former antitrust lawyer at the Justice Department who drops words like “goofy” and “wacky” with an aw-shucks grin into discussions of complex legal and economic issues. In contrast to Microsoft a decade ago, whose executives would rarely hide their disdain for regulators, Mr. Wagner speaks of his former colleagues at the Justice Department in deferential tones.

“They definitely care about doing the right things for users and consumers,” he said. “My company cares about doing the right things for users and consumers.”

Mr. Wagner’s job has not been easy. The slides he uses in his presentations have been circulating long enough that Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that is critical of Google, has posted an annotated version of them that disputes nearly every one of Google’s assertions.

For example, on a slide that cites a public policy group’s praising Google for some of its practices to protect users’ privacy, it points to four other groups that have criticized the company for collecting immense amounts of data about consumers.

Mr. Wagner, not surprisingly, takes issue with the image of Google as unshakable monopoly. Google achieved its market position by offering superior products and could quickly be dethroned if it stops innovating, he said.

And unlike companies that dominated other eras of computing, Google makes it easy for its customers to switch to rival products.

Central to Mr. Wagner’s case is the argument that Google is a relatively small player in a vast market where its rivals are not just other search engines or even other Web sites. Google says it is competing for users against sites as diverse as Amazon, WebMD and Wikipedia. And Google is competing for ad dollars with television, radio, print publications, bus stop benches and milk cartons.

Gregory L. Rosston, an economist at Stanford who has heard Mr. Wagner’s arguments, said others who faced antitrust woes had made similar arguments without success.

“When parties have tried to make the argument that television, newspapers and billboards are part of the same relevant advertising market as radio, that hasn’t flown with the Justice Department or the courts,” Mr. Rosston said. “That said, the Internet has changed things and they may be able to make that argument now.”

The timing of Google’s tussles with the government has surprised some analysts because the company and its executives are close to the Obama administration.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, campaigned for Mr. Obama, advised the transition team and now sits on the president’s council of advisers on science and technology. Some former Google employees have taken influential posts in the administration.

Those ties have not helped Google with regulators, at least not so far. Yet they provide another source of concern for Google’s critics, who fear that the company may gain undue influence over important policy areas like online privacy regulation.

Mr. Wagner says that some of Google’s rivals, like Microsoft or AT&T, are not only much larger than Google but also spend far more on lobbying than it does.

While the industry is volatile and competitive, Mr. Wagner said he was gratified by Google’s success.

“We know we have a lot of people doing searches and we are very proud of that,” he says. “We are not asking for sympathy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/te.../29google.html





Ad Networks Failed, Not News Sites
Rich Miller

Advertising networks and widgets are being cited as the key factors in the performance problems experienced by major news sites during the crush of Internet traffic Thursday as news broke about the death of pop star Michael Jackson.

Keynote Systems, which provided early data on the sluggishness of news sites Thursday, released an analysis late Friday that highlighted the role of third-party content. “Our measurement data shows that for sites reported as having performance slowdowns yesterday, internal content delivered quite fast, however content that came from other sources contributed most to the site slowdowns,” said Shawn White, director of external operations at Keynote Systems.

Many news web sites use advertising networks rather than serving ads from their own servers. This practice allows them to outsource some of their ad sales, but ties their site performance to the speed of the ad network’s servers.

Keynote’s analysis highlights the challenges of including third-party content in high-traffic sites, even as social networks help the web grow ever-more interconnected. It also exposes a tough problem for ad-supported sites in an online economy built around pageviews - the moments of heaviest Internet traffic offer potential gains, but can also be the most difficult to monetize.

Organization with significant news traffic can optimize for spikes, but ad servers and the content they provide are often outside the control of the IT organizations of the news site, according to Keynote’s White.

Delays Frustrate Users

“This is an important distinction, because in some cases, depending upon how a site is constructed or how the Web browser is used, a page may display perfectly fine with a blank area where a third party image should have been shown,” he said. “In other cases, the entire Web page will wait until that last image is downloaded from the third party advertisement service, frustrating the reader.”

ABC.com’s news content “was consistently served in a matter of seconds whereas some of the third party content took much longer,” according to Keynote, which said news sites should require third party content providers such as ad networks to certify the capacity of their networks, perform regular load tests from around the globe, and have strong Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place.

Speed and the ’Widget Economy’

The performance of third-party content is also key in the “widget economy” developing around social networks. Last summer white-label social network provider Ning cited performance issues in banning a popular widget developer from its platform. Facebook has also had to turn off third-party apps that slowed the site’s performance.

Here are several useful resources for addressing third-party content performance:

o Steve Souders of Google, author of High Performance web sites, recently blogged about the performance problems associated with iframes, which are often used to deliver ads.
o The recent Velocity 2009 conference included several presentations on site acceleration strategies and ways to package third-party content.
o Dare Obasanjo has a post titled Best Practices for Web Sites Seeking to Prevent Service Degradation due to 3rd Party Widgets.
o Mike Davidson has previously offered strategies for preventing widgets from slowing your site.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...ot-news-sites/





Google Voice Poised to Set a New Standard in Business Telephony
Michael Scalisi

If you haven’t heard about Google Voice, you will. If you’re not excited about it, you should be. This new Internet phone service offers a number of features that will change how both businesses and consumers view voice communications.

In a nutshell, Google Voice a front-end for all of your phones. It assigns you a new phone number which you can then use as your primary number. You then get to decide who gets routed to which of your phones, either individually or by using groups. Next, you can personalize voicemail greetings depending on the caller.

Say you’re going to visit some relatives who live out to the boonies. Unfortunately, you are way out of cell range and expecting an important business call, or you need to be reachable in case of an emergency.

Traditionally, you would need to inform the calling party of your relatives’ phone number. With Google Voice, you simply create an entry with your relatives’ digits and specify which groups or individuals will automatically be routed to the new number. You can now relax knowing that you are reachable in case of an emergency, and your paranoid uncle can be assured that you didn’t advertise his number to your questionable friends.

Let’s say you meet someone at a party, and finding no good way of blowing them off, you reluctantly exchange numbers. You could set up Google Voice so that when they call, they’re immediately directed to a voice mailbox with a greeting that’s been personalized to say, “You seemed very nice, but I’m spineless and have no interest in dating you”.

Frankly, I find checking voicemail to be mildly inconvenient. It may be because of my ADD, or perhaps my tendency to find myself in noisy environments, but I’d rather to get messages in ASCII than in audio. Not everyone in my life feels the same way I do, so I get a fair number of voicemail messages.

Google Voice can transcribe an incoming voicemail message and either e-mail or text it to you. This is fantastic for messages of your long-winded mother in law, or from colleagues you can't stand, because it lets you skim the text for important details without having to sit there listening to rambling chatter. Unfortunately, the technology isn’t quite ripe yet. Instead of “meet me at Lanesplitter Pizza on San Pablo at University”, you might get “meet me at lame spitter Pisa on some pebble adversity”. Google acknowledges the limitations of this technology and claims to be improving it.

Unfortunately for me, the cell reception at my apartment is mediocre on a good day. Fortunately, Google Voice has a ‘Call Switch’ feature. If I’m chatting it up as a walk in the door, all I have to do is press ‘*’ on my phone and my other registered phones will ring. I can pick up my home phone, and then hang up my cell, and I can continue my call uninterrupted.

Here, I’ve only scratched the surface of what Google Voice offers. In a few weeks, the Beta will be opened up to the public and you can discover first-hand how it will transform your life.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...leph ony.html





Was Wikipedia Correct to Censor News of David Rohde’s Capture?
Matthew Shaer

The escape of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter captured last November by the Taliban, has today sparked a fiery debate over media censorship in the open source age. At stake is the Times’ decision not just to tamp down on any news of Rodhe’s kidnapping, but on updates to Rohde’s Wikipedia page – a feat that was apparently accomplished with the complicity of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

According to Richard Pérez-Peña, a media reporter for the Times, the broadsheet’s top brass “believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival.” Over a several month period, with Wales leading the charge, Wikipedia editors were asked to scrub Rohde’s page of any evidence of the kidnapping, which had been reported by a handful of smaller outlets and blogs.

Wales is quoted as saying he agreed to the Times’ requests because no major newspaper had yet reported the capture of Rohde, a former reporter at The Christian Science Monitor. “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” Wales told Pérez-Peña. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

Blackout

As Dan Murphy wrote in these pages earlier this month, the idea of a media blackout is always controversial. In 2006, for instance, when Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq, the Monitor was criticized for requesting that the case stay temporarily out of the spotlight. “That effort ended after about two days,” Murphy wrote, “with major news outlets saying they could not continue to sit on a significant story.”

But the Wikipedia blackout has struck many as especially egregious. Wikipedia, these analysts say, was created as a collaborative project, where a large group of volunteers can share writing and editing privileges. “Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references, or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia’s editing policies and to an appropriate standard,” reads an introduction posted on Wikipedia.

Flexibility

Among the most vocal critics of the Wikipedia blackout is Kit Eaton, a reporter for Fast Company. Writing today on the magazine’s blog, Eaton argues that Wikipedia has permanently damaged its reputation as a “crowd-based and open-access information source”:

Quote:
Wikipedia isn’t a traditional media outlet, and therefore has no hard or soft journalistic moral code to abide by, which means it can be more flexible in its actions – and the fact a life was at stake here is a mitigating fact. But Wales’ excuse still sounds particularly weak. As a result, the next questions about Wikipedia are: What other news pieces is it hiding? And will users trust in the site as a news source take a hit?
Over at tech blog The Inquisitr, Kim LaCapria arrives at a similar conclusion. “Luckily for Wikipedia, this issue was clearly life or death,” LaCapria writes. “But what if it isn’t?… [H]ow can you stop the crowd from releasing possibly harmful information – and should you? If so, when?”

Importantly, LaCapria and Eaton are here addressing Wikipedia not as a traditional news outlet, but as a new media machine – one beholden to an entirely different set of rules than, say, the Monitor. Traditional media rely on a complex, top-down vetting process; new media pushes all information onto the web, and leaves the vetting to the crowd. Under this rejiggered rubric, the Times – which relies on a top-down infrastructure – can feel free to withhold potentially dangerous information. Wikipedia, on the other hand, cannot.

Element of danger

Others have argued that Wales handled the situation correctly. “There are two competing values to balance here,” Murad Ahmed writes at the Times Online:

Quote:
The first is freedom to disseminate information. The second is the effect it has on individual concerned. Put another way: freedom of speech vs a right to privacy. The internet (and newspapers generally) are, to my mind, skewed correctly towards freedom of speech. But sometimes someone’s right to privacy is so important it overrides the rule. Trying to keep Mr Rohde alive is one such example. Wikipedia’s maturity should be applauded.
Safety, in other words, trumps freedom of speech – a theme echoed by Adam Reilly, the media critic at the Boston Phoenix. Reilly parses the debate in terms of life and death: “The Times simply had do everything in its power to increase [Rodhe’s] chances of survival.” Furthermore, Reilly explains, although Wikipedia did “constrain” the freedom of its users – by erasing or otherwise editing posts on Rodhe’s kidnapping – there was no first amendment violation.

“The individuals who wanted to get word of Rohde’s kidnapping out could have contacted countless news outlets, for example; or nabbed a relevant blogspot account to publicize Rohde’s situation and Wikipedia’s response; or simply stood on the streetcorner handing out leaflets that did the same,” Reilly concludes.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innova...ohdes-capture/





China's Internet Porn Filter -- no Garfield Please
Emma Graham-Harrison

What do Johnny Depp, Garfield, Paris Hilton and roast pork have in common? In China, the answer is that a new government-mandated internet filter rates some pictures of all four of them as bad for your moral health.

Beijing has ordered all personal computers sold in China from July 1 to be preinstalled with the Green Dam software, which it says is designed to block pornographic and violent images, and which critics fear will be used to extend censorship.

But a trial of the program, which is available online for free download (www.skycn.com/soft/46657.html), suggested its filters may be of limited use to worried parents.

When the software is installed, and an image scanner activated, it blocks even harmless images of a film poster for cartoon cat Garfield, dishes of flesh-color cooked pork and on one search engine a close-up of film star Johnny Depp's face.

With the image filter off, even though searches with words like "nude" are blocked, a hunt for adult websites throws up links to soft and hardcore pornography sites including one with a video of full penetrative sex playing on its front page.

Green Dam has not detailed how it scans images for obscene content, but computer experts have said it likely uses color and form recognition to zoom in on potential expanses of naked flesh.

Program settings allow users to chose how tightly they want images scanned. When too much skin is detected, Green Dam closes all internet browsers with no warning, sometimes flashing up a notice that the viewer is looking at "harmful" content.

But the interpretation of obscene is apparently generous enough to include the orange hue of Garfield's fur and, on the highest security settings, prevent viewers clicking through to any illustrated story on one English language news website.

A program to scan written content appears less sensitive, with a string of explicit words typed into a word document triggering no response, although some users have complained in online forums of shut-downs similar to those of web browsers.

Sex Or Politics?

The software also allows users to choose what they want to filter for, and besides adult websites and violence, categories include "gay" and "illegal activities."

Gay and health activists fear the blanket ban on "gay content," in a country where homosexuality is not criminalized, could damage projects including sexual health and AIDS education.

And government critics worry the "illegal activities" section will cover political and social activities Beijing objects to, tightening access to non-approved information, already filtered by censors and a firewall.

Another setting allows Green Dam to take regular snapshots of a user's screen and store them for up to two weeks -- ostensibly so parents can monitor computer use by minors.

But it could also potentially leave security officials a track of computer use by a suspected dissident, or be a gift to fraudsters hunting online bank details and private information.

Researchers in the U.S. have already said they are concerned Green Dam leaves users vulnerable to malicious sites that might steal personal data or install code on the personal computer.

Western governments and trade groups have also asked China to reconsider, based on concerns ranging from cyber-security and performance of the software to Internet freedoms.

"People say the software is not very stable and has many technological problems," said Joerg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, which has dubbed the introduction of Green Dam "hasty."

China's foreign ministry Tuesday declined to respond to criticisms of the software.

(Additional reporting by Maxim Duncan, Kirby Chien and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Jerry Norton)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55T26Y20090630





Couple Gets Prison Time for Internet Obscenity

Extreme Associates owners are both sentenced to a year in prison
Grant Gross

Husband and wife owners of a California company that distributed pornographic materials over the Internet have been each sentenced to one year and one day in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet. They were sentenced Wednesday.

The couple, in their plea agreement, acknowledged distributing three videos through the mail and six video clips over the Internet to western Pennsylvania. They forfeited the domain name, Extremeassociates.com, as part of their plea agreement, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The company is now defunct.

"Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable," U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "These prison sentences affirm the need to continue to protect the public from obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy material, the production of which degrades all of us."

The DOJ began cracking down on Internet-based pornography in 2003, and the agency established an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in 2005.

Extreme Associates was the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary entitled "American Porn," which aired nationwide in February 2002. That program showed nonsexually explicit portions of the filming of a video. Undercover U.S. Postal inspectors then visited the Extreme Associates Web site and purchased videotapes. Inspectors also downloaded several obscene video clips, the DOJ said.

In August 2003, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh returned a 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates for violating federal obscenity statutes. In January 2005, a district court judge dismissed the indictment, saying that the federal obscenity statutes were unconstitutional. The government appealed, and Buchanan argued the case in October 2005 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

In December 2005, the appeals court reversed the decision of the district court and held that the federal statutes regulating the distribution of obscenity do not violate any constitutional right to privacy. The case was then remanded back to the district court.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/articl...rnet_obscenity





Atheist Bus Campaign Draws Official Complaint

A private citizen has filed a complaint with the Council of Ethics in Advertising over the atheist bus campaign, which has plastered buses in some cities with atheist slogans.

According to the petition, the cheery ad campaign for atheism is slanderous and breaches UN human rights treaties.

The chair of the Union of Freethinkers, Jussi Niemelä, denies the allegations.

“Our intention is in fact to promote human rights as an organisation advocating the equality of different belief systems,” says Niemelä.

The buses bearing controversial slogans, such as There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life or Enjoy your life as if it's the only one you've got, will continue to stir discusson this week in the capital city region, Tampere and Turku.
The Council of Ethics in Advertising has acknowledged the complaint and says it will assess the matter at its August 19 meeting.

The Atheist Bus Campaign was launched across the UK on January 6, 2009, and now similarly-minded organisations in countries around the world have adopted the idea as well. Comedy writer/journalist Ariane Sherine initially started the campaign in response to evangelical Christian ads on London's public transport, which sought to remind the public about Judgement Day.
http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/..._832596.htm l





Ruling for Salinger, Judge Bans ‘Rye’ Sequel
Sewell Chan

In a victory for the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, a federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely banned publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

The judge, Deborah A. Batts, of United States District Court in Manhattan, had granted a 10-day temporary restraining order last month against the author, Fredrik Colting, who wrote the new novel under the pen name J. D. California.

In a 37-page ruling filed on Wednesday, Judge Batts issued a preliminary injunction — indefinitely banning the publication, advertising or distribution of the book in this country — after considering the merits of the case. The book has been published in Britain.

“I am pretty blown away by the judge’s decision,” Mr. Colting said in an e-mail message after the ruling. “Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.” Mr. Colting and his lawyer, Edward H. Rosenthal, said they would appeal. The decision means that “members of the public are deprived of the chance to read the book and decide for themselves whether it adds to their understanding of Salinger and his work,” Mr. Rosenthal said.

Marcia B. Paul, a lawyer for Mr. Salinger, declined to comment on the decision.

In a copyright infringement lawsuit filed June 1, lawyers for Mr. Salinger contended that the new work was derivative of “Catcher” and Holden Caulfield, and infringed on Mr. Salinger’s copyright.

The work by Mr. Colting, 33, 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 best-known adolescent figures in American fiction, aged 60 years.

(The similarities between the characters were not much in dispute. As Judge Batts wrote in her ruling, “Both narratives are told from the first-person point of view of a sarcastic, often uncouth protagonist who relies heavily on slang, euphemisms and colloquialisms, makes constant digression and asides, refers to readers in the second person, constantly assures the reader that he is being honest and that he is giving them the truth.”)

Mr. Colting’s lawyers argued, among other things, that the new novel, titled “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” did not violate copyright laws because it amounted to a critical parody that had the effect of transforming the original work.

Judge Batts rejected that argument, writing:

Quote:
To the extent Defendants contend that 60 Years and the character of Mr. C direct parodic comment or criticism at Catcher or Holden Caulfield, as opposed to Salinger himself, the Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.
The judge’s ruling weighed literary arguments made by both sides in the dispute. “To the extent Colting claims to augment the purported portrait of Caulfield as a ‘free-thinking, authentic and untainted youth,’ and ‘impeccable judge of the people around him’ displayed in Catcher by ’show[ing] the effects of Holden’s uncompromising world view,’” Judge Batts wrote, citing a memo submitted by Mr. Colting, “those effects were already thoroughly depicted and apparent in Salinger’s own narrative about Caulfield.”

Judge Batts added:

Quote:
In fact, it can be argued that the contrast between Holden’s authentic but critical and rebellious nature and his tendency toward depressive alienation is one of the key themes of Catcher. That many readers and critics have apparently idolized Caulfield for the former, despite — or perhaps because of — the latter, does not change the fact that those elements were already apparent in Catcher.

It is hardly parodic to repeat that same exercise in contrast, just because society and the characters have aged.
While the case could still go to trial, Judge Batts’s ruling means that Mr. Colting’s book cannot be published in the United States pending the resolution of the litigation, which could drag on for months or years.

Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965, has sued several times to protect his works, including successful efforts to stop publication of some of his personal letters in a biography and to halt a staging of “Catcher” by a college theater company in San Francisco. He has also turned down requests, from Steven Spielberg, among others, for movie adaptations of “Catcher.”
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...right-suit/?hp





The Myth Of Original Creators
Mike Masnick

We recently wrote about how many different sources Shakespeare used in writing King Lear, some of which he apparently copied verbatim. However, it seems quite likely that what Shakespeare did with those words created something wholly unique and valuable (at least, it's withstood the tests of time). Yet, this idea that taking the works of others and doing something with them to make them new and wonderful seems to be an anathema to the "true believers" in copyright, who insist that creativity is about being wholly original, and almost never about building on the works of those who came before. Yet, there's almost no evidence to support this. Nearly any creative work can be shown to be built upon the works of those who came before (hell, even our own copyright law is copied from others').

Law professor Peter Friedman recently had a few interesting blog posts that helped highlight this. First, he noted that the very notion of an author as the originator of a new work is a relatively recent phenomenon, and part of the Romantic Movement. However, prior to that, the view was much more akin to what we're actually seeing today with online tools of creation: "creative endeavors are derivative and collaborative, that originality is not the product of isolated genius but of, well, remixing."

He then goes on to discuss the blues musician Robert Johnson -- considered by many to be the "quintessential" Blues musician. However, a recent study into Johnson's work suggest that his fame and renown is basically an accident of history. Some British musicians heard Johnson's music, and since they'd never heard it before, they credited him for it, even though he was mainly copying (and building on) the work of others:

Quote:
Conceptions of Robert Johnson's work highlight the context dependent nature of notions of originality. Originality is yet another characteristic of copyrightability that is not always easy to delineate in actual contexts of creation. However, what might seem original to those in one context may not seem as original in other contexts. Consequently, within the context of African American audiences of the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson's work probably did not seem startlingly original in the way that it did to British and other musicians and audiences listening to Johnson's music, often in relative isolation, in the 1950s and 1960s. This later audience was largely removed from the original context of other music that was prevalent at the time Johnson produced his music or able to listen to a limited and likely biased sample of such music. For early African American blues listeners, what seemed original and interesting was very different that what seemed interesting and original to the largely white blues fans that were the major force behind the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s. For the latter, romantic conceptions about the blues were closely tied to notions of authenticity that are often unsuited to musical creation in living musical traditions. As a result, what is perceived as original may depend in significant part on the contexts within which listeners hear music.
Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally. It's only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music -- which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to "protect" such things.

But, today, with the rise of the internet, and the ability for anyone to perform those roles, we run smack dab into conflicting interests. People still want to create the way they always have, but the industry of the last century, that has relied on copyright law to make its product seem different and "original" freaks out about this ongoing content creation:

Quote:
Culture is a conversation. Every act of culture is a reply to something, a restatement, correction, modification, reworking. Lawyers are constantly debating how much modfication is required to make a work legal. Thus, you may 'create' a new instance of The Blues(TM Martin Scorsese), by shuffling the notes and words around by a set amount. Shuffle too little and you're in trouble with the law. Shuffle too much and the purists start screaming rape. Still, artists are trained to recognize what is a new song and what a version and their publishing companies have experts to deal with these matters. And there we enter the crux of the matter:

Copyright law is corporate law. Or it used to be.

Previously, it took heavy investment to publish art, music, writing, so it was always done by companies and professionals. Today, squirting anything into a blog is an act of publishing. The legalese you signed by clicking when you started your blog forbids any use of copyrighted material that you don't own. Suddenly, instead of plain ordinary citizens entitled to sing "Poops, I did it again" or tape Brad Pitt's face in a toilet bowl onto a postcard to a friend, we are all professional artists required to Create Art from Scratch. Because we are no longer just having a conversation, in which we quote from everything we have seen and heard without any thought of Creation and Originality. Your piddling little blog is a Publishing Enterprise held to the same legal standards as Time Warner Inc, except that you do not have the funds to pay for any borrowings.

You have been muzzled.

This is why people are angry. Their normal modes of expression have been turned into a crime. They know they are only safe from prosecution because they are small fry - unless someone decides to make an example of you. Thus, any time you post some photoshoppery or a musical mash-up you risk having it summarily deleted and your account cancelled for criminal cultural activities.
It's nice to see more and more people recognizing and speaking out about these things. The idea that there is a single "author" or "creator" who deserves to get money any time anyone else builds upon his or her works is something that should be seen as increasingly ridiculous as people recognize that all works are created based on the works of others, and it's inherently silly to try to charge everyone to pay back each and every one of their influences in creating a new work.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090629/0230145396.shtml





Apple Says Jobs Has Returned to Work
Miguel Helft

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive, officially returned to work on Monday after a five-month medical leave. But for some investors the issues raised by Apple’s secrecy about Mr. Jobs’s health problems and liver transplant are likely to linger.

“Steve is back to work,” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said on Monday. “He is currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days.”

As was the case with Mr. Jobs’s leave, his return to work was accompanied by only minimal disclosures.

Mr. Dowling declined to say whether Mr. Jobs’s role had changed from what it was before his leave, and he declined to discuss his health. He also would not say when Mr. Jobs first returned to work at Apple. Mr. Jobs was at work on the corporate campus a week ago, according to a person who saw him there.

The Apple chief’s official return comes just before the self-imposed deadline for his medical leave. When Apple announced his leave in January, the company said he would be back at work by the end of June.

Mr. Jobs underwent a liver transplant about two months ago, but word of the operation did not surface until earlier this month. Last week, a hospital in Tennessee confirmed that he had surgery there and said his prognosis was excellent.

News of the operation rekindled a controversy among shareholders and corporate governance experts about Apple’s scant disclosures regarding the health of Mr. Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer. His return to work is not likely to quell the debate.

“We don’t know much,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “We know he is back at work and that he had a transplant. Given how important he seems to be to the value of this business, we ought to have the facts in front us that the board had in bringing him back.” During his absence, Apple said little about Mr. Jobs other than repeating that he would be back at the end of June. Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said Apple’s insistence on secrecy damaged the company’s credibility.

“At every stage, the rumor mill was more informative and accurate than the company’s external communications,” Mr. Sonnenfeld said. “The fact that they’ve gotten away with it sets a very low bar.”

With Mr. Jobs’s return widely expected, Wall Street’s reaction to the news on Monday was muted. Apple shares closed at $141.97, down 47 cents.

Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, who managed the company during Mr. Jobs’s absence, kept its business humming, analysts said. But Mr. Jobs’s vision, attention to product detail and ability to inspire employees are unmatched and have shaped Apple’s success, so the hope is that he will stick around, said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “Everyone is glad to have him back, but is understanding that things can change,” Mr. Munster said.

In Silicon Valley and beyond, critics and fans of Mr. Jobs alike said they were elated by his return to work, which appeared to signal that his health had stabilized.

“The entire Valley is happy to see that he is back,” said Paul Holland, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist. “Certainly many of us had our doubts.”

Mr. Holland, who is a partner at Foundation Capital, said the return of Mr. Jobs was good news for the region and the industry because of the broad impact that Apple has had.

“To have a hit company that has been booming for several years is very important for the symbolism it represents for the Valley, as well as for the impact it has on business,” Mr. Holland said.

Mr. Jobs’s return was also welcome news on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., Mr. Dowling said. “We’re very glad to have him back,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/te...s/30apple.html





Comcast Rolls Out Wireless Web
Yinka Adegoke

Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Monday it is introducing a wireless service for subscribers to access the Web beyond their homes anywhere within the United States.

The so-called fourth-generation (4G) wireless service, is the first execution of a partnership between Comcast, Clearwire Corp and other companies that use the emerging WiMax high-speed mobile technology.

Many consumers already update their blogs and watch videos using their mobile phones. Cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc do not want to become irrelevant by restricting subscriber access to the home.

The new service, called "Comcast High-Speed 2go," is expected to deliver data to laptops, netbooks and other devices over a wireless network at faster speeds than has been commonly available to date.

Comcast said it will offer download speeds of up to 4 megabits per second. Existing 3G wireless networks typically offer download speeds between 1 and 1.5 megabits a second.

Cablevision Systems Corp offers mobile Internet service via Wi-Fi, a short range service typically limited to a home, restaurant or "hotspot." The operator is providing Wi-Fi service to its digital subscribers throughout its market in the New York metropolitan area.

Comcast High-Speed 2go launches officially in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday and is expected to expand to Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia before the end of the year, Comcast said.

A Metro version of the data card, which is typically installed into a laptop to allow wireless Internet access, will cost $49.99 a month when bundled with home Internet service. The Metro version will only work within the 4G metropolitan coverage area.

A nationwide version for $69.99 a month will allow subscribers to access the Internet via Sprint Nextel Corp's 3G network where the 4G network is not available.

WiMax is expected to blanket entire cities with Web access for mobile devices at speeds up to five times faster than traditional wireless networks, but the technology is still unproven.

After previous stumbles, such as a collapsed partnership with Sprint, cable companies are hoping that Clearwire, founded by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw will help them resolve their long-running wireless conundrum.

The cable industry is also trying to figure out ways to make more video available beyond traditional TV sets.

Last week Comcast and Time Warner Inc said they start testing ways to allow people to watch more TV shows over the Web, while making sure they keep paying for their traditional cable or satellite TV services.

Comcast will likely try to market the new wireless service as a way for subscribers to watch their favorite shows wherever they are in the United States.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55S50220090629





A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics
Leslie Kaufman

This month, Edward Reilly, 35, finally let go of the television he had owned since his college days.

Although the Mitsubishi set was technologically outdated, it had sat for years in Mr. Reilly’s home in Portland, Me., because he did not know what else to do with it, given the environmental hazards involved in discarding it.

“It’s pretty well known that if it gets into the landfill, it gets into the groundwater,” he said. “Its chemicals pollute.”

But the day after the nationwide conversion to digital television signals took effect on June 12, Mr. Reilly decided to take advantage of a new wave of laws in Maine and elsewhere that require television and computer manufacturers to recycle their products free of charge. He dropped off his television at an electronic waste collection site near his home and, he said, immediately gained “peace of mind.”

Over the course of that day, 700 other Portland residents did the same.

Since 2004, 18 states and New York City have approved laws that make manufacturers responsible for recycling electronics, and similar statutes were introduced in 13 other states this year. The laws are intended to prevent a torrent of toxic and outdated electronic equipment — television sets, computers, monitors, printers, fax machines — from ending up in landfills where they can leach chemicals into groundwater and potentially pose a danger to public health.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 99.1 million televisions sit unused in closets and basements across the country. Consumer response to recycling has been enormous in states where the laws have taken effect. Collection points in Washington State, for example, have been swamped by people like Babs Smith, 55, who recently drove to RE-PC, a designated electronics collection and repurposing center on the southern edge of Seattle.

Ms. Smith’s Subaru Outback was stuffed with three aged computer towers that had languished in her basement after being gutted by her teenage sons, who removed choice bits to build their own souped-up computers. “It’s what geeks do,” she said.

Since January, Washington State residents and small businesses have been allowed to drop off their televisions, computers and computer monitors free of charge to one of 200 collection points around the state. They have responded by dumping more than 15 million pounds of electronic waste, according to state collection data. If disposal continues at this rate, it will amount to more than five pounds for every man, woman and child per year.

Use of the drop-off points was so overwhelming at first that the Washington Materials Management and Financing Authority, which oversees the program, urged consumers to consider holding off until spring.

“We were getting 18 semi loads a day when the program first started,” said Craig Lorch, owner of Total Reclaim, a warehouse on the south edge of Seattle that is among the collection points.

Still, states that pioneered the electronic recycling laws report that consumer participation remains strong over time. Maine, which was one of the first to approve such a law, in 2004, says it collected nearly four pounds of waste per person last year.

“If you make it easy, they will recycle their stuff,” said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. If products are recycled rather then dumped, parts of the machines are refurbished for new use where possible; if not, they are disassembled, their glass and precious metals are recycled, and the plastics, which have no reuse market, are often shipped overseas to developing countries for disposal.

The laws vary significantly from state to state. But in most, manufacturers are responsible for the collection and recycling system, although some will pay states or counties to handle the pickup. The newest laws tend to require recycling of a broader range of items, including printers and fax machines.

Many laws, including those for New Jersey and Connecticut and New York City (none of which are yet in effect) specifically ban residents from dumping electronics into the regular trash.

Least thrilled with the patchwork of laws are electronics manufacturers. “Our hope is there will be a national law before there is a law in every state,” said Parker Brugge, vice president for environmental affairs and industry sustainability for the Electronic Manufacturers Association, an industry advocacy group.

Mr. Brugge said it was difficult for manufacturers to keep up with dozens of laws and rules, many of which they consider impractical. New York City, for example, is pressing manufacturers to agree to pick up at apartment buildings.

Manufacturers say a reasonable rate for collection and processing of waste is 25 to 30 cents a pound. Still it is more than they say they can recoup from reselling the metals they harvest, particularly for televisions.

Peter M. Fannon, the vice president for technology and government policy at Panasonic’s North American subsidiary, said his company would prefer a national law that would put local governments in charge of collection and the industry in charge of recycling.

“We think it is unreasonable that an individual industry be designated as trash collector,” Mr. Fannon said.

State lawmakers counter that they cannot afford to wait for a national bill. With constant upgrades in technological capability, they say, manufacturers build obsolescence into many of their designs, causing outdated electronics to become the bane of the waste system.

The E.P.A. estimates that 2.6 million tons of electronic waste were dropped into landfills in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available. Once buried, the waste leaches poisons like chlorinated solvents and heavy metals into soil and groundwater.

Recycling programs do not address the problem of electronics that are already leaching poison in landfills. Nor do they prevent the frequent shipment of plastic shells covered with chemical flame retardants overseas to poor and developing nations; once there, they are often incinerated, because they cannot be reused, and spew toxic chemicals into the air.

The Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department has a continuing investigation into accusations that several federal prisons with electronics recycling contracts had used inmates to do the work without taking adequate safety precautions, exposing them to unhealthy levels of airborne particles.

Ultimately, said Ms. Kyle, coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, recycling does not eliminate the root problem: the vast amount of electronics generated in the first place and fated for disposal.

Carole A. Cifrino, the environmental specialist who manages Maine’s e-waste program, said she hoped the strict recycling would eventually prompt manufacturers to rethink their designs.

“Maybe since they have some responsibility for the cleanup,” Ms. Cifrino said, “it will motivate them to think about how you design for the environment and the commodity value at the end of the life.”

Hattie Bernstein contributed reporting from Portland, Me., and Claudia Rowe from Seattle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/sc.../30ewaste.html





A Year After Windows XP's Death, Users Keep it Alive and Kicking
Galen Gruman

A year ago today, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP, no longer selling new copies in most venues. The June 30 kill date for XP followed a six-month outcry from users about Windows Vista, with demands that Microsoft keep XP available alongside Vista for the many users who were frustrated by ease-of-use, compatibility, and retraining issues.

In response to the public outpouring of support for XP -- more than 200,000 people signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition [1], for example -- Microsoft did delay XP's formal death from the original Feb. 1, 2008, date to June 30, 2008.

[ See if your PC can handle Windows 7 [2] with InfoWorld's Windows Sentinel tool. | Follow the progress of Windows 7 in Randall C. Kennedy's Enterprise Desktop blog [3] and InfoWorld's Technology: Windows newsletter [4]. ]

And Microsoft let XP remain available [5] in a variety of specialty channels. For example, Microsoft let companies that build "white box PCs" for customers sell new XP licenses until February 2009. It allows PC makers "downgrade" new systems to XP, so Dell and Hewlett-Packard continue even today to offer XP on a selection of models. (But such OEM downgrades will end [6] on July 31, 2009.) Enterprises with corporatewide licenses and any user with a full or upgrade license has "downgrade" rights on their PCs to install XP Pro over Vista Business. And it has kept XP available for netbooks [7], though largely because most cannot run Vista. Plus, stores such as Amazon.com continue to sell XP [8], using inventory acquired before Microsoft's June 30, 2008, general kill date for the OS. (Microsoft's technical support for XP [9] will continue to April 2014 in some cases.)

Gartner analyst Michael Silver attributes XP's persistence, and Microsoft's compromises over killing it outright, to that public outcry.

But now that Windows 7 is less than four months away, is it time for XP users to move to a Windows 7 future and finally let XP go?

The resistance to Vista was historic, as the numbers show
Microsoft officials periodically tell the public that Vista is the most successful version of Windows [10] ever sold, but the numbers belie those claims. Officially, Microsoft has no comment on the rate of Vista adoption, and a spokeswoman said Microsoft doesn't stand behind the claims of its employees.

Gartner's Silver notes that when Microsoft does talk Vista numbers, it talks about shipped licenses. But anyone who "downgrades" to XP was still shipped a Vista license, which distorts the numbers -- significantly.

An analysis of thousands of PCs worldwide, though concentrated in North America, shows that more than half of business PCs have downgraded to XP [5], as have about 12 percent of consumer PCs (which have very few options to "downgrade" as compared to business PCs).

The data is based on the XPnet community of PCs, which counts 17,000 systems that contribute data on their configurations and performance attributes. (You can add your PC to the mix -- and get free, Web-based performance monitoring tool for your PC -- by joining the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel program [11].) InfoWorld contributing editor and Enterprise Desktop [12] blogger Randall C. Kennedy runs XPnet and compiled the data for InfoWorld. The table below and chart above show the percentage of manufacturers' systems that shipped with Vista but are actually running XP. The Dell and Lenovo systems are primarily used in business and enterprise settings, while the other manufacturers' systems are concentrated in home settings.

Note that the base of XPnet-reporting systems rose from 3,000 to 17,000 over the 10 months Kennedy tracked the data, but the patterns of XP usage held steady despite the growth in systems.

Gartner's research backs up Kennedy's XPnet findings, showing a significantly lower adoption rate in enterprises of Vista compared to that of Windows 2000 and XP at the same points in their lifecycles. In the 18- to 24-month period after Windows 2000's release, 12 percent of enterprise PCs ran Windows 2000. For XP at that period, 14 percent of enterprise PCs ran Windows XP. But at the same point in Windows Vista's lifecycle, only 6 percent of enterprise PCs are running it. Gartner's Silver expects Windows 7 to follow the strong adoption pattern of Windows 2000 and XP. "Eighty percent of our clients are telling us they've decided to skip Vista," he notes.

Is it time to forgive Microsoft and embrace Windows 7?

By all reports, Windows 7 fixes many of Vista's sins and adds compelling new capabilities to the mix. InfoWorld's tests show that Windows 7 is fundamentally no faster than Vista [13]; they also show that as applications get more multicore-aware, Windows 7 has more headroom for performance growth than XP does.

"Windows 7 has longer legs than Windows Vista or XP, especially on multicore," Kennedy notes. "This, combined with improvements in background task scheduling and some timely kernel tweaks, provides for an improved users experience -- even on lower-end PC hardware, like netbooks. However, whether or not it’ll be enough to help Windows 7 overcome Vista’s stigma remains to be seen.”

Although Gartner's Silver says Windows 7 is a worthwhile upgrade, he recommends that enterprises wait 12 to 18 months before migrating to Windows 7, so IT can test the OS on their current and planned PCs, verify software compatibility, and understand the implications of software vendors' Windows 7 plans. For example, Silver has seen some software vendors consider using the Windows 7 launch to raise prices via Windows 7-certified upgrades. He also warns IT to inventory its Web applications designed for Internet Explorer 6 [14], which are likely to not work properly under the Vista-oriented IE7 or Windows 7-oriented IE8.

IT must also work through Microsoft's array of software licenses, while also navigating moves the company seems to be making to steer customers to pricier licensing options.

For example, two weeks ago, Microsoft had planned to limit the ability to downgrade to XP [15] new PCs bought before April 2010, which could force enterprises to upgrade to Windows 7 before they are ready. The day InfoWorld reported this plan, Microsoft changed it so that downgrades were allowed on new PCs bought through April 2011.

Last week, Microsoft announced new PCs bought since June 26, 2009, could get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it shipped -- but it limited businesses to 25 free upgrades [16]. Businesses that pay extra for Microsoft's Software Assurance plan are free to upgrade the OS at any time, as a benefit of what is essentially a subscription plan.
http://infoworld.com/d/windows/year-...nd-kicking-247





Insider Trading Suspected Ahead of Pirate Bay Sale
David Kravets

Securities regulators are investigating potential insider trading of Global Gaming Factory before it announced its planned purchase of The Pirate Bay for $7.7 million, exchange AktieTorget told Swedish media.

AktieTorget, a Swedish exchange listing some 116 public companies, suspended trading in Global Gaming a week before the announcement as trading volume and share prices jumped without public news to account for it.

“There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked,” said Peter Gönczi, executive vice president at AktieTorget.

Gönczi also said that the exchange, if the purchase is finalized as planned in August, might open an even wider probe, given that the four Pirate Bay’s co-founders were convicted of facilitating copyright infringement by running the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker, and face a year each in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Gönczi said AktieTorget does not permit criminal enterprises to trade on the exchange.

“AktieTorget wants to make sure that the companies that are traded on the list are managing legitimate businesses,” Gönczi said.

The new owners said they planned to make the site legitimate and pay content providers for their wares.

Before the sale, average daily volume in Global Gaming was about 162,000 shares. From June 5 to June 18, there was little trading in the stock with an average price of about 9 cents. On June 22, shares nearly doubled to 18 cents with 1.2 million shares sold before trading was halted.

Trading resumed Tuesday, the day of the announced purchase, and shares closed at a high of 38 cents, with a heavy volume of 5.8 million shares traded. Trading closed at 25 cents Wednesday, down 13 cents, and the volume was nearly 7 million shares traded.

The 5-year-old Pirate Bay boasted some 20 million-plus users and was the world’s most go-to website to find pirated movies, music, games and software. Heads began spinning on Tuesday when the planned purchase was announced by software concern Global Gaming.

That sparked The Pirate Bay to become inundated by its fans asking whether their account information could be leaked.

“We are going to build a user deletion interface later today,” The Pirate Bay said on its blog. “Many people have asked about having their account removed and we will not force anyone to stay on of course. However, we also want to point out that we have no logs of anything, no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept). So, no need to be worried for safety.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...rate-bay-sale/





Party Celebrates China Web Filter Delay
Emma Graham-Harrison

Chinese web users flooded to a trendy art zone cafe on Wednesday to celebrate a last-minute halt to a rollout of government-sponsored filtering software, and make a stand for freedom of expression in the Communist-run state.

Dressed in t-shirts mocking the Green Dam program, about 200 Beijing residents had arrived by mid-morning to eat a traditional Chinese breakfast, denounce censorship and prepare for a day-long party.

Originally conceived as part of an Internet boycott to mark the July 1 launch of the filter -- and to give a web-addicted generation something to do during the 24 hours of offline -- the atmosphere was festive as guests celebrated what many said was an unexpected victory against state censorship.

"This is a very rare example for the government to suddenly push back an important decision the night before it is due to be rolled out," said outspoken artist Ai Weiwei, who organised the boycott and the party.

Beijing made a surprising about-face late on Tuesday, hours before an edict that all personal computers sold in China must be preloaded with the program was due to come into force.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said the launch would be postponed and did not give a new deadline.

Officials had said the software was intended to stamp out Internet pornography. But it was assailed by activists, industry groups and foreign officials as politically intrusive, technically flawed and commercially unfair.

"We are very happy because we got what we wanted," said Liu Yaohua, a 27-year-old artist. "We wanted to express our attitude to Green Dam."

There was trepidation among some party-goers about attending an event that was a direct, if light-hearted, rebuke to a government wary of public challenges to its control.

"I am a little bit nervous, but I felt it was very important that I find the strength to come," said painter Zang Yi.

The plan might now drift into oblivion if Beijing decides it does not want to face a second round of pressure from overseas and at home.

At a Beijing mall which specializes in computers and software, vendors shrugged at the news of the climbdown.

"It's a piece of software like any other. You can take it out if you don't want it. It's no big deal," said Zhang Bo, standing in front of a row of Chinese-made laptops.

But a lawyer who campaigned against the software warned it was premature to declare victory.

"It has not been canceled, just put back, so it's possible that after a certain amount of time it will be pushed back out," said Liu Xiaoyuan, who wants the government to explain why a software ostensibly designed to protect a minority of users -- children and teen-agers -- must be installed on all computers.

Artist Ai said battles over censorship would continue, but the government may have shot itself in the foot with Green Dam, by galvanising young web users.

"When young people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s found that the computers, which are so vital to their life, might be affected, it very naturally caused a kind of politicization."

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Benjamin Kang Lim)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...56014U20090701

































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